#wake up at least every 2hrs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

copias-thrall · 3 years

Text

Cause I'm Young and I'm Here and So Beautiful

A look into the rise and fall of Mary Goore's flash-in-the-pan modeling career.

~12.5K Mary Goore/Reader *drug/alcohol use; mentions of past child abuse; brief homelessness; plot no porn; POV shift*

This fic was inspired by and is very loosely based on Aurelio Voltaire's early days in NYC in the 90s, though I have set it in Boston in the early aughts. ��

Many thanks to the artists who did commissions for this! 🥰

One Way Streets

Mary stepped off the regional rail and gripped his backpack. He had $72.57 in cash rolled into his socks and a give-em-hell attitude.

When he’d packed his bag the night before, he wasn’t even sure if he’d go through with it, but he couldn’t stand being home anymore. Some of his friends had told him he was crazy.

"Three more months, dude. You got this. Just finish high school, then bounce."

But they didn’t have to live with his dad and the step-monster. Every day was a new indignity. Having them bitch about his music and his style was one thing—that he could have dealt with—but everything else had just kind of…escalated.

Now that the kiddies were older, they’d turned into gremlins. They’d somehow sensed that Mary wasn’t their beloved older brother—he was some sort of half other. They’d stopped questioning why "mom was so mean" to him and had accepted that she was because there was something wrong with Mary. They realized they could be little shits and blame everything on him.

And dad just didn’t care. He’d throw up his hands and say, "I have to live with her"—as if Mary wasn’t in the same boat.

Dad hadn’t stopped her when—in a rage—she’d smashed every single vinyl album Mary had owned because the twins ruined her nice tablecloth. He’d shrugged when she cut all Mary's guitar strings so he couldn’t play "the devil’s music." He’d held Mary back when she took a match and burned all his secret stuff that Mary kept under his bed—action figures, books, guitar mags, journals—in the backyard because he got detention for smoking. He hadn’t said a word when the police showed up after she came at Mary with scissors because he’d dyed his hair black and he’d pushed her away before she could scalp him.

Mary thought for sure he was going to get carted off to jail as she screamed about him terrorizing the family and being afraid he was going to kill her sons in their sleep, but the officers had just looked at her bored and told her being a teenager wasn’t a crime.

So, no: Mary couldn’t wait 3 more months.

He’d scraped together what money he had left from his secret shifts working as a busboy under the table at a local dive downtown, packed his backpack with the essentials, and walked the 5 miles to the train station instead of going to school.

Eighteen was 10 weeks away. He could fudge it for a few months, especially since he could already get away without using his fake ID to get into shows most of the time.

So, to the big city it was.

He shifted his weight and tried to pretend that he belonged here in Boston, but actually facing the busy streets was a lot different from looking at a bird’s-eye view map. He had a printout in his pocket, but he didn’t want to look like a doe-eyed tourist. So he set off down the seemingly labyrinthine streets in the direction he could have sworn was the correct one.

It wasn't.

When he came out a side alley into Faneuil Hall, he almost wondered if he'd gone through a fairy portal, since he was clear on the other side of town. Begrudgingly, he checked his creased map, and set out once more.

And ended up spit out by the State building.

Finding the hostel turned into a fraught adventure, and he got turned around several times more. When he tried to ask for directions, most people pushed past him while one lady shoved $5 at him. He used the cash to buy a hotdog, and it was the vendor who ultimately gave him directions in his thick, Southie accent.

Of course, making it to the hostel ended up being just part one. The rates were almost double what it stated online ("Sorry, honey—that site hasn’t been upgraded since the 90s."), and two nights were practically all his savings. Mary had thought he’d at least have a couple of days to find a job, not 36hrs.

He left the hostel, wondering for the first time if maybe he shouldn’t go back home…but he decided it was a nice day out. Surely there was some place he could hunker down. Just for the night.

What he hadn’t anticipated was the cops at every fucking turn telling him to move along. And any place out of line-of-sight seemed to already be inhabited.

He finally found a place behind some rocks in the Seaport where he didn’t think he’d be murdered in his sleep, curled around his backpack, and drifted off into a fitful sleep.

Mary woke up damp from the dew and the morning sun streaming into his eyes. The birds were creating an awful racket, but Mary guessed it was as good an alarm clock as any.

He ran his fingers through his bird's nest of hair, and he made his way back to the South Station. The men’s room may have smelled like a sewage treatment plant, but at least it was free. He had expected it to be mostly empty at the crack of dawn, but it was full of commuters making that last run to the head before they had to take the train 2hrs out of the city for work.

And it was a sight: a bunch of suits with their fancy lattes washing their hands, and Mary in the corner trying to surreptitiously wipe down with paper towels under his Misfits t-shirt and his shredded jeans. At school, he’d have probably gotten into several altercations by now—no one would have let him just turn into Mary Goore without a fight—but this was Boston, and no one gave him more than a cursory glance.

Just another college kid.

It emboldened Mary to go full-out in the kind of way he had only done when going out to the punk shows downtown at night: kohl all the way around his eyes, and some on his cheekbones; mascara because his lashes are long and thick, and he knows it (his dad had said it made him look hard, and Mary had sneered that maybe that was what he’d been going for. But maybe it had been because he’d liked the way it had made his green eyes pop.); a smear of the step-monster’s fanciest matte lipstick on his full lips; and airplane glue in his hair to give it that lift.

He made a kissy face at himself in the mirror, and headed back out.

It was a nice Spring day—almost boiling in the direct sun—and it tempted Mary to wear only his battle vest, but even he kind of figured applying to jobs half dressed was a mistake.

He walked all over the city, trying not to get lost, looking for any kind of work—dishwasher, busboy, barback—but all he had to show for it was blistered feet and a raging appetite. The only good part of the day was that he noted any restaurant or bakery that looked like it might toss perfectly good food at the end of the day.

He and his friends had become experts at dumpster diving in his podunk town, and he felt confident that he had a good feel for a jackpot. Mary staked out a bakery and was rewarded with a find of "old" bagels. He shoved as many as he could into the nooks and crannies of his backpack before slinking off to the Commons to inhale at least two of them.

Cold, stale dough never tasted so good.

He watched the tourists and the professionals walk by in ones and in groups while he ran his bare feet through the grass. Some laughed with each other as they sauntered down the path while others seemed singularly intent on their ultimate destination. A pack of dogs ran and played with each other as their owners looked on fondly, and nearby the baseball diamond hosted a casual game.

Mary counted his lucky stars that his first week in Boston was April at its kindest—always mild during the day, even when it turned cloudy, and a few times even downright warm. The nights turned chilly, though, and it had Mary in more layers than an onion. If the birds or damp didn't wake him, his butt cramps from being curled in a tight ball all night did.

He spent those days walking around the city proper looking for work. He wasn't adventurous enough to make the leap across the bridges to Cambridge just yet, but his travels gave him a good sense on how the different sections of Boston connected—and showed him potential places to crash at night. He didn't even mind living off day-old garbage food and drinking from bubblers (he'd bought a water for the express purpose of reusing the bottle), but the barren wasteland that seemed to be the job market was beginning to weigh on him.

At home, he could always find a shit job if he was willing to put up with shit hours and ridiculous requests. Here, though, Mary was just one of many desperate people willing to do desperate work.

And he didn’t look particularly trustworthy or reliable.

@dipendancesld

Hashtag WTF

I’m scrolling through Insta on the T, and I’m way down the rabbit hole of hashtags. New content was at a minimum this morning (how can I follow accounts in triple digits and only see the same 4 posts?!), so I’d started with some art tags and ended up where I usually end up—trolling social media for blurry pictures of my boy.

His band has been a local staple for years—or at least that’s what he told me on our first date. I had just moved from New York after a nasty breakup, ready to start fresh, and I’d seen him at a coffee shop hanging posters for his next show in his leather jacket, asymmetrical Metallica crop top, and stomping boots.

Fresh had never looked so good.

Then, a few months back, an online publication had featured his band in the year’s 50 best bands "you’ve never heard of," and now the band's starting to gain traction.

He’s starting to gain traction.

Finding the new online content of him first has become a game the two of us play. We had to stop counting images posted from the popular fan accounts because Mary's now acquaintances with most of them, and I said it was hardly fair to snipe me that way. Mary had pouted—but it was to cover up his grin. So now we troll for the pictures of his latest gig or at his favorite haunts from either his casual fans or one of his new ones. I even have a whole range of hashtag typos saved if I really want to triumph, since Mary just doesn't have the attention span.

I usually win, though, by virtue of not keeping Rockstar Hours—and because Mary doesn’t have a smartphone. Mary delights in spending the wee hours while I'm sleeping finding new content, and I'll often wake to one he's pulled up on my laptop and a "suck it" sticky note stuck to my monitor.

(But I’m reigning supreme.)

There’s a thirst tag I sometimes comb through (for reasons), and today I’m desperate for that morning serotonin to keep me from dozing off, which is why I stumble across a particularly convincing cosplayer in some…risqué poses and outfits.

The dude is really good, and I have to admit he really does have Mary’s mannerisms down pat. He’s younger and a little skinnier than Mary is now, but his facial expressions are on point. I zoom in to see the contouring technique because he's using one of those filters to make it look old…and that’s when I sense something off. I can’t quite place my finger on it, but usually there’s an uncanny valley to his serious cosplayers, and this dude looks so real. He’s even 100% accurate with the mole placement, which is something I never see.

My heart does a flip-flop.

Is that…actually Mary?

Foundling

Mary's sixth night in the city, it rained. It was more of a brief Spring shower, but it was still enough to soak him and his backpack through. He shivered through the early morning hours until the sun came up, then he made his way to the Commons to lay his belongings—and himself—out into the sun to dry.

By midday, he had a slight sunburn across his nose, but most of his things were dryish—though the food was a soggy lost cause. He cut his losses and decided to buy a sausage from the hotdog vendor, even if that meant he was down to $52.37 in his sock bank.

It was the most amazing thing he'd ever eaten in his entire life (sometimes he still dreams of it), and he gobbled it down as he sat in the grass and watched the show of people pass by.

He could take today off from his job search.

Just another Groundhog Day of rejections.

A gaggle of kids about his age walked past, and he lit up when he saw them: studs and bright hair and cuffs and combat boots. They ran and shrieked and shoved at each other, and Mary had never felt such longing to be a part of something.

Not that nebulous feeling of "my world is out there somewhere," but "my world is right there if I can just get to it."

And he realized maybe he could.

These were his people.

Mary hopped off the bench and approached the boisterous group.

"Uh, hey…guys."

The pack stopped and looked him over, confused but not hostile.

"Oh hey, man" said a girl with green fins and a studded, leather jacket.

"Hey."

I have nowhere to go. Can I go with you?

"Sorry, I forgot your name."

"Oh, you don’t—"

A guy in a tight striped shirt, snake bites, and blue hair interrupted him.

"Shit, were you in my intro into film class last year?"

Mary was a high school dropout.

"Nah, dude. I’m new and shit."

…But he wasn’t stupid.

A curvy white goth with bleached blonde hair and a cream princess dress smiled at him.

"Aww, that’s rough, honey. If you think about it, they really ought to give transfers on-campus housing. It sucks to be so new and away from the action."

Mary nodded. "Yeah. Sucks."

"Well, we’re going to The Pit, wanna come?"

"If you guys don’t mind…"

"Fuck, the more the merrier!"

Mary smiled as they assimilated him into the group. He found out the goth’s name was Vanessa ("But call me Vanity."), green fins was Alexa ("Or Alex. I’m trying it out."), striped shirt was Billy, and the two other punks were Mandi (Manic Panic red) and Aaron (band tee, spiked collar).

No one laughed at him when he introduced himself as Mary or asked him why he had a girl’s name.

They took him onto the T at Charles MGH, and Mary marveled at the setting sun over the Charles River before the train ducked underground to barrel in Cambridge. At Harvard, they ushered him off the train and directly into The Pit, and Mary almost cried when he saw the pit rats there playing hacky sack, strumming guitars, and smoking cloves. Mary watched as his group high-fived, bumped chests, and hugged nearly everyone there before introducing him as if they’d known him for years.

He was shit at hacky sack, but he accepted a round on the guitar and shared a clove with a white girl who had a rat's nest of hair.

"Fuck their beauty stands," she said when she caught Mary staring.

Mary smiled and pointed to his own mess of hair. "Fuck ‘em," he repeated.

She cackled and handed him a brown bag with what he expected to be whiskey, but tasted like turpentine.

She laughed harder at his face as he coughed, and she pounded him on the back.

"Moonshine, dude. Lenny makes it in his bathtub."

"Which one is Lenny," Mary asked as he wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Oh, he’s not here. He goes to MIT. We have a strict trade agreement—booze for pot. I’m Katie."

Head fuzzy, Mary had made out with her until Aaron tugged on his arm.

"Shit dude, we gotta go before the T closes. You live close to here?"

"Uh…"

"Aww, I think he got into Lenny’s moonshine," said Vanity. "If he’s a transfer, I bet he’s at some shithole in Allston. You in Allston, honey?"

Mary just nodded.

"All right then," said Alex, taking charge. "We’ll put him up tonight. There’s no way he’s gonna make it back to Allston by himself, and I’ll be fucked if I’m trekking out there without a BU party to crash."

Mary wobbled slightly as Alex took his arm in his and led him to the T.

"Ok, we gotta go now or we’ll all be hoofing it."

They took Mary back to their dorm by the Hatch Shell and signed him in as a guest.

"Is this ok?" Mary asked warily—he didn't want to get kicked out in the middle of the night.

Mandi patted him on the back.

"We do it all time. No one really gives a shit. Vegan Mick dropped out 2 semesters ago and they don’t even check for his ID."

That night, Mary slept in the common room on a lumpy couch that was half as long as he was.

It was heaven.

The next morning seemed like the end, and Mary slumped as Vanity to sign him out. For one brief day he'd been a part of something, and now it was back to Mary, party of one. But Vanity took one look at his face and asked if he wanted to get breakfast at the dining hall.

Of course, he wanted to…but he thought of the dwindling cash in sock bank and hesitated. Vanity, bless her, misread his trepidation.

"It's on me, sweetie. I know most transfers don’t opt in. Too expensive when it’s not bundled. No worries, I got a ton of points I don’t use."

Alex and Aaron were already half done with their food when Vanity and he joined them, and they looked on in amusement as Mary ate half the breakfast buffet.

When the subject of classes came up, he shrugged off questions.

"None this morning."

Alex narrowed her eyes at him.

"What year did you say you were?"

"Sophomore."

"Not a freshman?"

Mary shook his head. "I’m not a freshman."

She seemed about to ask another question, so Mary quickly changed the subject.

"I thought I’d spend the day applying for jobs. You guys know of any place that’s hiring?"

"No work study?"

"No."

"What kind of work you looking for?"

"Shit, anything. I’ll sweep the fucking floors."

They bandied about ideas, places for Mary to try, but no one had any leads. Too soon, some unknown gong had them scurrying to get to class.

Mary suddenly panicked.

"Hey, do you guys mind if I spend the night again? I mean…"

"Yeah, sure," said Vanity. "Aaron?"

"Yeah, man. Meet me after class and I'll swipe you in."

It apparently was a time-honored tradition, passed down from upperclassmen to underclassmen, on gaming the guest system. Most kids used it to essentially move their significant others into their dorm rooms, but a handful every year used it to give haven to others who had questionable housing situations.

So, just like that, Mary had a place to rest his bones.

@dilfpassing

A Deeper Look

I’m so intent on scrolling through the comments on the grainy pics—which I'm sure now are actual scans—that I completely miss my stop, and I have to put my phone away so I can wheeze lightly jog my way to where I work as a receptionist at an alternative hair salon.

It’s really important that I start a good hour before we open so I can return any calls left on our voicemail first thing in case I can fit anyone in today. Which means I have to shelve my find for now, much to my irritation.

Mornings are super-busy because apparently there are some people in the world that like getting up with the sun and want everything done by noon. (June Cleaver’s salon lets me get away with a lot—like coming to work in denim short-shorts and ripped tights, free hair colors, and a snarky attitude—but late start times aren’t one of them.) I honestly don’t have room in my brain to obsess about the pictures because I’m too busy answering calls, making coffee, settling accounts, and giving the new customer spiel for the 57th time to a walk-in.

It’s just after midday, when Penny, the shampoo girl, collects my cash for the salon-wide sandwich run, and I finally have a moment to breathe. And obsess.

I take out my phone again, and I have to retrace my steps because of course the app has refreshed, which is why Sonia has the time to look over my shoulder.

"Missing dream boy’s dick so much you gotta spend your lunch hour ogling pics of him on the internet?"

I zoom in on the one of maybe!Mary in his underwear.

"Who does that look like to you?"

Sonia makes a guh sound in her throat and backs away.

"I don’t need to see your intimates!"

"That’s the thing! It’s not mine!"

"Your boy’s nudes get leaked??"

I wave my arms around.

"I don’t freakin’ know! They may not even be him. Fucking. C’mere and help me out!"

Sonia warily creeps back over, and so does Ryan, since all the yelling has attracted him.

The three of us peer over the phone as I scroll through the images again.

By the time Penny comes back with lunch, we’ve gone back and forth on who’s in the images—Mary or a fake—and I haven’t been able to do any actual research. The afternoon rush starts, and I have to table the whole thing again, having made no progress at all.

It isn’t until near-closing, when most of the other stylists have gone home—and it’s only June who does the post-work crowd—that I can really dig into the matter.

A deep dive and a couple of defunct, decade-old forums later, I find that what I took as an aspirational hashtag was actually the name of a zine called "Heroes."

There’s like, zero online trail about it—except for a few other grainy scans of other pages of articles, poetry, concert pictures, and art—but it seemed to be an early aughts missive for local underground culture and color.

It still doesn’t explain why Mary’s in there in various states of undress and poses.

Or why Mary has never said a word about it to me.

Stripped Bare

Mary settled into a sort of routine. He spent most days looking for a job—any job—with his backpack full of food from their dining hall. Most nights he rotated couches on different floors so the RAs didn’t notice that he basically lived there.

He made friends with Vegan Mick for about 5 seconds until Mary had eaten an entire Rotisserie chicken from 7-11 in front of him. Mick had launched into a whole spiel, and Mary had pointed out that Mick's jacket and Docs were made of leather. He’d only meant it as a joke—a callout in answer to a callout, like he'd do with his friends back home—but Vegan Mick had turned purple, then iced Mary out every time he saw him after that.

Oops.

The brief friendship had lasted long enough, however, for Mick to give Mary some tips and tricks of being homeless.

Homeless.

That had been a tough pill to swallow. Until Vegan Mick had put Mary’s situation like that, Mary had just thought of himself between places.

But it was true: he didn’t live anywhere. He skated by on the kindness of his new friends, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep up the ruse of "transfer student who didn’t like his shithole apartment and was too busy job searching to concentrate on classes."

He still spent a few nights a week finding an out-of-the-way place outside to hunker down in or huddling in with Katie and a few of the other gutter punks under their boxes in the corners of the T stations. He knew they would have been more than happy to make room, anyway, but Mary always emptied his backpack of all the pilfered dining hall food for distribution amongst them.

It honestly wasn't so terrible now that he had friends and a warm place to go on cold or rainy nights, but.

He needed an actual place to live. To afford an actual place to live, he needed a job. To get a job, he needed a place to live.

It seemed like a catch-22, and he began to despair that he’d never get ahead…until Mandi offered him a leg up.

Mary was sitting on the grass in the Commons in the shade, thinking that with summer coming up, maybe he could fudge it until the gang came back in September. There was always Katie and The Pit, and Mary was sure he could chip in somehow.

Mandi sat down next to him.

"I thought that mess of hair was you, Mare."

"Hey, Mandi. What’s kicks?"

"You still looking for a job?"

Mary put his head in his hands and sighed.

"Don’t remind me."

"You over 18?"

Just last week. But Mary hadn’t said, since they thought he was a Sophomore.

"Yeah."

"Wanna be at least 21?"

Mary grinned at her.

"That’s what my fake ID says."

She laughed, a tinkling thing.

"You got anything against strip clubs?"

Mary furrowed his brows at her.

"Uh…what’s the right answer here?"

She shoved him playfully.

"Do you want a job?"

"Yeah?"

"Then say no."

"No. No problems with strip clubs." He squinted at her. "Are they looking for male strippers?"

She laughed again.

"Definitely not." She canted her head at Mary. "I mean, you're very pretty, Mare. I could probably put you on as one of the girls…even with these triple As," she flicked playfully at his nipple, which had him grunting and batting at her, "but I was thinking more behind the scenes."

Mary held up his arm and made a weak muscle.

"I don’t think I’d be much of a bouncer, Mands."

"You said you’d wash dishes, sweep floors and shit, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, the club I work at—"

"The club at you what now?"

Mandi gave him a strange look.

"Yeah. The strip club I work at."

Mary’s eyes bugged out.

"As a…waitress?"

"As a stripper, Mary. Duh." At his dumbfounded look she shook her head. "It’s kind of extra credit, as a dance major. I’m going to turn it into my thesis. Plus, I make hella bank."

She swept her arm across the park that made up her college "campus."

"How else do you think I can afford this rock-and-roll lifestyle? Not all of us are here on scholarship or mom and dad’s dime."

She tilted her head at him.

"I thought you’d get it."

When Mary didn't respond, she touched his shoulder.

"Mare. I know you don't go here."

"W-what…? I…"

He looked at her, wide-eyed as the blood drained from his face.

"Hey, it's ok. I'm not gonna tell anybody. Not if you don't want me to."

Mary looked down. "Thanks." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You know that means I've got no address."

Mandi bumped his shoulder and waved his words away.

"A lot of the girls dance. Paddy is used to dorm rooms as addresses. You can use mine."

Mary looked at her, hoping he could convey every ounce of gratitude he was feeling.

She grinned and punched him in the shoulder.

"So, you up for it? Sweeping floors and bussing tables?" She leveled a look at him. "Cleaning up puke?"

Anything.

"Fuck, I’m desperate, Mands. I’ll hold their hair back if it means a paycheck."

"That’s the spirit!"

***

Mary was sure Patrick was part of the mob—or at least in cahoots. The guy had taken one look at Mary’s ID and had said, "But how old are you really?" and Mary had said, "Nineteen."

Patrick had thrown up his hands. "Well, you ain’t gonna be serving alcohol anyway, kid. Your job is to do whatever I tell you. Some asshole breaks a bottle, you clean up the glass so the girls don’t hurt themselves. Some idiot ralphs all over the toilet seat, you scrub the shit out of that fucker. A bachelor party leaves a table a hot mess, you better be out there clearing off the table for the next one, got it?"

Mary had nodded.

"You show up at 5 to help the girls set up the bar. You stay til whenever it takes to close down—but you only get paid 'til 2am—and you get an hour to eat, unpaid. You don’t bother the girls, and," Patrick had leaned in, "you don’t steal from me."

Mary had gulped and nodded emphatically.

Patrick had jabbed a finger at him. "That includes the booze. If I get fucked because some snot-nosed, underage kid is drinking with my good friends Jim and Johnnie, I’m gonna be very put out."

"Got it, sir."

"Don’t call me sir. I’m Paddy to my friends, so you can call me Patrick."

"Yes, Patrick."

Patrick had looked him over.

"You get paid as an independent contractor just like the girls, so you gotta deal with your own taxes, you got that? I’ll start you at $10 an hour."

Mary’s eyes had gone wide. Back home he was lucky to get 5.

"Ten…?"

Patrick had tilted his head again.

"No, you’re right, 12. Do a good job, and I’ll think about raising it to 15."

Mary had to physically stop his jaw from dropping.

"You do weeknights for now so if you fuck up it’s not that much of a problem. If you don’t fuck up and the girls don’t hate you, you can get weekends. Deal?"

Mary had sat up straighter. "Deal." He’d held his hand out, but Patrick had just looked at it until Mary pulled it back into his side.

"Ariel vouched for you, so I’m giving you a shot. Don’t make her regret it."

Mary had shaken his head as Patrick had handed him some forms to fill out.

"Come back at 4 tomorrow with these and we’ll get you started. Now, get out, I got shit to do."

Mary had taken the forms and skedaddled.

Mandi was outside waiting for him, all smiles.

"Did you get it?"

"Yeah, but fuck—your boss is scary."

"Nah, he’s a teddy bear."

***

The job was awful.

The puke was an almost nightly occurrence, and by the end of the first week, little cuts covered Mary’s hands from the broken glass. The customers were loud, rowdy, and acted as if their mother was going to clean up after them.

Mary swore he would never get the beer smell out. It now lived in his soul.

One dude punched Mary and broke his nose for no reason Mary could tell before the bouncers dragged the guy away. The girls gave him some tampons to stop the bleeding, and Mary finished his shift.

Patrick paid Mary in cash at the end of every week with a "It’s your job to report that, not mine," and at the end of the month, Patrick bumped Mary up to $15/hr. He worked 5 days a week because, according to Patrick, "The Lord gave us a day of rest, and you get one day off per week."

Mary never reported a single cent to the IRS.

The girls loved him, and joked that Patrick had gotten them a pet. They showed him winged eyeliner and smokey eyes and how to contour. They guffawed when they watched him try out their shoes like a newborn deer. On slow nights, they tried to show him pole techniques.

He saw the gang less and less because by the time they were getting out of class, he was going into work, and when he was done work, they were crawling into bed. Fortunately, the desk sitters seemed to forget that he wasn’t an on-campus "student" and didn’t even bother signing him in anymore. There were a few sticklers, but Mary found that—while back home he was less than scum—here, he attracted all the right kinds of attention…and a smirk with the right compliment went a long way.

By the time their school year ended, Mary had saved up $1,000 (and he needed to transfer his money out of sock bank and into the ripped lining of his jacket).

Even though they didn't know just how much they'd saved him, Mary showed up on the last day as thanks to help them all move their stuff into family cars or rented trucks. They hugged him goodbye and said to ring them next semester.

Mandi bopped him on the nose and told him to keep his nose clean.

Mary took a sublet in Allston with 2 BU kids and a Berkley grad student. The "room" was a closed-in porch with a sleeping bag left by the last resident—but it was $400 a month until September, utilities included.

At first, Mary didn't know why the gang was so snobby about Allston, but the summer seemed to be one continual party. It didn't matter what day Mary got up, there were always broken beer bottles and stale beer on their front stoop, and the apartment had a designated watering can for washing away the vomit that dripped down from the top porches to their own.

But he took it in stride, and when he wasn’t at the strip club or sleeping, he was partying with the BU kids, or letting the Berkley grad show him better string fingering techniques.

Mary still tried to get out to The Pit with what groceries he could spare, but Katie had moved on with some of the others to do a protest tour with an activist street band that had come through town, and without her or the gang, it made Mary feel lonely.

By the end of the summer, Mary had saved up enough money for first, last, and security. He even had some left over to buy more than ramen and some new clothes. To Mary, it felt like a million dollars. He rented a garden-level apartment in the cheap part of Jamaica Plain for September 1st and spent that entire day with the BU dudes driving around in their rented truck for Allston Christmas’s best furniture finds.

Mary ended up with a mattress that he hoped on a wish and a prayer didn’t have bedbugs, a mismatched set of dishes, plastic drawers that were slightly warped, and a broken futon frame he swore he would fix. Throw in a few sets of slightly used string lights, and Mary’s cave felt downright homey.

When the gang got back, he simply told them he’d dropped out.

"Yeah, I just don’t think college is for me. Music’s my real passion, you know?"

Alex had groaned.

"I knew that Berkley kid was gonna be a bad influence on you."

Mary shrugged.

"My grades were shit anyway. But I’m still around, you know. The strip club’s only a block from campus."

"Because we saw you so much then," deadpanned Billy.

"Hey! Stop piling on Mary," said Vanity. "He’s following his path."

Mary shot her a wide smile.

"Thanks, Vanity."

Patrick finally gave him a little more leeway with his days off, and Mary started taking Saturday night to join the gang in Harvard Square for the shadow cast of Rocky Horror. One of Aaron’s classmates, Amber, was in it, and they all wanted to support her.

Mary felt that something again. That thing that told that this was his place and his people. This eclectic group who got up in front of strangers every week in their underwear for free enthralled Mary.

He and Amber bonded immediately, and Mary began going even without the gang. The cast welcomed him in as an honorary groupie, and Mary's friendship with the gang waned. There was still Mandi to cavort with at the strip club, but now when Mary wasn't there, he was at any one of the Rocky crew's apartments getting high and playing dress up.

"You’ve got such a Look, Mare," sighed Amber. "I’d kill for your cheekbones."

"I’d kill for your tits."

She slapped him playfully. "Don’t be gross."

"No, I’m serious. Someone once put it in my head that I'd be a hot chick."

The girls had giggled and proceeded to dress him up in bras and corsets with cutlets. They added a wig, and the glo-up surprised even Mary.

Still buzzed, they went out for girl’s night and hit up all the bars in Fenway and flirted their way to free shots from the dude bros before batting their falsies at bouncers to let them into the clubs ahead of the line and without the cover.

The cutlets eventually became a nuisance—and soon they were all flapping them about above their heads as they danced—but Mary had loved the feel of the lace and satin corsets against his skin.

When they’d all collapsed in a pile at the end of the night, Mary wondered if they’d tell him where to get some lingerie for himself.

***

By August, Mary was ready to quit the strip club.

He was tired of cut fingers (they were making it hard to play the guitar he’d bought), the drunks, and the sick everywhere. Now that he had a little cushion, he thought maybe he could at least find something with better hours.

Mandi had graduated and was well into a summer internship at Disney in hopes they’d bring her on as a dancer.

Alex had also graduated and moved out to LA to make it as a film editor.

Vanity and Aaron had started dating after finals, and they had moved in together in Cambridgeport for their last year.

Billy had stopped going to classes before dropping out altogether. No one seemed to know what happened, and when they called his home, his mother just said he was unavailable.

There didn’t seem to be much reason to stick around the Grid anymore, and it was a bitch of a commute back to his place if he wasn’t going to hang out with the Rocky crew. He landed a job at a record store that was walking distance to his apartment.

Patrick seemed surprisingly sad to see him go, saying, "Ah, the good ones smart up," and gave him a $500 bonus for not "fucking up."

Tim, one of the older Rocky people, turned out to not live too far from him, and when Mary started hanging out there, so did the party.

Now that Mary was no longer shackled by the strip club’s hours, his world opened a few more degrees. He spent his nights dressing up while he watched the cast rehearse. (When he showed them a move or two he learned from the women at the club, they tried to get him to do a guest star as Frank. But Mary had shaken his head and said that wasn’t the kind of performing he wanted to do.)

When they weren't rehearsing, they dragged Mary to TT The Bear’s, The Middle East, and The Milky Way Lounge for underground shows. They took him to fetish night at ManRay after a trip to Hubba Hubba for pleather and lingerie, and Mary made a lot of new friends.

Sometimes, Mary would show up to work straight off a night out in his club clothes, eyeliner smudged and lipstick smeared. It should have got him fired, but his boss just shrugged.

"I used to keep rockstar hours too."

Mary still wore all his old vestiges—his battle vest and his ripped jeans—it was just that now he sometimes added a corset and heels.

Wherever Katie was now, he hoped she knew he was still fucking their beauty standards.

ry.omen Insta

Answer Me This

I practically vibrate the entire way back to our place. I'm still trying to wring information out of the internet like it's too-wet clothes, but the only thing I accomplish is making myself motion sick on the bus, so I put my phone back in my pocket and breath through my nose.

When I get home, Mary is sprawled across the couch in his pjs with various limbs hanging over sides and edges as he watches some extreme sport show on my laptop.

I wonder if he just got up, but I see the start of dinner on the stove, so I decide not to snark at him.

"Hey," he says without looking up.

I am, however, gonna need some answers on "Heroes."

I gently close the laptop, and he meets my eyes.

"What?"

I climb onto the couch, and Mary’s limbs recede like vines to make room for me as I scroll through my phone to my photo app where I’ve saved screenshots.

"Lucy," I say in a terrible accent, "you have some ‘splaining to do!"

Mary squints at me and takes my phone, his expression morphing into one of surprise.

"Shit, babe. Where’d ya find these??"

"So they are you!"

He chuckles.

"Christ…I haven't thought about these in fucking years."

"Mind telling me what the fuck?" I ask, my hands on my hips.

I'm only half joking.

Mary grimaces at me.

"Ah."

"I'm gonna need more than that, mister."

He rubs the back of his neck.

"Fuck, you know those were hard times for me."

I know about his family, the homelessness. I know he tried out a lot until he found a life that fit. He'd given me the overviews with occasional anecdotes filled with names I never remembered.

But none of them included naughty pictures.

I worm my way under his arm.

"Yeah, I know, Mare."

His hand strokes down my arm.

"I mean, shit. I was kinda an asshole, you know?"

I wrap an arm around his chest.

"You're still kind of an asshole, Goore."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

When he doesn't say more, I poke him hard in the side.

"I’m literally dying here."

He laughs a little.

"Fine. But you gotta remember you asked."

Model Behavior

One day, Mary was walking down the street on his way to drinks with the new friends he'd made the weekend before. It was a good day. He wasn’t hungover as fuck, his makeup was only smudged artfully, and he was pretty sure he was going to get laid.

A guy in a leather jacket and tight jeans maybe a few years older than Mary stopped him on the street.

"Hey, man! I love your style."

Mary batted his eyelashes at him. "Thanks, dude."

"You ever think of dark modeling?"

Mary squinted his eyes at him.

"Dark what now?"

"You know—modeling but like," he gestured up and down Mary’s form, "for dark beauties. Show the world beauty isn’t cookie cutter."

"For like what? A website or some shit?"

The guy dug into his pocket, pulled out a card case, and handed one to Mary.

Heroes Greg Karson, Photographer/Web Design Butera School of Art

Actually, Mary had heard of this. It was a zine about the local happenings around town—concerts, art shows, parties, etc. There was a stack of them next to "Rrriot!" in the record shop. He’d flipped through one occasionally, mostly interested in the band reviews.

"We’re really on the lookout for anyone with the right look. You know, wear stuff you already own."

"So like a street fashion spread?"

"Well, we might do a little more with it, but—you know how it is. Most of the budget goes toward printing costs."

Mary perked up.

"Would I be paid?"

Greg laughed.

"Peanuts, my dude. But yeah. Even if it’s a T token. You interested, then?"

"Hell yeah!"

"Mind if I take a few test shots."

Mary smirked at Greg.

"How do you want me?"

"Just natural."

Putting his hands in his pockets, Mary arched his back and gave Greg his best snotty hipster face.

Greg dug out a digital camera from his carrying case and took a dozen or so pictures of Mary from different angles while telling him to turn this way or that.

Afterwards, the two of them huddled over the camera and scrolled through the shots.

"Aw yeah, this one. I love the attitude. The guys are gonna love it. You have a number where we can reach you?"

Mary gave him the number of the record shop. (His apartment had a phone, but he’d never gotten around to wanting to pay for service.)

Later, he and Amber looked up the Angelfire website on the back of the card. It was one page that contained the mission statement, bios of the creators, and locations to pick up the zine.

"Omigod—you’re gonna become a famous model, Mare!"

"Yeah, right. You know most of it ends up in the trash, right?"

But when Ben called, Mary said he was game. He directed Mary to a co-op in a converted warehouse in Dorchester, and Mary brought his favorite clothes in a borrowed duffle.

A girl in cat pajamas opened the door and pointed at a set of metal stairs with her cereal spoon.

On the second floor, Mary found Greg setting up a makeshift studio. A girl with multiple piercings and yarn dreads leaned against the wall in her black babydoll dress.

Mary sidled up to her.

"You here to model, too?"

She gave him an unimpressed once-over.

"I’m the art director, asshole."

Mary flushed hard as she turned to Greg.

"Couldn’t find one with brains?"

She turned back to Mary.

"I don’t know if you thought this would be a good way to meet chicks or what, dude. But I’m letting you know right now that I’m here on my day off to make sure this adheres to our aesthetic, so if you're not serious, fuck off."

Mary rubbed the back of his neck.

"Shit, sorry. I was expecting a dude named Ben."

She waved her hand in the air as if dispelling Ben.

"The Bens are morons. Good idea, terrible execution. I’m here to make sure we remain true to the idea of 'Heroes,' so don’t fuck up my shoot." She gave him a once over. "Christ. You have any experience?"

Greg turned from where he was testing the white balance.

"Angelique, stop harassing the talent. We get it, you have a degree from RISD."

Angelique snorted.

"As if I don't hear you going on and on about being a professional photographer. 'Hey, lemme shoot your portfolio, baby.' Whatever. As if we're not your only professional credit."

"Hey—you wanted a photographer for peanuts? You got me. You wanted models for peanuts? You got him."

Mary gave her his full snaggle-toothed grin.

"I take T tokens."

Angelique sighed, then pasted on a smile.

"Hi! So happy you’re here!" Her smile drooped. "You got your wardrobe in there?"

"Yeah."

Mary handed her the duffle, and she handed him release forms.

"Here: sign these"

She pawed through his offerings.

"Not bad, not bad." She pulled out a corset and his heeled boots. "We'll keep you in your jeans and have you wear your jacket over your corset. Cool?"

Cool.

The shoot was as professional as a shoot in a warehouse in what Mary was taking to usually be a living room could be. Angelique directed Greg with what she wanted. Greg called out positions and expressions for Mary to pose in.

It was surprisingly hard work, and by the end of a solid hour, his smirking lip was getting tired. Angelique and Greg scrolled through the shots, murmuring to themselves and nodding.

Mary waited—greeting at the other inhabitants as they squeezed by on their way either up or down—until Angelique approached him.

"That’ll do. You mind if we post on our website?"

Mary preened.

"Yeah, that’s kosher."

She handed him a pen and pocket notebook.

"Write down a quick bio."

He scribbled down a quick elevator pitch

Into general skulking and metal \m/

and handed the notebook back to her.

"Great, thanks."

She handed him a $20 bill, her eyes skimming him up and down.

"Next time we should show off those hip bones. Just jeans, I think."

Mary perked up. "Next time?"

"We’ll call you."

***

"Omigod, omigod!"

Amber perched on the record store counter, flipping through "Heroes," as Jon peered over her shoulder.

"Mary…look at you!"

Mary tried to swallow his smug smile.

Failed.

"Yeah. I’m hot shit, ain’t I?"

She bopped him on the nose with the newsprint.

"Don’t be vain."

He showed her his toothy smile.

"I like to think of it as confidence."

"So did Icarus."

Mary snorted and went back to putting prices on the new CDs.

"The camera loves you," said Jon, who was always quiet and reserved as you please…until he put on Frank’s corset and heels.

Mary had tried flirting with him, but Jon always ducked his head and played it off.

"Thanks, man," said Mary, giving him a softer smile.

"So??"

"So what, Amber?"

"Are you gonna do it again?"

Mary shrugged.

"I mean, if they call me, sure."

But he was kind of hoping they would.

When the next issue came out weeks later, Mary stared at the cybergoth on the pages and felt himself deflate. Listlessly, he thumbed through the delicate print, barely skimming the section devoted to the World/Inferno Friendship Society’s set he’d been at the week before.

He set it down with a sigh before he picked up his guitar and plucked out a tune he was trying to coax into a riff.

By the time a Ben called again, Mary had given up the modeling thing as a one-off.

"Hey, dude—thought maybe you guys forgot about me," Mary said in a teasing tone.

The Ben on the other end chuckled.

"It’s like herding cats to get shit out. Nah, dude—we definitely want you to be one of our regulars. You in for next Saturday?"

He was.

***

Over the course of a year, "Heroes" had Mary come out multiple times for shoots. Mainly, Mary wore his own clothes and did his own makeup, but occasionally, Angelique wanted something specific.

"How comfortable are you with boudoir shots?"

"With what?"

"Like a pinup, but more…saucy than sexy."

I'd pose nude if you paid me enough.

(Sure, he was a noodle boy, but he knew he had the goods.)

"Yeah, I’m cool with that."

Angelique brightened at him.

"Great!"

She picked up a set of complicated leather garters and thrust them at him.

"Put these on."

Mary had only ever worn lace garters—mostly out to clubs, but occasionally under his ripped jeans for an extra pop—but he found he liked these even more, liked the way they emphasized his thighs.

"Hey—where’d you get these…?"

(He was already thinking of what he could pair them with for goth night.)

"Local leatherworker. He mostly does pieces for Renn Fairs, but he'll also do custom. I can give you his info."

She led Mary into what was clearly someone's bedroom.

"Don't fuck anything up, or Joye will never let us use this again."

Mary shot her his best shark smile.

"Hey, I only mess up the sheets if someone asks."

Angelique gave him a flat look and called for Greg.

(But when he draped himself over the bed and told Greg to "Paint me like one of your French girls," Mary could have sworn she almost smiled.)

On one memorable occasion, she brought in a guy whose rope bondage demo she watched at a sex convention.

"Put on some of that lingerie and we'll truss you up. You ok with that, Goore?"

Mary ran his fingers over the coils and gave her a wolfish smile.

"You know I'm game for anything."

She gave him a vulpine smile of her own then, and she looked down at him from the height of her platformed boots.

"Good. I thought you should be submissive for once."

Mary had no witty rejoinder for that.

He listened with interest as the guy carefully explained what he was going to do, complete with pictures, and he relaxed easily into the process. (They put bunny ears on him, and it would be much, much later that he got that particular joke. Well played, Angelique.)

The ropes hadn’t let him do much posing, but Mary had kind of liked the constriction, and his thoughts were already on asking Amber to help him create a more versatile version for fetish night.

He’d left that day with a new kink…and the guy’s number.

"Why not just do one big shoot?" he asked another time. "Get it all done in one big bang!"

Angelique held up his garments to eyeball over him.

"Honey, we never even know if there's gonna be a next issue. The Bens spend most of the time arguing. My god you should hear them—Ben bankrolls the whole thing, so he says he should get final say on shit, and Benji wants total artistic control because it was his idea, because 'he's the graphic designer', and because it's his Kinko's employee discount they use."

She gave Mary a curled-lip smile as she tossed a few items at him.

"In the end it's this bitch you're looking at who gets shit done."

Mary began to change (they were long past modesty).

"How'd you get involved?"

"Went to school with Benji."

"Ben too?"

"Neg. The Bens are childhood friends. Ben works some cushy start-up job, so Benji lets him bankroll them both. Rent, utilities—everything. I love Benji to death, but he's a giant mooch."

"Shit, that must be nice."

Angelique shrugged. She stood back to appraise Mary's look.

"It's fucking lame. But it least it gets us fucking paid."

Mary didn't say I'd do this for free. Instead, he struck a pose and said, "I'm just happy for the exposure."

Angelique rolled her eyes and went to fetch Greg.

***

That year and a half would become a nonstop party with Mary as one of the VIPs; he wouldn't say no to anything—be it casual sex, club appearances, or whatever drug the current pretty thing was offering him in the bathroom.

But recognition started slow.

At first, it was customers who would leaf through the zine and recognize Mary.

Then, it was the occasional scenester who’d stop him on the street in JP as he walked about, and Mary would pose for grainy cell phone pics.

Soon, he was being approached at shows and clubs. The first time it happened, Mary was high off his new infamy and ready to please. A woman in a black bandage bra and pleated skirt with bondage straps approached him, and Mary was already thinking of what he could do with those.

"You look like that guy in ‘Heroes’!" she'd shouted to him over the music.

Mary had flashed her a crooked smile and leaned in.

"Maybe I am the guy in ‘Heroes’."

She'd given him an exaggerated once over before sidling closer with hooded eyes.

"I dunno…you're wearing way more clothes."

Mary had pulled his mesh top down by the collar in a tease as he'd curled over her.

"Take me somewhere more private and I’ll let you do a comparison."

She'd compared him all night.

And that was before he and the other "Heroes" models formed their own posse.

The Bens had thrown a BBQ and had invited everyone they'd ever met. There were people packed into their little 2 bedroom in Brighton, spilling down the back stairs, and equally packed into the little square of shared backyard. Ben had taken the 12-pack of 'Gansett beers Mary had brought, then introduced him to the other dark models.

"Now you're all here!" said Ben. He slung his arm around Mary. "Guys, this is Mary. Mary this is Mayhem, Lesley, Lola, and Bryan."

Mayhem was a rivethead, and Mary took to him instantly, but he was wary of the others. Lesley was the cybergoth who'd been in the first issue after him, and Mary still felt a bit salty at them, even though Mary knew by now the Bens rotated the models. Lola, the romantic goth, reminded him enough of Vanity that he felt guilty for losing touch with her and had him projecting a little. Bryan was a metalhead, so: competition.

Mary had thought they'd get along like cats and water, but weed, booze, and "Never Have I Ever" went a long way to creating a shared bond.

And there it was again. That pull. The magnetic force telling him that he'd found the place he was supposed to be. They quickly coalesced into their own pack, calling themselves the "Deathbutantes" (because they always killed it when they debuted for the night).

It had been rare for Mary to miss Friday and Saturday night shenanigans with the Rocky crew, but now, every night was Friday night. There was always a show or a concert or club that one of them knew about—and if they couldn't get lucky with the local color, they'd just go home with each other.

Mayhem taught Mary what Lola jokingly called the "grab a bat" dance, and the two of them cut quite the picture on the dance floors.

Lesley took to Lola, and the two of them could always be counted on for scintillating conversation in dark corners when Mary's limbst needed a break from flailing about.

The clubs weren't really Bryan's scene—take him to a sticky hole in the wall with concrete floors and a stage close enough to feel the sweat from the bands, and he was in heaven—but he liked to come along to hang. He'd drink PBRs, rub Lola's feet when she invariably abandoned her heels for the evening, and argue with Mary about the purity of death metal.

Mayhem and Lola weren't really into live music of the screaming kind, so—while Lesley, Bryan, and Mary bounced off each other in the mosh pits—they'd save a "home" base at one the bartops.

Amber noticed Mary's diminishing presence and stopped by the record shop to call him out.

"So you're not dead! Could've fooled me."

Mary was organizing the albums into order, and he grunted at her.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a cad. I'll make it up to you."

"You missed game night."

"Sorry. Jethro Tull played some tiny venue in nowhere Mass, and Bryan was salivating. I mean, Jethro Tull. Can you blame me?"

He looked at her, arms out wide in supplication. But she just blinked at him.

"You have no idea who Jethro Tull is, do you?"

"Sorry, dude. But christ, Mare. You should have invited me. I'd've gone. Maybe I would have even liked them. Now you'll never know."

"I could just lend you an album."

"Nope! The moment passed. Too late!"

Mary riffled through the stock and shoved a Jethro Tull CD into her hands.

She tapped it against her thigh.

"So, when do I get to hang?"

"I can get us into 80s night free."

"No, I mean, with your cooler friends. Your 'murder models', or whatever."

"You wanna hang out with the Deathbutantes?"

Amber scrunched her nose.

"That's so fucking pretentious."

Mary kind of liked it.

"Dunno if they're really your scene."

"Oh? And what's my scene?"

"Musical theater on crack."

She mock gasped at him, "Called out!" before smacking him with the CD. "Whatever. You love musical theater on crack."

Mary draped his arm around her shoulders.

"Yeah, I do. But I don't live it, you know? You guys have your niche—and fuck…I love to visit—but it's not mine."

Amber looked up at him, her expression serious.

"So the Dumbutantes are your niche?"

Mary shrugged and went back to shelving.

The Rocky crew had been good to him. They'd taken him under their wing, no questions asked, and helped him realize things about himself. Tim had taken him to the ER when Mary had come down with a serious case of the flu. Matty had taught him the basics of sewing. Gretchen had held him after a bad trip. Omar and he had had many drunken heart-to-hearts about their shitty home lives.

And Amber was his best friend. She'd been his #1 cheerleader for years and had never been afraid to call him out on his shit.

So yeah, he loved the Rocky crew…but they laughed at anyone who took anything too seriously. Mary would show up to game nights in his latest creation—with everyone else in pjs or jeans & hoodies—and they'd tease him about trying to impress the wrong people. He'd try to talk about the newest guitar god he'd been mainlining, and they'd make snoring noises at him.

How could he explain the kinship he felt with the Deathbutantes? That they were as serious about music as he was, that they just…got why he felt the need to dress the way he did to express the way he felt inside on his outside.

Instead, he said, "I'm just trying shit out, Ambs." He quirked his eyebrow at her. "I gotta do something while you guys do your real-person jobs."

(Amber had recently started as a junior marketing assistant at the American Repertory Theater. "Purely mercenary," she'd said. "Maybe it'll give me a leg up during auditions.")

She made a disgruntled scoffing noise in the back of her throat.

"Fuck, don't remind me. I actually gotta go to bed a reasonable hour now."

"Don't worry." Mary winked at her. "I'll keep ya honest."

"That sounds a lot like my head in a toilet, Mare."

"I'll hold your hair back."

She gave him a good-natured shove, and he pretended to cower.

If she wanted to cross pollinate, who was Mary to stand in her way? So, he invited her out the next time the Deathbutantes went to a show, and it went exactly like he thought it would.

They disliked her, and she was equally unimpressed. They thought she was too loud and frenetic, and she thought they had no sense of humor.

"I fucking told you," Mary had snorted as they sat on the curb sharing a clove.

"Shut the fuck up, Mare."

But she'd put her head on his shoulder.

"They make you happy, though. So I guess I approve. Just as long as I don't have to play nice."

Mary still hung out with the Rocky crew—there were still game nights and drug-fueled sex parties and theater games—but the Deathbutantes introduced him to the underground scene. They always seemed to have insider knowledge about the best up-in-coming bands and the secret shows. Theme nights at the goth clubs were always a must, and they rarely missed one. Sometimes, Angelique would crash, and they'd take the commuter rail to Providence to party at Club Hell before collapsing in a sweaty, smeary pile at a friend of a friend's hole in the wall.

As a bit player in the Rocky crew, Mary had been another made-up face in the crowd. As a certified member of the Deathbutantes, Mary became the face.

They all did.

The owners loved them because they bought round after round at the bar, and if word got out that the Deathbutantes were there, their admirers came to spend money as well. The employees loved them because they were fun and talked to them as equals. The clientele loved them because they were pretty young things.

Sometimes, though, Mary wasn't in the mood to party or get laid, so he talked to the DJs instead. He'd buy them rounds and stay past closing to help them pack up while they talked about the history of punk and 80s new wave and nu metal. There was one in particular, Dave, that Mary even considered a friend.

The two of them would sit in the club past closing, sharing a whiskey and talking about life while the bartenders closed down and cashed out. Occasionally, Dave's other friends would be around, and they'd all walk back to his place; he'd fool around spinning in his home studio, and they'd drink box wine as they danced and laughed before Mary would have to sit on the ground in an intoxicated exhaustion, good for only thumbing through Dave's vinyl collection.

Mary was just happy to talk shop with another music aficionado, but Angelique had pointed out that he should leverage his minor clout.

They'd been waiting for Greg to finish setting up, and Mary had been struggle city after a particularly hard night out. It was all he could manage to sit there quietly and hope some god would put him out of his misery.

"You need to get your shit together," Angelique had said out of nowhere.

Mary had cracked a puffy eye and had slowly (as to not bring the nothing in his stomach back up) turned his head to her.

"As if I haven't seen your melted ass on the floor wanting to die."

"Fuck, Mary. You've turned it into an art form."

He'd closed his eyes and given her the finger, but that hadn't stopped her.

"You wanna be a rockstar, boy? You can't just sit on your ass and hope the right person on the right night hears you. You're effervescent and charismatic—heads turn when you walk into a room and not just because of your skinny jeans—but you need more than air, Mary, which is all you are right now."

"Fuck you, Angela."

She'd clapped in front of his face, and she was lucky he didn't Exorcist bile all over her.

"You're a fucking pain in my ass, Goore. I'm doling out the good stuff, try not to bite my hand off, k?"

"All right, all right!"

"You wanna start that band? You wanna get play and amass fans? Well, make that demo you're always droning on about and give it to those DJs you're alway fanboying over. Fucking network, Goore."

At the time, Mary had been too hungover to care, but her advice would sink in…

Eventually.

For the time being, Mary was content. He loved the attention, and it made him feel invincible, made him feel like it was finally His Time. And he was going to make up for every slight, every unfair situation, and every beat down with sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.

With his newfound nightlife, Mary's day job had become an afterthought. He started sleeping through opening shifts, but with the extra foot traffic Mary brought to the store, his boss seemed resigned to let Mary slide (after a stern talking to and a pay docking).

The shadow cast had started using him as a mascot of sorts, and he was happy to show up on Saturday nights and hype up the waiting line with a pseudo striptease. (Even if it was sometimes to kick off his evening with the Deathbutantes and not hang with the cast after.)

Mary started a band ("auditioning" any and all of the many admirers who said they’d be more than happy to join it), and after a few false starts and a couple of lineup changes, they began working on an EP. (At least, when Mary showed up to rehearsal, they did.)

A Boston Phoenix reporter got wind of the Deathbutantes and called around about doing a story on them. The Bens were excited about the exposure that meant for their zine, and Angelique and Greg were excited about what it could mean for their careers. Mary did a brief interview over the phone where he answered questions about his style and talked about his dream of making his band a household name.

Mary saw his name up in lights, and he was reaching for it, full speed ahead.

But then things turned.

The story fell through at the last minute with no further explanation or contact by the reporter.

His boss finally fired him after Mary showed up too high to function too many times—or not at all.

The shadow cast had a turnover, and suddenly he was old news—a cringey hanger-on.

A trip to the clinic and a round of antibiotics for an STI had him way more wary of who he hooked up with.

"Heroes" lost momentum when imitators popped up and Ben cut off the gravy train.

Angelique moved to NYC for "better opportunities," and the Bens took their brand of counterculture to Portland, OR.

Greg took down the website when he got offered a legit job as an apprentice at a food magazine, and that was that.

The physical zines were cheap things, most ending up papering the sidewalk after trash day or lining the bottom of cages. Without the online presence, did Mary's "modeling career" even exist?

Mary was a little sad to see the era go, but when he woke up in Maine on the hood of some girl's car and only a hazy recollection of how they'd gotten there, he was beginning to see Angelique's point. He needed to get his shit together if he was ever going to become a rockstar. And frankly, he kind of felt like he needed to spend an entire month eating carrots and hydrating.

The 24/7 party had always been an ephemeral thing; it had been sand passing through his hands in a finite amount as he'd tried to hold onto it

He put himself on detox, and waking up sober for the first time in months felt like a revelation. And as it turned out, playing the guitar without badly shaking hands was way, way easier.

He found another job in another music store, and his starter!band was bringing butts into the smaller venues, like Toad.

He still had his old Rocky friends and the Deathbutantes. The club and venue owners still let him in for free, and Dave was always happy to give his demos a spin. By anyone's else's measure, he was steal one of the scene's darlings.

But Mary was beginning to realize that he needed to stop seeing himself as that scared kid who’d arrived in Boston 4 years ago with only a backpack, $72.57 to his name, and void where his family should be.

He needed to stop finding people to please into loving him.

Instead, he needed to live for himself and let them love him for who he was—fuck ups and all.

@slimylayne

Epilogue

"Honestly, that’s probably the reason I even got a band together," he says. "I was still kind of shit at guitar, but people came to see ‘Model Mary’ perform in his underwear."

He shoots me a smirk.

"I’m sure there’re pictures out there of me looking more glam than metal. I kind of played up the whole pinup thing for a while."

"Fuck, I would kill, literally kill to see that."

He pulls me into his lap until I’m straddling him.

"I could open up my underwear drawer and show you right now."

"Goore, you temptress."

I lean down to kiss him, and his hands sneak under my shirt, but I pull away again.

"I kinda thought I knew all your torrid secrets by now. Shit, how come Dave's never needled you about it?"

After 2 years with him, I’m surprised I hadn't even heard a peep from his oldest friend.

Mary snorts.

"Dave would miss shit hanging off his nose. Great dude, amiable as fuck, but he's always had fucking tunnel vision for his music."

I smirk at him.

"Sounds like someone else I know."

Mary pulls a face at me, and I apply kisses to every line until he laughs and bats me away.

"But really, Mare—how come you never told me about your brief career in blue steel?"

He blows out a breath, his hands smoothing up my thighs.

"Fuck. Cuz maybe I was a little embarrassed at how off the rails I was then, ok? Didn't want you to know what I fuck up I was." He takes my hand and kisses my palm. "And even I know it's a shit move to pitch woo at someone by telling them about banging half of Boston."

I make a face at him, and he laughs.

"Yeah, that’s what I thought."

His hands rest on my waist.

"Christ, everything about that year's a bit fuzzy, and it was like 10 years ago. Sometimes it feels like it happened to someone else, honestly. And shit—most of those people aren’t even around anymore. College kids who moved on and 20-somethings that grew up and moved who knows where. I used to watch Amber have—what is it when it’s four people?—and now she lives in bumblefuck Pennsylvania with 3 kids. After she left, I just kinda drifted away from all that."

He shrugs, his eyes downcast.

"I’m sorry, Mare," I say as I smooth his eyebrows.

He shrugs again.

"I mean, we all kinda keep in touch. It's like the only reason I have Facebook."

"When was the last time you even signed into that?"

Mary grins at me.

"Lola's birthday."

"One of the models? What happened with them?"

Mary bites his lip and thinks.

"Mayhem found religion after an OD and kinda ghosted everyone. Lesley followed a girl to New Hampshire. Uh…Lola pursued a PhD for something sciencey involving renewable energy with sugar beets in Idaho, and Bryan moved back to Florida to care for his grandma, who raised him."

Mary leans his head back on the couch and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"I mean, shit. We were fucking babies back then. Head empty except for a good time and unlimited potential."

I run my fingers through his hair.

"You miss it?"

His eyes pop open to look at me.

"Fuck no. Not for a million dollars. Too many question marks." His eyes glint as he runs his hands down me. "I like what I got going on right here."

I wrap my arms around his shoulders and kiss his forehead. The fucking sap.

Mary picks up my phone and scrolls through the pictures again.

"Fuck. I used to be goddamn adorable, though. Half this shit wouldn’t even fit me anymore."

I squish his little potbelly, and he grunts at me indignantly.

"Do you still have any originals?" I ask.

He shakes his head, his eyes wistful and his smile sad.

"Nah. Got destroyed when my roof collapsed and leaked everywhere. Fuck, landlords are useless. Glad we fucking own now, babe."

He scrolls up, scrolls back down.

"Just these four?"

I nod.

"Yeah. They were the only ones I found—and I did a lot of searching."

"Christ, I think there were at least 10."

I smile ruefully at him. "It’s not gonna be long anyway before they make their way into the popular tags and shit starts coming out of the woodwork."

He tosses my phone onto the table.

"Whatever. Just shows that I’ve always been cool."

And then he’s kissing me again, his hand tangling in my hair.

"You know, I’m your family now, Mare. Just for you."

He brings my hand up and kisses it.

"Fuck, I know that. Why’dja think I put a ring on it?"

#mary goore #longfic #gender neutral insert #aurelio voltaire

47 notes · View notes

aer-in-wanderland · 4 years

Photo

구미호뎐 | Tale of the Nine Tailed - 이동욱 VLIVE 2020.11.18 TotNT Q&A

Below the cut you’ll find a translation of some of the TotNT Q&A highlights from Lee Dong Wook’s recent VLIVE, wherein the actor answers live questions from fans and shares some fun behind the scenes stories and insights.

Note: these are only excerpts I’ve selected out (primarily from the third segment) of the full 2hr VLIVE. You can find a full transcript of the second segment here.

At the start, LDW wrote a few things on a white board because he was being asked them so much. Those are:

Tale of the Nine Tailed Ep 13 & 14 will both be broadcast the following week (filming for the drama has wrapped) [on November 5th, after filming for nearly 7 months]

He really does like mint chocolate

He has no intention of running his own SNS (social media)

[In a later addition] He doesn’t know his MBTI type and isn’t interested in finding out

The VLIVE proceeded in three main sections. 1) Free talk 2) VS Game (prepared for him by his promotional team), and 3) TotNT Q&A. Below are some things I thought were of note, mostly from the third section, complete with time stamps in case you want to go see where he talks about them but also because academia has conditioned me to always be meticulous about citing my sources. ;)

Q: Do you watch Tale of the Nine Tailed on live broadcast? [0:17:16~0:17:46]

I think I watched live...about half the time. I saw about half of the episodes live, and for the other half I couldn’t watch because we were filming, so I either watched them on re-watch [online] or when they re-broadcast them.

Since it wasn’t entirely pre-produced, we were still filming as it was being broadcast, so there were occasions when I couldn’t watch the broadcast live.

[Note: The reason people in Korea are concerned with the original live broadcast (bonbang) is because this is how the viewership ratings are measured.]

Q: Are you close with Kim Beom-nim in reality? [0:30:45~0:31:03]

(Laughing) Yes, we are close in real life haha. That was a very cute question. We’re extremely close. We worked out together yesterday too. (Laughing) That was a cute question.

[Note: Lee Dong Wook and Kim Beom are represented by the same talent agency so they’re also label mates]

Q: Are there any ad lib lines that come to mind? [1:17:30~1:18:30]

Everyone, to be perfectly honest, I did so many ad libs I don’t even remember them all. I think I made an ad lib in nearly...at least once in every two scenes? Was it more than that? But thankfully the director and writer gave me a lot of opportunities to do as I pleased. Most likely if you were watching and found yourself thinking, ‘oh, that seems like an ad lib?’ those were all ad libs. And there were actually many more than that even. Yes. I did so many I can’t remember.

[Note: You can find a full round-up of ad libs mentioned throughout the VLIVE that I did here. I’m not going to repeat them in this post since it’s going to be long enough already ;) ]

Q: What line left the deepest impression on you? [1:18:36~1:19:35]

This is also...for our drama, the writer really did a wonderful job writing the dialogue and there are many iconic lines, right? So to be honest it’s difficult to just pick one...yes. But, in any case, it would probably have to be that line, wouldn’t it? The ending of episodes 1, 4 and 9. Ji Ah’s line, ‘I waited for you.’ And then again at the end of episode 4, my line, ‘I also waited for you.’ And then at the end of episode 9 Ji Ah says, ‘I waited for you’ with a different meaning. The mirroring of the lines in these ending scenes, I believe it will have stayed with you, and it stayed with me too.

[Reading the live chat] Yes, ‘I have never once missed my target.’ Yes, that line was also really good. It was a line that helped to wake something in Rang-ie’s heart, so...

Q: Was it hard acting before the CG effects were added in? [1:20:39~1:23:19]

Ah, is that so? That was also released as a clip, as a video [available here]. They compared the CG before and after...It’s not easy. Yes. Especially in cases like the Knife Mountain Hell and the Snow Mountain Hell, when you film in front of a blue screen, you need to make a lot of calculations. And, you sort of...need to be aware of the details. Right now, what cut you’re filming, what cut will come after that cut, and...for that, seeing as how everything around you is blue, you tend to lose your sense of direction a bit? You also have to take that into account. So, actually to film all the Knife Mountain Hell and the Snow Mountain Hell scenes, added together, I spent three days and two nights in front of a blue screen...so it was a bit hard. After being in front of nothing but a blue screen for nearly three days straight...I started to lose my sense of time and space. Where I am now, which direction I’m going in, whether where I’m currently standing is facing forward or backward, even what time it is currently, or how much time has passed, these sort of...the most basic senses that are part of being human, become duller and duller. That was somewhat hard. But thanks to our director, our CG director, and our stunt director helping me a lot, and the same goes for our film crew, yes, so, that was how we filmed.

Ah, and, when filming in front of a blue screen, especially in cases like the Knife Mountain Hell, there are knives flying at me right? So I get asked a lot if that isn’t embarrassing, but to be honest when I’m filming I don’t have the space to even be concerned with those sorts of things. It’s not as if, like, because I moved in such a way I feel humiliated or because I did this I feel embarrassed. I don’t even have the space to be concerned with those things. I just think about the fact that the CG team, the stunt team, the camera team, and me, I have to act well so that these four teams can work well in concert...yes. Because to the extent that my acting comes across as realistic, it should be better once the CG is added. Because it will be easier for the people filming [that way], so I always film while keeping those things in mind.

Q: Do the colors of your thread rings have to do with the drama’s plot? [1:26:42~1:27:00]

[Big pause] Hm~.....the color doesn’t.

Q: Between Lee Rang and Imoogi, who did you have the best synergy with for the action sequences? [1:27:26~1:28:11]

For me, it was easiest when I worked with the stunt team (laughs). When I do action sequences with other actors...I’m uneasy. Well, the other party might also be uneasy but I am also uneasy, because if we happen to strike each other for real, we’ll get hurt. So I always film with a very cautious mindset, but when I do action sequences with the stunt team, in any case, because they are professionals, even if I get the motions slightly wrong or I step forward too much, they are able to adjust to match me. So my heart is most at ease when I do action sequences with the stunt team. Because they are able to respond to me well.

Q: Do you get startled for real when Taluipa screams at you while you’re acting? [1:28:46~1:28:59]

No. In reality it doesn’t startle me that much. Jeong Nan-Noona (Actress Kim Jeong Nan) is also very close with me. We’ve been in a number of productions together, so we enjoyed ourselves.

Q: A behind the scenes story from the promotional teasers with Jo Bo Ah? [1:29:17~1:30:02]

Ah~, this is a bit of a departure from talking about the drama itself. I was just talking with Ji Ah, with Bo Ah-ssi, and we ended up talking about how it might be if we tried filming something funny just by ourselves to release before the broadcast...and so, I was the one who provided the idea, at the beginning. If you look, it’s written there, right? Planning: Jo Bo Ah, Directing: Lee Dong Wook hehe. Yes, we just made them like that. At the very beginning, Jo Bo Ah-ssi was the one who proposed making them, so the planning is Jo Bo Ah, and then I was the one who supplied ideas of ‘let’s do this like this,’ so the directing is Lee Dong Wook. Yes.

[Note: If you haven’t seen these, they’re great. There are three of them that were shared to both Lee Dong Wook (@leedongwook_official) and Jo Bo Ah’s (@xxadoraa) Instagram feeds ahead of EP03, EP05, and EP07]

Q: Who had the most NG (no good) takes while filming? [1:30:59~1:31:14]

I have the most NGs. I think in any case, I have the most...I joke around a lot, and I make a lot of ad libs, and I also had a lot of scenes, so I had the most NGs.

Q: Re: Lee Yeon’s Hair [1:33:38~1:34:34]

Yes, I like it. Ah, this could actually be a bit of a ‘behind the scenes.’ It was actually my idea to make Lee Yeon’s hair red-brown. It wasn’t the original character setting. I thought that, since he’s a Korean red fox, how would it be to make his hair a bit closer to that color, and also that it would be nice to give him a bit more of an otherworldly image. So I consulted with the director of our salon and the salon director said that that would be good. So I ended up with red-brown hair, and it just worked naturally that the (mountain god) wig be a mixture of red-brown and silver. Ah that isn’t white hair, it’s actually silver. It’s much closer to silver hair, not white hair. So that’s how I came to have a combination of red and silver long hair. Yes.

Q: What was your reaction when you first met the agwi while filming the Forest of the Starved sequence? [1:36:27~1:37:50]

That, rather than thinking they were scary, I mostly kept thinking about what a hard time they must be having. The Forest of the Starved sequence, adding together every time the Forest of the Starved shows up from beginning to end, we filmed for nearly a week straight. Six days? For about six days to a week. For most of them, they are actually members of our stunt team in stage makeup. There were also many people who appeared just in those roles, but those folks all had a really hard time. That makeup takes a long time to put on and a long time to take off, and seeing as it’s all special effects makeup it’s hard on your skin in a number of ways, and because it was summer it was really hot and humid, and because we were in the forest it was just...well, in any case there were truly a lot of error conditions, so while me and Kim Beom-ssi also had a hard time, in truth it was those people who had it the hardest. Those who played the agwi really worked very hard. Thank you very much to those people. For me and Kim Beom-ssi, at least our clothes and shoes were, at least we were dressed comfortably while we filmed, but those people had to wear torn hanbok and straw shoes while running, so in truth those people are the protagonists of the Forest of the Starved. They really worked the hardest of all of us.

[Note 1: ‘those people’ sounds dismissive in English but LDW is using the respective term ‘bun’ so he’s actually being quite deferential here.

Note 2: Kim Beom has said elsewhere that he filmed this sequence for 3 weeks so either LDW is just talking about his own scenes or possibly Kim Beom just remembered it as being longer than it was haha]

Q: When you played baduk with Lee Rang, did you know what you were doing or were you just placing pieces at random? [1:39:34~1:40:07]

For that, I knew what I was doing. For that baduk game, someone who knows [how to play], if they see that board just once they will know. We used a high caliber game by extremely famous baduk players and transferred the placement of the pieces exactly, and then Rang-ie and I took turns placing piece by piece like this, right? For that, we each, Rang-ie and I each memorized our moves, so we were playing an actual game of baduk. The reason being that, these sort of things are the details, and for those, well, you shouldn’t lie, right?

Q: Are there any details you payed attention to when you were acting as Lee Rang transformed (into Lee Yeon)? [1:44:27~1:45:47]

For episode 11... for episode 11, at that time, conversely, I didn’t pay much attention to it. At that time, the reason being, fooling the viewers was a critical part of that sequence, of that episode, so conversely, if I had acted like Lee Rang, and Lee Rang had acted like me, like Lee Yeon, doing it like that seemed like it would have been too obvious, so we just, to the greatest extent possible, we each respectively acted Lee Yeon as had been, and Lee Rang as had been.

But then, when Lee Rang transforms into Lee Yeon and goes to see Taluipa, at that time I tried more to act like Lee Rang. In fact, before we started filming, I asked Rang-ie, I asked Beom-ssi to read through the lines once. I asked him, ‘If it was you, how do you think you would do this?’ So Beom-ssi read it for me and I matched that. So this was another place that I manipulated the details while I was acting. When I (Rang) went to see Taluipa, when he was transformed, there was originally another version where I (Rang) looked around even more and was even more awkward. But rather than that, that was too blatantly obvious, so it was broadcast with the more toned-down version.

Q: Did you really have a video call with Ji Ah? [1:46:18~1:46:36]

No, we each shot our scenes on different days. I shot mine first, and then Ji Ah-ssi, Bo Ah-ssi, shot hers about two or three days later. We each shot separately on different days.

Q: A behind the scenes story from the sound booth recording? [1:48:07~1:48:47]

The sound booth recording is just the sound booth recording (laughs). Ah, that, the sound booth recording for the hell scene? Ah, that was exhausting. For that, honestly if it wasn’t for the ‘making’ (behind the scenes video) you probably wouldn’t have known about it. To that extent, I poured as much energy into it as when I had originally acted it out all over again as I was recording it, so I really ended up feeling like I’d gone to that hell and back twice. Which is what I said in the ‘making’...And that was caught on video by our miss Bo Ah, and that ended up being released as part of the behind the scenes.

[Note: The sound booth BTS can be found here (2:09~3:01)]

Q: Which of the mountain god outfits do you like the most? [1:50:47~1:51:11]

That...when I went to save young Rang-ie, the outfit I wore the first time I appeared, the black one, yes. In the Forest of the Starved, when I went to save young Rang-ie, the mountain god clothing I wore when we first met, I personally really liked it.

Q: Re: the mountain god hair [1:51:30~1:52:17]

It was uncomfortable. It...dragged a lot, and sort of...yes. It gives you a headache. Once you’ve had it affixed for about 6 hours, your scalp gets tighter and tighter, and it hurts your head. So the wig, it also takes a long time to put on and take off. To be honest, the mountain god scenes, to everyone watching they may be very beautiful...but they were quite tiring. That goes for the wig, but also for the hanbok. It’s very uncomfortable to move about in and restrictive in a number of ways. Especially, seeing as how I always got a headache, it was a bit hard.

Q: Does Lee Yeon know that he’s cute? [1:55:06~1:55:09]

Of course.

[Note: This is the 3rd gif ;)]

Q: What was the first scene you shot? [2:02:18~2:02:46]

My first scene was...the scene where Soo Oh and I meet at the park and talk. That was the first scene that I shot. When the little girl lost her balloon and I caught it and returned it to her. Soo Oh said, ‘Ajusshi, are you an alien?’ and I said, ‘No, a gumiho.’ That scene was the first scene of Tale of the Nine Tailed that was shot and it was my first scene that I shot.

Q: Did you have a time when you swooned while acting with Jo Bo Ah-nim? [2:03:14~2:03:20]

Of course. Whenever I act out those sorts of emotions I always do.

~~~

This is not a complete exhaustive transcription. You can find my translation of the VS game that proceeded the Q&A here.

#lee dong wook #tail of the nine tailed #totnt #vlive #20201118 #구미호뎐 #이동욱 #my translations #totnt vlive #I was impressed by how candid he was #if some of the sentences are a bit hard to parse it's because I translated exactly what he said and obviously he was talking unscripted #so not every thought or sentence was brought to its conclusion

77 notes · View notes

coralstudiies · 5 years

Text

hello everyone! I got an ask from an anon asking for tips on time management so i decided to type this out before school starts heheh…

poor time management and procrastination, unfortunately, plague just about all of us lol. people with a short attention span (like me) and who are pretty much always on their phone (me again) and who hate scheduling are the most susceptible to these.

over the years i struggled with time management(studying the night before the exam 🤙🏼) but! these are some tips that have helped me in scheduling, avoiding procrastination and improving time management.

1. Write it down

as always, we’re starting with BEFORE the actual task. write all tasks, assignments, projects and homework, test dates down somewhere (notebook preferably so that you dont lose it. it doesn’t have to be your bujo and you do not have to start a bujo for this specific reason!!!) and write the deadlines. this is subconscious pressure to do work once you get home. also, since you can see everything, it’s easier to schedule it out later

2. Use travel time

i cannot stress this enough!!!! sorry that it appears in all my tips posts but it truly is very useful. for short commutes, review the content you’ve learnt so that when you start on your homework, you’ve already got the hang of it. ie you dont struggle to understand the chapter and be put off from finishing your work because you hate it. long commutes can be used to complete work itself. i like to place some books and a file under my worksheet while i write (if i have a seat lol) or you can take this time to plan your time in greater detail

3. Actually plan your time

you dont have to fancy it up with like, brush pens and highlighters. just do something on google sheets or excel. divide the day into appropriate blocks of time.

for me, since i use a focus timer (50+10 or 100+20, rare cases i do 120 with a long break after that) i keep my days in 1hr blocks. so i’d block in about 1hour after i reach home to chill, clean up and so on, 2hrs for homework and the remaining time can be divided by hour/2hours to complete my work. you can tweak the timings to work for you but so far this one suits me pretty well.

4. NEVER RUSH YOUR HOMEWORK AND REVISION WHEN PLANNING!!!!

i repeat, never rush. because when you give only, say, one hour to review 3 chapters and you fail to do so within that time limit, you feel demoralised and hence, will not want to work more. this is a very common issue i believe. sometimes i would rush revise and when i couldnt stick to the timelines, i’ll feel so defeated that i’ll probably binge watch youtube to cure my self-pity LOL

give yourself an ample amount of time. Assign one or two hours a day as ‘delay time’ (this was my free time) so that you can catch up on anything that unfortunately, you couldn’t finish. Assign one day of the week to be the ‘delay day’ -- anything that you cant finish the week before, do it now. this means that you can still ‘save’ your plan even if it screwed up somewhere along the way. it works wonders, believe me! i used to have ‘delay hours’ after training where i would (ahem sadly) study from 2330-0030 if i needed to. while i was tired, i always got my work done.

5. Prioritise

this one needs no explanation. i usually choose which task to start on based on a combination of deadline+importance+graded/non-graded. i start early for graded assignments because they count towards my semester’s final grade and i want to hand up the best quality work i can. find a system which works for you! note: start project work and large assignments early.

you can assign simple tasks first to start the ball rolling, and proceed with harder tasks.

alternatively, if you’re at your prime focus, start with the hardest and scale down to the simple.

6. Make good use of holidays + Wake up early

ok i used to game a LOT and go to training a LOT (still happens now lol) during holidays but i wouldnt get any of my holiday work done.

do your holiday homework first. schedule your time well, and maybe stay home and resist the urge to go out for the first 5 days. finish all your work (again, schedule well) with breaks in between.

thereafter, schedule maybe 3-5 hours a day to revise. if you’re going out with friends, i’d suggest you wake up early to study because once you come home you’re usually dead tired HAHA

so how early is early?? during my o levels study break i would wake up at 0330 (yes, for real) but i slept at 2130 every night. so thats 6 hours of sleep wew but AT LEAST i was very productive. think about it this way: waking up early to study at 0330 makes you more productive than studying till 0330. you don’t have to wake up THIS early, but preferably early enough when the sky’s still dark so that you can fit in those extra hours. DO NOT sacrifice sleep. that’s why you can see i’m still sleeping my usual amount, albeit sleeping and waking earlier.

more perks of waking up early: its quiet outside, the air is cool, your mind gets into the ‘get shit done’ mode, and if you absolutely have to use your phone to search something up, your social media probably won’t be pinging. in other words, early mornings are actually a great time to study! remember to eat something though :>

7. Remove all distractions to prevent possible procrastination

YES i know this is the dreaded one. lock your phone somewhere inconvenient and put the key outside your room. or if you don’t lock it make sure your phone is far away from you as possible. please i know how deadly your phone can get so just put it away.

if you find yourself drifting away and looking at something else, remove that.

alternatively, change up your study environment. you don’t have to go to the library or something (you can if you want to). this is as simple as studying in a different part of the house. a new environment helps to ‘prick’ my mind and help me ignore distractions. i dont know if this is scientifically proven but oh well, worth a try.

8. 2-minute rule

this is something i picked up from @studyquill! it’s pretty helpful (although i was skeptical at first). Tell yourself you’re only going to work for 2 minutes, which helps you get into the workflow. chances are you’ll get so into it (ok not in an excited but rather in a determined way) that you don’t feel like stopping.

if you’ve had a long day and after 2 mins you still don’t get any momentum, just stop and take a 15 min break. that means you’re really too tired and there’s no point in forcing yourself to complete your work.

9. Use reminders

set reminders on your phone for the tasks you need to do. for example, if you’ve planned to start work at 1500, set the reminder to ring 5 minutes before so you have time to gather all your stuff and ready yourself to do work. no excuses!!

set reminders for your breaks as well! those are equally important.

10. Reward yourself

if everything you need to do is done, give yourself a pat on the back. have you been extremely productive? great, treat yourself to your favourite drink/snack. honestly i feel like many of our brains function on the ‘reward’ system. if we reward ourselves for a job well done, we’ll be more willing to complete tasks and stay on time in the future (the brain thinks there’s a reward coming)

remember to take care of your mental health as well! this is one good way to ensure you don’t end up mentally exhausted.

Apps to help with time management

1. Tide - focus timer, meditation, beautiful and calming soundtracks (my fav!)

2. Pendo - everything in one tbh, schedule, to-do list, journal etc. (my fav too!)

3. Forest - focus timer $$$ (free alternative: flora)

4. Donut Dog - focus timer

5. Todoist - minimalist to-do list

6. Minimalist - minimalist to-do list

7. Google Calender - your entire schedule

8. Todait - smart study planner

a quick search will bring out many more! note these are all available on iOS but i’m not sure about google play. you don’t need everything to be productive. i rely only on Tide, Pendo and my iPhone calender and reminders. It’s less about having many ‘tools’ and more about how you properly and wisely utilise them to boost your productivity and manage your time.

also i don't think pendo is very well-known?? so this is how its interface looks like for 'Notes':

it's pretty, simple and clean and there are several themes to choose from! i rly like it omg HAHA (not a promo)

alright that's all! hope it helped :>

973 notes · View notes

felidfavs · 3 years

Text

i gotta go back to working in studio next week and i have SO MUCH ANXIETY. means i get to:

- take city transit again for ~2hr every day

- wake up balls early

- actual plan meals again to make sure i have lunch aka cooking all evening

- see my boyfriend at work every day which... is good but also... nerve wracking in a weird way cause im not usually one to mix aspects of my life

- have to dress semi appropriately (dress code is super relaxed but nOT AS RELAXED AS MY HOUSE)

- talk? to people? every day?

- not have little dance parties n grind in my chair when a good song comes on

- not take impromptu naps

- not have hella flexibility on being able to work at a pace that suits my injured flesh suit and adhd brain

- not able to watch netflix and tiktok while i work which is bad because it REALLY helps keep the adhd at the right level to actually get work done

im not excited. its such a struggle to surivive each week when work takes like 11 hours of my day and its all maximum overstim to stay focused hhhh.

like at least im starting from a better place this time but fuck im N e r v o u s

3 notes · View notes

i-am-still-bb · 4 years

Text

How We Live Now - Author’s Note

Just wanted to let everyone following the story know that I haven’t abandoned this story.

At the very end of November I received some unexpected and unwanted news. And I haven’t really written much since then that requires greater planning and attention. Long story short: I’m pregnant and not particularly pleased about it.

And it sucks. Big time. I hate every minute of it.

I have 2 masters degrees, I’ve researched, written, and edited 15 page papers in a night. I did archival research, wrote a 50 page chapter that was well connected to the other chapters with full citations and edits in less than 72hrs. And I have never been this effing tired in my life. I wake up (after doing so 2-3 times each resulting in being awake for at least an hour) and I have about 2hrs before I’m so wiped out that all I can do is mindlessly watch reruns of sitcoms. And you can completely forget about working out or cooking.

Tl;dr - Updates will be coming when I can think straight and work on the outline. Hopefully before February, but I can make no promises.

#personal #how we live now #if anyone says congratulations I might just snap and murder something #probably judgy pregnant ladies who want to name their spawnlings Reign #Ziggy #or Neko #and say that I can’t eat sushi or ski

10 notes · View notes

and-it-freezes-me · 3 years

Text

Schemes Of Mice - Part 1

Schemes Of Mice is the first part of the What Happened In Lichmai series.

Title is from the poem To A Mouse by Robert Burns.

{Part 2} {Part 3}

Summary: Virgil Insmyre’s carefully planned road trip takes an unexpected turn for the worse, and he falls back on getting help from a strange pair of travellers.

Content: car trouble, hitchhiking, very loud music

Word count: 7,007

It was dark.

It was always dark. The light of the moon never made it down here, the stars never shone across his face.

It was dark, and it had been dark for longer than he wished to know.

Just because he didn’t like it when plans went wrong didn’t mean that it was the end of the world.

Those were the words that Virgil repeated to himself as the needle on the fuel gauge dipped ever so slowly below the red line, and still no petrol station came into sight.

He had thought he had planned this whole trip out down to the last detail. It was supposed to be easy: leave his hometown with his camera and the other essential things he couldn’t be without in his car, and have everything else sent by post to meet him when he arrived on the other side of the country to start his new life. He had spent hours upon hours planning the route he would take, carefully avoiding any cities with higher-than-average crime rates, selecting a few choice parks and monuments that he had always wanted to visit and photograph and sketching his route around that. He had checked the laws for every state he needed to drive through and made sure his old, navy blue car had been checked over at the garage no less than three times before he had left. Virgil had packed enough bottles of water to survive getting caught in a snowstorm and having to stay put for up to a week; he had packed enough dried food to sustain him just as long in an emergency; he had packed not only his weighted blanket but also a fluffy one he had impulse bought a few months back, a patchwork one his grandmother had made him when he was seven, and his sleeping bag, just in case he had to spend the night in the car. None of these things should be necessary, though, because he had made sure to check the weather forecasts for every town along his route, made sure that there were diners and motels and hotels and restaurants everywhere he planned to stop for the night.

He had made sure that he had his route entered not only into the GPS he had bought for the sole purpose of not getting lost when he had to go slightly outside of his comfort zone to get specific photos, but also into his phone, and drawn it out across several maps with a full notebook of times and directions. He had scheduled in an hour’s break for every four he spent driving to stretch his legs.

And he had definitely scheduled in petrol stations.

They were pencilled in at regular, carefully calculated intervals: he should never have gotten below three-quarters full.

And now he was coasting to a stop at the side of a dark road, the screen of his GPS filled with static.

“Stupid, overpriced, worthless junk,” he snarled, engaging the handbrake and tossing the useless system on top of the bag on the passenger seat. His phone was in the drinks holder, next to a very large, very empty coffee cup, but when he grabbed it to call… Anyone, really, he found that he had no signal.

Virgil very nearly punched his steering wheel in frustration, then reminded himself that he still had another two days of driving to do and that the first aid kit in his glovebox, whilst expansive, would not magically fix his fingers when he inevitably broke them. Instead, he shook his phone roughly, hoping that by some miracle that would help it pick up a network.

It didn’t.

Instead, it completely.

“Fuck,” he commented eloquently. That was okay, though. Virgil made certain never to travel without a portable charger, and he made sure it was fully charged before he left whichever motel he stayed at in the mornings. Pulling it out of the top of the bag beside him, he plugged his phone into it and closed his eyes slowly.

He would count to five, open his eyes, wait for his phone to charge a little, and then call the nearest breakdown service he could.

One. Two. Deep breath in. Three, four, deep breath out. Five.

“Fuck!” The portable charger was out of juice - and Virgil had been certain he had charged it that morning. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!”

Okay, okay. This wasn’t the end of the world. The world wasn’t ending, he was just going to have to…

Okay, maybe it was the end of the world.

Virgil took another deep breath, and then another, and then a fourth just to make sure he still could. Reaching into his bag, he rooted around until he found his notebook and a pen, and flipped through to an empty page.

“Okay, okay… What’s happening, what’ve I got…” He muttered.

The problem, Virgil wrote.

Out of petrol on side of unfamiliar road at night 8pm

Should have passed petrol station > 1 hour ago - didn’t

Should be an hour from next motel

GPS broken + phone w/out battery or signal

Can’t figure out position on map

Individually, any of these seemed bad. Put together, Virgil was pretty sure he was going to get murdered by a roving serial killer. He jerked his hand through his purple bangs, then lowered his pen back to the paper.

Inventory

My camera set

Useless phone, map, GPS, laptop

Enough water + dried food for the week

Six clean changes of clothes

Two dirty changes of clothes

Three blankets + sleeping bag

Misc. house items including coffee machine + cactus

Okay, so he wouldn’t starve to death. Or freeze, especially given that the weather was supposed to be clement at the very least.

Solutions

Backtrack until civilisation found + get help

Haven’t seen a building in nearly 2hrs, would take all night

Walk along road until civilisation found + get help

Don’t know how long that’ll take

Don’t know what the road does / could get lost

Night - dangerous, unfamiliar place

He definitely didn’t want to be wandering around at night.

Wait until morning + follow road + get help

Means staying in car overnight

Less likely to get lost/murdered inside car than outside

It looked as though he was going to be sleeping in the car tonight. Chewing thoughtfully at the end of his pen, Virgil added one more bullet to his list.

Somebody might drive past + could help

Hitchhiking, of course, was a spectacularly horrible idea, and there was no way Virgil was going to attempt anything remotely like that - not with his phone out of action, and no friends to know where he was or report him missing, and in a strange place.

Virgil would really rather he didn’t get murdered today. Or any day, really. Getting brutally murdered was not how he would choose to go.

Hopefully, if somebody passed, they would be more inclined to help him than kill him. If he were really lucky, they might be the kind of person to carry extra petrol (why didn’t he do that? He should start doing that), or at least be willing to give him some of theirs if he paid them back. Maybe they could tell him where he was - or maybe they’d have a spare portable charger that he could buy off of them.

Virgil tried to ignore the fact that in the time that he had been driving down this long, seemingly unending road, he hadn’t seen a single other vehicle. There was no point in working himself up to a panic attack, not when he had a clear course of action now.

The fact that that course of action was to do nothing was beside the point.

Groaning, Virgil stretched his arms above his head and heard a series of pops as his back flexed (driving non-stop for almost a week wasn’t exactly doing him many favours, even with the breaks he had scheduled in). As he reached for the bag on the seat behind him, where he had stored a few of the water bottles and rations along with his blankets and sleeping bag, a wide yawn stretched his jaw. If there was a silver lining to this whole mess of a situation, it was the fact that he was being forced to get some rest now.

Well, what passed for rest. Virgil doubted he would sleep particularly soundly, even with his weighted blanket wrapped around his shoulders and his seat reclined back as far as it would go. Aside from the discomfort and the nagging worry that he was going to wake up to find a knife in his guts and somebody making off with his camera (both of which were good reasons to sleep fitfully), he needed to stay at least awake enough to be aware of any cars passing.

He could get out, could stand by the side of the road or sit on the bonnet. He’d be more awake that way, more aware, more responsive if anybody did drive past - but he’d also be more vulnerable to passing murderers and (he was reminded by a faint howl in the distance) whatever predators roamed the area.

Turning off the lights (he didn’t want to waste any more of the car’s battery than he already had), Virgil shifted briefly before turning on his side so that he was facing out of the car’s window, watching the road for headlights.

The clouds covering the sky shifted, and stars twinkled down at the quiet stretch of countryside. The moon rose.

It was peaceful. It could almost be considered pretty, if he weren’t one-hundred-percent aware that he was going to have to spend hours hiking tomorrow to find help.

The glow-in-the-dark hands of Virgil’s watch moved slowly around its face, and seconds dripped into minutes dripped into hours.

At least he was warm. At least he wasn’t hungry, at least he was free and safe and alone.

This would push his schedule back by at least a day, of course - but he should still arrive at his new flat sixteen days before his first day at his new job. That would give him plenty of time to get used to his surroundings, to make the walk between apartment and office several times over to make sure he wouldn’t get lost on the way, and to find a good place to get coffee when he didn’t want to be completely isolated.

Virgil still couldn’t quite believe that he had landed an entry-level position at Mary-Lee, Lee, and Co.. They were a fashion agency, one of the big ones, and there was no way they should have been looking at a twenty-year-old, only a year out of highschool (he had been held back a year before anyone had realised that his reluctance to participate in English classes had been dyslexia rather than laziness), with only a year’s crash-course in semi-professional photography to his name.

Of course, it wasn’t as though he wouldn’t get more training on the job - a lot more training - and he would probably be staying on the lowest rung on the company ladder for a very long time.

Virgil was thrilled.

It was the chance to be the one in charge of his own life, a chance to do what he loved rather than serving popcorn in a tacky movie theatre to pay for his photography course and his stupidly high rent, a chance to be free, a chance to disappear.

Virgil was jerked out of a light doze by what could only be described as the sound one would get if they gave a cat a chainsaw and told it to sing while it cut down a lamppost.

It was faint at first, faint enough that he wasn’t sure what had woken him. Then the small plastic spider he had taped to his dashboard started bobbing, and Virgil realised that the horrific noise must be something approaching. A car? Maybe? A car with the most horrible taste in music imaginable, and willing to play it at a stupid volume in the middle of - what time was it? He glanced at his watch - at two in the morning.

Well, if whoever it was was happy to announce their presence for miles around, they were probably going to be easy to track. He scribbled trying to attract attention of loud music people in his notebook (he was tired, it was the best he could come up with in a rush) and scrambled out of the car, turning on the headlights as he did. Anything to be seen, right? If he could just borrow somebody’s phone…

By the time the minivan was close enough to see, Virgil wanted to put his fingers in his ears: he had to ask how whoever was driving it wasn’t deaf already, or how they hadn’t been arrested yet. Instead, he took another long breath before sticking out an arm and waving it frantically, hoping that would be enough to get the driver’s attention.

It was.

There was a horrific screech that felt akin to a metal spike being driven into his brain, and Virgil almost crawled back into his car when the man driving leaned out of the open window to grin at him. His smile was so wide it seemed to split his face open like something out of a horror movie. There was a streak of white in his otherwise brown curls, he was waving at Virgil with both hands (one of which had a bandage wrapped around the palm, both of which looked smudgy with… ink?), and his wide eyes made him look ever so slightly unhinged. He had to be wearing contact lenses, because his irises were the kind of bright, acidic green that typically comes in bottles marked with skulls and crossbones. In cartoons.

“HEY!”

He had to shout to be heard over the ‘music’ that was still pulsing from the car and flattening all of the plants for miles around, and even then Virgil probably wouldn’t have figured out what he had said if he hadn’t been looking directly at him.

This was a bad idea. He was going to get murdered by a guy that probably had pure caffeine running through his veins and bats in his belfry. Lifting one hand in a weak surrendering motion, Virgil groped around behind him for the handle to let himself back into the car.

“HEY! ARE YOU IN TROUBLE? CAN WE HELP AT-” The ‘music’ cut off suddenly, and the guy glanced briefly at whoever was in the car with him before turning back to Virgil. “All?”

The sudden silence made Virgil’s ears ring, and the hand that had been waving awkwardly moved to rub the back of his head, where a dull throbbing had started up. “Uh… No. You know what? It’s cool, I’m all fine here, I’m just gonna…”

“Did your car break down?” The guy was still shouting. It was amazing that he could hear anything, really - or maybe he couldn’t, given how he had just ignored Virgil’s questions. “I know about cars! Anything I can help with!”

Then Virgil blinked, and the guy was standing right next to him, offering him his bandaged hand to shake. He seemed to be constantly in motion, shifting from foot to foot, picking at a scab on his neck with his other hand, tapping his fingers against his hip. If it hadn’t been for the constant motion and the overly wide cartoon eyes, he would have looked almost normal in a slightly tatty band t-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans - oh, maybe not. He was wearing slippers. Not just any slippers, either: they were fluffy, and when Virgil squinted at them he realised that they had long ears.

Wild-Eyes-Guy must have noticed him looking. “Vampire bunny slippers! Do you like them? I made them myself!”

“... What?” Maybe he was dreaming right now. That was the only sensible explanation for this. Virgil’s hand had found the car door, but for some reason he hadn’t scrambled back inside just yet - and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.

“Vampire bunny slippers! Made them! What do you think?!” The guy repeated, and Virgil blinked again.

“Uh…”

“Roman, what are you doing to this poor kid?” A second guy had gotten out of the van, an eye-mask pushed into his hair like an alice-band. He was wearing slacks, a sweater, and (thankfully) regular trainers on his feet. He seemed a little less… Manic, than Wild-Eyes-Guy (Roman?) - although maybe that was because he had only just woken up, if the sleep mask and the way he was rubbing his eyes was any indication.

They both looked to be no more than a few years older than Virgil, but being called a kid seemed to be the least of his issues right now.

“He was asking about my slippers! I told you they’d be popular!” Virgil had no idea what he was supposed to say to that. His absolute bewilderment must have shown on his face, because the calmer guy moved closer and rested a hand on Wild-Eyes-Guy/Roman’s shoulder. Roman seemed to calm down a little. He stopped bouncing, at least.

“Are you sure about that one? He looks terrified.” There was a dry note in Calm-Guy’s voice - and Virgil suddenly noticed that his eyes were yellow as butter. Acidic butter. Was there some kind of convention for people with a thing for weird contact lenses?

Had he been sleeping in contact lenses? Virgil’s foster brother had worn contact lenses sometimes, and Virgil was pretty sure that you weren’t supposed to sleep in them.

“He flagged us down! Why would he be terrified?”

There was silence for a second, Virgil still trying to figure out whether he was about to be murdered by a guy in vampire rabbit slippers and his sleepy accomplice. Calm-Guy seemed to be waiting for Roman to answer that question himself; after a second, Roman’s shoulders slumped and his smile dropped back to regular proportions, becoming almost sheepish.

“It’s super late and you’re alone on an empty road, of course you’re terrified!” At least he had stopped shouting, but Virgil wished he didn’t sound so excited about that fact. Calm-Guy rolled his eyes, then held out a neatly manicured hand. Virgil shook it. It wasn’t as though there was much else he could do now, right?

“I apologise for my boyfriend, he gets… Energetic, when he drinks coffee. I’m-”

“Hey! I haven’t had any coffee since ereyesterday!”

“Energy drinks, then?”

“Yep.” Roman popped the ‘p’, looking immensely satisfied with himself, then moved over to the hood of Virgil’s car and lifted the bonnet. Without asking. What the hell?

“Uh… What are you…”

“Engine looks fine! Flat tire? No, the tires look fine, the suspension looks fine -” He was under the car now, jabbering away at the greasy machine above him.

Calm-Guy groaned and ran both hands through his hair, but not so roughly that he dislodged the eye mask or ended up looking even remotely ruffled. “As I was saying, I am known as Ethan Anguis -” He pronounced it ‘on-guie’. “- and the delight currently trying to figure out why you’re sitting on the side of the road without asking you is my boyfriend, known as Roman Pulpos. I assume you flagged us down as opposed to us gatecrashing your private camp-out?”

“Uh…” Virgil blinked, then nodded. “I, uh… Ran out of petrol. Was hoping I could… Borrow your phone, or… Something.”

Ethan nodded slowly - and Virgil realised that he didn’t seem to have blinked in the whole time he had been standing before him. No, that couldn’t be right. It was just a trick of the light.

“I’ve got it! You’re out of petrol!” Roman had stood - and if his hands had been grubby before, that was nothing to the grease and grime that now stretched from fingertip to elbow. There was even dirt on his face. Ethan groaned beside him.

“Did it occur to you, dearest, that you could simply have asked him? It would have been far more polite than simply poking around his car…”

“He didn’t seem very talkative.”

A snort left Virgil, and he clapped his hand over his mouth as they both turned to look at him. Then Roman’s face split back into that wide grin, and he came back to stand beside Ethan, who took a pointed step away. “You’re not getting back in the car until you’ve washed some of that off, you know.”

“But it’s my turn to choose the vehicle!”

“Yes! You chose it! But we’re still keeping it clean! Water bottle, cloth, go!” Ethan flapped his hands a few times in a ‘shoo’-ing motion, and Roman rolled his eyes - and his head with them - before stalking around to the passenger side and opening the door. The yellow-eyed man turned his attention back to Virgil, a fond smile on his sharp features. “So, you said you were hoping to…”

“Borrow your phone, yes,” Virgil nodded, eyes snapping back to the man before him rather than the now-shirtless Roman, who seemed to have decided that his t-shirt would work better than a cloth for getting rid of the grease.

Ethan clucked his tongue sympathetically. “You won’t get any signal out here. The nearest town is an hour’s drive away - I’d assume that walking was going to be your next plan if you couldn’t flag us down?”

“Uh… Yeah.” Virgil shifted awkwardly. “Do you… Know the area well?”

“Used to live here!” Called Roman, and Virgil forced himself not to stare at the muscles rippling under the dark skin of his back.

“A long time ago, yes. We return every few years,” Ethan added. “I wouldn’t try walking at night. The landscape gets a little… Treacherous. We can give you a lift if you want - there’s a repair shop in town, you can get someone to drive out and pick up your car tomorrow.”

“I… I really couldn’t.” Virgil shifted from foot to foot. “I’m perfectly fine waiting until morning and walking in. Got plenty of blankets ‘n’ food. I’ll be fine. Thank you for offering, though.”

Ethan blinked - but still not as though he needed to. More as though he was processing the words Virgil had just said, and wanted to show that he was paying attention. Maybe Virgil’s mind was playing tricks on him. It was very late, and he was very tired. “Understandable. I wouldn’t want to push you into anything you’re not comfortable with, so-”

“We’re not gonna kill you, y’know,” Roman added helpfully, and Virgil almost jumped out of his skin because he was suddenly right next to him. Virgil had been so caught up in not staring at him and talking to Ethan instead that he had completely missed his returning to their side - still shirtless, because the world was actively working to make his life difficult. “That would just be rude.”

“Roman! We’re trying not to push the kid into-”

“I’m not that much younger than you, you know.” Yes, because that was the important point to argue just then. Really, it was a miracle Virgil wasn’t already dead in a ditch somewhere, what with his brain constantly seeming to do the opposite of what he wanted it to.

Ethan looked mildly amused. “Really? How old are you, kid?”

“Twenty. And it’s Virgil, not kid.” If they were going to murder him, they probably would have done it by now. Telling them his name wasn’t going to make any difference at this point.

Roman snorted and ran his hand across the top of Virgil’s car, inspecting a large scratch in the paintwork below the rear door. “Virgil? Like virgin?” Virgil winced.

“No, you dick -” Ethan punched his boyfriend lightly on the shoulder, and Roman rubbed a hand over the spot with exaggerated remorse. “- like the poet. And if Virgil doesn’t want a lift from us, we should get going.”

“We could keep him company! It’s gonna be a long night out here on his own - unless you plan on walking, which is a really stupid idea!” There was the soft popping noise of the petrol flap being opened, and then the click of it closing. Then Roman opened it again. And closed it again.

Virgil lasted until the third pop-click before turning and batting Roman’s grubby hands away from the side of his car. “Stop that.”

“Feisty,” Roman commented, but clasped his hands obediently in front of him, the picture of angelic innocence. Not. Virgil had a feeling that Ethan was scowling at him from over his shoulder. “You sure you wanna be left alone? I heard there are monsters prowling out here…”

He practically sang the words, as though nothing could delight him more than the idea of terrifying creatures ranging the countryside. Virgil made himself chuckle in spite of the shiver that ran down his spine, and nodded. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for the tip about town, Ethan. Thanks for… Whatever you did, Roman. I guess.”

“Nothing,” Ethan said, at the same time as Roman said, “Introduced you to the idea of vampire bunny slippers and made sure your car wasn’t broken.”

“Yeah. That.” Shrugging, Virgil tugged open his car door and slipped inside, then waved a hand at the pair of them. They were still staring at him with their bizarre, bright eyes.

He closed the door behind him, and the sound seemed to snap action into the pair of them. Ethan rolled his shoulders back and jerked a thumb at their minivan - the side of which Virgil now realised was covered in what looked like a mural of a pirate ship being crushed by a very large sea monster - before walking back toward it.

“See ya around, Virgil-Not-Virgin!” Roman yelled (why was he yelling again?) and followed, climbing back into the driver’s side of the van. The ‘music’ clicked back on, sound obliterating all rational thought (how was Ethan still sane, driving around with that cacophony all the time?), and after a second the van’s engine started up.

That was when Virgil filled up his stupid quota for the rest of the year.

It had suddenly occurred to him that he really, really didn’t want to be left alone in the dark and the quiet now - maybe Roman’s talk of monsters had gotten to him, maybe it was the contrast between the stillness of his cold car and the aliveness of the two people that had just stopped to try to help him, weird though they might be.

They probably weren’t serial killers. If they were, there was nothing to stop them from killing him as soon as he had flagged them down, or being a lot more pushy about giving him a lift. He had already told them his phone wasn’t working (why had he told them that? What had he been thinking?) and they knew he was alone.

Making the decision in a split second, he threw his door open again and started waving his arms, running after the van as it gradually picked up speed, as though that would make him more noticable.

Virgil only had to move a couple of steps before it screeched to a halt again. For somebody so clearly enthusiastic about cars, Roman should probably get his own brakes checked out sometime. The ‘music’ cut off once more, which was a relief, and after a moment the minivan reversed until Roman was level with him again. “Hey again! Change your mind?”

“I - yeah,” Virgil nodded. “Realised I’d rather not be alone. Promise not to murder me if I catch a lift?”

“Oh, don’t give me ideas!” Virgil raised an eyebrow at the toothy smile, and Roman had the decency to look a little less thrilled at the idea of murder. Why had he said anything? “Already said we wouldn’t - a gentleman’s word is his bond, ‘n’ all that!”

“Nobody’s going to believe you’re a gentleman, R.” Virgil had been planning on saying something similar, but Ethan seemed to have beaten him to the punch. “I, on the other hand, actually behave like a member of the gentry - in any case, you’ll be fine.” Ethan had gotten out of the van again, walking around the front to open the side door. Roman flipped him off lazily. “Is there anything you’ll need overnight? I doubt anyone will come across your car, but if you’ve got anything you’d rather not leave unattended, we have space for a bag or two in this… Contraption.”

There was a note of distaste in his voice - clearly, Ethan regretted whatever turn of events had led to him agreeing to allow his boyfriend to choose their transportation.

Virgil nodded, already turning back to his car. There was no way he was leaving his camera alone overnight - and he should probably grab a water bottle, maybe some food, a change of clothes - he would only need one change of clothes, right? Ethan followed him quietly, and after a second Virgil heard the slamming of a door and realised that Roman had come to join them.

The pair of them stayed quiet as Virgil pulled his bag from the passenger seat - his camera, laptop, and phone were already in there - and tossed in a water bottle and his weighted blanket, but when he opened the small boot to retrieve a clean change of clothes, Roman let out a low whistle.

“Fuck me, that’s a lot of stuff. You moving somewhere? Ow, watch your elbows, j-eez!”

“I’d have thought you’d have gotten better at respecting other people’s boundaries over the last few years, Roman.”

“I’ll respect your boundaries in a minute,” Roman grumbled, and Ethan snorted at the nonsensical threat. Virgil put his bag down by his feet and used both hands to close the boot (it had been a second-hand car even before he had purchased it, and the boot was stiff), then turned back to find the two of them nose to nose, locked in some sort of staring contest.

He cleared his throat. “Um. Are we…”

“Going? Yes, just dump your shit on one of the seats.” Roman waved a hand at the van without breaking eye contact with Ethan. Weird, Virgil thought, but whatever. They had been nice enough so far.

It looked as though the minivan had once held eleven seats, arranged in four sets of two down one side and three individual ones down the other. Now, though? The three individual seats had been ripped out, and the second pair back from the driver’s seat had gone the same way. Of the remaining seats, the two pairs at the back looked as though they had been converted into a makeshift bed: the backs of the seats had been bent down until they were almost horizontal, forming one large, mostly flat expanse. It was partially covered in rumpled blankets. A row of beanbags ran down the van’s wall, and blankets had been pinned over the windows like curtains; what looked like an icebox was strapped to the back of the vehicle.

It looked as though Ethan and Roman were used to travelling together.

Placing his bag carefully on one of the two remaining seats (the one with the brown stain that was probably barbecue sauce and not blood, because these people probably weren’t serial killers) and strapping the seatbelt down over it, Virgil sat down. One hand rose automatically for him to gnaw at the cuticle of his thumb; turning to look out of the still-open door, he watched Roman and Ethan finally break off their staring contest. Roman looked frustrated - he had probably lost, then. The taller of the two dropped a kiss on his forehead, and the green-eyed man stalked back around to the driver’s seat. Virgil couldn’t hear the words, but he was grumbling under his breath as he passed the still open door.

“All good in here?” Ethan was leaning against the open door, smiling at him.

Virgil nodded slowly. “I… Yeah, I guess so. I’ll be able to find my car again tomorrow, right?”

An answering nod. “The repair shop in town will do just fine. Tell ‘em it’s on the main road, about an hour out - no trouble finding it.”

“Thanks.”

Ethan nodded again, closing the door, and then climbed back into the passenger seat. Roman flicked the music on. Somehow, it wasn’t quite so deafening on the inside of the car. Frowning, Virgil leaned forward - he hadn’t seen Roman fiddle with the volume dial, although he hadn’t been watching… It still looked to be pointing at the maximum, though.

“Rigged it,” Roman said. Looking up, Virgil found his unsettling eyes watching him in the rearview mirror. “Plays super loud outside, isn’t so bad in here. Spent hours getting the soundproofing right. Ended up deaf for nearly a week!”

He started the engine as Ethan twisted around in his seat to look at Virgil again. “Roman,” he commented dryly, “enjoys being a deliberate nuisance. There was practically a mob chasing us out of Milan.”

“It was a literal mob, Eth. And you know you love me really.” For a vehicle that looked dirty and slightly battered on the outside and sounded as though there were monsters living in the braking system, the minivan drove smoothly - more smoothly than Virgil’s third-hand car, anyway.

“Milan, Illinois? Or Ohio?” If he was in this van, Virgil might as well make conversation.

“Milan, Italy. Nice place. Nice language. Good food. Sunny.” Roman waved a hand around his head, then turned to look at him as well - something that was not reassuring, given that Virgil could just about see that the needle on the speedometer had ticked past sixty. “Ever been, Virgil-Not-Virgin?”

“The road!” He should not have gotten into this van. Virgil was going to die because this idiot had decided not to watch the road and Ethan didn’t seem to have noticed. “Watch the road!”

“The road?” Roman glanced back at the windscreen and shrugged. The van swerved, and Virgil grabbed his bag to stop it from sliding forward off of the seat despite being strapped in. “Oh, the road! Yeah, okay… Wrecking the van would be a pain now I’ve got it almost perfect. Ever been to Milan?”

He didn’t sound at all concerned about the possibility of fiery death. Brilliant. Virgil was in a car with a lunatic. Well done, me, he thought sarcastically, don’t want to be alone in the middle of the road at night. Now I’ll be sharing a grave with these guys. Just brilliant.

“No,” he said, because why not keep the conversation going? It might help to keep his mind away from the apparently high chance of death. “Never left Washington before. Are you guys Italian now, then?” They didn’t have a trace of an accent, but that didn’t mean much.

“Nope! We’re from here - just going home for a few days!” Unconcerned with the fact that he had already told Virgil this, Roman yanked on the wheel, and the van skidded around a corner. Virgil grabbed for the side of his seat with one hand and his bag with the other.

“Ma viaggiamo molto, bambino,” Ethan added - because of course he would speak flawless Italian. Why not?

Roman jerked the wheel the other way, and Virgil winced as his shoulder hit against the wall of the van. “Non è un bambino, occhi di serpente, è Virgil.” Ethan blew a kiss at his boyfriend.

Great. Now they were talking about him in a foreign language. Maybe this was all just a really, really stupid dream, Virgil decided. He was probably sat back in his car, still dozing and waiting for the sun to rise so that he could make the walk into town. Assuming that there was a town, and that wasn’t just something else his subconscious had come up with.

At least he had the presence of mind to remember his camera and laptop even in a dream. They were his most precious possessions, both in terms of monetary value and in what they meant for him. Losing these would be like… Losing a limb, maybe. Or his head.

“-long way from Washington for somebody that’s never left it before, Virgil. Going anywhere nice?” Ethan had twisted around once more, and Virgil realised he had missed the point at which the conversation had switched back into English again.

Shaking himself, he patted his camera once. “Got a job on the other side of the country, took it as a chance to move somewhere new. Thought I might as well make a road trip out of it - still cheaper than flying, which is absolutely criminal.”

Ethan made a sympathetic… Hissing noise (?) as their driver bobbed his head, although whether that was agreement or simply in time with the ‘music’ that they were only just able to talk over without shouting, Virgil didn’t know. “Tell me about it! The faster humans learn how to travel, the more they try to suck every penny from you! Like money leeches!” Roman laughed, the idea apparently delightful to him.

“There’s definitely a strong correlation,” Ethan mused, turning to gaze thoughtfully out of the window. His sleep mask was still propped up in his wavy hair, though he had shown no inclination to use it again - maybe it was obvious how much Roman’s loud energy unsettled Virgil, and he was trying to make sure he wasn’t alone. Or maybe he had decided that they were close enough to town that there wasn’t much point in trying to sleep again. “Speed makes humans greedy… Sounds like the kind of claim - oh, Virgil, you might want to close your eyes for a couple of minutes. We’re almost at the Edge. Sounds like the kind of claim somebody could spend years trying to back up.”

“We should do that. Might kill some time, you know?”

“Are you telling me you’re already bored of-”

“Woah, wait.” Virgil held up both hands, remembered neither of his companions were looking at him, and let them drop again. “Why do I need to close my - holy shit! Sweet Frank Iero, fuck!"

Virgil squeezed his eyes tight shut a second too late. Light exploded around them, seemingly out of nowhere and leaving bright streaks across the insides of his eyelids. He could hear Roman cackling in front of him, the music still playing, an exasperated “I did try to warn you…” - whatever had happened, neither of his companions seemed at all surprised.

Maybe they had just driven past a football stadium, and Virgil hadn’t noticed the floodlights until just then? No, that didn’t make sense: he would have seen the lights when they had first appeared on the horizon. Unless they had been dark until somebody had just turned them on - at two in the morning? And Ethan had known that it was going to happen?

Automatic lights, then. Or - Or police vehicles, apprehending the two of them for whatever reason. But wouldn’t they have stopped, or sped up, or something? And if Ethan had known that there were police waiting for them, why would they have travelled this route anyway? It had to be automatic lights.

Then Virgil opened his eyes again, and realised that he couldn’t pinpoint its source.They were still driving through open countryside, on a road with no street lamps or buildings, grass stretching out on either side of them. To their left and stretching out in front, Virgil could make out a forest. The only difference between now and a few minutes ago was the fact that it seemed to be the middle of the day.

He looked out of his window, then out of the front of the van, neck craned toward the sky. It was a blank, pale colour somewhere between orange and yellow. He couldn’t see the sun at all.

Twisting in his seat, Virgil tried to see some line where the night ended and the day began. There was nothing. Just… Grass, and trees, and road, and light. Obviously. Night magically turning to day at three in the morning was slightly more likely than a magic line separating the two.

Of course, given that this was all obviously a dream, there was nothing to say that there couldn’t be a magic line like that. It wouldn’t be any more out of place than people with acid eyes and a soundproofed car who spoke flawless Italian, after all. Maybe Virgil should stop eating directly before going to sleep.

Both Ethan and Roman had turned to look at him, Ethan appearing to be somewhere between smug and sympathetic and Roman wearing a shit-eating grin that stretched from ear to ear. Virgil just stared at the pair of them for a moment. “... Road?” He asked finally, and Roman nodded before turning away again. Virgil cleared his throat briefly. “What the fuck was that?”

“That’s what I said the first time I saw it!” Roman crowed, and Ethan slapped his arm gently. Virgil grabbed the side of his seat as the van swerved before straightening again.

“One of the quirks of home.” Ethan gestured out of the front windscreen, and Virgil leaned forward to see houses racing toward them (how fast was Roman driving? Was this legal?) (Who cared? It was all a dream). “Never gets dark.”

“Ever?” How would a place function if it never got dark? “How does that… Doesn’t it… Drive people mad?” Of course, Virgil would understand if it didn’t. This was all in his head, after all, and his head didn’t always make sense.

“Of course!” Virgil wished Roman didn’t sound quite so cheerful about it.

Ethan sighed and shook his head. “Most people just learn to live with it. You’ll forget about it in the next day or so, don’t worry. That’s Lichmai for you.”

“Leesh May?” If he was going to be inventing names, they could at least be names that sounded real.

“Lichmai. Welcome to our hometown, Virgil.” Ethan didn’t sound particularly pleased to be back.

#remus sanders #janus sanders #virgil sanders #WhatHappendInLichmai #SchemesOfMice

2 notes · View notes