Today's Document
oozey mess
we're not kids anymore.
#extradirty
Love Begins
Cosimo Galluzzi
JVL
if i look back, i am lost
tumblr dot com
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h
occasionally subtle
izzy's playlists!
pixel skylines
Not today Justin
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Three Goblin Art
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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ojovivo
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Spain
seen from Belarus
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Canada
@papetoonvulpine
Sweet, and bitter, the taste of nicotine and recycled air. The dark was split with the burst of flame, brief and bright, outlining the brim of worn sunglasses, and fur bisected by a scar which branched beneath the rim of those dark glasses.
The taste was a relief, and it came with profound guilt.
Just like every night.
acewing:
“Didn’t say that.”
Falco didn’t look at James; not beyond the false hand peeling away at the gauze, gleaming dully in the sun rising overhead. He didn’t want to see his weakness - not today, not ever. Still, his jaw jumped once, twice, although it was quite some time before he bothered to push it to speech.
“It’s just the difference between guys like you and guys like that, ain’t it?” He said quietly, almost begrudgingly, pointlessly pulling a stone out of the sand beside him and chucking it out of the shade into the burning knoll. For some reason Falco thought, with a pang, of Zoness; of lying low behind a warehouse for hours, of skipping stones on the water with –
“If you can pull the trigger just like that – he couldn’t’a meant that much to ya, could he? It can’t be easy.”
“Shouldn’t be.”
There they were again, it was becoming routine for them. Somehow they’d found common ground once again in the rift left by their conjoined stupidity. How odd, or not--perhaps expected--that Falco held his delicate thoughts where none could see. It was safer that way, it was safer to front the air of indifference. No, he’d not said that--but it was easier for James to assume the worst, too. It was just easier to front the smile, those affable pleasantries while seeking the crags in every personality he ran afoul of just as he had as a boy.
It was safer. Better--but it wasn’t true.
James followed brief flash of light that caught the stone’s surface before it was lost to the mire of swirling dunes. The wind was turbulent, and hot, like fire and only tempered by the absolute lack of verdant life to keep the threat of wildfire at bay.
He could smell a storm on those winds.
Falco’s grumbled words were somehow more compelling.
“--Yeah, maybe. Maybe. . . . heh, It’s a hard thing to turn your cheek at.”
That was an understatement. The older vulpine flexed his artificial digits, troubling the thoughts he entertained without a word.
“--but that person I cared about is dead. Both of ‘em. --Only got a few of those now. N’ a man of his word should be just that--punctual. . . What happened to me doesn’t matter, but what happens to FOX does.”
He sighed, and scratched for the frames of his sunglasses, pushing them along his snout as had become standard even now--years later. The smile was not long to follow--that easy going gesture that had encompassed his veneer since his days in the cornerian military.
“--Guess that’s why we got people like you. Gotta have people that talk sense when you’re actin’ like an asshole.”
lupus-rubidus:
He made it hard for her to read him at this point. Most people would start acting more defensive when confronted with such blunt assumptions about their person. But Jim? He was different, despite kind of confirming her thoughts with his behavior. He was in control, even though he didn’t seem hesitant to let go of it. Maybe that was what made him interesting. Maybe there was more.
“Absolutely agree on that part”, she responded and took another sip from her drink. “Some only to a certain extent though. They like having control over the little things, but when it comes to big decisions they surely like to get rid of the responsibility. Cowardly, but understandable. We’re all just trying to survive here.”
She raised a brow and gave him a crooked smile.
“Fine, ya got me. I picked you, because…”
Her eye gazed into her drink.
“You reminded me of someone I looked up to when I was a kid.”
“It’s the job, right? Surviving is part of it--You won’t eat, won’t LIVE if ya can’t. Some would say that stayin’ in control is the same to them. Any variable they can help maintain in their favor is livin’ to them. --But you know that.”
He mirrored her languid movement as he took another sip of his drink, clearing its brim of the freshly refilled bourbon he’d chosen. There was little weight to his answer as he courted her thoughts, stating facts were hardly abstract, and the further she moved from it the levity of their meeting began to settle. She seemed kind, in her way, the rough, brash way that youth could be.
Maybe she was lonely, maybe he was too--so what was two passing lights in the distance meeting for a moment, really? For just a moment? The weight of the bar bowed against his knuckles bowed a touch as he found himself chuckling, and his undamaged hand moistened with the sweat of his shot-glass on his finger-tips.
“Yeah?
Who might that be?”
[//Please tag your drama posts.]
“Your dad was an inspiration to me…”
a request I did for a friend on twitter.
You're a knockout. single?
“You’re funny. Appreciate that, I guess. I’m a little OLD for that kinda mess, don’t ya think?”
[me: im gonna see if i can doodle a few new icons for james also me: does this i gotta stop]
Do you have a voice claim for james?
//I think I’ve answered this before, but I’m happy to do so again because I love thinking about it. I definitely do, and it’s definitely R.J Macready from The Thing
A Broken Bill; Introduction
nxthingbutahoundog:
Fire. Burning. Smoke. The smell of burning flesh and fur. Screams. His screams? He doesn’t know. He can’t see. The cockpit is sealed shut. His legs won’t carry him. Choking. He can’t breathe. He’s going to die. This is the end of the line. His body is numb, blackness engulfing his very being.
Beeping. The smell of rubbing alcohol. Chattering voices. The sound of metal instruments clinking together. One eye opens. Doctors? Hospital. Surgery. He can’t feel them operating anyway. He can’t feel anything. His lips feel parched. Fingers twitch, and instantly a nurse is there to dial up the amount of medication being pumped into his IV. Blackness again.
Quiet. Background noise. Television. One eye opens, scanning his surroundings. He’s alone. It’s late. The TV across from him is on low volume, the voices on the show undecipherable. He’s in a bed. It’s…well, comfortable, he supposes. He’s groggy as all hell. Even the heaviest drag from the tightest joint would never leave him like this. Slowly, he starts to realize that this is where he is. This is now. Not a flashback. How long has it been since…since whatever happened. Must’ve been one hell of a crash. Hopefully his board is okay. He’d have to be more careful next time.
The door opens and a familiar figure enters the room, silhouette barely alight from the glow of one of his vital sign readout monitors. His tail would be wagging if he could feel it. Reaching out a hand, he cracks a half a smile. Or, he thinks he’s reaching out a hand. In reality, there’s nothing past the elbow.
“H-Hey…Fox…you made it.”
@papetoonvulpine
James held a grudging sort of respect for hospitals and their diligent staff despite his evident distaste of them. He hated the sterile walls, the smell of antiseptic thinly masking death, the hushed talk of soldiers or passing citizens and their declining quality of life without the gravity it deserved. He remembered telling Peppy once--perhaps twice, time was funny in how it slowly clouded one’s recollection, that Hospitals were not the place a soldier went to get well. They went there to die.
Wasn’t the first time he’d been made the fool, as his prosthesis reminded him with every cold, aching shift of his limbs that It surely wouldn’t be the last.
It simply wasn’t conducive to progress if one let their best die, right? He knew first hand.
The familiar swig of bitterness came with the thought and languished on the back of his tongue, clung with the smell of burned fur and medical grade alcohol as he continued his careful gait, all the while peering over the brim of his sunglasses at a room-number one of the nurses had etched onto a scrap of paper.
Bill Grey--2114.
Just as his thoughts began to drift to his son, on whether he’d come, whether he’d ALREADY been--whether he should send notification out was when that voice breached the wall of silence, and James (understood, finally) that he’d found that room on his nose alone.
He remembered Bill; Wiry kid with sand in his fur, and a bright smile. Fox would chase him with his toys tucked under his arms, begging for pictures of the worlds beyond the desert he’d grown in. James remembered Bill.
This wasn’t him. Funny, James mused even as he approached, as he smiled a smile only men like him could fabricate, he thought the same each time he caught sight of himself.
James McCloud died that night on Venom, and Bill Grey was--
“Hey, kid,” The older vulpine replied, ignoring the mistake.
“How they treatin’ ya?”
"Smoking IS bad for you."
“Doesn’t have the same annoying gravity when you do it, Vix.”
smoking's bad for you, you know
“Lot of things are bad for you, stranger. Some might say repetition is, too– in that I hate havin’ people repeat themselves to me. That’s also dangerous.
Ya get me?”
acewing:
“‘Course you couldn’t, then.”
He hadn’t even meant to say it, but damn, if he didn’t mean every word. Falco snapped the case shut with more force than he needed to – some sad shake at breaking the melancholy, maybe, while he dragged the back of his wing over his disheveling forehead.
He handed the wrappings to him, too – he was no doctor, and James sure as hell didn’t need one. Leaving the kit at his boot, Falco let himself fall into the gravel, down where he could pull his back up against the face of the stone, pull a knee up for his arm to rest on, and fix his eyes on the horizon.
“'Course you couldn’t shoot ‘em,” he said. “Shit, man – you think that’s embarrassing?”
That--well, that was hardly the response he’d been expecting. James wasn’t sure WHAT he thought might come, if at all--truthfully, he’d not considered the youth’s response to his words, not really. They’d come unbidden, shaken free with the swan-dive he’d taken, and the subsequent confrontation that had followed after. James knew the moment had passed him even as he’d squeezed the trigger, and the tears burned the eye which bore the world in its dingy, unhampered present--and he hated it.
His heart was breaking, and he hated it. Hated that his anger hadn’t been enough to snuff everything he’d once stood for as he thought it might--even in his darkest moments, as those last vestiges of starlight went out (as they should have long ago) James couldn’t find it in his heart to shoot Pigma. Not in his face--not like he deserved.
It was embarrassing, right?
‘Course you couldn’t shoot ‘em.’
When had the gauze made it into his hand? When had Falco dropped it? The senior pilot couldn’t recall, as the sentiment his reluctant companion echoed stole away James’ ability to consider things his idle hands could tend to. If for a moment, anyway.
“Isn’t it? What justice is being served when people like that--
‘Guess we’re alike, huh? We both got nobody. No family, no real friends.’
‘. . . I’m your friend, Pigma’
--are allowed to walk with their shit not settled?”
He rolled the gauze wrap between his artifical fingers, and thought, inviting the welcome spell of silence as he began to unravel it enough to apply against his hastily stitched wound.
“--You telling me you wouldn’t?” Shoot him? Would you? If you were wronged? If someone snared the last bits of light from your life? Would you?
“ . . You wouldn’t shoot em?”
It would be wrong just to shoot him--
Right?
dontcallmestarfox:
Just like how you expect me to?
“It’s war.” Fox’ll correct him, first and foremost. It’s a justification that he’s become terribly comfortable with. Just how Star Fox has become an instrument of warfare as good or dependable as any other.
One new joke making the rounds calls us the ’General’s Fist.’ Fox doesn’t know how he feels about that one yet, but it means they get the job done right.
You’re gonna die, Fox. He knows that– it’s the downtime where his hands won’t get any steadier but it’s that same downtime with the same people all worth dying for. That steadies them just enough.
But smoke doesn’t calm the nerves for him; never has and never will. It’s an excuse to create some distance and round to the other side of his ship under the pretense of his inspection. Even if his eyes never leave them.
“So I’d expect you to keep doin’ your job and do what I tell you, so long as it’s still convenient.”
He gives a hollow laugh. “Or, heh, why the hell else am I runnin’ this thing, right?”
“--There it is.”
It was worth it, right? It had always BEEN worth it. James was never of the mind to keep what others whispered in his back pocket, never pinned them to his lapels, because what those faceless purveyors of misinformation lacked was GRAVITY--because the men James kept in his company were good, what they stood for was greater, and it was worth the stress of shouldering. Once.
“This what all this is about?”
There was something like himself in Fox, and it was the desire to shoulder all the unpleasant things as a leader should, it was written--somewhere, surely--that anyone donning the head of a ship would be doomed to follow it down when it began to take on water. Only this was different--and James knew the moment those short words were cast along the surface of the proverbial waters, a thought left to fester. Bitter, and unsure, and angry, and--
“You’re right, I’m followin’ YOU now, kid. This ain’t my show--it’s you. You have done ALL of this--not me. This has never been about me--”
“Your boy is like you, Jimmy. Just like you. More than ya’d like to admit.”
Sigh.
“. . . told you I would step aside, and I did. I want you to be your own man, always. I’m behind you the whole way--but I want you to BE there, Fox. This IS war, you’re right. We could all die--that’s chance, it’s how it is. Ya plan for it. You prepare-- . . . but you don’t start diggin the ditch before you’ve even start.”
//dadly fist bump
“Sometimes-- It ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
acewing:
It wasn’t the best trade he’d ever made, no; one crafty mech for a throbbing arm, an aching side, and dead nerves in his boots (insulation be damned). But James and his stupid smile could pull that kind of admission off his frozen corpse if he wanted it bad enough; Falco spat into the snow, shoving a stinging wing into his jacket.
“Luck’s got nothing to do with it,” Falco said. “It’s science. Stuff on wheels – forget it down here, man. If I’d been in my damn plane – ”
But he hadn’t been; that was his call, too. With the Sky Claw in the shop since their last scrap, the alternative was sitting out the fight altogether. Better a crash than taking that lying down: rain, shine, or blizzard.
“Whatever. Point is, I had it all figured out,” he said at last; it was harder at a mild limp, but he could make his way to the skid of the wreck where the snow was shallow, stamping powder out of his flight suit. “Now it’s your turn. You send a signal out already, or did you forget about it lookin’ for matches?”
“Yea, it’s always different when ya play it over in your head. ‘If only’, right?”
James understood the line of linking, as that phrase had become something of an old friend to him, occupying the quiet spaces of his mind when all his other means of distraction had all but dried away. Fun. It was a passing thought he set aside as he shifted back on the wrecked contraption, unbothered by the fierce, sharp wind that shot through them both. The ache was always fleeting.
“If you ‘figuring’ shit out is you crashing and burning, then yea. Sure. Ain’t me you gotta convince, it’s Slippy.”
He replied before finally (with his freshly sought lighter) setting his cigarette alight. Its glow, the taste, much like his aches and pains, were fleeting. James took a draw, and his smile split with a fresh plume of tobacco.
“I sent the signal the moment you went down, keep your shirt on. Got maybe thirty minutes ETA--two hours at the latest.”
Neither were ideal. James shrugged.
“--How’s your leg?”
Time to chuckle over a drink. No particular reason. He stifles whatever words he harbors with another sip.
