a still lake.

TO UNDERSTAND.

you feel as if you cannot understand. your heart desires to do so, but everything seems useless, or maybe like you've exhausted every possible option. you've probably tried hard, looking low and high. opening every cabinet in the house, searching every drawer, looking under every bed. you might've ripped apart whole rooms looking, searching for exactly what you need. maybe you feel you've run out of places to look, things to find, people to ask. the windshield is frosted over, and you're sitting in the car, waiting for it to melt on a cold, winter morning. it feels as if itll never defrost, impossible to see through, no matter how much heat there is. be patient. keep searching. you'll understand eventually, i promise.

TAGGED BY: @transforms

a nod, nearly as fleeting — she watches them with wide, dark eyes, ever unsure when to speak ( never wanting to cut in, should eden choose to elaborate ), but calm, content. it’s a rhythm she’s been caught in long enough to improvise. i think it’s nice. i think it’s you. the corners of bonnie’s mouth twitch upward, but can’t settle into smiling ( she’s never comfortable with compliments, even if she has earned them ). 

‘ alright. ’ they know she could use the fresh air on a good day, and she wonders when that happened. when she was a kid — when they were kids, in the summers out at faye’s — they forgot to come in till dark, more often than not, always doing something. ‘ you want a sweater? ’

   eden’s eager to grasp at the day before they get so sick they can’t enjoy it anymore. the headache’s there, the fogginess, the ache behind their eyes and at the back of their skull. they want to sit in the sun and have a cigarette before the sun’s so bright they can’t bear to keep the curtains open. it’ll be good for the both of them, and it’s one of the few nice moments they’ll have together before eden drinks themself into a coma or hops on the next train back to the city.

     ❛      i’m  tired.      ❜    that’s all they say as their body slumps down into an available chair.    words like that aren’t too rare to fall from their lips.    anything can make eyelids heavy and muscles relax.     ❛      i  got  a  full  eight  hours  !      ❜            @cultprodigy.     st.

          This is the end of the fourth match in a row and Hank is feeling bruised. “Maybe you moved ‘em when I took a leak,” he says and it’s clear he doesn’t believe himself any more than they would. Proud men and sore losers, these plainsfolk. Hank’s eyes track the piece as Eden resigns it from the game, then he sighs and lifts his hat from his head to give it a good scratch. “Who taught you?”

“You would say that now you’ve lost.

         “You’re damn right, I would.” Hank leans over the chess board in utter despair. He’s not a smart fella, he knows that much, but he’s thought himself to be a decent opponent in any game of chess. “I know you’re cheatin’,” he insists, though their victory is written plain and fair before him.

@cultprodigy - ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PARTRIDGE - accepting

‘ there’s gin, ’  bonnie offers, ‘ upstairs. ’  she won’t pretend she knows the half of — whatever happens with the visions, but there’s nothing to be gained from feigned ignorance. ‘ i shouldn’t, anyway. ’  shouldn’t, but maybe-definitely now’s a bad time for much sobriety, and it was wise of tegan to bring it.

i’ve always liked your house. 

‘ thanks, ’  almost shyly, smiling behind the mug in her hands, ‘ guess i am kinda proud. ’  it’s not something she’s thought about  — or even had time to think about, in the two years since she bought it — but bonnie loves the space, loves the area, loves making it more and more hers. ‘ you don’t think it’s too much? ’ 

‘ no, ’  a faint smile, more with their eyes than their mouth. no, it’s not too much. no, i’m fine without putting gin in my coffee. they don’t seem too taken aback being called out, but there’s a swell of shame, somewhere; ugly and deep. they could do with an aspirin, or something stronger, but they usually do okay without.  

‘ i think it’s nice. ’  even the butterflies. maybe even especially.  ‘ i think it’s you. ’

their mind drifts, briefly, wondering what the doctors have bonnie taking, but they glance away to drink their coffee as if that’ll do anything at all to quiet their mind.

he thinks about it for a long moment, swirling the ice around his glass. it’s all uncertain for a while. this place and their voice and the room around him, transient and unwelcoming, like the walls might melt into nothing and beyond it will only be a void. a long, bright dark. 

        “a big one. y’know. my dad always said a dog isn’t a dog unless it’s half your body weight.” 

   ‘ sure. ’  they get it.  ‘ i had a dobermann as a kid. ’

they watch the ice in his glass, the condensation creeping down the sides, pooling on the old wooden table to make a ring to match all the others. somewhere overhead, a light flickers. they wonder if it’s not their brain playing tricks on them, some twisted joke about common migraine triggers, telling them to order something more useful than cheap beer.

@cultprodigy | roulette starter

       printing has taken an hour. calvin’s just woken up from a long nap on the windowsill, though it wasn’t a very restful one – her neck is cramped and there’s a line of dried drool on her chin. eden’s process is a strange one, they seem to creep around like one of the characters in those stories they write. the pamphlets are of good use to cal, though, and their collaboration may prove to be a fruitful one. she maneuvers her way off the window sill and around the desk; eden doesn’t seem to notice. nothing alters their expression, nothing draws their gaze.

       “hey,”  she yawns, “have you been smoking grass in here?”

     the first draft of whatever eden’s writing is a mess --- half-written sentences trailing off mid-thought, scribbles in the margins of the notepad, symbols in languages no one else remembers how to speak.

@cultprodigy​ / logan.

     “meet me, king jesus, meet me.”     he hums it under his breath and thinks of what comes next. won’t you meet me in the middle of the air? something like that. his knee bounces so hard it’s starting to rattle the cartilage and hurt his heel, but the whiskey sour isn’t doing enough to calm him down; there’s that bad feeling again. the dread creeping up his spine. 

          “– i’ve been thinking about getting a dog.”

     ‘ maybe you should. ’

     it’s always too hard to tell which end they’re on; if the migraine’s in its infancy or if they’re just now getting over it, but it always seems to be one of the two. they rest their cheek on their hand and watch him through low-lidded eyes, looking tired and hungover. eden’s three beers in and struggling to feel any of them, the bottles set up in a neat little line at their elbow.

Oh, you know. She knows plenty. It’s the kind of non-response she hates — Bonnie’s not in the habit of asking questions she doesn’t want answers to  — but because it’s Eden, specifically, and perhaps because she’s only getting her second cup of coffee, she lets it slide. 

‘ Did it last night, ’ she says, ‘ unless you’re trying to tell me something. In which case, it’s too early, and I don’t care. ’

     they pour a mug for both of them, eden’s without the early morning hit of whiskey they’re used to. it helps, they’ll say, but when your nerve endings are always prickling under your skin, any concession helps. they think they’ll leave in the afternoon; spare bonnie the worst of it.