Fic - Spanner/Shoichi "A King of Infinite Space"
Title: "A King of Infinite Space" *
Author/Artist: placidmage
Rating: PG
Warnings: Angst; Extended metaphors? ^^;
Prompt: Spanner/Irie - Reunion "Do you sleep anymore?"
Word count: 672
With this one, I really struggled. I don't even like extended metaphors. ^^; That'll teach me next time for choosing angsty plots.
It’s not often Irie thinks of Spanner doing anything other than sitting at his desk, tweaking robots, turning gears, building dreams. It was the kind of image that was etched into his brain even before the feelings set in, and other images took up residence in his head.
“You can build it better,” he knew, and wanted to explain, but the truth is Shoichi knew nothing about relationships. He didn’t know how to make one, or how to keep one. He didn’t even realize he was in one until he was fumbling around trying to salvage the pieces.
Late at night, the captain of the White Spell’s 2nd Rose Squad shivers without his jacket. No matter how high Shoichi left the temperature running or how many hard drives filled the air with heat, the room was too empty, too big, and too cold. He wonders why it is that every time he puts his jacket on he feels colder. His smile twists into a frown and his heart freezes-up as if to keep from suffering a warm, living pulse.
Inside the jacket, he is cold as death, but even outside it he is cold, so cold that when he closes his eyes to nightmares, he prays that he wakes up breathing. If not for the nightmares, he would be fine with the comfort of the cold and infinite space. *
“Do you sleep anymore?”
The warmth of Spanner’s voice cuts through the ice in the air and the hard look in Shoichi’s eyes begins to thaw.
“. . .what?”
“Do you sleep?” Spanner looks back with curiosity at a glimpse of the Shoichi he once knew, the Shoichi who tried to avoid eye contact when faced with a question he didn’t want to answer.
His face betrayed him, there, where the deep lines of insomnia beneath his eyes hadn’t faded since he first began working on his queer machine. No, he doesn’t sleep. He lives a life of waking dreams-nightmares of the day Byakuran will sleep, deep in the earth, but even then he knew the ghosts would return screaming “murder, most foul”. And as a fitting punishment, he may never sleep again. **
“I just had a bad nightmare,” Shoichi looks down sadly, the cloak of lies like thorns that protect him from the world so he can keep on dreaming.
And as he locks himself in his tower, it’s cold and empty, and Shoichi needs to believe that they are better off this way. Even when Spanner passes him in the hall without as much as a word, and he can’t help looking, can barely help touching except to save his own sanity. It was easier than it should have been to pass him by. In his mind, he is being kissed, and drowning in the taste of strawberry, sickeningly sweet.
Did we ever kiss like this before? Shoichi’s heart sinks into his stomach when Spanner catches him off guard one day in the lab, like a scene out of a fairytale where the prince finds his princess locked away in a tower, and wakes her from sleeping. But Spanner was no fairytale prince, and this was no gallant rescue.
If true love’s kiss was this painful, Shoichi didn’t know how it could save anyone.
“. . .” He bites down on his tears and pushes away, turning his head, “What are you doing?”
A moment passed, as Spanner’s hands slid off his arms. Shoichi couldn’t even meet his eyes.
“Trying again.” The honesty of Spanner’s words shook Shoichi as he turned to look, but Spanner’s eyes were elsewhere, waiting for the moment to pass, as if it hadn’t ended. He knew what Spanner wanted to offer him was a place to escape to, but the whole point of it was not to run. If he woke up now, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself, or what he knew he had to do.
But Shoichi knew the lies he surrounded himself with weren’t acts of heroism. Until it was over, he lived in the cover of lies, his palace of briars, a king of infinite space.
~~~~
*Hamlet “I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”
**Ghost to Hamlet, “Murder most foul, as in the best it is.”
Author/Artist: placidmage
Rating: PG
Warnings: Angst; Extended metaphors? ^^;
Prompt: Spanner/Irie - Reunion "Do you sleep anymore?"
Word count: 672
With this one, I really struggled. I don't even like extended metaphors. ^^; That'll teach me next time for choosing angsty plots.
It’s not often Irie thinks of Spanner doing anything other than sitting at his desk, tweaking robots, turning gears, building dreams. It was the kind of image that was etched into his brain even before the feelings set in, and other images took up residence in his head.
“You can build it better,” he knew, and wanted to explain, but the truth is Shoichi knew nothing about relationships. He didn’t know how to make one, or how to keep one. He didn’t even realize he was in one until he was fumbling around trying to salvage the pieces.
Late at night, the captain of the White Spell’s 2nd Rose Squad shivers without his jacket. No matter how high Shoichi left the temperature running or how many hard drives filled the air with heat, the room was too empty, too big, and too cold. He wonders why it is that every time he puts his jacket on he feels colder. His smile twists into a frown and his heart freezes-up as if to keep from suffering a warm, living pulse.
Inside the jacket, he is cold as death, but even outside it he is cold, so cold that when he closes his eyes to nightmares, he prays that he wakes up breathing. If not for the nightmares, he would be fine with the comfort of the cold and infinite space. *
“Do you sleep anymore?”
The warmth of Spanner’s voice cuts through the ice in the air and the hard look in Shoichi’s eyes begins to thaw.
“. . .what?”
“Do you sleep?” Spanner looks back with curiosity at a glimpse of the Shoichi he once knew, the Shoichi who tried to avoid eye contact when faced with a question he didn’t want to answer.
His face betrayed him, there, where the deep lines of insomnia beneath his eyes hadn’t faded since he first began working on his queer machine. No, he doesn’t sleep. He lives a life of waking dreams-nightmares of the day Byakuran will sleep, deep in the earth, but even then he knew the ghosts would return screaming “murder, most foul”. And as a fitting punishment, he may never sleep again. **
“I just had a bad nightmare,” Shoichi looks down sadly, the cloak of lies like thorns that protect him from the world so he can keep on dreaming.
And as he locks himself in his tower, it’s cold and empty, and Shoichi needs to believe that they are better off this way. Even when Spanner passes him in the hall without as much as a word, and he can’t help looking, can barely help touching except to save his own sanity. It was easier than it should have been to pass him by. In his mind, he is being kissed, and drowning in the taste of strawberry, sickeningly sweet.
Did we ever kiss like this before? Shoichi’s heart sinks into his stomach when Spanner catches him off guard one day in the lab, like a scene out of a fairytale where the prince finds his princess locked away in a tower, and wakes her from sleeping. But Spanner was no fairytale prince, and this was no gallant rescue.
If true love’s kiss was this painful, Shoichi didn’t know how it could save anyone.
“. . .” He bites down on his tears and pushes away, turning his head, “What are you doing?”
A moment passed, as Spanner’s hands slid off his arms. Shoichi couldn’t even meet his eyes.
“Trying again.” The honesty of Spanner’s words shook Shoichi as he turned to look, but Spanner’s eyes were elsewhere, waiting for the moment to pass, as if it hadn’t ended. He knew what Spanner wanted to offer him was a place to escape to, but the whole point of it was not to run. If he woke up now, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself, or what he knew he had to do.
But Shoichi knew the lies he surrounded himself with weren’t acts of heroism. Until it was over, he lived in the cover of lies, his palace of briars, a king of infinite space.
~~~~
*Hamlet “I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”
**Ghost to Hamlet, “Murder most foul, as in the best it is.”