Summary: Maybe he's just a masochist. Maybe part of him likes digging just to know how long it takes till he bleeds. Maybe he enjoys pushing just so that he can watch himself crumble. Maybe he's been hurt so many times for so long that he feels abandoned without it. Maybe it feels like home.
A/N: Jess, after he left Stars Hollow. Exact timing left intentionally vague, so you can fill that in yourself. Oneshot. Rating a precaution. Real "T" writers laugh at me and call me names, but if it's not fit for the Disney Channel, I'm making it "T". I'm crazy and love angst, but I really want feedback, because I need to know if this is something that only I like, and if it is I'll stop writing about it...or at least posting it. So please review and let me know.
Disclaimer: I do not own. Not Gilmore Girls, not Jess (though I want him), not Hemingway, not For Whom The Bell Tolls.
Dark, the sun has set but he hasn't moved to turn any of the lights on. Cold, the window is still broken letting in the nails of winter. Hell, because she isn't here.
He holds the glass bottle firmly as if he can somehow hold onto her memory through it. It's long been empty, he's been sitting here for hours, staring into nothingness, as his mind slips through chasms of destruction. He should be working. Maybe tomorrow he'll go in and he won't have a job anymore. He thought about that this morning. But somehow he's still sitting on his filthy, broken couch, that isn't even rightly his. It's today. It was today. He wonders if she remembers. He's sure she doesn't. He can't think about her.
He hasn't blinked in a while. He blinks now. The phone rings...again. His crazy mother keeps calling him and leaving message after message on his machine as he makes no effort to move at all. The ringing stops and she starts talking. Rambling something about wanting to see him, he doesn't really care what she's saying, so he doesn't pay attention. He can't remember a time in his life when he used to pay attention to her unless she was crying. He had to pay attention if she was crying. She used to cry a lot. When he was little, she cried because his father wasn't there. And then she left him alone for hours on end and he would read his picture books or listen to music. He never watched the television. Partly because it was inane, and party because most of the time one of her moron boyfriends had taken it with him when he left. They all took something. The television, the radio, the microwave, the damn phone. Sometimes they would just take part of her. A few of them took part of him.
The only thing they never took was the toaster, because he hid it. When he was little he loved toast, so when she brought one of them home one day, he hid it. It was old, and he had to fix it almost as often as he used it, but they never took it. It was still his. As he got older, he hid his books right behind it. He hid his first Hemingway back there. That copy of For Whom The Bell Tolls, tattered, shredded, scribbled over almost beyond comprehension, lies in his broken bookcase now. He loaned it to her once, but she swore she couldn't read it. Dammit, he's thinking about her again, and he can't think about her. It hurts.
There's snow in his hair. It's drifting through the broken window. It starts to land on his face, freezing him before it melts on his cheek. He doesn't brush it away. The pain isn't enough to make him do anything about it. He's known pain before. Worse pain. Long pain. Hell pain. When some of the morons hit him before his mother realized what was going on. When the only one he ever liked died. When he made himself numb to it all. When he followed his dad across the country. When he left her.
He's still sitting here. Tonight is their anniversary. He can't move. He can't breathe. Her absence is suffocating him. He wants to slip under. To end.
He has bruises shaped like her all over his lips, his arms, his eyes. There's an unhealed burn like her fingers on the back of his neck where she placed her hand one night years ago. The blisters in his ears are her laughter. He has a tumor in his brain that is her wit.
It's painful as hell. It's excruciating. But he keeps coming back to it. He always goes back for more. He can't understand why. Why he needs to bleed. She was the one thing he couldn't have, and the one thing he needed. When they were together and happy, he had to shove her away until both of them were broken and bleeding. He's sitting here, alone, still broken. Still breaking.
He'll go back again. He knows he will. If only to see her eyes. Her perfect, sparkling, sapphire eyes. Seeing them will be a knife in his heart again. But he'll go back to see them. And again. And again. He always goes back to the pain. He can't understand why. Why he needs to bleed.
Maybe he's just a masochist. Maybe part of him likes digging just to know how long it takes till he bleeds. Maybe he enjoys pushing just so that he can watch himself crumble. Maybe he's been hurt so many times for so long that he feels abandoned without it. Maybe it feels like home.
There's a clock in the corner. 11:57pm. He's still sitting here. It's almost gone. He won't meet this hideous, taunting ghost of a day for another year. He needs to break. He needs to bleed. He needs to feel pain because he needs to feel something. He grips the bottle hard. It's been empty for hours. He holds it tighter. And tighter. And tighter. With a crash, it shatters. He looks down at his hand and sees blood. His blood. He watches it spill over his fingers and soak into the arm of the couch. He does nothing to stop it. He needs to bleed.
11:59pm.
He's still sitting here.
He can't breathe.
He's slipping.
The memory of her eyes are drowning him.
12:00pm.
The couch is empty.
He's gone.
He leaves the glass shattered on the floor and climbs into his dirty mattress. Tomorrow he'll go to work and beg for his job. He'll tell them he was hurt. He closes his eyes and sees hers.
He's bleeding.