#the quote is from arthur miller's the ride down mt morgan

[sharkneto]

Any WIP's you wanna share? 🔫

Man, always, but I also feel like I'm running low on WIPs to share lol. it's hard to keep track of what's already been shared. What to pick from, tho, what to pick from...

Have a snip from this fic that's just been sitting on my computer for too long. It's technically done, idk why I haven't posted it. Fits in with not alone series, Allison finds Five in a low moment:

There’s one of Five’s problems, right there, Allison thinks. Another one they don’t know how to fix. “What about you?”

“What about me?” he repeats back dully, tucking himself tighter into his ball.

“What about your happy ending?”

He doesn’t respond for a long time. They watch another delivery at the florist on the corner. She thinks he’s just not when he mumbles, “This is it, isn’t it? My good ending.”

Allison tightens her grip on his foot. He doesn’t react to it.

“Really,” he adds, almost to himself, “what do I have to complain about? Got everything I wanted. Well, five-sixths of what I wanted. That’s pretty good.”

Her heart aches for Ben, too. She wonders how that grief, now dull and familiar after all these years, would twist if she technically had the ability to save him but still couldn’t. Five is Five, so he must have tried; the fact that they don’t have Ben means there’s something that stopped him. She won’t ask. “You did really good, Five.”

He hums absently. “Never said I didn’t. Could have done better, though.” He glances at her, an eyebrow raised in a sad mockery of playful. “’Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.’”

It’s times like this where it really slaps her in the face that her brother truly is a fifty-eight-year-old man trapped as a thirteen-year-old. The weight to his gaze around how he’s trying to lighten the mood for her is extraordinary. That did sound like a quote, though, the cadence he said it with. “Is that from something?”

Five shrugs. “Something or other. I only found the one page of it. Some play. It was at a point where most other paper had disintegrated if I hadn’t saved it, so it was an interesting find. Stuck with me.”

“It’s a good quote,” she offers.

The corner of his mouth twitches up. “It does sound rather profound. Which means it’s probably the only good line from the worst play that no one ever saw. That’s my luck.”

Allison smiles with him, although it cuts her a little bit.

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

She looks back outside.

“You don’t usually talk about this stuff,” she says after a beat.

He sighs. “And I shouldn’t. You don’t need to deal with any of it and here I am dumping it on you. Guess you caught me at the wrong time.”

“Or the right time. I’m always happy to listen, Five.”

He gives her a flat look. “Nothing about this is happy.”

“You know what I mean. I’d rather you weren’t stewing in it by yourself. We want to help.”

“The whole point of everything was you wouldn’t have to. I’m fine, Allison. Really. Turns out I’m just a tired and maudlin old man. Who could have seen that coming.”

Allison rubs her thumb over the top of his foot. He still hasn’t pulled it away from her so it must be ok. His word choice gives her pause. “You haven’t been drinking, right?”

Another flat look. “Three, it’s two in the afternoon.”

The not yet goes unspoken but she hears it. “Touché,” she says anyway, her heart thumping funny at him calling her by her number. It’s something he’d done when they were kids, too; they’d had real names by the time they were nine but Five, as the lone number left, was the only one still allowed to use the numbers. He did rarely, when particularly irritated or – in truly rare instances – particularly affectionate.

It's something she’d forgotten. Another piece of him, still there.