singillppl | June 2025 Test Drive Meme

Entry tags:

June 2025 Test Drive Meme

JUNE 2025 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 — and the current inhabitants, their fellow survivors.

PROMPT TWO — WHAT LIES BENEATH: New fissures caused by seismic activity within the Northern Territories physiologically alters the Interlopers who check them out.

PROMPT THREE — SUFFOCATION RISK: Interlopers find it hard to breathe, and need a helping hand to catch a breather.

ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST

WHEN: Mid-month.
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.

These are the words of the Darkwalker, you’ll soon come to find.

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. This place has been ransacked, abandoned long ago. 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.

The sun is bright, enclosed in light fog. It is a strange kind of twilight.

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. Once more, you poor souls come.” he nods gravely. No, this is not the first time that this has happened. “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, mostly. But some coffee can be found. There’s also soup and stew and trays of charred deer and rabbit meats, plus some grilled fish. It’s very basic, but it’s hot and filling. A feast for those who have battled the cold to come here.

Methuselah will continue to busy himself, still; there is plenty to do. He will fetch blankets, tend to wounds, serve food and drinks — aided by a handful of others in the Hall. Your fellow survivors, but those who have been here for some time now. 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 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 gesture to your fellow survivors. They will have better answers than him.

WHAT LIES BENEATH

WHEN: The month of June.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: supernatural ailments; mental manipulation; altered physiological states; potential character injuries; potential dangerous situations; potential cold injuries.

The world has gone quiet since last month’s quake that caused a considerable amount of damage around the Milton and Lakeside regions. Newer Interlopers have been met with a town still in the process of being repaired and rebuilt, and some properties have been abandoned all together, used only for spares and repairs of homes that are actually occupied. Milton was home to some thousand people in its hey-day, now it remains a shell of itself. Some hundred or so people making this place a home in a harsh and unforgiving world.

But the world is not completely quiet: tremors and minor quakes can still be felt as time goes on. These tremors don’t have the same impact as earlier quakes, but they’re enough to give someone pause — keeping Interlopers on their toes.

What’s more is the damage caused by this ongoing seismic activity is dotted all over the landscape: scars are beginning to show in the earth itself, or rather — open wounds.

The fissures are small and unassuming, but can easily snag someone’s attention. Even more curious about them is the occasional strange vapours that seem to curl and lazily rise from these fissures. The vapours are a faint green in colour, almost sickly, and there’s plenty enough in you to make you feel like you should keep well away from these rising fogs. But there’s something about curiosity and cats, after all.

The vapours won’t kill you, no. They certainly won’t do you any physical harm, either. No instant burning of the strange, caustic fog that plagued Interlopers last year, nor the sickness that Glimmerfog brought.

But getting close enough to the vapours to examine them will cause a change in you. It’s more of an insidious thing: gradual and slow, changes in your behaviour over the course of a week. Feeling a little more anxious than normal; snapping at people you interact with; avoidance of others; the feeling of being watched and a growing paranoia. You feel like the animal that has known the feel of the snare, or seen the barrel of the gun. Hunted and small.

Soon enough, this slow chipping away at your mind is enough to cause you to snap: fight or flight.

Fighters are lost into states of pure rage. They are combative, blind to anger in a desperate bid to survive — seeking out their dangers to face them head on. They are volatile, difficult to reason with. They will cause damage to anything around them, or anyone. They will cause damage to buildings, objects — smashing their way through whatever stands in their way. They will fight with those around them — their fellow Interlopers — lost in perceived threats.

Flighters are lost into states of pure fear. They’ll break down in crying fits, hysteria and abandon all logic — avoiding their dangers. They will try to escape from wherever they may be — wanting to run out into the wilds, putting them in potentially more dangerous situations. They could end up getting lost in the wilds, or encountering dangerous wildlife like moose, wolves or bears. Or perhaps even onto thin ice on bodies of water. They will hide whenever they can: under beds, in caves, anywhere their minds might tell them are places of safety.

To those around them, it’s finding a way to try and bring the affected Interloper back to their senses. It’s a little stumbling in the dark: wrangling flighters back to the safety of town, like trying to calm a spooked horse and give them a sense of safety and care and connection might be enough to bring them back to their sense. Fighters can arguably be dealt with the same way, but some might need restraining or fighting back in order to knock some sense into them. Perhaps even literally. Drawing blood in a fight with Fighters will also… strangely calm the affected Interloper down.

Affected Interlopers will be a little shaky afterwards. But a stiff drink or a hot meal and some rest will end up soothing them. Hopefully they won’t go poking around those fissures again.

SUFFOCATION RISK

WHEN: The month of June.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: supernatural afflictions; themes of suffocation; themes of co-dependency/unhealthy codependency; potential character death/near-death experience; medical emergencies.

You think that maybe it’s the weather. The Northern Territories have been known for unsettled and sometimes ferocious climate — this is the world of endless winter, after all. But June marks a period of calm as the midsummer draws near. Occasional biting winds are the only disturbances to that calm. Other than that, it’s just damn freezing. Even with the midsummer upon the world and the still weather — the world is frigid.

The cold often bites at one’s lungs, and maybe that’s all you think it is at first. Each breath is like ice, hard to catch, and you feel like you’re suffocating sometimes. Overexertion seems to make it worse, whether you’re hiking up a particularly difficult piece of terrain or carrying a heavy load.

Interlopers will need to stop to rest often, and even then it feels like you still can’t quite get your breath back. This breathlessness will slowly get worse over time, until it’s almost unbearable.

Until it ends up nosediving into something more horrifying. One day, it’s the worst it’s ever been. It feels like you’re drowning. Your breaths are shallow and quick. Your vision blurs and warps, a shimmer of dull prismatic at the corners of your eyes. The world grows smaller around you, your hearing growing dim and distorted. You cough and splutter, gasping for air that you cannot seem to breathe in.

Panic sets in. You are suffocating, and if something isn’t done quickly enough, you will die.

But there’s a strange pull in you, too. A need. A person. You get a sensation of them, something about them. Their hair colour, their voice, their smile. Maybe it’s someone you know, maybe it’s a complete stranger, but something in you pulls you towards them.

As the world closes in on you, everything zeros in on that person. They can help. Hopefully you have enough time to reach them, hopefully you can find them. Maybe they’re searching for you too, in the exact same predicament — unable to breathe and trying to find that person to help.

Reaching that person and touching them will finally allow you to breathe. Like the air is clear, and breaths are painless again. It’s like an instant balm, and slowly the world grows back again — vision and hearing restored. You don’t know why, but this person, whoever they are — has given you your breath back.

You’re spared from the affliction, for a short time. Soon enough, it will return, and you’ll need to find that person again. Or just keep them close for a little while.

FAQs

ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST

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.

WHAT LIES BENEATH

1. Characters can be affected multiple times by the vapours.

SUFFOCATION RISK

1. The length of time Interlopers are 'stuck' together to combat the Suffocation Risk affliction is player choice. It could be a couple of days or even weeks — with the affliction itself ending by the end of the month.

2. Both Interlopers can be suffering from Suffocation Risk, or just one.

3. Interlopers who do not reach the person in time will die. They could potentially be revived through CPR, however — provided they are found quick enough.

TALES FROM THE NORTHERN TERRITORIES NEWSLETTER

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Something about the blitheness of it pisses Arthur off immediately, in a way he'd be short to explain but recognises as wholly his own.

And John will see the way his jaw works briefly (remember the sensation of gritting his teeth making behind his eyes throb), before he goes straight in like a headbutt to the diaphragm.

"There's a cult to the King in Yellow, in an entire sleeping city beneath Leerie. Until we got there and got trapped in a ritual that was meant to join John back with the King, we didn't know that John was a piece of him." His voice is even like the flat of a knife. "When I refused to let John go, the King dragged us both into the Dreamlands."

What the everloving fuck.

John takes a moment to look between one pissed off asshole and the other, and he feels his own temper flare. He's not gonna snap because they Do Not Need this, especially after he just broke up a fucking fistfight between the two most important people in his life.

But fuck it he doesn't want to.

"Yes," he says with pointedly careful, measured slowness, as he looks at Charlie, "we did. We offered it to the Enchanted Woods to gain passage."

And then to Arthur.

"And I refused to join with the King," he adds with a steady look to Arthur, "because the King intended to destroy Arthur in every universe." And he swallows at the mention of it, his eyes shifting back to Charlie as he continues, softer. "And I couldn't allow that to happen. I love him. And he loves me. We chose one another and defied the King, so he sent us to the Dreamlands to confront us in person himself."

Charlie's been crouched in front of the fire, one knee on the floor, twisted to talk to them. Now he stands up, putting a little of his weight on the poker to get started because about seven hundred distinct parts of his body really hurt. Afterwards, it hangs loose from his hand.

Besides standing, Charlie gives neither of them a single fucking reaction. He's stone at the talk of the King's cult on Earth. He's stone at John's declaration of love. 'Stone', in this instance, is a faint smirk. They didn't think this would be relevant to tell him weeks ago?

(They aren't doing it for a reaction. He needs to chill out or remove himself from the situation.)

"Then what?"

Arthur's a little bit doing it for a reaction.

But when John's response is so fucking earnest, it makes his own ire settle down a bit more, and he sighs, giving John another squeeze as he pushes his temper back down. It's easier now than it has been all week, which definitely means he's feeling normal again.

"We lost, Noel." He leans against John a little, more to remind himself that he's still there, that they're alright now. "We made it out, we- we recovered. More or less. But it went... badly."

Another light brush of his hand on John's tentacles, before he moves back to their little kitchen bench to finish off the fish before it starts to smell.

"He was going to kill Arthur if I didn't agree to go with him. I- I made him promise to spare his life and let him go and I let go of Arthur." He swallows and when Arthur moves away, he looks bereft for a moment before he steadies himself. There's something shaded to his eyes now.

"I lost in my fight against him. And he threw me back into the Dark World, a place outside of time and space where all that is dead and gone collects. A world made of death that feeds on suffering and rewards the cruel."

He closes his eyes.

"I-" and he almost turns to Arthur before he shakes his head. Breathes out. "I had to do terrible things to return. Terrible things dictated by... him. The one who appeared just before you ... came here." And there is so much hate packed into the name. "Kayne."

He nearly cracks and shouts what the fuck do you mean you lost after Arthur, but then John picks up the account.

A place like the pits, John said once before. Charlie'll have to give it to him, he sees the similarities. And John's tone, the pall over him, the things he's intoning, are slowly turning Charlie's anger into sickness. He stares, no longer smirking, but he doesn't ask what John did. He doesn't want to make John tell him. He doesn't want to know.

"Yeah, didn't we all." It's not... meant to be minimising. It's not meant to be much at all besides a mutter for Charlie. They've both been trapped somewhere by the King, both done bad things to get through. Who knew. Life rhymes and the song is always ugly.

"You never told the King about Roland."

But the statement is just that - a statement. There's no underhanded bitterness or a smug reminder. Just laying out a fact that Charlie told them himself.

"No matter what he threw at you, you didn't turn against the one principle you dedicated yourself to." He doesn't look back, as - with more effort than he'd like to admit - he wrestles the knife back out of the board. "That- kept you going. Kept you grounded."

With a noise of extertion he finally manages it, and has to put it down again, silently, because his hands are shaking, and his voice is quiet again. "You couldn't defeat him, but you didn't let him win."

Edited 2025-06-26 00:51 (UTC)

And John says nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

But he'll nod.

It's a good point. Charlie needs to hear that point, should hear that point. They aren't the same, after all. Charlie is...

Charlie is good. John knows that. He might have fucked up, might have lost his cool, might be angry or snide or sharp. But Charlie is good. And John is... not. And never will be. He is here because of the choices he's made. And he is here because of the things he chose to do. He is here, and he wouldn't do it differently if he could because it got them both here, alive, safe, whole. It has them out of Kayne's grasp. It has them out of medieval England and far away from the stupid fucking stone. Away from Lilith.

He doesn't get to regret the price he paid when he's enjoying the spoils of it. And he wouldn't give them back to reverse that choice.

So instead, he nods.

Better Arthur doesn't think about who did let 'him' win. Better for everyone.

If listening to John made him feel less like snapping, then listening to Arthur does the opposite. He's not ready to hear a positive spin on that decade: not when he's already pushing down and tying up a bit of a screaming fit, and not from someone who nearly had his thumbs in Charlie's eyeballs not twenty minutes before.

John doesn't get a pass either with his fucking nodding. They both get a wide, unfriendly smile, though it's Arthur who gets:

"Don't blow smoke up my ass when you got no fuckin' idea what I did there day to day."

Because he hasn't told them. He hasn't said, though maybe John already knows, that in ten years you don't just sit there and say "I shan't say": you grind off pieces of yourself as the chains get tighter, you look for comfort where it's a bad idea, you humiliate yourself for reeds on your floor or a few minutes of sunlight. And his time with the King directly wasn't even what he was alluding to, not for the most part. He's told them that he was thrown into the pits, but he has no reason to think they know what that means, not fully.

"And we've established now that you don't know what we did, either," he says evenly. Tiredly, as his shoulders sag a little. Resignedly, because he can feel Charlie turning this into another fight and he's still wanting to go up and sleep the rest of this fucking disaster of a day off but someone's got to make sure everyone's fed because Charlie's still trying to survive on the ghosts of cigarettes and John's still working on what qualifies as edible.

"I'm not saying any of us have had it easy. I can't imagine what ten years under the King must have been like." Neither can John, really, though more from the opposite direction. He stretches his hands, and picks up the knife again; he probably will need to eat tonight. "I'm just... we've..."

He finally looks up, but it's just to give John a bit of a helpless glance.

"I do."

John says it wearily. Achingly. Ashamedly.

"The ritual in Leerie. A side effect of the attempted joining was that some of the King's memory was left to me. Nothing so... precise as your suffering." A pause. "I would have told you that." A breath out. "But I remember being something whose very presence can inspire the urge to stab one's ear canal out with a fucking spoon. I know how the King hurts people. I know how..." And he looks to Charlie, "I know."

He leaves it at that.

A glance to Arthur before he says.

"He was trying to make it clear how much we think of you, after that bullshit earlier, and the lack of transparency might have made you question how important to us you actually are. Hamfisted, perhaps, but the attempt wasn't smoke." A dip of his head.

"I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you who I was from the get go all those months ago. I'm sorry that we didn't think to tell you about our own experiences. I won't speak on your experience further... but I think you understand that sometimes, you don't share not because of a lack of trust or importance... but because saying the words out loud makes them real in a way, ghosts of the past that one can still very much feel, and we had no interest in bringing that time to life again." He shakes his head. "I'm still sorry."

Charlie's eyes snap to John when he says he knows. He takes long enough to elaborate (depending on how you count, two whole sentences!) that Charlie starts to feel like he's going to burst out of his own skin. After John clarifies that he only knows in general terms, that feeling settles into flat eyes and a tightly locked jaw. Detaching from the present and listening to John speak are always a hell of a combination.

They're being very reasonable, and would have addressed all his concerns if what he'd started a fight about was the same thing as what was getting to him. The real problems are still, hah, eating at him. There are a few things he's in danger of saying and he can almost rank them in order of how much he would immediately regret it. The watchman in his head, vigilant for dangers from within as well as without, has started to call time. He needs to remove himself before he gets nastier.

"Yeah, don't worry about it," he makes himself say to John, evenly, because he still gives a shit about John's feelings currently.

It's probably just provoking himself to look at Arthur as he turns on his heel, but he does it anyway, skinny fucking street-brawler Arthur and his 'seven maybe'. Perpetually starved-looking Arthur who'd make a poor meal, who's been in the Dreamlands and faced the King and, thank fucking god, it sounds like the meeting was at least brief, even though it was still calamitous. He opens his mouth and realises the whole fucking confession of what went on in the prison pits is too close to his tongue for comfort, and after a moment he just says with a broad, winning smile: "Eat your fuckin' fish."

Then he walks towards the back door, because he doesn't want to deal with any fuckers who might be walking down the street out the front right now. His hand starts to slip into his pocket, and then he remembers, and it makes a small violent motion instead as he goes.

Arthur flinches when that raw, ugly smile gets turned on him, and his hands go still on the counter again as he listens to Charlie storm out.

His eyes lock on the raw, now-headless fish, at the flicker of pink internal flesh, gutted before it was frozen -

(empty, disembowelled, the memory of organs beneath his fingers and thumbs jammed in a too-small gap not meant for them)

- and he puts the knife down, breathing too slow and too quiet because the only other option is hyperventilating.

John doesn't approach. It's not... wise. Perhaps it's not kind, but neither is the idea of any lingering effect from whatever the fuck caused earlier prompting Arthur to take that knife and plunge it into him. And given Arthur's anguish over the bite, he doubts he would be able to handle that regardless of whether or not John was there to talk him down from it. So instead, he settles where he is.

"He'll be back," John says quietly. Because he caught that. That Charlie took the moment to comfort him. That Charlie let him off the hook.

"What about you? How are-

"Are you okay, Arthur?"

"Fine-" the answer is too quick, voice tight, and he hates himself for how his throat trembles when he sucks a too-deep breath in. "I-I'm fine, I'm--"

He gives a damp sniff, and when he turns to John all he can give is a wan smile, his eyes red and distant even as his voice recovers with a hollow cheer. "I think- all of that just. Took it out of me more than I realised. I'm... I-I-I just- I should rest, really. Can you-?"

He gestures vaguely to the mess of a counter. "If- if that's not too much to ask, I know none of it's yours, but..."

Yeah, that's bullshit. Which is why-

"Shut up," and he's going to move forward now, act not wisely but with hope, trust. Love. He'll wrap his arms around Arthur and pull him close. "Shut up and go lay down. I'll be there once this is cleaned up."

Because of course he's going to clean it up. And then he's going to wrap Arthur in himself until he doesn't feel like the world can get to him. That's what's happening right now.

He sinks into John's touch like it's home, grips him painfully tight around his ribs for a few seconds as he buries his face in the familiar, safe darkness.

Then there's a muffled, tight but deeply grateful, "Thank you, John."

And he allows himself one last squeeze before he peels back, a slightly stronger smile offered until he's turned away and walking upstairs, and when he's under the covers he curls up as small and tight as he can. Like if he manages to be small enough then he'll shrink out of existence and Charlie won't ever have to look at him like that ever again.

The fish is going to get salted and set to dry and the rest of it chucked in to go into a stock for later and the kitchen cleaned and straightened... and then John is going upstairs to wrap around him, wrap the covers around them both, and hold him so he can rest.

It's hours past midnight and the sun is relentless in the sky when Charlie returns, freezing and long-faced, to the cabin. Whatever fantasies he entertained about not coming back are irrelevant to the fact that he was always going to.

He didn't grab gloves or scarf before he left, only a coat hanging next to the exit, and so the front door rattles somewhat when he takes his hands out of that coat and manipulates the knob with shaking fingers. The wind is very cold.

But otherwise, he's being quiet. When it got late, he left it even later, to allow any bouts of insomnia to maybe run their course. He's hoping that nobody is still awake and he can slip inside unseen.

Edited 2025-06-27 14:48 (UTC)

The fire's been stoked recently, Charlie will notice, because the warmth inside hits him like a blanket to the face and the warm glow is disparate for this time of night.

The reason is obvious immediately, at least: a small pile of laundry is hunkered in front of it, ostensibly reading but for the fact the book in its lap is closed, and at the sound of the door Arthur's attention snaps up - but there's no hostility to it. Instead Charlie will see a rapid progression of confusion-surprise-relief-anxiety, and Arthur swallows thickly before he manages a nervous smile.

Charlie squints into the warmth, blinking away afterimages of snow under the sun, not visibly tense but certainly still when he sees Arthur there. The look he gives him is subtly anxious.

He closes the door behind him so that all the good from the fire won't fly straight out of the opening.

"Ain't it past your bedtime, kid?" he says, sotto voce. There's no hostility here either, only a sense that Charlie doesn't know what the hell to say and is falling back on his jokey bullshit. "Look, the sun's almost up."

Right. So that's how they're going to do it.

Arthur's smile fades, to something more polite, more brittle, as his gaze drops away, and his response is just a neutral hum as he looks back at the fire instead.

"I woke up," he says, his voice utterly void of inflection. "Thought I'd be useful, at least."

Well that makes his heart sink a bit. In a perfect world he would've gotten a joke back, even if it was a barbed one, but it seems that's not the game they're playing.

"Sure."

Charlie's voice is trying to keep it going, but he sheds his coat robotically.

"Means I come back to the warm, so I got no complaints."

He thought long and hard about how to address... this. Pretending is not what he decided on. He doesn't know why he's fucking doing it anyway, letting the elephant in the room get bigger and bigger.

(He also thought about telling them both exactly how he survived in the pits, maybe scrape it out from where it's been biting into his conscience for the last two or three years. He also thought about packing a bindle and walking all the way to that coastal town without leaving a forwarding address. He thought about fucking off and becoming a wildman in a cave, eating raw deer. He thought about a lot of things, some less seriously than others.)

Arthur's still too raw, too soul-deep exhausted to be able to put up the joking front. It's been a while since his privacy has bitten him in the ass as badly as that.

"There's jerky, if you're hungry." Since none of them fucking ate before. "Or- I can step out and leave you to cook in peace. I should be setting up to go fishing soon anyway."

Oh, and there's another problem, isn't it? Having to find a new spot and do it without Konstantin, without the other steadfast presence he'd come to trust before he revealed himself to be a spineless prick. It's not like he needed another reminder of what Charlie surely thinks of him now. "I'll stay out of your hair, regardless."

Oh boy is he hungry, but that took a gnawing anxious little back seat some time ago. His hunger is at the level where he's tracking it, quantifying it, and measuring it positively against how hungry he used to be, reassured in a sick sort of way that it's less. He's capable of spiralling over it, but that isn't how it's going now. If he doesn't spiral over it, then the pits were a long, long time ago.

He doesn't want to let Arthur go without pushing out of the act and saying something.

"Listen, Arthur, I... get the drift there's somethin' going around again, and I... really shoulda said this up top: I don't... hold any of that against you. Only rattled me a bit, is all."

It's broadly, partially, ideally true. It's also directed with a touch of nervousness at the coat stand. There's a lot still to say, but he waits to see how the other reacts. It feels like showing Arthur his throat. He isn't sure if that's a rational thought or not.

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath

Re: what lies beneath