(no subject)
Title: Frustration Smells Like
Characters: Ensemble
Rating: PG-13 (a lot of swearing though)
Warnings: Nothing in particular, I don't think.
Summary: The smell of frustration is different for everyone.
Author's Notes: I've discovered I really enjoy doing those guess who types of fic where it's a series of drabbles and though the characters' names are never mentioned you can still figure out who is who. So that's what this is. Got the idea from a random prompt I saw somewhere (and believe me, it is random).
Frustration smells like wet money left in a taxi on a humid day in the summer. You splurged on that one ride to get you from Point A to Point B, and it’s not like you have a lot of money to spare. All the effort you put into making that money is gone now. You never take cabs, but you wanted to make your girl happy. Get there more quickly; make up for your lateness. And now what are you left with? The knowledge that if you had taken one last glance into the car before it drove away you might have that wallet sitting in your hand right at that moment. You feel incredibly stupid and smack your head (hard) just for good measure. Luckily you’ve still got some money in your pocket but you know Hernando will never let you hear the end of it. It was only money from one job you had, but that wallet was a gift. Does Maricruz know what she puts you through?
--
Frustration smells like stale coffee and leftover takeout sitting on the table in your apartment. You’ve done everything: memorizing plans, creating mnemonics, digging up information, breaking into your office’s old file cabinets. Your head hurts, your eyes are blurry, you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week. It’s the blueprints that are the problem. Only the fucking blueprints that are the key to this whole thing. This entire plan is completely useless without the blueprints. And you can’t exactly carry them in there with you. So what are you supposed to do? Give up? There has to be a way, no matter how outlandish, insane, or stupid. There is going to be a way, because your brother is too good and he has sacrificed his life for you. And aren’t you obligated to do the same for him?
--
Frustration smells like pollution and steam from the train. You can’t believe you’re back here, but there’s nothing you can do. It’s what happens when the government fucks you over. You’re back to square one, no, you’re at square negative one. Hell, you aren’t even on the fucking game board anymore. And you can’t do anything because they’re too big and you’re too small. It’s how it feels to be standing here faced with only one option that makes you want to go punch something because this is not how it was supposed to be. You did (or tried to do) every single thing right. This is not what your wife married you for, and this is definitely not why you both decided to have a child. Your mother didn’t raise you to be another one of the thugs on the street, she didn’t raise you to deal drugs, and she didn’t raise you to be like everybody else. (She also didn’t raise you to sell and buy goods on the black market while you were in the army but that’s another story.) But you’re faced with only one option, and it’s this or nothing at all. And what are you supposed to say?
--
Frustration smells like dirt and grass in the middle of an open field. You can’t believe what just happened. You had everything calculated perfectly, you had the peace of mind, you had the gun, you had the goddamn plane ticket. And most importantly you had the parachute. And now you’re lying here like an idiot with the parachute on top of you and one leg bent out the wrong way, and there’s grass in your face and dirt up your nose. You lie there, in shock for a while. In a brief, hysteric moment, you think of Marilyn Monroe and the films you and whatever date you had that week would go see at the drive-in. Because that calms you down, and takes you out of this incredible pain that’s starting to thrum up your leg and pound inside your head. You imagine they’ll catch you sooner or later, now that you’ve screwed things up so royally. But you aren’t thinking about that, you’re thinking about Marilyn Monroe. Her curly platinum blonde hair, her laughing face, that mole, those legs. She floats; she’s in and out of your mind as you slowly begin to register exactly where you are. And after what seems like ages, you blink. Because you really should get up, shouldn’t you?
--
Frustration smells like Burger King. It’s being at the same place every day, ordering the same things (cheeseburger no onions, fries, shake), before you hit the strip club. Seeing the same girl behind the counter, leering at her enough to make her visibly uncomfortable, like you’re just gearing up for the long night of leering ahead. You sit on the sticky plastic chair leaning on the table gazing off into space as you halfheartedly munch on the same old mass-produced crap that is mediocre enough to satisfy your mediocre tastes. You figure life could be worse. But it still gets you mad, that you have never amounted to anything more than this and you never will. It’s like you’ve hit a dead end. Your job’s shit, the money’s shit, you’re basically alone. All you have left are strip joints, making a criminal’s life just a little bit harder, and taking some of the crap and bitterness in your life and injecting it into someone else’s. Just to give the world some justice. Because really, what else do you have?
--
Frustration smells like mothballs on a blanket in an old shack in the middle of nowhere. The saying goes that bad things always happen to good people, and you’re starting to believe whoever said that really had no fucking idea. This is not your fault. What you could use right now is something to do, somewhere to be, some way to help. But no, you’re stuck here unable to do a single thing other than simply exist. In some ways it’s not that bad. Not that bad until you realize that the longer you spend alone with your thoughts the more you replay that day in your head, the more you see his face in front of you laughing, smiling, framing you for the murder of your mother while he insists he can help, he can help. You have to sit here stranded, while the moisture curls the ends of your hair (you have actually noticed this) and Veronica sifts through endless paper. You’re still in your old clothes but you really couldn’t care less, your mind is distracted by thoughts of your father and your uncle and the complete chaos that is your life at this moment and the overwhelming sense of loss and despair that takes hold of you at every turn. And you have no idea how it will ever resolve itself. But what can you do?
--
Frustration smells like food on everybody else’s plate but your own. You sit there, at the table with your little group, while the restaurant buzzes with chatter and polite waiters fly endlessly from table to table like insects in tuxedos. You specifically picked this restaurant because of the food, because of the quality of the service, because of the chandeliers, because of the fucking impossibility of getting a reservation that makes you so desirous of one. Tony’s checking his watch, and you are ready to bang on the table with your fist because enough is enough. This is not how you are supposed to be treated. You glance around the table and they’re all looking at you, telling you with their careful but annoyed expressions how ridiculous this situation is. And you’re at the head of this whole thing. This is about impressing people. The way the restaurant is run may as well reflect your ability to do business because you chose it, this is on you. And fuck it if some dick you don’t know is going to screw this up for you. You refuse to deal with jokes at your expense while everybody’s leaving after this dinner (if dinner ever arrives), ringed fingers picking up toothpicks on the way to the parking lot. You’ll give it one more minute. One more minute before you go storming up to the manager, careful to make just enough of a scene so that the other customers don’t notice but the people who matter certainly do. Nobody does this to you. Nobody. So why does this keep happening to you all the fucking time?
--
Frustration smells like a CD player burning from so many spins. Listening to all your old favorites, from back in the day when rap was good and rap was pure, only to realize that this is something you just aren’t part of. You can try, and you are going to keep trying, because if Eminem could do it you can too. But brothers still keep throwing Vanilla Ice at you. They laugh and they stare you down, they point at you with knives, and they certainly aren’t going to let you into whatever gang or group or club they’re in. The point is made over and over again: you are just too white. Go back to your own kind, snowflake. So you can take a hint, it’s cool, you just go back to your friends and mind your own business. Spin your tracks, listen to the poets you idolize, listen to their words flowing over a pounding beat that shakes you right in the gut and grabs at something inside you that you can’t name. It’s all about the moment. It’s all about taking what you were given (nothing) and turning it into something. So why can’t you do that too?
--
Frustration smells like bad perfume. If that woman tells you that you are nothing more than a glorified body guard one more time, she might be the one staring down the barrel of your gun. But you would never do that, you could never do that, because it would jeopardize the entire plan. You know that, and she knows that. So you have to bite your tongue and take it. You actually have to stand there and watch her too-tight face tell you what you’ve done wrong and why you’re shit at your job, even though you are more than aware of your mistakes and have been going to great lengths to fix them. You’ve killed people, you’ve killed your old friend, you’ve almost gotten yourself killed for this project. All for the sake of one woman. Your father always told you women would be the death of you someday. You’re starting to believe him. You chose devotion to one woman, your almost-friend, your boss, your Vice-fucking-President. Not a bitch in sunglasses who has had one too many Botox treatments and thinks she’s the best thing that ever happened to this plan. You’re sick of this but you aren’t going to say anything, are you?
--
Frustration smells like a sterile room in a hospital. Seeing your daughter attached to tubes, crust on her eyelashes, her face deathly pale. Doctors gazing at you with distant, clinical looks, nurses who try not to look directly at you, the pervading sense of embarrassment and helplessness that threatens to drive you nuts. Or maybe it already has. You’ve seen her with boyfriends just as drugged out as she is, watched as she destroys herself one injection at a time. And the worst part is, you know this isn’t even her wake-up call. She should think about who she is, who you are, and how this reflects on you if she can’t come up with any other reason against throwing her life away. She’s a bit like her mother in that way, becoming an embarrassment, abusing substances just to escape this horrible life you’ve handed her. And what a terrible life it is. A comfortable home, plenty of money, a big city, a good education. People have done far more than she has coming from far less. You didn’t raise her to be a cliché. She needs to snap out of it, snap out of this selfish escapist funk she’s in, and she needs to think of people besides herself. Becoming a doctor seemed like a good start, until you discovered it was only for the morphine. This is yet another mess you have to cover up. You look at her and you wonder- why does it have to be this way?
--
Frustration smells like old beer sitting in the sun on a rotting porch in the middle of July. It’s watching the grass grow up to the mailbox and looking over and seeing birds on the telephone line as yet another day goes by while you’re stuck doing nothing. Things go slowly here, and you feel yourself starting to go a little stir-crazy. You can only drink so much beer, you can only smoke so many cigarettes, and you can only have so many inane conversations with Jimmy before your blood starts to boil and that old feeling gets back into your veins like it never really left. You can feel your fingers itching for a blade, your legs aching to run, to chase something, someone. You’re bored. It’s almost too hot to move but you’re flexing your arms, bending your knees, getting out of your chair to stretch and move down the steps and out onto the street, hands in your pockets. Down past the houses and into town, as the sun starts to sink and casts strange shadows over the houses. Casually you make your way into the home appliance section of the grocery store, striding along to the kitchen cutlery, the glint of the steak knife on the shelf stirring something very deep and very familiar in you. What exactly are you planning on doing?
--
Frustration smells like your own sweat. You’re becoming paler as the hours go by when you’re trapped in a miserable hole with nothing but you and what could conceivably have been a bed once but is really only springs inside a cover on a steel frame. Stuck. Knowing you aren’t going anywhere. You’ve started to pray every day now. This wasn’t supposed to be your life- four walls and bedsprings and a prison uniform. You’ve been set up. And the only thing keeping you from going absolutely mindlessly crazy from the injustice of it all is the one remaining fact that you hold dear and true and keep close to you deep into the night when you can’t sleep because your blood hasn’t moved all day: you’re innocent. Free from blame, free from guilt. You wish other people could see that, but the whole world thinks you’re who they say you are. You’re a sad echo of Lee Harvey Oswald. And as you’ve been sitting there you actually wonder if maybe he was set up too, like you were. Even though that’s crazy… but is it? Everything can be questioned now. Nothing is ever assured. You’re glad you don’t have access to a television, because watching the news and seeing Caroline Reynolds’s hypocritical face up there, that more than anything might drive you mad. So you crouch in the corner and think of your son (growing up without you), Veronica (moving on with her life, forgotten about you), your brother (working at a steady job, he has his own life and it’s all you’ve ever wanted for him). And you desperately keep the old nagging question out of your mind for as long as possible as you lie on the cold floor staring at the blank ceiling because nobody is answering and nobody will ever answer. Why?
Characters: Ensemble
Rating: PG-13 (a lot of swearing though)
Warnings: Nothing in particular, I don't think.
Summary: The smell of frustration is different for everyone.
Author's Notes: I've discovered I really enjoy doing those guess who types of fic where it's a series of drabbles and though the characters' names are never mentioned you can still figure out who is who. So that's what this is. Got the idea from a random prompt I saw somewhere (and believe me, it is random).
Frustration smells like wet money left in a taxi on a humid day in the summer. You splurged on that one ride to get you from Point A to Point B, and it’s not like you have a lot of money to spare. All the effort you put into making that money is gone now. You never take cabs, but you wanted to make your girl happy. Get there more quickly; make up for your lateness. And now what are you left with? The knowledge that if you had taken one last glance into the car before it drove away you might have that wallet sitting in your hand right at that moment. You feel incredibly stupid and smack your head (hard) just for good measure. Luckily you’ve still got some money in your pocket but you know Hernando will never let you hear the end of it. It was only money from one job you had, but that wallet was a gift. Does Maricruz know what she puts you through?
--
Frustration smells like stale coffee and leftover takeout sitting on the table in your apartment. You’ve done everything: memorizing plans, creating mnemonics, digging up information, breaking into your office’s old file cabinets. Your head hurts, your eyes are blurry, you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week. It’s the blueprints that are the problem. Only the fucking blueprints that are the key to this whole thing. This entire plan is completely useless without the blueprints. And you can’t exactly carry them in there with you. So what are you supposed to do? Give up? There has to be a way, no matter how outlandish, insane, or stupid. There is going to be a way, because your brother is too good and he has sacrificed his life for you. And aren’t you obligated to do the same for him?
--
Frustration smells like pollution and steam from the train. You can’t believe you’re back here, but there’s nothing you can do. It’s what happens when the government fucks you over. You’re back to square one, no, you’re at square negative one. Hell, you aren’t even on the fucking game board anymore. And you can’t do anything because they’re too big and you’re too small. It’s how it feels to be standing here faced with only one option that makes you want to go punch something because this is not how it was supposed to be. You did (or tried to do) every single thing right. This is not what your wife married you for, and this is definitely not why you both decided to have a child. Your mother didn’t raise you to be another one of the thugs on the street, she didn’t raise you to deal drugs, and she didn’t raise you to be like everybody else. (She also didn’t raise you to sell and buy goods on the black market while you were in the army but that’s another story.) But you’re faced with only one option, and it’s this or nothing at all. And what are you supposed to say?
--
Frustration smells like dirt and grass in the middle of an open field. You can’t believe what just happened. You had everything calculated perfectly, you had the peace of mind, you had the gun, you had the goddamn plane ticket. And most importantly you had the parachute. And now you’re lying here like an idiot with the parachute on top of you and one leg bent out the wrong way, and there’s grass in your face and dirt up your nose. You lie there, in shock for a while. In a brief, hysteric moment, you think of Marilyn Monroe and the films you and whatever date you had that week would go see at the drive-in. Because that calms you down, and takes you out of this incredible pain that’s starting to thrum up your leg and pound inside your head. You imagine they’ll catch you sooner or later, now that you’ve screwed things up so royally. But you aren’t thinking about that, you’re thinking about Marilyn Monroe. Her curly platinum blonde hair, her laughing face, that mole, those legs. She floats; she’s in and out of your mind as you slowly begin to register exactly where you are. And after what seems like ages, you blink. Because you really should get up, shouldn’t you?
--
Frustration smells like Burger King. It’s being at the same place every day, ordering the same things (cheeseburger no onions, fries, shake), before you hit the strip club. Seeing the same girl behind the counter, leering at her enough to make her visibly uncomfortable, like you’re just gearing up for the long night of leering ahead. You sit on the sticky plastic chair leaning on the table gazing off into space as you halfheartedly munch on the same old mass-produced crap that is mediocre enough to satisfy your mediocre tastes. You figure life could be worse. But it still gets you mad, that you have never amounted to anything more than this and you never will. It’s like you’ve hit a dead end. Your job’s shit, the money’s shit, you’re basically alone. All you have left are strip joints, making a criminal’s life just a little bit harder, and taking some of the crap and bitterness in your life and injecting it into someone else’s. Just to give the world some justice. Because really, what else do you have?
--
Frustration smells like mothballs on a blanket in an old shack in the middle of nowhere. The saying goes that bad things always happen to good people, and you’re starting to believe whoever said that really had no fucking idea. This is not your fault. What you could use right now is something to do, somewhere to be, some way to help. But no, you’re stuck here unable to do a single thing other than simply exist. In some ways it’s not that bad. Not that bad until you realize that the longer you spend alone with your thoughts the more you replay that day in your head, the more you see his face in front of you laughing, smiling, framing you for the murder of your mother while he insists he can help, he can help. You have to sit here stranded, while the moisture curls the ends of your hair (you have actually noticed this) and Veronica sifts through endless paper. You’re still in your old clothes but you really couldn’t care less, your mind is distracted by thoughts of your father and your uncle and the complete chaos that is your life at this moment and the overwhelming sense of loss and despair that takes hold of you at every turn. And you have no idea how it will ever resolve itself. But what can you do?
--
Frustration smells like food on everybody else’s plate but your own. You sit there, at the table with your little group, while the restaurant buzzes with chatter and polite waiters fly endlessly from table to table like insects in tuxedos. You specifically picked this restaurant because of the food, because of the quality of the service, because of the chandeliers, because of the fucking impossibility of getting a reservation that makes you so desirous of one. Tony’s checking his watch, and you are ready to bang on the table with your fist because enough is enough. This is not how you are supposed to be treated. You glance around the table and they’re all looking at you, telling you with their careful but annoyed expressions how ridiculous this situation is. And you’re at the head of this whole thing. This is about impressing people. The way the restaurant is run may as well reflect your ability to do business because you chose it, this is on you. And fuck it if some dick you don’t know is going to screw this up for you. You refuse to deal with jokes at your expense while everybody’s leaving after this dinner (if dinner ever arrives), ringed fingers picking up toothpicks on the way to the parking lot. You’ll give it one more minute. One more minute before you go storming up to the manager, careful to make just enough of a scene so that the other customers don’t notice but the people who matter certainly do. Nobody does this to you. Nobody. So why does this keep happening to you all the fucking time?
--
Frustration smells like a CD player burning from so many spins. Listening to all your old favorites, from back in the day when rap was good and rap was pure, only to realize that this is something you just aren’t part of. You can try, and you are going to keep trying, because if Eminem could do it you can too. But brothers still keep throwing Vanilla Ice at you. They laugh and they stare you down, they point at you with knives, and they certainly aren’t going to let you into whatever gang or group or club they’re in. The point is made over and over again: you are just too white. Go back to your own kind, snowflake. So you can take a hint, it’s cool, you just go back to your friends and mind your own business. Spin your tracks, listen to the poets you idolize, listen to their words flowing over a pounding beat that shakes you right in the gut and grabs at something inside you that you can’t name. It’s all about the moment. It’s all about taking what you were given (nothing) and turning it into something. So why can’t you do that too?
--
Frustration smells like bad perfume. If that woman tells you that you are nothing more than a glorified body guard one more time, she might be the one staring down the barrel of your gun. But you would never do that, you could never do that, because it would jeopardize the entire plan. You know that, and she knows that. So you have to bite your tongue and take it. You actually have to stand there and watch her too-tight face tell you what you’ve done wrong and why you’re shit at your job, even though you are more than aware of your mistakes and have been going to great lengths to fix them. You’ve killed people, you’ve killed your old friend, you’ve almost gotten yourself killed for this project. All for the sake of one woman. Your father always told you women would be the death of you someday. You’re starting to believe him. You chose devotion to one woman, your almost-friend, your boss, your Vice-fucking-President. Not a bitch in sunglasses who has had one too many Botox treatments and thinks she’s the best thing that ever happened to this plan. You’re sick of this but you aren’t going to say anything, are you?
--
Frustration smells like a sterile room in a hospital. Seeing your daughter attached to tubes, crust on her eyelashes, her face deathly pale. Doctors gazing at you with distant, clinical looks, nurses who try not to look directly at you, the pervading sense of embarrassment and helplessness that threatens to drive you nuts. Or maybe it already has. You’ve seen her with boyfriends just as drugged out as she is, watched as she destroys herself one injection at a time. And the worst part is, you know this isn’t even her wake-up call. She should think about who she is, who you are, and how this reflects on you if she can’t come up with any other reason against throwing her life away. She’s a bit like her mother in that way, becoming an embarrassment, abusing substances just to escape this horrible life you’ve handed her. And what a terrible life it is. A comfortable home, plenty of money, a big city, a good education. People have done far more than she has coming from far less. You didn’t raise her to be a cliché. She needs to snap out of it, snap out of this selfish escapist funk she’s in, and she needs to think of people besides herself. Becoming a doctor seemed like a good start, until you discovered it was only for the morphine. This is yet another mess you have to cover up. You look at her and you wonder- why does it have to be this way?
--
Frustration smells like old beer sitting in the sun on a rotting porch in the middle of July. It’s watching the grass grow up to the mailbox and looking over and seeing birds on the telephone line as yet another day goes by while you’re stuck doing nothing. Things go slowly here, and you feel yourself starting to go a little stir-crazy. You can only drink so much beer, you can only smoke so many cigarettes, and you can only have so many inane conversations with Jimmy before your blood starts to boil and that old feeling gets back into your veins like it never really left. You can feel your fingers itching for a blade, your legs aching to run, to chase something, someone. You’re bored. It’s almost too hot to move but you’re flexing your arms, bending your knees, getting out of your chair to stretch and move down the steps and out onto the street, hands in your pockets. Down past the houses and into town, as the sun starts to sink and casts strange shadows over the houses. Casually you make your way into the home appliance section of the grocery store, striding along to the kitchen cutlery, the glint of the steak knife on the shelf stirring something very deep and very familiar in you. What exactly are you planning on doing?
--
Frustration smells like your own sweat. You’re becoming paler as the hours go by when you’re trapped in a miserable hole with nothing but you and what could conceivably have been a bed once but is really only springs inside a cover on a steel frame. Stuck. Knowing you aren’t going anywhere. You’ve started to pray every day now. This wasn’t supposed to be your life- four walls and bedsprings and a prison uniform. You’ve been set up. And the only thing keeping you from going absolutely mindlessly crazy from the injustice of it all is the one remaining fact that you hold dear and true and keep close to you deep into the night when you can’t sleep because your blood hasn’t moved all day: you’re innocent. Free from blame, free from guilt. You wish other people could see that, but the whole world thinks you’re who they say you are. You’re a sad echo of Lee Harvey Oswald. And as you’ve been sitting there you actually wonder if maybe he was set up too, like you were. Even though that’s crazy… but is it? Everything can be questioned now. Nothing is ever assured. You’re glad you don’t have access to a television, because watching the news and seeing Caroline Reynolds’s hypocritical face up there, that more than anything might drive you mad. So you crouch in the corner and think of your son (growing up without you), Veronica (moving on with her life, forgotten about you), your brother (working at a steady job, he has his own life and it’s all you’ve ever wanted for him). And you desperately keep the old nagging question out of your mind for as long as possible as you lie on the cold floor staring at the blank ceiling because nobody is answering and nobody will ever answer. Why?