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singillppl2023-10-09 11:52 pm
singmod) wrote in singillppl2023-10-09 11:52 pm
Entry tags:
October 2023 Test Drive Meme
OCTOBER 2023 TDM
PROMPT ONE — ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST: A new group of arrivals find themselves lost in the frozen wilds and vulnerable to the dangers of nature. With luck, they make it to the town of Milton, and to a friendly face offering food, warmth and shelter — not to mention the fact they are not the first to come here.
PROMPT TWO — GUILTY PARTY: Interlopers are kidnapped and held captive by a being and forced to confess their wrong doings, or face fatal consequences.
PROMPT THREE — OFF THE BEATEN TRACK: Interlopers get more than they bargained for when a mysterious albeit friendly dog comes across them and persuades them to follow them into the wilds.
ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST
WHEN: Mid-October.
WHERE: Milton, Milton Outskirts.
CONTENT WARNINGS: potential animal attacks, potential injuries, potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk.
'You are the Interloper. You are not part of nature’s design.'
It’s the last thing you hear. A dark, deep voice. Impossibly ancient. You feel afraid. Maybe you’re dreaming, maybe you’re wide awake. You saw the lights, and then your world went dark. But you hear it in the blackness, you won’t forget those words.
You awaken. You are not where you were before. It’s different for everyone, there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern in where you find yourself. You may open your eyes to find yourself in a cold, dim and dank cabin. The air is stale, dust hangs in the rays of weak sunlight that shine through the tiny windows. Someone lived here once, but they aren’t to be found. You look around, it seems like no one has been here in several weeks, maybe longer. The fire is stone cold, the dishes in the sink are mouldy — it's possible the place has been ransacked, as if they've gone through the drawers and cupboards looking for something. It is quiet. The wood creaks around you. Or perhaps you may awaken to find yourself shivering in the yawning maw of a cave, the freezing stone below you. Or maybe you’re unfortunate enough to sit up to find yourself lying in the snow, in the middle of the wilderness. Snow lies thick around you. It’s freezing out. You haven’t felt a cold like this before in your entire life. Cruel and biting. You have no idea where you are, and what’s worse — you are completely alone.
You may feel different, too. Any powers or magics you may have feel... absent. Disconnected. Things that may not have affected you previously now do. Something in you has changed.
You know you can’t stay where you are. You’ll need to move, try to work out where you are and how you came to be here. So you walk, head out into the unknown, in hope of finding a trail or a road. You’ll find one soon enough. It’s here you may find someone else in the same boat as yourself, equally freezing and confused. You’ll both need to keep going. It won’t be easy. You hear howls of wolves around you, and the terrain is difficult: slips and falls are likely. You’re completely vulnerable out here in the open.
Or it’s possible you may come across someone else here. Someone who looks far better prepared to deal with the freezing cold and frozen landscape, out hunting or gathering. They’ll likely offer help and get you into town. However, for the unlucky ones who don’t come across anyone, you’ll carry on until you see it: the lazy trail of smoke rising in the air. Fire. Not just one, but several. Civilization...?
Follow it, and soon enough the way you’ve taken will certainly become a path or road. Unfolding before you in the mountainous forests, you’ll see the most welcome of sights: a small mining town tucked up in the valley. Battered, rusted road signs will direct to “MILTON, POP. 947”. You’re almost there, you keep going, and it looks like other people have had the same idea as you. In fact, you’ll hear the muffled sounds of life. People! In the town!
As you head into the outskirts and then further into town, you’ll find it’s a little easier to walk but the cold has gripped you hard. You’ll find the buildings, both shops and homes, some are dark and lifeless, some of them are boarded up, some of them are occupied. People are going about their business, or stood watching from their tiny porches of their small, timber homes. For a town this big, there doesn’t seem to be many people. Several dozen at most, but no more.
Towards the center of town, you’ll find the building from which the biggest of the smoke trail rises: a school-house of sorts, or some kind of community hall. Perhaps both. You’ll find more and more people all drawn to this place, each and every one of them in the same position as yourself (and your companion, if you’ve found one). Some are in worse states than others: some are bloodied, nursing bite wounds or cuts; others might have some other kind of injury sustained in the journey here from falls. Others may look as if they could faint from the cold at any second.
The door opens, and you’re greeted by the gnarled, wizened face of an elderly man, dressed in thick furs. He has a kind face. He smiles warmly, and with pity, ushering you in with haste.
“Ah, more of you have come.” he nods, just as he suspected you might. “I am Methuselah. I welcome you Newcomer, although I’m sorry for how you’ve come to find yourself here. You are not the only one, the lights are changing things. Come. Mother Nature has not been kind to you, but there are plenty here to help.”
The room is dim, lit only by natural daylight through the windows. A roaring fire sits at one end of the huge hall. It crackles, bright and cheerful... and warm. Even as big as this place is, the room is pleasantly warm. You’ll also find basic cots set up down one side of the hall, and while it seems there's a few people already living here, there's enough space for those in need of them. There's places to rest for a moment and get your bearings, or just trying to recover from the cold. Down the other side are tables and chairs, and long tables laden with food, drinks and bottled water similar to one might find at a soup kitchen. Once again, Methuselah offers a feast, aided by some of the other Interlopers.
There are canisters with hot herbal teas and coffee, along with soup and stew and trays of charred deer and rabbit meats, plus some grilled fish, instant mashed potatoes, and tinned vegetables. It’s very basic, but it’s hot and filling. A feast. The old man has been busy. And Methuselah will continue to busy himself, still; there is plenty to do. He will fetch blankets, tend to wounds, serve food and drinks. He does not have much time to talk. More and more people seem to be coming in from the cold. He will not stop to sit and rest until everyone is seen to, taking up a place by the fire to gaze silently into its flames. He is troubled, thoughtful. The arrival of so many is not something that sits well with him. The others from town will eventually trail in too, to eat and warm themselves, and search amongst the new faces.
He will encourage newcomers to get warm and eat, and when they are ready to — they can explore the town and find one of the many empty homes to call their own. He will not speak much, but perhaps you might be able to get some answers from those fellow arrivals who’ve been in this place for some time now.
GUILTY PARTY
WHEN: Over the next month.
WHERE: Paradise Farm Outbuildings.
CONTENT WARNINGS: forced imprisonment; forced honesty; supernatural beings; confessional themes; threat of death; possible character death; possible death by throat injury.
You don’t remember how you came to be here. The air is cold and damp, the rot of wood is strong, and… blood. Why does it smell of so much blood? You can’t seem to see all that much in the gloom, but you think you’re in some kind of outbuilding of sorts. You find yourself chained to a chair, the metal is heavy and cold against you and no matter whatever you seem to do, you can’t seem to free yourself from them. No struggling can ease their hold, and there’s no lock to unpick or break. They weigh you down in your seat, you can't even seem to tip yourself over.
But you’re not the only one here. Across from you in the dark is someone else. One of your fellow Interlopers is trapped here with you, too. They too don’t remember anything either, they’re equally as confused and uncertain as you. Perhaps frightened. Not only this, they’re also sat chained up just as tightly. You have a little time to talk before you realise the two of you aren’t alone.
There's a glooming green light, the feeling of a presence. A huge figure steps into view, cloaked in black. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a man or a woman, and it’s difficult to make out much detail of them. Their face is obscured by a stone mask in the shape of a monstrous, horned and fanged Jackal. Green light glows from behind it, foreboding in the dark. It will not answer you if you try to speak with it.
“WICKEDNESS LIES WITHIN YOU.” The voice is a fierce chorus of whispers, but yet so loud. It sends a shiver down your spine. “I HAVE SEEN IT.”
... You can’t help but know it to be true. Something inside you knows what they speak of is true. Any misdeed or wrongdoing done by your hand, any cruel word you spoke, any life you took or heart you broke. You feel exposed, seen. The figure knows what you have done.
“CONFESS.” the figure demands. “UNBURDEN YOUR HEART AND BE FREE. BE SILENT AND CARRY IT TO THE GRAVE.”
The figure holds an item in its hand, something that glints in the light that glows from its mask. Now you realise why there’s so much blood in the air: it’s a sickle, dripping with blood. You are not the first to be brought here. You will not be the last.
Speak, unburden yourself, and if the figure is satisfied — you will, in fact, go free. Refuse, or not take the demand seriously, and the figure will deem you unworthy. They will move within the blink of an eye, striking you with the sickle in the neck — let it be a mercy that they kill you quickly.
OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
WHEN: Over the next month.
WHERE: Milton / Milton Outskirts.
CONTENT WARNINGS: supernatural creature; trickster creature; themes of peril; possible character injury; possible dead body discoveries; potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk; possible character death.
The weather will continue to prove difficult for all who try to navigate this world, but with the current footfall in and around Milton, it’s at least helped to keep paths and roads somewhat clear despite the snow’s best efforts to cover up these walkways. Still, it’s a pain to get around, especially on particularly snowy days. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes necessary to go out on such days — survival doesn’t stop for the weather to pass.
And so journeys must be made, hunting must be done, forageables must be collected. You try to keep to the paths and trails, where the terrain yields before you for an easier journey.
… Until you hear barking through the trees, the sound of paws through the snow. Given the recent wolf activity of the last month, it’s understandable to be on edge. However, it isn’t a wolf that comes into view: it’s a large dog, bigger than any dog you’ve seen before. Coated in thick and shaggy black fur, this animal doesn’t seem to be like the wolves that have been found so far in this world. While the wildlife has certainly been altered, this dog remains very much like anyone would expect a dog to act in terms of behaviour. It’s playful with some, certainly friendly, constantly trying to play chase with you as it loops around in circles with a wagging tail.
However, there’s an insistence with this dog. It wants you to follow it. It will bark incessantly, trying to pull you from the path to go after it into the woods. It wants to show you something, take you somewhere. It will even try to gently pull at a coat-sleeve or trouser-leg to coax your forwards before heading off, keeping just in sight for you to go after it.
You’ll find it increasingly difficult to keep up, even if you pick up the pace as you head further into the woods. There’s less snow here, but the forest floor is filled with holes and tree roots that will trip you up. Falls are likely. But even worse is when before you know it, the ground simply gives way beneath you, sending you tumbling into a small valley or getting you stuck deep into soft, muddy earth. With it, perhaps, twisted ankles or worse. Or perhaps simply battered and bruised and unable to climb out of trench of earth. Maybe you come face to face with the body of some other poor Interloper who'd met their own end in similar manner — trapped and injured in the ditch.
Or worse still, the dog might just have you stumbling over a cliff face and tumbling into the Basin. Whatever fate befalls you, it’s as if the dog simply led you into it. And said dog, however, will be nowhere to be seen. It will have left you stuck, hurt, lost in the woods.
You’re sure you can hear some dark chuckling on the wind. Maybe it’s just the trees.
FAQs
1. Arrival threads can be treated as game canon.
2. Items characters have brought from home can be found either strewn around them when they awaken, or in the community hall — as if someone left them out for them to collect. Methuselah will not know how they got there, and will be quite bemused by the happenings.
3. Reminder that all characters are now depowered upon arrival. They can choose not to notice it at first, or can immediately sense something is different about them.
4. If asked any personal questions, Methuselah will smile and say "Oh, you don't want to know about an old man like me. But I have lived all over in these parts for all my life." He will be more concerned with trying to help Newcomers, and is genuinely concerned for them and their well-being. Other Interlopers will say much of the same — there's little to know about him.
5. More information about Milton can be found here.
1. Characters will find that once they have confessed, they will pass out. When they awaken, they will find themselves lying or sitting on the floor — the being, chairs and chains have gone. They are free to leave.
2. Attempts to search the outbuildings at later dates will prove fruitless. There is no sign of the being, nor the chairs or chains that held characters, but there will be blood on the floor that can be found.
3. One character can confess, or both. Player choice! As long as someone's doing some confessing.
1. Gyests, sometimes called Ghests or Bargyests are evil creatures from Northumberland, UK folklore. They seek to lure travelers away from a known and safe road to their miry and marshy demise, or perhaps lead them to walk in the darkness of a Cheviot night over the edge of a precipice. Often taking the shape of horses, donkeys or large dogs, Gyests could also shape-shift to appear as men, or even stacks of hay. But always their intention was to trick humans, for their own amusement, and lure them to their doom.
2. Attempts to lure or trap the Gyest will not work.
no subject
Then he laughs. It's rich, though not as sonorous as a certain theatrical blond's. Though it surprises even him, he maintains control over it, even as he cants his head with it. His face smooths once again into stillness, but it is not as melancholy as it was.
"If I had said something, would that have stopped you? I hoped that both my unexpected presence and the brandishing of this instrument," --phrasing-- "would be enough to deter any fuckery. But you insist on intruding... Tim."
He blinks slowly, deadpan, taking care to leisurely enunciate. "Why? Someone put you up to this? For the record, the beef between me, Louis de Pointe du Lac, and an enfant terrible with a most disagreeable disposition, started well before my arrival in town."
no subject
Again, the scene here is not unlike the cat-and-mouse games that have plagued him lately.
He could let himself slip into a familiar kind of lopsided smirk (a very posh sort of guy just dropping the word Fuckery is objectively funny), but he's not hoping to make friends with this person.
...he's really not looking to make friends with this person. His heart's taken the cue to start stewing in its anxiety. His own mask has morphed to guarded-- nothing more, nothing less. Cautious. Not enough to stoke an ego. Thawing, Tim thinks his bones ache in a way that could be audible if the silence ever stretches between Mr. Southern Comfort and himself again. He murmurs an irritable little, "Duh, yes?" at being asked if he'd have stopped his break-in. No, he's not sure he believes himself either.
With a stronger conviction he continues. "I don't know if you noticed, Louie, it's cold out there. I just-- give me a minute and I'll get out of your and the angry baby's hair."
--because that's what terrible infant means in French, right?
--god, gotta brush up on languages. Tim swears he can barely keep up in plain English nowadays.
His eyes narrow; there's only enough fooling around that the man will tolerate, he thinks. There's business to tend to. He asks, "Is your accent a prop, too? Same as that instrument? Or are you from... not from around here?"
no subject
"'Mister Pointe du Lac' or 'Mister du Lac', to you," he corrects almost lazily, but that did wipe away any trace of a smile. His tolerance for disrespect ran thin decades ago.
"I carry no props. I look like some fool actor to you? But where are my manners? Sit for a spell--that chair there with the blanket--and don't worry about the baby. You're safest from him here."
The smile returns, genuine amusement at Tim's use of the unfamiliar phrase and Louis running with it. (Louis still has an accent when he speaks French, but he's fluent enough to argue in it.) In his experience, an enfant terrible is a young adult too avant garde not to cause trouble. Irascible, difficult to work with, and all the rest. The person of whom he speaks is by no means young, but he's got the spirit.
"Ah--my apologies. I have nothing to offer you."
There is no sign of food or even water. Louis really did just claim this drafty hovel. There isn't much furniture, most of it having been looted, but the faded photos of the previous family are still here like ghosts. There are chewed holes in the walls and a cage with fresh bait meant to catch live rats.
hi I forgot about louis' crotch don't mind me
Regardless.
All he sees is a power move, and he dutifully obliges anyway. Maybe he did get off on the wrong foot, what with the breaking and entering and everything. Maybe he's just been hit over the head with too many favors from powerful men. He's crossed his lines and become his own man, made his own mistakes. A lot of them. Tim is loathe to admit that Damian, the gremlin, gave him some of the best damn advice in his career.
Never trust a man over thirty.
The chair and blanket want to steal Tim away to sleep-- it just makes him lean forward, a little. Stare openly at the man he's plainly opposite of, a little.
Business it is, then.
"Mister Pointe du Lac."
He can admit he's been rude, okay. Okay.
"Nobody brought me here. Nobody I can point a finger at. Nobody sent me. I'm going to ask you some questions."
Because it's just what he does.
"Have you felt any fatigue lately-- anything extreme, I mean? Any back pain? Lower-mid back in particular."
Tired in that existential sort of way, Tim cradles his right arm closer to his body. His gaze has, by now, fallen to the knife on Mister du Lac's lap-- well studied in the art of getting fucking impaled, he watches for any twitch of the man's hands that might signal Tim's end is near.
Unfortunately that means Tim has to, in mild horror, peel his eyes from the man's groin after a good second of lapsed judgment.
Jesus.
Tim goes on, clinical.
"Any medication you used to take that maybe you haven't been able to get a hold of here?"
i'm mcfucking dying, louis stop bullying this poor kid
"You lookin' to fleece an old man? The cane is for style and, as you can see, self-defense. My back is fine."
Louis can give small mercies. He sheathes his knife in the cane and returns it to leaning close at his side. Now if Tim has the audacity to glance at his unmentionables again, he can be comforted in the knowledge that he does so without immediate threat of being impaled and with an unobstructed view of fine tailoring.
Louis's own appetites are middling at best; he hasn't been feeding well or regularly, and his spirits are low. But, forgivingly, he knows what it is to be young and perhaps staring at a man who isn't Jesus more than he should. He's long since shed the shame of that, so he doesn't bristle like he used to.
"As for medication, I sure could go for a cigarette. But it's not a vice."
The taste does nothing for him, but various poisons--tobacco, wine, bourbon--still have effect. If anyone's going to be dealing anything around here, Louis hopes it will be himself, and he's in no danger of craving his own supply. But he's starting from nothing now. Wouldn't be the first time. His father had run his sugar business into the ground.
"How long you been here? And where does one get into that sort of trouble?" He nods at Tim's arm. He feels it's his turn to ask questions.
face in hands at this whole thing
"I asked if you were feeling alright because you look like crap."
Two birds. One stone. Or whatever.
God, he's a grump this evening. C'est la joie de vivre of the rich and famous and momentarily geographically displaced.
He could go on, say that abrupt change in climate or altitude can exacerbate chronic illness and that there's no shortage of perils to keep a neighborly eye on. But Tim wiggles his fingers in his right hand instead. Alfred would frown if Tim flipped this man the bird, and so Tim doesn't.
Ask him about his arm again in the next 16 hours and watch him ponder Old Yellering himself in the face.
But for now, triumph.
"I fell down. It's a lot more believable than telling people that I fell up. The sling's just there for a week more. I can still kick your ass, though."
Bruce Wayne sure does know how to pick em, huh.
cw: suicidal ideation, blood cannibalism, hashtag just vampire things
"Generally, those who insist they can put someone on the ground feel themselves too weak to walk with confidence. Rude of you to say that in someone's home. Must be the painkillers talking."
Louis pauses a moment, making a show of glancing elsewhere and blinking pensively as if just remembering the state Tim found him in.
"I am afflicted with only a little chill, which this fire will soon cure us both of, and the slings and arrows of the mind. I'd say it's culture shock--that's what they say?--but I don't see much of that here."
A little chill, as if his poor Southern skin didn't complain every time he went outside, and he has to wear his wool coat even indoors. But he'll endure. Despite thinking many times about ending it all, he never joined Dante's Wood of the Self-Murdered. He allows himself a roll of the shoulders to help the stiffness and returns his piercing gaze to Tim.
"...I'm being unkind. There is, at least, a culture of admirable hardiness and survival cobbled together here, one I would do well to learn from. As well as a culture of kidnapping people, chaining them to chairs, and demanding confessions as the price of walking free. If you see some fool walking around dressed as Anubis... let me know. He, or she, is a menace to the community."
He'd tell himself that he's protecting people for the greater good, but there is a part of him, the most hurt part, that simply wants revenge. And he wasn't even that torn up about this person. Hard to hate someone he has no connection to. It was another he was thinking of as he struggled to coax a spark in the worn stove. Le enfant terrible.
no subject
The dude gets a one-armed shrug, neither accepting or apologizing for his trespass.
At some point in his short life, authority failed to enforce its claim on him. But anyway, Mister du Lac has the sort of voice that Tim finds difficult to ignore entirely. His eyes, blue and dulled by hours in this hellscape, intently follow Louis at the mention of... Anubis?
"Kidnapping's a given. I'm from Jersey, not the Arctic Circle. Nobody's looking for the money in it, though."
He tries not to let the panic at the memory of chains bleed through. He inches further up his chair and toward the fire.
"What would they even want with confessions? Nobody knows each other here. There's no value in having us air the dirty laundry."
--oh, but there is and he knows it. But. Hey. Fishing.
no subject
But of course he has to dissemble: "Torture, coercion, threats... Those can only squeeze out so much. How many 'confessions' have the police wrung out of innocent people? 'S fool's gold that only works with enforcement to back up the lies. No, I think there was some darker appetite at play."
That last is his honest guess. He crosses his arms, an uncharacteristically human gesture. He's uncomfortable.
"But I was let free. It's foolish to assume there's logic to it. Sometimes there's just cruel people out there, and they get... extravagant. Is everyone in Jersey not much for small talk?" he follows seamlessly with a question and a raised eyebrow. Ah, that's the accent. He thought he detected a bit of back east.
no subject
"If we were good at anything in New Jersey we'd be called New York." And his voice is much better modulated than before, and even the chill feels like it's crawling away rather than towards the tiny room. Tim reminds himself to not get comfortable. Never get comfortable.
He lets silence hang after that, his own frown making itself home on his expression. It's not so much pensive or personal. Just an old friend of Tim's, a trophy of having made it so long as he has in the world.
He thinks about extravagance, and that has his hackles raised, the hair at his nape bothering him suddenly.
No good at small talk, Tim Drake muses further. He feels like he's talking at the fire. Like he used to. As a kid. With nobody around. He says, "I can tell you that I graduated summa cum laude from a prestigious ninja camp and you can tell me that you don't serve Ra's al Ghul. It won't mean anything now, which is when it would matter."
cw: racism in the Jim Crow South
Tim is so full of nervous energy, or maybe that's just the broken arm talking. What happened to him? In general? Tim frowns like someone ten years older than himself. Louis feels a little bad, despite his house being broken into. (It is only nominally his house, as he's little more than squatting in an abandoned building.)
Louis uncrosses and rests his arms on the chair again. A ghoul? Wrong monster. Or maybe Louis heard wrong. Entirely possible, since his ears have been annoyingly deafened to merely human. I have no idea who this Ra's al Ghul is. Maybe a movie star.
"I don't serve anyone," he feels the need to clarify. "I'm my own man."
Louis really tries not to bristle too much, which results in him becoming very still and unblinking. A lot of things back home get very old very fast, and they affect his interactions whether he likes it or not. He thinks, with a nostalgia too recent to be anything but sharp, of Lestat standing behind him in meetings in a reversal of the usual roles of white man and Black man in the Jim Crow South. It was their little game, one of their subtler rebellions, and Louis was always the brains of business operations.
no subject
Tim has the grace to look-- not apologetic about his choice of words, because then he wouldn't have won this secret entry to his war book, but he does look sorry that it happened at all. It's enough of a distinction to lend genuine good sense in him. Through the default of his frown, softened some, he nods. As if Louis' declaration was obvious, wholly unneeded.
"I believe you," he says, like it matters. Which, funny enough, it does to him. That Ra's is currently out of the equation makes the burden on his shoulders that much lighter. It rakes in so many new questions but he'd drown again if he gave them the time of day.
He hadn't had a lifeline back then.
Tim gestures to his own upper body, sitting with a straighter back. "You do that thing," he explains. Thinks, welp, he should probably explain some more. "When you're upset. It's almost like you stop breathing."
And he still wonders why he's branded as insufferable.
"And, for whatever it's worth, I did do ninja camp. I don't know if they did diplomas, though. I ducked out on Day Two."
Small talk, you say.
"There's bugs. In summer camp. Who knew? I didn't."
no subject
He forgets to remind Tim that he is a boy with more words than sense.
"Not a fan of bugs? You’ll see less up here, but I can’t promise this place don’t have rats. I haven’t had a chance to get it up to code. Did this Ra's al Ghul run that camp? Camp for wayward boys who break into folks’ houses?"
He smiles with more of his teeth.
short tag is short
Tim displaces the energy into a slow and long suffering breath outward. He leans back against the seat, theatrical. He thinks about manspreading but like, nah. Nope.
No.
"That," he says, "is nightmare fuel. So thanks for the push to pull an all-nighter."
And,
"D'you know what the coffee situation here is...?"
lol tags are as long or short as they need to be | cw: dank reeducation/correctional schools
"...You do know where coffee comes from, right?" He's pretty sure Tim does, but he can't resist the dig. "Given the state of the supply routes, I'd say that's one vice you'll have to go without. Whatever you can find in town will dry up."
The house creaks, as old or poorly-maintained houses do, especially when the temperature changes or ice shifts between the cracks. Louis wonders if "camp" had cabins, or if it was more a facility type situation. There are schools dedicated to more than just education, and they have their share of runaways.
"The body needs sleep. You need to, for that arm." His fingers gesture lazily, nails catching the firelight. They're pointed and glasslike like they've been polished to a high sheen.
cw for stupid kid stuff, drugs mention idfk
"If they can smoke like a chimney," Tim drawls, and he doesn't know who they are by name but he's seen those motherfuckers around- "then I can get my coffee."
He doesn't pay attention to flashy manicures. The wistful glint in his eyes says that he's found his footing once more.
It's funny, because he doesn't even care for coffee. Teas, trash energy drinks, soda- sure. Coffee? Well, Tim Drake figures it'll become an acquired taste.
"Even if I have to eat it one grain at a time."
Sleep is for the weak, the room is finally feeling cozy, and ah... there is fuckery afoot.
"It'll keep me up long enough to find a home that's not currently occupied. But I don't like the taste."
And then he thinks, don't do it and he does it anyway:
"Coke? That's a different story. That will be hard to find."
Coca-cola but like
yknow
why not.
oh my god this nervous bird
"Well, that's the thing," Louis begins, with effort, "Tobacco, coffee, even sugar, they all grow in warmer climates and require involved processes to refine. As does coke."
Both kinds. Louis doesn't bother specifying which. He also doesn't bother letting Tim know that alcohol of all kinds can be refined from things that do pretty alright in cold weather. Potatoes, vodka. Where there's a will, there's a way, and people find their way to vices without his help. He was just in the business of selling them.
"You fall asleep here, I'm dumping you in the snow. How's that for incentive?" Louis is using his dad voice. Uncool.
put him out of his misery
They are all so thoroughly fucked.
And he hadn't even weaseled his way through pharmaceuticals, if there are any. Maybe some basics for livestock or dogs. He's seen the farm in the outskirts.
So he adds that to the List.
And so he groans a pitiful defeated whine, the sort that comes naturally when one is a Younger Brother. He rolls his head back and stares bleary at the ceiling. He thinks about ceiling rats. It's better than thinking about the somersault in his chest at hearing warmth in Louis de Pointe du Lac.
Freakin' y i k e s.
"'sthat mean you're kicking me out, or should I wait until you Middle Name me?"
o7 lol. lmao.
It comes on like a sudden riptide and drowns the meager humor Louis managed to scrounge for himself. His eyes grow abyssal. He is reminded of growing up with Paul, how he couldn't help spoiling his little brother. And now he's admonishing Tim like he would Claudia, slipping into old habits.
He shouldn't have gotten comfortable.
"Yes," he says, as soft as the curved back of a claw and with infinite sadness. "I'm kicking you out."
So dramatic.
no subject
Tim heaves in a breath and stands his sorry ass up with no more fanfare. Arranging the unruly and oversized coat he scavenged is a bit of an affair, but soon done with.
Impossibly understanding, he peers over at Louis and chirps, "I'll find you a Nyquil or something."
And, as he braces to brave the cold and dark all on his lonesome again, he keeps the door open just one second too long, long enough to be a pain and welcome inside the house some flurries of fresh snow.
"Ciao, Mister L!"
And,
"I'll let the French guy know you're looking for him."
--shoulda stabbed him when y'had the chance.
cw: depression? dissociation? take your pick
In reply, he bares his teeth in a rigid grin that's more menacing than amused (were his canines always a little long?), but he's not looking directly at Tim. He's somewhere else, in that abyss that overtook him moments before.
"I already found him."
That's the problem.