tedandroses: (how i think almost all the time)
Teddy ([personal profile] tedandroses) wrote in [community profile] abraxaslogs2024-06-01 03:00 am

there are nights you say you don't remember [open!]

Who: Teddy and (you?)
When: backdated from just post-Event through May (and into the first weeks of June if it works better for where you want to run into Teds!)
Where: Around Solvunn, in the Horizon, Nocwich
What: Post-event feels; May-early June catchall
Warnings: Nothing major: some feelings of derealization. Re-remembering distressing events. If that needs to be upgraded I'll mention in the subject lines.


Teddy opens her eyes, blinking. The sky was falling down, and --

Their cheek is pressed into the dust, hard against the rock, and when they try to push themself to a sit, it feels like they haven't used their joints in -- they were thinking
years, but no, that's wrong; the whole thing was wrong. They were trying to wake up. They were trying to...

Oh. Oh god.

It comes crashing back like a wave: the storms, the crater, the fog. And the memories. All the memories Teddy still -- or can now recall -- the terror of knowing they were losing. Pushed roughly to the forefront: not just the things they'd lost but those they'd given up to Sam in desperation to not lose it forever.

Sam -- Teddy shouldn't even
know Sam. Much less, feel the instinctive urge to thank him as he's hit by an onslaught of memories of his home and family that tumble over each other so intensely he sits back down hard. He shouldn't know -- so much -- about so many things --

People are moving. People are telling them things; their voices don't feel like real sounds, but some part of Teddy's brain interprets it for her, and she gets back to her feet and allows herself to be directed toward the carts going to Solvunn. Her eyes catch on even more familiar forms, even beloved, heading in other directions, and she knows she's never looked at them here: can feel that her body recalls but does not know being embraced, jostled, laughed with.

That knowing feels like a great wave lifting them off their feet and shoving them underneath the water over and again. (They shouldn't know what the ocean feels like.) They want to be sick. They want to scream. They can't do any of it: just let it roll them over. They sit, silent and finally, blissfully unthinking for the ride. It's not until they're back in Solvunn, safe under blankets, that they burst into stifled, hiccuping sobs until they can't breathe.



Far above, the Abraxas skies are blue and cloudless like Teddy's never seen.

>> HORIZON
>> SOLVUNN
>> NOCWICH

[OTA! If there's nothing that catches your eye/you want something slightly different let me know at [plurk.com profile] wingedvoices and I'll start one!]
satanicpanics: (pic#15737630)

[personal profile] satanicpanics 2024-06-22 04:39 pm (UTC)(link)
This whole thing is kind of bizarre and difficult to navigate. For example, it’s sort of strange how Eddie can just step into this place and immediately know who it belongs to despite never having been here before, or the fact that he has a relatively good idea of who Teddy is as a person despite never actually meeting. It’s all more than a little overwhelming—especially when it comes to untangling the real memories from the false ones—but he’s managing the entire thing shockingly well.

He beams when Teddy rounds the corner, clearly pleased that they aren’t questioning the strange stringbean of a man in their domain—a pretty good indication that they’ve likely retained some memory of him.

“Well, if you’re anything like my friend Ronnie and the eight years of piano classes her grandma made her take? Probably more than anyone should ever have to,” he muses. He laughs and rolls his eyes as he taps out the right-hand portion of the song. He can do that, at least. It’s just a few easy notes, after all.

“Hey,” he echoes with a grin. “How did that, uh…whole magical mystery tour ordeal treat you? No extra limbs or anything, right?”
satanicpanics: (pic#15737630)

never too old!

[personal profile] satanicpanics 2024-07-23 08:07 pm (UTC)(link)
“Yeah, well, Ronnie was a better drummer than she was a piano player,” he snorts, finishing off his portion of the song with his best attempt at a little flourish. “But she’s probably graduated from NYU now, so I guess someone’s gotta be the one to share all her embarrassing failures with the world before she becomes a big shot lawyer.”

For someone who talks so much and wears so much of himself on his sleeve, Eddie is usually pretty tight-lipped about anything truly personal. It’s not that he’s uncomfortable with sharing (he isn’t--mostly), it’s just that music and D&D usually take total precedence. Either way, he doesn’t think he’s mentioned Ronnie Ecker to…literally anyone here in Abraxas, and she was his best friend. It speaks volumes, really, that he feels like he knows Teddy well enough to share that information without a second thought. He’s been struggling to understand where to place his experiences in the crater, but at the end of the day, maybe he needs to accept that it was real enough.

Besides, it’s not like there isn’t physical evidence as well. Eddie doesn’t even seem fazed when Teddy half-pulls their shirt off. He’s experienced weirder—in the past few months alone.

“Hey, at least you got some sick ink out of it. Which—if you’re looking for more and haven’t found the tattoo place in Nocwich yet? You should definitely seek it out. I’m practically a regular.”

He arrived with tattoos, and he’s obtained a few more in his time in Abraxas—lots of little ones that evoke the macabre, all in black linework aside from a tiny pink bat that’s been inked into the colony of them on his arm. When Teddy asks him to say cheese, he’s taken a little off guard, but he grins, flashing all of his teeth. “Uh...cheese?”

It only takes him a moment to realize Teddy is aiming for a better look at his brand new fangs—his own souvenir from they time in the crater.

“Oh! these? I’m pretty sure they’re purely cosmetic. I mean, the sun hasn’t turned me to ashes yet and I haven’t felt the insatiable urge to bite my roommate, and I didn’t need an invite to walk through your door, but uh…interesting, definitely.”
Edited 2024-07-24 19:47 (UTC)
satanicpanics: (pic#16020735)

[personal profile] satanicpanics 2024-07-27 02:24 am (UTC)(link)
“Mmm,” he hums thoughtfully. “Sort of an ex-bandmate? There was no Fleetwood Mac-level blowup or anything, but I mean, difficult to make it to practice when you’re about ten hours out of state. But she remains one of my best friends—when I’m not about ten thousand lightyears out of state.”

He doesn’t mention that he’s unlikely to ever return home because he’s very, very dead, but after those eight hundred years, that feels like something most people know now. It causes him a great deal of anxiety to literally have one foot in the grave and no knowledge of if his second chance will ever come to an end, but it is what it is.

“Uh, yeah, Teddy, for the time being? I think I’m gonna refrain from biting anyone.” Even as an ordinary human, Eddie still has a flimsy concept of personal space, and takes this opportunity to lean in close and whisper theatrically. “You’ll be the first one to know if I do, though. Or the second.”

With a grin, he breaks away, and rolls up his sleeves to begin comparing tattoos with Teddy. It was rare to run into people with tattoos in small-town Hawkins, and it remains a little uncommon here as well. He’s managed to talk some of his friends into getting one or two, though, and he’s happy to send more business to the tattoo shop in Nocwich.

“Uh—well, this one—and this one—the pink bat is a new acquisition…” The majority of his tattoos decorate his arms and hands, so it’s not difficult for him to point them out to Teddy: a graveyard, a skeletal hand, a sword, and the pink bat mixed in with his older, much more poorly inked bats. “The graveyard glows in the dark which is all kinds of sick. I dunno how they do it, but—definitely recommend a trip.”

“As for money—I distribute some incredibly potent weed for a woman out of the Free Cities. I probably can’t get you in on that, but you would be surprised how well Nocwich takes to busking. Just make it more interesting than whatever’s going on on the stage—not hard, most days—and you’re golden”

He feels like he does more of that than distribution anyway, especially these days when the factions are feeling even more separate and things are just rough. He rolls down his sleeves, gives a few of the piano keys one last tap (it’s always so hard to resist, and straightens up with a grin.

“It's your house,” he answers. “Where you lead, I will follow.”
satanicpanics: (pic#16020735)

[personal profile] satanicpanics 2024-08-01 06:21 am (UTC)(link)
“Yeah, I know,” he echoes dryly. In his state of semi-living, he’s not convinced he can go home at all, and even dreads the possibility of that being offered to them because he knows that he can’t just keep people from returning to their lives. He’s well aware that there’s a pause—that Teddy would clearly discuss it with him if he were to open that door, but he’s learned that he just can’t dwell on these things or he ends up in a spiral of nerves and anxiety thinking about the what-ifs and maybes, and it is very hard to get out. Toss those eight centuries into the mix and it’s not really something he’s prepared to talk about again just yet. Maybe next time.

He’s quick to grin, though, and carries on easily, breaking out of Teddy’s personal space once he’s made his point about his new teeth and any future biting of others—unlikely, but always a possibility, he supposes. Eddie Munson has never known personal space, not when he decides he likes someone enough to befriend them, or dislikes someone enough to torment them. In this case, it’s the former.

He remembers something about epilepsy, enough that he just…doesn’t need to ask what they’re talking about, and it feels odd to have that information at all, but he rolls with it easily, no questions asked.

“Oh yeah? And to think it’s illegal back home,” he snorts, rolling his eyes. “Not that it ever stopped me, but uh…Come with me next time,” he insists, doesn’t ask, as if they really have been friends for years. “We’ll make it a whole thing. I’ll hook you up with a free weed sample, make enough money for a little ink, you let me hear your tunes, I let you hear mine—no competition, just typical freak behavior.”

He allows Teddy to lead him through the grand tour, answering with the occasional quip, and he really is impressed. He replicated his uncle’s little trailer rather effectively, but that was one bedroom and little else—he can’t imagine replicating something like this. The noise he utters when he spies the mystery room at last—the guitars! The amps! The mics! Even a Nintendo, something he could never afford in a million years—well, it’s high pitched and a little embarrassing.

“You just opened the gates to heaven,” he utters with true awe and reverence. “Holy shit. All we had was a garage.”
satanicpanics: (pic#15737492)

[personal profile] satanicpanics 2024-08-15 12:16 am (UTC)(link)
“Imagine that, right?,” he quips with a grin, knowing full and well that he just has the look of someone who’s an expert at distributing illegal substances—because he is! He did it back home too, because gigs in a small town really don’t pay. It was something he chose to do to make sure he wasn’t seeping into his uncle’s tiny paycheck too much. Luckily, being from the 80s hasn’t impeded Eddie’s ability to interpret a fist bump. He returns the gesture easily, without a thought.

“Uh, no, no one told me that,” he confirms, rolling his eyes. “Jesus Christ, of course they did, because even the police were using it. Let me guess—Indiana was a hold-out, right?”

Because Indiana is always the hold-out, at least from where Eddie stands. To him, the whole state is dull and behind the times, but it is still home, and he can talk shit about it as much as he want. But for now, it doesn’t matter

“Oh, we’re playing something.”

He turns toward Teddy again, his eyes wide, intense, and serious. It’s clear that he won’t be swayed and he’s leaving no room for argument. They can absolutely listen to something later, but for now, they are playing something.

“So long as you allow me access to one of these beauties, of course,” he continues, gesturing grandly to the guitars.
satanicpanics: (pic#15737630)

[personal profile] satanicpanics 2024-08-26 04:22 am (UTC)(link)
“Here? Jesus Christ, no. I literally mean the cops back home. An officer searched my van once, found a joint, and no joke—I saw the guy smoking it in his own patrol car thirty minutes later.”

Short of the alternate dimension that lurks beneath Hawkins, Indiana isn’t particularly noteworthy. Eddie has spent all his life with that belief, an he refuses to change his mind now. “Yeah, that’s one good thing about it. Beer is like…crazy easy to get,” he concedes. “I was working at a dive bar—heavy emphasis on the dive—before I was eighteen.”

But that was the 80s, and Eddie is still unaware just how much may have changed twenty years later. Chances are, a seventeen year old wouldn’t be hired as a bar back, and he wouldn’t be able to slip his friends drinks any time the owner wasn’t looking.

“But besides that? Not a whole lot about Indiana worth mentioning, so…”

Besides the alternate dimension beneath his small town, but he trails off, taken in by the guitars and literally everything else about this cozy space Teddy has created. He and Nanaue have a good thing going on with Goat Destroyer, and Nanaue came back from the emergent reality with some crazy drumming skills, but Eddie misses playing with other people, just jamming and figure out what works and what doesn’t. He still plays solo more often than not, and there’s something sort of sad about that. But now is his moment to fix it.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

With a grin, he steps right up and reaches for the middle guitar—the Superstrat, just like Teddy expected he might. He’s a free spirit, sure, but when it comes to some things, he’s very predicable.

“She’s beautiful,” he sighs, immediately beginning to pick out an old blues riff. Start off slow, start off easy, launch into the shredding after a bit of a warm-up. He paces the “stage” as he plays, and this is clearly Eddie in his element.

Man, you have good taste in guitars. I wanna hear the others too. Get up here and join me.”