Chapter Text
You aren’t a particularly violent person. Weren’t. Probably aren’t still...maybe? You don’t know anymore. Getting a sock on is proving so beyond you at the moment you’re actively considering crying about it; introspection is therefore both impossible and not a priority. But regardless of what you are, or were, or will be someday, one thought shines constant and crystal clear amidst the molasses-slow muck of your mind:
If you ever meet the other half of your soul, your truest match, the heart that beats in cadence with your own, you’re going to fucking stab them. Without warning, without hesitation, without guilt, you’ll drive the knife into their stupid matching heart or whatever and then drop to the ground and finally get some goddamn sleep.
“That’s macabre,” Carol remarks both accurately and unwelcomely as you prod at the coffee machine like it’s alien technology. “Wouldn’t touching them be, like...simpler?”
“Simpler,” you say, finally managing the correct button. “But substantially less satisfying. Less oomph. Less—” You punctuate your statement with a yawn so wide it hurts your mouth. “Uhhh. Pointed.”
“Boo,” she says at the pun that it takes a full five seconds for you to realize you had made, and pats you on the back, helpfully stopping the machine before the cup overflows. “Do you need a mint or something? The boss is, um...looking over here. Again.”
“Let him.” You consider flopping your head onto the counter and stop only by virtue of the knowledge you’d have to wipe it down when you don’t want to move. “I’ll get fired eventually anyway.”
“Don’t say that,” Carol chides gently, but you know for certain that you’re right. You’ve been fired from every dead-end job you managed to land due to poor work performance, falling asleep on the job, so on and so forth. You had to drop out of school for the same reason; that was back when you thought the sleep specialist might be able to help, and when that failed, that avoiding the dreams by staying awake as long as possible might work instead. It didn’t, of course, but you did manage to tank your previously respectable academic record and disappoint your family and net a year’s worth of wasted tuition to pay off, though, so there’s that!
“I’m going to get fired, and I’m going to get evicted, and I’m going to die of sleep deprivation,” you hum to yourself, sort of to the tune of the smooth jazz playing on the radio if you squinted your ears real hard. “But I’ll stab ‘em first. Stab, stab, stab, staaaa…” Your voice trails off as your eyes dip closed, once, then longer, then—
blood salt meat filling your mouth raw and a little bit stringy and
Your eyes fly open and you inhale sharply. You don’t scream anymore, most of the time anyway. You’ve had plenty of time to get used to this particular dream.
Not that you’re actually used to it.
You slap your cheek and get to the next order, which doesn’t make you more awake but does make your cheek hurt, and one of the tables yells at you for being slow but the next pats your hand and says your dark circles are so deep you could hang something on them, poor dear, try to get some rest, would you?
Your customer service smile is more like a grimace. You’re long beyond being grateful for the useless goodwill of strangers. “Thanks. I’ll try.”
You’ll fail, again and again and again and again, at least as long as your stupid fucking soulmate’s dreams are funneled to you whenever you fall asleep—that is to say, until they’re dead, you’re dead, or you touch them for the first time.
You know, when you were a kid and stupid, before you turned eighteen and the soulmate bond snapped into place, you used to hope if you had a soulmate they would be nice to you. Funny maybe. Cared you existed maybe. Now, wherever they are, dreaming your stolen dreams, you just hope that they’ll either find you as soon as possible so you can get your dreams back or that you can die sooner rather than later instead.
Dealer’s choice.
For the rest of your shift, though, no valiant soulmate appears heroically offering their chest for the ganking, and you don’t die either—more’s the pity—so you trudge home instead, half-asleep amidst the almost soothing sound of rustling flyers in the wind. You startle with a screech when one of them flies up and hits you.
“Fuck,” you groan, shaking it off you and shuddering with revulsion at the wet spot it left on your jeans. Apparently there’s a circus coming to town soon, which is exciting because it means you can spend money you don’t have dozing off in a noisy crowd instead of at home. (Your sarcasm, if nothing else, has not left you.) You toe irritably at the offending piece of paper, crumpling limply amongst the carcasses of its hundreds of fallen brethren. “God. We get it already, you hate the environment, fuckin’…” You trail off, rubbing at your eyes, pressing your lips together.
You think once upon a time you might have actually been excited to hear about a circus.
You think once upon a time you might have, at the very least, given them the benefit of the doubt.
...You think. Those times feel increasingly distant. And anyway, maybe it was never the dreams at all. Maybe you were always destined to become a terrible, cynical, worthless person who stomps a small business owner’s flyers into the ground.
Your head hurts. It always hurts, but a touch worse than usual. You don’t like that thought.
Clenching your teeth, you mutter ‘sorry’ to nobody in particular, and carefully pick up the flyer and fold it (wet and all) before trekking an extra minute over to the nearest recycling can.
“Sorry,” you mumble again. “Have fun spreadin’ joy to kids or...whatever the...fuck, I’m talking to myself again.”
You laugh. It sounds a bit too much like a sob for comfort. “Nobody’s listening,” you say under your breath, mind swimming always too slow to register you’re talking to yourself again-again. “Nobody’s ever listening. I’m. Fuck.” You press the heel of your palm to your eyes, then take a deep breath and head back from your detour to get home.
You are, incidentally, correct: nobody is listening.
Not then.
A shame, but you’re only human—pitiful, fragile. Non-clairvoyant. You can be forgiven for not knowing to appreciate your last remaining hours of solitude.
…
blood. salt. meat fills your mouth, raw and a little bit stringy.
your tears do not help the taste.
they speak around you; your ears ring too loudly for you to hear them. you can only hear the crunching of bone, the tearing of muscle, the squish of an organ that bursts between your teeth.
you’re nauseous. you’re going to throw it up. you can’t. you cannot waste her it it it don’t retch don’t lose her don’t think don’t
you are as close to full as you have been in months.
you would much rather still be starving.
You wake up, gasping, pounding at your eyes. You can’t. You can’t, you can’t—you don’t want—
It’s too comfortable, and you’re just so fucking sleepy. You’re sucked down into it again.
blood. salt. meat.
he gave you hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
its heart as though he was doing you a favor, leaving you the best for last, a rare delicacy.
he’s crying too, you know. it does not make you any more capable of forgiving him.
you’re healing. she’s in your bones, blood, part of you forever.
it does not feel as romantic now as when you had pressed the word forever into her skin.
trembling fingers hold your jaw closed. not him, another. you might kill him if it were.
“keep it down,” you may hear through the ringing. “you need to keep—”
You bolt upright, retching nothing onto your shorts; you know far better than to eat in the evenings now. Bile crawls up your throat anyway. You should probably go to the bathroom, but instead you curl up, sobbing loudly into your knees. It may be from the dream; it may be you’re just feeling sorry for yourself, pathetic loser that you are. Bit of both, probably.
“I can’t do more tonight,” you murmur into your knees. “I’m done.” You look at the clock through blurry eyes. You've been asleep a half hour, if that. “Fuck! Fuck! No. Nope.”
The downstairs neighbors must keep their broom next to their nightstands by now; it thumps irritably against the ceiling.
“I know! Fuck, fuck me—” The tears keep coming; you rock back and forth and bite on your fist to try to muffle the sob and retch dryly again as you’re reminded of teeth in flesh and blood and salt. You bite down on your pillow instead and scream and scream and scream until your throat is hoarse.
You need more sleep. You know you do. But if you have to spend one more minute trapped in your own—or, rather, your stupid fucking soulmate’s—mind eating the flesh of their...lover? Crush? Something. You can’t do it. You should jump out the window. You should bash your head against a wall until it stops hurting. You should. You.
Should stab your soulmate.
You—
You’re not a violent person.
You just.
You just want this stupid fucking soulmate to know what they’ve done to you. To look straight at your face and feel every inch of the pain they’ve caused with their stupid fucking cannibal dreams. To see the bags under your eyes, to see the person you used to be, to see the way you’re barely holding on with a grip that grows looser every day.
You just want someone to look at you and understand you weren’t always like this, that you could have been better, that—that this is something that was done to you.
Nobody else really understands. Nobody else gets it. You were barely even able to get out the words ‘I dream about cannibalism’ to the first therapist, and you clammed up by the third. Nobody understands how visceral it is, the flesh, the way it tears under your teeth, far too realistic to be merely symbolic. They don’t understand the confusion and the sorrow and the horror as you chew. They’ll never get it.
But your soulmate might. Since it's their stupid! Fffffucking! Dream!!!
You’re screaming again. The broom thumps at the ceiling.
The fight leaves you as quick as it came, and you shut up and stare dully at the pillow and idly contemplate suffocating yourself before you sigh and get out of your bed to brush your teeth. One of the doctors told you once about whether you’re supposed to do it that much, something something enamel blah blah, and you think the answer was probably no? Maybe? All of your memories swirl together in a tarry haze, inaccessible. But it doesn’t matter. Fuck your enamel. You need the taste of blood-salt-meat out.
Brushing your teeth won’t help clean your mouth of a memory. You do it anyway. You lie back down, spread-eagled and staring at the ceiling.
“It’s just meat,” you whisper to yourself as everything starts to blur again. “Just dream meat. Just. Get used to it already. Stupid.”
blood.
salt.
meat.
h e r
Fifteen minutes.
You press trembling hands to your eyes.
It’s never just anything, and you know it.
...You need to get more sleep.
...
The next week or so slogs on just like that, just like always. You get one good night of sleep in there—by which you mean you dream of tearing out the neck of someone dressed in pink and then stabbing the fuck out of some tall guy in green, but at least it’s not fucking sad. Mostly, though, it’s the same one, over and over. You’re so tired it doesn’t entirely feel like you’re inhabiting your body, more like you’re piloting an all-too-heavy meatsuit from the backseat, and it only responds to your commands sometimes, when you remember you’re supposed to be giving commands at all. You barely talk; your speech is incoherent and stretched-out like taffy when you can.
It’s getting worse. Everybody can tell. Your boss’s expression is stretched somewhere between frustration and awkwardness and the pity that’s probably the only thing keeping you hired past the day. Carol is just plain worried, and she already has enough to worry about with everything back home. You’re banned from interacting with customers because the boss has gotten so many complaints and orders to let you go-home-and-rest-for-god’s-sake in equal turn. If the circus wasn’t making business heavier, you’re pretty sure you’d either be fired or put on mandatory medical leave about yesterday.
You haven’t thought too much about the circus since the night when you apologized to some distant small business owner about your act of minor vandalism, really, but you have noticed more flyers and of course the costumed clowns handing them out. You’re far too tired to pay attention to anything beyond that, but this guy has the sort of voice that demands to be heard even if what it’s saying isn’t worth it.
“Ever since you guys showed up, women have been disappearing!” the random guy screeches self-righteous and angry and so so fucking loud. Your head throbs in emphatic protest. “Go back to whatever hellhole you crawled out of!”
The person he’s arguing with isn’t audible, and you turn your bleary gaze over only to find it’s because he’s not said anything at all. The he in question, one of the clowns but in a flouncy red-black-gold ensemble rather than the pink you’ve seen most of the time, stays silent and crumpled on the ground. His eyes are averted; there’s a nasty-looking abrasion on his cheek.
You blink silently a few more times before putting together what Loud Dipshit over there is referring to. Some lady on the news or something? You mighta heard something about it, you don’t remember. Running away with her...something. Is this guy her something? Is this guy mad because the clowns have game? Like. He’s cute, but that’s not his fault.
“I’m talking to you, you freak! Get out of our town!”
Your reaction time may be delayed, but that puts a frown on your face pretty damn quick, considering. What an asshole. A loud asshole, even more unforgivably. Your head still really fucking hurts, god damn it! And he’s being an asshole to this poor cute clown, god damn it! And your soulmate isn’t around to yell at yet, so this guy.
Well. He’ll just have to do.
You can’t say whether this is something you’d have done before, if this is the sort of person you were/are/will be, but sleep-deprived ten-minutes-from-dying-probably you makes your way over there in a sort of diagonal wavy line and plants your feet in front of the poor cute clown. “Hey,” you say, maybe a bit too quiet.
“What the fuck? What are you—”
“Hey,” you repeat emphatically, poking Loud Dipshit for good measure. He gawps at you. “Hey, Loud Dipshit.”
He opens his mouth. You reach out with a hazy mind to pinch his lips.
He starts to make a noise. You shush him.
He tries to jerk away. You pinch harder.
The crowd murmurs to itself. You shush again, patting him on the chest, and say, pleased, still as quiet, “Okay. That’s a bit better. You hear how I’m talking? You hear how I’m talking at a decent volume? You hear how I’m talking with my nice words—”
A discontent grumble. You poke him harder this time, in the ribs. “With my nice words instead of getting mad at poor cute clowns for having game?”
He blinks at you, eyebrows drawing together.
“You hurt him. That’s not nice. You called him a freak. That’s not nice. You’re telling him to get out of town. That’s not nice.” You smile politely, the customer service smile coming back reflexively this time. “He’s an employee. He’s not the one deciding where the circus goes next. If you have an issue you can take it up with management. Calmly, nicely. Quietly. A letter maybe, politely worded. Look up a template or something online. Okay?”
That was a pretty good speech, you think from that distant place where all of your thoughts sort-of happen. Communicated your point. He should get it now, if he’s not a dipshit.
“You’re even more of a freak than he is,” the dipshit hisses with his mouth freed. “Did you fucking escape from a hospital or something? You look like you’re about to keel over, otherwise I would’ve punched you already too.”
You pause, registering, then throw your head back and laugh.
Oh, god, you’ve truly hit your lowest.
Even self-righteous street dipshits feel bad for you now.
Maybe he’s freaked out, or maybe he’s just the same old dipshit you came to know and love two-odd minutes ago, but he makes a disgusted face and pushes you. He maybe also doesn’t know how weak your body is; perhaps he doesn’t expect you to fall like you do. He looks shocked enough, at any rate, eyes shifting around like the crowd is gonna converge on him for pushing the poor sick kid, and elbows his way out after a few fraught moments with his head ducked down.
It didn’t hurt that much. You just fell on your butt, really; it might maybe bruise but nothing too bad. The cute clown looks even more shocked, though, hands fluttering nervously like he doesn’t know what to do. He probably doesn’t. You sure don’t.
It comes to you, belatedly, that you’re still laughing.
“Holy shit,” you giggle, wiping a tear from your eyes and grinning his direction, head lolling over on your shoulder. “I was gonna try to offer to help you up, but I guess we’re in the same boat now, huh?”
A worried smile pulls at his lips. His eyes are focused on you, intent—maybe too intent, scarcely more than a golden pinprick. They stop only to flicker to the place where your hands broke your fall, scant inches away from his legs.
“Well, while I’m down here.” You wince slightly as you move to your knees in front of him. You definitely banged up something. You knee-walk a step closer and dig through your bag. “I keep bandaids on me.” You’ve become pretty accident-prone, after all, given how out of it you are all the time. “Want one? It has a cat on it.” You wave it enticingly as though the cat might be the deciding factor between whether or not he accepts basic first aid.
His pupils grow, shining, and he nods with lips quivering. He still hasn’t said anything. You hope he’s not in shock or something because you don’t actually remember enough basic first aid to know what you have to do about that.
“Okay, uh. Lemme just...” You procure a tissue and reflexively lick at the corner and rub at the abrasion before freezing a few seconds too late. “Oh god I’m so sorry. Germs. I’m used to—well you’re probably not supposed to do it to yourself either, mouths are supposed to be super dirty or whatever—sorry I’m kind of not thinking great right now—”
The clown clasps both of your hands, practically beaming, a blush evident on his...face…? Not a mask then…? Special high-tech mask? Whatever. He shakes his head, then gives you a thumbs up, then—in case you might not have gotten the point—takes the tissue in his own hand and wipes his face, trembling slightly all the while.
“Shit, does it hurt? I’m sorry,” you murmur, peering closer. “It doesn’t look super deep, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still hurt. Here.” You take the backing off the cat bandaid and carefully stick it over the worst of the bleeding. It looks like it’s going to do approximately nothing for a wound that size. “...Yeah, that’s not doing shit for you, but it’s stylish, at least.” You laugh awkwardly, just now starting to realize how close you are to a stranger. “Uh. So.”
The stranger, meanwhile, has his eyes trained on your hands, grin falling until he looks practically heartbroken. You think you might see him flash a venomous glare in the general direction of Dipshit’s departure, as well, but only for a moment before he’s back to looking at your hands.
“Oh.” You stare at them also. “Yeah, I guess they got scraped up when I fell. Whatever, they’re not too bad so—”
The clown shakes his head again, so fast it’s nearly a blur, scowling at your hands. You laugh again, and he peeks at you, breathing deeply before going back to your hands. Gently, he takes the tissue you had unwisely licked and dabs at your palms with an untouched spot. He tilts his head at the box of bandaids, and you snort when you register what he’s asking. “You totally don’t need to—”
He tilts his head further, like a puppy.
Cute.
“Yeah, fine.”
Proudly, if lacking in finesse because his gloves have really long claws built in, he sticks a bandaid on each palm. Twin cats smile at you from your hands.
You feel, oddly, like crying.
“Um. Thanks. Really. I...sorry, this was a pretty lame as rescue attempts go, huh?”
His blush returns at that, and he shakes his head, clasping your wrists a bit too firmly for a moment before dropping them.
You’re considering whether you have the energy to get up when he hops to his feet himself, no help required, and reaches out a hand to you. You take it, but stumble a little when you’re standing.
He looks worried again.
It grates at you a little less than it did with Dipshit, maybe just because Dipshit was a dipshit and cute clown is more like a big shaggy puppy whining at you and asking what’s wrong. But you still feel a sense of shame, looking around and rather suddenly realizing that while the crowd has dispersed there are still people looking at you. You pat your face, thinking of your terrible eye bags and general dead-man-walking demeanor, and turn your head slightly, avoiding his gaze. “Sorry. I’m okay.” It hangs like a lie in the air between you, perhaps because it’s so visibly untrue. “I mean, I’m.” You purse your lips, then offer up a muted smile and a shrug. “You know.”
He doesn’t stop looking worried, and sways towards you a moment as if to reach out to support you. He doesn’t, though. If he had, you’re not sure if you would have cried or run away or pushed him or what. Your head is still hurting, you realize distantly, and you are probably late for work. Some of these people probably come into the café, actually.
Fuck.
...Fuck.
“Sorry. I really need to get to work. I just realized—yeah, sorry, I’m probably—” You gesture vaguely. “But nice, uh, meeting you. Sorry about that dipshit. I guess it wouldn’t mean much to say not everybody’s like that, right? ‘Cause it still really fucking sucks that even one person is. But, um…” Awkwardly, you ruffle your fingers through your messy hair. “I’m sorry anyway. And I hope you meet a lot more good people than shitty people in your life, hey? For whatever that’s worth. Which is, I mean. Probably nothing.”
He stares at you, eyes luminous, and does that strange semi-sway towards you again before drawing back again and crossing his arms around himself.
You zip your bandaids back up in your bag, not noticing that you forgot to grab the tissue to throw it away like the absentminded litterer you apparently are, and certainly not noticing that the clown has carefully folded it away and shoved it in his pocket.
“Okay. Bye then! Stay safe, okay? I’m nearly out of the cat bandaids, after all.” You laugh at your own shitty joke, waving behind you and meandering once more in a tilt towards the café.
...
The clown you leave behind watches, and watches, and watches, hearts in his eyes, and with shuddering hands brings the tissue, stained with dots of both your and his blood and the sweat of your palm, up to his face and takes a deep breath.
Blood. Salt.
You.
He tucks away the tissue again and slips into the shadows to follow you, defenseless and weak and gorgeous and everything-he’s-ever-wanted, escorting you from afar to your place of work as the silence spirals around him and his voice sings within. He has quite a lot to do, now.
Yes, this is only the start. And amidst his planning, amidst poring over the memories of the past ten minutes with you like treasured artifacts at a museum, amidst gushing over your hands and your face and your laugh and your body and the very you of you all, amidst his heart lit aflame and pounding in his ears loud, louder, he thinks—
He doesn’t deserve it. No, of course not. But ah...tonight, tonight.
Tonight, for once, perhaps he will finally have sweet dreams.