twitching grievances @lunarflicker - Tumblr Blog

CAST:

delilah-jane ebbing. intro. aesthetic. dexter zane. intro. aesthetic. patti fontaine. intro. aesthetic.

a dependent multi-muse blog for @fleelangston written by nai.

#pinned #shrugs shruggingly #ya i only just did this. and what of it?#too sleepy to check these links work.... i hope so. walks away

tintedswindows

the metal of the water tower was slick with dew, humming faintly beneath his palms. it hadn’t changed much since the last time he had scaled it when he first came to hadden and explored like a wild badger. the same ladder rusted through at the bolts, the same dented panel near the top where someone had spray-painted GOD’S BLIND SPOT in crooked letters. climbing was slow work — the rust biting into his palms, the slack of old bolts protesting every step. he could hear the wind threading through the forest canopy, leaves whispering like they knew he was coming. hadden’s air was wetter than his hometown, heavier somehow, the kind that clung to your lungs and made the stars blur like tears on glass. when he reached the top, patti was perched as he expected of her, sat in the middle of it all like a statue misplaced — carved marble cheekbones hollowed around a cigarette ember glowing steady and dimming like a pulse in the dark. the soft white fabric of her dress caught what little moonlight there was, making her seem both here and not: a trick of the dark, the kind that used to make them both whisper about hauntings when they were teenagers and supposed to be healing. he huffed out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. his boots scuffed the slate as he settled beside her, the smell of rain-soaked weeds rising from below. “reincarnated too soon. no proper eulogy. would've rather you bite my head off like that francisco goya painting. slower, more painful. no mercy. chew my innards after like a pack of big 5 gum.” the night spread out around them — the sky a dull bruise, the moon diffused behind clouds. the town below was mostly dark, save for a few sodium streetlights burning a jaundiced yellow, and the faraway hum of a highway that never seemed to stop moving. still, it felt like the kind of place they’d both always end up in again.

places like this had a way of calling them back: broken roofs, half-rotted ladders, quiet corners of the world where the grief meetings didn’t reach them. kaya leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes scanning the black stretch of land around them. hadden’s outskirts looked almost like albion if you squinted — the skeletal barns, the fence posts leaning in defeat, the silvered field grass shifting in restless patches. albion was gone, paved over by time behind him, or maybe just memories too painful to revisit. “place feels like a knockoff,” he muttered. “like someone copied the bones but forgot the soul.” as she blew silvered smoke toward the horizon, his hands fidgeted, thumb rubbing over a half-healed cut on his palm when blue eyes focused on a flash of color in a thin run of red against her shin. it startled him, the brightness of it, how it glared against the pale fabric of her torn hem. the blood had dried in a narrow trail, sharp as threadwork, like something deliberate. “you’re bleeding,” he pointed out bluntly, his voice dragged low, roughened by the climb. “might lose the leg to tetanus - or some shit,” he murmured, then smirked faintly. “looks real gothic. no chandeliers to swing from tonight, fontaine?” without really thinking he reached out a calloused thumb to brush along the small gash, catching at the line of blood and rubbing absently against the cool bite of metal of the water tower to leave a stain. patti fontaine was here. “you’ve got a talent for finding sharp things in the dark,” he excused, swiping the leftover ichor against the rough weave of his jeans, the fabric darkening under the pressure. “best to leave your mark somehow. crows’ll probably come lap at the dried bits like housecats with milk.”

lunarflicker

Patti wasn't sure what'd drawn them to the water tower, after a night spent prowling the brambles. Maybe it was that the structure managed to contain so much despite the rust, years of decay that'd make it so easy to collapse; maybe Patti felt an odd sort of kinship with that, images stuttering through her brain like a vintage viewfinder against a soundscape of rustling leaves, unable to escape them, skull creaking with the strength it took to carry the drowning body of that. A split bellied squirrel nailed to a tree. Pixellated CCTV footage of Isla, hollow cheeked, boarding a late bus out of town. Those stillborn lambs they'd cradle in their hands, growing up, trying so desperately to rub warmth back into their stiff, innocent limbs. Red Christmas lights blinking from the windows of her father's caravan whenever he'd shut himself away to drink again. How Patti saw that same red light, sometimes, glowing on the backs of her eyelids. When Kaya sat besides them, the heckled black cat that hissed inside their brain narrowed its eyes and hunched begrudgingly into loafed settle. "Oh, we're being cultured today? Wow. Francisco Goya painting. Ah, oui oui, monsieur," Patti impersonated, impish smile niggling. "You know that's one of my favourites. Fuck. To give a little guy a vicious munch. That would fix me, I think."

Patti looked out in tandem with Kaya, eyes inevitably finding the same shapes in the dark, an underrated intimacy in watching things with the knowledge that he was, too, gazes simultaneously together and apart. "Like a copy of a copy. Okay, Tyler Durden," she prodded, about to go on and agree, despite it, when he spoke again, a cold hand on a fevered forehead bringing her down to reality. You're bleeding. "Oh." Just that. Oh. Like they hadn't even felt it. Like they were still back there, mentally, a tangle of thread on a prong of barbed fence, fluttering occasionally with the breeze. "New accessory I'm trying out. Training a bat to dangle from my bicep, too, with its fangs bared. Lots of fashion developments coming--..." abruptly fell off, lips falling subtly ajar, further syllables lost in the ether the second he touched them. For a moment, Patti found herself wishing he'd slipped his thumb between his lips, instead, sucked the copper tang of her right into the warmth of his tongue, ruined his mouth with her metal. Something inside of her shivered like a black orchid that longed for the smothering humidity of a hothouse. Mentally, Patti picked up a pair of kitchen scissors and carefully snipped the stem. Kaya seemed to have a habit of sprouting flowers in her mind she'd never permitted to start growing. "Could've at least drawn a pentagram. That's just, like, wasteful of prime Patti paint. Vials of my blood go for hundreds on the dark web, you know. Got a bunch of mole men fucking gasping to drink me like a Capri Sun on there." It bordered on truth; Patti did have a few questionable lurkers on their webcam stream, a low resolution feed in which they'd typically contort a ghastly clay sculpture into stop motion positions at their desk, shaggy hair mussed and Burton eyes intent, chewing at their bottom lip as they concentrated on the development of their latest project. It'd attracted the odd, mouth-breathing anonymous commenter throughout its time.

Then, like it was nothing, Patti extended two fingers, offered Kaya their cigarette to share. They'd likely end up burning through plenty more, anyway. "What, like... time is it?" A discombobulating question, suddenly aware they'd been a boat adrift without an anchor, that it could've been hours they'd lost track of themselves inside the shadows. Gingerly swiping a tendril of hair from her eyes, Patti subtly braced her narrow shoulders inside of her thin dress, still looking out among the trees, imagination conjuring skulking figures from invisible shapes. "Don't -- don't know how long I've been out here. Feel like a fucking -- werewolf when it comes to, or something." Always deflecting, because to actually gauge the greening lump of a bruise on their subconscious would conjure unimaginable aches. Better to make it stupid. A leaping flea in a circus that Patti could pretend was small. An insignificant parasite foraged from a dog's coarse fur. "Might find a gnashed twink carcass lying around, somewhere. Soren gets so biteable when I'm hungry."

#patti | kaya #patti | all #blood tw #cannibalism mention tw #chuckles nervously n looks around #this got away from me a little bt its ok. its OK.

cloyingblccd

With a heaving exhale, Sonny burst into 12B with another box in tow. He’d been here for months now, but his parents were still sending his things - notes attached from his dad, telling him not to forget them, to call. To make sure his brother was okay. He did, because he felt guilty not doing so, but every rejected call from Shepherd felt like another jab to his ribcage, as if someone were trying to twist a knife into his lungs. So instead, when he got frustrated, he focused on his roommates - one of which currently wielded a glass of wine as if it were a weapon as well. Head lolling, eyes dancing around the room. Sonny watched Dexter with a fondness that didn’t come often, still narrowing their gaze with concern. Watching the wine splutter and splash around him, staining his trousers - not for the first time, probably, if Sonny leaned down to inspect. Dexter’s lips were already stained with the telltale sign that this was far from their first glass. He might’ve been able to get away with announcing that he’d eaten nothing but an entire packet of raspberries for lunch, if he didn’t want Sonny to fret. But fret he did anyway, because Dexter was drunk, and the sun wasn’t even close to setting. They should be outside - they should be enjoying the warmth. The rays, the weather that’d been a gift the last few days, not a cloud in the sky. If anything, Sonny planned on dragging his yoga mat out and forcing Dexter to lie on him like a kitten curled in a beam, the way he did when they slept together separate from everyone else hogging the bed. Instead, he was seemingly in a mood - one of the rare moods he could get into but never thrust upon anyone the way someone could if they were grumpy. It was just - Dexter. Who refused to let anyone help, but made it clear he needed it, anyway.

Slowly, Sonny put the box down. Watched Dexter sloppily dowse himself by accident in red fluid that could have masqueraded as blood. Sternum bleeding out suddenly, to reveal his soft underbelly as the source. Sonny didn’t drink often, it’d always made him feel queasy - but when he did, he was always just as sluggish, just as messy. If it weren’t for his apprehensions, he’d be fond of the sight. “Everyone thinks of impermanence, it’s natural.” He said with a shrug, finally moving forward towards Dex, “You look like a slob right now.” Scolding, firm but attempting to be gentle about it. Sonny was always trying to be gentle - they wanted to be so. They wanted to be known as kind. It was difficult, though, when they really wanted to snap at his company, for getting to this level and worrying him as such. “No, I don’t want wine. It’s only 2 PM.” There was nothing wrong with day drinking - when there was a reason to. Sonny saw no reason whatsoever or even a person to accompany Dexter. For once, 12B was surprisingly quiet. Eventually, he reached to tilt the wine glass in Dex’s hand upwards - then out, hesitating with a finger on the rim of the glass. Swooping index as they considered their next move. He’d grab Dexter more wine if he really started complaining - Sonny wasn’t his keeper. But maybe they could distract in the meantime. Bringing the wine glass into the kitchen and looking into the cupboards that were - surprisingly stocked. There were almost never any clean dishes. Grabbing a mug, he filled one to the brim then returned to the other's side, “I like talking philosophically though. What’s got you thinking of our mortality? You’re not dying on me, are you? Drink.” They commanded, stubborn and low in tone, as they shoved the mug into Dexter’s hands.

lunarflicker

Dexter might've noticed the discontented flutter of Sonny's abundant, fucking giraffe-like eyelashes if he weren't three sheets to the wind, but God gives his biggest burdens to his greatest soldiers, or however the saying goes, so, instead, he interpreted everything about Sonny's demeanour as irrevocably, immediately charmed. He had a habit of that; sailing peacefully down the river of conversation without any acknowledgement of potential rocks or brambles, somehow managing not to gulp back mouthfuls of water and drown along the way. It was just his way. Had been for as long as he could remember. But it'd begun to require a price, as the years went by, little pieces of himself he had to tear from the loaf of his subconscious and scatter on the pavement, watching blankly as pigeons pecked him up into their bellies and flew away. Minibar bottles cracked ajar and trickled into morning cups of coffee. A spiked bottle of diet coke flush in his palm as he took in rolling Italian hillsides through a grimy train window. A joy that crashed cymbals loudly inside him, for just long enough, had him spouting tales of bloodthirsty nuns and piano keys trembling through worn down floorboards, until the toy monkey began to wind down, utterly static when the splitting headaches woke him.

"Right, you are," Dexter commended with a butchered attempt at received pronunciation, the kind you'd find in an old, grainy Hollywood flick without a drop of colour, smile unfurling in delayed time at Sonny's disapproving jab. "I'm jus' a fuckin'... man of the people, humble fuckin' guy. You say that shit to... Anne Hathaway, in Les Mis? She was on the streets, you fuckin' -- savage. Pro'ly shaved her y'self." Incoherent as it was, it made sense from where he was looking, nose pressed to a frosted window pane, separating him from everything real. Dexter attempted to tap his temple as if to imply Sonny's wisdom but managed to miss, firmly prodding his eye. "Argh -- fuck, me... eye." One shut, the napkin strewn across his scalp fluttered off, onto the floor without his realising. "Feel like a... Dalek." A dissolving scrap of newspaper fished from the muddy pond of memory. Soggy, just distinguishable letters. Etching his times tables inside of checkerboard boxes on the arm of the sofa as Finn watched Dr. Who. The way his face lit up over all that awful fucking CGI. "Time's subjective." Dexter answered, so delayed that it left his mouth about the same time as the mug arrived in his hand. He shut his eyes, contemplative, and took a sip; then his face wrinkled like he'd chucked back a shot of petrol. "Fuck is'at?" Taking another sip, he leaned his head back, gargled it right at the back of his throat as if he was drowning. "Helpaaaameee--fuck--," turned into an actual choking interlude, coughs heaving his ribs. Finally, he stilled, shoved the mug back towards Sonny; even gave his hands a few pats, tried to furl them around the mug as if he needed assistance handling a tiny, unfamiliar gerbil, like Sonny was the flailing one. "Just, y'know... rigor... mortis. They bloat," Dexter's eyes drifted across the room, shut, paused. "Bloatin's... swellin', but -- swellin's, like, gettin' bigger, right? But it's... but they're becomin' less, when they swell. When they're a body. Less what they, er... were." Quickly shaking his head, Dexter ran a hand down his face, smoothed it out like an Etch-a-Sketch; just like that, forgotten. "You got a brother, right?" Forbidden territory. Alarms should've been going off. Trip wires rattling strategically placed tins among the shrubbery. Something. "You, like -- you got one?"

#dexter | sonny #dexter | all #death tw #jeeves get my carriage this mans scaring me.#alcoholism tw

FT: do hyun yoon. @collegiatesins EXT: lake weary, campus perimeter.

Long limbs elegantly crossed, Delilah nimbly turned a page of Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince as her rowboat drifted up to campus, gilded edges of the threadbare edition glimmering gold in the light. She paid no attention to the grunts of the scrawny freshman doing the rowing for her, meagre sinews of muscle in his arms barely enough to ripple, remaining serene as a floating swan. It was only upon the familiar clunk of the boat about to dock that she closed the book, slipped it into her white satchel and deftly fastened the buckle. Her assistant was so eager to clamber out of the boat in time to assist her step that he didn't even think to check where he was going, bundling face first into Topher and somehow losing his glasses to the murky water in the process. "Oh... no," Delilah concluded plainly, smoothing the pleats of her white skirt with a vaguely sympathetic tweak between her brow. "His goggles," she purposefully mislabelled, hint of a polite smile flickering over her mouth, before her attention landed on Topher, the unfortunate victim of this collision. Something rippled over the surface of her face like the tidal impression of a small, dropped stone, and Delilah stepped closer atop the planks, unabashedly inspecting his features in a way that might have made some blush to be caught doing so; not Delilah, though, never all cool and composed Delilah. "Did he break you?"

#delilah | topher #delilah | all #I HOPE THIS OK :D #taps out a little jig w my feet on linoleum suddenly

FT: laszlo kovach. @distortedblurs INT: their dorm :D

'ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE'. It was printed in white, medieval script across the front of the black silk underwear that Patti stood in, ratty t-shirt slouched off their left shoulder, and by the look on Laszlo's face as he hunkered against the wall besides his bed, plucking meekly at his lute like a starved, pox-ridden busker, he'd taken it a bit too literally during their previous entanglements. They'd immediately stripped off their clothes upon arriving back, left them in a heap by the door, grabbed a t-shirt and not bothered about pants, cheeks still shimmering from the ferocity of the wet night. Patti strode to a window reverberating with droplets, shoving it open to usher in a steady hiss of rainfall to intermingle with Laszlo's lament. They couldn't help but briefly exchange a look with their taxidermy ram, beady glass eyes somehow offering a knowing expression despite their utter lack of sentience. If only Black Philip could whisk them both away to live deliciously, somewhere. Then, hopping up to perch on their desk's edge, backlit by a lamp usually twisted to illuminate whatever gnarled, stop-motion figure had taken their whittling tool's fancy, Patti unscrewed an airtight glass jar and picked at the hunk of weed inside. "Christ. That one's a pussy quaker," came with a darted glance from her busywork, arranging the potent herb atop an open grinder. The thing is, Patti knew, had gingerly picked up Romy's blunt update about Budapest like a magpie acquiring a silver locket, but that didn't mean she knew what to do with it. Some things were too tender to press. "You really know how to curate a sensational vibe. Might start throwing ass, in a second. Nothing like a lute to get the crowds cheeks clapping."

#patti | laszlo #patti | all #pops hip n pouts fuckable lips to the side while trembling my triple fs

FT: kaya monaghan. @tintedswindows EXT: some rooftop u can decide where. as a treat.

It was what they did, back then, kids forced to sit through meetings in which strangers laid their hearts raw in cupped palms around a circle, Patti and Kaya both as tight-lipped as each other rather than share; clambering up onto rooftops, giving in to some subconscious, feline desire to feel safe from a vantage point, alone together above the mess of the world. Patti perched atop cold slates like a haunted porcelain doll on a back shelf in an antique shop, knees pulled up, a snag in their flimsy, Victorian gown from a hole in a barbed fence. The fabric fluttered, aloft, a white flag above the small, bloody gash on her shin from the metal's sharp prong. They'd been patrolling around again, mistaking shivers of branches for Zee's pleading whispers, scattering piles of leaves just to make sure Isla wasn't rotting underneath them in the dark. The dreams had gotten bad again. Rather nonchalantly, Patti raised her lit cigarette to her lips, staring out at nothing. Even the rustle of Kaya's arrival didn't deter their gaze, shoe scuffs announcing he'd successfully made the climb; Patti had texted him to meet them there, after all. Then his silhouette emerged fully from shadow; that familiar, grounding shape of him, one she sometimes found her eyes tracing on dark ceilings when she couldn't sleep; it was only then that Patti stirred, eyes flitting to find him, still containing some distant dial tone of an old phone off the hook. "Found a bug that looked like you, earlier." Smoke unspooled from her lips, translucent silver thread. "Gave it a stomp, and everything. Had to establish myself as alpha. Know what you're like."

#patti | kaya #patti | all #DOES A NARSTY LITTLE DARNCE

FT: sonny ahmad-devi. @cloyingblccd INT: 12b.

Dexter eyed a corner of the ceiling over the slanted rim of his wine glass, one that'd previously been home to a spider's web before an errant shoe ripped every thread undone. The world simmered around him like a pan on low heat. He was in a strange, morose kind of mood, the sort that often had him angling his wine bottle for a refill only to discover sparse drops. Sonny was just unfortunate enough to enter the room at the right time to hear a slurp so pronounced, anyone would think Dexter was cupping forth a bowl of delicious, piping soup; but no, just more wine, red as a rushing vein. "Sonny," he said the name like he was swallowing a chunk of apple, convoluted and half-consumed. Shifting slightly, legs kicked up onto a dilapidated, makeshift table, he tilted his head from under a thin napkin inexplicably draped across the top of his spiked tufts, scrunching one eye and scrutinising Sonny with the other. His wine glass kept dangerously leaning sideways within his grasp. It was 2 P.M. on a Wednesday. "Ever think 'bout, like... fuckin', impermanence, y'know?" It was easy, sometimes, to bounce thoughts off the black borders of Sonny's brain like a Microsoft screensaver, to know he wouldn't receive a shred of coddling, just cold, hard truth. Dexter respected the way his brain worked. "Like, shit that's jus'... Oop," he noted rather casually as a drop of wine spilled, seeping into the fabric of his pinstripe trousers in delayed time. Dexter stared at it, a moment, stomached the sudden image of a bloody school uniform, then lifted his head, trying to remember his train of thought. Gone. You ever think about shit that's gone? "Yeah, just... What was, er..." trailed off, taking another sip like it'd help. "Fuck. Dunno... Slithered off, somewhere. Eel-like, the fucker. You... Y'want some wine?"

#dexter | sonny #alcoholism tw #purses lips

cyberglittter

maryloveofficial

#patti | muse #delicious treat frm fiona encapsulating pattis vampiric aura so well i had to rb. bites fist until i draw blood #then smiles. w red mouf

FT: junie bacalso-coughlan. @cloyingblccd INT: slaughterhouse rave.

Delilah imagined herself membranous, against the strobes, pictured stark red veins forking through her pale flesh like an albino rabbit's ears. There was this quality in the air surrounding her, as the night progressed, of unreality, a distance from everything tangible; had she been there, truly, dancing in the crowd, eyelids fluttering with every wayward drape of her long limbs? Had she been there, across the room, when Adrien and Leona were practically nose to nose, fleeting intimacies exchanged like lifelines, or folded outside of herself, a mass of figgy, exposed flesh with a thousand susceptible nerve ends? Drifting through the upstairs floor of the slaughterhouse, Delilah came to pause besides Junie at a rail overlooking the pulsing crowds, clearly so absorbed in trying to spot someone that she didn't clock Delilah's arrival. Languidly laying her hands on the rail, the metal clammed against her hot palms, cold and constant as a dead star. Her eyes drifted, studied the square chisel of Junie's jaw, pondered her one of two matching costume with an expression as hollow as bird bones. "You look delicious. Like I could just..." trailed off, lips flickering with a smile like a small flame, "eat you." Milky irises intent on Junie's, Delilah looked at her, through her, inside the unravelling seams of time; everything and nothing, all at once. The air reverberated, heart humming beneath her ribcage like a caged bird. "Where'd your little blonde boyfriend scamper off to?"

#delilah | junie #delilah | all #:B #dissociation tw #adjusts monocle

profalseidols

"I'd always felt lonely, even before. This was a new feeling, like.. a terror, that I'd always be alone now. And then, as I got older, that feeling just solidified. Just a knot, here, all the time. And then losing them, it just got tangled up with all the other stuff about being gay, and just feeling like the future doesn't matter. Does that make sense?"

All of Us Strangers (2023) dir. Andrew Haigh

#ignore caption bt.#dexter | muse #trust me....