someday is a story

griffin baxley day after day, day after day, we stuck, nor breath nor motion; as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink. water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink. the very deep did rot: oh christ! that ever this should be. yea, slimy things did crawl with legs upon the slimy sea.

[griffingriffout]

bergmanns‌:

Ezra was not athletically inclined. He never had been athletically inclined. Even as a kid he’d preferred crouching in the dirt to watch ants parade back to their nests with crumbs of food or filling in the lines of a coloring book to tetherball or red rover, but skating had always been the exception. He wasn’t even sure he could completely rule it a sport. Sports weren’t fun. Sports usually ended up with him getting knocked into the dirt by a guy three times his size. If he got hurt skating it was because he’d made a mistake or he’d been too ambitious. It was his fault, not the inescapable consequence of having the constitution of an uncooked spaghetti noodle.

His board had been stored away for the winter, either resting against his desk or on his legs as he painted a new design on its belly. But now the clouds were clear enough to see slivers of blue cushioned between the clouds and the snow had melted away just enough to leave the playground of Broadripple’s back stairwell clear for skating. It was against the rules to skate on campus, but Ezra found that people rarely populated the back staircase. To anyone else, all it had was a pretty dismal view of a soccer field and the outcrop of trees behind a fence. But to Ezra there was a plethora of rails, stairs, and stretches of pavement for him to explore.

He wound up for a kickflip, board spinning beneath his feet before the wheels clapped back down on the pavement. He careened, nearly tipping over before he righted his balance. Ezra laughed for what felt like the first time in ages.

 “Out of practice, I guess.” He pushed his foot off the ground to accelerate, winding back to where his companion lingered at the stairs. “You know how to grind a rail?”

Griffin had an obsession with Ezra Bergmann. More specifically - his art. It was good and it was different and Griffin wanted to plaster it on the pages of his magazine. But every time he poked around the Art Room, Ezra shut him down. He’d insist that his art wasn’t for mass public consumption, which would send Griffin on a rant about how he and Ella were hardly consumerists, but that hardly did much to sway Ezra toward him. 

They were both loners of a sort, but they reacted to the world in very different ways. Ezra shrunk away, hiding himself in the shadows. Griffin forced everyone to acknowledge him, tilting his head back and shouting I EXIST AND IT DOES NOT MATTER TO ME WHETHER YOU LIKE THAT OR NOT. Despite this, there was more they had in common than the things that made them different. Apparently skateboarding was one of those things.

“I used to,” Griffin said from where he sat on a concrete step, having invited himself along when he’d caught Ezra in the hall with a board under his arm. “It’s been a minute, ‘cause my uncle broke my board over the Summer trying to move a life-sized Bigfoot into the foyer of our house, but...” He stood, rolling his eyes and shrugging. “If you wanted to watch me try, there are worse things than bloody noses.” 

[griffingriffout]

ecllas‌:

“So. Plot twist. He stood me up. Like, just completely didn’t show.” Ella dropped her purse on the table in Broadripple’s dining hall. It was the only one she’d brought to the Academy with her, the only one nice enough to be deemed worthy of going out. But instead of a promised Friday night escape to one of the local restaurants just out of town, Ella was left waiting at the gates for a ride that never showed up. If she was being honest with herself, the first of many red flags had arisen when Brent kept trying to slide their texts into the realm of sexts. And optimism was always an excuse she fell back on when she knew she wanted something unrealistic. “Just so you know, the guys from Somerville High are lame. I swear, this guy didn’t even know Sappho was an actual person.” She definitely wasn’t bitter about it. She totally didn’t care. Even though she’d wasted an hour trying to recreate a make-up tutorial and slaving over an outfit that looked effortlessly cute. An hour that she could have spent on something meaningful. Like practicing lines or reviewing Griffin’s latest edits for Broadripple Uncensored.

Instead, she’d spent her open afternoon rifling through drawers, switching out her earrings, and trying on nearly every article of clothing in her wardrobe. Gwen would have a mouthful to say about the pile mounted on Ella’s bed when she got back to the room, but Ella considered that an issue to suss out later.

She looked over the food on her classmate’s plate. Ella frowned. “Okay, that tuna casserole looks expired.” Ella cracked a smile. “Does it taste as sad as it looks?” 

Griffin had already been fully informed on Brent and this Friday night date, more than he ever wanted to be or had invited Ella into telling him. For what it was worth, he had tried sounding supportive, even if that mostly amounted to sarcastic phrases like, ‘Wow, he sounds like a charmer.’ In that moment, he barely made an effort to hide the relief on his face that Ella was waltzing back to the dining hall to sit across from him rather than in the passenger seat of Brent’s 2003 Toyota Corolla.

“The fact that your conversations got into Sapphic poetry at all is a modern fucking miracle,” Griffin commented, leaning back in his chair and looking Ella over. She was naturally pretty, but she had clearly zhuzh-ed herself up that night. He tilted his head, casually stabbing faded gray flakes of tuna with his fork. 

“It barely meets the criteria for ‘edible’. You, however, look --” Griffin skidded into a stop. What was he going to say there? Had his brain planned for this? What could he possibly end this sentence with that wouldn’t make everything completely awkward? “ -- like you should be eating something nicer than last week’s casserole.”

Good job, Griffin. Solid save.

“Shame you wasted it on Brent the living dick pic. Did you at least get something incriminating from him that we can laugh about? I’ll share my Broadripple mush with you in return.”

[griffingriffout]

amariaustin‌:

Amari responded to Griffin’s eye roll with a wise crack.But they responded to most things with a snarky remark.They enjoyed behaving like a college professor that sat on their desk and thought they were too cool to stick to the syllabus.“My condescension is always important."It was a self-improvement paradox.They knew they acted like an arrogant prick sometimes but they didn’t want to change.They enjoyed it and made it a part of their personal brand.They liked behaving like a college professor that sat on their desk and thought they were too cool to stick to the syllabus."It doesn’t matter that I just rambled about daytime TV and Ellen."Amari smirked.They associated Ellen with the Westboro Baptist Church parody she was referenced in.What a hateful banger. 

 "Maybe.”,they said in agreement.“I don’t want to underestimate them."Amari wasn’t sure about the rest of the faculty but they were sure Sister Michael was the real omnipotent presence at Broadripple ,fuck God.She was more frightening."Was the party good enough to convert you to the dark side?”,they asked with a small mischievous smile.They couldn’t imagine Griffin as anything other than a Dead Poets Society reject.It suited him. 

 "Kesha is the voice of a generation.“,they deadpanned.It was ironic seeing as they streamed her last two albums.Amari wasn’t as snobby as they seemed.In reality they were the exact opposite.They didn’t buy all that Good Art vs Bad Art Bullshit.Good Art was anything that caused a reaction and low brow stuff was fun to consume and analyse.That’s why they’d watched Zombeavers five times and had a John Waters pin. Their main motivation for attending hadn’t been for experience.It had been for research.Research had coincidentally resulted in an experience they didn’t enjoy or see the need for.They could tell Katherine Bishop how much they hated her on any day ending in Y.Perhaps hate was a strong word ,but they still weren’t endeared to that hypocritical Stepford Wife is training. They nodded along to show that they were still paying close attention.It made sense that Griffin was the type of person to have high hopes for college.Presumably he had the money and grades to go wherever he wanted so he’d probably be able to surround himself with equally pretentious like minded people.If they allowed themself to be optimistic Amari had similar ambitions. 

 "I think The BBC are the Disney of hosting parties.They have a monopoly on it and will crush anybody that tries something different."Amari didn’t know what a BAU party would look like or if any of them would be calm and likeable enough to host one (Wendy seemed like the most likely candidate).The closest BAU came to hosting a party were group movie nights.

Griffin cut his eyes at Amari when they asked him if he’d been converted to the BBC. As if either of them believed that was in the realm of possibility in this universe or any of the ones adjacent. “If I ever admit to tolerating the young yuppies of America, know that I have been body snatched and you are no longer speaking to Griffin Prime.” 

He honestly couldn’t think of a single BBC member he’d withstand the company of for more than five minutes. He’d gotten cornered in a room with Johnnie and had a full mental breakdown afterwards - extenuating circumstances notwithstanding.

“Well, someone should defect,” he said. “How can anyone be expected to socialize when their only options are BBC sinning sprees or a SWAT-inspired afternoon of Amish revelry? It’s like nobody’s ever heard of the middle ground here.” 

[griffingriffout]

johnnieward‌:

Johnnie scoffed when Griffin continued explaining like his body had reached its limit for listening and understanding. His anger was steadily recharging like a combo bar in a video game, getting ready to uppercut anything vulnerable from spilling out of him. It’d been months since they’d buried Jamie but it felt like it was happening all over again, but worse because, of course, Jamie’s parting words were anything but reassuring.

“Yeah, and what’d you feel when you read Jamie’s poem?” Johnnie sneered, pacing the room.

He came up to the old desk like a tyrant, shadow hovering ominously over the parchment and inkwell. He was pissed and wanted to break something but didn’t think he could afford to replace old relics so he settled for moving things around like a poltergeist until Griffin came around and repelled him like a magnet.

“I doubt some old bitch knows what I’m feelin,” he said, flinging an arm out and knocking over an ornament. A kettle. A book. Johnnie was a tornado determined to upend everything in his path and offload some of the fury. “You know what y’all’s problem is? You think too much. You think anyone gives a shit about what you’re feelin? None of that fuckin’ matters ‘cause at the end of the day, after everythin’ Jamie wrote, nobody did fuck all. What did poetry do for him but help him make up his fuckin’ stupid mind?”

Johnnie grabbed the end of a comforter and yanked it hard, spilling the sheets and bedding all over the floor. “He unplugged himself and let it all out and all that shit did was drown him.”

Guilty, mostly. That was how Griffin had felt when he’d read Jamie’s poem with new eyes, now fully aware of what it was and what it meant. He didn’t say this aloud, however. He watched Johnnie instead, who had started flinging antiques around the room like a pissed off poltergeist.

Griffin was calm and collected in most crises. It was the only way to survive living with his mother. He watched as Johnnie destroyed the room like he would’ve watched her, upending the house in search of a wire tap that wasn’t there. He just wasn’t sure what Johnnie was searching for. Answers, maybe. Relief? An outside that looked a lot like his inside?

He unplugged himself and let it all out and all that shit did was drown him.

Johnnie was finding poeticism despite himself. Like his grief was so big he couldn’t help it, grasping at any words that came to mind. Writing was a lot like that, for Griffin. He didn’t know how he felt watching it happen before his eyes.

“Drowning, that’s... apt,” he said, his own tone far more subdued than Johnnie’s own. “Do you feel like that? Like... you’re out in the middle of the ocean, with a storm on the horizon. And you know you’ll capsize when it comes, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Something like that?”

[griffingriffout]

micahshaw‌:

Micah managed a smile – this time, it reached all the way toward the corners of his eyes, wrinkling them with mirth. Griffin looked ridiculous. So did he, most likely. His shirt was damp and his ass was soaking wet with shower water, and yet, he didn’t mind it half as much as he minded the stiff blazer and tie that constituted his school uniform. Maybe that made him a little crazy, too.

“Good,” he said. 

He met Griffin’s hand with a tight grip, slipping only slightly as he hoisted himself up from the floor. Griffin had warm hands; Micah noticed right away, because his were usually quite cold, and so the warmth spread from his fingertips up the length of his arm. He felt it even after his hand fell back to his side.

“I actually thought you were drunk, so…maybe you need to brush up on your acting skills,” Micah teased, sweeping a lock of hair out of his eyes with his finger. “Just saying.”

The tendrils of anxiety still clung to Griffin’s insides. They weren’t so forcefully present, with Micah there to distract him, but he knew they’d be back in the lonesome privacy of his dorm bed. His eyes glanced over Micah’s face, the soft, yellow curl he’d brushed aside. He wondered if he’d been half a friend to Jamie, if it would’ve mattered. Would one late night cold shower breakdown have changed anything at all?

“I’m as much of a drinker as I am an actor,” he admitted. “Which is to say not very much one at all.” He almost admitted that the pool party had been his first real drink amongst peers, but even in a vulnerable moment outside space and time, Griffin was reluctant to make himself seem that lame.

The cold of nighttime at Broadripple had begun to sink through the soaked fabric of his clothing, onto his skin, down to his bones. Griffin wrapped his arms around himself. “We should probably get back to bed before they do another head count and force us into menial labor again,” he said, despite being one of the few who had avoided punishment for the party. He backed up slightly, then hesitated.

“Thanks, for... whatever,” he said, without quite meeting Micah’s eyes. “You should text me soon. You know, if you wanna collect on that five cents.” 

With that, he slipped into the halls and back to the dorms, hoping there really was a God and Scotty wasn’t awake with a thousand questions. 

[griffingriffout]

micahshaw‌:

Micah offered him a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Advice was not his forte, but he hoped, if nothing else, that his nonsensical rambling helped Griffin in some way. Even if that just meant pulling him out of his own head for a couple minutes.

He snorted and rolled his eyes, drawing his knees into his chest. Griffin had never seen him this way, he realized. Had never seen how thin his chicken legs were or how his knees stood out against his skin like angry red knobs. Nor how his arms were slightly too long for his torso, the way his shirt clung to his rib cage in ways a hoodie never did. Micah thought he ought to feel self-conscious about it, but after watching Griffin quote a Vine in the shower, there wasn’t much left he felt the need to conceal. They’d long jumped that hurdle, he was pretty sure. 

“You don’t owe me,” he said. “Although, I have been called Dr. Phil by two people before, so I think I should start charging for therapy sessions.” 

Micah cleared his throat. “But seriously, are you okay? Or at least…not contemplating dunking your head in a toilet on your way out?”

Griffin rolled his eyes affectionately, settling back into the comfort of easy, uncomplicated conversation. Micah had hardly fixed all of his problems, but he’d done enough to draw Griffin from his temporary spiral of misery and trauma.

“I’d never dunk my head in a toilet,” he assured the other boy. He shook his head like a wet shaggy dog, loosing his curls from where they’d stuck to his forehead. “This chaos is carefully maintained.” 

An obvious joke. Anyone that had ever seen Griffin could tell he woke up each morning with bed head and thought, ‘that’ll do’. He did run a hand through it, conscious of what he must look like in the moment. 

“But yeah, I’m... I’m good,” he said, standing up from the floor as if to prove this point. His clothes were soaked, clinging to him. He pinched and pulled at them a bit, adjusting. “This was actually all performance art so the joke’s really on you,” he said, smiling wryly as he offered Micah a hand to help him up.

[griffingriffout]

johnnieward‌:

Johnnie never understood poetry. He didn’t get the art and beauty of it or how something so small could say so much. He didn’t understand why anyone would take time to encrypt their feelings into metaphors so that it’d be even more difficult to be certain about them. At least he didn’t until Griffin explained Jamie’s poem.

There was something artful in the way Jamie wove it all together that once Griffin laid it out for him, he was able to place things into context. Like Jamie’s loneliness and how unwelcome he felt at home. Johnnie knew that things weren’t butterflies and sunshine with Frank, but he never stopped to think that any of them could’ve had it worse or that their feelings could be so vastly different when they all had the same values beat into them.

He didn’t understand how Jamie could’ve been unhappy with all of his skill and big words and opportunities. Or that someone so smart could feel so hopeless.

Johnnie thought of the slashes they’d found on Jamie’s body. Old wounds he’d inflicted onto himself over and over and over again. It made him wonder just how long he’d hidden his pain in words until they finally spilled out onto his arms.

The anger that had filled him evacuated, leaving him empty and numb and wondering if he’d just stopped and gave him a hug once in a while, Jamie would still be with them. Then, he summoned it back again like a tide, crashing against the shores where his sentiment laid. 

“That’s so fuckin’ stupid,” he decided. “Of course Jamie thinks he knows fuckin’ everythin’. What the hell did he know? He was seventeen.”

Griffin continued to focus on anything that wasn’t Johnnie. His eyes scanned the room, finding interesting things to look at like he was gazing into a Hidden Object book. Everything was slightly dusty and worn with time. There was a birds nest settled in the rafters. A little desk was set up by the window, with an ink well and a half-melted candle as if someone had sat at it just the night prior. 

“It’s not about knowing something, it’s about feeling something,” Griffin said, his voice tired. He wandered over to the desk, looking at all the little papers like he might find something authentic in the scene the staff had clearly arranged. “You feel something so much that you want to get it out of you. So you can see it... and know it. And then someone else can read it and know it too.” 

He wasn’t sure Johnnie understood what he was talking about at all and he might have been more hesitant to share were they anywhere else. But that old house felt like a private world and Jamie’s ghost was ever present, hovering in the cold spaces between them.

“You know Emily Dickinson was from Massachusetts,” he offered, whether or not Johnnie was still listening. “She was a notorious shut in. She never left her bedroom, probably wrote at a desk like this. A lot of her poems were about death. She once said something like... If I read a book and it makes me so cold that no fire could ever warm me, I know that it’s poetry.” 

He paused, fiddling with the quill pen from the desk. “Isn’t that weird? She lived like a hundred and fifty years ago but she sat in a room like this and felt all the same things.”

[griffingriffout]

micahshaw‌:

Oh. Micah rolled his lips apart, letting loose a deep exhale. So Griffin was mourning. He didn’t know much about losing someone close to you – or, he supposed, losing someone whose death you felt responsible for. He did, however, know what it was like to carry the weight of someone else’s decision on his back. Knew how it felt to bear the responsibility of somebody else’s life choices, to feel guilt-ridden by a fate he’d never played a hand in.

The truth was this: the guilt didn’t go away. At least, if it did, it took a long ass time; he was still years into his own recovery journey, or whatever. But that wasn’t something Griffin needed to hear right now. Micah’s burdens were not his burdens no more than his burdens were Jamie Ward’s. The three of them, it seemed, had just been fucked over by life in different ways.

He sat cross-legged before Griffin, soaked boxers and all, ruminating on the question for a moment. “I don’t know,” Micah said honestly. “I’d be a hypocrite, kind of, if I told you to just forgive yourself…even if it wasn’t your fault. Even if you feel responsible.”

Right. That probably wasn’t very helpful. He lifted his gaze to Griffin’s, working his bottom lip through his teeth. “I guess if it were me…so, I tend to treat myself a lot harsher than I treat others. And so I’d be less likely to forgive myself for something I’d easily forgive someone else for. Which means that maybe…in order to forgive yourself, you have to look at yourself through the eyes of someone else – like, for example, a family member or someone you really care about. And then ask yourself, would I hold that grudge against them? Would I want that person to beat themselves up over something they didn’t do?”

A hypocrite? Griffin was used to overanalyzing words so when Micah said that one, his brain jumped on it. Curiosity sprung a leak next to grief and it was a flood he felt he could tread water in. His head tilted as he watched Micah continue, the advice kind but falling mostly on deaf ears. 

Later, he might remember what Micah had said and reflect on it, but he was too caught up in his own head that night to heed any soothing words of advice. He couldn’t stand to be vulnerable for too long. It felt like his skin was peeling off, all his nerves exposed to the painfully cold air. 

“Yeah... maybe,” he said. “Thanks.” 

More drip drips filled the air between them while Griffin took a moment to gaze at Micah speculatively. Normally he wouldn’t allowed himself to linger, but they were already sitting soaking wet on the floor of a communal shower, so there weren’t many ways he could further embarrass himself.

“Do I owe you a nickel now?” he asked, his walls slowly re-forming themselves. “You know... like Lucy in Peanuts. ‘The psychiatrist is in’?”

[griffingriffout]

micahshaw‌:

…Okay. That didn’t make things any clearer. Was he trying to become a mermaid? Fish? Water? The mind of a person under the influence never failed to stump Micah, even more so when that mind belonged to Griffin Baxley. 

“Why not?” he asked. “I’m not either, so…you can suck at it on your own, or we can suck at it together. Plus I’m already half-wet.”

Usually, Griffin was the one who steered the conversation forward, and Micah was more than happy to let him. He couldn’t say intelligent, artsy things or commandeer a space but he could listen, and he did listen. And he supposed that was what he would keep doing, because Griffin seemed like he needed it – needed an ear to vent to.

“We could…rhyme about it?” His tone was serious, but the tug at the corner of his mouth gave him away. “Do some slam poetry if that’d be easier? Some improv? Or…you could just say what’s on your mind? That’d be fine, too.” 

Micah made Griffin want to laugh, inappropriately. He hated that as much as he liked it. It filled him with an altogether different type of anxiety. He felt like he was being looked at. 

“I, uh...” If Micah were a notepad, Griffin would have easily been able to share his feelings. He’d hide them all in metaphors, but at least he would get them out of where they dwelled inside of him. But Micah was a person, with independent thoughts, and Griffin was wary of what those thoughts would be if he dared explain the reason behind anything he did. It didn’t matter, but it mattered. In ways he couldn’t wrap his head around.

“You know Jamie Ward, the guy who used to submit to Uncensored about ghosts and... morbidity and things like that? He’s dead.” Griffin drew in a sharp breath and released it slowly. “I spent a lot of time making fun of the way he was obsessed with death and in retrospect...”

He trailed off, unsure of what else to say. It didn’t quite explain why he found himself in the showers, but that wasn’t something Griffin would likely be able to find the words for anytime soon. 

“How do you forgive yourself for something you didn’t do?”

[griffingriffout]

johnnieward‌:

Griffin’s words hit harder than he wanted them to. It was nothing that he didn’t already know and understand, nothing that he hadn’t already berated himself with, but it was different hearing it from someone else’s mouth. Like everyone else could see just how awful he was too.

His eyes stung but Johnnie refused to let sentiment bubble up past his chest. He’d keep it all there close to his heart, tightly pressed until it solidified into something heavy and flammable he could use to keep the fire in him burning until he could get somewhere private.

“He spent nine months out of the year at school,” he spat. “For the past three years, those brick walls saw more of my brother than I did and you’re trying to tell me that I was supposed to see it coming? I wasn’t the one who got the letter.”

It was a lame pitch but it was all he had to throw back at Griffin.

(Would Jamie have done it at school if he didn’t have to leave?)

Johnnie scoffed and pushed back on the door, his weight flinging it open and allowing him somewhere to escape into. The air was musty but he could barely breathe anyway, the dim light filtering into the cottage setting the mood. “Enlighten me then, oh wise one. What the fuck do you know?”

When Johnnie entered the cabin, Griffin was prepared to make another 180 and waltz the fuck away from him. It was his moment to get away. Maybe he could shut the door on Johnnie and lock him inside so he’d stop following Griffin around, making it feel like Jamie was truly haunting him beyond the grave. 

He didn’t, though. Johnnie’s question drew him into the room. If he could analyze it, maybe it would make it all feel less awful. He could explain it to Johnnie in a way that made sense and comfort himself somehow in the telling. Griffin was nothing more than a story teller, an academic studying something terrible from afar. His words would put distance between himself and the hurt.

“’Warm, welcoming arms never met in life,’“ he recited. “That’s clearly about how the writer feels more comfort in death than in living. So we the reader could assume the writer’s home life was not the traditional loving nuclear family, since that’s generally where we find warmth and welcoming. In this case, since we know the author had also begun attending a school far from home, it can be deduced that he’s talking about this experience as well. ‘Never met’, so at some point he was searching to be embraced but he failed to find it.” 

Griffin paced through the one-room house, fiddling with all the cast iron kitchen equipment as he spoke. “So he goes on to explain how he feels about this failure - which is that it’s out of his hands. Again, reiterating the fact that he was born into an unhappy life and this unhappiness persisted despite all of his attempts to change things for himself. As if God himself decided he should be miserable and laid his life out as such. It leads into the reference to Satan, who the author compares himself to as a rejection of God and this plan of his. And then...”

Griffin sighed. He dropped a metal fire poker against the ancient stove with a loud clang that reverberated in his chest. “He thought it was the only way out. That he didn’t have any other choice. Which I guess makes it both our faults.”

[griffingriffout]

amariaustin‌:

Amari nodded as they sat down in the seat across from Griffin.They thought he was intelligent enough to know that they were thanking him without needing any verbal cus.“The church hardly cares about people finding out about real human rights violations never mind fake ones."Amari sounded exasperated but it was obvious that their mood was caused by organized religion and not by the hipster infront of them.

"Her show doesn’t have very special episodes.Some talk shows aimed at boomers and kids skipping school have ‘important’ hot topic based segments but not Ellen.It’s one hundred percent fluff.Also ,very special episodes are more of a sitcom thing and she hasn’t stared in one of them since before the turn of the millennium."They said the last part of their speech in a gleeful condescending tone.It was a pleasant change to talk to somebody that could take what they dished out.Talking to people like Kat Bishop ,who had a tantrum as soon as you told her the truth, was exhausting.

"I can’t believe that actually worked.I need to take notes for the next time I go to a wild party.”,they replied in mild awe.In an ideal world they would always be the smartest person in the room but Amari was humble enough to admit that some people could outfox them.It took a certain type of intelligence to know you still had more to learn.“I thought there was a PowerPoint in the Broadripple nun training cause about learning how miscreant teens behave.”

“That’s rude.I’ll have you know that the party don’t start 'till I walk in."They snorted at their own sarcasm.They deserved an Oscar but they weren’t talented enough to pull off quoting Kesha and pretending to be a party animal with a straight face."Parties really aren’t my scene.But you have to see how the other side live at least once in your life.What about you?Why did you go?”

Leave it to Amari to know way more about Ellen DeGeneres than anybody other than Portia Del Rossi had any right to. Griffin made a face at them as they rattled on about the talk show, like anybody their age actually cared about a show that aired in the middle of the afternoon. Griffin and Amari had solidarity in knowing random shit about random things, but he could admit that Amari’s fact vomiting took the metaphorical cake.

“Maybe they were tripped up because I’m a first time offender,” he suggested. “I’m sure they would’ve flipped Sebastian’s dorm like a contraband search in prison if he’d tried the same stunt.” Which meant Griffin probably couldn’t use the trick again, especially talking about it openly in the library. But it was fine. After his experience at the pool, he doubted he’d be making an appearance at BBC parties in the future.

He gave Amari a very exaggerated eye roll - making sure they saw - when they quoted Kesha. “Poetic,” he mumbled. “I guess I went for the same reasons. To have an experience, for whatever it’s worth. That way when I get to college and people I can actually stand to be around have parties, I don’t make an ass of myself.” It was high hopes for his future, imagining he’d have a circle of friends. But that was what college was about and Griffin held onto the idea with an iron grip. 

“Isn’t it weird that nobody else at Broadripple throws parties?” he asked Amari. “Like your BAU friends. Why don’t you all have an Unsolved party? It’d be way more interesting than anything the BBC has ever conceived of in their lives.”

[griffingriffout]

micahshaw‌:

His first thought was that maybe Griffin had been drinking. For as long as he’d known him, which wasn’t very long at all in the grand scheme of things, he’d never known him to make a Vine reference. That was the biggest red flag, after walking into the showers fully clothed. The second came when Griffin sat down and covered his head, and Micah deduced that he wasn’t exactly sane or sober or either, at all.

That was okay. Micah could handle drinking – could handle drunk people if he had to. 

He tiptoed into the shower, narrowly avoiding the spray of hot water as he navigated the tight space. His shirt got a little damp in the process, but he didn’t mind. It wasn’t like he couldn’t change it when he got back to his room. The shower head gave a paltry last gurgle before stopping completely when Micah turned the dial all the way off. 

Cautiously, as though approaching a wounded bird, Micah lowered himself to his haunches in front of Griffin. He kept his hands on his knees, tilting his head to get a better look at the other boy’s face. “Did you…do you wanna talk about it?”

The way Micah crouched down and peered toward him, the way he spoke in that careful tone of voice... it all had the hackles of Griffin’s defense mechanisms rising. He felt all the more exposed in the silence after the shower, a beat extending between them during which droplets of water hitting the drain sounded like the detonation of grenades.

Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off. 

Griffin bit his knuckles. Was he really going to punish Micah for having the audacity to be a decent friend? Something Griffin himself had woefully neglected to do, and he’d known Jamie for a lot longer.

“Humans are about 60% water, right? I guess I was hoping if I sat here long enough, the other 40% would catch up.” He finally looked directly at Micah, but kept his hands on his face. Close enough to his eyes that he could gouge them out if he started doing something as heinous as crying. “Even if I wanted to talk about it, you shouldn’t waste your time listening. Recent evidence has shown I’m not skilled in the art of friendship.”

[griffingriffout]

micahshaw‌:

Micah hadn’t gone to bed before midnight since the sixth grade. 

His mom used to come home late some nights, smelling of red wine and musky colognes that changed every week. He tended to stay up those nights listening for the rattle of her keys in the front door. In a twelve-year-old’s mind, it was almost something cool – Micah didn’t have a bed time, and so he was allowed to do all the things other twelve-year-old boys weren’t, like watch old reruns of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and play Minecraft on his phone. He was allowed to, but he never did.

And even now, living on the other side of the country, Micah still watched the clock tick past one in the morning like his mother would come stumbling through the door at any second. When Sebastian came into the dorm, he half-expected him to crawl in bed beside him and tell him how much of his father’s son he was while hugging him from behind. It was easy to get stuck in his own head like that. 

He was scrubbing his hands raw with soap when the bathroom door burst open and a familiar mop of brown hair blurred past him. Micah squinted. Griffin? Did he always head to the showers this late? Nudging the faucet off with his elbow, he craned his head around just in time to witness the other boy in a stall – fully clothed. 

What the fuck. 

“You know…you’re supposed to take your clothes off before you turn the water on, right?” he attempted to joke, edging toward the shower. Closer, but not close. “But, um…seriously, are you good?”

So mentally focused on the act of cleansing himself, Griffin hadn’t noticed anyone else in the bathroom. He hadn’t bothered to check, assuming only insane people got up at that hour to walk Broadripple’s ghostly halls. He took a big, gulping breath to steady himself before he turned around to face Micah, though he didn’t step out from under the spray.

“I’m washing me and my clothes,” he quoted, speaking over the loudness of the shower. He laughed, but his voice cracked. He knew what he looked like even without that expression on Micah’s face. It would be a humiliating memory in the morning but that night, it was more weight piled onto an anchor in his chest. 

Griffin sunk to the floor, sitting down in the bed of his own making. Water cascaded over him, drenching his pajamas, turning his brown curls into a sad, wet mop that hung into his eyes. He looked pathetic. He felt pathetic. But if he moved, he knew that obsessive feeling would return. 

“I’m fine,” he managed. “It’s a metaphor, it’s--” It was as if talking, opening his mouth, allowed a carefully constructed wall to start crumbling. Griffin sucked in a decidedly Not Fine breath, burying his head in his hands and hoping Micah chalked it all up to sleep walking.

[griffingriffout]

johnnieward‌:

“His own personal motif?” Johnnie spat incredulously. Jamie’s personal motif was not showering and seducing the neighbourhood cats. He was weird and everyone knew it but death and the macabre, that was different. The family had always been known for being straightforward, never able to afford the time or grace to be anything but. A poem about plummeting into the depths of Hell was a fucking red flag in his books.

He chased him when he fled, bulldozing past subtlety towards bold and demanding. The fury he’d clamped down rose like a corpse in water.

“What if it wasn’t? What if everythin’ he’s written up until then was a fuckin’ warnin’ sign,” he argued to Griffin’s back. When they reached the door of the cottage. Johnnie surged ahead and stamped his hand onto the door frame to block him.

“You didn’t stop and think for one second that hey, maybe this kid needs a fuckin’ pick me up? What’d you tell him? Cool story?”

Griffin’s anger flared up to match Johnnie’s, like twin flames born of similar grief. But they revealed it in different ways. Johnnie, with his fist slammed against a wood door, looming threateningly into Griffin’s space. Griffin, in turn, took a breath to collect himself. He was a controlled blue blaze in the face of a wild fire. 

“We weren’t friends,” Griffin reiterated. Calmly. Coldly. “We weren’t the same age or grade... we had no classes together. You even pointed out I wasn’t in his final box of mementos. So why was it my job to search for warning signs instead of, say, his brother? Who lived in the same house? Who presumably popped out of the womb within minutes of him? You said he came home and shut himself away, so how’s that for your warning sign?” 

Griffin understood very little about Johnnie’s relationship to Jamie, but it was enough to conclude they weren’t close. He knew intimately how it felt to fail a family member in such a profound way. He knew, thus, how cruel it was to suggest this to Johnnie. But projecting made the weight on his own shoulders a little less heavy, for the moment. 

“Don’t talk to me like you know anything about anything at all. You can’t even apply enough reading comprehension to get past the first line of his poem.”

[griffingriffout]

scottydonovans‌:

“Awesome, ” Scotty said. Even if he didn’t feel entirely awesome nor did this conversation feel awesome. It sucked that he and G were on the outs. But until Scotty heard a sorry or something along the lines, he’d stick to his guns. Griff had to learn he had to be nicer about giving critique. Mean people don’t get brownie points.

America’s rapidly widening wage gap? No! He wasn’t mad about the thrift shop. He got farther with a girl than he’s ever had his entire life at the thrift shop. I’m mad at you, Griff! I’m hurt because of you! This wasn’t stress. Stress looked super different on Scotty. Stress looked like a lot of knee bouncing and tired eyes on Scotty. This was him being… mad. Or trying to. It was a lot of effort being mad. Who had the energy to pinch their face like this all day? Scotty had loads of energy but man, this grumpy face thing was a lot of work.

“The thrift shop’s great actually.” Kept him out of the dorm. Kept him around friends who were actually nice. Like Casey and Ez. “Just kinda sucks that we get less free time. I use a lot of it to study and work on stuff.” Because unlike super awesome genius writers like Griffin who quoted like, Greek philosophers and famed poets on the reg super casually, Scotty’s continued presence at Broadripple was a result of hardcore studying and forcing himself to keep at a problem until he figured it out. Pretty hard stuff when you had an attention span as short as his.

“Anyway,” the boy started with a sigh, feeling worse the longer he subjected himself to Griffin’s… Griffin-ness, “I should head out. I have some Trig work I’m gonna try to figure out before dinner.”

“‘Kay.”

Scotty’s voice had slowly, progressively turned away from a forced-sounding grumpiness to something a little sadder. Somehow, it sounded even wronger on him. Griffin hated it. He was relieved that Scotty was leaving, freeing him of the obligation to react to this situation. Until later. When the two boys would be stuck in a dorm room together. Griffin had brief images of a sad, mopey Scotty, occasionally glancing at him from across the room like a puppy who’d been abandoned in a cardboard box.

He sighed, reaching out an arm to grab Scotty before he could get too far.

“Wait.”

Griffin wiped a hand over his face, readying himself for a conversation he didn’t want to have. It felt necessary, though. Anything to wipe that miserable look off of Scotty’s face.

“I know I pissed you off,” Griffin told him. “But I didn’t mean to. I didn’t think you’d really take anything I said that seriously. Nobody else does. I kind of just... yell at the void most of the time.”

[griffingriffout]

johnnieward‌:

Johnnie narrowed his eyes at the treeline. There was a scene playing out in front of them with farmers and animals and shit. A clothes line. Some kids. It was all very scenic but it didn’t do anything to assuage his growing suspicions about Jamie’s letter. He didn’t get the whole poetry thing or where the appeal was in writing everything into riddles and cryptic metaphors. It was hard to parse meaning– if it was possible at all. The ambiguity wasn’t something he enjoyed and he liked it even less encasing his late brother’s last words in mystery.

“So when it says he said ‘it was on purpose that I fell, into brimstone’… He was talkin’ about goin’ to Hell?”

He cut Griffin a side-long look. “You read that and thought he was okay?”

Johnnie’s voice was the same tone and pitch of Griffin’s inner thoughts. His voice spoke words that had plagued Griffin ever since the afternoon in the library when he’d learned Jamie was dead. It sent a jolt of electricity straight to his heart. A feeling that was somewhere between anxiety and grief. It was one thing to think a thought, another to hear it. 

His eyes darted from the children to the horses to the bonnets to whatever they could land on, never staying on something for too long. He didn’t trust himself enough to linger, to give his brain enough time to default back to where he’d mentally existed for days. Wallowing in guilt. 

“That was how Jamie wrote,” he said, his voice stilted as though he were rehearsing a script. It was what he’d written in his head, to overcome his own thinking. Now he read it aloud to Johnnie. “His own personal motif. I had no reason to suspect it was meant to be different than anything else he had ever written.” 

Somehow, it didn’t sound convincing when spoken. Griffin knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on, but he wasn’t going to lay there and let Johnnie rain shit all over him. He wasn’t masochistic, and he wasn’t a martyr. He stepped to the side, slipping away from the group. They were distracted enough by the re-enactment in front of them that they didn’t notice Griffin heading off toward a cottage on his own.

[griffingriffout]

johnnieward‌:

Johnnie swerved around a hand and a hat about to flatten his coiffed hair, pinning the lady with a look that demanded ‘what the fuck?’ before taking the thing from her.

Spending an afternoon without his phone and pretending to be an old person was not Johnnie’s idea of a good time but after two weeks of being trapped in Nighmore, Johnnie would’ve followed a man into the back of a white van in order to get off campus.

The wide-legged slacks and suspenders weren’t nearly as foreign was he wanted them to feel. Johnnie surveyed the students scattered around the entrance, noticing that a couple of them had nicer outfits with breeches and waistcoats while the others were dressed more like him. It made him wonder if that was a purposeful choice by the staff or if his luck just happened to be consistently bad all around.

His eyes moved back through the crowd and stopped on a mop of hair being fitted for some kind of hat. It’d been a few days since he’d gotten Griffin’s e-mail –or rather,  a few days since he had the balls to open it. A part of him was afraid of what he’d find there but more of him was afraid of what he wouldn’t.

He was right to be wary. Jamie wouldn’t have given it to him that easy. Johnnie didn’t believe in the afterlife or karma but he believed in his twin’s ability to be a pain in the ass. His last words made a poem that spoke with too many cryptic metaphors for him to make sense of. Just like when he was alive. 

Johnnie walked over to Griffin and stopped beside him, hands stuffed into his pockets innocuously as he looked ahead, only glancing at him out of the corner of his eye like they were two spies from opposing countries sharing top secret info under the noses of their employers.

“I got the email. Thanks for sendin’ it,” he said.

“Do y’all always write each other in riddles or was that a one-off thing? ‘Cause I tried to Google Map where the elee-ze-ann field is but all it did was take me to a pub in Seattle and Jamie doesn’t drink.”

@griffingriffout​

Group bonding activities were something Griffin hated. Theoretically, he should have been boycotting them. Instead, he found himself gussied up like a 19th century newsboy, surrounded by classmates bemoaning the lack of their cell phones. All in the name of ‘inspiration’. Griffin had the vain hope that putting himself in their footsteps would somehow grant him the poeticism of Whitman or Coleridge. Jaime Lannister was right when he said, the things we do for love. 

If his own attendance was a shock, Johnnie Ward’s presence could’ve sent him into cardiac arrest. He felt tension immediately crawling up his spine.

“It’s a thing writers do,” Griffin answered, his tone academic. He avoided looking at Johnnie like he was afraid he’d see Jamie’s ghost if he did. “Like in class, when we have to peer review... except in this case, both parties are actually interested in what they’re doing.” 

That felt like the best way to describe sharing your poetry with another guy. It was the least corny he could make something that was, when spoken aloud, pretty fucking lame.

Griffin didn’t want to engage Johnnie further, but correcting people was like a knee-jerk reflex that he couldn’t stop. “The Elysian fields are a concept from Greek mythology. They’re an after life - the Christian idea of Heaven could be called derivative of it.”