[ FORT ]: sender builds a blanket fort for the receiver following a long and difficult day. - Taojin @ Rue ofc
so you had a bad day meme ( accepting ) + @synchronick // tao jin
There’s something to be said for Tao Jin’s persistence... that faith he had, unshakeable, despite how many times she’s fallen, disappointed him; he holds out a palm, examines at scraped knees, repeats, all the way back to her that she try to avoid the MAKESHIFT DISASTER that she represented. Damn. Take a breath, hold the course, she gets up - she tries again. For someone who feels like, barely older than her, it feels kind of comforting how the both of them are just spiralling out of control, the way most addicts are, honestly... it’s almost as if someone compresses a lifetime worth of sadness for them to consume, for them to grow into, shoes that they’ll never fill, they’re cast out and cast down from society. Degenerate failures, as if, their weight meant nothing, but fuck, America, right?
They don’t meet like she used to with Ali for pancakes; the diner feels like it’s his space, him on rainy days on Christmas Eve as they both pretend that they’re not reminiscing over the people that they’ve lost to their own struggles with sobriety. And in him, only then, does Rue realize that PERHAPS EVEN SUCCESS will not matter... people only ever hold onto the worst of who you’ve been, they watch you, crawl, and can’t ever picture you as anything other than being someone who spends their lives on their knees. But can’t they be more? Aspire for better? Or is the hard truth that this is their own, reformed punishment. Drugs, alcohol, or not, it’s the things you do in your desperation that burn behind people’s eyes, and no matter how much you might want to take back the horrors that you’ve inflicted upon them, you never really get it all back, do you?
It’s the topic of discussion, as she fumbles with a lighter and tries to smoke, a makeshift, hold on, high, that she uses to ween herself as she tries not to imagine the awkward process of going back to school. “I fucking HATE THIS PLACE.” she says, as if that’s the source of her problems, though, he knows better than that, doesn’t he? Said the girl who said she didn’t plan on being here long - but maybe that’s a discussion for another time, another place, watching the smoke as it filters past her lips, and floats up, up, up. His hand, linking loose about the baggy part of her sweater, the things she uses to hide the general sunken form of her figure, all bones, all depression. Startled, almost, given the way they connect, but rarely come to touch, but, he takes her inside, her place, but he’s got the key for the window latch by now.
If that ain’t trust, what is?
And Rue isn’t fucking sure what to expect by going in like this, her room made and transformed, dark eyes that widen with a surprise and a shock - WHAT’S THIS, if not a transformation of childhood? That cigarette is still smouldering outside, but there is delight in this, Rue, on her knees as she crawls through where the light filters in, knowing he’s there behind her as a chair upholds a sheet, as she lays out flat, beneath the blue-tinged view of the underside of a comforter. “Did you? Really do this for me?” it’s touching, and she’s all awkward and all pleased, and in the dim light, her hand reaches to find his, however anxious it ties her stomach into knots, and, wait why is she so nervous again? But she squeezes, anyways, her voice is lost in the dark, his eyes is all she sees. “Thank you. Like. Fucking seriously. This is really god-damned amazing.”
