i feel suddenly empty.

don't be upset about the parachute. i'll have my wings soon, anyway.

[widwer]

#WIDWER. a soft horror original character. by merrin. she/they, 30+.

navigation. rules. statistics. apply to be his husband.

warnings for: illness (one terminal), death, mental illness, coarse language, heavy explorations of grief, allusions to poor family dynamics, extremely poor coping mechanisms, suicidal ideation and tendencies, semi-unlikable main character, ghosts.

[widwer]

@bluedprints: [ order ] control ordering for bev at a restaurant or bar.

if he could stop it going through without causing the waiter discomfort, he would do. bev would have been content to pick apart a slice of bread or break a stick to pieces, nibbling on something of little substance to keep the illusion of a shared meal intact.

when it’s only them, the structure of the conversation altered by the departure of a third party, he falters. he hasn’t the strength to argue it with him properly.

“thanks,” he says with a bit of a gap between the K and the S, the word stretched out by guilt and apprehension. sadder, smaller, and delivered with his chin lowered close to his chest, “wasn’t necessary, was it?” you can see me. you know i won’t make use. “surprised you remember what i like.”

[rvolving]

even with beverly's life having crash-landed into the very heart of the er, it remains the same it's always been: well-oiled, efficient. a patient needs treatment and they'll be as methodical about delivering it as with anyone else. nothing's changed.

                   abbot imagines it must chafe something awful, such personal horror against the clinical backdrop of their everyday working environment. he can't think of how he'd cope. instead he'll think himself just another cog, if a crucial one if they want beverly to keep turning.

                   ❝ it's alright. ❞ he's lowered his voice as though to reassure it's just between the two of them, although of course it's not. but sympathetic eyes on him should be the least of beverly's worries. abbot rests a hand on beverly's shoulder, just shy of his neck. grounding as well as in case he'll need handling. ❝ that's great, thank you. ❞

                   richard's been given a cervical collar by now, along with supplemental oxygen and ivs. it all makes him look quite small, an odd match with beverly's hunched attempt to hide behind himself. abbot's as assertive as he thinks beverly can handle right now: ❝ listen, beverly. you know you can't be involved in richard's treatment but i think it'd be good if you went up with him. stick by his side until he's brought back down to us again. good to have a familiar face closeby when he comes to. okay with you? ❞

[widwer]

without dismissing abbot’s professionalism, beverly gives an unconscious nod to the personal lines running through the exchange simultaneously: he touches his elbow, unsteady and fleeting and feather-light. a thank you. an i’m sorry this has happened here.

he’s sorry it’s happened anywhere.

“yes. i—” his next words are stoppered temporarily by the lump in his throat. “—appreciate it.”

before the people upstairs remove richard from view, bev does have a moment to squeeze his hand, and to kiss him gingerly on his cheek. he pockets his wedding ring, stands fidgeting in the corridor for the duration of his testing, and descends just ahead of him, making his way toward his workstation. he’d return wordlessly to his duties if abbot weren’t nearby, and as beverly sees it, owed something.

“they’re bringing him down in a few minutes,” he says. “does everyone know?”

[widwer]

@bluedprints: [ placement ] molly telling bev to sit down.

it’s been so long since he slept through to the morning that he’s lost track of which day of the week they’re in. at work he takes readings, but doesn’t take blood, for which he fabricates an excuse so that the other nurses don’t accuse him of being sleep-deprived.

can’t be home the whole day, sensing what he senses in the house now—the passageway he’s unwittingly cleaved open for any spirit that seeks an audience. he’s encouraged molly out of it, too. he’d invite her with him to A&E if it weren’t another place to be surrounded by the dead.

it’s true he’s only stood and paced since he walked through the door. the closest he’s come to respite is in allowing himself the new position in which molly finds him: tilted over the kitchen island, relying fully on the support of his arms, which tremble and lock on a cycle.

“i’m all right,” he lies. he’s sweating slightly from the pain in his feet and calves. it seems as though too many lights are on. “i’m fine. i’ve sat.”

[devotedecay]

❥      NON - SEXUAL   ACTS   OF   DOMINANCE . 

feel free to edit or elaborate as you please .   ( add  ‘ reverse ‘  to your message if you’d like to see how my muse would perform the action ) . otherwise , send in one of these for my muse’s reaction to   …

[ lit ]  your muse lighting a cigarette , spliff , etc. for mine . 

[ order ]  your muse ordering for mine at a restaurant or bar .

[ guide ]  your muse putting a hand on mine’s back to lead them .

[ pay ]  your muse paying for mine at a store , bar , restaurant , etc . ( you can specify where or for what . )

[ open ]  your muse opening a door for mine .

[ dry ]  your muse drying mine off with a towel after a shower , bath , swimming , etc . 

[ instruct ]  your muse giving mine instructions / telling them what to do . 

[ groom ]  your muse adjusting mine’s appearance , such as straightening a tie , fixing their hair , or buttoning their shirt for them , etc . 

[ direct ]  your muse taking mine by the chin and telling them to look yours in the eye .

[ disagree ]  your muse sternly telling mine  ‘ no ‘ .

[ rest ]  your muse resting their arm over mine’s shoulder / s .

[ clean ]  your muse cleaning a smudge of something off mine’s cheek , forehead , etc .   feel free to specify what and how . 

[ answer ]  your muse answering a question meant for mine . 

[ coat ]   your muse holds mine’s coat out for them while they put it on .

[ pilot ]  your muse taking mine by the arm , hand , shoulder , etc . to lead them . 

[ stare ]  your muse staring mine down . 

[ placement ]  your muse telling mine to sit down .

[ teach ]  your muse taking control of mine’s hand , arm , hips , etc . to make sure they do something correctly .  

[ patience ]  your muse telling mine to be patient .

[ tears ]  your muse wiping away mine’s tears .

[ swat ]  your muse swatting mine’s hand away from something they’re not supposed to touch .  

[ jewelry  ]  your muse clasping a piece of jewelry for mine , such as a necklace , or earrings . 

[ enough ]  your muse commanding mine to stop talking . 

[ retrieve ]  your muse requesting or ordering mine to retrieve them something .

[ invite ]  your muse inviting mine to sit on their lap .

[ lean ]  your muse inviting mine to lean into their side while they’re sitting or laying together . 

[ calm ]   your muse telling mine to  ‘ just breathe ‘ .

[ scold ]  your muse scolding mine for something .

[ comfort ]  your muse pulling mine into a reassuring hug .

[ approval ]  your muse complimenting mine on a choice they’ve made .

[ beckon ]  your muse beckoning mine to them without speaking . 

[ laces ]  your muse lacing , tying , or zipping something for mine , such as shoes , a dress , or a jacket , etc .

[ stay ]  your muse telling mine to stay in the car . 

[ defend ]  your muse defending mine’s reputation , dignity , or safety for them . 

[ feed ]  your muse feeding mine something , feel free to specify what .

[ volume ]  your muse demanding mine speak louder .

[ read ]  your muse reading something to mine .

[ refill ]  your muse refilling mine’s glass for them . 

[ possessive ]  your muse resting their hand on mine’s leg or the small of their back while they’re sitting beside each other . 

[rassvetiye]

the state of beverly is very tempting. he should've known better.

with beverly's back turned and vulnerable to him, jayne is drawn to brace himself up onto arms at either side of the man beneath him. he trails his smile across beverly's shoulder, teeth gently scraping at the muscles where it joins the neck, only a playful fraction of bite force.

" i wanted it to be special, didn't i? " mumbling such around the shell of beverly's ear as if jayne is truly confessing to the crime, pressing his smile into the hair at the nape of his neck.

" not the kind of thing one rushes, in a new relationship. "

[widwer]

he changes states underneath him, solid to liquid, and lets himself be made small against the mattress. his eyes fall shut again, one eyebrow jumps minutely, and he sighs with pleasure.

in this moment, jayne could ask anything in the world of beverly and beverly would do it. he’d kill for him. he’d surrender his body for art supplies. anything to keep his grounding warmth atop him, and to encourage his mouth to continue its expedition.

“is it new?” he breathes out, his own mouth so lazy that his words bleed together. “i feel.” every shift of jayne’s weight relaxes him further, until he has the sensation of being bodiless. “as though i’ve always known you.”

he’d abandon his career. he’d cut ties with the rest of humankind. he’d marry him.

“where to?” the thread is slipping his grasp. “or would you prefer to be mysterious about it?”

[bluedprints]

her voice goes small,

"i see him."

like if she whispers it can't be true.

because the shimmering nothing is filling out into a person. it happens slow, while she watches. started from the floor up, a dirty ceiling leak, or a bucket run along the brackish floor of a river, until the sludge calms and settles into the shape of legs, torso, neck. it's a man. he looks ordinary, but her nervous system rejects him, the way nature rejects dead things.

it feels overwhelming, having both of them look at her like this. she dog-ears the page in her book and then undoes it, does it again, creates a ladder of little diagnoal lines in the corner of the chapter. she thinks it would be nice to wake up now. she thinks it would be nice to.

the face settles last. the eyes, the very fine, undecisive grains of sand. molly holds her breath, knowing that alone seems enough to disturb it again. he—whoever he is—seems wonderfully fragile, dust-mote colored.

"he's just looking at me."

[widwer]

beverly redirects his gaze to the doorway and finds no color, no shape beyond what can be inferred from the negative space. his mouth falls slightly open and he gasps, soft and shallow and cut off, as though she’s just splashed him in the face with cold water.

“is it—” she’s seen the photographs. she might even know his voice if he were speaking, if at any point in her stay she’s trod near beverly’s room during a moment of deepest weakness, whilst he’s been replaying old voice messages on his mobile.

all at once he feels he’s lost him again. his chair seems to sink into the earth.

“does he look familiar to you?” his own voice isn’t familiar to him, watery, wavering, frightened for different reasons than molly might be. and molly might be.

“molly, love.” he changes gears: grieving husband to father. it has him rising to his feet before her answer, choosing to place himself between the two of them in some way. “i should’ve said.” what, exactly? “he hasn’t spoken to you? do you want—i’m going to press him to leave, yeah?”

[soothfog]

#SOOTHFOG. independent original character named lee melanthom. a prophet, a prognosticator, an unwitting soothsayer. written by jordy.

A tall man was learning from a vendor how to pronounce churro. High in the sticky clouds of time, he kept repeating churro while eating a churro. How to say this made you want to live? No hand to hold still here it was: someone giving someone comfort and someone memorizing hard how to ask for it again.

[widwer]

@rassvetiye.

“you could give us a break.” he’s too uncharacteristically sheepish for it to come across as anything other than this: i’m tired out. let me stay in and i’ll make it worth your while.

although he’s certain jayne feels he’s exposed something precious, taking him abroad and letting him be seen by new people, beverly’s never looked half as claimed as he does now. wedding ring on, his hair left to grow past its usual length into loose curls, and he’s heavier—even wearing one of jayne’s larger shirts without permission.

“not a small man, are you.” he keeps his head down as he prepares his coffee; sucks a dab of chocolate flavoring from the end of his thumb. “fucking difficult to keep up with.”

[bluedprints]

the weight in the room does shift—a sliding scale—suddenly every heavy glance and breath collects near the hallway entrance. something that is nothing wants to be served. and strange, even with that weight she feels her gaze drift off when she tries to look at it, that spot, like a force-field is making her glance at wallpaper instead, or pine knots in the flooring. how the energy drifts round itself, back and up again, like a marble rounding a drain.

"the husband."

is dead.

"right."

when this ends up being a dream it won't be her strangest one. when. the room feels awake, though. maybe even more so now. she looks back to beverly to check if he's unsettled out of novelty or out of love.

"what does he want? —do you ask?"

[widwer]

even when they both know, when it's as shared an experience as this, he bears the weight of a lifetime of staunch disbelief, thus finds the forced acknowledgement to be a shameful, embarrassing thing. he would never have let slip in front of molly that he sees him, speaks to him. with the privacy he's usually afforded, he could easily have pretended to be conversing with an idea; imagining him there in whatever room she'd passed by at the right moment.

this, however, is so atypically bold and flagrant an act that he's beginning to doubt it's him at all. for her peace of mind, he chooses not to mention it.

his reaction is not one of love. his feathers would have settled by now.

"often." they're no closer to an answer. "can't make it out at the moment." then, dreading the worst—that she's gained something vital to him which he has suddenly lost—he returns his full attention to molly. "you can't see him, can you?"

[widwer]

beverly n. at default marrying age though he looks teeny tiny

[bluedprints]

molly grew up in a large house. many pairs of footsteps stayed imprinted on her brain.

it must be beverly coming downstairs after getting something. from where she's been sitting, head tilted so low she can rest her own cheek on her shoulder, his chair is in her blind spot. she doesn't think anything of it.

until

oh

he was here all along.

the doorway is empty. and open like a window would be: something cold coming through. just a breath. molly has the impulse to go and close it by the means of throwing something over it, a curtain, a blanket. nevermind the shape, the missing-granite outline. she stays seated. missed the mark to get frightened at the sound—now the absence of it making waves—she peeks at beverly over the edge of her book like a child behind her pillow.

"you know them?"

[widwer]

"unless we have visitors." though he doesn't let himself show it plainly, beverly is unsettled, too, by the prolonged and heron-still presence of something he would normally be able to see. the surrounding air is disturbed by it, motes floating and falling wrong, and the light from the corridor appears to be doing battle against it. too dim, then too bright; sometimes shining through and sometimes trapped behind, creating the vague, flickering shape of a figure that evidently wishes to loiter covertly.

because it hasn't moved, bev's eyes won't stay with his book—each time they dip to skim it it's for a shorter period.

he does glance at molly, expecting he owes her an apology. "haunted but you won't notice" had been his unspoken selling point, and now the third flatmate is putting on a show.

"should be my husband."

[widwer]

a non-comprehensive list of beverly's marks and scars and other such things, under the cut because the origins aren't all pleasant:

quite visible, wider-than-modern-standards top surgery scars, as he underwent the procedure in the 1990s, before the nhs had more or less worked out how to care for its patients in this area

a thin horizontal scar on his left cheek, which does also belong to his faceclaim and i could not find in myself to erase. beverly's is slightly more noticeable, however, as he makes no effort to cover it and it was deeper to begin with. it was inflicted by his mother

also courtesy of his mother: a scar running along his right ring finger, as well as a pop/crack when he bends it sometimes, as a result of it having been broken

very sparse, faint freckling on his shoulders, arms, one darker one in his right ear, some on his legs if he dares to bare them in the sun

a rougher scar on his left thigh from when he wandered too far into the water as a child, was swept away by the undertow, and scraped over a jagged rock. also why he never officially learned to swim

[widwer]

@bluedprints.

plain as day, a pair of footsteps descend the stairs, gain volume down the length of the front corridor, and come to rest in the empty doorway that separates it from the room beverly and molly occupy, atop a board which creaks under its invisible weight. bev has been watching through the ceiling and walls from the second thump, his head turning in time with its audial path.

the dust has been stirred where something ought to be standing, flurrying unusually around nothing. he’s even kept himself concealed from him.

he reverts to his original posture and blinks down into his book.

“benevolent,” he mutters, half-sure. turns to the next page. “if you heard.”

[smokefools]

42 stitches worth of apathy. It's clear by Jimmy's expression he doesn't buy it, but he doesn't press the matter, as he doesn't care much either.

He barrels past Beverly out the door, walking much like a pirate, swinging his leg around to get some momentum into his stomps. He's produced a snubnose from thin-air, checking how many bullets he's got left as his shoulder bashes out the door into the cold.

In the electrical glow of the city at night, he sees a car, he clocks the shape of the doberman sitting shotgun, jaw hanging open, horrible toothy grin, the car roars to life, blinded by full-beam headlights.

"Say, Doc," cylander clicks shut with a flick of his wrist, "I don't see your car 'round here."

[widwer]

“i never mentioned—” it was reasonable of jimmy to assume that the man tendering an escape plan would have in hand the parts needed to execute it. outside he feels entirely helpless, as well as foolish for the attitude that sent him in a rush to the front line again.

his red handprints remain on his sides like grip markers, outlines to be reclaimed by his fingers. handles, almost, which he grabs to walk him backwards.

it’s a shame for jimmy about beverly’s active death wish. it’s a shame for beverly that jimmy is too brutish to get ahead of.

“i have a bike.” not even with him. “please don’t start fucking shooting.”

[rassvetiye]

" i want to take you somewhere. " jayne says. running his hand up and down beverly's arm, trying to aid in the gradual lull towards sleep that may turn him more agreeable. he snakes it across the small of beverly's back beneath the sheet.

" anywhere you like. " pressing a kiss to beverly's shoulder. " maybe somewhere you've never been. would you let me do that? "

@widwer / just cuz

[widwer]

he's already settled into what he believes is his least desirable position: laid on his stomach, cheek on the pillow, with one eye held shut against it while he opens the other to squint at jayne. it had taken him a few overnights to build up the courage to sleep this way. he certainly doesn't expect to be propositioned while any "best side" he may have is hidden.

bev hums shortly first, pretending he needs to consider it.

"i'm surprised by your restraint," he murmurs. "you could have murdered me on holiday ages ago."

[widwer]

@bluedprints: you're so cruel to me. don't you forget me. eden

beverly's camped in hull for the duration of a london house renovation, the majority of which time he's spent half-pissed and happy in eden's company. on every visit, he behaves as though he's been transported back to the 90s—sunken low into her furniture, speaking more through his teeth and with his hands as he had then, agreeing too readily to indulge in drink and gossip—though he wears obvious signs of having aged. he exists in his daily life quite a few layers out from the earlier iteration he's presenting.

"oh, don't say that," he says without landing the last 't,' lazy in enunciation as he is in his body movements; letting his head loll to one side atop the cushions. "you're just being mardy with us. wouldn't be here if i didn't love you, would i?"