What If My Love Language is Hurting People? - SCP Foundation

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This article contains adult content that may not be suitable for all readers.

Graphic depiction of blood, gore or mutilation of body parts

Features sexual themes or language, but does not depict sexual acts.

Explicit depiction of sexual acts.

Features non-consensual sexual acts.

Depiction of severe mistreatment of children

Depiction of self-harm

Depiction of suicide

Depiction of torture

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Table of Contents

Part I: Plymouth the Righteous

Interlude: The Ugly Aesthetic

Part II: Eric the Scorned

Epilogue: Argus the Healed

Part I: Plymouth the Righteous

ArtPiece I

You: Plymouth sets his drink down on the table with a *thud*

You: "You cant let them do that."

Stranger: do what?

You: Take it all away from you!!"

A young Cole Ortegren tries to hear more of the rain outside than the screams downstairs. Cold hands on a cold keyboard, swaddled in the blankets he's pulled off his bed to station himself in front of the desktop, Cole's not afraid of any more tooth fairies. But he doesn't hog the shower yet either. Little kid. Kid Cole. PieMouth.

Blood blood blood.

Something slams, but Cole doesn't jolt anymore. Eyes stinging, fingers slow, Plymouth swigs another pint of ale before laying into his tavern-partner about the hard truths of family fortunes.

Stranger: but i cant do anything, gorha whispers im exiled forever and they wont talk to me

You: "You arent aware of the power you possess" Plymouth corrects her. "You and me. With my political power, we can rally an army and storm your castle to take back what's rightfully yours!!!"

Clumsy, gauche text on a screen that means more to Cole than the world around him. So Cole believes. Plymouth is ready to draw a sword. Cole is ready to smash cut to violence. With every harrowed yell from the first floor, Cole gets fresh visions of the bloodshed to come. Entrails pulled from ruptured bellies by the hooked blades of noble warriors. Rains of arrows plummeting into the kinks between plates, exposing muscle, breaking bone. A campfire of mercenaries chewing on the tongues picked from the strongest opponents of yesterday's war.

One more scream, and Plymouth beheads this lowercase orphan, assumes her crown as the ruler of Not-Yet-Named, the Forever Far Away, where Cole knows there will be bed chambers he must eschew and advances he doesn't yet have responses for.

World Wide Web. Big, big, big. Cole Cole Cole, young young young.

Footsteps up the stairs cut this massacre short.

PieMouth hastily closes his shameful incognito tabs, leaving some anonymous Stranger to bemoan the loss of their roleplay buddy — if only for a second before clicking towards the next exciting chatroom. From one charade to the next, Cole sheathes his sword and readies his shield. The tones of his bickering father and brother condense into droplets across the door like the rain across a window, until it opens to welcome the storm inside.

The most that can be made of the elder Eric in his incandescent silhouette is just that: some flavor of incandescence. Eric, with the home advantage, slinks into the room without the use of the light, allowing his father to take his place in the doorway. His silhouette is only different in size. He nearly fills the frame, his head as round and smooth as an egg, his arms packed as tight as balloons, his scowl so whole you can see it even in only his outline.

"You will not run away from me, boy! You will not run your fucking mouth and then bolt!"

Cole's finger on the power button finally wins and the monitor turns dark, but this cloak of darkness lasts seconds before the light is flicked on. He hasn't even made it to the bottom bunk. Thankfully, the patriarch is thoroughly occupied.

"You don't own me, you don't own me!" Eric repeats the mantra of a thousand million youth across the globe. His sheltered upbringing is the only thing that keeps him from a more popularly spouted: I never asked to be born!

"I do!" his father bellows. "Now come down here so I can show you."

Eric's made it halfway up the ladder to the top bunk, but his father crosses the distance with no fear of stumbling across the laundry Eric was always to pick up, or tripping across a wire for a device Eric was never allowed to have, or even laying waste to any toys that Cole was always hastened to put away. Only the most disciplined of boys keep their rooms so clean. All the better for fathers to cross them and pull them off bunk beds.

With little resistance — because Eric knows better than to resist — Cole's brother lands on his back, only to stare up at Dad.

"Stand up," he urges.

Eric complies.

"Stand up straight," he commands.

"Okay," Eric whimpers.

"Okay?" Dad puts his hands on Eric's shoulders, and forces him to a kneeling position. Eric tries to shrug him off but fails. "Try that again. Okay who?"

Eric stands. Straight. No slump in his back like his usual stance.

"Okay sir."

"That's better. I don't want you seeing those fucking King kids again, alright?"

"Dad —"

"Alright?"

Eric weighs his options quick enough to avoid another bellow. "Yes. Sir."

Sir Ortegren seems pleased. Or, content. He keeps his helmet down, over his eyes. With such fervor and grace does he champion His might, Plymouth falters. His reverence revealed, he realizes too late that he's put away his shield.

The patriarch turns to a defenseless Cole, sitting upright in his bed.

"And you," Dad starts. Cole's heartrate spikes. "Who said you could use the computer at this hour!?"

Cole inches closer to the wall.

In absence of a response, the father's rage turns again towards the older. "You…" Eric backs up, unsure of the angle of attack, unable to parry so hoping to dodge. "Do you let your brother stay up?"

"No, Dad —"

"I entrusted his care to you! Do you remember what I said?"

Sir Ortegren allows no time for the squire to recollect. He lays one good slap across his cheek, which Eric cradles. The knight allows him his slump this once. "You're a terrible influence on your brother," he says in his most level, reasonable tone. "You come home late, and you let him use the computer. Under my nose. I trusted you."

There is a moment of only breathing. Cole's fingers are frozen, but his feet are worse. There's a warmth missing, but it's worse than winter's life-drain spell. Plymouth thinks he can see it in Sir Ortegren's platemail — extracted through his gauntlets and stored in his breastplate. Then, the knight moves with intent.

Towards Cole's escape.

"No!" Cole yells.

He jumps out of bed, but Sir Ortegren is five times his size and eight times his mass. Cole would break his knuckles before altering his father's trajectory, and he knows it. The patriarch comes away from the computer tower with something important-looking. A little green square with more freckles than that redhead from school. Without a word for the device, Cole already knows what damage has been done.

"If I can't trust Eric to take care of you, I will."

"No! No, Dad, please! Please!" Just as inarticulate as his brother's teenage angst, Cole's begging accomplishes nothing. The father struts to the door, and turns only to say: "If I hear any noise from this room in fifteen minutes, you don't have to expect breakfast."

The door closes.

The room quiets.

Plymouth lies, open wound and coughing blood, saying goodbye to his throne, his crown carried off by a man more noble than he could ever hope to be. And from a pool of his blood, Cole turns to the squire — he who had so incited the warrior's wrath. And he hates him. From the top of his heart, he hates him.

Eric, defeated, sulks towards the light and turns it off. In the darkness, Cole covers himself in blankets. Eric climbs the metal ladder, which makes the whole bunk bed clink and creak. Rain patters the window. Both are colder than the air that surrounds them. A frost covering the windowpanes of their hearts. A slight tint around the eyes. Cole knows people can see it. Cole knows the kids that avoid him. From town to town, city to city, the only place Cole has found where he can hide his frost is in the already impersonal. The already anonymous. The internet. Life's better half: the fantasy worth pursuing.

Christmas exists as a relative reprieve from daily Ortegren life.

Recently moved to Texas, the Ortegrens are settling into their fourth home of the last three years. The surroundings are unfamiliar. The people are strange. Cole is afraid of school, but school can wait. Festivities are now.

Underneath the Christmas tree, in the living room cleared of unpacked moving boxes, lies an array of gifts, big and small, for the boys to tear into, most wrapped in a cardboard-colored paper with some red strings and ribbons. On Christmas morning, the boys rush from their rooms, their pajamas fuzzy in the cheap multicolored lights. Cole and Eric take great unfettered delight in the annual ritual of gift-receiving and -giving — though Cole is not so versed in the latter just yet. Freshly thirteen, Cole is getting ready to squeeze into a taller, thinner, sweatier body, and his parents are looking ahead.

On the unexciting side of gifts, Cole receives some deodorant he winces at, some clothes he doesn't fit yet, and, admittedly, a very nice hat.

"I don't know why boys stopped wearing hats," Mrs. Ortegren explains.

Cole doesn't know why either. (He will have a day of brief discovery in the near future, a run-in with a girl who makes him feel stupid for reasons yet unknown, and he won't pick up hats again.) The parents — the mom — shift their focus to Eric for the moment as he unpacks the next issues of One Piece he'd been patiently waiting for. The conversation that begins between Mrs. Ortegren and Eric is distracting and disinteresting. He digs further, only to find a box with unfamiliar wrapping paper.

Shake-a-shake. Classically, Cole gives the box a wiggle. He turns around to ask his mom about it, but she is still taken up. And just beyond her, on a leather chair, sits the father, calmly staring and refraining from an interaction. Suddenly, Cole wants nothing to do with anyone. He keeps his head low and his eyes down.

From Santa. Santa? Wasn't he a bit old for that? He tears open the packaging, and reveals a small doll. A little elf. He's old for dolls, too, but there's something else in the box. A tiny plastic Christmas card. He puts the doll down and looks at this curiosity.

Elf for Your Help™. Cole misses the pun, but opens the page. Inside it reads, in a whirling cursive Cole can barely make out:

Not everyone has good beginnings, but everyone is capable of a happy ending. We're here to help. To use:

Think hard about where you want to go — whether it be soon or a lifelong goal!

Find a token of this desire that you can hold in one hand, and kiss it.

Place the token in the Elf's arms, and close the Elf's hands over it.

Place the Elf somewhere high in your room, and preferably near your bed.

Be patient!

Grace is a slow and mysterious worker; we're only edging it along. Life will get better for you.

Love,

Dr. Wondertainment ♥♥♥

Cole flips the doll over in his hands. Yellow and green. Not the most flattering color-scheme. Attention: lost. Other presents call. The doll gets forgotten until the cleanup, when Cole shuttles it back to his room along with the rest of the day's winnings. There, he finds his second surprise gift of this Christmas. A tiny box on his pillow, with a note underneath. Cole picks up the box and rattles it. Shake-a-shake.

Bonus present. Sweet.

He opens the box — brown and simple, cardboard but classy — to find that CPU. Gasp. Back in the box. Heartrate spikes. "You serious?" he whisper-yells. Before passing judgment, Cole thinks to read the note. Envelope open, letter in hand, it reads:

Dear Bro,

Sorry this came late. I got it just before we moved and didn't realize the desktop wasn't gonna be in our rooms anymore. Anyways, I swapped the CPU in Dad's bedside table with the CPU from that dusty piece of shit in our basement. Figured no one would notice. So far, no one has. Now it's a pretty meaningless gift but I guess I didn't want the effort to be for nothing, so, here you go.

Keep it somewhere secret and maybe toss this letter straight in the dumpster. And don't think I never do anything for you.

Eric

He was right. It was completely useless. That desktop went deep into storage. It wasn't even in an unpacked box. Somewhere, a storage unit was happy to keep the wonders of technology away from the Ortegrens for the rest of boyhood-eternity. Hmm, Cole though. Well, if the gift was symbolic, he might as well use it symbolically. Fuck this doll anyways, he thought, but if they're going to make it easy on me I might as well.

But a kiss?

Cole looked at the computer chip and winced.

"Nah," he said to no one. "Yeah fuck that."

He pushed the chip into the Elf's stomach and closed the hands over it, which completely obscured it. Next, he climbed onto his bed to put the thing on top of his dresser, the highest stable place in the room. Once his feet met floor again, he looked up and wondered what the purpose of doing any of that was. Elves really weren't Cole's aesthetic and they never would be ever ever. It kind of messed with the room's vibe.

But. Hmm.

A parent's call put the fear of God back in him, and he bolted out to meet with family once more, the Elf a conundrum for a later date. Thing is, humans don't look up nearly as often as anywhere else. Only ever in the periphery of Cole's usual sightlines, the Elf's prevalence in his mind will fade easily — though little did the Elf care for Cole's ungratefulness. The token was placed and the gears — or wires — put into motion.

You: The corner of Plymouth's mouth twitched, and his squint became a glare. "You've bested me."

Stranger: Aegis raised an eyebrow. "I'm surprised you were able to admit it." Their sword glinted in the lurid sun, the remainder of Plymouth's blood dripping off its chipped edge.

You: The ocean's incurious tide lapping against the rocks filled the air, along with the wind coming in from the sea. Plymouth held a hand to his wounds, and his sword slipped from his fingers, falling lifelessly to a bed of sand.

You: "All my life, I thought I was the best. I'm not. I thought I was the lucky one. I wasn't. People told me I was worth something. Was it a lie?"

Stranger: ooc like what a hard hitter shit

You: sorry we can skip

Stranger: no this is sweet gimme a sec

Stranger is typing…

Cole can wait. Aside from being home for dinner, Cole is awash in a scheduleless existence that he decides to spend on the computer. The school computers, to be exact. The library is open well past the end of school, probably to be available for extracurriculars and study groups (Cole sees his fair share of both but participates in neither), and they have myriad computers, so many that he's never been bothered for using one up.

Roleplaying. Every day, after school. Omegle. Proxy sites make school wifi his bitch. Free forever, hell yea, Cole wins.

Stranger: Aegis knelt, and took Plymouth's chin in their hand. "No. You just weren't worth /enough./"

You: oof

Stranger: fr

Stranger: i gotta dip actually

You: Plymouth rips his face from Aegis' hand, and

You: aw shit really?

Stranger: yea i'm booked tonight but like you're like good at this

You: ayy thanks

Stranger: like i kinda wanna continue this scene??? what's your discord

You: you too

You: Discord?

Stranger: hmm?

You: i don't have whatever that is

Stranger: ohshi

Stranger: Okay like where can i find you

You: nowhere lol

Stranger: oh, don't wanna meet up again

Stranger: ?

Who is this person and what's their deal?

You: no actually continuing this scene would be cool i just like don't know how to do that

Stranger: gimme a contact ???

You: i guess i have an email

Stranger: bro like what is your life ?????

Stranger: Just get discord it's super easy

Cole purses his lips.

Stranger: I really do have to dip tho

You: gimme your like contact on discord and i'll figure someshit out later

Stranger: Okok but what's yr username

You: uhhhh PieMOuth

You: PieMouth*

Stranger: oh haha piemouth plymouth

You: yea lol

Stranger: ok chill im PentaclesPaige#0006

Stranger: both P names

Stranger: super chill

Stranger: ok cya

Stranger has disconnected.

Well, huh. They aren't very good at action, Cole critiques, but they have a good grasp on the character part. Still, Cole is reeling a little bit. Someone wants to continue talking to him. Someone has given him an app and a username. PieMouth. It came to him quick. It rolls off the tongue well enough. He'll stick with it. Besides, it feels… natural. Like it comes from somewhere. Cole shrugs at himself, and wipes that thought away, a little too quickly to be nonchalant.

Big world, shallow thoughts. Keep It Simple: Stupid.

Cole checks the time, and figures he could start walking home now anyways, maybe play some Advance Wars against Eric, or watch him play one of those Pokemon Nuzlockes he does.

Cole must have eyes on the back of his head, because he can just tell she's doing it again. Leaning forward and peeking at his shit. He figured this was supposed to stop as a behavior in the fifth grade at most, but here she was, the seat behind him, deciding that his stuff was her business, and it was making his hackles raise. He could feel them.

Here he is, trying to make good use of a perfectly shitty class, and someone is peering at his shit.

He closes his notebook with a kind of force he's hoping she'll take note of.

"Cole?"

"Yes?" he responds immediately, before he can even consider that more than just the teacher's attention has been thrown his way.

It isn't like the movies. Not every eye is turned his way. But it feels like it. Catching glances. Peers peering. Cole feels his face redden. His heartrate — no, it was already racing. Fuck this, he thinks, fuck this fuck this fuck this.

"If you have some energy you need to expend, you are welcome to take a walk through the halls."

Cole needs no extra encouragement. He can feel heat rising to his head. He nearly leaves the seat then and there — before turning around and snatching his notebook, giving that girl behind him some kind of look. This deep in his head, he doesn't even register a response. Or an expression. Message has been communicated. I need to leave.

Out the door, into the hall. Fuck these people. "Aaaaugh," he actually grumbles aloud, trying to manifest this mania into something he could touch and feel and thus choke and throw away. Left? Right? Left.

Linoleum floors forever. He wonders about the drop of the word "academy." Things weren't academies anymore. Academies had dignity. These are schools. Endless meat machines. Cole has received the hand-me-down of Eric's teenage angst. Hello there, old familiar. I understand you now.

He doesn't.

He walks, notebook in hand, at a generous pace. He breathes shallow, stupid breaths, and sweats from a mixture of hormones and something more unplaceable. He's coming up short on words, but a more outside perspective might suggest things like: flustered, embarrassed — no, something closer to intruded, violated. Some something in him takes control, and before Cole even knows it, three pages are ripped out and crumpled, and tossed in a bin.

The root of the infection, he thinks, is gone.

ArtPiece IV

Cole can't fall asleep. Grandma's house is old and smells like handsoap in every corner. This bedroom is no exception. Cole's blankets crinkle and hiss as fabric rubs against fabric, his cheap polyester tee shirt meeting the old-money silks of ritzy retirement. It feels like he's draped in the wrinkles that blanket old women's faces. Even the floral wallpapers look like the blemishes on Grandma's skin.

A clock with a tacky wood-carved owl ticks away from the corner of his room, and despite all his efforts he can't turn its repetitions into white noise. It, the blankets, and the occasional creak of compressing wood worm into his ears and lay down to rest with him. Or, of course, Cole is merely antsy, finding external factors to blame.

By this time of night, Grandma would be asleep. He feels confident in that much. He throws the lavender sheets from his body and tosses his legs over the side of the bed.

He shuffles, in white socks and plain blue pajamas, over to his suitcase, laid horizontally on the floor. He unzips it slowly and carefully pushes it open. Inside, he unzips a second compartment, and pulls from it a red notebook, supposedly with notes for his chemistry class, but that is hardly the case. He holds the treasure to his chest, unwittingly giving life to the phrase "close to the heart." Plymouth would do well to know the chinks in his armor, but pride keeps him from noticing his own weaknesses.

Cole opens the door onto the balcony that overlooks the first floor living room, and is sure to walk slowly and silently past the doors of both his brother and his grandma. Left hand on the banister, the other on his tome, Cole sneaks through the streaming moonlight, coming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows to his left. Once he makes it to the stairs, he puts his feet on the bottom of the sloped railing, knowing the stairs to creak. He slides carefully down and steps off towards the door to Grandpa's study.

Grandpa isn't around anymore, and Grandma didn't touch his stuff when he died. The study fell into his final expression — cabinets open, books agape, it looks scared, vacant and upsetting. The monochrome world beyond the windows looks at Cole with the same dead, milky eyes. That's why Grandma usually leaves the door closed, and that's why Cole can get away with being here, but what he's looking for isn't reconnection with someone he'd met thrice at most: it's Grandpa's computer.

ArtPiece V

PentaclesPaige

This is the beginning of your direct message history with @PentaclesPaige.

PentaclesPaige

?

PieMouth

hey

PentaclesPaige

?

PieMouth

uh

PentaclesPaige

who this

PieMouth

oh

we met on Omegle

Plymouth

um

PentaclesPaige

OH

PieMouth

you had a character named Aegis

fought on a cliff

PentaclesPaige

ACTION RP DUDE

PieMouth

stabbed me full in the gut

yea hello

PentaclesPaige

yooooo!!! you got discord sweet sorry i like forgot you existed

PieMouth

ye

PentaclesPaige

Like it's been months fr

PieMouth

ye

PentaclesPaige

ye

PieMouth

?

PentaclesPaige

🤡

what's been up?

PieMouth

what are you doing

uh nothing really

PentaclesPaige

like why'd it take you so long ???

PieMouth

lol

PentaclesPaige

"lol"

??????

PieMouth

some shit happened i dunno

im at a new place, computer in my room

PentaclesPaige

ok sweet

Do you have like

a phone?

PieMouth

lol

PentaclesPaige

"lol"

🙃

Can't she take a fucking hint, wow.

PieMouth

Not really

PentaclesPaige

damn wow

that's like

a whole different world

PieMouth

ye

PentaclesPaige

like

you been doing alright?

are you doing alright

now?

PieMouth

woah italics

how do you do that

PentaclesPaige

*like this*

PieMouth

?

yo

sick

That like no joke

adds a lot to RP mood

PentaclesPaige

you still rp?

PieMouth

when i can

yeah

PentaclesPaige

how do you rp

PieMouth

Omegle

PentaclesPaige

no like How do you rp if you don't have a phone or

like

a computer

PieMouth

lol

school computers

PentaclesPaige

"""lol""" (edited)

oh sorry

i rescind my """"lol""""

that's wacky dude

PieMouth

lol

PentaclesPaige

you need to stop doing that or i'm gonna make you stop doing that

PieMouth

sorry

PentaclesPaige

"sorry"

???

PieMouth

what the fuck is wrong with sorry

PentaclesPaige

no like is that genuine

PieMouth

yes?

PentaclesPaige

dude i think you need to get out more

PieMouth

yea like

get out of this conversation

what the fuck are we even talking about

what's going on

PentaclesPaige

bro

PieMouth

why did i contact you

what the fuck is even the point

PentaclesPaige

dude dude dude dude

i'm sorry

I'm totally getting up your ass about shit

Like we haven't even really talked yet

I shouldn't've done that to you

Didn't mean to get on your case

PieMouth

okay

PentaclesPaige

lol

PieMouth

:|

PentaclesPaige

sorry

A wind sends a shivering whistle through a crack somewhere in the room, and the pale blue leaves wave outside. Cole's red face scowls at this fumbling interaction, and he considers whether he should respond at all. Part of him wants to abandon the endeavor entirely. But a trick of the universe lays claim to only one possible outcome, and proceeds in that direction with a fierce determination. Paige continues.

PentaclesPaige

Flattering you reached out man, like i'd forgotten about you so that you remembered me, that's pretty cool

PieMouth

ye

it was the first time someone had invited me to continue, i wrote a note to myself in one of my notebooks

PentaclesPaige

Oh nice. Still in school?

PieMouth

ye

Cole uses a pause in Paige's responses to flip through his notebook, and folds along the perforations of several specific pages before neatly tearing them out.

PentaclesPaige

okay this is gonna sound hella intrusive but like

how old?

PieMouth

17

He's not. Cole is fourteen, soon to be fifteen.

PentaclesPaige

Okay that's good that's like

Human age

PieMouth

human age?

PentaclesPaige

yea you're like

Not really a person until you're at least 16 yknow??

I can work with 17

but if you were younger i wouldve totally ghosted you lol

Cole smirks.

PieMouth

lol

PentaclesPaige

ayways I was totally about to slpee before you showed up so like im gonna hit the hay

Are you gonna be here tomorrow or are you gonna disappear for another months ???

PieMouth

i'll be here

PentaclesPaige

sick

Did you reach out because, like, you want to continue our rp?

PieMouth

Yeah

But actually I was wondering if we could start from the top

i've developed Plymouth a bit from other Rps, I want to start over with a better understanding of his character

if you're down

PentaclesPaige

dude yes yes yes

To be completely honest I haven't thought of Aegis since we RPd, if we're starting over maybe we just ddo something completely different? You keep Plymouth?

PieMouth

yea i'm down

Mostly I'm interested in doing something with him that actually lasts more than just one session, occasionally you run into the same people on Omegle when you put your likes as the same thing each time but it's not something you can plan

I'm definitely gonna have access to this computer for a couple weeks, so like I'll be available

PentaclesPaige

aw

PieMouth

?

PentaclesPaige

are you gona disappear after that?

Cole pauses.

PieMouth

idk

PentaclesPaige

ok

Well talk tomorrow

gn

PieMouth

?

PentaclesPaige

bro seriously lol

Goodnight

PieMouth

goodnight

Cole closes out of the Discord app he'd downloaded onto Grandpa's computer, but he's not done with this room yet. He circles around the table at the center of the room to the back of the desktop, where Grandpa's old printer is. Much less modern than Grandpa's computer, it groans as Cole opens it up and stuffs the first page inside, face down. He closes it, hits scan, and the machine produces pops and wheezes that make Cole nervous, but he's done this before. He repeats the process with six more pages, and then closes the printer for good.

Circling back to the computer, Cole takes the scanned drawings of Plymouth and moves them into his character's google doc, sizing and formatting each so they stand parallel to his descriptions, backstory and lore.

"Hey," Eric's voice comes from behind him.

Cole hurriedly closes his tabs, and hears his heartbeat triple, pounding into his ears. "Bro," he whisper-yells, "what the fuck!"

"Sorry," Eric intones with that sleep-growl edge that persists just after waking up. "I was getting a midnight snack and I hear you in here."

"Why are you being so fucking sneaky?"

"Same reason you are. Grandma's not too easy to wake up, though."

"Go away!"

"Man, shut up. I was gonna ask you if you wanna go shooting with me an' Jed tomorrow."

Cole can't make eye contact, head whirling with what Eric did or did not see, or what he suspects, or anything of that sort. However, Eric has given him no sense of hostility or blame. He loosens enough to take the question seriously.

"Um, sure, yeah."

"Cool. After breakfast?"

"Yeah. Now fuck off."

"Yeah. Goodnight, bro."

Cole doesn't respond as his brother removes himself from the doorway where he had been leaning on the frame, tip-toeing towards the kitchen to grab a snack or drink or something. Cole feels limited, and decides he'll go back to his room before Eric comes back. He turns off the computer, grabs his notebook, and then pulls several books off of Grandpa's shelves that he has been eyeing for a while. "Don't mind me, Grandpa," Cole whispers. "I finished with Lord of the Rings, I need some new stuff."

He pushes the books under his arm, and then sneaks towards the door to check if Eric is within eyesight. Nowhere to be seen: and a clink from the kitchen tells Cole he's occupied. He runs up the stairs, creaks be damned, and gets into his room before anyone can see what he is toting. He stuffs the novels and his notebook back into his suitcase, zips it closed, and throws himself into bed.

He won't be able to sleep for a long time, but once he is calm enough, he finds himself looking forward to going shooting with his brother. And Jed, of course. Cole doesn't particularly care about Jed.

Pow, clunk.

"Good one," Eric says, with a warmth to his tone that contrasts the dry, frigid winter.

The lumberyard is wide and empty, and stretches far beyond what the Ortegren children have termed "the lumberyard." In reality, tens of miles of woodland is all new growth, a forest recovering from the industrial projects of several decades past. The trees are stout, and less sturdy than those that had come before, but they are still each of them older than any of the children who bear witness.

Jed wings a stray bullet into a young spruce. He can't know the difference between fresh growth and that which has weathered the earth's eras, he doesn't know that this wound will create a knot that will last the tree its entire life, one that would be joined by hundreds of other twists and knots as the decades rolled on — if it weren't for the fact that these woods will be stripped again several more times in the coming century.

To these boys, this is what the woods look like. It's nice to be out in nature, Eric sometimes thinks.

It's cold, Cole mostly keeps to himself.

"Cole, go set up the cans again," Eric instructs. Cole does as he is told, walking over the crunching frosted pine needles in his furred boots and (thankfully unnecessary) brown snow pants. He hugs his duck canvas jacket around himself, wishing he'd gotten just one more layer, before leaning over to pick up the cans that Jed had hit. He'd made about six of the ten of them, worse than his usual, but it was forgivable when the chill fucked with your hands.

Not that Cole will get the same treatment.

Once six have been added back — one coming from their can pile that they put in the corner of a concrete foundation for a building that otherwise no longer exists — Cole returns to the boys, who have been talking to each other in low tones while Cole was away. Cole is vaguely aware of some divisor between himself and his brother, the reason that they don't hang out at school. There is something about older kids that Cole doesn't get yet, and isn't eager to discover. They have many conversations that Cole is never privy to, and take great lengths to send him away to do things. Cole is undecided on whether he minds.

But that isn't on his mind as he takes Grandpa's bolt-action rifle from Jed. He wants to shoot cans. He feels the icy metal even through his fingerless gloves, and the heft in his hands is welcome. He presses the butt end into his shoulder, and levels the muzzle at the row.

Pow, clunk.

ArtPiece VI

Plymouth nails an escapee with his crossbow. The arrowhead spears into their calf, sending them sprawling onto the ground. Plymouth approaches and stomps the wound, making the highwayman scream in pain while Plymouth levels the bow at a second. This one is caught right between the shoulder blades. If he is alive when he hits the ground, he won't be for long. The third is definitive: into the neck. A volume of blood unbelievable to be contained in a human body sprays like steam from a broken pipe.

The fourth was shot through the shoulder, the bullet lodging into his broken bone. He screamed in pain, but it could hardly be heard over the commotion of the lumberyard. The strikebreaker ducked back under cover as bullets rang past him, the loggers firing back. This can't last much longer, he thought, looking at the road and assessing his escape options. There was a stretch of open air between himself and the wagon, though its tires looked to be in tact. No one had gone for the dirty trick of shooting them out, but it was only a matter of time until it was done on accident.

To his knowledge, there were only a couple more loggers to worry about nearby — at least, only so many with guns and the will to fire back. All he needed to do was make sure they stayed down before retreating to a safer position. He peeked above cover and, seeing no one, fired merely in the direction of the incoming gunfire. Pow, pow. The fifth and sixth shots penetrated only concrete, behind which were those he most worried about. Hoping that the shots would deter any to peek above, he ran for the automobile, only to —

Plymouth misses the seventh shot, the fleeing robber jumping into the wagon and the driver starting the horses. He curses, and aimed again. Eighth, ninth, they each jam into the wood of the vehicle, but the occupants are unharmed. He curses again, and then hears the whimper of someone who should be dead. Plymouth cut his losses, turning from the road to find the source of the sound. Behind a row of dry desert brush, the man with the bolt in his back lays crying and bleeding. Plymouth sneers. "Squirming wretch, let me end your miserable existence," he says, with about as much nuance and depth as it sounds. He puts the crossbow to the defenseless man's head, and pulls.

Pow, clunk.

ArtPiece VII

"That's ten," Eric announces. "Six cans down, ten shots. Barely a passing grade, little bro."

"What?" Cole states more than asks, incredulous. "Fuck you, Jed got six, too."

"So?"

"So?" Cole fumes. "I'm just as good as he is!"

"Did I ever say you weren't?"

"You didn't say shit to Jed!"

Jed says nothing. He's learned that when the two brothers spar, it's best to let them have it. He also knows — no, he hopes — that it is all inevitably harmless anyways.

"It's not about Jed."

Cole huffs, and almost smiles. "Then what is it —"

Cole isn't allowed to finish the thought. In his gesture of confusion and defeat, he has lowered the rifle, so that it is pointing directly at his feet, and Eric is quick. He steps to the side, grabs the rifle's trunk, and forces it to the side so that Cole aims it at the ground, away from both himself and Eric.

"Don't you fucking forget you're holding a gun, Jesus Cole."

Cole flushes with shame. "Sorry," he says.

"Don't be sorry, be better. Holy shit. I don't want you blowing a hole in your foot."

"Sorry," he says, quieter.

"Sounds like maybe enough for today?" Jed ventures.

Cole is now too embarrassed to make a contribution to the conversation. He lets the older boys sort it out among themselves. "Uhh," Eric says, a hesitation in his body language that Cole is too distracted to pick up on. "Yeah, probably."

Eric takes Grandpa's Karabiner 98 kurz from Cole's willing arms. Cole kicks frostbitten dirt and twists to face away from the boys. "C'mon," Eric nudges Cole in the back of the neck, and they start to walk, the two boys in front and Cole lagging behind. They follow along some long-cracked pavement that they are wise enough to not try to ride their bikes down, which leads from the lumberyard back towards civilization.

Cole minds his business. He wrestles with inarticulate feelings of inferiority and doubt, boyish hierarchical concerns. The boys up front speak in low voices, undoubtedly so Cole can't hear them, but he doesn't try to listen in either. Occasionally they laugh, but they don't rise above chuckles. Something is weighing on their mood. At one point, loud enough for Cole to hear, Eric asks: "Mind if you trot ahead?"

"Huh? Why?" Jed asks.

Eric shrugs. "I wanna talk with my bro."

"Oh." Jed puts two and two together, and his heartrate increases just slightly. "Yeah, alright." Jed hastens his pace a bit, and Eric stays back to wait for Cole to catch up. When they meet, Cole looks up to quiz his older brother with his eyes. Eric shrugs in response, and they start to walk. For thirty seconds, they walk in silence, Cole still too embarrassed to start conversation himself, yet increasingly curious as to his brother's proximity. Even on such a surface level, the intimacy of the act of seeking out Cole's company is uncomfortable to him. He struggles with the emotion.

"Do you… like Jed?" Eric asks.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, the ground underfoot.

"Like Jed?"

"Yeah," Eric cautiously responds. "Do you?"

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Jesus, it's a simple question, Cole."

"He's fine."

"Fine?"

"Yeah," Cole's face contorts, "why do you care? He's your friend."

"I was wondering if you liked him."

"Why?"

Eric struggles for words for a moment. "Just to know if you get along."

"What? We've never fought. Are you trying to fuckin', uncover some dirt or someshit?"

Eric lets out a loud breath through the nose, and the corners of his lips turn up into a bemused smile. "What?"

"Like, you hate Jed's guts but you gotta say it's about me and then you stick it on me. Trying to get rid of him." Before Eric can counter, Cole adds: "Do you like him?"

Eric pushes Cole hard enough that he almost loses his balance, but doesn't. Now Cole is smiling too, back into a familiar groove with his brother, one of ribbing and jabbing.

"Hey!" Cole raises his voice to try to catch the distant Jed. "Eric says —"

Before he can finish the statement, Eric attempts to grapple for Cole, missing on the first try but latching onto his shirt collar the second. Cole lets out a yelp, and Eric fits him into a headlock. "Eric says he hates you!" Cole manages to get out before Eric brings him to the ground and uses his weight to push Cole over. Cole fights back by locking his knees in a position that braces him, one arm below him for balance and another fighting Eric's chokehold and failing — Eric is bigger and naturally stronger.

Jed closes the distance a little, and lets himself laugh when he sees the smiles on both the boys' faces, erasing his first concerns about a violent encounter.

"Don't listen to the little shit," Eric says, hand now on the back of Cole's head, rubbing his face in a bit of dirt, pinning Cole to the ground with his own body weight. Cole, for his part, just makes muffled struggling noises, interspersed with bits of laughter. Eric, testing Cole's compliance, takes his hand off of Cole's head and lets him up for air.

"Says you're a shit-eating retard!" Cole gets in before Eric pushes his face back down and Cole's giggles redouble. Jed's eyebrows shoot up in amusement, but the comment doesn't elicit any other reaction. Cole doesn't notice of course, fighting as he is against a more pressing obstacle. Cole worms his head to the side enough to get out an approximation of: "Stop, stop!"

"You'll be good?"

"Yes!"

Eric stands up, and Cole struggles to his feet, coughing twice and laughing more than that. He brushes some dirt off of his pants, but then he turns on his heels and plunges into Eric's midriff, trying to use his whole weight to send his brother to the ground. It's worked before, but adrenaline keeps Eric alert for the attack, and a well placed foot keeps him upright. He uses his stance to push Cole off, and then gives him a light smack across the back of the head for trying. Both boys heave and chuckle. Cole lazily punches Eric in the arm, and Eric doesn't respond.

"Had your talk?" Jed asks.

"Yeah," Eric says. Without Cole's noticing it, Eric's smile falters just a little before adding a second, "yeah."

Jed gives Eric a sympathetic frown, but the expression doesn't last. "Then walk a little faster, would you? I'm starving and I wanna get home."

"Cole, walk faster," Eric deflects the instruction.

"He's talking to you, too!" Cole levels at him, but the complaint doesn't hold any grudge this time. The boys make it back up to the paved road where their bikes have been hidden in some bushes. Cole's gets stuck on a branch and Eric helps him get it out. As Cole picks leaves and twigs out from his spokes, Jed and Eric make some banter between themselves, talking about how long the Ortegren brothers will be in the area and when next they can all hang out. Cole brings his bike up to the road when he's ready, and the older boys take that as the cue to get on.

They sail down the road and into town. They haven't made it to the more suburban parts of the journey before the Ortegrens' turn comes up, and they have to say goodbye to Jed. Strangely, the boys up front stop their bikes to say goodbyes, and Cole quizzically sidles up next to Eric's stopped bike. Usually they just yell goodbyes and keep going, but something is different this time.

Jed and Eric stand awkwardly, and make a kind of non-conversation out of little observations.

"Well, see you… day after tomorrow?" Jed asks.

"Yeah, sounds good."

They look, for a moment, like they don't know what to do. Then, Jed extends his hand in a fist, and Eric bumps it.

"Alright," Eric's speech sounds stilted, "bye."

"Bye."

Jed gets back on his bike and rides off, downhill. Eric stares while he goes, until he turns a corner and is out of sight.

ArtPiece VIII

Do you like Jed? Cole questions in his mind, having completely missed a dimension of their interaction and noticing that very fact. Eric shakes his head, nearly imperceptibly, and then turns towards the hill to the left that they must climb to get to Grandma's house.

"Alright, little bro. Race you to the top!" Eric gets a head start, having mounted his bike as he said the words.

"Hey!" Cole yells in protest, mounting his own bike and preparing to pedal as hard as he can.

Cole gets off the bus in an unfamiliar part of town. Of course, all parts of town are at this point unfamiliar. Cole feels, for a moment, that he's in another country, of course completely unaware of just how different other countries can get. He's following another kid named Kody, who's probably a little less than a year younger than him, but nonetheless they share a grade and a homeroom. They sat next to each other, and Kody leaned over to Cole seemingly unprompted to make a joke of the teacher being a fat pig after assigning homework. They were fast friends, in the way that Cole understood friends to work.

Kody is having a lengthy one-sided conversation about a new console that's coming out, going over all the advertised features and release titles. He's particularly excited about some new graphics cards and a sleek controller design that Cole doesn't understand the purpose of.

All this is communicated before they even reach the gate. Kody's house is as standard as they come: so standard, in fact, it sits right between two other identical houses, all equidistantly set in this flat suburban plane. There's a little bit of wind chill and some stringy clouds overhead, but Cole didn't bother with any layers besides his long-sleeve shirt. Kody opens the gate of the white picket fence, but the rest of the house doesn't hold up to the middle-class accent such a fence is supposed to provide.

They enter the door of a tight, one-story house. Inside, directly opposite Cole and immediately visible, is a long confederate flag hanging over a cheap HD-TV. Kody shucks his shoes and Cole follows suit, though he's a little hesitant to, because the carpeting that covers every floor surface but the kitchen's looks grubby and old-person brown. A smell accompanies it. Not an unbearable or even distracting smell, but a smell that Cole notices and dislikes.

At some point, Cole refocuses into reality to notice Kody still talking about something.

"You don't shut up, do you?" Cole says, cutting into the middle of one of Kody's sentences, something about a military setting.

"I —" Kody doesn't seem to have an immediate response. In fact, for the first time since the start of the bus ride, Kody closes his mouth and keeps it like that.

Cole is barely aware of the effect he's had, but feels the relief of a moment of silence. Plymouth absent-mindedly wipes the subtle specks of blood off his blade before sheathing it. Cole walks further into the house without prompting, and sees a hallway to his right.

"That's where Mom and Dad are, on the left. My bedroom's on the right. Bathroom in the middle to the left, too," Kody says. "And over here's the kitchen," he points to the left, "and there's the dining room right there, and —"

Cole tunes him out and walks forwards, past the entryway and into the living room, closer to the TV. There's a big green-brown couch, a recessed lounge chair, a cabinet of CDs and DVDs, even some VHS's, and then a little glass table in the center of it all that should have been destroyed several hundred times by now but has miraculously weathered Kody's boyhood (thus far) and a number of ruffian pets.

Most important to Cole, though, is the game console sitting under the TV, and next to it, an assortment of ten or so games.

"That's my collection," Kody says, a little meek, now noticing for the first time just how much he's being ignored.

"Watcha got?"

Kody perks up at the recognition. "Oh! We have Accord, it's a puzzle game, it's not very good, it's about making a machine that builds a tower and you only know if the machine is going to build a good tower by watching it build the tower which can take a while, you can't make edits in the middle of the build so as the tower gets taller and taller before fucking up each time," Kody puts an awkward emphasis on the cuss, "and then you gotta go back to the bottom and make edits to the machine and hope you reach the goal and —"

"What about this one?" Cole picks up something with a skeleton and some fantasy setting on the front.

"Graveblade, that's like a collectathon, adventure-type thing, you go around and fight the undead —"

"You aren't a skeleton?"

"Oh you are, you're like, possessed by an angel or something — the story's really lame — and you are the only good one fighting against the evil ones, you know, uh, like so Satan has risen a bunch of dead soldiers and God who's only referred to as He and Him says that to fight an ancient evil you must raise an ancient good so you're like an old warrior, I think your name is Samuel or something, and you're going to go around — so Satan's risen a bunch of historical —"

"Is it any good? Let's play this."

Kody shakes his head, hard. "No, it's really not. It's not very good."

"What?" Cole shakes the box, as if he's getting the shape of the thing. "How come you know so much about it, then?"

"That one," Kody reaches past Cole, his arm momentarily directly in Cole's face which forces the boy to lean back on his heels, and picks a game off the top of a pile. "This, is, Heat, well Heat III, it's a uh, it's a first-person shooter set in the uh, Vietnam? Well Heat III is, anyways, and so you're fighting in a jungle, it's really hardcore, my dad really likes it so I kinda get to —"

"Your dad?"

"Hmm? Yeah, my dad plays it. He plays it with me sometimes, too. He's really good. He's a cop."

Cole snuck the mild discomfort under a huff of amusement and an accusatory glance. Kody seems unfazed. In reality, Kody doesn't notice the subtext at all, and powers ahead.

"It's a good game," he plugs in, "we should play that."

"Okay," Cole says, hesitantly.

As Kody excitedly pops open the case, a feeling stirs in Cole's chest. His intentions unclear even to himself, he nonetheless can't hold back from prying further. "Does your dad play other games with you?"

"No," Kody says, "sometimes. I guess. He doesn't like anything else. He just plays Heat. He's really good at it. He kicks my m-my butt." Kody stumbles over his words, and looks momentarily embarrassed.

In an admittance that surprises Cole himself as it comes out of his mouth, he says: "My dad doesn't play any games with me."

"Really?" Kody says. "That sounds lame."

Kody's responses come so fast, Cole has to catch his balance when honesty is given so easily. "It is," he agrees. Cole looks at Kody, who has the disc in one hand, the case in the other. Both of the boys are on their knees on the carpet in front of the TV, looking at each other. Kody's innocent, defenseless eyes disarm him, and he finds himself elaborating on a topic he hasn't even complained about to Eric. "They don't even let me play many videogames."

"Why?"

"I dunno." Cole's anxieties flare as he realizes how much he's said to someone whose house he has just entered for the first time. The feeling, deeply uncomfortable, worming into his heart and stomach, must be expelled at the soonest opportunity. To do so, Cole automatically, unconsciously and instinctually, summons up anger to mask it under. Anger is manageable, and directable. "It's retarded," he says, with a bit of emphasis.

Kody laughs. Cole's eyes widen at Kody, the boy with no reservations, who can laugh in Cole's face without a hint of shame. Before Cole can turn his anger towards this act of disrespect, Kody reveals the true subject: "They sound gay."

Cole snorts. "Gay as hell."

"F-faggy." Cole gives Kody one of the few looks Kody knows how to interpret, the observation aided by Kody's uneasiness, and so he's quick to clarify in a hushed tone: "That's what Dad says. Dad told me one time when he beat me in Heat that I wouldn't die so much if I stopped hiding l-like a fag."

Cole laughs, fully. Kody joins him, enjoying just the energy of the interaction. Cole can't express, to Kody or himself, just what it is about Kody's obliviousness that makes laughing so easy, but all of a sudden, Cole can't help but laugh. "They are faggy," Cole agrees, and a reminder of the anger comes back to the surface. "Faggy and fucking retarded."

"Retarded!" Kody repeats the word, too loud, and laughs again. "Fucking retarded!"

"Hey!" A voice from down the hallway shouts, and Kody seizes up immediately, rising from his knees to a standing position in preparation. Cole remains where he is, but his heartrate rises and his eyes turn to the hallway. Sure enough, out emerges a knight, sword drawn. Glorious righteous holy and right. Cole feels meek. Kody feels similarly. They see the same thing, but in Kody's world, this knight lives at home. His own protector.

"Watch your fucking language!"

"Sorry, Dad," Kody says. The apprentice. Cole realizes his place in the dynamic, and loosens slightly. This lesson is not for him.

"If I catch you saying that shit again," the knight levels his sword at the child, "it's your head. You hear me?"

"Yes, Dad."

ArtPiece IX

There is a weird silence. Cole takes in the imperator. He isn't like the one at home. He isn't a Sir Ortegren. He isn't someone Cole would expect to be a cop. He's got a little bit of pudge at the waist, but that's the only place. He doesn't look very strong in other areas, either. He's smaller than Cole's dad. Thinner. Shorter. His clothes fit loosely, and he's only wearing boxers. He doesn't look the slightest bit worried about his appearance in front of a guest. Cole, the Ortegren ambassador.

He does, however, take notice. The knight makes eye contact, looking through the slits in his helmet. Cole's heart thumps, equal measures fear and respect, but he doesn't feel endangered, not really. This one can't hurt me, he thinks. Not like Sir Ortegren.

Cole feels pride for his own father that will weigh on him for the rest of his life.

PentaclesPaige

no

Cole's brow furrows.

PieMouth

OoC? no?

PentaclesPaige

hard no

I am not allowing a rape scene.

Cole nearly scoffs in real life.

PieMouth

it's not of Argus

PentaclesPaige

really???

PieMouth

what?

PentaclesPaige

That is so far bessides the point dude aI am not talking abt a rape scene becauz of Argus or someshit Im sayin gno rape scenes period, in general, of anyone

I didn't think it was something I even had to say

Ever

PieMouth

oh

PentaclesPaige

Im like, upset it came up at all

Cole pauses, indignant. He types a message, deletes it, types another, and deletes that as well.

PieMouth

it wasn't in your no-gos

PentaclesPaige

like ok on the one hand my b ???

but also ????

Like that's a no-go by default, Im surprised that you hadn't like, run nup against this at some point, when you were rplaying, like elswehre? How did you never get that memo??

PieMouth

oh

PentaclesPaige

like unless you're fucking with me or something

Cole rolls his eyes.

PieMouth

i'm not fucking with you

PentaclesPaige

Then why ?????

Cole stews. He's never had Paige so mad at him. On the one hand, he feels disconnected. He has no understanding for why this should be a big deal at all. Plymouth was already willing to kill — more than kill. Maim, torture. He has inflicted fates worse than death on enemies before. Sentences to be eternally picked at by snakes, cast into maddening dimensions beyond mortality's reach.

PieMouth

Plymouth is going full villain mode

y'know

rape and pillage

PentaclesPaige

I can see that!! That does not answer my question!!

On the other hand, his relationship to Paige is valuable to him, in the only way he understands how to value: he does things with her. If he were to fuck up their relationship, they would cease to do those things. He loves doing those things. He would never say that, but he does. He's willing to make concessions to keep doing what he loves to do.

PieMouth

what would?

There is a weird pause between Cole's message and Paige's response. He doesn't know what to do with the time, so ends up googling some idle interests of his until he gets the ping.

PentaclesPaige

Why did you want to write a rape scene?

Cole begins typing immediately, but slows as the weight of the question settles on top of him. The reality of the situation is, puberty is hitting Cole like a bitch. He has had no time to explore his feelings, to adjust. There is only one place he can go to when he feels a need to express himself, only one place to take a closer look at his brain. However, Cole doesn't know these things by these words. What Cole knows is that he feels a strong urge to bring the sexual into his roleplay, which also is catalogued in his brain, mistakenly, as nonsensical, meaningless fun.

The stakes are nothing. Paige's reaction contradicts this. The dissonance bothers Cole, which turns into misplaced annoyance.

PieMouth

it felt natural, i'm not sure what you want me to say

PentaclesPaige

I want to know I can trust you.

Cole groans, loudly. This fucking bitch, he thinks to himself, is getting wound up over nothing. The annoyance starts to burn, to itch.

PieMouth

why aren't you telling me what you want

what do you want me to say

PentaclesPaige

JESUS Pie!!!

that your'e SORRY

that it wont' havppen again!!!!

Cole rocks in his seat with the energy built up in his arms and legs, energy he wishes could go into a good punch or kick at something.

PieMouth

i'm sorry, it won't happen again.

He wishes the stock response is enough. He doesn't know what else to do, what she wants from him. There comes a pause, and as soon as it's apparent Paige is going to take her time to respond, Cole finds that he has to stand up. He's in the computer lab at his new school. There are two other teens across the room, collaborating on some project or another, but besides that it's empty. A cold blue color. Carpet that needs washing and some missing tiles from the ceiling next to one of the light fixtures. A really boring, oppressive kind of place. He needs out.

He decides that the roleplay is over, and signs out on the computer, returning it to the logon screen, where images of smiling teens in various levels of quality and resolution slide on by before fading to the next. Most of them are sports, green and yellow the team colors.

Paige is being bitchy, he reasons, so she doesn't have to hear him say he's leaving. Of course, he "reasons" this retroactively, motivated far more by a sense of uneasiness and a push to be doing anything else.

He grabs his bag off the floor, stands up, and leaves. He doesn't know exactly where to go. He always spends his whole lunch in the computer lab, roleplaying or, if Paige isn't available, reading and writing. Before he knows where he's going, he simply sets off in a direction.

His thoughts fizz. They aren't accompanied by coherency, nor many complete phrases. Mostly, they bounce to a rhythm of anger, frustration, placeless longing and suppressed shame. When Cole can think of something, it comes out as either an accusation or a defense. She's too fucking sensitive, or, I wasn't writing anything upsetting. Often, he ends up repeating some aphorism to the tune of it doesn't matter.

Soon enough, he finds himself at the cafeteria. Well, this is a natural place to spend lunch, he guesses. He stands, at a loss of where to go, by the entrance, before he hears a familiar voice through the roar of the crowd and the roar of his thoughts.

"Cole! Cole!"

Cole looks to the right, to see Kody at a circular table near the front doors. Somehow, despite the cafeteria being packed tight, there are empty seats around him. On the side of the table opposite him, a couple sit and flirt with each other, the boy's hands always finding a way back to the girl's lap. Cole's mind bubbles and pops, but he looks away from them.

"Over here! Cole!"

I know, I saw you, Cole thinks, snapping at Kody in his mind. He does make his way over, however, and sits next to him.

"Hey! I was just in chemistry, and girl who sits two seats up and one seat to the right is really hot. She has really big boobs. She keeps wearing things that hide them though but I guess because the season is getting hotter she's started wearing —"

"Dude, shut up."

"Oh," Kody shifts in his seat, his heart corroding little by little every time he gets a reaction he doesn't understand. "Sorry. Only she's showing a lot of cleavage now and I was looking and I think she saw me looking and I waved but she turned away, and now I think she doesn't like me. Do you think she likes me?"

Cole waves his arms defensively. "How should I know? Probably not. Women are hotheads. They don't like anything."

"They are?"

Cole nods. "Hotheads and libtards."

Kody chuckles at the word. "Libtards," he repeats under his breath, and chuckles again. "My dad says women are really gentle, but I don't know if I believe him, because my mom can really yell when she wants to. My mom can be kind of a bitch. Is your mom a bitch?"

Cole gives Kody a look so searing, it burns straight through Kody's social blindness. Kody turns around, and then forward again, and wriggles like he's fighting against some kind of constraint.

"Are… you, okay?" Kody manages to say, without making eye contact.

"I'm fine," Cole says, quiet, slumping in his seat. "But I'll be better if you just shut the fuck up."

"Okay."

The rest of lunch passes without incident.

PentaclesPaige

ok. I believe you.

Clinks of silverware against ceramic and shifting of bodies make up the dinnertime soundscape around the Ortegren table, just big enough to seat the four of them. The parents sit on one side, the boys on the other. Cole had briefly nettled Eric about an embarrassing mishap earlier in the day that had ended with Eric on his back, covered in mud, his bike some feet away. Eric had wrestled for Cole's arm to give him an Indian burn until their mother reprimanded them. Now, they're both smiling, Cole still giggling a little and Eric shaking his head, but the conflict has ended.

The mother clears her throat, with some intent. Cole and Eric look up from their plates of chicken and mashed potatoes to see that their mom is still eating, though she makes a sideways glance at their dad, then back down at her plate. The boys follow her gaze, but the father makes no move, so they return to their plates as well.

Then again, she clears her throat.

"What?" Mr. Ortegren asks, clearly bothered.

"Don't you have something to announce?"

He looks almost like he's ignoring her, taking another bite of his chicken and grunting in a way that resonates, the sound betraying the weight of his body. Both the parents are big, in different ways. Both are fat, but the father is different. Even if he were slim, he would be head and shoulders above some.

He wipes his mouth with a napkin, and then grunts again. "Yes," he says through a mouth half-full.

The boys look at each other while the father takes another bite, clearly in no rush to divulge. The squires, however, have momentarily lost their appetite, hands at their sheaths, armor donned. There is not yet fear, but there is apprehension, eyes on the horizon and an ear to the wind.

Once he's satisfied, the father puts down his fork and knife and brings his hands together, signaling the beginning of his announcement. "Boys, I have a permanent assignment, should I take it, waiting for me in Idaho. We're moving again."

Cole rolls his eyes, and grunts. "Great," he says.

"Don't." Sir Ortegren points a finger at Cole. He's been acting up more recently, and the knight has noticed. Cole merely nods.

"Permanent?" asks Eric.

The father finishes another bite before responding. "At least long enough to get you and Cole through school."

"Your father and I thought it would be good for you two to be able to set down roots."

Cole finds that slightly funny, considering that Eric only has one year left of school. He just huffs. It is, if he thinks on it a little, relieving.

"When?"

"Over the summer," Mrs. Ortegren replies to Eric. "June."

Cole, marking the conversation as unimportant, returns to his plate, scooping a bite of mashed potatoes.

"Oh," Eric says.

"You'll want to be packing sooner than that," Mr. Ortegren states. "So that your mom and I can take your boxes with us while you stay at my mother's."

"We'll be accommodating for any farewell parties you want to have with your friends," Mrs. Ortegren adds, drawing a disapproving look from her husband.

The boys nod, knowing they won't be taking her up on that offer. Their mom has always wished they were a little more social. They don't throw, or attend, many parties.

The conversation ends without much resolution. Mrs. Ortegren looks around, having somewhat expected more discussion, more questions. Perhaps more signals of relief that they would finally be in one spot and one spot only. Creating a home to come back to. All she observes is a father who looks completely content to put his head down and eat, her baby boy looking disinterested, and Eric…

Eric has yet to start eating again. He peers into the middle distance. He looks at the banners on the horizon, he feels the weight on his gauntlet, the straps of his breastplate, the anxious braying of his horse. Are they coming this way? Or will this force pass?

"Eric?"

The cold metal feeling turns from armor to silverware as he comes back to the fantasy of a dining room table from the reality of the battlefield.

"I'm fine," he says, bringing chicken to his lips without any enthusiasm, just to cut off any possibility of continuation.

Though everyone hears the edge to his voice, nobody says anything about it. Mr. Ortegren doesn't care. Mrs. Ortegren frowns. Cole feels antsy, an energy kicking into his legs that tells him to finish so he can be excused to his room. No one decides to pursue the issue.

PieMouth

The rock walls climb beyond sight, their tops covered by blankets of mist and fog. Coils of vibrant greenery drape down over the narrow pass, barely wide enough for Plymouth to pass through with Argus in his arms. He is forced to use Argus' draping legs to push away the yellow, pink, white and red flowers that hang from above on vines, occasionally webbed with dew-dotted spider-silk and accompanied by spiders with five-pointed abdomens and feet-long millipedes banded with alternating orange and black. "God, if you are listening," Plymouth pleads, "if you answer but one of my prayers: let him live. Let Argus live."

PentaclesPaige

Argus' mouth moves, but not a single noise comes out. The only thing keeping the hole in his belly from pouring blood is the angle at which Plymouth cradles him. Tiny blue insects, the shape of scratches of pen ink, gather at the edge of the wound, recycling his life as quickly as Argus loses grip of it.

[i have no more to add, assume he's unconscious now, you got this 👍]

Paige deletes the message as soon as she sends it.

PieMouth

"Don't speak," Plymouth urges him, "conserve your energy. Do nothing. Only, don't die. For the love of all that is good — for my sake, Argus. Live a little longer."

Cole's hands shake as he types.

PieMouth

Rising above the clicks of strange, distant birds, the buzz of a million insects, and Plymouth's heavy steps as he forges through foliage… the sound, an amazing sound, shining light into Plymouth's head like a sunbeam through the cracks in a violent sky. Running water. Suddenly, Argus' body is twenty pounds lighter, Plymouth's steps easier. "We're almost there. Just moments longer. Stay with me just moments longer."

The path begins to widen. Finally, there is space between the hanging plants, Plymouth's vision clears, though the fog becomes denser, the path ahead opaque. Soon, Plymouth even loses sight of his feet, disappearing beneath him, his footing more unsure amidst the mossy rocks. He can't afford to slow down, even as he fears slipping and dropping his friend, dealing the final blow this close to salvation.

He presses onward. The air is warmer. The humidity reaches such a height that Plymouth can't know where his sweat and the atmosphere divide. He can no longer feel the rise and fall of Argus' chest. He grits his teeth. "You're not dead," Plymouth says, even as he knows the statement is for himself more than his companion of ten years. "You can't be dead! We're so close!"

Tears well in Plymouth's eyes, stinging as they pass over the cuts on his cheeks and the several thousand bites along his skin. "Moments longer, Argus! Only —"

He doesn't finish the thought, slipping on algae beneath his feet, himself and Argus falling towards an unknown fate. Plymouth screams as Argus slips from his grip, his body floating out into the fog, outside of both reach and sight. Plymouth's weight brings him down upon another rock, unable to find a grip, unable to see the slope, unable to make sense of direction, now tumbling in such a fashion that he loses track of up or down, flying through what looks like a cloud of gold-tinted mist, like sunlight's white glow on the edges of thick clouds. His heart drops as he no longer feels anything. Nothing to ground himself, no sense of direction, no point of contact. Free fall. It may only last a second or two, but in Plymouth's mind, the weightless moment is eternal, his mind blank, thoughts replaced only by equal measures fear and desperation.

Then, a splash. Two splashes. The second is his. His arms and legs pull in front of him, his torso becoming the lowest part of his body as he suddenly realizes that he's plunged into a body of water. A body of water. The realization flushes the resignation out of his body, pumps blood back into his muscles, pulling him back into the fight of fight or flight. He flails until he remembers how to swim, and pushes his head above the water. Now that he's listening for it, he hears the waterfall. They've made it. The basin.

"Argus!! We made it!" Plymouth yells, expecting no reply. "We made it!" His laughs are manic, lacking any pretense of restraint. They sound less like an expression and more like a spirit that is being exorcised from his body.

Coming to his senses, he drops under the water to get his eyes out of the fog, and sees Argus, floating, face-down, eyes closed. His ruptured belly makes a cloud of blood in the water, greater in volume than Argus himself.

He swims towards him, his excitement interfering with the precision of his movements, lacking the coordination of a frog and edging closer to the skittering limbs of a spider. Forgivingly, the water doesn't judge, and he closes the distance, putting his hands along Argus' side and flipping his companion over so his face is above the water.

"Live! Live damn you!" Then, as a reassurance only to himself: "You're going to live. Thank you, God. He's going to live."

This close to Argus, he can see him through the fog above the water, and he watches as the surface of the basin moves in strange ways. Moving up Argus' side, the water twists, climbs, in the shape of a hand with thin, delicate fingers. It moves towards Argus' wound, beginning to grope along the edges of the gash — Argus' belly, resembling soft fruit-flesh a thumb has pressed into.

"Thank you," Plymouth whispers. Then, louder: "Thank you."

He struggles to find a role, as more hands rise from the water and gather around his wound, some venturing inside. That isn't the only wound. Barely thinking, he removes his own shirt, tossing it somewhere unseen, into the fog to float atop the water. Beneath, his thousand cuts and bruises, some slashes inches long and discolorations pommels wide. He tries to pull Argus' tunic off, but it's stuck to him, mixed as it is with his grizzle. Instead, he grabs the neck of it, and pulls, tearing the thing along its back, and then stripping it off of Argus' chest, laying bear the dent along his ribs, where sharp bone must press against his lungs beneath the skin.

PentaclesPaige

um

PieMouth

The hands respond immediately, groping along the purple ridges at Argus' side, and then pressing in. Plymouth maneuvers to Argus' posterior, and finds his trousers more difficult to wrangle. He pulls his knife from its sheath at his waist, and gets it underneath Argus' waistline, then pulling down to cut the trousers without harming Argus. He can hear his companion wince at the contact of a blade against his skin, and though it at first startles Plymouth, he then gasps at the realization.

[you good?]

PentaclesPaige

aaaaaaa

uh this is getting a little uncomfortable 😵

PieMouth

oh

PentaclesPaige

The scene is really good. Your prose is like really really good

PieMouth

thank you

it's not supposed to be sexual

PentaclesPaige

Oh no I get that!!!

I can see that

PieMouth

oh

what's the issue?

PentaclesPaige

Um

aaaa it's fine, keep going

Cole narrows his eyes.

PieMouth

…

you sure?

PentaclesPaige

Yeah I'm overreacting 🥴

PieMouth

but… to what

PentaclesPaige

Ummm okok

it's like

not sexual stuff exactly ???

MOre like

body stuff

PieMouth

body stuff? Like… gore?

PentaclesPaige

Noooo uh

Cole's ears twitch as he hears incoming footsteps

PieMouth

brb

He alt-tabs to look like he's doing anything else, which happens to put him in a paused emulation of Megaman Battle Network as his brother rounds the corner, peering into Grandpa's study where Cole has stationed himself.

"What," Cole asks in an acidic tone, frustrated with Paige's discomfort and his brother's appearance alike.

Eric hesitates at the edge to Cole's voice, but masks it well. "Oh shut up, it's not my fault you watch porn in the middle of the house."

"That's not—!"

"I said shut up. Do you want to go on a walk? Bike out to the lumberyard."

"Huh? No, not really."

Eric frowns at that. He looks antsy. Cole catches on, and it only agitates him further. "You've been on that computer all god damned day," Eric chides, "you should get out of the house."

Cole lifts his eyebrows, incredulous. "Suddenly you're up my ass about how I spend my time?"

"No, look —"

"I don't walk into your fuckin' room when you're reading your shitty anime and get up your ass about —"

"I said shut up!" Eric quickly lowers his voice. "Shut up, it's not about that. Grandma won't let me go out alone."

Cole's eyebrows couldn't go up any higher, so instead, he waggles his head to emphasize. "What in the world are you talking about? She sends you with me because the old bitch won't let me go out alone."

"Okay not let. She just…" Eric moves into the room, and pulls the door behind him, not quite closing it but leaving only a crack open. "She doesn't want me hanging out with Jed. And now she thinks that if I'm going out, it's to hang out with him. She's getting up my ass about it."

"What? Why."

"You remember the King kids? It's like that."

"But…" Cole struggles with the subtleties of couching racism in economic terms, something that even behind closed doors has been drilled into his head. "Jed's family is fine. They don't live in a pit."

"Yeah, well, Grams doesn't think highly of him. Come on, I'd owe you one. Seriously, any stupid website subscription you want, I'll pay for it. Or get you something physical so you don't have to do your dirty business in view of the kitchen."

"That's—!'

"Tell her you're going out," Eric speaks over him. "Tell her you're going out and she'll say to take me with you."

Cole deliberates. He almost asks Eric how much he's willing to shill, but he thinks better of it — instead, he could take him to a store and trap him into buying something before the price is considered. Eric won't fight as hard in public. Not to say he wouldn't fight, but not as hard. Cole pictures the monster manuals in the cramped game store downtown, the captivating creature descriptions and their painterly depictions on every page — not to mention the slick feeling of the pages, the allure of the hard covers. Just to have them on his shelf would feel like a communication of status — not that he could put them there, for fear of Sir Ortegren burning the library.

"Fine," Cole says, "but we're going downtown after."

"The stores close in a couple hours."

"Tomorrow."

Eric nods, a little too fast, too eager. Cole wants to punch him, but not in Grandpa's study.

"Okay. Now fuck off, I'll get you later."

Eric nods again, and then takes his leave without a word.

Cole tabs back to Paige, who's sent a single message in the meantime.

PentaclesPaige

ok

PieMouth

gtg my brother is pulling me into his shit

The temperature is falling steadily as the sun threatens to dip below the horizon, except that the sun can't be seen through the trees. In the summer evening, the sky is still light, and the sunset will be long and ponderous, but the ground, covered in shade, is nonetheless dark. Eric totes Grandpa's rifle, and walks at a pace that makes Cole feel like he has to work to keep up.

"Why are you running like the fuckin' cops are after you?"

"I'm not running," Eric states, tone level.

"You're being weird, bro."

"Shut up or I won't buy you shit."

Cole shuts up. He eyes his brother with suspicion almost the whole way to the lumberyard, but doesn't say another word. He's frustrated. The promise of future gains is only barely enough to buy his silence. What he really wants to do is berate his brother. Maybe start a wrestle, put some dirt on him. He was in the middle of a really good scene before Eric barged in, and now he's just replaying the moments over and over to try and figure out what was making Paige so uncomfortable. She said it wasn't sexual, he keeps coming back to. Body what? Is she shy about dicks? To consider Cole "close" would be to forget that he will never come to the correct conclusion, not in a thousand hours.

"I wanna be home before it gets cold."

"It won't get cold, it's summer."

"It will and you know it. It's already cooling down."

"The less you talk, the quicker we get home."

"What are we doing anyways?"

"We aren't doing anything," Eric says, slowing down before coming to a stop. They're steps from passing the invisible barrier between the forest and what they consider the lumberyard, and at one of the familiar empty buildings, a phone light is on. The figure that holds the light can only be one person, based on context and build, but from this distance all they are is a silhouette.

Cole passes eyes between his brother and Jed. "Then what are you doing?"

"Fuck off, for a bit." Eric takes the Karabiner off his back, and holds it out to Cole, holding the barrel so the muzzle faces the sky. "Don't lose this thing. Go shoot some trees or something. Aim that direction, away from the lumberyard, at all times."

"What, you're getting rid of me?"

"Yeah."

Anger wells up inside of Cole. "You really bring me all this way and then you tell me to fuck off!?"

"Don't fucking yell at me! You didn't want to be out here in the first place, I used you to get out of the house, and I'll pay you back later. Now go, fuck off, and when it starts to get cold," he puts some salt into the word, "then you can head back."

"Y—"

"Be loud when you come back. Yell or something. Okay? Do that and my money is yours."

Cole wants to pummel his brother for sending him into the woods, alone, as the sun is setting. But, his brother is holding a gun, and even with the safety on and the thing probably not even loaded, Cole's instincts tell him to hold back. He resents it deeply, because he can't come up with something good to say either.

"Fuck you."

"Yeah, let me hear that again when we're walking through downtown tomorrow, you can watch how every word of protest tightens my wallet."

Cole grabs the gun from Eric's hand, too hard, trying to startle him or jerk his arm enough to get him off-balance. It does neither of those things, and instead Cole just looks petty. Cole spits at Eric's feet, hoping to provoke a more heinous argument. Eric stonewalls him, his blueish face in the waning light giving Cole nothing. Cole glances at Jed in the distance. His posture makes him look like he's turned this way, but he hasn't moved. The phone light is gone, and he just stands, leaning against a concrete wall.

Cole turns and walks along a rough kind of path, a break in the brush from old footpaths now seldom walked except by the boys and, they assume, a select few others they never cross paths with.

"Hey," Eric's voice calls, and Cole turns with tension in his shoulders and a furrowed brow.

He sees the object flying through the air in a gentle arc, and catches it with his unoccupied hand.

"You nearly forgot the ammo box."

Cole doesn't dignify that with a response. He just stuffs it in his jacket pocket, and walks out into the woods.

ArtPiece XII

Eric watches him as his figure begins to blur and blend into the colorless backdrop of dim forest and vague shapes. Soon enough, Cole is less of a shape than he is a motion, then disappearing behind a line of trees too perfect to have been the natural speckling of seeds — not that Eric pays attention to such details. A knot of guilt twists into shape in his heart, but he doesn't have time to think on it. Once he can't see Cole even as an impression against the dark, he looks up instead, at the darkening blue of the sky. He can't quite see a star yet, but he knows they will be soon. He sighs, realizing that it is getting cold. So little time. No time at all.

He stuffs his hands in his leather jacket pockets, and comes back to earth, head leveling, eyes finding Jed's unmoved figure. He takes quick strides over to Jed — Eric's tall. Genes he gets from his dad, that Cole didn't seem to inherit in quite the same way. It seems that even as both of them hit their adult height, Eric would be the big brother forever, have the upperhand in spats. Eric is relieved at the fact. That's part of what makes Cole such a good little brother, part of why they can resolve their issues with a quick toss and a bruise, not letting the tension drag into weeks of animosity as one or the other tries to make plays to put themselves on top.

Jed's features come into focus as Eric draws near. Eric is comfortably taller than Jed too, but not by too much. His eyes come level with Jed's forehead, bare to see because Jed's only ever had a buzz cut as long as Eric's known him. His eyes are grey in this light, but Eric knows they're a gorgeous forest green. His nose is slight, his cheeks a little chubby — Jed's never been the athletic type. His lips are full — not the thin type the Ortegrens keep with them, more skin than lip, Jed's look like he could be a horn player. He just looks younger than his peers. Unassuming. More boy than man.

"That was Cole?" Jed asks.

"Yeah," Eric says, coming to a stop close enough to Jed that it's obvious Jed has to look up slightly to meet his eyes.

"What was he doing here?"

"He's my ticket out of the house. Grandma's suspicious of us."

Jed frowns. "How suspicious?"

"Don't worry about it," Eric says.

"How much does Cole know?"

"Nothing." Eric moves his hand, pressing it against the concrete wall that Jed leans up against. Eric uses the leverage to get his face closer to Jed's. "Stop worrying about it."

"Okay," Jed says, voice quiet, eyes now going between Eric's eyes and his mouth.

"In fact, stop talking at all."

People are so fucking weird. They do stupid things for stupid reasons, and they barely ever say what they mean. Cole kicks dirt in frustration, rifle positioned in his hands like he's trudging into enemy territory. Stupid fucking people. The Paiges with their hangups, their retarded sensitivities, and the Erics of the world with their secrets and their — augh! Cole pulls the gun up to his shoulder, kneels down, and fires at the trunk of a tree, watching the bark and splinters spray into the air for a moment. He neglects his hearing protection — he wants the ringing, he wants the punch into his head, hopefully with enough force to shove everything else out. He has a harder time defining what exactly is wrong with his brother.

But his brain doesn't even try. If it can't find definitives, it will fire at the abstract. Eric's not this or that, he's just a pain in the ass. A fuck up. The words don't even have to match. A bitch, a sissy. Pulling him out of his roleplay just to send Cole out into the woods alone in the dark. What a shithead.

Cole turns on his heels and takes another shot before he's come to a full stop. The recoil mixes with his unsteady feet, and he has to take a step back. He knows, somewhere within him, that he's being reckless, but he has no one to stop him. He wheels on another invisible target, aims up at the last second, and hits the base of a branch. Tinnitus takes half of his sensory input, especially in his right ear, closest to the gun.

He breathes heavily. The light is waning fast now, and the textures of trees are becoming flat. Where one ends and another begins is becoming indiscernible. He has a flashlight in his pocket, but he just lets it get dark. His lungs start to protest — he's aware as the air gets colder. But is it cold yet?

A part of Cole wants to head back now, barely twenty minutes since being sent away, just to spite Eric. But he knows twenty minutes is no time at all, and the jagged edges of his anger dull against the cold stone feeling of acceptance and deference. Eric seemed pretty upset already — Cole isn't blind. Eric's own agitation bled onto Cole, but… he understands it on an intuitive level he can't put into words, or thoughts. He knows, on some level, the importance of giving Eric his space right now, even if he's not entirely sure what for.

He feels around for an old stump he saw before the twilight shrouded it, and sits down.

He consoles himself with thoughts of reward. Of walking downtown with Eric, feigning browsing to make him look less tunnel-visioned than he is. Of acquiring his Dungeons & Dragons paraphernalia. It has been a dream of Cole's for a long time, to actually run or join a campaign. He's narrowly missed the opportunity twice at previous schools he didn't stay in long enough to make the proper connections. He knows the monster manual will primarily inform his online roleplaying, but it feeds a greater desire as well. He's enamored with it.

His grip on the K98 softens as his mind soothes itself with more boyish interests.

Fine, Cole thinks. Let Eric have his time, let him and Jed do fuck all for however long they want.

Cole grabs his hunter's earmuffs from where they hang around his neck, and moves them up onto his head. He remembers a dry creekbed near here where, underneath a bridge, the boys had placed one of their can stashes. He tells himself he'll prop the flashlight in some bushes, set the cans along the bridge, fire at them from a distance.

As the earmuffs slip over his ears, the world becomes a weird, half-real thing. Visual stimuli are fading, and suddenly the only sound is a residual whistle that becomes a white noise. His eyes fill with phosphenes, dancing spots of imagined light that scramble his sense of the space around him. The only real feeling is his own breath. Ironically, to ground himself, he looks up, but the foliage, from where he sits underneath a tree, blocks most of the stars, leaving only some tens of incorporeal specks, half of which or more could be imagined. He blinks several times in succession. He becomes highly aware of his muscles, of his throat, of his eyes and stinging nose, of his ringing ears and his tired legs, of the sore spot on his shoulder where the butt of the rifle rests when he shoots it — of the cold metal in his hands, of his hair where it touches his neck, of the textures of his clothes against his skin. He feels aware and yet disconnected from everything — like his awareness comes from looking at everything through a screen, an outsider perspective that allows him to see around the corner where the protagonist can not.

His breathing slows, or his perception warps so that his breathing feels slower and heavier. His brow furrows, but he notices it after it happens.

I should go back, he thinks, no longer concerned with how much time he allows his brother. It's cold.

He stands, and takes a first step, feeling the signal go from his head to his leg, like a button pressed in a video game. And, much the same, the literal stated action takes place, but the knowledge of intent doesn't seem to be properly transferred. His foot catches on a snag that he should have known was there, as his foot had rested on it in an earlier sitting position. Rifle in his hands, one forgotten finger still resting on the trigger —

After Jed's first startles, Eric had explained the distant gunshots away. They still draw his attention, take him out of the moment, the singing sensation of his flesh blinking for a moment as his head comes out of the carnal pleasures and into the realm of higher concerns — but Eric is good at what he does, at his caressing and rubbing, at his hands at Jed's sides, Jed lowered over a low wall, Eric's jacket beneath his belly so his bare skin doesn't touch the rough concrete. Eric is big — Jed doesn't have another point of direct reference except himself, the visages of penises in lockers and changing rooms, and the exaggerations of porn star physiques on the internet, but still, Eric fills him in a way he hasn't been able to achieve with anything at his disposal at home. The rubs of Eric against his insides, the pulse of electricity as Eric finds Jed's prostate — just as Jed had directed him to it —

A gunshot, again.

A blink, again. Jed's senses leaving him, his chest tightening, not with shortness of breath from exertion and pleasure but instead from an anxiety preventing him from a full, sustained erection that Eric has yet to notice. But, quicker this time than the times before, exposure dulling his sensitivity, his head ducks back under the water, back into the absorption of senses and —

No, there's more to that sound.

It feels like he hears muscles, hears contact, hears the blood rushing through his own body, but above it, there's something coming from further out.

"Er-ic, Eric stop," Jed half-whispers.

"No," Eric says, removing his hands from Jed's sides to plant on the concrete wall to give him the freedom of movement to lean down, right next to Jed's ear. "I can't stop."

"Stop." Jed says with more force.

"Why should I?"

There it is again, another sound. Eric seems to notice, as his motion slows, and his torso straightens — Jed can feel the warmth of him dim against his back — and he keeps his ears to the air.

It seems this time, Jed's pulled Eric up with him, and they both wade, heads above the water.

A mewling.

It's a long, human sound, a moan of an entirely different sort.

The door opens, and an older woman comes in. She rushes to Cole's side in a way that would have startled him, had he had the whereabouts to be startled. As is, his muscles supported no such calls to action, his brain too defenseless to conjure up fear or alarm above a dull, heavy dread.

"Oh, honey, honey!" The voice is familiar. She pulls up a chair, but Cole is only half-aware of the action — as aware as he is of anything. Since spacing out in the dark woods, nothing has felt quite real. If he were to suddenly wake up and find none of it had happened, he wouldn't be surprised in the slightest, but somewhere inside him he can tell that isn't the case.

As the wrinkled, bony hands take his left and turn it, palm up, closing so that she holds one of his hands with both of hers and presses her pointer and middle finger into his limp thenar muscles, he places her. Grandma.

His rheumy, blurry eyes squint into hers, and she shakes his hand with a worried look on her face.

"What have you done?" she asks.

"Shoot myself." Cole can't accurately assess the damage his mental state does to his voice, but judging by Grandma's reaction, and just how difficult it feels to get the words out, he figures it must be coming out as a syllable slurry.

His eyes roam over to his foot, hanging in a sling from a contraption he has half-believed only existed in cartoons as a gag for when slapstick comedy put someone in the hospital. Hospital, I'm at the hospital.

"Oh honey, talk slower, you sound awful."

"Shoot myself," he says with more deliberation.

Grandma shakes as if she couldn't have put that together, as if none of the nurses had told her. This bitch, Cole thinks, but most of the annoyance that comes with the words has fallen off before he thinks it. It remains mostly as a habit. A pure title. Not with emotion, but as an output to the algorithm: If Grandma overreacts like you've put a foot in her stomach, then put your guard up. But the armor is so heavy, and Cole is so weak.

So instead of tensing, he releases.

"How did that happen? Doesn't your brother teach you anything?"

"Eric…" Cole can't finish the thought. In his state, it's like he has only a certain number of words he can say at a time, a certain amount of energy he can put into forming and communicating a thought.

"What were you doing?"

"Shooting cans."

"But honey, did Eric push you, did you get into a fight? I know you boys argue."

What? Does she think Eric shot me?

"No," Cole gets out as a single noise, mouth never fully opening into the o.

"And what happened to your shirt hon?"

What did happen to his shirt? He tries to replay the scene. The bullet goes through his foot, and the pain feels like it's on a delay. He can't walk. He falls to the forest floor, and he feels the blood pouring out of his foot. He… takes off his shirt, doesn't he?

"Bandage," he says. He wrapped it around his foot. He has no idea how effectual it was.

"Why your shirt? Did you do it yourself?"

The onslaught of questions make the dread feel heavier in his chest. He feels — he knows. There's an angle he's missing, something she's getting at.

"No," he says, this one more enunciated. "Eric."

"As he should have. Why your shirt?"

Why my shirt?

Cole just shakes his head. The pain killers swim through his brain, and he's slowly giving up on thinking, on being conscious.

"Honey." Grandma scoots the chair closer to his bedside, leaning over him. Her old woman smell reaches his nose, and he scrunches a bit. It's not a terrible smell, but it's not a good smell. Her breath mixes into it, smelling like sour mortality. "Was Eric with you?"

Cole remembers crawling towards the lumberyard, abandoning the rifle, yelling. The yells felt muffled, like he was hearing them through a thick glass pane. Some yells were intentional. Sometimes it was because his foot hit something, or twisted at some angle, that sent a pain piercing through his wall of adrenaline and endorphins.

Cole nods. Eric was with him the whole time.

"Was Jed?"

It was Jed who had picked Cole up first. He's deceptively strong, Cole didn't know he was that strong. Eric was there too, but that's where the memories became especially muddy.

Cole got caught on an mm, almost affirming before thinking that he shouldn't.

"No," he says.

"Cole, honey. I think Eric is keeping bad company, honey. Did Jed keep Eric away from you?" She puts a hand on Cole's head, and runs fingers through his hair. "Are you protecting him?"

Cole shakes his head. "No."

The questions let up. For a moment, Grandma just sits there, stroking his hair. It isn't soothing, it's sickly, but without interrogation keeping him awake and present, he begins to fade regardless. He looks back to his cast. He hears, for the first time, the beeps of equipment in the room somewhere. Hooked up to him? He can't tell. The white walls, the blue blanket, the railings on either side of him, on the head-end of his bed, where Grandma reaches over to stroke his hair.

He looks back to her face, and sees, through several bleary blinks, her grim facial expression. No longer dominant is the worry for his own wellbeing.

"Oh, honey. What have you done, what have you done…"

It's not aimed at him, he realizes. His face screws up, briefly, and he turns away from his grandma. The realization comes to him as it would in a dream, like a fact stated by an omnipotent narrator, so innately true as to be unquestionable, merely the reality by which the coming events will operate: I've lost. In a moment of weakness, he couldn't keep his guard up. Something in how he delivered his words, something in his hesitations.

He remembers the King kids. The black family down the street. He remembers Eric playing basketball with them. The hell that came next. Prying, the interrogations. What he was doing, who with, when. The little lies to parents. The ultimate reveals of their friendships. The screaming. The swords, the blood. The formations. The lessons. The little deaths. The creeping cold. The righteous fury, and then the long, long night.

Cole's eyes water.

"Oh, honey…"

The last two days had been so cold. Things were being kept from Cole. When Grandma and Eric came to the hospital to pick him up, Eric had looked worse than Cole had ever seen him, like a beaten dog. Grandma, then, looked like the beater, all civility and sweet talk, but with Eric always avoiding eye contact. They couldn't look at each other, but Eric looked down, while Grandma looked up. The victor, the righteous, the priestess and matriarch.

Eric hasn't lost the look. Cole watches his brother pass him and go to his ticket's seat, in the back of the plane. His eyes look like they are focused on the air in front of his face. Blank.

They haven't shared words more than where to be and when for the sake of departure on the flight, Eric going and getting Cole snacks and a drink while he sat down at the terminal.

Eric has never looked worse. Cole has never felt weaker.

Stupid, he thinks to himself. I'm so fucking stupid.

Now, Eric stares at the road in front of him, but if he's taking it all in, it doesn't look like it. He's always been a reckless driver, Cole knows that, but today he's staying in the slow lane, never passing on the freeway, stuck behind trucks going 15 miles under the speed limit.

There's one hour ahead of them. One hour before they pull up to their new home, in a cushy suburb near the military base. A permanent home. Something that'll keep them through high school.

Despite the slow driving, Eric's knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Cole stares at them.

When he first tries to make a sound, he fails. He clears his throat, to no reaction from Eric. Then he tries again.

"What doesn't Grandma like about Jed?"

Eric's eyes flick to Cole, then back to the road, the rump of a big rig in front of them.

"Are you retarded, Cole?"

Cole feels stupid. Cole feels fucking awful. But he never takes that kind of smack from his brother. "Are you gay?"

Eric doesn't respond. He looks away. Cole's eyes widen. He meant it as a meaningless jab, but as he says it, as he sees Eric's reaction… it clicks. As his framework adjusts, as the gears' teeth begin to interlock and the machine grows in scope and understanding, he finds all of the clues that have been right in front of him the whole time.

"You…" Cole starts a thought he can't finish to himself.

"Shut up, Cole." Eric's tone is low, quiet. A smoldering growl. "If you don't want me to run this fucking car into the fucking wall. Shut — shut the fuck up."

Cole looks away, out the window, at the aforementioned wall, the lightly decorated concrete along the side of the freeway, the other side of the shoulder. He smiles, and he can't figure out why. He feels sick. He feels sick for so many reasons. He chuckles, despite himself. It feels fake, and yet it comes out unbeckoned.

"What? What!?" There's an edge — a cracking, jagged edge to Eric's voice.

Cole's laugh continues. "Y-you're a f-fag!"

"Shut up! Shut your fucking mouth!"

Cole's body shakes, and he keeps looking out the window. His muscles feel ready. He feels utterly prepared, but he can't tell for what. A fight. A fight with who? For what purpose? He clenches and unclenches his right fist, pressed against his chin.

"I'll kill you, Cole! I'll fucking kill you! Shut up! Shut up!"

Eric slams the breaks, and Cole's body flies forward, caught by the seatbelt and yanked back into position. His laugh catches in his throat, pressure against his Adam's apple. The car jerks to the right, and stops at an angle to the road, poking into the shoulder but not quite out of the slow lane. Someone — several people — lay into their horns in response, then curving around Eric's car.

ArtPiece XIV

Cole coughs, and looks through suddenly watery eyes to Eric, who is leaned over the steering wheel, looking wild, feral, harried, staring across the dash and through the window at nothing at all. He's breathing. Heavy.

"Okay," Cole says, quiet, trying to hold in the spasms in his diaphragm, covering his grin with his hand.

"Shut up."

Cole says nothing. Eric doesn't look at him. Cole coughs, which thankfully overrides the laughter. Eric leans back in his seat, and seems to take some deep, centering breaths.

"Just shut the fuck up," he seems to whisper to nothing.

Cole watches him. He slowly presses on the gas again, and turns back onto the road. The corners of Cole's mouth start to creep back up again, and he turns to the window to hide it.

The rest of the drive passes without significant incident, only the muscles in Cole's body remaining so tense that by the end of it all he feels sore.

Heartrates increase as they turn off the freeway. Heartrates increase further as they leave behind the businesses, and enter the residential streets. Cole finally looks back to Eric again. He's reverted to the same look he started the car ride with, except there's something else in there. Something steely. He's geared for war, Cole sees. He's equipped with as much armor as he's ever seen him in, but strangely, he can't see a blade at all.

They turn onto their street, and crawl past copy-pasted suburban houses, until they reach their address, and park just outside.

It's a warm day. The sun is just past the center of the sky. The only clouds are wispy and insubstantial. All the same, the world is dark. Cole looks at Eric. He's slumped in his seat, his head angled down. Cole's smile has left, his expression neutral. He looks Eric up and down.

"Bro…"

"Get out of the fucking car."

"Eric —"

"Out."

Cole doesn't move for a moment. He stares his brother down. Eric makes eye contact for a split second, but he can't keep it. He turns his head away.

Cole grabs his crutches from between his seat and the car door, and then opens it. The car being low to the ground makes it difficult to get his crutches under his armpits as he steps out of the car, but he stands to full height, wincing at a reminder of the pain. He takes a step out into the street, and then turns around. Eric hasn't moved.

Cole scowls, and then it softens. He frowns, but it doesn't stick. He shuts the car door, and hobbles to the trunk, which pops open before he gets there.

Movement catches his attention, in the corner of his vision. He looks up, and sees his mother at the front door. She makes eye contact with Cole, and then runs over with an urgency Cole can't place. She reaches him, and pulls him into a tight hug.

"Mom…"

She doesn't hear him. He winces at the pain as her embrace pulls him off-balance.

"Let's get your baggage from the car," she says, her voice wavering, unsteady.

She says "let's," but she does it all herself, pulling his bags from the back and placing them on the sidewalk. She stops once they have all of his bags, and Cole feels his chest tighten.

"Mom, what about Eric's?"

She shuts the trunk.

"What's going on?"

"Come inside," she says in a hoarse whisper.

No, he thinks. No.

Still, he can hardly resist her. On a good day he could, but not with a broken foot, not in crutches. He nearly trips towards her as she grabs hold of his arm and urges him along.

"Let's go inside," she repeats.

"No," he barely says.

"We're going inside, come on."

Sir Ortegren stands in the doorway now, battle standard raised and waving in the wind.

"No!" He struggles free of her grasp, and in doing so, loses his balance and falls to the ground by his forgotten luggage. Pain surges from his foot and makes his eyesight fade out for a moment.

"Oh!" she startles.

"Cole, listen to your mother."

"No! No!" He's screaming, but completely ineffectual. His mother can hardly pull him up with how much he squirms, but he can't bring himself to his feet either.

"Cole." A firmer grasp seizes him, and pulls him to his feet. The knight. The crusader.

He doesn't care about Cole's foot. He doesn't care about the crutches or the bags. He drags Cole, and Cole can't resist.

"Eric!" he yells at the top of his lungs. "Eric!"

As he gets pulled towards the house, he watches Eric's face through the driver side window. Eric doesn't look up. He doesn't move. His eyes still fixed on the steering wheel, his hands shaking along its sides.

"Eric!!"

Sir Ortegren shoves Cole inside, and he tumbles to the ground again. "Stay here."

Cole shouts again, but this time there is no word. Just anger, just flailing cords where his lame limbs fail him. The knight shuts the front door and turns around. Cole struggles to his feet, pulling himself up by use of the bench by the door where shoes are offloaded. Once he's standing, he leans against the door, and presses his hands against the glass.

His mother, sobbing, stands guard by Cole's luggage. Ortegren the Noble is leaning down to the driver-side door, obscuring Cole's view of Eric. He's saying something. He's spreading the word, he is bringing down his holy hammer, he is sanctioning the grounds, ridding the household of sin.

The car begins to move. Sir Ortegren moves with it, until it picks up enough speed he can't keep up. He yells something at the car as it peels off. Cole's chest feels like it's going to implode — his heart can't keep up with the pace of events as they happen.

Eric is gone.

Eric is gone.

PieMouth

im sorry, i dont think i feel it today

PentaclesPaige

aw. That's fine!!

What's up?

Cole slumps in his library seat, his hands feeling limp on the keyboard.

PieMouth

i shot myself last week

on accident

PentaclesPaige

OMG

Are you okay???

PieMouth

yea i'm due for surgery soon to like reconstruct my foot or someshit

next week i think?

im kind of out of it

PentaclesPaige

That's understandable dude!! Go, like, rest or something man take some time off 🙂

Last week??

PieMouth

nah id rather be in town, then i get to use the computers at the library

yeah

PentaclesPaige

Just been pushing through this whole time huh 😔

PieMouth

ig

PentaclesPaige

like

How ????

PieMouth

i was being an idiot with a gun how else do you think

PentaclesPaige

I dunno it just sounds like a story

PieMouth

it's my story

PentaclesPaige

…?

Ohh like

PieMouth

what

PentaclesPaige

"it's my story"

is the emphasis

PieMouth

ye

PentaclesPaige

got it

PieMouth

ye

PentaclesPaige

Well

If it's ever a story you wanna share

I'm interested 👂

Cole feels anger's attempt to flicker into existence, but the cutting wind of exhaustion blows it out before it can take hold.

PieMouth

maybe

later

PentaclesPaige

Okay!

PieMouth

"later" as in goodbye

PentaclesPaige

Oh right 😛

See ya! Take care of yourself dude 💛👋

"You're a sad sack of shit, y'know that?"

Austin and Cole made quick friends once school started — Cole never notices that all his friends come quick, but they do. They sit next to each other on the bus home, because they happen to share the same bus stop, which is how they met in the first place.

I know that, Cole thinks to himself.

"Tch," is what comes out of his mouth.

"Seriously. You're gloomy. You'd think you'd been shot or something."

Austin laughs at Cole's expense. He's had his surgery, but they told him he might be in crutches until the end of the year. They recommended him take it easy, but apparently that didn't include staying home from school. Besides, it didn't seem like his parents were going to allow something like that.

"Very funny, shithead."

Austin's laugh just redoubles, and he elbows Cole's arm, hard. Somehow, the jolt still makes his foot hurt, even though it's more than half his body away. Things seem to work like that now.

"I just wanna know what makes you so special, y'know? Who gave you permission to bring down the mood?"

Cole can't stare out at suburbia as it passes by, because Austin has the window seat. Instead, Cole is forced to look off into the aisle, which doesn't take him a desirable distance from his current circumstance. He frowns and turns to Austin. Austin, who is wearing his trademark camo and John Deere hat, along with his strong brow and clean white smile.

"Who says I can't?" Cole asks.

"Everyone, dipshit. It's rude."

"Why do you care?"

"Because you make me sad, and if you keep making me sad, I'm not gonna have a reason to hang out with your sorry ass. So you can either cheer up, or you can give me a good reason, or you can watch your only friend leave and you can go hang with the bitchy emos instead, maybe they're more your style."

"I'm not an emo bitch."

"You're not being very convincing."

"My brother, okay!?" Cole snaps.

After the words leave his mouth, his mood softens, somber. Admitting it out loud to someone pulls loose a bit of his defenses.

"What, he giving you a hard time?" Austin asks, unsympathetic.

"No. Just the opposite." Cole pauses, but Austin doesn't speak, raising eyebrows instead. "He's gone."

Austin seems serious for a moment. "Dead?"

"Not dead, dumbass. Gone. Left. Ran away." Austin is about to cut in, but Cole adds: "Kicked out."

"Snrk. Kicked out? What he do?"

Anger and frustration boil in Cole's heart. "Turns out he's a faggot."

"Oh shit," Austin says, dead serious.

"Piece of shit valued his dick over the family and now he's paying for it. Used me to meet his fag boyfriend out in the woods, fuck while I wasn't around, and now he's getting what's coming to him."

"Ah man. And that's eating at you?"

"Used me. He fucking used me."

Austin smirks. "I see, I see, you're not a sad sack of shit, you're just the type of anger that seethes, aren't you? My dad's like that."

"So's mine," Cole states, cold.

"Well why didn't you say so? What are you, protecting him or something?" Austin laughs, and elbows Cole again. Cole bristles at the touch, but says nothing.

"Nothing to protect," Cole mumbles.

"That's what I thought. And hey, between you and me? You're gonna win points with that story, not lose 'em. You can even piss on the libs a little bit if you want, that'll get you in good with the guys I know."

Cole just nods, vaguely frustrated again that he doesn't have the window seat, staring at the seat in front of him instead.

"Hey. What say you and I go shooting sometime?" Austin laughs. "I mean it though. Shit thing is, the best one around requires a chaperone for if you're under 18. My sister's cool though, she could take us. She'd get a kick out of hearing about your brother, too."

"Best what?"

"Range, come on. Seriously, you and I, we could get out some of that aggression, eh? Fuck up some targets, really lay into them. I mean, just imagine, right? Know your brother's height? We could get a target about yay big, right?" Cole's heartrate quickens. "Ever heard the idea of putting some guy's face on the baseball so you hit it harder? Well, same idea. Picture that slobbering, dick-sucking brother of yours on that target, see how good it feels to put some holes in it. Give him what-for. I'd like to see that."

Cole's stare into the seat in front of him turns slowly into a glare, and Austin seems to chortle watching the transformation.

"Imagining it, huh?" He laughs. "Maybe you can picture that fruity bitch of his, too. Maybe picture that sissy putting his lips all around your brother's shitty little two-incher, head in front, and bam, aim at the target's crotch, and what you really hit is his head, right? Splatter everything all up your bro's front."

Cole imagines Jed's head cracking open, gray matter spraying onto Eric's abdomen, the ensuing scream as Jed slumps over, falling to the ground, leaving Eric with his pants down, reddened, bits of Jed spread over the dirt and the concrete wall of the lumberyard. The screaming. Only Cole doesn't picture a bullet — he pictures a crossbow bolt.

Austin's laughter grows. "Yeah, yeah! I see you, I see you picturing it, haha! Exactly like that. How'd that feel, huh? Maybe shed some manly tears 'stead of these pussy little things, really get it out of your system, whadaya say?"

Cole glances over at Austin, making brief eye contact. His heart is pounding in his ears. He looks forward again, and shrugs.

Austin huffs. "Whatever. Open invitation, dude."

Soon enough, the bus reaches their stop. They and two other teens make their way to the front and get off, Cole holding up the line with his crutches and being very conscious of that fact. The bus doors close, and the thing rumbles off. The two other teens, a boy and a girl, get ahead of Austin and Cole rather quickly, all heading the same direction. Austin seems bothered to have to walk slower to stay with Cole, but does so anyways.

Cole's heart boils, bubbles, twists and hisses. His breaths shudder, and his face coils into a scowl.

Austin, a few steps ahead and firmly in his own world without a conversation to draw attention, doesn't see the transformation. The black mood of his "friend." Cole is patient, though. Was patient enough to wait until they were off the bus, and is now patient enough to wait until the couple in front of them is far enough away.

He exerts himself to close the short distance between himself and Austin on his crutches.

"Hey," he says.

"Yeah?" Austin replies, turning his head slightly to the right towards Cole behind him.

ArtPiece XIV

Cole raises and slams his crutch into the side of Austin's head, throwing him off-balance and sending him towards the ground. He falls left, away from Cole, and catches himself with his hands, scraping them and his left elbow on the sidewalk.

"What the fuck!" he yells, bringing a hand to his head, and turning so that he's on his back more than his side.

Cole catches his balance, stumbling, but quickly ditches the crutches as he realizes they give him no leverage with which to kick or punch someone on the ground. He lets himself fall, trying to position his knee to stab into Austin's gut. The knee lands, but not where Cole wanted — the blow, while it makes Austin huff, doesn't give him much leverage, or seem to have much effect. Now, Cole, perpendicular to Austin, doesn't have a good angle with which to punch or kick or do anything. Austin rolls out from under him, easily shedding the attempted pin, and getting to his feet. Cole attempts the same, realizing the role reversal about to happen, but struggles with his broken foot, which is throbbing in pain in its cast.

Austin takes advantage of the moment, and kicks Cole straight in the chest. Or he would have, had Cole not been prepared to deflect. He may be untrained at offense, only winning the occasional sucker punches against his brother, but Cole has been long practicing defense. He palms the leg and pushes it to the side before it can land, which twists Austin's body and throws him off-balance, sending him to the ground again.

"Don't you ever fucking trash-talk my brother again you slimy piece of shit!"

Cole, ignoring the soaring pain in his foot, launches himself onto Austin, this time landing in a better, more compromising position, straddling the boy.

He rears back to give a punch, but the move is too telegraphed, and Austin easily blocks it, putting Cole's fist in his hand. Cole strikes with the other, and Austin repeats the action. With both fists in his hands, Austin leverages Cole — Cole is so small, Cole has always been so small. Austin, taller and stronger, is able to roll Cole onto his back, reversing the position.

"What the fuck is wrong with you!" Austin yells back, as he pushes a hand into Cole's face. Cole's hands wrap around his forearm, trying to move the intruder that was making breathing hard, pressing down against and hurting his nose, and obscuring his vision all at the same time. He makes no progress. Instead, he feels the hand release and a fist connect with his jaw in the same moment. It doesn't hurt immediately, but he can tell it will. Looking up, he sees that another fist is about to come down — but it gets stopped by intervening hands.

The couple that was ahead of them had run back, and now pulls Austin off of Cole, shoving him away. An argument starts, but Cole's ringing ears don't let him hear it — besides, he's incapable of giving much attention to anything except his foot, the pain of which seems to have creeped up his entire calf, deep as bone.

He tries to prop himself up on his elbows, fails, and then feels hands grip him under the shoulders, pulling him to his feet. The girl. She gets the crutches in his armpits, and helps him keep himself steady.

"Do you need me to help walk you home?" she asks.

Cole nods. He and Austin make eye contact, briefly, the boy still between them, blocking their way to one another.

PieMouth

hey

Cole's body feels hollowed, like someone took an apple-corer to him. He rotates his ankle on his healing foot. His knuckles are sore. They yelp at him every once in a while as he types.

PentaclesPaige

Hey!!

She never takes too long to respond.

What's up? How are you?

PieMouth

my brother got kicked out of the house

PentaclesPaige

oh shit

PieMouth

and its my fault

PentaclesPaige

🙁

👐

What happened? Are you okay?

PieMouth

im not okay

PentaclesPaige

Is there anything I can do to help?

Cole's mouth contorts, but he wills it to loosen.

PieMouth

no, i dont think so

PentaclesPaige

I'm sure it's not your fault lil guy

PieMouth

it is

it's his own stupid fucking fault too

but i didn't think they'd kick him out

why do people do stupid things paige

why can people be so fucking retarded

There's an uncharacteristically long pause in the conversation. Cole starts to type only to see Paige typing at the same time, and he stops. She seems to mimic him, also ceasing to type, but in the ensuing silence, Cole's patience wins out, and Paige starts typing again.

PentaclesPaige

What happened?

PieMouth

turns out my piece of shit brother is gay

PentaclesPaige

oh

PieMouth

parents didnt like that

dad didnt like that

PentaclesPaige

oh 🙁

Cole worms around a hole in the conversation, and he wants to know what's inside it. It feels like casting a line into a deep pit, hoping there's water at the bottom, and desperately trying to pull something up — anything up. He's trying to grab something. He's trying to hold something. If Paige could just give it, whatever it is, then maybe this could be a good day — the first good day.

do you?

PieMouth

what??

PentaclesPaige

Er, like it, y'know

Do I like it?

Cole has never felt energy pulse through his system so quickly. His hands briefly pull off of the keyboard as his biceps involuntarily clench. His jaw sets, his eyes squint, and the corners of his mouth pull back. Similarly, his legs curl so the insides of his knees hug the edge of his seat as hard as they can.

PieMouth

I dont fucking care ! I dont *fucking care!

why in the world should i fucking care???

PentaclesPaige

👐

PieMouth

I dont give a single shit what she doing whitg his time

i thouvht i cared but i dont care at all

i dont fucking carew

Cole's knuckles scream at him as his fingers punch at the keyboard with enough force he's vaguely afraid he might break something — but another part of him wants so desperately to break something, so strongly to destroy something, so passionately does he want to make sure the world gives him some violent recompense for the damage it has caused. Cole tries to gouge out an eye for an eye.

i just want the family to be fucking normal agian

I want everything to be ormlal agin

PentaclesPaige

You miss him

PieMouth

i want him back

The honesty slips out of Cole's brain unbidden. Looking at the words on the screen, it startles him. He pushes his seat back from the computer, and then scoots it in just as quickly. His eyes dart between his hands and the screen, as if questioning if they are still under his command.

PentaclesPaige

You love him

A wet shiver starts at the crown of his head and shoots down the length of his body. He feels hot in his cheeks. He feels like his neck is tight enough to rip open.

PieMouth

that's a retarded question

PentaclesPaige

It wasn't a question

Cole reels. He's never thought of his brother in those terms. He's never heard them said so plainly. It takes a moment of foggy consideration — cross-referencing his understandings of familial love and displays of affection, in crude inarticulate words — emotional impressionism.

PieMouth

yes

His body fights him as he writes it, but he can't figure out why. A shot of self-loathing, with the precision of a needle going through his nose and stabbing into the soft tissue of his brain, enters and disperses through his mind. He struggles for its source.

PentaclesPaige

I'm really sorry you're going through that.

Cole doesn't respond. Doesn't know how to respond.

PentaclesPaige

My family didn't really like it when I came out, either

PieMouth

came out?

PentaclesPaige

yea

Cole flashes to the scene of Eric's departure, twisted now, the memory distorting. He sees Eric yelling back, a screaming match between himself and Sir Ortegren. He sees the knight invoke the power of God — he sees the righteous light pierce through heaven and strike down the traitor — the masqueraded acolyte. And he wants it — he wants the anger, the name of God.

He types, all of a sudden, a flurry of hatred. Plymouth's gauntlets grip the pen so tight it is only a matter of time until it snaps, and the ink is Eric's blood.

Let me be right, a distant voice, like a King looking down from the barricades. Please just let me be right.

But he can't feel it. The words fall flat. "Dyke" drips off the page.

The page Plymouth has handed him.

Cole is aware, for the first time. He looks at his hands, and notices their bare skin. The bruising on his knuckles.

He looks up to see Plymouth's outstretched gauntlet, his frosted armor. The letter in his hand, bidding Cole to take it. To deliver his word. His righteousness. His anger.

Cole's fingers twitch over the enter key.

ArtPiece XV

"Take it," Plymouth bids.

Who are you? Cole thinks.

"Take it!" The voice booms.

Cole blinks, and realizes his vision is getting foggy.

He backs away. Plymouth's eyes are lost under his visor. All of a sudden, it looks like there might not be anything under it — like the metal, the pauldrons, the leggings, the chains. The helmet. The defenses — the offenses. Like Plymouth is a morass of mechanics, a tangle of intentions that force themselves upon him. But Cole — Cole is weak without the armor, without the sword, without the crossbow. He cannot defeat it.

The icy stare of Plymouth hardens as they both realize that they don't stand on the same ground anymore.

Cole presses Ctrl+A and deletes.

He feels his breath hitch.

PieMouth

im sorry

PentaclesPaige

It's alright

I'm in a better place right now

Little ugly noises come out of Cole's throat. He wipes a shaking forearm across his face to try to get rid of the tears.

He sees the holy light. He sees the squire smitten by the wrath of God.

PieMouth

im sorry

He doesn't know what it means, exactly.

im sorry

But he feels untethered.

PentaclesPaige

It's okay, really

I mean it

He feels uncertain.

[can we| ]

He feels a grip tighten around his throat as he types it.

PieMouth

can we retire plymouth

PentaclesPaige

Oh?

PieMouth

i dont

i dont want to play him

anymore

…

PentaclesPaige

of course

Cole feels something fall off of him, and with it go all of the defenses he still had up. He cries in a way he has never let himself cry before. Not once. Not even alone.

Interlude: The Ugly Aesthetic

Hey Jesus

I think we get along most of the time

Sorry we haven't spoken, I've said "hi" and "goodbye" but I'm aware that I've hardly tried

To foster connection, regression I'm sure from where I was before but all in all

Jesus

I think we get along mostly just fine

I like what you say, how you say it, replay it and I'll find a smile, only once in a while

The things people do in your name scare me half to death

Hey Jesus Christ!

You're known for understanding

So I'm asking for your blessing

Figure you might get, it's nothing against you

Figure you might get, I've got only respect

For the things you did, for the things that you do

Hey Jesus, dude

Don't find it rude

I think those guys look really good in black

And though your Christian senses might attack

At the fact that they're wearing your symbol upside-down

Figured you might get, figured you might've bit

At the fact that they're still sharing your symbol around

So I'm asking your blessing

Make this mosh pit a holy ground

We wear!

The ugly aesthetic

So good at drawing eyes

On which our future's heart relies

The ugly aesthetic

Should come as no surprise

When beauty is in God's domain

What's left is easy to surmise

The ugly aesthetic

In Satan's name, the holy ghost says "hi!"

The ugly aesthetic

The ugly aesthetic…

Plymouth raised a sword

That gleamed in God's radiance

The blood that dripped down

Was blessed by His countenance

We're well aware it's a twist to compare

Your message and the outcomes

We'd grab a drink, nag at the link

'Tween impact and intent

But Cole drew a gun

And, God help us, Cole wasn't the only one

They wear!

The holy aesthetic

Crusader

The righteous aesthetic

Celebrator

The unsympathetic

Consecrator

Good word antithetical

Nonetheless a white frustrater!

I hope Cole can find!

The ugly aesthetic x3

Legacy of the Ortegren!

The ugly aesthetic x3

Jesus, be with us, and help defend!

The ugly aesthetic

The ugly aesthetic…

ArtPiece XVI

Hopefully that was a good pick-me-up. Gets the energy up. How are you? How are you doing? It's been a lot of ugly, I know. And not the good kind! Yeah, I'm sort of mixing up my metaphors here by using "ugly" in a negative way with the song so close above.

Who, me? Oh, y'know. I'm the Elf for Your Help™️! Did you forget about me? That's understandable. See, I'm a subtle actor here. More like… a vector. A desire, maybe. I help things happen, in the broadest sense. Sometimes, it's very obvious. A little girl wants a pony. Well, maybe that's too much of an ask, living in the city like she is, but a horse ride can be arranged! On the way back from a long trip, Dad thinks he doesn't need the GPS, and where do they find themselves but a ranch. They have some extra cash and a generous schedule, what have they to lose?

Cole, well. He's a little harder, isn't he? I worry for that boy sometimes, but I'm doing what I can. Thing is, he hardly knows what he wants in the first place, and he certainly doesn't know how to work towards it. Doesn't help he's forgotten about me, but so many young boys do.

Sigh…

Feel free to take a break here. Only, I don't want you to leave too heartbroken. So, have a token of my appreciation, for you making it this far. I think it shows you really care — Cole really needs people who care, you know? It's good of you. I don't blame you if you don't, either. I find it very sad, of course. I've watched him grow up, and I'm getting pretty fond of him myself. His imagination, his creative spirit! That stuff is highly valued where I come from, eh? Magic, it's sometimes called. Despite everything, Cole still has a sense of Wonder. A lot of people from the Clause — that's what my people call your place, taha! — have trouble keeping it, and Cole has parents that don't value it very much so it's all the more impressive how he's toting it around. Only, I wish he could show it more often, to more people. He keeps ending up in the wrong circles — oh, or the right circles! Couldn't they all see they're the same and prop each other up instead of smothering one another?

Sorry. Sometimes, Cole's friends work me up like that. Not Paige, though. She's a darling.

Alright, breathe deep, we're going back. Yes, I know, it can be harrowing at times, but lighten up. I have a good feeling about this. Don't give me that look, I'm being serious! I think sometimes people are so ready to see the ugly they miss out on all the beauty — and there I am again, talking aesthetics and muddying the message. Look, it all makes perfect sense to me. Where I come from, ugly is beautiful, except of course we don't call it ugly in the first place, that's just me adjusting to how you Clausians think. Cultural exchange is a doozy, isn't it?

Okay, but I'm serious. Try seeing things from my perspective — try seeing the brothers who love each other, the hurt little boys who so rarely come upon a raw compliment and a hug. Try seeing the good in these broken people. Yes, I've heard it before, I'm a little naive they keep telling me. Well, come on, read on and prove me wrong… but I think they're going to surprise you.

It's been a nice talk. And don't forget, whatever you're seeing, I'm seeing too, and I'm ever so carefully nudging, nudging, nudging along this story, even when you can't see me. I'm an elf, for crying out loud! Do you know anyone who's seen an elf?

Part II: Eric the Scorned

ArtPiece XVII

Eric's sweat gleams across his skin from the long walk in 90 degree weather — never before had Eric felt the sun's glare so literally. The prickling heat on his arms had followed him inside, even as he retreated from the windows. It feels, to him, that the weather picks and chooses, and he is getting special treatment today.

His oily hands don't grip the pen quite like he wants them to. He's afraid his button-up shirt doesn't look half as decent as it did when he started the walk.

You don't even know if that's the manager, he reassures himself, peering over the counter and into the kitchen of the Domino's. He blinks several times, to get a bead of sweat out of his eyelashes. He writes into the application a brief job history — his stints as cashiers over summer, or his one job at a local roller rink he enjoyed and that made his father give him glowering eyes that hurried his retreat to his bedroom every time he got home.

Without a better idea, he writes in his address as his parents', hoping — with some confidence — that they won't care to check.

He goes back to the counter, and slides the application across it. The cashier notices him, but waits a moment to finish topping a pizza before sliding it into the oven. They wash their hands, and then meander over.

"I'll put this on the boss' desk," they say with no intent except to finish the interaction.

"Thanks. I appreciate it," Eric replies.

"Oh, uh. You're gonna have to apply online, too."

"Oh?" Eric frowns.

"Yeah."

"Then what was even the fucking point of the — this?" He makes a violent gesture at the piece of paper in the employee's hand, and they recoil from him slightly. "Nevermind," he's quick to adjust, "sorry." His eyes screw shut, and his mouth tightens, as he tries to get a bead on his own temper. "Thank you for telling me. Have a good day."

If the employee responds, he can't tell through the rumble in his ears and his tunnel vision on the exit. In one hand, he holds a sheaf of resumes he'd printed at the library, that he was handing to any business with a "HELP WANTED" sign. They're bothersome to hold, and he fears his sweat will make them damp and gross, but the other option was to bring his backpack with him, and he's afraid that would be detrimental to his image.

He looks up at the Idahoan sky, partly to intimidate it into a cooler temperature, partly to avoid looking at the people he has to pass. An online application will mean revisiting the library. What a fucking pain, he thinks, but cursing brings him no comfort, not out loud nor in his head. He struggles to find external objects to despise. The sky, the people around him. He finds moments of reprieve, when looking in disdain on women he judges as bitchy, on kids that get on his nerves, on little nervous dogs that come up to sniff him but then recoil from his intense stare. But more often than that, he finds the external creeping in: he sees a homeless man on a street corner, and attempts to grab at the addictive judgment he would levy on those lower than him, but in the same instant it burns him, his brain snapping away as if it had just touched a hot stove.

He repulses at each repeat instance. On his way between businesses, handing resumes, he crosses queers, butch women, homeless men asking for change. He had once politely regarded them — he was always taught to be polite above everything — and keep his rightful despising to himself, his superiority inherent and ever-so-elegantly talked around, though obviously implied, acted on, acknowledged silently and constantly. Now, he struggles to separate himself. Everywhere he looks, he finds connections, similarities. He may look different — but that is all there is.

His mind feels like a bowl of worms. He finds shelter in a gas station bathroom, and braces himself, his hands on either side of the sink, head down like he might start to vomit. He wonders if he actually will.

He doesn't.

He raises his eyes and looks at himself in the mirror.

So much sweat. There are little brown corners on his features where his perspiration has accumulated grime into one spot. He grimaces, and turns away. He's heard of "homeless showers," using a sink as your cleaning method. Unsure of the process, he merely turns the faucet on, and sticks his head under. A cold comfort crawls over his scalp. He grabs at it and then rubs his face, digging his fingers into the sides of his nose, his eye sockets, and giving special attention to his chin. He feels scratchy, and winces at the recognition that he hasn't shaved yet like he usually does.

He looks at himself in the mirror. Better. Not great. He struggles for something more to do. He squirts handsoap onto his palm, and then, with some hesitation, rubs it on his face, careful not to get any into his eyes. He then repeats the process of running his head under water and wiping his face.

He looks at himself in the mirror. Better. Not good enough. But it has to be. He rubs his face several more times to get rid of the white highlights where he didn't get the soap out, and then grabs his resumes from atop the toilet tank lid, turning and leaving. As he opens the door, someone is waiting their turn, and gives him a look that says they recognize what he must have just done. He instinctively summons up vitriol, but it catches in his throat and hurts, like holding in a cough. I have no right, he thinks, and shame shoots him towards the door of the gas station with the same force as gunpowder in a barrel.

He has to walk miles to get to his car, parked in an untended parking lot next to a series of garages hiding businesses that don't talk to the public. He's seen one take in a gurney with a covered body atop before the garage door shut. Where he's parked, he thinks, the garage is abandoned — or, at least, not yet sold. He hides under the incompetent cover of a thin tree and a chain link fence.

The summer evening brings with it, at last, a bearable temperature, though Eric still finds himself heaving and sweating buckets from the trek. Once he's ready, he uses his razor to tend to the scruff that's grown in as he's been preoccupied, and finds his ability lacking without a sink. He tries to soften the hairs with some water from his bottle, and he's unsure if it helps. With shaking hands, he nicks himself, and curses.

"Fuck!"

It comes out strangled, and he startles himself. The flutter in his chest rewards him for expressing the suppressed, and suddenly he finds himself without a reason to hold it in like he'd done all day.

On the realization, a kind of scream comes out of him, loud and deep and hollering, done in three takes with breaths between. He stands up with the energy, and bellows a fourth with some articulation: "God! God fu-uck!"

He ends with his throat scratchy. His eyes water, and his teeth grind against one another.

The night answers him with a comforting breeze, a distant dog bark, and the ever-present rumble of a nearby freeway.

ArtPiece XVIII

"Fuck," he says, to himself. "I'm fucked."

His voice cracks on the last word, and he recoils at the show of weakness, instantly tensing, grabbing his car door, and slamming it with all his might, for no other reason than to damage something.

"Cole, see me after class."

The teens file out as the bell rings, some giving Cole a smirk and a chuckle as they pass him. They love witnessing someone else's suffering — it makes them feel powerful and untouchable. Cole refuses to move from his seat, but makes no attempt at escape either. Mr. Gilmore can come meet Cole at his own table, if he wants to delay Cole's usual RP with Paige. Plus, Cole will have to come up with an excuse — not that it's hard, but anytime he has to talk around him still being in high school it makes him nervous.

Mr. Gilmore doesn't even have the decency to wait until everyone's left. A girl who's moving slowly, packing her textbooks absently while her focus is on her phone, is still in the classroom when Gilmore walks over and puts his hands on Cole's desk, leaning over and looking at him.

"Is there any reason you didn't finish the assigned reading?"

Cole huffs, and gives no further reply.

"Mr. Ortegren, I'm going to need you to take this conversation seriously."

"I am going to take it as seriously as it warrants," Cole snaps back.

Mr. Gilmore stands up, and sighs, half-turning away from Cole.

"This is your third missed assignment in a row. What you do turn in is often incomplete. When you get put in a group project, you disappear. Don't think I don't notice. You skip questions on the tests when you would get at least partial credit just by writing a single sentence. Mr. Ortegren, if this keeps up, you will fail my class."

Cole draws his shoulders inward, tightening his crossed arms, and shrugs.

"What if I don't care?"

"You'll have to take remedial classes over summer. Think of it as buying your free time — and if you fail those classes, you might have to repeat a grade. I've talked with your other teachers. You aren't doing much better in their classes either."

Cole bristles. "This is pointless," he mutters.

"Excuse me?"

"This is stupid," he corrects, louder.

"Is it, Mr. Ortegren?"

"It is. I don't act out. I don't bother people. I sit in the back of the class, doing my own shit —"

"Don't use that language with me."

Cole shuts up, but his expression shows no sign of guilt.

"It's not about you bothering people," Gilmore continues.

"Then what is it about? My future?"

"Do you want to be sent to the principal's office, Mr. Ortegren?"

"So you can't give me a good reason? You're just going to threaten me into complying?"

Gilmore flounders. The vocabulary Cole uses — he's not the white trash he can look like. Mr. Gilmore struggles to reconcile the stubborn, dirty, camo-wearing child in front of him with the one he'd seen after school checking out books from the library.

Cole shifts in his seat, anxious to leave. "What if I tell you I don't care if I fail this class. Will you let me go?"

"What are you hoping to do after high school?"

Cole feels a cold needle slip underneath his muscles, separating his pectorals from his ribs. He avoids eye contact. "Does it matter?"

"Does what you're doing right now get you the future you want?"

Fuck you, Cole thinks, the threat of the principal's office keeping him from voicing it. With no external outlet, it travels inwards, and that creases his brow further.

"I'll let you go right now," Gilmore concedes, "but I'll be talking with your parents."

The needle melts and diffuses over his chest. "Good, then I'm going."

Cole grabs his backpack, and is watched all the while by his teacher, who stands a desk's length away, unmoving, disapproving. Cole wants to yell something at him, show him how little he respects Mr. Gilmore's authority over himself, but he can't risk the conversation with his parents — with his dad.

He rushes to the door and throws it open.

He didn't used to be such a shit student. Cole wasn't good, either — but he worked at least hard enough to get a C. He's not sure what changed — he's not sure what future he envisioned for himself before — but ever since Eric was thrown out, he's been unable to figure out a single thing worth doing. The only things keeping him accountable are the patriarch's eyes boring down on him, and the occasional reassurance from Paige. He somewhat regrets opening up to her — he can't rationalize it, can't tell if it was a good idea. It makes him feel weak, but her supportive words matter more to him than any sense of self-worth. He can't let her know that, so he never asks for them, never prompts — can't let himself know it, or feel weaker still, reliant, stupid, girly. Sometimes, it makes him want to cry, and he doesn't allow himself to know why.

Still, it keeps him more willing to share, when she catches on that he's in a poor mood. She's good at it. Knows when to ask for more details, when to back off.

He has to be careful with his words, not to tip her off that he's still in high school and not college, where she expects him to be. Still, he can usually get most of his feelings across.

Some of them, he must admit to himself, have begun to make their way into their RP. He's entirely unaware of how influential his feelings have been to his prior engagements, erroneously identifying that only now do his life circumstances require representation in his fictions.

But he wants to keep it subtle. He's unaware — or willingly ignorant — that Paige sees right through it. He's not nearly as good at deception as he thinks he is.

He enters the computer lab, and passes the other few people who come here after school. He watched them become friends as they sat next to each other — the girls without access to the internet or printers at home, necessary for some assignments — and resents them for it. He takes his usual seat at the very back of the class, and tunes out their conversation as he enters his new role.

He opens the browser, and it automatically starts on his school email. The inbox is more than full, over a hundred unread emails. He doesn't care to check them. He always tabs out immediately.

But something makes him stop.

In the list of identical-looking subject lines, each longer than the displayable character count, talking about assignments due and when, groups for group projects, all from the same formulaic email addresses, one stands out, close to the top, sent several days ago.

Hey Bro

nicerackdoe@hotmail.com

Cole's heart jumps into his throat, and his hands begin to tremble.

He hesitates for an unmeasured moment. Then, the mouse shoots for the email, and opens it. Cole pours over its contents, however brief they may be, hanging on every word from Eric. His heart aches as he hears his brother's voice in the words: defeated. Eric, the stronger of the two — the bigger brother — sounds so passive in his email, so meek. Some part of Cole recognizes and empathizes with the pain, with the realization of how far Eric has fallen. Another, uglier part criticizes Eric, judging him for not projecting strength at his lowest moment. Maybe the fag's always been weak, Cole thinks, but the acrylic red thought comes with a layer of watercolor blue — something like a sigh, something like a pressure in Cole's biceps that wants to be relieved with an embrace, something like a confusing tint of love overlaid on his bigotry.

If actions speak louder than words, Cole should be grateful for the fact, because even as he resents his brother for his vices, for his transgressions against the family, his sole motivation is to help somehow.

He can't formulate a response. In a daze, he opens a second tab, and utilizes his proxy sites to navigate to Discord, where he enters his PMs with Paige.

PentaclesPaige

💃

Readyyyy

She's been waiting, but Cole doesn't have time to apologize.

PieMouth

My brother sent me an email

There's a heart-pounding delay as Paige undoubtedly hears the notification but finishes whatever it is she's doing first. Maybe one of her sudokus, maybe a YouTube video.

PentaclesPaige

Oh my god

you havent heard from him since he got kicked out right ??

PieMouth

no

PentaclesPaige

Oh my god

She avoids asking its contents, even though Cole knows she has to be curious. This is the kind of respect of his boundaries he finds incredibly comfortable, and which allows him to feel okay opening up like he does.

PieMouth

He's living out of his car and working in fast food. He figured out my college email because they're formulaic, derived it from my name. I have no idea what to say

PentaclesPaige

Did he ask anything of you?

PieMouth

no

PentaclesPaige

That's like

That's incredibly dude

PieMouth

?

PentaclesPaige

You can contact him now! that's inredible!!

PieMouth

yeah

Paige reads his signs, and so there's a pause. Cole cycles through the same thoughts over and over, and by the time he's on his fourth or fifth loop, he shakes his head as if trying to shuffle them into a different order or dislodge some rock to reveal a new rabbit hole. When that doesn't work, he types.

PieMouth

what do i do

PentaclesPaige

Respond to him

He told you what his life is like, tell him about yours, keep it casual

PieMouth

so, pretend?

PentaclesPaige

Pretend what?

PieMouth

that nothing's happened

Paige seems to consider that.

PentaclesPaige

Or you can tell him how much you've missed him, and ask him where he is, see if you can't meet up

I want to tell him how stupid he is, Cole thinks, I want him to feel the pain I felt for him leaving.

PieMouth

I know where he is. A few towns over. I don't have a car, though, and I don't have a good excuse to take Dad's car, either

PentaclesPaige

You don't?

The question feels off, and he bristles.

PieMouth

no, i take the bus to college

PentaclesPaige

hmm……

I mean

What do you want to do

PieMouth

idk

Paige begins typing, but Cole interrupts her by being honest, even as he wilts with shame at the act.

help.

PentaclesPaige

ok, maybe look up what programs he has access to in your state?

PieMouth

programs?

PentaclesPaige

Yeah like

For homeless people, what state and federal programs exist to get him back on his feet?

PieMouth

he doesn't need a fucking handout

Cole regrets the message as he sends it, but he pushes that feeling back beneath the surface of anger at Paige's suggestion.

There's a pause.

PentaclesPaige

There are private institutions that do similar work, like, Salvation Army has a program for getting people financially stable

PieMouth

What he needs to do is come home

PentaclesPaige

pie

there is not a place for your brother at home

As shitty and horrible as that is, that has been made very clear.

you can't make him come back

The words feel like so many arrows. Cole coughs metaphorical blood, though the cough itself seems to come through, because suddenly Cole is aware of being watched. His eyes drift up to the girls at the front of the room, and a split second of eye contact catches before the girls turn away.

He blinks water out of his eye, and turns back to the computer.

PentaclesPaige

What state are you in?

If you won't do it, I will, she's saying. Cole knows it. Fine.

PieMouth

idaho

But he aborts the conversation. He closes the browser and signs out on the computer, grabbing his backpack and slinging it over one shoulder. As he walks out of the class, he pauses in the doorway, and turns around.

"Mind your own fucking business!"

He slams the door behind him.

PentaclesPaige

oh shit

Idaho?

Really?

…

okay, pie, how much do you trust me?

Eric sits in the car, alone, the radio on but with no intention of listening to it. If anything, he's listening to the torrent of rain pattering on the metal, and the wind that sometimes blows so hard he can feel the car shift from side to side. He's tired. He's so, so fucking tired, and he's dreading the idea that the next step is meeting someone new.

Underneath that buzz of discomfort, Eric also notes the kind of neighborhood he's in. It's not what he expected. He's in the middle of what would be a cul-de-sac if it weren't for the parking spots. Maybe it still counted, he isn't sure. He just knows he's never seen a cul-de-sac big enough that there were parking spots in the middle.

But he can't see it now. Not with the car off, not with the rain oozing over the windshield, making a pattern more like crystal than glass. Not with the pitch black of a rainy 1:00 am.

ArtPiece XIX

He sighs, loudly.

No time like the present.

He opens the driver side door, and that breaks the circuit that keeps the radio on. Now it really is just him, the rain, and the yells of angry fathers. No, he frowns. That's just the wind. He closes the door before it can push rain sideways into the car, and he hugs his thin jacket close to him. He goes to his trunk and extracts only what he thinks he'll need to fall asleep, a single bag. The same bags he took to Grandma's house. He winces.

The house is big. Two stories. In this light he can't make out its shape exactly, but it looks to be baby-blue and modern. There's thankfully an awning and a light on the porch. He walks over, almost blown to his side, sliding on a particularly slick part of the asphalt. The trees look ready to fall over. Firs, tall and beautiful. These aren't the forests of Minnesota.

He gets to the door, and knocks.

Then he comes to his senses, and presses the doorbell in addition. With the sky pissing rain, it's impossible to hear any response inside. The wet on his clothes the hiss in his ear the buzz in his brain is all just too fucking much to cooperate with any new information, he wishes it would stop and he can just take all of this stuff off, lie down on a couch, be held, not be held, be alone, be left completely alone. The door opens.

Eric is momentarily surprised. "Hey, uh, you Paige's roommate?"

They suddenly look nearly as uncomfortable as Eric feels. "I'm Paige," she introduces herself.

"Oh." Eric's brow creases, but he wills it away. "I'm Eric. You're Cole's online friend."

"Yeah."

Why did I say that? "May I come in? It's fucking awful out here."

"Um, of course."

Paige steps out of the way, and Eric walks through the door, into the living space. The warmth is immediately refreshing, so soothing he can feel his muscles loosen and the buzz settle down. "Hey. Thank you. For coming through for me."

Paige rubs her thumb and forefinger together absently, and Eric notices. She avoids eye contact. "Yeah, no problem. I heard your situation. I couldn't stomach not doing something, so."

"Yeah," Eric states. "Yeah."

Eric can't seem to find solid ground to stand on. Paige looks so uncomfortable, it hurts him. She's probably a head shorter than him, but she's a little chubby. Just a bit of pudge around the waist that doesn't seem to exist anywhere else on her body. She stands with a slouch, and her hair looks a little greasy. Her scruff, especially, causes him to pause. It looks freshly shaven, but poorly. It's just a bit asymmetrical, and there doesn't seem to have been an attempt to get it clean off. Eric can't understand the implication — he's trying his best to not look like he's looking, to look like he's got nothing to say about it. All he wants to communicate is gratitude for being housed.

"Sorry if the place is a mess."

Her voice is scratchy from disuse, and it doesn't seem like she's done anything to it. She speaks in a craggy baritone, not anything like he'd expected from their messages back and forth. Well, he expected any level of outward femininity at all.

Paige, of course, intuits the thought process. She tells herself she might be imagining things, that it's easy to put words in people's heads that are actually her own insecurities. Unfortunately for her, this time she's right, and Eric is doing a poor job of proving her wrong. His eyes bore into her, and she finds it difficult to say what she was hoping to say.

He's fucking huge, she can't help but notice. She would never have guessed at his size, between Cole's descriptions and his quiet, polite demeanor over texts. His mass acts as a magnifier for her worries — the kinds of actions Eric would be capable of undertaking, should he get the mind to do so.

"It's totally alright," he says, a bit too late to dispel the atmosphere. He finally takes a look around, tearing his eyes off of his host for a moment. The space is perfectly livable. It may need a deep clean — the rug has an old brown shade to it, and the walls seem even more off- than the off-white they are supposed to be. But the space itself is fine. There is a couch that looks like it's never been used, placed to the left of a TV. The aforementioned rug sits in-between the two, looking out-of-place, like it came from a house a hundred years older than this one. To the left, the open floor plan connects the living room to a kitchen, pencil thin but well-stocked. Eric notices the dishwasher is on, but there are still more dirty dishes in the sink, yet to go in.

To the left of the kitchen, and closest to Eric, is a rather steep stairwell, leading up.

"The bathroom is behind the stairs, from the kitchen," Paige says. "Second door. Not the first. That one's storage space. That's pretty much the whole first floor."

"Looked bigger from the outside."

"Yeah. That's because of how much space the garage takes up. Upstairs is my bedroom and the guest room, which'll be yours, and another bathroom."

Eric expects that to lead into Paige moving, to give him the tour. But she doesn't. She stays in place, looking like she's going to collapse at any moment.

"Mind showing me to my room? I think that and a piss are all I'm going to be doing tonight."

"Yeah. Of course. Um, please don't mind the shit outside my door. I haven't figured out where to put it all yet."

"That's fine."

Paige turns and walks up the stairs, hands jammed in pockets. Eric follows her up, and discovers, downwind of her, that she's wearing a rather strong cologne. Perfume? Eric isn't present enough to decipher the terminology, and he is furthermore so thrown off-balance by Paige's presentation that he feels incapable of trusting his nose to discern whether whatever she sprayed on herself was advertised to men or women. The gray area agitates him. He finds his good manners waning, and he wants to get to bed before something vile comes out of his mouth at this person who's already done so much just to help him.

They have to step around a pile of books and two trash bags that are outside the first door to the left at the top of the stairwell.

"Sorry," Paige says under her breath.

Eric neglects to respond, now hoping to say as few words as possible, attempting to cut down on room for error.

She feels the silence, and hopes that Eric simply didn't hear her. It feels like her head is rattling. It's been so long since anyone who she is out to saw her. It is ironic, she notes, that getting groceries while closeted causes less distress than being out. She feels sickly — like her identity is limp and hanging off of her.

She fights through the feeling to motion Eric into his room. She opens the door, steps aside, and lets Eric by. "This is the guest room. It's got nothing in it right now, but, I blew up an air mattress you can sleep on. I hope that's enough for tonight…"

Eric pauses. "Yeah. Yeah, it's good."

"Good. Uhh, the door we passed, after my door, that's the upstairs bathroom. And… if you need me, just um, knock. I'll put the stuff outside my door into storage so you don't have to walk around it. Is that okay?"

"Better than okay. Thank you."

Paige flashes a smile, and makes brief eye contact for the first time since his opening the door.

"Goodnight," Paige says, hurriedly excusing herself.

"Goodnight. Uh, hey."

Turning to respond looks like it pains her, which makes Eric reconsider his approach.

"Uh," he redirects, "just, um, this is a ton, that you're doing for me. It's above the call of duty. I'm really really grateful. Thank you."

She takes it well. "Yeah. I mean, you're welcome. I'm, yeah, no, it's good. I'm sorry what happened to you."

He wishes she wouldn't bring it up. The anger comes back, the buzz returns, and once again he's afraid of saying something heinous.

"It's…" he struggles.

"It's not okay. I get it. I know you want to be reassuring, but it's okay. That it's not okay. You don't have to say it."

"Okay."

She seems to realize how much she's just talked, and her discomfort settles back into her face. "Goodnight."

"Yeah. Goodnight."

She closes the door behind her, leaving him in the barren room that has just a long window, a closet with sliding doors, empty floor space, and the aforementioned blue blow-up mattress. He tosses down his bag, turns off the light, and nearly falls into the mattress, his exhaustion taking full hold.

He nearly wants to cry. What he almost said was: You're cute. He wanted to give her a compliment, something to take the edge off of the vibe he knows he was giving off. It seemed to perfectly split the difference between honesty and a lie for her benefit. He did find her cute — in a completely masculine way. She was meek in a way that allowed his brain to ease up on the instinct for boyish competition — that allowed him to even communicate the gratitude he would otherwise guard like an open wound. He feels so inherently superior that he can relax. It isn't like that around other men.

They are so scary, all the time. So fucking scary. That was one of the things Eric really loved about Jed. Jed was also unassuming. Weak, bad at a lot of things. Good at other things, good at talking and listening. It put his guard down. He doesn't know how to put his guard down on his own, and the shield is heavy.

So heavy. It bears the Ortegren crest, and it takes all his strength just to carry it.

I deserve this, he feels more than thinks. I deserve everything that happens to me. I wasn't knightly enough. I didn't control my impulses. I broke the codes. I deserve my exile. I deserve to be thrown in with the freaks like Paige.

pentaclespaige has entered the chat.

acuterobot: don't get me started about theatre of coolty

pentaclespaige: euuuugh

acuterobot: if you get me started

acuterobot: i might not stop

chokerless: Trust me, I am not trying to start you

pentaclespaige: eueeeueuuuuuuugh

bluefootedboobies: anyone else hear something??

acuterobot: ಠಿ_ಠ

pentaclespaige: It is me!!

acuterobot: hi owo

bluefootedboobies: it's paige! hey paige

pentaclespaige: but maybe people weren't hearing me

chokerless: woof bullet dodged

pentaclespaige: what I meant to say was

pentaclespaige: EEEEEUUUUUGH

chokerless: That bad, huh?

acuterobot: what's up??? :<

pentaclespaige: I think I've made a mistake

chokerless: Oh well that sucks

bluefootedboobies: mistake?

pentaclespaige: I'll tell it simple

acuterobot: oh no!

pentaclespaige: there's a CIS GUY in my house!!

chokerless: Ah shiet

pentaclespaige: And it was an intentional choice!

pentaclespaige: By me!!!

chokerless: riiiiip

acuterobot: </3

bluefootedboobies: this that guy you're housing?

pentaclespaige: yea

chokerless: You're housing a guy?

acuterobot: i haven't heard about this

pentaclespaige: yeaaa

chereamie: acuterobot: consider yourself started :3c but let's not clutter, PM me

chokerless: That sounds like kind of a big deal

acuterobot: *starts* owo

bluefootedboobies: i've heard some of this, but the guy's basically houseless

chereamie: what's uP?

chokerless: Paige is telling us about a mistake she's made

chereamie: oh :,3

pentaclespaige: He got kicked out of the house because he got outed and then it took a bit for us to get contact again, but when we did we learned he was homeless but had a job and basically living on dimes working part time.

chokerless: Oh shiet

chokerless: Well, unfortunately, that happens

chereamie: I think the preferred term is "houseless," I've heard that at my work

bones: That must be very personal for you.

pentaclespaige: I couldn't hear that story and not start feeling shit so I let my empathy get the better of me and, after I learned he was only a state over, I offered, because I've got unused space in my house.

pentaclespaige: Only I don't know if that was a good decision.

bluefootedboobies: is he nice?

pentaclespaige: bones: right on the money, yea

pentaclespaige: bluefootedboobies: idk but he's very very cis

chokerless: You don't know?

chereamie: that

chereamie: really sucks ^_^;;

pentaclespaige: bleaaaah i could just feel him looking at me and it was horrible

chokerless: oh THAT kind

bluefootedboobies: yeeeeesh

chereamie: oh that reallly sucks ;;;;

pentaclespaige: But it's not like I can back out now! He just got here!

bluefootedboobies: you know as well as anyone that people's unfortunate circumstances aren't your responsibility

chokerless: Though probably hard to throw him out now

bluefootedboobies: but i can understand how it might have been hard to hear that story, see a direct way to help and not engage

pentaclespaige: I'm not going to throw him out.

chereamie: Gracy

chereamie: no.

bluefootedboobies: wording gracy

chokerless: What am I missing?

chereamie: ^^;;

pentaclespaige: I'm not putting him on the street again.

pentaclespaige: he hasn't even done anything

bones: The adjustment period may be difficult, but I think that you are doing a very noble thing.

pentaclespaige: thanks

bluefootedboobies: ^

pentaclespaige: I hope I am.

bluefootedboobies: to bones not "thanks"

chokerless: did he say anything?

pentaclespaige: No. It was all in the tone and the look

bluefootedboobies: did he know you were trans

pentaclespaige: no….

chereamie: i don't think he would have to?

chokerless: probably wouldn't have come if he did

chereamie: Gracy, time out

chereamie: as your friend

chereamie: please <3

bluefootedboobies: ^

chokerless: ok

chokerless: ciao

chokerless has left the chat.

pentaclespaige: bleaaaahhh

chereamie: sorry ^_^;

pentaclespaige: don't be

pentaclespaige: I get it

pentaclespaige: I 100% get it

pentaclespaige: I am currently experiencing it

pentaclespaige: I think

pentaclespaige: If I'm not reading way too far into little things that don't matter

bluefootedboobies: cis people are like that

bluefootedboobies: he's queer tho, he'll get it

chereamie: yeah! :)

pentaclespaige: mm

pentaclespaige: I hope so

hetcopogg: ay im back what i miss

pentaclespaige: eeeeugh

bluefootedboobies: paige has a boy in her house

hetcopogg: oh?

pentaclespaige: don't say it like THAT

EricO__

This is the beginning of your direct message history with @EricO__.

PieMouth

you're gonna wanna change that name

EricO__

fucks piemouth mean

PieMouth

oh it's like

this image i found

i think it was a shotgun suicide. mouth blown wide open. bruised as hell. looks like a sticky kind of pie, but it's his mouth

EricO__

haha

fucked

PieMouth

yea

https://awbw.amarriner.com/

EricO__

nice, this what you were talking about?

PieMouth

yea

tell me when you've made an account, and maybe pick something better than your name lol

EricO__

fucks wrong with my name

PieMouth

it's just not very fun

EricO__

ye?

dont matter my name when I beat ur ass

maybe thatll make it better too

PieMouth

lol

EricO__

force you to respect my stupid name

maybe ill be like TurdMuncher

PieMouth

haha ew

But nah you're gonna lose

you probably wanna name yourself something cool enough you can keep a little of your dignity when you lose

EricO__

TurdMuncher is taken

PieMouth

you type slow, bro

EricO__

okay I'm TurdMuncher_

PieMouth

bro the underscores are half of why your name looks so stupid

EricO__

the underscore is space for your balls when I claim them as a trophy

PieMouth

fuckin gay

…

EricO__

this website looks fucking awful

PieMouth

yeah but we can play now

also no sturm no sami no nell

EricO__

ye i know

what the fuck is this little twerp with the red hair

PieMouth

those are dual strike COs

ported over

ignore them for now i'll show you them later

EricO__

ok

PieMouth

How's Paige?

EricO__

hes cool

he mostly stays in his room I dont see him very often

but we like cleaned the house together and stuff

it was nice

PieMouth

What's she look like?

…

EricO__

"she"

PieMouth

mm

you right

I've just been talking to him so long it's like

Hard to picture him another way

EricO__

i mean shes hosting me

its fucking stupid but i should be respectful

PieMouth

no difference to me bro

she's just "she" to me because it's easy

EricO__

christ

…

shes been nothing but nice

the ouse is way big and she doesnt work so idk

hes just a fucking dude is the thing

when we first met he had a beard

PieMouth

wtf lol

EricO__

hes like shaving now tho

hes still just a fucking twiggy dude

bro he was probably fucking catfishing you

PieMouth

nah

EricO__

hes probably secretly some pedo creep

you fucking put me with him too

PieMouth

nah

She thinks I'm older anyways

EricO__

that dont mean anything

PieMouth

nah bro

she's cool

Do you talk?

EricO__

not much

sometimes house things

like i still dont know where everythihg is

and the toilet got mega clogged once

…

PieMouth

Oh you fuck

EricO__

coming for ur nuts dude

PieMouth

nah

You're not getting past this ironclad defense

That just fucking

Changes things

EricO__

nah it dont

i was already winning

PieMouth

uh-huh uh-huh keep thinking that

You two should talk

EricO__

y

PieMouth

she's really good to talk to

Plus she probably like gets it

She gets way more than I expect her to get

EricO__

gets what

PieMouth

idk

fag stuff

EricO__

i dont talk about fucking fag stuff

PieMouth

idk

EricO__

dunno what

PieMouth

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

maybe you should

She got kicked out of her house too y'know

…

EricO__

hows that for a ironclad defense

PieMouth

fuck

ah shit gtg

When are you available?

We can continue this later

EricO__

i dont have my work schedule yet so idk

for now im not doing fucking anything

PieMouth

okay

Well I'll be back tomorrow

My bus is leaving

But you should talk to her

EricO__

ok

PieMouth

seriously.

Okay bye bro

EricO__

bye

nice to be kicking your ass again

PieMouth

You say that now.

ok bye

Eric watches as another group of men enter the club. Eric presses his fur-lined jacket into himself, his arms tight to his sides, hands jammed into his pocket. In his left, he toys with a folded knife. A breeze makes him shiver. He looks up at the sky for a moment. The stars are sparse, light pollution at work, and something about it makes him vaguely uncomfortable — as opposed to the pressing, obvious discomfort he feels otherwise as a bending snake in his gut. He imagines, several times, that the men make eye contact with him, seeing through the veil of shadow.

They're so obvious, Eric thinks, with bitter, unidentified envy. The men with painted nails, pink attire, glowing skin. The men who take care of themselves. In another light, the men he's seen enter with unassuming outfits — those in jeans, tees, gray button-ups, clean military cuts, tennis shoes — make him a special kind of angry. The thought that he could run into them and not know, that they can walk through his life never clocked.

Stealth fags, Eric thinks, grinding his teeth. Limp-wristed fuckers.

ArtPiece XX

The Spark Club's neon yellow sign mixes with the dimmer blues of suburban electricity, casting Eric in a dreary blue cloak, only his eyes catching and reflecting the warmth of the club's entrance — his hungry, searching eyes.

He pulls the knife out of his pocket, and flicks it out, folds it, flicks it out, and folds it again, repeating the action absently, his eyes fixed on the comers and goers.

He knows, because he looked them up, that the club allows his age range. He wouldn't be allowed at the bar, of course, though he wonders if they would be able to tell his age at a glance. The door opens, and closes. Men come out laughing. Men go in wearing eager smiles.

Flick, fold. Flick, fold.

Men.

The base, animal part of Eric's brain loses grip and spins, like a tire stuck in snow, the complaining engine releasing that acrid, burning smell. Men. His heartrate picks up any time one of the men is obviously muscular, fit, large. Eric naturally sorts them into those he feels he could beat and those he couldn't — the action carries no intention, but it burns, whirs. Spins. Skids.

Unable to take another moment, Eric looks at the sky again. Relief. Release.

Why am I here? Eric can't come up with a good answer. He won't let himself know the answer — he won't acknowledge his loneliness, the aching place in his heart Jed once occupied, the gnawing want for human contact, physical contact, sexual release. Because I hate them, he thinks. Because they did this to me.

How dare boys be cute. Their alluring asses, their twitching genitals. Their scruff, their muscles, their weight. Their strong hands. Their broad shoulders. But even better, when they lose the typical trappings of manhood — even better when they're meek, soft. Beatable, Eric sorts them. Unthreatening. Easy.

He's been coming here after work for a week, and every time he leaves a little sooner, his tolerance for the intensity of emotion waning. And still, some force pulls him back. Some knot in his stomach is tied to the place, and he just pulls at the rope until he finds himself back again. Every once in a while, he thinks he might be able to walk to the door. His armor slips, and he finds himself indulging in a fantasy — that of entering, cavorting, laughing like the men laugh, smiling like the men smile. Meeting a boy, finding somewhere private, and exploring each other. Someone Jed-size, Jed-shaped. He's seen one or two. Pudgy, round-cheeked. They're uncommon, but they're here.

Eric presses his hand over top of his pants, onto his groin, his knees bent slightly, his face twisted into a scowl. Why am I here? he asks again. And, unable to trick himself a second time, he leaves.

chereamie: sorry I'm being dense ^^;;

pentaclespaige: you're not being dense !!

pentaclespaige: It's a lot of information all at once. But the most important part is, though the "pentacles" suit can refer to wealth, it's more about like, material things, the material world in general

pentaclespaige: that's all! sorry to overload you with info 👐

chereamie: i got that part

Knock knock.

Paige moves a headphone off of her left ear, and turns towards the door of her room. "Eric?"

"Who else?" His voice carries no humor.

"What's up?"

"I was wondering… if you wanted to hang out, or something."

Paige's eyebrows raise.

pentaclespaige: brb roommate stuff

chereamie: ok!

She removes her headphones, stands up, and moves towards the door — then, reconsidering, picks a discarded pair of jeans off the floor, and dons them first.

She moves towards the door, and opens it halfway.

"Hang out?" she asks.

"Yeah." Eric is hunched, and having difficulty making eye contact. Not that he's typically good at it — Paige rankles, Eric's awkwardness always interpreted in a negative light, though she tries to fight her own assumptions. "Go out. Have drinks or something."

Paige tenses fractionally. "Drinks?"

"A club, maybe."

And again, but she lets out an abrupt chuckle. "Um, I'm sorry dude, I don't think — I'm not going to a club, sorry."

His brow furrows. "Okay," and there's a bit of frustration creeping in at the edges of his voice, "then… what? Do you want to hang out or not?"

She really doesn't. Eric has given her very little reason to find interest in him — they come from such different backgrounds and they hardly seem to connect on anything, from temperament to aesthetic to — she reminds herself again that she is assuming — political leanings, favored media. It was really shocking to her system, meeting another queer person she so completely didn't click with. It occurs to her, now, that her insular online communities hadn't prepared her for the diversity of lived experiences. Of course she logically understood the vast differences between human lives — a great deal of her ideology springs from this very understanding — but meeting a gay dude who doesn't understand her slang, who has to be taught about how to use the computer, who has so little humor or warmth, who doesn't respond to self-deprecating jokes well — who raises eyebrows at a woman having a dick — it's alien.

But she does feel empathy for him. He's unwell, and he's very bad at hiding it, and while his processing of his emotions is so opposite to her own — how quick he is to frustration, his anger, the physicality of his emotion — she sees in him the same broken girl she was when she had to figure out how to live on her own the first time. Except, she notes, he doesn't have anyone. No chatroom, no community, no friends except his brother.

"Yes. Of course, I just, I just don't want to go to a club."

"Okay," he shakes his head. "Then where?"

"Um." She flounders. She only leaves the house when necessary — to go grocery shopping, or to get sewing materials for her clothes, or to replace something if it breaks. She has no hangout spots. "A cafe, I'll go get a coffee with you." That's something normal people do, right?

He visibly loosens. "Okay," he says, the frustration in his voice erased. "I'm available."

"Huh? Now?"

He nods. She tenses, and another chuckle escapes her lips. "Ah, can we do that tomorrow?"

He looks confused, but unbothered. "Sure. I get off work at 4:00, so, 4:30?"

"Yes. Sounds good."

"Okay." He stands there for a moment, looking lost, but altogether not uncomfortable. As soon as he finds he has nothing to add, he makes brief eye contact and says: "Alright. See you tomorrow."

She just nods, and closes the door as he moves to leave.

Tomorrow, she thinks, 4:30.

She breathes deep. "Ah, fuck."

We could have hung out in the living room, Paige thinks, staring out the passenger window of Eric's car. We didn't have to go out.

ArtPiece XXI

She dressed up, but she doesn't have much to dress up in. She wears tight, ripped jeans with leggings underneath, and a crop top she had to fight herself to put on. She spent an hour and a half trying to get the blue tint off of her chin, every last little bit of stubble scraped away, and now she's worried her chin looks red and irritated. She can't tell, and she's had to make herself stop checking in the mirror. Eric, for his part, has commented on nothing — if she hadn't imagined it, he even looked pleased with her when he came to pick her up.

Eric sits in the driver seat, and they'd exchanged some small talk about his work day. Eric seems to have a good relationship with his coworkers — if unfriendly. Eric has fewer hesitations when it comes to telling shitty customers to fuck off. It's earned him some respect, and he's saved some coworkers from customer service hell on occasion. Apparently, something along those lines happened today; a woman was unhappy with her sandwich, accepting no alternatives, and Eric got her to fuck off. It's clearly put him in a good mood.

Good enough to either not notice or be unbothered by her standoffish responses to him. Or, what she assumes came off as standoffish — assuming, always assuming, she tries to keep herself in line. You think you know everything, you don't know anything. Stop assuming. Have you ever considered that you're doing fine? What if he's comfortable with silence?

They arrive at a cafe, some place called Althea Coffee. Paige is too inside herself to notice the aesthetic, but Eric catches the colorful cartoon bears that walk along the windowsills and the big detailed skull on the door. Hippie shit, he squints, but he supposes that was inevitable with a cafe in Oregon.

Paige takes a second longer than Eric to get out of the car, but follows him inside, something between a fever and a cramp slinking along the bottom of her rib cage.

"What's your usual from a cafe?" Eric asks.

"Ah, I used to get caramel macchiatos pretty often, I guess."

"Cool. I don't really get coffee. Is it any good?"

"It's just my normal. I dunno."

"Okay."

Eric opens the door and they step inside.

I hate my belly. My chin is too square. I'm flat on both sides. Paige shakes her head. No one is looking at you. No one cares.

They get in line.

"You alright?" Eric asks.

"I am," she replies, too fast.

I had to dress up, she thinks. I just had to try. I'm failing. I'm no image of femininity.

She imagines herself as a neanderthal, and while it's incredibly demoralizing, it's also just funny enough to make her chuckle.

"You sure?" Eric asks, tone lower.

She looks up at him. He looks intense. Judging? Angry. I'm fucking this up.

She tries to shake it away. I'm not fucking this up. He just doesn't get it. There's no way for him to get it — to him I'm a man. To him I'm pretending.

Another hole. She shakes her head again.

He places a hand on her shoulder, and she flinches away.

"Come on," he says. Annoyed with me, hating me. She looks up.

None of that is on his face.

"Let's go," he says, and his voice is soft.

She hesitates to move, and he puts his hand on her shoulder again, as he begins to walk to the exit. She follows, and in a sequence of events she doesn't seem to record, they're back in the car, driving home.

She looks out the window, at the residences as they pass. Moments pass in silence as she fights the static in her head. This is why you don't go out, she reminds herself, idiot.

"Are you better?"

She turns in her seat and looks at Eric. His eyes are on the road, but he glances at her. His expression is neutral, his tone equally unreadable. He's holding it in. She shakes her head.

"No?"

"No — yes. I'm better. Not good yet. Sorry."

He nods. He doesn't ask her what's wrong — and somehow, even through her haze, she recognizes it. That's what she learned to do with Cole — allow him to say what's bothering him, never push. That's the language the Ortegren boys speak. She glances at him again.

He's letting me control the pace, she thinks.

Her eyes return to the window.

"I just…" she starts. She doesn't continue, but he doesn't insert himself, so she restarts. "I just… I shouldn't have dressed up."

He huffs, and she turns to him, surprised to see an amused smile on his face. "You dressed up?"

He looks at her, and his expression hardens. And then his brow furrows. Anger? "Sorry." At me, at himself?

"No, you're right," she allows a small chuckle to escape her own lips, "I don't really have anything to dress up with. That's… part of the problem."

"Mm," he says.

"I just…" her voice lowers considerably. "It's different, um, going out, without dressing up, and no one knows I'm supposed to be a girl, um. But… you know, and, I couldn't just… go out, in boy mode — uh, in boy clothes, and, feel like I wasn't lying, or, that… the lie is…"

She flounders.

"Okay," he says, slowly.

She looks at him. The anger has melted, but he still looks tense.

He doesn't get it, she thinks, and this time, with a clearer head, she feels better about believing it. And then she frowns. "Do you?"

He glances at her. "Huh? What."

Her face screws up. "Do you think I'm a girl?"

A pause ensues as Eric pulls onto their street, and lasts until he parks in the cul-de-sac. But he doesn't get out of the car as the engine turns off. She doesn't look at him. Doesn't know if she can.

Finally, he says: "I don't know why I'm supposed to."

She jerks her whole body in rotation, looking at him, but she doesn't take in what he looks like — she just turns back to the door, opens it, and gets out.

"Paige —"

"Because I am!" she yells, even louder than she means to, hoping not only to convince Eric, but herself. She immediately feels seen — watched, the houses around her, the setting sun preventing her from seeing the faces staring out the windows she's somehow sure must exist.

"Paige," and Eric's voice has an edge to it as he gets out of the driver's seat, "keep it down."

For some reason, she listens, though her voice crescendos with every syllable. "Because I'm a — because —" she loses her footing.

Before she notices, Eric's closed some distance. She steps back, and he reaches out and grabs her wrist. She pulls her arm away, and it catches, his grip solid. Her heartrate jumps.

"Calm the fuck down."

"Let go!" She pulls her arm away, and this time he lets her, releasing his grip.

His eyes are steely. His expression intense. He's big. He's a lot bigger than her. Tall, wide without much fat. Naturally strong. A man. The build, the stature — the imposing, instinctual intrusion on her personal space, the willingness to touch her without asking, the assumed ownership of that which he can take. Suddenly, she is not merely uncomfortable with him — she's frightened of this man she shares her house with, this person she's allowed in her space, her space he thinks he can take.

Where else to go? She stumbles towards the house.

"Paige —"

"Shut up!"

She makes it to the door, but she doesn't get much farther. As she tries to fish her keys out of her pockets, her shaking hands fumble and drop them on the ground. She feels herself losing grip, her thoughts spiraling more and more. He's right, you know. You're nothing like a woman. You've made no strides in ten years. You sit in your room all day and lie to everybody.

The thoughts interlock with another set, like intertwined fingers: He's right there. You can't do anything to him. He's going to hurt you. He can do it — he's hurt you already.

She doesn't even get to lean over and grab her keys, before she feels a familiar hand on her shoulder. She startles, and an embarrassing noise escapes her lips. She turns, and backs up, then realizing she's been quite literally cornered — her back where a wall makes a corner with the door. Eric stands there, hand hovering.

"Stop touching me!" she shrieks.

His expression hardens. Furious. He looks ready to kill something, and her eyes fix on him, unable to look away — trying to find the angle of attack, dodge, fight back.

He does nothing. He stands there. At some point, his eyes drifted from looking at her to looking at nothing, the wall above her head. After what feels like minutes, he reaches into his pockets, and pulls out his own key. He moves to the door, unlocks it, and pushes it open, then stepping back and out of the way, his expression unchanged.

A moment passes before she realizes he's letting her past. He's putting you in the house where no one can hear you, where you have less escape routes. She shakes the thought out of her head. Where else is there to go? She slides past him, then bolting up the stairs and into her room.

Eric hears the door close behind her, still standing at the doorway, outside in the dark, cool evening.

He's fucking retarded, he thinks to himself. But even as he feels it, it comes with no anger at her. It aims inwards. He can't help it, you shithead. Then he finally clenches his fists. Can't he?

Paige startles at the guttural yell from downstairs. She sits on her bed, breathing faster and shallower than she should. The front door slams. Is he gone?

No, she hears his footsteps through the living room. Back and forth, back and forth. She fixates on his movements, as if keeping track of him gives her control of the situation. As if she'll actually jump to escape out the window should he approach. She won't, she knows it — she's fucked, if anything should happen. She isn't that proactive. I'm just not that smart.

Over the course of minutes, his pace slows. In the same timespan, her breathing becomes more regular, though not as deep and consistent as she'd like. Finally, at some point, he stops. Without the sound of his footsteps, all she hears is her heartbeat in her ears. Then, as the silence prolongs, the soft tinnitus ring of sensory depravation.

He starts moving again, but his footsteps are softer. They feel less like the stomps of a man overtaken by anger, and more like the quiet steps he takes when he gets a glass of water late at night. He stops in the kitchen for a moment, and she can't hear exactly what he's doing, but there are the soft sounds of movement all the while.

Her heartbeat slows. Her breathing calms. I might be okay, she's finally allowed to think.

Then, the front door opens, and closes, and the noises stop.

But now, she can hear her room. The ambience of the running computer tower she turns off less than she should. The shiff of the blankets while she nervously rubs them with her hands. Other sensations come into focus. The ache of her back from sitting so hunched for so long. The similar ache in her neck. The soreness of tension in her arms and legs, which, now acknowledged, she wills to loosen.

Unexpectedly, a brief swell of emotion forces water into her eyes. She blinks away the would-be tears, and composes herself. Okay, she thinks, what now?

All she wants to do is curl in bed and try to sleep. You won't sleep, she thinks, and you'll boil in your thoughts. You've done this before.

She winces. You're emotionally unstable. Reach out. It comes so unnaturally. She doesn't want to talk to people — she doesn't want to tell anyone. She doesn't want people to know that she's weak. She doesn't want people to feel the need to accommodate her. But Kiave has put herself in a position to be reached out to, has yet to make her feel bad for venting — well, has yet to make her feel especially bad about venting, just the normal amount for venting in general.

She stands up, almost losing her balance as a reminder of how shaky she is, and moves to her desktop.

pentaclespaige: hey

bluefootedboobies: o/

bluefootedboobies: whadup gurl

pentaclespaige: rp?

bluefootedboobies: sure

pentaclespaige: medieval, high fantasy, duel?

bluefootedboobies: huh?

pentaclespaige: and could you be kind of an asshole? big character moment, protag v antag

bluefootedboobies: im the antag huh

pentaclespaige: could you

pentaclespaige: please

…

bluefootedboobies: ok

bluefootedboobies: no foreplay for this one huh……..

bluefootedboobies: alright im Dazaus, like da-SAY-oos, and im a fucked up lizardman

pentaclespaige: I'm Argus, a knight from a fallen kingdom. I still have loyalty to a fallen royal line, and am trying to find a new worthy cause. The destruction of everything I've loved has shaken my faith in God, though I still believe in His existence, as I was told time and time again that I worked for the heavenly kingdom, and I can't believe that, should that be true, God would have allowed the kingdom to crumble and die.

bluefootedboobies: ok

pentaclespaige: um there's a lot more but you don't gotta know

bluefootedboobies: sounds like you kno what you want

pentaclespaige: yeah

pentaclespaige: be part of the army that razed the castle? or something?

bluefootedboobies: sure as long as you're not hung up on specifics

pentaclespaige: nope

pentaclespaige: oh adn like

pentaclespaige: be a bigot, a lil

bluefootedboobies: ah c'mon

bluefootedboobies: so im not even a fun bad guy

pentaclespaige: you dont have to

…

bluefootedboobies: no i will

bluefootedboobies: alright me or you

pentaclespaige: ill start

ArtPiece XXII

pentaclespaige: Argus slides down the hillside, drawing his sword from its sheath, not attempting stealth as he comes within twenty feet of Dazaus, the lizard's back turned from him.

bluefootedboobies: Dazaus turns, the fresh blood dripping from his curving dagger, to regard Argus. "Ahh," he draws out, "what a pleasant surprise."

pentaclespaige: "Dazaus," is all Argus says. Somehow, he makes the name sound like an accusation.

bluefootedboobies: "Argus," he gives back, pretending not to hear the venom in Argus' tone. His tail twitches back and forth, the metal ornament on its end scraping against the stone ground.

pentaclespaige: Argus' hackles raise, the associations of that sound saturating his minds' eye, the imminent deaths or the harrowing defeat — Argus, supine, watching Dazaus' tale winding along the stonework, slinking away, trailing Argus' blood with it.

bluefootedboobies: "So, you're alive."

pentaclespaige: Argus neglects to respond, eyes travelling to the dripping dagger.

bluefootedboobies: Choking, sputtering noises come from the heap at Dazaus' feet, but he doesn't answer them, instead maintaining a long, cold stare at Argus.

pentaclespaige: Argus steels himself. He will not make the same mistake twice. He returns the gaze.

bluefootedboobies: The miserable sounds slow to a stop. Dazaus' eyes finally glance down to the fresh corpse, and a terrible smile creeps across his face. "Cold. I'm impressed."

pentaclespaige: "There was no saving her."

bluefootedboobies: "You've wizened some."

pentaclespaige: "You haven't changed in the slightest."

bluefootedboobies: Finally, Dazaus respects the knight's presence enough to turn around and face him fully. "Fine then. Let's do something different this time, then. I'll let you strike first."

pentaclespaige: Argus hesitates none, his sword raising before Dazaus has even finished his sentence, and brings it down against his shoulder.

bluefootedboobies: Dazaus' long tail reaches up and bats it away, but it seems to be less effective than he expects, and he takes a large step to the side as Argus' strike goes wide. He laughs. "That strength! You've been training, haven't you? Almost enough to convince me you're a /man!/"

pentaclespaige: [nice]

bluefootedboobies: [i gotchoo]

pentaclespaige: Argus refuses to respond, instead launching into a series of strikes against the serpentine bastard.

bluefootedboobies: Dazaus alternatively parries and dodges each strike, using both his metal-tipped tail and twin daggers.

bluefootedboobies: [i dont eally knwo swordplay]

bluefootedboobies: [well of that kind]

pentaclespaige: [it's cool you don't have to, me neither]

pentaclespaige: [also, ha]

bluefootedboobies: honestly i just dont do action scenes

bluefootedboobies: if you say you do something to me but i want to parry it then we have to like

bluefootedboobies: retcon

pentaclespaige: i dont really do action either

pentaclespaige: well, didnt

bluefootedboobies: but if you dont say anything hits i can just make you not ht forever

pentaclespaige: Yeah so

pentaclespaige: mm

bluefootedboobies: you good paige?

pentaclespaige: no

pentaclespaige: but I want to do this first

pentaclespaige: just um

pentaclespaige: dont fight back too hard?

bluefootedboobies: you want to kill something

pentaclespaige: yeah

bluefootedboobies: okay

pentaclespaige: you're the best kiave <3

bluefootedboobies: i know B)

pentaclespaige: Argus shifts his footwork, and takes his sword /up/ and into Dazaus' side, sliding against the grain of the scales and working into a gap.

bluefootedboobies: Dazaus stumbles, hand shooting to the bleeding gash in his side. "What — you!"

pentaclespaige: Argus doesn't let up, striking again, symmetrically stabbing at Dazaus' other side.

bluefootedboobies: He dodges, but stumbles, nearly losing his balance.

pentaclespaige: Argus capitalizes on the opening, and plunges his sword into Dazaus' belly.

bluefootedboobies: [prolly coulda used my tail to do something]

bluefootedboobies: Dazaus screams in pain, and swipes meaninglessly at Argus.

pentaclespaige: Argus retracts his blade, and watches as Dazaus falls into a heap on the ground, recreating the original image of their meeting, only with the lizard replacing his own victim, and Argus the merciless victor.

bluefootedboobies: "You…" he chokes. "I didn't think… you had it in you…"

pentaclespaige: "I don't pull my punches anymore, Dazaus. I would ask you to remember that, but you won't need to where you're going."

bluefootedboobies: "Still… believe in that g-d of yours, do you?" Dazaus coughs up blood.

pentaclespaige: Argus doesn't respond, instead watching Dazaus slowly bleed out, staying safely out of range of the whipping tail, though the strength seems to have gone out of it.

bluefootedboobies: [want me to question your gender again]

pentaclespaige: [nah that'd be overdoing it]

bluefootedboobies: [ok guess ill die]

bluefootedboobies: uh

bluefootedboobies: *dies*

pentaclespaige: really?

bluefootedboobies: I dunno I don't usually do death scenes

pentaclespaige: you were doing fine you'd just have to continue

bluefootedboobies: Dazaus' eyes flutter as his head goes limp, his gaze drifting from Argus to the open sky. His mouth slowly opens, then sets. His body is still. His blood gleams on the stone beneath him. Dazaus is finally dead.

pentaclespaige: thanks

bluefootedboobies: *bows*

bluefootedboobies: was that violent enough

pentaclespaige: honestly i was hoping to go stupid go crazy but i just dont do action very much, it was hard to come up with things

bluefootedboobies: yea

bluefootedboobies: so who was i anyways

pentaclespaige: my roommate

bluefootedboobies: oh

bluefootedboobies: Oh

bluefootedboobies: What did he do

pentaclespaige: nothing

bluefootedboobies: Paige

She wants to type "we got in an argument," but is that true? What did they argue? Was it a fight?

pentaclespaige: he said some shit

bluefootedboobies: phobic shit

pentaclespaige: yea

bluefootedboobies: Fuck.

pentaclespaige: i mean

bluefootedboobies: Fuck.

pentaclespaige: it wasnt unexpected

bluefootedboobies: It wasn't??

pentaclespaige: he's from fucking idaho

bluefootedboobies: i mean sure but i grew up in kansas

bluefootedboobies: That's not really an excuse.

pentaclespaige: i wasnt excusing it

pentaclespaige: i didnt explain myself well

bluefootedboobies: Explain what?

pentaclespaige: he asked me why he should think of me as a girl

bluefootedboobies: Jesus.

bluefootedboobies: Are you okay? Are you safe?

…

pentaclespaige: im okay

bluefootedboobies: Should I be worried?

bluefootedboobies: Where are you now, what're you doing, where's he what's he doing

pentaclespaige: kiave it's fine

bluefootedboobies: You told me he's kind of a big guy

bluefootedboobies: He LIVES with you

bluefootedboobies: Are you going to…?

pentaclespaige: I'm not kicking him out.

bluefootedboobies: Is that safe?

She's not sure. She feels unsafe, but she's too rattled to trust her emotions.

pentaclespaige: idk

bluefootedboobies: when it comes to safety, "idk" is /no/ Paige

pentaclespaige: he's an asshole, he's not a murderer

bluefootedboobies: Has he touched you?

pentaclespaige: not that way

bluefootedboobies: Paige.

She hears the front door close, and then steady steps up the stairs. Her heartrate increases, but she's nowhere near where she was before. Garden-variety anxiety — if a bit strong.

She struggles to juggle her sense of the present, her sense of Eric, with the growing realization that she's pressed a button of Kiave's that she didn't mean to press. People caring about her — caring for her safety, caring for her success and her wellbeing — is exhausting. She hates that she thinks that, she wishes it weren't true, but it is. Kiave had thus far been her go-to because she let off when Paige asks, but now she feels like she has to tend to Kiave's feelings instead of merely communicating her own. Paige had done this before — it remains her least favorite outcome.

bluefootedboobies: You need to confront this

pentaclespaige: kiave calm down

She winces as she reads Eric's voice in her words. Is there a better way to say that?

pentaclespaige: it's alright

pentaclespaige: I'm alright

bluefootedboobies: What did he do

pentaclespaige: he just touched my shoulder

And grabbed my wrist, she thinks.

bluefootedboobies: Why

pentaclespaige: um

pentaclespaige: I think just to get my attention

pentaclespaige: and calm me down

To shut me up, she reinterprets. Which was more likely? Always assuming, she thinks, but the efficacy of interrupting her own negative thought patterns was lesser in the face of Eric's comment. I don't know why I'm supposed to.

In a better state of mind, she doubts her own interpretation of the words. She mulls them over. And what reason have I given him — she shakes her head, legitimately angry this time. Stop that shit.

bluefootedboobies: Why were you upset

pentaclespaige: kiave please stop digging

bluefootedboobies: I'm worried about you

pentaclespaige: don't be

pentaclespaige: im fine

Knock knock.

She startles, slightly. She realizes she never heard Eric go to his room. Was he just standing there?

She doesn't respond.

"Paige?" his muffled voice comes through the door.

bluefootedboobies: Explain everything.

She tabs out of that conversation. Kiave isn't helping. She doesn't usually feel like reaching out helps, but she's trying to train herself to do it anyways. However, this, she feels, was an abject failure. She's equal parts disappointed and frustrated — with Kiave and, inexplicably, with herself.

"Paige, I know you haven't fallen asleep yet. You barely ever sleep anyways."

She still doesn't respond, but turns on her rolling chair to face the door, and stays that way.

"Are you going to talk to me?" He doesn't hide his frustration, and Paige flinches.

Eric sighs. Paige hears a brief sound of shuffling, and then a sliding sound that she realizes is him sitting and leaning his back against the door.

"Fine," he says, almost inaudibly, "I'll wait."

He does. Paige's eyes drift to her web browser, watching as she gets more and more notifications on IRC. Kiave hasn't let up — anxiety builds. The conversation won't be pretty when she gets back.

Somehow, she'd rather be here, with Eric. It's so backwards it's humorous, but in a sick, queasy kind of way.

She clears her throat. "What is it."

A moment elapses.

"I don't get you. You're not a pedophile. You're not going out, creeping on people. You've known Cole for years and he says you don't do shit. You don't dress up. I sorta thought you just… got off on it. But you got so fucking upset." Every word stings, but he says them so slowly, he makes no sudden movements. Still, without the barrier of the door, Paige doesn't know if she would be so calm. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you a tranny?"

Her whole body tenses, but she's in a place of comfort. She's in her room. Her sanctuary. Here, she feels safe by default. It's not the cafe. It's not the grocery store. It's not even the living room. It's home base, and it relaxes her defenses — with a looser grip, the spines of Eric's words don't pierce skin, even as she feels their pricks.

"Why?"

"Yeah," he says, frustrated at repeating himself. "Why."

"What, do you…" she trails off, and then anger creeps in at the edge of her voice. "Do you think I chose to be this way?"

"Fucking duh," he says, with some emphasis.

"What are my alternatives? Be a guy?"

Eric laughs, and it's a mean laugh.

"I tried that, okay? Don't you get it? I fucking tried that!" Her voice is louder than she wants, but she can't seem to keep it down. "I lived a decade of my fucking life wasting away, thinking I was a guy, thinking everything I had was just depression, anxiety, disfunction. I was told I had self-image problems. And you know what, I fucking do. I do but nothing anybody ever said helped, because nobody fucking knew anything, like you." She regrets the words as they come out, but she fights that side of her. He's Cole's brother, he's responsive to that. For his part, he says nothing while the conversation lulls.

So she continues. "And when I fucking, readjusted myself — after losing my place in life I just took a long look at myself, and I hated doing that — I hate doing that. I hate looking at myself. And I realized it's… I saw that I had nothing to work towards, that everything was bunk, because I was doing it for a person I wasn't. I never felt like anyone wanted me anywhere, and no one looked at me with that warmth that they had when I was little anymore. It felt… like no one really cared about me. And I had to ask myself that, Eric. Why. Why be this. Why live like this. And — and when I started saying I was a girl, there it was again."

No response.

"Why be miserable, all the time. I already knew some shit. I was called a girl a lot, when I was really little, and I didn't notice it at all, but I noticed when it started going away. I was in a play, and I played a princess that was disguised as a boy, even to herself. Magic bullshit, okay? But when she's revealed to be the princess, the actors switched out. I was just the disguise. She was real. And that sucked. I loved that play when we rehearsed it, and I didn't know why. When we actually started performing it, I fucking hated it, and I didn't know why. And now — now, I know I'm a girl."

Her voice weakens at the last sentence. She doesn't know. She hopes, with fierce determination, that she is, but she never feels like she's known. But that's privileged information Eric doesn't get to hear.

He remains silent. She doesn't give him much time, anyways.

"And now people talk to me like I've wanted to be talked to my whole life. And people see me in ways I want to be seen. It's better this way."

"What?"

The tone throws her for a loop. What is that — anger? Why? At what part?

"What?" she repeats back.

"Better how?" She opens her mouth to respond, but he follows with: "Better to be cooped in your room forever, playing pretend?"

Her face contorts, but he can't see it.

"I'm not —!" She can't finish the thought. She sounds too childish in her own ears. You are, she thinks, you are and you know it.

"Paige, you crumpled at that cafe. Was that what you wanted?"

"And what, do you think that's because I'm a tranny!" she yells.

"No!" he yells back.

…

"No?"

"You almost had me, you were making sense for a second, but you lost me. So being a dude sucks. That's not fucking new. Do you think that's new? I'm a guy and it sucks every fucking day." Emotion creeps into his voice, but he pauses to curb it. Then he clears his throat, and continues. "Every fucking day. You're not special. So on the one hand, get the fuck over yourself."

"Fuck you," she says, surprising herself.

Eric powers through. "On the other hand, you're not even doing what you say you're doing. You're fucking up on all fronts."

"Eric —" she stops herself, surprised at the words that could have come out of her mouth. That he owed her, that she was the only thing between him and the street. "I — you can't — I've been —" What is she trying to prove to him? What does she owe him?

"What? What have you been doing?"

"Everything!"

"No you haven't!"

"What do you know?"

"Get fucking dresses!"

"I —!" she reels. "What?"

"You want to be a woman? Do it! Stop fucking sitting in your room all day and jacking off!"

"I-it's not that simple! Did you not just fucking see — the — I can't handle that! I'm weak, I — I crumple, you saw me —" She realizes that he's twisted the conversation, and now she's arguing on his terms. "It isn't for them! I don't live to make people comfortable, I don't need to present just so I can be put neatly in people's boxes."

"If it isn't for them, then why do you care? Why do you care how they see you?"

"I —"

"If you care, do something about it. If you won't do something about it, stop caring."

"You can't choose not to care."

"Fine, then you've narrowed down your options."

She shuts up. There's no point in talking to him. Her thoughts roil — even as she defends against his attacks, she's fighting on two fronts, as the other offensive comes from within. He's right. You wasted your life hating yourself for failing to be a guy, and now you'll waste your life hating yourself for failing to be a girl. Your life is just a long string of wasting away, and before you know it there will be nothing left to waste. You don't go out. You don't go to college. You don't work. You don't do anything. You sit on your computer, wallowing in your filth, day in and day out.

"Paige…"

"Go away," she says, unable to make it sound strong, unable to bring her voice above a certain volume without cracking.

"Paige, I didn't mean to get angry."

That's not "sorry."

"I'm — I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to understand you." But there's an edge to his voice as he says it.

I didn't ask for your help, she wants to say, but she's afraid of saying anything, of prompting more conversation. She just wants him to leave.

…

You fucking retard, Eric thinks to himself, staring into his lap, his back against the door. He hates you now. People have to be some kind of fucked up to let you get near them, and yet you're still finding ways to fuck that up. Good job, asshole.

"Did you choose?" Paige's voice comes muffled through the door.

His head raises a fraction, momentarily unsure what she's asking. Then he catches it, and his expression burrows back into a furious shape, at odds with the quiet voice that comes through. "Didn't I?"

"Eric…"

"Didn't I?" he reiterates, cutting her off. His eyes travel back to his lap. "I knew it was wrong. I knew what I was risking and I did it anyways. I was selfish as fuck — and I pulled Jed into my shit, too. I didn't care. I fucked him up like I fucked up myself."

"Eric —"

"It's always a choice. Isn't it?"

"Did you choose to love him?"

Eric snickers, but there isn't much humor in him. "I wouldn't call it love."

"Fine. Did you choose to be attracted to him?"

"It — it was a power thing. Teenage rebellion shit. My dad yelled at me a few times for shit I did wrong and I couldn't handle it. I went and fagged out."

"Do you really believe that?"

He thinks about it. Of course, he thinks, but there isn't enough certainty to say it out loud, and he notices. For what other reason? He can't identify the hoops he's jumping through — he isn't aware enough to notice his backwards assumptions of how other people feel attraction, he doesn't know — even though its existence scares him from somewhere beyond his vision — that under his schematic, everyone is gay, and those that are straight are those who have their urges "under control." He hasn't been taught how to think that way. Still, he does feel different. Why couldn't he control himself? What makes him so much weaker than everyone else?

His silence seems answer enough for Paige.

"Eric, neither of us are in control, here. Do you see that?"

He doesn't believe her, but his willingness to fight the point wanes. He shrugs, but she doesn't see it.

We do what we have to, he thinks, to keep ourselves together. Maybe that's what all of us weak people do — my boys and Paige's "gender," or whatever.

"Sure," he says, though he sees it as a personal failing nonetheless.

"I couldn't choose to be a boy, the same as you can't choose to be straight."

His face curls into an ugly shape. I could. Then why hasn't he done it? Because I'm a fucking retard, that's why.

"Sure," he says again.

…

"What do I do, Paige?" There comes no response. "What do the freaks like us do? Where's the end?" He brings a hand to his face, and rubs at his right eye. "I-if you put up with my bullshit, I'll put up with yours. Is that fair?"

"Eric," her voice sounds closer, "I'm not putting up with you."

There's a silence, broken only by the occasional involuntary sound from Eric.

Paige slowly turns the knob, and opens the door. Eric falls backwards some inches before catching himself with his arm, his face angled up at Paige, standing with the door half open. A chuckle escapes her lips. "Sorry, I forgot you were sitting like that."

His face is red, his cheeks are wet, and he ventures no response.

Jesus, this guy, Paige thinks, but it comes with little anger. Not none. But little.

He tries to turn away, to hide his face, and she kneels next to him.

This sucks, she thinks. She's aware, the whole while, that an interaction that should have been about her — that should have ended with reconciliation from him for her feelings — has been twisted, and now he's crying, and she's taking care of him.

This shithead.

And yet, empathy is something Paige has never been able to turn off. However angry she knows she should feel, more than that, she sees someone in need of help. He didn't ask for my help, she thinks, with some spite. Just like I didn't ask for his.

She considers.

He didn't ask to touch me, either.

She leans forward, landing on her knees, and then does one scoot towards Eric. This is gonna suck. She wraps him in a hug. A weak, awkward hug, at a terrible angle that makes her back, already aching from earlier, remind her of its existence.

Eric flinches, but accepts. His eyes go from staring into the middle distance to meeting her forearm as it drapes across his shoulder.

Right, he thinks, they respond to weakness. They — we — have to, or else we'd just kill ourselves.

The contact is awful for Paige, but she maintains it. Not merely the angle — physical contact reminds her of her frame, of how far she is from what she wants to be. And worse yet, she can't fight her head this time — the thoughts are correct. He doesn't think of her as a woman. He is judging. Of that she's sure.

And yet, Eric is reminded of the only other physical contact he'd allowed himself — that with Jed, and that with his mother. Jed, because of how unthreatening Paige is, of how comfortable he finds himself crying in her presence, of how soft and awkward she is. His mother, because she was the only person he ever let himself cry in front of. He connects that to his framework of femininity — the virtue in being meek, the capacity to comfort and nurture. He watches as Paige slots in, and he feels a little less confused by her, he feels a better sense of how to interact. Maybe sissies like him make for good girls.

They sit there for a long time, until the shudders turn to sniffles, and when it finally feels like the well of tears is starting to run dry, Paige releases her grip, and leans back so that she's sitting with her haunches on her heels.

"It's not your fault," she says, so quiet he barely hears it.

He silently disagrees, but nods. He accepts it as her place to comfort, to speak sweet nothings and tell him it will be okay.

"I'm alright," he says.

She silently disagrees, but nods.

"And I'm sorry. That I got angry."

"It's okay," she lies. "Don't do it again."

He nods.

He stands up, and she stands with him. He reaches into his pocket, and pulls out her keys, then holding them out. "You dropped these, earlier."

She gives a small smile. "Thanks," she takes them.

He nods. "I'm gonna go to my room."

"Okay."

He looks down, and sees that, at some point, he'd disarmed. The gauntlets, the pauldrons, the chestplate. They lie in a heap on the floor.

He looks at Paige.

"Thanks."

She shrugs.

He turns, and decides he won't need that where he's going. He leaves his armor behind.

ArtPiece XXIII

PieMouth

How's bro?

PentaclesPaige

tbh

I think he's kind of going through it 😵‍💫

PieMouth

mm

PentaclesPaige

or, more likely???

He was already going through it and now he's like, finally showing it

Y'know?

PieMouth

uh

not really but alright

PentaclesPaige

you never had someone hide their feelings from you

PieMouth

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

PentaclesPaige

Doesn't matter ig

point is he's looked real sad

PieMouth

yeah

he won't tell me about that shit

PentaclesPaige

y'ever

idk

Ask him?

PieMouth

lol

PentaclesPaige

"""lol"""

🤡

PieMouth

ok ok

I should ask him

i dont think he'll tell me

Does he tell you?

PentaclesPaige

no 🙁

I can just tell

PieMouth

magic

PentaclesPaige

heehee

I am known to dabble 😏

How are you? How is other bro?

PieMouth

You can't just tell?

lame

PentaclesPaige

nah my magic stops at the screen

PieMouth

i'm doing alright

i mean it

PentaclesPaige

👐

PieMouth

i was really nervous when he moved in with you, but it seems to be working out

I'm trying to figure out how to visit

I'm saving up to get my own car

used ofc

PentaclesPaige

ofc ofc

PieMouth

i want eric to come here but

…

PentaclesPaige

💛

yea

PieMouth

lots of emojis today

PentaclesPaige

yea huh

I'm kind of excited today !!!!

I'm experimenting with my look

PieMouth

oh?

PentaclesPaige

yea 💛

PieMouth

neat

Well I have a thing to go to

PentaclesPaige

a thing? 👀

PieMouth

ever since bro left, Mom's been all kinds of worried about me

She's really up my ass for the weirdest things

now she's upset I don't hang out with people more often

shes encouraging me to go to a party

PentaclesPaige

aww

that sucks(?)

PieMouth

it's whatever

PentaclesPaige

know anyone there?

PieMouth

No one worth knowing.

PentaclesPaige

dam

harsh

What's the occasion?

PieMouth

There fucking isn't any

Idiots don't need an excuse to throw a party

but I guess it's Easter themed

PentaclesPaige

haha! People throw parties for Easter???

PieMouth

I did say "idiots" right?

PentaclesPaige

you did 😛

god i totally forgot it was close to easter

Which is stupid

I just did Ostara

PieMouth

Happy Rabbit Ovulation Day

PentaclesPaige

ewwwww

PieMouth

Ostara?

PentaclesPaige

Spring Equinox

PieMouth

oh cool

you celebrate that?

PentaclesPaige

I said I dabble, didn't I? 😎🪄

PieMouth

lol

PentaclesPaige

but fr there's more to it than just a "magic" thing, paganism (as broad a term as that is) doesn't exist just to be mystified, there's like some serious spiritual and cultural background that I'm really into and connect a lot with

PieMouth

sure

But also like

orgies and stuff

PentaclesPaige

yea but like I can't hear your voice so clarify for me

are you puttin stank on "orgies" ???

are you saying it the Christian way ????

(important)

PieMouth

I figure orgies are mostly composed of idiots, like all large gatherings of people

but they're probably having more fun than the party I'm about to go to

so they're probably less idiots than these guys

PentaclesPaige

heehee

PieMouth

ok im gonna like

get ready and stuff

if you never hear from me again i died of boredom

and tell eric to never go to a party ever

PentaclesPaige

o7

Roger Dodger Big Man

I'm gonna go look at myself in the mirror for a long time

PieMouth

lol

bye

PentaclesPaige

👋

Cole's annoyance grows, gradually, with every minute of the thirty minute drive out to this person's house. It's probably more like a twenty minute drive, but he had to write down the directions on a piece of paper and he missed some turns, got lost and had to get back to the correct route. No one's waiting for me, so whatever.

The road devolves into gravel and then eventually just dirt, with its fair share of bumps and potholes that make him nervous, driving his dad's car. The house's string-lights and grouped silhouettes make it obvious — and good thing, too; he's not sure he could make out the numbers of an address in this twilight. The road is parked up, and he assesses that "parking space" is a loose term here. As long as he isn't directly blocking anyone's exit, it looks like grass and curb and road are all fair game. Still, he's late, so he has to search for a moment to find somewhere discreet.

ArtPiece XXIV

He turns the car off, but doesn't get out right away. The hesitation, spurred by anxiety, he decides is actually disdain. He looks at the party in his rearview mirror, and he can hear the music from here. Loud, crowded — Cole has rarely found himself in such environments.

C'mon, he sighs. Let's get this over with.

He steps out of the car. He's dressed up somewhat — instead of his thrown-on tee-shirt and jeans, he's wearing a button-up and black pants. His mom told him it made him look "smart." He thinks it makes him look like a dweeb, but he didn't have a better suggestion.

He walks up a stonework pathway to the house, and, if Cole had a frame of reference, he would be impressed. Teenagers aren't renowned for their organizational skills, and yet this party is put together in exceptional detail. In fact, it is the afterparty of a longer event that had been organized by the party-planner's parents, who are still on the premises, available should something go awry, but gracious enough to let the students get drunk and high on their generous property. The decorations feel surreal — as Cole gets to the fringes of the crowd, he notices wireframe rabbits with coolers in their haunches, so you'd reach into their body and pull out drinks. There are eggs everywhere, and Cole gathers that there will be some kind of competition for finding the most — he notices little teams of girls flitting about and hiding them places.

The center of the party is an honest-to-god stage, where, at first, Cole thinks a band is playing. However, standing to the side and watching, he begins to recognize two of the bandmates, the drummer and bassist, as classmates he'd generously call "imbeciles." Assuming their lack of musical talent allows him to catch on that the music must be being played from some computer or device, and the instruments on stage are props so people can pretend to be rockstars. His suspicions are confirmed as the bassist engages in conversation with someone at the base of the stage, and then hands them the instrument as they climb on, switching places.

Cole looks up, and sees the string lights dangling in the trees and he wonders how much effort it took to get those up there. Jesus Christ, someone here takes this seriously.

He follows the perimeter of the crowd dancing in front of the stage. They're playing some flavor of pop-rock that Cole has no taste for, not that he's ever deeply engaged in music regardless. In the dim, multicolored lights, faces and clothes and silhouettes — details — don't seem to coalesce into recognizable people. He knows he should know most of these people, if only by their face, but besides the people spotlit on the stage, he hasn't been able to name a single one.

By the same token, he figures, they probably don't recognize him. He finds that comforting. He swims through the party as a passive observer, not even moving to hide his stares. He watches a couple tucked into a nook make out and pet each other. He finds a drunk group clumsily playing foursquare. He eavesdrops on a circle of people passing a bong, until one notices him and offers, at which point he silently departs.

Cole finds he's enjoying himself, despite his reservations. Watching people make fools of themselves gives him a great deal of schadenfreude — or, more honestly, living vicariously through people without the sense of reciprocated judgment frees him from his unacknowledged anxieties.

However, as he's listening to two jocks compete over what girls they've laid, Cole starts to get hungry.

I've seen people with plates of stuff, where is it all?

He feels like a scientist following ant trails as he locates the buffet. At last, he's greeted by an indoor setting — a garage door is open, and the inside of the garage has been decorated and dressed with a spread of finger foods, as well as some more filling things, such as chili, a pasta salad, and a chicken dish of some kind.

As he steps into the light of the enclosed space, he tenses. You're fine. Just get in and out.

He grabs a paper plate, and gravitates towards the finger foods. He grabs a handful of sandwich rolls, some chips, and some kebabs. He then looks around for a cooler, and opens one, only to find it full of coronas and pabsts. He scowls, and closes it, searching for a soft drink of some kind. He finds a separate cooler, from which he grabs a coke. Satisfied, he stands, and turns to leave.

"You're Cole, right?"

The hair on his arms stands on end, as he sees an approaching girl. She isn't terrifically pretty, but Cole doesn't get approached by girls at all. His heartrate rises. He clears his throat, and avoids eye contact as his face coils into a frown. Better to be pissed than to be nervous.

"Sure," he says. "And you are?"

He sees that she's not alone. There's a group of one more guy and a girl behind her, and they all walk like they're a little buzzed.

"Is it true, Cole?"

"What? What true?"

She drops her voice, and leans towards him in a way that makes his face burn. "Your brother, Cole, is it true?"

He'd caught on that, at some point, his home life had slipped into the consciousness of the school rumor-mill, undoubtedly from Austin in some kind of petty revenge against him, but they'd yet to approach him about it. The attention is uncomfortable — and yet invaluable. Though a part of Cole's body screams at him to evacuate, another is captivated.

"None of your fucking business, is it?" But he doesn't leave, and he isn't cornered.

"Hey," the guy steps forward, in a way that implies Cole is intruding on his property. Boyfriend. She's taken. That bothers him.

The girl puts a hand on her boyfriend's shoulder absently, and seems to give him a hushing look. "I'm just curious, come on. Did he really…?"

He's unsure how the story has been twisted while it's blown through the teenage imagination outside his control, but he isn't really concerned with telling her the truth anyways. Whatever she thinks, it doesn't matter to him. But continuing to talk to her does, even if she's already been claimed. "Sure. What's it fucking matter?"

"Why don't you tell us about it? That must be so hard for you," she reaches out and nearly touches Cole, but her boyfriend reminds her of his presence with a hand on the shoulder.

He looks between her, the boyfriend, and the girl who's yet to talk. Cole's only taller than the main girl — how he ended up being such a runt with that monster father of his, he'll wonder for the rest of his life.

His brain churns with the attention, the interest. He shrugs, and grunts to seem like he's more bothered than eager. "Sure. But let's get out of here, it's crowded."

"Did he really…? You know —"

"I'm leaving, if you want to talk you can come with."

"He's a fag, isn't he?" the boyfriend speaks for the second time.

Cole flushes red as the girlfriend turns to look back with a disappointed frown. Facing Cole again, she starts: "Don't mind him, he —"

"Yeah," Cole says, too loud, "yeah, he fucking is."

The girl feigns shock, and Cole sips from his coke, noticing his own shaking hands.

"How does that make you feel?" she asks. "That must be really hard for you. For your family."

"What's your name?" Cole prods.

"How's the house? Without him?"

So they've at least heard that much. Cole's chest contorts, and his head fills with defenses. Clumsy but reliable defenses — "fuck you," "none of your fucking business," and other variations on "fuck." But she's closed distance — she stands just at the boundary of his personal space, and his chest pounds. The defending urge gets suppressed as another, conflicting imperative says: Keep her talking. Keep her here.

The two fight long enough that someone notices his silence and cuts in.

"You must miss him," the second girl says.

"No I don't," Cole says, quick. His breath catches. What? Breathe, moron.

"You a fag too?" asks the boyfriend. "You a mother's boy?"

"Fuck him. And fuck you. I-I'm nothing like my brother. I'm no — I'm no fucking fairy." The words were beginning to be difficult to get out. Beyond that, his voice trembles. He can't force the strength into it that he wants — he sounds like a wimp. He sounds like a mother's boy.

"Woah, Cole! Calm down," the main girl speaks, "ignore him. He can't handle when I give other boys attention."

At the word, she reaches a hand forward, and touches his chest. Despite the desire, the feeling is so overwhelming that his immediate reaction is rejection. He bats the hand away, and she backs up at his rebuke, at first looking hurt, and then, inexplicably, laughing. Cole can't parse it — what the fuck is happening, he wonders, and the question begins to swell.

"Hey," another, new voice forces his focus out from the immediate group, to notice the crowd of people at the buffet, and the eyes that are on him. "Hey, Cole, you coming?"

He turns, and sees a guy. Deep black hair, round face — piercings. Through his septum, so many in his ears. Black clothes. Without waiting for an answer, the guy waves Cole towards him. He realizes, with a rising panic, that he isn't intaking information. He doesn't know who this person is, or why they think he's with them. He doesn't know why these people approached him. He feels like he's hit a wall, like he has all the knowledge but can't use it, can't put it together, and he's left instead with a sinking feeling — no, faster than that, a falling sensation. Suddenly, he feels like even if he wanted to step towards this stranger, he couldn't — his legs, his arms, everything feels weak. Weak. I'm so fucking weak.

Words are exchanged that he can't hear. The world is dim in a way that can't be explained by the lights around him. He begins to feel a phantom pain in his foot. It's the forest floor. Am I dying?

He's being led out. His legs barely hold his weight, but he's being supported somehow. Who am I with? Just before they pass out from the light of the buffet, Cole sees that it's the guy with the piercings. The emo kid?

"Hey," the guy says, loud, loud enough to grab Cole's attention. "Breathe. Breathe, dude."

Cole hears the words but doesn't parse them as a suggestion. What about breathing? He's barely getting anything — he's taking quick, shallow breaths, and barely anything is getting in.

"Slower, hey. Breathe slower."

He focuses on that, and starts breathing slower. He's shaking, all over. Sweating. It's not that hot, why am I sweating?

"Keep walkin', keep walkin'."

"You're doing great," says another voice to his right, startling him. He turns, but he can't make out anything except that the person is tall in this light.

"Eyes in front," the guy with the piercings says, "I got you but I don't want you to stumble too hard. We're gonna sit down soon, we just gotta get some distance. Keep breathing."

He does as he's told, and they somehow make it to a table he can't see in the dark, as he's guided to a seating position. However, the physical contact isn't released. "Where are you, Cole?"

What? He's too out of it to find the question offensive with any sincerity. Grandma. The hospital. I'm bleeding out. I'm not putting things together.

"Cole, where are you?"

His brow furrows. "Party. Easter party, what the fuck question is that."

"Breathe, dude. Calm down."

"You're doing great," the voice from before echoes.

"Is he alright?" another voice, across the table.

"How'd you get here?"

Crawled. How did I get here? The hospital, in and out of consciousness. Carried by Eric? "I drove?"

"What'd you eat for breakfast this morning?"

"What? I ate some steak. Leftovers."

"Alright. How's your breathing?"

He breathes. "It's fine."

"How's your head?"

"What the fuck is…"

He feels like his eyes are focusing. He's grasping the silhouettes of trees, the shapes of people around the table, illuminated by pink and green and blue string lights, selectively highlighting features and hiding the rest of the person's figure. To his left, he can catch gleams of the lights on the piercings in his ears.

"I'm fine. I'm fine, stop touching me."

The hands pull back from his arm.

"Are you here?"

Cole looks at him, incredulous. "What does that mean?" But he doesn't have the energy to put all the anger into the statement. He feels like he just ran a mile. His hand moves to his chest, and feels his own heartbeat, which is beating scarily fast. "What…?"

His posture and his hand must have communicated his question he couldn't put into words, because the voice from across the table answers: "You were having a panic attack."

Cole laughs, but it's a thin laugh. "Panic? I… I'm fine."

"No," the piercings-guy says. "You're not. But that's okay."

"You're way better now," a voice behind him says. He turns in his seat, and sees the tall figure that must have followed him here. Here?

"Where are we?"

"Our table we got, nearer the road. Far away from party central. Are you centered? You think it's over?"

Over? Think what's over? He sits. He breathes. He wipes sweat from his brow. He breathes. He deeply, thoroughly breathes. "Yeah," he says, half-confident he's answering their question earnestly, "I'm good. It's over."

"Do you want a hug?" the tall figure asks.

"And you are?"

"Sorry man. I'm Nick," says the guy with the piercings.

"And I'm Sequoia," the hug-offerer says. That doesn't sound like a guy's name, Cole thinks, and he reinterprets their voice, finding then that he can't decide if it's masculine or feminine. The gray area bothers him, but he decides they must be a girl, which makes him blush at the idea of them offering him a hug. "Nice to meet you, Cole. Offer stands?"

"Uh, no," he says.

"I saw you cornered by those assholes," Nick says, matter-of-fact. "I've dealt with them before, so I pulled you out. They got you bad."

"I'm really sorry you went through that," Sequoia says.

"It's fine," Cole says, sharp. He turns to the figure across the table, and then to Nick. "Panic attack?"

"Never had one before?"

Cole shakes his head, hard, still hoping he didn't have one just now either.

"It's what it sounds like," Nick follows up. "Get overwhelmed. Get fucked up. Panic, hard. Body starts shutting down."

"Shutting down?"

"Not like that," the voice across the table speaks up. "Just, head stops working. You're not gonna die."

"And what did you…?"

There's a brief pause.

"I have an anxiety disorder," the voice across the table says. "They just did for you what they do for me." Are these the special ed kids? "I'm Lissa. I didn't catch your name?"

"Cole," he says.

"Hey," Nick draws his attention again. "I just extracted you because you needed extracting. You don't have to stick around if you don't want."

"But maybe if you leave, you should leave. Courtney's a bitch," Lissa adds.

Cole is antsy. He doesn't want to be here — he doesn't want to be seen with the outcasts. You can go hang with the bitchy emos instead, maybe they're more your style. Austin's words return to him. He eyes the silhouettes around him. Is this where he was always going to end up? Is this his inevitable fate? Is this what happens when you're tainted? Is this what happens when the family crumbles, when someone goes and fucks it all up?

Can he accept that?

The Pals of Pentacles

Welcome to the beginning of the The Pals of Pentacles group.

PentaclesPaige

Welcome welcome !!!

PieMouth

sweet thanks paige

PentaclesPaige

💛💛

TurdMuncher_

whats this

PieMouth

Okay I wanted to talk to both of you

I've got some news

PentaclesPaige

oh ???

good news?

PieMouth

ye

I'm gonna come visit

if that's cool

PentaclesPaige

OH!!

TurdMuncher_

oh nice

yeah i mean thats fine

i dont do shit

PentaclesPaige

Me neither 😵‍💫

That's exciting !!! When? WHat's the pkan?

PieMouth

I figure this next week

PentaclesPaige

ohhhh sooon!!!

TurdMuncher_

to do what?

PieMouth

idk

See ya

Play Advance Wars in person again

you were right

The UI sucks

TurdMuncher_

fuck yea

PentaclesPaige

You have a specific say in mind?

day*

PieMouth

Uh

How about Tuesday

PentaclesPaige

sure!!

When until? How long you staying?

PieMouth

idk

PentaclesPaige

Just gonna take the couch?

PieMouth

it's kind of up in the air

I was just gonna feel it out

I have my own car now. I can leave whenever. Can't we figure that out later?

PentaclesPaige

Sure

Cool!!!!

So exciting you've got your own car now 🥳

you've sorta needed a way out of your house for like a whiiiile now

PieMouth

yeah. i have

TurdMuncher_

well cool bro

see you in a week

PieMouth

you too

ok i gtg, just wanted to announce that

See ya

PentaclesPaige

o/

TurdMuncher_

see ya bro

…

Knock, knock.

"Yeah, come in."

ArtPiece XXV

Paige opens the door to Eric's room, and pokes her head in. "Did he seem…? Feels like something might be up. With him."

"I'm supposed to know?"

"You're his brother."

He mulls it over. "I don't know. How do you get any emotion over text? I don't get it. It's like magic or something."

She chuckles. "I dabble."

"Yeah, well, tell me when next something works out for you."

More often than you think, she keeps to herself, but smirks.

"And when it does," he continues, "pass me whatever you're having. I'm down to do magic."

"Noted! But… seriously. This is pretty short notice, and there was no buildup. That doesn't ping as weird to you?"

Eric sits on his futon, and considers. He looks down at the floor for a long few seconds. "I dunno. I haven't seen him in a while." He looks up at Paige. "I don't really know what's going on with him, anymore."

"Did you before?"

He shrugs. "I caught onto more things. You could watch him, figure out when he's gonna whine and when he'll shut up. I can't watch him anymore. I don't know shit."

Paige looks concerned at that. "I'm wondering if I should bring it up, or just let him come over."

"Just let him come over. I'll be able to tell you what's up with him when he's in punching distance."

"You have such a way of thinking. I'd like to dissect you."

Eric sticks his tongue out at Paige, who chuckles. "You're one to talk, coin-lady."

"Nice one."

"Thanks. I'm full of 'em."

"Okay. Well, goodnight!"

"Goodnight. But if I hear any rituals, I'm calling the fucking cops on you and telling them you're a commie."

She chortles, and moves to leave the room. "Okay, I won't. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Paige shuts the door, and walks back to her room. For a moment.

Knock knock.

Eric looks up from his phone with a furrowed brow. "Uh, yeah?"

She slowly opens the door. "Is there something up with you?"

"What? No, I'm fine."

"That's what's weirding me out. He's your brother. You haven't seen each other in most of a year. And when you saw each other last…"

Eric just stares at her.

"I was just thinking. That like. It might be a big deal. Is it?"

Eric continues to stare. And then breaks eye contact, and shrugs. "It's not."

"Okay. Well… I think it might be a big deal for Cole."

"He didn't make it seem like one."

Is he hurt? Paige thinks. "You're not making it seem like one, either."

Eric shrugs again. "Then I guess it's not a big deal."

Each one, hoping the other will be the one to admit it. Fucking men, Paige thinks. "I don't think he would make it seem like a big deal. I just don't want you to be surprised if it is."

"Okay. I won't be surprised."

She feels unhappy leaving it at that.

"Do you miss him?"

He huffs, then turns to Paige with an expression that reads as: Are you serious? But it softens, and he turns away again. "Sure. Yeah." He pauses. He twice looks like he's about to say something, but doesn't. And then, no more attempts are made. He just glances back at Paige.

She gives him a soft smile. "Okay," she says. "I get the sense there's a lot of stuff you're not saying."

He huffs, but doesn't correct her.

"Goodnight," she says.

"Goodnight," he says. "Thanks for worrying about me."

She doesn't know what to say to that, so she just smiles.

"And I was serious about the ritual shit. You keep me up with that stuff."

She laughs. "Okay, not tonight." No special astronomical events tonight, anyways.

"Cool. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," she says, and closes the door for good.

The house is ridiculous. Two stories, on a hill, in the middle of a bougie cul-de-sac, surrounded by trees that are much closer to "wilderness" than Cole is used to (closer, but not quite there). It looks well-maintained, too. The walls are a nice, clean sky blue. The roof is scaped like those he sees every day in his parents' suburb. It's also my suburb, he corrects his own word choice. But is it? He wonders why that wasn't his first thought.

He steps out of his car, and gets lightheaded from standing up. At least the air is nice. Cool, but not cold. A slight breeze makes the trees sway and their leaves chatter. Birdsong somewhere garnishes the experience. Cole breathes deep, and the pleasant sensation in his chest mollifies. He breathes again — the air like a bellows, pointed at the embers of courage in his heart. Just once more, and he feels ready.

He goes to his trunk, opens it, and gets his suitcase out, then extending its handle and kicking it onto its wheels. As he begins rolling it towards the house, the door opens, and two figures step out. At first, he recognizes neither as his brother, and hesitates, but as his pace slows, one waves to him, and calls out: "Bro, over here."

That's Eric's voice. He wouldn't be able to mistake it.

His pace picks up, and the two come into focus.

It's a lady and a guy, and by process of elimination that must mean that this guy is his brother. Of course, his face, up close, is recognizable, but that doesn't speak to just how much has changed about his appearance.

ArtPiece XXVI

Gone are the earthy colors, the canvas jacket. Not a speck of camo. No cap. Instead, he wears a black leather jacket with a black-and-white striped shirt underneath, jeans torn to shit that couldn't have been protecting him from any amount of chill from the afternoon air, and black cotton canvas shoes with white treads and laces. But those aren't the most striking parts of his look. The choker stands out — one plain black strip around Eric's neck. In the same matte black, the choker is framed by his two dangling earrings, which Cole sees are upside-down crosses. Or are they swords?

His eyes don't linger on them too much, because there are yet more worrying changes on his brother's body. They would be the pink additions: his nail polish and his lipstick, of all things.

"Good to see you too," Eric comments in a dry tone in response to Cole's roaming eyes.

"You look awful."

Eric doesn't hesitate to punch Cole in the shoulder, with enough force to rotate him and shift his footing. Cole rolls with the punch, making no attempt to block, and smiles.

"You don't look much better, bro."

"I didn't go emo."

"It's punk."

"That's not better."

Eric shrugs. "No. It's not."

Cole laughs, and Eric smiles before continuing: "At least I've fucking changed, what the fuck is this you're wearing. We're not wading through mud, moron. These your gaybashing boots? Hopin' to get some slaves to lick 'em clean?"

Cole reels, brow furrowing, but he keeps his smile. "Hey, they're fuckin' good boots. And maybe they can get licked clean if you keep fucking running your mouth like that."

"Yeah, good for stomping the little guy. Seriously, fucking grimy, take those off before you go in the house."

"Says the guy who dressed up for sucking dick this morning. Maybe you should wipe off that lipstick before going out, and we can keep these boots and your faggotry in their respective environments, unless you really wanna see if you were right about them."

"Hey," Paige's voice warns, as Eric's stance shifts into the beginning of some kind of lunge for Cole, and Cole in turn looks like he's about ready to bolt or deflect, a wide grin on his face. The boys both look towards Paige, and loosen, Eric's glance shorter than Cole's.

Cole considers her for a moment, and she burns under his gaze. He's judging, she thinks, and it comes with a certain amount of confidence. But his expression is soft.

"You look… good, actually," he says.

The "actually" stings, but she's not sure if she would have believed his words otherwise. She was preparing for worse — she was honestly expecting a much rockier beginning. A compliment, even when acknowledging his reluctance at saying it? That's friendlier than she thought might happen.

"Hey," Eric growls. "She looks great, actually."

"Thank you," she says to Cole, and forces a smile. She eyes Eric, and hopes he receives the message: This is good. Back down.

Cole had come prepared for a different scenario as well. He was afraid he would have to fight himself to keep his mental image of Paige in-tact and, though he hadn't been this honest with himself, was scared to hurt her, was scared that whatever tension there was between them in-person would extend online.

But she reads as a woman to him, easily. She wears sandals, a mossy-green skirt that terminates just above the ankles, and a brown cardigan with a plain white shirt underneath. Her chin is shaved clean — Cole was worried about that in particular — and she wears a subtle brown lipstick that gives more contrast to her face. (Some application of a cream furthers the effect by making the tone of her face lighter, but Cole misses this point.)

"The hair is a work in progress," Paige feels the need to say, after a brief silence.

Cole reacts. "Really? It looks fine."

While she doesn't feel it, she tells herself that's likely another genuine compliment. If he didn't believe it, she expects he would grunt, or make a face and stay silent. The hair isn't as long as she wants, but she's stomaching this middle phase where it only reaches the very tops of her shoulders. She's pulled it back into a very tight, small bun, which she also doesn't like the look of, but she prefers it to the hair being loose.

"Well, uh, thanks." She projects more confidence than she feels, and still doesn't come up with very much. All of a sudden, the eyes on her feel weighty, so she decides to deflect with something she wanted to say anyways. "As long as we're discussing looks, Cole…"

Cole looks away, and shrinks a little bit.

"I kind of figured it out. Eric himself is not that old, and you stopped referring to him as your 'older' brother when we met. Like, tried to push that relation under the rug."

Cole doesn't speak up. Eric neither.

"How old are you now?"

"Seventeen," he says.

"Yeah. That's really not cool."

Paige doesn't say anything for a moment, and then looks to Eric, who is prepared to meet her eyes. He nods. She sighs.

"Do you know why it was fucked up?"

Cole makes eye contact again, a look of fury across his face that Paige hopes, from practice reading Eric, is further from violent action than it looks. "I don't see why it's a big deal, no."

"Then let me spell it out for you." Paige folds her arms, partly to hide her shaking hands, and lowers her voice. "Do you remember when you made a rape scene in our roleplay?"

He looks away.

She continues. "Do you know how much shit I could be in if it's discovered I was in a sexually explicit roleplay with a minor?"

"You were against the scene," Cole says.

"I was! Barely fucking matters, depending on who gets their hands on that information! A twist of that story could lose me friends, Cole. And it could look really believable. Do you understand how that was fucked up?"

He turns to look at her, but can't keep eye contact and bows his head. "Yes."

"And that's not going into how you casually lied to me. For years, Cole."

He stays silent. Paige looks to Eric, and they share a meaningful look.

"Okay," Eric says. "You're good."

Cole looks up, confused. "What?"

"You stood there and took it," Paige says. "Eric says that's what you'd do, if you knew you were wrong."

"You even said it out loud, actually," Eric adds.

"So, I forgive you."

Cole just stands there, stunned on several fronts. On the one hand, his brother feels suddenly alien to him. The change of appearance had been the first disruption, but their banter had put him back on familiar ground. Now, to be analyzed by him? Never had the Ortegren brothers spoken so frankly about their emotional processes — not even to themselves. Where had this power of perception come from? On the other, he feels like he's just learned something of himself — is this how he acts when he's sorry? Is this how he says it? It rings true, and that frightens him, that something as elementary as this could be new to him.

Lastly, he's surprised at the acceptance. His assumption in these scenarios is that once he's been established as defenseless, the confronting party is free to slice him however they choose, and his penance is to let them. Paige, instead, offers mercy.

"I…" he starts. He looks to Paige, with her arms still folded, then to Eric, with his thumbs hooked into his belt loops. Gaze returning to Paige, he finishes: "I'm sorry."

She nods. "Thank you for saying it."

He doesn't know what next to say, so he just continues to stare. Paige and Eric share another look, and then Paige says: "Sorry to start the visit off like this. But, Eric and I talked about it, and we didn't think there was a better time to bring it up. If it didn't happen first, it'd be hanging over the visit the whole time."

"You don't look twenty, bro."

"I know," Cole says with some venom.

Eric responds by roughing up Cole's hair while the runt tries to swipe away the arm.

"I am glad to see you," Paige says. "Really."

"I'm… yeah. Happy to be here. Can we go inside? My legs fucking hurt from driving."

"Yeah. I thought you were coming later so it's not done, but there's shepherd's pie in the oven."

"She makes a really good shepherd's pie," Eric adds, as they all three turn and walk into the house.

ArtPiece XXVII

Do they have a maid? The inside is just as ridiculous as the outside. To Cole's right is the living room, where Eric gravitates and sits on one of the two couches. In front of him is a coffee table, low enough to set one's feet upon, and on it is a short stack of what look like board games, though they seem color-matched and witchy. Looking up from them, to the furthest part of the room, is a TV bigger than Cole would have expected from his deadbeat brother and homebody Paige. How did they afford something like that? The sound system looks good, too. In a cabinet below it is a clearly visible Wii and a collection of titles.

Above, the walls have textiles. They bear simplistic, geometric designs that seemed to tend towards branches, leaves, and other contrasting organic shapes. Fungi, birds. Between the textiles hang some more of what he imagines were Eric's contributions — inverted crosses, mostly, but a surprising number of them. Most look homemade, and mesh with the textiles by being made of sticks. As the living room's far wall makes its way towards the kitchen, the wall-space seems taken up by more Eric posters, specifically bands that Cole has no chance of recognizing, as well as a spattering of pride flags.

Cole must have made a face, because Eric feels the need to say: "Got a problem, runt?"

Cole waves him off. "It's not my house."

The kitchen is well-outfitted, and the smell of cooking shepherd's pie wafts off of the oven in soothing, homey waves. There were several cookbooks on the counter, the front one bearing some Celtic knots on its cover. The overall color scheme is mostly dark forest-greens and black, with occasional purples and the garish additions of pride flags that draw the most attention despite their relatively small size.

"The bathroom is back here," Paige says from the kitchen, pointing behind a corner, "if you need it."

"I do actually."

Cole moves to relieve himself, and once the bathroom door is shut, Paige approaches Eric, sits on the arm of the couch, and in a low voice asks: "This is going well?"

Eric nods. "Home turf. He's got no choice but to go with it."

She frowns. "That's not how I want it to work out."

"Well, sorry? He's a bigot. We've got to beat him over the head with it."

Paige's expression changes little, but its focus shifts to Eric. You say that like you're so far removed, she thinks.

Eric gesticulates. "What?"

"Nothing. Maybe don't beat him too hard."

"Psh. You don't know my brother."

"I know some things about your brother you don't." Eric rankles, but she doesn't give him room to respond. "Just, play nice, maybe?"

"He won't."

Cole emerges from the bathroom, and quirks an eyebrow at the two. "Talking about me?"

"Yes," Eric says.

"Nothing good, I imagine?"

"Never."

"Good, I've got nothing good to say about you either, I'd feel bad if there was an imbalance."

Eric mockingly laughs, and Cole smiles. "Good to have you back, bro."

Cole's heart bubbles, and he fights the emotion from showing on his face. Good to have you back, too, he thinks, but he doesn't say it out loud.

The oven beeps.

"Good timing. That's dinner."

"Oh thank god," Cole groans, "I'm starving."

They eat and talk, and it is an especially good shepherd's pie. Paige attempts humility, but Eric says that he's tried to follow the same recipe she has and it doesn't come out half as good. Paige needles him, saying that he's very bad at following instructions and can't make rice without having it stick to the bottom of the pan, so him being bad at cooking doesn't make her good. Cole enjoys watching their banter — he enjoys participating. He, too, needles Eric, but he never turns his meaner humor to Paige. Though he's sure of his own understanding of the Ortegren dynamic, he takes note of whenever Paige seems nervous, and tones it down for her sake. If he doesn't imagine it, he thinks he catches Eric doing the same.

In all honesty, Cole is eternally grateful for Paige's presence. Her being there keeps the brothers from touching on the harder subjects, keeping her in the loop necessitates having the conversation be more surface-level. Jed stays far away from the dinner table, as does the Ortegren home life, though there is a telling silence when Cole winces at getting up.

He tries to hide it, but he's already accepted that he's going to feel pain in his foot for the rest of his life — not chronic, but when he puts pressure on it in certain ways. He was told he's lucky it was a glancing blow, but he's certainly not going to run ever again. When Eric expresses some sympathy for the injury, Cole prickles, and waves him off. He doesn't want to talk about it.

Thankfully, Paige brings the conversation back around by referencing a concert she and Eric are going to be seeing later that month, which begins a conversation about Eric's "punk" look, which Cole fails to say without putting some dirt in it every time.

"It's the moshing, bro," Eric says. "And the music. It's angry. It's fucking riling. You get going, some people get their earrings ripped out. It's blood and energy. You should try it sometime."

"No," Cole says, a bit snippy, "not for me."

"I just stay back, it's about the music for me," Paige says. "I'm still not into a lot of punk, but these guys are good."

"What's good about them?"

Paige finishes a bite, and says: "The lyrics. They're very biting, and they're very, uh, queer. It's… validating."

Eric gives her a look that says: stop compromising. "They've got a song about killing a senator. That bother you?"

Cole furrows his brow. "No. Whatever."

"And burning the American flag."

Cole huffs. "Good for them. I suppose you're into that shit now?"

"Hard not to be, when I've got a target on my head."

"When you've put a target on your head," Cole says, giving Eric a once over.

Eric bursts out of his seat, and wrestles a laughing Cole into a headlock, then pulling him out of his chair and forcing him to the floor.

"Boys," Paige admonishes, but she doesn't put a lot of emphasis on it — this isn't the first time this has happened.

"If no longer kissing ass puts a target on my head, then sure, yeah."

"Oh, you're no longer kissing ass? I thought you were practicing for nationals — ack!"

Even as Cole's face turns beet red from the strain, he's smiling. Smiling while Eric pushes his head into the floor and pins him there, Cole's legs kicking to no effect.

"Uncle, uncle, okay!" Eric releases him, and he gets to his feet, sliding back into his chair. "You spilled some pie on yourself when you got up, re— moron."

Paige had asked the boys to stop using that word, and Cole had listened more easily than she'd expected. She's repeatedly surprised at how much respect she's earned in the eyes of the Ortegren boys — though some portion of it, unconsidered by her, comes from their view of her as a woman, and some learned masculine drive to protect her feelings, uphold and respect her frailty. She's been recognized as a woman so few times by cis people, especially in-person, that she's still unfamiliar with the sexism she will begin to face as she passes more and more.

"Ah really? Thanks for looking out for me, bro," Eric says. He too smiles, but he's holding more hurt than he shows.

"You're welcome," his brother replies, beaming. The interplay, the needling and roughhousing, is familiar, and dearly missed. Cole might have gotten addicted, pushed too hard, had Paige's mediating presence not been there.

The evening proceeds in much the same way, until night falls, and Eric admits that he has work the next day. "I'll be around for breakfast, but I'll be gone for lunch, back for the evening."

Cole looks to Paige.

"I'll be around," she offers, "wanna hang out?"

"Yeah, show me the place."

"Sure."

Eric smirks for a reason private to himself.

"So, where am I sleeping? The couch?"

"That couch is actually a futon," Eric points at the one nearest the TV. "We've got some blankets and pillows in a closet upstairs. I'll get them."

"Thanks," Cole says, as Eric tromps up the stairs.

Paige also stands up, and grabs her plate, as well as Eric's. Cole offers his own to her, and she takes it. "Thanks," he says to her.

"No problem. I won't clean dishes tonight, I'm honestly too tired, but I'll get to it in the morning."

"I don't care. I expected this place to be a fucking dump anyways. You could shit on the floor and I'd probably still be impressed."

She chuckles. "Good to know, but I don't think I'll take you up on that offer."

"Free reign to shit on the floor and you won't take it?" Cole shakes his head. "I don't understand women."

Paige rolls her eyes, but she smiles. "No, you don't."

Eric returns, and tosses a blanket and pillow onto the futon, then removing the throw pillows and tossing them onto the other couch before pulling it away from the wall and unfolding it into a bed.

"Anything you need to know where it is before you sleep?"

"I know the bathroom, I know water, I'm good."

"Cool." Paige looks between the brothers. "Well, I'm gonna probably sleep, so I can be up and about in time to make breakfast tomorrow."

"You don't gotta, I could make us French toast."

Paige gives Eric eyes.

"Okay," he chuckles. "Okay, you can make breakfast while we have guests."

"I don't think I've ever had bro's cooking. I'm curious."

"Don't be," Paige draws out, one foot on the stairs, "you're not missing anything. I'll make us Dutch babies before Eric goes to work."

"Dutch babies? What the fuck is that?"

"They're good," Eric says. "But everything Paige makes is good."

Cole shakes his head. "Fucking Europeans and breakfasts. What's up with that? Anyways, goodnight Paige. Thanks for hosting me. Thanks for dinner."

She curtsies, and then feels stupid for having done it. "Uh, you're welcome. Goodnight."

She goes upstairs, and leaves the brothers alone. The silence for a moment feels natural, but prolongs, and Cole's smile fades as he looks over his brother.

"What's up?"

Eric walks over to Cole, and jabs a finger into his sternum, then speaking in a low voice: "Paige is crazy fucking anxious around people, and she's gonna go out with you tomorrow."

Cole raises an eyebrow.

"Not in that way, dipshit. Seriously? Your mind goes there?"

"What? I don't follow."

Eric pulls back and jabs Cole in the chest again. "Don't fuck it up. Treat her like a lady."

"Fucking, what are you talking about? Of course."

"Good." He backs up. "Goodnight bro."

"Oh. Just like that?"

Eric shrugs. "Got work tomorrow."

Cole crosses his arms, confused and a little hurt that this is the final interaction of the night. "Okay. Goodnight, I guess."

Once Eric is out of sight, Cole mouths: missed you.

He walks to the lightswitch, turns it off, and then crawls into bed. He dreams of shooting cans and a lunar eclipse.

The following day, Cole is awoken by Paige already being in the kitchen, and the oven being on once again. He turns over, and passes between waking and sleep several times, fast-forwarding him to when he gets a good slap on the shoulder, turning on his back to look up and see his brother in a much more familiar look.

ArtPiece XXVIII

"Breakfast time, bro. C'mon, I only got so long 'til I gotta go."

Cole gets up, and first gets his suitcase, obtains toiletries, and cleans himself up. Once he's out of the bathroom, Dutch babies are available on the table, as well as several bowls of toppings, such as yogurt, powdered sugar, blueberries and, of course, butter and maple syrup. The Dutch babies themselves seem to be a variant on the pancake, but in the shape of a pie crust with no filling. They have a pillowy, though thin, bottom, and a dramatically raising edge, and are cut into the shapes of pie slices. They're served along with small sausages and orange slices.

"Wow, Paige. Thanks. This looks great."

She grins, and Eric cuts in: "Don't let her trick you this is what it's like every morning. She's making it all special and shit."

"I didn't think it was?" Cole responds. "It's just nice. Thanks for the breakfast."

"It's one of my favorites," she gets in, "I make it when I have motivation to. Which isn't often, but. Special occasion."

"I'm not so special," Cole says, under his breath, and Paige doesn't seem to hear it as she scoots her chair in to be at the table.

Cole joins, and they banter over breakfast. Eric, in his work uniform, talks about his job he'll be going to in a moment, and the bullshit uniform codes they have. Cole silently likes them — if only because they've made Eric dress himself in a more familiar fashion, without the earrings, makeup and nails.

"What's rent here anyways?" Cole asks.

Both Eric and Paige hesitate to respond, but then Eric says: "Sixteen-hundred. I pay half, 'bout eight-hundred. Why?"

That sounds crazy cheap for a house like this, he thinks, but he says: "Really nice place you have. Nice location, too."

"Yeah," Eric says.

"The landlord is a friend of mine," Paige clarifies, "from high school. We're paying way less than it's worth."

A friend from high school? Cole didn't take Paige for the type to have made and maintained connections from her youth, especially not ones that could afford a house like this. But, then again, he doesn't have a good grasp on the scale of money and affordability of housing either.

"Damn," he states.

"Yeah," Eric speaks through a bite.

The rest of breakfast passes easily, and the boys don't even get into an altercation. Instead, they amicably meander between topics until Eric has to go to work, and the roleplayers wish Eric goodbye.

Once Paige is done clearing the table and washing the dishes from the night before, she turns to see Cole simply sitting in his chair, unmoved since he finished his Dutch baby and Eric had left.

"What's up?"

The questions brings him out of a daze, and once he gets his bearings, he replies: "I didn't bring anything to do." Except books to read, but he has yet to feel comfortable reading in front of anyone.

"Well, give me a moment, and I can show you around the town. It's not much to look at but you'll know what Eric's talking about. We can even go visit him at work."

"Mm. I don't want to. Take me to downtown, show me your spots."

Paige gives a wistful smile. "I don't really have spots. This is my spot."

"Right." Cole offers no more direction.

"How 'bout a hike? There's a trail, just behind the house. Goes maybe a half hour out, half hour back."

"Sure. Let's do that."

They get their shoes on, and walk out the back door of the house, down some stairs, and towards the treeline. The forest is dense — so much denser than the lumberyard. As Cole looks around, he wonders if this is what a forest is really supposed to look like. The trees seem freer here, not to mention taller. In the forest, it feels like his world only extends so many feet in any direction before it's lost to the mesh of trees. However, he can't know that this is too dense. He can't imagine the fires that will eat through this forest like nothing in the coming decades — that will be unstoppable, the trees so densely packed that the flames leap from one to the other as though there were no barrier.

But still, here, he wonders if the lumberyard weren't some facsimile of the outdoors, and that this is real. His scope is woefully small, his world only so many feet in any direction before it's lost to the mesh of reality, the dense packings of information, him traipsing along a narrow corridor on the floor of the jungle, on occasion looking up at the sky to catch his only reminder of the gasping void in his knowledge.

The two talk about benign things, returning to the familiarity of their characters for conversation topics, discussing their various retcons and favorite moments. Cole loses himself in thought sometimes, and Paige has to work to get the discussion back on track. After about the fourth sudden silence, Paige lets it ride. On the walk back, Paige gets some distance on Cole, and waits for him at the trailhead before they each head inside.

"Do you want to be alone?" Paige asks.

Cole feels insulted by the question, but considers it honestly. "Yes. We'll hang more later."

"It's good. An evening and a morning of being with people is already a lot of human interaction for me, I'm happy to return to my room. Knock on my door if you need me. I'll probably be back down for lunch."

He nods, and she walks upstairs.

The remaining hours of Eric's workday Cole spends reading and walking around the neighborhood. Cole and Paige have a short conversation about Eric's punk tastes over lunch, which Cole works to keep very surface-level, and Paige notices.

She doesn't want to pry, not just yet, but she's soon to ask him why he came up, what the impetus was. The circumstances seem strange and vague. Besides, she'd asked again how long he was thinking of staying, and he gave a noncommittal answer. After some further questioning, he answered "a week." He can't have gotten the days off school, then, she thinks. But she doesn't want to get in the way of the brothers' reconnection. She wants to leave them their space. Obviously, if he's come, he's deemed it important enough to do so. And if he hasn't said the circumstances, then he doesn't want to talk about it. She'll respect that. Not forever, but for now.

When she returns to her room, Cole returns to his book.

It's a high-fantasy about cycles and transformations. The characters excavate ancient ruins to find older and older names of the same spirits and deities. The older the name, the stronger its power. The revelation is of the cyclical nature of the world — and that through the lens of an ever-repeating world, all names are just as old as all others, and in fact, newer names hold more power, as they come directly from the characters' own conceptions and emotion. Cole finds this turn cheesy, but is committed to finishing the book, and so finishes several chapters.

Cole's ears perk up at the sound of footsteps approaching the front door, and he straightens on the couch, hiding the book under a pillow next to him. Keys jangle, and then the lock turns and the door opens, revealing Eric, still in uniform, holding a paper bag.

"Welcome back, bro."

"Hey."

He shuts the door, and walks to the kitchen, dropping the bag off on the table. "Gonna go change, be right back."

Cole stands up, and walks to the table, pulls the bag towards himself, and looks inside. His eyes raise as Eric comes back downstairs.

"Are you bartending?"

Eric snorts. "Tonight, maybe. That was my idea."

Cole hasn't had much alcohol. It's been passed to him at some holidays and family events, but he hadn't made the connections necessary in high school to have alcohol be in supply. His curiosity wasn't very high, either. But…

"You good at it?"

"I make Paige her girly drinks, I drink beer. You can have either."

"I'll have beer," Cole draws out.

"Or a rum and coke. That one's pretty good."

"Y'know what, I'll have whatever you're having."

Eric laughs. "You haven't drunk before, have you?"

Cole snickers. "You know I haven't."

"You're sad, you know that?"

Before Cole can retort, Paige's footsteps on the stairs draw his attention.

"Oh," she says, "you got something?"

"Brought up cocktail supplies."

"How'd you get that?" Cole suddenly thinks to question.

"We keep good stuff in a fridge downstairs, in the basement."

Cole raises an eyebrow, but Paige cuts in: "So, this is the dinner plan?"

"We have burger fixings. That's classic, beer and burgers."

"Sure."

Eric starts burgers going, but Paige can't help but switch out with him. He makes some comment on how grilling is exactly what he's supposed to be good at, but Paige points out to him that he's frying the patties in a pan, not grilling them. He concedes the point, and Paige starts adding some spices to the patties once he's gone.

The brothers discuss Eric's work, which mostly consists of shit-talking the customers and coworkers. Paige prompts Eric several times for especially good work stories while flipping patties and getting out all the condiments and toppings. Once burgers are ready, the three serve themselves, and Eric makes Paige a margarita and Cole a rum and coke, as well as another rum and coke for himself.

They eat their burgers, sip at their drinks, and talk about roleplay — a conversation Paige forces into existence at the resistance of Cole. The conversation meets a dead-end when Cole makes it clear he won't play ball, and Paige wonders how far she should push Cole outside his comfort zone. She finds it difficult to figure out what boundaries she even respects when his comfort zone excludes her identity and culture. She can't respect none of it, or else she wouldn't have even dressed up today. But is talking about their shared interests "too far?" It seems unlikely.

"So," Eric starts, "when'd you get a car? I don't remember that."

Cole shrugs. "Saved up, paid for half of it. Parents said if I got my grades up, they'd foot the rest. It's a piece of shit, but it works."

"That's fucked up."

Cole shrugs again, and takes another swig. "Fucked up?"

"They didn't help on mine."

Cole shrugs.

"Stop fucking shrugging."

Cole shrugs before thinking about it. "Why?"

"It's annoying. Speak."

Cole crosses his arms, drink in one hand. "Yeah well." He hesitates. "Once you left, they started doting on me."

"Doting?"

"Being sweet and shit. Easy."

"He didn't leave," Paige corrects, too quiet to interrupt the flow of conversation.

"Like fuck they are," Eric says, though there's a note of curiosity in his voice. "Dad doesn't go easy."

"He didn't. Not at first." Cole's face coils, but whatever thought he may have had, he takes a drink instead. "Now he just ignores me, I think. I guess I'm a lost cause."

Eric spits onto the floor — Paige watches him do it, and then gives him a quizzical look, like she's surprised that that was an option available to him, and furthermore that he chose to do it. "That's fucked up. That's retarded."

"Hey," Paige warns.

Eric shakes his head. "Moronic. It's stupid."

"What? What's so stupid about it?"

Eric just shakes his head again.

"Stop shaking your head," Cole delivers in a sardonic tone.

"Oh shut up."

Cole shrugs, deliberately.

"Guys," Paige cuts in, feeling the tension rise, "cut it out. We're here to have fun."

"I'm having fun," Cole says, interrupting some similar statement that was readymade in Eric's mouth.

"We're shooting the shit," Eric adds.

She frowns, but just takes another sip of her margarita.

The conversation lulls for a moment, and each participant enjoys their food and drink. Cole finishes his first.

"It's mostly Mom. Dad leaves me alone now. I guess Mom feels like she has to make up for it. She follows me around like she's afraid I'm blind — or, like, she's… bailing water out of my sinking ship. She's so fucking annoying."

"Sounds like she cares about you," Paige suggests.

Cole shrugs.

Eric stands up as he and Paige finish their drinks, and goes to the kitchen to fix up a second round.

"I'd have been happy to have a mom who cared about me," Paige says into the distance.

"It's not as good as you think it is."

Paige turns her focus towards him. "You're not better without it."

"Well I'd like to figure that out for myself."

"How exactly?"

Eric returns with the drinks, this time a piña colada for Paige and another round of rum and cokes for him and his brother.

"So," Eric says as he sits back down. "How'd you make time to come here anyways?"

Cole raises his hand, and finds it feels heavier than he expects. His thoughts are briefly interrupted by the sensation. Paige notices, and laughs. Cole smiles. "I guess I really haven't drunk before."

Eric catches on, and laughs himself, Cole waving his arm in the air just a little. "Huh."

"I usually stop around three drinks," Paige says. "Maybe four."

Eric leans back in his chair. "Psh. I'm not even feeling it."

"Eric," Paige smiles, "you're huge."

He just shrugs, and smiles back at her, then turning to Cole: "And you're tiny. Hadn't thought about it yet, but maybe you should take it slow."

"I'm not that small."

"Cole," Paige laughs.

"You're small," Eric finishes her thought.

He prickles, but tries not to show it. He's very bad at not showing it.

"That's probably why Dad went harder on me," Cole submits for discussion, a sharp note in his voice.

"Harder on you," Eric says with an ambiguous color.

"Yeah," Cole takes it as a question. "Harder on me."

"He didn't fucking go harder on you."

"And how do you know, huh? How do you know he didn't?"

"How do you know he did?"

Paige nervously sips her drink, eyes passing between the brothers, trying to gauge whether this is the kind of fighting through which they express enjoyment of each other or if it's something uglier. The alcohol is already working to impair her ability to tell the difference.

Cole shrugs.

"Stop fucking shrugging. He didn't go harder on you. He went hard on me, because I'm the older brother, and it was my job to go hard on you. He made that very clear."

"Well you didn't. He picked up the slack."

"I didn't, and he didn't pick up the slack. I made you look really good, Cole. I made you look really good."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Eric avoids responding by taking a drink.

"Hey," Paige says, tentative, "is this a conversation I should be here for?"

"Why shouldn't you be?" Eric asks, setting his drink down.

Paige winces, regretting her tactic and switching over. "Er, are you two sure you can handle discussing family trauma right now?"

"Trauma?" Cole laughs.

"While drunk," Paige clarifies, and then feels stupid, belatedly taking in what Cole is really laughing about.

"It wasn't traumatic," Eric seems to take Cole's side, though his face remains stone-cold.

"Like fuck it wasn't," Paige says. "Are you hearing yourselves? You're describing emotional abuse."

"And physical," Cole adds.

Eric's head turns away with a speed that makes it look painful. Inexplicably, Cole laughs again.

"I'm so sorry," Paige says, and she feels it. Hearing the admission strikes her as if it were her own experience. This kind of empathic response has always been hard for her to turn off — the drinks bring the walls she'd worked to put up down. "I'm so sorry."

Cole waves her off, and Eric follows up: "It wasn't abuse, it's fucking, corp-eerie-al punishment. Some kids we knew. They got it a lot worse."

"Dad was fair," Cole adds. "And it's 'corporal.'"

"Define fair," Paige asks with some alarm.

"Like fuck Dad was fair," Eric practically spits the words.

"It wasn't very often, and we got to make appeals. And it's pronounced 'corporal.'"

Eric spits on the ground again, and Paige nearly slaps him. "Eric, stop spitting."

"It's either I spit, or I get up from my chair and I tie my piece-of-shit brother into a knot." Cole laughs again, and Eric smirks. "Oh, that's funny to you, huh? Sounds like a joke, huh?"

Cole makes a circular motion with his hand, and once he's fought down the laughter, asks: "Another drink, c'mon you guys are done, get up and make another drink."

Eric stands up, and Paige puts a hand on his arm. "Don't get Cole another drink. He's had enough."

"I am not small," Cole responds.

"I'll get him something light," Eric says.

"Don't get him another drink," she insists.

"Get me something, bro, c'mon."

"I'll get him something light," Eric promises, and then he's off to the kitchen, Paige's hand hanging in the air.

She turns to Cole. "Are you okay?"

"I feel great."

"I think you're upsetting Eric."

He waves her off. "He can take it. We're shooting the shit."

"Yeah but the shit here has a really strong stench, Cole."

His brow furrows and he leans back in his chair. "And why is it all about him, huh? What if I'm getting upset?"

"I just asked, and you said you feel great."

"I feel fantastic."

ArtPiece XXX

Eric returns with drinks. He puts a light beer in front of Cole, at which Cole frowns, but the brothers' bickering ends with Cole reluctantly accepting that he will get no other option. Eric prepared for himself another rum and coke, and Paige receives a sex-on-the-beach, which she tries to take only small sips of, to not get too drunk too fast. Cole seems to have no such reservations.

"Dad's fucked up, Cole," Eric suddenly resurfaces the topic. "Don't idolize Dad."

"Dad sucks. Fuck Dad."

Eric raises eyebrows. "That's right, bro. Fuck 'im." But his tone doesn't hide his surprise at the easy agreement.

"He thinks I'm a lost cause."

"You're not a lost cause," Paige reassures.

Cole gives her a kicked-puppy look that makes her want to wrap him in a hug — she's glad she's still sober enough to fight the urge.

"What if I am? What if I'm a lost cause."

"Lost for what?" Eric asks.

"What the fuck does that mean? Say what you mean."

"What cause were you gonna go do, that's lost now?"

Cole shakes his head. "I don't get good grades. Fuck school."

"Fuck school," Eric emphasizes.

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm a lost cause."

"You're not a lost cause," Paige unhelpfully reiterates.

"I wish he'd hit me again."

"Holy fuck, Cole," Paige startles. Eric spits on the floor.

"That'd show he'd care."

"That's not caring," Eric growls.

"What do you know? You left."

Paige shakes her head. "He didn't leave."

"Didn't he?" Cole glares at Eric. "Didn't you?"

"Fuck you," Eric's voice strains. He takes another sip.

"He didn't." Paige turns to Eric. "You didn't leave. He kicked you out. You're not to blame."

Eric barely meets her eyes, then turns away.

Cole just nods. "He left. See? He left."

"And Cole, Cole, don't ever say you — don't ever say that! Don't you ever say that."

"What? What did I say?"

"Cole, p-people don't hit you, when they love you."

Cole hangs his head. "That's a lie."

"It's the truth."

"No, that's a lie, that's a lie, Paige."

"You're fucking crazy," Eric says. "He got you."

"What do you mean? Say what you mean, bro, say what you mean."

"You never left. You're Dad's kid."

Cole shakes his head. "I'll do better."

"What do you mean by better? What do you mean?"

Cole just shakes his head again. "I mean what I say."

"You're fucked up, Cole. You're going to grow up, and hurt everyone you ever love, and they're going to leave you."

"No I won't. See, Eric, I'm a lost cause. Bro, when are you coming home?"

Eric slams a fist onto the table, spilling some of Paige's cocktail before she can grab and steady the glass.

"I can't come home!"

"And you wouldn't," Paige is anxious to add, "you wouldn't, right?"

"I'm not coming home, Cole. Ever, not fucking ever, and don't you fucking wish that on me, don't you fucking put that on me."

Cole stares into his glass. Then he raises it. "Get me another."

"No! I'm not getting you another fucking drink, Cole!" Eric moves like he might cross the distance around the table towards Cole, but Paige's hand on his arm gives him pause, and her squeeze stops him.

"C'mon, I'm empty."

"Yeah, so's your heart, you son of a bitch. So's your crusty fucking heart."

"Ease up," Paige urges, "let up."

Cole shakes his head. "I missed you so much, bro. I miss you so much."

The words take Eric by surprise, and the hurt curdles in his heart. "Fuck you, no you don't, no you don't!"

Cole sniffles. "How do you know? How do you know I don't?"

"You laughed at me!"

Cole feels the weight of his words press into his chest, and he's momentarily at a loss for words. He just shakes his head.

Eric's volume lowers. "You laughed at me, you learned what I am and you laughed at me."

"I didn't laugh at you."

"How can you say that? How can you say that?"

"This was a bad idea," Paige says, the volume of the brothers — of Eric especially — pushing her into some other place, reality becoming a familiar kind of slippery that she usually doesn't feel until some more drinks in. "Guys, we should stop."

"Because I didn't."

"Then what?" Eric waves his arms. "Then what did you do? What was that?"

Cole only shakes his head. He doesn't know the answer himself. A more sober version might have said: "It didn't feel like laughter." Or: "It wasn't at you." But Cole only shakes his head.

"Boys," Paige tries to get in, but her energy can't penetrate the brothers' frenzy.

"You reached out to me!" Cole suddenly flares with anger.

"And what, bro?"

"What? What!?"

"You hate me! You hate everything about me! You hate that I'm a fag. You hate how I dress, you hate how I look. You hate Paige, you keep giving her that disgusting gaze you have. You hate that I left. You hate me. You hate me."

Cole shakes his head violently. "You fucking retard. I love you, you faggot. You fucking moron. I love you."

"And what good's that do me?"

"What?"

"What good's that do me, Cole?"

"I love you, bro, I love you —"

"What good's that do me if you're just gonna hurt me again!?"

Cole sobs an ugly sob. The drinks strip from him any restraint or concern for modesty. When he cries, the sound is a loud and undirected moan. The sound rocks Paige out of her dissociation enough to look at him.

Eric projects all his self-hatred onto Cole. It's easy. It's far too easy. The Ortegren brothers understand each other. They know the venoms in each others' fangs, they know the rattles of each others' tails — Eric knows the feelings Cole politely pushes down in Paige's presence, he knows the anger behind his actions, he knows the fears behind his words. Only, Eric is bigger. Eric has always been bigger, and Cole, especially, makes Eric feel big. He sees in Cole his own stupid, rotten weakness, and he hates it — a knife flicks open and closed in his mind, his fingers on his right hand mimic the motion — but he has the advantage of size, the disguise of physical presence, that Cole has always lacked.

"Cole," Paige stands and moves towards him, then kneeling at his side, "Cole what's wrong?"

Cole shakes his head and cries. "He loves me. He loves me but he won't say it."

Paige turns to Eric and gives him a look that says: Is this true?

"I don't."

"Yes you do!" Paige looks appalled. "Are you fucking serious?"

"Faggot! You're a fucking fag!"

Paige stands up and slaps Cole full across the face. He's so taken aback, it even interrupts his crying, as he puts a hand to his cheek.

She turns to Eric, who can't come up with an argument against Paige's direct call-out. He stays quiet.

"I can't — I can't believe we let this happen," she says. "What the fuck were we thinking?"

Silence reigns, occasionally broken by Cole's return to crying, though his eyes remain pointed at the floor.

"I'm sorry, Paige, I-I'm not that drunk. I don't have an excuse."

"You fucking don't," she bites. "Eric, leave."

"Me?"

"Cole's not moving."

He looks between Paige and Cole, and finds he can't argue that. He clenches his fists, and then trudges towards the stairs. He doesn't make it up the first step.

"Bro," Cole says.

"Cole," Paige warns.

"I won't do it. I won't hurt you. I don't wanna hurt you." His voice is reedy. "I gave that up. I gave up hating you. I couldn't do it anymore."

"You don't have to hate me to hurt me."

Cole shakes his head. "I won't do it. I won't hurt you. I don't wanna hurt you, anymore. Please?"

Eric stands completely still. He turns around to face Cole.

"Please what?"

"Just tell me. Tell me you love me too. Please."

He looks off to one side, unable to make eye contact. He leans, and then sticks out a hand to hold the railing and hold himself steady.

"Of course I do." He surprises himself, and he can't finish the statement without a crack in his voice. "I — of course I love you, you fucking retard."

Cole raises his head, and hiccups. "I love you, bro. I miss you so much. I miss you so fucking much. I can't stand home without you. You have no idea what it's like. It's fucking awful. I can't stand it. I miss you so much."

"But I can't make the same promise."

"What promise? What promise, bro? I miss you so much."

"I don't know if I can love you and not hurt you."

Cole shakes his head violently. "I don't care. I don't care at all. Fuck you."

"I care, Cole! I'm scared. I'm fucked up, and you're fucked up. Can't you tell how fucked up we are?"

Cole just shakes his head. "You used to hurt me all the time. That's how you showed me you love me."

Tears run down Eric's cheeks while he fights to keep his face straight. "I don't wanna do that anymore."

"Then don't, you fucking fag. You twink. You can't hurt me anyways with your weak little wrists, your little limp-ass wrists, what punches you gonna throw with your weak stupid wrists?"

"I'm gonna fuck up people like you, Cole. With these limp faggy wrists of mine, that's what I'm gonna do."

"Then do it, I don't care, just love me and do it."

"I don't want to do both."

"Then pick one!"

Eric walks towards Cole.

"Eric…" Paige stands in his way.

He looks her over, as if estimating her, and then looks her in the eyes and shakes his head. She cautiously steps aside, and he closes the distance.

"What you gonna do, bro? What're, what're you gonna do?"

Eric motions at Cole. "Stand up."

Cole tries to stand up, and is surprised at the difficulty — he loses his grip on the table, slides on the ground, and — Eric catches him, putting his hands in Cole's armpits and raising him up to his feet.

Cole raises his head to look into Eric's eyes.

ArtPiece XXXI

Eric pulls him into an embrace so tight it forces a grunt out of Cole. The older brother streams tears down his face and onto Cole's back. Cole follows, sobbing openly into Eric's shoulder.

"You're fucking stupid, you're a coward," Cole says.

"I hate you," Eric replies.

"Don't leave me again."

"I can't promise you that."

Cole struggles to breathe. "Why not? You fucking oaf, you fucking ogre."

"You have to not leave me."

"Not fair."

"It's not fair."

"I missed you so much. I missed your stupid face — never wear makeup again, you look different, it's terrible."

"Fuck you, I do what I want."

"Don't leave me. Don't leave me again. I'll fucking kill myself if you do."

"You have to not leave me, Cole."

"That's not fair! Why?"

"I can't go home."

Cole shakes his head. "Why can't you."

"I'm a fag, Cole."

"Why'd you do that?"

Eric laughs through the tears, and Cole giggles alongside him. "I think I got hugged too much. Grandma says that makes you gay."

"Ah fuck. You need to stop doing that."

The brothers laugh with each other, neither loosening their grip. As the laughter subsides, they sniffle and hiccup in turn.

"Fuck Grandma," Cole says.

"Fuck Grandma," Eric agrees.

"Fuck Dad. Fuck Mom."

"Fuck Dad."

"Fuck you, bro."

"Fuck you too."

"You're gonna make me choose."

"Are you on their side?"

Cole shakes his head again. "You're gonna make me choose. You broke the family up and now you're gonna make me choose. Fuck you."

"I did, and I am. Choose."

"Fine. But I hate you. I hate you and everyone like you."

"I can live with that."

"Good. I missed you so much."

"I missed you too."

The brothers hold each other for long moments as Paige watches.

She feels a vague sense of unease as she watches. Shouldn't this be a beautiful moment? She can't make herself take it in unalloyed by doubts. Is this a trauma that makes them stronger to share, or is it the type to force them apart?

But as they cry onto one another, she must allow for the moments. That's something I'm always doing — crowding out the present with the future. This, at least, had to happen. The harder she thinks about it, the more her anxieties ease, though they are replaced with a darkly humorous thought. And there's another night, she thinks, where I had every right to be upset, to make a point, to finally be acknowledged, and I didn't. Paige wonders when her life will finally be about her. Paige wonders if she does things that ensure it never is.

When the brothers are done, Eric practically carries Cole over to the couch, though he must be a little more tipsy than he thinks because his footing doesn't seem the steadiest: Paige remains close by to assist.

Once Cole is laid down on the couch, Eric steps back.

"You'd be so proud of me," Cole says, his voice a hoarse whisper, "I only play twinky little cowards anymore. Hardly a link of chainmail on 'em."

"What the fuck does that mean."

"I love you bro."

Eric just nods, and wipes at his eyes.

Paige pulls a blanket over Cole, and he weakly shifts his head to look at her. "You're so sweet for a tranny, Paige. Please tell me you love me too."

"Jesus Christ, Cole," Paige says at the same time as Eric's: "Don't you fucking call him that."

"I love you Paige."

Paige just shakes her head. "Ask me in the morning, Cole. You've been kind of a shithead tonight."

"C'mon, bro's a shithead all the time, tell me you love me."

"Goodnight, Cole."

"Goodnight, Paige. Don't change, please don't ever change."

"Goodnight, bro."

"Goodnight, Eric. I missed you. I missed you so much."

The three go their separate ways, and Cole's eyes drift to the window. His hands shove underneath his pillow and find the book he'd hidden there. He looks up into the sky, and finds a bright, nigh-full moon.

ArtPiece XXXII

What a fucking sissy I am, he thinks, what a lovebird. Maybe I got hugged too much, too. "I love you." You motherfucker, Eric, you got me. I'm gay now too. What's that mean, huh? What's that mean?

Cole can't dwell on the thoughts for long, as he's taken in by a drunken, hiccupy sleep.

Epilogue: Argus the Healed

Paige fidgeted with a napkin, elbows on the glossy table, eyes narrowly avoiding outright staring at the couple in the booth near her, several up and on the other side of the aisle. Their talking was starting to grate on her — their merely being there felt like a violation of her own privacy, despite the public space. To fight her own gaze, she looked to the windows, which offered a bland view of mostly black, dotted with the far-off lights of city, the nearer lights of some few streetlamps, and a glaze of gray light pollution fuzzing up the clouds.

She moved from fidgeting with the napkin to running her thumb along the plastic edge of the menu when she saw headlights enter the parking lot. The car parked in front of the diner: her heart fluttered. Is that her? The cheap plastic was worn enough to have a ragged edge, which she pressed her thumb into until rubbing it hurt. Absently, she put the menu aside.

The door opened, and there was no mistaking her.

The entrant's eyes passed over the diner, and Paige opened her palm in a tiny wave to bring her over. As the person smiled and strode over, Paige stood up to greet her.

"Hey, Blue," Paige said.

"Hey, Pen-ta-cle," Blue enunciated every syllable with a strike like a hammer.

Paige chuckled. "You know my name."

"And you can call me Kiave, unless you'd like to use my formal title, Ms. Boobies. Also, what the fuck you doing? C'mere."

The two hugged, and Paige felt eased in a way she wasn't expecting. It had been so long since anyone had hugged her — anyone she wanted to. Thank god she's not pretty. She was mad at herself for thinking it — she felt like some kind of spy that had been sent to infiltrate queer ranks and seed bigotry from the inside: she felt like the problem. But she couldn't help it. She was so afraid Kiave would intimidate her, and the relief is like a magnet against the side of her moral compass.

Once the hug was broken, Paige was sad to see it gone. She hovered awkwardly for a moment, before getting a clue and sitting down.

In a low voice, Kiave asked, with a head gesture towards the couple in earshot: "What name should I call you?"

ArtPiece XXXIII

Paige frowned. She'd done nothing to her appearance, except a hasty shave out of embarrassment for the meeting here with Kiave. Ideally, she would stick with her deadname and not feel so seen in a public space, but… Kiave was not so subtle. She had a streak of dyed blue in her hair, and her face was peppered with piercings — bridge, septum, snake bites, and when she spoke Paige thought she saw a gleaming bulb on the tongue. More piercings in more places than Paige knew the names for. Eyebrows. Everything. And to pair with the hair, blue lipstick. (Paige was surprised Kiave's screenname had that much connection to her live appearance.) She wore a crop-top with "Melvins" written on it, and had clearly visible bra straps — not to mention little lumps on her chest, without the grace of cleavage like a cis or post-transition woman might have. Below that, she had fishnets — the band of which rested just above her bellybutton — and torn jeans to see the fishnets through.

No, there was no point in trying to hide. "Paige. You can call me Paige."

Kiave grinned. "Nice to meet you, Paige."

"Seriously. Thanks for coming out. I know it's not the most convenient."

Kiave gave a little wave. "Don't worry about it. But you're right, I don't have all the time in the world — we should order."

The two got sodas and shitty food — Paige doubted there was anywhere open at this time whose food wouldn't be shitty. They sent the waiter off, and returned to each other's attention.

Paige asked Kiave about her trip to Portland, and Kiave told her about the trip she'd taken — trip of a different definition. Paige listened intensely as Kiave described her experience on mushrooms. She'd wanted to take the trip by the river, but of course, being in any way inebriated around a body of water was a no-go. "I'm not that kind of reckless," Kiave grinned. She said it was a relatively small dose and didn't last too long — that she's new to psychedelics, and didn't want to freak herself out. Her tripsitter, Gracy, had a lot more experience than her, and knew how much to give.

"I have… a different appreciation for trees, now, which is interesting," Kiave finished saying. "I recommend it. Gracy gave me some to take home with me. Don't tell the feds, they're gonna fuck with my spiritual journey."

Paige chuckled. "I won't."

The girls thanked the waiter as their food was dropped off — a lasagna for Kiave and a sandwich for Paige.

"He's real nice. I'll be leaving him a good tip."

Paige just nodded at Kiave's remark.

"Anyways…" Kiave swirled her drink and lowered her voice. "How are you?"

Paige's eyes cast downward. "I've been better."

Kiave reached a hand across the table, palm up, and Paige took it. The easy physical contact hummed through her.

"I'm… well, I'm… in a shelter, right now."

Kiave mouthed a drawn out "no…"

"But. I've got something in the works. Please don't worry about me too much. It's… pushing my limitations, but, I've been practicing stuff like this for a long time. Big motivator, I guess." Paige smiled sadly. Kiave squeezed her hand.

"If you need any help."

"No. Seriously, I'm fine."

Kiave leveled a finger at her, and quirked an eyebrow. "Don't pull man shit anymore, Paige. You're supposed to be unlearning man shit."

Paige couldn't help but smile. "It's not man shit. I seriously have it handled. And… if I don't, I'll tell you. I don't expect to be homeless for more than another month."

Kiave squeezed Paige's hand again, and another hum went through her.

"It's… fucked up to say," Kiave started, "but… fuck. Stay boyish, until you get somewhere safe."

"That's the plan."

"These people are vicious. I can't believe — I don't know if I can conscience leaving you here, girl."

Paige shook her head. "I'm not in serious danger. I have my wards and everything. No one else in the shelter —" her eyes drifted to the couple, and she lowered her voice "— knows anything. I'm just getting by for now. But I can't move far — I'm in tune here. It's honestly easiest for me to get back on my feet here than anywhere else. I really appreciate it, I do. But I've gotta stay."

Kiave put her other hand over Paige's.

"Okay. Fuck. I can't believe this happened to you. Why do such fucked up things happen to good people."

I'm a good person? Not that Paige thought of herself as a bad person, per se — but she didn't consider herself in terms of "good" or "bad" at all. "I think things just happen to people," she supplied. "I don't think the universe much cares about who you are."

Kiave shook her head. "That's just as bad, i-m-h-o."

Paige shrugged. The morality wasn't what bothered her. That, she had come to terms with long ago.

"I don't want to talk about it," Paige redirected. "Can I… can I just pick your brain about some things? I don't need your help with this, but, you could really help me about," Paige motioned to her shaved chin, "this."

"Of course," Kiave said with a kind of sincerity so strong it took Paige off guard. "Anything you want to know. Assuming I know it, shit."

"I… well, I don't think… I think I'd really just like to hear… your story. What uh, what was your journey, what was the moment?"

Kiave gave three quick breaths. "I don't know that there was a moment. The moment was a really long, drawn out thing. In high school."

Paige nodded.

"Did you know there are still fucking all-boy highschools? Fucking archaic. Probably huffing lead paint and asbestos walking through those fucking halls. My parents sent me to one of those."

Paige couldn't hide a wince.

"You get it," Kiave responded. "Of course you would. Well, you can imagine that there's a lot of fucking testosterone in that shitty place. People always bragging how many girls they've been with. The competition in PE, the casual hitting you. Commenting on you. Well, I wasn't really able to participate. I was sick."

"Sick?"

Kiave nodded. "My parents thought it was depression. Well, no. That's still giving them too much credit — because that's assuming that they gave me the amount of respect someone with depression deserves. Mostly they just thought I was a loser. Everyone did. I passed out in PE, I wasn't getting all my homework done. I fell asleep in class. It became really clear, really fast. I couldn't compete. No metrics by which other boys were considered successful applied to me. My options, really, were to accept that I was the piece of shit everybody thought I was, or to redefine my terms for success. Kind of saved me, actually. I flunked out of being a man. What a fucking world that would be. Not that it was an entirely conscious process — mostly I just felt different, and worse. I ended up hanging out with the rest of the losers, but they still had their aspirations. No one was comfortable there. They all sort of sucked in the same ways, but they were still dreaming that one day they could be an asshole just like the rest of the assholes. They acted like it, too. They had a little more tolerance for weakness because if they didn't they'd kill themselves, but when you got down to it they resented the same things in each other and themselves that the top dogs beat them up for."

Kiave took a bite of her lasagna, and talked through it for a moment.

"But I couldn't even keep up with the losers. At least they got good grades sometimes, even if they kept quiet about it. I wasn't cool or smart, as far as anybody could tell. I wasn't funny, I wasn't likable. I started to feel like I wasn't even there. Mostly I just slept through lunch, and it was at the losers' table because they wouldn't bother me. So. That's how it came clear that there really wasn't a lot of 'man' in my system. Thank fuck for that. But, I'm not exactly sure where 'girl' came from. I think mostly, it was that when I came out as a girl, people stopped expecting shit of me. I'm sorry, this might not be the most helpful to you, but actually, that's why these days I've been using it/its more often. I think femme was good shorthand for 'fuck you,' and I certainly feel a lot better, a lot more comfortable presenting femme, but if I'm being honest about it, I think I just want away from the whole fucking thing. Don't call me 'he' or I'll kick your ass. But maybe 'she' isn't more accurate, just less offensive? Having tits gets the message across lickity-split. People still calling me 'he' at that point are being intentional assholes, as opposed to just people who don't know, so that clears up a lot of ambiguity."

Paige nodded, but harbored secret concerns. Must I be a girl in opposition to being a boy? I don't feel that way. It's not a violent rejection of manhood, it's just an embracing of womanhood. But she felt shaken in her own reasoning — could it even be called "reasoning?" For what reason am I suddenly allowed to be a woman, a girl? Kiave, at least, had a path she followed, a stimulus and a reasonable response. She'd heard it plenty of times — that trans identity wasn't born of reason, that it wasn't a choice, that it was chasing gender euphoria, that it was presenting in ways that affirmed your inner being: that gender was a social construct — in its current state, a method of control, of putting people in boxes and dictating their behaviors — that gender was, as many of her friends online put it, "a fuck," didn't deserve her "respect," and, as Kiave had put it to her before, she "could take it into a back alley, shoot it, and wear its skin."

Her experience didn't feel so volatile. She wasn't the angry trans woman Kiave was. She wanted comfort. She wanted peace. She didn't find any of that with the gender she was given. Kiave seemed to want something else — retribution?

"Besides," Kiave said, seeming to read Paige's thoughts, "it's about interpreting yourself, y'know? There's no handbook. I mean, we're very literally building up gender from nothing. Okay not nothing, but. We're tearing up this fucking system, shredding it up. We're all about not fitting into these boxes people have built for us. Fuck them. Well, you get to make your own box. Or not get in a new box, hell. Have the courage to be boxless. It's not crazy helpful — and it's better, I guess, to find people who share similar enough experiences to you that you feel like you can model yourself after them, if that's your jam, if that's comfortable. But really it's up to you. Your version of girl doesn't have to be anyone else's version of girl. That's what I did. I worked with the stupid terminology we have, with the fucked up half-definitions we're fed, and I bent them into a shape I like enough to make me not kill myself every time I step out the front door. You feel me?"

ArtPiece XXXIV

Paige stands in the bathroom, wearing a dress. A dress I started wearing at the behest of a bigot that lives with me. Getting back into a comfortable, readymade box. What's that make me? Am I too much a coward to construct something new? Is being under the boot of society comfortable for me?

She doesn't have an easy answer for herself. She looks at her face in the mirror. She doesn't like it. But she likes it better than she did a month ago. She feels more like a woman, but she doesn't see Kiave — her favorite, albeit demi-, woman — in herself. I don't have to, she reminds herself. We're completely different kinds of women. She's strong in some ways, and I am in others. Could Kiave have handled the Ortegrens? Paige has her doubts.

She finishes gussying up her face, and appreciates how smooth it looks. She's become relatively good at hiding her stubble, and a few well-placed contours make her look sharper, less boxy, less chin. She's actually gotten proficient at makeup so fast, she wonders if she's glimpsing a visual artist that's been inside her all along. She makes a mental note to experiment with doodles.

She places the brush she was using to dust her cheeks back in its holder on the sink, and studies herself for a moment. She waits for the usual — the judgment — but it doesn't come. She feels it, still, but it's as if the door is closed, despite its presence on the other side being all too obvious.

Maybe I'll learn how to bolt this door shut, she thinks. Maybe I'm already doing that.

Satisfied, she turns and exits. She hears Eric downstairs, making himself a brunch of some kind, and smiles venomously at the idea of whatever it must be he's fucking up. She shakes her head, lips parting to show teeth, and takes a deep breath.

She crosses the hallway, enters her room, and strides to the open window. She puts her hands on the windowsill, and pokes her head out.

"Hey, Cole."

He jumps, just a little, and shields the notebook in his lap with his body.

"Mind if I join you?"

He seems to look somewhere far away for a moment, a breeze passing through his auburn hair, just long enough to catch the wind, still short in the general sense.

He shrugs. "Sure."

She climbs out, a little ungracefully — her dress isn't really appropriate for this maneuver — and gets onto the tiles of the rooftop, scooting in Cole's direction and sitting.

"Feeling any better?"

Cole shakes his head. "Not really. But my head feels better out here than inside. Besides, it's…"

She knows he's avoiding Eric, and doesn't feel a need to push him to say it. "Yeah. Just don't fall and die. I'd feel a little weird if you did."

He snickers. "I'm fine."

"Sure you are." She eyes the notebook. "What you writing?"

He purses his lips, and almost glares at Paige. But he answers honestly. "A new character, I dunno. An antagonist."

"Antagonist? What're they about, what's their deal?"

Cole sighs again. "I think… he's this guy, I'm thinking he's huge, he's this really big imposing armored asshole, right, and he's all villain-coded, right. He's got the dark-gray-black primary tone, maybe mix it up and make him be more orange-y green, pumpkin-like for the pops of color. He felt a bit Halloween, in my head."

Paige nods, and he pauses.

"That it?"

He shakes his head. "I think, he comes off as this incredibly intimidating dude. Probably not the main bad guy, he's probably a mook of some kind. And they put together, right, that he's actually got a really low kill count. I mean he kills, he fucks people up, don't get me wrong. But he's less lethal than he could be, by a long shot. I guess depending on the context, it's kind of like… a kid's show villain? You know, the kind that can burn down villages, but everyone escapes?"

Paige nods again.

"Well it's… it's 'cause he's… it's because he doesn't think the good guys, whoever they are in this story, can win. He's… a pawn of the big bad, the major evil, specifically so he can be in control of the harm that it causes. He's trying not to kill people, but to get them out of the way. I figure… I figure that… it's 'cause it's the only way, y'know, that uh… that he knows how to help people. Is to scare them off." Cole takes a deep breath. "Like, he feels like all he's good at is hurting people, so the way he tries to twist that into a good thing is to hurt them only a little. Only enough to get them to go away, to evacuate — scare the shit out of them so they never come back. It's fucking childish, the more I talk about it the more fucking childish it is."

"It's not childish," Paige speaks softly. "I like it."

Cole ventures brief eye contact, but can't hold it. Then, he huffs. "You would. You love cheesy shit."

She chuckles. "I like honest shit. Honest shit can be pretty cheesy sometimes."

He doesn't have a response.

"Can I peek?"

She motions to the book. He looks between her and the book. He hands it over, but he can't look at her while he does it, and as soon as she has it in her hands, he angles himself away.

ArtPiece XXXV

She studies his designs. He's not a trained artist, but it's obvious just by looking at the linework that he's been doing this for a long time, and especially that he loves his armor. He has several ideas for the shape of this character — some rounder than others, more pumpkin-shaped, though one outlier design is a slick, slender figure. It seems the rounder designs stick though, as they show up more. She passes through the pages, and skims through his character notes, mostly vague bullet-points.

She laughs, and he tenses.

"What's so funny?"

She shuts herself up, seeing the look on his face. "The designs are really good," she hastily gets out, "I wasn't laughing at it or anything. It's just… 'Mr. Ominous.'"

He loosens, and chuckles with her. "It's not his real name. It's just a working title, so I have something to refer to him as in my notes."

"Maybe it doesn't fit him, but I like it. It's a good villain name."

"Thanks, I guess."

"You're welcome, for sure." She smiles at him.

He puts his hand out, and she passes the notebook back.

"I was planning on revealing him in some RP of ours," Cole elaborates. "When I had him more fleshed out."

"That sounds fun."

"Yeah." Cole seems to stare at the pages, and flips through them once. He closes the book with sudden force, and tosses it aside.

"Careful, man. You could have it slide off the roof."

He shrugs, and just stares ahead.

She stares ahead with him. Off into the cul-de-sac, at the houses and the rooftops, at the trees. The sounds of wind and distant cars accompany their viewing, and the sky has scant clouds whose movement she follows off-and-on.

She turns to look at Cole, and sees his face drawn, his eyes on the asphalt rather than the sky.

He catches her staring, after a bit, and tenses. "What?" He practically spits.

Instead of answering immediately, she scoots an inch closer, and, in a low voice, asks: "Do you feel like you're going to scare the shit out of somebody? Push them away?"

He sits straighter for a moment, just to look her in the eyes, and she watches as he tries to corner the emotion, turn it into anger or something manageable — watches as his brow furrows and unfurrows, his nose scrunches and falls. Watches him catch her eyes, and have the mask fall, the anger melt, and all that's left is an honest expression of grief.

He makes a short sound, as he tries to start a sentence, but his throat closes up immediately. She takes that as her cue, and pulls him into a hug he neither reciprocates or resists.

Soon enough, she feels him shaking, and rubs his back. Then, belatedly, he sobs right beside her ear, the sharp intake of air as he fights past his closed-up throat. Tens of seconds pass, until Cole finally throws his arms around her, his hands gripping the back of her dress like a drowning man grasping at driftwood and debris.

"Aren't I?" He manages to get out. "Aren't I scary?"

She doesn't have a ready response, so keeps rubbing his back as he returns to crying, though the intensity seems to die down until he's no longer shaking, and he's merely holding her instead of gripping so hard it feels he might tear her clothes.

"Aren't I scary?" he asks again, with more composure in his voice.

"I don't think so," Paige lies. "Are you scared?"

There's a pause, before he nods into her shoulder.

"I'm terrified."

"What of?"

He pulls away, and swallows several times, sniffles, looks between her and the space just beyond her with red, puffy eyes. "Everything," he concludes. "The future. My brother. Myself. My dad."

She nods.

"I didn't tell anyone I was coming here."

"I kind of figured that out."

"I… I'm going to have to go back to school. Go… back home. Or else they're gonna find me. Find Eric. I don't know how, but they will, eventually. They're probably already looking for me. I've probably scared Mom half to death. Dad doesn't fucking care. He's probably smug. He probably knew I'd pussy out and do this — he probably feels so justified, that I've become Eric 2. But he'll be so upset. So upset that both his sons are such fuckups. He'll take it out on Mom, and…"

He trails off.

"Hey," Paige picks up the slack. "That's not your battle. You can't control that, and your safety comes first."

He scoffs. "Safety?"

But when he looks at her, he can't keep the glare on his face, and he looks away again.

"I was — I'm fine."

"You're not. And that's okay. It's okay to not be fine."

"Is it?" Surely the question was meant to come out as a dismissal, but the pitch quirks upwards at the end, and Cole rubs at his nose.

"Yeah. It is."

The wind blows.

"Okay," he states simply.

Paige looks off at the trees again.

"Cole, I don't think you should go back."

He shakes his head. "How?"

"I… would you believe me if I said I had ways of keeping your location secret, that you could stay here with Eric and I? I mean, unless high school is really important to you."

He groans. "No. It isn't. I… I was probably going to get held back, anyways. Drop out, and… join the military."

"Don't… do that, either."

Cole shrugs. "What other options do I have? Where else can I go?" He looks at her. "How can you really keep me here? I'm a minor. You'd be kidnapping me, I think. Unless you wanna, what, do a court case, get custody of me? A year before I could just leave the house anyways?"

"No. None of that."

"What, then?"

It's her turn to sigh. "Cole… are you open to having your perspective changed?"

"What the fuck does that mean?" He considers it, seriously, before following up with: "My perspective changed on what?"

"I dunno. Everything, pretty much?"

He sniffles, and rubs at his eyes. "Fuck. Don't I have to be? I mean, what's my other option? Fucking kill myself?"

Paige smiles, despite herself. Is it strange to hear Kiave's voice in Cole?

"If I… if I didn't change a thing, about myself. I'd fuck everything up, right? I mean. That's what I figure, I… I thought maybe I could stay the course, that — well… I didn't think like that, at the time, I just… I couldn't stand it, y'know? I couldn't keep hating Eric. And it's not because he doesn't deserve it or anything." He scowls a little bit, but the expression doesn't stick. "It's just as simple as I said it. I couldn't. I couldn't do it. I… if I don't change, I don't get to have my brother back, do I? My…" His voice seems to catch, and he clears his throat. "I don't get to have the family, that I care about. So… I can't… care, that he's a — that he's gay. I can't care because if I care I don't get to have him. And that sucks, okay? I know you don't agree. Of course you wouldn't. But that's the thing. You're… you're standing where I have to be, right?"

Paige gives him a confused look as she tries to piece together what he's saying — especially trying to piece together whether or not she should be offended, or worried. He takes the moment to continue.

"I have to pick sides. I can either be right, and lose everything, or be wrong, and keep the only people I care about. That's… that's not a hard choice, really. So… I have to. Fuck. Even if it's just a strategy for survival, I have to be able to change. Right?"

She gives a tight smile. She doesn't like how he's come to this position, but she has to be able to look past that. She can't hope for perfect, and she suspects that maybe Cole is simply being… honest. Could that be the word? That he's acknowledging his emotional reasoning first and foremost, rather than finding rationale after the fact and supplying that. He's made his conditions clear, he's made his influence obvious. Maybe that is a good thing. Paige decides to interpret it as such.

"Right," she agrees, and he seems to brighten at that. "I think… a lot of ideology, is about believing what helps you be happy. And survive. Maybe more than survive. Maybe live, if you know the difference."

He nods.

"You have to be open to the idea that the world doesn't work how you think it works. That you're wrong."

"Sure."

"I think it's about… interpreting yourself," she echoes her mentor. "Like, you can get all these feelings, and you have to name them so you know what to do with them, and there isn't a handbook. So you have to start making decisions about what you call everything, like… you're an art piece. You're a character, and you have to start deciding what your themes are, what's important to you. And once you start to get a grip on what you care about, then you have to make decisions about what you act on. Like, you're deciding that whatever you've believed until now, it's not compatible with the actions you want to take. You have to decide whether to not take those actions — whether to go home — or whether to change, whether to believe something different. You're figuring out what your story is about. You're having to make a characterization decision. Am I… am I making sense?"

Cole chuckles. "Some."

"Well… I… I've been in a place, where I had to make a really big decision, too. And —"

"You're acting like you have to convince me. You don't. If you have a way to keep me here, I'm game. Just tell me what I have to do."

She blinks a few times, thrown off-balance. "Alright, well, one sec."

She scoots towards the window, and then carefully disappears inside. She reemerges in a moment with a deck of cards, but not playing cards like the ones Cole's used to.

"This is a tarot deck. Y'know, where my name comes from."

"Yeah. I know."

"I want to… do something with you. It's gonna seem really silly at first, but, I need you to go with it for a second, and it'll make sense at the end. Well, why it's important will make sense. But then everything's going to make absolutely no sense. And… then I, and hopefully some other guys I know, are gonna help you pick up the pieces, and make a new world. Change your perspective."

Cole throws up his eyebrows, and gives her a long look. "You sound like you're going to drug me."

"It might feel like drugs, but no, I'm not. I… I just wanna show you some things, that have been really important to my personal development, to me figuring out my things. To me figuring out the world I live in, who I am, what I'm doing in it. I… figure that if you're ready to change your perspective, then, now is the best time to show you. Are you?"

He looks between her and the tarot deck, not making any effort to hide his skepticism. But after a long eye contact: "Sure. Yeah. Whatever."

"No. I need more than a 'sure,' it's not gonna work with 'sure.' I need 'yes.' I need commitment. Can you commit, Cole? Can you say 'yes?'"

Her stare is more intense than Cole has ever seen it, and somehow her conviction seems like it's already working to thaw his doubts and rigidities. She's so convinced — of what, Cole doesn't yet know — that he feels more capable of being convinced just because of it.

"Yes. I am," he says, and he means it.

"Good." She begins shuffling the cards. "Usually, for readings like these, I, the channeler, am supposed to deal the spread. But, if you're actually in, if you're open, you can do it. That's why it's so important that you're committed."

"Okay."

She holds the deck out to him in one hand. "When you're ready, but only when you're ready, flip the top card."

"Just like… turn it over, put it back on top of the deck?"

She nods.

Her intensity — thus far alien from anything Cole had come to expect from Paige — made him hesitate. Am I ready? What am I leaving behind? My parents are pieces of shit. My school is worthless. I didn't make any friends. My prospects? I didn't have any of those. No, I suppose I have nothing to lose except my convictions, and what fucking use are those? They aren't serving me. They aren't helping me. Maybe everything I am is stupid and wrong, maybe everything I've ever believed was contrived to make me miserable. Maybe none of this matters at all.

He reaches for the card, and flips it.

And with that, my work here is done.

Forever after,

Elf for Your Help™