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 Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 2:07 pm
4:43 AM.
He was awake, as usual.
The room was dimly lit, Chance having not bothered to turn on a light. Instead, he stared upwards at the plastic stars on his ceiling, at the waning, greenish glow they were still emitting, even after a significant amount of time had passed. He was still fully dressed, but it didn't seem to make a difference to him, his arms beneath his head, his gaze a little unfocused.
His mind was in three thousand places at once. He wanted to take it out and hit the reset button and then put it back in again, all nice and clean and without the excess threads attached to it, without the tangles of human relationships, relationships that he did not understand, could not understand, regardless of what Claude believed.
Thinking of Claude made him irrationally irritated. Chance twisted over onto his stomach and pressed his face into his pillow, heaving a breath that was muffled against the fabric. Asher remained quietly observant inside of his head, the demon's coldness soothing and familiar, the only familiar thing as of late.
It was less that he disagreed with Claude and more that he had not appreciated the betrayal. His understanding of her had clearly been off put, a mistake, a falsehood; she had led him to believe that she knew the type of person he was, but apparently it had all just been an illusion, though on who's part, Chance wasn't sure.
Three bridges burned, he thought tiredly, pushing himself up into a sitting position. Somehow, in the course of a week, he'd managed to make a mess of three of the things he saw the most near to be friendship, with the people that he liked to be around the most on the island. So far, Otto was rising in ranks when it came to being comfortable and open and relaxed, which was a nice relief; but as for the other three...
Well, two had been his own mistake, and one had definitely not.
Chance lay back down again, rolled over, and wondered if he could sleep through the rest of the mess until it sorted itself out again.
(Except he couldn't sleep, he could never sleep anymore, that was the problem; he hadn't been kidding when he'd talked to Otto about being read aloud to, because as childish as it may have seen to the other, for Chance it was simply another method, regardless of its madness. He was losing more sleep every day, which meant that he was losing his ability to gauge things properly, losing his intelligence to hold conversations properly, to stay himself - hence his annoyance with Claude, his frustrations with himself.)
(Sleep was just another thing he'd messed up somehow.)
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Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 2:32 pm
4:56 AM.
He wrote out about six text messages to everyone he was currently telling himself he was not going to see and promptly deleted them all after about five minutes of hemming and hawing of if to even send them (ridiculously early hour of the morning notwithstanding).
Then he closed his phone and set it aside.
Five minutes later, he picked it up again, tried once more, gave up, and shoved the phone into his upper desk drawer where he couldn't see it.
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Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 2:42 pm
3:39 PM.
He'd promised Ripley that things wouldn't change; that after that night, they would go back to being "friends" - good friends, as Ripley had reminded him gently - that there were no strings attached. And there weren't, he didn't harbor any sort of ridiculous notions or feelings towards either Finn or Ripley, except for a strange and unfamiliar wistfulness; a peculiar longing to stay in the same circles as them without being more than he was.
Maybe that was what Dawson had meant when he'd talked about friendship and being close to people. Chance had no walls; he was an open book, casually exploring his own life and his own relationships, and maybe that was the problem after all. Maybe he just didn't know how to be more than he already was.
Chance Bones was simply there. He existed, he moved through life with a sort of absent freedom that he often took for granted, and now it was changing, and he didn't do well with change, didn't know how to deal with change. He'd gotten angry at Claude because she'd stepped in to remind him of the fact that he already felt robotic and inhumane somehow; it felt somehow like she'd stabbed him in the back, because out of everything that had happened, he'd felt like she understood him on some level.
He'd been wrong, and now it was yet another mistake he'd have to live with.
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Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:53 pm
10:43 PM.
The frustration lasted approximately three hours while Chance stalked around his room with the door locked for the first time since coming to Deus. He picked up all of the discarded paper on his floor and attempted to cram it all the way into the trash can; but when that didn't work, he gave up and dumped it on the floor once again, not even bothering to kick it under the bed.
The sketchbooks were picked up and stuffed into the closet, beneath the duffel bag that still contained his telescope.
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Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:16 pm
6:03 AM.
When he woke up, it was to a colossal headache.
His mouth was dry, like he'd swallowed sawdust; Chance blinked blearily, his lashes feeling gummy and sticky as he forced them apart, trying to get his mind back into working order so that he could at least figure out where the hell he was and why he was still completely dressed when in bed.
A few groggy seconds later, a piece clicked into place, followed by another, and then another.
His night with Ripley that had extended into a spiral of second guessing himself and the subsequent distancing from both him and Finn to prevent anything from happening to either of them. The night at the club the day after. His fight with Claude, the surging bitterness he felt at her apparent betrayal. Texting Otto, venting some of his unexpected confusion and worries onto him. Their night out on the town, burgers and cheesecake at the diner, walking through the thick crowds. Bourbon and books, and surprisingly good advice. Go the ******** to Sleep and warmth.
The warmth was still there. Chance didn't have to lift his head to see that it was from Otto lying next to him, but he did anyway, and sure enough; the other was sound asleep, his eyes closed and his breathing deep and even. Chance himself was curled beside him, one arm loose around his waist, face pressed against his shoulder like a cat trying to find a warm spot.
And belatedly, Chance realized that he had slept.
He didn't know what exactly it was from; whether a combination of a lot of things, or simply the the fact that the companionship of someone else made it easier to drift off. Either way, it was the first time that Chance had slept before four or five or six in the morning, and he felt a little thrown off balance.
Or maybe it was just the remnants of the alcohol talking. Chance lowered his head back down to the bed and exhaled a breath; the casual warmth and the coziness and the comfort of someone else felt very nice, and it was easier to sort through his thoughts like this, drowsy and comfortable. Otto was shorter than him, but he was starting to become very familiar, and Chance's definition of the word friend had started to expand, just a small amount.
He didn't want to admit it, but perhaps Claude had been right; perhaps his attention was focused on something non-emotional because he disliked having to deal with disappointment, with annoyance, with anything negative in regards to human relationships. It was still an entire world unknown to him, confusing and disorienting, but it was there.
It was new. He was like a child still learning to walk, still learning to play nicely with others. A part of him desperately wanted to let go of the handrail and walk on his own, but the larger part of him was stubborn and thought it fruitless to do so.
Which left the question of which was right? He couldn't answer that right now, but he didn't need to. He did, however, think that he would need to be a bit more open when it came to change, as well as a bit more lax in terms of accepting that Claude, like Otto, had only been trying to help.
And speaking of the latter; Chance eased forward a little and burrowed closer, closing his eyes again, his forehead pressed against the side of Otto's shoulder. He wasn't sure how comfortable Otto would feel upon awakening, especially since he knew how awkward and uncertain Otto had felt when talking about his recent first time with a guy. But seeing as how this was merely sleep, and Chance was feeling relatively sleepy and more than a little comfortable, he sincerely hoped there would be no awkwardness upon awakening. Companionship was companionship, after all. The warmth was a comfort.
Until then, he would just stay here, surrounded by that warmth, and go back to sleep.
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