In the Aftermath {Oriel}

[Erik Stewart]

Erik, as a member of the cleaning staff, was on duty the morning after prom night. It was a tall order. The extra food had been cleared away already, but the tables and chairs had to be put up, all the decorations put down, streamers swept up, and general messes eradicated. Mostly he stuck to cleaning floors and tables, as usual. He did his job, but he was distant, more quiet than usual…which meant, at least, that he wasn’t giving anyone any lip. Most of his coworkers just assumed it was because of the early hours.

By the time everything was put up, it was nearly midday. The center was active again and back to its usual business. Soon enough Erik could go to his dorm and sleep off the deficit, and he’d be looking forward to at least two days off duty. Before that, though, he’d brought an extra Coke for an impromptu visit.

“Here,” he said, handing one to Oriel. “It’s on the house.”

Erik sat next to him. They were sitting on the concrete steps leading up to the employees-only door. It wasn’t the best view (there was the dumpsters to the far left and a flat parking lot to the front), but it was quiet enough. It was hot, too, and Erik was shrugging off his jacket; he’d only had to wear it because the facility was strict about workers not showing off shoulders and whatnot.

He held it to his stomach. “You didn’t go to the dance, did ya?” he asked him; it was obvious from his perspective. There was no reason for Oriel to be back so soon if he had. “I’d ‘uh thought Phoenix woulda dragged you by the hair.”

[Deleted]

Oriel was, as expected, fucking tired. He needed a nap. The mere fact that he was all the way down here at the LGBT center was against his nature. Against his principles. Against his religion, even. But still here he was, if just for a chance to hang out with his friend outside of Hammel for once.

“Actually, we did go,” he clarified, popping open the soda. He took a drink before continuing. “Figured we may as well try to go to one of those things for once.” A smile cross his lips as he looked back on the memories of the night before.

The ice coolness of the soda was refreshing against his parched throat. In this heat, Oriel had even gone as far as to wear his black workout shorts - the ones where the pant legs descended just around his knee and which was made of some fancy lightweight material - along with the kind of plain white tank that made people think he was a punk. Well, they weren’t wrong.

Oriel glanced over at Erik, his eyes observing the quiet boy. “You doing alright?”

[Erik Stewart]

Erik’s eyes lifted upwards in thought. He tilted his head. “Oh,” he said.

He’d helped set it up, too. It hadn’t bothered him too much, or he didn’t think it had. All he remembered thinking about the whole affair was how a costume prom-night sounded tacky and not something he’d willingly attend anyway. “You gonna tell me you dressed up like Tarzan or some shit?”

He took a sip from his drink. To Erik, it seemed he wasn’t any more quiet than usual; he thought he’d been doing a pretty good job of keeping things under wraps, considering. So he was surprised when Oriel asked him if he was doing ‘alright’. He tried to keep that surprise off his face, as well as the discomfort he felt when asked it. He was loathe to speak about it. It felt like it’d amassed a deep tangled black hairball at the bottom of his throat, sitting heavy on top of his heart; it would be difficult to talk around it.

Erik shrugged. Then, he muttered, “It’s all bullshit anyways.”

[Deleted]

Oriel shook his shoulders forward as he laughed into his soda can. “Nah, not Tarzan.” Didn’t sound like Erik especially wanted to hear the mushiness of how he and Phoenix actually participated in a stupid event such as this one. But Oriel was going to offer it up anyway. “It was Captain Hook and Tinkerbell. I’ll let you guess who was who.” Though knowing Oriel, he’d just as willingly dress as either one over the other.

It was probably just his imagination though, that there was something off about Erik recently. He’d noticed it, or thought he’d noticed something strange about Erik’s behavior lately, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. When watching the boy during their normal interactions, it didn’t seem like he’d been acting any differently; Erik was naturally a very quiet and private person, Oriel was finding out. A person with walls even thicker than the ones Oriel put up around himself. So Oriel couldn’t confidently say that Erik had been acting in any particular manner outside of his character lately unless he was…well, acting like Oriel.

But still, Oriel liked to think he had some sort of primal instinct that sniffed out these things, some sort of intangible intuition(which was ridiculous, because let’s face it, he wasn’t Tak or nothing like that). It was a childish idea, and he put little credence into it often, so when his concerns were confirmed though a small sentence that inferred there being more to the issue, Oriel was honestly surprised. And even more concerned.

“Wait, what?” he said shifting himself on the steps to face his friend more squarely. “Shit, you saying I’m right?” Oriel was silent for a moment, flickering his eyes out into the grotty-looking alley, then back to his freckled friend. “…you want to talk about it?”

[Erik Stewart]

Irritated, he turned sharply away from Oriel’s face, fingers drumming once or twice on the top of his soda can. If he’d known Oriel had only been making a shot in the dark, he wouldn’t have admitted to anything. It was too late now.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Oriel. He did – at least, as much as he knew how. But there were secrets tangled in this whole mess that he was afraid to touch, much less rattle on about, and he knew that revealing them would be like tearing open a wound. Erik wanted to forget, but there was so much about him that wouldn’t let him. He was quiet.

Before the silence stretched on to awkward, he muttered, “I can’t.”

Nothing else. No explanation as to why. Nothing to make the refusal gentle. Or, he would have. He had a feeling Oriel would take it hard if he didn’t, maybe he might even complain about coming all the way here to meet a brick wall like him. His blue eyes ducked down at his feet, then rose up to meet Oriel’s.

“It’s,” he said, pausing to wave his hand. “…it’s long. And stupid. And I wouldn’t know where t’start.”

[Deleted]

Oh, he struck a nerve. Oriel wasn’t exactly making a shot in the dark, but he wasn’t certain either. He was acting on a feeling, on an inconsistency that he didn’t know he noticed. And once this feeling had been confirmed, Oriel had zeroed in all of his attention on the other boy, unsure of what to expect next.

Oriel wanted Erik to talk to him. He wanted to know what was bothering the other boy. He wanted to know more about what he did in his private life, his public life, Oriel wanted to know about the southerner’s past. It was because he cared, yes, but it was also a selfish desire. If Erik opened up to him then that meant that they really were as good of friends as Oriel had imagined them being. If not, then it meant otherwise and Oriel had merely been deluding himself the whole while…

No, it wasn’t like that, he had to remind himself. Oriel’s face dropped at Erik’s refusal. It was fine, he told himself. After all, there was still so much that even Oriel wasn’t willing to talk about with just anybody.

But Oriel wasn’t ‘just anybody’, was he?

“I don’t care,” he said with obvious interest. Oriel snorted, a smirk reaching his lips. “Can’t be any more stupid than half the shit I complain to you ‘bout.” Erik tolerance for Oriel’s constant stream of energy and idiocy was a feat for the gods.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik hesitated. It was plain that the wheels were turning. He fought with himself; he fought to take strands of individual thought and reel them into something coherent. He knew that Oriel was waiting, expectantly, with a sort of eagerness that longed to hear a bit of gossip – that’s what it was, wasn’t it – and as much as he hated to play into it he was powerless to give up the opportunity. Erik sorely needed to expel some pressure off his chest. He’d been toting it around for who knew how long, and some part of him was just waiting for someone to notice.

“There…” He second-guessed himself, pulled back for a second as if he’d touched a hot stove. His lips closed. His knees were drawn tight, clutching his soda can. God, it was like pulling teeth. It was like dragging a wagon through a foot of mud.

To Erik, it wasn’t just one thing. Well, it was one over-arching thing, but it was supplemented by a lot of other things, things he wasn’t sure played which part. It was a difficult time for him. Only when he was asked to explain it did he acknowledge it; for the most part, he had self-medicated with sleep, work, sex, and a whole lot of nicotine. He didn’t like to linger too long on how he felt. He didn’t like to look up and see how far he’d sunk.

He swallowed, then sighed through his nose, shoulders slumping. “…I’m sure you heard half of it from Kodi.”

He knew they talked and you couldn’t punch a guy two times in the face without him telling his friends about it.

“But it ain’t about that.” Not really.

Another beat or two of silence passed before he took a breath. It was a big one, too, like something you’d take before plunging into cold water. His bright blue eyes rose to look into Oriel’s face. While there was resolution in his breath, there was nothing but defeat in his eyes.

“An’ he couldn’t tell you nothin’ about it, anyway.” It was said without resentment. “I think he probably told you that I hated ‘im. He probably told you that I won’t talk. An’ that I hit him. Which I did. But he – no, I don’t hate ‘im. He just don’t know shit, an’ that’s alright. ‘Cause he can’t know it.”

Erik was aware he wasn’t talking any particular kind of sense.

But he went on anyway. “Y’know, when I was younger, I thought things would get – better,” he said. “That’s what they tell you, anyway, that you should just wait, and I know it’s only so you won’t off yourself in the meantime, but – I don’t know. I guess I kind’ve believed it, or else I wouldn’t be this disappointed. ‘Cause when I look ‘round and people have…they have people who love ‘em and take ‘em t’stupid shit like this fuckin’ prom, they can go home with their mom n’ dad when school’s out, an’ what do I have? I don’t have anything. I still don’t have anything. It’s been four fuckin’ years an’ I’ve tried, I’ve tried, but there’s nothin’ at all to show for it, ‘cause they didn’t tell me that it never gets better, for some people.”

There was the insidious, creeping notion that there was something wrong with him. It ebbed and flowed like the tide, but it was always there, clinging to his back. Erik felt its weight now, crushing his shoulders, making him hang his head; he put a hand to cover his face, rubbing his temples, trying to stem the emotion his word vomit had induced.

Then Erik raised his head, as though he’d just been reminded of something. “An’ what’s he got t’bitch about anyway? All that fuckin’ talk ‘bout how he didn’t want a boyfriend, that it’s all sissy stuff, well – look at ‘im now. ‘I want t’be your friend.’” Erik’s eyes were indignant and halfway wild. “Pfft. Shit. He thinks I want t’look at his face all day an’ tell myself oh, it’s alright, it’s fine he can prance off into the sunset with some baby-face asshole when all he ever did t’me was shove his dick in my mouth. I don’t fuckin’ think so. Far as I’m concerned, he’s happy with what he’s got.”

Anger found him first, but that too subsided, washed out like low tide to bare the sharp, steep rocks underneath.

He sniffed. “I don’t want to…get in the way,” he said. “I fuck things up. That’s what I do. I don’t know what I did but – I did it. My parents won’t talk t’me, they won’t answer me. And - and you. I could’ve killed you. And Sean. My therapist, Jesus Christ - ”

There was one more thing to cross out the list and here it was – Erik knew he’d hit rock bottom, because this was where it was at: this was its beating center. “And I couldn’t tell the difference between Dom n’ his brother.”

[Deleted]

Oriel waited, giving Erik all the time he needed to get started, though it was true that Oriel wanted to pressure him into speaking up faster. Oriel could only remind himself that that he himself wouldn’t be so forthcoming if a person pushed him like that though. That’s how Oriel was trying to relate to Erik. And Kodi. He didn’t know their exact circumstances, but it was obvious that both boys had their share of problems that affected them much like Oriel’s did for him. That’s why, he supposed, it was a lot easier for him to be patient with them; he could empathize with them. It wasn’t so easy for him to do that with people like Gryphon, or the twins, or anyone else who’d come from a “normal” background.

The boy creased his eyebrows in confusion at the mention of Kodi. “Shit, no. He didn’t tell me nothing,” Oriel said, honest surprise and worry tainting his voice. “I didn’t even know you guys were fighting.” Oriel hadn’t heard anything, in fact, about how the two were relating since Kodi hooked up with that yodeling turkey.

What kind of friend was he that he didn’t even notice something so heavy had gone down between his two closest friends?

The way that Erik was talking, what he opened up about, reminded Oriel of when Kodi did so him him, though the dentokinetic had to be delirious with fever and high on bottles of Nyquil for him to even get that far. And just like back then, Oriel felt guilty that he couldn’t be the person to give his friends what they wanted.

“Whoever told you it gets better just from dicking off and waiting was an ignorant asshole,” he grumbled, remembering his own experiences. “Ain’t never fucking gets better.” Oriel stopped having expectations, he’d stopped trying because he couldn’t take the disappointment anymore. If there was something that Erik saw in Oriel that made him think it was better, then it was an illusion. “Just get better at hiding and pretending there ain’t nothing wrong.”

Oriel didn’t know if any of his words were helping…they probably weren’t, but it was just another thing that he and the other street kids used to use to pretend that it wasn’t so bad. Knowing that there were other people who did know what you were talking about, who weren’t just spouting shit that a stupid PHD told ‘em to but actually knew from living through it, was supposed to offer some comfort. All it really did was make Oriel feel like they were playing the “who’s life is more miserable” game. Which eventually made him stop whining about his own life, because there was always “someone who had it worse”. Who the fuck got to judge that anyway?

Did that mean that Oriel not having parents to love him was worse than Erik having parents that wouldn’t? Was it worse to not have anyone to love or to see the one you love suffer and tear and claw into his own skin from panic attacks and drug withdrawals?

Oriel looked down at his soda and tinkered with the tab until it snapped off.

One thing that Oriel did know, was that people like Dom could never hope to understand. And stuck inside their pretty little world that they took for granted, they’d never even consider trying. “I don’t know what you see in that guy,” he mumbled. “So you couldn’t tell the difference between a couple of identical twins? You saying he got pissed from that or something? Fuck, I hung around that guy’s dorm for a good six months and he still didn’t know who the fuck I was.” Oriel shook his head. “You ain’t the problem, is all I’m saying.”

He threw the aluminum tab into the alley. It clinked off the opposite wall.

[Erik Stewart]

“Nobody told me that,” he muttered. “Not to my face.”

He would have argued that it must have gotten better for some people, but that seemed besides the point, and he didn’t follow up on it. Erik stayed quiet, his eyes between his feet, his brows knitted together, the spaces under his eyes dark. He had not gotten much sleep and this was about as bad as he’d ever felt. So far, unloading his baggage hadn’t been as helpful as he had hoped when he’d began.

Erik knew that Oriel had something against Dom, and vice versa, so he was not surprised when his friend jumped at the chance to place the blame on his shoulders. The way Erik saw it, his previous track record with relationships guaranteed that he was part of, if not all of, “the problem”. His lips set in a thin line. After a short lapse in conversation, he took it as his cue to carry on.

Except he wasn’t sure how to tell it.

“I wanted it t’be different,” he offered, wincing inwardly as he said it, knowing that he had as good as told Oriel upfront that he felt like he’d lost more than a fuck buddy.

He was dangerously close to spilling everything. He was far too close to telling him of that night, the open car door, the long stretch of blackness; he could have told him, too, of the morning after, where he’d woken up on the carpet and found the bruises on his hips; he could hear it in his head, just beyond his lips, but he wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t. It was something he thought he’d take to the grave. That Dom knew was an accident - he’d just been the first one to text and it’d been a terrible, terrible accident.

The embarrassment made his cheeks flare up. “I don’t know. I guess it did. But it don’t matter much what pissed him off, anyway,” he said. “It was just ‘bout fuckin’.”

He was looking down, towards the concrete. “He told me so. It was all just sex.” Erik’s face was curiously blank. “And I’m stupid.”

[Deleted]

Dom was an interesting case. He didn’t hate the blonde half as much as he hated his brother. The reasons for it initially were borne from Oriel’s own resentment; the twins were from a far more fortunate environment than Oriel was and thus it was his impression that they must have had the perfect lives. He ignored the fact that Dom hadn’t graduated; such things told him nothing. What he focused on was that they had everything he didn’t and such a background meant that they didn’t care about someone as low class as himself. Meeting them face to face didn’t reveal anything to correct his assumptions. The twins were hard to read, especially Carter. Oriel’s lessened hostility towards Dom was for Erik’s sake more than anything, but also because he was only slightly easier to understand than his brother.

Oriel had a biased opinion, true, but he’d never see Erik as the one being the problem. Because then he’d have to admit that Oriel was the problem the entire time and was the sole cause of all of everything that had gone wrong in his life, everything from his abandonment by his mother to his sister being taken away to every single crappy foster family they’d tried to stick him in. Oriel couldn’t help being the person he was and being born into his circumstances any more than Erik could help being born a meta.

If Oriel knew more about Erik’s history, and that it was so eerily similar to Kodi’s as well, then he would make sure that Erik heard those thoughts of his. But neither of the two boys were very talkative about their pasts. Oriel wasn’t either about his own.

Oriel couldn’t tell Erik much, though. He couldn’t promise that it would get better, that the pain of losing someone you started thinking of as important would go away. It never did. If Oriel were to see Madison again today, he’d put on a brave face, lash out with something defensive and hostile, and then retreat somewhere away from others until he could push those emotions away again.

It never got better.

“That don’t make much sense,” Oriel said, thinking still that there was something not quite right with that whole situation. “If it was just about fucking, then why the fuck does he care who the person on his dick thought he was? If it was just about fucking, then he got no reason to be pissed, ‘cause it wouldn’t fucking matter what his bitch thought of him.” It was clear from the tone of his voice that Oriel was starting to get more and more pissed at this situation.

“Wanton people like that,” and like Oriel, and Erik, and Kodi, and Rya, and Tak… “They don’t give a shit who they get it from. Sounds to me like he’s either being a whiny little bitch Princess, or he actually gives a shit.”

[Erik Stewart]

The statement did nothing to soothe him; on the contrary, it seemed to touch a nerve, and he felt a twang of irritation stir up, which was the first familiar feeling he’d felt since he’d started this mess. He hadn’t admitted all that to have Oriel tell him he was wrong about the whole thing. “Wanton? Want’n?” Maybe he was stupid, because he had no idea what the hell that was supposed to mean. “People like that? Like what? You some kind’ve expert?”

And he especially didn’t like being referred to as his ‘bitch’ by a third party. “First off: might just be me, but I hear someone tell me it was just ‘bout sex, or whatever, t’my face, I tend t’believe it. Second, you weren’t fuckin’ there. So don’t go tellin’ me that I don’t know what I heard. An’ third – I didn’t ask for your theories, okay, you wanted t’know what was wrong an’ I’m tellin’ you. That’s all there is to it.”

The last thing Erik wanted to take away from this was false hope. He wanted to extinguish it, bury it six feet under – maybe deeper if he could manage. Of course he realized that Oriel was trying to help in his own way, but Erik had never been the sensitive sort, and even less so when he was a raw, emotional tangle. It only took a single misstep to cross his fragile trust while he was opening up, so to speak. Sean, and more recently Linda, could attest to that.

He fumed for an extra second or two, then said, in a mumbling (though gentler) tone, “It’s over with now.”

[Deleted]

“Fine, you’re right. I don’t know shit ‘bout what’s going on between you two. And I don’t know shit about people who fuck around just for the sake of fucking.” It wasn’t like Oriel was one of those people or nothing, right? Oriel breathed through his own growing irritation. Erik was right though, Oriel knew it. And Oriel hated when people made assumptions about him more than anything. “Just telling you what it sounds like to me,” he said with a strong sigh through his nose. “But you’re right, I shouldn’t be assuming I know shit about…anything.”

Oriel still thought he was right, though. How could he not? There was some arrogance in there, but it still didn’t made sense to him. Oriel, and Erik he assumed(there we go with the assuming again), knew better than anybody what it was like to say one thing when you meant the exact opposite. It was how you kept from being hurt, deny the emotion’s existence and push it away. Before it could do any real damage.

It wasn’t something that he’d admit to doing himself yet though. And he’d be damned if he accused Dom or Erik of doing the same. Not after the last time he tried to help, a mere few seconds ago.

He stared into his fizzing coke can. “What’re you going to do now, then?” Oriel wanted to ask more about the incident specifically, but…Erik wasn’t going to tell him any more of that now, was he? It was for the best anyway. Any more talk of how much of a dick Dom had been, and Oriel was going to be halfway back to the dorms by the end of Erik’s first breath, ready to pummel the terrakinetic into the world beyond. However, given their last encounter, Oriel likely wouldn’t get within 10 feet of Dom if he didn’t want him to.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik huffed in reply. He didn’t really have the emotional capacity at the moment to hold a grudge, so he let his ‘apology’ slip by without another word. It took him a while to respond, but when he did, it was with a shrug and a “Nothin’.”

It seemed all he could do, after all. Begging for forgiveness wasn’t something he did; it lacked dignity. That, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to weather another rejection.

“I thought I’d just bitch ‘bout it for a little,” he muttered. “Eat, sleep, fuck ‘round, maybe.”

Just listening to himself was tiring, he thought. He’d already been forced to wake up early, and he’d gone through several hours of manual labor besides, but the sort of tired he felt came from within. Threadbare, like a ragged piece of clothing. Washed up. Erik took a sip from his soda can and fixed his eyes on a spot of dark concrete.

“I could dig a hole n’ live in it,” he suggested.

[Deleted]

Nothing.

Well, that was an option. Either do something or nothing. Oriel himself usually went for nothing. Because…he’d tried something before and it just ended up with nothing anyway. Oriel wasn’t sure he agreed with Erik’s logic still, but….fuck, he didn’t know. Maybe Oriel was just trying to see things where there wasn’t anything. Because Oriel hated seeing him so obviously unhappy.

“Sounds like as good a plan as any,” he said. What else was he supposed to say? Oriel didn’t know. That’s probably what Oriel would end up doing in that situation. Well, it is what Oriel had done in that situation. Oriel barely smiled. That was how he met Erik, now that he thought about it. Though it was more like fuck with him that first time.

“So what, you just going to become a fucking mole-person? Hole yourself away until…” Oriel waved his hand around as he trailed off, unable to think of an ending to that sentence. “Right, whatever.” Oriel wasn’t taking that suggestion seriously. “If you do, just let me know where so I can drag your skinny white ass out of it and chuck it in the lake.”

[Erik Stewart]

Erik didn’t smile. He was past that. He didn’t know what he was thinking, talking his head off like that. If he’d thought it would help, it didn’t. Erik sighed and managed to lift himself up on his thin legs, a little bowed over. All he knew was that he felt tired, and still bitter.

“Sure,” he said.

Afterwards, he trudged off, forgetting to take his soda with him.

[we done I think]