Well, since I seem to be on a posting spree these past several days, currently sitting at ACEN, chain smoking outside with my computer while my little sister sleeps like a normal human being, and everybody else walks around like drunkards, I figured I'd go over the portion for the next part/chapter I had. It's honestly probably one of the shortest instillations I've ever posted since the first chapter, but since it's segueing into part two, as well as containing another one of my favorite prewritten scenes I've had sitting around for months, if not years, I felt it was sort of appropriate to leave at its current length rather than overdue it. Sort of an easier, much less heavy and descriptive transition than usual.
Also, hah, according to my stats, I should have had at least one review to which I'd be, in turn, reviewing right about now, but whenever I click it, it comes up blank. Well, not at all, would be the more operative wording, I guess. bahah. So despite that small dose of disappointment after an exhausting day of cosplaying in a barrage of other people, I guess I'm too bored and sleepless and not easily discouraged enough to keep from flooding with updates. Still a bit confused about the phantom incremental review increase, but am assuming maybe it was posted and then deleted? Or just a cruel and unusual technological error hah, but REGARDLESS, to whomever initially-if in fact ever did or deleted-said review, I'm just going to go ahead and preemptively apologize for failing to properly address it in the usual manner. Since, obviously I appreciate it/them, and like to reciprocate that sort of effort. But. Yeah. hah.
That's all I've got.
And here's all I've got to offer up in terms of chapter seventeen.
***OKAY, ACCCTUALLLY, sorry, right after I posted this, the review, OF COURSE, popped up lol, so herrrreeee we go:
Guest: Thank you so, so very much for the review :D It's been four years since updating, but also four years since I've received any such feedback for this fic, and it's definitely nice to see that somebody still enjoys it. Although, as you can see, I'm a tad flippant and inconsistent with the timeliness of my updates; however, one of my core principles in writing is that, no matter how long I may disappear for, or seem to have abandoned a story, I never will, and will continue to work on it until it's complete. So, yeah, I will definitely continue to write this fic, it's my baby, and first ever fanfic, as well as a present to my younger sister, so its a very special to me. Thanks again for the review, it definitely made my day seeing that 33 hit 34 lol and I hope to see you back again to read the rest :)
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⟪Ⓒℌ◭⁋⒯ǝℝ.⓱⟫⦂ Reduced Visibility.
When he woke up, the room was empty, head in a dull throbbing as the brunette sat up, disoriented and glancing around with evident confusion, curled into a blanket that smelled of someone else, a pillow that hadn't been there previously resting beneath his head. Next to it a note.
Didn't want to wake you. Just had to get going. Thanks for the room.
Short and sweet and unsigned, Kaiba crumpled it beneath his palm with a dull smile and shake of his head, gradually rising to his feet, comforter draped about him like a cape, his entire body suddenly feeling frozen. The heat of increased metabolic systems no longer active, ducking through the entrance, and teetering over towards the medicine cabinet. Dry swallowing two or three more than the recommended dose of Tylenol Extra Strength and cringing at the bad idea that turned out to be, before crawling atop his mattress, curled into the comforter that carried a distinct aroma, a series of small ash like flecks catching his eye, redirecting his gaze with perplexity towards the windowpane; dancing throughout the morning sky were soft, white feathery clumps, thickening as they accumulated and stuck together.
They're not actually supposed to come true, Kaiba muttered to himself, half in thought, and partially aloud, both acknowledging and scrutinizing the circumstances. I mean, for heavens sake, it was only October—but it was the one of the earliest ever recorded days in meteorology that the city of Milwaukee had gotten snow before December. It was eerily disconcerting, he'd hardly celebrated his own birthday period in the past sixteen years, let alone made some foolish wish on the whim that the wick of an extinguishing candle would suddenly float into the atmosphere, all disjoining, and somehow defy the very laws of nature. And it was unsettling in a way, how something so simple could simply be.
How quick a subject you've always ignored and overlooked could become something as substantial as an idea. An idea that provides the argument for the cognitive essay-to-self; an argument that takes place deep in the differentiating hemispheres in your brain—between what you want and what you need.
A wish. A whim. Wheeler, his brain tacked on systematicaly, almost alphabetically, blaming the semblance of similar letters and undeniably sad similarity of things he'd never seen value in. Things he'd wanted to need, and needed to want growing contradictory and unclear, but no less deniable they were all coming true. The whims of finding Wheeler, the more than out on a limb one that same person had taken to befriend him, even if by force, and the fact this long shot of accepting it had turned that whim into a wire, connecting them on rerouting levels, Wheeler being the very one to give him a proper birthday in the first place, the confidence to be childish, the hope required to put faith in extinguishing candles.
Something about the idea of burning out that didn't quite fit, that made his stomach spoil, candles were set on fire, the life sucked straight out them for the sake of stealing all their light, then discarding their dead, little bodies like trash. Would he too huff and puff and blow the boy down? Would he hesitate? Would he even have a choice? Growing emotional without natural emotion, irritable in such a way it tightened his chest; still disoriented, head still a dull thrumming of pain, not quite as sharp or capable enough to be considered functional, and then transitioning into an overwhelming burst of anger. Something about spending too much time in the sobriety after such a bender that sucked everything you said and every side of yourself you showed into deep speculation, a sort of reevaluating that found it all much less than favorable. The irrationality of it all seeming so obvious now, the inability to fathom why in gods name it seemed like such a good idea to act so unhindered when the point was to fortify control.
Angry with these conflicting feelings, angry with the shit state he'd left himself in, sitting up and fingering around his bedside table until knocking over an orange and white container that gave off a distinct clank-clanking as it rolled on its side, shifting the contents within. Crudely twisting off the childproof cap, tossing it, and tipping the whole pill bottle back until he permitted three orange ovals to pass. Impatient, pacing, hating the mandatory 30 minutes he so often lost sight of being required to wait, tempted to take another half, but became increasingly distracted with his cigarettes. The hallway outside the front door he'd given such bold statements to when Sam confronted him. The blanket fort in his living room. The wall he'd been pushed up against. The oddly compelling confidence Joey had worn. The dominant roles they seemed to be slipping into as easily as the other. The lack of spite. The fact it was...fun.
The fact it was starting to make him feel sick.
Two days, he told himself, it's been two fucking days…and you know what they say about the first 48—once they were lost, so was all conceivable hope. All possibility—every chance to recover—Gone.
Kidnapped, rebranded, and then sold like interactive identity theft that ruined more than just your credit score, except this was much worse than any temporary mark you could get on your record, this was permanent; untraceable, irreversible, and left sitting in a cold, drafty basement of boxes upon boxes collecting dust if you hadn't already been mindlessly computerized or compromised due to seasonal flooding. And slowly, but surely, it all sank in, and he felt somehow like he'd been stolen—petty reputation shifts and inaccuracies no longer disconcerting when you were no longer on the record, period. The sacrifice of his dominant personality had ensured that much; but this was too much, too many 24 hour cycles amounting—that 48 mark was crucial—each day after that you disappeared. Like Taken if Liam Neeson wasn't your dad, and let's face it, no one's dad is Liam Neeson, Kaiba stressed with a stiff upper lip, and both of mine are dead.
People stop looking, your priority level lowers, they give up, move on, forget, or at least try—but very few people ever have to relive it, and he'd been through this process twice before already, and he'd far from forgotten. No matter how cold and callous he could coax himself into a coy, convoluted Cheshire-Cat copy, it was merely costume jewelry. Just real enough. To be convincing, and not only to an audience, the trouble was when it came time to take it off, when you couldn't, when you were so in character you couldn't exist outside the illusion—that was the price of structure, survival, of Seto, but the price of stoicism was that it must be swallowed. Little had he known, your insides were never the same; shape-shifted, scripted, and shipped off without ever being separated had left the rest of him, physically, an outsider, on the run from the implicit that was apart of the original design, so twisted and so deeply buried that you couldn't possibly mistake it, that no infinite amount of zeros could pay to erase.
There was no forgetting, flashbacks didn't seek permission, those little flip-books that feel like fingers wrapping around the fragile throat of the fractured pauses of a person still fighting to find the sound of their own voice. Such a fucked up thing to forgo just in order to frown any evidence of identity away, pretending he'd dropped them. Those inseparable details. Pretending he'd truly lost track when there was a tombstone in his chest, an epitaph of existential crisis enshrouding the truth in fear, and fearing the truth so much he never had the foresight to see the flowers.
The pressure of feet and the face of someone who'd never once been his friend, but who'd, without reason, any tangible proof, without any reason to pay him any kindness, had gone out of his way to find him. He bought me a present, Kaiba hung his head in shame, mixing in with the resonating embarrassment that left a partially flushed, flustering face to meet the object between both palms—fingers slightly crooked, holding it had felt so weightless it had gone unnoticed, and the thought of placing it anywhere but closest to him felt wrong somehow. Sad somehow. Something, a feeling, an abomination to the proud, successful man who'd walked off that plane—to allow something so lethal to not having seen coming twist his lips into this overflowing fountain of honestly. To reveal his secrets, the only one that mattered, the only true thing he thing that ever truly belonged to him, the only thing he had left.
Himself.
The six year old boy sewn into the strings, the true colors false bones had been built up around, and their—his—very real ability to bleed. The source of false hope he'd been holding hostage, even when the brunette knew deep down it was the other way around—the refusal to ever be undone and remade—to remain as the world had left him. Back when he was human, complete, intact, me, Seto cringed, deeply pained eyes clenching when they were temporarily unable to calculate. To possibly fathom or ever understand, having been so lost and alone and scared and shackled, having waited his whole life away, two fucking days, he sighed again, exhausted, retreating, beginning to give into his original instincts as he set the piano paper to the side with a skillfully conditioned hand that refused to stop shaking.
The prior knowledge of post, pre, and present PTSD is what caused so much alarm to rise in his core, palpitating in his chest like he was being brought back to life by the shock of paddles; but he knew better than to cling to such a naïve metaphor and call it hope. He was already broken, and he was about to break again, nobody ever brings you back alive.
And he was running out of lives.
This was no longer preventable.
This was happening.
How could you let this happen?
"This is where I want to be right now, I chose it..."
"...because for the first time in my life I'm more fond of the one right next to me..."
"But I'm glad I found him...I'm glad it was you...Because you were worth the wait."
"You really are amazing."
"No, no I'm not," his body folded forward, clenched fists pressed down by his face, "I'm the worst thing that's ever going to happen to you," such a gut wrenching pain when he replayed the previous night. The things they'd said. The way Joey had made him feel like maybe he was worthy of that praise, or just the fact he liked the way it sounded coming out of his mouth. The way he'd defended the blonde's importance so vehemently, mortified and guilt ridden and flighting and feeling everything come and go in the span of seconds. "I'll ruin your life," he whispered, amphetamine upstart always so heavy and emotional, intonation caught between a wince and crack, but so terribly quiet, "I'm ruining it right now."
"What goes up, must come down."
I'm going to bring him down, he frowned, this awful acidic taste rising from his stomach to his throat, I'm going to destroy him.
».«
Back flat against his air mattress, Joey's eyes engaged the ceiling, tossing yellow ovals upward and catching them like kids caught popcorn and goldfish at lunch like some sort of game; however, they were merely doing it for the fun of it, perhaps mindless competition, or just the satisfaction of knowing they could, where as he was aiming with the sole objective to erase the contents of his memory bank. The way he'd woken up, the way he'd fallen asleep, the way he'd acted and been called out on the most embarrassing levels imaginable; and still been haphazardly drunk enough to have the guts to push Seto Kaiba up against a wall, to put his hands on him, the audacity to ask if it felt good. Face burning, color depleting, embarrassed so insufferably he couldn't even bring himself to repeat the detailed version of what had taken place. The more than implicative, more lewdly phrased dialogue, the irreplaceable knowledge that Kaiba's anxiety-hand-holding- shenanigans were innocent and well intended, while his were anything but, explicitly becoming...explicit...or just more...intimate...he wasn't even sure which was worse at this point.
Unable to escape the instant replay, the fabric, the momentary warmth radiating from his upper thigh, the sheer excitement of having controlled the ebb and flow of a body he'd never gained the upper hand over in his life, even if for just those few seconds it had lasted, taking advantage of such a fucking perfect human specimen it was making his stomach turn. Nothing about his body had been remotely familiar, nowhere near the same as the vivacious curves of a woman; but taught, slender, and excitingly well defined, it had been arousing all the same. The lingering desire that left him fantasizing the reciprocation, the curiosity as to how those hands would have felt if they'd been put on him instead; imaginably more forceful, more dominating, the compelling shiver down his spinal cord that compelled him to cram four more faint yellow pills down his throat. Desperate to displace the admittance of desire that had no rightful place to exist in the first place, confusing their brief interactions for the one's he'd loved more than life itself, and lost more than a decade ago it seemed.
Harpie Lady card finding its way guiltily into the palm of his hand, fingers tracing the edges, the image of the caricature, the deceased lover he felt like he was betraying by moving on. Onto something that wasn't even real, onto the worst possible human being he'd ever met in his life, that's who I chose to replace her. He held the card to his chest, feeling his eyes welling up for the first time in what seemed like weeks. The way this selfish projection of feelings he felt he'd thrusted onto Kaiba so unfairly only making him miss her all over again. Turning onto his side and wrapping the length of his arms around his pillow, bringing it into him and squeezing tightly, as if that would be enough to bring her back. As if the inanimate object could possibly offer the same warmth of a real, living, breathing human being, secretly hoping it might replace the actual body he'd found himself falling asleep against two nights in a row. The rising panic that even that could disappear, the fact it probably would. The last thing Kaiba needed, let alone wanted, was a clingy, incapable, emotionally lost mess like him, but Kaiba was steadily becoming the only thing Joey wanted, needed, and was absolutely terrified of losing. His own motives so blurred and blended and beyond recognition, remembering their days were numbered.
How many were left exactly? Had it been two days or three? He couldn't seem to keep track, having been too drunk off atmosphere and elixirs and irrecoverable sentiments of what was able to exist only in an entirely alternate world. The fact that, regardless, he only had between four or five left before the deal they'd struck was done. If I'm lucky enough to live after the shit I pulled last night, thoughts wandering back to the fact Kaiba had briefly allowed his invasiveness to invade what would have once quite literally cost him his head. The brunette having been drunk enough to even formally submit the verbal confirmation it had indeed felt good, that Joey had made him feel good. Oh god, he felt his stomach starting to summersault, he's going to kill me where I stand next time I see him. He's going to skin me alive or string me up atop a street lamp and leave me for dead, paranoia increasing at an alarming rate, that's not the sort of boundary you can just cross without expecting to arouse some repercussions.
Fumbling with the three or four smashed together cigarettes he'd managed to conserve throughout the night, nervously lighting one and sucking harshly, the scent of the other's cologne conjuring faintly beneath his nose. Somehow having forgotten he was still clad in Seto Kaiba's clothes, frantically beginning to lift the shirt up and overhead, chucking it across the room, kicking off the pants, and laying back in his boxers, having already decided there wasn't a chance in any of the seven hells he could see him again today. Probably wouldn't even be able to look him in the face, Sam either, Sam especially, she meant well, but she would just make it worse at this point. Her playful comments that followed him like the plague, hungry eyes, ravish away, how he hated the power of female observation sometimes. The spot on way of reading him not so reassuring anymore, the realization he was back to being entirely alone even less reassuring than that. Knowing full well he couldn't face the likes of either of them, whether collectively or individually, something was bound to backfire.
"FUCK," he cursed loudly in his native tongue, what the hell is wrong with you? he asked himself, do you have a death wish? Or am I really that fucking stupid I can't think before I let my words pour out like a leaky faucet?—drip, drip, drop—never seeming like any substantial amount until you finally get the bill. Realizing how quickly those little slip ups added up, how expensive it was when left uncorrected for an extended period of time. Heart escalating in a calm, almost indifferent sort of anxiety that Joey was unable to distinguish between discomfort and numbness. Another cigarette lit, smoke drifting in misshapen masses lacking any grace, no beautifully overlapping sinews, no transfixing swirling, just this thick, suffocating smog. Walking over to his windowpane, noticing the frosted glass, wiping at it with his bare forearm, taken aback by the sight of snow. This sinking feeling.
In lieu of consecutive postings/updates in such a short span of time slash running out of material I've yet to properly sort through and selectively place in an orderly fashion, on top of transitioning into an entirely new portion of the story, it might be awhile before I get around to pumping out the next chapter. So I guess I'll leave the last 25,000 words or so for you all to chew on for the mean time. Haha, hopefully it wont take me another four years, but I don't expect it will. That was quite an unprecedented lapse, even for me. Thanks again though, for continuing to stick with me through the process, even if I'm only actually talking to myself at this point, I feel such sentiments are called for nonetheless. And as always, and as everyone does, any semblance of a review is appreciated, lol as well as shamelessly motivational, and my redundantly reiterated review4review offer is still as valid as it's always been. So don't hesitate to ask. Hah, gonna go try and crash now though, since now I KNOW I'm talking to myself. Aye-ye-ye