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ntzsche9 · 9 months

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So, hi! I'm Verne (they/them), practically a queer elder in my 30s, brand new to tumblr (dunno how I ever missed the boat), and I only ever seem to write in the 20 minutes or so between pulling up to work and clocking in, or when I'm putting my toddlers down for a nap but don't want to crawl out of their beds and address the chores I gotta do while they're out of the way. I've written poetry, prose, and roleplayed in the past but got away from it for years and years, and only recently started writing again. I have notebooks and lists of story ideas but the few things I have fleshed out are mostly silly character-based "what if?" scenarios, because those are the most fun to me. Too many of my stories are me simply wanting to write a scene, developing a bit of a world around it, then losing interest entirely. I hope this blog can change that a bit, help me focus on following through or figuring out how to better develop small ideas into something longer.

Interests:

Post-apocalyptic

Near-future dystopias

Scifi/Fantasy (urban) with magical realism

History/AltHistory (especially lesser-known and marginalized stories)

Horror, dark, violent, and mature themes

Queer everything. I can't write heteros to save my life and I'm not all that sorry about it.

Sexy melodrama and smut with too much plot

Fanfiction (I could read/write Fallout stuff all day)

Some Favorite Authors:

Octavia Butler

Nnedi Okorafor

VE Schwab

Starhawk

Madeline Miller

Ta-nehisi Coates

Becky Chambers

Emma Donoghue

Looking for:

Community, inspiration, other writers to follow, and problem-solving tips in storytelling and sticking to stories when things get tough. I really just need some folks to talk to when working through all the things in my head. Open to the occasional tag but I'm not great at responding.

I have plenty more little bits of nonsense in various states of readability, like character backgrounds, alt-ending scenes, slice-of-life banter between characters, etc. These will be posted under the tag #ntzsche misc

Noteworthy WIPs:

Bad Blood - A Fallout Nuka-World fanfic (#ntzsche Nuka-World)

My longest story is a fanfic, but with a cast of characters largely not in the Fallout 4 DLC. I intend to eventually write this in a way that someone who hasn't played the game would be able to easily read.

Lafayette, the son of a 'retired' raider, left his abusive father to find his place in the world and was taken in by an eclectic trauma-bonded found family that inspires him to be a better person and shows him love he is certain he doesn't deserve. When his father comes across them in a raid, Lafayette is given the offer to join him, and he agrees in order to save the settlement and his little brother. Lafayette finds that being with his dad again, and being the son he always wanted him to be, isn't nearly as difficult as he thought it would be. He struggles to maintain the person he wants to be with the person he suspects he is, all while a cast of scheming raiders, wastelanders, and slaves vie for power in the raider city built within the rusted remains of an amusement park.

Salem's Child (#ntzsche Salem)

A background on one of the lesser Nuka-World characters that I got carried away with.

Andrew Rook doesn't look like his parents. He looks like someone they are desperate to forget. Growing up in post-apocalyptic Salem, Massachusetts has it's perks, though. In a fading settlement run by incompetent men who would rather blame the population of feral black cats for their problems than try to solve them, Andrew and his two best friends build a world in their imagination that shields them from the wretchedness of the wasteland and the people they have to rely on to survive.

Hechizo

Another character background that I would love to expand into a few short stories around.

Mateo Zavala was born in the vibrant and tight-knit community of Navarro. His great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, a pre-war ghoul, is still the ruling matriarch, and it's hard for her not to play favorites when she has over 300 living descendants.

The Crash (#ntzsche Crash)

A what-if real-world rewrite of an event from another story. I just really enjoy writing these two.

Gabe always knew his functional alcoholic roomie would get into a terrible car wreck some day, but he never thought he would be dumb enough to be in the car with him. When the consequences of the wreck threaten to destroy Dave's life, Gabe finds himself doing everything he can to hold those pieces together. The love he harbors for his straight, polyamorous best friend runs deeper than either of them are ready to face, and find that Dave's injury turns their relationship completely on end.

#writeblr introduction #writeblr #writeblr intro #queer writers #lgbtq writer #ao3 #wip #creative writing #writing #new writeblr #ntzsche misc #ntzsche nuka-world #ntzsche Salem #ntzsche Crash

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cmrosens · 6 months

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Worldbuilding notes for queer normative fantasy societies... I have a lot of thoughts about this so here are some notes and questions around 3 of the main ones I have been thinking about recently.

1. How many different structures of formally recognised relationships are there outside of the monogamous spouse version?

If you want a society where relationships themselves are queered, moving away from a monogamous default, think about different forms of union and commitment and whether these can be legally recognised and what the legal/civil ramifications are.

Who recognises these relationships? What is the legal process to get them recognised? If there is no legal process then are we looking at a society where taxes are a communal responsibility and not levelled at individuals?

Is there freedom of movement and if so how much is affordable and feasible - does this have a bearing on queer people even in a queer normative world? What happens if the village is very small and has 3 queer people in it none of whom really like each other? Where do you go to find a partner if you can't travel far?

If the society thinks arranged marriages are normal and there is no concept of marrying for love, and no expectation of attraction only reasonable companionship, and you can have multiple spouses/formal partners for political reasons and to unite families (perhaps to formally team up and spread the cost of those communal taxes, etc) then you may end up with the situation of lots of different relationship structures and someone married off finally coming out as straight, and their formal partner wingmanning them to find someone else to be with.

2. Inheritance law and family connections

In a queer normative society, it would make sense for both biological kids and adopted or fostered kids to be equally accepted and no distinction drawn between them. This has extensive knock-on effects for how society is structured and

Legitimacy may not even mean anything in a society with multiple relationship structures. So how does this all work legally and socially and culturally and politically and economically?

First off: does it matter who your parents are and whether you have a firm grasp of your personal genealogy, or would people just give up on all that because it gets so muddy.

E.g.::::

"I am Bran son of Brom" means nothing when you actually mean, "I am Bran, my mother Ceris was the wife of Carl and she carried me to term and Brom didn't impregnate her, that was Roan, partner of Brom, but to be fair it might also be Carl because we can't really be sure on the timing there, and then Ceris and her other partner Sara both nursed me as a baby and then as a kid it was decided I would have more opportunities in life if I went to live with Brom and Roan and learned their trade, and then Brom as the higher earner and the one contributing most to the communal taxes thought he should be the one to formally adopt me, even though I still mostly lived with Ceris and Carl and Sara until I was 16, because then I would inherit more and be able to pursue a different career path and have money to travel, so when I say I am Bran son of Brom I mean only in the technical legal sense".

It also makes no sense here to say, "I am Bran son of Brom" and erase Ceris, Sara, Carl and Roan from that picture of yourself, particularly if the society is not patriarchal and therefore less likely to reckon lineage in a strict patrilineal way.

In this example, the implications of saying, "I am Bran son of Brom" are that you don't KNOW who your other connections are and you have had a childhood lacking in all the other communal connections others have had. You only know Brom. Were you hermits, living apart from society in a lonely, mountainous region somewhere? That would make sense. But people might still look at you once you say "I am Bran son of Brom" and wait a bit and then be like, "...Brom, and...??"

Like you wouldn't say that. You would instead say something like, "I am Bran of Seven Oaks" because the place is what everyone has in common, or you might say "I am Bran, of the Seven Oaks community" if the people are more important than their location.

Or would communities like this have their own assigned name, if not based on location, then on something else? A symbol or glyph that represents different groups and people adopt this glyph when they enter into a new community, but keep records of the previous ones they have been connected to until there is a whole string of glyphs after their name as a shorthand record of their entire network of relationships? Is this marked on their skin or on some item they wear? Formally inscribed in ledgers and public records?

Do these glyphs appear as a straight line, a row or column, or is there a cobweb or star shape with different sections/points meaning different things, and these symbols/glyohs/letters or whatever are placed in the web or star points?

That might be a cool item of jewellery with things carved on beads and beads added to it, or a massive back tattoo that gets added to all the time until for some it covers their whole body like a map of all the people they have connected with in some official way through their entire lives, especially if you adopt a kid and add in that kid's connections that are now connected to you.

How would people react to those with very few beads and few connections? Would they treat them with pity or with suspicion? What is the story of "Bran son of Brom"??

3. Patriarchy vs Matriarchy vs ....????

First, let's not pretend Matriarchy is a utopia. It is the same thing as patriarchy except women are in charge, and is equally as toxic in terms of structure. A society where 50% of citizens are subject to gender-based power structures is not a good one regardless of which gender is in charge.

Also, this still presents the normative of a gender binary, so you would still have structural oppression of genders who do not conform to or are perceived to undermine that binary. Up to you if your society is like that, but one to consider.

Also if we are talking about a queer normative society with one of those "gender plague" situations so everyone with an X or Y chromosome is dead, trans people and non binary people would still exist, still presenting in the applicable way. Intersex people would still exist, and people who present as "the sex that doesn't get the plague" may still contract it and die of it if you have it linked to chromosomes, because unless you do chromosomal testing you won't always know to look at someone what they have. So there is all that to think about.

Eliminating all cis men from a society doesn't actually get rid of men or masc-presenting people, but it does open things up for a less binary society in general.

If we aren't playing with dodgy science, and we have a queer normative society but you do want to explore some hierarchical structures within it, there are lots of other ways you can do that unrelated to gender.

In fact it doesn't make sense for this fantasy society in the "Bran son of Brom" example to have "gender roles" at all, so what is the internal family structure like in terms of power balance? Is this more about dominant personality vs democracy (just because you agree one person is in charge means nothing in practice if there is a more charismatic option that undermines this elected choice). Is it to do with earning power? If things are decided at communal meetings, who chairs them and why? What is the knock on logical effect on society on a larger scale?

So much stuff to think about there tbh

#writeblr #world building #worldbuilding #queer normative fantasy #writers on tumblr #gay fantasy #lgbtq writer #lgbtqwrimo #lgbtq community #writing fantasy #fantasy world

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maveras-posts · 10 months

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🖤ART 🤍✨HEADCANONS✨

Art the Clown General Tingz:

Art is c h a o t i c to say the least

He sometimes is manic and does some questionable things (he’s in a silly goofy mood)

Some nights he just stays up and practices his ✨MaKeUp✨ (May or may not listen to Britney Spears while doing it😭✋)

CLEAN YA MAKEUP BruShEs ART—

Art is also a Barb ( I’ve walked into some dance routines 😂✋)

Also ATTITUDE 🙄🤌

IS IT ME? AM I THE DrAmA?—YES my dear Art YES💅

Actually a big Teddy Bear if you can get him to warm up to you (Clingy VERY clingy)

Also LOVES the ✨TEA✨ he’s that gay bestie you tell everything to (Careful tho, ✨HE WONT HESITATE✨ to put a Bitch 6 FEET DEEP🙄✋)

Also loves cotton candy and ANYTHING flavored like it (Blood gotta be made from cotton candy syrup)

Also watch him he ✨NiBblEs✨ on arms and toes— ART DAFUQ. Art BIT ME— (ya know sometimes violence is the answer🙄💅)

Idk how to describe it but he smells like vanilla, blood and ✨DeViL’s LeTtuCe✨

Also LOVES Insane Clown Posse (Art is an insane clown and it feels nice to be represented)

He Shoplifts A LOT(EVERYTHING he owns is ✨StOleN✨)

Also the type of guy to be in Walmart at 3AM riding a bike or riding a shopping cart (The workers know him they leave him be)

Also has candy on him at all times (HE LOVES the ✨SoUr CaNDy✨)

Tbh one of my my favorites cause he is just fucking batshit crazy (Art is my homie for real)

So…I watched both the Terrifiers and I must say… I LOVED IT— tbh these movies are very slept on and forgotten especially our mans of the hour/ post whatevs… ART THE MUTHAFUCKIN CLOWNN— Idk why but instantly when he entered the diner I fell in LOVE. Lmfao I kinda knew he would just be CHAOTIC (I was right) he’s just such a lil shit and he ✨SLAYS✨ (literally and figuratively) so I cooked up these headcanons, don’t worry he confirmed and denied…

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ari-zonatea14 · 5 months

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I want/someone

I want someone to run their fingers through my hair and look at me with undying love.

I want someone to lean in with a smile and kiss me until we're breathless.

I want someone to text me all day long and actually care about my day

I want someone to make me feel like There's no one else they would rather be with

I want someone to start acting like me because they spend so much time with me..

I want to have someone to hold and care for

I want someone to Tell that they mean the world to me

I want Someone to talk to until we pass out on the phone

I just want love...

-Ari

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romantic-serendipity · 5 months

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pomegranates are a sapphic fruit.

today i wandered upon a single fruit, a garnet in the sunset reflected across the snow. i broke the fruit open and gently pulled each seed from the flesh of the fruit.

but most lovely of all, the juice stained my fingertips, my wrists, my nose. i painted a flower garden from the juices flowing across the countertop - violet roses blooming and glowing beneath POMME; 2023.

and in the same way, sapphic love is a wandering, a glowing, breaking boundaries, and gentleness. it's an inspiration in the wind, a romanticized wisp of creation on the drift of a breeze.

it's a flower garden to which lovers tend and lovers bloom.

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ghoulishbuck · 6 months

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Writer: hyper focuses on a mural that will only be mentioned once or twice and goes into great detail about said mural.

Also, writer: Can’t describe any part of the house beyond the small section the mural is located in.

#writer #queer writers #writerblr #writers on tumblr #writerslife #writer problems #writerscommunity #lgbt writer #lgbtq writers #queer writer #lgbt writers #writer things #lgbtq writer #writing #writing wip

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sunset-a-story · 1 year

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When I was going through writing workshops in undergrad it was always asked, “But why is this character lgbtq?”

Because they are. Being lgbtq doesn’t need a literary justification.

It was never accepted in these workshops that a character could simply be a person who is also queer. Instead, it was required that queerness had to be a metaphor/symbolic or the story had to be solely about their queerness. And it was fucking infuriating.

Queerness is more than a plot device. I will die on this hill. Let the gays be gay in life and in fiction.

So this is my thank you to all you writers out there writing our queer stories, our gay af characters, our epic heroes that happen to also be lesbians, our ace protags, and our gender-expansive love stories. Thank you for remaining un-straight-washed. These stories deserve to be told because they are powerful stories and I’m excited to read them.

#writeblr #lgbtq writer #queer stories #the word literary chaffs my ass

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future-journalist-adventures · 13 days

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Inside my Head - A Collection of Short Stories

"Silent"

experience or daydream: experience

characters: me, "my friend" (🌘), classmates, substitute teacher

setting: mid-April; Friday afternoon; high school

content warnings: queerphobia

Vibrant colors danced through the hallway as a content smile spread across my face. The bassline of the upbeat music I blasted through my headphones vibrated in every inch of my body as I absentmindedly walked to the beat; the muffled sounds of other kids talking and laughing could be heard beneath the sound of the music. I watched as my friend and I walked in sync, resisting the urge to comment on it. I glanced over at the large black pin my friend was sporting, with the LGBTQ+ flag in the middle and the words “Silence is Loud” printed across it, before carefully adjusting my own matching pin. He flashed me a small smile, which I returned almost instinctively as we walked side-by-side into our biology classroom.

I turned off my music, taking my headphones off of my head and setting them down on my neck. My friend and I began to cross the room to put our things down at our seats, only to find something that would wipe the smiles right off of both of our faces.

My heart seemed to stop for a moment. My stomach dropped, and the content feeling I once possessed had somehow vanished. I gaped breathlessly, watching as my classmates passed around a crumpled flyer with the same design as our pins, laughing at and mocking it.

One of them glanced at my friend and I’s pins, going quiet for a moment before scoffing and smirking, holding out the flyer for both of us to see.

“So-” he began, still laughing, “are you guys really not allowed to talk?”

My friend and I exchanged nervous glances before slipping past them wordlessly.

My attempts to calm myself down, and to hide how much I was shaking now, were quickly failing. I shot the substitute teacher a desperate glance only to find that she hadn’t looked up from her desk at all. Sitting down at my desk, I replayed the scene in my head and watched as the kids continued their insensitive mockery.

As I finally began to calm myself down, I heard the sound of something hitting the floor, followed by an eruption of laughter. My head snapped up to see the flyer, now completely rolled into a ball, laying on the floor next to my friend’s desk. They quickly snatched it from the ground and stuffed it in their bag. Their head was turned away from me so I couldn’t see his face, but somehow I felt I knew exactly what they were thinking.

40 minutes later, the last bell of the day rang, signaling the end of our day of silence. But as I walked with my friend out of the room, across the hall, and up the stairs, we stayed silent: not because we had to, but because there was nothing left to say.

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malibudarby87 · 6 months

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How To Bury Your Love - short story

#Content Warning for spooky stuff and mild body horror#

I recognise Xander the way I would a wax figure. An uncanny approximation of my friend standing in my kitchen, familiar in ways both unnerving and kindly. He is Canadian by catabolism now. His long British vowels drowned in maple; the sharp gravel of his bass notes softened to a pine-fire purr. Even the mass of him, his imposing granite shape, square shouldered and reaching the height of the doorframe, is softened at the edges. Smooth and autumnal, with an un-English gentility.

He is back for the winter, he tells me, and leans in for a hug. His body is a thick, rustic object, made for labour, but his eyes show the softness that kept him indoors; molasses brown with a ring of cinder toffee, cracked and dispersed into the surrounding syrup. Raised eyebrows and the flash of a canine in his smile as he pulls me into him. Skin prickles at the warm-stone kiss on my cheek, campfire and salt on his collar as I breathe him in, and something else. A dryness like mould on bread that catches in the back of my throat.

I raise my arms and hold him firmly, unsure for the first time in my life of his solidity. I press the flesh of my cheek into the buttons of his coat and my fingers find warmth beneath the green corduroy and I know, inflexibly that he is here in my kitchen, holding me. The evidence of his hands, large and square like paws on my neck and lower back, and the soft purr of his comforting coo that vibrates in my hair, is unshakable against the equally inflexible truth that Xander Hollinsworth – my best friend and great unrequited love of my life – had died a week prior.

I step back from the hug and begin to ask him how he got in, appearing as he did seemingly from nowhere in the doorway of my galley kitchen as I absentmindedly finished making two cups of tea instead of one. As if some part of me expected this strange company. An odd behaviour made odder by the knowledge that I don’t get much company – undead or otherwise – anymore.

He waits for me to finish, one eyebrow cocked in anticipation, but the words stick in my throat and instead I turn my gaze to the counter. I stare at it for a while before quietly handing him the prophetic second mug of sweet, milky tea.

‘Cheers, darling,’he says, and my chest blossoms.

In the past, my friends in the know had scolded me for letting him call me that. Tutted their tongues and shaken their heads when I explained how it made me feel like a wildflower shrapnel bomb had exploded in my gut whenever he called me darling, or sweetheart, or handsome.

‘He’s leading you on. And what’s worse, you’re encouraging it,’ they would say, exhausted by the repetitive, futile explanation, like the tired owner of a dog that won’t stop pissing on the rug. ‘It’s not healthy. He’s never gonna fuck you, Ben.’

I would agree with them, only in part to keep them quiet but also firm in the knowledge that they were right. Then later, in the proximity of him and his all-encompassing solidity, all such pretences would be shed, and I would go out of my way to be dutiful and attentive enough to illicit those words.

When he announced his permanent departure to Canada, more than four years ago now, there were some among my friends who couldn’t contain their glee at being proven right. He was never going to fuck me, and now he’d be too far away for me to keep pretending like he would. This, for reasons I could never quite explain, would not be the case. My imagination, despite my own protestations, knew no obstacle it couldn’t overcome, and I pined and hoped harder in his absence than I ever did in his presence.

Weeks turned to months and years, and I still held out a childish hope that he would one day return and sweep me off my feet and we would fall madly in love somewhere with green mountains and caramel doughnuts; the scent of sandalwood and acoustic guitar following wherever we went. This was not – as I was reminded for a time until my friend’s patience depleted – a healthy way of being for a thirty-three-year-old man.

There is a significant part of me, standing in the kitchen, watching my dead but not dead friend sip his tea in awkward silence, that feels a grim smugness at being proven right.

Conversation is stilted as I ask awkwardly how his journey was and he laughs dryly. I join in the laugh after a few moments of quiet shock, shaking my head as I try to rationalize the situation. Xander is dead. He is also in my kitchen, swirling the dregs of his tea in a Starbucks Pumkin mug, and shooting me glances with those molasses eyes of his. Both things are true. I decide that to examine things much further is a waste of sanity, and lead him to the living room to sit on the sofa.

The silence here is gentler. A warm, familiar thing that was always easy to come by between us. We could sit for hours in each other’s company, never saying a word. I would sometimes, as I did now, count the freckles on his neck, imagining constellations in the flecks of brown, and he would, as he did now, pull my legs onto his lap and make cat-like biscuits on my calves in a feeble half-massage.

As I chart high-sailed ships and bears swiping at salmon and juggling jesters, I notice the skin between the freckles is paler than I remember, with a shimmer of oyster shell like spoiling ham. I hear the tendons of his fingers, mashing into the flesh of my calves, crack, and grind like stones in sausage casing. I choose to ignore these things, for now.

I don’t remember how we met. We seemed just there, in the periphery of each other’s lives. Planets in the same system. Friends of friends of friends. Over the years the Venn diagrams swelled and contracted, twisting in a spirograph pattern until we became our own little circle in the middle of the page.

I do remember, however, the moment I fell in love with him. It came long before our planets fully collided; long before we were the one person the other would call in a crisis. I suppose there was a perversity in me allowing us to grow so close in friendship, knowing what I did.

It was the week before my Birthday, not one of the big ones, and I had been a sulking child for the better part of a month. I hate Birthdays, specifically my own, and had been oscillating wildly between not wanting to bring it up for fear of anyone making a big deal of it, and wanting to tell everyone so I could demand they didn’t.

I’d just finished work, an evening shift at a massive arts and crafts store. I walked to the bus stop in a grim silence, rubbing at the knots in my shoulders, and didn’t even notice him until we were separated by a mere few feet. He stood by the bus stop bench, just under the shelter. The structure was dwarfed by him. His height, his breadth. The measure of him made everything around him look so small. But it wasn’t just his size. It was something else. A weight of being. The world was smaller for him being in it.

He held a golden balloon decorated with white smiley faces in one hand, his other behind his back. A dopey grin spread across his bearded face, flash of white in the dull glow of the streetlights, and I couldn’t help but smile in response.

He started singing Happy Birthday. Loudly. Voice like coffee grounds and whiskey. I cringed, eyes rolling. I turned on my heel and started to walk in the other direction. He rushed to follow, feet dancing on the pavement, balloon bouncing against his wrist as he continued his song. Hot breath on my cold ear. I started laughing, calling him a dickhead and swatting at the balloon when it flew too close to my face.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, slowing to a stop as he circled me. He didn’t answer until he’d finished the song, ending with a bow and a flourish, revealing a gift-wrapped rectangle in his free hand.

‘Happy Birthday, Ben.’

‘It’s not my bloody Birthday, Xander,’ I said, taking the present and the balloon offered to me. I felt foolish, stood on the pavement of an industrial estate, clutching childish party favours.

‘I know,’ he said, pulling a menthol from a half-crushed packet and lighting up. ‘But, I’ve heard you don’t like to celebrate your Birthday.’

‘I really don’t,’ I said, breathing in the smoke as it drifted towards me.

‘Well, that’s a problem for me. Because I always have to make a big deal about my friend’s Birthdays. It’s a sickness. I’m a sick man, Ben.’ He paced the narrow pavement back and forth in front of me, gesturing like Columbo giving his final thoughts. ‘So, if we celebrate it today, when it’s not your Birthday, I get to fulfil this admittedly selfish, irrepressible need I have, and you can’t be mad about it.’

‘Oh, I can’t?’ I asked, with as much impunity as I could muster through a smile.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head grimly. ‘It would be completely unreasonable of you. And rude. And possibly homophobic? I’m not sure, but just come with me for one drink, which I will buy, and we won’t have to speak about your day-of-birth again. For exactly one calendar year.’

I laughed, tapping the present against my thigh, and weighing up his disturbed logic.

‘One drink,’ he pleaded, eyes catching jewels of amber from the streetlamps. ‘And you have to be very pleased with the present or I’ll cry. It’s a copy of Frankenstein. One of the posh ones. The book is posh, not the monster. Or the Doctor. Scientist? Creator.’

That was the moment. Him stumbling over his words in the middle of nowhere, in the dusk of an unremarkable day in April, pleading for me to celebrate my existence solely for his benefit.

He asks me how I’ve been since we last spoke. It’s been a little over a fortnight since our last call. A week before I heard the news. He’d said ‘Love you, buddy. See you soon.’

I look around the room, at the collection of coffee and tea mugs, two dozen strong; the Pot Noodles with forks still embedded in the crusted remains; torn scraps of brown envelopes, notes and numbers scribbled, languidly. Pen strokes dragging across the paper. Details for his funeral in Canada that I couldn’t afford to attend. An appointment date for free grief counselling.

‘Stupid question, I guess,’ he says, and I’ve missed his smile so much. I’d thought about it often the past week. Imagining it in my mind. Picturing the way his mouth pulls up unevenly, higher on the left side. One rogue canine sliding out from his under his upper lip. I’d gotten it almost perfectly in my memory, though his lips are darker at the corners than I remember. An aubergine purple, almost fading to black.

‘You need to look after yourself better,’ he says, drumming an arrhythmic beat on my shins. If he knows he’s dead, he hasn’t yet mentioned it. ‘Honestly, I go away for a few years, and you really let yourself go. Hideous.’

It takes me a moment to realise he’s joking. His voice is flatter than I remember, the edges round and indistinct.

I wonder why I’m not scared. Shocked, yes, but searching my body I find no trace of fear. Even the shock is a dull emotion, tempered by the nearness of him. The weight of his forearms resting on me. The sound of his breathing. I’m crying. Not a hysterical thing. Tears, thick and heavy roll down my cheeks and collect in the scruff of two-week stubble.

I pull myself closer to him across the couch. My hands moving under his jacket to grab at him hungrily. Xander yields and shrugs himself free from the extra layer. He shushes me gently, stroking my neck and thumbing at the dampness in the corners of my eyes, but does nothing to stop my grasping.

‘Hey, it’s okay,’ he whispers.

I push my face into his chest, breathing him in. Fire and ash. Wood and leather. Dry mould.

‘Xander?’ I start. Unsure of where I’ll end. ‘Why? Why are you here?’

He holds me for a long time in silence. My salt tears dampening his chest hair and the ribbing of his shirt. Eventually, he answers.

‘I owed you that much, I think.’

He doesn’t elaborate, and he doesn’t need to. We both know what he means, in some way. ‘You don’t owe me shit, dickhead.’

Fingers firmly on my chin, he raises my head. Our eyes search for each other’s in the dim light. His dart rapidly, as if struggling to focus on mine. Carousels of brown and gold, flickering like tracking on a VHS. The edges are cloudy, like cigarette smoke.

I remember the last time we were this close, in this way. The electric anticipation of possibility that went unfulfilled.

‘Can I?’ he asks, barely more than a whisper. I should say no, or at least think further. But before I can find protestations, something slick and warm in my bones moves, and I shakily nod my response.

His lips touch mine and I crack open. A tectonic shift of plates under pressure, finally yielding after years of friction. I am split in two. In this moment we are both of us dead men. I know this like I know anything. How to breathe. The sound of thunder. Universal knowledge that lives in the blood.

I am certain that beyond this kiss, the man I was, who waited and craved, will be no more, and the man who knows a hunger sated will continue. This dead man doesn’t know which is more cursed.

Xander’s mouth tastes like curdling milk.

I was always terrible at flirting. I came out too young and learned too quickly to fear the violence of threatened masculinity, and so I never felt comfortable around men.

Well, most men.

Xander had an ease to him. An assurance in the way he carried himself. I’d watch him flirt and seduce, casually slipping from relaxed, friendly conversation to something more primal without a hint of fear.

I wasn’t even jealous, most of the time, but fascinated by an aptitude that seemed impossible to me.

I remember seeing him strike out only once, though I’m sure there must have been other times. It was less a miscalculation through incompetence and more the effects of mixing Tequila and Prosecco.

It was New Years Eve 2015, and we’d spent the night hopping around house parties in Nottingham before finding ourselves outside some tiny black-box gay club down by the canal. The entry price was more than either of us had left to spend, and Xander instead had the bright idea of seducing one of the door staff; a stout, burly bald guy with ginger stubble.

Xander dwarfed him, practically having to lean at the waist to speak into his ear over the din of whistles, fireworks, and general homosexual commotion.

I kept my distance, steadying myself on a safety railing, swapping between swigs of water and drags from one of Xander’s Superking menthols. I expected I’d soon be watching them make out by the river. I was wrong.

I didn’t hear what was said, but I saw the shove. This guy with the stubble, not much more than five feet tall caught Xander off balance. He tumbled onto the cobbles, rocking like a see-saw on his head before crumpling into immobility. It was a strangely morbid spectacle, but oddly impressive. Like watching a tower block fall while a lone resident waved from a balcony. It wasn’t a fight. One push and it was done.

I stood frozen, as if unable to process what I’d just seen. By the time I’d summoned the courage to walk over and help, Xander had somehow already charmed the guy into apologising.

Throwing out some apologies of my own, I promised to get Xander home and waved off the forming crowd. His weight on my shoulders as I walked him down the street was a beautiful burden. My cross and my cause in one drunken package, slurring nonsense into the cold air.

Later, we sat together further down the canal. Shoulder to shoulder with a greasy slice of pizza between us, feet dangling through the safety rails over the still water.

‘Don’t think either of us is getting lucky tonight,’ he said, wiping blood from his hairline with a balled up pizza napkin. I ignored his commentary and took the napkin, and gently tried to clean up the blood that he’d missed.

He smiled at me, glassy eyed.

‘One of these days,’ he began. I could tell what was coming. Something that always happened when he was drunk, and horny with no one to shag.

‘Don’t say it,’ I said, wanting him very much to say it.

‘No, shut up,’ he said, grabbing my wrist and looking me dead in the eyes as though delivering some important speech. ‘Ben. Ben, one of these days, I am going to ruin our friendship so hard.’

‘Shut up, you’re drunk!’ I laughed, pulling away.

‘So hard! I’m gonna-‘ his voice dropped to a pantomime whisper. ‘I’m gonna do things. To you. Weird shit. Like, crazy animal shit. We’ll never speak again, and you’ll hate me, but it’ll be so good.’

‘You’re an idiot, Xan,’ I said, pulling him to his feet and he wrapped me into a hug.

‘One day, handsome,’ his voice, hot and wet in my ear. Thick and sour with alcohol. ‘One day.’

We don’t mention the kiss. We settle back into our comfortable silence, his hand stroking my head as I curl into a ball in his lap. The motion of his hand feels stunted. Mechanical. His fingertips are cold

‘Now what?’ I finally ask. The tears have stopped now. I can still taste him on my lips. Sweet and sour.

‘No idea, handsome,’ he says with a soft chuckle. He makes a strange sound that might be a yawn. I hear something snap as he does.

For the first time since his return, I’m scared. A cold, weightless fear that lives at the base of my spine and swims in circles.

I wait for the night to turn black. Then a little longer. Finally, I suggest getting some rest and reluctantly climb off of him. As he stands his bones and flesh crinkle and crack beneath his clothes. A cruel percussion that makes me wince. He cracks his knuckles and one of his fingers splinters like a cinnamon stick. Neither of us mention it, but he gives an apologetic smile and strokes my face with his remaining solid hand. I don’t even flinch at the cold.

‘Lead the way,’ he says, and I take him by the hand, across the hall into my room.

I haven’t slept in my bed in two days, curling on the sofa instead; sleeping with a mindless drone of YouTube playlists of our favourite bands for white noise. I’d forgotten the state I’d left it in.

Xander walks around me, beelining for the bed and the pathetic shrine I’d been sleeping in since his first death. Pictures of the two of us; the copy of Frankenstein, the gold leaf embossing almost entirely worn away; the wrapping paper it came in, unfolded and refolded a thousand times; postcards, letters, Birthday cards, and gift tags. A littering of desperation.

He smiles as he brushes his fingers across them one by one. I wonder what this must be like for him. His expression gives away nothing. He looks tired.

We clear the bed and undress. His feet and hands are blue now, pearlescent and shiny, with thick grey veins visible up to his knees and elbows. When he’s done he helps me peel of my last layers. Somehow still delicate with hands of stone.

We lay down and pull up the blankets. I curl instinctively into him, my feet finding place behind his knees and my hands snaking beneath his shoulders. It feels natural. A slotting of bodies that makes a strange sense, and I imagine a world in which we did this every day.

The cruelty of it pulls me back into the present moment.

As if sensing my mistake, he pulls me closer. Stone-lipped kisses on my forehead. I stroke his back and a piece of him falls away.

The fear snakes its way up my back and I know I’m not ready for what’s to come. I wish that pieces of myself would crumble. I wish that we could turn to dust together.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. His voice sounds distant, and hollow. Bouncing off the insides of him.

‘Don’t apologise. Don’t you dare fucking apologise.’ I whisper into his chest, stock still so as to not break him further.

His breaths grow quick and rough. A rumble of quiet thunder that feels like a lullaby.

‘Don’t apologise,’ I’d said to him, staring at the nauseating shapes on the carpet of the cinema lobby. Xander had just told me his latest trip to Canada would be permanent. He’d taken me to a Halloween horror night at the Odeon to soften the blow, and it ended with me crying into the dregs of a bucket of popcorn, skeleton facepaint smeared into a lopsided rorschach.

He hadn’t been able to look me in the eye since he told me. He was standing by the window. He never sat when he was nervous.

The sounds of the busy lobby buzzed around me. They droned, distant and muffled, as if underwater, and for a moment I imagined I was drowning.

‘Say something, handsome,’ he said. He was keeping his distance. I wanted to ask him to come hold me, but I was afraid he’d think me weak. I was afraid he’d think I was manipulating him to stay.

God how part of me wanted to manipulate him to stay.

A bigger part of me knew I couldn’t, and that hurt somehow more than the knowledge that he’d be gone.

‘I’m happy for you,’ I said. And it was true enough. ‘I’m gonna fucking miss you, Xan. Really fucking miss you. But I am happy for you.’

I forced a smile. He was crying. I stood and it felt like the world was off its axis. I stumbled and he grabbed me. He held me. The solidity of him righted the globe. Soon that would be gone.

‘It won’t be forever,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back.’

I open my eyes and he is still. The world expands.

I must have fallen asleep, and for a moment I fear that I’d imagined it all. But he’s still here, in my bed. Pieces of him. Solid, but broken. His hands still hold me, unattached to his wrists. Cold stone fingers gripping me tight enough to bruise.

I whisper his name in the darkness, knowing there will be no response from his fractured face. His mouth and nose have rolled off the pillow. One eye, set solidly in place in a petrified lid stares at me sightlessly. No molasses. No cinder toffee. The sweetness of him a memory.

I leave him there in my bed for too long. Resting next to him each night, stroking at the remains of him until he turns to smooth edged stones that glitter like snow and smell of fire and mould.

When the spring comes, I sweep up the jewels of the man that I love, and bury him in a ring of stone. I water the soil until wildflowers grow.

#lgbtq writer #queer writers #lgbt fiction #short story #gay fiction #horror fiction

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