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It’s an old house. It creaks and whimpers in the night and with each footfall on a bad floorboard. It’s been theirs, always been theirs, for years now. They had just not set foot inside of it for a good fourteen or fifteen years. It was dusty, cobwebs extended beyond corners and furniture had to be thrown out and replaced when they came back.
And even if it was in good condition, they destroyed it anyway.
There were still pictures on the wall and they had taken such delight in tearing them off, in spilling their whiskey, vodka, wine, whatever else they were drinking over them and lighting them on fire. Threw them into the fire place and laughed, holding onto each other like they’d fall through the world if they didn’t cling on tight. The glass they threw out, the frames they burned with the photos. They warmed themselves on bad memories and the destruction of them.
They tore their parents clothes from their closets, ripped them apart, draped scarves around their necks before ripping them off and throwing them out windows or into the fire with the photos. They destroyed reminders of their parents success in this place. Destroyed their parents.
They may not have murdered them, they may not have of been the ones who finally tore their parents from their pedestals, but they were killing them then. Killing the memory, the reminder.
They kept a few things. Pictures of themselves without their parents there. School pictures, pictures they took themselves.
There’s one on his bedside table now, him and his sister looking like the rowdy fuck-ups everyone thought they were. That everyone needed them to be so they had an excuse to hate them. An excuse to hate them for not being like their parents, for not being perfect and angelic. For acting out on their parents bad days.
Those bad days were almost every day.
It doesn’t make him sad anymore, no, people could hate them as much as they wanted. People could scream at them like they had when they kicked them out of town. They could tell him how despicable he was. He wouldn’t care.
Maybe the tiniest bit.
But that’s okay.
He’s in the kitchen, and he can hear his sister and Celeste talking.
Hears Celeste say ‘
I love you,
’ and his sister say it back.
He’s happy for them, really. He is. They deserve that.
Doesn’t he deserve it too?
He puts back whatever he was grabbing from the cupboard, makes his way quietly up the stairs. He knows which ones creak, and how to step on them safely. Ingrained into him from when they were children.
Why can’t he have that too?
Celeste loved Eos from the beginning , Eos wasn’t rejected based on rumors and bullshit. Wasn’t rejected because she wasn’t ‘good’ enough for someone. No, she didn’t have to go through that.
He passes a photo they’d stuck up with nails, hammered through the paper. A class line up. Him and Eos, and in a different row, Celeste and Rosa.
Rosa was beautiful back then, and still was. She carried and carries herself with confidence, grace.
He’d tried talking to her back then, tried getting her to see that he wasn’t everything everyone else said he was. That there was more to him. He tried . He adored her, adores her still?
No.
Yes?
He doesn’t know. And it isn’t fair.
He’s grown up since then, filled out, his looked more defined and refined. Anything that might’ve looked scruffy or undesirable changed, adapted, or just simply come into style since those days. Hair dyed blue, streaks of it through black, thick hair.
When she saw him, when they arrived back, she’d looked at him in a way she never had before. At first, maybe it excited him,
delighted
him.
At first, yes.
Then after he remembered exactly how they’d left things.
The embarrassment she’d left him with, the shame of having the reputation he did. The anger that, no, he could never be good enough. Not for her, not for anyone.
(
They’d moved to a bigger city with their aunts and uncles who’d come for them. Somehow, some way, their peers at their new school knew about why they’d left their old home.
And despite that- no.
Because
of that, they’d been interesting. Bad boy personas becoming something to salivate over. He was good enough for people then. Their acts cleaned up, they did well at school, but their personalities became what people had once expected. They smoked- He did, Eos tried and almost died more than once- they snuck out and went to parties they shouldn’t have.
They were good kids, their aunts and uncles would say, so they could do a few bad things.
The first person he kissed asked if he’d actually killed his parents just before,
And he could only say he wished he had.
He didn’t understand why he felt so conflicted when he said that. )
She’d gotten what she wanted, when that happened. He left her alone, he turned cold to her then the next day they were ushered out of town like they were a curse on this place.
The only curse on this place had been their parents but no one ever saw that.
When they’d come back, she’d been interested in him. And he pretended not to notice her. He flirted with everyone but her, flirted with her friends in front of her. He made her want him, because now he was acceptable to be into.
She didn’t want him, not really. He knew that, felt that.
She knew who he was, and didn’t feel a thing for the things she’d said, about him or to him.
He could still hear the faint muffle of his sister and Celeste, and knows he wants something like
that
.
Love unconditional. Someone who truly loves you for who you are, he wants
that
. He knows his sister can be with someone, in a triad of people who love or her like her enough to let her in. He knows she deserves it, but they’re the same.
They’re the exact same so why doesn’t he get it too? Why doesn’t he have someone who loves him like Celeste loves Eos.
It isn’t fair .
He closes the door shut behind him when he enters his room. He lays down on his bed, shoes still on, and stares up at the ceiling.
He still has posters plastered up there from years ago. Pictures too. Of him and Eos. The two of them hanging out, being the only friends the two of them had. Pictures of them and Celeste, sometimes Rosa, in Eos’ car driving out beyond the limits of that small town. Listening to whatever playlist Celeste had put on.
They had good taste back then. Probably still does.
He turns over, he doesn’t want to look at that anymore. Doesn’t want to look at what he was like, at Rosa, at anyone.
It bubbles and builds up in his chest, it isn’t sadness but it’s crushing . The feeling of inevitability, of self isolation stemming from a childhood of never being good enough for anyone but his own sister. Of not having the same things she did, of not having the same chance to have someone love him like that.
It feels like there’s something in his chest, a hard stone or fist, pressing and growing. Pushing against the inside of his ribcage and crushing his lungs, crushing his heart.
His fists clench, nails digging into palms, and teeth grinding together.
It isn’t fair, and it isn’t right. He deserves to be happy too, he deserves that.
It isn’t fair to expect Rosa to love him and now how he presents himself but he fucking wants her to. Because he hasn’t changed, it’s just now that he’s not the outcast that people kicked out. He’s the attractive outcast that people kicked out. He’s cool to like now.
That’s what she likes. The idea he represents, not him. Never him, it’s never going to be him. It’s unsustainable, she’ll be around too long and see him and that’s when it’ll be time for her to move on. He’ll be jerked about and kicked to the curb.
His breathing gets harder and he closes his eyes. Sits up, legs swung over the side, and brings his head to his hands.
The crushing presence extends to his head, pain in his jaw from how hard he’s clenching. Tightness in his throat and a stinging in his eyes.
Tears drop down onto his lap. And he sucks in a breath to try and keep himself as composed as he can, but it hurts .
He’ll never be good enough, not really. She’ll hurt him, as she always had.
Unless he hurts her first, unless he goes through his
shitty
plan to hurt her in front of everyone like she had him so long ago.
And he wants to.
Sort of. He wants her to understand and feel how he felt, she won’t entirely. She won’t have the reputation of being a terrible person behind it, won’t have accusations of
murder
behind it. But it’ll be close enough. Her reputation means so much to her after all. It’ll be just enough.
There’s a sound coming form the back of his throat, something just barely suppressed and prolonged. He doesn’t want to cry, not with Eos and Celeste in the house.
He slides down off the bed, wedged between it and the wall. Hidden from the doorway. It hurts, something constricts his chest and it
hurts
. Despite himself more tears fall, and he can keep himself mostly quiet but he can’t stop the tears or the way his throat tightens and mouth rips itself open in the silent mockery of a cry or scream.
Every piece of his body is tense, holding back sobs.
It isn’t fair. He just wants what Eos has, what Celeste has, what even their parents had. Their sick obsession with each other, beheld above all else. He wants something, he’ll take anything , just a hint of someone who truly, genuinely, loves him.
Rosa can’t ever give him that, because he knows she can’t love him, and she won’t ever really try. They go through the motions, but it isn’t the same. She doesn’t love him, but he can still hurt her how he hurt her.
It won’t be what he wants, but he can pretend it is. He can do that. Because pretending is enough isn’t it? Clearly it’s all he will get.
A pretense. Faux love, faux satisfaction.
Maybe he just isn’t supposed to find love, or experience it. Maybe Eos has something that makes her deserve it more.
He doesn’t know what.
Aren’t they the same? Raised the same, grew up the same, never one without the other, why can’t they have the same things even now?
Why can’t Rosa love him, how Celeste loves Eos.
He just needs something , from anyone .
Because he can tell, from the way Eos looks at Celeste and Asra, and how Celeste looks at her, that she’ll leave one day.
And he’ll have no where to go but go back to the city, or stay in this house.
It won’t be Eos and Hyperion, Hyperion and Eos.
It’ll be Eos, Celeste, and Asra.
Hyperion, and himself.
His hands move up to his hair, gripping it tight and tugging. As though inflicitng pain on himself will make the crying stop, will make his thoughts stop. He can rip them from his own head, he can stop feeling like this if he just fucking tries . He needs to be better than this. He doesn’t need Rosa, he’ll get used to being on his own.
He doesn’t need anyone.
He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t, he fucking doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
He takes a deep breath, hands smoothing over his hair. He’ll be okay.
He has a plan and he’ll stick to it.
Then he’ll leave.
If Eos wants to stay, that’s her choice.
But he won’t stay here in a house that was never truly theirs. It’ll always be the house that hide bruises and belts and screaming parents.
He doesn’t need this place, he doesn’t need Rosa.
He only needs himself.
And that’s…
That’s okay.