Pathetic or Poetic?
Poetic or Pathetic?
Quinn’s sitting uncomfortably on the wooden chair in some dumpy restaurant, surrounded by both his immediate and extended family. Ever since his first birthday, Quinn’s deformed family had around this same table, in this same restaurant every single year, without question. After 21 years, he’s used to it. He’s used to being dragged out here.. He’s used to faking the surprise when the waiters all came out to sing Happy Birthday and cause him public humiliation. Oh yes, he’s used to the entire ordeal.
“What do you want for your birthday, Quinn?” his senile grandfather asks, looking at his brother, Riley.
“I dunno,” he mumbles.
Truth? He wants to see the sunrise. He wants to wake up early as fuck, sit on the grass, freshly painted with dew, in his Batman pajamas while yawning so much that it isn’t even funny and just wait. Wait until the sun peeks out from behind the gray clouds, igniting the sky so vibrant shades of blue, orange and yellow splatter against the dark, blank canvas we call night.
That is, truly, all that Quinn Allman wants for his 21st birthday.
Pathetic or poetic?
“How can you not know?” his grandfather barks, his eyes still locked on Riley.
Quinn sighs and says that he just doesn’t. The family eyes the boy strangely for a brief moment, before returning their attention back to their steaks and burgers. As they stuff themselves stupid, Quinn gazes out of the window, and decides that’s what he’ll ask Bert for tonight. He’ll ask him to wake up early as fuck with him and watch the sunrise above the mountains.
“What time does the sun rise?” he asks suddenly.
His father clears his throat and tells him five; the sun definitely rises at five. No, no, his Uncle Joe interrupts, it rises at six.
“Five?” he whines. He usually wakes up at noon the earliest. He doubts Bert will wake up at five just to see a sunrise. Bert isn’t… deep. Not that Quinn is. No, Quinn’s not deep at all, he just wants to see a sunrise. He doesn’t have any real reason.
Poetic or pathetic?
Their waiter brings out their check and all of the men lunge for it, like it’s some kind of treasure, as if paying for a huge meal makes you better than everyone else. A few arguments and death glares later, Quinn’s in his black Cobalt and trying to stay focused on driving back to their apartment.
Desperation isn’t exactly the right word, but it’s the first word that pops into his mind.
He pulls up in front of their apartment complex, kills the engine, opens the door but doesn’t get out. He sits there, hoping for a gust of sweet night air to hit him. When it finally does, it catches him way off guard and his heart begins to palpitate wildly, like the first time he took Dramamine and found himself smack dab in the middle of a hallucination. The first time was an accident; the many times after were on purpose. For some reason, he liked being delirious. For some reason, he enjoyed being disconnected from reality. For some reason, he loved dreaming while he was awake, even if most times, they were nightmares.
Pathetic or poetic?
Once upstairs he realizes that he’s left the keys in the passenger seat of the Cobalt. Rather than coalesce his fears of the dark and elevators, he simply knocks once, twice, three times on the door. He waits, and for some reason he wishes he had some Dramamine so he could keep himself entertained by talking to his dead cousin or something while he waits for Bert to drag himself to the door.
“Hey,” Bert says, pulling him into a kiss the split second the door opens. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon, not that I mind.”
“Will you watch the sunrise with me in the morning?” he blurts, unable to keep the burning question inside himself any longer.
Bert’s dark eyebrows knit together and his glass eyes cloud over. Quinn can sense that inside of Bert’s head, there are sirens whaling and a voice screaming, “Fuck no!”
“Please,” he begs. “It’s all I want for my birthday.”
Bert wants to tell him that he just bought him a new guitar, a pearly white Epiphone, but he doesn’t. He just puts his hand out towards the older man and says, get up. Quinn’s lip quivers, he’s definite that it is a no. When he was younger and wanted to go to a party, buy a new bike or anything like that his mom had that same blank stare plastered on her face before she finally said, “No, Quinn”.
“Alright, I’ll watch the sunrise with you,” Bert finally grumbles, breaking the numbing silence, all the while trying to sound cheery.
If Quinn could sense he didn’t want to do something, he immediately backed down and would stomp off to his room, screaming that they didn’t have to go and do whatever if Bert didn’t want to. Bert would sigh, Quinn would freak. It was a messy ordeal and Bert didn’t want to cause any unnecessary friction on Quinn’s goddamn birthday
“Really?” Quinn’s pale, listless eyes light up, and suddenly, to Bert, the world seems so much brighter.
“Yeah,” Bert stumbles over his lie.
He hates sunrises, sunsets and anything all wimpy like that, but if Quinn wants it, Quinn gets it. He figures he’ll have to take Nyquil so he falls asleep before three AM, that way he’ll be conscious by … whenever.
“What time does all of this… ‘sun rising’… go on?”
“Somewhere between five and six AM,” Quinn replies, chewing his lip.
Now, he’ll say no. What he doesn’t realize is that Bert would do just about anything – illegal, deadly, whatever – just to see Quinn sport that electrifying smile.
“Okay,” Bert says a final time before he disappears into the bathroom for a terse moment and downs some Nyquil, even though he’s sure that it won’t work for him and it’ll probably be just another sleepless night. He’ll wake up an asshole and grunt throughout the entire sunrise and Quinn will throw a fit.
Bert’s heart flutters whilst some part of him, though he’s not sure what, melts inside. Just like a cheap, teenage movie. A boring, self-satisfied cliché.
“I owe you,” He whispers into Bert’s ear, suddenly appearing behind him in the cramped bathroom, inching closer and snuggling against him tighter and tighter. Bert shakes his head no.
“No, you don’t. Happy birthday,” He crooned.
And then he’s gone, lying in bed and tossing and turning like there’s no tomorrow. His blue eyes burn and his eyelids feel like rocks, but whenever he goes to shut them, they always pop open – a default reaction. It happens every night. His mind decides that it would be fun to keep him awake and spits out random thoughts a million miles per hour to clutter his head and make it ache, just for fun.
In our non-existent, teenage drama movie, the camera focuses in on Quinn, lying on his bed – stiff and still, almost dead. You can faintly see his chest rise up and down rhythmically. His mind is jittery as hell, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at him. He’s counting the milliseconds until four-thirty, so he can run downstairs in a crazed fashion, make some coffee then soundlessly wait for Bert to rise. For reasons he couldn’t quite fathom, he felt ecstatic. A sunrise is no big deal, it happens every day. It’s not some rare occurrence; this isn’t Halley's Comet.
This is a fucking sunrise.
Two hours and fifteen minutes. 135 minutes. 8100 seconds.
This, Quinn thinks, falling back against the gray sheets of his bed, is pure torture. He could picture it perfectly in his mind, all of the misty colors swirling in the sky. He’d googled “sunrise” many a time, and would just sit staring at the screen, body in a half-way place – half asleep, half awake – and mouth agape. Most often, he would make it his desktop background, but then change it back to the picture of him and Bert in a matter of minutes. Three minutes gone. 132 minutes, 7920 seconds. He was too jittery to sleep, and too tired to do anything. A real oxymoron when you think about it.
Poetic or pathetic?
The night of January 18th/morning of January 19th a wasn’t exactly a great wake-up situation. Even Quinn was reluctant to drag his weary form out of bed when the screams of the alarm clock crossed the line of dream world and reality in the middle of a really, really epic dream. Quinn quickly got over it, throwing on an old sweatshirt with Brigham Young University printed boldly across the chest. Peeking out into the hallway, then quickly looking away, he lets his hand feel along the wall for the familiar shape of the light switch, flicking it on swiftly to flush away the shadows in which the monsters thrive. He tiptoes down the hall, carefully opening the door in an attempt to rid the horrid creak of the hinge. Naturally, it creaks just as Quinn’s shadow creeps into the room. He wants desperately to turn on the lights, but for the sake of the sunrise and all that is good in the world, he doesn’t.
“Bert,” Quinn coos, shaking the boy slightly, “Wake up?”
“Ghmhmdf,” Bert grumbles into the pillow. It was meant to be “get lost” but with your face smashed into a pillow, all of your sentences are gibberish.
“It’s time,” Quinn says solemnly, as if announcing a tragic death or happening. Nope, just a sunrise.
Personally, Bert would’ve preferred a funeral to a sunrise; he wouldn’t have to wake up until much later, and he could always sleep during the service if he kept his snoring under control. No, his headvoice screamed, do it for Quinn.
Those four words are what makes Bert toss off the red flannel covers and swing his feet over the edge of the bed. His yawn is so immense that he’s fairly sure that the stretching will tear his mouth in half. And he figures, hey, if you tear your mouth you won’t need to watch the sunrise. But his mouth doesn’t snap in two because things like that do not frequently happen in this little place called reality.
“You don’t have to do this,” Quinn whispers into the night – or well, morning, rather. Bert can’t see Quinn’s face in the dark, but he’s definite that his honey eyes are glassy and shrink-wrapped in tears as he says this.
Bert shakes his head again, hoping to kill two birds with one stone: answer Quinn and shake away the drowsiness.
“I want to,” comes his shaky reply as he pulls a plain, navy blue sweatshirt over his head, “just let me fix my hair.”
Quinn presses his cool lips against Bert’s forehead and says, “You’re beautiful just the way you are.”
Bert smiles and tells him, lead the way. Hand in hand, they walk downstairs. The man at the front desk eyes them oddly and opens his mouth to ask what the hell they’re up to at 4:55 in the morning, but stops himself, deciding he doesn’t give a shit as long his building stays in one piece.
“Fuck. I forgot a towel,” Quinn blurts suddenly, once outside.
“Forget it,” Bert yawns, “It’s just dew.” Bert sets himself down on the grass, as if plopping down like normal would cause him to shatter, like glass meeting concrete.
He pats his legs and Quinn grins, fitting himself flawlessly into Bert’s lap. Quinn leans his head against Bert’s chest, kissing his chin impulsively before grinning once again.
“Time?” He asks. Bert glances down at his shimmering wristwatch and yawns again before mumbling 5am.
“I’m excited,” Quinn announces sometime later, “I’ve always wanted to see a real sunset, the real deal, up close and personal, y’know? Seeing a picture of it and seeing the actual things are two completely different things. One is Earth, the other Mars.”
“Please,” Bert’s yawning again, longing for a cigarette to shove in Quinn’s mouth so he’ll shut up – the same method mothers use with fussy babies; pop in a pacifier and the baby becomes docile, granting the mother a few brief but perfect minutes of peace. That’s what Bert really wanted, a few minutes of peace. He figures that maybe he’ll ask Quinn for some peace for his birthday, since Quinn gets a sunrise for his. “Stop comparing sunrises to planets. I’m too stupid to comprehend all that shit.”
“You’re not stupid, I just don’t make any sense,” Quinn mumbles, eyes fixated on the inky canvas above them, “Time?”
“5:15.”
“Goddamn. Where is this sunrise?”
“It probably didn’t want to wake up,” Bert grumbles, attempting to rub the sleep from his eyes.
He’s freezing and his ass is soaked with dew and the sunrise is late and this is most definitely the worst morning of his life, but he doesn’t tell Quinn because Quinn is sitting, all bright starry eyed, an angel anxiously awaiting a hint of sunrise.
“What time is it?”
“Time for you to get a watch.”
“Not funny, asshole,” Quinn pouts, crossing his arms over his chest and sticking his little, pink tongue out at the younger man.
“Watch it,” Bert tells him, “I will cut off your tongue.”
“Go ahead, you’re the one who will miss out.”
“… damn.”
They laugh, snuggling in closer together in an attempt to push away the cold. Bert wondering why Quinn’s birthday couldn’t be in say… June? Quinn; where the hell this sunrise is. It’s already 5:30
If yawning earned you money, they’d both be millionaires by now. 5:45. No sign of life in the sky.
“You want to head back in?” Quinn asks, sighing heavily.
“No,” Bert says hastily, “We came for a sunrise, and fuck, we’re going to see a sunrise.”
“But Bert,” He’s whining now. Quinn, happy-go-lucky, dying-to-see-a-sunrise Quinn is begging, “It’s already 5:48. The sky isn’t starting to lighten up yet. Why?” his voice cracks mid-sentence. Quinn should be used to not getting what he wants, but he isn’t.
Pathetic or poetic?
“I don’t know,” Bert replies, ruffling Quinn’s bleach blond hair, “But it will be here soon, I swear.”
6:00 AM. Light gray streaks splatter against the sky. Quinn’s listless eyes light up again.
“It’s coming!” He screeches, pointing up at the sky. He’s like a 5-year-old and yet again, he makes some part of Bert melt.
“I see,” Bert says, flashing the blond a smile, “Just wait until the colors.”
“I can’t,” Quinn replies slowly, fidgeting around in Bert’s lap.
When something this amazing happens, something you’ve been waiting for for the longest time, the final minutes before it actually happens always seem to be the longest moments of your life, don’t they? That is exactly how Quinn feels, like at any moment he’s apt to explode from the ultimate moments of anticipation.
Bert’s legs are starting to become numb. He nudges Quinn off of his lap tenderly.
“You can,” Bert is whispering now, his encouraging words floating in the chilly morning air, “Think of that… what was the name? Oh yeah. Think of the little engine that could.”
Quinn pouts again, “Please, Robert,” he’s shaking his head and the wisps of blond smack Bert in the face and make his eyes water instantaneously, “I’m not five.”
Bert doesn’t want to, but he looks at his watch for what feels like the millionth time this hour.
And then something spectacular happens. Over the horizon, over the vast Utah Mountains, blues, greens and yellows can be seen slicing through what’s left of the night. Quinn’s mouth is crafted in a perfect, round little O shape and his big brown eyes are fixated on the history that is being made right in front of them. Quinn doesn’t move a muscle until the entire sky is ablaze – almost like he was in some type of sunrise-induced trance.
Poetic or pathetic?
“What do you want for your birthday, Quinn?” his senile grandfather asks, looking at his brother, Riley.
“I dunno,” he mumbles.
Truth? He wants to see the sunrise. He wants to wake up early as fuck, sit on the grass, freshly painted with dew, in his Batman pajamas while yawning so much that it isn’t even funny and just wait. Wait until the sun peeks out from behind the gray clouds, igniting the sky so vibrant shades of blue, orange and yellow splatter against the dark, blank canvas we call night.
That is, truly, all that Quinn Allman wants for his 21st birthday.
Pathetic or poetic?
“How can you not know?” his grandfather barks, his eyes still locked on Riley.
Quinn sighs and says that he just doesn’t. The family eyes the boy strangely for a brief moment, before returning their attention back to their steaks and burgers. As they stuff themselves stupid, Quinn gazes out of the window, and decides that’s what he’ll ask Bert for tonight. He’ll ask him to wake up early as fuck with him and watch the sunrise above the mountains.
“What time does the sun rise?” he asks suddenly.
His father clears his throat and tells him five; the sun definitely rises at five. No, no, his Uncle Joe interrupts, it rises at six.
“Five?” he whines. He usually wakes up at noon the earliest. He doubts Bert will wake up at five just to see a sunrise. Bert isn’t… deep. Not that Quinn is. No, Quinn’s not deep at all, he just wants to see a sunrise. He doesn’t have any real reason.
Poetic or pathetic?
Their waiter brings out their check and all of the men lunge for it, like it’s some kind of treasure, as if paying for a huge meal makes you better than everyone else. A few arguments and death glares later, Quinn’s in his black Cobalt and trying to stay focused on driving back to their apartment.
Desperation isn’t exactly the right word, but it’s the first word that pops into his mind.
He pulls up in front of their apartment complex, kills the engine, opens the door but doesn’t get out. He sits there, hoping for a gust of sweet night air to hit him. When it finally does, it catches him way off guard and his heart begins to palpitate wildly, like the first time he took Dramamine and found himself smack dab in the middle of a hallucination. The first time was an accident; the many times after were on purpose. For some reason, he liked being delirious. For some reason, he enjoyed being disconnected from reality. For some reason, he loved dreaming while he was awake, even if most times, they were nightmares.
Pathetic or poetic?
Once upstairs he realizes that he’s left the keys in the passenger seat of the Cobalt. Rather than coalesce his fears of the dark and elevators, he simply knocks once, twice, three times on the door. He waits, and for some reason he wishes he had some Dramamine so he could keep himself entertained by talking to his dead cousin or something while he waits for Bert to drag himself to the door.
“Hey,” Bert says, pulling him into a kiss the split second the door opens. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon, not that I mind.”
“Will you watch the sunrise with me in the morning?” he blurts, unable to keep the burning question inside himself any longer.
Bert’s dark eyebrows knit together and his glass eyes cloud over. Quinn can sense that inside of Bert’s head, there are sirens whaling and a voice screaming, “Fuck no!”
“Please,” he begs. “It’s all I want for my birthday.”
Bert wants to tell him that he just bought him a new guitar, a pearly white Epiphone, but he doesn’t. He just puts his hand out towards the older man and says, get up. Quinn’s lip quivers, he’s definite that it is a no. When he was younger and wanted to go to a party, buy a new bike or anything like that his mom had that same blank stare plastered on her face before she finally said, “No, Quinn”.
“Alright, I’ll watch the sunrise with you,” Bert finally grumbles, breaking the numbing silence, all the while trying to sound cheery.
If Quinn could sense he didn’t want to do something, he immediately backed down and would stomp off to his room, screaming that they didn’t have to go and do whatever if Bert didn’t want to. Bert would sigh, Quinn would freak. It was a messy ordeal and Bert didn’t want to cause any unnecessary friction on Quinn’s goddamn birthday
“Really?” Quinn’s pale, listless eyes light up, and suddenly, to Bert, the world seems so much brighter.
“Yeah,” Bert stumbles over his lie.
He hates sunrises, sunsets and anything all wimpy like that, but if Quinn wants it, Quinn gets it. He figures he’ll have to take Nyquil so he falls asleep before three AM, that way he’ll be conscious by … whenever.
“What time does all of this… ‘sun rising’… go on?”
“Somewhere between five and six AM,” Quinn replies, chewing his lip.
Now, he’ll say no. What he doesn’t realize is that Bert would do just about anything – illegal, deadly, whatever – just to see Quinn sport that electrifying smile.
“Okay,” Bert says a final time before he disappears into the bathroom for a terse moment and downs some Nyquil, even though he’s sure that it won’t work for him and it’ll probably be just another sleepless night. He’ll wake up an asshole and grunt throughout the entire sunrise and Quinn will throw a fit.
Bert’s heart flutters whilst some part of him, though he’s not sure what, melts inside. Just like a cheap, teenage movie. A boring, self-satisfied cliché.
“I owe you,” He whispers into Bert’s ear, suddenly appearing behind him in the cramped bathroom, inching closer and snuggling against him tighter and tighter. Bert shakes his head no.
“No, you don’t. Happy birthday,” He crooned.
And then he’s gone, lying in bed and tossing and turning like there’s no tomorrow. His blue eyes burn and his eyelids feel like rocks, but whenever he goes to shut them, they always pop open – a default reaction. It happens every night. His mind decides that it would be fun to keep him awake and spits out random thoughts a million miles per hour to clutter his head and make it ache, just for fun.
In our non-existent, teenage drama movie, the camera focuses in on Quinn, lying on his bed – stiff and still, almost dead. You can faintly see his chest rise up and down rhythmically. His mind is jittery as hell, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at him. He’s counting the milliseconds until four-thirty, so he can run downstairs in a crazed fashion, make some coffee then soundlessly wait for Bert to rise. For reasons he couldn’t quite fathom, he felt ecstatic. A sunrise is no big deal, it happens every day. It’s not some rare occurrence; this isn’t Halley's Comet.
This is a fucking sunrise.
Two hours and fifteen minutes. 135 minutes. 8100 seconds.
This, Quinn thinks, falling back against the gray sheets of his bed, is pure torture. He could picture it perfectly in his mind, all of the misty colors swirling in the sky. He’d googled “sunrise” many a time, and would just sit staring at the screen, body in a half-way place – half asleep, half awake – and mouth agape. Most often, he would make it his desktop background, but then change it back to the picture of him and Bert in a matter of minutes. Three minutes gone. 132 minutes, 7920 seconds. He was too jittery to sleep, and too tired to do anything. A real oxymoron when you think about it.
Poetic or pathetic?
The night of January 18th/morning of January 19th a wasn’t exactly a great wake-up situation. Even Quinn was reluctant to drag his weary form out of bed when the screams of the alarm clock crossed the line of dream world and reality in the middle of a really, really epic dream. Quinn quickly got over it, throwing on an old sweatshirt with Brigham Young University printed boldly across the chest. Peeking out into the hallway, then quickly looking away, he lets his hand feel along the wall for the familiar shape of the light switch, flicking it on swiftly to flush away the shadows in which the monsters thrive. He tiptoes down the hall, carefully opening the door in an attempt to rid the horrid creak of the hinge. Naturally, it creaks just as Quinn’s shadow creeps into the room. He wants desperately to turn on the lights, but for the sake of the sunrise and all that is good in the world, he doesn’t.
“Bert,” Quinn coos, shaking the boy slightly, “Wake up?”
“Ghmhmdf,” Bert grumbles into the pillow. It was meant to be “get lost” but with your face smashed into a pillow, all of your sentences are gibberish.
“It’s time,” Quinn says solemnly, as if announcing a tragic death or happening. Nope, just a sunrise.
Personally, Bert would’ve preferred a funeral to a sunrise; he wouldn’t have to wake up until much later, and he could always sleep during the service if he kept his snoring under control. No, his headvoice screamed, do it for Quinn.
Those four words are what makes Bert toss off the red flannel covers and swing his feet over the edge of the bed. His yawn is so immense that he’s fairly sure that the stretching will tear his mouth in half. And he figures, hey, if you tear your mouth you won’t need to watch the sunrise. But his mouth doesn’t snap in two because things like that do not frequently happen in this little place called reality.
“You don’t have to do this,” Quinn whispers into the night – or well, morning, rather. Bert can’t see Quinn’s face in the dark, but he’s definite that his honey eyes are glassy and shrink-wrapped in tears as he says this.
Bert shakes his head again, hoping to kill two birds with one stone: answer Quinn and shake away the drowsiness.
“I want to,” comes his shaky reply as he pulls a plain, navy blue sweatshirt over his head, “just let me fix my hair.”
Quinn presses his cool lips against Bert’s forehead and says, “You’re beautiful just the way you are.”
Bert smiles and tells him, lead the way. Hand in hand, they walk downstairs. The man at the front desk eyes them oddly and opens his mouth to ask what the hell they’re up to at 4:55 in the morning, but stops himself, deciding he doesn’t give a shit as long his building stays in one piece.
“Fuck. I forgot a towel,” Quinn blurts suddenly, once outside.
“Forget it,” Bert yawns, “It’s just dew.” Bert sets himself down on the grass, as if plopping down like normal would cause him to shatter, like glass meeting concrete.
He pats his legs and Quinn grins, fitting himself flawlessly into Bert’s lap. Quinn leans his head against Bert’s chest, kissing his chin impulsively before grinning once again.
“Time?” He asks. Bert glances down at his shimmering wristwatch and yawns again before mumbling 5am.
“I’m excited,” Quinn announces sometime later, “I’ve always wanted to see a real sunset, the real deal, up close and personal, y’know? Seeing a picture of it and seeing the actual things are two completely different things. One is Earth, the other Mars.”
“Please,” Bert’s yawning again, longing for a cigarette to shove in Quinn’s mouth so he’ll shut up – the same method mothers use with fussy babies; pop in a pacifier and the baby becomes docile, granting the mother a few brief but perfect minutes of peace. That’s what Bert really wanted, a few minutes of peace. He figures that maybe he’ll ask Quinn for some peace for his birthday, since Quinn gets a sunrise for his. “Stop comparing sunrises to planets. I’m too stupid to comprehend all that shit.”
“You’re not stupid, I just don’t make any sense,” Quinn mumbles, eyes fixated on the inky canvas above them, “Time?”
“5:15.”
“Goddamn. Where is this sunrise?”
“It probably didn’t want to wake up,” Bert grumbles, attempting to rub the sleep from his eyes.
He’s freezing and his ass is soaked with dew and the sunrise is late and this is most definitely the worst morning of his life, but he doesn’t tell Quinn because Quinn is sitting, all bright starry eyed, an angel anxiously awaiting a hint of sunrise.
“What time is it?”
“Time for you to get a watch.”
“Not funny, asshole,” Quinn pouts, crossing his arms over his chest and sticking his little, pink tongue out at the younger man.
“Watch it,” Bert tells him, “I will cut off your tongue.”
“Go ahead, you’re the one who will miss out.”
“… damn.”
They laugh, snuggling in closer together in an attempt to push away the cold. Bert wondering why Quinn’s birthday couldn’t be in say… June? Quinn; where the hell this sunrise is. It’s already 5:30
If yawning earned you money, they’d both be millionaires by now. 5:45. No sign of life in the sky.
“You want to head back in?” Quinn asks, sighing heavily.
“No,” Bert says hastily, “We came for a sunrise, and fuck, we’re going to see a sunrise.”
“But Bert,” He’s whining now. Quinn, happy-go-lucky, dying-to-see-a-sunrise Quinn is begging, “It’s already 5:48. The sky isn’t starting to lighten up yet. Why?” his voice cracks mid-sentence. Quinn should be used to not getting what he wants, but he isn’t.
Pathetic or poetic?
“I don’t know,” Bert replies, ruffling Quinn’s bleach blond hair, “But it will be here soon, I swear.”
6:00 AM. Light gray streaks splatter against the sky. Quinn’s listless eyes light up again.
“It’s coming!” He screeches, pointing up at the sky. He’s like a 5-year-old and yet again, he makes some part of Bert melt.
“I see,” Bert says, flashing the blond a smile, “Just wait until the colors.”
“I can’t,” Quinn replies slowly, fidgeting around in Bert’s lap.
When something this amazing happens, something you’ve been waiting for for the longest time, the final minutes before it actually happens always seem to be the longest moments of your life, don’t they? That is exactly how Quinn feels, like at any moment he’s apt to explode from the ultimate moments of anticipation.
Bert’s legs are starting to become numb. He nudges Quinn off of his lap tenderly.
“You can,” Bert is whispering now, his encouraging words floating in the chilly morning air, “Think of that… what was the name? Oh yeah. Think of the little engine that could.”
Quinn pouts again, “Please, Robert,” he’s shaking his head and the wisps of blond smack Bert in the face and make his eyes water instantaneously, “I’m not five.”
Bert doesn’t want to, but he looks at his watch for what feels like the millionth time this hour.
And then something spectacular happens. Over the horizon, over the vast Utah Mountains, blues, greens and yellows can be seen slicing through what’s left of the night. Quinn’s mouth is crafted in a perfect, round little O shape and his big brown eyes are fixated on the history that is being made right in front of them. Quinn doesn’t move a muscle until the entire sky is ablaze – almost like he was in some type of sunrise-induced trance.
Poetic or pathetic?