(no subject)
Title: I'm Selfish and I'm Sad
Pairing: Jalan. Who the hell else nowadays?
Notes: For the prompt but it don't snow here/it stays pretty green/I'm going to make a lot of money/then I'm going to quit this crazy scene.
Some might still call it unconventional, but he’s not exactly one of those blessed ‘some’. Not anymore. This lifestyle had shone like the star of Bethlehem, glistened like the gold that was presented to baby Jesus. But you know what they say. Not all that glitters is gold.
Jacob Hoggard smiles for the crowd, trademark gapped teeth and lip ring shining brightly. The shirt comes off, the crowd cheers; he can’t see past flashes of cameras and his own goddamn grandeur.
Jacob Hoggard smiles for the crowd.
Jacob Hoggard smiles for the
Jacob Hoggard smiles for
Jacob Hoggard smiles
Jacob Hoggard
Jacob
Rinse, and then repeat.
.
He stuffs the wad of money - not enough for a chunk of his soul, he thinks - into the band of his jeans, his pockets already full with receipts and phone numbers and labels pulled from beer and expensive champagne c/o Universal Music Canada. This club is dark and dank - as all of them are liable to be - save for one faraway corner, opposite the stage. In that corner, a single string of bulbs hangs. Red, blue, yellow, orange, green. Blink blink, blink blink, blink blink. A tinfoil star hangs underneath, the corners ripped and showing cardboard underneath. Still, it is the honing beacon that somehow draws him towards the blonde standing below, and of course he’d be there; Christmas, under the lights or under the star like the messiah that he thinks he is.
Jacob blinks for a moment, and he’s gone; perhaps he was only resurrected from another time and place, perhaps simply Gabriel appearing to the shepherds.
He rubs the back of his hand across tired eyes and tries to forget that they both share the same favourite book, the one that is found in the drawers of hotel room tables by which Jacob has fucked pretty girls while trying not to whimper his name.
.
The days before Christmas find him at home - home in the loose term of course, no more than a basement apartment that bares claim to a host of memories now lost and broken - and the boredom eats at him like a cancer. Life without the road isn’t life at all, but then again, something tells him that what he considers life isn’t much of one either.
He looks around, and for the first time sees the state of filth that he lives in. He can hear the quietly nagging voice of someone that he once knew, the voice that he hears as often as his own nowadays, if never out loud.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness, it purrs.
.
He picks up beer bottle after beer bottle, now a rotund and callous carpet of sorts around his bed. The white t-shirts come next, $4.47 for a pack of two at Zellers. He only wears them once. He studies the crude drawings on the front with disgust, not only for himself but also for those foolish enough to worship an idol so far fallen.
He’s on his hands and knees when he finds it, pushed under his bed amongst mismatched socks and crumpled up lyrics.
A glass jar, the kind that holds the dill pickles that Kalan likes. Or liked, Jacob doesn’t really know anymore.
Get to Kalan fund it reads in a child’s scrawl, and he doesn’t hear the scream that is ripped from his own throat as he throws it, glass shattering everywhere and coins clattering in melancholic harmony.
.
The house is eerily quiet now, even through the hangover pounding insistently through Jacob’s brain.
Somehow, he manages to miss the quiet steps down the hallway. The boy is slight, and can move undetected when he wants to. He drops down beside Jacob on the couch, head lolling for a moment to brush against a shoulder.
A plan is made in whispers and fragmented sentences, each boy treasuring and holding onto the things that they need to say, as if speaking them would taint their glory.
After a pause, Kalan speaks. The tone of the conversation has changed entirely, Jacob can tell as soon as it’s uttered. It’s something in the way that Kalan’s voice trembles and sticks on the fourth word, an uncertainty.
“I’ve got a present for you,” he whispers.
“But you won, not me,” Jacob utters, baffled.
“Did I?” Kalan asks, and there’s a certain lingering sadness in his eyes that Jacob has never seen before.
He moves to smooth the sadness away with his lips, and somehow the present is forgotten.
.
It arrives express post, to his parents’ house. A crudely wrapped box, backwards Christmas paper from the previous year and scotch tape coating it at random.
JACOB HOGGARD it commands in capital letters, uneven and slanted like maybe he was drunk, like maybe he hasn’t yet grasped holding a pen.
There’s no card inside, not even a name. Just the jar, just the handmade label on the jar.
Jacob starts to fill it with the money pouring in from the Hedley demos and shirts that day.
.
He slumps down amongst the wreckage, pulling absently at a shard of glass that has launched itself onto his sock.
This mess - the money and the glass and the remnants of dreams - lies around him, and he thinks that it's almost a metaphor. A part of him wonders if he's broken Kalan, if with the shattering of everything that they were Kalan just ceases to be, too.
He shakes his head, no, that's silly.
But a part of him continues to wonder.
.
His cellphone lights up to indicate a call, vibrating and dancing it's way across the bedside table.
He doesn't answer; maybe he has a more important call to make, instead.
Yeah. Maybe today’ll be the day that he gets back to Kalan.
He picks up the phone and dials only the area code before he realizes that he doesn't know it, not anymore. He'll have to get the number from someone, Shane maybe. Or Theresa. One of them will have it.
Then again, maybe today just isn't that day.
Pairing: Jalan. Who the hell else nowadays?
Notes: For the prompt but it don't snow here/it stays pretty green/I'm going to make a lot of money/then I'm going to quit this crazy scene.
Some might still call it unconventional, but he’s not exactly one of those blessed ‘some’. Not anymore. This lifestyle had shone like the star of Bethlehem, glistened like the gold that was presented to baby Jesus. But you know what they say. Not all that glitters is gold.
Jacob Hoggard smiles for the crowd, trademark gapped teeth and lip ring shining brightly. The shirt comes off, the crowd cheers; he can’t see past flashes of cameras and his own goddamn grandeur.
Jacob Hoggard smiles for the crowd.
Jacob Hoggard smiles for the
Jacob Hoggard smiles for
Jacob Hoggard smiles
Jacob Hoggard
Jacob
Rinse, and then repeat.
.
He stuffs the wad of money - not enough for a chunk of his soul, he thinks - into the band of his jeans, his pockets already full with receipts and phone numbers and labels pulled from beer and expensive champagne c/o Universal Music Canada. This club is dark and dank - as all of them are liable to be - save for one faraway corner, opposite the stage. In that corner, a single string of bulbs hangs. Red, blue, yellow, orange, green. Blink blink, blink blink, blink blink. A tinfoil star hangs underneath, the corners ripped and showing cardboard underneath. Still, it is the honing beacon that somehow draws him towards the blonde standing below, and of course he’d be there; Christmas, under the lights or under the star like the messiah that he thinks he is.
Jacob blinks for a moment, and he’s gone; perhaps he was only resurrected from another time and place, perhaps simply Gabriel appearing to the shepherds.
He rubs the back of his hand across tired eyes and tries to forget that they both share the same favourite book, the one that is found in the drawers of hotel room tables by which Jacob has fucked pretty girls while trying not to whimper his name.
.
The days before Christmas find him at home - home in the loose term of course, no more than a basement apartment that bares claim to a host of memories now lost and broken - and the boredom eats at him like a cancer. Life without the road isn’t life at all, but then again, something tells him that what he considers life isn’t much of one either.
He looks around, and for the first time sees the state of filth that he lives in. He can hear the quietly nagging voice of someone that he once knew, the voice that he hears as often as his own nowadays, if never out loud.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness, it purrs.
.
He picks up beer bottle after beer bottle, now a rotund and callous carpet of sorts around his bed. The white t-shirts come next, $4.47 for a pack of two at Zellers. He only wears them once. He studies the crude drawings on the front with disgust, not only for himself but also for those foolish enough to worship an idol so far fallen.
He’s on his hands and knees when he finds it, pushed under his bed amongst mismatched socks and crumpled up lyrics.
A glass jar, the kind that holds the dill pickles that Kalan likes. Or liked, Jacob doesn’t really know anymore.
Get to Kalan fund it reads in a child’s scrawl, and he doesn’t hear the scream that is ripped from his own throat as he throws it, glass shattering everywhere and coins clattering in melancholic harmony.
.
The house is eerily quiet now, even through the hangover pounding insistently through Jacob’s brain.
Somehow, he manages to miss the quiet steps down the hallway. The boy is slight, and can move undetected when he wants to. He drops down beside Jacob on the couch, head lolling for a moment to brush against a shoulder.
A plan is made in whispers and fragmented sentences, each boy treasuring and holding onto the things that they need to say, as if speaking them would taint their glory.
After a pause, Kalan speaks. The tone of the conversation has changed entirely, Jacob can tell as soon as it’s uttered. It’s something in the way that Kalan’s voice trembles and sticks on the fourth word, an uncertainty.
“I’ve got a present for you,” he whispers.
“But you won, not me,” Jacob utters, baffled.
“Did I?” Kalan asks, and there’s a certain lingering sadness in his eyes that Jacob has never seen before.
He moves to smooth the sadness away with his lips, and somehow the present is forgotten.
.
It arrives express post, to his parents’ house. A crudely wrapped box, backwards Christmas paper from the previous year and scotch tape coating it at random.
JACOB HOGGARD it commands in capital letters, uneven and slanted like maybe he was drunk, like maybe he hasn’t yet grasped holding a pen.
There’s no card inside, not even a name. Just the jar, just the handmade label on the jar.
Jacob starts to fill it with the money pouring in from the Hedley demos and shirts that day.
.
He slumps down amongst the wreckage, pulling absently at a shard of glass that has launched itself onto his sock.
This mess - the money and the glass and the remnants of dreams - lies around him, and he thinks that it's almost a metaphor. A part of him wonders if he's broken Kalan, if with the shattering of everything that they were Kalan just ceases to be, too.
He shakes his head, no, that's silly.
But a part of him continues to wonder.
.
His cellphone lights up to indicate a call, vibrating and dancing it's way across the bedside table.
He doesn't answer; maybe he has a more important call to make, instead.
Yeah. Maybe today’ll be the day that he gets back to Kalan.
He picks up the phone and dials only the area code before he realizes that he doesn't know it, not anymore. He'll have to get the number from someone, Shane maybe. Or Theresa. One of them will have it.
Then again, maybe today just isn't that day.