i. “would you delete memories if you could?”
ii. observations from inside a train station:
he loves her more than she loves him,
you think, watching him look at her.
in three weeks she’ll be yelling. in five they're over.
you give him a weak smile when he makes eye contact,
sorry bud, i read your future.
iii. the store that reminds you of venice is closed now
and that was the last place you had that didn’t reek of
failed relationships.
when did this town get so small? the woods
so quiet?
iv. fuck him.
v. everything moves too fast here and too slow at the same time,
like you’re watching the city from a bird’s nest outside while
actually sitting on a bench thinking about the last time you were
well and truly kissed, kissed like you meant it, kissed like
the world is burning and if you just hold onto each other
you can prevent the end to it
vi. you light a cigarette and stamp your feet in the cold and
think about what he was to you and the words
scrawled into your skin by people who were barely thinking
and the lovers you’re jealous of that you project onto in train stations
vii. she asks you again, "would you do it? it’s permanent.“
viii. you could get rid of everything. the whole of it.
forget the little sandwiches in the french store, lose the taste
of a night that bites like a cold sore. forget your name and
the sins you’ve committed and were
committed against you, unsoil a body,
start over.
ix. there’s a boy on a bike in the background
of one of your sad memories, and he’s
laughing.
lately i have been waiting
for something
something to happen to me, anything
that will warrant this feeling
of the end of the world approaching.
i’ve felt it once before.
i was nineteen, and had just
crawled my way out of hell
onto greener pastures
as they say.
i am saying i moved out of my abusive home and into the arms of a partner who still loves me to this day.
but even then i kept waiting
for something.
us kids, us crooked-back-and-damaged-joints-at-age-twenty soldiers,
adults who can’t handle being yelled at or even politely criticized because it may as well be the same thing,
doctor’s notes piling up in the chaos on our desks, always sick, always worried,
about missing work and
missing life,
us kids we don’t trust peace.
if things are going well that just means the next disaster is right around the corner.
i remember being nineteen and sitting up in my lover’s bed wondering what college to go to now that i am free to make my own choices, and i remember, right afterwards, a mere second later, thinking,
what does it matter? i’ll be dead in two weeks.
i had no reason to think this — no health issues, not even suicidal tendencies
i just knew.
two weeks. something was going to happen. because something always does.
two weeks came and passed.
i lived.
i eventually
stopped thinking about it.
eight years later i have
recently finished therapy.
all the horrible things that were done to me — dealt with.
they are still there and will always be, but now i have learned to armwrestle them into submission, so as to not drown in the quicksand of my own mind.
it feels good. to be done. freeing. i have worked hard to get here and i am so proud of myself
and yet
here i am,
waiting.
maybe a loved one will die
in a terrific accident. it happened four years ago, and i had to figure out how to go on without my father then.
it might happen again.
i have a few family members left
whom i don’t actively despise.
maybe a friend will fall terminally ill
it happened… six or seven years ago.
so many memories are foggy.
maybe my dog will get sick or maybe i will
one day wake up and realize
that i don’t love my fiance anymore.
and maybe i will create problems where there are none
because my battered and bruised mind cannot comprehend that sometimes
things are just good.
and we don’t need to ruin them
for the sake of being right.
accept defeat
and allow yourself to be happy
the end of the world will come in due time.
You are standing at the window. You are looking outside. You don’t feel anything. Five minutes ago, you felt it all, and five minutes from now, you will again.
You are standing at the window. You are looking outside. In the dark glass, your reflection stares vacantly as blood sprays from the empty stump where your arm used to be. You will never get the stains out from between the kitchen tiles. You feel nothing.
You are standing at the window. You are looking outside. You are familiar with loss. You know grief better than you knew the ones who left. You count down the seconds, to when it will start to hurt again. You know that it’s okay to bleed. It needs to get out, and it needs to get all over the kitchen. You will forgive yourself, and clean up later.
You are standing at the window. You are counting down. In time, you know, you will learn to be left-handed. Blood is soaking through your sweater. It’s heavy. And it’s cold.
so as it turns out, it’s all going to be okay.
so you broke up with him. the person who you had thought, at some point, was the love of your life. and maybe, at that point, you were right. he was the love of the life you were leading back then. you have a new life now, and he got a new role in it. as it turns out, that’s the way it crumbles, cookie wise.
so you spent a few weeks thinking you had made a huge mistake. what if this was it, you thought, and nothing is ever going to be this nice again, and it’s never going to be like this with anyone ever again?
so you got over that.
so you’d thought, for a while, that this is what all the movies and tv shows and books and songs were talking about. you kept thinking about him, kept pondering mistakes that were or were not made, kept wondering if maybe you hadn’t been better off staying with him. and you had tried to prepare for it being like this for the rest of your life.
so as it turns out, it is all going to be okay.
you know, now. the books were wrong. you know, now, that you are not going to keep pining after him for the rest of your life. you have made the right call, and you are moving on, and every day it hurts a little less. the sting will fade, and in time
you will find new things to write about.
by god, do we romanticize breakups! anyone who says fiction does not affect reality ought to take a look at all your ex boyfriends trope content, and then your diary. by god, do we make it hard on ourselves.
but we learn.
and as it turns out, you are going to be just fine.
ship haljake / jakehal
word count 5,164 for now
chapters 1/?
warnings zombie apocalypse! au-typical violence, future smut
rated m for now, will be e later
When Jake breaks his arm in the middle of the apocalypse - his good shooting arm - he is rendered useless among his friends. Doomed to sit it out inside an empty research facility, he only has an ill-tempered, solar-powered AI to talk to.
ship haljake / jakehal
word count 759
warnings nah
rated T? for language i guess
prompt word was “challenge”
The best thing about corporeal existence, if you ask Hal, is all the dumb shit he can get up to now. He has always found beauty in proving other people wrong -- and considering the concern everyone seemed to harbor in some way, about him going rogue and obliterating humanity as soon as he acquired a pair of hands he could make people catch… Well, considering that, it does feel pretty beautiful to him that all he gets up to now is ill-advised acrobatics that hurt nobody but himself.
Actually, Hal usually manages to turn off his pain perception just in time, and then Dirk is the one that has to sit down with a heavy sigh and fix whatever he broke with his most recent stunt. So really, what he does with his body doesn’t hurt anyone, except for Dirk, and Dirk doesn’t exactly matter, so it’s fine.
Right now, he has no face.
He has one, normally. A good, human-looking face, with nice skin imitation and pretty features, looking similar to Dirk’s but not the same. It’s a nice face. Hal likes it. But it’s gone now.
Smeared into the grass of the hill he just slid down on.
It was masked as a dare -- Jake telling him to ride a skateboard down this slope even when they both knew it’s way too grassy to make the wheels work for more than two feet, at best. Jake likes posing him challenges, likes to see how far he can push him now that he’s got bodily autonomy. He likes proving that he’s still better at climbing and jumping and spelunking and anything fun, and Hal? Hal just likes making him laugh.
“Holy fucking crumbs,” Jake says loudly. He is not laughing, not quite, but he’s getting there, Hal can tell. It’s in his voice, and the corners of his mouth are twitching when he comes closer, carefully sliding down the last few feet of the hill and crouching down where Hal is sprawled out in the dirt. Hal can see him just fine. His eyes are still lodged firmly in his head, even if he thinks the lenses might have gotten a little scratched up. Dirk’s gonna hate that.
“I know,” Hal says. It comes out a little weird sounding -- his voice output is fine, the speakers in his general mouth area are fine, but there are no lips to enhance the effect. He sounds a lot more robotic now. And he probably looks like a Terminator nightmare. “How you likin’ my new look?”
“Oh, it’s just about the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, Mister No Face,” Jake says, leaning in close. He’s grinning now, presumably relieved that Hal is taking it with humor. “You know, that looked really stupid, you sliding down there on your mug instead of your board. Real uncool, Hal.”
“Don’t say that,” Hal says, but it ends up muffled, because Jake is pressing his entire hand to his face.
“Wow, it’s all warm,” he says, pushing his fingers against the shredded parts of artificial skin, and the alloy underneath. Quietly, Hal turns on his touch perception again, keeping it low so he can’t feel any pain. Just Jake’s fingertips pressing into his face gently. “You look like a movie villain.”
“I thought you might say that,” Hal says, still muffled against his palm. Like he’s speaking from another room. “You know, people have also told me I behave like one.”
Jake rolls his eyes, but he laughs. There it is. “Oh, leave it out,” he says quietly. His hand slips down a bit, cupping what’s left of Hal’s banged up jaw, and his eyes flicker over his face. “I’m trying to figure out where your lips would be. This… This is the real challenge. I have it so hard.”
“Yeah, you’re a real explorer, English,” Hal says, and again, the last few syllables are muffled, but not because of any hands. As it turns out, it didn’t take Jake very long to figure out where his lips would be. Hal plays one of his quieter laugh tracks as Jake presses his mouth against the speaker in the lower third of his face. Then he quiets down and curls a hand around Jake’s neck, to make it feel at least a little more like a kiss.
“Android kisses are so fucking tubular,” Jake mutters, and to Hal’s amusement and absolute delight, he just keeps going. He’s going to get spit on the speaker membrane. Hal couldn’t care less.
ship dirkjohn
word count 689
warnings language, referenced parent death
rated T
written for the prompt word “jail” --- dirk and john go on a date in france. it is very romantic.
John will not stop fucking giggling. It’s the low kind, barely audible, certainly not to anyone but Dirk. He’s pressing a fist to his mouth too, wheezing into it occasionally when he lets his raspy voice take a little break. Dirk digs his fingers deeper into the disconcertingly sticky bench they’re both sitting on.
“John, will you stop already,” he murmurs, even if he doesn’t really mean it. He doesn’t… He doesn’t want John to stop laughing. Not after what he’s been through, certainly.
But a prison cell still seems like a weird place for a giggle fit.
“Sorry!” John whispers, and when Dirk turns his head he watches him press his lips together and stare at the floor, obviously trying very hard. It looks like he’s about to turn blue in the face when he erupts in giggles again, eyes squeezing shut and both hands pressing to his face, pushing his glasses askew. He even pulls his feet up the floor and his knees to his chest, curling in on himself as he shakes with laughter, and after a few more gasps, he tips to the side until his shoulder bumps into Dirk’s. Dirk sighs loudly and doesn’t move.
“You are not sorry.”
“I am not sorry,” John gets out between dry wheezes. “I just can’t believe you tried to fuck a statue at the Louvre.”
“I did not try to,” Dirk starts saying loudly, then realizes how the guards are looking at him as soon as he does, and tries to remember what he learned about voice regulation. He hisses, “I did not try to fuck a statue. You pushed me.”
“I did no such thing!” John proclaims with his voice breaking first into falsetto, then another wave of giggles. “I sure told the cops I was just innocently standing by while you were getting your moves on with Hercules or whoever that was.”
“Neptune,” Dirk hisses. “That was Neptune, and yes, your goddamn lies are what got us here, you ass. I didn’t even know you spoke French that well.”
“You know, Egbert is a french name,” John says, dropping the T at the end of his own last name as he says it.
“It is not.”
“Yes it is! I’m french.”
“You’re a scrotum with glasses is what you are.”
“Yes, and that’s very french.”
Dirk groans and leans his head back against the rough wall. “Ugh, I bet it’s still going to be hours until Lalonde gets here to bail us out. I can’t believe I’ll be stuck here with the world’s giggliest son of a bitch until I die.”
Of course, John lets out another series of hoarse giggles, and then his hand closes warmly around Dirk’s. Dirk squints at him from the corners of his eyes, and John is grinning widely. “Good date?” he says.
Sighing, Dirk squeezes his hand. “Good date,” he says softly. He hesitates for a little, then adds. “It’s good to see you laugh.”
John smiles next to him, looking down at their hands as he starts to play with Dirk’s fingers. “Dad would’ve appreciated the prank.”
“I’m sure he would have,” Dirk says slowly. It’s been hard for him, trying to figure out the right things to say to a boyfriend that grieves over the loss of his father. He’s never been good at the whole empathy thing, but he does know that it has all been way harder for John, so he does his best. “I dunno if he would have appreciated landing our asses in french jail, but it sure makes for a good story.”
“Oh, are you kidding? You think the man that got kicked out of Cirque du Soleil, for life, wouldn’t appreciate me landing us in jail?” When John looks up again, he’s grinning, and Dirk’s entire chest feels warm. “He’d be so proud of me.”
“I’m sure he would,” Dirk says. He makes sure that the guards outside their barred door aren’t looking, then he leans in and presses a kiss to John’s lips. He didn’t know his father that well. But he knows that he himself is proud of John.
ship haljake / jakehal
word count 1,069
warnings none
rated T
thief!au for the prompt word “gift”
The box is on your bedside table when you wake up. You’re sitting up, staring at it blearily, your tired mind processing what this means. Once you realize that there is a fucking box in your apartment which you didn’t bring here which means somebody broke in, you whip your head around to the window. It’s an automatic motion, and it is wide open, your curtains waving softly from the morning breeze, but you’re on the twelfth floor. There’s nobody that could climb this high and hop in through your window while you’re asleep in the same room, drop off a box right next to your head and piss off again without you noticing. That’s just not feasible.
Well, except for two people, you suppose.
One of them being you. You could do it. You’re by far the best burglar this city has to offer, if anyone were to ask you, that is. The crème de la crème. You could pull this stunt.
You, and your nemesis.
As you try to turn your head towards the cardboard box again, your gaze slips instead to the visitor in your bed. The one you actually invited. Jake is fast asleep, looking as graceless as ever. Hair tousled, mouth hanging open, stubble poking from his chin, one arm thrown over his forehead. Sunlight is creeping into the room, slow and steady, but of course that doesn’t wake him up. Of course someone coming into your goddamn apartment also didn’t wake him up.
Useless.
You were talking to him about them, last night. About your nemesis. Jake knows about your lucrative pastime, about the heists you pull in museums, banks, expensive stores around the city, sometimes around the whole state. You never tried to hide it from him, didn’t see the necessity in it. You two are… Well, you’re fucking, mostly, and if you like each other then that’s not something you ever talk about, and that gave you enough mental leverage to feel secure in telling him the truth. If he ever ratted you out, you could easily take him the fuck down. That was your stance.
And also seeing his eyes light up and his face contort into an expression of pure joy when you gave him the opportunity to loudly ramble about heist movies and how cool it is to go against the system like that… Maybe that was worth it anyway.
He’s cute. A little stupid, but cute, and good enough in bed to keep him around. Especially when he thinks that you’re the most awesome thief the world has ever seen.
And of course he also thinks that it’s, quote, bombastic that you have a nemesis. There is another thief in this town, and they’re almost as good as you, making headlines that rival yours, sometimes robbing places you had picked out just before you can go and act out your own plans. You figure it’s coincidence, there’s only so much the city has to offer after all, but it still annoys you a little. Because you could have done it better, and then they get the public reaction to a heist that you could have aced so beautifully.
You’re breaking into a museum tomorrow night, if everything goes according to plan. You told Jake about that too, enjoying the way he was lying in your bed, all fucked out and still watching you talk with bright green eyes, nodding at all the right times when you told him about the little statue you wanted to steal. It’s a depiction of Icarus, something you’ve been after for a while, something you wouldn’t even sell to anyone but keep right in your apartment. You’ve just been doting on it, and you’re going to lose your goddamn mind if that nemesis of yours somehow manages to get to it first.
Jake grunts and shifts in his sleep. You tear your gaze away from him and back to your nightstand, carefully extending one hand to touch the cardboard. The thought that this might be an assassination attempt crosses your mind briefly, until you see the little card attached to the top. It’s handwritten, but you don’t recognize the scrawl.
A gift for you!
With love,
your favorite rival.
Something in your chest budges weirdly. No, they wouldn’t try to kill you. That’s not how thief rivalries work. But then what the hell did they…
When you take a deep breath, Jake behind you sighs as well. You straighten your back and open the nightstand drawer to pull out the knife you keep there. Carefully, you cut open the packaging tape, and unfold the box with calm, but cautious fingers.
It’s Icarus.
It’s… It’s your statue.
You open your mouth, as if to ask him, where the fuck he came from, how the fuck he got here. Your fingers feel numb when you take him, examining with wide eyes -- it’s the real deal, it’s the exact thing you were planning to steal tomorrow. In mint condition. Right here, in your hands.
You hear Jake shift again, and freeze.
You told nobody else about how much you want this. You’ve never even targeted the museum. There was no way for your nemesis to know that it’s this precise Icarus you’ve been wanting to steal for ages. The only one you ever told ---
“So?” Jake says behind you. You flinch more at how deep and raspy his voice gets in the morning than at the cold realization running down your spine. His lips are chapped when they press against the nape of your neck warmly. “Is it everything you dreamed of?”
You turn, just a bit, just enough to look at him. The morning sun is illuminating him from behind, shining through his dark locks like a halo. Your mouth is still open. “You,” is all you get out, accusatory, and Jake laughs. He pecks another kiss to your cheek and then drops on his back so heavily it makes your bed creak.
“Surprise,” he says. You watch in awe as he yawns. “Oh, I’ll go back to sleep. I had a busy night.”
You breathe in, and then you breathe in again. What the fuck.
“What the fuck,” you say.
Icarus is small and light in your hand. Jake stretches his arms above his head and gives an utterly relaxed groan as he sprawls across your mattress. He has never been more attractive.
fun slice of life drabble to the prompt word “dice” :>
“Hey. Yo.”
Karkat tries to zero his vision in on his tomatoes. Really get that tunnel going, magically make dark borders appear in his peripheral vision.
“Dude. Yo, dude.”
Okay, no, if he keeps doing this he’s pretty sure he’s going to pass out.
“Hey, man.”
He whips his head up instead and gets a little dizzy. “What?” he barks, as quietly as someone can bark, while his eyes adjust to the quick movement and he realizes he maybe just snapped at the guy at the table next to him while accidentally looking several inches to his left.
The man is short, with bleached hair falling into his eyes under thick rimmed glasses. He’s wearing an apron that says kiss the cook with an arrow pointing downwards, but the arrow seems to be deliberately too long, so it’s pointing at the floor and not at his crotch. He himself is pointing two fingers of the same hand in Karkat’s direction and says, “You’re holding the knife wrong.”
“What?” Karkat hisses again, shooting the teacher of this cooking class a quick look, but she seems preoccupied with other students that are definitely doing worse than him. Then he glances at his hand holding the knife. “I am not holding the knife wrong. You can’t hold knives wrong, they’re fucking knives. You just grab them. It’s not fucking hard, what do I look like, a dumbass?”
“No, you just look like a cute guy trying his best,” he says, and Karkat can tell he was trying to be smooth about it, but he’s mumbling by the end of the sentence, and his neck grows several shades darker. He’s still fighting through it like a champ, shuffling over to Karkat’s table and very carefully wrapping one icy cold hand around his wrist. “See, you gotta loosen up. You’re all stiff. Relax.”
“Stop touching me, I have a knife,” Karkat says, but most of the venom disappears from his voice when the guy lets go immediately and mumbles out a sorry. Karkat rolls his eyes and casts his abandoned table a glance. His tomatoes are diced perfectly. Like actual dice. Karkat’s pieces look like he was just blindly stabbing at them until they broke apart. “Fine, okay. Show me.”
“There we go,” the guy says softly, and then he goes through a series of convoluted explanations about what Karkat is supposed to do with his hand, which Karkat absolutely doesn’t understand. He’s pretty sure they’re mostly made up anyway, because it literally cannot be this complicated to just hold a goddamn knife right. To both of their luck though, the man’s hand is back on his and the way he’s showing the correct movements to Karkat actually helps, way better than whatever the hell he talked about.
“Hey, why are you here if you’re so good at all this?” Karkat asks when his hand is finally his own again, and he carefully tries to dice another tomato. It still looks completely skewered, but maybe a little bit more rectangular than his other tries.
“To pick up dudes,” the guy says without missing a beat. Karkat immediately looks up to glare at him, and raises the knife.
“I swear to--”
“No, no, geez, relax,” he says, holding his hands up in defense. There’s the hint of a smile playing around his lips. “I’m friends with Jane. Your teacher, I mean. I’m just hanging out.”
“Oh, alright,” Karkat says. Huffing, he goes back to torturing his tomato. He stabs it a few more times, wondering if he can get away with acting like he’s doing this badly on purpose, to annoy the other. Then he says, “Well, you can give me your stupid phone number anyway, smartass.”
fandom homestuck
ship davekat
word count 1,177
warnings light angst, referenced child abuse!
rated T
au, written to the prompt word “autumn”
You watch the leaves outside the window tumble to the ground like the world is in slow motion. It’s only a handful of them, as if even the trees are reluctant to acknowledge this summer’s end.
