ericrobinson-blog

[ericrobinson-blog]

Fire Alarm Doric V2 [Skype]

[6/22/2016 9:56:15 PM] eric's ghost: Eric laughed, shaking his head.

"No, nothing so exciting. Just a little smoke, that's all. But next time..." He gave Cadogan a mischievous look.

In the distance the all clear sounded, and Eric sighed with relief. Now he could finally get back to work.

"Next time, mark my words, there will be muffins." [6/22/2016 9:57:25 PM] *** sweet lil jas has renamed this conversation to "fire alarm doric v2.0" *** [6/23/2016 8:49:19 AM] radueriel: Next time, unfortunately, there were no muffins.

The upside of this was that the next time wasn't in the middle of the night on a dewy lawn with Cadogan clad in next-to-nothing. The downside was, as was probably to be expected, a lack of muffins.

See, as it turned out, the moment you met someone, you started seeing them everywhere. So it was that Cadogan Daley, belabored artist and beleaguered human, began being haunted by the spectrally beautifully blond Eric. He saw him when he walked to class, always on the way to something Cadogan couldn't even conjecture about. He saw Eric in the dining hall, engaged with others and therefore having cast a nonperishable shield around himself. Cadogan even saw him in classes, and was shocked at the realization he'd never noticed him before.

And it was precisely here, once Cadogan had adjusted to Eric's nearly translucent presence in his life, that Eric willed himself into a far more opaque form. An opaque form, to be more accurate, that at eight in the morning wielded a cup of coffee in one hand, and a can of Red Bull in the other. [6/28/2016 12:12:01 AM] eric's ghost: The sun’s light seemed more like a fog that morning, obscuring his path and confounding every step. Even the nearly-lethal shock of caffeine he chugged down as he rode the bus to class couldn’t rouse him from his stupor. As he sat, half awake and half asleep, echoes of his dream—or, perhaps, his nightmare--mingled with reality. The clack of high heels in the distance. His brother’s voice, pleading and desperate: “Forgive me.” Eric’s head jerked up. Peter sat in the aisle across from him, eyes wide and moist. He reached out his hand, outstretching to fill the space between them that seemed infinitely vast. The tips of Eric’s fingertips twitched, longing to reach out, to touch the fingers of one who loved him, or at least had at some point. Eric shook his head and Peter disappeared back into the mist. He knew better than to believe the tricks sleep deprivation played on him; they were duplicitous and provocative, two things he absolutely did not need when he was already in a bad mood as it was. Stumbling off the bus, Eric found his building by muscle memory alone. He pushed open the metal door to the lecture hall and looked around, only to come face to face with a very familiar blur, porcelain on the bottom and carrot on top. Eric blinked a few times. “Ah, he of the comfy blanket,” he said at last, putting the face to the name—or nickname, anyway. He sat down, looking at the seat beside him pointedly. What was the boy’s name again? Cah… cah… “I didn’t know you were into, uh…” he faltered, realizing that he couldn’t remember what class this was. “You know, this… riveting… subject.” [7/2/2016 3:23:02 PM] radueriel: "Good morning," Cadogan said immediately, more an instinctual response than an actual willingness to engage with the ethereally beautiful boy who'd seen him half-naked. But once it was said a contract was signed, and Cadogan could no more avoid at the very least a conversation than he could strip down to the nude in the middle of the lecture hall. Then the nickname registered, and he decided he needed to give Blondie his own.

"Destroyer of Innocent Muffins." A couple moments later than socially conventional, maybe, but a sufficient nickname nonetheless. Cadogan felt a little nugget of pride in his breast.

And now this Destroyer had sat himself down right next to him. Pride comes before the fall, or something. "What, Psych 101?" he asked with a tiny knowing smile. "It's a prerequisite." He almost stopped talking there, but a switch in him he didn't know existed had been thrown; given he hadn't known about it until it had been moved to its other position, he couldn't possibly figure out how to move it back. "I only really come to class because I need something to force me out of bed in the morning. I don't even take notes. I just---" Cadogan blushed and quickly (and with something almost, but not quite, like grace) shoved his paper under his bag.

"Why are you here?" [7/2/2016 3:58:06 PM] space: Eric cackled and smacked the desk at the nickname, drawing the attention of the people around him. They stared for a minute before returning to their business. “That’s perfect,” Eric said, and the reduced volume of it made him sound almost conspiratorial, like they were discussing codenames. “Someone finally recognizes me for my true nature.” He looked up at the projector screen. “Psych 101” displayed in big letters, mocking him for not noticing it before. A clipart diagram of a brain in someone’s head, glowing blue for whatever reason. “Great. Just what I need first thing in the morning. A trip into my own head.” Shaking his head, he took his coffee in hand and downed what remained, about half the cup. He peered behind them, locating a trashcan just far away enough to be a challenge. Aiming carefully for a few seconds, he lobbed the empty cup over to the trashcan and made the basket. As he turned back around, he quietly fist pumped and mouthed yes! Still riding the vibes of a tiny victory, he chose to ignore the boy’s question. There was something about him that made Eric want to know him better. It had long been his theory that everyone had a secret fire behind their eyes, and one couldn’t truly know someone unless they understood why that fire burned. “You just..?” he said, mischievously, double-dog-daringly. Would the redhead bite? One thing was for sure: he’d caught the spark. Maybe it was the nicknames, or the plaid blanket, or the blending of freckles and flushed skin at the juncture where his neck and shoulder met—whatever it was, Eric felt drawn to him. He had the feeling that this particular spark might just set him ablaze. [7/2/2016 4:50:48 PM] radueriel: Wow. Enthusiasm at 8am. It was--he was-- cute, cute in a way that Cadogan hadn't surmised from either their brief nighttime meeting or his surreptitious viewings. Destroyer of Muffins wasn't just hotter than anyone Cadogan had ever before seen. He was also adorable. With a clarity and precision he rarely possessed, he knew in his bones he wanted Blondy in his life. Maybe even more than that.

Suspicions only confirmed by the waste-basketball and subsequent victory gesture, Cadogan didn't press his question. But he also didn't give Muffin Destroyer the benefit of a full answer. Instead he bit the inside of his cheek, readying himself to say something he didn't say often. "I draw. Doodles, really." The sheets of paper stayed beneath his bag, but neither words nor boy could hide. [7/2/2016 6:03:29 PM] space: Eric’s eyes went from crescent to full moon immediately, waxing with the power of his interest. “Oh, now you have to show me.  You can’t not show me. It would be criminal.” Perhaps it was the envy deep in his heart that magnetized him to artists. He always felt that artists were able to express their feelings more easily than he ever could. [7/6/2016 7:39:31 PM] radueriel: It was with a prolonged glance at the clock (with the poorly concealed hope that class was about to start and he would be unable to show his work) and a sigh (when he realized his one and only alibi was a non-starter) that Cadogan assented.

His own dark eyes connected with taut fishing-line to Destroyer's crystal blue ones, he slipped the looseleaf out from beneath his bag. Up near the top were crammed ten or so lines of psychology notes in Cadogan's cramped spindly handwriting. The bottom half of the page had been overgrown with pencil shadings coming together to form a derilict house peeling with age, which in turn had been overgrown by the beginnings of a forest working its way through the bones of the architecture. An image that had been toying on the edges of Cadogan's consciousness for weeks now.

"It's nothing special, I know," he said with a half-baked smile. "Really just a doodle. But at least you can't arrest me now." [7/6/2016 9:32:34 PM] the whole motherfucking galaxy: Eric’s eyes widened when he saw the drawing. It was an annoying habit of artists to downplay their skills despite all evidence of their talent; Eric, for one, was maddeningly jealous of them. Never learning to draw was one of those great regrets from his childhood that he still carried with him but had long lost hope in rectifying.

His fingers felt pulled magnetically toward the paper, fueled by the burning hunger he felt for the minute details that as of yet remained unseen. However, he recalled the newness of their relationship and it gave him pause.

“Can I..?" [7/6/2016 9:32:59 PM] radueriel: Do shook his head, more violently maybe than was needed. "No. Sorry. No." [7/6/2016 9:54:05 PM | Edited 9:55:04 PM] the whole motherfucking galaxy: Eric was a little taken aback by the boy’s reaction, but his shock was quickly replaced by a grin.

The fire! He’d spotted it! It was momentary, but it had been there, blazing to the forefront in an entirely unexpected way. Eric wanted to know more—no, he had to.

It was almost as if the energy from the outburst had transferred to him, clearing the fog and leaving behind the clarity of finally having a mission. Though he was in general an impatient person, he knew when to blaze ahead and when to take his time. Some things were worth the wait.

“Okay,” he said, leaning back into his seat. The professor began the lecture and he frowned; he had forgotten that lectures were a thing. He took a few notes, but hardly lasted long before he got off task, scribbling in the margin of his notebook.

Want to get coffee after this? - e

There. That ought to settle things. He tore off the corner of the paper, folded it, and passed it to the boy, feeling a little bit like he was back in primary school. [7/7/2016 10:52:22 AM] radueriel: With relief, Cadogan turned his attention to the lecture. At least while the professor was speaking, he could pretend not to feel the surveying gaze of those crystalline eyes. By turns he took notes and continued to work on the drawing of the decrepit house, keeping his hand (and to a lesser extent, his mind) as busy as he could.

A little scrap of paper ended up on his desk. At first he didn't notice it, so engrossed in the detail of a half-crumbled archway. When he did, he looked up at the boy next to him with a small smile. "e" was probably a better moniker than "Destroyer of Muffins," even if it was only half a step closer to his actual name.

Cadogan didn't want to waste any of his note/drawing-paper, so after thinking for only a moment he pulled out a pen from where he'd lodged it in his hair and wrote his reply on the back of his hand, sliding it toward e while surreptitiously keeping his gaze upon the professor.

sure. not some ploy to get yr hands on my doodles i hope - c

[ericrobinson-blog]

Fire Alarm Doric V1 [Skype]

[4/28/2016 11:39:51 PM] the silliest goose: In Eric’s eyes, failure was success.

So, alright, it wasn’t exactly the desired outcome, but every mistake was a chance to learn something, right? Really, failures were just golden opportunities in disguise, wise teachers just begging to share their knowledge with him so he might do a better job next time.

It was for this reason that, when the fire alarm sounded just shy of midnight that balmy Tuesday night, he emerged from his dorm with a gigantic grin on his face, racing down the stairs as fast as he could—not because he feared the flames, but because he was excited, full of the kind of zest for life that comes from fucking up bigtime without really needing to live with the consequences.

Let it be said that he was not a baker. His father was a gym nut and his mother was a soulless husk, so the only time the Robinson house smelled of fresh bread or cookies was when someone else brought them over. Eric had actually tried to bake once—a batch of muffins, specifically—but he’d overfilled the cups and the batter had gone all over the heating element, burning to a crisp. When the smoke alarm went off, his mother nearly had a conniption fit, going on and on about how he’d nearly burned down her house and his irresponsibility was just criminal and did he know how much it had cost to remodel the kitchen?

Needless to say, he had never been allowed to bake again.

In a way, this was all her fault. Moving off to college had fully unleashed his interest in cooking, and with that had come a penchant for trying to make new things, like pot roasts, Indian dinners, and, of course, baked goods.

“You’ve really done it this time, ma,” he said as he walked out onto the lawn, almost awed by the outpouring of people from the stairwell. He just hoped the firemen would take care of it quickly. [4/29/2016 12:31:32 AM] radueriel: It wasn't exactly that Do (Cadogan, Cadogan, he was trying the name on again (and to say it fit baggily was an understatement) for the first time in years and he kept forgetting) was antisocial, although it was a word that certainly looked better on him than his birth name did. It's just that he didn't really like people very much at all. People were loud and usually rude and altogether less manageable than the tubes of paint in neat rows on his desk. Sure, he spoke with people whom he attended class with, once in awhile. He had dinner that one time, with that one person, whose name he no longer could remember and whose eyes he no longer met.

Okay, when you put it like that, it sounded depressing even to Cadogan. But nobody had said college would be easy.

Being antisocial (a substantive participle that read more like having no friends) had its merits, though. It meant, among other things, that he found it relatively easy to maintain a healthy sleep schedule. He'd done extensive research a few years back on the effects circadian rhythms have on depression. It meant being able to go to bed at 11:00 and not having to feel anxious about missing out on anything his friends were doing. It meant that he was right in the middle of a very appealing dream about crepes and oiled skin and speedos when the fire alarm went off.

Some primordial survival sense sliced through his groggy vision; Cadogan managed to struggle into a pair of boxers, wrap his shivering body in his blanket, and stumble out the door and down the stairs and out into the frankly frigid air. He mumbled some sort of string of expletives half-heartedly under his breath, watching as--- a swarming hive with light and bodies pouring out of every pore--- the night filled with people. [4/29/2016 2:21:21 AM] the silliest goose: A half-conscious string of curses sounded from Eric's left and he felt it: the call to adventure, dancing with electric fingers up his spinal column and rooting itself in his brain, pushing him to investigate, to explore, to act.

He turned and found a boy, hair tousled and eyes half-lidded, a lick of chest hair peeking oh-so-tantalizingly from the v-shaped gap in a blanket that had no doubt been thrown on in haste. Perhaps it was the sleepiness in them, but his eyes betrayed some sort of delicate innocence, a breed rarely seen in Eric's circles.

Eric liked him instantly.

"You're in 503, aren't you?" he asked, peering at the boy, gaze caught somewhere between suspicion and exhilaration. "I think we're neighbors." [4/29/2016 6:07:37 PM] radueriel: It took Cadogan a serious moment for the boy's words to even register as sound waves infiltrating the air and competing with the dog-whistle wail of the fire alarm. This was due to several reasons.

Number one: he was still half asleep. He intended on being fully asleep shortly and therefore didn't want to attempt to wake up any more than he already had.

Number two: Cadogan normally kept to himself, meaning that unless he intentionally broached the barrier between himself and another human being, they didn't interact.

Number three: this boy was hot, and Cadogan had been very willfully forcing himself to not stare at him.

When he realized that blondie had said something, he stiffened and turned away; he didn't want it to look like he was eavesdropping or paying more attention to him than he ought to have. But another moment passed and the painful realization that it was he who had been spoken to. "Uhm," Cadogan said, angling his body again toward this strange person. "Yeah. What's your name?" He thought about reaching a hand out to shake, then realized that his blanket would undoubtedly drop if he tried to maneuver that. So. No handshake. [4/29/2016 7:09:32 PM] the silliest goose: Eric grinned. “Eric,” he said gleefully, sticking his hand out for a shake, but thinking better of it when he remembered the boy’s attire. Judging by that glorious triangle of skin peeking out from under the blanket that he had been lucky enough to lay eye on, the kid probably had nothing—or precious, precious little—on underneath. “Hereafter known as ‘The Kid Who Burned Down Caffrey Hall,’ I guess.” He probably should have at least tried to sound remorseful, but he wasn’t a big fan of lying. “What would your legend name be? You know, ‘The Kid Who Screwed the Chem Professor’ or… whatever. What are you going down in history for?” He was careful not to ask for the boy’s real name; that was, in his opinion, far too boring, and predictable to boot. [4/30/2016 7:46:40 PM] radueriel: "This was you?" Cadogan says, staring blankly at him-- at Eric. "What on earth were you trying to cook at this hour?" How could anything being cooked at this hour go that wrong? Cadogan wasn't sure whether he wanted to scoff at him or giggle. "Besides, it's not going to burn down. Is it? I have stuff in there..." His paints. God, if he lost his paints....

"My legend name?" Why did every thought he had end with a question mark? "I'm Cadogan. There is no legend. Just me." [4/30/2016 9:29:58 PM] the silliest goose: “Muffins,” Eric said with a shrug. Ever since that momentous first failure, he’d always dreamed of going back to the tasty treat and setting things right. There was just something about them that held a special place in his heart, a place he couldn’t give up until he tried his hand at making them—and succeeded. Maybe it was that rich, nutty flavor, or that perfect balance of sweet and savory that kept him coming back. Whatever it was, this most recent failure just meant that he’d have to try again.

He gave the boy—Cadogan, what a wonderful mouthful that was—a long look, taking stock of him from the tips of his toes to the top of head, fighting the urge to smooth down the poof of hair at his crown.

“Oh, there's a legend in you somewhere,” Eric said thoughtfully. After a moment, he broke into a lopsided grin, the kind that meant nothing but mischief. “You just don’t know it yet.” [5/6/2016 10:21:35 PM] radueriel: Muffins. Of course it was muffins. Cadogan couldn't imagine finding the will to google a muffin recipe at midnight, let alone actually mix everything together and deal with the oven. Though maybe if Eric had tried baking at a normal hour, he wouldn't have screwed it up. He wanted to be irritated at him, he really did, but there was something marvelous about the lean-faced blonde, something in those crystal blue eyes that borrowed shine from the dim moon above but still must have shone on their own, that made anything other than admiration and wonder melt from his heart, carried away in tiny and impotent doses along with his blood through his veins.

"If you say so, Eric," he said, delighted at the combined pleasure of knowing his name and being able to say it aloud. "There wasn't actually, you know, a fire, was there?" [5/7/2016 12:40:45 PM] the silliest goose: Eric laughed, shaking his head.

"No, nothing so exciting. Just a little smoke, that's all. But next time..." He gave Cadogan a mischievous look.

In the distance the all clear sounded, and Eric sighed with relief. Now he could finally get back to work.

"Next time, mark my words, there will be muffins." [6/22/2016 9:53:07 PM] *** eric's ghost says "boo" ***

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