AN: Here is a break from The Reason. This just kind of popped into my head and I had to write it. So I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimers: I don't own Degrassi: TNG
Trigger
It is funny, some of things you can remember. Sometimes a scent will
trigger some inane memory that can make you smile, a song lyric can
make you cry as you drive, or even a familiar setting can have
whispered conversations.
Memories aren't bad things; they can be a great thought that suddenly
uplifts you in the middle of math class and leaves you grinning like a
dork throughout the day. Though they do have the drawback, if they are
painful memories, to leave you sad and depressed even when you are at
the happiest of places.
Dylan knew that there were several triggers for past memories and
depending on if they were sad or not, he knew when to avoid them.
The couch in his living room didn't remember each individual make-out
session he had ever had there, but it did always seem to recall the night
when they had watched a scary movie together, and to his chagrin, it was
not Marco to be scared at the slightest movement, but he himself. Marco
had laughed himself into hysterics when the movie was over and Dylan
had gone into a long diatribe about the things in the movie that he didn't
like, only to peter out in the end to admit:
"And by didn't like, I mean freaked me out."
The kitchen would forever remind him of the time that Paige had been
stunned into spoon dropping silence when he and Marco had wandered
downstairs for breakfast, from one of the nights that Marco had stayed
the night. The look on her face as she dropped her spoon into her Lucky
Charms was so priceless, that Dylan could be sitting at that kitchen
table, eating his food, and still randomly burst out in laughter (causing
every family member present to stare in wonder)
Climbing up the stairs always brought back the memory of when Marco
confessed that as a child he would race his brother down their stairs in
sleeping bags. That confession had prompted the spontaneous retrieval
of moth-eaten sleeping bags and the experiment of whether or not two
teenaged boys can sled down the stairs like two little children could.
Dylan had more bruises from that race than from any hockey related incident.
Walking down the hallway during the middle of the night, however,
wouldn't bring the happy memories. He would remember the times when
he would get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and pass
by Paige's room and hear her soft crying. It had been in the aftermath of
her date-rape and those nights were the most helpless moments of his
entire life.
He no longer used the upstairs bathroom if he had to go in the middle of
the night.
In his room, there was a entire batch of remembered moments that he
would hold on to.
His bed, for instance. It conjured, not the memory one would think of,
but of the time when he and Marco were just lounging around one lazy
afternoon when suddenly Marco burst out laughing.
"What?" he had asked.
"Your cat. She just stretched and rolled right off your bed!"
There was also that time, when he had just changed for bed when there
came a knocking on his window. He had opened it up only to reveal
Marco, clinging to the tree that he had apparently just scaled, grinning.
"Surprised?"
Dylan would still look to the window before he'd go to bed each night,
just hoping.
The bookcase reminded him of when he and Marco built it together in a
fit of macho-ness and the plain need to use some power tools. The
screws still stuck out and the whole thing listed to the left.
Maybe all these little moments of the past were the reasons why packing
up and moving was taking so long. Each object he'd get ready to pack,
he'd stop and remember something about it. His room was very big, lots
of stuff. Lots of memories.
As he sat on the empty floor of the very empty room, he felt like
nostalgia was a physical weight in the pit of his stomach. So much had
happened in this room, in this house.
Now he was moving out. To college.
The door opened and Marco peeked his head inside. "Dyl'? Are you
ready?"
He nodded and twisted to his feet. Closing his door to his old room, he
wrapped his arm around the other boy. "Yeah, I'm ready now."
It wasn't as if he was moving a million miles away. And besides, there
was plenty of time to make memories in his new apartment anyways.