penny's writing blog

...PENNY / 28 / she/they / Scorpio / Slytherin / INFJ / This is my writing side-blog. I promise I'm really nice and want to be friends! I always accept requests even though I may not always be able to fill them. Follows from nonmortem-somnifratrem.

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cracks my mfing KNUCKLES

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Here is your card for Bad Things Happen Bingo. Happy writing!

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I’m so excited!!! Send me your requests! (one at a time please)

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@bunnyfangs: "can i please get duke and nathan but in a mad max universe??? some words: injury, stitches?, red, "you have to" 

nathan knows he's bleeding.

it's impossible not to know, because the empty ahead is all he can see. his vision has narrowed so tight he might as well be trying to drive while looking through an exhaust pipe. his hands are black with it and the wheel is slick and his heart is beating in his ears. he knows he's bleeding and really, honestly, maybe he's glad.

it doesn't hurt, though. at least that. it doesn't hurt.

"nathan."

that's the voice from the back seat, the voice nathan keeps hearing and keeps refusing to believe is real. duke is dead, long dead, and that's nathan's fault, sure, but he's not going to give the ghost in his rearview mirror the satisfaction of acknowledgement. he owed duke everything while he was alive but he owes him nothing now.

"nathan, it's time to stop."

nathan can't stop. if he stops, they catch up. if they catch up, nathan doesn't make it home. if nathan doesn't make it home, audrey dies. and if audrey dies, any hope of a revival dies with her. the fate of thousands of people rests squarely on nathan's narrow shoulders.

if he's honest, he doesn't care about them all that much. nathan cares about one person and one person only, because everyone else he's ever loved is dead.

nathan can't stop because if he stops, audrey dies, and that's all that matters in this burnt husk of a life he calls his own.

"nate, you know what to do."

"i can't stop," nathan grinds through his teeth. the tunnel he's looking through is turning shades of dangerous yellow. he's going to pass out, and it's going to be sooner rather than later. "i won't let down audrey."

"so you black out and you crash into the cliffs at the pass. smart, nathan. that's gonna help a whole lot."

sarcasm just drips from duke's words like oil from an old engine. nathan looks in the rearview and there are brown eyes looking back, warm and framed with long lashes. he gives his head a hard shake and looks again. the dust cloud in the distance is small but visible. any amount of dust means they're too close for comfort. he can't stop.

"nathan," duke says, and nathan thinks maybe he can feel a hand on the back of his neck. it's stupid because nathan can't feel anything. duke's voice is right by his ear, gentle and persuasive the way he never was in life. "you have to stop."

nathan stops. there's no room in the front seat so he tumbles out of the rig and manages not to break anything as he hits the ground. he lays there and breathes and breathes and the sun moves overhead and bakes his skin hot and tight and close to his bones.

"you know what to do."

nathan knows what to do. he gets up, hauls his pack down from the cab, dumps himself back down in the dust and pulls his shirt off until the slash across his ribs is exposed. he threads his bone needle and he stitches it shut from end to end, then packs a folded shirt against it, wraps his body to hold it in place. the valve on the water tank is rusty but nathan manages to force it open just enough to drink and douse his head in the precious stuff. then he lies down in the shade underneath the rig and breathes.

he can't remember the last time he just breathed.

"maybe i never have," he whispers to the underbelly of the beast.

"you wanna know what i think, nate?"

nathan can see duke's shadow, a long black stretch of man-shape. its arms are folded.

"don't need your opinion, crocker," nathan says.

"i think you're being a stubborn ass about this. and what happens to stubborn asses who don't take care of themselves?"

"they get killed?" nathan muses. "you're one to talk."

"you know what to do," duke says.

nathan looks and the shadow is gone.

when he rolls out from beneath the rig, he can see the vast expanse stretching out in all directions. the exhaust pipe vision is gone, but the cloud of dust in the distance is bigger. time to pick himself up and go.

audrey's waiting.

hauling himself back into the rig, nathan bumps his head on the whistle hanging from the leather cord around the rearview. it swings, taps against the red thumbprint nathan left on the mirror. duke doesn't need to say anything for nathan to know he's talking.

"i know," he says, as he puts the rig in gear and revs it to life. "i know what to do."

[nonmortem-somnifratrem]

The setting is FO4, Gansey is SS. Shaun is the King he is seeking. Who does he encounter along the way?

(Dammit I may have to expand this one later)

—

Blue is gone and all Gansey has left of her is a wedding ring and a holotape and some memories, but he leaves Sanctuary for Concord knowing that somewhere out there is his baby boy.

In Concord he meets a man named Adam struggling to keep the last of his friends alive, and in Diamond City he meets a man named Noah looking for the truth, and in Goodneighbor he meets a man named Ronan who wields a rifle and a broken heart.

When Gansey stands on the pad of the signal interceptor he knows he has to go in alone, but he looks at his friends around him and wonders what life will be like when he finds his son; now that the old Gansey is dead and gone, he wonders what he will be without the search.

[nonmortem-somnifratrem]

Wtnv/trc au?

Let’s have a look at the Community Calendar.

Thursday afternoon, Dark Owl Records will be hosting a live concert featuring popular rock band Panic at the Disco.  Instead of promoting their new album, Panic at the Disco (which now only consists of one member playing every instrument by himself simultaneously) will be performing a previously unreleased track called Murder Squash.  Panic at the Disco will perform this song forty-seven times in succession.  Remember, concert attendance is mandatory.  The Sheriff’s Secret Police would like to remind residents that failure to attend the mandatory concert will result in your implication in a series of nasty child murders you did not commit.

Friday, the Night Vale PTA is sponsoring its annual “Hug a Hitman” carnival.  Come on down to Night Vale Elementary for fun and festivities and the chance to hug or maybe adopt a lonely, abandoned hitman.  Bring the whole family!

Saturday and Sunday will be rewritten in future history books anyway, so what’s the point?

Monday is “Sleeping Kings Day” at the Night Vale Public Library.  The Librarians have set up a workshop for any young Night Vale residents who might be searching for ancient sleeping kings.  “We know who you seek,” they hissed through the library doors, their claws digging gouges in the glass panes, “we know where he lies.  Come see, come seeeeee…”  Then, one of their venom sacs erupted and Intern Noah was unable to get the rest of their statement.

To the family of Intern Noah, we offer our sincere condolences. Please come pick up his car, we need the space in the station parking lot.

Tuesday is the day to ponder your impending death.  Alllll day.

Wednesday will be a dream.  You will find yourself in a nighttime forest.  Mist coils around your ankles.  Behind you, a raven caws.  You look… Nothing there.  In your hands…  Was this here before?  A book.  A leather journal.  You open it and you are enlightened.  Wasps patrol your skin.  Behind you, a raven caws.  You know what it is you need but you cannot find it.  You beg the forest, but the trees do not speak your language.  There is a girl holding your hand.  Behind you, a raven caws.  Behind you, a raven caws.  Behind you, a raven.

This has been the Community Calendar.

[nonmortem-somnifratrem]

Surprise me with a Noah and Blue that will literally tear my frickin heart out. Also I'm gonna be a dick and say Jamie and Emily... I hate myself.

(I’ll get Jamie and Emily to you in a separate post.)

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Blue Sargent goes to college because Richard Campbell Gansey III loved her.  She hates that it’s on his money but she knows where his heart was when he left the tuition to her.  And really, she wants to go.

When she comes back from California, she’s browner than ever and she feels at least more well-informed, if not necessarily smarter.

300 Fox Way is a hive of activity as usual, but this time it’s a welcome home party and she has to pretend she isn’t tearing up over her aunts and cousins and half-cousins and second cousins cheering.  Mr. Gray’s shoulder is a suitable handkerchief because he hugs her for a long time.  She thinks eventually she will be able to call him Dad.

Later, she bikes past Monmouth.  It stands empty, a ruin again, panes of glass broken out everywhere.  Whoever owns it now doesn’t care.  She leaves her bike in the grass and takes the stairs.  The door is open and there is a bird nesting somewhere in the rafters.

Blue tilts her head back.  “Chainsaw?”

The bird doesn’t answer.  Not Chainsaw.  Probably a pigeon.

“You’re back.”

The voice startles Blue.  She whirls in a circle but no one is there.  Had the voice even been real?

“Blue.”

There it is again, so gentle, so subtle.  Blue knows it now.  Tears well in her eyes, horrible hot ones that burn all the way up.

“Hi, Noah.”

There he is, in the doorway of his old room.  He’s almost formless now, with no one to hold onto.  Everything about him seems to slump to the left, like that side of his body has become to heavy to maintain a fully upright position anymore.

Noah is a terrifying and heartbreaking thing.  His eyes are dark hollows now, all the color washed out of him.  Blue can no longer make out the Aglionby crest on his sweater.  She reaches for him.  He reaches for her.  Their hands almost touch, and then his fingers pass through her palm and out the other side.  He isn’t just insubstantial, he’s almost nonexistent.

Blue says, “I missed you.”

Noah says, “I loved you.  As much as I could love.”

Blue says, “I’m so sorry.”

Noah says, “He says hi.”

Blue is alone in the dark room.

[nonmortem-somnifratrem]

Adam has decided to get a tattoo, and brings Ronan with him.

“You’re aware that it’s going to hurt, Parrish?” Ronan says.  “There will be pain involved.  You know, that, right?”

Adam is in the passenger seat of his own car.  Ronan drives, and the only reason the mixtape he made for Adam isn’t blaring at full volume from the shitty speakers is because Blue confiscated it for everyone’s safety, just like she did with the last one, and the one before that.  Adam is glad for the lack of gratuitous noise.  The hot summer wind rushes by the open windows, carrying the smell of cut grass and dust and exhaust, blowing pollen into Adam’s hair.

He forgets that Ronan has spoken until a hand grips the back of his neck.  It’s not like his father’s hand, hard and forceful.  Ronan’s touch is slow and easy, fingers worshiping the tendons under his skin and the soft hairs at the nape of his neck.

Ronan says, “Adam.”

Adam says, “I know.”

Ronan drives.

Adam says, “I’m not worried about the pain.  I just want it to be right.”

—

Later, when it’s all over, Adam lets Ronan inspect the image on the back of his neck, where Ronan’s hand had been before.  Ronan snaps a picture with his phone so Adam can see.

“Well,” Ronan says, hands in his pockets, “are you happy?”

Are you happy now, Adam?

“No,” Adam says, “but it’s what I wanted.”

They pay and head home.  Ronan drives, only because he’s stronger and likes to wrestle Adam’s keys away from him.  Lately, Adam lets him.

Back at the Barns, Ronan stops him and kisses him outside the farmhouse.  Dusk is falling, casting everything in shades of purple and blue.  A choir of crickets sing their approval of the soft, stolen moment.  When they’re left standing, holding on, breathing each other’s air, Adam asks the question that’s been lingering in his mind all day.

“Would he have liked it?”

Ronan doesn’t touch the new tattoo, but his hand slides up Adam’s back all the same, palm hot through Adam’s t-shirt.

“He liked everything about you,” Ronan says, which isn’t the kind of answer Adam wants.

Inside, while Matthew chatters over reheated pizza, and Chainsaw tears strips out of a phonebook containing only the address of Blue’s college in California, Adam sneaks a glance at the photo of his tattoo on Ronan’s phone again.

There is the back of his neck, and there are Ronan’s fingers holding down the collar of his t-shirt, and there is the stark black shape of the oyster-shell raven in the field outside Cabeswater, and there, wound through the lines of the bird, are Gansey’s last words.

Non mortem.

Somni fratrem.

See you soon.

[troublesareback]

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