oh hello f-list, newbies and old faithfuls, one and all

[dire_redux]

So I am stealing this from my darling featherfish because it is a very, very rad idea and also some of you are shy and I wish you wouldn't be because I really don't bite unless you're into that.

So without further ado, I give you:

In past Christmases, I have left an open invitation to write little fanfic drabbles for LJ holiday presents. I'd like to do that

Comments

Fill: Cutting Room Floor

[dire_redux]

This is you and I in the projection room, standing close enough that I can feel the warmth of your body through your clothes. Except that we’re both dead. Dead in different ways. You’re not breathing. I’m asleep because I don’t want to be awake and there aren’t too many alternatives. I’m dead to the world.

It was true, I guess. I’d die without you. I’m not a liar. I never have been.

You’re talking to me and your words don’t quite match up to your mouth, like an old film, one I’ve seen a thousand times but it never ceases to shock me when your lips are moving and then finally the sound reaches me, like it’s travelled a long way. It’s travelled so far and it just wants to lay down on my couch so I can wrap it up close and tight in blankets, put on a pot of tea, and hold it without speaking until it’s time to go, until the clock’s run dry. No, no. That was us. I’m getting confused. Forgetting things or maybe I’m remembering them. There’s too much in my head and I’m afraid that it’s going to push you out.

“Pills,” you’re saying in echoes and refrains, “I swallowed pills,” and I know that’s a bad thing, an awful thing, just from the way you say it, like you’re tired and ashamed and you didn’t have too many choices left. Isn’t this where I lay you down on the couch? No. It’s too late. You’re dead.

So I look at you and I put my hands on your shoulders and you look just like you looked that night in the hotel room, with your eyelids heavy and your pupils dark and your hair all across your face but I can’t say you look good because you don’t, there’s something all wrong. Or maybe it was always all wrong and I was too blind, too caught up in emotion and motion to give a second thought to the way your lips were twisting.

“What pills?” I’m asking, “What are you talking about.”

But you keep on saying, “I’m sorry, this wasn’t about you, wasn’t about us, this is something I’ve been fighting for way too long. It’s dark,” you say, “and it’s cold and it’s got a thousand thousand teeth and it knows just where to tear in.”

You lay your head against my chest and you’re listening to my heartbeat and I’m holding you close while I’m watching the movie on the screen, larger than life, louder and closer and brighter, too. I can hear the projection machine stuttering and clicking away working at blowing this up huge and inescapable so that I have to look.

And there’s you and I, I know that dance, I know the flush of your cheeks and the sounds of your breath but it’s all going backwards. Here’s the part where your hands fly away from my back, where all the blood goes back where it belongs and it stays secret and safe. Here’s the part where you sit alone in a hotel room with a prescription bottle that doesn’t have your name on it. Here’s the part where you unwrite a note that starts and ends with goodbye, where the pieces leap out of the trashcan and knit in your hands and you’re still thinking and it’s not too late to give us a different end, leave the scenes with the pills and all those broken words on the cutting room floor.

Re: Fill: Cutting Room Floor

[featherfish]

Gaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhalsfjldjf

Such a sad pair of drabbles/people. Thank you my darling, I love them.