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lovelylogans · 4 years ago

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i wish i knew how (your eyes are like starlight now)

warnings: vampires (blood drinking mentioned), alcohol consumption, food mentions, cuddling, kissing, death mentions, if i’ve missed any please let me know!

pairing: logan/patton

word count: 6,003

notes: for @fangirltothefullest for our discord server’s secret santa! prompted with “Preferably logan-centric and fluffy! Logicality would be great! Logince would also be good. Maybe some cute cuddles by a fireplace?” title is from “baby it’s cold outside!” the idea of vampires being able to eat red food comes from a book i remember reading as a kid, but i cannot place the title, so if anyone knows it please let me know!

Hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps and Bailey’s, it turns out, is a particularly adept calmative.

It’s made the world go hazy and lovely and beautiful, and that’s even before Logan acknowledges the way his eyes are half-lidded and he’s leaning his head a bit more against the side of his wingback armchair than he would if he were entirely sober.

Logan narrows his eyes down at his mug, the one Roman had wheel-thrown and painted him with the chemical illustration of the molecular construction of caffeine on it, which is half-drained, the whipped cream and marshmallows melted, the peppermint stick meant to stir already losing its red stripes. Logan plucks it from the mug and sticks it into his mouth, crunching it, wriggling in the armchair to get more comfortably seated, and to get a better view.

Roman, Janus, Virgil, and Patton have long since been occupied with a board game; Remus left to do whatever it is that Remus does at night, probably screaming profanities at random passerby, so it’s just the five of them left. The Christmas party’s been winding down slowly for the past hour or so, the fireplace still crackling but burning lower and lower, their hot chocolate supply depleted, and Roman and Virgil’s fits of competitiveness losing fervor as the moon creeps higher and higher in the sky. The white of the waxing moon peeks out against the clouds that distribute the fat, fluffy flakes falling from the sky.

The snow catches the light of the Christmas lights hung outside the house (goodness, hadn’t that been a trying day) so the snow gleams in technicolor reflection, the rest of the world lit by the hazy orange glow of the street lamps. It is very beautiful, and Logan, in an unusually sentimental fit that he would tell himself in the morning was brought on by the alcohol, is incredibly grateful to be alive, at this precise moment, that allows him the company of such wonderful friends in such a beautiful world.

What a statistically improbable event they all are. What an outright scientifically impossible group they all make—a vampire, a set of twins that turned out to be a banshee and a siren, a selkie, and two humans. Three years ago Logan would have scoffed at the idea of any sort of supernatural, mythical humanoid, much less even suspected he’d meet them. And now he is in love with one, and is best friends with the others, and his life is so strange, so odd, so wonderful.

Logan comes back into himself when Roman cries out in protest, making Logan’s ears ring unpleasantly, as Janus crows in victory, holding the longest road card aloft, the dark gray seal-skin on his face gleaming pearlescent in the firelight.

“Cheater!” Roman accuses, his voice still maintaining that double-pitch—a high keen layered over Roman’s typically pleasant baritone—that always makes something in Logan’s head throb.

“Just because you didn’t strategize your road properly,” Janus gloats, pointing—and yes, the yellow road winding around the edge of Catan is decidedly longer than the red road circling over itself in the middle.

All the while, Virgil is muttering darkly about how useless the Largest Army card has been, tossing it aside, and Patton looks up at Logan, dark eyes glinting brightly in amusement, freckles speckled across his face like constellations, trying his best to hide his smile around the specially-ordered red-dominant candy canes he’s been eating all season, his fangs gleaming white, freed from the fake teeth Patton usually wears to pass as human, his lips tinged artificially red.

Logan feels even warmer all over at the sight of him.

Patton’s eyes get even brighter, and he flashes a sweet smile at Logan before he turns back to the board game and breaks up the squabbling with patient declarations of “Everyone did a really great job!” and “The fun’s what matters, right?” and being so stubborn and relentless in his optimism and platitudes that Janus and Roman relent and grumble grudging “good game��s at each other.

Patton’s far more patient than the pair of them—which makes sense, as he’s been practicing at it since the seventeenth century, according to all their estimations surrounding the first edition of Human Understanding he’d acquired the month after he’d been turned, in a fit of uncharacteristically dark humor—so he always wins out when it comes to digging in his heels and cheerfully going about something with the consistency of the little bird and the diamond mountain.

Roman ducks out to sulk for a moment, under the excuse of adjusting Patton’s painstakingly maintained gramophone he’d bought in the 1920s—he still has the early prototype phonograph he bought in the 1870s, but that one is even more painstakingly preserved in the rooms full of obsolete technologies, clothes, and knick-knacks that Patton’s accrued and hoarded throughout the years like a magpie—and the sound of Bing Crosby crackles to life in the next room, crooning “White Christmas,” the snapping of the fire providing unintentionally harmonious percussion. Logan wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of the original vinyls, too—Patton’s got loads of vintage music from artists Logan had never even heard of before.

Janus bows out, next, content to allow the high of his victory usher him out the door. He even allows Patton to fuss over ensuring his coat is warm enough to protect him from the snow, considering he’s wearing his sealskin coat and not a proper winter coat, and then even lets him fret over Janus staying moisturized, despite the fact that both Janus and Logan have attempted to explain that Janus’ version of moisturized and the human version of moisturized are quite different in execution, one being smearing lotion all over oneself and the other consisting of sealing himself into his skin and taking a dip in the nearest ocean.

Logan mentally backtracks over the previous sentence and immediately blames Patton for the pun, and simultaneously promises himself to never utter it in Patton’s presence. Patton still brings up the time Logan had accidentally mentioned Patton sinking his teeth into something, and can hardly finish recounting it before bursting into giggles. He is fortunate he is so adorable, otherwise it would irk Logan to no end. As it is, when it happens, Logan can’t summon up anything stronger than resigned affection.

He’s in love with a vampire who is currently fretting over a selkie with the exact air of a concerned father. It’s a fate he’s all too eagerly accepted.

Janus usually gets snappy about being mother-henned, so Logan suspects that either the Bailey’s has done a number on him, or the Christmas sentimentality is getting to him.

And, considering that Janus had one mug of mulled wine with dinner, Logan has a fairly good guess as to which is the root cause—especially taking into consideration Janus allows Patton to hug him goodbye. Janus wishes him a happy Christmas in a tone that is not quite as drawlingly dramatic as usual.

By then, the gramophone is playing a new song, a soprano prettily warbling “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and Roman seems to be over his discontent over losing because he joins in, singing pleasantly rather than shrieking—he usually leaves the wailing to the banshee in the family, it’s just that the whole “drawing men to their deaths” aspect of his voice emerges when his temper flares—and Logan swallows down the sudden lump in his throat at the sound of it.

Of course, Roman’s voice is supernaturally exquisite, but there’s something different about it now; Roman had tried enchanting Logan, exactly once, after Logan had pestered him for weeks out of scientific curiosity, so he can say with certainty that this isn’t like the captivating sound that put him in a stupor with the speed and subtlety of being hit by a train, but it’s like someone has captured the flame in the fireplace and tempered it to a temperature that a human could stand, the cozy sensation of being beside a fire rather than the fire itself, and set it directly inside his heart.

You’re happy, a sober corner of his brain says dryly. You know this, you’re happy.

He is.

He is stupidly, incandescently, absolutely happy.

He will blame the dryness of the room from the fire for the sudden wetness in his eyes when Virgil joins in, usually quite shy about singing, but it is almost equally as pleasant as Roman’s, even though Virgil’s vocal chords (and the rest of Virgil) were entirely, completely, mortally human.

They are excellent, the pair of them. Not just their voices, but them, as people—they are excellent. Logan is exceptionally glad to have made their companionship.

Logan takes a deep breath, downs the last half of his hot chocolate, and launches himself from his armchair, perhaps a bit wobblier than he was at the start of the night, and Roman laughs without halting his song, wrapping an arm around Logan’s shoulder to steady him.

He can only join in for the last part of the song, which is probably for the best; Logan supposes his voice is tolerable enough, but it surely cannot compare to a siren, or to Virgil’s voice, rumbling like thunder. Also, he does not want to make a fool of himself, and surely singing more Christmas carols than necessary while not entirely sober would be a surefire way to do that.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Patton watching the three of them, a fond expression on his face, even if there is a flash of sudden gloom that passes over his face as the three of them sing “ Through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow,” and Logan frowns to himself, noting it.

Intellectually, he is aware of the various burdens an immortal life forces upon its receiver; Patton has hundreds if not thousands of sketchings and, when the technology became available, photographs of people he had known through the hundreds of years of his life, painstakingly filed away.

Intellectually, he is aware that Patton was the source of unexpected windfalls that had been bestowed on Virgil’s family throughout the years, the reason Virgil and his siblings could afford to go to college; it is only after he and Virgil knew who Patton truly was that they found the reason behind the luck that struck his family once a generation. Patton had once been Virgil’s great-great-great-grandmother Violetta’s dearest friend, and she his; he’s been anonymously helping the descendants of all his friends in a similar manner for centuries.

Intellectually. He is aware that Patton fears the day that he will lose them all, and he will be left alone, unchanged, eternally in his late twenties, as he has been for centuries.

It is different to be intellectually aware of something, and to remember seeing Patton show Virgil the portrait he had personally painted of Violetta and choke back his tears because he’d missed her so much, and meeting and befriending Virgil had been a bit like having a piece of her back in his life again, and getting to know you has been such a gift, such a blessing. She would have adored you, as I do, and then Virgil had hugged him, and Patton had gotten so overcome he had not been able to say much else.

It is this memory plucking at his heartstrings that sends him stumbling in Patton’s direction.

Patton moves so quickly that Logan’s eyes can’t track it; one moment he was watching the three of them, the next he’s caught Logan around the waist, smiling down at him.

“Hi,” Patton says, and Logan takes a half-step closer to wrap his arms around Patton’s neck.

“Hello,” Logan says. He is about to attempt to say something that is emotionally adept, he really is, except Patton’s skin is smooth and cold under his fingers, and his lips are still tinged red, and Patton’s eyes dart down to Logan’s lips and then looks him in the eye and then he smiles, and any particularly subtle ideas about how to probe Patton’s emotions or perhaps to get him to stop thinking about the curse of bearing witness to the passage of time entirely flee his mind.

He barely has enough time to hope that Patton’s mind is similarly empty before Patton meets him halfway, pressing his lips against Logan’s; even though they’ve been together for years, Logan still isn’t quite used to the chill of Patton’s lips meeting his own. It makes him shiver every time.

Patton is always so sweet, so soft—Logan thinks only part of that is that he is a vampire afraid of hurting his comparatively delicate human lover, and the majority of it is because Patton strives to be sweet and soft as a default state of being, because he is a person who understands that kindness is not a state of being but constantly, consciously making mindful choices to be kind—and his kisses reflect that about him.

He almost always tastes of mint, because Logan had established early that he was perfectly fine with Patton drinking blood, he would not be facing secondary exposure to someone else’s blood, absolutely not, he holds a less than zero amount of desire to become an amateur hematologist through taste, and so Patton was incredibly scrupulous about brushing his teeth after consuming the blood he’d procured through a source of his in blood donation.

Patton tastes of peppermint now, and Logan sighs into the kiss, lips parting, and he feels the slightest, teasing pinprick of fangs against that sends a thrill zipping down his spine, and—

“And that’s our cue to leave!” Roman bellows with good humor; Logan turns to scowl at him over his shoulder anyways.

“Oh, you don’t have to—” Patton begins, brow creasing ever so slightly.

“Yeah, we do,” Virgil says, an edge of a laugh in his voice. “Besides, us humans have to sleep.”

Patton usually forgets about this; he doesn’t necessarily need to sleep, but he can. Logan knows of at least three decade-long naps that Patton’s taken; he has next to no memories of the foundation of the United States, because he was snoozing for the vast majority of the buildup to the Revolutionary War and the establishment of the government afterwards.

He is, though, content to lie in a bed he’d bought for Logan’s use as Logan dozes throughout the night; sometimes Logan wakes up to Patton propped up on an elbow, looking at him with an expression in his eyes that is a bizarre mixture of fondness and jealousy.

Patton nods and says wisely, “Or else Santa won’t come to your house.”

Virgil snorts, “Yeah, that’s why.”

“I’ll have you know that Nikolass’ a close personal friend of mine,” Patton sniffs, “and it is a very long way from Gemile.”

“North Pole,” Virgil corrects. “Santa lives at the North Pole.”

“Mm,” Patton says neutrally.

“Patton, did you really know St. Nick?” Roman demands.

“No, no, you’re right,” Patton sighs, a glimmer of mischief in his eyes. “Far too late for you mortals. Off to bed, then, and don’t forget to leave him some börek!”

“ Milk and cookies,” Virgil says, he and Roman now wearing twin expressions of desperate curiosity. Logan, who knows when St. Nick supposedly lived, keeps silent.

“He prefers börek,” Patton says, his nose twitching, a telltale sign he’s holding in laughter. “It’s traditional, where he’s from. Leave him a note that old Patton remembers him, it’ll earn you börek points!”

“Brownie points,” Virgil corrects again, “Patton, did you actually know Santa Claus—”

Patton bursts into giggles, unable to hold up the ruse for very long.

“The figure we know today as St. Nicholas of Myra lived in the 300s,” Logan explains. “He predates Patton by thirteen hundred years, approximately.”

“I can’t believe you fell for that!” Patton cackles, eyes bright, making him look as young as his face presents him to be.

“Yeah, okay,” Virgil says, as Patton pulls Roman into a hug, “you say that like it’s entirely unbelievable when you’ve shown us paintings of you and other completely unreal people like Maid Marian—”

“Aw, I miss her,” Patton says.

“— sorry if Santa Claus is too far out of the realm of belief from the vampire, ” Virgil continues to grumble, even as Patton folds him into a hug, too.

“He has also known Marie Curie,” Logan says, still unable to quite believe it even though he’s practically memorized the missives she had sent Patton. “Also, I may have elevated my threshold of belief to include vampires, selkies, sirens, and banshees, but I absolutely will not be budged to start believing in childhood myths.”

He pins Patton with a look. “And I am still unconvinced that you knew Robin Hood.”

“Well, he wasn’t actually called that then — ” Patton begins.

“Nope!” Roman practically yells. “Nope, Logan, you are not going to take the fact that I am one degree separated from the Merry Men, I refuse to listen to you debate this again, Sheriff of Not-letting-Roman-have-this-one-thing-ingham—”

“All of my research suggests the people you knew were imitators—” Logan begins again.

“As a Christmas gift to me, shut up,” Roman says.

“Roman,” Patton scolds.

“ Please shut up,” Roman amends politely—only his tone is polite, as the words themselves and the eyeroll that accompanies them are not particularly courteous.

Virgil distracts him quite handily by physically turning Roman around and nudging him toward the door.

Patton follows after them, Logan a few steps behind.

“All right, well, be safe going home,” Patton says, beginning on his spiel as Roman and Virgil pull on gloves and scarves. “Are you calling for a ride?”

“Walking,” Virgil says.

Patton makes a discomfited noise. “In this cold?”

“We barely live three blocks away, Ed-worry Cullen,” Roman says, and flaps his arms to show off his new peacoat, a gift from Janus. “We’re all bundled up.”

“All right, well,” Patton says, clearly still fretting, “Text message me when you get home?”

“Just text works,” Logan murmurs, but he can empathize with Patton’s difficulty with memorizing certain terms; it’s just that Patton’s are mostly technological in nature, and Logan’s are slang. Back when they first met, Patton still had the occasional slip-up and called texts telegrams.

“Text me,” Patton corrects himself, smiling at Logan and squeezing his hand in silent thanks before turning his attention back to Roman and Virgil.

“We will,” Virgil says, and amends, “or at least, I will,” because Roman was notorious for promising he’d text when he got home only to wake up to fifteen missed calls from Patton because he’d forgotten to do so.

“Good,” Patton says with a sigh of relief, then, “All right, bring it in!”

Logan releases Patton’s hand so Patton can step forward and hug Roman and Virgil simultaneously; Roman pulls a face at him over Patton’s shoulder, likely still stung by Logan’s accurate theory about the validity of the so-called Merry Men Patton had been acquainted with.

Though Logan is the correct one, Patton may believe that those people were the original Robin Hood and his band of thieves, but he was most likely deceived considering the earliest myths of Robin Hood originated two hundred years prior to Patton’s birth, even if Patton protests that the dates of the origin of many myths during his human life are incorrectly cited—

Logan presses his lips together in an expression that is not reciprocating the face that Roman pulled at him. Logan is correct; he can rest easily knowing this. And perhaps Christmas is not the proper time to bring up this oft-rehashed debate.

Even though Logan is right. It should not be oft-rehashed because he is right.

“Merry Christmas, Brainy Swan,” Roman says, stepping forward to give Logan a hug that Logan would describe as brotherly, except he knows Roman’s brother and this is far too tame, even if there is more back-slapping and hair ruffling than Logan would prefer.

“I am not anything like Isabella Swan,” he begins—this is an oft-rehashed debate, too, but this one is far more teasing in nature; Logan, at least, has the retort of pulling up any image of a particularly hideous mermaid mock-up or ugly fish and showing it to him with the (Virgil-taught) response “This you?”—and Roman rolls his eyes.

“Stop denying the Twilight renaissance, Lucy Weste- nerd -a,” Roman says, and reaches out to pluck at the patched elbow of Logan’s tweed jacket, even as he’s hugging Patton goodbye. “You’re dressed Victorian enough—”

“Patton isn’t anything like Dracula,” Logan disputes this time, because obviously Patton would never drink Logan’s blood or turn him without his consent. He straightens his waistcoat, and is about to reach into his pocket, grab his phone, and show Roman the image of a blobfish he has saved for a special occasion to tell him that this is clearly his long-lost twin, not Remus.

He may or may not have rehearsed this with Virgil to ensure a devastating effect.

“Can we please go before you two spend all of Christmas Eve talking about vampire franchises,” Virgil groans.

“Yeah, as fun as that is, most nights, this is kind of a special night!” Patton says brightly. If it were anyone else, Logan would wonder if he should attempt to scan his tone for sarcasm, but Patton probably does think it’s fun.

Virgil steps forward to hug Logan next; a one-armed hug around the shoulders, quick. It’s what they’re both best with, really; abrupt, swift affection that can be moved on from in a tidy manner.

“Merry Christmas, L,” Virgil says, then he steps forward to allow Patton to give him a more substantial hug; Patton wraps his arms around Virgil’s shoulders, squeezing him tight, his eyes shuttering for a brief moment, his face becoming gaunt.

“Merry Christmas, Pat,” Virgil says in a very quiet voice.

“Merry Christmas, V,” Patton says, his voice equally quiet and a touch strained.

Something deep in Logan aches at the sight of them before the look on Patton’s is wiped clean, so abruptly it’s almost as if Logan’s imagined it, and Patton inhales deeply and lets go of Virgil.

“Text me,” Patton reminds them, as Roman and Virgil step off the front stoop.

“I will,” Virgil promises.

Roman’s face splits into a grin, and he calls back, “Merry Christmas, Elena Gil-boring!”

Logan’s head whips around, and he opens his mouth to respond—he isn’t sure with what— and the world surrounding him spins, and he’s weightless, airborne, and as suddenly as it started, it’s stopped. He sees Patton smile at him before Logan closes his eyes, the world still spinning in a way that is distinctly unpleasant.

“Okay?” Patton asks, gently touching Logan’s shoulder.

“Mm. Dizzy.” Logan takes in a deep breath through his nose—the smoke off the fire, the lingering scents of their dinner and desserts, peppermint—and releases it, shaky, through his mouth, before he chances opening his eyes again.

“Sorry,” Patton says, guilt in his tone.

“It’s all right,” Logan says, and he smirks a little. “I’m sure Roman would have said something to interrupt the Yuletide peace if you hadn’t.”

“Yes, Roman would have,” Patton teases, amused, before he blurs for a moment and comes into focus just as quickly, Logan’s empty mug in his hands, one of his many fluffy blankets over his arm—Patton is almost always eager to use his preternatural speed when they are alone in his home. “Would you like another?”

Logan evaluates it; he does not drink very often, but it is a holiday, and he has eaten a sufficient amount and kept well-hydrated today. Though, he does not usually get too vertiginous when Patton moves him quickly, unless they are moving a great distance, he does have reason to suspect that the alcohol is the reason for it today. He’ll have to mention it to Patton; so long as he avoids that, and keeps it to this last mug, he should not face any unfortunate aftereffects in the morning.

“Yes, please,” he decides.

Patton kisses his temple and casts the blanket in front of the fireplace with great fanfare, fluffing it up so that it is at optimum comfort levels, before he unfolds another with an equal amount of fanfare, wrapping it around Logan’s shoulders. Logan smiles at him in thanks, as he knows the blanket is likely for his benefit—Patton frets about Logan getting too cold when they cuddle due to their disparate temperatures—and there’s a rush of artificial wind as Patton zooms to the kitchen.

Logan wraps the blanket around himself a little more securely as he settles in front of the fire, taking a moment to adjust the wood with the poker, listening to the popping crackle that allows him to lean back in time to watch the spray of sparks leap up the chimney. There’s the sound of a needle being lifted off a vinyl, the vinyl being replaced, and the needle lowered back down; Patton has switched them to an album of orchestral performances of Christmas songs.

Another rush of wind, then, a soft tap of fingers at the top of his head. Logan tilts his head back to look up at him.

Patton’s smiling down at him, eyes reflecting the last remaining sparks, his dark eyes catching the light like stars. He cradles the mug in his hand, and, despite the great speed at which he had moved, he has not spilled a drop.

“Here you are, love.”

“Thank you, dear,” Logan says, placing the poker back where it’s meant to be before he accepts the mug. Patton takes the time to settle in beside him, setting a tray on the hearth, before he wraps his shoulders in the fluffy blanket, too.

Logan smiles a little at the sight of the tray. One half would pass as a traditional, human charcuterie board, if perhaps a bit heavier on jellies than most. The other half is crowded with sectioned blood oranges, a small bowl of pomegranate seeds, raspberries, cherries, and strawberries, all foods as red as Patton’s punny Christmas sweater. It says Merry Chrismath! on it, with math formulas sketched out to form the shape of a Christmas tree, which Patton had purchased specifically because the corners of Logan’s lips had turned up at the sight of it in the store.

Patton takes a sip from his own mug—from the smell of it, mulled wine—and sighs in satisfaction.

“This feels very human, doesn’t it?” Patton asks Logan, as if he is asking for Logan’s approval, and in all honesty he probably is; Patton has been undead for so long that the memories of his human life are dim and distant. “Sitting in front of the fire, eating snacks. About to cuddle.”

It does feel rather human—all he has to do is pretend that his boyfriend is a red food enthusiast, rather than, for whatever reason, red foods being passable enough to a vampire that they are the only human foods he can stomach.

He doesn’t waste time pretending, though. Why should he, when his reality is stranger than fiction?

Logan presses his cheek to Patton’s shoulder, for a moment.

“I’m perfectly satisfied with this being a shared vampire-human experience,” Logan says, deliberately misunderstanding why Patton is asking. He likes that Patton is a vampire; it is part of him, it is why they have been able to meet. He does not understand why Patton sometimes seems to act like Logan would prefer a human boyfriend, because he wouldn’t. He prefers Patton.

“Well,” Patton says, his voice almost unbearably soft. “I suppose I’m all right with that too.”

Logan reaches for his own mug and takes a sip, before, once again, pressing his cheek against Patton’s shoulder in a way that presses his hair against Patton’s face.

Patton huffs softly in amusement. “Are you trying to get me to smell you?”

“I find it interesting,” Logan says, and he does; the amount of data Patton can deduce by one smell is absolutely astounding. He has plans for a more specific experiment, which he will ask Patton to conduct on a day he is bored and amenable to such suggestions.

Patton hesitates, just for a little bit, before Logan scoots closer, about to tilt so that some of his more major arteries will be closer to his nose.

“All right, then, for Christmas.”

Patton presses his nose against Logan’s hair, kissing the crown of his head, before he inhales, slowly, curiously, like someone trying to place what’s cooking in a kitchen without being able to see what is being prepared.

“And?” Logan asks.

“Mm,” Patton hums, getting his thoughts in order, before he inhales again, this time as if he is a sommelier inhaling the scent of a fine vintage. “Well, you, my favorite smell in the whole world.��

Logan feels very warm in a way that has nothing to do with the blanket, Patton’s arm around his shoulders, or the fire before them.

“You washed your hair this morning—oh, this is a new shampoo!”

“You didn’t like the other one, you thought it was too chemical-y,” Logan says. “I finished it yesterday.”

“Ooh, thank you,” Patton says. “Not that you didn’t smell lovely without the overtone of whatever phoenix is supposed to smell like, but I like this one much better—ooh, lemongrass? You’re spoiling me.”

Logan grins into Patton’s collarbone; really, only Patton would think that a new shampoo scent was spoiling.

“And the usual soap smell,” Patton says. “Sweat, skin, deodorant, your aftershave. You walked by someone smoking today; tobacco and herbal cigarettes, that’s unusual, those were way more common back in the forties—damiana, blackberry leaf, rose, and,” another inhale, “hibiscus and mullein. Gosh, the thought of those takes me back.”

Logan is about to ask—perhaps a past acquaintance or friend smoked something similar in those days—but Patton moves on without ruminating on it further, which makes Logan feel an odd prick of pride; nostalgia has been one of Patton’s greatest strengths, true, but also one of his greatest downfalls.

“Did you have tacos for lunch yesterday? I can smell the spicy salsa still.”

“You cannot,” Logan says, still stunned, even after years, at the amount of things Patton can detect. He’s probably smelling the capsaicin in his salsa, for one, but Patton can also smell certain chemicals the body produces: illness, for example, but also things like cortisol and oxytocin.

“Mhm, makes my nose itch a little. And I can smell the stuff we had at the party, and for dinner last night and breakfast this morning, so it wouldn’t be as fun for you if I listed that off...” Another inhale. “Oh, and I can tell you’re a little tipsy.”

“I think that’s probably why I got dizzy when you ran with me earlier.”

Patton kisses his forehead as a form of apology. “And. You’re happy.”

Logan pulls back just enough, just so he can look Patton in the eyes.

There are a great many supposed vampire stories that claim to know the color of a vampire’s eyes; blood red, commonly, but yellow or gold were popular ideas, as well. Silver, sometimes. Almost always, the presumed color was a color not found in nature.

Patton’s eyes are so dark a brown they are practically black, the iris near indistinguishable from his pupil unless someone was shining a direct light at them. They were the same color when he was human, Patton thinks; he has an illustration of his mother hidden away upstairs, and they are identical in shape and shade. They are beautiful, and captivating, and full of the warmth and love that are so perfectly, wonderfully Patton.

“I hope you don’t have to smell me to know that,” Logan says, and then, fumblingly, “I mean—I am aware you can smell my oxytocin, but I hope you know that I am without relying on that sense. That I am happy, I mean. Because I am. I do not tell you how you make me feel enough and I feel the need to do so now and articulate it clearly. You make me incandescently, impeccably happy. I am deeply in love with you. I could not have imagined the way my life is now, but I do not want it any other way, because you have made my life so much better.”

Patton’s expression has softened, his head tilting to the side, his lips tilted up into a smile, his eyes so full of affection that Logan almost has the urge to look away, overwhelmed. But Logan, bolstered by something —the Bailey’s and peppermint schnapps, the Christmas spirit, his own love for Patton, he isn’t sure which or if it’s a combination of all of them—keeps looking at him, savoring the expression, before his hand drifts up to cup Patton’s jaw.

They lean in simultaneously, and Logan’s eyes drift shut as he presses his lips to Patton’s once again; this time, without anyone to watch or heckle, Patton’s soft lips part easily for him, Patton’s fingers tangling in his hair, and Logan shivers a little with pleasure as Patton’s tongue brushes against Logan’s bottom lip. Patton is always, always so intolerably tender with him, so careful and deliberate, as if Logan is something to be savored, something exquisite and vitreous that needs to be handled delicately, something precious.

Logan tries his best to treat him in kind. He touches Patton’s face, Patton’s mouth and lips and tongue, eternally cool to the touch, with the kind of mindfulness he gives to pipettes and microscopes and test tubes, as if touching Patton in a way that is any less than the amount of devotion and love Patton deserves will irrevocably contaminate the results of his hypothesis.

But then Patton’s tongue brushes against his own, and Logan gasps, and he moves to kiss Patton with the devotion and love and passion that ignites in Logan’s stomach, burning hotter than a Yule log, his heartbeat thudding rapidly in his ears, and Logan presses himself even closer to Patton, so wonderfully chilled to the touch, the only thing that could temper the heat flaring to life in Logan’s stomach to something bearable, the only thing that brings balance, something as undeniably well-paired as the heat source and the heat sink—they bring each other thermodynamic equilibrium, romantic equilibrium, equilibrium in all things—

Patton pulls away, just in time, just as Logan needs to break away to gulp in a breath that Patton does not need to take, and Logan looks at Patton, whose eyes are flaring with their own kind of heat.

“I love you too,” Patton says, and he presses his forehead to Logan’s, inhaling deeply; Logan wonders if his body has started producing dopamine and norepinephrine and serotonin and vasopressin, if Patton can smell it.

“I love you so much,” Patton says again, his voice trembling with the weight of it.

Patton wraps his arms around Logan’s waist, pulling him into his lap, and Logan wraps his arms around him. Patton cuddles closer, rubbing his cheeks against Logan’s hair almost like a cat.

“I love you too,” Logan says, “I love you.”

Patton bundles the blanket around them, the fire crackling and the ebb and flow of string music in the background, and Logan presses a kiss to Patton’s cheek.

“I love you,” Patton repeats.

I love you, I love you, I love you, they whisper at each other, wrapped up in a blanket until the fire sputters down to embers, Patton’s cold skin keeping Logan from overheating, the pair of them exchanging kisses that only slightly tip into overly passionate, always returning to holding each other, cuddling in front of the fire, even as Logan’s eyelids slip lower and lower as the moon rises higher and higher in the sky, so comfortable and so adored and so absolutely, completely sated that he cannot help but drift off in the comfort of it, one thing ringing in his ears that carries him off to a deep, dreamless sleep.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

#my post #text #my fic #my fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #logicality

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wannabeagrunklefan · 8 years ago

Text

Fic: Fire and Freedom

Pairing: Stancest Rating: PG-13 for language and some implied sexy times, I guess ^^; Author’s Notes: Circus AU! This was written for the Stancest Discord server’s scavenger hunt. I just wanted to say a quick shout out to my very talented teammates for making this event so fun and for being so kind! You’re all brilliant and I was so inspired by your lovely writing and art! :D And a hearty thank you to my beta team @yehvaru and @reinstotheworld, who made this legible! I know you’re both really busy, so it really touched me that you made time to look over my story and give me some feedback and encouragement. You two are the absolute best and I adore you both to the moon and back! :D <3

The link to this fic on AO3 can be found here.

“Little shit!”

Carla sighed heavily, eyes rolled up to the ceiling as if seeking divine patience. “Stanley, don’t start-”

“‘He’s cheating! He’s behind a curtain! ANYONE could have got him out! You think that’s a good trick?’” Her companion continued on with his tirade in a squeaky, off-key parody of what she assumed was meant to be a child, if the child in question sounded like a leaky bike tire.

A leaky bike tire with a serious chain smoking problem.

“Seriously, kid?” He continued arguing with his imaginary, tiny antagonist, weaving haphazardly through the throng of performers backstage preparing for their acts to start. Carla heaved a frustrated breath as she attempted to keep up, neatly dodging some acrobats and coming dangerously close to Ms. Petunia’s prized, trained poodle, Rex, earning her a vicious glare from the older woman. “Anyone could have gotten me outta handcuffs and a locked tank of water in the middle of a giant, empty stage?? The entire point is that I escape on my own!”

“To be fair, the tank’s not really sealed as tightly as it looks, though,” Carla couldn’t help but point out, trying to take the wind out of his sails before he made it clear across the Atlantic Ocean fueled on spite alone.

It seemed to work slightly, as far as distractions went, as Stanley’s steps did slow somewhat. “I know that, and you know that, but that’s not the point,” he growled, punctuating the end of his sentence with a few vicious stabs in the air with a pointer finger. “My job is to create an illusion that inspires ‘wonder’ and ‘the inner child’, and that real child is being a real asshole!”

“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Carla replied dryly. “What child wouldn’t experience a sense of wonder watching a happy-go-lucky guy like you answer their innocent question with a ‘Bite me, kid!’?”

Her companion narrowed his eyes in a mockingly fierce glare and put indignant hands on his hips as his body relaxed into a more playful posture. Bull-headed as Stan was, at least he could concede the point when he was being ridiculous. In his own, silent way, of course. “Yanno what? You can bite me too, Carla.”

“Been there, done that, sugar,” she replied, patting him lightly on the shoulder as he grinned. She wrinkled her nose for effect as she added, “never again.”

He burst into laughter, resting a hand over his heart. “You break my heart, McCorkle! Just like you did that night when you left me fer some clown!”

She immediately shoved him in frustration, forcing more laughter out of him. “NO! It wasn’t funny the first fifty-thousand times you made that joke, and it isn’t funny now! Ugh, I can’t deal with you when you’re like this. Where’s your brother? Why isn’t he suffering you like the rest of us? FORD!” She yelled at a nearby camper, their original destination (Stanley’s destination was always Stanford), and relished the violent tremor that ran through it as she had no doubt startled Ford out of a deep focus.

One chair scrape and several heavy, booted steps later, and the door to the RV swung open, revealing Ford’s perplexed face and emitting a faint scent of chemicals. He quirked a brow in Carla’s direction. “You bellowed?”

She frowned at his word choice and crossed her arms defiantly, pointedly ignoring the sniggering coming from the manchild behind her. “You’re a fire tamer, right?”

His brows scrunched together in a mild frown as he thought the question over. “I suppose you could call it that. But I prefer to say I work with fire-”

“Deal with this,” she interrupted, grabbing a handful of Stan’s sleeve and dragging him over to his brother. “There was a rowdy kid and now he’s all riled up, and if you don’t take him now I’ll throw a knife at him and I can’t guarantee I’ll miss.”

Stanford rolled his eyes as he stepped back to allow Stanley entry. “I’ll deal with it, but I can’t promise it’ll stay dealt with,” he countered, leaping back as Stanley laid a comically exaggerated and loud kiss to his cheek. “AGH! Stanley, what the hell?” he yelped, rubbing a hand up and down his cheek, face flushed and lips twisted into a grimace when his hand passed over saliva.

“Thanks, bro,” Stanley said as he made his way cheerfully into their shared space. “I feel so loved!”

Ford turned back to Carla, his expression deadpan. “Run, while you still can.”

She laughed and punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

“Oh, and Carla?” Stanley popped up over Ford’s shoulder, and that’s when Carla realized she had to leave now.

“Gotta go, Stan! Talk to you later, ok?” she called over her shoulder as she swiftly turned around and began making her escape.

“Oh! Ok. Could you just thank Thistle for me when you see ‘im?”

…Damn him and damn her curiosity straight to hell. She turned around with what she hoped was an effective warning look. “Thank him for what?”

Stan quickly held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Whoa! Hey! No need fer that! I just genuinely wanted to thank him for helpin’ me put away all my props ‘n stuff yesterday.”

Carla could feel her shoulders returning to their more relaxed positions. That was actually… “…Thanks, Stan. I’ll tell him you said that.”

He smiled. “No problem, Carla. I just wanted to make sure he knew I appreciated his kind jester.”

There’s no way of knowing for sure, but it was generally accepted by everyone at the circus that day that the ensuing, aggrieved shriek could be heard the next city over.

“We’re going to need hearing aids soon if you keep winding her up like that.”

Stanley grinned mischievously from his place against the wall as he watched his twin fiddle around with his latest fuel-concoction. “That was a good one, wasn’t it? Even better than I hoped for!”

Ford shook his head in exasperation as he continued with his work. “I honestly don’t know what you hope to achieve by bothering that poor girl. Didn’t she suffer enough as your girlfriend?”

Stan barked out a laugh and pushed off the wall, coming over to Ford to wrap a hand around one shoulder as he leaned over the other to observe his twin’s progress. “Yanno, I’d clock you a good one fer that remark if it wasn’t dripping with jealousy.” He glanced to the side to look for Ford’s reaction and – there! A quick spasm of fingers around the beaker he was holding, a slight quiver of a pipette in a suddenly unsteady hand and a jaunty bounce of an Adam’s apple were all Stan’s to cherish; small pieces of evidence of his twin’s affection that he could collect like an emotional magpie, decorating his life with pieces of love and hoarding the warmth they brought him.

“Who’s jealous?” Ford asked, in the most chalant-nonchalant sort of way. Stanley hoped he wasn’t sincerely trying to sound unaffected, because that would mean his brother was the worst liar in history and bullshit was basically their trade, so…not a good combination. “I just meant that perhaps you should…ease up a little. No person should be screaming that much, that regularly.”

“No?” Stan asked casually, plucking the beaker and pipette out of Ford’s hands and setting them down safely out of harm’s way, as Ford avidly stared at the side of his head. “You couldn’t see any advantages to screaming loudly on a regular basis?” He continued his line of questioning, pulling out the chair Ford is sitting in and sitting down in the newly created space of his twin’s lap. He looped his arms around Ford’s neck, grinning in triumph as he felt strong hands grip his hips, some stray fingers slipping under his shirt and coming to a stop to lightly caress the skin underneath. He licked his lips as he gazed into brilliant, warm brown eyes, so much more vibrant and arresting than his own. “No fringe benefits, at all?”

He watched Ford’s eyes shift from side to side - searching for something, it looked like. The inner workings of Ford’s mind often eluded him. Whatever it was, he must’ve found it, because the firm, stiff line of his mouth softened and melted into a charmingly lazy grin and the feather-light caresses began to move downward with intent. “Well, Carla was certainly right about one thing. You are riled up, aren’t you?”

Stan grinned devilishly, bringing one hand up to run through Ford’s curly locks, pausing every so often to deliver light, teasing scratches to his scalp. “You bet. She seemed to think that you should deal with me.” Here he grabbed a mass of hair, pulling Ford’s head back. Ford went willingly, offering his throat in its entirety to his brother. “What do you think about that?”

“I’m not sure,” Ford admitted, looking up at the ceiling. “I’ve never really done well trying to force fire to bend to my will, as I’m sure you remember.” Stan responded with a non-committal hum and a light caress to a pale, pink patch of skin on his brother’s throat. “As I mentioned earlier, my best work seems to come when I treat the fire with respect. Like a partner.” He flicked his eyes down in an attempt to meet Stan’s despite the awkward angle.

Stan considered him briefly, laid out and submissive beneath him, before throwing aside the façade and finally giving into temptation, bending forward to kiss, lick and suck at every inch of skin he could reach. His twin came alive immediately, hands coming up and grasping at Stan’s shoulders for purchase as he gasped and moaned his pleasure, completely losing himself in the moment.

It was times like these, here in this narrow world where he and Ford were the only things in existence, that Stanley felt like everything slotted into place. Where he could slowly, carefully free his brother from all the invisible trappings of the world outside and celebrate his freedom, celebrate Ford. It was always his most thrilling escape, and when he succeeded it brought him more pride and joy than hundreds of locked tank performances could ever touch.

Every soft gasp was like the rattle of a loosening chain, every moan the click of a lock springing open under his hands. Every desperate plea was like the awed gasps of an enthralled crowd and every call of his name the thunderous applause of a phantom audience. With Ford he reached new heights and it was with Ford that he achieved some of his greatest accomplishments.

When they were together, he received some of Ford’s magic too. Every light caress trailed fire along his nerve-endings, and every kiss seared into him like a brand. Ford’s intense gaze lit a fire in his gut and his fierce embrace was scalding enough to melt away the outside fears and anxieties that plagued him while leaving his heart and soul feeling blissfully warm.

Together they were two fires that burned brightly, twining and melting into one another to become an intimidating force of nature. Together, they broke locks and rent chains asunder, lifting each other to previously unattainable heights where they could soar in their freedom.

Together, the future was bright.

Together, they made the impossible possible.

#stancest #stancest scavenger hunt #my writing #ugh this is kind of a mess lol #but i enjoyed writing this anyway #aus are so fun to mess around with ^^

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castlehead · 8 years ago

Text

mx pharaoh -b-side u-

Ideals and notions slash into every oblivious dawn, which now I can only see through windows in the visiting room Clark 8 has. My friend on the outside came to visit today. He said I was living on “Borrowed Time” and that I should be lucky. I listen to him and do not quite know what he means by that.

. . . . . .

Ether swirls forlornly.

Merit in people, like merit in poets, according to poet Wallace Stevens, is a bore. Well seems to me a baseless assumption but I have not a friend in a single bloodvessel so maybe I am doing something wrong. But contra standards everything is baseless, sideless, endlessly sidereal. In a lit World. In a leaning, lit up, bloodshot World. But that is where I am in the night under a cloak of meds turning me robotic or like something.

. . . . . .

Generally, if the sky fell, which it has, would to me the sun in actuality be the burning pyre of a onceplanet, diffuse now, back then, though, home to matter unfeasibly unfreezeable, in regards the fiery heat, and lurking in their heat those burning bodies, knowing the surface of the sun as theirs, or at least learning like as we do of the grand mirror of consciousmind.

Under a newer cloak of mild hospital patterns I live a milder life than once I knew in being thrust indeterminedly blank, into sideless nothing. Knowing not.

A thing unto myself like a sack of carrion carried. Locked in a thrust of obligation and to trudge through my blazes and situations and then come to crisis.

Frame of reference disappears. Seeing God, whether true or untrue, which really doesn’t matter, produces doubts you hoard like a magpie. They are special to you. In the moment of seeing, there it dawns, lets itself be seen, is seen, but for you only, and never again: then you are forced to find understanding within yourself. You will be at inward war for endless time, I think silently: finding kinship with hope and an impossibility.

You experience the thing. It lights up your flesh like the last burnt being on an inhabited sun. Once. Once I could relay a moment with another, focus my thoughts, have a diameter more than an inch of reason around my headspace. Different however than phrenology. Old World cures. Trepanation. That guy Geoffrey Dahmer drilled acid like LSD into the brains of 14 year olds. And turned them into idiotzombies. Like he drilled holes in their heads. And poured pure acid into the drilled holes. But maybe that’s just an urban legend. In any case.

Who? Is? On? My? Side? Slipping slipping slipping dawn proves this abstract to think about when there is nothing to grab onto. Like in that moment of reckoning, even; you forget your confusion and say, “The star was never a planet, nothingness can exist godlessly most sensibly.”

But not that no. Not a farrow for the plow there. Just old rusted junk and the skeleton of old mouse of Burns. I frame it as a remark not a question needing appeasing: Who is on my side. Words on the life and soul of one, whose difference between life and death relied on a fucking air conditioner, and hence, a fall broken.

Then and then only can it be seen what it is. Something I guess not like expecting anything. There’s an old bluff in every answer to a personal question I use and it’s, Well that’s just me. Or. Something of the sort. Nearly draconian my sense of self whips me. Lashing a handsome leather one.

And maybe I block myself out of my own portrait or maybe others do that I wouldn’t know I’m not a fan of blaming people like I wasn’t there man I didn’t geographically locate the body of another and install myself fucking into their fucking harddrive. And see their thoughts about where he was and also reflections in sensations and impressions of emotions. I am the static field my space proclaims, and the static reality is where I am in the moment however the soul is often placed where I long to be and suffer to be.

. . . . . .

In this fecal birdcage I am hassled by the names I call myself. Hateful little whispers my own mind builds together and that unto itself, is unto itself, it is pressing, it is a pressing matter, it presses on me like a lover of a kind. Cosmos, touching. My evicted head, squeezed head, attenuating.

There is nothing different going to happen besides some screams. In answer is the clogged place the sound releases me from, once again, into the World, the whirly World, filled with friends or not with friends or not with friends but family or not family but just my Dad.

So I am injured greatly at heart. I am very sad. What is my sadness I do not know what my sadness is but it remarks on a soul hurt as if it knew more than that, more than little horrors, here and there, and mere, stubborn names, frames of mind, or all of it observed through a still glass, time then seen in and as frames, each: memory nearly real as present, and all of it a polaroid, a stillness made from the primordial clay by some mindfuck cretin upstairs.

So I knew perhaps a stubborn, loud thing of being had, which invaded all possible analysis with its goofy inverted visions. Trembling under disregards. You know, cutting myself out; or do I make nothing for nothing is real? Maybe the only real thing one does is his laps around his true character, his head waiting for an end to the meanwhile. As if to prove through the effort that truth is present there somewhere in the greymatter and would present itself, living and fecund and like a mirrored life maybe drumming in some morsecode blather of an arc I’d travel to in that life, a clime mine, and away from that picture in the glass, a face which even by the mundanest observance causes ringing in my ears.

And yet an observance guttural and still viewing the spectacle of nothing there. Dear everyone, my sumptuous actions. Are of bloom or like I guess to say in bloom sorta. These my fatted acts. Rosebud caught not in the bud, left unfed anyway to fetidness, roaming lights in the mind revolving, as would alive stones, real expanses of mind, of a mind of leafy strands of hair, soupy lectures on an element about me unfulfilled.

Well spare me, me. Or do I speak or have I ever spoken; I do and have. Logic’s remaining drug will be unapproved by the FDA. It will go waxing, first waiting to draw closer these stones, these eerie feelings about a glutton replenished again, a waterglutton again, rose budding again. Tears. Amor Fati. Winsome of incipient chance. Out of a straight line a knot. Something a definition. Not what I was. Who I was.

Will I not be owlish in eye, stretch rude features? Generous little snot. Begin. Provoke me. Tell me you matter, do you. Drain me out like foul blood. I am. Say breaths. Este loco. Este loco. Este loco. Precarious rich flowershoots fished risky out of a vase on the ledge of leaning dawn. Or I am fucked up and leaning on my friendless self. Or am I somewhere weightless and dark in a dried out morbidity, this horseman of myself pacing, clicking, clicking around his halls of hell, chiseling out aggressive conversation with himself despite me, whether I engage him or not. I am the place droopysnouted humankind takes their feelings, a place to browse through them, be a dog at. It is just some people walk in the shade and think it’s more than that.

. . . . . .

Staring down a bottle of expired Roxicet, right there, and my eyes glued there, and my face plain and stoic, and I already nearly under the table with five shots of Jäger and three lines of good shit. Like I mean fucking fire. But I guess blow and liquid shitface didn’t drown out the noise of my own mind, harping at itself, again, batty again.

Besides the talk of different friends at this guy’s house I mean, which was like thousands of pianos tapping a variety of keys. An eager discord I thought, eagerly. To drown out with.

Weird half-convos and I guess a few pills. Yeah, it was reason enough to ingest that shit. Reason enough to eat half the bottle nearly, and wind up passed out on the side of the street at 3 A.M., picked up to my shaky haunches, heaved rather, by a few preferably [in my mind] anonymous ex-friends, them all bodies for the carnage, this disturbing wastefulness, nearly a tale for Fitzgerald to read and think of abandoned

Airdales. I was green. Froggy. But at least I wasn’t blue.

But from that day on I figured out how easy it was to steal pills. How easy it was to lose people. Everyone. A few simple turns and you can be throttled forever until you put down the brick. Left me with a massive headache. The loss of trust people had in me is a gift doe. And, at least now, I take an aspirin or two, maybe. I was fourteen. In a word I have started recovering from my own illness that is yet too much a choice for me to call disease. Been shattered by drugs, this time bundles of heroin.

Spent four months in and out of seedy places in Windsor Locks, CT, cultivating this addiction, ignoramus that I am, who does not listen to his body. Tried quitting seven times; sick sick sick, unending sick, physical convulsions, puking black grease, needing water that yet when I drank it burned my throat. Physical addiction is the story of Narcissus embodied. Wasted money, wasted years.

I am clean now I guess and scared of drugs generally, but will probably pick up cocaine again. Perhaps this reasonable fear comes too late to retain the whole of what (or who) I once was. But I pick up the scraps and call it a day like anyone does.

So as of now I am clean. Only fitting I’d push myself to the extremity at the very end. I am doom-eager as Orpheus, my solitary lady, haha. I have thirty days clean and feel higher now than I ever was quenching my habit by the coming of the sun, my girlfriend and I driving to Hartford to pick up and sick as hell.

Every morning that was what it was. Blank sleep, maybe too disturbed to call it sleep, waking and heading to resume my disembodiment etc. Ah,

Hell,

I am done, I am serious, life is no joke; I tell myself this. If one doesn’t take what they have been given seriously life will respond and turn them into a joker, and their life an exposed punchline, meaningless, detrimental to everyone. A bug is in every family as Kafka said. But we are all bugs, sweaty, stinking, plain, thoughtless, wrong. I have in such and such a way quit my buzzing against the window and resigned myself to dying in this place, this World, this planet: this imprisonment etc., between two walls of infinite glass. It’s lovely. For we are all resigned. We as a race of people are stuck with life’s retaliation against those who do not celebrate the gift that it is. The positivity here is muddled I guess but it exists here in the words.

I am staying sober. Alright? For good. For my brain. For my body; I can make out a few of these directives without stalling. I still stall. But I am healing. Just like you. I am healing forever. We heal by affirming the awesome power that takes our ommateum and feelers to the glass walls and reveals our painful futility etc. which is grace. Life is grace. So we shall live and continue to live gracefully.

i don’t regret surviving anymore from that long fall a subsequent long haul i know it yes through these days of insidious boredom after too long a while walking the halls brought to me like unto me like 'unto’ like a thunderous punishment or a poison’s delay creeping stiffness over my slouching heart

a ‘wellnesss’ now and faked well for all time over itself, over itself and out i go into a dreamt stop of it all one of these days that encircles vulturelike round me whom is in this senseless room ordinarily and draped in an ordinary at least for the place a hospital a gown greeklike and soiled kind of by the wiping of snot and snot the more

i was listening to m83’s “soon, my friend” and came up with an idea. the idea was being stabbed in the chest. i thought this was a good idea because it hurts to be stabbed in the chest but life also hurts so to not be stabbed in the chest would hurt but maybe just later or over time collectively. i guess it’s a metaphor or something.

[Fecal ape. No remonstrance to that in this tattered brain, thank Lordy. None but the blare. And then these swaying things. Meretricious, subdued talk, of something hungering wealth in something aside from this field in my dandy head. Grope, grope, youth. File the truth. Mister, she came by but in the end asked for nuffing like you didn’t say. You don’t say. Well laddie churn about on that liquid sea. Black as regular. Another day on the Hudson, another yearned conversation, another bandaged head against the wind.]

so then i thought abt what love was and it was like being stabbed in the chest the first time you love and they leave you, then you meet someone else and you leave them, and they remove the weapon. and it’s like there’s this blind pain for years before that: you’re telling people, “Hey man, I’d love to hang, but I have a knife in my chest,” or “There are things I wish I could have done before this knife was sticking out of my chest,” or “The additional six inches of this leather knifehandle protruding from my chest make it very hard to navigate crowded rooms.”

[Embattled in scorn, years of shouts, foreign eye, a foreign, bleeding eye, yes, an evil one of those a better evil than the finest smile’s chancedisgust seen by that very communicated evil. In the eye. Shivershivershiver. Oh and what did the lady say a'you. Well sire she said I had not got a melon ripe enough but my head’ll do. Cheers. Tripe, well gone’s miss. Feel around in the dark for some verb, aside, you know, from anything like 'feel.’ Dread upwards, vertical people pounding pulpit. I’d say. Mmmmsmash.]

and then the other person comes along and they ask why. so i explain to them. and they hold my hand for awhile and maybe sit under a tree with me. then i say to them will you take this thing out please and they do it and i finally bleed out and die, after all these years. then they walk away, heartbroken. i left my girlfriend of three years a week ago. she finally let the wound be a wound. and then i think there is this subtle exchange of stabbings between rejector and rejected. and i think, we have enough blood to get us through the year, we have enough temperance to hide ourselves this last time, until the last time ends, and even she, thinking she saved you in removing whatever offending object, has unknowingly conspired to rid you of her. for death takes all, and where a relief begins another ends.

[Sad sad sad. My noise, but a ghost’s achoo through paper floors.]

. . . . . .

—To understand the interconnected conversation or to just somehow prove that something impossible could happen. How is nothing impossible you may ask well let me tell you. Our hero taps his crooked index on the chalkboard. That is life. And our life is rational thought. Not in a solipsistic sense, wherein the five senses are overseen by some abstract Will For Things More Pleasing. But in that reason gives us the pleasure of life for that is synonymous with purpose. So then. For something to be Impossible, besides conceptually, is impossible, because for it to exist as a word it needs to in its extremity pinpoint something absolute in words that do not exist in reality. It says that words are realer than beings in at least our three dimensional reality. It does not matter what this image, object is, or looks like, -but is this even logical for a word to etymologically call for itself to get gone to nothingness and exist, impossibly in its own fourth dimension logic, as an example that is not itself, within the ballpark of its opposite meaning at most. Words literally make more sense than reality doez. Which basically tells us we are the result of words and can be draped with whatever context makes the most sense. Look at, and I mean really look at the idea of Being. To me, the universe seems to have an aim, that is, expands itself with everything because not to include everything would imply not only that something could exist and calls for something other than everything in order to be/.-after but that if manifested would be absurd, nonsensical, for yet there. This statement proves the absurd. At the end of the day the word is pretty clearcut. Not possible. To make it possible is a logical fallacy. Well then haven’t we figured this out? Do you want me to spell it out for you. Ok then: It is not possible, so it is possible, as itself a word, qua a word. This has some catastrophic consequences. It means that language is fleet. It can simultaneously make sense and not. The Meaning, confined to the word itself, is one that exists as much and as light and heavy as money. Yet why is what is possible possible? How do we mark that. It means a load of assumptions. It means that there need be a lifeline for the universe. That at its most far reaching, Throughout its life, the universe itself denied that this would happen, when, and this is crucial -when there was more to add. That possibility were a matter of duality. Impossible cannot be called possible bc that is absurd. It is not the definition of the word. An infinite universe says this: impossible is an impossible word. It assumes something other than it’s own infinity.

Conservation of energy. No loose ends is the assumption here, which can be used if they are put in this environment to simultaneously justify and call their existence false. Everything that exists is everything that exists and impossible is a literal lie and proof of this, I feel, because it is a word that needs itself, you know -in order to be. Said MX Pharaoh through miraculous whiteness and white ethersglow a ascending him to a head of breathed punk until he realized he is too late for this car. The monolith. It will get HIM. I will give up my HIM. And Cherryblossom my own, forever, yet that will kill us both. I give up my myself to words that don’t exist.

—The stunt of a wonderful, broad nascence too ill stemmed to not screw out at every board’s unclung fangs. This thick meteoric chamber. Guide us willful. Plank to plank, threadless way, pushed mechanic feet -Dickinson //

To start out on the water and end in the meadow. To deny the distance between anything in my reach, everything, the least or perfectest touching The Mind Of Cosmos with ye own bare lurid looking. You look long when you lose me. Then you lose me I am back to the nurses harping on old fellas who stroked out. Endless debate in the brain, then nothing, k-holekablooiy. But nah. She doesn’t give up not for nothin. Dwelled hard in my brain and barely there before. What difference was there ?? well the loose chains to myself, makes clouded things. With its armor. Making it perilous to merely move.

—Honestly the only dead writer I relate to Is Antonin Artaud. A'saith. Love can drive a man to cruelty. His mind can rebel against its borders and piss off into nothing. I took my hand and petted the venetian blinds with my hand. “Touch with my tactile impressions.” I remember. Pessoa.

Monolithic as it was there was space enough to hit him. Made in no debt to anyone but himself, to reason, to find sonorous reason compiled

In this ship of mates. Long groveled he. Atop his vestibule shedding cuticles. And some mute drone like a cateye’s dearth in it o such a thing, and such

a thing as would insist me past deliverance, working wicks at both ends and driving the conversation. Looted, but not unemployed. Free hat. Free HAt !

–What . [?] –Keeps getting better. It does. PRomise, I.

… …

Few rue the slain, even in these irrational days. Corruption is seen from afar when it is right in front of you. Begging rhetoric, gold mountains of rhetoric. Feasibly HE was as far away as the floor. Busiest one. Soaked not in sun. For one day to bruise through venetians, that day, some part in the mix, or a lost umbrella or unoriginal ideas or faked curiosities I seize myself and slap him up right well to unhook his jaw M8 just a tiny flaw HE had nothing to do with ye ruining. Sun aslant. Sun given. OR a one his own. Where circles fix one of their ends.—

—That Shia Leboeuf or whoever’s motivational speech got to me. MX Pharaoh, a'saith. Extend the pause between period and period ol patcheyes say it is I JJ I have come to blight you, strike you, be like you like me to be and something carried with that black as art, as the puppetmasters speak again for you -M8 these are not real quarterstones through the suck. Sneak in the creaking bed, surrounding me like folds of weatherdd sheet, wooly mup of hair stickin, embracing into an egg of lightness, outside of a world filled with truisms, hiccuped persuits hosing down the interest like a brainwash: club me silly: So some by the dreaded thousandhead come like thunderheads. Stuff not lasting awhile. The only way to do it is to do it. I was abt to hit post on a status and two text messages. This is what that happens after the book. It was like i was abt to drop a bomb or something, which is why similar things happen in reality we call ‘dropped bombs’ -and just furiously held myself alone, but together. Strike, my patience.

“Yr so sexy.” They fuck. And that no more I would feel. And that no more I would but try and strain myself out of, instead of undeveloping the complacent rut. To not feel something different that impossible time in Bantam CT.

… …

The hanging pendulum, famous pendulum, I brought a disguise. That ippie Jesus lad was he. Round squat lad. That’s right. Annour away from here. Ye. Das Righ. When cannit. Some guy talking to the police bout a crash somewhere. We had this great blanket that had ciggie holes in it it was Black one side White the other, forget leavening, have liquor be the rise always, and forevour, she had a worst part of life, dolour, cherry, feast of I admit another’s blocked chemistry, gangly ganglion fretting the nethers’re fed well worser then and as the corroding jism implies and implies all day long. Playing skermish his index with words on the board: Don’t! Perceive! Doubt! Make it like he dinna think of doing it the night before in this the dim place, of a city [THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSCRIPT OF THE WELLKNOWN “STRIDENT BAT” NSA RECORDING, DISLODGED FROM ITS SAFE AND BROUGHT TO THE BLEAK PUBLIC] lording over his width and graveness obsoletely,ekin -int o- INTO the air. We was playing catch. Teleophne. The sars scare -Why –Cali hipsters -Bay Area, true heroes Fazzfazz. Fazz. Lonely mean men off to the sides of the street looking you. Fortunate you look. MX Pharaoh. Lonely alien plains their eyes. Ghost meat. Feel them burn a hole in ye back as ye cross. And called her that, for she is blossoming, for she limitless, pigs raining down to the world in droves of ström, lorilee the chance was -Ear -Wax parents.Searin-bet- stridenscimist. Then to the anchoring felicity that night feet in me lap. Stringy memories launch by like a list of buzzfeed. He struggled to notice fingers of him in hers. delicate cross, small, pink foison of bushytail, or a thing we had, or when it was it was had. Feeble embers these. The tap of a shoe is like a kiss and there’s, a sopping tongue there’s, white guilt there’s, manic, seeing figures in the tar of a television’s blank screen, of which frightened Cherryblossom, fidgeting her psyche to recall and experience and re-live a done for sure thing. Worried told her he was. And now this. MX Pharaoh left the door open all night. He says he means the window said patcheyes. Lost delivery, hope those vapethings get here. Squatting to piss public. Glad I don’t got to do that. Pharaoh said. Massagin a bad neck hoping madness to bend him back to life. It was never that I was back HE said. I was neck. I broke my neck in the crash. Is this even real. And all this looking into her eyes that day speaking lil wayne fashioning pigeon grills, good movies and tainted moments and their audacity to be tainted. Comforting things like that song in my head most times.

Simone to my Jean Paul. Delineating skyscape in the night waging itself free into the starry Staten Island chasm. Hope little prose roses lift him. Croon. Empty now. I was poor once. Less of an appetite now. Can starve for a few days and be fine. I had a little house in Bantam in Connecticut where I did that. Furtherance. Lift me now and ever in good stead. Such sadness. Such inexplicable maddening stabs of sadness. A knife’s throat drinking up quaffing up. Bloodblood. Bloodspew. Recoil at me she do. Fear symperanekromenoi for they are those who know not they are dead. Lifted lies, old father. That’s what they are and I read them to you for my video in the coffeeroom. Pharaoh shirking his moral duty. Pishyynallalastersheppalalalalalala. For when you can’t think of a word for omnipotent eyes. Teacher, teach. Little ones one day sighted in my possibility will too wag from me o sorrow. Pharaoh took his last drag on her porch.

“Rose the tenant. Crazy bitch.” This, Simone. “You put her out soon.” I say. Then her:

“Granma makes me hold her papers when she’s trying to get things in order.” “Soon enough. Seems nice.” I say.

… …

Well it goes faulty. Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet singing her tone row into the night. I stayed on the couch that night embodying soft abstractions. Dripdripdrip. Into faculties my night emits like systems, unlike faculties, like the mechanism of dripping itself as consummate, like they each were in their drops blessed whole: not form, unformed, but reaching into form through concept, concept, generality by generality elucidating the complex: a'saith the poor-sighted phantasm in his eyepatch. Dragged her into this. Pharaoh was bleeding thoughts. He says to himself did I see all this time a lie shining broken light all over the fleeting like it would make it lift, make it see itself through into clarity. My thoughts. He thinks man what a day what a day. Something of kin I feel. After this book is over, there will be a part of the life of Pharaoh where he thinks clearly of his epitaph. It will say A Just Death. For he thinks, at least it will be his, and if so, some moral measure could exist in the world, if by these granted hallelujahs a punishment makes me rescind back into the wordworld like some rite of passage, but writing nothing. Meets a good friend halfway. Tries to get back her, begging for Cherryblossom. And all these repetitions. Are they with gusto ah, enough? Or twirling leaves. Senselessly from the tree. Deciduous as mine pineal perspective, growing anew, growling anew, then dead, dead again, faced again, risen. He believed, then, that if T. were to kill himself he would feel for him, and her, and not be glad it happened, and not have such a secret to keep. For it is not to stomach without a bitter feeling in the right way of how that feeling is in that pit there.

No beginning no end. Stone heart, pealing laughter. Cherryblossom he wanted some sifting through. Some irrational need to. Maybe to make sense. Find GOD. But GOD would not have any multitude be in his creamy lap. Lost folds of sheet. Or lost in them. I would have marked another blight. I would have come again in six years to leave Cherryblossom thought Pharaoh. Thought Pharaoh: my inkling of prescience was not a rudiment doubt but one more complex chink for the place the hole. Chest cavity’s ache. I shouldn’t have done. Well now who is that young squanderer: he makes to heave his cutlasslegs and paint the street with kicking blood. Can goes: blunkunk! Blunkunk! He kicks the sodacan like an old maid he does. Well that’s what they think of me, he thinks; and he channels HIM who gives Pharaoh the thoughts of others. More trained. More the luckier. I still learned to use the words Pharaoh thought. And when they gently there in my head manifested as actual words -that limited the whole scenario. GOD-train. Mellifluous summer and home again from a stay in Staten Island. Waging silent postures waiting at the curb. Fat tangle of feelings:

[So it would have easily been the soft gloaming, so it would, so it would have righted itself in the encroaching rheum, and yet he was here, now, Pharaoh was here: and in his grace met something nondescript amongst big waves of time, something like when he smoked a ton of Angel Dust and thought of the rain, and himself, and all the lightning in the distance, opining and scary, the faced, the unfaced, the lorded morals of a scared kid in the corner, the corner an eye and an eye a flick away from being a movie for our lives to look at, and we see the movie: and he thought of her silly, raven hair, and the somber grate outside by the sitting trash; and of Cherryblossom, by now but the trillionshadow’s abrupt gaze, waveful and timely, back into the night of a substance, like perhaps the remembered reality of drugs, drugged reality, embracing the life of him who falls: Saw my feet a'saith. Hanging in the air. And HE was not the cause. HE had the very first knife that broke the spring in his gut. HE kept it on his celestial mantlepiece, you know, that towering muttering spaceconstruct through wild byways, where once HE hanged Pharaoh by the tits of void. But Pharaoh. Oh my lovely by his docks biking to the piers the metal napes sinking slovenly into abusive, hurtling waters. Like a thousand pounds. Andandand. Food for thought: life’s done. I can uncreate HIM. But for the plied wares I would not have reckoned HIM, thought Pharaoh. So then out the speckled iris the man shunned doubts and things and claptrap shaped into these light, fitful unnamables, seeking their tide yet really the wreck, the blind misery in the heat lightning of that alien Connecticut night, wherein I [and this the voice the woodwork wouldn’t have guessed] was this GOD in the moon, and the moon a plane’s drifted glint a distance resized and resized. Fly fly fly. Oh my Cherryblossom, and my friends, and specky hipsters, and the delicacy of life, and ooo the righteous glint a sand speck dries the eye to. And so he go scoffed at the feeble reed he but was. He thought of himself as he was, and of you as well, strange, omnipotent eyes, and of all the hankering voices singing from their last climes. licking yon wounds of wonder. Usurper and usurped in union and none in charge. No last buck. No trinity of sleepless nights giving him his religious stomachbutterflies. So it was neon yellow morning finally across the last day and Pharaoh smudged in his eyesocket once out into his breach, once that eking bit of the unreal panted into thought and out of strange scope and thoughthindrance. Tempted by dreams to punch through floorboard and in him a wandering wastrel’s presence a fertile eye like a dunce nudged into the chair in his corner. Forgone this, foregone that, so much had happened. Pharaoh needed more time to understand this but was tired of waiting and the light poured and the mouth of the window was all gripping and finding views here and there he made a wizz on the sides of the toilet kind of. Shaped crass the eye. The umlaut of moon and sun above the brow of mankind. Pharaoh smudged in his eyesocket and thought of his patronage, absurd ghosts, and his histories within him and all aflame like sightless ruin, like something needful in the dark.]

[These connections, these feeble relations I have forged, between myself and myself, and others with others, they are nothing, they are dull words in the dark, when still I have not bridged myself to those others, nor them to me, for then is left but GOD to mangle.]

#prose #creative nonfiction #b-sides

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