#hate that feeling of going through the motions. everything is just emotional grey static

[torchickentacos]

winter depression is here and I am ANNOYED about it

[spilledkauffie]

Still Having Nightmares

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader Word Count: 1.8k T/W: nightmares, trauma conversations, fluff A/N: MY HEART IS FUCKING BROKEN!!! Do you hear!? All because of this gif set— spoilers!

Song inspo: Nightmares - All Time Low

You squeezed your eyes closed, trying not to let the tears fall. But they weren’t for you— from outside the door, down the hall, and into the living room, you heard the soft mumbling. The desperate “no’s” and the heavy breathing. Rolling over in bed, you placed your hand where he often began the night, right next to you. Knowing he liked to fight this struggles alone, you methodically bit at the inside of your lip, furrowing your brows. 

However, when you heard the static of metal tension, you couldn’t ignore it any longer. Sitting up, you tossed the covers aside. Taking a moment to calm yourself, you quickly wiped the tears off your cheeks and took a deep breath, wanting to be in the best state to help him. Opening the bedroom door you stepped out into the hallway gently. Attempting to make your footsteps as light as possible, you made your way to the living room doorway. Bucky was laying on the opposite side of the apartment’s room from you. 

Watching him toss and turn, sometimes jolt, was difficult, but you always tried to think of how best to help him if you could. As you debated waking him up to end the night terror, something did that for you- hearing him yell your name he completely sat up. You blinked back some tears, hating that you knew his nightmares forced him to see himself losing more than he already had. 

“God-” he exhaled as if he had been forced to hold his breath for five minutes, it was a painful first few breaths. Shoving his hands through his hair, he set his elbows on his knees and tried to steady his breathing, he clearly hadn’t seen you yet, “shit,” you heard him say in a broken voice, though you couldn’t see them, you knew there were tears from the way he sniffled with an inhale every other breath. 

You shifted your weight onto the opposite foot, accidentally catching his attention.

“Hey,” he suddenly said as if nothing had happened, quickly turning his face away from you, rubbing the back of his hand against his eyes, trying to get rid of any proof of tears. Clearing his throat he exhaled, “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Tilting your head with a heavy sorrow that he just wanted to push everything aside, you reached for the light switch.

“No!” Bucky exclaimed, before looking down, surprised at his tone, “no,” he said softer, looking back up at you, “can we leave it off? Please?”

“Yeah,” you answered hoarsely, feeling a tightness in your own throat, “of course, baby.”

Walking over to where he was, you settled on the floor, sitting next to him, facing his direction. There was just enough light from the apartment windows for you two to see each other in dim lights streaming in. He tried again to subtly brush away any tear stains, while you joined him. Pushing the top of his wrist against his lip, he dropped his hand, and finally turned to you. 

“Did I-” he swallowed, you saw the tension in his jaw, “did I wake you?” 

“No,” you whispered, raising a hand to fluff back some fallen strands of his messy hair.

“Really?” he perked an eyebrow, “then why are you awake?” 

You hold your breath trying to think of an excuse, but you’d rather say nothing than lie to him again. 

“I didn’t mean to leave tonight, I just-” he quirked the corner of his lips, trying to find the right words, “I’m not used to it, but I didn’t want to leave- I just-”

“I know,” you assured him, free hand touching his forearm, calmly stroking his chilled skin.

He dipped his head shaking it, before giving a disappointed laugh, “you know I thought I was over this,” he admitted, your hand still brushing soothingly through his hair as he stared straight ahead, you swore you could see him thinking of another time. 

“Tell me about it?” 

He pressed his lips together, debating if he wanted to say more, so you let the quiet come between the two of you, and that was okay. Time was needed and you were more than willing to wait for him.

“You know sometimes I can see myself, at different times, and I just keep thinking- when I see that kid, signing up for the army, he looks at me,” he smiled for a second, but it faded faster than it came on, “he had no idea what he was signing up for.” Looking down to the metal replacing his arm, Bucky nodded to himself,  blaming himself for it all.

“Victims never do,” you said, “because it’s not their fault.”

“Victim?” He scoffed, raising his eyebrows in disbelief at you, “have you seen my count-”

“Bucky, what they did to you-”

“But what I did to others-” he started.

“What they did to you,” you repeated, more firmly, stopping him from interrupting you, he waited for your next words, “what they did was cruel and monstrous, but that doesn’t mean you are.” Bucky tilted his head, “you signed up because you’re a brave soldier, what came next was out of your control, but now, you’re back on the path you first started.”

His grey blue eyes were fixed on you when you finished, “tell me about tonight’s nightmare?”

He was quiet again, so you pressed your hand against the middle of his chest, covering his dog tags, before you curled your fingers around the metal and glanced down to study them in your palm. Rubbing your thumb over the raised letters- one tag spelling out his name the other simply saying “Winter Soldier,” you bit the corner of your lip. Bucky never took his gaze off you, studying you studying the tags. 

After a moment of silence, he leaned in closer, slipping his hand against the side of your neck, fingertips pushing into the roots of your hair at the nape of your neck, while he brought his mouth to the opposite side. You tightened your hand around his dog tags as his skin brushed against your knuckles. With the way his chest was already rising and falling and the hum of his moan against your neck, you almost got lost in it. Slowly moving his other hand up your thigh, to your hip, you felt the metal, smooth and cold as ever. Closing your eyes, you focussed for a moment on his hot desperate kisses, his lips felt so good against you, but you knew what he was doing.

“Bucky-” you said softly, but seriously, knowing what you needed to do.

“Mhmm?” he hummed, lips ghosting against you as he waited for you to continue, but when you didn’t, he pulled back to look at you, his hand still caressing the nape of your neck gently.

You stared at him, amazed at how well he was trained to shift from emotion to emotion or just hide them altogether. It seemed wrong that there was so much pain and hurt in you form sympathy when he was the one actually fighting through it. As you stayed silent, his gaze fell to your parted lips. Bucky took his opportunity and met your mouth with a deeply passionate kiss, when you hardly responded he paused the kiss, lips still touching yours as he spoke.

“What is it?” he asked, caressing your cheek.

“I love you so much,” you took a deep breath, placing your hand on top of his and bringing it away from your cheek setting your interlaced hands in your lap, looking back to him, “but that won’t make them go away,” you stated eyebrows knitted together, shaking your head softly, “I need you to talk to me,” you stroked his jawline with your thumb, still holding his hand with your other, and speaking as gently as you possibly could, “so we can work this out together, I want to help you, I want you to be able to stay a whole night with me.”

Taking his hand off your thigh, you heard the metal adjust as he shifted his weight onto it.  

“Alright, in my nightmares. . .I keep hurting you,” his words broke the silence, “different ways, I tell myself it’s not me, it’s that shadow I used to be, but all the same in the end.” 

Listening carefully you placed a soft kiss to the cooled skin of his shoulder, where the scars met metal, encouraging him to continue with gentle stroking motions of your fingertips on the back of his hand. 

“Every time. . .I’m in a place from my past, but you’re there,” he confessed, tightening his grip around your hand, “and you die, all because of me.”

“You’d never hurt me.”

“But I did...I do,” tears were returning and he didn’t understand; the one happiness in his life was being twisted by his past and his mind, he remembered certain things, others a blur and now past and present were blending. . . 

“James,” you brought him to face you with your hand against his cheek, “you’d never hurt me.”

“I’m just-” he said cautiously.

“Bucky,” you said almost disappointed he’d question himself on this.

“I’m just scared I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from hurting you,” he confessed in a louder voice than intended, making you jerk back, but keeping your hand in his helped ground him, “I’m sorry,” he said, calming himself down. 

You could see the tears falling even if he didn’t want you to see them.

“There’s no chance of that happening,” you pressed your forehead against his, “I know you, Bucky, you love me.”

 “But you’ve seen it, if- if someone knows those words- with that book- they reset me and I can’t-” 

You heard him exhale, heavy with pain and hurt and panic. His chest began to rapidly rise and fall. 

“Bucky, Darling,” you moved yourself closer and brought your arms around him, to which he responded by wrapping his around your frame, pulling you even closer, and burying his face against your neck, “it’s okay, we’re okay.”

Feeling his hot tears against your neck, and his erratic breathing, you tilted your head up, trying not to cry yourself. Stroking across the back of his bare shoulders, you softly combed your fingers through his hair, embracing him against you. It wasn’t easy for him to show this much emotion and you could sense that, staggering breath and long periods of tension, as if he was trying to hold it all back. Feeling him tighten his hug and squeeze his eyes closed, you just held him to let him know it was okay.

“We’ll get through this, I promise,” you whispered, “no one is ever coming near you with that book ever again, and if they do. . . now they’ll have to get through me first.”

Pulling away from you just enough to press his forehead back against yours he smiled softly, staying there for a moment, “how’d you get so tough, huh?”

“I live with a fighter,” you smiled back, “he’s taught me to survive just about anything,” he gave a small laugh with his smile spreading, “so together,” you stole a kiss, “I know we’re unstoppable.”

[fandom-necromancer]

1165. Part 3

This was prompted by an awesome anon, the lovely @aurea-b and the amazing @rufina72! Please heed the warnings. This chapter isn’t nice, but I promise, the next part will be super fluffy! I will try to finish it today too, so it will come anytime in the night (at least for my timezone). If you don’t want to read this part because of the warnings, you can skip it and still read the next one!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Reed900 (Warnings: violence, kidnapping, graphic description of android dismantling, mentions of physical and mental abuse) [Part1]   [Part2]   [Part4]

‘No, no, please, no! No! Ahhhhh!’ Gavin was awake, but that static scream jolted him from unconsciousness in mere milliseconds. His sight was still hazy, but a small red light smeared over his vision as he rolled his head from one shoulder to the next. Everything was turning around him and refused to stay still, there was a weird cheeping sound and he felt like he might throw up. The hit to his head must have done some damage, but despite all of this, his detective senses told him the situation was bad. He was still alive, that had to be good? But it was so dark, and his head felt like a cannon ball on a toothpick. Phck.

He heard the buzz of electric motors and soon there was the scream again. Right. Little red circle, robot sounds… Nines? The damn toaster had been run into by a car. The memories were coming back one after the next. And with it his vision. Two thugs stood a few metres away from him and towered above him. But they had their backs to him and were working on something. He frowned and tried to focus. He was sitting, hands bound behind him and back leaned against a pillar. He leaned to one side and his nausea got worse, but he could spy through their legs. There was a lot of blue. Blue liquid flowing down on a white surface. It dripped to the ground and gathered in a puddle. Gavin tried hard to piece it all together, but a great percentage of his will was focussed on not vomiting all over himself.

The thugs helped him assess the situation as they stepped back in a laughing fit. It gave the bound man a better view on the other figure on the ground: A human shape, naked, completely white, bleeding blue from a circular hole. Red lights pulsing through the armour plates and panicked, pleading grey eyes darting around. Dirty human hands on a cylinder that looked about the same size as the hole. What did it mean, what did this shit mean? The one time Gavin needed his braincell and it was unavailable.

The weird white human opened his mouth, the blue liquid flowing from it. There should have been words coming out, but it sounded more like a radio without connection. It was pained and it was loud, earning him a kick to his chest that let him fall to his side.

‘Come on, stick it back in, we don’t know if the boss needs it’, one of the thugs said. It. Suddenly it clicked. He had been with Nines when he was hit unconscious. It made sense he would wake up with him. But… was this really the android? Gavin had never seen him without skin. But there on the ground, this had to be him, hadn’t it? He tried to will his brain to function and focussed on the android’s face. Shit. It was Nines. No doubt. ‘Urgh, fine. But let’s be real, what would she want with a fucking android, huh? She’ll kill it anyways.’ ‘Yeah, then let her do it. Wouldn’t want to get in any trouble. Stick it back and let’s go.’ The other man seemed to be hesitant, but then kneeled down to slam the thirium regulator back into its socket. Nines pulled his eyes and mouth wide open, but it was a silent scream this time.

When the thugs took their leave, Gavin pretended to still be out cold. It wasn’t that difficult, with a headache that made thinking unbearable. He heard the door slam and lifted his head again. Motions still made him feel sick, but at least he had recovered enough that they were possible now. Nines laid on his side remaining in the position the two men had kicked him into and staring straight ahead. Gavin would have thought the android had shut down if it weren’t for the slow red flash of his lights. He had never seen the android in such distress and that counted in the times he had threatened the thing. He didn’t like the RK900. He hated him. He hated the whole of androidkind. But to his own surprise seeing the ever uptight, nose-in-the-sky android like this brought him no satisfaction. He didn’t know what he could do in his bound position, so he just sat there, staring at the oddly calming red pulse of Nines’ body.

When he finally snapped out of it, he tried to move his hands. They were bound behind his body, but not too tight. Maybe he could work the knot loose. He knew pulling would only fasten it more, so he felt with his fingers for the knot and fumbled with the strands of rope they used. It wasn’t the most efficient way, but it showed slow progress in widening the loop. With time he maybe could get his hands free.

He worked on his confines while he was watching the android. Thirium still dripped from the regulator and his mouth. Maybe the thing wasn’t fully connected, Gavin mused, or maybe them slamming it back in broke it. No matter what the cause was though, it didn’t look too good. He was nearly sure he could get free in the next minutes, as he froze. There were voices outside.

‘…with them?’ ‘Ugh fine, have some fun. But don’t touch the pig. We have no use for the bot, but the guy could be useful as a hostage. I’ll be out for today. See you tomorrow.’ A door outside slammed shut and a few moments later the door to this room opened. Gavin again mimed the unconscious man, watching in silence how they pulled Nines back up. Upon touch the android’s LED blinked faster, but other than that there was no sign he was still alive. One of the thugs snapped his fingers in front of him and as that didn’t work, took a pipe from the ground and hit him with it. Nines’ head flew to the side, but he remained silent.

‘Let’s try this next.’ The second man announced and knelt down. Something blinked in his hands, then Gavin identified it as a pocketknife he pushed in between two plates on the android’s chest and angled upwards. The plate resisted, then gave in and fell to the ground. ‘Please, stop, I didn’t-‘ He was interrupted by the same knife hastily slammed in between the plates over his heart. ‘Please, don’t. Stop!’ The next plate fell to the ground with a dull plastic sound and light flooded the ground. Gavin got a good look of the fast beating pump glowing red in his chest and the surrounding Thirium pipes. There were a lot of air bubbles in the liquid and the lights were stuttering. ‘And why should we?’, one of the thugs asked, adding an ugly laugh afterwards and prying the next one off. Expecting another plea, they stood there waiting as the android remained silent. ‘What? No more begging, huh? Come on, we want to hear your beautiful voice, tin-can!’

They worked the knife between the next plates, as Nines eyelids fell half shut not unlike with a broken doll. ‘This unit is damaged severely. Please contact Cyberlife for repairs.’ ‘Oh, that’s good, that’s good!’, one of the thugs exclaimed excitedly. ‘I nether managed to push deviants back into their machine routines! Didn’t even knew they still had them in them!’ ‘Did this unit fail its mission?’, Nines asked, not answering to the thug’s discovery. His voice was completely level and void of any emotion. Gavin had never heard him like this. It didn’t even sound like the android he knew anymore. ‘Guess so.’ The android nodded as if understanding. ‘Is this correcting this unit’s errors?’ ‘Heh, yeah, it is.’ ‘Registering failure and correction in mechanics log. Please continue.’

Gavin didn’t believe what he just heard. He wasn’t able to think through what he was about to do, it just happened: ‘Nines! Nines, what the hell?’, he shouted from his position, gathering the attention of the two thugs. ‘Oh, so the pig is finally awake? Missed one hell of a show, buddy!’ ‘Show? What the hell are you assholes doing…’ Just then Gavin realised he hadn’t only had the full attention of the criminals. Nines looked at him and he seemed to be more afraid than he had been at any point in this torture. Even in his utterly damaged, panicked state, he tried to get away from him.

‘Gavin!’ His voice was wavering. ‘What are you doing here, this isn’t possible. Only Cyberlife personal is allowed in here. Please. This unit doesn’t need repairs just yet, Gavin. This unit is still functioning! This unit can complete the tests! Please, Gavin, don’t do this to me!’

The two thugs looked at each other in confusion, but Gavin tried to ignore their conversation about what this meant. He was too occupied being shocked. He got that the android was delirious from depleting Thirium levels and the pain. But he couldn’t understand why he was afraid of him of all people. Yes, he had been a bit rough with him from time to time, but that wasn’t enough for him to be afraid of him, right? But when he thought back to these occasions now, Nines had always been afraid of him, hadn’t he?

The two thugs seemed to come to the conclusion, that it didn’t matter. They shrugged and continued with their cruel work. Gavin couldn’t see the android, but he could hear his pleas over the clunk of hull pieces falling to the floor and thirium dripping down. He had gone back to talking about himself as “I” and his intonation had come back, but that didn’t make things any better.

‘No, Gavin, please! Don’t do this to me! What did I do to you? I-I never told anyone, please! I never told anyone what you did to me! I know I’m not what you want me to be. I know I’m not enough for you. But please, I didn’t do anything! I just tried to be your friend, please, stop. Gavin. No! You are killing me. Stop. Please.’

‘Goddamnit, this thing is creepy as hell! I think we should leave it alone’, one of the thugs said and the other nodded, taking a step back. ‘I agree. It’s gonna deactivate soon anyways. Let’s just get out of here.’

Gavin would have joined them, if that was possible. He was rightfully mortified, watching his work partner hanging in his confines, whispering the words over and over again, static thick in his voice: ‘I never told anyone. I didn’t do anything. Gavin. I never told anyone. Please. Stop. I didn’t do anything.’

But it wasn’t his place to run. His hands were free for a long time now, he only had to find the strength to stand up. His knees were weak from the realisation that this android had been afraid of him for as long as they had worked together, and it had needed criminals torturing the tin-can for him to realise that. He owed the android, if only because he had ignored his warnings and let him run into this trap blindly.

In a soupçon of determination, he wiggled free and stood up. He scurried over to the android and let himself fall on his knees next to him. He used the knife the thugs had left behind to cut the rope, all the while muttering: ‘Everything will be fine, Nines, listen. Everything is fine. See? It stopped. I’ll get you out of here. Just hold on. Stay with me, okay? We’ll get out of here.’ He got more and more desperate to cut the thick rope. They had done a far better job on binding the android than him. But Gavin was thankful for that mistake. ‘Nines, it will be fine, you hear me? It will be alright again, stay with me. I will change, okay? I don’t know what has you so scared but shit, I will try to be better. I promise you. We’ll get out of here and then you will kick my ass for being such an asshole, okay? We’ll get you back in order, I swear. I phcking swear!’

Finally, the rope gave in and the android plopped to the ground. Apparently, that had pulled him from his trance and the android was lucid for a few moments. He looked up at Gavin, pain evident on his face. His LLED was impossibly dark, near to no colour left in it. ‘Don’t… Touch… Me…’, he struggled to whisper just before he deactivated.

Gavin winced at the words cutting deep. But still he looked at the lifeless android. ‘No can do, tin-can. I’ll get you out of here.’

[>next part]

[homebody-nobody]

these skeletons got ways of coming out

k so I actually published this a few days ago but tumblr was being a butt so I couldn’t cross-post it til now anyway This is a Pope Heyward character study that ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ASKED FOR and I wrote anyway bc I needed to fix him before I could use him as a character in the rest of this series. If you disagree with the way that I've extrapolated very little data into detailed headcanons, I don't blame you but also just like read elsewhere

title from "Brother" by Kodaline ------ ao3 ------

And that -- the intersection of John B and Kiara -- the overlay of his two best friends in his heart -- that’s what scares him.

Pope realizes some things after the Phantom goes down. Things that change the way he lives his life ------

I used to be free Of any fear of emotion But these skeletons got ways of coming out I used to believe That someday you'd see That baby you got devotion in every little motion

And I won't see the storm When the rain's coming down Never let you go Never let you go Even when the madness has broken you apart Even when the madness has broken you apart

Objectively, Pope is not an idiot. He knows this. He gets good grades, and he knows more about computers and physics and a lot of other things than the rest of any of his friends. He’s a smart kid. Even though he skipped out on his scholarship interview and his grades took a very sudden dip at the end of last semester, he has a solid GPA, a fantastic ACT score, and a glittering array of colleges waiting for his application in the fall. He’s spent his entire life waiting for his chance to get out of the Cut and prove all of those motherfuckers on Figure Eight wrong. He has potential. So why, when it comes to the simplest of things, does he feel so lost?

He was sure he was in love with Kiara. Dead certain. Everything lines up. She’s kind and beautiful and intelligent, everything that matters. He feels comfortable around her, natural, like he doesn’t have to try to be funny or charming, like he’s not constantly afraid of fucking up. Everything he’s read about being in love, all the books and the articles -- it all follows. And it’s a good story, one other people will nod their heads and smile at, high school sweethearts, best friends who found solace in each other during the most difficult part of their young lives. But there’s something about it that still feels -- wrong. Uncomfortable. Like there’s the Pope that everyone else sees and then the Pope that he is, and the one in love with Kiara isn’t the same one who lays in his bed at night and stares at the ceiling fan begging for his brain to shut up.

It’s strange, to feel so separate from himself and the life he lives. He doesn’t think it’s normal. He wishes he could talk to his friends about it. It’s not like they’re dumb, the rest of the pogues. Well, not fundamentally so, anyway. John B and JJ definitely make interesting decisions sometimes. But they all inhabit their bodies without question, so sure in their skin and the feeling that they belong with each other. He slips in and out of that too readily to feel completely comfortable at every boneyard party and through every misinformed adventure. The ease is less a standard and more a pleasant surprise; there are some nights when his friends fall quiet around a bonfire and Pope realizes he can’t stop smiling, that he loves every single one of them with his whole heart and he knows they love him, too. And then he starts doubting himself, and gets nervous and quiet and weird again, and they all brush it off as Pope being Pope -- but he’s an outsider even in their little chosen family and that starts to chafe, after a while.

Honestly, he was doing a pretty excellent job of not thinking about it until John B died. Or disappeared. Or whatever you call it when your best friend goes out in an open boat in the middle of a storm and disappears off the radio and the capsized boat is found three days later with no sign of him or his kook girlfriend. Pope’s angry at him, for that. He also really, really hates Sarah, for driving him to make that choice. For her. If it was him, he would have made John B turn around. He should have tried to stop him in the first place. He shouldn’t have helped get him to the Phantom , shouldn’t have let him go.

He hasn’t been haunted by guilt like this since JJ took the blame for sinking the wakesetter, and, for some reason, this is worse. It chews at him, a constant gnawing in the center of his chest that leaves him empty and hurting every second, swallowed by a hunger consuming itself. He hasn’t stopped thinking about John B since that deadly, neverending moment of radio static. Memories flash on a constant film reel through his head. Surfing at Rixon’s, parties at the boneyard, bonfires at the chateau, afternoons on the HMS Pogue. All the moments this summer when John B smiled and Pope followed, unquestioning.

Surfing the surge. That was so beyond stupid, and Pope knew it, even before they got to the beach and saw the huge, angry waves. But John B asked, with that insane glint in his eye that he always got when he caught hold of an idea, unable to let it go, so Pope went. Someone had to keep him alive when Kie wasn’t around. And that -- the intersection of John B and Kiara -- the overlay of his two best friends in his heart -- that’s what scares him.

The whole summer, he’d watched them, first their strange tension with an undercurrent of possibility that tugged at his stomach and made him feel sick, and then their familiar platonic intimacy as they finally became comfortable in what they were to each other. Jealousy pinched and prodded at every moment of eye contact, every kiss on his cheek or lighthearted shove of her shoulder. And the way his heart soared at the salvage yard when John B told them she’d rejected him. That had to have meant something -- and what followed logic was that Pope was into Kie, and he wished himself in John B’s place.

Right?

The night the Phantom goes down, Pope thinks he’s the one who should be dead. His parents arrive to take him home, talking to him about how worried they were, how happy they are to see him safe, but his head is still full of that gut-wrenching radio static. He doesn’t hear anything they say as he watches red and blue lights dance across their faces. They pull him into a fierce hug, JJ tugged in next to him, and all he feels is hollow.

Every step he takes echoes off the side of the tunnel of his thoughts, black and void. He stays as still as he can, spread-eagle across his bed, still dressed, just to avoid the clanging of the empty air when he moves. The barest stimulation is too much, the dimmest light blinding. His chest feels like someone has reached in and turned his ribs inside out, split them with a chest-cracker and opened him up on a steel table. In the far, unexplored regions of his imagination, he can see his own autopsy, surgery performed on a perfectly silent boy, hands at his sides, eyes still open, heart still beating.

Night falls around him, from grey dusk to the unforgiving ink-black you can only get in power outages on a tiny island fighting to breathe through the salt marsh. The only thing that drives him from his bed is the urgent cry of his bladder, and it’s easier to get dressed for bed once he’s already moving across the floor. The floorboards creak under his feet and while he would normally walk lightly for fear of being hassled for waking the house the next morning, his steps are heavy and dragging. Staring at the counter, he reaches for his toothbrush and squeezes toothpaste out onto the worn bristles. He puts it in his mouth and looks up, making eye contact reflection for the first time.

You love him.  

The realization hits him as clearly as if someone had whispered directly in his ear. It’s like an icepick through the center of his exposed, defenseless heart. He lowers the toothbrush slowly, the silence of the house ringing in his ears like sirens. His breath quickens, his bare chest rising and falling as he backs away from the counter, fear and grief and disappointment and a thousand other things he can’t name swirling in him like the storm that ended life the way he knew it. The tears start, flowing down his face silently at first and then, as he loses all control of his breath and his hands find their way into his hair, accompanied by gut-wrenching, heartbreaking sobs, broken sounds of grief and loss in too many respects.

Heyward rushes down the hall, throwing the door open, fear for his son wild in his eyes. He finds Pope doubled over, hyperventilating, face a mess of snot and tears, eyes squeezed closed, as he shakes and sobs. After a moment in the door, he pushes in, pulling Pope into his chest, wrapping firm, solid arms built from hard work and weather-beaten skin around him. “It’s gonna be alright, kid,” he whispers as Pope shivers violently against him. “It’s gonna be alright.”

Pope doesn’t remember being folded into his bed, or how the glass of water and bottle of Advil ended up on his bedside table. He wakes up well into the afternoon, the room heavy and sticky with the day’s heat, the air conditioning rendered useless with the lack of electricity. The golden light fools him into a pleasant kind of ignorance for half a moment before the reality of the previous night crashes over him ,and suddenly the comfy nest of his bed feels like a prison, sucking him down like quicksand into the mattress. He puts his hands over his face, pressing fingertips into aching eyes, trying to keep himself calm by counting backwards from four hundred, a number with each breath. When he reaches three hundred and fifty four he feels like he might be able to move again, and he reaches for the water and gulps it down, a note stuck to the bottom fluttering to the floor.

He swings his legs out of bed to pick it up, recognizing his mother’s handwriting on the pink post-it note, smudged and running from the condensation. Breakfast in the fridge , it says, don’t worry about the store. Rest. We love you. It makes his skin itch, rather than being comforting. The storm in his head turns a tide toward guilt, like he’s keeping a secret that he just learned, himself. The bed calls, but he knows that if he collapses back into it he won’t move for the rest of the day, and that he should stand before he changes his mind. The ache in his belly forces him up, and he pads through the empty house, feeling halfway like a ghost. Eggs with peppers and cheese, sausage, and hashbrowns are on a covered plate in the fridge, and he unwraps it and puts it in the microwave, watching the food rotate as his mind comes to grips with consciousness.

He’s in love with John B. The boy that taught him how to play beer pong and smoke a bowl, the surfer that pushes him while they’re out on the water, daring him to bigger and bigger tricks, making him better. The idiot that chases gold and kook girls without a glance at impossibility, simply because he has no understanding of the idea. The John B that died last night.

The microwave beeps and he takes his food to the counter, hunched over it, twisting a fork between his fingers and feeling like his stomach might feel better on the outside of him. He takes a few bites, to see if maybe just the potatoes might go down easy, but they taste like ash, and he sits back from the plate, sore and exhausted. He wanders through the house and eventually back up to his room, standing in front of his closet, knowing he should get dressed but overwhelmed by even the simplest choice. Finally, he just pulls on a plain t-shirt over his basketball shorts, and, after catching a glimpse of his hair, puts a snapback on backwards. He doesn’t feel like sitting, so he doesn’t, tucking his keys in his pocket and sliding on a pair of flip flops, leaving the house without his phone or any sort of destination, just walking as his thoughts churn and crash over each other without being much of anything at all.

The heat sends sweat rolling down his temples and between his shoulder blades but he barely feels it, keeping his eyes on his feet as he shuffles down the side of the road. Normally, he’d be listening for any sound that might indicate Rafe or Topper coming up behind him, constantly judging the proximity of the cars, quietly bemoaning the blister forming under his left big toe from the strap of his sandal. But the only thing he senses is the slap of his shoes against the asphalt, carrying him aimlessly across the island.

His own denial fights vocally to be heard under the stifling realization, but it’s something he’s been pushing down for years, ignoring even as the obvious signs wiggled their way into his every day life, like the goosebumps at John B’s touch or the expansion of his chest when John B laughed. It was always there, waiting for him to see it, quietly growing and climbing its way like ivy from his heart to his head, finally bursting from underneath his skin at the worst possible moment.

He’s going to have to tell his dad. There won’t be any way to explain the grief crashing over him without the truth. That settles itself on his shoulders right next to the realization itself and everything else he’s been holding up for months. Knowing the name of it, at least, makes it easier to handle. He’s been carrying around his feelings for John B without knowing what they were, mis-assigning them to Kiara and fucking up what’s probably his favorite friendship. He’s gonna have to tell her, too. He’s not looking forward to that.

As he walks, it settles in, making a home along with all the other true things about him. Pope Heyward. Black. Sixteen years of age. Six feet tall. Pogue. And, he guesses, gay. Maybe bi. But probably gay. Looking back, no girl has ever made him feel the way that John B makes -- he swallows. Used to make him feel. With his stupid floppy hair and his kind brown eyes and that absurd jawline. Tears cloud his eyes and the path in front of him blurs. His best friend is dead . And it took that horrible, heart-shattering tragedy for him to figure out how he felt about him.

He keeps walking for a while, choking back tears and half-planning conversations with his parents and Kie, listening to the slap of his sandals on the cracked asphalt littered with long, dry pine needles and cracked seed pods, signalling the nearing end of summer. He feels, gratefully, a little more clear-headed, less freaked out than he thought he would be. He always feels better, having a plan, no matter how vague and ineffectual that plan may turn out to be.

After a while, he looks up, and finds himself in Figure Eight -- a very dangerous place to be, given the current social climate of the island -- not very far from Kie’s house. He heaves a sigh. Better now than later. Pausing before mounting the porch, Pope spares a second of a regret for his appearance. Kiara’s parents have never been keen on him or either of the other boys, and he knows that showing up in tattered shorts and flip flops won’t exactly help his case. Anna opens the door, looking surprised to see him, and Pope is momentarily relieved it isn’t Kie’s father.

“Good morning,” she says, wary.

“Hi,” Pope replies, lacking his usual magical parent-charming abilities, exhaustion and grief sapping the energy from his bones. There’s an awkward pause as Mrs. Carrera awaits the explanation of a rattily dressed pogue boy on her porch and Pope scrambles for one. He settles on the obvious. “Is Kie here?” He doesn’t know where else she’d be, honestly, but it’s the usual go-to for when they’re dragging Kie back to the Cut for nonsense and potential delinquency, and he’s hoping her mom won’t question it.

“She’s not,” Anna says, concern coloring her tone. “She isn’t with you?” Pope feels his eyebrows draw together, a betrayal of his own confusion, an immediate admittance of guilt.

“I, uh --” he says eloquently as panic overtakes Anna’s face. “I mean, she --” He’s saved by the girl herself riding down the sidewalk on a bike that looks like it’s seen better days, rattling loudly as she cruises toward the house. “There she is!” he says, with a disturbing amount of forced enthusiasm that puts the same expression on Kie and Anna’s faces. “So, we’re all good. Thanks, Mrs. C!”

But Anna isn’t gonna let her daughter slide so easily. “Kiara,” she says, “You weren’t in your room this morning.”

“I went for a bike ride,” Kie replies coldly. “I needed to think.”

“For three hours?” Anna asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

Kie shrugs. “I needed to think a lot.” Anna looks like she wants a little more information out of her daughter, but she looks at Pope, clearly reluctant to start a fight with him around. He feels caught, standing on the porch between mother and daughter, like he’s in a room with a half-constructed bomb. Kie’s hands fidget with the handlebars. “C’mon, Pope,” she says.

“No way,” Anna interjects. Kie opens her mouth like she wants to argue, but her mother’s words cut her off. “You two can hang out on the porch for a while, but when you’re done,” and here, she looks at Kiara like she might actually commit murder if her daughter doesn’t listen to her, “Come inside. We have a lot to talk about.”

Kie heaves a heavy breath. “Fine,” she says. Satisfied, Anna turns and goes inside. Pope drops off the porch and walks with Kie as she walks the bike over to the garage.

“Hey,” he says, his heart in his throat. This is a complete turnaround from the emptiness of earlier, every inch of him hyper aware of her body language, the changes in her expression and her attitude towards him. His entire life feels like a shipwreck, dashed against the rocks after careful years of building, after months of planning the perfect voyage. “Bike ride?” he asks, because he always knows when she’s lying.

She props her bike up against the side of the garage. “I was with JJ,” she blows out on a sigh. She doesn’t look at him as they walk around to the back porch. “At the Chateau.” Pulling her hair out of it’s ponytail, she splits it over her shoulders, fidgeting nervously with the ends. “I didn’t want him to be alone.”

He’s about to say that he was alone, that maybe he wanted to have his friends around him, too, but then he remembers his father catching him in the bathroom, waking up in his own bed, water and a note on the bedside table. JJ wouldn’t have gotten any of that. He can’t even go home, not after Luke Maybank finds out what happened to his precious Phantom . With John B -- gone -- JJ doesn’t have anyone left. Except for them. And Pope was too wrapped up in his own grief and bullshit to think about something like that. He takes a second to be grateful for Kiara.

They reach the steps to the Carrera’s back porch, and she sits down on the second-to-last one. “I have something to tell you,” she says, and she still won’t look at him. Half of him wonders what she’s upset about while the other hopes she can’t hear his heartbeat, it’s pounding so loud in his own ears.

Slowly, he sinks down next to her, the morning sun radiant across her skin, amplified by the reflection off the channel. He takes a deep breath. “I have something to tell you, too.” Her eyebrows draw together. He licks his lips. She pulls her knees up to her chest. He stares at his feet. They’re afraid of each other, and the awkward tension in the air makes him hate every wrong thing he said, every lie he told her, even though he believed them when he said it. She doesn’t say anything else, and he takes that as his cue to go first. He looks up, before he says anything, taking in her kind brown eyes, the soft lines of her kind, intelligent face. He wants one last picture of her before he changes everything. “I don’t love you,” he says.

Her face contorts in an expression of surprise and offense, and he rapidly backpedals. “I mean, I do.” he says. “Of course I do, but like, like a sister.”

“A sister,” she says incredulously, confusion rising in her eyes.

“Not -- Oh, fuck, that’s not --” He drops his head in his hands, his blood rushing so loudly in his ears he can’t hear himself think. “This is not going well.”

“No shit,” she says, but there’s a little bit of relief in her voice. This bumbling, tripping-over-his-words Pope makes a lot more sense than the one that lost his shit and nearly killed Rafe Cameron the previous day. (And God, was that only yesterday?) He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, and she notices his breath start to quicken. “Pope?” she asks, leaning forward and putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Kie, I’m gay.” It falls out of his mouth like a boulder, hitting the ground and shaking the earth with its weight. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud, and it’s terrifying, to have it so concrete in front of him, no longer nebulous and trapped in his head. He can’t take it back, can’t lie about it anymore, to her or himself or anyone else. He has to live with that truth, now, no matter how he feels about it. Part of that, while intimidating, makes him feel just a little bit more free.

“Oh,” she says, and he’s too panicked to discern anything in her tone. “Okay.” He doesn’t want to look at her, doesn’t want to see the horror or anger or whatever else must be settling there.

He rushes to explain himself, like he didn’t hear. “I’m sorry that I thought I was in love with you,” he says, even as she feels a thousand worries slip from her shoulders like coming up from diving under a wave. “I just, I was jealous, and I thought that it was John B I was jealous of, but it wasn’t, it was you, and then he--” Pope blows by his name before he chokes on it, realizing what he’s said aloud, how dangerous and loaded a once-familiar thing has become. “It wasn’t him I was jealous of,” he repeats, lacing his fingers over the back of his head, dropping it to his chest. “It wasn’t him.” He squeezes his eyes shut, swallowing down the tears fighting their way up his throat.

Kie hesitates in reaching for him, but the moment her fingertips brush his shoulder, she falls against her best friend, wrapping her arms around him as best she can. “Oh, Pope,” she whispers, as tears well in her own eyes. “Oh Pope, I’m so sorry.” He falls into her embrace, all his anger and uncertainty dissipating like fog at dawn. They both cry for a while, her silently, him shaking. She does her best to comfort him, but his grief has taken on a different tone she can no longer imagine.

When his breath finally slows, he sits up out of her arms, wiping under his eyes. “You aren’t mad?” He asks, in true Pope fashion.

“Why would I be mad?” she asks, disbelief echoing in her words.

“Well, I was…” he sniffs, watching his hands fold over each other. “I was kind of a jerk about it.” He feels bad, about the way everything went down. He was drowning, in disappointment and confusion and a million other things he still doesn’t have words for that he wishes he could explain. He was an asshole to her when he should have listened and  

She knocks their shoulders together with half a sly smile. “Yeah, you kind of were.” It feels good to be joking with him like this again, after the last couple of days of chaos and anger and disappointment after disappointment. They’re best friends for a reason, her boys and her.

“And then --” he swallows, remembering the moments at the Dump after John B disappeared into the marsh, moments he still doesn’t understand. “Y-you kissed me, and --”

The smile falls off her face. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she says. She shifts her weight between her feet, her knees moving back and forth as they sit side by side on the porch steps, picking at her nails. “That wasn’t --” she looks at him, and he looks back. “I shouldn’t have done that.” She stretches her legs out in front of her, knocking her sneakers together, her hands dropping to her lap. “I have my own shit to figure out, Pope,” she says. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into it.”

Pope leans over, “You wanna talk about it?” he asks pointedly. He knows she likes to talk things through, make sense of them by pushing everything out into the atmosphere so she can see it all, pick out the pieces that make sense. He also doesn’t want to talk about him, anymore.

“No,” she says abruptly. He leans back into his own space, holding his hands up a little, and she bites her lip, like she does when she’s thinking too hard about what to say next. “I’m sorry,” she admits. “I just --” she knocks her feet together again before pulling them back up to the last step, her chin falling onto her knees. “I gotta think about it some more, I guess.” She looks at him, screwing up her face in that way that makes everyone agree that she’s adorable. “I’ve got some more I’ve gotta work out.”

“You know you can still talk to me, right?” he reassures her. He used to be the best listener, before he went and fucked everything up. Kie would talk to him about things John B and JJ would never understand, usually about parents or family pressure, things she felt guilty discussing with either one of their practically-orphaned friends. Pope understood, and it was easy to let Kie just let everything out, answering her own questions, defining problems and putting together solutions in the same breath. It’s part of the reason he assumed they would end up together, before -- well. Before. She trusted him, and he fucked that up, and now he can only hope that he can earn it back.

“I know,” she says, folding her arms on top of her knees and looking back out across the channel. “It’s not because of --” she stops, unsure of how to define it.

“Yeah,” he answers. He doesn’t want to talk about it either.

“It’s just --” she goes quiet for a second, picking through words like the wrong ones are rotten, and he watches her, the slight breeze off the water picking up strands of her hair. Her shoulder drops as she moves her head, and a few curls shift enough that he can see dark red marks tracking up the side of her neck. Hickies? “I don’t think I have words for it yet,” she says, finishing her sentence. JJ , he thinks, her confession about her absence this morning circling back through his mind. The word is JJ .

Pope isn’t blind. He sees the way JJ looks at her. He always has. It never unsettled him like the shared glances between Kie and John B, and now he knows why. It’s a little relieving, to not have to manufacture false jealousy in the pit of his stomach, to have to lie to himself in order to make his constructed, false worldview make sense. JJ and Kie -- they’re going to be something else to handle, with the inherent chaos of how they both handle their emotions and the forced bravado they both put on, but he supposes they were… inevitable, in a way. Kiara was misinterpreting her own feelings, just like he was, forcing herself to believe she loved someone who made more sense, someone that was easier to accept than confronting the truth. John B was his truth -- JJ is hers. He’s grateful, in a way, that they’ll have each other, through this -- once she gains the same clarity he’s come to.

“It’s okay,” he says, as everything slides into place. He’s not gonna rush this, not gonna make her take steps she’s not ready for. “You don’t have to talk about it if you’re not ready.” She smiles at him -- a weak thing, but genuine.

“Thanks, Pope,” she says.

He shrugs. “What are best friends for?” She drops her head against his shoulder, and for the first time since Shoupe confirmed their worst fears, he feels like things might, someday, be okay again.

They stay like that for a while, and then she asks him if he wants to talk more about it, and Pope recounts the moment of clarity in the bathroom, his thought process on his walk across the island. Kie listens, because he’s still her best friend, and it’s one of his favorite things about her, the way she makes it so easy to let everything out, the way she makes him feel seen. She doesn’t say much, but she doesn’t have to, because everything is still so fresh and bleeding that he doesn’t know what he wants to hear, yet. She reassures him she still loves him, that she’ll stick with him no matter what, just like she’s always promised to do, and that seems to do the trick.

Eventually, Mrs. Carrera comes out and offers to drive Pope home, a very pointed instruction to the both of them. She goes to get the car, leaving the two of them to say goodbye on the porch. Kie stands with her arms crossed over her stomach, like she’s holding herself together. “My parents are probably gonna have me on lockdown for a while,” she says, biting on the corner of her lip.  

“Mine too,” he answers, with some inkling of what she’s about to ask him.

“Do you think you could --” she starts, and she’s staring somewhere around his collarbones, because JJ means more to her now, and makes this request, somehow, different. “I mean, with service down, it’s gonna be hard to keep in touch and I just --” She sighs, frustrated with herself, that she can’t get the words out. “When his dad figures out what happened --”

Pope interrupts her this time, reaches a gentle hand out for her arm. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” he promises. “I’ll talk to my parents…” he says, automatically, his usual main resource for help or assistance, and pauses, remembering the note he left on with his father, how things might go without the overhang of a recent disaster. His parents. They’ll be out all day, at least, won’t know about his sojourn to Figure Eight. But they’ll be back, and he has a lot to face.

“Will you just make sure he’s safe?” she asks, small and scared, and, in true Kiara fashion, ashamed to be asking for help.

“Yeah,” he answers. He wraps her in a tight hug, grateful to have his friend back, to be centering somewhere at least slightly left of normal, to be spiralling down from the insane high of failure and the chaos of being half a fugitive. “Yeah, of course.”

Mrs. Carrera drives him home, and even though she tries to ask him how he’s holding up, he answers monosyllabically, avoiding small talk by staring out the window and doing his best to stave off the encroaching panic as he anticipates the upcoming conversation with his father. Anna watches him carefully, and he can feel her eyes on him. It makes him uneasy.

Watching Figure Eight slowly melt into subdivisions and condominiums and then, as houses get smaller and the weeds get wilder, into the Cut. In a matter of minutes, fantastic wealth descends into abject struggle and poverty, a jarring display of privilege and elitism that Pope and the others are no longer shocked by. They grew up in it, cut down over and over again by a system that simply wasn’t built for them, grew up before their time because the kooks never will, abdicating responsibility and ignoring the fallout. Pope’s thoughts wander to Topper’s wakesetter, bile rising in his throat. His impulsive mistake ruined JJ’s life at sixteen, and the Thorntons, well. They’ll just buy another boat.

When they reach the Heywards’, Anna cuts the engine, and Pope doesn’t move, staring at his family’s little house, shabby but well-kept, his mother’s vegetable garden in full swing, bursting with a physical manifestation of love and care in an explosion of green leaves and colorful fruits and vegetables. He thinks about the Carrera’s neatly kept lawn, the decorative plants placed carefully on their wraparound porch, the contrast between the two images. Chaos and love, wealth and precision.

“I love your mother’s garden,” Anna says, almost like she doesn’t mean to. “I wish she’d tell me her secret.”

You can’t have it , Pope thinks, selfishly. He wants this one thing, for his mother, for his family. Instead, he answers; “I wouldn’t know.” This, he realizes, is unfortunately true. When was the last time he helped his mother with her garden? Asked her what she wanted to do on a Saturday? He helps with the store, of course, but in that, he doesn’t have a choice. He’s spent so much time chasing John B, first his promise of adventure, and then his approval, and then, desperate to help him in his hour of need. When was the last time he helped with the yard work? Helped make dinner? Stayed in on a Friday night?

His parents love him violently, work hard to give him opportunities they never had. His father breaks his back, works the store, the delivery service, any hard labor job he can get, used to being a tool, something to be taken advantage of, a means to an end. He does it so Pope can go to school, have a laptop to do homework and apply for colleges on, have a phone to text his friends and stay in contact with his parents. His throat thickens with the realization that his father was right -- he has been ungrateful. He’s been disrespectful, and rude, and if it was him, he wouldn’t even let himself back into the house, much less comfort him, leave him breakfast and reassuring notes.

Anna takes the emotion in his eyes for something else, and she puts a hand on his shoulder that feels so distinctly different from Kiara’s that it’s fundamentally wrong, and he freezes under her touch. “I know this is hard,” she says, in a tone that tries for concerned mom and lands somewhere closer to patronizing school counselor. “But you’ll get through it. You have each other, and that’s the most important part.”

“Thanks,” he says coldly, reaching for the door handle before climbing quickly out of the car. When his feet hit the packed-dirt drive, he stops, feeling like an asshole. “And thank you. For the ride.” He goes to shut the door, but she interrupts him.

“Pope,” she says, and he looks up at her, making eye contact for the first time since he got in the car. “If you -- or your family -- needs anything…” She bites her lip the same way Kie does. “Just, don’t hesitate to ask.” Pope usually rankles under the suggestion of charity, pride bred into him alongside a stubborn willfulness that rivals even his father’s, but she knows life in the Cut, has faced the same things he and his family deal with every day. It’s an odd juxtaposition, her inherent compassion and her dislike of her daughter’s friends. It’s what, at the end of the day, separates her eternally from Kie.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Of course. Thanks, Ms. Anna.”

When he reaches the door, he hears tires twist in the dirt, and Anna Carrera drives away, back to her house, her daughter, her life on Figure Eight. Pope lets himself in, showers off the sweat from his trek to Kie’s, and sets about cleaning the house, both as a distraction and a desperate appeal for his parents’ forgiveness. The whole afternoon, he rehearses a million different versions of the same speech, apologies and admittances, going back and forth about copping to the sinking of Topper’s boat, afraid of his father’s wrath and the legal consequences, but still guilty and anxious to the point of nausea over it, desperate to do the right thing.

Pope was raised with a strong sense of right and wrong, a deep and little-discussed Catholic faith, and a strong sense of familial pride. What Heywards are and aren’t, what they do and don’t do -- it was all drilled into him from a young age. Heywards pay their debts. Heywards don’t complain, don’t argue, don’t talk back. Heywards work hard. Heywards work honest.

Heywards aren’t gay.

It was never said, but Pope knows his dad. He knows what counts as acceptable behavior, the future his father imagines for him. A college degree, a Good Job, a house, a wife, kids -- he knows what’s expected. He tries to wrestle with the disappointment that he’ll never own up to that image as he scrubs the stove, tears welling up as he works at a particularly stubborn grease stain. He’s already disappointed them so much, just in the past few days. What will they say? What will they think of him?

He knows he’s lucky, as a kid in the Cut with both parents still around, still willing to work, still willing to love him. There are too many kids like John B and JJ, left behind, ignored and neglected, the victims of vicious cycles and cruel tragedies. Pope still has a whole family, as small and broken as it may be. He should start acting like it.

He’s just finished dusting the living room when he hears tires in the driveway, the rattling engine of his father’s old pickup, and he freezes like a prey animal caught in an open plain. They’re home. His mother makes quiet comments on the improved state of the house as they toss keys in bowls and remove shoes, speaking calmly to each other, the soft noises of domesticity and routine. Routine he is about to monumentally disrupt, more than he ever has.

Pope has a speech planned. He has things he wants to say, sentences he needs them to hear in the same way he has them planned. Everything needs to follow the course he’s laid out, or it could be open to misinterpretation. He’s prepared. That’s what he does -- he plans, he structures, he researches and prepares. All of that disintegrates the moment his father walks into the living room.

“Pope,” he says. “You cleaned.”

“Dad, I’m sorry,” Pope says, and the words choke him, tears welling and spilling in the same instant, like a faucet turning on after winter. He tells him everything, about Topper’s wakesetter and the failed treasure hunt and the impossible hope that drew him from his scholarship interview, the desperation and the certainty that he was following, determined to be the final piece of the puzzle, the thing that saved his friends. He begs for forgiveness, crying and broken, looking for himself in his fathers eyes. Heyward doesn’t say anything for a long time, soaking in the information. His wife is struck dumb, at Pope’s heart breaks with the horror in his mother’s eyes, at his admittances of all he’s done.

“Please,” Pope begs. “Say something.”

The silence that hangs in the living room feels like a gun against his temple, his father’s finger on the trigger. “Well son,” Heyward says, “What are you gonna do about it?”

“What --” Pope’s brain stops, too overwhelmed to process this reaction from his father. There is grief and anger, guilt and fear, and a thousand other things he cannot name. He is out of words, out of ideas and out of power. He wants someone to tell him what to do, because cannot possibly summon the energy to determine a path himself.

“You sunk that boy’s boat?” Pope nods, dumbfounded, answering on instinct. Heyward looks tired. “You let your friend take the fall?”

“I --” It’s hard, to hear it in his father’s voice, to hear the disappointment there, to feel it, real, metallic, and cutting in the air. “Yeah.”

Heyward shrugs, like it’s simple. “What are you gonna do about it?” Maybe it is. Pope got himself into this mess, and now he needs to get himself out.

“I don’t --” he starts, with nowhere to go.

“You gonna do the right thing?” His father asks, his tone implying that there is one answer.

Pope straightens up, closes his mouth, swallows down all the tears, all the uncertainty and vulnerability. He has asked for guidance, and his father is providing it. There is no more room for weakness here. “Yes, sir.”

Heyward nods, and turns to Yvonne, who has tears in her eyes. “He’ll be fine, sweetheart,” He says to his wife. “We’ve got a good boy here. He’ll be fine.” He wraps his arms around her, folding her into his chest in a familiar, nostalgic gesture. Pope feels awkward, watching his parents comfort each other, but he knows that his feelings are not the most important in the room. His chest hurts knowing he’s the one who caused their pain.

But this conversation still isn’t over. “Dad, um,” he says, and Heyward looks at him with exhaustion in his wizened eyes. “there’s one more thing.”

Heyward turns toward him again, leaving one arm around his wife. “Well I don’t know if you can shock me anymore today, Pope,” he says, “so go ahead.”

The words dam up behind his lips, and his hands flex at his sides, clenching into fists and spreading out again, and there’s no way out of this, not anymore. It was easier with Kie, for some reason.  “Dad, I’m gay.” It hangs there, bigger and somehow more terrifying than anything he’s said since his parents came home. The air in the living room doesn’t move, stale and muggy in the North Carolina evening, without the hum of the fridge or the air conditioner for reprieve.

Heyward blinks. Once, twice. Yvonne shakes on a silent sob, a noise that cracks Pope’s ribs open. “Okay,” his father replies.

It is somehow relieving and disappointing all at once. Pope doesn’t lie to his parents, at least, as much as he can help it. “Is that all?” he asks, because he expected -- something more? Something beyond indifference. Maybe rage, maybe affirmation. Maybe some indicator that this was just as big of a deal as he made it out to be.

“What else do you want me to say?” Heyward asks, knowing this is the most he and his son have talked about anything in years. The last mention at vulnerability came before the ill-fated scholarship interview, less than a minute of conversation before Heyward left his son to take a job. Sometimes he kicks himself for that, wondering about what might have happened if he’d waited, been there when his son made one of the most impulsive decisions of his young life. Could he have caught him coming out the door? Talked him down? What would today be, if Heyward had been there?

Pope looks at his father through a haze of tears, his breath somewhere other than his chest, uncontrollable and foreign. “You don’t hate me?”

Heyward shrugs. “You’re still my son, ain’t you?” Pope nods, sniffling and backhanding tears off of his face. “Well then, I guess I still love you.” Pope doesn’t remember the last time his father said that to him. “Pope,” Heyward sighs, heaving himself off the couch. “You’ve done a lot these past few weeks I don’t understand. I’m not gonna pretend I’m not upset with you.” Pope looks at his father’s feet, weary and sore on the threadbare carpet. “But you bein gay? That ain’t why.”

And that, that breaks the tenuous control he has over his emotions, and he sobs, loud and hard and echoing in the small living room. “I thought maybe -- maybe you might --” Pope tries, his arms at his sides, fists clenched, chest shaking. Heyward steps forward, wrapping his arms around his son, because he may not know what Pope is going to do, what he’s going to do as a father, as a man. Even though neither of them know how they’re going to get through this, how they’re going to deal with the police department, the Thorntons, John B’s death, and the rest -- they  know this, they know the faith they have in each other, the love and respect that lives there, even after everything.

Pope’s father pulls back from the embrace, places his hands on his son’s shoulders and levels him with the same stare that Pope has known his whole life. “What are you?” he asks, the same way he’s asked a million times before. This is a routine, between father and son, in moments of desperation, a way of taking a step back up from the most crushing of lows, of taking back control, setting their shoulders and facing into the wind.

Pope knows the answer. “I’m a Heyward.”

[its-jwang2017]

Interlude 2: Jaebeom

JB had only agreed to move to Chicago for two reasons; One was because he wanted to leave his small hometown after his 14th birthday when he realized he couldn’t keep his technopathic powers hidden much longer. The second was because he wanted to get out of the small bubble his hometown provided, where everyone knew everything about everyone whether they wanted to or not. To JB, the relentless whispers about his peculiar personality and quick-to-anger characteristics labeled him as a freak in his hometown, with the neighboring kids bullying him relentlessly in order to see for themselves how easy it was to anger “the bull”.

Kids can be really mean sometimes.

Even though he was labeled as “aggressive” and “weird” by the people in his village, there were some aspects about him that showcased his gentler side like his odd love for photography. There was just something entrancing about the way life ebbed and flowed around him, something beautiful to be found in every still moment that could be portrayed elegantly through a single camera shot or, on the flip-side, many singular moments combined together in one video. Through all of the harsh words subjected on him by his peers, Jaebeom looked for the shots that captured the happier moments in life as a way to escape the present. Even when he was younger, he would constantly use his fingers to create a frame around anything that caught his interest, whether it was a flower tilting over underneath the weight of a bumblebee or his friends laughter as they swung higher and higher on the swing set.

For his thirteenth birthday (the birthday that he realized every moment has to come to an end where even a picture couldn’t save it), he received two things; an old Polaroid camera stocked full of film and a goodbye note from his father, who had written a short explanation that he had fallen in love with the neighbor’s daughter and had fled the town to be with her.

There was no note that said if he would come back.

With the absence of his dad and his mother falling into a deep depression, JB fell deeper and deeper into the art, trying his best to capture the fleeting moments of happiness in every shot and bringing the best ones back for his mom. At first, he had hated the camera that mocked and reminded JB of his father’s heartless abandonment; it was really tempting at times to burn the camera as one last rebellion against his traitorous dad. But the passion for art won over his hate for his father and JB reluctantly kept the camera (he could never afford another one anyway). From that point on, Jaebeom kept the camera like it was the most precious treasure in the world and even picked up some odd jobs around their small neighborhood in order to continue to pay for film.

This did not get past the older boys in his neighborhood at all, who upped their ante and began taunting JB even more by making fun of the ludicrous notion that photography was too feminine for a boy JB’s age to be messing around with. JB did his best to squash the growing feelings of hatred and malice for the neighbors whispering is he a fairy? , of the other boys’ relentless taunts, and for his father labeling him and his mother as a rejected “family” to everyone in their town. He was burdened with being ‘the man of the house’, a position his father should have stayed to fill, and his responsibilities increased tenfold with having to provide for both him and his mother during her debilitating depression. Then, dealing with the faux sympathy from his neighbors and bullying at school… without even realizing it, JB became full of anger, anxiety and rage for the way life had unflinchingly dealt him a losing hand.

It almost came to a head one day, when JB’s powers were still at their beginning stages, where one of his tormentor’s jabs hit a little too close to home. Sometimes during JB’s nightmares, he can still hear the disgusted sneer of one of the older kids with the scathing comment, “Your dad would’ve stayed if you weren’t such a huge disappointment!” ringing in his ears as the hairs on his skin stand on end due to static lightly crackling around him.

He remembers the weird feeling of sparks dancing across his fingertips as he balled his fist in preparation for a sucker-punch. He would have thrown it too if the power bubbling underneath his skin wasn’t quelled by his mother suddenly tearing out of their small home, having overheard the whole exchange, with venom in her words and fire in her eyes. This marked the first time that JB had seen her get out of the bed in months.

Even with her shorter stature, none of the other kids were willing to duel with a protective eomma (out of both deep respect and blatant fear) and JB’s aggressors fled the scene in a split second, leaving both Im’s standing outside on the grass breathing harshly and fighting to regain control ( like mother like son, JB always recalled fondly).

The rest of that day was a blur in JB’s memory, in that he faintly remembers having a real conversation with his mom for the first time since his father left. Apparently his mom had, without him knowing, submitted an application to JYP prep with the pictures that he had given her throughout the past months. The reason why she had regained some of her energy was due to the fact that, out of thousands of students in the world, he had miraculously gotten accepted on that very day and had an open invitation to join the school to study Photography and Film.

JB’s relationship with his mom didn’t magically repair in the months that unfurled between his acceptance notice and his first real day at JYP international prep. In fact, a HUGE part of JB wanted to stay and support his mother while the other part of him desperately ( selfishly ) wanted to get away from her and her haunted silences, her blank stares, her lifeless form mechanically going through the motions of basic hygiene and eating. As his powers grew and fired randomly, he also began to become afraid that he would hurt his mother in his desperation to breathe some life back into her aura and he was worried he’d shock her if he wasn’t careful. His worry became overwhelming as his control kept slipping and he became eager to separate himself from the person he loved most as fear threatened to overwhelm him again.

Jaebeom sometimes thinks back to that day , when he had first noticed the sparks dancing around his fists as the dam inside of him almost broke underneath the harsh words spewed out of the other boy’s mouth, and he faintly wonders what would have happened if his mom hadn’t broken up the fight in time. That fateful moment was when his powers first broke free from within some hidden compartment of his physiology, spurred on by the wild emotions overtaking him in that split second. He never truly understood what forced the powers to manifest, why that day and why that time, but he never got a chance to really ask anybody as he did his best to keep his powers under wraps. However, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide it for long and only chose to accept the invitation to JYP Prep at the very last second when a spark from his hand almost caused a fire while he was preparing dinner.

The last day at home had his mother looking more like herself than JB had seen since he could remember. She was all smiles and pride oozed out of inn her ever pore as JB packed up his most treasured possessions and clothes into a tiny suitcase.

The last time JB saw his mom was standing on their tattered wooden balcony, her skinny form looking lighter every minute as if a tremendous burden was slowly lifting off of her second by second. He recalled her smiling toothily at him as he entered the cab that would take him to the airport, remembers her waving furiously at him underneath the dazzling sunlight until she thought he couldn’t see him anymore, her hair a beautiful mixture of grey and reddish brown and her hands worn by time.

In present time he can barely recall her face, but he remembers the split second feeling of foreboding as the cab turned the corner, the last sight of his mother standing on their porch looking angelic in the sunlight staying with him.

A week later he got the call that his mother passed away.

Since it's in the past, I kept up with the italicized theme Literally, gag me. I have major writer's block. I can't even. I wrote this MONTHS AGO!! Months! And I've just been waiting to post because I still don't know if I fully like it or it's placement within the story line. At least you know more about JB as my character in this story. ADHJADIOASIJASIOAIOOJSJAKNJAF = how I feel at the moment. Please look back through the story because the first interlude is now replaced with Jinyoung's origin story (again, wrote it months ago and am just now posting RIIIIIIP!)

Any comments or kudos would be lovely and sincerely appreciated!

[a-for-alternative]

Valentines

[Previous]

   The threat of reward hangs like February’s icicles off the keystones of their arched windows; like teeth, glittering with iridescent magic he had secretly wanted to reach for but could never allow himself to indulge his imagination and believe there was anything special about sunlight captured in tapering ice.

 But, unlike the magic of dripping frost spirals, B held real mystery that could not be measured on the density of latticing molecules or their capacity for refraction.

   —   For the past five Winters, he had glimpsed from over his shoulder the grey outline of the second successor in the dull amber lamp-light, bleeding into the darkness of predawn from their window’s frame – the sight eerily echoing fairytales, an ice-toothed maw, building a weak fire at the back of it’s throat around the templar caught in it’s jaws.

  The house’s bowing scaffolds and cavernous ceilings reminded him of a monstrous, yawning thorax.  But, hadn’t B always been the beast he was told to slay?

 The second child would be the only one to swallow up his future, but even after he became curious enough to peer out after him into the dying night, he never called him back inside. He simply watched him go.

  Only once, B had seen him through the frosted glass and drew a warm finger down the chilly pane, leaving a clear trail for A’s eyes to follow.  

          –   ‘ 早 trop ’

       早; early.   Trop; too much …   

 `

A had smiled softly.  ‘ Too early,  too soon. ’  

      Too quickly gone.   Everything.

`

    The privacy of twilight, the thrill of their rivalry, the careless surprise on B’s face when he uttered ‘friend’ in his mother’s tongue, the impression of warm fingers on cold glass,   their time together sharing the same Winters with the same purpose,   all too quickly gone.

   He lingered a little longer that day but, all the same, disappeared to the far side of the grounds, the only hour and place he found true privacy, in the weeds spared by the grounds keepers; indulging his imagination and giving form to the unrefined thoughts of B and their place in the world.  

`

     A dreaded the day he might be discovered and told it was too dangerous to venture out before dawn…

  It was as though, as his mind was sharpened and expanded, it became equally more wild with possibilities and a thirst for purpose.  Some were fantastical, others bitterly inevitable, but his position left no room for doubt or desire that might take him off course.  Yet, language allowed him to solidify his thoughts, condensed his fears from their monstrous shadows and gave his conflicting fascination with B more form to twist into delicious narratives that no one else had to know…

   Could any of what he imagined in the slow moments of sunrise be mutual … ?   Could Backup’s own expanding mind hold the same spoiled possibilities?

`

  The invitation to revisit old battles was enough for him to incline into the warmth building between them, further kindling a familiar unrest that twisted his dreams into an abstract hunger – pressing into the other’s skin desperately, pulling him blindly into his body like an animal ignorant of sex…

      The shot glass, standing amber and fading to his left, wasn’t spared a glance. But, he neither considered backing down nor felt ready to accept the dare.

`

  His senses were too swept up in the physical actions; It’s only been moments-  

 B’s thighs wound around his body, a hand guiding his fingers - it is like the creak of the window’s ledge under the heel of his hand, reminding him of how close he is to touching the slender, sparkling ice, and that if his intent is already so obvious, that he might as well   have.  i t.  …

  If only for a moment, he allowed possibility of learning what rolling, summer-soaked sex felt like …

Watching barely parted lips, soundless as smoke.

His breath trickles from his open mouth.

  He could almost  feel  it.

`

            “ - B … ”

`

   He hesitates, introspection emerging out of the soft haze, slowing time. Several questions not quite formed,    

‘Why do you want it?’,  

 ‘For what ends?’,   ‘Have you ever- ?’

   ‘Would you ever consider- … me ?’

   – a distracting warmth builds on his face. He can’t tell if it is the heat rising from between their bodies or if allowing himself to ponder asking has caused his inexperience to surface visibly.

  He’s been practicing control over his emotional affect since the day L asked him,

 “Why do you think you are first and Backup is second?”,  

  The question made his blood run cold…

`

     Being readable was being vulnerable.

   A’s skin has always had the thin, delicate quality of alabaster. B’s pin-prick love bites had bruised him painlessly for weeks but had damaged his carefully constructed veneer of invulnerability, drawing low toned whispers from their peers…

  Until then, most assumed he was easily flustered from anger; a manifestation of a temperamental nature under pressure or the years spent with B allowing something to rub off.

 In truth, it was a compromise with his body; if he couldn’t conceal his responses, he would control the message they carried – A sharp glance, the sucking of teeth, the veil of teenage impudence, ‘-tu meurs en premier’  ( You die first ) where nothing else felt strong enough…

`

    Hiding behind animosity had been intentional, but it felt like a betrayal to suppress more of who he was than he already had to, slipping deeper into the skin of his persona until there wasn’t a trace of the person beneath the letter left.

   However, it was a price worth paying, allowing his eyes to wander unscrutinized over polished desks to trace the gentle, verdant veins of the other boy’s arms – his hands, fingers curling around the pages edge gracefully, the tender hiss of skin against paper…  

  Behind the camouflage of disdain, he could drink in the subtly of his closest friend’s voice, it’s cadence maturing into a syrupy, deep resonance; saccharine sound…

`

   … Do other boys do this to themselves ?

`

   A would repeat his words behind closed lips, savoring them, amplifying every morsel by bringing it into his body, into his mouth.  Anything to make the thought more vivid; the memory of B’s breath trickling over his pulse.  

    He can’t remember what was said anymore…

It changes with his mood, the flavor of his dreams, the tone of the moments when he is alone.

He can only remember the wispy susurrations over teeth, the strange awareness of the temporarily of the moment, how teasing close to the line of satisfaction it brought him, leaving him feeling desperately unsated when it was over.

   It keeps him revisiting the confrontation, a pseudo-masochistic fixation with a moment long gone and fading from memory.. But all within the safety of his mind, where no one else would know.

The warmth on his face leaves him feeling exposed, summoning the familiar resentment towards his own body .. though it’s muted, somewhere distant, pricking without sting.

`

He still wants to pull away and hide.

But, the distance between them is so unbearably tight, and unreasonably comfortable…

`

  He leans in closer.

   If he is close enough, B will not be able to distinguish the emerging color from the shadows he casts over his features. But, he can feel the humidity of an exhaled breath pulled into his mouth and the warmth seems to prickle like sparks through his skin.

  The condensing air between their lips is sweltering and silent as the calm before a storm. It tingles with electricity that he pulls deeper into his lungs. It’s charge filling up his chest, until the impossible gravity brings the flush warmth to his mouth without any deliberation - the release of letting himself simply have it allows a sigh to escape, taking with it the uncertainty that’s haunted every previous instance of betrayal by his body.

 The contact is tender, the motion slow, as gentle and inoffensive as it was starved… letting the plush heat and subtle pulse seep into the union of their lips.     Time’s viscosity embellishes the pressure with delicate sensation he’s never been receptive to before, amplified by his famished longing to relive the lustful sincerity of their altercation.

  –    His fingers press into the firm muscles of his friend’s lower back. The contact is so light B could detect the trembling of his hands…    He’s never felt this rawly unguarded before, this honest without regret.

`

 The balmy nirvana of his rival’s lips has an ethereal softness like the satin of rose petals that lingers on the tips of his fingers, something he couldn’t detect in the bruising, hateful kiss they shared years ago.

 But, it meets his senses with a familiarity… from their childhood; the groaning of tree limbs under his weight as he leaned over and allowed the contact as light as moth’s wings meeting mid-flight, guiltless and strangely polite. The sensation was phantom, almost untangle, like if warm velvet and cream could mesh,  living on his lips like they had exchanged something vial and irreversible - leaving an unsatisfied intrigue, the desire to fully grasp the physical impression. They personified the idiom ‘just one more time’ – turning one, a single curious action, into several repeating attempts.

 A sermon on sin lead them to never speak of it again, but his belief in sin had outgrown second hand virtues.  There was nothing virtuous about his intoxicated touch, brushing fingers against his friend’s smooth cheek as he gave himself to it, his eyes sliding closed as he let himself submerge  -  the quiet sanctuary of their room, ‘I-missed-you’ pressed into the lobe of his ear, the warm inflection like a lifetime’s confession -pulled down into B’s body, sliding under him, pulled into Egyptian cotton by his gravity-his fingers lacing into his hair-surrender-as-they-curl-pulling-possessive-’say you’re mine’-the-humiliation-of-his-heel-in-his-back-

  His lips part.

`

  The galvanized air slips into his mouth, tingling as faintly as dust caught on sunlight, sparkling invisibly on his tongue as he inhales. He wants to fill his lungs back up with static, invite the delicate energy into his body, allow the current to saturate his senses.  He wants Beyond’s thunder in his veins.

  Sloping into one another, his fingers guiding the arch of B’s back. The subtle shift of his clothes, pressure through thin layers, and bare caress of skin again skin, the novel sensation of having someone press their aroused body into his. A hitch in his breath, a shiver rolling down his spine.  Everything moves so slowly, the fiction tight, hot in his lap. He can feel the warm weight of B’s thighs and is unable to conceive of anything but the sensation  – a surge like cream icing on his tongue, every nerve telling him he’s on the cusp of what he’s been craving all this time.  

 Each benign shift leaves his mind blank from pure indulgence, relaxing his jaw.   He could yield under that mouth without a second’s regret.

`

 But nothing feels quite enough.

`

  Ensnared in a torrent of want, he presses harder into his friend’s friction but he can’t push it deeply enough into his own body to reach the elusive ache.  The unbearable want is undefinable, evanescent as fists of sand, slipping through his hands -

`

   —  He-brings-his-fingers-to-wrap-around-his-rival’s-throat - his thumbs press into the resistance of cartilage…  

The electricity is burning him from the inside out-

`

  He wants something beneath the relief he’s pursuing, he wants to plead with B for it, but doesn’t know it’s name. It’s not a promise, it’s not his body, it’s not that he wants to ask him to be his friend again-

    He wants something he cannot have.

  He wants the mystery of the second child, the one from the crimson-lit alleys of a country he’s never seen, to hold real magic that will make all of this stay the way it is forever – never knowing who wins, who vanishes from history, what there is left to keep his blood running hot when his opponent is gone, what a decade without his touch to haunt him will feel like–

    But, there is no magic.

   Ice spires hanging like opulent wands would melt in his hands, trying to keep their rivalry forever would be as futile as clutching at sand being pulled in by the tide. You can’t conquer fate or time, they know no mercy or masters and never will.

  B knows that better than he ever could.

 There is no magic but B possesses a curse that never lets him forget the futility of trying to hold onto what was never yours.

`

   But, if either gave into despair over what they could not change, he would not have this to lament that it would be gone one day. A would relish in the fire of their conflict and the heat of B’s body, until time took it from him.  Because it would.

`

 Fragile peace is found so easily when, if he could get any closer, their clothes would merge at the treads and he would be one less layer from reality… Every nerve is ringing with his friend’s friction, the first direct motion causes his eyes flutter, the muscles of his thighs spasm with an intense surge. The carnal hunger is devouring all sense, in his mind, in his mouth, his pulse under his thumbs.

  He squeezes down a bit harder, summoning up the impression of B’s heel at his back with as much vividness as his imagination could manifest -- he could feel the tread bitting into his spine, the sense of defeat, the delicious twinge and tension-

  A breaks the kiss, his gaze softened with ecstasy but darkening with stormy passion.  Each movement was building up to an indeterminate end and he was aching for impact.

`

   “ - Dit-moi que tu m’deteste. ”

          Tell me you  hate me.

`

    Fantasies conjured up with more intensity without need of the usual focus. It was just there, at his lips, between his thighs, and looming over him without threat. His friend’s confession of violent daydreams, had became intertwined with his own.. The fixation with their worst altercation, it was mutual.

`

    “uhhh-h-…”

    If he could feel embarrassed by the meager, straining sounds, it isn’t right now.  The rush comes again with a roll of his hips, A shuts his eyes to yield into it.

  It is incredibly more intimate than he is able to appreciate.