Over the years, Pip learned how to be stealthy. He learned how to hide in every gap and crevasse, how to outrun the larger boys with agile serpentine patterns and flat out sprints across snow-covered hills.
By high school, he had made it onto the track and field team. When he got the news, he felt a lightness devour his heart. For once, he would belong. He would be part of a team, he would have teammates, maybe even friends!
Three weeks into practices, Pip realized that he was still looking into that world of social acceptance from the outside. His teammates rarely spoke to him, worked with him only when necessary, and muttered things under their breath as they walked away from him.
When he walked into Whistlin' Pete's one day to see them all sitting around enjoying a stack of pizzas without him, all wearing their track jackets, he realized that he hadn't been invited to their shindig on purpose.
Having hidden for a majority of his childhood, Pip knew all of the isolated and empty spots that South Park had to offer. He knew where to go to get away from everyone. There was a spot, behind the Walmart they'd built where Stark's Pond had once stood, just behind the recycling dumpsters in the back, next to a Bobcat, where he had hidden once from Cartman and the other boys. He had even dived into the dumpster once when they drew near. If they found him there, then he could never, ever, go there again. And back then, that spot had been incredibly valuable, filled with a number of useful materials for a variety of projects Pip worked on in his free time to keep occupied (and keep his mind off of the impending doom of the next schooldays).
When Pip realized that he had been living a lie, deceived by a false sense of security, mocked by the same boys who he had called his teammates, this was where he ran. He dashed through the parking lot, ignoring the startled looks of shoppers coming and going, and rounded the corner of the building, stripping off his track jacket and duffel bag and leaving them both lying in the snow.
He wouldn't be needing them anymore, anyway.
He knew he was too old to cry, but the tightness in his chest and the burning in his eyes refused to leave him with his dignity. He was only thankful that he managed to hold back his quiet sobs until he could duck behind the big yellow dumpster and sink down to squat with his back pressed against the metal container.
He buried his head against his arms and pressed his lips tightly together, waiting for this unbearable pressure in his upper chest to uncoil. It was anger and shame and guilt compacted together and welling up until it was bubbling in his throat.
On the precipice of what was sure to be a rather thorough cry, the sound of gravel clicking and rolling across the asphalt to his right abruptly yanked Pip back from that edge.
He lifted his head, a hoarse noise of surprise torn from his throat.
A tall, dark-haired figure stood there, leaning against the other recycling bin, the ball of one booted foot planted against the side for leverage. He looked down at the blond from behind a pair of reflectively tinted sunglasses, a clove cigarette hanging between his lips.
"Damien," Pip said softly, suddenly feeling even worse than before. Now there was a witness to his shame. Mortification swelled up between his ribs from a pit in his abdomen, nearly overpowering his anger.
Nearly.
Damien said nothing. He kept his hands shoved in his pockets and his eyes on the blond squatting beside him. Though Pip couldn't see his actual eyes behind the sunglasses, he could still feel them on him, like the slow burn of a frozen limb warming against the heat of a fire, a not-wholly-unpleasant pins-and-needles sensation that crawled across the nape of his neck and his cheeks with all the speed of a melting glacier.
The end of the dark-haired boy's cigarette slowly burned away, crackling like white noise, flaring with red light with each breath before fading away and leaving ash in its wake. Like a pulse, a heartbeat.
"I…I didn't see you," he muttered nervously, slowly getting to his feet. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. He hadn't shed too many tears; maybe Damien wouldn't even notice.
"What happened to you?" Damien asked, harshly cutting through Pip's desperate hopes. The question came out crisp and simple. It sounded passive, but not entirely disinterested.
Pip bit his lip and resisted latching onto that little shred of compassion that may or may not have been lurking beneath the words. He didn't think he could be blamed for being rather reluctant to trust the Antichrist, after all.
"Nothing," he said as nonchalantly as possible. "What are you doing here?"
Damien scoffed and a touch of a smirk appeared on his lips. One pale hand appeared from the pocket of his black pants, the white skin of his wrist contrasting sharply with the inky material of his full-length sleeves, and plucked his cigarette from his lips. "What does it look like?" he answered, exhaling as he spoke. It reminded Pip of all of the old storybook portrayals of demons and dragons, creatures that billowed smoke and fire from their mouths and nostrils. "What are you doing here?" he asked, pointing his cigarette at the blond before bringing it back up to his lips.
Pip could not come up with a suitable or believable excuse, so he did not answer. Instead, he waited for Damien to come up with an answer of his own.
Were you crying again, Frenchie? Did your boyfriend dump you? Aw, careful, Frenchie, you'll smear your makeup.
However, after a long, awkward length of silence, Damien was still waiting for a reply. His brow was furrowed in confusion above his sunglasses.
"You shouldn't smoke those things," Pip said, attempting to divert attention away from him once more. "They aren't good for you."
Damien stared at him for a moment and then shrugged. "Life isn't good for you. 100% of people who live end up dying." The clove cigarette, which was almost burned down to the filter, was plucked from between the young man's lips. "Nation's number one killer, you know." He flicked the cigarette away. It landed almost, but not quite, in an oily puddle nearby, still steadily smoking on the asphalt.
The red glow at the end flickered unsteadily, stagnating and dying as it burned up the last of the clove and tobacco.
Pip watched as Damien produced a pack from his back pocket and lit up once more. The dying embers of the discarded cigarette flared up fresh at the tip of the new one.
The stub lay on the asphalt, black and dead like old coal.
Pip said nothing, just watched as each black stick burned down between Damien's lips, watched the tip glow hot red before fading to orange and then to grey and black as it turned to ash and crumbled to the ground.
A pulse. A heartbeat.
Damien looked away from him, out across the large empty field that had once held trees and shrubs but had been plowed down for the giant superstore.
After a minute of neither speaking, Pip sat back down again and stared out as well, but the sight of that cycle of the swell and ebb of glowing embers always drew his gaze back towards Damien.
A few minutes later, Pip realized that the tightness and pressure was gone, leaving him feeling awkward and uncertain. He wasn't sure what was lingering in his chest now, something bittersweet and smoky.
It was the secondhand smoke of pungent clove cigarettes and it would stick inside of his lungs for days afterward, leaving him feeling almost pleasantly numb inside each time he took a breath.
Pip quit the track and field team and tried out instead for the school play. They were putting on a performance of Macbeth and Pip managed to land the part of Banquo. He lost himself in pretending he was someone else and the theatre geeks were much more accepting of him than the jocks had been. Even if they still treated him as somewhat of an outsider, at least they made the effort to inform him of cast parties when they held them.
When he had received his first invite from Wendy Testaburger, he had been very anxious and excited. Part of him very much wanted to go, felt almost obligated to go. But another part thought about everything that could go wrong, the possibility of it being a huge prank, and of some gnawing from an empty space somewhere below his ribs.
Even so, he went. Wendy's family had a very nice house, people said "hello" to him, but nothing much more than that. Wendy tried to hold a conversation with him but Eric Cartman butted in with what Pip considered rather pitiful and pathetic attempts to win the young lady over by insulting Pip and anyone else within reach of his hurtful tongue.
Pip would forever loathe the fact that Cartman was the only student large enough to move some of the scenery and props around. Ever since he had taken up body-building, he had gotten bigger and bigger and, despite Pip's prediction, it only made him look all the more unattractive.
After standing in the corner awkwardly with his drink, which he suspected had been spiked after his head began feeling fuzzy after only half a glass, Pip quietly slipped out the door, reminding himself to thank Wendy later for the invite.
The party had been a bust, but Pip decided he didn't want to let the rest of the night go to waste when he reached the 7-11 that lay a few blocks from his house. He ambled through the garishly lit aisles of the local convenience store.
He dumped a packet of his favorite crisps and a soda onto the countertop at the register.
"Will that be all?" the pimply-faced cashier asked with a bored expression.
Pip opened his mouth and stopped, looking at the boxes behind the counter. Then, he pointed at a box near the top of the shelves.
"I'll take one of those."
Pip walked around to the alley and produced the box from his pocket. It was black and crisply labeled with the brand Djarum Black. The red triangle in place of the "a" in black glared up at him like a warning. Pip opened the box and sniffed curiously at the contents of the box.
The scent was comfortingly familiar. It left something reminiscent of guilt lingering within him. He snapped the box shut and walked over to a metal barrel that was nearly overflowing with garbage and refuse. He held it out over the barrel, but found his fingers resisting when he tried to drop the pack into the pile.
Pip frowned, a quiet whine rolling up from the back of his throat.
He shouldn't have these. This was impolite...indecent. It felt like stalking, spying, an invasion of...something.
But why should it? Millions of people probably smoked clove cigarettes. He was just curious. That was all.
They'd kill him though. They weren't good for you, after all.
Then again, neither was living.
Pip felt himself flush and in a split second, hurried decision, he shoved the cigarette pack deep into his pocket and strode off.
As he rounded the corner onto his street, he tore open the crisps, shoveling them into his mouth until the taste finally covered up the dry bite that had developed on the back of his tongue.
A week later, the cigarettes still remained in Pip's coat pocket, partially crushed, completely untouched. Pip didn't think he'd ever smoke them, but he kept them there. They were a reassuring weight against his hip and, if he focused, he almost thought he could smell them around him.
But that thought left him feeling jumpy and nervous whenever Damien was around. It wasn't until recently that he had begun to realize just how close they sat near each other in class, how much they indirectly interacted. Every time they got within a few feet of each other, Pip began to panic, certain that if Damien came too close, he'd smell the cigarettes on him and he'd know that Pip had bought them and...and...well, that just wasn't a very good thing, was it? It was...weird, creepy.
A few days later, Pip realized that he and Damien did not speak to each other at all at school. Their brief exchange behind the Walmart was the most they had said to each other in years and the most anyone had said to Pip without spitting at him in the same amount of time.
With that realization came a strange urge that ate away at him all day and all night. It whispered to him during class, drew his gaze across the room towards a specific head of dark hair. It murmured to him at night, tempting him with suggestions of belonging and affirmation.
And against his better judgements, Pip let it worm it's way past his defenses, let it ingrain itself into his veins and pores and flourish there.
Pip got invited to the next cast party, this time at Cartman's house.
It was more than the location that led Pip to declining the invite.
Instead, after rehearsal, Pip found himself heading towards Walmart, bundled up more than usual against the bitter cold with a lumpy, multicolored scarf wrapped around his neck. He was not expecting to find anything there, not really hoping for anything either. He just longed for the familiarity, for the traces of warmth, of the memory that lingered there.
Even so, he felt his heart sink just a little when he arrived to find no one standing behind the dumpsters. To distract himself, he rifled around in the bins and pulled some pieces that caught his eye, labels and colored cardboard that felt right to him. He would make something with them, but he wasn't certain what yet.
Then, he sat back against the bin and looked out across the field, breath fogging in front of him as it slipped through the scarf across his mouth.
The emptiness, the openness lay before him. He felt like a pin dropping would resonate forever in a crystalline, clear tone within that void.
Being alone in the silence was comforting in a way it had been for years, but something new came with it today. It sent his thoughts buzzing about in his skull, a quiet hum that grew until Pip was so accustomed to it that he didn't notice it anymore, didn't notice as it lulled him to sleep, head drooping forward until his chin hit his chest and he dozed.
Pip awoke with a start the moment his half-awake brain realized that he had nodded off. It was growing dark around him as the sun began to sink beneath the horizon in the distance. His eyes darted back and forth, panting quickly as he leapt to his feet.
"Bad dream?"
He yelped in surprise and wheeled around to face the source of the voice.
Damien stood before him, wearing a heavy black trenchcoat, a fine, cream-colored scarf wrapped around his neck, and sunglasses over his eyes.
In the half-light of dusk, Damien's face was lit up by the glow of his cigarette and mirrored back in the lenses of his glasses, reflecting Pip's image back at himself in oily shades of dark orange.
Once again, Pip saw the classical image of a demon rise up in his mind's eye. Damien seemed a seductive blend of ancient and contemporary.
Pip opened and closed his mouth noiselessly, at a loss for words.
"You'll catch your death out here," Damien said, sparing him the opportunity to speak. "Thought you had died at first. I shook you but you didn't wake up."
"You-you did?" Pip asked, eyes locked on the image of his own reflection staring gracelessly back, cursing the squeak that popped up in his voice in the middle of the question. He didn't recall anyone shaking him. His slumber had been nothing but dreamless, aimless floating.
"Trying to fucking kill yourself or something?" Damien remarked, a little more malicious this time. He turned to look out at the field and Pip felt some sort of trance break as his own reflection slipped away from his gaze. "Pretty shitty place to off yourself."
Pip stared at Damien's form for a few seconds and then he took a step forward. "Do you think…" Damien turned to look at him and Pip caught his reflection in his glasses again. It drew him in, made his head spin, seeing himself like that. He looked almost…like a different person, someone he didn't recognize.
"Yes?" Damien asked and shaking Pip out of the spell once more.
"Do you think I could…try one of those?" He asked, gesturing to the cigarette between Damien's lips.
Damien frowned, pressing his lips together in thought.
At first he hesitated on an answer, the tightness in his face making him look horribly torn, but then he said, "You shouldn't. They're not good for you. They'd end up killing you."
Pip's face fell and he looked down when Damien turned his eyes away again. He felt somewhat rebuffed, but something inside of him bloomed forth, warm and excited. He felt like he had just been invited to a party and that he had a very long time to decide whether or not he wanted to go.
Pip picked up his bag from the ground and made to leave, but when he lifted his head to look back at Damien, something made his heart seize in fear.
He felt like he might never see Damien again if he left now, that he might die out here in the cold and no one would find him and he'd slip out into the field like it was a giant ocean of white that would carry him away into an endless void. He stepped closer to Damien and settle down against the same dumpster, close to Damien's legs.
"It's cold out, I hope you don't mind," he said, trying to sound casual.
Damien stared down at him, an awkward tenseness in his limbs. He looked taken aback from Pip's perspective, but it could have just been a trick of the light. There was a moment of hesitation and then Damien let out an odd bark of laughter, lifting his head.
"Why the hell would I mind?" he said, his voice strange. He looked down again. "What's in the bag?"
"Craft stuff. I like to make things out of recyclable material."
Pip felt his cheeks heat, two points of contrast on his body in the winter chill. That was such an embarrassing admission. What the hell had compelled him to say it?!
"Oh," Damien said and then shrugged, like he was shrugging off a giant weight from Pip's shoulders. "Cool."
They both stared out into the night as the last sliver of sun finally disappeared from the sky and neither of them said anything for a long time.
When the cold became too much to take, Damien crushed his last cigarette beneath the heel of his boot and pushed off the dumpster. "It's getting late." He turned to face the blond. "I'll take you home."
"Oh, no, I can walk!" Pip insisted, getting to his feet.
Damien shook his head. "You shouldn't be walking around alone this late. There are a lot of weirdos around here."
Pip bit his lip. He felt like the world was spinning too fast, that something had started rolling into motion and he wasn't ready for it. "I…I don't know if I should…"
Damien sighed and took the blond by the elbow. "Look, I promise I'm not going to steal your soul or slice your throat or anything."
That was not very reassuring. Even so, Pip shivered as another piercing wind cut through his worn jacket and the dark stretches beyond the Walmart parking lot did look incredibly threatening.
"O…okay."
Damien's car was a sleek, almost pristine red Mustang. While the outside of the car looked brand-new, the inside was visibly lived-in. It smelled heavily of clove cigarettes, which had Pip feeling somewhat drugged the moment he buckled his seat belt, and the car was littered with cigarette stubs, old CDs, and empty cans of all sorts.
The moment the car roared to life, the inside suddenly blared with loud music that bombarded Pip's senses with grated, twisted, warbling sounds all set to a hypnotic rhythm. Damien immediately depressed the volume dial and the music stopped as quickly as it had started.
"Forgot to turn it down," Damien muttered, almost apologetically.
The ride to Pip's house was awkward, the blond tensing whenever he caught the movement of Damien's hand out of the corner of his eye, but each time he was only changing gears.
When they rolled to a stop outside of Pip's house, the blond muttered a quick thank-you and emerged hurriedly from the car. His parents would definitely question him being driven home in such a car, and Pip wasn't quite ready to answer any kind of probing questions that even he couldn't answer himself right now.
He stood on the curb for a moment though, looking at Damien through the passenger window, feeling like he should say something else but not knowing what.
"Ah," Damien began, leaning over and, to Pip's amazement, slipping his sunglasses off. His eyes looked black in the streetlight above Pip's head. For a split second, Pip thought his whole face looked rather graceful, and then he quickly chalked the notion up to merely having gone so long without seeing it. "I guess I'll see you at school," he finished haltingly.
Then with an uncertain nod that Pip was rather baffled by, Damien straightened in his seat and drove away.
Pip went inside, told his parents he was out gathering more craft supplies, and went up to his room.
He changed out of his clothes and into his pajamas before dumping the contents of his bag all over his crafting table next to the window.
As he stared at them, each piece slowly began to put themselves together into a vague, fuzzy final product in his mind.