#doevines

DISAPPEAR. AND DON'T COME BACK. they were the hardest words she ever swallowed. it tore everything she took for granted , right out from under her feet. eventually she found her brother, michael, living in their childhood home that he inherited. he didn't recognize her on the doorstep. looked past her like she was a solicitor. it's me , emily. even then it was almost difficult to break through his denial. she had shown up with no explanation , covered in blood. nearly two decades had been lost between them. time she would never get back. but they had embraced , he let her into the house , showed her to her bedroom that was never redecorated , left frozen in time as a memorial to the disappeared daughter. there was dust coating everything , suggesting that the door remained closed and her whole memory was ignored as though an inconvenience. emily had sat on the stiff mattress , looking around at her old life , but her mind was on everything she left behind. lottie.

from the time she left the mental institution , her entire life had revolved around lottie. she looked at the woman with nothing short of reverence. believed whole-heartedly that she could lead them into the light. that she was powerful. she never expected that twenty years of life together would lead to this.

time passed , emily had tremendous difficulty adjusting to life in her childhood home. her heart was broken , she felt lost. how would she know where to point herself without lottie's guidance ? michael worked , had a social life , had a girlfriend. he seemed to just continue on with his life , practically uninterrupted. it stung to know that she had faded into a sad childhood story , that her reappaearance wouldn't change anything. michael got tired of her constant crying , the days she wouldn't get out of bed. he placed an ultimatum. that she needed a job , the utilities and the groceries wouldn't pay for themselves. unable to say much about what her last two decades entailed , she couldn't provide much work history. the corner gas station offered her a positon , and she didn't have much choice but to accept.

it's time to talk about larissa's brother-in-law, mel's husband, vikram. disclaimer: assad is an extremely beautiful man and i think he is a little too beautiful to really be a faceclaim for vikram, who i see as having the general build and aura of an office manager--so a little bit physically heavier, softer around the face, and feeling somewhat more grounded and down-to-earth than the guy who was literally cast as "the vampire that all the delicate biblical waifs in all renaissance paintings were based on." that being said, these glasses make him this much closer 🤏 to how i see vikram, and the shy mannerism on the right is vikram all over 1000000%.

vikram is a younger-middle son from a very large family and, like somebody else significant in mel's life, has always had severe second-best syndrome. being in the middle and being fairly stable and obedient as a kid meant that he was overlooked and his emotional world and experiences not really noticed. he was the prototypical shy kid who sat by himself for every school lunch and played alone every recess. vikram compensated for this by developing a rich inner life and focusing on things that he could do alone--he is, indeed, that guy with all the lego sets, those miniatures you buy as a kit and put together, those book nooks you can buy on etsy... he is actually quite crafty and good at diy bc of this.

he and mel met at university, where both were doing some kind of communications or public relations thing, and heterosexual kill bill sirens went off in her head. she was like he is the most beautiful precious thing i've ever seen in my life and i MUST hold him in my hands like a baby bird and hand feed him and pet his head and tell the server "he said no pickles" and... (please keep in mind that vikram was a few years older and mel was like 19 and like THAT'S THE MAN I'M GOING TO FUCKING MARRY. so.) so then after she calmed down, they started dating. after the honeymoon phase, things were really not perfect because of their very different personalities: mel was so confident that she was prone to bossiness and being controlling; vikram was so used to suppressing his own thoughts and opinions that he pretty much let her steamroll over everything, which caused him to build resentment.

each was pretty much the first truly adult relationship the other had because they learned to communicate and grow through this, together. mel had to get used to letting vikram stand on his own--because despite appearances, he is actually a very strong person, and capable of handling himself as well as deciding what battles he wants to fight--and vikram had to stop trying to just keep the peace and learn to actually pick said battles when they mattered to him, even if it would impact the relationship with mel.

in chatting with maya, i described him as, rather than a golden retriever boyfriend, an "italian greyhound" boyfriend such that you would lose him at his own birthday party and then find him hiding somewhere in his little party hat like this:

which led to the following illustrative exchange about his temperament:

𝕷𝖔𝖙𝖙𝖎𝖊 𝕸𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖜𝖘 ( @doevines ) & 𝕯𝖔𝖗𝖈𝖆𝖘 !

as the weather warms, the immediate threat has started to fade. addy can worry less about the elements (to some extent, at least) and food and focus more on building a more permanent shelter. she's set something up, she can forage and hunt, and it no longer feels like the threat of death is constantly looms over her. still, it does little to improve her mental state, the months of isolation and stress taking it's toll. so maybe it's natural that she doesn't think lottie is real at first, even if she usually only ever sees jackie and laura lee.

van_palmer , a laugh falls between the crack in her lips. if it can even be called a laugh. more like the sound of morbid irony, but who the hell who is keeping score these days? VAN'S HANDS WAVER, molding the air into a sphere as if she's getting ready to launch it straight into the tree line. no hand contact in soccer, van! fuck, they haven't seen a soccer ball in years. the college kids back in ohio play in a field down the street but her walk man's gotten about as much use lately as her hot off the press 1990 copy of goodfellas ... oh, lorraine bracco was only good enough for a couple of eye-rolling watches ... maybe lottie thinks she remembers the non-existent ice cream scene too.

" gee, lot, i think you ought to hone in on you're getting people to sign the white dotted line skills before it starts feeling a whole lot more like getting into a white van there. " this is where van shines after all. with just a few moves of her mouth she can shove some sorry excuse for humour down all of their hungry, starving throats. EXCEPT THEY AREN'T REALLY HUNGRY ANYMORE. the winter came and died. the years passed in a slow hullabaloo. (we changed and we stayed the same) and it hasn't been so damn true as it is right this second, in the same room as lottie, with a howl tucked in her esophagus just waiting for the moon. " you're not exactly giving the mcflurry machine a run for its money right about now. " she sighs beneath her breath. " how the hell did you even find me? " A BEAT, and a wrinkled nose. " do i even wanna know? "