Sketch in C

by Naisumi

An experimental piece in 2nd person p.o.v. ...No, that's not a decent summary at all, but it's hard to summarize :P All you need to know is it involves downwardspiral!Lance and um...L/S! :D:D:D ...R&R, please? [slash] [post-Bayville] [L/S]

Title: Sketch in C

Author: Naisumi

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Lance/Scott, Scott/Lance

Disclaimer: Still not mine, still not rich, still not famous. Damn.

Spoilers: None.

Warnings: Angst, 2nd person p.o.v., future!fic, and...um, some sap >.o Toward the end. Oh, and: STNH! STNH! STNH! (Season Two Never Happened)

Notes: This is an experimental piece in 2nd person p.o.v. from Lance's perspective. It involves post-high schoolness and it is slash, like everything else I write. :D Um...>.> That is all :D

Additional Notes: This is dedicated to Mor, who makes me download shibby songs like Hot Hot Heat's "Bandages" and who inspires the fuck out of me.

As always, C&C is encouraged and craved and NEEDED DESPERATELY.

Enjoy! :D

--

You look at him, and you think that maybe what he reminds you of is that book where the dog gets hit by a car. The author described the dog as a twitching, twisted mass of red with a burst of intestines smeared on the road. You think about that, and you decide that it's a little too morbid. So, instead, the two of you sit and you watch movies about girls getting their heads smashed in by hammers and children with their feet blown off by shrapnel, all the while with snappy music playing in the background. He doesn't like it, and you ask him why. He tells you it's too violent for his tastes. You say to give you a break; it's just a movie. He says that fifty-two percent of all children have their minds skewed and corrupted by the assertion of the media, by the socialization of the media; by sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Then he smiles at you and turns on the CD player in his car, playing very loudly the Strokes, who Rolling Stones says are the saviors of rock as per this generation. You grin back, and feel your heart tighten a little at how he seems to trust you enough to joke. You ignore the heartbreak.

You go to college. It's a community college where half the majors are vocational. Decide to get a degree in woodwork. Play the guitar every night until three in the morning, and then get drunk. Laugh when your friends decide to paint a mural on your bedroom wall. Accidentally let Chevvie, the guy who used to live down the street from you, stash some of his marijuana under your bed. Get suspended and kick a few asses for dragging you down. Get drunk, get a bus ticket, and go visit him.

He says you smell like alcohol. You tell him you got kicked out. He asks why, and you say that paint fumes and pot aren't the fragrance du jour. He smiles and tells you that you're making progress by knowing what "du jour" means. You sort of hate him then for joking condescendingly. You know he doesn't mean it. But you still sort of hate him then. It doesn't matter in the end; you get drunk, and he says he doesn't want you, but the two of you fuck anyway. You wake up in the morning and he has made some coffee and orange juice. There are some bagels, and you realize he left for class. His schedule on the refrigerator says that he won't be back until two. You think about getting drunk some more out of boredom, but you sleep instead.

Apply to another college. Get put on academic probation. Decide you'll blow the shit and sign up for some liberal arts class. The life of an artist is for you. Your roomie has E and the professors don't even care. They call it "freeing the mind" in the industry. You say that it's bullshit, but you drop a few anyway. It makes the guitar feel like air in your hands. You fumble with it accidentally one day, high, and lose two pegs. You get pissed at yourself and stop doing drugs. The colors aren't worth the broken music.

Ponder how his kitchen floor looks like snow with bird shit on it. Wonder how bird shit on snow would look anyway, and if it'd freeze mid-air. You tell him about it, and he just sort of smiles at you again. You wonder if it's all in your head. You ignore the mindpain.

Go to an internet café. Figure it'd be easy. Wonder if you could work there. Apply some, and put down his apartment as your permanent residence. Decide that if he really loves you, then he won't mind. Find out that you're wrong.

You move out of his apartment. By "moving out," you mean that you ate the rest of his Chex Mix and left with the clothes on your back and your guitar. You had an argument with him about your life. He says that you're going downhill fast. You say that the slippery slope analogy is overused anyway. He gets mad and says that you're avoiding the point; that what you're doing isn't healthy. You tell him to go to hell, and you go out to a bar and drink until four and the bartender's threatening to drown you in a keg and toss you into a ditch. You're too drunk to walk and you pass out under a streetlamp with its light sharp behind your eyelids. You wake up the next morning and your shoes, wallet and coat are gone. You still have your guitar, but someone has kicked the case a few dozen times. Hung over, you don't care. Instead, you stumble to his apartment building and you're in the stairway on the way to his door before you remember that he kicked you out. So, instead, you steal the dry erase marker hanging by the whiteboard schedule in the lobby and write dirty words on the wall.

You fall into flipping candy on a string again, and you can barely remember anything except for wire sculptures and vomit under straw. Your friends have names like Fazzy and Durk and Magma Blue Sky. You think they're all stupid fucks but they give you pot and drugs and dirty picks they find. They make up words to songs, and you strum for them and they find everything so incredibly funny. Finally, you get sick of all the laughing and the throwing up, and you take twenty bucks from one of them while they're passed out in the bathtub with vomit on their face and hitchhike back to Bayville.

See a few people you never knew you missed. Enroll in the community college there. Decide to gun for an anthropology major so you can tell people that the dirt just means nothing. Pietro tells you that you're crazy, but he leaves you alone. You know that Pietro doesn't give a shit, and that's fine. You sit in your bedroom, shivering and running to throw up every so often. You yell at everyone. You're going through withdrawal, and you shake so badly every day you can't even play your guitar. Pietro says you look like shit. You tell him you're not addicted. He tells you to go the hell to rehab, will you? Just go. You tell him that "dead butterfly wings" rhymes with "crushed promise rings," and he kicks your door shut in disgust. Sit and write songs that you tell yourself are artistic. Drop out again.

Consider the projectile vomiting in classic horror movies. Stare at the ceiling and think about how a waterstain looks like a face. Become paranoid as hell and talk about Watergate and Deep Throat (hear kids named Fazzy and Durk and Magma Blue Sky laughing at the name "Deep Throat") and Syria and Syracuse and farming down in Oklahoma. Draw crop circles on your walls. Talk about juxtaposition and scream at Todd when he comes in. He looks at you out of the corner of your eye, but doesn't say anything because he's listening to his headphones. Tell him that the music industry has subliminal messages in rap music. He tells you to go to hell and goes to his room to write about sex and symbolism and smoking and to listen to music about clubs and closing out and climbing.

Pietro tells you that he's calling a lot. He says he's sorry. You hang up on him. Hug your knees to your chest and sit in the center of your bed, unwashed. Pietro tells you that you smell like crap and you flick him off. He comes dangerously close to telling you to just shape up or ship out, but decides to just not care. Freddy comes in and looks at you kind of funnily, but leaves when you ask him what the fuck he's looking at. Todd's the only one who bothers leaving you food every so often at the door. Todd doesn't talk to you, so you guess that he's mad at you. You think that he can go to hell.

Get asked about Scott. Think about orange juice and refrigerators with magnets and schedules.

Break down.

Finally feel clean. Wonder how the fuck you got into the mess to begin with. Go back to the city. Look for him. Wonder where he went. Ask the landlord. Find out he left something for you. Get an envelop with a rejection letter in it from the internet café you applied for and a Post-it note on it with a cellphone number.

You call him. He asks if you're in college again. Lie and say that you are, that you're going to become a, you don't know, a statistician. He says he's glad for you. He tells you about a job he heard of, doing inventory. Says you can try that while you're working on studying statistics. You say that it sounds good to you. He asks if you're clean. You pretend to be offended, demanding of him if he really needs to ask. He laughs and tells you that you should get together and meet again. You agree and hang up. Your stomach is swimming, and you throw up in a trashcan even though you haven't eaten for the past two days.

The two of you meet in a coffee shop. He orders a sandwich--turkey with lettuce and honey mustard sauce--and you sit and twiddle your thumbs. He asks you if you want anything. No, of course not, you say. Why would I want anything?

He says you look thin. You joke about your girlish figure. He looks at you and his eyes are very serious. You sort of hate him then. He looks like he spent the last seven months studying engineering and axles. He looks like he spent the last seven months being rich and smart. He looks like he always looks: perfect.

You follow him home, and he asks you when your first class is. You say you don't know, and he looks at you with the same expression on his face--the one that says he knows you're lying. He asks you where your school is. You try to kiss him. He asks you if you're really clean. You get angry and say for God's sake, if you don't want to, just say so. If you don't wanna.--when you say it to him, you say it "wanna." He looks at you very carefully, and you find yourself on the floor, your jaw feeling snapped and sore and cold. He rubs his knuckles and looks very sorry. You tell him to go to hell.

You use the last pocket change you have to call back to Bayville. Pietro picks up and you can't hear him at first because a truck is driving by. He tells you to go talk to Summers. He tells you that you sound like you haven't slept or eaten in a month. You snap back, asking if he can really tell all that from your saying that you're wasted. He tells you that he could care less if you're dead. You don't want him to hang up on you, so you hang up first. You stumble into an alley, wedge yourself behind a dumpster, and go to sleep.

Call Scott. Ask him if you can come over. He gives you an address. Asks you if you're staying anywhere. You tell him to just fuck off. He says he's sorry, but. You hate it when people tell you "sorry, but." You tell him to save it. He tells you he wants you to come up. He says please. You feel your heart tighten a little. You ignore the heartbreak.

You sit down next to his door, your back against the wall. You lean your head down between your knees and try to forget how dizzy you feel. You hear him walking. He always walks a certain way. Staring down at the floor, you notice that it's terribly clean. You feel his hand on your shoulder very briefly--hear the key in the lock, the door squeak open, quiet. You hear him tell you to come in. You stagger to your feet and follow him.

He tells you to take a shower while he orders pizza. You do so, and you can't help but smell his shampoo before pouring some into your palm and working it into your hair. It feels good, but your hair feels too wet between your fingers. You smell his soap, too, and you close your eyes, and you almost never open them again. You towel off, and you look over, and you see that he's laid a set of spare clothes on the counter. You wonder when he did so, and when you get out and reach to pick them up, you almost want to cry.

You rub at the stubble on your chin. When you shave, you nick yourself, your hand is shaking so much. You curse at yourself, and look up into the mirror. You ponder how it looks like a lake in the morning, all fogged up around the edges. You almost want to laugh. You wonder if it's all in your head. You ignore the mindpain.

Realize you sort of love him. Realize he sort of loves you, too. Realize that you're going to get fucked up no matter what.

Swallow your pride and leave.

You try to enroll in another community college. Find out that Mystique has cut off your money. The college is small anyway, and you feel like you're in a penitentiary, so you tell yourself that it doesn't matter that you didn't get in. Punch the wall a few times and almost break your hand. He finds you then, and you run away. You don't want his help. You don't want to fuck things up. And you figure you can't if you don't want him.

Problem: You want him.

Another problem: If train A is leaving from a station to city A, and train B is also leaving for City A, how much earlier can someone on train A get to city A than someone from train B?

Answer: Too much earlier.

You wonder if you want him to find you. You decide it doesn't matter. You finally cave and go to the local Y and take a shower, get something to eat, and fall asleep in the weight room. Some girl wakes you up and you're too tired inside to tell her to fuck off.

Think about Pietro. Wonder about college.

Miss him.

You get a job at a fastfood place. You hate everyone there, even the nice guy who gives kids extra fries. You figure he'll crash one day, anyway. You room with one of your coworkers, working up enough courage to ask and say please. You hate saying the word please.

Miss him.

You look for more jobs, and you find one doing inventory. Work full-time. You're holding four jobs, which is ridiculously difficult. Joke to yourself that it isn't so hard when you don't have school to juggle.

Miss him.

Find your roomie dropping acid one day. Almost reach for some, but back up and run the five blocks to your workplace. Collapse near the door, a half hour early, and bang your head on the wall. Shake.

Miss him.

Ask people if they want to supersize their fries. Tell them the toy of the day is a purple car with a see-through cannon on the back. Wonder what the fuck that car is supposed to be and why there's a cannon on the back. Look down at the floor.

Misshimmisshimmisshimmisshim.

You decide you're going insane. You move out of your shared apartment and rent one on your own. You can't believe how badly your head hurts every night when you go to sleep and every morning when you get up. It hurts a little less, though, when you call back to Bayville and Todd picks up instead of Pietro.

You sound better, Todd tells you. You tell him about all you've been up to. It feels good to talk to someone. Todd tells you that he's been calling every day, looking for you.

Love him.

You tell Todd your phone number and address. Todd tells you that he'll pass it along. He pauses and says that he'd like to visit sometime. He says that he's glad that you're not a "fucking druggie" anymore. He says that he's glad you're you again. You just think about Scott through it all. Then you and Todd say good-bye, and you sit on the couch, drinking a cola and wondering if you can just not go to work. Decide you have to.

Love him.

He calls one day and he sounds breathless on the phone. He says nervously that he might be "in town." You look out the window and he's standing on the sidewalk below your window. You almost don't recognize him.

Love him.

When he comes up, at first the two of you don't talk. You just kiss and he winds an arm around your neck and another around your waist and presses up against you, just the way you like it. You need him to move fast. He needs you to move fast, too. So the two of you move fast together.

Love him.

He wants to talk. He says that he's sorry he wasn't there. You tell him it doesn't matter. He says that he wanted you to get better on your own. You tell him that you did. He looks at you like he's about to cry, and you just

Lovehimlovehimlovehimlovehim.

You look at him, and you think that maybe what he reminds you of is that song where holding hands can heal the soul; the one that talks about still-life paintings. He's sleeping, and you're on your side, staring at the back of his head. If you tell him, you know he'll just smile a little, and now you know that that smile means: Only you would think that way. You'll never tell him you figured it out. You'll never tell him a lot of things. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that "butterfly wings" does rhyme with "promise rings" and crop circles are made by the sun and that you can just touch him instead saying you love him and he'll understand. He wakes up and stretches a little, looks up past the red. He says good morning. Your heart tightens a little at how he seems to trust you enough to smile like that. You hold onto the heartbreak and keep it in your mind.

~fin~