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[highfivingoscarwilde]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

*shows up to Anderperry April almost two months late* anywhere here’s the rest of the DPS reacting to Anderperry for day 10 😭😭

[highfivingoscarwilde]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

50 moments lost in time, occasionally remembered (mostly by Todd, but perhaps more accurately by Welton itself)

ff.net

[highfivingoscarwilde]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

"Yūri had imagined that, the first time he would decide he didn’t want to break away and calm his heartbeat during one of these intimate, sensual sessions of touching, it would come to him as a sudden, striking realization—a brush of Victor’s engagement ring against his heart or a quick whiff of his and Victor’s sheets that he would somewhat astonishedly realize smelled just like home. But, it isn’t like that. Yūri still isn’t used to St. Petersburg weather—no matter how much Mila teases him for “look[ing] like [he] stole every coat, sweater, and scarf out of Victor’s closet” when they’re all out together—, and some days, he still wakes up expecting the scent of his bedroom in Hasetsu. The reasoning behind his comfort seems obscure and inexpressible as he runs his palms (one arm squashed under Victor’s side) up and down the exposed planes of Victor’s back, presses their hips ever closer together, breathes hotly into the dampness of Victor’s mouth."

ff.net

[highfivingoscarwilde]

No Bad Vibes

           Lunel’s head emerges from the pool encased in glowing water embellished with city lights, creating a momentary fisheye distortion so that she appears more divine and distant from reality than she already is. Her makeup, more than flawless, seems like it was applied with this specific situation in mind: for the water, the lighting, the alternating flashes of neon signs, the combined effect of the lights in the pool and the lights outside shining through the window. Water drips from her eyelashes, framing her celestially blue eyes darkened with emotion as she stares up at Sam, slowly and deliberately blinking, the Swarovski crystals adorning her bikini reflecting the bright overhead lights. “Samantha,” Lunel says, her voice dripping the same expensive falsities as her hair, “how wonderful you could join me, really! Come swim with me. If it slipped my mind to tell you to bring a swimsuit, you can just skinny dip; we can get you something nice tomorrow.” She backstrokes until she’s pressed against the glass, and she sighs as she looks out over the city. “Although…skinny dipping in front of the glass does seem just the right amount of thrilling. I might just get Danica to come and fetch my swimsuit.” Sam has already stripped herself of her clothes and entered the pool by the time Lunel has finished talking, and Lunel casts a judgemental eye towards the clothes heaped by the pool. She doesn’t say anything, though, solidifying Sam’s suspicion that she brought her here for something specific.

           Sam thoughtlessly wades to the window and presses herself against Lunel’s side. The Sam of two years ago might think it frivolous that someone would have a penthouse suite (at all—let alone in all of their favorite cities), but looking out across the bright lights of Los Angeles, Sam can’t bring herself to have any thoughts about it at all. Lunel grabs her truly waterproof phone from the side of the pool and swipes across the screen several times, the light misting across the pool morphing with each swipe until it’s a deep red. She sets her phone down and wraps an arm around Sam’s bare waist. “After we relax a bit, Sammy, I wanna ask you about something.” Sam hums in contented agreement.

-

           Usually, when Lunel wants some absurd favor, she calls in masseuses or takes them to spas or flies in professional European chefs, but today, she merely sits regally at the head of her table, staring across at Sam. She had even told Danica to leave them alone for a while, so Sam is really wondering what she’s up to. Lunel folds her hands together, decisively topless after showering to wash off the chlorine. “There’s an issue here,” she says simply.

           “With me?” Sam asks.

           “Oh, god, no, don’t be silly. I just mean that my dear old grandpa is still alive, and I’m 22.”

           Lunel, as Sam has learned, likes to think that everyone else knows her thought process exactly—but only when she wants them to. “What does that have to do with anything?”

           “Sammy! Did I not tell you? On my eighteenth birthday, I made a deal with myself. If Grandpa didn’t die by the time I was twenty, I’d kill him myself. And it’s been two years since I should have killed him.”

           Sam rubs at her temples. “Are you serious?”

           “Serious as the heart attack my grandpa never had, darling. I want your help with it—I think I’m gonna kill him on our yachting trip.”

           “When we go yachting? Does Julien know?”

           “God, no! Love him to death, but he has such a high sense of morality. I also figure if anything happens, him not knowing anything will speak well in my favor.”

           Sam lets out a frustrated sigh and puts her head in her hands. “Lunel,” Sam starts, “why do you want to kill your grandpa?” Lunel rolls her eyes and lets out a longsuffering sigh like Sam doesn’t know anything.

           “For the money, of course! Why else would anyone wanna kill a washed out old prune like him?” Sam gapes at her. “Close your mouth, dearest. You’ll catch flies.”

           “Money? Really, Lunel?” Lunel rolls her eyes again, waves her off with a sumptuous hand.

           “I’ve always wanted to be able to buy the world. I think I might just start up a housing business. Think about all of those gorgeous, environmentally conscious houses I could have built!”

           “You could do that now.”

           “Yeah, but think about the dent it’d make. Not a good look. Grandpa is on his way out, anyway. He’s 95, you know. It’s selfish of him to be alive when he has five grandchildren.” At the look Sam gives her, Lunel continues on, “Oh, come on, Sammy. I’ll buy you a great big house in the country—no, no. I’ll have one built for you. Just like you want it, everything. You can have your own personal chefs, and, oh, I’ll get you another Savannah cat—or ten, or—” Sam’s expression doesn’t change. “At least listen to me, Sammy,” she says, and her lips are curling down in a way that indicates that she might start crying. I get whatever I want 90% of the time, Lunel had said once, and the other 10% of the time, I just start crying. Then, I always get what I want.

           Lunel starts to sniffle, and Sam sighs. It’s a whim, anyway. She won’t actually do it once she gets into the physicality of it.

           “What are you planning to do?” Sam asks.

           “Oh, this is why I love you, Samantha!”

-

           The sun is bright overhead, but it’s early enough that there’s a slight chill to the day, and Sam shivers a bit in her shorts and sleeveless shirt. “Oh, there’s Julien,” Lunel says, pointing him out from where he’s walking up to the dock. “Julien! Love of my life, prince of my heart!” she yells, arms spread out wide.

           “Lunel! Star in the sky, queen of my world, goddess of opulence and the morning sun!” Julien yells back, and he and Lunel go back and forth with increasingly extravagant compliments until he gets up to Sam and Lunel.

           The sun shines resplendently golden through his hair, and he walks with that ease of gait that Lunel is always claiming to be jealous of. His sunglasses are completely black, and his lips shimmer with a sparkling, near-transparent shade of purple. The lip gloss shade is called Diamond Cluster, Sam remembers. His clothes are all loose—some transparent, some drifting in the wind—except for his tank top, which clings to his skin and shows off his arm muscles. The people carrying his bags lag dutifully behind him.

           Lunel kisses Julien once on each cheek, and Sam has well learned how to tune out their frivolous doting on each other by means of greeting by now. They separate only after detailing the recent activities of their mothers, and Julien comes over to give Sam a hug and kiss her on the forehead. “Oh, look at you, gorgeous,” he says, kissing her once on each cheek. He pulls back from the hug and then narrows his eyes at Sam, whipping off his sunglasses with a well-practiced flick of his wrist. He grabs one of her earlobes between his index finger and thumb. “What is this, darling heart?”

           “Tell her, Julien!”

           Sam rolls her eyes. “Your mom has her ears pierced.”

           “Don’t remind me. Who even goes about punching holes through their skin like that?”

           “I do,” Sam says simply.

           Lunel and Julien share a twin look with a haughtiness that Sam can attest is truly born and not bred.

Julien lets go of Sam’s ear and goes back to fawning over Lunel. “Look at that contour!” he says, “Lunel, send your newest hire my compliments. She really has a great understanding of your face’s angles.”

           “Oh, I know. Marvelous, isn’t it?” Lunel asks. She makes a condescending clicking noise with her tongue, and some of the yacht’s staff come over to grab her bags. “Oh, and take Samantha and Julien’s bags, too,” she says, only briefly taking her attention away from her conversation with Julien. She walks up into the yacht with him, her custom crystal Louboutins clunking on the wood. Sam follows them at a distance until Lunel insists she come walk with them, wondering what Julien would say if he knew there was arsenic carefully placed in a specific compartment of Lunel’s luggage.

-

           Along with Sam, Lunel, Julien, and Lunel’s grandfather, Lunel’s brother, Asti, and her father are also on the yacht. Sam lets out a sharp breath when she thinks about how much the ship had cost them, how in each million there are one thousand thousands.

(“This is Lady Constantine,” Lunel had said, gesturing at the yacht while they stood waiting for Julien, “we put in a few hundred mill on our lovely Lady.” Sam had rather deftly covered up the deep feeling of exhaustion that had entered the direct center of her forehead at this admission.)

           They’re all lying on chairs by the pool with light brown cushions softer than Sam’s last bed, and the sun shines bright on all of them like the rays of luck and prosperity.

           Lunel flips over onto her back, and Sam can’t believe the audacity she had to stuff the vial of arsenic into the back band of her bikini top and then ever so casually take it off to lay in the sun. It’s just sitting in her chair now, and Sam is painfully aware of it. “I’ve told you a thousand times now, Julien,” Lunel says, “our parents named us after the cities we were conceived in. Right, Daddy?” Lunel’s father affirms the statement.

           “Meaning the places where you were embryo transplanted, yes, we all know—my memory isn’t that bad—” Sam snorts at that comment, “and let me just say again how smart of a woman your mother is. Aside from the pain of it, who has time to be pregnant, really? Anyway, I just wanted confirmation from someone other than you.”

           “It’s true,” Asti chips in, sipping at his cocktail, “I’m forever bitter Lunel got the more elegant sounding city.”

           “What, you don’t trust me?” Lunel asks, completely ignoring her brother. She shifts a bit in her chair, flicks her designer sunglasses up. She winks at Sam and tinks her flower-embedded acrylic nails against the vial. Sam narrows her eyes at her, and Lunel grins before flipping her sunglasses back and grabbing her drink from her side table. “Daddy, when are we having dinner?” she asks, “I’m hungry.”

           “Oh, why not now then, mon petit bouton?” Lunel’s father says.

           “Fabulous,” Lunel says, rehooking her bikini top and holding the arsenic vial loosely in her palm as she pulls Sam into the ship’s kitchen, paying the cooks some meaningless compliments as she drags her over to the side. The plates bear each family member’s initials in gold paint, and Lunel’s eyes stay firmly trained on the one labelled ‘E.E.G.’ She taps the vial with her nails again, and Sam glares at it. Lunel catches her look. “No bad vibes, Sammy,” she says, drawing out the ‘i,’ “besides, Grandpa’s a writer on top of having been a trust fund baby. Writers are the worst kind of liars, you know.”

           “You won’t do this,” Sam breathes out. Panic has started to rise in her stomach now. Her heart races in her chest; her life feels like it’s unfolding without her permission, that she has no say, can take no actions to so much as alter it. She feels as if, to differing extents, her life has always been like that the past two years.

           Lunel frowns at her. Still, she turns her attention back to the plates without much more pause than this. “I am, and I will,” she says. “Watch me.”

           A little later, the cooks start to set the plates out onto the tray they’ll wheel out to the table, and Lunel sprinkles a dusting of arsenic onto her grandfather’s plate, disguising it as a movement to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. Lunel nearly floats out the door with how gracefully she places each foot as she goes. “Thank you for making our food! I know we can be ungrateful at times. It was very interesting to see how the process works. You’re all just wonderful; I’ll pitch a little something into your salaries.” She blows a kiss at the cooks, links her arm in Sam’s, and leaves the ship’s kitchen.

           Her arm is warm in Sam’s as if the sun’s tanning rays had never left it.

-

Towards the end of dinner, Lunel’s grandfather starts to rub at his temples with his old, shaking hands.

           “Are you feeling alright, Dad?” Lunel’s father asks.

           “Yes, I think so,” he answers, “I think I might retire early tonight, though.”

           Lunel grins wide, crosses one leg over the other, and flicks back her hair.

-

           “Lunel, Asti, come here,” Lunel’s grandfather says from his chair, looking worse for wear. A member of his personal staff stands by his side holding two small boxes. Lunel and Asti go over to him, and Sam and Julien sit back and watch. Lunel’s grandfather motions to the woman standing next to him, and she hands him the boxes. “To add to your personal collections, my dears,” he says smiling, presenting one box to Lunel and one to Asti.

           Inside Lunel’s box is an inch-long ring of diamonds with two crescent-shaped, parallel insertions of amethysts surrounding the oval-shaped middle diamond. Sam lets out a noise that’s a mixture of a gasp and a sigh. Lunel twists her new ring in the light, looking over at Asti to see an identical ring with emeralds instead of amethysts. She turns her head back to her grandfather. “Thank you, Grandpa,” she says with a smile, shutting the ring back in the box as she comes back over to Sam and Julien. “Lousy old cheapskate couldn’t have gotten us one of each?” she whispers angrily.

           “He is right that you favor amethysts while Asti favors emeralds, though,” Julien says.

           “Who cares about that?” Lunel says, picking up her drink to sip it through her straw, “You should understand, Julien.”

           “I’ll take the ring if you don’t want it,” Sam says, her eyes drifting over to Lunel’s grandfather.

           “Not on your life, baby doll. We can buy you something of your own.”

           Sam feels two weak pangs. One for Lunel’s grandfather, one for Lunel.

-

           A few days later, Sam has a moment away from Lunel—a moment to breathe. She’s off somewhere on the ship doing god knows what—probably sprinkling more arsenic around in her grandfather’s general vicinity like some careless, snide, wicked, beautiful, enchanting fairy of death. Sam uses this moment of free breathing to grab Julien and drag him into her room to lounge on her giant memory foam bed.

           The bed, so easy to sink into and so pleasantly warm with Julien by her side, cannot take away the somewhat artificial quality of the room. The curving and twisting floral patterns on the furniture, handles and embellishments of gold, and flat screen TV stretching across the room match that of any luxury home, but the windows showing the ocean ever so casually reveal the truth. The bedroom, designed by Lunel, looks like a smaller, less golden version of Lunel’s room from her family’s main mansion, with one key difference being the ceiling mirror as opposed to a golden chandelier. Lunel has an awful sense of humor, but Sam isn’t always sure when she’s joking.

Lounging on the bed with Julien, Sam spends some well needed time with him pretending that nothing is going on, and she, Julien, and Lunel are still the same Rich Kids and Poor Third Wheel that they were before this trip. Julien fake-jabs at her side, and Sam jumps and accidentally kicks him in the shin.

           “Ow, Sammy! Don’t injure me if you can’t even pay my hospital bill.”

           “Lunel would bail me out,” Sam says, and she’s thinking about her again. She would, wouldn’t she? And she’d probably fawn over the both of them afterwards. Sam frowns, and she and Julien slip into silence.

Julien has a habit of running his fingers through his friends’ hair when he’s lying next to them, and Sam lets the gentle drag of fingertips guide her thinking for a bit. She focuses on Julien’s chest, moving up and down with his breaths. She bites her lip and asks the question she’s been building herself up for. “Hey, Julien, have you noticed anything? Like, during the trip?”

           “That’s vague,” Julien says with a laugh, hugging Sam close to him and gently nudging his kicked shin between hers. “What do you mean?”

           Sam looks up into Julien’s eyes. He smells like blackberries and some oddly unartificial cologne scent that Sam never has been and never will be ‘refined’ enough to name. He’s soft and calm, and when he tilts his head to look inquisitively at her, Sam can only remember the time that he boarded a plane to come meet her and Lunel at four in the morning his time because they just couldn’t see this Frank Ocean concert without him, or his free plane service to take animals to the clinics where they can receive the best care, and she knows she can’t do it. She can’t say a word about what Lunel has been doing on this trip.

           “I don’t know,” Sam says instead, “I guess I’ve just been feeling kind of sick lately.”

           Julien frowns. “That’s not good. Do you need to see a doctor? We could arrange that, no problem. What have we told you about worrying about monetary things? Or is it—oh, Sammy, this is your first time going yachting, isn’t it?” Sam nods. “You might just be seasick. I still can’t believe we never took you yachting before this. How unthoughtful of us.”

           At this moment, Lunel enters the cabin, using her copy of the key to Sam’s room and not bothering to knock.

           “Come look at the sunset with me, my loves,” she says, spinning around as she enters the room and draping herself onto Sam and Julien, “there’s this one spot that’s this gorgeous mix of purple and red—god, I’d let it fuck me.” Sam and Julien laugh and scoot apart a bit so Lunel can fit between them.

           Julien wraps an arm around Lunel’s shoulders. “You seem rather peppy for someone whose grandfather is dying.”

           At the beginning of this whole plot, Sam might have flinched. Now, she only cuddles into Lunel’s side with a distant frown on her face. Lunel is warm from standing in the sun, and she smells just lightly enough like the spray of sea for Sam to want to bury her nose deeper into her neck. “Life goes on,” Lunel says, dismissing the comment by waving her well-manicured hand through the air, “the man’s like 100. It was going to happen someday.” She presses two soft little kisses to each of her friends’ cheeks. “Now, get up, lazies. Come see the sunset with me.” They follow Lunel with no further complaint, thoughtlessly passing by the room where Lunel’s grandfather is wasting away.

           Lunel lets out a soft, sensual sigh when they reach the deck, and she wraps her arms around Sam and Julien’s waists, dragging her fingertips across their skin. It’s like the way you might feel a particularly silky new dress, Sam thinks. She doesn’t step back.

           A breeze drifts through the air and flutters Sam, Lunel, and Julien’s hair just as a whale’s tail flicks up out of the water on the horizon. Lunel lets out a little gasp of delight, turning excitedly to her friends just as a loud shout of “Fuck!” emits from some other place on the ship. Lunel’s father promptly walks out onto the deck with his phone pressed hard against the side of his face, talking fervently into it. “I don’t know,” he says in shaky breaths, “he’s been sick for most of the trip…we should have just taken him home, but he insisted he not ruin any of our fun. We shouldn’t have listened to him…. Yes, we’re on a yacht…. Yes, it does have a landing pad.”

           “Oh, god,” Julien says, raising his hands to his mouth. Lunel wipes the smirk off her face.

           “Oh, that’s terrible!” she says, breaking away from Sam and Julien to be with her father. It would convince Sam if she didn’t already know.

           Lunel wraps her arms around her father as he calls his son, wiping at the tears slipping from his eyes. Asti joins them as quickly as he can, joining in on the hug. Less than an hour later, as the helicopter comes, Lunel unravels herself from her father and her brother’s arms and goes to stand by her friends on the deck. “Julien,” she says, wiping at the tears she’s learned how to shed from acting classes, “could you give me and Samantha a minute alone?”

           “Of course, Lunel,” he says, giving her a hug before walking to the other side of the deck. The paramedics have all made their way into Lunel’s grandfather’s room.

           “Well, I did it,” Lunel says, still wiping at her fake tears. Sam doesn’t say anything; she just watches the ocean toss and roll like it’s any other day. They stay silent until the paramedics start to bring out Lunel’s grandfather’s body on a stretcher, and then, there’s a flurry of excitement that Lunel uses to her advantage. The thrumming chops of the helicopter’s blades cut the air.

           Lunel reaches into the band of her crop top, pulls out the vial, and chucks it into the sea, and it no longer exists.

           “Lunel, Sam, come on, get in the helicopter!” Asti yells over the whipping of air.

           “Well, come on, Sammy,” Lunel says, smiling at Sam like she means the whole world to her and more. Something in the sky shifts, and the sun, in its day-dying breaths, suddenly frames Lunel’s face. She glows, eyes sparkling, lip-gloss shimmering, smile easing Sam’s spirits, and…

           Sam closes her eyes.

[highfivingoscarwilde]

Aubade; or, a Lingerie Brand That Almost Sells my Bra Size

The joys of this messiness; Oh, the golden pool of light, Spiked flights of white cutting the black. Or perhaps dripping down the near-tan Of the new day—the dip in the valley. Where it dries At the sides, requiring the wash Of rain.

She pulls the soft, sun-warmed mounds From their places stuck to her arms. Stretches, And they stick again. And what a lovely stretch It is. The cat that caught the canary Leaping through the doves’ trees and Glad to be on her own, without the yawn of That tom.

She rises to follow the westward arch Of the sun, a futile, thrilling pursuit. The cool, flat press Of wooden flooring morphing Into the texture of tile against her dew-soft Feet. The pause in prance at the mirror, those Crushed capillary marks imprinted into the near-tan of the New day.

[highfivingoscarwilde]

She Cannot Sing Revolution (I Scream Revolt)

inspired by Ada Limón

Hot knife through a horse heart, that sizzling slide through muscle-flesh. How dare it—

how dare it convert the force propelling the beast capable of carrying carriers of whips

into the sorry liquid of cows’ stolen butter with spongy heartstrings shredded beyond sense, never again supporting the sanguine surge of survival?

I felt the sinew snap the second she stopped breathing; I felt the murder in my chest. So swift. So sharp. So searing. So

skillets seizing kindred skins. So distance was the only thing stopping me from slaying

the butcher with his own smoking scythe. I would have held it under the heat for twelve hundred years

(the time it will take for horses to undomesticate after I burn down every slaughterhouse and farm fence);

I would have strung him up vertical supine, sliced him down the center as he screamed, listened to that slick blood sizzle under the touch of his own

hot knife. I would have severed him twelve times. Once for each time a horse’s heart is bigger than mine.

[highfivingoscarwilde]

Ode to the Busted Laundry Pod on the Pavement, Seeping in its Juices

You’re               electric, fluorescent purple, the most unnatural thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I have to stop to witness the sidewalk scene of your flip flop murder and the alluring, arched splatter pattern of your liquid. It’s like               laced indigo powder is being crushed directly into the lining of my eager, open throat. I want more than to devour you; I want to suck you up into my body, go tumbling in cycles, make myself ascended in that               hypersexual crushed grape feel, fingers stale and stinging, dripping clean poison. I want to stain like you stain, find salvation in your sacrilege, your               telemagenta that transcends space time and spits electricity in the faces of our violets, our amethysts, our lilacs. You’re a               psychedelic phlox alien blood show and the ridges of concrete peek up like starlight to abduct me out of my color protected clothes as the seer of                Byzantium, the newest shattered neon tube, and I, as gas, return to the atmosphere. The sun evaporates                our color and leaves behind only an Ocean Mist trace.

[highfivingoscarwilde]

Magnus Hirschfeld’s Obituaries

“Only ignorance or bigotry can condemn those who feel differently. Don’t despair! As a homosexual, you can still make valuable contributions to humanity.” – Magnus Hirschfeld, Anders al die Andern, 1919

I.

MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD IS DEAD; 1920 AND “THE WELL-KNOWN EXPERT ON SEXUAL SCIENCE” IS DEAD. MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD IS NOT DEAD. 1920 AND IT IS SUCH A SHAME THAT “THIS SHAMELESS AND HORRIBLE POISONER OF OUR PEOPLE” HAS NOT COME TO HIS “WELL-DESERVED END.”

We, the dust between the brick, watch as Nazis try to stomp Magnus Hirschfeld’s face into 17 million bloody butterflies 13 years before the first concentration camp. The butterflies stutteringly kiss the wind 

with their wings, but the ripped planes of his boot-torn face pull them back in with every beat of his heart and further spill of blood. Though we cushioned his fall, none of us know what those insect eyes of his saw at that first blow. 

Newspapers were so eager to hear the news of him choking on his own looped proboscis tongue that they had to issue a statement three days later correcting themselves: “We apologize, Mr. Hirschfeld is still alive, and this is not to say that we wanted him dead as much as whoever attempted to blind rather than blacken both of his odd, many-lensed eyes did.” Magnus Hirschfeld smiles in his hospital bed. We dance in our place trapped in the lights. The paper flutters under his fingertips. Who else gets to read their own obituary? he asks.

II.

MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD IS DEAD; 1932 AND WE HAVE SET HIS PERVERTED TEXTS AFLAME. MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD IS DEAD; 1932 AND WHAT A SHAME WE COULDN’T CATCH HIS FLESH.

We, the stars not-watching this disaster, imagine that Magnus Hirschfeld had a feeling he wasn’t coming back when he edged out Germany’s door. If we struggle against our spatial constricts, we can see indistinct flames through the black sky’s coat of smoke, which

it pulls up around itself to protect the bright, multi-colored eyes of potential existences. We feel more than see Magnus Hirschfeld’s eyes struggle to tear the darkness of the night in France, and there is nothing to smile about now when all those bloody butterflies are nothing but flaming thorax shreds and wing dust

across black gloves’ too-straight fingertips; they will not help any future keepers of looped tongues. They only float up to join the sky in its foggy disgust, missing each starry eye under its coat. What is it? We wriggle to try to break out of our birth cocoons; uncover our eyes. Let us see.

III.

MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD IS DEAD; 1935 AND IN THIS FOOTNOTE, WE WISH THE MAN A HAPPY POSTMORTEM BIRTHDAY. MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD IS DEAD; MAY 14TH, 1935 AND NOW WE MOVE BACK TO WARTIME NEWS.

 We brighten in our twinkling. Do you hear that? The collective question, the sky shuffles its coat, a pumping set of butterfly wings enters, stopped in one life but stronger than anything in ours. Our grandparents are barely born, if they are at all, and

Magnus Hirschfeld wishes us all luck on his way up.

[highfivingoscarwilde]

alright, I’m about to post some works from my first semester of college (what was i waiting on, 2018?) so i’m gonna tag them all as ‘semester one’ (and then stuff from this upcoming semester will be tagged ‘semester two’ and so on)

not everything I wrote by any means, but quite a few poems and one short story ❤️

[highfivingoscarwilde]

hi everyone!!! this is guccimetti over on cer writing blog!!! my secret santa this year was @astral-clefairy who wanted some hardenshipping w/ may as their daughter and also manaphy with the family. i hope you like what i did with this--it’s kind of like a mini study of this little family’s interaction with legendary pokemon over the years @pokemonshitposts

Once upon a time, a young boy and his friend came across a Pokémon awakened out of their millennium slumber. They were awakened, luckily for the pair of friends, on a Friday evening, after school, to stay until the next one.

“I’ve heard about Jirachi before,” the boy said, the little Pokémon easily floating around his and his friend’s heads. He had always been interested in Hoenn’s legendaries, ever since his father had told him the story of Kyogre and Groudon. “Jirachi grants wishes!”

“Yes! Wishes!” the little Pokémon said.

“No way!” the boy’s friend said, furrowing her brow, “Jirachi, I wish for that plushie I saw last week that my mom wouldn’t get me.”

“Plushie…” the Pokémon said.  The little Pokémon glowed and touched a hand to the boy’s friend’s forehead. “Plushie,” the Pokémon said, more certain, and the very same Azurill plushie she had so fervently stomped her feet over appeared in her arms. She and the boy shared wide, matching grins.

-

The two lollipops, wedged into each hollow of the boy’s friend’s cheeks, made a loud pop as she simultaneously pulled them from her mouth. “Jirachi looks sleepy,” she said, “how long did you say they’d stick around for?”

“A week,” the boy replied. It was the next Friday, after school, the sun beginning to set on the horizon.

“Last wish!” the little Pokémon said gleefully but with a yawn.

The boy’s friend shot him a frantic look as if to say, You do it—that’s too much pressure for me! The little Pokémon, seeming to pick up on the silent conversation’s cues, floated into the boy’s arms. “Last wish, Archie! What is your last wish?”

What was there left to wish for, the boy wondered. It seemed he had everything he wanted—candy, all the latest toys, posters of Kyogre, a waterbed. He resolved to wish for something he might want in the future, then. He took a deep breath in through his nose.

“Jirachi, I wish that someday I’ll meet someone special. Someone really special.”

The Pokémon smiled. “Are you sure you want just one?” they asked, but before the boy could answer, the Pokémon glowed and fell back into their deep, deep sleep. The boy and his friend were silent for a time, watching the Pokémon sleep.

Then, “Hey! Am I not special?”

-

When May goes running off in the wildly oscillating flashes of skin-pummeling rain and brain-evaporating sunlight, sneakers slapping against wet and dry stone as she calls her Swellow out, both Archie and Maxie let out a shout of protest. May is gone, though, off to clean up her fathers’ messes, but of course, said fathers don’t know that. Archie’s legs shake so badly that he drops down to his knees, and Maxie immediately starts screaming at everyone around them to do something—can’t they see that their daughter, their ten-year-old daughter, has just vanished in the middle of this catastrophe? Archie starts to gasp for air and dry heave against the ground, and Maxie kneels down next to him to rub his back and cry.

Meanwhile, in the sky, May is wiping away her own tears. The way her dads had both yelled at her—in interest of her safety, but still—had gotten her thinking about yelling, about the interactions he’d seen between Archie and Maxie while they’d been separated. She gets out her PokéNav.

“Wallace,” May says, still sniffling a bit.

“May! What are you doing? Your dads are really worried about you.” Wallace tries to keep his voice loud enough to hear over the weather but low enough so that he doesn’t have any former Team Aqua or Team Magma leaders breathing down his neck asking about their daughter.

“Do you know…” and now her sniffles pick up as she thinks about the gravity of the situation, “do you know what to…what to do?” She pauses briefly. “I’m scared,” she adds quietly.

“I have an idea,” Wallace says, and as he talks, May steers her Swellow towards the Sky Pillar.

-

Rayquaza lies calm when May approaches them. She takes a deep breath, puffs out her chest (Sometimes you’ve just gotta be tough, baby girl. It’s not fun, and it’s usually not right, but sometimes, you have to. Hopefully, it’s not too often, though, sweetie, Archie had said to her once), and walks forward. Rayquaza tilts their head at her. They radiate an energy of presence ascended; it’s as if Rayquaza knows everything about the world, everything about May, everything about Groudon and Kyogre fighting and May’s dads doing just the same not long before. Rayquaza is…waiting, May realizes. She feels oddly comforted and calmer than she has the entire day.

“Rayquaza,” she begins, and her voice is steady, “please help us. Please help our world.” Rayquaza breathes a puff of warm air against May’s skin, and she takes it as encouragement. Rayquaza likes her, she’s coming to realize. “It was my dads,” May admits, nodding a bit to herself. It doesn’t hurt to say—it doesn’t make her want to cry like it did. It feels nice to say everything out loud. “Don’t get them wrong: they both love the Earth. They just…love the Earth differently, and I think that was their problem. But I don’t really know what made them think this was a good idea, and I tried to stop them, but…” May takes a deep breath, “they’ve awakened Kyogre and Groudon, and they’ve realized now how bad of a mistake they’ve both made. Don’t begrudge them for that, Rayquaza. I just ask that you help us because what’s happening right now with Kyogre and Groudon…it’s scary. I don’t know what’s gonna happen to…to our home, Rayquaza.”

Rayquaza stares for a moment at May. She stares back. Rayquaza breathes another puff of hot air against May’s skin, lets out a cry, and flies up out of the Sky Pillar. May gives herself a moment to breathe and then runs down the stairs.

-

“What’s happening?” Archie asks, now standing, he and Maxie both supporting portions of the other’s weight. The sky is clearing.

“Rayquaza listened to May, I suppose,” Wallace says with a smile.

“Rayquaza?” Maxie barks out.

After Groudon and Kyogre have gone back into their caves and into their sleep, Rayquaza takes off into the sky again. They come back to Sootopolis City with May on their back.

That’s when Archie and Maxie know.

-

Two years later, when May comes back from an adventure with the legendary Pokémon Manaphy nestled into her arms, given everything, it isn’t really much of a surprise to Archie and Maxie. After the fact, at least.

“So, Dads,” May says quietly, mindful of Manaphy, once she reaches them in the living room, “don’t freak out.”

Archie and Maxie stare at her for a bit then look at each other. They like to think they live a nice, calm life in Alola, away from the mistakes of their past. But, of course, Tapu Koko had flown over from the Ruins of Conflict to greet May nearly the moment they’d come to Alola, and Rayquaza sometimes still crosses the oceans to come and visit her. What is there to do?

Archie is the first to set down his book. “Well, you know my policy. Water type Pokémon are always welcome in my house.”

“And because this is our house,” Maxie adds, “all Pokémon are always welcome.”

Archie looks over at Maxie, affronted. “I can’t even ruffle your father’s feathers anymore, May!”

She laughs and shifts Manaphy a bit in her arms. Manaphy sneezes, and water goes all across the floor.

“I’ll get paper towels,” May says.

-

The sound of May’s laughter and loud splashes ring out through the air, creating a warmth in Archie and Maxie’s chests along with that of the warm Alola breeze. “Manaphy!” May yells, and Manaphy jumps high above them to jump back down and splash her yet again. May squeals with laughter, and Archie squeezes Maxie’s hand tighter, that never-ending warmth spreading yet again.

Archie and Maxie are sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and the sun shines brilliantly on May and Manaphy as they play. “Sometimes,” Maxie says, and when Archie glances over at him, he still feels the urge to giggle at his giant straw hat, “I feel that we don’t deserve this.” From below the cliff, May clings to a beachball, and Manaphy propels them along.

“Maybe we don’t, Max,” Archie responds, “but I like to think we’re good people despite it all.”

A giant bubble floats up to the cliff, then another. Archie and Maxie look down to see Manaphy blowing larger and larger bubbles while May laughs and claps. They love days like this: when May doesn’t have to be the girl who saved Hoenn or one of the strongest trainers in Alola and can just be a 12-year-old girl instead. Archie gently nudges Maxie with his elbow. “Come on, let’s go swim.” Maxie groans but takes the hand Archie offers to him.

When they swim out to May and Manaphy, all four of them brighten up. And if a few other ancient, legendary Pokémon smile a bit, wherever they are in the world, in whatever state of consciousness, that just makes sense, doesn’t it?

[bravernificationbeam]

y’all wanna know some tea???? y’all wanna know some fucking TEA right here right now on this day december 8th, 2017?????? my first final went decently well imo AND ya binch got accepted into one of the intermediate poetry writing classes that i applied for (by submitting FIVE of my poems)

[highfivingoscarwilde]

promise I’m still up at the writing game!!!! I’ve done a ton of writing for class these past few months, and I’ll surely be posting some of my revised works here in December

[highfivingoscarwilde]

Lungs

They told me I entered the world screaming such as we all, all should, but there’s always been something wrong about my breathing. Stethoscopes in their hands after examining my unknowing little baby face, exactly like all the others, but, still, there’s something, something— “oh, my love, oh, my heart, you have your great great uncle Magnus’s lungs” (THE SAME CYANIDE AND CHAMBERS THAT WEAKNESS, THAT SMALLNESS, THAT FRAILNESS, THAT FUTILITY THAT POLYETHYLENE QUALITY— “THE THIN FILM MAY CLING TO NOSE AND MOUTH AND PREVENT BREATHING”— THAT IS, IF NOTHING ELSE DOES FIRST. IF YOU ARE HEALTHY IT WILL TAKE TWO MINUTES). Sometimes gasping, sometimes hitching, sometimes panting, I could never breathe— deserted on the banks the tide would never quite reach, being BAKED in that that scorches. Sometimes people’s words are as sharp and burning as the sun— something in their breath mixes with mine, somewhere inside of them they’re housing packets of pesticide that they can and will burst and suture at will. My chronic, constant panic attacks, coughing fits, breathlessness— my inborn suspicion of that that I breathe is a tragedy and an elegy

~m.a

[highfivingoscarwilde]

Present Time, Todd Anderson

I really do love fic exchanges, secret santas, etc when I have time for them. This one is for @makeyourlivesextraordinary from @guccimetti over at cer writing blog. The prompt was “ anderperry: the soulmate au where your soulmates last words are tattooed on their arm and Neil says the last words he says to Todd and Todd recognizes those words and gets Neil to talk to him, saving his life.”

word count: ~2,131

summary: Todd Anderson had wrapped the arm his soulmark is on in bandages the moment his soulmark started coming in. Today, he rips the bandages off.

read on AO3 or ff.net

I’m really, really proud of this one, hope you love it!

(warnings for mentions of death and suicide and minor period typical homophobia)

@dpsficexchange 

[highfivingoscarwilde]

Rainbow Diffraction Spike

*crashes into the leoji tag 9 months late* HEY WHAT’S UP (this is @guccimetti over at cer writing blog)

for leoji week 2 day 2: first meeting

word count: ~385

summary: Leo and Guang Hong meet at a rink in the summer of 2012 and form an instant connection (and watch all three High School Musicals in one day).

read on AO3 or ff.net

anyway, this little bite sized thing (it’s been so long since i’ve written something under ~1k!!!!) started as an idea i got in bed one day and typed into my phone, which then turned into an idea for the soulmate prompt for the first leoji week, which then didn’t happen bc of Stuff, which I then decided to make fit this prompt

I had to tweak this one a bit to make Guang Hong and Leo seem more like young teenagers bc I apparently forget sometimes that not everyone is a word maven like yours truly (which I definitely WASN’T when I was 13/14)

rainbow diffraction spike comes from the diffraction spike of stars (stars are mentioned a lot in the story) and part of Guang Hong’s name meaning rainbow

@leojiweek

[bravernificationbeam]

my college has two writing requirements and the first one you have to fulfill in your first year (first or second semester depending on what letter your last name starts with) and there’s 4 different levels you’re sorted in based on your writing sat score and uh. ur teen right here missed the mark for advanced placement by 20 points. so I had to send in a writing portfolio with three of my essays and a short letter requesting advanced placement and I GOT IN!!!!!!

and advanced placement gives you a lot more freedom of what classes will fulfill the requirement, and, because you know I want to be an english major, I’m taking 3 english classes my first semester, and they all could be used to fulfill the first writing requirement

[highfivingoscarwilde]

The Weak Spined, Part II

Barnyard mice always get trampled by horses. The warm hay, the dropped grain all they want. Running on paws folded in on themselves, frostbitten so severely by something outside of their control. Sharp-fanged snakes tell them to run in and fetch their midnight snacks. Sharp-fanged snakes slither in and eat their carcasses off the floor.

~m.a