curse/bless

You, Too, Could've Been Insane Four Years Ago

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:54:52 GMT

In my quest to find accurate dates of former employment for myself, I had to remember a scene in which I wiped my ass with pages from my best-friend's American History book. That was the day I quit, I remember. I drove up Angeles Crest after picking her up, I was sobbing and threatening to throw myself off a mountain. I sobered up and realized I could just quit, because fuck them, and she promptly ripped her history book up because she hated the class and was only taking it because I sorta maybe forced her.

Because I remembered wiping my ass with her history book (I had to pee, so I guess I didn't technically wipe my ass), right before this strange fog settled around us and it started raining, I realized I could check my old grades to find the right semester. Semester uncovered, I cross-checked it with an old livejournal of mine. LO AND BEHOLD WHAT I FOUND THERE:

the whole of the law. (q_de_coeurs) wrote,
@ 2005-09-12 14:31:00

I hate living. I hate having to do things. I hate having to deal with family. I hate having to think. I hate having to feel anything. I wish I was born retarded. I hope I have cancer. I hope I die soon. I hope my boss fires me. I hope I don't live long enough to finish this semester. I hate trying to fall asleep. I hate my father. I hate my mother. I hate my sister. I hope my brother doesn't grow up to be fucked up because of all the bullshit he has to deal with. I hope this house burns to the fucking groud. I hope the people buying this house are murdered. I hope the people buying this house beat their children. I hope my uncle dies. I hope my dad gets fired. I hope Ray's mom dies. I hate making an effort. I hate wanting things. I hate hoping. I hate the human spirit. I hope no one tries to pity me. I hate people who think they understand. I hate the people that do but do nothing. I hate society. I hope everyone who ever cut their hair to be scene kills themselves. I hope Pete kills himself. I hope people suffer. I hate the phrase "misery loves company." I hope a terrorist attack hits Los Angeles. I hope I die in it. I hope I'm dying. I hope something is exploding my cells. I hate that it's complicated to kill yourself. I hate that I can't quit my job. I hate my boss' stupid face. I hope she drives drunk and kills herself. I hope our store loses enough sales to close. I hate that stupid bitch with the weird voice who bought the pink bear for a shitty party. I hope she realizes how fucked up and insecure she sounded. I hope Holly hates college. I hope I never have to go away to college. I hope I don't get into UCSB. I hope the end of the world is coming. I hate every christian I've ever known. I hate that I don't have enough guts to push harder. I hate that my skin doesn't bleed easily. I hope no one remembers me. I hope there isn't a hell. I hope there isn't a heaven. I fucking hate any and all notions of god. I hope people hate me. I hope people think I'm stupid. I hope professors think I'm annoying. I hope I never have to write another fucking paper about something that doesn't matter. I hate not knowing what's going to happen when we die. I hope the human soul is a lie we tell ourselves to feel better. I hate that no one will listen. I hate every fucking thing in the entire fucking world. I hope Pete kills himself. I hope people kill themselves because of it. I hope Harry dies in the end. I hate my life. I hope that it really is over when you die. I hope hell isn't too bad. I hate everyone who's ever tried to love and leave me. I hate drugs and what they do to people. I hope Skyler isn't the one who finds my body. I hope my mom does. I hope she hates herself because of it. I hate that this is the way my mind thinks. I hate worrying. I hate studying. I hate thinking I have to study. I hate people without compassion. I hate myself. I hope JPL blows up with everyone inside. I hope there is a revolution in this fucking country. I hope the US falls like Rome. I wish I was someone else. I wish I could've been born in the Romantic Period. I hate remembering.

lols taken from HERE.

In conclusion: Was I always this hateful? Am I still? Do I secretly think terrible, homicidal things about you when you think I'm actually nice and friendly and impossibly nerdy despite my huge tits? JK, THEY AREN'T THAT HUGE. But seriously. I was almost shocked to see this from myself. I always manage to forget how truly fucking crazy I used to be. I once took this class in undergrad called THE POWER OF NEGATIVE THINKING. It was nothing like this, but god damn.

Anyway, I'm currently planning to sell my soul to the devil (read: APPLY TO A MINIMUM WAGE JOB, EFFECTIVELY ERASING MY YEARS OF UNDERGRAD AND GRADUATE EDUCATION BECAUSE GOD DAMN I NEED SOME MONEY AND PROSTITUTION IZ HARD), so I need to find out when I worked for that bastion of self-expression when self-expression iz hard: HELLMARK! Sorry, I mean Hallmark. Those bastards fucked up my cuticles and all I had to show for it was some resume experience, a slew of tickets to see my favorite bands, and a beautiful pearl white Nintendo SP (LIMITED EDITION, BITCHES).

Yes, I'm updating at 1:45 a.m. to tell you this. Also, you know that story that I'm writing? SOON, YA'LL. Chapter 15 is in the works. I mean, it's been in the works for two months now, but now it's getting real hot and heavy.

Hatake Kakashi: TRUE FUCKING LOVE

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:55:16 GMT

I'm actually farther along than 108, but this scene has been lodged in my brain for the last couple hours. IT IS BEAUTIFUL ANGST WAITING TO HAPPEN. I love you, Kakashi, omg.

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:42:57 GMT

I can understand the desire for revenge. I can understand how it builds a nest out of mean scraps, half-forgotten things, and grows until it fits underneath your entire skin. I know what lust for revenge feels like, but I have a weak heart that's not made for hating. I'm bad at keeping grudges or saying things convincingly with anger (there are always tears, my mouth doing all the talking while my heart protests). I am not made that way, not even a little. I am too soft (?) or too sentimental, always giving the benefit of the doubt, always searching out that last shred of goodness. I was never an optimist, so what is it in me that does this? I have no faith in people, but believe in a person until there are no other options. The human capacity for indifference, the human capacity for knowing another, how they are at odds with each other.

I don't understand people who feel no love for anything. I understand walls and building them up and making them necessary, but to tear down your angels, to hurt your friends, to kill the parts of you that beat. I can understand and I can't understand. I can understand and I can't agree. Wrongness doesn't mean anything, doing the wrong thing has ceased to matter. But how can you stand against the sort of person you used to be? Maybe some people hate themselves and want to make themselves miserable (math, toxic relationships), and that can be a reason for adding to the list of things worth exploding over. Things Worth Exploding Over: 1)parents, 2)childhood, 3)finances, 4)relationships, 5)the death of everything you hold dear, 6)being a hypocrite a hypocrite a hypocrite, 7)destroying the only things left, 8)making them hate you. Who can add to a list like that? People with no hope, I guess.

What is this even about? Naruto, that's what this is about. I don't have a heart made for hate, but I have one that is convinced easily, is bound up in things easily. I suspect it is a medical condition, caring so fucking much about things that don't exist, but I really just can't understand how Sasuke can be such a fucking stupid bastard. How the fuck can he be such a fucking stupid bastard. Much in the same way that people I know can be stupid fucking bastards, and I love them so much that it kills me, kills me to be angry with them, to force myself to be angry with them, and it becomes a dual wound. Them hurting you, and you hurting yourself.

Also, I am sick in the way that, if untreated, causes disfigurement and eventually death. It's a hard concept to deal with, I'm trying my best, but my best is a joke on the best of days. The best medicine aside from real medicine is isolation and 60 episodes of Naruto in two days. I live an exciting and cutting-edge life, kids. Oh, brb, slitting my wrists. (I guess since I'm a depressive I have to add that this last part, the slitting my wrists part, is a joke. Do you know how truly difficult it is to slit your wrists? I guess it would be easier with something with more cutting power than an Exacto knife, a paperclip, a rusty paring knife, a serrated steak knife, or a shaving razor. What's left? A saw? A katana? Excalibur?)

Blah blah blah, time for more Naruto.

Kingdom University: Yes, That Story Again

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:35:18 GMT

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene. The dorm on the right is Sober Living/The Crack House.

Roxas' picnic tables on the bluffs. This is where he walks, coming back to Kingdom after visiting home, to watch the sunset.

There are a lot of setting suns in A Lesser Beauty for several reasons, and this is definitely one of them. There are sunsets, and then there are sunsets. This is one of the better ones I've seen not just there, but anywhere. I timed the drive up so that I'd make it to the bluffs right before sunset, but there was heavy cloud cover and a bunch of fog as I drove up through Santa Barbara. I was worried there wouldn't be anything more than a little glow. I'm glad I was wrong.

Around this stretch of beach is where Axel and Roxas do naughty illegal things. I think a lot of people read this story and feel like it's exaggerated, that real people's lives don't happen this way. I wonder if they've ever been to college. I wonder if they've ever been to college at one of the nation's most lauded party schools. I wonder if they know Santa Barabara was a cultural hub for hippies and beat poets. I wonder if they know what it's like growing up with a killer in your chest, a bastard king in your head. You think it never happened? Think it can't happen? Think again.

THE OPENING SCENE. This is the quad where A Lesser Beauty first starts, Roxas sitting on the concrete bench thing on the right side of the divided wall in the center of the picture. To the left, out of the frame, is the Sluts of Math and Science dorm, the dorm on the left in the frame is The Crack House where Roxas dorms with Zexion on the third floor, the dorm on the right is HPV where Axel dorms with Demyx. The names, while slightly skewed for dramatic effect, aren't as far off as you'd imagine.

On the right: the upper-classmen dorms. On the left: a hotbed of sex, drugs, and loud ass music. The two are separated by a couple yards. The neighboring mile of off campus housing, a smattering of bars, liquor stores, a couple great Mexican places with the awesomest burritos you can ever imagine, is where Little Vista is. That name is slightly changed from the place that actually existed while I was in undergrad there. It's not like some secret (OR IS IT?), the campus is UCSB, the neighboring town is Isla Vista. Imagine a world without adults. Imagine a world where it's okay to put your couch on the roof to watch the hot girls sauntering down the street in the least amount of clothing that's legally possible, surf every day before class, get loaded every night, and score whatever drug you want, whenever you want it, if you know the right people. Isla Vista, a concentrated cell of unreality. It's not real life, and, really, it's not even college.

A close up of the opening scene, Roxas sitting there smoking a Parliament. Later, sitting there with Axel.

The breezeway in the center is what separates Roxas' dorm on the left from Axel's dorm on the right. It's also where Riku shows up later, if you're that far along.

OMG STALKERxCORE. Third floor, last room on the left. The room right there in the center of the picture, that's where Roxas lives. It sounds weird to say it that way, but in order to write the rest of the fucking thing, this is what I have to believe. I needed to see it again (it's been two years), I needed to them there again. Recapture the way it smelled, the way it felt.

We really don't know what we have until it's gone. I wish I could go back, and I don't know if that's me regretting leaving grad school or not. I don't know if that's premature nostalgia or fear of the unknown. It's very beautiful there, but I was so fucked up that I couldn't see beyond myself.

Alas.

The Plan.

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:13:52 GMT

I'm going to the beach for a couple days. This is what we want to happen:

LB15
re-conceptualize living in Japan for a year
try to be cohesive and lucid when I write these fucking things
think seriously about that novel
play guitar on the beach and attract strangers to throw me things (money, tomatoes, etc)
visit UCSB campus and try to avoid colleagues and professors who might try and ask me What I'm Doing Now
stop
breathe

Until right now, right here, I've been operating under this very specific aesthetic that I think is both 1) obtuse and 2) mystifying. It was intentional, with the purpose to dissuade certain sneaky sonsofbitches from thinking they understood things they couldn't possibly understand. I'm going to try really hard to be coherently honest as opposed to on acid honest. There is nothing to be afraid of, and this isn't the place for abstraction anyway. I do enough abstraction in my chest (there is nothing to prove, no one to prove it to). Maybe it had something to do with a real desire to appear more interesting that I actually am (read: inferiority complex).

Some Immediate Goals

read those grad school lit books you have sitting under your dresser (start with Miller)
finish that kirino book before it's due on the 29th because you're out of renewals
write Day 68 before passing out, omg

This was more elaborate and apologetic when I thought about it first. NOW IT IS JUST BABBLING.

The short version: will be gone; will be back if I don't die somehow (Murphy's Law... YOU NEVER KNOW).

In a Letter That Says

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:36:57 GMT

Emotional trauma puts a strain on these three things: 1) creativity 2) self-worth 3) never trusting people ever again. Never, fucking ever again.

And despite already knowing your course of action, knowing exactly which steps to take to keep your head above water, to move on already, dammit, you get stuck in the same maddening cycle. Breathe, drown, breathe, drown.

Do you really think there can be a perfectly pleasant place? A locus amoenus? Or maybe it is the degree of jaded I've become that even the word "perfect" invites ridicule and skepticism. That there is no perfect without rigid control, iron-fisted and clinical with legality, with propriety. Dystopias are so much more interesting, anyway. I was sixteen years old, sitting in a room with no windows at a round table with a pink crayon, and it was something like, "Everyone is happy in the same way." How true is that? Levels of falsity, levels of lying. In this dictionary I'm reading it says, "An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad." AN IMAGINARY STATE. IMAGINARY.

I think it was Palahniuk who said that if you're happy, if you're smiling, then there's something you don't know. It's not imaginary at all. Hello, welcome to reality. Hello, welcome to reality. (Someone said they would roll their eyes, and I wondered how people could be so flippant about bad luck, the car crash aesthetic. I am glad your life is blessed. Please understand that mine is not.) I was seventeen years old, watching something obscene because that's always what knowledge has been for me, THE ROAD TO OBSCENITY, and I thought then that there was so much filth, so much we don't know. I understood the people who believe in things and get angry because they believe in things, who stage protests, who make approximations of Molotov cocktails.

But that's just like saying lawyers can save you. Ostensibly, anything can save you if you explain it well enough. Justification has never been valued by justice, just by by angry idealists. Do you think I would sell my soul? Do you think I give a fuck anymore about what you think? I reject your idea of success, of a good time. You're pathetic is what you are, so blinded by your own prison of luxury that you can't even see past the gilded bars. I pity you. I, who am pitiable, pity you. (This in the face of back-breaking pride, the weight of being full of potential.)

I was twenty one years old and I never thought I could be called cynical. And there I was being accused of bitterness. Callousness. I guess I am callous still, even now. A clinical removal, a depersonalization. I am sorry for being so cruel, for the things I've done. I have broken myself apart for you, at the memory of you. I have ripped myself apart at the seams for you, poured out the violence for you. For you, for you, for you. I am also a liar. And, when I think quietly about it, I even hate you. I loathe your presence in my life, in my heart.

Please just stop, just fucking stop already. This isn't a game; this is my fucking life.

This is clearly the biggest thing I'm carrying with me now, trying hard to smile and be brave. I am not her anymore, the girl who could smile that flavor of derision. I grew a heart and tore down my walls (for you, for you). Is this how you repay me?

I never fully understood it when all my favorite bands sang about never writing another song for you again. That this was the last time, these were the last words. I understand that perfectly now. REAL HEARTBREAK, and I can count how many times: him, her, him, you. I guess in some ways loving him is going to be eternal heartbreak, a continuous strain on my sensibilities. I should save myself. The part after that is "while I still can," but I can't anymore. Too late.

My stomach hurts and you are a worse liar than I am. I don't know what I'm so nervous about all the time (WHAT MUST YOU THINK?) or why there are now these long gaps in between writing here (ARE YOU ROLLING YOUR EYES YET?) when I used to write in here all the time. When the sun is up I'm going to get my shit together, I swear to you I will get my shit together.

"Call me a safe bet, I'm betting I'm not." Jesse Lacey said that. It's not very clever, but it is apt. I love you (SAVE YOURSELF).

/RAGE

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 06:00:19 GMT

I AM TRYING TO UPLOAD THE NEW LB CHAPTER TO FFNET AND IT WON'T LET ME.

FUCK.
THIS.

[edit: 11:11 pm]
/cackle

Found a way around it. Apparently FFnet is having some down time? WE WILL PREVAIL. LB14 at a sexy 6,500 words, posting a little after midnight.

The Hills of Los Angeles are Burning.

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:03:08 GMT

After my last post, the fire spread to the hills above my city. Last night I got a mandatory evacuation call. For two hours I started piling the important stuff, then we got a call that said someone fucked up and only the upper half of the city was being evacuated. Crazy times. I could see the fire zig-zagging across the mountains in front of my house, decided to round up a couple friends and get to higher ground to see it better. These were taken from above the Oakmont Country Club, about a mile and a half behind my house.

To the right, the initial origin of the Station Fire in La Cañada was still burning. A couple kids were chilling and taking pictures, smoking out and drinking beer. A really nice, laissez-faire attitude to their city burning down. Come armageddon, right Morrissey?

My house is to the left of the middle of the picture. The evac site is just up the street from us.

The last number I heard was like 60,000+ acres burning, but I'm sure that number's gone up. I can't breathe, I can't sleep, and god damn I can't take much more bullshit from people who are supposed to be my friends. In other news, you know that story some of you have been reading? I started writing it again today for the first time in two months. I have about 2k and rising.

Midnight, August 28th

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:32:00 GMT

It smells like someone is having a barbecue in my living room. When I was driving home two hours ago, the smoke was so thick that if I was retarded, I might have mistaken it for fog. That picture was taken five miles away in La Cañada. Lots of my close friends live there. If you look for it in the news, they're calling this particular wildfire the "Station Fire." When I last checked, 5,100 acres have burned, 900+ ~~homes~~ mansions evacuated. It's a really nice, very affluent area. Since it's sorta relevant, I guess it's kinda interesting to note that Haley Joel Osment (aka SORA) lived, maybe still lives, in LC along with a slew of other people in the media (Shia LaBeouf, who I've seen around, but I totally don't want to make this about name dropping D:). This is the kind of stuff they won't tell you on the news, the kind of stuff only other people from this area really know.

Do you know what's burning right now? Angeles Crest, my Angeles Crest. My dad loves camping and being in forests and being awesome, so we've been to tons of national parks. I've been in an around Angeles National Park for most of my life. It's not like it's never burned before, but this is the only time it's been this close both literally and metaphorically.

Did you know I just had a birthday? Did you know my dad took me on a picnic in the forest for my birthday?

My dad thought it would be nice to get away for a little, so he took us up the Crest to a picnic area I'd been to tons of times as a kid, but not recently. I'd never realized there was a hiking trail that led down to the water. Skyler caught tadpoles that I petted and screamed at, my dogs ran around smelling things, and it was sweaty. It was fun.

I had dinner scheduled for six, so we came back relatively early. It was clear enough to see Downtown L.A., so I took this while we were winding down the Crest. Yes, that's smog. You see the hills in the foreground? Those are all burning right now. They started burning two days after I was in this exact spot. You see the mountains behind L.A.? That's Palos Verdes. That was burning yesterday, too.

Kahlua cheesecake, omg. Yes, I wished for Axel. I turned a quarter of a century this year (25, oh fuck). Hols bought me something sparkly and expensive and designer and really, really nice. I haven't enjoyed the first half of my twenties, and I'm resisting the urge to say something spectacularly negative here. Blah, blah, I had an awesome night of awesomeness.

Around 1am, all sweaty and makeup smeary and tired as fuck from celebrating. See how I'm almost smiling? That never happens! On the 25th Skyler treated me to an extended birthday gift involving District 9 (I liked it despite some melodrama) and copious amounts of candy and a Zefron film (his choice, heh). When we were driving back from the theatre, I got a text from a friend telling me that Angeles National Forest was on fire. I was like WHAT I WAS JUST THERE. Turns out the fire was in Azusa, about thirty minutes east. We couldn't see the smoke, so it wasn't a big deal. On the 26th I hung out with friends and had another birthday dinner because that's how we roll. A friend got me a motherfucking Sora necklace (floating around on my twitter), and all was awesome with the world. Until we drove back into La Cañada and I was like WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? There was a giant plume of smoke rising from Angeles Crest, directly across the 210 freeway from us and visible from the top of my friend's driveway. We scanned the internet quickly, found out 30 acres were burning, 10% containment. I went home tripping out. Because WTF, right? I'd just been there the other day. Since then, the night of the 26th, it's been an increasingly horrific nightmare.

Around 12pm on the 27th my dad said he could see flames over the ridge. This is taken from my front yard. I left for work around 5pm, and it looked similar to this, just smokier.

Came in from work around 7:45pm and saw this as I drove up the 2 freeway. This is taken from the top of my back porch. I started getting nervous. This is my forest we're talking about. In 2005 I did NaNoWriMo and most of the setting takes place in La Cañada and Angeles Crest. If I ever finish LB, there's a scene where Axel and Roxas are in a place lifted from a real place up in the Crest. I love this place. I love it. And now it is on fucking FIRE.

Around 11pm on the 27th. I'm in La Crescenta, just around the curve of a mountain. Once you drive the five miles into LC, sometimes lovingly referred to as Cockañada, you get the picture at the top of this post, right off the now closed 2 highway leading up the Crest. Tonight, the 28th, it was even worse, but I left my camera at home.

And I don't know what else. It's 5am, I can't sleep. It smells like smoke. Why is this happening? This isn't fair. Life's not fair (...like that Papa Roach song?). I ate a green mango and it reminded me of the Philippines. One of my dogs has been sick. Today I thought about going back to grad school. People are mad at me. My dad had some good news about this microbiology position, now I just need a miracle. Just one miracle, please. God, please. I don't even believe in you anymore, but God, please. I always get like that, broken and crying in my car and saying God, please, oh fuck, oh God, please. Crying, fucking: Oh, God, Please.

Ozymandias? (or: How To Be Unworthy)

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:21:13 GMT

Look what pouikee made, a scene from Fortunate Son:

fullsize @ dA

/grovel

[fic-oneshot] Fortunate Son (2/2)

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:10:24 GMT

Title: Fortunate Son
Author: Versace Frolic
Rating: T
Pairings: Axel/Roxas
Warnings: Adult language and content, sexual themes, improper use of a broom, and teenage existentialism.
Word Count: 10,176
Summary: A traveling circus, a literature class, and classic rock. When Roxas planned his summer, this isn’t what he had in mind at all. Axel/Roxas oneshot for 8/13.

Two months deep into the summer and Roxas was studiously handing out ping pong balls people were throwing in floating bowls, aiming for the blue bowl in a sea of clears, reds, and yellows. The blue bowl got you the giant smiling star with rounded anime eyes. It hung in the center of the booth like a fluffy, limbless god. There had only been one close call, a ball bouncing in and out of bowls to land in the yellow bowl right next to the blue, but so far so good, and he was trading rude gestures with Axel in the plate toss booth across the midway when it happened.

A group of slinking hipsters, skinny dark denim and neon deep V-neck shirts, swaggered over to Axel’s booth, half of them wearing oversized sunglasses despite it being after dark, eyeing the clear plates distastefully before pulling out change and firing away. Axel, cross armed and terribly amused, watched the hipsters go through a couple rolls of quarters, jeers loud enough that Roxas could hear them thirty feet away over the din of the carnival. Axel, unconcerned, let them toss their coins until they were out. One of the hipsters apparently didn’t like Axel’s attitude, hurling the empty jar of quarters at the plates. There was a brilliant crash, glittering shards of glass thrown wide over Axel, a million trajectories of shattered plates sailing through the air. Axel shook off his jacket in an instant, leaping over the booth and landing a punch in the city kid’s laughing face before Roxas even had the clarity to hurry across the midway. Didn’t Axel know four against one were odds not in his favor?

In the five seconds it took Roxas to reach the destroyed plate toss booth, Axel was bloody on the floor, two city kids holding his arms while a third kicked him in the ribs, the kid who’d thrown the jar nursing a bloody mouth while spitting in Axel’s face.

“Carny trash,” one of the boys spat, kicking Axel hard. Roxas just stared. “Think you’re tough shit in that faggot jacket.” Another kick, and carnies were running toward them now, shouting. The city boy jabbed a thumb at the stereo Axel had playing classic rock. “You listen to that tired rock like you got a clue, but you’re a fucking freak like every fucking loser here.” A couple rousties with bats were tearing out from around the big top, carny girls crying over at the balloon toss while parents hurried their children away to a safe distance. Roxas breathed, thousands of candy lights bouncing off the broken glass and curving over his face. Axel watched him, bleeding. Roxas knew his eyes were telling him to say something, telling him to tell them off. Roxas just breathed and stared. “Bet you think AC/DC is the best band in the world, right? You’re such a fucking loser, dude. It’s called evolution. It’s called reality. Remember that when they have the clowns patching you up, fucking faggot hick.” A final kick to Axel’s ribs and the kids bolted, shoving Roxas hard in their wake, his palms landing on shards of glass as he fell.

Roxas watched as a couple rousties sat Axel up, other carnies chasing down the hipsters at a dead run, and handed him a bottle of Jack, insisting he drink to dull the pain. Axel’s mother, still in the tight white suit she used during shows, auburn hair a low sheen in the dark, dabbed at his face with gauze. They kept most of the medical supplies at the back of the big top for emergencies, animal malfunctions, and they’d been in the middle of a performance when the cry went up. “Hey, Rube!” People streamed around them, chaos and fear bleeding out as the big top emptied. Axel stared at Roxas the entire time.

Axel’s mom, her name lost to Roxas’ memory, picked the glass from his hands and wrapped them in gauze, made him take a few swallows of Jack and handed him a paper cone of cotton candy. There was a lecture Roxas couldn’t hear, Axel nodding and staring at the ground, before the crowd around them dispersed. It was nine o’clock on a Saturday night. The show must go on. Roxas couldn’t formulate a single word, couldn’t even find it within himself to get to his feet, the cotton candy in his hand untouched, eyes staring blankly.

“Do you even care? You care about anything at all?” Axel stared at him, eyes accusing, before he ripped the bottle of Jack from the ground and limped off into the night, both his and Axel’s booths already taken over by other carny kids. Tidus, now at the plate toss, shook his head at Roxas.

“Not cool, man. You just let them wail on him.”

“Fuck you,” Roxas snarled, scrambling to his feet. “You think I want to be here? You think I fucking care about any, any of you?” His throat was tight, coiling rage wound up and choking him, strangling hot, stinging tears from his eyes. “I hate this place. My mom hated this place.” Roxas stormed away, paper cone squashed in his hand, and left Tidus frowning after him. She had hated this place, had hid every article and memory of it from their Long Island home. If she knew what her husband had done, how he’d dragged Roxas back to this hellhole, she would’ve hated him, would’ve clawed at him, screaming. Roxas ran blindly, careening toward his dad’s tent. Throwing himself in the side entrance, his dad still dripping wet from his show, Roxas hurled the cotton candy at the ground.

“Why?” he screamed, shaking. “Why the fuck did you make me come here with these people? Do you hate me that much? Do you hate her?”

The smile fell from his dad’s face, taking in the sight of Roxas’ bandaged hands and streaked, reddened face. “Buddy, what—”

“Fuck you!” Roxas shouted, and his dad’s assistant, the acrobat girl with the wide smile, hurried from the small enclosure. “You tell me why the fuck we’re here when she hated the carnival.”

His dad mouthed wordlessly for a moment, struggling for speech. “Roxas, she didn’t hate the carnival.”

“You liar. She hid every single memory of it from sight. We don’t have anything from those years. That’s why I can’t fucking remember anyone or anything. She hated it, she—”

“No, Roxas,” his dad sighed, peeling off his soaking tuxedo, pulling the single pale yellow rose from his lapel buttonhole and laying it lovingly on the dressing table. “She loved this place. She loved it so much she couldn’t bear to have a reminder that she’d lost it all.”

“That’s—,” Roxas said, sinking to his knees. “That’s bullshit.” He said it without conviction, without the rage that was slowly draining out of him like he’d been punctured. A thick wave of guilt and nausea washed over him.

“We only left after she got sick,” his dad said, leaning forward in his seat, hand settling against Roxas’ face. “She was getting worse that year, the year you turned five. I needed something steady to help with her medicine, to get her a place that was easy; a stress-free, non-chaotic, structured life that was going to help keep her healthy.” His dad swallowed, slight bitterness in his voice. “You think I wanted to end up a stockbroker? You think I wanted to be like my old man? We were bohemians, Roxas. Your mother and I, we… this was our life. Our home. We loved this place very, very much.” His dad sat back, lowered his face to his hands. “You think I did this to disgrace her? I did this because I love her. She would have wanted you to have the joy she once had, the magic.”

Roxas stared at his hands for awhile before he got to his feet, leaving his dad still dripping in his chair, head in his hands. He wandered aimlessly, tracing half-remembered paths of dreams until he was behind the rollercoaster, dodging falling change. Axel wasn’t there, he wasn’t in the empty, broken rides or with the rousties playing poker. When he didn’t find Axel at his trailer, he was on his way to his own, to turn in and sleep the rest of this nightmare away, when his feet carried him past his trailer door. Down, past the row of gaudy trailers dressed up for talent, nodding politely at a bearded lady on her way to her tent, Roxas found himself picking a path across the rigging supplies, leaping over poles and stacked chairs. There, just at the edge of the encampment, was a plain, dusty trailer, dark green siding nearly blending in with the night.

When he opened the door, Axel was in the middle of drinking from the bottle of Jack, sitting atop a stuffed lion, and hardly glanced over. He coughed around the burn of the liquor before he tossed out a quick, “What d’you want?” Roxas decided against saying anything, just closed the door behind him and climbed onto the belly of a stuffed teddy bear, shiny black eyes staring up lifelessly. They sat while Axel drank and drank, a rhythmic swish and swipe that Roxas could’ve set a song to. He hummed under his breath, a melody Axel had played for him that morning, until the bottle was forgotten on the floor and Axel was staring at him.

“I never,” Roxas rasped before coughing, clearing his throat. “I never told anyone.” The words, it seemed, broke Axel. The boy crumpled where he sat, collapsing in upon himself. Roxas dashed over, threw an arm around Axel’s shoulder and listened to him breathe, drunk and messy and the exact kind of boy that Roxas felt the most unnerved around. His own charming downfall, a shuddering, sloppy mess of a boy that was all angles and laughter.

Roxas woke up around two in the morning nestled in a sea of unicorn plushies, the sound of Axel retching just outside the door to the trailer. Peeking out the doorway, he found Axel bent over, one hand steadying himself against the trailer, the other clutching his stomach as he emptied himself in steady, convulsing streams of vomit. He laughed when he was finished, dragging an arm across his mouth. “Sorry you had to see that.”

“What, your shining moment of glory? I like it. It makes you human.”

Axel grinned, that easy, teasing laughter rumbling in his chest. “Since there were doubts about it, right.” Roxas shrugged, pulling a noncommittal face. Axel was… different. Not weird in the same way other carny kids were weird, just… different. Better. Shaking his head, Axel started walking back toward the center of the circus. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

“Something” came in the form of pulling Tidus from a rousing game of strip Connect Four, Axel bribing the boy with a fourth of Jack to stop them at the top of the Ferris wheel for an hour. They were encamped at a city by the sea, a string of lights dotting the shore, the carnival sleeping beneath them. It wasn’t cold, but Roxas felt the offshore breeze in the hollows of his bones.

“Is it because you agree with them?” Axel smoked at the sky, forever turning his head up and away from Roxas, secondhand smoke floating up, kept away from Roxas’ lungs.

Roxas fixed Axel’s jaw with a glare. “Are you retarded?”

“What? It’s a valid question. You just… stood there.” Axel massaged a temple with his free hand, pulling from his third bottle of water. “I saw how you looked at us that first day. Like you were disgusted.” Axel shrugged, looking out to where the sea met the sky, a space of possibility, of hypotheticals. “I know why they do it. They’re trapped in jobs they hate in towns they can’t stand. They’re in prisons they make for themselves, but we’re free. It’s how they all think. I assumed you would hate us, too. I assumed you wouldn’t remember.” He looked quickly at Roxas before looking away again. “I’m glad I was wrong.”

“I though she hated the circus,” Roxas began, staring at the same indistinguishable space of uncertainty—where was the sky? the sea?—beyond the horizon. “There were blank pages in the middle of photo albums where the circus used to be. Whole pages torn from my baby book. Just… disappeared. They kept none of their costumes, none of the tanks.” Roxas smiled wryly, mouth twisting, and he plucked the Red from Axel’s hand, inhaling deeply. “I came home with a book on knots, you know, the kind you can get out of. She took one look at it and turned her back on me. Didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day, like I’d done something terrible. What did I know? I was ten. I could barely remember the carnival at all.” He snuck a glace at Axel, quiet and staring. “I’d forgotten so much already.”

“It’s… hard,” Roxas said, speech coming stilted. Hard wasn’t the right word, but it was close. It felt that way, felt impossible. “I thought she hated it here. I just found out today that she never really wanted to leave in the first place.” He laughed, a mirthless sound lost in the air. “You know what that’s like? Realizing the entire foundation of a belief is actually a lie? Your belief structure just—it falls apart. I can’t even understand. It feels so—so right to be here. I feel like I was supposed to be here all along.” He thought of his friends back home, of Naminé, and he felt years of cultivated patience, years of trying and tolerating, of forcing himself toward an imaginary, hypothetical place just out of reach. The space between the sea and the sky, some unseeable future out in the darkening distance, the big What If. Had he ever wanted any of it at all? Had he?

“When did she—” Axel trailed off, looking pointedly at Roxas.

“What?”

“Your mom. When she did she, y’know. Pass.”

“Oh,” Roxas said, shocked into speechlessness. “Oh, she’s not—not dead. She’s just—,” he paused. Had he said it aloud yet? The reality felt immovable against him, a suffocating burden lodged in his mouth. “She has schizophrenia? Uh, catatonic schizophrenia?” He didn’t know why it came out as a question, as if he were asking Axel—someone, somewhere—if it were true. “She’s in this assisted living place now. It got to the point where we couldn’t feed her because she wouldn’t chew. She just… sat there.” Axel’s arm was around him, rubbing warm circles into his back. His face was wet. Why was his face wet? “I just—I, y’know. It’s hard. It’s so hard.” The words caught in his throat as he tried to explain why he couldn’t be happy. It wasn’t fair if he was happy, if he could laugh. Because she couldn’t. “I figured it was the least I could do. Keep it in, because she’ll never laugh again. She’ll never feel anything again. If she couldn’t, then I wouldn’t either.”

“You think she wants that? You think she wants you to be like that?”

Roxas swallowed, rubbed his eyes. “No. I was just,” he floundered, grasping at words that didn’t fit. “I was angry. I’m still angry.”

“Carnival,” Axel said, tracing the world on the air. “Know what it means?” Roxas shook his head, eyes on Axel’s hands. “If you follow the word back, you find that it’s Latin. Caro and levare.” Axel turned and stared Roxas in the eyes. “To put away the meat. It was a religious celebration, right before Lent, the time when you weren’t allowed to eat any meat at all. Carnival was the last chance believers had to indulge. It’s where Mardi Gras comes from. To put away the meat.” Axel’s gaze slid toward Roxas’ cheek, and he raised a hand, stroking an even dragging touch against the curve of his face with the pad of his thumb. “To put away the flesh. It was the one time people could be free. Let loose, be alive. You’re supposed to have fun here.”

Axel studied him, fingers rubbing steady circles into his back as Roxas quieted. “I wondered if maybe you grew up into someone else. Two months ago you came in here and you wouldn’t smile at all. You walked around pissed off, like you were going to kill someone.” Axel’s voice lowered, dropping into a quiet half-whisper almost carried away entirely be the wind. “You were so different from the Roxas I remembered. You loved to laugh before. It’s all you would do, laugh.” Axel’s hand stilled on Roxas’ back, a calm fluttering building in his chest as Axel spoke. “My mom told me you were coming back, that it wasn’t forever. It was just a little while because your mom got sick. But you didn’t come back. I got older, we kept going city to city. We were in Europe for a couple years. I was sad for a long, long time.” Axel pulled Roxas closer and he felt all the breath leave his body. “When I heard you were coming for the summer I couldn’t sleep. I used to see you here, just turning behind a booth, just out of the corner of my eye.” Axel’s voice broke and he lowered his face to Roxas’ hair. “I never forgot you. I missed you so fucking much.”

It was like finding something you hadn’t even realized was missing, pulling it from a box dusty and leaking colors and smells, whole images springing to life as you take it into your hands and say, “Oh. There you are.” Axel was alive around him, breathing and sweet like warm cake batter dusted with powdered sugar. Axel, Axel, Axel, how could he forget?

Axel lifted his face, lint clinging to the ends of his eyelashes, and time coalesced around them. Oh. There you are. Axel moved with a gust of wind, and then his mouth was pressed against Roxas as the gondola swayed, an industrial cradle keeping 3/4 time with the faint crash of waves in the distance, a lazy aerial waltz. Axel’s tongue lapped at his mouth, hands running through his hair while he melted, melted into the night sky, counting which beat got one. When his lips parted, his hand tangling in the ends of Axel’s hair like it was drawn there, and Axel’s tongue dipped into his mouth, Roxas gasped and pulled away.

Axel froze, hand white knuckling on the edge of the gondola. “Fuck,” he whispered, pupils shot.

“I’m sorry,” Roxas rasped, licking Axel from his lips, his entire body screaming. “I have,” he swallowed thickly, “a girlfriend.” The logic was fuzzy in his head, a vague sense of wrongness. He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t the kind of person who did this.

Axel stared at him uncomprehendingly. He’d just opened his mouth to say something when they lurched backward, Tidus whistling up to them. Axel just stared and stared, a hand still on the back of Roxas’ neck like he’d pull him forward again, anyway. When they reached the landing, Axel let go and hopped out, walking off into the night without looking back.

The summer wound down faster than Roxas could believe, days stretching impossibly long as the temperatures rose. They worked him into the ground, calling up blisters under his hands and trying his patience until he thought the next kid who threw money at him would be getting it shoved up his ass. But he was laughing, smiling. He could do a standing back tuck, could slip out of three different kinds of knots. It made him feel guilty sometimes, in the bare corners of his chest, but he raged against that feeling until it was small, inconsequential.

Despite being unmistakable in any crowd, Axel was surprisingly difficult to pin down. The other boy made certain they were never alone together, attached to the other carny kids at the hip, staying out so late that by the time they broke for the night, Roxas could hardly keep his eyes open, stumbling drunk toward his trailer. Axel was avoiding him, that much was obvious. And maybe, just a little, Roxas was avoiding him, too. Seeing Axel now sent a bolt of electricity through his ribcage, a nervous flutter that held his breath for him when Axel walked into the big top for class, sat down at the table for lunch, caught Roxas’ eyes across the midway. Roxas never had the balls for confrontation, calling someone out on their shit and squashing drama. It was strange to be out of Axel’s good graces, like the sun shone everywhere else but on him. But he did what he could, tagged along into towns and made a lot of long-distance phone calls.

He didn’t even like boys, did he? He had a girlfriend. A girlfriend that he couldn’t stand, but a girlfriend all the same. What was the point of getting all flustered over a summer romance when the summer was ending in a week and a half and he was going home? It would just make him feel guilty for cheating on Naminé, make him feel reckless and fevered and… fuck. Because kissing Axel had felt like realizing some forgotten truth, like a deafening, roaring surf in his stomach. Did he want that context? That he found a little fling over the summer, cheated on his girlfriend? Did he want to be one of those guys? Careless, reckless, selfish. No. He didn’t, he wouldn’t.

They were standing in front of Damien and the carny kids, Roxas with his hands shoved in his pockets as Axel talked over the cassette player, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” warbling over the speakers. Their presentation was going well so far; Axel was like a walking textbook of music trivia, rattling off band members and dates with an easy, knowledgeable authority like he’d been born listening to this band.

“…And it was something that was a misconception at the time, that the soldiers in Vietnam actually wanted to be there and supported the war. They didn’t. Our ranks were full of working-class blue-collar kids who didn’t have a rich daddy to save their asses from getting blown off. That war exploited the kids who had no choice, who were drafted into fighting for a cause they didn’t even understand. Kids like us, kids who worked hard and lived hard. They looked at the rich kids with connections sitting home and waving their little flags, and they were angry. Of course they were angry. But they weren’t crybabying over having to do the dirty work for the people with the power. That’s how it always is. Instead of bitching about it, they stood together. They didn’t want the wealth, the affluence. ‘It ain’t me.’ It ain’t me, and it never will be. They don’t want that life. I don’t want that life. We don’t want that life. We don’t want their fucking silver spoons and comfortable, cushioned, sedated lives. If it means we gotta go to war to do it, hell, at least it’s living.” Axel paused, lifted both of his middle fingers in the air. “This is what ‘Fortunate Son’ is saying. It’s saying fuck you to comfortable lives and trust funds. It’s saying fuck you to handouts and pity parties. It doesn’t apologize, it’s not sorry. It draws a line in the sand between us and them, and, in a sense, it’s calling out for you to do the same.”

Axel paced the center ring like he was born to be there; agile, loping grace and careful articulation, his hands drawing shapes in the air, emphasizing phrases. Roxas watched him with everyone else, awed. The way he spoke drove something up from inside him, a pulsing, throbbing desire to agree, to raise his fist up and nod. But did he really agree? Wasn’t that the life he was going back to? The life he wanted?

“Well said, Axel, very well said,” Damien clapped, nodding. “I could do without some of that language, but it’s a good point.” Turning to Roxas, eyebrows raised, Damien asked, “You have anything to add?”

Axel turned to face him, the first time he’d purposely looked at Roxas in two weeks, with defiant, challenging eyes that Roxas could see himself reflected in. What did Axel see? A scared, safe little boy? Someone confused, scrabbling blindly for a ladder leading vaguely upward? The song finished playing, the opening riff of an AC/DC song starting up before Axel leaned down and clicked the stop button, the same song he’d been listening to when Roxas saw him for the first time in twelve years. Pulling sentences together in his head, Roxas inhaled to speak, and with the breath flooded in a memory.

It was right before his family left, sitting on the floor in the tent that housed the lion’s cage. Fira was lying on the ground, licking her paws lazily while Axel swept the inside of her cage. The cassette player was on the floor next to Roxas, same AC/DC song blaring out of the speakers as Axel swept, strumming an imaginary guitar on the broomstick, howling into the top like it was a microphone. Roxas watched, entranced, and thought Axel was going to be a rock star when he got a little older. Roxas would see all his shows, would sit front row. Or maybe he’d learn to play an instrument—the lion dad had a guitar in their trailer—and they’d be in a band together. He didn’t know how Axel was like that—fearless—unafraid to be in there with Fira even though he told Roxas a hundred times that she was nice. Roxas would only pet her if Axel held his hand and stroked her fur with it, like if he did it on his own, she would know it wasn’t Axel and bite his hand off. Fearless, a great singer, really good at putting on band-aids—these were things Axel was. Roxas didn’t like anyone better.

“Roxas?” Damien asked. “You got anything?”

Roxas swallowed, his mouth dry. Axel, Axel, Axel, how could he forget? “Yeah.” Turning to look out at the carny kids, Tidus smiling encouragingly at him, Roxas balled his fists and stepped forward. “Axel talked a lot about the history of the song, about what it meant at that time. If we think about it in terms of today, the song can take on a different meaning. I think Axel had it right when he said, ‘It ain’t me.’ It’s like,” he said, voice shaking, “it’s like saying you don’t want what we’re all supposed to want. A house, a spouse, two point five kids. Y’know, the American Dream. It’s what we’re all trained to want since we’re little kids. That’s the image of success, of having lived your life the way you’re supposed to.” There was a flutter in his chest, and his voice rose. “That’s great for people born into it. They’re born into that idealized dream, their own self-serving cells. For a lot of people, the American Dream just isn’t going to happen. It’s going to stay exactly that, a dream. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to let someone else’s definition of success define my own happiness. I will never be happy slaving away in some suburban law office, slinging cases all day like it means something. All those people,” Roxas thundered. “They’re asleep. I was asleep. I’m awake now. I’m not a fortunate son.” Roxas shook his head, eyes flashing. “I don’t want to be one.”

The applause crackled in the air, Damien beaming up at him, teeth a smear of white in the depths of the swirling inked lines around his face. Roxas looked over his shoulder to Axel, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt. Small smile on his mouth, Axel nodded.

“You really mean all that?” They were sitting on the picnic table, pulling apart a funnel cake with their fingers. Being this close to Axel felt like being on fire.

“I want to,” Roxas said, sucking traces of strawberries from his fingers. “It’s hard. Scary. But I never felt right wanting any of that.” Roxas laughed, wiping away a trickle of sauce on his chin. “Who the fuck would? Who celebrates their own small, sheep-like lives?”

“Oh, I can think of a couple people,” Axel said, eyeing a passing group of obnoxious city kids. “Your girlfriend, for instance. I mean, probably. Weren’t you saying her parents own a yacht?”

Roxas smiled at his funnel cake. “Yeah, she probably celebrates her sheepness. But you know,” he said, turning to smile at Axel, heart pounding painfully in his chest. “She’s not my girlfriend anymore.” Roxas didn’t have a single quarter left, all of them spent on calls to his friends. He wouldn’t be back for a long, long time.

“Oh?” Axel said, dusting the sugar from around Roxas’ mouth.

Roxas shrugged, cheeks aching from smiling so wide. “New development. I’m so heartbroken I think I might have to stay on at the carnival for a little while. Need a little cheering up.”

Axel was impossibly close, grinning and sticky, his breath edible. Roxas’ eyes had already fallen shut, lips parting, when someone cleared their throat.

“Ahem.”

“Mom.” Axel said, pausing an inch away from Roxas’ face.

“We’re doing a viewing at two, and Fira’s cage is a mess. You have fifteen minutes.” She was smiling at them, gave Roxas a wink as she turned away. Axel sighed, the brush of it against Roxas’ lips plucking shivers down his spine. He left sugared fingerprints on Roxas’ cheeks when he pulled his hand away, laughing as he rubbed them off.

“So,” Roxas said, grinning madly. “Lion tamer, huh?”

Axel laughed, pulling Roxas off the table. “Shut up.”

Later, after Fira’s cage was clean and they commandeered the carousel, shoving in a cassette of Axel’s music and dancing around, Axel standing atop saddles and howling away, they climbed a hill just outside the carnival encampment and spread themselves out on the grass. The circus sounds floated up to them like music from another room; familiar, pleasant. A thousand winking stars stared down at them; a space of possibility, of hypotheticals. Smoothing his hand over the grass, Roxas found Axel’s hand and tangled their fingers together, felt his pulse in his fingertips. So… so maybe he wouldn’t be a lawyer. Maybe he wouldn’t apply to Dartmouth. He didn’t know. He didn’t have to know. Axel’s fingers tickled his palm, and he laughed; a bright, reckless burst of life. The important part—past the uncertain, fearful jumble of butterflies and hope—was just being alive, being awake to the music, the magic.

[fic-oneshot] Fortunate Son (1/2)

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:47:56 GMT

A/N: Happy AkuRoku Day! This ship means more to me than is probably sane to admit, so I wanted to do my part to give to the fandom. I know most of the time I deal with heavier themes, so this was an opportunity to lighten up a little. I dedicate this story to every single person who has ever read any of my writing: it would be crazy to thank you all individually, but know that I value your thoughts and your spirit very, very much. There are those of you who deserve individual thanks, so if you think this bit is about you, it probably is. I suck at this whole life thing, but I’m trying.

I made a tiny mix/playlist for the story, including Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” the title track, so check it out if you like classic rock. The full tracklisting and link to the file is up on my ffnet profile.

Theoretically I’m working on Ch. 14 of A Lesser Beauty, but I can’t make any promises on when it’ll be done. I’m still churning stuff out for the 117days project if you’re interested.

It wasn’t the light of dawn that woke him, neck aching from sleeping sitting up in the passenger seat, but the change in speed as they took a highway off ramp, slowing to a stop at a sign. Golden, dusty dawn, and he noticed stilled windmills as he wiped the sleep from his eyes. Aside from a sore neck, Roxas felt surprisingly okay. Calm, composed. Resigned to mad whims and shucking responsibility. After all, there was no turning back now, one eight hour drive across state lines behind them. Stifling a yawn, Roxas realized his breath was just short of horrendous.

“We pack any toothpaste?” He squinted at his dad leaned back in the driver’s seat, thumb at six o’clock and looking almost asleep. He nodded, pointed toward the rear of the trailer. On his way to the back, Roxas bumped the shifter into neutral with his hip. One stumbled apology later and he was spitting Colgate out the back window between the bunks, thankful that they were in the middle of nowhere. The lavatory, his dad said, was not for using unless you liked smelling your own shit.

“There’s coffee left if you want some, buddy.” The radio was on, his dad flipping through static and more static before settling on what sounded like someone singing through a tin can.

Settling back into his seat, managing to slosh coffee on himself only twice en route, Roxas sipped at his mug and eyed the horizon. Dawn had given way to sunrise, their accompanying landscape a whole lot of nothing. “We getting close?” His dad nodded, humming along to the radio, a song Roxas had never heard.

He’d hopped out of Naminé’s window at ten the night before, his fingers still smelling like girl despite having washed them at least five times, and hightailed it home. He didn’t think she came, or maybe he didn’t know how to finger her properly. Or maybe it was the pot, a couple celebratory bowls Hayner had provided for his going away party, because he couldn’t get a boner no matter how hard he thought about fucking her. It was supposed to be the night—he was leaving for three months, an entire summer of stolen foreplay—the condom was already in his pocket, and it was supposed to be hot and exciting, not a bunch of flushed awkwardness and his growing nausea about ever having to put his face in there. In the end he watched in a stoned daze as she got herself off. It was lame, mostly, and she’d pressed her fingers to his lips afterward. The least he could do was suck the taste from her skin, creamy ivory acrylics toying with the backs of his teeth while she giggled below him.

“I miss you already,” she’d said into his neck, and he smelled her everywhere.

“I’ll call when I can,” he’d said, kissing her cheeks, her tits, the jut of her hips. As he dashed over damp lawns, cutting through someone’s garden and almost decapitating himself on a clothesline, he wondered if Naminé even liked him at all. He was shitty at knowing what girls were thinking, and just because she was his girlfriend didn’t make her an exception. It was probably worse with her, actually—her little code talk with her friends, and the way her eyes were always laughing at something just beyond his comprehension. Naminé. His girlfriend. The label made him feel faintly aggravated, and he’d begun to worry that he was an asshole.

“There she is,” his dad said, low whistle trilling as spiraling colors peaked in the distance.

“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Roxas muttered under his breath, peppermint spires jutting into the early morning sky. The big top was already up, billowing lightly as smaller colorful tents blossomed around it, a pop-up storybook of garish colors and throbbing lights. “Can I just say again how much this truly sucks, dad?”

His dad beamed, tipping his head toward the steadily approaching carnival encampment. “Trust me on this one, kiddo. It’s one summer. Not gunna kill you. Get to see a little of the world before you get tied down with all that grown up stuff.”

“Grown up stuff like what?” Roxas asked, rolling his eyes at the twentieth iteration of this exact same conversation. “Oh, like jobs? Oh, like your job? And college, too, huh? God, all that pointless grown up stuff. I’ll make sure to tell that to the law firm I was supposed to intern at.” Before Roxas could bite back the remark, he said, “What would mom think?”

His dad just shook his head, eyes hardening a little. Roxas had already long decided there was no use in being a child about it, but he didn’t have to agree with the idiocy of the whole thing. He’d just humor his dad for one last summer before he went away to college. Downing the rest of his coffee, Roxas watched the carnival rise.

Walking around was eerily surreal, devoid of the spark and tumult of a carnival gone live, swamped with families and over-eager children all dropped jaw excitement. It was quiet, everything covered in a fine layer of dust that made the brightly colored rides and booths look ancient; candy-coated behemoths that loomed just out of sight in Roxas’ memory. The vomit of a small child, a rainbow of refuse. The sight made his stomach twist. He sold his summer for this? For a ragtag bunch of hippies and their love children? He was supposed to be padding his college application, for fuck’s sake, not playing chaperone to his father’s middle age crisis. As if his father could hear what he was thinking, he ruffled Roxas’ hair, beaming. Roxas almost hated him.

As they neared the center of the encampment, Roxas felt the atmosphere shift, like a switch had suddenly been flipped. Bags of stuffed toys were laying everywhere, people laughing and talking and dancing, an easy joy pushing against Roxas in waves. The entrance to the big top was dotted with rousties and talent carrying paper plates piled with food, hyping for the morning gates. Roxas couldn’t help but notice that everyone looked like they’d stepped out of a catalogue a decade old, clothes dated and haphazard. A group of kids holding dominion over a table worked wonders for his mounting alienation. He would’ve laughed at home, huddled with Hayner and Pence and made fun of the poor, unfortunate freaks dressed like backwoods social rejects. Displaced, he felt like an insect, hands curled inside the pockets of his nice jeans, wishing he could pull his hood up and disappear.

One of the boys sitting on the table, a redhead in a leather jacket, said something that made every kid at the table turn to look at Roxas, a peal of laughter breaking out amongst them. There was a cassette player on the table text to the redhead, sleazy guitar riffs blaring from the shitty speakers. Roxas gave his best unimpressed face and turned in the opposite direction. His dad was standing in a circle of people patting him on the back, hugging him. It was strange to think Roxas had seen most of these people before. He’d been so young then…

“Hey, newbie.” The voice sounded like it belonged to someone stupid.

Roxas turned and tried his very best not to scowl or cuss the kid out. “Hey, what’s up.”

“Holy shit,” the blonde boy exclaimed, peering into his face with disbelief. There was a piece of chicken in the kid’s hand, his face streaked with grease and dirt. “Axel was right. You really are Roxas.”

“Sorry, I don’t—”

“Remember me, man?! It’s me! Tidus! We took baths together!”

Laughter exploded at the table of kids. The redhead was expressionless, staring at Roxas. “S-sorry, I don’t really remember much. I was pretty young.” Tidus, looking put out, invited him to join them, but Roxas declined, thinking that if he started walking now, he might make it back home by next week.

There were differing stories on where he was born, this state or another, and his birth certificate had yet to see the light of day. As far as Roxas knew, it had been a quick ordeal, minimal recovery, and then they were back on the road, his crib secured to a corner in his parent’s trailer as they went on to the next city, the next show. At the time, it was the most natural thing in the world. Of course he lived at the circus. All the kids he knew were born in the carnival, and for a long time afterward he’d have to explain that no, they’d didn’t hole up in one of the rides, and no, clowns didn’t deliver him. How could he have known then, sneaking behind booths with the lion boy to steal handfuls of cotton candy straight from the machine, how could he have known that another world existed? Another world where the circus was a place you went sometimes, or a place to run away to. You didn’t live at the circus, and you certainly weren’t born there.

Except he was.

He would watch his parents sometimes, peeking behind the canvas curtains as his mom pirouetted around the stage, rigid ruffled skirt turning glittering circles around her as his dad climbed out of the tank of water, soaking wet and looping the length of rope used to restrain him in his hands, turning to give Roxas a wink before his mother pulled the coverlet from the tank, revealing his dad triumphant and smiling. It was magic. For a long time Roxas didn’t know how to explain what his parents did. His mom was a ballerina, his dad… well, his dad was a swimmer. Or he was a hostage swimmer. His mom was a hostage swimmer ballerina sometimes, too. Later, when he was old enough to understand, the lion boy, who was six, told him his parents were escapologists, escape artists. Excape-lologists, because he was four years old and spoke in whispers all the time, and what the hell four year old can pronounce a world like escapologist. His mom told him that if he wanted to watch the show, he needed to be quiet, and when you live at the carnival, there’s always a show going on somewhere. So Roxas spoke in whispers, followed the lion boy and the other kids around. They were lawless children in a forever moving city of lawless men. How could he have known there was something else? Somewhere else?

And then, when Roxas was five, his family left the carnival.

“You know,” Roxas said conversationally, stripping off his pajama bottoms, “in the real world people put their kids in different classes if the teacher looks like that.”

“Roxas, this is the real world.” His father found him, crossed arms and staring at the ceiling, in his bunk when he should’ve been sitting center ring under the big top with the rest of the carny kids.

“No, dad. It’s the—“

“You were so concerned with falling behind with your application; this is the perfect opportunity for you to pad it a little.”

“Uh,” Roxas said, face blank, “I’m pretty sure an English class in the middle of a fucking circus is going to look great at Dartmouth.”

“You watch your mouth, kiddo,” his dad warned, finger level with Roxas’ face.

Roxas thought about saying something stupid back, and he would’ve had his dad not looked so beaten. Exhausted. “Sorry,” he grumbled, shoving on a hoodie and making his way out of the trailer. It was a nice change, almost. He’d never had the opportunity to fight with his father before.

Roxas walked down the midway, hands in his pockets, and imagined a sea of people. Last night had been ridiculous, hundreds of people coming from nowhere to the middle of a field. He’d declined a spot in his dad’s show, content to help lower the curtains and hand out flyers for the performance times. A carny girl a little older than Roxas took on the ballerina role, wide eyes and a delicate red mouth in an O of surprise, flouncing around the makeshift stage in a dress hardly as beautiful as his mother’s, her costume flashing under the spotlight. He thought he’d be sick when he saw it, an intense flare of rage at his father flaming up in his stomach, but he’d grit his teeth and it passed. The girl was nice, anyway. An acrobat who, when she saw Roxas the first time, flipped over and swept him into a hug, pulling out an enormous lollipop for him.

“Remember me?!”

No. Roxas didn’t remember anyone.

Pulling aside a flap at a back entrance to the towering center tent, Roxas felt his stomach sink immediately. This was the group of kids sitting on that picnic table yesterday, the redheaded boy in the same embarrassingly tacky leather jacket hunched over, wrists balanced on his knees, sitting on the edge of the center ring, lounging as if he had a cigarette in hand. Roxas scowled and hurried over, taking a seat.

“Nice of you to join us, Roxas.” The man standing in the center of the ring was covered in tattoos—face a mass of swirling black lines, his entire torso the home of an enormous colorful tree branching upward onto his shoulders, his arms. Roxas wondered if his dick was tattooed, too. “As you all know, I am Morgrago the Tattooed Man, but you can all call me Damien. And yes, Axel, before you ask: I have a degree in English literature from Northwestern, and I am as fully qualified to teach you guys this year as I was last year. And the year before that.” Axel, the redheaded boy, was smirking, saying things Roxas couldn’t hear to the people around him, laughing easily. Looking up, the boy caught Roxas’ eye and winked. Roxas, abruptly shocked, looked away quickly.

“This year we’re going to be focusing on the literature of revolt, protest literature. We going to be reading books about people shunned by society, about people who were angry, people who were mad. We’re going to read about revolutionaries and courage and people who refused to be oppressed.” A chorus of “hell yeah!” rang out over the kids, several of the boys, including the redhead, lifting up fists and nodding. Roxas shrunk further into his hoodie. What a bunch of fucking freaks.

Since they couldn’t be expected to go out to a bookstore and buy books, they read aloud from Damien’s personal copies. By the second page, Roxas was tuned out, thinking about his friends at home. Hayner throwing parties on his parents’ boat, Naminé laying out by her pool--golden, supple skin flecked with light, inviting him. Except he didn’t know why hanging out with Hayner on his boat sounded more promising than swimming with his girlfriend.

“So pair up and discuss, and tomorrow we’ll talk about what counts as an acceptable form of protest. For example, hate crimes are not valid forms of protest, kids. They’re valid forms of bullshit. Music, film, art—these are all mediums you should be exploring. Alright? Class adjourned.”

Roxas watched as kids paired together, and he got the distinct feeling he missed something. They had a project? Fuck. He hated group projects. Running his fingers through the dirt around the ring, he tried to think of nothing. Of course people would pair up with people they were friends with. Tidus, the one person whose name he actually knew, was already chattering away with another boy. Maybe if he just left…

“Hey.” The redheaded boy was in front of him, holding a hand out to help Roxas to his feet.

“Hey,” Roxas said, taking the hand and feeling himself being pulled up. Axel’s hand was bony, warm.

“You’re my partner,” Axel said, an almost challenge in his eyes.

“Uh, sure,” Roxas said. They made their way out of the tent, Axel pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

“You smoke?”

Pot. “Nah.”

“So I guess you don’t remember me,” Axel said, exhaling toward the sky.

Roxas opened his mouth to say no, he didn’t, sorry, but Axel grinned quickly at something another kid shouted to him, and Roxas sucked in a breath, a soft “oh” falling from his mouth. He did remember Axel. Axel, red mane of hair like a… “Lion boy,” Roxas said, surprised he hadn’t seen how obvious it was earlier.

“Yep, that’s me.” Axel looked entirely too pleased with himself, hopping on what Roxas took to be the kids’ picnic table, old cassette player still sitting there. Axel jabbed a finger at the play button, the same sleazy guitar riff bleeding over the tinny speakers.

“So you, like, tame lions now?” The singer shouted incomprehensible words over the guitars in a raspy squawk.

“Yeah,” Axel said, shrugging. “Beats being a roustie.”

“No, no,” Roxas said. “I mean, that sounds cool.” Awkward.

“You like AC/DC?” Axel stubbed his cigarette out on the surface of the table.

“What?”

“AC/DC?”

“Um… what?”

Axel turned to look Roxas in the face. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Reaching over to turn up the stereo, Axel explained, “AC/DC, only the greatest rock band in the history of ever. You’ve never heard of them?”

“I don’t really listen to music.”

Axel’s mouth dropped open a little. “You don’t listen to—oh my god, Roxas. Where did they keep you these last twelve years? In a cave?”

“I just—,” Roxas floundered. He listened to the radio; did that count?

“No worries,” Axel said, pulling up a picnic basket full of cassette tapes and patting it. “I’ve got you covered. And I have the perfect song for this assignment.” The perfect song, singular, turned into a sprawling five hour intensive music lesson where Axel found a whole catalogue of songs, plural, “perfect for this assignment.” By the time they broke for lunch, Roxas’ ears were ringing, the chorus of four different songs battling for dominance in his head.

His own mother never made food, and he got the plastic eggs and rubber bacon from the food tent with everyone, chewing toast that scraped the top of his mouth, stabbing at pieces of tough meat that took him a five year old’s eternity to chew. He preferred having lunch with the lion boy whose lion mother made the crunchy corndogs and pasta from a box. Their “house” was the color of the sea, smelled fuzzy and orange like Fira’s cage. Roxas didn’t like any place better, not even his own bed that smelled like chlorine and the pits of cherries. Feet swinging in his wicker chair, drinking whole milk that left a liquid half-circle Axel kept wiping off his mouth, Roxas wondered if everyone else was coming today, too. When everyone came, they got caught faster, and he always got less of everything. When it was just him, Axel got a lot of cotton candy, his arm a fluffy, sticky mass of pink and blue spun sugar that they ate behind the rollercoaster, dodging the change that fell from people’s pockets. When it was just him, they never got caught.

He asked in his whisper voice if they could get more cotton candy today, but Axel said the machine was broke; someone dropped a stuffed monkey in it. Roxas pouted, set his corndog on the table and crossed his arms. When the funny faces Axel was making didn’t work, he said they could get funnel cakes if he wanted, with strawberries if Roxas did the asking. His eyes rounded and he batted his eyelashes, asking Roxas to copy him. Just like an angel, he said, and he rubbed the apples of Roxas’ cheeks.

He sat on Axel’s shoulders, the lion boy wincing as Roxas pulled on his hair to keep himself steady, tall enough now to look over the counter, two quarters begged from the lion dad clutched in his sweaty palm. The lion dad smelled like bloody steak and the inside of a lion’s mouth since he always had his head in there and that’s what Roxas thought it smelled like, but Roxas did the angel face and the lion dad pulled two quarters out of his ears. Roxas knew funnel cake costed way more, at least three whole dollars, but the lady with the bow was nice, piling extra strawberries on their cakes after he batted his eyelashes like Axel showed him.

They sat on the broken Wave Swinger behind the big top, pulling apart the funnel cakes with their fingers, Axel dusting the powdered sugar from around Roxas’ mouth. When they finished, after Axel made him wipe his hands off on his shirt, Axel pushed him on a swing in the sea of suspended chairs, telling him about the little people that came out at midnight, how they lived in that one minute for the length of an entire day after the carnival had gone to bed. Roxas felt thirsty and breathless, small hands gripping the rusting chains as he went higher, higher, almost to the sun. When he thought he might never come back down, he yelped softly and Axel caught the swing as he fell back to earth, steadying him.

“I found treasure,” Axel said into his ear, lifting him off the swinging chair. “Wanna see?”

The treasure was hidden behind the talent trailers, past the rigging supplies. Plain, dusty, dark green siding, and stuffed to the ceiling with carnival prizes. Stuffed animals bigger than Roxas—pandas, giraffes, dragons—and bags upon bags of small, furry piglets and flowers, strange half-animals that wore clothes all piled chaotically from wall to wall, the single swinging overhead bulb casting a halo of soft, golden light around them as Roxas bounced around with glee. Depositing Roxas onto an enormous stuffed bear, his eyes the size of saucers, Axel leaned close and wrapped his arms around him. He smelled like sugar, like warm cake batter and strawberries, and he whispered, “Never tell anyone, k? This is our secret treasure.”

Roxas nodded, the tips of Axel’s hair tickling his nose as the other boy squeezed him tight, rubbing their cheeks together and calling him his little brother.

The weeks flew by in a flurry of movement, set ups and blow downs and show after endless show, Roxas working game booths with screaming, stubborn children who insisted on having one more ball or one more dart or just one more go. There was pressure from management to rein people in, to shout and flash smiles and be winning, charming, irresistible salesmen. Of course you want to give me your money to play this game you aren’t going to win. Of course you can have another ball, it’ll just be three dollars, please. This was a business, albeit dressed up incognito as a swirling ice cream sundae of candy carefree decadence, but a business all the same. Quotas to fill, pockets to line, and as long as people were having fun, there was no cause for concern. Roxas had an incident with a guido in a wifebeater accusing him of rigging the milk bottle toss as he wrapped his thick, meathead hands around Roxas’ neck. Axel came to the rescue with the mallet used for the game he was operating—one of those Can You Make the Bell Ring ordeals that was impossible to win—but other than that, everything had been fine, strictly non-physical except for the celebratory pie to the face for bringing in over two hundred people to the balloon burst without awarding a single oversized stuffed dragon.

When Roxas really thought about it, though, there was just barely concealed hostility between the carnies and the townies or the city kids. It was often worse with the city kids; snide remarks tossed out like spare change, feeding the homeless. It embarrassed Roxas. Hadn’t he been the same way when he first stepped into their migrating city? Hadn’t he wanted to laugh with his friends at the oddities, the tragically unhip carny trash that would sell you your own shirt if you’d fall for it? Even Axel, who was easy conversation and ready for anything at any time, Roxas had thought was weird. He was still weird, wasn’t he? They all were. The lawless children of lawless men. Knowing this didn’t stop Roxas from wanting to smash in the faces of townies trying to make a thing out of the coin toss (“Fucking carny freak, why don’t you get a fucking real job?”). Axel told him the attitude was nothing more than the way of things. The turn of the carousel, of the Ferris wheel—all inevitable cycling of the traveling circus. It goes up, it comes down, a wheel of fortune and misfortune, and people just didn’t like carnies.

“You get used to it after a while,” Axel shrugged. “Not like it means anything, really. Just white noise. Bitter, white noise because we get to wake people up.” He waved a hand at the flashing, candy lights. “This is fun, this is alive. It’s magical, and they can’t stand it.”

Days started at the food tent, sucking down scalding coffee that tasted like dirt accompanied by toast that simultaneously tore up the roof of his mouth and gave him seriously bizarre déja vu. He sat with the carny kids now, most of them bleary eyed and hungover as they manned their picnic table while the sun climbed over the horizon. Axel would stumble toward them some time during the dregs of breakfast, stare quietly into a cup of dirt coffee until he resembled the living again, Roxas never quite getting over exactly how much Axel was not a morning person. After they were as close to bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as they’d get, there was class with Damien every morning at ten, a music lesson from Axel until lunch, and then working the rest of the day. On the rare occasions he didn’t feel like crawling to his trailer and sleeping for twelve hours before doing it all over again, he hung out with Axel and the carny kids.

They were a lascivious, snarling bunch that favored hard, dark liquor and flirtations with danger and each other, heaving themselves from one gondola to another on the stationary Ferris wheel in the middle of the night, howling at constellations like a pack of savages. They commandeered the menagerie after the blow down, long after the goats and kangaroos and ducks were brought back to their cages for the night, and made chairs from stacks of hay, swapping bottles and cigarettes and spit for hours. Tidus was with Selphie, or he was with Wakka. Sora was with Kairi, or he was with Riku. Nobody seemed particularly choosy as long as there was some form of whispered, inebriated kissing, the oft-maligned “rolling around in the hay” reckless teenagers were always being warned against. Roxas couldn’t help but notice that Axel didn’t join in with the pleasures of the flesh, smoking a pack of Marlboro Reds lazily up at the top of the tent while working his way through his share of the Makers. Roxas didn’t know if they didn’t do drugs on principal or if it was just because they didn’t have any, but when he pulled his emergency joint from under his bunk, only Axel cared to smoke it with him, the acrid, searing smoke raking up the inside of his throat before blowing the sky open.

Axel was paranoid as hell, kept looking around as if he expected to be caught stealing a car or robbing a bank, pupils blown wider than the full moon. Roxas never saw him without the leather jacket, ill-fitting and showing his thin wrists; bird’s bones all fragile paper skin and veined tracery. Being around Axel felt familiar, often unbearably so like the beginning of a word you can’t remember on the tip of your tongue, working your way down the alphabet until the right word comes, but it never does. Every night Roxas dreamed about a small angel blonde and a lion boy, constantly underfoot in an impossible candy world. Every morning Roxas couldn’t remember his dreams of memories lost to him.

They would go into town sometimes, picking up supplies or looking for some action. Roxas tagged along to make calls on payphones, flipping the carny kids off as he talked to Naminé and called her “baby” a lot (“Miss you, baby,” Axel said, smirking. “Can’t wait to see you, baby.”), called all his friends and left messages when they didn’t pick up. He wondered if he should miss everyone more, if he was a bad person for not feeling an empty ache at being away from them for this long, but it was more of a dull pulse every time he hung up the phone, his store of quarters steadily depleting. Maybe it was the other carny kids keeping him company, feeding him drinks and teaching him tricks like how to walk on his hands or how to get a townie to play a game they were on the fence about. How to win the unwinable games, how to score townie ass, how to do a back tuck—all these things keeping him from remembering he was supposed to be sad. If he noticed he was having too much fun, if he was beginning to smile, Roxas shut down, tuned out.

“You depressed or something?” Axel asked eventually, pulling up at Roxas’ cheeks before Roxas swatted his hands away, scowling.

“Didn’t know having a brain cell was a crime.” He might half-smile or laugh, but never with his teeth and never for long. He just wouldn’t.

“Smart people smile too, sunshine.”

“Call me sunshine again. I fucking dare you.”

Despite his unwillingness to show it, Roxas was having fun. He felt happy, relaxed. At night, after everyone had parted and gone to bed, he hated himself for it.

part 2

Status

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 06:42:17 GMT

I'm alternating between bouts of fuck this and fuck, please. Two shitty scenes down out of a projected ten, and I gotta ask myself if I'm beating a dead horse. The magic is fucking gone.

On Masturbation

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:02:02 GMT

I want to hide things in your body, pressed into geometric cuts, gaping wounds. I want to watch it fester and rot. Things fall apart.

I read something about suppositories, being stuffed full and vomiting blood, passing blood.

I have an idea and I have writer's block and it feels like whatever there is between up there and right here is obstructed by a wall the size of the entire fucking universe.

I think a lot about distance. Long miles, endless constellations and all that through towns I don't know, rivers I've never been in. I think a lot about gunpowder and how hard it is to shoot a can. Is it hard? Is it? Or is it just me.

About the body, again: harvesting veins, sewing in lockets and figures pulled from charm bracelets. I read something like that, sewing things into the lining of clothes. Little brass hearts. There is something to be said for unacknowledged love, hidden away into the folds. Mute inglorious Miltons, right? Born to blush unseen. I think it's noble, but that just means I'm an idealist. I value Platonic Forms more than I'll ever value you. That's the great thing about hope: it's the motherfucking blackest pit of despair. I don't remember the right line, but it's like hope's end is its ruin. I hated Shelley until I read him closer.

Originally i was just going to say FUCK YOU. It didn't work out so well.

Maybe it's just me. Can't shoot a can, can't stop myself from tearing it all apart limb from limb. I think my biggest issue is wrath. That means I end up killing Kevin Spacey because I'm so pissed. If you found your chick's head in a box, wouldn't you be pissed? Wrathful. Hols once told me that it's like I "explode" with anger. Like Peter Petrelli, right, at the end of season one. I go nuclear and destroy everything I touch. I don't just pick fights. I say GO FUCK YOURSELF. What that really means is save yourself from my radiation, you idiots. You stupid perfect gorgeous idiots.

All Bets Are Off

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:37:49 GMT

If I talk about it honestly (NEVER), this is indicative of failure. It is a systems failure, a collapse of very finely constructed infrastructure whereby anything I've ever said, that's always been the truth. All the time, no matter how it's written, or when, or why. All truth all the time, and now it's just collapsed like someone kicked it out from under me while I wasn't looking.

Or, we get the dawning horror or the creeping violins like spiders, and I let you in on the secret: I kicked it out from under myself. Birds ate my face, right? I won't give that one away, but it still came like divine lightning when it happened. Is it wrong to be shocked? You all need to stop that theorizing bullshit. I do the theorizing bullshit, you just enjoy the ride. But that's not even what it is, not really. It's that it's easier to NOT pay attention to something than to actually pay attention to it. Porn? Why the fuck not! Pills? Why the fuck not! The total failure of everything you have ever loved? Why the fuck not! It's all just history, anyway. Ashes, dust, dirt. Something about chemistry. Something about how I never learned that in third grade, and maybe if I had, I wouldn't be this way.

Anyway, since it's all the worst shit you've ever read anymore, I promise to try to write LB14. It's two weeks late now, and nobody cares anymore, and it's so fucking uninspired that I want to claw my eyes out. The real problem is diverting from the path. The real problem is how nothing ever goes the way you planned it, and all of a sudden everyone hates everyone and we're all suspicious and fucking each other behind each others' backs. There are less convoluted articulations of this, but my aim has never been your comprehension. As long as it reads like PW said it would, back in '04, then it's all good.

The real problem is standing water. Is rot. Is stagnancy. The real problem is that sharks don't sleep, right? Alex told me that one before he thought zombies were cool and he fucked his whole band up by releasing a shitty record, zombies, and then a really good one. Then they broke up.

Whatever. What it comes down to is distrust and rage and having one good thing against a sea of bad things. What it comes down to is I had to have the new Set Your Goals record because I need to set my goals, I need to, need to, need to not let this win over me. Music has been the only consistent savior my entire life, and I can chronicle for you the downfall, big staples of Where It All Went Wrong. But who needs friends when you've got friends like these? Who needs enemies? Who needs? Who needs? Who needs? Repetition and the negation of meaning. The futility of habit, of ritual. I need to start reading again. It's July. I'd have read half the world by now, or at least sixty books. At least five, ten. Twenty, to be fair.

I haven't read a single one. Can you imagine? Basing your life on consumption, on a thirst for these stupid pieces of paper and ink? And then renouncing it all like... god. Tearing down your temples, tearing down your gods. Books are just words now, all of them uninteresting. I don't read anymore. What the fuck is wrong with me? It's like being STARVED to death. Emphasis is important.

Paragraphs are supposed to be five to seven sentences.

I want to stop thinking about things on levels below the surface. Yeah, it's all fun and games until your head explodes. Yeah, it's nice until that's all that you are anymore, a calculator of probability, theory, and motivation. I will give you motivation: he did it because nobody has ever loved him. He did it because he misses the father he doesn't have. He did it because he really, really wants to be cool. He did it because he's a slut. Some people are just sluts, they just are. They just ARE, just are, just are. Or maybe this is the real problem. INCOHERENCE. Lucidity used to be one of my praise points. Now I just finger myself until it's something resembling a line, paragraph. Perfect lust, perfect trust. We're laughing all the way to the bank OR, in this case, some dark corner of the world where no one really gives a shit, where no one really matters. You and what you have done. Me and What Have I Done?

It stopped being interesting when it stopped being about him. Intimacy has always been the jumping point. OR maybe intimacy is the lava, and we must, at all costs, get away from the lava. Lava is also kind of a weird word.

Did I post pictures last time? Of my face? No, I don't think that happened. Waterfalls happened. It wasn't very interesting, anyway. Just something of me looking like the bitch I am. Y HELLO THAR. Anyway, it's all set in place. I just need to write the fucking thing. Did you know that was the plan, back when I wasn't going to be around anymore? I was going to write it all, like 250,000 words in a couple weeks, then sail off into a sunset. It probably should've happened that way; at least the tone would've been even. It's my biggest creative hang up right now. Creating all these weird expectations that I'm trying to meet, and then wondering why I feel like the wrong end of catastrophe when I don't live up to my own unreasonable expectations.

I didn't tell you, but it was supposed to happen. I was doing it all already. The only reason this is here is because it didn't work. Like the Midas Touch, but completely fucked.

In other news: goddamn is it difficult to get someone to call me back. I would really not like to get in touch with that literary agent I was working for, but that is looking like the only option if I want to get back into publishing since it is slim pickings in Los Angeles unless I think I can hang with textbook publishers. Who the fuck does that?

It's so hot lately. It's making my blood turn like some cheesy Byron epic that I won't speak of. Hotter temperatures and all. I don't think it's unfounded, really, except my blood is all wrong. Today I was wondering why I couldn't be Half-Some Other Kind of Asian, since they all seem to be hotter than the actual part asian that I am. If I were Half-Japanese, I could probably die happy. Instead I'll just die pissed off.

Also, I don't actually have tumors or cysts or cancer, which is all good. According to the doctor, this is also bad. This means we don't know why things are happening, means we don't have a solvable problem yet. So, unless I start craving human flesh or decomposing as I walk, we're going to wait it out and see if there's some kind of... something I can do other than eat pills. I loathe pill taking unless it is of the recreational sort.

And also, damn I love fruit. That's all.

ten things

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:19:47 GMT

meme, hijacked from kokanshu:

• Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.

• NO CAPTIONS!!! It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.

• They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.

• You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.

WAT?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:48:46 GMT

Don't ask me how I went a month between updating here. It's kind of strange. I'm busy and also not busy all the time. Or, I guess a better way of saying this is: I'm busy doing nothing. I'm not at home, I'm out, but we're always just doing nothing. Chilling, I guess is a good way of putting it. Chilling like so:

If you'll notice the date, that's when the Lakers pwned Orlando hard and took the NBA playoff championship thingy. Can't you tell that I'm an epic basketball fan? THE THINGY. YEAH. THEY WON IT. Anyway, there was a bit of rioting at the Staples Center, and it just so happened to also be the night that we were out celebrating Cho's 23rd birthday and Silv's UCLA graduation in downtown L.A. Do you know what it's like to party on a high rise rooftop while helicopters swarm the sky and cops race over the surface streets below you? It feels like the fucking end of the world, like that scene in Independence Day where those idiots are throwing a party to greet the aliens 2.5 seconds before the freaky green beam explodes them into particles of human residue.

In short, it was fun. I was going to make this post when it actually happened, but I was too busy doing NOTHING.

Anime Expo '09 was epic as fuck, and pouikee was nothing short of the very best ever. Highlights:

LOL REX DART AS AXEL AND HOW I COULDN'T MAKE MY MOUTH WORK BECAUSE AXEL AXEL AXEL
an exceedingly good Gokudera, Lambo, Tsuna, Ryohei, and Aang complete with air scooter (omg)
a KH and KHR! explosion of cute, the game Twister, caramelldansen, and unintentional obscenity on Saturday evening adequately summarized by this: little Riku cosplayer and little Sora cosplayer frolicking joyously... AND THEN THE SORA GETS ON HIS KNEES IN FRONT OF THE RIKU'S JEANS AND STARTS FIDDLING AROUND WITH HIS HANDS BEFORE MAKING SWALLOWING MOVEMENTS! I, no shit, looked around to see what camera-wielding sick pedo pervert was forcing these innocent little kids (definitely not more than fourteen years old) to simulate such kinky shit. Turns out the Riku had some potion bottle thing dangling from his waist, and the Sora got on his knees to drink from it... finishing by standing up and giving the Riku a HUG. I saw this from a poor angle; I cannot be blamed for poor angles and a gutter mind! It just happened!
LOL REX DART. I mean SRSLY, she's already a good fic writer; does she really need to be Axel, too? It's just not fair.
about 80 million people, most of them cosplaying
dropping a wad of cash on superfluous otaku shit like a kitsune mask (I BLAME DAY 15/117days), a ~*~super kawaii desu~*~ neko hat thing, Axel and Roxas toys, etc. forever and ever
various Cosplayers of Suck, ex: The Axel of Suck
watching episodes of KHR! at the CrunchyRoll booth/stage thingy
trying to figure out if dudes with katana things were actually just dudes or Yamamoto cosplayers
general feelings of joy and unity, especially when that group of boys burst into the area a bunch of people were sitting in and started a cappella rickrolling all of us

Mostly it was only awesome because I had awesome company in the form of one scorchingly talented artist, but I guess the other shit was cool, too.

The only reason I'm really updating is to post this thing that I wrote a couple months ago. Reading it again now, it makes even more sense. It's also not cryptic at all, which is only slightly less shocking than the fact that this, too, isn't cryptic at all.

“Waterfalls”

I’ve always thought the end of the world would sound a little bit like thunder. Thunder as the ground splits open and swallows up cities and farms and rush hour traffic. Thunder as we run like a crowd of particularly crazed sheep away from the floor that falls behind us like it does in movies. Edge of your seat action, the end of the world. Imagine my surprise to find that the end of the world sounds a lot like birds chirping and a bunch of moms in minivans dropping their kids off for soccer practice. It sounds like a park in the middle of a California winter—sweaty, cloudless, and completely unremarkable.

Sitting in my car, a book of P.B. Shelley’s poetry in hand, I thought about the choice I had to make. The book, pages so thin that they tear if you look at them too hard, sat open in my lap, lines of obsessive neon pink highlighter illuminating Shelleyan hope. Hope? When you’re going for your Ph.D. in English, there is no hope. At least that’s how I felt, sitting in my car and hearing the approach of the end of the world: three twenty-five page papers due in five weeks. It might sound relatively easy, but we’re not talking about your bullshit high school papers that masquerade as original thought and quote huge passages with hopes of filling up that three page quota. We’re talking about page after page of literary theory and ideas that you have to pull, screaming, out of your hands and slap down on paper, pasted with blood and hours upon hours of time spent reading, time you will never get back. This kind of scholarship makes you hurt. It makes you sweat in your bed and before a room full of students all politely inquisitive about how if Milton’s Satan is a terrorist, then by extension, so is God.

There is nothing easy about it.

Despite this, it was never about ability. The question never was, “Can I do it?” Because the answer to that is, “Of course I fucking can.” I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I have a summa cum laude degree that says nine times out of ten I will outwrite you in an essay. Nine times out of ten, I will have the higher score. That’s why the question never was, “Can I do it?” I know I can. The question was, “Will I do it?” Because ability has nothing to do with inclination. Because we fall into the traps of safety and routine. Because I went to graduate school since that was what I was “supposed to do.”

Sitting in my car, back stuck with sweat to the seat fabric, I wondered how the hell I had gotten so duped. Tricked. Deceived. Played. The inner tension I felt had finally materialized: my dissatisfaction with graduate work in the form of me and unbearable heat, reparking my car in the shade of trees as the sun set. The form of me in a car, sweating out the seven hours I was supposed to be in class so my family didn’t begin to suspect I’d actually done it. That I’d actually failed. Quit. Dissatisfaction in the form of me and an imaginary handgun. Because the way I live, the things I value… you don’t quit. You never quit.

I was reminded of waterfalls. Maybe it was the heat, the way the sweat trickled down the back of my neck and slid into my shirt. Maybe it was the feeling that I’d finally lost it, that I was experiencing my very own quarter-life crisis complete with impulsive decisions and concentrated bursts of hysteria. I was reminded of waterfalls and the slow swell of Hawaiian ocean air, black sand beaches and miles of golden skin. I remembered pulling over on the side of the road to Hana and gaping in open-mouthed sixteen-year-old awe at the forty-five foot waterfall crashing with terrifying force into the most perfect pool of water I had ever seen. There was no hesitation. My sister and I ran like lunatics up the side of cliff, tearing away clumps of damp, dark earth in our haste to get to the top. We were going to jump. Of course we were. If that fat middle-aged tourist with the visor and mirrored sunglasses could jump, then of course we could. Of course, our legs and arms pumping with the kind of apeshit adrenaline specific to reckless youth.

We stood at the edge of the cliff and peered over. The feeling I got, seeing the water drop in freefall (nothing romanticized like cascade down or gracefully tumble—this was terrifying) was akin to the moment right before you have a car crash: guts clenching, mouth sucked dry of spit, and a heart-stopping sense of the inevitable. My sister and I looked at each other and shared a collective, “Oh, shit.” She, with a breathless shriek of joy, took a couple steps backward and then careened forward with haste that was either very brave or very stupid. She slipped on a patch of moss right at the edge and tripped off, falling parallel to the water below us. I watched with the kind of wide-eyed disbelief they show in movies, slow zoom close-ups in twenty-four frames per second as the killer is unmasked or the pregnancy test comes back positive. The sound her body made as it hit the water is a sound I will never forget.

She surfaced a couple seconds later, a sister-shaped blob of arms and water, and I remember thanking God that she didn’t die. I chewed my lip, hands balled into fists at my side as she treaded water below me.

“Does it hurt?” I called down, voice shaking.

“…Yeah.”

There was no laughter, none of that uncontainable excitement that had propelled her forward just a few seconds previous. There was only the short silence followed by an affirmative. Pause. Yes. Oh, shit.

The knowledge that it would hurt, that I would suffer legitimate injury from this, kept me pacing at the edge of the cliff for a full ten minutes. I didn’t have to do it. I could ignore the crazy waterfall jumping freaks behind me, rock-climbing gloves and smirks intact, and slide my way back down the side of the cliff. I’d walk away with a dirty ass and wounded pride, but my skin would be intact. After all, this little waterfall detour wasn’t even part of the plan, wasn’t on our family trip itinerary. I could just walk away, right? No. Ten minutes spent pacing, sweating it out, because you just don’t quit. You do the things you say you will, and you do them hard. You do them furiously, fiercely. I’m not a fucking quitter.

So I jumped.

I took a breath, grit my teeth, and kicked off from the very edge of the cliff. I fell like a crucifix, feet pointed straight and arms forced out by the flight of falling. I’d closed my eyes at the top, and after an eternity I tore them open only to find myself still plummeting a few feet above the water. Every inch of me slapped against the surface of that innocuous glittering pool. A hammer on concrete, a car into a brick wall, immovable objects against immoveable objects, and it fucking hurt. I was paralyzed in that perfect water, body throbbing like Life had backhanded me and I’d been struck dumb, all thought smashed out of my brain, bitchslapped back into infancy. I flailed my stinging arms feebly, wriggling my way to the surface. There was applause from watching tourists as I broke through, gasping and aching. Later, there would be bruises over 60% of my body.

So, sitting in my shitty Toyota in the middle of a sweltering winter, I wondered when I’d become a quitter. When I’d decided to cut and run when things got tough. It became less about Me versus Grad School and more about Me versus Life and how I let it beat me, how I let it win. Cue that imaginary handgun. It wasn’t enough that my planned out life, my salvaged from the wreckage of a fucked up childhood and set on the train tracks to a golden sunset, had been hopelessly derailed. There had to be the dawning realization that I’d done exactly what I’d never wanted to do: given in and given up.

I sat and chain-smoked, watching the minutes slip by, and visualized what was going on in class. I visualized how this professor would squint right before swearing, uttering a “fuck” in hushed impassioned tones. I imagined how another professor, a tiny woman fond of platform shoes, would toss up an endless stream of theorists and criticism as I marveled at how such a small body could hold such vast stores of supposedly valuable knowledge. I thought about enduring just one more day of higher education, and was overcome by disgust. I reasoned that sometimes you just have to know when to walk away. The waterfall? The story alone was worth it, worth the way it hurt to walk or even sit, worth the way it made me feel alive. But graduate school? Slaving away for three or more years over shit that only half-interests me so that I can fight tooth and nail over teaching positions? So you take a peek, measure the pros and cons, and figure out if it’s worth it. If it is, you jump. If it’s not? You walk away. There’s honor in that, having the foresight to look before you leap. There’s wisdom in knowing how to pick your battles, knowing when to shrug and turn your back. We can’t win them all, and some aren’t worth winning anyway, right?

Right?

Fuck that. I tried to reason with myself then, feeling sorry for myself in a car that felt like it was parked on the face of the sun. I tried to come to terms with walking away from something I’m good at, something I have the ability to do. But as each day passes, I come to realize that I didn’t walk away at all; I took a kamikaze leap. I threw myself over the edge with that same impetuousness my kid sister showed as she slipped and fell into Experience with a capital E. Grad school isn’t the waterfall; it’s the sorry beaten slide down off the side of the cliff. Grad school is according to plan, is playing it safe. As much as a twenty-five page paper on the construction of Wordsworth as a poet scares me, the thought of jumping out into the world without the parachute of a Ph.D. puts the fear of death and starvation into my blood, into my cells. “Oh, shit” is right. Those are the sentiments for my entire life, for every fallen expectation, for every fear of the unknown. Every single second as I freefall of the edge of a cliff.

But you know what? Fuck it. I spent seventeen years of my life playing it safe. Family trip itineraries, straight “A”s, full of potential, and for what? All of this to find, at the end of my life, that they can write this: She Played By The Rules. I refuse to let that happen. Give me the scars that have stories, thousands of dollars in student loan debts and uncertainty that makes every night sleepless. Give me the sucker punch that makes a life worth living, all the lust and terror that makes your heart beat loud in your ears. Give me waterfalls, lush and raging.

The end of the world sounds different than I thought it would. The end of a foreseeable future, of something safe and familiar that I constructed my entire reality around. I jumped off a waterfall as I drove home from the park that day, drenched from the sweat of winter and decision. And unlike the first time, eyes squeezed tight against the rush of the world, of life, I’m keeping my eyes open.

The Best Laid Plans

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:27:01 GMT

A slight perversion of Burns, probably, and only meant to be used in the context of plans and planning and how things get fucked up, but it's even better than you hoped for.

pouikee has been my house guest since Tuesday, and today we are going to uncover the horror (the horror) that awaits at Anime Expo. It's being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and even though Google tells me it's 16.4 miles away from La Maison des Mensonges (AKA THE CRIB, YO), I know better than to trust that wind-y (not to be confused with windy, no hyphen) ass 110 connector thingy by Dodger Stadium. It's all fun and games until you're stuck for an hour in rush hour traffic.

Potentialities [fic]

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:21:30 GMT

Title: Potentialities
Author: Versace Frolic
Rating: M
Pairings: Axel/Roxas
Warnings: Sex, swearing, and slutty blondes
Word Count: 3,455
Summary: What better way to procrastinate during finals than to have some random promiscuous sex with an anonymous blonde?
A/N: Prompt supplied by tsubasa_yume. Happy Graduation~!

The middle of the night tasted different on his tongue. There was that, loosely followed by the high potency of nicotine laced with the aftertaste of the sweat rolling down the exact center of the gyrating back in front of him. He’d been accused of many, many things, but moderation had never been one of them. Procrastinating for the neuroscience midterm worth half his grade in his fourteen person upper division seminar had never been a question, as if a choice between approximately nine hours of grueling, tedious study on the eighth floor of the library could ever trump Thursday night debauchery on the University loop that ran through downtown. Bar hopping was an excellent way to not study. His sixth two dollar mixer—cranberry cocktail and the world’s shittiest vodka—in hand, hips participating in a highly questionable exercise on friction, Axel tried to remember what it was like to not be drunk, novel proteins with absurd names flying through his cerebrum. It was like grasping for daisies or unicorns underwater. They were simply not there. The back, though, was very present, golden skin slicked with perspiration. A blonde. And so short. When the short, blonde, shirtless, sweaty boy twirled against him, plucking the drink from his hand and downing it in one, Axel found it hard to be properly disgruntled.

“Are you, y’know, old enough to be in here?” The boy was clearly twelve.

A dart of pink tongue, lips glistening in the aftermath (cataclysmic at this point; Axel was already eying the exits, planning the quickest escape route back to his university-owned off campus apartment with said short, blonde, shirtless, sweaty twelve year old in hand), and the boy grinned deliciously. “Old enough to know what I like.”

The glass had disappeared, and then there were shooters in his hand, pink and not unlike the vomit of very small children. Had he even paid for these? It seemed important to drink, regardless, and then the boy was all over him and the music was gone because they weren’t inside anymore, the night air cool against his cheeks.

“I think I’m… drunk.” His brain. It worked sometimes. For a neuroscience major, he was surprisingly daft.

“Roxas,” the blonde said, giggling in a horrifically attractive manner with his hand extended. Axel thought he might disintegrate.

“You go to Spence?” They were walking, his arm slung around the blonde’s shoulders naturally, like he wasn’t drunk and nearly blacking out.

“Sure.” The boy was chewing gum, arrogant little smile on his mouth. There was something disconcerting at the sight, like he had been divested of his charm and power, and here it was residing in this little boy next to him. The hopes and dreams of his sixteen year old self, thwarted. Put to rest by a little fucking kid. Insouciance that had taken him years to cultivate, paraded about for all to see in the form of a now fully clothed slut. Well, apparently a slut from the weird way the kid kept grabbing at him, licking suggestively at exposed parts of his skin. A kid or a kitten, and why were they at the liquor store? Roxas was wrinkling his nose at a bottle of Jack, and there was a handle of Malibu in his hand. When, Axel wondered, had he become a chick?

“And these,” Roxas was saying, pushing a pack of Camel Crushes on the counter toward the clerk. There was a twenty in his wallet, two dimes at the bottom of his right pocket, just past the condom and single stick of gum. Axel had learned to leave his cell at the apartment so as to save himself the embarrassing banter of potential bedmates asking him to call their hastily scribbled number on his hand so they could “make sure it works.” It’s your fucking number, why wouldn’t you be sure? But now he was broke, handle of rum in one hand, short blonde in the other. Penniless but chipper, Axel chattered idly, drunkenly, and steered the blonde to his place, coughing intermittently on the putrid cigarettes the kid hard strong-armed him into buying.

“They put fiberglass in that shit.” Slurring and, oh god, swigging from the open bottle. Open container tickets were just shy of $400, and with not even a single penny to call his own, Axel was sure this couldn’t be the most spectacular idea he’d ever had.

“So?” Roxas taking the bottle from him, licking the rim suggestively, mouth sliding down over the neck and back up until he was drinking like a normal person. A series of sevens sliding home flashed behind Axel’s eyes. The jackpot, walking along beside him, showing him where to press on the filter to crush the little ball of menthol. The jackpot, and he had one fucking condom.

It became apparent, however, clothes an impressionistic portrait of delayed gratification strewn all over the floor of his apartment, that more than one condom wouldn’t be necessary. The head had been atrocious. For all the lip-licking, eye-winking, bottle-fellating going on, the blonde left much to be desired.

“Easy with the teeth, babe.” But he was arching up into that hot, wet mouth anyway, teeth sliding away like uniforms over a pitch, sliding home and dirt ground into skin. He’d have road rash by the time the kid was done. Roxas giggled, vibrating against him, and he lost it in the back of his throat, throwing a hand up over his eyes so he didn’t have to watch the kid gag and gag on his dick.

“You okay?” The kid was turned away, coughing, one hand still wrapped around the base of his twitching erection. Axel couldn’t figure out why it turned him on.

“Yeah,” Roxas spluttered, wiping his mouth with one hand, jacking him off slowly with the other. Come and spit and one fucking condom. “I want to fuck you.”

No pretense, his hand still wrapped around Axel, and red flags littering the playing field. “Are you sure you’ve done this before?” Because the kid was a freshman or something, right? Hadn’t he said he went to Spence?

Slow smile spreading over that gorgeous mouth. “Yeah. Loads.”

“Look. A pun.”

“Ha ha,” Roxas said, syllabic emphasis on each upstroke. At least the kid knew how to give a handjob. The sex, though, was… well, it was scary. So tight, and his face, and those sounds, and why did this feel like he was fucking a virgin? Virgins are great, yay for virgins, but Roxas was the jackpot specifically because he was not a virgin. No, he was a sex crazed cockslut who wanted him bad, who would fuck him until he saw stars, who, on his better days, solved quadratic equations or talked a lot about manifolds because that’s what it seemed like Math majors did, and who the fuck majors in Math?

Virgins, his mind supplied.

When Roxas came, it was with a tiny gasp, eyes closed, back arching up with a swift intake of breath. Axel watched the entire time, watched the blonde rock again him once, twice, and then the gasp, his admittedly cute, slightly curved cock dipping down, spilling over his stomach. Axel came in his ass, annoyed at the way the condom felt like fucking a carpet, but for the space of one wondrous, breathless second, Axel imagined coming inside the kid, some place deep within the recess of his body. It was the only moment of clarity in the mess of hazy drunken blurs. That, and the blood on the condom when he pulled out.

“Fuck.” And he’d used so much lube, too. That couldn’t be right. The kid was so tight. Kid kid kid, the kid. Roxas look sated, collapsed on the couch, fingers dancing idly in the come smeared across his abdomen.

“Doesn’t hurt.”

“Are you a virgin?” He was in the kitchenette, picking the bloody condom out of the sink where he’d tossed it before he realized the trash was a much better option.

“I’m so drunk,” Roxas said, licking a finger languidly.

“Hey, how old are you?” Coconut in his mouth, and he was passing the bottle to Roxas, shoving the boy’s legs apart so he could inspect the damage under the guise of licking up residual ejaculate, mind hovering somewhere between cytoplasm and mitochondria while his tongue lapped at the golden skin and his finger probed, feeling out potential damage.

“Does it matter?” Roxas hissed, legs twitching as he bumped against his prostate, tongue swirling over the head of his dick. It’s a cute dick. I didn’t know dicks could be cute.

“I would really like to not go to jail.” And despite what his mouth was saying, his finger was pressing with abandon, followed shortly by his mouth. Tasted like blood and lube, thank god, though he could do without the blood. This was when Roxas bolted up, hand over his mouth. Axel pointed reflexively at the bathroom, and Roxas scampered away, heaving into his hand. Somehow, this was not what he’d envisioned when he thought of taking home a hot, blonde, nympho. Sex numerous times, lazy, delicious, head, showering together and fucking him against the shower tile. It was all very elaborate in Axel’s head. Instead of countless hours paying tribute to the perfected male form, he was supplied with pathetic retching coming from behind his bathroom door. He found the noise oddly erotic. Axel stumbled over, shocked to find that he’d forgotten he was still drunk, and knocked on the door. “You okay in there? Do I need to call a medic?”

The door opened almost immediately, toilet swirling away behind Roxas’ flushed, petulant face. Axel knew the threat of vomit mouth should’ve acted as a deterrent, that he shouldn’t have felt like shoving his tongue into the kid’s mouth, but the desire was there, animalistic in his chest. Roxas briefly eyed him, unfocused, before meandering toward the bottle of rum and knocking back a shot.

Even drunk, Axel knew this didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. “Should you be doing that?” Roxas, mouth around the bottle, shrugged. It was a righteous, infuriating, little movement that made Axel feel like shaking him. “How old are you, again?”

“You ever get tired of repeating yourself?” Roxas slurred, gesturing grandly with the bottle in his hand. Axel made his way back to the couch and watched the blonde spin around like a satellite, staring at his record collection, his DVD towers, his mounds of laundry. “How old are you?”

“Twenty,” Axel said, watching Roxas bend over to inspect the bottom row of his movies, apparently looking for something. It might be worthy to note that Roxas was still completely naked, Axel’s body aching at the sight of his balls between his legs, ass up in the air.

“Twenty?” Roxas, looking back at him over his shoulder, ass swaying.

“God,” Axel whispered.

“They didn’t card you for this.” Roxas shook the bottle, took another shot.

“This is a college town. You want to do business, you don’t card the kids. Unless they look like you.”

“Blonde?”

“Twelve.”

“Where’s your porn at?” Roxas on all fours now, his body looking like a four course meal. The things Axel wanted to do to—wait, porn?

“You want to watch porn?” The incredulity exploded out of him. “We’re not… done for the night?”

Roxas, stumbling toward the couch with Axel’s laptop, taking another swig of the rum, looked ravenous. “We can play copycat.”

Well this was certainly more like it, but considering the bad sex they’d already had, it was only a matter of time before the blonde was smearing blood and excrement all over his dick and, inevitably, his bathroom floor. Quick, deft movements navigating toward his movie folder, Axel tried to think up a suitable, sober-sounding excuse. “You sure you want to do this? Pornstars are practically contortionists, and I threw my back out in a… boating incident last week. I almost died, actually, right after I speared the four-eyed shark with eight rows of teeth. Ever see Jaws? It was just like that, except I’m much better looking than that guy…”

Roxas watched him with a dazed, unfocused look. “Will you suck my cock?”

Waldo Does Washington—a 90-minute concept porn his friend, Demyx, starred in, chronicling Demyx dressed as Waldo, glasses and red and white sweater intact, having sex in wildly conspicuous places throughout Washington—was under the cursor. “Uhhh, yeah,” he said lamely. Maybe the four-eyed shark was too much?

“The only way to shut you up is by shoving my dick in,” Roxas said thickly, slurring noticeably now. “Your voice is so annoying.”

“My voice is like choirs of angels, kiddo.” Roxas giggled and leaned in for a kiss… with his ear. “You’re, uh, making out with my ear. You know that, right?”

“I don’t even know your name,” Roxas breathed into his ear, hand sliding over his erection. Wasn’t alcohol supposed to deflate his libido?

“A-Axel,” he shuddered. He was clearly drunker than he felt, letting a twelve year old boss him into watching cheesy porn, probably giving him a potential ear infection what with vomit-infused saliva and all.

“Axel, I want you to suck my cock,” Roxas whined in his ear, hand lacing with his and clicking on the… “You have Wall-E? Can we watch it?” The blonde clicked the file without waiting for Axel to voice his dissent, cuddling closer and separating a sizeable portion of Axel’s hair for him to wind his fingers through. “I love this movie,” Roxas slurred in hushed tones, almost reverent as he brought the bottle to his lips again. The sacramental rum. Axel felt faintly nauseous, watching the little robot roll around on a desiccated earth. Somewhere inside him, somewhere far, far below his blood alcohol level, Axel bemoaned what was now almost certainly his dissent into pedophilia. Because, really, Wall-E?

Roxas was giggling somewhere around his ribs. Then everything went very, very still.

“And I tried to quit. I stuffed a turkey under my shirt and walked out the front doors, but they just let me!” Roxas’ voice rose up from the depths of Axel’s unconscious. Attacking, somehow, from within, and pushing toward the surface. “But it’s free food, at least. I eat like five yogurts a day.” A slick drag of something against his forearm, the chemical bite of a Sharpie undercutting sweat and rum. He opened his eyes a fraction of an inch, focusing on the laptop screen where robots were chasing around a plant in a boot.

“This is the second time through. You slept forever,” Roxas said, dotting his arm with the pen Axel used for taking notes while beheading test rats with a guillotine. It sounded more interesting than it was, and there was only so much French Revolution he could channel before giving up to draw ducks in permanent ink, pens conveniently finer than typical Sharpies. They still smelled like shit.

“That’s my pen.”

“Dur,” Roxas said, sketching away on his arm. If Axel squinted, it kinda looked like an octopus. “Anyway, my dad’s a total asshole. I swear he’d put bars on my windows if it wouldn’t trip out the neighbors. Did you know we can’t even park our cars outside? We have to put them in the garage, otherwise we can get a ticket. My neighbors are total assholes.”

“What time is it?” Squinting at the screen of his laptop, the rum—fuck—in his hand, tilting back against his lips. “What about that blowjob I promised you?”

“Don’t turn it off!” Roxas swatted at his hand and then restarted the film, extracting the bottle from Axel and shooting him a scathing look. Axel gaped at him for a full ten seconds, annoyed (read: aroused), then turned toward the screen. Same robot rolling over a desiccated earth. “Look at that.”

“Hmm?” What time was it? Did this kid ever go home?

“You think you could live like that?” Roxas brought the bottle to his mouth; the liquid slide, a wet smack against Roxas’ mouth, signaling the end of the rum.

“Like what?” Roxas passed the bottle over and Axel finished it off, recoiling slightly at the bubbly backwash.

“Alone.”

Reading the label on the bottle, eying the proof, Axel sighed. “We are alone.”

Roxas made a small noise beside him, shifted, then unzipped the pants he must’ve thrown on while Axel was out. “I’ll have the blowjob now, thanks.”

Axel shrugged and leaned over, swallowing and swallowing while Roxas gripped his hair. Unsurprisingly, the kid didn’t last long. Roxas had potential, though, tongue trembling in Axel’s mouth after he reached down and pulled Axel up for a kiss, mouth still awash with come. It was… nice. Soft. Tasted faintly of yogurt, Boston Cream Pie, or maybe he was imagining things. The last thing Axel felt before passing out again was a small kiss against his jugular, fluttering there as his eyelids opened to darkness.

The problem with blacking out is that, until you wake up the next morning without a fucking clue where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing, you don’t even know it’s happening. You wake up, naked, next to someone you’d never touch with a ten-foot pole if you were sober. You wake up, naked, in a jail cell sleeping next to someone who smells like jalapeños and raw meat. You wake up, naked, tied to a sink in a girl’s restroom at a middle school three cities away. Or, in Axel’s case, you wake up, naked, with an empty wallet, an empty bottle of Malibu, a tattoo in ink—thank god; two unexplainable tattoos are enough for one lifetime—on your right arm, and, maybe most disconcerting of all, Wall-E is playing on your laptop, repeating for the last seven hours. There was a moment of distraught paranoia—did he have a dick scrawled in Sharpie on his forehead, and where were his fucking pants?—before he shrugged and sat up. Frowning, Axel added “smell like bad sex” to his shopping list of strange obscenities, the metallic clang of blood just under the low, heavy smell of come and sweat. What’s worse is that he was hard, a clear indicator of what had probably been a lackluster performance on behalf of whatever sweet young thing he’d picked up last night. Laughing at his horrible luck, he kicked off his pants and picked up his phone, sending off a mass text while jacking off.

One shit, shower, and shave later (and at least two orgasms, the second of which took an inordinate amount of time, his fingers wrinkling under the heat of the shower) Axel was a new man. According to Demyx, he was last seen leaving the bar with a blonde boy. Certainly an interesting development, and now he really had to remember that he should never call Tifa back, drunk or not, re-naming her entry in his phone as, “HELL NO.” According to Lux, he ambled up the stairs at one in the morning, bottle of now empty Malibu sloshing about as he barged into Luxord’s apartment, sucking face with “some blonde whore, can I get his number?” after mistaking it for his own, located a floor above. According to Larxene, he was pathetic and should try fucking himself. Altogether satisfied, Axel headed toward the corner liquor store.

The boy was easy to pick out in the sea of high school students emerging from the front doors, bell chiming at 3:01pm. It was his third high school this week, and he’d been beginning to think that he wouldn’t recognize the kid when he saw him. But that blonde hair, frowning mouth, and dejected slant of shoulders… it snapped home in his brain like the last piece of a puzzle. Rockford, his mind supplied. Rockford? That definitely could not be right.

The blonde walked right up to him, eyes slit against the sunlight. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Axel said, remembering how his come tasted. Like water and piss.

Roxas stared at him, immobile, probably wondering what sick fuck actively searches out lying high school kids. Axel could only think of one word, a repeating loop like that goddamn lonely robot for seven hours: potential.

“Can I walk you home?” He winked at the end of the question, leaned up against the fence in a way that he hoped looked badass. Really, he looked like someone’s older brother picking a fight with some kid half his size. Roxas scowled and walked away, pulling a pack of Camel Crushes from the front pocket of his backpack. Eyes lingering briefly on the spot where Roxas stood, grinning hard in the afternoon sunlight, Axel turned and followed.

A Preface

Thu, 28 May 2009 11:25:50 GMT

Before I tell you anything, I have to wash my face, take out my contacts, brush my teeth, take 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C, and put the dogs in their room. Rituals are important and also unimportant. The former because they reveal neuroses, the later because repetition imparts no meaning. That's where Stein can take a fucking seat with her making of Americans a hundred and one million times. You want to know about the making of Americans? We start with a middle class Catholic family. A dad, a mom, five kids who are going to grow up to hate each other. Who are going to grow up and not talk. Who are going to grow up and fight over things like fucking lawnmowers and marble end tables one day after they put their father in the ground. I remember waking up to snow in May and feeling just like you're supposed to feel, second floor of a house that belongs to you, belongs to you, belongs to you in those little girl nightgowns with a bow at the neck, and some lace. Long-sleeved for decency. Because you're a little fucking girl. Upstate New York, I miss you. And Susie Asado was not a fucking flamenco dancer.

[insert nightly ritual here.]

Intimacy feels like two thousand dollars in your hand.

The last time we spoke, kissing close under covers, he was sorry, ravenous. Hunger always sounds savage, thirst always sounds like lust. I was staring at my desk, thinking of ways to make it even more intelligible. I admit to doing it on purpose; one million and one reasons for you to look the other way. Now, look the other way. Ravenous, like he couldn't believe he'd forgotten what the inside of my mouth tastes like. Licking always sounds pornographic, lapping always sounds like promiscuity. It is inevitable that if you have a door under your stairs, I am going to ask if Harry is in. It is inevitable like the end of them is inevitable, exploding all the time on the periphery like optical illusions, cops, and after you've been on meth for too long.

Can't hold a charge. Doesn't stand a chance. Makes me think of Yeats. THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD. Because things do fall apart and the last image, all the time forever, slouching toward Bethlehem... that stays with me. The impetus, the coming (the second), the inevitable. I keep coming back to that, like Donne talked about, and it can mean so many things: buzz words, seeds planted, perversions of the intellect. It's all intellectual, isn't it? The sex, the fucking, the way I lead you all on like it's something easy. NOTHING IS EASY. If you think it's easy, then you aren't thinking hard enough. Think harder, look closer (love hard, live hard). At least I don't feel like a Dr. Dre song about it anymore --"Now you wanna run around talkin' 'bout guns like I ain't got none. What, you think I SOLD 'em all?". It was a nightmare then. Again, now. I'm still laughing at you, sweetheart.

I was trying to explain that grad school was MASTURBATION and theorists and scholars sucking each others' dicks all the time like it was a fucking orgy of original thought. I don't think anyone got it.

At least he was sorry for it, though. Real sorry, not fake sorry. How can you not forgive someone you love? It's an impossible task. Because it becomes a non-issue. They don't have to apologize because it doesn't matter. This is all idealism. It wouldn't happen in the first place except by accident. THAT IS NOT A FUCKING ACCIDENT, BABY. Even if alcohol is involved. (Zexion, the prodigal roommate, is going to have an Adios Motherfucker because the color is nice and so is the sentiment--head down at Hollywood Billiards, underage and feeling up a fever). Listen, I don't blame you. But how could you, baby? We go back to why this doesn't work: it, theoretically, would never happen. Not if it was TRUE LOVE.

True love true love true love. Yes. Yes, I fucking do.

This is forever boring now. Epic waste of time when I could be jacking off or finishing that prompt or editing that piece of shit chapter or sucking face with someone gorgeous or insufflating Vicodin or mixing a White Russian. Noticing the veins in my hands and wondering why they are so blue today. Or yesterday, whenever that was, sitting there and thinking... whoa. Look at those veins. (We are so mortal.)

In short: drama, and I'm feeling sort of uninspired.

FUN FAX OF FUN

I spend a lot of money when I'm bored or overwhelmed by bullshit.
Plums are pretty good, but only the good ones.
The trick is to keep going even after the come hits the back of your throat.
I know a whack ass story about pineapples.
Shit, I'm still wearing those earrings.
After you have thyroid cancer and they cut you apart to save your life, you kinda talk like a funny alien.
Technically, SORA IS AN ALIEN. This is unrelated to thyroid cancer.
Gato told me she shot heroin through her eye ducts.
I hate sleeping with blankets or a top sheet or or a duvet or anything like that. In short: COVERS. FUCK THEM.
Pug pug: to beat something (rug, child) or smack something so as to remove detritus (ass, shoes--both after being at the beach). Maybe only filipinos will understand this.
Fuck you, Amazon, for e-mailing me in the middle of the night. I'm like WHOA, SOMEONE LIKES ME. Nope. Just Amazon.
This isn't actually a list. Can you tell?

Ugh, I'm tired. I didn't really talk about anything here. OH, there's one I forgot: Reviews Really Do Give Me Anxiety, But I Love Them, So Keep 'Em Coming (400 Is A Really Nice Number). Was that shameless? Don't give a fuck. Ariza is really growing on me. I'd hit it. Don't even get me started on my boy, Sasha, with his three of AWESOME. I'm not technically a basketball fan, but damn. I find that changing topic in the middle of paragraphs does wonders for confusing the fuck out of people. I remember drinking some Carnation Instant Breakfast shit right before hopping on the shortbus to take me to high school. "High School." I'll tell you all about it in images and half articulated memories that you will never be able to piece together, sitting in trees and footballs landing perfectly in tomato bisque. Mmm, bisque.

In theory, mozzarella/tomato/basil sounds like a delicious sandwich, but mostly it tastes like nothing unless you do it right. Who can do this for me? Porto's makes a soul destroying feta sandwich that costs $4.50, but... oh my god. WE SHOULD GO TOMORROW! Wham was dying for a turkey sandwich today, so tomorrow we decided to try that deli that we used to harass when we were in high school. But we should go to Porto's! There's one in Glendale and one in Burbank. And I'm talking about food because I had a lollipop, a lime, and a couple kuftehs today. And about 85 million pretzels while I edited M's paper. Does this mean I'm starving myself? I dunno, 85 million pretzels is kind of a lot. It's four o'clock in the fucking morning (the Used), and it's clear that I need sleep.

I used to count questions (and stars, and on my fingers).

The Trouble With Sunlight [fic]

Fri, 15 May 2009 09:02:16 GMT

Title: The Trouble With Sunlight
Author: Versace Frolic
Rating: PG-13ish
Pairings: light Axel/Roxas
Warnings: Random cursing, humor drier than the Sahara
Word Count: 2,165
Summary: There is no sunlight on The World That Never Was. Isn't that weird? Axel and Roxas go on a "mission" where they don't really do anything except exchange innuendo and flirt all over each other. Also, magic carpets and magic lamps!
A/N: A tiny oneshot for pouikee, who is unfairly awesome and commands a troubling armada of creative skills. This is merely a simple, uncomplicated scene that fulfills her prompt of "Axel and Roxas just hanging out."

It had something to do with how the sky was always dark. Ten in the morning, ten at night: the same oozing pitch obstructing the space where the sun should’ve been. It wasn’t that Roxas wasn’t a morning person—look at him, bleeding blonde and light all over the place—how could he not be? He was a morning person, but the ever-present absent sun did a number on his internal clock. The trouble with sunlight is that, without it, daytime doesn’t theoretically exist. Without the sun to set his life to, Roxas was tired all the time. Tired and late all the time. This is why Axel—with nothing but the purest intentions, of course—decided to be Roxas’ surrogate daybreak. The first time he’d done it, the redhead barely dodged the keyblade sailing for his cranium in time. There had to be a bribe of waffles, and later, those 3-D Doritos that could only be found off world. Roxas was one stubborn, fussy sonofabitch, but things had progressed from that first failed substitute sun. Axel had loosened—ahem—Roxas up, and bribes were as uncomplicated as lunch at that great taquito stand off the corner of Main St. and Bloody Entrails Dr., or a promise to stargaze for no less than thirty minutes. After awhile, of course, Axel stopped thinking of them as bribes. He suspected Roxas had stopped, too.

It wasn’t very often that the Organization members had a day off (read: never), but Axel, always a fan of treacherous insubordination, and Roxas, who didn’t give a fuck either way, found ways to sidestep the agonizing and, let’s face it, pointless recon missions the “Superior” (air quotes and highly affected, dropped-jaw voice required) sent them on. Really, nine hour shifts sitting in the middle of a desert on the watch for suspicious activity? Well, those fifty fucking trillion pieces of sand seem to be minding their own business, and Axel was salivating at the thought of Roxas in a kinky little Arabian princess get up. Veils and mystique, he was thinking. He had the habit of staring down Number XIII, eyes fond and far away. Roxas endured his moments of dazed unresponsiveness. He figured it was some form of epileptic seizure Number VIII was clearly too ashamed (read: arrogant) to reveal.

“If you try one on, I promise to make your bed for a week.” So close. So close to getting Roxas to surrender his dignity.

“A week? Try an eternity! I’m a boy, in case you haven’t noticed.” Axel gave a shocked gasp (“What?! Nooo!”). “I look horrible in peasant tops, and turquoise washes my skin out.”

“Au contraire, XIII. Turquoise brings out the color of your eyes, and I’m going to pretend it’s not fucking hilarious that you know they’re called peasant tops.” Axel was looking pointedly at the looming spires of Agrabah being all pompous and unnecessary in the distance. “Besides. They come in fuchsia.” Roxas made a strangled noise behind him as he strolled down the sand dune they were posted at. The problem with sand dunes is that they aren’t stroll-down-able. By the time Axel was finished somersaulting down the rest of the way, sand pouring in coarse rivers from every crevice of his body and clothes, Roxas was tumbling out of a portal, laughing so hard he was on the ground, beating the sand with one of his dainty gloved fists.

“Laugh now, pretty boy. We’ll see who’s laughing when you’re dressed as a genie and my cock is in your… oh. I’m speaking aloud, aren’t I?” Roxas, no longer laughing, was staring at him with an odd look on his face. Scowling and getting to his feet, Roxas turned toward the city. Axel didn’t know whether to feel delighted or horrified.

“And this,” Axel said, brandishing an ornately woven rug, “is a magic carpet.”

Roxas, a sizzling plate of shawarma in his lap, looked skeptical. “It’s an ugly rug. Very unmagical.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Axel countered, laying the rug on the floor in their momentarily commandeered Arabic abode, the lady of the house bound and gagged in a bedroom, left to watch re-runs of comically dated Arabic-dubbed episodes of the Smurfs. “I traded 1/16th of my sex appeal for this thing, so you better be grateful. We can fly around like heroes and you will no longer be so distracted by my lean physique and charming good looks.”

“You have sex appeal?” Mouth full of meat, Roxas was clearly void of any smug sarcasm. His question was honest, politely curious. The little bastard.

“You wound me, Roxas,” Axel said, clutching a hand to his chest as he situated himself on the rug.

Roxas rolled his eyes, dipping a strip of meat in hummus and dangling it into his mouth. Watching Number XIII eat was like watching porn, Axel had discovered. Extremely stimulating, ultimately unfulfilling. The dazed, epileptic look settled over Axel’s face, and Roxas sighed as a lecherous smile spread over the redhead’s mouth. He should really get that checked out. “You should try this.”

“I tried. You almost tore my hand off. Didn’t you ever learn that sharing is caring?”

Roxas looked thoughtful for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip, before carefully dipping another strip of meat in the hummus, setting the plate aside and walking over to where Axel was reclining on the rug. In one swift movement Roxas was straddling the redhead’s hips, piece of meat positioned over Axel’s slightly agape mouth. “I can share. Open; it’s going to drip on you.”

Axel’s mouth opened slowly, eyes on the small blonde in his lap as hummus dotted his tongue. When Roxas finally lowered the strip of spiced meat into his mouth, his fingers lingered on Axel’s lips, slicking them with grease. “Messy,” Roxas said, almost accusing.

“Why don’t you clean me up.” It was like a line from a bad porn, a non-question that would lead to him slamming Roxas against him, watching the light spill out of him. Oh, this was torture.

Roxas leaned close, little sparks of joy in his eyes. Axel was surprised at XIII, his hands on Roxas’ hips and just barely fighting off the desire to grind himself upward. Maybe it had something to do with the weather—absurdly hot, even for Agrabah—the heat going to their heads, or something. Well, going to Roxas’ head; Axel was ready to fuck in snowfall, in a frozen tundra. His eyes fell shut as he leaned forward, ready to break a fundamental unspoken rule of the Organization (BUSINESS AND PLEASURE. DON’T MIX THEM.) when he felt what was undeniably Roxas’ sleeve running across his mouth.

“There you go,” Roxas said, smirking all over his stupid face. Axel could only growl barely concealed obscenities in response. “What’s that? I don’t speak Thwarted Pervert.”

Feigning nonchalance, Axel offered his best unruffled shrug. “Well, I was going to give you this magic lamp I bought off some legit black market guy with a glowing turban, but I guess that wouldn’t interest you at all. Since you’re more concerned with,” Axel rambled, gesturing wildly, “following rules and shit.”

“My ass.”

“Your ass what? Is hot?”

“Off world lingo. Means ‘bullshit.’”

“Oh, bringing out the big guns now, are we? Well, listen up, kiddo.” Axel produced a small lamp from a pocket. “Three wishes. This cost me a year’s salary and the last shred of self-restraint I was saving up. That probably explains my cheesy porn line a couple minutes ago. Inhibitions dropped like a bad habit… not that I drop those, and wow, I’m still speaking aloud, aren’t I?” Shoving the lamp at Roxas, Axel shook his head, laughing at himself. “Here ya go. Knock yourself out.”

Roxas eyed the dull lamp wearily. “Why are you doing this for me?”

“You’re my friend,” Axel said lamely.

“You sell your sex appeal and self-restraint for your friends?”

Axel grinned. “Every goddamn day, baby.”

Roxas breathed deeply, rubbing at the lamp. “Don’t call me baby.” After a minute of rubbing, a genie yet to materialize, Roxas shrugged, setting the lamp in his lap. “You might want to think about tracking the glowing turban guy down.”

“He told me this would happen, actually.” Axel produced a wad of paper from his pocket. Unfolding it, he read the text to Roxas. “See? ‘Magic Lamp: Genie Not Included.’ I think you’re just supposed to wish, anyway.”

“I don’t know who is more retarded in this situation.”

“You, by far,” Axel quipped, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning back against the rug. “Wake me up when we’re filthy rich or something.”

Roxas frowned. “We don’t need money.”

“We don’t need lots of things, Roxas. We still want them. Sex, for example. I don’t need… well, yeah, maybe I do need sex. But I’m having a dry spell, and you don’t see me withering up, hitting on anything with legs, do you?” Roxas glared at him. “Maybe it’s best if you don’t answer that strictly rhetorical question. Just ask for what you want.”

Roxas watched Axel’s chest rise and fall for awhile. The redhead wasn’t really sleeping, and more likely than not he knew he was being observed, the smug fuck, but Roxas didn’t mind the ego service. He liked looking at Axel. Picking the lamp back up, Roxas closed his eyes and focused on his wishes. I wish, I wish, I wish. Please.

Axel sat up with a started, “Oh,” eyes over bright. “What did you…”

Instead of responding like a normal, sane person, Roxas tackled Axel back onto the rug, hauling up the redhead’s coat and pulling down on his pants at the same time. “Whoa, whoaaa, what the hell are you doing? Not that I don’t like where this is headed, but if you’re checking to see if my dick got bigger, I can assure you, it was already of excellent size.” When Roxas’ thumbs pressed into the flesh at the dip in his hips, Axel hissed, grabbing the blonde’s wrists. The pain, though, was only anticipation and memory. The wound, the magical remains of fucking with Maleficent, had been diagnosed by Number IV as “a lasting reminder of your exhausting mouth and laughable battle skill.” A wound untouchable by potions and time, left jagged, blackened. Axel didn’t have a heart, but if he did, it would be exploding.

“It worked,” Roxas breathed.

“Those wishes were supposed to be for you,” Axel said quietly.

“This is for me.”

“Ah, a twelve-year-old’s logic. So endearing.”

Roxas smiled hugely and Axel was momentarily dazzled, blinking away a surge of something in his chest, which is why he didn’t see Roxas tackling him again, pressing their chests together in a way that might have been homicidal had the blonde not been laughing against him.

“This is a little sociopathic for me, Rox,” Axel exhaled. It was easy to forget Roxas could more than hold his own in battle.

“Listen,” Roxas said. And there, underneath their breathing, was a sound that Axel had only memories of. Memories that didn’t really belong to him. “It’s not real,” Roxas said. “It’s just the sound, but it’s fun to pretend, right?”

Axel didn’t know if he could speak. “Yeah,” he managed, hearing the beat of Roxas’ heartbeat against his. Memory supplied the feeling, a gentle pulse in his fingertips and at his neck; a phantom heart. This was certainly unexpected. Axel had anticipated a blowjob, either receiving one or giving one. But see, the trouble with sunlight is the trouble with Roxas: without it, things stop existing. With it, they can exist again. Plants die, hearts wither, but Roxas counters with a smile, and one fucked up attempt at scoring some blonde ass later, organic cells knit together and new life happens. Hearts, even phantom, beat again.

“What was the third one?” Axel was stroking down the length of Roxas’ back.

Nuzzling his chest like a particularly affectionate kitten, Roxas yawned. “I don’t think that one worked.”

“No way. It worked. Look at this, at us. It worked.”

Roxas pushed up against Axel’s chest, meeting the redhead’s eyes. “Did it?”

“Am I supposed to know the answer?”

“I think so.”

While it would have pleased Axel greatly to spend the rest of his unnatural life staring Roxas in the face, he decided he’d risk decapitation for one kiss. Roxas was already leaning forward, eyes closed and lips slightly parted, so why wouldn’t he oblige the kid a kiss? Just one kiss. When he felt the phantom of Roxas’ heartbeat at his lips, his own staged heartbeat pounding away in his mouth, Axel thought it felt like the universe was unfurling. Not unravel, not unwind. Unfurl.

“Hmm,” Roxas said, licking at Axel’s lips. Each lap made the room spin. “I might have wasted one.”

“What?” Dizzied, out of breath, Axel could only hold on to the light spilling out over his hands.

“That wish. It had already come true.”

There is a Massive Bruise on my Left Forearm.

Wed, 06 May 2009 18:09:23 GMT

I live! I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to hang out with little boys who are all talk, but it seemed like the better choice at the time. And now I'm all banged up and bruised over like we were fighting with swords in a glade somewhere, shoeless and with a kind of animal glint in our eyes. It was like a little dance, a fucking game, and now you have to take the wreckage and tape it all up, hope for the best. The best, the best, the very fucking best, and pretend it's not strange at all when loyalty leaves you on its doorstep. Like it doesn't twist in your guts like being betrayed or being turned away.

Because it doesn't really matter. Not really. I just know that it should, somewhere, to someone. If that someone was sane, maybe. The things I do, no one can know. The things I do, you would never even guess. And they parade around inside the place where my heart should be (IRONY? IRONY?) and make me smile sometimes, laugh others. Like I've l-l-l-lost it, baby.

I am actually working on LB12. I have 800 words and rising, if Axel would stop talking like a fucking idiot and Roxas would stop being a pissy bitch. They just do these things, and I can't stop them. But, god, this bruise on my arm is so alarming looking. It's so hot. I press on it, and my body curls against itself a little. Violence. Sex. They're almost a slant rhyme. Because I am easily wounded. Marked, branded, scared. That's almost a fucking Dashboard Confessional record.

I'm a hotbed of the seven deadlies these days, Wrath probably trumping all at the moment. There's just so much to be angry about. Drug addicts, for one, stupid fucking plagiarizing bitches, for another. Boys, maybe, on their bad days, and assorted other idiocies that I can't believe I waste myself on. I waste myself on you. Time, breath, patience. Such a fucking waste. The real question is why can't I stop? I can stop so many things. It's so easy for me to just turn off the part that cares, that wants, that needs. A practice in sensory deprivation. A practice in delayed gratification. For Yours Is The Kingdom of God. For yours, for mine, for how we are all falling down like ashes, ashes, and plagues, and apples with cloves stabbing them like an over eager halo.

Whatever. I used up all my images the first time I wrote. Used up all my dialogue and all my stories so that now all you get is a poorly-worded rehash of shit you've already heard before. Broken record, maybe. Or maybe I'm just too hard on myself. This is what I seem to remember: that "tokidoki" means "sometimes." Maybe. Sometimes. They aren't so different. So I wear this thing around my neck like a crown of thorns. A Crown of Thorns, just displaced.

Uhhh. I forgot what I was talking about.

ALL I CAN DO IS LAUGH

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:04:37 GMT

lol.

fuck.

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:00:55 GMT

Four nights in a row isn't so bad to hang.

...it's like some kind of disease sinking into my blood. Right now I'm over it. Tomorrow I'll be sitting by the phone again, breaking the law to answer. Pissing my friends off.

FUCK.

...

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:09:19 GMT

I didn't actually want to talk about this at all, but I had that pull. You feel it in the pit of your stomach, and it's whispering, "Write." So the thing is I had two weeks of absolute fail, full of disease and disaster and the worst shit ever. Nothing to write home about, though, not really. Couldn't write without the Mac (it's back, now!), couldn't think without some downtime, and then right as I was getting back into the swing of things (Word open, cursor blinking), the floor started cracking.

The thing is I have to play my cards right and close to the chest. Because if I'm not careful, I will fall the fuck in love with this gorgeous kid. Three nights in a row isn't so bad to hang. Three nights in a row, hour after hour after hour. This is what you can't do: READ INTO THINGS. That's my default setting, reading into things. Like how he sings and sings and sings and when I look over to watch, he looks away because I don't think he can stand the vulnerability of it. Chain-smoking when he doesn't smoke at all. And the fucking kissing. Kiss on the mouth, whatever, but when he drops those, soft, imploring, adoring little kisses everywhere else... what the fuck can I think? Hmm? What the fuck can I think. Because IT IS WHAT IT IS, and please don't let me make this something it's not. I don't want to think it's something it's not...

But I don't know what to think about it at all. There are only these things:

1. I feel electric.
2. The slow tumble.
3. I want him.

It's a reckless, knowing-you're-not-doing-the-right-thing feeling. The right thing, the right thing. Like we live in a place where there is right and wrong anymore. What was it? It was a lyric once, and I don't know the band or the song. Something about picking your friends by the beating of their hearts.

This is trouble, but only because of eighty million reasons that don't matter. And one that does.