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hale-13 · 3 years

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Better Together

By Hale13

For the Summer of Whump Day 15 - Sleep Deprived

Peter has always known that he had a platonic soulmate. He grew up sharing feelings and emotions through his bond and waiting eagerly to meet his other half.

Let’s just say - meeting your hero isn’t always all its cracked up to be.

Words: 2500, Chapters: 1/1 (Complete), Language: English

Fandoms: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)

Rating: Gen

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark

Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Happy Hogan

TW: Poor Communication, Self Deprication, Canon Typical Violence

Read on AO3 or below the line break.

Peter had always had a soulmate.

Some of his most formative memories as a child were nebulous warm feelings sent in his direction (mostly when he was sad or upset) and other emotions that he wasn’t quite old enough to comprehend. May and Ben had told him that his parents had known that he had a platonic soulmate nearly from the second he was born – Peter was never a loud baby and slept better than most newborns. The only logical explanation was his connection to someone else’s emotions that made him feel safe and loved before he was even old enough to process what those feelings were supposed to mean.

Soulmate bonds always grew stronger with time and the decrease in distance but the link connecting them was always there, growing ever stronger the longer it was in existence. May always told him that there was no better feeling than to be in contact with the other half of your soul, that the feeling was truly indescribable – warm and safe and comforting and loving and so many other things.

Peter wanted that. After losing his parents, after Skip, after the bullying and the Bite and Uncle Ben he wanted that. He wanted to feel warm and safe and protected more than he had ever wanted anything.

Meeting Tony Stark and finding out the man was his other half rocked Peter’s entire universe.

He had read the stories that were published everywhere; how magical it was supposed to be to meet the one person you were destined to be around for the rest of your life. The person who understood you sometimes better than you understood yourself.

His meeting with Tony was the opposite.

The shaking of their hands felt like pure electricity and the bond between them finally finally snapped into place, their minds linked together firmly now allowing for Peter to feel Tony’s shock and concern like they were his own before the man bricked up the link and left Peter reeling and untethered. Having Iron Man, his soulmate, revel that he knew about Peter’s wall crawling extracurriculars just served to unsettle him more and what could Peter say – he was a people pleaser. There was no way he would say no to Mr. Stark’s offer to go to Germany

Talking May into it without reveling he had found his soulmate was a completely different ordeal.

Peter had thought (hoped) that Mr. Stark maybe just needed to get used to the idea. That they would get back from Germany and he’d open the link again and try to get to know Peter. But, if anything, he had clamped down further leaving what once was a bright and vibrant part of Peter’s mind dark and lonely, the once taunt cord connecting them limp and lifeless despite Peter’s attempts to reach out.

And, yeah, maybe some of the stuff with Liz’s dad and the alien weapons had been a big attention grab but who could blame him really? It was painful to be ignored by the one person who had always been completely present through everything. After Tony had taken the suit, after he had made it abundantly clear how he felt about being Peter’s soulmate, how he felt about being in his life at all, Peter bricked his side of the connection as well. It was probably one of the most painful things he had ever done and it left him feeling more alone and empty than ever before.

He was lucky he was able to convince May that all of his moping was just about losing his internship and not about losing his soulmate. She had spent the evening with him on the couch watching crap TV and eating ice cream and had promised that he would get over it, that Stark Industries wasn’t the end all be all, that he was better than that. Peter supposed it was a good thing Tony had rejected him, he had no idea how May would take their connection if he hadn’t.

At least he was able to stop Toomes. At least he was able to save the majority of Mr. Stark’s stuff even if he destroyed the plane.

The fire from the crash was slowly starting to burn out on the beach as emergency services arrived. From his vantage on top of the Cyclone, Peter could see Happy pulling up and making his way across the shifting sand to where Toomes was attached to a pile of crates with webbing before looking around like he was trying to find something.

“Finally,” Peter thought, letting his eyes slip closed and resting his head back against the rough wooden structure behind him in exhaustion. He’d hang out here until it wasn’t so crazy and then he’d need to walk home. He’d used the very last of the webbing in his damaged shooters to restrain Toomes so swinging was out of the question but, with as bad as his shoulder was hurting, he didn’t think he’d be able to accomplish it anyway. He felt fresh tears of frustration and pain well up before he pushed them down – it didn’t matter how bad he felt, he had to do this.

His link to Tony, deadened for the past few months, lit up briefly and Peter scrunched his face as he tightened up the block on his end. It took concentration to cut ties (it was unnatural and mostly unheard of) and he must have slipped some during the fight; he needed to do better so he didn’t make Tony any more disappointed in him. A lone tear beaded up at that thought and he pushed it down. It was fine – Peter didn’t need a soulmate anyway and who was he to think he deserved Tony Stark of all people.

“Kid?” A voice, quiet, traveled up and Peter peaked over the edge of his hiding spot, pushing down the rising feeling of vertigo that made him feel unsteady.

“Hey Happy,” he said. “Sorry about the mess.”

The man looked unusually ruffled and concerned from his place on the ground, head tipped back completely to look at Peter. “Are you okay? Can you come down here?”

“Don’t have my mask,” Peter muttered, clumsily making his way down and nearly falling the last few feet when his vision tilted. Happy, arms half raised and spotting him from the bottom, barely caught him when he dropped the last couple feet.

“Jesus,” Happy said, holding Peter at arms length and surveying him with a critical eye. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” Peter said with an eye roll, batting the man’s hands away so he could stand on his own. “I need to get home.”

“Yeah no,” Happy grunted, pulling Peter’s uninjured right arm over his shoulder and dragging him toward the waiting town car. “You have a date with the compound MedBay, don’t want to miss it.”

“I’m fine,” Peter protested, trying unsuccessfully to pull away. “I just need to sleep it off.”

“I wasn’t asking,” Happy said firmly, pulling open the back door and shoving Peter in. “You got a concussion?”

“What?” Peter asked, confused and listing to the side as he blinked away the spots in his vision. “Uh… probably.”

“Stay awake then,” Happy said, shutting the door and climbing into the driver’s seat. “And buckle your seatbelt, we’ve got a long drive.”

“My aunt-,” Peter tried to say before Happy interrupted him.

“Tony will handle it. Just relax for now.” Peter let out a restrained sigh and let his head fall back to rest against the seat, eyes shutting in exhaustion. “What did I just say about falling asleep?” Happy grumbled from the front seat as he pulled the car away from the curb and sped out of the city.

Peter hummed, feeling more dizzy and out of it with the movement of the car. “Not sleeping,” he muttered, “resting my eyes.”

“Yeah well rest with them open,” Happy grumbled back and Peter huffed but let them open into slits, vision unfocused as he watched the streetlights blur together through the window. He must have dozed at some point because, the next thing he knew, Peter’s door was being opened and he nearly fell out of the car – held in only by his seatbelt.

“Yikes,” Tony said, poking his head in to look Peter over with a critical eye. “You weren’t kidding Hap.”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter said, surprised and confused, blinking his eyes against the bright lights of the garage they were parked in as they momentarily blinded him. “What? Why are you here?”

The man rolled his eyes and reached over Peter to unbuckle his seatbelt, pulling him out of the car and supporting most of his weight as Peter’s legs wobbled under him. “It’s my compound,” he pointed out, dragging Peter over to the elevator. “Why wouldn’t I be here?”

“Sorry about your plane,” Peter said, feeling worn down and upset – it felt like physical pain to be in such close contact with his soulmate without being able to feel him through the link. It felt wrong and confusing and his side of the link felt like a live wire.

“Don’t worry about it Spiderling,” Mr. Stark said, brushing him off brusquely, the elevator doors closing on their own and the elevator car starting up without Mr. Stark pressing any buttons. “I suppose I owe you an apology for not listening about Toomes anyway. And a thank you for saving all my shit.”

“It’s fine,” Peter mumbled, feeling uncomfortable. “It’s no problem.” Tony hummed but didn’t say anything as the doors trundled open to the bustling MedBay where a nurse was waiting for them with a wheelchair that Tony gently settled Peter into.

“I’ll call your aunt and smooth everything over,” Tony told him, getting back in the elevator. “You listen to Dr. Cho and get some rest.” And with that, the doors slipped closed again, leaving Peter alone and empty, his bond just as limp and lifeless as always but feeling more lonely and lost than ever.

————————————————

“Having some difficultly sleeping?” Dr. Cho asked when she checked in on Peter. He had arrived at the compound about six hours previously and was now resting semi-comfortably on one of the MedBay beds in borrowed sweats. He had been exhausted when he arrived, was still exhausted, but between the stinging pain from his still-healing injuries and the new, cold space he couldn’t seem to get any rest.

“Just not tired I guess,” Peter said listlessly, picking at a loose thread on the sheets and not making eye contact as she looked over his vitals and adjusted the IV drip. They didn’t really have drugs that affected him as much as they had hoped so it was all a guessing game right now. So far, nothing had been able to eliminate his pain completely. Dr. Cho gave him a look that showed she didn’t believe any of his bullshit but was kind enough not to call him on it.

Truth was, Peter was tired and all he wanted to do was sleep. He hadn’t really slept well since he had lost his ‘internship’, averaging maybe three or four hours a night if he was lucky and he felt like he was going a little crazy from the sleep deprivation. He couldn’t wait to be back in his own comfortable apartment with May. Dr. Cho didn’t try to further engage him in conversation, leaving and turning the lights down a little more as she closed the door.

Peter let his head flop over to stare out the window, his vision hazy and out of focus as he tried to turn off his brain. The outside of the compound was still lit up and, despite the late hour, full of activity. There must be some serious soundproofing and light dampening though since none of it reached into Peter’s room. He sighed in frustration, he wanted to sleep.

“I’m pretty sure I told you to get some rest,” Tony said from the door, surprising Peter and making him flinch.

“Sorry,” Peter said, dropping his gaze to rest only on his sheet-covered legs. Even though their bond was bricked, Peter being awake was probably keeping Tony up. He needed to do better. Mr. Stark wanted him to be better.

“What?” The man asked, stepping further into the room and clearly waffling for a second before dropping into the chair next to Peter’s bed. “There’s nothing to be sorry for kid.”

“The link’s probably keeping you up though right?” Peter asked, eye flicking over for just a second and then back to his knees.

Tony snorted softly. “Hardly. I’m not the best at sleeping which is why I’m awake. You, however, should be recovering and its hard to do that wide awake.”

“I’ll do better,” Peter promised, tone a little sardonic. “I’m sorry for disappointing you.”

Tony sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think its time we talked. I wanted to wait until you had recovered but I really don’t think it can wait that long. Let me just say that I’m not disappointed in you Underoos. I’m actually really proud.”

Peter whipped his head up. “Proud?” He asked, surprised.

“Of course,” Tony told him, leaning forward in his chair. “I made a mistake taking your suit and grounding you. When I told you I wanted you to be better than me its because you’re already the best of us kid, you don’t want to stoop to my level.”

“But the link…” Peter started, his throat feeling dry and his eyes wet.

Tony’s eyes narrowed, roving over Peter’s face intently before standing and kicking off his shoes. “Scoot over.” Peter, surprised and confused (these were becoming his perpetual states of being he thought) did as he was told and stiffened up a little when Tony climbed onto the bed next to him and pulled him into a half hug and throwing open his side of their link completely. Peter gasped at the influx of emotion spilling over, frowning at the deep self-loathing and unworthiness. “I didn’t block you out because I didn’t think you were good enough; quite the opposite in fact.”

“Oh,” Peter said, relaxing his grip on his side of the bond so it opened up and sinking into his soulmates side, feeling more content that he ever had. “That’s stupid. You’re my hero. You’ve always been my hero.”

Tony sniffed and pulled Peter in tighter so his head was resting on Tony’s chest, his stuttering heartbeat steady and comforting. “Get some rest buddy,” he told Peter, running dexterous fingers through Peter’s mattered curls and pulling his head more firmly into his chest. “I think that we’ll have a lot to talk about tomorrow.”

So this was what May meant, Peter thought, his lips tilting up into a smile as his eyes dipped closed and his muscles relaxed. He wasn’t even out yet and he could already tell that this would be the best sleep of his life.

#summerofwhump #summerofwhump15 #Prompt: Sleep Deprivation #irondad #spider man #Summer of Whump 2021

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yeswritingsandwritings · 4 years

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COVID Diaries; Pennies

It is March 2020 and I’ve channeled the spirit of Paul Revere. As Los Angeles erupts into rioting and mass fentanyl suicide, I dive headfirst into the cabin of the Mazda, and gun the packed ship upwards along the vacant I5 corridor. Every smouldering city under Gavin Newsom looks further gone than the last. The navigation takes me on some perverse fantasy detour thru post-apocalyptic San Francisco. It’s been a long time coming but now it’s solidified. The mayor and her delegates have chomped their cyanide pills and now the streets and bridges offer rotting cars beside silent, beautiful Victorian manors. Still in full color, the sky is blue and the sun is yellow, gleaming indifferently. I am nervous about San Franscisco County. The shelter in place order says no one shall be out on the street without proper reason. And, proper reason or not, I have a pharmacy of drugs in the trunk of my car. Will it be enough to wait out the pandemic in my mother’s house? Enough to keep me sane tucked in the basement of the compound on Cougar Mountain, Issaquah, Washington, for GodKnowsHowLong? My very own Bavarian Alps.

For years in LA I have lived for high speed and hard sex in a blackout frenzy which no young American could denigrate without looking like a nerd. In our culture of excess I sought the most insane, unexplored corridors. Chavionistic romps through the bitter forests of lust, contamination, too-young suicide, too-good blowjobs that leave explosions on this cast of characters flown from every corner of the globe, all with the same indelible fever. I come to now, in this chaotic month handed down by God, March 2020, and I’m withdrawing from all of it in the penthouse on the side of the mountain.

In this moment the fantasy is fading fast, like being jolted from a wet dream by a home invasion. For a lot of people the American dream was already a flickering ember in the distance, a relic of some stupid pilgrimgrage for egoic glory, a blind propaganda puzzle piece with no jigsaw to belong to. But I had formed my own relationship with the concept, and, until now, had believed wholeheartedly in the myth in America; or at least that myth’s capacity to spur significant action, which could abolish hunger and pain, mistreatment and misunderstanding, which could deliver us from evil and unto the kingdom of heaven.

I am not, to many of her 300 million pairs of eyes, a portrait of traditional American success. I am the starving artist archetype. I’ve lived in abandoned buildings and shot cocaine into my veins in the speeding bathroom of many an Amtrak carriage. These may be my most definitive traits, save for the music I somehow manage to draw out of all of this. Albums worth of potential answers to the impossible questions. Sometimes I think I’ve reached the peak, with the LSD and the naked festival girls. I am 26 years old and feel incompetent. I go to pay a traffic ticket or am electric bill and find myself paralyzed at the entrance to the website. In a moment of otherworldly strength I call the bank and my debit card has been cancelled. I stare at the parking ticket in my pod, which has been rented from a company called Up(Start), and is arranged in a row with twenty others. At least I’ve made it to Los Angeles.

Up(Start) is a strange place. I find most people don’t last very long in this community. They leave back to their hometowns or find apartments. The ones who stay haunt this place like ghosts, with no discernible goals and mysterious incomes. I’ve learned not to ask how these life-longers pay the rent. The answer is not translatable.

Willow is one of these life-longers. She always talks about moving out; sometimes to an apartment in LA, most recently about some nebulous palace in France. She says her grandmother died and left her everything. She shows me a suitcase full of watches and rings that still can’t fully convince me of her story. She drinks vodka when she wakes up and convinces me to fuck her when Jesse leaves us in his room alone.

Jesse found his way out to a beautiful house in Silver Lake. He had been at Up(Start) for a year before that. He is the nicest guy I know, offering the coat off his back for nothing but a swig of your vodka in return.

I left these characters behind, keeping a steady 65 on the interstate and stopping only to black out in a hotel room in Redding, CA. Summer, inspirational barista and blowjob queen, dared me to stop and see her in Portland, but my body was crawling from scabies from Lucy, (who was also in Portland and, I would later learn, infected with the virus) and I sped right through.

My younger brother Jon was at the house and had been awaiting my arrival. I instantly understood why. My mother had become a figurehead for the national panic, and shoulder-hugged me with her mask on. She is, as we speak, sterilizing the place.

I’ve gotten to spend a good amount of time with Jon, and am somewhat surprised to find that he faces the same existential torment as I do. This is not something we talk about, but I can feel it on him. He is super into Xanax, and orders pressed bars off the darknet. I share the drugs I’ve brought with him. Kratom, weed, and, —most enticing— Flubromazolam. I learn that he has been kicked out of UW on academic probation. I ask him about it in front of my mother and stepdad. With a casualness that shocks me he says he just didn’t care about any of his classes. But he’s got reaccepted to the school and he says he’s going to make it this time.

I show him how I order my drugs online. I show him the designer benzodiazepines on the clearnet, pennies per dose. We place an order for O-DSMT. It’s an insane solution to our problems, but I guarantee you it works.

I tell Jon about my life in LA with the stuff. Taking it and driving weed deliveries all day. I don’t tell him about the long nights with Lucy, telling her the love I feel from the opiate is sourced from her, then failing to get hard.

Jon, for his part, tells me about the peak of his Oxycontin habit, poppin 7 OC30’s a day with his buddies at Rolling Loud. I was just a few blocks away. I didn’t know he was in town.

We order the O-DSMT to his apartment in the U District, stopping to and snag it on our sole vacation to Dad’s for dinner. Two packages have been delivered. We have the save pavlov response. We carry the packages to his apartment on the top floor and split the bubble wrap with a butterfly knife. Out of a manilla envelope comes 100 green Xanax bars. From a bent UPS envelope comes a gram of O-DSMT and 250mg of 4-ACO-DMT, a bonus for me (Jon says he hates psychedelics).

We set to the scale and split the gram, dosing 50mg then and there to get through dinner. The next day he visits me in the basement, saying “Yo, this O-DSMT shit… it’s dope.”

I say “I’m with you.”

My days are spent deep in the dream flow, recording songs for a hopeful fourth album. The third one is still far from complete, but I can’t go back and meddle with those songs now. Wouldn’t dare touch their Los Angeles essence with the hand of the evergreen state. They will go to Rob and Twon and Andy as they are.

I’m back to guitars for the new album. Cardinal sin AC/DC type songs. I think it may be a double album, quarantine permitting. I want an exploratory, unstructured, throw paint at the wall and see what sticks, White album/Life of Pablo situation. I want solo piano pieces and Aphex Twin-esque 808 excursions. I want the label to release it on white vinyl with extensive liner notes. Indulgence. I want this album to be the one where I say “indulge me.”

If Rob is vehimently opposed to the idea I had the fantasy of making an easy album. Taking songs like Parade Owl, See You Tomorrow, Miss Can’t Sleep and putting out a whole album of them. Good rock music. Take a step back from the frontlines; the cutting edge. We’ll see what sticks to the wall after this quarantine is over.

Weeks drift by. There’s a trade route for all the beer that gets brought into the house. It goes from the garage fridge to the basement fridge to my eager hand, to my mouth, to my blood. Night by night the ritual recurs, til my mom takes out the downstairs trash and finds all the empties. She makes some subtle comment. I tell her to buy more White Claw.

Despite the drug flow my inspiration seems to be drying up. Rob took a listen to the twenty five songs I’d completed since arriving in Issaquah and said they sounded like Dogs. The old band. The old rock and roll band we’ve been trying to move away from. I was disappointed to hear him say it. I was disappointed he wasn’t excited about the songs. “Fuck it, should I scrap them all?” I asked myself. Then I started to look around the house and understand that if nothing came of these songs… I must be insane. I must be losing it. The stupid research chemical stimulants don’t help. I thought they would. Productivity and all… but I’m just jittery, texting strangers on Instagram for hours, all the while feeling like I should be doing something else. And the television is on in the background, and I told myself I was going to do so much to day. And I did it. And people on Instagram say “you seem busy.” They’ve always said I seem this and I seem that. I never agreed with any of it, but they probably know me better than I do. How could I see myself? I look for myself through a fog and it’s only a ripple of a shadow. A microcosm a million miles away through a hellscape with no up or down, no east or west. They say I’m social. They say I’m a socialite. Really I just get drunk and unleash all my nervous energy on the party or, nowadays, the Zoom meeting.

Today I drink Modello. Ma and Chuck went to the Seattle waterfront for a picnic or something. I didn’t get the details. But the sun should be going down now, and she’s texting me asking if I want to play a board game when they get back. I say yeah sure I do. My temper when I’m off these amphetamines analogues, though… I worry I’ll flip the Pictionary board. Slam dunk the wine glass onto the wood floor. Now the cliffhanger; will this Modello calm my nerves?

This morning I went with mom to buy plants for the garden. I thought we were going to get seeds but she wanted the already grown ones. She was ready to be angry. Nothing made her happy. We went to three different garden store. I think she got some tomatos. How the hell am I going to get out of this one? Feels like the walls are closing in. I feel like I’m in the freezer in the back of McDonalds. I feel so sad for her, but I also feel so sad for myself. I feel cut off. I feel short of breath. I feel terror. It is Friday, April 17, 2020. Dread, terror, paranoia… I’m sure it’s been felt a million times by a million people, but here’s my version of it. In this McMansion on the side of the mountain, feeling less like I have a mission than ever. Calling nobody. Freezing. Yeah I’m freezing.

My brother and I both have drugs to get through this crisis but I’m planning to get off them. I sold him half of my etizolam and half of another shipment of O-DSMT the other day. He wasn’t at all interested in the 2-FDCK, an analogue of the dissociative Ketamine. I am still not really sure what dissociatives do to consciousness. They can move you into states profound darkness. You feel like your life is a black and white film and it is raining outside. And it drips off the palm trees and you sit in traffic on the way back from the Boy’s and Girl’s Club, where the boys and girls wouldn’t listen, they’d just go off into their own worlds. I wonder how they’re all doing now, tucked into their parents houses in Calabasas.

Anyway, I said to Jon “I’m getting off the stuff.” And I intended to. This journal finds me at a crossroads between fantasy and reality. What is my life going to be for? Where do I cast this fishing pole? Well the pole’s been cast. It’s out there in the middle of the ocean. But at the same time it’s in my hand, in this very moment, and I can chose where to dip it. I’m not trying to catch a fish in this scenario, I just like the serenity of the bay.

The question on everyone’s mind is: “If not drugs, then what!?” That’s a great question and I’d be bullshitting if I said I could answer it. I don’t know what lies on the other side of this life. I want to find out. Do I truly? I have to truly. Love, sex, work, victory… I’ve seen all these things before. And I keep turning to these substances. They fill up my days and my hours and all the music is informed by them. They move my hands to play the guitar and my voice is scratchy when it comes out. I’ve formed an identity around these drugs to a certain extent. That idea of me has to die. It does. I’ll have to mourn it. I’ll have to mourn a lot. I guess I don’t know what to be afraid of. I know a lot of stuff is going to come up through this process. The drugs numb it all out. People say that but it’s really really true. Bad news doesn’t don’t hit you as hard. Most things don’t hit you at all. You’re in your world. You’re off in a cloud. You’re unaware of the world around you. You’re afraid to engage. Why?

It’s easier not to ask why. It’s easier to get the immediate relief of a squirt of etizolam tincture. Or a gross tossing of O-DSMT powder into your mouth and a quick washdown with water. In this way you don’t have to answer any questions. In this way nothing hits you. And guess what else? All your heroes did the same thing.

But a lot of them died doing it. And you don’t want to die. You really really don’t want to die. You want to live a long life, with kids and grandkids, and see what happens to America and what music turns into. You don’t want to die, but what do you have to live for? You know you can make things up. Everyone’s always making shit up. All of this is made up. The culture, the value of a dollar, the value of a Benz. We just decide on it. And that takes a lot. But you know what takes a lot less? Deciding how you want to react to each moment. This one and this one and this one. Do you know what I mean? They say a lot of stuff about the world. The world’s fucked. They say the world’s burning to the ground. They say we can’t leave our houses. They say America won’t be a super power by the end of all of this. But they’re making shit up. And I’m making shit up too. I’m whipping up like a chef. Throwing dishes out from the kitchen, but the dishes are words and actions and the kitchen is my mind. What kind of food am I throwing out? What kind of food am I serving the world? Let me serve love and hope. But for that to happen, let me cultivate it in myself first. Let me nurture it like a child. Let me see it sober. Let me take the steps in the right direction. It’s simple. It’s simpler than you think it is. What are you going to do right now, after reading this? Or while reading this? How are you going to face the world?

Jon told me he got into Xanax from the Famous Dex song “Japan.”

“Baby girl, what you doing, where your man? I just popped a xan, fifty thousand in Japan”

He told me his friends heard the song and picked up some Xanax because of it. They liked it and reached out to him “You’ve got to try this,” they said. My little brother, in the throes of this batshit demon force that will bury him. It might bury me too. The jury’s still out. Mom, just let me withdraw in peace. She brings down a space heater. I grow to love it. I lay down on the wood floor that the spiders sometimes dash across. The space heater comes close to burning me, but I’m ok. I stand up, dizzy from all I’ve done to try to combat the withdrawls. Way too much etizolam, way to much kratom, getting to the point of way too much weed and alcohol. But hopefully it’ll all be over soon, and I can call my friends in peace and not want to slam down the phone whenever there is the tiny threat of silence, or whenever I speak, or whenever they speak. I can’t any of it sober, that’s what I think. Life is hard sober; it’s a breeze when you’re floating thru it. A good dream. So why get sober? They say it’ll kill me. Well, I said that. In this very same paragraph. And maybe it will. But when you’re withdrawing like this… all you want is a moment of peace.

Oh God, at dinner tonight I started to go off about my own mental state to the family. I should have known it was a big mistaken, but on my way home from Doordashing a rainy Issaquah I stopped at QFC and got a bottle of True Eagle American Spirits, Kentucky manufactured vodka. And, helping myself to serving of kimchi, I said to them “I think I’m losing it.” And the conversation spiraled until my mother asked me “Are you suicidal?” And “Are you struggling with drugs?” Jon, between us, must have felt betrayed, but I just wanted to feel understood. I feel Chuck does not want to understand. I understand what he’s sacrificed for the life he has, but what value does that life has to him? He has a tumor in his jawbone, and it’s eating away at him, and no one can do anything. And they can’t get out to the specialists on the East Coast, and they won’t do the invasive surgery. He’s too busy. I know, in some capacity, he understands. Because he blows these things off like they don’t matter at all, when anyday he could have a stroke like Grandma had, fall to the floor of the kitchen while dishing up his kimchi, or pulling a slice of pizza out of the carton. I feel the same way. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I know that I am mentally unwell. And I avoid the questions about my drug use and about my suicidality. I miss girls, ma. I miss pussy and parties and not giving a fuck. The way I don’t give a fuck now is in these terrifying sound collages drafted on the latest of nights, in the deep dark depths of quaratine. What was I saying in the last one? Something about how I didn’t wanna kill the crabs on the beach on Whidbey Island as a kid. Holy shit I’m losing my mind. But it’s all fine, isn’t it? As long as the music comes out fine.

What could I possibly do to get healthy? I feel so far off the deep end. You have no idea; I feel like crying. My best friend, living with the girl I thought I could always go back to. We don’t talk. I mix these ketamine analogues in with that cheap cheap vodka (plus etizolam) and cry tears onto this plastic table. It’s pointless to keep up the tinder courtships. I feel like this will never end. And it started with such a bang. I was such a part of history. Now I’m a nobody; I’m a junkie, holding on by the thinnest thread. No energy to pray. I feel like Cobain, and I know so many people do… but I really do. I can only imagine. But I’m only listening to Mingus, Lana Del Rey and Radiohead (Kid A thru Hail to The Thief).

Should I throw weed in the mix? Lord knows I have enough of it. It’s my number one priority. I’ve made enough songs now that we could workshop what I’ve come up with years. What else is there to do? Mingus ripped the piano strings out of some pianist’s instrument in front of a live audience, then stormed off the stage. Where the fuck is that in my life? I’m in front of the computer, weeping because America has come to a close. You know they sent jazz to the Soviet Union as a WEAPON? A weapon of freedom and democracy and individualism. What the fuck happened? It all makes me want to cry. It’s all too much; this world. These people I’ve known and loved and lost. This music I’ve made that they promise me will be something, but I don’t know if I believe them. I don’t know if I want anything to do with this life. I can’t engage with my culture anymore… my history. I feel like I’m not a part of it. I feel so disconnected. Who’s rippin the strings out of MY piano? Or who’s piano am I ripping the strings out of? We’ve lost so much… I mean… I’ll do my best to work with what we still have, but we’ve been so fractured. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was the end. Of America. Of our culture. Of our music and our hustle and bustle and industry and lover’s lanes and rites of passage. I feel like I’m mourning it now. Mourning my culture. Maybe mourning the illusion that was sold to us. Believe me, I was first in line to buy. That’s why it destroys me so deeply to see it collapse.

I guess we’re all one people. I’m crying writing this. Weeping, weeping, weeping. Grieving. You know what grieving is. I remember what’s-her-name in the pool. We went to every hot tub, each a different temperature, in the Desert Hot Springs Resort. Then Lucy’s friend’s new boyfriend told us Bernie Sanders had stayed there when he had visited DHS. I laughed so hard. Lucy ordered me another drink. She didn’t mind the cost. She liked me to be on her level. And I didn’t mind. I was proud to sip. We went back to the hotel and did god knows what. Feels a million lifetimes away.

This was back when anything could happen. When America was a blank slate and no one could predict anything. When you could go outside and say “What the fuck is up?” and get in adventures. I mourn the loss of that. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe that’s still there. But I’ve emotionally severed my ties to it. And I wish I didn’t. Because I love it. I love it so much. It’s not a myth. I swear to god it’s not a myrh. It was a reality… until all this happened. You have no idea. I mean, if you’re reading this and weren’t around before. You have no idea. I mean… I don’t know what things are going to be like after this. But not the same. There’s no way they could be the same.

You know I hope I get this shit. I hope I contract COVID-19. Lay in this guest bedroom bed with the scabies I may or may not have gotten from Upstart Creative Living… and which wouldn’t die off. I hope I can’t breathe. I hope I’m immune. I want to walk the world. Maybe I should go out, get it, isolate, heal, be immune… if that’s even possible. At this point we don’t even know if immunity is a thing that happens with COVID. But even if I could walk the earth without fear of it… everyone else is cowering, and they pull away from, seeing I’m not wearing a mask or gloves, or even if I am… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it would all end this way. I would have done so much more. Focused so much more on each kiss. Even every note. I did my best, I guess. It feels like it’s all coming to an end. It’s Thursday, April 23, but that doesn’t mean anything. You have to understand how little dates mean in this time. It’s like we’re living in one of those time capsules buried beneath the walkway at WWU. Stagnant… yeah we write songs and poems and do our work and keep the economy from faltering completely… but there’s a different angle to look at it all now. The world is over. I mean, aha, to use the words of Rem… “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.” Key words: “As we know it.” I had no idea this would happen in my lifetime… I couldn’t even conceive it. If you would have told me this would have happened six months ago I wouldn’t have believed it. America seemed so stable. And now it feels like it’s in shambles. It really did feel stable. You may think I’m insane for saying America in September, 2019 seemed stable… but shit, we were free. And we were headed where we were headed. This throws a wrench in all of this. And it could be the end. And I thought this was the greatest country on earth. Happiness is a buttery, try to catch it like every night.

I’ve been fascinated in American history since I could understand it. Most specifically, I’ve been fascinated about how history is still happening. The closer you get you the current day, the harder it is to get a straight story. FDR did what he did and we won. That’s fact. That’s cement. Nixon? Everyone agrees he was a crook. But what about Reagan? What about Bush Sr? What about Clinton? The closer you get to the modern day, the more difficult it becomes to discern what is real and what is fake.

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partsofthemachine · 5 years

Note

For the meta memes: one of the Umbrella Academy kids + your saddest Thought about them.

I feel like you know me well enough to know that this was going to be just a big wall of sad that I’m mostly putting under the cut.

The Hargreeves in General: Empathy is a learned behavior and it’s not one that Reggie the Dick put a lot (or any) time and effort into teaching his children. So for the most part they learned how to be empathetic and how to communicate with other people from TV It’s the primary reason their communication with each other is so strained and assholeish; because no one TV cares about real emotions. And you just have theses seven people who barely know how to name their own emotions much less deal with each other’s emotions.

Also, the fact they learned communication from TV is a large part of the reason they refer to each other by nicknames like “bro” and “sis.” It’s very common on TV, and decidedly less so in the real world where you’re not constantly establishing your relationship for an audience. The even sadder part of that is that they just didn’t have names until they were 13, and then it was only on the advice of a PR team. In a lot of ways, their numbers feel like their actual names and their names feel like affectionate nicknames which is also why they never shorten them. (For example, it’s always Allison and never Ally.)

Luther: Honestly? Luther has always known on some level that everything Reggie put him through was complete and total bullshit. There’s really no way around it. He knows what he went through, he saw what his siblings went through. And all of it is bullshit. But Luther has to psych himself up and convince himself that it’s for the greater good, that there is a reason for all of this because otherwise it’s just his father wasting his entire life. And it’s him being too afraid to ever step out that door without a mission, without a plan and start any sort of life.

Naturally, his depression from this sort of isolation and arrested development was at its worst on the moon. It started very early when he could no longer convince himself that the “care” packages coming late or short on food wasn’t a simple mistake but a sign of how little Reginald actually cared about Luther or the “mission.” In order to convince himself that it mattered, that he had to get out of bed every morning, Luther named the plant he was studying Ben because he just fucking misses his dead brother and because he has a lot of guilt over how Ben died. Ben the plant didn’t survive the trip back to earth and, in a lot of ways, neither did Luther’s motivation to keep going. If he hadn’t been thrown immediately into mission mode (the funeral, the murder mystery, the Apocalypse), there’s a good chance he just would’ve stopped doing anything.

Diego: The deep, dark truth is that Diego feels like he’s the least essential person in the Academy. Throwing knives and holding his breath are not particularly useful powers. No one needs him in a fight, and certainly not as much as he needs to be in the fight. As much as he thrives on fighting, on being constantly in motion, on moving towards some nebulous something. Honestly, he genuinely believes that if he stops moving, stops fighting, he’ll just break.

That’s also why, even if he’s not the best at showing it, Diego is the one most concerned with his other siblings’ mental health. He’s aggressive and loud and even violent about it, but he is doing is level best to try and check in with Luther and Klaus (and Vanya that one time but he made her cry and run away). Because his brothers stopped and it broke them. And maybe he can fuel all that driving and fight from feeling inessential into something that’s truly useful for them as a family if they’re not a team anymore.

Allison: Real talk, Allison never actually got her way with her father. That was a story her siblings concocted due to her powers: her ability to get anyone to do anything she wanted as easy as breathing. And because there was perception that Reggie went easy on her in training, that he was more lax with the rules when it came to her. From the outside looking in, with all the dark thoughts they had about each other and Allison’s casual callousness, it was easy to be convinced that she somehow got special treatment.

The painful truth, however, is that Reggie had little to no use for daughters. Allison got off better than Vanya because her power was useful and she was a more focused toddler. Because Allison has always been focused. Ambitious. She saw what she want and she went after it. And what she wanted more than anything was to be Number One. Was to come out on top. Nothing she could do, though, could dislodge Luther and Diego from their places, and she knew that her place was only safe as long as Klaus was popping pills or Five was being defiant or Ben was too soft. So Allison took that pain and frustration and disappointment out on her brothers and let them just believe she was cold and heartless and that she got whatever she wanted.

Klaus: The reason that Klaus is significantly more tactile than his siblings is because he’s genuinely not sure if they’re ghosts or not. With the sole exception of Allison, Klaus has seen every single one of his siblings as a ghost. Klaus tried opening up to Diego once and only once. But because Klaus has been consistently lying about being able to see Ben’s ghost and none of their other siblings have died, Diego convinced Klaus to check himself into a psychiatric hospital for the first time. So Klaus is just torn between thinking his siblings might be ghosts and thinking he is genuinely crazy.

For a kicker, the fact he’s never seen Allison’s ghost makes it even harder on Klaus. Of all their siblings, Allison has come the closest to actually dying in front of him. Klaus has held her while she bled out from losing her arm and from having her throat slit. And he’s never seen her ghost. Not once. When he’s most cogent about it, he thinks that it’s because Allison is a miracle, she came to the edge of death and pulled herself back. But, sometimes, Klaus convinces himself she was never real at all and that’s why she can never be a ghost, why she can never stay wit him.

Five: Okay. There’s nothing really sadder about Five’s life than what’s already explicitly canon. But, listen. I think a lot about the fact that he isn’t really a person anymore. Five has spent so many years in isolation and sacrificed so many pieces of his soul to save his siblings that he doesn’t really actually know how to function in society. And it was fine when there was an actual mission he was working towards: stopping the Apocalypse.

The real problem is when there’s no long an apocalypse to think about. He spent so many decades trying to save his siblings that he has no idea how to actually live with them. They are entirely different people than the people he left and he doesn’t know how to function living with them in the mansion. And it’s not like any of them ever learned how to meet people or make friends. So it’s just this really painful thing that everything he worked for feels futile because the people he was trying to save were gone as soon as he was. But they’re also still there in a way if he can just figure it out.

Ben: Extremely unpopular opinion time. I think Ben deeply resents Klaus. It doesn’t bubble up very often because, on the whole, he’s trying to let that stuff go. An eternity is a long time to hold onto the grudges and petty bullshit that so plague the Hargreeves’ existence. So he taught himself how to let go of hurt feelings, mostly by attending rehab and support group meetings with Klaus.

But the thing that’s hardest to let go of is the fact that Klaus lied to their siblings. For five years. Years where the only thing Ben wanted was to be able to communicate with his siblings, to check up on them, to make sure they were okay. And instead of doing this one little thing for him, Klaus tried to drug him away with all the rest of the ghosts. Klaus openly and blatantly lied to his siblings for years that he couldn’t see ghosts anymore. That he couldn’t see Ben’s ghost. It kills Ben to be so close and so far at the same time and he has a hard time forgiving Klaus for the lastest and sustained bullshit.

Vanya: I want to bring in a piece of comics canon that didn’t traumatize me as much as what Allison went through, but is still something I think about a lot. When Vanya was seventeen, she was sent to a music conservatory in Paris on her own. This was only weeks after Allison left and basically came across as Reggie was just done trying to deal with his daughters at all. Because Reggie was just trying to wash his hands of daughters.

It’s honestly a very bittersweet time for Vanya. On the one hand, she was fully immersed in the one thing she’s passionate about and actually feels good doing. But, on the other hand, it was the first time Vanya ever truly felt lonely. Because she had six siblings on top of her growing up and even though they weren’t close to her, it didn’t feel hollow and empty and painful. Her time at the conservatory was definitely the darkest her depression has ever gotten and she actually felt better just being back in the same city as most of her siblings made her feel so much better and safe in a strange way, even if they’re still separated.

#headcanons: luther hargreeves #headcanons: diego hargreeves #headcanons: allison hargreeves #headcanons: klaus hargreeves #headcanons: five hargreeves #headcanons: ben hargreeves #headcanons: vanya hargreeves #;; 'cause i've been living where the black meets the blue (luther hargreeves)#;; i need to move i need to fight i need to lose myself tonight (diego hargreeves)#;; all the glamour and the trauma and the fucking melodrama (allison hargreeves)#;; champagne cocaine gasoline and most things in between (klaus hargreeves)#;; run boy run this world is not made for you (five hargreeves)#;; well you can never know the places that i go (ben hargreeves)#;; you're ripped at every edge but you're a masterpiece (vanya hargreeves)#;; now i see you in our old home where i'm always afraid to go (the hargreeves)#| well this took a thousand years and i hurt but here we are

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tb5-heavenward · 6 years

Text

Harvard!Christmas

Ambitiously, being as it’s Christmas Eve, here is the beginning of a Harvard Christmas Story. With thanks to @plastictuna and the inktober piece that inspired the whole thing, here is some further depth to the story behind this exchange in Close Quarters:

I can’t promise a happy story, but in the rather dark tradition of A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, I can promise an ultimately hopeful story. And it has a kitten! What more can you ask for! don’t say i never give you anything.

His building doesn't allow cats.

John's the sort of person who keeps a digital copy of his lease for reference, and stores it somewhere where he can access it remotely, and immediately at need. Not, that is, that he's had the immediate need of it in the year and a half that he's had the apartment---or, at least not until he had, and then the situation had just been proof positive that it was a good idea; good to have a readily available digital copy of his apartment's lease, because backups are important.

It doesn't change the fact that his copy of the document clearly states that cats---and indeed, pets of any kind---are not allowed in the building under the terms of the lease agreement, as dated and signed with his angular scrawl of a signature. John knows this, because he'd checked.

But it still doesn't doesn't change the fact that he's currently heading home with a cat tucked inside his jacket, a scrawny, half-sized little ginger thing that he'd found curled up and freezing to death in the alley behind his apartment; ghost given up, almost all the way gone but for a few tiny twitches of its front paws, just waiting to die. It's the dead of December, and well below freezing. It's Christmas, or it will be in a couple more hours, at least. And if he's being technical, as he opens the lobby doors and steps into the warmth of his apartment building, it's not like he plans to actually adopt the cat. It's just that he doesn't want it to freeze to death, all alone on the streets of Boston.

The front lobby of his building is all done up for the holiday. Lights and garland and ribbons and bows, all classy red and gold. Boston seems to deck itself out in a grand and gloriously old fashioned style. John hadn't expected to be in Boston for Christmas, and so while he'd noticed the trappings of the season, none of it had really registered in a meaningful way. He notices it now, late in the evening on the twenty-fourth of December, and his only impression is that it all seems like a bit much.

It's maybe a bad omen when it's the actual building manager who holds the elevator doors for him---but John's never especially believed in that kind of thing. And it's not like he's a stranger to breaking the rules---or a stranger to lying, deliberately and directly, to people who'd never believe him capable of breaking the rules. And anyway, it's only four floors up, and the worst that happens during the course of the ride is some uncomfortable small talk. And while the small talk is certainly uncomfortable ("Thought you were headed home for Christmas with the family, Mr. Tracy?" "No, last minute change of plans."), it's only made a little bit more awkward by the fact that he's got a cold, wet, contraband tabby tucked beneath his armpit. All things considered, John manages just fine, running on a pharmacological infusion of confidence/charm, and the fact that the cat stays still and silent the entire time.

The circumstances are unfortunate, but it's still probably lucky that the poor little thing's just about catatonic from the cold, and therefore not mewling pathetically from within his jacket. It doesn't make a sound the whole ride up, doesn't make a sound as John says a polite, "Good bye, merry Christmas" to the building manager. In fact, it's gone so quiet and so still that by the time he gets safely within sight of his doorway, John's a little worried that all he's got to show for his attempted rescue is an eight hundred dollar Burberry peacoat full of dead cat. It would be the cherry on top of the day at his back, as he fumbles with his keys trying to unlock his apartment door.

Once securely on the other side, he sighs and sags just slightly against the door, just for a moment, depleted more in spirit than in body---but also fairly depleted in body, hazy and vague and tired from a long day of stress and travel. He's been pulling a rolling suitcase behind him this whole way, and letting it go in his front hallway leaves his hand feeling curiously light, his fingers still sore from the weight of it.

Because his apartment is home, but it isn't home, because he's left home almost a whole day behind him. He's spent more time in airports waiting for a flight back to Boston than he had at the farmhouse. He spent as much time at the farmhouse as he'd spent driving a rental car to and then right back from the farmhouse. He'd made a mistake. Now he's corrected it. The whole situation is shitty and awful and makes him hate himself, a little (a lot), and so the half-dead animal tucked inside his jacket is actually a welcome diversion, considering everything he'd have to hate himself for, if he didn't have a problem to solve.

Very carefully, he unbuttons the front of his coat, and carefully extracts the cat.

Still alive. He's pretty sure, at least. Scraggly and damp and still cold to the touch, and curled up in a way that suggests its muscles are too stiff to move. Bigger than a newborn kitten, but not a full grown cat, a few weeks old, maybe more like a few months. John carefully cradles the creature along the length of his left arm, still against his chest. He doesn't shrug out of his heavy woolen peacoat, and quickly crosses the apartment to the corner of his living room, where the radiator lives.

"Lives" seems like the apt term, because the thing is a bit of a beast. There's a valve near the top and with his free hand John twists this open, is answered with the usual groan of metal, and the hiss of changing pressure, as steam begins to enter the newly opened system. This accomplished, the next stop is the bathroom for a big fluffy bath towel and two smaller hand towels. He returns to the living room and parks himself on the floor right beside the radiator. There's some careful negotiation, and eventually he ends up with a carefully burritoed cat, wrapped up in a towel so he can gently start to warm it up. The extra hand towel he drapes over the inlet pipe of the radiator, to let it warm up. Against the pressure of the towel wound around its stiff little limbs, there's a faint, tiny noise from the back of the cat's throat, the first sound it's actually made. It's intensely sad and fleetingly hopeful all at once, and it makes John swallow against a slight pressure at the back of his throat, managing to find his own voice.

"You know, you're going to be fine," he says, finally, the first thing he's actually said to the animal. He rubs his thumb gently against the top of the cat's head. "But I'll be honest, that's mostly because today's just been really, really awful, and I don't think I could actually stand it if anything else went wrong. So, by that logic, you've gotta be okay. Does that sound fair?"

This probably isn't technically logic, because logic isn't fair. Or, if you were to subscribe to a slightly different school of thought on the subject, logic is perfectly, exactingly fair. And of course, there's logic and then there's Logic. Lately he's become an expert at the former. There's the sort of fallaciously wishful lowercase logic that says that a day this bad can't actually get any worse, and therefore he hasn't brought a small animal into his home, just so it can die in his lap. There's the sort of nebulous interpersonal logic that people are going to try to use to explain what John's done, because logically he shouldn't be here at all. Logically, he should still be back in Kansas, suffering through the onslaught of his family, all the while edging nearer and nearer to the breakdown he can't afford to have in their presence.

But instead he's sitting on the hardwood floor of his apartment with a half-dead cat, waiting for the radiator to start to heat up properly, as he gently rubs moisture from the small animal's sodden fur, and hopes that this is going to work. He's not sure what he'll do if it doesn't, other than just have a dead cat.

Carefully, John works his hand into the wrapped towel, trying not to loosen it too much, but also hoping to manage to feel the cat's heartbeat, and to maybe contribute something with the warmth of his hands, not that his hands are terribly warm on their own. It takes him a while to figure out how to position his fingers, such that he can distinguish between his own pulse and the animal's. His is a little fast. The cat's is barely there, and worryingly slow.

Animal rescue hasn't ever been his area---that had always fallen to Mom and Gordon and Virgil, with occasional major assists from Scott or Dad, and wide-eyed spectation from Alan. John's involvement with the process of finding and caring for assorted animals (in need or otherwise), had always been in an adjacent sort of fashion; a research position; a consultancy. And mostly on the grounds that he was just better at finding and processing information than either of his younger brothers. "How to move a baby deer with a broken leg?", "Squirrel with only half a tail?", "Can ducklings jump?", "How much pond do tadpoles need?", "Do birds have lice?" and all manner of other queries.

He should probably do some research about how to warm up a hypothermic cat, but that would require taking his phone out of his pocket, and turning it back on. Currently he's pretending that it's just slipped his mind---as ridiculously unlikely as that is---that he'd turned it off to board his flight back to Boston, and just hasn't remembered to turn it back on. So far, since leaving the farmhouse, John's only spoken to his father, an apologetic call (fabricated around the framework of a convincing excuse) that he'd made from the airport lounge, but he'd left without a word to anyone else. He's been let off the biggest hook, but there are plenty of smaller ones, still trying to catch and snag. There'll be missed calls, texts, voice mails. His brothers are going to want to talk to him. But John can guess what they'll say, and he doesn't especially want to hear any of it.

"See," he starts, gently unwinding a little bit more of the towel, as he continues to work on the circulation of the damp little cat, its breathing still slow and shallow, and its muscles still stiff beneath his fingertips. The radiator takes about twenty minutes to start to warm the apartment properly, but sitting right close to it, there's already heat starting to come off the cast iron pipes. If it's not quite helpful yet, at least it's encouraging. "This only happened because I grabbed the wrong winter coat. Because I grabbed this coat, specifically, when I should've grabbed the grey houndstooth, the overcoat? I don't know why I'm telling you, it's not like you know. Anyway. The one I wore on that trip to Geneva for that awful, awful finance conference. Because the one I wore to Geneva has a pocketful of the drugs I need to be a functional human being, and they do me absolutely no goddamn good, if they're still in Boston, when I'm stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere, in fucking Kansas."

The radiator is in the corner of the living room, so he has the other wall to lean back against, and the back of his skull knocks on the plaster as he tips his head back, closes his eyes. A few absentminded moments pass and then as an afterthought, John offers an apology, "Sorry for the language, but I had a really shitty day. Also, you're a cat."

And a still not-really-actually-conscious cat, anyway. A still very-nearly-dead cat, which isn't helping him feel any better, but then, that's a selfish way to think about the whole situation anyway. There's a life in his hands, even if it's a small, meagre sort of life. He doesn't know what exactly his odds are of coaxing the poor little creature back from the brink, because he can't quite tell if he's making any difference yet. As near as he can tell, there's been no change to the cat's breathing, and the feeble throb of its heartbeat beneath his fingertips still seems incredibly slow. It's still cold to the touch. And it's probably too early to expect a change for the better, but at the same time, it's hard not to hope.

John shifts where he sits, adjusts so that he's sitting cross-legged. Now the larger bath towel lies flat over his lap, and now he can lay the bundle of towels down, and carefully curl both hands around the cat's skinny little body. It's got a white belly and long white socks, a smudge of white fur on its face above its nose. It's still damp, and so he goes back to work with the hand towel, gently rubbing at the creature's fur. Its eyes stay tightly closed and John sighs. "C'mon, cat. The radiator's really starting to kick on, that'll help. Just hang in there. Please don't ruin Christmas. I mean, I already ruined Christmas, but probably more for everybody else than for me. And believe me, it would've been much, much worse if I'd tried to stay. I had to go."

He'd lied to his father, when he'd called him from the airport. John's not a frequent traveler, but he has the sort of credit card that would belong to one, a sleek little slice of absolute darkness with a line of immaculate credit behind it, and it unlocks the doors to VIP lounges in every corner of the world. He'd called his father from Chicago, because the first flight he could get back to Boston hadn't been direct, and had him bouncing all the way over to O'Hare for a four hour layover. He'd at least had the duration of the flight to come up with a plausible excuse, carefully, precisely tailored to suit his father.

Circumstances considered, in a sort of twisted way, he's proud of the lie, and so he repeats it by way of explanation. "I told him that a last minute position opened up in an internship program I'd applied to, but that if I wanted to make the start date, I needed to get back and prepare a proposal. When he starts poking around to find out whether or not that actually happened, I'm gonna need to make up some kind of cover---but that can wait. He'll be busy. My stupid little brother got drunk off his ass the same night I came home, just to be an idiot. So Dad'll be dealing with him. And it's not like he can blame me for wanting to leave that behind. Right?"

There's no answer, but then, there wouldn't be. All the same, John almost feels a little bit better for talking about it. Like pressure bleeding off, like he's opened a valve and let something out, just by getting to tell the truth out loud. There's not much evidence to suggest that the cat can hear him, but maybe that's not what matters. Maybe it's helpful just to talk, just to give the little creature something to listen to.

Maybe it's helpful to have someone listening.

#harvard hell #Close Quarters #Sort of #John Tracy #Kitten #some kind of creative doubt

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