#HI IT IS STILL YOUR BIRTHDAY BECAUSE WE ARE NOCTURNAL AND IT'S NOT MORNING YET SO UM PLEASE DISREGARD MY LATENESS | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

roccomoon · 3 years

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a birth anniversary noticing

7.22.21

1036am

if you’re reading this, maybe you know me, maybe you don’t,

maybe you care, maybe you don’t,

theres no way i could know,

so i don’t really care,

but i do appreciate the energy,

and attention,

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its my birthday today, and im writing this,

typing it,

reflecting on how it feels,

an anniversary that notices when i first breathed life into this form,

it brings something tender, vulnerable, and sensitive out of me,

i woke up this morning, sat up, checked the time, and closed my eyes,

i sat until it felt i was ready to open eyes, i checked the clock,

20 minutes had passed,

all i saw was who i am, and how that wants to be,

how it already is,

but honestly, how that isness wants to be expressed,

theres so much i want to do,

and yet,

only ever one thing to do, that does all things,

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i remember being a young human,

feeling like i was just overflowing with a world inside of me,

it seemed like my dad was really important to a lot of people,

people showed up to his concerts and they cared about the things he said,

they cheered and applauded ,

i wanted that,

i tried to do it in sports,

and failed,

for the past 10 years,

I’ve really been doing my absolute best at creating meaningful art,

and admit-tingly , it always feels really nice when people care,

when they care enough to pay close attention,

when their attention is on me,

when i am in the center of someones attention,

and they’re absolutely focused on my expression,

performing music on stage,

acting in film,

seeing someone really grasp a tech idea that can be a huge business,

it feels really nice,

to be really seen and heard,

and felt , and noticed, and understood,

i guess i don’t need it,

but i actually do,

i have God’s love pouring through me,

and in many ways, that is the end all be all,

it is enough, but as my sadhana deepened,

i realized it was actually a bizarre western roman catholic christian trauma distortion to act like you don't need attention, or want to be the center of attention, or the center of your own galaxy, .. a star.

the west actually, because of toxic christianity mostly, has developed some kind of weird anti ego - egohood...

its like an ego complex about being anti ego...

like its frowned upon to want the spotlight or something...

but as sadhana deepened, and the Parusharthas unlocked much that was suppressed, ... i ... as i actually am, was unlocked, ... and allowed,

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there, here, is presence, that could go unnoticed by others, for centuries,

but i , rocco, now with integration, noticed,

that i actually need to be noticed,

i sat with this, and observed the reality,

i need it,

its not just a want,

it is a literal need. not just human. but a meta-physical need,

of every soul,

to varying degrees,

some more than others,

karmic structure is just as real as physical skeletal structure,

its about potential , and potential being wasted,,,, is sad,

the All is sad when such occurs,

so,

i need to be noticed,

in my growth and evolution,

it confirms that its happening,

and i only discovered this because i did my best to become invisible,

totally avoided my calling, and that "wanting" to being seen,

heard,

felt,

witnessed,

as a kid on tour, i practiced being invisible,

then in art, i wanted to become invisible so the art was seen, but i didn't get in the way,

but that was all still woven with fear of being seen,

for being seen as being the greatest living thing in existence,

which , i am,

i am literally the greatest living thing in existence,

not stuttering,

clarifying ,

i , am , the , greatest, living , thing , in , existence,

...

and i want, which is predicated on a need,

to be witnessed in that,

witnessed as attention, attention as awareness ,

awareness as love,

of, and for my evolution and expansion,

and not from lack, but from having,

from abundance,

from being, ,

its not just a want,

its an actual human need,

that i acknowledge is sacred, and actually of divine accord,

why else would i be beaming with these desires,

to be seen and heard,

for no reason?

or for the one and only reason.

sat. chit. ananda.

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i remember being backstage, and getting in the way one time,

we were on tour with kiss, and lynyrd skynyrd,

and i got in the way,

these dudes were pushing huge container things on wheels down the hallway, and i think i was walking while playing pokemon on my gameboy... and my dad grabbed my arm tightly,

and in my eyes, told me to never get in the way like that,

always be aware and cognizant of what's happening around me,

so i did,

that wasn't the first time that happened,

but it was the last,

i was never in the way again,

well, there were probably times, but since then i have been keen on not being in the way if i don't have to be,

since then, i love being against a wall,

or in a corner,

so i am able to see everything that is occurring around me,

i love being able to see, everything, clearly,

even in life, if i go days or weeks without being on top of a mountain, or on a big wide open road, it feels like claustrophobia,,, like i need to see evvvvverryyyything around me... its like a clarification of where i am in relationship to everything around me... and what all those things are...

theres this scene in one of the jason bourne movies where he basically flexes as to how aware he is... he's like... theres 3 dudes over there... one just got divorced... 2 are well trained... then there 4 other dudes over there... one likes pickles... etc etc... its like a sherlock holmes thing too... who is another one of my favorite super hero style reference points amongst the all.

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it feels like that's what happened for several years,

i moved to la,

and just disappeared,

i needed to get bearings on who i was in relationship to literally everything else in existence.

i dissolved most the friendships i had from high school, and became a loner, and nocturnal,

i had actual human friends still, but now something changed,

and i was inward almost seemingly more than i was outward,

my friends were people who i didn't even know,

kid cudi, yeshua, tesla, einstein, thelonious monk,

artists, legends, great ones, channels,

and as i became more and more alone,

i became more and more aware of what i wanted to do with my life,

i wanted to channel the infinite into the finite,

and i although i thought i didn't need anyone to notice,

i realized, after a while of no one noticing, i did.

so if you're reading this. thanks.

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the i am witness seamlessly bright in awareness at these words,

as they move through my fingers and appear on the screen,

when i watch them appear on the screen,

it feels like a mirror,

to me,

that’s how it feels,

i had these sensations inside of me,

and they were just sensations,

but not i am typing those feelings,

and they show up as words on the screen,

that’s pretty cool,

i guess that must be what my dad feels when he plays the guitar,

they were just feelings and sensations inside of him,

and then , because he is a master craftsman ,

he is able to become a channel, and fully express himself into that form,

i feel that when i write,

i feel that when im acting, when the camera is on,

or even on stage,

i feel that when im performing a piece of music i really care about,

i feel like i haven’t felt that in a while with music honestly,

it feels like i got away from just being my most ridiculously authentic signal there,

and i wanted to be cool,

cool feels like death sometimes,

sometimes its nice when it happens, but sometimes it just doesnt feel like who i am,

i don’t think I’ve ever felt cool acting,

i don’t feel like like that’s what its for ,

for me,

i love feeling the feeling of completely disappearing, and feeling whatever is that, fully,

and not having an opinion about what the feeling is,

terror, horror, anger, jealously, hatred, pain, sorrow, torment, love, joy, bliss, fun, happy, friction, confusion, lostness,

whatever,

as long as im feeling it fully,

then i call that “perfection”,

i call that “missing out on nothing”

i call that “fully reflective”

im writing a book about it actually,

its called “moon theory”

“missing out on nothing” means nothing is missing,

when nothing is missing everything is perfect,

resistance-less-nes-

the state of no resistance,

wu wet, zero point, crystallinity , buddhic emptiness,

perfectness,

my version of it,

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…

so im sitting here,

writing this,

and noticing what is present for me,

and the other things i would like to be present,

that feel like, because i don’t see them outside of me,

but feel them within me,

they are missing,

but they are only missing from the outside,

they are present on the inside,

and that feels nice to distinguish,

they aren’t actually missing,

they are loading,

so they are coming,

coming into existence,

growing from thought, to feeling, to experiential manifestation,

from the inners of my inner awareness,

to the palpable touchable holographic matrix i access through senses,

that’s basically where im at right now,

nothing is missing,

but i notice what i would like to add to what is present,

i knew this last year too, but it was less accessible ,

less tangible,

as clarity,

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last night my mom said that jesus is the only way to God,

that made me sad ,

cuz yeshua literally came to me and said that not true,

he said folks misunderstood his teachings, and ran with em,

he literally said that he is the crystal soul self,

which all are, and so all can get to God,

and his teachings have been horrifically, violently misinterpreted,

he told me this,

and it feels sad sometimes when those closest to me don’t notice who i am,

it feels sad sometimes when it feels like those closest don’t see me,

or , like they haven’t taken the time to realize who and what i am,

that’s okay though, it gives contrast so when there is the feeling of being super heard, seen, felt, and understood, its clearly noticed,

i know who i am,

and amongst all the things pouring through me,

and into the holographic field of reality,

i am glad to be this one,

with the awareness i have,

,,,

enough thoughts for today,

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i phase out of rocco,

rocco’s eyes glaze over,

rocco looks up,

the channel opens like a flower,

we see rocco looking up to us,

we receive him with love,

he asks us,

what else should he write,

what else should he share with those who will read this,

he feels like not that many people will read it,

and so he feels less important,

because he compares himself to others so quickly,

we reassure him that is not appropriate ,

for the time will come ,

when everyone pays attention,

he feels our reassurance,

the reader wonders who is We,

we are rocco’s guardian guides,

yeshua is here,

gautama is here,

arch angel michael is here,

quan yin is here,

thoth is here,

gabriel is here,

st. germain is here,

melchizedek is here,

abraham is here,

ra is here,

we are rocco’s channel prism guardian gateway keepers,

rocco feels slightly scared to share this right now,

and we reassure him it’s okay,

for he is emptying into the infinite,

and dissolving into resolution,

you reading this is a sacred witnessing of a human beings dharmic resolution,

rocco looks up to us with a prayer hand emoji,

we look to him with the same,

this is enough for now,

thanks for reading,

thanks for paying,

thanks for your attention,

thanks for all you are,

ase, aho, amen, amun,

ra,

co,

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tirednotflirting · 3 years

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you're a sky full of stars

hi this fic was actually the combination of like three different ideas but i think it works out okay.

it’s more soft jalex bc we love soft jalex in this house

here it is on ao3 !

Alex’s flight is delayed.

It makes sense. He had sent Jack a picture of the snow-dusted pasture outside his window when he was getting ready to head for the airport so Jack had expected his early afternoon flight might be delayed by a little bit so the plane could be prepared to fly through the cold air. But a five hour delay was much longer than he originally anticipated.

All afternoon Jack had tried to busy himself with cleaning up a little more and a trip to the grocery store in between getting sad selfies from his boy in an airport Dunkin with updates on his flight time. Each one brought a bittersweet smile to his face because while he was sad he had to wait longer to have Alex in front of him, it was impossible to not smile at his pouty puppy dog eyes. Jack was certain he was sending the dramatic look on purpose, always trying to do something to make Jack smile. It was just one of the many reasons he was entirely head over heels.

The sun set a couple hours ago though and now Jack is camping out on his couch, staring out the big window in his living room, watching tiny blinking lights cross the sky and waiting for Alex’s flight to be one that catches his eye. It’s the closest he can get to stargazing in Los Angeles (the irony of the City of Stars being too bright to see the real ones isn’t lost on him) but it’ll have to do for now. The activity reminds him of Alex, as do most good and soft things in the world, and he can’t help but think about the last time he was at the farm.

It had been Alex’s idea to bundle up a bit and lay out a couple blankets in the front yard to watch the stars one night in October (Mars and Jupiter are going to be visible tonight. Jack, come on, this is important). He requests hot chocolate before they go out, which Alex happily makes and pours into a Thermos that Jack jokes he remembers from the high school lunch room. He lets Alex lay out all the blankets once they’re out there and after moving to sit, he pats the spot between his legs. Alex laughs but moves to take a seat, his back immediately relaxing to rest against Jack’s chest as his eyes drift up to the clear, cold skies.

He points up into different spots across the night sky to provide direction on how to spot the planets and some constellations he looked up the stories for. Alex tells Jack the stories as well in his typical dramatic fashion while his fingers play with the strings of Jack’s hoodie. Something about the simple action feels so fond, Jack thinks, as one of his own hands lifts to pull Alex’s beanie back over his ear.

He’s just finished telling Jack a story about a guy called Orion, when Alex reaches for Jack’s hand and holds it against his chest. Jack can feel him sigh from the way his chest lifts below his hand. “I’m glad I did this.”

“What this are you referring to?” Jack questions as he slips his fingers into the spaces between Alex’s where they rest against his heart.

“Lots of stuff, I guess,” Alex says, his eyes still trained on the sky. “Decided on this place and the animals, agreed to the hot chocolate for tonight, fell for you. I’m just thankful the universe allowed for all of it, you know?”

Jack smiles easily at his words. He’s always been grateful to have Alex’s perspective on things be such a constant in his life. The world feels way too big and scary and it’s easy for Jack to feel like he’s getting lost in it. It’s his own reason for being so thankful to have the farm to visit from time to time. Jack likes the activity and pace of LA but he’s glad he has a place to head to where the rest of the world aside from his boy and a few goats and horses disappears. “Yeah, I think I do know.”

Alex turns then and resituates himself in Jack’s lap and Jack’s smile grows as he just barely makes out Alex’s in the minimal light provided from the porch light they left on when heading out. Alex leans forward to press his lips to Jack’s, the action obviously intended to be a short one and Jack finds himself laughing against his lips at the gasp Alex lets out as he lies back fully against the blanket. Alex pulls back but only far enough that their foreheads still rest together. “Excuse me, sir, that was not very safe.”

“I live on the edge, baby.” Jack teases back before pulling a giggling Alex closer against his chest to bring their lips back together.

The stars that night had appeared in Jack’s dreams for weeks after that trip. The simple joys of the farm and the sky and Alex lived on a loop in Jack’s brain pretty much always until he could get back to the clean, brisk Maryland air. He sighs now as his eyes strain against the LA sky, searching pointlessly for even the tiniest glittering of a star.

He could go to sleep, Jack tells himself, as another yawn leaves his lips. He’s been sat on the couch that faces the window for a few hours now, his fingers absent-mindedly strumming his guitar while he waits for a text with a selfie containing one of the LAX filters to tell him the plane has landed.

He wills himself to get up and wander toward the kitchen to set out Alex’s favorite tea on the counter. He fills the kettle and leaves it on the stove so that way it’ll be ready for when he gets the notification so he can make a mug for Alex to have while he fills in Jack on the day and the writing session he had yesterday. A mug of tea will be the only thing Jack can use to get Alex to stay awake long enough to let him just listen to him for awhile, the sound of his voice, live and in person, always being something to warm Jack’s soul after they’ve been apart.

Jack heads back to the couch then, determined to watch the sky until his phone buzzes. He blinks the spots away from his eyes as he takes a seat and pulls the sleeves of his sweatshirt over his cold hands. He’s not used to getting tired this early. He used to live in some kind of nocturnal state, he’s pretty sure. It’s as he’s sitting there, lounging against the back of the plush couch and thinking on what could have caused this change in his lifestyle (he’s got an idea of a who rather than a what that has him wanting to settle down), that Jack’s eyes finally drop shut.

“Hey there, sunshine.”

Jack’s eyes flutter open at the sound of Alex’s voice and he feels his heart melt a little at the view in front of his still open window. A beanie covers Alex’s head, pulled down over his ears to fight the rare cold night they were meant to be having in LA. He has yet to take off his jacket, evidence that he must have immediately come to find Jack after stepping through the front door. Alex is always an absolute vision to Jack but there’s something special about his first look at him after they’ve been away from one another for a while.

“You lost all rights to call me that after the last album,” Jack jokes lazily, his hand reaching up to cup Alex’s jaw, the familiar stubble against his palm making a blush and tired grin paint its way across his face. “I was gonna try to stay up for you. Was gonna try to figure out exactly when you would get up here so I could have a tea ready for you and everything.”

“It’s the thought that counts, my love,” Alex smiles, his face turning in Jack’s hand to press a kiss to his palm. “You can make me my tea in the morning if that’ll make you feel better?”

“Mmm, maybe.”

Alex laughs and his eyes light up some in the dull light coming from the entryway and that alone lets Jack consider this night a win, regardless of his tired mind not allowing him a better welcome home for his boy. (If he wasn’t so tired he probably would question how easily he called this place home for the both of them but it’ll have to wait until he’s had more and better sleep.) Alex leans closer and tucks a finger below Jack’s chin before brushing their lips together. “I need to shower off all the plane air but why don’t we go head upstairs and I’ll meet you in bed, yeah? We can catch up in the morning.”

Jack sighs because his tired brain knows that it’s a good plan but he was really looking forward to a catch up. He’s also not all that certain he’ll be able to fall asleep again that easily. “If I’m still awake when you’re done will you tell me more constellation stories?”

He watches Alex’s features soften impossibly more. “You want to hear more of my useless star stories?”

Jack shakes his head as he moves to stand, his hand reaching down for Alex’s so he can walk them in the direction of the bedroom. “They aren’t useless. Always love listening to you talk about your love for everything going on up above us. You always sound so excited.”

They stumble up the stairs, hands loosely linked together as Alex walks behind Jack, his free hand providing a guiding, comforting touch as Alex steers them down the hall. After entering the room, Jack falls into the mattress and behind him he can hear Alex laugh, the sound even more of a comfort than his favorite song. “Well in that case,” Alex starts and Jack lifts his head to watch a tired smirk pull at his lips. “On the plane, I read this really cool article about some of the zodiac constellations that I would love to share with the class.”

“I’m all ears, babe.”

Alex bites his lip as his eyes meet Jack’s from his spot leaning against the bathroom door frame. “Get ready for sleep then and I’ll be back in a few. Happy to be back. I love you so much.”

“I love you more,” Jack says back, his face half-smushed into a pillow. Alex winks and turns to close the door.

And though completely exhausted, Jack finds himself making the mental note that maybe the whole naming a star after Alex would actually be a good birthday present after all. Then maybe Jack can be the one to tell Alex a story. One about a boy who loved another boy enough that every night he filled the sky full of stars and their stories.

#jalex #jalex fic #atl fic #we love some fluffy 2.45am nonsense :))))))

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allthebooksandcrannies · 4 years

Text

Dana Has Enough- Chapter 2

Read on AO3

Read Ch 1

Every once in a while, even the people you know best manage to surprise you. What Dana really ought to have remembered, however, was that no one ever said those surprises were always pleasant. And it wasn’t just that Jack had forgotten his son’s birthday that really was so upsetting to Dana. No, the worst part was when Tim came down that morning and was obviously so unsurprised that his dad didn’t remember.

Dana had worked so hard to give Jack the benefit of the doubt when he and Tim fought. She knew that Jack had been ashamed of not spending enough time with Tim when he was little. He had talked about it all the time during his physical therapy appointments after he woke up from the coma. Back thenm he had been so excited about all his plans to be a better father, and she had believed him. But at some point, they had grown complacent and fallen back into old patterns.

Dana had been concerned about Tim and Jack for a while now but had stayed out of it because she wasn’t Tim’s mom. She wasn’t his parent, and it didn’t feel like her place to interfere in how Jack raised his son. But she would be damned if she let a child feel forgotten on his birthday.

Now, listening to Tim gush over some of the better photography exhibits he had seen at the museum before, but how he hadn’t had found time to see this one yet, Dana was really glad she had taken the time last night to do some last minute research into potential activities to do today. It had been harder than she expected to find something she was confident Tim would like. She had realized she had almost no idea what Tim was interested in, what he did with his free time. It had been an embarrassing realization to come to about someone she lived with. She had been almost ready to give up when she remembered the museum exhibit one of her college friends had posted about on Facebook the week before. She hadn’t even known that Tim had a camera like that when she decided to invite him, just remembering how obviously interested he was every time the news had anything to say about the Justice league or Gotham’s rotating roster of vigilantes.

She needed to do better. This kid deserved it.

She was almost disappointed when she finally pulled the car into the museum parking lot because she had never seen Tim this animated before. He had moved on from past exhibits to some of his favorite photographers to explaining just why it was so hard to get good superhero photos, particularly of nocturnal vigilantes and why this exhibit was such a big deal, but he pulled himself up short when the car came to a stop. Dana was honestly surprised his teeth didn’t make an audible clicking sound, he shut his mouth so quickly. She turned to Tim in the passenger seat.

“You okay, Tim?”

He looked startled by the question, and a little sheepish too. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk your ear off like that.” Tim didn’t meet her eyes. That wasn’t going to work.

“Don’t worry about it, kiddo. I thought it was really interesting. I had no idea that so much work went into trying to photograph superheroes, especially as art.”

“Oh, okay.” Dana didn’t think she was imagining the little smile on Tim’s face.

“C’mon, let’s go inside.”

---

Once inside the exhibit, it was like Tim forgot Dana was there, he was so focused on each piece. To Dana, they were just photos of superheroes. Really cool photos of superheroes, of course, but she was sure she was missing some deeper layers of meaning that were obvious to the more art savvy patrons around her. She started wandering around the exhibit.

She stopped in front of a large photo blown up in front on a massive canvas. It was obviously taken in Gotham, with a camera that probably had a great zoom feature if the subject matter was any indication. Standing in the light of a burning building was a little girl, no more than five years old. But what really made this one standout was the man in a domino mask crouched down in front of her, a red helmet at his side and one hand offering a lollipop to the kid.

Dana wasn’t sure what made her stand there so long. Maybe it was how calm the child looked in front of a man that scared the majority of Gotham adults. Maybe it was the realization that the Red Hood didn’t look all that much older than Tim. Practically a child himself. Dana stood there, just staring at those two children until she heard a quiet click beside her.

Startled, she looked to the side at the child next to her. Tim was focused on the camera screen, probably reviewing the photo he snuck, until he met her gaze with a crooked grin. “Sorry.” Something told Dana he wasn’t really that sorry. “I just really wanted to capture the look on your face.”

Dana rolled her eyes playfully. “Well, on that not-at-all creepy note I’m going to go look at some other photos.” Tim acquiesced. And she left him focused on the Red Hood with a strange expression of his own on his face.

Thinking she ought to let Tim enjoy the exhibit for a minute, she decided to swing by the giftshop. After all, at this point she could practically guarantee Jack hadn’t gotten the kid anything. Maybe they’d have something he’d like.

---

About five minutes later, Dana was incredibly frustrated. Why was everything so gimmicky? Almost everything in here was so obviously touristy, which, honestly, was patently ridiculous. What tourists were coming to Gotham. That’s what Metropolis was for.

Then she saw it. Yes, that would be perfect.

---

If Tim had questions about what was in the plastic bag with the GMA’s logo on it when Dana rejoined him, he didn’t ask them. Honestly, that was probably a symptom of a bigger problem, but Dana was going to leave that for another day.

Instead she just stood next to Tim as he examined the info tag next to a photo of Nightwing mid-backflip from one roof to another while Robin jumped after him with significantly less fanfare.

---

We really should do this more often, Dana thought as she watched Tim wave his hands around, sweeping gestures helping him tell some story about his friend Cassie trying to walk him and two other boys through her mother’s brownie recipe and it going terribly, terribly wrong.

Tim was actually a pretty good story teller once you got him going, and he seemed to relish the opportunity to talk about his friends to someone who didn’t know them. She had already gotten a thirty minute lecture on what made each of them so great and so exasperating, and Dana had had to hide her smile in her burger when he spent more time than he had on both Bart and Cassie combined on describing this Connor. The obliviousness here was probably the universe’s way of balancing out Tim’s genius because wow was Dana realizing just how brilliant this kid was. She had always known he was smart but it broke her heart to think that she had been missing so much of who this kid was for so long.

She wondered whether playboy Bruce Wayne realized just how wonderful Tim was. If the Waynes had always known Tim better than his actual family. If the way Tim talked about them was any indication, they probably did. She wondered if Tim would rather still be living with them. If he had ever let himself ask that question.

But if he didn’t want to go there, Dana wasn’t going to make him.

“So, were you able to get the mix off the ceiling?”

Dana was quickly learning not to trust Tim’s “innocent” expression.

“Of course we did,” he grinned, “just not before it dripped all in Dick’s hair.” If Dick Grayson ever asked, Dana most certainly did not laugh so hard she choked on a french fry.

---

When Tim tentatively asked if Dana would like to come to dinner at Wayne Manor with him as she dropped him off to meet up with his friends, she was far more hesitant to accept than she would have been even a day before. On the one hand, it was Wayne Manor. No one got a private invitation to Wayne Manor, and she had been curious about these people that had taken Tim in for so long. But, she couldn’t help but feel like she’d be an intruder. Against her better judgment, she said yes.

---

It was strange to go to dinner somewhere without Jack. She really needed to get out more, regardless of how Jack felt. She tried to suppress the feeling of not belonging as she fiddled with the hem of her two-year-old blouse as she waited in front of the ornate wooden door. As she squeezed the painstakingly wrapped package in her arms, she tried to bring in a deep breath. This was fine. Everything was fine. Tim had asked her here, hadn’t he? Of course, he may have only been trying to be polite…

She wasn’t able to go any farther down that path, however, before the door was unceremoniously yanked open to reveal Tim grinning straight at her. When did he get so tall?

“Dana! You made it!” He didn’t ask where Jack was, which was good because Dana didn’t want to tell Tim his dad was sulking because Dana refused to try to comfort him in his guilt over forgetting his sons birthday again. Shaking unpleasant thoughts out of her head Dana grinned straight back, handing Tim the gift she had bought that afternoon.

“Of course, I did! You didn’t think I’d miss Mr. Pennyworth’s cooking after hearing you talk it up all day?” Mentioning Alfred Pennyworth was apparently the right call because it clearly reminded Tim that he was supposed to step away from the door if he wanted her to be able to come in and he quickly backed up, present in hand.

Dana followed him into the house, and then towards what could only be described as a cacophony of noise. Several voices were busy talking over each other even though she couldn’t make out any of the words. Tim seemed quite amused by her trepidation to actually walk through the door to the dining room. Rude.

---

The introductions hadn’t been nearly as awkward as she’d feared. Granted, she’d gotten appraising looks from just about everyone in the room and it had gotten a little tense, but everyone had been polite. Dana had been guided to a spot to the left of Mr. Wayne’s seat at the head of the table and directly across from Mr. Pennyworth, and she had to admit that neither of them had really been what she expected.

Pennyworth had waited to join them until after he had brought out the meal, and it was some of the best food she had ever tasted by far. He was also hilarious, which was the unexpected bit. Dana had been prepared for a formal British gentleman, and he was that. But Dana had not been ready to watch him sass the richest man in Gotham twice in the first ten minutes of the meal. She now understood why Tim said Alfred was really the one in charge.

Meanwhile, Mr. “Call me Bruce, Dana, I insist!” Wayne was unerringly polite, but there was a quiet sort of intensity about him that was not apparent in the stories told in the society pages. If there wasn’t so much blatant fondness on his face when he glanced at the playfully arguing kids at the other end of the table, she might’ve called him intimidating.

The kids, on the other hand, were everything Tim had said they were, and Dana couldn’t be happier. Dick Grayson had been mercilessly teasing Tim and the other chattering kids, perfectly playing the embarrassing older brother while making sure that no one was left out or overly picked on. As for the other children, she had also been introduced to the infamous Cassie, Bart and Connor she’d heard so much about at lunch followed by a purple-clad blonde. Tim’s cheeks had been bright pink when he’d introduced Stephanie as his girlfriend. Interesting…

Dana didn’t really know where she fit into the clearly well-established dynamic of the group, but that was okay. She was here to make sure that Tim had people in his life who understood just how special he was, and these people seemed to understand that even better than Dana. Again, today was one humbling experience after another.

---

Dana was embarrassingly nervous when Tim picked up her gift last. Everyone else’s gifts had seemed so meaningful, and there had been a plethora of inside jokes involved. Plus, she had the uncomfortable feeling that everyone was treating this as a sort of test, to see if she really deserved to be here, to be around someone like Tim, and were waiting to find her wanting. Maybe she was being ridiculous, but damn if her heart wasn’t pounding anyway.

Tim opened the present slowly, to the consternation of the red-headed kid, Bart her mind supplied, who let out a comically loud groan of impatience. Finally, Tim pealed the last of the tape back and unfolded the last of the paper, pulling out the book within.

Dana felt the room go still as he opened it up to the middle, allowing the rest of the room to see the cover. It seemed like everyone turned to look at her in perfect unison, and she was hit with the impression that she had made a serious mistake.

“I just- You were talking about how hard it was to find good photos of the Gotham vigilantes, so…”

When Dana had seen the book claiming to be a compilation of the best photos of all of the Bats, she had figured he might appreciate it. She’d seen the batman and robin pins on his backpack after all. But the way everyone was looking at her, she was beginning to wonder if she had made a mistake, that is until…

“Well,” drawled Dick Grayson. “Timmy does love his Batman pictures.” And the room dissolved into laughter at a joke Dana didn’t understand. All of a sudden, everyone was talking over each other, telling various Tim stories, as the boy in question carefully paged through the book in silence. He paused for a long time on a recent image of Robin and Spoiler flying overhead.

No, Dana thought with a smile, she might not understand all of the inside jokes, but she understood the silent thank you Tim sent over everyone else’s heads just fine, and that was enough for her.

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ghosty-schnibibit · 4 years

Text

much earlier in the day than usual taz liveblog! ^o^

the only reason this is going up so early is i haven’t slept yet lmao, i fixed my sleep schedule for about a month and then went right back to being nocturnal.

i've spent the last four nights or so staying up til around ten in the morning binging the magnus archives (i'm about halfway through season three right now) and enjoying the hell out of it. for anyone who followed me bc of my taz liveblogs, rest assured i'm still going to be keeping up with graduation and taz in general :P

without further ado, here we go!

i fucking forgot about “thundermen”

awww, argo made friends with the kitty ^u^

snippers my sweet prince

"i think i take a great deal of delight in that" fitzroy you lil bastard man ilu

clint asking the important questions here lol

you've just described hell travis

did clint already forget the name of the school

jesus that's depressing argo

god i wish i'd had a gary during college to remind me of stuff

i vill tell you the story of melon

i love firbolg and argo so much, they are my favorite best of friends

aww firbolg ; _ ;

fitzroy i am suspicious of where your folks even are

yes fitz get your cloak back you silly boy

i love firbolg so much holy shit

i hope we get to see the boys hang out over spring break, that sounds like a fun episode

"that's good narrative!" travis ilu

oh god the capitalism owl is back

“i vill not do this thing” mood

justin's about to hit us with that sad shit i just know it

called it ; _ ;

... well damn that made me sadder than i expected

i'm still very suspicious about that dog

fitzroy you dumb little shit ilu

make sure higglemis isn't pulling a sazed lmao

you are being very paranoid fitz but that’s okay

"you don't curse well" he's a good sweet boy

jesus christ fitz maybe don't say this to the dude in charge of the school

fitzroy my sweet boy what is your deal, please tell us

... so fitzroy basically wants a venue to prove himself to be a good person that doesn't revolve around performance and artifice. he wants a way to gain power on his own merits without relying on status to boost him up, and felt knighthood was a better way to accomplish that than going to a school where he’s basically being trained to fit a specific role in life

i can see where higglemis is coming from with his worldview given that he's been forced to play second fiddle to his brother for so long

i have a sneaking suspicion that hieronymus thinks he can better manipulate or keep fitz under his thumb in the villian track

fitzroy you dumb himbo baby, my sweet stupid son who i love so much

well that was fucking tense as hell, jesus fuck

yes, on to my sweet boy

c r e e e e e p y

ilu jackyl

why would he want a pocket watch though?

i feel significantly better in argo's ability to do challenge this now that there aren't any life altering consequences

this is going well so far

argo this is such a dumb plan, you are smarter than this my boy

"i'm drawing a word picture" ilu clint

argo this is a dumb and bad plan and you need to roll for this!!!

clint my sweet son

yeah!!! that is how it works!!!

A R G O W H A T T H E F U C K

i cannot fucking believe that worked holy shit

idk if it's just because the creepy voice is gone but i'm trusting jackyl more and more

ARGO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING

take your caffe back to chicago

he got a fuckin tattoo holy shit

what is this reference justin

argo is deeply committed and i love it

this whole bit has been so good

oh damn that was quick edit, holy shit, i didn't even realized we were going into the money zone

there we go, there's the regular intro, i missed it

yay! my favorite girl's birthday :D

awww, argo and firbolg being bestest buds is so wonderful

a knight's tale is the only one of those movies i've seen, please juice don’t dunk on me like this

i know i keep saying this over and over but i love their friendship so much, it warms my heart dearly

fitzroy my sweet boy, he cannot cuss for the life of him

"as partners" y'all

i love them so much, my sweet loves

god this is cute as shit, i am sold, i am sailing away on the fitzrain ship

... argo were you about to give her the same thing???

argo where the fuck did you- oh okay, nevermind lol

oh firbolg my sweet son

oh my god this is the best holy shit

rainier is my sweet darling girl and i love her so much

i need art of this so bad this sounds so cute

argo why are you busking at your dear friend's birthday party

good god argo really is shaping up to be the magnus of this campaign in terms of rolling and bonuses

yay! festo is back :D

what was that noise travis

festo is going to dance with the wee crabby, i love this so

WHY IS THERE DUBSTEP NOW

i need this as a ringtone asap

i am so bad with names, is buckminster the nice one or the malfoy one??? oh yay good he is the nice one

oh no, what happened to leon? D:

"he wouldn't leave me!" ... are they together?

gross griffin, gross

yes! show love to your sweet crab!

i love these sweet dumb friend boys

oh dang, so the blacksmith professor is in the group too??? interesting

not liking that emphasis on "when someone needs stopping," this is extremely interesting but i'm worried about the narrative implications of this, vís a vís argo being made to turn on his friends

this is so powerful, wow

i'm gonna cry but in a happy way ; u ;

oh snap this is already so cool, wow wow wow

how many teachers are in on this, dang

WAIT WHAT??? why do they want dirt on fitzroy?????

so higglemis was the one who controlled him???

"you may forget" WHAT IS GOING ON

OH FUCK, HIGGLEMIS WHAT ARE YOU UP TO? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SWEET LEON???

dang there was a lot of development this ep, plot and character-wise! i’m very worried for literally all three of my boys, but also very excited to see what travis has planned from here on out now that some conflict appears to be brewing!

see you guys next right thursday~ ^u^

#taz #taz spoilers #the adventure zone #taz graduation #ghosty liveblogs taz #i can't believe i'm actually posting a liveblog within four hours of the ep going up #this has got to be a new record of some sort for me lol

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terriblelifechoices · 5 years

Note

i miss your comment fics!!

Same, anon. I should go back to posting those. I’m going to do that.

Graves Manor, June 1942

“Hey, little man,” Galahad said, carefully freeing Dagonet from the blankets he’d been swaddled in. Dag took advantage of his new freedom of movement to kick his legs and scream even louder. “I know,” Galahad said. “I know. The outside world is real big and real cold and real scary. And you need your diaper changed, no wonder you’re cranky. Let’s get that taken care of, yeah?”

Dag scrunched up his little face and howled.

“You could’ve waited,” Galahad informed him, getting Dag changed with the ease of long practice. “Could’ve stayed put in Papa’s belly for another week, and then we’d have had the same birthday. And you wouldn’t be having these problems now, because you’d still be safe in Papa’s belly.”

Dag was unimpressed with his logic and kept crying.

“We can share birthdays anyway,” Galahad confided, holding Dag close to his chest. Papa and Charlotte said that babies liked being held close enough to hear someone’s heartbeat, especially when they were as little as Dag, because it reminded them of being in the womb. Lyo had liked being cuddled when she was this little. Dag seemed to like it too, his angry screaming subsiding into faint whimpers.

Galahad summoned a soft cloth and wiped Dag’s face clean. “Better?” he asked.

Dag stared at him, or tried to. He wasn’t even a week old, so he wasn’t very good at focusing on anything just yet.

“C’mon,” Galahad said. “Let’s go see what everyone else is up to. But you have to be quiet, okay? I think Dad and Papa are still sleeping.”

Dad had passed Dag off to Galahad “just for five minutes” while he went to check on Papa. That had been twenty minutes ago, and a surreptitious check of his parents bedroom had revealed that Dad had basically landed face first on the mattress and passed out while Papa slept the sleep of the justifiably exhausted next to him. Galahad had left them to it.

Dag had kept Dad and Papa up until the small hours of the morning. Galahad had no idea babies were nocturnal, like mooncalves or hodags. He had vague memories of Dad and Papa being up with his younger siblings, but Lucan and Gareth and Lyo were fairly easy going as babies went. Lyo in particular had slept like the dead. She still did.

Dag did not seem like the sort of baby that slept at all. Or at least not for longer than twenty minutes at a time. Dad was running himself ragged trying to take care of Dag and Papa. Galahad didn’t blame him for the impulse; Papa was still moving like everything hurt. He really didn’t look like he ought to be out of bed at all.

He slipped past his parents bedroom on sneaky-quiet feet, casting a wordless silencing charm on the door as he went. Galahad’s silencing charms were second to none, courtesy of being almost fifteen in an all-boys dormitory. There were some things no one needed or wanted to hear. Unless one of his siblings brought half the Manor down around them, Dad and Papa wouldn’t hear anything either.

Galahad really wished he hadn’t had that last thought. He honestly wouldn’t have put it past Ollie and Gawain and Ellie to do just that by accident.

Ollie was in the dueling gallery, using one of the practice wands to go through the motions of casting defensive spells over and over until the movements became muscle memory. She could only cast very weak versions of the spells she was practicing, since her own wand was locked in the safe in Dad’s study along with Galahad’s, as per Ilvermorny’s rules. Galahad left her to it and went to track down the next likely suspects on his list.

Liam had Ellie and the twins and Lyo under control. Liam had looked after Galahad and his siblings for as long as Galahad could remember; he was unflappable and impossibly quick with his wand. Liam could keep the little ones from accidentally bringing the Manor down around them; he’d certainly had a lot of practice at it.

That just left Gawain.

Galahad and Dag found Gawain in his room, reading peacefully. He stood up when he caught sight of Galahad.

“Does Papa know you have the baby?” Gawain asked, peering at Dag.

“He’s sleeping, so no.”

Gawain abruptly took three steps away from Galahad and Dag. “You should go put him back,” he advised.

“Papa and Dad need rest,” Galahad said, annoyed. “Papa, especially.“

“He’s gonna wake up and panic,” Gawain retorted. “And then Dad’s gonna kill you.”

Galahad could picture that, actually. Not Papa panicking, because Papa didn’t panic, but Dad killing him for upsetting Papa? Yeah, he could picture that all too clearly.

“Right,” said Galahad. “I’ll just leave a note.”

“Good plan,” said Gawain.

Galahad gave him a baleful look. He wasn’t entirely pleased about being condescended to by a nine year old, but Gawain was right.

“Go get me some paper, brat.”

Gawain rolled his eyes, but he did as he was told. Galahad scrawled a hasty note to their parents and sent it back up stairs. It would hover just outside the door to their bedroom until someone opened it.

“I guess I’m an accessory now,” Gawain said. He looked weirdly pleased by that, whatever it meant.

“A what?”

“You know,” said Gawain. “An accessory. Like Dad says.”

Galahad stared at him. The logic of nine year olds was very strange, and it only really made sense to other nine year olds. Maybe not even then.

“An accessory,” Gawain said again. “Like, accessory to murder and stuff. Only not, because you haven’t murdered anyone. Kidnapping, maybe?”

“I don’t think there’s accessory to kidnapping,” said Galahad, although in all honesty he had no idea. He’d have to look it up. “Accomplice, maybe.”

“Is that better?”

“Er,” said Galahad. “I think it’d be worse if we were criminals, but since we’re brothers, sure. It means were a team.”

Gawain gave him a profoundly skeptical look. “You and Ollie are a team,” he said.

“We can be a team, too,” said Galahad. “Us Graves boys have got to stick together.”

“Ollie won’t like that,” Gawain pointed out. “She says boys clubs aren’t fair.”

“All of us Graves’ have got to stick together,” said Galahad. “Even Dag,” he added, bouncing his brother a little in his arms.

Gawain thought about that. “Okay,” he said.

“Why don’t you read to us?” Galahad suggested. “What are you reading, anyway?”

Gawain picked up his book and showed it to him. “Grandma’s stories,” he said. “I wanted to know more about Dag’s namesake.”

“Sounds like a good one,” Galahad said, settling onto the floor.

Gawain cleared his throat. “A long, long time ago,” he began, “when wizards lived alongside the No-Maj’s and neither feared the other, the cleverest of Arthur’s knights was merry, laughing Dagonet.”

#my fic #comment fic #Possible 'verse #Galahad Graves #Gawain Graves #Dagonet Graves #anon

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davekatprompts · 6 years

Text

Spurs

Written for the @strilondefanjams Theme Sprints Prompt: Smoke/Fog/Haze

Synopsis: Davekat Humanstuck College AU. Drinking alcohol and dancing with hot strangers.

NSFW Content Warning 18+ Only

Karkat was walking way faster than he believed one should ever walk past midnight. Kanaya was taller and took longer strides than he did; it was hard to keep pace, especially after the few drinks he’d had already. He wasn’t drunk, but there was definitely a loss of some fine motor skills and basic coordination happening. She didn't really notice he was trailing behind, too busy looking down at the map on her phone, presumably leading them to yet another fucking club. She stops suddenly and Karkat nearly barrels into her back. Oh, no.

The club was shaped like a giant cowboy hat, and it was fucking called Spurs. It looked like a miserable pit of a place, Karkat could see the multicolored lights flashing and hear the shitty pop music blasting from their place on the sidewalk. Drunk people oozed continuously out of the doors, stumbling and giggling, like pus from a gaping wound. God did Karkat hate clubs.

“Kanaya, this place is a shithole!”

She smiled at him, the glitter of her lipstick gleaming in the moonlight. “For once, I agree. But Rose asked if we could meet her here. She mentioned something about knowing the DJ.”

Of course it was Rose. A good friend of hers who Karkat was pretty sure she wanted to be more than just a friend. Everything suddenly clicked into place. Kanaya’s crazy outfit, the way they had gone out of their way to travel to this one bar in the middle of another fucking town and not stayed by the usual ones near campus.

Not that any clubs were what Karkat would really consider his scene. He didn’t particularly enjoy the thought or the reality of being pressed bodily against dozens of sweat and alcohol soaked strangers while loud trashy music took a sledgehammer to his ear drums. Karkat’s prefered nocturnal pastime was closer to watching Will & Grace reruns in his cramped dorm room until the wee hours of the morning.

As it were, tonight was Kanaya’s birthday, and she had wanted to go clubbing. With graduation only a couple of weeks away, their years as fun, free college students were coming to an end. He understood the sentiment, really. And he was doing his best to behave. This was their fourth stop, and everyone they had been with earlier had dropped off one by one as the night went on at varying stages of intoxication. They got in line for the club, reflexively pulling out their IDs for the bouncer at the door.

“You’re lucky that I’m such a considerate roommate,” Karkat said.

“I know, Karkat. I’m very grateful to you. And frankly, your humbleness is something I truly admire.”

Karkat rolled his eyes, but said nothing else as they both stepped into the club. The music instantly intensified, the floor almost vibrating under Karkat's feet. There was a light layer of fog over everything, because of fucking course there was. Karkat turned to lament this to Kanaya only to watch her materialize into the crowd. The only clues Karkat got before she vanished were a flash of blonde hair and a hint of flowery perfume. Rose, of course.

Sighing, Karkat made his way to the bar. It was almost empty, everyone was out on the dance floor. The bartender smiled in his direction. She was short, with blonde, curly hair and piercing eyes that looked almost pink under the flashing lights. She grinned and winked when he ordered himself two cosmos. This was gonna be a long night.

Karkat drank idly, wondering what he was going to do in the very likely scenario that he didn't see Kanaya again. It would be a real bitch paying for a cab back to campus by himself. Waiting became easier the longer he sat at the bar, happily watching the bartender move back and forth. He looked for a DJ booth, wondering who in the hell could be so important that they needed to trek all the way to downtown Houston of all places. His search was fruitless, the club was lost in a sea of fog, no DJ in sight. The music itself was terrible, a mixture of country pop and radio singles, blending together very inelegantly, to say the least. There's no way anyone more skilled than a two setting toaster could be assembling this playlist.

Halfway through cosmo number two, a stranger sat down at the bar a few stools away from his own and started chatting up the bartender. Karkat took immediate notice of him, because for some shitbrained reason he was wearing fucking sunglasses in a darkened bar. After midnight. And the more Karkat looked at him, the more annoyed he got. He couldn't be real. He was wearing a white button down shirt with a red handkerchief tied around his neck, blue jeans and actual literal cowboy boots. Cowboy boots! This was Texas, but he looked like a cartoon character. He was tall, taller than Karkat at any rate, and leaned in close when he spoke. The bartender giggled in response, twirling her hair like he was the hottest shit on two legs and Karkat huffed. What a tool.

The conspicuous glowering in the stranger's direction might have been a poor idea in retrospect, because he suddenly turned to face Karkat. His smile was wide and sure, and Karkat felt a not so comprehensible, possibly alcohol fueled urge to smack it away.

"What's a desert lily like yourself doing in a place like this?" His voice was loud and carried easily through the space between them. A true texan twang ran through his words that you rarely heard around campus. A native then. Some of his annoyance fades, but not much. It's still no excuse to dress like a total fucking jackass.

A small area of Karkat's brain lit up that he fortunately still had the facilities to suppress. Absolutely not, in no life here on Earth or reborn, would he be caught dead considering getting with this guy, even if he was kind of good looking. Keeping eye contact, Karkat downed the rest of his drink instead of answering. When Karkat still felt the strangers eyes still lingering on him is when he opened his mouth to say, "Fuck off."

To his credit, the guy didn't press any further. He tilted his head, smirked, then shrugged and got up, quickly disappearing into the pulse of the crowd. What the fuck.

Karkat ordered more drinks. After about another cosmo and a half, Kanaya stumbled up to the bar, arm in arm with a drunk looking Rose. "There you are Karkat! Are you quite enjoying yourself? We are going to go dance, if you would care to accompany us!"

Rose gave a celebratory woo, pumping her arm and pushing herself off balance and further into Kanaya's arms. Karkat hesitated. Normally this would have been an easy no, but as the seconds ticked by he found that the alcohol leeching into his veins was softening his resolve, if not snapping it completely.

"Okay." He nodded, moving to hoist himself off the stool with far more difficulty than it warranted. He followed them, following the gaps they created in the throng of clubgoers as expertly as a sickle cutting through a field of wheat.

Karkat wasn't a dancer, but he was enthusiastic, moving to the beat and feeling the bass thumping through his bones. He danced and let his limbs hang loose, the alcohol creating a warm, bubbly feeling in his chest. Kanaya and Rose were gyrating against each other in a way that made Karkat's stomach churn with a feeling he wasn't equipped to handle in his present state. Still he had fun, until once again they disappeared into the crowd. Confused, Karkat turned to find them only to come face to face with the cowboy douche from earlier.

Immediately, he lifted his shades up into his hair. He was only a foot away from Karkat and the sight was like a slap to the face. God was he was beautiful. Karkat's face grew hot as he took in everything about the stranger, the sharp line of his jaw, the soft looking wheat blonde hair, the dusting of freckles claiming the bridge of his nose, the eyes that were locked on his. The eyes that even in the dimness, Karkat could see were a shocking blood red. He was still wearing that cocky as all hell grin and cowboy boots, but suddenly they weren't tacky and embarrassing, not at all. He was suddenly breathless in front of this stranger who had called him a flower, of all things.

"I'm Dave," he said simply.

Speaking took a few tries, and Karkat's tongue felt thick and foreign in his mouth. "Karkat," he finally managed.

The cowboy, Dave, lifted his hand to his mouth, miming taking a drink. Karkat nodded, feeling fairly sure that he would do anything he said from here on out. Dave made a beckoning gesture, and Karkat followed him back through the crowd and toward the bar, keeping a steadying eye on his nicely fitted jeans the whole way. A warm fog clouded his mind as much as it did the club around him, leaving him floating in a pleasant haze.

When they got to the bar, the bartender smiled at him again and Dave lifted two fingers in a silent order.

Dave leaned in close, placing his face beside Karkat's to ask, "Tequila shot?"

His words were a warm breath and brush of lips against Karkat's ear, causing sudden arousal to hit him like a shock of cold water. His whole body shivered. What the fuck!

Dave was grinning, loose and easy when he pulled back. The bartender deposited several glasses down at the bar, along with a couple of limes and a salt shaker. Karkat reached out to take the shot but Dave put an arm out to halt his movements. Even the small touch sent sparks up Karkat's arm.

"Gotta do it right, alright?"

Dave brought his hand up to his face, palm facing out. Looking directly at Karkat, he slowly licked the web of his hands between his thumb and forefinger. Karkat broke the eye contact, helplessly following the pink drag of his tongue. It sent a jolt through his spine that ended at the point of his dick.

Dave used his other hand, the hand that still was holding Karkat's, to bring it up to his face. He licked up the back of Karkat's hand, then, and it was as if a match struck against his skin. Fiery arousal ran through every nerve and Karkat sucked in a shuddery gasp.

Dave grabbed the salt shaker and tipped some out onto Karkat's hand, and then his own. Then, still holding on to Karkat’s hand, he linked their arms the way just married couples do for their first drink, holding Karkat’s in front of his face, just like he had his own. With his other hand he passed off one shot glass to Karkat and kept one for himself.

The wet slide of Dave’s tongue against his skin made Karkat shudder, something hot and sticky pooling in his gut. After he licked the salt, Dave pressed a wet kiss to the same spot. Karkat was dying. Was he dying?

He grabbed Dave’s hand then, steeling himself and licking the salt off in one quick swipe. Karkat looked up as he did it, he could see the way Dave's throat flexed as he swallowed, eyes locked on Karkat. He tasted like salt and something mildly sweet, like apples. They both tipped back the shots in unison.

Before he even put the shot glass down Karkat’s self restraint toppled, finally overcome with the weight of heat and desire. When he lunged forward Dave was ready like he knew it was coming all along and grabbed Karkat by the neck, meeting his lips fiercely. It was immediately desperate and clawing and deep. Since when exactly, did kissing feel so good? It consumed his mind until his only focus was pulling every bit of heat and sweetness out of Dave’s mouth. His whole body vibrated with pleasure as he wrapped arms around Dave's middle to pull their bodies closer still.

The thing that whacked Karkat back onto this plane of reality was the amused but pointed throat clearing sound made by the apparently still existing bartender behind them. Dave pulled away first, his face attractively flushed, lips parted and shining a pretty pink.

"You forgot the limes."

Dave turned his head to address the bartender. “Shut it, Roxy.” She just giggled, collecting the glasses and turning away with a smile.

Karkat didn't have a second to ponder on why Dave knew the bartender by name because then Dave was grabbing his hand and jerking his head in the direction of dance floor. Karkat followed, his mind emptying of everything but the need to stay close to Dave and the heavy pull in his groin that told him to capture those lips again. Even the thought of it sent a cascade of tingles down his spine. Surprisingly, the crowd had only gotten thicker since they went to the bar and Karkat was happy to follow Dave's lead, squeezing through bodies and dodging drinks until they found a small space they fit into.

As soon as they settled into the crowd Karkat immediately pressed himself close to Dave, two hands wrapping around his slim waist as their bodies found the rhythm to the music. Karkat never thought of himself as the type of guy who would grind on a perfect stranger at well past three in the morning, and hadn't been, up until this point. But there was something about the hunger in Dave's eyes that turned his insides into a needy mush, ready to be scooped up and devoured.

Karkat pressed up to Dave, slotting their bodies together so that there was a delicious friction as their bodies moved to the music. Halfway through the first song he could feel his dick stirring in his pants, the slight hardness he felt pushing against him signalling that Dave was there right along with him. He looked up and once again Dave was on him like he could read Karkat's damn mind, bending down to kiss him breathless while they rocked their hips together boldly and in sync with the beat.

When Dave finally broke away from the kiss, Karkat made an audible cry that was immediately lost in the thrum of the music. Dave put two hands on Karkat's shoulders, quickly spinning him around and pressing the definite hard line of his cock into Karkat's ass. Heat flared through him, sweeping and intense, his pulse ratcheting to new heights. Karkat pushed into Dave's crotch shamelessly, throwing his neck back and Dave swooped in to suck at the skin there. He was burning up, it was all so much. Karkat let out a moan, long and low in the darkness as the combination of Dave's slight bite at the heated skin of his neck combined beautifully with a long grind against his ass.

The material of Karkat's jeans was tightening and the heat clawing all around him was becoming almost too much to bear. Dave's voice came in a whisper against his ear, making him shiver. "Hey babe, I gotta split for a sec."

Wait, what? When Karkat spun around he caught a glimpse of Dave disappearing into the crowd. Karkat stumbled a bit, off balance now that he had to fully support himself on his own. He slowly made his way back to the bar, scanning around for any sign of Dave in the thinning crowd. There were no tall, handsome cowboys in shades to be seen anywhere. The bartender smiled brightly when Karkat approached, like she was greeting a long lost friend.

"Looking for Dave?"

"Yes, how did you–"

"There," she said, pointing somewhere toward the back of the club. Karkat squinted, but nothing was really visible past the billowing clouds of fog that were densely rolling through the air.

"DJ booth!"

Once he knew where to look, Karkat saw him. He was sat at the very end of the room, elevated a few idiotic feet over everyone else, a pair of headphones slung over his neck and fingers working on a computer set in front of him. Dave was the fucking DJ? God, he vaguely thought, this music sucked. There was someone next to him, a blonde man also wearing cowboy boots and a orange neckerchief. He wasn't sure if it was just the uniforms but from this vantage they actually looked like they could be twins. At least the the cowboy getup was just the club uniform, it looked like.

Dave and the other blonde traded places as Karkat watched. He also handed Dave a drink, which he downed half of in one gulp before stepping down from the platform and checking his phone. Oh shit, Kanaya! Karkat pulled out his own phone to see a string of messages from Kanaya. Most of them were nonsensical, but one thing was clear. She had gone off with Rose somewhere. Looks like he was finding his own way home tonight.

There was a clink behind him and he turned his head to see the bartender pushing a shot of something across to him with a hearty wink.

"Go get 'im tiger."

Karkat shrugged and downed the shot. "Thanks."

Some kind of whiskey, it tasted like. It burned on the way down, but that was nothing compared to the way his heart was slamming against his chest as he got up and made his way once again through the mass of clubgoers and towards the DJ booth.

#davekat #dave strider #karkat vantas #writing #this is an unedited WIP #titles are hard like always

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simonaj1804 · 3 years

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Interview

Warning: this includes drugs use and suicide and depression threats

TLDR; I asked one of my friends to open up about his experiences and share them with me for my FMP to which he agreed since he was planning on doing something similiar previously. He has been through a lot and I won’t be metnioning any other names. He has struggled with mental health, ASD, PD, Psychosis and Drug abuse (he has been clean for past two years).

I will be using his script since he wasn’t completely sure about posting a video of him speaking about it.

Worth mentioning is that one of his biggest role models, David Goggins often says:

‘That to be fully comfortable with yourself, you should be comfortable putting up a billboard detailing your entire life in your hometown.’

I had a prolonged panic disorder caused by an adverse reaction to syntethic weed which was prescribed to me by my psychologists as verging on if not crossed the line towards psychosis at the time. Later his GP reassured him that he retained notion that I didn’t actually have psychosis.. Which I agree with, however I was prescribed Olanzapine (an antipsychotic) which during administration kept my symptoms at bay but led to dulling down my emotions and personality until like very recently. Like I’d say I started feeling like myself again around like, I don’t know like earlier in 2020. This episode, it lasted between like 2017 and 2019. It started kind of when I was young like pre-puberty young and I was like super self-conscious about my voice and I still am like any little comment would set me off, I had like these really big anger issues and I seemed to be like extremely gifted at maths from the young age. I wasn’t for long to be honest. Eventually I was asssessed showed signs of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) with some of my main traits being extreme logic and unwillingness to show or properly express emotion among other things. But I didn’t display the super prominent characteristics that most people with ASD do, like not understanding social cues and stuff like that. I didn’t end up being diagnosed until I was 17 and I didn’t really get any counselling or support when I was young although I was reffered to cams at like 14 and 15 which ended up getting me my second assessment because the first time I couldn’t be diagnosed under the old criteria but when DSM-5 came in it was all good. The reason I was directed to the cams was quite silly looking back at it now. I just had a crush on a girl who didn’t like me back and my best friend started dating her and little 13 year old me in a way other went a little off the rails. As I ended up being a bit of a compulsive liar about this and I just like talked about it different to how it was because that’s how I was at the time. And in second year of secondary school I like pretended to take a pill at a Halloween event that was happening in my town which when I returned to the school I found out that was like a horrible idea because now I had a reputation of being a 13 year old who does drugs. Now please remember at this stage I have never been even drunk in my life before. But this thing is that this newfound reputation of drug dealers and people involved in that scene would like contact me and kind of started treating me as a part of that group. It felt nice in a way even though I felt very outcasted which I kind of caused, like I afflicted it upon myself but like I felt the sense of belonging in the new group I started like regularly smoking weed and at a party in a neighboring town I ended up taking like three pills consecutively but luckily they were like complete duds. I think back to it a lot and kind of wonder if I would have died if they were real. My actual time taking ecstasy was when I was 15 or 16 and it was junior cert results night. I took this orange tesla pill I got off the dark web which had like 300mg in it which isn’t that high dose but I was like a late bloomer and at the time I was pretty publishing so at the time it sent me into like this state... I ended up being taken to a hospital where my mum and my best friend at the time came to the hospital to see me and I was like rolling off my xxxs like I was in the hospital bed just like uhh..The nurse at the time decided it was a good idea to tell me and my family I was probably going to die and after blood tests were done it was the purity of MDMA off the dark web or something else I was accused instantly of being the dealer as there were four other people and they were overdosed in the hospital that day too. So I would say it was probably a very traumatizing event although I’m not a psychologist I can’t psychoanalyze myself or not. However I enjoyed the physical sensation so much I ended up doing ecstasy again in my bedroom alone the following week. Which led to an actual regular intake of drugs. I educated myself very throughly on anything I took and I measured out the doses as my anxiety and paranoia had started to form around the time and as well earlier in the year I had like developed these chronic sleeping patterns as I had no interest in school. Me and my family had taken this holiday to Wales at the start of second year and I’m usually quite fast in attributing me stopping going to school to this as consequences of one of my autism traits (that’s not blaming autism) I just, it’s part of my personality. I could have remedied it if I wanted to, I just didn’t. So after that trip to Wales I just never ended up going back to school like full time and I would often stay up for likee 24 hours at a timee and if I didn’t stay up I was usually nocturnal so I was up at night and I continued to obsess about that girl I had crush on until like the end of third year. Which is a long time and by the time it passed there were so many cringe memories that I had created that I couldn’t even look or talk to her anymore. My first then girlfriend ended up being a long-distance kind of thing but we weren’t like exclusive and despite this I took it to like deluding myself into thinking it was abusive because she would threaten suicide and self-harm and stuff and if I didn’t give her attention then she wouldn’t reply to me for a few days at the time when she no longer needed it and despite this I now hold the belief that she didn’t really owe me anything as the terms of our relationship weren’t exactly concrete. This had a pretty large emotional effect on me. I think it was around this time that it triggered me being like very emotionally numb and I had like a refusal to show genuine emotion like I could show emotion but it was like a mask and an act and I would act very engaged if I wasn’t. I continued to do drugs and I met a couple of friends in school who were interested but had not actually done any drugs yet and one of those people who I found the social acceptance with, because it seems from my point of view that popular in secondary school which I hated but I wanted to be a part of it really at the time. I moved towards like parties instead of sports because people became like old enough to drink and go to the pub and I was a bit of like an over-indulger and usually I ended up crying or screaming various girl’s names into the air when I got too high or drunk for my mind to properly function. My mum started getting really worried about me and then I went to this music festival body and soul and I was basically assaulted because I was paranoid and someone gave me drugs and I was already high so I tried to like throw it on the floor because I didn’t want to OD again and they saw and basically they just ended up beating me up and saying that if I got up they were gonna kill me. I was marked as missing and I woke up next morning coming down hungover and I had like huge bump at the back of my head. And my mom and dad, they were like the most caring parents in the world, they were waiting for me at the front gate because when I asked the security guard if I could call home she already knew my name which was embarassing.. After this experience I began to like recluse and see people I knew as little as possible and the little time I did spend outside I would spend smoking in a different town which was bothersome stuff. Then some of those friends ended up getting into slightly heavier drugs too but some didn’t and I no longer was like comfortable hanging around with them either and then my mom was diagnosed with cancer. After that two things happened really fast, I smoked this synthetic weed in a vape and then I went into town with some friends and dropped a half gram of ecstasy and I noticed I didn’t feel the effects of either of those but after smoking the vape something didn’t feel right, it was like super horrible and my brain just like flatlined but my body was fine I was still like there but it felt like.. I don’t know how to explain it. After I got home after taking the ecstasy I walked past a mirror and I looked in the mirror and noticed my pupils super large but it’d been like eight hours since my dose and as far as I was aware that shouldn’t be possible. So I locked myself in the room for like two days and avoided any human interaction at all. When my 18 birthday was coming around I was supposed to go to celebrate it but I didn’t because I had intence panic attacks and like delusions which I can but won’t share because they’re usually really concerning to the people I actually tell them to and even talking about them kind of gives me flashbacks. I ended up not being able to function properly and my mom would have to sleep with me at night as if I was like a child and my body seemed to just move on it’s own. Eventually I was prescribed the Lanzapine which suited the symptoms but I can safely say it’s the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, the anxiety and likely ever will be. It was to the point where I was making suicide plans in case I actually had an urge to act on any of the intrusive thoughts that went through my mind. Regardless at the time I had like two main anchors, my mum and my girlfriend at the time, the only two people I felt like super calm around and I’m super grateful to both of them for that but to be honest my physical state started deteriorating I was not shredded before but I was in decent shape, I had like skinny abs and like ‘fake athletic’ and the Lanzapine had the side effects where you would gain weight and you were super lazy. I started getting cold emotionally, I was forced to give up my favourite hobby kickboxing because I couldn’t be around other people especially when there was such a close relation to violence and if my friends were smoking weed or doing other drugs around me I would vomit. I ended up spending most of my time watching anime and playing video games, the stuff you expect from someone who can’t interact with the outside world and my personality changed rapidly especially on the withdrawal with the Lanzapine. I started being very creative and happy in a way but also without the medication there was a constant threat of panic attacks which I had to keep a close eye on when I got better. It felt like I was kind of creafting a new person and even my career path kind of changed because before I wanted to be a computer programmer and I was only obssessed with logic and money and I’ve been training vocals for about a year and I’m super passionate about music. I started yoga and meditation and I workout a lot now but with this like new character I felt like I had to refine myself in a sense because I didn’t really know who I was and I kept doing sthings thought they were unthinkable or uninteresting and I started drinking again. I was just unsure and this stopped around NY 2019 because I got too touchy with another guy (I’m BI by the way). After that I took a month completely from myself and I was meditating a long time and self searching and year 2020 has ended up giving me time to find this. I moved out I made some mistakes, definitely not like big ones, not like the last one but I would say I don’t deeply regret anything from the point after I moved out but basically this is my billboard as David Goggins would have said.

This is my interview that I approached and used to expand my knowledge and understanding of people who struggle with problems and also understanding that not all people are bad or wrong or need to be treated differently. Maybe with just more care. I have met my friend about two years ago and until like an almost year into the friendship I had no idea what he dealt with. I have been doing my best to be there for him and making happy and I think anyone deserves this and deserves to be open about it on the internet. People shouldn’t be put down for having disorders and problems with their health from their past which they can no longer do much about. I’m very thankful to him for being open with me about it and pretty detailed with his story. He prefered not to speak because he stutters a lot and I asked him one single question and kinda explained what I would imagine as response and I’m very happy he has helped me and took me on a way with him.

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konpithepuppy · 3 years

Text

[TRANSLATION: WiNK UP 05.2021]

7 MEN SAMURAI CROSS TALK

Proofread by aji10647731 (Twitter)/ @janiappend

Special thanks to yeska_noka (Twitter)

Scans not mine

Neither an English nor a Japanese native speaker

Feel free to correct me, thanks

STRAWBERRY BOYS

Sweet and sour like a strawberry.

This month, the theme "Strawberry Boys" was photographed.

In round table discussion by threes, they talked about "the strange things from the other team."

[Sugeta Rinne x Sasaki Taiko x Yabana Rei CROSS TALK]

Daka-san regularly talks to himself weirdly (LOL)

Sugeta: The strange thing about Katsuki is that even though he minds being told something like, "Didn't you gain weight?" from the adults, he will just eat (LOL).

Sasaki: Certainly, that is mysterious.

Sugeta: Moreover, since he moves so he burns calories, he should endure a little bit after that. But, he eats a lot after, I think him burning calories has no meaning.

Yabana: Isn't that a serious advice?! Also, Daka-san regularly talks to himself weirdly (LOL). He mutters to himself like it comes out naturally (LOL).

Sasaki: Even on stage, he plays around by himself. Moreover, since it is a self-satisfaction, he does it in the corner secretly...(LOL).

Sugeta: He does it without saying anything to anyone, right?

Yabana: But, if he didn't get noticed, maybe he is lonely after all, he will appeal saying, "Honestly, I've been doing this all this time."

Sasaki: Is it for self-satisfaction or he wants to be noticed, which one is it!?

Yabana: Even though he is really that weird guy, he still appears in shows like 「Q sama!!」, isn't it pretty insane? (Lit. kekkou yabai)

Sasaki: As for Konpi, I don't understand the meaning of him having a mood of going out together for a meal but will go home at once when he arrived at the front of the restaurant (LOL). He said, "Well, I didn't say I will go."

Yabana: But, haven't you come to understand him a little lately? On days when, "Oh, I think he won't be coming," he will suddenly become quiet.

Sugeta: Ahh~ I see!

Yabana: Although he goes, "OK!" when you invite him on a day he feels like joining in, his tension is low on a day he doesn't feel like joining that much. Konpi has his own distinct reactions.

Sasaki: Speaking of Konpi's peculiarity, it is also strange that it depends on the height of the vehicle whether he gets carsick or not (LOL). Since he doesn't get carsick from riding a sedan, but gets carsick from riding a rokebus. (T/N: rokebus = bus used by actors,etc. during film and TV production).

Yabana: Moreover, this is something that Konpi has said himself, he gets dispirited when being controlled by anyone. He tends to take things on his own.

Sugeta: Konpi is quite the person who makes the decisions, right?

Yabana: Like in birthday party for Jr.SP, he made a reservation in a restaurant by himself. That mood of having a desire to be a leader character is also strange.

Sugeta: Konpi has a different sensibility than the 5 of us. There are times when he is funny like, "I didn't see thay coming?!"

Yabana: That's why, there are times when he is into us, and there are times when he is completely not interested in us (LOL).

Sasaki: There are also times when I get annoyed (LOL). During those times, I will say, "That's not okay."

Yabana: And then, he will reply, "Oh, it's not okay? Ah, I see" looking like he is not convinced .

Sugeta: Yes, you're right!

Yabana: Reia-kun...occasionally, I feel like he doesn't have a heart as a human (LOL).

Sugeta: That is slowly being shown in platforms like YouTube (LOL).

Yabana: But, even though being like that, people gather around him, that's why he has definitely a great charm.

Sugeta: That reminds me, he said in an interview something like, "If you will say bad things about the members, then better say all the bad things about me." I think it is because he has that kind of humanity [that's why people still gather around him].

Sasaki: He looks do-S at first glance, but isn't he really a do-M (LOL)!?

Sugeta: Actually, all 6 of us have different personalities. And yet, we have quite a good balance.

Yabana: On the contrary, why we have a good balance is the strangest thing (LOL).

[Nakamura Reia x Motodaka Katsuki x Konno Taiki CROSS TALK]

Actually, they are twins. Maybe they take turns going to work you know?

Nakamura: The strange thing about Yabana is that why he is always tired. It doesn't have to do with being busy, he feels like barely living.

Konno: Certainly! He is tired no matter when. He looks exhausted everyday (LOL).

Nakamura: He is weak with mornings too, and he often has stomachache too.

Motodaka: It looks like it takes all his energy just by living (LOL).

Nakamura: Moreover, he interchanges morning and night too much. Since it's possible that he will go to sleep at the time I wake up.

Motodaka: But Reia sleeps early, right (LOL).

Nakamura: I think I sleep around 12 at midnight. That's why, I wake up at 8 in the morning the next day even if I don't have work, but I wake up at around 5-6 in the morning and when I message Yabana during those times, he replies back immediately. He will say "I will go to sleep now," so I am like, "What on earth are you doing!?" (LOL).

Motodaka: But, I am also a nocturnal that's why I somewhat understand that part of Yabana.

Nakamura: You also interchange morning and night sometimes, right? Since Yabana always does it, that's why that is strange. The strange thing about Taiko is that he suddenly changes between being an adult and being a child.

Konno: I know! I don't know the timing when he will switch.

Motodaka: Even though he usually doesn't seem to really care about his sorroundings, he will immediately start to care.

Konno: Moreover, if he is consistent about that, I will understand him and be like, "Ah, this person cares about situations like this," but Taiko is not consistent so it is confusing.

Nakamura: Probably he got a dual personality (LOL).

Motodaka: That's got to be true!

Nakamura: Or...maybe they are actually twins. Maybe they take turns going to work you know?

Motodaka: But in interviews like this his switch suddenly changes completely. Even though he is saying nothing but jokes on a previous magazine interview, he is suddenly talking about serious matter on the next magazine interview.

Konno: Maybe his switch turned off?

Nakamura: I mean, what would probably the "on" one? Will he be an adult when he said "Let's turn on the switch" or he will be a child when he turns on the switch...

Motodaka: Either way, both are very extreme (LOL).

Nakamura: The strange thing about Rinne is that he is super healthy even though he only eats so much snacks.

Motodaka: Don't people who maintain their muscles usually pay attention at their diet too? But as fars as I can see, Rinne only eats those that seem bad for the health (LOL). And yet, it is a mystery that he maintains his muscles. If I do the same diet as Rinne's, I will definitely look terrible (LOL). Moreover, the amount of snacks he eats is not normal! The snacks that we always receive in interview locations, he brings home an amount of those to the point that can he even eat all of those?

Nakamura: It's 3-4 months of snacks for me (LOL).

Konno: But, he brings back home the same amount of snacks again in the next month's interview.

Motodaka: The amount of ice cream he eats is terrible too!

Nakamura: Like he casually eats around 10 packs in a day.

Konno: There's an ice cream that you divide to share right? When I noticed it, that's in his mouth.

Nakamura: Then, since he maintains his figure, when I see in television or alike programs like, "Train your body by watching what you eat," I think "I wonder if this makes sense."

Motodaka: No, that's because Rinne is idiosyncratic. Recently, when we went to a boxing fitness too, I was dripping with sweat and had two bottles of water too. But Rinne, without drinking water and without having a single drop of sweat, acted like nothing happened at all. I was a little bit scared (LOL).

Nakamura: Surely, unlike the normal people, maybe he can change anything he eats to protein.

Konno: I want him to have a medical check-up. And then, an amazing result might come out, you know (LOL) ?

#7 men 侍 #translation

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desktopgargoyle · 7 years

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the road trip series - the fic

so i finally have chapter one finished?? the response to the extract i posted was kinda mixed lol so please let me know if y’all actually like this or not. thanks! xx

ff.net version

chapter one

“Nino, we agreed that I would drive first.” Alya places her hands on her hips, foot beginning to tap in frustration. They’ve been going back and forth for about ten minutes now and she’s tired of this metaphorical ping-pong match. Why can’t the boy just be less damn annoying?

Nino shrugs noncommittedly and jingles the car keys in her face. “My car, my rules, Al. I always take first shift on these trips, it’s tradition. Besides, I only agreed to that because it was ridiculous o’clock in the morning and I needed sleep.” He blows her a kiss and unlocks the car so that they can start loading their stuff into it.

Alya takes a minute to just stare at him and wonder how she ended up dating someone so irritating and immature and insufferable and –

“Al, I know what you’re thinking but I’m going to remind you that you love me for all my faults and secretly find them endearing because I’m just that loveable.”

– and apparently psychic.

“Just shut up and get in the driver’s seat, idiot.”

Nino grins widely at her and lands a quick peck on her cheek anyway. Although he will swear up and down that he doesn’t love anything more than Alya (except for his Bestest Bro Adrien), annoying Alya makes for a pretty close second.

The road trips have been an annual tradition for the last three years. Their first trip, to Calais, took place three weeks into the summer before university started and, ever since then, they’d made it an official tradition to explore somewhere new every year.

This year, they’re tackling the seven-hour drive to Marseille. She’s had the itinerary planned for weeks now but, as usual, it will likely go out of the window as a result of Nino’s need for spontaneity, Marinette’s inability to stay organised, and Adrien’s hate for schedules in general. It doesn’t matter, it’s all part of the routine and Alya is as excited as ever.

Except seven hours is a long time. As much as she loves Nino, seven hours is a long, long time and she will be stuck in the passenger seat forever.

“I promise you won’t be stuck in the passenger seat forever.” Nino grins at her from in the car, reading her mind.

Alya raises an eyebrow. The psychic mind reading thing would be more impressive if they didn’t have this exact conversation every year. Especially seeing as how last year turned out.

“Okay, okay. You won’t be stuck in the passenger seat forever, this time. Better?” Nino waits for Alya to roll her eyes dramatically. “Now get your butt in the car, we’re gonna be late! I wanna beat traffic and that’s not gonna happen if you stand there tapping your foot at me all day!”

“You’re lucky I love you, Lahiffe.”

“So I’ve been told.” he winks back at her. Alya wants to roll her eyes again.

It’s barely seven but it’s still a Saturday and traffic will pile up in no time. Alya’s never been too fond of super early mornings, but it’s a sacrifice she’s willing to make if it means that they have the best damn road trip of all time. She’s so glad that they haven’t stopped doing these trips.

With university and work and all the other responsibilities they each have it’s become so much harder to plan and organise things like this, and for a while Alya was worried that they’d stop altogether.

Her internship has been so full on recently that she hasn’t seen Marinette in a week and she hadn’t even been able to grab lunch with Adrien on Tuesday because all her lunch hours have been devoted to finalising content in the lead up to press week. Heck, she’s barely seen Nino and she lives with him. Although to be fair this DJ gig has Nino working mainly nights, so he’s usually already gone by the time she gets home and is asleep when she leaves in the mornings.

“How come you’re so awake?” She practically yawns the words out.

“Are you kidding me? We’re on our way to pick up my Bestest Bro in the world! Of course I’m gonna be awake for this!” He’s practically bouncing in his seat.

“Nino, you saw Adrien on Monday. It’s only been, like, four days –”

“I’m gonna stop you right there, Al. Because obviously someone doesn’t know how to recognise true love when they see it. Any time spent apart from my Bestest Bro is too much time apart.” Nino clutches his hand to his heart and the way his voice cracks on ‘true love’ is just too perfect.

“You know anyone would guess that you’re actually Adrien’s boyfriend and not mine.” She deadpans, arms folded and one eyebrow raised. Nino’s random declarations of True Love for Adrien are now a regular occurrence in Alya’s life. The two of them are, as Nino puts it, the bestest bros in all of Paris.

He really wants to get that written on matching t-shirts for Adrien’s birthday and if Alya didn’t already know that Adrien was planning the same thing for Nino’s birthday, she would back him one hundred percent.

Except she is Alya and Everyone tells her Everything. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

“Nino, you were supposed to take the last left, what are you doing? I thought you said you wanted to get on the road ASAP, not take the scenic route to Adrien’s apartment!”

“Well, in case you didn’t notice the scenic route is the only one not blocked up by traffic.”

“Hey, use your turn signal you idiot! You can’t just do whatever the hell you want whenever-”

“The road was clear, there is literally nobody around to care about whether or not I use the turn signal apart from you!” Nino huffs. “And you are in the same car as me!”

“Alright you know what – actually, hold that thought. Mari’s calling you.” Alya sticks her tongue out at her boyfriend’s stupid smug face before answering Nino’s phone. “Mari girl, hey. Yeah – no, well I – one sec, let me put you on speaker, alright?”

“Mari! My number two bro! You’re on speaker, dude!” Nino grins.

“Hey, Nino!” Marinette giggles from the other end of the line.

“I can’t wait until we get to yours because Alya has been driving me insane and I need you to distract her!”

“Is that all I’m worth to you? I’m offended.”

“Seriously, dude. I miss you, Maribro.” Alya may complain about a lack of Marinette time, but Nino hasn’t seen her in three weeks. They’ve had to make do with weirdly timed texts and rushed face times at all sorts of hours. The only reason they manage to talk as much as they do is because they’re both practically nocturnal at this point and they can vent to one another about a lack of both sleep and a social life.

Marinette and Nino fall into easy conversation about planned playlists for the trip, yet another tradition. They always come up with seriously long-winded titles and, intrepid writer and grammar enthusiast that she is, Alya wants to strangle them sometimes.

She’s just glad that there’s a character limit on Spotify because after the ‘where-the-hell-are-we-tunes-for-when-nino-inevitably-takes-a-wrong-turn-after-arguing-with-alya-because-of-their-differing-opinions-on-maps’ playlist, Alya was prepared to stage an intervention.

She doesn’t even know why they need a specific playlist for that, but it exists. Right between ‘we-need-a-coffee-break-soon-because-nino-will-kill-someone-if-we-don’t-stop-before-this-playlist-ends’ and ‘we-are-going-to-be-stuck-in-traffic-so-this-playlist-is-six-hours-worth-of-the-least-annoying-songs-we-could-think-of’’.

Alya tunes back into the conversation just as they pull into the car park of Adrien’s apartment building. Nino and Marinette are currently planning an ‘alya-is-about-to-get-into-a-fight-with-a-random-stranger-in-another-car-and-we-need-to-distract-her’ playlist and, at this point, she doesn’t want to know what exactly that entails. Instead of asking, she looks down at her phone.

From: my best pal al To: The Boyfriend’s Husband Dude, we’re outside your building. In a strictly non-stalkerish way that is. Obviously.

Yes, Alya may be an adult but that does not mean that she has outgrown using nicknames for all of her contacts. None of them really have.

From: The Boyfriend’s Husband To: my best pal al I thought I had the restraining order posted last month.

From: my best pal al To: The Boyfriend’s Husband Do you want to see your husband or not?

From: The Boyfriend’s Husband To: my best pal al NINO STOP TEXTING ME ALYA YOU’RE DISTRACTING ME I NEED TO LEAVE

“Is that my bestest bro?” Nino’s ears perk up at Alya’s text notifications.

“Yeah, and from the looks of things I suggest you go help him before he hurts himself or breaks something because –”

Nino is out of the car before she can fully complete her sentence. She can hear Marinette chuckling in the background.

“You know, Alya, you might have some competition there.”

“Tell me about it, girl.” Alya laughs. “Although I will point out that this means that you and Nino are also in competition.” She grins slyly; she can practically see Marinette turning beet red already.

“That’s different, me and Adrien aren’t in a long-term relationship. Or any type of remotely romantic relationship at all.” The last part is added somewhat dejectedly.

It’s no secret that Marinette has been in love with Adrien since she was fifteen and, whilst the schoolgirl crush vibe has significantly decreased with time, she is still very much in love with him. Alya sighs and presses the phone to her ear, switching off speaker mode.

She and Nino have both agreed to say nothing to Adrien about Marinette’s feelings and, although it’s been killing her to watch the two of them flit around each other hopelessly, a promise is a promise.

“Mari, I’m telling you. He likes you. Like, like-likes you. He just doesn’t know it yet.” She’s positive about this. There is literally no other explanation that Alya can think of. It’s just that Marinette is so quick to dismiss the evidence.

“Who like-likes Marinette?” Shit, she forgot the window was down. Nino appears suddenly to her left, carrying what appears to be twelve packs of Oreos. She hadn’t even seen him or Adrien exit the building.

“Someone like-likes Marinette?” Adrien pipes up as he opens the door and slides into the back seat.

“Uh…” Shit.

“Alya is that Adrien?! What the f–”

“Gottagotalktoyouwhenwepickyouuplaterloveyoubyeee!” She clicks the end call button as fast as is humanly possible.

“So, who is it?” Adrien grabs a pack of Oreos from Nino and rips it open. Alya turns around and grabs the pack before he can grab a cookie. “Hey! I haven’t had breakfast yet!” He sticks his bottom lip out and pouts.

“Listen, Model Boy. Firstly, the pouting isn’t working so cut it. Secondly, you can’t steal my boyfriend and expect me to not steal Oreos.” She grabs three cookies from the packet before tossing it back to Adrien. “Thirdly, Oreos are not a nutritional breakfast and you are officially grounded.”

Adrien sticks his tongue out at her before biting into a cookie. “I’m a grown man and you can’t tell me what to do, Alya.”

“Yeah, well I’m older than you.” Alya looks down at her phone and begins to shoot a quick text to Marinette, just to reassure her easily panicked friend that Adrien is on to nothing.

From: queen of everything To: my precious macaron Don’t stress, Mari. I’ve distracted Adrien with Oreos. Also he’s grounded for not eating a proper breakfast.

From: my precious macaron To: queen of everything thank fuck.

From: queen of everything To: my precious macaron Watch your language or you’ll be grounded too.

“You may be older, but I’m taller.” Adrien grins at her in the rear-view mirror. This has been an ongoing joke since forever and frankly, Alya does not appreciate him insinuating that she is short. She’s a perfectly average height of five foot seven.

Okay, maybe she’s five feet six and a half. But her point still stands. (If she was Adrien she would make a joke about her point standing taller than she does). Alya groans audibly.

“What was that, babe?” Nino asks as he slides behind the wheel.

“Nothing. I just made an Adrien joke in my head and I am disappointed in myself.” Alya slumps her head against the window as Nino snorts and high fives Adrien. “I need coffee, like, yesterday.”

Adrien pokes the back of Alya’s head. “Don’t worry, Al. We can hit up Starbucks after we pick up Marinette.”

Alya groans again. “I need real coffee. Not one of those frappe-mocha-sugar-overload monstrosities.” She’s not a coffee snob, but really, Starbucks? “Is there no way we can swing by Tom and Sabine’s?”

“The bakery is almost twenty minutes out of the way, Al. If you can deal with Starbucks just for today I’ll buy you a pain au chocolat too.” Nino promises.

Alya considers this thoughtfully for a good couple minutes before nodding decisively. “Fine. Make it a pain a chocolat and a granola bar and you have a deal.”

“Deal.”

The drive to Marinette’s apartment takes ten minutes longer than it should have because Adrien forgot to lock his apartment and they had to turn back. When they finally arrive she’s sitting on the bench on the pavement just outside her building, sketchbook and pencil in hand, as usual.

Adrien rolls down his window, grinning at the fact that Marinette hasn’t even noticed that they’ve practically pulled up directly in front of her. “Hey, Marinette!” He leans slightly out of the window and waves. “Any new designs?”

“Adrien! Hi! Yes, designs have new! Uh, I mean – I new designs drawn – er, no wait – ” Marinette drops her sketchbook and pencils in surprise, stationery flying everywhere as she scrambles to find words. She kicks herself mentally; all she wants is to form one coherent sentence. Does it really have to be this difficult?

Adrien chuckles momentarily before exiting the car to help Marinette collect her things. She hasn’t been this awkward around him since their school days and, although he was relieved when she started to act normal around him, part of him has missed this.

“Here,” he hands her back her pencil case, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry to startle you like that, Mari.”

Marinette smiles back, taking the pencil case and stuffing it into her bag. “It’s alright, Adrien. I’m glad you guys finally made it though, I’ve been sitting out here for almost half an hour now.” She directs the latter part of the sentence at Nino, accompanied by a pointed look.

“Again, that was my fault, sorry.” Adrien laughs apologetically.

Marinette raises an eyebrow. “Did you forget to lock your apartment like last time?”

His embarrassed nod tells her all she needs to know.

“Whenever you two have finished your conversation, I would still like to hit the road ASAP.” Nino calls from the car. He’s not frustrated just yet, but Adrien knows that if they hit traffic they’ll all get the This Situation Was Easily Avoidable and You All Ruined It speech. It’s not a fun speech.

The trip to Starbucks is fairly uneventful. Nino buys Alya her coffee (black, one sugar, because at least I can pretend this is real coffee) and her food, which she practically snatches from the barista’s hands, as well as an iced caramel macchiato for himself (Alya, I’m paying so don’t criticise me). Marinette orders a chai tea latte (it’s the best of both worlds okay? Shut up, Adrien, I’m not basic) and Adrien sticks with hot chocolate (because I’ve only been awake for an hour and a half and I need sugar. A lot of it).

Marinette always maintains that the road trip has never officially started until they reach the highway. Only then do the traditions really begin. Nino’s first playlist of choice is ‘all-those-songs-that-we-like-even-though-they-are-awful’. The ‘we’ in this case is only Marinette. When the Playlist Committee was first formed they came up with a set of ten rules:

The Ten Rules of the Road Trip Playlist Committee

1. Each Playlist Exectutive is allowed to make one playlist without the other’s permission

2. The other member must allow this playlist to be played at any time, no complaints

3. There are to be no exceptions to universal karaoke when Carly Rae Jepsen’s artistic masterpiece ‘Call Me Maybe’ is played

4. Each playlist (apart from the aforementioned excepted permission playlist) must be the result of a team effort

5. Alya is not allowed to make playlists

6. All passenger requests must be agreed upon by the Playlist Executives

7. There will be no Bieber at any time. Ever.

8. Adrien is only allowed three song requests every hour.

9. The soundtrack of ‘Cats’ is not appropriate road trip material. Do not play it, no matter how much Adrien pleads.

10. Any rules broken will result in immediate termination of the guilty Playlist Executive.

Marinette is pretty sure that Nino has violated Rule Number 1 already, but she’s willing to let it slide because, to be completely fair, she ends up sleeping through a lot of the car journey. It’s not like she falls asleep on purpose, it’s just that her blanket is super warm and fluffy. Can she really be blamed?

“Alright, my dudes, I officially declare this road trip in motion!” Nino grins as the intro to the Ghostbusters theme fills the car. “We are hitting the highway!”

Alya whips out her camera, snapping a quick selfie of all four of them before turning it onto video mode. “You heard it, folks. The road trip is officially underway! Marseille, here we come! Hey, Mari, say hi to my vlog! You too, Model Boy.” Alya shoves the camera into her friends’ faces, barely allowing them time to react before yanking it back. “This is gonna be the Best. Trip. Ever!”

the road trip series

#the road trip series #miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain-cheng #adrien agreste #nino lahiffe #alya cesaire #djwifi #nino x alya #adrienette #adrien x marinette #mlb

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aliceslantern · 6 years

Text

Nocturnal Memory, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic, chapter 16

[Summary: Dying takes a lot out of you, it's true, but when Demyx wakes up for the first time since his fight with Sora nothing's right. His memories are fragmented and he's missing his true name. And he's not the only one. An incomprehensible mystery and an inevitable war make him question what, exactly, he would do to become whole, and reclaim the music lost to him.

on FF.net/on AO3]

Lea only had a few hardened pieces of bread. Demyx settled for instant coffee. As it boiled he sat listlessly at the card table. While Demyx had slept off the alcohol, Lea had spread the paperwork out messily in any direction. Some of the pages were coffee stained, though legible. He wasn't sure whether to read them or not; after all, this was Lea's, and none of his business. Demyx cleared a small spot for himself, and text caught his eye.

It was Demyx's handwriting. His own handwriting. Reservations aside, he snatched it. He recognized the header on the paper right away—Organization paperwork.

How did Lea have this?

It was just a reconnaissance report, from several weeks spent on a world he'd remembered as particularly lovely; it had been targeted for its strategic placement in the galaxy. The few clipped, stunted sentences on the report didn't do the place real justice.

There were more. Not just his reports, but others' reports—some of Dilan's, Aeleus's, work orders completed within the castle. Papers about all their second-strand Nobodies. Each had been given a number, but Demyx remembered naming all of his. David. Iggy. Janis. Grace.

316 woke up today. I worked with them for a little while. They really like reggae for some reason. Maybe that has something to do with where they're from? Look into this.

At the bottom of the report was a big "yes" in Saïx's handwriting, followed by, "Get it combat ready ASAP."

He had always hated that, though, and how eventually he would feel the little ping of their loss in his consciousness. It hadn't caused much pain then, but it wasn't pleasant, either. Even with his powers back he still didn't feel that same connection to the hivemind of the Dancers, probably because he himself was no longer technically a Nobody. They must all be human now, he tried to reassure himself. Then again, if they were as fucked up as he was, maybe it was better if they were gone.

At the bottom pile was older stuff, darker stuff. Reports by Xigbar. Planet X fell. Swarmed by Heartless. Barely had to lift a finger. Demyx saw a dozen at least like these. His stomach felt still sicker.

Mixed in were gray file folders of their personnel reports. Demyx saw his and felt his heart stutter. Maybe his true name was in there, or something useful. He snagged the folder and tried to quell his breathing.

The first page was an intake form. It was more or less the same as any of the second strand Nobodies, with sparer information. His number was listed first, in Roman numerals, not Arabic like the rest. His given name was listed, but the small box was blacked out, with "redacted" handwritten in white. He held the paper up to the light, trying to see the printed letters through the marker, but the ink was completely opaque. Like a lot of things.

His chest began to ache. His homeworld info had received similar treatment. His power, weapon, and skillset was listed, and there was an unflattering picture of him at the beginning, zombie-eyed and shorn-haired, face still childish. There was only one small piece of information that was new to him. His birthday, October 19, and the birth year, telling him for the first time that he was nineteen years old. Nearly twenty.

"Nineteen." He felt so much older than that, a million years old really.

At the bottom were yearly reviews, written in pencil by Saïx.

The first year—Nine has proven to be a capable worker—when he sets his mind to it. He has an incredible potential for laziness. His power still grows, as does he. With proper discipline he'd be a perfect member yet. The second and third years listed a clear decline in his work ethic, and Saïx's aggression became less and less veiled. Absolutely USELESS. Lazy. Incompetent. Complete and utter waste of resources.

Then the fourth year, right as Sora had destroyed them all—Terminated. DOD 6 March. Three months ago. He'd only been conscious since April. How much time had actually passed? He'd known he'd lost some time in recovery; he hadn't realized just how long. It was true that time flowed differently on all worlds, but he didn't buy it. Something wasn't adding up.

Demyx's hands were shaking. He set the reports down and tried to fix them the way he had found them. He realized that the kettle was whistling loudly and had been for some time, worsening the stabbing pain in his head.

He drank the coffee down too quickly and nearly scalded his tongue. He left Lea's house, walking fast even though his legs complained, and headed back to the castle.

The hangover mostly abated after he ate something and bathed. He was so sore he could barely raise his arms high enough to get a shirt on. He couldn't figure out what to do now and loitered for far longer than he should in the kitchen, trying hard not to think about the reports, and the lies.

"Good afternoon, Nine. I thought you had spent the night at Lea's. How did it go?" Ienzo asked. He started to make himself some tea.

"Oh. Good, I guess. I'm pretty sore."

"I would imagine. Might I join you?"

"Uh, sure." He paused. He tried to find the steely sense of resolve he had felt that morning. "I have something to tell you."

"What would that be?" He stirred his tea calmly.

Demyx's throat was dry. He forced a laugh. "I, um. I want to fight."

Ienzo went still for a moment. "I'm not sure I follow."

"I want to fight. This. I want to help."

"You… you do?" He spoke slowly.

"Yes." He laughed again, as hysteria twined into him. "Oh, fuck. I got pretty drunk last night and I guess I had some sort of epiphany."

"You're sure," Ienzo said. "I know in vino veritas, but perhaps… perhaps it was just a passing impulse."

"That's the thing." His eyes were tearing up again and he blinked it away. "It's been a while since I felt this sure."

"…What if this is what he wants?" Ienzo asked.

"I don't care what he wants! I…" He took a deep breath. "I can't just sit on this guilt and do nothing."

Ienzo looked down. Demyx couldn't read his expression.

"I found my birthday," he said more softly. "October. I'm nineteen."

"I know." Ienzo smiled weakly. "I forget that little more than a year separates us."

He wondered if he should tell him the rest. "Lea has… Lea has paperwork. From the Organization."

"I'm aware."

"That means he's gone back. How has he gone back without getting killed?"

"We didn't want him to go back. This was during Sora's Mark of Mastery. He's brought back useful information. I was hoping… that he could find some sort of clue, about our conditions. But it all seemed paltry to me. Accounts. Reports. Pittances of things that we already knew." Ienzo hesitated. "We had almost wanted him to surrender to them; to be a double agent. But that was before he started screaming his alignment from the rooftops."

"Are you fighting too?" Demyx asked. "Have we… have we all…?"

"Yes and no. I'm trying to gather as much as I can, as fast as I can. I don't think we'll be much use until we're all healed. If we're not, he could use that against us." He set down his mug and looked Demyx in the eye. "There was a thought, at the beginning, to make you the double agent."

"Ten already thinks that's what they're trying to do, by fucking me up," he added. His voice was steady but he was faint.

"You have to admit there's some appeal," Ienzo said. "Your powers are returning rapidly. You're skilled at gathering intelligence. Besides, there's little the other side doesn't know. If we sent you… let you drop some few spare things… maybe we could get a return."

"I don't think I could get them to trust me. I never could find out what was going on in the Organization."

"Perhaps not. But you have the will to, apparently, when before you didn't."

Demyx stared at the table and traced the woodgrain. "…You mean go to them. Beg for mercy, to be healed… and then be among them."

"…Yes. That was the basic plan."

His heart clanged in his ears.

"Obviously this would be after you became considerably stronger. And they need you to mend the town. If our other plans proceed at the predicted rate… Perhaps… in the fall, sometime."

Demyx laughed. "Happy birthday to me!"

"You should tell the committee of your… change of thought. Just so they're aware."

"…I feel dizzy, Ienzo." His hands trembled. "Is this a stupid thing to do?"

"I do not know, Nine. I really don't."

He hunted in the storage room for useful things. His heart still hammered against his ribs. He needed to fix the guitar, to get his mind off of all this. Otherwise he thought he'd throw up.

He needed wood, for the fingerboard. The leg of a chair or dresser would do. It would need to be cut, sanded down, and finished. There had to be sandpaper and finish somewhere… even if it was ugly, it would do. And something for frets. Even if he found tape he could cut it. Pegs… maybe there was something among the lab equipment that could work?

The hardest would be strings. He'd probably have to buy or trade for them. He only had the measly amount of money that had been on his person when Sora had killed him. But Heartless had some money… When he could fight better he could go after them.

He found a songbook on the floor, waterlogged and half chewed by mice. He held it gently in his hands. This must have originally accompanied the guitar; it wasn't far from it. The pages were brittle and swollen. The first few pages detailed the parts of the guitar. The tide of his excitement caused him to flip through page after careful page. Even though the tablature might as well have been runes for all he understood, he could learn, right? There was still time. At least, for now—

But he didn't find much of anything else. If there was anything good, he didn't come across it in his search, and he searched for some time. Was there anywhere else he could look? Would the sitar ever get back to him? Or would he just be like this—so weird and so fucking numb all the time—until this war inevitably killed him? If Sora had been able to cut him down so easily when he was at his strongest, what about the other vessels? What if this meant more than espionage? And if he got caught by them? Would any of this actually be worth it, in the end?

He gave up after sundown, and found it hard to get much sleep, a sick stinging anxiety keeping him up most of the night.

The next day a note for him arrived from the committee, calling him back to work. He'd only been away a few days but it felt like so much longer. He followed the path deeper into town, with the weight of the knife steadying him.

Demyx arrived where they'd told him, near the castle. A massive crane had been set up, and new stone connected the old aqueducts with the rest of the town. He saw Cid sitting inside the cab, yelling indiscriminately, but it was too hard to hear because of the noise.

"Oh good! You're here!" he yelled at Demyx when he saw them. "Do you like this new setup we've got?!"

"What are you doing?"

"What was that?!"

"I said, what are you doing?"

"Hang on, I'm coming down!" The engine stopped rumbling. Cid climbed down and checked his ears. "Post-industrial piece of shit," he explained. "But it's what we've got. We always had plans to build out the aqueduct. With this place mostly in ruins, we've got to get this going before you can step in fully. Those repairs we did earlier were to try and connect the old system to the new. I'm afraid to say that today, you're more an extra pair of hands than anything."

He was still so sore he wasn't sure he'd be much use. "Uh… okay."

"Yuffie and Leon are up top, patching everything up. I'm guessing you don't know much about masonry."

Reconnaissance had supplied him with a weird amount of knowledge for all sorts of things. He'd studied far too many industrial parks. "…More than you'd think."

"Then up you go. Careful on that scaffolding." He gestured to wooden supports built up some few stories in the air.

He exhaled and climbed diligently. His arms were jelly by the time he got up top.

"Thanks for showing up," Yuffie said, voice bitter. They were both kneeling down on the highest part of the scaffolding, spackling on a thick gray mortar over cracks in the stone with trowels. They were getting nowhere fast. "Pick up a trowel and get to work."

"There are some tools over there." Leon gestured to a toolbox sitting just behind them, near a few bags of dried mortar. "You might want to grab a pair of work gloves."

He did so and returned. He could already tell this would be painful, tedious work, but he was already here, and if he was going to work with them, there would be a lot more painful, tedious work coming. It would have to be worth it, he told himself. Maybe there really was a way for them to heal him. Maybe they hadn't found it yet. If Aerith and Ienzo worked together…

For a while they built in near perfect silence, laying and cementing stone in the hollows between reclaimed pieces. Very quickly a burn set in his arms and he had a feeling time was passing a too slowly.

"Why not just use pipes?" Demyx asked. He rolled his shoulder to try and ease the pain.

"We don't have any," Leon said. "We've got to work with what was left from all the other destroyed districts. This will all hold up better, eventually."

More silence. The pain had him near tears, heaving bricks to and fro, but he forced himself not to complain because Yuffie was right there.

"Lea told me he was teaching you to fight," Leon said.

Yuffie peeked through her bangs.

"…I guess that's true," Demyx said.

"It's reasonable. You shouldn't wander unprotected. Nobody should." Leon wiped the sweat from his brow. "He told me you were interested in standing with us."

Yuffie looked up fully. Her gaze was bemused, but uncomfortable.

"We'd be happy to have you," Leon continued.

"How would you trust him?" Yuffie asked. She scoffed. "How would you know he wouldn't…"

Leon gave her a look. "Wouldn't what, Yuffie?"

"I don't know. They hurt people. You hurt people. What about the Thousand Heartless?" Her tone was sharp and she spackled a bit more harshly than necessary.

"They sent me there to die," Demyx said. He tried to make it sound matter-of-fact, but he was starting to get pissed. "They wanted Sora to kill me and he did and that's that."

"But say you had stopped him—"

This again. "But I didn't." The sun was beating harshly on his face. "I never had a fucking chance."

"Yuffie. Stop. Please." Leon's tone was sharp.

"I've gotta get out of here. I'm gonna go help Cid." She slipped down the scaffolding and was gone.

Demyx's stomach hurt. He took a deep breath.

"Yuffie holds a grudge," Leon said. "I'm guessing you already figured that out."

He didn't know what to say. He was so mad he could practically see red. "I'm trying to do the right thing. Does she think I don't know? Does she think I don't feel that way all the time?" The mortar was cool against his hands.

Leon nodded. "I understand it was… complicated."

More silence. The pain in his arms was grounding. When they broke for lunch he sat off by himself, dangling his legs on the scaffolding and trying to find some flavor in his pathetic sandwich. He felt footsteps and weight next to him and saw Yuffie with her plastic container. "Going to yell at me some more?" he asked. He would get up and move, but his exhaustion rooted him to the spot.

"No." Her voice sounded forced. "I came to—ugh—apologize."

"What, did Leon make you?"

She shrugged. "Did they really want to kill you?"

He had no more appetite. "I was terrified," he said. "We were all dying. Half of us were gone. I never cared for their cause, I just did enough work to save my life. I don't think anyone thought the fake Kingdom Hearts would work but we were desperate. Xemnas, he… he said the whole time that this was the answer. We didn't know how to be whole again. You don't know what it's like, Yuffie, the emptiness, it's just this huge… void, inside, gnawing like, these little weird half pops of feeling coming in now and again." He touched his chest and prayed he wouldn't start crying.

She didn't say anything. She looked vaguely pained.

"When they gave me that order to face him… I think they saw me as a burden. Like if they put me there I could buy them some time to make a better plan. I don't know why I didn't just run." A pause. A hot wind had kicked up. "How can you think I'm so bad when you have no idea how you'd act in the same situation?"

"Fuck that." Her tone wasn't as heated as usual, though. "Have you seen a world fall? All the chaos… the bloodshed… knowing that most of them won't get out? Knowing that they'll die, or they'll become Heartless? Or worse?"

Planet X fell. Xigbar hadn't even given the planet a name. How many stories and songs had been lost? He'd seen the reports, heard the whispers of the lesser Nobodies in his consciousness as they reported to him, the fire, the fear, the screaming, waves and waves of boiling darkness. A sharp pain stabbed behind his eyes. "Yes. I have."

"It's how my dad died. I'm sorry. I can't see the shades of gray in this situation." She looked away from him, out onto the rest of the town.

He could hardly believe it. A human conversation. "I never wanted to hurt anyone. I know that I probably did."

She slumped forward. "Me too. Shit. I always wondered if I could have done more when this place fell. All I could think about was… running."

"You were in danger. It was the instinctual thing to do."

"Maybe someone else should have gone in that ship instead of me. Maybe I should have stayed with my dad." She closed her eyes. "We're going to be working together for a while. Let's at least put up with each other."

This day was too fucking weird. "I can do that."

#nocturnal memory #demyx #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 3d #fanfiction

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readonline · 5 years

Link

I stumbled across Justin’s online dating profile while waiting for water to boil. I had just gotten home from running errands — A.T.M., mailbox, grocery store — and was cooking dinner before sitting down to work.

It was just after 4 a.m.

“Message me if you want to talk about anything and everything until the wee hours of the night,” his profile said.

The phrase “wee hours,” as it turns out, means different things to different people. For him, a software engineer with an eye for design who can wail on an electric guitar, the wee hours are 2 a.m., maybe 3. For me, it’s a little more complicated.

I have a circadian rhythm disorder called delayed sleep phase syndrome. It’s not insomnia; I’ve never had trouble sleeping. It’s that my circadian clock tells me it’s time for bed when the sun is rising and time to wake up as it’s setting. As these things go, I’m an extreme case — a vampire, basically — offset from society’s clock by approximately eight hours.

Each week, you'll get stories about money, power, sex and scrunchies.

My father is similarly chrono-challenged, as was his mother. As a child, I struggled to live in the diurnal world. Some children feel they were born into the wrong body. Me? I felt as if I were born into the wrong time.

Now, as a freelance writer making my own schedule, I have reveled in the freedom to live by my own clock, going to bed around 8 or 9 a.m. and waking around 4 or 5 p.m., though some “nights” I stay up late, going to sleep by noon and getting up at 8.

I’ve always lived in cities — New York, Philadelphia, London, Boston — yet my world is sparsely populated. There are no lines when I grocery shop, only an obstacle course of restocking boxes. No traffic when I drive. No phone calls, emails or social media stir as I work.

Alone with my books and my thoughts, I write about physics.

Being nocturnal isn’t a requirement for physics writing, but it helps. The dark of night is perfect for contemplating the universe. With everything silent and still, it’s easier to notice the cracks in reality’s facade.

Of course, my chronologic freedom comes with a few technical difficulties, such as an inability to take calls from editors, listen to music without headphones or remember what day of the week it is, since my days are always changing in the middle.

Then there’s dating. First dates usually go O.K. because they’re in the evening, but complications quickly arise. It’s hard to explain to a date that you don’t want to drink at dinner because you’ve just woken up and have a full workday ahead. You tire of saying you can’t go to brunch or to the beach because you’ll be sound asleep. When they ask why you don’t just go to bed earlier, as if perhaps you’d never thought of that, you have to explain that your inverted schedule isn’t a preference.

On my first date with Justin, we went to an art museum at 7 p.m., where we spoke easily about our families and passions, software and string theory. I learned that he had a 9-to-5 job (not my 9 to 5 — the other one) and enjoyed cycling and being “out in the sunshine.”

I didn’t mention that I was midway through a regimen of prescription vitamin D, administered in blitzkrieg doses. “Sunshine” was not in my vocabulary.

For our second date, it was my turn to make plans. “I know you’re on a normal human schedule,” I texted him. “But the Perseid meteor shower peaks tomorrow night. Want to find a dark spot and watch?”

“Despite being a normal human,” he replied, “I’m totally down for that.”

At midnight, we found a cozy spot by the Charles River and gazed upward, watching for the stray dust of an ancient comet. Despite the city lights, we saw three meteors blaze above the Boston skyline.

We talked about starlight, how it had begun its journey thousands of years ago and we were looking back in time. I thought how in a sense that’s always true: My now is not the same as his and never will be. There’s always a delay, each of us living in the immediate past of the other, regardless of how tightly he wrapped his arms around my waist. We are all trapped in our own time zones. The best we can do is try to meet in an imaginary middle.

So that’s what we did. He booked us a trip to go night skiing. I made it to the beach in time to feel the sun on my skin. He rigged up a high-powered bike light and took me for a long ride in the summer dark. I ate Thai food for breakfast; he ate pancakes for dinner.

Eventually, however, the constant compromise made for two grumpy, bleary-eyed shells of human beings. We were in love but exhausted and ready to give up, resigned to nursing our heartache from the opposite side of a circadian rhythm. He went back to his hometown in Maine to clear his head. I returned to the night to live in mine.

One afternoon (i.e., just after midnight), I got an email from him suggesting we try a new approach.

“There is no world we both occupy at the same time,” he wrote. “It’s an illusion. We don’t actually need to find that.” Instead of fighting our difference, he said, let’s just love each other from across the clock.

So we decided to move in together. We found an attic apartment with tons of skylights, where sunlight would flood the living room during his day and moonlight would stream through the ceiling during mine. We were still unpacking boxes when there was a total lunar eclipse, and we pulled a lounge chair into the kitchen and watched as the earth’s shadow slid across a terra cotta moon.

As a token of our new living arrangement, I gave Justin an illustrated edition of “The Day Boy and the Night Girl,” a fairy tale by George MacDonald from 1882. Snuggling on the couch, we took turns reading chapters aloud to each other.

In the story, a witch raises two children in captivity, allowing the boy to see only day and the girl only night. But one day, the boy stays out longer than he’s supposed to, and when it gets dark, he becomes terrified. The girl finds him shaking in the garden and tries to comfort him, explaining “how gentle and sweet the darkness is, how kind and friendly, how soft and velvety!”

Since she’s wide awake, she promises to watch over him while he sleeps. When the sun rises, he awakens to find that now she’s scared, a stranger to the sun, and so he carries her in his arms while she sleeps until dark.

Justin and I figured we would do the same. When a repairman insisted on coming at noon, Justin stayed home so I wouldn’t lose a night’s sleep. When he didn’t have time to buy wrapping paper for birthday gifts, I had them ready with ribbons by morning.

I always made sure to wake up before he got home from work so we could cook and eat together — his dinner, my breakfast. Then he’d go to bed, and I’d write for hours beneath the moon. Eventually, I would crawl quietly into his arms and we’d dream happily alongside each other — for a few minutes, anyway, before he had to get up.

On weekends, he played guitar, saw friends, soaked in the sunshine, all while I was still dreaming. By the time I dragged myself to the coffee maker, he’d cycled 35 miles and eaten two meals. With the sun setting, he greeted me with a happy “Good morning!” He told me about his day; I told him about my yesterday.

And so it went, the earth spinning for each of us in turn. We made the most of the hours when our lives overlapped, then let each other thrive in our own times, like animals in our wilds.

In August, the earth made its annual pass through the dust and debris of that ancient comet. Late that night, Justin drove me to a secluded beach on the north shore of Massachusetts where a handful of stargazers stared skyward. He put down a blanket as frogs croaked in the distance. Then he fumbled in his camera bag, pulling out a small black box. I couldn’t see what was inside, just a glint, like the flicker of a star. Then he asked, “Will you marry me?”

We lay back on the blanket, grinning, as meteors streaked the sky. By then it was nearly 2 a.m., too late to call anyone, to squeal our news to family and friends. Instead we just lay there in our shared place and time, surrounded by sand and ocean and a few hundred billion stars.

#love #essay #nytimes

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vamytas · 7 years

Photo

18th May ‘94

Molly,

Thanks for your exhibition prints. I’ve sold a few off the counter, the deer ones are popular. Still find it funny that people opt for the cuter kind, even if the forest frolickers are dead, although when one woman came in to buy a wallet for her husband and I told her the deer was a taxidermy she didn’t seem as eager to look around much more! Shame, that. Tried to tell her half the cost went to the RSPCA but she didn’t buy it. I’ll see if Alex wants one. Have you sent some to Tommy? He’d like the mouse driving the car (that’s him, right...?)

I would say ‘same old’ here if it was true but it’s not. The bloke I work with, Rob, the one who thought it would be a grand idea to throw Alex’s surprise birthday bash, he hasn’t shown up for work in a couple days and he won’t pick up his phone. I could joke that it was Alex’s doing but at this point with the way he’s become such a recluse I wouldn’t put it past him. Maybe they eloped? Not that they have any reason to, didn’t catch on to anything like that. Not that you’d care, obviously (ha ha). I shouldn’t joke about it, though. Rob’s somewhere we don’t know...or at least I don’t know. Thank god Alex is responding even if it’s minimal. I asked him if he knew anything and he said he didn’t. At the moment it’s a mystery to us but I’m not sure if Rob’s family have managed to get in contact, or if he has any family to worry over him, there’s a lot of characters like that around here.

Don’t be a stranger, even if you have all the critics climbing all over eachother just to glance at your face. Are you really going to try and pull the Banksy thing?

Much love,

Seb

P.S. Have you installed your dial-up yet? Data’s quicker to send than paper.

21 May 1994

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: Beep, beep ... nnNNRRHH

Happy to see you’ve joined the legion of the world wide web! I know a lot of people complain about the noise but it doesn’t sound much different to what we used to listen to. You haven’t sold your original 20 Jazz Funk Greats, have you? Not sure it would even rake in much with what we drew all over the back, unless you or Alex get put in the Tate. With the way you’re going I wouldn’t say it’s a far way off! Also need more of those prints! Running low. You’re a popular girl here :) -- that’s called a smiley.

As for the Earnshaw Update: he’s as much a hermit as your sister used to be when she started getting into The Cure. I don’t know what instigated it but he’s only been reachable by phone since his birthday, and only at night. I’ve tried dropping in but his door’s been shut tight and I don’t know where he keeps the emergency key. You should try talking to him (I can resend his address if you’ve lost it, he hasn’t got internet yet). That’s if I can’t tide him over by telling him you’ve got a gift, next time he picks up... if he does. Sorry, that sounds very doom and gloom. I really am worried about him, if only because he hasn’t been in this kind of stasis since... well.

Please get back to me as soon as you can.

Much love,

Seb

23 May 1994

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: He’s alive!

Did you send that print to him? I came by his place tonight and he answered after the first knock! Smiling as ever. He felt colder than a Yorkshire winter, though, and pale. I told him I could help with the gas bill if he needed it but he waved me off. We went out to one of those clubs where everyone is in fishnets and knock-off McQueen, which is nothing new, but they were playing that new MTV gothic stuff, the kind he said he hated -- could be broadening his horizons. I lost him for a bit but he found his way back, he’s somehow easy to distinguish from the crowd now (for me that is, imagine it’s always been the case with you, ha ha!)

He also told me that Rob went on a spontaneous break to Rome. Rob in Rome! And that I’d be getting a “confirmation of assumin’ such responsibilties required of a leather shoppe owner, as well as the salary”. Alex and him were closer than I thought.

It’s all looking up here. What’s happening with you? Apart from the Guardian editorial, you don’t tell me much apart from work!

Much love,

Seb

27 May 1994

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: Concerned again.

I don’t mean to ignore the other topics covered in our ditties but Al has gone Weird. I know he always has been, in that ‘cool cousin’ kind of way but now he’s just... I don’t know. He’s practically nocturnal. There’s more and more stuff popping up in his wardrobe that he used to say was a ‘fuckin’ disgrace of shite taste’ -- the chokers! There must be about ten discarded around his whole place. I’ve seen some of his paintings too and they’re dark, as in David Lynch meets Goya’s black paintings, I mean they’re good -- really good -- but it just seems excessive.

Worst of all, he keeps mentioning Ricky. Since the accident he’s been fairly healthy with talking about it but now it seems like he’s got this growing obsession with ‘what it all meant, his death’, I don’t even know what Alex meant by that.Then he’ll ask me where I think Ricky is now and honestly I don’t know, I don’t like to think about it. I just keep saying ‘somewhere warm’ because it seems like Alex needs the comfort. I don’t know if what happened to Ricky got to him more than he let on before, or if he was too preoccupied at the time with making sure I didn’t do anything drastic. Was I that needy?

I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what to suggest either. Sorry to end on such a downer of a note.

Love,

Seb

1 June 1994

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: Dire.

I don’t know him anymore, Molly. When we don’t go out he just wants to talk about Ricky with me, like I’m a proxy for some kind of loss he’s going through. But I don’t know what loss that is -- you? It’s the only comparison I can think of. I feel like the kid stuck between two divorced parents with you two sometimes. Except he avoids talking about you all together and if I do bring you up, like how you were moving back to London, he just looks down, rubs his beard... a new habit.

(Beard, yeah. I forgot to tell you because it was a really gradual transition at the time that I didn’t notice, but he has this Jesus thing going for him. Before, I didn’t think much of it but now it’s like an inherent look he should have been born with, innate? I could never imagine him looking like it but now it’s hard to imagine him looking any different.)

Anyway, beards aside. He’s getting... creepy. When we’re not drinking he just wants to postulate on death and ‘what comes after’, he’s a right fucking misery to be around. Although I haven’t seen him drink much at all, do you think he’s on drugs or something? It’s the only conclusion I can come up with, and I don’t have anyone else to ask about this because they’re all in the same scene he is.

Please reply soon.

Seb

2 June 1994

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: -

Okay there are some things I’ve witheld for a long time because I didn’t want to cause you any unnecessary pain. As much as I know you say you’re fine it’s never a gift to hear these things but I feel it has a lot to do with how Alex is now.

After we moved to SF he started seeing this woman who I didn’t see much of myself,, she set me on edge but I can understand how he was drawn to her because I think it was mainly a sex thing to get over you. I told yu before that he was a catastrophic mess after you left and things got better but when I say catastrophic mess I really mean it, I won’t state examples because I dont mean to make you feel guilty Molly but it’s the truth and I don’t know what to do anymore.

I didnt want to make uyo worry because i know you;re already dealing with enough already, and i didnt want this matter in particular to be especially distressing for you. But I think alex and this woman were into heavy stuff - not drugs but maybe that too. We went out while he was with this girl, in January, I think? it was to one of those fetish clubs, wasn’t my thing. But he left me there alone without telling me he was leaving, hhe left with the girl and didn’t even leave me a voicemail. I got home fine, couldn’t sleep though. But then I went over to check on him in the morning and his back was covered in gashes and blood. he didnt wake up but he was breathing. i didn’t know what to do, i pretended i never walked in and he called me soon after to apologise for the night but i wouldnt say anything about his back because i thought it was a bdsm thing but with the way hes acting now i dont know if he was being abused? I dont know the telltale signs, just that he’d follow this woman around like she had him on a leash.

There are still parts of him I recognise but there’s something about him which feels out of touch, like he’s not the same person but trying to be. I dont know how to put it, maybe I’ve been away from someone who can actually talk about these problems for too long

The thing is I havent seen him with this woman in a while, since his birthday I’d say. Despite it he seems a lot happier now than when he was with her (apart from the Ricky fixation) but he’s gone full blown Byronic Bohemian. He’s invited me out almost every day in the past week and since this was an improvement from locking himself inside, I tried to go as much as I could. Each time I’d lose him for a while because he’d gone off with a girl . He thinks he’s being discreet but I’m not much of a dancer for these places so all there’s left to do is watch. Sometimes he goes home with them and offers to pay me for a taxi, which is a step up from leaving me stranded, I’ll give him that.

I know I shouldn’t have but I looked through his art yesterday (his emergency key is in a broken light on a wall outside his door), not his stuff under the bed but in his wardrobe. There’s five entire sketchbooks of you, some of the drawings are so beautiful, he still remembers how you look exactly but in others they just seem... off? Not that they don’t look like you because they do, even if it’s a few strokes, but for someone who knows you they just look like he;s trying to put through what he is now onto you? I don’t know. that doesnt make sense.Then there are some Ricky drawings in there too but I don’t want to talk about them. he writes stuff around you and Ricky, dates and places and random lines like ‘snake chokes on its own tail’ and ‘saw him around Seb’s’. I think he’s scared of losing parts of himself and not being able to get them back.

Please talk to him Molly , you know his number and email . I know you think you’ll do him more harm than good but I don’t know what to say, if I point out how he’s acting weird he just resorts to deflective humour ‘it’s all part of being a la Americana now’. But I’m worried if I push it he’ll get angry. Sometimes I don’t feel safe with him and I don’t know why. Please reach him, I miss him, nothing’s right with Alex like this. I’m getting homesick because there’s nothing here that seems real anymore, everything feels like I’m watching it through a TV screen and it’s muted, or the music’s too loud to hear what people are really saying. I don’t want to leave Alex alone but I feel like I’m in a coma here.

Do you think I could stay with you for a while?

Love always,

Seb

#▏🌹 ▪ VANITAS.#▏▪ HEADCANON.#[IDK WHAT TO tag this as rn . .#its long .. . longest thing ive written on this blog and its not from alexs perspectiv.e..#I DONT HAVE much to comment abt it im tired. ..#just a biffle's view of alexs days after his Death . .]

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beckettsthoughts · 7 years

Text

Rules: Answer the questions then come up with one of your own and tag as many people as there questions.

I was tagged by @baz-pitch-is-alive, thank you so much :)

1. Coke or Pepsi: I don’t actually like fizzy drinks- is apple juice an answer I can give?

2. Disney or Dreamworks: Disney. I love Disney movies.

3. Coffee or tea: You’re going to hate me for this, but I don’t like hot drinks either. Is apple juice an answer I can give?

4. Books or movies: Books, by a long way. I do like movies every now and then, but they often can’t quite hold my attention unless I am actually in the cinema.

5. Window or Mac: Mac, for me. I used Windows up until a couple of years ago but it crashed super often and the settings were really difficult to navigate. It fucked up once when it updated and I could never let it update after that, plus it couldn’t run games without crashing everything, I never tried it but there’s no way it could have run Photoshop. I also like Garageband.

6. DC or Marvel: Marvel, if we’re talking movies. I haven’t read as many Marvel comics as I have DC, though, and while I’ve only read a few DC comics they’ve all been awesome: Black Canary, Gotham Academy, and my absolute favourite The Sandman. I prefer other comics in most cases, though, my favourite being The Wicked + The Divine.

7. Xbox or PlayStation: PlayStation. I don’t have an Xbox, I do have a PlayStation. I admit, I may be biased.

8. Dragon Age or Mass Effect: I haven’t played either, but Dragon Age is way more my thing than Mass Effect.

9. Night owl or early riser: Haha, haha, haha; I don’t sleep much. When I do, it’s in the mornings. I am most definitely a night owl, so much so that people may mistake me for an actual nocturnal being.

10. Cards or chess: Card games, no question. My friends and I used to play card games every lunchtime at school and we still know several, our favourites being Cheat (also known as Bullshit when we’re not at school), Spoons, Shithead (oft-shortened to Shed when teachers were nearby), Irish Snap and a game called Hi-Jack. I’m also a big fan of Sevens and Solitaire.

11. Chocolate or vanilla: Chocolate. I like vanilla but, alas, I like chocolate more.

12. Vans or converse: Man, in general I prefer Converses but I have this pair of awesome leather-and-corduroy high-top Vans and those are probably the best shoes I own. I’m not really a shoe person. I’d still probably say Converses, overall. I have a couple pairs of low-tops, grey and navy blue.

13. Star Wars or Star Trek: To be honest, I don’t know enough about either to judge. I like what I’ve seen of both, but from what I can predict I’d probably prefer Star Trek overall. I know, I know; I’m a bad nerd.

14. One episode per week or binge watching: I don’t watch much TV, I guess. I’m happy to watch once-a-week if it’s on the actual TV, but if I’m watching things on my laptop I usually binge-watch in a fit of hyperfocus. I can only binge-watch stuff like cartoons that have short episodes, though, or I can’t concentrate.

15. Heroes or villains: Um, I’m a big villains fan. They’re just, like, cooler, I guess. Also they’re way more likely to be supernatural and stuff, and they usually look more goth or have British accents, and they often have deeper backstories. What I really love is like, anti-heroes and anti-villains, though.

16. John Williams or Hans Zimmer: Don’t make me choose, bro.

17. Disneyland/Disney World or Six Flags: I don’t know like, anything about Six Flags, but I can say honestly that what I love about Disney is the atmosphere. From the little I’ve seen of Six Flags it seems pretty cool if you’re into roller coasters and water parks, but I’m not really about that. What I love about Disney is that you can be somewhere completely different, be it foregin or fictional. The California Adventure park is by far my favourite of the Disney parks I’ve been to, for example, because wandering round it felt like Yosemite, it felt like Route 66, it felt like Santa Monica. Walking down Main Street at Disneyland is just amazing, man, I don’t know how to really describe it.

18. Forest or sea: I love forests, but I was born by the sea and I think the coast will always have my heart. The feeling of standing on the sea wall in the dark, watching the ink-black sea churning and roaring and leaping up against the rocks; it’s some strange sort of magic, it’s mesmerising.

19. Flying or reading minds: Both sound awesome, but I think flying. It just looks really fun, whereas I feel reading minds would be really stressful. Like, the pressure of knowing what people are thinking and feeling seems kind of intrusive and I would feel awkward in judging how to react and talk to people. I can’t handle my own mind half of the time, I don’t want to be dealing with others.

20. Twin Peaks or Northern Exposure: Not seen either, but I’ve heard of Twin Peaks and it looks cool. I’ve literally never even heard of Northern Exposure.

21. Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings: Harry Potter. Again, I don’t know enough about LOTR, I haven’t had the chance to read the books yet because they’re like, intimidatingly long. I shelled out $30 for a replica of Hermione’s wand at Warner Bros Studios, though, and I think that speaks for itself.

22. Cake or pie: Definitely cake. Preferably chocolate. Preferably M&S star-themed tray-bake.

23. Beyoncé or Lady Gaga: I like both, but I don’t know either very well. I don’t feel like I have enough knowledge to make a fair decision. Beyoncé is like, divinely beautiful though.

24. Rain or sunshine: Rain, rain, rain. I like sunshine and it makes for the best kind of lazy, summer afternoons, but heat is uncomfortable and I like the sound of rain on the roof at night.

25. Steven Universe or Gravity Falls: I haven’t seen Gravity Falls, but I do like Steven Universe. I’m really liking Star Vs The Forces of Evil recently, though.

26. Blue or green: Dammit, I can’t decide. Ultramarine or malachite green, I love both.

27. Vanilla or cinnamon: Vanilla. I barely ever have anything with cinnamon on it, but it’s good on pie?

28. Foreign films, subbed or dubbed: Dubbed is best for me because I like to do other things like draw or write while I watch so being able to listen is super useful, but for TV shows I’ll likely be watching on my laptop and therefore subbed is fine because I can’t write on my laptop and watch on my laptop at the same time.

29. Rain coats or umbrellas: Umbrellas are cool and I have this massive rainbow umbrella that I got given for free at Pride, but I don’t use them very often, if at all. I do, however, have a fair collection of long, flowy coats. They’re not raincoats as such, and in fact none of them have hoods, but I’ve had raincoats in the past and I like them more.

30. Christmas or birthdays: Birthdays! Don’t get me wrong, I really really love Christmas but it can be really stressful, whereas birthdays I’m hanging with my friends and eating cake and it’s really fun. Christmas beats birthdays where dinner is concerned though, because you really can’t beat a British Christmas dinner.

Now for my contribution, it took a minute to think of but my question for all of you is:

Art, literature, or music?

And, though I don’t think I can tag 30 people, I’m going to tag @littleduckalex @toadstoolfuel, @finnisnowdeadrip, @windsweptarmadillo, @luuxraay, @mcnamak, @homjom and @shark-myths as well as anyone who sees this and thinks it looks like fun!

#b replies #ask meme

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perspectivepodcast · 5 years

Text

[Transcript] Side A: Infinity Times Infinity

In their song entitled ‘Sun’, music band Sleeping At Last sing: “We are the dust of dust. We are the apple of God’s eye. We are infinite as the universe we hold inside. Infinity times infinity.”

In an interview to Krista Tippett for her ‘On Being’ podcast, physician and writer Rachel Naomi Remen tells a story her grandfather had told her when she was a child, the story of the first day of the world. “[T]his was my fourth birthday present, this story.” Remen recalls, “This is the story of the birthday of the world. In the beginning, there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. Then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident. And the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness in the world, the light of the world, was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light. And they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day. Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people; to lift it up and make it visible once again and, thereby, to restore the innate wholeness of the world. This is a very important story for our times — that we heal the world one heart at a time. This task is called “tikkun olam” in Hebrew, “restoring the world.”

Krista Tippett at this point of the interview asks Remen if there is “a connection between the story of the sparks and tikkun olam in Jewish tradition? Are they bound together?”

“They’re exactly the same.” Replies Remen, “Tikkun olam is the restoration of the world. And this is, of course, a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world. And that story opens a sense of possibility. It’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It’s about healing the world that touches you, that’s around you.”

In the prelude to her book ‘Figuring’, Maria Popova writes: “All of it — the rings of Saturn and my father’s wedding band, the underbelly of the clouds pinked by the rising sun, Einstein’s brain bathing in a jar of formaldehyde, every grain of sand that made the glass that made the jar and each idea Einstein ever had, the shepherdess singing in the Rila mountains of my native Bulgaria and each one of her sheep, every hair on Chance’s velveteen dog ears and Marianne Moore’s red braid and the whiskers of Montaigne’s cat, every translucent fingernail on my friend Amanda’s newborn son, every stone with which Virginia Woolf filled her coat pockets before wading into the River Ouse to drown, every copper atom composing the disc that carried arias aboard the first human-made object to enter interstellar space and every oak splinter of the floor-boards onto which Beethoven collapsed in the fit of fury that cost him his hearing, the wetness of every tear that has ever been wept over a grave and the yellow of the beak of every raven that has ever watched the weepers, every cell in Galileo’s fleshy finger and every molecule of gas and dust that made the moons of Jupiter to which it pointed, the Dipper of freckles constellating the olive firmament of a certain forearm I love and every axonal flutter of the tenderness with which I love her, all the facts and figments by which we are perpetually figuring and reconfiguring reality — it all banged into being 13.8 billion years ago from a single source, no louder than the opening note of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, no larger than the dot levitating over the small i, the I lowered from the pedestal of ego.

How can we know this and still succumb to the illusion of separateness, of otherness? This veneer must have been what the confluence of accidents and atoms known as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., saw through when he spoke of our “inescapable network of mutuality,” what Walt Whitman punctured when he wrote that “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

One autumn morning, as I read a dead poet’s letters in my friend Wendy’s backyard in San Francisco, I glimpse a fragment of that atomic mutuality. Midsentence, my peripheral vision — that glory of instinct honed by millennia of evolution — pulls me toward a miraculous sight: a small, shimmering red leaf twirling in midair. It seems for a moment to be dancing its final descent. But no — it remains suspended there, six feet above ground, orbiting an invisible center by an invisible force. For an instant I can see how such imperceptible causalities could drive the human mind to superstition, could impel medieval villagers to seek explanation in magic and witchcraft. But then I step closer and notice a fine spider’s web glistening in the air above the leaf, conspiring with gravity in this spinning miracle.

Neither the spider has planned for the leaf nor the leaf for the spider — and yet there they are, an accidental pendulum propelled by the same forces that cradle the moons of Jupiter in orbit, animated into this ephemeral early-morning splendor by eternal cosmic laws impervious to beauty and indifferent to meaning, yet replete with both to the bewildered human consciousness beholding it.

We spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins. We snatch our freeze-frame of life from the simultaneity of existence by holding on to illusions of permanence, congruence, and linearity; of static selves and lives that unfold in sensical narratives. All the while, we mistake chance for choice, our labels and models of things for the things themselves, our records for our history. History is not what happened, but what survives the shipwrecks of judgment and chance.

Some truths, like beauty, are best illuminated by the sidewise gleam of figuring, of meaning-making. In the course of our figuring, orbits intersect, often unbeknownst to the bodies they carry — intersections mappable only from the distance of decades or centuries. Facts crosshatch with other facts to shade in the nuances of a larger truth — not relativism, no, but the mightiest realism we have. We slice through the simultaneity by being everything at once: our first names and our last names, our loneliness and our society, our bold ambition and our blind hope, our unrequited and part-requited loves. Lives are lived in parallel and perpendicular, fathomed nonlinearly, figured not in the straight graphs of “biography” but in many-sided, many-splendored diagrams. Lives interweave with other lives, and out of the tapestry arise hints at answers to questions that raze to the bone of life: What are the building blocks of character, of contentment, of lasting achievement? How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of mind against the tide of convention and unreasoning collectivism? Does genius suffice for happiness, does distinction, does love? Two Nobel Prizes don’t seem to recompense the melancholy radiating from every photograph of the woman in the black laboratory dress. Is success a guarantee of fulfillment, or merely a promise as precarious as a marital vow? How, in this blink of existence bookended by nothingness, do we attain completeness of being?

There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.

So much of the beauty, so much of what propels our pursuit of truth, stems from the invisible connections — between ideas, between disciplines, between the denizens of a particular time and a particular place, between the interior world of each pioneer and the mark they leave on the cave walls of culture, between faint figures who pass each other in the nocturne before the torchlight of a revolution lights the new day, with little more than a half-nod of kinship and a match to change hands.”

We all come from nowhere, and from everywhere. But are we worthy of the infinity we contain and are?

In her illustrated book ‘Eating the Sun’, writer and illustrator Ella Frances Sanders writes about the sense of awe the infinity we are made of and surrounded by inspires. “A sense of wonder can find you in many forms,” Sanders writes, “sometimes loudly, sometimes as a whispering, sometimes even hiding inside other feelings — being in love, or unbalanced, or blue.

For me, it is looking at the night for so long that my eyes ache and I’m stuck seeing stars for hours afterwards, watching the way the ocean sways itself to sleep, or as the sky washes itself in colors for which I know I will never have the words — a world made from layers of rock and fossil and glittered imaginings that keeps tripping me up, demanding I pay attention to one leaf at a time, ensuring I can never pick up quite where I left off.”

Astronomer and poet Rebecca Elson published only one collection of poetry in her too brief lifetime, and it was entitled ‘A Responsibility to Awe’. Are we ever able to live up to that responsibility to awe, to the universe in its infinitely changing expressions?

Sanders goes on: “Depending on where you look, what you touch, you are changing all the time. The carbon inside you, accounting for about 18 percent of your being, could have existed in any number of creatures or natural disasters before finding you. That particular atom residing somewhere above your left eyebrow? It could well have been a smooth, riverbed pebble before deciding to call you home.

You see, you are not so soft after all; you are rock and wave and the peeling bark of trees, you are ladybirds and the smell of a garden after the rain. When you put your best foot forward, you are taking the north side of a mountain with you. […]

A lot of our time is spent trying to tie up loose ends, trying to shape disorder into something recognizably smooth, trying to escape the very limits that hold us close, happily ignoring rough edges and the inevitable. We separate ourselves out into past, present, and future, if only to show that we have changed, that we know better, that we have understood something inherent; if only to draw neat lines from start to finish without looking back.

The problem is that chaos is always only ever sitting just across the table, frequently glancing up from its newspaper, from its coffee cup filled with discolored and imploding stars. Because chaos too waits. Waits for you to notice it, for you to realize it’s the most dazzling thing you’ve ever seen, for all of your atoms to collectively shriek in belated recognition and stare, mouth open, at how exquisitely embedded it is in everything. Because we are not designed to be more orderly than anything else; seams have a tendency to come apart with time — you and the universe are the same in this way, which makes for a delicately overwhelming struggle.

So, then, if you can’t ever end things neatly, can’t ever put them back quite the way you found them, surely the alternative is to remain stubbornly carbonated with possibility, to never rest from your rotation. To keep assembling stories between us, stories about how everything was everything, about how much we loved.”

Tell me, can we really embrace the infinite facets of the same infinite oneness we all are?

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notsdlifter · 5 years

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Kill Hollows: Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE:

BHA-AAB

Robert Warrington’s Journal

Token-Oak, Winter of 1991

10,562 days before the Syndemic

________________________________________

When I say my grandma knew the apocalypse was coming, I don’t mean it in a general sense. She didn’t just foreshadow dark times on the horizon. I believe she saw what was happening: the burning cities, the collapse of agriculture, and corpses along the interstate piled like trash at a landfill. She felt it, too: The intense pressure of knowing ate at her heart and eventually killed her. The incredible weight of this bleak future smothered her before she could adequately warn anyone but me.

She died on a Tuesday right after the wheat harvest. Even in death, the family would say, she accommodated my grandfather's schedule. Grandma planned her own passing—thou the doctors said the aneurysm was a fluke—right down to what she wore to the hospital. One day, Gramps came home from the farm and found her on the sunflower linoleum in the kitchen convulsing. Yet she packed a bag, stashed a week’s worth of leftovers in the fridge, and paid the bills a month in advance. Grandma was spooky like that. She had the foresight of a Cajun mystic.

Grandma had these great big eyes, but she rarely opened them more than a squint. She hid them behind reading frames she bought in the plastic turnstile at the local IGA Supermarket. With her head tilted and her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, she dug into people with those eyes. She had this way of looking into a person, right inside their thoughts, like she was vetting them for trustworthiness suitable enough to be her confidant. Few met her standards.

Grandma was a collector, like many women from small towns, she had a “power animal.” She bought cookie jars, bric-a-brac, and mawkish paintings of her “power animal” that personified her best. For my grandma, it was owls: spooky ass, head-turning-180-degree-Exorcist-style, big-eyed, predatory, nocturnal, clawed, and sharp-beaked owls. The damned things filled her home, lurking in every nook, following you with their eyes. I saw my grandma in all those owls.

Grandma loved to scare little kids. Scare them in a way that was simultaneously welcoming and bone-chilling. Over a plate of fresh-baked cookies—chocolate chip that were puffy, crunchy on the outside, yet doughy in the middle—she'd offer you her “insights” of the world. The cookies lowered your guard and the way she spoke really sucked you in, always in a gentle coo. “You know, Bob, those black spots on BBQ chips? Those are boogers from people that work at the factory.” Or, ever so subtly, “I once filled a glass dish with Coke and submerged a metal spoon in it and left it overnight. In the morning, the spoon was gone … completely dissolved. Now, Bob, imagine what that stuff does to your stomach overnight? Have you been checking your poop for blood?” And, let's not forget her stories about chocolate, “that stuff is made from the coco plant, you know, that’s where the 'cho' comes from. Well, the plant is used to manufacture illegal narcotics. A little white powder called CHOcaine. There is something in the plant that pulls people in. Changes their brain. Every bit of ‘Cho’ you ingest is a step closer to being a drug addict when you’re older. A step closer to sleeping in gutters, having no teeth, and never wiping your ass with toilet paper. So, enjoy that Butterfinger, Bob, enjoy it real… slow.”

Yeah, I loved my grandma. Even though she was mean and wrong about a lot of things. I remember her stories because she conveyed them with a quiet passion. She was the only woman I ever met that could scare me to death and make me feel loved unconditionally at the same time.

Grandma grew up in the town of Token-Oak and stayed there her whole life. A town named for the prevalence of thousand-year-old oaks. In its heyday, Token-Oak was a Midwestern postcard town, picturesque in a Norman Rockwell kind of way. In the fall, the foliage from the deep-rooted oaks provided a pallet of Autumn colors so brilliant and varied that people would pull over on the interstate to take family photos with the hills in the background. In recent years, however, the oaks suffered a debilitating disease causing their leaves to fall. These hulking relics stand all over the town leafless and dying, their twisting fingers reaching out into space.

Before things went to hell, townsfolk talked about Token-Oak like a distant relative that once had a multimillion-dollar empire. They never mentioned that the relative spent the fortune on whores and coke only to wind up penniless and using the daily paper as a blanket. Token-Oakeans bragged on the oil booms and the new interstate and the influx of traffic as “progress.” They never mentioned the meth labs, violence, and the strange detachment that permeated the town. No one ever discussed the dark underbelly of Token-Oak, no one except my grandma.

Grandma and this will sound crazy, could predict future events. Perhaps not the exact time or outcome, but she could see the future. Frankly, all grandmothers possess this gift in varying degrees of intensity. Most grandmothers can look at a young man and tell you with surprising accuracy if a kid will be a success in life. In a moderately advanced form, some grandmothers can predict the downfall of a kid, but the advanced ones, women like my grandmother, could predict success, downfall, and the immediate steps necessary to correct the downward spiral. Grandma had the trifecta, the holy trinity, of grandmotherly prognostication.

Grandma knew where I was headed a long time before I got there. She warned me, and my life happened precisely like she said it would. You see, I was what many considered a smart kid, but one that was intensely troubled by emotions. Back in the Eighties, parents didn't throw around psychobabble. Today, I probably would have landed somewhere on the spectrum. In 1986, I was just a fucked-up little kid struggling through life.

Life was one hell of a struggle.

My dad overdosed when I was six. My mom, my brother—his name was Jacob—and I walked into our trailer on a Friday night after going to the County Fair. Dad was laying on the dirty carpet next to the couch. He had this white froth around his mouth, and one of his eyes was rolled back in his head. In his left hand, he held a hypodermic needle. Mom dropped me in the doorway and released a milk-curdling scream. Jacob and I just stood there, in the living room, looking at Dad.

The whole trailer park was around our house for hours. The cops took Dad away in a black sack and combed through the house looking for more drugs. They took buckets and bottles and dirty tubing out of our back room. Pretty much anything that could be used to make meth.

There was one thing that the cops missed. A few days later, I found a spoon under the couch. The backside was burnt black. The neck of the spoon was wrapped with electrical tape. The bowl of the spoon had a white film, and a piece of cotton singed to it, but it still shined. I’d lay on my twin mattress at the far end of the trailer and look at my upside-down reflection in the concave of that spoon for hours.

My mom caught me with it weeks later. “Where did you get this?” she said in a voice that was somehow a desperate plea and a rage-filled question. I told her that I found it under the couch, “underneath my dad.” And Mom cried so long I thought she might have died. But she left me with that dirty spoon.

The next day, Mom went to buy milk at the gas station. A semi-truck hit her car over the bridge by the tire plant. The driver that hit her was so high on meth that he never let off the gas. The roaring engine of the Freightliner slammed her Datsun hatchback over the guardrail and into the icy water of the Smoky River fifty feet below.

In a three-week span, I lost both my parents to drugs. That period changed my life, as you might imagine. Jacob and I went to live with our grandparents. It only took the better part of a week to figure out it was an arrangement that was doomed to fail. Grandma was always watching me, always warning that I couldn’t let my past ruin my life. “You drew a rough hand,” she’d say, “but you have to persevere. Use this pain, don’t let it use you.” She was always telling me to “put my suffering to work,” like it was a fucking mule that could till a field. She watched me with those huge eyes, like a predatory bird.

I still remember every detail of the afternoon Grandma warned me about the future. And that was decades ago. I was at her house on a chilly October afternoon around my birthday. I was shooting hoops with Jacob just before dinner. We had just finished watching the movie Hoosiers. Oh man, we loved to watch movies back then. The final scene was so inspiring to Jacob and me that we ran outside to impersonate the movie protagonist, Jimmy Chitwood. Hoosiers meant a lot to Caucasian farm kids in the Midwest. A good jump shot combined with “fundamentals and defense”—and a shitload of freckles—was all it took for your name to be whispered among the wheat stubble for all-time. It was all polished wood and step back jumpers against rowdy-ass opponents. They balled hard in Hoosiers, like the NBA in the early ‘90s, it was football in shorts.

I was ten years old back then. Jacob was twelve.

Jacob and I were adopted by our grandparents late in life. Both were well into their fifties, long past the age when they had the energy to deal with his shit. Jacob’s life was a cycle in three repeating patterns: (1) he received little attention, so he did something vicious; (2) he received a beating for his actions that made him worse, and the grandparents felt guilty; and (3) then they showered him with toys and freedom. Jacob was raised by television, and he returned to this well of knowledge again and again. He saw the world through a prism of movie montages and climactic scenes. In this cycle, Jacob developed an innate fixation for creating fear and causing pain. Even at twelve, he was growing into a “special” kid.

We were playing a game of one-on-one on Grandma's driveway. The rotted plywood hoop was just above the garage door. I was smoking Jacob pretty good. He was older, taller, and had the lanky frame of a b-baller but lacked athletic ability. I stole the ball from him regularly, and that really pissed him off.

“Bha-aaaaaaaab,” Jacob would say in this voice that drew out the vowels like a bone saw. It was a portmanteau word of my nickname and the sound that Jacob said I made when he hit me. There was something about that way Jacob said it, in this sotto voce hiss that was so full of sarcasm and hate: “Bha-aaaaaaab, don’t be a bitch.” Every time I showed weakness: “Bha-aaab.” If I displayed any awkwardness in a social setting: “Bha-aaab.” If I was too affectionate with my family pet: “Bha-aaaab.” If I flinched when he was about to hit me: “Bha-aaab.” That name, said in that voice, came to epitomize everything I hated about myself. It was as if all my adolescent self-reproach came to life when Jacob hissed that name.

Jacob had this weird thing about movies. He’d see it, and he’d do it. Sometimes, when a pivotal scene came on, I’d look over at him, and his face alone was worth the price of admission. His eyes wide, one eyebrow raised in curiosity, and mouth agape in utter fascination. He studied movie characters: their mannerisms, vocabulary, intonation, and style of dress. He lost himself inside that tubed box like no one I’d ever seen before or since. Then he’d head out into the world and imitate. Art became life. Fantasy became a reality. For Jacob, there was never a wall separating make-believe. It was like he existed in this alternate universe that mixed make-believe and real life like fuel and air into a jet engine. He soared into the deep recesses of the back of his mind.

The game, just like in the movie, degenerated into jail ball. It was all hip checks, and awkward curse words dropped by kids who didn't fully understand their meaning. "Nice shot, you damn gigolo" and "you play like you got a tampon in your ass."

Grandma was doing dishes in the kitchen and watching us through translucent curtains. The kitchen window was just up the stairs and overlooked the driveway basketball court. She often sat up there like a silent observer in a booth. I saw her silhouette every time I looked up. One time, I took the ball along the edge of the driveway towards the hoop and Jacob body-checked me into the garage door. The collision made a tremendous noise. Springs, plywood, and metal wheels erupted like a raucous crowd. I hit the pavement cursing up a storm. "What the balls was that, you fucking boot-licking gypsy?!"

I heard Grandma's swollen knuckles and skinny fingers wrapping on the window pane. Thomp, Thomp, THOMP! The curtains flew open, and we both saw her scowling down. She had wild eyes that trembled, though the rest of her stood motionless. I could see the air molecules around her head vibrating with energy. Her lips were pursed so tight they could cut through the metal of a spoon. It was a look developed through decades of parenting rowdy kids. It was her own version of the machine kill switch. Flip it, and everything comes to a complete stop.

At least for a while. The thin curtains slowly closed, and Jacob and I started playing again. A shot here. A few dribbles there. I grabbed the ball from Jacob and held it behind me while leaning forward. Both of Jacob’s palms faced toward me, his eyes on fire with rage. He looked like a mime performing the trapped-in-a-box routine.

Then we heard some sounds from the end of the driveway. It was the unmistakable clanging of empty gas bottles and the rattle of wrenches against the bed of Grandpa’s pickup truck. There was a nasal whine, a seething breath. Whatever it was, it sounded rushed.

I sat the ball down on the pavement and Jacob, and I tiptoed towards the truck.

A man was standing at the tailgate. His head down and his arms furiously rifled through the truck bed. He wore a beanie pulled down to the tips of his eyes. Open scabs dripped blood from his unshaven neck. The skin on his face sagged in loose pouches. His mouth was open, and his lips curled back on his teeth. His black, infected gums puffed outward. There was a filth to him, a layer of grime that indicated he hadn’t washed in a long while, maybe months. He wore the clothes of a younger person, but he looked like a haggard old man.

The man grabbed a canister of gas, removed the lid, and dumped out the contents. Gasoline vapors filled the air. Gramps had a 100-gallon tank bolted to the bed of his truck that he filled with anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer that he used during the growing season. The man grabbed the spigot of anhydrous and twisted it open. The repugnant stench of anhydrous overpowered the gasoline. Jacob and I were fifteen feet away, but even from that distance, the fumes burned my eyes and ignited a burn in my throat. The man coughed and growled through the caustic stench as saliva drizzled from his black gums.

The man wore fingerless gloves. He spilled some of the anhydrous on his skin and yanked a hand away, shaking. The caustic liquid ate away at his exposed flesh, but he did not let go of the hose and stood there until the gas-can was full of anhydrous. His eyes squinted hard as he held the can under the spigot. I could smell his flesh burning.

Whenever Grandpa handled the anhydrous, he wore thick rubber gloves and a respirator. Jacob and I must have had eyes as wide as saucers.

When he was finished with the can, he looked up and saw Jacob and me. A loud inhale turned into an animalistic hiss. He was clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw shook. There was a twitch inside him that crawled up from his waist and snarled up his back. His arms and head bobbed and contorted in inexplicable patterns. His eyes swam in their sockets as he tried to focus on us. He had the body of a man, but there was something very inhuman about him. He took heavy and irregular breaths, punctuated by desperate gasps of air. It was like he was fighting inside himself just to live.

He turned away from us as if he heard a sound in the distance. He broke into a run. His limbs stammering and shaking in a disjointed, yet frantic, gallop. He hit the end of the street—two hundred feet—in less than five seconds. The canister of ammonia sloshed caustic liquid in his wake. As he turned into the alley at the end of the street, another figure met him and then a third. They grouped together and disappeared over a dog-eared fence. We watched them run across the railroad tracks and sprint into the grass field by McClintock’s Tree Farm.

“What was he doing?” I said, looking up at Jacob. And Jacob had the TV face. His mouth was open, and his head was tilted to one side. His unblinking eyes watched the men disappear over the fence. “Jacob,” I said as I reached out to touch him.

Jacob’s trance disappeared, and he blinked slow. He turned his head and looked down at me. “He needed that stuff to take back to the Hollows… the anhydrous,” Jacob said.

“What was wrong with him?”

Jacob shrugged and looked back at the fence where the man disappeared. “I don’t know. Did you hear that fucker breathe? Sounded like a dying cow,” Jacob said. And he swiped the ball from me and turned towards the basket.

When we turned, Grandma was standing there holding a double-barreled Winchester. The gun was cracked open, and two fresh shells were resting inside the break action. The brass circles of the shells sparkled in the October sunshine. She stood for a long while intensely watching the men disappear into the tall-grass field.

She grabbed me by the neck and pulled me toward the driveway. I fell, and she kept pulling.

Once we were near the basketball hoop at the far end of the driveway, she let go: “If you were standing at the end of that tailgate, he would have killed you both. If you ever—ever! —see a person like that, you run. You get inside the house and lock the doors. There are things in this town, bad things. And don’t you think for a minute that just because you’re a kid, that thing wouldn’t open you up from belly button to Adam’s apple.”

Grandma took a long breath. She brought her hand to cover her eyes and let out a wobbly exhale. Grandma took me up and hugged me so hard I thought she broke my ribs.

“Why was he breathing like that?” Jacob asked.

Grandma looked back down the drive for a long while. She covered the sun from her eyes as she scanned the fences in the neighborhood. Then she looked at Jacob and I and shook her head. “He breathes like that because he’s dying. Been slowly dying for a long time. And one of these days, this whole damn town will be full of people like that.”

Grandma pulled the shells from the Winchester and snapped it shut. She slipped the shells in her coat pocket. She looked around and disappeared inside.

Grandma was a woman of idiosyncrasies. She had rules—live or die rules—that she never broke. She wouldn’t leave the house at night for any reason. She loved her two Alaskan Huskies, and listened to them like they were people. Responding to each one of their barks while in the house by looking out the shutters to inspect the neighborhood. There was a suspicious side to her, especially people in authority or control. I once saw her bolt from the Token-Oak hospital when a doctor tried to take her blood pressure. “I don’t trust him, and neither should you,” was all she ever said. It was like she expected the worst in people and searched for it everywhere. For a gregarious kid like me, that coldness was often grating. I could tell that beneath all Grandma’s issues, she loved us furiously.

Grandma and I butted heads like two rams on a mountain. She tried to keep me contained, and I was always busting out. She would correct me, and I’d fly off course. It was the ebb and flow of our dynamic.

After Grandma was inside, Jacob looked over at me. “Did you hear that shit? She is losing it,” Jacob said in a wobbly, effeminate voice, “the town will be full of people like that,” as he imitated Grandma standing with the Winchester. “She needs to be in a place for crazy people.”

After a while, Jacob and I were back to jail ball. Within minutes, I caught an elbow to the face and hit the pavement. I sprung up spraying profanities like a yard spreader. The curtains flew open, Grandma was standing in a dark kitchen. A vision of utter rage, she glared down upon us like the demon in Fantasia’s Night on Bald Mountain.

I was scared, but my anger outweighed my fear. What Jacob did was wrong, he was always wrong. I knew that she saw him, and yet she just stared. Grandma always cut him slack.

I waited until the curtain closed. Then it happened, the middle finger on my right hand extended and my arm shot up until my elbow straightened. Boom. There it was. I flipped my grandma off for only a split second. Turns out, that split second was enough.

Even Jacob, the twelve-year-old sadist, knew I’d made a tremendous mistake.

"You’re a dumbass,” Jacob said, “she saw that.”

“Whatever,” I said, holding the ball with both hands while leaning over.

I dismissed the thought and continued the game. Jacob began a new tactic, utterly uncharacteristic. He played softly, no longer pushing me around. It was like he wanted the game to end, just to see what would happen next. After five minutes of disinterested ball, we were done.

Jacob and I kicked our shoes off at the back door of Grandma’s house and stomped up the kitchen stairs. Grandma was standing at the sink and washing a set of dishes. Her back was facing me, and she did not offer her usual greeting.

I palmed the handle on the fridge door, yanking it open. A half-full container of cherry Kool-Aid was sitting on the top shelf whispering my name. I stood in the middle of the kitchen pouring the chilled, cherry goodness into a jelly jar. Grandma's back was toward me, her hunched shoulders wiggling as she scrubbed a pot in the sink. Jacob stood at the stove in between us. He had a subtle smile as he watched me.

As I took a drink of the cherry liquid, Jacob was the first to speak.

Jacob said, “Bob bent the garage door.”

This was such typical Jacob. His goal in life was to get people to lose it. He was gifted at this skill, like an aikido master throwing an attacking opponent off balance, Jacob knew just where, and how, to press. He kept memories of unhinged emotional responses in his mind like a running back keeps the game ball from a three-hundred-yard game.

"That's bullsh . . ." I said reflexively, only to be interrupted mid-profanity by Grandma's hand. She wheeled from the sink, flattened her palm, and threw a cat-quick right cross. It left the side of my face smashing my cheeks into my molars. All of this occurred in three-tenths of a second. Sometimes, life happens in a flash, but you remember it in excruciatingly slow detail. The way her fingers smashed the fatness of my cheek. How my lips curled as she followed through. The spinning jelly jar full of cherry Kool-Aid. Most of all, though, I remember the crime scene afterward.

Red Kool-Aid splattered all around the kitchen, in patterns so intricate that Jackson Pollock would've been jealous. The sunflower linoleum floor, the finger paintings hanging by magnets on the fridge, even the bubble screen on Grandma’s 9" kitchen TV were covered in the pitter-patter Kool-Aid splatter. The red stuff was everywhere, a fine mist of blood like someone’s head had exploded. I laid on the linoleum floor looking up at Grandma.

“It was Jacob… he did it,” I whimpered from the floor as I pointed at Jacob.

She towered over me with her right hand still cocked. Bending down, she calmed herself, and said the unforgettable words, “You can’t control yourself. It’s always someone else’s fault. And by the time you figure it out, I'll be dead."

Then Grandma leaned down and grabbed me by the collar of my T-shirt, pulled me closer, and said in a hissing whisper, “there is going to come a time, after I am dead when you’ll need Jacob. And he’ll be there. Family runs deep, and those bonds are forever. All this you’re going through is just training for what’s coming. And when it gets here, you’ll be thankful.”

Grandma wiped her hands off on a towel and walked out of the kitchen.

Jacob stood by the stove with an orgiastic smile. He had this look, an I’m-in-control-of-a-delicious-situation visage. His smile was so crooked and fulfilled, half his face looked like the Joker from Batman. It was a look that said, "told you so" and "eat shit" with seamless ferocity. The way his upper row of teeth glowed under his upper lip, the evil twinkle in his eye, even the way he held his head slightly upturned and to the side. For a twelve-year-old kid, he could play the douchebag card with uncanny skill.

“Fuck you, Jacob,” I said, sulking out of the kitchen.

I heard him laughing hysterically as I descended the basement stairs. He yelled after me, “Ahhh, Ba-aaaab, you going to need me someday. You’re welcome.”

The basement was the furthest spot in the house away from my grandmother, and she needed time to calm. The basement was quiet, had shag carpet, and puffy furniture. The house was not air-conditioned, but the basement was naturally cool. It was a place of respite from family dysfunction and summer heat.

At the base of the stairs, just to the left, there was my grandfather's office. A room unlike any other. Grandpa’s U-shaped desk had a glass top. He slid decades of old pictures and newspaper clippings under the glass. It was a tableau of his life and our family history. I sat in Grandpa’s office chair with my elbows on the desk, cradling my head in my hands.

Grandpa was a high school history teacher, county politician, and farmer. An avid democrat—the “party of the little people,” he always said—he believed in the common man and would rail against the machine any chance that he got. He supported inmates and single moms and small businesses. Most of all, he loved a good underdog story. After all, who is a bigger underdog than farming teacher with four kids and a penchant for taking on societal problems? He even ran for state senate a few times and lost. Badly. Through all his endeavors, he became part of the political machine. He wrote scathing letters to the editor in the local newspaper whenever he saw a person slighted by “big business, big government, or big bullshit.” People hated him or loved him. In his office, he kept mementos that he treasured dearly.

The history in that room was personal and honest. On the doorframe, all Grandpa’s children had penciled their height from toddler age to present day. Under the glass on the desk, there were hundreds of pieces of paper. One was an article about my great-grandpa who died when his arm was ripped off in a threshing machine. He bled to death in the wheat stubble of our home place field. His last note, scratched with a pocket knife onto a painted piece of John Deere green metal, read: “I love you all. I did my best.” There was a photo of my grandfather and Bill Clinton, where Clinton wrote so charmingly, “If I had supporters like you in every state, I’d be king.” There were the election results for state senate, where Gramps only brought in 27 percent of the vote, glued to the top of his campaign slogan that read simply: “I teach.” Grandpa was so proud of that slogan.

That room was Grandpa’s entire life, his sanctuary from the world. A physical manifestation of memories that told his story. There was not a single picture of my grandmother in that office. Other than the scribbled height of the kids on the doorframe, there were no pictures of any of Grandpa’s kids either. His story.

I sat in that office absorbing the history. My thoughts wandered to what Grandma had said about Jacob. I couldn’t envision a scenario when I would need him, the idea that I would be thankful for him was asinine. Just the thought made me clench my fists so hard that my fingernails dug into my palm leaving bloody imprints. I was so emotional, especially back then before the weight of time and responsibility largely suffocated my restlessness. I vowed to myself not to let Jacob get to me again, not to lose control, no matter what happened. I squinted my eyes hard—as if to force the goal into my head.

While I sat there in the basement, Grandpa came down the stairs and walked through the office door.

“Grandma tells me you shot her the bird . . .”

I nodded while looking at the floor.

“On the driveway…”

I nodded again.

“She tells me she slapped the holy hell out of you in the kitchen.”

I nodded again, still looking down.

“Well, she’s upstairs. Hands and knees up there cleanin’ up red shit off the cabinets. She must have busted you pretty good.”

“It’s Kool-Aid, Gramps.”

He laughed as only he could. “You left your mark on that room. Everyone will remember that slap and splatter.” And Grandpa walked over and patted me on the back. He told me to try to get along better with Jacob and “keep my head.”

Things repeated themselves over that year. So much that it was like living in a spin cycle. We were always together, Jacob and I, working the same dawn until dusk shift at the farm. Like too many familial relationships it was a forced shitshow that led to nowhere good. “Jacob and I” lit a neighbor’s pasture on fire and caused some damage to property. “Jacob and I” wrecked a farm truck. “Jacob and I” were caught stealing money from Grandpa’s wallet. “Jacob and I” stole beer from the fridge. There was always a lot more Jacob and a whole hell of a lot less of “I.” Though “I” was guilty by association.

Jacob and I never got along. I came to realize we never would. Jacob was drawn to pain and fear like an insect to bright light. He loved giving titty twisters that left scars for years. When he was really feeling froggy, which was often, he forced me to slap box him until my gums bled. You could never ride as a passenger in anything Jacob was driving, be it a four-wheeler, a pickup truck, or a bike. He would push the envelope of safety right up to the edge of death until you were in tears and begging to “make it stop.”

Grandma’s prediction about Jacob always hung in the back of my mind like a guilty thought. One of Grandma’s favorite sayings was that “everyone served a purpose.” Even Jacob. She was especially fond of reiterating that statement when Jacob got into trouble. I watched him deteriorate over the years—violent arrests, a stolen car, an arson charge for burning down a hundred-thousand-dollar grain elevator “just for shits and giggles.” Grandma kept saying “everyone serves a purpose. Everyone. Jacob slid so far into the abyss that even unconditional advocates like her began to wonder just what that purpose might be.

_____________

If there was a moment where Grandma realized Jacob would not be able to live a normal life, it was the pigs. That changed everything, that was it. Things went from dysfunctional to something more malevolent. It was the coup de grâce of Jacob’s sanity.

Jacob and I had just finished watching a comic book flick on the TV in the basement. A hackneyed yawner where the super-villain tied the hero to a post. The villain filled a trench with gas, and spent the last scene flipping a book of matches open and closed over the ditch while saying vague shit like “you think I wanted this,” “I’m a monster,” and “no one ever loved me.” The movie was boring and formulaic. Nonetheless, Jacob had “the face” while he mentally recorded the scene.

A few weeks later, he did it.

Jacob and I were playing near the pigpen. Grandpa had nestled the pen underneath a trio of thousand-year-old oaks right near the water pump. These trees were the oldest in the country. Massive oaks that had trunks so thick they were twelve feet across the middle Grandpa said the oaks were old even when he was a little boy and his dad had nicknamed them Comanche, Cherokee, and Apache after the warrior Indian tribes.

These three oaks were the centerpiece of the farm. They were so enormous, even in 1880, that the original homesteaders built the house so they could look upon the trees. They towered over the countryside each of them was over 150 feet tall and just as wide. They were never trimmed so their lower branches, thick as sidewalks, reached all the way to the ground. It was a rite of passage to climb to the top of Comanche’s tallest limb. We built a tree house about forty feet up, cupped by the branches of Apache like a father coddles a newborn babe.

As an adolescent, I read this short story from John Muir about riding out the fury of a thunderstorm in the peak of a tree. I climbed up Comanche in the middle of a prairie deluge. The branches dipped thirty feet in high winds. I clung to the trunk, my eyes glued to the horizon as lightening carpet-bombed the chalky hills along the Smoky River in an awesome show. Hugging that tree, I felt the power of nature and the delicateness of life at the same time.

I know this sounds clichéd and sophomoric. With my ear to the trunk of Comanche, I heard the call. It was the most invigorating experience of my life and lit a fire inside me I could never extinguish. I loved that tree since that day.

One summer, Comanche, Cherokee, and Apache started to die. They got an unknown disease that caused their leaves to fall off in the middle of summer. It happened fast, in just two weeks. The hulking relics stood there bald and naked, with three feet of green leaves piled up around them. I still remember Grandpa standing to look at the trio stripped bare and dying during the height of the growing season. They had, at least according to Gramps, been there for well over “five hundred years.” It was the end of an era that stretched longer from end to end than the American republic.

When those trees died, their leaves turned brown in a matter of days. The ground around the ancient trunks started to dry, and those poor pigs got hot. Even with the water pump dumping gallons of water onto the dirt, the ground began to flake and crack.

When Jacob dug his trench, that dirt was powder dry. He filled it with a line of red diesel. He stood over that trench for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette and flipping the box of matches open and closed.

“You think I give a fuck?” he said to me, imitating the supervillain from the movie with astounding skill.

He stared down into the box as if the answer was written in tiny letters along the side of a match. He finally pulled one and pinched it in his fingers, his eyes looking from the sulfur of the match-head to connect with mine. There was a flare in those eyes, a crazed glaze that was more akin to a rabid dog. He took a long draw off a cigarette he’d pilfered from Grandma. An inhale so deep, the smoke didn’t even come out when he next spoke.

“Grandpa always loved you more. You’re a soft little pussy. You'll hole up in the basement again. Eventually, he will come to pat you on the back.”

He took another long pull, this time letting the smoke drift out of his mouth only to be pulled back in two long tusks of smoke. He made his right arm wiggle forward as if it had no bones. It swung like Dumbo’s trunk. Only instead of a magic feather, there was a single wooden match.

“Ahhhhh,” he said with genuine satisfaction, “He will lose his goddamned mind. You can try to explain it. Just try.” He rubbed the back of his head with his palm and looked into the rolling hills of the pasture. Jacob had this look, kind of a contemplative stare into space where he’d raise his eyebrows and push out his chin. He would stay perfectly still while you looked at him. It was his I-am-a-deep-thinking-troubled-artist stare he probably bastardized from some B movie.

“I've enjoyed the pain,” he said. “Do you know that?”

I didn’t respond, that would have just made things worse.

Jacob lit the match then pinched it in his fingertips. His arm was completely extended. There was no bend in his elbow, Jacob let it burn slowly down without speaking. The flame of the match was, from my vantage point, perfectly between his eyes. Looking all the while past the flame at me.

“I love the fear—what’s crazy Jacob going to do next? Fear lasts. It stays with people. And causing it, creating it… Ahhhhh God, it’s the best feeling in the world.”

The flame touched his hand then. His eyelids squinted, and there was a moment I could have stopped it, maybe redirected his attention away from that trench filled with diesel, away from those pigs. I only could muster a single word.

“Jacob…”

He dropped the match with a theatrical snap of his wrist. The diesel lit with a low, blue flame that crawled across the ground. It slithered into the pigpen with silent grace, and when its tendrils touched the drippings on the grates of the pen, it went up with a whoosh. The flames tore through the cage, rolling across the pink bellies of the piglets.

The sound that came from there was unlike anything I've heard before or since.

It was a squealing cough full of agony. The smell of burning hair and shit was so harsh I had to cover my nose with my shirt. The sound of those piglets choking themselves as they tried to push through the square grates as they burned alive. That sound never left my ears. Every time I smell a pork chop or hear the grunt of an animal, the memory of that day comes squealing back.

Above the din of the burning pigs, I could hear the trees begin to burn. Those ancient oaks swaying violently as their branches scratched together like antlers of bucks fighting to the death. I looked up, and the trees bent and bowed as they began to burn.

The fire stretched from the pigpen to the base of Comanche. The trunk browned then blacked and popped embers as the fire licked up its branches. In less than a minute, the flames had clawed its way to the top and spread to Apache and Cherokee. The fireball was the size of a New York skyscraper.

I didn't try to run. When Grandpa came, I offered no explanation. I just sat there, eyes wide, as Jacob smoked Indian-style and leered. A single pillar of black smoke stretched from the blaze ten thousand feet into the sky. It was as if the arm of the devil reached out of hell to claw hands at the heavens above.

The grandparents committed Jacob to a mental hospital the very next day. There was no goodbye, no explanation. Just a silent sendoff that served as an acknowledgment of their fear of Jacob. He had progressively gotten worse. He had gone from general physical abuse to vandalization to animal torture to full-scale slaughter. In this linear progression, animals wouldn’t hold his attention much longer.

Looking back after all these years, I see that Grandma was right. Even a person as fuck-snap crazy as Jacob did have a purpose. There was a world where a kid that relished fear would have value. I didn’t know it then, but that world—with its suffocating nights and roving killing herds—had started to develop all around me. The seeds of the apocalypse had just sprouted, and addled roots of the dead oaks had just broken through the soil.

#Kill Hollows

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