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numb3rsflashficTitle: Dying is Strange and Hard
Author: NV
Pairing: Don/Charlie
Rating: MA/FRAO/NC-17/what-have-you (due to my naughty language and adult themes)
Prompt: #7 Flowers for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
30_deathfics, #17 Song Title for numb3rsflashfic (ooh, I'm sneaky)
Warning: Nonconsensual sex and incest
Spoilers: Second 2 finale
Disclaimer: I'm not nearly as creative as Heuton and Falacci, who own all the characters and canon. I am simply their bitch.
Summary: Don has a breakdown following his mother's funeral.
A/N: Posting late to this challenge, my apologies. Song is "Dying is Strange and Hard" by mewithoutYou. I am posting the complete fic here, as the rules would indicate, but it would be sincerely appreciated if you would post your comments to the version on my personal LJ, if for no other reason than easy maintenance of responses and in the event that I make any edits (because, as most of you know, I rarely do anything sober, so there are a lot of edits I end up making post-posting).
He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to breathe again.
The flowers were a silvery-purple – Mom’s favorite color. She used to wear glittery brooches in that color – little birds and buds and ballerinas – to the PTA meetings, the synagogue, and a time, too long ago for him to remember, save for the photographs, when she had given a few rare piano lessons. The brooches were never worn in court, too gauche, but he had thought them pretty, and Charlie had always been amazed by the reflections of light and patterns cast on the walls – probably calculating fractals or some other shit that Don would never understand, the little bastard. Charlie, whom Mom would hold so tight in her arms. Charlie, whom Mom made sure got all the attention his genius brain required. Charlie, whom Mom followed out East, leaving Don to himself and Dad. Charlie, the fucking prince.
Don throws back another long swallow of bourbon. He savors the sharp, smoky, biting taste, lets it burn down his throat and settle into lead in his stomach, a clinging memory of fire in his chest, hoping that choking down enough alcohol will help him to choke down this feeling. What is this feeling? Heartbreak? No, heartbreak was when Jennifer broke up with him sophomore year, and he had laid in bed, listening to The Smiths for three weeks, until the guys from the baseball team told him to stop being a ‘tard and get ready for the season. Loss? No, loss was when Jake died from alcohol poisoning after the Academy graduation, and some fucker played Nirvana’s cover of “The Man Who Sold the World” at his funeral. Three goddamn times in a row. Don wasn’t sure what to think; someone he knew, with whom he shared a room, who he thought was going to be his partner out in the field, had died, and it hadn’t been from a massive shoot-out or major bombing like they had figured, worse case scenario, it would be. Hell, they were so sure that they’d die from old age. They’d be the best sons of bitches out there, capturing the bad guys, scaring the shit out of suspects in interrogation, being big goddamn heroes every day of their lives, and they’d be the most highly-decorated agents, retiring with enough accolades to score them a Presidency if they were so inclined, in which neither of them were interested, and then dying in bed one night next to the wife, x-number of children, and x-squared (at least) grandchildren. Instead, Jake died just after being officially made an agent. And they had played fucking Nirvana three times in a row at the funeral.
But that wasn’t anything like this.
No, this is death. Slow, agonizing death. Whether it comes five hours from now or fifteen years, Don can’t speculate. He just knows that this thing with its vice-grip on him is going to kill him.
He takes short, shallow breaths. It’s the best he can manage. It’s the best he’s been able to manage for the last three days. Now breathing is just shorter, quicker, more futile.
He’s not nearly ambitious enough to take on that Alcoholics Anonymous slogan of “One Day at a Time.” Taking things a day at a time would be far too much; he takes it in quarter-hours. Another fifteen minutes, he tells himself. A mouthful from his tumbler, forced down, and then he watches until the hands on the clock make 180-degrees or 90-degrees. That was the only shit he had been able to take away from math class. Rough calculations of degrees, 60,000 divided by 12 is 5000 before taxes, five boxes of frozen burritos at 15% off is… oh, fuck it – he can afford it – just pay the goddamn bill. Meanwhile, Charlie’s out in the garage, trying to solve some unsolvable mathematical mystery, arrogant fucker.
A part of him thinks that he should stop trying to pace himself, stop counting the clock, just take glass after glass so that he can pass out within the next two hours and continue the behavior when he wakes up, continue the inebriation until this whole nightmare can’t be amounted to anything more than a series of delusions, and, by the time he snaps out of it, everything will be too distant and vague to evoke anything other than an itchy nearly-numb recognition of an amputee’s tingling where the limb should be.
Fuck it; he takes another shot.
The living room clears out eventually. Dad ushers everyone away, trying so hard to keep it together. Trying so goddamn hard that it’s almost pathetic, Don thinks. What kind of man can’t cry when his wife dies? He sips back more, takes a deep breath – sharp pain in his lungs – and focuses on the cover of a magazine, focuses on the grain pattern in the fireplace mantel, focuses on the texture of the ceiling. His tears recede from the front of his eyes to… wherever the hell tears go when you rope them back in. Charlie would probably know. Charlie would give some kind of long, drawn out, complicated answer, too complicated for a normal person to understand; he’d probably know how complicated the answer was and the fact that no one would understand it, and he’d keep going with it just to be a self-righteous shit, probably feeling so fucking wonderful that he gets it and regular people don’t. Would probably use the biggest multi-syllabic words he can think of, just to be a bitch about it.
Don takes another shot.
Dad’s gone with some of his friends, and Don sits alone in the living room, alone in the house. He closes his eyes, feeling a euphoric dizziness whirl around him, toes to head, until he starts swaying to music that only he can hear. What song is it? What movie is this score from? The sudden, nagging need to know the faint melody in his mind becomes all-consuming. He tries to swallow the lump in his throat. Things feel… distant yet searing, an itch that can’t be scratched, a memory that can’t be pulled from scrapbooks, a line from a book from a library in a grade that he can’t completely recall.
On wobbly legs, he stands. Maybe just go to bed. Go crash up in his old room.
But then he hears the movement out the garage, the tick-tack sound of chalk against a whiteboard, the faintest sound of rustling papers. The sound of Charlie, too good to show his face at his own mother’s funeral. Charlie, too good to show for more than ten minutes at a time at the hospital in the last days. Charlie, too good to be around for the last year, his mom’s last months on earth. Charlie, too wrapped up in his fucking numbers to give a damn about anyone else, even his dying mother. Charlie, taking his mother away from Don. Charlie, whom Don had to defend at school every day. Charlie, who made Don always second-place to his parents. Charlie, who should have never been born.
Don throws open the door to the garage, walks quickly, thinks he hears stomping, feels curls in one fist and a sharp hipbone in the other, pushes until the front of those gripped hips hits something hard – a table. The body bends forward, fingers dig roughly for the button on a pair of jeans, denim and the elastic of cotton are pulled down to bony knees. His own hands on his zipper, hands on his cock, precum smeared across his length, head pressed to tight, puckered velvet. Pushing forward, something that vaguely registers as a scream, a lingering question.
Burning heat, painful grip on him. Left hand’s fingers digging into flesh, right hand keeping balance on a lacquered – plastic? – tabletop. His hips meeting soft skin. Tightness in his balls, shouts ringing in his ears. Flashes of birthday parties, baseball games, first fucks, watching a car drive away, and the skeleton of his mother barely covered by a translucent film of flesh spark behind the black-lit back of his eyes. Harder, faster, deeper. Just trying to get there, thrusts compensating for every last thing he wished he could have said. White blurs the edges of rewinds of family videos captured on VHS. An explosion, a shuddering release of pain and fear and loss and absolute desperate need, never to be sated again.
He thinks it’s eight o’ clock in the morning when his cell phone rings on the bedside table. He reaches for it, the path familiar from all those years waking up in this bed, this room, fumbling for an alarm clock.
“I’m on leave, asshole,” he slurs after flipping open the phone, voice like broken glass. It’s only a few moments after he’s ended the call that he realizes it was his boss’s number on the caller ID.
He looks up and sees Charlie in the doorway, holding what looks like a mug of coffee.
“Don’t you ever knock?” he spits, turning away from his brother.
The door closes, and he hears the footsteps getting fainter down the hallway, the slightest hint of a sob.
Author: NV
Pairing: Don/Charlie
Rating: MA/FRAO/NC-17/what-have-you (due to my naughty language and adult themes)
Prompt: #7 Flowers for
30_deathfics, #17 Song Title for numb3rsflashfic (ooh, I'm sneaky)Warning: Nonconsensual sex and incest
Spoilers: Second 2 finale
Disclaimer: I'm not nearly as creative as Heuton and Falacci, who own all the characters and canon. I am simply their bitch.
Summary: Don has a breakdown following his mother's funeral.
A/N: Posting late to this challenge, my apologies. Song is "Dying is Strange and Hard" by mewithoutYou. I am posting the complete fic here, as the rules would indicate, but it would be sincerely appreciated if you would post your comments to the version on my personal LJ, if for no other reason than easy maintenance of responses and in the event that I make any edits (because, as most of you know, I rarely do anything sober, so there are a lot of edits I end up making post-posting).
He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to breathe again.
The flowers were a silvery-purple – Mom’s favorite color. She used to wear glittery brooches in that color – little birds and buds and ballerinas – to the PTA meetings, the synagogue, and a time, too long ago for him to remember, save for the photographs, when she had given a few rare piano lessons. The brooches were never worn in court, too gauche, but he had thought them pretty, and Charlie had always been amazed by the reflections of light and patterns cast on the walls – probably calculating fractals or some other shit that Don would never understand, the little bastard. Charlie, whom Mom would hold so tight in her arms. Charlie, whom Mom made sure got all the attention his genius brain required. Charlie, whom Mom followed out East, leaving Don to himself and Dad. Charlie, the fucking prince.
Don throws back another long swallow of bourbon. He savors the sharp, smoky, biting taste, lets it burn down his throat and settle into lead in his stomach, a clinging memory of fire in his chest, hoping that choking down enough alcohol will help him to choke down this feeling. What is this feeling? Heartbreak? No, heartbreak was when Jennifer broke up with him sophomore year, and he had laid in bed, listening to The Smiths for three weeks, until the guys from the baseball team told him to stop being a ‘tard and get ready for the season. Loss? No, loss was when Jake died from alcohol poisoning after the Academy graduation, and some fucker played Nirvana’s cover of “The Man Who Sold the World” at his funeral. Three goddamn times in a row. Don wasn’t sure what to think; someone he knew, with whom he shared a room, who he thought was going to be his partner out in the field, had died, and it hadn’t been from a massive shoot-out or major bombing like they had figured, worse case scenario, it would be. Hell, they were so sure that they’d die from old age. They’d be the best sons of bitches out there, capturing the bad guys, scaring the shit out of suspects in interrogation, being big goddamn heroes every day of their lives, and they’d be the most highly-decorated agents, retiring with enough accolades to score them a Presidency if they were so inclined, in which neither of them were interested, and then dying in bed one night next to the wife, x-number of children, and x-squared (at least) grandchildren. Instead, Jake died just after being officially made an agent. And they had played fucking Nirvana three times in a row at the funeral.
But that wasn’t anything like this.
No, this is death. Slow, agonizing death. Whether it comes five hours from now or fifteen years, Don can’t speculate. He just knows that this thing with its vice-grip on him is going to kill him.
He takes short, shallow breaths. It’s the best he can manage. It’s the best he’s been able to manage for the last three days. Now breathing is just shorter, quicker, more futile.
He’s not nearly ambitious enough to take on that Alcoholics Anonymous slogan of “One Day at a Time.” Taking things a day at a time would be far too much; he takes it in quarter-hours. Another fifteen minutes, he tells himself. A mouthful from his tumbler, forced down, and then he watches until the hands on the clock make 180-degrees or 90-degrees. That was the only shit he had been able to take away from math class. Rough calculations of degrees, 60,000 divided by 12 is 5000 before taxes, five boxes of frozen burritos at 15% off is… oh, fuck it – he can afford it – just pay the goddamn bill. Meanwhile, Charlie’s out in the garage, trying to solve some unsolvable mathematical mystery, arrogant fucker.
A part of him thinks that he should stop trying to pace himself, stop counting the clock, just take glass after glass so that he can pass out within the next two hours and continue the behavior when he wakes up, continue the inebriation until this whole nightmare can’t be amounted to anything more than a series of delusions, and, by the time he snaps out of it, everything will be too distant and vague to evoke anything other than an itchy nearly-numb recognition of an amputee’s tingling where the limb should be.
Fuck it; he takes another shot.
The living room clears out eventually. Dad ushers everyone away, trying so hard to keep it together. Trying so goddamn hard that it’s almost pathetic, Don thinks. What kind of man can’t cry when his wife dies? He sips back more, takes a deep breath – sharp pain in his lungs – and focuses on the cover of a magazine, focuses on the grain pattern in the fireplace mantel, focuses on the texture of the ceiling. His tears recede from the front of his eyes to… wherever the hell tears go when you rope them back in. Charlie would probably know. Charlie would give some kind of long, drawn out, complicated answer, too complicated for a normal person to understand; he’d probably know how complicated the answer was and the fact that no one would understand it, and he’d keep going with it just to be a self-righteous shit, probably feeling so fucking wonderful that he gets it and regular people don’t. Would probably use the biggest multi-syllabic words he can think of, just to be a bitch about it.
Don takes another shot.
Dad’s gone with some of his friends, and Don sits alone in the living room, alone in the house. He closes his eyes, feeling a euphoric dizziness whirl around him, toes to head, until he starts swaying to music that only he can hear. What song is it? What movie is this score from? The sudden, nagging need to know the faint melody in his mind becomes all-consuming. He tries to swallow the lump in his throat. Things feel… distant yet searing, an itch that can’t be scratched, a memory that can’t be pulled from scrapbooks, a line from a book from a library in a grade that he can’t completely recall.
On wobbly legs, he stands. Maybe just go to bed. Go crash up in his old room.
But then he hears the movement out the garage, the tick-tack sound of chalk against a whiteboard, the faintest sound of rustling papers. The sound of Charlie, too good to show his face at his own mother’s funeral. Charlie, too good to show for more than ten minutes at a time at the hospital in the last days. Charlie, too good to be around for the last year, his mom’s last months on earth. Charlie, too wrapped up in his fucking numbers to give a damn about anyone else, even his dying mother. Charlie, taking his mother away from Don. Charlie, whom Don had to defend at school every day. Charlie, who made Don always second-place to his parents. Charlie, who should have never been born.
Don throws open the door to the garage, walks quickly, thinks he hears stomping, feels curls in one fist and a sharp hipbone in the other, pushes until the front of those gripped hips hits something hard – a table. The body bends forward, fingers dig roughly for the button on a pair of jeans, denim and the elastic of cotton are pulled down to bony knees. His own hands on his zipper, hands on his cock, precum smeared across his length, head pressed to tight, puckered velvet. Pushing forward, something that vaguely registers as a scream, a lingering question.
Burning heat, painful grip on him. Left hand’s fingers digging into flesh, right hand keeping balance on a lacquered – plastic? – tabletop. His hips meeting soft skin. Tightness in his balls, shouts ringing in his ears. Flashes of birthday parties, baseball games, first fucks, watching a car drive away, and the skeleton of his mother barely covered by a translucent film of flesh spark behind the black-lit back of his eyes. Harder, faster, deeper. Just trying to get there, thrusts compensating for every last thing he wished he could have said. White blurs the edges of rewinds of family videos captured on VHS. An explosion, a shuddering release of pain and fear and loss and absolute desperate need, never to be sated again.
He thinks it’s eight o’ clock in the morning when his cell phone rings on the bedside table. He reaches for it, the path familiar from all those years waking up in this bed, this room, fumbling for an alarm clock.
“I’m on leave, asshole,” he slurs after flipping open the phone, voice like broken glass. It’s only a few moments after he’s ended the call that he realizes it was his boss’s number on the caller ID.
He looks up and sees Charlie in the doorway, holding what looks like a mug of coffee.
“Don’t you ever knock?” he spits, turning away from his brother.
The door closes, and he hears the footsteps getting fainter down the hallway, the slightest hint of a sob.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-24 12:30 pm (UTC)I just wanted to say, don't apologize! Late entries are always welcome. *g*
no subject
Date: 2006-07-24 01:11 pm (UTC)I can't really describe how this makes me feel. Sad, angry, and confused don't even begin to cover it. I can't imagine how Don and Charlie must feel....
Wonderful!
Thanks...
no subject
Date: 2006-07-24 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-24 04:51 pm (UTC)It sure did get to me. I read it almost 4 hours ago and it just keeps knocking at my brain, it won't let me go....