Chapter Text
He isn’t normal. He knows that.
His mother worries about him often—he can see it in the way that she looks at him and the way she’s always tensed around other people, holding herself like she’s constantly bracing for impact. He’s young when he comes to understand that it’s because other people are cruel, and they don’t understand why he thinks the way he does or needs to do things to stay calm. The world is terrifying. She’s a safe harbor.
He doesn’t have a father. At least, not anymore. She took him and ran far away. This is something he knows, but there’s a haziness around the place where there should be memories. It doesn’t make him doubt her and it doesn’t feel like a lie, but there’s something about the way the pieces are arranged on the board that he knows isn’t right. He tries to find comfort in the fact that it’s the two of them in the apartment and he tries to lean into her while feeling guiltless.
He finds comfort in the same things he used to. He draws in his room. He clings to the blanket on his bed that feels not scratchy or coarse but just right. He stays in her company when he can, and she keeps him close in turn. He finds comfort in routine and knowing and jam sandwiches. He hates the word “simple”, but it feels accurate, sometimes.
He finds a new love when she takes him to the only record store nearby that still sells cassettes. He’s tried to find the appeal in the shiny CDs that are easier to find, but there’s something lacking in them. He likes the tactile aspect of cassettes, the click as he settles it into the player and pushes the button to let it go. He likes sorting his collection—first alphabetical by album, then artist, then by color of case or genre or least to most favorite. It’s grounding. She takes him to get new ones when he does well at school, and he lets himself get lost in whatever new treasures he finds at the discount bins the shop has in the corner. The clerks know both of them by name. One of them sets aside the tapes he thinks would be a hit when they come in on shipment.
He goes in for a new tape. He comes out with two, one of oldies hits (they’re the most comforting aside from quiet folk) and the other a collection of outtakes from a band he’s never heard of. There’s also a comic book in the bag. The clerk smiled at him when his mother paid, telling him to have a good day and keep his grades up. He nodded slightly and didn’t say anything.
He didn’t know why he was drawn to it. He’s not a fan of comics, really, none of them ever feeling all that appealing. He appreciates the art and the work that goes into it, but it’s never been something he cared about. He just locked eyes with the cover and pulled it off of the rack, looking to his mother for permission. She nodded and let him add it to his collection, more than likely quietly surprised at the change.
It isn’t something he’s ever heard of. There’s a boy on the cover, skinny, pale, cloaked in black. He’s surrounded by wreckage. Something in the pale blue of his eyes draws him in, familiar in a way that both scares and comforts him. He reads it that night. Something about it resonates the way no other stories have, the boy on the pages like him in ways that nothing else has been.
He gets the next issue when she takes him out to the shop again. He gets the third after that, then the fourth. The clerk mentions letting them know if any new ones are due to come in, or if the author writes anything new, like the comic he’d tracked down in an anthology from the library. He latches onto the words and the art, entirely tangled within the story. It feels like one he’s heard before.
His mother finds joy in her son discovering something new. He finds comfort in the part of it that makes him feel known.