He's found that there's this time, this very specific moment just at daybreak, that looks so much like dusk that he can barely stand it. So, of course, he trains himself to wake up at that time--just for a moment--like the masochist he is. He allows himself to believe it's late sunset and not early sunrise, and that he's just taken a long nap because if it's sunrise then another long, long, useless day has gone by in which his life is indubitably wasted.
This moment is the only time at all that he'll let himself become nostalgic or self-pitying. (Well, he tries not to let himself. It usually doesn't work.) He hates himself for being so foolish, so young, so sure beyond everything that because he loved her it would work. That they would pull through.
Of course the Exhibit A-evidence of this naïveté was most always under his arm--on his chest--spooned up against him--curled against him like a flower to the sun--and he sometimes just wants to hit himself because she's nice and really. But somehow she's not enough and he kind of wants to disentangle himself and run, just leave her in his bed and hide out in a bush across the street until he sees her leave, maybe in tears. He's a gentleman, though, and the harsh curses to his mother he doesn't mean that result of this fact pound forcefully on the interior of his skull and now he needs it to stop, just stop and he's kissing her awake because sometimes being with her just evens out the sorrow, scrapes the excess off the top, and he's left numb and kind-of satiated instead of sobbing and banging his head against the wall, at which time she would have him admitted to the nice people in the psych ward at the Wilkes-Barre hospital.
When they're finished and he rolls back to his side of the bed, panting slightly and sweating (however much he thinks there might be tears mixed in), she looks towards the window and says breathlessly, "Whoa, what time is it? Shit, did we"--she glances to the clock--"oh." She laughs softly at herself, lifts up her head and lets it fall back to the pillow, pushes the stray hair away from her sweaty neck (where there's a not-so-shabby mark forming), and punches him softly. "I thought you had me so worn out we slept 'til tonight. You freak, what are you, revisiting your teenage years?"
He looks at her and chuckles softly in acknowledgement, but says nothing in reply. Numbness doesn't work with wit, it turns out, and he can almost feel the life draining from him in sporadic spurts.
Yeah, he's going to stop doing this. Masochism doesn't have a place in a life that already has so many opportunities for pain.
Story Notes:
I do not own it, much to my never ending dismay. However, I do own a poster that happens to have a certain someone on it that I may have kissed during my mid-afternoon-get-out-of-my-way-I-feel-like-shit-and-I-want-to-look-at-JKras's-beautiful-face-since-I've-just-gotten-out-of-bed rampage. Oh, and a prettypretty Jim shirt that I almost cried over last week when I found mysterious stains on it that will not and never will come out. But besides that, I don't own any of this, really.
This was the result of . . . well, I don't exactly know what. But enjoy anyway, yes? (:
This was the result of . . . well, I don't exactly know what. But enjoy anyway, yes? (:
Chapter End Notes:
Review and I'll buy you your very own poster to kiss.
elliehalpert is the author of 8 other stories.
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