so we can keep things quiet / ryan

[goat]

blair noland

Blair rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and stretched toward the sky. The bones in his spine cracked happily, and he let out a noise as he brought his arms back down. The sun was shining down, having finally escaped from behind April clouds, and the warmth on his skin felt nice. It was weird to relax. His hours at work had been cut with no prior warning, a stressful event that had left him crying behind the building before going back home. He was still making enough to cover his mother’s medication, but barely, and rent was going to be due in a couple weeks. He’d thought about asking his father to pick up a few shifts somewhere, but that wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have yet. How unfair, he thought, that all this responsibility had to be piled onto him, but then he decided that he thought about that too much and should think of something else.

He’d gone far from the city center that morning. He needed to be away from the crowds and the smog. It was his first day off in a while, after all. He figured he should make the most of it— take some time for himself, be a little selfish. Nothing terrible would happen if he dared not to think about somebody else for a change.

After an hour or so of wandering, he’d come across a small lake. It was surrounded by tall trees and lined with misshapen rocks. The water was dark, but calm. He sat down on the edge of it and pulled his legs in so they wouldn’t stick out into the water. Now that he was closer, he could see some things underneath the surface— rocks, moss, a few swimming fish. An entire ecosystem existing alone. He wanted to feel envious of them, able to exist without anyone depending on them, but he was too practical to feel jealous of grass in a lake.

At least, he was in theory.

He leaned back on his elbows and closed his eyes, tilting his face up toward the sky. This felt wrong— being alone, having time to wind down and relax. He was worried there would be some sort of punishment after, like he would get home in a couple hours and find his mother sicker, in need of extra medicine that he didn’t have enough money for. When he worried like that, it made him feel like his father.

He shook his head, as if he could physically shake all of his worries out, and tried to focus on the things around him— the soft breeze blowing, the rays of sunshine streaming through the leaves, something that sounded like footsteps in the distance.


[title from rhode island by the front bottoms] [x]

[ryan]

You can barely handle the rainy season, but its calming. It isn’t like you have a choice in the matter though. You do not control the weather, just like you barely controlled your own life.

Everything and nothing changed at the same time, your parents still tasked you with taking care of the children when they could not, and as much as you rebelled, they always found some way to guilt you into it. Whether it be them claiming that you didn’t spend enough time with them, or empty promises that are made in jest.

You try your hardest to not believe them, or buy into them, but at the end of the day, promises always had leverage, no matter how empty they were.

And so you took the time to give them a chance, a chance that you knew would be wasted because they were just going to go back on their word the moment they got what they needed out of you. You were a pawn, a needle in their stitching, a tool that they could guide to do whatever they wanted.

However much you tried to not be blind to it, you were young, there was no way for you to see it clearly, because pride clouded your vision, and that would always be the death of freedom.

And that killed you.

---

So you took as much time as you could to just doing what needed to be done.

The forest in eight wasn’t much, nothing to write home about, but it was enough to get away from the mess that was at home. You pined for it, more than you wanted to admit. The smell of the grass, the texture of the trees, the calm of the river that streamed across the land you walked on. Everything was picturesque, a utopia that you came too when you were tired of the world.

You ran fingers through water and tried to catch anything, just something to hold onto. The foundation was always weak, and you felt like someone was always ripping the rug from out under you, which meant that you fell, constantly, and no one was there to pick up the pieces that you shattered into. As much as it angered you, you got used to it eventually. No one cared about you more than they wanted to use you, and as much as you tried to talk yourself up from the pits of despair that the district held you over, you simply let your hands slip.

You did not deserve anything more than crashing into the atmosphere and combusting on impact.

---

Today seemed to be different, because you noticed that you were not alone on your new adventure. A boy, one that you hadn’t seen before had been strolling through the forest probably lost just like you were. After all, no one came this way unless there was something they were hiding from.

And you Topher Kotan, were hiding from everything.

---

You walked up the riverbed, nearing eyes trying to analyze the area, but you stopped just before you got too close. You didn’t know him, you could tell that much by just a glimpse of his eyes.

If he was here, then you knew something was up.

And so instead of jumping off the ledge, you stood there, you thought about everything you could have done, said, spoke, scream, sung, prayed, and inacted, but the only thing you could think about was feeling the water on your feet.

So you kicked off the shoes you were wearing, the ones that you made with your own two hands, and placed them on the side as you slipped each foot into the water.

With that, you felt like you were safe from falling, as water always was a good buffer, just like it was also a great conductor. However, you were sure that no electricity would be exchanged in this confrontation, because you knew that you had grounded to stand on.

You didn’t have to jump.

---

”What brings you out here?” You offered as you stretched your hands into the water, which lacked the crystal like texture that you had heard about in four. ”Are you a jumper as well?”

You don’t know why you asked that question, but something told you that answer would be excavated in due time. But for now, your hands clutched the rocks as you dangled over the Cliffside.

The impact would either destroy you or turn you into something beautiful.

[goat]

blair noland

There was another boy there.

Blair watched him take off his shoes and put his feet into the water. The surface of the lake rippled with the new motion. He pulled his legs closer to his body, like he was trying to become smaller, as if he could curl into himself and disappear from this boy’s sight. It had been a while since he’d spoken to someone outside of work.

(There had been his thing with Elliot, of course, but that was long over, a mutual breakup once he’d realized Elliot couldn’t stop himself from charming other shy boys with blonde hair.)

Blair figured he was out of practice, didn’t want to open his mouth and embarrass himself. So he just stared at the boy. His hair was dark, his eyes hazel, and his nose strong. He studied the way it sloped down his face like one would study a marble statue. He looked away, looked back at the sky before the boy could catch him staring. The leaves were rustling aimlessly overhead, and he focused on the way they danced as the wind blew threw them.

“What brings you out here?” the boy asked him. “Are you a jumper as well?”

Blair looked over at the boy before shaking his head. “Just needed some time away from the city. I feel like I can’t breathe there.”

He usually wasn’t one to talk about his feelings. Everything needed to be internalized, caged inside his chest and locked so tight that he couldn’t get it out. There was no time to express how he felt, not when there was a job to do and a mother to take care of. It was just one of the many sacrifices he had to make. Besides, there was nobody in his life that he was close enough to to talk about his feelings with anyway. He envied people who could just say whatever they were thinking. It was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Once again, his jealousy crept up on him. He knew it was poison, but he couldn’t stop the infection.

He wondered if this boy was one of those people, or if he found himself as closed off as Blair did. He wondered if it even mattered.

“I’m Blair,” he said, shifting onto his side. The grass poked through his shirt and stabbed at his skin like tiny dull knives, but he paid it no mind, propping his head up on his arm. “Do you come here often?”

It hit him as soon as he opened his mouth that that was a silly thing to say. Instead of mentally beating himself up over it, as he often would, he decided to laugh instead. “Sorry. That was so stupid. What I mean is, do you often try to run away from society too?”

[ryan]

You try not to get caught up in the motion of it all, and maybe that is for the better. The disassociation from one thing to the next becomes jarring, but you find your way through, because at the end of the day, there isn’t anywhere else to go.

All you know is your home, and what you are needed to do there.

And for the most part, you are left alone as long as you come by and do what they need you to do. They could care less as long as the young ones are taken care of, and since none of them are babies no more, they are good about taking care of each other.

Its scary to think that most of them can tell that you want nothing to do with them, but as time goes on, they accept it just as much as you accept it. It’s a chore that you hate, but not one that you can get out of, not until another one cares enough to step in for you.

However, you don’t know when that would be.

But you hoped it would come soon.

---

And so being here, in the small forest of eight, makes things bearable, because you are able to escape from the people that thrust everything on your shoulders. You are nothing like Atlas, but it feels like it, a whole planet shoved onto your shoulders as if you wouldn’t be crushed under the weight.

Maybe the water was enough to catch you if you fell, or maybe it would swallow you whole? You didn’t know, and you didn’t care, you just wanted to feel something, and with the planet, or at least your parents version of the planet mounted like cement, it was just too much.

Or maybe it wasn’t enough.

”The city is always too much for me. I hold my breath too often after all.” You say as you pull one foot out and begin to massage it deeply before placing it back into the water. The cold air sweeping against it was enough to make you uncomfortable, but you try to hide that from him, because for once, you might have found someone that could understand what it was like to be burdened, even if they weren’t the same in theory.

It was something to hold onto as you dangled over a cliff.

”Topher.” You smile before leaning back on your hands that caress the grass with a certain amount of fear. Maybe its because you don’t know what it is like to meet someone similar to you, or maybe its because you don’t know what it is like to meet someone different.

You couldn’t tell which one was better, so you just let it be.

”My family as a whole I try to run away from.” You answer his question honestly, but that’s because there is nothing to hide, even to a complete stranger. ”But running from society sounds pretty good too.” The honesty matches your vibrato. However, you continue to smile as you stare across the way from where you both are.

”Ive always wondered what it is like to not be confined to this place.” You speak softly before locking eyes with the boy and giving a light smile before looking away. The mere utterance of such a phrase could get you in trouble, but you didn’t care.

Come what may, this boy had your interest, and so you would indulge them, as much as you could.

[goat]

blair noland

“The city is always too much for me. I hold my breath too often after all.”

Blair nodded. He understood the suffocation, the feeling of going through life with his breath held. One day all of the air bubbling in his chest would burst and it would destroy him, tear through his ribs and rupture his organs, till there was nothing left of his front but a bloody cavern. It was just a fear, and an irrational one, but sometimes it was a hope. A hope that he would keep quiet from everybody else.

The boy introduced himself. Topher. Blair sounded out the name in his head over and over. Topher. Interesting. He was interesting, that was for sure.

“My family as a whole I try to run away from. But running from society sounds pretty good too.”

He thought about his mother, sick at home, and his father, shirking all his responsibilities onto his exhausted son. God, he wanted to be away from them so badly. He was glad somebody else knew what it was like.

“I’ve always wondered what it is like to not be confined to this place,” Topher said. He caught Blair’s eyes and smiled, just a bit, before looking somewhere else. Blair thought about craning his neck to keep eye contact just a second longer, but decided against it.

“Me too. But I know what happens to people who try to leave,” he said. Everybody knew what happened to people who try to leave. Nobody ever seemed to get far before the Peacekeepers caught them and hauled them back to the district, before shoving them into the back of an armored truck and shipping them off to who knows where, to their death or imprisonment or to be avoxed. “It isn’t worth the risk.”

He looked at the boy, how he wasn’t looking at him. There was something already unspoken between them, a shared shame, and it was both unfair and terrifying. “I’d like to run away from my family too. I know it’s selfish, but— I just feel like my life would be a whole lot easier if they weren’t around. Like I’d be able to be my own person or something.”

As simple a statement as it was, it was the most open he’d been with his emotions in a long time, and with a complete stranger at that. All he knew about this boy was his name, but he seemed to understand him more than anybody in his life ever had. It was strange. He wasn’t sure if he liked strange. He had a routine, an expectation of what his everyday life was, and he hated it, but it was what it was. He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about breaking out of it, about doing something different. About feeling something different. He wondered if it would even matter tomorrow.

He needed to end this conversation before he said too much.

“I’m kind of thinking about throwing my entire body into this lake. You in?”

[ryan]

You don’t think about much in the moments between traded words, because thinking always seemed to get you in trouble. Instead, you tried to focus on the water flowing between your toes, the way it washed away the dirt on your feet and purified anything that might have seemed like it was dirtier then it seemed.

You knew that there was dirt everyone, even in places you couldn’t see, but you didn’t try to scrub, or push water into those places, because you didn’t feel like they could ever be truly clean. Not until you could admit to yourself that this place was not somewhere you wanted to be any longer.

But running away wasn’t an option, and from what Blair said, it was clear to not only him. You were young, and you were so naïve to everything about the world. Sure, you claimed that your life was hard, but objectively looking at it, you only needed to take care of your siblings and then the rest of the time in the district you could spend by yourself. Your parents did give a shit what you did as long as you came home enough to keep the children out of their sights.

And in the long run, it was only two others, it wasn’t like they populated the whole district, but you were rebellious, an Aires in practice but a Taurus in actuality. Everything that you wanted to do did not involve a plus one or a plus two. In that vein though, neither did it for your parents, so it was trying to find that balance. ”I would like to say that I want to try, but I think youre right.” You said as you looked up at him and then down at the water, then back up to the trees that were in the district lines. ”Nothing seems like it is worth it here, and going out there might yield the same feeling.” You sighed. ”I guess were just stuck.”

It was something that you didn’t want to admit to yourself, because you were prideful in every aspect of the word. You wanted recognition for the work that you did do, but your parents would never offer such a thing because in the end, you were doing what they asked you to do. You did not go above and beyond the call of duty, you did not cure a disease or sadness or hunger. There was no gravity behind the actions you left for them to look at, and for all they cared, you could have disappeared and they probably would have just replaced you because that would have been easier. The 2nd oldest would have to take care of the youngest and that would be that.

You were expendable.

You didn’t even know what that word meant.

”Sounds like we are cut from the same cloth. We want so much from the world, but we get the short end of the needle because we are just too nice to say something, or too afraid speak up.” You shrug for a moment, taking a deep breath. ”Whatever it is, we need to be the change we want to be, but when, that is the question.” You let a light chuckle out before realizing that you were speaking in rhymes and riddles that weren’t even necessary to the conversation. Maybe you were monologue-ing, or maybe you were just caught in the moment, and you just needed to say something.

Whatever it may be, you could tell that this conversation might have reaching stages of uncomfortable heights.

Maybe it was time to jump.

You smirk at his last statement, standing up and pulling your feet out of the water before taking off your shirt and the shorts you had been wearing. There you stood in the forest of eight, bare chested and underwear clad for only the boy to see before taking the leap into the lake that it seemed like only you two knew about. You resurface for a moment, looking at him. ”The water’s great. What are you waiting for?”

And for the first time in a while.

You smile.

[goat]

blair noland

“I would like to say that I want to try, but I think you’re right. Nothing seems like it is worth it here, and going out there might yield the same feeling. I guess we’re just stuck.”

“Guess so,” Blair said. The boy kept looking everywhere except for at him. He didn’t know why he wanted to make continuous eye contact so badly, but he kept shifting his gaze to wherever Topher’s was. He wanted to shout, look at me, I exist, tell me I exist, tell me I’m real, but he figured that was too much to ask of a stranger, even a stranger who seemed to understand him so deeply.

“Sounds like we are cut from the same cloth. We want so much from the world, but we get the short end of the needle because we are just too nice to say something, or too afraid speak up.” Topher paused, took a deep breath. “Whatever it is, we need to be the change we want to be, but when, that is the question.”

Never, Blair thought, and it wasn’t a negative thought, it was just the truth. Neither one of them were ever going to get out of there. They were going to be stuck in these mundane ruts forever, for the rest of their meaningless lives, unless their names were plucked from the big glass bowl they roll onto the town square stage every year. Even then, they’d be nothing more than a name, sent off for filler material in the broadcast while the Capitol fawned over bigger and better tributes. When they died, their names would be nothing more than dirt in the ground.

Maybe flowers would bloom from that. Maybe they wouldn’t. Blair wouldn’t know. He’d be dead.

At his suggestion, Topher stood and peeled off his clothes. Blair stared, at the, at the curve of his spine, before he jumped into the lake. He watched as the boy went under and reemerged, saying, “The water’s great. What are you waiting for?”

Blair let out a laugh. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll hurry up.” He took off his clothes too, revealing awkwardly jutting bones and work-scarred arms, and jumped in. The warm water engulfed him like it was welcoming him home. He broke the surface, all smiles. His face was unused to the motion, already wanting to revert to its usual neutral expression, but he refused to let it. “You were right. It is great. So,” he said, before taking a chance and swiping out his arm, so he splashed Topher with a wave of water. “What now?”

[ryan]

You have never been the type to pause and think.

You just did, and that’s what made you stronger than you thought you were.

You were a go getter, someone who wasn’t afraid to just go in for the attack, because you knew what it meant if you didn’t. Your parents made it very clear that if you didn’t strive to do everything you could, you would amount to nothing. It was another reason that you hated your parents, because it was a tactic to keep you subservient to whatever their whims were. You harbored resentment towards them.

But they still took care of you.

Maybe they thought you would get over it. But you wouldn’t. Not until you got out of the hell they put you through, but since it wasn’t feasible for you to go out on your own just yet, you suffered. It was simpler then suffering by yourself, at least, that is how you justified it.

Maybe that’s why you were so afraid of making friends in the district.

---

However, that didn’t stop you from jumping into that lake. The water felt crisp on your skin, and you realized that you could in fact float. You didn’t question it, you just let it happen. You wondered if there was anything else for you here in eight as you waited for the boy to make his decision. His name was still fresh in your mind, but you felt like it wasn’t necessary to speak it. It could just exist here. Just like you were right now.

Existing was one of the only things you were good at anyway.

You smirked as you watched the boy strip down to his under garments. It was something that you didn’t expect to happen so quickly, but there he was in front of you, fearless and brash as he made his way into the water. ”I give you an eight for presentation, but a four for execution.” you said with a wink before wading around the water. That’s when you felt water splash over your face. ”Fine… fine you can have a ten if you want it.” you laughed as he spoke quickly. ”I don’t know. We can travel up the river and see where it goes if you want?” you swam around for a moment before slowly making your way towards the mouth of the river. ”That is, if you don’t mind getting a little lost with me?” you posed a question because you didn’t know where this was going, and that’s when you had to realize, that it didn’t matter where it was going.

You just had to go.