plane vs. tank vs. submarine

andrew jude esposito. a portrait in grayscale, a perfect betrayal.

[rilvys-blog]

✧ | ❛  the timing’s never right. || riley & jude.

[rilvys-blog]

        There was something in the air, in Chegual. A chill, whispering don’t sleep too soundly. Look over your shoulder. Lock your doors, close your blinds, tuck yourself away from harm. Lately, Riley had been swinging between wanting to put an end to that feeling, drain it from the air like the colour draining from the leaves, leaving an atmosphere as airy and bright as the snow-capped town. But instead, the atmosphere was as drizzly as the unfortunate weather, and Riley could do nothing to really combat that fact — a poor excuse for a deputy, he wanted nothing more than to wrap himself in his comforter, to not leave his apartment for several days and forget that Amy was dead, forget that this James King guy was dead and forget that anything was happening at all, in sleepy little Chegual.

        He couldn’t, though. It just wasn’t an option, for Riley. He had to take action, and was planning his course of attack that night, to his issue and his suspicions regarding his issues. Then, the car happened, and it was all interrupted — like that. His plans for the night ruined. Camera equipment, microphones sat in a box in the backseat of his car, a plain and unassuming file-folder in the passenger seat. He wouldn’t possibly have time to formulate a plan tonight —— not unless he wanted to forfeit sleep entirely. Being a day behind on his own trail would catch him less shit than falling asleep on the job, though, so it wasn’t really worth the risk. Not with his dad watching.

        Fuck his dad. Fuck his job, his car, his night. Fuck the so-called “Chegual Chucker”, especially. What kind of chicken-shit serial killer name was that, anyways?

        Hands folded together, twisting as he tried to remove himself from his thoughts, from his buzzing mind as he waited for a response from within the garage. Tan fingers wrapped around his wrist, crescents dug into the skin. Out of your head, Riley. You don’t like what’s in there. Of course, Riley was… careful about everything he did, and such nervous body language was hardly befitting of someone of his — image. Archetype, maybe. So hands slid from his wrist to his belt, pulling up slacks that had loosened with his lack of appetite. He’d have to tighten his belt. His mother would say something. That wouldn’t be a fun conversation. Riley’d be able to start eating again if it weren’t for his — well, his meds were partially at fault, sure, but with the Chucker on his back, Amy’s death over his shoulder and more on the horizon —— who could blame him for losing his appetite, really?

        And there, before him as he was lost in thought, was none other than Jude Esposito. Riley wasn’t surprised that he saw Jude Esposito at Esposito Tire and Lube — the garage Jude himself had told Riley he was working at, but he had gone so long only glazing over Jude’s face in the crowd that seeing him up close and really noticing him was a bit… surprising, maybe. But there he was, same stubbly smile and dark, messy hair — this time, they weren’t such opposites, despite Jude’s oil-stained clothing. Grime stained Riley’s own fingertips, a mixture of dirt - processing evidence at the King crime scene - and ink - processing papers, and his hair was in a terrible state of disarray. (It wasn’t actually as horrific as Riley assumed it was, only slightly mussed through the heavy gelling - it was kind of… like terrible boyband bangs. Not exactly a good thing, but it had a certain charm, strands falling from his coiffed hair, sweeping his forehead.)

        Riley offered Jude a crooked smile, despite his drooping eyes and tired mind. “Any Esposito is more than good enough. Really, anyone who can fix a car alright — I don’t think she’s given out on me yet, not for good, she isn’t that old, but… man, she really fell through tonight.” Fiddling with his badge, he nodded back to his car, still parked on the side of the road. “Needed her for a stakeout, but, ah,” glancing at his watch, Riley shook his head with a level of disdain. “Too late for that. Missed my window. Still, kind of need her fixed and all, to, well, get home ‘nd such. It’d be a big favour if you could help me out.” And it’s a powerful thing, to owe a Pierce a favour. Riley didn’t say as much, but most townspeople got the gist. He hated throwing his name around, but in such circumstance, he could hardly afford not to. Besides, he wasn’t entirely sure that Jude would get it, as an outsider to Chegual —— which wasn’t a problem to Riley at all, if he really thought about it. Some genuine interaction would be nice. He could really go either way.

[espcsito-blog]

       Much to Jude’s surprise, Riley’s presence comforted him. While wind whipped shrilly through the trees outside, just slightly reminiscent of a howl and tangibly discomfiting, carrying with it a chill more suitable for Christmastime, Riley seemed to add a certain light to the garage that hadn’t been there before. Truthfully, Jude wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it. After all, a litany of unspeakably horrible things had happened on the island in a matter of a single month, and they all seemed to point to the idea that their town was, in some way, a beacon intended to attract a disproportionate amount of tragedy to its shores. However, while the majority of Chegual seemed to feed off of their own misery and allow it to drag themselves further into the bottomless pit of despair currently swallowing the island, from where Jude stood, Riley appeared not to have lost all of his warmth quite yet.

        While it surprised Jude that not all hope seemed to be lost for even one citizen of their sleepy, little island, it surprised him even more that something within him had cared enough to notice it in Riley in the first place. It caught him off guard in a way that he wasn’t entirely used to. As the feeling came soaring out of left field, abrupt and unexpected, he contemplated it for a brief moment or two, before writing it off as nothing of real, tangible importance. Who could really blame him, a young man afflicted by chronic loneliness, for finding a small slice of solace in someone else’s mere presence? 

        Anyway, he thought, the logistician in his mind filling in gaping blanks that he otherwise wouldn’t have been able to, Riley’s a cop; it just makes sense that I’d feel safer around him right now, all things considered. Doesn’t it? A long moment passed before he decided to put the thought out of his mind altogether, shelve it for another day that would probably never come. After all, avoidance seemed to be where Jude consistently excelled.

        Something akin to the unease he’d been feeling bubbled up within him as he took another hesitant step forward, toward Riley, every step that his boot-clad feet took sounding clunky and loud against the concrete floor. This anxiety was noticeably different, though. It was purer, less polluted with fear, more immediately pressing. Another surprise. Scratching absentmindedly at the nape of his neck, at the place where locks of dark hair gave way to sallow skin, Jude smiled back at Riley, his mouth lopsided and teeth not exactly bared. To a certain degree, smiling—genuine smiling, at least—felt foreign and just slightly uncomfortable on his face. He dealt with it.

       Still smiling just a little awkwardly, Jude raised his arm from his side and glanced at his wrist, at where a watch should have been but wasn’t, and said, “I don’t know, man. It’s, like, half past freckle, and usually by now, I’m pretty burnt out on the whole fixing cars thing. Y’know.” As he spoke, he motioned around the room, at nothing in particular, then at his stained jumpsuit. “We might be cutting it just a teeny-tiny bit close here.” Then he paused for a moment, trying to gauge whether or not his attempt at a joke had successfully landed, and after a beat, laughed quietly at his own poor execution. Like a vast majority of things Jude said, it had sounded much funnier in his head. “Jesus, that was really lame, wasn’t it? Sorry.” It was better to laugh at himself than get visibly embarrassed.

       Jokes aside, he knew that, no matter what, he would be trekking through the darkness and cold, out to wherever Riley’s car had broken down, toolbox and flashlight in hand in order to repair whatever had caused it to break down in the first place. Of course, he tried to be generous to those he felt truly deserved it—specifically, kind people who didn’t seem to pass judgment on him or his past—but Riley’s reputation also preceded him. Jude may have been an outsider by default, foreign to the ways of Chegual, but even he knew that the Pierces had power in town. Kicking him out into the cold, to deal with his car alone, could easily come back to bite Jude, whose own reputation was fragile enough as it was.

        Plus, he just liked Riley. From his perspective, it was entirely worth it to do a favor for someone whose company he genuinely enjoyed, even if they’d only really spoken a handful of times.

[rilvys-blog]

✧ | ❛  the timing’s never right. || riley & jude.

        James King. The name felt heavy on his tongue but still so, so strange. Unfamiliar. He wasn’t in mourning, not like he was for Amy, but the anger and the exhaustion was still deep in his bones — he hadn’t slept the night through in days, stewing, out of his mind over case files. Amy and this Mr. King had nothing in common, other than being supposedly upstanding members of the community. Of course, that painted a target directly on the backs of Riley and his family, but his tired brain had thrown out this connection — even when the impossible happened explicitly, Riley still employed the ‘not me, couldn’t happen to me’ method of thinking. Not him. Never him. Things like that didn’t happen to the Pierce family.

(Things like that didn’t happen on Chegual, either, but that didn’t stop whoever was doing… this.)

        The last cop had left the building… at least half an hour before, according to Riley’s watch, but he had stayed. ‘Chasing an idea’, he had mumbled as he stopped his co-worker from shutting off the lights. In reality, he didn’t have any ideas. He needed to show his dedication to everyone, show that he’d go the extra mile. Really, Riley just needed some silence. But it was nearing 9:30, and he just needed to go home, to sleep for hours. So, files in hand, he slid into the seat of his car and peeled out of the station parking lot, starting home.

       Home was half an hour away from work, an obnoxious distance, but the station was posted outside of town, and Riley’s apartment was stationed on the other end, and, well, it’s not like he could be posted somewhere else. Small island. But driving cleared the mind, at least, that’s the effect it always had on Riley, so it was a welcome distraction. He could just… focus on driving.

        Halfway through his drive, his car made a… bizarre sound. It rolled to a stop, and Riley barely pulled it onto the shoulder before another car came whizzing bye. It wouldn’t start, and only luck - chance - fate? would have it so his poor car died half a block away from a garage. ‘Esposito Tire and Lube’, painted on the wall, and like a bang, Jude Esposito’s face flashed before him, soft eyes and a smile Riley didn’t think he could shake off if he tried — which, okay, was a weird first descriptor to come to mind for another guy, but, whatever, right? He was tired. If he thought something totally… bizarre, in the privacy of his own mind, not even God could fault him for that.

        Thankfully, the lights were on, and Riley pushed through the doors, sticking his head through. Though he felt the exhaustion all the way down to his bones, it was easy to paste a smile on. (Especially with the prospect of seeing Jude again — what? He was a nice guy. Maybe they could be friends. A person could use some of those - especially in times like these.)

        “Hello? ‘s anyone around? It’s late, I know, but my car junked out on the side of the road, and I really can’t have a hold up like this tonight.”

[espcsito-blog]

        Chegual Island, it seemed, had been rocked by two more small catastrophes. Not only had Fawn Mercado been violently attacked and subsequently left unconscious, but a second body—that of one James King—had been found on the shore, bloodied and limp and lifeless. From what Jude had been able to glean from news reports and the rumor mill, they’d each been attacked with a rock, but only Fawn had managed to make it out alive. Ever since the news had broken, he had been sent into a sudden and unshakable state of unease, dread prickling nervously at the cavity of his chest and the base of his throat as a single thought gnawed at him: who would be next?

        It almost seemed naïve to believe that there wouldn’t be another victim, or maybe two more, maybe three, maybe a dozen. For all he knew, the rest of the island would be slain within the week, one after the other after the other in a flurry of blows dealt indiscriminately to his neighbors. From Jude’s perspective, it was truly only a matter of time until they were all felled by the unidentified figure skulking in the night. In spite of his apprehension, he did his best to avoid thinking about their situation too often or too deeply, in fear of working himself up into a frenzy.

        However, as Jude sat in the back room of the shop, the top of his grease-stained jumpsuit unbuttoned and hanging slack at his waist, it became difficult to quiet the anxiety boiling in his stomach. His uncle had scrubbed the black from his hands and departed what felt like hours ago, his old pick-up truck spewing out gray clouds of exhaust as it rumbled noisily toward home. Only he was left to linger around the now-closed shop: too antsy to head home, but far too tense to accomplish anything substantially work-related. 

        Instead, Jude had shrugged his torso out of his navy jumpsuit, wiped his stained hands on the white undershirt beneath it, and settled in front of the television stationed in the back room. He and Evan spent a disproportionate amount of time there, slacking off and watching whatever remotely entertaining thing they could manage to find. As it was, he could hardly pay attention to the rerun of Full House playing. From what he could glean, Stephanie was struggling with a popular girl—Gina or Gigi or something—peer-pressuring her to smoke; as he absentmindedly watched, he pulled his pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

        He was reaching for his lighter when he heard the front door of the shop swing open. He hadn’t locked under the pretense that trespassing seemed to be a foreign concept to the people of Chegual, but as hesitant footsteps approached, a strong sense of regret washed over him. Rising slowly, Jude reached toward the coffee table wedged snugly between the sofa and television, grasping blindly for anything that could be used to defend himself against the intruder.

        He froze, a warm relief flooding him, when he heard a familiar voice echo throughout the shop: “Hello? ‘s anyone around? It’s late, I know, but my car junked out on the side of the road, and I really can’t have a hold up like this tonight.” 

        It was only the cop, the one he’d spoken to about Amy, the one with the misaligned jaw and crooked smile and twinkling eyes and sun-kissed skin and— Okay, enough. Clearing his throat as if it would decongest his thoughts as well, Jude straightened up and moved through the narrow doorway into the front office, where their front desk and a handful of chairs were located, as well as a smattering of different magazines on a random end table. There, he met a very desperate-looking Riley, his apparent desperation dwarfed only by his apparent exhaustion. Before Jude could stop himself, he felt a slight twinge of sympathy for him somewhere deep within his chest.

        Taking another slow step toward Riley, he gave a half-hearted shrug of his shoulders and said, “I’m around. I’m not the Esposito—” He motioned to the logo on the front of his now-stained white t-shirt, which was mirrored on the exterior of the shop and its accompanying garage. “—but I’m a Esposito. Good enough?”

[espcsito-blog]

LISTEN.

[rilvys-blog]

For a split second, Riley’s mind was taken over by the voice of his father’s. ‘Who is he, coming to Chegual, thinking he’s part of this? One of us? Who is he, anyways? Nothing but an outsider, Riley. A stranger. Dangerous – just look at him! Not to be trusted.’ For a split second, Riley believed the voice in his head, eyes hardening as he met Jude’s. After all, who was he? To be coming into Chegual? Judging how they ran their island? He was an outsider, he couldn’t understand, he wouldn’t…. and in an instant, Riley remembered himself. His real self, not the one his father carved out for him. Xenophobia wasn’t in his blood – it was learned, and it hurt him and his mother and he couldn’t perpetuate it. Still, glancing from the posters in his hands to Jude’s face, Riley couldn’t help but think, ‘What could you possibly know? How could you mourn her?’. “Yeah, don’t want to give anyone false hope. Besides, her parents… I can’t even imagine, seeing these posters up around town as you’re planning her funeral…” Riley could imagine, though. Slips and pieces of piercing grief around every corner, memories flashing through like a reel, slowly burning up, erasing the memories he wanted to hold. They weren’t all good – there were some times he wanted stripped, wanted gone, like the first time she said ‘I love you’ (ike how he held his tongue and said it back) – but they were all he had left, besides her body that barely looked real, and her killer, still out there. “Yeah, well. When you see her, it’s… It’s pretty final. I can’t even look at pictures without it coming to mind, man. Rough stuff to see, especially when you used to – you know. It’s just, it’s rough.”

[espcsito-blog]

Something about the way Riley looked at him, even if only for a fraction of a second, made Jude’s mouth go dry. He’d seen that same dirty, disapproving look on so many of Chegual’s citizens’ faces before, silently condemning him for something that he could no longer help, inflicting an unspoken pressure on him to leave their sleepy coastal town be. He’d seen that look before, but that didn’t stop it from hurting when he saw it on yet another person’s face. Within a quick second, though, Jude saw Riley’s expression replaced with a more gentle one, and a welcome sense of relief washed over him. Part of him wanted to smile. With a cursory glance at the stack of crumpled posters in Riley’s hands, Jude said, “Can’t say I know how that feels, but rough sounds about right. I— We weren’t that close. She...” He trailed off then, his stare fixed resolutely on Amy and her flat, fake smile, as well as the single word emblazoned boldly above her picture: MISSING. Just looking at it made him feel as though his stomach were twisting up into knots, and he suddenly understood why the sheriff’s department saw it a necessity to take the posters down as hastily as they could. After a few long moments, he tore his gaze away from Amy to meet Riley’s and finished, “She was always nice to me.” Jude then took a moment to take another step forward and tear down the final poster wallpapering the telephone post, if only to give himself a false sense of accomplishment for contributing to Riley’s work. Without any forethought whatsoever, he found himself asking, “How are you holding up?” Then, realizing how his question may have come off, he quickly added, “Is it weird to ask that?”

[rilvys-blog]

It was like the world without Amy Woodward was without light. No, that wasn’t a fair statement – it had light. Obviously. Riley was raised a pragmatist, raised to reject such literary fancies and romanticisms, and the sun certainly existed, as assured as the small but steady crowd at the local high school’s football games, or his family’s presence on the second pew on the right at church every Sunday. But the world was dark, sky clouded over, clouds themselves hanging heavy with rain and even a tinge of sorrow. And Riley himself was mourning alongside the sky, tearing down the smiling pictures of Amy, the already-taken papers crumpled in his hand. He couldn’t even look at the posters properly, memories of Amy firing through his mind like a rapid sort of slideshow, intermingled with images of her corpse – lying in the water, on the coroner’s table, dead, dead, dead. He hardly realized the presence of another soul until the stench of smoke filled the air, pungent and attention-grabbing, pulling Riley out of his own mind. Blinking at the intruder on his moment of meditation, he shook his head, a wistful smile catching his lips. “Gotta do it. Don’t want to be sending mixed messages to the community or the press, and, well, figured I’d be the best person to be it.”

[espcsito-blog]

For a single fleeting moment, Jude felt bad for interrupting what appeared to be a moment of quiet introspection. Riley seemed to have been lost in a sort of immersive thought and altogether detached from his surroundings until he’d approached, the bitter scent of his cigarette smoke wafting around him and quickly announcing his presence. The town as a whole had been entrenched in a similar daze since Amy’s body was discovered floating heavily in the water, had been forced to relinquish their cheerful and enthusiastic existences in favor of dismal and bleak ones. However, from where he stood, this complicated version of grief appeared to have impacted Riley a little worse than anyone else he had encountered thus far. Jude almost pitied him for it. Moving a step forward, he shrugged noncommittally and said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Can’t say one thing on the news and another on the telephone posts outside. It just... doesn’t really feel like it’s even sunk in yet, you know?” He wasn’t lying; although he’d convinced himself that she wasn’t coming back long ago, Jude still half-expected to run into Amy every time he turned a corner, and every time a new car pulled into the shop, part of him hoped it would be her. His mind knew that she was dead, but his heart believed otherwise.

[alecblushed]

xx

[ofkorku]

He can’t force himself to make eye contact; too afraid they’ll see how suddenly worldweary he’s become. “I didn’t…” He can’t stand still either, keeps sniffing and scuffing his sneakers against the pavement. “I never really… fuck. I didn’t actually think she was dead, okay? I thought she got sick of this stupid fucking island and ran away. The pictures of her…” The pictures of her they’d been showing on the news were revolting. She looked helpless, floating there like that. He wondered how long she’d been sitting there, waiting for someone to find her. He wondered if she thought someone would save her before she died. His throat burned with raw emotion and tears pricked at his eyes. This was hard. It was too much. His twin sister. The person who should have been half of who he was, and now she was gone and he still didn’t know a damn thing about her.

[espcsito-blog]

While Jude wasn’t normally one to say ‘I told you so’, the temptation to do so ate at him as he sat on the curb outside of the auto shop. He’d seen Noah walking past, looking harried and distracted as he did, and although the two men weren’t exactly friends, something had propelled Jude to stop him and ask him how he was doing anyway. Several minutes later, he found himself outside, a cigarette resting between two fingers and elbows perching on his bent knees as he listened to Noah monologue about his sister. Fortunately, the smoke collecting in Jude’s lungs and quickly diffusing back out kept a lump from rising into his throat. The last thing either boy needed was for both of them to break down. After a few long moments had passed, when he was certain that he had finished speaking, Jude looked up at Noah from where he sat on the pavement and said, “I know. I... kept thinking there was no chance she’d come back. That she was definitely... well, you know. Like, nobody can go missing for a whole month and come out okay on the other side. But now... this doesn’t even feel real. Not even close.”

[domashford]

“Hey!” 

Fawn rarely raised her voice, unsettled by the harsh slur it manifested into but she was desperate for something - anything that would stop the horrible ripping and tearing. “Wait, stop! Please sto-” She had run as fast as she possibly could, but it was too late. Broken at the tattered remains of hope for her friend, the pacifist fell to her knees, hands forlornly uncrinkling fliers and smoothing them out on the base of her sunkissed thighs. Halfway through attempting to salvage another flier when she heard a voice pipe in her ears. Isn’t it kind of soon to be doing that? She nodded in agreement, not with his laugh but with his words despite the pernicious smile in them. It was offensive maybe, but Fawn ignored it - people handed their grief in different ways, of course. 

“Yes, yes it - it’s much too early. Her body may be found, but her soul is still lost…” The girl might have elaborated on that thought when a loud cough racked her system and she was forced to meet the piercing blue eyes of her companion. Cigarette smoke. Her mouth tilted down slightly, but her tone was even, pleasant and her hand outstretched. 

“Excuse me - but can I see that please?”

[espcsito-blog]

There was truthfully very little that Jude could do but futilely watch the scene in front of him play out, as Fawn—tall and lithe and tense with her hair cascading down her back in loose, dark tendrils—scrambled to salvage the crumpled posters of Amy. Unfortunately, the young police officer that he had originally accosted looked more than offended at Fawn’s intervention, his arms crossed and spine straight, as he backed away from the pair; however, he wasn’t nearly as invested in purging the town of the posters as he seemed to have originally thought, because within a few moments, he had clambered back into his cruiser and drove off, abandoning the two with the posters that he had carelessly ripped down.

In the officer’s wake, Jude felt a sort of derisive scorn start to bubble up within him as the girl knelt in front of him spoke. Even before succumbing to the throes of cynicism while in prison, he had never quite been into the hippy-dippy, kumbaya thing that Fawn seemed to embody, and hearing her speak about how Amy’s soul somehow lingered among them was just too much for him to bear. He had begun to open his mouth so as to cut her spiritual ramblings off when she coughed harshly, and just a moment later, extended her hand toward him. His eyebrows pulled together, Jude couldn’t mask the disbelief in his tone when he asked, “I’m sorry, but you... want my cigarette?”

[katerinarivera]

Ignorance is bliss. Katerina had never truly understood the sentiment behind this phrase. Sure, sometimes it was easier to be kept in the dark, to live a lie, but at the end of the day honesty was the best policy. That was how she’d been raised and that was how she tried to live, for the most part. But now? Now she wished she could return to her state of blissful ignorance, before Amy’s death had become a reality, before her fantasy had come crashing down and had taken her with it. Never before had she experienced a tragedy like this, not so intimately, and her fragile heart struggled to beat under the weight of it all. “Move on?” She repeats the words back to him as if they’re foreign to her. Though he was right, the concept of moving on hadn’t even occurred to her yet, not when the incident itself was so glaringly present, so real. “I can’t…” With a small frown, she shakes her head. “How can I?” When he tries to take the flyers, she steps back, suddenly clutching them to her chest as one might embrace a loved one. Despite having been set upon cleansing the town of flyers only a moment earlier, Katerina now desperately clings to them as if clinging to Amy herself, refusing to relinquish them to Jude. 

[espcsito-blog]

Whether he would have liked to admit it or not, the rawness of her voice, the pure and unadulterated grief that Kat seemed to be feeling, hurt Jude. It wasn’t like he wasn’t grieving Amy, too, in his own way, but his method of mourning was a more private and contained one. He didn’t break down in the middle of the street, but he had his moments at home where the weight of it all seemed to crush him and choke him and rob him of the air in his lungs, leaving him breathless and gasping and shaking. He hadn’t known Amy as well as some others had, but she’d still meant a great deal to him, and that alone was enough to send him into his own private spiral. For the time being, though, that didn’t seem to matter: Kat needed him. Taking another step closer, Jude placed his free hand on her shoulder, his touch light and gentle. He didn’t quite know what words to say; after all, what could he say that would make any of this better? Instead of thinking too hard about it, he simply opened his mouth and began to speak: “I don’t know, Kat. I don’t know the answer to that question. D’you think Amy would’ve wanted you to be like this, though? Suffering?” He had all but forgotten about the posters, instead shifting his focus to ensuring that Kat was okay.

[jxcksonbxnnet-blog]

Jackson’s anger was volcanic: it had laid dormant for all of those years of pampering down in South Carolina, all of the years of taking verbal and physical from his older brothers, from his father. When everything changed, when the entire world he’d grown up in fell apart right before his eyes, he’d watched passively, leaving his friends and his hopes for his future behind in favor of family. Suddenly, it had erupted, and incident he doesn’t like to discuss to anyone and only known to the ER doctors that had helped him with his bruises knuckles, and had been erupting periodically in small, hot, bursts like this. The stench of tobacco hit his nose and he made a face, but dropped the posters that had been in his hand. “No, that’s wasn’t–I shouldn’t be doin’ this.” Somehow, his accent was thicker, the edges of his words clipping off harshly and his vowels stretched out. He laughed, almost bitterly. “Shitty couple of days.” The swear slipped out without thinking, and he felt the heat reach his ears this time. He needed to get it together. He swallowed. “You shouldn’t’ve seen me like that, sorry.”

[espcsito-blog]

Silly as it may sound, Jackson’s Southern drawl seemed so quintessentially out of place that Jude almost instantly felt closer to him. Chegual Island was a town of cycles and repetition, of generations of families living and dying here and never seriously venturing outside of their small, safe bubble. That Jackson had an accent at all was irrefutable proof that he, like Jude, was an outsider, someone who didn’t fit snugly into Chegual’s well-established status quo. The thought made the corners of Jude’s mouth tug upwards into a half-cocked smile. Placing his still-lit cigarette between his lips, he crouched to pick up the posters that Jackson had discarded to the sidewalk; he didn’t care much about this town, but if the posters were coming down, they might as well actually go into the trash, too. Jude, as he gathered them into his hands, quickly crumpled the mass of papers into a ball and then spoke, his voice slightly muffled by the cigarette between his lips: “I’ve seen worse, don’t sweat it. If you’d been, like, on a rampage, trying to destroy the posters, then I might think you were crazy, but as it was, you were just taking ‘em down, so... we’re all good.”

[katerinarivera]

Cold air bites at Kat’s bare hands. A shiver runs down her spine, but she doesn’t think that’s from the cold - she’s been trembling since she spoke to Penny earlier. She’d been wandering around town for a while now. She wasn’t sure how long. 15 minutes, maybe? An hour? Two? And she’d forgotten her coat at home, having stormed out the door in a panic after sitting in the stifling dimness of her living room staring at the wall for far too long. Having no destination in mind, she’d simply began wandering aimlessly, trying to abandon the sickness in the pit of her stomach somehow, to travel back to a time when she hadn’t known. Somewhere along the way she’d seen a missing person poster and torn it down, angered by it’s existence now, by it’s false hope. And though that hadn’t made her feel better, exactly, it had given her something to do. A task to focus on. The sound of Jude’s voice registers on the fringes of her consciousness, pulling desperately at her attention, “She’s gone.” She turns slowly, fingers clenching the flyers into a crumpled mess, which she stares at for a beat before looking up at Jude as if confused. “She’s…dead.” 

[espcsito-blog]

Jude honestly hadn’t been surprised by the result of the search for Amy. He hadn’t been particularly vocal about it, but he’d been quietly expecting her to turn up dead sooner or later for the past several days, having already lost whatever hope the rest of the town had still clung to. Sometimes, missing people showed up months or even years after their initial disappearances perfectly okay, but in a small town like Chegual Island, such a miracle seemed impossible—or perhaps it was just his cynicism convincing him so. Either way, the community would now have to handle the fact that Amy was, in fact, dead and not coming back, and truthfully, he wasn’t thrilled about it. From what he could see, Kat already seemed to be struggling with her grief, and it tore at him in a way that he didn’t know was possible anymore. She’d always been sweet when others weren’t, gracious in ways he could no longer be, and he admired her for it, but now she stood before him, crumbling. He sighed and murmured, “At least we know now, right? No more waiting for her to come home. We can all move on, once and for all.” Even to him, the words sounded like lies coming out of his mouth. Taking a step forward, Jude gently reached out for the flyers clenched in her hands so as to relieve her of their weight. They were probably only a few ounces, at most, but it must have taken an emotional toll on Kat to even hold them.

[jxcksonbxnnet-blog]

Jackson didn’t get angry often. It was one of the biggest rules he set for himself; don’t get angry, don’t cause more pain than you have to. No matter how much you want to fight back, take the high road, keep your chin up. There were some nights, though, when it all became too much, and rage would surge up in his stomach, keeping him awake. Usually, he would go take a walk, unable to control himself with his father in the next room, but because of the entire Amy fiasco, he’d been forced to stay in. Tonight, it didn’t matter. He needed some sort of release, and the missing posters had been the nearest destroyable thing. He whirled around when he heard a voice, a picture of Amy crumpled in his hand and a wild look his face, just for a moment, before his muscles went slack. “Sorry,” he mumbled, feeling the heat rise up in his face. People weren’t supposed to see them like this. He wasn’t supposed to be like this.

[espcsito-blog]

Truthfully, Jude had been angry for the vast majority of his life. As his family buoyed unstably in poverty and his mother struggled desperately to make ends meet, it came to him as a natural defense mechanism, an attempt to shield himself from the hand the world had dealt him. That anger—which had never fully blossomed, instead choosing to simmer just below the surface—had simply intensified during his stint in prison; since then, he had never quite been able to get back to how things had been before. In other words, anger wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling to Jude. However, the last time that he had been confronted with a physical outburst comparable to the one in front of him was several years earlier, inside walls of concrete and fences of barbed wire. It was surprising, to say the least. After allowing himself a brief moment to take it all in, Jude shrugged, flicked the ash at the end of his cigarette to the sidewalk, and said, “It’s cool. I get it. It’s kind of been a shitty couple days, huh?” That would be putting it lightly.

[espcsito-blog]

Perhaps it was simply the approaching winter, but as he aimlessly strolled through town, Jude couldn’t help but notice the chill hanging frigidly in the air of Chegual Island. The cold front had moved in practically overnight, and suddenly, it felt more like late November than the first week of October. While his uncle had prattled on all morning about how climate change would be the death of the planet, Jude had a sickening feeling that the weather was simply mourning Amy Woodward along with them. What right did the sun have to shine when a teenage girl had been found dead on their isle of solitude and peace? Lifting his cigarette to his mouth, Jude turned a corner, only to be abruptly confronted with an entire telephone post’s worth of missing person posters being unceremoniously ripped down. Without thinking, he laughed, a sharp, bitter sound worsened by the smoke caught in his lungs, and asked, “Isn’t it kind of soon to be doing that?”

[spoiledbrxt-blog]

tag yourself: revenant version

tag your mun! You can also tag your characters too if you want to! 

[henry-cavill]

[rilvys-blog]

Everything in Riley’s world was about belonging. After all, conformity was a Pierce family tradition. Jokes aside, though, everything in Riley’s universe fit into something — his role in his family, his community, his job; they were all tight hierarchies. What time he woke up, every step he took, hell, every hair on his head was gelled into place. The pills he swallowed every morning and the time he closed his eyes at night, timed down to the minute. Riley was neat and tight and together. Jude didn’t seem to share that same approach to life —— after all, how could he? He was living as an outsider, a life Riley could never imagine. As much as he craved freedom, he lacked the courage to leave his safety net, the comfort of mind-numbing routine. While Jude didn’t exactly scream “fuck the establishment”, something about him —- the worn in leather Riley’d never dare wear, the scruff on his chin that was a statement in and of itself in such a tight community, the act of mere existence in a way that wasn’t trying to make himself small, another stitch in the fabric of the island. “Fair enough. Who’s your uncle, if you don’t mind me asking?” Riley’s stomach twisted with the words — he was his father’s son, and was learning the art of asking without there being a question at all, willingly or otherwise. He bit his tongue and stopped from backtracking, though, leaning back on his desk (and away from Jude). “Yeah, I mean. We haven’t been as close lately as we were, but back then… Well, you know. Quarterback and head cheerleader, everyone knows that story.” Cocking his head to the side, the question made him take pause. Sure, he wasn’t exactly a natural, at this whole cop business —— he wasn’t a natural leader or a commanding presence, but did it really take Jude so little time to determine that Riley was green? “Not long, actually. Couple months, maybe? How’d you know?“

[espcsito-blog]

For the most part, Jude was used to how the world operated and how its inhabitants lived. It was a circular in the worst way possible. Things would be okay for awhile, then something would happen—something small, something large, it didn’t matter—specifically designed to destroy whatever balance had been existing in his life. Rinse, and repeat. Every so often, though, Jude would stumble across something new, something unrecognizable that he hadn’t encountered before. Something told him that this was one of those moments, a rare point in time almost entirely new to him. Too often over the previous several years, he had met people who already had harmful preconceived notions about who he was and what horrible things that he had done in his past, but suddenly, he found himself standing in the sheriff’s department, confronted with a young man who seemed to have no knowledge whatsoever of the fact that he had a criminal record at all. Riley’s demeanor—awkward, but altogether kind and gracious—was a welcome change from the norm of hostility and judgment. Scratching absently at the back of his neck, as he often did when his nerves kicked in, Jude said, “He’s a mechanic. Julian Esposito?” The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them; Riley had asked, and he had willingly handed him the power to dig up any dirt he wanted to on Jude’s life. He quickly continued, “Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Only my high school’s quarterback wasn’t as nice as you are. If I remember right, he was the one who liked launching rubber bands at the back of people’s heads in my English class.” This time, Jude’s laugh was genuine, but the shrug that came after it was noncommittal. “Call it a lucky guess.”

[rilvys-blog]

Growing up like he did, where he did, it was odd for Riley — looking at Jude and not seeing a mental file folder, filled with parents’ occupations and embarrassing moments in middle school and favourite sports teams. Looking at someone and seeing a stranger. He’d have to do some digging later on the guy — if he could get a last name, that was. The best part of being a cop —— access to a person’s police records. An abuse of power? Oh, definitely, but Riley was pretty good everywhere else. His biggest fault was gossip-mongering. Not exactly the worst thing to happen within the station walls. “Really? That makes sense —— I haven’t really been around the past couple of years, school and all. Though, I’m still surprised — it’s always kind of strange, when people move onto Chegual. It’s more of a place people try to get away from, you know? Especially right now…” Riley trailed off, allowing himself to slip again. He really couldn’t see why anyone would want to come to Chegual, much less a person like Jude, who didn’t seem quite the clean-cut all-American type the island liked —- not like Riley was. People only came to run from something, really. Despite the questions flitting through his mind, though, Riley couldn’t help but return the smiling, toothy and crooked as he shook his head. He allowed a breathy sort of laugh, half-hearted and exhausted by the events surrounding the island. “Honestly, you’re probably right. It’s just been non-stop, looking for Amy. Which, of course I’m more than willing to do — Amy and I were pretty close, back in high school, so. Also, it’s my job, heh.” He pointed — unnecessarily — at his badge. What the hell was he doing?

[espcsito-blog]

Unfortunately, the striking differences between him and Riley were not lost on Jude. While he stood at an imposing six feet and three inches with rough stubble across his jaw, his frame long and lean underneath his worn leather jacket and jeans and his feet clad in a pair of scuffed workmen’s boots, Riley looked as clean-cut as anyone would expect. He stood a few inches shorter than Jude, his face clean-shaven and his hair gelled precisely into place, and he filled out his uniform nicely, as if he had been born to wear it. Knowing how the island operated, Jude quickly realized that he very likely could have been: everything seemed cyclical on Chegual, a never-changing wheel constantly rotating, waiting for the next generation to continue that which their parents before them had begun. The thought terrified Jude. With a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders, he said, “I don’t know, my uncle, he owns a shop out here. He needed some help, so here I am.” Before his incarceration, a flush might have risen from the base of his neck then and crept up to his cheeks, revealing his lie in no time at all; then, after all that time feeding himself and everyone around him half-truths about his past, he could barely tell the difference anymore between what was supposed to be the actual truth and what wasn’t. Quietly, he added, “Sorry, though. This all must suck if you guys were close. She was pretty cool.” Glancing down at Riley’s badge, he felt his eyebrows pull together in something akin to confusion. He simply seemed too awkward, too tense to be a seasoned cop, and after a fleeting moment, Jude found himself abruptly asking, “How long have you been a cop, again?”