Chapter Text
A bustling school canteen. Students of all ages mill about, holding juice cartons and canteen food. Spotlight on GRIAN, who sits in a group of three, staring forwards. There is something omniscient in his eyes, shining dormant in the depth of his pupils - his friends, JOEL and JIMMY, jostle each other and laugh wildly, before noticing his silence.
JOEL: “Grian!”
He motions to JIMMY, who shoves GRIAN in the shoulder, shaking him out of his stupor.
JIMMY: “Grian.”
“Hm?”
Grian looks up, blinks, and inconspicuously begins to poke at his pasta with the thin wooden fork held between his fingers, as the flickering daze fades. Jimmy and Joel sigh and groan in unison, and he fights the overwhelming urge to snap it and feel splinters prick his fingers.
“What’re you looking at?”
“Nothing,” he says, careless, shovelling lukewarm penne into his mouth and trying not to grimace too much at the rubbery texture. Joel scoffs and cranes his neck, looking upwards and stretching just above his chair. He laughs as he catches sight of the poster from across the canteen. Grian can feel a joke about his unnatural vision coming on.
“Romeo and Juliet? I could barely read that, Jesus, G, ”
The joke is said; Joel reads the curly black font at the top of the poster out with an edge of incredulous laughter obvious in his voice, and Grian winces. When he looks up, Joel has that superior grin pulling at his mouth - his arms crossed, fake, too loose, his fingers splayed across his elbows. They’re unsure whether or not to properly grip his jacket, so they hang nervously. Grian knows all of Joel’s signs by now. “That’s so stupid,” he says, “God, imagine the losers bored enough to sign up for that,” he laughs. Grian is caught between embarrassment and exasperation, flushing or eye-rolling, kind or himself.
The poster is halfway across the canteen, pinned to the wall next to the swinging double doors with the cheap wood peeking out behind chipped blue paint and the scratched metal handles - in hopes of attracting entering students - so Grian chooses embarrassment, goes pink and pretends he hasn’t been staring at it for the last five minutes. “Can’t read it anyway,” he mumbles. Maybe they’ll believe him. He hopes so.
“Better hope Ms Harris doesn’t bully us into signing up,” Jimmy says anxiously, hands tucked into each other in his lap. He slouches into the table, cutting inches off his spine until he looks almost Grian’s height, and his jacket is half shrugged off so that none of the teachers will see it on his shoulders. (He’s not really sure why Jim and Joel wear their jackets in the building, considering the fiery wrath sure to incur if a teacher spots you with it still on - especially in the Art Department, God forbid - but they’re his boys, so even if he doesn’t quite understand this need to be cool and edgy and hard, he’ll play along, leather jacket warm on his shoulders as he sits close to them. He’ll be loyal if nothing else, he thinks.)
“Us?” Joel cries, “Who’s us?”
“Ms Harris only hates you, Tim,” Grian interjects, but he’s smiling. Jimmy groans out a pained shut up! and buries his forehead in his hands, dejected. Grian supposes that the tall scrawny kid - especially Jimmy, who can come off nervous at his best - is just easy prey for teachers like Ms Harris.
Really, Grian shouldn’t be surprised they think that the play is stupid. He isn’t quite sure what he was even doing, staring at the poster - there’s no way he’s going to sign up. Romeo and Juliet is not something that a bad boy like him does.
Or-
But - well, it’s just that he has a little bit of a soft spot for the drama tutor directing it. His name is in italics at the bottom - Mr Void - teacher director, just to the left of Doc M - student director . Xisuma’s pretty young, and he confirmed the rumours that he went to MCU only a few years back in the first workshop he taught, telling the students not to call him Mr. Void, that he wanted to be on the same level as them. Grian isn't and wasn't taught by him usually - he's never been into drama, and so would never sign up for the tutoring and extracurricular classes Xisuma teaches.
And this teacher director, Xisuma, was new last summer - not like Grian, who’s lived here all his life, and never known anything other than HCA. Grian doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the day last summer when Xisuma helped him.
Year 11 - his parents fighting all year, Pearl leaving the house every chance she got. Sitting with his back to his door and his knees pulled up to his chest, and listening to the screaming pierce through his headphones. He’d gotten into some bad habits that year, incurring Jimmy’s worry and Joel’s frustrated fretting. And then, right in the middle of the last week of exams, he’d been called to the front office and directed to one of the private rooms with two serious, cold steel chairs and a coffee table.
Grian still remembers how it smelt in the room - stuffy, the air thick and like wading through water. He still remembers the safeguarding officer’s freshly trimmed fringe and the crease in her brow when she handed him the phone with his dad on the other side. She wanted to go back home to her husband and the bottle of red wine sitting out on the counter. She didn’t tell him that.
Grian still remembers the way his fingers trembled as he walked out of the door afterwards, knees weak, face blanched. He still remembers teachers coming up to him, sympathetic glances and creased brows just like the safeguarding officer. He still remembers the detached, slow-motion nods and mumbles. Let me know if you need any extra help.
“No - no, let me speak to my son - Grian? Grian - I’m - Grian, she’s gone. She’s gone.”
“What are you talking ab-”
He didn’t let anybody know if he needed extra help. He didn’t let them know anything .
On the last day of school that year, Grian slipped away and hid behind the school building during the Leavers Assembly. It was one of the secluded spots where the quieter kids sat at lunch, or smoked when they thought the teachers weren’t looking.
He’d been avoiding Taurtis, avoiding what had happened the previous weekend. He’d been avoiding the look he’d given him after it had happened, avoiding the way he’d disappeared, avoiding the way he hadn’t answered any of his calls afterwards.
Grian’s hand was still tangled in short dark hair when Taurtis pulled back. He had this unreadable, indistinct look on his face, flush still high on his cheeks from the vodka passed around the room. His lips parted, as if to say something, and there was a sinking feeling slowly weighing down Grian’s stomach, still leant back against the wall. Taurtis’s brow creased. “I’m-”
So he’d had his head tucked into his knees, chest heaving, blurry-eyes, a compact ball curled up and composed of grief and shame and hurt, and then he had heard his name said in front of him.
“Grian?”
And when he looked up, the new teacher Xisuma had been peering down at him, an extinguished cigarette stub between two fingers, concern bleeding from the shallow creases around his eyes.
And he had known Grian’s name.
Grian had never spoken to him before, and he had known his name.
It was already a fragile, walking on eggshells day - Grian crumbled, cried even more, and Xisuma crouched down and hugged him, said hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m so sorry, Grian.
So it isn’t like Grian wants to sign up for the play. He’s just thinking, a lot, recently. Especially since they closed the case for his mother. He’s half sure nowadays that she just decided to leave, and he thinks Pearl is sure of that too.
When Jimmy and Joel pack up their bags, check their timetables for fourth period, and swing frayed backpack-straps over their shoulders, he takes the opportunity to inch away from the table and towards the notice-board.
The poster looks like it was made on MS Paint, with thin straight lines to write names on. Under the curly black font proclaiming ROMEO & JULIET is a commanding bold red one reading Sign Up Now! A battered pencil hangs on an old knotted string, taped precariously to the wall.
Grian has probably been staring at it for upwards of a minute. This can’t be good for his reputation, he thinks absently. But somebody has written their name in their own pen instead of using the pencil, so fast it's smudged quite badly, and the ink shines furiously at him, making him squint. Grian peers closer to read the name.
Oh.
A scalding hot feeling swells, angry, in his chest, and he pushes it back down, breathing slowly outward. He hasn’t spoken to Taurtis in just over a year now, or rather Taurtis hasn’t spoken to him. His name is written, hurried, in thick black ink, reflecting angry stars in Grian’s eyes.
Something ignites - he snatches up the pencil and nearly rips it from the wall, writing his name angrily underneath Taurtis’s. He hopes the pencil marks intertwine with ink and force Taurtis to remember his existence, if only for a moment. He wants so badly for him to remember. He wants-
He walks away, blazing, and spends fourth period skipping in the car park.
The car is lukewarm.
The air is thick and greasy as it slips between his teeth, and Grian exhales, clenching his fingers into fists. He doesn’t roll down the window, though, not yet - his eyes are glued to the clock on the radio. Digital - reading 2:22 and he knows it’s slow by three minutes and that it should read 2:25 and that Pearl should be back soon after her afternoon class. He knows this logically - but he stares at the time and he believes that it is 2:22, because he hasn’t the energy to think about lies right now. Grian rejects logic plenty. Grian knows things that other people don’t. This is normal for him.
But there are a lot of things normal for Grian that shouldn’t be. His fingers tap tap tap on the rough, battered edge of his seat. He keeps his arms pinned to his sides and tries to remember if there is anything in the fridge for dinner. He doesn’t know if Pearl is staying - it doesn’t really matter, they haven’t had family dinners since his mum, and he doubts his dad will even be home. He hopes he isn’t home.
He hopes he isn’t home.
2:23.
Maybe Pearl won’t come back from class. Maybe Grian can stay here in this spot for the whole afternoon. Until night. Midnight, morning. Maybe Grian won’t ever have to move again. Even his fingers have stilled on the seat.
“Griba!”
Pearl knocks on the left window and opens the car door, smiling. Grian plasters a similar grin on his face like he is folding paper. “Pearl,” he says. “How was class?”
Pearl climbs into the car and shuts the door, wrinkling her nose and rolling down the window immediately. It feels like she’s sticking her elbow hard in-between his ribs. He stares forwards and settles his hands on the wheel, pulling out of the car-park.
She tells him about her day.
It was nice, she says. Class was fine. She tells him about how her architecture tutor was in a bad mood and made it everyone else’s problem, and how the other 3 students were making fun of him with her. She tells him her Year 12 friends texted her about the poster in the canteen -
“Some of my friends signed up,” she yawns, stretching out in the passenger seat.
“Which ones?” Grian asks, eyes on the road, face carefully set blank.
“B, Gem.” Pearl says. “Mumbo, too.”
“Huh,” he mumbles. Pauses. “You didn’t?”
She wrinkles her nose at him. “Not my thing,” she laughs, good-natured. “Anyway, I have too much work on. Wouldn’t want to be the only fresher there.”
Grian frowns. She’s right - she does have too much work on, what with the beginning of university and that part time job, and everything else. Pearl is moving into a dorm at MCU soon, and the mere thought of her absence is making him feel sick. Grian doesn’t want her to leave him alone (with their dad.)
But he doesn’t say anything. Why would he? He won’t contaminate her life to save his.
A couple seconds go by without either of them saying anything, and Grian seizes the chance with both hands and pulls it towards him in an embrace. He turns the corner of the road, past the supermarket, onto their road. “I signed up,” he says.
“Grian!” Pearl says, he can tell she’s smiling and he’s not even looking at her, she sounds happy and he doesn’t know why it isn’t making him happy- “that’s such a good idea,” she grins. “That’ll be so fun! You know what - I think you’ll get along with Gem great.”
Gem is one of Pearl’s new friends that Grian doesn’t really know. He’s caught glimpses of laughter and copper curls and play-fighting from her before, but he’s never really had a conversation with her. The thought makes him want to curl up - his stomach constricts and twists and contorts - unfamiliarity wrecks him, as per usual. He knows BigB and Mumbo, at least, but not well - they’ve been Pearl’s friends for years, she’s always had friends in the year below, younger than her - and he knows them, but they never really gave each other more than a passing glance, Gem being in the year above him and Mumbo being in different classes. He furrows his brow, tightens his grip on the steering wheel, and pulls into the driveway.
“Yeah,” he says, all his leftover energy pushed into the words to make them sound truthful, “yeah, I think we will.”
“Unless you just want a tiny part,” Pearl jokes as she unclips her seatbelt. She climbs out of the car. Grian doesn’t need to unclip his own before he climbs out - he always keeps it undone, just in case. “So you can skip class more efficiently.”
It does actually make him laugh - which he cherishes, holding close to his heart, “Yeah,” he giggles, only half sarcastic, “maybe!”
They walk shoulder to shoulder, perfectly parallel up to the front door, the beep-beep of the car locking echoing behind them. Grian opens the door with his keys and breathes in the silence. Dad isn’t home. He wishes it was always like that.
They walk wordlessly upstairs and retreat to separate rooms - there’s a sense of surliness and resentment brought on by the house, brought on by the emptiness of it. Grian sits on his bed, back straight, and wishes that he still shared a room with Pearl. Then he takes it back inside his head. Again - he won’t contaminate her life to save his.
When he gets Joel’s texts, he’s lying in his bed, on top of the duvet, staring at the ceiling with his arms crossed on his torso like a corpse. Pearl’s music is blasting through the wall, and he listens to it - some indie rock band that Gem recommended to her. She’s been listening to it non-stop, and there’s a pit in his stomach of something that’s meant to be affection or happiness, but just isn’t strong enough to show.
His phone buzzes, and he doesn’t respond to it for two minutes, listening to his clock tick, tick, tick, tick, counting. One hundred and twenty seconds. One hundred and eighty.
He reaches without looking to the bedside table and picks up his glasses. Grian never likes having them on when he feels like this. When they’re settled, frames cold on his ears, he holds his phone up to his face without sitting up.
7:12 PM Come over?
The blue-light is cool on his irises. Grian stares at the message for a few seconds, blank, before he gets up. He stands, and looks at himself in the mirror. Old shirt and boxers.
He pulls on a pair of jeans and slips on his jacket in the doorway. “Pearl!” he calls, hand on the doorknob. “I’m going to Joel’s!”
The music is still very loud. Pearl doesn’t hear him, so he frowns, heavy, and walks back upstairs to knock on her door. “Pearl?”
She’s sitting at her desk on her laptop. “G?” she asks, twisting around in the golden light cast from her lamp.
“I’m going to Joel’s,” he repeats, and she smiles at him.
“Sounds good,” she says. “Text me when you get there.”
He smiles back at her, listens to a couple seconds of the music, and closes her door. See you.
When he gets to Joel’s house, he uses the spare key. Grian doesn’t remember when they ended up with the keys to each other’s houses, sometime last summer, but he’s not sure he wants to, because Joel looks at his house key with this dejected catch in his glance, like he glimpses them and remembers something. Grian isn’t sure what.
Joel isn’t in his bedroom, so Grian looks out the window. He’s sitting out on the roof, on the flat outcrop facing the garden. Smoke curls and floats above his head, reaching out into the sky.
Grian climbs out of the window to join him.
“Hey,” he says. He sits down next to him and leans against the brick wall. Joel doesn’t look at him, just stares forwards and takes another drag of his cigarette.
“Want a fag?”
“Sure,”
Joel passes him a cigarette and he fishes his lighter out of the pocket of his jeans to light it. They’re dark wash, and ripped at the knees - not intentionally, though. He wore them one of the first times he hung out with the boys, and they’d ripped when he’d fallen over the previous day. He was going to try and sew them up or patch them, but Joel and Jimmy had loved them, so he’d kept them that way. His mother had hated them.
His mother would have hated (would hate? Grian is never sure anymore) the things he does now, so Grian doesn’t dwell on it for long. He exhales smoke and closes his eyes.
“I signed up for Romeo and Juliet,” he says.
Joel doesn’t take his eyes off the sunset. “That’s good,” he replies, and it sounds genuine. “That’ll be really good for you.”
Grian looks at him, then, eyes narrowed, exasperated, but Joel looks back. Smiles. “I’m serious,” he laughs.
“You said it was stupid,”
“I say a lot of things I don’t mean.”
He looks away again. Grian bites at his lip and tries to draw blood. He looks down at his cigarette. He hates it when Joel gets like this.
“I know things have been hard,” he says.
“Stop that,” Grian scowls.
He doesn’t relent. “G,” he goes on, “I think this will be so good for you. You’ve got to get out there, man.”
“I am out there.”
“I see you when you think nobody’s looking,” Joel says then. He turns towards Grian again. He’s frowning. Grian doesn’t respond. Grian doesn’t say anything. He just stares forwards into the pink and orange of the sky and takes another puff of his cigarette.
Joel blows smoke circles into the sky. Grian used to wish he could do that. Now he doesn’t really care.
“It’ll do you good to care about something,” Joel says. Grian wonders privately if he can read his mind.
“Yeah,” he says, but his voice feels hollow.
If he squints, he can see the stars. They remind him of Taurtis.