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Chapter Four
My vision was blurry when I woke up, and my head was pounding with a migraine. Everything was out of focus, but I was fairly certain I was staring up at my ceiling. No, wait. Not my ceiling, but a ceiling. I tried moving my head to try and grasp at my surroundings and I felt my heart drop when I saw a blonde mass of hair laying on the mattress next to me. Wait a minute... I tried to sit up slowly so as to not disturb him, and to try and not make my migraine worse, but it was to no use. A sharp pain hit the back of head as my vision blurred, and Kenny woke up. Before I could say anything, he quickly grabbed me for support, “Woah, dude, calm down, you're okay.”
Was that...? There was actually a hint of fear or maybe just worry in Kenny's voice. He looked exhausted. What time is it? I felt my jacket for my phone but realized I wasn't wearing my hoodie anymore. I looked at Kenny quizzically, and before I could say anything he explained, “You um, you had a major freakout. I wasn't sure what to do when you passed out so I brought you to my place. Don't worry though! My parents aren't home right now and no one saw me bring you here.”
“Where's my phone?”
He nodded towards the dresser where it was sitting on a charger. “It was almost dead when we got here, so I put it on the charger for you. No one's called or texted you though.”
I sat up straighter as I felt the throbbing in my head begin to dissipate. I ran a hand through my hair as I tried to remember what happened. I knew I had went to Stark's Pond to talk with Kenny, but that's where it started to get fuzzy. I froze. I held my hand up in front of my face to see, and sure enough, there were new, red and fresh, scars running up my arms from my hands. Lichtenberg figures danced and blossomed from my wrist to my elbow. Then it hit me. I almost unleashed a major energy attack on Kenny on accident. I lost control. I could feel panic forming a knot in my stomach at the memory, but before it could spread another memory emerged in my head: his lips on mine. My face turned bright red as the sensation of Kenny kissing me returned to me like a phantom. I had kissed...Kenny McCormick... Or rather, he kissed me. But did I kiss back? I couldn't recall, I just knew that his kiss stopped me from turning the bench into an electrified pile of ash and debris. I turned to look at him, but he seemed to already know what I was thinking, if the pink tint to his cheeks said anything. He tried to smile like it was nonchalant, “Yeah, um, you're welcome, I guess?”
I couldn't think of anything else to say, other than, “I'm sorry.”
His smile dropped and he looked at me curiously, “What do you mean? I must've said something to trigger you or something, technically it's my fault.”
“No,” I ran my fingers over the scars now apparent on my arms, “I did this. I... Dude, you have no idea how complicated things have been for me.”
I explained to him everything that had happened, how it's been getting harder for me to control my powers at will, this curse, that apparently now my emotions have an influence over it, and how my parents have been gradually getting worse. We talked for a while about how rough things had been for both of us, and how stupid things had gotten. I confessed that I've had some dark thoughts lately, how I'd grown to resent my parents on some level and how much I hated having to be in control for so long just to keep them held together. We talked about my game, and graduation, and what was going to happen now that I was out of school. And then he dropped a major bomb: very casually he admitted that he liked me. Things had been so weird between us for too long, and by the time he realized why he'd been worrying about me for so long, he said he thought it was too late to try to make amends.
“If you don't like me back, that's fine. I don't want you to feel pressured into anything,” he stated. In that moment, I wasn't really quite sure what I should be feeling. I liked Kenny enough, sure, and we always seemed to get along as kids. His sister loved hanging around me, and I'm pretty sure that made Kenny like me to begin with. But, we aren't kids anymore. I thought we'd grown apart, but that kiss... Nothing had ever grounded me that fast before. Maybe it was the pure shock of it?
“Kenny, you know I'm a guy, right?” Ever since I moved here I've known I was queer. As a kid I tried experimenting with my gender a bit, but I'd always felt most comfortable as a guy. And Kenny McCormick was not into guys. He groaned and wrapped his arms around me in a dramatic hug, “I dunno~ Life is confusing for a budding teenage boy!”
My blush darkened as he hugged me closer. I tried to wiggle out of his grip but he wouldn't let go. “Hey, Lucien,” he spoke my name for the first time in what was probably years, “I promise, if you identify as a guy, that's what I see you as. I don't think of you as a girl in the slightest. But I... I can't help but worry about you. Karen used to ask about you a lot, specifically 'when would that New Kid come over to play with us again?' And I guess after a while, I started wanting to hang out again, too. You're way more fun than that fucking fatass. And, well, maybe a part of me's worried.”
“Worried?” I managed to push him back just enough to see his face. “About what?”
“About you. Your powers. How you're holding up. A lot of stuff. I know what it's like to be an oddball. This whole immortality gig makes things pretty stressful. And I know you've...” he trailed off.
My eyes widened, I didn't think anyone else remembered when I reset time. And more specifically, what I did to my mom. I tried telling myself I did it out of mercy, she was going to die anyway. I tried saying that my dad drove me to do it, that he drove me to kill him as well, and that it really didn't matter since no one remembered but me. But the guilt... the nightmares... perhaps if I saw a professional they'd say that's why I started designing games. That I used my hobby as an excuse to not sleep; to not relive those awful memories. I had always tried to push those memories to the back of my mind, but that meant that they were just always waiting to jump out at the most inopportune time. As if Kenny could read my mind, he let go of me and started speaking in a calming manner, “Hey, hey, shh, I'm sorry I even brought it up. It's okay, you're okay-”
“What do you know about me?” I interjected. I wanted to hear it. I needed to hear another person say out loud what it was I had done, to maybe help cement in my own head that I wasn't as crazy as I felt at times. Sometimes it felt as though maybe I had dreamt up half of the memories I had, since I couldn't talk to anyone about anything. Hell, when I first moved here I was so convinced that if I spoke a single word to anyone we'd have to move again or else we'd be caught, that I didn't breathe a single word to anyone for several days. My tipping point was when Eric and his friends asked me to play again with them after the town was nearly destroyed and I had some less than appealing traumatic memories added to my vault of Things To Unbox Later In Therapy. Kenny stared at me, unsure of what to say before I weakly pleaded, “Please, Kenny. I need to hear it from someone else. If I sit here for too long with you, everything will hit me again and I need this off my chest; my parents be damned. Please, what do you know?”
I grabbed his hands as he attempted to scoot back, my anxiety and desperation for another persons voice in my head causing my body to shake. I felt like crying. I felt like screaming. I was fairly certain the white marks on my face were beginning to glow if Kenny's eyes widening said anything. I could feel a stinging in my eyes as I'm sure they were starting to tear up. The voices, the screams, started to echo in my head. “Please...”
Kenny clasped my hands in return and pressed a chaste kiss to each of my wrists. “I'm sorry. I...I don't know how to say it without upsetting you anymore. I-”
My phone started ringing loudly, cutting Kenny off. I recognized that ringtone; it was my mom. I felt the color drain from my face and scrambled up to grab it. If I missed her call, my parents would lose it on me. And I didn't feel like watching my dad start a physical fight with her again. “Hello? Yes, mom, I'm fine. No, no, I'm not with anyone,” I glanced over at Kenny as a ping of guilt hit me, “I just- I went for a walk since I couldn't sleep. No, no, I'm fine- no mom, you don't need to pick me up. Yes, yes I'm sorry. Mom- yes, I know. I'll head back home, yeah, I'll head back now. I'm sorry to make you both worry. Yes, love you too, bye.”
I hung up as quickly as possible, and took a deep breath in to curb my growing frustration. I saw the time, it was only 9 am. I hadn't been gone longer than 4 hours – and it wasn't uncommon for me to go on morning walks – and my dad had not only broken into my room when I hadn't come down for breakfast, but he also checked the geo locator on my phone to try and see where I was. Kenny's voice caught my attention, “Your parents want you back home, I take it?”
I nodded, “My dad sounded like he was ready to skip town. That or hit something.”
“Hey, you um, you don't have to go back. Home I mean,” Kenny stated. Or maybe pleaded? I couldn't quite read the tone of his voice in that moment. I looked down at the newly formed scars on my arms. I really didn't want to go back home. There was no way I could explain any of this to my parents. They both were under the assumption that nothing weird was happening to me. That I wasn't depriving myself of sleep to not relive my parents' death by my own hands. That I wasn't trying to ignore my emotions out of fear of losing control of this curse. That I wasn't hiding away in my room for so long at a time to avoid fighting with my dad. “Hey dude,” Kenny placed a hand on my shoulder and broke me out of stupor.
“If you really don't want to deal with this you don't have to,” his eyes lingered on my arms before he looked up and met my gaze. He looked as though he was starting to blush when he smirked, “I could always, y'know, take care of you here~”
I blinked back in response. I was pretty certain he was flirting with me again, though he used to joke around like that a lot when we were kids so I wasn't entirely sure how serious he was. He let out a laugh at my silent response, “Eh, you never really were one for subtleties.”
He pulled on my arm to turn me to face him, and pulled me in for a kiss. Oh. Oh, he was serious. I could feel my face heat up and before I could think I found myself kissing him back. He pulled me backwards until I was falling onto his bed. I broke the kiss long enough to catch myself, and then he pulled me into a tight hug. “I've wanted to say this for a while, and I'm sorry. I never should've just sat there and watched when Eric picked on you. I didn't realize how hard it was getting for you to control your powers. If I knew I would've stopped him back in middle school, before all of this happened. And maybe...” he trailed off.
We'd been really close as kids; we both were the only kids in town that had inhuman abilities and both of our parents were kind of shitty to be around so we would hang out a lot. And as much as I didn't want to go back home, I also didn't want to sit here and wallow in pity over past events that wouldn't change now. “Wanna go back to my place?”
I didn't even realize I had asked the question out loud until Kenny responded, “If I didn't know any better, I'd say that sounded like a proposition for sex.”
I tried to hold back a laugh, out of shock and also out of embarrassment, “N-no, that's not what I meant. My mom's been asking me about hanging out with people again recently, and if I show up alone I'd have to actually talk to my dad. I just thought... my game. T-the game I've been working on, I could show it to you, if you'd like.”
He gave me a squeeze before letting me go, “Sure, that sounds better than hanging around this dump anyway.”
The smirk on his face should've told me that he was up to something, but this was Kenny McCormick. When wasn't he up to something?