He paused and he waited for his hands to stop shaking.
One brick at a time.
_______________________
Serving size: 1 bottle (8 fl oz of liquid chalk)
Calories 350
Calories from Fat 100
Fat 11g (17% DV)
Sugars 20g (high fructose corn syrup mostly)
Protein 13g (26%)
He read the label every time. He'd gone through three bottles and read the label every time.
He drank it one go. He'd tried to sip the first one and had nearly thrown it up. He'd wanted to throw it up: he'd welcomed the nausea with a spiteful pang of relief. But he hadn't. So now he held his nose and drank them in one go before he tucked the ends of his scarf neatly away into his collar and went to get lunch, expressionless and calm.
_______________________
He smils at a girl on the sidewalk outside of a Starbucks, and she hesitates, but she smiles back.
He realizes that at some point he's gone from being sure of the touch of unfamiliar hands by the end of the night to praying for a second look, and feels nothing but gratitude when he gets it.
_______________________
He battled his way through the Shadow Run again, the first time since the New Year, and he felt both the weakness in his starved body and the improved synchronicity between himself and Fionnghal: an easy, almost thoughtless partnership, the bond between them never better or less tested or less angry than when they were working.
He'd made it all the way across, his lungs burning and his arms sore but grinning, before he thought about Clerise.
_______________________
He felt no compulsion to move anything but terribly slowly. Let the sadistic assholes watching him waste their entire afternoon on him: he didn't care.
He realized he was holding his breath as the tower wobbled.
The ludicrous nature of the situation did not escape him: he was playing high-stakes Jenga on top of a pirahna pool, on a deserted island in the Bermuda Triangle, with nothing but the dismebodied voice of a dead deer in his head to keep him company.
He wasn't going to make it. Every tiny weight on the increasingly-frail structure made it shimmy and shake. It was unstable.
_______________________
He's standing at the magazine rack in a K-mart on leave and he's reading an article in some pop-sci magazine about camera stabilization tech in eating utensils for Parkinson's patients when he realizes the page is trembling. The picture accompanying the article is of an old, old man.
_______________________
When he was sure he was alone and after he'd double checked the windows and the doors closed--as if anyone could hear him over the lashing rain--he indulged the craving to babytalk at them.
"Who's the cutest horrifying hellbeast from beyond the threshold of death and terror?" The kitten-shaped-thing gnawed on his thumb sleepily, gazing at him with stupid, fond eyes while its other half-dozed in the crook of his elbow. "You are. You are the cutest ******** hellbeast."
His phone buzzed on the nightstand, and he ignored it for a few seconds in favor of disregarding tiny needle claws so that he could rub a fat kitten belly. The sound of his phone never had good news for him nowadays.
Today would be no different. He leaned over to pick it up and it was Kostya's name on the alert. He steeled himself, but what he got wasn't a lecture or an awkward apology. It was worse. He read it twice, and then scooped up the kittens and pushed them back into their box before he replied.
"OK," he texted. And then, feeling numb and apathetic, he lit a cigarette and read twenty more pages of The Sun Also Rises.
_______________________
Quote:
Direct Message to @DeathByHoop: If you were here I'd let you ******** sad hold me but I don't think you'd want to any more.
(UNDELIVERABLE)
Quote:
Direct Message to @DeathByHoop: The only two people I can talk to are dead and one isn't even human.
(UNDELIVERABLE)
Quote:
Direct Message to @DeathByHoop: I'm sorry.
(UNDELIVERABLE)
Quote:
Direct Message to @DeathByHoop: I'm so ******** sorry.
(UNDELIVERABLE)
_______________________
The tremor was sudden and vicious and every meandering red dot snapped away and he knew they were peppering the back of his neck, but the tower remained standing, for now.
Another tiny weight. Another minute blow to the balance. His fingers shook as he gingerly sought out another loose end.
_______________________
He wanted to be held but he wanted more to hold someone. Every option was impossible. He thought of Bird's skinny arms speckled with mud and freckled with paint and he thought of her whispering fiercely: you're getting snot on my shoulder you smelly old codger and tightening those arms anyway.
He lay shaking on top of the blankets, curled around his arms he'd folded over his stomach to ward off the hunger pangs, and he thought about texting Peyton or America or anyone, anyone, and he kept thinking about it until sleep caught up.
_______________________
Titan duty with some pack of people he didn't know. A Mist hunter was on the other end of the tether and he wondered whether Leslie had managed to get himself killed yet.
_______________________
His hands were steady now, but the tower wasn't. Just one misplaced weight. Just one insignificant push too far to any one of a dozen compromised pieces.
_______________________
The rain is a train roar and it is constant and inescapable and what had been a pleasant change of pace at first is a constant grating now. It interrupts what little sleep he gets; it makes the trudge from dorms to outbuildings a tiny act of war against the elements. All of his clothes are soaked; his boots are turned upside down and drying over a towel in a corner of the room.
He is trying to read but the screeching wind makes it too hard to follow a line to its end. He has been stuck on the same page for fifteen minutes: the rain is loud enough to prevent him from focusing on the words but not loud enough to prevent him from the still-louder clamor of his thoughts. The ever-present temptation to self-examine, to do the thing he hates the most and introspect.
And then, with a suddenness that jolts him out of his bed, the glass of his windows bow and shatter, shedding shards across the floor of his room and letting in all the rage of the storm.
He stands in the darkness among the noise of the wind, amidst the plaintive noises of the cats in their tank, and he isn't sure why but he begins to laugh, weakly and silently, and he does not even bother to string a sheet over the wreck of the window frame. He sleeps on the floor, barely sheltered, and he dreams of Chicago streets and waking up to the promse of a hit.
_______________________
It was inevitable. The structure could no longer be supported and his hands could no longer be trusted. Collapse was imminent.
He stared at it for a long time, willing some explosion from the testing grounds overhead to do what he did not want to witness his hands doing, and when nothing obliged he gently slid his chair back and he left, not even sure if what he was doing was part of accepted testing protocol. He heard the clatter of the bricks as he stepped through the portal.
