(no subject)
Title: Neon
Pairing: Tim Kasher/Conor Oberst
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: fishnet
Summary: You dream that you find Conor on a slick street corner...
Word Count: 1026
Disclaimer
Notes: The next bit in the still unnamed series. I'm not even going to pretend they're loosely bound.
You dream that you find Conor on a slick street corner in downtown Omaha, small and bony and fragile, caught in the flurry of women in fishnets and too much make-up, moving in and out of strangers' cars. He's painted like them, wide and frightened eyes surrounded by black liner. His cheeks are red, but you don't think that's make-up - it's cold and windy and he's dressed in a thin shirt and low-slung jeans. He's shivering. The neon lights reflect colours onto his pale skin.
Next thing you remember, you're in this motel - you know the motel, you've been there so many times in waking life, with Kim and girls and boys from the bars you frequent, and even with Conor a few times - and you've got Conor sitting on the edge of the bed.
He looks at you, pleading. "Please," he says softly. His toes are pointing inwards, and he keeps breaking eye contact because he's so nervous, voice full of tremors. "Can't I just go home?"
And you notice the bruises for the first time, or maybe they just appear, this is a dream, after all, and god only knows what you put into your subconscious. They're on his wrists, his cheek, his lip is split - and that split lip, you know that was you, you've hurt him... and you sort of love him like this.
You love the fact that you have power for once. You watch him strip, watch yourself as you shuck your jeans, and you watch as you hold him down and fuck him as hard as you can. Your thumbs dig into his sparrow-like wrists to keep them pressed against the pillow, and your teeth are on his neck, a vicious assault on his delicate skin. Under your mouth, his skin is still cold, and he lets out a little sob when you come.
You feel so utterly vindictive and vindicated that you are suddenly terrified, and you see the skin on his wrists growing darker. You see the broken boy on the bed in front of you, and he is being swallowed up by the sheets, the headboard turning into the gaping maw of some sleep-beast, and he's crying too hard to scream for help.
You want to help him. You want to help him because he can't ask for help, and he wouldn't even if he could, but you are rooted to the spot with your jeans halfway up your legs and your muscles are shrieking with the effort of moving through air that's suddenly turned to molasses.
And then he's gone, into the mouth of the bed - when did it become a living creature? - and you are yelling his name and time is trying to eat you alive and -
When you wake up, you're in bed with Kim, and Sierra is crying. Heart pounding, you get up, and you go into your baby girl's room. You pick her up, holding her against your bare chest. "Shh, baby," you murmur. "I got you now. You're safe. I'm here."
You know that, in the morning, Kim is going to yell at you because you came home too late. You got in at eleven PM, after Sierra had been tucked in and just as she was crawling into bed. She doesn't understand that you have to take care of other things (namely Conor, who is almost as much as a child as Sierra is, dependent and needy, though it's not as if you mind. For either of them).
You rock Sierra until she goes back to sleep, and then you go into the kitchen. You can't close your eyes; whenever you try, you see the teeth in the bed coming straight for you.
You keep thinking about Conor being swallowed by the bed, and how you can't help him.
You keep thinking about how you kind of really do want to hurt him. You'd love to be rough with him. But you're no Mike, and this time, you want him to know it's about more than having a bed when Kim is angry with you. It's about setting him up to take care of himself, but making sure, at the end of the day, he still needs you.
You pass out, slumping over the kitchen table some time past three with a bottle of Jameson's. You wake up by seven, as Kim starts to stir upstairs, and you leave the house.
You go to Jenny. You always go to Jenny. You lay with your head in her lap and do lines of coke as she plays with your hair. You two have always been close, since you were preteens and you both discovered Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.
"Conor hasn't called today," she tells you. "It's the first time in two months he hasn't called me."
"I dreamt about ruining him," you say to her.
She laughs. "Oh, honey," she says as she smiles the fondest smile she has, the one she saves for you and for him, "you already have. But you're fixing him. Aren't you?"
With dreams like that, you're not sure you are.
You see him again the next day, and he lets you into his apartment without a word. He's still small, still vulnerable, still as wide-eyed as he has been in your dreams. You can't help it when you press him into the wall and kiss him.
He kisses you back, and he's clinging to you, this little whimper escaping his mouth, and later, when you're both naked and panting in his bed, trying to catch your breath, he whispers, "I'm not me anymore."
You pull him a little bit closer, and you kiss his hair. "You'll get back to who you were," you promise. "We can get you back there."
And this time, when you look at him, all tangled in his sheets, he's not being swallowed, and he's not bruised. He's just a boy with messy hair and pale skin and wide, wide eyes that aren't full of fear. It's there, but they're not full of it. And he's smiling.
Pairing: Tim Kasher/Conor Oberst
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: fishnet
Summary: You dream that you find Conor on a slick street corner...
Word Count: 1026
Disclaimer
Notes: The next bit in the still unnamed series. I'm not even going to pretend they're loosely bound.
You dream that you find Conor on a slick street corner in downtown Omaha, small and bony and fragile, caught in the flurry of women in fishnets and too much make-up, moving in and out of strangers' cars. He's painted like them, wide and frightened eyes surrounded by black liner. His cheeks are red, but you don't think that's make-up - it's cold and windy and he's dressed in a thin shirt and low-slung jeans. He's shivering. The neon lights reflect colours onto his pale skin.
Next thing you remember, you're in this motel - you know the motel, you've been there so many times in waking life, with Kim and girls and boys from the bars you frequent, and even with Conor a few times - and you've got Conor sitting on the edge of the bed.
He looks at you, pleading. "Please," he says softly. His toes are pointing inwards, and he keeps breaking eye contact because he's so nervous, voice full of tremors. "Can't I just go home?"
And you notice the bruises for the first time, or maybe they just appear, this is a dream, after all, and god only knows what you put into your subconscious. They're on his wrists, his cheek, his lip is split - and that split lip, you know that was you, you've hurt him... and you sort of love him like this.
You love the fact that you have power for once. You watch him strip, watch yourself as you shuck your jeans, and you watch as you hold him down and fuck him as hard as you can. Your thumbs dig into his sparrow-like wrists to keep them pressed against the pillow, and your teeth are on his neck, a vicious assault on his delicate skin. Under your mouth, his skin is still cold, and he lets out a little sob when you come.
You feel so utterly vindictive and vindicated that you are suddenly terrified, and you see the skin on his wrists growing darker. You see the broken boy on the bed in front of you, and he is being swallowed up by the sheets, the headboard turning into the gaping maw of some sleep-beast, and he's crying too hard to scream for help.
You want to help him. You want to help him because he can't ask for help, and he wouldn't even if he could, but you are rooted to the spot with your jeans halfway up your legs and your muscles are shrieking with the effort of moving through air that's suddenly turned to molasses.
And then he's gone, into the mouth of the bed - when did it become a living creature? - and you are yelling his name and time is trying to eat you alive and -
When you wake up, you're in bed with Kim, and Sierra is crying. Heart pounding, you get up, and you go into your baby girl's room. You pick her up, holding her against your bare chest. "Shh, baby," you murmur. "I got you now. You're safe. I'm here."
You know that, in the morning, Kim is going to yell at you because you came home too late. You got in at eleven PM, after Sierra had been tucked in and just as she was crawling into bed. She doesn't understand that you have to take care of other things (namely Conor, who is almost as much as a child as Sierra is, dependent and needy, though it's not as if you mind. For either of them).
You rock Sierra until she goes back to sleep, and then you go into the kitchen. You can't close your eyes; whenever you try, you see the teeth in the bed coming straight for you.
You keep thinking about Conor being swallowed by the bed, and how you can't help him.
You keep thinking about how you kind of really do want to hurt him. You'd love to be rough with him. But you're no Mike, and this time, you want him to know it's about more than having a bed when Kim is angry with you. It's about setting him up to take care of himself, but making sure, at the end of the day, he still needs you.
You pass out, slumping over the kitchen table some time past three with a bottle of Jameson's. You wake up by seven, as Kim starts to stir upstairs, and you leave the house.
You go to Jenny. You always go to Jenny. You lay with your head in her lap and do lines of coke as she plays with your hair. You two have always been close, since you were preteens and you both discovered Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.
"Conor hasn't called today," she tells you. "It's the first time in two months he hasn't called me."
"I dreamt about ruining him," you say to her.
She laughs. "Oh, honey," she says as she smiles the fondest smile she has, the one she saves for you and for him, "you already have. But you're fixing him. Aren't you?"
With dreams like that, you're not sure you are.
You see him again the next day, and he lets you into his apartment without a word. He's still small, still vulnerable, still as wide-eyed as he has been in your dreams. You can't help it when you press him into the wall and kiss him.
He kisses you back, and he's clinging to you, this little whimper escaping his mouth, and later, when you're both naked and panting in his bed, trying to catch your breath, he whispers, "I'm not me anymore."
You pull him a little bit closer, and you kiss his hair. "You'll get back to who you were," you promise. "We can get you back there."
And this time, when you look at him, all tangled in his sheets, he's not being swallowed, and he's not bruised. He's just a boy with messy hair and pale skin and wide, wide eyes that aren't full of fear. It's there, but they're not full of it. And he's smiling.