remnants | {maverick/presley} clue

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

P R E S L E Y When he played, everything else vanished. The theater could've been filled to the brim with other students waiting their turn to audition, or with prying eyes in a showcase. It didn't matter. Of course, it helped that currently, he actually was alone, but it wouldn't have mattered either way. Playing wasn't something he did for others. It was something he did for himself. To Presley, it was always empty: just him, on a chair, cello in his hands. It was a form of escapism that suited him more than any alcohol or drug ever could, and when a person loved to run away as much as he did, having a solid outlet was like striking gold. Presely Douglas was, by no means, an expert when it came to Maverick Poole. He didn't know his story, though he also believed no one really did. He didn't know the inner-workings of the boy's mind, though he also believed no one really should. But that wasn't to say that Maverick was a complete stranger. There were things Presley did know. He knew that, on the first day, every period during role call, Maverick had to correct the teachers when they said his real name, Taylor, instead of the one everyone knew him by. He knew that he always had bits of dried clay on his hands, and that he often smelled like a strangely pleasant mixture of cigarettes and cologne. He spent a lot of time with Naomi. He took the term mandatory as a light suggestion, and he didn't know how that had somehow worked enough into his favor to allow him to advance in his classes. He knew that he'd smiled at him in homeroom. He knew his friend had died last summer too. And, as Presley opened his eyes upon finishing, he was surprised to see Maverick out in the seating area. He was all alone, sitting about halfway into section A, right near the isle. Presley squinted at him from under the harsh stage lights. "You have free period too?" he guessed, wondering why someone from the art department would make his way all the way here when he could've chosen literally any place else. He was also fully aware that there was at least an 80% chance this was not Maverick's free period and he had instead opted to skip class. Wouldn't have been the first time, if Presley remembered correctly. He went to work putting his cello back into its case, slung it over his back, and met Maverick on the carpeted floor. His eyes shone like something molten, Presley noticed: ever-brooding. A boiling something that would burn anyone who got too close. He cleared his throat, pushing his sweater sleeve back up to his elbow as it tried to fall. "I didn't know anyone else was here."

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

M A V E R I C K The crux of it all is this, the one fact that no one on this planet can ever escape is that you're all going to die. The human condition has always been as such, a collection of humans being impossibly, unflinchingly human for what is only a brief flash of time. The goal for a human has never, ever, ever been to try and live forever. The goal is to create something that will. You used to pretend like you didn't know why you loved music, why you could listen to someone like Presley Douglas draw their bow across the strings of their instruments for hours and hours on end and never get tired. It's because music changes the way you think. You don't understand how it couldn't be like that for everyone, how someone could listen to Presley's music fill the auditorium and not feel all of their thoughts shift and change until they were something different, something better. Sitting in the audience, watching Presley's eyes fall closed and take in the sound of his own music, the crescendos and decrescendos, the vibrato that fills your chest every time it sings in the air. It's the intangibleness of it that makes you love it as much as you do. Because that's what lasts, isn't it? Your statues will crumble into dust. Wood will rot. People will die. But music like this can transcend all of that. It's ideas and concepts and thoughts that really change the world, the intangible things that end up living so much longer than any human ever could. It's the intangible that changes the way you think, settles in your brain. When you sank into that plush seat, you knew exactly what it was that you were looking for from Presley, what you're looking for every single time you come to this part of campus. Someone to make you feel something, someone to give you something to hold onto in your mind that isn't a thought that maybe, just maybe, you should burn this place down. And the thing is, when he puts down his bow and looks out past the lights and the stage and into the darkness—you like watching him wonder. His eyes meet yours when the music finally crests to the end, and you can see the confusion flash in his eyes even from your seat in the empty auditorium. You can tell from the immediate shift in the set of his shoulders that he's nervous now, unsure of himself, like he's a boy lost in his own music and he doesn't know how to exist in a world where it isn't radiating from his fingertips. The slant of your eyes when he comes up to you, nervous and pushing at his sleeves, is playful, but not unkind. "Hmmm," you respond at first, your hum ringing with false pensiveness. You get up from where you're sitting slowly, sling your own bag over your shoulder. "What if it's not?" you reply, brow arched. "Going to tattle on me, Douglas?" It's not quite the smile that he brought out of you earlier, but it's a burning something, an amusement that you don't know how to tame and are pretty sure you have no interesting in trying to. I didn't know anyone else was here. You don't know what to say to that, don't think that you want to tell him that you're here all the time, don't know how to tell him that you've spent so many hours hiding away in corners of hallways outside the music classrooms, don't know how to say something like that without it spilling out that music like his is what's kept you sane for the past years, don't know how to say that music like his is one of the two things that saved your life. "Should I start wearing a bell? That way you'll know when I show up next time."

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

P R E S L E Y "Should I start wearing a bell? That way you'll know when I show up next time." He smirked, straightening the strap of his cello case. By way of reply, he raised an eyebrow and said, with just the perfect amount of feigned confidence to be deemed believable, "Liked the show, then?" Presley liked attention just as much as everyone else. He couldn't deny that. And he was also aware that, perhaps, the biggest reason he'd stuck with cello was because of that: no one else he knew could play which meant no one he knew was better at it than him, he liked the sounds, and it was a way for people to focus their attention on him without really focusing on him. They watched his fingers make chords, watched the bow drag across the strings, marveled at the melancholy melodies made. Which meant it was perfect, because then no one really noticed if he was wearing mismatched socks or that he stuck his tongue out when he concentrated. "You know, usually I make people pay first for a private show." He allowed the words only an instant to be said. Then, to be sure something like rejection or embarrassment or anything of the sort didn't happen, he kept the conversation moving forward as he took a step toward the exit and nodded his head as an invitation. "What's your next class?" he asked. Perhaps the best way to make sure Maverick Poole attended his lessons was to walk him directly to them, like he was a child being dropped off for school. Presley wouldn't walk away until he was safely inside and under the supervision of his teacher. "I got Mr. Hawkins for Chem this year. I heard he smells like ammonia and he hides in the supply closet all day." He'd also heard rumors that Mr. Hawkins was a drug addict who created his own supply, but that felt a little too far-fetched to be true. Surely someone would've found out, or done something. Especially if there were rumors; Presley found that teachers were often more in the loop than the majority of the student body. Which was fair, he supposed. If people would ever stop talking long enough, they'd realize everyone around them was whispering secrets that, if found out, would be their own social suicide. Teachers simply act like they are grading papers for a couple minutes and they know exactly who is dating who, who cheated, who fought, how someone changed their final grade, and pretty much any other sort of damnable information. Then again, speaking out against a peer was a daunting task. Which was why most people usually stuck with the herd. Pack mentality. He hated being a teenager.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

M A V E R I C K Presley smirks, all crooked and untamed, an expression so foreign on his features, and by god does it stroke your ego. You never see that look on him, and it makes something flip over at the bottom of your stomach. You're only half surprised when it makes your heart beat kick up a notch; just one, but still. There are so few people in this world that make you feel anything real, anything that isn't bored apathy. And even those that make you feel something usually only ever make you feel something terrible, something that you feel like you should have better control over. Grady makes you want to put your fist through something, namely someone's face, even if it's not always his. Cass makes you feel warm inside, and that usually makes you want to vomit after the fact. Nai makes you melancholy most of the time, makes you think too much about who you used to be and who you are now and you wish that she would stop making you feel anything because you're pretty sure that that would be a hell of a lot easier than whatever it is she stirs in your chest. Even Cleo, who you don't even really think about: it's all white hot anger and a wish she would just fucking disappear. A dark part of you, a boy that you thought died years ago, likes that he makes you smile; likes that when he does, you don't feel badly for doing so. No one does that anymore. "Liked the show, then?" he asks, and in kicks your heart into high gear, a grin creeping across your cheeks. There's a reply right there on the tip of your tongue, and you're surprised by how badly you want to let it out. How could anyone not, you want to say, but he's already going on and he's making it worse, the thrumming of your heart in your chest. "You know, usually I make people pay first for a private show." Your eyebrows lift into arches without skipping a beat. You're impressed. But then he's running away already, pulling back and trying to make himself smaller, move on from the playful path that he's just opened up. You could lie to yourself and say that it doesn't sting just a little bit, that he wants to run away instead of run through the door he's just peeked through, but you're the last person on the planet that's allowed to begrudge anyone pulling away from the things that scare them the most, so you let him change the subject. You let your eyebrows drop and your eyes soften and you try not to roll your eyes when he brings the conversation back to school, but you're immediately entertained again when he starts talking about where he's heading. "Why, Presley Douglas," you reply, following him towards the exit. "Are you telling me we have chemistry together?" You're arching your eyebrows all over again now, but it's not exactly the same crossed line as before, and you start laughing this time; you don't want to make him uncomfortable and the only way you know how to do that is to turn it into a joke and then breeze past it. "Oh, I know he hides in the supply closet for at least 75% of the day," you say next. Without even thinking about what you're doing, when you go on, you bring up your dead best friend like it's nothing. "Frankie had him last year and used to tell me that he would hide in there and come out glass eyed sometimes, rambling about ratios. He keeps the door locked and we always joked about breaking in to see if he was cooking something with all those chemicals." The memory pours out of you before you can even think about trying to stop it, and when you stop talking, you're almost inclined to sit there waiting for the sadness to creep up your throat; or worse, the anger, the desire to put knuckles to the wall with enough force to split them open. But it doesn't come. A half beat passes before you swallow, glance at Presley again out of the corner of your eye to see if he reacted to Frankie's name at all. "His compulsive intellectualism is definitely some shitty version of a coping mechanism."