just-french-me-up - Tumblr blog

just-french-me-up · 2 days

Text

red currant

Read on AO3 here. No one can outrun grief, not even Morpheus, formerly Dream of the Endless. Grief is patient, and it will wait, even in the aisles of a grocery store, to take him into its arms and hold him tight. contents: Dreamling, human Morpheus, post-Kindly Ones, mild gore, brief discussion of food-related issues, grief

At first, Morpheus was too busy dealing with a body that needed things. It was often too cold, its joints ached terribly, and it took him longer than he cared to admit to recognize what hunger and thirst actually felt like. The latter came with their own host of indignities, not least of which was the seeming inability to properly digest dairy, and a strong aversion to certain textures, no matter how appealing the food in question might be in theory.

Hob both understood, and didn’t. He was always warm, something Morpheus deeply envied, even if he wouldn’t admit to it aloud. He too struggled, sometimes, with food, albeit in a much different way; the cupboards were often overfull before being carefully culled for in-date products to donate away, and he ate to uncomfortable excess on occasion, as if he forgot that there would be more for the foreseeable future.

There was also the question of fashioning a life out of nothing. Morpheus was dragged to a tiny shop in an out of the way street and photographed for a passport purchased in cash, along with all other relevant cards and certificates that made someone human. He was, with great effort, persuaded to allow the doctor with kind eyes who still made house calls to examine him, who pronounced him to be in fair health and left him with a number of pamphlets on proper nutrition. He came to know how to use a phone in practice, instead of merely in theory.

But Hob couldn’t stay with Morpheus in the flat forever, and Morpheus threw himself into the process of becoming human. He spent long hours reading, books he once would have known simply by touching their spine, learned instead page by page and word by word. He slept more often than he thought an adult human might need, and he spent time submerged in the bathtub, topping up the hot water the second it began to grow tepid. He played music on Hob’s speakers, any album that Hob owned, and didn’t stop to think why he couldn’t bear to sit still without distraction.

Because Morpheus was fine. He had been trapped in a human body in a glass cage for a century; being suddenly and irrevocably shoved into the same form, pieced back together lovingly by hands he could not bear to contemplate, was almost a familiar feeling. He had not felt hunger or thirst or pain in that prison, but to discover them for himself was not mind-breaking. He endured, and he allowed Hob to care for him, and he did not let himself be otherwise.

But all things, as he came to know, must change.

He was alone in the shop around the corner from Hob’s flat. In exactly seventy-four minutes, Hob would be home for tea, and they were, inexplicably, entirely out of jam, which meant that he could not have jam on toast for tea, and that was entirely unacceptable.

To Hob’s unending surprise, Morpheus liked the shop, just as he liked the park at noon when all manner of people were milling about, and the pub of an evening when it was full and loud and bright. He did not want to speak with people, but he wanted to be within them, surrounded by them, the rise and fall of their voices, and Hob hadn’t asked him why. He had, instead, shown him a website dedicated to ambient noise, and told him that he could have the coffee shop in the flat all day if he wanted, if that was what he liked.

Morpheus was standing in front of the shelves dedicated to all manner of spreads, contemplating the relative merits of strawberry (a known quantity, which he liked very much) or red currant (unknown, untested, but also free of any bits, which he disliked very much, and red, which was a promising color when it came to foods), when he reached for a jar to peer at it up close, and instead met the hand of the shopper beside him, who had crept up without his awareness and reached for the exact same jar at the exact same moment.

He withdrew his hand, out of courtesy, and began to offer an apology as the woman beside him did the same, and neither of them kept hold of the jar, which fell, end over end, until it landed with a very final sounding smash at their feet. The woman stepped back with a small cry of alarm, and Morpheus stood, as if rooted to the very ground itself, and contemplated the slightly wobbling red mess in front of him. Vaguely, he was aware of the woman stepping to the end of the aisle to catch the attention of a shop worker, who would undoubtedly gather cleaning supplies and in fifteen minutes, it would be as if it had never happened at all.

There was a scent, a cloying sweetness that rose from the shattered remains of the jam jar, a scent that Morpheus was unsure anyone else had noticed, or that was perhaps unique to him as he stood, still and unmoving, a buzzing in his ears, like the whine of a particularly persistent fly, and he moved his hand as if to shoo it away and clean up the mess besides only to blink and see—

Viscera, deep and red as rubies; he was walking through a field of carnage, each step staining him further, gore working its way over his feet to his ankles—why had they bled? they were never flesh and blood (but that was a lie, a lie he told himself again and again and again—they had been flesh and blood to him) and he was walking towards the end of all things, or maybe just the end of himself, and it was quiet, so quiet, an unearthly silence so vast that it nearly swallowed him whole and he felt it, a physical thing, the shattering of all that he was, all that he was ever meant to be, but it hurt less than he thought it might, and for a moment, just a moment, he thought it was over, the power gone, until—he had never felt so hollow, and he tried to reach out, to feel the warm familiarity of uncountable minds of his creation and those entirely independent of himself, human and creature alike, and found only an unending void, he had thought it quiet before but this, this was true nothingness, an abyss in which there was only him, and him alone and he was nothing, nothing, nothing at all—

“—all right, duck? Just a bit of jam on your boots and trousers, nothing that won’t wipe right off, I’m sure, and no staining to worry about, not with that very sensible black, hides a world of sin, doesn’t it?”

The woman was standing near him, close enough to feel the warmth emanating from her, and once, he would have known her name. She was not touching him, only hovering a hand quite near him, as she continued, voice even more gentle.

“Let’s just step to the side, and we can get out of everyone’s way while they clean up.”

For one horrible, painful moment, he thought she might say more, might even offer to call someone for him, the look in her eyes well-meaning, but horribly perceptive. He could not bear to be seen. It was enough to jolt him into motion, and he nodded, somewhat stiffly, and moved away from the puddle of jam. The arrival of the shop worker, complete with cleaning supplies, distracted the woman long enough for Morpheus to enact his escape, abandoning any thoughts of tea or toast as he made his way, with single minded determination, back to the flat.

It was too quiet on his walk back, and it was too quiet inside the flat, the soft tick of the clock on the mantle and the gentle hum of the refrigerator not enough, never enough. Hob would be home in fifty-three minutes, and it was not enough.

He burnt the paper in the sink, watching it crumble in on itself and smolder into ash, not knowing if it would even work, being as he was. Morpheus waited, hands gripping the cold porcelain of the sink, his knuckles nearly white enough to match. She would understand, his sister. She would know what it was like. She could tell him what to do, how to live, now, that he was apart from the only piece of himself that he had ever cared for, no matter how imperfectly he had done so. He could not abide being so terribly, horribly alone, with only the sound of his own voice in his head to keep him company. There was no consciousness within him, save for his own.

Morpheus did not hear her enter the flat. She had always been so good at silence, slipping into spaces like smoke. Her hand, when she laid it over his own, was slightly clammy, and so painfully familiar that it made his chest ache.

“Brother,” she said, and he tried to speak, to greet her in return, but found that he could not force the words past his lips. She would know, he thought, she would understand.

She led him to the couch, pulling him to sit beside her, and Despair enfolded Morpheus in her arms.

#the sandman #dreamling #sandman fics #well fuck :')#hit right in those feelings #imiright #he's so fucking alone in his mind and that is such an odd and cripplingly lonely feeling aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh

82 notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 3 days

Text

“omg you’re so creative. how do you get your ideas” i hallucinate a single scene in the taco bell drive thru and then spend 13 months trying to write it

#i mean #accurate

18K notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 5 days

Text

"Is it normal to-" Doesn't matter. Do it weird if it isn't hurting anyone

#👌👌#solid take

37K notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 6 days

Text

me : i dont do parasocial relationships

sortedfood, with its 13-year-old chokehold on my person: *exists*

me : shit

#sortedfood #sorted #listen listen listen #they're my beloveds #they're family #and im only half ashamed

5 notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 7 days

Text

Liquid Courage

#CUTE AS HELL #les mis #enjoltaire #enjolras #grantaire

580 notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 7 days

Text

International news reporting on the coming 2024 Paris Olympics : wow amazing venues, events held at Versailles, so fresh, so sophisticated, hon hon oui oui

French news reporting on the coming 2024 Paris Olympics : this shitshow will be the biggest travesty the world has ever seen and we cant wait, let us be Nero playing the violin as Paris burns

#france #french culture #french stuff #i just saw NBC report on it and I was like?????????#oh baby youve got a BIG storm coming

75 notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 9 days

Text

"Do I deserve this?" "Am I worthy of this?"

So irrelevant. Do you want it?

#bringing this energy into spring

59K notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 12 days

Text

I made a lino block out of this piece from last year!

Progress shots below the cut :)

#enjolras #les mis #oh so that's the terrible in the #capable of being terrible part #good good good #that man BITES

282 notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 12 days

Text

Annalaura_art

#all of this artists posts are like a balm to the soul #serotonin posts

2K notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 12 days

Text

#when will the bountiful harvest come back from the war?#writing nightmare

54K notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 12 days

Text

"is this too cliche?" who cares? bro, write what you have fun writing. stuff your manuscript full of your favourite tropes. the same themes you love. all inspired by things you grew up with. do it all. go off. load. it. up. be freeeee

#yessssssssss #youre on this earth for the Delights!

12K notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 13 days

Text

not now kitten, daddy has to replay that brand new song until the very last atom of serotonin runs dry

#some straight up cocaine in some of those tunes

100 notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 16 days

Note

You are a Tumblr celebrity to me. The impact your Grantaire textposts had on me, age fourteen, cannot be overstated

This is a badge of honour I shall wear till the day I die

#answered #how incredibly nice of you!#I did churn those out at an unhealthy rate #the word brainrot was not yet in use and yet #we're almost :')))) 10 years later :')))))#i'm trynna not to consider that :')

24 notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 16 days

Text

A reminder to all my lovely fellow writers: progress is progress, even when it isn't. Writing four thousand words in a session is progress. Writing a hundred words in a session is progress. Removing an entire scene because it doesn't flow well is progress. Rethinking your plan for the plot in order to get unstuck is progress. Development looks different for every writer and every story.

#good great thanks #writing nightmare

5K notes · View notes

just-french-me-up · 17 days

Text