FAIRCHILD

[jakfruit]

Avocado toast with cilantro and green onions and oh my god I cannot believe I successfully poached an egg.

[brakebillskids]

[littledozerbaby]

I re-discovered OOMPH! and got really inspired by the Gott ist ein Popstar music video. I am really sorry-

[westdesertsage]

‘Is there no way,’ Odysseus said, ‘of escaping the whirlpool Charybdis, and at the same time keeping Scylla off when she is trying to eat my men?’       ‘You daredevil,’ replied the goddess, ‘you are always wanting to fight somebody or something; you will not let yourself be beaten even by the immortals.’

Homer (via westdesertsage)

[kaliforniaface]

[booksquoteslove]

You have me. Until every last star in the galaxy dies. You have me.

Amie Kaufman, Illuminae (via booksquoteslove)

[asher-fairchild]

It was fairly hard to impress Asher – seen it all, done it all, carvers’ beauty carved out of flesh or whatever monstrosity they could pluck out of their own twisted minds to dazzle the easily impressed Golds didn’t work on him.

The bright blue liquor provided for tonight didn’t seem to soothe his prickly mood either. Head resting in Olive’s lap as she stroked gentle fingers through his hair the only thing Asher could hold his thoughts around for longer than a fleeting moment was Jax. Somehow the gorydamn Bronzie managed to beat him to the first place in their little competition today and what was probably worse earned praise out of his father.

But round two was coming and Asher was more than ready to beat him on his own territory. He’d made sure that Jackson wouldn’t be able to refuse his request to come tonight, not one made so formally.

His pale gold eyes hardened the moment it landed on Jax’s fair head.

“The man of the hour.” Asher greeted him with a sharp grin. Tilting his head just so to speak to Olive. “Did you know Jackson won the competition today?” When he looked back at Jackson the tilt of his mouth turned mockingly sweet. “Didn’t think you have it in you, brother, guess even pixies can muster the character to fight every once in a while. ”

[asher-fairchild]

Asher moved seamlessly through the crowd of gathered people. One hand busy with a delicately shaped plastic cup filled with whiskey and the other occupied with Jackson M. Beckett’s first book. A sturdy copy of  three hundred pages, simple black front with only a few drops of color and Jax’s face on the back a top of his too short of a resume.

Asher expected to find himself in the book. Naturally, narcissistic traits showing. He wasn’t in it. Jax’s style was still as raw and clipped as you would expect of someone that had a lot to say but didn’t like decorating his truths. Critics acclaimed him – diamond in the rough.

Asher thought of them all fools. There was no need to polish the rough edges and file down what wasn’t pretty to read and to look upon. It was Jackson. It was like sucking off the blood from a fresh wound, like dragging your tongue over a barb wire. It had a punch.

His eyes landed on Jackson’s back eventually. The man deep in conversation, hands curled around a similar plastic cup. His shoulders had filled out in a way that being twenty something never would manage. Face still handsome as ever now that his features had done that leap from boy to a man and his jaw had an edge and his eyes  wrinkled as he smiled.

Asher’s breath halted whenever he smiled.

Fairchild chased forty now with a bit more silver in his hair with every new year. Few more regrets added to his long list of fuck ups. In a way he never stopped fucking up.

“So you came.”  Jackson’s voice startled him out his thoughts and Asher found himself face to face with the other. A welcoming smile graced Beckett’s face. On cue Asher’s chest jerked. “I thought you wouldn’t.”

“I almost didn’t.” He confessed.

Jax’s smile turned sad, but still bright.

“Did you like it?” A finger pointed at the copy of the book that he was clutching .

“I haven’t read it.” Looking back Asher suspected it was his lies that got them where they were. He piled on and Jackson tried to shoulder the weight until eventually their own Babylon tower crumbled.

“Is that -- ” Asher continued head tipped towards the blonde whose side Jax had abandoned.

“My boyfriend?” Beckett plucked the words from Asher’s mouth helping him say what he couldn’t. “Yeah.”

“Is he good?”

“He is.” No malice. If he was any lesser man Asher would guess Beckett was trying to gloat. Pour salt over past wounds. But he knew him. Jackson always cared more than Asher ever could. No ill intention behind his words. “He’s really good.”

“I’m glad.”

Jackson’s complicated green eyes stayed on him for a long moment of shared silence.

Where did they go wrong?

[romantcova-blog]

[drunkenlyhere]

[cutesexts]

[asher-fairchild]

‘Come get me. Im drunk.’

But things did change. Not over a night but Jax had less and less time, when he was in the fraternity. Asher found himself with emptiness that he had to fill by himself. He’d always been one for quick fixes. Anything and everything that’d slap a band aid on a gushing wound.

So he drank.

Then drank some more.

Jax made friends.

Asher wanted to hate Brian too. But he couldn’t (still he tried).

He found himself sitting on the pavement in front of a club when he gave into texting Jackson for help. Trying not to paint the asphalt with his insides, Asher shivered in the cold air, feeling feverish.

“You look like shit.” Jax announced when he came a greeting that Asher rewarded with a drunken grin reaching out to take the help offered and stand up. Which was a bad decision.

His stomach lurched and the empty threats his stomach all came to a bitter end. Admitedly there was some sober modicum of him that had the decency to feel embarrassed as Jax waited and then hauled him up when he was done. Asher didn’t protest when the younger man dragged him to the bmw.

They had to stop a couple more times before reaching his apartment.

His place was cold, messy and unwelcoming.

Asher pressed his cheek to the cold metal of the door watching as Jax moved around the studio apartment, taking his jacket off. The comfortable gray sweats were the most interesting thing Asher had seen in a long time.

“I need water.” Asher muttered tearing himself away from the door and only made it halfway through the room before another wave of nausea crashed over him and he lurched forward.

Jackson was ready with the trashcan. Which was funny because thinking about it Asher couldn’t even figure out what was there left inside of him to puke really. Jax’s fingers pressed lightly at the top of his head as Asher made sounds he hoped to never have to hear again. A hoarse chuckle tore from his windpipe, eyes watered with tears Asher rolled around resting his head on what seemed to be the backside of his couch and looked up at Jax.

“Why are you so drunk?”

“Tequila?” Asher said with a pathetic excuse of a smile and swallowed feeling the pain in his throat.

Jackson made a sound like he wasn’t happy with the answer he got. “I’ve seen you drunk Ash. What possessed you to drink so much?”

Asher sighed. “I just wanted a break.”

“A break from what?”

The room spun around every time Asher closed his eyes. “Huh?”

“Seriously, Asher. What the fuck?”

“Don’t be mad.” He heard himself answering. Jackson helped him up again trying to guide them both towards the bed.

“I’m not mad.”

“You sound mad.” This is what it feels like trying to hold a conversation with a drunk person.

Asher felt like the grim line across Jackson’s face was something he could instantly make up for right now, but his brain just couldn’t cooperate with any good ideas. So he stood where Jax had left him – at the edge of the bed, hands around the edges helplessly trying not to puke again.

Which he did.

Jackson groaned, helpful with the trashcan, then dutifully as the single sober person in the room went looking for clean clothes while Asher traced the thin strip of skin that appeared under his shirt.

“Hands up.” Jax instructed him when he came back, a shirt thrown over his shoulder and Asher held both his limbs up in drunken obedience that seemed to him rather funny at this moment.

“You tryna take advantage of me?” he cracked.

“You smell like puke.” Jackson informed him. Apparently he didn’t find Asher’s sense of humor very entertaining. Then he added in a more sarcastic (forgiving) tone, “Besides, you couldn’t get it up right now if you wanted to.”

“For you I could.”

Instant sobriety.

He was pretty sure there was a solid second in the room where nothing moved. At all. His heart didn’t beat, Jackson didn’t breathe. There was nothing. Nothing but his words and the implication behind them.

The truth behind them.

And just as he was trying to find some way to backpedal make up some good excuse Jackson saved him. He moved again leaving Asher to pull down his shirt brushing his face with the dirty one.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

Asher couldn’t figure out what to say. His whole body hurt, his ribs pained from the spasms of throwing up, he was feverish and sweaty and cold all at the same time. He groaned and Jackson laughed.

“If you feel like shit now, you’d be half dead tomorrow.”

“If I even make it until the morning.”

“”

[asher-fairchild]

It was only one variable that was changed in this tale of many other possibilities. It could’ve been that Asher never considered pissing off his father and not going to some Ivy League like he did. It could’ve been Jackson’s life taking a whole another turn for the dark, his passion for writing stomped over in an early age. But it wasn’t. This particular variable was as simple as a thin leather strip with blue thread wrapped around. That’s all it was.

Well…

Not really, but it does sounds poetic that way.

Actually it was them being friends. Simple as that and maybe that much more complicated. Jackson was there from day one to be what Asher had needed him to be and they gave and took from each other. Not without turmoil of course, it wasn’t an easy friendship. One accompanied with many doors slammed shut and half muttered apologies. Jackson still took dance classes and Asher found it was especially hard to share Jackson’s attention then when the ballet dancer (whom Asher simply refused to refer as anything else but that). It wasn’t that he was rattled by Jackson’s sexuality, which he wasn’t, Asher didn’t care much as long as things between them stayed the same. It just so happened that the things between them didn’t leave much room for anyone else. One could say Asher singlehandedly ended Jax’s relationship before it even started, it wasn’t obvious, maybe even to Asher’s credit, it wasn’t even a conscious choice to be rude whenever he was offered the chance to meet the ballet dancer, occupy Jax’s every other free moment with himself and well…simply need him. At the end it was the ballet dancer himself that simply stepped away. He wasn’t the last, but he was the first of many to follow that same route of men that Jackson would date and Asher would disapprove of for one reason or the other.

There weren’t all that many things Asher considered sacred in his life.

a)      his bmw

b)      the bracelet Jax’s sister had given him for his sixteenth birthday. Which was really just a leather strip with some blue thread coiled tightly around.

That and Jackson’s seat next to him on the bmw. Prickly as he was Asher never let anyone else sit next to him, Jackson was also the only other he trusted behind the wheel of the shark muzzled car, or as Olive called it ‘fucking monster’ and not in the loving way (how dare she).

“I still don’t know why you bother rushing a fraternity.” Asher muttered (and not for the first time) blowing off a thin strip of gray smoke.

“Didn’t we have that conversation already?” Jax’s answer came after a healthy pause neither of which seemed to be bothered by. Scribbling down something in his notebook, he looked up and Asher met his gaze with a tight diasproving smile, head shaking.

“Still don’t get it though. Why’d you wanna join a bunch of queens that’ll probably just make you sing Celine Dion songs all night long.”

The other’s laughter made his lips twitch up. “Really, Art history? That’s rich coming off of you.” Jackson closed the book shut and rolled his window down to get some fresh air in. “And besides last time I checked you were the one that had Tyler Swift whole album on his phone.”

“Point taken.” Asher chuckled, but didn’t relent. “I just find the whole thing pointless.” He gestured still keeping a hand on the wheel. “Why are fraternities even a thing still? I thought we left that shit back in 2007. Jesus.”

“Well, we can’t all have a trust fund set in our name and rent an apartment because we felt like it.”

“We could share.” Asher insisted again. “I told you, you don’t have to worry ‘bout rent. Why you have to be so stubborn?”

“I don’t want your money, Fairchild.” There was no irritation in Jax’s voice, but there was no questioning it either.

Asher’s fingers drummed across the leather irritated. He knew better not to push Jackson when it came down to money, if there was one thing bigger than Asher’s ego it was Jackson’s pride.

“Fine. Whatever. It’s your funeral, I guess.” A sour twist settled on his face when he pulled in front of the Kappa house. When Jackson stepped out Asher leaned in:

“Text me.”

“I know.” Jax said closing the door behind him, about to join the people that had gathered on the yard.  Asher’s stomach did a stubborn twist, like he wanted to say something that would make Jax turn around get in the car and forget this stupid shit altogether, but he couldn’t figure it out and it angered him.

“Hey, frat boy.” Asher yelled. “Don’t forget me alright!” He grinned back when Jax smiled at him and rolled his eyes.

But things were changing. And Asher didn’t like it when things were changing.

[asher-fairchild]

I’m not much of a believer am I?

Never was.

I guess I always expected one way or another we won’t last. I always found a way to see a fault in your ways, even the smallest of things. I tried hard to push you away while gripping at you all the same. Sometimes I think I did it just to hurt you. Maybe I wanted to see if you had a breaking point, and every time you found a way to shield me, shield yourself. And I crumbled. More and more each time.

How’d you do it?

Matching me beat for beat?

How’d you do it?

If I were a storm you were then you were my ground. I was never too sure if I were the sword or if you were the shield, but I know you’ve taken more hits than I ever could and you came out adamant when mine only made me hard to hold without bleeding. But you did.

I don’t know what we are Beckett, but we are.

So am I a believer now?

Yeah, guess I am.

Because you were made for me. I don’t have to believe that. I know it.

In my gut. In what makes me – me. I know it. Down to the last cell of my body I know there must be some stuff of you in there. I know that if I played my life over and over again every time I would’ve ended up being yours. In every variation, against all entropy, against all odds against and all the things that could’ve been changed - we’d always end up right here.

[ryangosking]

[asher-fairchild]

[wnq-writers]

Everything in me gravitates to you.

Bruce Adler