aftersfm - Tumblr blog

[aftersfm]

{  C O N N O R  }

x.

Pushing himself from the stool, a balance shaky for the benefit of others, a tired sigh weighing down his shoulders as he turned to leave, what was it with small towns and everyone getting into each others business. He’d already had a welcome basket of bread and jams and meats dropped at his apartment door, one which he’d stared at for far too long, half expecting it to grow another head. Barely a step had been taken when his past came crashing into the present.

Turning too quickly for the picture of the drunk he’d been a moment ago, all facades washed away, leaving the sharpened version of himself he missed, before he was Connor the firefighter. “Well I’ll be damned!” Closing the distance between them, which should be whole states rather than a few feet, he wrapped his arms around Nolan’s shoulders and clapped him on the back excitedly. 

Withdrawing just enough to see Nolan’s face, Connor was half worried that this was some cruel trick, an apparition, or perhaps he really had to much to drink. His hands remained on the others shoulders so he couldn’t simply disappear back into the memories of his past, as a look of sheer joy and disbelief mixed on his own face.

“What in gods name are you doing here Nolan?” 

⊹     ⊹     ⊹  

Years would pass, time would ease the man in a way where he’d try to be good. Try to be whole. Like his brother or uncle, or friends he knew as a rosy cheeked boy with eyes ready to swallow the world. The man would try to reflect these things, try to give the world something other than the anger he knows. Swallow the rot inside him, let it gnaw and pick apart at his insides until it devours him whole. It’s something his time taught him, gradually over the years. In a place where knew bruises only covered now old scars, and he’d spit the blood from his mouth at the security guards who tried to step in his way.

Trapped.

Perhaps Skulls wasn’t so different.

“You’re in my stomping grounds.” Leaning into the other man- into the familiar touch, with golden liquor coating his words, “I hate to tell ya, you came to the wrong side of town. Didn’t they warn you? There’s nothing here.”

[aftersfm]

location: the drunken cactus status: @valmillcr​​

It’s easy to forget on nights like this. Where there’s quiet chatter somewhere distant behind him, and time seems to stand still at a bar he’s known as long as he was a young man. Split knuckles now turned white with scars, and features once made for war now finding age settle across them. It’s easy to fall back into a time before he tried to swallow the rot that oozes through his veins, before the years tire him and he lets it slowly eat him alive. Where anger finds its way back.

“Some of us are trying to enjoy a drink in peace.” Nolan wouldn’t even remember what it was the person beside him had said, besides for how it ground against the thin patience he already had on this ever burning night. “We’re getting sick of hearing your voice up here.”

[aftersfm]

{  M A G G I E  }

x.

Starved for attention, clawing at her own soul craving for scraps from anyone. She was in a free fall just waiting for someone to save her from this unending boredom. His lack of reaction was positively enraging, if she’d been any less in control she would have him between her teeth. She might like playing a dangerous game but she wasn’t stupid enough to risk everything good she had going by starting a fight with the wolves. One bite from him and she’d be done. Perhaps that was why she was so enticed by him, a firefly to the flame only to get burnt.

A snarl full of bared teeth, fangs threatening to slice through her own lip as he uttered the very words she knew to be true. She was after attention. She was demanding attention. “I don’t need your permission to destroy something Nolan.” Throwing the plate in her hand at the wall, let it shatter, let the wall crumble for all she cared right now. Her attention was fixed on him, if he thought she was a cat then that made him the mouse she was playing with.

Silent steps taken with no rush, no urgency. Full of pride, confidence and even a whispered hint of arrogance left over from days long since passed. Her eyes lit up as she stopped before him, looking up into his empty threats. “Please. We both know there is nothing you can do to make me do anything. You’re all bark no bite.” Biting at the air in front of her, her lips curled up, the corners holding all the cruelty she hadn’t intended to throw into her words as they dropped with the challenge she’d just laid at his feet.

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Fans offer a distant white noise in the gym, attempting to ward off the humidity that settles in the air. Stale and suffocating. Loud collisions of the weights thrown to the room, sharp strikes of lighting in this brewing storm. Nolan takes his own steps closer to Maggie, until they’re stood square before one another. Where the woman before him was awash with confidence, with arrogance. The human that stood before her, stands with a force of fearlessness that only comes from those willing to paddle out in the middle of the storm until the waves wash over them. Consume them. Until there’s no difference. Crashing waves, electric skies. Beating rain. Man and ocean. Ocean and storm. 

But he doesn’t stop there, reaching out he grabs the woman by the wrist. Calloused fingers sinking into her porcelain skin. Gripping tight, promising not to let go. “What, are you afraid I might do more than bark at you?”

His own words like a deep rumble of thunder, carrying through the night like a distant warning. Every ounce of reason says he should be afraid of the woman before him, that a human like himself shouldn’t dare bite at a vampire. But Nolan had never been one for reason. And he’d played the same game as supernaturals as long as he could remember. Fear wasn’t something he knew. But a growing cataclysm coursing deep inside him, that was.

“You like to play this game, pretend you have any control over anything in your life. Why are you so afraid to lose it?”

[aftersfm]

{  M A R L E Y  }

—

His lips parted and Marley had expected another denial, a refusal to admit the truth, or to claim her as his own blood. The surge of anger coursed through her without even needing to hear the offered excuse, blood boiling at just the potential of the words yet to pierce the air. It was hard to think of a rebuttal to a response that had yet to be given, but they crossed her mind anyways in a rapid fire, head brimming in retorts and comebacks. She told herself that she wouldn’t have been this angry if he’d just told her, that day at the trailer, but Marley deep down knew this to be a lie. With all she’d had to deal with as of that day, all that’d lied before her, learning that a man claiming to be her father had made a reappearance in town would have surely sent her over the edge, similar to the way that it was now.

Her laugh rang out in the space between them, though there was no humor in the sound. If he thought flattering her would get him out of having to explain himself, he was sadly mistaken–but as Marley’s lips parted to inform him of such, he continued to speak. 

Just as quickly as the fire in her had been started, the information being offered extinguished it, her raised and expectant brows slowly furrowing into confusion. Nolan. August. Helen. Initially she thought herself to only recognize one of the three names, but as her brain drifted to the box of photos she’d found beneath her mother’s bed, to the picture of the unfamiliar man, August ‘90 scrawled on the back in her mother’s handwriting. Marley had thought it to just be the date.

I’m nothing to you. She’s unsure how long she’d been staring, stunned into silence, as her brain scrambled to make sense of the information being given. She’d been so sure…without a word, Marley stepped back from the counter, disappearing around the corner and to the break room where her bag resided. She returned moments later, a stack of photos in her grip. Her initial instinct was to throw them down, accusation in the action, but she forced herself to gently slide them across to him (Nolan). 

She didn’t need to look at the photo on top to know what it was of. A boy, a younger version of the man sat before her, with a baby on his lap, sat on the very same couch Marley had sold weeks before for fifty bucks. His head tilted up towards the camera, a bandage stretched across the bridge of his nose, shit eating grin plastered across his lips. Baby Marley’s wide eyes turned up towards him, little pink bow wrapped around her head. It was the first baby picture of herself that she’d ever seen.

“You were around? When I was a kid?” It’s not so much an allegation as it is a desire for clarification. To make the pieces fit. To make them make sense.

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Honey suckled evenings, rose tinted against a glaring sun on the horizon. A day where the boy was once soft, with bruises covering his skin. Days before his hands knew the weight of blood against them, and those days when all he knew was sharp smiles. There was August. A boy as bright as the day, orange hues washing over him and staining him the colour of the town.

The same town that would swallow him whole. 

There was softness between them. Two creatures who only knew the rough edges and razor sharp summers. Friends before either of them knew what that was. Understanding before they could even speak the words. A tenderness only two boys learning the weight of the world could find in each other.

Then there was Helen. Fireworks igniting in the sky, she was wild, she was life. She was a summer love they’d both get lost in. Worn denim, and shared jackets as they all pile into the same car, driving into the night. As they all pile into the same diner booth. Or against the arcade game. Pressed up against each other, always crammed into one another’s space. Arms tangled reaching for buttons- for fries on each other’s plates.

It was never the same after he was gone. Despite these memories captured in photographs. A young man attempting to be something he wasn’t. Attempting to be gentle. A smile something vibrant, probably a reaction to something the woman behind the camera had said. It was never the same. And he could never be August. But he would have given Helen the world just to help her.

If only it had stayed that way.

Clawing. He feels that clawing again at the back of his throat. Words catching, things unsaid. The man in the picture looks so far from the mirror that stares back at him. His hands tremble more than he would have liked as he reaches out to the pile of photos, but he doesn’t dare lift it. He doesn’t dare look closer at these things that belong in the past. 

“Yeah..” A course graven voice, finding its way into the space between them. “I was, for a bit. You were old enough to stumble around the house, you even got old enough to talk back. But I went away for a while, your mother and I fell out afterwards.” The most simplistic way of putting it all, of explaining who he was. A stranger.

No one to her.

“I was your mum’s friend again there at the end. It’s okay, Kid. She wasn’t a good person, neither of us are.”

[aftersfm]

{  A R D E N  }

Nolan’s entertaining him, he’s certain of it, until his own curiosity pours out with another round. It’s not judgement, not overly curious, but he knows he has to answer. It’s an invitation to share more than a demand, and Arden knows better than to ignore them. It won’t set him free but the burden will be shared.  

While his friend is human, and wields the power to turn Arden a shade of green, he knows he’s not as innocent as the lore claims him to be. The two throw themselves all in, claim a freefall, because its that danger that rips them apart from the weight of all they’ve done for just a little while. They’re rarely discussed it, but they knew that while there wasn’t blood under their fingernails, they had scars from scrubbing them clean. To kill is just as part of the nature of man as it was beast. It was Arden’s human ambition that created a scarlet wake more than the animal he’d become. When he was a boy, he’d been forced to try and wake it but it was mortal hands that carried out the task. 

“No, it wasn’t me,” He found himself unraveling from another confession. He seemed to sink deeper into the chair he sat in. “I didn’t do it, but I still played a part. I let her be there. I needed her there and that’s how it started.”

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Beating. His whole life there’s been this beating creature against his ribs. Clawing, begging to be free. Poison in his veins. A family trait. It wasn’t his. He’d say time and time again, he’d convince himself. He’s been like this his whole life. A hunger to know the universe, to let it sink it’s teeth into him and tear him apart until there’s nothing left. Nothing but blood and flesh, and matted mess of this rotting person that once was.

He’d beg the universe to take him. Night after night. Let me be free. Let him escape like all the others who crossed into his life. 

Nolan asks Arden because he understands- he knows what it is to kill someone. By intention or accident. He knows blood caked under his nails, and dirt clawing. He looks to Arden. And he understands. It’s written all over the man’s face, the blood that stains him. 

He pours Arden another drink, his mind trying not to drift to blood sprawled on the floor, or gunshots ringing against his ears. “She doesn’t seem like her anymore.” His statement is simple- not an accusation, not anything beyond an observation. Thinking back to his last interactions with her. Lost.

“You’re not a bad man, Arden.”

[aftersfm]

{  C O N N O R  }

where: the drunken cactus when: middle of the afternoon

The crisp fizz off the top of his beer settled against edge of his fingers as they sat wrapped around the neck of the chilled glass, the ghost of a bruise dusting his knuckles beneath the many well worn scars that told a thousand stories. Despite the noise in the bar, even in the middle of the day, he was still struggling with how quiet he found it. Prisons were noisy places, and with their penchant for timetables and activities, Connor found himself with far too much time on his hands. 

After a punishing workout and finally unpacking the last of his things he’d ambled down to the bar, only to hesitate at the door, although it wasn’t hesitation. He’d grown used to waiting for doors to be opened with the electronic buzz that released the lock. It took him a moment to remember that he was out, clear, free! This lapse had left him in a sour mood so when he felt someone disturb the space beside him he sighed, and not all that quietly. “What? No other seats?”

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

It didn’t matter how many years passed, the man would never really leave those confined walls. Trapped. As long as he’s been free. Concrete surrounding, suffocating- not much unlike Skulls. He knew the restlessness of being alone for too long, of the echo of silence when there’s nothing but your own thoughts. Despite him never admitting it, Nolan still needed that constant white noise. Which means the man find himself at the company of local bars most nights. But it’s easy to say that was always where the man was found, even before then.

What he wasn’t expecting to find at his local bar, in a middle of nowhere town, in the middle of nowhere America- was a familiar stature sat up at the bar. A man who should have been long forgotten by now, faint to the taste of blood in his mouth and early hours whispered against dark, buried nights. 

A smile stretching wide against Nolan’s features, an unknown life bubbling into his tone as he places an empty glass on the bar besides the man and slaps a hand against his shoulder. “What, there’s no room for old friends?”

[aftersfm]

{  G R A H A M  }

—

It’s Nolan’s proximity to Arden in Graham’s mind, or the familiar motion of his hands being guided to self defend that bring the memories of childhood back to the man. The man who’d once been a boy who, much to the chagrin of his grandfather, had channeled his emotions through words and tears rather than physical violence. A boy who had needed his older brother to look out for him, who had heard countless sighed you’re going to have to stand up for yourself some day, Graham’s as he cowered behind and watched Arden take care of whoever it was that decided to pick on him that year. He never had learned, not truly, but with graduation, his brief stint in California, and his return as something more hollow than when he’d left, the bullies had simply either gone off, or found different targets. Ones easier than a wolf who’d triggered and wouldn’t tell the tales of how. Couldn’t. 

“Feet under my shoulders.” Graham repeated, a mumble to himself, body rearranging to the correct stance at Nolan’s insistence. His arms once again were taken control by Nolan, large hand shaping Graham’s slightly smaller digits into a proper fist. This much he knew, remembered from Arden’s brief teachings, and slowly began to nod his head, eyes lifting to meet Nolan’s. “Yeah, I think I’ve got it.” If only standing with his feet beneath his shoulders and his fist raised were the end of it. 

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Blood staining the floor beneath their feet, if you looked close enough on the surrounding grounds it would be easy enough to find a lost tooth from nights prior. Fans churning against the dense air- sweat and humidity. This place was never designed to be comfortable, it was designed to be a release. A release from a town where dust stains everything you own, and the ghosts of the past weigh against your shoulders. 

Violence and ache, shattered knuckles and bruises against soft skin. Nolan never used to fight for the war it was, he fought to taste blood in his mouth and pain searing hot against his skin. The only kind of touch he would grow to know, where his nose now rests crooked and scars line his skin where violence shaped his youth. How the man still aches for it these days, no matter how much he tries to take a step away.

From a nearby stool, Nolan picks up the focus pads and positions them comfortably on his hands. Standing square across from Graham, “When you’re ready, take a deep breath and punch like you want to do some damage.”

[aftersfm]

Wanna drink with him 🥺

[aftersfm]

{  A R D E N  }

Existential seemed to be a state Arden could hardly run from. If he didn’t face it, he buried it inside himself in old wounds until it finally cut itself out of him once more. At least now he had learned to drink to numb its resurgence. His discomfort had become a constant, the soft hang of his head between his shoulders and the way he seemed aware of every fiber that made him tug for every movement. Arden was trying to avoid pain, but now, he relished its company. He was mindful of how he sat simply to ensure there was an ache, and the whiskey was downed fast enough to allow him to press on.

“We could ask Wren.” It was a slur laced with something other than the amber diluted on his tongue, the whiskey Arden convinced his body was bitter nectar. It was distain, but not towards who he spoke of. It was a disappointment for the words he laced together himself despite the way he couldn’t settle himself because of those circumstances, a hatred for the way his old self clung to some laughter because it was better than choking. “I buried her, and I dug her up, and I’ve still got the fuckin’ dirt under my fingernails. You think she’s still got it in her lungs?”

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Ringing still swells in his ears- why are they ringing? He forgot long ago, that gun. Those hands of his trembling. Grappling. Weathered from years. The venom that dripped from his fingertips- he’d now lick clean of the blood and dirt and poison. Just in hopes that his could bring something other than pain.

Perhaps he could touch something, someone- and there would be more than rot extended. That beating mass of a being with crimson blood dried against his features and staining his hands. And God how he’d pray for it to be his own blood, his own pain. Let him know something other than these emotions that swallow him. Give reason to the pain. Let him know pain again, excruciating and searing. Leaving him with bruises against his skin, and shattered bones where he longs to be whole.

He’s almost certain words are going to leave his mouth, but they catch in the back of his throat as silence washes over the two of them. As dense as the air that circulates them, how the man wishes he thought Arden was joking. But there was a weight to the words that carry the universe with them. Lifting the glass to his lips to wash away the words that catch in his mouth. “I think we’re all covered in dirt from this town. It chokes us from the moment we learnt to breathe.” Pouring them both another drink, perhaps too many all too quickly but he longed for that poison they both craved.

“Did you kill her?”

[aftersfm]

{  T O M M Y  }

open ﹕ location,   the crowbar just before ten pm.

The king had not always been a king,   he had emerged from the dirt piles surrounding unmarked graves.   He crawled through the mud and sweltering sun after the rainstorms had drizzled out,     he grew a larger belly that was hungry for power and recognition.    He was no longer that small child beaten and spat at in the fields,    he was an emperor.   Brought back to life with blood that never slowed and teeth that longed to tear into flesh that betrayed him.  There’s no god on earth that could take this title from him now,   no enraged sea that could drag him down to the bottom of those black depths.  The dethroning of his kingdom will be impossible,  he is the ruler,   the killer,  and the survivor.   The Crowbar was most certainly not his domain,    but his own club meeting was dismissed a few hours ago and he had unfinished duties for those gambling pools. Now he sits in the corner at his usual spot at the back of it, counting the most recent bets for the fights for the next evening,    glass of dark whiskey in his hand.    A form moves to his right,   and he breathes out a low warning.  ‘   Jesus Christ and all that is suffering,   would y’quit your pacing.   It’s giving me a goddamn headache.   ‘  

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Stood in a dim lit room, walls only echo the crowd that cheers and shouts. Bloodied knuckles, and beer breaths. Inside these small walls where sweat dripped to the floor pooling in bright crimson, and swallowed in the glint of stark overhead lights that only illuminate the ring. Even Nolan’s washed by shadow as he paces back and forth.

“Stop watching then,” His own tone something sharp against the static in the air. Bustling background noise of an ongoing fight floods the room. 

[aftersfm]

{  M A R L E Y  }

—

Everything she’d learned in her return to Skull had been a contradiction of itself. Her mother died of a human disease, but had never been human. Her dad was a deadbeat. No, he’d died before she was ever born. No, he was sitting there, across from her at the diner counter, looking at her like he’d seen a ghost. Had he? When he looked at her, she knew what he saw. Helen. The mother of his child. Marley’s mother. 

But Helen, Marley was not. Nor was she was not a photograph he got to peer into, a snapshot of the past he hadn’t been a part of. It all made sense now–his discomfort at the yard sale, his refusal to admit their relationship, the way his eyes bore into Marley, as if simultaneously trying to see her while simply looking through. As if unable to face the part of her that was him.

She wonders how long he’s known. He plays the surprise off well enough, Marley hearing the hitch in his throat in the silence that’d fallen between them following her words. He doesn’t speak, merely stares at her with that damn stare, still looking through her, as if she weren’t standing right there. Look at me, Marley resisted the urge to scream. To bang her hands on the table, draw his attention. Look at me. But she refrained. If he wanted to play this quiet game, this game of chicken, then she would play. She had all night.

Marley couldn’t even find it in herself to be truly surprised by his denial. She could find the humor in it, however, even as the laugh that sounded was anything but humorous. Her head shook, just a show in her act of disbelief, that damn blonde ponytail swinging with it, tickling the back of her neck.

“You don’t get to pawn me off onto another man because you’re…what? Ashamed?” Chipped polish nails drummed against the counter, arms spread out on either side of it, as if to trap him there. It was a play at bored, at disinterest, but her gaze held anything but. “Afraid that after thirty years I might want somethin’ from you? Need somethin’?” Another laugh, even more unfunny than the first, lip curled up in a half snarl, disgusted at the thought. “Please. I don’t even know your name.” It hadn’t occurred to her until after he’d left the trailer that day, her mother’s necklace tucked into his pocket, that he hadn’t ever offered it. “You’re nothin’ to me.”

 ⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Memories stain every ounce of the diner, even here in the middle of the night where ghosts linger between the steam evaporating from coffee mugs, and hide in booth corners. He knows he can hear it, the distant laughter of a group of friends that once was. A time that was long before now. A distant past that could have been another life.

Hearing the anger rise in the woman before him, grapple at the air for answers. Begging to know more than this stranger sat before her. He wants to give her more, he wants to offer her something so much more than the unsatisfying truth that was. That he, the man sat before her on this chipped seat was nothing more than a stranger that crossed into her life when she as young. That he- this stranger that knew her parents. 

Knew their laughter like the summer sun warming his skin, and the ghosts of them whispering down his neck- no matter how often he tries to drown out these distant things. Friends. Back in a time when they were invincible, and the world was nothing but a course river they dared to cross with each other.  Young and reckless, and ready to sink their teeth into the world.

And now, it’s just Nolan, sat alone with the ghosts of their past.

“You don’t seem like the type of woman anyone should be ashamed of, but I’m afraid it’s not nearly as interesting as that.” He finds the words catching in the back of his throat as he tries to speak them, grappling to stay somewhere unspoken. Truths he’d long tried to forget. 

“I’m Nolan. Your dad August, I knew as long as I can remember, and Helen we met when we were teens.” Even leaving his own lips the answer felt unsatisfying, like there was so much left unsaid- and perhaps that’s because there was. Like their lives were this weighing secret the diner remembered between etched wooden table tops, and jukeboxes that holds the coins they once fed it. But a whole lifetime passed since then. A lifetime Nolan does his best to forget.

“I’m nothing to you.” He echoes her sentiment with his ground gravel voice that carries the air like an open highway, “I’m sorry kid.”

[aftersfm]

{  A R D E N  }

“Dying means you win, Nolan,” He scoffs, glass lifted above him in compelling dismissal of his claim. “It means all this shit is done for. You finally find peace. Only the best of us get to simply pass away. The rest of us, the goddamn worst of us, just have to keep enduring and pretending we can fix any of it.”

The liquor threatens to slosh over the edge of his drink, dulled senses taking practice in their inhibition to still savor and protect every ounce of the whiskey at hand. No matter how much he drunks, no matter how much he festers in the thoughts he muddies so much he can’t see them, Arden never spills the poison he’s learned to love. 

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Most nights he saw Arden, the man would be like this. A flammable air around him, vapour waves carrying his words into the evening’s air. And Nolan only ever encourages it, sharing bottles between them of anything he has on his shelf. It’s been this way as long as he could remember. Coaxing the poison from the other, where that inky oozing poison stains his veins and rot creeps to the edges of his skin. There was an understanding between two things so feral.

He lets out the slightest bit of amusement at the other’s words, something stale and far from joyful. As long as he could remember he begged the Earth to take him back, where he could finally rest under six feet of dirt. Let the worms, and tree roots settle into his rotting body and let him finally know peace. 

“We should have died long ago. Soft soil crumbling around us. What do you think it’s like?”

[aftersfm]

{  M A G G I E  }

x.

Not as scary … that thought alone should have hurt, but she had spent centuries crafting the perfect façade in order to hide in plain sight. To pass as human. Mundane, non-threatening, passive even. So perhaps it was a compliment, although she was almost certain that he had not intended it as one. Her control slipped for a fraction of a second, her body going rigid, brows shooting up as she turned to face him, the incredulity written all over her face before that façade slipped back into place.

In typical house cat fashion Maggie ran her fingers across the edge of a stack of various sized weight plates and slowly one by one started pushing them off the stand, letting them drop to the floor with a rather distasteful sound, never once did she break eye contact with Nolan as the weights hit the floor, not having a care in the world if they landed on her foot or cracked the floor. “And yet, you seem to let me in. Every. Single. Time. Nolan.” Pushing off another weight with each word, ever so slightly pointed canines grazed the edge of her lip as she barely hid the amusement as the scene she was causing. “What does that say about the attention you crave?”

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Attention demanded back in her direction with the woman’s cry for attention, heavy weights crashing to the ground. Pulled back to the earth where they clatter to the ground, threatening to crack under the pressure of the fall. But the man, looking back to Maggie couldn’t seem to care less for the destruction she attempted. It was perhaps because it had all been seen here, a thousand times over. This was nothing new. But there was the slightest hint of something in the woman that made Nolan stir. It was that chaos that wash over her sharp features, even just for a moment. The crack in her facade that promised destruction. 

The soul part of her that he would understand- that constant ever growing creature that would stir. The part of her that was nothing more than bared teeth and blood soaked mouths. That was the part of her that interested him.

“You’re the only one here after attention,” There’s no anger in the man’s voice, not the slightest hint of a rise to Maggie. Instead there’s that deep gravel tone that promises threats of what the man tries to swallow. “Destroy my gym all you’d like. Keep going and I’ll be making you glue them back together.”

[aftersfm]

{  R A E G A N  }

Wordlessly she followed, bare feet being careful as she glided across the gravel. Death wouldn’t let her be hurt, that much was for certain, but the desert was cold at night and her toes had gone numb against the dirt. There’s something about the man, more than his voice, that calms her. A sense that he knows what she is without her having to explain, but even Raegan knows that’s wishful thinking. 

The blood on the floor, the permanent smell of sweat, this is not the building she thought it was. But people must have passed here, it’s the only reason a voice would call out into the night, looking for a beacon that came in the form of red hair and silk pajamas. She does as she’s told and takes a seat, wiggling her toes to get the feeling back into them as they press into the cold concrete. 

When he returns, she offers him a smile, it’s the only payment she can think to give him right now. “That’s quite alright…” She trails off, being as quiet as possible just in case the mourning are still waiting. “Are you the only one here?” She asks, looking around for other signs of life, wondering if she fell into a spiders trap as she twists the lid off. 

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Nolan wouldn’t know about the woman before him, he wouldn’t know the way death’s whispers carry to her through the night. He wouldn’t know this river of Acheron which she ferries between, this river of whispering masses. But he would know of pain, of something sharp and searing prying at the edges until there’s nothing more than shadows everywhere you turn. He was a man alive, with scars splintering his body where the rot should have crawled through and left him as nothing but bones. Just as it would to those around him. 

Death clung to the man, a weighed shadow on his back. The barking dog that cries into a silent night as he walks the streets home. Streetlights flickering, ghosts of the past. Blood on his hands, silky in the moonlight.

He wouldn’t recognise it, the familiarity on the woman before him to be just that. Nolan would think it a hundred other things first. An addict, perhaps a werewolf still learning their own powers. A cry for help. One he may not know how to answer.

“Usually we’re closed up by this time, but a regular- Hudson’s still here on the machines.” Nolan sits back on the bench, easing into the atmosphere- trying not to crowd into Raegan’s space. Tries to ease some of the tension that seems to settle into the other’s shoulders. “Besides it’s not like there’s much else going on, may as well wait around some sweaty benches for the night to pass.”

[aftersfm]

{  G R A H A M  }

—

Had he ever been in a fight before? If Arden Bishop hadn’t been his brother, Graham was sure the answer would have been yes, but he’d grown up under the protection of the other, and so he’d had to deal with the bullying that didn’t leave physical marks more than it left emotional. In some ways, he was grateful for this, but standing there under the weight of Nolan’s gaze, the question hanging between them, Graham almost wished he’d had a better answer to give him than the one they both had already thought.

“No. Never.” But this could have also been a lie. His brain flashed, only briefly, back to that night, the one that’d triggered his curse to begin with. Had there been any kind of fight, that night? Had the other ever even stood a chance? He didn’t know. It didn’t matter, he told himself, because it didn’t. The outcome had been clear the morning after, and it was the only confirmation Graham had needed to know what he’d done.

He lets Nolan move him like a rag doll being dragged by a child, arms loose and at his disposal to be posed and wrapped. With each loop over his skin, he can’t help but think about what a bad idea this is, but he makes no move to run away, simply watching until only the tips of his fingers were exposed, the rest hidden beneath red tape. He only lifts his gaze when Nolan speaks once more, meeting the other man’s eyes. He can’t help but wonder if his words were meant to be as threatening as they sounded. Either way, he knows they’re true.

He nods his head anyways, swallowing roughly before saying: “okay.”

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

Rough calloused fingers offering the most tender of touches as the man wraps the other’s hands until they’re secure. He can remember the same being done to him, split knuckles and blood bruising the surface as his uncle pulls his hands in tight, wrapping until they’re secure. But Nolan would never sit as still, he never dared be so co operative. Sitting so silent, letting another manoeuvre his hands around- there was always resistance when it came to Nolan. His own hands only ever having known violence, bruises black to the touch and someone else’s blood on his scarred knuckles. Always something sharp right on the edge waiting to bite.

That thing, that sharpness- these days rests somewhere beneath the surface. Somewhere he begs it to swallow itself.

Stepping away from the other, Nolan starts, “Keep your feet under your shoulders.” Dark hues tracing over the man before him, a gentle nudge to his arm as he feeds him directions on his stance. “You should have seen enough punches be thrown, you’ll know this.” Reaching for the other’s hands again, Nolan begins manipulating his fingers into the shape of a proper fist.  “Do you think you can manage that?”

[aftersfm]

{  W R E N  }

…

She had to have spent time here before it all happened. There was something she felt, memories were made here at one point in time that was still waiting to be unlocked in her head. Neon lights flashed, one of the letters dead as she stared up, hoping for anything to trigger a feeling. Her eyes flickered back to the stranger, “you know me?” There were people around town who knew her, even if she had no idea who they were.

Wren currently lived in a fog, a haze that clouded her entire mind and had no idea if it would ever clear up and give any sort of clarity. “I’m sorry if I don’t remember you,” she paused, “I’ve lost a bit of my memory,” she couldn’t disclose how it happened. Rider warned her to not say a word to anyone, but she needed help and guidance to help her remember what she had lost. Wren wondered if this life, where memories were fleeting, unable to be retrieved with a simple command. Instead, she scrambled to put the pieces back together, even if the fragments didn’t make a cohesive image. She looked around, clearing her throat, “how do we know each other?”

⊹     ⊹     ⊹    

The wall is against his back is almost cool to the touch, dark brick with grime crawling in the cracks. Dust building up over time. His hands rest gently to his side, fingers drumming something silent against the wall as he looks for something to do with his hands. Never feeling like they’ve sat right just by his side, aching for something to do.

These were the last things he was expecting to hear from Wren, you know me? He was gone for some time, and he thought surely not long enough to be washed from her memories. But her next sentence seemed to offer some explanation. The kind that only raised a hundred more questions Nolan wouldn’t find himself asking. He knew better than to be intrusive in someone else's life. “You used to come around here on the occasion,” There’s something of caution to his words, unsure just how much to say. Unsure how much she knew.

With Arden- he considers saying. You were a firecracker back then. The words pass his mind but never quite find his lips. “It was a while ago, don’t worry you weren’t a fighter- just hung out.” How long had she been like this? Distant from memories of this town? Where he barley knows the right words to offer her. “I’m Nolan.”