#I think Lemi would have a water bed | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

luckylewis · 8 months

Text

who: lucky lewis + @macaulaymontgomery

where: london, circa november 2021

Mac sits crosslegged on Lucky's bed, easily biding time as he studies while she plays around on her phone. She glances back and forth from the screen to him, taking a breath before she speaks up. "Have you thought about what you wanna do for Christmas?"

. . .

With mid-year exam season fast approaching, Lucky's stress levels had reached an all time high and in true Lewis fashion he did nothing but internalise it. He was in the thick of revising programming with data when he found his attention sidetracked by Mac from behind him. He hadn't much considered it, and it showed on his face as he swivelled around in his desk chair.

"Most of my housemates'll be going home, I think. I was just going to spend it here." He shrugged, placing his pen down on the table. "You got any plans?"

. . .

She gives him a quick 'hello again' smile as he turns around in the chair, backlit from his computer. He'd been focused, working tirelessly, and she did her best to stay out of his way when it came to the academic part of his life.

Except flashcards -- she was fucking great at making flashcards.

"I don't know, my mom's been texting me asking if I'm gonna be around," she says with a limp, one shoulder shrug and a tilt of her head.

"You haven't thought about going home?"

. . .

Lucky swallows subconciously at her question, knowing she meant well because Mac always did but being unable to sidestep how the question made him feel. The same way he always felt when he thought of home -- like he was a failure.

It was a large part of why he studied so relentlessly.

"Don't think I'm very welcome back home," He tells her, keeping his tone level. "And you know that, so I'm having a bit of a hard time with why you would even ask me that."

. . .

She knew that asking that question, even innocently, was very tennuous. His answer illicits a frown from her, corners of her mouth completely downturned in disagreement.

"That's not true, I'm sure your sisters would love to see you --"

His words stop her and her brows knit as she looks at him.

"No, I don't know how I would know that," she replies slowly, moving her phone to lay it face down on the bed beside her.

"We don't talk about home. I've been here nearly nine months and we never mention it except to say where we've met."

. . .

"Sister. Singular." He corrects, unable to refrain himself from it. There was no doubt in his mind that Lemie would welcome him back with open arms, but Lori was a much more unpredictable matter.

She always had been when it came to the pair of them.

It was sad in it's own way, not just siblings but twins with the kind of disconnect that they had, but he didn't know how to mend it.

Especially from a different continent.

"What is it exactly you want me to say about home?" He asks, his arms folding across his chest defensively.

. . .

Mac presses her lips together at the correction, momentarily averting her gaze with an exhale. She talked to Lorelai -- all the time, at least every other week. Lorelai knew she saw Lucky, that they "hung out", but Mac had never gone into the depth of the situation. And Lor never asked after him.

The way that family could pretend a problem didn't exist if they couldn't see it -- it was so deeply foreign to her way of operation. But she played along for the sake of calm water, and because she liked the little world that they made up when they were together.

"I would go with you. We could go together, it wouldn't be so bad," she offers him in answer to his question as she draws up to sit on her knees, trying to tilt optimism into her voice --trying to make the prospect of home sound good.

"We could stay at my parents house, even…You could see some people, if you wanted."

. . .

"It wouldn't be so bad for you." Lucky corrects, and why would it? The family next door had always gotten along from what he had seen, always managed to find some unity even in their disputes. He hadn't grown up like that, his family had always been disjointed.

Existing on separate pages of what was supposed to be the same book.

"There's no one there who wants to see me." He straightens in his seat at that, believing it to be the absolute truth. The friendships he had before he left had trickled down to radio silence, ghosts of his past to join the rest.

And he understood it, he wouldn't have any time for him either if he was trying to make a friendship work with someone who had abandoned their baby before she was even born.

"I'm never going back there."

. . .

"I just thought maybe it would help to have me with you…" Macaulay answers, the words coming out a bit deflated and less idealistic as she realizes how silly it must sound on his end.

She looks at him across the short distance, considering every inch of his form and everything she knows about him -- from the life they live now in tandem, to the boy next door that she had been in love with before she really knew what it was. Neighbor, crush, best friend, lover, boyfriend. Well, not boyfriend. But pretty damn close.

"Do you mean that?" she asked, gaze unwavering as she finds the courage to ask the question that she's been stomaching for months.

"You never want to meet her?"

. . .

Her question makes his heart feel like it's being constricted, as if some invisible force had reached through his chest to grip it and start twisting. If he couldn't hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, he might have been worried that was the case.

He had thought about his daughter every day since he had left, before he had even known for sure that he was going to have a daughter. He had found out her name through Facebook, seen his first glimpses of her through Instagram. She had been born into a world without him and seemed to be growing and thriving in his absence.

He didn't want her to turn out like him. He didn't want to inflict himself on her like a plague carrying his family's curse when he wasn't sure he could be a good father to her.

Nothing could change the fact that he had never even held her when she was a baby.

"I want to meet her, but I don't want her to meet me."

The impossibility of it was what kept him frozen there, in that chair, in that city.

. . .

Macaulay's eyes soften, sad, at his answer. For all the show she puts on for the rest of the world -- the way she puffs herself up to make it seem as if nothing sad or bad could touch her -- it always fails to be effective when it's the two of them alone together.

She'd seen his daughter -- met her, accidentally, in passing when she'd run into Sterling at the grocery store. It'd left her with a strange feeling, something that hadn't settled right in her stomach the whole time she'd visited.

Like she'd felt guilty that she'd met Sunny first, in spite of the act that she hadn't spoken to Lucky in over a year at the time.

"Don't you think that that's a little unfair?" she asks as she moves to sit on the foot of the bed.

"To just completely remove yourself from her life forever and not even giving her the option?"

. . .

“Is it more fair to be a half-there presence in her life?”

Thats the most Lucky ever was anywhere, half-there, half-present. The only thing he ever was wholly was selfish and he’s known that since the second he stepped on a plane to London without looking back.

Even if things were different, even if he was different, it was too late now to take back what he had done and he wasn’t man enough to face it head on.

“I don’t want to talk about this, Mac.”

. . .

"It's better than not trying at all," she answers without filter before her brain could stop her, her voice low in consideration.

She couldn't claim to be any kind of expert in the matter -- except that she herself had a 'just okay' sort of dad. So maybe she wasn't the best example.

There's a chance to drop the subject and move on like it never happened; it's right there and staring her in the face with his words.

But she can't. He's flown halfway across the world to avoid this, formed a whole new circle of friends who don't even know that his daughter exists, and she can't stomach the feeling that he hasn't had anyone to check him on it.

"I just -- If we keep being in each others lives like this, Lucky, I think we have to talk about it."

. . .

“Then maybe we shouldn’t be in each others lives like this.” He says, a little too fast and a little too harshly.

It was the direct opposite of what he wants, a fear come to life in truth. If he didn’t have Mac he didn’t truly have anyone, not in a real way. Even Adam only knew the version of him that was tailored and fine tuned and polished to fit in there.

( He can’t help but wonder if maybe that’s what he deserved for the choices he’s made. )

. . .

Maybe she'd just gotten too hopeful.

They'd been playing house since she'd gotten there nine months before. They'd had a summer in Italy together that made her so happy that she could easily start picturing forever with the two of them together.

It felt like something real. And she was hoping that if they finally talked about this specific and especially large elephant in the room, then maybe they could really talk about what they meant to each other and where they wanted to go.

The quickness of his reply stings in a way that shows on her face, but she inhales sharply.

"Do you mean that?"

. . .

“Yeah.”

He’s certain he would have said anything to end the conversation, the consequences of it be damned. It’s harder to pretend those consequences were inconsequential as he imagines them, imagines what he had decreed — Mac not being a part of his life.

It makes him draw in a shaky breath, his eyes screwing shut so that might save them from the way they welled up as the weight of it all hit him square in the chest like a punch.

“No.”

He’s as unsure of his own words as he was uncomfortable with the emotions he couldn’t get a handle on, the type that he only ever let himself experience in an empty room where no one would ever be any the wiser.

He can’t bring himself to look at her as his head turns to focus on the clipped wooden floorboard near his desk, swiping at his eye with the back of his hand as he tried to get a handle on himself and the rising sense of panic he felt at the vastness of the things he’s said and done that led him to that moment.

“Fuck. Can you just give me a minute. Please.”

. . .

He answers in the affirmative and her lips pull in tight, nose scrunching as she does a terrible job in hiding how much his knee-jerk reactions had hurt her.

She's already on her feet by the time he walks it back, reaching for her phone and a charger chord, both of which she stuff into the front pocket of her hoodie.

Macaulay looks at him as she's turning to the door and she's never felt more torn -- she doesn't know whether to refuse and stay stubbornly with him through it or follow his wishes for space. Either holds the potential to make the situation worse.

Then again, it seems like he's made his stance on the importance of her presence pretty clear.

"It's fine. I'm going. I'll go," she answers, a waver in her hollow voice as she exits his room and starts down the stairs from the landing.

. . .

He’s equally grateful and devastated as she does what he asked her to, her footsteps on the landing rather than towards felt like the worst kind of prize. For most of his life he felt like he had dabbled in some accidental practice of making himself an easy person to walk away from — now he’s worried he may have mastered it.

He lets himself feel it all once he’s the only person there to witness it and it feels like the kind of regret that morphed into something else. An insurmountable grief for the lives he could have had. With his daughter, with Mac, the hundreds of other version of the present he could have found himself in that weren’t his current reality hunched over in his desk chair with his hands covering his face as he sobbed like a boy overwhelmed by emotions no one had ever taught him to understand.

It’s the kind of anguish that makes him want to call his mom though he knew she wouldn’t answer. She rarely did these days, texts back were even less frequent. His dad was no different, the pair of them too tangled up in a war with each other to spare the capacity to be any kind of comforting presence when needed.

The pair of them embody exactly what he’s most afraid of — that one day the little girl with his eyes half a world away might find herself in a moment where she just needed her dad and he would be a name and a number and a voice on the other end of the line that didn’t pick up.

#flashback.#thread.#discord thread.#ft. macaulay montgomery.#mac 004.#timeline: november 2021.#macaulaymontgomery #depression tw #anxiety tw

5 notes · View notes

thefifthclown · 5 years

Text

Part 1, Chapter 1-Mother Becomes President; Scene 4

Fifth, Pierrot, pages 23-32

The first time Lemy had met “Ney” was when he was seven years old.

Though “met” might not be the correct way to put it. For Lemy had never once seen her even to this point.

Ney was, from the beginning, a mere “voice”, and judging from her manner of speech he was sure she was a girl. Her voice did seem to resemble Lemy’s a great deal, but of course it also had a different feel to it.

Yes, it certainly was not Lemy’s own voice. Even though it was a voice that no one outside of him could hear, Lemy had always been sure that it wasn’t some delusion or auditory hallucination.

--That day, Lemy had disobediently snuck into the house’s treasury.

Inside Julia’s mansion that was so incomparably larger than the orphanage, that was the only place that Julia told him he couldn’t enter. And whenever he was told he couldn’t do something, it made him want to do it all the more.

The treasury was always locked, but fortunately today alone the door was open.

Julia was the only one who had a key to the place, and their servant Phoebe normally never came in the room as well. Julia had probably forgotten to lock it.

His pocket watch that he had on hand said that it was 11PM. The watch was something that Julia had given him for his last birthday. It had a dragon design on it, and Lemy had grown very fond of it.

Julia and Phoebe were already sleeping in their rooms. Lemy had been resting too, but he’d woken in the middle of the night from his usual nightmare. Probably because the dream had been in water, he ended up having to go to the bathroom, and then when he walked by the treasury on the way there, he had realized that the door was open.

Taken by curiosity welling up within him, Lemy walked inside the treasury.

The place was properly cleaned, so it wasn’t dusty. However, as there were no lights in there it was very dark. Lemy set the candlestand he’d been carrying with him in the center of the room. Thanks to the light of the candle that stood on it, he became able to look around the inside.

The treasury was filled up with very peculiar items.

A stuffed, eight-legged animal about the size of his head, various black robes of different size and design, parchment with a star-like insignia on it, bundled up red thread with sewing implements...There were a lot of things that Lemy didn’t understand the usage of, and from the looks of it not many toys there to play with. Lemy was a little disappointed, but when he thought again he figured that Julia was hardly likely to hide toys somewhere where Lemy wouldn’t find them.

She always bought him everything he ever wanted, after all.

On the highest shelf were seven pitch-black pedestals. Various characters were inscribed on each one, but at that time Lemy couldn’t read just yet, and so he didn’t know what they said.

The pedestals were all lined up uniformly in a row, but six among them had nothing resting on them. Only one, the second one from the left, had a red wineglass placed on top of it.

It looked like a drinking glass of perfectly ordinary make. Outside of being red, it didn’t seem all that different from the glasses that Julia would normally use when drinking milk.

Julia didn’t drink wine. And apparently she didn’t care much for tea. So she was always just drinking milk. It was her way to drink milk not from ceramic cups, but wineglasses.

Despite the other items wafting with the stale air of decades, the red wineglass was brilliantly gleaming, as though it was brand new.

Inside the dim treasury, the wineglass alone carried the light of the candle flame.

When he brought his face to the glass, Lemy was faintly reflected there. It seemed to him that the face being reflected back was a little distorted. Perhaps that was just due to the flickering of the candle light, but Lemy progressively started thinking that this face didn’t much look like his own.

--That’s not me, it’s someone else.

Without thinking, Lemy took the wineglass in his hand.

For some reason he’d been completely overtaken by fascination.

Gradually, he started to feel a heat on the right hand holding the glass.

It wasn’t to the point where it would burn, so Lemy didn’t toss the glass away or anything like that. –Frankly speaking, Lemy now didn’t want to let it go. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t open the hand that gripped the wineglass.

The heat of the glass extended to his right arm, and arrived at Lemy’s head. Developing a headache, Lemy crouched on the spot, and suddenly became unable to stand.

--You and I are one and the same.

That “voice” spoke to him, but at the time Lemy couldn’t grasp that it was someone else’s words.

Unable to bear the splitting pain in his head, Lemy finally lost consciousness.

What he saw right before he blacked out was a red cat walking up to him.

--When he next opened his eyes, Lemy was in bed in his own room.

The sun was already up, and the light streaming in from the window pierced his eyes. But his headache was already better, and he was no longer holding onto the wineglass.

After he sat there in a daze for a short time, Julia entered the room with her eyes raised. –Lemy was hardly ever scolded by Julia, either before or after this. Midway through her hour-long lecture, Lemy started bawling loudly, and gave her an irresponsible rebuttal:

“But it’s your fault for forgetting to lock the treasury, Miss Julia,” he’d said.

Truthfully, Lemy did need to thank her. It was none other than Julia after all who’d found him passed out in the treasury, and nursed him until morning.

But at the time Lemy had been a mere child, unable to grasp that.

“That treasury is full of dangerous items. If someone who doesn’t know how to use them touches them, you get what happened this time. So don’t ever go inside it again,” Julia had given as a parting remark before leaving the room.

Lemy was still crying.

He finally stopped crying when he heard that “voice” again.

Give it a rest and shut up already. What a disgrace.

It was the same voice that he had heard when he’d gripped the glass.

Without thinking, Lemy replied back to the voice, “Who are you?”

Though he could hear a voice, he couldn’t see anyone around. But without a doubt, that “voice” was not Lemy, but someone else talking to him.

My name? Right…I am “Ney”. Another you.

“Another...Me?”

Yeah. I awoke due to you touching that wineglass. You’re the only one who can hear my voice. I’m you. You’re me.

“That’s kind of creepy. A voice that only I can hear.”

Don’t say that. You should be glad you have someone to talk to. You must be fairly lonely now that you can’t see the kids at the orphanage.

--He did certainly agree with that.

Though Julia had told him at the start that she would take him to the orphanage from time to time, lately she had stopped taking him there, saying she was too busy and that they would go next time.

“...But how do you know about that?”

Didn’t I tell you? I’m you. I know everything about you. Well then, I hope we can get along, Lemy.

“Wait just a minute. Are you always going to be near me like this from now on?”

That would be a problem. Lemy also had that thing called privacy.

If you’re worried I’ll get in the way, you needn’t. I just won’t talk to you for a while. And since the only thing you can hear of me is my voice, when I’m not talking to you it’ll be like I’m not here, right?

“I guess? I feel like that’s not the same thing though.”

Stop complaining. I can’t separate from you anymore. Since you went and touched that wineglass.

“A ghost? Are you a ghost?”

The “voice” responded, as though fed up, to the frightened Lemy.

Don’t keep making me say the same thing over and over. I’m you, okay?

--After that, Lemy had told Pheobe about Ney, but she’d thought he was joking and paid little mind to it.

“It’s not nice to make fun, little master. No matter how I listen in I can’t hear a girl’s voice in here.”

Phoebe was from the beginning not the type to buy into ghosts and supernatural phenomenon. There were some times when stories of things like ghosts coming out in back alleys at night would be going around town, but she alone would laugh them off with a snort. Even though someone like Lemy wouldn’t be able to sleep well from fear the night after he’d heard such stories.

Even so, it seemed that because Lemy was persistent in his story of hearing a “female voice”, Phoebe had naturally grown a little worried.

It wasn’t that she thought “Ney” might really exist. It was more that she thought he might have gotten a little touched in the head from his headache.

She’d reported to her employer Julia what Lemy had told her, and suggested that it might be best they brought him to see a doctor.

However, Julia never called a doctor over.

Instead, for Lemy’s birthday in December she gave her son something special as a present.

“It’s this…”

When Lemy unwrapped the present’s packaging, he saw that inside it was that red wineglass from before.

“This, you see, is a very peculiar wineglass, and even if you drop it, it will never break. Despite that, you mustn’t be reckless with it. You’ll anger the spirit of the wineglass if you do,” Julia explained to Lemy, smiling.

“The spirit of the wineglass?”

“Yes. Perhaps that spirit is the true identity of this ‘voice’ that only you can hear.”

“But this is really important, isn’t it? Is it okay for me to have it?”

“Yes, this is a very precious item. And that is why you mustn’t lose it. …Or would you prefer a toy, rather than this glass?”

“…No, this is fine. Thank you, Mom.”

“—I’m the one who should thank you. I’m glad, Lemy.”

Julia suddenly, warmly hugged Lemy.

“Why are you thanking me, Mom?”

“Haha, because…For the first time, you called me ‘Mom’.”

“I did?”

Lemy hadn’t been paying much mind to the way he addressed her.

Since being taken here, he had in his heart always thought of her as his mother. To Lemy, who did not know his true mother, he didn’t have much resistance towards that.

He had called her “Miss Julia” at the start out of embarrassment at that, and at some point it had just become a habit.

After Julia had hugged Lemy for a short time, she pulled away.

“You know, there’s a legend that people who have that glass lose their preferences for food. Maybe you’ll start to be able to eat your hated green onions after this, hm?”

Lemy hummed and shook his head.

“No I won’t. I’ll still hate green onions.”

--Though, as it seemed that the legend of the glass was true after all, and before he knew it Lemy was able to eat green onions that he’d thought so hated.

When he had the glass with him, oddly enough any food was delicious to him.

The wineglass had another effect to it. Lemy normally had it set out on the shelf in his room, but every now and then he’d take it down and look at it.

When Lemy held the glass, it would give off a dull glow.

Do you love your mother? Ney asked him.

“Yeah, I love her. She buys me anything I want, she’s pretty, she’s nice…Although sometimes she’s a little scary.”

Hmmph, I see. Then that’s good, right? …For now, anyway.

“What, what are you trying to say?”

Nothing. …Only, she might not be as good a person as you think she is.

“Why would you say that?” Lemy huffed indignantly.

Ney said next, not minding him, Maybe she adopted you in order to use you for something in the future. I know quite well that people like that exist.

“Mom’s not like that!”

Yeah yeah. You don’t have to shout. You’ll worry Phoebe again.

Ney was always saying contrarian stuff like that.

Frankly, he thought she was a little bit of a jerk.

Even so, for some reason Lemy didn’t hate Ney. At some point, he had come to enjoy lightly bickering with her like this.

Lemy tightly gripped the glass he was holding.

--When he did, he felt as though he was able to more strongly feel that Ney existed.

<<prev------directory------next>>

30 notes · View notes