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OK I think that's it. Is that it?

Prompt Response

He felt... weird. Not... good weird... maybe not bad weird but... definitely weird. In ways he wasn't quite sure he knew how to describe... or entirely understand. He felt...

...hm. Like someone had kind of... smudged a line somewhere, but the line was supposed to be part of him.

He supposed maybe he was just homesick. Not for a place, not for a specific person, not even his Grandmother. It was more... homesick for the way things used to be, before he'd gone and screwed up. When people looked at him and you saw them measuring his potential, not clucking their tongues at his perceived waste of it.

The first time it happened he was seething; stewing at his desk and looking at the same text book page over and over (without actually seeing it... because damnit, you always thought of the perfect comeback when it was hours too late for anything but 'Oh Yeah??'.

He could picture the grassy stretch of lawn, feel the knots in his shoulders and the way the tension of rage made him feel like he was slowly working toward bursting into actual flame from containing frustration and fury.

He could smell the torn grass under his sneakers, fresh and green, mixed with a prickle of sweat just overpowering the forced, artificial scent of deodorant.

The way the light broke against his classmates hair and turned dull brown into glints of red and dirty gold, the details as sharp as knives. He was even pretty sure the tree they'd stopped under was an maple, with circles of lichen dotting it's bark. Motes of dust or pollen drifting on a breeze too light or him to feel.

He could still taste the slightly-sweet cheap Marinara from lunch, lingering on the back of his taste-buds, soured by anger as he pictured exactly what he would have LIKED to do to that...

that refrigerator shaped jerk.

"Yeah maybe you should go out for football, you're good at running from stuff I hear."

He wanted to punch him. He wanted to put another bend in that once broken nose, flatten it to his face until he looked like a bulldog. Yell at him that he didn't know anything.

He should have said... ... he should have said a lot of things.

Instead he was sitting at his desk, drowning in the little details he was surprised to remember. He didn't normally think deeply about trees. Oak, Maple, Birch, who cared, right? He didn't need to know... but he could see it, the way he could see the shirt his classmate was wearing. The faded spots from a bleach accident and the wrinkles from having been crumbled up too long. The spots jerk-face had missed shaving.

He could have drawn it, if he was any good at that.

He didn't want to see it though. He wanted to see... he didn't know. His grandmothers living room. But When he tried to imagine it... the way he so sharply imagined the details of the argument, it was like watching something go out of focus. The details slid back into softness, the smell of grass was gone and he couldn't for the life of him summon that fantastic smell of her blueberry pie, or the type of wood polish she used on the floors. The sharp details just weren't there.

Just the text book. A tedious march of black lines on white paper full of dates that felt like they were tap dancing just enough on the page to make it hard to focus on the dates and names he was supposed to be learning about.

UGH.

He buried his face in his hands and groaned. Maybe it was a good time for a break. He'd go downstairs and get a soda or something.

Yeah... yeah maybe that would help.

It took him a bit to realize he was misinterpreting things. That the smells weren't imagined (even the particularly vivid memories of that godawful 'haunted' dumpster Gwen had hauled him to. Screw that damn racoon. Not in a fun way.

The smells, the intensity, they were real, he was just... incorporating them into things. It started with the smell of the deodorant, he was getting dressed after a shower, trying to sort out plans for the night and imagining how the night might go. He had places to go, and was already imagining being the coolest guy in the room (for a change) bringing his guitar out and playing some tunes, when he caught a whiff of it again.

For a second he bristled, thinking the smell belonged to someone he'd like to pound into the ground, then he realized that the smell was familiar for... entirely different reasons. It was even sharper, being freshly applied, and he put the deoderant down slowly, focus snapping away from the party.

Parties certainly contained smells like... the faint whiffs of deodorants and shaving cream, but it was the under currant of his Uncles weird 'Green Clay' soap (not unpleasant, just... weird) that helped make the tipping point.

But that couldn't be right, could it? The... the make up smells, the...

But that didn't make sense. None of it. Even if he assigned the smells, the,,,


Maybe there was something wrong?

He braced his hands on the sink and squinted critically at his own face, but if there were supposed to be any obvious signs of something like a ... he wasn't sure... weird brain tumor... he couldn't detect anything. He was equally pretty sure that even with his nose, which he felt might be a little more prominent than absolutely necessary, probably hadn't developed that crazy Mutant power where you could detect the individual ingredients in perfume.

Was that a thing you could develop later? Oh god he couldn't tell Gwen she'd assume he was either turning into Hannibal Lechter or possessed by an ...weird, giant nose ghost or something.

Falco feels he is taking this entire 'Yer a Warg Ha... er Falco." thing rather well.

Leather Jacket Blues
Solo-

The leather jacket was a statement.

For most people who saw it, they saw… pretty much what you’d expect. The shaggy hair, the jacket, the occasional round of bruises and abrasions on his knuckles. They saw the Boy who Ran.

For him it was a trophy. Or a reminder. Or both.

That as much as sometimes you might think you wanted the truth, sometimes you were better off not knowing.

He tugged up the collar of the jacket and sniffed the worn leather, trying to recapture the smell it had when it was new. It still smelled good, but it was a different kind of good, and there was less… pain… attached to the memory. It was more, coffee shops and books and the crushed grass at the park, playing for some girl he’d met ten minutes ago because she was hanging out in a tree.

Less of new leather and someone else's spilled alcohol. He’d even cleaned up the stain at the cuff where he’d flattened…

….He couldn’t even call him ‘Dad’.

‘Father’ barely fit. It all sounded too… connected.

What was the word for someone who you found out had walked out on you before you were born, because you weren’t good enough. The word for someone who, when you did find them, smiled and lied and lied and lied, until they didn’t think they could hear you.

Until you found out they had an entirely different life without a space for you in it. Because you weren’t good enough. Not smart enough, not handsome enough, not well bred enough.

Like He was so much better, instead of someone who dusted off, found out he could pass as a show breed, and decided to ditch it all.

He hadn’t even known he had an Uncle. Not until he’d made his way back home. He’d spent most of his bus fare on buying the guitar, pretended he had run away to join a band. He’d kept the jacket. Well… stolen… the jacket kind of. He could have tossed it back, it hadn’t even been what his Father had said it was. It was supposed to be a gift for his -other- family but the lining was damaged and it wasn’t good enough.

Falco goddamn loved that jacket. At least as much as he’d kind of hated it at first, and worn it anyway.

He’d wrapped himself up in it on his Grandmother's beat up furniture and pretended everything was fine. Like hadn’t run away, scared her half to death on a stupid mission after finding out that one of his parents was alive. (He got now why she didn’t tell him, but he’d been so damn mad about it then… It had been like watching her grow older in steps in the wake of his anger but he hadn’t been able to stop.)

Then she’d come into the room, with her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, and said softly that there was someone she thought he might want to talk to.

Someone else his Father had left behind.

Someone who had a little room for him.

Heavy Metal- Jaro and Falco

We Didn't Start the Fire

Rylan checks in on his fellow Warg after the Job Fair gone awry.

MissMatchup- Falco has some discoveries about Pokemon and thoughts about his wardrobe.