quick little drabble i actually wrote last night but i went back and edited it today because i thought of something to ease it a bit? cut back on aftertaste and ya
spook/bitter, dumb not... sexual... weird comfort ? fic i guess i dunno what this is
Sso what? He muttered to himself, head cocked into his shoulder to keep his phone up as he adjusted and re-adjusted strings that looked like they disappeared under his hands. (He'd gotten used to the tricks his mind played on him, though when one had snapped and gone missing it'd resulted in a short spiral of fear and anger and various other emotions until Rocky mentioned the legitimately missing string.) He didn't care. The kid was just some dumbass roped up with the authorities and the healthcare system, taking the pills and bullshit the doctors fed to him and befriending corporate dogs. It wasn't even any sort of shock that he'd end up on the bridge, with that kind of miserable lifestyle.
But issn't evveryone elsse who buyss into that bullsshit happy? He couldn't tell if his string broke, grunting in frustration at how swimheaded he had become, trying to pin down a string and watching the others disappear into his blind spots. He trusstss too eassily. Like a proper pawn, something in the back of his mind itched, but Spook simply put his guitar away. Maybe hiss missery issn't about that. His hoodie was probably too warm for the weather, but it wasn't like he had many other options- he was sure by now Bitter had seen enough scarring to not be surprised in the least, but the other, more pointed stares from the happily deluded? Fuck that shit.
Another voice in the back of his head creeped up, non-nauseating, and he recognised it as his conscious, the dusty thing croaking out some shit about how he should save him, not from capitalism or anything but himself right now. A brilliant fucking idea, really, if he hadn't been mounting his bike by the time the ancient voice piped itself up. He wasn't sure why, either, exactly why he had decided to do anything more than slam his phone shut, though he chewed on the idea that maybe there was some similarity between the two of them. Maybe all it would take is one slip up from the corporate dogs he bathed with to get him to finally realise, to stop trusting what they fed him so easily, to actually fucking question shit instead of taking it laying down in some desperate attempt at whatever the kid was striving for.
Somehow he'd already had his number, shrugging and saying the person must have gotten it from a show or Rocky or something, and he'd offered the younger boy his reply if something had gone wrong with his piercing. He was pretty sure at no point did his offer of a reply cover "standing at the edge of a bridge waiting for someone to pick up" and by all means, he shouldn't have answered it, shouldn't have stayed on the line the entire fucking bike ride there, listening to just the wind and sea spray and crowing birds for what must have been 10 minutes. There was a short inhalation from the other end before the call ended abruptly, and Spook didn't tell himself to get there any faster, why should he, but he managed to get there too soon all the same.
Bitter seemed to be putting most of his willpower into standing against the wind, and Spook simply watched him for a short while. His feet shuffled, and if he had been going for the stereotypical suicidal teen overlooking his fate look, he had quite a bit to rectify. He clearly tried to look down into the expanse, but hair whipping into his eyes and wind burning at them kept him wiping his face and burying his nose and face beneath his palms. He wasn't crying, though, and for a while Spook wondered if he had come all the way out here for nothing. The kid could very well have just picked up his own overturned bike, mounted it, and rode home at the rate he was going. He wasn't dedicated, and maybe that was why he had called Spook in the first place.
"Are you evven going to do sshit?" The wind ate the message, garbled it into something that must have sounded less goading and much more… whatever the fuck it was that made the smaller of the two shrug in a nearly relieved manner. Something with a taste of "yea" whispered in the wind and a chasing ghost of "until you asked," before there was a sincere, honest, mouth-moving-non-hallucinated reply of "Probably not."
He bit his lip, finally, actually, looking his part in the Hollywood bullshit film, body stiff and staring downward on the railing he had caught himself between. His body still looked ready to throw itself to the wind, if he hadn't started to snake a leg back under and around the first railing, back to the pedestrian path.
"Sso why the hell did you call me? Not your dog ffriend?" Bitter shrugged again, picking up his bike and dusting rust off of his hands from where he'd been gripping the decrepit railings. "It'ss not like I'm the one who would give a sshit iff you did it or not. I barely ffucking know you."
"Yea. I know… you'd probably get some weirdass boner from it or whatever the fuck." It was still a little bit unclear, the voices of the dead whispering to him on the wind, but Spook shook his head and growled slightly, narrowing his eye at the other teenager, wanting to beat the shit out of him for wasting his time. "You also wouldn't call the fucking cops and make it a hugeass deal or anything like that. … Besides I'm pretty sure fucking throwing myself off this fucking bridge would be a shit idea. I promised you my intestines when I died or whatever, right."
Spook gave a short nod of confirmation, a bit perplexed at how someone so easily swayed by society and it's rules could sound so serious in a way unaffected by them.
"Yeah. No ffuckin' russh though, at leasst givve me time to clear out a place." He snorted, glancing back at the younger boy as he fidgeted with his bike for a moment.
There was something in the short contact their eyes met with, something raw and powerful and betraying his status as a sheep in the herding system. Understanding of how fucked the world was, maybe, or some other vague point neither of them could decipher, but regardless of it's importance, Spook simply continued to cast his gaze towards his own bike. He could worry about it later, if he decided to, (and he was fairly sure he wouldn't) but the music store was on the way back to his house, so fuck it if it wasn't worth biking down there to steal a pack of spare strings to sit on the other packs he'd stashed around his room. They were closing soon, and Bitter was a fair distance away already, anyway.
Spook could count his good days on one hand, if he was lucky.
