starphotographs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
starphotographs) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2016-07-16 02:01 am
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2016-07-16 02:01 am
Meme Party 1, Olympic Gold 13
Name: starphotographs
Story: Universe B
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Pentathtlon), Seed Beads, Novelty Beads (“fire”), Glitter (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/thought-poem-victor-martinez-undelivered), Yarn (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160715.html), Glue (Jul 15th)
Characters: Barclay, others mentioned.
Colors: Meme party 1 (Forever Alone), Olympic Gold 13 (trial)
Word Count: 1,500ish
Rating: PG (Probably? I’ll change it if someone spots an F-bomb.)
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Barclay isn’t always sure who he is.
Note: I want to say this counts as Seed Beads, but I write ensemble casts and that feels odd! But I guess Barry here isn’t really part of the main clique.
An I for an I
“...And, that’s the last of it! You gonna be okay for the night? Need anything else?”
Zach takes the tube out of my arm, pats me on the shoulder, and starts cleaning up. He always asks me these things, even though, by now, he knows how this goes. Because this is part of how it goes.
Am I gonna be okay?
How would I know?
“Get me a glass of water.”
What do I need?
My head is heating up too fast. I lean it against the cold, black wall, close my eyes. There’s an image of a lightbulb burned in to my unguarded retina. My eyelids glow a meaty red. Zach ducks into the bathroom, returns with the glass, and sits it on the nightstand.
“That all?”
Is it?
“Turn on the TV.”
He turns on the TV. Some show where antiquers get in arguments. I don’t know if it’s what I needed, but it can stay.
He can stay.
“Anything else, boss?”
It’s already too much. I picture my body fortifying its parameters, blood going hard and hot in my veins. In a day or three, I won’t feel it. I’ll be just like everyone else, as far as everyone knows.
“Maybe just sit with me until I get to sleep.”
He knows how it is That we won’t talk about it later.
That I wish he could be part of everyone.
That I can barely look him in the eye.
*****
Kelsey knew me back when I wasn’t okay, so she can’t see me like this. Zach only met me a few years ago, so he can. They’re my two most trusted executives, each holding half of the formula, riding in different planes.
So they can’t put the whole thing together behind my back and expose me. So they can’t go down together.
I shouldn’t have to worry. Not because I should trust them, and I know I should.
(And I do.)
No, I shouldn’t have to worry, because I have all they have and more, and I still can’t put it all together.
*****
It wouldn’t look that way if you knew the story, but I dove into life head-first. I say this because my head was all I had to work with for a very long time. My body wouldn’t cooperate, so I forgot it and let it drag behind me. I decided I didn’t need it for anything, anyway. All the important stuff was in good working order, or at least that’s how it felt at the time.
I don’t really remember where I came from, so I guess that doesn’t matter. My mother was there because she was afraid of something. They all were, but I can’t say of what. I had an older sister. My eyes and spleen were trashed before I left the womb. It doesn’t feel like much more than another theoretical life I could have lived, another me that could have been different.
(He had to have been. This can’t be everything I came out with.)
*****
The start of my real life was mostly alright, even though I wasn’t. I was sleepy and isolated and almost constantly feverish, but I never wanted for stimulation. The house was full of books and games and televisions. My fathers let me speak with them about serious things, and my only friend didn’t speak at all, so I learned to speak like an adult.
In the squeaky-clean vault of my childhood home, I compiled myself out of what little I could get my hands on. I made something out of nothing. I bided my time.
Eventually, I was almost okay. It didn’t occur to me until then that I might have missed something, but I couldn’t say what that something was.
All I knew was that I was thirteen going on forty, and no one was sure how to respond to me. I wasn’t sure how to respond to anything else. I was removed from everything, too serious, disembodied.
But, there’s nothing about me that suggests I could have turned out any different.
*****
I don’t trust okay as far as I can throw it.
It’s the medication. It’s a string of flukes. I wash my hands a lot. I still don’t go out as much as most people.
I only look okay. I’m even fooling myself.
As much as I’ve tested it, I still haven’t proven myself right, and that isn’t good enough. I’m okay enough to live a normal life. I pull all-nighters. I’m not incubating an infection in every crevice of my body. I can stand in a crowd and not pick up the plague.
But, maybe I’m standing on an edge without even knowing it. Maybe I need to tip myself in every direction. Just to check.
Most days, I go down to my complex’s gym and run. It’s fun in and of itself. I like that I’m able to do it. Normally, I leave it at that.
Other days, I run until I forget where I am. Because, if I wasn’t okay, something bad would happen. But I don’t get anything but sweaty, and don’t wake up anything but sore. Sometimes, I use the pool instead. I keep going until, even if I’m just fine in the water, the gravity knocks me for six on land.
The metaphor isn’t lost on me.
It used to be a lot worse. There was a time when risky behavior was like breathing to me. I’d snap back to reality and find myself doing something incredibly stupid, the way some people wake up eating in the middle of the night.
Which is preferable to coming around and realizing you’ve almost set yourself on fire.
*****
When I was nineteen, I made a friend with strep throat spit in my mouth.
The results were pretty predictable. But would have, I realized, lying awake in the middle of the night, putting off swallowing a mouthful of spit, happened to anyone else under the circumstances.
It’s just that I was the only person I knew who would end up in those circumstances in the first place.
What did it matter if I wasn’t sick anymore? I was catastrophically fucked-up.
I wasn’t okay.
*****
Shiloh and I didn’t properly meet until we were already grown.
The sister I only knew of in theory, made real, standing next to me in a suit, talking like she’s perpetually ready to bite someone’s head off. The sickly baby brother, rescued when she wasn’t, now a full head taller than her, tattoos and tinted glasses, unsmiling.
We’ve lead very different lives.
We’re so much alike.
I look at her and think grim severity must run in our genes. I can’t picture either of us as children, real children. We’re not missing anything. This is what we came out with.
But then I watch how easy she is in conversation, her no-nonsense voice weaving gracefully through dry jokes and brutal cutdowns. I’m not like that. I say what it takes to get back to work, and little else.
She was obviously present for some lesson I missed.
Then again, we’re different people. She’s my sister, not my double, and I’ll find no answers in her.
*****
My friend Kelsey thinks people are who they are, that our lives are just different roads to the same place. In her mind, it’s obvious. They did everything in their power to make her talk, and she doesn’t talk. They tried to make her sit still, and look at people, and not like things quite so much, and she came through it intact. Nothing was taken from her. Nothing was taken from us.
We don’t talk much about how things were for me, but one of the few times she did, she pointed out how it speaks volumes; that I adapted as well as I did. That being sick sucks, but maybe it let me sit out a game I never could have played and won.
Hell, she probably has a point. I don’t mourn any missed opportunities. I have a sneaking suspicion that I would have grown up reading in my room either way.
I just wonder if, given more options, I might have turned out a different person. And that, unable to determine this, I might never know who I am.
Am I what I’m supposed to be?
Am I whole?
*****
Am I fooling everyone?
Am I okay now?
I’ll never know.
I probably don’t need to.
In a few days, I’ll sweat this out and get back to my life. Whether or not it’s what I was really meant for. Whether it’s a fair reward for a hard job well done, or all I was left after so much was taken away, or just some life like any other.
Whatever it is, it’s mine.
Because I am, as ever, making something out of nothing.
And if those days really did make me, what is being made of me now?
When I get there, how will I know?
Story: Universe B
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Pentathtlon), Seed Beads, Novelty Beads (“fire”), Glitter (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/thought-poem-victor-martinez-undelivered), Yarn (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160715.html), Glue (Jul 15th)
Characters: Barclay, others mentioned.
Colors: Meme party 1 (Forever Alone), Olympic Gold 13 (trial)
Word Count: 1,500ish
Rating: PG (Probably? I’ll change it if someone spots an F-bomb.)
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Barclay isn’t always sure who he is.
Note: I want to say this counts as Seed Beads, but I write ensemble casts and that feels odd! But I guess Barry here isn’t really part of the main clique.
“...And, that’s the last of it! You gonna be okay for the night? Need anything else?”
Zach takes the tube out of my arm, pats me on the shoulder, and starts cleaning up. He always asks me these things, even though, by now, he knows how this goes. Because this is part of how it goes.
Am I gonna be okay?
How would I know?
“Get me a glass of water.”
What do I need?
My head is heating up too fast. I lean it against the cold, black wall, close my eyes. There’s an image of a lightbulb burned in to my unguarded retina. My eyelids glow a meaty red. Zach ducks into the bathroom, returns with the glass, and sits it on the nightstand.
“That all?”
Is it?
“Turn on the TV.”
He turns on the TV. Some show where antiquers get in arguments. I don’t know if it’s what I needed, but it can stay.
He can stay.
“Anything else, boss?”
It’s already too much. I picture my body fortifying its parameters, blood going hard and hot in my veins. In a day or three, I won’t feel it. I’ll be just like everyone else, as far as everyone knows.
“Maybe just sit with me until I get to sleep.”
He knows how it is That we won’t talk about it later.
That I wish he could be part of everyone.
That I can barely look him in the eye.
Kelsey knew me back when I wasn’t okay, so she can’t see me like this. Zach only met me a few years ago, so he can. They’re my two most trusted executives, each holding half of the formula, riding in different planes.
So they can’t put the whole thing together behind my back and expose me. So they can’t go down together.
I shouldn’t have to worry. Not because I should trust them, and I know I should.
(And I do.)
No, I shouldn’t have to worry, because I have all they have and more, and I still can’t put it all together.
It wouldn’t look that way if you knew the story, but I dove into life head-first. I say this because my head was all I had to work with for a very long time. My body wouldn’t cooperate, so I forgot it and let it drag behind me. I decided I didn’t need it for anything, anyway. All the important stuff was in good working order, or at least that’s how it felt at the time.
I don’t really remember where I came from, so I guess that doesn’t matter. My mother was there because she was afraid of something. They all were, but I can’t say of what. I had an older sister. My eyes and spleen were trashed before I left the womb. It doesn’t feel like much more than another theoretical life I could have lived, another me that could have been different.
(He had to have been. This can’t be everything I came out with.)
The start of my real life was mostly alright, even though I wasn’t. I was sleepy and isolated and almost constantly feverish, but I never wanted for stimulation. The house was full of books and games and televisions. My fathers let me speak with them about serious things, and my only friend didn’t speak at all, so I learned to speak like an adult.
In the squeaky-clean vault of my childhood home, I compiled myself out of what little I could get my hands on. I made something out of nothing. I bided my time.
Eventually, I was almost okay. It didn’t occur to me until then that I might have missed something, but I couldn’t say what that something was.
All I knew was that I was thirteen going on forty, and no one was sure how to respond to me. I wasn’t sure how to respond to anything else. I was removed from everything, too serious, disembodied.
But, there’s nothing about me that suggests I could have turned out any different.
I don’t trust okay as far as I can throw it.
It’s the medication. It’s a string of flukes. I wash my hands a lot. I still don’t go out as much as most people.
I only look okay. I’m even fooling myself.
As much as I’ve tested it, I still haven’t proven myself right, and that isn’t good enough. I’m okay enough to live a normal life. I pull all-nighters. I’m not incubating an infection in every crevice of my body. I can stand in a crowd and not pick up the plague.
But, maybe I’m standing on an edge without even knowing it. Maybe I need to tip myself in every direction. Just to check.
Most days, I go down to my complex’s gym and run. It’s fun in and of itself. I like that I’m able to do it. Normally, I leave it at that.
Other days, I run until I forget where I am. Because, if I wasn’t okay, something bad would happen. But I don’t get anything but sweaty, and don’t wake up anything but sore. Sometimes, I use the pool instead. I keep going until, even if I’m just fine in the water, the gravity knocks me for six on land.
The metaphor isn’t lost on me.
It used to be a lot worse. There was a time when risky behavior was like breathing to me. I’d snap back to reality and find myself doing something incredibly stupid, the way some people wake up eating in the middle of the night.
Which is preferable to coming around and realizing you’ve almost set yourself on fire.
When I was nineteen, I made a friend with strep throat spit in my mouth.
The results were pretty predictable. But would have, I realized, lying awake in the middle of the night, putting off swallowing a mouthful of spit, happened to anyone else under the circumstances.
It’s just that I was the only person I knew who would end up in those circumstances in the first place.
What did it matter if I wasn’t sick anymore? I was catastrophically fucked-up.
I wasn’t okay.
Shiloh and I didn’t properly meet until we were already grown.
The sister I only knew of in theory, made real, standing next to me in a suit, talking like she’s perpetually ready to bite someone’s head off. The sickly baby brother, rescued when she wasn’t, now a full head taller than her, tattoos and tinted glasses, unsmiling.
We’ve lead very different lives.
We’re so much alike.
I look at her and think grim severity must run in our genes. I can’t picture either of us as children, real children. We’re not missing anything. This is what we came out with.
But then I watch how easy she is in conversation, her no-nonsense voice weaving gracefully through dry jokes and brutal cutdowns. I’m not like that. I say what it takes to get back to work, and little else.
She was obviously present for some lesson I missed.
Then again, we’re different people. She’s my sister, not my double, and I’ll find no answers in her.
My friend Kelsey thinks people are who they are, that our lives are just different roads to the same place. In her mind, it’s obvious. They did everything in their power to make her talk, and she doesn’t talk. They tried to make her sit still, and look at people, and not like things quite so much, and she came through it intact. Nothing was taken from her. Nothing was taken from us.
We don’t talk much about how things were for me, but one of the few times she did, she pointed out how it speaks volumes; that I adapted as well as I did. That being sick sucks, but maybe it let me sit out a game I never could have played and won.
Hell, she probably has a point. I don’t mourn any missed opportunities. I have a sneaking suspicion that I would have grown up reading in my room either way.
I just wonder if, given more options, I might have turned out a different person. And that, unable to determine this, I might never know who I am.
Am I what I’m supposed to be?
Am I whole?
Am I fooling everyone?
Am I okay now?
I’ll never know.
I probably don’t need to.
In a few days, I’ll sweat this out and get back to my life. Whether or not it’s what I was really meant for. Whether it’s a fair reward for a hard job well done, or all I was left after so much was taken away, or just some life like any other.
Whatever it is, it’s mine.
Because I am, as ever, making something out of nothing.
And if those days really did make me, what is being made of me now?
When I get there, how will I know?
no subject
oh my gooooood this this this this this I know this feeling SO HARD. I mean, the whole story is really well done, but that's the bit that really struck a chord with me.
no subject