FicWad

The farther I go, the harder it gets to edit each chapter. I've found myself deleting entire scenes, rearranging events and this chapter is a combination of two scenes that happened three chapters apart--and I moved what was originally here into a later chapter.

I'm getting so confused.


~~~~~~~~
Chapter five
~~~~~~~~

Kiff groaned lightly as he tried to figure out what had woken him—his alarm hadn’t gone off and the little light that was filtering into his room showed it to still be night.

The clock illuminated the room in a soft green haze as he blinked bleary eyes towards his door. A slight movement of shadow had him wide awake as he strained his eyes to catch the movement again. He gasped when he felt a hand grasp his arm and another cover his mouth.

He couldn’t see anything, but he could guess as to who it was.

Kiff whimpered from behind the hand as the shadow of a man pulled from his bed and shoved him out of the room, getting more violent and agitated every time Kiff fell on the stairs. Even though his knees were getting battered and he kept receiving harsh shoves that stung the flesh on his back, he was glad he was being taken from the room. He had never been hurt in his own room, he had never been taken on his own bed, and he never wanted to be.

Kiff tripped on the last step (the ill be gotten builders that had constructed the house had decided to make the top stair a tad taller than the rest), and landed with a grunt on the carpet, his arms rubbing uncomfortably against the abrasive surface. A hand bunched in the back of his T-shirt had him lifted back to his feet. He stumbled again and found himself dragged impatiently the last few feet. He yelped when he was lifted and tossed into the bed, landing face first into the pillow.

It was flat and smelled like sweaty rust. The polyester material felt cool against his hot cheeks at first, but began to chafe with friction. The pillow began to stick to his sweat and tears as he clawed at the sheets. The mouthfuls of cloth didn’t taste that good either as he tried to tilt his head to the side to breath, his small frame nearly crushed into the bed.

After a few moments of still silence he found himself wondering if Rick had fallen asleep and would suffocate him to death by way of chest pressing his face into the pillow when the larger man moved. He rolled the limp Kiff off of the bed with a grunt and the teen found himself face up on the floor, the ceiling fan greeting him with its unmoving blades. Not that they could move anymore.

They reminded him of sunshine and a cool breeze. A summers day when he had sat on his parents bed and drawn with crayons, the fan blowing one of his papers away. Kiff had twisted around to catch it and ended up tangling himself in a blanket and falling from the bed. Ending up in a similar position to the one he found himself in now. Laying on his back and looking up at the ceiling fan, its blades whirling around and around.
But they were still now.

“Get going,” Rick grunted. Kiff pulled himself to his feet and walked out slowly. He wondered if Rick ever remembered any of those little insignificant things that Kiff himself found so important.

Kiff trailed a hand along the wall as he found his way down the stairs, his feet finding each step without much work from his brain as he tried to hold the sunshine in his head. Wanting desperately to smell his mother’s citrus like scent again, the ghost of its memory taunting him as he lost the last wisp of the memory.

He went straight for the laundry room and stripped himself of his pants, shoving them into the washing machine with a shaking ferocity. His motions banged his arms against the side of the machine and he began to cry, the soap he had been pouring into the machine spilling down his arm as he slid to his knees and pressed his forehead to the cool metal.

After a few moments of trembling he pushed himself back onto his feet and finished with the washing machine.

A whimsical thought pushed its way into being as Kiff shut the lid to the washing machine and turned away. He could no longer picture the scene from his past like he had moments before. He couldn’t see his mother’s smiling face, or the warming sunshine.

But he could picture Alex. Maybe that was better than trying to grasp onto the fragments of something that had long since been destroyed.

Where his mother had been a small flame–a warm, flickering candle that had sputtered and died–Alex was more of a wild fire. A bright blaze that couldn’t be contained.

The only thing that he didn’t like about this analogy was that wildfires had a tendency to burn themselves out.



Kiff woke later to stiff joints and even stiffer cheeks. Salty tears had dried on his face during the night. Whether from before or after he had fallen asleep, he was unsure. Nor did he particularly care. All that he cared about was the insistent beeping of his alarm clock and making it stop.

A loud, almost squealing sound that had him thinking the smoke detector was going off as he jerked upright in his bed and glanced around.


No smoke. No nothing. Just a still room and glowing green numbers informing him of the early hour. Six twenty-two, the blurry numbers read. He had slept through two minutes of the horrendous beeping noise.

He had no idea how he had managed that, as the still squalling machine attempted to drill into his head and set off the nerve endings in his teeth. Yet he didn’t move. He just stared at the clock and frowned.

Something wasn’t quite right.

With deliberate motions he moved the blankets off of himself and shoved them to the side, flinging his legs off of the bed and pressing the ‘Off’ button on his alarm clock with a slow, hesitant motion. As if praying that the thing didn’t decide to explode.

‘The blanket,’ he thought to himself as he looked at his discarded comforter. He hadn’t gone to sleep under it. If he remembered correctly–which it was quite likely that he didn’t–he had fallen asleep with it a crumpled mess half beside him and half on the floor.

There was also a note on his table. Crowded next to his alarm and teetering, nearly falling to the floor. He moved and a slight shift of air sent the piece of paper towards the carpet. He found himself moving quickly onto the floor to catch it, his fingers closing on nothing as the lonely sheet of paper slipped to the side and struck a corner into the carpet. It fell flat and laid still. He wasn’t sure if he had been expecting it to disintegrate or disappear when it struck the floor but, neither of these happened. The paper just lay there quietly, waiting for him to pick it up and unfold it.

It read: Dear Kiff:

I left early. I let you sleep.

The letter was unsigned, but he recognised the large, almost perfectly proportioned letters as his father’s well practiced cursive.

He stared at the writing for a few moments. He wasn’t at all sure what to make of it.

What had been the point to this message? Left early: that was obvious. Let him sleep: Why?

Kiff looked over at his old comforter. His father had tucked him in and let him sleep. He looked back at the note and went to touch the words, the ink threading away from his fingertips, pulled along by a wetness that leaked along the paper. He touched his cheeks and his fingers came away hot.

He threw the paper aside with a curse. It flew away slowly like paper usually did, and made no noise when it landed. He stared at it for a moment, iterated. He lashed out, knocking his side table into the wall with a bang that made him cringe despite himself. He listened carefully, even knowing his father was gone, and was greeted with the admonishing silence of the nearly vacant house.

With a quick jerk, as if just noticing the mess, he stood up and righted his table, setting his clock back on top. He found his clock unbroken and anxiety filtered out of him, leaving a wariness behind that carried him out of his bedroom and up the stairs.

With a quick look around the house and an ear pressed to his father’s door he decided the note had been correct and trudged back down the stairs. He found himself in his own washroom in front of his mirror.

He thought his reflexion was funny. He looked like his mother. Except younger, thinner, and more masculine. The last part only because of the lack of breasts and the sparse amount of hair that grew on his face.

He pulled out a disposable razor and found himself wondering what Alex would look like with facial hair and how it would feel against his finger tips. Maybe a mustache. This thought had Kiff laughing and he had to pause in his strokes across his face lest he slice his cheek open. Shaving was a nuisance and he would have just let it grow if it didn’t look ridicules and remind him of his father.

He rinsed the shaving cream from his face with a splash of cool water and stripped down to take a shower, leaving his clothes a crumpled pile before the door. He turned the lock on the door and began to twist the handle, checking that the door was indeed locked like someone with OCD before he snatched up his toothbrush and stepped into his bathtub.

He spent an unusually long half hour under the warm shower spray, relaxing tense and knotted muscles, water soaking him and streaming across his face so that he couldn’t open his eyes against the spray. He worked shampoo into his hair and scraped soap across his skin with nails pressing a touch too hard.

He stepped out of the shower and shivered in the cold, missing the nearly scalding sensation of hot water dripping over him. He pulled a towel from a bar attached to the wall and began to towel off. He found that he had pressed so hard with his nails that he had nearly drawn blood on his thigh. The abrasive fabric of the towel hurt the rug burns he found across his arms so he left them wet and wrapped the towel around his waist. He found his way back to his room and pulled on a pair of jeans that had a stringy rip in the right knee. He didn’t know where the rip had come from, nor did he particularly care as long as he could still wear the pants. He pulled on a belt and yanked a grey zip up sweater over a miscellaneous coloured shirt. It was a bluish green T-shirt with a frayed bottom and rip over the seam, leading up from the bottom to just above his hip bone. It showed a small bit of skin, but his sweater covered it up- enough that he doubted anyone would really notice. He could always just zip the sweater up, as well.

Pushing a hand through his wet hair he padded back up the stairs and into the kitchen where he got himself a bowl of cereal and sat down at the table. He ate slowly, staring at nothing as he contemplated the silence of the house.

~~~~~~~~

Alex’s morning wasn’t as calm as Kiff’s. His started out with a thud as he rolled onto the floor, cringing away from the light that streamed in through windows with drapes that he had neglected to shut the night prior. He only spent the short time of fifteen minutes in the shower before he was rambling down the stairs ungracefully.

He let himself into the kitchen and was assaulted by a flurry of too happy mom. Rosa was moving back and forth in the kitchen with a swish of her long blue skirt. The smell of bacon and potato was fresh in the air and mixed perfectly with her obnoxiously loud and out of tune singing. She flashed him a bright smile and waved to him with a spatula.

Alex made the mistake of trying to grab himself a cookie from a plate on the counter and earned his mother’s displeasure.

“Out! You can have junk AFTER breakfast!” Rosa waved a T-towel at her son and Alex earned a slap on the ‘behind’ when he attempted to reach for a cookie again.

“OW,” Alex whined in exaggeration as he walked out of the kitchen and into the dinning room. Sara was sitting in the centre of the table munching gingerly on a cookie.

“Hey! Why did you get some?” Alex put his hands on his hips and stuck out his lip in a fake pout. Sara laughed at him again and scarfed down her last cookie, wiggling her eyebrows at him and giggling.

“I’m persistent?” Sara said with a shrug and wiped her hands off on her pants. Alex sighed and trudged back up to his room to get his backpack and homework. By the time he got back downstairs the kitchen door had been opened again and Rosa was setting plates down. The cookies were no where to be seen. Alex sighed again and sat down.

“So, what were the cookies for?” he asked hopefully and earned a mischievous grin from his mother.


“I put them in your lunch. You can share them with that new friend of yours! Kiff, I believe it was?” Rosa winked, “My vanilla cookies always break the ice,” she laughed evilly and they sat down for breakfast.

~~~~~~~~

Kiff was sitting in his first period class starring at the desk in front of himself when the scrawny kid at his side leaned over with a whisper of noise that was meant to get his attention. A slightly lisped and hushed form of the ‘psst’ sound. Kiff jerked his head to the side with an owlish blink and felt his stomach flip uneasily as the other leaned closer. He had no idea what he had been expecting, but he was merely greeted with an irritated inquiry.

“What the blast is this chit talking about?” the boy whispered in his lethargic, lisping voice. Kiff felt humour twitch in his gut as the scrawny guy tilted his head with his mouth open theatrically. He watched the boy discreetly as he crossed his eyes and draped himself over his desk with juvenile dramatics. He stayed this way for a moment and Kiff went back to staring at his desk, slightly unnerved.

“Oi?” The scrawny guy turned his head on his desk and gave Kiff a frown. “Do you ever smile? Come on mate! I’ve given you my most clownish crap and you’re still just staring like someone died ...” he trailed off as he watched Kiff blush and look guilty. “Alright, never mind, no more jokes, my names Darren Parsley,” Darren pushed his right hand awkwardly out from its crossed position and held it out to Kiff. Kiff hesitated a second before placing his hand in the other’s tentatively as he muttered out his name.

“Ooo, I like yours better than mine! Wanna trade?” Darren said with a foolish grin which got wider as Kiff tried to stutter out a response to such an odd question. “Don’t chew up your tongue there, Buddy! I’m joke-ain!” Darren stuck out his tongue and held up his hand in the sign language for love commonly used by pierced rock fans. Kiff shook his head lightly to shake his hair over his eyes as he glanced back and forth between Darren and his desk. Small talk wasn’t high on the list of ‘things-I’m-good-at’ for Kiff, so he occupied himself with his hands and prayed that Darren would lose interest.

He decided that his hands weren’t ones you would think were those of a musician. Hands proportioned just a touch too lard for his bony wrists looked awkward and clumsy to the eye. Nails chewed to the quick appeared sore and painful to the touch. His skin was rough and callused, the thick of palms scarred from numerous cuts and scrapes under the new bruising from the night before. The scars visible were light and faded but as prominent to Kiff as that damnable spot of the formidable Lady Macbeth’s.

“Must be some fascinating hands you’ve gots yourself, huh?” Darren put in, twisting a strand of spiky, dull brown hair in his fingers and appearing more interested in Kiff than he had a moment prior. “Ah, a strange one you’s be, no?” a slight pause and he looked a little confused, his mouth open and his tongue running along his crooked front teeth, “Yeah ... if that didn’t make any sense to you, don’t worry, I got no idea neither!” Darren said, his whispered voice becoming higher in pitch near the end of the sentence as he dissolved into hoarse laughter.

Kiff blinked at the other teen, leaning away from the odd scent permeating from him as he leant closer. He smelled kind of like a herb garden. A burned herb garden. He remembered his uncle Ted smelling the same way on occasion–the occasions when he acted the weirdest.

“Yo, do you got anything to eat on you?” Darren asked with a furrowed brow and a smacking of lips, “I. Really. Want. Juice,” he said slowly and turned back to the front, staring at the teacher with a slack jaw and contemplating eyes.

Kiff shifted around and checked the clock anxiously. Fifteen minutes of class left. He spent the rest of the time cautiously watching the boy at his side, who was doodling on a piece of paper what looked like a severed arm holding a deformed, severed goat/lizard head with a tail coming out of one of its ears. This sketch was surrounded with a frame of lines and swirls. He shaded it in pencil, dark and kind of foreboding.

When the bell rang, Kiff was relieved and headed for his second class, his eyes open for Alex even before he entered the room. The blond was sitting by himself at the back, his head bend forward over a textbook. Kiff decided to be bold. Well, bold for him. He walked over, planning to sit next to Alex, but wimped out and ended up two seats away at the opposite end of the three seater desk. In the end, it was probably a better decision. He got close to Alex without being presumptuous.

The blond glanced up and then back down at his textbook quickly as people had a tendency to do when other people came close. He looked back up a second time and furrowed his brow. Kiff found himself blushing and looking away, fiddling with his hands, his heart skidding off without him as he realised that he probably looked like a moron. Alex stood up and Kiff could have been sucked into the floor and been happy about it. But, instead of walking away, the blond slipped over and plunked down into the chair next to him. A grin twitched at Kiff’s lips.

“You know, you can sit next to me; I don’t bite,” Alex said, laughter obvious in his voice.

“I’m s-sorry,” Kiff mumbled back, the edge of his sleeve finding its way into his mouth even as he was still speaking. It was like an automatic thing. Like his mind was thinking: ‘Oh, you’re talking? Let’s fix that.’

Alex opened his mouth just as the teacher entered and called for quiet. And then popped in a video. It was an odd thing teachers did. They should realise that, the instant the T.V flicked on and the lights flicked off, each student was sleeping, drawing, talking, or passing notes.

The last of this list was what Alex decided to do. He ripped a sheet of paper from his note book and began to scrawl across it. He slipped it over to Kiff and sat back to stare, eyes glossed over, at the T.V screen.

‘Spend lunch with me?’ the note read, in a cramped, almost scribbled scrawl. Some form of printing/handwriting hybrid with a curvy and eloquent question mark and an S that looked like a three.

Kiff reached into his bag and hastily located a pen, the end literally chewed off. He furrowed his brow and frowned at the paper before writing: ‘Sure.’ He slid the paper back and jerked away when Alex’s hand brushed his while retrieving the paper, the other’s fingers cold, yet soft. He had to brush his hand off to get rid of the sensation lingering on his skin. A second later Alex passed the note back with: ‘GREAT,’ scrawled across most of the remaining blank space of the paper. He had even put a happy face at the end. Kiff, despite his best efforts, giggled. It wasn’t long, it wasn’t loud, but it was a genuine giggle.

He could have killed himself. But at least he caught sight of the large grin that slid over Alex’s face—even if he was mocking him, at least he was amused.

Eventually class–and the respectively the video–ended and Kiff waited while Alex stuffed his notebook back into his bag and slipped into his tan jacket. And then sat back down and pulled on his socks and backless shoes. Kiff had absolutely no idea when he had taken them off.

“Ah, sorry! I’m so slow!” Alex laughed when he finally shouldered his pack and straightened his clothes. Kiff made no response and just continued to contemplate why Alex had found it necessary to take off his shoes and socks.

They headed out of the class room and Alex led the way into the school yard. It was getting cold and Kiff wouldn’t have been surprised to see it snowing. Yet somehow the grass still peaked out amongst the mud and leaves and the trees hung onto a few of their dying and changing leaves.

Kiff walked in silence while Alex talked about his sister, cats, and some movie he had been watching–a B rated horror film called, ‘the Brain That Wouldn’t Die’–a comment here or there earning a nod from Kiff, or a small chuckle behind his hand. Oddly enough, he found himself actually paying attention as if he cared.

“Kiff,” Alex stopped walking abruptly, taking Kiff by surprise.

Kiff looked around as if just noticing his surroundings. They had walked quite a ways from the main part of the school building and were now standing under a row of trees near the schools boundaries. They were completely alone.

Kiff squirmed under Alex’s contemplating gaze and swallowed in horror when Alex reached for the hand he had been using to brush his bangs out of his eyes.

‘Oh god.’ was the only thought that could force its way into Kiff’s head; Alex wasn’t supposed to be like that.

Kiff glued his eyes to his feet.

Somehow this seemed worse. Worse than being taken by anyone else, even his father—the one person that was supposed to love him no matter what; his childhood protector and hero. Why would this be worse? Maybe because he should have seen it coming. Maybe because he had seen it coming but had ignored his own warnings.

Kiff pulled his head up in surprise as Alex pushed his sleeve up a little and looked at the newest scars on the backs of his hands. The blond frowned as he flipped the hand over and took in the new bruises formed over the base of his palm. A sick purple with a few slivers still stuck in the skin that Kiff had failed to notice.

“What happened?” Alex brushed his thumb over a bruise softly, the darkened skin looking the part of a rotted apple. Kiff looked away, his lips mashed between his teeth. “Kiff?” Alex called to him softly. A moment of silence passed and the blond felt his stomach drop as he let go of Kiff’s hand.

“It wasn’t Mark, was it? I swear to God I’ll strangle that fuck if he so much as looks at you wrong!” Alex growled out and pushed his hair out of his face with a rough motion. Kiff backed up a step without really meaning to as he shook his head, his hair bouncing about his face. Alex caught both movements and gave a guilty and slightly sheepish half smile–not that Kiff saw this. “I’m not scaring you, am I?” Kiff just shook his head again and Alex sighed, a palm pressed firmly to his forehead.

“I-It was-n’t M-M-M-Mark.” Kiff scratched the back of his head and looked around on the ground, as if his answer lay amongst the twigs, fallen leaves, and generous scattering of garbage. “I fell,” this even sounded unconvincing to himself so he just continued to dig. It couldn’t get any worse than it already was. Right? “O-On the st-stairs ....”

It wasn’t necessarily a lie.

“What were you doing?”

“G-going up th-em?” Kiff asked as he pulled his sleeves over his hands and held them closed in tight fists. He backed up a step and became utterly fascinated with a shiny object lying a few feet away.

A small metal trapezoid was lying in the grass. A little bronze shape that looked like it should have been dangling from the ear of a bouncy brunette. It would have off set brunette curls perfectly. He wondered absently how shined bronze would look on Alex and glanced up at gold lengths. He traced his gaze across the taller boy’s collar bone, exposed perfectly by the loose tan shirt that fell slightly towards his right side.

Alex had a nice neck. And a nice jaw. He found himself wondering how it would feel to touch the hollow of his neck, or his perfect lips–to look into those bright green—‘DON’T LOOK AT ME YOU FAG!’ Rick’s voice rang in his ears with a clear severity that made him want to look around to see if the hated man had not in fact been beside him yelling it. He flinched away like he had been physically struck and fixed his eyes safely on his feet.

“Kiff? Are you alright? Here, lets go sit down?” Alex said softly and gestured towards an old, gnarled willow tree. The kind that you could never truly find, but were mentioned in almost every romance story for no apparent reason. Perhaps it was for the surreal nature of romance and the fact that the perfect spot only existed in the mind.

And perhaps all of this was only in Kiff’s mind. He toyed with this thought as they found seats in the dirt at the base of the tree. It sure seemed like some fantastical plot was playing about him. Moving and twisting without his consent.

He always wished to wake up at the end of each day before he went to sleep, hoping to find that he had never actually gotten up, that every horrid little thing that had happened during the day had been nothing but a torture from his own mind.

Today was different; he wasn’t sure if he could take it if he woke up from this. Woke up to find that the laughter, flashing smile, and bright blond hair flashing in the sun was nothing but another torture invented in his own mind.

“Oh! I almost forgot! My mom wants me to share these with you,” Alex said gleefully as he rifled through his bag and promptly produced a clear, plastic container with a translucent blue lid. Opening the lid, he produced a cookie and held it out to Kiff.

Kiff didn’t move for a good few moments. He just sat there and blinked at the cookie. A few seconds ticked past and he realised that he had to do something, so he held his hand out and accepted the treat. He would have been fine with just holding on to it, but Alex was watching him expectantly.

Eating in front of people wasn’t something that he was usually comfortable with, but the look on Alex’s face had him ignoring that fact. He took a small bite from the cookie and chewed mechanically. Swallowed. Another. Swallowed. Another. Last bite. Alex was watching him expectantly as he sucked the tips of his fingers out of reflex of eating with his hands. He quickly wiped his mouth and glanced up at the other.

“I-it’s good,” he said with a small smile and a nod. He took a chance and looked up slowly. His eyes found their way across the smooth curve of the collar bone and up past the Adam’s apple. They lingered on pinkish lips and skirted past a slightly crooked nose to meet with shocking green. A bright shade that had darker green rims around the outside, lashes so light they were nearly invisible.

It was strange how it was phrased ‘looking them in the eyes,’ when you could, in fact, only look into one at a time. Not that Kiff particularly cared about this at the moment, as he was too busy thinking—well, nothing.

He slowly turned pink. He darted his eyes away quickly, but now that he had looked once, he lacked the determinism to keep from looking back. Meeting Alex’s eye once again, he felt a grin twitch at his lips. A shy, hesitant one that really had no reason for appearing.

The school bell rang in the distance and snapped Kiff out of himself. He looked over towards the school and went redder. He didn’t move, his gut twisting around with a sudden wave of mild depression.

“Hey, why don’t we forgo class?” Alex suggested with a grin of his own and Kiff felt the depression leave him as he nodded and settled back against the willow tree.