YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE!

It has been two years. I didn't want to do this because I have always, always wanted to keep things just lowkey. Painless. I'm here to enjoy myself and that is all. I didn't want to deal with the inevitable retaliation from this group seeing as how they all already so obsessively stalk and send grotesque anons. I didn't want to have to share my story and have it put under a microscope. I didn't want to go back to my chats and relive all that Q did to me and how I felt through that entire ordeal, but here I am forced by their hand because of Q's absolutely reprehensible lies. So be it.

Triggers include (pulled straight from my document): extreme emotional manipulation, manufacturing of events to isolate, love bombing, gaslighting, vaguing, guilt tripping, fabricated lies about being sexually assaulted, my reckless driving driven out of suicidal thoughts as a consequence of the abuse, and the genuine engineering of situations to turn my friends against me. There is mention of racism, primarily Southeast and East Asian racism, and talking in an exceedingly terrible light about Turkish people and Q mocking/denying SA stories of those they have hurt. There is ample amount of just straight bullying. There is slut shaming. There is also mention of Attack on Titan, which I do not engage with anymore and haven’t for years, but had been a huge source of our fights toward the tail end of our relationship. There is a conversation about rape as well with my being pressured into sex/having my boundaries and vocal discomfort dismissed. Explicit details of my rape are provided at Point #3.

rodrick wasn't ever much for discernment. amongst the gator's, buckmoth's and copperheads came a sense of comradery for the sharp - toothed and venomous, a breach of the human values that so many held dear to their catholic hearts. the dirty and divine, the gravedigger's and funeral director's, rodrick found a home sitting with the sinner's; this sharp - suited thing standing before him, all done up to the chin with his paisley noose sitting tight around his neck, rodrick is sure that somewhere here he could find common ground.

this strange little song and dance does nothing but entice him to come closer, his furrowed eyebrows disappearing entirely when his hat is bent forward and the night's shadow overtakes half his face entirely. concentrated on figuring out what exactly he's talking about, the preacher's mouth upturns into a hyperbolic frown, both ends of his mouth comically pulled down, the cheeks giving the slight impression of his age around the mouth.

❛  t'die for — is y'now? ❛ humoring what shouldn't be humored, rodrick lifts his head and his eyes, now exposed to the moon, glimpse sam with a hollow, star-like glaze around the pupil; amusement is there somewhere, dancing through his thick eyebrows, causing a ruckus between chin and hairline. ❛  jus' tell me. why're you tryna stall? ❛ and why wasn't he? trying to stall? what about this has him ready to hop into his car and ride off into the night with sam at his side, where was all that fear from before?

non-existent, and made calm by the fact that he would likely be the one to take care of the body after anyway, he moves again. too quiet now that the floor under his feet is half mud, half dried mud. the crackling of dried mud to dust, clothes rubbing against skin, the chirping of the katydid - the world seems to sing again. and sam, for being so far away, only glowed that much brighter in the evening's chorus. his blood, and heart, so loud that it brings a throb to his fangs just thinking about it. so alive, more alive than anyone rodrick's ever met. and yet here, as they stand around in the dark, rodrick and sam are death's hands and eyes. it's rumbling, needy stomach. it's hard, throbbing heart. equal and yet so far from one another.

There’s something to them, Sam thinks. Like the cat that ate the canary.

“...What do you mean,” Sam rumbles, his mouth slanting up. “I just told you.”

Something is afoot. He theorizes it may be the work of mischievous pixies or perhaps the hand of some ambiguous, intangible juju, but there’s no mistaking the amusement in Rodrick’s eyes for anything else. The coils in Sam’s brain begin to vibrate. His eyebrows crinkle together. 

“You know. Some mouth-to-mouth action,” he says, pitching onto his toes. “Like kissing! The kiss” —he swoops out a finger— “of death.”

His eyebrows hike up to the stars. Sam, then with blinding, literal clarity, says, “I’m soul sucking!

“So. We got our walk in the moonlight, a little heart-to-heart—” He’s quickly ping-ponging around, rapidly segueing into something here. Sam rolls a finger out at Rodrick, the fluorescent imp. “Hey. Come one, come all.”

As in: why watch it happen to someone else? 

Why not subject Rodrick?

It's a joke, and it isn't. Headstones dot the field that gives the living room a backdrop. The dogs answer the call of the coyotes somewhere on the ridgeline. Here, Sam is swallowed by the shadow of a bull elk shoulder mount above the couch. Everything a reminder of all that is dead and all that is wild. There's no spare room, no large dining table, no accounting for a life of anything or anyone other than a lone beast and her endless solitude.

Her spaces do not roll out red-carpet welcomes to guests. If anything, they work to deter them. Living right above a morgue makes it all the more airtight against the contamination of company. A choice made out of convenience, or a carefully-crafted wall to keep others out? Margot often asks herself the question only to promptly ignore the answer.

She doesn't know what compelled him to routinely seek shelter in this place, an antithesis to all the things most beside Margot find comforting and cheerful and homey. But he does. And she's happy he does.

" Pitching in for rent means I'd have to give you half the bed. Wouldn't feel right keeping you on the couch. " She speaks the too-intimate offer before her tired mind can think. Not that she backpedals. Only half smiles.

She should stop while she's ahead, before the inevitability of embarrassment and the realization that she's misunderstood. But she watches Sam from the doorway. Sam, and Sam's drooped shoulders, and Sam's hopeless blue eyes that shy from her when she stares too long as she often does. She watches him, all of him, and can only think about how purposeless her hands feel now that they're not holding his.

Sam has no memory of conjuring words. It’s only afterward when he realizes the couch has fallen away, Sam dumbly following her to her room like a newborn changeling. The door clicks shut.

He has seen this bed before, but never so pigmented. Neural chemistry thrown out of whack, the proverbial cotton in his throat. He smells the well of her lavender soaps and her fabric softener and tracks her in the dim of these citrus papaya lights, wondering if she’ll crawl in first, feeling out of body. This must be what the young people call astral projection. He’s spirit walking. 

Maybe Margot has changed into pajamas, her eyes in the dark: disco balls. 

Sam shambles in beside her, fully clothed and stiff. It’s too small, elbow jabbing arm.

“First things first—” Sam finally revs up his throat. He turns to face her. “Gotta get a bigger bed. I’m thinking something maybe... two-people sized?”

T-minus fifty-three minutes to airing and Hanson is getting one last rehearsal under their belt. A trifle excessive; they had a rehearsal this morning that went overschedule, and many have not yet recovered from that experimental acoustic version of MMMBop!

There is not a single crew member on Late Night who hasn't now got doo wop! BAH BAH... bouncing from one wall of the cerebrum to the next, and it's making Monty, Conrad's dour-faced executive producer, especially testy. His criticism of an intern's mopping skills was questionably constructive, and his greeting to Samuel was lukewarm, if we're feeling generous.

Conrad is just off-stage, thumbs hooked into his jeans. He has stopped trying to make sense of how Hanson has managed to commandeer the stage for so long.

"If you close your eyes, we could be in a diner in the sixties right now," he tells his colleague. No one really thinks of Sam as a guest anymore -- his visits are too frequent, and often too memorable, to think of him as anything less than part of the fabric of the production.

Sam has heard this song before. Ad nauseum, even. So much so that it’s ascended into visual tie-dye hallucinations and the axis of the Earth might finally tip. Soon, the arctic ice caps will Sputnik into space, raining back down in the form of lethal subzero projectiles.

Based on Monty’s grunted hello and the tight smiles of the crew, everyone else seems to agree. 

Conrad, inexplicably inhuman, buzzes.

“Yeah,” Sam finally drones, flummoxed. “I feel like Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Has Conrad seen it? He must have. Sam clasps his hands then holds them out, ignoring Hanson with extreme prejudice. 

“Imagine: stage fog for ambiance. Dramatic lighting…” He snaps his fingers, eureka. “Like a disco ball. Maybe hang a couple of angels from the ceiling, throw in some pearly gates, cue in a choir, and when the curtains pull back…” He turns around on his heels. He splays his hands. “‘Stairway to Heaven’.”

Led Zeppelin, like a reunion thing. He smiles bright like aluminum in a microwave, his sunny side up dress shirt radioactive under the fixtures. 

Told to look at what he got him, Z looks at the mug and snickers a bit. "Heh. leave it to such a ... manny to get you something like that. What a mess." They seemed.. close, in some kind of way.

Nevertheless, Zora returns to their task and focuses on cleaning up the computer.

“Yeah. Real heart of gold,” he says to no one, overly droll. “Three years he’s been crawling on hands and knees for someone. Here’s an idea: take a hint!”

When it’s done, Sam turns back around. His tie is a tasteful chunky sunset paisley, like a relic of the nineties. 

“Slipped in a touch of the good stuff,” he starts, rattling molten gold in the form of whiskey, “and, getting real luxurious—‘cause why not—a dash of nutmeg,” he says, setting their mug down. “You know, spice things up.”

rodrick often wonders if his sin is something palpable to the untrained eye. if the average man, if that's what sam was, could tell that he felt all prickly and undone just sitting next to him. his legs, while long and pale, felt naked. he felt naked, all newborn flesh and unfledged skin just hanging out; is this what men did when they weren't scared? they undressed and sat amongst kindred spirits, half naked and unafraid of what unsightly things hide under the black's he's grown so fond of hiding in? were his legs ugly? was the hair too thick, the scars too pale?

there's privilege in being able to interact with sam in a way that doesn't suggest that he's too damaged to do so. he isn't rodrick the preacher here. he's just rodrick. with or without his collar, he's just rodrick to sam. and he feels lucky about that, luckier than he's ever been.

another life and he'd have been able to share a beer with him. the push and pull of that throat as it swallows down the amber liquid has rodrick looking down with a swallow of his own, half tempted to take the bottle before the lips seal it off; just to taste the dregs around the opening.

it surprises him that sam would choose so violent and end. it was personal, he assumed, that kind of death. a knife was one thing but a steak knife has a rolling affect on rodrick, caught off guard by the shiver of disgust at the image. at the memory of skin cut, whether by a scalpel or serration, it didn't matter. the damage would be gruesome. ❛  you'd use a steak knife? ❛ rodrick kind of exclaims, baffled and intrigued. still wondering how that could be. ❛  y'ever - hey. ❛

mid inhale, mid suck  — the smoke isn't even down his throat. it just dissipates through his open mouth, surprised to find that the mere threat of anymore skin contact makes him eager to be the one to initiate it. to show sam how normal he could be, that he wasn't scared - even if he was.

a knife or his soul. a kiss after death or a kiss before. he isn't ready to make a choice. to admit anything at all was to give sam the knife that would surely kill him and yet he finds, as that smoke is given back, that he wouldn't mind dying painlessly. the saliva on that cigarette thrills the preacher, it gives him a shy smile as he puts it back to his lips and sucks on the end the way sam does. he doesn't pinch the smoke, rodrick just cradles it between two fingers and gives a slight pull. warm saliva on his dry bottom lip. salty and briney, the way the lip of his bottle would taste, he reckons.

❛  easy. i'd choke y'till there ain't nothin' left to feel. make sure that yer' nice n'sleepy. ❛ roddy laughs a little bit, smoke pouring out from between his eye teeth. the phantom pain of a blush is pouring behind his face, a false positive to the confession.

There is little here to admire. Sam, forever encroaching on fifty, in his baby powder tartan boxers and the wiry chestnut hairs on his legs. Sam is not beautiful, predisposed to the post-hair syndrome of older men—at his age, he wears crow’s feet, sexy only by his snake oil charm and that neon confidence. Then there’s Rodrick.

Rodrick has been entombed in his church like he’s been swallowed by a wooden Monstro. It’s as if the powers that be saw fit to take this Grimm fairytale, born under a tangerine eclipse and on the fuzzy backs of docile, sleeping bats, only to lock him away. There are words to describe men like him: imagined. The one that got away. 

“You don’t- mean that,” he huffs, waiting. “What. Seriously?”

Rodrick is better at bullshit than a priest should. 

“Alright, Muhammad Ali. Let’s see what you’ve got.” Sam’s beer clacking the nightstand. He sits up, offering a knobby, wide hand. “Good ol’ boy like you— fiver says you’ve a lover,” he stresses, pointing a finger, “not a fighter.”

This looks like arm wrestling. Or the start of a full-sized, laundered cage fight. Soon, in five minutes, the television will roll the credits and fade to black, but not before Connie bursts into hysterics, he was my husband, and you killed him.

     Arms stay crossed with one hand gripping the strap of her designer tote bag as if it might depart her shoulder and be left behind as evidence of her presence in that small office. No extra thought is given to Sam’s showy language, she just follows, mouth shut, like one who feels like they overstayed their welcome. 

     Another step and her core starts to tremble; her sight on the dirty grout of old tiles loses focus. Something feels off, like a sudden bought of motion sickness on a boat that won’t stop rocking. Eyelids shut tight hoping to clear a blur only to open upon what wasn’t there before.

A westerly wind blows through. There is a fairytale haze to this place. Sam tastes seasalt and manifests visions of a salmon, lacquered moon and whiskey-colored stars, the marble floors made from the eggshell of a cream dragon. The ocean crashes in shades of plum.

Brienne looks bewildered and stammers. This is stage one, and his gears turn. 

“You’ve got your outdoor heated pool and your all-day room service… And hey, a spa with one of those jet baths—perfect for rejuvenation.” Sam motions vaguely to the potted indoor yucca, then, to the whiskey stars. “And check out the view.”

Brienne wouldn’t be marveling at the skyline. He’s prepared; he needs to pivot. The inevitability of human shock has arrived. 

The werewolf stares down at the man with narrowed eyes, her ears slightly pinned backward against the sides of her head (the best they could anyway in this state). When he warns her of the potential of passing registrations coming down the sidewalk any minute, she lets out a growl and jerks him away, brushing her hands over her chest to rid her of the smell. Behind the cheap cologne he was wearing, all she could smell was nothing but decay.

“You’re brave coming out here and making deals, out in the open like this,” she motions lazily around them with a roll of her wrist. “Especially with others about, others who know your kind of business on the less keen.” She shakes her head a little, pinching the bridge of her nose, her head slightly bowed down before she shifted her gaze back on him.

“Alright. Last I checked—and... I think you’ll find I’m right on this one” —he holds up a hand, face crumpling— “I don’t recall a sign. Now I pose: how is a tourist in this great American state supposed to know he can’t enter public, city-owned property? And… who was hurt?” He waits. He smiles, failingly. “Not a soul. These people fully consented, uncoerced, into an agreement which I’ll remind you, extends their lives. Lives that, without me, would’ve ended tomorrow!”

Now, Sam throws his arms out semi-eagle-winged, washed in storefront lights and streetlamps of neon raspberry Americana kitsch. Her nails glinting, asphalt black. He still feels them at his throat. 

shit. he should have been more hesitant. but rodrick's never been one for begging, he didn't get on his knees for any man but the almighty and sam sure as shit was no shepherd. he might even argue that there was something devilish at play, a scheme of preposterous folly. and while rodrick might not beg, he did often fall sacrifice to his own selfish longing. a devil perhaps, but divinity anyway. a warm mouth, the same grinding teeth to help to digest the soul.

was he not of the same ilk? did he not strip the body and make it easier to flay the flesh, to dig the soul out with scalpel and a concave mirror? he wasn't the man with the pressurized bolt thrower to the cattle's forehead, but he was the butcher. and sam, he was the next step in the natural order; the devouring.

it would seem fortunate, then, that the butcher be so acquainted with what the devourer needs. he's only been leading his flock to another kind of hungry god for the entirety of his life, what was another in this second, half-lived, life of his? another hungry god, more souls brought to the alter and mouth? he would not be holding the knife.

outside, warm dusk deepens into an amorous darkness. there's a fading indigo night upon him and death is near. yet rodrick feels that in the darkness was something unmerciful and unbecoming of what he'd built his life around; a burgeoning dread that turns him around at first mention.

“‘We’re not’...?” He mirrors Rodrick’s befuddled face. Then, Sam cracks a long and sloping smile, fingers spread. “Back by popular demand,” he gravels, now, lowly, “you can take a bite out of this.”

There’s a cosmic-sized joke there. Rodrick’s quivering smile said he was caught off guard, maybe tickled, impossibly exasperated. There will be no breath catching or deep-belly sighs, and Sam pivots before he can argue.  

“Rodrick. Rodrick! I’m painting a picture here!” He smiles, amused, rocking onto his toes. Twigs crunch underfoot and he sets back down. “I pay someone a visit, we do a little…” he clicks his tongue, spinning a finger, “embrace— And pain free, I might add. Light as a feather.” He chuckles, free-styling through. “I’m stealing hearts, promises are fulfilled, and look at that,” he simmers. “They say I’m to die for.”

He clasps his hands together. 

animals, rodrick thinks as the citrusy backsplash eats away at the tube's muted atumnal colors, are easier to subdue when they think they're safe; an animal that knows it's about to die would fight tooth and nail for another breath of air, no matter how small a breath it turned out to be. carlo is no different. to see michael usher him into a state of weakened submission held rodrick in thrall for what he already could feel was coming. nerves gather in his belly.

his cigarette is all but ash as he wraps that hand around his thigh. a pinky overlaps the old, frayed boxer fabric, hiding the overlapping pistol pattern scattered about the cotton. he squeezes harder when carlo leans back in his seat - and then the animal is taken to the alter. and the boots, as they push through glass and grasp for purchase, rodrick can't help but jump slightly in response to it. leather bottom's were never meant for surviving a murder.

❛  — saw that comin' from a mile away! ❛ he says, turning his head with a breathless smile. when he looks at sam, a secret thrill runs through him like a wave of blush from his toes to his eyes; but there's a moment there where he takes him in on a sensory level. the smell of sharp menthol on the fingers, a mix of sweet cigar from earlier and stale beer. it's not a smell that repels him. he uses his cigarette as an excuse to lean towards him, to give himself an inch or so of mercy for those minute indulgences. just a tap, a sniff. nothing more. perhaps the sleeve of his button down brushes against the edge of sam's boxers, but nothing more. but it seems a familiar sentiment is shared between them, the puppet's are tied up together and sam leans up against him in the same way.

rodrick turns his face back to the television. ignores that the hair on his arms are standing on end.

“Chyeahh,” Sam drawls, long and silly and raspy. “Look out, Nancy Drew.”

He takes another swig. The copper hairs on his wrist bristle, reacting to the covalent proximity of another man. This too-small, one-person bed with its supima cotton, the heatwell of Sam where his shampoo-cologne has permanently sunken within the fibers, fusing now with whatever detergent Rodrick uses. Rodrick wearing cowboy boxers. Rodrick’s sleeve is by his thigh. 

The movie continues. He’s seen this already. Eight times since its release. He’s noticed three things forced in Rodrick’s Mercurian orbit: the first, that he gives off no heat. A benign and inert room temperature. The second, scars frame his mouth. Lastly, this: that through the brume of cigars and mint menthols, he smells vaguely of cherry tobacco and incense, weaned from the mountains of the Wild West.

“What?” Sam laughs incredulously around beer, his eyebrows pinched together. “Alright, uh... You’ve got two options. You ready for this?” 

He holds up a finger.

“First up: I’m talking good, old-fashioned, honest to God... bravura. Murder,” Sam croaks, motioning with his hand, “on the Orient Express. Use a steak knife, maybe? You know, kinda like whodunit? Fun for the whole family?”

Sam reaches out and, with a V, plucks the cigarette from his mouth. 

     “I rarely find those sorts upstanding, to be honest. It’s usually all gloss.” The cynicism of putting her father in that category, someone who runs a money laundering scheme on the side. And then there’s the divorce rate. Who in her social bracket is happily married anymore? It’s all depressing. 

     “But he’s a good man in a not-so-good job. And neither of us expected it. I would say we were at odds from the beginning, but a person can grow on another until you realize that fondness is there.” Not love at first sight. No whirlwind romance that Sam had for his wife. No Romeo trying to sweep Juliet off her feet. Nothing romantic about jungle humidity, the lack of running water, mosquitos, and trafficking. Only two people finding their missing half in an unlikely other.

“Couple of bad breaks, huh.”

Sam’s mouth forms a slope. The image of Brienne in graphite pinstripe business professional and designer heels, forcing a beige, sad smile on a lonely February 14th. Maybe an anniversary. She seems to retract like she’s mortified, partly of being seen, partly of being judged. 

“Nothing wrong with a little yin-yang,” he says, then, elbows glued to the desk. “How’s it go again. Grass is greener on the other side? Opposites attract, and all that? Hey. I’m judgement free” —he turns his hands around— “we’re rockin’ the same boat.”

In it. He flashes a half-smile that encroaches on his eye. 

“And, uh, just… clearing the air—no harm, no foul,” Sam tacks on, “but bet you never thought I’d tie the knot.”

Brienne with someone rough around the edges. Life is full of surprises. Likewise, he suspects she saw him as a peacocked shyster who pays to keep his bed warm, uncommitted and fancy footloose, no strings attached. Maybe a tasteful swatch of triple-divorced, middle-aged washout to balance the scales.

Being at odds with first impressions went both ways, and Sam raises his coffee.