(no subject)

[unironickylorenfan]

Aug - Voice Test 2
Liam supposes it’d be more authentic if he did this at a table – the dining room, maybe, with the nice red tablecloth and the curtains drawn. Maybe some candles. He could even burn incense. But, no, he’s sitting in the middle of his messy bedroom, flanked on one side by half a veggie pizza and on the other by the few things he’d purchased for his dorm earlier today. The severe blue-white glow of his laptop’s screen casts an eerie light on the dark room and the old window air conditioner shudders like the wet cough of the infirmed. This is ambiance enough for his needs. It just feels right.

And it’s all bullshit anyway. A simple three card spread – Aspiration, Obstacle, Overcome – nonsense to pass time on his evening alone. God, he hates being alone – more than he hates that exhausted, needling feeling he gets from being in a crowded room. Still, his mother and father are probably having a good time. It’s their first date night in...years? There’s a twinge right in the middle of him thinking about it. A brief twist of pain followed by a flicker of something bright and light and good that he doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t particularly like any of it, because it all kind of makes him want to cry.

Liam shifts, unfolding his long legs and leaning on his elbow to stretch before curling back up again. Then, he lays down a card.

The Heirophant.

Well, that’s a little on the nose. He turns his deck in his hand and gives it a look. The capital L sort of look – expression crumpled, with furrowed brow and a drawn frown. Suspicious, but amused.

“Really?” He asks the deck. Because - really.

So, Liam Blumenthal, the cards are telling you that you’re about to go back to school.

No shit. He’s three and a half weeks away from a 2 hour flight and uber ride to Bumfuck, Maine to go to a school full of magic bullshit.

But maybe the Heirophant means more than that. Last year was the first time that Liam could honestly say he had friends. Friendship felt weird. Uncomfortable. Too tight around the neck, chest and shoulders, but precious all the same, and alarmingly tenuous. Simply feeling like he belonged to something – belonged with people, to people – was unbearably wonderful. The urge to compulsively check and make sure it was still there had been overwhelming – like reaching for your phone in your back pocket over and over, expecting that someone else had nicked it while you weren’t looking.

The rhythm of that thought starts to loop in his head, ring around the rosie, and threatens to drag him away with it. The tiny part of him standing its ground shouts at him to get back to the bullshit cards. Liam shuts his eyes and lays down a new one over top of the Heirophant.

The Nine of Cups.

He clicks his tongue at that, letting his head tilt up so he can look down his nose at it. His frown bends, exaggerated for effect – for absolutely no one but himself. This isn’t a hard one to interpret. Obviously the obstacle here is…

Liam’s head does the mental equivalent of a five car pile up. The front-most thoughts barreling toward an obvious conclusion that the rest of him simply doesn’t want to think about. Yes, the way back part of his brain knows exactly what this means – a fear of intimacy, a reluctance to trust, an inability to relax – but he won’t focus on that too long. This was supposed to be a fun distraction, not self-examination. And-- You should... the thing in his head that uses his voice to suggest terrible things interjects. It tells him to do something stupid and awful.

“No.” He says, firm, like he’s warning a dog against digging in the trash. Liam tilts his head to one side and refocuses on the cards, the carpet beneath them, the smell of pizza.

“Well, you wanna do better in school, you gotta stop beating off so much.” He jokes to himself – to the air conditioner and the FBI agent watching him from his laptop camera. Like he’s interpreting the spread for a friend. He’s got those, now. Maybe he’ll do a reading for one of them. “And to do that, you need to...”

He lays down the last card for the spread.

Queen of Swords.

“Be honest with yourself?” He blurts, affronted. “Jeez.”

With a lazy flick of his wrist, Liam drops the deck. “Get outta here.” He says, grabbing a slice of pizza from the box on his left and stuffing it into his mouth. All the while he does his best to brush off how eerily appropriate the spread is – like he always does when this happens. Tarot was just some silly hobby until precisely September 2017. Then, there was Finchwood and now it’s all lousy with meaning.

“Jagoff tarot cards. Dumbass Jungian monster school. What the shit’s a Persona, anyway.”


July - Voice Test
The old Sonata sounds a bit like a weed whacker when it starts up, the engine revving with a muddy stutter. Liam's father makes a face, eyes closed, pressed and wincing - it's one Liam's caught himself making on more than one occasion. It rattles him in that What-If-I-Become-My-Parents teenage dread sort of way. He's so distracted with the thought, it takes him a moment to register that his father is speaking. "This thing's a death trap, you know?"

"That's exactly why I drive it." Liam replies, matter-of-fact, shifting into reverse and then throwing his arm around the passenger seat to leverage himself back and watch where he's going.

Whir whir whir whir. Clunk. Liam doesn't even blink at the sounds coming from the engine.

"You excited to go back to school, Li?" Maxwell Blumenthal asks, ignoring both his son's sarcasm and the disconcerting noises the car is making.

Liam hums noncommitally. There's still multiple weeks' worth of bumming around left to do, yet. He doesn't want to think about going back to school - back to a bunch of superlative, too attractive and too cool for him peers, to being away from home, to fighting, to monsters. "Hey, you think I could put her in neutral at the top of the hill and coast to Giant Eagle?" Liam says, hearing his own accent in the way he says 'Gian Igle.' As he cranks the wheel hard to the right (rattle rattle, thunk thunk thunk), he wonders if the kids at school notice his accent. Probably.

"Please don't," his father says over his internal monologue, drawing him once again back out of his own head.

"I'm gonna." Liam lies. He shifts into drive and pulls out onto the street. Mr. Blumenthal looks at his son - kind of. Liam's still not used to it. Even five years after his vision started to go. Something fidgety and uncomfortable writhes in his stomach.

Mr. Blumenthal grins. "So, junior year. Going to get a girlfriend?"

Liam snorts in laughter. He opens his mouth, on the verge of making a joke about how much pussy he's totally going to crush this year, Dad, for sure, but (blessedly) stops himself. The silence that follows isn't given long to hang.

"What about a boyfriend?"

The car jerks forward a bit. Liam laughs again, choked this time. He glances at his father, then at the road, then his father, then the road again, all the while his face burns up, cheeks red, head suddenly heavy. Something like a rock falls into his stomach, crushing the life out of the uncomfortable thing that had been knotted up in there a moment earlier. God, he's glad his father can't see any of it, that his voice doesn't betray him when he jokes, "I'm taking you to Phipps and leaving you in the orchid room."

"Wow, rude." Max says, patting out an improvised rhythm on his knees. Liam hates when he does this. Why can't he mind his own business? Why does he--

Max speaks again. It's careful, soft, serious. "Hey, kid, I love you. Want you to be happy."

Liam swallows. That lump in his stomach rises up to his throat. Nothing about his father's words really makes him feel any better. Just a different kind of bad. Guilty, anxious, wrong. But still, somehow, the prying questions, the jokes... his father is his father again. Talking to him. Leaving the house. Smiling. And he's thankful for that.

"I know," Liam says, patting the back of his dad's hand. "I am."

"We should take your mother before you head back." Maxwell goes on, changing the subject. "To Phipps."

It takes Liam a few seconds to respond. He makes a careful right turn before speaking again. "And leave you in the orchid room?"

"Oh yeah, Li, for sure."