some roads are only seen at night
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Dan looks at him, at the facial bones trying to escape his pale skin and the dishwater tangle of curls strewn across his narrow forehead and the wet black eyes. “I doubt there’s anything left out there that scares you,” he says, which comes out sounding more like flattery than he really means it to.
Rat’s thin lips part and his cheer is gone in an instant, swallowed up. Now he looks more like himself: wide-eyed, hungry. When he speaks, his reedy voice is soft and fervent. “Oh, Daniel Powell, I hope you are wrong.”
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- Part 1 of some roads are only seen at night
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Comprehension washes over him, a tidal wave to the backs of his knees, and he has to sink down onto the sofa. The springs groan beneath him. Across from him, in the blank TV screen, the hazy outline of his own reflection stares back at him. “Oh my god, you’re trying to impregnate me.”
Rat beams, taking a seat on the coffee table, which is close enough to the sofa that his knees knock against Dan’s. “You see, last time you did not know, and it was not my project - the egg was not even of my design, so to speak, and I had to try to contain my excitement every time your body gave some indication that the incubation was progressing because you could not know. I was not sure how you would react, and I could not risk you hurting your new body trying to get it out.”
Dan leans back against the sofa, puts his face in his hands and presses his fingers into his eyeballs till he sees stars.
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- Part 2 of some roads are only seen at night
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Rat removes the comforter covering his lower half, and it makes a soft whump as it lands on the carpet. Then there are hands around his ankles. He is carefully maneuvered down on the bed until he’s lying flat. The pillow is all rucked up under him from the movement, a lump in the middle of his spine, that he would like very much to be able to fix. Thankfully, Rat does it for him: he pulls it out from under Dan and, after a moment of consideration, he lifts Dan’s head with one hand at the back of his skull and slides the pillow underneath.
Series
- Part 3 of some roads are only seen at night
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steer your way through the pain that smashed the cosmic model by audenrain
Fandoms: Archive 81 (Podcast)
16 Feb 2024
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“You have been through quite an ordeal, but you’re recovering very nicely,” Rat says, bending down to look at the plant more closely. “Where did Dan find you?”
“At the hardware store,” Dan replies, since the plant is unlikely to. He sets aside his laptop. He doesn’t usually work in bed, but he’d wanted to keep an eye on the plant. This morning he thought the leaves were looking a little dry, even though the soil was damp, but he must have imagined it. They look fine now.
Rat laughs, reaching out to touch one of the rippled leaves with a tentative fingertip. “How unexpected!” he says. “And mysterious.”
(Or, Dan and Rat adopt a plant and get more than they bargained for.)
Series
- Part 4 of some roads are only seen at night
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Yellow light floods Rat’s face; his pupils dilate and the dark shadows beneath his eyes seem to recede, but he doesn’t otherwise react. “I apologize for appearing at such a late hour, but it has been a while!”
“Yeah,” Dan says, “it has.” He sits up against the headboard. He doesn’t feel particularly inclined to fill the silence. Rat has a tiny scratch on his forehead - and it really is tiny. Dan only notices because the pink stands out so starkly against his pale skin.
Rat tilts his head. “You are upset. Because of my absence?”
“Upset is… I mean, I did wonder what happened,” Dan says. He’s cradling his dead hand to his stomach, suddenly not at all keen to ask Rat to fix it. It’s too much neediness all at once. He can’t be the jilted… whatever, and the broken experiment at the same time. “What, did you just get bored with the real world?”
Rat gives him a look, cross and scolding. “That is an absurd question on many levels, Dan. Did you miss me?”
“You have a scratch on your forehead,” Dan says. “Did you know that?”
Series
- Part 5 of some roads are only seen at night
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“What did you do to me?” he asks, without any accusation. Because something must have been done. Because it hadn’t always been like this, surely. Wouldn’t he have noticed before now? Had he ever felt so much like butter melting in the sun?
“Nothing,” Rat says. “You enjoy when I put my fingers inside of you. You find certain spots more relaxing than others. I observed that, and I encouraged it. You should relax more often. Stress is a killer, Dan.”
Series
- Part 6 of some roads are only seen at night
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He tries to picture it, Rat’s garden, and for some reason in his mind’s eye it kind of looks like an open air museum he once saw that was styled after Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, which is probably much too cutesy and not nearly weird enough. “Maybe… Can I see it?”
Rat tilts his head. His expression doesn’t change, but Dan can tell just from the way he does it that he’s pleased. “I didn’t think you would want to. It is in the City, after all. Well, it doesn’t look like a City there, I cleared out the cement and the foundations… but the other place. You told me once you would never set foot there again."
Series
- Part 7 of some roads are only seen at night
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Rat’s mouth tenses and works. “I told them,” he says insistently. “Perhaps free will does not exist, and there are many who argue this with absolute certainty, and they are probably right, but Daniel Powell, at the very least, the illusion of free will is a necessity to the story of any living thing. Even me, and I understand better than most the ways in which I am no more than a leaf tossed about by cosmic winds!”
“Rat,” Dan says, his throat suddenly tight and dry, “shut up.”
Series
- Part 8 of some roads are only seen at night
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Rat had wanted to say many things in response: that in bed was a funny euphemism considering the last time they had sex had been on this sofa; that it seemed very unlikely Rat knew everything Dan wanted, because there was always more to learn and human nature was such that even Dan himself probably did not know the very depths of his own psyche; that Rat had, in the beginning, shared such things with abandon, and if he has slowed down it’s only because he likes what they do already.
But what he had said was, “When I come on your face you are very careful to close your eyes and sometimes I wish you would not.” And Dan had blinked at him with parted lips and gone totally still, and Rat had blinked back, trying to pretend that even the thought hadn’t sent a small shiver through him. It didn’t help his composure that that particular expression on Dan’s face always seemed sexual to Rat, who had watched him make it countless times in the moment before they did something new or interesting together.
Series
- Part 9 of some roads are only seen at night
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in a language that you can't read by audenrain for santanico
Fandoms: Archive 81 (Podcast)
06 Aug 2024
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“You were aroused by your fear of me, that morning. The adrenaline flowed from your brain throughout your body and the physiological responses you had - a quickened pulse, dilated pupils, perhaps a light sweat - these often go hand-in-hand with desire.”
“So how can you tell the difference?”
Rat tipped his head back slightly, looking at Dan in a patient, listless manner he always saved for Dan’s stupidest questions. “Because I know you, Dan Powell.”
Series
- Part 10 of some roads are only seen at night