#orchidscript whump

Prompt | “This wasn’t supposed to happen”

Warnings | therapy, trauma recovery,

~*~*~*~

He sniffles and adjusts his body in his chair. Maybe it’ll come off as early spring allergies, maybe it won’t. Maybe he’ll care later, maybe he won’t. It’s all a coin toss. All a swirl of chance.

His hand is rough in his hair. The key is heavy against his sternum. The sleeves of his tee shirt itches his wrists.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he finally says, quietly. He tilts his head back against the chair, pinches the bridge of his nose. He purposefully stretches his legs out into the space between him and Despina, knowing she’ll take it as the discomfort it is.

Patiently, as always, she asks: “What was supposed to happen, Lyric?”

He’s said this all before. Recites it to himself in the shower, while cobbling together a half-assed breakfast, in the middle of the night when he’s wide awake listening to the settling timbers in his walls. He’ll say it even more to Despina, his conditionally loyal therapist, before they part company for the week. He doesn’t imagine how long it will take for them to part ways for good. His gut tells him it’s going to be a long time.

A long time.

“I should have a real job, friends, money,” Lyric murmurs to the ceiling. “I should be normal. I should be okay with strangers. I should be happily ignoring my sister for another eight years.” He drops his hand from his face into his lap. “All I’m saying is. All I’m saying.” He opens his eyes, tilts his head up just enough to see Despina. Her sharp aquiline nose and equally as sharp eyes. “What am I saying?”

“What are you saying?” she asks with a hint of uncharacteristic humor.

Lyric sighs. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. That’s what I’m saying. I should have stayed the relatively normal, well adjusted person I was.”

“How would you have stayed that way?”

“He could have loved me better.” Lyric shrugs. His stomach twists suddenly. “I could have broken up with him. Could have never met him.”

Despina hums in understanding. “Are you wishing for a time machine again?”

“No,” Lyric huffs. He pushes himself back upright, like he had been taught to growing up. How he should reasonably sit as an adult in the world. But, really, he just wants to lay down and not get up. Seems like a nice bargain to make, in the back of his head. He meets her eyes for the first time since he arrived, jabbing a finger at the air. “No, I’m not. And I see the flaw in this line of thinking, you don’t have to ask that either. I’m just talking. That’s all we do here. We talk.”

“We do.” She nods. “Would you like to try something different?”

“I just want to know when it’ll start helping,” Lyric answers. “It’s been five months.”

She smiles in a way that is neither pitying nor sad, but still looks to Lyric that way. He likes her. They get on. He’s okay talking with her. But impatience set in about a week ago and he’s tired. He’d like this all to be over, behind him, a return to a kind of normal that didn’t exist even before Beckett sauntered his way into his life.

“It’ll take longer than that, Lyric. I know you understand that.”

“I guess, but is it worth missing a morning shift for?”

Despina makes a quick note, eyes not moving from him. “I thought you hated your job?”

“Most of the time,” Lyric agrees. “But I can tune it all out the longer I stand there. People are in there all the time, there’s never really a slow minute until we close.”

“So, you hate it but you admit it helps you?”

“I didn’t say help.”

“What word would you use then?”

Lyric presses his lips together. “Distracts. It distracts me.”

“Alright. Distracts from what?” Despina nudges lightly.

He shoots her a knowing look. He doesn’t like this repetition, the cycle of constantly voicing things they both know, have known since the beginning. He would appreciate a day where he didn’t have to be specific, where detail wasn’t required. He would appreciate not being turned into a broken record.

“Distracts everything that keeps me up when things go bump in the night,” Lyric offers with biting sarcasm. “How’s that for you?”

Been working really hard on the second installment of Henry’s story, and I wanted to share a bit of dialogue that I’ve been grinding through. It’s a conversation between Henry and Carter. No prose, only dialogue, which is strange for me, and I’m not giving you anymore than that to go on! Enjoy!

The scientific name for house cat that is the title makes sense, I promise. Just hang with me and my lame attempts at being clever.

warnings | bbu, memory loss, memory recovery, angst, discussion of sobriety.

~*~*~

“You’ve been… focused lately, on what truth means for you. If someone is being honest with you, if you can believe a story you can’t remember… if someone can be a liar if they believed wholeheartedly something that turned out to be wrong/untrue. You’re still there, I think. In a different way.”

“Sounds about right...”

“You’re doing well with it.”

“I’m not. I feel like a goldfish in a plastic bag. I’m stuck in my own fucking head... everyone’s just been really kind. I don’t remember much, but. But my gut trusts them.”

“Like I said. You’re doing really well with it all.”

“You’re all waiting for me to snap aren’t you?”

“Waiting for it, expecting it, preparing for it when it does happen however it does. It’s all the same to us. We’re just happy you’re awake.”

warnings | trauma recovery, recovery arc, hyperthermia, over-exercise.

~*~*~

Sweat had long since soaked his hair and drenched his skirt. Rivulets slithered down the back of his neck, carving the length of spine. Beads collected on his hairline, his temples. They dripped into his ears, off his jaw, stinging his eyes as they caught on his eyelashes.

A crosswalk flashing the bright red hand stopped him in his tracks. Lyric sucked in a deep breath and coughed into his fist. He bounced on his toes to keep moving, feeling the sweat scatter and bounce and soak into other parts of him. It dripped into his mouth, sweaty and grimey. 

A woman,  holding the handle of a grocery buggy, eyed him with gentle brown eyes. She had sweat through her pink tank top, dense coils of hair pulled up off her neck. Her cheeks were pink. Lyric imagined his cheeks – the skin dry and itchy-burnt feeling – were an unflattering red. He offered her a winded smile. The crosswalk sign turned and Lyric took off, missing whether or not she returned it. Just the action felt brave enough for today.

It was the hottest day of the summer. The weatherman on the local news had told them so, exuding a strange joy at the prospect. A flat 97 degrees in the shade, the air itself a thick 101 degrees; each estimation followed by cheerful warnings about staying cool, keeping hydrated, how to dress, how much activity would be okay to do outside.

Lyric had curled his nose up at the screen. The man’s seersucker suit was an unflattering minty green. His hair was slicked back like an Atlantic City mob boss. 

He’d been sweating in his apartment as he watched, the air conditioning turned down low so he could hear. He’d sweat through his shift at the coffee shop. A run wouldn’t hurt and his shower would feel even better after.

He never went far on his runs, staying to a strict four block radius from his apartment building. He never went into the nearby park. He never went out late at night or early in the morning. He felt better surrounded on all sides by people despite his distaste for crowds; felt better knowing if he screamed someone would at least hear him.

His muscles ached the longer he ran. His lungs protested and his head turned pleasantly fuzzy. It was the clearest his head ever was. Coated in soaking sweat, Lyric felt like he was close to normal.

Lyric rounded a familiar corner onto the last block before his building. A little quieter with shops instead of cafes with umbrellas. A  little shadier, spotted with trees whose roots turned the sidewalk into a long line of jagged gray  teeth. He stumbled a bit as the toe of his shoe caught on a corner of  raised concrete. Lyric caught himself with a jolt but stayed upright, kept running. 

His insides felt molten; stomach and lungs and brain sloshing around in their respective cavities. He tripped again, catching himself less than elegantly. He blinked hard, eyes feeling unfocused. Like he was seeing through water. Pain throbbed in his thighs and knees, pulsing in time with the vein in his throat.

Lyric slowed his pace, trying to suck in a bigger breath. He coughed, throat drier than his face. He could see the door to his building. He just had to get there, then it would be air conditioning and ice cold showers. 

Lyric stumbled sideways, dropping hard onto the concrete steps of a townhouse. He ground his palm into the roughness, the pinprick scrapes centering his head as he gasped for air. His head spun now that he had stopped completely. His legs were seizing up, muscles seeming to twist and tighten under his skin like so much cleated rope. Lyric bent forward, dropping his head. The dizziness grew. He rubbed absently at his collar, as if that alone would loosen the tight feeling and help him breath. Even his hands felt tight, too big for their skin; heavy and useless.

“Hey, are you– Lyric?” A voice said, distant and soft against the underwater soundscape clogging up his ears. “Oh shit. Are you alright? Can you hear me?”

Hands pressed to his biceps and Lyric lurched to the side. The speed of it sent him gagging weakly on the steps.

“Shit shit shit,” the voice came again. “Hey, Lyric, if you can hear me, it’s Wes. From across the hall. If you remember. Can you talk?”

Lyric blinked, coughing weakly. He managed to shake his head.

“Okay, good. Good enough. Do you need help inside?”

Lyric nodded. The dizziness, the sliding feeling underneath his skin; it was enough to start him panicking. Enough to make him shake and gasp. Wes’ hands – yes, he remembered Wes; law student, lots of opinions, bad beer, weird laugh, good smile – gripped under his arms. He tensed just to keep himself from bolting and dropping hard to the pavement.

“Jesus, you’re soaked. Holy shit were you running?” Wes kept talking, sounding more and more panicked himself. “The fuck were you doing running? Today of all fucking days, Lyric?” 

A buzzer rang somewhere, a lock clicking in and out of place loudly. Lyric kept his eyes closed, determined that only that would keep him steady. If he kept his eyes closed, things would be fine. He’d be okay. Maybe it was a bad habit, a leftover habit, something just south of denial. He didn’t know, but his brain rang with all the possibilities until his back hit freezing-cold, steady, hard.

The floor.

He was on the floor.

Cold air washed over him, freezing the sweat all over him. In his hair, on his skin, soaking his clothes and his underwear, running down his back and neck and sides. Until he was shivering and shaking, gasping at the involuntary jerking and jolting of his limbs.