Drumsticks and Sketchbooks @demogorgongotme

[gareththegreat]

Everything had finally started to calm down, ever since the earthquakes had caused so much damage and deaths things were quiet. Town was quiet. Hell most of the town had hightailed it out as soon as they could. Not Gareth's family though, not with how stubborn his mom could be. Between everything that was being said about Hellfire and Eddie specifically she seemed to dig her heels in. She wasn't' budging just because a ton of people where giving into hysterics. She had grown up in a big city and moved out to Hawkins with her first husband, Gareth's dad, she wasn't going to let some earthquakes and 'religious hacks' scare her.

She was also one of the few people who refused to believe that Eddie Munson or Hellfire had anything to do with the deaths that had happened. She had known the guys since he was a kid, of course she didn't think he was capable of murder.

So that was why Gareth ended up returning the next year to what was left of Hawkin's High. Sure it wasn't much but his mom had insisted. It was quiet and for the most part people just tried to get back to some sort of normal, though mostly they avoided anyone who wore a Hellfire shirt. It might have been in bad taste but Gareth wasn't about to stop. It was his friends and his club, of course he was going to still fly his colors.

It's after school that Gareth makes his way to one of the art rooms, determined to actually get some peace and quiet to sketch or ink something without people staring at him all the time.

That is until he hears music coming from his usual little hiding spot. Raising an eyebrow he pushes the door open, ready to tell whoever it is off...only he doesn't get the chance to because what he's met with is some kid he doesn't recognize at first sitting and painting while blasting....is that The Clash?

Really?

"Your taste in music sucks." He manages to time it perfectly in the lull between two songs, standing with his arms crossed and arching an eyebrow at the boy.

Comments

[demogorgongotme]

Will had started taking over the art room when classes weren't scheduled but the school was still open and nobody else was in there yet. He would bring his music and a sketchpad full of half-finished ideas, and spend his time alone where nobody wanted to be if they had other choices. He didn't join in on D&D anymore, he didn't really join in on much of anything at all, much to the chagrin of at least one of his friends, but he'd found that he was happier just being left alone. At least it meant that nobody was treating him like he was weird, or broken, or fragile, or on the verge of blowing up.

He's happy to work on his art alone, and until he hears someone speak up at the door, he's lost in almost delicately dragging dark lines onto a larger piece as he sings to himself, perched atop a stool with a pallet in hand and his elbow supported by his knee. The smile slides off his face when he processes the words, and he stares for a beat, eyes huge until the next song starts and he just moves to first rattle his brush in the jar of dirty water he'd been using for just that. He starts to collect his supplies and the Stop button of the tape deck he'd been listening to gets poked in passing, leaving ringing silence in its wake.

"Sorry, I'll get lost."

[gareththegreat]

"Woah woah," Gareth shakes his head, curls moving as he walks over, setting his own stuff down on a large table as he moved to look at what the other kid was working on. "Don't worry about it, I'm just teasing."

He crosses his arms as he looked over the painting, admiring the lines as he tilted his head from side to side.

"You don't gotta leave, I was just giving you shit." Turning to look at Will, Gareth gave him a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You're good, I like the style. Have you tried watercolors? They can be a real bitch to control but they give a really cool effect when you do something sort of like this. I'm more partial to ink though."

[demogorgongotme]

Even though he'd been here first, Will is starting to feel distinctly like the invader here, especially with the slightly forced feel of the attempt at conversation. But the other guy had asked, and it would be rude to continue trying to beat his hasty retreat. So he just pauses, and looks back at his piece, the open jaws of a fantastical lizard dripping with yellow-tinted venom directed toward a trio of figures with weapons raised, all about half finished as he'd been working on the monster and putting details into its limbs and scales.

"Not a lot of practice with watercolor, no," he admits, picking his pallet back up. "Mostly I go with acrylics, they're great for working in big chunks of color and a cell-shaded sort of aesthetic. Oil pastels are good for when I want blended color though." It was a step up from his 64-count crayon box, for sure. Though, there was something satisfying about pressing down really hard and getting a similar sort of look as pastels, as long as he didn't mind the crayons occasionally snapping.

[gareththegreat]

Gareth just nods as he's listening as the other explains what he typically works with. It's obvious that he actually seems genuinely interested, even if from time to time he's squinting at Will. The guy looks familiar but he can't quite place it. Like he's seen a picture of him? Or someone who looks like him? It's something he can't quite put his finger on and after a bit he just sort of stops trying and instead focuses on the work in front of them.

"This is really cool," He motioned to the painting in question before looking back at Will. "I do similar stuff actually...mostly things from a...game my friends and I play." Shrugging he heads back to the table he set his things on before opening his own sketch book.

"And I mean it, you don't have to leave...or turn off your music. I'm just gonna sit here and work on something so just...I don't know...pretend I'm not here?"

[demogorgongotme]

The way he says "a game" makes Will narrow his eyes a little bit. Someone being cagey about playing D&D is nothing new, but apparently he doesn't give off the aura that he knows exactly what that is anymore. Weird, the way time separated from his hobbies has changed him.

He does at least sit back down and pick the brush he'd been using back up, blotting the damp bristles on the rag he'd been using and loading it with black again.

"You said it sucked," he points out, with a bit of stank on the last word, and goes back to the detail work he was on before. "What do you listen to, then?"

[gareththegreat]

"I also said I was joking." Gareth rolled his eyes, digging out a box with his own brushes that were stained black as well as a couple squat bottles and shiny looking paper that he taped down to a board.

"You know, Motorhead...Van Halen...the good shit." He grinned. "But I guess The Cure isn't as bad as it could be. At least it's not like...Pattie Label or something."

Getting out a pencil he started to lightly sketch in a few places on what he was drawing. It looked to be a rather large man wielding an ax if Will really managed to get a good look at it. The smile on Gareth's face is lighter now, not looking quite as forced and it definitely starts to reach his blue eyes.

[demogorgongotme]

"My mom likes Pattie Label." He has to point it out. He's sure that only strengthens the guy's case.

Will reaches to poke at the tape deck again, but instead of continuing to play the same tape he had been, he grabs another from the backpack resting nearby on the ground, carefully replacing the first one and then slotting what turns out to be a mixtape in in its stead. He can't help the tugging up of the corner of his mouth as his favorite song, his comfort song, starting to play in the silence.

He glances over at what Gareth is working on, tilting on his stool as he gathers what it is, and he feels a little bit better about being in what seems to be likeminded company at least when it comes to subject matter.

He sings along under his breath rather tonelessly. Not a musical bone in his body, this one.

[gareththegreat]

Gareth just laughs at the comment. Of course she likes Pattie Label, most people did. But Gareth and his friends weren't 'most people', they were metal heads. However the music that Gareth changes it to is...definitely better. As if on reflex his right foot moved as if stepping down on the bass pedal in time with the beat. He might not know the right beat but he knew the basics.

After a bit of sketching, Gareth is opening up the bottles and dipping one of the ends of his brush into it. Not the bristle side however...the handle. Which he then used to make a vague sketch with the ink.

[demogorgongotme]

Will works more slowly with someone else in the room, though not, as one might expect, due to the distraction (though there is some of that, as well.) Rather, he's actually kind of fascinated with both the technique with the opposite end of his brush, and the distinct rhythm that his foot moves with. It's not the one that he expects, and it's not moving in the way that he would normally see. Rather, after some listening, he realizes that it's specifically following the kick drum. This guy is an actual musician.

He's glad he hadn't left, now. He returns to his painting and slowly details the shadowed parts of his monster, only moving away from it when he realizes that he needs to stretch or he'll start to cramp up and ache. He surveys the painting as a whole, and finds that he's pretty satisfied with the way that it's coming out. He still hasn't put any real detail into the characters facing his monster down, but he could figure that out in time.

This also gives him a minute to just wander over and regard the drawing from a respectful distance, head tilted to take it in without hovering.

"Cimmerian?" he says without thinking, having a feeling that the other would know what he means.

[gareththegreat]

Gareth works, seeming to get lost in the process as well as the music. Sure he had teased the other for his music tastes but, and don't tell Eddie this, he'll basically listen to anything that has a good beat. Well...almost anything. Sure he still prefers metal but...not everything else is terrible.

When Will comes over he's hunched a bit, scratching in some details(honestly a bit prematurely) with a smaller stick. It almost looks like a long toothpick with how skinny it is. the voice cutting over the music surprises Gareth but he doesn't jolt, with his friends he's learned not to physically react too much.

"Huh?" Straightening his back until it pops he sighs before looking back at Will with a confused expression, before the others question actually sinks in. "Oh uh, yeah kinda inspired. It's uh..." He seems to think it over a bit, look to Will's painting, and then sigh. "It's my fighter in my friends dungeons and dragons campaign. He's a half orc, even though they took them out of the players handbook this edition...which is stupid." Is he salty about it? Maybe a little?

[demogorgongotme]

His eyebrows arch up, and his expression softens while his hands tuck into his pockets, just to keep himself from starting to talk with them as a way to keep himself from getting overexcited.

"I never played more than my human Wizard," he replies with a shrug of his shoulder. "I was thinking about dual-classing with points in rogue but we never got around to it." The potential end of the world and moving away got in the way of that kind of thing, after all.

[gareththegreat]

"Human wizard huh? I mean, solid start. What sort of spells do you usually aim for?" He stops, putting the stick down to instead turn his attention to Will, definitely seeming more relaxed and like he's actually enjoying the conversation.

"Yikes, your campaign end or? We might have a slot open if you need a table to sit at. My best friend DMs and he is insane. Pretty sure he wouldn't mind a new victim." Glancing over at the painting he smirks. "And if you game half as good as you paint...you might help knock him down a notch or two."

[demogorgongotme]

"Abjuration and enchantment usually, with some evocation if I'm in a corner," he replies immediately, happy to have something that he can readily talk about. He offers another shrug, though. "Moved house before the end of the campaign. I don't know about joining another campaign, though. It's been long enough that it'd feel kind of weird just putting him in an ongoing game that wasn't his to begin with."

[gareththegreat]

"I mean, you could always make a new one? We wrapped up one not that long ago and I think he's wanting to start up a new one now that things have calmed down."

Plucking up the stick again he dipped it into the ink before moving to make a couple more lines, defining the ears and some bits of armor and muscles. He didn't even have this guys name but he was already pretty happy to have met someone with like interests. Someone who he hadn't met before...which was weird because it was Hawkins.

"So what made your family move to Hawkins? Not exactly the greatest town ever...especially not lately."

[demogorgongotme]

There's a little bit of hesitation before he murmurs an "I don't know..." about building himself a new character. It's less about the character building process, and more the anxiety when it comes to joining a game, which is probably readily apparent when he adds, "We came back because we had to. That was before I ever started high school though and the guys I used to play with, they all basically moved on and I ended up giving my handbooks and stuff to someone else."

Will rubs his hand around the back of his neck, leaning against an adjacent table with his arms crossing and hands tucked under them. "Not that I don't miss it, I'm just...not really into the idea of trying to get in with a new group."

[gareththegreat]

"Ah, okay yeah I totally get that." Honestly he had just gotten a little ahead of himself anyways. "Sucks that your buddies moved on, do you at least get to hang out with them? Also I can't imagine giving up my books, doesn't way too much on them. Maybe if I get a new set but....yeah no."

Shaking his head he smiles as he adds in some fairly bold shadows with thick lines of ink. Chiseling out the highlights by providing the contacting shadows. Some of the lines don't seem to connect but they do still imply a line that continues and connects somewhere else.

"So...favorite artist, go."

[demogorgongotme]

Watching Gareth work provides a good distraction from his own melancholic line of thought, and he's happy to talk about other things as his brain fills out the image even with just the limited shapes that the other works with. It's fascinating, and he feels a little bit outclassed. But he doesn't work in ink, so that's not really fair to either of them.

The corner of his mouth quirks up, and he glances back toward his work-in-progress.

"Depends on the subject matter. Vallejo's great for creatures, Burroughs for dynamic work, Frazetta for full scenes." And the influence on his own work is extremely obvious, with that out there.

[gareththegreat]

Gareth nodded as he finished up a line.

"Yeah the influence definitely shows, it's good." He smirked a bit. "Haven't dabbled much in painting other than a little watercolor here or there, most of my work is either pencil, pen, or ink like this." He motions at the picture that is probably about half finished. He lets it dry a bit before grabbing a colored ink that is fairly translucent to color things with.

The first thing he uses is a green, filling in the skin as he does so and letting some of the black mix in in places.

[demogorgongotme]

"All of my pencil stuff is small-scale. Watercolor's a little beyond me, personally. The lack of control's hard to wrap my head around." He bends forward to get a better look at Gareth's paper, then pushes off from the table to return to his own piece before it could dry too much. He opts to keep his music down now, only just loud enough to fill the silence and hopefully not be obnoxious about it, considering that now he knows the other is a metalhead and he just doesn't have anything that sounds quite like what he'd suggested. He doesn't have a lot of time left to be here before his brother comes by to see if he needs a ride home, and he wants to finish as much as he can before that happens.

[gareththegreat]

"That's fair, it can be a bit more unpredictable especially when you first start out." Gareth nods. "It takes a lot of practice and getting used to the idea that you don't have the same sort of control. Lots of embracing whatever it decides to do, y'know?"

Setting aside his own work to let some of the stuff dry more, Gareth turned and watched Will, quietly taking in the others techniques and watching the painting come to life.

"So, are you and your family staying in town with all the crazy shit happening? I was thinking about trying to be here more often to work on stuff...when I'm not at game or practice. Hope you don't mind the company."

[demogorgongotme]

"Seems like it would work best either really small so you can get good vague gestural blots like the kind of shading you do or really big so you have fine control," Will muses as he works, blending the colors together in feathering motions of his brush, then running his little finger wrapped in a scrap of paper down an edge to make it cleaner. He looks up from the careful edging around where he'd be putting darker lines, lip pulling in between his teeth as he considers just how much to actually say.

"Yeah, we're gonna be here for the foreseeable future, I think. I'm starting work soon so we can keep up on bills and stuff while my mom takes care of stuff around the house and my brother looks at college options. He was gonna go to a local community college where we were but we had to come back so that's what he's looking into now."

[gareththegreat]

"Yeah, but sometimes not having the control is good too, like...it can be freeing. Sometimes. If you're into that I mean." He shrugs and picks up a couple of his brushes, cleaned of inks, and starts drumming on the edge of the table. It's not too loud and it seems to be for the most part in line with whatever the beat of the song that's playing is.

"Well, your mom must be as stubborn as mine. She refuses to leave just because some 'religious kooks'. Or at least that's what she says." He shrugs, watching but mostly staying out of the way and even starts to quiet down a bit more so Will can focus on his work since he seemed so dialed in.

"What sort of work are you looking at? Not much around these days I guess."

[demogorgongotme]

He can't really explain how terrifying loss of control is for him personally, be it in the mundane sense like his art, or the much more explicit, invasive ways he'd experienced. He just nods without argument and continues to work and hopes that that hadn't seemed as weird as it was.

"Yeah, mom's the type that refuses to run no matter what. She doesn't believe in the whole Satan-worshipping thing. Like...she only believes in what she's seen."

His hand falls away from the piece and he sits back to observe it, teeth worrying at the corner of his lip until Gareth speaks up again. There's a distinct hesitation before he answers.

"You know Palmer's funeral and crematory? I'm gonna be apprenticing there started next week." He's just bracing for the inevitable assessment that it's grim and weird and morbid and every other thing he's heard.

[gareththegreat]

"Sounds like our moms would get along." Gareth looks from the painting to the teen at the eisle and nods.

"Oh yeah, I've heard of that place. They got a new guy there didn't they? That sounds like a pretty cool place to work. Surrounded by the dead, sounds pretty creepy~" He grins, teasing tone slipping out on reflex as if he had been teasing Mike or Dustin. "Sorry...used to teasing my friends that are about your age."

[demogorgongotme]

"Yeah, a lot of weird stuff happened and the first guy got replaced and then the next guy got fired I guess? So the new guy took over and he's pretty cool. He's making sure I have a suit and everything. Which is weird but I also haven't had anything fancy to wear since the Snow Ball like...two years ago? I think it was two years anyway."

He briefly looks disturbed. So goddamn much has happened in the last four years it's unreal. Having a growth spurt in the middle of all of it seemed like the absolute least of his worries.

He pulls a face at the tease, but he at least parses that it's not malicious. This guy doesn't seem like the type.

"You're a senior, right?" Only the seniors could look at him and say something like that.

[gareththegreat]

"Junior, gonna be a senior next year...if there is a next year." He rolls his eyes. "With how this town is I wouldn't be surprised if something else happened and it finally just fell into the abyss or something."

He has no idea how close he is to the truth while knowing nothing about what has really been going on.

"Sounds like a cool job though, metal as hell."

[demogorgongotme]

The corner of his mouth curls up in a slightly unsure smile. "I don't know about metal, but there's something about it that feels important and kinda...grandiose? Mr Blackwood would probably roll his eyes about that kind of thinking but he's been doing it for years."

Will sits back from the easel and surveys the work he's done, figuring he should probably slow down on it before he starts overworking it. He bends to wash out his paintbrush and start tidying up the immediate area so that he'd still be able to use the room again later.

"Hey, maybe I'll see you around. I'm usually here for when the physical therapy people get out to help a friend get home so I'll be here again."

me sitting here realizing they haven't given their names

[gareththegreat]

"Yeah I can see that." Gareth nods, watching as Will cleaned up the area. It was interesting to know that he might actually have someone similar enough to him, or at least with similar hobbies, to share the space with now. It was actually something he was already looking forward to. Hellfire was all well and good and they were his best friends but...it wasn't often he found someone he could talk about art with.

"Maybe, I try to be here most days other than when we have our d&d games or band practice." He didn't seem to be cleaning anything up, like he was going to be there a while longer yet. He's sitting there a while longer before seeming to realize something.

"Oh! Uh...I'm Gareth by the way."