Me in pain and exhausted and only thinking of characters being in the same situation

Rolan with joint issues because of bug joints and bones so his body just hurts and things easily dislocate where he’ll have to pop them back in place and try to continue on and deal with the dull aches everywhere

Rand with migraines, always wearing his sunglasses to try and block any of the light coming in, struggling to write dnd notes because while his head may be slowly trying to kill him he finally figured out where to go in the story and he’ll be damned if he forgets it

Kian just exhausted all the time even if he hasn’t done anything but is just tired down to his bones and struggles to get out of bed, lays awake wishing he could just sleep but racing thoughts fill his mind instead and he just stares at the ceiling as the sun slowly starts to rise

(I originally wrote this as a infodump for friends who haven’t seen it yet and that’s why it’s so vague and spoiler adverse but sure yeah tumblr can have it too)

Thinking about the ways the Bitb boys did and did not keep in touch,,,

It ended up being a long post so putting it below a cut 👍

I think Kian tried to keep in touch the most, like Grizzly mentions in the discord, Kian doesn’t feel cared for or loved out in Hollywood with only his therapist seeming to actually care a bit about him in any meaningful way. Nobody actually cares about him it’s all connections and shallowness even with the nicer and well meaning celebrities. His dream in his eyes failed even though he’s making crazy money as a stocks broker, he feels like a phony not living his true life that he promised for himself and that he wasn’t able to make his rock star dream a reality. He misses Becky. He wonders why she never came up to meet him like she promised. He still wonders if she’s still coming and still manages to think she’s just somehow 10 years late. He misses his friends. He would leave voice mails to Rand and Rolan with very short like one sentence “what’s up?” And maybe a joke, and on the occasions they picked up they would chat and laugh but it would always end up with Rolan or Rand pushing the conversation to be about whatever Kian was doing in Hollywood because, obviously his life is the best and most entertaining right? So Kian would give them a story, most of which was true as he still got around, and the rest weren’t lies but padding to get around questions that might show how he truly felt or how his daily life actually looked. He would find anything to talk about that would get a laugh out his friends, the people who were supposed to really care for him and the care that he needed but was paranoid that they too were going to grow distant and their knowledge of each other would get too wide with their time apart and soon he wouldn’t know the true them and they wouldn’t know the real Kian anymore and he would be totally truly unknown to those around him again.

Rolan would talk a bit about his own personal life, and would always find some way to construct it so it sounded like he was justifying everything he did. Because if he couldn’t communicate to someone else that he knew what he was doing how could he fool himself? How could he fool himself enough to keep going and fool everyone else that he deserved his job and his life and leaving everything behind?

Kian would bring up Galloway all the time for nostalgias sake and because it was something they both experienced and could talk about, but it always made Rolan uncomfortable. He couldn’t tell Kian that he missed it because then why did he leave. Why did he flee that town and everything he had in the dead of night with the clear intent to everyone left there he was escaping them. And he couldn’t tell Kian he hated it either because it was their old life, the one they had together and Kian loved it..and so does Rolan. He knows he loves his old life but he cannot look it in the face and cannot take his eyes off the present or he will crumble under his own mountain of questions he puts off answering for himself. And so he constructs a life where it’s all going well for him and Kians feeds him back a life where it’s all going well for him too and both are deeply saddened because they know that’s not telling the full truth and that their friend is no longer telling them everything.

Rolan and Rand do not talk, sometimes they receive information about each other through Kians calls and gossip or on very rare occasion some kind of too-formal-they-don’t-know-why-they-said-it-that-way call or voicemail. Rolan blocks out a lot of The Event and he associates it heavily with Rand even tho he wishes he didn’t. He knows Rand went though a similar thing he did, and he feels really guilty for not being there for Rand but can’t decide when he should try to be there for him, if it’s too late. He still has a lot of feelings he hasn’t figured out about Rand and whenever he tries to untangle them it hurts, he feels Rand resents him.

Rand feels like he’s losing a grip on everything. It’s all slipping out of his hands and he’s becoming more and more pessimistic about his own effort to hold on, a cycle looping to make it worse out of guilt and shame and self loathing. Some days he picks up the phone desperately when someone reaches out only to not know what to say, and other days he lets it ring and ring and just thinks about allll he wishes he could say.

Sometimes when he spares a word with Rolan he find himself slipping and often has to hang up before he ends up lashing out or saying something hurtful that he wouldn’t be able to fix halfway across the country when they don’t know when they will talk again, so he ends up shutting his mouth tight to keep his emotions in. Rolan doesn’t know what to do with this and after a couple of awkward ha-ha’s leaves with just telling Rand what info he needed to communicate, with their calls often ending with a couple seconds of silence while Rolan waits and Rand tries to work up the courage to say something else before Rolan gives a small goodbye and hangs up.

Rands calls with Kian go much better, and on a good day Rand will often end up laughing and joking with him for an entire day on the phone if Kian doesn’t get busy with something. Rand never gets busy. He never gets busy in their godforsaken lazy town on his own lazy ass. He hates the others for leaving and he hates himself for staying. He is jealous the others got out and so so so thankful they did. He is so so lonely and doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He wishes that he called more but really just wants them back in his attic again, sitting next to him, somewhere where he could see and feel them. If he convinces himself that he’s sneaking into Kians backyard and throwing rocks at his window he can call Kian. If he convinces himself that he’s going to ask Rolan why he left Galloway he can call Rolan (but he will never ask, it’s just to get him to punch in his number). A lot of his messages get sent to voicemail, his friends are busy when he isn’t, they have lives at 11:00am when he hasn’t left the house. They are sleeping (sometimes with babes lol) at 4:50 am in the morning when Rand gets so high he wishes it could just knock himself out and he needs someone or something to take him out of his current stagnant as the bayou life. He doesn’t have a life he’s waiting to live anymore, and he thinks he’s missed his window. One misstep in his life, and his sister is gone. One misstep and the rest of his life is a unfinished plan with empty pages until he dies.

TDLR : Kian desperate for the people he truly connects with calls his friends often to maintain his knowledge of their lives because if they drift there will be nobody left who actually cares about him.

Rolan needs to prove to himself and everyone else that every decision he makes was the right one because if he lets doubt slip through his regret and anxiety will destroy all he has scraped together for himself.

Rand has so many things he wants to communicate to the people he trusts but he can’t work up the courage to decide that “it’s the right time” to say anything. And all that’s left to talk about is whatever else is going on his life which is nothing at all.