[fic] smash | What I Need From You
Title | What I Need From You
Fandom | Smash
Characters | Jimmy Collins (and Derek Wills)
Word Count | 1140
Rating | M
Summary | Post Kyle’s death AU.His well-intentioned bid for sobriety lasts less than seven hours in the end. He counts it as a victory of sorts anyway, given the circumstances; he long ago learned to take what he could get after all.
Warnings | Explicit drug use and suicidal ideation
Author's Note | A languishing WIP that I've managed to complete for catteo's prompt at my 2015 Comment Ficathon of Redemption. Again, not a comment fic.
(This is not a story about redemption.)
His well-intentioned bid for sobriety lasts less than seven hours in the end. He counts it as a victory of sorts anyway, given the circumstances; he long ago learned to take what he could get after all.
But it’s three am now. There’s a lamp on in another room and a window is open to the street. Shadows dance in darkened corners and it already feels like ghosts lurk, mocking, in the cobwebs and the dust motes.
Or maybe, he thinks, that’s just him.
(He is nowhere near wasted enough not to recognise the notion for what it is: self-indulgent; pathetic.
He clings to it, all bloodless fingertips and shallowed out breaths, nonetheless.)
He finds an almost empty bottle of vodka in the freezer; grins. Fills a shot glass to overflowing and lines it up awkwardly beside the six pack of beer he’s already consumed. Only manages to conjure up half the hatred he’s sure he deserves before conceding defeat and raising the chipped glass into the silence.
“Fuck you,” he says, loud, bitter; tips his head back and swallows without thinking, the motion as familiar to him as breathing.
The clear liquid scalds a trail through his insides, steals his breath so completely he doesn’t have time to examine who the words might be directed towards.
It is exactly the effect he’d been intending.
The sun is up, he has no idea how many days have passed.
There’d been a funeral though, somewhere in the endless space between then and now. Fingers had looped themselves through his; if they were connected to a hand, to an arm, to a face and a body and person he once might have known then -
But it’s later now, and Kyle’s parents come. They empty out the apartment while he sits there on the stairs, hands between knees, head lost in chemical clouds, and watches. They don’t question his presence but they don’t speak to him either, at least, not beyond a stammered version of his name, Jimmy, when he’d first opened the door to them, and so he’s not entirely sure how much they’ve been told about…
Yeah.
All of that.
He can’t gather together the air required to speak up when some of his own possessions make their way into the zippered bags they’ve armed themselves with. He knows he won’t be able to stay here anyway. Not alone, not for long. He doesn’t have the kind of money he’d need for rent.
(He doesn’t have the kind of strength he’d need for sanity.
Or, at least, some respectable illusion of it…)
There’d been a wordless acknowledgement of sorts that he could have his job back, his rightful position at the top of the ‘Hit List’ pack. Surreptitious glances offered and reciprocated, nods exchanged and shoulders shrugged from various points around the room. His wordless response had been to disappear; a tactic he’s used to good effect more times than he can count.
Because fuck them…
He needs pity from no-one, he needs, he needs -
He splits his time between mopping up spilled beer at the bar, losing himself into the bottom of cloudy bottle after cloudy bottle, and pretending that nothing’s really changed all that much. Flip back through six calendar pages and it’s quite easy to imagine.
There’s only one part missing, after all.
Derek takes to following him home.
Wants to know, “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”
He laughs at that, laughs and laughs and laughs, while Derek stares back, eyes wide and unblinking.
He has carefully lined up sharp white rows across the coffee table in preparation for the night ahead. A hit list of his own he thinks, and perhaps the only one he’s ever really known. His face is painted with the faded remnants of a black eye he can’t remember receiving, and suddenly Derek wants to know things…
So he laughs some more.
(Later, when he sleeps, he dreams his bones have been crushed to dust, not a single one left intact.
Mostly though, he doesn’t sleep at all.)
His phone rings when he turns it on. And the knuckles of ghosts constantly tap at his door.
Today, tomorrow, sometime next week…
There’s this overwhelming expectation that Kyle’s death will be the making of him. That he’ll pick himself up from the proverbial ashes and finally become the person they all, blindly, think he’s supposed to be.
That they don’t get it is physically shocking to him.
There is nothing to be gained from death. At least, especially?, not this one.
He finds it offensive that they could ever begin to think otherwise.
“Stop,” he screams; muscles rigid with effort. It is in response to nothing in particular.
(It is in response to everything.)
Derek’s hand is wrapped around his upper arm; the grip, like a vice, as his feet catch on the chipped lip of the gutter.
He remembers headlights and music and hands on his face, and sometimes he forgets that it’s not him who died all those nights ago.
Derek’s apartment is nothing and everything like he’d expected.
‘Hit List’ opens on Broadway. There is critical acclaim and Kyle is lauded as the kind of creative genius only death can perpetuate.
He wonders, fiercely, if any of the others read the reviews like he does. If they remember that time they all rolled their eyes at the read-through and said that his book was terrible.
Later, he smashes his guitar into shards of splintered wood and tangled strings. Forgets why exactly before the last pieces have even begun to settle at his feet, just remembers the rage, the taste of it on his tongue and the feel of it, living, beneath layers of skin. But it’s okay he thinks, he has no use for it now.
Maybe he never really did.
“The role will always be yours, you know, if you can bring yourself to want it back.”
But Derek still doesn’t get it.
It was never a role to him and just because he’s not on stage doesn’t mean he’s not still living it.
(Adam’s fist, Kyle’s ghost, and the taste of his own blood on his teeth.
Art imitates life. They all should know this by now.)
“Bet Sam loves it when you say things like that…”
(This is not a story about redemption.
At least, not yet.)
Fandom | Smash
Characters | Jimmy Collins (and Derek Wills)
Word Count | 1140
Rating | M
Summary | Post Kyle’s death AU.His well-intentioned bid for sobriety lasts less than seven hours in the end. He counts it as a victory of sorts anyway, given the circumstances; he long ago learned to take what he could get after all.
Warnings | Explicit drug use and suicidal ideation
Author's Note | A languishing WIP that I've managed to complete for catteo's prompt at my 2015 Comment Ficathon of Redemption. Again, not a comment fic.
(This is not a story about redemption.)
His well-intentioned bid for sobriety lasts less than seven hours in the end. He counts it as a victory of sorts anyway, given the circumstances; he long ago learned to take what he could get after all.
But it’s three am now. There’s a lamp on in another room and a window is open to the street. Shadows dance in darkened corners and it already feels like ghosts lurk, mocking, in the cobwebs and the dust motes.
Or maybe, he thinks, that’s just him.
(He is nowhere near wasted enough not to recognise the notion for what it is: self-indulgent; pathetic.
He clings to it, all bloodless fingertips and shallowed out breaths, nonetheless.)
He finds an almost empty bottle of vodka in the freezer; grins. Fills a shot glass to overflowing and lines it up awkwardly beside the six pack of beer he’s already consumed. Only manages to conjure up half the hatred he’s sure he deserves before conceding defeat and raising the chipped glass into the silence.
“Fuck you,” he says, loud, bitter; tips his head back and swallows without thinking, the motion as familiar to him as breathing.
The clear liquid scalds a trail through his insides, steals his breath so completely he doesn’t have time to examine who the words might be directed towards.
It is exactly the effect he’d been intending.
The sun is up, he has no idea how many days have passed.
There’d been a funeral though, somewhere in the endless space between then and now. Fingers had looped themselves through his; if they were connected to a hand, to an arm, to a face and a body and person he once might have known then -
But it’s later now, and Kyle’s parents come. They empty out the apartment while he sits there on the stairs, hands between knees, head lost in chemical clouds, and watches. They don’t question his presence but they don’t speak to him either, at least, not beyond a stammered version of his name, Jimmy, when he’d first opened the door to them, and so he’s not entirely sure how much they’ve been told about…
Yeah.
All of that.
He can’t gather together the air required to speak up when some of his own possessions make their way into the zippered bags they’ve armed themselves with. He knows he won’t be able to stay here anyway. Not alone, not for long. He doesn’t have the kind of money he’d need for rent.
(He doesn’t have the kind of strength he’d need for sanity.
Or, at least, some respectable illusion of it…)
There’d been a wordless acknowledgement of sorts that he could have his job back, his rightful position at the top of the ‘Hit List’ pack. Surreptitious glances offered and reciprocated, nods exchanged and shoulders shrugged from various points around the room. His wordless response had been to disappear; a tactic he’s used to good effect more times than he can count.
Because fuck them…
He needs pity from no-one, he needs, he needs -
He splits his time between mopping up spilled beer at the bar, losing himself into the bottom of cloudy bottle after cloudy bottle, and pretending that nothing’s really changed all that much. Flip back through six calendar pages and it’s quite easy to imagine.
There’s only one part missing, after all.
Derek takes to following him home.
Wants to know, “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”
He laughs at that, laughs and laughs and laughs, while Derek stares back, eyes wide and unblinking.
He has carefully lined up sharp white rows across the coffee table in preparation for the night ahead. A hit list of his own he thinks, and perhaps the only one he’s ever really known. His face is painted with the faded remnants of a black eye he can’t remember receiving, and suddenly Derek wants to know things…
So he laughs some more.
(Later, when he sleeps, he dreams his bones have been crushed to dust, not a single one left intact.
Mostly though, he doesn’t sleep at all.)
His phone rings when he turns it on. And the knuckles of ghosts constantly tap at his door.
Today, tomorrow, sometime next week…
There’s this overwhelming expectation that Kyle’s death will be the making of him. That he’ll pick himself up from the proverbial ashes and finally become the person they all, blindly, think he’s supposed to be.
That they don’t get it is physically shocking to him.
There is nothing to be gained from death. At least, especially?, not this one.
He finds it offensive that they could ever begin to think otherwise.
“Stop,” he screams; muscles rigid with effort. It is in response to nothing in particular.
(It is in response to everything.)
Derek’s hand is wrapped around his upper arm; the grip, like a vice, as his feet catch on the chipped lip of the gutter.
He remembers headlights and music and hands on his face, and sometimes he forgets that it’s not him who died all those nights ago.
Derek’s apartment is nothing and everything like he’d expected.
‘Hit List’ opens on Broadway. There is critical acclaim and Kyle is lauded as the kind of creative genius only death can perpetuate.
He wonders, fiercely, if any of the others read the reviews like he does. If they remember that time they all rolled their eyes at the read-through and said that his book was terrible.
Later, he smashes his guitar into shards of splintered wood and tangled strings. Forgets why exactly before the last pieces have even begun to settle at his feet, just remembers the rage, the taste of it on his tongue and the feel of it, living, beneath layers of skin. But it’s okay he thinks, he has no use for it now.
Maybe he never really did.
“The role will always be yours, you know, if you can bring yourself to want it back.”
But Derek still doesn’t get it.
It was never a role to him and just because he’s not on stage doesn’t mean he’s not still living it.
(Adam’s fist, Kyle’s ghost, and the taste of his own blood on his teeth.
Art imitates life. They all should know this by now.)
“Bet Sam loves it when you say things like that…”
(This is not a story about redemption.
At least, not yet.)