93 Blue and mutt? Rarepares!
probably one of the rarest of pairs, honestly. a bit of an intro into this: i may or may not have taken liberty with the prompt, and this may or may not be less of a ship and more of a “slim is here and oh let’s throw blue in last moment”
WARNINGS (yeah, this has warnings): thoughts of death, nihilism, unhealthy mindsets, mention of physical violence (nothing too graphic), possible relation to unhealthy relationships
He wished that he had his coat. Then again, after what had happened, he was lucky that they hadn’t killed him. The coat was the least of his worries right now. His hands trembled slightly, and with a glare and focus Slim stilled them, sighing as he leaned his head back against the wall.
Though they wouldn’t kill him, would they? They hadn’t been pushed far enough to kill from what he had done. And he’d done quite a lot. But no, everyone had their breaking point, and Slim considered himself rather adept at finding them. So he knew that there would be consequences for what he did, but that he wouldn’t die over it.
He tried not to be disappointed by that fact.
Being weaned from violence wasn’t as simple as just saying “Hey! Try to not stab people anymore!” Not that stabbing was really his thing in the first place, but the others seemed to think that just going cold turkey was the best method. It had worked for his brother and Red and Fell, after all. Surprise surprise: he was out of the norm.
Part of him was glad that they had just decided to put him in the shed until he calmed down. It wasn’t like it was really his fault, of course. He told them that just sitting around waiting would make things build up, and sure enough, it had.
He needed an outlet, and the things said by the therapist that they made him go to weren’t really helping. Everyone had gotten pissed when he’d started breaking shit or tearing up paper, and after a while he’d gotten bored of doing both anyways.
There wasn’t a lot that he could do but sit around and wait for his senses to overload once more. He had tried to get better, and it hadn’t worked, and now he was just tired. Tired of trying, of dealing with this…
Funny how he almost missed Swapfell sometimes. The Taleverses had a million and a half ways to work through everything. When he was underground, there were only two. Kill or be killed.
The door creaked open, and Slim flicked his gaze up before moving it away, looking down and picking at the raised and off-color scars on his bones from badly-set breaks and unhealed gashes. Shuffling footsteps paused just inside the door before they started to make their way towards him, slow and uncertain.
Navigating through the mess that he had made, for lack of a better description, would be fucking difficult. They did lock him in here, he reminded himself, and in the smaller space he had to find something to take out his energy on. It was what they deserved, anyways. Or maybe it wasn’t, and that was just his mind grasping in a desperate attempt to shift the blame from himself; for his sanity, he rationalized.
Either way, it wasn’t his fault. It was his mind or it was others, vague “it”s and “they”s that gave him something higher to focus positive and negative thoughts on. Slim realized that he was waxing poetic - or maybe waning, if introduction of logical thought couldn’t be included in the poetic-ness of it - and promptly decided that it was bullshit.
The footsteps stopped just beside him and didn’t move after that, so Slim looked up to see Blue standing there, arms crossed over his chest- not in disappointment or defensiveness, but more for comfort. Neither said anything. It was fairly hard to find something to say when standing in front of a “friend” who was suffering from a mental breakdown and responded by lashing out in violence.
And it was even harder to find anything worthwhile to say when you’re sitting on the ground in front of someone you had tried to stab when they had tried to calm you in the middle of your nervous breakdown.
Maybe he should have felt guilty. But he didn’t. And that was the thing, the main point behind it all. Slim didn’t feel guilty. And why should he? He had found something that had worked in the past, and then everyone decided to pull the floor out from under him, watching him as he stumbled and fell in confusion and watching as the others got up and made themselves comfortable, but here he was, literally and metaphorically sitting on the floor and watching all this happen around him as they watched him with microscopic scrutiny.
Sometimes, he wondered what would happen if he painted himself some bullshit color and waved his arms around above his head, screaming “Hey! Guess fucking what! I literally have no idea what’s going on!”
But that was a stupid idea, and he was pretty sure that they would find him before he finished painting himself fully and ruin the whole joke, or maybe they would see it as some kind of cry for help. Whatever. It was fun to think about.
Blue moved, looking uncomfortable, and Slim realized that oh, he’d been staring at him as the thoughts ran rampant through his head, and that kind of thing tended to make people uncomfortable. He looked away, not bothering to apologize, and the release of his gaze seemed to be what Blue needed to move closer, sliding down the wall until he was sitting beside him. He still didn’t say anything, and the silence went from uncomfortable, to wanted, to boring, to uncomfortable all within the span of a few seconds.
“What do you want,” Slim said, because he wasn’t actually asking since to ask is to want an answer. He just wanted to break the silence, but he’d started on the topic, and so now he had to continue it. “Do you want me to apologize or some shit?”
No response was given, but Slim knew that the answer to that question was a definite yes. He scoffed a laugh, because he didn’t want to apologize. “You want me to- to just go and fucking hop right onto the roller coaster of life with a bouquet of fucking roses, singing Kumbaya?”
His mind reminded him that no, Blue had said nothing of the sort, and just what the fuck kind of metaphor was that in the first place? Fuck off, he thought in return.
Slim dropped his voice into something thick, letting his face twist into something afraid, heat prickling at his eyes. The best way to beg for money, he had found, but it typically only worked when you were a kid. “This isn’t who I am. This... this awful thing that I’ve done, this thing I’ve done to hurt you and everyone else, it’s not me. I can do better, be better, I swear. This was a mistake, I really am trying.” He prattled off a list of half-apologies, managing to keep the act up until he reached the final one, sob moving into a bark of a laugh.
He swept his hand down his face before moving it to arc theatrically in front of his body. Fuck the police, he thought. His mind, the damned, half-logical thing, reminded him that the thought literally had nothing to do with anything that was going on.
It was silent again, and Slim thought that Blue was about to get up and leave before he spoke, voice soft but steady.
“You tried to kill me,” he said. Not accusing, just a statement.
“I did,” he agreed. They continued to sit there. Slim grabbed the bottom of his sweater, picking out an end of yarn that was poking out, breaking it off and twirling it around his finger. You had to be remorseful to apologize, right? The thing was that he wasn’t. Or maybe he was. It was hard to think at the current moment. He was holding a very interesting piece of yarn.
Wow, he thought, I am really fucked up. His mind agreed with him.
A weight settled on his arm, and he looked down to see that Blue had leaned his head against him, gaze fixed on a point of the wall just in front of them.
“I forgive you,” he said, said, always saying things.
Slim waited for him to move away, and when he didn’t, he swallowed. This wasn’t half bad, he thought. He’d probably be fine to do it again some other time when the atmosphere wasn’t so shrouded in awkwardness. It was always fairly awkward when you were in the same room as someone that you had once stabbed- or someone you had intended to stab. The idea of the stabbing was there either way.
He needed a smoke.
He was really, really fucked up. Admission is the first step on the road to recovery, his mind said.
Fuck off, he thought.
