@altaridem ( Everything needed lulling to sleep. )
❛❛is that what you’re calling it,❜❜ ronan says, flatly, breath whistling down the neck of his nearly empty beer bottle. ‘lulling’ is a word for songs sung at bedtime to children with drooping eyelids, or soft-sweet nothings from manipulative mouths in hostile conversations. not the little pills rattling in kavinsky’s palm-warmed screw-top bottle, not the violent way ronan’s head met the headrest after the first one hit his stomach. now, on the rapidly cooling roof of kavinsky’s mitsubishi, ronan’s almost past his threshold for arguing semantics, which is to say, he’s getting drunk and tired, despite fitful intervals of sleep. trinkets of varying degrees of usefulness litter the dusty fairground — none of them a camaro, except for the tiny one, key-chain-sized, burning a hole into ronan’s pocket. guilt worms its way around his guts, fizzling as it soaks in alcohol and bile. ❛❛shit, if you know how to spell that, you should let mr. milo know. he might be surprised enough to let you pass the semester.❜❜
lynch pulls words apart like a hungry dog, starved for meaning. or maybe in the years of wagging his tail around dick gansey's legs he's been able to catch a few scrap brain cells fallen from the table. lynch shouldn't be a follower, k finds. it makes him slow and dull, and neither of those suit him.
kavinsky lets his head roll onto his shoulder like a careless bottle, his sideways gaze swashing lazily over the brim of his sunglasses. the simmering heat of early summer seems to slow him down like everyone else, but something inside kavinsky is activating. a prelude to the fire. he gives lynch his sluggish, suffocating, dark-molasses-smile.
“ you didn't hear me right. i'm awake, if i'm in here, ” he taps the side of his temple “ or not. everything else needs to, y'know, ”
he takes his index finger from the side of his skull and points it out towards the world, like pulling a gun from a dream. in his imagination, he has pulled the trigger countless times.
there is nothing soft about sleep for them, it's dark feathers and fire every night, red eyes and frozen muscles every morning. kavinsky plummets into unconsciousness and comes out half-alive on the other side. what about that is fair?
the valley's breath slows as the last sliver of light sinks behind the horizon. k sits up from his comfortable position to put his face right next to lynch's. in the darkness, half of his expression is a guess.
“ just for once, what if we stayed awake and put the world to sleep instead. ”