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Red ♫ Citta Apt R-1 ♫ Crash() 3x a day

[gildedmic]

turnleft:

What’s she expecting to hear.

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He’s back-- is all she can think.

It’s hard to hide the relief she feels when his voice finds its rhythm. He’s found his way back, and she’s grateful because she’s realizing she doesn’t have it in her to keep him in her grip when he slips. 

“Hey, don’t be sorry.” She lifts herself up on her knees, reaches up to kiss the vague sort of frown that seems to be plaguing his face. She wonders if she looks as tired as she feels-- as he sounds.

Her hands find his, rest on top of them while they keep her in place. They’re clammy, and all too warm but she’s feeling dizzy and she doesn’t know how well she can manage to steady herself without them.

“I mean, how many times have you done the same for me?” Guided her home and taken care of her after one vodka dry too many? Plenty. Guided her through Cloudbank, given her a reason to keep herself from getting lost in the current of sterile white and blinking red eyes? Even more. 

But somehow her voice is still small and her smile shakes. 

She needs to sit-- on her own, somewhere where his eyes are farther from her.

Her hands have gradually been working at his fingers for awhile now; soft nudges, slowly pushing his fingers aside so she can lift herself up and out of his grip. She picks herself up, knees wobbling as the mattress sinks from the pressure.

She stumbles and tries to brace hand against the headboard, but her depth perception does her no favors. She misses, and her palm lands on his face. 

“Whoops! Sorry--” But she doesn’t retract her hand, uses him to steady herself as she maneuvers off off and beside him. And despite everything, this situation, the mess of tangled and unresolved implications between them-- she finds it in her to laugh. “Guess I’m not doing much better than you.”

In more ways than one.

Her feet knock against each other, knock against his, and the two of them are quiet. The Transistor has stopped glowing and the room is dark.

She’s still buzzing from the laughter and vodka, and maybe that’s what gives her the courage (or maybe energy is the better word) to speak.

“Do..do you sleep better? By yourself?” She looks up at him through the dark, squinting and smiling. “It’s fine if you do.”

[fy-girls-generation]

Visit Original Link

[dokkaebies]

[gildedmic]

leavingearths:

Hey Red, thanks for the lift.

[depositron]

[gildedmic]

depositron:

“I’m going to find the thing that’s doing this and I’m going to break its heart.”

[gildedmic]

turnleft:

Magic happens.

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There is something there worth salvaging she thinks, she tells herself as he kisses her hand and his chin prickles her skin. 

But she’s late to return the kiss, by the time she brings her lips together his mouth has already moved on, concerned by other matters.

Her throat is dry, and the desperation in his eyes makes her sad in a way that rings in her ears so loudly she can barely hear what he’s saying. He’s got one hand on her and she’s gripping the other one tightly, holding on for dear life.

But the Transistor falls again, and she can’t tell if she’s been condemned or spared.

His hands are frantic, and there is no space left between the two of them. But she’s never felt as far from him as she does now—her gaze is unmoving, she’s paralyzed and the pleading in his voice only makes it harder.

They’re a mess, the two of them.

Everything is tangled in knots that refuse to budge, legs woven together, hands pulled close around her—you can’t really tell where he starts and she ends. But all she sees is the Transistor, laying there on the floor and gazing back at her.

Watching, judging, waiting.

She looks away, looks at him finally, because she can’t keep her head above water if he stays submerged. Because she remembers what he sounded like when the Spine tried to take him, when he nearly let it—it’s hard to look at him but she can’t bear the thought of him disappearing.

“H-Hey, hey, shh—I’m here.”  She pushes back from him slightly, only enough to maneuver her arms and put a hand on his cheek. “You’re here, and I’m here… and it’s just us.” The Transistor glows in defiance, and Red squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, places a kiss on the corner of his mouth as she guides him with her hands to rest his back against the headboard.

“See?” She’s perched on his lap, fingers combing through his hair as she blinks up at him. His eyes are tired, his gaze is harried, and she wonders if he sleeps at all most nights. She’s looking at him, and it wasn’t as difficult as she thought it would be.

But it doesn’t make her feel much better.

The room looks like the scene of a crime—clothes on the floor, lamp knocked over, furniture in disarray, and the weapon of choice abandoned on the ground with no one willing to claim it but everyone’s conscience tied to it.

In a way, she supposes it is exactly that.

It’s cold and she considers picking her blouse back up, but she doesn’t think she has it in her to subject him to what that would mean symbolically. Neither of them were people who put much stock in words, and that was because they knew the sorts of things that spoke so much louder than that.

“You don’t look all that good.” Her voice is so quiet he can only hear her because there isn’t even a sliver of space between them.  Her throat, recently damped by liquor, sounds dry and like every word is a struggle. She strokes his cheekbones with her thumbs, keeps her hands busy so her eyes will focus.

“I haven’t seen you this bad since—” The Spine, the dizzying silence, the frayed connection that left her fighting for air. “—that one night? You remember? That jazz club on Goldwalk.”

It was the first night they’d spent together but only in the most literal sense. She’d practically had to carry him home, despite not being in much better shape herself. He’d won a match, she’d kissed him outside some dusty bar, and the two of them fell asleep immediately after stepping foot into his apartment.

That morning she’d rubbed his back and he’d looked so pitiful she couldn’t bring herself to make fun of him.

She’s has never relied on him but she the sight of him crumbling is terrifying.

“Are you okay now? You look tired.” The Transistor is lifeless turquoise, visible out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t have to look away from him to see it from where she’s sitting.

[florenceismyreligion]

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[gildedmic]

florenceismyreligion:

Florence + the Machine - Blinding

It seems that I have been held, in some dreaming state

A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake

[gildedmic]

It’s a scene not unfamiliar to either of them but somehow something that’s become foreign, almost alien in nature.

Touches are fleeting, they rarely meet eyes when they kiss, and when he leaves their bed for the night to move to the living room she pretends like she’s still asleep. There are spaces in between the careful and occasional words of affection and they mark the distance between them so obviously.

The room is dim and she vaguely wonders if he’s switched colognes.

His stubble tickles her face and she laughs into the crook of his neck. It’s been a long time since they’ve felt this close, in any sense.

She doesn’t remember how much either of them drank, but she knows it’s not enough to make her feel any kind of awful in the morning. The magic amount—none of the inhibitions, and none of the sloppiness.

It’s just made them momentarily forget—about the loops, about this place, about how they tiptoe around each other despite rarely being more than a few feet apart. For a moment the distance doesn’t plague them so much.

Her hands are on the back of his neck, and he dips forward slightly to meet her. But that’s not good enough for her.

“Hey, c’mere.” She pulls him forward and they fall back together, and somehow in between laughing at his face as they do she manages the coherence to kick her shoes off all in the same motion.

The room is dim, but between her vodka buzz and his palms everything is brighter than it has been in a long time.

She doesn’t remember what she was reaching for, not now anyway. She’s got one hand on his cheek while the other searches the nightstand for something—and whatever that something was will plague her for days after. Her hand slips, her arm extends too far, and the Transistor—resting against the corner of the table—tips over and falls flat on the ground.

The sound is loud, sharp, like a slap. Once just a lifeless slab of wood in the dark, it bursts to life and bathes the room in a furious turquoise. Red brings her arm over her eyes, as if to shield herself from the light.

It’s quiet and her eyes are still covered when she finally speaks.

“Sorry.” She smiles like she’s trying to duck out of blame for doing something wrong. There isn’t anything clouding her mind anymore, she sees all too clearly and it won’t be the liquor that makes her nauseous in the morning.

turnleft

[gildedmic]

turnleft:

It’s gone.

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The rain feels like it’s caked onto her skin, thick grimy layers that she’ll have to scrub off every surface later. The wind passes right through her, makes her shiver and has her bones feeling hollow.

She wonders who he’s saying it for—her, or himself?

It shouldn’t matter, she’ll think later, because she knows he means it.

Between how the cold makes her knees shake, and how heavy her waterlogged clothes feel his arms are the only thing keeping her standing. But the weight of the ring—gone now but heavier than ever—makes her feel stifled by his grip.

“I know you do.” Is her answer, and it’s the only answer that she can compose that doesn’t make her feel like she’s lying to him. Her words spill over into a kiss, light as can be on his collar bone, sealing the acknowledgment like a bow.

“Yeah, we’ll find it.” But she’s not talking about the ring.

She finally brings her arms up and wraps them around his torso, and two of them stand like that for a while. They’re so close right now but she doesn’t think either of them know how to map their way to the other.

The rain sloshes loudly around them; no one seems willing to wait out the storm. That had been their plan, hadn’t it?

His plan, actually, now that she thinks about it.

“I want—I think, we should go home.” It’s not really a home, just a place—just somewhere they wait, and sleep, and sit, and wonder when this will all cave in on itself and they’ll be pulled back to the beginning of it all. But they can’t call it that, it needs a name.

She slips from his grasp, maneuvers herself and drapes his arm across her waist. The crowds are just as harried and chaotic as ever and she needs to remind herself how close he is. It would be better to wait it out, she knows this, but she just wants to get out of the rain.

[turnleft-blog]

He laughs.

He never laughs.

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[gildedmic]

She’s soaked to the bone by the time he manages to shepherd her to shelter.

She’d forgone the jacket, his jacket, because of how hot it’d been and she regrets it now. He lets go of her and she wobbles back a bit without his arm there to support her, keep her in place. 

Her hair is plastered all around the sides of her face and she pushes it back with her fingers, looks up at him and grins like she’s been dying to say this the whole time.

“I’d vote for storms any day.” That was the difference between them.. maybe. Why they worked, probably. 

If everyone votes for thunder storms there’s no point in a ballot, no point in having options at all. No point in democracy. 

Maybe that was a poor comparison, what with how everything had turned out in the end-- or maybe that comparison spoke most accurately for where they were. She doesn’t want to think about it anymore than she has to though-- she’d been enjoying herself. 

 Everyone is trapped on all sides, with the weather beating down on them from above, and the narrow pathways of abandoned tents squishing them together from the sides. The two of them watch, almost removed from it all as their striped awning howls in the wind. 

“We didn’t even manage to do a lap around the lake.” She says it like she’s disappointed, but she’s smiling. It’d been a bad idea, but he’s never really been good at stopping those. Not with her anyway. 

Rainwater drops down from the roots of her hair, and she reaches her hands up to wring it out. It’s then that she feels it, the absence of metal and sharp edges on her left hand as her knuckles brush skin.  

“It’s gone--” It’s a murmur, and she’s quietly puzzled as her gaze drifts casually around the perimeter, like something is amiss and she can’t tell what it is. 

She steps forward, out from under the awning and into the rain, wringing her hands almost painfully. The crowds are no less severe but they’re moving faster now, something has made the exit more accessible and they’re not letting the rain deter their escape.

“It’s gone.” Maybe she dropped it, maybe someone had pulled it off in the chaos, maybe she’d thrown it into the lake when he wasn’t looking. She wasn’t sure-- the lack of weight on her finger is strange, and she’s not sure. 

She’s not sure, and there’s something about that she finds makes it difficult to swallow. 

She steps back under the awning, wipes the rain out of her eyes as she looks up at him.

“I think I lost it-- I’m sorry.”

 About what, she’s not sure.

[gildedmic]

He’d asked her if she’d wanted him to come with her.

She’d said no-- because she’d wanted to be alone (she hadn’t told him that), because it was just a trip across the street and it was perfectly safe for her to go by herself (that part she did tell him, insisted on actually).

She’d taken the Transistor with her though, so she’s not sure how much he’d believed her. 

She’s standing in a pastel pink aisle full of feminine hygiene products when two masked men walk into the pharmacy. They’ve got guns and gritty voices, and Red does little more than raise an eyebrow and drop her tampons of choice into her plastic basket. 

She turns to the only other person in the vicinity-- a blonde man who seems just as unimpressed by this attempt at robbery.

“They told us to get on the floor, you know..” She says, despite showing no signs of getting off her feet anytime soon.

autocratism

[gildedmic]

She’s finding that it’s easier for her to interact with kids when she doesn’t bother trying to play the role of responsible adult. 

No I.D. and too youthful a face to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes-- she’s been there-- young, tired, and desperately in need of liquor. 

The cabana they’ve gathered in is atrociously tacky-- plastic bamboo, fake tropical flowers, mismatched tiki masks that look like they’ve been sitting in someones basement for years. But no one is here for the ambiance. 

“Need a little help?”

She hops onto the bar stool next to the younger girl, smiling far too brightly for someone who had the worst sunburn on her lower back.

“Hey, over here. I’ll have uh--” She glances at the girl beside her, quiet deliberation etched into the crease of her brow. Then she decides “-- strawberry daiquiri.”

The bartender gets to work and she leans against the counter.

“You look like a daiquiri.”

There’s a fan on the ceiling with blades that’re supposed to look like palm fronds. It’s barely moving, and whatever air it manages to circulate doesn’t make it down to where they are.

“They only really care about who orders the drink, not who actually drinks it.”

inquisitorvex

[persephinae]

Visit Original Link

Impossible (Hummed)  - Transistor: Breached Tracks

[gildedmic]

She’s not one of those people-- the kind that curses the existence of children, or gets grumpy when a toddler throws a tantrum in a restaurant. But she doesn’t really get them.

She could try, maybe. But being around them made her walk on her toes and fumble for words, so really where was the chance for insight when she could barely manage to interact with them?

“The tides going to come in soon you know..” She lifts her sunglasses up, and frowns down at the boy in the sand.

“Your castle probably won’t last too much longer.” Half a sandcastle sits on the soggy ground. It’s pretty impressive-- there’s a tower and something of a mote in the works.

“I don’t think you’ll get to finish it..”

daathics

[incandeo]

   IT WAS certainly a bold assumption for the likes of him. While this wasn’t his initial guess towards the mysterious noise, he decided to grasp the concept of ‘thinking outside the box’ as this city would be the one place for things out of the blue to occur at a regular basis. 

   He was capable of conjuring many varying fantastical and otherworldly-like ideas but he had his bets firmly placed on the whole tape recorder theory. 

   The male gave a simple nod before keeping some distance between the basket and himself. As the pieces fell into place, or as the welcoming of the image of a baby flashed before his eyes, Frank couldn’t help but frown in the slightest. He had expected some kind of plot-twist, considering the many different things he had encountered in the past. 

   ❝It was a worth shot at least! That’s also true… yet I’m still confused on the fact why anyone would want to leave a defenseless baby on a train…❞ he states thoughtfully. Though he was in no place to judge, if he were to be in the woman’s position he’d probably hold the infant in a way which cannot be described into words. 

   ❝I’m not too great on ages but I’d at least say about… a year a bit? He has hair, so that’s something.❞ though the action of fondness being directed to him by the smaller individual made Frank blink twice before a rosy hue painted onto his cheeks. ❝L–Likes me?! Are you sure that action isn’t how babies express ‘I don’t like you’?!❞ 

[gildedmic]

She’s no better with kids (teenagers? Young adults? People significantly younger than her-- there.) than she is with babies. He hasn’t really put two and two together, at least that’s what she assumes. She’s not sure which is the more morally sound action, filling him in or letting him keep his borderline naive optimism. 

She’s trying to remember how she wishes adults had spoken to her as a teenager-- but she’s drawing a blank. She’d forgotten as much of her own teenage years as she was capable of in lieu of survival, and she decides this is probably why adults are so bad at empathizing with teenagers. 

“I’m not any kind of expert on babies but I’m at least half sure that ‘I don’t like you’ in baby usually translates to crying, screaming, and an emotional response down here.” She gestures at the child’s diaper with an unnecessary amount of enthusiasm-- like some game show host directing the audience’s attention to a possible prize. 

The infant remains unaffected and mostly amused, wrapping a strand of her hair around his round little fingers. He gurgles, reaches another arm out at the older boy-- like he’s trying to engage the other in conversation. 

“Whatever the reason for him getting left behind here.. we should probably contact the authorities or something like that.” She says we, but she’s the adult, she’s the one with the baby in her arms so really she can’t expect anything from this stranger. “I’ll just get off at the next stop-- find a police station or something. I can go alone--” 

She doesn’t bother adding the ‘if you’ve got better things to do’ because she’s sure most people had better things to do than cart around orphans in baskets. 

[quartzied-blog]

Rose is used to people looking up at her, and she in turn looking down, but the shock of her height in the eyes of others’ rarely did not amuse her, even for a few moments. She noticed it in the woman’s eyes, but made no notion of recognition.

The gem was pleased – she certainly had made the right choice in asking this fellow consumer, rather than one of the poised employees throughout the store. She looks carefully as the redhead points out the pictures in the catalog. She almost wondered if the women were gems, with all those body proportions that seemed just too neat to be fully human. Rose takes only a few moments to understand the basic function of the garments before them after Red’s display, yet, is still at a slight loss on the aesthetic standpoint on the matter.

“I see.”

“Ah – I thought they matched my dress, but, perhaps that isn’t the point?”

[gildedmic]

“It can be the point.” She shrugs, rolls the catalog up with little care for the glossy unblemished women that were wrinkling and writhing in her grip. “There’s a lot of different reasons-- why people wear these things or why they wear a certain type.” 

She’s got her hands in a bargain bin of out of season pieces. They’re all mismatched and strangely patterned-- left behind and overlooked for very obvious reasons. 

“Some people wear them for other people, there are a few who wear them for themselves, and well.. I’m sure there are people out there who aren’t really sure why they wear them at all.”

“Societal pressures, standards of beauty, fearing rejection-- you know, things like that-- they’ll make you do crazy things like cram your backside into leopard print lace. Consequences of civilized society I guess.”

[hoshidho-remade]

Female Video Game Characters Meme: A Protagonist  ► Red (Transistor)

[turnleft-blog]

Storm on the horizon. He doesn’t recognise the sound – not at first.

When it hits him, his gaze is pulled to the sky like a magnet.

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[gildedmic]

The wind makes makes her rub at her arms, as she looks up at the sky like it’ll help her make a decision.

Like what he’s proposing is even something she should be thinking about. 

Her shoes aren’t very good for rowing, and she’d put them on with the intention of doing everything that was the opposite of this. So she leaves them on the floor of the boat, slides her feet on top of the rough plastic pedals. 

She thinks about the patterned welts the pedals will leave on the skin of her feet, thinks that if they could’ve voted on the weather, could have foreseen the heavy clouds and dusty wind, they could’ve been in this boat a lot longer. She wonders who would’ve decided to head back to sure then, if something hadn’t made the decision for them.

“Who says we were ever stuck? We’ve both got feet, right?” It’s kind of a challenge. Thunder sounds, grumbling somewhere that’s not too close but still too loud to seem like it’s not far enough. Lightning rings through the air soon after, and Red realizes the pedals on her side are kind of rusty.

“A team effort.” She parrots, feigned determination helping her convince herself that she’s got the energy to row.

The rain is just a drizzle when they make it to shore. 

She’s got her heels in one hand and his fingers in the other. She falls behind him, and comes to a stop suddenly. To his credit he realizes she’s stopped walking before he can stray far enough to tug her forward.

“Can you remember the last time we had a storm like this?” Back in Cloudbank-- she means, but she doesn’t elaborate. She remembers, because the power had gone out and she’d spent a good half hour fumbling in the dark, hitting every sharp corner of his apartment before she’d found candles. 

Because, like he’d said all that time ago, in some loop numbered somewhere in the forties, because she never forgets.   

“People never vote on bad weather.” She catches up to where he is, drawing closer as the crowds begin to get more dense. Thunder rumbles once more and the rain gradually starts coming down on them in full force. “It’s a missed opportunity I think..maybe it’s not so bad to not get a vote.”

Everyone is headed in the same direction-- the general area that’s marked as a kind of exit. They’re all packed close, and the lukewarm rain makes her feel grimy.

She doesn’t really like crowds, neither of them do.