Of Ice Cream and Moping

The characters of "Red Words, White Wall" are back! This time it's a Gavin-centric story though. Hope you enjoy!
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The words best friend, or even the word brothers, could never cover exactly how much of a bond Alex and Gavin shared. Sure, to mere passersby, they looked like childhood friends who liked to get on each others’ nerves. To their mutual acquaintances, they were like a toy that came in a set. Even when apart, you simply couldn’t describe Gavin without including at least a tiny morsel about Alex, and vice versa.

To Gavin, however, it was much, much more.

It was a mutual, unsaid agreement, that if Gavin fell, Alex flew down after him, and if Alex drowned, Gavin would be swimming forever with him. They never needed to actually say things to prove their ultimate trust and care to each other, because they just both knew it. They shared everything, they gave each other their all, and they would always, always make sure the other was still alive and well and relatively happy. 

So, of course, he was basically shot in the head and chest when Alex suddenly revealed he had been chasing after a nice young lady for a while now, and that they were now dating.

Of course he would be hurt. After all, this was his, his, whatever they were supposed to be called, and keeping secrets was a big no-no. It was all given facts that Gavin thought had been long established.

Alex had had the decency to be extremely apologetic about keeping such a huge secret, but he was still gravely upset. Thus, when he was invited to a fancy, private dinner to meet said girlfriend, he found himself struggling and battling against himself as to what exactly he was feeling to emotionally confused about. 

That night had ended up terribly in Gavin’s opinion. Of course, he never said a word to Alex since his something, whatever they were called now, thought it had gone exactly as expected.

He had been late due to a last minute discovery of a destroyed painting he had promised to turn in, had been stuck with a grumpy professor for several hours as he tried to recreate said painting, had had no choice but to arrive in his paint stained, ratty old jeans and t-shirt (in all it’s wonderful glory, please note the sarcasm), and had found out that the girl in question was not only beautiful, utterly feminine and delicate seeming, but also smart, witty, and all of the other traits that made, all in all, the most perfect girl a straight man would wish to marry. Ever.

He didn’t outright hate the girl, that was for sure. In fact, he quite liked Madeline. She and Alex really did fit well together.

And that was where the problems started. 

Those two were perfect together.

Gavin was no longer the other half.

And that hurt.

 

Bad.

Now, Alex didn’t truly abandon him, no. But gradually, he began to see that the entire balance they had created between them had changed. It had been altered, and suddenly, he felt lost and scared, like he was 5 again, and stuck in a dark room during a storm, all alone. Friday night movies were suddenly a single’s only affair and the same occurred to many other given traditions the two had shared.

Gavin would often find himself staring at the precious mirror the other had mounted for him, staring and wondering why that one secret had started a whole new chain of secrets, and why, ultimately, that chain had managed to strike his very core. The core that hid all the insecurities and fears he thought had been almost chained up by now. 

Or maybe when his friend, best friend, whatever they once were, left, he had taken the chains with him.

And this was basically how he found himself curled up on the couch, hugging his sixth (Oh dear stars above, someone save him from this total self destruction, he really didn’t want more calories in his system) carton of Neapolitan ice cream, feeling sick and depressed while watching a strange playlist of Disney movies and chick flicks. 

Yes, he had finally sunk to that level.

And it really annoyed him how he ended up being the only one of them to sink. What happened to together forever? 

He would never really, truly retreat back to how he was before, of course, because that would mean not only wasting all of Alex’s hard work, but he knew it would also hurt his friend (because that was what they were reduced down to now, wasn’t it). 

But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

Because it did. 

A lot.

(And he honestly couldn't afford to pay for an average of 20 cartons of ice cream every two weeks for the rest of his life either.)

Summer Burns

                It’s a semi-cloudy, semi-blue, average temperature Saturday and she’s stuck between deciding if she’s feeling lonely or if she feels just bored. She’s been lounging on the pale cream couch for the past few minutes, and before that she had been trying (and failing) to cook something that would be relatively delicious by her standards (and she always ends up feeling so miserable when she hates the final product anyways), and before that she had been taking a shower, because she simply had nothing else to do. 

She may or may not have skipped lunch, because the cooking had taken such a long time. And she may or may not have burned her finger (yet again), but she lied to the empty air saying it wasn’t anything serious, and didn’t even bother running cold water over that finger. The cold could barely be felt anyways, so why bother, right?

It’s been the same sort of pattern ever since summer strolled into town, with all its flashy, burning, searing golden glory. Groggily get up to turn off the alarm clock, lay there with no purpose or meaning for another half hour, get up, go to school, sit through yet another boring, monotonous lecture for several hours, go home, eat crap (she really needs to stop eating so much junk food), feel empty again, get up, cook, burn another finger (she would run out of space soon), ignore said burn, finish whatever work had to be finished, stay up staring at useless newsfeeds and unresponsive chat boxes, stay up till the sun was back to greet her again, sleep for a few hours, and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

By this point in her thoughtless rambling, her finger is beginning to throb a bit, so she absentmindedly rubs the skin around the burn a bit. It distracts the pain. She supposes that everything else was the same way too. She stopped feeling anything, just like the cold water stopped working. She cooked, burned, hated, to get a distraction. But what was the actual problem? She no longer knew.

She never truly knew in the first place.

She got up and trudged to the bathroom, walking forwards even when she actually couldn’t see anything, seeing as her vision was all black and white and silver and all the colors mankind could never and will never be able to describe from getting up too quickly. When she gets there, she really doesn’t know what she came here for, so she just turns on the faucet to the coldest degree, and sticks her stinging finger under the water, and stares at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair is the same as usual, or maybe worse (it was always so dull and flat). Turning off the flow of water, she turned back and flopped back down onto the couch. Almost out of reflex (or maybe it was a pathetic addiction), she grabbed her phone, which had been tossed onto the nearby coffee table, and swiftly unlocked it with one hand. No new messages.

Well that was expected.

She really didn’t know why she checked it anymore. 

She couldn’t leave it on silent, for she would find herself constantly checking it, even though she knew, she knew all too well, that no one was looking for her, no one needed to talk to her (no, not even a best friend, significant other, acquaintance), but she still found herself looking.

So, she kept it on the highest volume, so that it would ring (like that would happen though) if anyone was trying to talk to her. But even with that knowledge she still checked, and re-checked, almost like the phone was the portal to her life-line and she had to make sure she wasn’t dead.

Tossing the phone carelessly back onto the table, she stared up at the blank ceiling (blank, all blank, just like her feelings, or, actually, her feelings were even more blank than that), and ignored the burns all pinching at her skin, as if trying to painfully remind her that she was still human after all.

And such was a day in the life of the lonely. (Or bored. She still didn’t know.)

Fate

     If things happen by fate, then how do you know if the results of something are because of your own hard work or by fate? Or is fate created by your own work?

He ran, each step echoing much too loudly on the wet concrete surface on the inside of the tunnel. His sharp pants of breath seemed to bounce off the round walls and slap him in the face. He could hear the slapping sounds of the issued boots marching and racing faster and faster, closer and closer towards him. It would only be a short second before those issued weapons would reach him as well. He had to run, or they would catch him, and then, and then!

Forean felt a biting combination of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and dust particles unseen to the naked eye zing straight through his lungs as he jolted up and out from underneath the faux Egyptian cotton, dove grey sheets.

What was that?

He shook his head vigorously. A glance as the blaring blood red digital clock read that it was much too early to the noon, yet all the same much too late to be morning as well. Shaking his head once more, he slowly slid out from under the sticky-from-sweat, warm-like-a-living-body sheets and stumbled out of the dark, musty room into the world of the breathing.

A light sizzling sound brushed his ears, while the background of the busy urban city and the noise of all the rushing, hustling, running humans ever-so-gently gripped at his forearms with its graffiti painted, pointy, long plastic arms. He was still desperately trying to shake off the hair-raising grasp of fear that had arrived and latched onto his back from the strange dream. He pretended the steaming, magma-hot water from the shower head had burned that hideous creature off, but he still refused to look in the mirror as he was brushing his teeth, for to see it would be too acknowledge it.

He walked into the kitchen, seized by the smells, and wrapped his arms around the other warm body in this room.

“Is it a good morning?” he asked, nuzzling into the soft smelling hair below him. He could hear the agony of the fear as it slowly began to lose its grip on him.

Rillian raised an eyebrow and replied, “A bit late for good mornings, isn’t it, Forean. Decided today was a lazy day?”

They seated themselves around the tiny pale wooden square table and began to eat wordlessly. A gentle wave of homeliness lapped over him.

“Rillian,” he asked while staring out their window to the balcony.

“Yes?”

“Do you believe in fate?”

She froze in time, before sitting back slowly in the wooden seat, and quietly setting down her fork with a small clink.

Opening her mouth, she finally stated, “I believe, that fate is merely the idea when something happened and you had no control over it. Nothing more, and nothing less. Why?”

He continued to gaze out towards the skyline of the city.

Silence fell again, and Rillian reached out to gently touch the top of his left hand. He flinched, giving a short jolt backwards in his chair, and snapped his gaze from the top of the skyscrapers to her dark eyes. They just stared at each other, each unrelenting, until finally, he murmured, “I saw a dystopia. I think I saw a dystopia. Rillian, are we fated to a dystopian future?”

She sighed.

“Forean….”

He jerked his hand off the table, and abruptly stood up to his full height, without his usual casual slouch, glaring down at her blank face. The chair clattered to the ground behind him, almost as if in slow motion, like time had stilled for those few seconds.

“I’m serious, Rill! If the theory of a dystopia ever does occur, wouldn’t we be fated to suffer the most? We aren’t normal, Rillian Forrestair! By human predictions today, tomorrow we would be the chosen ones to suffer!”

Dusting off her already crisp blouse, she slowly stood up as well, gazing levelly into his frantic eyes, and said, “Fate cannot be predicted. And predictions today won’t be the same tomorrow. My spliced genes don’t make me a prisoner, and neither will your mad visionary mind, if we do not choose to. We have made it this far, we’ve made it this far away, and what happens will happen. If we cannot control it, then it is fate, just like how we met. If we can, then we will continue to work for it.”

Pausing, she walked over to gently reach up and touch his right cheek, softly running a thumb over a scar right underneath his eyes, and murmured, “Alright, Number 64?”

He stopped for a second. Everything stopped for a second. The musky air was back, and so was the darkness, and so were the sounds, and he couldn’t breathe, and what if tomorrow the world changed how would he ever find who he really is then, and, and, and!

He stopped. He closed his eyes. And he breathed.

In. Then out. Open your eyes. Look forward.

Intent, dark eyes, one a metal grey, the other a deep murky type of concentrated copper, dyed with a wash of black watercolour.

He breathed out, and whispered, “Alright.”