you are shaking – shaky hands, shaky voice – they call you twitch, freak, spazz. you take a drink. the shadows in your room come alive and trail their hands down your back. you take a drink. your heart feels like it’s falling out of your chest. you take a drink. you don’t trust anyone, least of all yourself. you take a drink. stupid boy, they say. don’t you know the drink is making things worse? you know. you know. you wonder if the next sip will be the one that kills you. you hope it is.you take a drink.
don’t say argent skinner never taught him anything. the headlock lev is currently victim to is a watered down version of the one that knocked him out cold, gentle and cautious to avoid harm, but still near impenetrable. laughing, connor splays the fingers on his right hand and ruffles lev’s ponytail with more than a little disdain. for a moment, he’s tempted to take lev’s legs out from beneath him, but decides against it – there’s still a spark of fear that comes with roughhousing, still a twinge of sadness that he can’t quite place. only later will he think about lucas. ❛ and i said you needed to cut your hair – looks like neither of us are good listeners.
❜
REMEMBER TO REPOST & NOT REBLOG. FEEL FREE TO ADD TO THE LIST
bold the aesthetic for your muse italicize what can be taken 2 ways.
the softest palms that never want to touch you until after a bottle of wine. / “ just braid your hair if you won’t brush it, at least, you useless girl. ” / pulling on your skirt with one hand as you shuffle away. / “ you’ll get it done before the day is up. ” / guilt that isn’t yours to have. / it’s a crooked game, but it’s the only one in town./ chains. / “ how could you do this to me? ” / the sharp sting of guilt. / you feel something even though you’re paid to do the opposite. / the family you never had. / falling backwards through time. / quicksand. / drowning, but you don’t save yourself. / “ you’re getting better. ” / “ they smile like a snake. ” / you’re the stars and the sky. / there’s a part of you that couldn’t stay away even if you were forced to. / they are your wings, there’s no doubt there. / “ let’s take off somewhere. let’s fly. ” / you edge a bit too close to the sun. / another ghost to take your place after every stumble. / deep roots in the ground slashed open in the sun. / rock candy melting in water. / waves rise and leave the foam behind. / the precipice you call home has a tip you’ll reach eventually. / happiness is the best front a man can take. / “ i’ve never seen someone as beautiful as you before. ” / you disagree; they’re more beautiful. / discomfort at the tiniest of touches. / the sky opens up when you see them. / rain comes down. / poppy fields. / your sanity hanging by a thread. / “ oh god, what have you done? ”/ roommates weren’t supposed to be the smartest ones of all. / they’ve got a devil on their shoulder and an angel in their mind. / you try to help, but it only got worse. / now they’re dead, it’s all your fault. / adam & eve in the garden. / a temptress in crisp button-downs. / “ fuck, you’ve gone off the deep end, haven’t you? ” / they lie so perfectly you almost forget yourself./ the spark that lit the kindling on your funeral pyre. / sugar and spice and a taste for the dark side. / yves saint laurent black opium on your pillow, a scented cloud drifting behind you like a cape. / crisp green apples piled up on the table./ your shoes are sharp, but your wit is even sharper. / what a pretty one, they say. / you laugh without humour. / a soft, hollow spot sits in your chest. / there’s a place you’ll never leave no matter who tries to stop you. / the seat of power fits like a glove. / heavy is the head that wears the crown. / you share a space, but not a mind. / they think you are weak; you are, maybe. / “ what are you going to do with all of these pills? ” / an empty bird’s nest. / broken pencil tips. / there’s an empty paper in front of you that you’ll never fill. / “ we want you to succeed. i hope you can grasp that .” / “ they weren’t there when it happened. ”/ corruption. /there’s a red string tying you together./ the scent of whiskey on the horizon. / “ you’re the best friend i’ve ever had. ” / pink tipped fingers lock in secrecy. / 99 red balloons drifting through a hazy sky. / you try to lift your head up, but it’s so much effort. / always walking on sunshine. / there’s a million reasons to come down from the clouds, but you can’t be bothered. / loon is the word of the day. / hair twisted up with glitter butterfly clips like a haphazard mobile. / you drift, but you know where you’re going. /no one has any dirt on you because you’re infinitely spotless./ the empty side of your bed they crawled into when they were nine. /court hearings. / “ I miss you. ” / siblings are a funny thing. / they point out every family-shaped hole in every picture on the mantelpiece. /ivy infiltrating an empty, corroded church. / proud marble busts faceless & crumbling: a proud mirror to your waning sanity. / you will do anything to keep them. tear apart the world, mass murder: all that matters is that you’re together. / the wounds of the world make you bleed. / “you are not your own.” / both heroic & sick. / choking on ash and dust.
“ what did you do ? you know, to become this. ” tied to a tree, he can’t exactly gesture ; he settles with tilting his head to indicate connor’s entirebody. the movement cues some of the remaining sedatives in his body to cycle through again, and he pauses to let the nausea fade out. gettingtranquilized is high on the list of ‘things that should’ve never happened to levi calder’, right under ‘be taken hostage’ and ‘have tithing interrupted’. thus, this is shaping up to be the worstpossible outcome, and he might as well get some rude remarks in before it ends. “ to become Undesirable. ”
he starts to laugh, and it’s a strangely infectious sound. connor’s entire face seems to change when he smiles - it’s a pity he doesn’t do it often. propping himself up against a tree opposite the kid, connor folds his arms across his chest, sparing a quick glance at the wound he’s now baring – he forgets about the pain until he examines it, and so he’s trying not to. ❛ you should be asking what i didn’t do, ❜ he says, eyes alight with mirth that replaces the threatening glint from earlier that day. jerking his head in a quick shrug, pulling his knees up to his chest, he makes the split second decision to leave out anything redeeming. let him fit lev’s image of a bad seed; it doesn’t bother him all that much.
❛ and i wouldn’t call it undesirable. i’m not that ugly.
❜
it’s been building for days, and maybe he’s at fault for letting it. connor had been told that the grafted limbs sometimes still harbour personality, muscle memory - maybe he just hasn’t been fighting it as adamantly as he could’ve been. it makes him just as antsy as crowds do; if he lets roland’s arm rule him, he’ll have lost so much more than a limb. risa doesn’t know this - he hasn’t told her, but connor figures she can see it in his eyes. shame is stacked like bricks inside him. ❛ i don’t want it, risa, ❜ he whines, pacing the space below his jet with said arm tucked behind his back, away from his eyes.
❛ i just don’t want it.
❜ spat through clenched teeth, connor drives his fist into the low belly of the plane, watching blood burst onto his knuckles with cool indifference. the arm is not his. it will never be his. // @excellentunwindliked.
full name: connor michael lassiter aliases: e. robert mullard, bees-neb hebííte, bryce barlow nickname[s]: con, akron awol age: 16 - 18, verse dependent gender: cis male preferred pronoun[s]: he / him . sexual orientation: demisexual religion: non practicing christian occupation: leader of the graveyard / anti-unwind spokesperson status: alive fandom: unwind
eye color[s]: brown hair color[s]: black height: 5′10″ - 6′1″ . notable physical traits: tall and lithe, hair is always slightly dishevelled, mischevious and expressive eyes, permanent half-smirk, a right arm that is slightly lighter than the rest of his skin, large tiger shark tattoo ( most notably: thin scars all over his body, three large slash-like scars across the right side of his face ).
HEALTH
phobia[s]: hospitals, a minor case with enclosed spaces. mental disease[s]: ptsd physical disease[s]: n/a.
DISCLAIMER. this blog is not affiliated with unwind or neal shusterman. it is purely for fun. hello ! my name is riley, i use she/her pronouns, and i am a sophomore in american highschool.
SMUT:
i am below legal age. smut will not happen under any circumstances. fading to black is fine.
SELECTIVITY:
this is a highly selective blog. i only write with mutual followers, and open starters/starter calls/memes are meant for those people. however, do feel free to IM me or send me a message if you’d like to talk about plotting or even if you just need someone to talk to. don’t be intimidated by the selectivity!
PASSCODES:
if you have a password in your rules, i will most likely not send it. it tends to be awkward for me, but this does not mean i haven’t read your rules! i read everyone’s rules before following.
RULE FOLLOWING:
this part is important: if i ever happen to break your rules, please pop into my ask and kindly tell me. i’ll be guaranteed to feel absolutely awful about it, but i’m sure you can understand that when i’m following so many blogs, it’s hard to remember every single rule.
SHIPPING:
honestly, i love ships. so very much. but when it comes to shipping, CHEMISTRY is what matters to me. i will not force ships, and i really really hope you won’t try to push them on me either.
IMPORTANT:
please be sure to tag posts that include vague blogging, self harm, suicide mentions, body dysphoria, or anxiety. these things tend to make my anxiety worse. and once again, if you have any triggers you would like me to tag, just pop into my inbox, on or off anon. i’ll do my best to immediately tag anything that might make you uncomfortable.
verses
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2.
3.
4.
ARC 1.
follows the events previous to the book unwind.
KNOWN FOR: kicking awol, tranquing a juvie cop with his own gun, being opposed to unwinding
WEAPON OF CHOICE: whatever he can find
NOTE: connor’s bio contains triggering subjects such as general body horror, abandonment, murder and death. please proceed with caution.
( UNBOTHERED. )
in the days before, life is a haze. you’d call it hard, but that’s because you’re an expert at feeling sorry for yourself. smoking away the moments you’re not fighting and yelling over the sound of the tv, you can wallow in your own injustice. being a kid who’s uncomfortable in his own skin is something, but the fact that you do nothing about it is another. your parents get sad when they look you in the eyes; you’re unable to decide if it’s pity or concern, but it doesn’t matter. you hate both options equally. the not-quite-life goes on as normal until you stick your nose again where it is not wanted and find three plane tickets - it’s strange, because, including your little brother ( which you try not to do often ), there are four in your family. opening the top drawer to look for yours, you come across something entirely different. something that solidifies the look in your parents’ eyes as pity, but not for you. they are pitying themselves - so distraught with the fact that they are having a son unwound.
( UNBELIEVABLE. )
for a few hours you try and convince yourself that they won’t go through with it - but there it is in black and white. unwind orders are final - a fact that everyone knows - and there’s no begging or pleading to be done. so you turn, let that hot anger bubble up inside your chest, and spite them in ways only you know how. actually put effort into your class: pull up your grades to show your father the intellectual value of the brain he is giving away. bring home flowers for your mother and make sure she looks into your eyes as you hand them over, silently asking her what she’d do if she were to see them in someone else’s face. it’s a petty practice, one that brings you little joy, but it’s an impulse, and you have always given into those. it’s not until a day or so later that your plan comes to fruition. you’d heard about kicking awol on the news all the time - but back then, you didn’t care, too wrapped up in yourself to notice the desperate kids who stopped coming to school. never had you entertained the notion that it could be you.
( UNSAFE. )
it’s not glamorous, but it’s what you expected, and you find you can’t ask for more than that. the others were never art of the plan - the legacy was never part of the plan - but the plan was poor at best, so maybe it’s best to differentiate somewhat. it isn’t often you’re faced with a fight you cannot win, but the boy with the shark tattoo poses a problem that is much stronger than your solutions. ignore him, the gentle voice of the girl you don’t hate chides, and you try. you try harder than you’ve ever tried before, and it may just kill you yet. being tossed from place to place is easy for you - you’re awful at being a kid. moving constantly is fine; it quells the itch in your chest, calms the ants beneath your skin. if you keep your eyes forward, keep your feet moving, you cannot feel the way they pull, the constant discomfort of having to live with yourself. upon getting to the safe place disguised as a resting place, you are determined not to fall flat this time. maybe you’ll find home in a graveyard after all. ( you don’t, and you’re caught, and you lose and eye and an arm. while unconscious, they fit you with new ones, ones you don’t consent to. the shark tattoo that is now on your body seems to wink when you express your utter disgust. )
( UNQUALIFIED. )
at least, that’s how you feel. it’s almost funny that you of all people had been groomed to take over once the admiral found that leading hundreds of fugitive awol kids was taking too much of a strain on him - in crowds, you see fire, and people can get under your skin in an instant, so how can you lead? - but to others, you aren’t the same boy you were when you became the akron awol. he was flighty and impulsive and almost dangerous, wild and desperate. now you are still desperate, but fair. unselfish. it is a good quality in a leader to stay humble, and you accomplish this by self hatred. despite this, you make mistakes; big ones. allowing one boy to get as powerful as he did results in the loss of so many lives - too many, a huge setback on what you are trying to accomplish. letting the stork go is one of the greatest errors you will ever make, and you will never forgive yourself for it, even when, years later, you crush his windpipe with your birth arm to prevent his own unwinding.
( UNSURE. )
on the run again with the tithe-turned-clapper-turned-shell, it feels like the old days; something you are indescribably scared of. you have changed so much you see it in the mirror, even in the eye that isn’t yours - you don’t want to revert back to who you were before the unwind order, the arrogant boy who thought he was rebelling. this time, it’s different, and you both know it - you’re running towards something, answers from a woman who the world had tried to erase. if you can find her, understand why those in charge of unwinding are so afraid of her, maybe you can really make a change. maybe you can bring the whole system crashing down for good. maybe you can live up to the large shadow cast by the legend of the akron awol, the legend that lives in your chest where your heart beats.
( UNWOUND. )
it’s like breathing out and never stopping.
i’m still here… i’m still here… i’m still…
how do you fill it? the space?
i’m still… i’m… i…
( UNDESERVING. )
you remember every second of it. every twitch and pull against every part of your body, even if you’re smoothly stitched back together. you feel like a ragdoll, a monster - even if it is all your parts, aside from the arm and eye. while extremely lucky, you are still apprehensive - why you? thousands of kids have been unwound, ones smarter than and superior to you, and yet you are rewound. there are spaces now, ones that should not exist, between your heart and soul and mind and memories. it will get worse before it gets better, someone had told you once - you’d like to think you’d seen your worst.
INDEPENDENT && SELECTIVE
CONNOR LASSITER
OF THE UNWIND DYSTOLOGY.
HIGHLY SELECTIVE
SEMI-EXCLUSIVE
SLOW-REPLY
WRITTEN BY RILEY
tracking: KINGUNWINDALL ICONS AND GRAPHICS ON THIS BLOG ARE MADE BY ANDROMEDA UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE. DO NOT USE OR REDISTRIBUTE THEM WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.
