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"...Hey, Nico, are you aslee-"
"No," says the sun-baked and heat-drowsy child that answers to the name Nicholas D. Wolfwood. Although the other child addressing him calls him Nico, a habit Nicholas is trying to break him of. Nicholas just sounds more grownup, he thinks. Miss Melanie says it's a rather distinguished name. Nicholas likes that too, likes the way the sound of the big word rolls around his mouth.
"Oh, um..do...do you remember your parents?"
Nicholas opens his eyes.
Livio is standing just outside the rocky overhang Nicholas is nestled under, crouching to look under it at him. The twin suns beat down directly on him, turning his pale hair all bright shiny white, making him glow and waver around the edges like he's going to disappear.
Nicholas blinks a few times.
"...your dad...or your mom?" Livio prods, less confidently this time.
"Get outta the sun, stupid." Nicholas says up at him.
Livio obeys, ducking down to his knees to crawl under the overhang and wedge himself into the tiny sliver of shade alongside Nicholas, who scoots back against the rock to make room for him. In the end there's barely enough room for them, but they've long since figured out how to make themselves bend with the shifting shadows, just how to curl up in patches of coolness smaller than this.
Livio ends up half-lying over Nicholas, head resting on his crossed arms which are resting in turn on Nicholas's ribs, the rest of him a slight, warm weight on Nicholas' stomach, between his legs. Livio's eyes are bright, reflecting the stray light of the suns, his cheeks are also bright, bright red. Stupid.
" 'Kinda question is that?" Nicholas half slurs. It's almost noon and he wants his nap. Miss Melanie insists they all take one during the hottest part of the day. Can't afford none of you runnin' around gettin' heatsick, she grumbles daily as she shoos them into the nooks and crannies of the dilapidated main building - they only sleep on the beds at night. Livio gives him a little shrug, a little self-conscious huff.
" 'M just curious. Alotta the other kids say they remember their parents."
Nicholas closes his eyes and thinks too. Remembers.
It's true, a lot of kids do remember, but the older ones mostly, the ones who aren't toddling when they're brought in. It's like a contest to all gather 'round and see who can remember the most, who has the most stories to tell of a life before the orphanage. Nicholas has never been inclined to join in, and some kids don't either. He wonders just how long Livio has been working up the courage to ask him about it.
Dark hair, dark skin, warm brown eyes squinting down at him. Mom? A slender, worn hand closed over his, painted and chipped nails he stares at curiously. Low rough humming in the dark. Dad? No, maybe it's the other way around. Maybe it's both, he doesn't remember.
Livio waits patiently for his verdict.
"Yeah," Nicholas says. "I think I do."
Livio perks up like a tomas chick sighting food, Nicholas knows what's coming next.
"What were they like?"
"Dunno. They might've been nice." Thinking about the humming and hands and eyes feels nice, it feels like a stomachache too. He doesn't want to tell Livio that.
"Whatcha all do?"
"We usta' go to church alot." Nicholas says after a moment of consideration. Those memories are clearer, surer. He finds himself inside that arching building that sits out in the town square, watching robed figures move in a dance around a table, rising and falling with everyone else around him. The smell of something sweet and sandy in the air, a hardness under his head, some unseen force nudging him up. He vaguely remembers spending what seems like an endless time entranced in examining a crack in the wood paneling that covered the corrugated metal walls.
"Was church nice, Nico?" No one goes to church here at the orphanage, Miss Melanie will say prayers with the kids that come knowing how to say them, but that's it. Nicholas hasn't set foot in that building in years.
"Yeah," he says. Livio settles more against him, interested and beginning to be droopy-eyed. "Smelled nice," Nicholas expounds. That seems important.
"What else did you do?" Livio wants to know. Nicholas reaches down to pinch his red red nose, racking his memory. Livio sputters, giggles faintly, and breathes loudly through his mouth.
"We went to the market," Nicholas decides a bit later, pulling on the thread of the most prominent memory, reeling it in. He holds hands with hands much larger than his own, and he feels...excited. From somewhere above him, a voice laughs softly. He blinks, and it's Livio who's laughing in the high, thin way he does, and bats Nicholas' hand away from his face, unimpressed.
"We go to the market too." They do. Miss Melanie takes them in turns, two or three at a time if they're well-behaved that week. Nicholas shrugs, and his shoulder blades grind against the bumpy ground.
" 'S different."
Livio hums at him noncommittally, swiping the back of his hand over his nose. Skin is already peeling off under the rapidly fading impressions of Nicholas' fingerprints; Miss Melaine will give them a rag dipped in water when they come in for dinner, and Livio will walk around balancing it on his face for the rest of the day. If it's too bad, she'll pull out some of precious creams she keeps in a lock-box. Nicholas thinks, and thinks hard.
"We used to buy candy. ...And stuff for the baby." Bits of too-bright sweetness in the sun, in wrappers that crinkled and crushed easily. Nicholas kept them in his pocket, because you weren't supposed to thrown them on the floor.
"Baby?" Livio says.
"They were going to have a baby." Nicholas says. He's suddenly so sure of it. He thinks back to low- happy? were they happy?- voices one day, the feel of expensive softness another day - blankets, it was blankets they had been in the market for, blue, red and yellow, and Nicholas doesn't remember ever deciding which he liked best. "They didn't," he adds, because that's important too. It's important because, because...Livio. "They died...before they had it."
"...And you came here after they died," Livio finishes by rote. Everyone here knows that sentence, it's the ending to a story the kids all know by heart. It's true for all of them.
...But it's not.
The sun is warm around them, Livio is warm on him, but Nicholas is suddenly cold. Livio's weight is crushing him now, grinding him into the sand. The suns have moved a little in the sky now, and a line of darkness lays in a slant over Livio's face. His left eye peers out of it, golden-yellow, overly bright where it catches a bit of the light. Nicholas shudders at it, shudders from the cold.
Oblivious, Livio yawns and lays his head against Nicholas' chest, the extra bit of weight makes every inch of Nicholas' body stiffen. He's being pushed, pinned, held.
"I didn't," he blurts out, and the shrillness of his own voice makes him wince. But he can feel the vibrations of it in his neck, at the start of his ribs, and keeps talking, because if he keeps talking, he might vibrate right out from under the terrible hold on him. "...I went to the church, before. I mean after mom and da- um...but before I..."
Livio looks up in curiosity, the tiny point of his chin sharp between Nicholas' ribs as he lets it rest there. The little needling of pain makes a shock of something run through Nicholas, shuddering up his spine, through his fingers, all the way down to his toes. It makes him feel less heavy, a little more warm. "Before you came here?"
Nicholas nods wordlessly, his tongue seems as if it has been squashed back into his throat. He forces it to move. "A priest came and got me."
"What's a priest like?" Livio wants to know.
"...Tall. 'Lotsa black." Nicholas says, because what Livio wants to know is more important than what Nicholas doesn't want to remember. He remembers the way his feet had swung just shy of the tiled floor, the uncomfortable snugness of a shirt buttoned to his throat and wrists, the way his eyes were stinging. The sound of footsteps, and that blurry dark figure approaching. "He said my parents wanted me to live with him. 'Said he was going to make me a..." Nicholas falters, searching for the words. They're strange little words, ones that he has to chase around and around his brain until he's dizzy. He closes his eyes against it. "...altar boy."
"What's that?"
"...Dunno. It was important, though." It had seemed so important, it had been so daunting to the child Nicholas was then, even if he didn't know and still doesn't know what it meant.
"So you 'hada important job?" Livio prods, eager for more detail. He wouldn't dare with anyone else, he's always too shy, too timidly cautious in a way that keeps him on the outskirts of the other kids' camaraderie - there's another big word Nicholas likes, it's such a nice fancy word for being friends - but with Nicholas it's different. When Livio asks, Livio can always expect an answer. So Nicholas shakes his head, his eyes still closed, and pulls his tongue from the back of his throat again.
"I ran away."
There's not much to remember about the night he did, so thankfully not much to tell, but Nicholas' bones ache for a moment the same way they did back then, ache with the same hurt that drove him to slip out of the tall, wide bed and into the desert night in his bare feet. He'd been found by Miss Melanie three days later. Before she even gave him water she gave him sandals, and Nicholas has never once since then wanted to be anywhere but in a place near her.
Livio sounds a strange mix between shocked and curious when he pipes up next, he's both thrilled and skeptical of Nicholas' admission. Nicholas knows he's going to ask why, and knows he can't tell him. He can't. He can't. His stomach is twisty and empty, like he's getting that stomachache again, but worse worse worse, and he's not gonna say anything, because he's gonna puke if he does.
"Why'd you do that, Nico?" Livio asks, oblivious. The weight of his chin rises suddenly off Nicholas' chest, Nicholas knows without seeing the expression Livio is looking down at him with, the face of a puzzled tomas chick. The face that says he's ready to believe anything Nicholas says.
"..He...touched me bad." Nicholas finds himself whispering in a thin little voice he can hardly hear, he's not even sure he's said the words aloud. But he did, because above him Livio stiffens, taking that in, trying to figure out what he means.
"..Touched you bad?" Livio parrots, and then the whole weight of a little hand settles on Nicholas' chest, just that much lower than where Livio's chin had been a moment ago. Nicholas knows it's Livio's hand, he knows. But this hand is large, this hand is cool, this hand is pressing a hole through Nicholas' body from under his chin to the end of the front of his ribs, sending an awful painful pressure through his belly-
"-Don't!" Nicholas cries-screams out, and kicks out under Livio before he catches himself and makes himself go still, his muscles burning and trembling.
There's a tiny gasp, and then an awful moment of silence that goes on and on before Livio pushes himself up on his elbows - Nicholas knows that because one digs painfully into his stomach, but he ignores it. It takes longer for Nicholas to force his eyes open and look up, Livio is awkwardly straddling him, wide-eyed. His hands are balled into fists, angled awkwardly away from Nicholas, and his lower lip is wobbling, his nose all scrunched up they way he does it when he's trying and failing to hide the expression on his face. It takes a few false starts for Livio to speak, but when he does it sounds like he's about to start crying.
"...Did...do I touch you bad?" Livio is always touching Nicholas. Grabbing his shirttail, plucking at his elbow. Throwing his arms around his waist when one of the older kids startles him in passing, pressing close when they nap together. Sits shoulder to shoulder with him at one of the rickety dinner tables they share with six other kids. At night, Livio will reach out for him across the two little beds Miss Melanie has allowed them to push together, in the morning he'll gently shake Nicholas awake, a hand on his knee or shoulder. Livio's hair always smells like soap and heat, it tickles on Nicholas' face when Livio worms his way into his arms and tucks his head right under Nicholas' chin like he belongs there.
Nicholas shakes his head. No. No. Livio's touch is good, his hands are small and warm and they can't throw the feed for the tomas chicks far enough. Nicholas likes them alot. He shakes his head again.
"You don't touch me bad, Livio."
"...Promise?" Livio says unsteadily after a beat. Then sniffles. Nicholas wants to pinch his nose again, so he does, and is almost astonished when his arm obeys him, taking his hand up to Livio's face. Though he doesn't pinch him as hard this time, because Livio's nose has turned really, really, red.
"Promise," Nicholas says, and is rewarded with a watery smile. The sunlight has started to slant a bit differently now, so Livio's face is out of shadow, but that also means the sun is hitting them almost directly. Nicholas shuffles Livio and himself back into whatever spare space they have left in the overhang, getting sand all up his back. Livio runs his knuckles over his eyes, starts to relax into the shade.
"Priests sound bad," is the conclusion he comes to and voices a little while later. Nicholas agrees with a faint nod, and then they both fall silent. Thinking, maybe, of everything the other has just said.
-
"What about your parents, Liv?" Nicholas asks later, when Livio has curled back up on him, and they've both started surrendering to the heat. The pull of sleep has reminded Nicholas that he's curious too, and he wants to ask before Livio knocks out for good. And because he doesn't want to think about his own parents or the priest or the church. Or anything about himself, really.
Livio's quiet for so long Nicholas think he's actually fallen asleep after all, but then Livio stirs a bit, his hand fisting in Nicholas' shirt.
"They were nice," Livio says quietly. "Really nice." His other hand comes up and he combs his fingers through a thatch of the hair that's always falling in his face. "They had hair like me."
White, he means. Nicholas has never seen another person with hair quite like Livio's before, it's almost the color of paper, of clean shirts and sheets and it goes kind of silver in the evening sun. Miss Melanie says Livio is a platinum blond. Nicholas isn't exactly sure that's right, but he won't argue.
"Mom 'usta sing songs to me at night," Livio continues. His fingers curl tighter into Nicholas' shirt, wrinkling.
"What songs?" Nicholas says automatically, because the channel that runs on the radio in the kitchen only ever plays the same songs over and over, and Nicholas is always curious to hear new ones.
Livio thinks for a moment, or maybe he doesn't, because except for a few beats of silence, he answers very quickly. "I dunno. Something about a man in the stars, and sometimes she'd sing one about teaching kids."
"Teaching kids what?"
"Dunno?"
"Huh."
"Coulda been about school."
"Huh." They both puzzle over that for a bit, until Nicholas says, "how was your dad?"
"Really nice," Livio repeats his early affirmation. "He'd, hm...make me toys out of wood. With a knife. Worms and toma' chicks and cars and stuff."
"Hm." Nicholas says thoughtfully, thinking. Worms and toma' chicks and cars and stuff. He has a little pocketknife he keep under his pillow, and wood - firewood- is in fair supply, and if it isn't, he can always knock some off a rickety stool or table. And there's more than plenty of tomas chicks around to whittle. He'll start off with one or two, one for Livio, one for him, and maybe there's some spare white paint so one can look like Livio, or..."Hey, Liv-" and he just means to ask Livio if he likes red, because he's sure he's seen a can of red paint knocking around, but Livio misinterprets it entirely, because he's suddenly shoving himself half-up, using Nicholas' chest as leverage.
"They got shot," Livio's eyes flash as he looks down at Nicholas, flash like the bit of dancing fire in Nicholas' lighter. The next moment, they're watering and colorless. "They got shot." Livio says again dully. Matter-of-factly, and Nicholas thinks his voice sounds more like an adult's then than the soft shrill tones Nicholas has so far always known. "Men with guns came and shot them."
"Liv-"
"Mom told me to hide an' I did but she didn't and dad didn't and they got shot and I didn't do anything and I shoulda' I shoulda-" the words trail off into a horrible whimper, and then Livio suddenly seems to drop, pressing himself down on Nicholas, curling his arms around him and pressing his face down against Nicholas' chest. The slight heave of his shoulders is the only indication that he's crying, that and the wetness that slowly soaks the front of Nicholas' shirt. Nicholas throws his own arms around Livio's waist, holding the thin shaking body to him as tightly as he dares, and waits, his thoughts churning in his head, his stomach roiling with the urge to throw up for good this time.
Liv, Livio. Livio. 'M sorry, Liv.
-
"Hey," Nicholas says when Livio has gone completely still against him, carefully sliding one hand into his pocket and working out the fragile little thing he has in it. "Look what I found at the market."
He holds up the thin little paper cylinder for Livio's inspection, who lifts his head slowly after a minute or two, and squints at it dubiously through wet lashes. It's a real cigarette, or half of one at least. He'd found it sticking out of the sand under one of the market stalls last week, and had pocketed it immediately. He's been carrying around for days now, waiting for the right time to use it, or the time when he's sure he won't get caught. Miss Melanie finds his habit of sneaking dried worm legs to play at smoking charming, but he knows when not to push it.
"...It's kinda broken," Livio remarks, pointing one finger at the uneven end. Nicholas shrugs.
" Someone 'musta dropped it."
Livio sniffles loudly, but his eyes have taken on a gleam of interest. It does something - everything - to settle Nicholas' stomach, and he wiggles around a bit until his lighter drops out of his pocket into his other hand. The only, only thing Nicholas had taken from the church - the priest, had been the lighter, snatched from the nightstand by the bed in an impulsive, desperate decision, snatched because it was the only thing there, besides a lone and almost-filled ashtray.
"...Are you gonna smoke it?"
"No, dummy, I'm going to eat it." Nicholas says deadpan, and flicks the lighter to life with that flourish Livio loves. It takes a few tries to connect the flame to the ragged end of the cigarette, but in the end, a thin stream of smoke rises up into the overhang's limited depths. Livio watches it rise with awed eyes, and Nicholas feels a grin tug the corners of his mouth. Carefully, Nicholas spins the cigarette in his fingers until the orange tip is pointed at Livio, and waggles an eyebrow in invitation. Or tries to, at least.
"Hey, 'wanna smoke?" he says, doing his best impression of the low, engine-rough phrase he's heard growled between the market-goers and the bar patrons and grizzled rough n' readys in town.
Livio giggles, giggles and giggles, and says yes. And then he's coughing and coughing, and then Nicholas is the one giggling. And then Miss Melanie's voice is calling from somewhere far away but rapidly approaching, so by the time the suns are drooping low in the sky, Nicholas and Livio have quite forgotten everything they have just talked about, and have come to the more urgent and distressing realization that cigarette smoke smells very very distinguishable indeed.