#beelijah

"so,” jaylen says, breaks the silence of their living room that’s been uninterrupted but for the gentle buzz of the tv for an hour or two or three — who keeps track of time, really, over siesta? “you excited for the season to start again?”

it’s hard to make out movement when looking directly at nan for too long is a great way to get a migraine, but she thinks she sees them shrug. she’s pretty sure that’ll be their only answer, but eventually they say: “we were made to play blaseball.”

which wasn’t her question. “that wasn’t my question,” she says. they’ve been through that whole discussion before — whether or not she feels like she was literally created to play the splort (she doesn’t, she had a childhood that’d hardly involved blaseball at all, she’d had a life before season one and refuses to think about the fact that someday, she may have a life post-blaseball, too) matters less than her bone-deep knowledge that being a pitcher is the only thing she can do, and the only reason she’s alive, in ways both literal and metaphorical.

“i don’t know,” they say. “i’m not good at it.”

“yeah,” jaylen says, less of an agreement (though they both know nan’s star count could be way better) and more of a brushing past it. “but do you like it?”

nan’s quiet another long moment. maybe it was a shitty question, jaylen thinks. the game’s fucked up both their lives in such visceral, identity-warping ways. god fucking knows her own feelings on whether or not she still likes blaseball change by the hour; she wants to, she wants to like the thing she dedicates her life to so badly, she wants to find some love in her heart for the thing she’s died for two times over. it isn’t that simple. nothing in their lives is, really.

“i don’t know,” nan says again.

2. digging your fingers into fresh dirt (crime au flavor)

Just because Stevie is used to Hank disappearing out of the house in the middle of the night doesn’t mean they like it doing that. They lie flat on their back in bed, squeezing their eyes shut hard enough to see starbursts on the back of their eyelids, willing themself to go back to sleep for what must be an hour after they hear the back door bang open, then shut again. There’s no sound after that - maybe Hank’s finally gone for good. Stevie worries about that, that Hank’s going to slip out one night and not come back - or worse, that it’s going to go and kill Derrick to get back in Jaylen’s good graces, and disappear back to Seattle. Sometimes living with Hank, knowing it could decide that at any moment, feels like living on the edge of a knife.

Stevie gets out of bed, finally, wrapping a heavy quilt around their shoulders and clutching it shut at their collarbone. The moon is full outside, a spotlight glaring through their bedroom window. Stevie looks down on the backyard, mostly searching the tree line for signs of Hank and Derrick brawling in the woods between Stevie’s house and Seb’s. Instead, motion from closer to the house draws their eye. 

Hank is in the garden. Digging. No - not digging. Filling a hole that’s already dug. Stevie can see its hair coming loose from its ponytail in the light of the moon, the muscles in its arms tensing and flexing with every load of soil Hank piles on and tamps down with the back of the shovel. The hole is already too full for Stevie to see what’s buried there, but they know the size of a hole made for a corpse. 

Stevie waits until Hank is leveling off the last of the soil to leave the window and come downstairs. The boards of the porch creak underfoot as they step outside, barefoot, quilt still draped over them. Hank is kneeling on the ground, now, and looks up.

“Didn’t want to wake you,” it says, flashing an easy grin. It has the fingers of one hand in the dirt, the other clutching something round - a plant bulb.

“Is that Derrick?” Stevie asks, because they would prefer to know outright if Hank is planting a flower bed on the body of their best friend’s boyfriend.

“What? No. Not him.” Hank’s brow furrows. “He’s slipping, though. Caught this guy coming down the road, with my and Krueger’s pictures in his wallet. Figured you could at least get some good fertilizer and some hyacinths out of it.”

i know its incredible. gawain not only has more interactions with his horse than his children, he has exponentially more. the friendship between gawain and his horse is like his most important character bond after like, lancelot and maybe guinevere. 

  actually, admittedly i have no idea why ppl are...

yeah cookie dough (at least for chocolate chips) usually has egg in it, unless you go out of your way to not use egg (…. which is usually done so that you can just eat the raw dough)

ailavyn-siniyash actually, admittedly i have no idea why ppl are...

Uh yeah eggs go in cookie dough, shrrom

huh. i’ve never even concieved of cookie dough with eggs in it? this is how i’ve always done it, and now i’m unsure if this is an american thing or if it’s just me?? hm.

Commission for @beelijah !! (edit: +bow!)

this sounds super interesting, so count me as wanting to play! (ALSO the game dungeon world might be a good way to go about this? im listening to a campaign podcast rn and the DM split the party into two groups and dungeon world seems to work really well for that?)

im pretty sure about doing dnd 5e for this! i’ve been playing a lot of FATE core lately, which is fun, but after all that i’ve been itchin for some crunchy old school d20s, and also I haven’t played actual on-brand dnd since middle school so im curious what it’s like these days.

i looked up dungeon world though and it seems interesting! the official website was a bit vague so i was lookin at dnd vs dw comparisons on reddit, which were also kinda vague, but, im gettin the vibe that it’s one of those more-role-play less-roll-play systems that like, build a more collaborative story telling experience or whatever?

i got distracted for a few hours between looking it up and responding so it’s all getting hazy. but yeah looks like something i’d have fun playing, but i don’t think i want to dm in an entirely new system, especially since i’ve already got a new setup going here.