Personal Raincloud (11) : Itâs a beautiful, sunny day in Destiny Cityâfor everyone but you. Thereâs not a cloud in the skyâexcept for yours. No matter where you go, a dark cloud seems to hover, casting shadows wherever you go. Itâs been raining since you woke up today, and itâs like bad luck and bad weather just follows you. Itâs a constant downpour, always exactly where you are. The raincloud is usually big enough to easily cover a full building, so if you stick around for too long, your misfortune will turn into someone elseâs too. The raincloud might follow you for a few hours or for the whole day before slowly fading; thereâs no escaping it, or the strange, sombre mood that seems to follow you.
"You know," Vasha said, "I know you're not exactly the cheeriest person, but this seems a bit extreme." He gestured above them with more than mild amusement. What had started out as dragging Alyosha out to get the lay of the land around their new townhouse in Destiny City had become something else altogether, given that there seemed to be a raincloud following them around. Yes, it had been there when they left, but he'd sort of expected it to blow over eventually--summer storms and all.
But no. At least they'd managed to find a bus stop that had a cover--which was both good information on public transportation, and a place to shelter from the rain.
And it gave Vasha a chance to comment on his friend's particularly dour mood.
"The move has been stressful, I know," he said, "but this is a big opportunity, so I hope it ends up worth it."
Amor Remanet
Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2025 2:35 pm
As far as most of the world was concerned, Aleksey Nikolayevich Lebedev had given up pouting shortly after heâd turned five and never looked back. With twenty years of not pouting under his belt, then, it hardly seemed befitting for him to start back up again nowânor did he intend to do such a thing. If, however, he allowed himself to glower somewhat as he looked away from the sky above them and over to his dear friend, then honestly, he felt it quite understandable under the circumstances. The very bad joke-shaped circumstances.
Even as Vashaâs Alyoshaânot sleek and styled as he had to be in their professional capacity, but wearing instead his glasses, a messy ponytail, and a somewhat oversized Depeche Mode t-shirt that had fit him better in undergradâhe could only indulge his friend so much.
âI fail to see how the weather is my fault,â Alyosha said flatly, pushing a clump of pale golden bangs back off his face. Glancing back up at the sky, however, did force him to concede, âIt is strange that the rain cloud seems ratherâŠâŠfocused, in its scope, though. None of the rain back home has ever done anything like this that Iâm aware of. Not even down in Brooklyn.â
While he didnât make that name sound entirely like a slur, Alyoshaâs tone did convey his familiarity with a truth (in his mind) universally acknowledged about life in New York City: ever since Giuliani had pushed through his racist, homophobic gentrification efforts in the 1990âs (a time that Alyosha had heard and read about but had not been alive for himself), most of the truly strange aspects of life in The City had moved to Brooklyn. Even the phenomena that had most made The City special and unique couldnât afford to live in Manhattan after a while. Still, a largely clear and sunny sky, marred only by a single rain cloud that intently hovered over the covered bus stop where Vasha and Alyosha had sought refuge?
Something about it sat oddly for Aleksey, no matter how much New York City heâd steeped in.
âAnyway, of course the move is going to be worth it,â he offered, not wanting to entirely shut poor Vasha down. Bad jokes or not, he was one of Alyoshaâs only friends. âThere simply may need to be anâŠâŠadjustment period. Both to being away from home homeââ At least, such was true for Aleksey, whoâd never lived more than a few subway stops away from The Family before, ââand to this townâsâŠâŠparticular unique quirks. Iâve gotten some sense that things here might get stranger than we can properly account for ahead of time.â
There was always something cute about getting to see Alyosha unbuttoned, as it were. Not performing as Aleksey, but instead Vasha's friend, who he trusted, and who was now his bandmate, if everything worked out properly.
Though really, he had no doubt that Mother would make sure it worked out properly. Aglaya Voronin did not tolerate failure.
"Well, my friend, it's either you or me, and given that I mostly feel perfectly cheery," not entirely the truth, but he was teasing Alyosha right now, and that mattered more, "I must conclude it's you. Or we are just ragingly unlucky today."
Really, one or the other, obviously. He lightly kicked a foot against the ground, though he was careful only to hit the platform sole of his boots--those were allowed to look worn, but he couldn't damage the boots themselves. Too much image all wrapped up in any clothing choice he made, and also he just liked these boots.
"I have to admit to not loving the omen of being under the only clouds in the sky," Vasha confessed, "but perhaps it's the opposite. Bad weather so early on washing away all the bad luck, and clearing the way for a new start and better things." Perhaps that was silly and superstitious. Vasha didn't care. "Speaking of quirks, have you read some of the local chatter on social media? This city is, truly, weird."
Amor Remanet
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2025 4:02 pm
âIf I had been sent here alone, then maybe blaming the weather on my mood might make sense,â Alyosha said, both as easily as breathing, and with the gravitas of a man whoâd laid out his heart and soul upon an operating table. Had he been anyone else, that might have been worth a double-take. But Alyosha always tended to get a bit melodramatic when he said anything about his feelings outside his preferred language of song. âSeeing as your mother sent us here together, though? It simply isnât possible for any empathically induced weather disturbances to be my faultâno matter how it might seem from the outside.â
Not that Vasha entirely understood what he meant by that.
The surface-level reading was good enough: Alyoshaâs cold, serious outward demeanor did not reflect how he felt around his oldest and dearest friend. Maybe Vasha could have understood his meaning, more specifically, butâŠâŠ
Maybe Alyosha never wanted him to understand.
Vasha didnât need to know that, in Alyoshaâs mind, he lit up the world around him more vibrantly than mere sunbeams could ever hope to manage. He didnât need to know that he brought enough light into Alyoshaâs life to count as both a promise and a threat. He didnât need to know that unlike Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl Southampton, he entirely deserved comparisons to a summerâs day: too hot to handle, blindingly brighter by far than the rest of the sky outside their little rain cloud, and potentially fatal through no fault of his own. Exposure to Vasha required endurance in that way, but what would life have looked like without him in it?
Dark. Cold. Miserable. Empty.
Life with Vasha had music in every key, played on every scale and in every conceivable mode, whether that meant the mystery and magic of the Dorian, the Aeolianâs introspective melancholy, the ethereal and pensive character of the Miyako-bushi scale, or the Locrian modeâs internal conflict and lack of resolution. Life without him didnât even play in a minor key, or sound like static and white noise. It sounded like nothing.
Uncapping the water bottle heâd brought when Vasha had dragged him out, Alyosha threw back a long drink. At least he knew his voice would stay well cared-for around Vasha. Being a thirsty b***h had its positive side-effects.
âNot so much from social media,â Alyosha conceded to Vashaâs more interesting question, âbut thereâs the therapist search, and thatâs beenâŠâŠfun.â For an extremely masochistic sense of the termâbut considering one of his favorite feelings was the perpetual heartache of being around Vasha, maybe Alyosha didnât have any room to judge. âIâm not sure yet if itâs some interesting local quirk, if my resting b***h face is losing its touch, or if Iâve just gotten unlucky? But thereâs been somebody in both of the last two waiting rooms who wanted to talk while we waited for appointment times. One of them was genuinely upset? Something about auditory hallucinations that made her feel compelled to chase them. The other one, thoughâŠâŠâ
Alyosha frowned, his lips tight against each other. âVasha, they told me some story about running into a demon chicken.â
Vasha blinked, and then he broke into a broad smile, as he turned over what Alyosha had said and it clicked.
"Aww, Alyosha, you're too sweet." He reached up to poke his friend's cheek playfully. Of course it wasn't what he wanted it to be--but if Alyosha was happier just by being here with him? That was nice. He liked that. A lot.
The fact that it made his heart feel like it was full of baking soda and vinegar, reacting dramatically like some elementary school project--well, that was a personal, private matter.
Even the complications of Alyosha's therapist search couldn't entirely bring him down, a delightful resistance against the dour, rainy mood that seemed to want to settle around him.
"A demon chicken. You're kidding." Even though Vasha knew his friend very much wasn't. "I've definitely seen some things online and a lot of very shaky cell phone videos of this or that odd thing--they say there's some kind of creature in the reservoir, but surely that's just a Nessie myth." He waved a hand dismissively. "Strange sounds, though...ooh, that almost sounds worse, I'd hate not knowing if what I was hearing was real. Not being able to trust my ears..."
Ooh, that was not fun at all.
"Fascinating that Mother wanted us here specifically. I get the impression the house was very easy to find, though, which is shocking for somewhere as big as it is." A two-story, five-bedroom luxury townhouse? A pipedream in New York. But here, it was apparently thoroughly accessible. "And she's renovating that old theater for us." He hummed. "It's going to be interesting here, for sure."
Amor Remanet
Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2025 3:09 am
Alyosha wouldnât say that he flinched at having his cheek poked, because he didnât move away from the contact. He did, however, wrinkle his nose about it and allow himself to frown.
âOnly for you, though,â he said as though simply saying the words could erase behaviors like always making enough egg bites for Vasha, Rory, and more recently Emil to help themselves. Or volunteering to do everyoneâs laundry for the chore chart, and picking up doing the dishes if someone else forgot. Or beta-reading Tanyaâs fanfiction about Park Jimin and Jeon Jungkook from BTS. âIf Iâm ever sweet for anybody else, it might be a symptom of traumatic brain injury.â
Because saying that made it true. Really. Nobody could prove otherwise, not if Alyosha had anything to say about it.
âThe reservoir beast has to be just aâŠâŠlocal Nessie, Champy, or whatever kind of thing. Thereâs no way itâs anything else. People love making up local cryptids or monster legends to explain phenomena they donât understand.â That had to be the explanation for everything, right? Maybe strangeness seeped into the flow of life in Destiny City more easily than in other places for whatever reason, and so people needed to invent monsters. âThe strange sounds, that could be someone having a terrible experience, but something isolated. The reservoir thing, local legend. Shaky cam footage might be people messing around. Iâd guess viral marketing for a horror movie, given the local film industry, butâŠâŠthat seems unlikely?â
Out of curiosity, heâd browsed various âcreatives for hireâ apps and looked at local postings where people sought composers, trying to get a better idea of what the scene around here was like for the people who lived and breathed music. Some of them had been from the teams of indie films being made locally. Most of the films advertised had seemed like either quirky dramedies or quiet, intimate dramas. He didnât recall seeing a single horror movie listed. Which didnât mean that there werenât horror movies being made, or that they hadnât been made before, only that Alyosha hadnât seen people looking for those composers.âŠ
âThereâs still the demon chicken left unexplained,â Alyosha supposed. âWe might need to be more careââ
His phone decided to cut him off with an alarm, politely but quite insistently playing a track Alyosha had liked, from some game that Vasha and Irina had liked. Once heâd swiped it away, Alyosha pulled a sandwich-size ziploc bag out of his (thankfully quite weatherproof) shoulder-bag. Inside were four squares of homemade granola bar.
âCan I tempt you,â he asked, holding the open bag out toward Vasha. âButâas I was saying before that alarm went off? We may need to be much more careful about living here. Or at least, careful in a different way from living back in The City. âKeep Brooklyn weirdâ is largely well intentioned but ineffective nonsense. But âKeep Destiny City weirdâ almost sounds like a threat.â
Alyosha was so ******** cute. Vasha would never say it out loud, and he knew most people would never see it, but they didn't get to see Alyosha wrinkling his nose and frowning about having his cheek poked.
Cute.
Even if no one else ever got it, Vasha knew. Because he was lucky enough to get to know Alyosha in ways no one else outside his family did. That was...special, and he was lucky, and he knew it.
"I'll gladly accept being your special exception," he said, cheerily. In whatever way he could be.
He nodded thoughtfully about Alyosha's speculation about the various local weird happenings. "Destiny City is probably no thicker with urban legends than anywhere else, people just seem more willing to talk about them openly," he said. "The chicken...maybe people are just frightened and mistaken? Getting dive-bombed by owls or something for getting too close to their nests?" He shrugged, and reached over to take a granola bar. "Thanks," he said, taking a bite.
It was good to see Alyosha looking after himself, and it helped Vasha remember to eat too.
"Agreed. There's the ordinary dangers of city living," he said, "but also apparently vicious birds. And lake monsters." He smiled, wryly, and glanced up. "And surprisingly localized rainstorms."
