b4rren

[b4rren]

he must have been thinking too long. it's happened enough times for him to analyze it, to name it with words other than vague feelings and vibes, to cement it as fact in his head: he zones out, and in the static fuzzing of his brain he turns to stone. like those guys that paint themselves gold or silver or bronze and then hang out in times square, except instead of tips hamza just gets stared at, generally.

he assumes that's why she approaches him. he blinks and then it's like he comes back to life (ha), inhaling (performatively), blinking (performatively), smiling awkwardly (instinctively). "sorry. just. i'm considering if i'm actually, uh, fit to take care of a plant." the flora that he's ruminating over is there, this large shrub of curly leaves that he doesn't know what to call because there are no fucking tags on anything. "green thumb is... undecided."

[ 13 ] the garden center of a home improvement store from charlotte! @ensnaring

[b4rren]

he forgets, sometimes, because it's easy to be comfortable around her, that there is a certain degree of acting that he needs to do in public. acting that's become increasingly difficult—mimicking automatic processes like breathing and blinking and shifting your body weight is a gargantuan task to do for hours at a time.

(eliza generally doesn't mind when he neglects to do them. when he sits like a mannequin while they're watching movies, she still tucks into his side with two blankets across her shoulders. in the back of her truck, when he lays next to her in a way that's akin to a dead body (ironic), she still nudges his foot with hers every once in a while.)

which is mostly why, he can only assume, a man spits on hamza's jacket as they pass him on the sidewalk.

hamza—to his shock and delight, because he feels the way every single substance in his body goes from dormant to boiling in two quick seconds—manages to keep walking with a minimal stutter in his step. eliza is already cursing as she spins around, and he reaches out quick to pinch at her jacket.

his grip falters and then snakes around her middle, instead, when the guy responds in smooth and fluent italian and her entire body starts to jerk towards him.

"i think you can take him," hamza says, near her ear, blinking against the way strands of her hair brush across his eyelashes. she feels fiery against him, in both temperature and physicality. "but, um. whatever he said can't be worth having to talk to the cops."

if i tell you, will you let me go? @strnza

[b4rren]

there are a lot of days that have him feeling like a foal. shaky legged, wide eyed, too small in the world around him. like he needs to press start, go back to the main menu, and run through the tutorial a couple of times.

there will be no such luck. she seems honest enough, truthfully helpful, but hamza can't help the way his entire body stills with his hand in her grasp. (it's a nice feeling, even if discomforting - the blazing warmth of her skin around his.)

"uh—"

@b4rren

He's young. It sticks in her throat, the thought of his funeral — a body buried and mourned. Victoria knows wounds, but she can't imagine what it was like for him to claw his way out of the grave.

She looks at his palm, the bloodless cut, and quickly takes his hand into her own before anyone else can see.

"Here, let me help."

[b4rren]

through his somehow burgeoning optimism (which reads to some maybe closer to something like desperation), hamza could argue—would argue, were he not too entirely tuned to (say that five times fast) cam's feelings—that this is more of a technical glory day than anything before ever was, but. but. there is a fathom of difference between his relationship to himself (before/during/now) and hers to herself; he's not even sure he could attempt to reach the bottom of that gulf without drowning.

metaphorically speaking, given… well. the state of things.

and! she now has an indeterminate amount of time to make some new glory days. and he almost says that. in fact, he opens his mouth and some air comes out with the intended first word, but he clamps back down on it so hard it makes his teeth snap together, and he tries to search hard for something else to say instead around the rattling of his skull.

i didn't know those were my glory days. @janedoez

and despite everything, all the different ways to delineate the states of them, of their adjacent conditions, mostly he just wants to make her feel better. find whatever silver lining there might be in the stagnant chill of their insides and pull it out so it can see the sun. then reflect it onto her, like that might help something.

"i get it feels … bleak, now, but." he taps his finger against paper they'd found on all the doors this morning, posted with clear tape that shouldn't have pulled the paint off but did. a picture of a person, macabre but grinning, gaunt in some cartoonish approximation of what someone alive-but-dead might look like if you described the concept to a toddler, sitting on a park bench, with swirly letters that say—"second time's a charm," he does a combination grin/grimace that he can only imagine what it looks like— up top where the clouds would be.

[b4rren]

anita de monte laughs last.

dialogue prompts from anita de monte laughs last by xóchitl gonzález.

the parties here are all the same.

i'm not being cynical, just honest.

you always come back with the longest stories.

human will is a particularly powerful magic.

you take the sounds of home for granted.

my gilded cage comes with barbed wire.

promise you'll start calling me ____.

it's not every day i meet someone who can insult me without making me feel bad.

most people are phonies, you know?

endings are tricky things to pinpoint, aren't they?

perhaps we were always doomed.

endings are long and messy. and honestly, i'm not certain they exist.

i don't like being part of a schtick.

i've learned to put on a good show.

i thought you might need a drink.

i know you've never been a fan of mine.

romance is a bitch.

i'm not going to fall in line. not now, not ever.

your actions have consequences.

you needed me before you even knew me.

you are a tough fucking cookie.

you are so fucking cool.

you should really just let me go.

it's even better than i imagined.

it's late. just sleep over.

tell me why we're laughing.

this was sloppy, sloppy kid shit.

people still do ketamine?

i've always just been good at things.

everything worth doing hurts at least a little bit.

you can't imagine what happens to children when adults see them as dispossessed.

you've read too much freud.

i didn't really appreciate what it was that i had.

i'm a bit dramatic.

catastrophe can be a course correction, you know?

everyone freaked out a bit, but not you.

i'm part witch, and witches are never surprised.

i don't want to fight anymore.

no one's ever asked me that before.

i've always been too much or not enough.

everything has a workaround, for a price.

when we get along, we're unstoppable.

what you did was profoundly uncool.

your silence speaks volumes.

what do you need me for, anymore?

oysters are supposed to be an aphrodisiac. did you know that?

please bullshit someone else.

you've always had a good head on your shoulders.

maybe everything doesn't need to be so hard.

how did you know it was me?

i didn't know those were my glory days.

people like me can teach people like you a thing or two.

thought is a very powerful thing.

misery really does love company.

probably what's wrong with you is that you think you always know what's wrong with you.

i hate crying. even when i'm the one doing it.

i've never seen wasps be so emotional.

you want to split a box of wine?

be angry at the system. then, see how you can fix it.

[b4rren]

um sorry for moaning when you stabbed me. it's been a really long time since anyone touched me like that

[b4rren]

she’s been playing with his hand for the past fifteen minutes: tracing stilled veins along the back of it, dragging her thumb down his wrist & examining his palm nonchalantly as they reach the climax of whatever godforsaken movie plays through. only when eliza thinks that she’s dulled hamza’s senses enough does she slip his thumb between her lips, looking toward him with a growing smile - digit still held lightly between her teeth. “c’mon, i’m bored - let’s play.”

every single touch — every pass of her fingers, every small rotation of his wrist — he has been painfully aware of. after the first minute of her consistency, he'd forgotten to breathe. every subsequent one has iced him further into almost complete rigidity, as if moving would interrupt the (well, his interpreted) aimlessness of her attention. if his hands could sweat, they would be. he almost feels the illusion of warmth low in his stomach, a mirror of the body heat he feels in waves from where @strnza is next to him.

his eyes are fixed resolutely, unblinkingly on the screen. at some point, he must have stopped paying attention, scenes passing by with little to no comprehension.

everything comes sharply into focus when he feels her exhale across his knuckles. instinctually, he inhales, body somehow tensing and melting all at once, every single square inch of his body lighting on fire. he wonders if she knows that—he wonders if she knew that would happen.

his thumb flexes, pushing lightly on her teeth. he's not sure what he might look like when he turns to face her, thrumming all over. "what. what are we playing?"

[b4rren]

hamza's apartment.

it's government provided because they didn't want pds on the streets, but it's clearly not much nicer than that. he's had to do a lot of work to it. cleaning, for one, patching a lot of holes. the walls have a lot of spots that are discolored from peeling paint, and he hasn't had time to even it out so it's just like that. there was furniture in it, some that he kept, and other things that he found at flea markets or someone in the neighborhood was giving away.

everything is pretty mismatched, none of the chairs match the table, his living room is extremely eclectic. couple that with the fact that he doesn't have much stuff, it's hard for him to connect with the space. he has a lot of plants because it's something to keep him busy and adds some kind of cohesiveness. the kitchen he doesn't use much, so a lot of space is taken up by other things, plants again and decor that he's tried to use.

ironically the bathroom is the most decent part. it's small and cramped and would be rough with more than one person in it, but it's nice enough. he has just a mattress on the floor in the bedroom, that's the newest addition. for a while he just slept on the couch. his bedroom is pretty bare bones, too. he has his clothes folded on the floor or in the laundry basket, a small lamp, some books he's gotten for cheap. for decoration and for something to do, not necessarily books that he knows or enjoys. he has some cds, again just the cheapest ones he could find for something to have, and a old cd player that more often than not fucks up the disks.

[b4rren]

i know just by virtue of how horrible the building is that hanging out at hamza's apartment can sometimes feel like hanging out in a medieval dungeon but PLEASE just know he's trying his best. he's at secondhand stores like three times a week trying to find furniture and decor to spice the place up give it a few times to really get the full experience

[b4rren]

i'm gonna need a cup of coffee.

which should be no complicated task. and it isn't, though some might consider the request only half fulfilled. hamza places it in front of her: coffee, instant; mug, thrifted, so possibly lead-addled (not that it matters, really, for either of them); temperature, boiling (he'll use the rest of the water in the pot for a cup of his own, maybe, so he's not just sitting there staring at her.) @deatheless

[b4rren]

“VIOLENCE FOR VIOLENCE IS THE RULE OF BEASTS” SAYS THE MAN WHO SPENT THEIR DAYS INFLICTING VIOLENCE UPON THE INNOCENT AND NOW FEARS THEIR RIGHTFUL RETRIBUTION

“AN EYE FOR AN EYE LEAVES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND” SAYS THE MAN WITH BOTH EYES INTACT

HOW QUICKLY THE HAWK BECOMES A DOVE WHEN FACED WITH THE BARREL OF A GUN

[b4rren]

THE KILLING 1.05

[b4rren]

just thought about it. new yorker + dead/currently can't have a driver's license=hamza is a terrible driver. he'll make you motion sick and will curb check and also probably will hit something.

[b4rren]

PROMPTS FOR PRE ESTABLISHED CONNECTIONS AND CREATING HISTORY BETWEEN CHARACTERS *  assorted dialogue for giving your characters a history and giving them past things or events to talk about, adjust as necessary

do you remember what i told you last time?

have you been doing well since i saw you?

that's not what you told me back then.

when was the last time i saw you?

you were shorter then.

i'm picking the restaurant this time.

we've known each other since we were children.

always knew i could count on you.

that time was different. this is worse.

you're not going to let me live that down, are you?

i seem to remember a conversation we had back then.

so you changed your mind about it?

do you remember our encounter in paris?

you should know me by now.

am i the only one that knows the truth?

we had a lot of help back then.

your mom told me to look out for you.

you just love bringing that back up to annoy me.

maybe don't mention my past indescretions?

this was never going to work out between us.

i told you not to get attached.

i know more about you than you think.

i was there, remember?

i'm not about to forget all the shit you put me through.

you told me you were going to try and make this work.

remember what i said to you?

the last time i saw you, things were good between us.

you never mentioned this before.

that was the longest flight of my life, and you made it worse.

can i still trust you after all that?

at least we tried to make something work.

we never discussed what happened between us.

okay, but i'm driving the car this time.

i haven't forgotten what you said last week.

i'm still thinking about your comment.

i didn't realize it was you when i first saw you.

you seem to make a lot of enemies around here.

there's not much for us to talk about.

we worked it out last time.

i know you far better than you know yourself.

we have a long history.

is that the shirt you were wearing last time?

what don't i know about you?

i haven't told them about us.

you were the only person i could go to.

you know me.

this is bigger than both of us.

i can't stand your driving.

are you taking me to the place we had dinner last time?

that's not at all what you said.

didn't we agree on that?

i thought i made it very clear where i stand.

are these the same people that came after you last time?

are you still going on about it?

can we talk about it?

staying silent about it won't help.

you're the only person who knows the real me.

this is a bad time to talk about your problems.

[b4rren]

would you guys still like me if I got shot in the forehead and fell backwards

[b4rren]

meet cute idea: you almost become hamza's meal

[b4rren]

writing up some more detailed arc breakdowns. thinking about the fact that hamza probably has never told anyone in detail the process of what he had to go through to be "accepted" back into society. mostly because it actually was very traumatizing, coming so suddenly back to life and having your entire being feel completely different, but also because it was test after test after test and then sooooo much paperwork that he's not sure if it was a couple days or a couple of weeks before they let him go