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Inside of the hospital, there's a cold, airy wing with a lack of cameras or doors, where you can trap yourself within the confines of a janitor's closet, that Shayne hides himself away in. It’s not his first time being sent to Saint Carols Hospital, and after his mom washed away the blood from his hair from an ‘intervention’ he assumes her established good faith will only get him locked up here again next summer.
The program started on June 2nd, so Shayne’s been mentally preparing himself since school got out back on May 29th, psyching himself up for what he planned to do. His mom’s house is docked and his backyard is the ocean. The first time he was sent there was when he had almost drowned at 2 years old: the doctor had said he’d never seen a baby's face turn green.
It’s June 3rd and they’d already gone through all the introductions and meetings that a kid like him could take, and for all of the ads and brochures they churn out, telling healthy, christian couples that they could send their sinning children here to be fixed…the security could use work. And funding.
Hence the section he was in now. Every section of the hospital had big, glowing signs to direct people around without people getting majorly lost.
Due to a bill that had passed two years ago, all cameras and video logging equipment had to be taken from the nursery and young children's section of the hospital. Shayne had heard about it from his Moms favorite podcast, and the guys on screen had taken a tone of disgust when talking about the case of a child predator.
So, whenever he knew he could get away, Shayne snuck past the legs of a young woman cradling children and doctors doing much the same, crawling underneath a curtain to a discontinued playroom that had been turned into a storage area. The curtain to his right led to a janitor's closet, which he much preferred to the creepy dolls, and just as he was lifting his hands to shove it aside…
“Hey!”
Shayne jumped, knocking his head into the wall and clutching his eye, “Ow, ow, ow.”
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!”
Shayne groaned, turning around to be face to face with Damien Haas, a boy who had an infamous reputation with the staff. A boy who he wasn’t supposed to talk to under any circumstances.
“What are you doing here?” Shayne asked.
Damien reached into his pocket, pulling out a watch, “I owe you from last summer. Boy, do I have some stories for you. But here: that watch you got from Cynthia was a fun thing, and I finally got it working.” He tossed it.
Shayne barely managed to catch the Paw Patrol themed merchandise.
Damien giggled, “I think she was sweet on you.”
“Yeah right. You just think that everybody is interested in everybody because they talked one time. Cynthia's queerer than a Christmas tree in August.”
“Were coming out, now? Shayne, do you-look around buddy, I swear they kept the listening devices.”
Shayne strapped the paw patrol watch to his wrist, “I feel like we would have been found if they kept them.”
“Maybe they're humoring us.”
Shayne sighed, staring at Damien with his eyes fixated on the badge. The mental health institution side of the hospital enforced a color badge system: Damien had ‘upgraded’ from blue to purple.
“What'd you do?” Shayne mumbled, pointed at it.
Damien shrugged, “Nothing!”
Shayne stared.
“I may have bit somebody. But that had less to do with my mental health decline and more with Georgie being a huge dick.”
“That's fair. Mom still thinks I'm a boy kissing whore, which is why I've got red this year.”
“I was wondering that. Shit’s stupid, I mean, you'd never-”
“I know.” The self hatred swam in his gut. Red was S/A. Because of the hospital's homophobia and apathy, they considered any gay activity as non consensual, “And yet Doctor Robert is a free man…”
“I hate this fucking hospital.” Damien pulled his lips into a sharp smile, “You wanna dye each other's heads, put on some makeup and scare the therapist junkies with me?”
“Damien Haas, I would love nothing more.”
Damien stood up, “I'll get some ice for your eye.”
---
The bathroom was very similar to what Shayne assumed a prison would look like. Damien urged him to take a seat on the sink's flat counter space.
“Good, good. I've got pink in here somewhere. Your lucky your fucking blonde, because in a different world, I'd be bleaching you right now.”
“Hate the way you said that.”
“Readying my canvas? White washing-”
“Shut.” Shayne glared at him, “Up.”
“Yeah,” Damien winced, “Not my most activist moment. Lean your head back, please.”
Damiens fingers covered his forehead and ears with vaseline, and Shayne's nose twisted from the plastic like texture, “We're gonna get isolated for this, huh?”
“Probably. But the dyes are permanent, so at least we'll have that.”
“And you don't think they'll just shave us?”
“I am very good at screaming like somebodies killing me,” Damien dead panned, “If they wanna try, then that's their fucking funeral.”
“Well, in that case, it's more yours.”
“Shayne, have I told you I love you?”
“Not recently.”
Damien giggled, pulling his hands away, “Oh, my sweet baby boy, my partner in crime, my Frankenstein's monster.”
“Your nicknames are not appreciated.” Shayne huffed, leaning back against the wall, “And you think you'd be the doctor? You?”
Damien gasped, “I am offended! No, really, I am much more of the Dr Jekll, Mr Hyde type, and you still get woozy when you see blood-”
“Okay, but if your best friend kept showing you her cuts, you'd develop a trauma response, too.”
“Or I'd join her in a mob mentality and we'd bleed together. That's more my style.” Damien added, refraining from turning the conversation from eccentric teen bickering to whatever emotion was forming deep in Shaynes chest. “And Shayne, have I ever said I love your face?”
“Again, not recently. It's almost like I haven't seen you since last summer.”
“Oh, doll, that sarcasm is why I keep running back to you.” Damien gripped his chin, “Stay still. Let me paint you.”
“And you're still weird.”
“But it's me.”
Shayne smiled, “But it's you.”
Shayne doesn't know how long the two of them were in that private bathroom on the other side of the hospital, where no one knows two queer boys sit and dabble in dye paints and giggle about past trauma and smile lines and whatever else they can get a hold of.
Mom would call him the reoccurring image of Lucifer's face. And Shayne, if he had the guts, would tell her that wasn’t a bad comparison. God's direct kill count was thousands, at least he wasn't being compared to her. Yes. Her.
“Why is your hair blonde?” Shayne couldn’t help but ask after they finished up with him. The pink strands hovered in front of his eyes. Shayne wished they allowed mirrors outside of the ED section.
Damien groaned, “Ask my fucking step mom. I don't know, she thinks I'm the devil because my birth mom had an ex boyfriend she named after me. I think 'Damien' is a great name but I'm apparently cursed from hell and back and I need to be sanitized with Shein blonde hair dye.”
Shayne blinked. “Wow. Did you-”
“I told her she sounded like Hitler, yes. She told me to go wash my mouth out with her soap. And I said I was allergic to 3 in 1 conditioner. It uh… didn't go well.”
“I bet.” Shayne rummaged through Damiens bag, pulling out dye after dye after dye, “Are you hiding a secret boy band that were dyeing the heads of too?”
“No, no, god, I can't fucking stand boys. Not you.” Damien shrugged, “I put the Hetero in Bi.”
“Uh-”
“I'm aware the word play is non-existent, but some of us bisexuals only really like women with the occasional Steve Rogers and Shayne Topp coming through.”
“And on this day I learned that you have a type.”
“You knew that.” Damien looked over at his face, pinching his nose, “ Please, you had to have known that, come on?”
“Well, to the surprise of no one, you don't take the time to tell me who gets your rocks off in a conservative sundown town in the middle of nowhere where if they buried you, no one would know.”
“But I would fuck that same twink in the janitor's closet.”
Shayne blushed all the way to his chest, “First of all, I am not a twink. Yes, and. Second of all, it was less ‘fucking’ and more mindless groping with no intent other than pissing off Georgie. You didn’t even like me back then.”
“Well, that's just not true, doll, I've always liked you.” Damien smiled sweetly, pecking him on the corner of his mouth, “But making Georgie go red in the face? Yeah that…that was a glorious opportunity. I fed two people with one meal that day.”
“Isn't the saying ‘killed two birds with one stone?’”
“You seriously think I want to endorse bird homicide. As a Damien named, 17 year old kinky gay bastard with multiple mental illnesses that the church condemned when I was five, I draw the fucking line in the dirt. And are you gonna procrastinate forever?”
Shayne rubbed his neck, staring at the bag, “I thought you were procrastinating cause you were nervous .”
Damien stared at him, “Oh, you actually believe that. Oh that's hilarious. Well, come down now, that's it.”
They swapped seats, and now Shayne was staring up at Damien and Damien hesitantly threaded his fingers through Shayne's hair, “The pink really brings out your eyes.”
“Yeah?” Shayne whispered.
Damien nodded, bending down and kissing him. After a few seconds, he pulled away, gesturing over to the dyes sitting there patiently.
“You choose, bubblegum.”
Shayne immediately reached for the blue, smiling in a sudden ecstasy, “Blue makes you look like a corpse.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No, no, like-like Dracula! It brings out the blush in your cheeks and the tired wrinkles under your eyes. All gothic and…” Shayne shrugged, “Cool.”
“You have the funniest talent of taking me by surprise.”
“In a different world, the world where you had to bleach my hair, I'd be good at improv.”
“So, no change.” Shayne shrugged.
Before opening the bag, Shayne sighed, looking down at his shaking hands and clammy skin and Damiens artificially pink fingertips, “What if we die?”
“Hmm?” Damien hummed, “What's up, bud?”
“What if, y'know, they murder us for this? They've killed kids for worse and staged it as an accident.”
Shayne remembered the faces of kids long gone. Tommy, Spencer, Courtney. Damien recognized his shaking bottom lip and rested his hands on his shoulders, pressing Shaynes head to his chest so he could feel his heartbeat. They both knew it was a likely outcome. They both knew they were at rock bottom.
“Don't think of it as a murder. This is suicide. This is ours.”
“And were gonna haunt their fucking asses.”
Damien grinned. The reflective light from Shayne's hair made his teeth look scarlet, “That's my boy.”
---
There's a section of Saint Carols Hospital covered in police tape from a decade ago, with the stuff untouched and newspapers pinned to a bulletin board. They send the new hires there to see how squeamish they can get when the lights go off.
There's always a faint smell of bleach and hair dye. Five people reported seeing the twin smiles of two teenage boys in the janitor's closet.
One day, they'll find the bodies within the property line, one day, those poor kids will get their justice.
Until then, be wary of the two young lovers who haunt the grounds. One of them tends to bite.