please respect the roses

the brightest light (is the first to go) | chicago fire | casey + severide (+ darden)

beethemonster — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 22:46:29 GMT

title: the brightest light (is the first to go)
fandom: chicago fire
characters: casey + severide (+ darden)
warnings: major spoilers for the pilot. there is also one thing mentioned that is only revealed later on.
notes: made for waywardmixes's theme 16: one episode. listen to the mix on 8tracks here.

CHICAGO FIRE is a television drama that explores the lives of the firefighters, rescue squad and paramedics of Chicago Firehouse 51.

THIS MIX focuses on the strained relationship between Severide and Casey after Darden’s death as it is shown in the series’ pilot.

IN THE FIRST EPISODE a fire claims the life of a team member, Andy Darden. Following the tragedy, Lt. Matthew Casey and Lt. Kelly Severide, both good friends of Darden, start to blame one another while all the same being consumed with guilt over his death.

fever ray: seven

i’ve got a friend

who i’ve known since i was seven

alt-j: tessellate

triangles are my favorite shape

three points where two lines meet

blonde redhead: here sometimes

end of day, we watched the sun go down

i can see you're like a firework

you want to save me, people will save me

but this is you, completely you

vampire weekend: don’t lie

gods’ loves die young, is he ready to go?

it’s the last time running through snow

where the vaults are full and the fire is bold

Darden and Severide have been friends since they were kids, always wanting to be firefighters. Somewhere along the way, they befriend Casey, too.

ms mr: dark doo wop

this world is gonna burn, burn burn burn

it’s all gonna shift, it’s out of our hands

fever ray: the wolf

its blood

and big fire, big burn

into the ashes

and no return

lorde: biting down

the electronics of your heart

see how fast they fall apart

rising shadows: catharsis

farewell

fate of us all

found in the cold

like fire

the leaving

the flaming lips feat. phantogram: you lust

when you pull the switch on us

i don't really want to know

when you shoot the stars away

the brightest light is the first to go

Darden dies during a fire run.

sea oleena: milk

step one: wake up,

now open your eyes,

now float to the window,

open the blinds,

now nevermind

the cold shiver on your over-exposed spine

sill lying on the bed where you left it,

soaking up the sleep from the mattress.

and that's it

imagine dragons: radioactive (hypnos remix)

i’m waking up to ash and dust

i wipe my brow and sweat my rust

i’m breathing in the chemicals

welcome to the new age

this is it, the apocalypse

the xx: tides

why would you just leave us alone

when we have been close, close

james blake feat. bon iver: fall creek boys choir

and we both end up alone

and if only we could have known

laura marling: sophia

sometimes i sit, sometimes i stare

sometimes they look and sometimes i don't care

rarely i weep, sometimes i must

i’m wounded by dust

A month
passes.

lykke li: dance, dance, dance

words can never make up for what you do

easy conversations, there's no such thing

alpine: gasoline

there's gasoline in your heart

there's fire in mine

deptford goth: feel real

even when you know

hits you hard,

leaves slow, comes back fast

when you can’t take it

you don’t swallow your pain

hold yourself, howl and scream

Losing one of their own has left a toll on the entire squad, and Casey and Severide, once close friends, are experiencing a painful rift. The tension between them escalates multiple times.

fever ray: if i had a heart

crushed and filled with all i found

underneath and inside

just to come around

more, give me more, give me more

Severide locks himself in a bathroom stall and injects medicine he shouldn’t be taking into his right arm, which seems to be cramping up on him. It is later revealed that he broke his neck and has developed a need for painkillers as a result. This could also be due to Darden’s death.

fever ray: i’m not done

so, i lost my head a while ago

but you seem to have done no better

how do you say you’re sorry?

kanye west feat. john legend: blame game

let’s play the blame game, i love you more

let’s play the blame game for sure

let’s call out names, names, i hate you more

blue october: my never
and i had a dream that you were with me

it wasn't my fault

Casey decides to cook Sunday night dinner for the crew, but Severide makes a show out of not eating his food. Casey confronts him outside. Severide is still blaming Casey for Darden’s death, though it is obvious they both feel guilty.

glass animals: black mambo

whisper slow in curls of smoke

small black: canoe

all my powers used up

getting to you

inc.: the place

that is when i’m at my best

nothing more, nothing less

While dealing with a house fire, Casey and Severide get stuck, the flames closing in on them, and they are forced to work together and they have to overcome the frictions to get out there alive.

anna von hausswolff: liturgy of light

well it's a hard life

that we share

and it's a long road

that we share

emmy curl: mine

i still don't understand that look in your eyes

but we both know where this history is gonna take us

The crew gathers in the waiting room of the hospital, awaiting word on Herman's condition, since he got stuck in the apartment building, too, and was hurt. Casey and Severide nod at each other as if they made peace over the incident.

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don't kiss trainwrecks. don't kiss knives. don't kiss. | hunger games | peeta/gale

beethemonster — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 08:32:21 GMT

title: don't kiss trainwrecks. don't kiss knives. don't kiss.
pairings: peeta/gale, gale/katniss, peeta/katniss
rating: pg-13
summary: gale doesn’t do love. here’s why.
words: 604
beta: girl-on-sunshine
disclaimer: no profit is being made; no copyright infringement is intended. the hunger games belongs to suzanne collins, the title is by daphne gottlieb.
author’s notes: written for this prompt. idek what to say, this is a mess..

Gale doesn’t do love. Here’s why: Katniss’ skin against his is like two suns hovering above the desert. Her grip on his heart is visceral but too tight, and her eyes are darker because of it. Gale strokes his thumbs over her cheeks but in the end the rough pads of his fingers can’t keep her close. She leaves him to die. (There is dried blood between his molars where he bit his tongue too hard. At least he thinks so. I volunteer will forever burn like acid on the roof of his mouth.)

But here’s the thing: Peeta is composed of stardust. His eyes twinkle dimly and his lips are plump and cherry. Gale uses his fingers to feel the ridges of bones where they stretch obscenely beneath his skin and curve again, forming something too soft for his brutal hands. (It’s horrible on all fronts – they both have traces of Katniss running along scarred limbs.)

It takes some time until clenched fists become hands, but Gale sees the way Peeta’s cheeks are drawn in by his big jaw. (He still feels her loss in the spaces between breaths himself, because even though she came back – she never came back to him.)

“You don’t have to love me,” is something he says one night, two hours to dawn. There’s a chip in the paint where Peeta rests his head against the wall. “I don’t love you, either.” But he touches Peeta’s skin when he sleeps, pressing his fingers down where he licked lovebites against each knob that makes his hip; he claws at the stretch of Peeta’s ribs when he flirts with waking up.

(The problem is, Gale doesn’t know how to kill a feeling and he doesn’t know how to fill the spaces where long lost love used to hide.)

(Skin performs the following functions: protection, sensation, absorption.) Gale looks at Peeta’s new layer of skin cells and thinks: you have never touched his body. And Peeta lets him mouth at his collarbones and stomach, the stretch of his ribs and the birthmarks that are stark like bruises. He tilts his head to put his lips on Peeta’s bicep, settling there with his open mouth against him. You will never get to touch this body. Then he stops thinking of her – almost forgets, even. (This isn’t his first mistake, but it’s the biggest.)

Peeta is still asleep and he is terribly beautiful in a way only men and sleeping lions can be, a feverish energy that will sear him to ashes hugging his limbs even in rest. He looks ready to fight. Gale lays his head on the pillow next to him, face soft, and touches his cheek with just the pads of his fingers. Peeta feels like a rough diamond now, and Gale dares to think about writing promises on the tissue of his eyelids. He looks down to kiss the spot where Peeta’s chin protrudes a little bit, especially when he smiles.

Peeta draws his head away and leaves Gale’s mouth behind with a tiny sound. His eyes are too complicated, like syntax in a poem.

“I don’t love you,” he whispers, voice rough and raw, ripping at the soft spot behind Gale’s breastbone. Hands become clenched fists again.

Gale nods, his raspy drawl steady and firm. “I know.” His brows are relaxed, but he feels ancient.

Peeta’s voice is frayed. “I don’t think you do.” (It sounds too much like I’m sorry or Katniss. Gale isn’t sure what’s worse.)

Gale doesn’t do love. Here’s why: sooner or later, they all leave. That’s what people do.

the sound of love is out of tune | on the road | dean/sal

beethemonster — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 10:55:01 GMT

title: the sound of love is out of tune
fandom: on the road (movieverse)
pairing: dean/sal
notes: made for waywardmixes's theme 14: journeys. on the road obviously features more than enough journeys and trips, but i mostly chose this fandom because of dean and sal ~~and how their ending leaves me in tears every goddamn time.~~ i hope you can enjoy the movie/book just as much as i do ♥ (ps: i’m sorry the lyrics and such are all over the place but html and i ain’t never gonna be friends, and i’m glad i got the text next to the pictures in the first place.) oh, and thanks to kellica this is now also available on 8tracks here!

the hold steady: stuck between stations

there are nights when i think that sal paradise was right
boys and girls in america, they have such a sad time together
sucking off each other at the demonstrations, making sure their makeup's straight
crushing one another with colossal expectations, dependent, undisciplined, sleeping late

+

dean rushes around, afraid of running out of time, needing to beat time, and measuring everything in time. sal, does the same for space. he needs to visit all these cities, to get quickly from one place to another, and he measures everything in distance.

while dean used to “spent a third of his time in the poolhall, a third in jail, and a third in the public library” before he came to new york, sal is a young writer - currently lacking any inspiration – who lives with his aunt in new jersey.

bob dylan: visions of johanna

now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
he brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
and when bringing her name up
he speaks of a farewell kiss to me

+

when sal meets dean, he is intrigued and, throughout the story, seems to forgive dean all his faults or simply overlooks them due to his infatuation with him. to sal, dean is a con-man, an angel, but most of all a hero, even though he tends to abandon those who love him.

marylou is dean’s first wife. she loves him, but understands that she can’t have him because he’s simply “too mad”. they break up and make up multiple times.

of monsters and men: mountain sound

i heard them calling in the distance
so i packed my things and ran
far away from all the trouble
i had caused with my two hands

+

sal longs for the freedom of the road and to join dean
and their mutual friend carlo in denver.

the black keys: tighten up

i wanted love, i needed love
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
and i'm bound to fall, bound to fall for you

oh, what can i do?

+

sal also gets to know dean’s second wife, camille.

a fine frenzy: the sighting

it was a dark and clouded night
where neither star nor moon would shine
yet standing in a pool of light
like saturn with its rings

a lonesome figure gleamed […]

oh, hi
love

+

during a stay in sabinal, where he works in the cotton fields for a while, sal seems to at least partyally overcome his writer’s block,
while dean leaves camille and their newborn child behind to meet up with sal and suprise him on christmas. he decides to take marylou along.

a fine frenzy: winds of wander

learn to float
don’t you worry so
let the winds of wander blow
up and away we go

+

since dean spent christmas with sal’s family, he promises sal’s aunt to give her and sal a ride back to new york to thank her.

daughter: candles

'cause we both know i'll never be your lover
i only bring the heat
company under cover
filling space in your sheets

+

after a smashing new year’s eve party, dean tries to talk sal into a threesome with marylou.
sal hesitates and backtracks in the last moment.

lena: bliss bliss

your every little heartbeat gets to me
wherever in the world my carousel is spinning

+

in dean's hudson all three take off from new york and make it to new orleans.

daughter: landfill

well this is torturous electricity between both of us
and this is dangerous, ‘cause i want you so much
but i hate your guts. i want you so much
but i hate your guts.

+

sal, dean, and marylou continue their trip through the states. once in san francisco,
dean leaves the two of them to starve to reunite with camille and his daughter.

woodkid: i love you

whatever i feel for you
you only seem to care about you
is there any chance you could see me too?
‘cause i love you
is there anything i could do
just to get some attention from you?
in the waves i’ve lost every trace of you
oh where are you?

+

because sal is sal, he forgives dean and comes to visit him. camille is pregnant again, and unhappy. she throws them out when they get home one night, very late and very drunk. dean and sal hit the road again, but soon run short of money, so dean sleeps
with some guy they meet on the road, gets payed for it, and tells sal, “i did it for us.”

kleerup: until we bleed

i'm naked, i'm numb
i'm stupid, i'm staying
and if cupid's got a gun, then he's shootin'

lights black; heads bang
you're my drug
we live it
you're drunk, you need it
real love, i'll give it
so we're bound to linger on
we drink the fatal drop

+

the two of them go to mexico city together, where they spend lots of money, have lots of sex, and drink lots of alcohol.

dan croll: from nowhere

every now and then i fall
every now and then i lose control
in your eyes i see your ghost surrounding me
and i’ve a little bit of thought for you
‘cause every now and then i fall a bit behind
every time i stare into your eyes
‘cause every now and then i fall a bit behind
every time i stare into your eyes

with your thrills, i find
it's not hard to be left behind

+

still in mexico, dean abandons sal – again – while sal is in a dysentery-induced fever.

bag raiders: way back home (dean –> sal)
what if just can't find my way back home
what about all the things i just don't don't know
what if i just can't find my way back home
would you be there to show me where to go?

midi matilda: day dreams

(sal –> dean)
you’re not my day dream
you’re not my savior
you’re not my guardian
you’re my get up and go
i’ve got you figured – nobody else does

+

a few months later, sal sees dean one last time. he’s obviously started a new life, one that dean and his drugs and drinking doesn’t fit into. dean tells sal he came all the way to new york just to see him. he tries to apologize for leaving a sick sal in mexico, tells sal he wants to spend as much time with him as possible, but a friend of sal tells him to hurry.

when sal gets into his car to leave, dean calls after him, “hey, sal! i love you as ever,” but sal can’t hear him anymore.

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a thousand years in perfect symmetry | the pacific | snafu/sledge | [1/2]

beethemonster — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:12:50 GMT

title: a thousand years in perfect symmetry
pairings: snafu/sledge, sid/gwen
rating: pg-13
content: band of brothers, the pacific, generation kill crossover. modern day au. language. cardiac disease.
summary: the illness in his heart cannot be healed by love alone. (in which snafu chips away sledge’s shell of insecurity and naiveté, and sledge shows him how to care in return.)
words: 10.930
beta: girl-on-sunshine & scratchywilson
disclaimer: this whole universe is nothing but sheer imagination. none of it is real; nothing mentioned ever happened or has anything to do with the actual veterans. no profit is being made; no copyright infringement is intended. the title is by los campesinos!
author’s notes: please notice everything i know about cardiac diseases and heart transplants is stolen from the internet and perhaps not 100% accurate. if you happen to know the subject better than i do, please excuse any mistakes or point them out to me, thanks.

all you can hear is the sound of your own heart. and all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course. but, oh, i can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me, five hundred behind. a thousand years in perfect symmetry. --los campesinos!

Sledge wakes up because the window is open and the spare room, painted a shy shade of marigold, is bathed in soft light that smells of early mornings. His lashes are caked with sleep. When he looks outside to the sun wavering just behind the stray clouds, he wishes it was still late summer. He’s not fond of autumn and its crumbling leaves, even if they’re gleaming in rusty reds and deep tangerines.

A fresh breeze, tinted with gardenias and rain-slick concrete, tickles the fuzz on his arms and sweeps away the last husky remnants of night. He slips his thighs and knobbly knees into a pair of track pants with worn draw stings that are long frayed along the edges. It’s the only one he brought the whole way from Mobile through Indianapolis to Chicago’s south side.

Frank Ocean is on the radio with Sid humming along softly from the kitchenette, waiting for his bread to leap out of the toaster. “I’m glad to have you here now, Gene,” he says when butter melts on his golden-brown slice of cinnamon toast. “Can’t believe your folks let you go, though.” Cacti plants with tiny blossoms are lined up on the narrow window sill, arranged in order of size and colour. Strangely, they remind Sledge of life.

“I’m eighteen. I can look after myself.” Sledge’s face crumbles a little like pressed flowers tend to do. “At least for a year or so,” he remembers. Until he gets his new transplant.

Sitting on one of the wooden stools at the breakfast bar, he’s spreading jam over his breakfast before he pops the pills he needs to keep his body from killing itself.

Sid’s smile suddenly displays a full row of straight, pearly teeth. “M’not a virgin anymore, by the way. Got myself a girlfriend.”

“What about Mary Huston?” Sledge can feel his molars crunch when he thinks about her French tipped fingers and the way her hairline would glitter in the dim evening sun dangling low over Alabama’s horizon. “You used to be so smitten.”

“Look who’s talking!” Sid’s words send crumbs flying onto the linoleum floor. “But. I don’t really care about her anymore. Not like that, anyway.” He chuckles softly. “You’ve got her all to yourself now.”

“Sure, man.” Neither of them mentions the endless line of exuberant boys with broader shoulders and less freckles on the bridge of their noses than Sledge clutching to the hem of her floral skirts. “Don’t you have any classes?”

"Yeah, you’re right. Busy, busy.” Sid grabs a messenger bag he didn’t have when they were in high school. “Don't die while I'm gone," he calls, not sugar-coating the matter.

Sid makes things easy for Sledge, dissipates the strain of worry that’s constantly engulfing his mind and heart. That’s why they still share a friendship built over sandcastles and monkey bars, wound tightly with time. That’s also why he followed him to Chicago despite his parent’s concerns for the maimed organ caught in his chest that isn’t pumping blood, oxygen and nutrients to the rest of his body quite like it should.

"I shall try," he waves after him, but his eyes are glued to photos of a girl with fuchsia cheeks littering the kitchen cabinets, wondering if that’s the one who managed to steal Sid’s heart from Mary.

The sun’s kissing the earth goodbye with orange-red lips when Sid stumbles back into his ground-floor apartment, smelling of work and flour and preheated ovens. Sledge is curled up on the sofa, his white and jittery hands hidden in the crooks of his armpits. “How was your day, bakery boy?” he asks, ignoring his defiant heartbeat. The spaces between his toes aren’t clammy, neither are his palms, so it’s okay.

“Gwen says she wants to meet you.” Sid drops his bag of heavy college books, while undoing the apron he wears at work, and zips up a hoodie until it meets the sharp tip of his chin. “I’m fixing to go to the store,” he says then, “to get some healthy food now that you’re here.”

Sledge is sure Sid wants to ask him what to buy. He could give him a detailed list his mama tucked into the inside pocket of his bag. Instead he says, “I’ll come.”

Sid eyes how the gelatine bones in his fingers tremble with the strain of opening his pill bottle. “Gene,” he sighs, but Sledge only shakes his head. He isn’t quite ready to feel like porcelain again – frail and threatening to crack at any moment.

He won’t let a sick bundle of veins and arteries take over his life, not yet.

They stroll down Embers Lane after Sid made sure to convince Sledge to wear more than just a thin sweater to keep the cold from settling in his bones. The street is lined by pale houses with crumbling fronts and picturesque bay windows that project into side streets smelling of honeysuckle and cloves rather than piss.

When they round a group of guys testing who can shout butt fuck the loudest, rain starts bleeding from the sky. Sid ushers them inside a shop with a yellow awning saying Toccoa Grocery Store in narrow, almost squiggly letters, and a Help ~~Wanted~~ Needed sign hanging in the window.

“You know,” Sledge says when he puts a zucchini and berries and tubs of plain yoghurt into the shopping basket, “I could work here, maybe. It’s close and everything.”

Sid throws a carton of red, seedless grapes at him; Sledge’s favourites. “Need to talk to Sobel then, he’s the big boss here or something. Acts like it, anyway.”

Sobel is a stern man with tight shoulders and a spine so taut it could snap beneath his ridiculous Toccoa vest at any moment.

“Are you even out of school yet, boy?” His smile is derisive, brittle around the edges.

Sledge can feel his trapezii brace, making the bones in the slope of his neck crack. “Yes, sir,” he mumbles, meekly. The pulsing of his heartbeat keeps his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth and almost keeps him from talking.

“Well, you – ” They notice a short guy with tattoos trailing down the skin of his forearms standing in front of one of the cooling shelves. A sticky trail of milkshake is dripping off his lower lip. Sledge can see a muscle twitch in Sobel’s jaw.

“Tomorrow, eight o’clock.” Sobel pushes a bright orange vest against the sharp dip of Sledge’s breastbone and leaves with hurrying feet and scolding hands.

The rain has gone from fat plopping drops to random barely-there sprinkles by then.

+

The next morning comes slowly, creeps along the seams of a rain-swept night and into the room Sledge will one day start calling his. He curls his toes into the duvet that rests heavily on his chest, not yet ready to let go of the Mary-shaped dream still tickling his fingertips.

Pulling on a cable-knit sweater with sleeves that flap around the tiny bones in his wrists, he goes to brush his teeth and scrub away the dryness in the back of his throat. The wall mirror shows him the blue tinged skin just below his eyes is run through by navy veins, and that he desperately needs a haircut. It’s nothing he doesn’t already know.

Sid is eating a bowl of multi-coloured cereal in the glare of the hazy morning sun that’s flooding the narrow space between the breakfast bar and messy kitchen counters when Sledge’s circulatory system is stable enough to keep his pills from slipping though his fingers.

“We’re meeting up with Gwen at Bravo later,” Sid announces. His eyes crinkle with a smile. “It’s on Riverside Promenade, the street that’s all flowery and shit. You’ll find it.”

Four hundred heartbeats later, Sledge reaches Toccoa and slips into his vest. Sobel is already waiting with taunting eyes and arms crossed over his sternum, an artificial smile stretching his mouth.

Sledge is sure the back of his neck and the skin around his cheekbones blotch a heated shade of red, even though he’s dead on-time.

“Good morning, sir,” he tries, but Sobel stays stiff from the tips of his boots to his lashes. He straightens the wings of his collar that shines a deeper hue of pumpkin than Sledge’s, and nods his head in the direction of a guy who is stacking a myriad of canned soup with languid, flowing movements.

“I want you to stick with Shelton today.” His voice is clipped, rushing through quickly-smirking lips. “He’ll show you around.”

Snafu is a viscous supernova compressed into silent diamond glances and brassy words, but Sledge doesn’t know that yet. Now, he’s just Shelton, a boy who chain smokes in front of No Smoking signs, gaze tired and heavy beneath a sweep of dark lashes.

“Who’re you, then?” he asks with a distant, flimsy smile, cerulean swimming in his eyes like wet paint. The neckline of his tee is falling far past his protruding clavicles, making them jut out like cinnamon razor blades.

“Eugene Sledge.” Flushing suddenly, Sledge feels oddly self-conscious about the way his sweater is too big in the shoulders, flapping loosely around the sharp slopes. “I just moved here from – ”

“Yeah,” Shelton interrupts him, waving a hand that silently screams whatever. Sledge feels his chest tighten. “Just follow me.”

At first, Shelton makes him carry box after box of glistening oranges and juicy berries he usually eats with granola and milk. After that, he has to refill the canned goods shelves in a twirl of second hand smoke and watery blue stares, and in the afternoon, he wipes the floor, guides the mop along dirty sneakers and hastening oxford shoes.

Sledge feels good with a kind of normalcy aching in his bones he doesn’t usually experience. It makes his back strain and his fingers shake, and his heart, though dealing with attrition gnawing at its edges, still beats steady and reliable.

Later, when things are getting ridiculous and he’s to dusting the tomatoes displayed in a palette on a low table, his hands become sweaty, clammy, and he rubs them against the thighs of his jeans.

“Look, Shelton, I – ”

The individual knobs in Shelton’s long neck creak when he lifts his chin abruptly, stiff from watching Sledge work. “Don’t fuckin’ go around callin’ me that.” The baritone words drip off his lips like molasses, but they’re sharper somehow, like he means it. Sledge tries to not let them squeeze his throat shut.

“ – I don’t really think I have to do this,” he finishes, anger bubbling hotly in the pristine cage of his ribs but not daring to infect his tone. His fingernails bite crescent-shaped marks into his palms, now balled into useless fists against his legs.

“Well, no,” Shelton drawls, complacency drawn around his irises in electric blue dots, and Sledge doesn’t really know what else to call him. “I just wanted to see you sweat.”

Shelton skips what’s left of his shift with a lavish smile and a cantaloupe he didn’t pay for carried in the arch of his elbow.

+

Riverside Promenade is overloaded with ivy climbing up stucco walls and flamboyant flowers blooming beside the sidewalks, just like Sid said. It smells of pollen, viridian greens and dove-grey rain.

Sledge reaches Bravo dripping and with shaking bones. The front door is made from old wood painted sangria red and framed with even more ivy that curls along the brick walls. It gets lost where the walls go off into a beer garden’s fence. He isn’t sure if he should go inside, because, god, he isn’t of age yet and this is a bar, but he can spot Sid through one of the multi-pane windows, so he opens the door with a jittery push.

There is no room for anonymity in this bar, no quiet drinking into oblivion. Everyone seems to know each other, clinks bottles and pints while cursing loudly about life and its flaws or girls and the sway of their hips.

Already huddled deeply into the billow of smoke and false bravado that lurks even in the farthest corners of the room, Sledge winds his way through brawny men’s shoulders, greeted by indifferent eyes. He realizes he’s never been a stranger anywhere before.

“Jesus, Sid,” he gasps when he sits across him at the wooden table, round and with tiny ornaments that don’t seem to match each other, “this place is full of cops.” He rubs his hands, pale as moon dust and flecked with freckles, over his knees, kneading the flesh there worriedly through his trousers.

“Nah,” Sid assures him, delighted by his panic, “the ginger one at the bar is just picking up his drunk-ass boyfriend. And the serial killer lookalike over there comes here after his shifts to hit on Lipton, who’s a cop, too, but it’s all good.”

“I thought this was a coffee shop. Bravo sounds like a coffee shop.”

“You don’t even drink coffee.” Sid’s tie-dye laugh easily carries over the crowd of tipsy men with big mouths and even bigger beers.

“I don’t drink alcohol, either,” Sledge protests. He doesn’t know anything about liquid courage and the pleasant vertigo that comes with drinking. He’s eighteen, he’s not supposed to. (Then again, maybe he really is.) He’s always built his life around his illness, prepared to let go of it again if necessary, not leaving any space for alcohol or caffeine or feeling like everyone else.

After two hundred heartbeats of looking around – he counted them, of course, to make sure his pulse didn’t get lost – his eyes meet blue ones, partly hidden behind copper lids.

Shelton has to crane his neck to look back at him, the long, smooth hollow of his throat prominent in the yellow light from above the bar. When he doesn’t blink, wet indigo patches start simmering in his eyes, peeling back the muscles that hide beneath Sledge’s skin to peer right into him and take apart his insides.

It’s Sledge’s first glimpse of the opalescent gaze Shelton endows only sparsely. His breath lurches. “Who’s that?” he asks. He shapes his words as if he doesn’t already know because he feels like he really doesn’t know at all, and his palms prickle with a strange shade of curiosity, an itch he can’t scratch away.

“That’s Snafu.” Sid licks his lips and doesn’t smile, his tone not light anymore or floating over the table between them. “Well, Gwen said so. Bit of a dick, really.”

"Takes one to know one," Sledge mumbles impishly, loud enough for Sid to hear. Though, pulling his beige sweater over his knuckles, he inwardly lets Snafu roll over his tongue again and again. It tastes sweeter than Shelton, but sharper at the same time.

Gwen arrives in a swirl of skirts and blonde ringlets that cascade around her face like a fair waterfall. When she sits, Sid slides his chair closer to hers and greets her with a private smile that speaks of an entire library filled with little moments Sledge hasn’t witnessed.

“Gene, I want you to meet my lovely girl of, what? Two months?” He says it with his whole gold dusted face stretching into a huge grin that wrinkles around the corners of his mouth.

Gwen seems almost too perfect; they do – the way her fingers curl around Sid’s broad wrists, fond with memories and the infatuation that’s painted across their coral-coloured smiles. She’s nothing like Mary. Sledge likes her, anyway, or maybe precisely because, and decides the pang that’s swirling in his guts isn’t a twisted sort of jealousy he can’t explain, but pure, genuine happiness that’s perhaps a little stained along the seams.

+

Sledge gets almost used to living with Sid and the sounds Chicago makes at night after a week of waking up with orange blooming behind his eyelids and a handful of pills, all different colours and sizes, neatly prepared by his plate. The trees now look like someone splashed them with paint during his sleep and he’s found a new doctor that’ll care for his heart.

Today’s morning, still pale and quiet, hugs the air with nebulous arms when Sledge enters Toccoa, leaving a trail of foot-shaped mud puddles behind he’ll later have to clean up himself. Snafu is puffing on a cigarette as usual, to pass the time, maybe, or simply to see flushing ire twist on Sobel’s face when he smells the obvious remnants lingering in the air between the shelves Snafu is supposed to restock. He comes over to where Sledge is standing in the depot, starting to count boxes of TV-dinners.

“Want a drag?” The question comes from between his teeth and has to fight its way through the cloud of smoke.

“Not much of a smoker,” Sledge replies. It sounds weak and he knows it, but for some reason Snafu’s piercing gaze sparks a series of goosebumps that races alongside the freckles on his pale skin, makes his cheeks rouge up with heat.

Snafu only lifts his chin the way he does sometimes and drops a low yeah before he leaves like he arrived: slow, gliding, like the approach of a cat sneaking up on its prey.

+

The floor creaks under his feet when Sledge steps out of the autumn sunbeams and into the flat, for once not shivering and damp. His nose is runny, anyway, and his cardiologist won’t thank him for that.

In the tiny shower he turns on the faucet, lets the spray douse him and droplets pool in the valleys between his ribs for little moments. The hot water quickly pinks his shoulders, and his eyes fall shut. By the time he crawls out of the cloaking warmth again, a rye bread is freshly sliced and waiting for him, as well as Sid with an awry smile.

With Sid leading him, Sledge walks down Embers Lane in the direction of Bravo, passing a rundown laundromat and chartreuse to sandy coloured apartment buildings that don’t reach too far into the sky.

On the balcony of the one of the top floors, three stories high, Snafu sits with his legs poking out through the gaps of the railing. He stares down at Sledge with his always darting eyes, lips parted around a smoke in a sharp toothed smile.

It’s only a fleeting moment, four heartbeats perhaps, until Sledge is dragged away by Sid’s arm looping around his waist. Snafu’s nostrils flare in something like irritation but his eyes don’t seem to care.

He sits in a fading puddle of lukewarm yellow sunlight by the river, huddled on top of a quilt Hoosier, a friend of Sid’s who taught him how to swallow shots without retching, threw at him. Hoosier is blond and wry with a miniscule stubble on his lower jaw. Sledge isn’t sure if he should like him.

Gwen’s hair is up in a messy bun, her face alight in the rare sun that’s gilding the afternoon one of the last times this year, while Sid is running around with most of the guys Sledge passed on the street this past week, chasing a ball through two sticks that make for a goal post.

Sledge and his heart and the dust in his lungs, they aren’t much into socializing. He still doesn’t really know what he’s doing here, in the middle of people he could know, should know, maybe, but doesn’t.

Gwen is an exception, though. She is cute and wispy, with lips like oversweet drinks and an air of calmness surrounding her that stops the anxiety in his veins the way only Sid and his mama do.

“How did the two of you meet?” he asks into the peaceful quiet, his tongue almost trembling with curiosity. Sid never said anything but starry and fetching and mine mine mine.

“Oh.” Shifting, Gwen tucks her legs underneath her, barefoot on the soft quilt. “We met in the bakery. It belongs to my uncle and auntie, you have to know. He was actually very kind and sweet.” She smiles silently with the taste of memory on her tongue.

“I can’t imagine,” Sledge laughs, blinking.

Gwen likes to smile without showing teeth. She’s so very different from Mary, from Sid, but somehow they fit just right. Their bones click and lock, and they grow around each other’s spines without ever crunching. Their hearts overlap.

It has to be nice, Sledge thinks, being in love.

The sky is a plum purple on their way back home, night already fallen. Snafu isn’t sitting on the balcony anymore, of course he isn’t, but Sledge can’t help himself and checks, anyway, with dully glittering particles of hope in the caverns of his heart.

+

The first cracks his cardiovascular system showed when he was seven, right in the centre of it. It’s just a murmur, they said, but his dad, he knew better.

He was nine when he needed his first transplant.

“You grew so fast, boy,” is what his new Chicago doctor says, “your heart won’t be able to handle you much longer. It’s possible that we have to move up the operation date.” He smells of antiseptic and too expensive cologne.

All Sledge notices is the dry, dusty rust gathering at the back of his throat.

That day, Sledge is late for work. Snafu and Sobel are arguing in the fresh produce section. It isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

“This is serious bullshit, sir, I won’t do it,” Sledge hears when he rounds the frozen meat. The leaves sticking to his shoes look artfully flicked with paint and he knows he’ll have to sweep out each of them later.

“You work at my command!” It feels like Sobel is emphasizing his entire little speech, gums sore and toes curled in his pointy-toed boots. “You very well will do this or I can guarantee you – ” He pauses, tugging on one of his sleeves, and shifts his anger from Snafu to Sledge who just passed the nearest aisle. “You’re late,” he says, trying to appear as if he carries any authority at all. He likes to wear his vest like a uniform.

“I’m sorry, sir, I had an appointment. Here’s a note from my doctor,” Sledge hedges, forcing himself to swallow, but nothing in Sobel’s eyes indicates that he cares.

“No,” he says superciliously, rage still alight in his skin peeling look. His face is the colour of puce. “You didn’t tell me beforehand. It's against regulations!”

Wednesdays are slow days full of barrenness and tired eyelids; Sledge didn’t think Sobel would mind, but he should have known better.

Snafu just smiles at him through slow lips and cerulean that’s hidden behind a row of fluttering black.

Sobel makes him rearrange the depot after his shift, ostensibly because of reasons. Snafu offers to help, his features calmer, smoother, less intimidating. It sparks surprise in Sledge’s guts but he doesn’t mind the company, the second heartbeat thrumming in the room.

“Why doesn’t he just fire us?” Sledge asks, annoyed before he even starts to do as he was told. Somewhere in the back of his skull, his mind is still shaking with the doctor’s words. His throat feels like it’s filled with thick, wet paint up to his tonsils.

“Why don’t you just quit?” Snafu retorts. He pulls a Marlboro from inside his vest. It smells faintly like peppermint. “See, Sledge,” he explains with waving hands, cigarette kept between the bones of two fingers, “that prick needs us just as much as we need his goddamn money. No one else would put up with the shit he pulls all the time.”

Sledge is sure he’s never heard Snafu say his name before. He listens to it like he listens to music, and buries the soon to be memory deep inside his belly where it can’t touch his heart. “That’s against regulations,” he mocks then, pointing at the cigarette, facetious and with false sincerity on his face, to distract himself from the sudden tingling in-between his ribs.

Snafu takes a heavy pull. “Fuck Sobel,” he says. His voice sounds like silk and burned ash, echoing from the taupe walls. “It’s Snafu, by the way.”

“I know.” Sledge feels a blush colouring his cheeks like war paint, but he doesn’t mind it much. It’s Snafu. He’s allowed to say it now, like he’s earned it somehow. It makes him feel special and he likes that.

The smoke from inside Snafu’s mouth creates wisps of clouds in front of his face, shrouding him like a curtain he’s never going to lift. “Why don’t you have any classes? You look like you should go to college,” he asks, maybe genuinely curious.

“I’m taking a gap year,” Sledge shrugs, and starts placing Raisin Bran boxes on one of the shelves.

“Workin’ in a fuckin’ supermarket?” Snafu sounds like he, in a way, expects more of Sledge. The look in his eyes, dark like a storm looming just over the horizon, says the same.

Sledge feels too hot all of a sudden, seen through and judged. He offers, “I’m going to become a teacher one day.” (At least that’s what he’s told himself since he was nine. He used to have dreams of his castaway heart, somewhere in a pile of trash; horrid dreams about scalpels tearing the flesh of his chest apart, and that he wouldn’t make it. So he learned to force the picture of a shiny future into his brain, one that would help him stay alive.)

“Yeah?” Snafu rolls his shoulders with a crack, then his neck, feline, like a cat. All the bones tucked smartly underneath his skin show in a stripe, running from atop his collar only to hide in his hairline. “I think I’ll just stay here.”

Sledge can’t help himself but stare, his heartbeat sticking tightly to the front of his ribcage.

+

It’s early in the evening but already darkening outside, and the phone that he barely uses buzzes on the bedside cabinet where it lies right beside a nearly empty box of tissues.

“Hello, sweetheart,” the voice on the end of the line intones. “I just wanted to see how they treat my baby boy over there.”

“Mama,” Sledge sighs softly, kneading at the sudden soreness behind his temples. I miss you. He sits down on the edge of his mattress, crumpling the duvet a little. The wall lamp casts a strange array of shadows around the room.

“I’m you mother, I worry.” He imagines her pinching his cheeks the way she does, until a pink layer spreads that shushes the scary pallor resting there, or muttering at the bugs in her garden that dare to eat her leaves. “Your father does, too. Now tell me, Gene, how are you?” Her usually prim voice is full of barely concealed worry. Sledge doesn’t know what to say besides the handful of things he won’t.

“Fine, really. The doctor says I’m fine.” The lie sits heavy on his tongue, weighting it down, but he doesn’t want to think about her fading smile. He knows the way her hand wanders to her chest in sorrow too well already, like a photograph burned into the back of his skull.

“I’m glad, darling,” she says, relieved. “But you know you can come home at any time, right?”

“Right.” He stares out at the cotton candy coloured sky, lilac rolling over it in streaks of clouds, and doesn’t think of going back any time soon, or how his maimed heart will probably force him to.

+

That Friday morning is a velvet blue with crisp clouds sticking out against the murkiness. On his way to Toccoa, Sledge steps over leftover puddles from last night’s storm, and crumbled leaves in amber and orange-red that will soon fully brown with decay. He’s early, pale thumb skating lightly over his knuckles while he waits for the first customers to arrive. When Snafu appears, huddled into a fur-lined denim jacket Sledge has never seen before, their shift is already one hour in. He smells wet and of dirt and smoke, but warm nonetheless.

“My dog died,” Sledge gushes for no apparent reason. “My mother called. To tell me, I mean.”

Snafu’s eyes soften measuredly. His hair sits awry on his head, whipped around by one of the many Chicago winds. “M’sorry,” he says, Sledge’s grief not lost in his ears while he peels off his jacket.

Sledge dares to think that maybe he’s gentle beneath the imperceptible muscle and tissue and bones.

“Come home with me today.”

“What?” Sledge asks, a blush stealing over his cheeks while he tries to sell fruit schnapps to a small guy with unruly curls and his teeth slightly ajar. His girlfriend has her hair up in pigtails, one higher than the other. “Um. Have a nice day,” Sledge waves after them.

“I’m pretty sure you understood me just fine.”

“’Course, yeah.” Nodding while rubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand, Sledge shakes away the confused crease in-between his brows. “I – yeah.” He would like to touch the dip between Snafu’s shoulder blades, and his jugular, where the blood pumps right against his skin, but he isn’t that stupid.

Instead, he stares at the watch he wears above his sweater’s sleeve, hand circling around the veins and the bones of his wrist, and converts the remaining hours of their shift into heartbeats.

+

Sledge is rocking on his heels in front of the woolly-violet sunset with his hands in his pockets while Snafu slips his house key into the lock. His rolled up sleeves show off slim, cinnamon wrists.

When they reach the top floor, Sledge is already out of breath thanks to his heart. Snafu chooses not to mock him. “Welcome to my two-room shithole,” is what he says instead when he opens the door to his apartment with a tiny wave.

Stepping into Snafu’s home is a bit like stepping inside of Snafu himself. They are greeted by thick wisps of peppermint cigarette smoke and the smell of coffee mixed with laundry detergent. There is no couch, but a soft, leathern armchair and a coffee table littered with empty Marlboro Smooth packs.

“This place reeks of your bad habits,” Sledge states and a small smile blooms on Snafu’s face. It’s nice for once.

They sit on the balcony’s floor, legs poking out between the thin metal bars. It reminds Sledge of lavender nights and eyelids at half-mast. The air is chilly but not too much and he doesn’t want to complain, much less break the spell that’s keeping his heart at bay right then.

Two colourful cups of tea are placed between them. Sledge takes his with more honey than water, while Snafu drinks it very pure and very bitter. Nestled in their laps, they both carry a plate of yesterday’s mac and cheese from the fridge.

“You look tired,” Snafu notes, taking a long pull from his cup.

Frazzled is what Sledge would call it, but it’s not like sleep would do much about that. “I’m fine.”

Snafu nods and pulls a cigarette from his pants pocket. “So, tell me about yourself.” Wisps of fresh smoke slip through his lips. The timbre of his words speaks of unwavering seriousness, as if he cares, but Sledge is sure he doesn’t. Snafu doesn’t even care about his own beauty and his flaws; he doesn’t take care of his future and the soft parts of his body. Sledge can see it in his hands, almost grey with dryness, his lungs, and the yellowing wallpaper in his flat.

“What do you want to know?” he asks, anyway, because maybe. His heart beats like a kick drum in the middle of his throat as if it’s trying to escape.

“Somethin’. I dunno,” Snafu shrugs with the opaque indifference Sledge knows so well. It’s in the corners of his mouth, dripping sometimes. “You look like the complicated type of person, with a past and all that.”

Sledge swallows heavily, one two three times in unison with the pounding beneath his ribs. “Well. I had a heart failure when I was little,” he tells his fingernails, but the tremor in his voice reaches out for Snafu, wraps around the soft shells of his ears that move a little while he chews. “Don’t know if that’s complicated enough.”

Snafu is watching Sledge’s waxen hand, spellbound by a vein winding down its freckled back like a river or a derelict road on a map traced far too many times. Sledge has known that route for a long while, can guide the tips of his fingers along it, eyes closed, without hitting any of the marks that are there from thick hospital needles. “Got a transplant then,” he continues, nervously dragging his fork through the sauce on his plate, “but I’m slowly growing out of it.” He doesn’t know how to explain that the heart currently residing in his chest isn’t his, that it won’t make it another two years. Soon, he’ll have to take the bigger pills again to prevent his body from rejecting the foreign organ he’s going to get, and later rely on IV medications to make it from day to day.

Snafu doesn’t want to hear of that, anyway, it seems. “Should stop the smokin’ then, shouldn’t I?” he simply says, and crushes the short butt of his gleaming Marlboro in the ashtray.

When he turns to face Sledge after a second caught between silence and speaking, long neck bend a little, there's a sheen of sweat atop his upper lip. His eyes are pale but intense, and Sledge can feel his pulse stutter. The muscles in his legs start to tremble, but Snafu doesn’t mind, just puts a hand in the small space in-between and touches their foreheads together. He smells of soap and tea, coated with an everlasting veil of cigarette smoke.

“This okay with you, Sledgehammer?” he asks, exhaling a bundle of hot air that makes his words ghost over Sledge’s mouth.

Sledge shivers at the newly blossomed nickname, feels the dust of hair on his arms and thighs rise with a prickling that covers his skin. He nods quickly, too eager, but just in time with the throbbing staccato of his heart. Snafu’s lashes tangle with his. They flutter like gossamer wings around his owlish eyes before his tea-warm tongue slips out to tease his lip, to glide across the burning flesh in a slow rush only Snafu could provide.

Sledge tucks his hands in between his thighs, unsure what to do with them, and meets Snafu’s, hot and dry, so chapped the skin stretching over his knuckles almost ruptures. Snafu tangles their fingers lightly, and finally, finally fits their mouths together in a kiss. His other hand sweeps against Sledge’s ribs, pressing them like keys on a piano.

It all aches in a way that feels like blood vessels bursting with pleasure.

Curled up under his own comforter, Sledge still notices his lips tingle, swollen and slick with spit like a phantom limb: prickling, burning, not really there but consuming him all the same.

next

my attitude is always i and me and mine | merlin | gwaine centred

beethemonster — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:42:41 GMT

this was made as part of the round-the-table fanmix challenge over at knightsinarmour. i’m really sorry two of the songs aren’t downloadable but i hope you like it anyway.

gwaine

+ turn cold (cut off your hands) when all is said and done, i must admit i’m still so young,
i’m still trying to find my feet, and workout which promises to keep.

+ my love (lykke li) solitude, i’m doing fine, i dance alone with my head high. oh solitude it’s all sublime to swing along, the choice is mine.

+ it's my own cheating heart that makes me cry (glasvegas) i tally up tonight's strangers and stragglers that i’ve kissed, training ground notches, perfectly executed notches and near misses. it’s all about going out and getting pissed with eagle eyes and sincerity bottom on my list.

gwaine/arthur

+ heavy in your arms (florence + the machine) i was a heavy heart to carry, my beloved was weighed down, my arms around his neck, my fingers laced to crown. {and is it worth the wait, all this killing time? are you strong enough to stand protecting both your heart and mine?}

gwaine/elyan

+ young blood (the naked and famous) {we’re only young and naive still, we require certain skills}
we lie beneath the stars at night, our hands gripping each other tight.
you keep my secrets hope to die, promises, swear them to the sky.

gwaine/lancelot

+ live in dreams (high highs) {i could ask you “are you dead like me?”} pretty face could you make the jump with me? i’m dying just to let things go
do you remember the lightning storm? it was the first time that i really felt you.

because our lips won’t last forever and that’s exactly why
i’d rather live in dreams and i’d rather die.

gwaine/leon

+ night drive (gotye) when you're feeling down i‘m comin’ round to pick you up and take you out.
it won't be long ‘till those blues are gone.

gwaine/percival

+ off to the races (lana del rey) my old man is a tough man but he’s got a soul as sweet as blood red jam and he shows me, he knows me, every inch of my tar black soul. he doesn’t mind i have a flat broke down life, in fact he says he thinks it’s what he might likes about me, admires me, the way i roll like a rolling stone.

gwaine/merlin

+ for emma (bon iver) with all your lies, you’re still very lovable.

gwaine/gwen

+ big jet plane (angus & Julia stone) she said “hello mister, please to meet ya.” i wanna hold her, i wanna kiss her. she smelled of daisies, smelled of daisies. she drive me crazy, drive me crazy.

download

resources

ain't love grand? | harry potter | draco/neville

beethemonster — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 02:36:57 GMT

title: ain't love grand?
pairing: draco/neville
rating: pg-13
summary: love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
words: 300
beta: girl-on-sunshine
disclaimer: no profit is being made; no copyright infringement is intended. harry potter belongs to jkrowling, the summary is by henry fielding.
author's notes: written for natt as part of the rarepair_shorts wishlist event. i used the prompt scandalous romance & i really wish this was longer!

“That poor boy is heading full speed in the wrong direction,” they whisper into teacups filled with camomile and gunpowder tea; “thinks he's in love with a Death Eater,” while dabbing their mouths with pristine white serviettes.

The thing is, it's all true.

Neville likes how Draco is moving over and inside and around him; likes the way he makes him shiver with want and lust and almost while they're waiting for the night to tear apart and show the sun again.

I love you, he never says aloud, hair that's not his own tickling his eyelids, and Draco answers him in bites and scratches.

It's all kind of perfect like this.

They don't go outside, not together. Draco avoids being stared at and Neville avoids angering Draco. They don't share any moonlit walks or French wine and waltzes, but it's still love, because they have low moans in the darkness and quiet curses kissed into their skin.

(Right?)

“You're boring me, Longbottom,” Draco says one night, too pale against the dark blankets twisted around his legs. And Neville tries, tries so hard to please become the better kiss, the hotter touch Draco is yearning for.

But he knows he'll never be enough, even with all traces of youth scrubbed off his body.

(He's Neville after all.)

It's two months later, with winter melting into spring, and Neville Longbottom and the Death Eater child are still deeply in love.

“That's old news, darling, haven't you heard about the Malfoy brat and the young Delacour yet? She's a Veela.” His buttermilk skin is all hers now; his razor sharp tongue and filthy noises aren't meant for Neville any more.

And the people try different brands of tea and families to talk about, they move on, .

(Neville doesn't.)

two ficlets | hunger games | peeta/gale | haymitch/peeta

beethemonster — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:31:30 GMT

title: this mute language they share
pairing: peeta/gale (past peeta/katniss)
rating: pg-13
prompt: you look so angry when you sleep
words: 446
beta: girl-on-sunshine
disclaimer: no profit is being made; no copyright infringement is intended. the hunger games belongs to suzanne collins, the title is by jean hegland.
author's notes: originally posted here.

this isn't the story of a boy who loves a girl any more

.

There once was a time when he needed to hear those noises she makes when he draws circles at the base of her spine, presses his chapped lips to hers and whispers caresses, aiming straight for her heart.

But they're not Peeta & Katniss any more, no Star-Crossed Lovers, no fake fake, and sometimes so real scenes only build for the cameras around them.

She, all scuffed knees and tangled hair, is his past now.

.

this is the story of a boy who loves another boy now

.

He watches his own pale pale fingers dancing across honey arms. They're soft, yet so strong, and it shouldn't even matter to him who's waist they circle at night, he knows that, but oh, it does.

He looks so angry when he sleeps. Maybe because they're hurting his best best friend, together, and don't ever want to stop. Maybe because the people around him die and die and die. Probably both.

“Why are you staring again?” Gale opening his eyes ever so slightly makes the breath catch in Peeta's throat. A mess of tangled feelings tries to flee from his heart, wants to take the path over his tongue and escape into real, said out loud words Gale isn't supposed to ever hear.
There aren't many words between them; Gale isn't one for talking. But there is this mute language they one day discovered they shared, the fluent and precise language of tongues.

Gales lips are a bright, brilliant flash of colour in the darkness of the room that's surrounding them. Peeta thinks about the perfect blush of him, how his sweat tastes, and the way his own stomach makes a weird kind of almost somersault just before he knows he is about to get kissed.

“Fuck knows why I bother with you.” Gale sits up, the sheets pool around his hips, and scratches at his chest. “Lie back.” And Peeta lets Gale fuck him into the mattress, his legs wrapped tight around his body.
He isn't sure if Gale loves him back or please please ever will, but he knows their story will continue – has to.

title: in the end, what's left?

pairing: haymitch/peeta
rating: pg-13
prompt: you are beautiful, but you don't mean a thing to me
words: 466
beta: girl-on-sunshine
disclaimer: no profit is being made; no copyright infringement is intended. the hunger games belongs to suzanne collins.
author's notes: originally posted here. set before the third quarter quell.

Peeta wakes with the morning sun. The buttermilk skin of his bare hip is peeking up from underneath the sea blue sheets. A thick, heavy arm is slung around his waist, sticky with cool, dried sweat.

I'm doing this for Katniss, he tells himself; he always does. He's here to keep her safe, his not really fiancé, see, not because he longs for these chapped lips to glide across his body, these rough hands to keep him in place and pin him to the mattress.

Staring at the marigold tapestry instead of the warm body he left in bed, he pulls on his clothes and tries to leave without another glance. He fails, of course, but that's nothing new.

He is already back when the day he spent with nothing and nothing but thinking of him loses it's usual fight against the creeping dusk of the night.

There's no how are you or how was your day, there never is, but it's okay. As long as he has the kisses and touches and what they do in the dark, it's okay.

Haymitch seems lost in drunken reverie. A cup of something dangles lopsided from his loose grip. Peeta combs one of his pale pale hands through his hair – like a claw – and keeps getting it caught in a thousand little knots.

“God, stop this already,” Haymitch suddenly snaps and pushes Peeta's hand aside. His large fingers close around smaller wrists. Peeta doesn't mind being pulled towards the bedroom, pushed into soft soft sheets and pretending it's all about Katniss, remember?

Though his pale grey eyes, cutting sharply through the darkness of sleeping nights and sometimes mornings white as diamonds, always leave a tiny space for maybe – maybe not.

Still.“Save her, save Katniss and let me die,” he begs, again and again, and stifles all answers with needy kisses he'd never admit to anybody else.

Haymitch is kneeling above him. There's no space between them, their hot bodies, and please please he even presses them closer together.

Peeta licks his wanting lips. His fingers itch with the desire to cling to Haymitch's skin, drown in his thick curls, something. “Do it for me” he whispers, and oh, he should have known better. There's suddenly so much air between them, too much, please.

Haymitch's laugh is hoarse with the anticipation of sex and the hungry kisses they just shared. “You are beautiful, boy, but you don't mean a thing to me, just so you know.”

It seems this really only is about Katniss in the end.

to sleep, perchance to dream | hunger games | haymitch/katniss

beethemonster — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:33:33 GMT

title: to sleep, perchance to dream
pairing: haymitch/katniss
rating: pg-13
prompt: but there's somethin' behind the whiskey whispers you speak that rocks me to sleep
words: 1023
beta: girl-on-sunshine
disclaimer: no profit is being made. no copyright infringement is intended. the title is by william shakespeare.
author's notes: originally posted here.

& this is how it starts

.

Tonight's the kind of night where she feels like crying the world a new lake. She really isn't one to waste tears but, see, her sister – dead. Her best friend – gone. Her lover – not real, not real, not even really here.

Morning is creeping closer and closer and the half moons underneath her eyes finally burn into her skin, intending to stay forever. The cold, ash-drenched air is driving through her hair like icy fingers. And no, no, she can't stand the maddening silence of the twilight hour.

A sudden “hey you, fleeing from your little baker?” echoes across the blank street where the empty houses of victors are lined up like pale pale pearls on a necklace. A silly grin splashing Haymitch's features lazily follows. Drunk again. But this is what she's used to. Haymitch. Haymitch is familiar, never changed.

She herself is already two gin and tonics into the evening, too, so she slaps on a cheery smile and lies right into his face. “You know me, I don't run away.”

“Ple-ase,” he slurs and when he leaves, waving his hand in a way that really tells her nothing, she still knows she's meant to follow. The gusting wind doesn't leave them alone until the lock of his front door finally clicks shut.

“Drink that, sweetheart.” He holds out an old, dirty looking mug with something that smells suspiciously high-proofed. Perfect.

A soft sip sip fills the room, next to Haymitch's heavy breathing. It's peaceful, almost, but not quite. And when she sets the stained mug aside, an almost whiny “doesn't help. Please, Haymitch, I need something” escapes her tongue.

There is a brief flash of want in his eyes and she can't help but act on it. In a short short second her fingers are caught on his belt, dragging him close.

She litters kisses up his neck to the pink shell of his ear, one hand in his messy black hair and the other tracing the bumps of his spine. And he wants it, too, she can see it in the deepening blush riding his cheeks.

He pulls them flush together, as if trying to crawl into her, into a safer place. He needs this just as much as she does. And with that thought, she feels startlingly fragile and vulnerable beneath him in a twinkling of an eye.

But she is Katniss, right, so in a fit of pique, she bites down on one of his ruby lips, feels it throb beneath her teeth. And for a moment, it's only them in this grey scale world.

.

& this is how he makes her forget

.

Three nights later, half past eleven, she takes the steps to his house again, two at a time, even though she feels like death itself. She doesn't bother with closed doors or knocking. She's so full of shit, she doesn't really know what she's doing any more at all. But it's not like she's in love with him now. (This is no romantic tale of love and loss.) It's just a solution like any other to not go mad after all.

When she spots him, his hair is still damp from showering, and stray curls cling to his ears.

“I need you,” she whispers, but it's okay. She knows she isn't the brave one in this story. And she feels a need like an animal's for him and his body and the way he can make her feel just by being close. “Don't make me tell you twice.”

She clings to him, his broad shoulders, large forearms, thick thighs. She can't let him go and the thought of him gliding away, right through her fingers, chews at her nerves and leaves her itchy and irritated.

Don't go don't go, please, don't go. She could never say it out loud. Then again, there's no need to spell it out.

Afterwards, he stinks of sex and sweat and whiskey. But it's good; the smell of being save and forgetting and sleep, please please please, she just needs to sleep again.

.

& this is how they're told to stop

.

It was an open secret between them. Until now. Until Peeta decided he was here enough to actually care.

“You can't do this! Katniss, please” He's pacing around the room, growling like a caged animal. He, god Peeta, is so in love with her.

“No?” It makes her sick, how his eyes glaze over with hurt instead of some far away place. “Watch me!”

Dusk settles around the District when she stomps out the door. Peeta isn't what she wants, what she needs so badly, not any more.

Her hands are clumsy on the buttons of Haymitch's shirt that night but she knows this is right so never think about him, just don't.

There's nothing left of the Star-Crossed Lovers, it seems.

.

& this is how they never stop

.

Between midnight and dawn, she kisses up his thigh again. The faint tang of sweat is lingering in the air, growing heavier and thicker with each press of lips to skin. Her mind screams Haymitch over and over again, like a prayer, perhaps, but that's also one of those things she can't say.

When she straddles his lap, she licks his red, gasping mouth; covers his lopsided grin with her own version of lust-drunken smiling.

She wants happiness, or to feel as close as one can in this fucked up world. You can't blame her for that.

Their legs are a tangled mess; their skin is cool with dried sweat. “You can sleep now,” he whispers in his drunken oh so Haymitch voice, and it shouldn't be like that, but she closes her eyes then, and drifts off into pitch-dark nothingness.

please respect the roses [masterlist]

beethemonster — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:58:01 GMT

now i am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern; frank o'hara

chicago fire;

the brightest light (is the first to go); mix; casey + severide (+ darden)

harry potter;

dark blue december nights; fic; lily/teddy; in which teddy fears to not be able to breathe with all this longing filling his lungs; rating: pg-13; words: 1365

ain't love grand?; fic; draco/neville; love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea; rating: pg-13; words: 300

the hunger games;

seashells and ocean green eyes; fic; annie/finnick; this is about a boy and a girl, so it's a love story, even though she's crazy and he's a murderer; rating: pg-13; words: 1995

to sleep, perchance to dream; fic; haymitch/katniss; but there's somethin' behind the whiskey whispers you speak that rocks me to sleep; rating: pg-13; words: 1023

this mute language they share; fic; peeta/gale; you look so angry when you sleep; rating: pg-13; words: 446

don't kiss trainwrecks. don't kiss knives. don't kiss.; fic; peeta/gale; gale doesn’t do love. here’s why; rating: pg-13; words: 604

you and me and the moon; fic; peeta/gale; it's nothing but a one-time thing spiralled out of control; pg-13; words: 484

in the end, what's left?; fic; haymitch/peeta; you are beautiful, but you don't mean a thing to me; rating: pg-13; words: 466

merlin;

i'll see you when i fall asleep; fic; merlin/morgana; her life is a play and she already knows how it will end; rating: pg-13; words: 168

my attitude is always i and me and mine; mix; gwaine centred

on the road;

the sound of love is out of tune; mix; dean/sal

crossover;

a thousand years in perfect symmetry; fic; band of brothers, the pacific, generation kill; snafu/sledge; the illness in his heart cannot be healed by love alone. (in which snafu chips away sledge’s shell of insecurity and naiveté, and sledge shows him how to care in return.); pg-13; words: 10930