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A Treatise on Tornado-Damage:
Being an Account of Things That Might Cross a Person's Mind at 5:43 am
Sometimes Zelos thinks that beds are the most fantastic creation in the entirety of history. Well, not beds specifically. There have always been beds. It's just that historically, for the most part, they've sucked. So maybe it's really modern mattresses that are fantastic. Which, honestly - that's not true either. Because sometimes, when he's on his own, his perfectly modern mattress feels like shit on a fucking metaphorical shingle and he can't sleep to save his life.
So mostly he's thinking that it's not being alone that's fantastic. It's being warm. Consistently warm - like, whenever he wants. He has two keys on his keyring and there's a circle of something shiny and metallic and reassuring on his left hand, second finger in. He never really got why people liked trinkets so much before. (Aside from the obvious fact that shiny things are interesting things and more likely to be pawnable for large amounts of cash should headhunters decide to come looking for you at any point in time.) But, no. They're nice because they mean something. They're extended, tangential metaphors that pretty much mean that when you roll over, you won't be all by yourself.
And, fuck if he isn't lucky. So incredibly lucky that it really doesn't make sense a whole lot of the time. Though he doesn't ever ask why. There isn't any point in questioning things that make him happy.
Not if you want them to stick around, at least. And gods he wants that. He wants that more than anything else he can think of.
Cocytus isn't though. Happy. Not always. (Nobody is, he knows. But that really isn't the point. Nobody isn't the somebody that matters in this situation. So Nobody can kindly go fuck their collective self. Which is, wow, actually really meta and - Sidetracked. Right.) Just - he still isn't. No matter how hard Zelos would really like for him to be, just exactly how much and how dirty and how far he'd be willing to go in order to secure it. To secure happiness.
Because he'd really be the one to figure out that particular equation. Sure.
People don't think that he notices those sort of things - and, yeah, he doesn't a lot. Mostly, even. Which probably doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence in anybody with half a braincell, but he sure as shit fucking tries. He tries so hard sometimes that his teeth ache and he can practically feel the marrow moving around in his bones - all slow and weird and painful to remove. They need such huge-ass needles to take that stuff out of you that it's actually kind of fucking terrifying in an obscure, not-quite-objective sense.
But, y'know, apparently they can save babies with that shit.
So maybe - Just maybe, because he admits to things like compulsive liars admit to things: in erratic bursts and in the middle of newspaper articles or monologues from Grapes of Wrath - which, as an artistic whole, he really doesn't get. Probably because the history isn't his history. There's this huge, gaping hole in the middle of then and now and it's really kind of fucked up if you think about it. They don't really belong here. All of them just dicking around in their stupid, fucked up, probably evil apartment building. Probably taking up someone else's space. They're like this collective lexical gap dropped down in the middle of a society that isn't even remotely the same as the one they left.
But, yeah. Sometimes he saves babies. And that might be worth something.
Sometimes he wonders what kind of a person he'd be if he actually was a person. Like a real one. One that had these parents that sort of wanted him around even if he was probably a horrible kid and most likely sucked ass at chemistry and busted his kneecaps trying to inline skate or something. (Did people actually inline skate anymore? Or ever? Fuck. This was the worst fantasy ever. Barely breaking PG. Whatever. Sticking with it anyway.) One that looked up while in a library or on a bus stop or, y'know, sprawled on the floor due to tragic inline skating accidents and sort of saw this skinny, tired, fucking beautiful person standing there and decided that was fucking it.
That they were gone. One look. He thinks he might be that kind of person. Which is probably a bit pathetic. But he likes that stupid, cheesy bullshit. It's nice. People could use more cheesy bullshit in their lives. Sometimes he talks to old people - like, really really old people, the kind of old people that live by themselves in depressing places
But, anyway, he imagines himself sisters - because y'know, you didn't get to this level of emotionally fucked up without sisters. So, a shit ton of them. Sisters. All over the fucking place. With their ridiculous padded bras and those dumbass hair-ties with the little metal bits on them that sting like a bitch when someone finger-guns you with one of the little bastards. But - yeah, he thinks. Sisters. Nice, normal sisters. Not like Nike or Bia who were better and smarter and stronger and - fuck this is why he doesn't think too hard too much. Think too hard and you start sounding like a whiny bitch.
Fuck. Not the point. Concentrate.
But it's just - Concentration takes him - It takes time. Probably way too fucking much of it. More than it should. He doesn't mean for it to, really, but he guesses that's just the way he was made. A whole lot of trying and not so much of the end result.
The trouble with being a thing - a concept, a personification - is that you are what you're made to be. He's looked it up in the dictionary - thumbed through actual fucking pages of real books, surpassing the beautiful fucking simplicity of Google in favor of the heavy weight of the real thing. You wanted to be solid and shit when you defined yourself. It probably qualifies as one of those important, life-affirming moments that people talk about.
Mostly though? Mostly it just makes him feel ill and a little inadequate.
But, zeal, right? Zeal is fervor. It's wanting. An eager desire. A fanatic devotion. Intensity. Passion. Ardor. May be enlightened, the dictionary says. May also be ignorant or misdirected. But, any way you slice it - it's still just a wanting. That's all. Nobody has jack shit to say about getting. Because getting is incidental. Probably accidental.
It's kind of cruel, if you think about it. But then, he doesn't. Not really. He doesn't think about a lot of things.
There really is no good way to explain to people that sometimes you're flat like fucking Kansas after a tornado rips through it. Or that maybe you're the tornado? That sometimes you want things so badly that you're probably going to knock everything over on the way. You won't mean it, though. But tornadoes probably don't either. So, in the end, it's kind of the same thing. If that's even the right thing. Which it isn't.
He thinks, maybe, that his meatsuit is just a bit bipolar. No. That's inaccurate. Unfairly blaming and deferring responsibility or some shit. Correction: He thinks, maybe, that he's just a bit bipolar. Ain’t no point in blaming the meatsuit. When it comes down to it, he doesn't feel any different. He just feels more. All condensed like powdered milk or jello mix and just waiting to hit water. Sick to his stomach and about to explode.
Mostly it's some sort of mania. Some unholy energy that bubbles up inside of him like steam in a tea kettle and screams between his ears with facts and figures and so much pent up desire that he's pretty much certain that he could fell a grown man with sheer want from fifty paces. Like some heat-seeking missile, some long-range scope, some telekinetic stranglehold that throttles him from the inside and boils over in words and hands and irrelevant quotations. He's like a not-so-human timebomb.
It's probably overwhelming. No. Forget probably. It's overwhelming as fuck. He doesn't envy the people around him. He honestly doesn't. But he doesn't want them to go either. He's greedy that way and he knows it, owns it, covets his greed with a grin and sticky fingers.
(Before - and later, a long time later - he had scrubbed his hands for three hours. Which was overkill. But when the red was gone his hands were red and it all blurred together into some MacBethian metaphor that his eyes had kindly taken the time to transcribe onto his skin and under his nails and into the creases that some gods - some God, some gods, some Someone - had left behind on palms that probably weren't his to begin with. Ownership is finicky. Afterward, he spins his ring for two hours more. It shines and it means that he doesn't wake up alone.)
Sometimes, though - other sometimes entirely - he finds himself feeling still. Content. Awake and alive and still, tangled up in Thundercats bedsheets and grinning at the ceiling-fan like a man possessed. In some unprovoked, practically-orgasmic haze of equanimity. Sometimes it's a half-step on the wrong side of too-early and he's totally okay with everything - with his mattress, his life, his skin, with the person sleeping next to him. (Though he's always okay with that. But extra. A giddy, joyful, unanticipated extra that makes him laugh under his breath and sit up. All aware and breathless and suddenly awake.)
The sun is very barely peeking over the horizon somewhere behind the curtains and out of sight and Zelos is scrambling momentarily onto his hands and knees, flopping back down and onto his (warm, pliant, sleepy) favorite person in the whole world. There's the potential for his own bloody demise ringing in between his ears and it only makes him grin harder, plaster a sloppy, wet kiss onto the place where Cocytus' ear meets his jaw.
The string of curses that follows this action is particularly inspired. A something stunningly similar to fireworks goes off behind his eyes, colorful and euphoric. It's a good morning. Someone should clearly express this sentiment.
"Good mornin', gorgeous!"
"I'm gonna punch you in the fucking trachea."
"Did you say pancakes? I totally heard pancakes. Pancakes sound amazing! Anybody ever tell you that you're a genius? Because you totally are. Pancakes! Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?"
The clock blinks. Red and appallingly digital. There's a ring on his finger - left hand, second finger in - and he doesn't wake up alone.