Pop Songs for Us Rejects

Sorry, once again, for the delay, I know it took me a blindingly long time to update this, but I took my sweet sugar time in developing a new character for this one, and I wanted him to be just the way I see him in my head. I have no idea how long this fic will turn out to be, but I doubt it will be super-super long, and it's sort of my replacement for Our Own Little Musings, which I deleted due to lack of inspiration and the fact that it killed me with OOCness. I'm sorry.

Chapter Five: So Very General

Hours pass, and she still counts the minutes
That I am not there, I swear I didn't mean for it to feel like this
Like every inch of me is bruised, bruised
And don't fly fast. Oh, pilot can you help me?
Can you make this last? This plane is all I got so keep it steady, now
Cause every inch you see is bruised

(Jack's Mannequin – Bruised)

Sasori's Point of View:

Life is carved in stone. (Clay, perhaps. In either fashion it is carved. But then again, is clay to be carved? Or shaped? Does it matter?) It stares at the faces of the weak with a certain amount of burning apathy. Almost depressing. But that's contradictory. Apathy doesn't depress. It only allows for the devil to take the mind of the fool into his hands. Such as it is, life remains carved in that same solid stone, and yet I remain unsure of exactly what it tries to tell me. This could make me ignorant, or not- I have never thought of myself as such. (Ignorance is such a petty term, really.)

It's so very general.

My fingernails click against the hardwood of a desk that feels too new, and I can feel the stares. The stares. (I glut in them, little attention whore, little whore-) I knew they would stare. I'm torn in wonder as to if people are naturally fascinated with others, or if they just don't like the way I look, and either seems completely probable. Grandmother tells me I shouldn't dress the way I do. (But no one listens to her. No one cares. No one cares. No one knows.) I press my lips together as I stare at my Calculus work, the corkscrew between them slightly smudged by the purple gloss. The ring moves under my skin, and I feel a sharp sting stab at my lower jaw. It's infected. Annoying.

The school's been open for a few weeks, almost a month, but time drags like the cigarillos I smoke, (-slowly. Deep. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.) I don't know anyone, nor do I care to. (Mommy taught me everything I needed to know for such a long time…) No one interests me enough. (-I, myself am all I need. Myself and those pretty little-) I stare at the work. Complex equations that make too much sense to be real. The lead of my pencil scratches quietly against the paper as I write, and a bit of graphite dust brushes over one of my answers. The heat of the classroom makes my skin bead sweat and the thin fishnet that covers my shoulders begins to itch. I pull one of the black strings of a bow in my hair into my mouth and chew on it. My stomach hurts.

The triple tone bell rings out and people stand, swinging book bags over their shoulders and talking about the Faggot who sits in my seat. I slide out of my chair and brush myself off, the pink material of my dress snagging to a hook in the seat. I disattach it and take my things, adjusting balance in my (- "I'm sorry Mrs. Akasuna, I can't really see why his growth is…") boots and taking an armful of books to my chest. (Black corset. Tight.)

No one interests me just enough…

I have a Lunch Period. The half hour of the day where I can sit in a room with five-hundred other students and do exactly as I wish. I never go. I hate the noise. The food disgusts me. I hate the people. The heat of too many bodies in too small a space. I hate it. The dress sways as I walk, and people stare at me in hallways, and it could be considered Masochistic that I enjoy the crude attention. (-Better than home. Better than there.)

I walk to the art wing. The area doesn't smell as strongly of used material as it was supposed to. It smelled new. New paint, new clay, new sinks, new kilns, new everything, and it was sick. For lack of the better term, art rooms aren't supposed to smell that way, but this one does. I don't like it. There's no one in the room when I enter, and I sit down in one of the chairs, scratching at the table with one of the glossed purple nails I am too often made fun of for. (-Idiotic people. My chest aches.) I sit there for a few moments, and my name is carved into dust, the letters written not in actual script, but a code of lines and inches I can't well define.

This is my art. The one so few have the capacity to really understand. To know that people are raised so devoid of taste and beauty is depressing. To know this, I would want to help them, but I don't, really. I provide, they ignore. That is how it has always been and I most believe it is. That is the way the world exists as it is today, and I am discontent, though there is nothing for me to do about it. People rarely appreciate the beauty of the body. (But they will, oh, they will-)

I listen to the door creak open behind me, and I can feel the dust that has gathered on the floor raise again as it's disrupted. The hard wood scrapes quietly, and I can hear the breath in a pair of unhealthy lungs steadily being filled with Tar from cheap cigarettes catch in surprise as eyes are glued to my back. The click of feet against floor breaks the would-be silence, and I wait for words, confirmation, anger, acceptance, (-anything so I can feel the body's human in the air. The innocence steadily being corrupted of a High School kid. Does everyone else think like I do?)

I turn around in my seat, the pink material of my skirt gathered at my bottom twisting awkwardly against my inner thighs.

He's there.

Kiba's Point of View:

The smell of chipping paint is somewhat reassuring, because it smells like some version of home and it's only there if the home has been there for a long time, long enough for the paint to start flicking away in strips so the layers of insulation and wood can reach the surface. I pull at the strips, and a few loose pieces caking under my fingernails as I do, and Shikamaru is telling me to cut it out as he glances at me from his windowsill.

We should be in class today. But this morning Shikamaru woke up with over a hundred fever and I'd rather be here, pretending to take care of the guy, than at school, pretending to do my Algebra problems. Since we started, I've already gotten In-School-Suspension, which is where they lock you in a white room all day and give you your work, three times, I've had four detentions, and I'm supposed to be getting a Saturday-School referral for skipping class too much soon enough, but I doubt our teacher will follow through. A lot of these teachers are brand new, so they aren't very harsh, but most of them came from schools before they all got merged into this one, so they're a bunch of rock hard bastards that I don't like.

Shikamaru called me sometime this morning, and as I walked to his house, the burn of the last of September on my back made me sweat rivers into my black hoodie. By the time I got to Shika's house, I was a bit embarrassed, because I've always been a heavy sweater and no one really knows why. I helped Shikamaru's mom make some soup, but Shika didn't really want to, so I had about half and left the rest beside his bed. Shikamaru's house is so serene compared to every other place in the world. As I lay on his bed, watching the fevered flush in his cheeks stretch steadily to his ears (-He's pretty like a girl when he does that, and I would have slapped myself for thinking that, but such thoughts have been so reoccurring, I give it to hormones and nothing else. I am not attracted to him. He just looks like a girl.) He's been watching the sky for a few hours, and I've been listening to his boom box quietly pelt tones that reverberate around the room like air. Music might as well be air; I wouldn't survive for long without it.

The first month of school hasn't been as good as I'd planned it to be. It hasn't been hell, because there are lots of cute girls who'll talk to me, like this blonde chick in my first period who's pretty popular, or this really shy girl in my art class who barely ever talks but she's really good at drawing and is my seat partner. I don't really like shy people that much, I like it better if they're comfortable telling people how they feel. Not in a brutally honest way, but just in a…relaxed way. Kind of like Shika. (-Him again.) But the shy girl in my art class is pretty okay. Even though she stutters and blushes all the time, which is kind of weird, she's okay.

I feel myself squishing into Shikamaru's comforter, and I watch the cracks in the ceiling, the unmoving cracks that seem to really move if you don't keep your eyes focused. But every sixty seconds I lose that focus and I could swear I see something move. (-But it never does. I hope I don't need glasses. One more embarrassing thing.) I smell some sort of drug, but I can't tell where it's from, or even what it is. It could be grass, in fact, if anything, it would be grass, but Shikamaru had told me that his parents had stopped, and I believe him. Stupid shit.

I don't really know how Shikamaru's doing in school, because we don't have many classes together, but my guess it that's he's doing great, or at least okay, depending on how much he's been sleeping this year. I'm surprised at how I don't find myself jealous of it. I used to, during Middle School, and it made me feel guilty that I did, but I was jealous of the fact that he had such great grades and almost irritated because he didn't really take advantage of his smarts. I just sort of stopped caring this year. I think it's because I realize Shikamaru doesn't really care either. It just sort of justified it, in a way that doesn't really make sense to me or anyone else. I won't be asking him how he's doing either, because Shikamaru and I have a silent agreement not to talk about classes unless we need help. It's kind of cool. We don't have to listen to each other bitch about teachers or homework or anything. It's acting like we're still on Summer Vacation when we aren't.

I noticed some bruises on his arms, and they aren't that bad, they're brown and fading, and I wonder if he's been getting in fights. I don't really picture Shikamaru in a fight. I can't see him angry enough to punch anybody and I can't see him pissing anyone off enough to get punched. But then again. People are weird. People get provoked by the stupidest shit. I really wouldn't surprise me if some guy punched Shikamaru for a bullshit reason, like… if Shika was walking on "their" side of the street. Stuff like that happens all the time in high school. (-Though not so much at ours, because turf is still being established.)

I'll ask him sometime.

Not now though.

He looks too tired to talk.

(-And the blush extends a little further.)