if work permits {oliver and jude}

[[nyte]]

o   l  l  i  e    z  h  a  n  g

Dawn overwhelms me like a violent wave curling off rocky shores. Every movement is sluggish, like the ocean's fog physically restrains me as the whole of my body comes to life. (barely, but I'm still breathing.) There's a gaping hole in the arm of the sweater I pull over my head. Having once fit me it falls over my shoulder, revealing the sharp bone protruding from my collar. Absentmindedly I run my fingers through my hair, using up my precious few minutes before being swept up into the same monotonous trek. My stomach is hollow, flipping and gnawing at my insides, growing worse with every step.

All that welcomes me is the morning's breeze, cold light filtering over the huddled buildings making up the slums. This place still feels so empty, so strange, and even though I've lived here for four years there is nothing homely about it. The soles of my shoes are falling to shreds as I make my way down familiar paths, across winding streets and through old allies that might have sent shivers down my spine if i had anything to lose. Honestly, I fucking hate this job. There isn't much I don't, these days. (how tired I feel, how weak I am.. how my skin has collapsed upon my bones) It's getting to me, my eyes growing heavier by the day and my will shrinking with each sunset.

But now, I'm on a mission. Father always told me there was no such thing as a free lunch. One of the few actually helpful points he got across during our many spats. "Sport, people always want something from you. They can act all innocent with bright eyes and small smiles, but they aren't doin' it for you. No such thing as selflessness in a world like this." (and like many things my father said, I accepted it as fact. He's not been proven wrong yet.) It all started a few days ago, I left my cart unattended to strip the bed of an unoccupied room and when I returned there it was. An unsightly blemish upon an otherwise boring accessory.

A brown paper bag, tauntingly full with foods I often can't find the time to buy and next to it a note: eat. I didn't. Perhaps I should have been grateful, perhaps that's what they expected. A typical beggar would hold the bag like a priceless diamond, swallow their pride and thank the heavens for a stranger's seemingly random act of kindness. (the act only severely wounded my pride and left me feeling even more like shit. I didn't want to be anybody's charity case.) The thought sends embers to my cheeks and sparks down my veins, my heart beats louder with resentment at the thought of being pitied. Once, I was the child who threw coins at the homeless on the street and now I am little more than a prince turned pauper.

Maybe it wouldn't have been a problem to throw away one bag and continue. Maybe I wouldn't have thought anything of it; the stranger and I could keep on our own merry - at least i hope his was some semblance of merry - paths and forget the other existed. (alas no such luck.) The next day a bag appeared on the cart again and I felt my cheeks heat up with anger (and shame.) Every day the trek continued and I begged for the bag not to appear, for not another weight to be added upon my shoulders because I was only moments away from collapsing anyway. Every. Damn. Day. It was there. And every damn day I was too proud to take a bite, no matter how my stomach growled and begged for a release I touched not one morsel hidden beneath brown paper.

Today I've hatched a plan. Cart handles gripped within my palms, the rounds I make are as uneventful as ever. (trying not to heave as I empty bedpans or to cry at the suffocating death surrounding me was all work ever consisted of.) Hopefully, the not-so-good Samaritan will suspect nothing when I leave my cart abandoned in the usual place, As I walk off without so much as a second thought before dashing behind a wall and (feeling like an idiot) keep my eyes glued to the abandoned cleaning supplies.

Hook. Line. And sinker. The stranger falls into my trap, casually dropping the bag upon my cart on his way past without so much as a moment's hesitation. (fucking bingo.) As always my tongue moves without permission. "Hey!" and my feet follow suit, snatching the bag on my way over and holding it out as soon as we were within range. He couldn't have been much older than me and must have been some kind of genius to end up here so young. (but is he really? what genius gave lunches to the janitor who's never so much as received a second glance in his life?) "You forgot something." (please please please just take it and leave.)

{i'm writing the folks back home to tell them,
"hey i'm doing alright.";

[gamemaker kelsier]

j   u  d  e    r  i  p  l  e  y

They don't rob graves anymore.

At least that's what Jude and Nino promised each other a couple months back. No, it was the straight and narrow for the Ripley boys from then on and that was a fact. Nino had gotten a well enough paying job at a nightclub as a bar man and Jude had started working in a little coffee shop near the hospital that he was attending medical school at. I thought that would be enough to keep us in house and home. However, he hadn't counted on the bills that were piling up from tuition fees and the endless amounts of money that he'd need to achieve a Medical degree. That's because you're a fucking idiot, Jude. You were seeing roses where there was only mud. Oh fuck off, really.

He wasn't supposed to know, he was likely to be the first Ripley to attend school in the first place. With the money stress come back to haunt him, the faceless voice came too, the little man in the back of his head who had conned him into slitting his wrists nearly two years ago now. I'll get you next time, Jude my dove. "I highly doubt it," said Jude to the handle of the shovel that he was gripping tightly in two callused hands. Med school hadn't made them soft, only tught luckily and it seems that one never really forgets how to dig. Despite the stress and confusion that was weighing down on him so heavily yet again, Jude knew one thing for certain, "I'm not ditching Nino again." We'll see, won't we?

It was the three hundred dollar bill for his books that had him digging up some rich old crone who'd died only last week, all her jewels sewn into her skin in an effort to keep her wealth from the children she had only ever held scorn for. Jude was outfitted with his shovel, a scalpel he had nicked from the hospital and a particularly dead feeling resting beneath his collarbones. Maybe resorting to gravedigging again was breaking yet another promise to Nino, No, it is breaking a promise, he's going to hate you, Judey-boy. but there was nothing else for it, not if Jude wanted to become a Doctor and get Nino and him out of the slums forever. What he doesn't know can't hurt him at least. You just tell yourself that.

At least it was three in the morning and the place was deserted. The only folk you saw around the graveyard at night was the dead kind. Jude worked quickly, only stopping to rest a couple of times. It got to him just how quiet it was. Was it really only a few years ago that his three brothers were beside him, complaining and making terrible jokes about the state of their clients? He can't say that he misses the old days, but he does miss his brothers. Dead and gone from them for too many years now. BECAUSE OF YOU, JUDE, went the voice as if it had been waiting all night for a chance to bring up his failures.

He felt his shovel hit wood and he stopped, leaning his forehead against the handle of the old shovel, breath coming quickly from the exertion. "No. It wasn't my fault," he whispered to the rusted metal like Nino had whispered to him that night, nearly a year back when they had finally spoken about it. "It's not my fault that the-."IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU, WHY DIDN'T YOU VOLUNTEER FOR THEM? COWARD. He slammed the tip of the shovel into the rotting rood and it gave easily beneath his blow, splintering in on an old and rotting face. He dropped the shovel, and fell to his knees, hands scrabbling at the wood and tearing it away in chunks. "I couldn't...I didn't, I didn't-." COWARD COWARD COWARD COWARD, went the voice and it laughed, loud and raucous in his head and filled up the entire world with hateful laughter.

Desperately, Jude slipped the scalpel from his worn shirt pocket and dragged it horizontally down his left forearm, a line of blood appearing and bleeding from wherever the cold metal kissed his skin. It stung and he hissed in surprised pain, a cloud of confusion stopping over his head, kicking the voice out.

He waited for a moment as he angled his arm downward so the blood would drip down onto the casket bellow him, rather than onto his short.

The laughter was gone, the beast in his brain was sated and Jude could resume without interruption.

Acid built up in his throat and he leaned forwards reflexively, wondering if he was going to throw up right then and there, on the face of a dead woman but the moment passed. He shut his eyes tightly and drew in a deep breath. One of his professors had decided to send him to mandatory therapy sessions, without even really knowing him. She'd seen the name Ripley on her class list and had told him the same afternoon that he was to report to a Doctor Walt Robbins. The first thing he'd done was teach Jude how to breath. He'd told Nino about the therapy sessions. They were attempting openness with each other.

And here I am, fucking it up by building another lie.

Jude opened his eyes and set himself back to work, tearing away more wood to reveal a gold necklace and a wedding ring as a pendant, resting right over the woman's heart. He yanked the chain, pulling the dear thing away from the corpse in a cold gesture. It's not that he didn't care about the precious thing that he was taking, it was that he couldn't. Sure, it had been some time since he'd had to rob a grave in order to live but if he wanted to at least attempt to stay sane, he couldn't let himself care too much about what he was doing.

The jewels were inset into the collarbone and quickly, he dug the scalpel into the rotting flesh, loosening each rare stone and pocketing them in turn. Perhaps this job had ensured his ticket to hell, but it had also gotten him into Medical School as one of the youngest applicants. They'd never seen someone that was so calm around a dead body before at first go.

Bitterly, he finished with the corpse and stood, the jewels in his pocket would be enough to pay for his school books and more as soon as he palmed them off to the Libertines. He'd just have to be careful that Nino didn't suspect where the money came from. ....tut...tut....all these lies.....jude, said the voice and Jude didn't flinch, digging a fingernail into the fresh cut he had just given himself, the burning pain sending the voice packing for a few blessed minutes again.

Mechanically, he used his shovel to help himself out of the hole and set himself to burying the mutilated corpse, where no one might see the destruction he had done.

He was home, in the shower by the time the sun rose, jewels stashed safely in an old burlap sac beneath his bed.

_ _ _

Many might as him what the hell he thought he was doing as he made his way down the hallways of the Hospital during his short lunch break. He held a brown bagged lunch in his right hand, white lab coat made colourful by a multitude of pens in the front pocket over the left breast. To be honest, I'm not really sure myself. Perhaps it was because Nino was suddenly too old for Jude's careful care. Perhaps it was that he had left over feelings of nurturing from the two brothers that he had seen buried, whatever it was, it was most likely unwanted and invasive. However, he couldn't seem to help himself.

I couldn't watch him starve to death out of idiocy.

Put it down to years of forgetting to eat, of feeling sick and tired from malnutrition, whatever it was, for the past few weeks he'd been leaving a brown bagged lunch on the cart of the Hospital's day janitor at every lunch time. It wasn't anything special, just the same thing he packed for him and Nino everyday. He'd never been good at sticking to two lunches anyway, after so many years of making four every morning. He told himself that that was all it was because he didn't want to admit that he was still in the business of worrying about everyone else instead of focusing on his own health.

There was something about looking a kid in the eye though and seeing yourself in them. Jude had been there too often, exhausted out of his mind and starving himself to death. Perhaps if someone had tried to help him, he'd have suffered less. Ha, as if, you love suffering too much, you whiny little pissbaby. Jude groaned slightly as that same stupid voice spoke up in his head. However, he knew better than to admit it's presence in public and he ignored it steadily as he walked by the janitor's cart and dropped the bagged lunch on it, with the same command written on it as every other time, 'Eat'.

"Hey," someone called and Jude kept walking steadily, ignoring the voice because if they really wanted something from him, they could use his name. Otherwise it wouldn't be important. However, he found himself cut off, a brown paper bag waving in front of his face, "You forgot something."

It's the janitor boy.

Jude wasn't expecting to see him, it was why he always waited for the cart to be unattended before he left anything on it. He blinked at the boy and then at the bag in his hand as if he had never seen it before in his life, expression blank. He was good at appearing calm but on the inside his heart rate was already speeding up and his whole being was begging for a quick getaway. "You are mistaken," he said softly, eyes travelling away from the bag to rest unblinkingly on the face of the wielder of the nutritious evidence, "That isn't mine."

It wasn't a lie.

Jude had made it for him after all.

Oh twice as much
ain't twice as good
And can't sustain like one have could
It's wanting more
That's gonna send me to my knees

[[nyte]]

o   l  l  i  e    z  h  a  n  g

I stare at the stranger in disbelief, mouth slightly agape and fingers curling so tightly around the bag that it hurts. I was absolutely not mistaken, I'd seen him drop the bag into my cart. I don't know what he's playing at but he's not helping me, I'm not going to be his fucking charity case so that he can go home and pat himself on the back for helping someone less fortunate. Fuck him. "Bullshit!" I exclaim, words sharp and unrestrained as I shoved the bag closer to him. "I don't even know you, I don't want your help! You shouldn't even care." (because no one ever has. because father said no one ever would.) And for some reason my voice breaks. The eye contact I'd held with this stranger dissipating as I drop the bag at his feet and hug myself tightly, digging broken nails into my skin through holes in the fabric. (brave face...brave face...brave face...)

But I have not been brave for so long. There's not time to feel much when simply breathing takes so much out of me. I feel like falling right here at the man's feet along with the contents of his shattered lunch and letting the world slip away because I've been on the precipice for weeks now. (when was the last time I cared enough to sit down and eat a proper meal? it's surely been years.) Walt would hate me if he knew. He'd give me that look that only a father can give, with those sad eyes and slight pout. "I'm not angry at you Oliver, I'm disappointed in your actions." (same fucking difference.) But I've already met with Walt this week and I've said nothing about this asshole and his vendetta to suck me dry of my remaining pride.

Tongue peeking from between my lips, I kneel down and quickly gather the ruined food because I'd have to clean it anyway. "Look, you think you're helping me? You're not. I can afford my own food. I can afford everything I need!" (that's why my clothes are riddled with holes and I can feel my skin pull taught against my bones as I lean down. that's why i look so pathetic that a complete stranger felt the need to feed me.) "I'm just fucking busy okay?!" my tongue stumbles and in a desperate attempt to regain it's footing, lets out a frustrated groan. I didn't want this, I wanted him to take the goddamn lunch and leave because I'm not this pathetic.

I straighten much too fast and stumble, barely managing to catch myself with an outstretched hand on the nearest wall. Anger and embarrassment claw their way up my cheeks as I turn and throw the bag onto my cart. I feel cold, not just in the places my skin is exposed by the old sweater, it's a worse cold. One that travels the whole of my body and deep into my bones. Because I'm about to collapse. I'm still not able to take my hand off the wall because it seems my legs have decided to abandon me and I'm absolutely not falling on my ass in front of this fucking knight in shining goddamn armor. (but i have no strength left)

This is going to get me into a shit ton of trouble. I shouldn't be standing around on the fucking job and any of my supervisors could walk buy and chew me the fuck out and it'd be all this assholes fault and- (pins and needles force their way up my legs, draining every ounce of strength as I continue to glare at the man.) Black fairies float across my eyes, calling their friends until hoards of them are absolutely everywhere and it's hard enough to keep my eyes open let alone focus on the guy in front of me. (everything is fine.) I force my breaths to slow, I'm good at avoiding panic. Such petty things faded after I grew accustomed to my father's screaming, the way his face turned red and got so uncomfortably close to mine. And of course I refused to back away. (honey you shouldn't be so problematic.)

It all fades, like a tide's gradual ebb. As long as I can keep calm, it always does. That's the beautiful thing about being a man as stubborn as I. Ignore the problem with enough resolve and it'll fuck off. I play off the moments like an intentional ploy, keeping my palm firmly planted on the wall because I don't trust myself in the slightest to stand on my own right now. My chest and head burn something awful, like the slight energy exerted in staying conscious was akin to running a mile with weights tied to my ankles. (which is how most living felt now a days. it's a bit pathetic.)

It's not that I want to die, or even to suffer like this. I just want to be everything that he wasn't. Everything that my father said I could never be. "I brought you into this goddamn world it'd be a pleasure to take you out of it! Don't for one second thing you'll get anywhere without me!"

"Of course I will just you fucking wait! I'll prove I never needed you!"

Then mother had thrown herself between the two of us and begged for her two favorite boys just to get along for once. (in the end, she still took his side. i was never her favorite anything)

And my father has been waiting for four whole years now; I've yet to prove anything.

{i'm writing the folks back home to tell them,
"hey i'm doing alright.";

[gamemaker kelsier]

j   u  d  e    r  i  p  l  e  y

You make my job too easy when you make enemies so quick Jude.

He shut his eyes for a moment and let out a long breaht of air, imagining it blowing away from him in a long steady puff. The focus exercise helped sometimes. If he was lucky, it would at least quiet the asshole who had taken up residency in his head a little until he could find a supply closet and something sharp.

The janitor was not happy with him. In fact, he looked livid. I was just trying to help him. All he'd done was piss him off. He wondered when he was going to stop doing that and actually help someone for once. Maybe he wasn't as helpful as he thought he was. "how can you be too busy to eat?" he asked, marvelling internally at the mildness to his tone, "Besides," he continued, "It doesn't matter if you want my help or not. I'm a doctor."

More like doctor-in-training. That's a sidenote.

He moved to help him regain his balance, carefully putting his hand on his arm and waist to steady him, "Here, let me help you."

Oh twice as much
ain't twice as good
And can't sustain like one have could
It's wanting more
That's gonna send me to my knees

[[nyte]]

o   l  l  i  e    z  h  a  n  g

My face must be some awful shade of red and I want to die right here and now because nearly falling on my ass in front of the guy I'm trying to prove something to is surely only furthering his assumption that I am helpless and weak and pathetic. I'm not. My father taught me well, no matter how much of an ass he might be I know how to take care of myself. How to work myself into the ground and then some because in the end my worth is measured by the amount of hours I put into a week. Because I can be something without him. Without anyone. And I'm going to fucking prove it or I'm going to die trying.

And I must be really fucking close because I can feel my heartbeat, I can feel bright white brands into my chest with every feeble thump and there are black spots crawling into the corners of my vision. My legs are weak, hands shaking so badly that when I move to push his hand away I only press myself closer. "Let me help you."

But I don't need him. I don't need anybody. And I would tell him that if I could remember how to fucking speak but I can only slide further into his grasp because the world is floating away and my vision is tunneled and there is an angel staring down at me and I'm not quite sure what to say to him.

"Don't... need... uh" I furrow my brow and grit my teeth. "I don't need... help."

[gamemaker kelsier]

j   u  d  e    r  i  p  l  e  y

"Don't need help," says the janitor but before Jude knows it he's already supporting all of his light frame in his arms. He barely weighs anything at all and for a moment, a lightnening strike of fear skids through him. Maybe he's dying right now. Don't be a fool Jude.

The voice in his head is right for once. He isn't dying just fainting.

"It's okay, I know you don't," he says, voice soft in reassurance. As he speaks he gestures at a nurse walking down the hall to give him a hand. She's a pretty little woman named Jana and has a smile like the sun. Right now she's frowning and making a 'tsking' sound with her tongue.

Jude can't help but notice how his hair smells when he leans further into him as his consciousness fades. It's floral. You fucking perv. His cheeks went slightly red at the comment but it was covered well by a soft grunt of effort to hold the janitor up.

He gestured to another nurse, all business as the boy's head fell back. "Help me get him to a bed," he said, voice louder and more commanding. "Does anyone know his name?"

Oh twice as much
ain't twice as good
And can't sustain like one have could
It's wanting more
That's gonna send me to my knees

[[nyte]]

o   l  l  i  e    z  h  a  n  g

There is something to be said about the touch of another, the softness of his hands around me. I feel greedy, closing my fists within the fabric of his shirt and I try to make myself as small as possible because maybe he will forget that I am here and he will never let me go. I've never been held like this, never so much as had a hug from anyone but my mother the weeks that my father was in some dusty motel for business and she did not have him to worry about impressing.

Affection bred weak children and my father would only raise the best. (But he still managed to raise me so I think his logic is more than a little flawed. Not that I give a shit that I'm some kind of monumental fuck up that he wants nothing to do with. I don't care one bit.)

"Oliver." My name is thrown so far across the room that I can barely catch it with my ears, barely focus on where the sound came from because I am hovering somewhere between the light and the dark and I am far too stubborn to give into the darkness no matter how hard it may tug at my heartstrings. Instead I lift my palm and press it to the cheek of the annoying angel, the one who wants to save me and I give him a smile because maybe it was him saying my name. "His name's Oliver but he likes us calling him Ollie. Sweet kid but thick as a brick."

The voice isn't wrong.