Timothy
Gabriel Darius Trahan [Link to Patreon] did *Not* Like talking to his father. 

It wasn't that his father was a bad person, per say— Terence Trahan was many things, and a bad person was not one of them. He went to mass, and he washed his hands before eating, and he said grace; a trait most bad people did not have, in Gabriel's eyes. 

No, Terence was not a bad person, he reminded himself as the former screamed his ear off via smartphone. Just a stressed out one.

He had far since tuned out the barrage of noise coming from his phone— in fact, Gabe was expecting the onslaught ever since yesterday, when Blanche called and mentioned how Dad was passed up for a raise he was excited to get. 

He would have been mad to be treated this way. He *Should* Have been mad, except... 

The same old crack in Dad's voice shone through his words; the one that appeared the night Mom was first admitted to the hospital, when he had to sit the both of them down and explain her condition.

Then, and even now, Terence Trahan was grieving. And Gabriel was not one to kick someone down while the did so. 

"Yes, Dad." He said, for most likely the thousandth time in the past minute. He was ranting about an appointment this time— how the dentist Gabe scheduled conflicted with a meeting Terence had, and the laborious work he did in order to right such a wrong.

In a few days time, Dad would warm up again, sheepishly calling back and peppering Gabriel in words of affirmations. How proud he is of his son. How helpful he is ever since Mom became less of a mother and more of a walking zombie. How much he *Needed* Him. 

Of course, that was tomorrow Gabe's problem. 

The *Click* Of a phone as Terence hung up on Gabriel, and he lightly tosses the offending object on his comforter. He dives face down into his pillow, and groans.

"Hhhhnghngh." Gabe rolls around to eye Sigrun. "How much of that did you hear?"
William
"Enough to want to tie your *Far* To a ceiling fan by his ankles. Not for too long! No torture! Just to... Spin him around a little."

Quoth the blanket heap on Sigrún's bed, from which the *Mario Kart* Music had ceased to emanate around a half hour ago. 

With a grunt and the incredibly loud popping of at least four joints, Sigrún's face and hands emerged from their dense cave like a disgruntled bat on an off-day. Bright, multicoloured eyes blinked at her poor dear friend as she wrangled the rest of herself out of the blanket cave, taking the top layer with her around her shoulders on her perilous two-second journey across their comically decorated space. The anachronism felt like home, now, despite the impeccable organization on Gabe's end.

A soft huff came from the concerned creature and it plopped comfortably onto the side of his bed, somehow pulling the space to perch cross-legged on the edge from the same cartoon void from which it seemed to get its ideas for glorious retribution. She tilted her head to align with his.

"I have *Many* Words about how I would like to spin him by the ankles from a ceiling fan for a non-permanently-damaging amount of time. Would they help? Or would they make you more depressed?" Her low, raspy voice softened a little. "I'd hate for that."

*Patpat.*

She rested a hand on his shoulder, for good measure. Her strange, curling smile was a little late as well, but genuine enough; those grins of hers were more for his benefit than her own expression, but she did feel a real pang of sympathy for him. This phone call, followed by the (frankly, creepy) apology attempt was one she had overheard from her blanket pile many a time before this, and the thought of the number of times more compelled her to bite the inside of her cheek. Nothing stung like repetition.

So her guts twisted, and her little grin held steady, for whatever good it did.
Timothy
"I don't know. Maybe?" 

"I'm in the mood to simultaneously be the best, most perfect person I can be just to prove to him I can, and do something extremely reckless and horrible just to spite him." Gabriel says, groaning. 

"Maybe I'll kiss a guy. Or study for six hours straight. Or maybe I should get shitfaced and vomit in a toilet." The sound is muffled as he flops back on his stomach, pressing his face in a pillow and letting out another groan before facing Sigrun once again. 

"I'm torn between being the best person I can be, and watching it all burn just because I can. Is that so *Weird*?" His hands twitch, grabbing onto a pencil and flipping it between his fingers to be doing *Something* With the nervous energy coursing through his veins. 

*Christ,* He thought to himself, looking at his own distorted reflection in Sigrun's misshaped pupils. *This is embarrassing. This is so fucking lame. I'm being so annoying.* The Gabriel that stared back at him looked disheveled and *Tired* After the emotional drain of that phone call. Not at all like who he was supposed to be, who he had to be; someone reliable. A guardian angel, one could say.

He slowly stretched the corners of his mouth in a mockery of a smile, watching the pointed corners rise in his reflection.

*What the fuck am I doing.* Gabe asks himself with no correct answer, and groans again.

"Maybe jostle me from the ceiling fan. It'll get my head on straight."
William
Sigrún shifted a little as Gabe turned his turmoil this way and that, trying to find an angle that would be easiest to tuck back into his cheek without souring his expression. It didn't brush away so nicely, though, colouring his show-stopper grin with the same stinging fluorescence as a headache. Lenses flipped imperceptibly behind his reflected image.

"Oh, put that away, *Smukken*." Sig's palms clap onto the sides of his face; they were a mottled reddish purple today, up to her elbows. Her tone is even— not quite teasing (well, a little), but far from shock or distaste. Clay on the riverbank.

"If your head were on any straighter, your spinal column would be fused into a worse stick than the one the science teacher has up his ass." 

It playfully tilted his head this way and that, making a dry clicking sound for emphasis before snorting half-heartedly and finding an annoying curl of hers to fiddle with instead. That was all the shit she felt like giving him; her roommate didn't much care for pity, but the stuff Sigrún was made of was soft and mirrored the murky and vibrant shapes alike around it. Smudges of the ashen purple beneath Gabriel's ink-drop eyes flickered through her face, a silent note of concern.

She knew his plight— the folded spectre, too, held a cup that was never quite full, the tea leaves swirling in the last sip before the phone rang always hovering above a shape that spelled dissatisfaction. It was a knot in an organ she had yet to find in any of the books of medical diagrams propped open on her desk and the foot of her bed; she tried to visualize it sometimes, and got the closest with fingertips dipped in dense ink and charcoal more smeared on her skin than her page, but it was never accurate. Its attempts always looked a little too much like someone else's, delicate loops, frayed ends, pulled nerves muddled in expression.

She supposed the difference between them was what they were aiming for, in achieving such similar results. Still...
_ _

Sigrún rocked on its perch, a wry smile creeping in. A benefit of not having a great sense of the *Time* Or *Place* For funny thoughts was that they came to it delightfully often.

"Any way we could jostle you in the *Other* Direction?"
Timothy
Gabe didn't know what *Smukken* Meant, but he found great amusement of thinking it a portmanteau of "Smug" And "Munchkin." Gabriel was not a munchkin at all, but he was *Certainly* Smug, especially when it was justified, and he snickered at the thought. 

It was probably some Nordic insult, Gabe assumed, and waved the term of endearment off. 

"A jostle in the other direction...?" The actor thought to himself for but a moment before large, jagged spikes appeared to dig into his skull; he winced, and the quaint dorm room with a horrible clash of aesthetics seemed to swim. 

"You know what always cheers me up, actually?" Despite the pain in his head, Gabe manages to sit up and look at Sigrun dead in the eyes. "Being subjected to all of Blanche's whims. Dragging me to play dress-up, or house, or her forcing me to run around with her on my shoulders... It's kind of nice to be dragged around by someone and having a ball."

The awful, dark images swirling in his head are momentarily replaced with happier, bright ones; Blanche, his shooting star, his sole reason he kept moving forward. Sure, she sees him like a cross between an older brother and a father, but... If Gabe were to be honest, he'd be equally as lost without her. She helped him just as much as he helped her, and bringing a smile onto her face filled him with all the warmth of the beignets they used to sell two doors down from the church, the same ones they'd share when they'd walk back to school together.

And the buttery smell of those walks were gone, and Gabe was back in Sweden.

"What I'm saying, Siggy—" Gabe batted his eyes at the squid, the color-shifting of her skin not phasing him any more, "Is that my fate is in *Your* Hands. Treat it with all the care and grace you treat your Sandman comics with."
William
Faintly green-stained teeth worried a sore, coppery spot on the inside of Sigrún's cheek as difficult things arced beneath the glassy surface, nearly breaking the even swell. Her shoulders rolled back as he leaned forward, pulling the rest of her spine along on a fishing wire; it tasted sunlight, in his strained words, warm and soaked deep, buried there. Gold dust blinked in its ever-turning kaleidoscope skin— she was listening.

Gabriel really was a nice thing to listen to, she thought. When he talked about Blanche, he had the nicest scenes to set; the air is warm because somebody precious is smiling, little hands tighten around strong shoulders, and things are alright again, for a moment. The actor spoke of true things.

The feeling ached; Sig held it tight.

*Ah! He has half a proposition.*

"*Pytt!*" A cheerful splash of crushed pearls exploded behind Sigrún's sudden face-aching grin. "Sometimes I wonder if I've started making words on my forehead by mistake!" *Welcome, dear Gabriel, to the point of no return.*

Cool red fingertips run along either side of Gabe's jaw, sliding off his chin before landing on his carpet just in time to brace for the rest of her half-falling-half-melting off of his bed, blanket apparently forgotten. In a step and a half, she had made it to her closet (what of it that wasn't piled over her laundry basket) and scanning for only the most devious things with which to bedazzle her... Hopelessly normally-dressed roommate. *'Bless his heart', as he would say, no wonder he's so emotionally constipated.*
_ _

"My brother used to let me do this! He is known for being far more sensible than me. So you're in good hands! Tell me, I beg, how hot am I allowed to make you, on a scale of... Heh, *Monster High* Heartthrob to murder-victim's-vengeful-spirit-found-behind-goth-club?"

It was clear as day, from the wicked gleam in her silvery eyes, that she needed this as much as he did.
Timothy
Gabriel was taken off guard by Sigrun's silky smooth movements— sometimes, he forgot how *Fish* Like she really was, down to the inhuman, freaky flexibility and the smell of the sea that seemed to follow her. (Or maybe she just didn't shower? Inconclusive, but Sigrun seemed like she liked showering. Then again, she *Was* A bit of a nerd...) 

"How *Hot* Are you allowed to make me?" Gabriel looked mock offended. "I'm *Always* Hot. Me changing outfits isn't changing my level of attractiveness, only my target demographic." It sounded... Oddly rehearsed, as if Gabriel has recited this same train of thought to himself multiple times. 

"Like you." He gestured at Sigrun from across the room. "Just because you change color doesn't change the core of who you are." 

He leaned back. His strong arms stretched out behind him, cradling his neck in a lax pose. 

"The core of who I am just *Happens* To be being attractive." It was a truth Gabriel had forced into existence. Indeed, if he wasn't attractive, or smart, or reliable, he was essentially *Useless*; so he had made those words a shell around him, his whole life a play with that persona as the lead. 

He was attractive, smart, and reliable, and no style of dress could take it away from him. No one could.
William
Sigrún paused her rummaging for a moment, pretending to admire something silvery just a little longer than she normally would while Gabriel rambled through his elegantly constructed palace of self-assured reasons *Why*. He kept the tapestries clean, and all the stained-glass portraits detailing his practiced smile in wrought-iron gleamed with a vengeance, certainly. It kind of gave her the heebie-jeebies.

"The *Core*, you say," It mused, stretching its arms far above its head. Being all coiled up for too long was really no good.

"You don't seem fickle enough a bastard, for a thing like beauty to be the one constant."

She fiddled with her earring for a moment, skin rippling like a seabed under a choppy day. It really was interesting how her roommate made sense of himself, and of her, even if his implications did make her sad. *Was that the right word?* Despite the public's ideas of him (one he had worked to create), he didn't truly go to all that many lengths to make himself happy and, as someone who had firmly decided she cared about him, that was... Saddening.

"I wonder if I have a core," Said she, testing how much give a shirt had around the shoulders. "I'm a three-hearted thing whose skin changes with its shadow... Who's to say where the middle is?"

She snickered to herself, her train of thought switching tracks nine times a minute. "You make me sad, Gabriel, and for that, you get the murdered-goth treatment!"

Its shoulder pops loudly as it spins on its heel and throws a couple of its decidedly favourite options at its willing victim's damnably smug face.
Timothy
"The middle of your three hearts?" Gabe ponders the question for a bit, before a sly smile grows on his face. 

"Why, it's the brain, of course. Only got one of those, eh?" He puffed out his chest as if his words were something profound, only deflating slightly at the words *You make me sad.* 

He didn't *Want* Her pity. Gabriel held back the gritting of his teeth, instead opting to bat his eyes at Sigrun and spare glances at her wardrobe. 

"Would any of your clothes even fit me?" He wonders out loud. "I mean, no offense, but... I am *Built.* Don't wanna rip anything, is all." 

Who was he kidding. Sigrun was around his height, and while she wasn't as defined or slim as he was, she was certainly strong in her own right. 

An interested look makes its way onto Gabriel's face— the intrigued eyebrow raising, concentration and deep contemplation piloting his usually overly upbeat eyes. "You *Are* Onto something," He admits, a smile forming. 

"After all, e-boys are the new trend. It's great to modernize to appeal to all audiences, right?" 

Gabe whistled. Maybe Sigrun *Was* A marketing genius.
William
"Eh. I am built for two things: pillaging, and surviving the winter with enough of me left for more pillaging," She mused, dramatically flexing an arm in Gabe's direction; her outline was soft, but there was a density to the stretch of muscles across her back and arms that only made sense from certain angles, that suggested what was coiled inside of her. "Plenty of room."

Gabriel took great pride in the broad planes of his figure, Sigrún knew; something sleeveless for him, yes, for she wasn't trying to knock him down (or rip any of her tighter-fitting things). No, the goal here was mostly to make his father have a heart attack.

And, despite the blonde's inclination towards womenfolk, she could appreciate a madman sculptor's work; the both of them were striking, in their ways, and though she made many a joke of it, her excitement to drape her roommate in vampiric finery came from a place that did think he was beautiful. He certainly drew enough attention to it. Ah, a dangerous thing it was, to draw Sigrún's attention to beautiful things.

"Pardon me, *E-boys?!!*"

Sig's face flashed a bright warning round of stripes, *Incredulous*. A red hand fished her favourite spiked gauntlet out of the mess on her desk, and the fate so kindly entrusted to her is sealed in black leather. 

"Heh, that does sound like something one with but a single brain would say."

She worked with a ferocious attention to detail—silvery pieces move around Gabe's hands, neck, and waist, balanced perfectly, gleaming like stars against his dark skin; complimented by bloody reds and heavy draped black. Contrarian though Sigrún was, cloaking and bedazzling him with things she loved was no small deal to her. Strange shapes and colours stretched and coiled like shoals of undefined creatures swimming below her pearl-dusted skin as the wheels turned behind her eyes.

Its eye shadow palette flicks open, and it bounces with excitement. Had he any last words?
Timothy
"Hell yeah I said e-boys." Gabe said, jutting his chin out with an amused smile on his face. Riling up Sigrun was one of his favorite past times—not with any malice, he'd assure you, but simply because it was amusing seeing Sigrun have an excuse to talk about the things she was interested in. 

Or, in this case, Sigrun unrepentantly bedazzling him. 

"Give me your worst," Gabriel said with a cocky half-smile, and he knowingly sealed his own fate. Especially when she was just starting on eyeshadow— it was one thing to move with righteous fury when adding necklaces, or putting clothes on, but getting someone currently doing your makeup to be pissed off at you was the number one way to make sure you made a statement with your look. Which, funnily enough, was *Exactly* What Gabriel was looking for.