#pre-2013

So I saw this picture by @cloverflynn the other day and know this song (was planning to write something at some point lol)...the picture just wouldn’t leave me alone. So thank you for the inspiration. <3 

This is the A side Trevor piece to another B side with Michael that’s coming soon. 

Habits

You're gone and I gotta stay

High all the time

To keep you off my mind

Spend my days locked in a haze

Trying to forget you babe

I fall back down

Gotta stay high all my life

To forget I'm missing you

Take a hit, smoke a drag, pop this, eat that, snort a line, wake and bake...he’s done it all. Frequented bars, gone to sex dungeons, been to the most backwater fucked up places in an effort to forget the face that plagues his mind, to forget the body that still warms his dreams. 

To never remember the incident that haunts his nightmares, bodies laying on the cold ground, red bleeding into white, but one, in particular, is forever etched into his memories, left now in the frigid tundra of the north.

He couldn’t bear to make the journey anymore, couldn’t cry at the tombstone, whisper declarations of lost love, rage in the miserable hate that only those left behind experience. Instead, he cries into sheets, whispers hopelessly into beers, and rages at those who dare to get close. 

He makes a habit of avoiding anything or anyone with that name besides the last testament to their bond permanently inked onto his upper arm. It had almost gone over his heart, but he’d thought better of it when he’d realized that he’d have to see it every day, and the pain would be too much for a long time.

It never gets any easier though, mourning someone who was and by all means is still loved. Time moves on so slowly at first, almost as if everything is as frozen as North Yankton, but then it becomes a blur as he has to hit the pipe more often than he used to do...anything to take the edge off, to focus on something else, to forget the one piece of him missing. 

An old movie comes on, and he talks to the ghost in the room before he curses at himself for being so fucking stupid as to believe that it will speak back. He hears one of their old songs on the radio, and he goes to say that name without thinking. What the fuck is wrong with him?

Ice has become such a figurehead in his life because of this habitual need by his heart to reminisce about something his brain wants so badly to ignore, and he finds it almost hilarious that he finds peace in something bearing the same name of a thing he had once grown to despise. 

A cloudy haze is what fills his days now instead of snow, hidden touches, and infectious laughter. The heat that surrounds him is so insufferable, it’s actually comforting. It envelops him and cuddles him close just as those arms once did. It’s a soothing blanket to the chilling past that fills his soul. 

The first connection he makes on his own is to a former chef turned wannabe chemist who knows how to cook the stuff, and they make plans together to form an entrepreneurship. 

And now for the B Side to Trevor’s Habits. 

New Depression

Won't it be nice when it's all a memory? Almost forgotten, barely thought of Always hanging on the tip of your tongue But you just can't place it when push comes to shove Had a bad night again Cried about everything Wept and bawled till there was nothin' in my eyes Can't seem to start my head Feelin' my book is read Still unsatisfied, much to my surprise But won't it be nice when there's something you want? A desire you just can't put your finger on A yearnin' that's stronger with each rising sun Beginning of a deep fascination A light on the road to a new depression

Whiskey in one hand, ibuprofen in the other. Sometimes it’s almost too simple to bypass the Advil and go straight for the 9mm that sits in the dresser next to this strange bed that’s become his. 

One of the few things left besides his love for movies and fine liquor that adheres him to the Townley name is this gun. Everything else has become this other persona, this other him who was just a cast-off name once upon a time but has turned into a wholly individual being. 

Even Amanda and the kids have adapted to their new roles so well it’s as if nothing exists of the family he used to know and love. He looks for signs of them every day in their actions and words, but all that is before him now are empty husks that have been shucked. He doesn’t voice his irritation out loud because he knows they were uprooted so quickly, so drastically. Hell, it’s not as if he wasn’t traumatized too, for fuck’s sake.

Amanda misses her sisters and a couple of friends who were leftovers from her old profession, sometimes her controlling parents too, but she has acclimated so skillfully to this new life with expensive tastes, it’s as if she were born into it. 

His kids can’t stand to look at him. As the years go on, they forget old friends because they make new ones, but they can’t forget family. They understand why they had to move, but they don’t agree with the reasoning. Tracey especially despises him since she was closer to her favorite uncle, unlike Jimmy. She used to barrage him with questions that went unanswered until, after about a year and a half, she finally stopped trying and grew as distant and cold as their previous place of residence. 

He doesn’t blame her. Sleep doesn’t come easily, sometimes not at all. There’s no escape from memories that keep repeating until they become nightmares, and in them, it isn’t Brad who eats the bullet. 

Tracey’s voice yells at him on these nights, poking at him as if he’s one huge festering wound, and that’s what it certainly feels like when she pleads with him to save the only real adult in her life to whom she ever allowed herself to get attached. The tears ooze from every single pore when he hears her cries mingling with the screams coming from a voice he’s tried so hard to lose to time, but no matter how much he strives to do this one thing so he can finally let go and move on, he is filled with regret. 

The only place they are left to connect is within the recesses of these fitful terrors, and Trevor haunts him there. He’s never sure if it’s just the delusions of a man gone mad with nostalgia for whom he once was and the person he desired above all else, or if the man he still reaches for during slumber has passed away in a gutter somewhere, and they can only meet in the spaces which border fantasy and the supernatural. 

And not everything is Ludendorff in his head. Sometimes Trevor is right there with him, running hand in hand with him through alleyways, cackling his crazy head nearly off as they barely make an escape from the latest place they’ve robbed, and just as they’re about to touch, he’s interrupted by an overwhelming sorrow, sobbing desperately until his eyes are raw and abused over someone he can never hope to attain again.

They used to get plastered after a job well done, to socialize, to lose themselves in each other’s mouths and arms and legs and wherever else they could make delicious flesh contact, but now he doesn’t care to interact with anyone, and each shot he takes coasts him further away from this constant horrible pain he’s forced into, stuck like a broken record, carried along on a sea made from his weeping. 

Melancholy is an old hat he wears, but it used to be a different style and size. It was guilt, fear, and loathing that he donned back in his youth, but that hat grew smaller and deteriorated until it vanished in the snows of North Yankton.

Sica looks sooooo goood T_______________T also feet *eye emoji*

Her eyes closed, a single unruly tear escaping as she turned her back to him. He wouldn't see her cry this time. She had told herself this many times, like a mantra, when their fights became angry and out of control. The only reaction she ever had when it started to sink in that they were falling back into this cycle was to break down and cry. He was still yelling when she walked out the front door and slammed it shut behind her. She didn't bother going any farther than the steps outside of their apartment, dropping to a seat. Golden hair spilled around her shoulders, shielding her face from view as she rubbed hastily at her now tear-streaked face. She didn't know how long it was that she sat there before she heard the door open again behind her, his hand running gently over her hair as he asked her to come back inside.

Sometimes things were fixed.

It took her until Thursday to realize it. The problem with this was that she couldn’t be happy with it. Of course, who could be happy with the concept? It was blinding, startling, head-first into the dark abyss with nothing to guide the way with one’s own foolish heart. A heart that reacted not on logic, but on pure emotional, instinctual drive.