Chapter Text
Chapter 1 - Don't you see, I'm the narrator and this is just the prologue
There are really only three ways to deal with a phone call. Picking up and be happy, picking up and being unhappy, and not picking up. In the two first cases, you might start with a neutral « hello » or an interrogative one, if you don't know who is calling. Then, according to your interlocutor or the subjet, your mood might change and the call will end up somewhere between a warm « bye ! » or the sound of a phone being brutally slamed down. Unless you have a smartphone, in which case you'll either tap angrily on the screen or throw the phone away. Note : that this is never a good idea, as the fragility of such objects is as high as their prices.
Unless you are a super-human – and it which case, please send me the composition of whatever made you so, thank you very much – you cannot deal with a phone call by being 100% neutral. You will experience a vast range of emotions and thoughts, from simple curiosity to pure bliss/rage. Those few seconds before you are made aware of the object of said phone call are treasurable : you will never be ignorant like you were again.
Some people don't know if this is a good, or a bad thing...
Half falling from a bed, tripping over discarded clothes and bumping into the door is not what Alex would consider a nice start of the day. The neighbours are saved from the salve of cussing by a mug of very dark coffee which is more like his idea of how morning should go. The fact that he will drink coffee all day at work is not relevant. Mostly as half the coffees he will see today are for customers and not him. And that he will again probably argue with the new chick that, no, frappucinos are Not actually coffee and do Not tastes “exactly the same”. No matter how many time his friends will tell him to shut up because she's quite cute, Alex can't accept that someone working in a coffeeshop could be so wrong about coffee. But he will admit she is quite cute. When she doesn't talk about coffee. Or at all to be honest.
Walking to work under the rain is really not doing anything to Alex's mood. He arrives at the coffeeshop dripping wet, cold, and his hair a mess for the day. The new chick, Jess, waves at him way too enthousiastically and almost knocks out Jon in the process. As always the dude stays calm and just smiles lazily. Alex always wondered if it is his character, or just the amount of weed the dude smokes on regular basis. His apron and the customers coming inside steal him from his thougts for the next few hours where smiling, asking the same question over again and talking casually to regular customers becomes the only thing he thinks about.
He's on his cigarette break, talking with Jon about an accoustic show happening next saturday when he gets the phone call. He picks up without looking at his screen, still listening to Jon. It's his expression that make his collegue stop talking about folk vs classical guitars. When he hangs up after having only made a couple of sounds -barely qualified as words- Alex is definitely sorting this call in the second category. He is far from happy.
To understand why, a little summary of who Alex is is mandatory. The basics are that he is a 23 year old male, with messy dyed black hair, a degree in Litterature and a few spots of ink on his skin. He currently works in a coffeeshop, lives in a little two bedroom flat in a small northen Californian town and he considers going back to school next year to become a teacher.
The reason making this phone call an unhappy one is Alex's secret. Half secret, as his parents, sister and best friend Matty know about it.
When he was nineteen, Alex met a girl. He was working a part-time job in one of the bars o the beach and she was on holidays. They did the whole rom-com summer-fling thing, with maybe more booze and sweat, and three month later he had a phone call saying she was pregnant and didn't want to get an abortion. She also told him she was leaving with her boyfriend of over a year, from who she was separated during that summer. He was okay to forgive her, to help her take care of the kid, but not to get the real dad in the picture. She on the other hand “thought Alex diserved to know”. How nice of her.
For the next six months, Alex kept calling her, saying he diserved more than to “know”, he wanted to see the kid when it'd be born. On the 14th of April, he got another phone-call. The baby was born at 7:02am, was healthy and was a baby girl called Eleanor. Her mum was exhausted, and mixed with her joy, that led her to give him the name of the hospital. The next day, after driving all night, he was there and he was holding a very tiny thing in his arms, and she was looking straight at hm with dark blue eyes. Delia, her mum, smiled and promised to not cut him out of their lives.
That promise lasted three month, until her boyfriend left her. He apparently wasn't ready for a baby and the whole responsabilities coming with it. Three months later, Delia was back living at her parents until she could go back to work. Said parents, very traditionnal and religious people, were blaming everything on Alex and forbid him to ome near any of them. For the first year of his daughter's life, he saw her only briefly, in coffeeshops and parks, when her mother could have a whole afternoon alone. She found a job but stayed at her parents a bit more, and Alex's visits came more and more irregular, new came less and less, and before Eleanor was two, she and her mother had disappear and her parents refused to tell him anything, threatning to call the police if he called them once again. He missed her second birthday, and her third. He stopped talking about her, because not even knowing if she was okay was hurting him more than he could've ever imagined for a kid he had by accident and who he fed of change the diapper less than ten times. He still sent card at her grandparents place for her birthdays and chrstmas, he still put money aside, just in case. He still had her pcture in his phone and in his room. A picture of them, that first day, with the sunrise glowing on them, dimmed by Alex's surprised smile.
But today, after almost two years, he got news. And said news made him want to throw his phone away and punch someone, hard, in the face, many times.
He's been looking at the window for fourteen minutes. It's cold, he can barely see inside because of the fog that formed on the glass and he can't smell a thing - except the occasionnal cars that pass in his back. But he sees the lights, warm and golden, he sees the people, relaxing or smiling at each other. He can see the already there chrismas decorations, tinsel and shinny balls reflecting green red and gold on the walls.
Fifteen minutes. He reaches for the door and, again, drops his hand. A couple comes out and look at him suspiciously. He turns around and starts waking away. He stops dead in his tracks, turns around, and before he can scare himself out of it, opens the door, walks to the counter and blurts "one coffee please".
"Yeah, what kind? I'll need your name too"
"B...Brendon. And I uh..."
He almosts runs out again. He didn't even know there was different types of coffee! Is it like tea then?
"I... I don't really know?" He feels like an idiot.
"Well then, maybe in my infinite wisdom I can help you?" The guy is smiling, but he doesn't seem to make fun of him. Which is odd.
"Hum, sure?"
"Okay, so you're looking for something to really wake you up, something sugary..."
"Yes!" He blushed and tries to become invisible when the guy laughs.
"Okay then, that's settle. Do you like caramel? Chocolate?"
"Hum... Caramel?"
"Okay, well I know what to do!" He shuffles a bit with cups and bottles, pouring many things in a cardboard glass painted red, with a couple raindeers on it. He finishes with a mountain of whipped-cream that makes his mouth water, ads a lid and hand it to him.
He take a carefull sip and litteraly beams at the guy-behind-the-counter.
"Is coffee always good?!" He really shouldn't be allowed to speak. Or have any sugar. Probably no caffeine either. Now that he thinks of it, there might be a reason behind the interdiction, but this tastes so, so good!
"Nah only when I make it" says the guy with a blink. "Not to brag or anything."
"Uh, haha, okay" he says awkardly. "So how much do I owe you?"
"For your first coffee ever and compliments? It's on the house, c'mon!"
"No, no I can..."
"Nope, you can't. Now shoo, go drink it before it gets cold, that be heretic."
Guy-behind-the-counter must not notice how his fists tighten their hold around the cup. Heretic, that's a good way of pointing it... He smiles and thanks the guy a thousand time before sitting in a comfortable leather. He sits with his back really straight at first, and then remembers that his mom is definitely not here to tell him how to act, so he slumps down and kicks his leg in front of him, crossing his ankles. His second sip is even better because the cream started to melt and is now mixed with the coffee.
So that's it. He crossed a line. Well technically two, since he lied to his mother about where he was going. But this one is a Sacred one. It's probably not the worse he could've crossed, but it's a first step. He didn't know the first crack in his Eternal Soul would taste creamy, sugary and so warm. He can't even feel bad about what he did, the rule suddenly sounds wrong, stupid. But even thinking that is probably breaking another rule...
He wishes he could just do like his brothers and sisters, listen, obei, love. That his brain would leave no place to questions. It used to, when he took Ritalin, when his parents couldn't deal with him anymore, with the endless energy, the constant twitching, the vibration of every bone. He remembers all too well the times where he thought he would crawl out of his skin, when his brain hurt because he couldn't concentrate enough to listen to the end of a sentence, when he would try to talk and his tongue would stumble against his teeth because three sentences came out at the same time. They all promissed him the medicine would help him settle, like any other kid. It did, sure. But no one told him everything would feel numb, useless, that every sound would be muted, surrounded by coton balls, that he would concentrate, but without the interest he had before, the energy to learn, the envy to give the better of himself. The world around him was suddenly declined in fifty shades of grey where the only dirty twist was the dull vibration he could only imagine as death.
He took the pills like a good kid for three years. Then he begged everyone - parents, siblings, doctors, nurses and priest - to please, please lower the dose. They did, slightly, after six months of begging. A year later, he still felt like a puppet with no stringfirst he was afraid someone would notice, would understand what he did, so he took them every two days, then twice a week. He had stop taking them at all three weeks ago. No one noticed. If anything, his mother told him he looked better, more interested. He had felt the buzz coming back under his skin, but it didn't make him feel like he needed to burst. He only had little rushes of toomuchtoospeedtoofast and he would find himself giggle for no real reason, for little silly things but it all felt so good. He had not felt this alive in four years and a half.
That's when he stopped believing. In the church, because of the priests that told him what he felt was good, that everything else was only parasite thoughts between him and the love of God. In the doctors, that did not realize they were ruining his childhood and killing his smiles. But the worst was when he stop believing in the entity of "familly". In his familly. Didn't they care about him? Didn't they realize he was miserable? Only a shadow of his old self, a shallow robot, only able to function but not live? They said it was good, that he was better, "a good son".
Maybe he didn't want to be a good son after all. But no one would ever even think that, right? Because it wasn't possible, he couldn't sin and bring shame on them all, no?
The shame part, he wasn't very found of to be honest. He did love them, he just didn't believe in them, in what hey believed, in what he had been taught to believe. He wanted to know in what he truely believed. And today was his first step in the I Want To Know Who I Am (But Not Too Obviously Because, Hello, I'm Only 17yo) process. And he decided that coffee, the forbiden beverage, was a good start. After all, everyone drank it at school, and they didn't burst into flames so it was probably safe. and it smelled horribly good.
It tasted even better. It tasted like rebellion, freedom and youth, with just a dash of whipped cream, just for the hell of it. Pun non-intended.
He giggled at his stupid thought and then promptly hid behind his cup, trying not to attract the attention on him.
The next step was to change his clothes. That wasn't breaking one of the Rules, just a "parent-rule", but it did matter a lot. He had already change his parent-church frienly haircut (an abomination, made every three month by their neighbour for free because he sang in the choir). He now had bangs fallin in front of an eye and shorter hair in the back. It wans't really well done, but for a first try, he was proud of himself. He had the intention of dying them black, had bought the dye and everything, but the sight of his mother clutching her heart when she saw him and the angry "care to explain This?" of his father dissuaded him, for now. But he really couldn't stand the rigid white shirt, the black slacks with no shape, since they had belonged to both his bothers before him and the dressed up shoes. He was 17, not 90!
But the problem was he didn't really know what to wear! He had a little bit of money on the side, from many nights of babysitting for the whole neighbourhood & church. He knew he disliked sweat pants and all the likes, the very baggy jeans and the neerdy style (because he allready had it, thanks a lot). So he spend a whole day wandering at the mall, not really knowing what to buy. Everything looked too grown up, sporty of douche bag-like. He ended up -not knowing how- in the kids section of a shop, probably Gap. In the 7-14 girls section even. And there, in the middle of alley 7 and A, Brendon fell in love, with a purple hoodie. It was a pretty regular hoodie actually, no writing, no weird flower paterns, but a bright pastel colour, between pink and purple. Lavender. He tried the biggest size and it fit. At least on the arms, because it riled up a little, finishing just before his hips. But he definitely can't wear it over his stupid mormon uniform. He decides to build an outfit based on the hoodie, and an hour later, he leaves with three tight tshirts -because other wise they would be longer than the hoodie, and even Brendon knows how hasbeen this is- and a pair of jeans. Girls jeans. Tight, girls jeans. He can barely fit his hand in the pockets, but he likes the way it felt over his legs and how it makes them look longer.
He has to hide the bag when he gets home, but he knows it's only a matter of time before his parents see him. The "new" him.
He helps his mother set the table that night, stays relatively quiet during diner, because since his stopped his meds, Brendon is sure someone will notice he's not as quiet as he's supposed to, and then goes straight to bed, arguing that he is "tired". He really isn't.
2am finds him wide awake, staring at the ceiling, hands clutching the covers over his chest. It's terrifying to be seventeen and to realize that you are going to disappoint and hurt everyone you care about, and who cares for you. It's even worse when you could prevent them to be hurt, by not being yourself, ever. And it's way to much to ask to a curious and energetic seventeen year old boy, who's always looked at the world with wide eyes.
Sunday morning, he sturcks his head on the heater for fifteen minutes before stumbling down in the kitchen, eyes half closed and coughing.
"Back to bed young man", had scowled his mother, puttaing a hand on his forehead and looking worried.
He did not even pretended he was upset about missing church, just nodded and went back to his room, counting the seconds until they were gone. In the heavy silence of the house, he let out a shuddering breath.
An hour later found him sitting in the coffeeshop from last week, in his girl's jeans and lavender hoodie. The guy from last time wasn't behind the counter, instead he found a girl looking bored who rolled his eyes at him when he said he didn't remeber the name of what he drank, just what was in it. Sort of.
He was definitely on board with this coffee thing. He might even be in love. Well if you could be in love with many things, because he was sure he would end up marying this hoodie. He was contemplating if his parents would hate him less if they thought he went perfectly mad and went on marrying a hoodie and murmuring sweet nonsense against it's collar, when guy-behind-the-counter came into the coffeeshop. Behind him was another guy, and when he looked in his direction, Brendon's heart dropped to his toes and he swallowed with a loud "gulp". That was not part of the Plan. That was not happening, it couldn't, it was already too much, dammit!
There, on a warm sunday of october, in a very average coffee shop, Brendon Fell In Love With A Boy With Stars Painted On His Cheeks (Without Even Knowing His Name).
Brendon was safely in his bed when his familly came back from mass. The jeans were hidden in the back of his closet, but the hoodie was under his pillow, one of the sleeves firmly held by one of his hand under the covers.
He was suddenly considering the whole "hide who you are and make your mommy proud" thing. Because being a little too exhuberant could pass. Not... Not believing, uh... Yeah. But, that? He would break her heart forever.
But it couldn't be true, right? He had just been fascinated, intrigued, by the make up, right? Right?
He wanted to cry. To curl in a ball on his mother's lap, cry and point the bad guys to his dad. The whole problem was that he would have to point at himself...
The hoodie and jeans stayed in his closet for weeks. The irony was not lost on him. He didn't really have to prentend to look like he was still taking the pills, he felt so miserable on his own. Brendon had thougth for years now that he would be different from what people expected from him, but in his head, it meant too exuberant, with a carrier a bit stupid and glittery, like hairdresser, at the most with the shame of not beliving. But this? He couldn't even form the word in his head. Maybe if he didn't think about it, it would be like a dream, like nothing never happen.
And anyway, he liked kids, hell, he wanted kids, later, someday. And girls were cute. They had soft curves and cute little laughs and beautiful long hair... He couldn't be... Right?
But no matter how much he tried to convince himself, now he couldn't stop the images to appear behind his closed eyelids and the sinful thoughts to crawl in the secret of the night. He couldn't either stop his gaze to wander in the locker rooms, to think "what if" and "maybe...". But he does not see the guys from his high school. Their weird bodies, stuck between kids and men, too thin or too muscular, either way no turn on at all. All he sees are the semi-long brown hair, the faux-hawk, the long thin hands, kinda spider-like, the too small blink-182 tshirt and the stars pouring on cheeks.