OC Independent RP blog for Thaddeus Salant, Jonah Gallagher, and Spencer Powell.
NSFW Is likely, and will be tagged appropriately.
FC:Ian Somerhalder, Jared Leto, and Norman Reedus
By sheer dumb luck, Byron single-handedly caught the t-shirt and shorts Jonah tossed his way, almost bringing them to his nose to sniff before he realized what he was about to do. He lowered the bundle of clothes to his chest, bewildered by the compulsion and not entirely sure where it had come from, but he was drunk, which was explanation enough. Jonah smelled pretty good too; he supposed there was no harm in admitting that much to himself. Even over the stench of blood and booze, it had been hard not to notice when Jonah’s shoulder had been wedged under his arm, supporting him from sidewalk to elevator. “I’ll stop, I’ll stop,” he grumbled, returning Jonah’s swat with one of his own, but his depth perception wasn’t what it usually was, so he fell short of his mark. “Please, I don’t think I can take any more flattery,” he joked, knowing Jonah had a point. Kicking the door shut, without bothering to check and see if it had closed the whole way, Byron stripped off his shirt and helplessly prodded his face in the mirror some more, grimacing at his pitiful reflection. At length, he leaned over the bathtub and ran the water, letting it get nice and hot before stepping under the spray of the shower. It felt good to wash the grit and grime off his skin, the blood out of his hair. He didn’t know how long he stayed in, but he didn’t pass out or fall down, so he was pretty proud of himself by the time he toweled off and dressed in Jonah’s clothes. This time, he let himself smell the collar of the shirt, closing his eyes and trying to distinguish the individual scents there. Mostly, he was getting a whole lot of laundry detergent, but there was something else there too, he thought, a unique scent that belonged entirely to his savior.
While Byron showered, Jonah took the time to pick away at the strings, sitting with one ankle on the other knee, stopping after a few notes to scribble them down carefully on the paper, humming along carefully to get the sound right before he started adding lyrics, whispering them to himself until he heard the shower shut off, the water in the pipes coming to a halt and shuddering in the old building. Not that he didnt want Byron hearing him singing or playing, he just figured being as intoxicated, or partially intoxicated as he was, he'd want to rest rather than be bothered with the twang of an acoustic. He waited until he came out a few moments later, unaware that he'd just been sniffing his clothes, and smiled at him some, "Look, there is a human under neath that bloody mess. Your face looks like shite, thought I'd let you know." He joked though, shrugging and pushing the covers back and sliding over on the bed until he was on the far side, "Lay down before you fall down."
Byron appreciated Jonah’s sympathies, but he didn’t need them. It didn’t occur to him that maybe the opposite was true, that what he really needed, more than the distraction of the bottle and picking fights he couldn’t win, was someone who’d been through what he had, someone who understood, someone he could talk to about all of it. Because the truth was, Byron never brought it up, and he was determined to make it stay that way. He’d only ever talked about it in the days after the fire, questioned by a pair of indifferent policemen while he still lay in his hospital bed, his arms bandaged and burned, his throat raw from smoke inhalation, his voice little more than a cracked, hoarse whisper, a pale shadow of itself. That was the only time he’d spoken of it… until now. Clearing his throat, he shrugged and pushed himself out of the chair, staggering over to the bathroom door and catching himself on the jamb. He looked at Jonah out of the corner of his eye, an unreadable expression on his face before it yielded to mild amusement, a soft huff of laughter. “Fair enough. I don’t date though, so you’re out of luck there. Guess that means I’d better clean myself up, spare your sheets the shame and all.” Dating. It had been easy once upon a time, but he didn’t think he remembered how to anymore. Besides, who would want to date him in the state he was in? He was damaged goods, broken beyond repair. It wouldn’t have mattered even if he was interested in someone. There had been no one for the past two years. He hadn’t even been tempted. A thought tried to force its way to the surface, curious and forbidden, but it dissolved into nothingness before he could grasp it. Regardless, it was probably for the best that he didn’t do a lot of thinking right now. “Thanks, by the way. I don’t think I said that yet.” He exhaled heavily, a faint groan escaping his lips as he tenderly prodded the giant bruise he called a face.
"Lucky for you, I don't date either." Jonah gave him a lopsided grin before watching him, flicking his long dark hair from his face. Not that he wouldn't date, it was just no one had caught his attention for longer than half a second since his girlfriend passed away, until now. With a furrowed brow, he wondered what the hell that thought meant, before shoving it away to the back of his mind. Clearly he was drunken off of the fumes coming from his friend. Tossing the clothes at Byron, he shrugged, "Towels under the sink, washrags right there. Don't worry 'bout it, lad, I'd hope someone would do the same for me should my face look like road pizza. Stop poking it." He swatted at his hand as he pushed the clothes into his chest, "Go shower. You smell something awful, like sewer, blood, and alcohol, and it's not becoming of you." Of course, he was joking, before padding away, going back to his guitar that he'd set down when they made it in, pulling it out of the soft case and kicking a piece of stray composers music across the floor, dragging it to the edge of the bed to pick it up and set it down on the bed beside him, picking away slowly at the strings, humming for a moment.
Jonah’s answer sobered him up for a moment, but just a moment. “Well, shit.” He didn’t boggle at him wide-eyed, only blinked in mild surprise. Byron hadn’t expected to have that in common with the Irishman, but maybe that was what kept drawing them together in haphazard, casual ways: maybe on some level they could sense the tragedy in each other. More likely it was just coincidence, but his writer’s mind couldn’t help but want to put a more fantastical spin on it. The problem was, reality was never as magical as he wanted it to be, and that was one of the reasons why he wrote. He could make the life he wanted for himself on paper. All the things he couldn’t have in this world were within easy reach in the realm of fiction. “Me too, actually. Whaddya know.” Normally he wouldn’t have been telling him this, wouldn’t have even hinted at it if he could help it, but liquor made for loose lips. It didn’t help that Byron was a fairly blunt person to begin with. Like Jonah, when he did open up, he wasn’t one to beat around the bush or sugarcoat harsh truths. “Only difference is I had one of each. Not exactly conventional, I know, but it worked for us. Doesn’t matter now, since they’re both dead.” He shrugged it off with a nonchalant smile, running his tongue over his swollen lower lip, not wanting to say anymore about it when it was what he’d been running from all night. “I can’t take your bed. Where are you going to sleep?” He had to admit to himself that that bed did look mighty cozy right about now. Distantly aware of the dried blood on his face, flaky in spots and unpleasantly sticky in others—he dreaded looking at himself in the mirror—a shower didn’t sound half bad either.
"Condolences.." Jonah murmured as Byron admitted that his lovers too were gone. He didn't like to dwell on such facts, to be quite honest, because she was gone, his lovers were gone and no amount of moping or pleading with the universe would bring them back. All he had to hope for was that his transgressions wouldn't condemn him to an eternity just outside of her grasp. He wasn't a believer of religions, though his family was Catholic, grew up going to mass at the ass crack of dawn praying to a god he didn't believe in, and watching his father be a hypocrite, trying to portray the doting father when really the only thing he'd ever even Jonah was the scars on his back and an irrational fear of the dark and his dreams. Dad of the year material. But maybe he was wrong, and there'd come a time when he'd feel her slender arms wrapping around his waist again, and the warmth of her breath upon his neck as she slept. He didn't get his hopes up though. "Like hell you can't take my bed.." he laughed softly and shrugged, "There's room for two, I am not shamed to sleep beside someone. Besides, I don't sleep much anyway." He shrugged, and nodded, "Go get a shower though, you arent fucking up my sheets with blood...you haven't even asked me out on a date yet, you think I'm going to let you soil my bedclothes?" He teased, standing up and going to his dresser to pick out a pair of shorts and a t shirt to get Byron through the night in.
Send me “black Bird” and I will give you a darker memory from my muse’s past
*Trigger Warning* IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED BY ABUSE OF ALL KINDS, VERBAL, PHYSICAL, SEXUAL, DO. NOT. READ. You have all been warned, and if any of you whine and say I’m a foul person for this, well then you need to look for that magical unfollow button. I do not condone such behavior that is implied in this drabble, however, it is apart of my character’s past, and it is part of what defines him to this day. You Have Been Warned.
He could still hear them down the stairs at five til ten, pillows stacked around his head as if to try and drown out the sound of his racing mind, and the clatter of plates downstairs. ”He’s done it again you know, what will they think of us, raising such a petulant little boy? A demon, I tell you Marcus. He’s vile! What does that say about me, having given birth to such a monster?" He knew who they were talking about, their voices wafting up the stairs and into the crack of his bedroom door, a spoon falling into the stainless steel sink. "It is not your fault, Risa, dear. You were lost, we were both lost but we’ve found our salvation. All we can do is try and save the boy, and if all else fails, we will rid him of his demons in the only way we know that is successful. Brother Rem’s son was cured of his demons! Perhaps we can save Thaddeus as well " Thad wanted to scoff at those words, but he knew better…knew that if he made a sound that it would only be worst. But the truth was, no matter what he did up here, it would always be worse. He could be sleeping at present, and his father would still come up those stairs once their late dinner was finished, wrench him from the bed to serve out his punishment. Today was worst, however, having been sent to bed without any semblance of dinner or food and water since his 3 pm snack of a banana and half a glass of water. Quietly, he slid out of bed, barefeet resting on the carpet of his bedroom floor for a moment before he stood up and padded ever so quietly towards his bookshelf. He didn’t understand what he’d done wrong, or how he’d betrayed a God that was supposed to love him as if he were his own child…but the way his family worked, maybe this was the love he was meant to have. He must have done something to deserve this, though he couldn’t wrap his small ten year old mind around it. What had he done that was so wrong, so vile that the bruises on his wrists and ankles never healed, that his teachers down in the school room looked upon him with disgust? Why did he have to watch from the window while the other children played freeze tag out in the yard, and he had to copy lines of scripture detailing about salvation and damnation. No one had faith in him, clearly. He was damned, and knew that. Whatever he’d done in heaven or hell before he made it to this place on earth…he deserved this. Why was it so wrong to want to draw? To paint the beauty of the world around him, to express his thoughts with pen to paper. Why was it wrong to read something other than the bible? Crouching carefully, he reached behind his devotional books, and grabbed up a dusty copy of Robin Hood that he’d managed to swipe, if only barely, on their last trip into town.
Thad often lost himself in the pages of his books, the books he wasn’t allowed to have, living lives that would never be his, the freedoms he longed for. Between these pages, he could be Robin Hood or Little John, fearsome bandits stealing from the privileged and giving to those in need. He could be Long John Silver, a feared pirate on the open blue seas. He was not Thaddeus Salant, a boy made to believe he was damned to hell regardless of what he’d done. His eye caught the purple bruise on his wrist, though by now he was used to the adornment, as it never seemed to have the time to fade to the sickly green and yellow color as the blood broke down beneath the surface of his skin. His hand pushed the collection of dust from the cover, flipping the page open as he leaned back against the bookshelf, believing he had time to read a few pages before he had to hide it away again when his father came up the stairs to collect him. Eyes as blue as the caribbean sea followed the words across the page, soaking them in as if they were the word of God himself, though that was blasphemous and he knew that thought would only damn him more, likely putting him in the darkest circle of hell where even Dante himself couldn’t locate him on his path for Beatrice. Three pages in, he’d tuned the arguing out from downstairs, which was a shame, considering he’d have heard his mother confessing his crimes to his father, enraging him more. ”I told you Marcus, repentance isn’t working! His punishment is only driving him further into damnation! Brother Paul confessed that he’d caught him drawing again, that he’d gotten a notebook from someone and had hidden it behind the shelves in the classroom! He’s not been reading his scriptures and he is in constant rebellion, questioning why they’re not allowed to read other books. He’s done his best to take care of the situation himself, but today he found him using stolen watercolors and brushes from the stained glass projects the other children have been working on, and painting with them." To anyone outside of the compound, outside of their "church", this, by all means was not a punishable offense, but inside the walls of the campus they lived on…there was a code. Girls must have their hair in the braid down their back at all times. Neutral colors. Women were not allowed to speak their minds on church matters. The children were on a regulated diet, and there was to be no outside influences allowed through the walls. This included artistic creativity, reading materials that were not approved first by the council, no music except what came from the church choir for worship. Punishment was dealt with and executed by Father Marcus, the pastor, and Thaddeus’ father, and the Deacons, which consisted of seven men in total. If anyone were to interfere with the punishment process, they too, shall be punished to the same degree as the trouble maker, if not more so. Thad learned early on that interrupting was bad for his health, having left the bright blue eyed six year old with a large welp from a lash to the face after he tried to intervene when the girl he had a school yard crush on was being punished for stealing a bite of Brother Rem’s cookie. Had Thad been listening to his parents’ conversation, he might have heard as Marcus spoke to Risa. He may have heard the harsh footsteps coming up the stairs, rather than being lost in the Sherwood Forest, running with Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men.. "WHAT IS THIS?!" Caught. And he knew it. Thad threw the book down quickly, as if it’d burned his hands, trying his best to shove it behind his devotional books but it was too late. "Your mother was right…you are the devil incarnate. This is FILTH. Trash that will ruin your mind, and you sit here under my roof and read this. HOW Did you get this, Hmn? Did someone give it to you? Did you steal it? You stole it didn’t you? So I am also harboring a thief now am I? Get up. GET UP NOW" Thad scrambled to his feet, only to be wrenched roughly up by the hand of his father underneat his arm, nearly dislocating his shoulder as he roughly brought him to his feet. "Tell the truth…" Marcus said, with fire in his voice, and Thad knew that if he lied it would only be worse.
"Yes." He murmured softly, looking away from his father and back at him as he tried to get away. "I’m calling Brother Damien as well as Brother Rem. This must stop tonight, and clearly my punishment is not enough. Perhaps Brother Damien or Brother Rem can get through to you. Get past the demons in your blackened heart…Come here boy..” Thad stepped forward tentatively, feeling his father’s strong hand wrapping around his arm again, nearly dragging him down the stairs and shoving him into the fridge to stand. ”Face your mother, tell her what you’ve done." Before Thad could open his mouth, his father produced the book, tossing it on the kitchen table so hard it made Thad flinch, standing there with tears in his eyes, looking down. "Not only did I catch him reading this blasphemous material, he was stowing it away, who knows what else is behind his devotionals! And to top it off, he is a THIEF. Call Brothers Rem and Damien. I will be in need of their assistance, immediately. To the chapel. NOW RISA”
Without another warning, his father gripped him up under his arm, and wrenched him out into the cold night air, fingers like a vice on his small arm. "Clearly beating it out of you isn’t doing the job. Have no fear, we will straighten you out before its all over with, Brothers Rem and Damien, and myself….we will get through to you." The trek across the damp grass didn’t take long, though his feet were scraped by the time they made it through the doors of the chapel, mostly from trying to keep up with his father’s long strides, across the gravel roads that crisscrossed the compound. Flashlights across the way told him Brother Rem and Damien were already on their way, having left their families to serve punishment to the preacher’s demonic child. What had he done wrong? "Stop your crying, you know good and well this is what you deserve" his father growled at him, leading him to the back of the church, down a set of stairs. He’d been here nearly ever week since he was eight, taking the beatings like a man, to the point where he’d discovered coping mechanisms to help block out the pain. It was during those moments that he lost himself in the dark Sherwood Forest, protected by Robin Hood who would never let the youngest of his Merry Men being treated this way. But tonight was different than all those nights, he could feel it in the air, in how his father threw him onto the hard floor, telling him to get out of his clothes. That’d happened before, he’d suffered whippings across his bare skin before, those were more painful. But what his father…what brothers Damien and rem did to him that night….leather straps leaving bruises across his wrists, what started out as a brutal beating turned into something so much worse, and as he lay there, helpless, knowing his cries for his daddy were lost on deaf ears, staring up at a picture of the man who was supposed to love him so much…God…he knew heaven was out of reach..and hell was engulfing him, burning him alive. There was no salvation..and he knew there was no coming back. That was the night it all changed for him, the punishments only getting exceedingly worst, driving his mind into a darker place, trying to protect himself from the pain of the world around him. Hope was just a figment of his imagination…
Byron’s own apartment was littered with similar sheets of paper, but they weren’t covered in music, just words: words that no one but himself ever read, words that were ultimately irrelevant, but he still needed them somehow. He had nothing else, no one else. Jonah was barely an acquaintance and he wasn’t about to spill his life story to the guy; he wouldn’t want to hear it anyway. These days, everyone had too much of their own shit to wade through to pretend to care about anyone else’s. It was an every man for himself situation. Byron couldn’t bring himself to be bothered about it, at least not right now. The bourbon had done him a favor that way. He didn’t care about anything, couldn’t feel anything. The alternative was to feel everything, which he knew from experience was far worse. Booze was a bad habit, but it was the only way he could turn it all off. If he didn’t he’d be overwhelmed, crippled with remembering what he’d lost. Two years ago he’d had everything, now he had nothing. Byron grimaced like he was smelling something awful, his furrowed brow and scrunched nose telling Jonah exactly what he thought of his job. “It’s a shit gig anyway. Wouldn’t care if I did. Work like that’s not hard to find.” His eyes tracked Jonah’s movements until he crouched down in front of him, then closed when he grasped his chin. The touch steadied him unexpectedly, making it easier not to sway in his seat, but he gripped the sides of the chair anyway. The peroxide stung a little, but all that happened was a muscle in his jaw jumped and his eyelids twitched. “So you don’t have a roommate or anything? No, um, girlfriend? Boyfriend? Both?” He laughed bitterly at his own inside joke, because unbeknownst to Jonah, he’d had both. But that was before. If he’d been sober, he wouldn’t have had to ask, able to put two and two together based on the size of the place, but details weren’t his strong suit right now.
Jonah wasn't bound to spill his life story either, but then again, he was never one to beat around the bush. So when Byron questioned his roommate situation, Jonah just shrugged for a moment, moving to the balls of his feet carefully to grab up some steri strips from the kit and start stripping the gash at his eye. "No boyfriends lately, girlfriend.." Murdered . "passed on few years back." And I havent had a relationship since. He wanted to say, but kept his mouth shut, crystalline blues running along Byron's jaw to patch up whatever gashes he could. "I think you'll survive it, if only by the hair on your chinny chin chin." He joked a bit, standing up, knees popping as he did so, turning to look at him. "See that bed over there?" He pointed to the disheveled hunter green and white sheets, "Thats where you're going after you get a shower. And If you protest, I'll throw you in the shower myself, no way you're going back out on the streets like that. Don't care what's goin' on in your head. You're skinny enough to maybe fit in my clothes."
It lightened Byron’s heart some to think of Jonah dropping by the shop on Monday morning. The beginning of a new week was always rough, especially when he spent all of Sunday night tossing and turning and trying not to drink himself to sleep like he usually did. His attempts to abstain very rarely worked, and then he got to open the store hungover and bleary-eyed, which wasn’t much better than the alternative. But sometimes that was the only way he could sleep, with a bottle of liquor on the pillow beside him, because it was the only thing that could keep the nightmares at bay, that spared him the misery of waking up screaming or with tears streaming down his cheeks. The scars on his forearms burned with the memory of flames beneath the sleeves of his thin black sweater, and he hugged the one that Jonah wasn’t currently holding to his stomach, something he didn’t even notice he did anymore. It was habit to wrap his arms around his middle, as if not doing so meant that all the hurt he held inside would come spilling out along with his guts. “If I’d known you were playing I would’ve come,” he mumbled. “I’ll give you a discount on smokes on Monday to make up for the tip I didn’t get to give you tonight.” Byron didn’t care about the state of Jonah’s apartment because his wasn’t any better. Barely gazing around, he sank into the offered chair with a rattling sigh. “Thanks. And sorry for the disruption. I know the last thing you probably want to be doing right now is taking care of a drunk.” Byron didn’t make many apologies or express gratitude often, because he didn’t see that he had much to feel sorry about or be grateful for, but when he did, it was always sincere.
"Yeah, well you'd have been sorely disappointed if you showed up. Got sent home early, considering there wasn't a crowd. I thought of goin' down to another place, seein' if they'd let me in the play, but this is more important. I can make do.." He gave a light hearted smile, shoving his long hair out of his face as he kicked off his well worn out converses, toeing them towards the door to tip toe around the scattered sheets of music, treating them as if they were precious gems, and in a way they were. It was his life's story on the floor if anyone looked hard enough, though he didn't anticipate anyone to ever care. "Don't worry bout the smokes Monday, I'd hate for you to get into trouble at the shop for knocking a bit of money off of the price. It's not big deal.." He murmured, disappearing into the bathroom to snatch up the first aid box he kept, rifling through it for the bottle of peroxide and some gauze, padding quietly, and crouching back down in front of Byron. "Sit still, mate, might sting a'lil." He murmured, taking Byron's chin in his grip and dumping the peroxide on a fresh piece of gauze and dabbing it over the gash above his eye. "Rather be takin' care o' a drunk than sittin' up here by myself."
