#the Greek Chasm | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mediumgayitalian · 3 months

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“Oh, gods.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Oh, gods.”

Nico scowls, wrenching just eyes away from Will’s poorly-covered grin and shaking shoulders.

It’s not that bad. It isn’t.

Sure, the complete lack of lighting except Greek fire torches makes the cabin look like a little piece of the Underworld, right here on the surface. But that’s comforting. Honestly. Nico knows the Underworld. It’s — familiar.

And, yeah. It would, probably, be pertinent to have some furniture, or something. At least somewhere for him to store his clothes, because he has more than one set of those now, and maybe a shelf, or something. And, admittedly, the obsidian altar could take up a little less space than it currently does.

But it’s not that bad.

“Are those. Coffin shaped beds.”

The tone of Will’s voice is unlike he’s ever heard it. He turns back to face him, slowly, and finds him biting his fist, hard, every muscle of his body tense as live wire.

“I was twelve godsdamn years old,” Nico snaps. “Forgive me if interior design wasn’t my passion.”

Solace loses it.

In his defense, not that Nico is too worried about defending him, he does appear to try very hard to not lose it. When the first giggle slips out of his lips, he clamps his jaw shut tighter. When his whole body begins to shake with the force of repressing his laughter, he curls inward, as if making himself smaller might reduce the chance of a lapse in control.

But then he glances back inside and looks, really looks, at the dreary, stone walls, the lone skeletons standing guard, and the plush, teakwood black coffin bunk beds, and he collapses to the floor.

“I’m going to open a chasm beneath you,” Nico threatens. “You are going to fall and crack your spine into a million pieces on the bank of the Styx, rotting there with every other forgotten hope.”

“You are a Black Parade lyric personified,” Will wheezes.

Nico doesn’t know what that means, so he kicks him. Unfortunately, he only laughs harder.

“I mean it, Solace. It’s a long way down to the Underworld. You will spend the entire fall petrified with the knowledge that nothing can save you.”

For added effect, Nico makes the floor under the medic’s body shake, makes the tip of a skeleton hand peek out from the earth.

Ironically, this stops Will’s laughter, but not for the reason Nico was aiming for.

“Hey!” A bright blue flipflop-clad foot darts out and collides With Nico’s ankle, sending him sprawling. “I said no spooky magic for the next two months! Put that skeleton away!”

“Fuck off, Solace! It’s barely half a bone! You are so annoying!”

“That’s my specialty.” Will pushes himself upright. He waits until Nico sits up, too, so he can catch his eye before his face splits into a dazzling grin. Actual sparkles seem to flicker beside his face. “And you are ever so easy to annoy.”

Nico stares, unimpressed.

“Anyways.” Will coughs. “You can’t stay here, Neeks —”

“Don’t call me that.”

“— it’s straight-up too depressing.” He peers inside. “It’s also cold, and, like…borderline unliveable? So. As your doctor, I can’t allow it.”

“You’re a medic,” Nico says, raising an eyebrow, “first of all, not a doctor. Second of all, you can’t tell me what to do. Third of all — where am I supposed to sleep? The woods?”

“Hm. Good question.”

Will gets to his feet, brushing the dirt off his shorts and offering Nico a hand. After a second of hesitation, he takes it, allowing Will to haul him up.

“C’mon!”

Nico snatches his hand away, face burning. (Gods. Why does Will have to be so…touchy-feely? And why does it always do weird things to Nico’s stomach?) But it hardly takes a look over Will’s shoulder before Nico’s feet are following after him, without his permission.

“Where are we going?”

“Well, my dad’s kind of a hoe,” Will says matter-of-factly. Nico chokes. Will’s grin widens. “And our cabin was built with that in mind. I know we’ve got an extra bunk or two for ya. Hurry up!”

This…cannot be allowed. Nico doesn’t have a ton of Camp Half-Blood experience, or anything, but as far as he knows, Hermes is the only cabin that can really do that. He doesn’t want to incur the wrath of Apollo, or whatever, by staying in his cabin uninvited.

Well. Will’s inviting him, technically. And there’s a confidence to his offer, like maybe this isn’t the first time he’s done it.

“What if I don’t want to live in your stupid sunshine-y cabin,” Nico grumbles, trying to cover up his nerves. “Holding hands and singing about how much I love being alive isn’t really my cup of tea.”

Will snorts. “Oh, di Angelo,” he says dramatically, shaking his head, “you are in for a world of discovery. Welcome to the Cabin Apollo. Take your shoes off at the door and remember that Kayla bites.”

———

Living in the Apollo cabin is strange.

Four days in, and Nico is only just starting to get used to it. He’s not entirely unused to sharing space with people — he’s had two sisters — but the Apollo kids argue like they enjoy doing it. One minute, Will and Kayla will be screaming at each other at the top of their lungs about touching each other’s shit, then they’re teaming up to pull Gracie off Yan’s face for the exact same argument, only now they offer sage advice on respecting boundaries and compromising. It’s bizarre.

(Austin is pretty chill, actually. Nico has noticed him starting quite a few fights — it was he, in fact, who moved Will’s shit and then gracefully framed Kayla — but he has a very powerful eyebrow raise and a very powerful image as Unproblematic. He has quickly become Nico’s favourite.)

He’s only just barely beginning to understand how they work together, and the struggle comes in because everything is so chaotic. When Nico spent time with Hazel in New Rome, she was in the barracks. He never really had to worry about squabbling over counter space in the bathroom with her, because she had her own little toiletry caddie like everyone else, and bathrooms were public. With Bianca — well. There’s no one alive who knows this about her, but she was bossy. She was sweet and wonderful and self-sacrificing and brave and kind and the centre of Nico’s life, but by the gods, did she take her authority as a big sister seriously. She ordered Nico around all the time. He never had to worry much about when he would have the chance to use the bathroom they shared at the Lotus, or who got the T.V. remote, or who go to sit on the bus instead of standing, because he was not the one deciding. He could stick his tongue out and whine all he wanted, but she was boss. He knew that.

The Apollo kids are not like that.

As well as Nico can figure, it’s kind of a free-for-all. You want first shower? Either wake up the earliest — a strategy only Will every manages to employ with any success — or manage to jab an elbow in someone’s rib and sprint. You want whoever’s humming to shut the hell up so you can sleep? Make sure your threats are quick and believable, or just straight up start throwing shit until they finally stop. You want the coveted middle of the bench spot at breakfast? Well, tough shit on that one, actually. Nico has yet to make that one happen for himself.

He won’t admit it, but he has kind of learned to enjoy it. It’s annoying, and the Apollo siblings do indeed sing at all hours of the day (although the content usually skews more towards diss tracks and delighted insults, if not straight-up curses), and it is so godsdamn bright in there, seriously, is it a gimmick or what, but there’s something to be said about the fact that he’s so surrounded by people and chaos that he hasn’t even had the chance to feel lonely. Not even at night, panting to himself after a nasty nightmare, because all it takes is a particularly loud snore from Will one bunk down to remember where he is. To remember that he’s safe — by demigod standards, at least.

But, still.

He kind of misses his privacy.

“Will,” he whispers urgently, on his fifteenth day of rooming with the Apollo weirdos.

The medic hums noncommittally, attention very focused on the test tube in front of him. Nico has been fighting the urge to try and launch a piece of dust inside it for forty minutes, just to make him explode.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Sounds good, Nico.”

Nico narrows his eyes. “You’re ignoring me.”

“Uh-huh. Agreed.”

“I can say anything I want right now.”

“Sure. Maybe double check with Austin.”

“…I’m going to put a colony of ants in your pillowcase.”

“Good idea.”

“Then I’m going to douse your hair products in gasoline and set them aflame.”

“Baller.”

“After that I’m gonna read your super secret diary to the entirety of camp at singalong tonight.”

“You betcha.”

“And then I’m going to shadow travel to Russia.”

Will blinks, frowning. “Hey, no shadow-travelling. What’s this I hear about shadow-travelling?”

Nico rolls his eyes. “Nothing, stupid. You were just ignoring me.”

Will smiles guiltily. “Aw, I’m sorry, Neeks. Got focused on this. I’m finished in twenty, then I’m all yours?”

“…Don’t call me Neeks,” Nico grumbles, furious with himself for how quick he’s relented under wide blue puppy-dog eyes.

“Sorry, Neeks.”

Huffing at Will’s quiet laughter, Nico slides off the nurse’s station counter and wanders around the empty infirmary. Things have luckily finally cooled down in here, nearly three weeks after the end of the Giant War. Some of the exhaustion has faded from Will’s features now that he’s had time to sleep properly.

Not that Nico has noticed, or anything.

“Okay,” Will says a few minutes later, holding his hands up protectively in front of his geeky little setup. “I just gotta do this last step, so long as I calculated it right, it should be fine…” He squeezes a drop of something into the liquid bubbling over the burner, freezing immediately. One, two, three seconds pass and nothing happens, so Will relaxes, sighing in relief and turning to face Nico fully. “Okay, we’re good. What was it you wanted to —”

The text tube contents explode in his face, dousing him in slimey green goo.

Nico bursts out laughing.

“Great,” Will says darkly, swiping the stuff from his eyes. “The one day I don’t wear goggles. Great.”

Nico gasps, sides aching. “Oh my gods —”

“Feel free to help, di Angelo.”

“— you look like a cartoon! Your face!”

It takes Will twelve cloths and seven whole minutes to clean himself and the nurse’s station off of the goo. Nico cackles at him the whole time, and tastefully does not mention the many globs of goo that remain caked in his hair.

“Whenever you’re done.”

Will is very, very bad at being stern when he doesn’t really mean it. And he doesn’t really mean it now, because every time he tries to glare at Nico, his mouth twitches.

“I’m good,” Nico finally wheezes, forcing his face back to normal. “I’m good, I’m good.”

He very pointedly does not look at Will’s hair.

“Dick,” Will huffs, fondness bleeding into his tone. “What did you want?”

He must notice the change in tone at his asking, because he clears the bench fully, hoisting himself on top of it and patting the spot next to him. Nico hesitates for half a second, then crawls up, sitting criss cross applesauce, knees touching.

“I need to move back to my cabin,” he manages, finally.

Will’s face betrays no judgement or emotion. “Oh?”

“Yes.” He picks at a loose thread in his jeans. “I need — space.”

The thread loosens, allowing Nico to tug on it. A hole begins to unravel along the seam as he pulls and pulls and pulls. He stops himself before it gets too wide, tearing the thread off and winding it around his fingers.

“I can tell everyone to tone it down,” Will offers softly, eyebrows creased. “We’ll be more quiet, we’ll —”

Nico places a hand on his knee, cutting off his sentence. “It’s not about that, I promise. You guys have been great.”

A wounded look still pulls at Will’s strong features, as much as he visibly tries to pull his face back to something more supportive. “It’s not?”

“No, no. It’s just —” He frowns, trying to articulate the tangled mess of his thoughts. “I have my own cabin.”

“So?”

“And I can’t stay in yours forever.”

“I mean, you could.”

“Chiron’s been giving me looks, Will.”

“So what! I’ll — write you a doctor’s note, or something!”

Nico snorts. “A doctor’s note letting me sleep in your cabin?”

Will nods fervently, although he seems to acknowledge the ridiculousness of his suggestion, if the grin on his face is any indication. “Yes! For medical reasons, you know.” He mimes writing. “‘Patient’s cabin is dank and sad. To avoid bouts of misery, patient must sleep in the presence of the coolest and best and prettiest and most uplifting people in camp.’”

“Hm. Not sure Chiron’s gonna buy that last part. Not sure I buy that last part, actually.”

“Hey.”

Nico dodges Will’s shove, chuckling.

“Seriously, though, Will. This was never a long term solution, right?”

“I know. You’re cabin just — sucks so bad, man. No offense.”

“I take great offense to that, actually. My cabin is art.”

“Sure, Eddie Cullen.”

“I don’t know who that is, so that’s a horrible insult.”

“Travesty, honestly.”

Outside the open infirmary windows, Nico can hear distant, triumphant screaming, laughter, and the clang of metal. Today’s a good day. The weather’s balmier than usual, for late August, and some of the gloom that’s hung over everyone’s head for the bast few weeks seems to have lifted.

“You can’t go back to your cabin like it is,” Will says into the silence, startling Nico, “but —” he grins when Nico begins to protest, holding up his hand. “We can definitely change it up.”

He slides off the bench, botching his landing and almost sprawling on the floor. He holds a dramatic hand out to Nico when he rights himself. Nico ignores it, rolling his eyes and getting to his feet by himself.

“C’mon,” Will says, grabbing his hand anyway. Sparks shoot up Nico’s arm. “We need to go ask Chiron for the van keys and approximately five hundred dollars.”

———

Three hours is too fucking long to be in a vehicle. Especially when Will is driving, because all he does is play nonstop country music and let everybody cut in front of him.

“I’m driving us back,” Nico informs him as they (finally) get out of the stupid van, snatching the keys from his hands.

Will shrugs. “Sure.”

Nico had expected more of a fight, honestly. But he supposes neither of them are legally allowed to drive, age-wise, and besides, Nico technically has seventy years of driving experience on Will.

(…The Lotus had a racetrack.

Nico was very, very good at it.)

“What is this place, anyway?”

“This place,” Will says grandly, throwing an arm over his shoulders, “is essentially the mortal version of the Labyrinth, minus, you know, the soul-sucking terror.”

“Okay. All that’s telling me is that you have horrible ideas and we should leave immediately.”

Will rolls his eyes. “It’s a furniture store.”

“Well, then —” he punches Will’s shoulder, huffing when he only laughs. “Say that, then!”

“But then what would I do with all the drama in my heart?”

“Choke on it, hopefully!”

Ikea is weird.

Since Will did not tell him what the plan was, he didn’t draw up any plans. Luckily, Will has the dimensions of his cabin — although where he got them, Nico does not ask — so they spend an hour or so in the cafe drawing out a plan.

“You need more than two beds, Neeks.”

“Uh, no I don’t. Unless my father has something very important to announce to me, I need a bed for me, and a bed for Hazel.”

“What if I want to sleep over?”

“You can sleep on the porch.”

Mostly, they wander around the sets. Nico isn’t really sure what he wants his cabin to look like — he has to remind himself that yes, actually, he cares about the space he’ll be spending at least the next three years of his life in. It’s a startling reality, to have control over his own space. He must’ve had some say in his childhood bedroom, but he has no memory of it. He spent the most time in his and Bianca’s room at the Lotus, but that was already furnished when they got there, and besides, it only felt like they were there for less than a year. It always felt like a hotel room, never his room. Westminster was no different. His room in his father’s palace had already been designed, too. In fact he’d based his cabin on it.

What does Nico want his bedroom to look like, without someone else deciding for him?

“I’m not getting a fucking Lightning McQueen bed, Solace.”

“But it would be so sick! And look — it’s got little cubbies!”

“I’m going to ditch you, and shadow travel back to camp,” Nico threatens. “And I have the van keys, so you’ll be stuck here for real.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Will looks at him sternly, hands on hips. “No shadow travelling for you, Death Breath. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fade into nothing on my watch.”

“I’m joking,” Nico says, exasperated, but cannot deny the warmth that fills him up at Will’s concern.

In the end, he decides on a pretty normal bed. It’s bigger than Will’s bunk (“Or anyone else’s bed,” Will grumbles, “you lucky asshole.”), but not ridiculously designed. He picks a similar size for Hazel, only the frame is white, not black, and the bedspread that comes with it is a soft, coral pink that he knows she will like.

“Wanna see if they’ve got a Mythomagic bedspread for yours?” Will teases.

That would be the coolest thing ever in the entire world, Nico thinks, and is so embarrassed that he shoves Will, shrieking, into a giant basket of pillows for making him think it.

“Obviously I don’t want that.”

“You are such a turd! I’ll get you, di Angelo!”

He does not. Nico is way too sneaky for him, and after the fifth time Nico manages to give him the slip, he gives up, sulking in a display for a bedroom of a nine year old girl.

“Fitting,” Nico teases, gesturing to the princess wallpaper. “You drama queen.”

“Buzz off.”

Next, they look for furniture. It’s pretty easy — Nico doesn’t need much, and he’s not too concern with cut or style or anything. He quickly picks out two dressers, one to match Hazel’s bed frame, and one to match his, and then a couple bookshelves.

Four hours into their trip, Nico is exhausted. They have a three hour drive ahead of them, they’ve been out all day, and he wants to go home.

But Will stops him before they go get all the boxes for their furniture.

“This is still pretty bare bones,” he says quietly, then grins at his own accidental pun. Nico shoots him a venomous look, warning him against making it more obvious, and for once he actually listens. “You know, we’re still under budget. We’ve got around $200 left — we can get a motel, stay the night, then we don’t have to drive back right away. And tomorrow, maybe we can check out some other stores, look for smaller decorations and stuff. And if we don’t have to drive back tonight, we’ve maybe got another hour in here, if you wanted to get a couple more pieces.”

Nico opens his mouth to refuse — that’s way too much effort to spend on one person’s cabin, c’mon — then pauses, thinking about it.

Chiron hadn’t even thought about it before handing them the money. Will had barely gotten the words out before he’d started counting out the bills.

“I want you to make a home here,” the centaur had said, touching his hand. There was a pain in his kind eyes, stopping any protests. “I made a mistake, Nico, the first time you came here. In another life, you felt welcome enough to stay the whole time. Take what you need.”

What does he need? What does home look like, to him?

“There was a beanbag chair, in our room at the Lotus,” he says, pushing the words past the lump in his throat. “Me and Bianca used to fight over it.” His voice shakes. A tear gathers at the corner of his eye, and he blinks it back. “It wasn’t real fighting. When I called mercy she’d — scoop me up and throw me on it and squish in after me, and we’d sit together and play video games. Or read. She liked to read.”

Will squeezes his trembling hands. “We can get a beanbag chair.”

“And I — don’t like the blackout curtains. The dark makes me think of — the pit.”

“Okay. They sell lotsa lamps here, too. Might be nicer than the Greek fire.”

Nico nods. There’s — more, far more ideas, now, flooding his brain; Hazel crowding over him on a rug-covered floor, shrieking as he teases her about Frank; a desk tucked in the corner where Will sits, mouthing along to his textbooks as Nico sharpens his sword; Jason running his fingers along rows of books on a big, cluttered shelf; Reyna with her fist curled around her mouth, studying a chess board across from him, hair shining under the natural light from the window.

He can have that. He can have that.

Thankfully, all their stuff fits in the back of the van. Despite his insistence earlier, Nico hands Will the keys, and he drives around until he finds a shitty motel with a vacancy sign flashing out front. He pulls into the farthest corner of the parking lot, killing the engine, then waits.

“You okay?”

Nico shrugs. “I’m…not sure.”

“That’s okay,” Will assures, pressing a fleeting touch to his shoulder. Nico grabs his wrist before he moves away, tugging down his hand and linking their fingers together.

For once, it doesn’t make him feel all sparky. The warmth of Will’s hands is grounding, and so is the gentle squeeze, the smile he feels pointed in his direction.

“C’mon. Let’s check in and sleep, huh?”

Nico’s exhaustion compounds in the walk from the car to the lobby, so by the time Will is speaking quietly to the host, he’s half asleep, leaning on Will’s shoulder. He vaguely feels it when Will shifts his weight, sliding a hand around his waist to hold him better. He blinks and they’re standing in front of a door.

“Almost there, Death Boy,” he murmurs. “Hold on a sec.”

It takes him six separate tries to make the keycard work. He gets huffy when Nico snickers tiredly at him.

“Finally, yeesh.”

He guides Nico in, dropping the backpack he brought somewhere near the door. As soon as the bed is within Nico’s sights, he makes a beeline, barely remembering to shuck his shoes and jacket.

“Please do not sleep in your jeans.”

“Mmmfuck off,” Nico groans, already sliding under the covers. He’ll regret it in the morning, but whatever.

“Goober.” Callused hands brush through his hair, resting lightly on his forehead. “Goodnight, Nico.”

Nico’s out before he can even think to respond.

———

He wakes up, in the middle of the night, scream caught in his throat and heart pounding in his ears. The air smells like smoke and fear. The rushing of the Phlegethon is so loud it’s overpowering.

A loud snore knocks him back to reality.

Crawling desperately towards the source of the sound, he hangs over the bed, eyes adjusting rapidly to the dark to see a curled lump on the floor, head resting on his own hands. A quick glance behind him confirms the other half of the bed has been left untouched.

“Stupid,” he mumbles, tiny smile chasing away the last of his fear.

He tugs the blankets off the mattress, pulls off the two pillows, and joins his dumbass, selfless friend on the floor.

———

“Question,” Will asks, swallowing the last of their disgustingly delicious greasefest of a breakfast. “Were you alive when Walmart was invented?”

“I was alive before your great grandmother was.”

“No, I mean — were you out and kickin’. Have you strolled the endless aisles of corporate soullessness, basking in the wonder of American overconsumerism?”

“…You’re such a weird, particular person.”

Will looks delighted. “You’re a Walmart newbie!”

He pulls into the dead, cracked parking lot way too happily for this hour in the morning. Nico would even say he takes the nearest exit to get to the store gleefully. He is embarrassed for him.

Walmart is…underwhelming.

As stupid as it is, Will had hyped it up so much that Nico was almost a little excited. It just looked like any other basic superstore. Will, for whatever reason, seemed delighted by that fact.

“I do not like this store,” he explained when Nico asked, expression not matching his words, “it just means so very much to me that you are joining me in the misery of having experienced it.”

They spend more time than they mean to just dicking around. At one point they nearly get thrown out by management, because Will finds a pair of NERF guns that some child dug out of its packaging and no words need to be spoken. They gear up and scamper off, hunting each other through fluorescent-lights hell.

“Please just get your shit and leave,” says the very tired looking manager, and they have the good gall to at least appear embarrassed as they mumble, “Yes, ma’am.”

It doesn’t take long when they have their head on straight. They get some fairy lights, a couple cool posters, dorky little trinkets that Nico probably doesn’t need, per se, but what was he supposed to do, leave the little plastic crow skeleton behind?

Unlikely.

With his own money, Will buys several cans of paint and a CD. He explains neither of these purchases. The look on his face gets steadily more infuriating as they make their way through the line, and Nico really, truly considers leaving him behind.

The purchase of the CD becomes very obvious very quickly. Even though Nico is driving, and therefore Nico should get music control, Will pouts and pleads until Nico gives in and lets him play his stupid country album. He justifies his decision in his own brain by noticing the radiance of Will’s smile as he belts out the words, badly, at the top of his lungs. He then spends the rest of the drive back to camp convincing himself not to be embarrassed for having said thoughts.

They get back to camp about lunch time, and Will destroys any attempt for a subtle reentry by whistling the second they cross the property line.

“Austin! Kayla!” he hollers, making Nico jump. “Come help us unload!”

“We coulda done it ourselves,” Nico grumbles.

Will pats his head condescendingly. “It has been twenty-four long, long hours since I’ve bosses my siblings around, Neeks. I need this.”

It does go by quite a bit quicker with Austin and Kayla’s help. Lou Ellen, Cecil, Yan, and Gracie come to help, too, but Gracie’s too little to carry much more than a small desk lamp. Instead, they lay down the biggest box — Nico’s bed frame — and let her climb on top of it, carrying her like she’s a queen atop a throne back to Nico’s cabin. She has the time of her life, giggling to herself like a madwoman.

By the time everything’s unloaded, a couple hours have passed, and the Hades cabin looks like a clusterfuck.

“Maybe you stay in Apollo a couple more nights,” Will suggests.

“Might have to,” Nico agrees. Will looks inordinately pleased with himself.

All in all, it takes about two days to disassemble the old furniture, get rid of it, and start putting together the new stuff. Will helps for most of it, but he has a few shifts in the infirmary, so Nico ends up trying to do a fair bit on his own.

“May the wrath of Zeus come down upon this fucking piece of shit, no good, poorly designed garbage-looking idiotic mother fuc —”

“Maybe time for a break from furniture assembling?” suggests a voice, accompanied by a quick knock in the open door. Will leans on the doorframe, grinning, box propped up on his hip.

“Will, thank the gods,” Nico sighs, relieved. He angrily shakes a tool in his direction. “Allen wrenches are fucking useless. I’m three seconds away from throwing this through the window.”

“Definitely time for a switch, then.”

Will’s smile is wide and crinkles his eyes. He’s got dimples, too, Nico is now noticing, and then very rapidly un-noticing then because gods above that is a dangerous path.

“Did you and Rachel get into another prank war?” he asks, praying the flush on his cheeks goes away.

Will glances down at his paint-spattered clothes. “Nah, this is just my painting outfit. Why ruin more than one set of clothes, you know?” He sets down the box in the middle of the room, then heads for the half-built furniture sprawled all throughout the cabin, tugging it all towards the middle. Nico inches towards the box, curious, and finds it full of dozens of paint cans and brushes, including the ones he got at Walmart.

“I didn’t know you painted.”

He flashes another grin in Nico’s direction. This one has a little mischief to it, a little teasing. His stomach swoops.

“Gotta have at least one artistic talent or my dad would disown me. Help me tape down this tarp, will you?”

It takes them twenty minutes to prep the room, protecting the floor and the furniture. Once everything is ready, Will jogs over to the CD player he gave Nico a few days ago, flicking through the stack of CDs and choosing one at random. Soft opera music begins to float around the cabin.

“Okay,” he begins, clapping his hands, “first we need a base coat. Get the white paint and the rollers.”

It takes them the rest of the day, painting until dinner, then waiting past sunset for it to dry. Nico follows Will back to his cabin that night — he wouldn’t let him sleep around the paint fumes — and the two of them return the next morning, re-donning their paint-spattered clothes. Will braids his hair, this time, tucking the little pigtails behind a kerchief. It makes Nico smile every time he looks at him.

As much as he’s in painting clothes, Nico doesn’t really do much of the painting. He stays in the centre of the room, half assembling furniture, half watching Will bring his walls to life with more colours than he’s ever seen in one place.

Will doesn’t ask what Nico wants him to paint in his murals. Instead, Nico watches as the streets of Venice begin to unfold on one of the walls, bright and blue and exactly as he remembers, even though he knows for a fact Will has never been. The shining fruit of his stepmother’s garden is next, with a notable absence of the pomegranate tree, and then the hills of New Rome, the sunflower field in rural New York Nico used to visit, the Chinese mountainscape from the first big shadow travelling jump he ever made. Even the poplar forests of the Underworld, looking much kinder and livelier in Will’s rendition than in real life, with Mrs. O’Leary and Cerberus chasing each other through the flickering leaves. Beautiful, colourful, breathtaking scenes; Nico’s favourite places, Nico’s many homes.

“I get a lot of dreams,” Will admits, dragging a smear of rich purple near the ceiling. “You’re in a lot of them. These are the places you’re smiling, the most.”

“They’re beautiful, Will.” Nico’s throat is drier than any desert he’s ever been to. “Gods, they’re more beautiful here than they are in real life.”

“Liar,” Will teases, although his smile is shy.

Nico has never seen him smile like that. He’s seen a lot more of Will in these past few days, actually; his softness, his kindness, his love.

He has only knows Will for a little over a month, he thinks. But Will loves him. That much is obvious.

“Hey.”

“Hm?”

His eyes are still trained on his work. He is on his tiptoes on a step stool, one leg extended precariously, tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth. The curve of his brush is careful, meticulous. Only the best for his friends, for Nico. That’s Will.

“Hey,” Nico says again, more urgently. He steps forward, wrapping his fingers around his wrist.

“Just a sec, Neeks, as soon as I’m done we can —”

Nico pulls until he loses his balance, falling into Nico’s arms. He stares into wide, blue blue eyes, for one second, two, then presses their lips together. Will’s squeak of surprise is swallowed by his mouth, hands sliding up his arms to cup his face, tilting his head to the side.

“Oh,” he sighs, eyelashes ticking Nico’s cheeks as they flutter close. “Oh.”

He melts into Nico’s hold. There’s a thunk and a crinkle as his paintbrush falls from his loose fingers, splattering onto the tarp, and paint-wet hands tangle into his hair. Nico finds he doesn’t mind.

“You love me,” he murmurs in between breaths, lips brushing Will’s with every word.

“Yes,” Will breathes. He kisses Nico again, and again. “A lot.”

“Good.” He’s not sure if it’s the paint fumes making him lightheaded, or the odd, slightly uncomfortable position, or the intoxicating, delirious feel of Will’s warm skin. He’s not sure if he cares. “Good.”

It’s not quite an I-love-you-too. The words won’t form on his tongue, so instead he tightens his hold, sending them that way, and presses closer, closer, closer.

Will smiles into the kiss.

He understands just fine.

#i could write an essay about how i think they’re dynamic would be immediately post three days in the infirmary #also i fit SO MANY of my personal headcanons in here hell yeah #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #hoo #heroes of olympus #pjo hoo toa #nico di angelo #will solace #solangelo #nico/will #will/nico #gently falling in love #love #i’m tagging it bc. will loves so clearly in this one it kills me a little #fic #my writing #longpost

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yeyinde · 1 year

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infinity in the palm of your hand (eternity in an hour) | reincarnation AU

Johnny "Soap" MacTavish (OG) x Reader | Johnny "Soap" MacTavish (Remake) x Reader

You're grieving for something, someone—a man with kind eyes and a soft smile like the valley in spring: fresh rain over the boscage in bloom—that you've never met before.

And then you find him.

MATURE | 18+ —TAGS: AU, canon divergence: reincarnation; fluff; tagging as fem!Reader due to usage of "bonnie" (not a name—Reader is not named), and mentions of a dress but no other descriptive imagery is used —WARNINGS: grief, loss, unhealthy coping mechanisms, existential crisis, allusions to smut; cosmic horror (but??? it's a romance????) —WORD COUNT: 11,9K —NOTES: I like the idea of fated pairs, soul mates, but I can't write this concept without somehow diving into the cosmic horror of something, someone, controlling you from behind the scenes. So. Um. Idk what to call this abomination. It leaks horror but is meant to be quite fluffy. It's romance. It's a love story. But it's also kinda eldritch. Oops. This was also originally a request I got back in November (I'm so sorry!). I have since lost the request, but Reincarnation Anon, this is for you!!! 🖤

In Greek, there are two words for time:

Kronos—chronological, the clock: fixed—measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. The world runs on Kronos. On its merciless rigidity, it's apathetic, unending trek forward. It is cruel, sometimes, but it cares little for you, or anyone else who exists inside its unforgiving realm. Time is linear. A steady March.

And then there is Kairos. In its essence, and in utter simplicity: timelessness.

It's often found in grief when the world around you shatters and implodes. When it lapses into pain and agony. Into how and why and—

Nothing makes sense. Nothing matters.

You've never experienced any such loss. Gran, grandad, friends, family—all alive and well. And yet—

You're grieving for something, someone—a man with kind eyes and a soft smile like the valley in spring: fresh rain over the boscage in bloom—that you've never met before.

And then you find him.

Or, rather, he finds you.

(Over and over and over again—)

It starts in university.

Start, of course, is an operative word. It's an incipient event: a slow burn in the back of your head that gets hotter and hotter, but you can't quite discern why. You just feel wrong. Shaken. The foundation in which you walk wobbles. Crumbles.

There is an unseen precipice under your feet covered by cobblestone. You know it's there—are aware of the yawning chasm that wants to swallow you whole, but you don't know where it is.

And then—

There is no phone call, no blunt condolences for any particular loss, just—

A knock on your door. It's just your flatmate, but the rhythm cuts through your head, right down the middle.

Agony. The world around you flips, topples off its axis, and just keeps spinning, spinning, spinning—

It hits you with the force of a tsunami. A deluge of biblical proportions that uprooted everything you'd ever know, casting you out into a frothing abyss, ravaged by mountain-tall waves that left you asunder. Awash in a tumultuous sea.

It would make sense, you suppose, had you lost someone, but you haven't.

The most you've lost was a pet.

And yet—

You sob, scream, and claw at your chest until your skin is torn and shredded, trying futilely to get to where it hurts the most. It's agonising. Brutal. They sedate you—no choice is given when you're so frantic, so desperate. The world slips away. The pain abated.

But it doesn't stop it.

They call it grief, and you don't know why. You haven't lost anyone. Mum, dad, gran, grandad. All alive and well. All there, standing clustered around your hospital bed (admitted when you wouldn't stop screaming) looking quite bewildered by you. By the things you say—missing something, someone, gone, just gone—and the way you're acting.

And it scares you just as much as it does them, but you can't just push it aside, let it go. There is a gaping hole in your chest, one punched straight through your sternum. It's gangrenous, and rotting; the stench makes you dizzy, makes your head spin. Your heart is necrotising between your ribs and spine, but no one knows why. No one understands the agony you feel because everyone is alive.

They all say the same: we don't know. Depression, perhaps. You just need time.

Time does nothing to heal the wound. You can't run from the hurt—it's never-ending—but you get better at hiding it, at dealing with pulpy remains of your still-beating heart that slugs on despite the mouldering wound ripped open in the centre.

They tell you it's Thursday, now.

Before you'd throw something, thrash, and scream yourself hoarse because what does it matter when your heart is dying, decaying inside of your chest.

Now, you just nod. Thursday, is it?

Time doesn't exist to you anymore. It's just an endless stream of days and nights that get easier to withstand as the foreign clock on the wall ticks down the seconds you don't feel.

The world is a murky haze of confusion and pain. You move on only because you have to.

Things—

Well. They don't get better, but they get bearable, and you suppose that's the same thing, isn't it?

And then you dream.

They come in flashes. Snippets. Little moments of a place and time that doesn't exist, that isn't real. This life was not one you lived. The taste of elderberry has never graced your lips, but you think of the sweet, tartness like it's an old comfort.

It makes you ache.

Simplicity bleeds into familiarity into love into—

—you should… you should sit for this—

Crushing heartache. It carries the flavour of gunpowder, and is soaked in charcoal; the soot stains the tips of your fingers when you reach out, curling them in the rough lapels of a gunmetal grey jacket still carrying the scent of ichor, and loss.

—i… i can't promise you forever, but i can promise you now—

You dream of a man. Of hands on your body. Eyes gazing at you—an alluvial fan in hazel, green, and gold; the shadows cast in the shallow valleys make you yearn for something.

Something, something—

You wake up, hand to your splitting chest as the agony rips it into pieces. Heartache, grief. It drapes itself over you like a storm cloud. Looming there, ever-present, and ready to chisel open a deluge of pain so visceral you weep. And weep. And—

Your pillow is wet. Nose stuffed, eyes gritty. You've been crying, sobbing, in your sleep again.

It's a cycle. Memories flood your head until it's splitting apart at the seams, making room for that life it wants to force you to remember, acknowledge, and pretend exists, and one you're in now.

It breaks something inside of you. Cracks the levee. In the midst of crumbling concrete, and a roaring deluge, you hear a voice.

(You stare at the bottles lining the shelves in your vanity, and tell no one.)

—excuse me? You dropped this—

HERE

There is a tavern on High Street.

It's nothing special on its own. Just a building, just a pub. You pass it twice a day on your commute to work, and it should be background noise. A blur of scenery and objects as you stroll through the streets. A melding of the world around you, an inconsequential smear of cobblestone and brick.

And yet—

Your eyes keep finding it, seeking it out. It's involuntary. Automatic. You pass the grocer and the pharmacy, head angled down toward the grey stone below, and then, like an unignorable force, a gravitational pull, your head lifts. The fairy lights are strewn around the outside coruscate in the gloom. You nearly trip.

It's strange. Odd.

It's just a building. Just a tavern.

—got some of the best brews in town—

But you remember it. Are familiar with it in a way that makes absolutely no sense. You've never gone inside, never heard anyone speak about it. It's a building on a street of many. Ordinary. Plain. Nothing about this place should stand out to you. It isn't eye-catching or garish. It's—

—cosy little spot—

It's an anomaly. Much like—

Well. Much like everything in your life.

There is a gnawing in the pit of your stomach, one that's so achingly familiar that your head swims from deja vu that shouldn't exist. It fits inside like an augur. A portant.

How can the unknown be a comfort to you? How can it blister your heart with such ferocity that you find yourself pawing at your face to stem the deluge of tears that cascade down your cheeks in rivets?

Whatever it is, it's calamitous and entirely unignorable.

Your life is asunder, in shambles because of it yet each hiss in your ear addles your thoughts until you become overwhelmed by it all. Until the echoes that tell you to wander down a random side street, sign a lease for an apartment you can't afford, to leave the safety of your home country, and—

On a whim, you packed your things up on the behest of that strange, Eldridge feeling eating you alive that made you cut ties with your old, peaceful life, and book the first plane ticket to Elgin. No plan, no money.

(You'd call it an afflatus had it not been so drenched in the unknown.)

It's paradoxical: you cry when you see that stupid church in the distance, your feet drag you to places you've never been before, and now.

Now:

You can't stop staring at a nondescript pub in a sea of many.

Ignore it. Leave it. You take another route, head down, hands shoved deep in the pockets of your jacket to keep them from trembling. It'll pass. It'll go away.

It doesn't.

It pools in the pit of your stomach, noxious and rotten, until you wake up drenched in sweat, hands grasping for a phantom who no longer exists—

—wanna come with me?—

You break on Saturday.

—i like when you wear that dress—

You wear it, and hate yourself a little bit for it. It's stupid, and out of place, but you do it, anyway.

—booth in the back is where i always sit, want to come join me—

The inside of the tavern is just the same as you remembered it—

No. No.

You've never been here before.

You smell malt in the air; the same amber that spumes in your veins. You dance in circles between the tables, giggling at the people who smear by in a haze of gold and red.

A hand reaches, snags your waist. "Where are you going, pretty thing? Wanna come sit with us?"

It makes you laugh, and laugh, and—

"There a problem?" Heat against your bare back. Ironclad arms around your middle. His voice is a rumble. A thunderclap. "She's with me. Go on now. Get."

You pull away from him, smirking, and—

The air is punched from your lungs. Longing sits in your throat, heavy and thick. It aches. God, it aches. A phantom pain that never quite dissipates. A raw wound left to fester; exposed and open to the elements. It never heals. Never scabs. It oozes grief and headache into your bloodstream and makes you feel lost. Dazed. Confused.

It's silly.

Stupid.

The warm blends of burnt umber and gold make you tremble. Everything inside is—familiar, in all the ways it shouldn't be.

You can't be here. Can't—

Something quivers inside of you. The sting of a guitar being plunked by indelicate hands. It snaps, breaks. You turn, eyes wild, wide—

—hey, where are you—

"...goin'—?"

A chest. Warm. Familiar.

Your neck aches when you jerk your chin up, hands beaded against the hard, firm flesh of a stranger who feels all too familiar, too—

Hazel. A boscage in spring. Warm milk—

"Honey…"

It's out before you can stop it.

Green and golden widen until they're drowning in a sea of arsenic white. An island of bloom, spring, carved in the middle of a barren, icy land. Lids fall, lashes dust across the shadows of the valley smeared beneath the red seal of his lower lash line.

Your breath catches when they slide open, a slow crawl over a varicoloured plume of witch elm and wheat.

—dark eyes, a furrowed brow, long nose, a dusting of charcoal stubble along his cheeks and jaw, and full pink lips—

No. No.

It's different. This isn't the man who haunts your dreams and whispers sweet nothings into your ear. This is not the cut of a man who once curled his fingers over your hips, lips glued to your pulse as he spent himself inside of you—

Heat sears your cheeks.

His mouth opens, and closes. Opens again. No words spill out. His confusion is an oppressive silence.

You swallow down the bitter tang of panic that pools on your tongue, nails digging into the soft fabric of his shirt.

This isn't that man.

He just—

"Sorry," you think you say, but it's all a blur. There was a blue ravine in his eyes, one with shallow shores, and crystalline waves that rippled with the breeze. You're sinking in those waters, now. Dragged down to the murky depths of blue, blue, blue that once made you see samsara with just the brush of his lips. Everything sounds distorted. Hollow.

—you make me crazy. make me want things i shouldn't. Riley thinks i'm whipped. kinda agree with him, but i can't let you go. i can't get you outta my head, and i don't want to—

"Sorry—," you choke, the words a crumpled piece of paper lodged in your throat. Papier-mache seals over your trachea.

You push away from him, stumbling out of this paroxysm. Flames lick at your heels, carrying you further from the laps of blue that flicker over beige.

He chases after you. A warm hand around your wrist stops you on the corner outside of a pharmacy. The streets are dusted in white. It trickles from the sky in a thick hail of cosmic dust.

His breath plumes in front of him when he breathes, pure white tendrils ghosting into the midnight blue silk that covers the town.

"Hey, you alright? Can I—call someone for you, or—"

"No." You gasp, shaking your head so fast, you're nearly sick with it.

"Hey, hey." His hand moves, perches itself against your cheek, eyes brimming in the flushed lamp overhead. His brow is drenched with concern. With confusion. And anger. Anger—why, why—

"Did someone drug you? Did you drink anythin'?"

It rips a bark of laughter from your chest. "Drugs? No. I'm just—"

Spiralling.

You make a vague motion with your wrist, and hope it's enough to convey the absolute travesty of your life. It meets the mark.

The divot in his forehead softens, eyes creasing in the corners. Full pink lips knot to the side. Something passes his expression that looks a little too much like understanding to ever sit well in the pit of your stomach.

You swallow down the acrid residuum of panic, and nod. Why—who knows. It just feels appropriate.

"I need to go—"

"—I like your dress."

The words tumble over each other, barely coherent amid the amalgamated syllables, but ring with distinct clarity in your head. Your dress. Your brows knot, eyes dropping to the stupid little thing you'd picked out in a shop you had no business being inside. Led by the nose. A puppet on strings.

You scoff. "I hate it."

You don't. You'd have picked it out yourself if you had that funny little thing called freewill; that precious little something you'd left behind in a dorm on a university campus you haven't thought of in years.

"It's, ahh—," he rubs the back of his neck, eyes skirting toward the bar you fled from. "It's pretty."

Pretty.

"Oh…," you say, quite intelligently. "You can have it if you want."

It's only when his brows buoy to his hairline do you realise the innuendo within that.

The fire inside dies. Doused with the waters of Acheron.

"Sorry—"

"—'dunno if it'd look as good on me as it does you, bonnie."

Bonnie. Your veins crackle with ice. Bonnie.

"What—what did you call me—?"

He blinks. "Oh, it's not—," his hand slides away from his neck, scrubbing over the stubble on his jaw. He looks bashful, almost. The man in your dreams is—

Reserved. Cool waters. A rock.

"It's just a nickname, it's not—it's not anythin' weird, I promise."

A nickname. You should have known that, you suppose; but like many things, it slips, silken and liquid, through the cracks wrought by paradox.

"Right." Your nails dig into your palms, cutting the flesh until your fingers puddle with something warm, wet. Tacky. The breath you suck in between clenched teeth is a sharp hiss. "I should go."

"Ah, yeah," his brows tighten again, jaw ticking. He looks uncomfortable, unsure. Concerned. His arms come up, folding over his broad chest. And that—

That is familiar.

You swallow down mildew and honeysuckle. Heart lurching in your chest, a painful crescendo that echoes to the whispered beat of soft words in your head.

—you should stay, bonnie. stay with me—

"Can I at least make sure you get home safe?"

You can't. You can't—

There is a tavern on High Street that you've been to before in a dream, where you are taken to by a man with a distance in the crook of his smile; a degree of separation that makes you yearn. It pulled you in, gravity and magnetism and that primal something that they often talk about in wordy biology papers you can't understand.

Maybe it's the chemical slurry in your head—dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin—all mixing together, and polluting your rationale, but it made a shade of roseate fall over your eyes; veiled like a Magellanic cloud. Through the startling nebulae and cosmic radiation, he loomed. Your fingers reached out, latching on to him, and you pulled him into your orbit.

The reservations slipped, dulled by the way you fit against him. A missing piece. A complimentary artefact. His edges softened until he looked at you with nothing but warmth, affection.

And then—

Then:

Three knocks in halted succession. Military precision. Boom, boom, boom.

A man stood before you, achingly familiar in his mutton chops and hat. The gleam of his metals—chest candy—caught in the setting sun. Ochre, gold. You think of him, and you smile. Was smiling when you peeled back the curtain to greet him.

It wavers. Your heart aches for that person standing in the doorway; you from a dream.

It drags in slow motion. He takes his hat off, and cups it on his chest.

—look, i don't… i don't know how to tell you this—

Then—

"—don't." The word startles you as much as they do him. You baulk. "Just… no thank you."

Something rings in the cognitive dissonance that shrouds you.

It's your turn to walk away.

And so, you do.

(He doesn't follow. You don't know why you expected him to.)

—be patient with me, Bonnie. my job is my life. my everything, but you–you're my—

It doesn't rain—a rarity in Elgin—but the scent of wet soil, petrichor, clings to the air.

It isn't raining, but it feels like it should.

You don't expect to see him again.

And why would you? There are so many people in Elgin, so many men. The chances of finding him again—shaggy mohawk; kind, amber eyes—were nearly impossible. Infinitesimal, really.

So, you push him to the far reaches of your mind, and try not to dwell on the stranger that smells so strongly of coumarin that your head still feels dizzy from the scent of golden wheat fields in the spring and sycamore when you breathe in some mornings.

Out of sight, out of mind.

A familiar stranger in a foreign land.

But you should have known better than to expect anything in this strange purgatory you’ve slipped inside where dreams are sometimes a reality, and you can’t stop comparing a hazy figure in your mind, someone you might have loved in a distant life you have no memory of, to a stranger who slots himself into your path like he was meant to be there all along.

It starts three days later.

You tuck a book under your arm, and walk the unfamiliar path to a small cafe you’ve never dreamed of, have no lingering sense of recognition in the small building.

Safe, you think.

And then—

Blooming honeysuckle. The heady scent of coumarin. Salt, amber.

He crashes into your life again, and again, always with the same expression of happy surprise when recognition bleeds into wheat-tinged eyes.

He offers a wide smile, a little wave, and seems unbothered by a dizzying sense of unease that sweeps through each uncanny meeting, each strange divergence of paths always, always, leading to each other.

In the produce section of the grocery store halfway across town, he holds an unripened apricot and grins at you over the yellow sign above (30% off!). The colourful anchor in Cooper Park, where he stands with his hands in his pockets, eyes listing toward the swans in the background, drifting idly over the dark water. At the counter in a Turkish restaurant, laughing at something the waiter says as he takes his bag of takeout.

You turn down a random sidestreet, trying to navigate the tight, claustrophobic streets of Elgin, and he's there, suddenly, at the end. Legs thrown over the seat of a sleek motorcycle, fingers toying with the clasp of his helmet. Wander into a shop, and he's already sat at the table. Reach for a carton of eggs in Tesco's and his hand bumps against yours as he tries to grasp the same.

You hear his voice crackling through the concrete. A whisper in the back of your head. The grit, the cadence, is so different from the man you dreamed about, the hazy spectre who haunts you, that you know, instantly, that it's him. The man whose only resemblance to the ghost latching onto you is his eyes, the hairstyle. The scent. The familiarity blooms in his proximity. Two strangers sharing the same essence of a soul.

He drives past you on his motorcycle, wanders down the same alleyway, boards the same train, and gets off at the same station.

A living phantom.

It's always the same, too. His eyes always shift, somehow catching yours. Easily, effortlessly, finding you even in the midst of a crowded shop, a bustling park, or a loud eatery.

Each time, you run. And keep running.

And then once, you catch him.

He leans with his forearm resting on the railing of a mezzanine at dusk. His wrist resting on the iron, fingers gripping the nozzle of a lagger that dangles over the edge.

Behind him, music spills out from inside the flat. French doors spread wide open, leaking the whisper of a party into the warm air.

No one joins him. He doesn't look back.

His chin is pointed up toward the varicoloured sky streaked with lavender and pink and blood orange. Eyes glowing brightly in the darkness. A field of wheat against the midnight blue gloom of an approaching storm.

It's mesmerising.

Despite the urge to run, you stop. Can't help yourself, really. Not when your heart cracks at the expression on his face, eyes drawn tight, brows pinched. Full of—

Longing.

Like a magnet, then, his gaze drops to the ground where you stand, clutching your book so hard, your joints ache.

His hand lifts, fingers still curled in a loose fist, and he gives you a lazy wave from above, lips pulling back into that same wide, infectious, grin. Happy—for some inexplicable reason—to see you, his own little poltergeist.

You hesitate for a moment, burning the image of him in your retinas where he'll stay, a permanent scar, in the black puddles for you to see again when you close your eyes, or look into a mirror. Another ghost.

And then you turn. Run.

(He doesn't try to stop you. He never does.)

It is almost clockwork.

The same soft hazel eyes creased lightly in the corners. Broad shoulders are hunched as he gazes down at his phone resting on the countertop. His brows are furrowed today. Irritation bleeds in the crevasse.

Your fingers itch. You want to smooth it out.

(It doesn't surprise you that you can feel the phantom warmth of his finger under your flesh.)

It's strange. All of this is. Paradoxical, really.

You know him. You don't. You've never met him before. You know he'd taste of honeysuckle.

There is a war in your mind. A long, drawn-out battle.

(No victor in the carnage.)

You should walk away, leave, like all the times before when you'd spotted him, and ran, but:

Frozen. Paralysed.

You can't move. Can't—

—maybe, you're just tired of running—

—maybe, i'm just waiting for you to catch up—

His head lifts, and he catches sight of you before you can run. Hazel flashes in recognition. Spotted, you think; but it doesn't matter, it doesn't.

He isn't waiting for you—

His chin lifts, a smile crooking on the corner of his mouth.

—you'll be waiting a long time, Bonnie—

You want to run, but you can't. Can't. All you can do is watch as he slides out of the booth, hands shoved into his pockets, and makes his way to you. Tucked into the corner near the counter, away from everyone, everything, but he still spotted you. Still noticed. Still—

"Hi," he greets, low and cautious, like he's trying his best not to startle you. His eyes crinkle. "Didn't expect t'see you again."

You shouldn't be here. "Yeah," you say, instead, huffing. "I, uh… life is pretty funny that way, isn't it?"

His brow furrows together at your words, eyes darkening with something you can't place. An unknowable emotion, hidden from your prying eyes. You think of him, then, and see the similarities you tried so desperately to ignore each time you saw him. Each time you ran.

"Aye, it does."

You should leave him here. Turn around, flee. Forget this place, this microcosm that blooms, and spreads over parts of Elgin you know so intimately; sure, somehow, that you'll find your fingerprints smeared across the ruins despite never having been there before.

Little pieces of yourself. Shedded skin, hope, dismay, peace. Longing. Laughter. It echoes through the tight webs of cobblestone buildings, bouncing playfully off of the pilasters and balustrades, the wrought iron fences, the fanlights, forever embedded in the grout.

If you go there now, in that beautiful divisional line between new Georgian and old Baronial, you'll hear it whispering through the alcoves, a tantalising sound that rents the air in two.

But it shouldn't. Can't.

You've never been there, or here, or anywhere else that wasn't the winding path from your rented flat to the tavern, and the place you eked out from stone to support the vagary of moving to a whole new place for a dream. A feeling.

And yet—

You taste malt in the air. Smell the barley, the sickly sweet scent of wet dirt on the slick pavement.

It's familiar in your olfactory senses. Petrichor. Loam. Humus. It congeals in the slick mortar, clinging to the moss that weaves over the old concrete.

If you looked down, you'd find a little weed growing through a crack beneath your feet, and so, you fix your eyes up, ahead, and try not to weep when the swooping sense of deja vu nearly knocks you off your feet.

But the only thing ahead of you is him. Expectant, curious. He looks at you like he knows you, like he can peel back the skittish layers that cling to your skin until you're shiny and new again.

It's too much. Intense. Hazel.

Your gaze drops, fixed on the rounded points of your shoes. There is no pavement beneath your feet—just scuffed linoleum.

"Do I, uh, know you from somewhere?"

His voice carries that same heft, that same weight, as the look in his eyes. A strange approximation of wariness and steeled scepticism, blanketed together by intrigue. Curiosity. Concern.

"No."

It sounds uncertain. A white lie that crackles in the air between you, nestled amid the sound of chatter muted in the background, as if someone turned the radio on in a different room. Everything seems to contort, and shift around you when he's near.

A little microcosm eked out inside a cafe you've never been to but know, innately, what you'd order, and what you would recommend.

"Well," he dips his head like he's trying to catch your eye, and when you lift your chin, the flash of teeth nearly makes your knees buckle. He's softer when he smiles. "How 'bout lettin' me get t'know you then?"

It's a bad idea etched into the cold marble of a headstone.

Your mouth opens, but the word that chews through your teeth isn't no, but yes.

And fuck—

Something in his gaze shifts. Noctilucent eyes widen, staring down at you like he somehow didn't expect a yes at all, and was bracing for the harsh impact of no.

"Well—" he starts, but the words fall into ash when you duck your head to avoid the crevasse of hazel washed out in flushed gold. "What's your number? I'll call you when m'free next, and we can—"

"Sure," you cut in, hand sliding into your pocket. The cold metal of your phone burns the tips of your fingers when you pull it out. It feels a little bit like a mistake when you hand it over, but he says nothing about the way your hand shakes when he takes it from you.

His brows draw together in a childish concentration as he taps away at the screen. The artificial light, dimmed as low as possible, brightens the craggy ravines that cut across an emerald tinged boscage; sunlight splitting a lush valley of yellow and green. His puckered lips, the flash of a deep red tongue swiping across his sun-chapped mouth, seems designed to appeal to your baser desires. The one that knows how he'd taste if you pressed you let your tongue grace the tip of his, and can feel the weight of his hands on your flesh.

He'd hold your hips like he was anchoring you to the earth: tight, warm, and a little bit desperate as he devoured you whole.

You shiver, and try to ignore the way his pupils bloom into pits of black eclipsing lightened hazel when his gaze settles, hot and heavy, at the brief brush of skin when you reach for your phone.

"I'll call you," he says, low and strained, like he was choking on the words he wanted to say. "I'll call you as soon as I can, bonnie."

You nod. It's all you can offer with your heart scrambling up your throat, pulsing furiously against your trachea.

His nails scrape the skin of your palm when he curls his fingers into a fist, and pulls away.

"I'll see you around."

It's not a choice, you want to say. You nod instead. Choke out an equally strained, yeah, and fight the urge to follow him when he finally pulls away.

"Are you ready to order?"

The world bursts back into sound, colour. You blink rapidly against the light that seems harsher now than that it did when he was blocking out the sun.

"Uh, yeah—"

The taste of freshly poured coffee blooms on your tastebuds.

You order tea instead.

(It tastes like defeat.)

You only stop running when you can't anymore. When the murmuration in your head turns into screams, and the white-hot agony of grief, of yearning, threatens to make your knees buckle and your bruised heart give.

You stop, letting him finally catch up.

(Somehow, somehow, you feel lost and found at the same time.)

His name is Johnny MacTavish. He tells you this over dinner at some upscale restaurant that feels out of place on the old side of Elgin where the walls bleed history, and stink of old bones, and funeral dirt.

Over a steaming dish of shrimp scampi and burgundy wine that makes your head spin and belly churn, you wonder why it doesn't feel new to you when he murmurs it.

(A bit late, you find, since you've been texting rather infrequently since you gave him your number three days ago.)

Names never mentioned. Somehow, they didn't have to be. Until now. Until there was emptiness at the end of his question when he posed it, hazel eyes bright and blooming under the hushed yellow glare of the coruscating chandelier hanging above your heads.

It feels a touch too late when you share your names over dinner despite already knowing he's in the military—opinions clenched between aching teeth and a strained smile that doesn't reach your eyes—and that he normally adorns a Mohawk when he's on missions, but grows it out, rather haphazardly, when he's home.

Everything between you and him seems to happen in reverse: fears, wants, and worries are known before his given name; the touch of his skin on yours, the taste of his lips, the brush of his tongue, the weight of his palms holding your hips as he buries himself as deep as he can go in a haunting sequence of memories that bare their teeth at the starkness of reality holding them at bay. All of this before you've ever even touched him with your bare hands.

There's a strange listlessness that envelopes you—a tangled web that spools around you, trapping you in this realm of hypnagogia. The lines between reality and dream blur until they're indistinguishable from each other. Knotted threads married together. Parallel. Concurrent. Where one begins and the other ends is as lost to you as the unfathomable uncertainty of the unknown universe.

It's not meant to be this way, you think, watching as he feigns not knowing the name that slips between your numbed lips in the same manner you had only moments ago. Traps surprise in the tilt of his chin, but the display is largely done out of some unspoken agreement that this paradox does exist, and the emotion is fleeting. Temporal. He cloves it down the middle, and discards the excess as soon as you look away.

(Your name fits in his mouth better than it ever did your own, like it was made for his mouth, preordained to play with the soft coil of his tongue.)

He knows more than he lets on, but you don't begrudge him his secrets—not when you have to turn your gaze back to the curled shrimp on your plate to avoid reminding him he prefers fish over crustaceans when he makes a face at the steamed scallops, and should have ordered the Maple Crusted Salmon instead.

Like he didn't before, in a life you've never lived. In a place that mirrors this world.

(It isn't something you should know, but you do. You do.)

You know more than that, too: whispers late at night when he couldn't sleep—internal clock still stuck halfway around the world—and urges you into playing a dangerous game of asking questions of each other when pieces of truth buoy in the dark like bobbing for poisoned apples in a barrel.

You have to erase the words when you type them out, preemptively answering questions he'd never asked yet, and filling in the blanks to ones you posed yourself.

Odd, you think. Strange, and weird, and macabre in that way that only deja vu gnarling between the broken crevasse of your grey matter can imbue.

People don't just—

Know each other.

And yet—

"They call me—"

"Soap."

Your eyes snap up. A misstep. A grievous one. You've both been content to ignore this paradoxical magnetism that draws you together like eager poles, unable to stay away (not by choice or freewill, but some design that has no place in rigid structures of reality), and you broke it. Trampled over the unspoken rule left to linger in the foreground while you navigated around it like some misshapen elephant in the way.

He tries to hide the suspicion, the surprise, but it falls between the empty space of his plate (food he only ordered because he's never been here before despite the familiarity that bleeds from the walls like condensation in June) and the ledge. A proverbial precipice that you leaped down; the steep incline filled with detritus and broken shale sharp enough to carve skin, muscles, from shattered bone.

You want to swallow the words down, but they sit—innocuous and damning—between the salt and pepper shakers where his hand twitches, curls into a tight fist, knuckles bleaching under the strain of reeling himself in. Joints, cartilage, bulging through translucent skin. Reddened around the angry peaks of distrust and wariness; a summit you're not sure how to descend from now that you've crossed the arching tops.

(Stuck, forever, at the peak.)

"How—" his voice is gravel, lavascape. Jagged rocks. Lakes of sulphuric acid. "How did you know that?"

His accent thickens when he's angry. You wonder if he knows that.

"I—"

Excuses float like moots in front of you. You reach out, grasping for one, but it dances away in the turbulent wake you leave behind. You bite your tongue until it tastes of oxidised pennies, and then shrug. Nonchalant. Indifferent. Fear curls in your gut. Military, right. You wonder what you'll say if they arrest you for treachery. That you dreamed about him? Stupid. Stupid.

"You told me," you murmur, eyes downcast and heavy, fixed on the bloody cup of wine you don't like, and trying to find solace in your downfall. "I think. I just remembered it from somewhere."

It makes no sense, and the weak explanation would crumple like damp papier-mâché if he pressed, even just slightly, against it. A single touch, and the house of cards you built from the ground up on nonsensical lies will come crashing down around you.

He shouldn't entertain it. Shouldn't let it go.

"Yeah." But he does. "I must'a, huh?"

When you look up, you catch keen hazel eyes, sharp and pointed like the curved talons of a hawk. Johnny MacTavish is many things, you learn, but stupid, guileful, naïve is none of them.

"Yeah," you echo hollowly, and give another shrug. "Guess so. It's, ah, an interesting nickname."

The clumsy barb seems to break the surmounting tension, and the pieces fall around you like poisoned raindrops, staining your skin.

A reminder, then, when it crawls down your throat, that this balancing act can't last forever. That, eventually, your excuses will run dry. Empty. They'll be picked at and poked until they burst like a waterlogged, bloated corpse drifting aimlessly down the Nile.

"Not the only thing that's interesting about me, bonnie," he says in a way that bleeds boyish charm, but his grin is wide, wild, and untamed. White teeth, sharp canines. You think of a wily fox on the prowl, and reach, reflexively, for the glass of wine, swallowing it down like a lifeline. "But I'm beginnin' t'think y'know that already, don't ye?"

It's a threat. A warning.

You stare down in the half-empty glass of burgundy, the same colour red as the papercut on your index finger, and try to read the beads of crimson that run down the glass in a bloodied rivulet as if the answer could be found somewhere in the liquid.

(Crystal Ball. Crystal glass. It's all the same, isn't it?)

"Not really," is what you eventually settle for, hedging through the murk that swims before you, an unsettling fen of unknowns and praeternatural happenings that you no longer than chalk up to happenstance.

Kismet.

Horror.

Some cosmic merging of the two.

It's all—

Absurd.

And when you politely whisper to him that he should have gotten the salmon, you can't help but notice the ravines in his eyes widen slightly, the chasm growing and gaping, and taking on new shapes in the boscage that blooms like a familiar friend.

(Kismet, indeed.)

He tries to pretend he doesn't know what the maple salmon tastes like, but slips up when the waiter passes by, and says it was good the last time.

You fight the urge to chew on your glass like rock candies between your teeth.

He stands with his hands in his pocket, rocking back and forth. The uncertainty in his brow is swallowed by the tendrils of pleased excitement that knot over his expression, unable to hide his glee when the hazel of his eyes glow brighter than the sun.

Isn't this strange, you ache to say, words painted with the aftertaste of brine—sea, salt, and sand that are so uniquely him—but they, too, are swallowed down.

The urge to lacerate the bubbles of complacency, feigned normalcy, are eclipsed by the raw shock of seeing him happy. Of wanting to make him happy. This stranger in a strange land.

So, you offer some facsimile of a smile when he asks, words pushed out through a wide grin; infectious, if you had a good time.

"Yeah," you say, and know that this word, this blase affirmative is quickly becoming your faultline through this mess. The thread keeping you sane, keeping you steady.

It's at the curve of the word when everything else in the world is devoured by the shadow cast under his magnetic glow. The bright yawn of the sun in shades of white teeth catching on some ephemeral magic still dancing within the aether. Atoms spark.

You try to run from it, ignore it, but your core teeters on the edge of instability. You think of neurons. Protons. Criticality. Something inside of you heats to almost half of the degree of the sun, sweltering and unrelenting. Pulsing, blue-hot.

"That's good," he husks, eyes lidded and heavy. "I did, too. Whaddya think about doin' it again w'me?"

It blooms. A great, scorching mushroom cloud plumes in midnight black in the milky white of your eyes.

You shuffle through the darkness, the artificial, comic night, and try to pat at the walls until you find something familiar in terror, the gnawing sense of loss that permeates through your pericardium, thrumming like a mourning toll.

Sightless, you nod. "I'd love to."

And you mean it, too.

(Damn you. Damn you—)

Despite that tangled web that snakes around your jugular, twinning threads between the two of you, Johnny MacTavish is relentless in his pursuit.

Where someone else might have shivered at the ghosts that brim in the tenebrous of your pupils, lurking in the untouched corners where your fingerprints stain the sediment, he lingers. Stays. Fixes himself in your path, and refuses to acquiesce to the whims of the world that keep stringing you along like reluctant puppets to some unseen, unknown marionette.

It's almost charming in its own right, and really—when has a man fought so hard just to simply coexist in the space you deign yours? When has he torn nails from their beds, clawing at the walls that stand tall and proud, a protective tower of ashlar and dread around you until it starts to give. Until the stone crumbles away under his bloodied fingers.

But as potent as his statement is, it gnarls inside your stomach like a poisoned seed.

Bending to the demands of whatever this paradoxical realm goes against every fibre of your common sense that you recoil, almost, for just allowing him the scant space he occupies in your proximity.

It's a deranged pantomime with some unseen force at the helm, conducting the madness with fingers drenched in whimsy and fate. Notched between its knuckles is the mockery of freewill and choice as it pulls you around a soundstage set in a place you've never been. It makes you dance. Amused god, eldritch horror. It takes pleasure in your discomfort, and glee in your fickle humanity. Weaving webs of tangled kismet until the silken threads are pulled taut and there is no more room, not a single atom, between your body and his.

A nameless, faceless playwright with you as its shining star.

Hapless leads stuck in an unending beat, a cantastoria, waiting for the shoe, the curtain, or anagnorisis to drop.

You want to run again, but your feet are glued to the floor. Tangled in webs, threads of abstract concepts your mind threatens to come undone at the mere thought of. A cosmic sense of surrealism: crushing helplessness.

This is horrific and terrific in equal measure, but the ache, the agony, of distance hurts more. And so, you stay. Watch as the curtain shudders over his eyes. As the etchings of complacency seem to gnarl in the tussock that line the expansive valley. He looks at you and doesn't see the awful truth nestled in the scant distance between your flesh, unable to be apart for too long. He sees you, somehow, and for him, that's enough. Enough.

Johnny smiles at you, seemingly unbothered by the precariousness of this dance you're caught inside. In this strange equinox where you can answer questions he hasn't asked, and know things he hasn't said. Where you catch yourself leaning closer, starved for a touch you haven't forgotten despite never experiencing yourself.

He's content, then, chasing the whims of a ghost, reaching for a fantastical dream in the head of another.

But as content as he is, Johnny MacTavish is a hard man to catch, you think, noting the distance in his eyes, the arm's length of space he keeps between the version of him not haunted by the wants of ghosts, but such an easy man to love. To fall for.

He balms the panic—that world-ending sense of uncertainty that nips at your heels—and makes you forget, sometimes, that there is more to him, and more to you, than anyone else could ever know.

He's kind. Charming.

A little space inside of your head is eked out just for him, and you find yourself hating that person for falling for some version of him first. Loathe them just a little bit more with each effortless grin he sends your way for tainting the experience of knowing him yourself.

But you wonder, when he turns away, hiding the shadows in his eyes, and the pinch in his brow, if you really, truly know him.

Or if the face he's wearing belongs to a phantom.

The dance continues.

Your feet move to a soundless beat, steps preordained in a sequence lived world's ago. Nothing can feel surprising when you know a man so intimately without more than a touch, when you feel the burn of winter's chill in the middle of summer, and long so desperately for someone you just met.

Nothing is new, and yet everything is novice. A paradox awakening with each gravitational pull to him, this man who looks only vaguely like the phantom who lives in your head, and tastes of longevity between your teeth.

An arranged romance. Possession by ghosts who want to drive your bodies until they can live again, and love in tandem, vicariously through your living flesh.

It makes sense to you, then, to call for an exorcism.

(It just surprises you that Johnny does it first.)

Johnny has his secrets, just like you have yours. A small morsel of agency after autonomy has been stripped from the bone.

You see the shadows of those hidden things etched in the topography of his valley-filled gaze, crevasses and canyons that pitch themselves in the tenebrous, uncrossable to even you.

He reaches for you through the murk, fingers threading through your own, hands trembling with the shock, the electric current that sizzles through your blood at the brush of bare skin against quivering flesh. His hands are rough—worker's hands—and chock full of callouses and cuts, multitudes of scar tissue packed tight on top of each other, a thick layer of a life you will never know. Don't want to know.

He seems settled when you touch, finally, thumb brushing your skittish pulse point as if he could somehow calm the acrid panic in your chest.

(And damn him, damn this, he does. He does—)

Magnets fixed together, locked tight. You feel like a conduit to his frenzy, his hidden mania, and feed your own through the line, the red string that ensnares you both in a tangled web, until it's buzzing with shared panic and serenity and joy and helplessness. A feedback loop of emotions too extreme, too flighty, to catch. They run in droves along the lines, weaving into your skin, your chest, your head, and then pulling away to do the same to him.

His eyes are heavier than steel when he gazes at you, expression caught between relief and longing and fear and—

Something, something. You can't pick it apart. Can't undo the tight knot until it spools, open and known, in the palm of your hands. Some unseen distance. It feels like standing at the highest peak of the valley and trying to make sense of the men in the tussock who look like mere ants from this high above.

Is it happiness, you wonder.

(Or maybe it's the same reluctance that wraps it's boney, gnarled fingers around your neck—)

It becomes too much. Too soon, too sudden. In the back of your head, you see images and flashes of a life not yet lived, a world still taking shape. You see him and you and a clock above some blue, broken bed. You see his smile, wide and elated, caught on the dawning sun spilling from the open curtains before it disappears under the covers, taking your laughter with it, stuck between his teeth.

You see the past, the present.

And your future.

Cold. Barren. Three sharp knocks echo in the emptiness of your head. A man, a familiar stranger. You don't know him. You'd die for him. He rents the air in two. Your world in cloves. They fall to the ground, leaving you stranded and alone in the middle.

Future. There's no future.

Your chest twists. You let go of his hand and find bloody crescent moons embedded in a ring along his flesh, knuckles whitening under your harsh grip. He said nothing about the pain. The flicker of worry across his face is genuine, you think. Real. Current.

You smell funeral dirt in your nose. The mud is called under your nails.

You pull away. He lets you go.

"I, uh," he breaks off into a soft huff, injured hand lifting to scratch at the back of his shorn nape. His eyes slide away from yours, listing seaward. Avoidance undercuts the arch in his brow, the sheepishness in his mien. It's his turn to run, you realise.

"Glad I met you," he says instead, and it's a confession and a curse.

A bonfire burns in the river that runs through the valleys in his eyes. It's pitched on the sandy shore: an ochre flicker in the cobalt hue that saturates the land. You see the dark peaks of the rolling hills in the distance, black shapes in draped blue.

The river is calm. The fire burns a smear of orange across the tranquil surface, meeting the milky white glow of the moon.

It makes you think of those nights in the zenith of summer, the ones that feel neverending. Timeless. A piece of your history etched in balmy melancholy. Alone in the great expanse with nothing but the trill of cicadas, and the echoing chirp of the crickets hidden in the lush grass below.

The sky shifts. His eyes plume with lavender-tinged stratocumulus.

"I really like you, bonnie." It's whispered in your ear, and you wish, oh, how you wish, you couldn't hear it. That you could block the words, and the world, out so that it never reaches you again.

Sweet longing. Beautiful agony.

Your heart races, and you wonder how an empty space can beat at all. Can feel anything when it's just a hollow chasm.

A heat blooms under your skin, desperate and aching. This, this, is everything you've been looking for since your heart split free from its fleshy prison, and ran away to find him, tucking itself in the boscage that glows in the flame on the shores. It's hidden somewhere. The palpitations sound like a song. You could follow it, you think, and find its lovelorn shell nestled amongst the grass that sways to its beat, and tuck it back into your empty chest where it belongs.

(But it belongs to him, now.)

And you—

You hesitate.

The words well on your tongue, but you think of fate, of choice, and swallow them down.

The flames in the distance flicker, growing dimmer and darker as the moments stretch on, unbroken and barren until it's snuffed out. Gone.

What can you say? What could you say?

Instead, you say nothing at all.

Johnny leaves a piece of himself on the table when he walks away.

(You don't pick it up.)

Johnny doesn't say anything at all when he brings you home, when he stands outside of the archway to your flat, eyes lidded and pensive. A smile snakes across his face, but it's brittle and full of uncertainty, and your fingers ache to smooth the rugged lines in his brow, in the stress in his shoulders. You push it down. Smile for him instead.

"I'll see you later," you say, and wish the ghosts wailing in your head would drop dead.

The valley is drenched in ink when he nods, catching your gaze.

All black, black, black.

No sounds escape.

"Sure, bonnie."

You dream, and when you dream, it's of him.

He stands at the top of a hill, and when he smiles it's full of starlight so bright it could eclipse the sun.

In his hand, you see a pair of shears. Your mouth opens, but no sound escapes.

He says just one word—your name—and then he lifts his hand, and cuts the rope. The sutures knit your bodies together, the string that holds him to this mortal plane, falls in swaths of golden thread to the ground where they're devoured by the earth, dissolved into nothing. Gone, forever.

There's distance now, and separation. Nothing ties you to him except space.

You wake up with the ghost of a scream on your lips, and the feeling of silken threads dragging over your flesh. You reach for them, and catch nothing but air.

Palm pressed to your chest, you feel the rapid pulse under your fingertips, and know that it's back. Back where it belongs.

Belongs, but doesn't want to be.

You think of Johnny.

And you weep.

He sends a text message, and for the first time since you've met him, it surprises you. Nothing should shock you with him, anymore. You know everything, anything, about him.

Gonna be away for a bit. Should talk when I get back.

You reach for answers but they slide like mercury out of your hands.

You don't dance, and you don't dream.

You wander down the streets of Elgin, and for the first time since you woke up screaming in your bed with ghosts wailing in agony inside of your head, you get lost.

Johnny comes back a week later, eyes heavier than you'd ever seen them, and shoulders drawn tight together as he asks you why—

"Why'd'ya keep runnin'?" He asks, words pitched and heavy with something lour and aching, a phantom pain you know all too well. There's desperation in his eyes, a low keen settling in the depth of his throat, echoing with the clamour of his despair. "If you don't want this—;" don't want me: "—then just say so, bonnie, 'cause I ain't forcin' ya t'be w'me, I ain't gonna make you stay. You wanna leave, you can just go—"

Can't. Can't.

"Johnny—"

"No, none o'that, now. You make up your mind, 'cause I ain't makin' it for ya. I ain't makin' ya do somethin' you don't want to, and I ain't—"

He's pleading, you think. Begging—

For this, this strange thing. This awful, broken calamity, this abomination in the face of free will and autonomy. Despite the rage that hums in your veins at the idea of being controlled, manipulated, he finds something worth chasing. Worth running for.

Why?

And what?

And—

It comes in flashes, snippets. Fragmented pieces of bright eyes—brighter, maybe, than the sun—and warmth, one hot enough to burn but it doesn't, it won't, it soothes instead. Eases coiled muscles, and absorbs the lactic acid that leaks from shredded, knotted fibres. Hands on your body, on your skin: the press of rough fingertips over prickling flesh. A whisper of curiosity, the slow descent into affection, adoration. Plush lips pillowing sharp teeth, too reverent to ever leave a mark behind—part in fear of marring fragile skin, and—

Letting the ghost of permanence fester, take root, inside his chest where his heart beats—

Jus' f'r you, bonnie. Jus' you.

For once, the phantom touching your body isn't a dream, a half-lived fantasy in another world where a man-made you whole and then ripped you into pieces, letting the scattered fragments blow with the sharp winds howling through the highlands. You know the touch, remember it. Felt it. New, and tangible. A touch that never lingered, too afraid of letting something, something, stick.

For once—

The snaps flashing, blindingly, through your synapses are not made of dream dust and kismet.

And—

All at once, it shatters.

—you know, i never thought i'd say this before, but i—

(You were lost in Elgin, but when you see his face, you feel found—)

THERE—

There is a lot to be said about Johnny MacTavish.

Good things—kind, dedicated, driven—and bad things—bold, stoic, dogmatic—but one thing neither have in common is tardiness. Broken promises.

So, when Johnny calls you in some distant land you've never heard of, and says:

Things got bad. I might not—I might not be coming home.

You believe him.

But the thing is: there's a difference between believing the words being said to you, and understanding their meaning. Your mind is not equipped to latch onto devastating blows with the same swiftness you do ignorant bliss.

So, when you hear I might not be coming home, you think, instead, of tardiness. Of a missed anniversary dinner.

(Of all the ones that came before it, and will come after it.)

And you smile. Smile into the receiver with your heart drifting down Lethe.

"Okay, Johnny," you say, and those words will come back to haunt you three days from now, when John Price shows up at your goddamn door, stupid bucket hat tucked tight to his chest, and rips your heart into pieces.

But for as much as you are blissfully ignorant, your mind still understands nuance. They used to call it foresight, a sixth sense; hindsight.

You add, softer than you've ever said the words: "I love you."

His breath stutters through the line in response. A brief pause. And then—

"If anything happens—" you hate him a little for even saying it; you really do: "just know that I love you, too. And that I hope—ah, Christ, bonnie, you got me all stupid, now—but, fuck, I hope we meet in another life."

It knocks something loose inside of you. Some primaeval thing that nestled in the safety of your ribs, moulting along your moon-white bones and glueing to the soft tissue that pulsed around it. It's shaken. Dislodged.

It feels a little bit like your soul is being scraped off of bone.

"Johnny—"

"—gotta go. We haven't heard from Roach or Riley in a while. I probably won't call tonight. So, don't wait for me, bonnie."

The line clicks before the words I've been waiting for you forever fall from your wobbling lips.

You hate Johnny a little bit for this. For digging his roots deep into the soft chambers of your heart where it gnarled around your pericardium. A perfect little knot. A bow tied nice and pretty just for him.

It makes it so much harder to bare when John fucking Price knocks on your door, stupid fucking bucket hat tucked tight against his chest, ghosts in his eyes, blood on his hands, and rips your heart into pieces until nothing but the rotten, dying roots remain.

"I hate you so much right now," you hiss at the tombstone—the only thing you have left of him. "I hate you and I miss you and I wish you were here so I could—"

John finds you with your forehead pressed against the brass plaque, cheeks raw from the rivulets of tears that feel endless—a baptism in grief; in your tear ducts, Noah battles the biblical flood, and loses.

Eyes that can't see past a shimmering hinterland of death and abject dismay are fixed, broken, against speckled granite.

It's agony. The kind that makes it feel as if the marrow in your bones turned into a corrosive liquid, molten and devastating, and burst through brittle, hollow bone.

Price, you've come to realise, seems to know things beyond what you tell him. Always picking up the shedded skin that falls from the people around him. Little pieces of them that he shoves in his pocket to ruminate on when he's trying to put together the puzzle of who they are.

Words won't penetrate through the haze in your head. It filters in like water through a rhyne, back out to the open sea.

(He knows this, of course, because you've been shedding pieces of yourself around him for years.)

It doesn't surprise you, then, when he says nothing. When he just falls to his aching knees in the soft humus, resting beside you as your world crumbles into ash and heartache.

You sit in numbed silence until the sun is swallowed by the dusk that creeps across the sky. The moon itself seems to mourn along with you, hiding her eyes behind a nebulous veil of gunmetal.

Price, without a word, helps you stand when the gravekeeper comes and ushers you out. He shepherds you into his Jeep and brings you back to the place that reeks of loneliness and dinners for one. A place that still carries the ghost of his presence around every corner, tucked away in each alcove and nook.

He might be gone, but his shadow still lives and breathes the dank, funeral air that clings to your sallow skin. A miasma of loss that tangles itself in every atom around you.

Price seems hesitant to step inside, but you'd rather sleep on the patio with the chirping crickets and the weeping moon than be inside where the echo of his voice whispers through the halls, and he knows this, because he knows you, and so he brings you in before you can entomb yourself in grief, lost to the elements. He sets you down gingerly on the couch, body now more fragile than fine china, brushing your tangled hair from your forehead. It catches on his weathered hands. You barely feel the pull.

He looks at you like you're a battle that can't be won.

"Take care'a yourself, yeah? It's what—" he chokes, then, and you feel the hiccup like a white-hot knife to your gut. "It's what he would've wanted."

What he wanted is gone, and it's dead—just like him.

You don't say these words, but you wonder if he knows them, hears them, anyway. He must, you think, watching as the ashy, smoked cedar of his beard twitches. His mouth gnarls to the side in grief, uncertainty.

He says your name. You know this because you know the shape it makes of his mouth, but don't you hear it. All it sounds like is a nail scraping over waterlogged, mossy wood.

Price leaves.

A part of you goes with him.

You rest your forehead against his pillow, the one that smells of him still—warm milk, honeysuckle—and you wish so hard on broken promises, unfilled dreams, to see him again, to hold his face in the plinth of your palms, that your heart feels like it might burst—

—break.

But it's already broken. There's nothing left to shatter. The pulpy mess he left behind beats not because you want it to, but because it has to. A biological failsafe that does not care about your human emotions even as it quivers and shakes at the loss that tipped your world upside down. A gaping hole sits in the middle in the shape of his smile, and your stubborn heart pulses around the wound.

Sometimes you think it would be easier to feel nothing at all. To shed the agony like a rotting limb, cutting it as close to the bone as you can, and watching it fall, blackened with decay, and postulating with infectious spores that bud, devouring unblemished, unhurt, flesh until you're a pristine corpse.

Grief twists you into the living dead. Breaks your head in two, cloved clean down the middle of unrelenting panic and anger—anguish so severe, you can easily convince yourself nothing at all is real.

But it is.

And then there is only denial and abject horror at that unimaginable nothingness that looms, blooming in your insides until they turn into a gaping, festering maw. One that makes you feel like you could swallow the whole world and still feel empty.

No longer a human on the inside but a chasm. The person you were before died the moment his heart stopped beating. Irrevocably changed with three, stark knocks against the door he painted yellow because it reminded him of the way you looked standing in a field of sunflowers. Gone. Gone—

A barren void with its insides scraped out. Hollow. Wind rattles through your chilled bones. It sounds like his voice when it ghosts over your ribcage.

You chase the sound.

Running, running, running. Going so fast, it barely feels like your feet touch the ground. A wingless bird soaring across the valleys that gleaned in his hazel eyes.

Running, running—

Your feet slide against marshy peat. A hidden bog gurgles beneath your soles.

You don't scream when you sink.

(The bubbles sound just like him—)

You smile.

—NOW

Eldritch machinations, some fanciful god playing a chaotic game of matchmaker, a dizzying sense of folie a deux—you haven't quite determined what the reason for this is, who or what might be behind it, but one thing you do know is this:

Something might be aligning your paths until all trails lead to him, but when you wander down those Wonderland roads, your heart beats for him.

A second heart pulses under your skin. One slipped inside when you cupped his cheeks in your palm, and told him when you looked, you saw only him.

It might not be a choice you've made in this lifetime, but it's certainly one you can't bring yourself to regret.

You run, but this time, it isn't away from him, but to him.

He tastes of coumarin when you press your lips to his, a kiss met in the middle.

You're lost, now, in the swell that gusts across the boscage. A breeze dances over your ears. A thousand starlings coo in the clear blue aether above. You feel the tickle of barley against your knees. Rasping tussock sedge curls over your ankle, weaving together until you're tied to the ground. Anchored against the stalks of wheat that shiver in the wind.

His hands are warm, solid, on your skin. One hand braced on the small of your back, keeping you pressed firmly against him. The other cups your chin like you're made of fine china, polished crystal full of precious gems and rare metals. He holds tight as if he's afraid you'll drift away when he lets go.

Your head is blooming full of sunflowers. They germinate in your thoughts until the petals burst through, lifting high to the heavens where the sun burns half as hot as his body angling against yours.

His atoms sing, calling to yours. A buzz, a hum. You feel them stretch, shifting from the prison of you until equilibrium is reached when they merge, tangling together. A new being, a new entity is born from the collision—a person made of two with lungs and hearts that breathe and beat in the same cadence as it's ghosts. Woven together with marionette strings.

It feels like coming home and getting lost all at once.

Etched in the delicate flesh of your heart sits a kairos moment. A brief period of nothing that runs as deadly and tumultuous as the Swillies. An upheaval.

Time is tenuous. Broken. Fragmented.

An arm stretches out, anchoring across your waist. His mouth presses a kiss to your bare shoulder, eyes glossy in the mid-morning sun.

"Wha' time's it?" He slurs out, words thick with sleep.

Your eyes cut to the alarm clock on the end table. A slow, languid smile curls across your kiss-bruised mouth.

"Eleven-fifteen," you breathe, eyes fixed on the red lines. Your heart stutters when it flickers. "Eleven-sixteen."

"S'too early," he moans, lips rubbing over your flesh. "Stay in bed with me."

You peel your gaze away from the clock ticking down the seconds (minutes, hours, days, months, years), and turn to him. Hazel in bloom. A boscage in spring. Your eyes mist a little from the morning dew.

"I love you, Johnny."

His breath ghosts over your skin. You hear the hitch in his voice when he speaks.

"Been waitin' a long time t'hear you say that, bonnie."

"Sorry to keep you waiting."

—don't wait for me, Bonnie. i'll come find you—

—THEN

"Excuse me? You dropped this."

It's raining. Pouring, really. The droplets are the size of pennies and pelt the top of your umbrella with an unforgiving force. It sounds like the clatter of a mourning bell, and drowns everything else out.

But it catches. Clear. Low.

You turn, blinking through the thick fog that congeals around High Street in a dense, white blanket.

"Sorry?"

A man. He's towering above you, cut off at the chest by the fine points of your umbrella. You lift it, and—

Your wallet is the first thing you see. Wet, covered in grit from the cobblestone. It's clenched between a thick thumb and forefinger, held delicately together. You baulk.

"Oh, shit—," it's snatched out of his hand, and pulled into the sanctuary of cover. You can feel it already. The mess inside. Still. You hope—

The leather peels back. Mush.

You groan. The meagre bills you'd pulled from the machine are now wet, sticking together in a papier-mache square. Useless. No one is going to accept sopping wet bills.

"Alright?"

"No, I—," you glance up at him, irritation cutting across your brow. No, you're not alright. You're shit out of luck, and stranded here, now. And—

And—

Hazel. It's the first thing you see. Mountains of brown slope into a lush green valley. A cool blue lake cuts through, splitting off into a ravine.

Your breath catches.

"Sorry, umm. Yes. I'm—"

Attractive is the first word that springs to your mind when you stare at him—dark eyes, furrowed brow, long nose, a dusting of charcoal stubble along his cheeks and jaw, and full pink lips. Kissable is the second one.

And then—

Oh, God.

"Sorry," you murmur again, cheeks heating despite the chill. "I'm fine. Thank you, I'm—"

"You're not," he says, and it's uttered so assuredly that you can't find it in yourself to lie. As if he is somehow able to chisel into your head, and rifle through your problems with ease. "It's all wet, isn't it? Were you heading home, or—?"

It's cliche. Stupid. Your belly rumbles.

Mortifying. Absolutely—

His lips quirk up. A soft, almost secretive smile. Reserved. "Well, I know this place around the back. I could use the company, if you wouldn't mind."

You should say no. No, thank you—because you were raised proper. But all you can think about is the deep, brassy tone that tickles your ears when he speaks. The distant, almost careful way he regards you, as if he's putting himself at arm's length so you aren't scared off by his brawn.

Hazel is dusted in gold. You want to bask in his warmth for just a moment longer—

"I'll pay you back, I promise."

His brows raise. Hazel framed in white. A soft huff leaves his full mouth before his lips pull up in a slow, genuine smile.

"Y'alright, bonnie. I'll hold you to it."

(And so, it begins.)

#john soap mactavish #soap x reader #Johnny MacTavish x reader #og soap x reader #og soap #john soap mctavish x reader #john soap mctavish x you #cod fanfic #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #this took me forever #idk why #i just?? expected more fluff but instead we get horror and grief and eventually fluff #kinda #like #sorta #idk #enjoy

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vitaminseetarot · 5 months

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PAC: Your January Forecast 🎇❄🦢

Sup y'all, I'm back for the very last PAC I'm gonna write for 2023. By the end of the weekend, we will have shifted to a whole new year, with a new moon close in tow. I'm gonna be honest, this has been a rough year for me, but not without its bright spots. Like the birth of this blog, for one! I'm already planning the 1 Year Special.

The plan is only to expand from here to see what more there is to do! There was a lot I wanted to do this year but didn't get around to doing because of life, so I have a lot lined up for January.

Thank you for your support this past year in helping my blog grow! The circle is small, but each like and reblog makes a difference, especially to newcomers like me.

Please choose your swan ornament below to find out about how your January will look for the new year. Instead of Tarot today, I'll be using my Black Salt Lenormand deck and Astro Dice to get details along with oracles for advice.

Pile 1 - Black Swan Pile 2 - White Swan Pile 3 - Gold Swan

Pile 1 - Black Swan

Death, Sun; 49. Sun A♦, Cross 6♣, Crossroads Q♦; Uranus, 11th House, Aquarius

Hi, pile 1! Hope you're feeling alive and well for 2024. I kinda called this the "zombie pile" while drawing cause I'm getting this sluggish energy dragging along. Mumbling, creeping, hair disheveled. Goodness, this past year had you wiped out, didn't it? If you're feeling pressured for a resolution, I wouldn't, because for you I think simply sloughing off the old year like snake skin is your main priority for January. I'm hearing Usher's lyrics: "I feel like a zombie come back to life." Maybe you could treat this month like an extended New Year's Eve party. You can't force yourself to be excited for it, but you can slowly build up to it.

There is an emphasis on positive thinking with this pile. You have two Suns from different decks. Doing what brings you simple joy will be healing for you this month. Focusing on little joys can help you shift perspective. Being in the present is very important right now, and you're being asked not to think too much about last year as it will only drain you of further energy. You can't draw healing to yourself if you're spending all your Magic Points on looking backwards for answers. It it feels difficult to be positive, think outside the box at how you can move away from past thinking, like making a vision board for what you most desire to experience this year.

One of the real impressive things about your reading are the dice. You have Uranus, its natural house 11, and its sign Aquarius. Emphasis on CHANGE, much? You know how in movies, where the main character is falling into darkness and has relinquished all hope of being saved, and just as it fades to black someone swoops in to help them while casually laughing off "hah, yeah, I just happened to be in the neighborhood when I saw you falling into an infinite chasm, y'know?"

The word "Deus Ex Machina" is also popping up, or "god out of machine". It's a Latin term referring to an ancient Greek theater technique where a crane would lower an actor dressed as a deity onto the stage during the final act of a comedy, delivering sudden divine intervention and saving the day for the heroes. In other words, there is massive and very unexpected change for you, one that's gonna pull you out of the sluggish stupor of 2023. This is why resolutions aren't important for you now; whatever 2024 will be for you, it's coming in lightning hot and will do that for you.

And I think this change, however large and surprising, will be ultimately wonderful for you. There is so much sunlight emerging from this fog, new life will be breathed in for you by divine planning. It's going to help you work through some of the damage that last year left behind. It will also help you pivot to your next chapter in life. It may feel weird going into a new year with very little expectations, not knowing where you're going to end up next, but it'll be worth it. When the door swings open for you, it will BURST open, so stay on the bright side and focus on regenerating your health for now.

May your new year be shockingly bright, pile 1!

Pile 2 - White Swan

Strength, 25. Sapphire; Garden 8♠, Anchor 9♠, Person A♥; Gemini, 12th House, Pluto

Hello, pile 2! This month will be a quiet one for you, in a good way. This will be a time of retreat for you. If you found yourself being rather social at the end of 2023, expect the new year to start off with a whimper. I see you going into a hermit mode and disengaging from regular activities, especially involving other people. I get the sense that this pile is the type to want to overextend and please everyone around them. If you need a resolution suggestion from me, it's to put the brakes on now before you careen over the edge. January is putting a halt to this behavior.

Yes, you are strong. No, you do not always need to be strong for everybody else. It will wear you thin to even try, and you may end up resentful over it. It's not worth the struggle. I'm not asking you to snap at anyone who comes too close, but consider not adding more of other peoples' errands to your schedule. Consider saying, "actually, I can't go today," without feeling the need to explain why. You have a right to your own personal space away from distractions now.

This pile could belong to a group of people or community that's close to you, which could be going through a lot of hell or has been in the past year. They may have asked a lot from you with few other options. It's made you have to stand up and advocate, at the cost of your own issues being put on the back burner. It is not selfish to walk away for a while and take care of yourself, doubly so if the group in question deals with a lot of arguing and gossip. If it feels bad, trust your gut and keep your distance for now. Don't try to solve big arguments while Mercury is retrograding.

I know how Pluto in the 12th house is, as it's prominent in my chart. Imagine walking downstairs to get to your basement, only for the stairs to never end until you find yourself floating in a weird little wonderland. Somewhere, in that surreal underground mindscape, is a deeply entrenched karmic pattern that may elude you at first. Some shadow work may be required here to dig through the trenches for unpolished gems. If a pesky pattern is repeating in your life, it's time to withdraw and connect to your dreams and subconscious for clues. This pattern may have something to do with this group.

You're actually going to get more progress done by meditating and seeking out nature rather than getting too involved with these issues. The time will come when things can be handled with a clearer mindset. But your higher self is pulling you inward to help ground you through this, to remind you that you are your own amazing being even when you're separate from these people. You have the strength to stand on your own, otherwise there wouldn't be so many folks seeking you out in need. Sapphire wants you to marry your heart with your mind. It's a stone of wisdom guided by compassionate understanding and care. You spin your wheels overthinking an issue, when instead coming back to your heartspace will provide the key.

Take it easy this winter, pile 2, may your dreams give clarity and hope for 2024!

Pile 3 - Gold Swan

Protection, 15. Opal; Bouquet Q♠, Person A♥, Crossroads Q♦; 4th House, Capricorn, Mercury

What's going on, pile 3? Looks like somebody wants to enter hibernation mode, lol. I don't blame you one bit. As the full moon in Cancer has passed and the season changes, there's a strong desire to nestle into the home. Your house will be like your castle for you to improve during this month. You may feel up to redecorating or rearranging furniture to make it feel more cozy or season appropriate as you settle in. Or you may simply desire to clear out old things to decide what to keep.

You may want to do a spiritual cleansing of the house to ring in the New Year, too. Try infusing magic herbs like lemon verbena into your cleaning products, or toss cinnamon outside the front door while ringing a bell to invite prosperity in. A simple incense stick with a very fresh, mild scent like lavender can also do the trick. Does your family have a special trick or recipe they use? Whatever herb and scent combination brings out that "New Year New Me" feeling is best!

I heard loud and clearly, "YOU'RE PROTECTED!" for whomever needs to hear it most. Things might feel shaky and ungrounded at the moment. I wanna wrap a big blanket around y'all. You're being totally protected right now by your guides, so please don't let the uncertainties of 2024 leave your head dizzied. Yes, there's a lot of plans to be drawn out and a lot more work to be done, and you may not know where you're heading next, but perhaps there's a reason we like to begin the year at such a slow quiet time, after all the festivities have passed. It's not sound to start off in a rush.

You're being heavily affected by Sun in Capricorn doubled with the current Mercury retrograde, regardless of your chart placements. This is absolutely not a time for rash decision making, even if it feels you're not being your most productive. Our modern society doesn't like it when workers take a break or listen to their body's needs in any way. It will always have its excuses for its ruthless standards. After a while, though, you have to learn to shrug those expectations off and do what's right for you, or you'll risk burning out before the new year has even started.

Some of you might be thinking of even doing the Dry January trend as part of your resolution. If it's a serious issue, I'd talk to your doctor about how to do it sustainably. If you're already stressed and at risk of burnout, more pressure is not going to help. But a sober month could prove beneficial for you overall. This is not a command for you to have a Dry January if you're not interested; this message is for those who already plan on doing so. Try to take it one day at a time, keep your head free of self criticism, and don't guilt yourself over "cheat days". I will be doing one as well, so please reach out if you need a supporting voice.

Wishing you all the best to come this year pile 3, may you succeed in your resolutions!

This reading has not been evaluated by the FDA to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any disease or infection. Please ask your physician before going online.

Cards Used: Black Salt Lenormand, Prism Oracle, Crystal Healing Cards, Astro Dice.

2023, @VitaminseeTarot ™

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tylermileslockett · 5 days

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Theseus #1 - "Pythia: Oracle of Delphi"

King Aegeus of Athens, still childless, travels to the Pythia oracle at Delphi for advice. The Pythia, ever famous for her enigmatic and ambiguous prophecies, tells him “Do not uncork the wineskin until you have reached Athens.”

Zeus, wanting to locate the center of the world, released two eagles flying in opposite directions around the earth at equal speeds, and the birds reached one another at a specific point above the slope of Mount Parnassus. Here Zeus placed a sacred stone called the Omphalus, or “naval of the earth.” A serpent, Pytho (son of Gaia) guarded the stone, until Apollo came and slew the creature, establishing the site as a divine source for receiving messages directly from the god of prophecy.

Before entering the temple, priestesses and pilgrims alike would wash themselves in the soul cleansing waters of the Castilian spring for purification. In a sacred, inner sanctum, the Pythia, (head oracle priestess) was said to sit upon a tripod and breath in toxic vapors (said to be toxic fumes from Pythos rotting body) from a chasm below in the cave rock. The fumes could have been methane or ethylene, while others have theorized, she chewed or inhaled smoke from Oleander leaves. The priestess then fell into a trance, and receiving divine inspiration from Apollo, spoke in tongues that was interpreted and translated by priests into dactylic hexameter (the poetic meter used in ancient Greek epics like the Iliad.)

The Delphi site was sprawling and complex; holding the religious temple of Apollo, a stadium and gymnasium for the Pythian games, an outdoor theatre, a hippodrome for chariot races, among others. There were three philosophical phrases carved into the temple known as the “Delphic Maxims.” They were; “know thyself,” “Nothing in Excess,” and “Surety Brings Ruin.”

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#theseus #pythia #oracle #delphi #oracleofdelphi #greekmythology #greekgods #pjo #mythology #classics #classicscommunity #myths #ancientgreece

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icarustypicalfall · 5 months

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HIGH INFIDELITY

MASTERPOST • AO3 • PART 1

summary: You loomed over the empty grave, in the cemetery of perished love, and wondered if the fate of yours hath to end here.

warnings: guilt, post cheating, angst, Alejandro is a calm man (surprisingly),greek myths?

note: sorry for the delay (101 days??!! help) i recall posting the first part way ago. I just ending writing this part today, tysm for voting for the end, i couldn't bring myself to chose, and i see this ending to be perfect. If you want a p3, tell me! TYSM for everything mes loulous <3

“And I couldn't whisper when you needed it shouted.”

"What have I done... What have I done?" you repeated frantically, collapsing onto the bed sheets and clutching your head in despair.

The piercing headache had finally subsided, leaving behind a whirlpool of guilt and remorse. Your mind was overwhelmed with thoughts that you could hardly bear. A sense of disgust filled you to the brim, as if Alejandro's final words had created an unbridgeable chasm between the two of you. Tears welled up in your eyes as you lay there, utterly hopeless.

Dressed in black, you attended the funeral of your faith and devotion. The long-term promises you both made to each other were now buried alongside the vows whispered in each other's ears. You stood by the empty grave, in the cemetery of love that had turned to dust, wondering if this was the tragic fate of your once beautiful relationship.

A sense of sin compelled you to kneel before Eros and Aphrodite, pleading for forgiveness and vowing to rectify your past mistakes.

Perhaps you had been wrong all along, or perhaps your relationship was destined to be a tragedy, penned by the foolish Sophocles.

You cried until there were no more tears left to shed, until all your sorrow had been lamented. You didn't bother to check the time, but judging from the faint noise and the dark grey sky, you assumed it was well past noon.

You pushed open the bedroom door with utmost silence, tiptoeing down the hallway towards the kitchen. Deep down, you wished to be a small mouse, a tiny creature that could hide in corners and scurry under kitchen sinks, feasting on the crumbs left behind by giants —humans. Oh, the sweet life you would lead, albeit short-lived, until Alejandro, the cat, finally caught you in the act and put an end to your existence.

Your head throbbed with pain, a result of the excessive crying and the alcohol you had consumed on an empty stomach. You swallowed two pills, finding no appetite for food.

A strange sensation of guilt gnawed at your insides, choking you with every breath. Standing behind the couch, you gazed at your husband, if you can still cal him yours. He laid there, still asleep, with three empty beer bottles carelessly strewn across the coffee table. Alejandro was still in his combat attire, boots off. Your heart broke at the sight of his socks, the ones you had lovingly knitted for him years ago.

You reminisced about the day you had presented him with the warm socks. He had hugged you tightly, showering your cheeks with kisses, spilling his gratitude against your lips.

Again, your heart ached, the bittersweet memories lingering in your mind. How you wished you could push them away, banish those haunting thoughts! But they persisted, tormenting your very existence, staining your once innocent soul with foolish acts of sin.

Alejandro stirred, and you flinched, fearing that he might awaken. You longed for his hearth gaze, the warmth that used to envelop you in your darkest days. But now, that gaze had turned into a mirror of the devil, a hollow void filled with hatred and betrayal.

He was still handsome, even more muscular than when you last saw him three months ago. Your hand twitched, almost yearning to run through his dark curls and caress his cheeks, pledging your undying devotion.

But he was not one to grant second chances.

As if by instinct, his eyes fluttered open, and he fixed his gaze upon you. A cold glare pierced through your soul, promising a war that you knew you could never win against this military veteran. He dismissed your outstretched hand, your entire existence, ignoring you completely. Slowly, he rose from the couch and walked past you. Every fibre of your being trembled with a mix of anger and adrenaline.

"Alejandro...?" you uttered, more as a plea than a question. The demanding tone dissipated, leaving only worry and the overwhelming weight of guilt. It was a meaty morsel to chew on, while the bones were tossed to the dogs.

He came to a halt, lifting his head to face you. His expression changed, a neutral gaze that held more fear than anything else. You had barely secured a place in the colonel's heart, and now, by the way he looked at you, it seemed that you had lost that place forever.

"What is it, amor?" he spat out the endearment as if it were an insult, dripping with sarcasm and venom. Crossing his arms, he waited, his silence more punishing than any shout. How you wished he would just yell.

You stood there in silence, tears welling up in your eyes and your lips trembling. Alejandro's heart clenched, but he knew better than to forgive you. Letting out a sigh, he slowly turned away from you. His warm breath brushed against your face, and you looked up, guilt stifling the words on your lips.

"Why?... Why did you do that, amor?" he whispered, his voice filled with a mix of disappointment and sadness. His hands cupped your cheeks, gently caressing the soft flesh adorned with tear-stained pearls. He continued to scold you, his tone resembling that of a parent reprimanding a child. But you were no child, and your transgressions could never be compared to the mistakes of a young one.

"Why did you do it?" he repeated, his hands slowly retreating from your face. He walked away, leaving you alone in the room, with nothing to prevent you from the haunting thoughts. Your body felt cold, and you collapsed against the wall, your weak knees giving way as you sank to the floor.

...

Instead of divorce papers, a sorrowful Rudy arrived at your door, informing you that your husband was MIA - Missing In Action. You never heard from him again.

The pain of knowing that he was out in the world, alone and utterly abandoned, was enough to drain peace from your soul. You regretted your actions, praying every day for his return, promising complete devotion. You extinguished the greed within you, longing for him to come back, just to feel safe and sane again. To have him return home.

Now, standing by the lake, you hadn't taken a single sip. But who could you blame? You had already drunk your fill from the lakes of others, and now, the salty taste on your tongue left you eternally parched.

#𓆩♡𓆪 faith writes #call of duty #call of duty fanfic #writblr #cod angst #alejandro vargas x reader #alejandro cod #alejandro vargas #alejandro x reader #alejandro vargas x female reader #alejandro vargas x you #Alejandro Vargas angst #cod fic #cod #mw2 fanfic #cod mw #please boost #i just 😭😭😭😭

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talonabraxas · 4 months

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Pythia: Oracle and High Priestess of Delphi Talon Abraxas

Situated on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis, Delphi was associated with the Greek god Apollo. According to legend, the hill was guarded by a giant serpent called Python, who was a follower of the cult of Gaia (Earth), for hundreds of years. After killing Python, Apollo claimed Delphi as his own sanctuary.

Perhaps this legend was a reflection of actual events. During the Mycenaean period (14th-11th centuries BC), there were small settlements in Delphi dedicated to the Mother Earth deity. Subsequently, the worship of Apollo was established between the 11th and 9th centuries BC. By the 8th century BC, Delphi was already renowned internationally for the prophetic powers of the Pythia. Yet, it was only in the following century that the Oracle became a Panhellenic institution, when Apollo’s advice was sought by the Greek cities on important matters of state.

Pythia was the name given to any priestess throughout the history of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The priestess was a woman over 50 years of age who lived apart from her husband and dressed in maiden’s clothes. According to Plutarch, who once served as a priest at Delphi, the Pythia first enters the inner chamber of the temple ( Adyton). Then, she sits on a tripod and inhales the light hydrocarbon gasses that escape from a chasm on the porous earth.

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xavierknightsbridge · 9 months

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The Greek Hero's Belly

Art by the amazing @the-elusive-libbin

Gastridoulos touched the amulet that hung between his ample pectoral muscles. It depicted a bare man’s torso, with a handsome chest and a bulging swollen belly hanging below the pecs. It was the symbol of Gastidolous’ father - the divine God of Appetite, alternately known as the God of Belly.

The God of Belly’s sole commandment was the filling of his divine gut, and the spreading of pleasure through the satisfaction of his godly gut. This pleasure extended to making sons - handsome demigods like Gastridolous. These sons shared all of their father’s gifts - and the privileges owed to him - and to his belly, whose human representatives in Greece were his sons’ mighty stomachs.

Gastidolous considered the amulet, sitting in the cleft between the twin muscled halves of his bare chest, and smiled as his own bare belly (swollen slightly from the digesting remnants of his last meal) let out a hungry grumble. It was well past time he performed his service to his father - and filled his belly out to its proper size.

And there, pinned to a stake on the hill ahead, was his meal. The local village wished to thank him for his help ridding them of a monstrous lion, and had left out a fresh sacrifice to the divine hero. Gastidolous licked his full lips in anticipation as he considered his meal, stripped naked and tied to the post. Hardening in his loincloth, Gastridolous swaggered towards the stake, tying his hair back as he did so, in readiness for his feast.

The handsome goatherd looked up from the post he was tied to at the gorgeous bare-chested hero approaching him. His village’s saviour - and his fate. The hero placed an admiring hand on the young man’s bare chest, and asked him his name.

“Galen,” the young man said, nervous with fear - and anticipation,

“Well, in the name of the God of Appetite,” Gastidolous said, warm, honeyed voice speaking the ritual words, “I rename you belly.”

And not waiting a second more, he untied his meal and began to feast.

***

Gastridolous let out a belch that echoed across the hills as he swallowed down the kicking feet of his sacrifice, sealing him in the fleshy tomb of his big bare belly for good. The golden-haired hero looked down in smug pride at the wobbling, swollen expanse of belly that hung like Atlas’ globe beneath his smooth planes of pectoral muscle. His round nipples were hard as his hero’s cock as his food (formerly known as Galen) struggled futilely inside him. Gastridolous sighed with bliss as he watched his big, distended belly squirm, a handprint visible against the stretched, taut skin of his bloated stomach. Gastridolous loved nothing more than a sacrifice that struggled. It brought even more pleasure to his divine belly, to feel his food plead and squirm within his godly globe of gut.

“Ah Galen,” the hero said in tones of pleasure, “You do my belly such honour by pleasuring him with the sweetness of your sweating, handsome flesh - and with your movements within me. But this is where you belong - as part of my belly for good. I shall digest you and your body, your energies, will belong to me. But my belly will always remember you, and you should be honoured to be part of a hero’s belly for always.”

Gastridolous gave his distended smooth sphere of belly a satisfied smack, causing his big man-eating belly to bounce and wobble, and he let out another great belly-quaking belch as his godly stomach began to digest his meal of unwilling human sacrifice. It was good to be a god, he thought, as he began to convert the young man into a smooth sack of post-vore belly, a swollen sphere of gut that would hang below his mighty hero’s chest for days - until of course it was time to fill up his belly once more.

Gastridolous descended the hill, belly bouncing and gurgling as he feasted on Galen’s lovely body, belly button yawning like a great chasm in his middle. Thus sated on the meat of a beautiful young man, Gastridolous was ready to perform more hero’s deeds - and earn more living meat for his big divine belly as he did so. He slapped his distended man-eating bare belly once more, and grinned. It was good and proper to fill his belly so - after all, it was a god in its own right. And gods always demand sacrifices.

#oral vore #male vore #male pred #vore writing

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nightmare-grass · 6 months

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One of my biggest hyperfixations nowadays is the lore of ancient kingdoms in Genshin Impact. I wanna know what they were all about, how life was like for them, what led to their downfalls, and how or if they interacted with one another. It’s said that there used to be a unified civilization of humans in Teyvat, and that’s why so many ruins have similar architectural details despite being spread across all the nations of modern Teyvat. We still have very little lore about the Nameless Ruins in the Chasm, we still don’t even have a name for them despite Dainsleif’s quest taking place there. But there’s also strange similarities between the stories of the ancient kings and how the kingdoms fell. I already buy into the theory that King Deshret of Sumeru/Gurabad may be related to or the same as King Irmin of Khaenri’ah, since the Traveler’s twin is the Abyss Prince/Princess, and the Traveler seems to remind Liloupar of Deshret in terms of looks and powers. And wouldn’t it be fitting for Deshret, who turned down the Gnosis and challenged the heavens by obtaining Forbidden Knowledge (abyssal power) to be in some way related to the king of Khaenri’ah, a nation without a god that hid from Celestia and was later punished for it? And there’s sources about Remus, the king of Remuria, citing Remus as a god king just like Deshret. And Remuria as well as Remus were swallowed by the Abyss, reminding me of the sinking of Enkanomiya, where the names of the people are lifted directly from Greek/Roman mythology. And Remus is directly inspired by the Rome founding myth, while Remuria as a whole is inspired by ancient Rome. And the most tantalizing thing for me has to be the lost kingdom of Sal Vindagnyr, where it seems so cut off from these other lost kingdoms but their princess dreamt of events that wouldn’t come to pass for thousands of years, long after her civilization was destroyed. She was born under an offshoot of Irminsul, and had the power of prophecy through her connection to the tree. She foresaw the Cataclysm in Khaenri’ah, the coming of the abyssal dragon Durin, but she had no frame of reference for when these visions would come to pass. Think about what that would do to you as your kingdom was being swallowed in ice and snow, the gods having forsaken you, and your father asks to see a vision of the snow cleared and blue skies, but you’ve already forgotten what that looks like since it’s been so long in the blizzard. Dragonspine and the ruins of Sal Vindagnyr haunt me.

EDIT: I think I figured something out about Dragonspine. In every source I could find on the topic, people usually sort the Princess’s vision of Durin before the Celestial Nail that destroyed their Irminsul tree. I think, since the people of Sal Vindagnyr proclaimed to be in such close contact with Celestia, that Celestia dropped the nail on Dragonspine as a response to the princess’s vision. They laid down a preemptive strike against the abyss and then realized, “oh shoot, we messed up,” because Durin wouldn’t appear in Mondstadt until thousands of years later! So Celestia gets the heck out of dodge before the humans can seek retribution for the destruction of their home, that’s why they abandoned the people of Sal Vindagnyr. The humans were left wondering what they did wrong, but Celestia is the one at fault! Celestia panicked and messed up!

#genshin impact #Dragonspine #Remuria #Gurabad #Sal Vindagnyr #the chasm #Mondstadt #Liyue #Inazuma #enkanomiya #Sumeru #Fontaine #king Deshret #king Irmin #king Remus #khaenri'ah #Genshin impact lore #lore #theories

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perfectlyripeclementine · 5 months

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queer novel masterlist

cleaning up that post i've got running with books that touch on queerness. these are not organized in any particular fashion, or gathered along any particular theme. these are just gay novels i've either read and enjoyed or would like to read. blurbs are the books' own descriptions of themselves. not all these blurbs mention the queer stuff, but trust, if it's on this list it's in there. last updated 9 dec 23.

lists: sapphic books by Palestinian authors; butch memoirs; another list of masc, butch and stud books; a digital library of trans-related content; free access to the works of Leslie Feinberg.

After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz. "“The first thing we did was change our names. We were going to be Sappho,” so begins this intrepid debut novel, centuries after the Greek poet penned her lyric verse. Ignited by the same muse, a myriad of women break from their small, predetermined lives for seemingly disparate paths: in 1892, Rina Faccio trades her needlepoint for a pen; in 1902, Romaine Brooks sails for Capri with nothing but her clotted paintbrushes; and in 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: “I want to make life fuller and fuller.” Writing in cascading vignettes, Selby Wynn Schwartz spins an invigorating tale of women whose narratives converge and splinter as they forge queer identities and claim the right to their own lives. A luminous meditation on creativity, education, and identity, After Sappho announces a writer as ingenious as the trailblazers of our past."

All Boys Aren't Blue, George M. Johnson In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia.

The works of Dionne Brand: In Another Place, Not Here. Beautiful and meticulously wrought, set in both Toronto and the Caribbean, this astonishing novel gives voice to the power of love and belonging in a story of two women, profoundly different, each in her own spiritual exile.

Love Enough. In Love Enough, the sharp beauty of Brand's writing draws us effortlessly into the intersecting stories of her characters caught in the middle of choices, apprehensions, fears. Each of the tales here—June's, Bedri's, Da'uud's, Lia's opens a different window on the city they all live in, mostly in parallel, but occasionally, delicately, touching and crossing one another. Each story radiates other stories. In these pages, the urban landscape cannot be untangled from the emotional one; they mingle, shift and cleave to one another.

The young man Bedri experiences the terrible isolation brought about by an act of violence, while his father, Da'uud, casualty of a geopolitical conflict, driving a taxi, is witness to curious gestures of love and anger; Lia faces the sometimes unbridgeable chasms of family; and fierce June, ambivalent and passionate with her string of lovers, now in middle age discovers: "There is nothing universal or timeless about this love business. It is hard if you really want to do it right." Brand is our greatest observer—of actions, of emotions, of the little things that often go unnoticed but can mean the turn of a day. At once lucid and dream-like, Love Enough is a profoundly modern work that speaks to the most fundamental questions of how we live now.

What We All Long For. Tuyen is an aspiring artist and the daughter of Vietnamese parents who've never recovered from losing one of their children while in the rush to flee Vietnam in the 1970s. She rejects her immigrant family's hard-won lifestyle, and instead lives in a rundown apartment with friends—each of whom is grappling with their own familial complexities and heartache.

By turns thrilling and heartbreaking, Tuyen's lost brother—who has since become a criminal in the Thai underworld—journeys to Toronto to find his long-lost family. As Quy's arrival nears, tensions build, friendships are tested, and an unexpected encounter will forever alter the lives of Tuyen and her friends. Gripping at times, heartrending at others, What We All Long For is an ode to a generation of longing and identity, and to the rhythms and pulses of a city and its burgeoning, questioning youth.

The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, Soraya Palmer. Sisters Zora and Sasha Porter are drifting apart. Bearing witness to their father’s violence and their mother’s worsening illness, an unsettled Zora escapes into her journal, dreaming of being a writer, while Sasha discovers sex and chest binding, spending more time with her new girlfriend than at home.

But the sisters, like their parents, must come together to answer to something more ancient and powerful than they know—and reckon with a family secret buried in the past. A tale told from the perspective of a mischievous narrator, featuring the Rolling Calf who haunts butchers, Mama Dglo who lives in the ocean, a vain tiger, and an outsmarted snake, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is set in a world as alive and unpredictable as Helen Oyeyemi’s.

Telling of the love between sisters who don’t always see eye to eye, this extraordinary debut novel is a celebration of the power of stories, asking, What happens to us when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?

Before We Were Trans, Kit Heyam. Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives. Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures. 

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, Lillian Faderman. As Lillian Faderman writes, there are "no constants with regard to lesbianism," except that lesbians prefer women. In this groundbreaking book, she reclaims the history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, tracing the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from early networks to more recent diverse lifestyles. She draws from journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, media accounts, novels, medical literature, pop culture artifacts, and oral histories by lesbians of all ages and backgrounds, uncovering a narrative of uncommon depth and originality.

note from roo: essay in this about how queer white women engaged with Harlem should be essential reading for white queers who enter spaces (like drag spaces, ballroom spaces etc) that are informed by Black culture.

Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang. A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world's troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef's boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.

Grievers and Maroons by adrienne maree brown. Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function. Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it. In anguish, she follows in the footsteps of her late researcher father, who has a physical model of Detroit’s history and losses set up in their basement. She dusts the model off and begins tracking the sick and dying, discovering patterns, finding comrades in curiosity, conspiracies for the fertile ground of the city, and the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared.

In the second installment of the Grievers trilogy, adrienne maree brown brings to bear her background as an activist rooted in Detroit. The pandemic of Syndrome H-8 continues to ravage the city of Detroit and everyone in Dune's life. In Maroons, she must learn what community and connection mean in the lonely wake of a fatal virus. Emerging from grief to follow a subtle path of small pleasures through an abandoned urban landscape, she begins finding other unlikely survivors with little in common but the will to live. Together they begin to piece together the puzzle of their survival, and that of the city itself.

Elastoe, Darcie Little Badger. "Elatsoe—Ellie for short—lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals—most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered. Who killed him and how did he die? With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Elatsoe, must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and it’s dark past. But will the nefarious townsfolk and a mysterious Doctor stop her before she gets started? A breathtaking debut novel featuring an asexual, Apache teen protagonist, Elatsoe combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, fantasy elements, and is one of the most-talked about debuts of the year."

Sordidez, by E.G. Condé "In the ruin created by climate disaster and a devastating civil war, survivors in Puerto Rico and the Yucatán peninsula struggle to rebuild their communities and heal their lands, but powerful forces from abroad plot against them. Desperate for answers, Puerto Rican journalist Vero Diaz seeks the counsel of the Maya revolutionary known as the Loba Roja, triggering a chain of events that will forever reshape his destiny and the fate of the Caribbean world."

When They Tell You To Be Good, by Prince Shakur "When They Tell You to Be Good charts Shakur’s political coming of age from closeted queer kid in a Jamaican family to radicalized adult traveler, writer, and anarchist in Obama and Trump’s America. Shakur journeys from France to the Philippines, South Korea, and elsewhere to discover the depths of the Black experience, and engages in deep political questions while participating in movements like Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock. By the end, Shakur reckons with his identity, his family’s immigration, and the intergenerational impacts of patriarchal and colonial violence."

My Government Means to Kill Me, Rasheed Newson "Earl "Trey" Singleton III arrives in New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket. Born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, at 17, he is ready to leave his overbearing parents and their expectations behind.

In the city, Trey meets up with a cast of characters that changes his life forever. He volunteers at a renegade home hospice for AIDS patients, and after being put to the test by gay rights activists, becomes a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Along the way Trey attempts to navigate past traumas and searches for ways to maintain familial relationships—all while seeking the meaning of life amid so much death.

Vibrant, humorous, and fraught with entanglements, Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me is an exhilarating, fast-paced coming-of-age story that lends itself to a larger discussion about what it means for a young gay Black man in the mid-1980s to come to terms with his role in the midst of a political and social reckoning."

Where There Was Fire, John Manuel Arias Costa Rica, 1968. When a lethal fire erupts at the American Fruit Company’s most lucrative banana plantation burning all evidence of a massive cover-up, and her husband disappears, the future of Teresa’s family is changed forever.

Now, twenty-seven years later, Teresa and her daughter Lyra are picking up the pieces. Lyra wants nothing to do with Teresa, but is desperate to find out what happened to her family that fateful night. Teresa, haunted by a missing husband and the bitter ghost of her mother, Amarga, is unable to reconcile the past. What unfolds is a story of a mother and daughter trying to forgive what they do not yet understand, and the mystery at the heart of one family’s rupture.

Brimming with ancestral spirits, omens, and the anthropomorphic forces of nature, John Manuel Arias weaves a brilliant tapestry of love, loss, secrets, and redemption in Where There Was Fire.

#queer lit #qlit #queer fiction #queer memoirs #queer history #lgbt history #lgbt writers #lgbtq writers #lgbt novels #lgbtq novels #queer novels #tbr #to be read #reading list #queer reading list

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