Sometimes, people tell me random things and then stories happen. Like that time a friend told me to write a Doctor Who stapler monster. Stuff like that
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Re: Evidently Deviltown, Arc2, Part 2.1bendingsignpostJuly 25 2011, 04:09:37 UTC
“He is not my mancrush,” he huffs, shoving her off, straight into more giggles.
“So gay,” she proclaims. “You want to have his brain babies.”
“Yes, Rose,” he says. “That’s the secret. I have brain babies.”
“I knew it.” She settles back against him. “Name one after me?”
“Of course.” His hand comes up, palm settling between her shoulder blades.
After a while, dozing off, waking up, watching one another sleeping and waking, she says, “I have a secret too.”
“Bet you’ve got dozens.”
“I’ll tell you this one.”
“Then it won’t be a secret,” he says.
“Will be if you don’t tell anyone.” A lie with him the fourth to know.
“I can’t keep anything from the father of my brain babies, Rose. That is a terrible foundation for a relationship. Think of the children.”
She pretends to. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll tell you anyway.”
“Mmhm?”
It takes her some time, takes her more than one try to say it. Jackie’s annoyed and Mickey laughed and not even Shareen has stood up for her. It’s not so stupid of an idea. It’s not so impossible of a thing.
“Promise you won’t laugh,” she tells him.
“I will never promise that,” he answers.
She rolls her eyes and he squeezes her hand.
“I’m studying for my A Levels,” she says.
He blinks at her.
He smiles like something, like some burst of light she can’t quite name, and she’s smiling back so hard she thinks she might cry.
“Oh, Rose,” he says. “That was my secret too!”
His secret is a bit more complicated than that. It involves a fabricated online identity, really vague details, and a rather crazy plan of revising for sociology, psychology and literature A Levels online. They're the ones he'd found the courses for. He hasn’t quite worked out how he’s going to sit for exams.
“Fake id?” he offers weakly.
“I think this is going to be a bit harder than a fake driver’s license,” she says. “There’s got to be records and all that. Schooling, your GCSEs. A birth certificate.”
“Um,” he says. “I was homeschooled?”
She sort of looks at him at that.
His gaze drops and he crumples. He doesn’t move, doesn’t twitch or fold or bend, but he crumples all the same, disappearing into himself until she catches his hand.
Evidently Deviltown, Arc2, Part 3bendingsignpostAugust 6 2011, 04:23:54 UTC
“If you keep scratching, it’s going to fall out.”
He stops. Considers.
Keeps right on scratching the beard.
“Hair doesn’t work that way,” he tells her.
“Okay, just.... Be patient, yeah?”
A flash of white teeth through brown fuzz. “Oh, I know how to wait, Rose. Don’t you worry about me.”
“Wish October would get here already,” she says, says it yet again.
“Rose the uni student,” he muses. “You’ll be brilliant.”
“I’ll be a mess.”
He gives her a pointed look, then scratches at his beard.
She laughs. Reaching out, she scratches it for him, both hands along his cheeks and chin.
His fingers fall from his face, hold her elbow. Eyes happily shut, he hums.
“We’ll be messes together,” they say in unison, then laugh.
“But really,” Mickey says.
“No,” she says. “I’ll visit, all right?”
“What’s wrong with a school in London?” He’s accepted it’s happening, they’ve that much at least.
“What’s wrong with wanting to go somewhere else?” she asks.
“Yeah, but... Cardiff.”
“It’s a good business programme.”
“But, Rose. Cardiff.”
Yes. Cardiff. A nice train ride away, where nobody knows her.
“Change of pace,” she says and shrugs. “Look, are you going to support me on this or not?”
When she realizes she was hoping for the “or not”, she realizes she has a problem.
Lots of couples break up when one goes away to uni, right?
In the weeks that follow, she knows Mickey knows and she also knows they have one of those mad loops of knowing going on. It all means they’re very well informed but still not technically on the same page, and it’s driving her mental.
It’s just hard to bring up, difficult to start. She loves him, she really did, and now there’s the plan and she’s going away and she needs a clean break for this to work. Except she can’t say any of that.
She finagles it with her mum, works out the details for expenses. She has to live in a dorm, first year, but that’s not so bad. She’s applied for funding and scholarships and a great deal of things that Freckles worked out on his own. She’s pretty sure he applied for them on his own, too, because she doesn’t remember writing any of those scholarship essays. Might be an issue, that, later.
The real issue, when it comes down to it, is convincing her mother about the kennel fee. More specifically, the insurance.
“Look, we won’t say he’s a weird one,” she protests. “I just want to make sure that if anything happens to him, I don’t starve for the rest of the year. I’ve heard stories about the Flesh up in Wales, we all have.”
“Mm, yes, but....”
“Think of it this way, it’s still cheaper than selling him and me going back to frozen.”
“Be even cheaper without the insurance.”
“Mum.”
“Oh, all right.”
Perfect.
Moving day approaches and she packs everything up, all of his things and most of hers.
Edgy about it, he returns his clothing, storing it in the safety of her suitcase. With obvious reluctance, he puts back on the smock Jackie had bought him in. It’s ill-fitting and ridiculous. It’s absolutely horrible: he sticks out like a sore thumb. He looks like someone dressed up as Flesh for Halloween. They’re going to think he’s a joke, she’ll have to convince people, and then they’ll never forget his face, beard or no.
And then he shuffles, pulls in on himself, shoulders hunching, eyes flicking to the ground. Livestock once more.
Her stomach heaves and she rushes to him, shoves at his shoulders and catches his face. “Stop it. Stop it.”
He looks at her with confused eyes, brown and bright. “Stop what?”
“You’re not- You’re not that. You-”
“Not what?” he demands. “Not Flesh? Of course I’m Flesh, what did you think all the bloodletting was about?” He gestures at his own neck, the soft, marked skin.
“You’re not stupid,” she says. “You can’t stand there and go all small and-”
“Yes I can,” he interrupts. Says it firmly. “I can play the part as well as any. I have to.”
She knows that.
Takes a breath, lets it go.
Her convictions, her qualms: not so easily released.
“Just playing,” she says.
“Just playing,” he confirms.
They play a lot, the two of them. He plays a part, she plays a part. They play at this and that.
Evidently Deviltown, Arc2, Part 4rallalonOctober 3 2011, 21:26:18 UTC
The first few days are chaos.
Getting Freckles sorted turns out to be the easiest of it. There are modules to sign up for and flatmates to meet and a campus to learn and a city to learn on top of the campus. If she didn't need to eat, she'd never see him.
That he hates the kennel is obvious. It's obvious because anyone with a brain or a heart or a soul should hate the kennel and every time Rose goes back there, she's hit by it all over again, the way no one notices.
At first, she thought it was the Flesh who were unnerving her. They're nothing like Freckles, nothing at all. The docile ones have their pens together and it's a common sight to see them slumped in piles. They lie around like stray cats but look like people: of course it's disturbing.
But then she starts paying attention.
The floors are hard. The air is cool. The Flesh are drained.
They're not foul and pathetic.
They're abused.
She begins to smuggle things in when she comes, little things at first, then larger things. For all Freckles is among his own kind, he clearly isn't. She's gained three pounds since uni began in the attempt to put him in a hazy state even vaguely like those of his penmates, but nothing's working. He's bored and can't sit still and it's worse than it ever was back in the flat. He's surrounded by Flesh and so terribly lonely.
Whenever she arrives, he stands. He stands and he comes to her, even if this involves shaking free of his sleeping penmates.
When she bites him, she takes her time about it and he talks all the while. He's light and clever, astonishing as always, and there's no sign of him going mad save for the fact that he must be. She couldn't stand this.
"Two more months," she reminds him every time. "Winter break." She's already looking into apartments.
"What are you getting me for Christmas?" he usually asks.
Or, a month away, "How's revision going?" or "Are my emails piling up?"
Or, a week away, in a tiny, controlled whisper: "Rose, they tried to drug me."
Evidently Deviltown, Arc2, Part 5rallalonOctober 3 2011, 21:26:52 UTC
From the beginning, there has been the issue of group feeding.
From the beginning, there has been the issue of Lady Cassandra.
Cassandra is a bitch. Rose has thought long and hard about this and her conclusion is this. Cassandra is a bitch. Then, now, and always. Rich, spoiled, spent her two gap years traveling the world, and has a pair of Flesh in the same pen as Freckles. Chip and Dale are from the same batch and Cassandra likes to pretend she can tell them apart.
Cassandra also likes to feed with her friends. Once and only once, Rose tried to stick around for the social occasion. Not because she likes any of Cassandra's friends, or even knows them. They all look at Rose with "chav" written in their eyes. Even so, being social with other people is a reason to remain among the Flesh. It's the excuse she needs to sit with Freckles with her hand on his back, or combing her fingers through his hair or holding his hand with care so that no one else can see.
She remained the odd one out, which would have been fine if it hadn't made Freckles look odd as well. He's smarter than all of them combined and when Rose is with him, he lets it show on his face.
She still doesn't know what to think about that, that he wears his dignity best when she's there to see it. It scares her, the thought that someone else might catch a glimpse.
So the attempts at social feeding stop. If not for limiting her time with Freckles back to the beginning, she wouldn't regret the lack at all. Watching the other Flesh submit - some afraid, some oblivious, some fawning - it all turns her stomach.
"How did the world get like this?" she asks Freckles once while they're alone, as "alone" as they can be in his pen, surrounded by blank-faced Flesh. It's a week before the attempted drugging, two weeks before it's time to sink or swim.
"Is that rhetorical?"
"Nope."
"Check my emails," he tells her.
"Already done. You've had nothing new for-"
"No," he corrects. "The essays and articles I translated over the summer, those."
"From Professor Mancrush?"
Freckles rolls his eyes. "Professor Yana, Rose."
"I know," she says. "I'll read them."
"Will you?"
She nods.
He smiles. It's a sight she hasn't seen in ages.
She presses their foreheads together, running her fingertips through his beard. She can feel him smile wider.
"Everyone's looking," he warns, warm and chiding.
"Get used to it," she warns right back.
They grin into each other's faces, so very close and still so very far.
Re: Evidently Deviltown, Arc2, Part 5mylittlepwnyOctober 4 2011, 00:27:13 UTC
There are...no words for how hard and fast my heart beat throughout all of this. Just.
The Kennels. God. God. And Rose, and group feeding, and Cassandra ugh and he is in there all alone THEY'RE GOING TO TRY AND DRUG THEM WHEN ARE THEY MOVING OUT WHEN OH GOD.
He smiles. It's a sight she hasn't seen in ages.
She presses their foreheads together, running her fingertips through his beard. She can feel him smile wider.
"Everyone's looking," he warns, warm and chiding.
"Get used to it," she warns right back.
They grin into each other's faces, so very close and still so very far.
And somehow, this was the worst. Because it's them, Freckles and Rose, and this moment should not be happening where it's happening, it should be happening on some hill looking over Cardiff at sunset.
Re: Evidently Deviltown, Arc2, Part 5rallalonOctober 4 2011, 02:08:20 UTC
And somehow, this was the worst. Because it's them, Freckles and Rose, and this moment should not be happening where it's happening, it should be happening on some hill looking over Cardiff at sunset.
Rather why this entire section had to be written in summary. Not as bad as the Ood pens, but still bad.
“So gay,” she proclaims. “You want to have his brain babies.”
“Yes, Rose,” he says. “That’s the secret. I have brain babies.”
“I knew it.” She settles back against him. “Name one after me?”
“Of course.” His hand comes up, palm settling between her shoulder blades.
After a while, dozing off, waking up, watching one another sleeping and waking, she says, “I have a secret too.”
“Bet you’ve got dozens.”
“I’ll tell you this one.”
“Then it won’t be a secret,” he says.
“Will be if you don’t tell anyone.” A lie with him the fourth to know.
“I can’t keep anything from the father of my brain babies, Rose. That is a terrible foundation for a relationship. Think of the children.”
She pretends to. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll tell you anyway.”
“Mmhm?”
It takes her some time, takes her more than one try to say it. Jackie’s annoyed and Mickey laughed and not even Shareen has stood up for her. It’s not so stupid of an idea. It’s not so impossible of a thing.
“Promise you won’t laugh,” she tells him.
“I will never promise that,” he answers.
She rolls her eyes and he squeezes her hand.
“I’m studying for my A Levels,” she says.
He blinks at her.
He smiles like something, like some burst of light she can’t quite name, and she’s smiling back so hard she thinks she might cry.
“Oh, Rose,” he says. “That was my secret too!”
His secret is a bit more complicated than that. It involves a fabricated online identity, really vague details, and a rather crazy plan of revising for sociology, psychology and literature A Levels online. They're the ones he'd found the courses for. He hasn’t quite worked out how he’s going to sit for exams.
“Fake id?” he offers weakly.
“I think this is going to be a bit harder than a fake driver’s license,” she says. “There’s got to be records and all that. Schooling, your GCSEs. A birth certificate.”
“Um,” he says. “I was homeschooled?”
She sort of looks at him at that.
His gaze drops and he crumples. He doesn’t move, doesn’t twitch or fold or bend, but he crumples all the same, disappearing into himself until she catches his hand.
“What do you want them for?” she asks.
“I want to be a doctor,” he says.
“Of what?”
“Of anything,” he says. “Of everything.”
She bites her lip. Asks, “What first?”
“Modern languages.”
They get to planning.
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He stops. Considers.
Keeps right on scratching the beard.
“Hair doesn’t work that way,” he tells her.
“Okay, just.... Be patient, yeah?”
A flash of white teeth through brown fuzz. “Oh, I know how to wait, Rose. Don’t you worry about me.”
“Wish October would get here already,” she says, says it yet again.
“Rose the uni student,” he muses. “You’ll be brilliant.”
“I’ll be a mess.”
He gives her a pointed look, then scratches at his beard.
She laughs. Reaching out, she scratches it for him, both hands along his cheeks and chin.
His fingers fall from his face, hold her elbow. Eyes happily shut, he hums.
“We’ll be messes together,” they say in unison, then laugh.
“But really,” Mickey says.
“No,” she says. “I’ll visit, all right?”
“What’s wrong with a school in London?” He’s accepted it’s happening, they’ve that much at least.
“What’s wrong with wanting to go somewhere else?” she asks.
“Yeah, but... Cardiff.”
“It’s a good business programme.”
“But, Rose. Cardiff.”
Yes. Cardiff. A nice train ride away, where nobody knows her.
“Change of pace,” she says and shrugs. “Look, are you going to support me on this or not?”
When she realizes she was hoping for the “or not”, she realizes she has a problem.
Lots of couples break up when one goes away to uni, right?
In the weeks that follow, she knows Mickey knows and she also knows they have one of those mad loops of knowing going on. It all means they’re very well informed but still not technically on the same page, and it’s driving her mental.
It’s just hard to bring up, difficult to start. She loves him, she really did, and now there’s the plan and she’s going away and she needs a clean break for this to work. Except she can’t say any of that.
She finagles it with her mum, works out the details for expenses. She has to live in a dorm, first year, but that’s not so bad. She’s applied for funding and scholarships and a great deal of things that Freckles worked out on his own. She’s pretty sure he applied for them on his own, too, because she doesn’t remember writing any of those scholarship essays. Might be an issue, that, later.
The real issue, when it comes down to it, is convincing her mother about the kennel fee. More specifically, the insurance.
“Look, we won’t say he’s a weird one,” she protests. “I just want to make sure that if anything happens to him, I don’t starve for the rest of the year. I’ve heard stories about the Flesh up in Wales, we all have.”
“Mm, yes, but....”
“Think of it this way, it’s still cheaper than selling him and me going back to frozen.”
“Be even cheaper without the insurance.”
“Mum.”
“Oh, all right.”
Perfect.
Moving day approaches and she packs everything up, all of his things and most of hers.
Edgy about it, he returns his clothing, storing it in the safety of her suitcase. With obvious reluctance, he puts back on the smock Jackie had bought him in. It’s ill-fitting and ridiculous. It’s absolutely horrible: he sticks out like a sore thumb. He looks like someone dressed up as Flesh for Halloween. They’re going to think he’s a joke, she’ll have to convince people, and then they’ll never forget his face, beard or no.
And then he shuffles, pulls in on himself, shoulders hunching, eyes flicking to the ground. Livestock once more.
Her stomach heaves and she rushes to him, shoves at his shoulders and catches his face. “Stop it. Stop it.”
He looks at her with confused eyes, brown and bright. “Stop what?”
“You’re not- You’re not that. You-”
“Not what?” he demands. “Not Flesh? Of course I’m Flesh, what did you think all the bloodletting was about?” He gestures at his own neck, the soft, marked skin.
“You’re not stupid,” she says. “You can’t stand there and go all small and-”
“Yes I can,” he interrupts. Says it firmly. “I can play the part as well as any. I have to.”
She knows that.
Takes a breath, lets it go.
Her convictions, her qualms: not so easily released.
“Just playing,” she says.
“Just playing,” he confirms.
They play a lot, the two of them. He plays a part, she plays a part. They play at this and that.
Then it’s moving day, and it’s time for reality.
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Getting Freckles sorted turns out to be the easiest of it. There are modules to sign up for and flatmates to meet and a campus to learn and a city to learn on top of the campus. If she didn't need to eat, she'd never see him.
That he hates the kennel is obvious. It's obvious because anyone with a brain or a heart or a soul should hate the kennel and every time Rose goes back there, she's hit by it all over again, the way no one notices.
At first, she thought it was the Flesh who were unnerving her. They're nothing like Freckles, nothing at all. The docile ones have their pens together and it's a common sight to see them slumped in piles. They lie around like stray cats but look like people: of course it's disturbing.
But then she starts paying attention.
The floors are hard. The air is cool. The Flesh are drained.
They're not foul and pathetic.
They're abused.
She begins to smuggle things in when she comes, little things at first, then larger things. For all Freckles is among his own kind, he clearly isn't. She's gained three pounds since uni began in the attempt to put him in a hazy state even vaguely like those of his penmates, but nothing's working. He's bored and can't sit still and it's worse than it ever was back in the flat. He's surrounded by Flesh and so terribly lonely.
Whenever she arrives, he stands. He stands and he comes to her, even if this involves shaking free of his sleeping penmates.
When she bites him, she takes her time about it and he talks all the while. He's light and clever, astonishing as always, and there's no sign of him going mad save for the fact that he must be. She couldn't stand this.
"Two more months," she reminds him every time. "Winter break." She's already looking into apartments.
"What are you getting me for Christmas?" he usually asks.
Or, a month away, "How's revision going?" or "Are my emails piling up?"
Or, a week away, in a tiny, controlled whisper: "Rose, they tried to drug me."
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From the beginning, there has been the issue of Lady Cassandra.
Cassandra is a bitch. Rose has thought long and hard about this and her conclusion is this. Cassandra is a bitch. Then, now, and always. Rich, spoiled, spent her two gap years traveling the world, and has a pair of Flesh in the same pen as Freckles. Chip and Dale are from the same batch and Cassandra likes to pretend she can tell them apart.
Cassandra also likes to feed with her friends. Once and only once, Rose tried to stick around for the social occasion. Not because she likes any of Cassandra's friends, or even knows them. They all look at Rose with "chav" written in their eyes. Even so, being social with other people is a reason to remain among the Flesh. It's the excuse she needs to sit with Freckles with her hand on his back, or combing her fingers through his hair or holding his hand with care so that no one else can see.
She remained the odd one out, which would have been fine if it hadn't made Freckles look odd as well. He's smarter than all of them combined and when Rose is with him, he lets it show on his face.
She still doesn't know what to think about that, that he wears his dignity best when she's there to see it. It scares her, the thought that someone else might catch a glimpse.
So the attempts at social feeding stop. If not for limiting her time with Freckles back to the beginning, she wouldn't regret the lack at all. Watching the other Flesh submit - some afraid, some oblivious, some fawning - it all turns her stomach.
"How did the world get like this?" she asks Freckles once while they're alone, as "alone" as they can be in his pen, surrounded by blank-faced Flesh. It's a week before the attempted drugging, two weeks before it's time to sink or swim.
"Is that rhetorical?"
"Nope."
"Check my emails," he tells her.
"Already done. You've had nothing new for-"
"No," he corrects. "The essays and articles I translated over the summer, those."
"From Professor Mancrush?"
Freckles rolls his eyes. "Professor Yana, Rose."
"I know," she says. "I'll read them."
"Will you?"
She nods.
He smiles. It's a sight she hasn't seen in ages.
She presses their foreheads together, running her fingertips through his beard. She can feel him smile wider.
"Everyone's looking," he warns, warm and chiding.
"Get used to it," she warns right back.
They grin into each other's faces, so very close and still so very far.
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The Kennels. God. God. And Rose, and group feeding, and Cassandra ugh and he is in there all alone THEY'RE GOING TO TRY AND DRUG THEM WHEN ARE THEY MOVING OUT WHEN OH GOD.
He smiles. It's a sight she hasn't seen in ages.
She presses their foreheads together, running her fingertips through his beard. She can feel him smile wider.
"Everyone's looking," he warns, warm and chiding.
"Get used to it," she warns right back.
They grin into each other's faces, so very close and still so very far.
And somehow, this was the worst. Because it's them, Freckles and Rose, and this moment should not be happening where it's happening, it should be happening on some hill looking over Cardiff at sunset.
Seriously. My heart is still clenching.
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Rather why this entire section had to be written in summary. Not as bad as the Ood pens, but still bad.
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basically.
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it's not going to happen is it?
*sigh*
I just.......really want more of this
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