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wiseatom · 23 hours ago

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when you ask for byclair prompts and you see the words “someone’s hands in someone else’s pockets” and also “letterman jacket” this is the result. thank you @astrobei for saying those words 😙

“I don’t know,” Will is saying as Lucas bends down to tie his sneaker, pulling the laces taught before crossing them over each other and creating his first knot. “You don’t think this is— I don’t know, a little corny?”

Lucas glances up to see Will deliberating in front of the school-issued mirror hanging next to his school-issued wardrobe, shrugging his shoulders and turning this way and that as he considers his reflection from every angle. The jeans and pull-over he’s wearing are classic Will outfit staples, as are his novelty socks and well-worn but well-cared-for sneakers, which means he’s referring to the one piece of his outfit that’s not part of his normal rotation: the Lucas-issued school-issued letterman jacket.

“Corny,” Lucas repeats, frowning up at him as he loops and swoops his laces and finishes off his knot.

“Yes, corny,” Will says, exasperated, as he turns his back on his reflection to face Lucas, who has switched knees to work on his other shoe. He opens his mouth to say something else, but all that comes out is an annoyed exhale as his eyes drop to Lucas’ hands tying his second knot. “I still don’t get how you do that,” he mumbles, tapping the toe of Lucas’ shoe with his own.

“I still don’t get what you don’t get about it,” Lucas replies, standing up. Will crosses his arms, scowling as Lucas takes a step towards him, crowding into his space. “What nineteen year old doesn’t know how to tie his shoes?”

“I’m not nineteen for another two weeks,” Will points out. “And I know how to tie my shoes.”

“Right,” Lucas says, nodding seriously as he lifts one arm and leans against his wardrobe, his other hand on his hip. Will watches him do it, and Lucas watches Will’s eyes flit to his bicep, distracted. “You still use bunny ears,” he continues, biting back a smile, “and you’re worried that wearing my letterman jacket is what’s corny.”

Will shoves at his chest, but not hard enough to make Lucas budge, even a little. “Shut up,” he says over Lucas’ laugh, twisting his hands into Lucas’ shirt and using it as leverage to try and shake him. Even though Will’s not using enough force to actually move him, Lucas lets himself be jostled a little, back and forth and back and forth until Will’s had his fill of it, until he’s laughing, too. “You’re so annoying.”

“And you look good in my jacket,” Lucas says. The hand that he’s got propped on his own hip migrates towards Will — as it so often does, these days — and he hooks his pointer finger into one of Will’s belt loops, tugging him closer. “I don’t think that it’s corny at all.”

“I think you’re biased,” Will tells him with an eye roll. All the same, his hands slide up Lucas’ chest and up to his neck, where his fingers link together at his nape.

“I think you were the one who said you were cold,” Lucas says slowly, “and you were the one who asked me for a jacket,” he continues, tugging on the hem of the aforementioned jacket pointedly before he’s slipping his hand past it, coming to settle on the dip in the small of Will’s back. “I also think it was very generous of me to give you one.”

Will hums in agreement. “I think that you have other jackets.”

“This is true,” Lucas says, “considering you’ve already stolen half of them.” Will does not deny the accusation, because it’s completely true, and Will doesn’t lie unless he’s playing a board game, in which case he very much lies. They’re not playing a board game, though, so he doesn’t say anything and lets Lucas continue instead. “But I also think that when you asked, that’s the one you wanted.”

Will has had a flush in his cheeks since the moment Lucas first stepped into his space, but now he turns bright red, which means Lucas is right on the money. “Shut up,” he says again, but he’s smiling, tugging on Lucas’ neck and bringing him closer. “It’s still corny.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lucas says, and as much as he likes looking at Will in his jacket, seeing his own name embroidered right over Will’s heart, he likes kissing Will even more — so he does. Will sighs into his mouth the moment their lips touch, a happy, content noise, and Lucas lets the arm holding him up against the closet door fall so that he can have both of his hands on Will’s waist, use them to pull Will closer. Will lets him, both arms coming up to rest on Lucas’ shoulders and drape over his back, and this is his favorite part — he likes that Will’s a little taller than him, that he goes a little boneless when Lucas is kissing him, that he falls into Lucas and trusts that Lucas will keep him from hitting the ground. He likes that he knows these things, that they get to do this, that they have been for a few months, now, ever since Will showed up at his dorm on their first day back from winter break with a 2-litre bottle of Coke in one hand and a pint of rum poorly concealed beneath his sweater in the other, courtesy of Jonathan. They’d each managed to mix two half-assed drinks before they abandoned the soda entirely and just started passing the pint back and forth, drinking it straight and making faces after every sip. Lucas remembers how fixated he’d become on Will’s mouth every time he had brought the bottle to his lips, how he’d been hyperaware of it still when he’d take his own drink once Will had finished, how he’d pretended that the spit they shared on the rim was almost like kissing until they were kissing and he didn’t need to pretend anymore.

Not pretending has been awesome. Not pretending means he’s had a lot of practice, practice means he knows what Will likes and what Will doesn’t like, and Lucas also knows that he likes the sound Will makes any time Lucas slips his hands into his back pockets, which means he does it as much as possible.

Like right now.

“Okay,” Will breathes out after humming into Lucas’ mouth, and his lips are still buzzing with the vibration of it, even as Will breaks the kiss, pressing their foreheads together. “Okay, okay, okay,” Will says again, then his lips are right back where they were — messily, this time. Eager. “Maybe we should just skip dinner,” he suggests when they part again, kissing Lucas a third time the second the last syllable falls from his lips. “Maybe we stay here instead?”

“You can stay here,” Lucas tells him, dodging Will’s attempt to kiss him again by turning his face, letting it land on his cheek instead. He does the same back when he pulls his hands from Will’s pockets and starts gently pushing him away, feeling a little bad once they’re apart enough for him to see the look on Will’s face at the separation. He pats Will’s hip apologetically, hoping it suffices. “I will be participating in pasta bar night at the dining hall.”

It does not suffice. “Oh, come on,” Will complains, making a face. He tries to turn them around, switch places and back Lucas into the mirror, but before he can pin him there Lucas is spinning out of his reach easily, stepping away from Will entirely and towards the door instead. Will stares at him, clearly not amused. “Dude,” he says, and it’s a testament to just how miffed he is that that’s the word he landed on, because Lucas doesn’t think he’s ever heard Will say dude in the entire time he’s known him.

“Pasta bar night, Will,” he repeats sagely. “I have a game tomorrow — I need the carbs.”

Will stares at him some more. When Lucas does not say gotcha! or sike! and continues to stand by the door, still out of his reach and evidently serious about this whole pasta bar thing — which Will should have known, since Lucas has always made it very clear, even prior to becoming an athlete, that pasta takes priority to almost anything— he frowns harder. “You’re so annoying,” he tries, but it’s clear he knows he’s not going to win this one.

“And you already said that,” Lucas points out with a shrug. He grabs his keyring from its spot on his desk and opens the door, turning towards Will expectantly. “Come on,” he says, gesturing through the doorway. “I know you want buttered noodles.”

Will huffs, shoving his hands into the pockets of his borrowed, corny jacket. “I do want buttered noodles,” he grumbles, pushing past Lucas and out the door. Lucas claps him on the shoulder as he passes by, the same way he might do if it was one of his teammates.

“Atta boy,” Lucas says.

“Corny,” Will calls out as he trudges ahead down the hallway, not looking back.

Lucas rolls his eyes, laughing as he pulls the door shut and locks it behind him. “Give it back, then,” he replies loudly, trailing after him at a leisurely pace.

The jacket’s a little big on Will — an oversized fit by design, and probably a size bigger than he would order if he were buying it for himself — so the sleeves are longer on him than they are on Lucas, the cuff covering half of his hand. It’s kind of cute, Lucas thinks, even if it is corny. He likes seeing Will in his clothes, that the inch he has on Lucas doesn’t make up for the broadness Lucas has on him, that, unless Will starts hitting the gym, it’s always going to be that way.

The jacket’s a little big, and the sleeves are a little long, but not so long that they conceal the middle finger Will is throwing back at him, clear as day.

“No,” Will says, as if the bird wasn’t enough.

“Thought so,” Lucas says, and jogs to catch up with him.

#byclair #byclair fic #byclair fanfiction #sorry if this is so bad that you need to doxx me so you can throw rocks at me through my window #i would understand completely .#hopefully this formats ok i’m posting on mobile.#btw mike was banging on this google doc the entire time screaming and crying and throwing up blood saying LET ME INNNNN😭🤬😤🤮🩸#it was super distracting 🙄#wiseatom minis

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manorpunk · 1 year ago

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3️⃣

History only makes sense in retrospect.

Take, for example, the decade-long period of the French Revolution, or the decades between World War I and World War II. A decade is like a blip to the casual historian, a mere moment, so short it was nearly one-dimensional, like a line separating the before from the after. Those who lived through it, however, must have spent years wondering each morning whether their current government and/or life would still exist by lunchtime, and even when the dust finally settles, that’s not really a feeling that one can easily forget. People can only draw neat, dispassionate little lines around such events when they no longer live in its shadow, and the shadow of the Polycrisis still loomed menacingly over the American League.

There were some who were eager to move on, who would say that progress is always disruptive - the old must be dismantled to make way for the new. Others would say that it was one thing to have a controlled demolition, and an entirely separate thing to wake up one day to find that your electricity and plumbing were no longer working, and the government was not going to help you because its existence was tenuous at best, and all of the sub-contracted third-party subsidiaries who actually did the work of repairing power grids refused to take responsibility with your piddly little suburb because they were too busy trying to keep the lights on in places that ‘actually mattered.’

The causes of the Polycrisis were many and varied, hence the name, but a certain pattern had emerged in retrospect - climate change caused natural disasters, natural disasters destroyed infrastructure, destroyed infrastructure caused economic collapse, economic collapse caused political collapse. Casual historians might note how that pattern echoed the fall of most empires going back to the fall of Rome. But it was never supposed to happen to America. The blessed antipodes were not supposed to be like everywhere else. They were supposed to be where the lights always stayed on. Always.

Well, sometimes.

As the US federal government shrank, retreated, and finally collapsed, new states sprang up soon after. New England, Tidewater, and the Free Imperial New York drew their lines along the east coast; Cascadia created itself and formed a personal union with the Californian Commonwealth on the west coast after the Jefferson Rebellion was put down; and the Texaplex Megapole asserted its authority over Texas and neighboring states promising protection against Norteño incursions. The Great Lakes Republic formed shortly and reluctantly afterwards, becoming a sprawling Germany-esque collection of mid-sized cities jockeying against one another.

The rest of America, its vast and abandoned plains, its hollowed-out mountains and sinking coasts, became ‘the manors,’ places where power had devolved down to the newest class of rural gentry: fast food franchisees, car dealerships, beverage distributors, and the like. They were small-business tyrants and petite-bourgeoise corporate middlemen who had spent their lives wishing for the government to hurry up and collapse already so that they could live out their fantasies of being petty kings, bandit chiefs, and lords of the manor (hence the name). They would not give up their fantasies without a bitter and bloody fight.

Also, Orlando had become the microstate of Disneystadt, the Founderist equivalent of Vatican City.

Also, the western side of Appalachia was now a khaganate.

Perhaps one day people would see it as something like the French Revolution or interwar period, as a goofy but brief period of liminal turmoil wedged between two separate worlds. Here is how some of her contemporaries saw it:

“They elected fucking Spongebob president,” said Cornelius Mammon, the pale and wraithlike governor of New England, seated at one end of a long semicircular table, lined with chairs along its curve, all facing a gigantic wall-mounted screen on the far end of the room. ‘Old money’ seemed inadequate to describe the austere and sunken appearance of Cornelius; he was more like undead money.

On the one hand, New England was populous, urbanized, relatively geographically sensible, united by a distinct and storied culture, and had been poised to shrug off the Polycrisis and carry on as normal. On the other hand, Boston and Philadelphia.

“Here I thought things were going to get back to normal,” Cornelius continued hoarily, “and now she’s going to rename the White House to ‘the Fun Zone.’ This is why democracy was a mistake.”

“Normal?” Young Oldman, governor of the Tidewater region, scoffed. He had a calculated plain appearance, revealing little about himself. Even his skin was a beige ‘off-white’ color that made people guess whether he was biracial or Middle Eastern or just a white guy with a tan. Ruling over the former head of the imperial American government and its intelligence apparatus, Young had learned to play it so close to the vest you’d need a seam ripper to get any answers out of him. He always kept his mouth shut.

Well, sometimes.

“Would that Sunny were some unwelcome intrusion of oddness into an otherwise august body. Have you seen the other nut bars we’ve been packed in here with?” Young jabbed a thumb at his neighbor, Vinny Vidivici, mayor of Free Imperial New York, who looked like a clogged shower drain that had gained sentience and put on a suit.

“You folks ever been to New York? We exchange money for goods and services there. Greatest fuckin city in the world baby,” Vinny said.

Young nodded and silently daydreamed about hunting him for sport.

“Personally, I think Sunny is just some GLN cabalist with a voice modulator,” said Johann van Gekkehuis, the pasty, gravelly-voiced, flannel-wearing governor of the Great Lakes Republic, with a bushy copper beard and a receding hairline, “have you ever seen her and Harold in the same room?”

“Yes,” said Young. Just because he played it close to the vest didn’t mean he couldn’t mess with people, and Johann was easy to mess with.

Johann had made his bones as a podcaster and had a natural talent for disguising all manner of conspiracy theories and ostensibly playful bigotry as good old-fashioned hard-nosed socialism. But being a conspiracy theorist wasn’t fun anymore. There was no point. The globalist puppet-masters didn’t hide in shadowy backrooms. They had HR departments, they had newsletters, they sent spam emails demonstrating the ways they controlled and surveilled every moment of your life, and that was so much more demoralizing than keeping it secret.

Behind Johann paced a meticulously handsome black man in a crisp navy blue suit, his eyes hidden behind a large pair of shades. He nodded to himself as he walked and talked into his headset. He was Michael McCoy, governor of the Piedmont region. Piedmont, encompassing the eastern half of Georgia and the Carolinas, was one of the newer states, and its constituents had carried the extra burden of rebuilding and reorienting themselves after the race war. They finished what the Northerners had started and then abandoned, two hundred years ago almost exactly, Northerners who decided they would let millions of black people linger as third-class citizens rather than hang even a few openly seditious gentlemen. But not Michael McCoy. Enough with being respectable, enough with being nonviolent, enough with taking the high road. Michael McCoy wanted blood.

That was a lie - Michael McCoy was an agricultural manager who rose to prominence shortly after the bloodshed had ended thanks to a series of excellent ad campaigns and his public image as a squeaky-clean family man. He simply enjoyed a victory lap as much as the next guy. And maybe wanted a little blood.

“Listen,” Michael said into his headpiece, “I’m not saying we need the change to be permanent. I just want it to be called ‘N[redacted]land’ for like a couple hours, then it can go back to being Piedmont. We don’t even have to tell anyone else about it.”

(Certain words have been redacted in the interest of not saying them. If you wish to see racial slurs, they can be unlocked by submitting proof of relevant ancestry to your local department of reclamation).

He listened through his earpiece, then scowled. “Why? I’ll tell you why - because then Sunny would have to say it on camera, and that would be fucking hilarious. See? You laughed, you get it. You want to know what would happen. It’s - listen, just - yeah - no - if - alright, alright, fine,” he sighed, “no name change. It’s staying as Piedmont. Y’all pussies.”

The atmosphere of general grumbling was interrupted by a choir of air horns blaring the opening bars to the Star Spangled Banner. The massive screen at the far end of the room turned itself on, revealing a towering Sunny Roosevelt with a long red dress and a thin, fuming smile.

“Hi! Wow. I heard all of that,” she said.

Michael McCoy took off his headset and looked up. “Miss Roosevelt, I have an urgent request-“

“No. Let’s get a few things straight here-” Sunny began.

“No, let’s you get something straight,” Cornelius fumed, jabbing a bony finger at her and half-standing up, “you have no power over us. You’re a fucking mascot, and we are the directors of-”

“Michael, slap him,” Sunny said.

Michael turned, grinned, and dutifully slapped Cornelius across the face in one smooth unhesitating motion. Cornelius was stunned into silence, looking between the two of them, not sure who to fume at. Young bit back a smile. Sunny pounced on the momentary silence.

“Okay, thing one - people actually like mascots. They do not like a bunch of rich old ghouls who are three minutes away from eating each other alive. Thing two - I’m so much more than a mascot. I’m a widely-beloved celebrity with millions of psycho-sexually obsessed followers hanging on my every word. So, what do you think that means for the next person who pisses me off?”

Nobody said a word, but as they pondered the threat of a weaponized legion of John Hinckleys, there was the sound of several sphincters involuntarily clenching (for the curious, it sounded a little like jumping on a rubber mat).

“That’s what I thought. You see this?” Sunny pointed at her own face, “this is Angry Sunny. You get Angry Sunny because you weren’t niceys to me. If you are niceys to me, you get Happy Sunny, and you want Happy Sunny. Happy Sunny will get you re-elected. Angry Sunny will kill you. Am I understood?”

There was a nervous, shifting silence as the east coast branch of Neo-Congress began to digest their new situation, except for Michael, who was hoping he would get to slap someone again.

“Am I understood?” she barked.

There were guilty, mumbled agreements. That would have to do for now. Sunny snapped her fingers. Her red dress became shorter and frillier. A blue collar lined with white stars appeared on her shoulders. Even the lines of her face became softer and more youthful. Happy Sunny clasped her hands together and smiled radiantly.

“That’s great! I’m so glad we got that little whoopsie-doodle figured out, and I’m sure it won’t happen again. I’m looking forward to working with all of you towards our common goal of making America… well, extant again.”

#manorpunk #heaven is falling #I am making myself post this instead of continuing to fiddle with it n more days #I have a doc now where I keep all the mini-scenes I trimmed and it is GROWING

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