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dream of better lives // the kind which never hates ☀️☀️☀️

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My baby Colossus

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the tendency of 4chan to attract individuals isolated from their peers and society for one reason or another has led to a generation of people with completely inscrutable worldviews. stormfront nazis figured out pretty early that this particular demographic is susceptible to their propaganda but i don’t think they understood just how many confused / closeted LGBT youth would also feel attracted to these spaces. so now we just have Strasserite Nazi trans girls and Traditionalist Catholic “Femboys” posting on twitter with like gacha game avatars about how to effectively institute their desired ethnostate. really cool

[sizzit]

"Get out of my house! And don't you ever come back!"

"Momma-"

"I don't wanna hear it! I will not raise a mu-" A pause as her voice cuts off, unwilling to let that word escape into the air where a neighbor might come across it, "One of you freaks in my house!"

The door slams in his face, rattling in its frame with a forceful finality.

He sits — collapses, really, legs no longer able to bear the burden of his frame — on the rough wooden planks of their porch, for lack of anything else to do. His back rests against the wood painted a disgusting pine green —  dead trees in imitation of living. She had packed him a bag, at least — his clothes jammed haphazardly into a duffle bag as if in a hurry. Always a hurry. Always rushing — away from him, away from the dark stain he represented in her life, her reputation. Always uneasy.

He wonders about his other possessions, what little of them there were. What would happen to the shrine of trophies — track meets, cross country, a marathon? Would she throw them away? Pawn them off? Melt them down into a puddle of gilded bronze? Cast it into a mould, build a new son who could never disappoint her in his imperfections?

He stares at his hands, studies the spaces between his fingers. He wonders about spaces, about distances. Distances to be crossed in haste — faster, always faster, than the people behind him — no time for rest. The space between his fingers becomes the space between words, between conversations — between affection and disgust, mother and son.

A jagged distance that coalesces into something more solid, a spear through the chest, missing all of his vital organs. Pain without the release of death, nothing but pain, dull and aching and agonizingly sharp all at once. She had had enough. Enough of pretending, that was what she had said. Enough of acting like he would ever be normal, ever able to live like the other kids. He had tried to explain to her that he had been living like the other kids, but she wouldn't hear him.

She had detached from him — the product of her own body rendered abject before her, a twisted mirror of reality. She reels in violent revulsion at his touch, at his attempt to reach out to her, to hold on to her physically, as if that would draw her back to him.

Part of his soul soars, finally free to roam, free of the stifling heat of that Texas summer, free of the dust that settled all over every surface of the house no matter how many times you cleaned. It got into you, that dust, coated your insides with grey. They were ash on the inside — he, his mother, everyone in this neighborhood. They were all made of ash. He could be himself now, whatever that meant. Find water, clean the dust from his system, see himself reflected in the mirror of the surface — at once familiar and totally changed. Two beings in one — Gemini.

He never does cry, in the intervening moments between his mother's rejection and the arrival of Warren and Piotr. He stared at their lawn — his mother's lawn, now — stared at the cracked, parched earth, begging for moisture from a sky so clear and blue that it hurt to look at. He stares at the baked clay, willing a tear to run from his eye to the ground, to grant that soil what it yearned for, to provide something for once in his life.

He doesn't cry as he is offered a new life with these strangers. They speak of their home — a place where people like him, like them, could exist free of hate, free of danger. They tell him about their team, always on call to protect, to serve, to defend. He gives himself up to them easily. Nothing to lose. He catches their exchanged glances, disturbed at the emptiness that echoes in the hollow of his voice.

He doesn’t cry as they lead them to their jet — far more sophisticated than anything he had ever seen outside of a movie. A vertical take off, barely disturbing the silence of the street where he had lived his whole life up to that point. He wonders about home — what it means. 'Home is where the heart is', a slogan stitched into fabric, hanging on the wall in the living room. Perhaps that was why it never had felt like home. His heart had always been somewhere else. Maybe that was why he ran — always chasing, always seeking.

He cries as they breach the clouds — the sky opening itself to them in a vast swathe of untouched blue — great heaving sobs that wracked his entire body. Tears flood out of him, unbidden, but not unwelcome, enough to flood the lawn of the home he left behind. Enough that the salt might kill the already-dying earth, so that nothing would grow again. He was aware of their presence in the cockpit. He is aware of a hushed voice, pleading in deference to another's expertise — "Pete, c'mon man you know I'm no good at this stuff, please."

It was in that moment, his body unleashing his grief as a tempest — a hurricane trapped within the metallic confines of the jet — that a hand finds his. A hand much larger than his own, stronger. Five fingers, a wide, flat palm covered in skin so soft, so rough, so perfectly textured. An arm held steady before him, undaunted by the weight of Kyle's body as he anchors himself to it. His own hands — bony, long-fingered, pale — gripped the offered limb as though it were a fallen tree trunk in a raging river — his only chance to stay above the churn of the water. Another arm around his shoulders, a hand pressed to the side of his head, a chest into which his face is buried, tears stoppered against muscle and bone and skin and a heart so pure it sings. He embraces this statue — a monument to divinity that walks among humanity — lets his frailty display itself in its entirety, lets this figure absorb his misery into his perfection. Free of judgement.

A voice, an accent so heavy it is difficult to understand beneath the sounds of his laboured cries. A voice that is more motion than sound — sensory confusion as the vibration that shook his body is translated into language. The physical becomes immaterial, movement becomes sound becomes thought becomes comfort.

"It is okay. It is okay. You are not alone, my friend."

You are not alone.

[sizzit]

All these songs are for you baby

(You know who you are)

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A little something else:

"Okay. Give me names one more time please."

Bobby rolled his eyes, pointing out each of his friends where they were dispersed across the nightclub floor. He and John had been there for a few hours, sitting at a booth in a corner, shrouded in a hazy mist of smoke and artificial fog. Apparently the smoking ban hadn't quite penetrated the club's defences, which suited John just fine. Bobby had introduced him to his friends briefly, clearly desperate to get him on his own. They had seemed excited to meet him — he had figured Bobby would have spoken about him beforehand, but it didn't seem apparent — he shook hands, made small talk, and allowed himself to be whirled upstairs to a booth where Bobby had spent the night trying — and succeeding — to endear himself to him.

"That's Kyle at the bar, skinny kid with blond hair, looks miserable. That's Peter and Ororo on the dancefloor. No, he doesn't do steroids, and yes she's wearing a wig."

"I knew that was a wig Bobby, she had a mohawk in the Snapchat you sent me yesterday. And which one is Scott?"

Bobby shook his head as he swallowed a mouthful of his drink, "Scott's not here. He doesn't do clubs."

John nodded, "And Hank isn't here either. He's on the sports team, right?"

"Yeah. Honestly, I'm glad he stayed home."

"Why?" John hated to admit it but he was partial to a little interpersonal drama.

"Because there's absolutely no way you'd be sitting here with me if a guy like Hank was here."

"Oh wow."

"Yeah. I'm not sure if he swings like that but you never know. Better safe than sorry."

"I mean, you said Peter swings like that and he's here," he replied, head inclining to Bobby's bodybuilder roommate, who had joined Kyle at the bar. He watched them talk, Kyle's face creased with laughter, and wondered if he looked at Bobby like that. "And yet, here I am. Although, I'm not sure I'd wanna try fight Ororo for custody. She looks like she could beat me up."

Ororo and Peter were going at it on the dancefloor, eliciting both amusement, awe, and anxiety from their fellows. Peter was huge, well over six feet and possibly just as wide. He looked like he had been built in a factory, and Bobby confided in John that he may well have been. Ororo was just as captivating as Peter, and John was a little sad that it hadn't been her working the register that night. Although he wouldn't have wanted to see what Peter would do if he stole his woman.

"They're not together."

"So why are they like that ?"

If they weren't together, John wondered what it would look like if they were, as he had never seen two people dance like that who weren't up in each other's business seven nights of the week.

"I said they weren't together, not that they don't have sex."

"Right. So why is Kyle down there staring at them like a Chihuahua eyeing the mail guy through the window?" Peter had departed, leaving Kyle to whatever sour taste was scrunching his face into a twisted grimace, bringing Ororo some radioactive pink monstrosity in a tall glass. He had one of his own, and John watched their faces as they spoke. They were close, yes, but there was a clear distance, an invisible barrier that kept his hands from her waist, kept her eyes from lingering too long on his mouth. John didn't like to be nosy, but he couldn't help but wonder what their situation is.

Bobby barked a laugh, voice coated in liquor as he spoke — shouted , even — into John's ear, drawing his attention back to the reason he had even come to the bar in the first place. His breath was freezing, somehow, and it sent a shiver up John's back, which he was sure Bobby felt, as his hand had been sitting pretty there the entire night. John shifted against him, moving closer. Bobby's hand slid further around his back, fingertips grazing his hip bones where his jacket had rucked up.

"Listen, you can't tell anybody this, okay."

"Are you really giving me gossip on our first date? You must really like me."

Bobby faltered for a minute, but his flirty smile reasserted itself on his face as he leaned in even closer to John, whisper-shouting into his ear. His lips moved against the ridge of John's ear as he spoke, and he questioned himself as to what exactly he was getting into with this guy. This boy who had seemed so earnest and innocent at the store. This boy who now had him wrapped around his little finger.

Goddamnit.

"Kyle's got it bad for Pete. Won't tell him. Afraid he'll ruin their friendship."

John felt a pang of sympathy for Kyle, mixed with an eye-rolling sense of secondhand embarrassment at his melodrama.

"That sucks."

Bobby laughed again, something in John's disinterested tone clearly tickling him. He freed his arm from behind Bobby's tiny, muscled, waist, turning to fish out his lighter and cigarettes. He lit one up, watching the glow intently to make sure he didn't inadvertently start a blaze. He took a long pull, and let the smoke sit in his lungs for a minute, nicotine on an expressway straight to his brain. He let his head loll back against the seat behind them, eyes focused on the ceiling as he finally exhaled. He was acutely aware of Bobby's eyes on his face — his mouth, his throat — and offered the cigarette to him. Bobby leaned down, eyes locked on John's as he put his mouth to the filter where John held it, letting them fall shut as he inhaled. His mouth held open as he pulled off, tendrils of grey probing the air outside as he held the air in his lungs.

"You think of that one all by yourself?"

Bobby's act cracked a little, a coughing laugh blowing smoke out of his mouth in stuttering spurts, illusion broken. He leaned into John again, arm solid across his shoulders.

Fuck, I could use his bicep like a pillow.

"I might have. Better question is, did it work?"

John answered his question with a hand half way up his thigh and his mouth on his. He tasted alcohol on Bobby's tongue, mixed with some unidentifiable sweetness that seemed to radiate from every part of his body. Bobby's arm shifted, hand cupped around his ass, pulling him close. John ratcheted things up a notch, hand crawling further and further up his pant leg, feeling the coiled strength in his muscles underneath the fabric. Bobby's mouth fell away with a panting sigh, forehead pressed to John's, eyes locked on his hand on his leg. John's middle finger grazed the space in between Bobby's legs, fingernail toying with the rim of his buttons.

"Careful there." Bobby's voice shook a little, and John was proud of himself for being able to pull at the threads of Bobby's little playboy pantomime.

John surged forward with his hand, grinding the heel of his palm into Bobby's crotch as he passed to run his fingernails across his abs and stomach. Bobby's eyelid twitched, and John could hear him choke a moan to death before it escaped his throat. Bobby wasn't letting him have it all that easily, but John knew he had him.

He leaned in, tongue running a line from Bobby's jaw to the lobe of his ear. His voice scratched in Bobby's ear — a metal fork raked across blazing coals — as his hand pinched at his side under his shirt.

"Take me home, Bobby."

Their eyes met again, and he couldn't help but notice the uneasy expression on Bobby's face.

"Shit. Was that too much? I'm sorry. I thought you were into it. We don't have to-"

Bobby's hand gripped his face, cheeks squeezed in between his fingers. He squished his mouth into a pucker, and spoke over him.

"It's not that. Believe me." His other hand pressed John's once more in between his legs, where he wasn't any less interested than before. John's hand squeezed it minutely, to his immense personal joy.

"So what's up?"

"I don't live alone." He jerked his head in the general direction of the dancefloor, "Those freaks live with me. Scott too. He's at home, no doubt waiting up for us in his nightgown with the newspaper. Thought I got away from my Dad when he kicked me out, but then I met Scotty."

Bobby seemed unperturbed by the familial trauma he had just spilled to John, unbidden, so he let it float past, unacknowledged.

"So come to mine, duh."

"I didn't wanna be the one to ask, 's your place dude."

John rolled his eyes, pulling out his phone.

"Suppose I gotta call the Uber, huh?"

See the rest on ao3

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Just a little something:

Three shafts of orange light against a wall cast in shades of midnight.

Six springs out of place in the mattress, four jabbed painfully into his body where it lay tossed and turned by insomnia.

Two eyes trained on a crack in the ceiling — off-white faded into grey faded into fizzing lights across his retinas as his brain began to shut out the optic information it deemed unnecessary.

Absently, he wondered if he stared at the ceiling enough, would he be rendered blind? His visual centres closed down until further notice, everyone sent home, no pay?

He turned to his side, rustling the sheets further into the tempest of fabric caught between his limbs. Eyes refocused, spots swimming in his vision, he regarded the clock. Four bright red digits declared the time with all the enthusiasm of a cockerel at dawn: 03:42. His brow pulsed with a headache, the whisper of a migraine swirling in the depths of his skull. Blood coursed through his head, disturbed by his movements, sound bolstered by the surrounding silence.

With great effort he rose, body swinging suddenly from horizontal to vertical. His skull thumped rhythmically, pulse heightened in anticipation of action that would never come. He lifted his creaking limbs from the bed, covers discarded to their whorl on the mattress, and sought his peace, across the room by the window. His body interrupted the light from outside, his shadow looming behind him, front illuminated in sickly orange. And there it lay, the little carton of salvation — bone white, accented in scarlet, black warnings plastered all over it. He reached for it, quick movements snatching it from what he could imagine was its own sleep, rattling it awake in search of comfort.

Empty.

He crushed the cigarette carton in his hand, frustration pulling the tendons in his forearm taut, hand shaking. He struck a match — the box practically overflowing with the things as if to mock him — and let the flame course through his mind, catching across the hand clutching the carton. He watched the flame engulf his fist, smelled the ash of the cardboard as it disintegrated in his grip. 

Serves you right.

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