Kerith felt numb. The music around him sounded far away. His skin felt like ice despite the sweat that covered it.
Things around him weren't registering fully. The only sense that was somewhat working was his sense of taste. He could taste the beer he was finishing off. His eyes were glazed over, his nose was clogged with smoke, his fingertips were tingling and his ears were ringing. His mind kept going back to his sister.
"Where're Steve and Tommy?" He asked absently. Kerith was seated on a barstool with his back to the bar and his arms behind him and out resting on the surface. Elya was standing in front of him, perched between his legs, her hands playing with the buckles on one of the shirts Kerith always wore when they went to the goth club.
"They'll be here soon. They had to stop somewhere and get something first." She waved the bartender down and got two more beers, passing one to him.
"Sounds ominous."
She giggled. "Everything sounds ominous to you." She took a sip of her beer and set it down on the bar behind him then continued to fiddle with the buckles on his shirt, leaning closer to him and pressing herself against him. "I like spending time alone with you anyways."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I just do. Maybe cause you're a good dancer – that's really hot y'know."
When she mentioned dancing, Kerith's eyes fell shut.
Jaryn.
Had he really danced enough for Elya to notice it? Must have been the drinking. He wouldn't have done it otherwise.
His thoughts went to his father.
A growl erupted from his throat and it was masked by the always loud music of the club. He opened his eyes to Elya finishing her drink. Kerith still felt cold, despite the warmth of her body pressed up against his and the beer he was consuming. He finished his glass and slammed it on the countertop.
"Going to the bathroom." Clumsily shifting her away from him, he slid off of the stool and began to push through the crowd. He was mildly surprised at the fact that he was joined in the empty bathroom hallway by Elya, who had followed him there.
"Need any company?"
Through his haze, Kerith managed to look at her somewhat inquisitively. "Company to pee? No, I'm good—"
He felt a hand on his crotch and stopped.
"No, silly. Company for something else."
Mere moments later he had been dragged into the women's restroom and pushed into a stall, door slammed shut behind them – he could faintly feel Elya's hands running up his shirt and was currently trying to wrap his foggy brain around the fact that their lips were pressed together.
He had only kissed one girl before and that was Penny Karsh, behind a shed when he was in second grade. Jaryn—
Jane
-hadn't talked to him for a week after that because her and Penny didn't like each other.
There was something inside of him somewhere that kept telling him this was odd. This was wrong. This wasn't what he wanted. But those small traces of coherency were shut out by the anger he was feeling at the situation he and sister were in as well as the alcohol he had consumed with dinner and since he arrived at the club.
Something was driving his hands against Elya, pushing her up against the door of the stall, and something was causing his lips to move from hers down to her neck, where he slid his tongue up to her ear and began kissing the soft spot under it.
"Ker…" she murmured, her voice muffled by his hair.
Only Jaryn called him that.
Suddenly he pushed away from Elya and she was about to open her mouth in protest when her phone rang. She fumbled around, sticking her hand down the front of her corset before pulling the device out and answering it.
"We're out back. What took you so damn long to answer the phone?"
Steve and Tommy were out back smoking cigarettes when Elya and Kerith emerged. Steve smirked at their disheveled appearance. "Did we interrupt something, sweetheart?"
Elya rolled her eyes. Kerith could only stare blankly down the alleyway at the moon that hung low over the buildings. He had been lost in his haze since stepping outside and the only thing that broke it was when Tommy put a pill in his hand. He looked down at it. It was green and had a smiley face on it.
"Take it," Tommy said, one in his hand as well. Elya was popping one in her mouth and Steve had just swallowed one.
Kerith stared at it and began to raise it to his lips despite those same protests of coherency that existed somewhere in his system, but stopped when raucous laughter and a yell sounded down the alleyway.
"Ha, what the hell is this shit?"
He could see four men making their way down the alley from the next street over. The haze was lingering and Kerith felt lightheaded, but he could still see them approaching.
"Oooo, the spooks are out tonight."
"Yeah," the short one in the back said. "Must be hopping in the freak club tonight."
"What's that in your hand, kid? Ooo, look at you - with your makeup and your designer drugs." The third one slapped the bottom of Kerith's hand, causing the pill to drop to the ground.
The fourth one spoke up to his friend, "What'd you do that for dipshit? We could've taken that."
The first one who spoke glanced back to Steve and Tommy. Elya was hiding behind Steve, already shaking from the pill she had taken. "Hey assholes, give us your drugs and we'll leave you alone."
"No," Steve mumbled.
"What was that, kid?"
"No way, man. I spent a lot of money on these." Steve was shaking too and it was audible in his voice.
"Aw, did baby spend all of his allowance on some pills for his little friends to play with?"
One of the men grabbed Kerith. "Hand 'em over or we'll ruin your friend. I mean, since his share was dropped on the ground and all." Kerith could feel the man's beard rubbing against the side of his face. It felt faint, much like everything else did. He almost felt like he wasn't even there. His vision was getting darker, his legs, weaker.
Hours seemed to go by to Kerith in a matter of seconds.
Through the haze, somewhere far away, he heard the following. The sounds of which he would never forget.
"Come on!"
"What about Kerith?"
"Fuck him! Let's go!"
There was some talking, some laughing and cackling around him. He didn't register any of it for a minute or two. He could now taste bile in his throat and smell booze. Whether it was him, the men around him, or both, he couldn't figure it out. He could only feel hit after hit as one or two of the guys pummeled him. Somewhere around him and above him as he crumpled to the ground, he could make out the words, makeup, fairy and bullshit. The phrase, "Jackson, you mighta broken his nose!" repeated itself over and over in his head as well.
It wasn't long before he completely blacked out.
…
Oblio had rushed to the studio as soon as he got Jaryn's phone call. She was sobbing. He couldn't make out many of her words, but he pieced together the fact that she and her brother had a fight.
"Hey, hey," he said, after entering the room and jogging across it to the corner under the camera where she sat, her face buried in her hands. "Shh, it's alright. Everything's going to be alright. This'll blow over."
He sat down beside her and wrapped his arms around her, gently rocking back and forth like his mother did to him when he had a problem. That lasted for a few minutes before she finally started to speak, relaying all the details about the friends Kerith had made from art class, the drinking, and the fight.
"I don't know what to do…"
"Jaryn, he's your brother. Your twin brother – you two have a bond. You almost share a soul, if you want to look at it that way. Everything will work itself out. You two have gotten this far, right?"
She stared at the ground.
"It might just take some time." He leaned down, putting his face in her field of vision. "Time heals all wounds." Her eyes finally shifted away from the wood floor to meet his. "You want to let some of that energy out?" He jerked a thumb back at the open dance floor behind him.
"I can't." She whispered. "Not now."
"That's fine. How about a ride? Want to go for a ride?"
She responded with a nod and he helped her to her feet, leading her out of the studio and locking it behind them for her with her keys.
He drove them to his spot in the woods along the coastline and set the same blanket out that they had eaten on that night he bought them both fast food. He sprawled out on it, stretching the corners of it out and then pulled her down with him. Within a few minutes, Jaryn was asleep with her head resting on his chest. Oblio absently stroked her head, weaving his fingers through the locks of dirty blonde hair. He could feel her warm breath on his neck and the slow rise and fall of her chest against his side. Her hand was on his stomach; her fingertips touching his skin where his shirt had rode up when he had set himself down on the blanket.
Oblio shut his eyes. It calmed his system to have her beside him like that. Somehow it felt so right to him. All he could hear was her soft breathing and the breeze rustling through the trees around them.
His mind was clear for the first time in months.
She shifted against him in her sleep, her hand riding further up his shirt. He didn't open his eyes to her movement, but he gently tightened the grip of the arm he had around her.
He hadn't brought up the party at Tan's Estate. He couldn't let her go. He didn't want any of them going. He had talked to Tan about the situation again earlier that day. He wouldn't need much from the others – he had used the term "a pinprick here and there" or something of the sort for the second time. But earlier that day he mentioned he would need Jaryn there for longer. Her process would be more lengthy, more involved.
Oblio couldn't let her walk into that. When he had met her, he had been under the guise that he was just gathering words from her for Tan. As time went on, he learned more and more about what Tan had wanted to do to everyone, which threw an unexpected wrench in Oblio's works. The other wrench? Jaryn herself.
He found himself able to talk to her, able to be around her for hours without getting uncomfortable. He was finally opening up to someone correctly and knew it wouldn't last.
Just like everything else in my life, Oblio thought.
He thought perhaps his ease with Jaryn was coming from the fact that she shared traits with his mother, which must've been why Tan wanted her for his experiment so badly. Bernice had been the only one Oblio could ever actually talk to.
He opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Jaryn, her hair still wrapped around the fingers of his left hand. His reverie was broken by Lady Gaga and Oblio picked up Jaryn's cell phone that she had left on the blanket beside her.
The letters on the caller ID made his throat close up. The phone couldn't fit the whole name of the caller, but Oblio instantly knew what it was.
JUSTICE HOSPI
He softly shook her awake, gently pulling his fingers from her hair. "Jaryn, your phone."
"Ngggh." She grabbed it from him and slowly sat up, putting the phone to her ear. Oblio could tell by her tone that she assumed it was her brother. "What?"
He watched as she listened to the speaker on the other end. Her eyes were still puffy from earlier and he noticed another few tears spill from them as the moments passed. When she finally hung up, she dropped the phone onto the blanket from the violent shakes that had suddenly seized her hands.
"Kerith's in the hospital."
"Come on," he pulled her to her feet with one hand, grabbed her cell phone and the blanket in the other and sprinted across the clearing with her in tow. He was careful through the woods, holding certain branches out of her path on the way, and placed the helmet on her head, helping her onto the bike after he slid on. "Hold on tight, alright?"
He felt her nod against his back.
It didn't take too long for them to arrive out front of the brightly lit building and Oblio pulled up right out front of the main entrance, holding her right hand while she steadied herself with her left and climbed off of the bike. He reached out and took the helmet off for her, like he had done many times before, holding it in his lap while she put her cell phone that had been in her hands back in her pocket.
"I'm gonna go. I don't think your brother would be too happy to see me."
He was about to put his helmet on when her hand hit the top of it, holding it down. She planted a quick kiss on his lips. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it, Jaryn."
He watched her jog towards the front doors and enter before he sped off, leaving the parking lot in silence. He suddenly felt very cold inside.
He was unaware that it was the last instance he would see her for a very long time.