Rating: PG
A/N: I really needed to get away from Wild is the Wind for a little while, so I wrote this short little thing...I wrote it in about fifteen minutes or so to get past my writer's block, so I hope it's not too bad.
Hidden Behind Glass
He sat, a gentle throbbing in the back of his head from the stress
of maintaining a constant facade. He was a man everyone hated, but no one knew. Shyly, painfully, he hid himself from the harsh world around him. He guarded his heart -- his innocent,
naive heart -- against an overwhelming sense of abandonment and self-pity.
So, like everyday, he sat alone.
The soft lights around him were incongruent with the blatant stares he could almost feel on his back. America, what a wonderful place America had become. Before it had been bad, one had to be a loud talker to get anywhere in pre-pulse American society. Now, in the midst of the depression and poverty, one had to scream and still there was the fear of being drowned out by the agonized cries of others.
However, he wasn't overly concerning with being noticed, not in the way he normally was anyway.
Sighing, he forked his fingers through his short blonde hair.
Life wasn't fair.
Dejectedly, he looked down at his hands, his strong, working hands. All of his life he'd worked for everything. Nothing had ever been handed to him, and had it been he would have suspected it to somehow blow up in his face. So, maybe he'd become a little cynical. Wouldn't anyone in his shoes?
Even the poorest people, at least they had someone. His own love life was somewhat of a joke. He was the man that people pointed to when they told their children what not to become: a man stuck in a dead end job, and incredibly lonely. Never invited to parties, he spent his nights sitting alone in restaurants, eating pathetically and pretending his non-existent date was late and would arrive any moment.
Even as he sat, surrounded by people pleasantly chatting with one another, he felt somewhat threatened. As he looked around him, he imagined words of disgust flowing readily from their eager mouths. It was so easy to find pleasure in the pain of others, knowing any of them could be in the position, but glad that they weren't. Being human, he felt the need to add company to his level of misery. He was hard on people, critical and sharp tongued.
A handsome looking couple walked by his table, their arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. He'd been like that once...so long ago. Back before the pulse, before his life had crashed down around him, he'd been happy. Or, at least, he'd known some level of the emotion.
Content, maybe that was the word he was looking for. Happiness, joy...they didn't seem to fit his memories of the era.
He hid as they passed. Hid his blind wanting for what they had. Hid his humiliation, depression, and anger. There was only so much one man could take, and he'd been dealt a bad hand in life. The pure unfairness of it put a bitter taste in his mouth.
But, life wasn't fair, was it?
Looking down at the smooth, honey colored table he focused his eyes on the sweeping grain of the wood. In the thick varnish he saw all the things he couldn't afford: nice furniture, a big house, a passage to pursue a career rather than a job.
Frowning deeply to himself, he pushed his glasses up further on his own. Their thick, black frames marked him out in the crowd, his only real substantially notable characteristic. It was generally the one people remembered of him, until he opened his mouth. The things that rolled off his tongue were barbed, creating a fence for him to crouch behind. It was a feeble defense, but it was all he had.
All he had, besides his damn glasses.
Standing up, he pushed his chair in and gazed out at the world again through the frames of his ugly spectacles. Blinking against the bright sunlight, he pulled all of his doubt and sadness back into a shell of control and -- hiding once again behind the glass shield of cutting comments and a pair of lenses fixated in black plastic -- strode back out into the hostile world.