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 Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 6:33 pm
ice cold
He pushed open the door to his room, walked across the floor, and set his bags carefully on top of the bed. He kicked off his shoes, set them neatly in the closet, peeled off his layers of coats and scarves, hung them up, and then sat down on the edge of the bed in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved thermal shirt in his favorite shade of dark blue.
The room looked exactly the same as he had left it, which was unsurprising, considering that he'd been gone for less than 48 hours. Chance put a hand over his mouth and skimmed his fingers thoughtfully over his lips, eyes taking in the plastic stars on his ceiling, the flat, empty desk, the closet that held only a small variety of clothing, the space in front of his window that his telescope normally stood. There was nothing very personal about the place, nothing sentimental, nothing different. It was almost sterile, it was so neat and tidy, though it wasn't from Chance being obsessive, and instead just stemmed from a lack of personality when it came to decorating.
Yet another missing trait, Chance thought to himself, and pushed himself back on the bed, laying back and folding one arm beneath his head. Normally, he would have taken the telescope out by now, set it carefully and reverently up so that it would be ready when evening rolled around and he could see his beloved stars.
But something about today made him hesitate; something about the weekend, and idly Chance wondered if it was because of what he'd done the previous night - or rather, who. Wrapped up in his own desires, his own passions, he'd managed to break one of the few rules that he actually had when it came to sex - the rule that he did not get in between established couples. Infidelity was not on Chance's list of acceptable situations, because it usually wound up in much more complicated and messy drama than he wanted to deal with.
It was different, he knew, with Ripley and Finn; they were not exactly the most normal of couples, as clearly evidenced by the conversation that Chance had had with Finn outside of the infirmary that one time. An open relationship, he recalled, because he'd already slept with Finn before then, and the flirtations and sharp comments about helping him to sleep had continued after knowing the extent of their relationship. But Chance had also known that Finn felt deeper for Ripley than he showed in public, because he'd been told that as well: something about how Finn had feelings for him, but that it was not love.
Chance suspected otherwise, in spite of these denials. Which meant that what he'd done with Ripley felt very strange and wrong now, after the fact. At the time, he'd been caught up within his own adrenaline-filled mind, and Ripley was warm and eager and responsive. Chance had always found the other man comfortable to be around, and would not have objected to such an opportunity under normal circumstances - except that these weren't normal circumstances. Chance had let his body take control instead of his mind; had let the lust and desire for physical contact overcome the common sense he usually was very diligent about, and now he was in the middle of something he felt that he had no right or business to be in the middle of.
He pushed himself into a sitting position, running a hand through his mussed black curls. It was an unfortunate situation, he thought, but the solution was at least easy - he would just have to not be around either of them anymore. Hiding the fact that he'd slept with Ripley was not a factor in the equation, because Chance was nothing if not honest, but he did not want to get in between two of the people that he liked being around the most. Their strange relationship may have been what it was, but Chance liked them both too much, individually and together, to mess anything up even further. He had no idea if he had, but somehow the assumption was made anyway, and he was preemptively attempting to help by removing himself from the picture altogether.
Yes, this was the solution that was needed, even if it wasn't ideal, because it meant that he would no longer have the conversations he enjoyed with either of them. Ripley's promise of good friends, whispered gently and reassuringly in the tent; Finn's snarky sun and stars - they resounded in his head, and Chance lifted a hand, rubbing at his temple to try and ease them away.
Stay out of it. You still have Claude, and you still have...whoever else that you like to talk to who like talking to you as well.
{ it will be all right }
Even Asher wasn't helping the headache, but Chance appreciated the kindness anyway. He pushed himself to his feet, picked up the telescope, wrapped carefully in the duffel bag, and made his way over to the closet, carefully and gently setting it down on the floor inside. For a moment, he looked down at it, an almost wistful expression on his face.
But then a sigh escaped past his lips, and Chance closed the closet door before he could change his mind.
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Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 6:54 pm
dress to impress
He didn't like shopping, because shopping took a lot more effort than Chance was willing to expend. There was something about taking clothes on and off repeatedly, half of which probably wouldn't even fit, that was exhausting and mostly pointless.
But Chance did like wearing clothes, especially if they were comfortable. As a child, he'd dressed only in what his mother had given him - which had been a mix of her old clothing and things stolen from other houses, since she blew their money on expensive and unnecessary things, as well as the occasional drug. When he showed up in a skirt of his mother's that had been tied twice to stay on, his third grade teacher had sent home a Very Concerned note that his mother had thrown away after reading it with a snort. After that, he'd worn mostly pants, at least to school; but at home it was different. At home, he had to listen to his mother, do what she told him to do.
He had not cared about the fact that skirts were considered "girly clothes," or that he got strange looks and laughs from the other students. It was normal, he told himself, to wear this sort of thing.
Even now, as he stood in his boxers in front of his closet at Deus Ex Machina, he still believed it to be normal. There was nothing wrong with wearing things that you found comfortable, even if by other standards it was considered "wrong." He liked what he liked - that was his mantra, right? That was what he told everyone else, that was what he based his life off, that was what he reminded himself every time he woke up and found himself in someone else's bed, or if he brought someone home with him. His life was his own to live, everyone else be damned.
Chance reached into his closet, dug around for a moment, and pulled out a particular dress, which he held up to examine. It really was very pretty; he unzipped the back and slipped it on over his head, tugging the sleeves down into place and then reaching around to finagle the zipper back up. The dress was one he'd gotten from a girl back in Michigan who had wanted to get rid of some of her old things; Chance had offered to take the dress, which had confused and disgusted her, but by then he was already moving on.
He twisted a little, letting the skirt flare outwards, and then smoothed it down with one hand, tapping a black painted fingernail against the fabric. It fell a little past his thighs, a few inches above his knees, which was about the length that he felt the most comfortable in.
The closet doors were shut, and Chance padded back over to his bed, sat down, and drew his legs up to his chest, making sure that the dress didn't ride up too far. He reached next to him, opened the top desk drawer, and plucked the sketchbook that he'd gotten in the Caribbean with Claude out, flipping it open.
After a few moments, he started to draw.
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Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 7:14 pm
draw it all out
The floor of his room was littered with crumpled pieces of paper; the old sketchbook was mostly empty, with only a few pieces remaining, and they had all been scribbled on in some way or another. An attempt at charting constellations on one, several deep gouges in the next where Chance had pressed down too hard with the pencil and had wound up ripping a whole straight through the paper. Another just had hundreds of stars drawn in neat lines, one right after the other, in tiny, cramped doodles to fit on the whole page. This one had an almost obsessive feel to it, each line meticulous, each stroke of the pencil deliberate and carefully made.
All of the papers on the floor had various sketches started on them, but none had been finished. A few familiar faces could start to be seen on some, but the sketch had stopped after the face, or after the hair and shoulders, torn away impatiently and tossed aside.
Dimly, Chance wondered if this coping method to trying to explore his own suppressed emotions was the right way to go about things; something told him that it was wrong, but he didn't know how else to handle it, or if it was even possible to drag out something so far buried that it was practically gone to begin with.
So he kept drawing, and he kept tossing them aside, dissatisfied with all of them.
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Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 7:24 pm
written in the stars
"Most ancient cultures totally saw pictures in the stars of the night sky, because like, who ******** wouldn't, but anyway, the earliest known efforts to catalogue the stars goes back almost six thousand years, which is insane, but so ******** cool. They found these text things in the valley of the Euphrates River, and it totally says that the ancients looking up at the heavens saw the lion, the bull, and the scorpion in the stars. The constellations we know now are probably different from back then, but anyway, the sky and star charts we look at now are images from a bunch of different groups, both modern and old. But the Greeks and the Romans are definitely the strongest and most obvious."
"You are babbling," Asher pointed out, the frost demon sitting on the edge of Chance's bed, but Chance just waved a hand at the golem and kept up his pacing back and forth. His fingers moved restlessly to twist the rings on his fingers, tug at the curls of his hair, smooth down the front of his star-printed shirt.
"So, anyway, Homer was probably the first Greek guy to catalog s**t, and that dates all the way back to the 7th century, B.C. Homer totally describes the creation of Achilleus's shield by the craftsman god Hephaistos in The Iliad, which is kind of a shitty book, but at least that part is kind of cool..."
Asher let out a hum.
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Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 7:32 pm
out of the woods
A day off. That's what he needed. A day off the island to settle his thoughts, which were starting to be steeped in confusion because he didn't know how to deal with this sort of thing - this is exactly why I avoid these sorts of situations, this is exactly why I don't do strings attached, this is exactly why I keep myself separated from everyone else, this is exactly why I don't make friends -
That wasn't entirely true, because he didn't know how to make friends, and the reasoning behind that had little to do with his current situation. He'd grown up not understanding the concept, and he still didn't understand it now, or anything further than that. Backing off wasn't running away, Chance reasoned with himself, it was just a selfish desire to not get caught between two people that he liked the company of.
He didn't do drama. He didn't do complications. He'd promised both Finn and Ripley no strings attached, and that still remained true; his feelings for them did not extend farther than he already knew, thankfully, but the "strings" attached was just friendship now, not more. He'd inadvertently attached strings by learning that he was their friend in the first place, and he'd gone and tangled the strings.
It was incredibly stupid, and such a simple mistake that he was annoyed with himself for having made it in the first place. Assuming things just made an a** out of 'u and me,' after all, and that was definitely applicable here.
A day off sounded much needed, and this time he would go alone.
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Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 8:12 pm
written in the stars
"Chance, please do sit down."
"In a minute. I'm talking about the constellation Orion, and I've gotta remember all this s**t before I forget it. Or rather, I've gotta tell you all of it so you know, I mean normally you're inside my head so you know my thoughts anyway, but I like being able to physically see you, like that's pretty badass, so I want to be able to talk about s**t in person."
"...as you wish. Please continue."
"Thank you."
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Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 8:34 pm
up all night long
The insomnia hadn't gotten better. In fact, if anything it had gotten worse, though Chance wasn't sure he was about to admit that. The past three days he hadn't slept at all during the night, and had only briefly napped during the normal waking hours, drifting in and out of light dozes rather than a full slumber. Whether it was just simple restlessness, or just his thoughts running through his mind, he couldn't be certain either, but it was simultaneously frustrating and annoying all at once.
Reason and logic were important, they were there for a reason, and he was so used to feeling nothing at all, used to just passing through life without too much drama because he'd already had the s**t life and he had never wanted anything to stem from that. Chance had seen the type of men that kids from households like his grew up to be, and he had little intention of ever becoming that way. The emotions were suppressed for a reason, the feelings were pushed aside and discarded to protect not just himself, but everyone else as well.
There was a reason he was the way he was, and right now he couldn't seem to fix the piece that had broken.
Focus, he thought, at 2:49 AM on Monday night. You're just overreacting to this s**t, get over yourself.
I really do think a part of me is missing something, he thought, at 3:37 AM on Tuesday. I wonder where it went; probably lost somewhere in all of the chaos, probably stomped all over during a visit from one of Mom's "candidates." That's why I'm not quite the same as everyone else.
I don't mind, he reasoned, at 4:13 AM on Wednesday. I don't mind at all. Friendships are meaningless anyway, because I don't understand them, and I don't really need them. They just serve to get in the way, their only purpose is to wreak havoc and make messes, and that's why I'm not supposed to have any.
I wonder what Mom is doing right now, he idly contemplated, at 5:56 AM on Thursday. I don't really care all that much, because I lost the emotions to feel for her a long time ago, but I wonder if she misses me. I wonder if she finally found a man to actually be with that wasn't a total ******** up.
I wonder what it's like to feel something, he thought drowsily, at 6:12 AM on Friday, just before his eyes closed and he drifted off to sleep.
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Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 8:48 pm
written in the stars
He talked until his voice was hoarse, talked until he had no more breath to say anything more, talked until he'd run out of stories, but not out of memories and confusing and conflicting thoughts, thoughts he didn't want to have, but that he had anyway, thoughts that Chance swallowed back, buried beneath his layers again, lost them to the blackness that rested within.
He still hadn't really slept, but he dozed on and off with his head in Asher's lap, the demon gently stroking his curly hair away from his face with pale, cold fingers that were somehow reassuring.
Sometimes he dreamed, but most of the time he didn't.
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Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 9:15 pm
draw it all out
The air in the room felt stuffy somehow; he'd cracked the window to let a gentle breeze filter through, and it ruffled the papers that were still scattered everywhere that Chance had not quite gotten around to picking up just yet. The room looked marginally worse than it normally did because of this, though it was more of a cluttered feeling than an actual messy one.
Someone could come in at any moment and see this mess, Chance thought idly, pencil scratching across the paper in absent lines. I don't care, but the only people who know that I keep my door unlocked and open all the time are probably otherwise occupied; and two of them I already decided that I wasn't going to see anymore anyway, so that narrows it down to perhaps one or two people.
He didn't want to dwell too long on that, so he went back to his drawing, which was of Asher this time. The long, slender lines of the demon's face came into view on the paper; small crystals of ice around the eyes and down the neck, glossy white hair that fell down in sheets along a bare back. Chance particularly enjoyed sketching in the details of the crystals, and spent a good twenty minutes trying to make sure that they were perfect.
So far, it was the only drawing he didn't tear out, crumple up, and toss aside.
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Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:09 am
dregs
He took all of the plastic stars off of his ceiling and rearranged them.
Since there were about a hundred, this took quite a bit of time, but considering that Chance was avoiding people at the current moment, he didn't mind so much; that, and it gave him something to do with his hands, to keep him from sitting around restlessly. Even drawing had grown rather tedious after a certain point, so he was looking for opportunities to actually do things.
As long as those things were confined to the safety of his room. Chance took some of the smaller stars and made Orion, and then took some of the larger ones and made Draco. The former was nearer to his feet, the latter right above where his pillows were. A few others went to create Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, but they were off to the side, and just a few more were clustered together haphazardly to create the illusion of a tiny galaxy.
(He wasn't that successful with it, but that was beside the point. He liked it anyway.)
Several hours later, when Chance finally finished with his handiwork, he stood in the middle of his room with his hands on his hips, giving a satisfied nod. Asher thrummed reassuringly inside of his thoughts, and the familiar cold breeze of the frost demon's musings clearly indicated their approval.
Chance went over to the door, contemplated it for a moment, and then reached out and flipped the lock. Then he went back to his bed, climbed in, and lay there with his hands under his head, staring up at his newly redecorated ceiling and tried to sleep.
(It didn't work.)
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Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2015 12:09 pm
my kiss on your lips
The club was loud and pulsing, the music thrumming vibrantly through the floorboards and reverberating in the walls, synching up to the beat of Chance's heart. It was something unfamiliar, the words garbled together so that the lyrics sounded meaningless, and that was really all that Chance needed - a mess of chaos, a mess of people all crammed together on a floor that was too small for them, so that everyone was close with everyone else and things blended together in sounds and colors and scents and nothing else.
His first dance was with a cute redhead, her curls almost matching his own in terms of them being everywhere. They tumbled down her back in waves, and Chance liked looking at them as he swayed behind her, his hands on her hips, one of her arms looped lazily around the back of his neck. She was here with her friends, she told him - or rather, shouted above the heavy drumming of the music - and they were all just out to have a good time, because one of them had been dumped by a recent boyfriend.
Chance didn't really understand, but he smiled and went along with it anyway, because she was pretty and friendly and she leaned casually against him without hesitation, black miniskirt flaring out around her thighs. When his hands smoothed idly down the sides of her legs, she just laughed, twisted around, and kissed him on the lips with her full, red mouth, leaving behind a smear of lipstick.
He spent a good hour just talking to her and her friends, laughing and clinking their beers together, and then they left, and Chance stayed behind.
He didn't remember the second or third dance. The fourth was with another girl, small and sweet, clearly anxious about being at a club, but Chance was nice to her, and did not try to push. Instead, he twirled her around merrily, grasped her hands and pulled her gently to fall into step with him. She left with bright eyes and a happy smile, and he felt somewhat satisfied with having done something good.
(Was this how he was supposed to feel? He didn't know.)
The fifth dance was uneventful. The sixth was a tall - taller than him, which was nice - muscular blonde with a broad, inviting chest and warm brown eyes that made Chance think of a puppy dog. He leaned with his back against the man's chest and let the strong arms wrap around him, closing his eyes and resting his head back onto the man's shoulder.
(What were names? He hadn't asked, he couldn't even remember if he had or if he'd just gone straight into things because they were there, because maybe if he tried hard enough, he'd be able to feel something, anything other than the very obvious and distinct lack of emotions.)
The man was kind, and not forceful. He left without even a kiss goodbye, not that Chance had expected, but it would have been nice. At least they'd parted on friendly terms, and the dances together had been satisfying and pleasant.
Sometime around three in the morning, Chance found a black-haired man with sharp, dark eyes that drew him in. He didn't remember most of the dancing, except that they'd been pressed hip to hip for the majority of it, bodies flush together, one of Chance's arms lazily draped around the other's neck. He didn't remember leaving, but he did remember everything else that happened after that.
He remembered the short cab ride to his apartment, the impatience of the man's hands even in public, groping restlessly even as they were climbing the stairs. He remembered that he'd lost his shirt in the front entrance of the apartment, that he'd been picked up and carried to the bed, thrown roughly down and then climbed on top of. He remembered heated kisses, greedy, rough, almost forceful; hands that explored everywhere, bruising in their touch, too rough, he couldn't breathe well, couldn't drag enough air into his lungs between heavy kisses that tasted of alcohol and something sweet.
He remembered thinking I don't actually like this in an idle sort of way, and it reminded him of Otto saying that he wasn't able to get into sex if he didn't enjoy it, remembered the gentleness of other hands past and present, and maybe this was not the right way to handle things.
Chance just closed his eyes, however, and didn't leave.
When he got back to Deus the next morning, dark circles beneath his eyes, he felt substantially more tired than he usually did. It was almost ten, but he climbed the steps slowly and a little painfully up to the trainee hallway, padding down the long hallway until he reached his own room. Inside, it was safe, and inside he could think more clearly.
Except that was kind of the problem - he already was thinking clearly, he just couldn't feel anything.
Chance curled up on his bed, fully dressed, and went to sleep.
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Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2015 12:19 pm
heartbeat song
Claude was wrong, Chance decided, after a long night of contemplating what she had said about friends and romantic love and platonic love and how being someone's friend meant that you didn't have sex with them. But she had told him that they were friends, and Ripley and Finn had too, and yet Chance had somehow managed to sleep with all three of them at one point or another.
Which clearly indicated that they were in fact, either not friends at all, or he was severely missing something.
It was probably a combination of both, Chance thought musingly, idly sketching a few lines that would eventually turn into a sketch of Finn, with Ripley beside him; the latter was leaning on the former's shoulder (Finn with a trademark smirk, Ripley looking impassive, as usual). He didn't know what it was that made people tick, or what the actual definition of "friend" versus "lover" meant, whether or not making the distinction was actually worth anything at all.
He'd told Otto that sex was meant to be fun and pleasurable, and yet here he was, running scenarios over and over in his head again like a hypocrite, finding strings and trying to untie them before they became too entangled together. The point of his view of sex was that there were no complications, no messes, no drama.
Clearly he'd failed at that. He'd broken his own rules, and now he was going to pay the consequences.
Chance folded up the finished drawing and set it on his desk, out of sight, out of mind.
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Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:51 pm
out of the woods
I don't believe in regrets, but I do believe I've made a mistake -
I think you're one hell of a guy, and the sex was fantastic but -
If I messed anything up, I am truly sorry -
Letters were stupid, Chance decided, as he gave up entirely on attempting to write one. Letters were written in place of those people that didn't want to talk to someone face to face, and he had always been easy to talk to; had always much preferred to be politely honest than hide things, because hiding just led to more messes.
Chance did not want any more messes. He already had too many of those as it was, even if technically it was only one big mess with several smaller things stemming from it. Letter writing was foolish, and besides, what if someone else found it instead? It wasn't Chance's privacy he was worried about - he was, for the most part, an open book - but when it came to other people's involvement, it was not his decision to reveal anything.
He wanted another drink, and the bourbon bottle under his bed was still half full. Chance dragged it out, and, not bothering to get a cup, just drank straight from the bottle instead. The alcohol burned down his throat, but it was a pleasant warmth compared to everything else.
I screwed up, he mumbled sleepily to Asher, and the demon just made a soft soothing sound inside of his head. I've never done this sort of thing before, I've never had people that I actually enjoy talking to as much as I do them. I don't 'care' because I don't know how to 'care,' but I don't want to stop talking to them.
{ so don't }
Chance laughed lightly, turning over so that he was on his back, staring up at his star-strewn ceiling.
That's not really an option.
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