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 Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 10:30 pm
it sounded like a dream
Because they were idiots, because they were on a road trip and trying new things, in Washington Chris and Thorne decided to go to a bar. It wasn't really clear whose idea it was - it could have been Chris' or Thorne's equally, with the other being unable to tell them no or just not thinking, high off the trip to Disney and whatever else. Regardless of where the blame lay, there they were, in this random bar in Washington (the state, not the city) with alcohol of choice laid before them.
Admittedly, Chris did want a drink. The downside to driving for a whole trip was that drinking always put a hamper on things and made them stay and there was so much to do, to see, that they hadn't done any at all. Beer, maybe once or twice, but it was easy enough to shake off with a water and that was that. And he wasn't complaining because they had seen so much that was amazing, so much that he couldn't have seen if they had flown, that he didn't regret it for a second. He didn't regret their stupid arguments and 3 am drives across endless stretches of land, he didn't regret the weather they've seen seen and the temperature changes and everything.
But the west coast was less exciting as they drove up, the temperature that they had escaped from Ashdown creeping back in, the weather starting to grey a little into rain. They'd crawled their way through Oregon and now in Washington, outfitted in jackets that they'd been ignoring for weeks in the South and in California, a drink felt appropriate right now. Spending a little more time in Washington, that was fine. They'd find somewhere else to go, something else to do, but for now taking a breather felt appropriate as the cold crept back in.
So now they were in this bar in Washington, a busy bar but serviceable enough that it had Soju and Whisky along with all the fancy drinks that people were buying around them. It was busy enough that Chris could lose Thorne among the crowd, but not so much that it was hard to hear anything over the music.
Thorne left to go to the bathroom or - something, Chris isn't sure, so he's sitting at the bar idly playing with his phone. Something is toying on the edges of his memory here as he runs a finger of his free hand around the edges of his glass and it leaves him with a vaguely worried frown, the lines of his forehead rumpled. He wants to pour another drink of his bottle but before that he wants Thorne to be back because he know Soju can hit hard and he's already feeling strange, something about this bar and something about the liqueur that makes him uncomfortable enough to stay his hand. Have him aimlessly scroll buzzfeed and wonder how the hell Thorne is taking so long, if he's drunk.
To his left a girl appears, a pretty thing, dressed in something that makes Chris wonder how she even got here, much less getting home, without freezing to death. He flicks his eyes her way, thinking she's just ordering from the bartender before back at his phone. To his surprise, she places her hand on his arm and he looks up, confusion rewriting worry on his face.
"Have a bad night and drinking it away?" She asks, innocent, concerned. Chris offers her a vague smile, quietly puts his phone away, since it was rude to have it out. "I'm fine," He replies easily, wonders again where Thorne is. Wonders why he let Thorne dress him, since he's slightly cold and would kill for Thorne's jacket at the moment, the leather one that Thorne still had on him, or at least he thought he did. Wasn't too sure at the moment.
"Are you?" She asks, sounding like a purr. Her arm moves up and down on his, a comforting motion, "You look like someone who should be on the dance floor, not drinking a bottle at the bar alone. Why don't I help you finish that and then we do something fun?"
[wc: 699]
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Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 11:05 pm
it sounded like a dream
Washington is familiar to Thorne, and once they hit Seattle, he stops consulting Google Maps. He knows I-5 and I-90 like the back of his hand, but more than that he knows the smaller veins and arteries that connect the state together, east and west, and their haunts and their smaller, disjointed whispers, all of them sleeping beneath the weight and comfort of the spotlight Seattle shines. Even the construction does not bother him enough that he cannot see the beauty of his old home. He confirms hotel rooms for them on their way in. He murmurs absent thoughts to Chris on where they might travel later on, since he'd booked them a three day stay in Seattle, just to see the sights that surround it.
They'd cruised through California, through Wyoming and Oregon and Nevada. The coastal highway had been gorgeous, but Thorne thought when he saw Seattle that there was no other place he would rather be with Chris just then. He pulls his old jacket from the duffel in the trunk that night, dresses casual, an off-black cotton soft shirt hanging from his body, fitted around his chest but loose the rest of the way down, concave above tight jeans and faded out boots made for hiking. He prepares to wander the streets with Chris, get food, whisper and laugh and talk as though this entire road trip hasn't been burning a tension through the air that they can both taste, an invisible passenger joining them in the backseat by the time the Midwest had risen to greet them.
How they end up at a bar is beyond him, mostly because Thorne has actively been avoiding bars with Chris in them since the last time it had happened. The only time it had happened. The entire time they enter and order and sit, Thorne is nothing but tightly bottled energy, his breath wound up in his throat like a molotov cocktail waiting to be lit. He doesn't want to be here. He looks at Chris. He wants to be here. His mouth feels burned.
He takes the first shot of whiskey easily. He isn't unaware of the attention they both grab. Every sliding glance bounces off of him, but whenever he sees furtive glances browsing Chris, something vicious turns in him. Cruel, unhappy, unkind. It tells him terrible things, makes him want to wrap his arms around Chris, keep him close, keep him his. They have been on the road too long. Thorne had gotten used to nice restaurants or nowhere dives, hours of driving and hours of walking and hours of being alone with only one other person to share his world, this beautiful plane of existence. Now he remembers that there is a world beyond them both -
And for all he knows, in that world, someone Chris wants to love is there, waiting. You could share a thousand secrets in a universe with just two people. But what did they matter when the rest of the world came back with all of its fish and its wide, wide sea?
Thorne leaves Chris after the second shot to escape out of the exit he's marked in back, easy enough to slide in and out of because none of the staff remembered to lock the doors when they went out for a smoke or to take a pause. The alley is cloistered with the fragrant smell of flowers and rain - Seattle has a habit of decorating the better ends of itself with alleyways pumped full of greenery, even with the cobblestone broken and slanting inwards towards a center fault line, gutters cluttered with the decay of autumn's arrival, the atrophy before the actual fall of winter. Ivies climb around him up uneven brick, thick throngs of flowers growing in windows and simply on the side of the alley mouth. They're near enough to the beating heart of Seattle's innards that he can still hear raucous laughter from other sports bars, other places playing rewinds of a football match or a world series match up. He breaths in the chilled Seattle air and tries to calm his own heart down. He presses his hands to the slick, uneven brick and it pulls away gritty. Thorne goes back inside.
When he returns, Chris is flanked by another woman, her eyes as predatory as a foxes, and twice as deadly. She is beautiful, and Thorne gives her that, but he feels that sleeping creature in him roll and roar and murmur, perplexed and shaking and wanting to claw its way into his throat. He tries to swallow but it will not go back down. He tries not to let the acid build in his throat. His empty whiskey glass has already been topped off again by one of the bartenders. They drop him a wink as they pass, and the ghost of a smile, barely amiable, flares on his lips and dies just as quick.
"Hey," Thorne says, coming up to Chris and the woman again, his eyes flicking over to her with an unknowable, wild-eyed stare, "Who's this?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 11:29 pm
it sounded like a dream
Chris doesn't feel uncomfortable, per se, with the girl around. She is beautiful and amicable company and were this another time, Chris might have responded to her better. Might have tried to finish his bottle, go out on the floor with her. But Chris is far, far too involved with Thorne to even consider it without something twisting uncomfortably in his stomach, something running cold through his veins and turning everything to ice. There is nothing there for him but Thorne, even in this sad, one sided crush of his that he knows will be his undoing and so with this girl here Chris doesn't know how to react.
Maybe it's that it's been far too long since he's actually interacted with anyone who's not been Thorne, the drive they've been making through small towns and miles of untouched land with just only each other for company has him unreceptive to anyone else. He knows Thorne a great deal, knows his actions and inactions and small habits that he's cataloged. Knows that he'll let Chris blow dry his hair if he asks and has as much of a penchant for shitty coffee as Chris does and that he prefers to go barefoot when he can. Can traverse conversation with him easily, isn't afraid of what Thorne will say to him, even when it's 2 am and they're getting philosophical and Chris can't sleep and is delirious and is saying strange things. Knows that Thorne won't judge him at all, really, because he's seen Chris at his worst and has helped him through his worse and there's not much else he can do to scare Thorne off and so Thorne is safe. But anyone else, there is always some level of unknown, some factor that Chris cannot see. He can handle it, most of the time, but now he doesn't know what to do because he is in a city he does not know and escape is not possible because he can't leave Thorne.
It was probably a bad idea to come to his bar, a bad idea to do anything at all except just stay on the streets. Thorne had looked good and warm and Chris had stolen a beanie from him, had let his hair down and let Thorne pick out what he wore and decided it was going to be a good night. There had been something there in the backseat lately, a third passenger that Chris couldn't see but could taste, could feel was there. But Thorne had relaxed when they had hit Seattle, had turned off his phone and directed Chris by memory, by just sight and gaze and Chris had thought that this was good. They were staying and this, this would be good. A night to start it off, a night to begin what would be a three day stay and a way for Chris to know a little more of Thorne. See another part of him that he didn't know, to catalog for later, to add to his growing collection of Thorne.
But now he was in this bar with a beautiful girl and Thorne nowhere in sight.
He shifts, trying to figure out how to reply, how to tell her he had a friend without it sounding like an excuse. Girls have never been his forte and he knows that he has to word it right, lest she become more pushy and his brain is still trying to find them all when Thorne appears, his savior of the night. He gives him a grateful smile, all attention pulled from the girl. "Thorne," He says, warmly, his mood shifting into something better. He wants to get out of here now, somewhat.
The girl herself turns to look at Thorne, giving him a flat look as she glances him over before her eyebrows raise in approval. "Annalyse," She offers, giving Thorne a similar grin she's given to Chris, predatory, calculated. She wants both, now with the arrival of Thorne and she isn't sure who to pick first. Who will be more receptive to her game, to her blatant flirting. "I'm guessing you're his friend? You both drowning your sorrows tonight?" She nods towards the whisky, her eyebrows drawn in pretend concern. "A girl get you bad, or what?"
[wc: 711]
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Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 11:42 pm
it sounded like a dream
Thorne watches the girl, lupine, predatory, but not biting. He is reserved, calculated, even though something wild burns through him, a cold sort of fire that claws his belly until it feels like it's in shreds. He wants to take Chris and leave. He wants to drown himself in the shower. He wants to pound through the streets or take another shot of whiskey. Anything to stop making him want Chris so badly that some shameless flirting is making him wild like this.
His head tilts, eyes sharp and bright in the bar light, the music drilling a low beat into the soles of his boots. He glances at Chris and strips his coat, but doesn't say a word. he offers it over to him to either put on the bar stool or wear. It's a quiet gesture, a wordless thing. Chris is a wimp when it comes to the cold, and Washington isn't brutal like Montana, but the chill comes in the damp, in the autumn rain, always misting the air, the salt-rot sea breeze close to the ferry terminals always crimping the air with a different sort of chill.
"Chris," he responds, softly, but his gaze turns to the woman. Fishing. He might bite - but not that way. "A pleasure, I'm sure," he drawls, his eyes cutting to Chris. "You could say something like that."
He pauses and adds, "If I wanted to drown my sorrows, I'd throw myself into the sound. Why? Are you looking to drink yours away too? It's a bad fix."
His eyes rake over her, not unkind, but not knowable either. His warmth is reserved. He speaks and it's a low, raw burr of sound beneath the music. It doesn't promise anything. It doesn't want at all. "If only," he adds on, "I've never let a girl break my heart. I play a different game."
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:05 am
it sounded like a dream
There is something going on, Chris can sense, something between Thorne and Annalyse but he isn't going to try and figure it out when he still wants to leave the bar. When he wants to go through the streets, wants Thorne to guide him. Wants to go back out to the hotel and order shitty takeout and watch something on television and pretend this didn't happen.
What instead happens is a standoff between Annalyse and Thorne, both of them giving each other looks and Chris isn't really able to tell what's going on in this. Thorne offers him his jacket and Chris takes it wordlessly, gratefully, tugging it on and giving Thorne a warm look. It's still warm from Thorne's body heat and it smells like him and Chris settles into it happily, his mood improving a little more. How Thorne knew Chris doesn't know, but he's pleased he knew all the same.
Annalyse watches this exchange with a calculated gaze, her eyes narrowing at Chris before flicking back to Thorne. She tilts her head, her mouth starting to thin into an unhappy line. There's another exchange of eyes between the two, something in her connecting things Chris can't understand.
"My apologies," She says, sounding a bit more strangled than before. What Thorne has been saying has been something akin to a verbal slap, a warning, something edged with danger. She wanted both of them but she'd get neither and she's going to cut her losses early, find someone else. "If I had known you were... like that I wouldn't have bothered."
Her gaze relaxes and she takes one last look at Chris, like she's pondering something, before she steps in close to Thorne. "I suggest," She says carefully, like she's tiptoeing around something big, "That you don't leave him alone again, lest someone else tries to snatch him up, someone else who doesn't understand subtlety. He is a temptation."
With that final remark she is gone, disappears into the dance floor, another body into the crowd. Chris just pauses and then carefully goes, "What was that?"
[wc: 346]
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:26 am
it sounded like a dream
Temptation my a**, Thorne thinks angrily, he's more than a ******** prize.
And just like that, the teetering edge of his good mood is gone. He stares at Annalyse, his eyes flaring from wild to dangerous in the span of a second and he wants to tell her it's not like that - it isn't, he swears - but he'd all but marked out a line between them and her and told her not to cross it. And maybe that, more than anything else, is what makes him feel sick to his stomach. He's acting like some jealous lover, some lovesick idiot that can't let go of simple things, and he thought he'd learned that night at the bar when Chris had forgotten, when it had all been swept under the rug and returned to normal but -
He should say something like have a good night, but he's feeling too rotten to say it out loud. The shame and anger and inverted unhappiness from that first morning after digs a hole in him and fills it with acid, makes his entire body vividly aware of how much it remembers, how much he remembers, and how it's been scratching at him every day. A subtle, soft motion that acts like a river slowly cutting through the landscape, until he is filled with bad thoughts, unwanted thoughts, and things he can't have.
What was that, Chris asks him, and Thorne thinks viciously that it is everything. That is a kiss that he's robbed from the blond in the middle of the night. Some hastily covered up crime that paints his hands black. It's the taste of stolen soju on his tongue and promises and paint and Chris telling him to take him home, and he had, only not the way it had been asked, and only to wake up in the morning and realize only one of them remembered. Or pretended to. Or what.
Thorne looks at him and says, "It's not my business who you flirt with and who you don't, but if you're going to take someone up for the night, at least give them the courtesy of remembering in the morning no matter how you feel about them."
And maybe it's vicious and maybe it comes out wrong - Thorne immediately regrets the words and his face crumples, the look of guilt and regret flashing across his face to cover the raw wound left in him from that night and he presses the back of his hand to his eyes and exhales sharply before dropping it again.
"I'm sorry," he says haltingly, "I didn't mean - "
He doesn't know what he means.
I'd be yours if you asked me.
"I'm sorry," Thorne says again, and turns on his heel, "I'll meet you back at the hotel. Don't drink so much soju you pass out again, or I'll - "
He gestures wildly.
"I don't know," he finished, clumsily, aggravated and moves to leave.
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 2:13 pm
it sounded like a dream
Chris looks at Thorne and he's still confused but his confusion is turning into alarm, into something he can't describe. Not panic, but something akin to worry, frustration. He wanted to stay out of it but he is very, very clearly being discussed and he's not about to let that go, although what he's hearing isn't anything he can figure out. He's smart, but this is something he's not catching on to, complete with posturing and some sort of silent fight that Chris can't figure out. He watches them snap at each other, watches Annalyse walk away and Chris has no idea what has happened.
All he can tell is that Thorne is angry, maybe, and that Chris shouldn't have asked that question but he's never been able to stand being talked over, he's never been good at having something like that happen and then not demand an answer. He wants to know and he thought Thorne was his best bet but he's unhelpful, surprisingly, and now he's sitting here and is frustrated as well.
His hand snaps out to grab Thorne's wrist, leaning away from the bar. "I wasn't flirting with her," He hisses, giving Thorne something of a glare. "She approached me while I was waiting for you since you went god knows where. She approached me and started the conversation and I didn't want anything to happen, not at all."
It's slow, part of Thorne's message missing Chris until the last moment, until Chris' face contorts into something of confusion, a pair to Thorne's regret. Faintly, something in Chris' chest hurts, but he can't place what it is and he looks at Thorne, questioning. Something isn't adding up, something isn't adding up at all and Chris doesn't know what it is and he is so, so hopelessly lost that he wraps back around to frustrated.
"What do you mean?" He asks again, searching his mind for something, anything to make sense of all this. But his question isn't something that he really wants to be answered, he's searching his own mind for something, for anything. For desperate answers because this is going south so, so fast and Chris is desperate to salvage it.
What comes is a trigger in the form of Thorne's warning, to not drink enough to pass out. He thinks about the bar, he thinks about the gap in his memory, he thinks about the start of this trip with the reminder of an undercurrent of something between them that he couldn't place and wouldn't place. His mind spins, hands gaping and restless, before finally landing something and dredging it up for Chris to view.
What it finds is a hazy memory, clouded by soju, recognized by the easy burning in his chest. It finds a bar, one Chris recognizes as the one Chris and Thorne went to back in Ashdown on that night. In it Chris and Thorne are talking and it's snatches of what he remembers already, of what was jolted in the store, of his back as a canvas and flowers, galaxies on his body. Of Thorne flirting with Chris and Chris flirting back and then he watches, in horror, as he leans in and kisses Thorne.
There are more words after that but Chris can't hear them, dull clay in his ears as everything is roaring. The ground is being pulled from under him, the sky is falling, because Chris has made a huge mistake. He'd been so careful to not play his cards, to keep everything so close to his chest on this trip, when unwittingly they had been played long before. They had been played and Chris hadn't even known and Thorne had and Chris doesn't know what to do, what to think, because this is panic in its finest form. All he knows is he's revealed something he never wanted to and now he's realizing the consequences.
His hand burns on Thorne's wrist now, touch that was one comforting now firebrand hot, now something that burns him. He drops it and looks at Thorne with something akin to fear, utterly terrified and nowhere to go with it. "Oh god," He whispers, the only thing that can come to his mind. "Oh, my god."
Thorne knew, he realizes, Thorne knew and didn't tell him and Chris' face burns bright, nothing to do with the soju. He is embarrassed and scared and doesn't know what to do, especially not with the knowledge that Thorne knew, that Thorne tried to throw it back in his face. That would hurt more maybe, if it wasn't for the all consuming fear he felt, the fact he couldn't be around Thorne. Not right now.
"I'm sorry," He manages, "Please don't hate me."
With that, he bolts from the bar.
[wc: 795]
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 4:07 pm
it tasted like damnation
Thorne calls Wren.
As usual, she doesn't pick up. Aggressively, he texts her.
Wren.
Wren.
Wrenwrenwren. Wren.
Answer me.
Her response comes at least two minutes later.
I'm sleeping!!! go away talk to me later im tired :'( :'( :'(.
Thorne calls Wren again.
"You are obviously not sleeping," he says, and before she can hang up on him, he adds, "Wren I've made a terrible mistake." And it's probably in the way his voice splinters, a fraction away from a complete break, that has her awake on the other end in a heartbeat. She asks him what's wrong, what he's done, and a blurry voice lolls something in the background (It could be Necalli for all he knows, or Adrastos if he's been hoarding her couch to avoid his own parental obligations again), but Thorne can't think of them right now. He can't even think about how Wren is juggling her life problems when all he can see if he stares long enough up at the dreary Seattle skyline is Chris bolting from the bar to god only knows where.
I'm sorry, he'd said, please don't hate me.
As though that had ever been the case.
"I don't know what to do," Thorne says, "I love him. I don't know what to do. Wren."
He wants to cry, or take himself apart, or dash his head on the nearest brick building, or just do what he'd told Annalyse and walk off the nearest pier into the Puget Sound. But Wren speaks to him soothingly. She asks him silly questions - do you like his hair, even his morning breath? What about the fact that he kicks you off the bed in his sleep? Are you mad at him? Oh, no, don't be angry at yourself. Someone starts talking in the background - Thorne knows now that it's Necalli, and his slow sure voice echoes in the background.
"I'm not repeating that," Wren says, the diligent friend. So Necalli says something else, and Wren says, "Oh my god. Listen, everyone here knows beyond a doubt you're worthy of love. Why are you so afraid of taking that leap?"
And Thorne knows it's because of fear. If he abandons everything he has with Chris, what is there to say that he'll ever be able to reclaim it if Chris doesn't like him that way? He had convinced himself all along that he could hide this - this atrophying heart, this disease inside of him, this garden, because it was better to stay the person Chris wanted his life than to be an unknown variable. He'd thought he could live with it, that it wasn't a wound in him, dragging across his heart and cutting him a little deeper day by day and night be night, until every point of contact between them burned Thorne, and every sleepless moment made him stir restlessly, his hands wanting to touch things that did not belong to him.
Wren must know all of this, because she gives an exasperated huff and says softly, "You'll never know what could come of it unless you leap."
Thorne asks her about her day next, and Wren tells him she won't let him sleep on her couch no matter how much he begs. When they finally hang up, Thorne's chest feels lighter, all of those voices inside of him quiet somehow. He still wanders, until it's late enough that the world is past the edge of dusk and well into night. Most people are hitting up bars or prowling the streets, the tourist season dead to the middle of October rain. A light drizzle comes the air, a misting sort of welcome. Thorne slows to a stop on the harbor steps as they light up one by one, empty apart from a few people here and there, eyes looking out from late-night coffeehouses into the deluge, staring out at the Puget Sound. The lights glimmer off of the ferries hustling in and out from Bainbridge, from other points of contact, like lines of stars and spider webs drawn back to the heartbeat of the state. His phone is a warm weight in his hands, and it has to have been a few hours, and god is he scared.
But he sends Chris a text. A simple, soft message.
Remember those steps I showed you that would light up at night? I'm there, now.
He pauses. Stutters.
I don't hate you. I want you to come back. Please come back.
Thorne lowers his phone and mutes it, looks out at the harbor, the seagulls cresting the air. The salt breeze hums at him, kissing the small of his back. Once, Thorne had almost been able to call it home. Now he knows it's not, it has never been, and he's waiting, waiting, waiting. On someone to open the door and let him back in.
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 5:41 pm
it tasted like damnation
Chris runs, and he runs, and he doesn't know where he's going except for the pound of his feet on pavement and the burn of air in his lungs. There's looks thrown his way as he runs, some of concern, some of alarm, but there's no one chasing after him, no one yelling to get him, and so he's blissfully left alone to just sprint through the darkened streets until he wears himself out. Until his thoughts catch up to him, until he can't move because he's paralyzed by the fact that he has no idea what to do now and even with his mind, there is so many factors to everything that he will never figure out what to do. How to fix this, how to handle this, how to even come to terms with what just happened.
When Chris finally slows to a stop he's by the water, some little intersection of steps that are lighting up. He makes his way down clumsily, taking two, three steps at a time until he's as close to the water as he can be, folding inwardly on himself as he sits down. He toys with his phone, considers calling Hyejin, considers talking to her in this city and unfamiliar place and trying to piece himself together like he's done before. She'd be up, probably is up, since they're out somewhere late and he knows how the time is over there. He knows she'd answer his call immediately, wouldn't judge him for not telling her, would offer his advice. But a call feels too vulnerable, feels too exposed. He continues to play with his phone, finally opens it up.
I think I ******** up He texts her
The reply is immediate.
Finally realized you liked Thorne huh?
How did you know?
Just did. Tell me how you ******** up
I doubt it's as bad as last time.
Chris sighs, toys with his phone again. The minutes pass but Hyejin is patient like him (a trait is sad to share they admit, since she uses it about a successfully as him) and finally he gains the strength to text her back.
I kissed him while drunk one night and now we're on a road trip and we're in seattle and I just remembered and I think he hates me
Jesus Hobi, you really did ******** up didn't you? Go big or go home.
I can't really help you though, you gotta talk to him.
That's all you can do.
Chris sighs and drops his head against his knees, phone open on his other knee. Thanks, he texts back, then locks his phone again. He knows she won't reply and that she's right, but he wanted actual advice. The reality is that he knows everything she'll say, a conversation they already had in different terms but the exact same words. He knows what she'll tell him to do, he knows that she believes he is worthy of love. That the ghost that haunts him, she thinks she is gone, because he told her she was and that it doesn't haunt him. Hell, even the ghost believes it, and Chris just scrabbling to for hold.
The problem is none of them have factored in how talking can go wrong. How talking can hurt, how it can make the problem worse, how Chris can lose everything. So instead of moving, instead of trying to find Thorne, Chris sits and looks at the ocean and tries to remember when everything didn't go wrong. Tries to remember the world not collapsing on himself inward, tries to not think about how he's going to have to eventually face this because he is from Massachusetts, from a small podunk town called Ashdown and he is currently in Seattle and that is all the way across the nation and he is so, so ********. Tries to not think about going back and having to move out of Coalsmoke, of having to be alone again in his shitty small apartment. He just focuses on the water and the salt air and desperately tries to breathe.
It's some time before his phone buzzes again and Chris thinks it might be Hyejin, telling him off for something, or a spam text, or a million other things but instead the name that reads across the screen is Thorne and Chris' heart speeds up. Even in his fear in his hesitation, he is weak and he reads the message, unlocks his phone. His fingers hover for a second, wondering if he should tell Thorne where he is, if he should let him know if he read it at all. Thorne is nearby somewhere, Chris knows, because the steps he's by are illuminated and it would make sense that his body would run here. Would find somewhere that his mind assumed was safe, even if he hadn't fully acknowledged it, because Other Ashdown had done wonders for his senses. But he's scared and he doesn't want to face reality yet, even though he of all people knows he should, so he sits there paralyzed and hesitant, unsure.
His misfortune comes in the form of a second text.
His phone isn't on silent, not really, just a combination of buzzing for anything that hits his lock screen and then sound when it's open. Normally it's not a problem, a little strange, but Chris deals with it just fine and maybe in a more crowded place no one would notice. But the steps are mostly empty, people driven from the rain and the cold, and the air is clear and the sound carries. The very distinct sound that Chris had programmed as Thorne's text sound, as one that Thorne would probably recognize now with their months together, and Chris cusses and scrambles to shut off his phone but he knows the damage is done.
At his place down at the bottom of the steps, he hunches, and hopes Thorne won't find him.
[wc: 1001]
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 11:24 pm
tastes like damnation
"Chris," Thorne says, standing in front of the blond, silhouetted by the ferry lights that spider off of the sound in arching, glittering rows. His eyes are downcast, looking at the taller man hunched over, his eyes raw and soft. He doesn't move, not to touch or bend or walk away and leave this, leave it all. He doesn't know how to start or what to say, because he'd found Chris with ease as soon as he'd heard the echo of noise from the bottom of the steps. He had to laugh at that, the sure absurdity of them, ending up in the same place at the end of a fight. It is the staircase of Coalsmoke all over again, only this time he has nothing planned, no stars or galaxies or flowers that can help him breathe out the words trapped in his chest.
"Chris," he says again, "I want to - say something. And then you can tell me to leave. I swear, this is the last thing I'll put you through tonight.'
He had been drowning in this so long. Now he was cut open, and he didn't know where to begin. He stutters through a breath, stills, and wonders what to say.
So he starts at the beginning.
"I've been alone for a long time," he continues softly, "I've had Wren, Necalli, those idiots that would call me friends here in Seattle, probably setting off fireworks in October just to be contrary to the world. But I've always been alone. And I got good at it too." He pauses and shifts his weight, turns his head up to look at the harbor, the cusp of moonlight cresting on the uneven pattern of waves. "I made a choice a long time ago that it would be better to stay away from other people than to reach out, to hold on to someone else, because what if they left? What then? I knew I could pick myself back up, but why take the risk in the first place?" Thorne takes a deep breath, feels the words spilling out before he can stop them, doesn't even try to. With all of their cards on their table, he still feels like he's reaching his hands into the dark. That warmth, that comfort that Chris gives him is on the brink whether or not he lies or tells the truth, and Thorne had made a promise to him long ago that he wouldn't lie anymore.
He sucks in a sharp breath, not daring to look back at the other man. Go on, go on, a small part of him says, but the fear in him is shredding him apart, and he still feels like his heart is going to slip and break completely at any point. Wren had told him he wasn't allowed to sleep on her couch but if this went poorly he would damn well be on her doorstep in an uncontrollable fit in the middle of the night. The silent sky above them crumples inwards with the sound of rain coming down harder, harder.
"I wasn't ever lying, when I said all this time that I think I've been looking for you." He blinks as a ferry docks, a starburst of color here in the night. A stream of cars, nothing but headlights streaming out into the steadily growing rain, cuts a path beneath the viaduct and into the Seattle night. Going somewhere, nowhere. Onto entrance ramps, off of them. To home, home, home. Thorne exhales. "Because you're the first time I stopped and thought that if you left, I wouldn't be alright again. I would pick myself up and put the pieces back together and remember what it felt like being alone all this time, but there was nothing I wanted less in the world. I didn't want to be alone if it meant being without you. So I - never said anything. This whole time. I never said anything, because I kept thinking, maybe that night was a mistake - maybe you just wanted fun, or a distraction, or something. If I said it out loud, if I admitted it and ruined everything, would you leave? I couldn't - couldn't let that happen. I thought, this entire time, that I could live with not letting that happen. I could live with that dream in my head, even if you never felt the same, but I can't." His voice breaks there, that raw wound splintering open again.
A shiver curls up his spine, his hands trembling where he has hooked his thumbs in the shallow pockets of his jeans, the dark material clinging wet and sticky to his skin. He isn't ramrod straight, but neither is he crumpling inwards. A stranger might call him calm, at ease if they saw him. But closer he is trembling. Closer he is on the edge, balancing dangerously. Fall, fall, fall, a voice hums and sings and hollers in his head. It might be the voice of reason, but it sure as hell sounds a lot like Wren. It might be the voice of disaster, but that could be Wren just as easily too.
"I love you," Thorne says. He looks back at Chris. "I - that's it. That's all. I love you. I want you to stay with me at Coalsmoke. I want to talk to Heddy, and I want to push you off the bed because you always put your feet under mine when they're cold. I want to go on more roadtrips with you and I want to go to Korea with you, or New York again, or wherever the hell you want, and I want - I want you to be happy. I want that more than anything." He bites his lower lip to keep an audible exhale from coming out, the splintering edge of his barely held demeanor. The words slice him open, slice him down to the bone, to that garden in his ribs, now inverted, now out for all of this goddamned world to see.
He unwinds his hands and slides them to knit together at the nape of his neck, and the rain comes down in full now, just like it had in the south when they had talked about the end of the world. A universe where they existed together, a galaxy where no one else lived but them. His eyes are downcast, droplets of rain beading and falling from the night-dark lashes. He looks vulnerable there, a hero overcome on a battlefield or a painting of something just after a fall. He looks at Chris and sees salvation, but even he knows that these scarred and blackened hands can't reach far enough to finds something in the dark, something that he should not touch, should know better than to touch - because he is not worthy - he is not -
You are though, Wren had said on the phone. You are. You have to believe that. Don't be alone because you're so afraid of what he might say. What if he feels the same? What if you've been looking for him all along? I think fate works in strange ways. I don't know about soulmates, but sometimes I think that there are people we're meant to meet. Meant to be with. What if it's him?
"I love you," Thorne says again, "And I'm not saying that because I want you to say it back to me. I'm not saying it - I'm saying it because you deserve to know. Because I wanted you to kiss me, I wanted you to wake up and kiss me again, and again, and again, and I wanted it to be real so bad but I didn't want to ever force that on you, and I wouldn't - ever ask that of you, again, if you didn't want it. I would take you, I would want you to stay, no matter how you felt about me, because you're important to me. You're the one person I want in my life, more than anyone else."
Thorne presses the palm of his hand to his eyes, his burning face, and steps back, hands lowering, an apologetic gesture, the rain sliding against his throat, drenching them both now as the Seattle lights ghost through the droplets, the world falling down, down, down.
"I'm sorry," Thorne says, gutted, aching, raw and spent and feeling his body collapse beneath the weight of nerves, of the secrets in his chest bared for Chris to see, for him to hate or accept or deny, "I'm sorry. I love you. I'm sorry, I'll leave if you want. I can go. I just - "
But there are no more words.
Thorne takes a step back. He feels restless and doesn't know what to do with his hands, his body, as though there's too much to occupy just this liminal space. If Chris wants to judge him, Thorne will wait on his rejection. If he simply wants him to go - well, Thorne knows better than most how to run. But here, now, he doesn't want to. Here, now, he wants more than anything to be asked to stay.
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Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 12:19 am
it tasted like damnation
His phone is a traitor because of course Thorne finds him, finds him with the kind of ease and simplicity that came from him knowing exactly where he was, even with Chris hunched into himself, into an angle he himself didn't recognize. He stares up at Thorne still fearful, still worried, because he still doesn't know what to do. Still doesn't want to talk, still does not have the words in order in his head. There is so much swirling inside him anxiously, so many thoughts and words and phrases that he cannot find himself able to order them so he clenches and unclenches his fingers, curls into himself more. Hopes Thorne won't ask him to talk or to say anything, won't demand reasons or answers or things Chris cannot give him. He is scared and this conversation is nothing he knows how to prepare for.
His eyes flick to Thorne when he speaks, breaking the silence that has grown between them. He doesn't offer anything to Thorne, but it seems that is fine, because Thorne wants to speak this time and so he keeps his silence, keeps his lips together. What Thorne is about to say, Chris doesn't know and he only watches quietly, cautiously. There are lights silhouetting Thorne, illuminating him from the back and Chris feels like he is about to watch something godly happen - although if it's in his favor or not, he doesn't know. He braces himself for the blow.
The blow never comes.
Instead Thorne talks of loneliness and Chris aches, because he knows that feeling too. He knows what it's like to have friends but for them to be at arms length because of fear, because of the thought they would leave. The ghost that sits in his bones was one of these, fear brought to life, and it took him so long to let go of it but the idea never really leaves. The knowledge that he had, while he may not believe it anymore, he knows what it was like and to know that Thorne had it, had carried that hurt with him, it makes Chris ache. It makes him hurt because he wants nothing more than to curl around him, to make him know how much he is worth it. How everything is worth it.
But that isn't a luxury afforded to him anymore and so Chris stays in place, a statue, a rock, melded with the steps that he has planted himself on. If he stays long enough, maybe he will become part of the city and will not have to experience this heartbreak, because it sounds like something that Thorne is setting up for. The rain falls harder and Chris just sits and lets Thorne gathers his thoughts, lets the silence draw out. The slow ripping off this bandaid, the pull of adhesive away from skin. It doesn't hurt as much, oddly enough.
Hurry, he wants to say, just let me know that you are done with me. He stares out at the water, at the cars, at anything but Thorne. Waits for it to end. But Thorne keeps talking and Chris has been attuned to him from day one and he can't help but listen and every second more his heart swells, fit to burst. He is more alike to Thorne than he'd ever admit because this is what he had thought too, during that fight. He could put himself together perfectly, a picture of what he used to be, but it'd be nothing without Thorne and he hadn't wanted to do it, a mirror image of what Thorne was saying, was thinking. He relaxes his fingers, traces one gently on the jacket, waits. Because Thorne was saying this and he knows, he knows that he wants him to forget this, to just be friends. He could do that, of course, but he is terrified that Thorne even knows in the first place. He is terrified that he is wrong, terrified of what will come next.
He dares a glance at Thorne and in this moment he looks both ethereal and not, a god in his city and his element, a human on the end of their rope. He doesn't know which is the truth, which is the truer version, which one is speaking to him. Maybe both, maybe neither, and Chris is enthralled because this is an image he will keep into death.
I love you, the god says, the man says, and Chris is startled. Sucks in a breath, a gasp, loud and unfiltered and he cannot think.
Because Thorne loves him, because this cannot be real, this has to be a daydream that has come to life. A trick, an illusion, something that isn't Chris' and won't be, because in what life would Thorne ever love him? He was trying to imagine a universe where Thorne chased after him, but all he could think of was his form following Thorne's, a starburst against the dark dark world. But that inverts here, crumples into dust, because Thorne loves him and Chris isn't alone in his feelings, isn't alone in everything he wants. He sucks in another shuddering breath, barely able to hear what Thorne is saying, because he cannot believe what is happening to him and this is nothing he knows how to handle. Thorne loves him. Thorne loves him.
The rain is coming down hard now, a full sheet, but Chris can barely notice it because Thorne is before him and this is a dream. He stands up, stretches himself to full height, drops his phone in his pocket. Steps towards Thorne and takes one of his hands, tries to close their distance. His mouth is dry, unsure of the words that he wants to say. Even now he doesn't know where to start.
You are worthy of love, his ghost whispers, wrapped around him. You are worthy and you are his and he is yours and it is time. to let. go.
"I'm scared," He admits, tongue heavy in his mouth, words thick and halting, nothing that he wanted to come out but truth all the same. "I'm scared Thorne, more than anything, to be given something like this. I've- I've hurt before. I was trusted with something and they died and-" He sucks in a breath, panicked. Because he's never loved with this kind of intensity, this kind of starburst fire that eats him from the inside out, makes him feel hollow and full all at the same time. He's never felt this before and to have it and to have it returned is a terrifying thing, something delicate and precious and the last time he was given something this delicate he smashed it to splinters in his hand, had watched the people around him hurt in the process.
"I love you," He says, an echo of Thorne, true. "I love you and I'm terrified I will hurt you and I've held onto this so long because I thought you didn't lo-" His tongue trips on the word, unable to fully process it yet, "like me back. I love you and I want to kiss you back and I want to do so much with you and I am so, so scared."
His eyes flick downwards, scared to see Thorne's face. This is new, unexplored ground, something he can't handle. He is still holding onto Thorne's hand and he can't find it in him to let go, not in this pouring rain, his hair starting to stick to his face as the rain eases it from its confines of product. He can't let go because everything would overwhelm him, wash him away, and he would lose this chance.
"I don't want to hurt you," He breaths, "Are you sure you want this? Are you sure?"
There is salt on his cheeks, mixing with the rainwater.
[wc: 1308]
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Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 9:07 pm
tasted like damnation
Thorne doesn't flinch when Chris grabs his hand, holds him still, but he looks at him startled, eyes wide and unbearably dark, the color of night. He is afraid, everything in him set on fire, his chest a cage for his hummingbird heart. Let me down gently, he thinks desperately, Please just let me down slow.
But instead Chris takes him by surprise, speaks of fear and hurt and a past that Thorne knows has captured Chris in a similar way it has chained him. Thorne waits and listens and the rain comes down harder until they are both wet fools standing in the rain, the glow of Seattle lighting them from beneath, from the bars of the steps and the soft light of late-night coffee shops and bars.
They are eternal, here, just the two of them.
Thorne exhales, and it is as sharp as a gasp and as soft as something whispered, something secret. He watches Chris and his gaze is raw and painful, not because of anything the other says but because of how much the want in him builds and builds with every word, every action.
You know how they say there is a cliche in falling in love? Wren had asked him once, how you're supposed to feel like you're drowning? I don't think it's like that at all. Thorne had touched her hand gently, had watched her crumple and laugh as Lorcan stumbled laughing into the corridor with Adrastos in his arms, the two of them embarrassed and flustered, and so, so in love that Thorne was shocked it had taken them years to understand.
He remembers asking her what she thought it was then, if not drowning, if not a constant suffocation, a weight pressed inwards, against your chest, your very core. Wren had smiled, fond, in a white dress stained with grass and dew from the wedding ceremony, the beauty of the wilderness that burrowed into the mountainside as mist rolled down through the cliff-faces and plumed white over the fields and valleys and trees.
It's a bullet with no exit wound, she said, smiling at him, it doesn't hurt, not necessarily, it doesn't ache or twinge. It just - it feels. It feels, it feels, it feels. Until you cannot breathe. And Thorne understands now, because it doesn't hurt, it doesn't burn anymore. But it's a weight. He cannot breathe. He wants to close the gap between them but he knows there are still words they have to say out loud, words they must admit to one another. He twines his fingers with Chris and looks up at him and that want is so plain that it nearly looks like grief, like sadness, like having been this close to letting the most precious thing in the world slip away from him.
Thorne slides his free hand to the gentle curve of Chris's neck and thumbs at one of the drops of rain sliding against his throat. He looks up at Chris and says, "I'm afraid too."
The admittance feels like unwinding. Feels like confession, like all of the times he had stood in Mass, felt small. Felt as though he were lost, unbound, wandering in a world full of faces, none of them belonging to him. He thumbs another droplet and says, "But I don't want to let that fear keep you lonely. I can't promise that I won't ever hurt you - and that you won't ever hurt me - but isn't that what love is for anyways? To know forgiveness, and accept those parts of us that have hurt, could hurt?" He blinks and his vision is blurry - he's not sure if it's from the rain or something else. "I'm afraid, I'm terrified. But not of you. Never of you." He pauses, breathes, shudders.
Thorne blinks away more rain. He turns their intertwined hands between them over, and looks down and examines the parts where they collide, connect. The pale of Chris's hand against the dark of Thorne's own. The mixture of them, together, together, together.
For a long time, he studies the link. And then he looks up at Chris.
"Yes," he says, and steps forward, and kisses Chris.
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Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2016 10:28 pm
it tasted like damnation
There's a moment of silence, the rain falling all around them and yet Chris is still afraid to look at Thorne. He's afraid of what he'll find in that gaze, afraid of what he won't. All he can think of is the split image of god and man he found in Thorne and he thinks of that divide in Ashdown, in everything. He's scared, he's so scared and so he keeps his gaze to the ground as they stand and continue to get soaked in the rain, as they inch closer to sickness.
He thinks back to home and Hyejin, back when he was twenty one and she was twenty two and they had stood on the beach right before a storm. Nothing bad, not a typhoon, but something still thick and heavy. She was wearing a floral sundress, short hair flying out behind her as they stood on the beach together barefoot. Chris had slouched into himself, still unsure, still on unsteady ground, the silence between them growing as thick as guilt. It had only been seven years then, Hyejin still painfully aware Chris was holding on and still beating himself up for it. It was why he was back at Jejudo, after all. Why Hyejin was back too, instead of in Seoul, in her fancy apartment and fancy job.
Chris, she had said, soft as sand, soft as the clouds coming towards them, and he had turned to look at her. He thought he could predict her next words, seven years practiced and still not stale, although starting to crumble around the edges. Even she was getting tired of this game and he didn't know how to tell her that she could never absolve him of his guilt, that nothing could or would except the dead and well. It was an impossible concept then and still one now.
He looked at her and she looked at him for a very long while and then said, You're worthy of love and someday, someone will think that too. Make sure you hold onto them.
He had scoffed at the concept then, new words that had a pretty tilt to them that eventually grew practiced, but now he can see what she meant. Always the smarter of them, of the trio and now the pair, always seeing a little ahead. Because Chris stands here now and he knows without a doubt Thorne loves him and he is terrified of this new concept, of this new feeling sitting in his chest, elation and worry all rolled into one.
Thorne curves his hand around Chris' neck and he shudders at the touch, leaning into it and feeling electric at the same time. His admittance prompts Chris to look up, to finally look at Thorne, to take in his gaze. He's not like he was before, of the image Chris was holding, but just Thorne now, just his, and he looks and breathes and tries to not fear.
Because Thorne was standing there and he thought Chris worthy and he was afraid too. They were both afraid but it was going to be okay because like Thorne said, what was love for anyways but that? They had fought before anyways, he realizes, fought hard and still had come back and they could do it. They could make it, even if they were both afraid, because they weren't afraid of each other but for each other and it would be okay. It would be okay.
He follows Thorne's gaze down to their connected hands, the contrast they draw from each other. Alike and not, dark and light, except here Chris feels like they could become one and he wouldn't mind a bit. He still holds his breath, wonders what Thorne will say, looks up at his face and waits for what he'll say. It's a long, drawn out moment.
The only thing that makes it better is the kiss.
He's surprised for a second, eyes widening, but then he steps in and cups his free hand around Thorne's jaw. Deepens the kiss between them, eyes fluttering closed because this was what he wanted and he didn't want to forget it, not a second time, not ever. This is a dream come true and the impossible all wrapped together and Chris is going to make sure that he doesn't lose sight of it, that it doesn't slip out of his hands. He wants Thorne and this love and it will be his, until the end of time, until he loses Thorne and even then he will chase across a hundred, a thousand lifetimes, until he found the one Thorne would return to him.
Maybe this was another one of them, where they finally came back together.
He breaks away from the kiss gently, draws his thumb across the curve of Thorne's jaw. Leans in and pulls Thorne to him, just takes the moment to feel them together.
"I love you," He says and it's affectionate and a bit shy and Chris is home.
[wc: 839]
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Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2016 7:32 pm
it tasted like damnation
Once, when Thorne was younger, Declan had come to him to tell him that he was getting married. And Thorne hadn't understood. Why? he'd asked, desperate for an answer, for some way to understand. He'd seen his mother broken by those ties, he'd seen his father twisted and destroyed by them. Why would his brother do this to himself? Wasn't he afraid? Didn't he constantly question that choice? Was Thorne really the only one to shy away from love the way he'd been taught, to fear it the way he'd learned to fear things in the world like this?
But Declan had only looked at him, his voice gentle and soft. One day you'll understand, he'd said. You'll find that person one day. I know you will.
The day of the wedding, Thorne had never seen Declan happier in his life. And he had never seen a more beautiful union. One that lasted. One that promised an existence beyond bodies alone. One that continued on in the wild grins and wild eyes of their children, in the urban garden of their kitchen and their house, the height charts constantly carved into one of the archways that Thorne laughed at whenever he came back for the holidays, for the anniversary, for her. It had been overwhelming, a world Thorne felt he'd been locked out of.
And here, now, he feels like he stands at the threshold. And there on the other side, the key pressed to his heart, is Chris.
There's so many things Thorne could say here, now, so many things that could go between them repeated, reiterated and reaffirmed. He maps over the memory of Chris and him, their entire time together. The midnight visits, the cupcakes, the ball, and the fallout afterwards. The world they'd inhabited together, fragile at first before it had grown and grown and grown into something different. Something wild and new and bigger than them both. There is no part of Thorne that does not want to keep this. To keep them. If this was only one world, if there were thousands more out there, he would hunt in all of them for Chris. He would chase him through each and every one.
How long have I been looking for you? Thorne thinks, his eyes half-lidded, his expression fond and raw and wanting, How many lifetimes have I reached for your hand? His grip tightened, rain-slick, against Chris's. How many times had he been close? How many times had he lost Chris? How many times had Chris lost him?
Not this time, he thinks, resolution like steel in his heart. No longer. They would find a way, they had to. But that came in the future. Here, now, there was only the Seattle rain. The soft remembrance of touch and sound and taste. The soft echo of love between them that had never been hidden, not really, only left unacknowledged. Fear had driven them both, fear and more. Thorne lifts his head to look at Chris and that fear ebbs into something else, something new and waking and wonderful.
He steps forward, closer, until they are all but chest and chest, their breath burning together. Wren had once told him that love was not a prize or a reward - not a gift or a treasure. It was work, it was a bullet straight to the chest, it was a different breed of hurt and comfort, love and loss and wonder. Thorne hadn't known at the beginning that this garden in him had been bleeding him as much as it had been suffocating him. Hadn't known that it would still stay ever present in this dream where Chris said yes, said I love you too. It was no longer a pressure, no longer a dangerous thing filling the empty hollow of his lungs. Now it bloomed and colored, brilliant and golden, so overwhelming that Thorne wanted nothing more than to collapse against Chris and hold him here in the rain until the world ended, until it was nothing but the stars and them.
The kiss burns through him, sets fire to his veins. He is nothing but nerves, the raw edge of sensitivity. He leans in and makes a sound like happiness, like pleasure, like want, pure and searching and found after so, so long. His eyes close completely and he winds his fingers into Chris's soaked hair, grazing his teeth against the blonds lower lip. His eyes flick up to the other, and he wants - he wants -
I love you.
Thorne closes his eyes. He's wants and he's home and it is alright. The world is falling apart but it's alright. It's alright.
Thorne wraps them together, lets them push flush against one another despite the rain and the wet and the cold, until all that Thorne can feel is the uneven beat of his heart and the warmth that blooms between their chests, as bright as a starburst.
As welcoming as home.
"I love you too, I've always loved you," he says, "And I'll love you for as long as I am on this earth, and even after. Even then."PeanutButterPies writes the longest wrap in history
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