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possibilistfanfiction · 1 year

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prompt: touch

[@unicyclehippo here u go]

touch

you think maybe you have always been meant to come back to the ocean.

this is one you've never been to before, in a place you know mostly from movies. there's a pier in the distance and the rest is just blue: the water, the sky, the hazy horizon line in the middle. a calm late morning, after you'd woken up in a big soft white bed with beatrice curled against you, your arm around her waist and your forehead pressed between her shoulder blades; she was still asleep. the vast, devastating nothingness of the other realm fades away when you feel her breathe beneath you, deeply and at peace. you feel the heat of her, the softness of her skin where her shirt rides up from her sleep shorts. you're greedy for it; greedy for everything: tacos and what it was like to kiss her again without death looming over you like a shadow, grief already sitting rotten in your mouths.

you still don't quite believe in a divine order but you do believe in this: she shifts, eventually, as light pours in through the gossamer curtains and bathes her face in gold. she sighs and turns around toward you and there's a wonder in her eyes — gold, too, and more beautiful than you can even remember — as she looks at you, disbelief and joy and awe. you remember the first morning you woke up after you got the halo, how you had been so scared to fall asleep because what if it was a dream, what if it would end — but you had stared at your hand, moving like you'd thought you'd only get to do after you died, in the sun. she looks at you like that; tears fill her eyes and you hadn't missed it, yesterday, the ink on her wrist — in this life — and the sorrow. she had been afraid to fall asleep.

she brings her hand, shaky, to touch your cheek, to rest there in the light.

'i'm still here,' you say, a benediction. 'i'm right here.'

her eyes fill with tears and you kiss her. eventually you get up; she would be content to stay in bed all day but you have missed the world, its pain and joy, its bad smells and traffic jams and the softness of a dog's fur — you have missed the world. you want the world with her.

you dress in soft clothes she'd bought for you — an admission she'd made with a blush that had made your heart ache in fondness — and let her take your hand and lead you to the sea. it's her ocean, you realize, in the way that nothing is but matters all the same. it's her ocean where she prayed to you, and longed for you, and found moments of solace. the sand hasn't warmed up to the day quite yet, and the water is cooler than you expect, when she steps in with you and it laps at your ankles.

'i thought california was supposed to be hot,' you say, but you think you're choked up, crying: you feel it all: her warm palm and the bright winter sun and the pacific, small, harmless shells underfoot — coquina clams, she explains later — and then she laughs. you feel it more than anything, right in your chest. you've witnessed miracles before, have been one yourself, but that — that — is a fucking miracle.

'i love you,' she says, and kisses you while the tide goes out, and you feel that too.

sight

you allow yourself to look in the mirror later, an elegant full-length one with a gold rim in beatrice's big closet. yours, now, too, you suppose. you let yourself look in the mirror and take a deep breath: beatrice has seen you for days, now, has looked gently and greedily, wide-eyed when you'd straddled her. you have saved the world, you remind yourself — you have saved the earth, and heaven, and realms between with no name.

but still, gnosis, you have found, can't fix everything: your back hurts when the sun sinks below the horizon, and your ribs and hips press against your skin more than they had before you had gone through the portal. you had trimmed the hair between your legs and shaved under your arms and along the skin of your calves, your shins, the tender inside of your thighs. you had showered and allowed yourself to look at your body, its failings and imperfections and resilience. you washed yourself gently: the birthmark near your seventh rib, the dip in your collarbones, the softness of your breasts. you have let yourself look, but not like this.

you have scars all over from the divinium. they're angry and red and you had thought, maybe, while you were lying in nothingness and pain, in and out of consciousness, for an amount of time that you will never know how to translate into years on earth, the simple blessing of a planet spinning around the sun — day and night. god saw it was good, you guess. you try not to care: the halo imbedded in your back, a perfect circle; the shrapnel scars on your thighs, into your side, a small one along your collarbone. you have lived eternities; you have looked gods in their eyes — but you're still a person. you're twenty-one here, a birthday having passed while you were gone. you like the way your boobs like in this one red bra beatrice definitely brought for you, and she had taken you to a fancy salon yesterday so you could get a haircut like you'd wanted; you'd gone shopping for makeup and shoes and new underwear. you're just a person and you want to look beautiful. you want to look pretty.

but your scars aren't, you think. you know, they're not.

but then beatrice walks in, her airpods in, her eyes on her phone, her hakama high over her hips, her abs dripping with sweat, her hair up in a bun. you had told her that you want to have a life with her, which means she needs to do the things that had brought her comfort and joy; it made you smile when she took you to watch her surf, and when she showed you her dojo.

it takes her a few moments to even notice you standing there — another time, you would tease her for losing her edge — but there's definitely not enough time to pretend that you were doing anything other than staring at yourself naked in the mirror. she stills, and then takes her airpods out and tucks both them and her phone into her pocket. you don't have to say anything: you fought a war together. you died for her. she made herself a life that immediately had a place for you in it, in this house by the sea, bright fruit in a bowl and lavender lotion and a tv that sits above a fireplace. she walks toward you efficiently, measured, and then tucks her body around yours, like she's shielding you from a blast, or loving you in the sweep of the afternoon breeze. her skin is warm and her hand runs along your spine until it stills between your shoulder blades.

the halo hums and aches toward her palm.

eventually she turns your body gently and tucks her chin over your shoulder so you can look in the mirror again. she meets your eyes and then closes hers, leans down and kisses beneath your ear. you had seen the red lines left on her shoulders from her chest binder yesterday, had kissed them and massaged her tight, sore muscles. you had seen her; she had let you see. her fingertips touch the worst of the divinium scars, just once, and she has seen you too.

'you're so gorgeous,' she says, low and sincere. she looks at you and she means it.

finally, it feels like you can breathe.

proprioception

'okay,' beatrice says, patient and happy, even though you are failing spectacularly, 'so you hold the second chopstick right here.' she places it between your thumb and forefinger, like she already has a few times before.

you try valiantly, as hard as you tried to learn to walk on water, or block a punch, to pick up the very expensive, incredible piece of sushi. beatrice has taught you how to swim, how to hold a pencil properly, how to cut meat with a knife. she's eaten with chopsticks her entire life, she'd told you one day when she'd ordered chinese food for dinner and tried to teach you then, enviably and quickly scooping fried rice into her mouth without spilling any. you haven't felt embarrassed at all, because, like, how the fuck were you supposed to know these things; you were paralyzed and abused and then very, very busy, so it's always been something you'd felt peace with. plus, beatrice has never faulted you for it, or looked down on you. she compliments you easily, genuinely, all the time.

you drop the entire piece of sushi into the small dish filled with soy sauce and you sigh. beatrice just plucks it out and eats it herself with a smile, although you're sure she's screaming inside that the flavor profile is now off because the fish — the star of the show — has been overpowered.

'there's gonna be none left for me,' you pout, and she shrugs.

'we can order more on the pope's dime. we can order as much as we want.'

she shows you how to hold the chopsticks again, and then it's like something clicks, and you clumsily manage to grasp the sushi and then hold onto it enough to dip it in the soy sauce and then bring it to your mouth. it's so, so good — made even better by the fact that you did something that had been hard. the stakes are lower than learning how to phase through twenty feet of concrete or heal from a thirteen story fall that had exploded every organ in your body, but that's not a life. that's staving off death, a losing battle, a war that's bigger than you ever were.

but you sit across from the handsome woman you love on a patio in a city named after angels, a heater nearby warming your shoulders, flavor bursting on your tongue. your fingers are clumsy, like you sometimes feel with your love. but beatrice feeds you a piece eventually, grinning, and you eat edamame with your hands, and the sake makes your head feel light. this is life.

smell

the desert at night smells unlike anything you could've ever imagined. beatrice takes a hit from the joint she'd picked up from her favorite dispensary before the drive here. the joshua trees are spiky and bizarre and stunning; you've been to realms beyond comprehension but this is like another planet, rich and alive. there's rain in the distance and beatrice passes the joint with a low laugh at nothing.

you lie with her in a hammock and look up at the stars, clouds the color of a bottle of red wine on the horizon, rolling lazily over the mountains. you'd driven past the wind turbines and through the hills tinged red, orange poppies bursting on the green of the hillside and the sky so blue your eyes can't quite see it, specks of color floating through your vision when you look up.

there's agave and yucca and desert lily; sprouts of plants you had been both pleased and surprised to find were onions. you'd seen quail and small lizards with blue tails; rabbits so fast they're skittering away in the blink of an eye. there's the smell of the weed, heady and lush. there's your shared laundry detergent when you press your nose into beatrice's chest; there's her crisp cologne, all spice and musk; there's her skin, warm and heaven.

the sumac grows thick, stems and leaves offering themselves up even in the dark of night. you think everything here longs for the sun.

beatrice's hair, long and loose, just the two of you, smells like lavender and mint. the stars outnumber the wonders you've seen everywhere else other than the freckles you map on her skin. this world is astounding in its vastness, in its texture and overwhelm. but then there's her, and the small of her body: her elbows and the scar on her thigh that you kiss in the morning light sometimes, the way she folds your underwear unnecessarily when she does the laundry and the candles she lights when you watch silly tv before bed. creosote and sage. the smoke from blown-out birthday candles. the shed snake-skin and rattle somewhere that poses no danger. wishes and prayers and consecrate.

the rain grows closer. you stay warm in her arms.

sound

the bass is overwhelming in the best way. you feel it in your lungs, like every time you breathe the beat fills you up. beatrice had steadfastly driven to the greek, calmly following directions but her knuckles were white around the steering wheel when she'd had to merge onto three separate freeways. there's kinds of love you're always going to be learning: beatrice's safe driving, even in los angeles; the way she presses her body against yours from behind, her hands eager along your hips, your ribs, once, even, the inside of your thigh; her bright laugh when you turn around and tug her face to face because a song you'd wanted to see live since the moment you'd first heard it is next on the set list. there's whiskey on her lips from the shots you'd done earlier; you sneak a hand under her t-shirt and rest it along the waistband against her spine.

'let's ride!' you scream along with the crowd, overwhelmed by it all: the pulse and the sweat and the worship of it all. you turn to bea and even she's swept up in it, grinning, bouncing up and down. you tug the elastic out of her hair and kiss her and then sing along. it's so, so loud, this close to the stage, filling your entire body. and there's a reverence in it that you haven't ever felt before: fun. you fell in love with music like this because of its excess, because of its truth, because of its joy.

'i think my ears are still ringing,' beatrice says, a little loud, after you get back to your car, exhausted and sated and so beautiful.

you grin. 'that was heaven.'

she looks at you with a smile. 'you had a good time?'

you take her hand, ignore the honk from the car behind you, just for a moment, and kiss her. i've never felt so real, so alive, you want to say, but that seems to sentimental, too dramatic, for a night where you had gotten to sing all my life, i've been waiting for a good time, a good time — 'can we go to another show soon?'

she shifts the car into drive and then squeezes your knee before she puts her hands faithfully at ten and two. 'we can go to any shows you want, although i might need to invest in some earplugs.'

you laugh. 'i can live with that.'

taste

you've done this a few times before, but never quite like this. you press beatrice against the wall in your bedroom, shared now: the side of her bed, nearest the door, with two books on it placed neatly, an elegant charging dock for her phone, airpods, and watch, and a minimalist lamp on her nightstand; yours with a stack of six books that you're reading concurrently, haphazard, and three charging cables, one for your favorite vibrator included.

she moans into your mouth, your fingers tangled in her hair, tugging like she likes. you tug her shirt over her head and, delightfully, she isn't wearing a binder or a bra. still, 'do you feel comfortable with this?' you ask, because you love her more than anything, and when she nods, a little frantic, and then says a clear yes, god yes, you bring your mouth to one of her dark nipples, pinch the other between your fingers. her skin is soft and tastes just faintly of her lotion and the ocean — flowers and salt.

and then, like everything you've ever done has led you here, you kneel before her. you've met gods; you've known heaven and hell; you've died, a few times over. you kneel before her and you pray in a language only the two of you know. you'd read yesterday that if you took a human's dna and stretched it, stacked it end on end, it would stretch all the way to jupiter and back ten times over. there are the stars and the sea and the desert and this city of angels, with its haze and its gods. and there's this house, with its whitewashed walls and soft blankets. you're young, your bodies full of scars, your bodies filled with afternoon light. you take her clit into your mouth and her knees buckle and she tastes perfect, sun and salt and an endlessness that is so full, that is so much the opposite of nothingness you remember less and less every day. the black hair between her legs is soft against your chin and you drag a tongue through her folds. her hands, reserved, steady, usually, find their way into your hair and pull, desperate. you have died so many times to no funerals, no pyres: you bury yourself now, time and again, in the holiest place you know. the only communion you have ever cared for — you take her body into yours.

she tastes like heaven. she tastes like the ocean. she tastes like home. you tally the miracles again, another infinity as she arches into your mouth.

#wn #avatrice #avatrice fic #wn fic #prompts #anyway ollie & i have gone so feral over ava like... coming back & getting to have sensation again #wild #there's so much more to this but a lil smth on this los angeles snowday for me lol #girls against god #i guess?#also butch bea i guess but she hasn't BLOSSOMED quite yet but like #butch bea 🥺🫡#its a way of life

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inkskinned · 9 months

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at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.