Richie "Bitch Baby Tears" Tozier (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summertimeblues) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
nysalogs2018-09-12 03:08 pm
summertimeblues) wrote in nysalogs2018-09-12 03:08 pm
Entry tags:
And if you don't love me now (Closed)
Who: Richie Tozier (summertimeblues) & Others
What: Catch-all for September!
When: Throughout the Month
Where: Mostly Olympia, maybe Wyver or other places if questing takes them there
Warning(s): Light NSFW in one, will warn for other stuff in threads
summertimeblues) & OthersWhat: Catch-all for September!
When: Throughout the Month
Where: Mostly Olympia, maybe Wyver or other places if questing takes them there
Warning(s): Light NSFW in one, will warn for other stuff in threads
no subject
[Byerly was the grenade Prior pulled the pin on because it was the only weapon he had to hand, and he knew Richie would still be riddled with schrapnel. But there was never really any fair justification to pinning Richie with any hurt he'd felt over that. Byerly screwed around by profession, and Prior struggled with the idea that anyone would ever want to touch him again, and whatever they found with each other it seemed to be the perfect length of rope to both hold onto or hang themselves with.
My fucking boyfriend. Not something he'd said out loud when Byerly was awake to hear it, as though the admission would have made the act unbearable for him. Their relationship was always keeping balance on a precipice.
But it's not his fucking boyfriend he's hurt over. It's the fucking isolation. It's living in such close quarters with someone who flinches over his touch the second he suspects he's not looking. Even without malice to it - and Prior hasn't really suspected there was, not for a long time now, and not at all with the memory of Richie walking an eighteen-year-old ingenue home. But what's ingrained into Richie by the malice of society at large presses on sore spots, all the same. Homophobia, they named it well.]
Anyway, you're right. [Drawing his knees up to his chest, Prior folds his arms across them and settles his chin on that bridge.] I'm more venomous than poisonous really. Do you know the difference? Swallowing poison will kill you, but venom has to get into the blood. Even then, I'm told I'm neutralized now. Didn't I say? New pills. They don't make me better - in fact they fuck my kidneys for the privilege - but they make me safer. I'm not a vector anymore. So try not to worry about the plates. And as for Byerly... well, him you may have needed to worry about. Just not on my account.
no subject
[Good to know. Fun fact for the day, slip that in with how a ghost will use you to work in one last hard dicking before passing over. What he's learning about Prior belongs on a shelf of its own.
Richie's fingers rap on the wooden shelf.
Not contagious. How about that?
Has the sweat lifted out of his scalp? No. Do the dried presses of where Prior's lips met his flesh feel any less prickly? Not really. He wants to ask how he can know for sure, but wasn't Byerly himself a testament to that? If Prior was still hazardous, it would have passed on to him and then to every Sue and Bobby that swung through the bar doors for a rollicking good time with Mr. Vorrutyer.
It hadn't shown on his own test. Weren't there greater miracles afoot? He'd come back from the fucking dead. Red had regained speech just before she fell asleep. Boxer had been granted a flesh body for hours at a time, before he'd get kicked back to life as a soul in a sword. Shouldn't keeping AIDS at bay be an easier buy than all that?
Except outside of Red kicking her muteness, none of those things had been prospects before the apocalypse. The news called it GRID at first, gay-something immune deficiency, then AIDS proper. Then it was the gay bug, the gay plague, gay cancer. He remembered headlines about bathhouses shuddered in LA and walking past those ghost blocks, frowning in his curiosity and worry. Secondhand stories of tragic passings, televised updates on the deadly stages, bulletins on what to watch for. Water cooler talk about which toilet stalls in restaurants were to be avoided, which bars the queers colluded at. He'd ragged on the boys for being so fucking paranoid, told them not to worry, the shovels they'd hit their faces with were all the vaccine they'd need. But then, he'd avoided the slandered joints too. Just to be safe.
It's not that he thinks Prior would lie, or that Prior's been had. Staving the disease was well within the Natha's capabilities (yet they haven't cured him either, and that should be a cinch compared to the other miracles they've worked). It's more that shaking loose some five years of prepackaged hysteria was going to take a lot more than placid explanations.]
I got checked after. When I was all dried out. Figured that was a good idea after the week-long party I'd had. [It wasn't just the sex, or sex with a man. He had gotten drugs from elsewhere in the days after, desperate to disappear again but too fearful to go back to the only known refugee supplier. Better get the works in that case, who knows what he could have come down with. All was well in the end with an impossibly clean bill of health.
Nothing that he has to worry about now, there's already here plenty. Richie has chanced eye contact again. Suddenly he's aware of his missing shirt. It's chilly. It would be a bit callous to run off and clothe himself now, wouldn't it? Like he was hiding more of himself from the deadly man-lover hugging his knees atop his couch. Prior looks like a child. Soft bellied and coiling up to cover it, unable to contend with the sensation.
He folds his arms over his chest. Not the boyish squeeze for decency, but tense. He'd be mirroring Prior's pose if he could, or were ten or twenty or thirty years younger.]
But you're not feeling better. Are you? And I'm making it worse. [Richie wets his lips.] This is...fair enough reason as any, if you want to call it. I won't argue.
[He snorts apropos of nothing. Laughs as he looks to the ceiling.] Here was I, congratulating my little self on being so damn magnanimous and being all respectful. Turns out I was doubling up on the bullshit and dumping it all on your lap.
no subject
That's the problem, he's not being worse about any of it, just reacting the way he's been all but trained.]
Oh, as if I like you because you're respectful.
[And like him he does - always has, though more distantly at first. Enjoying the ease to his conversations (set him off and let him go) and the jokes just the right side of crass to make a person wince before they smile. Prior may not be feeling better in this minute but there's no mistaking that there are some days Richie can be a tonic.]
Do you want to call it? It's your place.
[And Prior has that big old house still he could rattle around in for a while. More likely he'd haunt work and the spare beds of friends until he could face being alone again. Solitude is hard work, but so is inflicting himself on the mercy of others - alone would likely be his only choice in the end.]
I gave you the disclaimers before I said yes, didn't I? I'm sick, it's not always pretty. I'm hard to get rid of. But we're in the honeymoon period. [His voice lifts a little under the irony.] Warranty's still intact if you want to take it back. If you're... going to be afraid.
[There's the rub.]
I'm not the delicate flower I look. There isn't a fag joke I haven't made myself. But I can't live with that.
no subject
[No one dared accuse him of good grace.
He pulls a face at the suggestion. The sheer gall! Honestly.]
I'm not kicking you out over my own damn stupidity! Christ. [He works a hand over his hair.] And I know what death is. I've done this before and I made it through without skinning my balls. And that was with worse odds on Earth than Olympia's giving you.
[He'd mentioned it over small talk before. Wentworth Tozier, cancer of the larynx, 1973. Maggie Tozier, cancer of the lungs, 1975. His mid-twenties had shut the draw bridge on the siege of parties, girls, and good times young men should be having. He's seen how a body could be whittled and withered into fragile sticks, and all it took was a single breath to take that final snap. There had been the murders before, but that was a wound of differing nature.
He may not like the prospect. Might fear it, might dread it, might scream and rail and shake whoever came close enough for a better answer than the diagnosis Prior's lived with for years. But he knows the pattern. Prior's not at his end yet. It could come any time. He shouldn't be alone for it.
And by now, Richie would crumble letting him go.
His caveat is clear, however. Richie nods stiffly. He spots his bourbon abandoned on the coffee table and frowns, then quits the console to go fetch Prior a matching glass. Or close to it. He knows his drinks by now, the banal necessity of slumming it as a bartender made it second nature.]
Then what should I do? Is that why you're always clammed up in your room? [The glassware clinks as he sorts it through for a Collins.]
Am I bad enough company you gotta hide from me? Because I'd rather not be. Man ought to feel welcome in his own home.
no subject
[Richie's done this before? Prior's never buried family but back home there was a funeral every week, and twice a week after the holidays. Men - friends - half of them younger than him. Some of them outrageous send offs: going out the way they'd have wanted, as if any twenty-four-year-old wants to go out at all. Some sombre affairs starring mothers shellshocked at the swift and silent loss of their sons to... pneumonia, usually. Mothers wondering why their boy's funerals were packed out with somber faced, slight-bodied soldiers. Why they hadn't picked up a girl in all their time in the big city to cry over their coffin. Fathers in stony faced denial, or not there to pull up a pew at all.
He knows what death is. Endless, remorseless. He knows people who keep checklists of regulars at bars and clubs, striking a line through them as they're put in the dirt. Every week, a funeral, every week an empty space somewhere.
But knowing him isn't knowing death at all. He pulls himself to his feet as if in protest at the very notion. If sitting around makes him look like an invalid then he'll stand 'til he shakes. Fuck death. As long as he can run he's not making plans for that.]
It's a funny thing. Somebody tells you you're terminal and you've barely straightened up from that sledgehammer to the face before - wham - you realize you've never felt as alive as you do right now. Remember taking tests, when you wrote three times as fast in the last ten minutes? That's how my mind wants to live, now. If my body could only keep up with it I'd be a wreck.
[He grins a little, at the irony. It's a cruel kind: give him this urge to live and whip his strength and safety out from under him at the same time. Give him a craving for human contact like nothing he's ever known (and he's always been a touchy little creature, the elevator can attest) right when people are at their most afraid of touching him - of hurting him or hurting themselves. Mother Nature's a malicious bitch.]
The point is, if it bothers you, I'd rather lose a place to stay than a friend. Though if the queer thing's going to be a problem, well.
[With timing precise to when Richie's got his hands too full to protect himself, Prior tosses that shirt straight at his face.] Put this on, for pity's sake. I don't know how I've controlled myself so long.
[It's a ridiculous move, and it isn't. There's still a tension about all this not quite resolved, so why not prod it with a stick and watch whether it snaps or tickles.]
no subject
If you're so adept at missing the point maybe he'd be better off without you after all.
Petulant thoughts. Self serving too, they exist because he's bruised and guilty and still some irrational sect of his brain wants to protest that nothing is his fault. He dispels them, then they whip back in after he chucks them out on a boomerang arc, swish swish swoosh.
He doesn't interject. Prior rises as he monologues, Richie makes him a drink. Clinking and a double shot, lime, mix. He doesn't have the spread of full liqueurs or spirits at every price point to truly pamper it up, but he makes due.
Then when he turns to pass it off his own shirt slaps him in the face. He jolts and the drink sloshes, losing a good ounce to the kitchen tile and slobbering over his knuckles. The shirt rumples to the ground and soaks it up on impact.
Well then.]
What? Don't you like the view?
[Jokes. He's no Adonis, and humor in poor taste is his specialty. Richie passes off the drink, puts down the bottle he'd been topping it off with and scoffs as he rescues his shirt. He shakes it out. The wet spot is broad and interspersed with dry streaks where wrinkles had kept patches out of reach.] Tsk tsk, looks like my only shirt is ruined and I'll have to keep flexing pecs at you all evening.
[Yet he makes for his room, snagging the first thing he finds off the rack and tosses the cast off into the hamper. He's buttoning his new pick as he emerges.]
Look, I'm saying I fucked up. I get that, I can see it, but I also don't know all the particulars. I don't want either to be a problem, Pry. I don't want to make you feel like a pariah. [He goes for his own bourbon. The couch remains untouched. You bet there's lingering tension. He's gone up and down and all around, felt like both a woeful hound dog and a snapping rottweiler in the span of mere minutes, and that livewire buzz hasn't dissipated yet. There's still a high chance this could go tits up before the night is over.
He grimaces. Shame reads plain in him. He takes an uneasy lean against the side of the fridge not more than four feet from Prior.]
Yeah, sure, I wiped my mouth after you kissed me. As far as I know — knew — it was better safe than sorry. I was told spit was chancy. I should have asked you instead of going off second hand bullshit, and I should have trusted that you wouldn't be so stupid as to risk infecting me.
[He swirls his drink. The cubes of ice have disintegrated to pebbles. Watery slosh, paler amber than he usually likes. Richie takes a drink anyway. He needs a bit of steel to push through.]
As for...God help me, how am I supposed to keep from crossing lines if I don't know where they're drawn? I am afraid, I admit it. I keep fucking it up. Look at what happened when you went all baby faced on me. Look at what happened with Byerly! I'd hate to do that all over again. We might have been friends, him and I. [No, no. Richie chuckles sourly.] All right, friendlier. But I'd stood under that hexed mistletoe at the Gala and I suppose whatever I'd said and done before that, he thought that me planting one on him wasn't out of character. From there on out everything was a forest fire and I had nothing but a half-empty pasta pot to fight it with. I've thought about it. With you, I shouldn't have bought the shoes or tried to shepherd you back to our place, but with him? I don't know. I can't think of anything I'd done or said that I wouldn't with a regular pal.
And then you go the other way around, and I'm standing off enough that you're thinking the notion makes my skin scrawl.
[He stops. Mouth twisting and a head dipping left to right. Much like it had upstairs, speaking of the murders in carefully measured words while the killer lay around the bed. He's never spoken aloud about that night. None knew, save this unholy trinity of basket cases. The thought of articulating all his misgivings is giving him palpitations that would send paramedics in a tizzy.
Richie takes another drink. He can't feel the wash of bliss, it's too weak and it's his first drink of the night. No shelter there. The booze even showcases the baby tremors rocking his hands as he circles that cataclysmic point. Traitorous slop.]
I can't say I feel a pull to try it again. It was a very...very strange time. My memory's patchy, Pry, we'd taken a lot in a very short time, and neither one of us was in fighting shape so the buzz hit quick as a whip. But I know part of it was this— [His hand rises, flexes to knead a surly ball of who-knows-what out of the static air between them. The gesture turns to a flippant toss, who-even-fucking-knows.] —need of sorts. To choose something. To make a swerve off the freeway and go kick up dust in the Arizona off-roads. Everything was out of my power and I didn't know what to make of what I remembered when I was gone. I was stuck and they wouldn't let me go. Not even death could do me part. I wanted to cut my brain out and put it on ice. I didn't expect he'd offer, I thought the bridge was all but burned to crisps and cinders, but he did and I guess I...
[Guess you what? There were leading questions, he remembers that. Oh, why are you afraid? Are you sure you wouldn't enjoy it? Good little boy too afraid to break the rules.
That's not enough to goad someone into abandoning women. The wrongness of man to man has been threaded deep in every facet of his living from 1948 to 1985. Even if he'd grown to see the people behind the propaganda trying to bury them, venturing to bat for the other team is not so much a leap as it is a flight from LAX to Waikiki. So why had Richie bought the ticket?]
...I mean, I don't look at a fellow now and catch myself checking his ass. I don't know what to think. It was a mess from start to finish, and I didn't come out any more enlightened than I was going in. I even passed out in the street not two days after, courtesy of a different pack of pills. It's wrapped up in that mess with the needles and the wipe out and the godless kick-back from the grave, and it's rooted in the way we chilluns was raised. I can't work out what to untangle or whether to toss it in the trash and forget it ever happened.
no subject
Prior almost thinks its done when Richie goes for a new shirt. Maybe tossing the first one at him had been a bad move, too much of an attempt to be playful when nobody's playing here. But Richie doesn't growl over it. Doesn't laugh, either. Just tries to roll some of the tension off his shoulders, and when he comes back some dam's giving at the seams and all these fears and regrets, backtracks and should haves come out like the proverbial flood.
Prior's left with his fingertips pressing circles into the moisture round the edge of a glass, just listening. Here and there he takes a breath as if he might interject something, but a breath's too long - the chance is gone.
He can't say he follows half of it. Byerly. Mistletoe? Pasta pots and who the fuck knows what, but it all keeps skimming around to a couple of points. He was fucked up.
He's still fucked up.
Sometimes Prior forgets that Richie died in that godforsaken hole that left its rainbow track marks in his skin. Died. The term loses its impact when someone comes back pristine, three days later. If there was just one like Richie he'd have a cult built around him now, they'd be calling out miracles from his tears and kissing his hands. But there are plenty who've been knocked down and got back up now, a couple more than once, and death's starting to feel like nothing more than the jail square on a monopoly board: most people win a get-out card in the end.
Prior's even wondered if that might be his cure. Maybe dying's the only way to kill the parasite hitching in his blood. Maybe he could come back pristine too.
Or maybe not. Maybe it would be worse. Maybe he wouldn't wake at all. For a prophet, he's lacking enough insight to take the leap. Instead he takes the Tom Collins Richie's mixed him, crosses the four feet between the two of them, and sleight-of-hand switches it out with the empty glass in Richie's hand. Raises his eyebrows. Smiles. Take a fucking drink for fucks sake and breathe.
Prior doesn't cut in a response right away. He considers first.]
So you're saying you took it up the ass [Wait, wait, give him a moment here, he's a step ahead and interrupting himself with a light protest of] Or wherever - and you didn't hear a hallelujah chorus or get dragged into the eternal flames? Well I guess you found the secret my people have been keeping all this time: its not that big a deal.
[He's not lecturing. This is sympathy doused in a sardonic twist of something sharper, to keep it from seeming too soft.]
They're just bodies. It's just sex. We all feel good the same way, and if it weren't for the centuries of guilt people managed to work into the process I can't imagine anyone would care who fucks who. So stop torturing yourself over where you found some release.
[Over why it happened with Byerly, of all people, as if there needed to be some magic involved when it came to laying him. Like sleeping with someone he thought might hate him wasn't a self-flagellator's dream. Or over a teenager with all that entails getting the wrong impression.
It's stupid, but Prior kind of wants to reach out a hand to one of Richie's. Find a pulse point and smooth his thumb over it. Soothe the ways he knows how, with touches and
And maybe that thing from before hasn't quite shaken out of his head, that's all.
Still, he finds himself reaching anyway, holding back enough that he's just taken the sleeve of Richie's shirt and smoothed the fabric, instead.]
I understand the urge. The panic. Panicking when the world gets tumbled over, or you look in the mirror and don't quite see yourself anymore's the kind of uselessly impractical response to crisis that makes us human. And when both those things come at once? Well, it doesn't make things easier.
no subject
He still drinks it. The need is real. Another three shots down and he'll be whistling dixie.
Except the guy follows up with an offhand, "You took it up the ass." Five brusque words is all it takes to put a rose red bloom in Richie's ears and cheeks. If his confession had been curiously stripped of pizzazz, he rushes to make up for it now. Don Knotts does his bidding while Richie shakes his head and splits into a grin, wholly embarrassed.]
Golly, I'd remember if the party got that wacky, now wouldn't I?
[Not that he isn't taking the words to heart. Richie stills, eyes locked to Prior's with a dreadful stiffness, earnest and guarded and bleeding open from a fresh picked scab all at once.
It's exactly as he dubs it for any other person. No big deal. And it isn't, nohow, yet spinning that around and putting it back on himself seems a task insurmountable. Time is the key, he thinks as his mouth dries out all over again. You've spat it out and now it won't have to fester in there all lonesome, so you can get used to it. Just like anything else old boy, this is no different than putting up with the pegasus and the time warps and the malleable mortality.
It still feels like cold comfort to him.
Their closeness tugs like magnets on the brink of linking. Prior goes for his sleeve. The electric sparks the spooks left in their wake is potent enough to raise tingles even now. A split second is lost to a flicking glance at Prior's lips.
It hadn't been a trial to kiss him. Hold him, thrust the button of his jeans open.
For God's sake, if he doesn't stop turning every man's touch to mythology he's going to need six shrinks and a thousand volts to screw his head back on straight. Richie just reaches up and grips his wrist. Not prying. Reassuring. A squeeze of solidarity and nothing more, lingering until Pry sees fit to shake him loose.
His gut flips around like a ornery walrus, all bloat and heated nerves. He'd said so much on the subject and now he doesn't want to deal with it any longer.]
Really made a snatch for your thunder, didn't I? Turned it all back around and now you're patting my poor ass. It's gonna be okay ya big baby. [He laughs, nose crinkled up at the bridge and batting back the wet rims of his eyes. He's still shook up like a martini.
The sound dries up, slow and soft as disappearing dew. The smile stays on. It's just meek, an ill match for the steady voice he pulls to ask:]
So you will stay?
[Please.]
no subject
Prior hadn't sugared the pill, because somebody needed to say it. Though graphic and probably inaccurate in its specifics, the alternative: tiptoeing around the words of it, laid what was a miserable, needy little fuck into a sepulcher, something a little sacrosanct, a little scary, the kind of monolith around which one is encouraged to whisper. And Prior's never been much of a fan of that. Irreverence is what's required in the face of fear. It's been the key to survival for a whole queer community, so it'll do for someone who's barely dipped a toe into the pool.
And if it sets Richie on fire a little (there's something helplessly endearing about a person who flushes to the tips of his ears), then he deserves that, at least.
Prior draws in a little breath as Richie catches his wrist - loud enough to betray him. It's not just their recent bedfellows that distract his focus. He can remember, too, bumping up against Richie's shoulder (a shoebox under one arm) and studying his profile in secret, finding enough to be pleased with in the quirks of his features, the knots of his wrists. He's looked, before. That first video connection. Dark mussy curls and those glasses he'd had for a brief while.
And he's asking if he'll stay and it sounds like it matters, and Prior dips his head so the answer won't be read from his face.
He slips his arm free.]
Well I don't know that I see the point.
[It sounds chilly, but there's a wry little smile working its way across his mouth, if Richie looks below the spill of his hair enough to see. The hint of it has crept into his voice as he goes on.]
Now that you've told me I won't get anymore shoes out of the arrangement.
no subject
It's too soon, he thinks quickly. It's the jitters left behind by the ghosts and what they'd done to them, done with their bodies. He can't fault Prior for that, can't fault himself for how he stops breathing in turn, shutting off air as Prior sucks it in too strongly.
Prior pulls loose. His head dips away, and for a second Richie's ripping in two. He'd said he wouldn't fight it before but now he knows he'd tape his knuckles and bolt the door if the other man packed his bags. So many people are gone, and he'd never say it aloud but there are times when he's sure that this one, this man is the last straw.
But maybe there's mercy left in the cosmos yet.
Richie is silent.
Then he's a bolt of lightning shackled in man's flimsy skin. He latches onto Prior's shoulders, even with one hand still cupping the glass. The ice clacks against the sides but he'd taken a good slurp before, and so it fails to spill.]
Shoes? Shoes?! By gum, I'll get you shoes! What do you need? Galoshes? Loafers? Moccasins? Ruby slippers? Glass ones? I'll call the Wicked Witches of the East and West, I'll raise Salvatore Ferragamo from the dead for you! Son, I'll get you shoes! You'll be so clodhoppered up you'll forget you even had other limbs to begin with! I swears it, I say! On me mother's grave, I do!
no subject
[The full, playful affectation's back in Prior's voice, a sign at least that if he's not quite recovered he's doing well enough to fake it. And it's unfair really, how easily Richie makes him laugh when by all rights one or both of them should still be in the blank staring phase of the evening, perhaps a precursor to slammed doors and anger stirred under the ice of a whiskey glass.
Not to say Prior won't slip out later to catch some time to process this alone. There's an atmosphere here that's wrapped round his shoulders like a mink stole, but he couldn't say if it's a lingering tie to the spirit world, or the physical aftereffects that still feel tangible on his skin (his mouth was here, and fingertips dragged there, and lower, and lower). Or if it's just that the longing he stuffs down day by day's been unpacked and it'll take him a while to seal the box back up and be able to carry it around less precariously again.
Or, maybe, it's the quick stick shift from all that to being looked at like the short straw drawn from a sweaty palm: the least wanted prize at the tombola. For all the crinkle at the corner of Richie's eyes now, it'll take a while to look at him and not be able to picture that.
But look long enough and it eases away. There's a pinch of humor at the corner of Prior's mouth as he tilts his head back up.]
But galoshes, well sweet merciful heaven, never let it be said that you don't know what a lady wants. Gumboots if we're feeling fancy. [He sets a palm lightly over the scaffolding of Richie's collarbone. Tell your piteous heart there's no harm done.] I'll stay, no bribery needed. Though gifts, of course, can't be included in the category.