#grimrecper

SLITHERING. WRITHING. CHOKING.      He saw nothing,   but he could feel everything,   the way the eyes watched as he struggled beneath the weight of an invisible force stronger than he ;   they’re like these terrors. . .  it feels like as if somebody was gripping my throat. . .   they’re not tremors,   they’re worse than tremors. . .  they’re these terrors,   it’s squeezing,   like somebody was gripping my throat. . .    AND THEN I OPEN MY EYES AND ALL I SEE IS FLAMES AND PEOPLE THAT I LOVE DYING,   he’d explained to his therapist.   She’d simply upped the dosage on his medication,   and yet,   here he was again,     crying out for somebody to help him but choking on the words nonetheless. 

It happened nearly every night.    He’d yet to learn how to manage the things he was seeing,   or cope with them.    John was beginning to believe he might not ever.

HAZEL HUES FLY OPEN,     chest heaving with each laboured breath,    hands. . .   searching,   reaching,   trying to find the other body in his bed but unable to see through involuntary tears that threatened to spill over onto his cheeks. 

“Here we are, Mister Kravitz.” His favorite mug, white base with a floral pattern one of his sisters painted on it once, joins the other on the table. In it steams a lovely pick from the Pellico family. “Unfortunately, I have neither sugar nor milk on me; I’m due another stop at the shop, I’m afraid. I hope you will enjoy your tea regardless -- the Pellico family is one of the newer additions to the graveyard, bless them, so I haven’t had much of a chance to share them with others yet.”

       ‘   But  –  !  I do not  –    ‘   words all catch on his tongue and fall to the ground along with any semblance of an argument.   How is he supposed to argue with this  –  this accusation that seems to come from nowhere?   All he can do is stop in his tracks with an armful of records recently made,  newly recorded on the spirits in his stockade,  it’s just  –  it’s just work.   His work,  that he’s trying to put together to make this afterlife bearable at all.   Work regarding the dead yes but  –

   His gaze holds steady for a minute,   brows furrowed,  until shaking his head and making an attempt to continue on as though he hadn’t been interrupted.   ‘   I don’t … see why I should?   I mean,  we’re  – I’m dead,   Vax.   What use do I have to spend time with the living?   ‘  It’s the excuse Kravitz has conjured for himself.   Not that he hasn’t thought about it in passing,   when watching the world turn from his glimpses into it.   But he’s always held back the urge to dip his hand into that stream of life and change.   Gloved hands sort through names and file them away.    

       ‘   I know I can go to the prime material plane but I’m effectively … a ghost,  right?   ‘  he goes on softly,   ‘   I’m dead.   I appear just to kill people.   I’m a violent,   dangerous ghost.   At best I get to watch people grow up and die.   At worst I’m probably terrifying to them?  Fuck  –  I’d probably be scared if I met someone like me while I was alive.   ‘  

                    oh,  this  man  is  going  to  be  difficult. 

          vax’s  hands  shoot  out  quick  as  a  blink  ---  he  was  a  thief  before  he  was  her  champion,  he  remains  lithe  and  dexterous  in  death,  and  has  never  failed  to  claim  a  prize  his  nimble  fingers  sought.    he  lifts  the  stack  of  neat  little  files  from  his  young  friend’s  arms,  keeps  the  pile  crisply  collated  when  he  sets  it  on  the  desk.    it’s  all  so  much  more  complicated  than  it’s  ever  needed  to  be,  but  it  brings  kravitz  some  comfort.     

          “ what  use  do  any  of  us  have ? ”    two  straight  fingers  tap  his  companion  pointedly  on  the  chest,  a  hard  poke  to  the  crest  of  his  clavicle.    “ it’s  good  for  the  soul,  kravvy.    you’ve  still  got  one  of  those. ”    

          kravitz’s  role  affords  him  a  freedom  that  vax  does  not,  cannot  have,  and  he  is  still  a  young  man,  as  young  goes  ---  too  young  to  quite  grasp  the  point  of  it  all.    joy,  everyday  joy,  the  beauty  of  cold  morning  air  in  the  lungs,  the  love  of  other  people.    in  death,  in  the  cask  of  his  chest,  sentimentality  has  aged  like  wine. 

soft angst starters. @grimrecper

“No.” The answer comes readily; he doesn’t have to search for it. There are few things that make Caduceus uncomfortable. Most involve being around undead, and for all that Mister Kravitz is decidedly not alive, he does not make Cad’s blood run cold. In a strange way, Mister Kravitz is natural, and this makes him perfectly fine in Cad’s eyes.

Despite the current lack of skin and impressive display of goddess-granted powers.

AMUSEMENT WASHES OVER HOLLOWED EYES.    John had heard Kravitz utter the same words over twice since he’d stepped out of the shower ;    once when his hair was sopping wet and a tangled rat’s nest falling in his face,    and another now,    when he was pulling a shirt over his head.    It made him smile,    but only a little. 

manhandling meme: @grimrecper​

Molly laughs at everything. He laughs too much. Ornna says it makes him sound insincere, and isn’t that the goal, leading the kind of life he does? But when Kravitz muzzily shoves him flat against the downy-stuffed mattress that is more luxurious than Molly has any right indulging in, that usual humor fizzles in his throat, winks out like he once watched a star do, quicker than a snap of his fingers. It leaves something else in its wake, a kind of excited, what? nervousness that ripples under his skin, alien and uninvited and slightly terrifying. He never forgot the position of that star, still looks for the empty pocket it left in the sky.

“Wasn’t going anywhere, sweetheart,” he swears when Kravitz shifts to drape half atop him, the wefts of his locs brushing his jaw. They’re loose, lay long and lovely over the pillows because Molly asked and Kravitz obliged him, and he aches with the sight of them, and that’s…new, that ache. That’s very new. At least he can still lie, because he was definitely about to go somewhere, and that somewhere was away from here. If he leaves before Kravitz disappears on a mission, on some fucking hunt like Yasha does for the Stormlord, maybe Molly won’t be unmoored by his absence—

He curls an arm around him, turns into the curve of Kravitz’s body to pull him closer, lips finding his hairline. Kravitz asked, maybe not in words, and Molly obliges.