I am Jack's oh-so-originally-titled LJ post
Skipped classes with a migraine this morning, so after waking up refreshed and mostly headache-less from a nap, I decided to actually focus on getting work done today. By which I obviously meant "look through my unfinished fics/ficlets folder and find something to slam an ending/beta onto and post up on LJ". Whoops. In any case, here's some shameless Fight Club character study I roughed out for old_blueeyes a while back when she was having a bad day. Movie 'verse, set mid-film, so Tyler Durden is still only mildly fucked up, depending on how you look at it. Title from "Bones" by the Killers, because they're what I have playing on shuffle right now.
put on the heartbeat line
Tyler/Narrator, Tyler/Marla; R; ~820 words
Just like Fight Club, there are rules to this. Like: it only happens at night. In the daylight, he has coffee and Tyler has Marla, and sometimes Marla is at night, too, but never like they are. Marla is early night. She comes (and comes over) when the moon is still high and bright in the sky, when the streetlamps still light up the sidewalk in 15-foot increments because it hasn't yet reached the hour where the city condemns some of its own to save a buck or two on electricity. When there is enough light outside that they wouldn't need the naked glow of the bare 60-watts they stick in the corners of every room to see if their windows weren't curtained with plywood, Marla comes. Her skin shines a sallow yellow and her hair is rucked into crazy, oily tufts and her voice alternately grates and slides on curses he himself uses too often to call filthy as Tyler fucks her. She is dirty in all the ways that are only obvious in the comparative confines of society, poverty nothing like the freedom of a punch and only like the ache in your stomach when you've blown all your money on cigarettes and slick and condoms and have none left for food, let alone soap.
He wonders what Tyler sees in her in the same way he doesn't have to wonder what there is to see in them. They are Fight Club and always have been. They are everything about sweat and blood and tearing skin, scabs catching and pulling open to sting all over, all at once. They are the exhilaration of adrenaline balled tight as a fist in your gut, the heat of flesh on your flesh, the gasp of your breath flooding out and the empty possibility that echoes in your chest after. They are all the physical, violent anarchy of a fight, the nonsense connection that has always defined and heightened their relationship to something living, something worth living for.
Because it's Tyler, though, and because it's another fight, and because it's them, it has rules. Like: it only happens at night. Like: it stops when one of them cries out for an end. Like: it is never talked about. A new one: they don't kiss. This is violence, the rush and unadulterated unleashing of it. This is violence, and they are violent men; there's no crying in baseball; there's no room for kissing in this new, blood-won definition of themselves.
He would wonder, if it weren't so contradictory to everything they have always been, what it would be like if this weren't combat. He would wonder what the rest of Tyler would feel like against his cock, more than just Tyler's hand because your hand is your most basic and effective weapon, the only one the rules allow. He would wonder what it would be like to have imprints of Tyler's mouth in other places than the back of his hand, in teeth-arcs instead of a pursed chemical-burn kiss. He would wonder what Tyler would taste like (he has, late in the evening when Tyler is fucking Marla in the room next door and later in the in-between hours of the early morning when Tyler is fucking into his fist. Tyler would taste like blood, because that is what has always defined what Tyler is to him. Blood and sweat and tears and the spilling forth of all of them, the rupturing of skin under pressure and raw, muscle-backed force. Tyler would taste like the stuff of injury, of scar tissue in its earliest stages and life weathering on past that and a little bit like lye, maybe, in the deepest corners of his mouth and burning throughout).
But he doesn't (usually). They are Fight Club, and Fight Club is defined as rules birthed in anarchy. Fight Club is rules that they have birthed. Fight Club is rules that they have chiseled out until they are as solid and as real as themselves. Fight Club is rules they cannot deny, same as they cannot deny that they exist, that they are choked by the money-hungry world they live in, that they breathe and bleed and sweat and piss and cry and come and run all of it together in spite of that.
They are Fight Club, and they are themselves remade through Fight Club. Even as he slams his hips up against Tyler's and comes with a cry that rings like a boxing bell in the space of their house and the further space of the two miles in every direction that they are alone; even as he feels Tyler roll off him, round completed and aggression still spreading out of him like the blood they'll both have to wash off their faces later and alone-he wouldn't trade this for anything, especially not in their commercialized, cash-and-carry society, not even if he could.
Also, apparently the Porn Battle's taking prompts again? I fail at prompting things, but I think I may actually get in on the writing part this time around. So look for that, probably, my schedule constraints providing.
ETA because omg this is too fantastic not to share: Grandpa got the results back from his latest round of tests and scans, and the doctors have declared him officially cancer-free! I am so happy and relieved rn, you guys, I just can't even.
put on the heartbeat line
Tyler/Narrator, Tyler/Marla; R; ~820 words
Just like Fight Club, there are rules to this. Like: it only happens at night. In the daylight, he has coffee and Tyler has Marla, and sometimes Marla is at night, too, but never like they are. Marla is early night. She comes (and comes over) when the moon is still high and bright in the sky, when the streetlamps still light up the sidewalk in 15-foot increments because it hasn't yet reached the hour where the city condemns some of its own to save a buck or two on electricity. When there is enough light outside that they wouldn't need the naked glow of the bare 60-watts they stick in the corners of every room to see if their windows weren't curtained with plywood, Marla comes. Her skin shines a sallow yellow and her hair is rucked into crazy, oily tufts and her voice alternately grates and slides on curses he himself uses too often to call filthy as Tyler fucks her. She is dirty in all the ways that are only obvious in the comparative confines of society, poverty nothing like the freedom of a punch and only like the ache in your stomach when you've blown all your money on cigarettes and slick and condoms and have none left for food, let alone soap.
He wonders what Tyler sees in her in the same way he doesn't have to wonder what there is to see in them. They are Fight Club and always have been. They are everything about sweat and blood and tearing skin, scabs catching and pulling open to sting all over, all at once. They are the exhilaration of adrenaline balled tight as a fist in your gut, the heat of flesh on your flesh, the gasp of your breath flooding out and the empty possibility that echoes in your chest after. They are all the physical, violent anarchy of a fight, the nonsense connection that has always defined and heightened their relationship to something living, something worth living for.
Because it's Tyler, though, and because it's another fight, and because it's them, it has rules. Like: it only happens at night. Like: it stops when one of them cries out for an end. Like: it is never talked about. A new one: they don't kiss. This is violence, the rush and unadulterated unleashing of it. This is violence, and they are violent men; there's no crying in baseball; there's no room for kissing in this new, blood-won definition of themselves.
He would wonder, if it weren't so contradictory to everything they have always been, what it would be like if this weren't combat. He would wonder what the rest of Tyler would feel like against his cock, more than just Tyler's hand because your hand is your most basic and effective weapon, the only one the rules allow. He would wonder what it would be like to have imprints of Tyler's mouth in other places than the back of his hand, in teeth-arcs instead of a pursed chemical-burn kiss. He would wonder what Tyler would taste like (he has, late in the evening when Tyler is fucking Marla in the room next door and later in the in-between hours of the early morning when Tyler is fucking into his fist. Tyler would taste like blood, because that is what has always defined what Tyler is to him. Blood and sweat and tears and the spilling forth of all of them, the rupturing of skin under pressure and raw, muscle-backed force. Tyler would taste like the stuff of injury, of scar tissue in its earliest stages and life weathering on past that and a little bit like lye, maybe, in the deepest corners of his mouth and burning throughout).
But he doesn't (usually). They are Fight Club, and Fight Club is defined as rules birthed in anarchy. Fight Club is rules that they have birthed. Fight Club is rules that they have chiseled out until they are as solid and as real as themselves. Fight Club is rules they cannot deny, same as they cannot deny that they exist, that they are choked by the money-hungry world they live in, that they breathe and bleed and sweat and piss and cry and come and run all of it together in spite of that.
They are Fight Club, and they are themselves remade through Fight Club. Even as he slams his hips up against Tyler's and comes with a cry that rings like a boxing bell in the space of their house and the further space of the two miles in every direction that they are alone; even as he feels Tyler roll off him, round completed and aggression still spreading out of him like the blood they'll both have to wash off their faces later and alone-he wouldn't trade this for anything, especially not in their commercialized, cash-and-carry society, not even if he could.
Also, apparently the Porn Battle's taking prompts again? I fail at prompting things, but I think I may actually get in on the writing part this time around. So look for that, probably, my schedule constraints providing.
ETA because omg this is too fantastic not to share: Grandpa got the results back from his latest round of tests and scans, and the doctors have declared him officially cancer-free! I am so happy and relieved rn, you guys, I just can't even.