#WLC birthday asks

[detectivezedd]

🧜🏻🧜🏻The golden tail🧜🏻🧜🏻

🐬I never know I was a mermaid🐬🦈chapter five🦈🌀Mia🌀Mum, am home, I said as I walked in.What’s that in your hair?, Mum asked as she noticed the comb.It’s a birthday gift from Jane, I replied and she smile.It look good on you, mum said and I smile.Thanks mum, I repliedYou wlc, your lunch is on the table. Am going out, mum said and went out.I was the only one left at home.Dad had gone out with my…

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

Character Study: Warren, Pt. 2

↠ Pt. 1 ↞

Date of Birth: June 1st, 2016 Current Year: 2030 Location: Somerwilde, Alaska

"Here's a card for you."

Warren snatched the envelope from Roy's hand as he made his way to the kitchen. "Thanks, Grandpa. Who sent it?"

"Why don’t you see for yourself?"

Warren halted his stride and stood in the center of his grandparents' cabin, eyes glued to the return address in the corner. He hadn't seen that series of words and numbers for a long time, and frankly, he was somewhat surprised he recognized them. The last time he'd seen the address, he was six or seven.

"...Adam sent me a birthday card?"

Roy seated himself on the couch and glanced over from unlacing his muddy boots, his long grey ponytail falling over his shoulder. "Could be money in there!"

Warren threw him a mightily skeptical look. "Why would he send me money?"

"You only turn fourteen once. And he's your brother, after all."

Sighing, Warren ripped the sticker of a globe that had acted as a seal and pulled out a generic greeting card. Curious, he shook it over the floor. A twenty dollar bill fell out, so that was cool. He peered inside the envelope before picking the money up off the hardwood.

"I don't think he's my brother."

Roy stood and pulled his wool sweater down over his belt. "He does love you, Warren."

"Sure, so does Layla. That's why I haven't heard from her since Dad died, right?"

Just in time to cut the sudden mood swing of the room, Warren's grandmother arrived at the front door, removing her boots and knocking the mud from the snow off of the soles. "It's bad out there for June, isn't it?"

"That's climate change for you," Roy said.

"Someone sent you a card?"

Warren blinked as he realized the question was directed at him. "Oh...yeah. Adam."

"Oh," Evelyn said. Her shoulders tensed. "...What does it say?"

Warren watched his grandmother's aqua eyes, the ones that were identical in color to his own even as they shone with sadness. He knew she missed his siblings terribly even though she never quite said as much. The look he exchanged with Roy confirmed the fact that even just hearing Adam's name was hard for her.

"Uh...I didn't read it yet."

He scrutinized the embossed leaf pattern on the front of the card. It said "For my brother…" in fancy cursive writing, something decidedly strange for something picked by Adam, who liked to poke him hard in the belly or swat the back of his head while walking by on the rare occasion he did come to visit when their father was still alive. Adam was passive jokes and stupid puns, not sentiment and affection.

"I think his girlfriend picked this out," Warren muttered.

"Well, you don't know that yet," Roy said.

Warren ignored him long enough to skim the inside of the card. "'Sometimes we fight, but I still love you, blah blah blah,' yeah, he picked it out alright." The sarcasm dripped off his words. "Just another obligation to fulfill before we all inevitably die."

Evelyn placed her hands on her hips, brow crinkling in a frown. "Warren Levi, don't say things like that."

Warren rubbed the card between his thumb and forefinger. "Sorry, Grandma."

She approached him and delicately brought him in for a tight hug. She smelled like the forest and crisp air, pastry dough, sweet apples and strawberries.

"You been bakin' pies again?" Warren asked, his mood lifting marginally at the prospect of his favorite dessert.

"How'd you know?" Evelyn chuckled. "I was going to surprise you—if you'd rather have a cake, I can certainly whip one up for you instead."

Warren grinned. "Are you kidding me? Cake's overrated."

The three of them migrated into the kitchen, where Evelyn produced a beautifully baked cinnamon apple pie and three strawberry tarts. The card lay temporarily forgotten on the desk as they enjoyed their pastries.

—

In the blanket of night that tucked the forest under the stars, Warren sat at the edge of the lake, Adam's card in one hand and his phone in the other. The ringing echoed out of the speakers and across the wilderness, the wind cutting into Warren's skin.

A bleary voice croaked at the other end. "Hello?"

Warren only felt mildly guilty at having woken him up. "Is this a bad time?"

"Warren? What…? Uh...yeah? It's the middle of the night?" Adam sighed loudly into the phone. "What do you want?"

Something rock-like gripped Warren's chest. Something like dread or anxiety, he couldn't tell which, held his breath inside of him and he remembered with sudden clarity the last time he saw his brother, two years ago. The boxes, the labels, the stagnant grief hanging within the walls of his childhood home as Layla impatiently dragged their newly-late father's fishing gear out the door. His own backpack full to bursting with stuff, stupid things he never kept, clutching his suitcase in a shaking grip as it slammed him with unforgiving force that it was the last he'd ever see of that house.

He pressed his fingers to his forehead, gaze falling from the glass surface of the lake. "Your girlfriend choose that card or what?"

"Fuck’s sake, Warren, what card?"

The rock around his heart burst. He felt the debris drop into his gut, the surprising nothing that came out of that. He smiled—no...grimaced—his reflection in the dim screen of the phone appearing false, a funhouse mirror of which no one could pinpoint the distortion.

He tapped the red phone icon with a feather-light touch. Didn't need to think about launching the card into the water with the flick of two fingers. Dug a loose cigarette out of his jacket pocket along with his cheap plastic lighter and stared after the floating white rectangle through the veil of smoke until it disappeared from view.

"I know it was you," he sniffed when he entered the cabin again later.

Roy calmly exhaled from his place on the couch, reading a book in low light. "I'm sorry. I thought it'd make you feel better."

Warren stood at the door for a little while. "You were wrong."

Roy lifted his eyes from the page and fixed Warren with a worried look. "We're doing our best, kiddo."

Fingers, toes, nose, and soul cold and unaccounted for, Warren bobbed his head in somewhat of a nod. "Yeah."

He shuffled through the living room and locked himself in the bathroom until the rest of the house was asleep.

[journeytoherwings]

It’s my 20th birthday! :)

I’ve been reflecting on the past four years of my life and I wrote this letter ♥

To the girl who wished she was dead on her sixteenth birthday,

 Maybe you didn’t blow out of the candles hard enough or you forgot to close your eyes when you made your wish, but maybe, just maybe, it’s not your time yet. You’re sixteen. You’ve only been alive 16 years or 192 months or 834 weeks or 5,840 days. In the scheme of things, that’s nothing. The world still needs you, dear. There are also so many beautiful moments and experiences and people that you would have missed out on if you wish came true.

 You would have never gone to HOBY and felt truly loved and accepted for the first time.

 You would have never cried until you laughed and laughed until you cried with 500 strangers across the world at the World Leadership Congress.

 You would have never seen your sister stand on the bima and read from the Torah at her Bat-Mitzvah.

 You would have never dyed the tips of your hair blonde (even though you look much better as a brunette).

 You would have never gotten your license and experienced the liberating feel of driving 70 down the highway with music blasting in your car.

 You would have never discovered the abandoned playground in the neighborhood across the street where you found solace and peace when you needed it most.

 You would have never become a nanny for the cutest three year old who always made you smile.

 You would have never celebrated Thanksgivikkuah and joked with your sister that you could be millionaires if you created a turkey shaped menorah together.

 You would have never organized a toy drive at your school that was so successful that you were featured on the local news.

 You would have never run out into the snow in your pjs and make snow angels when school was canceled for a week.

 You would have never seen the light in the preschoolers’ eyes when you made rainbow cupcakes for your preschool internship.

 You would have never eaten at four different icecream places in the same week with your sister for your ‘Tour-de-Icecream’

 You would have never received a grant from United Way to create art books for children with Art with a Heart

 You would have never turned seventeen.

 You would have never popped a bottle of champagne with your sister and drank sour wine directly from the bottle.

You would have never worn a Cinderella ball gown to prom and twirled around like a princess.

 You would have never received the Schmidt Award which recognized all of your service you have completed throughout high school.

 You would have never gone back to HOBY Indiana as a junior counselor and made connections with your group members that would still last to this day.

 You would have never gone to California and realized that San Francisco would be your future home.

 You would have never swung from a trapeze and feel the wind in your hair as you jumped off the ledge.

 You would have never seen The Fray in concert and cried when they played Be Still, the long you listened to every single night before going to bed.

 You would have never received the President’s Volunteer Service Award (two years in a row).

 You would have never gone to the Student Diversity Leadership Conference and be surrounded with thousands of students who were just as passionate about equality as you were.

 You would have never felt the joy of your first college acceptance and feeling hopeful for once.

 You would have never traveled to Greece and seen the Acropolis, Delphi, Olympia, Mycenea, Hydra, or the Temple of Posideon.

 You would have never run into the Medditeranean Sea barefoot and danced in the sand in because you were so happy.

 You would have never turned eighteen.

 You would have never traveled to the Caymen Islands.

 You would have never received screamed into the phone when you found out you were a Hunt Scholar at SMU.            

 You would have never attended an Art with a Heart gala as junior board president at the Ritz.

 You would have never gone to prom with your sister during senior year.

You would have never graduated from high school with highest honors and actually felt proud of yourself as you received your diploma.

You would have never gone skydiving and felt the biggest adrenaline rush of your life.

 You would have never gone back to HOBY as a Special Assistant and continued to make memories at HOBY Indiana.

 You would have never seen Ed Sheeran in concert and screamed the lyrics to You Need Me I Don’t Need You with my sister.

 You would have never attended freshman orientation or moved into your first dorm room.

 You would have never gone to Taos and whitewater rafted, hiked, and stargazed with your Hunt family.

 You would have never gone boulevarding and cheered at football games with your new friends.

 You would have never dressed up like a pirate just to get free donuts with a girl from your gym class.

 You would have never marched in the Dallas pride parade and felt so much solidarity as people cheered as you walked by.

You would have never seen the biggest fireworks in your life for SMU’s centennial homecoming celebration.

 You would have never played sand volleyball and come back from a game smiling and covered in sand.

 You would have never graduated from Emerging Leaders, a program that made you feel safe and like your voice mattered.

 You would have never seen SMU light up during Celebration of Lights while you sipped your hot chocolate.

 You would have never made honor roll in college.

 You would have never run home to Gamma Phi Beta on bid day and received your pink jersey.

 You would have never met Sarah Kay or seen her perform her spoken word poetry live at a Tate Lecture.

 You would have never attended Gamma Phi formals and actually begin to feel beautiful.

 You would have never had big/little and received the best big and twin you could have asked for.

You would have never gone on your first Alternative Breaks trip to St. Louis and found your calling.

 You would have never turned nineteen.

 You would have never celebrated Holi and thrown colored powder through the air without a care in the world.

 You would have never participated in Sing Song and danced and sang onstage at McFarlin Auditorium.

 You would have never volunteered with Girls on the Run and seen the joy on little girls’ faces when we sprayed their hair bright pink or purple with temporary hair dye.

 You would have never been published in SMU Criteria for your essay about microaggressions on college campuses.  

 You would have never studied abroad in London and traveled to Scotland, Wales, Stonehendge, Oxford, Cambridge, and Amsterdam.

 You would have never climbed to the top of a waterfall at Isle of the Skye and drank fresh stream water.

 You would have never screamed with your roommate as you saw the Queen of England pass in her town car.

 You would have never volunteered at WLC on Team Alumni and giggled as we made jokes in our walkie talkies.

 You would have never learned what warm fuzzies were and felt so loved with each strand of yarn that was placed on your necklace.

 You would have never woken up at 5:00am to see the sunrise over Lake Michigan with your HOBY family.

 You would have never gone to Taos for the second time and stargazed with your Hunt family until 4:00am and having deep conversations about life.

You would have never gone to Lake Hubbard with your Gamma Phi sisters and felt the warm sun hit your face.

 You would have never attended Mustang Intersections and met SMU students who were as passionate about intersectionality as you were.

 You would have never drank peach moscato at a Halloween party with your Gamma Phi sisters.

 You would have never gone to see The Fray in concert for a second time – by yourself and felt such a sense of freedom and joy.

 You would have never been Dance Marathon Team Captain and attended your first 12 hour dance marathon.

 You would have never been at your first friend’s wedding with everyone in your Hunt family drinking sangria and dancing together.

 You would have never explored the secret apartment of Dallas hall at midnight during finals week.

 You would have never surprised your sister with over 150 love letters from around the world.

 You would have never put your first ornament on a Christmas tree at your friend’s house while Christmas cookies baked in the oven.

 You would have never began working in your psychology research lab as a research assistant.

 You would have never crafted for Gamma Phi big little and run to the stage to hug your little during reveal.

 You would have never seen Brandon Stanton speak at a Tate Lecture and felt so incredibly inspired.

 You would have never seen your sister be accepted into her dream college and be overjoyed with pride.

 You would have never met Wendy Davis at the Women’s Symposium.

 You would have never gone back to St. Louis on an Alternative Break and instantly bonded with all of the participants from deep conversations about religion to making spaghetti at 11:00pm.

 You would have never climbed to the Armstrong cupola and watched the sunrise while sitting on the roof.

You would have never turned twenty.

 Or thirty. Or forty. Or fifty. Or sixty. Or seventy. Or eighty. Or ninety. Or one hundred.

 If all of this can happen within four years, imagine all of the amazing things that can happen during the rest of your life. But you have to stay alive to see it. ♥

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

Warren's birthday is coming up soon and he will be, in the year of two thousand and nineteen, three years old.

Since I'm a weirdo who likes to celebrate the birthdays of my characters (always have always will) I was thinking about doing some inspired drabbles or "character studies" or whatever.

Send me a word (e.g. "blue" or "December" or "yawning" etc.)—one (1) word per ask, please, but you can send as many as the ask limit will allow—and I'll write something short and in-canon for it, the first thing I think about when I see it, and I'll post them all on June 1st, kicking off with another "study" of my own that I'd written just for this occasion!

Like...I didn't just procrastinate finishing a piece and never come back to it until this convenient moment, I'd never do that!! This was ALL meticulously planned.

P.S. Don't think I won't send myself asks if I don't get any, I don't know the meaning of the word "pride" lmao

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

quiet

(content warning: suicide)

Quiet

The silhouette at the window had his chin tilted upward slightly, just enough to expose the clean line of his jaw. His face turned to the glass, a patch of condensation growing and shrinking as he exhaled, silent. His chest rose and fell steadily, no one would know he was breathing if it couldn’t be seen firsthand. Eyes sharp and focused, pinned to something in the distance, pinned to nothing but the trees that went on for miles into the mountains.

Fat flakes of snow curtained the dismal sky, peppering the porch and accumulating on yesterday’s layer of white ice. And on the offering from the day before that, and the day before that. No wind, not a single branch waving in an uninvited breeze or the flap of a bird’s wings to rebel against the outside stillness.

Warren watched this as he gave up his posture to the cushions of the couch and kept a tight grip on his own hair. He bored through Thrive’s darkened outline with his gaze, his mind a blank slate, dropped to the curve of his throat, stuck there for quite a while. What a cruel god it was that gave him that throat with a body that wasn’t even authentic. And who was Warren to claim it? What manner of fate gave him that right?

The false doors in the cabin promised freedom they hadn’t seen in days. At that point, probably weeks. Thrive told him to stop counting and he heeded him immediately. Shadows lurked in the corners of the house and they couldn’t be shaken away. Bulbs couldn’t scatter them and they swallowed the light, rippling into fine mist if agitated.

The times they couldn’t bring themselves to speak reeked of failure, of bone-chilling misery no amount of quality time could dissolve. Warren watched Thrive stand in silence by the window. Obhelian spine straight and rigid, bathrobe over the form suit in such a way that hinted at how much he was afraid that getting truly comfortable would cost them their native reality. Lumping the responsibility onto his own shoulders again, dragging himself through a swamp of guilt.

“What is it that we’ve supposedly failed?”

At the sound of Warren’s hoarse voice cutting through the hours-old ringing quiet, Thrive let his eyes fall shut. The condensation shrank and his chest rose.

Hours of quiet. A search of the doors and windows for cracks, daily and always futile. Blasts of force from Thrive’s hands unable to make any sort of crack or a dent, daily and always futile. Sheets wrapped around fists, human and otherwise, jabbing into the glass in an attempt to create a shred of respite from captivity, daily and always futile. Thrive’s knuckles reddened from trying without the sheet. Daily. Taking knives to the wood of the walls. Always futile.

Stop counting the days, Thrive had advised, but it had been months.

Warren did note with a heavy heart as he combed his fingers through his beard in the bathroom and fought through the post-traumatic bog of being locked up again that he wasn’t even sure taking Thrive to bed while in the cabin wasn’t a desperate necessity in order to cling to sanity anymore. He ripped himself to shreds for that notion, stuffed a hand towel in his mouth to muffle the anguished sobs he tried very hard to suppress, wouldn’t allow the tears to actually leave his face. It didn’t matter; Thrive’s superior hearing paired with the close quarters of the cabin practically guaranteed his cover being blown.

Thrive took up stroking his hair to lull him to sleep every night. Unspeaking, eyes glued to one another until Warren couldn’t stay awake. It stopped the nightmares, anyway.

The next time Thrive stood at the window in his form suit and bathrobe, Warren got up from the couch, removed the terry cloth garment and peeled the skin-tight black suit from his shoulders. Draped the articles over the desk chair and watched him stand, naked as all, still unmoving from his spot.

A few times Warren had to bathe Thrive himself. Then Thrive would get embarrassed, snap out of whatever made him borderline comatose and refuse to let him care for him further. He stomped out of the bathroom and pretended to brainstorm ways to outsmart the Emmuli, to get them out of that cabin once and for all. But they both knew he gave up a while ago.

Warren wished he was back in Alaska. The real Alaska, the genuine cabin, with bitterly cold air he longed to breathe again. He had glimpses of it in his dreams, walking through the tranquil forest, Thrive close behind, guarding, ever vigilant. Unintelligible whispers passing their ears. He wondered at times if those weren’t dreams. He couldn’t bring himself to ask.

This was supposed to be a dream, too. A nightmare. Anything but reality. But what did reality even mean?

“I have a theory.”

Warren would’ve jumped ten feet out of his skin if he cared anymore. He addressed Thrive at the window yet again, his inhale deep and audible. “Yeah.”

A long enough stretch of even more of the quiet passed before Thrive opened his mouth to speak again. He still wouldn’t meet his stare.

“…You’re not going to like this.”

“Get me the fuck out of here, Thrive,” Warren blurted. “Please. Please. Just…anything. Fucking save me. Get us out of here.”

Thrive swallowed, jaw clenched. He smoothed his robe over his form suit, bracing himself.

The tension was immense.

“I think we’re going to have to die.”

Warren smiled. Not a trace of humor within it, not an ounce of happiness or pleasure. Irony, of course, but no mirth. He shook his head as if it would do anything against his utter disbelief. “What?”

“It…may be our only choice.”

“A suicide pact? That is so dark. Even for me. Even for the fucking survivor of an actual suicide attempt, that is fucking dark.”

“I think….” Thrive’s eyes flashed with a poor attempt at disconnect. “…The Emmuli will remove us of this hellscape if we beat them at their own game. They know the worst thing for either of us is watching each other suffer as much as we already have. They’ve been doing it this whole time, Warren. Everything from here to all of the constructs they’d built for us before, all of their illusions and their trickery. It was all to mentally manipulate us. If we show them we’d rather die than live like this….”

“What if that’s exactly what they want?” Warren snapped. “Huh? What if throwing in the towel is exactly what they want us to do? Don’t they want us dead, anyway?”

“They want us to hurt,” Thrive said, more loudly than he possibly intended. “They need us to feel what they’re doing, that’s what keeps them in power. They’ll try to keep us alive for as long as they can. They’re not going to let us die. And it may weaken them.”

Warren rubbed his hands on his knees. “And then what? They just bring us right back here to start this bullshit all over again?”

Thrive didn’t reply. He did meet Warren’s worried stare eventually, and the seriousness was staggering.

It began to dawn on Warren that this lethargic behavior, Thrive’s despondency, could not have been incited by their imprisonment. It started before this. Before they even woke up in the cabin again. After the last constructs, after they were last separated.

“…What did you see?” Warren asked tentatively. He didn’t want to know but his mouth asked before his brain could catch up. “What was the last thing they showed you?”

Thrive sighed.

Warren leaned forward, voice hardening. “…Thrive, how did you come up with this theory?”

“I’m not telling you now,” Thrive muttered, facing the window again. “…It wouldn’t do you any good. I’ll tell you…another time. When we leave this place.”

The quiet outside bled into the inside yet again. Warren began to doubt his mind for the five hundredth time. Wondered if it was really Thrive standing in front of him, if it was really his hands on his head every night, cupping his face or smoothing his hair down. If this version of him existed, the one that couldn’t contain what happened on Zliyagi within his body and poured it out of himself in torrents. If his walls were really breaking down, crashing around him, dropping massive chunks of material into oceans of grim thought.

“I can’t do it for you.”

Thrive nodded carefully. “I know.” He gritted his teeth. “…I’ll do it for both of us.”

Warren swore, dialing back his visceral reaction just in time to avoid upending the coffee table completely. He did manage however to scrape it across the floor, overwhelming the room with the grating sound of metal on wood. He disappeared into the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him as he searched and pleaded for ways to stave off the manifesting panic attack. He resorted to an old favorite—cloth in the mouth. No tears, just gasping.

Thrive caught him that time. The door swung open and he stared at him from the threshold, eyes wide as Warren sat on the edge of the bed with a pillowcase dangling from between his jaws, in the midst of hyperventilation.

In the quiet, Thrive marched over to him, gathered him tight against his chest, squeezed him. Fingers digging into his shoulder, the back of his neck. They clutched painfully at each other, both shaking, one more violently than the other. Wordlessly agreeing to spend one final night together before they did anything else.

But when Warren’s eyes opened in the dark room in the middle of the night to the sight of Thrive fast asleep for the first time in months, he smiled.

Maybe this would work. And maybe it wouldn’t. But he got to spend the sunrise watching the peace on Thrive’s face. A serenity he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen. It possibly predated him.

And when he opened his eyes for the second time several hours later, half-collapsed on the floor of the Ganymede bridge once again as Thrive blasted the door off its hinges from the corridor, he caught his breath and regarded his frantic obhelian in stunned silence. His neck was fine. Thrive used the doorframe to keep himself upright at the sight of Warren unharmed by the window until he couldn’t anymore and sank down onto the plush maroon carpet. They were both alive and intact. Breathing, pulses racing, alive.

The ship sailed on in quiet space, oblivious.

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

infringe, says you to yourself

Infringe

The box fell onto the table with a cardboard thunk, the pieces inside clattering impatiently. Warren glanced from the screen of his phone to the colorful board game as it shouted its obnoxious slogan from the front of the lid, then landed his exasperated gaze on the man who dropped it in the first place. He was met with a cheeky grin and an equally obnoxious clap of the hands.

“Let’s turn that frown upside down!”

“Tucker,” Warren groaned. “Please. No.”

Tucker executed a weird flip of his elbow-length obsidian hair and shook his butt from side to side as he kept himself bent over the table. “You need to smile today, friend!”

“I only just stopped smiling from the entire weed cake I ate by myself at graduation.” Warren set his phone face-down on the table. “No thanks to you or anybody else, by the way.”

“Wow, I followed you all the way to Arizona to be your roommate and this is the thanks I get? All sorts of wrong.”

“You didn’t even know I applied here, loser. Just let me sulk.”

Picking up the box, Tucker shrugged and flopped his beanpole self onto his bed. “Suit yourself. You should know, though, that there’s this girl that’s been asking about you. Something about your eyes or whatever, I think she said she thought you were hot.”

Warren scrunched his nose. “God, seriously? Already? Usually it’s like…three blissful years before anyone fucking notices me.”

“She’s coming to the party that’s being thrown down the hall, you going?”

“Can I not and say I did?”

“Nah, brah, you gotta go. You could meet your soulmate there.”

Warren scoffed. “Right. My soulmate probably isn’t even in this galaxy.”

He did attend the party, though as he downed his first cup of alcohol he realized that despite his initial grumbling he was, in fact, having a pretty decent time. He flitted from group to group as vaguely electronic indie music played unchallenged in the background, surprising himself with his chattiness, participating in a rousing game of beer pong that ended with one of the frat guys spilling half the last cup down the front of his sweater.

A girl shoved a succulent in his face. “Wanna succ?!”

Warren blinked at the pastel pink bowl vase and the small tuft of Dudleya under his nose. He finished the three-point shot of his empty cup into the trash can. “Uh…bathroom?”

The girl, whose short afro perfectly complemented the shiny gold skater skirt she wore, took a step back in apprehension. “Uh…wait, what?”

“I gotta piss.”

“Oh! Oh, god, I’m sorry!” She laughed and pointed to the succulent. “I thought you were…never mind, I’ll let you go then!”

Warren watched her turn to swim through the crowd with her hand over her mouth in embarrassment. “Wait, what’s your name?”

“Keeya!” she called over her shoulder as she waited awkwardly for a mountain of a vape-smoker to make room for her to squeeze through his group.

“You wouldn’t happen to be the one who’s been spreading the rumor that I’m hot, would you? That’s a closely guarded secret and I may have to report you for it.”

Keeya turned around flashed him a brilliant smile. “Damn it…how’d you know?”

Warren grinned, hand searching for the bathroom doorknob behind him. “Just a wild guess.”

“You a freshman?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yup. Moved in last week.”

Warren tipped his head, still blindly flailing for the knob. “So…? Is it the eyes?”

Keeya nodded emphatically. “Oh, without question. You get that a lot?”

“More than I ever wanted. Hey, can I come back in a minute when I’m not about to wet myself because I can’t seem to perform the simple task of locating a fucking doorknob?”

Keeya laughed again and Warren hurried into the bathroom.

The two of them were practically inseparable for the rest of the party, talking with each other alone or with other people, making a game out of introducing one another to people they’d never met before. When the party showed signs of wearing down, Keeya instantly pitched in to help the clean-up process. Warren followed, picking cups with dregs of beer still in them out of partygoers’ hands, much to their annoyance.

“Bold moves, Cougar,” Keeya said, holding the trash bag open for him to dispose of the cups. “You could get your lights knocked out for something like that.”

“Oh, I know,” Warren said. He nodded toward a scowling goth girl in the corner of the dorm. “Wednesday over there’s probably sifting through her apothecary in her mind right now for the right dosage of hemlock to slip into my next drink.”

“I would’ve said arsenic.”

“You too, huh?”

They continued their housekeeper jobs until only a handful of people were left, talking amongst themselves in the kitchen. Keeya tied the last trash bag shut and left it by the open front door.

“Well, this is where I leave you,” she said. “Unless you wanna ask me out for coffee or something.”

Warren spotted Tucker in the hall, making strange gestures at a group of girls who looked more parts bewildered than amused. He sighed and turned his attention back to Keeya.

“I’m not who you think I am,” he said. “My name’s not Warren Cougar, it’s Reginald Branthwaite IV, and my father owns half of this university.”

“Are you stalling?” Her eyes searched his face in question, on the verge of cautious hope, maybe a low expectation.

He swallowed. “Um…yeah. Okay. Let’s get coffee.”

He didn’t speak much the entire time, busied himself with his usual black coffee and milk. Hands shifting uneasily over the cardboard sleeve of the cup. Keeya certainly noticed, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk their way back to campus.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

Warren looked at her, surprised. “…Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else.”

The way she said it made his heart twist. “No, it’s not…I just….” He paused, unsure what his brain wanted his mouth to say. “…I’m not entirely sure I’m looking for a relationship right now. And…I don’t know if that’s what you’re expecting or if you’re cool with just being friends, or….”

Keeya raised her eyebrows. “You thought I wanted to start dating you? Sweetie, no, I’m in a committed relationship with my sociology professor.”

Warren let out a huge snort of coffee and clamped his hand over his mouth to keep it from spraying everywhere. Half-choking, he signaled to give him a minute to make sure he wasn’t about to literally die. “O-okay,” he coughed. “I’m sorry. That was…great.”

“Gotcha for a second, didn’t I?”

“Point two seconds.”

“I’ll forgive the conceit since you’re hot and all.”

Warren, infinitely more relaxed now, smiled and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Like on a scale of one to ten…?”

“After that display, like, a fifteen at least.”

A week or so into the beginning of classes, Warren came home to find his dorm room had been turned inside out and Tucker sat on his own bed, glancing wearily around at the clothes and books strewn about the floor. The chaos had been concentrated more to Warren’s side, the things that once made a home on his desk now littering his bed and the couch.

“What the hell happened? Were we robbed?”

Tucker shook his head. “Nah, this lady came in and ransacked the place, dude. I tried to stop her but she was determined. I think she was looking for something. She was on your laptop for a long time.”

Warren strode over to his desk and opened his laptop. It was still on and with a few clicks, he determined that his social media had been raided.

“Who would do this?” He scrolled through the pages of his first course assignment that had been read by the culprit. “What the fuck…?”

Keeya appeared in the doorway. “Hey, is everything okay? People are saying some woman was in here destroying you guys’ things?”

“I don’t think she destroyed anything,” Tucker said. “She sure did wanna get into Warren’s stuff, though.”

Warren discovered half of his security programs were missing. In the recycling bin, thankfully, and he restored them to their original state, his brow furrowed. “Tucker, what did she look like?”

“Uh…she was average build, black hair to her shoulders, bangs, I think she had…brown eyes?”

Warren’s fingers paused over the keys. He turned to Tucker and his frown deepened. “Did she look a little like me?”

Tucker and Keeya exchanged a look. He smoothed a hand over his bun and scrutinized Warren’s face. “I dunno?”

“Wait, is she related to you?” Keeya asked.

The lack of emotion in Warren’s chest as he pieced together what happened surprised him. He slumped in his chair, folding his arms and sighing deeply. “Yeah.”

“Who is she and what did she want?”

“I think it was my sister.” Warren ran a hand through his hair, dreading the incoming months if it meant having to deal with this all of the time. He should’ve realized it would end up this way; after their last encounter the week following his arrival into Arizona, he had the strangest sense that he wasn’t going to get any rest. “She’s keeping tabs on me.”

“What? Why?”

He contemplated explaining the entire situation, starting with how just last year he was hospitalized for almost finding himself at the bottom of Ruria Lake and how the only one who put him there was himself. He almost opened up about a couple of weeks ago, sitting in front of his aunt’s house up north in his shitty car with no air conditioning, staring through the windshield as Layla screamed at him through the window, calling him names, accusing him of being selfish, that he didn’t care about the family at all, that he only decided to go to college in Arizona to play the victim card, all while Adam watched from the house.

In lieu of that, he shook his head. “She’s a bitch sometimes, that’s all. I mean, I knew that my whole life, but this is a new low.”

The other two were quiet for a second.

Keeya cleared her throat. “Want us to be your family now?”

Tucker shrugged again. “We can get all up in your personal space and wreck your shit for you instead.”

Warren grinned despite the fact that he didn’t really want to smile at all. “Thanks. I’ll be okay. I always am.”

He reassured them that he was okay until they went off to get something to eat. He told them he’d be with them soon. When they were gone, he brought up his various social media accounts on his phone, steadily deleting them one by one. It was a temporary fix, but he needed to do it. He could handle being seen as the weirdo without the apps, but he couldn’t handle any more abuse from his family.

For a second he stopped, having accidentally scrolled onto a picture of Adam with what looked to be a newborn in his arms. He admired the photo briefly, the subtle smile on his brother’s face as he cradled the child with care.

Warren hesitated. Only slightly. “Yeah, fuck you, too, buddy,” he muttered, deleting his own profile. Then he tossed his phone onto his bed and followed his friends out of the dorms.

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

Word for Warren's Birthday thing: Blindness

Blindness

Rain lashed against the windshield and Warren’s finger impatiently tapped the trigger guard of his weapon as he aimed at the situation happening in front of his parked sedan. He squinted, nostrils flared, laser focus not once veering from the glint of the headlights reflecting off of the wild eyes of the man holding a rusty knife to his partner’s throat. Agent Great didn’t move a muscle, his own gaze glued to the car, catching Warren’s eye between aggressive passes of the windshield wipers.

“I’m not gonna ask you again after this, Mr. Dominic,” Warren shouted loud enough to be heard through the open doors and over the downpour. His own voice rang in his ears. “…Put the knife down, let go of Agent Great, and we can handle this like rational adults.”

“Like hell!” Dominic tightened his grip on the crook of his captive’s neck. “You think you can take me down through a windshield?!”

“Freddy,” Warren called. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Freddy said, blinking away the water pouring down his face. He appeared to be in deep thought. “Trying to remember…how to…right, I’ve got it.”

In a flurry of movement, he disarmed the unstable man and pounded his head into the hood of the car, knocking him out. Dominic slid onto the muddy ground and Warren exhaled, resting his tired arms on the dashboard.

“This is why I’m getting promoted and you’re not!” Freddy said, whipping his phone out of his pocket and rubbing his neck.

Warren bit his tongue to keep from retaliating and instead watched Freddy’s fingers search for the small knick on his skin when he dialed headquarters. When he found it, it began to bleed—not a lot, but enough to get immediately washed away onto the collar of his white shirt. He loosened the soaked tie and Warren watched that, too.

“Yeah, we’re gonna need a van,” Freddy said into his phone. “Maybe some diapers for Cougar.”

Warren flipped him off despite the good-natured grin aimed his direction.

While ETHOS backup loaded Dominic, handcuffed, into a van and out of harm’s way, Freddy and Warren watched from the dry interior of their standard sedan in silence. Freddy kept clenching and unclenching his fist as he disappeared into his own mind, unaware of the cavalry feet away from him in the parking lot.

“Wanna talk about it?” Warren asked.

“Not really,” Freddy said. It hadn’t been enough time for his hair or clothes to dry off, but he’d aimed the air vents directly at him to hurry it along. “Nothing to talk about. Same shit, different day.”

“Well, yeah, but…I mean, you could’ve died.”

Freddy looked over at him and narrowed his eyes. “This your first day or something?”

“I’m just trying to connect, man.”

“Connecting isn’t really my thing.” Freddy fiddled with his left ring finger and Warren caught sight of the strip of lighter skin around the digit that indicated a ring had once been there. “Kinda had to learn that the hard way.”

Warren nodded but sighed. “Fine. I get it.”

“And I mean…I just had to save my own ass because my supposed partner froze up and couldn’t shoot a gun for some reason.”

“I didn’t freeze up, asswipe. Do you know how thick these windshields are?”

“Better watch how you talk to me, I’m gonna be second-tier soon.”

“You’ve been saying that for a month now and I’m starting to worry that you’re delusional again….”

Freddy emitted a laugh—quiet, concentrated, almost fake but not quite. “Yeah, I’m off my shits again I guess.”

Warren looked at him, the way his brow had knotted and his shaky fingers couldn’t stop gliding over the superficial cut on his throat. He wasn’t that close to Freddy personally, but it didn’t even take a body language expert to recognize that the ordeal shook him to the core, no matter how much he tried to roll it off his back.

“Don’t let this fester,” Warren said, dropping his gaze to his own lap.

The sound of the van driving away broke the silence that followed, and Freddy turned off the car engine, choking the thnk-thnk of the wipers and allowing the windshield to be obscured by the steady, straight rainfall. The darkness inside the vehicle made Warren’s chest tight, but he ignored it.

“I’m gonna be in denial about this for the rest of my life,” Freddy said.

“Don’t,” Warren said immediately. “Believe me, if you sit on trauma like this—”

“There’s that word again, ’trauma,’” Freddy interrupted. “I’m over it. People don’t know what trauma truly is, they just throw it around when someone gives them the wrong coffee order or their boss dared to ask them to work overtime. Do you know what trauma really is, Cougar? Do you know what that looks like?”

Warren pursed his lips, the irony of the question drawing attention to how itchy he felt being in an enclosed space with water pouring over the windows. “Mm…I get the feeling what I do or don’t know doesn’t matter here….”

Freddy didn’t elaborate any further, much to Warren’s relief. Instead, he started the car and drove them out of the lot.

Later, when Warren was alone in his apartment, he took out a bottle of bourbon and parked himself on one of his couches, scrolling through a string of texts he and Esther had been in the midst of exchanging about moving in together. He hovered over her last text to him, asking if he had been looking for places or if it would be better to keep one of theirs, and he read it for what had to have been the six hundredth time.

He took a swig straight from the bottle and psyched himself up with a loud growl and a couple of vigorous head shakes. Took a deep breath. Hesitated with his thumbs over the keys.

He typed out his response and sent it without thinking about it.

     Maybe we should table this for another time.

When he closed his eyes, the images of Freddy’s cut and his fidgeting fingers flooded his brain. His stomach surged downward and his brow prickled with perspiration.

He opened a new text message, stared at the profile picture of the woman he’d met several times at Pepper Fox’s bar. Typed something out and hit send without thinking about that, too.

     Hey, Landon, this is Warren. Sorry I didn’t have the guts to reach out…haven’t seen you in a few days, is everything okay?

He took another swig of the bourbon and screwed the cap back on, shoving it into the cupboard again and abandoning it and his phone to take a shower and go to sleep.

And he supposed it was some sort of payback that Landon never responded to him.

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

For the one-word Warren-birthday-snippet-thing: Chill (any definition, lol)

Chill

“Uh…so actually….”

“No!” Esther yelped, laughing around her mouthful of ice cream and hitting Warren’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “Don’t you dare.”

Warren gingerly placed the next spoonful onto his tongue and made a face, smacking the creamy frozen treat around his palate before ultimately deciding his first instinct had been correct. “Yeah…sorry, you talked a big game but I’m not feeling this.” He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and dug around the contents of the cup for a piece of blueberry and gave it one more try, chewing through the odd combination of the tart fruit and the caramel ginger ice cream. “What…the hell kind of health-nut bullshit is this? This isn’t dessert, this is fraud.”

Esther laughed again and stomped her foot. “Don’t! Oh my god, you’re never gonna let me live this down, are you?”

Warren grinned at her, casually sweeping his eyes over the shadows cast on her face from the sunset through the trees on the other side of the street. “You swore up and down on this weirdness, calling me all sorts of names for not believing you, so I think this deserves at least a week’s worth of retaliation.”

Stirring her own melting honey-topped ice cream around in its cup, Esther groaned. “I guess it could be worse.”

“It could be, and it just might. I just hit some of the almond.” Warren made a show of gagging.

“Stop eating it if you hate it so much, then!” She snatched the cup from him. “Who invited you anyway?”

“You did,” he said, tossing the spoon in the trash as they passed. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “The words were ‘wanna grab some fraudulent ice cream, you fucking child?’”

Esther laughed again. “Well, you’re definitely being a child about this.”

They stopped at the pier and watched the fishing boats bobbing along with the current down the shore. Esther combined their ice creams and finished them herself, letting out a loud belch after the last bite that echoed across the bay.

“Mm, real humbling, Esther,” Warren quipped.

“Wanna go to my place and make out?”

Warren inhaled sharply, observing a particularly large boat that circled the dock, blocking some of the smaller ones from view. “What’s the second option?”

Esther shrugged. “I got a cold mouth.”

Warren risked glancing at her just as she winked and stuck her tongue out, a wicked smile crossing her pretty features. He chuckled, ignoring the shiver that bolted through him. “Jesus Christ, woman….”

“If you’re not up for that, we could watch a movie or binge that new show, uh…what’s it called….”

“Back up a second,” Warren said. “Were you being serious?”

Esther looked at him, holding her purse under her arm and tilting her head. “…Was I?”

Warren idly stroked his stubble and took in the way her eyes manifested an amber glow when exposed to direct sunlight. A vague and persistent something tugged at the back of his brain as he noted her minimal use of makeup and the small beauty mark under her right eyebrow, but he couldn’t focus enough to place the nagging or give it any mind.

The corners of his mouth turned up. “Were you?”

“I mean, I’m cute, you’re cute…I think we should be cute together.”

“That’s pretty damn bold of you, girl.”

“Got somewhere to be?”

Warren cleared his throat and surveilled the area for nosy passers-by. “…You know what? I don’t. I’ll meet you at your place in twenty.”

The sun had long gone by the time they sat in Esther’s bed in their underwear after an awkward but fun time getting to know each other that much better, bowls of vanilla ice cream in their possession while the second episode of the latest popular show started on her laptop, perched precariously on Warren’s knee. He dropped a bit of the cold chocolate syrup on his chest on accident.

“Shit.”

“You’re right,” Esther sighed. “Nothing beats the old-fashioned stuff.”

“Never doubt me again, Washington, I know what’s good.”

“Yeah you do.”

Warren snorted and shoved her with his elbow. When they finally cleared out the bowls, he wrapped an arm around her and she snuggled against him, settling down to binge the next five episodes of the show before they agreed to talk about what transpired at a later time and fell asleep in each others’ arms.

Though, it took Warren a good hour to actually get to sleep at all.

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

just a heads-up, I will not be adding my tag list to the Warren birthday prompts to save people from getting their notifications spammed, but you can see them under #WLC birthday asks when I do start posting them (or you can blacklist the tag if you don’t wanna see them).

when will I be doing that. I...don’t know. maybe right after midnight here since it’s going to be...oh god I don’t even wanna think about how much shit we’re in right now in terms of moving and packing. I can’t even talk about it lol we’re royally fucdnjsfkasdjkf

uh. anyway. maybe I’ll start posting them in like, 45 minutes.