I was tagged by @ihavesomanynotes and I’m in the mood for a distraction so here we go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1. Are you named after anyone? My first name is the same as my paternal grandmother’s middle name but my parents told me that wasn’t the reason they chose it. My middle name is the same as my mother’s maiden middle name and her mother’s first name, and that one seems to have been intentionally passed down. Not so much to honor anyone as much as a kind of nod to a familiar family name, I guess.
2. When was the last time you cried? A few hours ago (thanx, @hormones)
3. Do you have kids? No
4. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Only if the person I’m using it with understands it
5. What’s the first thing you notice about people? I guess I clock how they respond to certain things to gauge how I should conduct myself with them wait did you mean physica--
6. What’s your eye color? My internet upbringing makes me instinctively dodge this type of question, but they’re [redacted]
7. Scary movie or happy ending? happy ending (that’s not a gross euphemism, right?)
8. Any special talents? I’m “double jointed” in my right shoulder and can roll my tongue. I can crack my knuckles but that’s more of a habit/nervous tick. I was able to correctly answer all the Star Wars-related Jeopardy! clues the other night so I’m pretty sure legally that qualifies me as a certified genius (see Q4).
9. Where were you born? Manhattan (NYC)
10. What are your hobbies? hard pass
11. Do you have any pets? I was adopted by a stray kitten this summer. Her name is Freya, she’ll be around 6 months in November, I used to define myself as a “dog-person” but she is my life now and I am essentially the living embodiment of the Rosa/Arlo meme.*
12. What sports do you play/have you played? Soccer, then some private tennis lessons in high school... does skiing count if I wasn’t on a team? I’ve rarely participated in sports [and definitely avoided organized sports] since I became a vaguely conscious/self-aware human, but I’m fine with those who do. I just don’t vibe with negative motivation, which tends to be the most common athletic coaching tool, in my experience.
13. How tall are you? Heighty enough that it can make the choice between flats and heels on a first date rather significant. (see also: Q6)
14. Favorite subject in school? I have a masters in writing, but my fave HS subject was probably desperately fighting the urge to say free period Spanish. If we can include one-off electives, then I’d go with Videography or Film Studies.
15. Dream job? Screenwriter
If this kinda thing annoys you, ignore it. If it doesn’t, feel free to perpetuate the vicious cycle. I’ll tag 3 magnificent peeps 5 times each to avoid bothering too many followers... @affectedexistence (x5), @sea-swallowed / @wafflesandwonder-blog (x5), and @nostalgias-a-bitch (x5).
*look at this picture of my cat, she is Special and there is No Other Animal Like Her (Q4 again, kinda)
Will eventually be linked to both AO3 and Live-journal
“All that glitters is not gold,
often have you heard that told”
Mine is all the glittering sea,
waves of gold engulfing me,
in the depths all shadows dark,
they do not offer a warning bark,
Have you ever sung to the ocean?
and walked waters with a board?
For the tide’s ears are always open,
as long as it’s pits are clawed.
The rush of people and his father’s gruff voice in his ear wakes Kurt from where he’s been almost sleeping; cut off from the world in tiredness, but the bluish light of the hospital crashing waves upon waves of thought across his skull.
“Kid, I’ve spoken to Blaine’s parents,” Burt tells him, sinking into the seat next to him, his boxy frame making the seat look childish in comparison, “look, don’t get angry ok, we all deal with this stuff our own way but Cooper’s coming down, he’s on a flight at the moment...”
“They’re not coming are they?” Kurt asks, his voice made childish by the presence of his Dad and the aftermath of rushed tears that he finally allowed to stream in Artie’s absence.
“Not until the weekend at least,” Burt replies, obviously disappointed in the apparent lack of parenting and that he has to express such things to his only son, curled into his seat like he might never move again, “But we’re going to stay here, ok? Me, you, Carole and Blaine and anyone who wants to, we’ve rented a house and we’re staying until Blaine can move.”
“Is it really...” Kurt starts, swallowing his words so he can rework them against his gums, catching them between his teeth, “his arm, is it?”
“Kid, I don’t know what to tell you,” Burt says, tiredly, slinging an arm around his son, until he lets his head flump against his shoulder, his soft tufts of hair reminiscent of those he was born with, tickling his throat as he screamed through those first few nights, “It’s not going to be the same, but he’s stable they’ve said, he’s lost about sixty percent of his blood so he might be out for a few days but Puck was really fantastic out there, he saved his life; you should go thank him.”
“Is he here?” Kurt asks, glancing around the room where his friends are scattered, smudged against walls, lolled in chairs, drifting, waiting for something to happen.
“He took Sam back to the hotel about an hour ago,” Burt explains, pointing out the scruff of a Mohawk jutting out from the corner of room, between the vending machine and the wall, head in hands, no shirt, only shorts, stained with something Kurt is trying not to think about, “he had a bit of a panic I think.”
“Sam just went?” Kurt asks, sitting up stiffly, feeling an anger well in him that he hadn’t felt yet, “just like that?”
“You can’t imagine what he might have gone through out there, kid needs his sleep, Kurt,” Burt explains.
“I know I can’t imagine,” Kurt replies, aggressively, before slipping back into his Father’s warm arm, “I should have been there, I knew there’d be something, it’s not safe out there out in the water, it’s...”
“This kind of thing really is very rare,” Burt tries to calm his son pressing a solid hand between his shoulder and rubbing like he did as they rocked together in those early days, trying not to wake an exhausted Elizabeth, “he was just really unlucky, Kurt.”
“He had his fair share of unluckiness,” Kurt whines turning his face into his Father’s neck, breathing harsh air through his teeth and trying to push the burning cinders of heartache out of his eyes and ears, “You shouldn’t get that more than once you know? You just shouldn’t.”
“Kurt,” Burt starts, taking his son’s chin so they can truly face each other, “I know this might be hard to understand but most people they get that ambulance call, that’s it, there’s no car out, to get that chance again and again, it’s a form of luck ok? He’s going to be ok. He’s not in pain any more. And he’s going to live for a really long time, no matter what.”
“Dad, I’m sorry,” Kurt responds, knowing they’re both picturing his mother’s drawn out face, the sirens that rang and rang out, the ones that trembles with hope, the one where he sketched out black suits in his head and the one she begged them not to call until it came only to take away a lifeless body.
“Just go and talk to Puck will you?” Burt continues, ruffling his hair, “give you both some distraction.”
Kurt nods and pulls himself up onto unsteady feet, one of his legs has gone numb and the cool floor feels unnaturally smooth under his bare feet as he shuffles towards Puck. He feels the silent eyes of his friends hard at the back of his neck.
“Hey,” he says softly, crouching in front of Puck’s bent neck before slipping into crossed-legged position. Puck lifts his head slowly, a panicked wild look on his face, cracking with the welts of red where his eyes should be. Salt and sand crust against his face. He scrambles further back against the wall, “Hey, it’s ok,” Kurt begins again, reaching out to press a hand against his sand crusted shoulder, “I’m not angry, I wanted to come thank you Puck.”
“For what,” the unfamiliar crunch of a voice responses, almost sarcastically, “For ruining your life?”
“For saving my life,” Kurt corrects him, earnestly.
“I could have done more, if we’d had someone with us,” Puck continues, disregarding Kurt, “We were so dumb to just go out there and I was just making stuff up, I don’t know anything.”
“He’s going to be ok because of you,” Kurt responds, hardly believing how quickly he can turn from smothering himself in anguish to coherently comfort another person. But it hurts to see Puck like this, broken and brave in so many ways, encaging himself so deep in the corners of his mind that he can’t see, like Kurt hadn’t seen, that despite no face being seen, no magnificent grin returning, Blaine’s heart is still beating behind closed doors and Kurt aches for it to beat next to his again, “Are you going to be ok?”
“I keep seeing it, it’s teeth,” Puck closes his eyes, “I mean I tore them from him, literally, they were still gripping him and that was attached to something you know. That’s the water we drink and wash ourselves with, that’s the same water I threw over Finn’s head at that Fourth of July Party, the same water I may have pushed Rachel’s head into when apple-bobbing on Halloween. We can’t escape it and I keep seeing them and I know that it’s not me that people should be thinking about. I mean, Sam practically chucked up his intestines into the ocean and you look like you haven’t breathed in hours and Blaine.”
A sob rips from his throat suddenly and terrifyingly, knocking Kurt sideways into the wall as Puck grips his hand and sobs ‘sorry’ over and over into it, rocking out desperate tears into puddles in his wrists, that drip into elbows.
“It’s all this fucking water,” he wrecks against Kurt’s skin, opening floods of it.
“It’s ok,” Kurt says softly, “It’ll dry, it’s ok, we need the stuff, let it out.”
“Kurt they’ve got to let you in there,” Puck responds, urgently, tugging Kurt closer to his face so he can breathe in his desperate words, “You’ve just got to tell them that you’re all he wants, you’re what will make him survive. I may have saved him but you’ve got to keep on, you’ve just got to.”
“I know,” he replies, “But I’m not family, so I’ve got to wait.”
“Only until they legalise that shit,” Puck adds, smiling slightly, enough to turn the corners of Kurt’s mouth too, a little light in the darkest corner of the hospital. Waiting is the cracks in the glass before it shatters or stays, the wobble of a child before it falls or mends, the sinking of sand under waves, dipping endlessly to the bottom of the earth and back again.
Blaine sinks into the sandy subconscious, free of pain for what feels like final moments. He dreams he’s in a snow-globe, hands against the glass, the final twist of the music box key, slowly turning a frantic dance into slow measured movements, bumping him from side to side. The glass feels unbending but not hard, it feels cool to touch like the soft mill-pond of bathwater.
He dreams of ducking himself under frothy silken water, making waves for himself in pudgy hands tipping tsunamis against ceramic snow-globe edges. A plastic boat scuttles under hand and fearless sailors sing childish songs away on the ocean.
He dreams of wrapping towels, pulling him tight, in white smiles and motherly kisses to tender skin.
He dreams of a board against his hands, plunging to his feet and whipping around to grin and whoop in the nothing air of globes where, his hands are inches from the curved beginning.
He dreams that inky blotches could be wiped away and spilled red wine on white carpets could be covered over with music boxes and dancing feet across crusted sand carpets; that silt in slipping silent waves and green horses on horizons.
He dream-walks across glassy waters, gravity-less, upside down with sticky feet and hair can’t in unmovable breeze. He thinks of tipping things, weights crashing against each other, ticking clocks and blue eyes shuttering open.
It’s the blue eyes that make him want to shatter the glass, that grip tiny ice like splinters as he rams his fist again and again. He slams his feet too, pressing hard, crusted, and his starfish limbs are breaking into unmovable limbs, crunching with something that loosens his grip, dropping him through nothing air into hard plastic boards. His limbs become unbending and joints stiffen into nothing but curved bones.
The blue eyes still light up above him like fireworks, like T. J. Ecclesburg, pleading with him, splurging waves over him in endless tearful puddles, sweeping waterfalls over his unbreakable glass. He tries for tears too but they cannot come. He is dry, dusty with sand and salt. His perfect dreams of perfect water turn to glass memories, cutting, slicing at his skin, battering crusted glass froth, on sandy shores, grazes smattering him.
He is smashed open with it, starfished, waiting for blue-eyed water to run deep enough to gash lines in the glass and retrieve him from the nothing air and silken glass waves.
Will eventually be linked to both AO3 and Live-journal
“All that glitters is not gold,
often have you heard that told”
Mine is all the glittering sea,
waves of gold engulfing me,
in the depths all shadows dark,
they do not offer a warning bark,
Have you ever sung to the ocean?
and walked waters with a board?
For the tide’s ears are always open,
as long as it’s pits are clawed.
The next day only Blaine, Sam and Puck decide to press through the forest towards the thrust of ocean a local had said was perfect for surfing. The others remain at the main beach, content for lazy swimming and lounging in the sand.
The air is hot with summer and damp from the thrill of the ocean as they get closer and closer. The tread of mulched dirt and leaves gets grittier as they reach the sandy shore and Blaine tugs his sandals off, feeling the dirt and sand harden his feet. Behind him endless cliff faces are sliced up by waterfalls that skitter on and on. The board under his armpit feels safe and when they finally run across the sand together he feels light despite the weight of it. When he strapped to it, the board feels like part of him.
The waves are perfect, evenly spread with a high rise to them, breaking only as they peak and then running fast towards the shore. Blaine aches to be among them.
“Jesus, you don’t get this in Ohio,” Puck breathes out, before dunking his board into the water, the weight of it flips him over and he comes up choking for air. The other two bend over in laughter, trying to breathe again before smoothly slipping into the waves.
Hours later, Sam and Blaine are racing, arms fiercely griping at the water, stroke after stroke slicing up the waves. Puck loiters behind watching them humorously. In the concentration of their race, neither boy notices the darkening of the waves beneath them, shadows moving in the black depths. The water becomes unseasonably still, and the waves become soft and penetrable, like the water itself is loosening in vulnerability.
Blaine’s dolphin-bottomed board slices through the water, easily, like butter and he drifts ahead of Sam, his experience winning over Sam’s length and strength in his arms. Grinning, he swoops his arm down for another stroke, happy enough with the win to no longer continue, not with the pitiful offering of waves the ocean is offering.
His arm hangs in the water for a moment as he turns to call out his success to Sam but mid yelp he feels something swoop under him and grip his shoulder, at first it feels tight and uncomfortable, like he’s losing circulation and then there is impenetrable pain.
He lets out a scream that could curdle the water they float on. I’m dying, he thinks, I’m being torn apart. Rushes of water crash over him as Puck and Sam frantically, paddle towards him, dragging the board away so he’s torn away from the jaws that rip at him. Something leaves with it but he can’t concentrate on anything but the searing pain and the lightness of his mind, itching to get out.
Puck pulls at his body, shouting for help and he slips a little off the board until they can tug him onto the rough surface of the reef, sharp pain stutters along his spine and the blue of the sky spins over him blotting with dark spots.
“Call the hospital,” Puck shouts to Sam whose body is retching forward into the ocean. Blaine can’t breathe, the splotches above him are leaking further and further and everything is smudging into nothing, he can’t work out what hurts and what doesn’t, “Sam I need you to work with me here,” Puck adds.
“Ok,” Sam breathes, reaching for his phone deep in the ziplock bag in his pocket, typing frantically.
Puck tugs at Blaine’s skin, tipping him to one side and ripping the leash of Blaine’s foot to yank it around and around his shoulder stemming the blood as it seeps everywhere. Red against pale skin, red against Puck’s hands, red ink seeping into the waves across the way.
“Come on,” Puck says, gripping the board and tugging it up the beach, “Come on, come on, come on.”
“He can’t die,” Sam chokes out, he’s tears spittling onto Blaine’s barely awake face, as Sam bends over to lift the other end of the board so they can stumble back up the beach, to a truck waiting, so they can career around corners.
“I can’t drive,” Sam says, when they reach the rented truck, his shaking hands shoving the board, jamming it against the side, so Blaine’s body thumps against it and his head lolls to the side. Sam cradles it back onto the board, trying to stop his jittering fingers, his wrist thwacking against the metal of the truck.
“Sam pull it together,” Puck says, almost angrily, shoving him into the passenger side, and ramming the car into gear, jarring them out of the forest, the road bumps beneath them and they squint with it. Sam tries to ignore Puck continued cursing to himself between faint, “I don’t know how to get there, I can’t, they need to be here, where the hell are they?”
They hear the ambulance first, its piercing screeches giving them enough time to pull over and grapple for Blaine’s body, slapping his face in the hope that he’ll wake up.
“I need to phone Kurt,” Sam says, suddenly and Puck’s face falls, pale and wet still with salt-water.
“What can we possibly tell him?” he asks, as the paramedics round on them, efficiently manoeuvring Blaine into their white van.
“Follow us to the hospital, ok?” One turns to them to say.
They nod silently and duck back into the truck. The voicemail they leave on Kurt’s phone reads simply: ‘something got to Blaine, get to the hospital now.’ The whirr of the car’s engine is not enough to drown out the tugging criticisms that their minds chuck at their skulls, accusations against speed, against wit, against cowardice.
In the Ambulance, Blaine can breathe again, with only the help of the clear plastic mask that settles over his face like a snow-globe. His skin is crusted with sand and salt and wet with blood. His t-shirt is soaked to his skin and he feels both cold and feverish, everything feels off-balanced and he longs for Kurt, for his hands against his face and neck and holding his fingers tightly. Instead he feels numbness and dense air.
He listens for the thump, thump, of his gurney, crashing down the hallway. He is red alert, red, red, spotting against his skin. Heavy yells, strap him into himself. And red is what he sees before there is nothing but darkness.
***
Kurt leaves his his flip-flops and phone abandoned where they slipped from his hands as he sprints from the beach, sand spraying up his leg. The others call after him but he simply grabs Artie from the deck and haphazardly wheels him until he can haul him into the front seat and ram his chair in the back.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” he explains as the car begins and he spins out of the parking lot his fingers ticking nervously against the wheel. His eyes bulge against his too pale skin, like they might burst out, the very pieces of him fraying with Blaine in danger, “But Sam calls and it’s something to do with the water I just know it, I told you, and I knew you’d understand.”
“Kurt, where did Sam say we need to go?” Artie says, authoritatively, hoping that the steadiness of his voice will calm Kurt’s somewhat erratic driving.
“The hospital,” Kurt breathes out, closing his eyes for a moment before he feels like he’s tipping and opens them, “I can hear the sirens in my head and,” he glances at Artie, gnawing his lip with his teeth, “he can’t be back there, he just can’t, with his eye and before and it’s not the place for him, he can’t be there.”
“I’m sure they’ll be doing their best,” Artie replies, focussing on the rhythm of his speech rather than his words, knowing that Kurt is not really listening to anything other than the ideas that whip at his skull.
“Yes, but I don’t know if I can do it either,” he adds, quietly as they pull into the hospital lot. The outside seems quiet compared to the inside where their fantasies are being ripped apart. Kurt tries not to hurt Artie as he almost rams him back into his chair, murmuring desperate apologies and then they’re hurtling into the building towards the front desk.
“Please, it’s Blaine Anderson, is he ok? Please let him be ok,” Kurt rushes out.
“He’s in surgery at the moment,” the woman smiles fondly, but frowns at his bare feet. Until now Kurt has not noticed hold cold they are, they’re almost blue with it, “he’s lost a lot of blood and obviously with a shark bite there’s risk of infection...”
“It was a shark?” Kurt repeats, paling further and gripping Artie’s chair even tighter, despite Artie’s perfect ability to wheel himself around, “it bit him?”
“Took his arm it looked like,” the woman adds, snapping gum between her teeth and turning back to the computer, “You can wait by the chairs if you want.”
“No, I’m not doing that,” Kurt breathes out but Artie tugs at his hands until he can wheel him backwards into a chair, spinning around to face him and pressing their hands together.
“It’s going to be ok,” he says, softly, trying to hide his own panic, “but we do need to call his parents and yours...”
“His arm, Artie,” Kurt says finally, sinking back into his chair pulling his blue feet up onto it. He feels dull and heady, like he’s dreaming. This isn’t something they can heal, not like a starfish. This is a piece of Blaine he will never get back, a hand he’ll never hold, an elbow that will never hold him close again. His face aches, “you can’t just take something like that; it doesn’t make sense.”
“Kurt, we don’t know anything yet, ok?” Artie replies, “give me your phone, ok, I’ll call everyone.”
“I left it on the beach,” Kurt tells him, pressing his face into his knees to try and get some feeling back, “this can’t be happening, I thought it would just be he hit a rock or something, I don’t know but there’s so much out there, out in the water. Why did he even go out there? Who would want that? You can’t feel the bottom, you can’t feel anything. Oh God, he couldn’t feel it. What if he doesn’t know? What if he’s freaking out? Of course he’s freaking out.”
“Kurt I’m going to need you to sit here and breathe for me, ok?” Artie interrupts him kindly, “I know waiting’s the hard part ok, but however much you tie things in knots it’s not going to change things back there, ok?” he reminds him, before wheeling away to the front desk again. Kurt watches the wheels spin and imagines a tinier Artie who ran and played, whose very being was wreckaged. Once out of earshot Artie lets out a deep strained breath and feels his face flood with panic, who could rewrite Kurt and Blaine life like this, rip open the already delicate pages, strip away the neatly stitches back together paper reminders of their lives so far together. The sickly white walls of the hospital call to him, hark back to ages past, there is no good outcome to such ghostly places, only manageable, he hopes as his fingers cross over one another, twisting in the receptionist’s phone cord.
sea-swallowed asked: If Richard Armitage was coming around to yours for dinner and dessert, what would you cook him? Meat & potatoes? Fish & chips to appeal to his British sensibilities? Creme brulee to make sure he had something sweet for the road?
This is the first ask I'm answering after coming back home, and it's such a WONDERFUL question! Oh, I could cook a thousand suppers for Richard Armitage, but if it were just for one special evening...
He would be on Oahu, on a nice, hot day, and all my family would be there to make merry. (I feel like he and my sister's boyfriend could blow a whole day talking about scifi/fantasy literature.) Ice-cold extra-sweet watermelon to start. We'd grill a mess of barbecue -- chicken and pork skewers, garlic sweet corn, vine tomatoes, maybe short ribs. We'd make him help butter and wrap the corn. Mom's German potato salad, which can make grown men weep. A nice summer shandy for the fellas, Jarritos for the teetotalers. For dessert, Kit would make her grilled chili-honey pineapple rings with a scoop of coconut ice cream in the center. All of this, I'm thinkin', would be cooked and eaten seaside, between swimming and throwing a frisbee around. North Shore somewhere, maybe Mokuleia, while the sun sets and sea turtles bob in the tide.
There are great dishes, and then there are great meals. Barbecue isn't the fanciest or the best, but for my money, it's harder to put together a more perfect dinner than one that's made outdoors, as a group, eaten with the hands (and hands washed off in the saltwater), surrounded by people you like. That's the best I can imagine, and that's the supper I'd want to share with someone as nice as Richard Armitage.
