Un-Believable

Sunao started it… mentioned something and then the characters took on a life of their own and this isn’t quite my usual fair for characters. Frankly, the moment the one opened his mouth I kind of wanted to punch him in the face.

The other just responds to the first's negativity and is stressed out because of an exam.

I'm not entirely certain where I'm going with this but I know sort of how it will go. So writing it as I go along, unlike Hellian which I'm working on and Wilds Born which is still in the USB of doom.

Those looking for my other stories: there is a USB of doom, it has eaten everything. My first recovery was Hellian, as it was my only copy. I've recently found Adaptation but it takes so much work that I can't work on it until next week (read as: I have a massive presentation to do, was given two weeks to do it and really, should just drop the course)

This, however, takes little thought and helps relieve a bit of stress so expect an update any free time I have. Whooo.

Read, Review and Enjoy.




He dropped his books on the table, causing a reverberating thump that drew the eyes of other students in the library. The netbook on his shoulder received a gentler treatment, sliding the strap down his arm, he dropped it just enough to make a sound, but not hard enough to possibly damage the precious contents of the black bag. Not eliciting the wanted reaction, he shifted his weight to one leg, crossed his arms, clenched his jaw and waited expectantly. He would not. Be. Ignored.

The young man, on the other side of the table, pointedly ignored him, eyebrows moving upward and lips pressing together in a thin line. The black hair was not toyed with, as the young man tended to do when he was actually studying. Shaggy and a bit too long, it hung down in front of narrowed blue eyes. Bright blue eyes, the colour of a tropical ocean, were focused too intently on the book, were not moving and thusly not reading. Wide features and pale set this young man apart from the others, he looked more mature than his fellow classmates.

Still ignored, he gave in, working his jaw back and forth for a moment before he snapped out, motioning as he did so, “you said that you would be at my reading, you know, the one this afternoon? The one for my book, in front of the press and university administrators and my professors? How am I supposed to speak in front of tens of people when my only friend decides not to show up? If my friends won’t come to hear me speak, why would anyone else?

“I was a laughing stock! Stuttered the whole way through and the critics are mocking me, even as we speak. Tearing apart my work because it’s ‘unrealistic,’ can you believe that? That I am unrealistic!”

There was a pause, the briefest of pauses as the other considered holding his tongue, controlling his temper. Then there was a small tensing of muscles in the jaw, his only warning of what was about to happen, “your poem,” came the deep voice that sounded gravely due to the after effects of a cold, “is about the suicide of your mother. It’s not even true.” the young man raised his voice to speak over the protest that stumbled out of his companion’s mouth, “your mother is alive and well, and you were supposed to call her three nights ago. The critics were right, your work is unbelievable, flat and without character or sustenance.

“And I.” the young man growled, “am not your friend. We are roommates, that does not make us friends. Friends,” stressing the word, “work together, they play together, they chat and get along. Friends believe one another and support one another, none of which you have ever done for me despite the fact that I have attended several of your damned readings, being bored to death at every turn. I have tried being friends with you and you, in return, have mocked me.”

Verbal murder. He cringed just slightly. This was what the other young man was known for. That and his too bright, too vibrant blue eyes that no one could prove were fake. Everyone knew, because that colour wasn’t natural. But no one, not even his roommate, could prove that the sophomore had coloured contact lenses.

“So what do I care, if you stutter through a reading on a poem that is written about an even that never happened?”

He was determined that his roommate was at fault, absolutely determined, so he ignored it all and continued on as if nothing had been said, “where were you? What was so important that you couldn’t make one little reading for ten minutes?”

“It was a four hour meeting. And I was off finding inspiration.”

“Inspiration doesn’t exist, if you want to write, you need to sit down and write!”

“I have writer’s block, Jared, which means that I can’t write because I have a mental block on my writing abilities. Do you know what it’s like, not being able to reach your worlds? To start writing and then just hit a wall?”

“There’s no such thing as a wall, it’s all in your head. You just have to sit down and write. Professor Smithen has told you multiple times, he’s said ‘Tristan, your only limitation is that which you lay on yourself,’ just write, just sit down with a pad of paper and write, for crying out loud.”

“Then why don’t you finish that damned novel of yours and send it for publication already?”

“I’ve… been distracted,” ever since he had found out that Tristan was gay, he had spent his nights tossing and turning, hot thoughts bothering him all the night long. So they were both gay and they shared a room, slept in the same room. Tristan didn’t know that he was gay and wasn’t about to find out. It was just the idea of it, the thought of something taboo and un-allowed that made Jared’s blood boil in his veins. Instead of his novel, he had been writing pornography, carefully cataloguing every fantasy he had had, every touch, every flick of the tongue.

“Earth to Jared, come in Jared.”

“What?” he jerked out of his stupor, wiping a hand across his mouth instinctually, praying to God that there wasn’t any drool there on his bottom lip, like he thought there was, “I wasn’t doing anything. We were talking about you and your refusal to write. You have a problem and it’s name is procrastination, not writer’s block.”

“Writer’s block is a real thing.”

“Sure, like magic is a real thing.”

“Don’t you also believe that one should only write what they know?”

“Yeah? What of it? It is a logical thing to do, that you should write what you know, least the piece fall flat or simply fall apart all together… why are you looking at me like that?”

“Kind of like your poem that the critics are currently tearing apart? And, oh, by the way, what is that novel of yours about? Mages or something?”

“Uhm. God disappears and someone escapes from Hell bent on finding him and righting all that has gone wrong in Heaven in God’s absence so as to gain his own salvation while… perusing a relationship with the mysterious young man who rescued him. What of it?”

“With mages, magic, spells, Heaven and Hell, God and the devil.”

“It’s about redemption! I know redemption, I can write that.”

“Bull, it may be about redemption but the only reason you are writing it is because Johnson challenged you to write something imaginative instead of your blasé fictional garbage.”

“Fiction is not garbage and at least it’s not a pseudo-genre like fantasy or science fiction, my work will actually mean something in a hundred years, yours on the other hand will die with you. My work will change the world.”

“What are you saying, that Lord of the Rings didn’t change the world? Asimov’s works didn’t change the world? What about Douglas Adams? Orson Scott Card? Rowling even, dislike her, but she changed the world and how we perceive it and she was one of those dreaded fantasy writers of yours. I can make a difference, any amount of a difference that you can. Fantasy is a newer genre, it hasn’t been around for centuries and it is gaining momentum faster and faster. While your genre is dying, while it is being consigned to the halls of ancient history, mine will be in full bloom.”

“Bastard.”

“Bitch,” Tristan said maliciously, closing his book as he did so.

The two stared at one another for a very long moment before Jared looked away, annoyed, “You skipped my reading to find inspiration. Might as well have been playing that stupid game of yours.”

“About that…”

Jared groaned, “you had them over last week.”

“Well, I have to host it two weeks in a row, which means I’m going to need the room tonight to… play Dungeons and Dragons. Just go see a movie, soak in some myth and archetype and let it all mellow over a cup of coffee then come back to the room around eleven. We’ll be packed up and done by then and no one will be on your bed, they learned their lesson last time.”

“He was on my bed,” Jared growled.

“You came at him with a frying pan and no warning, Jared. All he was doing was sitting on the edge of the foot of your bed. Seriously. You have to learn to relax before you break yourself and have some sort of mental slip.”

“It’s my room and it’s Friday night. Friday nights are my writing night, I drink and stay up until three in the morning. I write for my random stories, to purge my mind of all impure events and then I have a cup of hot milk and go to bed. You know this, every weekend I’ve done this since-”

“Since the beginning of time. I find it annoying, by the way. It is impossible to sleep with you tapping away at the keys of that damned netbook until six, not three, in the morning. At which time I have to get up to go to work because daddy isn’t paying my way and my scholarship was shut down this year because someone convinced his father that imagination doesn’t exist.” Ending on that pointed tone and the look.

“Not my fault that he believed in the contrite existence of a mythological happening that writers have been claiming as true for the past century or so. Imagination was nothing more than an excuse that is linked to writer’s block and inspiration. Writers have said that they cannot write because they haven’t got anything imaginative to say and so they shall say nothing at all.”

“I hate you. So very. Very. Much.”

“Screw you too, it’s my dorm room and my father is paying for it, so what are you bitching about?” Jared snapped up his netbook and his books, “honestly, I don’t even know why he’s making me have a roommate when he can afford to rent the whole room out just for me, this is ridiculous. Taking on an ungrateful charity case who claims to have latent writing talents.”

“Story telling talents, not writing talents.”

“Same thing, different name.”

“And him forcing you to have a roommate probably has something to do with the fact that you are a contrite asshole.”

“Oh, repeating big words that I just used, less than a minute ago. I am soooo impressed. Take your friends somewhere else tonight, Tristan, you need to give me at least twenty-four hours notice to having friends over. It even states as much in the contract we drew up when you first moved in.”

“You sonofa-”

“Watch what you say about my mother,” Jared snapped, “my father does not appreciate anyone saying anything about her. She is a kind and gentle soul.”

“Yet somehow she managed to spawn you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you’re an egotistical asshole and we’ll be having our meeting at the pub instead of in the room.”

“The pub?” Jared cringed, that meant that Tristan would be returning drunk. Stumbling around and babbling about magical spells and puking in the morning, “but you won’t drink at the pub, right?”

“Oh no. I will do a shot every time I roll the dice. Just so that you have a higher chance of having to clean puke out of your clothing in the morning. Because, unlike you, I have a life and I am still welcomed at the pub. I can drink and I do have actual friends who actually care about my wellbeing and my stories. Thanks for asking how my oral improv exam went, I greatly appreciate your concern despite the fact that my exam ended ten minutes before you stupid speech started and I wouldn’t have been allowed in because the room is a twenty minute walk as it is across campus. But I can’t expect you of all people to think of these things because your head is so far up your ass, you can see daylight out your own mouth.

“My mother warned me about people like you and I didn’t believe her. I told her that coming to America to attend university would be a breeze, that Americans could not possibly be as big of dickheads as everyone says they are and I was right. Everyone is nice as could be, except you, so you just take the arrogance level and boost it a million times when combined with the levels of everyone else. Americans aren’t the problem you are.

“But no, I couldn’t get put with a normal person, I get put with the douche who sucks his thumb-”

“I do not,” Jared protested as a librarian paused for a moment, considered shushing them and then continued on when she recognised who they were. To say the pair were notorious for their fighting was an understatement. They had already had three meetings with the Dean about volume levels and scaring freshmen.

“And is such an egotistical megalomaniac that he can’t even realise what’s in front of him. Now, despite the fact that I told you last week that I had to host twice in our room, I have to take everyone out to a pub which means that I have to pay for the drinks and I can’t afford to pay for the drinks and. And. To top it all off, you are telling me that I cannot drink.

“Go fuck yourself Jared.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I fuck you?”

Jared’s face practically lit on fire. He had just walked into a trap, he had opened his mouth and inserted his foot and he would never live it down. Ever. Never. Ever. He was going to just die of embarrassment, right then and there.

“That’s not what I meant.” he said so quickly that his words slurred together.

That was when he realised the awful truth of the fact. Well, not entirely true. He started to grasp the horrid idea as some senior shouted, “maybe if you did, his mood would improve,” and it fully sunk in when the entire library burst into laughter.

Because everyone was watching. Them.

Panicking, Jared whimpered and fled the library. He had tried so hard to hide the fact that he was gay. His father had sent him to a university on the other side of the country so that he could have a fresh start, so that he could get away from all the gay bashers of his high school and immediate area. This was supposed to be a good move for him, a good change.

And he was already the butt of the joke.

Just outside the library doors, Jared pulled to a stop and looked around him as he panicked. Full blown attack, he hadn’t had one since his graduation when Timothy Andrews, the quarter back of all people, had cornered him and seduced him, only to get it all on camera and then post it to YouTube where hundreds of thousands of people watched it.

Spotting a study alcove, an empty one at that, Jared bolted into the little concrete room and dropped to a bench, suppressing a sob as he did so. He was losing control and it was all because Tristan didn’t show up to his reading and that had thrown him off and he just. He just.

Needed a break.

He drew his feet up and set his forehead on his knees. He tried not to cry but the tears came anyway and before he knew it he was whining. It was the whole effect of trying not to cry while drying to breath while trying to stifle any sound that was trying to escape his throat.

“Jared?” Tristan walked in and turned towards him as he snapped up, wet eyes, mussed up hair and all, “there you are.”

“What? Come to mock me more?” Jared sniffled, wiping his eyes.

“Why would I mock you more?”

“For being gay.” which Jared realised was a stupid thing to say even as the words came stumbling out of his mouth.

“I am gay,” Tristan said, moving across the alcove to sit beside Jared, “I didn’t know you were. I mean, I brought guys over to piss you off and you never said anything about it so I just assumed you were one of those silently pissed off types who never said anything because you were afraid that everyone would hear you gay bashing. Then your career would be over and it would be my fault, such on and such on.”

Jared sniffled again, “I didn’t want to tell you I was gay because then everyone would know and once everyone knows, it’s high school all over again.”

“What’s so bad about high school?”

“My first kiss was the quarter back…”

“I hear for high schools that is a good mate to have. Personally, being from way up north,” Jared always assumed that meant that Tristan was from Canada, “I… don’t see the appeal unless he’s handsome and smart to boot. Good dancer. Great kisser. The ability to hit a ball with a stick of wood is hardly exceptional.”

“Uhm. Quarter backs are in football.”

“… no they aren’t. Football has goallies and-”

“No, as in the game with the. The. Pigskin ball that’s sort of ovular.”

“Oh, rugby. Nice. Those guys, now those guys are hot.”

“No, we call it football. And it wasn’t good at all, he was a terrible kisser and he caught the whole thing on tape, played it live for the teachers, parents, presenters and the rest of the class, then uploaded it to YouTube where it stayed for three months before my father managed to sue his father for slander and abuse of a minor.”

“That’s. Not so good. But being gay doesn’t give you the right to be a dick.”

“I’m not a dick because I’m gay. Though, in some ways I’m gay because I’m a dick.”

“Heh,” Tristan smiled, “was that supposed to be a joke? If so, it was a terrible joke.”

“So what if it was-”

Jared was stopped midsentence as Tristan leaned over and pressed their lips together. For the briefest of moments they kissed. Then Tristan pulled away and cleared his throat. The dark haired young man took the time to smooth out his hair and run his tongue over his upper lip, as if considering.

“Well, then I suppose there’s hope for you yet.”


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