#thanks!b

Five Times Our Muses Almost Hold Hands, and the One Time They Do:

{{Spectrum}}

I.  HollowHe’s sitting there, head down, ends of his hair spilling over his hands, and for the first time Riley notices they are darker than the rest of him. Years of oil and grease and wrenches have built up callouses but it’s built something else. Shadows of all the things those hands are capable of that no matter how much pumice-soap he scrubs with it doesn’t wash away. Only closer inspection shows that there’s more. Hints of rust under his nails…no. Rust is a different shadow of red. Rust doesn’t leave someone scourged and empty. Rust doesn’t cause shoulders to shake. Hesitantly, Riley reaches out and Baz pushes him away, shakes his head. Saying with actions he doesn’t need this.

Riley nods and grabs whiskey instead.

II.  Two Man TeamThe rain was coming fast, hard and heavy. A storm brewed in the background, lighting striking haphazardly in the distance. But the thunder isn’t from crashing clouds. Riley holds up a fist. Holds up a finger. Then two. Makes a fist, and he’s moving. Low crouch, rifle braced shoulder high. Kevlar soundless. They move and breath as one.  Riley doesn’t have the luxury of wondering how exactly he’d gotten here, on this Strike Team. It’s a by product of too many late nights spent worrying. It’s because Baz is transparent as glass. When the younger walks into a room and looks around before his blue eyes finally fall on him, Riley knows it’s gonna be an issue some day. Riley’s not stupid. He knows that look well. And he loves the guy, really he does. It’s just…just…. So this is the best he can do.

Rounding the corner, he scans through the scope. He reaches behind his back. Hand glances off the fucker’s wrist, just shy of his intended target. There’s no sound over the comms, but he feels his head duck forward as the fucker tags his helmet.“Got this. Laying down cover fire. Go.”

III. Paradox

It was the turkey sandwich that woke him up.

He stares at the unholy alliance of bread, turkey, lettuce and cheese, thinking I’m stuck. Stuck in this perpetually shifting span of time, in which the same day is repeated over and over again. Like Groundhog Day which was a stupid movie. Only worse because time was actually continuing to move forward. Mondays became Tuesdays which turned into Wednesdays. Months still passed by synonymously with the changing of seasons. Children grew into adults. Adults still sank in their depression.Yet the events that occurred in each individual day were exactly the same. Every day Riley would wake up and go to work. He’d be stuck with the same case as the day before and the day before that. Then he’d eat lunch with people who talked in a language he did not understand.  Then he goes home to a world that chooses not to understand. Sleep.

Rinse and repeat.But that turkey sandwich. Something inside of him had gone missing. The anger rises in response. He was sick of the sandwich. Sick of the watery-crunch sound the lettuce made when he chewed it. Sick of the cheese. Sick of soggy bread that almost dissolves in his mouth. The same thing he’s eaten for years now.

He averted his gaze and looked around. He saw fellow cops sitting at the same tables, wearing the same clothes, conversing with the same people about the same things. Amidst the sea of voices he could make out snippets of conversations he’d heard countless times before. All the meaningless gossip and small talk wrapped around his brain.His head begins to throb furiously, a circuit board overloading with too much data. Squeezes his eyes shut only to see the sickening mirrors reflecting infinity on the back of his eyelids. It was like someone had put the feeling of deja vu in liquid form and shot it through his veins. He gets up and sprints.

In the men’s room, there’s silence. He looks at himself in the mirror and his reflection stares back, seemingly surprised by direct-eye contact.“Are you done yet?"What?”“Are. You. Done. Yet?”“I don’t know what you’re talking-”

The mirror splinters in cobweb fragments.

He only just manages to throw his arm up to shield his face.

“"Fa'fuc'sake s'only a'sandwich, asshole. Don'want it? Don'eat it.”

If Baz only knew. His first instinct to grab the kid’s hand, make sure he’s real. But that’s a whole lot of crazy he doesn’t want to get into, because how do you explain Quiet, a mage’s version of metaphysical time-out for bad behaviour?

He eats the sandwich.

IV.  Six

“Be there n'six”The last thing B says to him. He wonders, after six minutes has passed, if the shithead meant six hours, but somehow that couldn’t be right.  He doesn’t remember there being a job out of town.

An hour later and he’s worried. Calls his cell, sends texts, wonders what else he could do.  The worst part about it, Riley broke his word. Long distance knocking around the castle walls, even though he promised he wouldn’t. But the gates are all shut up, the windows bricked up and despite the power he commands, he can’t find a way inside.

And that sparks a wildfire of well…not jealousy exactly. Nor anger.

Hurt, asshole, the word your looking for is…hurt.Normally sleepers have little resistance to his magick, though Baz isn’t technically a sleeper. Nor is he awakened. The best way he could put it was the kid’s a kind of sorcerer, and that’s not right either. It is what it is, but the point was…to get around Riley like he’s doing… SOMEONE has to have shown him how. And that someone isn’t Beth because she couldn’t will her way out of a wet paper bag without him knowing about it.

So that means Baz has been hanging out with someone else.

Someone who’s deliberately shutting Riley out.He paces his way through a half bottle of Glen Livet before he switches to Vodka.Two hours.Three.At this point Riley’s grabbing his keys and his jacket, mentally composing a missing persons report for his missing person, because the inner cop won’t let this shit go.Throws the door open and there’s a strange collision of puffed up chests. There’s a spectacular display of juggling as the plastic sack hits the floor, ass over tea-kettle, though Baz manages to retain his grasp on the bottle, because of course he has priorities.

“‘Y'fuckin’ kiddin’ me? S'fuckin’ dinner, jackass.”The words don’t matter. Riley grabs his hands, and then takes it a step further by dragging the fucker into a hug, arms like vices around his neck and shoulders. 

“Next time, fucking call.”

This is how Baz discovered Riley doesn’t do surprises well.

V.  HettiquetteRiley’d heard, knew Beth and Jay went to these kinds of things in support of their friends, but it’s goddamn fascinating. Like if someone took Carnival and mated it with Mardi-Gras and somehow incubated the result inside of a Vegas Strip floor show. It was absolutely mesmerizing.  And there’s a lot he didn’t inspect. There’s a man and his wife not far away, a group of teenagers. A couple wearing 'Theirs’ and 'Theirs’ tee-shirts that he makes a mental note to ask about later.

And Riley has to wonder if he’s even got a right to be here, that maybe his attempt to offer B moral support isn’t actually having the opposite effect, even if he laughed in his very Baz way over the 'Not Gay but my Boyfriend is’ shirt. Beth had given him one piece of advice before they separated for the day. 

“No dare aks wen Straight Pride is. Jus’…no. If ya do… no gonna be let out of da hale wi'out woke adult supervision, yeah? An’ wha'evah ya do…no embarrass. If I hear ya make him uncomfortable….I will make YOU uncomfortable.”Then she vanished into sequins and feathers and flower crowns.She hadn’t needed to warn him.

Despite everything that marks him as out of place, the people are welcoming. They’re warm and beautiful and the beer flows. Sees a couple people he would never have thought ought to be here. The only awkwardness is when he comes across Wojakovitz. Riley’s not usually intimidated but the rookie is six foot seven and about as wide across. Apparently, his partner…boyfriend… is a school teacher at PS 182. Good on them.At some point, in the bar later, Riley’s managed to hit his limit, and teeters his way over to Baz whose been strangely quiet most of the night, more so than usual. Arm around the younger’s shoulder, Riley leans down and lays his cheek atop Baz’s head.“C'mon asshole. Dance with me. This is a good song.”The look he gets  from both of them would have curdled paint.

He asks twice more in variations.

Twice more he’s rebuked.So he sits down next to B and his hand falls to the other’s side. Trying not to make an issue of it, one pinkie curls around Baz’s and then Baz is up and muttering something about hitting the head.“Did I…say something wrong?”No one answers him. Not even his sister.

VI. The Hang of Thursdays

         “Pick sum’m else dickhead.  Shit’s kill yer dog depressin’.”

There’s a point where his face is pale and haggard, where lack of sleep has left him looking five days dead on a three day weekend,  and the next line of the song stutters into a choking breath. He doesn’t imagine it, Baz’s mouth had moved, had formed the words and it’s stolen all of the oxygen from Riley’s brain. He doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry or …there was a phrase for this, they used to call it 'don’t know if he should shit or go blind’. 

His hands tighten around the fucker’s, careful not to dislodge the IV shunt.It’s a process. Rough palms sliding against each other. Long, blunt fingers seeking the crevices between the other’s hand. The grasp is as tight as he can make it, a warning that if Baz slips out of consciousness, he’s dragging Riley’s two hundred and five pounds with him.Baz’s scarred and battered knuckles are brought up, pressed against Riley’s lips. They’re dry and chapped but gentle as Riley bows his head over their joined hands. It takes him long minutes to compose himself enough to actually speak.

And This Is Why You Don’t Just Walk In.

There were moments where the Universe conspired to bestow love. Today, that love was given to Darcy.Riley clearly hadn’t heard her come in because right then, he was a man consumed. Or perhaps consuming, it would be left up for debate later.

His phone was mounted on a little tripod. He was clearly video chatting himself doing...He was bent over his kitchen counter. Hands cuffed loosely enough that he could slip out of them behind his back. And he was talking to his phone...

“Las’ one fucker.”Shoulders flex as he bent a little lower, his head weaving to and fro. There was a pause before finally he turned to rest the back of his head on the counter. In his mouth, carefully clutched between his teeth is a donut. Very obviously a Bavarian cream, judging by the powdered sugar that seemed to cover him from chin to cheek, and dusting the front of the black undershirt he was wearing.It was almost an art form, really. Clearly he was licking at the pastry cream inside. No hands, just his tongue. A flick. And again. Each dip inside slow and carefully practiced, exploring the depths of the donut a little more fully at each stroke. The fullness of his lips provided a balance for the fried bit of dough to rest and his breathing turned a little heavy but appropriate considering what he’s doing and the angle he’s got himself in. The rhythm changes, becomes complicated patterns as he chases the filling and this followed by some vaguely obscene, wet, slurping sounds.

By this point, Darcy couldn’t help herself as she stared at him in a mixture of horror and fascination, and she covered her mouth as a snorting laugh exploded in the air.Riley’s eyes strained to the side to glance at her. His face was red now, and a the veins along his temples stood out.  “...I...cannn...eghs-pwain...dis.”

“And I’m dyin’ ta hear it,” she says with that kill or be killed grin of hers.

And that was when she saw them. 11 other perfectly hollowed out jelly and cream filled corpses of donuts on his counter.From the phone, she hears a low, husky chuckling. "Y'win t'bet fucker. Coffee's on me t'ma'ra." There’s something that only Riley can see that turns the red in his face to purple before the screen goes dark.

So I made You This CD || Accepting

The Raft Prison Blues

1. White and Nerdy || Weird Al

2. Friendship || Tenacious D

3. That’s How We Roll || Georgia Florida Line

4. Find Out Who Your Friends Are || Tim McGraw ft. Tracy Lawrence

5. Painted Yellow Lines || Dispatch

6. The Stable Song || Gregory Allan Isakov

7. Angela || The Lumineers

8. Lonely Boy || Matt Corby

9. River || Leon Bridges

10. Soul of a Man || David Lindley

11. The Darker Side of Me || Brother Dege

10. If it actually was cloudy with a chance of meatballs, and balls of meat rained from the heavens, would you dance in the miraculous showers with an open mouth, or would you hide indoors? Why?

I’d be indoors. I mean...so we don’t talk about it much, but some of my kind they Awaken...funny. And I don’t mean Gabriel Iglesias or Ron White funny, I’m talking clinically insane funny. Every new apprentice hears stories about this one guy Awakens and believes he’s a piece of string cheese, and poof...that’s what he becomes. But some...some are very dangerous. Wrapped up in their own reality and thrust into existence with the ability to control reality and nothing to limit them....I’d be fuckin’ terrified.

13. You were transported back to Shakespeare’s time and he’s created a character based off of you, but had to change the name so as not to violate classic time travel codes. Who’s the character?

I’ve got to flatter myself and say Richard III from Henry IV, and the best description of him is as follows:

'I can smile, and murder while I smile." Richard is a mess of contradictions; a tragic hero, but one who makes us laugh, with more killer one liners than most of the Bard's clowns put together. Richard may be one of the few disabled protagonists in theatre, with a withered arm and a crippled leg, but he's also a formidable warrior.

Ambitious and charismatic, damaged and insecure, Richard manipulates people expertley without really ever understanding them. He's the prototype for every charming antihero, every smiling pyschopath, to many, he is Shakespeare's greatest creation.

And in his own play, how beautiful the speech, 

“Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this son of York;And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our houseIn the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”

For the record though, my favourite Shakespearean character of all time, and the one whose speeches I can recite from memory, is Henry V.

16. Donuts, milkshakes, or that strangely shaped orb you’ve been seeing out of the corner of your eye the past couple days?