Chapter Text
the fuzzy lights of the stove tell andre it’s a little before midnight when he gets home from work. the house is silent, still, and no one else is awake except for him.
he drags his hand down his face and considers just crawling into bed in his work clothes, grimacing at the thought once reality settles in. he walks slowly, barefoot with his steps measured and careful, towards his bedroom to grab a change of clothes before going to take a shower.
his hair is still wet when the phone rings, now dressed in clothes devoid of grease and the smell of food as he stands in front of the sink to fill a glass of water.
he almost drops the glass when it does, moving quickly to pick it up before the sound wakes anyone up. the caller id reveals that it is no one that he knows, and he answers it despite that.
“hello?” andre glances back at the clock. “who is it?”
“andre?” the voice on the other end allows andre to relax, only somewhat.
“cal?”
“i’m sorry, i didn’t know who else to call.” it muffles for a second like cal dropped the phone, all crinkly noises until it goes back to normal. “can you come get me please? i’m at um, a house. i don’t know. i came here with someone.”
andre shifts, uses his shoulder to hold the phone against his ear. “i was about to go to sleep.”
“okay.” cal responds, sounds small. the line goes dead and andre feels closer to tired than he does guilty.
—
cal barely makes it the short distance from the phone back to the couch. he bumps into someone who waves his apology off with a smile. he not-so-gracefully throws himself down and attempts to gather his bearings before drawing his bony knees up to his chest and resting his head on them.
the world spins around him, renders him pale and spiraling on the couch, until someone puts their hand on his shoulder. the outline of a person greets cal when he opens his eyes. it all relatively betters within a few seconds, his vision not so blurry and his head a bit clearer. he still feels sick.
“shit, man, you okay?”
cal shakes his head, fights the urge to cry. he misses andre.
“do you want to go lay down?” the person, who he now recognizes is trent, asks while putting his drink down on the table beside them.
“please?” cal feels like he can’t breathe, can’t think. trent helps him up and steadies him while his legs feel like they are in the process of going out. “fuck.”
“i got you, dude. you’re fine.” trent sort of laughs, guides cal up the stairs. “just don’t puke in the bed, it’s not mine.”
trent locks the door behind them as cal sits on the edge of the bed before letting his body fall backwards. the room smells like weed and boy. it’s as close to a soothing balm on cal’s soul as he figures he’ll get. cal says nothing as trent leans down to unlace his shoes for him and pulls them off, just stares at the glow in the dark stars scattered across the ceiling.
“do you want me to stay with you?” trent finally asks after a moment of standing awkwardly at the end of the bed, scratching at the fine trail of hair on his lower stomach when his shirt rides up. “so you don’t like, choke and die.”
“you don't have to.” something close to shyness or embarrassment settles over cal and he turns over to move towards the pillows, his face burning.
“i’d feel bad if i didn’t.” trent shrugs and takes his own shoes off. cal’s mouth goes dry when he crawls into the bed next to him and rests his back against the headboard, only a little room left between them. trent reaches for the small tin on the nightstand, then lifts his hips up to access his back pocket before placing a red lighter on his lap.
trent goes through the motions of getting a joint out and lighting it, holding it out like a peace offering to cal.
“it’ll make you feel better.” his grin makes something stir in cal’s stomach. his hair is a few shades too dark, too long, to be andre’s. he’s too kind, all of it is wrong and not andre. but he is there, warm and real beside him and not pouring salt into his wounds. “take it.”
and so cal does, takes it into his shaking hand and breathes it in, ignores how much bigger and brighter trent’s grin gets, how much his teeth show, his laugh like it’s an inside joke cal isn’t being let in on.
they lay there in silence for a few minutes, maybe longer, and cal almost forgets that they aren’t alone, about what's happening downstairs.
“can i ask you something?” trent’s voice startles cal out of the tiny daze that had crept over him. cal nods and looks up towards him from beneath his eyelashes, that weird feeling in his belly growing stronger.
“are you into guys?” it hits like a punch, takes the breath out of cal. his mind scrambles, a hundred words dying in his throat. trent looks at him funny, one pierced eyebrow raised.
“um, yeah. sort of.” it feels wrong to say it, like he shouldn’t have ever even opened his mouth. he thinks of andre, again.
“you’re cute.” cal can’t tell if he’s making fun of him or not but the thought goes away once trent gets in between his legs, pulls them apart and makes a home for himself there. “take your hoodie off.”
cal can’t look him in the eye when he leans up to pull his hoodie off, tentatively letting his fingers rest at the hem for a second before taking it off. he knows his arms are littered in cuts, scabs, and scars from wrist to shoulder, skin marred by pink and red; knows it’s not dark enough in the room for trent not to see them.
he doesn’t have much time at all to think about that before trent presses his lips to his and has his hands creeping up his t-shirt. it stings when he pulls away.
“you want some?” trent tilts his head towards the half-empty bottle on the nightstand and reaches for it without waiting for cal’s response. cal really doesn’t, his stomach turns at the thought of drinking anything else, but trent takes a drink and grins at him all easy again and he can’t just say no.
it burns worse this time around.
“want more?”
cal shakes his head and falls back down to the bed, closing his eyes.
“yeah you do, come on.” trent cups the back of his head and lifts it up, holds the bottle to his lips, keeps it there until he drinks. cal coughs when he finally gets his fingers out of his hair and trent does the thing again where cal isn’t sure if he’s being mean or not, smiling at him like he’s stupid.
“sorry, didn't mean to.” trent grabs the hoodie and uses it to gently wipe off what spilled down his chin. “forgive me?”
“‘s okay, yeah.” cal can’t move, limbs too weak to be useful even if he managed to get out from under him. trent kisses his neck, sucks a bruise into the skin. “god.”
“you’re such a lightweight. guess it’s ‘cause you don’t weigh nothing at all.” trent laughs against it, bites down on his pulse point, and cal sort of wants it all to stop, to go away, for it to be andre. trent’s feeling him up like he’s a girl, hands spread wide over his waist and trailing downwards towards hips he doesn’t have.
cal thinks about andre and dying and throwing up until there’s nothing left.
except he doesn’t want to upset trent, because he doesn’t really have any friends besides him and andre. cal buys off him sometimes so maybe friend isn’t the right word, but trent’s nice to him. he was nice enough to invite him to a party, to bring him. he can’t remember how old he said he was, could be twenty-one or twenty-two.
“think i’m gonna throw up, ‘m sorry.” it’s a lie until it isn’t, feels like a knife’s being twisted in his chest when trent doesn’t even try to hide his disappointment.
“you’re fine, baby. just lay there, let it pass.” cal shakes his head, tries to sit up just for trent to hold him down until he stops trying, “you’re fine.”
“i need air, feels like i can’t breathe.” he turns his face away when trent leans in to kiss him again, weakly trying to push him off just for trent to grab his face with one hand and hold it there.
“i said you’re fine. stop being dramatic.” he squeezes his face, once, twice. the ring on his thumb digs into the side of his chin, hurts.
cal thinks he might be crying, can’t understand why trent is being so mean now, why he isn’t being nice anymore, doesn’t know what he did wrong to deserve it.
“get off me, please, i’m sorry.” his breathing has devolved into short spells of catching his breath, unsteady and inconsistent to the point that he’s lightheaded. “i don’t wanna anymore, not tonight.”
trent rolls his eyes and pulls back once he figures out cal wasn’t going to give in.
“you're lucky i like you.” the way he says it cuts deep, like he’s doing cal a favor, like cal owes him. he moves back to the other side of the bed and lights a cigarette, waving cal off. “i’ll take you home in an hour or two, don’t feel like leaving yet.”
cal puts his shoes on before trent can change his mind, doesn’t say anything but thank you before he goes out of the room. he almosts falls down the stairs trying to get out, not looking back to see if trent had followed behind him.
—
andre tosses and turns for what feels like hours. of course it's because of cal, the thought of him a few stages into decomposition in a ditch somewhere, skin as dull and blue as his eyes.
the image circulates in his brain and he isn’t sure how it makes him feel.
he also isn’t sure what motivates him to check the caller id list and cross-reference the name to the phonebook to get an address for the number cal had called from, thumbing through it before he finds the right one.
it’s nearly one in the morning by the time andre grabs his keys and makes it out the door.
even in the darkness andre can immediately see cal in the yard, down on his knees and leaning towards the ground. there’s three or four people outside on the porch, too, only one of them paying any attention to him.
andre gets out of his car as soon as he shifts it to park, doesn’t even shut the door. when he gets close enough to cal it registers that he’s throwing up, hands curled into the grass like it’s keeping him steady.
andre wants to laugh at him once it devolves into dry heaving. he doesn’t think cal even knows he’s there.
“get up.” andre glances at the house again and spots someone staring at them, leaning against the doorframe and drinking from a long neck bottle. it makes his skin itch, feels entirely off. he shifts his weight and struggles to ignore it. “cal, come on. get up.”
“andre?” his voice is hoarse, like his throat is raw and it hurts to talk. his face is surprisingly clean and devoid of puke, just red and wet from tears. he hasn’t moved an inch, nails still dug into the dirt.
“yeah, it’s me. get up.” andre’s breath catches briefly when cal finally looks at him, or at least attempts to with glassy, bloodshot eyes. andre tries to think of the word to describe it, settles with ghostly; all pale and barely there, almost see-through.
“i’m sorry, andre.”
andre closes his eyes for a second, tries to will away the pressing want to make him shut up. cal is wiping his face with the back of his hand when he opens them, focused on the ground in front of andre’s shoes.
“it’s okay, just get up.”
“i can’t.” cal’s arms are shaking, noticeably so even in the low light. andre thinks about pushing him down even further, keeping him there for a while, pretty face pressed to the dirt and —
andre grabs cal’s arm and gets him off the ground, wraps his arm around his waist and walks him to the car. the dim overhead light tints it all that yellow-orange color when andre buckles him into the passenger seat, and he doesn’t give how close he is to him a second thought, can’t.
“i don’t want to go home.” cal says once they’re pulling out of the driveway, mindlessly scratching his wrist. always scratching, like he has fleas.
“you’re not.” andre has a vision of himself swerving his car into a tree, maybe off a cliff, maybe into the lake, sinking below the surface until their lungs filled with water.
“i don’t, i don’t wanna be alone, please.” cal shifts, telling andre that like it wasn’t already written in scar tissue.
they don’t say anything else the entire way back to his house. andre has to help him get out of the car, opens the door for him and unbuckles him because cal is helpless in the way that would be endearing if he wasn’t a sixteen-year-old boy.
“you need to take a shower. you smell like vomit.”
cal nods, hurt and shameful all at once.
andre waits outside the bathroom, sits with his back pressed to the door and thinks about one of the worst shifts of his life he had a few hours ago, how exhausted and pissed off he felt, all of it eating away at his insides. he thinks about the person on the porch, how unnerving it was.
the water shuts off and there’s an odd few seconds of silence that feel out of place.
“andre?” cal says, not quite a whisper but just loud enough for andre to hear. andre’s eyes feel like they are going to bulge out of their sockets with each passing minute, further and further until his head is empty.
“yeah?”
“i need – can you come in here?”
andre pauses, thinking of a reason why cal would need him to come in there. of course he can’t, so he gets up and pulls the door open.
his brain processes it like it's a crime scene. cal, standing there in the middle of the bathroom soaking wet and shivering, thin arms hugged around himself, still fully clothed with water dripping from his hair to the floor, a puddle forming where he stands.
andre takes a chance to look towards the medicine cabinet where the disposable razors are kept, then to every inch of visible skin. no blood on the tiles, the porcelain.
“did you seriously get in the shower like that? just, why?”
“i’m sorry.”
andre already knows this, already expects it; expects him to be sorry for everything. he is getting sick of hearing it, so he sighs and stands there for a moment, narrowly avoiding a fleeting thought to just fill the tub up and hold cal underneath the water until he stops shaking, breathing.
“i’ll get you some clothes. don’t move.” cal isn’t even looking at him, seems to be somewhere else entirely, doesn’t even notice that andre is holding a towel out for him. “take it.”
cal flinches at the last part.
andre tries to shut the door slowly, inching it until it finally clicks shut. everything feels too loud, too much. his body aches and he is so, so tired. he finds clothes that will be warm, knows they won’t be warm enough because cal is perpetually cold. a freezing, underfed tiny thing.
he is unsurprised when he opens the door to the bathroom and sees that cal is standing there in the same place he left him, still clothed and stupid. he does move when andre enters, a sign of life.
“just put the wet ones on the ground. i’ll get them.” andre sets the clothes down on the counter and goes back to waiting outside the door, questions if he should trust cal not to find some way to fuck up something as simple as putting on clothes.
it is a bit comical when cal finally opens the door and the sweatpants that andre gave him are way too big in the waist, falling down past the peaks of his hipbones. the sweatpants that should be able to fit any normal teenage boy. except, andre thinks, cal isn’t normal. he’s so far from normal and shrinking a bit more every day.
andre sends him to the bedroom while he gets the discarded clothes and puts them in the washer, remembers it is too late to be doing any of this and leaves them to be dealt with tomorrow.
cal is waiting for him when he slips into his room, sitting on the edge of his bed like a little toy doll, all clean and dressed up in andre’s faded sweater, biting his fingernails. andre doesn't have the energy to acknowledge him, grabs a pillow and some extra blankets and goes about making a spot for cal on the floor.
“thank you.” it startles him when cal speaks, not enough for a reaction but enough to unsettle andre. “i’m sorry that i’m like this.”
and that –
andre is so very conflicted, wants to make it hurt and kiss it better, coax cal into telling him everything that he hates about himself, every flaw and weakness; thinks almost fondly of cal’s self-deprecating behavior, how much worse it’s gotten since they met. then he thinks about kissing him, his scars, get him all passive and docile.
he’ll sleep on it. maybe jerk off once cal goes to sleep if he’s still awake.
“at least you’re aware of it.”
cal says nothing as he slips down to the floor, curls up with his face to the bed and closes his eyes. andre wonders if his bones are pressing into the floor through the thin blanket he had laid down, if it’ll leave marks on his skin.
andre is more awake than he has been all night by the time he gets into bed. he’s thinking, thinking about how cal had looked when he got there, about the tears running down his face, the guy standing in the doorway, how utterly devastated cal had sounded over the phone.
he’s staring at cal, watching. he counts how many times he twitches as he drifts off to sleep, studies the way his face twists up like he’s in pain every so often. it’s lovely, in that tortured soul sort of way.
andre taps into that little bit of guilt that exists there before snubbing it out.
when he finally falls asleep, cal is there, too. he always is.
crosshair set on cal’s forehead, blood seeping from a wound andre hasn’t even made yet, blonde hair stained red.
—
andre wakes up before cal does. he’s still curled up on the floor, like a puppy kicked out of the bed. andre doesn’t bother with waking him up, just goes about getting ready for the day. he needs to go wash cal’s clothes, get those taken care of before he forgets about them.
he has work again tonight so he’ll have to take cal home at some point, too, so maybe the clothes will just have to stay at his house, give him something that at least fits him to wear when he stays over.
he also needs to study, which seems to be the right thing to do, convenient and unimportant enough that he can sit in his room and keep an eye on cal.
he’s looking through his notebook for a specific set of notes when cal finally stirs awake, sitting up and stretching his arms above his head. he looks rough, messy-haired and dark circles under his eyes.
something pulls at andre, ugly and yearning.
“morning.” andre says, even though it’s closer to afternoon. “feel better?”
“not really.”
“are you hungry?” andre had come to realize that asking him that question was futile. he still asks out of habit, but cal never says yes. cal’s stomach growls at the thought of food and it’s funny how embarrassed he looks. “you should eat. i can make you food.”
“toast?” cal says it as if he’s asking andre for permission, weirdly apprehensive about something that was being offered to him. “nothing on it.”
“yeah, okay. i can do that.” andre feels uncharacteristically nice, like he wants to take care of cal. it's disgusting and so unlike himself that he doesn't know what is wrong with him.
so he spreads a thin layer of butter on the toast, lets it melt down so it’s not visible, knows cal won’t gain anything from sixty more calories. it’s more about the fact that cal asked him not to put it on there, how upset he’d be if he knew he gave his body nutrients.
if cal notices it, he doesn’t say anything. he eats one full piece of toast and nibbles on the second piece for a solid fifteen minutes until it’s gone cold and he’s done playing make believe.
“i’m sorry about last night. i shouldn't have bothered you.” cal moves from his spot on the floor to get on andre’s bed, sitting on the opposite end. “you're just the only person i could think to call.”
“i don’t get why you thought it was a good idea in the first place.” andre tries to keep himself from sounding too much of anything, aiming for indifferent.
“my friend wanted me to go, and you were at work. i didn’t really want to be at home.”
of course, andre’s internal voice says, of course the neurotic little freak would worm his way into someone else's life after fucking up his entire existence.
“you don’t have friends.”
which isn't a lie. he just has andre.
“um, we met like a month ago. his name is trent. he’s, uh, i don’t know if we’re friends or not. maybe he just talks to me because i buy weed off him sometimes, but he’s, um, he’s not like a bad guy or anything, i guess.”
the um’s and uh’s are getting more and more common now, andre had noticed, like cal’s brain is eating itself and ruining his ability to string sentences together.
“he brought you there? why didn’t he take you home then?” why did you need me to come and get you? why did you call me? why couldn't you just stay home and wait for me to get off work?
“we kind of got in an argument, i think. he was going to but,” cal trails off, looks haunted, “it’s nothing. i don’t want to talk about it.”
cal’s refusal to tell him what happened is interesting at the least and aggravating at most. cal tells him everything.
so that makes andre curious.
“what’d you do?”
“i didn’t do anything.” cal frowns, stares at the floor. his body collapses in on itself like the flowers starting to die out front, tries to be smaller than it already is, his back slouched. “was just a bad night.”
andre knows if he were to reach out and put his hand there, he’d feel every notch of his spine.
—
cal manages to successfully dodge all of trent’s calls and messages for a few days. naturally, because he is being punished for existing, all of the hiding and avoiding was for nothing as soon as he ran out of weed. he knows where trent lives, thinks maybe if it’s unplanned then trent may be too occupied to want to talk for long. he doesn’t want to be rude, to impose, but he really just wants to get it and leave.
so, stupidly, he decides to stop by once he gets out of school. he hasn’t even responded to the messages trent left him, hasn’t returned any calls.
he knocks lightly on the door, bypasses the doorbell he knows by now only sometimes works. he shifts his weight from one leg to the other while he waits, biting at his lip.
only then does it occur that trent might not want to see him, could be mad at him, and then he starts to turn on his heels until he hears the chain lock being slid into place.
trent is halfway through pulling a shirt on when he opens the door but doesn't seem bothered at all, just has a smile on his face when he sees that it’s him. cal thinks about running anyway.
andre’s never smiled at him like that.
“cal, hey. wasn’t expecting you. you need something?”
“yeah, but um, i can come back later if you’re doing something right now.” he really doesn’t want to have to come back, wants to get so high he forgets about andre and everything else going on in his life, about food, wants to feel anything other than hollow.
“never too busy for you. come in, man.” trent holds the door open for him, doesn’t give him the chance to say no.
cal’s been to his apartment three times, but it’s never been like this. he feels out of place, suddenly very self-conscious when he sits on the edge of the worn couch cushion, shoes planted on the beige-gray carpet. there’s a candle lit on the kitchen bar, a poster for a band he’s never heard of attempting to cover a hole in the drywall just a few inches from the hallway.
“i didn’t know you were coming by or i would've cleaned. it’s a fucking wreck in here, sorry.” trent walks off to a different room and the walls are thin enough that cal can hear him riffling through some stuff.
trent sits down on the opposite end of the couch and kicks his legs out to rest on the coffee table in front of it, accidentally hitting the ashtray on it and causing the ashes to scatter around it like snow.
the silver balls of his piercing glint as they catch the light when trent turns to look at him.
“fuck. you know, i’ve been trying to talk to you, calling you,” there’s a cigarette hanging from between his lips, unlit, and he stops talking to dig around for what cal can only figure is a lighter, "messaging you and shit. i’m sorry about the other night. it’s just, i get that way when i drink sometimes.”
cal’s brain immediately kicks into flight mode, unprepared for trent to even mention anything about it, had hoped and prayed that it got swept under the rug and forgotten about long enough for him to get his weed and go.
he flicks the lighter twice even though it sparks the first time, the sound catching cal’s attention. he watches the flame, thinks about holding it against his skin.
trent’s looking at him now, earnestly, and cal thinks about running again.
“it’s fine.” cal’s voice shakes, too breathy. he knows it’s a lie. there’s not any skin left around his nailbed for him to pick at, so he settles for chewing his nails. it’s not as soothing, doesn’t hurt.
“you sure? you’re not upset with me?”
cal shakes his head, his hair brushing against his skin. he feels hot, burning up in a hoodie that is never adequately warm enough for him to be comfortable. his jeans rub against his legs, weighing him down like he’s treading through water.
“i get it if you are.”
cal’s hearing goes wrong then, fizzles out like TV static and diet soda carbonation. trent is still talking, he can see his mouth moving, can’t hear a single thing that comes out.
when it returns trent is saying his name, over and over again, alternating between that and ”hello”. he seems concerned, genuinely so, nice in the way he was before that night.
he needs to get out.
“i’m fine, i just really need to go.” cal digs through his pocket for cash and trent tilts his head, looking mildly confused. “here.”
“no, keep it. it’s on me. it’s the least i could do.”
“thank you.” cal grabs the plastic baggie off the table and shoves it in the pocket of his hoodie. “thanks.”
it must be the wrong answer because trent takes an abnormally long drag from his cigarette and pushes his hair back. he exhales the smoke from his nose and it diffuses into the air around them like putting a dirty paintbrush into water.
“anytime.” trent then nods, like he understands.
—
it’s rare that andre has a day off on the weekend, so he never knows what to do with himself when he does. there are things he needs to do, to catch up on, but he finds himself inviting cal over.
andre notices a few new traits over the course of the week. like, for instance, cal almost never pays attention to what he says on the first go around, makes a dumb little face and goes “huh?”, distant in a bad way, touchy when andre says certain things.
his body is dying, his brain atrophying.
cal is sprawled out on his bed and thumbing through the stack of cds he had brought with him, already bored of the one he had put in the player, not even midway through the tracklist.
“do you want to go do something?”
cal shrugs, too absorbed by the bootleg cd in his hands to respond, which pisses andre off even more than usual. only when andre jams his finger into the eject button does cal lift his head, his fingers still pressed to the clear plastic case.
“i said, do you want to go do something?”
“like what?”
“anything but sit in my room?”
“i don’t mind being here.” cal smiles, kitten-toothed, almost coy.
it hits andre like a hollow-point, and everything in him flares at the sight of it. he has to look away from it like it burns.
“well, i do. so get up.”
—
the suffocating smell of sweet cinnamon from the mall’s food court is nauseating. it takes the breath out of cal for a second, reminds his body how empty it is. it’s the type of hunger that you feel in your throat, the kind that can’t be soothed by time.
he follows andre to a line for food. he doesn’t want to eat, never does, but andre wants to and not getting anything would be odd.
after they order, andre sends him off to find somewhere for them to sit while he waits for their food to be ready. cal picks a table furthest away from anyone else, tries to distract himself from the nearing
devastation that is a meal by fidgeting with the laminated piece of paper plastered on the table.
minutes pass by like hours and seconds all the same until andre sets the tray down in front of him. he grabs his drink first, drinks as much as he can to take up space that can’t be filled with food.
he feels distended.
thin fingers pick and pull at the slice of pizza, mutilating it until it's nothing but crust and sauce. he looks at it as if it taunts him, the thoughts of oil and fat and eating in front of people consuming him.
andre nudges him with his boot under the table and his head jerks up like a child caught doing something wrong, eyes wide and hands filthy with the aftermath.
“gross.” andre grimaces, and cal knows it is, the sauce under his fingernails and the pile of cheese off to the side of his plate. “you’re so gross.”
“i'm not really hungry.”
“okay,” andre sighs, reaching for a napkin to wipe his own hands, “that doesn’t mean you have to do that.”
—
a sense of dread falls over andre once they get back to his car and he realizes the time with cal is nearing an end.
andre doesn’t want him to go home. being apart meant there was time that cal had to fill, room for someone else. it was hard to functionally exist when he wasn’t near, hard to think about the fact that he could be doing anything, be something separate from andre.
if he leaves when they get back, andre won’t see him again until monday morning.
“you should stay at my house tonight.” it doesn’t come off as casually as he intends for it to, sounds a little too much like he’s asking him to instead of just suggesting. “i have work tomorrow. you could leave then.”
“do you want me to?”
andre looks over at cal, at the pink on the tip of his nose and cheeks, at the pale expanse of his eyelashes. his body seizes up briefly, short circuits. it feels like he’s losing.
why would i ask you if i didn’t want you to?
it dies in his throat.
“i mean, if you want to. we can – we can watch movies or something, go pick some up before we head back.”
cal just nods, silent again, in a way that is not intentional or anything at all.
and maybe it’s the fact that it’s hard for cal to wrap his head around the fact that someone actually wants him around, or at the very least doesn’t mind that he is, and maybe it’s the fact that andre would rather eat a shotgun slug than admit it, come to terms with something he doesn’t have a name for.
andre wants, and wants, and wants so badly it crosses into need.
his fingers grip the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white, waits for it to ache before he moves and shifts his car into reverse.
they walk around the video store for what feels like hours. it’s pointless. all of it is. andre wants to leave as soon as they set foot inside and some of their classmates are there. it shatters the illusion, something andre has granted himself. the one-sided fantasy he had going on in his head, like no one else exists besides him and cal.
he’s starting to feel sick.
“what about this one?” cal says, hand reaching out to grab a copy of a movie andre knows he already doesn’t care about. “it looks cool.”
andre could not care less about it.
“yeah, let’s get that. and another one, you pick.”
“but i picked this one out.” cal tells him, like it matters, holds it up like andre had forgot about it in the point five seconds it had been since he agreed to it.
“i’m aware.” andre glances over at the people from school, and he doesn’t even know their names, but they’re grinning and laughing and what the fuck is there to be so happy about?
he hates them.
“if you changed your mind then i can just go home.” cal says, and andre can tell he’s trying to mask his insecurity, the self-doubt. “you just seem like you don’t want to.”
andre doesn’t dignify it with an actual response. he snatches the movie out of cal’s hand and another one off of the shelf. he doesn’t even know what he grabbed.
“come on.”
and cal listens.
—
a week goes by and andre considers quitting his job. the idea is short-lived, more of a constant buzzing in his head that, hey, you could be with cal right now instead of being at work.
he closed last night and opened this morning, and everything that happened between waking up and now is just gone.
school doesn’t count, because andre can’t act how he wants, can’t treat cal how he wants.
it’s another night of not being with him, or hearing from him. another night of pacing, and thinking, and alternating between his revolver and the landline.
he caves, dialing the number as quickly as he can before he changes his mind. the phone rings only a few times but long enough for andre to start to regret it. he should've just went to sleep.
“hi,” cal answers and –
and it’s mortifying how nice it is to hear his voice.
“hey, it’s me. andre.”
“yeah, i know. is everything okay?”
andre doesn’t know how to reply to that, so he doesn’t.
“can i come pick you up?”
“i mean, yeah, i was supposed to go to trent’s tonight but, um, yeah. when?”
“i don’t care, and now.” it comes off a little mean, a little shitty, but andre genuinely does not care. “just be ready.”
and then he hangs the phone up before cal can say anything else, and that makes the situation kind of better.
he presses the horn when he gets to cal’s house, which he knows is rude, especially at ten at night. it’s even ruder when he does it again, approximately two minutes after the first time, but then again he does not care because he told cal to be ready.
cal comes half-running out the door about two minutes later, drowning in clothes with his backpack slung over one shoulder. his hair looks different, longer maybe, even though it’s really not been much time at all since he saw him last. time is irrelevant at this point, just another constant that isn’t really much of a constant at all.
it’s dark. cal looks pretty in his headlights.
“hi,” cal says, and it’s already tense. he throws his bag in the floorboard before getting in and just sits and stares at andre, expecting something. “where are we going?”
the car door is still open, so andre reaches over and pulls it shut. cal actually leans back as far as the seat will allow, away from him. andre can’t believe it.
what changed?
he thinks about the last time they had really been together and finds nothing to blame.
cal had made andre watch natural born killers again. he makes andre watch it as often as he’ll let him. which is nearly always, because that's two hours that cal is occupied and he can just sit and think while pretending like he’s actually watching it.
he’d seen it enough times that he knows what happens, so it’s not like it matters anyway.
andre bought a copy of it for him after he had rented it for the third time.
they had watched that and another movie andre didn’t find interesting enough to remember. the movie he had grabbed without looking didn’t even make it to the VCR.
so he is, for lack of a better word, stumped. lost. confused. it’s not a good feeling. they’re down the street before he responds.
“does it matter?” you’re already here, with me.
cal shrugs, the streetlights forming odd shadows and shrouding him in orange light as they come and go.
“i need to go by trent’s,” cal answers, sort of mumbled like he’s afraid of something, “just for a minute. you don’t have to come in.”
it has andre glancing over at him. “you don’t want me to meet him?”
he’s not really asking, he doesn’t really care.
“what? no, it’s not that. you’d like him, i think, but i was just saying if you don’t want to then you don’t have to.”
“you think i’d like him?”
it’s hilarious because andre hates him. he doesn’t need to meet him to know that he does. cal is silent for a second before he lets out a little laugh, faint enough that andre almost can’t hear it over the radio static.
“yeah, no. you really wouldn't, like at all.”
that makes andre pause. is that why cal likes him so much? because he’s different than him? better?
he doesn’t fully pay attention to what cal says after that, just registers that trent lives on the other side of town. his fuel gauge is verging towards empty, so he’ll have to stop and get gas.
—
andre, predictably, does not like trent.
it takes trent a few moments for him to acknowledge that he is there, that he exists. it makes him feel insignificant, small. something that he isn’t, something that he never will be.
“what’s up?” trent looks at him, trailing off like he’s waiting for him to tell him his name.
“andre.”
“cool,” and trent’s staring at cal again, “you out already?”
cal laughs – it’s not genuine, andre can tell – and holds up the small stack of cd cases he has in his hand. “no, i’m just bringing these back.”
“i told you you could keep those. i don’t need ‘em.”
andre feels like they’ve been there for too long already. he probably should've just stayed in the car, but the thought of letting cal go by himself didn’t sit right with him.
“oh, i forgot, i’m sorry. i thought you wanted them back.”
there’s a bit of an awkward silence as trent takes them from cal nonetheless and sits them on the cluttered countertop to the side of the door. the almost silence, if you ignore the noise from who andre assumes is trent’s roommate flipping through channels on the TV.
he thinks maybe for a second that they’ll get to leave now, which is great, ideal even. except things never go how he wants them to. of course not. he’s stupid for even thinking they might.
cal and trent are sort of exchanging words, but it’s in a way that’s not conversational. it’s like he’s interfering even when cal tries to include him.
“can we go talk for a second?” trent nods his head in the direction of the hallway. cal turns to andre, who just shrugs. there’s a flicker of something in cal’s eyes, something akin to distress.
andre picks up on it, but it’s gone as quickly as it came.
“uh, yeah. i’ll be right back.” he says to trent, and then to andre. in that order. andre doesn’t care for that.
cal glances back at him while he trails behind trent down the hallway, mouthing a little sorry before they disappear. he hears a door shut and then he’s left entirely alone with someone that he doesn’t know. he stands by the door instead of going and sitting down at any of the chairs at the bar or on the couch like any other normal person would do.
trent’s roommate gives him a weird look, almost like he wants to say something but doesn’t. he appreciates it for the minute that it lasts.
“he eighteen?”
“what?” andre either can’t or unconsciously refuses to understand it the first time.
“cal,” trent’s roommate points towards the area of the apartment that they had gone into, “is he actually eighteen?”
andre’s eyebrows furrow at that and the words escape from him so he shakes his head, which makes the other man grimace, almost cringing, before laughing.
“that’s so fucked, dude.”
“what is?”
“oh, you don’t know. shit. it’s none of my business, man.”
andre very decidedly does not like that, but considers that it could be something else. maybe the fact that cal gets his weed from trent, but that doesn’t seem to be bad enough to qualify for it to be fucked.
“don’t know what?” comes from his mouth before he even realizes it. he hates how he feels at that very moment, like he’s missing something.
“it’s really not my business. how old is he? ‘cause like, damn. it’s crazy. you weren't at the party, were you?”
“sixteen.” andre can feel his patience wearing thin, but decides to play along. he can wait. he’ll figure it out.
the answer has trent’s roommate choking on his beer, which tells andre that it’s a lot worse than what he wants to believe.
“dude, trent said he was eighteen. holy shit.”
andre doesn’t have time to respond to that because the entire world seems like it’s falling below him. he can only assume the worst. there’s a ringing in his ears that keeps getting louder, more intense. he thinks, for just a split second, that he deserves this. for ever letting cal have any power of him. for letting cal think differently.
that was his mistake.
the roommate, who is not diffusing the situation at all, turns the volume of the TV down and holds his finger over his own mouth like he’s shushing him. they can hear trent and cal talking through the thin walls and the tiny expanse of the apartment. andre wills the ringing to stop so he could focus, and it does.
the first thing he hears is i wasn’t trying to hurt you. it’s muffled, of course, and cal is always so quiet, soft spoken, so if he replies to that then andre doesn’t hear it.
trent’s voice gets louder, easier to make out. he doesn’t have to put any effort into piecing it together, because he knows what he means. it makes him sick. give me a chance.
trent’s roommate jumps and turns the volume back up as soon as they hear the door click open. cal looks very distraught when he comes into view, quickly walking towards the door with trent behind him. cal’s face is discolored, the blush clouding it unnaturally bright. his eyes are watery, eyelashes spiked together.
“we need to go.” cal tells him, pulling his sleeve over his fist to wipe his face.
andre takes one look at cal and then at trent as he pulls out a cigarette from a tattered pack. he doesn’t even get the chance to light it.
andre can’t pinpoint exactly when it is that his body takes control of itself, forces him into the backseat while it moves on its own, and no sooner does his fist reach trent does it all wash over him.
the hit sends trent backwards a few steps.
“what the fuck?” trent raises his hand to touch at the skin under his nose, a confused look on his face when he pulls his fingers away and blood drips down them.
he can hear cal distantly, vaguely, but it doesn’t register.
“what the fuck is your problem?”
andre should be expecting it when trent hits him back, but he isn’t. he punches him square in the eye, and andre knows it’s going to bruise. nothing in him seems to care, his sense of self-preservation gone.
his first cohesive thought is the gun he has in his glovebox, the one that’s sat there untouched since the day he held it in his hands and talked himself out of –
something that was so far behind him it didn’t feel real, didn’t matter, never mattered, wasn’t tangible. but this is. brain matter scattered around the walls and on the sticky carpet around them, blood spray on cal’s face, in his hair.
his roommate pulls trent away by the time andre’s knuckles are bleeding and his bottom lip is split open. his face hurts, his body hurts, but cal is so upset that andre can’t say he didn’t feel like all of it was worth it.
he can feel his eye slowly swelling shut, a dull throbbing pain that warns him he should probably drive home before he can’t see out of it anymore. he could have cal drive, and he probably should, except he doesn’t like giving up that control.
god, he should've just killed him. he should've just shot him when he had the chance. he still could, but cal is pulling him out of the door and towards the parking lot. another time, he tells himself.
neither of them speak on the way to andre’s house. he doesn’t ask if cal wants to go home, and cal doesn’t tell him he does, so andre decides for him.
it’s not until they’re there that they actually talk.
andre’s sitting on the couch with a bag of frozen mixed vegetables pressed to his eye, sulking. he shifts when cal sits beside him, moving to rest his elbow on the arm of the couch. he winces when the sharp corner of the bag catches the slit by his eyebrow.
he feels off. like his skin is too tight for his body, like his veins are tangled, like each movement is the wrong one. it’s unsettling and he can’t quite voice it in a way that is comprehensive.
“are you okay?” cal asks, far too gently than what andre deserves. he doesn’t feel like answering it.
“how – how old is he, anyway?” it’s watery, feels like coughing up razor blades.
“what?”
“trent.” the mention of his name has cal brushing his hair behind his ear and staring at his lap like he can’t look at andre any longer, sinking into the couch even further.
“he’s twenty-two, i think.”
andre laughs, all clipped and artificial. of course.
“so are you two a thing?” he can’t stop himself from asking, like it’s a scab he just can’t stop picking.
“what?”
“you and trent.” andre spits and turns away when cal finally looks at him again, and god it hurts. cal is softer like this, all subdued and not on edge or thinking about getting zipped up in a bodybag. “i don’t care if you are.”
cal shakes his head. andre can see it happening from the corner of his good eye, can see cal pulling his legs up to his chest.
“no, no. it’s not – it’s not like that, at all. no. he tried to – he um, he tried, but i didn’t, i didn’t want to.”
and then things start to click in andre’s head.
“when?”
“the night you came and got me. he tried to, and i kept saying i didn’t want to, but he, he stopped after i said i was gonna get sick.”
it feels like andre can’t breathe for a second. like his lungs have collapsed and there’s nothing left there. it only gets worse when cal continues speaking.
“i called you, before – before it happened. i wanted to leave, you know, to be with you, i’m sorry.”
andre doesn’t know what to say.
there's a part of him that wants to apologize, to tell cal that he was sorry he didn’t get there sooner. but it wasn't his fault, was it? cal should've just stayed home, should've known better than to go to a party. to trust someone other than him.
so he settles for oh.
“are you mad at me?” he asks, small, wounded.
“i just don’t know what you expected.” andre shrugs, hoping that he masks how upset he is well enough that cal doesn’t pick up on it. “i mean seriously.”
“he said i could lay down, he was just staying with me so i didn’t, so i didn’t choke on my puke. i didn’t know he liked me.”
“yeah, well. guess you do now.”
“i don’t like him like that.”
“i don’t care if you do.” andre refuses to accept it, to believe him.
“andre, please.”
“no, genuinely. i don’t. at all.” he knows he’s acting childish but he can’t stop himself, wants to throw a fit and kick and cry and scream. “don’t even know why you’re here. you should be with him.”
andre feels his face heat up before his eyes start to fill with tears, enough to blur his vision. he hasn’t cried in years, can’t even remember the last time or what it had been over, but it hits him all at once and the hurt of wanting something he can’t have causes his restraint to splinter.
he throws the bag onto the table, listening to it thud as it slides. it’s not helping. nothing ever helps.
“andre?” cal says softly, and it’s this strange, horrifying thing.
“i hate you.” andre wipes his face roughly and kills what's left of the tears before they could fall. “i wish i never met you.”
and it serves to satisfy andre a little bit to see cal’s face drop, to watch cal process it. he tilts his head, blinks all slow.
“i’m sorry,” then, “i don’t hate you.”
“it’d be easier if you did.” andre leaves it at that, intentionally cryptic for no reason other than to watch the gears turn in cal’s head.
“i’m confused.”
“i can tell.” there’s no bite behind it, no weight. he sighs. his head starts to hurt, a dull ache blooming at his temples and his eye, and he is so, so tired once again.
“did i do something?”
andre just stares at him for a moment, hesitates, narrows his vision down to how cal’s worrying his bottom lip with his sharp teeth, thinks about how it would feel against his own. wants it, needs it, decimates it. and for the first time, he can’t think of a single thing cal has done. it’s just him.
“no, no. it’s not you.” andre sinks down, carefully deciding what to say next. “it’s me.”
cal is quiet, waiting for him to elaborate.
“i’m in love with you.” andre looks over at him from underneath heavy eyelids. he doesn't hide the anger in it, doesn’t see the point in lying anymore. he is done with it. he’s ripped off the proverbial bandaid and he can’t come back from it now.
“oh.” cal whispers, staring down at his lap.
“yeah.”
“since when?”
since the beginning.
“does it matter?” there are a million other things that he thinks of telling cal but they just metamorphose into anger, annoyance, everything other than what he needs to say.
cal reaches out to hold andre’s hand, but andre jerks it away the second his fingers brush over it. it makes cal flinch, his own hand still raised in the air.
“i don’t get – why? i thought you –”
“none of it matters. we aren't going to be together. there’s no happy ending for us, cal. get that through your head.”
“i don’t get why we can’t be.” cal frowns. andre’s stomach turns. “we don’t have to tell anyone, if that’s why. i swear.”
“try to use your brain for once.”
“i want to be with you, too.”
andre huffs, hand tightening into a fist until it feels like his knuckles are bleeding again.
“no, you don’t.”
for a second it’s like he can finally breathe. digging that piece of himself out of his chest and throwing it out meant that he didn’t have to carry that burden any longer. it wasn’t his anymore. it was cal’s, something for him to deal with while andre dealt with killing the emotion entirely.
and then, to make things worse, because that’s all he ever seems to be good at, “i’m not like you.”
cal opens his mouth again, then closes it, recoiling.
“you have problems.” it’s juvenile, angry. andre deserves it.
he can’t stop himself from laughing.
“yeah, coming from the one who got put in the hospital because he’s too stupid to eat.”
“i fucking hate you.” and then cal is gone, already halfway to the door by the time andre looks up.
he lets a minute or two pass before he goes after him.
“i don’t really hate you.” cal confesses, wiping away his tears for the second time in one night. he looks how andre feels, and it makes andre want to put his face through the window just to make it stop.
“you should.” andre mumbles under his breath, sitting down beside cal on the edge of the porch, and it’s not that he doesn’t know he’s pathetic, probably even worse than cal. he knows. he just hopes cal doesn’t figure it out.
he can’t bring himself to say it back, that he doesn’t sincerely hate him, either. he doesn’t think he ever could, has too much invested in it to let it go to waste.
cal doesn’t reply, just sits there hanging his head. maybe it’s best that he doesn’t say anything, because andre can’t think straight when he does.
“we were made for each other.” andre says, his lip splitting back open when he does, the skin separating, healing undone.
cal looks up at that, expression indecipherable. he just looks broken. andre thinks that maybe he’s accomplished something with this, but a grave can always be dug deeper than six feet, so he keeps going.
he takes a shallow breath when andre cradles the side of face and pulls him closer, their noses nearly touching. andre looks down to cal’s pink mouth and takes.
andre knows that cal can taste his blood, because he can taste it, too. he wants more, needs it, knows that cal would give it to him, anything he wants.
his blood is on cal’s lips when he pulls away from cal, diluted with spit and morphed into some sort of gloss. it’s on his cheek, too, his chin. it’s beautiful, like reopening old wounds.
“you’re perfect.” it’s the first nice thing that andre thinks he’s ever said to cal, feels wrong when he says it, like he’s betraying himself. “perfect for me.”
“then – then why don’t you want me?”
“i do.” and admitting that, that right there, is where he betrays himself.
anger flashes over cal’s face, and then hurt, and then confusion. andre watches him process it in real time, which would at least be a little bit funny if it were any other situation.
“you said you hated me, andre.”
“i told you i’m in love with you.” andre doesn’t like having to be so honest, truly. he despises it, but he has to clean this up. “i need you.”
someone a few houses down turns their porch light on to let their dog out. it’s only then that andre remembers that they really need to take this inside, so he gets up without giving cal the time to respond.
“come on.”
and cal does, like always. not an ounce of resistance. that’s why he’s so perfect for andre, just lets him control and lead. it’s what he needs, what cal needs. andre can give it to him, and andre can take.
“we should get some sleep.” andre goes about getting him a pair of pajamas, ignoring cal’s clothes he had washed the last time he had stayed over in favor of his own. “you can sleep in my bed.”
he purposefully doesn't say the with me part.
“um, are you sure?”
andre sighs. “if i didn’t want you to, i wouldn't offer.”
and when cal touches his hand again, this time underneath the heavy covers, he doesn’t move away.
“are we going to talk about it?” cal whispers, and andre knows there's a lot of things cal could be referring to. none of them are anything he feels like talking about. for now, he wants to pretend. he wants to pretend that he can have this, that they can have this.
“probably not.”
and when he dreams of cal that night, he’s not the only one that’s bleeding.