i know him in theory we only met a couple times but he was the worst fucking one he beat the shit out of my mom one time and did the same thing to me anyway i never touched him
lighting someone up like the 4th of july doesn't rly seem like ur style esp if we're not talking premeditated one doesn't just set a person on fire in self-defense. that takes effort.
bc it is much easier to grab the nearest sharp object and go to town vs taking a lighter to someone's clothes and hoping theyre flammable idt he was doused in lighter fluid either but i didn't get a good read on him
my mom has a scar at her hairline from when he slammed her face into the bathroom mirror doubt we were the first single mom and son duo he fucked with but we were definitely the last he was a piece of shit and i don't give a fuck about his angry fucking ghost
ok i'm at the beach already if you go past the bonfire there's a little stretch of beach kinda by the woods promise you won't send me any more fucking emojis
[ it's all he sends because he's starting to overthink this and needs to put his phone down. delta knows too much, but the details are still a mystery to him. that's good. ashe can continue to play this off and do his own research on how to get rid of an angry spirit. no need for delta to ever know what he really did that night, and he's not sure why he's in this specific location on the beach because it's far too close to where he dumped the body into the ocean.
it's stupid. it doesn't matter. he idly heaps sand around him while he waits for the edible to take effect, forming the base of the castle and quietly enjoying the balmy breeze moving through his hair.
he doesn't remember when he plopped down onto the sand and started stargazing, but the castle is wholly forgotten while he tries to find pegasus amongst the constellations. ]
[ despite ashe's overwhelmingly weird reaction, delta more or less forgets about his angry apartment spirit the second he closes his phone. out of sight, immediately out of mind.
fifteen minutes later, he's at the beach with a full tank of gas, parking near the boardwalk and walking down a grassy dune toward ashe's location. it's unseasonably warm tonight, but delta is dressed in a light jacket and torn jeans, aggressively kicking up sand with dirty black chucks.
he finds ashe slivered in moonlight, distant firelight burnishing his hair a shimmering copper. how pretty he is is a gut-punch, every time. ]
What's up, man? [ but delta's good at this, an entire nineteen years spent pretending to be someone he's not, just another rich kid with endless privileges, and he can pretend that looking at ashe doesn't squeeze his heart to pathetic mush. fucking easy. done.
he narrowly avoids stepping on his unfinished sandcastle as he drops to the ground next to him, hugging his knees to his chest. ]
[ delta appears out of nowhere, and ashe lifts his head just to make sure he didn't flatten his castle. still there. good. he twists a lock of his hair around one sandy finger when he plops down again, eyes half-lidded. ]
Yep. [ and he's glad for it, because he can finally feel his stresses begin to slide away. the sound of rustling plastic fills his sense as he roots through the back pocket of his jeans to pull out a small baggie with a square of rice krispie inside. also falling to the sand are his wallet and a stray condom, but it only vaguely registers. ] Here.
[ it's nice to have delta here, sort of. he does come with the possibility of being sucked into another dimension, but overall delta can be pleasant to be around. sometimes.
he gestures at the heaps of sand. ] Make, like, a tower. And a dragon.
[ there are too many jumbled up memories in his head and he doesn't know which one he's supposed to be thinking about. there's dumping the body into the ocean, but there's also sitting on the shore building a castle with his mom. he doesn't know how it's possible to wish she was here now while also feeling intensely relieved that she's gone. ]
You know when you asked if I had a best friend? [ he looks over to check the progress of the tower. little to none. disappointing. ] It was my mom. She was my best friend. Like you and Genevieve.
[ this is quietly comfortable. delta sheds his jacket and shoes and socks, hitching onto his knees in front of ashe's unfinished sand castle. he tears the rice krispie wrapper with his teeth and takes a bite as he starts forming the dragon with one hand, long headless body stretching into a semi-circle around the base of the castle.
it's easier to focus on that than ashe's face and lips. less obvious, too. ]
You shouldn't keep your condoms in your wallet. [ god, he sounds like six. he flicks sand from his fingers, popping the rest of the rice krispie in his mouth and leaning over his knees to nudge his wallet with a curled knuckle. ] You dropped your wallet, by the way.
[ while crafting the dragon's head and slithering tongue, he wonders how often ashe has done this, and with who, if anyone. for delta this is every friday night in high school, laid on the beach away from the party with a girl on top of him or his head in her lap, gentle fingers mapping every sparse freckle on his face and nose. it feels tentatively familiar, intimacy dipped in glass. one wrong move or word and everything shatters to the shrill tune of ashe telling him to fuck off forever.
his eyes return to ashe's face when he says viv's name. has he been talking this whole time? fuck. ]
I never really knew my parents. [ never really upset him, either. his parents' former lives are shrouded in mystery because six doesn't talk about them ever and as far as delta knows he has no other living relatives. ashe's relationship with his mother may be fucked beyond repair, but delta can tell he loves her. he almost wonders what that's like. did his parents love him the way ashe loves his fuck-up mom?
two important facts delta learned in the time he spent on his knees sucking ashe's cock: he likes to touch, stroking his lashes and cheeks, smearing his bottom lip in saliva with his thumb, grabbing fistfuls of hair between hissed fucks — and he has a tattoo on his finger, almost invisible now in the dark. delta swings one leg over the castle and scoots closer to ashe, pulling his hand into his lap and turning it palm up.
he hooks his thumb over his finger, brushing sand from the tiny, neatly printed numbers. ] This is her, right?
[ ashe's hands are little ice cubes, so much colder than the rest of his body. he cages his hand in both palms, lips touching his fingers as he blows hot air into the gap left for his mouth. it's stupid and utterly gay, but he doesn't let go. ]
[ he ignores the comment about his wallet and his condoms, leaving them lying in the sand because delta telling him what to do is not the move. his eyes close for half a second and the next thing he feels is delta blowing his warm breath onto his cold hand. ashe almost snatches it away, his mind tripping slightly on the question about his tattoo. he can't remember if he ever told delta about it, but it isn't hard to guess considering his total lack of close friendships. ]
Yeah. Her birthday. She has mine on her hand, too. Same place. [ he was fourteen when he got the tattoo, a favor from one of his mother's many friends, and he remembers how bad it hurt but more than that he remembers holding his mother's hand and laughing with her in the tattoo shop. every tattoo after that never failed to remind him of that moment.
he wiggles his fingers in delta's grip, a fleeting thought of how soft his hands feel passing idly through his brain. ] There were. There were a lot of them. It wasn't all bad. She would disappear a lot but I knew she'd come back and then we'd do stuff together. Like get milkshakes and build sandcastles and she'd listen to all my songs and sing with me sometimes. She taught me how to braid my hair and how to properly throw a punch. I always knew she had problems and we'd fight, too, but... she was the coolest person I knew. I mean, mostly. Except for when she's flooding the fucking bathroom. One time she threw up in my car and I swear I wanted to shove her ass out the door. And if I ever got sick she was the fucking worst at taking care of people.
[ he stops there, suddenly realizing how much he's said. fucking weed. he pushes up onto one elbow, examining the castle again — fucking f, just like all of delta's report cards must've looked — and then drops his head into delta's lap, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath of salty air. ]
What about you and your uncle? Did you guys do stuff together?
[ it's more than he's expecting, the kind of soft and familial love that delta's never experienced in his life. for a fleeting second he thinks he understands why he stays. every moment with his mother is a numbers game, and sometimes he gets lucky, strikes the lottery and they roast marshmallows on the beach, sharing one blanket. other times he comes home to a flooded bathroom with his mother unconscious on dirty linoleum. how many times has he patched up her swollen black eyes? forcibly taken a bottle or needle from her hand while she screamed at him? tucked her in bed and curled up around her like a child?
delta folds his legs and cards his fingers through ashe's hair, blunt nails lightly scratching into his scalp. a clear, cloudless moon bathes the ocean in silver light. waves like black mercury fade to neon blue as the water creeps up the shore, a bioluminescence only visible at night. the ocean's aurora, is what six called it.
six. there's no way to succinctly sum up his relationship with six. ]
We never really did stuff together like you and your mom. Like, family stuff, I mean. If he wasn't physically gone, he was never really there anyway. [ he'll start with the only truth he knows then, plain and straightforward. if he's bitter, he doesn't sound it. his childhood was spent learning the ins and outs of his abilities, or nights in the wight wood with six by his side, firmly instructing him how to damper his energy so as not to attract all the shadowed, toothy things that that might want to devour him alive, bones and all.
he was ten when he learned he only had twelve more years to live, if he was lucky. he's nineteen now. two more years of luck left. he might already be on borrowed time and not know it. delta doesn't know why six was so afraid of everything in the universe eating him alive when he's doomed to a bad end where his abilities eat him instead. there's no fucking difference. he's going to die. he didn't have anyone but himself to teach him how to be okay with that.
what an asshole.
delta realizes — belatedly, his hands still deep in ashe's hair — that he's shaking. ]
Fuck. It's cold, right? [ it's not. exhaling through his teeth, he leans back and pats down every one of his pockets until he finds what he's looking for, a small baggie with a rolled joint and his lighter. he lights it up with the joint in his mouth, rolling smoke through his lungs and nose like he's starved for it. he should've asked ashe for more edibles.
wordlessly, after three consecutive hits in a row and his shaking subsides, he plucks the joint between two fingers and dangles it in front of ashe's lips. ]
[ it feels like a non-answer, but when he forces his brain to process the words he realizes it's simply the truth. they must not be that close, certainly not as close as he and his mother used to be, but he can't tell if it's delta's lack of a strong bond with his uncle or something else that causes the tremor in his hands. despite the faraway daze his brain is in, he still feels it in his hair. ]
It's not that cold. [ cooler by the water, yes, but not enough to make someone shiver. he briefly considers asking if delta wants to move closer to the bonfire, but that would require both movement and being near people, neither of which he currently wishes to attempt. delta's lap feels like it was made for his head.
the joint appears before him like an angel from the sky. he tilts his chin to wrap his lips around it, drawing in a breath before letting go. ]
It's cool if you don't really want to talk about him.
[ he's fully aware the amount of half-cocked shenanigans he and his mother would get into is outside of the realm of normal mother and son interactions. most people have regular things to say about their family, or nothing much at all like delta. his mother once threw his math textbook out the window because ashe told her he had to study instead of helping her feed the stray cats by the dumpster. ]
What're you thinking about right now? [ he blows a small stream of smoke upwards. ] Something's up with you.
[ kissing him. asking if he wants to fuck in the back of his truck. the ocean. the low, pulsing bass from further up the beach. anything except for what it must feel like to be lit up from the inside, or that he almost died a half-mile from here, pulled to a watery grave by a woman with nails like razor-sharp claws and scales on her hands.
anything except for the man near the shore, too. ]
My head is pretty perpetually empty, dude.
[ delta noticed the man near five minutes ago, shortly after he sat down and started building ashe his sand dragon. he didn't think anything of it because he sees dead men all the time, what's one more dead man in the dark, but he's closer now, and that familiar scent hits him, melting flesh on an ocean breeze. like salted fucking pot roast gone way bad, left in the sun to rot. he sinks his hand into ashe's silky hair and maintains eye contact as the man ghosts across the beach, inhaling a deeper, fuller drag, smoke filling his lungs.
who the fuck. why the fuck — ]
Ashe. [ he almost tells him, but a feeling stops him short, tongue to the roof of his mouth. dead people don't wander, in most cases. ashe probably doesn't know that. dead people linger close to the trauma that caused their death. dead people stay where they died.
unless they have a reason to be in two places.
unless their bodies were dumped.
his eyes slide to ashe's face, soft-edged and deceptively sweet, and strokes his hair from his forehead. he stamps the joint out in the sand and wraps it back in the baggie to throw in a garbage can for later. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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u do know him
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we only met a couple times but he was the worst fucking one
he beat the shit out of my mom one time and did the same thing to me
anyway i never touched him
[ technically ]
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maybe he tripped and fell and broke his fucking neck
karma's a bitch
what does this have to do with me
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he was burned alive and asphyxiated on the smoke
im not saying he didnt deserve it but he died in ur living room
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this is officially none of your fucking business
fuck off
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i wasn't accusing u of anything
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you think i killed him
can't you see me getting pissed off enough to snap
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one doesn't just set a person on fire in self-defense. that takes effort.
did u kill him
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i'm not saying yes but what if i did
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idt he was doused in lighter fluid either but i didn't get a good read on him
u said he deserved it
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my mom has a scar at her hairline from when he slammed her face into the bathroom mirror
doubt we were the first single mom and son duo he fucked with but we were definitely the last
he was a piece of shit and i don't give a fuck about his angry fucking ghost
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u say u didnt touch him then drop a shady confession
im not going to judge u for whatever happened dude
i just want u to be careful rn in the present
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it's all stupid anyway
i don't give a fuck about this i'm trying to get high and build a sandcastle
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[ not really that sorry because warning him felt right but he will apologize every time to keep the peace. ]
lets get fucked up
promise u wont ditch me
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if you go past the bonfire there's a little stretch of beach kinda by the woods
promise you won't send me any more fucking emojis
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need to get gas real quick
that is a promise i cannot make
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[ it's all he sends because he's starting to overthink this and needs to put his phone down. delta knows too much, but the details are still a mystery to him. that's good. ashe can continue to play this off and do his own research on how to get rid of an angry spirit. no need for delta to ever know what he really did that night, and he's not sure why he's in this specific location on the beach because it's far too close to where he dumped the body into the ocean.
it's stupid. it doesn't matter. he idly heaps sand around him while he waits for the edible to take effect, forming the base of the castle and quietly enjoying the balmy breeze moving through his hair.
he doesn't remember when he plopped down onto the sand and started stargazing, but the castle is wholly forgotten while he tries to find pegasus amongst the constellations. ]
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fifteen minutes later, he's at the beach with a full tank of gas, parking near the boardwalk and walking down a grassy dune toward ashe's location. it's unseasonably warm tonight, but delta is dressed in a light jacket and torn jeans, aggressively kicking up sand with dirty black chucks.
he finds ashe slivered in moonlight, distant firelight burnishing his hair a shimmering copper. how pretty he is is a gut-punch, every time. ]
What's up, man? [ but delta's good at this, an entire nineteen years spent pretending to be someone he's not, just another rich kid with endless privileges, and he can pretend that looking at ashe doesn't squeeze his heart to pathetic mush. fucking easy. done.
he narrowly avoids stepping on his unfinished sandcastle as he drops to the ground next to him, hugging his knees to his chest. ]
You high already?
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Yep. [ and he's glad for it, because he can finally feel his stresses begin to slide away. the sound of rustling plastic fills his sense as he roots through the back pocket of his jeans to pull out a small baggie with a square of rice krispie inside. also falling to the sand are his wallet and a stray condom, but it only vaguely registers. ] Here.
[ it's nice to have delta here, sort of. he does come with the possibility of being sucked into another dimension, but overall delta can be pleasant to be around. sometimes.
he gestures at the heaps of sand. ] Make, like, a tower. And a dragon.
[ there are too many jumbled up memories in his head and he doesn't know which one he's supposed to be thinking about. there's dumping the body into the ocean, but there's also sitting on the shore building a castle with his mom. he doesn't know how it's possible to wish she was here now while also feeling intensely relieved that she's gone. ]
You know when you asked if I had a best friend? [ he looks over to check the progress of the tower. little to none. disappointing. ] It was my mom. She was my best friend. Like you and Genevieve.
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it's easier to focus on that than ashe's face and lips. less obvious, too. ]
You shouldn't keep your condoms in your wallet. [ god, he sounds like six. he flicks sand from his fingers, popping the rest of the rice krispie in his mouth and leaning over his knees to nudge his wallet with a curled knuckle. ] You dropped your wallet, by the way.
[ while crafting the dragon's head and slithering tongue, he wonders how often ashe has done this, and with who, if anyone. for delta this is every friday night in high school, laid on the beach away from the party with a girl on top of him or his head in her lap, gentle fingers mapping every sparse freckle on his face and nose. it feels tentatively familiar, intimacy dipped in glass. one wrong move or word and everything shatters to the shrill tune of ashe telling him to fuck off forever.
his eyes return to ashe's face when he says viv's name. has he been talking this whole time? fuck. ]
I never really knew my parents. [ never really upset him, either. his parents' former lives are shrouded in mystery because six doesn't talk about them ever and as far as delta knows he has no other living relatives. ashe's relationship with his mother may be fucked beyond repair, but delta can tell he loves her. he almost wonders what that's like. did his parents love him the way ashe loves his fuck-up mom?
two important facts delta learned in the time he spent on his knees sucking ashe's cock: he likes to touch, stroking his lashes and cheeks, smearing his bottom lip in saliva with his thumb, grabbing fistfuls of hair between hissed fucks — and he has a tattoo on his finger, almost invisible now in the dark. delta swings one leg over the castle and scoots closer to ashe, pulling his hand into his lap and turning it palm up.
he hooks his thumb over his finger, brushing sand from the tiny, neatly printed numbers. ] This is her, right?
[ ashe's hands are little ice cubes, so much colder than the rest of his body. he cages his hand in both palms, lips touching his fingers as he blows hot air into the gap left for his mouth. it's stupid and utterly gay, but he doesn't let go. ]
There must have periods of some normalcy.
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Yeah. Her birthday. She has mine on her hand, too. Same place. [ he was fourteen when he got the tattoo, a favor from one of his mother's many friends, and he remembers how bad it hurt but more than that he remembers holding his mother's hand and laughing with her in the tattoo shop. every tattoo after that never failed to remind him of that moment.
he wiggles his fingers in delta's grip, a fleeting thought of how soft his hands feel passing idly through his brain. ] There were. There were a lot of them. It wasn't all bad. She would disappear a lot but I knew she'd come back and then we'd do stuff together. Like get milkshakes and build sandcastles and she'd listen to all my songs and sing with me sometimes. She taught me how to braid my hair and how to properly throw a punch. I always knew she had problems and we'd fight, too, but... she was the coolest person I knew. I mean, mostly. Except for when she's flooding the fucking bathroom. One time she threw up in my car and I swear I wanted to shove her ass out the door. And if I ever got sick she was the fucking worst at taking care of people.
[ he stops there, suddenly realizing how much he's said. fucking weed. he pushes up onto one elbow, examining the castle again — fucking f, just like all of delta's report cards must've looked — and then drops his head into delta's lap, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath of salty air. ]
What about you and your uncle? Did you guys do stuff together?
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[ it's more than he's expecting, the kind of soft and familial love that delta's never experienced in his life. for a fleeting second he thinks he understands why he stays. every moment with his mother is a numbers game, and sometimes he gets lucky, strikes the lottery and they roast marshmallows on the beach, sharing one blanket. other times he comes home to a flooded bathroom with his mother unconscious on dirty linoleum. how many times has he patched up her swollen black eyes? forcibly taken a bottle or needle from her hand while she screamed at him? tucked her in bed and curled up around her like a child?
delta folds his legs and cards his fingers through ashe's hair, blunt nails lightly scratching into his scalp. a clear, cloudless moon bathes the ocean in silver light. waves like black mercury fade to neon blue as the water creeps up the shore, a bioluminescence only visible at night. the ocean's aurora, is what six called it.
six. there's no way to succinctly sum up his relationship with six. ]
We never really did stuff together like you and your mom. Like, family stuff, I mean. If he wasn't physically gone, he was never really there anyway. [ he'll start with the only truth he knows then, plain and straightforward. if he's bitter, he doesn't sound it. his childhood was spent learning the ins and outs of his abilities, or nights in the wight wood with six by his side, firmly instructing him how to damper his energy so as not to attract all the shadowed, toothy things that that might want to devour him alive, bones and all.
he was ten when he learned he only had twelve more years to live, if he was lucky. he's nineteen now. two more years of luck left. he might already be on borrowed time and not know it. delta doesn't know why six was so afraid of everything in the universe eating him alive when he's doomed to a bad end where his abilities eat him instead. there's no fucking difference. he's going to die. he didn't have anyone but himself to teach him how to be okay with that.
what an asshole.
delta realizes — belatedly, his hands still deep in ashe's hair — that he's shaking. ]
Fuck. It's cold, right? [ it's not. exhaling through his teeth, he leans back and pats down every one of his pockets until he finds what he's looking for, a small baggie with a rolled joint and his lighter. he lights it up with the joint in his mouth, rolling smoke through his lungs and nose like he's starved for it. he should've asked ashe for more edibles.
wordlessly, after three consecutive hits in a row and his shaking subsides, he plucks the joint between two fingers and dangles it in front of ashe's lips. ]
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It's not that cold. [ cooler by the water, yes, but not enough to make someone shiver. he briefly considers asking if delta wants to move closer to the bonfire, but that would require both movement and being near people, neither of which he currently wishes to attempt. delta's lap feels like it was made for his head.
the joint appears before him like an angel from the sky. he tilts his chin to wrap his lips around it, drawing in a breath before letting go. ]
It's cool if you don't really want to talk about him.
[ he's fully aware the amount of half-cocked shenanigans he and his mother would get into is outside of the realm of normal mother and son interactions. most people have regular things to say about their family, or nothing much at all like delta. his mother once threw his math textbook out the window because ashe told her he had to study instead of helping her feed the stray cats by the dumpster. ]
What're you thinking about right now? [ he blows a small stream of smoke upwards. ] Something's up with you.
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anything except for the man near the shore, too. ]
My head is pretty perpetually empty, dude.
[ delta noticed the man near five minutes ago, shortly after he sat down and started building ashe his sand dragon. he didn't think anything of it because he sees dead men all the time, what's one more dead man in the dark, but he's closer now, and that familiar scent hits him, melting flesh on an ocean breeze. like salted fucking pot roast gone way bad, left in the sun to rot. he sinks his hand into ashe's silky hair and maintains eye contact as the man ghosts across the beach, inhaling a deeper, fuller drag, smoke filling his lungs.
who the fuck. why the fuck — ]
Ashe. [ he almost tells him, but a feeling stops him short, tongue to the roof of his mouth. dead people don't wander, in most cases. ashe probably doesn't know that. dead people linger close to the trauma that caused their death. dead people stay where they died.
unless they have a reason to be in two places.
unless their bodies were dumped.
his eyes slide to ashe's face, soft-edged and deceptively sweet, and strokes his hair from his forehead. he stamps the joint out in the sand and wraps it back in the baggie to throw in a garbage can for later. ]
You wanna chill in my car instead?
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tw homophobic slurs??? just in case
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