joekid
Angst Fiend
Vadim’s whole perception of love was something entirely twisted and gnarled himself. His mother barely had the energy to love him except in simple words and gestures, she was just too sick to do anything else. As for his father, love was tainted with horror and hurt and sacrifice. Jae-Hwa was probably right then. That was what true love was. It made sense to him at least. Wasn’t that a saying he’d heard before? That love was pain? Love was difficult? Surely it was true then. Matters of the heart were not so straightforward as the patterns and equations he’d grown to rely on.
Jae-Hwa’s story was a cruel one. A cruel life really. A life without empathy, without tenderness and without comfort. They were so similar to each other and yet they were entirely nothing alike, it was truly a fascinating sort of case study. ”I’m sorry,” he spoke so gently and so full of feeling he nearly started crying, “And I’m especially sorry that no one else is.” He realized he was crying, a single tear rolling down his pale cheek. He wiped it away quickly.
“Did you ever try the God approach? I think my faith lasted about... six hours before I realized there simply isn’t a God. It was after I lost everything. My dad, my leg, our house, all of it. Once I was out of the hospital they didn’t care what happened to me. So I wandered aimlessly on the sad little crutch they sent me with, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with myself now.” He laughed, but this time it was bitter, “I found some sad little chapel with the roof caved in. And I sat on my knees despite the way the floor scraped right against my stitches. And I asked God to help me. I asked God for the reason all this happened.” He filled up his glass again, “I prayed until I fell asleep and when woke up and someone had literally taken my crutch from the hospital. I had to crawl to get out of there.” The shot went down smoothly this time, “People only seem to have a God when they need a God, and I certainly didn’t need another person who would ignore me when I needed them. I had plenty of those.”
The forehead contact made his already reddened face turn the color of grenadine. With his brain running entirely on impulse now, the first thing he thought slipped right out of his mouth, “You’re so warm,” he muttered, eating up the shared body heat as the draft from the window persisted. “Ah, I said that out loud, didn’t I?” He laughed hard at the realization, nearly snorting on his laughter. “Sorry it’s just…I’ve never been so close to someone before, it’s nice.”
Vadim smiled at Jae-Hwa’s intense notions, not entirely taking the other’s threats all that seriously in his drunken state. “Oh I don’t think that will be necessary,” he giggled, “There’s no reason someone like you should have to die when I do. You have your whole life ahead of you.” He tilted his head a bit to the side, “Besides, there’s no one I hate enough to genuinely want dead, and if there are, they’re probably all in Russia.” A moment passed and his face fell a bit. “Actually…” he could feel himself into the drunken ranting his father could he prone to sometimes. “There’s this girl at the Academy. Her father’s a beneficiary so she gets away with anything. I hate the way she looks at me and how I can hear her whispering nasty things about me to other people. She gets *everything*, every opportunity that comes across gets handed to her first and it’s…” he tightened his hand into a fist, “It’s not fair. I would do *anything* to have what she has. And all she does is act petty and cruel with all that privilege.”
His anger quickly subsided, his drunken brain swapping rapidly between emotions and feelings, giggling again. “That word you just said was so pretty,” he let his head lull more against the other’s, “I don’t have a clue what it means, but it sounded pretty when you said it.” A long few moments of tension passed between them, faces close and flushed and all the lack of impulse pulsing in Vadim’s veins. “Are we friends Jae-Hwa?” He asked innocently.
Jae-Hwa’s story was a cruel one. A cruel life really. A life without empathy, without tenderness and without comfort. They were so similar to each other and yet they were entirely nothing alike, it was truly a fascinating sort of case study. ”I’m sorry,” he spoke so gently and so full of feeling he nearly started crying, “And I’m especially sorry that no one else is.” He realized he was crying, a single tear rolling down his pale cheek. He wiped it away quickly.
“Did you ever try the God approach? I think my faith lasted about... six hours before I realized there simply isn’t a God. It was after I lost everything. My dad, my leg, our house, all of it. Once I was out of the hospital they didn’t care what happened to me. So I wandered aimlessly on the sad little crutch they sent me with, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with myself now.” He laughed, but this time it was bitter, “I found some sad little chapel with the roof caved in. And I sat on my knees despite the way the floor scraped right against my stitches. And I asked God to help me. I asked God for the reason all this happened.” He filled up his glass again, “I prayed until I fell asleep and when woke up and someone had literally taken my crutch from the hospital. I had to crawl to get out of there.” The shot went down smoothly this time, “People only seem to have a God when they need a God, and I certainly didn’t need another person who would ignore me when I needed them. I had plenty of those.”
The forehead contact made his already reddened face turn the color of grenadine. With his brain running entirely on impulse now, the first thing he thought slipped right out of his mouth, “You’re so warm,” he muttered, eating up the shared body heat as the draft from the window persisted. “Ah, I said that out loud, didn’t I?” He laughed hard at the realization, nearly snorting on his laughter. “Sorry it’s just…I’ve never been so close to someone before, it’s nice.”
Vadim smiled at Jae-Hwa’s intense notions, not entirely taking the other’s threats all that seriously in his drunken state. “Oh I don’t think that will be necessary,” he giggled, “There’s no reason someone like you should have to die when I do. You have your whole life ahead of you.” He tilted his head a bit to the side, “Besides, there’s no one I hate enough to genuinely want dead, and if there are, they’re probably all in Russia.” A moment passed and his face fell a bit. “Actually…” he could feel himself into the drunken ranting his father could he prone to sometimes. “There’s this girl at the Academy. Her father’s a beneficiary so she gets away with anything. I hate the way she looks at me and how I can hear her whispering nasty things about me to other people. She gets *everything*, every opportunity that comes across gets handed to her first and it’s…” he tightened his hand into a fist, “It’s not fair. I would do *anything* to have what she has. And all she does is act petty and cruel with all that privilege.”
His anger quickly subsided, his drunken brain swapping rapidly between emotions and feelings, giggling again. “That word you just said was so pretty,” he let his head lull more against the other’s, “I don’t have a clue what it means, but it sounded pretty when you said it.” A long few moments of tension passed between them, faces close and flushed and all the lack of impulse pulsing in Vadim’s veins. “Are we friends Jae-Hwa?” He asked innocently.
