#ephemeralblast

[kichonahana]

                                    { @ephemeral-blast gets a thing bc of reasons }

               “Dei-nii, look!”

          She’s hanging upside down from tree that she’s managed to climb up fairly high in. She wanted to impress the missing-nin. Clearly this is the best way. 

[wrathsheir]

            @ephemeral-blast

College is an exhausting thing. Even more so when it’s not what he wishes to pursue. Unfortunately, as an Uchiha heir, he has little choice. ‘Come to the party, little brother. Relax some.’ Itachi had insisted, and though the younger is less likely to enjoy such an event, he goes anyway. 

Most of the people here are Itachis friends. He’s met a few of them, but not all. It’s the blonde that’s got his attention tonight. He’s loud, and why is that? Eyes narrow as a sigh passes between parted lips, fingers massaging the stretch of his own forehead as he watches the other. 

“Why is it the blondes are always the loudest?” 

[desertgourd]

@ephemeral-blast​

  Gaara stood at the gate between a suited man and a young woman carting a toddler on her hip. The man, all broad shoulders and sunglasses, carried an embossed name placard; the mother, a bouquet of flowers and a diaper bag. All Gaara had with him was a backpack containing a toothbrush and a chili sandwich from Subway (Deidara’s request) and a half-eaten bar of chocolate (Gaara’s).

  People poured through the gate like ants. To his left, an equally-impeccably dressed businessman met and disappeared onto the escalator with his greeter; to his right, a father reunited with his wife and child. Gaara double- and triple-checked the flight itinerary and circled the exit doors once. He tugged at the ends of his long shirtsleeves; despite the lateness of the season it was not yet cold enough for a sweatshirt, but Gaara had not worn it for warmth.

  Then, suddenly: Deidara, emerging from the gate with hair the color of dry wheat flowing behind him, his posture heavy from the seventeen-hour trip, looking exactly nothing and everything like the terrible morning they had last seen each other nearly two years before. Gaara pushed through the crowd gathering for a neighboring flight with a burst of superhuman energy. He narrowly dodged a fleet of motorized carts and lost him briefly in the chaos. A moment later they locked eyes, nothing standing between them but mustard-yellow linoleum.

  Instincts demanded he run to him, but his feet and lungs were ice. It was all he could do to force a sole step forward and half-raise his hand in a measured but uneasy greeting.

  You’re here.

[desertgourd]

If you think Deidara isn’t going to use this as an excuse to hang mistletoes all over the apartment, you’d be wrong. So wrong. They’re /everywhere/. Pucker up!

  They made out in Deidara’s miniature foyer. They made out on his couch. In his bathroom. In the kitchen, leaving Gaara to scramble for purchase as Deidara pressed his back against the silky faux-granite countertop.

  They’d kissed in all these places before Deidara drowned the place in mistletoe, of course, but neither of them minded the extra incentive. With the curtainless floor-to-ceiling windows on one of the busiest streets in Brooklyn, Gaara wondered if anyone spied them from below, wondered if they envied the two young men and their swiftly rekindled relationship, the passion consuming them like a virus ever since their awkward reunion in the airport and the torrid night that followed. He discovered he didn’t mind the thought of that. Not at all.

  “You know,” Gaara muttered late on the evening of the twenty-fourth, his breath hot on his partner’s cheek. He pushed aside a clump of twiggy leaves dangling from the bedroom threshold inches above Deidara’s head. “Neither of us even celebrate Christmas.”

[desertgourd]

It's Valentine's Day in eight minutes. That gives Deidara plenty of time to finish painting the terracotta pot of some sort of succulent that looked pretty and unlike any other littering the apartment. Paint covers his fingers and sticks under his nails in a sea of pinks, blues, and yellows, but the end result - a custom pot, just for Gaara - is worth it.

  Gaara notices the little things first.

  He notices pop hits on the radio. Over the course of his time with Deidara the banal, meaningless drivel, nothing but auto-tuned lyrics marketed for the clueless masses, begins to seep into his long drives with lovestruck insidiousness until he knows enough of the lyrics to cringe after the first few decadent chords.

  He notices as he settles on the couch for movie night, nestled against Deidara’s chest with a blanket drawn over them both, and is able to recognize the dizzy, tingling sensation in the pit of his stomach as something other than nausea.

  He notices, as the train jostles him against hundreds of sweaty and smelly bodies on his commute home from work, how his desire for a high is nearly matched by his desire for that sharp tongue and golden hair and fingers flecked with clay, where the very concept of home had ceased to be define by four shrinking walls in his brother’s cramped Queens apartment and had instead become a living, breathing person.

  He notices, and he begins to imagine, in his dreams, in the periphery of his vision, a world beyond the bus schedule or texts from his dealer and into the next weeks and next months, into not merely a reluctantly inevitable future, but a better one, one shaped concretely by his own hands instead of letting himself fall into the fog of time that had swallowed more regrettable years than he could count.

  He knows what it means, he realizes, late one night with his partner’s breath catching the curve of his ear, with a cold foot stroking the back of his calf in an act more intimate than any sex he’s ever had. Knows it and shoves it deep into the recesses of his mind, where it festers like the corpse of a rat rotting in the wall on a hot summer’s day. It does not fade there and it does not wither. His subconscious acts as a fertilizer and with every beat of his heart the it, the unnameable, thrives with an incessant need he did not know he possessed. As the holiday of romance and sweets rears its head for the third time since these young men first met Gaara greets it with greater disdain than ever before, like one might regard an acquaintance after a difficult disagreement.

  On the day itself he examines the pot with a keen eye and the soft smile to which only Deidara is privy - barely there, hidden, as though he expects to bring trouble simply for simply experiencing the affection that roots it. The bold streaks of the brush and the the bright, eclectic colors are everything Gaara is not, and for this reason he finds himself afraid to let it slip from his grasp, even simply to set it down.

  “I didn’t get anything for you.” The same rare hesitance emerges again as he struggles to unwind his thoughts into a single, untangled thread, struggles still to force them out, treading a minefield of new territory. “But there’s somewhere I want to take you. On the first week of March, when you’re on break.”

[desertgourd]

  For @ephemeral-blast, because while you write cute and fluffy things, I do this.

  Hey.

  At first he thought nothing of it. Milling the streets of Brooklyn on a late Friday night, accidental eavesdropping was unavoidable.

  Hey princess.

  Gaara’s steps stilled. Deidara froze just behind him. The voice belonged to a stranger but the tone was too familiar; it was the tone they heard when they left certain bars or entered certain shops, or even while daring to walk down the street a hair too close, a touch too friendly. It was a loud voice. Taunting. A barbed wire threat lurked beneath it, strengthened by the shroud of dead and darkened streetlights on a desolate side street. It echoed out again from the shadows, crooning - Hey princess, you hear me?

  Gaara murmured something low - keep walking, we’re three blocks away, it’s nearly midnight - but Deidara had already turned on his heel. He followed suit and came head to head with two punks not five paces behind them, with wide stances and a saunter like something out of a midcentury western. One was tall and lanky; the other shorter and built like a U-haul. The fat one swaggered forward with a loose smirk. His face was slack with inebriation but his words were crystal clear, as were the two middle fingers he shot up proudly in their direction.

  Can’t read the sign? No fags allowed. His friend laughed, high and weaselly.

  Beside him, Deidara’s hands twitched into fists. Gaara lay a tense palm over them instinctively, but the attempt to soothe him was fruitless. In the old days their spats exploded with screams and stomping feet and arms that gestured like hot pistons. Now Deidara’s face glowed with a still, quiet sort of fury, the simmer of Rome’s fiercest volcano before it drowned Pompeii in a cataclysm of lava and ash, and the likes of which Gaara had never seen. His lips had twisted crudely, his eyes glinting like hard diamonds. Breath shot from his nose in short, bullish puffs.

  Whatcha gonna do, fight? Gonna mess up your makeup? Hey China, you even speak English?

  Gaara nudged Deidara and again failed to force him along. Let’s go, he urged. There was nothing good for them here. Seeing his target’s cold indifference, the kid switched tactics, wavering on his feet as he took another step forward.

  Blondie’s ready to fight. Fucking faggot. Lookit his hair. You wanna be a girl? I’ll show you how, fucking cocksucker, wanna take my -  

  The world whited around its edges as Gaara lunged forward.

  He was neither a fast fighter nor a strong one, but he had the element of surprise on his side and the shorter teen fell flat on the ground with a thump, Gaara straddling his hips with his knees. His fist slammed into the kid’s cheek with a solid crack. The second punch connected with his jaw. Gaara’s other hand gripped him by the throat, crushing him with his weight. Distantly he recognized the sound of teeth shattering against his knuckles. Hands slapped feebly at his sides until they slowed and ceased. Gaara’s eyes had glazed over into something furious and inhuman, and if he was at all aware of the strangled pleas he showed no notice, not even as they dissolved into incoherent grunts, which, too, soon gave way to a more ominous silence. His blows rained down.

  A second or an eternity later something wrenched Gaara backwards by the shoulders with startling strength. He landed half on Deidara’s thighs and half on the pavement, where Deidara crouched on his knees, one arm locked around his chest, the other hand grasping his wrist. He spasmed wildly against the hold, his partner’s words reaching him from another realm (that’s enough, Jesus, you’re going to kill him). His face ripped through a primal and unmodulated spectrum of hunger and excitement and arousal. Only when his adrenaline faded, leaving him with heavy limbs and bile churning his stomach, did Deidara loosen his grip.

  Gaara sagged in his boyfriend’s arms, chest heaving. His heart drummed in his throat. A consciousness he had not realized he’d lost trickled back to him. He was dimly aware of the lanky one helping his semi-conscious friend to his feet, and when he blinked, they had disappeared down an alley.

  Gaara’s breath evened in the cool winter breeze. A young woman walking her dog took one look at the pair crouched on the sidewalk and scurried across the road. At some point he rose to his feet. Flecks of blood stained his face, his neck. His shirt and hands dripped with the stuff. He wet his lips with a swipe of his tongue; his mouth had gone tacky and dry. 

  “I didn’t like what they said about you.” He realized after the fact that the words had come from his own mouth, and they sounded detached and foreign to his ears. When he walked it was with a slight limp; his jeans had ripped in the knee where he had collided with the ground, and crimson beads blossomed beneath the fabric. He staggered down the sidewalk toward their original route in a masquerade of a straight line; whether he assumed Deidara would follow or whether his very presence was simply beyond his comprehension was unclear. “I didn’t like it.”

[desertgourd]

“I can’t figure you out.”

Mad men starters

  The lunch rush in Sakura’s cafe came and went. The chaos of children on winter break and drones bustling about between meetings dwindled to little more than white noise. The two young men in the far corner booth withstood the commotion tersely, but Gaara’s tea had long cooled, and he had pushed aside his slice of blueberry pie after a single lackluster bite. 

  Deep down, Gaara understood. Deidara spent every conversation tiptoeing around the landmines left by his boyfriend’s past. Hot one day, cold the next. A gentle touch turned bruising with one misplaced word. A temper the width of a split hair and explosive as a hand grenade. No wonder Deidara had left him, his mind concluded scathingly, conveniently ignoring the completely unrelated reason he’d jumped ship and taken off to Europe for the better part of two years. Who wouldn’t leave? He was broken.

  Gaara’s skin prickled. His face was unreadable. Everything about his body language - his crossed arms, his white knuckles, the almost listless gaze that wavered inches above Deidara’s left ear - screamed a need for isolation. Yet he was here. He had not walked away, even if the Gaara that sat before his partner was a dark and shut-off version of the person Deidara had come to care for so deeply. Had come to .. love.

  “I don’t expect you to. You would never understand.” The words fell from his mouth like shards of glass. “I’m going to hurt you. I’m always going to hurt you. I can’t give to you what you give to me. I don’t know how.” 

  Gaara did not chatter idly. He wielded his language like a weapon. Here, he did not attempt showmanship or a battle of one-ups; he was stating the truth, as plainly as he could, and as honestly as he could tell it.

  “ … If you stay, you have to know that.”

[desertgourd]

“I am not losing you again!”

old meme

  Gaara knew something had gone wrong the moment he stepped across the threshold of Deidara’s apartment to find him waiting at the kitchen table, arms locked across his chest, his face pinched so tight Gaara thought it might crack in two.

  He’d had enough, Deidara said. The late nights with no calls. The last-minute cancelled dates, no explanation given. The waxy pallor creeping across Gaara’s skin, the bags beneath his eyes heavy enough to trip over. Deidara had seen this side of him before, back when their budding affair shared a backseat with everything else in Gaara’s life while his addiction manned the wheel in full force. He knew now, Deidara said with such grating intensity Gaara nearly stepped back from the sheer force of it, that something was up again, and neither of them were moving an inch until they came to the bottom of it, goddammit. He had had enough. He was not losing Gaara again.

  “You aren’t going to lose me!”

  Fire raged beneath their words, and Gaara’s posture twisted in turn. Nothing’s wrong, he insisted against deaf ears, and when Deidara saw right through him, It isn’t what you think. I am not how I used to be. Trust me. Please.

  The more Deidara pressed the more he thrust up his walls and withdrew into himself, certain that the moment he admitted he had a problem, admitted anything was wrong at all, even if it was not what Deidara assumed, Deidara would snuff out everything they had built together like he did the butts of his cigarettes: Use it up, spit it out, grind it into the dirt. Move on.

  Deidara isn’t like that anymore, he told himself, even as his partner fidgeted in a way Gaara knew meant that he was ready to speed right out that door if he didn’t hear what he needed to, and fast. Deidara won’t just leave anymore. He’s changed.

  The thought hit him like a ton of bricks, cutting him off mid-plea: If Deidara had changed, Gaara must show that he had, too. He needed to trust Deidara with more of himself than he had given before. Even the vulnerable parts. Even the parts that hurt.

  Gaara jerked his backpack off his shoulders and let it fall to the kitchen table. He thrust his hand into the smaller pouch and fished out a thin, shiny box the size of a pack of smokes. Suboxone, read the bold font in all capital letters across the front, and beneath it, in smaller subtext, sublingual film. Medical jargon filled the rest of it. The package was already open, and by the looks of it, about a quarter empty.

  “It isn’t what you think,” he stressed again, honest and raw. Deidara’s steadfast skepticism (and the fury behind it; worse, the pain) forced the words from his mouth measured and low and drenched in resignation. “I’ve … been going to a clinic in Queens. Their drop-in hours. Look.” He shook the box into his palm and extracted a slim, individually wrapped package, similar to a band-aid. This he held out for examination with a clenched hand, one arm still pressed tight to his chest, his lips nonexistent. His eyes trained themselves on Deidara’s, tensed for the inevitable crash and burn.

  “It - treats opioid dependence.”