The Metaphysicist (Kill Your Darlings) | Featured

is lucien the vodka aunt now

Nature is no longer charming for Lucien Carr, a man who used to enjoy it, at least not now anyway, because yes, nature is where the beauty hangs out in every aspect of the greens and the blues and the whistles of the wind, but nature is also where Lucien went to relax and instead was met by someone he hadn't seen in eight years, someone who abused him, someone who seared belt scars into his back because that's apparently how you experience more flavors of the world, someone who left traces that can never be forgotten in a lifetime, someone who ruined everything that Lucien had planned for his future by simply existing in the same space as him, and Lucien has barely been able to recover.

In fact, you never really can recover all the way. You can only suppress the urges and the feelings and the tears so that no one will suspect that you were once the bitch of someone who hated dogs, that you spent so many nights with wet pillows from the industrial factories of your own eyes that will never stop producing their goods, that you are not okay in the slightest but people will always expect you to be, and that's what Lucien is doing. His limited group of friends never would've known that he is crumbling on the inside, because he's done such a skilled job of hiding that notion from the people who would try and pick him apart to solve it when all they would do is leave fragmented windows strewn across the halls of Lucien's mind.

Lucien had thought he would be alone, but I decide it is a perfect time to investigate why my companion has been sitting out on the front steps for over an hour, barely doing anything from what I could see from the window, and maybe he's lonely, and lonely people need temporary boosts in their mood, because though I cannot fix his loneliness on the spot, I can subdue it like he's subduing his worries in the alcohol bottle gripped in his hands lapsing to ivory with the intensity of his clasp on it.

The screen to the front door clangs against its frame as I exit, but Lucien doesn't have to turn around to know that it's me, because quite frankly, if he's in this state, he'd probably rather see as little of me as possible, and that's okay, for I can deal with that. His safety is mine to uphold, and I can keep him safe by chatting with him about why he is most likely inebriated in a place where my neighbors can see him and call the Homeowner's Association to evict him, but most of our neighbors are sleeping at four o'clock in the afternoon due to their unbelievable oldness, so none of them are really here to witness this breakdown, which means that I can wrap my arm around my friend and comfort him with a brief "Lucien, are you all right?"

That is the most cliche thing I could ever say to anyone, the most useless thing, but it's already out of my faulty throat clogged by phlegm and the nervousness that spawned it, and it's the only phrase I can muster for the troubling situation, because I am clueless about this all, and it's obvious that Lucien won't disclose any helpful information to me, so I am left with the stock sentences that I've always abhorred, and they're my only choice.

But, of course, Lucien doesn't comprehend that, because he's drunk, and he's in pain, and he abhors those stock sentences almost as much as I do, so he only offers me a glare and a swig of whiskey down his throat as he refrains from moving anywhere besides my trembling vision. "Do I look like I'm all right?"

In all honesty, he looks like hell, and not the kind of hell writers enjoy writing about. Every features that I adore has now been dulled to the perverse enchantment of melancholy. His ocean eyes are in the midst of a great storm who throws all of the sailors off of their decks before snapping the boat in half like it's a larger model of a twig. His golden hair has been matted flat to his head without any of its signature shine or its classic style, just an amorphous mess of relationships among the strands. His berry lips now quake with each word he wrestles to spew out because he has to, not because he wants to say anything, but this is for me, and I appreciate it dearly, even if he's in this terrible pool of despair currently.

"No, you don't look like you're all right, but do you want to tell me about why that is?" I know he'll never agree to this with his secretive personality and acerbity towards those who only care for him, but it's worth trying.

Jaw swaying to the other side, Lucien's head slants away from me, clutching his bottle of whiskey tighter to him. "You couldn't help."

I offer all that I can, and though Lucien won't ever permit them to be in his sight, I still offer them. "I could help emotionally, at least," I propose, shrugging desperately as if he'll slip away if I can't give him something, which he might.

"Stop barging into places with clear warning signs, Allen."

My arms rocket towards the sky as blue as my companion's ocean eyes, eyes that have now worn down with the obstruction of pointed rocks, and I'm hoping to restore them to their buoyant state, but Lucien isn't allowing me to do so. "But you're here to tell a story, not deceive those who care about you!"

All Lucien has done is deceive me by pretending that he's okay when that's the farthest concept from the truth. Lucien is not okay, has never been okay, and will never be okay if he doesn't share with me what brought him to this perpetual underworld. He should not be able to smolder alone, especially not when the ambulance of a person is so close to him, not even a tantalizing deity to a mind deprived of splendor, but he is so estranged that he can't even realize that people are here for him, people like Jack and Edie who don't know him all that well, too. There are no benefits of isolation, and for the longest time I thought there were, but this level of isolation is reckless, and not in the way typical of Lucien Carr, rather in the way that lands people in hospitals and in debt that they can't pay off and in a deeper level of their personal hell.

"I hope that one day the number of stories I tell will surpass the number of lies I tell, but as you can see, today is not that day." A swig of whiskey luges down Lucien's throat, unapologetic and as intoxicating as his crystal eyes. "Tomorrow doesn't look very promising, either."

Well not with that attitude. Part of me wishes to reprimand him for being so lacking in prospect, but the other part latched onto a sliver of faith in his sentence. He used the phrase "one day", which means that he will live to see multiple sets of twenty-four hours. He could be alive for longer than now, longer than I would've thought it would take to crumble completely, and even if he's wrong about this, if he's dead tomorrow morning with a smirk hounding his blueberry lips, his current ignorance is a blessing.

"Don't be an irrational suburban mom who won't vaccinate their children, Lucien. Do not allow your spite to poison those who only want to help you."

"The only irrational one is you, Allen." He tows a shaking hand through his lifeless hair, acknowledging the doom that he could easily prevent if he would just grant me access to a bit of information about him, and he's a fragile man now because of it, so fragile that under his breath I can barely hear him say, "You can't help me."

"I'd rather try to help you than throw you to the wolves immediately."

"Let me at the wolves," Lucien commands me, though I'll do nothing of the sort, and he knows this, even if he doesn't know anything else, so he elaborates to convince me to do something that I'll still never do. "They're gentler than humans."

He has a point, though I hate to admit it, but arguing is pointless when he's knocked by whiskey and shaken up like a soda can into a haze, so I decide to continue this conversation when he's not in a stupor of emotion, and I force myself to concur with him so that he'll leave the debate alone for a while. "Well I suppose you're right."

And I now recognize that I am not like Lucien, no matter how hard I once endeavored to be. I do not like to tell lies.

~~~~~

A/N: why baes always fighting???,,gotdam

anarchism: being opposed to the government

~Dakotrash