Un-Believable

To Ghost: Nice catch and look for more, it’s not corrected (there’s a method to that particular madness).

This was written while reading literary criticism, this being a sort of side or treat while I make final preparations for a presentation. As it looks like weather is on my side (whoot freak winter storms) I could pull this off.

Note: there are times when I agree with Jared’s writing what one knows. Like now. One little presentation should not be this difficult. And no, I did not drink as much as Jared but I was awfully tempted to.

Read, Review and Enjoy.





He sat at his desk with a drink to the side, a movie playing on the little television, books opened up around him and a blank word processor in front of him. Jared stared at the screen and wondered what was wrong with him. He could do this, it was a simple writing, the act of putting his fingers on the keyboard. Yet every sentence was painful and he couldn’t seem to fit words together.

The hero rose up from the bed of the maiden, newly asdobnasdjn

The asdobnasdjn was Jared’s forehead hitting the keyboard after struggling for three whole minutes to recall how to complete the sentence. He couldn’t even complete the sentence. Newly what? The hero was newly what as he rose from the maiden’s bed? Besides strutting about all proud of himself because he got some.

His story went, the hero saved the maiden, had a delightful night with her and then rose the next morning to return to her father and ask for her hand in marriage. The proper, perfect thing to do. Yet getting from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ was impossible. He knew the pieces of the plot but not the details of the in between.

He had a completely structuralist view of the story. The blocks that made up the story were there in his head but not the in between, not the details and the ideas. The events that would link the blocks together.

Jared was not a structuralist. No. Bad.

Sitting back from the computer, he took a swig from his drink, grimacing at the taste, and thumped the glass back down on the desktop. A glance at the television set and he bent over his book, reading a bit for his literary theory class. It only took a paragraph for him to get completely lost and he turned back to his computer screen at the little flashing line that was his place on the page. He looked at the ‘I’ shaped curser, back to the flashing line and cursed his fingers for not finding any sort of attachment to his brain.

He could do this. Anyone could do this. Hundreds of thousands of people wrote fantasy every day. His classmates talked about it as if it were the simplest thing in the entire world. Well, obviously it either wasn’t as simple as they made it or he was an idiot, had a learning disability, even.

The hero rose up from the bed of the maiden, newly

Jared hit the backspace button annoyed, thump. Thump. Thump. Stupid word.

…freshly awakened by the morning sun glittering in through the window of the tall tower

This went on for half a page and then Jared hit a wall again. He tapped at keys, annoyed, then deleted the whole bunch. Took a sip, glanced at the television set and grimaced at the stupid movie he had put in. For background noise and because he couldn’t work with music, if he had sad music, he wrote sad.

It was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. Entirely, atrociously stupid. If he had friends he could be out, if the professor had given him some direction besides “write a full length novel in the fantasy genre by end of semester” he might have been able to do something. No one else had contacted him, no one else was helping and there were a million and one different ways to look at the work, how was he supposed to find the one that the professor would accept and pass him for if he didn’t know what he was supposed to do because no one had told him.

The line of text that appeared on his screen was “hyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyybgvr eg4t56ghyjmuk,I” and then his computer started beeping and whining at him because his head was sitting on an important button. Jared straightened, cleared up whatever he had done wrong and promptly began writing another half a page, pausing as he tried to recall how to spell ‘of’ it came out ‘ove,’ ‘uf’ and ‘uff.’

He downed the last of the drink and wondered how much he would have to drink to write something besides pornography. Jared stood, shuffled to the little bar fridge and retrieved another drink. He opened it, shuffled back to his desk and thumped his newly opened drink onto his desk. Cracking his fingers, he paused just briefly before he gave into temptation and switched windows.

The supple, young flesh heated under his tongue. There was a moan of protest as slender hands tangled in his hair and pressed him against the offered neck.

That went on for a half a page before he recalled what he was actually supposed to be working on and, oh yes, he had a looming deadline. Cursing his luck, Jared flicked back to the other page and seriously considered dropping out of school.

This.

Was.

Ridiculous.

For a moment he was certain that that was what every student said about every assignment and he tap-tap-tapped away at the keys. Managing to get a whole three pages done before his brain started melting out his nose and he was certain he was going to die of stupid.

“Please,” begged the velvet voice, “please, I can’t take any more.”

No! He must not write that dirty, dirty thing. Jared sucked back half his drink, face starting to heat from the mixture of alcohol and embarrassment. The movie had ended, however, and he took a moment to sit in front of the rather large collection of DVD’s and contemplate what he hadn’t seen in a while. Stared, thought, almost picked one but then decided against it and selected a blockbuster movie that was a few years old but was good enough that he had watched it a few times. Popped that in, sat back down at his desk and wrote four pages for that thing he should be writing.

And yes, they were all sex. Well, there was some heavy petting. A little tongue action. Few things that that technically couldn’t happen -like going at it again- but he was ignoring that for the sake of the sexual fantastic.

Jared settled back in his seat, satisfied with what he had for his actual story, finally, but annoyed at how little it actually counted as in the long run. If it were fiction, he knew what he could add, which rules applied and which did not. But fantasy was something else entirely, it had a flexible set of rules that were defined only by the author himself.

Tristan would say it was defined only by the imagination of the author.

For a very. Very. Long moment, Jared thought about Tristan. Naked, on the bed, one finger in his mouth teasingly, sprawled out arrogantly. He jerked himself out of the thought, shuddering as heat throbbed up and down his being.

Downed the last of his drink, got another and stared at the television set for twenty minutes, hardly paying attention to the images that flickered across the screen. He pulled himself away from the television and stumbled out of his room.

Down the hall, Jared made it to the bathroom without making himself look like the fool. In the bathroom, three out of four urinals were in use by freshmen who were obviously more intoxicated than he was. Jared stepped up to the fourth stall, slipped it out and let go. Nothing was quite like pissing to make way for more alcohol. As he finished, he glanced over at the freshmen, who were all staring at him and down.

Conscientious, Jared tucked himself away and moved very quickly to the sink. There he washed his hands not once, but twice. Then he left the water running as he pulled down on the paper towel dispenser, retrieving three pieces which he dried his hands on. These he dropped into the trash bin before he retrieved another and shut off the water, thusly preventing his hands from becoming contaminated. Jared left the bathroom -thankfully there was no germ infested door on the room- and rushed back up the hall and into his dorm room where he closed the door and leaned against it for good measure.

When no one came knocking on the door, Jared pushed off of it, slid into his seat and looked at his drink. Empty. He had drank the entire thing while he had been watching the movie. But the fridge was so far away, he didn’t want to get up. Groaning, he did just that, got up and retrieved the last of his drinks.

Then back to the work. Half a page and he was wandering over to the pornography again. Instead of even writing on that, Jared imagined what it would be like to kiss Tristan. No, not quite imagined it. He knew what it could feel like, the tingle that would go up his spine and the desire that already fuelled him. All he could think about was kissing Tristan. Tongues dancing together, struggling against one another for the upper hand as they rolled on the bed and writhed against one another.

How could he think about his work when couldn’t get the thought of Tristan out of his mind?

As if called by the mere thought, Tristan stumbled into the dorm room and closed the door. The dark haired man paused just inside and leaned on a wall for support. Tristan smacked his lips together, then cleared his throat and pushed off the wall.

Drunk.

This could not end well.

… or… could it?

Fuck.

No! No! No, that was not the point of it! It was his night to work on his stories and his writing and he was going to focus on those, damn it. Taking in a slow breath to steady himself, Jared looked over at Tristan and angled his hips away. No need to show off the sudden problem he had.

Though that did bring up the question of why it hadn’t been a problem earlier. Everything else caused slight arousal and Tristan… made him stand to salute?

“You’re drunk,” Jared snapped at Tristan, fingers clicking away rhythmically at the keyboard, eliciting a tapping that he found comforting even as he knew that Tristan, along with anyone else within earshot, would finding it absolutely annoying. It was a reassurance that the keyboard was there, that his fingers could dance across the keys as he looked at Tristan, he could write whole paragraphs without worry of a mistake, “I told you not to drink, drinking is not only unhealthy for you, but in you, you just don’t know when to stop and you go overboard and then you puke in the morning. How is that going to help you finish your piece, let alone finish your graduation thesis proposal?”

“I’m fine,” Tristan said, words slurring together and proving him a liar.

“You are not fine, you can’t even pronounce fine,” Jared snapped, saving each of his open windows multiple times before closing each one down carefully. He didn’t want any information lost. Having saved each window, he closed down his computer and thought about his grandmother. Naked.

Oh yeah, that solved the problem.

Grimacing, Jared stood and pushed the chair into the desk, close and out of the way of any possible drunk stumbling. He downed the last of his drink as Tristan watched, then shuffled to his bed and fell face first onto it.

“Why are you so bummed out?”

“You probably won’t remember this in the morning,” Jared said, speaking into his pillow, “so I’m just goanna say it. I keep fantasizing about making out with you.”

“What? Jared… I can’t hear what you’re saying,” Tristan’s voice got closer, “you either have to speak up or pull your face out of the pillow.”

“I’d rather fuck you, but at this point, any taste of you would be good or great, it would just get me through the day. Goooooooddddddddd I’m so screwed.”

“Jared.”

He rolled and groaned, “what?”

“I didn’t hear a word of what you just said.”

“Nothing important,” Jared grumbled as he rolled away from Tristan and pretended to fall asleep.

There were several minutes of silence as Tristan left the room, likely to go to the bathroom, and then returned. Tristan struggled with something before he flopped on his bed and sighed out.

“You’re probably asleep by now,” Tristan murmured quietly, so faint that Jared had to strain to hear, “but my friends think you’re just a fling, something that I’ll get out of my system. Truth is. Asshole that you are, I don’t want you out of my system.”


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