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hayleysstark · 6 years

Text

you disappear (without anyone noticing)

Words: 7903 Warnings: Emotional abuse, mildly sexual content Summary: The Onceler finally makes it big, and it's not anything like he'd ever imagined. Notes: So, I lifted the title straight out of the Andy Black song, Homecoming King, because I needed something to call this and that was the first thing I thought of.

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Right from the get-go, there's a hundred million things to get off the ground, and the Onceler can barely keep up with them all.

The factory, for one—he's got plans for that factory, big plans, and he doesn't think he's even left his bedroom the last two days, sketching and erasing and resketching out the blueprints, over and over and over again, pencil scratching lightly along the graph paper, and he has to stop and rub out a line here or add a beam there—even just the crude mock-up he's got going on the page lets him know this project's going to be a pretty huge one, and he'll need all the help he can get if he wants to get this thing built, and fast. They can't keep working out of tents and campers their whole lives—he's pretty sure, when he stops to think about it, that that's actually some subset of illegal, somewhere, and he is not going to let this whole thing crash and burn in a courtroom before he can even get it all the way off the ground.

So he lays the plans for the factory, line by thin, graphite line, until the shape of it starts to come together. And it's a little bit odd, he's not even going to try to deny that, and it's a little bit clunky, too, with these big pipes sticking out at odd angles here and there, and there's one roof over on the east side that's shaped kind of like a triangle at the top, and it doesn't really look anything like a roof is supposed to look like, but it's—well, it's quirky. It's got personality.

And he really actually kind of—likes it.

"Oncie?"

Something jolts, sharply, in the pit of his stomach. The alarms start going off in his head like sirens. His mother only uses that voice—that voice like something a little too sweet, like sugar, like honey—when she's got to say something she knows he won't want to hear, like—

—you're never gonna amount to anything, you know that silly little invention of yours isn't ever gonna go anywhere, you know that, Oncie, don't you—?

"We've got us a little problem."

Yeah, okay. There it is.

He swallows hard, and swivels around in his seat to look at her, just outside the window, with the curtain pulled back, and he tries not to let himself think about what he'll do if—if—

—if his thneed has already failed, already, so soon after its success, if it's just a silly little invention that'll never go anywhere—

But he doesn't say that. He doesn't say any of it. "Problem?" he says, instead, and it takes everything he's got to keep his voice steady.

—what will Ma think if I've failed already—?

"Mm-hm." She bobs her blond head solemnly. "See," her lips pinch up in a little, dissatisfied line, "we're not makin' thneeds fast enough."

Okay. Okay. That's—that's good. Right? Not—not good, not really, but it's—it's good that they're still getting orders, that they have too much work, rather than too little, that's good, isn't it? More is always better than less, right?

"Harvesting the tufts takes too long!" Uncle Ubb pants heavily from behind a wheelbarrow filled with fine, bright pink strands.

Oh…kay.

Okay. That's—that's something they can work with. Right? This—this is something he can work with. He can figure something out.

"Well," he turns to his mother—this is his mother, after all, his family, and sure, he's had his disagreements with them, but they're still his family, and they're helping him when they don't have to, and they should be just as involved in the decisions as he is. Besides, a little brainstorming never hurt anyone. Two heads are better than one, and all of that. "What else can we do?"

"Well," his mother taps her perfectly-manicured fingernails—hot pink, this week, but she'll probably cycle back around to lemon-yellow next Sunday—against the side of her made-up face. "This just came to me—we could always start," she glances, hesitantly, up at him from under her blue eyeshadow and black mascara, "choppin' down the trees."

Chop—chop down the—? But—but he said—no, he explained things to his family, he did, he told them they couldn't—

"What?" Maybe he misheard. Maybe she said something different, something totally different, and he just heard trees because Mustache has—gotten into his head, or something, the guy's always on him to join in his hippie-conservationist stuff—

Uncle Ubb, still dutifully pushing the wheelbarrow, lets out a cheer. "Now you're talkin'! That would speed things up!"

"But—" Mustache and Pipsqueak and the animals, what will they do? The swans, the fish, the bears, what are they going to do without—without the trees? Mustache said they needed them, he said everyone here needs the trees and—

"No buts, Oncie," his mother breaks in before he can finish, but it's not like he even knows what he was going to say anyway, "you're runnin' a business now."

Yeah, he—he is running a business, and he knows that—he has to do whatever he can to get this thing off the ground, up and running, he's got plans, he's got big plans, he's got a dream, he's got a vision, and he'll do whatever it takes to see it through, but—but Mustache—and the animals—and the trees—they need—

"You have to do what's best for the company! And your mama!"

What's best—what's best for—?

Something sparks up and sears like—like heat, like fire, in his chest, in his lungs, in the back of his throat. She's right. She's right, she's right, she's—if the money keeps rolling in like it does, if people keep pre-ordering thneeds like this, in twos and threes and tens and twenties, he's going to be rich, he's going to be—

He's going to be able to take care of his family. In all the ways that his mother couldn't, in all the ways that his Aunt Grizelda couldn't, and his Uncle Ubb couldn't, and Brett and Chet couldn't, in all the ways that his father wouldn't—

There's that sparking-up-and-searing-like-heat-like-fire thing in the back of his throat again.

He's not thinking about trees anymore.

"I guess it couldn't hurt to chop down a few trees."

He can take care of the family. No one will ever have needs that can't be met, not here, not in this family, not ever again.

"You've made me so proud, Oncie!"

Proud—? Proud? He's made her—he's actually made her—? He's—he's really—?

"Come here!" And she puts her knee up on the windowsill and throws her arms around him—and he can smell her hairspray and her perfume and all her makeup, mixing and merging together and making his nose sting, and she's hugging him so tight, he thinks she's going to crack his ribs clean through his shirt and vest, but he doesn't care because he's smiling wider than he ever has in his life, so wide it hurts his face, and he doesn't know how his heart can possibly hold this much happiness, she's hugging him, she's never ever ever ever hugged him before, not ever, not once, even when he asked, even when there was that really bad storm and he got scared and he ran to her and he asked her to hold him, she didn't, and it was like she couldn't bear to touch him, to be near him, to even look at him, and what's wrong with me, why doesn't she want to hug me, what did I do—?

But she—she's hugging him. She's hugging him. Here. And now.

And this—

—this is what it feels like to be a success, to be important, to matter, to mean something, this is what it means, and he never, ever, ever wants this moment to end.

Things are okay until his first interview, and then his mother tells him she won't sit next to her grown son on live television looking like a chimney sweep, with sleeves that don't go all the way down his wrists and a vest that doesn't go all the way down to his waist, and then his mother laughs—her high, tinkling, sugar-sweet sort of laugh, and he knows she isn't doing it to be mean, he knows she's just trying to motivate him to look better, and she only wants what's best for him, but it still stings like saltwater on broken skin, and Aunt Grizelda laughs, too, a deep, throaty sort of laugh, and it sounds a little nastier, a little more like she means it, and it falls on his ears a little harder, and he really, really doesn't know how to remind them that this is all he's got—he hasn't had anything new since he was about twelve, he hasn't had the chance, he just hasn't—he started growing out of it, and he'd tried to save up when he got that job in the coffee shop, but his mother needed a new coat and Aunt Grizelda needed new boots and Brett needed—

Well. It—it doesn't matter. New clothes for him just—it's just never been a priority, and there isn't anything wrong with that, and oh, Oncie, it's not like you're ever gonna look nice no matter what you do, sweetheart—

New clothes have just—just never been a priority. Okay? Except now they are. So. So the Onceler goes into town to get himself a suit.

The custom-made three-piece is the brightest shade of emerald green he's ever seen in his life, and all kinds of eye-catching, and the silken fabric flows smooth as water through his fingers, and the price tag's enough to make a lesser man faint, but the money's really rolling in now, by the hundreds, by the thousands, and this will barely even make a dent in things, even if the poor-boy-from-the-poor-farm in his head is freaking out because unnecessary extravagance, what don't you understand about unnecessary extravagance, but he pushes it down and he pushes it back because he is not a poor boy on a poor farm anymore, he is not sleeping in a falling-down barn with a mule, and he places an order for a pair of long green gloves to match the suit, just to prove it.

He never even knew, until now, that he likes the color green. Or silk. Or expensive things, in general.

It turns out he does. He really, really does.

And then he adds a hat, just because he can, and it makes him look taller, except taller in a good way, not the weird, gangly, over-six-feet with legs so long he spends half his time tripping over them—not that kind of tall, the hat doesn't make him look that kind of tall, like a child who hasn't grown into his limbs yet, like a little boy who doesn't know what he's doing, it makes him look an imposing kind of tall, an intimidating kind of tall, a no-one-can-knock-him-down kind of tall and that—that's a tall he can really, really get behind.

"Mr. Onceler," the lady in the chair calls him, like she's been calling him all night, and he sits up a little straighter, on instinct, because there is something about the mister in front of his name, something that makes him feel good—"the Onceler" sounds—there is something intrinsically and fundamentally weak about the sound, something that is too open, and exposed, and there for everyone to take from, and look at, and laugh at, and—

Mr. Onceler. Mr. Onceler. Mr. Onceler.

Yes. That sounds—

—strong, powerful, no one can knock me down—

—good.

The Onceler stares over his plate of pancakes-and-syrup-and-marshmallows-that's-actually-mostly-marshmallows, with the fork frozen halfway to his mouth, at his own face, grinning out at him from the glossy cover of the magazine—the biggest magazine in Greenville, he's on the front of the biggest magazine in Greenville. His stomach does a little flip at the thought. That's a pretty big deal, right? Pretty important, right?

(He's pretty important now, right?)

"Hey, Ma," he says, when she comes into the kitchen, still in her bathrobe, and her honey-yellow hair pulled back in dozens of tiny pink curlers, "they published the interview." He flicks the magazine at her.

His mother goes to the coffeepot and pours herself a steaming cup before she even glances at the magazine, adjusting her electric-blue cat-eye glasses with one perfectly-manicured hand. "Eurgh," she says, the last remnants of sleep softening the sharp edges to her voice, and she tosses the magazine back onto the table like it's the dirty pelt of some dead animal by the roadside, and it nearly goes skidding into his mostly-marshmallows, "you can do better than that rag, Oncie. Passin' themselves off as a decent publication when they didn't even bother to cover up those horrible bags 'neath your eyes! Leave you lookin' twice your age!" She takes a slurping sip of coffee.

Oh. Right. Yeah. Right, yeah, of—of course there are shadows under his eyes. In—in the photographs. Of course there are shadows under his eyes, blazing stark and violet and obvious against his skin, and he looks again and he can't believe he ever missed them in the first place, he can't believe he missed them before the interview—he'd looked in the mirror before he'd sat for the interview, hadn't he—

No. No, he hadn't. He'd had to take care of all that paperwork to even have time to sit for the interview the next morning in the first place, and it had taken all night and most of the morning and he'd just jammed on his hat and pulled on his gloves and raced for the door and—and—

The biggest magazine in Greenville, he repeats, silently, to himself, lips soundlessly forming every word, except it doesn't feel like such a big deal anymore.

(He doesn't feel important anymore.)

He gets a pair of sunglasses before his next interview—those cheap plastic frames, you know the ones, and he picks the ones that are glittery, and blue, and ten kinds of over-the-top, and he wears them to the next interview, and the interview after that, and the interview after that, and the photo shoots and the public speeches and the parties and the dinners with important clients and the networking events and everywhere and there is something about it that feels good. The dark lenses hide the shadows under his eyes like nothing else. The dark lenses hide his eyes like nothing else. The dark lenses hide—

—everything, everything, and there is something so powerful, isn't there, about hiding away where no one can see, there is something so powerful about a barrier that no one can break, no one can smash through, no one can hurt him, no one can knock him down—

—the shadows. The dark lenses hide the shadows.

He's spent eighteen years trying to disappear.

Into the window, into the wall, into the old, creaking wood of the floor and the front porch steps, into the new paint his mother just put up in the kitchen, into the apple orchard down the road, into Old Man Simmons' strawberry patch a few hundred acres over, into the new cabbage crop Ubb just planted, into the barn with Melvin's shaggy warmth and the rain on the half-collapsed roof, and the floor all strewn with scratchy bits of straw and hay, into the notes that sound out of the falling-apart guitar in his hands, into everything, into nothing, he just wanted to go away, to disappear, to stop being, and to stop being seen.

Because things would be better if no one could see him, things would change, things would get better, because his mother couldn't look at him, if she couldn't see him, if he wasn't there to be seen, to be looked at and laughed at and exposed and why couldn't he just disappear, why couldn't he just—just stop being seen, why couldn't he be invisible, everyone would be happier if he disappeared, everything would be better if he disappeared, if he could just disappear—

He's spent eighteen years teaching himself how to disappear.

Into the window. Into the wall. Into the old, creaking wood of the floor and the front porch steps. Into the new paint his mother just made him put up in the kitchen. Into the barn. Into music. Into everything.

Into nothing.

He's spent eighteen years teaching himself how to disappear, and—

The cameras are flashing, everywhere he looks, a thousand silver lights coming to life so fast he can't keep up with them all, and he knows better than to even try, and there are microphones in his face and reporters and everywhere he goes it's Mr. Onceler, I love your product and Mr. Onceler, you're a genius and Mr. Onceler, will you sign my thneed and—

—and he's never been more visible.

And he—

Wow. He really, really likes being seen.

"Money? Is that what this is about? About making money?"

It's not. It's not the money. It's not about the money, it's—he likes having money, because of course he likes having money, who doesn't like having money? He likes having money, and he likes buying things, he likes buying expensive things, and he likes the looks on people's faces when they see his expensive things, the awe and envy there, and then they know they are dealing with someone strong, they are dealing with someone powerful. And he likes the extravagance of it, he supposes, the absurdity of it, of having so much he doesn't even know what to do with it all, but it's—it's not about money. It's never been about money.

He grew up on a farm—nothing but the clothes on his back and the crops in the field, and he's lived without velvet and silk and satin, he's lived without office skylights and crystal chandeliers and high-backed crimson chairs, and he could live without it all again.

No. It's not about the money.

(Then what is it about?)

He doesn't—he doesn't really—

He doesn't really know what it's about. When he really sits back, and thinks about it, he doesn't—he doesn't know. He doesn't have an answer.

He tries to press, tries to push or pull or pluck it out of himself, but there's just one word, flashing on and off and on again, like a neon sign in the back of his mind, and he keeps coming back to it—that one word, over and over and over again—more more more more more—

"If it's money you want," the Lorax looks pointedly around the lush office, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and the crystal bowl of fresh fruit and the twenty-four-inch globe revolving slowly on its gleaming brass stand, "pretty sure that ship has already sailed." There is something silent and unspoken at the end of the sentence, just there, an empty space where he might have added, once, something like kid or Beanpole, but he doesn't, and the silence stretches on and on and on, and the unspoken goes unspoken and that empty space stays empty, and it burns the inside of the Onceler's ear just to listen to it.

"Yeah," he says, because he needs to say something to fill up that empty space. "Yeah. It really has."

He buys a guitar.

It is bright red, and the strings are gold, and there's glitter at one tapered, triangular end, and it fits like it was made for his hands, and every note is clear and ringing and bright, and he loves it.

It makes noise, it makes—music, it makes music, and he—

He loves it.

The noise and the music and the clear and ringing and bright notes and the sound—

The sound, all the sound, there's so much sound—

(He is being heard, and he wants more.)

It's another late night, with furious torrents of rain heavily lashing at the high windows, and a mountain of paperwork towers over him on the polished desktop in his office, and it's not like it's going to go anywhere if he just spends the night sitting in his desk chair and staring at it, with his hands clasped under his chin, like he's been doing for the last two hours because the idea of reaching out a hand and grabbing the paper off the top of the stack, and starting to read it, sounds like so much effort, and he is so, so tired—

He wakes up with an aching neck and a pen in his hand and a pile of papers beneath his head, and his glittery blue glasses hanging half off his face.

(It's okay, though. He wakes up like that a lot these days.)

"—but wait! There's more!"

He's tired. A bone-deep and aching kind of tired, the kind of tired that makes him feel cold all over even though it's sunny and seventy-five Fahrenheit outside, and even hotter here, under all the bright lights and blazing cameras. He's tired, but he puts on his best sell-a-thneed smile, and he keeps right on going, because the cameras are rolling and the world is watching and he'd damn well better be ready to put on a show.

"Thanks to its all-natural microfibers," he holds the fuzzy, lemon-yellow thneed up for the camera, turns it around and around and around so every angle, every inch, can be seen and observed and admired by the audience, "the thneed is super absorbent!"

And, right on cue, he dunks it down in the water bowl, lets the eye-watering, egg-yolk yellow fabric greedily soak it up, drop by slow, glistening, crystal-clear drop, and he hefts it up again, in full view of the cameras.

"Everybody," he says, and paints on another bright, beaming smile—the world is watching, and you'd damn well better be ready to put on a show— "needs a thneed!"

"Well," his mother says, as the screen goes black and his sell-a-thneed face disappears, "least you remembered to smile."

(He's on television, and he's never felt less important.)

"Mr. Onceler," Linda with the long blond hair and red lipstick and a flawless French manicure says, pumping his hand enthusiastically, "it's such an honor! I love your thneed!"

He laughs. He's practiced that laugh when he's alone in his office, practiced it until it's polished, until it's perfect. "Thank you." He dips his head, but not far enough that his hat will fall off. He's practiced that, too. "It's wonderful to hear that." He says it like he doesn't hear it a million times a day, like he isn't stopped by a dozen people just stepping outside the factory. He's practiced that.

He's practiced everything. All of it. There's nothing spontaneous, nothing new, nothing he hasn't said before. There's no room for mistakes, no room for him to screw it up, no room for him to—

(be him)

—no room for mistakes. There's no room for mistakes.

Three days later, Linda with the long blond hair and red lipstick and flawless French manicure invites him out for a coffee, and he realizes, a split second too late—because this is him and when he has he ever been good at reading social cues, when has he ever—he realizes a split second too late that she's asking him out on a date, and he—

—he panics, okay? He panics and he doesn't know what to do and he doesn't know what to say because this isn't something he's practiced when he's alone in his office until it's polished and perfect and there's no room for mistakes, this isn't something he's ever—had to practice, he's never even been on a date before except that one time with that one guy but that doesn't count because things lasted all of twenty minutes before the guy called him a weirdo and ditched him, and there was that girl with the pretty brown eyes, but she stood him up and he's pretty sure the whole thing was a joke to begin with—

He's never—he's never been out on a date, and if he's never been out on a date and he says yes to this one, then he's not going to know what to do. He won't have any way to practice when he's alone in his office, because he doesn't know what you're supposed to do on a date to begin with, and he can't practice if he doesn't know what he's supposed to do to begin with, and then it won't be polished and it won't be perfect and there'll be room for mistakes and if he has room for mistakes then he'll make them, he'll screw things up somehow, he'll be him, and she'll see him and she'll look at him and she'll laugh at him—

"N-no," he says, and it comes out so quietly he knows without needing Linda with the long blond hair to tell him that she can't even hear him. "No," he says, again, louder this time, "no, I don't—I d-don't—"

—want, I don't want, not if it can't be perfect, not if I can't practice—

"No—" and he realizes, with a sharp jolt deep in the pit of his stomach, that he's saying it over and over and over again, "—no, no, no, no—" and he's shaking his head and he's stepping back and he's panicking and Linda with the long blond hair and red lipstick and flawless French manicure is so close to him and—

—she'll see him and she'll look at him and she'll laugh at him and this isn't something he can practice until it's polished and perfect and there's no room for mistakes and if he has room for mistakes he'll make mistakes and she'll see and everyone will see and they'll know he's a liar and a fake and a fraud and he's not smart and he's not strong and he's not big and powerful and they'll know he's just a boy in a falling-down barn with a secondhand guitar and a shaggy, stubborn old mule and he is not so big they can't knock him down and they'll knock him down—

He finally figures out how to shut his mouth, but Linda with the long blond hair is already gone.

He tells himself, when he gets back to his office, and he is alone, and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and bowl of fruit and crystal chandelier and twenty-four-inch globe and skylights are there to soak up the sound and the shaking in his hands, he tells himself he wouldn't have had time to grab a coffee with Linda with the long blond hair anyway, because he has work. He is smart and strong and big and powerful, and he has work, lots and lots and lots of work, and even if he could have said yes, he wouldn't have had time, and he would have fallen behind on everything and had to play catch-up, and he would have just embarrassed himself on the stupid date anyway, and she would have called him a weirdo and ditched him like that one guy—

He's busy. He's big and powerful and important and busy.

He doesn't have time for Linda with the long blond hair.

He doesn't have time for things and places and people that aren't going to turn a profit.

He can't breathe anymore, when he steps outside the factory—there's this awful, metallic smell in the air, kind of like motor oil, like something you'd dump in the back of your car, and he chokes on it—he can taste it in his mouth, swallow it down the back of his throat, feel it all thick and globby and vile in his lungs, but he steps outside the factory sometimes anyway, just to—just to look at it.

(Is that weird? That's weird. That's really, really weird.)

He likes to look at it. The way it towers over the trees. The way its tallest pipes pierce the grey clouds and belch out thick layers of heavy black smoke, so dense he can't see, but there is a flare of fierce pride in his chest, all the same, because this—

—this is his factory.

He designed it, and he built it, and he brought it to life, he turned it from pencil lines on graph paper to something real, and solid, and here, and it's his, and he made it, this is his factory, this is—

—something so big, no one can knock it down, not ever—

—his factory, and he loves every last metallic, motor-oil inch.

He's not sure why he says no.

He likes to work—he really, really likes to work, and the Lorax has dropped by three times this week to tell him it's unhealthy and he's working too hard, like that furry little lump cares, like he gives half a damn about anything besides his grass and his trees and his forests—

Look. The Onceler likes to work, okay? Is that so wrong?

He likes to work, and he's not sure why he says no, except that this is one meeting, one public speech, one photo shoot, one interview, one pile of paperwork, one high-society party too many, and he wants to—

Jesus. He just wants to sleep. He doesn't want to talk to people. He doesn't want to shake hands and shoot his sell-a-thneed smile, the one he's practiced when he's all alone in his office, God, his face hurts from how much he's put that smile on this week, he doesn't want—

—to be polished, to be perfect, to be entirely without flaws, to be Mr. Onceler—

—he doesn't want to go out.

But—

"You're runnin' a business now, Oncie," his mother says, sternly, and her eyes flash behind electric-blue frames. "You don't have time to be takin' no breaks! You have to do what's best for the company, and your mama!"

She's right.

And he knows she's right.

So he hitches that famous, sell-a-thneed smile right back on, and he lifts his chin and throws back his shoulders and he does what's best for the company.

He knocks his hat off.

One flailing hand, one overenthusiastic gesture, and his hat is gone, rolling away, bouncing on the floor, and he feels—

—so small—

—wrong, without it, and there are a lot of people looking at him—

—thousands and thousands and thousands of them, and they're all here, they're all looking at you and laughing at you because you're a fake and a fraud and you're not Mr. Onceler, you're just a boy from a barn with a mule and you're never going to amount to anything, you lazy, worthless, useless—

He grabs his hat, and he jams it roughly back on his head and—

—safe, you're safe, they can't see anymore, they can't see who you really are anymore, and you're safe so long as they can't see who you really are—

—and things are okay again. He can breathe again.

There's a party.

Sorry, it's not really a party, it's a charity gala, except it's really just a party, because he can't think of a single person in this room that's actually going to donate a single cent to charity by the end of this night.

He doesn't really want to be at the party—it's in some marble ballroom in some big city, thousands and thousands of miles away from Greenville, and the trees and the valley and his factory and his work and his thneeds and the Lorax, it's thousands and thousands of miles away from everything, and he doesn't like not being there, but his mother, she—well—it's—it's a long story.

But then he was on a plane, and then he was in a marble ballroom in a big city, at the party, and the only good thing is he has a glass of red wine in his hand, and good stuff, too, not the shitty grocery-store brand you buy when your life has really gone off the rails and you just need something—nah, this is good wine. And also, it's free for every attendee.

He's going to make the most of that.

(He likes wine. Is that so wrong? He likes wine. He likes the way it tastes in his mouth and on his tongue and in the back of his throat, a little bit sweet and a little bit not, and it goes to his head really quick, and things spin and blur all around him, and the lights dance side-to-side in front of his eyes, and the tips of his fingers tingle, and things don't hurt. He thinks of his mother, his father, his Aunt Grizelda and his uncle Ubb, and it doesn't hurt.)

(He thinks of Linda with the long blond hair, and his own voice, no no no no no no and it doesn't hurt.)

(He thinks about the Lorax, and the way he used to call him Beanpole, and the way he used to call him kid, and the way he doesn't call him anything at all anymore, like he's something too terrible to even name, and that—

—that one is going to take more than two glasses of wine to get down.)

(Thank God the wine is free.)

Look, the point is—the point is—

Okay, look, the point is this.

There's a party, in a marble ballroom, in a big city, with bright lights spreading out like the glittering web of a giant spider, and everybody in this room and everybody in this city knows his name, but there is still something—something wrong, there is something cold, and hollow, and impossibly heavy inside him as he stands there, sipping (free) red wine (that's just a little too sweet). He's away from everything.

The factory. Greenville. The trees, and the valley, and the thneeds, and the Lorax—he wonders, all of a sudden, what the Lorax would think of them all here in this ballroom, playing at charity and generosity, and his heart hurts, like a physical wound hurt, like a giant hand has reached inside and squeezed his core, and even as he shakes hands with Colin with the brown hair and the brown eyes who loves his thneed and has three of them at home, Colin who is developing a new high-speed camera that can take five hundred frames a second, that feeling doesn't go away. Or Randall with the big ears and the bright orange thneed slung around his neck like a scarf, or Avaline, in the blue chiffon dress with her ginger hair teased up high as an anthill, who says the thneed changed her life, or Jessica with the red handbag that's actually a thneed when he looks closer, and bright purple lipstick, and—

"—oh, mm-hmm, yes, my Oncie's a huge success—"

(Something jolts, sharply, in the pit of his stomach. The alarm bells start going off in his head. Like sirens.)

—something a little too sweet, like sugar, like honey, and he turns, and he looks, and she's there, in the red taffeta dress, with half the room hanging on her every word—

"'Course, you wouldn't have known it from lookin' at him!" She laughs. High and tinkling and it's not not not sweet, it's not sweet at all, and he thinks maybe it never really was. "Never thought he'd amount to much of anythin' at first—spent half his childhood askin' myself where I went wrong!"

No. That's not—that's not—but he's made her proud now, right? She's proud of him now, right?

(He's done something right now, right?)

"—still ask myself that, sometimes, if I'm bein' honest with y'all—"

But—but—

—but hairspray, and perfume, and makeup, all mixing and merging together and making his nose sting and you've made me so proud and didn't she mean it? Didn't she mean it? She was supposed to mean it, she was supposed to be proud now, she was supposed to—

(She was supposed to love him now.)

And she—she—

—she doesn't.

(And maybe she never did.)

And everyone knows, and everyone sees him—everyone is seeing him. They're seeing him, and they know. They know he's a fraud. A fake. A liar. They know he's not big or important or powerful, they know he doesn't matter or mean anything, and they're going to knock him down, and he just—

—he just—he just wants to get out. Get out, get out of here, get away from here, get away where no one can see, but he can't—he can't—he can't get away, because the doors are on the other side of the room, and there's nowhere else, there's nowhere else for him to go, and he's stuck and he's trapped and open and exposed with a trillion people who know he is a fraud and a fake and a liar, and not big or important or powerful—

Balcony. There—there's a balcony. Right? There's a balcony, and he can—he can reach the balcony. It's closer than the doors, he can reach the balcony. He can reach the balcony. He can make it. He can do it. He can get to the balcony—

He crashes. Into something.

Into someone.

A man.

A man, dressed all in blue, with blond hair down to his chin, and a beard, too, and muscles, and a warm and easy and wide and open smile, and there is something so bright in it, the Onceler can feel it all the way down to his bones—

"I-I'm sorry," he says, reflexively, and steps back. The man in blue is as tall as he is. Maybe taller. He's never met anyone as tall as he is. "I'm sorry," he says, again. "I—I wasn't looking."

"It's all right," the man in blue says, and his voice is deep, a rumbling sort of deep. "As a matter of fact, I was hoping to speak with you, Mr. Onceler." His tongue curls around the name in a way no one else's ever, ever has, and it sends a shiver of sheer pleasure down the Onceler's spine, but he pushes it back, pushes it down, and he doesn't let himself think about it. "And I believe you've just given me an in."

"I—yes," the Onceler says. He isn't tongue-tied. He isn't stammering. Powerful and important people don't get tongue-tied. Powerful and important people don't stammer.

(The man's name is Bryce Downing. Bryce Downing gets him a third glass of wine from a server with a shining silver tray, and Bryce Downing takes him out to the balcony, and he looks out over all the blurry bright lights of the big city with Bryce Downing and a glass of wine, and he can breathe again.)

Bryce Downing leads him out of the ballroom, and down the hall, and around a corner, and into a brightly-lit bathroom with a marble counter, and faucet taps that glisten gold, and Bryce Downing pins him against the bathroom wall, and presses kisses all down his cheekbone and his jaw and his throat, and he doesn't stop to think about anything before he pushes off the wall and kisses back, and moans into Bryce Downing's skin.

Bryce Downing grabs at him, at his clothes, big broad hands grasping at his pinstriped lapels of his suit and emerald-green silk of his gloves and velvet black brim of his hat and cheap glittery plastic of his glasses and—

—he was going to see. Just like—just like everyone back there in the ballroom saw, Bryce Downing was going to see, and he was going to see a fake, a fraud, a liar, useless and unimportant and insignificant and stupid and small—

"—no—"

The Onceler pulls back. He pushes pushes pushes out against Bryce Downing with everything he's got, but there's nothing—there's nothing, there's no force, he's got no power to put behind it, he's got nothing to put behind it, because he's—

—weak and small and anyone can knock him down, anyone at all—

"What?" Bryce Downing's breath is hot. On his ear. On his cheek. On his neck. His big, broad hands are warm through the Onceler's suit. "What's wrong? I just—I just wanna see you." His rumbling, deep voice sounds a little slurred. Bryce Downing isn't very sober.

The Onceler isn't very sober, either.

But he is sober enough to know that Bryce Downing is going to see, and if he sees, if he sees how weak and small and unimportant—if he sees how easy it would be to knock the Onceler down—

"Get—get off me! Get off me! Get away!"

He's screaming. He's screaming the words at Bryce Downing, tearing them from his throat and throwing them out in the air like knives, like weapons, and he's shaking his head so hard it hurts.

"Get away! Get away! Get away!"

Bryce Downing is going to see him.

Just like everyone saw him, back in the ballroom.

And the Onceler doesn't want to be seen.

He doesn't know when Bryce leaves.

But Bryce Downing leaves.

And he is alone.

He is alone, sobbing, on the bathroom floor, with his back pressed to the wall so hard, it's hurting his shoulder blades, and his silk suit jacket torn half-off his torso, and a rip running all down the arm of one glove, and his glasses knocked half-off his face and dangling from one ear, and he's—

God, he's sobbing, huge wracking sobs that shake his whole body, sniffles and hiccups ripping their disgusting, squelchy, wet-sounding way out of his open mouth, and tears pouring in a great river down his face, sticky damp trails all down his cheeks and dripping off his chin, and he tries to muffle it into his sleeve, tries to be quiet, tries because everyone will hear him, and he—

—he doesn't want to be heard.

It doesn't make sense. He doesn't understand. He doesn't understand any of it.

He wanted Bryce Downing to kiss him. To touch him. He wanted Bryce Downing.

He doesn't—he doesn't understand, he doesn't know, it doesn't make any sense, he wanted—

—to be kissed and touched and fucked when he is perfect, and polished, and entirely without flaws, after he has practiced all alone in his office and there's no room for mistakes, to be kissed and touched and fucked when he is big and powerful and strong, when he is too big to be knocked down—

He doesn't—he doesn't really know what he wants anymore.

(There, in the bathroom, in all the cold and echoing marble, he cries so hard he can't breathe, and he disappears. Into the window. Into the wall. Into the floor.

Into everything.

Into nothing.)

He picks himself back up. Off the bathroom floor. He dusts off his suit with one hand, and scrubs and scrubs and scrubs at his face until he can't see the tearstains—

(except he can, because he knows where to look)

—and he puts on his sell-a-thneed smile.

His mother was supposed to love him.

And she doesn't.

And she never did.

He was supposed to be kissed and touched and fucked by Bryce Downing.

And he wasn't.

Because—

—because I'm me, and what is there to love in someone who doesn't mean anything after all—

Well.

He puts on his sell-a-thneed smile, big and bright and beaming, and he pulls his glove over, so no one can see the rip, and he pulls his jacket back on, and he straightens his glasses, and he throws his shoulders back and he walks out of that bathroom with his head held high, and his chin doesn't tremble once.

The cameras are rolling, and the world is watching.

And he'd damn well better be ready to give them a show.

#the lorax #emrys' spellbook

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