Drabble one!
Sorry these are taking so long, by RL is fucking me with a sharp, spiky stick, no lubricant and twenty-one years' worth of pent-up aggression.
This is for radioreverie, who requested Thom/Jonny and magical realism, and is in fact not a drabble but an extract from a larger fic I plan to write some far-off day, in which Thom sometimes wakes up in an alternative existence where life didn't really work out for him. Think Time Traveler's Wife, but with less time travel and more inexplicable poverty.
There's this dream he has, first person recurring, where he answers the front door and finds himself face to face with some kid he knew in secondary school. "Jesus," the kid says, grimacing. "What happened to you?"
Then the kid comes in and Thom turns, follows him, sees for the first time the wreckage of his room: clothes and bottles and fast food wrappers pocked with cigarette burns. He can smell the fug of it, feel the heaviness of the stale air.
"You've got to get your head together," the kid's saying. "She's - fuck, were you sick in the bed?" He holds up a fistful of soiled sheets, streaked red-brown and reeking. Thom reaches out a hand and touches them. He can feel the roughness of the sheets, the gritty texture of his own vomit. He can smell it. He can taste it at the back of his his throat.
And the he wakes up and there's nothing - no sheets, no noise, just the pulsing in his head and the bile in his throat. He launches himself out of bed and dives for the bathroom, manages to make it as far as the sink before he's hurling, throat and nose burning, eyes watering, stomach twisting. He coughs out the last of it and blinks his vision clear before he realises that the sink is chipped white, black with mould around the edges.
Not right.
He closes his eyes again, sucks in a breath and tries to throw off the strange, still-drunk sensation that's pushing at the back of his brain, shaking at the tips of his fingers.
"You okay?" Jonny's words, Jonny's fingers closing round his arm and when Thom opens his eyes he's back in Jonny's bathroom with its blue sink and noisily fluorescent light. When he leans back, his head presses against the curve of Jonny's shoulder and it feels solid, real. "If you're okay, I'll find a plumber's mate."
Thom's laugh is really more of a shaky exhale and his "fuck you" is sub-par at best. Jonny fetches him a glass of water instead and as he sips it, Thom tries to remember the last time he drunk anything else.
This is for radioreverie, who requested Thom/Jonny and magical realism, and is in fact not a drabble but an extract from a larger fic I plan to write some far-off day, in which Thom sometimes wakes up in an alternative existence where life didn't really work out for him. Think Time Traveler's Wife, but with less time travel and more inexplicable poverty.
There's this dream he has, first person recurring, where he answers the front door and finds himself face to face with some kid he knew in secondary school. "Jesus," the kid says, grimacing. "What happened to you?"
Then the kid comes in and Thom turns, follows him, sees for the first time the wreckage of his room: clothes and bottles and fast food wrappers pocked with cigarette burns. He can smell the fug of it, feel the heaviness of the stale air.
"You've got to get your head together," the kid's saying. "She's - fuck, were you sick in the bed?" He holds up a fistful of soiled sheets, streaked red-brown and reeking. Thom reaches out a hand and touches them. He can feel the roughness of the sheets, the gritty texture of his own vomit. He can smell it. He can taste it at the back of his his throat.
And the he wakes up and there's nothing - no sheets, no noise, just the pulsing in his head and the bile in his throat. He launches himself out of bed and dives for the bathroom, manages to make it as far as the sink before he's hurling, throat and nose burning, eyes watering, stomach twisting. He coughs out the last of it and blinks his vision clear before he realises that the sink is chipped white, black with mould around the edges.
Not right.
He closes his eyes again, sucks in a breath and tries to throw off the strange, still-drunk sensation that's pushing at the back of his brain, shaking at the tips of his fingers.
"You okay?" Jonny's words, Jonny's fingers closing round his arm and when Thom opens his eyes he's back in Jonny's bathroom with its blue sink and noisily fluorescent light. When he leans back, his head presses against the curve of Jonny's shoulder and it feels solid, real. "If you're okay, I'll find a plumber's mate."
Thom's laugh is really more of a shaky exhale and his "fuck you" is sub-par at best. Jonny fetches him a glass of water instead and as he sips it, Thom tries to remember the last time he drunk anything else.