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[enoderedrum]

 

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ripraven

CURRENT HOUSING:

Currently living both in his designated housing, but also Adams House (pretty much in Kavinsky's bed nightly).

 

SCARS / MARKINGS:
ENVY - Cut into his left forearm (via Blue)
SUFFER - Carving into his calf via himself.
WRIST SCARS (successful suicide) + Thigh SCAR.
WRIST TATTOO -  Paw on his right wrist (via Kavinsky)
THROAT TATTOO - A raven with its wings spread on either side of his neck,
the face is a skull of the raven instead, and the background is filled with blue, purple and hints of red watercolor splashes. (Tattoo shop on Mammons Island.)
RIBCAGE TATTOO - An arrow for Clint and an hourglass for Nat.
STITCH SCARS AROUND MOUTH + slightly damaged vocal cords - Thanks to The Veiled Order capture.
MERMAN Features; white hands with claws and subtle webbing that's retractable, iridescent scales over his hands and in random spots.

DEMON ATTRIBUTES:

Demon Teeth.
The beginning of Pointy Ears (not pictures because right now they're just itchy and growing).
[These are based off Hellburbia Suicide].
Slowly his hands are turning White and his nails are turning into claws (basically)





RICHARD JOSEPH LYNCH
aka
little grey dragon he adopted from Mammons Island.

 

N A V I G A T I O N:  kinks & permissions | visuals | funeral | bdsm info | cr chart
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Comments

[greedbowstome]

[There is a flurry of reactions at reading that. First, just a flustered sort of inner-response he wouldn't know how to put into words if asked to try.

Then, it's an intense insistence of no–

And Don't be like that–

And something sharp and uncertain–

And–– ]

That isn't why I text you.

[enoderedrum]

Kaz. Where are you?

[greedbowstome]

I asked you first.

[It's true.
It's petty.
It's petulant.

He doesn't care.]

Coffee shop.

[He might need something stronger than coffee, though.]

[enoderedrum]

[ he doesn’t respond, just heads in that direction with his bag of clean laundry.

Caffeine when you can’t sleep is kind of….counterproductive, Sir.

But he makes his way to the shop and his heart does weird things when he sees him. He pushes it all down and lowers the guard a little tighter for Kaz’s sake as he approaches him. ]

Coffee isn’t going to help you sleep, you know.

[greedbowstome]

He doesn't know how this is going to go. He can see a hundred different ways it might play out in his mind, but none of those scenarios are helping him right now. He isn't sure what will help him right now.

Coffee isn't it, it's just something to do.

Kaz senses him, in the way he always knows when Inej walks into a room even if he isn't looking at her, in the way he always senses Noah, before he sees him.

The movement too close in front of him catches his attention. And then he looks up, and the sight of his ghost might as well have been a punch to the gut that stole all the breath from his lungs.

Just for that initial, tiny, split-second moment when his eyes latch on the other boy's presence in front of him.

Over a month.

"Can't sleep anyway, what does it matter?" Kaz is not sure how he managed to sound that casual when he feels nothing like it at all.

[enoderedrum]

Guarded like this, he can’t tell one hundred percent what Kaz is really feeling but where it feels like his heart is in his throat, the other boy seems… Noah doesn’t know. Everything is messed up right now. All of it. He knows it’s his own fault but he dug this hole he’s in and he isn’t ready to climb out of it yet.

He drops his bag and sits down carefully.

A month. No, it’s been longer than that.

“Why can’t you sleep?” He asks quietly, “you’re safe now. No one is messing with you anymore. I know it’s easier said than done but Jes won’t let anything happen.”

[greedbowstome]

Something about this moment feels surreal, almost stilted. Like it can’t possibly be truly happening at all.

The ease with which he sets his bag down.
The careful way he takes the seat across from him.
It’s something in his posture.
Or the softness of his question.

It’s that same feeling of the world being shifted just a few inches to the left in his absence.

Something is off.
Tilted.
Wrong.

But he can’t put a finger on what. Or how or why.

Kaz stares down into the mug of coffee. He doesn’t want to answer the question. Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t know how to, exactly. There are so many reasons that he can’t pin it down to just one. “Maybe… but he didn’t let this happen, but it did. Everything in that place, I—“ his voice wavers to a halt before he finishes, “how can you expect me to just be okay because I’m here and not there?”

[enoderedrum]

“I don’t expect anything from anybody,” Noah murmurs and settles back into his chair. His arms naturally cross over his middle; shielding or comforting himself, who’s to tell?

He lifts his gaze and watches Kaz. Or tries to.

He feels that shield wavering as guilt rushes back in.

Guilt. And pain. And hurt. And bitterness. Jealousy. Defeat.

He looks away again and forces it back into place. This is why he was staying away. This was why Cabeswater was his refuge.

“I’m sorry.”

[greedbowstome]

He doesn’t know what to say to that as he lifts his gaze from his coffee back up to the boy across from him. He looks… small. Withdrawn into himself. Just that step above the way Noah has about him to just… fade into the background. He doesn’t like it.

Something flickers there across Noah’s face, but it’s so quickly there and gone that Kaz doesn’t quite catch it, even though he was looking right at him. What was it? Something angry? Hurt? Kaz isn’t sure and it bothers him.

Over a month.

His stomach twists when the thought comes to him again. It pounds over and over in his head with every single thing he doesn’t catch or know or understand. Somehow he feels like he’s back at the beginning with Noah, except the ghost— his ghost— is the one closing himself off and erecting walls where there should be none.

Wrong wrong wrong.

It’s the only thought that drums through his veins. Everything about this is wrong. Nothing is the way he left it.

Shifted.
Skewed.
Wrong.

Kaz doesn’t understand the apology. He shakes his head, a confused frown creasing his features. “What? No. What for?” It isn’t as though anything that happened is Noah’s fault. There’s no blame for him to shoulder.

Don’t be sorry, he isn’t sure how to say. just be here.

[enoderedrum]

Of course none it it was his fault. Noah can’t control the things that He’ll chooses to do to them. But, the guilt is still there. It’s still clawing at the inside of his skull. He should have tried harder. He should have tried anything. He should have… Maybe if he had then it…

Rolling his tongue across his bottom lip, he slides his hands into his pockets. He doesn’t want to be here like this. Unstable. Uncertain. Feeling too much and not enough. His balance is all gone.

Beneath the table his knee bounces softly and he shakes his head, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get in there. That we couldn’t get you before you did things.” Before K. Before being teased with a good life without the pain without the loss without any of the truth.

He clears his throat and his brow furrows softly, “Anyway…if you’re really not sleeping, you could probably just ask K for something. Not all of his shit is addictive stuff. He can make you something to help you sleep.”

[greedbowstome]

All the nervous, uncertain, restless gestures do not go missed by Kaz. The all too familiar endless surge of energy he sees in Jesper on the best of days is mirrored here in the barely-here, boy in front of him. Small fidgets that, alone, could mean nothing, but added together spell something else altogether. Something desperate to escape. From this feeling. From this table. This room.

From Kaz.

Everything about Noah right now, from the fidgets to the almost too-final sounding note in his words, screams someone who's about to dart out of a situation as fast as their feet might carry them. A numbing kind of panic shocks through him at the idea. "Don't leave." barrels out of his mouth before he can even let himself process anything else.

He can't let himself process the idea of Kavinsky, and asking him for anything, or his stupid smug face when he realizes... No. He will not be going to him for anything at all. He wasn't the important piece in any of Kaz's time here.

Outside of his Crows, that crowning achievement is only held by Noah.

He can't.
He can't not have Noah right now.
He can't.

[enoderedrum]

Two words. It takes two words to draw Noah slowly out of his self inflicted cloud.

The ghost blinks once and looks across the table to watch Kaz. His knee stops shaking. His fingers stop fidgeting. It isn't because anything is better, it's just a shock to his system from a voice he hasn't heard in what feels like a long time.

"I can't stay," he murmurs, "not until I can get out of my own head."

That's the truth.

"All I can think about is blood, and dying, and not being able to get to you, and you and Kavinsky, and Barbie's bullshit, and not having my house, and not being able to do anything." It all rushes around like clothes in a washing machine switching from the wash to the rinse cycle.

[greedbowstome]

Sometimes stillness is more violent than movement. Kaz would know. It's the moment of stillness before a choice is made. The second between breaths before a life is taken. The ringing in his ears before he watches someone walk away with no way to stop it.

He can't let that be Noah.
He can't, he can't, he can't.

"You can't leave." His voice is thicker than he'd like, the argument feels childish on his tongue, but doesn't care. "You said you wouldn't. You– you promised." The last word comes out in a whisper, not for anyone else's ears, a secret meant only for the two of them to know.

"...you and Kavinsky."

Three words have never made him feel so outside of himself as those. Nothing has ever made him want out of his own skin. His first kill wasn't as bad as this. It's a nauseous roll in his stomach to think about it. Is it because it was Kavinsky? Maybe. More to the point: it would have felt as wrong with anyone else. Further still, Kavinsky was Noah's (or is the other way around more appropriate?).

So many things are still screaming in his mind, and he doesn't know where to start, so all he says is one, small, desperate thing:

"Don't leave me..."

Alone.
Like this.
To do this without you.

[enoderedrum]

He did promise. And he had no intention of breaking that promise, but he couldn't do this when he felt the way he did, either. Everything was a mess and he was trying to untangle it all alone. Noah was no help to anyone when he was like this. Even Cabeswater was frustrated.

"Kaz...I'm not leaving you. Certainly not forever. But I'm no good to you right now," he frowns and draws one knee up to his chest, "I need to let some things go before I can be around you."

Noah was more Kavinsky's than Kavinsky was Noah's. Noah belonged to other people, people didn't belong to Noah. That's just the way it was.

"I missed you."

[greedbowstome]

Not forever.
Just right now.
When Kaz feels like his entire world has been turned on its head.
When he isn't sure how he's supposed to do any of this without him.

Everything feels like it's spinning, or maybe the world is stationary and he's off-kilter. Kaz can't tell anymore. He drags both hands through his hair, lowering his head down to the table, lacing his fingers together at his neck. "How long?" his voice is muffled for how he's sitting, but the words are clear enough anyway. "How long are you going to be gone?"

A beat.

He adds, "Where are you going?" He obviously can't go back to the Raven House.

He drops his hands, folded one on top of the other on the tabletop, and sits up, staring across the table at the other boy. "How do I make you stay?"

In another place, in a ragged sea-side city, a world away, what feels like a whole other life at this point, it would be a question full of certainty. Sure beyond one drop of doubt he could do it, if just for the right price.

No hint of that person is found here, though.
This is not the teenager feared by grown men in the streets of Ketterdam.
This is not Dirtyhands.
This is no Barrel Boss.

This is just a boy, desperate to cling to one of the only touchstones he has in this place that keeps trying to tear him apart, from the inside out, in the slowest way possible.

(The same way he took Pekka Rollins down over the last decade. Layer by layer. Piece by piece. Brick by brick.)

[enoderedrum]

Noah doesn’t know what to say for a very long time. He’s watching the way Kaz is moving. The way he’s sitting. He can feel his heart beating and the uncertainty creeping in as his own walls slowly lift to try and figure out how to navigate this. It made sense to him, to stay away. To let time mend whatever this bullshit was a hat was in his head. To let the guilt leave him before he tries to solidify everything again.

It made sense because then he wouldn’t accidentally push onto this boy lol hat he was feeling. The hurt that came from something that no one had any hand in controlling in the first place. The feeling of abandonment and the fear that he’d never see them again. That they would be stuck there, not remembering him or Jes. Or Wylan. Or any of them.

It was one thing to be forgotten once. It was another to have it shoved in his face all over again. To take any ounce of control he may have had and strip it from him. To take the people he cared about the most away and force them to be people they weren’t. Do things they wouldn’t.

His heart hammers in his chest and his eyes gloss over, “Did you read all of my messages? Listen to them?”

[greedbowstome]

He doesn't know how to read Noah like this and he doesn't like it. He's just so... Kaz doesn't even know the right word for it. He just knows it's not right. This is not the Noah he–– however unwittingly, accidentally–– left behind.

"Yes..." he nods, "All of them... every one." He had gone through them one by one, and tried to ignore the way it all made him feel. He wasn't very good at that last part. It may be part of the reason sleep was so elusive.

[enoderedrum]

Nodding slowly, Noah swallows back his own bullshit and shifts forward…hesitantly extending his hand across the tabletop.

“Then you know why this is hard for me,” he says, “I want to be here. I do. I want to not go away but I am feeling way too many things to risk pushing them onto you.” He gives him a look and then looks away.

“And yeah, unfounded, ridiculous jealousy is one of them,” he snorts and pulls his hand back completely so he can reach for his bag, fully intending to leave, “I won’t be gone much longer. Till then, Jes is more than capable or doing anything I was before.”

[greedbowstome]

His eyes follow the line of Noah's hand reaching across the table and his own gloved fingers curl on themselves for a second. Two.

He thinks about how easy it was there. How unfettered and free he was with touch–

Leaning into kisses on his cheek from his– from Sara––

Hugs from Nicole like it was a daily occurrence––

An easy, friendly shoulder nudge with Alina––

The so-simple, unbothered slide of his hands across––

He cuts the thought there because that is part of the reason for this entire mess, in the first place. Beyond every other thing still firmly tangled up in it all.

This, however, is a very short time in reality. That single half-second space of a snap before he reaches to meet Noah's hand in the middle of the table. Hooking his fingers with the ghost's briefly. A show of faith? A promise? A point to prove to himself? Maybe all of these, maybe none of it. He just knows he couldn't let the second pass without something. Anything.

"So do it." It comes out more like a dare or a challenge than he meant it to, but he wouldn't stand down from the tone of it if pressed, either. "Push it onto me. I..." whatever was coming next is gone in a second, a frown, soft, thoughtful, pinched just between his eyes, comes over his face and he shakes his head, changes course. "...Noah, you have taken on my past, my...emotions, my panic and anger and my trauma for months. Even the score a little...let me carry some of this with you."

Let him return the favor. Be the one doing the helping, instead of the helped, for once.

[enoderedrum]

“No,” it comes instantly. Sharp. And his heart speeds up again.

Panic and something else. Didn’t he just hear him?

He failed to get him out of there! What happened in there will catch up to him and it’ll be even more trauma compounded on what Kaz already has. Noah isn’t about to go and make it worse by adding his own hang ups into the mix.

No.

He loops the bag over his shoulder and stands up. He watches the other boy for a moment…did…was he not paying attention to the jealousy part?

“Thank you…but no,” he adds softer, “please just go back to Jes. I don’t like you being out here alone. I’ll be fine.”

[greedbowstome]

He frowns. Strange, hearing himself echoed in this boy like that.

The problem is they're coming at this from such different angles, but Kaz has no idea how to make them align. They are too far apart on what they're looking at right now to make it happen.

It's a lead stone in his stomach.
A sour taste in his throat.
A knife edged perfectly between his ribs.

All he can do, short of grabbing him, forcing him to sit back down, is the exact thing he'd not wanted to do since Noah had sat down at this table:

Watch him walk away.

[enoderedrum]

It looked like Kaz was going to give him what he wanted. Space. To be left alone.

Good.

Great.

Easy.

But it wasn’t. And this was the problem. He didn’t want to be away from them. Any of them. He just didn’t want to feel what he felt. It was stupid. And he knew what he was doing was such a classic Noah thing to do. He knew it.

He turned to go but it almost hurt worse to leave than it would be if he stayed.

“You really want to feel it?” He asks softly, closing his eyes.

[greedbowstome]

Something stupid happens in his chest at the sound of Noah's voice again. Not like the way the drowning panic feels. Something else. Something lighter.

"Yes," he says just as immediately as Noah had said the opposite seconds ago. A forceful gust of a single word tangled tight with the ropes of desperation. He's suddenly sure that this will be the only chance he has again, so there is no other choice, no other option to pick. Even if his answer was no, he had to say yes. But he'd meant what he said, and he didn't have to lie this day.

But.
Suddenly.

The too-public-nature of where they are creeps slowly back into Kaz's awareness. It was fine to be a hushed conversation between two... well, what even were they? Kaz isn't sure anymore. He isn't sure he ever knew. "...Maybe not here." It doesn't feel like the kind of thing that should be so out in the open, does it?

[enoderedrum]

“Come on,” he murmurs. He can agree that this isn’t something he wants aired out publicly anymore than Kaz would.

Noah waits until he can hear Kaz moving before he starts to leave the cafe. He doesn’t want to go to a room. He doesn’t want to go far. He just wants to go somewhere else. Somewhere dark.

He finds a room, looks sort of like an office, and heads inside where he drops his bag on the floor and waits for the other boy so he can close the door and lock it behind them.

[greedbowstome]

He doesn't hesitate to follow, except in so much as his leg might protest, since he'd forgotten his damn cane when he left earlier. He hadn't really intended to come so far, or do much more than wander the hall he was on in the first place, but his mind had blanked, and he'd just let his feet carry him wherever they deemed fit to go.

He slips into the room behind him and snaps the lock on the door. Some habits never break, and he doesn't doubt Noah might have done the same.

The room is dark, only whatever low light may seep in through blinds over a window on the far side of the room from where they're standing. Kaz doesn't move to turn on any lights, and he doesn't say a word.