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tamingthemuse2009-11-07 02:48 am
wordwhacker.livejournal.com) wrote in tamingthemuse2009-11-07 02:48 am
Entry tags:
Prompt #172 - Irenic - Impasse - Cass (wordwhacker) - original fiction
Title: Impasse
Fandom: Original
Prompt: #172 - Irenic
Word Count: 631
Rating: G
It is up to me, I suppose, to once again make the peace between us; because you cannot see me, meet me, or grasp the side of the conversation that I have argued over and over. And it isn't your fault alone, of course; the rest of the world, the western world at least, is in agreement with you. I am standing alone facing a crowd of millions, a tide of thought and desire and order, and - for you - love.
The light is dim in the kitchen; we have been up all night talking - I will not say 'arguing' because it is not so forceful as that, though the depth and the brewing discomfort are the same. I am weak and woozy and in need of sleep and food, two things I can't conceive of consuming at this moment. Tremors move through me, originating from some deep pit in my stomach and wracking out, coiling down the lengths of my fingers, sending hot tendrils into my brain through the stem. I have a strange emotional anatomy, and I am glad at times like this that I do not understand the physical processes that I undergo in times of stress. It would be less personal, less mystical. I do not so much mind that I have no control over it.
You are sitting back in the small kitchen chair, and while I am feverishly thinking of anatomy I imagine the curve of your spine in that position, the fitting of your joints into one another, the bend of muscle and tendon and flesh around hard, warm bone. Your head rests in one hand, the elbow propped on the table, so that you can avert your gaze and yet keep me in your peripheral vision as you watch where the sun will be rising in the smog and cutting roofs. The other arm hangs limply before you, between your legs, dangling as though released at the shoulder. It is a young man's pose, a child's pose, something from a Norman Rockwell painting, and yet it suits you because you are comfortable in your awkwardness.
We are waiting for something, but the silence has hung between us for long enough that I have difficulty now remembering what it is. I cough and the sound recalls for me who spoke last - it was you, something quiet, something about your inability to change. Then it comes back to me, and with it the chills - it was the realization that you were telling the truth, and that when I said the same thing, so was I.
It must have happened to others, this impasse of needs; we cannot be the first to feel so many linkages and compliments and yet feel threatened by one, overthrown by one. It should be simple: you want exclusivity - not just between us, but for me; you want me to want what you do. And I want... something different. I want others - I want to want them - and it would please me so deeply to have you want this as well, to feel what you feel for me two, three, ten times over again. I want you to know the beauty of my affection for you, the wholeness that transcends these small thoughts, hard thoughts, numbers and fractions. These things are from your world.
But my world is pliable, and so I bend. I will be irenic; to have you, I will give in.
I will give in, to save you the little death that has come over me, and pretend to see the sun rising through the drawn curtain.
Fandom: Original
Prompt: #172 - Irenic
Word Count: 631
Rating: G
It is up to me, I suppose, to once again make the peace between us; because you cannot see me, meet me, or grasp the side of the conversation that I have argued over and over. And it isn't your fault alone, of course; the rest of the world, the western world at least, is in agreement with you. I am standing alone facing a crowd of millions, a tide of thought and desire and order, and - for you - love.
The light is dim in the kitchen; we have been up all night talking - I will not say 'arguing' because it is not so forceful as that, though the depth and the brewing discomfort are the same. I am weak and woozy and in need of sleep and food, two things I can't conceive of consuming at this moment. Tremors move through me, originating from some deep pit in my stomach and wracking out, coiling down the lengths of my fingers, sending hot tendrils into my brain through the stem. I have a strange emotional anatomy, and I am glad at times like this that I do not understand the physical processes that I undergo in times of stress. It would be less personal, less mystical. I do not so much mind that I have no control over it.
You are sitting back in the small kitchen chair, and while I am feverishly thinking of anatomy I imagine the curve of your spine in that position, the fitting of your joints into one another, the bend of muscle and tendon and flesh around hard, warm bone. Your head rests in one hand, the elbow propped on the table, so that you can avert your gaze and yet keep me in your peripheral vision as you watch where the sun will be rising in the smog and cutting roofs. The other arm hangs limply before you, between your legs, dangling as though released at the shoulder. It is a young man's pose, a child's pose, something from a Norman Rockwell painting, and yet it suits you because you are comfortable in your awkwardness.
We are waiting for something, but the silence has hung between us for long enough that I have difficulty now remembering what it is. I cough and the sound recalls for me who spoke last - it was you, something quiet, something about your inability to change. Then it comes back to me, and with it the chills - it was the realization that you were telling the truth, and that when I said the same thing, so was I.
It must have happened to others, this impasse of needs; we cannot be the first to feel so many linkages and compliments and yet feel threatened by one, overthrown by one. It should be simple: you want exclusivity - not just between us, but for me; you want me to want what you do. And I want... something different. I want others - I want to want them - and it would please me so deeply to have you want this as well, to feel what you feel for me two, three, ten times over again. I want you to know the beauty of my affection for you, the wholeness that transcends these small thoughts, hard thoughts, numbers and fractions. These things are from your world.
But my world is pliable, and so I bend. I will be irenic; to have you, I will give in.
I will give in, to save you the little death that has come over me, and pretend to see the sun rising through the drawn curtain.