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Scaramouche is the most beautiful man Childe’s ever set his eyes on, from the obvious things to the minuscule.
His sharp eyes and his button nose, his lithe and flattering figure, the thin lips that spewed out the most colorful of words, and the ferocity that came with his somewhat disagreeable personality.
The dainty dip of his shoulders shaped to cradle a head, the beauty mark on his neck, hidden from the world. His delicate fingers and his perfect cuticles, hands that do amazing things, he could never comprehend.
Childe can’t help but think how lucky he is to be held between his arms, encased in warmth, indulging in his embrace. The sweet nothings he whispers into his hair sends hot breath down his neck and with his petite form surrounding his own lanky one curled in on itself, Childe feels his love, feels loved.
It’s the sunshine leaking past the shadows and lighting up the chandelier, sparkling in blue, pink and yellow.
It could’ve been anyone else, someone prettier and stronger and sweeter than him. Yet he’s the one the light lands on, pulled out of the darkness to shine.
Childe loves him back.
-<>-
They’ve already been official for over half a year and it seems too good to be true sometimes. The kisses they steal in the most inappropriate of places, the glances, and getting lost in his mind with fantasies fulfilled.
Their descent starts subtly.
Maybe it’s the first time his call doesn’t go through, or the way Scara never quite looks him in the eyes when they kiss. He doesn’t know. He’s never done this before. He’s inexperienced and unfamiliar and clings on to the way Scaramouche smiles at him like a lifeline.
It’s not a major dip or anything. Things stay sealed and warm and glittery.
The few years Scaramouche has on him probably assists in the way he can so smoothly leave him flustered. He says Childe looks cute, all bashful and pink. At first he’s indignant, but Childe learns to shoot right back. Their banter stays lighthearted, usually.
Scara loves to make jokes about their level of intimacy, which frankly stays rather domestic. It’s okay like that, still personal and precious and delicate. And frankly Childe’s never really had interest in having sex, with anyone ever. And he was alright with that. He doesn’t need a physical reminder of their connection when it’s in everything he touches.
But when Childe mentions anything remotely lewd or coarse about them, well.
He always just scoffs and turns away.
-<>-
A slope is a slope, however flat and inconsequential. You’ll always be going down.
Scara starts coming back late. It’s the week after his finals, so Childe assumes it’s for the purpose of stress relief or something. He can get that, the illogical need to run and disappear and let out all the things that you want away with. Though maybe he’s projecting.
Childe waits patiently and tries not to worry like his sister advises. A rough patch, she says, it’ll pass. Be supportive.
He sits staring at the door every night Scaramouche isn’t back by 9. He’ll still be there, likely asleep, when Scara creeps through the door at 3 am, clutching the wall as he guides himself to his bedroom, stumbling like a drunkard.
Childe’ll cook him breakfast when he inevitably wakes up before him with a kink in his back, sleep deprived while he turns eggs and scrapes up bacon grease. Scara will stumble out of his room, rubbing his eyes and already shoveling the food into his mouth.
It’s all worth it for the little muttered thanks he spits out between bites, slurred and ungraceful.
Childe beams.
-<>-
Growing up, Childe didn’t get much exposure to the internet as it was developing. With seven children in a single household, three older than him, three younger, there was never nothing going on. His family valued those personal relationships a lot, maybe too much, which might’ve been why everything seemed ready to rip at the seams sometimes.
Hastily stitched together again, of course, before he had to be the one to break the sewing machine.
Nevertheless, that firm belief in personal connection stayed with him. Call him old fashioned, but something tangible just always felt irreplaceable compared to whatever measly obligation online communication and instant messaging provides.
So it’s worse when an Instagram post pulls him out of his denial.
It’s a short little clip, camera shaking as party chatter screams in the background. The caption says something like ‘lol found this on my camera roll, don’t even remember taking it. party at @smallvens’ and Childe's got no idea how it ended up in his recommended.
But it doesn’t matter because Childe can’t focus on anything in the video but the little glimpse he catches of Scara’s lips interlocked with Dottore’s, that kid in medical that everyone’s scared of, who is unfortunately…maybe quite conventionally attractive, with his jawline and broad shoulders and wispy curtain bangs and his stupid fancy syringe liquid earring. Fuck. Why are the hot ones always crazy?
Childe can feel an itch crawling up his throat.
It’s hard to make out through the motion blur and whatnot but one of Scara’s legs is straddling Dottore’s waist, and his dark hair is tangled beyond imagination. The video is so short, and the tiny shot of them in the background barely lasts a moment but Childe finds himself hyper fixating on it.
He screenshots it, and as the little check mark that signals the successful processing pops up, he can’t fight the urge to sob.
-<>-
Childe doesn’t say anything immediately. For all he knows, Scaramouche could’ve been drunk and out of his mind and not remember a single thing. He can’t say anything, because it would be unjustified. He won’t say anything, because Scara loves him.
At least, he thinks.
After the initial emotional breakdown, a seed of doubt plants itself and if he dwells on it too long, waters it relentlessly, it’ll be sure to spiral out of control like a weed.
Childe ignores the hesitance that trembles at his fingertips as he goes through the motions of making food for the both of them, again and again.
He ignores the cold that fills the room when he and Scara can’t find anything to say to each other, and the cold that still lingers even with every word that comes out of his mouth.
He ignores Scaramouche’s distant gaze, and the new scrunch in his nose bridge, and the way he begins to spit out his sentences.
He ignores it all and can’t help to notice anyways.
Childe can’t bring himself to delete the photo on his phone, though its presence gnaws at the back of his head and churns his stomach. Maybe he’s secretly waiting to muster up the courage to confront and challenge Scara. But if that’s the case it’s obviously not going very well.
So he doesn’t know why it’s still there. But he keeps it.
-<>-
Another bout of worry pushes his hand. He needs to get it off his shoulders, and if Scaramouche tells him it was all a fit made in his drunken stupor he would believe him wholeheartedly. It won't change anything, and he trusts him; he loves Scara, he does. He’d believe anything he’d told him.
It doesn’t seem Scara shares the sentiment.
Something in Childe cracks when Scaramouche goes so immediately defensive. It hurts, the glare, the words, the hunch of his shoulders.
All he did was ask, so guileless and full of penance.
Fucked in the head, Scara calls him. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
The response is outrageous. He tells him so.
Child’s a good name for you, you girlish bastard-
I just want-
Selfish bitch-
Wrong. So so wrong.
You’re not making sense anymore!
Because your puny brain couldn’t possibly grasp it anyhow!
You-
Their conversation, if it even began as one, quickly devolves into a shouting match, Scara arguing for his stupidity and Childe getting angrier and angrier with every half assed excuse his lover shrieks at him. The things they say are so much like the insults they always throw back and forth but now they cut so deep.
Nobody’s listening to the other. Their voices go shrill, so, so loud in their tiny kitchen.
At the end of it, they’re both in tears.
Once both of them run out of breath and insults to spew, Scara grabs his keys and slips on his shoes before storming out. The slam of the door reverberates through Childe’s skull, bouncing back and forth and severing all of his functioning neural pathways. He’s crying and feels numb and empty and wants to punch the wall until his fingers snap and his knuckles are a bloody mess. The main reason he refrains is because the landlord would yell at him for the property damage on top of the noise complaints.
Instead he falls to the floor and heaves. Dry sobs mixing with the salt streaming down his face, pooling on his chin and tickling his tongue. The silence rings with the absence of the noise, his boyfriend, lover, oh god Scaramouche.
Please.
The mental images of his beloved swirl with the tears spilling over, blurring the sights and sounds of the world.
The reality of what just happened doesn’t seem comprehensible, and at the same time, because the world hates him, it also makes so much sense.
Crash and burn, he thinks, incoherent ramblings. Crash and burn.
He ends up packing a bag and staying at Signora’s.
-<>-
They’d disagreed before. But maybe it isn’t the same. It’s hard to tell because Childe doesn’t even know what he wants himself. He just doesn’t want to be alone.
Lovers make up from imploding arguments all the time. He’d witnessed it himself with his own parents, who’s quarrels would ring through their quaint cabin and their unspoken apologies told through saccharine gestures and stolen kisses and mysterious bouquets of roses that just appeared on the kitchen table one day.
In this situation, who’s supposed to buy the flowers?
-<>-
When Childe returns to their shared apartment a few days later, it’s evident Scaramouche’s already been back, and with a clear intent. His bedroom’s stripped clean, his toothbrush is missing, and the kitchen furniture that had been left askew was neatly replaced.
There’s no epiphany or dramatic connecting of the dots. He just knows there won’t be any beautiful bouquets to fill the gaping hole in their relationship now. Childe doesn’t own much so it won’t take long to move out. He was never really attached to this place outside of the person he shared it with.
The next semester starts soon, he can just move into the regular dorms. He’ll just survive off the crappy wifi.
He accepts it with a melancholy resigned sigh, sitting down at the kitchen table and sinking into the wood to just hear the creak one last time.
He calls their landlord.
-<>-
Hearing the horror stories, living in the dorms proves to be a very unappealing option. So in the end Childe continues to stay with Signora and just does all the chores.
She lives in this whole ass house because her somehow extremely rich parents live near their school and they’re never home. Off travelling and treating themselves with their copious piles of money, she tells him, leaving their child alone for the majority of the year since she was 16.
They can bond about terrible familial relationships. Hurrah.
After signing away their contract with their old landlord, Scaramouche hasn’t contacted him. Childe’s glad. It’s helped him move on. Although sometimes he still thinks about their sweetest moments. It had been a glorious year, but in retrospect near the end he might’ve just been riding the high of his first relationship and the fact that it was actually lasting more than 2 weeks.
Living with one of his friends is actually very beneficial for working past the portion of him that longs and grieves. Signora isn’t one for bullshit, and she doesn’t let him sulk for too long, doesn’t leave him alone with his thoughts. She drags him to the mall to go shopping with her on the weekends, introduces him to some of her other friends, and forces him to live, like a regular human being.
There are still days when he can’t find the will to get out of bed.
Occasionally he’ll have to indulge and scroll through endless piles of mindless content to silence that part of his brain that constantly runs through thoughts the rest of him doesn’t want to have.
Somehow though, he picks himself up every time. It's a miracle, really. The first few days after their fight had made him truly believe the world was ending. There’s still the ancient creaking in his soul, foundations swaying, and ready to tumble down at any moment.
He’d still announce his love for the man that cuddled up beside him every night and he’d constantly exchanged quips without hesitation.
It’s strange, how he still clings onto the memories they shared. And honestly, Childe doesn’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. He does move on, but he can still be happy in those bittersweet memories right?
Maybe the action is more of a thing of letting go rather than forgetting. It’s a bit of a predicament to love people who hate and hurt you, but you can’t just forget your love when it’s so potent and engrained in your bones.
And is there really anyone who’s actually holding it together? Everyone loves regardless.
Signora says being philosophical is majorly out of character for him. This must be what breakups do to people.
-<>-
You can know the route down to your core and still drive the wrong way. You can understand a concept, and still act illogically. The flaws of humanity, perhaps.
He reopened the wound, and doused it in flames to cauterize it. Now he’s got burns running along the border but at least he’s not bleeding out.
It’s just a random August morning. The ice coffee in his left hand grows warmer, condensation slipping under his hand. Something about the air seemed dense and heavy and it isn’t the humidity of the summer air.
He sits in a random park, people watching. The backpack on his lap is heavy with the weight of his laptop and a book on a topic he can’t remember.
At some point Childe zones out to the sounds of barking dogs and a crying baby. Time passes in a blur, the shifts of the leaves impossibly slow, clouds above flying past faster than Usain Bolt.
Is that even a good comparison?
Coming to his senses, Childe checks his watch and finds that way too much time has passed for this to be productive.
He gets up and stretches, taking a sip of his coffee to find that it’s horribly watered down. Disgusting. He’s dumping it down the nearest public water fountain as soon as possible.
There’s an oncoming blur in his peripheral, approaching fast as he gathers his drink and bag. Childe looks up to see that there’s someone barreling at him.
Detached, he can only muster a mental note on how alarming that is before they collide.
The back of his legs slam into the bench, his coffee goes flying out of his hand, and that’s definitely going to leave a bruise. The pain becomes an afterthought as he studies the head of black hair buried in his chest.
Oh.
Scaramouche’s saying something, muffled by the fabric of the his shirt, muddied and hurried. He can barely make it out before he lifts his head and reveals his tear streaked face.
I love you, you know that right? I’m so sorry Ajax, I love you I love you, please-
He sounds torn and full of conviction at the same time, an enigma of emotions, tearing into everything nearby, ripping into his skull.
Scara screams it like a mantra, like Childe doesn’t understand what he’s saying. And he’s right that Childe’s stopped listening. He’s just staring at this pathetic display, the composed and revered Balladeer crumbling at the seams.
He’d always admired that about Scaramouche, how even in his ugliest and clumsiest moments he could be so pretty and intentful and somehow seem like he knew what he’s doing.
Childe wasn’t graceful, or pretty, or had any clue what he’s doing most of the time. But right now out of the two of them, he’s the one who’s holding himself together.
Ironic.
It would’ve been terrifying to a younger Childe, only a few months younger perhaps, to know that a part of him would be questioning the pleading words ripping themselves out of Scara’s mouth. It's a declaration, and once everything he’d ever wanted.
Noticing his silence, Scaramouche pulls away, face flushed.
Anguish is hidden within Scara’s expression, in the way that only he can know to look for; the creases across his nose and the slight tilt of his eyebrows. And maybe he’s cold but it almost makes him want to open his arms and hug him back and cry with him. Almost.
But it’s been too long, they can’t be going back to this now.
You can’t pull in a fishing line halfway.
And Scaramouche is in pain, it’s evident in his disheveled hair and chapped lips and desperate eyes, in his shaking silhouette and the way his fingers dug into his skin. Childe is not the remedy. They’re both falling apart a little bit and they can’t be trapped in a cycle of codependency, falling towards each other but never quite bridging the gap, hands outstretched, fingertips scratching the surface.
He can’t do that.
He loves Scaramouche.
Scaramouche loves him. (Or so he says.)
Lovers stand by each other. Lovers work through their problems, Lovers can look each other in the eye without recoiling and contemplating every decision.
Lovers trust in the other, blind faith, or a complementing opposition. Lovers want each other, full heartedly and forever.
Lovers, lovers, lovers. All these things lovers are supposed to do.
In a strange juvenile sense, some part of him wants to keep hoping for repair. Keep on thinking that everything’ll be alright.
Everything’ll be alright, what a funny phrase; the empty promise of a mother to the child lying in a hospital bed, the thing messengers of God tell you to place your confidence in, hushed and whispered assurances of older siblings over the shouting downstairs. What you tell yourself in the midst of despair and misery to stave off the thoughts that tell you what’s in actuality.
People have told Childe all his life that relationships just took a lot of work. People put in the work, and divorce rates still fly high at fifty percent. Were relationships supposed to hurt like this?
He doesn’t know.
(Feelings are valid, everyone tells him, assures him, gently guiding him along towards a pitfall. Be happy. Why aren’t you happy? Someone’s screaming in the background to shut the fuck up, because you can’t have feelings and be a functioning member of society, now pull your weight you whiny bitch. And everyone turns around and agrees, faces plastic and twisted into grins.
You can’t allow yourself to feel those feelings to be valued, you can’t have no emotion and be important because you aren’t human anymore otherwise.
Who are you?
We don’t want you.
Who are you?
He feels. He wants to be wanted. He wants someone to trust.
So screw that. What were they going to do about it? Although, who exactly is ‘they’ in this situation? As a conjure of his own mind, isn’t it himself?
There really isn’t anyone to blame.)
Maybe everyone needs a little more introspection and someone who can support them along the way. Someone to support who’s already supported.
Is that wishful thinking? Probably. Anyone can crumble to dust in the right circumstances. There really is no such thing as perfection, but it doesn’t hurt to try, right?
(Right?)
Childe thinks you can’t be lovers that solely rely on each other. You need more than one person by your side, or otherwise, to push at those boundaries and to stay. Signora has been that person so far, in her gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss way. (He hopes he’s returning the favor.)
Is that what lovers really are? Perfect people in the perfect situation? In a vacuum, a simulation, a fantasy, sure.
Yet here they are, standing like human houses of cards to fall to the ground any moment now. The world will not wait in anticipation for them, hungry to feast on something despicable, craving the pain like a crowd of silent sadists.
So, in a way, he stands in spite.
Childe loves Scaramouche.
Scaramouche loves Childe.
They aren’t lovers.