abrightboy: (figuring you out)
Malcolm Bright ([personal profile] abrightboy) wrote in [community profile] apocalypsehowcomm2022-01-04 01:12 pm

New Year, New You [OTA]

Who: Malcolm Bright and YOU
When: The first half of January.
Where: B1, ADI offices, around town.
Summary: Malcolm is aware that he has problems. Time to get rid of them for good! Because mental health works like that, right?!
Warnings: mental health struggles, vomit


There's a TV playing in the cafeteria at ADI when he goes down to get lunch after the new year. He's going to order soup; he already knows this. He's not even paying attention to the TV. He's lost in his own thoughts. But, as he waits in line, he changes his mind. Maybe he won't have soup after all. He's going to have a hamburger! And fries! Time to do like his mother says: stop all this nonsense. It's all in your head, Bright, he tells himself. That admonition is in a lot of people's voices from throughout his life.

He spends most of the afternoon in the men's room on that floor throwing up.

But Rome wasn't built in a day.

Back at B1 a few days later, he's staring at the tidy line of pill bottles on the kitchen counter. He's considering just throwing them away. He has to force himself to be normal; he can see it now.

At the coffee shop down the street, on another day, he orders his usual mocha and a big slice of chocolate cake. He'll try not to throw it up on the street but no promises. It takes time for a body to get used to new habits, is all. And if he's a little jittery, anxious, more unraveled than usual, well it's probably because he quit his meds cold turkey but he'll adapt. It's not to worry. He'll adapt.

Maybe he should stop relying on the restraints to sleep.

Maybe he should start going out to bars to meet people.

Maybe he should break curfew and crash with friends at Bonnie's.



Somebody stop him.
graveyounglady: (srs | straight on)

[personal profile] graveyounglady 2022-01-05 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
"Mr. Malcolm? You all right?" The question comes from Mercy, her brows furrowed when she spots the man looking... jittery in the cafeteria. Is he shaking? "Getting cold in here, ain't it? Reckon we should ask them to crank up the heat?"

The poor man looks... bad. She should do something about that. She needs to do something about that. What sort of things can she do to him? For him. What can she do for him?
cacophonish: ILU, LONG HAIR (103)

[personal profile] cacophonish 2022-01-08 03:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Jeff's wrapping up an absolutely fucking abysmal set at the only dive that'll even have him at this point, when he catches a familiar face in the hostile, unwelcoming crowd.

("Crowd." That's a word to be used loosely here. There's hardly anybody in the bar, and the ones who are, clearly aren't here to watch Jeff perform, judging by the heckling.)

Malcolm's here. That's new. Does the guy even drink? Jeff doesn't think he's ever seen him have a drink before. And if he did, he'd probably do it at someplace fancy, with a nice (overpriced) cocktail menu and fewer "you'll probably catch tetanus" vibes.

The guy so obviously stands out, and Jeff's definitely not the only person to notice. A couple of creeps he recognizes from the docks are surrounding him, all fake smiles, full of that "friendly" kind of mockery. Yeah, they're... definitely gonna mug him the first chance they get.

So, he wraps the night with a little spell wrapped up in an improvised song.

"This one's called, um. Malcolm Cover Your Fucking Ears."

Is Jeff about to curse the bar with a head full of fear? You bet. Is the chorus of this song just "Stop listening, Malcolm, cover your fucking ears, Malcolm, I'm serious, Malcolm, this song's for you"? Yes. It is.

But you know what? It's actually pretty good. Fucking catchy.
Edited 2022-01-08 15:22 (UTC)
bossyboiler: ((green eyes) 1)

[personal profile] bossyboiler 2022-01-08 05:28 pm (UTC)(link)
They work for the same people and yet they always seem to meet up at the coffeeshop, Any Beans Necessary. After ordering her latte, she walks over to where he is sitting at. Kate then sits down opposite him. The seat hadn't looked taken.

"Hi Malcolm." She notices the cake but doesn't comment on it. She is under the impression that he doesn't like rich foods but it's rude to comment on someone's eating habits so she doesn't. "How are you today?"
cacophonish: ILU, LONG HAIR (094)

[personal profile] cacophonish 2022-01-08 06:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Okay, so.

That's...

This is going... differently than anticipated.

It's funny, for as much fear as Jeff's been causing since his arrival (feeding, always feeding that swirling emptiness inside), he's never tried causing it outright. It's always mania, hysteria, despair, the highest highs and the lowest lows. Fear was always just a byproduct of a sudden onset of irrationality. This is the first time (ever?) that he's sang with fear as the primary intention of his magic. The way he figured: everyone would get scared, leave Malcolm alone, and they could just leave. No harm, no fuss.

Jeff never accounted for the whole... fight or flight thing. He never listened to the wise words of Yoda during the Prequel marathon: fear leads to anger, et cetera.

He also never accounted for the possibility that Malcolm knows how to fight. A big biker looking motherfucker steps the profiler, and-- it happens so fast that Jeff almost thinks he imagined it, or like, just experienced some weird time skip or something. The guy's on the ground in an instant.

The chorus of Malcolm Cover Your Fucking Ears cuts off with a very anticlimactic: "Oh."

And as the barroom blitz breaks out, Jeff's unplugging his guitar and rushing to shove it back into its case in record time. Slinging the case over his shoulder, he pushes his way out of the performance corner and heads for the exit.

"Malcolm! Dude, come on, let's go!"
cacophonish: ILU, LONG HAIR (170)

[personal profile] cacophonish 2022-01-08 07:26 pm (UTC)(link)
"I thought some guys were going to fuck with you, so I, um. Tried to. Help?" Yeah, that's a perfectly thorough and coherent explanation. "Anyway, it's no big deal. What're you doing here?" Look at that smooth subject change. "That didn't seem like your kinda scene, man."
cacophonish: ILU, LONG HAIR (140)

[personal profile] cacophonish 2022-01-08 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
"Uh... you were?" Did Jeff misread the scene, or did Malcolm? A mystery for another day. Those creeps from the docks suck, either way. Jeff shrugs and pushes his hair back, a nervous, fidgety gesture.

(Jesus, he needs a haircut. He's needed one for, like, months now.)

"Yeah. No problem. Sorry, um, if I totally disrupted a beautiful new friendship."

He wrinkles his nose and shakes his head.

"I don't think an agent can fix things. I'm fucking cursed. That's the best gig I can get here." A beat. "Though I'm betting they won't welcome me back after I bailed." ANOTHER BEAT. "Fuck, I forgot to get paid..."
bossyboiler: (Default)

[personal profile] bossyboiler 2022-01-08 08:08 pm (UTC)(link)
"Several things, Malcolm." Chocolate cake is good but it doesn't hold a candle to a properly baked strawberry cake with real strawberries. There are other things that are better than chocolate cake but some of them cannot be said in polite conversation. Kate is nothing if not polite. "You seem to be enjoying it."

Is this the same person that had a few slices of apple at the beach bonfire and couldn't eat any of the turkey at Thanksgiving? "I'm okay. I have nothing new to report." A pause and then, "Are you sure you're okay?"
cacophonish: ILU, LONG HAIR (091)

cw homophobic slurs

[personal profile] cacophonish 2022-01-08 08:17 pm (UTC)(link)
"Oh, like... thirty bucks." Which is kind of embarrassingly low, considering where his career had been heading back home. Jeff snorts. "I make more in a day of busking-- and a lot less people call me a faggot when I'm out on the street. But with the weather..." He waves a hand. Fucking... East Coast winter. Feels like shit. "I've gotta find more indoor gigs."

He shakes his head.

"Enough of my bitching. Isn't it, uh... past the ADI curfew?"
bossyboiler: ((green eyes) 1)

[personal profile] bossyboiler 2022-01-08 08:36 pm (UTC)(link)
"I've never seen you eat such heavy food."
cacophonish: ILU, LONG HAIR (140)

[personal profile] cacophonish 2022-01-08 09:33 pm (UTC)(link)
"Oh..." Fuck. That's so nice. If Jeff weren't even more broke than Malcolm, he'd probably turn down the gesture. But the colder it gets, the harder it is to get by on busking and dumpster diving, when nothing in his life ever prepared him for a Massachusetts winter.

So that's another $40 for the Fender he'd been saving for. Though with the way things have been going, a nice gig guitar feels like a total waste of money on a stupid pipe dream.

"Thanks, Malcolm," he says, voice soft, trying to keep all his dumb feelings out of it as he pockets the cash.

"Well--" He slaps a hand on Malcolm's shoulder (and look at that, he's still wearing the friendship bracelet). "Hey, c'mon, you can crash at Bonnie's."
bossyboiler: ((black) 2)

[personal profile] bossyboiler 2022-01-08 10:15 pm (UTC)(link)
"Get over it?" Kate regards Malcolm with a great amount of skepticism. "Is just getting over something how it normally works?"
bossyboiler: ((black) 5)

[personal profile] bossyboiler 2022-01-08 10:23 pm (UTC)(link)
"It's stupid advice." Kate does not hold back on how she really feels. "You need therapy."
cacophonish: ILU, LONG HAIR (103)

[personal profile] cacophonish 2022-01-09 12:50 am (UTC)(link)
He lets out a laugh. "No way, Bonnie's way less uptight than the ADI. People just come and go--" He waves a hand. "--whenever."

And as they walk, he looks at Malcolm curiously. "So what's up with all the... new experiences? Is it like a new year's resolution?"

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