A fic MichaelxKaren for my friend Slushipping. Happy early Birthday! :D
It was one of those nights in South Park.
Lonely, and almost too quiet… while snow layered on her window ceil. And the outside world covered in a white haze and erased completely. A cold, wasteland of snow and ice.
For one Goth, it isn't so bad.
Michael, the unconfirmed leader of the Goths… you know, the one with the poufy hair and the large nose? Yes! He sat on his bedside, looking out the window from afar. His bedside light is still on and the CD player near the window skips back to track one… Still no sleep. It has to be at least three or four AM.
As Pete would say, 'Dancing is something you do alone, in your room, at three in the morning'.
He removes the cigarette from his lips and dies it out on the frame of the bed, discarding it into a clay-ceramic-bowl-ashtray… thing.
"Cold." He mutters to himself as he fumbles through his pack. He plops another fag in between his lips. He's about to light it when he hears a small yawn and peers over to the woman curled into a ball. Karen. Her expression is soft and innocent. Although, she looked the same when she was awake. He lets his mind wander as her begins to ponder: maybe everyone looks harmless when they aren't awake? Michael thinks about serial killers and the like... Even the grumpiest, oldest person could seem innocent.
Before going too deep in thought, he shrugs it off.
Karen was as innocent as they came… well, for a McCormick. Although, she was a little- erm, damaged.
The woman was too frightened to sleep in her own bed and often times would wander to Michael's. She would go into manic like episodes, blubbering on and on about a guardian angel that doesn't show up and how she's been abandoned. She would go on and on, sputtering, 'it's all my fault, I should have done something to prevent it'.
The Goth doesn't ask her about the mysterious 'Guardian angel' and Karen didn't seem open about it.
So, he leaves it at that.
Michael and Karen's relationship was… not so much a relationship. It was like one of those animal specials on TV. Symbiosis.
He still remembers how they met. Michael was hanging around the graveyard, enjoying the sights and… there she was. Like a specter of some sorts. Completely shell-shocked. Her eyes were soulless. He had never seen a conformist that was such a… nonconformist. And then, after a short conversation, she never left.
Karen was just someone who appeared one day… and stuck, like a leech- No, not that. Karen never took from Michael in any sort of way. It wasn't mentally or emotionally straining on his part. She's just… there. He liked her around, much to his friend's dismay. Of course, he really didn't bring her around too often when they were present.
She was more like the dirty secret. Like the dirty magazine stashed under the bed.
The Goth lights his cigarette and ashes in a nearby sculpture that Henrietta made. He didn't hate her, nor the sculpture… he just found it as a, 'appealing handicraft for multiple uses'. Fancy word for an ashtray.
Henrietta…
Where has the time gone? Henrietta used to be so close to the group, like the mother hen. She was always watching over everyone but now she's distant. Maybe time eroded their friendship? Or maybe it wasn't Henrietta at all, maybe it was just him. Michael had changed a lot… maybe too much.
Maybe, maybe, maybe… no definite answers.
The smaller woman mumbles in her sleep, tossing and turning, the sounds of The Cure playing softly in the background combined with the rattling window make the night anything but silent. He likes that, actually. He likes it a lot. Sometimes, nights are too quiet for Michael. Too lonely. Too solemn.
Karen seems to change that.
The only reason he thought she clung to him so tightly was because of her brother. Apparently, there was some kind of debilitating disease Kenny had. She says that it was her fault that he died but it's just the grief talking. Years and years of grief and yet she still talks about it as if it were yesterday.
Kenny was dead. He's gone. It was easier to except it than fool yourself.
And he thinks about his friends again. Henrietta, Pete and Firkle… They probably moved on to darker and stormier pastures… replaced him with that Mike Makowski since Michael himself was a poser.
Poser…
No! Michael was totally dark and nihilistic. He wasn't a wannabe nonconformist, he was a nonconformist!
Karen was just the bump in his path.
Parasitic!
He could easily cut her out like the cancerous tumor she was and then… then things would go back to the way they were. He would have his old friends back again and he would be freed from this good for nothing leech. He wouldn't have to prove himself to his friends that he was Goth because he would be the unofficial leader again and maybe… maybe Henrietta would look at him again.
What the fuck was he doing with his life?
The woman's hand suddenly flies out from under the blankets, moving around and searching the other side of the bed. Her eyes flutter open and she looks up to Michael, "Oh. I thought you left. Can't sleep?"
"Totally, like this friggen insomnia," He grumbles angrily to himself, "It's the worst thing ever."
He slides back and into his spot next to her, cigarette still firmly in between his lips. He places his arms behind his head, blowing smoke up lazily. Karen tries to mask a cough and he rips it from his mouth, tossing it in the ashtray.
"How long have you been awake? You need sleep or your sleepies will get bigger."
Sleepies. Bags under the eyes. The woman's antics could give anyone diabetes. Not implying that she was cute or anything…
"Is the music not loud enough? I can turn up a little louder. I know you don't like it quiet. Then you can get some rest, okay?" she sits up rubbing her eyes, squinting at the CD player across the room, ready to make the sleepy fumble over. Michael pushes her back in the confines of bed.
"I'm going to be awake whether something is playing in the background or not."
She tosses herself on her side, wrapping her arms around the poufy man's torso. He tries to relax, tensing up when the younger woman's clinging onto him. Karen nuzzles his collarbone, "Want me to be your dreamcatcher? I can take all your bad dreams and make them go away."
Dreamcatcher.
He remembered reading something about the OJibwe people and dreamcatchers… And how bad dreams would stick into the net and disappear with the light of day while good dreams would slip through the net and down the feathers to the sleeping child.
Fuck. So conformist and so nonconformist.
He looks over to the woman, noticing her fragile smile. It wasn't very Goth to agree with her. He could either hurt his pride or hurt her.
Well…
Nobody was around to listen anyways.
"Yeah. I guess you're my dreamcatcher. It's a twelve hour job and you better keep someone of the totally dark and black dreams and get rid of the shitty conformist dreams."
He nods to himself, absorbing the words, trying find others to make it more Goth… but none come to him. He looks back to the young woman. Her eyes shining with some kind of emotion he couldn't quite place.
"Good night, Michael." She lays her head back down and covers herself back up in his blankets as her eyes flutter shut.
Michael gives another glance at the window and shuts off the bed side lamp, nestling down beside her.
"Night Karen."
It was one of those nights in South Park.
Lonely, and almost too quiet… while snow layered on her window ceil. And the outside world covered in a white haze and erased completely. A cold, wasteland of snow and ice.
For once, it isn't so bad.