#imbricare

Fingers tick-tick-tick on his knee.

He could lead Will around to plans made, and missed in order to play catch up with an old friend. But that's for playing games and he's not in the mood for anything but dragging out the worst memories of everyone in a ten mile radius.

He might just play that game later.

It's still so strange to be able to feel his heartbeat in his ears again, the way anger makes his mouth taste like copper. The way that nearly-silent but never gone voice creeps along the shadows of his thoughts, reminding him exactly why Will would choose a night out with old friends over him.

It happens when Max calls. Her voice whispers over the phone. It doesn't sound like Max. And she's talking in that way of hers. Which means she's talking in circles. In code. Trying to say the thing without saying it. Like someone's listening. (Neil was always listening. 'Was. You got that, Max? Was.') Billy hears enough. She's with Will. They're in trouble. It sets him on edge. Every muscle in his body tenses. And Billy feels sick to his stomach. Drives too fast. Blows past one out of two. fucking. traffic. lights. in this shit-hole town. On any other day, that fact drives Billy up a wall. Makes him feel cagey. Like this town is too small. Too suffocating. But now it's too big. Too much. Nothing can be normal.

Like Max's voice wasn't normal.

Jesus Christ.

It's impossible, but everyone will swear that Billy's out of the Camaro before he even cuts the engine. He just sort of appears. Lifts himself out. Pinches a cigarette between two fingers. Shuts the door. Takes everything in at once. His eyes immediately lock on Max and Will. She's in her wheelchair. He's gripping the handles. They're outside Family Video. Max just wanted to feel normal. For once. She wanted to go out and pick a movie with her friend. Not have someone pick it up for her. Because she's in a wheelchair. And she's trapped.

Billy's eyes flick to the windows. Sees the faces pressed up against the glass. And then there's a cluster people craning their necks on the sidewalk. Mouths curve to spit out jeers. Eyes that won't stop staring. Like this is some goddamn show. And Max and Will are the resident oddities.

He catches wind of the whole damn thing. Hawkins' residents are calling Max Zombie Girl now. Because she came back from the dead. Like Will. And Will is Zombie Boy. And it's like the joke's too good to pass up. The dead girl and dead boy being friends.

It's sudden. Billy's at Max and Will's side. 'They're watching us,' Will murmurs. "Get to the car, Byers, and pop the trunk." A warning. Not to Will. But to everyone else. Billy's words carry an edge. An edge most people don't want to touch. It cuts through the air, and the gathering crowd steps back a bit. Like they don't want to get in the way of Will Byers making it safely to the car. Because Billy said it.

His teeth clamp down on the cigarette. Billy's puffing away, fingers gripping the handles of Max's wheelchair as he gets her to the car. And this is the part Max hates. She hates it because she can't even get into the car without help. And people are fucking watching.

Which is why Billy keeps smoking as he locks the wheelchair and comes around to the front. He bends down a little, arms bracing to lift her. Strong. Steady. Their faces are inches apart, and he keeps puffing away. Max's arms wrap around his neck. She scrunches her nose... and takes the bait. Max starts bitching about him smoking all the time. Calls him disgusting. Asks why he's gotta smoke all the damn time.

And the concentrated knot that's forming between Billy's brows lessens. A little bit relieved. Because he's smoking so Max can have something to be mad about. Something to throw her anger into when she can't throw her own weight. So she can focus on that instead of the fact that she's in a wheelchair. And she can't do this on her own. And people are watching.

Billy doesn't really lift Max. They just sort of stand up. And this is the part that kills him. Because Max is leaning against him, and he can barely feel any weight. She's sitting in the passenger seat soon enough. "You all right?" The question is serious. But his voice cracks, and his tone pitches higher. Because the worry's twisting his lungs until he can't breathe. Max only nods. Doesn't look at him. Just keeps glaring through the windshield at the gathering crowd. And Billy's fucking had it.

He straightens up. Looks at Will. "You all right?"

A metallic TING! from the bell above the door at Family Video breaks the silence. A balding man steps out. Bold. Stupidly so. "You should've stayed dead. All of you. Instead of bringing the whole town down with you."

That does it. Billy's stepping out around the car door. Shuts it gently. Too gently. And that's somehow scarier than anything else. The gathering crowd knows it. There's a collective breath held in the space between them. Billy shifts his weight, body blocking Will and the wheelchair from these people. And he looks like a fucking wall.

"Put the wheelchair in the car, kid." He says it without breaking his gaze with the bastard standing at the doorway. Billy's eyes are intense. A little wild. Pissed off. And the truth of the matter is that Billy's actually tired. His body is tired. His mind is tired. He's tired of this goddamn town. He's tired of these people and the way they stare. It was one thing when they were staring at him. Billy thinks (or thought), he could take it. But now they're staring at Max. And Will. Because they died. And that makes them wrong.

Billy pulls the cigarette from his mouth. Ashes it. "Didn't you ever learn to respect the dead?" The words roll out slow. It's dangerous. Loaded. And then he grins. It's not nice. It's like Billy's daring the guy to try him.

📝 : a mutual whose headcanons you always look out for

time to call out @mercysought because while i am sometimes terrible at keeping up with my dash, if i see one of skells' lovely headcanons i always try to give it a read. the worldbuilding that goes into her muses, especially her ocs, is nothing short of awe inspiring. you can feel the love that she has for her characters and the stories she wants to create with them in every post, and even if she's not around as much at the moment actively writing because of lifeTM, i still think about anora and maxima and asharen, how important they are to my own muses and the wonderful dragon age and outlander things that we've plotted together !

💌 : a mutual who checked in when you needed it

so i'm gonna s/o to my dear @whimsyckal here !! i adore talking to billy, whether it's about our dynamics, the latest muse on their brain ( even if i know nothing about the muse in question, i always want to hear about them ), gaming or anything else going on in their life!! getting a message from them is always a joy, and knowing that i can hop into vc with them and their friends ( i need to be better at hopping in more often !! ) is so so nice :'))

🛡️ : someone who makes you feel safe

i have to mention my dear @iniziare here because we've known each other for years at this point, and if there's anyone on tumblr dot com i feel like i can talk to about anything, it's sae lmao. i love writing with sae of course but i feel like at this point we are first and foremost friends, and the best part about our friendship is that we don't always need to talk everyday, but when we do talk ( or hop into vc to yap ), we pick right back up where we left off and suddenly three hours have passed while we catch each other up lmao. i genuinely couldn't imagine my life without her in some capacity <3

"Feyd drapes an arm along the backrest and spreads his knees, claiming space the way a hawk claims meat." 🤌🤌🤌🤌

"Isä had said the Lady Jessica’s name like a fish-bone lodged sideways" 😩

"Tries to picture the knife Jessica fears, the non-Euclidean shadows ‘neath which it might be honed, veiled, and thrust. A corridor: a Harkonnen daughter, a melded vector of two poisons. To Paul, the question is not if, but how many times the knife will rise, and through which ribs. There are a thousand permutations in the sparking dark: a girl, a shape, a tsunami." 🫨

"What serves a body with a birthright too big for her chest? A future is just callouses and repetition, a line of ancestors clawing at her skull from within." 😫😫😫

i could go on for pages

Have I ever written any memorable lines? || @imbricare

A  PEAK  AT  WHAT’S  INSIDE  HARA'S          .    .    .          02.     bag   /   purse. 𝑎 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑠 𝑡𝑜 @imbricare 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛!

harry’s is the sharpest eye he’s had the privilege of. if sharper, it would’ve pointed out the vomit-looking string of bubotuber pus shimmying slowly off the candelabra behind albus’ ear. or through it, rather. one tends to become tellingly precious about seemliness around ghosts.

1.)  Yesterday I posted about how Edward Teach was shot 5 times and stabbed 20 before he finally died, and how I thought that had Teague Energy. Well, that’s one of the reasons I love him. There’s something truly steadfast about Teague. He’s strong. Not in the physical sense, but rather that kind of person who you know can take whatever you throw at him. Pirate societies’ very own atlas. He’s a force not to be reckoned with. Someone who has been knocked down to his knees a thousand times and pulled himself back up. What’s more, this strength is something he uses to prop up an entire rock full of unruly pirate children. 

2.)  I was going to sit here and talk about how he’s morally grey but subverts ant-hero/villain tropes that tend to accompany that but y’know what? No. Let me tell you how much I love his relationship with his brothers. It’s possibly the purest thing about him. See Teague grew up in an abusive household with a twin sister who died when they were eight and two baby brothers. After his sister died he became close with his younger brothers. He looked after them, tried to shield them from their mother the best he could, and the trio became a sort of stabilizing force in each other’s lives. Also, seeing the ways in which they impacted each other. For example, his youngest brother, Adam, became a lawyer because he wanted to help/protect people. I don’t know, man, I just love the brotherly family dynamics.

3.)  This one is about weird because it’s not something I necessarily love about Teague but rather what I’ve been able to do with him... Teague is a fairly minor character in PoTC. Thus, the backstory and character development you see on this blog was all done by my writing partners and me. My original goal in writing Teague was to take a loathsome child abuser and turn him into a character whom people could understand, even if they don’t particularly like him. In developing Teague, and later on his family, I believe this blog became a commentary on generational trauma and the differing effects it can have. Being able to explore that (on Tumblr of all places) without getting dogpiled (again...on Tumblr of all places)  has been neat.

Eames woke himself up by turning over onto his bad shoulder, an experience he wouldn’t recommend to anyone.

The searing agony was good. He wasn’t dead, for one thing, and he was conscious enough to experience the pain, plus it meant that Brownlow had actually listened to Eames’s garbled, slurring, half-incomprehensible pleadings not to overdose him with too many painkillers (had Arthur heard this? Even as he groaned and struggled into a seated position he was starting to calculate). His mind was foggy with sleep and pain and the last vestiges of a fever, but nothing else. It was good, but it was also bad, and waves of nausea crashed over him; he made it to a perched position on the side of the bed and had to sit, swallowing and breathing heavily, for several minutes before he was certain he wouldn’t spew.

All of this had been conducted through instinct rather than any conscious thought; his brain was scrambling to catch up to his body, running on fumes, saying get up, move, go. Pouring sweat, he held himself still, reminded himself fiercely that - as far as his fuzzy memory could recall - this was Arthur’s place. It was - a quick glance around confirmed - Arthur’s room. It had been here, in Arthur’s inner sanctum, that Brownlow had opened up his shoulder and rebroken his fingers, and Eames faintly remembered, with dawning horror, that it may, in fact, have been Arthur who forced water down his throat and took his temperature every few hours and made him take the antibiotics. Eames grimaced. That was worse than his throbbing shoulder and hand and - Jeez - ribs.

Still, there was no time to waste on self-pity. If he was awake and together, that meant he had likely outstayed his welcome. He ran his hand down his face - at least half a week’s worth of beard, and then some - and, with some effort, stood, then waited for the spots to die down and the room to stop spinning. To the bathroom, then, blind to many of the defining features of the room, a piss, and then a good hard look at himself in the mirror.

Well. He didn’t look his best.

Even after doing his teeth and splashing water one-handed over his face, he looked like he had been run over by a truck. The muscle he had put on for his last job - real life, topside forgery meant he couldn’t change his appearance in the blink of an eye, but in his experience weight did that very effectively for him when worn in the right way - was more defined than bulk now and his face was thinner under the growth of beard. He scratched it contemplatively. He wasn’t necessarily a vain man, not in the way that counted, and there were benefits to a changed appearance. Maybe he would make it to Mombasa alive after all.