drabble meme

[beachland]

Via neveryourmask and ravenna

Pick one of my characters. Pick one of yours. I shall write a snippet of their relationship. It can be established or hypothetical, just as long as I have some familiarity with the character!

Here is a list of prompts, some of which I am probably lacking the pop-cultural reference knowledge for. Choose '33%' at your own risk.

Comments

[demimonde]

l'oreal blondes in the ~distant past~

... so she was a brunette but whatever

[meaola]

Danny and Ethan, 45: Heart Song.

[berserkergang]

tony + pepper + lesson.

fandral + hogun + a change in the weather.

[unbeliever]

... maaaaybe Faora and Rhodey and dangerous territory? :3

[astrokinetic]

faora and bruce, "seeing red"

[bitter]

bai + dude of yr choice + cold hands

[beachland]

Cresting the dune, she found a great blond man holding a hammer. At his feet, there was a monstrous serpent, dead, each gaping mandible large as a canoe.

"Welcome to the Tabernas," she said. "Have you seen my father's entourage?"

Perhaps surprised, he spoke slowly. "From the sky, I saw five men moving East. None graying, though, nor any women."

"Thank you, sir." She turned East. Dry wind swept her cloak taut, delineating her crossbow.

"Your family hunts today, milady?"

"Never!" she lied, laughing. She gestured at the snake and added, "Our families are quite different." Curtsying, she walked on.

[beachland]

It's a wolf privilege: to listen to heart and hear truth.

Or not. Some liars stutter aloud; nearly anybody stutters at the heart. As a kid, he'd known Aiden hogged the Kinder eggs hours before he puked up pints of acid sugar. Later, Aiden lied about Lydia. Ethan had only asked, "What're you thinking about?" but he knew.

Danny pillows his head on Ethan's chest one afternoon, the new mix roaring through the bedroom. Ethan says, "Not feelin' it." Suddenly, his own heart kicks out of synch with the drumline, but Danny isn't even listening when he says, smiling: "Bullshit."

[jennibeans]

bucky & faora: nowhere and nothing.

idk if you know speedsterface well enough to give me thor + tiny pietro being bros, but if not it is there in my heart ok.

THIS TIME TO THE CORRECT COMMENT

[beachland]

The rainstorm thieves their cloaks and drowns their boots before they find a cave. The men shuck off what's left of their clothes, sit and start a fire. Fandral complains when Hogun rotisseries their shirts. They talk.

Mostly, Hogun listens. The story of the beauty who'd gifted Fandral that tunic becomes one about court yesterday, then wondering where Thor is, tonight. Fandral stops before trying tomorrow.

"I am wretchedly dirty," Fandral says instead, splaying his hands.

Hogun looks at the salty sheen of Fandral's chest with mild interest, the lightning play in it. He says, "What else is skin for?"

(there are no villains.)

[beachland]

"I bet I know what lesson two was gonna be."

They're watching CNN after the operation, Tony's head on her lap, pupils huge from Percocet.

His face darkens. "Pep. Remember?"

Pepper says, "Look, it's Rhodey."

Of course she remembers: Killian's meticulously worded E-mail ten years ago seeking font advice for AIM's logo; Mr. Stane's choking up on the podium during suicide prevention day 1999, wearing his father's tie, which had a dice print. Loki is an orphan.

And if villainy is measured by cost in human life, Tony is fucked.

Fortunately, Tony is distracted. "He's just a guy," he scoffs.

[beachland]

"Rhodey," Tony repeats: "Get outta there."

"You've been hit by lightning before. Asgardian lightning."

"Not about Goddamn lightning!"

The storm system gluts the whole sky. Lightning pulses within the swollen architecture of clouds, flickering his HUD, radar interference. Rhodey keeps searching. The crippled dreadnought won’t stay crippled long.

Movement, starboard.

He twists, guns his right boot. The Kryptonian drops past him, a clean miss, but so close he hears her cape snap taut. He catches her eye the instant before she cuts out into darkness.

"Tone. Can they survive terminal velocity?"

But he already knows, before Tony starts to swear.

ivinsky for andie (tw misogyny and other offensive language)

[pillz]

the one time he kisses ivy on the cheek, it's by accident. everything else is as sleazy as expected: shotglass rings drying on the table, lime wedges, and texas hold 'em, the wet summer wind inhaling through the barroom door, the the bra-strap falling off her shoulder despite her lackadaisical efforts to put it back on again. him seated always with his knees spread almost satirically wide apart. you wouldn't know he was keeping sober unless you were watching close. (she pretends not to.)

he says he doesn't care that she's on her period. but she's feeling off-- not cramps, not bloating, not anything as mundanely biological as that. it's his token maturity about the thing that makes it dangerous. boys like him don't have a lot of maturity to waste.

and hell, mundane biology is what she signed up for, and she's a little tipsy, thinking it, when she says-- joking: "that's not why i keep you around."

it's not meant to be a challenge, but she sees the flash of old arrogance, that old bullshit boy machismo. kavinsky hardens-- shrinks away, really, from the light of softer-focus perception. he makes two shitty jokes without really pressuring her, pretends to ignore the beginning of her story about aunt edie's incriminating panty hose in the gardener's hawthorn, sends her next cocktail back for a diet replacement, then tells her she's fat in case she didn't get the hint. they're well into their first fight by the time they get to the cab stop. ivy's too drunk to know what they're arguing about; even if she were sober, she doubts she'd be able to articulate it. she's here to buy herself a paradigm shift, after all. if she could see the paradigm from inside of it, she wouldn't need eudio.

"fuck you," she tells him. "why are you such an asshole?"

"prostate stimulation," he says. "strap-on next time, okay? tired of the fish smell anyway."

she almost slaps him, but the cab flashes up around the corner. they sulk loudly until it pulls up, and he leans over to pull the door open for her at the same time she stoops to tell the driver only one passenger. kavinsky's mouth accidentally hits her face, and they both kind of recoil and kind of fall over. suddenly, he's got her leaned up on the car door, technically, or maybe cinematically, his hand pressed on the window beside her waist, one of her heels tilted up, his leather jacket hanging over her cocktail dress nearly close enough to touch. he'd beat her two games out of three. he would kiss her if she let him.

but ivy says, "i'm not going to let you take that back," and she turns her head away. but not before she catches the smile on his face, brief, triumphant.

harcho for andie (cw injury, vague gore)

[inculpate]

I.

"Everybody knows Azgeda kill a white bear when they're five," Harper says, loudly enough to interrupt the whisperers around the campfire. "Rite of passage." Echo overhears, of course. Echo has ears like a bat; no doubt, she had heard the gossip anyway, the people trying to divine the flesh of her back. It is netted with raised keloids, edges, notches, a pattern like dragonscales spanning the wings of her shoulderblades. Normally, the grounders seem to cover up, but lately, the alliance seems to have lulled everyone into more casual traditions. Clothing, apparently. Echo's dress knots a halter behind her neck-- which is not a choice that anybody from space would have made, had they the scars, but Harper understands that that's the point. The jagged rows of teeth strung around her neck might even be considered jewelry. The other skaikru go silent on either side of Harper, and start to look at the cooking pots. Echo looks over her shoulder and a smile alters the shape of her eyes.

II.

"Everybody knows Azgeda bleed silver," Harper says, loudly enough to be heard over the moans and cries of the other wounded. "That can't be blood." It's a reversal of roles, considering how they met. But Harper isn't here to feed anybody this time; she's here because they ran out of restraints, and that can be a problem when you need to reset a limb on a warrior. Dr. Griffin had tapped her for Echo partly because they're about the same size and partly, she supposed, because they're friends, or as much friends as grounders and skaikru can be at this point. She braces her elbows on Echo's chest, above her breasts, and smiles down at her thinly. Echo's face is sweaty, but her eyes skitter and focus. "Maybe the gods that built you wired your saliva glands to your bones," she suggests. "So when you hurt, you spit." Echo stares at her for an instant-- and then there's a flash of pale teeth, incredulous, not quite exasperated, and a sweet, slow, rasping laugh that only Harper is close enough to hear.

III.

"Everybody knows Azgeda kiss with their noses," Harper says across the forest glade, loudly enough that Echo can tell that she's nervous, probably. Louder than Harper had meant to. She isn't sure. Maybe Ice Nation women dress like that all the time. Maybe Echo laughs for lots of girls now. Maybe Echo just likes punching assholes in the face. That last thing, Harper is pretty sure, is completely true. But there are other truths-- that Harper has learned the geometry of Echo's scars and made a rough estimate of her kills, that she is recently single and kind of damaged and pretty patient. But it's also true that death has been in a hurry for most of her youth. Life, she thinks, had better fucking catch up. Echo cocks her head and steps toward her, soundless in a way that underscores the fact she doesn't say much most of the time.

Then she touches Harper's bandana gently, over her brow. "No." Then she gets even closer than that. Leans over and rests her forehead on Harper's forehead. "Azgeda kiss like this way," she says, laughter in her voice, smile in her eyes.

"But not really," Harper says.

"No," Echo says, and kisses her for real.

calinsky for nubl (cw animal death, relational abuse, everything is terrible)

[pillz]

I.

it is a terrible fight. unimaginable, and yet completely inevitable. after caleb came home, they'd made up in less than a day and spent most of the rest of the week making out. they hadn't talked.

until they had. which, despite the record levels of avoidance throughout their relationship, had been inevitable as well: the truth comes out.

and maybe with all the inexorable freudian fate bullshit going on between the two of them, caleb should have predicted it. caleb is a hard monster to shock. he can do sunday movie in as easily as he can eat a man alive, and while he wouldn't exactly be pleased if his mother attempted to murder him again, he wouldn't waste his adrenaline on being surprised. a dragon almost killed him earlier this year; he's met kavinsky's magic before, and uglier spells besides. last month, he stepped in through the door to find an arrow-punctured tire in his bed and several doors missing, with no margin of error in his first guess as to whodunnit. caleb holt has traveled worlds, and he will travel more. he can take nearly anything in stride. maybe he should have pretended to be impressed by the kidnapping story, but he hadn't wanted to be dishonest about anything, least of all the way that he loved.

but he walks into his house to find mal's inexplicable carcass sodden in blood. paws limp, the proud plume of his tail bedraggled, flies gathering around his milky eyes. a part of him dies and comes alive again. he kills the culprit in his mind a half-dozen different deaths and forgets all of eudio's laws. he lays his hands on mal and nothing happens, and in that illogical moment that caleb's power deserts him, the rage that cuts his heart has an edge fine enough to scar the furthest years of his immortality; he knows he will never forget.

five minutes later, kavinsky pulls up in a mitsubishi full of real dog. mal: alive and well. mal's barking sounds off joyous and then worried, noisy, nearly loud enough to drown out kavinsky's shitty dubstep, kavinsky's shitty laughter, and the querulous beep-beep-beep of wylan ringing kavinsky's phone with questions that he probably doesn't actually want to know the answer to.

caleb breaks in the driver's side of kavinsky's car.

not the door-- the side of the car. kavinsky has stopped laughing, but he doesn't apologize, watching mal cover caleb's face with whining kisses, cleaning off the salt of his tears. "guess what," kavinsky says suddenly. "i got my powers back."

II.

i just wanted ot know i could get to u, kavinsky texts, later. caleb doesn't respond.

none of it gets to caleb, really. not the apology, properly typed, and then properly said aloud. not the fact that kavinsky actually cried a little-- childishly, caleb is sure, and largely out of frustration. not the gifts, certainly, and there were so many of them, puerile and almost offensive, carob dick cakes for the dogs and an suv big enough to drive them all in, a nicely framed picture of nico that was actually a picture of caleb, an actual diamond ring, flannel shirts, dildos, a laptop, an apron printed with what kavinsky imagines wylan looks like naked, a dozen planters of catnip for the garden, then just a leafblower because he noticed caleb needed one, a yoga mat, an obscene quantity of pillows, a new laptop, video games that caleb has never heard of, a particularly aggressive roomba equipped to deal with the entire bestiary, quite a bit of porn, and some nice flatware. caleb ignores him. wylan and joe and nico jr. don't bring him up, probably unwilling to volunteer for world war iii, and no doubt nervous about the possibility of being drafted.

do u want me 2 go home?
ill gohome

caleb doesn't answer that, either.

by the second month, the gifts stop. the texts do too. but at least once a week, mal and the others still smell kavinsky around the block when they walk; the reek of straightforward sadness, of ordinary heartbreak, and periodically of beer. humanity sits queasily with monster guts. caleb knows better than most people. if dogs weren't his nature, they'd have changed it for the better. caleb misses him by then, but he's very busy between work and wylan and the other humans and the animals. he cheats a little, maybe, sneaks peeks at kavinsky at the meet and greet when he knows the other boy isn't watching. kavinsky looks the same but worse. the facial hair is a bad idea. kavinsky is with a girl who catches him looking and smiles at him ruefully. of course she knows.

the third month, caleb wakes him up with a knock on the car window. there's something comical about the way kavinsky sits up, muzzy-eyed, rolls the wrong window down, before he gets the right one. "number one," caleb says, "cologne isn't the same as deodorant, and deodorant isn't the same as taking a shower." kavinsky nods. "number two," caleb says, and puts his arms through the window to put the puppy on kavinsky's lap.

kavinsky stares down at the puppy. then he looks up and opens his mouth, probably to say something inadvertently stupid, and caleb kisses him.

"i was too tired, man," kavinsky complains, rubbing his hair then his face then his puppy. "i was too tired to fucking shower. okay? i ran out of enemies. now i just compulsively fuck up my friends." but he stops himself before going into it all over again. it was just a prank, blah blah blah. he knows what he did. he always does, even if it's never as bad as last time.

"congratulations," caleb replies. "you win."

"what," kavinsky says.

"the chance to stop."

rovinsky for mici (cw nonconsensual kiss)

[pillz]

It's not until Adam puts his hand on his ass that Ronan realizes that something is fucked. And it's not that Adam is completely unacquainted with his ass, at this point, and they had been trying some stuff with tongue lately anyway. But then there is a hand on his ass-- when they are outside, with a handful of strangers crossing the street nearby, and the unexpected boldness of Adam's affection is immediately, obviously something else. Something fucked.

He flinches back. Tastes cigarettes and stale beer in the hollow of his tongue, impossibly strange and unmistakably fucked. Rage lances Ronan's heart like a needle through a boil. He recoils like he was burned. One hand in a fist, his shoulders already braced, as ready as hate-- as ready as hatred used to be for him.

Yet the sight of Adam's face stops him now. As it would stop him anywhere, in any world, on any sunlit street corner, in spite of fucking weird behavior. Adam's elfin jaw and Adam's splash of brown freckles, the tawny tan in his cheekbones deepened with the advent of summer. Ronan has been watching him darken through the summer. Every detail is right, down to the confusion, the guarded beginning of hurt, reflected in Adam's widened, dark eyes. Every detail is right until the instant Adam's damp mouth stretches itself wide around a grin, and Kavinsky's voice leaks out of it, a toxic serpent into the garden.

"Hey baby."

Ronan hits him. Adam's face— not Adam, not Adam-- erupts into electrical sparks, twists and then sags abruptly, grotesque and impossible, flickers and flattens. Kavinsky's pale nose emerges underneath, and then a jackal's grin. He laughs despicably. Ronan hits him again and it does nothing but make him feel better, then worse. Ronan uses his elbow, shoves him. Kavinsky is as skinny as ever, stumbling aside easy, but there's no blood, no satisfying creak and give to his bones. Inarticulate fear clenches Ronan's heart, threatening to short the easy heat of his temper. He knows, he knows. He shoves Kavinsky against a wall. "What," he's screaming now, "the fuck do you want?"

Kavinsky shirt is torn down his shoulder. His eyes are bright as poison, and his voice is mellifluous now in a way that it never was back home. "Just checking in to see if you're okay, my queer cunt queen," he says. Not gentle, but smoothed out by the certainty of his own invincibility; the patience that comes of despair. "And if you are, fuck everything up."

"Where's Adam?" Ronan's voice cracks like a child's. A younger child. Somehow, they are both children.

"Fucked if I know. Kidnapping is so passé." It's impossible to tell if Kavinsky is lying, but it's probable that that's the truth. Adam's power is as unimaginable as ever. Still, Ronan's guts are a Gordian of anxiety, bad lunch, incipient shame. His face starts to heat up before he can think a thought to stop it. He twists away on one heel, viciously, stalled out of dialling the psychic text network by a confused crowd of thought, sickeningly familiar. He knows, he knows. The other boy's laughter follows him down the street, into the Virginian sunshine. Ronan punches the first paparazzi he sees right in the camera.

bivinsky for mici (cw drug use)

[pillz]

Billy Kaplan is drunk. Blind, reel-around, puke in his own mouth, can't remember his name drunk.

Well-- Billy Kaplan tried to get that drunk. In practice, and in spite of recent magical disasters that have partly motivated him to get this way, he's a little bit too responsible to engage in escapism that's that obvious. For example, he kept drinking water in between the tequila shots, took public transportation and, when Joseph Kavinsky wandered up the bar and asked him if the magic order was ready, Billy Kaplan had put up a responsible hand and responsibly said, "No magic today." He had almost added, melodramatically, No magic ever, but again he was too responsibly sober to convince himself of that.

Kavinsky had frowned impatiently then smirked, suddenly. "You okay, man?"

No. "Sure." Lately, Billy generally felt like he had lead weights tied to his ankles. Envy pinching with every step, and regret heavy in a way that he didn't tend to notice in the ordinary grind of the way, right up until he had to make a lefthand turn or unexpectedly look at an erstwhile victim in the eye and then he was tripping over himself, clumsy and miserable. He did not know much about what had happened to Kavinsky, but he was aware that something had. "It probably isn't a good idea to... invest with me."

"I am," Kavinsky smiled, "a big fan of terrible ideas."

He stopped smiling when Billy threw up on his shoes.

Kavinsky is evidently protective enough of his investment to babysit. He makes a half-hearted offer of cocaine and then ecstasy and then a dubious mustard-yellow pill, pinching Billy's hip, predictably skeezy. And then he transtions, with mercenary precision, into buying Billy chicken nuggets and holding a water bottle over his face after Billy somehow up winds up wallowing in the (uncomfortable) backseat of the Mitsubishi. There is a scandalous amount of guns in this car. Also, two bullet holes. Billy has not bothered asking what Kavinsky's original plans for the evening were. "Did you even make the fucking belt, shitqueen?" Kavinsky asks, finally. "I got a business to run, man." But he pulls the bottle away when Billy pauses to swallow and, being a categorically disgusting person, drinks from it too. Maybe Kavinsky is accustomed to vomit taste. He washes it down with beer, after.

They get out of the car at an overlook. De Chima twinkles below.

"Haven't you ever really wanted to be with someone," Billy asks, folding his arms under his head. He closes his eyes and tries to remember the warnings that Gansey told him, but the thought of Gansey is a razorblade in his heart. "Really."

Kavinsky shrugs. Then he bounces the bottle cap off Billy's head. Billy can barely feel it. "I can fuck anyone," Kavinsky says. "When you're on cocaine, you'll understand."

Billy is quiet awhile, watching the faraway cars. Presently, he says, "If you want anyone, that means the same as wanting no one at all. It's like being anywhere or nowhere. Anything and nothing. If you don't care, you don't care."

"Yeah," Kavinsky says, then he leans over and kisses him, licking into the sour damp of Billy's mouth. It's not quite the worst thing Billy's done this summer.

kavilde for libby! (tw suicide, mourning)

[pillz]

Georgie kills himself on Friday, and popular theory has it that he did it for her, thereby proving with dubious certainty that he was an idiot in a society of idiots.

She's thinking about cutting the funeral. Heading out to Brighton, maybe. It might be gauche, but New York City is feeling more and more passé.

Still, her dressing room at the jazz club represents a sanctuary. Ilde is powdering her nose-- literally, when the note comes for her. Marie hands it over and says, "It's from a fan." This explains everything and nothing. Swimfan? A soggy middle-aged hopeful fresh out of a divorce? Ilde tilts her head at the older woman, and doesn't have to even start to say the words before Marie adds, with a shrug, "Hard to read. Looks shady. Around your age."

Swimfan, Ilde thinks. Except that Marie is usually a better judge of character than that. They exchange smiles, and Marie heads back out to the manager's office. Ilde opens the note, and sees an unfamiliar, jagged script, handwritten.

On the first day in the world that was mine
I had a bottle of blueberry wine
There was a house for me, boxes and sky,
And I knew my old friends would soon come by.

She drops her brush and steps out so quick she might as well be running.

It's Kavinsky. Were Ilde to be entirely honest, he's a disappointment, but transparency was never something that their relationship required-- if relationship was the word for it. He guesses at her reaction, which isn't subtle anyway, and his narrow face creases into a laugh. Marie was right. He's older now. Oxford shirt and jeans rather than the shitty old muscle shirt, leather jacket over it. She remembers now, that he'd hired her for a song. "How's tricks, sweetheart," he says, and that much is the same.

"Your rhymes suck, white boy," she answers, allowing him to kiss her on the cheek. "How did you get here?"

"Cab." He shrugs. "I'm a guest on a friend's interversal tour."

"Anyone I know?"

"Don't think so. Doubt it. He fucked a different girl."

She shrugs, knowing that the questions are there but not arsed to ask. Instead, she sizes him up. Shoulders, inseam. His cologne smells expensive, but there's still too much body spray underneath it. Oh well. "Can I borrow you for a funeral?" she asks, interrupting his something spiel about Eudio. Beggars can't be choosers, but if she's going to choose, she isn't going to beg. Or make with wasteful niceties about a world that's over, at least for now. She has about sixty black outfits to choose from.

At the funeral, he whispers, "Didn't know you were such a royal bitch," and she doesn't know if he's twigging on the accusatory stares or the fact that her dress is effectively backless under the sheer. She had seen Georgie's mother earlier, the woman's pruney lips moving around the words escort and some other idiotic words of self-comfort. Ilde leans her breast on Kavinsky's arm and answers,

"Don't you make this about me too. It never was." But she cries a little anyway, because she had cared for Georgie, even though he had been an idiot, and died for worse causes than love.

At the car, Kavinsky kisses her. Wraps an arm around her waist and slants his mouth over her lips, demure and quick. He is still holding the crumpled Kleenex discolored by her mascara in his hand behind the small of her back. He doesn't ask, but he stays through the evening to hear her sing another man's song.

blivinsky nov-dec 2016

[pillz]

[1]

Maybe it wouldn't feel so good if he'd gotten laid in the past month. But he hadn't. It's the longest he'd gone without fucking anybody in years, and maybe he was beginning to resent it a little, ramping up for some pointless trivial bicker about Marie Claire's shitty advice for young women who want to control their men through the paternalistic yoke of sex negativity, like, way to be a victim, Cavendar, but then it's Tuesday morning in his apartment when she slips a hand under the covers and touches his thing.

He almost stops breathing, thinking giddily that, maybe, she got confused, is dreaming about stirring crust batter. Maybe his dick is about to be in for a painfully literal twist.

But she turns closer, the T-shirt sinking over her shoulder, her faintly freckled breast. Her fingers quicken with unmistakable intent. And like a twelve-year-old, he's hard in two seconds. She blinks at him, her eyes wide and dark and beautiful as some grand metaphor that just means a pretty girl remembered to lick her palm before she stuck it down your boxers. Fuck, he thinks. Subtle as he can, he tries to dig his nails into his own thigh. Tries to focus on the sore half-moons forming pink in his skin. Tries not to come too soon. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to concentrate, pun intended; the most of all, when she inchworms nearer, so he can pick out the notes of his own shampoo in her hair. When she says, "Hey, Kavinsky. I can't kiss you from here."

[2]

She likes his Nicordistide present. Flying fucking rollerskates: of course she likes his present. They go out to Benson park to practice, over the lake, where Alanis will catch her if something gets fucked up; a good plan, a safe one, insofar as that magical water dragons are good and safe. Somehow, Kavinsky ends up being the one clinging too tight to her hands as she floats up, her feet shuffling elegant circles in the air, and her laughter shimmering even higher up, an auditory aurora in the winter sunshine. He's supposed to be anchoring her down, but the rowboat begins to turn under his feet. His hands are sweating. You'd think he would have learned by now, after a hundred white Mitsubishis and two fire monsters, to stop gifting people with ways to get away from him.

[3]

At some point, he allows himself to be cautiously happy. Contrary to the opinions of local vampires, he is not reckless about it; there are few good things in his life, and he doesn't like for anybody to bother the ones he has. He skips a few meet-and-greets, pragmatically, avoiding the revelation (or five) about who Caleb's trying to fuck now, and also somehow not too tempted to see the look on Caleb's face once he saw who'd replaced him.

He does more parkour, drags Minho up there with him a couple of times. He smokes less pot, hangs out with Ash on nights he can't sleep. He takes a beta-blocker so avoid psychic fucking any astral projectionists that accidentally wander into his head. #dreamthiefproblems. There are too many things he doesn't tell Bliss, but he makes up for it by coming by the Pie Hole most days before his shift at the nightclub. He brings her coffee and open-mouthed kisses and star-shaped fairy lights and some weed and town gossip and a tire pressure gauge, normal boyfriend stuff. Most of the time, he suspects it's trite. Worse, he suspects she knows it's an act. He suspects it's an act, himself; he wonders if that's why he likes doing it. The props, the performance. Perhaps the pretense. His therapist tells him that, "Nobody would ever fall in love if they hadn't read about it first," and he guesses she's reassuring him because she thinks that he's embarrassed by all this shit. The normalcy, the vulnerability that she's always talking about. Kavinsky sees it in other people: the precarious balance in Vex's frame when he's wrapped his drunken arms around Mark, the trite heart-shape that Wylan and Caleb's profiles had framed when they had kissed in the Jade Shrine. How fucking fragile the possibility of healing, when Ivy dismisses Jason, talks about the people she's seen since Jason. Fragile, like if you breathe on it too hard, all these good lines she's giving you are gonna fall inward, and maybe you'll find out underneath, she was still fucked up over him all along. But maybe not, you know?

The truth is, he doesn't feel vulnerable. He feels happy.

friendship ronsey for poets;

[beachland]

It takes exactly as much wealth as the Ganseys have, to not only have a membership from Charleston Club Luxury rentals, but to authorize a fifteen-year-old boy to get behind the wheel. The Jaguar XJ220 looks like a thing of weird science-fiction, squashed and sharpened like a surgical knife designed to operate on the wind itself, but as a member of the resurrected dead, Gansey isn't one to judge.

And more importantly: Ronan loves it.

Gansey wishes there was a convertible version, but they have the windows rolled down anyway. Wind pours through, carding through Ronan's long curls and half-burying the percussive thump-a-thump of the obnoxious mixtape that the Irish boy had put in the USB port. Gansey isn't sure why they call them mixtapes anymore, when a small glowing stub of circuitry is what keeps the data, but he supposes that the net effect is the same. That net effect being: loud. Ronan laughs like a maniac. Gansey tries to say something.

"WHAT?" Ronan asks, looking at him. Gansey adjusts his glasses and tries again. Ronan snaps his fingers encouragingly, then pushes his hand away from the stereo. They're going at least thirty miles per hour over the speed limit, but there is nothing but fenced-in cow pasture as far as he can see, and he feels strangely safe in the smeared madness of summer-time color as long as it's in Ronan's hands.

Lacking other options, Gansey shouts: "I KNOW YOU LIKE IT, BUT THIS CAR IS FAR TOO OBNOXIOUS FOR WEST VIRGINIA."

Ronan lofts an eyebrow at him, sharp, skeptical. Gansey catches, NO, but the rest is lost to the wind. There's only a day left before they have to stat heading back for the semester; he isn't going to begrudge his friend this particular fantasy. And who knows, maybe Mr. Lynch will get one for him for his birthday. Gansey's not disappointed; something about his sparse dormitory room, the suitcases in the corner, makes him feel light. Free. He has no particular desire to be burdened by outrageously expensive belongings again, no matter how well-matched their utility and beauty and novelty and horsepower were matched to every penny. And the Jag, and the Audi they'd tried after that, had been nothing if not outrageous.

It's not until they're off the 68 for almost half an hour before he realizes that they aren't detouring for lunch after all. The music's quieter than it was when they were test-driving cars, but even so, when Gansey shouts his question over the beats, Ronan pretends not to listen, guiding the BMW around a corner. So he asks again. Nothing.

"You recall the Bluetooth's connected to my phone. How are we feeling about smooth jazz this afternoon?"

That gets him a veritably fangy grin, a flattering concession by Ronan's measure. But he just says, "I just don't want to get your hopes up. It's dangerous to dream too big." He winks. They're only fifteen, so Gansey mistakes his meaning.

"I hardly think I'm particularly susceptible to unrealistic expectations," he says. "Even considering my extracurricular search. I've been rigorous in my scholastic methods."

Ronan fakes a snore. But it's only a minute later that they pull up in front of a grand old house— not grand the way that the mansion in Washington is grand, but grand the way that two stories and Spanish tiled roofs can be when framed just so by the drooping skirts of a front yard willow tree, vegetable garden marked off with tiny, immaculate wooden signs for carrots, beets, butternut squash. Later, Gansey will find out that the owner had a tragic story about irreversible glaucoma, three grandchildren roughly their age, and a history in the Navy besides, but in that moment, Gansey can't think about that or Welsh Kings or even road safety. Ronan can't stop the BMW fast enough. She's already parked in the driveway, glowing orange in the sunshine.

aricinsky for kit;

[beachland]

1. After the first two weeks Kavinsky spends on the couch, Aric lets him come to bed, but they stay on their own sides. Aric doesn’t know which is more difficult: not touching him when he’s soft and wan, asleep in the mornings despite knowing this is for him now, or listening to him cry, harsh but muffled late at night, and knowing that that has nothing to do with him at all.
   
   
2. When Aric sought to woo him, he had tried and failed to be subtle, choosing public events and ordinary venues, tolerating the knowledge Kavinsky would be back the next day with someone else on his arm. Despite sleeping more than half the day and moving slower than usual, Kavinsky is not and nor does he try to be subtle. Apparently, there is something called “Pinterest” in Kavinsky’s homeworld, and Eudiography is the equivalent. A horrific handmade tree decal begins to germinate across the wall of his home, and the keepsake glasstop farmtable idea ends on a chemically odorous bonfire; the glass jar Sharpied with “The Reason I Really Like You” contains many folded Post-Its of cartoon penises and well-endowed stick figures in sexual positions, but some of them have smiley faces and arrowed labels of “Your Face,” or unillustrated “When You Toast My Croissant (Literally),” “You Remind Me To Take My Meds,” “Kissing Until I Need A Fucking Chiropractor,” “Be Shorter Maybe.” Aric catches a glimpse on of the website on his computer one afternoon and sees an album titled, “How to Get Him Back.”
   
   
3. Kavinsky looks haggard in the sunlight, but Aric knows better than to mention it. They ride mostly in silence and Aric is not sure that the boy is having fun, or that he remembers how. Down a valley, up a hill. At the pond, they dismount and Aric tries to pick some apples from a tree because he’s tall enough not to have to climb it. On an off-chance, he turns and catches Kavinsky sneaking sugar cubes to Thanatos, leaning sleepily on the warhorse’s huge neck. He knows better than to mention that either.

vexinsky for april;

[beachland]

(on kissing)

It’s not that Kavinsky had fantasized it out of the ballpark, you know. Stared at his lips, framed in his car window profile, race after nocturnal car race. Kavinsky hadn’t stalked him for months around rural Henrietta, broken into his home, mocked his friends and taken gross liberties with the belongings and the bodily health of the ones he loved best. It’s not as if Vex had been his last greasefire beacon of hope in a dumb fucking adolescent despair, a prize that he had been desperate to have completely but incapable of laying but one perverse finger upon.

It’s not as if Kavinsky had done it for a year, which was longer, more times than he’d ever kissed anyone else. It’s not as if he’d built a little house of cards upon that shallow and flimsy foundation, or not even a house of cards; the shadow of the house, unspecific, without named geography or charted timeline. It’s not as if he’d pictured a number of dogs in the yard and a van big enough to hold all of them, carob cake, a grudging but optimistic effort to accommodating conflicting work schedules, morning sex on the weekends, arguments to fuel the fucking at night.

It’s not like Kavinsky counts down until the next night he can put his mouth on Vex’s mouth, or that he can’t picture a month without making him laugh. It’s not as if Vex is the only one who understands him, likes him for who he is, likes just enough of the same things and knows just enough different to teach him weird sex and sleazy mind games, like nobody else ever has before. It’s not as if they get along like a house on fire, bright as a terrestrial fucking star in the dark, wood smoke and endings, grief and gasoline, the elements they know best.

They aren’t like that. Not exactly.