Big Book Of Sjips One Shots

And We Will Come Rejoicing (S)

TW: Drug Use, Teen!Cast

Sjin's dad's cousin has an old house. It's doomed to be condemned, some day, and it will be, when Sjin is in college. But Sjin is 17, Sips a little older, and there, they plan to kill Rythian.

The carpet is old and smells like cat piss and Sjin kneels on it, picking up little nuggets of weed that had fallen off the table when Sips had kicked his sneakered feet up on it. He tuts at Sips, looking up at his scruffy compatriot, and Sips just laughs in response.

Sips has choppy ragged hair and skin that is pale in an unnatural way and he wears flannel shirts and track jackets and dirty jeans and he is absolutely beautiful. He's heavyset and short and his nose bends in a once-broken, twice-shy way, and Sjin likes to think of him as his lumberjack.

It's stupid, he knows, to say he's in love at 17, and it's stupider to think it when he's scraping granules of THC off the mildewed carpet, but it's true. Sjin loves Sips, every little itty bit of him.

And he's plotting murder with him.

"I think this house is haunted," Sips says, leaning back on the musty broken sofa and taking a long drag of his joint. He holds the smoke in his lungs for a moment, two moments, and then lets it all go in a heavenly white cloud. He shifts, a little: the couch has springs poking through, probably stabbing him in the ass, but if Sjin knows Sips (and he does) he knows that he's too lazy to slide off the couch and onto the floor.

A testament to tiredness, that one. Sips sleeps in odd hours, snatches at school, never at night. His eyes are shadowed gunmetal gray, to tired to hold themselves completely open all the time. Sips's eyes are perpetually sleep-hooded, making him look less than alert.

"Don't change the subject," Sjin says, picking up the last of the weed and piling it into the ashtray they're using as a holder. They're letting their actual ashes fly all willy-nilly. "Do you think if we threw this ashtray at the wall it would explode?"

"Like Bruce Willis at the end of the Sixth Sense," Sips says, dreamily, nonsensically.

"Ooh, someone's feeling the Mary Jane," Sjin snickers, and begins the process of rolling a joint for himself.

He's gotten quite good at it. Sips has big, clunky fingers, and always drops the stuff or burns himself or folds the paper incorrectly. Sjin's fingers are elegant, pianist fingers, really, and he can get a blunt done in under a minute if he concentrates. He finishes up, licking the paper delicately to seal it, and then lights up with the box of matches sitting on the table.

Sips plants his sneaker on Sjin's back, giving him a shove, trying to knock the joint out of his hands. Sjin pays him no mind. If Sips is being annoying, the correct way to deal with it is to ignore him. He takes a puff himself, closing his eyes in an attempt to savor the smoke, and then lets it out.

"My father owns a gun," Sjin says, after a moment.

"What?" Sips says.

"Rythian," Sjin says, trying to get him back on track. "I know where my father keeps his gun."

"Oh," says Sips, and then thinks about it, for a long moment. He dips his hand into the bag of chips sitting next to him on the couch, brings it back out empty except for crumbs, and licks them off his fingers. "I dunno."

They sit in comfortable silence, for a few long moments. Sips is chewing on an answer. Sjin is content just to listen to the birds outside. He can hear them through the broken windows. The air inside the house is muggy and too warm even with the lights off, but there's a little bit of a current circulating through the shattered glass.

"We could bean him with a brick," Sjin says, interrupting the peace.

"Too messy," Sips mutters. "Too goddamn messy."

"What about poison?" Sips asks, and Sjin looks up. He seems excited about this one. "We can slip something into those dumb Hot Cheetos he's always eating. One bite and bam, we're done!"

Sjin swivels around, still sitting on the ground, and faces Sips. He's getting excited, too, it's bubbling like ichor up in his veins. This plan seems promising.

They've been planning on killing Rythian all summer. It seemed the logical cumulation of the feud that had lasted the school year and beyond. Get rid of him, and end the annoying phone calls, the looks at school, the constant numbing presence in the back of the mind. Sjin has never outright stated his guilt for scarring up Rythian's stupid face. He is not guilty. He thinks about it, sometimes, at night, at all the blood and the bubbling flesh, but he is definitely not guilty.

They had tried drowning Rythian a few days ago, on a day reaching a record-breaking hundred and five degrees, and it hadn't worked, because his girlfriend had been there. Sjin passed it off as roughhousing, but they had been kicked out of the public pool anyway.

(Sips had flipped off the lifeguard, as he stormed away, face covered in high-density sunblock, and Sjin's heart had thudded painfully, the call of love.)

And now they are planning again, regrouping. A different way to kill him. Something with less mess.

"There are so many possibilities," Sjin says, spreading his arms wide, eyes shining with excitement, "Cyanide, botulism, mercury, polonium, Sipsy, we're going to kill him!"

"You're spending too much time with Lalna," Sips says, and laughs. He picks up his keys from the table, flips to the pocket knife hanging off of it. "Sjin," he starts, and then pauses, and then continues, "You magnificent bastard, are we really gonna do this?"

"Oh," Sjin breathes, because he knows what Sips is going to do. He gets up, climbs up on the couch next to Sips, ignores the springs digging into his ass. His heart is pounding. "We'll give him a snack, and then hey, presto! No more Rythian."

Sips flips the blade open. The rest of his keyring is unkept, piles of rusted metal, but his blade is sure and shining and true. He looks at Sjin for a long moment. "Let's swear on it," he says, and presses the tip of the knife to his thumb. He does not make a sound, but as Sjin watches, a bead of crimson wells up on the soft meat of his fingertip. He hands the pocket knife to Sjin, and Sjin takes it, careful of the million old keys and chains and toys hanging off.

Sjin takes a deep breath, closes his eyes to steel his reserve, and waits one, two. He is getting the courage. He can do this.

"Oh, you babby," Sips mutters, and grabs the knife away from him. He takes Sjin's hand between his two, one bleeding, and mindless of the smears of blood he is getting all over Sjin's skin, holds the edge of the blade to Sjin's finger. "Say "go"."

"I love you," Sjin says, instead, and Sips cuts him. The pain is a sharp edge itself and it flairs as Sips presses their fingertips together, mingling their blood. And then he pulls away and it eases off, and Sjin is left with a bloody finger and a cottony taste in his mouth.

Sips kisses him, deep and slow, and Sjin is bursting with love, just full of it. There is a second when they are together and kissing and the birds are singing and life is perfect and they are going to kill Rythian.

Sips pulls away, finally, his features still an inch apart from Sjin's. "You're growing a beard," he mutters. "I love you too, dummy."

And the sun is shining through the window and Sjin can see the long lengths of Sips's eyelashes up close and the delicate skin under his eyes and he is heartbreakingly in love at only 17 and he has plans for murder. They haven't thought it through past the act of killing and Sjin knows, he knows that it is stupid, that the whole thing is, that even if they do manage to kill Rythian they will go to jail, but there is a chance that they can run away and dump their weapons in a clearing and cover them with leaves and somehow get away. And be together.

Sjin thinks of saying something else, something about how he hopes it will work out, and even if it doesn't he has Sips's blood inside of him now, but Sips is reclining on the couch and he pulls Sjin down for a kiss and Sjin goes down, down, down.

Credit to orphan_account on Ao3