(no subject)
the first time he had ever turned on a television set was the first time he'd ever heard the kind of nausea inducing static shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh that would come to fill most of the moments of his days. it had been something of a triumph and a cataclysmic failure - he had succeeded in getting something to happen behind that thick panel of glass and had masterfully grasped the use of fingers to press a single button, only to be assaulted by the in between channels nothingness of electricity. it drowned the voices out and made his new mortal stomach roil but it drowned the voices out, the lingering vestiges of his immortal existence as a piece of the dreary furniture. cocytus was smitten.
later (months later, perhaps, or even a year or two; eternity left you muddled, time was not something you ever truly had a grasp on no matter how hard you tried), when he had come to embrace the full spectrum of his humanity and had bought himself an ipod, he made playlists of white noise, of space noises fast forwarded, of recordings of warning alarms from the 1950's and dial-up tones from the 90's, of car alarms and co2 warnings. there's "real" music on there, too - nikki minaj, gaga, bowie, the soundtracks to RENT and Velvet Goldmine, kiss, queen, that kind of glam classical rock and the unadulterated top 40's pop - but it's not important, they don't work as well.
humans are flawed creatures, he reminds himself (on bad days it is hard to distinguish this voice - his voice, he thinks, but is never quite sure - from the others) on a thursday afternoon (one hour every thursday afternoon was spent with his pscyhologist; fifteen minutes every thursday morning, every three months was spent with his pscyhiatrist, medication managing, and reminding him just how much he hates thursdays), chipping at the remnants of black polish on his thumbnail as he squirms in the standard waiting room chair of his therapist's office, and you're a human. it's okay. you're totally allowed to be fucked up. totally allowed.
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "mr. monroe?" shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "kiedran?" shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. (that isn't your name.) shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. i know. piss off.
his head throbs as he tugs his headphones down to hang around his neck, his jaw sore from how hard it's been clenched. a hand (it doesn't feel like his hand) in the pocket his hoodie, he thumbs down the volume on his ipod and offers the receptionist a wide grin. "sorry." he shoulders his messenger bag, relishing the jangle of his keychains and the staccato tapping of the receptionists fingers on her keyboard and how it's helping just that little bit he needs to keep the voices down (but really, he thinks sometimes they just humour him to see what he'll do, to see what they can get him to do). "new album. fantastic stuff." she smiles back in reply, lips tight and buzzes the intercom once to let the doctor know he's on his way.
the white noise trickling, barely detectable, from his headphones is slowly filling the folds of his scarf and murmuring against his neck. he's ready to drown in it. doesn't want to take his scarf off because he'll lose it all. knows how fucked up that is. needs it.
dr. ross' office is big, open, professional, always warm. she turns the heat up just for him, has the big zen sand garden in the middle of her coffee table clear just for him. he notices she has a new rock piece, a crystal, cloudy and cracked at the base; he can't wait to hold it in his hands, cool and solid. dr. ross herself sits prim as ever, relaxed against the arm of her chair, graying but still steel. prometheus had recommended her (of course he had, heard cocytus was looking and stepped in - a serious fucked up abuse of some kind of omnipotence that comes with the job of prison warden) and cocytus had said "oh" and smiled, all teeth, and said "thanks, pops" and had hardly lasted a second under that infuriatingly benevolent and quietly amused smile that reminds cocytus of the way skin dries once you've died, the way it pulls tight and fucks with your expression. smiling corpses. people think it looks peaceful, but they don't know that it's just a stage of decomposition. paranoia gnaws at his brain. he wonders if dr. ross is gaia, if she's khaos, hiding a really needlessly vicious vendetta against the pantheon behind a classy blazer and a supposed phd. he wonders what would happen if he killed her; how mad would prometheus get? shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. would he care?
"headphones, kiedran." it amuses him to do this: to have her walk him through the stages of stripping out of his cold weather gear. he likes to imagine that it amuses her now: to see him comply so diligently. it used to be a sad attempt to waste time, back when he'd been reluctant and more stubborn than he is now and in a manic fit, bursting into her office speaking too loudly, too seriously, about how he could "hear dead people, dead people with regrets, dead people who did really bad shit and suffered for that shit for, like, all of fucking eternity; i bet those fuckers are still there now, i bet", but now it was routine. he lives for routine, for the unconditional steadiness of it.
he obliges, untangling himself from his headphone cord and setting it all on the table (he sees her glance at the screen of his mp3 player for a moment, sees her make a small note to herself from the way she raises an eyebrow and he can tell she's only sort of surprised.) "scarf." white noise spills out onto the floor (thank you, thank you, thank you) around his boots, he grinds it into the carpet with his heel and hangs his scarf on the coat rack. "jacket. denim, really?" everyone's a fashion critic these days. he has a ring on nearly every finger - tacky? maybe. he wonders if she'll make him take those off, too. "sweater." he balks, knows he's too thin. "sweater, kiedran. the heat is on and i can tell you're wearing long sleeves." yes, fine.
"if you wanted to get me naked, love," he quips from inside his black knit, pulling it over his head, "you only need ask." two minutes out of his pockets and his fingers are already cold, clammy against his skin in the places they accidentally catch.
"really, kiedran." he wishes she would stop calling him that, but he gets why she does it. (spite?) telling her everything (absolutely everything because otherwise it just didn't make sense why you wanted to gut your boyfriend's boss) had been a choice he'd made even when she'd threatened him with a schizophrenia diagnosis, but that was bullshit. dr. ross said that even if it was true there was no point dwelling on something so out of reach, that while he was here he might as well adapt. it would make everything easier, she said. he will never be sure.
the good doctor crosses her legs at the ankle. "how are your doses?"
"300mg of lamictal, same as before. keeping up with my omega-3s." shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "all is quiet on the whatever-front." (we don't know why you bother lying.)
snatching up the crystal from the table, he settles, tailor style, into the couch opposite her. they do not like to talk about his medication, but he understands that she has an obligation to ask. that is alright. he understands obligations, doesn't understand medication. it's stifling. it is not a good day.
dr. ross realizes that; he watches her direct an apologetic smile (bitch.) at her notes. "major depressive episode?"
"yup."
"you should stop reading wikipedia, kiedran."
he snorts, holds the crystal up to the light. he doesn't know what he's looking for, but he's seen people do this before in movies, in video games. he doesn't know what they were looking for then, either. maybe rainbows. "what the fuck else am i supposed to do when i can't sleep?" (chew your nails to the quick, chain smoke, jump off the roof.) he hopes for a rainbow, even just a little one. that's uncharacteristic.
"how many days?"
"three-ish. maybe four."
"how's charlie?" she goads, and he knows she's just testing, just prying and pulling to get him to talk. "he must know you're not sleeping." he has to talk. it's therapeutic.
it gets a smile out of him anyway, small and detached but sincere. "darling. his cast's off and it's december so that means how the grinch stole christmas is basically on loop." body language, he reminds himself as he shifts, self conscious, drumming his rings against the sides of the crystal. (you're pathetic at this. you give the game away so easily.) "the thing about zelo-"
dr. ross looks up from her notepad. "charles. charlie."
exhaling, he fidgets. shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "right." therapy is exhausting.
__
because new york city never sleeps, new york city never shuts up.
it's something to revel in, really, some kind of great scientific achievement. he's sure it is, because he listens to space noises and he's heard stars further away than he can imagine singing and he knows that when they - when earth, he means, when us, us mortals, biodegradable meat sacks - are gone they will still buzz out through space for a zillion years. trust him. he's basically the go-to genius for this kind of inane bullshit. it's all waves and electricity and energy and things he really doesn't understand or care to understand, and as much as he processes in sound he still has to google decibel to make sure he's got the definition right before he makes an ass of himself somewhere public.
did you know scientists have found the biggest black holes yet? two of them, each one ten billion times the size of our sun. two of these fucking imaginably huge black holes just chilling only three hundred million light years away. on a galactic scale that's really not that far. they think they're left over from fucking quasars. the bigger the black hole, the bigger the galaxy surrounding it. one of them weighs nine point seven billion times the mass of the sun. you can't even imagine something that large, so don't lie and say you can. you couldn't even imagine one hundred lions in your house. you could imagine many lions, sure, but exactly one hundred? you could not. but just, for a moment, imagine the kind of energy these black holes produce. do black holes even produce energy or do they just consume it? he doesn't even know, he doesn't care. he is certain there's a way to hear them sing. it makes him feel lightheaded, and hungry.
therapy always leaves him aching for mania, for a sudden shift in the way his day is going, because he feels like a different person, a better, more exciting, likable person who does crazy shit and never gets caught and never regrets it later. it doesn't matter if he can't sleep - fuck, he can't sleep now - or if he blows a weeks salary on three pairs of boots from aldo and tears through the rest of manhattan just looking to get higher than he already feels, indestructible and unstoppable. the mania is easier sometimes: it doesn't leave him curled up in the bathtub, skin pink, water steaming, trying to dissolve into something that feels more familiar.
maybe next week - that would be nice - he can leave the apartment and not want to throw himself in front of a train because he is selfish in that way, selfish and miserable.
__
eighty-eight hours without sleep and taking the 1 to 72nd street is a dark blur.
he stops in grandaisy and trader joe's because he can and because it's convenient (because he can) and walking the few blocks home is strangely easier with a messenger bag full of groceries and a warm bread cradled against the side of his neck. one of your typical 80's synth-pop songs comes up on shuffle and he thinks the thing about the synth is that it feels like you're drowning. it's an idea to flirt with every time you're in the shower.
home, he has come to realize with every mortal day, is a place he could never even attempt to afford, six stories from the ground and all the same alarming shade of modern sterility.
home is zelos on the floor of their bedroom with his feet propped up on the bed and his arms draped over his face to keep the sun out of his eyes, strangely still for the moment that cocytus being back hasn't quite registered yet. it's why cocytus shuts the door quietly behind him and toes his boots off in the hallway, why he lets his keys drop into his bag instead of them jangling against the counter top. he wonders if zelos is asleep, wonders why he's on the floor in the first place and sees godzilla curled up against zelos' side and cocytus snorts because who the hell conks out playing with their dog.
zelos plays hard. this is nice, in it's own way, even though cocytus feels like a voyeur freak. it is his apartment, though, so maybe he's allowed. maybe.
he steps over the dog and the boyfriend only to curl up on zelos' free side, still in his jacket and his scarf, inching still cold fingers up the bottom of zelos' shirt. zelos is almost instantly awake, instantly alive, a live wire. there is, he thinks, some kind of masochistic glee at waking someone up only to get elbowed in the nose.
zelos strings apologies along like pearls on a string - "shit, baby, shit, oh my god, fuck, sorry, i'm so sorry, baby, babe, harry fucking potter, baby, fuck" - and every pause is a kiss and a knot in the string and cocytus laughs until he thinks he might be sick. zelos hauls him up off the floor and into the bathroom because his nose is choosing to be a blood geyser and this shirt is definitely ruined but cocytus can't find it in him to care much. they press wads and wads and wads of toilet paper to cocytus' nose and mop the blood off his chin and zelos has this kicked puppy look on his face and his hands are splotchy with blood. sitting next to each other on the edge of the bathtub, cocytus snorts more blood into a ball of toilet paper and zelos frowns at his knees.
"did you have a good day before this, at least?" zelos tries, so hopeful it hurts and subdued for the moment, like any sudden motions will cause cocytus to keep spraying blood.
the noises cocytus makes are unattractive at best. he drops his head to zelos' shoulder and lobs the bloody tissue towards the garbage can. he misses. "nah. it was a shit day. better now, though."
beautiful white noise.
later (months later, perhaps, or even a year or two; eternity left you muddled, time was not something you ever truly had a grasp on no matter how hard you tried), when he had come to embrace the full spectrum of his humanity and had bought himself an ipod, he made playlists of white noise, of space noises fast forwarded, of recordings of warning alarms from the 1950's and dial-up tones from the 90's, of car alarms and co2 warnings. there's "real" music on there, too - nikki minaj, gaga, bowie, the soundtracks to RENT and Velvet Goldmine, kiss, queen, that kind of glam classical rock and the unadulterated top 40's pop - but it's not important, they don't work as well.
humans are flawed creatures, he reminds himself (on bad days it is hard to distinguish this voice - his voice, he thinks, but is never quite sure - from the others) on a thursday afternoon (one hour every thursday afternoon was spent with his pscyhologist; fifteen minutes every thursday morning, every three months was spent with his pscyhiatrist, medication managing, and reminding him just how much he hates thursdays), chipping at the remnants of black polish on his thumbnail as he squirms in the standard waiting room chair of his therapist's office, and you're a human. it's okay. you're totally allowed to be fucked up. totally allowed.
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "mr. monroe?" shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "kiedran?" shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. (that isn't your name.) shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. i know. piss off.
his head throbs as he tugs his headphones down to hang around his neck, his jaw sore from how hard it's been clenched. a hand (it doesn't feel like his hand) in the pocket his hoodie, he thumbs down the volume on his ipod and offers the receptionist a wide grin. "sorry." he shoulders his messenger bag, relishing the jangle of his keychains and the staccato tapping of the receptionists fingers on her keyboard and how it's helping just that little bit he needs to keep the voices down (but really, he thinks sometimes they just humour him to see what he'll do, to see what they can get him to do). "new album. fantastic stuff." she smiles back in reply, lips tight and buzzes the intercom once to let the doctor know he's on his way.
the white noise trickling, barely detectable, from his headphones is slowly filling the folds of his scarf and murmuring against his neck. he's ready to drown in it. doesn't want to take his scarf off because he'll lose it all. knows how fucked up that is. needs it.
dr. ross' office is big, open, professional, always warm. she turns the heat up just for him, has the big zen sand garden in the middle of her coffee table clear just for him. he notices she has a new rock piece, a crystal, cloudy and cracked at the base; he can't wait to hold it in his hands, cool and solid. dr. ross herself sits prim as ever, relaxed against the arm of her chair, graying but still steel. prometheus had recommended her (of course he had, heard cocytus was looking and stepped in - a serious fucked up abuse of some kind of omnipotence that comes with the job of prison warden) and cocytus had said "oh" and smiled, all teeth, and said "thanks, pops" and had hardly lasted a second under that infuriatingly benevolent and quietly amused smile that reminds cocytus of the way skin dries once you've died, the way it pulls tight and fucks with your expression. smiling corpses. people think it looks peaceful, but they don't know that it's just a stage of decomposition. paranoia gnaws at his brain. he wonders if dr. ross is gaia, if she's khaos, hiding a really needlessly vicious vendetta against the pantheon behind a classy blazer and a supposed phd. he wonders what would happen if he killed her; how mad would prometheus get? shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. would he care?
"headphones, kiedran." it amuses him to do this: to have her walk him through the stages of stripping out of his cold weather gear. he likes to imagine that it amuses her now: to see him comply so diligently. it used to be a sad attempt to waste time, back when he'd been reluctant and more stubborn than he is now and in a manic fit, bursting into her office speaking too loudly, too seriously, about how he could "hear dead people, dead people with regrets, dead people who did really bad shit and suffered for that shit for, like, all of fucking eternity; i bet those fuckers are still there now, i bet", but now it was routine. he lives for routine, for the unconditional steadiness of it.
he obliges, untangling himself from his headphone cord and setting it all on the table (he sees her glance at the screen of his mp3 player for a moment, sees her make a small note to herself from the way she raises an eyebrow and he can tell she's only sort of surprised.) "scarf." white noise spills out onto the floor (thank you, thank you, thank you) around his boots, he grinds it into the carpet with his heel and hangs his scarf on the coat rack. "jacket. denim, really?" everyone's a fashion critic these days. he has a ring on nearly every finger - tacky? maybe. he wonders if she'll make him take those off, too. "sweater." he balks, knows he's too thin. "sweater, kiedran. the heat is on and i can tell you're wearing long sleeves." yes, fine.
"if you wanted to get me naked, love," he quips from inside his black knit, pulling it over his head, "you only need ask." two minutes out of his pockets and his fingers are already cold, clammy against his skin in the places they accidentally catch.
"really, kiedran." he wishes she would stop calling him that, but he gets why she does it. (spite?) telling her everything (absolutely everything because otherwise it just didn't make sense why you wanted to gut your boyfriend's boss) had been a choice he'd made even when she'd threatened him with a schizophrenia diagnosis, but that was bullshit. dr. ross said that even if it was true there was no point dwelling on something so out of reach, that while he was here he might as well adapt. it would make everything easier, she said. he will never be sure.
the good doctor crosses her legs at the ankle. "how are your doses?"
"300mg of lamictal, same as before. keeping up with my omega-3s." shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "all is quiet on the whatever-front." (we don't know why you bother lying.)
snatching up the crystal from the table, he settles, tailor style, into the couch opposite her. they do not like to talk about his medication, but he understands that she has an obligation to ask. that is alright. he understands obligations, doesn't understand medication. it's stifling. it is not a good day.
dr. ross realizes that; he watches her direct an apologetic smile (bitch.) at her notes. "major depressive episode?"
"yup."
"you should stop reading wikipedia, kiedran."
he snorts, holds the crystal up to the light. he doesn't know what he's looking for, but he's seen people do this before in movies, in video games. he doesn't know what they were looking for then, either. maybe rainbows. "what the fuck else am i supposed to do when i can't sleep?" (chew your nails to the quick, chain smoke, jump off the roof.) he hopes for a rainbow, even just a little one. that's uncharacteristic.
"how many days?"
"three-ish. maybe four."
"how's charlie?" she goads, and he knows she's just testing, just prying and pulling to get him to talk. "he must know you're not sleeping." he has to talk. it's therapeutic.
it gets a smile out of him anyway, small and detached but sincere. "darling. his cast's off and it's december so that means how the grinch stole christmas is basically on loop." body language, he reminds himself as he shifts, self conscious, drumming his rings against the sides of the crystal. (you're pathetic at this. you give the game away so easily.) "the thing about zelo-"
dr. ross looks up from her notepad. "charles. charlie."
exhaling, he fidgets. shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "right." therapy is exhausting.
__
because new york city never sleeps, new york city never shuts up.
it's something to revel in, really, some kind of great scientific achievement. he's sure it is, because he listens to space noises and he's heard stars further away than he can imagine singing and he knows that when they - when earth, he means, when us, us mortals, biodegradable meat sacks - are gone they will still buzz out through space for a zillion years. trust him. he's basically the go-to genius for this kind of inane bullshit. it's all waves and electricity and energy and things he really doesn't understand or care to understand, and as much as he processes in sound he still has to google decibel to make sure he's got the definition right before he makes an ass of himself somewhere public.
did you know scientists have found the biggest black holes yet? two of them, each one ten billion times the size of our sun. two of these fucking imaginably huge black holes just chilling only three hundred million light years away. on a galactic scale that's really not that far. they think they're left over from fucking quasars. the bigger the black hole, the bigger the galaxy surrounding it. one of them weighs nine point seven billion times the mass of the sun. you can't even imagine something that large, so don't lie and say you can. you couldn't even imagine one hundred lions in your house. you could imagine many lions, sure, but exactly one hundred? you could not. but just, for a moment, imagine the kind of energy these black holes produce. do black holes even produce energy or do they just consume it? he doesn't even know, he doesn't care. he is certain there's a way to hear them sing. it makes him feel lightheaded, and hungry.
therapy always leaves him aching for mania, for a sudden shift in the way his day is going, because he feels like a different person, a better, more exciting, likable person who does crazy shit and never gets caught and never regrets it later. it doesn't matter if he can't sleep - fuck, he can't sleep now - or if he blows a weeks salary on three pairs of boots from aldo and tears through the rest of manhattan just looking to get higher than he already feels, indestructible and unstoppable. the mania is easier sometimes: it doesn't leave him curled up in the bathtub, skin pink, water steaming, trying to dissolve into something that feels more familiar.
maybe next week - that would be nice - he can leave the apartment and not want to throw himself in front of a train because he is selfish in that way, selfish and miserable.
__
eighty-eight hours without sleep and taking the 1 to 72nd street is a dark blur.
he stops in grandaisy and trader joe's because he can and because it's convenient (because he can) and walking the few blocks home is strangely easier with a messenger bag full of groceries and a warm bread cradled against the side of his neck. one of your typical 80's synth-pop songs comes up on shuffle and he thinks the thing about the synth is that it feels like you're drowning. it's an idea to flirt with every time you're in the shower.
home, he has come to realize with every mortal day, is a place he could never even attempt to afford, six stories from the ground and all the same alarming shade of modern sterility.
home is zelos on the floor of their bedroom with his feet propped up on the bed and his arms draped over his face to keep the sun out of his eyes, strangely still for the moment that cocytus being back hasn't quite registered yet. it's why cocytus shuts the door quietly behind him and toes his boots off in the hallway, why he lets his keys drop into his bag instead of them jangling against the counter top. he wonders if zelos is asleep, wonders why he's on the floor in the first place and sees godzilla curled up against zelos' side and cocytus snorts because who the hell conks out playing with their dog.
zelos plays hard. this is nice, in it's own way, even though cocytus feels like a voyeur freak. it is his apartment, though, so maybe he's allowed. maybe.
he steps over the dog and the boyfriend only to curl up on zelos' free side, still in his jacket and his scarf, inching still cold fingers up the bottom of zelos' shirt. zelos is almost instantly awake, instantly alive, a live wire. there is, he thinks, some kind of masochistic glee at waking someone up only to get elbowed in the nose.
zelos strings apologies along like pearls on a string - "shit, baby, shit, oh my god, fuck, sorry, i'm so sorry, baby, babe, harry fucking potter, baby, fuck" - and every pause is a kiss and a knot in the string and cocytus laughs until he thinks he might be sick. zelos hauls him up off the floor and into the bathroom because his nose is choosing to be a blood geyser and this shirt is definitely ruined but cocytus can't find it in him to care much. they press wads and wads and wads of toilet paper to cocytus' nose and mop the blood off his chin and zelos has this kicked puppy look on his face and his hands are splotchy with blood. sitting next to each other on the edge of the bathtub, cocytus snorts more blood into a ball of toilet paper and zelos frowns at his knees.
"did you have a good day before this, at least?" zelos tries, so hopeful it hurts and subdued for the moment, like any sudden motions will cause cocytus to keep spraying blood.
the noises cocytus makes are unattractive at best. he drops his head to zelos' shoulder and lobs the bloody tissue towards the garbage can. he misses. "nah. it was a shit day. better now, though."
beautiful white noise.