( billy kaplan app. )

The cafe was a quaint, out-of-the-way place on the corner of a busy street between a florist's and an antique shop. At this hour, so close to noon, it was pleasantly busy, bustling with the sounds of clinking china and shuffling feet. The smell of fresh coffee beans was sweet, heavy in the air. And in the a seat near one of the bay windows, Miss ( Read more... )

4:46 AM
It's a cold morning. Still dark, and quiet over the beach except for the churning of murky waves and the first screeches of seabirds. The air smells like salt and sand. He's missed it a little, this place. It's been three weeks since the mission took him a couple hundred miles away, and he's sure as fuck ready to sleep in his own bed.

4:49 ( Read more... )

[ Charles gives it fifteen, twenty minutes before he excuses himself from where his friends and their families have gathered together to take photos, exchange congratulations. It's not his scene. Not really. He'd sent his own family home after a few pictures with Metis. The ceremony itself had been a boring ritual, a supposed passage from ( Read more... )

[ It's 3:03 AM on a school night, and Charles isn't sure why he's been awake so often the past two weeks, staring at the ceiling in the dark at odd hours. It's all the things he has on his mind-- almost as if something's weighing on his non-existent conscience, or something's bothering him-- but his pride won't let him admit any of it ( Read more... )

[ He loathes to leave his pet alchemist alone. That brat, the gears are always turning in his head, churning out ideas and thoughts that could easily twist their way against Envy. It's not something the monster cares for-- that fucking boy is too smart for his own good, but it's something Envy needs. He needs what the boy can make for him. And he's ( Read more... )

5:56 AM
The sun hasn't yet risen over the cold silver coast, and the air is biting with premature winter. Frost covers the windowpane in a thin, translucent veil and the sky is the color of steel. He pushes out of bed, barefoot and naked except for the navy blue boxers he slides into, and pads into the kitchen.

6:15 AM
He leaves the kitchen lights ( Read more... )

[ Friday rolls around, and Charles somehow finds himself on the doorstep of an apartment he's never been to before. He doesn't make a habit of this-- showing up to strange places by himself, without being bribed or forced-- but today, circumstances have brought him there. Somewhere between Metis urging him and Josh saying they'd take him and ( Read more... )

It's not the first time he's come home bloody, but it's one of the few times the blood belongs to him ( Read more... )

It's one of those nights where he wakes up with a snarl half-stuck in his throat, strangled and forcing it's way out of the pit of his stomach as a vicious hiss of breath. The image is still vivid in his head, so vivid and real that he can almost feel the fire licking at his skin, eating him alive. The dream feels like burning, like swallowing ash ( Read more... )