it's been a long october.

[afterdrop]

Who: Charles Rowland and YOU
What: Monthy catch-all
When: Throughout October
Where: Around Milton

Content Warnings: Specifics TBD; general warnings available here.


𝒊. 𝒚𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒔𝒂𝒓𝒅

[A short jaunt up from the town center, where the road gets rougher and the sparse trees begin to climb towards Milton House, there's an overgrown, decrepit cottage tucked back in the trees. Blue once, maybe, but faded into a mildewy grey, its windows utterly piled with what hasn't been worth scavenging.

At least, until today.

It's been almost six weeks of squatting in the near-hoard, stuck between pretending that he wouldn't be here long and feeling overwhelmed by the monumental task of making this place livable, when Charles finally wakes up, opens the front door, and starts dragging shit outside.]

Sorry, mate. [He gives a sideways little wave, plunking down a plastic cat carrier.] Just trying to clean up a bit, yeah?

[If it looks like it might have belonged to a 70-year-old woman prior to the apocalypse, it's sitting in the front yard now. Several ceramic horse figurines. A needlepoint pillow with a Bible verse on it. An ornate mirror, slightly scuffed. Use your imagination liberally. Surrounding it all, however, are items in much worse shape. The mattress looks like someone may have died on it, judging from the stains, and there's plenty of busted, broken furniture that's ripe to be chopped into firewood.]

Nick whatever you want. Don't think Gladys'll miss it much, will she?

𝒊𝒊. 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆

[There's one thing he won't part with from the old lady's house - an old, crumbling stick of black eyeliner he found in a bathroom drawer. With a tragic lack of sufficient inside light, however, he's toted a compact mirror down to the lessening hours of the town's unfiltered sun, and sat down against the back of the hunting supply store.

After thirty years of spiritually manifesting his eyeliner, it's harder than he remembers, especially with the scavenged pencil.]

Fuck. [Someone's having a hard time.] Bloody piece of shit.

[If you approach, he'll have one of a couple of reactions. Older men, particularly those broad or bearded, or otherwise classically masculine, will have him scrambling to conceal the pencil behind his leg, quickly barking out a, ] What're you looking at?

[If you have the good fortune not to remind him of one Paul Rowland, however, his reaction will be much less hostile. Instead, he'll give the pencil a little wave and offer a crooked smile.] Bit harder than back home, innit?

𝒊𝒊𝒊. 𝒐𝒐𝒄

[Contact me at ghoulsonfilm or pantsghost @ discord to plot a custom starter. Brackets are prose are both fine!]

Comments

[afterdrop]

Operation Ivy was another whose heyday Charles missed, though several of his icons are named after their songs he managed to find a copy of Energy years after their quick dissolution.

"Nah, Sublime was pretty mint," he answers, passing the eyeliner over. He sits up straighter and leans forward a bit. "Actually caught one of their shows once." Years after he died, of course, sitting unnoticed on a balcony railing. The only shows he went to when he was alive were in cramped, graffitied venues his mother would've fainted at seeing.

"My favorite was the Specials, though. Band out of Coventry. Tried my bloody hardest to dress like them, but I just looked like a schoolboy headed to church." Especially when his dad trashed the brimmed hat he'd fished out of a thrift bin, saying it made him look like a fairy. Of course, his dad probably would have said that if he was wearing a construction vest and work boots. "They were big on fighting injustice, and stuff. Probably why my dad hated them so much."

[ployboy]

"No kidding?" He asks, the words out of his mouth a placeholder as he gets the pencil and juggles angles and distances and squints in the already poor light to try to not... melt the thing.

Young Justice got into plenty of shenanigans- concerts were good shenanigans, and even the early days as Titans had plenty of resting and recreating. San Francisco was only kinda famous for the scene. So in spite of being an angry and black hearted soul, Tim finds his lips twitch up in reserved amusement.

"Schoolboy headed to church is any day ending in Y for us with boarding school syndrome," he says wryly. Doesn't miss the blazers, does miss (and he despises this part of himself, this piece that shouldn't have fit in the puzzle but does) the fighting.

And the fighting he had learned he could do in a suit. And tie. In a room full of other, older people in suits and ties.

(Tim Drake was Bruce Wayne's neighbor, once upon a time. Since then, he's learned a lot about privilege.)

With an eyeliner deemed good enough (he has No Idea what he's doing) and offering it back to its (second or third) owner with a commiserating sharpness, he prods, "Your dad a cop or something?"

(It's not painting a great picture, the information he does have.)

[afterdrop]

"Nah, just a massive dick." Which is a gentle way of saying he was a complete fucking monster who terrorized his family, but Tim doesn't need to hear any of that. Right now, it's all smiles and easy conversation, Charles taking back the warm pencil with fidgeting fingers. "Not in my life anymore, at least."

Except in the quiet, aching moments Charles spends magicking his mirror, checking in on his parents' home. Making sure his mum's safe in his absence.

"Boarding school, though, yeah?" He gives a low whistle, sympathetic, and starts about cleaning off the pocket mirror to examine Tim's handy-work. "Hope yours wasn't Catholic at least. You think the place can't get any worse, and then they add bloody mass to it."

[ployboy]

Good riddance Tim thinks and doesn't say: he remembers Steph (she never leaves his thoughts) and Arthur Brown and all of those nights with heavy talks and high emotions. Still, as he readjusts and brings his backpack to his other side in belated protectiveness, Tim hopes the sentiment shows.

"You missed him," he muses somewhat lowly, because- well, Jason's been on his mind a lot lately too, though Tim attributes that to Jason. "There was a guy around our age." He stamps out the last stubborn breath of light from the now discarded magazine- "We were both new, heading into town, and he was decked out in the blazer for Saint Someone's school. I was just jealous for the blazer."

No,

"It was almost military school for me. Lucky, I know."

[afterdrop]

The blazers. Charles can just barely remember the feel of them, scratchy at his wrists, bunched beneath his arms. Pins poking at him since he couldn't afford to get his tailored like the other lads.

"Hilarion was ours. St. Hil's." He says it like it's a curse, like it tastes bad in his mouth. "Named after some old codger who starved himself to death 'cause he was embarrassed about being randy."

There isn't much he remembers from his classes, but that one was amusing enough to stick with him. The stunning result of ten years of formal education culminating in two helpful facts: the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, and Saint Hilarion killed himself because he wanted to fuck.

"Poor old Hilly would have lost his mind knowing how many blokes were sneaking their girlfriends into his school after hours for a shag."

[ployboy]

Tim snorts, but he's grateful for the returning shadows that might hide the hopeless red of his ears. He's learned a lot since getting chased out of Ari's house with a shotgun trained on him after an unfortunate misunderstanding of two high school freshman. He now knows where babby come from- not from hand holding, Steph had told him with a nudge of her elbow.

No, Tim's no prude. He's pretty sure.

But this talk has never been his-- scene. He shakes his head, still good natured and enjoying the moment but he- like, not if they're going to be talking about girls. He says, "I only did co-ed for some months before I had to transfer. Then Brentwood, all boys' school, had dogs on the grounds after hours."

Timothy Drake, chastises his last remaining brain cell, the dog was a pug.

"Nobody went in or out, but that didn't stop the fun. It was alcohol and gambling in my wing. We even had a big 3-letter agency investigation once."