Historye

[pendraeg]

Who: Uther and Chase
What: blemishes
When: backdated to after Chase meets Clarice
Where: out for a walk in the wood
Rating: A for good clean angst
Status: private, complete

Comments

[chaseandoldlace]

Winter in the country was different than the city--the color, even the smell was different. Gone were hints of rust and dark concrete peaking through snow plowed into dirty, steep hills on curbs. Gone was the tepid smell of exhaust that would hang, like pockets of poisonous gas in the freezing air; in it's place only the clouds of their breath as they spoke.

Well, as Chase spoke, anyway. Uther had barely gotten a word in edgewise because the other blond was too busy talking about Clarice, and the flood of things her introduction into his life had brought on. She was part of his world, and there was so much about that that Uther didn't know. Like In and Out Burger and shock-jock radio. He was in the middle of recounting the unfortunate incident with the radio announcer zombifying half of LA when he it finally hit Chase that Uther hadn't said anything not because he couldn't, but he had apparently no desire to

[pendraeg]

But it was difficult, pretending that all was well, when someone constantly paid attention to him, and not an attendant or a guard, but a companion. Uther had been trying not to think about the dead rising from murky water, drowned children, skin like that of grey, bloated pigs. They had been staring at him, baleful and passive. Silent against their deaths, for it had been the command of their King.

He turned to look slowly at Chase, not really present. "Did that make them more difficult to defeat, or easier?" he asked, having followed the tale well enough thus far, though he could not summon any interest in it.

[chaseandoldlace]

For as much as Gert had accused him of being totally oblivious, the truth was that Chase just got distracted easily, and it happened so often, it was simple to assume he didn't notice anything.

Living with a bunch of girls had changed that though--girls who sighed and sulked on couches or took forever in the bath as ways to disguise their melancholy. He'd even devised a pruniness-to-depressiveness scale for Nico--when he needed to see what sort of day she'd had, all he needed to do was look at her fingers.

Uther, though they were nowhere near a bath had a sort of pruny look him: brows furrowed in a sad attempt at interest.

"Harder. Look are you...okay? You kinda look like you need a drink." Because that was the answer to everything.

[pendraeg]

It was a great temptation, but drink didn't help. Uther had tried, late at night when the entire household was abed, and the more drunk he had become the more vivid the phantasms had been. Where the tableaus had been soundless, all the noises he had only imagined had "turned on".

Uther shook his head. "I'm fine," he said, dismissing Chase's suggestion. "So how did you fight it then?"