[029] "What was the Star of Bethlehem?"
Title: Grocery List
Author: ME LOL
Rating: MATURE?! Mature. D8?
Series/Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Characters/Pairings: A sixteen year old!Shamal
Warnings: ...MATURE THEMES. :/
Summary: Life is harsh, but Shamal's got it all worked out.
This was SUPPOSED to be a Shamal/Dino fic for picnicbird, but it turned out to be this overblown, shitastic ramble instead. SORRY GAIZ.
The sixteen years he’s spent in existence has taught him a few choice things about the cold and lonely world out there, a list of sorts that he keeps written on a crumpled old bit of newspaper paper sewed under the hems of his sleeve, lest he forget them. He’s young, has a lot to learn and a whole lot more to lose; and at this point in his career, there was no harm in having a set of guidelines, a kind of ten commandments set to remember, set to engrave into the back of his mind so he may soon know them by heart, by memory alone.
Number one was written in red and underlined in blue to set it apart from all the other digits on the list: survive.
Do anything and everything to keep on living.
Even when he’s old and gray, and the heart in his chest finally compresses into a useless pile of crap caught between a rusty pair of ribs, he’s going to keep on trying; he’s going to beg and he’s going to cry and he’s going to pray to whatever God that’ll listen to give him a few more years, give him another chance. He’s got it all worked out.
Shamal’s never been to keen on descending down into that imaginary place of fire and brimstone that his father took such a fancy to.
(And he’s not too keen on seeing his father again, either - “Remember that time in Germany, that time Angela accidently killed you? Haha, that’s great; me too. No hard feelings, right? …So, how’s the weather down here, papa?” - and naturally, he’d like to avoid that type of situation.)
--
Number two was a sign drawn thrice, sloppy and dirty, green like a haphazard warning label: $$$
Money.
Surviving was one thing, but living, really living was an entirely different matter altogether. It consisted of ones and zeros, of the faces of wrinkled dead men printed on thin, awkwardly colored pieces of paper. Everything in the universe ran on money, despite what all those naive pacifists on the television might’ve advertised. Absolutely everything.
Get sick? Go to a hospital and fork over a few hundred bucks for a doctor to fix you up and make you better again. Decide that, hey, that really sucks, and take a bullet to your head instead? Fine, but someone’s going to have to pay for those shovels and for that hole in the ground, you asshole; hope you feel proud of yourself, you selfish shit.
It was all so clear to Shamal, seeing as he was sixteen years old and already knee deep in medical debts, federal debts, whatever the fuck debts: for his mother’s care and eventual death, for his father’s care and eventual death, for his perpetual state of
dying, dying.
--
Number three was scrawled with all the grace of an artistically inclined five year old, two circles with dots in the middle and a heart gushing out of crevice where the met.
( . )♥( . )
A pair of breasts.
Women, the fairer sex, the Eve to his Adam.
The next important thing to accomplish in life was to get laid.
A lot.
No explanation needed.
--
And she left him two things and two things only - a photograph on the edge of the hotel mirror, a smiling square portrait of a stranger with a pretty little wife and two pretty little girls against the backdrop a pretty little house with red trimmings, and a message crudely smeared on foggy old glass in shoddy red lipstick.
And it told him: Dovrebbe soffrire, il mio bel dottore; he should suffer, my handsome doctor.
(You know what to do.)
And as he sat on the edge of an empty bed, naked with blankets strewn between his creaking legs and cigarette caught between his clenching white teeth, he thought: This is it. This is as good as it’s gonna get.
Good morning.
Author: ME LOL
Rating: MATURE?! Mature. D8?
Series/Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Characters/Pairings: A sixteen year old!Shamal
Warnings: ...MATURE THEMES. :/
Summary: Life is harsh, but Shamal's got it all worked out.
This was SUPPOSED to be a Shamal/Dino fic for picnicbird, but it turned out to be this overblown, shitastic ramble instead. SORRY GAIZ.
The sixteen years he’s spent in existence has taught him a few choice things about the cold and lonely world out there, a list of sorts that he keeps written on a crumpled old bit of newspaper paper sewed under the hems of his sleeve, lest he forget them. He’s young, has a lot to learn and a whole lot more to lose; and at this point in his career, there was no harm in having a set of guidelines, a kind of ten commandments set to remember, set to engrave into the back of his mind so he may soon know them by heart, by memory alone.
Number one was written in red and underlined in blue to set it apart from all the other digits on the list: survive.
Do anything and everything to keep on living.
Even when he’s old and gray, and the heart in his chest finally compresses into a useless pile of crap caught between a rusty pair of ribs, he’s going to keep on trying; he’s going to beg and he’s going to cry and he’s going to pray to whatever God that’ll listen to give him a few more years, give him another chance. He’s got it all worked out.
Shamal’s never been to keen on descending down into that imaginary place of fire and brimstone that his father took such a fancy to.
(And he’s not too keen on seeing his father again, either - “Remember that time in Germany, that time Angela accidently killed you? Haha, that’s great; me too. No hard feelings, right? …So, how’s the weather down here, papa?” - and naturally, he’d like to avoid that type of situation.)
--
Number two was a sign drawn thrice, sloppy and dirty, green like a haphazard warning label: $$$
Money.
Surviving was one thing, but living, really living was an entirely different matter altogether. It consisted of ones and zeros, of the faces of wrinkled dead men printed on thin, awkwardly colored pieces of paper. Everything in the universe ran on money, despite what all those naive pacifists on the television might’ve advertised. Absolutely everything.
Get sick? Go to a hospital and fork over a few hundred bucks for a doctor to fix you up and make you better again. Decide that, hey, that really sucks, and take a bullet to your head instead? Fine, but someone’s going to have to pay for those shovels and for that hole in the ground, you asshole; hope you feel proud of yourself, you selfish shit.
It was all so clear to Shamal, seeing as he was sixteen years old and already knee deep in medical debts, federal debts, whatever the fuck debts: for his mother’s care and eventual death, for his father’s care and eventual death, for his perpetual state of
dying, dying.
--
Number three was scrawled with all the grace of an artistically inclined five year old, two circles with dots in the middle and a heart gushing out of crevice where the met.
( . )♥( . )
A pair of breasts.
Women, the fairer sex, the Eve to his Adam.
The next important thing to accomplish in life was to get laid.
A lot.
No explanation needed.
--
And she left him two things and two things only - a photograph on the edge of the hotel mirror, a smiling square portrait of a stranger with a pretty little wife and two pretty little girls against the backdrop a pretty little house with red trimmings, and a message crudely smeared on foggy old glass in shoddy red lipstick.
And it told him: Dovrebbe soffrire, il mio bel dottore; he should suffer, my handsome doctor.
(You know what to do.)
And as he sat on the edge of an empty bed, naked with blankets strewn between his creaking legs and cigarette caught between his clenching white teeth, he thought: This is it. This is as good as it’s gonna get.
Good morning.