Thomas
It starts out with the schedule of a therapy session and a phone call from one former friend to his boyfriend. It isn't necessarily even his problem. It is just that Thomas has terribly little to do than stick his head in people's matters.
"I'll be back in two hours," Maven promises, putting his headphones on. If he growns out his hair longer, he'll trump Thomas' shaggy mess of brownish strands hanging everywhere. It's endearing, and to Thomas he looks good either way. He is, after all, the prettiest boy. "It's just a coffee before I go to therapy."
"It is a coffee with your brother," Thomas corrects. "In public."
He barely makes it to pack his things without the inhabitants of this appartment (or this battlezone, as Thomas prefers to call it) leering and lurking behind him like hungry vultures.
Elara is at least subtle about it. Thomas knows no such boundaries and he wouldn't even try to. He just puts his arms everywhere or stands in the way.
Thomas doesn't let him leave without a shower of small, tiny kisses. Weird how he used to dislike that, how it was hard to take at the start that it was just small, tiny bits of affection, and now he would never trade it for anything else. Another kiss flutters over Maven's eyelid. He rapidly keeps it close and blinks with dark lashes when Thomas' lips wander over his cheekbone, not irritated but more accepting.
"You can stop making a show of it just because my mother is watching," Maven whispers. "She is irritated already."
"Where is the fun in that?" he asks. "No, can't do, Mr. Calore. Also, you were romantic about being the love of my life, let me kiss you. I'm really proud of you."
Before he can object even more, Thomas leans up and presses another kiss on his mouth, but at least for the time being, it gets reciprocated with a light answer before Maven pulls away. His hands smooth over one side of Thomas hair.
"I need to leave now. Don't fight her."
Don't leave me alone with her, a part of Thomas thinks, but he is mature enough not to plead and beg with puppy eyes. Not when this is vital. And the other part of him wants to fight and snap at her. "As if I ever listen to that."
A dry sound escapes Maven's throat. "I know."
With that, he leaves, and the clicking of the lock is too loud.
"How was that?" Thomas shouts, before he turns. In the corner of the room, far enough away to look casual on her phone, Elara is as always smooth and dressed to the t, but a crinkle runs over her forehead between her eyebrows. "He didn't say goodbye to you at all."
"Goodness gracious, you are like a monkey in a zoo, Thomas." Elara sighs,a perfectly rehearsed sound of exasperation. "You never know when to behave."
Thomas blows her a rasperry. "That isn't racist or insulting at all."
An hour with Elara is like an eternity in the slipstream of fires lit in purgatory. At first, he tries to ignore the urge to speak to her. But it buries so, so deep in his head. It is accompanied by all the other thoughts he tries to blend out. By the blame he still feels, by the faults he has, by the avoidance of the people he loves. By the way that the world moves on and never gets better. By the faces he hasn't seen in a while or the faces he will never see again. It buries into his brain like hot needles, and it makes him sick. He wants to sleep it out of his system. He wants to ignore it, laugh at a movie with Iris, cook with Maven, get hit by Cameron's fist.
He misses his sister and Farley so dearly that if he could rip a hole inside his body, he is sure there is some vital part of himself missing. It is lost in some cracks, and he can't even cry anymore. Not even when he sits in front of a grave lit by the colors of carnations.
He tries to blend Elara's voice out while he paints. He puts headphones on, but her peeping, harsh sounds penetrate the music and he gives up. The piece of coal in his hand smears a senseless circle over the paper. He scratches his nose. The color gets stuck in his face in an oily black crumb.
It is too much now, and he can't concentrate.
So he leaves the ruined sketch of a bridge hanging low over a river, and wanders to eat instead.
Problem is, the fridge is almost empty. There is only things in it that he recognizes as deadly for his allergies. He scraps a meal together and just eats as noisy as he can.
The soudns from below the hallway stop sometimes.
Not too long.
After even more time, he can't stay off. His toes itch. Sniffing and extra loud, he waltzes over.
He doesn't knock, he doesn't wait. He doesn't even sit down on the chair. This room is always the most cold and the most frozen. It is a room full of letters and numbers and laws. A room that dictates money. The room was bland and it felt wrong when Maven used it. It is now filled with vicious energy that Elara oozes off, like the evil witch queen she is.
"I have no time for you." Her hand tries to usher him away, nailpolish and jewelry on her wrist gleaming.
"This isn't me insulting you, I wanna know something."
Her eyes could roll back into her skull, she is so very clearly annoyed that even in her cold composure cracks point to it visibly. "Can I ever stop you or get truly rid of you?"
"Nah." Thomas shrugs. "What the fuck do you think will happen when you just act like you didn't do anything wrong? That's your child, this messed up pretty boy. He is your only son."
It doesn't change anything about the way she looks at him. If only, her eyes narrow. "Do you think I don't know that?"
Thomas puts his hands out, one in black ink , one in clear off skin that still looks too dark against the background of Elara's white home, and her pale self. "Hey, you told him his whole life fucked up shit about weaknesses, about how you shouldn't try rely on people, you told him no one loved him."
"I always loved my son dearly," she clears something she clearly feels as a misconception, stretching her head up.
Thomas blinks against the need to smash his head through the wall. He chose to initiate this talk, he might as well pull through this time.
"Yeah whatever. He has a whole year of mental breakdown on his plate, he has a lot more on that from before, and he fucked up any chance to go to a college or whatever. He is like some old game rebooting right now, and holy shit, Elara, he is doing ok, better than me at least. He is doing fucking great without you. And you're still acting like you didn't do anything wrong. So how's that hanging? Bet you're secretly pooping your pants waiting for him to say goodbye."
Her demeanor doesn't crumble. He isn't sure Elara knows how that even works. She sits there, silently. First , she drops the phone. Then, the nails disappear in her hands folding harshly together. "You've got a talent to be unnerving, Thomas. I give you that. But you are worse than me. I never abandoned the people I truly cared for."
He can't help but laugh. If this was a younger version of Thomas, he maybe would be afraid, he would be insulted. He is still angry, he still hates her guts. Right now, though, they are not too different. They both act ignorant. And that is what makes him laugh. How very much he tries to avoid everything and now, he is as ignorant as this woman in front of him.
"I'm a shithead, I know, I know all about it, but you don't get to NOT answer that. How's it hanging, Elara? How scared are you to end up alone?"
"You dare," she hisses. And her words hammer right through his skull. It is a snowstorm of anger and hurt feelings, even, below the scratched vanity. " I have always just done what I needed to do, and I wouldn't be here without making sacrifices. I would give Maven the world if he wanted it. Now clean up your mess, alone, for once in your life, you filthy red street rat, and don't dare to judge others before that."
The problem is that she isn't wrong. Not at all. He realizes that after spending the rest of the time in his bed. He just stares at nothing in particular. Joke's on him. Progress is not enforcable, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't need to come. And if he could just stop trying to avoid it, to sleep it off.
Joke's on him. Fighting Maven's mother doesn't do him good. Because she is right.
Joke's on him. He is to blame and he wants to jump out of the window to forget that, just for a moment.
Joke's on him. He misses the people he glossed over. He is just like her or worse. At least Elara has a plan for her life and enforced the plan, no matter how toxic it can be, or how she needed to kick down. He can't even kick himself.
He rolls together and stays like that. Just there. Thinking about everything and nothing. He just exists in that blanket of apathy.
