#On my way home

[yamasakiko---ji]

on my way home.

[irishmansdaughter]

[greencheekconure27]

[geritsel]

[pngjamie]

Panic attack at work

[timeofjuly]

on my way home

Summary: Quinn gets a late-night text to pick the reader up from a friend's apartment. Set shortly after they moved out together.

Tags: Drug use, angst, blood mention. Nobody is having a good time here.

Read it on AO3 or read it below :)

Quinn drives to the apartment without the radio on. The roads are empty, the streetlights lit up in a long line of sickly-yellow spotlights just for her. It makes sense; it’s four thirty-six in the morning on a Wednesday. Everyone else is tucked away in bed.

Not her, though. Even before getting the four twenty-two text, she’d been awake, folded up on the couch watching late-night infomercials. Her phone had been held loosely in her hand and when it’d buzzed, she’d almost dropped it in her haste to see if it was an ‘on my way home’ message from you.

She pulls up outside of James’ apartment building, her beaten-up sedan looking right at home in front of it. The air is cool and the world outside is almost as silent as her car had been. This far into the city, there are no birds, no buzzing cicadas, no ponds to be populated with the growls and croaks of frogs, to echo through the night like the fading din of a church bell. She is so very far away from home. Not home, actually, not anymore, and that’s a good thing.

Quinn’s buzzed into the building and then takes the stairs two at a time, one hand on the rail to keep herself steady and the other keeping her cardigan wrapped securely around herself. Once outside of apartment 303, she knocks and waits.

The door open and light spills out onto her, bright like the first rays of dawn cracking over the skyline.

“Come in, Quinnie,” James says, ushering her in. His pupils are huge, black pools swallowing blue. His jaw ticks. “Sorry for texting you so late. You weren’t asleep, were you?”

“It’s okay,” she says. “I was up anyway.”

Her nose wrinkles as she tip-toes into his apartment. The place smells like old alcohol and older smoke, the kind that gets embedded in the carpets and stains the drywall yellow. He’s got incense burning on his coffee table, which just adds to the whole unpleasant affair, rather than covering anything up.

She doesn’t like James; hadn’t in high school, even when you’d done your best to make everyone get along. She likes him even less now. She’s not sure if you’re the bad influence on him or if it’s the other way around, or if you’re both just as bad as each other.

She doesn’t like the other people in his apartment, either. Ollie is splashed like watered-down paint over the couch, her eyelids closed. Her fingers twitch as Quinn passes by, but she doesn’t otherwise react.

“Hey, it’s carrot top,” says Buck, the other occupant of the room, his beady eyes trained on the television. “Thank the stars. Clean up in aisle seven, otherwise known as James’ bathroom.”

Mortification burns in her belly, and she wraps her cardigan around herself tighter.

“Shut up,” James says, flipping Buck the bird. He turns back to Quinn and does his best impression of an apologetic look. “But he’s kinda right. Your girl’s a bit of a mess.”

James takes her to the bathroom. The door is open, ceiling light pale yellow and fan humming. You’re kneeling on the grimy tile, between the wall and the toilet. You look barely awake.

“Quinn,” you say. Your voice is thick, like your nose is blocked. Which it is, Quinn guesses, going by the blood on the lower half of your face. Your nose – it doesn’t look broken, she thinks, but what does she know?

“Had a bit of a run-in with the edge of the table, didn’t we?” says James. He looks at her again, still apologetic. His handsome face looks wan beneath the stark bathroom light. “She, ah, went a little too hard and then added alcohol to the mix.”

“’M fine,” you slur, then promptly lean back over the toilet to wretch. Nothing comes out, which bodes poorly for you.

She kneels down next to you, the floor cold through the thin fabric of her pyjama pants. She brushes your sweaty hair away from your forehead and strokes your back with long, gentle brushes, until the gagging subsides. Your whole body shakes and she can feel the individual nodes of your spine through your skin.

“Should I take her to -.”

“No hospitals,” you say. You look at her with glazed, teary eyes. “No hospitals.”

“Okay,” she says.

You sigh and then close your eyes, leaning against her. Your skin burns. She gathers a wad of toilet paper and presses it under your nose, holding it there.

“You gonna be right to get her home?” James asks. He sniffs and rubs at his nose.

“I’ll be fine,” she says. What else can she say? There is no other option.

“Listen, babe…” James sighs. He steps out of the bathroom and beckons her to join him. She’s loath to leave you alone – she hates to think how long it’s been already, how long you’ve been by yourself, so sick, so lost to yourself – but she follows him all the same.

James shuts the door. “I don’t think – Look. This is awkward, but she can’t come around here anymore, okay? We’ve all talked about it. It’s nothing personal, but no one likes to see her like this. Kinda puts a damper on the whole evening, you know?”

She stares at him. Something fizzles in her chest, a cold, numbing ache. It makes her fingertips tingle. “You’ve known each other for years. She’s your friend.”

“Yeah, of course she is! We’ve always had fun together. It’s just. Well.” He clears his throat.

“She’s not fun anymore.” Her voice rings in her ears.

“Exactly,” James says, satisfied. “You get it. No hard feelings, right?”

You have known James forever. Known all of them for years. You would die for these people.

“Right.” Quinn swallows the chill down. It feels like swallowing nails, or a tooth. Sharp. Like it’ll bore through her insides and cut her open.

“Great. I’ll help you get her into the car.”

Getting you downstairs is a process. It’s a two-person job, so James comes down to the car with her, making sure that you don’t tumble down the stairs. Once you’re at the car he passes you over to Quinn and you collapse into her, hugging her tightly, your face buried into the crook of her shoulder. Your blood is sticky on her neck.

“Sorry,” you say, the point of your nose cold against her skin. “Sorry, sorry.”

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” she soothes, running a hand over your hair. She needs to unpick her fingers from the tangles.

You mumble something into her neck. For a moment, she thinks you’re going to vomit again and wonders if she should redirect you to the gutter, but then you sigh, thin and high. “Are you mad at me?” you ask, voice like a kicked dog.

“No. No, of course not. C’mon, get in the car, I’ll get you home and into bed, and we’ll have a look at your nose.”

You tumble into the car and it takes you a few tries to get your seatbelt to click.

“One more thing, Quinnie,” says James. He stares at you, curled up in the passenger seat. “Has she told you about Jesse?”

“I think so?” She hates that it sounds like a question. Hates that she knows so little about your comings-and-goings that she can’t keep track of all of your friends now. “Um, you all met him at Rendezvous a few months back, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” James rubs at the back of his neck, then looks around, almost covertly. For an absurd moment, Quinn feels like she’s part of some cheesy spy movie, alone in an empty street save the streetlights. “Look, you didn’t hear it from me, but the dude’s bad news. He’s into some shady shit and he really likes your girl.”

“She wouldn’t cheat on me,” Quinn snaps, the words whip-quick and firm with her resolve.

James screws up his face. “That’s not what I mean. ‘M just saying that – I don’t know if he just deals or something else, but he’s not a nice guy. I saw him –.” He cuts himself off and then sighs again. “It doesn’t matter. Just try and keep him away from her, yeah? Just some friendly advice.”

“Okay, thanks,” she says, feeling queasy. She’s met Jesse, only once, and he hadn’t made much of an impression. Just another one of your friends who circle like sharks around you, all wandering hands and hungry eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

James leaves and then it’s just you and her, the way it should be.

Quinn gets in and starts the car. The sound of the engine rouses you from whatever stupor you’d been in – you blink blearily at her, wiping a flake of dried blood away from your nose.

“Hey,” you say, voice still thick.

“Hey,” she replies. Her tone is flat, even to her own ears. She starts the car, ignoring the way her hands shake as she changes gears.

“I’m sorry,” you say again after a few minutes of driving. You’ve opened your window and have been staring into the inky night with almost preternatural stillness.

“I know.”

There’s a moment of quiet. Quinn wonders if she should put some music on, if having something to focus on will make you feel less sick.

“What are you thinking about?” you ask. The wind from the open window makes your voice sound like it’s coming through a poorly tuned radio.

“I’m thinking that you could’ve died tonight,” she says, and it’s not what she’d been thinking at all, but now that she’s spoken the words aloud the thought consumes her. You could’ve died tonight. So easily. Blow to the head, an overdose, drowning in your own vomit.

And you didn’t, but you could very well die tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, the day after that. So on, so forth. How many more texts is she going to wait up for? How many more times will you come home to her?

“I’m okay. I’m alive, see?” You grab her hand with your clammy one, ripping it from the steering wheel, and bring it up to your throat. Your pulse jumps against her feeble grip.

You’re right; you feel so very alive and there is so little keeping your blood where it should be, just a thin layer of skin.

She tears her hand away and places it back on the steering wheel. The road ahead is dark and she needs to focus.  

From the corner of her eye, she watches you wipe at your crimson face with the palm of your hand and for the first time in her life, she doesn’t look at you and find you beautiful. She can’t metamorphose the gore and the sadness and the shadows under your eyes into something enthralling. There’s nothing poetic about this. There is only blood.

[virtuouslibertines69]

"I stand still inside your tears I come back alone into your blood." - Ryūichi Tamura, from Four Thousand Days and Nights: Poems; “On My Way Home,”

Painting by Jonathan Viner

[forgottenroisin]

A Year in the LONG FORGOTTEN REALM roisin's favorite interaction: [ on my way home ]

Edmund was eager to leave those thoughts behind as he followed Rose out into the rain. He enjoyed these moments of spontaneity – where all of his cares and worries seemed so far away – and the only thing he need concentrate on was Rose’s laugh and her bright eyes. 

And then Rose asked if he had ever been to town. 

He cleared his throat, “Once … ” His armies had pushed them all back, until the battle was raging on the outskirts of the village. Fire from their torches caught and spread like wildfire through the place. Edmund’s only memories of it had been the smoldering ruins he had left it in. 

“… but never in the rain and never by you.” He finished, his smile masking the thoughts that had raced through his head. “Will you lead the way?”

[bioskoop]

[markooo-kg]

[sennenpharaoh]

He boards the bus to go home.

He's quiet. And nervous.

[yamasakiko---ji]

on my way home

[honeycombhank]

Today on the way home from therapy

2/24/24

[greencheekconure27]

[geritsel]

Yesterday in Amsterdam

[diexupery]