Author's Note: Big piece of pointless crap that falls into continuity with Almost Routine and Cracks in the Gypsum. Highly speculative non-canon crap. But I guess I don't have to specify non-canon, cause like seriously, when has any crap I've ever written even remotely touched a breath of canon? Disjointed and blah and shitty as ever. Crap grammar. Crap punctuation. Crap style. Crap everything. Beware of child abuse ._.

But there's a bit of a thing behind this and whatnot which is kinda somewhat interesting, I guess? I started writing this back in February, as I was gonna upload it for Nathaniel's birthday. But then like, I dunno, I just didn't think it was looking right so I stopped writing it. I didn't plan to go back to it, I just didn't delete it from the docs list because I'm a lazy piece of shit. Then MsAsumness messaged me asking if I would continue Almost Routine for her birthday and I like, remembered that I never deleted what I started of a continuation.

Thus I went back and finished it. I hope you like it, MsAsumness~! Happy (belated) Birthday at any rate, if you don't like it, feel free to request something else for compensation.

just ignore the smoke and smile
call an optimist, she's turning blue
such a lovely color for you

— a perfect circle

Blue ties, blue books, blue pens, blue ink, blue skies.

(blue feelings)

Blue bruises, blue bruises, blue bruises, blue bruises, blue bruises.

You're so surrounded by blue, you should be sick of it. But you're not, no, in fact, it's your favorite color. Your fingertips skim over a blue imperfection on your shoulder and though it hurts, it doesn't hurt the way it used to. It's a different kind of pain; it still throbs without your touch and complains with it and aches when you move, but it's missing an element that all the past bruises and cuts and wrenches had. You fervently rack your brain trying to figure out what it could possibly be that's missing, but the files come up blank.

Interestingly enough, you find the answer with your mother. It's one of those days and it's just the two of you in the kitchen and she just finished helping you bandage your wrist, and she's getting you a small ice pack out of the freezer and wrapping it in an aster-blue washcloth. You take it from her with the fingers that aren't throbbing and wordlessly press it where it hurts, hurts with that pain that's devoid of the element you can't place.

"Why don't you ever do anything about it?" Your question is soft and tired and only carrying a soupçon of accusation. You don't need to specify 'it.' She knows very well what 'it' is, she just watched 'it' happen again.

She bristles and steals a sharp intake of breath. You expected that, but you're taken off guard when she slaps you right across the face. Low and behold, the sting resonates with the brand of pain your father's blows have lost. Now you know what was missing: betrayal. You carefully touch the reddening spot on your cheek as your eyes meet your mother's wavering ones. You glare with what isn't just a soupçon of accusation and her eyes lower, too ashamed to keep facing you.

"I'm sorry, Nathaniel," she whimpers, lower lip quivering. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to."

You don't answer her, but she's answered your question. You suppose you already knew the answer anyway. She doesn't do anything about 'it' because her fear of him is stronger than her love for you. You're starting to lose your ability to forgive her for that. And apparently she's starting to lose her ability to forgive you for not forgiving her.

You leave the room without another word, and your lack of forgiveness is already starting to breed outright loathing, because you hope your silence bites her almost as much as you know it bites him. Him, the other parent whose punches and kicks and slaps and smacks and shoves and pushes and pulls and slams and grabs and whacks have lost their edge because you don't care about him anymore. You're done putting effort into seeking his approval, because you're never going to have it and that's just that, and you're sick of playing the textbook devoted doormat and never getting any results out of it.

(but this is normal, has to be normal, when you're constantly getting hit in the head, your halo is bound to fall off)

No, now you piss your father off in every single petty, infuriating way you can. You're cryptic if you to him talk at all, you never ever show your pain, you smile at him in every inappropriate moment, you leave his newspaper where the coffee can spill on it, etc, etc. Whatever it is you can do, you will do. He may have the upper hand in the overall situation, but you still know what makes him tick and you're never going to let him forget that.

If he's going to leave marks on your skin, then you're going to burrow under his.

Sometimes you bait him. You usually don't have to, he gets irritated over the smallest of things. But sometimes you bait him just because you need to remind yourself that you have that power. You are his punching bag, but you can drive him into spasms if you so desire. He's a bull and everyone but you is blue, but you, well you're special, you're red! You're red and you've tried so, so hard to be blue, but you can't. You didn't ask to be a matador but you are. So you do what any good matador does, you taunt the bull.

For every three rounds he wins, you win one. He can break your skin and even your bones, but you can break his complacency.

And yet it's still...It's not...It's not enough. As (rightfully) triumphant as you feel when you see the twinge in his features that lets you know you've gotten to him, it pales in comparison to how fucking bitter you are. How fucking bitter he's made you. But you don't show that. He probably knows you are anyway, but you'll never reward him the satisfaction of confirmation. And at school, well, you're just plain optimistic. But there it's somewhat less of a façade, because there you can be useful, and not just useful, but worthwhile and temporarily unburdened.

You also have a refreshing degree of control.

The ways in which you have control are spectacularly subtle and you seize them. Control aids victory and you're so, so tired of losing. You're a winner at heart, after all.

Some people are harder to peg than others, but in the end it's all the same thing. All it takes is thorough observation and dedication. You find time to do it in between slips of paper and borrowed scissors and manilla folders. Once you master this, it's only a matter of plucking the right strings. If you know Melody's in earshot, you laugh with Lynn a little louder and step a little closer. When Armin's distracted on his handheld, you gently nudge chairs into his path. If Capucine has her back to you, you make sure to drop a heavy book on the desk.

Little things, menial things. They give you this some sense of satisfaction. You can get to people. It's not the same as getting to your father, of course, but you're honing your skills to get to him even better next time. And maybe there's some truth to "misery loves company" after all. You're miserable, you hurt. You don't want to carry it alone. You lash out. You should be allowed to lash out once in awhile, right? You're always taking his lashes.

But you always leave Lynn alone. She always manages to make you happy just by being herself, even if it's only for a little while. She smiles and it's salve to the wounds you hide. You like her. Genuinely like her, and that's something you can hardly say about anything else.

But there's always a flip-side. An opposite. As much as you never take anything out on Lynn, the brunt of your passive aggression falls on Castiel. You hate him. Truly hate him. He thinks he hates you, and he definitely doesn't like you, but somehow you don't think he even knows what hate is. You do. You've been fostering it for awhile, feeding it because it's the one thing inside you all this blue hasn't sucked the life out of. It's thriving.

Why? Probably because he embodies a lot of what rubs you the wrong way and also a dash of what you want to be (namely alone). Probably because he had the gall to mock the snippets of blue on your flesh when Lynn made the mistake of opening her mouth about them. Probably because it's convenient to hate him. It doesn't warrant an explanation. You just do, and you think that maybe you always have. Even back when the two of you shared a benign atmosphere, you think you hated him. You think that when you witnessed the gold of his girlfriend screwing him over with one little phone call, you weren't planning on telling him because you wanted to warn him.

You think you were going to tell him just because you wanted to see him hurt.

That's neither here nor there. Though speaking of that bitch, you suddenly realize you and she are likeminded on one thing. Castiel's the biggest idiot at your school. It's not your hatred making you bias, it's a fact. He's impulsive, and impulsive is just a word for easy to fuck with. You play with people, you play with everyone, but his strings are so easy to pull, it's like you're not even putting in effort. You badger him in whatever little splenetic way you can, whether it's exaggerating the principal's concerns regarding him, or deterring Lynn away from him.

He's easily agitated, and on days where you can see he is exceptionally so (for whatever reasons, not limited to your own doing), you go in for the kill.

"Goddamn it, what do you want now?"

"For you to stop littering on school property!" You hold up an empty pack of cigarettes and waggle it disdainfully. "Before you even try to blame it on someone else, I know this is your brand. And you know what else? It's not only the pack I found! I found countless cigarette butts of yours defacing the grounds, and as if that weren't bad enough in itself, when you're careless that way I get blamed for it because it's the council's job to keep them neat!" Actually, you have janitors. But it's not like he notices, and truth be told, litter irks the hell out of you.

"You just said yourself, it's your job." Castiel grits his teeth and tries to step around you, but you mirror him. Just one more push should do it, just one more push and he'll give you what you want.

"No! It's my job to keep things organized and get them done, not clean up after your carelessness!" You breach his personal space and that's it, you've pushed him to his limit. He punches you in the face just like you wanted him too. He's pretty strong too, strong enough to send you staggering, stumbling. Still not as strong as your father. But the situations are completely different, alien to each other practically; here you can fight back.

There's something rapturous in driving your fist into his gut that has you high.

But it's different when his blows rain in what your boxing self labels body shots. Because the last time something happened to your ribs, you ended up hacking on your own blood and in an antiseptic purgatory for over a week. You stiffen, you panic. You didn't foresee this coming and it can't happen again, no, no, no, no, no, no! Suddenly your high is gone and dread has hooked through your heart. You can't let anything happen to your ribs again, last time you could've died, so you just can't—

You blank out.

That happens sometimes. Usually only when your father is using you as a punching bag. This is the first time you've blanked out outside of that situation, so this catches you off guard. But you know you have. An indeterminable amount of time has passed since you started fighting and Iris has leapt between you both and serves as a buffer, but even as she does so the fight is over with. Kim, Kentin, and Armin are snapping at you as they physically restrain you and drag you backward. Lysander and that guy in the basketball club who doesn't go to your school are doing the same to Castiel.

But what exactly anyone is yelling is all static to you, unimportant white noise because there is blood in your mouth. Blood coats your tongue and you internally jolt; you're dying, you're dying, you're dying! Your ribs are impaling your lungs again, just like they did when your father pushed you down the stairs and now you're drowning. Drowning in your own blood, you irresistibly cough out a noise and then you realize you're actually not. Castiel didn't break your ribs, he knocked out a tooth.

You're not dying.

You relax and the trio who've pulled you away from the scene finally let go. Your knuckles are aching and swelling, but they're not split open. The blood on them isn't yours.

"I was defending myself," is what you say when you're in the principal's office, holding the provided bag of ice to your throbbing jaw. Your tongue keeps probing the bloody, pulpy place where your premolar used to be. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't exactly do anything but fight back."

"I know, Nathaniel, you're a good student. But I still need to know what happened."

So you tell her. You make up the parts you don't remember, but it's a solid story, a good story. And you aren't really lying. You were defending yourself. You might've baited him, but he threw the first punch. It doesn't matter that you were provoking him, he was in control of how he chose to respond to that provocation. Not to say you're relinquishing yourself of credit, you'd never do that, however private your perverse satisfaction remains.

(honestly, what are you even doing anymore)

Castiel brushes expulsion, but the principal settles on suspension. You're kind of disappointed, but you suppose it was still worth it. You get sent home. You're not in trouble, but you are a mess and visibly pained (perhaps you're playing up the latter too much, it's hard to tell). Your father is royally pissed. You expected that, but you also expected that you'd have some time to recover from your spat. You don't.

He shouts at you for fighting, snarls at you for making yourself look bad, smacks you for that dental bill he's going to have to pay. You mentally spit on him and physically stand immutable. He shoves you into the table and harpoons shoot up the small of your back. You do what you've groomed yourself to always do, clench your jaw and refuse him the satisfaction of hearing your pain verbalized.

You don't glare either. Glaring would indicate that he's worth your loathing, and you're never going to let him know he is. So you're impassive. Muscles in your face fixed to be deadpan as he snatches a handful of your hair and drags you across the floor. Searing rug burns form beneath your clothes and kiss your bruises with lips like a wolf's bite. But as bad as it hurts, as deep as it runs, it's still lacking the singe of betrayal. And somehow you think, you hope, that if that part of it will stop hurting, maybe other parts will stop hurting too.

If parts stop hurting one after the other, eventually it won't hurt at all.

If there's one thing you want, it's that. Just that.

Eventually your father grows frustrated with your wordless pliability, gets antsier, gets rougher in an attempt to bring something out of you. Like all bullies he craves reaction, attention. Like any wrathful recipient, you silently spurn him. He gives you one last blow to the head before he backs off, incensed and grumbling. White-blue sparks explode in your vision like fireworks, accompanying the bolt of agony.

You scoot back to the wall, moving yourself as carefully as possible until you sag against it. The wall is kind like the floor is. The floor's always there to catch you when you're headed towards it and the wall is always there to support you when you get back up. Invisible flames lick up your skin as rocks scrape against your bones and your muscles twitch and whine. Your body's just as jaded as your mind.

Your mother pokes her head into the room now that all is said and done, as she usually does. You're almost vexed with her for doing that, but there's probably nothing you can do to get her to back off. Even if there was, your feelings concerning her position in your life are currently too mixed to try to sort out and address. You're just so tired, too. So sore, so so tired. Too tired to close your mouth even. It hangs open mutely. Dry, nearly too dry to taste the blood.

She shuffles a little closer, hesitant, uncertain. Like she's approaching a sick animal. Her eyes are probably tearful but now you prefer looking at the drapes, thank you very much. Thick, knitted drapes. The kind a cat would get their claws snagged in. Blue drapes. Royal blue. You like them, don't you? But you kind of want to close them because they're letting a little too much sunlight in.

Your mother leaves the room in nervous, short strides. You hope you won't be a parent like her. Statistically speaking, it's significantly likely that you'll be a parent like him. Thinking about this makes you sick. Literally. You double over and deposit the sloppy, syrupy remainders of your lunch all over the nice blueberry-scented carpet. Later your father's going to see it and take that out on you too. Your limbs suffer in premature anticipation.

You hope you never have children.