newbie!
I am a newbie to the community, and I come bearing a peace offering.
Title: Good Once
Genre: Drama..romance-ish? Is slash a genre? This is slash, at any rate. Exercise your right to be a homophobe by not reading this rather than by flaming my fic. Thank you :)
Characters: Doug/Bobby. (AKA: Dobby ahahaha)
Rating: PG, I guess. Mostly just for swearing.
Summary: It's been a month since the whole radioactive-mutants-eating-their-family ordeal. Doug and Bobby have the house to themselves, and they talk about what happened for the first time since it happened.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Notes: Uh, this movie scares the shit out of me. The first time I saw it was in theatres and I BAWLED. I was so close to walking out; it was so relentless and cruel and the family reminded me so much of my own (Yes, I can imagine my brother-in-law and my brother hitting on each other. We are not normal...Um, well, maybe it's just me that's abnormal....) and uh yeah it really horrified me. But I watch it obsessively, and I see the slash in everything and I couldn't find anything existing on the intenet, so I wrote some of my own.
Bobby Carter had watched his mother become a widow. He had been sobbing like a brokenhearted child over his father’s smoking body when he’d heard the gunshot that killed her. He had returned to the run-down-by-vacations-and-memories trailer to find his mom with crimson blossoming across the front of her white nightgown, and when he had turned his eyes from her in horror, they had landed upon the sight of his murdered older sister lying resignedly in a pool of blood beside an empty cradle. He had spent a lot of time looking at his reflection in the mirror and hating himself for briefly noticing the blood lining his other sister’s legs, registering what that meant, and barely filing it.
Bobby Carter had seen a lot.
Doug Bukowski was there. He had felt respect and awe soar through him as he watched the fiery crucifixion of his father-in-law. He had felt his heart collapse and wither in the single second that it took his brain to tell his eyes that what he was seeing was his wife dead and their baby stolen. He had felt the sick sensation of true bravery as he promised his dying mother-in-law that her kids were safe and her oldest daughter was just sleeping. And he felt the guilt that Bobby did, because he couldn’t help but remember all the secret glances he had stolen of his wife’s younger sister when no one was watching, but the one time that he should have looked at her (“Brenda, watch the baby!”), he didn’t.
Doug Bukowski knew the feelings that God had abolished when he had made man, deeming them too horrible for his children-those that didn’t wander, anyway.
+
“Hey, Lurch,” Bobby called. “Wanna make us some popcorn for the movie while you’re up?”
Doug threw an affectionately impatient look over his shoulder as he walked to the kitchen. “I don’t think I have enough fingers for that, Bobby.” He mimed the actions of flipping the bird, which he couldn’t do effectively because he no longer had a middle finger, but he knew it made Bobby laugh.
It had been a month since the desert. Doug, Bobby, Brenda, and the baby had been thrilled to tears to come home to Ohio, even though they knew that they had left behind everything they longed to come home to. Doug and the baby moved in with the remaining Carter siblings-he let the realtor take care of the home he and Lynn had just bought together, because he couldn’t face it. He couldn’t stand to smell the vanilla air-fresheners that she had picked out, or see her well-worn sweatpants lying folded in the laundry room, ready to be put away. Lynn would have wanted him to look after her little brother and sister, and who knows, Big Bob might have even been proud of him for once.
Tonight was the first night that Brenda had gone out with her friends. It had been ages since Doug or Bobby had seen her do her hair or apply more than just mascara. Still, they both found themselves racking their brains and biting their tongues against excuses to make her stay home. When she closed the front door behind her, the house had become deafening with silence. Bobby had suggested they watch a movie-something from when Jim Carrey was still funny. Doug agreed; glad that Bobby did not opt to spend the night holed up in his bedroom listening to Slipknot and wishing suicide didn’t involve so much blood. He adored this kid, and he needed him a lot more than he cared to admit to himself.
Doug was just wrestling the popcorn packet out of its plastic wrapper when he realized Bobby had followed him into the kitchen.
“Your leg bothering you today?” Bobby asked, opening the fridge and bending over to inspect the contents. “You’re walking like Frankenstein.”
He shrugged. “There have been better days, I guess.”
“I should fucking hope so,” Bobby chuckled in his lazy-sweet way. He had this crazy ability to sound like a worldly old soul and still laugh like a child all at the same time. “That’s good, though, right? Some days hurt like hell, but at least we know that it was good once.”
Doug froze, his finger suspended in air over the start button on the microwave. He cleared his throat and pressed it, nodding. “It was good once,” he murmured.
Bobby tossed a can of grape pop to Doug, hopping up on the counter and cracking open his own drink. “At least Catherine will grow up okay.”
“Jesus, Bobby,” Doug laughed. “You’re still in high school. Don’t talk like you’ve done all your growing up. You’ve still got plenty of time to get over this, all right, buddy?”
Bobby nodded. “Yeah. When school starts, I’m sure that writing about the murder of sixty per cent of my family for the obligatory “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” assignment will be very cathartic. Maybe I’ll try out for the football team and get all my frustrations out on the field and I’ll overcome adversity, and maybe my parents’ death will spur me on to be the best that I can be and I’ll graduate with honours and get a good job and be able to afford some fucking therapy.”
Doug studied the younger boy’s face. There was a perpetual shadow in his eyes at all times, his jaw was always tight except for when he sighed which was when he shuddered and his lips trembled. Doug could hardly believe that this was the boy that Lynn had introduced him to three years ago-he still had the messy hair and the impish sparkle, but he was haunted now. And then he remembered the way this boy had cried with childlike horror beside his father’s body, and then cursed and screamed and sobbed and backed away from his mother’s, and it made Doug wonder how this boy could even function at all now.
“Bobby, if you, uh, want to talk, you know you can always talk to me--”
“Your heart’s fucking broken, man,” Bobby said, rolling his eyes. “I don’t want you anywhere near mine. Our hearts are so fucking shattered that we won’t be able to tell who’s whose.”
“That’s--” Doug sputtered. “…tempting.”
“Kinda, yeah.” He shook his head and took a drink. “She made the worst potato salad in the world.”
After a startled pause, Doug burst into laughter. “She really fucking did, didn’t she?” He chuckled and scratched his chin-he had shaved his beard off when he thought of how much blood had been in it. “Lynn was one hell of a woman, but she was a disaster in the kitchen. She made good grilled cheese, though.”
“Yeah, because I taught her,” Bobby said. “I’m a master in the kitchen. I take after Dad. Mom couldn’t really cook worth shit either.”
“I know,” Doug groaned, crossing the kitchen to stand closer to Bobby without even realizing it. “Thanksgiving at your house was always the worst. Those poor goddamn turkeys, martyring themselves only to be burned to a crisp on the outside and frozen solid on the inside.” He smirked. “We were supposed to spend Thanksgiving with my family this year.”
“You still can,” Bobby told him. “Me and Brenda can hold down the fort here.”
“Like hell you will,” Doug said. “I can’t say thanks for you without you there.”
Looking surprised, Bobby stared at him, and then smiled teasingly. “You’re sweet.”
“Seriously, kiddo,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you now.”
“You’d have to change your own baby’s diapers, Claw,” he said, gesturing to the other man’s disfigured hand.
“It’s hard,” Doug insisted. “You try only having eight fingers!”
“Hey, I’m glad to help,” Bobby laughed. “I owe you a lot. Forever, pretty much. Brenda and me would lost without you, too. When I saw you come over that horizon like the white knight you are--”
Doug smacked Bobby over the shoulder, laughing with him. “You’re such a little dick.”
“I know, but I’m serious, too,” Bobby said. “I lost my hero that night, but I found another one, you know?”
“…I’m--?”
Bobby hit him back. “What do you think? Of course you are.” He took a long moment to stare down at his hands, large and awkward-looking, like a puppy that had a long way to go in growing into its paws. “I get these nights sometimes when I can’t sleep, or I sleep and I dream too much, and I wish I had just fucking died, or whatever. If that meant that you could have Lynn back or Mom could have Dad back or Brenda could have Mom--” His voice cracked, and Doug loved that he was still just such a boy that his voice was still vulnerable. He listened without interrupting because he’d had those nights, too. “I just…you know. There are some nights when I can’t believe in God because I just can’t figure out how my sister was expendable and I wasn’t. And tragedy makes you feel selfish, I think, because then I’ll be like ‘I’ve gone through enough, I don’t owe anyone a fucking thing’ and since I don’t believe in God, I start to think about killing myself.”
“I know you do,” Doug murmured.
“But then I think about how much you went through to get back to us,” Bobby said. “And basically…you save my life every day.”
“Fuck,” was all that Doug could get out before he pushed back Bobby’s dark hair and pressed his lips to his forehead in one swift motion. The kiss tried to be innocent, but it couldn’t be, because neither of them were capable of it anymore. He knew that this was his dead wife’s teenage brother (and his dead mother- and father-in-law’s son), but he still wanted to lower his lips. He missed his wife so badly that he couldn’t cry sometimes and couldn’t stop other times, and maybe his affection for Bobby had something to do with his desperation to have any piece of her back that he could possibly find, but he also knew that he loved the hell out of this kid. When he pulled away, he looked down and saw that Bobby had closed his eyes at the contact, and for the first time in a long time, he looked content.
Two pairs of lips inched closer as scar tissue hovered between them, waiting for the chance to finally heal. But the fucking microwave beeped, and Bobby suddenly cursed his craving for popcorn. They turned their faces away from each other wordlessly. Bobby took down two bowls from the cupboard and brought them to the living room, with Doug carrying the bag of popcorn close behind him. They sat on two different couches for the beginning of the movie, but when Bobby came back from a bathroom break, he settled down next to Doug and threw a blanket over their legs.
It was true that Bobby Carter had seen too much and that Doug Bukowski had experienced feelings that paved the road to hell. They had been stripped of love and innocence, and they were left with only each other. But Doug made Bobby close his eyes, and Bobby made Doug search for the path home, and so maybe…it would be good again.
Title: Good Once
Genre: Drama..romance-ish? Is slash a genre? This is slash, at any rate. Exercise your right to be a homophobe by not reading this rather than by flaming my fic. Thank you :)
Characters: Doug/Bobby. (AKA: Dobby ahahaha)
Rating: PG, I guess. Mostly just for swearing.
Summary: It's been a month since the whole radioactive-mutants-eating-their-family ordeal. Doug and Bobby have the house to themselves, and they talk about what happened for the first time since it happened.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Notes: Uh, this movie scares the shit out of me. The first time I saw it was in theatres and I BAWLED. I was so close to walking out; it was so relentless and cruel and the family reminded me so much of my own (Yes, I can imagine my brother-in-law and my brother hitting on each other. We are not normal...Um, well, maybe it's just me that's abnormal....) and uh yeah it really horrified me. But I watch it obsessively, and I see the slash in everything and I couldn't find anything existing on the intenet, so I wrote some of my own.
Bobby Carter had watched his mother become a widow. He had been sobbing like a brokenhearted child over his father’s smoking body when he’d heard the gunshot that killed her. He had returned to the run-down-by-vacations-and-memories trailer to find his mom with crimson blossoming across the front of her white nightgown, and when he had turned his eyes from her in horror, they had landed upon the sight of his murdered older sister lying resignedly in a pool of blood beside an empty cradle. He had spent a lot of time looking at his reflection in the mirror and hating himself for briefly noticing the blood lining his other sister’s legs, registering what that meant, and barely filing it.
Bobby Carter had seen a lot.
Doug Bukowski was there. He had felt respect and awe soar through him as he watched the fiery crucifixion of his father-in-law. He had felt his heart collapse and wither in the single second that it took his brain to tell his eyes that what he was seeing was his wife dead and their baby stolen. He had felt the sick sensation of true bravery as he promised his dying mother-in-law that her kids were safe and her oldest daughter was just sleeping. And he felt the guilt that Bobby did, because he couldn’t help but remember all the secret glances he had stolen of his wife’s younger sister when no one was watching, but the one time that he should have looked at her (“Brenda, watch the baby!”), he didn’t.
Doug Bukowski knew the feelings that God had abolished when he had made man, deeming them too horrible for his children-those that didn’t wander, anyway.
+
“Hey, Lurch,” Bobby called. “Wanna make us some popcorn for the movie while you’re up?”
Doug threw an affectionately impatient look over his shoulder as he walked to the kitchen. “I don’t think I have enough fingers for that, Bobby.” He mimed the actions of flipping the bird, which he couldn’t do effectively because he no longer had a middle finger, but he knew it made Bobby laugh.
It had been a month since the desert. Doug, Bobby, Brenda, and the baby had been thrilled to tears to come home to Ohio, even though they knew that they had left behind everything they longed to come home to. Doug and the baby moved in with the remaining Carter siblings-he let the realtor take care of the home he and Lynn had just bought together, because he couldn’t face it. He couldn’t stand to smell the vanilla air-fresheners that she had picked out, or see her well-worn sweatpants lying folded in the laundry room, ready to be put away. Lynn would have wanted him to look after her little brother and sister, and who knows, Big Bob might have even been proud of him for once.
Tonight was the first night that Brenda had gone out with her friends. It had been ages since Doug or Bobby had seen her do her hair or apply more than just mascara. Still, they both found themselves racking their brains and biting their tongues against excuses to make her stay home. When she closed the front door behind her, the house had become deafening with silence. Bobby had suggested they watch a movie-something from when Jim Carrey was still funny. Doug agreed; glad that Bobby did not opt to spend the night holed up in his bedroom listening to Slipknot and wishing suicide didn’t involve so much blood. He adored this kid, and he needed him a lot more than he cared to admit to himself.
Doug was just wrestling the popcorn packet out of its plastic wrapper when he realized Bobby had followed him into the kitchen.
“Your leg bothering you today?” Bobby asked, opening the fridge and bending over to inspect the contents. “You’re walking like Frankenstein.”
He shrugged. “There have been better days, I guess.”
“I should fucking hope so,” Bobby chuckled in his lazy-sweet way. He had this crazy ability to sound like a worldly old soul and still laugh like a child all at the same time. “That’s good, though, right? Some days hurt like hell, but at least we know that it was good once.”
Doug froze, his finger suspended in air over the start button on the microwave. He cleared his throat and pressed it, nodding. “It was good once,” he murmured.
Bobby tossed a can of grape pop to Doug, hopping up on the counter and cracking open his own drink. “At least Catherine will grow up okay.”
“Jesus, Bobby,” Doug laughed. “You’re still in high school. Don’t talk like you’ve done all your growing up. You’ve still got plenty of time to get over this, all right, buddy?”
Bobby nodded. “Yeah. When school starts, I’m sure that writing about the murder of sixty per cent of my family for the obligatory “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” assignment will be very cathartic. Maybe I’ll try out for the football team and get all my frustrations out on the field and I’ll overcome adversity, and maybe my parents’ death will spur me on to be the best that I can be and I’ll graduate with honours and get a good job and be able to afford some fucking therapy.”
Doug studied the younger boy’s face. There was a perpetual shadow in his eyes at all times, his jaw was always tight except for when he sighed which was when he shuddered and his lips trembled. Doug could hardly believe that this was the boy that Lynn had introduced him to three years ago-he still had the messy hair and the impish sparkle, but he was haunted now. And then he remembered the way this boy had cried with childlike horror beside his father’s body, and then cursed and screamed and sobbed and backed away from his mother’s, and it made Doug wonder how this boy could even function at all now.
“Bobby, if you, uh, want to talk, you know you can always talk to me--”
“Your heart’s fucking broken, man,” Bobby said, rolling his eyes. “I don’t want you anywhere near mine. Our hearts are so fucking shattered that we won’t be able to tell who’s whose.”
“That’s--” Doug sputtered. “…tempting.”
“Kinda, yeah.” He shook his head and took a drink. “She made the worst potato salad in the world.”
After a startled pause, Doug burst into laughter. “She really fucking did, didn’t she?” He chuckled and scratched his chin-he had shaved his beard off when he thought of how much blood had been in it. “Lynn was one hell of a woman, but she was a disaster in the kitchen. She made good grilled cheese, though.”
“Yeah, because I taught her,” Bobby said. “I’m a master in the kitchen. I take after Dad. Mom couldn’t really cook worth shit either.”
“I know,” Doug groaned, crossing the kitchen to stand closer to Bobby without even realizing it. “Thanksgiving at your house was always the worst. Those poor goddamn turkeys, martyring themselves only to be burned to a crisp on the outside and frozen solid on the inside.” He smirked. “We were supposed to spend Thanksgiving with my family this year.”
“You still can,” Bobby told him. “Me and Brenda can hold down the fort here.”
“Like hell you will,” Doug said. “I can’t say thanks for you without you there.”
Looking surprised, Bobby stared at him, and then smiled teasingly. “You’re sweet.”
“Seriously, kiddo,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you now.”
“You’d have to change your own baby’s diapers, Claw,” he said, gesturing to the other man’s disfigured hand.
“It’s hard,” Doug insisted. “You try only having eight fingers!”
“Hey, I’m glad to help,” Bobby laughed. “I owe you a lot. Forever, pretty much. Brenda and me would lost without you, too. When I saw you come over that horizon like the white knight you are--”
Doug smacked Bobby over the shoulder, laughing with him. “You’re such a little dick.”
“I know, but I’m serious, too,” Bobby said. “I lost my hero that night, but I found another one, you know?”
“…I’m--?”
Bobby hit him back. “What do you think? Of course you are.” He took a long moment to stare down at his hands, large and awkward-looking, like a puppy that had a long way to go in growing into its paws. “I get these nights sometimes when I can’t sleep, or I sleep and I dream too much, and I wish I had just fucking died, or whatever. If that meant that you could have Lynn back or Mom could have Dad back or Brenda could have Mom--” His voice cracked, and Doug loved that he was still just such a boy that his voice was still vulnerable. He listened without interrupting because he’d had those nights, too. “I just…you know. There are some nights when I can’t believe in God because I just can’t figure out how my sister was expendable and I wasn’t. And tragedy makes you feel selfish, I think, because then I’ll be like ‘I’ve gone through enough, I don’t owe anyone a fucking thing’ and since I don’t believe in God, I start to think about killing myself.”
“I know you do,” Doug murmured.
“But then I think about how much you went through to get back to us,” Bobby said. “And basically…you save my life every day.”
“Fuck,” was all that Doug could get out before he pushed back Bobby’s dark hair and pressed his lips to his forehead in one swift motion. The kiss tried to be innocent, but it couldn’t be, because neither of them were capable of it anymore. He knew that this was his dead wife’s teenage brother (and his dead mother- and father-in-law’s son), but he still wanted to lower his lips. He missed his wife so badly that he couldn’t cry sometimes and couldn’t stop other times, and maybe his affection for Bobby had something to do with his desperation to have any piece of her back that he could possibly find, but he also knew that he loved the hell out of this kid. When he pulled away, he looked down and saw that Bobby had closed his eyes at the contact, and for the first time in a long time, he looked content.
Two pairs of lips inched closer as scar tissue hovered between them, waiting for the chance to finally heal. But the fucking microwave beeped, and Bobby suddenly cursed his craving for popcorn. They turned their faces away from each other wordlessly. Bobby took down two bowls from the cupboard and brought them to the living room, with Doug carrying the bag of popcorn close behind him. They sat on two different couches for the beginning of the movie, but when Bobby came back from a bathroom break, he settled down next to Doug and threw a blanket over their legs.
It was true that Bobby Carter had seen too much and that Doug Bukowski had experienced feelings that paved the road to hell. They had been stripped of love and innocence, and they were left with only each other. But Doug made Bobby close his eyes, and Bobby made Doug search for the path home, and so maybe…it would be good again.