gabban

I've avoided this for as long as I could, but I'm gonna have to somewhat pause activity for the next two weeks, at least. My mental health's taken a hard blow since April and I'm not coping at all. I'm trying to write what I can, when I can, as always. But I need more space. I'll still be checking dms! Plus, I'm not planning on dropping any threads just yet. I'm just not doing well. :' )

#.ooc #/I feel like that pic of squ/idward after getting trampled...#/sorry that I'm not around. I genuinely want to be #/: (

Update: ta mala la cosa.

#.ooc #/here too. I love you all!

Happy birthday to me! <3 🌷☀️🌺

#.ooc #/<3!

› › › @meadowlarksabove / cont.

Beneath him was still stone. Cold, stripped of the warmth gathered throughout the day. It felt hard against his knee, an adversary, showing its horns against his presence with its frigid touch that seeped through fabric and began pressing into his skin. So meet the thing that sat inside. To think that bones were meant to be warmed by flesh. Paukka only ever felt the cold in his bones.

How jealous the stone must be, then. The quiet slow they were. Pondering for them was something most would never do. To contemplate, to know, was to be. To be, amidst the passing, crushing, revealing ages. Time was but the passage of change. These stones must have had very little change. That which was them, if such a thing could be them, if any such thing could be more than what was thought about it, if any such thing could exist outside what related, that they had been stuck for so very long. Trapped within the mires of that larger it. The expected pressure of all that it should be. A piece of the whole, a piece of another whole, and so on. Forever. How many times had water touched and kissed it into a different shape? How many times had the wind whipped the whole, bringing with it tiny pieces of the all, promising a tumult of entropic adventure. How much of the it, of the them, had swam away in the wind?

How much of the stone had wept, then? Exposed, then. Not tears, but waves. Bringing more pieces of it, the smallest it had known by relation. In the crying, broken free of binds. Helped along by the ones who had gone before. It was not without time. Not without the whole, the them of they, clinging desperately.

But all holds weakened with time. All bonds faded if coaxed and welcomed, if allowed to leak. Change found its way within the cracks of a stone wall. Gabban had, too. With his eyes, with his smile. Before Paukka had even known him to be of breath and warmed bone. Of warmed teeth. Before he had learned that Gabban was made of warm sunlight, soft and bright. Gabban, who had brought him warmth. Gabban, who was like love. Gabban, who was his love.

Gabban, who said yes!

Paukka beheld his lover. Looked at him with the eyes of a man who had found God. Breathless; heart on his sleeve, he watched in what felt like a millennia how Gabban, knees buckling and near-fainting, took it and put it on his finger. Instinctively he rose back onto his feet, strong and ready to catch the man who had made home in his chest. Fueled by the desire to be close to him, now (always, always, always) and to be there and hold him and shelter him from a fall. Stricken by the want to wrap his arms around and grip him with his hands and remind himself that this was reality, still stunned and speechless that his proposal had been accepted. To be united, even more.

All that Gabban had to give washed over him in waves of golden light and Paukka returned each and every kiss with a soft yet strong want, not believing his own composure newly-found. Feeling the wild fluttering of the muscle in his chest, the wild bird who had migrated so many miles from its home, still quivering and hindering and disturbing his breathing into shuddering, he had never before felt so sure and cemented into being and having done the right thing.

„Tu... sì l'amuri... di la me vita“, Paukka tried, then breathed a chuckle, because he knew that even if he had gotten it wrong, Gabban would understand him.

Lovingly, one hand found its perch on the low point of Gabban's spine. The other rose higher, gently landing on the back of Gabban's head, sinking into the soft strands of sun-kissed hair and Paukka just closed his eyes for a moment and held Gabban like this, after pulling him even closer. „You make me so happy. So happy...“

Leaning in so their foreheads touched and their noses brushed, he began attempting to kiss away the tears, peppering the face of his lover with more kisses. He had not noticed when exactly the smile had appeared on his face. Paukka only realized that it was there, now, blooming naturally.

#.ic #.Gabban #.always feed the hand that leads to teeth (modern)#ihmissutta #/<3 <3 <3 <3 !!!!

Joyous were the tears that streaked his face. The gates to paradise had opened for him at last, and there an angel refuged his soul in the warmth of their arms. Gabban pressed his body flush to theirs, all but surrendering the burden of his weight as he vacillated between worlds. This was more than any apparition written about in tablets or in the testimonies of his saints. Greater than any vision of the cross– God forgive him! Light burst from his chest, and he wondered then if it was real, if it could be seen and felt, the same way he saw and felt the glory of this moment.

The brightness coursed through his veins, warmed him with the flurry of new life. He was once again reminded of how cold the years had been without Paukka. So numbingly cold and bereft of any sense, as if he’d spent his time only half awake, half alive. Sorrow could dull a person’s nervous system, weaken them from within until they were left with varying deficiencies. His grief, then, had withered him like spoiled fruit, turned him a decayed bud on the vine. Or as his brothers had put it, an unsalvageable piece of shit. Grief dared rear its head for an instance, before it was quickly cast away by what Paukka’s proposal had revealed to him.

If he could allow himself a little grace, a little compassion even, he might just think better of himself and his nature. He stared up at Paukka through stifled sobs. Love resonated between the both of them. Whatever his doubts, his blasphemous disbelief, he could no longer deny the strings which had happily tethered them to one another. (And always had, someway, somehow.) Therefore, was his spirit truly foul? Had he actually been defiled by such shame and disgrace, that it made him a damnable husk of a person. Gabban blinked until his lover’s eyes were clearer in view. They beamed at him with such tenderness and acceptance, he could hardly believe himself worthy of it, unless there was more to him than what had already been written on his own skin…

Gabban chuckled, not at Paukka’s fumbled pronunciation, but at himself. How stricken he could be by so few words, and ones that could hardly express what stirred in both their hearts. Language fell short in that regard. No matter how beautifully composed and modulated, it would never capture the full scope of what his body understood on instinct. He let himself be pressed further, lulled by the low hum of their voice, the warmth of their skin and the care in their kisses. This was where he belonged, and after what seemed an eternity of wandering through the murk, he’d come back to the rightful seat of his soul.

“Please, I’m already lightheaded…” He smiled, gently nuzzled their nose, and quickly turned the nuzzling to a kiss, unable to withstand the love he felt seeing them just as happy. With trembling hands, he caressed the sides of Paukka’s face. Those hard, stone cut features, so dear and calming to him, rarely formed such a dazzling smile. Spellbound, he lightly traced the corner of their mouth with a thumb, and relished the sight of their perfect (,sharp) teeth.

“The moment I saw you, I knew. I don’t know how, I can’t explain it, but I knew I’d found the other half of my spirit. Now everything makes so much sense. Every time I’ve looked over my shoulder, waited by doors, all without reason but feeling so sure that someone else should be there. It was you. I was searching for you.”

Whatever he had felt (shapeless and alien as it had taken up space in his mind) was washed away again by the single batting of blond lashes and sung off to a distant place by that one voice he wanted to hear. Without giving so much as time to make sense of sentiments he had heard the name to in fleeting, carelessness over any troubling thing ever felt returned, alongside content which lifted the weight enough that it took away the inner tension usually chaperoning youthful uncertainty. From not knowing what Gabban could be thinking, to having his answer through the soft caress of loving fingers over his exposed skin, Paukka had his eyes opened to something which he had not spent much thought on over the past couple years and was sure it had nearly lost its meaning. Differently, much warmer and softer. Although Paukka was never one for others' approval, hearing that Gabban thought the motive did fit him and that there was a good sense in his own thinking of getting it, back then, made him glad that he had. Reigniting something he had thought he had shed, about a sense of self that he had every right to have but had lived without.

Faintly, the corners of his mouth curved upwards into a smile, without Pauka paying any attention whether it did. A display of an absent mind and feeling that took hold of him and warmed him even though his torso laid bare and his mind was full of the feeling of the fingers that beheld him and of the view he had, of that same handsome young man that looked at him not only for the sake of seeing, but to understand and make sense of him. How great it was to be loved by someone so beautiful, so kind, so soft, so gentle. Someone who did not mind his rough hands and wild grip and how his gums were always hungry and his teeth in need, to taste him and fill his own mouth, with him, to have him so close that he could fill his lungs with his scent and feel though his lips and even the tip of his nose, the warmth and the hard softness on his skin. Gabban, who looked at the bruises left by those same rough hands and that same wild mouth and smiled, even came to him to remind Paukka that the marks were fading and giving him permission to devour him all over again.

Paukka breathed and back he was, breaking from that momentary slip of the mind he too was exposed to every so often by simply looking at his lover, seeing visions of the same thoughts and ideas that filled him whenever he looked into those ocean eyes that were a window to the only world he wanted to live in, that he sometimes mourned could not be his whole and sole existence, that they could never just be together like that forever, intertwined and together in the shape of a moving mass of noise and flesh and sometimes resting just so he look at Gabban and realize all over again how lucky he was, how blessed. To only exist to please and be with Gabban...

He could not help the need and so he gave in to it, by placing a finger underneath Gabban's chin to make him look up at him instead of at the lines of ink in his skin, leaning in and kissing him for a few seconds.

How could he not? How could he not!

„It did hurt. But I've hurt worse.“ By being stabbed and by being shot and by being separated for the first time after finally finding him. Leaving and going back because of responsibilities he had thought needed to be adhered to and followed. A mistake. What a fool he had been. “I like it even more now that you like it too”, he added and the faint smile on his face grew even further into one.

Regarding Gabban a moment longer, his head turned the same time his left arm lifted. As if to give attention to something on it, he held it up to their side facing upwards. Between the lines of veins sat more lines of ink.

The first took shape in the form of a needled branch. Sitting on the inside of a bicep, four hairless branchlets, each covered by sharp-tipped needles, reached outside and stretched over the muscle, leaving the tattoo partially visible even when he was not offering it up as he did now. The second sat lower and past the crook of the arm, on the inside of his forearm. A set of carnivorous animal teeth, both upper and lower row; sharp and without the gum and bone around it. Like a diagram showing off proper size and shape; anatomically correct. Following the direction the veins of his arms took, they sat neatly and placed in the correct order.

“Pine.” He began but immediately paused paused, because it was only when he wanted to share what sort of teeth they were that he actually remembered, the night they had sat on a park bench together. When Gabban had told him of his fear of dogs. Just like that, the feeling was back again. The smile slowly faded away again like it never had existed. The least Paukka wanted to do was cause Gabban distress. Yet he was there, possibly showing off the very reason why Gabban was made to fear dogs in the first place. Teeth that might have bitten him...

Paukka swallowed (and his throat felt so dry). Unsure on how to continue but wanting to break the silence before it grew into something ugly, he explained. He decided not to acknowledge the second tattoo unless Gabban was ready for him to do so.

“Half of Finland's forests are pine. About a third are spruce.”

#.ic #.Gabban #.always feed the hand that leads to teeth (modern)#ihmissutta #/ :3

The hand which’d moved Gabban’s chin was as gentle as their kiss. Whatever tension he’d held from his day at the office, hunched over his patients and laboring in close quarters, melted away with his bliss. Paukka’s lips were a true balm for the spirit. An oasis at the end of a long and arduous journey. No matter how battered or worse for wear he felt, their kisses rejuvenated him with the fury of an illuminating flame. As if he were receiving sacrament right before the altar of his lord. And perhaps he was. Love and compassion were the pillars of his worship after all, foundations which had strengthened his faith in the church, even when it’d failed him miserably.

His gaze followed the shifting of their arms, noting with a smile how they flexed with the subtlest of motions. Beautifully sculpted muscle paved the way to the rest of their tattoos. To which, the very next one raised his brows, earnestly tickling his sensibilities and his interest for the natural world. He wondered then if the pine trees of Paukka’s home were any different to the ones littering the mountainous region of the isle, or if they were of the same conical shape he’d grown accustomed to seeing. Gabban hummed with some amusement, envisioning their forests in the deep midwinter, frosted over with ice and snow. What were the odds of them ever visiting that perilous stretch of land? How much would the trip possibly cost them? Questions darted to and fro, his mind plotting a new venture just as quietly, while he traced his finger down from the branches and onto–

Grief struck through the tender haze of his thoughts. Although he was only an expert on human teeth, he quickly recognized the maxillary and mandibular structures which followed the path of Paukka’s veins.

Any more accurately placed, and they would have better matched the scars along his own flesh, sore then with recollections of a familiar pain. Gabban’s smile wavered. The memories flooded back to him, and breached every chamber without his meaning to. He resisted the urge to wince and turn around. This was nothing like having the animal in front of him, snapping its jaws and giving chase. Still, the shock drained all color from his face.

He looked up, searching whether Paukka had noticed his sudden discomfort, or if he could’ve still passed the moment as something else. Something less embarrassing and shameful to his person. The corners of his mouth twitched back to a grin, haphazardly stringing his composure together, all whilst the blonde cursed himself for being so disturbed. There was nothing to fear. Nothing to fear at all! The adrenaline that coursed through him was absurd. Yet the terror nipped at his heels all the same, and with the unnerving persistence of a hound.

“Tell me about this one.”

His fingers slid across the gumless maw (,trembling almost imperceptively). As much as he feared the fine points of its canines, a small part of him admittedly marveled at the linework, impressed by the sheer craftsmanship of the artist. With that in mind, he pressed on, mustering what strength he had to continue what he’d started. Determined to understand Paukka more intimately than ever before.

“I want to know more…”

Celebrating because a three day symposium I was a part of organizing has officially ended! But I am so so so sleepy :') I'm gonna hibernate today and then write throughout the weekend. <3

#.ooc #.delete later

› › › @meadowlarksabove

Paukka sniveled, wrinkled his nose. Sounding like someone bothered by cold, dry air irritating nasal lining. Nonsense. Absolutely crazy. His vision was blurry from lack of sleep and the twyr-addled drug, nothing more. From the bottle of Twyrine he had managed to swallow in one sitting, when his legs had carried him, pliant and untethered, to the Broken Heart in searching for guidance and reason. Nothing more.

It just so happened that the former Kin was not a September child. Not bothered by the change in weather or the rising cold, while September ushered the seasons to change from summer to winter. Not minding the general aptness to wetness or the increased frequency in thunder, which indicated a good crop of grains and fruits the next year.

In September, Twyre was in bloom.

It was dark. Perhaps it was the eerie dusk of the Earth’s awakened magic swallowing the Steppe whole. Perhaps simply night. A bad ending, late and cheated. The scent of blooming Twyre filled his lungs; dizzying. He had no idea how much time had passed; how long he had been walking. Only vaguely felt the wind pull at his clothes and hair, warm and insistent. The breeze guiding him along the path of cobbled stone and under dim streetlamp light, it was the moving of a figure trying to lift something heavy up the few front steps of a building that had him looking up. Taking a moment, until he recognized the man.

At first he thought about turning around and taking another road home. Then he wanted to say something. The gossip about the man's involvement with their physician somehow had Paukka on alert and his sixth sense told him the rumors were not so far from the truth. But what he needed to say, he did not. The words were on the tip of his tongue. Like how he felt about his presence in the Town-on-Gorkhon. Something that should probably never be said out loud under any circumstance.

Paukka rubbed his nose with his forearm, trying to banish that need. Something else surfaced in its stead. The philanthropist inside him. Whether he liked someone or not. It would be wrong to turn away. So he walked on, approaching the young man trying to carry an old, stool-height roll top desk inside the building. An old pharmacist desk, the Townsman recognized, his hands still in his pockets.

„Do you need help with that?“

#.ic #.Gabban #.A door is the mouth ( Pathologic )#ihmissutta

Stone steps led up to the brick and mortar house that now served as his office. Tall, dark and foreboding in the stillness of dawn. Less of a home and more of a warning, the bearing of a predator’s sharp teeth. Surprisingly, Gabban hadn’t been the first to set up shop there. A canine tucked inside the maw of the Knots Quarter, snug between the park and the walkway of the station. The signage on the front had once said grocer across the head of a tan bull. But that was before he’d chipped away the letters, careful to leave the animal unscathed. Inside, he’d found most of the old pharmacist’s furniture intact, if a little neglected by grime and the passage of many seasons. All except a desk which’d sunk and crumpled with mold.

It was fortunate then, that an unfortunate death had led to the purchase of this beautiful antique at an estate sale. The elderly schoolteacher who’d owned it, and who herself must have inherited the thing from a parent in a similar business to his own, must have loved it very dearly. Its mahogany surface shone brilliantly beneath the streetlamps, varnished and fitted with golden filigree, preserved to a point of seeming brand new. Though as wonderful of a find as it was, its great stature and weight posed another problem. How was he supposed to get it up and inside?

Uffa!

Ora chi? He’d wheeled it across town with the aid of a push cart, but that was as far as it seemed to go. Or wanted to go. Obstinate against the mere suggestion of giving way. The blonde ran a hand through his hair, mulling what little options he had. There, in the darkness of the town, there was no one he could call or trust. (Not that he’d trusted many back home, and not after all the bridges he’d managed to burn. Gabban had left nothing behind him but scorched earth.) Carefully, he traced a thumb across the painted detailing on the side of the desk, and drew a line up the curved horn of a bull.

Then he tensed, and felt his chest tighten with terror at the sound of another man, caught unarmed and unaware. “Yes.”

His voice was soft against the breeze, partly conscious of the hour and partly nerve stricken by the other.

“If you could- only if you want…” Gabban held up his hands, placating. The last thing he wanted was to incur another strike against him. He wasn’t ignorant of the rumors, nor was he entirely indifferent to the ways he’d been treated so far. As a stranger, an outsider. He hadn’t expected much of a reception at all, and indeed he’d been given nothing but the barest tolerance all this time. Now– well, now…

“Could you help me carry it up the steps?”

I'm writing rn, and the thought of Gabban exclaiming 'Uffa!' with pure frustration is rocking my world. Mi hombresito italianoooooooooooo

#.ooc #.delete later #.gabban

picture of a dog.

#.my art #.ooc #.gabban #/using new brushes ^^

Ages since I've had time to sketch him :')

#.ooc #.my art #.Gabban

Time was of the essence. Time did fly and time did not wait. You may delay, but time will not. Do not waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.

Festina lente, he would remind his men during campaigns. Hurry slowly. On the one hand, they should not waste time. On the other hand, they should not hurry. It was wise to run only if one learned to walk first. One of the biggest mistakes man could make was accelerating processes without having well-established the foundations. Even any positive eventuality could overload the designed system. Dying of success was just as much a threat if they had not the means to deal with rising demands.

All beginnings were tedious. Yet as time would go by, so does one's ability and what once seemed difficult would be no longer so. Because tomorrow would continue to be a consequence of today, whether or not one learned the lessons life was trying to teach them. Lupercus did not have to wonder what his father thought of all that. Mistakes were made into statement within the Legion. Their growth force-bruted change.

Sum mutatus ego; per me omnia mutabuntur. Demanding change and fearing it at the same time. Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor. I know what is right, I am doing what is wrong anyway. Amor fati. He embrace deverything that happened to him. Both, good and bad. Yesterday was gone. Tomorrow had not yet come. Time, devourer of all things. There they were, trapped in the amber of the moment. There was no why.

Time was of the essence, because they had so little of it to be and to give. There he was, giving up his time and taking it with a greedy hand at the same time, to walk up the path to the heavy iron door trapping anyone within and shielding them from the cold dark of the depths. For a brief moment the young Legate wondered whether the soldier guarding the dungeons had grown wary of his visits yet. Far and spread thin in between as they were, perhaps he was just paranoid enough to catch on to the forbidden hidden away, not only deep down but also within the cavity of his broad chest.

But he was worth it. Every second of risking being found out, Gabban was worth it. It was not an option to take the time he had and could give and hand it to the young devout man on the day of his goddess. To bathe him in the affection and sanctity the Brute's hands were capable of, to wash his lover clean of the sweat and the blood, so they both could celebrate the feast of Lupercalia.

Venus and Mars used to meet in secret too.

There was whistling coming from the other side of the wall. There had to be- No, not a wall, but a pile of debris that’d cut off the rest of the tunnel from its exit. Large chunks of cement crushed beneath the weight of the mountain, pierced through with metal beams, and all of which were obscenely bent out of shape. They appeared to Gabban like the fractured remains of a skeleton smothered between the bloated mounds of its own flesh. The way the blunt and bleeding end of a freshly amputated arm gapes before the ax’s edge. But this wound neither hollered or writhed, only whistled…

The frumentarius pressed an ear against the cold, roughhewn surface of the ruin, leaving red smears wherever his butcher’s apron touched. He was sure to have heard it again. A high pitched, sibillant noise sprung out of the darkness. At first, he’d assumed it was air drifting to and through the cracks of the dead end. (Though the breeze had never been so strong as to make it past the hatch before.) Then he heard it a second time whilst walking from one chamber to the next, gently ringing beyond the reach of his candles.

Gabban closed his eyes, hoping to train his senses onto the source, both curious and disturbed. What had once been a bunker of the old world expanded inside his mind’s eye. Almost monstrously so, as the more he listened, the more he subconsciously likened the silence to a slumbering animal. A shiver ran up his spine at the thought, stricken with visions of wild, snapping jaws lunging for him in a frenzied haze, half remembered and half imagined. How far does it go? How far can it go? Perhaps to the very heart of the canyon, or to the very pits of Tartarus where the divine awaited to judge his putrid soul. Was what he heard a whistle, or the long-drawn-out scream of a throat reduced to tatters? He listened, and listened, and listened, seeming to probe with the pads of his bloodslicked gloves for an answer…Won’t you whistle for me again? Won't you let me hear you?

Then another sound, loud and terrorizing, stiffly rooted him into place. He instantly recognized it as the clambering of heavy doors having opened and shut. A stranger, some warm blooded creature of the surface, had breached the threshold of Caesar’s dungeon (, after so, so long), and willingly steeped themselves in the corpse rot of its rooms. He remained stock still, like a mongrel ready to strike at the slightest threat, all of his muscles drawn and taut as he stared over his shoulder. The light trapped in his eyes was cold at first, then intensely and passionately warm as the figure neared. Relief flooded his body with the arrival of his sun, stripping him bare of the resolve to fight or run away. His love, his altar, a brilliant crimson against the eternal night around them, quickly shut away his thoughts. And even that bodiless sound disappeared from his mind.

“Dominus!” Gabban brightened, though he was still marked by the dark stains of his labor. Carefully, he began to untie the back of his apron and shed his gloves. He wanted nothing more than to touch and relish in his lover's presence, but he’d never dare infect them with the filth of his own disgrace, let alone the disgrace of their prisoners.

“You’re here! I didn't think- I wasn't sure-...” His smile quivered slightly, becoming as fragile as it was deeply earnest. “This– this isn’t a dream is it?”

#.ic #.Gabban #caesaremvehis #/I love that Lupercus gets to see him unwell :)c #/was the whistling real? does Gabban hallucinate from prolonged isolation and being underground for too long? :3 hehe...who knows...

Have been thinking a lot about my previous post and wondering if I should make that a verse…A Gabban without the Legion, who is still so very odd, unregulated and traumatized. But his life being comparably peaceful to how he´s living in his canon verse, of course. Working on what he´s actually passionate about, while struggling with his apprenticeship under the tribe´s main doctor and still confronting the ugly reality of death. The trade off for this nicer verse being that he still doesn't get to meet his mother, because she dies some three years after his birth having never fully recovered from delivering triplets. :'(

#.ooc #.delete later #tw parent death #/and he would still have met the man who gave him his face scars...but that is...unfortunately...a constant

Is it clear what role he would have had within his tribe, if the land had remained untouched by the Legion? Is his affinity to mysticism something he was born with or did it only develop during his time with the Legion?

🌿🌿🌿🌿

If the Legion had never reached the shores of the Great Salt Lake, he would’ve grown up to be the healer of his tribe! Gabban has a natural affinity for medicine that, when nurtured, often leads him to becoming a doctor or a herbalist. (Or a dentist, in the case of his modern verses.) As for his worship, he will ALWAYS find a path to religion. He’s a deeply spiritual person (,and his ocd provides him with ample superstitious and religious delusions to anchor him further into ritual practice). Instead of Venus, he would've taken up his tribe’s nontheistic/animist beliefs and woven them into his medicinal arts.

#.ooc #.Gabban #.inspo #/it's such a shame that even without the Legion he'll still get his scars :')#/also having ocd and suffering spiritual delusions...hell...i would know!!!!

✶ 15 questions to get to know your mutuals better ! answer those applicable, then tag a handful of mutuals to pass it on .

a television series i recently enjoyed is: I don't really like to watch series. Not my preferred viewing experience at all. But if I had to pick- do reruns of Columbo count?(And reruns of Ghost in the Shell: SAC? <3) a meal or food that brings me the most comfort is: Unsure. I'm honestly blanking. :/ songs i've had on repeat lately are: Little Buddha - Toad The Wet Sprocket | Tereketena (live) - Nilusi | God is a circle - Yves Tumor | サイバーバード - Yoko Kanno my favourite go-to hobbies or pastimes are: drawing, gaming, taking pictures of abandoned areas, reading poetry the pets i have at home ( if applicable ) are: a cat! the app on my phone with the most screentime is: youtube for sure. I can't go to sleep without something playing in the bg. something that always gives me heavy nostalgia is: Older Visual Kei bands, specific songs and art styles. my zodiac sign is: Taurus the last book i finished reading was: technically I'm reading a handful of books atm for work/research, but if we're just talking reading for pleasure... it was Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer my chinese zodiac animal is a: Rat my opinions on ghosts & hauntings are: What a strange prompt. There's no way for me to answer without yapping on and on for two paragraphs. So I'll go with 'idk' a few of my all-time favorite films are: Babette's Feast (1987) | Kairo (Pulse) (2001) | Macbeth (1971) | Us (2019) | Annihilation (2018) | The Love Witch (2016), and others but I'm not gonna fit em all :') if i could cast an actor to play myself, it would be: una mangosta i'm currently obsessed with: My ocs (of course), footage of abandoned towns, horror anthologies, noir lighting and uhh, videos of baby penguins :') tagged by: @flameskewer tagging: @malefikant @ch4ined @treerie and whoever else wants to :)

#.ooc #/thank you for the tag!

Often he had wondered what it was, about that photograph, that had captured him the way it had. Days where he consciously reached for it with the need to see the man captured a century ago, when looking at him was like satisfying a type of urge, perhaps even an addiction. Like the need for a smoke or a drink that was strong enough to burn the throat. Like a must, something he just had to do.

Then there were days where he reached for it without knowing, on instinct, until his head turned and his eyes sank to lock with those whose color he had not known until just a few days ago. No less beautiful and no less gentle, reaching a part of his inner self that had not been touched since he has grown. Not like that, at least, not leaving him appeased and consoled when his thoughts were racing and his head was full of the horrors his kind of work had him lie awake at home, at night, when he should be sleeping. They followed him home, the dead. Young and old and torn from life much too soon, no matter their age. From the hands of loved ones and even those that no one missed, ended in vile and violent ways, shot and cut and shredded and burned. The worst were bodies so fucked up they had become unrecognizable.

In his time, Paukka had seen a few drowning cases. The bodies bloated up and filled with gas, with their eyes popped out and the tongue protruding grossly out of their mouth. Skin that had become slimy, threatening to slip off, creating huge flaps of loose skin easily with just a light touch. He did not know what was worse. His first water corpse or walking in on a forensic pathologist sifting through a bag trying to find organs, telling him how sometimes the only thing you could find to resemble a person was a nose or fingers or some such. Only then had he realized that all that was left of a human being was a fleshy mess in a bag.

So the guy had just continued to talk so casually and Paukka had walked in with his hands in his pockets, listening calmly, because he knew that the guy had no one waiting at home either to talk with, waiting for his partner so they could continue their case. That exact day where he thought about it for the first time, on his way home. How desensitized they all were. It was then when guilt had struck and it was ever since then that he took the images back home, before his inner eye, keeping him from eating and from properly sleeping. On those days he reached for it without even being aware, until his gaze beheld the man smiling back at him and every other image faded and the anxious beating of his heart slowed into a more tender rhythm.

How many times had that photo saved him from losing it?From being crushed under the weight of his existence being part of tragedies that altered the entire life of others in the worst possible way? Or the guilt accumulating, with every case they could not close and every soul that did not get closure? Enough times that he was too embarrassed to share it. How unreal was it to now sit beside the same face, be looked at by those same eyes and catch that same smile — now meant for him? How many hours had he wondered what the man in the photo had been like, what he had sounded. What he had liked.

Now they sat together and Paukka looked at Gabban with such softness in his eyes, it almost felt wrong. But it was not wrong. It was his heart reaching out and his existence finally having found its meaning, his soul finally having found its place. He did not have to imagine but could hear it from that same mouth whose lips he had caught himself wondering what they felt like. Revealing to him more images to his inner eye, of the things talked about and the places described. Of Gabban at the beach, being kissed by the sand and the gentle wind and being called to by the calming sway of the waves. The water licking his naked ankles as he walked in. To clear skies above his head and nature blooming wherever he walked, spreading its luscious greens and speck of colour atop it, in different shapes and different smells. Even the calm of night was beautiful when Gabban was in it.

The cold did not reach his skin and his being reached out with invisible hands to intertwine and sing in unison. Of all the things Gabban could have told him he chose such simple things. Simple, yet pure and beautiful. Further cementing the image Paukka had of him. Paukka, who continued to watch him with ardor and listen closely to his voice. Drawn in to the movement of his features (the first time he caught a man with such beautiful lashes), their shape and to how he could die then and there, if only he got to kiss him just this once.

When it was his turn to answer Paukka turned his head with a thoughtful hum that was no more than a low vibration of his voice. „I would like to see your the sea." When Gabban deem it the most beautiful. Surely it was nothing like Helsinki's beaches, who always reminded him more of the shores of Finland's many lakes.

„I like to run to clear my head. When that is not enough, I climb. Without any ropes.Or I bike. Downhill. You know, steep, rough terrain that often features jumps, drops, rock gardens.“ He reached up to briefly gesture with his hand and draw a wavy slope into the air, before it dropped back onto his lap.

„Sauna is great. Which Finn doesn't like Sauna. Especially when you get to drink cold beers.“ He huffed. His attempt at a joke. Then his gaze wandered upwards, looking into the night sky.

„I have an old motorcycle at home I am trying to get running again. Only that whenever I fix one thing, another turns out to be broken.“

#.ic #.Gabban #.always feed the hand that leads to teeth (modern)#ihmissutta #/I love them so much...

Steam billowed along the sides of his face, as with puckered lips he blew to cool his own mug of tea. The trees swayed around them like a host of restless sleepers, creaking and turning, half-roused by the cool touch of moonlight. In turn, the city and its gasoline-addled breath were less apparent there, muddled by the scent of citrus blossoms and murky pond water. A mixture that was neither pleasant or unpleasant, but closer to the truth of the freeborn earth beneath. Gabban stared at the splotches of greenery sprung out from the cracks in the cobblestone. Fennel and mustard greens that would never reach their full scale. Not until the world and all its people were swept away in smoke, like sand chafed off the edge of a cliff. Tiny, fledgeling leaves shivered with the night air, and with nightmare-visions of clippers and scythes which thirsted for their fragile stems, auguring a fate soon and fast approaching. His eyes sank further, pulled from the fretting of little creatures in the reeds and into the darkness of their surroundings. This park, half-neglected and secreted away, was so much like the one from his childhood.

It’d spanned a few miles, pitted in between the houses, before it merged crudely with the nearby forest. A long, winding path that devolved from brick to rank and unseemly mud pools. He'd passed through some of it on his returns from school, meandering through the muck, and often stopping to make note of the wildflowers. In early Spring, he cut violets and spanish vetchlings along his way, only to eat and pick them clean on the furthestmost bench. Then in late Summer, he marvelled at the flowering Sullas jutting from the bushes and wondered if he could ever make them into real honey. Even in the absence of life and color, he spent his autumnal and winter evenings by the treeline, huddled fast in his coat. He would’ve done just about anything to avoid going home. Would’ve much preferred to lose himself to the elements, come wind and rain, than to pass through the threshold of that place. That dark, narrow doorway into perdition. Into his disgrace…

Gabban listened somewhat absently at first, then with more and more fervor. Brightened by the images brought to the very forefront of his mind. He imagined what places Paukka jogged through, what heights he must have climbed without the aid of any ropes. The rocky terrains that grit and bumped against his wheels. He smiled, delighted to have found someone who loved the grand, open air as much as he did. A kindred spirit with a desire to always be moving. Their reasons might have differed, their means branching like divergent paths. But it all came to the same result.

The lamps then reflected off his gaze and shone the full brilliance of his excitement. “What a daredevil!”

Chi surprisa. He would’ve never guessed Paukka to be a thrillseeker. Not for any lack of bravery, as was evident by their being there, having so boldly asked Gabban out in the middle of the night.

“Biking like that sounds dangerous.” His words were teeming with barefaced admiration. Everything about his expression betrayed his curiosity, and fleeting thoughts of whether or not he was eager enough to try the sport himself. Would he have the skills necessary to pull it off? “And absurdly fun!”

Gabban held back a chuckle, which turned then to a warm and good natured hum. Sauna and a cold beer, huh? That was as far as he would go with that thought, cutting himself short before he could imagine Paukka’s skin glistening with sweat, his muscles tensing with the mere motion of sitting and getting back up. How they would look when relaxed– and when not relaxed–the steady heaving of their chest turning ragged...

“Ah, no project is ever truly finished. But that’s part of the joy, no?” He inched a little closer, moving the hand from their forearm to the space between their arm and torso, subtly asking to link arms. “Where do you plan to ride off to once it’s fixed? Where do you dream of going?”