Work Text:
"i never knew what one voice could do
i was in heaven the moment i heard you
my friends go out drinking and having fun -
i stay in bed with my headphones on"
-christopher lydon, dresden dolls
---
Today will mark the one-hundredth time you’ve tried calling in, but you don’t keep track of that, because that would be weird – even weird by your admittedly low standards. That speaks volumes.
You carry everything in your NPR tote-bag and you like to think that he actually touched it himself, with his own hands, even though you know better. Your friends give you shit for it all the time – actual strangers, in fact, have given you shit for it. Some guy once – you were just standing in line at the grocery store, the way normal people do, when the cashier accosted you. “You do know carrying that bag makes you a douche, right?” You were pretty flummoxed, but what could you say? “No, I’m not a douche, I just hold it while I sit on my bed and listen to Sollux Captor on the radio, pretending it’s him I’m touching instead of my fucking tote bag.”
That would probably make you more of a douche, not less. You’re usually going for less, but then again, you usually don’t care.
There’s also the fact that your two best friends are both astounding in their scrutiny, finding fault in almost everything. One time Vriska had dragged you out of the house to one of her squalid hole-in-the-wall bars, the kind with tattooed, beefy bartenders and usually actual holes in the actual walls. Then she’d leaned over and asked Terezi if some woman actually had the nerve to show up with her hair the wrong shade of blue. And the sickening part in your opinion is that Terezi had agreed. The wrong shade of blue. Incredible.
Terezi and Vriska are capable of finding something wrong with anything in the sick sad world, so you tend to hold the opinion that your obsession with a certain radio personality is a lot more normal than they let on. Don’t lots of people get celebrity crushes? You’re pretty sure that’s a cultural phenomenon. (Sollux Captor isn’t really a celebrity; he’s no Ira Glass. He’s just some guy who does this really cute local segment called “The Buzz”, some dumb flighty name for a show that is more or less the blood which runs through your tortured veins.) Terezi and Vriska could look at Heaven’s gates and complain about the architecture, so to be totally honest, when they call you a creepy weirdo you don’t give it that much thought.
You’ve been trying to get past Sollux Captor’s monitor for however long it takes to ring up one-hundred call attempts. That’s okay; it’s the chasing that gets your heart racing anyway, and you aren’t even sure what you’d do if he actually put you through anyway. He has to recognize your number, since you call every day. Perhaps Sollux Captor has a copy of the universe’s shit-list on which you are permanently etched. Good for him. He deserves it.
You’re not sure if you want him to actually give you airtime, anyway. You don’t know what you’d talk about. The Buzz is a niche show about beekeeping, one that you suspect was originally the product of a favor someone owed someone else – you even laughed, the first time you heard it. “Who the fuck listens to this shit?” You’re still not sure. For all you know, you’re his only listener. Yet he must have a pantheon of elderly women, young girls, clearly homosexual guys; he never has a shortage of callers, and he answers questions every day, with his nasally voice and speech impediment and toxic, intoxicating laugh.
You still don’t know how a guy with such a wretched voice ended up on the airways. Not even the Internet will tell you, since Sollux Captor is such a nonentity in the grand scheme of public radio. Wikipedia tells you nothing, and Google comes up barren. One time he got interviewed for Vanity Fair, and you came across it by accident, considering you really don’t give a shit about what’s in magazines. You’d just so happened to stumble across it while sorting magazines at your shit job – and then, let’s say, you paid for it legally. To yourself, you can admit that you stole, but it’s not like Walmart’s going to miss the money, and hell, looks like your tote bag actually came in handy, swallowing the magazine into its canvas depths.
Yeah, you could have bought the magazine, but things have been so rough since your dad snipped the fiscal umbilical cord you’d been leeching off of for, oh, the entirety of your early-adulthood existence. Really rough. You didn’t have time to cram the magazine’s cost into your budget. You needed it. Just like you need him.
Sollux Captor’s voice is a beautiful kind of flawed and although there is absolutely no imaginable reason for him to be on public radio, he is, and you consider this an act of providence almost holy enough to justify your rather questionable Catholicism. Good Catholics don’t get crushes on the baritone, lispy voices that belong to men on the airways. But hey, you cross yourself every time you imagine him naked. (There was a picture of him, for the record, in Vanity Fair. He’s much more good looking than his voice might indicate. You wouldn’t mind raising his funds.
That sounds slutty. Wasn’t there a time you introduced yourself as straight? Your closet is pretty transparent. Or maybe it’s just reserved for him.
He has no business being on the air, given his perfectly imperfect voice, and although an unforgivable voice is forgivable with the help of an interesting show, Sollux Captor has the burden of a show with relevancy to maybe three people, tops – again, you have no idea how he gets callers every day, unless the greater majority of Boston is also enamored by his non-dulcet tones, which you sort of doubt.
And you know it’s creepy, is the thing, because - duh.
You’re about to turn off your phone, the way you always do when you get ready for The Buzz, when it goes off. Call, not text.
You answer.
“Yeah?” you ask, unable to keep the irritation from permeating your voice. It’s Vriska; you recognized her ringtone immediately. (“Sorry I'm not home right now, I’m/Walking into spiderwebs/Leave a message and I’ll call you baaaaaaaack.” You’d like her to call you back, except Vriska’s been known to get pissy when you ignore her calls.)
“Hey, loser. Terezi and I are going drinking. Wanna come?” You wrinkle your nose. This is a fairly unusual request from her, in that…well, in that it’s a request. Usually she calls to say she’s on her way, or lately doesn’t call at all. You get the distinct feeling that there’s something ulterior behind her illusion of choice.
“No,” you tell her. “Didn’t you check the time? ‘S four-thirty.”
Who schedules their radio show at four-fucking-thirty? Sollux Captor is so broken. You’d like to think he’s as broken as you are.
“Ugh,” she says, and if anything you’re shocked by her shock, but your surprise is tinged with apathy and so you can’t really find yourself giving a shit either way. “You need to get laid, is what you need.”
“Yes I do,” you agree. She has a tendency of working your ever-present dry spell into conversation more than you’d care, and with some justification; the last time you’ve had sex was with her, totally intoxicated, reeking of Long Island Iced Tea and lots of pity the next day. You frown as you remember. Still, she’s not wrong. “Know any interns who can hook me up?” You wiggle your eyebrows, though she can’t hear it.
“Gross, Ampora,” she says, and you smile, just because getting her to react is one of your little pleasures, the small things, of which there are few and far between. “You need to get over that fucking radio guy. It’s so weird. You’re never going to get through. He doesn’t even know you’re alive.”
“True,” you tell her again. “He might have a girlfriend. Who can say?” No one knows about his love life – no one who has the good fortune of getting on The Buzz has pulled their head out of their ass long enough to ask, and although Vanity Fair fed your vanity (he likes freckles! you have freckles!) it didn’t do a whole lot on his straight/gay compass, nor is it all that recent, since that magazine came out a good few months ago. You glance surreptitiously at your house phone; you always use that one for calling in, and that is all you use it for, and you realize with mild horror that surely the dumb broad pitching for NPR support has finished blabbing by now. “I gotta go, shit.”
You hang up before you can realize that she asked you to tell her how it went. If you hadn’t, you might have recognized the sign as one of many that today’s call was going to be different. Vriska Serket showing any kind of concern would have set you on your guard, had you heard it. Instead, you leaned back against your cheap-o foam pillows and put your headphones on, content to be a malcontent.
---
You can’t wait for him to reject you.
God, you want it so bad – you can just taste it.
Of course, you’d like it more if he’d say something along the lines of, “Well, golly gee, mysterious caller, I’ve never wanted to sleep with someone and take them on dates in any particular order based off their vocal inflections and desperate declarations of love more in my life. Please take me at your earliest convenience.”
With his /lisp/, and the nasalness – wouldn’t that just be the cutest?
It’s a nice thought.
But you don’t suppose that’s very likely to happen. You’re not that stupid. So you’re willing to settle instead for a rejection – it’ll be lovely, you think, to hear him tell you why you’re pathetic or awful or trash. It’s not entirely because you’re a masochist, but how could anyone else feel different? How could you not pine for that twelve-and-a-half seconds of Sollux Captor talking to you, only to you? Sure, rejection would sting, but if you’re lucky, he might say your name.
The flipside to this is that him turning you down might help you get over him, and this you’ve accepted as a more likely solution to your horrible, mind-eating problem. Your fetishization of Sollux Captor rejecting you is probably to cushion the blow if and when he does; in actuality, you’ll probably just be very hurt and feel bad about yourself and then get over him, because that’s what you do, that’s what you’ve always done, that’s just the way it is.
---
You’re clutching the phone so tightly that it hurts your hands.
Knuckles all white and breath all shaky, you have an earbud in your left ear and the phone up to your right. You try your hardest to retain everything he says, and fortunately, you have the kind of brain where this sort of ludicrous malarkey is possible. It’s how you can recite at least two thousand facts about bees, none of which interest you in the slightest. You could listen to Sollux Captor recite the phonebook and be enthralled. His voice is like broken glass; so disjointed, so gorgeous, so painful, so pretty.
You sigh, and your chest shakes.
The blinds aren’t drawn for any real reason, nor do you sit criss-cross on your bed in boxers and a t-shirt that your stepbrother got you for the sole purpose of seeming like a creepy asshole; it’s just easy, and you are all about easy. No one can see you like this and in fact no one has. Even Vriska, who has forced you from your room through the sheer force of her abrasive personality, has the decency to drive her absolutely garish Serket Junior, the thing that can totally be heard from two or three streets down, so although she’s found you curled up with your pillows with headphones half-in, she has never found you doing so pantless, because goddamn it, you have standards.
You do.
“Now let’s take some caller questions,” Sollux Captor says, and you curl up without thinking, curled up on your cranberry-colored duvet, clutching the phone and dying for some kind of connection, which you are exactly two minutes and thirteen seconds from receiving.
---
You’ve always had a thing for the unattainable, but frankly, this is ridiculous.
When you were really young, you saw the mayor’s daughter on TV and wanted her hand in marriage; not only that, but you were convinced of the validity of such an aspiration. That is to say, you thought it was viable, which was stupid even for a six year old. You wrote her at least twenty letters in haphazard English, your writing being gentle and barely-readable. All of them were sent back, return-to-sender. You’d never felt love like that before. That’s when you learned it: love tastes sweetest when it’s unrequited. It’s been an awful habit of yours ever since.
Later you grew up and continued to have several more crushes on people who either remained blissfully unaware of your presence or, more dangerously, knew who you were and simply didn’t care. You got addicted to it really quickly. It’s so easy to love someone who’s never going to meet you to tell you ‘no’. That’s just common sense.
The only time you broke this rule was when you feel head-over-heels for your high school best friend, and in all fairness to her, you still aren’t sure if it was her you fell in love with or the idea of her – beautiful and charismatic and sunshiny and, more or less, everything you were not and continue not to be. You probably came as close to loving her as you had it in you to – but then again, you suspect this isn’t saying very much.
You don’t know if you have it in you to love the way normal people do. You’d like to find out, but you’re not sure it’s an experiment you’re capable of escaping from unscathed.
That’d be the worst, being scathed.
Rejection sucks to your not-firsthand knowledge, and so you hide behind television screens and telephones. Perhaps someday you’ll stop this nigh-self harming behavior. Perhaps not.
You like to consider Sollux Captor at least a little different because upon realizing he had a personality beyond his persona, you didn’t like him less – you wanted him more. His responses in Vanity Fair were a beautiful blend of talk-show host polished and political-flavored bullshit; then, between the lines, you saw the most painful and pulchritudinous bitterness you have ever seen.
You suspect rather heavily that Sollux Captor doesn’t like his work, that a father or sibling pushed him into it for some ubiquitous reason. The idea that he’s a real person is enchanting on its own; the fact that he’s a real person who’s just as suffering as you are makes you so giddy that you could just die. When you found out, you hugged one of your pillows and curled your toes and celebrated by buying a keychain from NPR, which you’re pretty sure he’s touched, because you’re not quite so cynical as to believe all of your valuable contributions are totally worthless.
---
One woman asks a question he’s already answered, which is about the rudest thing you can possibly believe. He cuts her off like a guillotine. Good. You even find yourself smiling, still shaking as you grip the phone ironclad.
This must be what pain feels like. Real, honest anguish. You might tear up a little, except there runs the chance that you might connect with him and sound all gross and sniffly.
The next woman who connects sounds chirpy and happy, and you cringe, because not only are the happy ones committing a major crime by being happy at all, but they’re also the ones who ask the most banal bullshit questions on the face of the Earth. You brace yourself.
“Sollux Captor,” she declares, and you have to roll your eyes at how bubbly she sounds, saying his first-and-last name like some kind of devoted tool, “will you go on a date with me?”
Wait.
Shit.
--
Q. Would you say you have a type?
A. Let me know what the atmosphere’s like on the planet where my ‘type’ has anything to do with my job.
Q. Surely you have a type.
A. I like walks on the beach, ridden atop white horses, and if you don’t have freckles I’ll refuse to see you.
Q. What if you went on a date with a woman who told you she hated bees?
A. I’d admire her honesty and consider the possibility that she sees me as a person and not some radio personality associated with one topic.
---
Sollux actually stutters, and you forget to be mad for a second, just because that is the absolute cutest thing. Sometimes you stutter. You sigh.
“Are you asking me out on public radio?” he asks. You have to agree with the sentiment; what a bullshit thing to do. (Of course, if you’d gotten through, you’d have done the same thing. You wouldn’t have expected a yes, though, which this woman obviously does, based off her tone. You dig your nails into your duvet with your free hand.)
“I absolutely am. Would you like my phone number?”
You could recognize Sollux Captor’s laugh from absolutely anywhere, and your recognize it now – a hesitant little “eheh” noise which prefaces his response. Your heart lurches.
You find yourself wanting him to reject her far more than you’d ever wanted him to reject you. You swallow out of habit.
“I already have that, thanks.” He shuffles something around; laughs again. Your headphones should theoretically be awful, since you got them for five bucks, but for whatever reason they’re hi-def and work fantastically. You hear him shuffle around some more papers and suspect it’s one of those meaningless gestures you do when you’re nervous. There’s a second or two of dead air, and you wince. Good job, caller number suck, you’re making Sollux Captor nervous on the freaking air.
“You know what?” he asks.
No, you don’t know what.
“Why the hell not?”
It comes so suddenly that you feel as if someone’s pushed you off a cliff and you’re just now feeling the fall; like you’re walking up the stairs in the dark and suddenly there’s one less step than you’d thought there would be. You’re falling, that’s for sure. Falling and there’s nothing to grip at save for your phone, which still resides faithfully in your vicelike grip.
“Really?” she asks. She laughs, a little hee hee hee that’s nowhere near as charming as the laugh you’ve etched into your chest and committed to perfect memory. Were you a mimic, you could recall it on the spot. You could probably write it out on sheet music and musicians could play it on their instruments. Maybe you could sketch each syllable and they’d hang it in museums.
“Sure. You sound cute. Plus, asking on the air is gutsy. The worst that can happen is you turning out to be some kind of stalker, but hell, I’ll take my chances.” You recall him alluding in one of the interview questions that he didn’t care at all about his job security – it had been one of the things which had caught your eye with the most force. Behind his radio-smile was a wall of apathy, and you were drawn to it, like a bull to a matador.
For a few minutes you listen to Sollux as he answers another call, although you don’t hear a word. You don’t notice that you’re still clutching the phone, much less tightly, but you do notice that your hands feel kind of numb. So does your head. Yes, definitely your head. You hear Sollux answer to someone else that as a matter of fact he’s bisexual (ow, was that your fucking heart? yes, you're sure it was, that snapping sound was just your heart falling to pieces, not like you needed that anyway) and that he’s agreeing just because he hasn’t gotten out of the house in a while, some kind of crap. You wonder if Sollux is someone else, if maybe the fake one is who you’d been so enamored with. But that’s impossible, you think. Surely-
“Hello? You’re on the air.”
When had you gotten past the fucking monitors? You blanch, and sit up straighter. Knees at your chest, feet on the duvet, hand on the phone like it’s a rotten life-line. You have no idea what to say. For once, you are speechless. You've recited this in your head for days, nights, even, using the fata morgana memory to lull you to sleep on nights when NyQuil won't do the trick. You've dreamed of hearing him address you, acknowledge you, and while you've long suspected that you wouldn't really have the nerve to let Sollux renounce your love in front of at least twelve whole listeners, you never one thought it would be because of something like this.
The worst part, probably, is that you know you had a chance. You know you had a chance because if you'd asked him - "Will you go on a date with me?" - he would have had to say yes, because he just said he was bi and he just said he liked the gumption behind the gesture, and it makes you angry more than sad because he could have been yours if you'd gotten through faster. Some dumb bitch from buttfuck-nowhere got through instead. It's the worst kind of luck. Sollux didn't reject you; he never had a chance.
You swallow rather thickly and realize that you've been silent for a second or so, which is like minutes on the radio. You know you hate when other people do it, but what the hell are you supposed to say? "Do bees feel heartbreak?" You know that they don't; not like this.
So with all of the strength you can muster, you pull the phone from your ear, and you hang up on Sollux Captor. His mild confusion, which still plays through in your left ear, does nothing to mollify you in the end.