|behind| my back :: jace standalone

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i never know what to do with my hands so i'll put them behind my back[/color][/size]

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hey, i'll move out of the way for you
hey, i'll move out of the way for him, too
i never thought we'd end up here
in separate cages
it doesn't go like this, you've left out some pages

--Sometimes

[/size] I drown in all the things I can't say. The right words have a way of slipping into the whirlwind of my rapidfire mind there is so much so much so much i want to tell you but it flies away before i can make myself brave and i feel like i'm trapped in a loop of shining almost-moments and fading away until I barely remember them, but then I look at you and they all come rushing back only to slip away again, and for the first time in an eternity it makes me wish I was normal and not-broken enough to speak the words that could save both of us.

"I-I mean, what kind of asshat...does that thing with a pen, on a napkin?" you stammer, sitting in my kitchen with your eyes like midnight and your heart like a hurricane. Words were always different for you, but we have the same problem of never being able to make them do what we want. While every turn of phrase I could ever make worthwhile gets lost on a tide of things that don't matter no one listens long enough to find the gems of a wisdom i do have i really do i'm smart just not in the way other people are yours cling to the tip of your tongue, painting the backs of your teeth into a canvas of heartbreak that you can't find the words to vocalize. We both have a way of losing our words i have a way of losing everything because i move too fast and everyone always leaves because they can't keep up and i don't know how anyone living in this world of color can feel as alone as i do, that's what drew me to you in the first place, what drew me to you with your smile like the stars I've never seen and a voice that could make the world stop and listen. You stumbled into the choir room and I talked and you listened you listened and i couldn't believe it because no one ever listens because i have too much for them to hold and it's better to ignore me but not you because you smiled and nodded and i smiled too and it felt real and I let myself start to hope, start to think that hey, maybe this one will stay.

And in the end, maybe I was half-right. You didn't leave. He swept you off your feet and carried you off to somewhere I couldn't follow.

hey, when was the last time you laughed
and did you mean it when you did
i'm just wondering, the sound
in your voice, it's abounding
it's astounding how you live so close to your cure

"Are you honestly asking me that question, Colt? Come on, you know about how I feel about the guy," I mutter darkly, stirring my overly-runny bowl of cake batter with a little more force than I need to. It's true, I've never liked Kaelen he was everything i could never be with his silver tongue and pretty eyes and a magnet beneath his skin that always made you look at him like he was something to be adored, but it wasn't until after he got his claws in you and started dragging you away (that's how I tell myself it happened to make me feel better, but the deepest part of me knows you'd follow him willingly over the edge of oblivion) that I started to hate him with a force that scares me, rips me apart at the seams and blackens my soul. It wasn't jealousy, or maybe it was, just the sort of screaming in my head every time I saw you give him that starlight-smile that had been mine for however short a time, a piercing shriek of No, don't, he'll break your heart, you can do so much better. And then he did. I've never been so bone-deep sad to be right about something.

I never thought that I was the better you could do, the grass on the other side of the fence that you deserved. I don't love you because before I could, you were already out of reach. That's how it always happens i want to feel what it's like for someone to hold my heart in their hand and have them be a part of me but no one is ever willing to stay that long and that's why i've got miles of rumpled sheets and awkward morning-afters in my wake because if i can't have love i at least want something that feels like it, I find someone I could have as a forever one day only to watch them slip through my fingers. People always talk about the one that got away and I could never understand because all of mine got away, but after this, after you, I think I might get it a little bit.

I tried to hold onto you. Goddammit, I tried. But trying to keep you was like trying to catch the smoke that bloomed off the end of Kaelen's cigarette, forever pulling you just an inch beyond my grasp until I realized that maybe it was better to be there for you as a best friend than nothing at all.

i never know what to do with my love
i never know what to do with my hands
so i'll put them behind my back
i'll put them behind my back
behind my back

"Why am I so leavable?" you whisper, sounding so broken that a piece of me shatters along with you. I told you, I told you, I told you he'd break your heart because that's what boys like him do. Boys like him, they find boys like you, all smiles and light and goodness, and they break them because everything they touch falls apart. I watched him pull you in until you hung on his every word like the gospel of some god the rest of the world forgot, watched him take every last piece of your heart and hold it carelessly in his hand, watched him toss it on the ground without a second chance and destroy it.

Maybe that's why I hate him. For mistreating something I would have cherished.

"You are not leavable, Colt. You're proving that by what you're doing right now, and don't pretend that's your school backpack and you came here for extra help. We're friends for a reason, you know." Even now, you're chasing after him. He's so deep in your soul that he pulls you along with an invisible string that no efforts of mine can cut, and something about that i kept quiet because i'm not like him i actually care about you so every time i saw you with him even though i wanted to scream THAT SHOULD BE ME i just turned around and pretended not to see it because you smiled and you were happy and i thought you deserved that makes the blur of angry red in my whirlwind mind rush and swell until all I want is ten pairs of drum sticks to wear out against unyielding force that is the only thing in the world that can withstand it. I was never good enough for you, but I would have been better than someone who could break you without a second thought.

There's nothing but could-have-beens haunting my mind as your face furrows into a petulant glare, eyes broken but still defiant. "I'm not going...to um...follow him like a whiny little...freak."

"See, I told you he was a no-good deadbeat who'd hurt you, not saying I told you so but I told you so. You deserve better," I say before realizing that it sounds too much like someone with sour grapes and covering quickly with a laugh that doesn't even sound close to real. And through everything, through the midst of your pain that feels like it could rip both of us apart, a smile blooms on my lips. Beneath all of this all the i wishes and i'd be better than him's and why couldn't you see that i wanted you more than him's and why couldn't i just find the words to tell you's, there's a fragile sort of hope. You're broken, yes. Shattered. But he won't come back to sweep you away again into an endless cycle of destruction and rebuilding. I know enough of boys like him to know that once they break their toys, they move onto new ones. You're broken now, but that only means you need someone to put you back together, and that's a job I'd volunteer for any day.

hey, you don't know what i mean when i say
hey, see it in my face, i'm breaking
i've waited for so long just to know
that you'd wrap yourself
around me if you couldn't let go

You stand, walking into the kitchen with new purpose, like you've got something to live for, and I smile more because of the nubile dream that hey, maybe one day I'll be that something. But then your hand closes around my wrist, yanks me into a hug, and oh God, I know this feeling because it's one I've had a thousand times ro mew ophelia wren isabella colt It's the feeling of someone leaving. "G'bye Wheaton, I'll...have that feeling of loss when you think about someone you're away from."

And I try, I try so damn hard not to cling back as tightly as I do, a silent whisper across my skin of please, please don't leave me. I'll give you everything I am, just please don't leave, but I do, a cataclysmic few seconds of conflicting emotions before I pull away, too lost in the clashing whirlwinds of my mind and your soul to hold on.

Sometimes I drown in all the things I can't say. I wish I could say don't do this. I wish I could say stay with me. I wish I could say I know I'm not what you want but I'd never hurt you. I wish I could say I'm not him but I could be whatever you wanted me to be. But I can't. I can't, because there's hope in your eyes and purpose in your step again. He broke your heart, but once upon a time he made you happy in the way that I was never brave enough to find the words to do. And maybe by chasing after him, there will come a day when you'll smile again. I wish I could say I'm a little in love with you and it scares me but I still want to try, but I can't, so instead I push open my front door and shove you playfully into the cavernous hallway. "Go after him, you idiot."

I watch you go until you disappear into the distance, just one more person that leaves in the end.

i never know what to do with my love
i never know what to do with my hands
so i'll put them behind my back
i'll put them behind my back
behind my back

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WORDCOUNT 1728 words
TAGGED nobody
LYRICS BY ingrid michaelson
NOTES i don't know what this is. i felt it was necessary to work some things out with jace and everything that's going on in his life, and this is what came of it. sorry.
CREDIT TO ohemgee callie ?! of caution 2.0!