Ryssa Bean
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ryssabean.bsky.social
Ryssa Bean
@ryssabean.bsky.social
180 followers 550 following 550 posts
ryssa bean. 30+. she/they. lesbian. #vashwood prophesier. surprise #jayvik guy. certainly not a sith. definitely not a jedi. naruto made me gay. ffxiv stole my wallet & all i got was nero scaeva. fix your heart or die.
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ryssabean.bsky.social
they have joined their bretheren!!! my army grows!! @nobledemons.art
November 4, 2025 at 2:23 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
@gaycowboyjesus.bsky.social
a poorly drawn graph of the things i love with summer at the far left (i hate it) and a line increasing to the right with pocketwatches near the top (love them) with my cats being the things i love the most).
June 29, 2025 at 6:03 PM
ryssabean.bsky.social
it's not wednesday but it's the same jayvik wip so i can do whatever i want.
Time, when it’s raw, exists across and outside measurement. Its penchant for consumption rivals the force of its buoyancy, its touch inescapable regardless of description of acknowledgment. It has passed over worlds where it has been shown the ultimate deference and it has let its gaze linger where there has been no one to attend to it at all. In distance, it spills like bolts of cloth, meter after meter of different textures shifting under unsteady hands. In volume, it sweeps itself against the broken edges of sharp cliffs, leaving fragments of everafters behind in swirling tide pools, leaking its infinitude from uncaulked seams in its seabed. In mass, it carries its own gravity, bends the universe to its will, pushes it outward with the principle of displacement, just like it will one day pull everything back in to swallow it whole. It is as vast as its appetite. To quantify it is a fool’s errand. And yet to affect the illusion of taming it, mortals have chosen to count it in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, decades, centuries, millennia, eons. Years. Months. Weeks. Viktor’s life as it once was. By now, Viktor has seen so much of it that traditional measurement has long since lost its use. He gets trapped in it, the specifics—loses himself there, between seconds and minutes, minutes and hours, hours and days. Past-present-future vie for his attention, tucking their knuckles under his chin to bring his gaze toward their performances, each an approximation that requires interpretation. Time becomes smell, taste, touch, sound, color. It’s mistakes, promises, sinkholes into nothing, broken sets behind which the cosmos peek out, ink on paper. So Viktor has different conversions of relative value with limited equivalence. Seasons. Summer-winters, winter-autumns, winter-springs, spring-autumns, the moon sporting colors that didn’t match the weather year after year— Cats. Rio had been the first, but not the last. There’d been Sybil and Pythia, Brizo and Carya. Some that he can no longer remember, except for the way it’d felt to sit with them on nights where sleep was nothing more than a fog to be waded through during the first-or-second two in the morning. Brigid. Fatia. Dolya. Cassandra. Now here, increments have been more finely hewn, as though carved from wood. Viktor measures them thus: An early afternoon in midsummer that smells of what will be rain in the evening, the implication of the ocean’s chill not yet a knife underneath the humidity curling the ends of his hair that he’s unable to keep out of his face. The cloudcover smearing trees together into a mess of greens and browns. Butterflies and wildflowers, playing at court, until one presses too close to Viktor’s ear and plays him a song to the key of— (recent past), he writes with a fingertip against the well-loved page of a notebook that isn’t his. Under his thumb, Jayce Talis is written in the bottom right corner, the letters close together but losing nothing in flair. “Every page?” Viktor asks, shifting within the space afforded by a windowpane of limestone and marble, its stained glass cleared out ages before. “You’re being a dick about it right now,” Jayce is taking slow steps across the church’s floor with several butterflies to keep him company, “but you’d be surprised at how useful my signature turned out to be. Saved me years’ worth of labor. I’d be a little bit nicer if I were you.” Wood shavings gather on the notebook’s spine—thumb to blade to time, piece by piece. Three weeks of summer as measured by the weight of these moments, kept in a jar. The whisper of them as they bump against one another. The smell of them, left out to warm in the sun. Seconds. Hours. Years. Seasons. Cats. This, whittled out by hand.
June 25, 2025 at 5:33 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
my army grows………. courtesy of @saeuchelle.bsky.social
June 19, 2025 at 12:43 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
my creature army
eight plushes of jayce and viktor from the arcane cartoon. top row, left to right: commune viktor, trench jayce, academy jayce, academy viktor. all of them are by galeorb on etsy. bottom row, left to right: academy viktor (by @sushiisiu on bsky), academy jayce and academy viktor in animal crossing style (by @tsuyonpu on bsky), and academy jayce (also by @sushiisiu on bsky).
June 9, 2025 at 3:00 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
thank you @tsuyonpu.bsky.social i’m so happy to have them. i cannot describe my enthusiasm adequately but know it’s immense.
jayce and viktor plushes in the animal crossing style
May 31, 2025 at 1:45 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
but wait, there's more. the same 259 words i've been reworking for the past 10 days between school assignments.
“I don’t see you with anthropology credentials.” Jayce’s gloves peel away from his palms, the hiss of damp skin and synthetic rubber low in the heat of the leaning hour. “I told you it was the most straightforward. Like—yeah, it’s not like it explains everything. A few sites are landlocked, but the theme is consistent, regardless of proximity to water.” Other thoughts pile onto Jayce’s tongue as he drags it along his lower lip. Viktor watches him hold their weight as he lifts the index and middle fingers of one hand. “That brings us to dubiously professional guess number two. It’s—you can’t laugh.” “I’m not going to laugh.” “Based on the, what, six? Eight? Nine? Nineish hours we’ve known each other, there’s almost no way you wouldn’t laugh at me if I said something stupid.” The scene tries to change through a hole in the wall, announced by a butterfly that’d been a wildflower in a past life, the vibrant purple-and-yellow of a pansy. A chalkboard filled from end-to-end with fighters’ brackets, boxes built around names too small to read, lines drawn to circles filled with question marks. “You are assuming I would find it stupid,” Viktor tells him. He can see chalk dust on Jayce’s knuckles—a souvenir for Viktor’s benefit. Burning coffee, a creaking table, the coarse slide of consecrated air through old vents. He writes (past) on the toe of his sneaker. “It’s far more likely to be soft. That isn’t the same.” Jayce’s gaze is a touch. It has calluses, earned over time.
May 21, 2025 at 7:17 PM
ryssabean.bsky.social
it's wip wednesday, which means it's jayvik wednesday. you've met the anthropologist. you should see the other guy.
It’s a greeting, thumbed into the grain of a wooden door frame. hello, to the creak of floorboards. did you miss me? “Basically,” he says, “it’s a motif, implying cultural significance. Ergo, anthropological value. Checkmate.” Around Jayce’s shoulders the graveyard parts itself against the breeze of time as though a window had been left open in someone’s absentmindedness. Through its veil, an oyster cracks against a knife as brass cogs spill out onto the limestone. Against the heels of Viktor’s past-future-past-present-past-past-past, the pearl burns like stars. Over the pane’s threshold, a butterfly crawls from the mouth of a corpse, its wings bright white, the church’s burlap edges catching on Jayce’s angles, wet threads tangling in his hair— Every muscle in Viktor’s body locks, dropping him the short distance to the floor. “Fuck, shit—fuck.” “Oop—shit.” Jayce loses his balance, his right knee folding with Viktor’s left to take both their weights, Jayce’s left foot taking responsibility for reclaiming what could pass for equilibrium between them. The end product is a slow untangling that leaves them both stretched out along the floor, leaning back on their palms. The past still fills its lungs beneath the floor. Cobwebs of Jayce’s future are clinging to Viktor’s clothes. Between them, the air stirs—deep inhales, a vestigial cough held in divine suspension, the wind and its brine, sweat and the closeness of bodies, the lingering stench of holy Favor, unwelcome even now. Old ink and faded spices, decaying paper and drying clove. Deeper still, fabric softener, cedar, nitrile, eraser shavings.
May 21, 2025 at 7:15 PM
ryssabean.bsky.social
thursday night jayvik promo hours.

jayce is an anthropologist who's dead-set on ruining his career before it can even start, obsessed as he is with the end of the world.

read here: archiveofourown.org/works/650458...

[learning new marketing skills thanks to @deadpokerface.bsky.social]
Image is a summary of a fanfic: “Can I help you?” “Blacksmith’s balls!” Alarm strikes his tailbone so sharply that his fingers go cold, his body turning before his hindbrain has decided on a course of action, before it’s even identified the possible exits, and for an impossible, delirious second, he wonders when he’s going to learn the lesson that the world does exist, even when he’s not thinking about it. There’s a shadow in the arch of the church until there isn’t, the shape of it stepping into a stream of sunlight that flows like water and wears like silk, draping itself over the head-shoulders-waist of a man that someone has certainly waited lifetimes for. He can’t be any older than Jayce is but he looks like he hasn’t slept much since infancy. His face is flushed like he’d walked at least some distance to get here, his hair piled loose in a bun, strands of it wild. He’s built almost entirely in angles—his cheeks, the small square of his chin, his shoulders, his elbows, his hips. His collarbones jut from under the crease of his buttoned shirt, its short-sleeved cut colored in a subtle purple-blue, a shade shared between dawn and dusk, the contrasting wash of his jeans spinning the flax in his dark hair into gold. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: M/M Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) Relationships: Jayce/Viktor, Background Caitlyn/Vi, Background Ekko/Jinx Characters: Jayce Talis, Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce (League of Legends), Caitlyn (League of Legends), caitlyn kiramman, Vi (League of Legends), Jinx (League of Legends), Vander (League of Legends), Ximena Talis, Mel Medarda, Sevika (Arcane: League of Legends), Heimerdinger (League of Legends), Silco (Arcane: League of Legends) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting; Non-Traditional Post-Apocalypse; Anthropologist Jayce; Prophet Viktor; Jayce is in love with Viktor (League of Legends); Viktor is in love with Jayce (League of Legends); Future Explicit Content; author viktor; Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Slow Burn, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Author Is Not Religious, Author is a Former Catholic (negative connotation), trans Viktor, cis jayce, gratuitous use of imagery, gratuitous presence of butterflies, jayce's car is virtually its own character Language: English
May 2, 2025 at 5:31 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
first #jayvik work and first multichaptered work in a long, long time.

the last will and testament of a long dead god
rating: E (in the future)

jayce is an anthropologist who's dead-set on ruining his career before it can even start.

archiveofourown.org/works/650458...

[repost: updated summary]
“Can I help you?” “Blacksmith’s balls!” Alarm strikes his tailbone so sharply that his fingers go cold, his body turning before his hindbrain has decided on a course of action, before it’s even identified the possible exits, and for an impossible, delirious second, he wonders when he’s going to learn the lesson that the world does exist, even when he’s not thinking about it. There’s a shadow in the arch of the church until there isn’t, the shape of it stepping into a stream of sunlight that flows like water and wears like silk, draping itself over the head-shoulders-waist of a man that someone has certainly waited lifetimes for. He can’t be any older than Jayce is but he looks like he hasn’t slept much since infancy. His face is flushed like he’d walked at least some distance to get here, his hair piled loose in a bun, strands of it wild. He’s built almost entirely in angles—his cheeks, the small square of his chin, his shoulders, his elbows, his hips. His collarbones jut from under the crease of his buttoned shirt, its short-sleeved cut colored in a subtle purple-blue, a shade shared between dawn and dusk, the contrasting wash of his jeans spinning the flax in his dark hair into gold.
April 26, 2025 at 11:34 PM
ryssabean.bsky.social
first #jayvik work and first multichaptered work in a long, long time.

the last will and testament of a long dead god
rating: E (in the future)

jayce is an anthropologist who's dead-set on ruining his career before it can even start.
“So,” she says, and he knows what’s coming, “the ink isn’t even dry on your doctorate yet and you’re already looking for more trouble to get into.” It’s not a question, because she’s not asking. It’s the same kind of resignation that settles in his gut when he leaves the coffee pot on and burns the dregs, noticing the smell thirty seconds before Caitlyn turns the corner into the kitchen—like it’s an inevitability. “It’s not trouble,” and he defends himself just the same, the rhythm of it so familiar that he almost tells her they should just get a coffee pot with an automatic timer, “it’s research. And it’s coming out-of-pocket. There’s no grant money or private funding or whatever, so there’s no one to get in trouble with.” “Except almost everyone in scholarship, Jayce. You know they almost put you on an academic corrective action—” “Okay mom—” “Excellent point, have you told your mother what you’re up to during your little gap year or—” “Can you just lay off?”
April 26, 2025 at 8:12 PM
ryssabean.bsky.social
trying to validate myself as a #jayvik fan (sorry) by writing fic but i keep getting too in the prose of it all
He is here with past-future-future-present-future pressing hard into the roof of his mouth, clinging to his tongue like down feathers and paving tar. A butterfly touches his face with the tenderness of jasmine petals and recites to him a prayer to a god long dead. (distant past) he writes against the table. The anthropologist turns around to rest his back against the bar. “Oh,” he says with a voice that’s chipped and fine, warm and round. Viktor can feel the broad strokes of his recognition filling in the gaps between late afternoon and early morning. “Um.” There’s something funny that moves across his lips, an inside joke. “Hello. Or—I guess, hello again?” The greeting skips across the morning, a rock across a lake. “Hello again.” Future-future-present-future-present-future—a tangle around his knuckles, loose and fraying. The restaurant breathes deep, butterflies caught in its draft. Summer makes a stew of itself, rich and damp, all loam and mud, and if he were to press his ear to the wall he would be able to hear— Viktor inventories him—the anthropologist—from head to shoulder to heel as he crosses the bar. Jayce: a chip in one eyebrow, a gap between his teeth, and a jawline that his beard tries to obfuscate to preserve the dignity of everyone else’s. The faded purple of a couple days’ missed sleep blended into the brown of his skin with tender fingers, the curl of his hair against his cheekbones gentle enough to have been done around someone’s fingertip. Broad shoulders. Devastating hips. Hiker’s shorts with too many pockets and the boots he’d worn yesterday. His fingers touch the end of Viktor’s table. “Is it okay with you if I…?” “I am absolutely certain that there is nothing of anthropological value right here, so in this, I don’t know what I can offer you.” Coffee is lukewarm when it gets to his mouth. “Since you’re on the clock.” So rarely is this a tactic that fails him that Viktor doesn’t realize his mistake until direct eye contact is already made.
April 11, 2025 at 4:43 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
hyperventilating an unreasonable amount @bonesbunns.bsky.social
April 3, 2025 at 1:16 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
and her refined troublemaker antagonist baby sister mothra
March 17, 2025 at 6:09 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
my glamorous sweet baby angel
March 17, 2025 at 6:08 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
autocorrect attempted to change neuroplasticity to microplastics and i am offended. like look at this shit. fucking.... neuroplasticity is a real word!
screenshot of the tweet "autocorrect attempted to change neuroplasticity to microplastics and i am offended." neuroplasticity is underlined in red as though it is an incorrect word where microplastics is not.
March 16, 2025 at 2:45 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
this is you
February 7, 2025 at 4:54 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
tagged by both @chaosservant.bsky.social AND @goodnyte.bsky.social

1. A WIP! not vashwood so i censored it
2. my favorite fic
3. the fic i've been planning the longest - also not vashwood, and also a WIP
4. the fic i've found the hardest to write - also not vashwood, also a WIP (bc it's hard)
1. The call of summer came from the woods as the sky considered sunset a distant dream. Every tree wore the dry husk of a cicada’s carapace, each clinging to the bark as though something still lived within the shell of it. Their remnants crunched underfoot as ____ sprinted between the trunks and under branches, bird calls scattering across the leaf-litter with the weight of loose change. Sunlight gathered in the footprints he left behind in the mud, a rich and viscous gold. Between his lungs ached the hot shame of a stupid fight that he started, a petulant swipe at the fundamentally unfair universe that his mother had caught instead. The absence of his father was open wound that no one wanted to talk about, his presence even stronger than it’d been when he was alive. He was a looming spectre in his mother’s parents’ farmhouse, hidden in corners and buried under blankets. The reek of incense still filled the house and the Blacksmith’s rosary had yet to go cold as it moved between his mother’s fingers. There’d been no urban chaos to lean into—just a too-cramped house on too-much land in the middle of nowhere, with an empty, silent kitchen and no workshop to hide in. It’d been a crypt without a corpse to fill it. Or maybe everyone in it was just waiting their turn. But outside, beneath the branches of old-growth trees, noise was everywhere. Squirrels raced each other from limb to limb, loose twigs rustling where they’d been stuck in the leaves. A half-filled creek talked itself in circles in the shadows, glimpses of it made possible only because a tree three times his width had fallen over decades before right where the sun’s fingers could reach out and touch the water’s surface, moving through its veins like fish. It’d sounded nothing like an open market, even less like bumper-to-bumper traffic, but it was cacophonous, the riot of it taking up enough space between his ears that there’d been practically no room for ____ at all. 2. title: i think we should go and get you out of here During a game of cards, an older man spoke of his grandmother who’d seen a man that’d looked like a shooting star running through her fields of wheat and saltgrass, only to vanish at the town’s eastern border. From what she’d seen of him, he’d looked too sad to make a wish on, and she hadn’t much liked the idea of wishing on a dead man in the first place. The story hadn’t been much of anything. It certainly didn’t tie to the lake in any concrete way, and it didn’t mention July, and it didn’t have the tension that every other rumor did. But Nicholas finds himself in some stranger’s grandmother’s hometown north of July anyway, a couple hours’ ride up a highway that looked to be maintained only by the grace of God and hand-mixed pitch. It’s bigger than July, but that isn’t saying much. Its defining feature is a bar that markets itself as a Real Western Saloon, complete with swinging doors and a dusty piano that plays two hairs offkey to keep the tunes jaunty. What’d once been those saltgrass and wheat fields sport maize these days, and they stretch for yarz down the highway. When he breathes in, he can taste lakesand against his tongue. He presses it to the roof of his mouth as a reminder, as an omen. 3. Nier is a man of very few but very specific talents, the greatest of which is his ability to swing really big swords really quickly. His muscles had remembered this skill better than his mind had, at first, but time spent out here in the middle of the snow, in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the dark had made those connections between mind and body stronger than they had ever been, probably. The trees creak as a wooly boar shoulders through them, huffing steam out of its nose, only evident in the way the temperature changes in front of him. He takes two steps back, adjusting his grip on the hilt of his sword and pulling a tightly pinned scarf over his nose in the same motion. The snow crunches beneath his feet, the heels of his boots finding a root beneath the snow. To his left, he can hear other footsteps and the drawing of bows, wood creaking against sweaty palms. To his right, there is another snort of the boar’s breath, the pawing of hooves against the frozen dirt—and then, a high-pitched scream as the boar lifts itself onto its hind legs, rattling the tree branches above its head, giving away its location, its distance, its size. This close, it sounds like a person, almost. This close, the whistle of his sword through frigid air isn’t enough to drown it out. The sword connects, hooking into skin and sinew and bone, the soles of his feet pressing against the creature’s ribcage, struggling to maintain their grip against the combination of blood and fur. The boar screams again, shaking itself, trying to dislodge the sword, as Nier swings himself onto the boar’s back. It’s bigger than the ones from the Northern Plains, its shoulders too broad to press against in any useful way, but this is one of Nier’s other talents, long-cultivated and only becoming more fixed with age. He’s fucking stubborn. 4. Naboo, again, the safer of two confessions, one that would be easier to contain, control, explain. It hits him on his right elbow, shattering it into stardust, only to have static fill its space. Ashoka, leaving the order. His hip, his calf, the back of his head. The cruiser, and the Chancellor, and Dooku’s head. It holds his gaze. Obi-Wan comes to find him, and Anakin can’t hear him speak. He can’t even feel where this memory hits him. He only knows he survives it, as much as he can survive anything like this. He clips a memory that isn’t his with his chin, knocking around his teeth. Utapau. He bites his tongue, but no blood fills his mouth. Or maybe it does. He can feel something leaking out from between his lips. don’t go, obi-wan. The Temple—the Temple. Anakin catches himself here, holding onto the chamber’s floor, his fingertips squealing as something works to pull him away. He sees himself, curled in a chair, wrapped tightly in black robes, frightened, and angry, and alone. The polished marble reflects his shape in reverse, leaving three of him in a room for company—a wide room, with wide windows, and the city-planet racing by with no idea what’s about to happen. He tries to speak. He tries to say stay here, tries to say wait for master windu, tries to say don’t fuck it up this time, but nothing comes out of his mouth. He tries to say i wish we’d never come here, tries to say all we do is hurt the people we love and who love us, tries to say i hate you so fucking much i could die. But he only struggles for air, only finds himself capable of another almost-sob, and he’s pulled from the memory with enough force that his palms feel stripped of their skin. He thinks he catches the floor’s reflection making eye contact with him.
February 7, 2025 at 4:35 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
HE IS HERE!!!!! now i’m just waiting for the vash preorder on 1/26!!!! @ruporas.bsky.social
wolfwood plush, adoption certificate, and merchandise from @ruporas!
January 24, 2025 at 2:51 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
myeheheheheh
it’s a plate of omurice with the ketchup drizzle!
January 17, 2025 at 2:29 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
your little man cat is so handsome!! so beautiful!!

this is a picture of my beloved eldest
December 6, 2024 at 5:48 PM
ryssabean.bsky.social
this is her!!!
a picture of a cat in a cat tree with her cheek resting against the raised edge of of a round sleeping space.
December 6, 2024 at 3:25 PM
ryssabean.bsky.social
@artofalas.bsky.social THE SHIRT IS HEEEERE
December 1, 2024 at 7:18 PM
ryssabean.bsky.social
this isn’t the help i hired for my laundry
a tortoiseshell cat of mischievous inclinations is sitting on a stack of clean clothes meant to to be hung up
December 1, 2024 at 9:20 AM
ryssabean.bsky.social
it’s not wednesday but what about a wip in these trying times (the end of my academic quarter).

#vashwood
(The apartment hadn’t been old enough to have a mind of its own yet, a new build with so little history that he’d been surprised it’d been able to hold a curse at all. Floorboards weren’t creaking, the walls were insulated against the weather. He’d been able to hear the city sing to itself outside, car horns and emergency sirens, the hiss of tires on drying asphalt. The client had complained of a trembling bed, of scratching at the walls, of air so thick as to be breathing underwater. In the end, the curse had been under the bed, the unintentional result of a break-up that’d gone worse than either party had expected, chalky to the touch and just as fragile. Vash had still been able to taste it on his tongue, bitter and sour, even as the sky threatened to bring back rain, the sweetness of it getting lost in the stagnant smell of past-date diesel of an antique car, smothered by wet paper and clogged gutters, cooking oil trying to stay afloat in the city’s late night cocktail. Laughter and music came from a bar on the corner, its doors wide open for the coming closing time, completely unbothered by the damp. A streetlamp flickered above the bus stop where he waited, ankles crossed in front of him, a case of beer on his lap and a grocery bag from the twenty-four hour corner store wedged between him and the reinforced plastic pane screwed into the bench he’d been sitting on. Nighttime hung in swathes from windows and brick facades, neon signage and pharmacy logos. If he’d reached up, he might’ve been able to catch it on his fingers and put it in his mouth. But a man crossed the street, eating distance with long strides, and paused only to hover just inside the streetlamp’s territory, inconsistent as it was. “mind if i smoke here?” A voice like smoke itself, gone cold enough to crawl along the sidewalk. Vash’s eyes had shifted from the width of the man’s shoulders to the sign slapped against the bus shelter’s other side: NO SMOKING WITHIN 20FT. “nope.” It hadn’t yet been cold enough to respond in kind. The dying bulb turned the buttons of his denim jacket into stars as he’d dropped onto the bench beside him, the screws squeaking in the bus stop’s metal frame. Rain began its slow return, fat droplets hitting the roof, and making their way onto the bench between them through a crack in the tin too small to see. “and since i don’t see anyone else here to ask…” As he’d lit his cigarette, his hands trembled, almost hidden by the scoff through his nose—infinitesimal, only apparent in the fingers of the hand he’d used to keep the lighter out of the breeze, kicked up from under a delivery van that’d run a light, its tires lifting around a turn it’d taken too tight. Skin was peeling over his knuckles, rubbed raw by harsh attention and harsher soap. There’d still been evidence of agitated color, shifting along the tendons of his hand. Its headlights cut the man’s profile, sharp even through the flyers for summer events that’d ended months before, even through the smears of windburn and dirt that’d scarred the plastic. His nose curved long from his face, his eyebrows sloped over his eyes. His jaw had been solid, muscles working in his jaw as he’d checked his phone for the time. Mud had been caked along the toe of his left boot—or something else, soaked into their laces. Vash slid his shades farther down his nose, watching the scattered fragments of November’s lifeblood gather in puddles in the street, glittering in the space between them. Reds and oranges circled back on themselves, swirling inside the streetlamp, oil on water. It slipped throughout the man’s blood, looping underneath his skin, stitched into the muscle. It gathered in his palms, the center of his chest, dripped from the back of his throat to settle in his stomach. He’d been able to see the curse in him, down to the shiver of his fingertips as he’d taken the cigarette out of his mouth to breathe smoke toward the shelter’s roof. There’d been something on the tip of Vash’s tongue—something poignant or awkward, something that would’ve given him the opportunity to trace the curse’s path toward its resting place and peel it out—when the bus lumbered its way toward the stop, its windows streaked with rain. The doors had squealed open, the driver stretching their leg while it idled. Rain hit tin and plastic like gravel, bounced across uneven pavement like ice. “that yours?” The man had looked at him, an eyebrow arched. His eyes had been rich and depthless, and a shadow that looked a lot like nervousness was pulled taut at the corner of his mouth. Vash stood, nudging his sunglasses back up his face, folding the ambient energy back into itself, keeping it toward his periphery. He’d been able to feel the whir of his legs in his hips as he’d hesitated. “i’m guessing it’s not yours?” “nope,” a half smile, a glimpse of teeth. “mine won’t be here for a while.” He’d knocked his knuckles against the bus stop’s edge, drawing the city’s brightness into the stretch of his skin. It’d hummed its way through aluminum and tin, steel and plastic. “stay dry.” Hardly anything—but a charm flickered against his tongue like soda. “you too,” a pause, long enough to be considered contemplative. November’s pulse filled the width of it, its heartbeat the uneven rattle of the inner city rail system, the half-heard pop song from a charging station’s busted speakers. The man’s eyes kept threatening to catch fire in the dark, “hate to see what you’d look like soggy.” Vash huffed a laugh under his breath, the bus jostling slightly as he took the stairs. The doors hit the same pitch as they’d closed, as he’d tucked himself against a window closest to the bus stop. The bus’s suspension shook as it’d lurched forward, leaving the man on his own with his curse and a cigarette on its last legs. As they’d rounded the corner, he’d watched the streetlamp tried to give up with a half-hearted pop and a short-lived spark. For a moment, the bus stop was gone, swallowed up by the low grind of November rolling over in its restless sleep—until the streetlight shivered with carbonated vigor, and cigarette smoke lingered against a shadow’s open mouth.)
November 29, 2024 at 8:45 AM