I Hate Myself & Want To Die (Saiyuki, Gojyo, PG-13)
Title: I Hate Myself & Want To Die
Author: KMB
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of suicide
Word Count: 1144
Author's Notes/Prompt: written for prompt Saiyuki, Gojyo: Time travel - Gojyo ends up in either the 20th or the 21st century and must make a place for himself. This is a crossover with Gus Van Sant's Last Days, though heavily peppered with my own memories of the event. I loved this prompt! Apologies for its lateness!
April 9, 4:12 am
He woke up to a stained and cracked ceiling, one eye opening then the other, though both felt gummied shut. Rubbing at them he sat up, not registering the heavy weight across his midsection until it shifted and he blinked down at a head of greasy, matted hair. Large eyes--or amplified eyes, whichever, those glasses were huge--opened up at him in a dully penetrative stare before anyone said anything. For the first time in his life, Gojyo didn't go first.
"Hey, man," mumbled the greasy boy, a light five o'clock shadow dusting his pointed chin as he didn't bother removing his thin, bare arm from around Gojyo's waist. "It's only just after four. Go back to sleep."
"Nnn," Gojyo disagreed, his shaking head more vocal than his mouth, "gonna have a smoke," and he slunk his way out from under the already-dozing guy and picked his path around and toward a door that looked like it might lead to some sort of an outside. Gojyo had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't the kind of outside he was expecting.
On his way, he passed another sleeping man and a blonde girl with pretty, dusky eyelashes that stole her cheeks in her sleep. Another... girl... maybe? was passed out uncomfortably on a torn and dirty armchair, her head stuck painfully to her shoulder, her neck looking broken. But her chest was rising and falling, and Gojyo tried to be as quiet as he could as he tiptoed past everyone, though he hadn't need be. The door made a god-awful croaking sound when it opened, and still all the strangers in the room slept on in oblivion.
Once outside, under the harsh yellow light of a cockeyed streetlamp, Gojyo lit up a cigarette with shaking fingers and exhaled long and slow. Somewhere, a television was on, acoustic music playing and a man singing... and somewhere else, someone was crying.
He was a long way from India.
April 4 3:20 pm
"Hey, man. This is Gojyo."
The blond guy-- barely measuring up to Gojyo's chest at best-- just stared at him with watery blue eyes. You could practically taste the conversation that would have happened between them--
"Fuck, you're tall. You played basketball?"
"...basketball?"
"So you're not one of those fuckers that played sports and then just decided that long hair and... what the fuck are they calling this... grunge rock are 'pretty cool' like these motherfuckers surrounding me?"
"Uh, no?"
"...You're alright, then."
--would have happened being the operative phrase, because that face and body and mind was so numb with drugs that only a grunt and a cryptic, "Macaroni and cheese," came out before the blond guy sidled past Gojyo into the kitchen.
April 5, 1:52 pm
Strumming a guitar in a listless fashion, picking at the strings like a baby with a toy. Gojyo watched him in uncharacteristic silence and could see the futility in him, this exalted king of... what? A large, empty house? A few smelly hangers-on? A plethora of broken instruments and an obviously large, but very unwanted, slice of fame? A lot of nobody that really cared. The televisions blared his name; it was inescapable.
"Do you have kids?"
It took Gojyo a moment to realize the question was directed at him. He stared at the guy for a moment, watching his hair fall to one side as he cocked his head inquisitively, before Gojyo gave an uneasy laugh and said, "Possibly. A couple I don't know about, maybe."
The joke fell flat, the blond's mouth turning down into something resembling disdain. He just nodded and sighed and Gojyo recognized that look in his eyes. It wasn't the first time he had ever seen it, though it had been a while and there were no spilt guts, no blood to be seen. Just a dug-up box containing a horse's dose of heroin and one hypodermic needle and a shotgun in the corner.
This time it wasn't going to be so easy to be contrary.
April 4, 10:20 am
He heard voices downstairs and decided to follow them. What he found was a bent and broken young man, the straps of the black slip he wore slipping down his shoulders and bunched at his thighs.
Gojyo took the seat opposite him, perching on the dusty couch the noncolor of dirty bathwater, and just resisted a sneeze, the cigarette in his mouth twitching. "Hey," he said do softly he doubted even he heard it himself.
The blond head rose just enough and stared long at Gojyo, who didn't shift under his gaze. And when the shotgun was pointed at his head, all Gojyo did was sigh. "I thought I had escaped cranky blonds that point guns at my head."
The gun was lowered, reluctantly. "Give me your cigarette."
Gojyo cocked an eyebrow. "Now, I didn't take orders from Sanzo, what makes you think you're so special?"
Relief was so obvious it made the blond's shoulders slump down. "You don't think I'm special?"
"Nope." Gojyo shook his head, but he took his cig out of his mouth and handed it across anyway. "Why, should you be? You look as ordinary as I am."
"Ordinary?" He snorted and those blue eyes stared at Gojyo, fogged over with drugs but clear that moment, somehow and they bored right into him, stripping Gojyo's bones clean. "Don't sell yourself short." The words were spat out, angry. "Okay? Because it's-" he shook his head, cigarette held just in front of his mouth as eye contact was lost. "It's so fucking not worth it."
April 10, 11:03 pm
Gojyo stood in solidarity with a few thousand other mourners in a grassy park, the Space Needle bright and odd in the background, somehow fitting in with the black sheep crowd of eyeliner-streaked girls and boys and men and women clutching to themselves and each other, all of them asking why. Long ago someone had dragged out a tape recorder and everyone listened in silence as a young widow's voice spoke out among those gathered, at times as vulgar as Gojyo himself, choked over in thick tears and sometimes completely unintelligible. That night, as he stumbled through the dark, something was thrust at him. His hand folded over it before he knew what he was doing.
"Here. He obviously doesn't need it anymore," and Gojyo's arm was draped in a dirty off-white tee that smelled like the outdoors. He caught a flash of bleached hair and messy lips before the benefactor was submerged into the crowd, her scratchy voice familiar from earlier. He wanted to say thanks but the word was stuck in his throat.
He listened as someone started up a tape and closed his eyes, that same acoustic music washing over the crowd. He wished for the will to live.
He wished for green eyes.
Author: KMB
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of suicide
Word Count: 1144
Author's Notes/Prompt: written for prompt Saiyuki, Gojyo: Time travel - Gojyo ends up in either the 20th or the 21st century and must make a place for himself. This is a crossover with Gus Van Sant's Last Days, though heavily peppered with my own memories of the event. I loved this prompt! Apologies for its lateness!
April 9, 4:12 am
He woke up to a stained and cracked ceiling, one eye opening then the other, though both felt gummied shut. Rubbing at them he sat up, not registering the heavy weight across his midsection until it shifted and he blinked down at a head of greasy, matted hair. Large eyes--or amplified eyes, whichever, those glasses were huge--opened up at him in a dully penetrative stare before anyone said anything. For the first time in his life, Gojyo didn't go first.
"Hey, man," mumbled the greasy boy, a light five o'clock shadow dusting his pointed chin as he didn't bother removing his thin, bare arm from around Gojyo's waist. "It's only just after four. Go back to sleep."
"Nnn," Gojyo disagreed, his shaking head more vocal than his mouth, "gonna have a smoke," and he slunk his way out from under the already-dozing guy and picked his path around and toward a door that looked like it might lead to some sort of an outside. Gojyo had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't the kind of outside he was expecting.
On his way, he passed another sleeping man and a blonde girl with pretty, dusky eyelashes that stole her cheeks in her sleep. Another... girl... maybe? was passed out uncomfortably on a torn and dirty armchair, her head stuck painfully to her shoulder, her neck looking broken. But her chest was rising and falling, and Gojyo tried to be as quiet as he could as he tiptoed past everyone, though he hadn't need be. The door made a god-awful croaking sound when it opened, and still all the strangers in the room slept on in oblivion.
Once outside, under the harsh yellow light of a cockeyed streetlamp, Gojyo lit up a cigarette with shaking fingers and exhaled long and slow. Somewhere, a television was on, acoustic music playing and a man singing... and somewhere else, someone was crying.
He was a long way from India.
April 4 3:20 pm
"Hey, man. This is Gojyo."
The blond guy-- barely measuring up to Gojyo's chest at best-- just stared at him with watery blue eyes. You could practically taste the conversation that would have happened between them--
"Fuck, you're tall. You played basketball?"
"...basketball?"
"So you're not one of those fuckers that played sports and then just decided that long hair and... what the fuck are they calling this... grunge rock are 'pretty cool' like these motherfuckers surrounding me?"
"Uh, no?"
"...You're alright, then."
--would have happened being the operative phrase, because that face and body and mind was so numb with drugs that only a grunt and a cryptic, "Macaroni and cheese," came out before the blond guy sidled past Gojyo into the kitchen.
April 5, 1:52 pm
Strumming a guitar in a listless fashion, picking at the strings like a baby with a toy. Gojyo watched him in uncharacteristic silence and could see the futility in him, this exalted king of... what? A large, empty house? A few smelly hangers-on? A plethora of broken instruments and an obviously large, but very unwanted, slice of fame? A lot of nobody that really cared. The televisions blared his name; it was inescapable.
"Do you have kids?"
It took Gojyo a moment to realize the question was directed at him. He stared at the guy for a moment, watching his hair fall to one side as he cocked his head inquisitively, before Gojyo gave an uneasy laugh and said, "Possibly. A couple I don't know about, maybe."
The joke fell flat, the blond's mouth turning down into something resembling disdain. He just nodded and sighed and Gojyo recognized that look in his eyes. It wasn't the first time he had ever seen it, though it had been a while and there were no spilt guts, no blood to be seen. Just a dug-up box containing a horse's dose of heroin and one hypodermic needle and a shotgun in the corner.
This time it wasn't going to be so easy to be contrary.
April 4, 10:20 am
He heard voices downstairs and decided to follow them. What he found was a bent and broken young man, the straps of the black slip he wore slipping down his shoulders and bunched at his thighs.
Gojyo took the seat opposite him, perching on the dusty couch the noncolor of dirty bathwater, and just resisted a sneeze, the cigarette in his mouth twitching. "Hey," he said do softly he doubted even he heard it himself.
The blond head rose just enough and stared long at Gojyo, who didn't shift under his gaze. And when the shotgun was pointed at his head, all Gojyo did was sigh. "I thought I had escaped cranky blonds that point guns at my head."
The gun was lowered, reluctantly. "Give me your cigarette."
Gojyo cocked an eyebrow. "Now, I didn't take orders from Sanzo, what makes you think you're so special?"
Relief was so obvious it made the blond's shoulders slump down. "You don't think I'm special?"
"Nope." Gojyo shook his head, but he took his cig out of his mouth and handed it across anyway. "Why, should you be? You look as ordinary as I am."
"Ordinary?" He snorted and those blue eyes stared at Gojyo, fogged over with drugs but clear that moment, somehow and they bored right into him, stripping Gojyo's bones clean. "Don't sell yourself short." The words were spat out, angry. "Okay? Because it's-" he shook his head, cigarette held just in front of his mouth as eye contact was lost. "It's so fucking not worth it."
April 10, 11:03 pm
Gojyo stood in solidarity with a few thousand other mourners in a grassy park, the Space Needle bright and odd in the background, somehow fitting in with the black sheep crowd of eyeliner-streaked girls and boys and men and women clutching to themselves and each other, all of them asking why. Long ago someone had dragged out a tape recorder and everyone listened in silence as a young widow's voice spoke out among those gathered, at times as vulgar as Gojyo himself, choked over in thick tears and sometimes completely unintelligible. That night, as he stumbled through the dark, something was thrust at him. His hand folded over it before he knew what he was doing.
"Here. He obviously doesn't need it anymore," and Gojyo's arm was draped in a dirty off-white tee that smelled like the outdoors. He caught a flash of bleached hair and messy lips before the benefactor was submerged into the crowd, her scratchy voice familiar from earlier. He wanted to say thanks but the word was stuck in his throat.
He listened as someone started up a tape and closed his eyes, that same acoustic music washing over the crowd. He wished for the will to live.
He wished for green eyes.