Work Text:
Think: Being alone and dying.
It’s not desirable, but it’s a fact. A lot of things are like that, unwanted and naked and bare and he thinks about the time he’s on the cover of a women’s magazine with half of his torso on display. Like an object — but wanted, for a millisecond of a life.
“You’re hot!” Says the photographer who needs half an hour to find his good angle, who still needs to comb through different lighting for one stupid pose. “You’re on fire right now, man!”
You’re shit, Bojack doesn’t voice back the dismay.
Princess Carolyn reviews the photos later and gives him a thumbs up. She also schedules a private trainer starting tomorrow and fine, someone has to do the boring, depressing work. Might as well be him with all the shit he’s been consuming in between the failed casting.
“That bad huh?” He snickers, and “No. You’re beautiful.” She smiles.
The voice inside his mind goes quiet, for a sec. A stutter in his brain.
He looks and excuses his French but Bojack doesn’t quite grasp the disconnection between that horse and the one in his mirror view. He looks at a mess and “beautiful,” she says.
They kiss, intensity comes back in waves.
Lips locked and this is fine when he unhooks her bra with two fingertips, this is good for him, he thinks.
&
Think: Kissing someone and staying with them for once, you stupid shit.
He blinks, tired. The whole thing is weird. It is not.
She’s in his bed. The woman he’s been chasing around for over a century is here, quiet. Princess Carolyn lies still in the bundled-up sheet and he thinks about this thing she has on her work desk. Some kind of motivational keepsake printed inside a cheap wooden frame. Something about working hard until your last breath.
He would rather much dislike that, but whatever flows her boat, he guesses.
Bojack sits by his balcony and Los Angeles can be nice, sometimes.
The world is sleeping right now and he can have this — all of this, if he wants to: Her in his bed, warmth in his home. Complete safety in his heart where the black tar doesn’t reach up here, doesn’t crawl into his sheet and sleeps in his skin because LA is toxic—
He can kiss a person and stay with them forever, if he wants to.
&
Think:
“We’re over.” She says and he’s onto his ninth basket of bread.
His girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend — if you care about the technicality of it, doesn’t wish to waste more of her years kissing a horse and hoping a Prince will magically turn up. A cat-shaped man or something. His clothes itch and he hasn’t been paying enough attention in this shitty restaurant.
“I don’t know how you expect me to love you when you so clearly hate yourself.” She continues, stern and this place is insane if they’re going to charge him over complimentary bread.
Think:
Think:
Empty.
&
Think: Write a memoir. An autobiography. Anything.
Not, depressing horse asking for public healthcare at fifty because he’s a lot of things but not a ‘self-pitying masochist’. He’ll prove Princess Carolyn wrong. Maybe. He’ll write and it will be more of “Look at me, I’m a poem and you should fucking care about me!” because jumping to those that appeal best to their own colour schemes is good.
When you live in a world that has little to no space for stability, isn’t gripping people by how awesome you are — a good tactic?
He has time and this is easy. Bojack will make something that sad, poor little workers have to place a gold foil star on the cover of every single one. He will make history, he thinks.
&
Think: Diane Nguyen.
Difficult thing, to be seen for the first time for his brilliancy. The girl looks at him in the blurring lights of this party like she understands who he’s supposed to be, who he truly is and okay, maybe it’s not the first time he feels like this.
Princess Carolyn has done this once, too.
But Diane! New is better, isn’t it?
He can — maybe — just maybe,
Bojack thinks this time can work. Kinda.
&
Think: Book. Sarah Lynn. Diane. Bender. Sane.
His pseudo daughter kisses him, abbreviated, and holy fuck what is wrong with both of them?
Checks her into rehab, closes this chapter. It’s Diane on the phone when he blinks and the single-minded determination to finish the book and less of falling in love with women who would break him — weakens.
He doesn’t know why. Call it a misguided generalisation, call it a habit.
Think: Book. Diane.
Think: Diane.
&
“Are you— in love with my girlfriend?” Asked his rival, the golden boy of Hollywood and fuck, not that word .
Think something.
Think anything.
“No.”
&
Think: Choking Mr Peanutbutter to death with these hands.
The clown used to pick up things after him.
Still is, if someone is keeping count of the way his tail wags behind Bojack’s ass.
There was a time where everything Bojack did first, Mr Peanutbutter would follow, taking in crumbs of his shredding until he could build a house of it. Mr Peanutbutter’s House.
Funny how he’s a yellow Labrador when gold foil does nothing but trick people.
“I stole the D for Diane.” The fool exclaims, live and—
“You can’t be mad at him for going through with your plans when you have never finished one.” Princess Carolyn comments.
Truth hurts,
He turns off the TV.
&
Think: Princess Carolyn.
“Every time something bad happens to you, you’re always here. You’re not in love with me. You’re in love with Diane. But then again, you’re not really in love with her. You just think you are because you pay her to listen to you talk about yourself. You do this every time you’re going through bad times and,”
—Stop thinking.
&
Think:
Think:
Think:
Quiet. His last thought settles on: Being alone and dying.