#oscar explosion | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Tumblr has a low social media market share in South America.

pipartuuli · 7 months

Text

Kloktober 2023 Day 7 - Missing AOTD scene

...

They'd let him get too close. They'd been so focused on Nathan's injuries - serious injuries, enough to have downed the vocalist - that none of Dethklok had noticed one of Salacia's fanatical devotees creeping close, machete in hand, raising it in preparation to strike--!

CRACK!

The would-be assassin, sporting a new fist-sized hole in the center mass of his torso courtesy of the buckshot that had ripped its way through him, collapsed onto the snow with a soft thud, dead. The four still-conscious members of Dethklok wheeled around to determine the source of the gunshot. There on the ridge were two familiar figures: Nathan's mother and father. Rose, her entire five-foot-two frame trembling with maternal rage, still held a double barreled shotgun leveled, ready to fire another round if their attacker dared to show any residual signs of life.

Over the cacophony of the battle raging behind them, the band could just make out her battlecry: "Not my baby you don't, you bastard!"

...

Would have LOVED to see the parents in the final battle! Could totally see them all cresting the ridge, holding various makeshift weapons. They might not always be the best parents or easiest to get along with, but no one - NO ONE - touches their babies, dammit!!

#my art #tuulidraws #metalocalypse #mtl #rose explosion #oscar explosion #army of the doomstar #kloktober2023 #hell hath no fury like a florida woman scorned #full mama bear mode #oscar gonna put them new balances so far up salacias ass he'll taste rubber

204 notes · View notes

bellamer · 2 months

Text

The fact that the “I fucking love my dad” comes from Nathan even though in Deathfam Oscar straight up says that Nathan ruined his life. Idk, maybe they went to family therapy or something and sorted it out.

#metalocalypse #nathan explosion #oscar explosion

35 notes · View notes

deada55 · 6 months

Text

Grandma Called

for kloktober day 22: sea horror or cosmic horror

Oscar’s mom, like all grandmothers, has a couple opinions on Nathan’s upbringing.

tws: lil bit of weird gritty stuff I don’t want to spoil but if you have common triggers for angst-type stuff then think twice.

All she could hear was her grandson crying through the receiver, screaming “No! No! No!” at the top of his lungs, screeching higher than his cries on the day he was born, directly into his mother’s ear. He fought her because the killer soreness all over his body made him want to fight something. Her slow, gentle attempts at blocking him or slowing him down pissed him off until he threw himself onto the carpet. By now, Oscar and Rose had spoken to enough people to know to let him do it. If he wasn’t hurting himself or anyone else, he ought to be able to do what he wanted. After all, they’re his parents, and he’s their kid who was doing really well until he saw about fifteen people die all at once.

“How many times did I tell you to get away from that damn water? But chose Tampa anyway, didn’t you? You didn’t want to unsettle Rose after—“

“Ma! You—“

“She didn’t know, Oscar! You ought to’ve told her something anyway, whether or not you cared to listen to me. We knew what would happen to Nathan. This ain’t all about that damn truck.”

On the floor by Oscar’s feet, Nathan curled with his knees to his chest, facing his mother and sobbed. He was either biting himself or scratching his face and neck (Oscar could only see the top of his head quiver.) Whenever she touched him (including when she had to get him to stop, when he dug into himself too hard or raked too quickly) he screamed and swung at her face. Oscar had just opened his mouth when his mother had had enough.

“Cunting christ, Oscar! I’ll have to call you later.”

She hung up the phone and blinked until she felt like standing up. She put the phone receiver in the pocket of her black puffy vest and got up from her chair. Then, she turned and re-folded the afghan on her telephone chair, and only after that did she leave her sage green sitting room. The yellow curtains filtered the light splendidly, although the space was slightly dim: a Chapel-like sitting room off the side of the dining room.

Her screened-in porch kept out more birds than anything else. Her scrubby, brown grass and the heat of drought in her face made her senses dim down and become livable. Her cigarettes (just one a week) lived out the patio, too, on a glass side table by her standalone porch swing. Today was a cigarette day.

She did a bit of math. She couldn’t remember if there was a specific age where Nathan could push the clock forward, but it had to be at least eight more years, right?

Ah, Texas… A tear rolled down her eye. Sure, it’d taken the future, at least her future, and that was worth crying for on its own, but it took her grandson, too. Nathan would be under it forever. He had a unique agency, he was strange in his own right, but he’d never sleep the same when his soul became a playing piece in a game older than ghoulies like demons and gods.

In the arid November, hundreds of miles away, there wasn’t anything she could do to help but wait for Nathan to get tired of the hysteria and the clozapine syrup and grow out of the confusion and lack of purpose that would only draw out the end, risking greater and greater numbers of survivors. For now, he’ll have his two parents, worried senseless and sticky, trying to coax him to eat drugged grape jelly for the fifth time, but he’ll grow out of it.

Soon.

#metalocalypse fanfic #mtl fanfic #kloktober2023 #Oscar explosion #rose explosion #my writing

6 notes · View notes

pan-flute-skeleton · 1 year

Text

Time to go to the past. Rose is basically living out the dream. Enjoy!

#metalocalypse #nathan explosion #rose explosion #Oscar Explosion #next chapter #ao3 writer

6 notes · View notes

writing-good-vibes · 2 years

Text

[picrew credit: https://picrew.me/image_maker/482731]

[MTL OC] INTRODUCING THE 90S SCREAM QUEEN HERSELF... JULIE ANNE “JULES” EXPLOSION! Born in 1976, Jules is the youngest child of Rose and Oscar Explosion and a certified Scream Queen. Watch any schlocky horror from the mid-90s onward and Jules is sure to make an appearance (her shirt, on the other hand, may not). But at the end of the day, you can't fault her; she made something of herself, and she only scrounges off her brother, Nathan, sometimes.

Due to being only a few years younger than her brother Nathan, Jules experienced the best of both worlds in that she and Nate got on very well, whilst he still maintained a sense of “older brother protectiveness” over her.

She graduated high school in 1994, and went to community college in Tampa to major in drama. Whilst there, she took a role in a student film called Drop Out Massacre (directed by her roommates boyfriend). The film did surprisingly well on the indie circuit (maybe not surprisingly given how persistent the director was that it was going to be a success) and ultimately developed a bit of a following. Jules started getting offers from agents and was asked to audition for a few other low-budget horror flicks.

She got a moderately well paying gig on a studio financed horror movie (still low budget but with a guaranteed distributor) and dropped out of college.

It didn’t take long for her to power through a few more movie, get an agent and ultimately she became a Scream Queen in her own right.

Although at the start of her career she was doing a lot of indie slasher/borderline exploitation films, she fell into the niche of doing sequels.

Her longest running franchise that she’s starred in is called ‘Hack and Slash’. There are seven movies to date and she has starred in all of them.

Although she is no where near as successful as her brother, she does have her own career and doesn’t particularly rely on him to bolster it in any way. That being said, she never turns down his invites to industry parties and she makes no secret of the fact that royalties from her past films pay a lot of her bills.

Jules chose to stay in Florida -- even when Nathan moved out to the newly built Mordhaus -- and currently lives in Miami. She can and will brag about how she knows where Cher lives.

DETHPHONE TRANSCRIPT BETWEEN J. EXPLOSION AND N. EXPLOSION

JULES: NATE, CAN I GET AN INVITE TO THAT ALBUM RELEASE PARTY?

NATHAN: NO.

JULES: I'M BETWEEN JOBS RIGHT NOW AND YOU WON'T EVEN GIVE YOUR OWN SISTER A SHOT AT SOME FREE FOOD? FOR SHAME.

ONE MONTH LATER

NATHAN: HEY.

JULES: I'M FILMING WALMART MASSACRE 5 RIGHT NOW, WHAT DO YOU WANT?

#mtl oc #metalocalypse #dethklok #mtl oc: jules explosion #nathan explosion #rose explosion #oscar explosion #oc week is coming up and jules wont leave me alone #bonus content for you tag readers out there: jules is very much the antithesis to seth #in that her brother can actually stand her #she does scrounge a little bit #but who wouldnt if your close relative was part of the worlds 6th largest economy #i love her #she dresses like cross between guy fieri and 90s winona ryder #her and nathan are besties

12 notes · View notes

bogmonstergeneral · 5 months

Text

i’m so funny and original. laugh

#metalocalypse #mtl fanart #pickles the drummer #nathan explosion #army of the doomstar #nickles #the oscar slap.

398 notes · View notes

painful-pooch · 3 months

Text

Captain Down

The time for waiting is over! Here is the debut to the Hostage Arc! I hope this is a fun little chapter to start things off with. Please enjoy!

Bru Bru tag list: @cpt-winters, @redd956, @straight-to-the-pain, @technom0ose, @actress4him, @whumperofworlds, @i-eat-worlds, @inscrutable-shadow, @gala1981, @thethistlegirl, @ocean-blue-whump, @noirineverysense, @steelandblood, @crash-bump-bring-the-whump

CWs: military whump, war, gunshot wounds, blood, injury, bombing and explosions, gunfire, death of random soldiers

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Do you have your eyes on the target, Kieran?” Bruno asks, leaning against the wall, huffing from the quarter mile sprint he just had to do after he was spotted. He tilts his head back, groaning while the heavy gear he has on makes him sweat unbelievable amounts. He doesn’t have time to wipe the sweat dripping from his brow or nose, his fingerless gloves gripping his weapon tightly. It wasn’t even a terrible run, but with the sun burning them from above, it makes it more unbearable to even be out. A mission is still a mission, however, and it makes the man even more committed to getting the job done. “Kieran, you better not be napping on me. Respond.”

He hears the crackling of a mic coming to life, followed by a sarcastic, “You know, Bruno, it’s kind of hard to find a target when a bunch of Tangos (targets) are all after your ass. Give me a minute.” Kieran has a smart mouth on him, but that’s what you get when the Navy has to give away one of their best SEAL operators, especially one so skilled with a sniper.

“A minute? Wow… seems like you are losing your edge, Navy boy,” Valdemar’s voice comes in, gravely like an Army Sergeant’s voice would be after screaming nonstop. A chuckle or two later, he continues, “I am surprised Bruno over there can even run as fast as he did. Fuck, he left a cute little plume of dust in his way. How are the joints doing, old man? I think I could hear them creaking all the way over here. No wonder everyone was on you.”

Bruno can’t help but growl back playfully into the mic, “Valdemar, you damn asshole. Shut your mouth unless you have something important to say. What have I said about keeping the channel clear of any unnecessary bullshit? Keep your vest on, your ears clear, your eyes open, your head on a swivel, and your mouth shut.”

Kieran’s humming is all Valdemar gets in response from the prideful Naval operator, instead Miranda’s voice coming in. “Leave Kieran alone, Val. The man has better eyesight than your Army ass. Shit, give me a second-“ the sounds of gunfire and a thud on the ground made Bruno’s heart pound loudly in his ears.

“Miranda,” he breathes out, taking a moment to check his surroundings. She was always so ballsy and trying to prove her worth on the team. It doesn’t matter how many times they all told her, she just has to work unbelievably hard while putting her own life at risk. It came with the territory and the occupation. They are the ones making the real changes in the world, and yet their names will never be entered into the pantheon of the greats.

They are destined to remain in the shadows and only be seen by the select few that were granted the right and clearance to even know who they were. Out of the entire military, they are the small crew that felt like a real family. They ate out together, lived together, laughed together, cried together, and so many other things. They have his back and he will make sure they are safe in return while offering them the best leadership he can impose.

He can’t deny that Miranda is good at her job, but his worry keeps rising until she laughs, “Damn, the bastard almost had me. Kieran, what’s the sitrep (situation report)?”

Bruno sighs to himself, his helmet digging into the bricks of the building he is using as cover. He takes a chance to peek around the corner, but the whizzing of bullets launched his way forces him to take cover once again, the next volley of them chipping away at the corner of the building. “Fuck! Okay… just breathe. You have been in these predicaments before. Come on Kieran…” He doesn’t bother saying anything into the comms, waiting for his sniper expert to handle the mess.

“Sitrep isn’t too great, guys. They are holed up real good at their vantage point. I know where they are at, but I can’t take the shot without giving away my position. I can move and get a better angle at them. Guidance, Bruno?”

Shit. That’s not the answer Bruno needed, but it is what it is. He clears his mind of all the noise around him, trying to get to the part of his head where he can think out of a problem. He’s a sitting duck where he is at, but maybe he can get lucky. “From where you saw them firing, do you think I could mask my location with smoke?”

“What the hell are you thinking of, Bruno?”

He can’t help but smirk in response, a small weight off his chest when he laughs, “You heard me, Kieran. Can I use smoke or do you think a flash bang can do the trick? I am trying to get to the next few buildings but I need your help.” While he is waiting, he takes his canteen of water, taking a swig to then spit out the dirt and dust coating his mouth before finally drinking a few gulps. He needs to be hydrated if he’s going to really be doing something half crazy.

“Bruno,” Miranda calls out from the comms, “I really hope you aren’t about to pull your usual stunt of risking your life. Maybe just sit tight and call Lukas in for an airstrike, yeah?”

“That’s a lot of gall coming from the girl that plays with explosives and death on a daily basis. Also, I am not wasting a good airstrike on just me. Kieran, you better give me an answer or I am going to get fucked real good by the tangos,” Bruno huffs back, reaching into his pouch to grab a smoke grenade just in case.

“Alright. I got it. Bruno, I need you to throw the smoke as close to them as you can. Then use the thermal scope and pick out a few. I can handle some of them too to take the heat off. Other than that, I don’t see another way out. What’s the verdict, Sir?” Kieran sounds like he played out a few scenarios and picked the one with the best outcome. That’s what he needed from the man.

Bruno flips the switch on his assault rifle’s scope, seeing the blue haze on it to show it’s on. “Perfect. On my mark, Kieran.” He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and getting his body ready to react fast. He takes off the pin from the ‘nade, counting off, “One. Two. Mark.” He rolls around the corner, throwing the smoke grenade as it sends out a smoke screen to obscure everyone’s vision. There’s a gunfight going crazy now, Bruno on the ground firing away at all the blips coming into view on thermal, the blasting sounds from the mountain near them giving away Kieran’s position, whether he liked it or not.

He can hear shuffling over the comms, Kieran’s voice quick and short. “Position compromised. Running two klicks eastbound. Approximate time to wait ten mikes. Copy?”

Valdemar grunts back, “Copy, Kieran. I’ll be the closest to you once you’re there. We have a few more people here than we thought. Possible intel miscount, Bruno. What now?”

He just finally got to cover, the barrel of his rifle turning to a reddish hue from the heat building up. Bruno barely has a chance to breathe when the news comes in and his eyebrows furrow. “Wait… The count shouldn’t be off. This was validated plenty of times via the NSA, STRATCOM, and the folks over in DC. Oscar, what the fuck is going on?” He busts his way into the building, aiming around and clearing the vicinity prior to making his run up the steps in the stairwell, getting to the fifth floor and getting into a rundown office. He better make his nest now, flipping a desk on its back to press up against a window, using it as both cover and a thing to lean back on, his eyes on the door to the stairwell in case anyone followed him. “Oscar, I need something, now.”

There is frantic typing he can hear, and that is never a good sign. He sets up his gear where he needs to, taking the chance to wipe the sweat and dirt off his face, his eyes on the tablet he has set out. There’s a grid map showing his position in relation to the others and where the main target, who is the main reason why they are there, is. He keeps his composure though, waiting for Oscar to explain himself and the faulty data compiled from multiple three letter agencies.

“Sir… something isn't right. There's more movement from the enemy. ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) operations are alluding to a possible betrayal," Oscar breathes out, the clicking and typing starting up again. It's so quiet now, almost as though a pin could drop.

The waves are crashing in Bruno's head now, the man needing to come up with a solution. His options are either to continue pursuing the main target or fall back and go back to the drawing board. He stares up at the ceiling, his eyes tracing the fallen wires while he attempts to strategize. With that, he glances back down at the tablet and with a gruff mutter, he announces, "We aren't letting these people get away with what they've done. They've killed too many innocent people. If I let them slip through my fingers again, I'm going to lose my shit."

"Alright, Captain America, so what's your plan?" Miranda shoots at him, and he can feel as though she's staring right at him, even if she's so far away.

Bruno snaps his fingers and goes to type in the tablet, each tap another step closer to the end goal. "The plan is to aim a barrage right down the middle of their forces. Force them to split up and we rip through them like nothing. Lukas, can you handle helping us out from up there?"

The voice of the young and cookies pilot Bruno's ever heard of comes through the earpiece, "Oh I can handle just about anything, Bru Bru. General Kane got me a nice Reaper MQ-9 drone for Christmas. Have you seen what that baby can do? I'm talking about Hellfire missiles and whatever other toys I requested. What are the coordinates?"

Bruno manages a small grin and laugh, the corner of his lip rising. He remembers what it was like to be a real fighter pilot, and he knows how long Lukas has been working towards becoming a drone pilot as well. "Good. I'm sending them over now. Fire when ready. Those in quadrants three and four need to take cover."

He puts the tablet away the second he's done sending the location, taking a few more to drink away some of his water and prepare for the long haul as they won't be making it back for dinner. Things seem to be going his way and then his earpiece screeches in his ear. He jumps in surprise and rips it out, grumbling about stupid technology before placing it in his pocket, replacing it with the backup headset. It takes about another minute or so, but yet he hasn't heard the sound of explosions or missiles. "Did I miss anything?"

What Oscar comes through with doesn't sit well with him: "Sir? Nothing happened, but Lukas is having some trouble from his end getting the coordinates, but he just got them. Thank you for revising them for him."

There are alarm bells ringing, and his heart starts to pound to the drums of War. He scrambles to his feet and starts running towards the stairwell, his voice rushed and full of worry. "I didn't revise a damn thing. I sent him the right thing already. Oscar? Lukas? What the fuck is goi-"

The blast cuts him off as he holds onto the railing, barely keeping himself from tumbling down them. His eyes widen when looking back at the office, now engulfed in flames. That missile was aimed right on him, and he can hear the whirring of the drone closing in again and he returns to his attempt to make it out of the building, concrete pieces and debris falling on him. "Stop the airstrike!" He roars in retaliation, reaching the ground floor of the building.

The door is blocked from the other side and he's attempting to bash through it, but it refuses to budge no matter how hard he tries. No one is on the comms anymore, and he feels as though everything is falling apart around him. His eyes are now darting around the building, seeing the stress of the bombardments cracking the walls, the lines zigzagging to the ceiling.

"Of fuck," he huffs, realizing that if he doesn’t get out soon enough, the building is going to collapse right on top of him. To hell with the mission and to hell with the comms being down; this is survival. He turns away from the door and runs down the hall, coming to a halt when he sees a window inside a room flooded with fire. “You gotta be kidding me.” The building shakes again from the next blast, and it forces Bruno to grit his teeth, his own fire burning inside of him. He’s not ready to die yet; not to a building. It’s not a fitting end for a man like him. “Here goes nothing.” He locks the rifle to the chest plate’s hooks, ripping his pistol from the side holster. He aims it straight and true and pulls the trigger, launching the bullet right through the window, shattering it upon impact.

He jumps over the flaming debris of the desks and fallen file cabinets, thankful that he has enough gear on to keep him from getting too burned, the sweat now freely flowing down his face. Still rushing to the window, the final blast hits the floor above him, parts of the ceiling crumbling down just as he vaults through the broken mirror, not bothered by the glass cutting away at his uniform and face. The stinging from the sweat, fire, and glass just pushes him over the edge, and he catches himself on the dirt floor, coughing. Just in time to see the drone pass by him one more time, but nothing comes from it thank the heavens.

He stands up and moves away from the building, his heart still pounding away in his chest. Hiding away in one of the alleys, he groans and wipes away at the slick red coming from his face. “Someone. Better. Have. An. Explanation.”

His comms are only returning static until finally there is a voice beside his own: “Sir, I think there's enemy interference. Someone is trying to get in and find our locations. I am trying to scramble the signal, but they got a hold of you. I don’t know about the others.”

Bruno tenses up at that and it hits him that someone ratted on them. No one should have known they were there. No one should have prepared reinforcements so quickly. No one should have tried to murder him with his own drone. It was a trap, and he had to get everyone out before things could get any worse. “Everyone, head to the second emergency rendezvous point. We have been compromised. If there are signs of adversaries there, make it to the third point. Move it!” He reholsters his pistol and rearms himself with his trusted rifle, treading along.

When he makes it to a major street, something doesn’t feel right to Bruno. It’s this weird feeling someone gets when they are in a room, but they can sense another person in there. It only gets worse the closer he is to the edge of the alley. He has to sprint across as fast as he can, and so that’s what he does. He dashes as fast as his legs can carry him and the extra hundred or so pounds of gear… and that’s the second an immense searing pain hits him right in the calf, making the man fall to the ground. Only then does he hear the crack and boom from the sniper rifle. He just got hit, and he’s still in the open. He forces his body to act fast, pushing himself to get to cover, his back leaning against the wall. They know where he is. It’s only a matter of time. He rips off his helmet and looks down to see the damage. His right leg is the one that feels as though there’s a small fire inside of the gunshot wound, blood already seeping through his fatigues.

“Hit. I’ve been hit,” he groans, but there’s nothing on his comms again. He reaches into his shoulder pocket, pulling out a small pouch. Using his teeth, he tears open the sterile tourniquet, reminding himself of the steps Khrystyna taught him. He gets the belt strapped and then using the stick on the tourniquet, he begins to twist it, cutting off his blood flow. The pain is getting worse, the man clenching his jaw so hard when he cuts away at his pants to find the wound.

To his dismay, he sees both an open and exit wound, and he takes a deep breath. “Okay… there’s a big ass hole in your leg. Time to pack it. Dammit, why me? Move faster…” He rolls up the cut fabric, rolling it up and proceeding to bite down on it before he takes the gauze from the first aid kit he had, shoving it into his wound without waiting. He screams into the fabric, the back of his head digging into the wall to distract himself. He wants to cry, but he instead just pounds at the ground with his free hand. Just as he’s done, he can hear the sound of someone rustling near him. He takes his pistol with one hand, his body trembling from the shock and anger ripping through him. Waiting for the person to come around the corner from his left, he doesn’t catch the person to his right rounding the corner and firing into his side. Bruno gasps and turns quick enough to fire a few rounds into that soldier, returning his attention to the one he had initially heard, taking them down as well when the opening presents itself.

His breathing is ragged, his hand reaching to where he felt the slap of a bullet. Wincing, he pulls his hand back to see that there’s now a bullet lodged in him, finding the one part of his torso that wasn’t shielded by the vest, plates, and gear. It’s getting hard to breathe, and he stares up at the sky in search of an answer to his problem. It takes him a few minutes to patch up, getting up while using the wall to lean against, limping his way towards his team. The corners of his view are blurring and turning to black, almost like the beginning of tunnel vision. He trips over some broken stone and slabs of brick, screaming silently when one of the pieces digs right into his side. Struggling to his hands and knees, his head snaps up when the one person he couldn’t have near him speaks.

“Bruno?!”

Khrystyna runs up to him and helps him sit against the wall, her eyes so calm and yet her voice is full of worry. “Hey, you are going to be okay. We are really close to where we need to be. I need you to tell me what’s wrong and what you need me to do, Sir?”

Bruno isn’t fully there. His mind is on the fact that this entire time, he was leaving specks of blood and a trail for his enemies to follow. If he dies, and they find him, they are going to take Khrystyna and do the most awful things to her. If he doesn’t die and they both get caught, they will use her against him, and he would be responsible for her dying due to his loyalty to secrecy. Even though she is one of the strongest women he knows, she won’t be able to carry him the entire way, and he’s only getting weaker by the minute. The answer was there the whole time.

He knows what he has to do, and so when he coughs up a bit of blood, he reaches over to take Khrystyna’s pistol, aiming it at her with tears in his eyes. “You need to get away from me right now if you know what’s good for you.”

#izzy writes #whump #bruno stenberg #miranda ryker #kieran ashton #valdemar ackermann #lukas kazemi #oscar cortez #khrystyna paszek #military whump #war #gunshot wounds #blood #injury #bombing and explosions #gunfire #death of random soldiers #guns

30 notes · View notes

aspennntree · 11 months

Text

i have recruited another oscar fan i am doing so well

#rwby #this was after i showed her the monstra explosion #also hi luna if you are reading this asdfghjkl #oscar pine

20 notes · View notes

bellamer · 17 days

Text

I wonder how Nathan’s parents survived the hurricane since they actually live in Florida and I’m assuming still live there when nathan was governor . Maybe they were taken to a bunker until the hurricane blew over

#metalocalypse #nathan explosion #rose explosion #oscar explosion

3 notes · View notes

deada55 · 1 year

Text

Being There (Chapter 1)

crossposting: ao3

synopsis: Rose Explosion pushes through her teenage son's overdue laundry.

content warnings: I think we're good, let me know if I missed something.

“How long are we going to let this go on for?”The pile of musty laundry was enormous. She sorted it in the middle of the living room floor, in the middle of the sunbeam that shot through their screen door every morning. The top corner of the blade of light scraped the chair rail that split the peach wall in half. The sectional matched the rug matched the table matched the wall art… Oscar really spoiled her a couple years’ ago and gave her carte blanche in a furniture showroom once they’d paid off all their old medical debt. Oscar stood at the white kitchen island mixing an orange Tupperware pitcher of Crystal Lite. Last night, when Nathan “snuck” out the house, she went in his room and dug out a pile of dirty clothes that could have swallowed her whole. In the corner, piled up from the floor to the top of a five-drawer dresser, was a stiff-cornered tower of cotton-blend fabric and sweat and sweat and sweat.

It was always a teenager’s room, always, but she hadn’t seen it was a problem until the book club came over and very, very gently told Rose that Nathan’s room was extreme, not just unhealthy, not only messy. They even opened the door and looked out of the hopeful kind of doubt that, surely, Rose was overreacting. Unfortunately, Rose’s long-time friends knew that she was rarely overstating what she went through with Nathan. After a while, it was only natural that she’d get used to it, like how a rollercoaster strikes it’s operator deaf over time.

The drum of her washing machine was tinging grey from entire loads of black shirts, with the tags lovingly removed, picked out, cut out, or torn straight through, hard enough to leave a hole on the back of the neck. Guess which ones Nathan got to before she could? She tutted and assumed Oscar was talking about money… again. She kept buying clothes. When he was little, it was worse. Kids’ clothes came with so many tabs, elastics, weird buttons, intrusive pocket designs… finding something he’d wear was difficult, and finding something he’d wear without constant pulling and scratching was like looking for a four-leaf clover. She got better at it over time, but it took a lot of catalogs, returns, store credit, and beer money to figure it out. Of course it got expensive, but adult clothing had far fewer scratchy intrusions, and black men’s shirts came in packs of five.

She bought clothes this time around when he kept wearing the same ones until they were gummy with grime- she thought that there was a new three-month turnover on his clothes, before they “wore out” or made his skin crawl. One time, during her canning phase, he (a smaller, stoic Nathan) described it like his skin wanting to peel off of his body like the blanched tomato in his hand, shedding red-orange ribbons between his fingers.

There were at least forty shirts, but how dare Oscar bring the money up now?

“Oscar… don’t start. Don’t start.”

“Rose! We have to talk about this-” She saw him graze his knuckles over the outside pocket of his pants, looking for Rolaids as his temple started to pulse. High blood pressure didn’t lie. Her lymphedema wasn’t as easy to kneel on as it used to be, and her ankles were whining like puppies. They were all getting older. The festering, moldy underpants didn’t come from a boy. The gamey smell penetrating the room was a man’s doing, even if he’d hardly grown up. She expected him to bloom late, he’d always done it, but for once it really looked like he’d be very slightly ahead of the curve. Nathan was on track to graduate on a wing and a prayer. He was an unstoppable running back, the team made regionals, and the game was tight until he got carried off the field on a stretcher. She thought she’d seen every expression her baby boy could make, but even through the titanium facemask, she could see the subtle laxity of his face spreading second by second until there were athletic trainers keeping him from sitting up, thinking he could have given himself a neck injury from jamming himself into someone elses’ shoulderpad. He writhed for about a minute anyway before they strapped him to a backboard.

Oscar told her a couple days afterward that Coach had turned white. He didn’t approach the ambulance: he didn’t want to get in the way of the EMTs trying to keep him conscious. She couldn’t remember the night at all, anymore, not out of her own memory. Oscar told her she cried, and that was probably true.

The team tanked when play resumed: No going to states. Nathan still hasn’t come back to school to find out thtt the team didn’t blame him for that.Nathan was always disappointed at the end of the season, and the fact that it was his last one possible didn’t help, but the month or so he was recuperating from the concussion (just a concussion turned out to be a huge, grateful jinx) was eerily quiet. As usual, he wouldn’t talk to either of them about anything. Hovering wouldn’t win him over, and it never has. Again, Nathan called on her patience to leave him alone while he figured himself back out.

Again. And she gave it.Again. Even if it didn’t feel like the right thing for a parent to do, the strategy in the Explosion household was to keep Nathan from being completely averse to getting help on his own terms. You can’t listen when you’re too busy talking, but there was so much to say.

Rose settled for being, admittedly, invasive elsewhere. If he went out again tonight, she’d snoop around his room under the guise of getting the rest of the laundry out. Yes, there was more.She sighed, dropping the crusty shirt in her hands onto her lap. “Oscar. I’m serious. It’s not up for discussion. It’s done, I bought too many shirts, I did it, it’s over-” “What do you mean, it’s over?” Forget about how much she’d bought: Oscar had no idea what could have made her so nonchalant about their son piling at least a month and a half’s worth of laundry into a wet pile of lingering sweat and puke. Jesus Christ, Nathan!

She’d been their son’s biggest hero in his eyes. Look! She had no idea how many shirts he even owned, but here she sat, washing them all, sticking to the normal life they’d carved out despite…Nathan never, ever would have done it all on purpose, but he made a normal life difficult. Sitcoms lost their sparkle: they had their own Dennis the Menace running around silently with knives and strung-up sardines on long, green pieces of yarn tied to his ankles. Ever seen an eight year-old almost drown themselves in a bathtub because they “liked the way it sounds”? Nathan pumped out sordid, dark dramatizations of every teenage stereotype, with heavy “rock” music that sounded like deep-fried television static pumped through a ram’s horn blasting in his room, and pages on pages of what Oscar used to think were obsessive lists and not just clumsy, gorey poetry. His good mother faced it with all the kindness she could muster, and found so, so much to be grateful for whenever Oscar started to think that they were at the start of a horror movie where eventually Nathan would get tired of playing nice and eat the neighbor’s dog. Not maliciously. Never maliciously. It just fit the theme. Then, they’d have to approach the neighbor and explain that their son swallowed Fido’s teeth, small as nitroglycerin tablets, whole.

There was no doubt she loved Nathan, but how could she be so callous? The doctors said it’d take a month of dedicated recovery to go back to daily life after the concussion, but they were a month and two days out and Nathan wasn’t doing much of anything at all, much less towards getting back to school. They had to figure out what to do about Nathan before it was figured out for them: in the meantime, they let him go out to give him whatever amusement or normalcy made him want to leave the house in the first place.

“It’s not over! Look! Look at this shit! It’s not the concussion! This isn’t a month’s worth of clothes-!”

“Oh, oh, I’m sorry, so it’s not just my fault for buying too many clothes but I let ‘em get dirty, too? Oh, how dare I-”

“What are you talking about? Rose, I’m not talking about the money, I’m not saying you’ve done anything, just listen to me, dammit!” Palms open, he leaned forward with a furrowed brow and sweat starting to pick at the edges of his hairline.

“No! You listen to me!” If she wasn’t sitting on the ground, she would have come chest-to-chest with him, just to see if he’d back up. Just so she could see him scared- The thought made her throat force down all the spit in her mouth, forcefully, like a gag in reverse. God, it tore into her that she’d want his frightened eyes, but the rush of power would have been a luscious reward for years of hard work and shit-taking. Oscar wasn’t the one pulling her leg, but it didn’t matter who she had to shock to feel like someone was congratulating her for something, like she could change something more than just un-crusting and un-wetting a pile of rotting clothes.

As much as she coached herself to face everything with grace and continued compassion, a creeping, aching helplessness blew in every once in a while. Of course she cried about it all. She’d been sleepless for weeks. She’d been sleepless for months. She’d been sleepless since Nathan was little.

The first year was the best of her life, completely synergistic, perfectly new-age but so traditional and so timeless. Other moms in her postpartum group had real struggles, of feeling so hopeless and pressurized that they’d started making their husbands drive everywhere so they wouldn’t feel tempted to take the car off a bridge. Or, they went back to work and missed their babies, or they didn’t go back and missed the life as a working woman. There was one mother who lost her little girl to SIDS at eight months. Aside from the immediate postpartum, everything was buttery smooth.

God, she remembered the doctor’s voice like a grocery store jingle: “Either I make an incision or you’ll tear.” In the middle of a couple of hours of labor, she went along with an episiotomy but Nathan graced her with both options in due time. Thirteen stitches later, she was taking perineum ice packs by the armful out of the hospital. The Sitz bath was thrown in for free, left off of the itemized bill: One of the leads for the obstetrics ward was in that day, to observe a resident, and walked in on “one of the longest episiotomies of her career.”

The first year with Nathan was heavenly. This is what it’s all for. This is what you’re made for. Some deep, deep, cooing echo rang in her ear while he slept that made every ounce in her body pulse fluorescent joy. Holding him was universalizing and powerful. He was the biggest baby in that postpartum group, with the most hair-She wasn’t the only person who thought he was special, but she was the only one (other than Oscar… on a good day) who could hold him without getting an earful of wailing.

Whenever he tested her, that special throb came back to remind her. Her heart skipped a beat and gave her all she needed to be patient, to protect him, to shove past feeling defeated long enough to get him where he had to be, to the fullest possible extent of her ability.

She opened her chest and let her arm rise, pointing at Oscar like it was right to scold her own husband like a child. “I’m not going to sit here and fight about this-” She swung her arms around like she was slapping through a swimming pool of applesauce. “-with you. I’m thinking about what’s more important!”

If the man she loved could only think about the laundry, she couldn’t care less what he had to say.Oscar froze with his lip curled clear to his eyebrow. If the woman he loved could only think about the laundry, he’d have to make up for it. It was his turn to keep going and try to get Nathan out of this mess.

The dryer alarm rang out from the laundry closet around the corner like the first shot of a race.

#my writing #Rose Explosion #Oscar Explosion #Nathan Explosion #metalocalypse fanfic #metalocalypse #WOOP WOOP!

10 notes · View notes