two ficlets for that meme, both Stephen King stuff (The Body and The Dark Tower)
Ha. Yeah, I'm branching out. *iz nervous* Also, still nine prompts free here.
Title: Staring Into An Abyss
Rating: PG13 mostly for language
Pairing: Roland/Eddie (from The Dark Tower)
Words: 1031
Summary: Then he just goes and asks Roland who he is one day, out of mere exasperation and feeling like his stomach has been turned inside out, and the answer is your destiny and it’s fucking terrifying.
Disclaimer: they are King's, not mine. If they were mine, TDT would have featured at least one triangle.
A/N: for reckess who wanted Roland/Eddie and unknown. This time I don't have excuses because I did write them before so if I completely missed the point throw me all the rotten tomatoes you wish. Spoilers for the first half of The Drawing Of The Three and directly inspired by the awesomeness that is my icon. Or something. Also, third person = easier than first person. Random fact: I re-read the shuffle parts of said book and oh God, Eddie Dean, I love you forever. Every time I re-read any part where he's in he just gets more awesome.
Staring at Roland is like staring into an abyss. That’s pretty much everything that Eddie has figured out by this point and sincerely, it’s more than enough. Because the problem is that figuring things out when the Clint Eastwood duplicate who started talking to you in your head, sort of saved your life and then brought you to another fucking world is currently feverish and you’re gone cold turkey is, if you please, kind of a task. At least he has pills to give Roland; he thinks he’d kill for some methadone right now, except that he doesn’t think that he’d ever find it in this blasted place. This does not look like Edgar Rice Borroughs and surely not like the place he could find bare-breasted girls in, not that he’d have the strength to come out to one if there was.
It’s kind of unnerving. It’d probably be even more unnerving if he wasn’t throwing up every two hours and if aspirin wasn’t good for withdrawal. Fuck, what he’d give for some methadone. Famous people in rehab don’t know how good they have it, he thinks as he feeds Roland pills, shoots those not-so-funny jokes of lobsters, cooks them and fights to keep their meat inside his stomach. He doesn’t know what he should do, he doesn’t know why he’s doing what he does and more than that, he doesn’t know the guy he’s sharing space with 24/7. Except that, as established, said guy is the only reason you’re still alive somewhere to begin with.
So, in the beginning, he snaps a lot. He shouts and complains and if Roland makes any kind of half attempted try at making him feel better he rejects it; after all he has to lash it out on someone and it’s not like this place is full of options, if you don’t count the lobstrosities (and those don’t really count as a crowd he could have a talk with, especially considering the language barrier).
Then he just goes and asks Roland who he is one day, out of mere exasperation and feeling like his stomach has been turned inside out, and the answer is your destiny and it’s fucking terrifying. See, Eddie never had much use for the concept of destiny. Also because when it looks like your destiny is living for a heroin fix, well, that’s quite the crap for destiny and it’s better to think that destiny doesn’t exist. It always was a black hole for Eddie, instead of a concept. Roland throws it back in his face with a force that shouldn’t really be allowed to a fucking mere whisper and sincerely, considering that for Eddie Roland is a black hole himself it really isn’t much help. But that sentence creeps under his skin and stays there. He thinks about it when it isn’t time to feed Roland pills or to shoot the lobster things or when he’s shaking so bad that thought isn’t an option; he doesn’t know why but it sounds like the truest thing he’s ever heard his whole life.
The next time Roland’s hand reaches his wrist, he doesn’t shake it away but just sighs and lets it be.
It’s not really much after that he finds himself with one of those guns pointed to his head and later he will tell Roland that he didn’t do it because he has just one pair of pants first and the real reason after, but the truth is that he doesn’t try to find a fake reason as he’s sitting there with a finger on the trigger.
He goes through all the pros in his head and they sound like good enough pros, but the first con is if I do this he’s as good as dead and it’s strange, so strange that such a man has to rely on him of everyone to survive, but it’s the honest truth and somehow it feels somewhat flattering and then he realizes he has only this pair of jeans with him. He puts the gun away and shakes his head. There are people who need people to need them, and fuck Barbra Straisand, he’s one. Wasn’t he in that mess to begin with because he had needed Henry to need him? Smart, Eddie, real smart, he thinks as he gets closer to Roland’s sleeping form and lets his hand rest on the gunslinger’s shoulder for a little more than what one would consider friendly. He’s still feverish and the pills are almost over; great. Now maybe if he ended up alone in this godforsaken beach maybe he’d pull the trigger alright.
The day after he doesn’t shove Roland’s hand away either. Not when it reaches his wrist. Not when with a considerable effort he finds himself as close as they were when Roland told him he was his destiny, the stench more or less the same, the tension definitely of another kind. There’s a second or two in which their eyes meet and steel, feverish blue pierces through his head; it’s a question of moving a bit in the right direction and then kissing Roland is like jumping into that unknown abyss, except that isn’t jumping right into the unknown what he did the second he answered yes when Roland had asked whether he was coming? Roland doesn’t taste of anything he can recognize, maybe because he’s not from his world, not really; it isn’t even good and it isn’t just sour breath, but it’s alright because Eddie knows he doesn’t really taste that better anyway. Roland’s lips are thin and insisting despite his body’s weakness and Eddie feels suddenly on fire, his tongue meeting Roland’s; it’s strangely slow and almost gentle and that’s another thing that Eddie feels should be different, but then he decides he’s thinking too much and draws Roland closer.
He shivers when a hand which lacks fingers cradles the back of his head, the skin rough against the skin of his neck; it feels almost too intimate and not anything he’d have associated with Roland. Nothing to say; what he doesn’t know is a lot, but if this is filling the blanks, then so be it.
End.
Title: You First
Rating: PG? Maaaybe PG13 but not really.
Pairing: Chris/Gordie (from The Body)
Words: 1209
Summary: It had been his idea to open the application answers together since they were bound to arrive more or less at the same time, even if a couple of days after we had agreed about it he had started to say it had been mine.
Disclaimer: they are King's, not mine. It'd have ended differently.
A/N: for astra2104 who wanted Chris/Gordie (well, she wanted gen and I saw slash as usual, so my fault) and letter. This'd be me trying to do the first person thing of the short story and it'd also be the first time I write those two, so uhm, go easy on me? *hides* Also, blatantly ignoring the part where he said they weren't gay for each other in high school. Sure, uncle Steve, sure. BTW: they're eighteen here. No, I don't slash twelve year olds usually.
“You go first.”
“No, you go first.”
“No, you do it.”
“You do it.”
“Man, you’re getting ridiculous. Just open the fucking thing already, won’t you?” I said as I turned in my hands a thick, pristine white envelope addressed to Gordon Lachance with the words University of Maine neatly printed out in the upper left corner. I shot a look at Chris, who was sitting in front of me on my bed holding a duplicate of the envelope in my hands, only addressed to him instead. It had been his idea to open the application answers together since they were bound to arrive more or less at the same time, even if a couple of days after we had agreed about it he had started to say it had been mine. Maybe it would have been funny and maybe if Vern and Teddy had been present they would have (probably rightfully) said that me and Chris were acting like two pussies, but considering what was in those letters, it really wasn’t. Not that much for me since while University of Maine was my top choice I already had been accepted in another couple of places, but Chris had only sent three applications and two had been rejected, which meant that this one was the last chance along with his top choice. I didn’t have it in me to find it anywhere remotely funny, but the situation still was awkward and I could see his hands barely shaking as he turned the letter restlessly between his fingers.
“You know what,” I said when I saw that he wasn’t going to open it, “let’s switch.”
“What?”
“You open mine, I open yours.”
“Oh. Yeah. Fine. I guess it’s… just, okay.”
I was already standing and just took a couple of steps in the bed’s direction; I handed him my letter and snatched his from his hands. For a second I thought it would break since the grip he had on it was frightfully strong, but he let it go almost suddenly and I took it alright.
He didn’t have much trouble as he carefully opened the envelope; I used the same care to his, not really getting why my hands were slightly shaking. It wasn’t mine after all, but you know, your friends dragging you down if they drown? During the last five years or so, I thought about that dream I had on that trip sometimes. It was still valid, even if with some changes. There weren’t corpses to drag us down, me and Chris, but more of a thing of me and him clinging to each other in high waters and trying to reach the shore without drowning in the process. I felt like that letter was somehow the final solution; if the answer had read accepted we would have probably finally reached land; if it had read rejected, then some wave was going to drown the both of us at the last minute.
I took a breath, shook my head and took the bundle of folded papers out of the letter; he was holding mine in his hands, too, still folded.
“On three?” he asked, and I still couldn’t find it in me to joke.
“You count.”
“Well, then three, two, one and who gives a fuck, really.”
Oh, he gave a fuck alright and we both knew it but at least if I couldn’t joke about it he could. Not too bad. I unfolded the sheet and read it, then bit my tongue; I was about to speak when I heard him chuckle.
“Man, you so worry about fuckin’ nothing. ‘Course you got in, and they’re seriously impressed with whatever you had the presence to write in your application. So?”
“Wait a second, I need to check something.”
I turned to the following sheet, realizing that I was being pretty much cruel, but I needed to make sure of one thing before telling. Then I bit my tongue harder.
“Gordie, you sadist fuck up, will you just…?”
“Dear Mr. Chambers, congratulations on being admitted with a fucking full ride, Portland campus and so on.”
I think I wouldn’t be exaggerating things if I say that in that second, when I raised my eyes to meet his, his face went blank. On my side, I couldn’t restraint myself from grinning like an idiot anymore.
“With a what? What did you say?” he asked, his voice so thin that for a moment I was honestly scared.
“I said full ride, man, and if you think I’m fucking with you just read the thing already.”
I pushed the bundle of papers into his hands and he kept on blinking as he got through them, shaking his head at every page, his hands trembling for real. It took maybe five minutes, but then he just let them fall on my bed and stared at them like he couldn’t believe they were real.
“I got in. I mean, I really fucking got in.”
I was about to say something but I forgot it as soon as I saw the expression on his face changing into what I can describe only as pure joy, the smile forming on his lips not too different from that one he had shot me six years before as he said not if I see you first on that warm morning in September. I don’t exactly remember when he started laughing, but as soon as he did I started too and I was just going to hug him because it was pretty much mandatory, but when I did his grip on my shoulders was so tight that I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and then somehow we ended up on my bed in a very compromising position, the sheets from my letter and his getting mixed together as they were mercilessly kicked on the ground. I remember thinking that’s it, we’re on shore, and then it happened. It was an accident.
I was trying to disentangle and he was trying to disentangle but the bed was made for one person and the angle was awkward and my lips brushed over his, or maybe it was the other way around, it really was an accident. One that we could have forgotten with a shrug. I also remember some scattered thought about his eyes being really beautiful and why the hell would I think that of everything, and then he moved and I moved and our lips met not really by accident and his hand was suddenly gripping firmly at the back of my neck. My right one was tangled in his hair and the left was holding his shirt over the shoulder; he moved his lips against mine and as soon as I did the same he was melting against me or it was me melting against him or something along those lines. One couldn’t tell who was starting what and we didn’t say a thing, maybe because it hadn’t even felt weird and when it was over neither of us said the obligatory I’m not a faggot. Maybe because it just sounded petty, by that point. We looked at each other and we just kissed again without saying a word, and meanwhile his hand was grabbing mine.
End.
Title: Staring Into An Abyss
Rating: PG13 mostly for language
Pairing: Roland/Eddie (from The Dark Tower)
Words: 1031
Summary: Then he just goes and asks Roland who he is one day, out of mere exasperation and feeling like his stomach has been turned inside out, and the answer is your destiny and it’s fucking terrifying.
Disclaimer: they are King's, not mine. If they were mine, TDT would have featured at least one triangle.
A/N: for reckess who wanted Roland/Eddie and unknown. This time I don't have excuses because I did write them before so if I completely missed the point throw me all the rotten tomatoes you wish. Spoilers for the first half of The Drawing Of The Three and directly inspired by the awesomeness that is my icon. Or something. Also, third person = easier than first person. Random fact: I re-read the shuffle parts of said book and oh God, Eddie Dean, I love you forever. Every time I re-read any part where he's in he just gets more awesome.
Staring at Roland is like staring into an abyss. That’s pretty much everything that Eddie has figured out by this point and sincerely, it’s more than enough. Because the problem is that figuring things out when the Clint Eastwood duplicate who started talking to you in your head, sort of saved your life and then brought you to another fucking world is currently feverish and you’re gone cold turkey is, if you please, kind of a task. At least he has pills to give Roland; he thinks he’d kill for some methadone right now, except that he doesn’t think that he’d ever find it in this blasted place. This does not look like Edgar Rice Borroughs and surely not like the place he could find bare-breasted girls in, not that he’d have the strength to come out to one if there was.
It’s kind of unnerving. It’d probably be even more unnerving if he wasn’t throwing up every two hours and if aspirin wasn’t good for withdrawal. Fuck, what he’d give for some methadone. Famous people in rehab don’t know how good they have it, he thinks as he feeds Roland pills, shoots those not-so-funny jokes of lobsters, cooks them and fights to keep their meat inside his stomach. He doesn’t know what he should do, he doesn’t know why he’s doing what he does and more than that, he doesn’t know the guy he’s sharing space with 24/7. Except that, as established, said guy is the only reason you’re still alive somewhere to begin with.
So, in the beginning, he snaps a lot. He shouts and complains and if Roland makes any kind of half attempted try at making him feel better he rejects it; after all he has to lash it out on someone and it’s not like this place is full of options, if you don’t count the lobstrosities (and those don’t really count as a crowd he could have a talk with, especially considering the language barrier).
Then he just goes and asks Roland who he is one day, out of mere exasperation and feeling like his stomach has been turned inside out, and the answer is your destiny and it’s fucking terrifying. See, Eddie never had much use for the concept of destiny. Also because when it looks like your destiny is living for a heroin fix, well, that’s quite the crap for destiny and it’s better to think that destiny doesn’t exist. It always was a black hole for Eddie, instead of a concept. Roland throws it back in his face with a force that shouldn’t really be allowed to a fucking mere whisper and sincerely, considering that for Eddie Roland is a black hole himself it really isn’t much help. But that sentence creeps under his skin and stays there. He thinks about it when it isn’t time to feed Roland pills or to shoot the lobster things or when he’s shaking so bad that thought isn’t an option; he doesn’t know why but it sounds like the truest thing he’s ever heard his whole life.
The next time Roland’s hand reaches his wrist, he doesn’t shake it away but just sighs and lets it be.
It’s not really much after that he finds himself with one of those guns pointed to his head and later he will tell Roland that he didn’t do it because he has just one pair of pants first and the real reason after, but the truth is that he doesn’t try to find a fake reason as he’s sitting there with a finger on the trigger.
He goes through all the pros in his head and they sound like good enough pros, but the first con is if I do this he’s as good as dead and it’s strange, so strange that such a man has to rely on him of everyone to survive, but it’s the honest truth and somehow it feels somewhat flattering and then he realizes he has only this pair of jeans with him. He puts the gun away and shakes his head. There are people who need people to need them, and fuck Barbra Straisand, he’s one. Wasn’t he in that mess to begin with because he had needed Henry to need him? Smart, Eddie, real smart, he thinks as he gets closer to Roland’s sleeping form and lets his hand rest on the gunslinger’s shoulder for a little more than what one would consider friendly. He’s still feverish and the pills are almost over; great. Now maybe if he ended up alone in this godforsaken beach maybe he’d pull the trigger alright.
The day after he doesn’t shove Roland’s hand away either. Not when it reaches his wrist. Not when with a considerable effort he finds himself as close as they were when Roland told him he was his destiny, the stench more or less the same, the tension definitely of another kind. There’s a second or two in which their eyes meet and steel, feverish blue pierces through his head; it’s a question of moving a bit in the right direction and then kissing Roland is like jumping into that unknown abyss, except that isn’t jumping right into the unknown what he did the second he answered yes when Roland had asked whether he was coming? Roland doesn’t taste of anything he can recognize, maybe because he’s not from his world, not really; it isn’t even good and it isn’t just sour breath, but it’s alright because Eddie knows he doesn’t really taste that better anyway. Roland’s lips are thin and insisting despite his body’s weakness and Eddie feels suddenly on fire, his tongue meeting Roland’s; it’s strangely slow and almost gentle and that’s another thing that Eddie feels should be different, but then he decides he’s thinking too much and draws Roland closer.
He shivers when a hand which lacks fingers cradles the back of his head, the skin rough against the skin of his neck; it feels almost too intimate and not anything he’d have associated with Roland. Nothing to say; what he doesn’t know is a lot, but if this is filling the blanks, then so be it.
End.
Title: You First
Rating: PG? Maaaybe PG13 but not really.
Pairing: Chris/Gordie (from The Body)
Words: 1209
Summary: It had been his idea to open the application answers together since they were bound to arrive more or less at the same time, even if a couple of days after we had agreed about it he had started to say it had been mine.
Disclaimer: they are King's, not mine. It'd have ended differently.
A/N: for astra2104 who wanted Chris/Gordie (well, she wanted gen and I saw slash as usual, so my fault) and letter. This'd be me trying to do the first person thing of the short story and it'd also be the first time I write those two, so uhm, go easy on me? *hides* Also, blatantly ignoring the part where he said they weren't gay for each other in high school. Sure, uncle Steve, sure. BTW: they're eighteen here. No, I don't slash twelve year olds usually.
“You go first.”
“No, you go first.”
“No, you do it.”
“You do it.”
“Man, you’re getting ridiculous. Just open the fucking thing already, won’t you?” I said as I turned in my hands a thick, pristine white envelope addressed to Gordon Lachance with the words University of Maine neatly printed out in the upper left corner. I shot a look at Chris, who was sitting in front of me on my bed holding a duplicate of the envelope in my hands, only addressed to him instead. It had been his idea to open the application answers together since they were bound to arrive more or less at the same time, even if a couple of days after we had agreed about it he had started to say it had been mine. Maybe it would have been funny and maybe if Vern and Teddy had been present they would have (probably rightfully) said that me and Chris were acting like two pussies, but considering what was in those letters, it really wasn’t. Not that much for me since while University of Maine was my top choice I already had been accepted in another couple of places, but Chris had only sent three applications and two had been rejected, which meant that this one was the last chance along with his top choice. I didn’t have it in me to find it anywhere remotely funny, but the situation still was awkward and I could see his hands barely shaking as he turned the letter restlessly between his fingers.
“You know what,” I said when I saw that he wasn’t going to open it, “let’s switch.”
“What?”
“You open mine, I open yours.”
“Oh. Yeah. Fine. I guess it’s… just, okay.”
I was already standing and just took a couple of steps in the bed’s direction; I handed him my letter and snatched his from his hands. For a second I thought it would break since the grip he had on it was frightfully strong, but he let it go almost suddenly and I took it alright.
He didn’t have much trouble as he carefully opened the envelope; I used the same care to his, not really getting why my hands were slightly shaking. It wasn’t mine after all, but you know, your friends dragging you down if they drown? During the last five years or so, I thought about that dream I had on that trip sometimes. It was still valid, even if with some changes. There weren’t corpses to drag us down, me and Chris, but more of a thing of me and him clinging to each other in high waters and trying to reach the shore without drowning in the process. I felt like that letter was somehow the final solution; if the answer had read accepted we would have probably finally reached land; if it had read rejected, then some wave was going to drown the both of us at the last minute.
I took a breath, shook my head and took the bundle of folded papers out of the letter; he was holding mine in his hands, too, still folded.
“On three?” he asked, and I still couldn’t find it in me to joke.
“You count.”
“Well, then three, two, one and who gives a fuck, really.”
Oh, he gave a fuck alright and we both knew it but at least if I couldn’t joke about it he could. Not too bad. I unfolded the sheet and read it, then bit my tongue; I was about to speak when I heard him chuckle.
“Man, you so worry about fuckin’ nothing. ‘Course you got in, and they’re seriously impressed with whatever you had the presence to write in your application. So?”
“Wait a second, I need to check something.”
I turned to the following sheet, realizing that I was being pretty much cruel, but I needed to make sure of one thing before telling. Then I bit my tongue harder.
“Gordie, you sadist fuck up, will you just…?”
“Dear Mr. Chambers, congratulations on being admitted with a fucking full ride, Portland campus and so on.”
I think I wouldn’t be exaggerating things if I say that in that second, when I raised my eyes to meet his, his face went blank. On my side, I couldn’t restraint myself from grinning like an idiot anymore.
“With a what? What did you say?” he asked, his voice so thin that for a moment I was honestly scared.
“I said full ride, man, and if you think I’m fucking with you just read the thing already.”
I pushed the bundle of papers into his hands and he kept on blinking as he got through them, shaking his head at every page, his hands trembling for real. It took maybe five minutes, but then he just let them fall on my bed and stared at them like he couldn’t believe they were real.
“I got in. I mean, I really fucking got in.”
I was about to say something but I forgot it as soon as I saw the expression on his face changing into what I can describe only as pure joy, the smile forming on his lips not too different from that one he had shot me six years before as he said not if I see you first on that warm morning in September. I don’t exactly remember when he started laughing, but as soon as he did I started too and I was just going to hug him because it was pretty much mandatory, but when I did his grip on my shoulders was so tight that I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and then somehow we ended up on my bed in a very compromising position, the sheets from my letter and his getting mixed together as they were mercilessly kicked on the ground. I remember thinking that’s it, we’re on shore, and then it happened. It was an accident.
I was trying to disentangle and he was trying to disentangle but the bed was made for one person and the angle was awkward and my lips brushed over his, or maybe it was the other way around, it really was an accident. One that we could have forgotten with a shrug. I also remember some scattered thought about his eyes being really beautiful and why the hell would I think that of everything, and then he moved and I moved and our lips met not really by accident and his hand was suddenly gripping firmly at the back of my neck. My right one was tangled in his hair and the left was holding his shirt over the shoulder; he moved his lips against mine and as soon as I did the same he was melting against me or it was me melting against him or something along those lines. One couldn’t tell who was starting what and we didn’t say a thing, maybe because it hadn’t even felt weird and when it was over neither of us said the obligatory I’m not a faggot. Maybe because it just sounded petty, by that point. We looked at each other and we just kissed again without saying a word, and meanwhile his hand was grabbing mine.
End.