Chapter Text
ꜰᴏʀɢᴇᴛ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪꜰᴇ ɪ ᴜꜱᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴋɴᴏᴡ
(𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯 - 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦)
“Is everything in place?”
Caleb was in the pilot’s seat, Xavier in the seat next to him.
“Everything is in place, Colonel Xia.”
The Deepspace Tunnel loomed above them, inky black swirling into itself, its vast expanse a promise.
“You really think we can reach him this way?” Zayne, flanked by Rafayel and Sylus, asked from behind them.
“He’s close. I can feel it,” Rafayel said. “We just have to be patient.”
“Everyone in your seats,” Caleb demanded. “We’re about to take off.”
─── ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆ ───
I was so lonely.
I sat, staring at my screen as Love and Deepspace loaded, but all I could feel was guilt. I should be out talking to real people, not playing a dating game not even targeted to my demographic. Despite the icky feeling I sometimes got, I genuinely enjoyed the game, which brought another wave of guilt and shame.
I should not have been ashamed. My cousin Bruna played the game; hell, she introduced me to it. But since we drifted apart, I found I could not play the game without thinking of how lonely I was. I was a loser. A deadbeat. A chud, even.
The game loaded, and I was greeted by Caleb. He said his greeting line, but I wasn’t listening. Dropping my phone onto the bed, I fell backwards onto the mattress with a sharp exhale.
The past few months had been awful.
I was excited to be back in my childhood home. Or, I thought I was. It was nice of my mom to let me live in it, especially since she’d kept it all these years as a “vacation home” (that the family never visited, and I honestly wasn’t sure she even liked it, and it seemed more like a plot device in a shitty fanfic if anything). But being in this house alone meant what I always was afraid of; Mother didn’t want me.
See, my family is big. Very big. And usually, more than one generation lives in one house. When I was a kid, it was just Mother, me, my little brother, and my father; he’d convinced Mother to live as a nuclear family. But once she was caught cheating, we moved into my grandparents’ house. It was crowded, the way it should be. They way I liked it.
I was never lonely. In just one house I had my mother, I had my grandparents, I had my uncle and aunt, I had my brother, and I had my five cousins. The rest of the family- my other cousins, aunts and great aunts, uncles and great uncles, were all in two other houses back in Portugal. They didn’t come to America with my grandparents, but they flew down every Christmas and Easter to visit.
On hot days, we were outside running through the sprinkler while the adults tended to the garden and listened to music on the loudspeaker. During cold nights, we huddled together on the couch and watched TV.
Even after I reached adulthood, I stayed. I tried. I wanted to be a family.
I made sure to pay attention to the sermons, even though I had no faith. I walked with the church during every candlelight procession. I prayed the rosary with the family. But everything changed when the Priest gave my mother a pamphlet for novitiate training intended for me.
Mother told me over dinner one night. I was nineteen, freshly out as a pansexual trans guy. I already felt guilty about it. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything, not with the way the older members of my family were. Not with how closely we were living. But I loved my family and I needed them to love me, too.
I managed another two years avoiding any mention of the convent or novitiate training, avoiding the Priest's eye during sermons and being the first one out of the church, avoiding even speaking. I wore pretty white dresses and did my hair in a simple long braid. I said my Hail Marys with the family during processions, walked until my feet were sore in my heels and my hands were covered in wax. I couldn’t really escape it. I was named after Our Lady, after all. I was named after our church.
Finally, I broke. “My name is Rio and I am a boy,” I’d cried. “This is killing me. I love you. So please love me.”
Mother decided I needed some time alone.
She drove me back down to our old house. The uncles and boy cousins helped move Mother and Tiago’s old things out, helped move my things in, and then I never saw them in person again. It’s only been four months, and I miss them bad.
I had no friends here. I didn’t have coworkers, either; I worked a remote customer service job, so most days, I didn’t even leave my house. The only interaction I got was online.
My solution? To play Love and Deepspace and live vicariously through my MC, Lenore.
I refocused my attention on Caleb. It was almost like he was scrutinizing me through the screen. He did that a lot lately; they all did. I told myself I was just paranoid, but I couldn’t help but feel like they could see me.
“I’m going crazy,” I said aloud.
And then, as if to prove me right, Caleb tilted his head. “Crazy? How so?”
I froze. Stared at the screen. Then calmly closed the app and turned my phone all the way off.
What the fuck. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck- meds. I need my meds.
With shaking legs, I made a beeline for the dresser, opening the top drawer and searching for my emergency pills. There were so many bottles, so many prescriptions that I was supposed to be taking but wasn’t. Maybe I wouldn’t need my emergency meds if I simply took the prescribed ones. But I couldn’t help that I forget.
I dry swallowed a hydroxyzine capsule. It got stuck in my throat, and I gagged, but it went down after a second.
I curled up and began to cry.
─── ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆ ───
I woke up before I even realized I fell asleep. The medicine had that effect on me, and I hated it. A glance at the clock showed it was 3:26 AM. My stomach growled. I was nauseatingly hungry. I rolled over, trying to ignore it. Usually it went away. This time it didn’t.
Slowly, I sat up. I knew from past mishaps that moving too quickly when I’m hungry will cause me to faint. Once on my feet, I crept down the stairs. The darkness of the hall and the stairwell, along with my neglect to wear my glasses, caused my socks to slip, and with a whispered “Aw shit,” I fell hard on my ass, sliding down the last five steps. My arms shot out to catch me, and I knocked a framed photo off the wall. I gave a groan of pain, sitting there for a few seconds before standing slowly.
I brushed the glass off the picture in the broken frame. It was an old photo of me, my brother, and my cousins when we were all little. I smiled back at myself from the photo, little me who didn’t know anything yet. She was happy. Where did she go? Why did I grow into this?
I stared at the glass on the floor, scrutinizing the shards. They were big enough; I didn’t need a dustpan to pick them up. I took them into my hands and walked into the kitchen with them. My hand hovered over the trash can, and before I could drop the shards in, the thoughts came.
It had been a while since I last cut myself. I was a few months clean, but the last time was just a relapse. In all, it had been years since I was addicted.
Back in the glory days, the worst years of my life, I would break glass when my blades got too dull or rusted. I would break glass and test each shard, would draw a single stripe across my skin with each singular piece of glass, and I would keep the three sharpest pieces. I remembered my days of standing over trash cans with glass in my hands, with blood on my wrist.
Those are years of my life I’ll never get back.
Though I did falter for a moment, I gave a heavy sigh and dropped every shard into the can. I was not going to rip myself open any more.
I turn around, squinting in the dim light of the moon. What was I doing again? Another stab in my gut. Right. Food. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning’s granola bar.
My eyes scanned the kitchen. There was a pot of stuffing on the stove that I’d made a few days ago, but I’d added too much water and it was mushy. If I ate that, I’d throw up. There was always cereal, but the milk expired yesterday and anything cold hurts my teeth.
My eyes land on a loaf of dry bread, untouched on the counter. I was mildly surprised that I’d remembered to buy a loaf last time, not just sandwich bread. Bread and butter was my comfort food, and I always counted on Tia Perola to have it in the kitchen. But since I’ve been living alone, I always bought sandwich bread and forgot loaves, despite specifying loaf bread on every shopping list.
I didn’t dwell on it. I was too hungry, and I was ecstatic to be able to eat my comfort food for the first time in months.
I opened the fridge, finding the margarine and taking a stick out. I cut it in half, putting one half on a plate and the other back in the fridge. I popped the plate in the microwave, letting the margarine melt a little before taking it out, cutting the loaf in half, and absolutely slathering that bad boy in the margarine. I took a bite of heaven. God, this dry ass bread and probably expired margarine was the best thing I’d ever eaten in my entire life.
I wasn’t able to finish it. With half of the loaf gone, my stomach was so full that I was nauseous.
I sat at the table in silence for a few minutes, unable to make myself move. I turned my phone back on, then turned the screen off, then I unlocked it, then turned it back off after scrolling through my apps. There was nothing to do. I wasn’t tired enough to go back to bed, but I was too tired to get up from the table.
The curtains rustled.
I glanced up, startled. I stared at them for a good moment, wondering if I’d simply imagined it. They were still, no sign of previous movement.
…I was getting freaked out. Maybe living alone has made me paranoid, finally on the brink of a complete mental breakdown. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe these past few days never happened and I was in some sort of coma.
The pit in my full stomach said otherwise.
I trudged over to the couch and sat heavily. I blinked slowly, then turned on the TV. I scrolled through the selection, eventually settling on The Goonies. The light from the TV was the only light in the house, and I could have sworn I saw a shadow move from the corner of my eye.
I was absolutely insane.
Eventually, I felt my eyes closing. I didn’t bother trying to stop them.
─── ⋆⋅ ♰ ⋅⋆ ───
I was awoken by my lamp crashing to the floor.
I awoke with a gasp, sitting straight up. A shadow was hunched by the lamp on the floor, stiff as a board. “Oh,” they said. “I’m so sorry.”
I screamed.
The figure stood, hands up in surrender. “Wait, wait, wait, wait! Don’t scream! Don’t scream!”
“What’s all this yelling for?” another voice loudly demanded, flipping on the lights, and that’s when I knew I was crazy, because Rafayel Qi and Sylus Qin were in my living room.
“What the fuck,” I said numbly, throwing the blanket off and standing on my feet without realizing it.
“Rio,” Sylus said. “I hope you aren’t too alarmed, but you didn’t expect us to stay away for too long, now, right?”
I screamed again, my hands flying to either side of my head. I couldn’t help it; I’d finally lost it, lost my damn mind, hallucinating my parasocial fictional relationships. The other three love interests bounded into the living room.
“Who woke him?” Caleb asked, glancing around and spotting Rafayel near the fallen lamp. “You! How’d I know you’d be the one to mess it up first thing?”
“I didn’t mess anything up!” Rafayel protested. “I tripped!”
“I thought your fish eyes were superior,” Sylus egged him on. “Don’t tell me you lied?”
I whimpered at the back and forth. They were so real, so… in front of me, and I was beginning to wonder if all hallucinations were so lifelike.
The room quieted at my noise, and all heads snapped towards me.
“Look, you two, you’re scaring him.” Caleb pushed his way forward, brushing his shoulder against Xavier in the process. He made his way towards me, crouching slightly to show he was not a threat. “Rio D’Souza. Finally, we meet face to face.”