CHAPTER 9:
He'd hoped talking things out with John would make the words swimming around on the page before him somehow make sense, but alas, Alex was having no such luck with it. He knew he shouldn't be that worried about it, after all classes didn't start for another week, but sometimes Alex had a hard time waiting patently for things to get underway. He always dove right into his text books as soon as he got them, taking notes as he thought they would be relevant, doing his own further research into what topics especially interested him. He just loved learning. Anything, everything. He wanted to be good at everything he did, he wanted to be valued, he wanted to be helpful and sought out, and trusted.
John had left smiling. But his words kept echoing in Alex's head.
"Because One Time When I Said Stop—No one in that room listened to me."
How many, Alex wondered. How many people stood in that room and didn't do a damn thing? Two? Three? More? How many thought raping a child—oh god, he couldn't have been older then ten if Alex's math was correct—was just another ordinary Sunday afternoon?!
"They told me it was for my own good, that they were teaching me a lesson."
Who in their fucking right mind thought that was even remotely appropriate? Were they ever brought to justice? How could anyone ever fucking justify hurting another human being that way, let alone a child? And exactly what lesson was John supposed to learn from that? Not to trust adults, other human beings? That intimacy was something to fear?
" I have been abused in ways I don't even remember now."
This one broke Alex's heart the most. It was one thing to endure that kind of trauma, to know what someone did and to have to live with that knowledge the rest of your life, but how could someone begin to heal when they couldn't even process what had been done to them? Had John just been suffering for twelve years? And told that he deserved it for being gay? Had no one ever told him otherwise?
Alex took a deep breath and pushed away the tears that were blurring his vision. As a sex worker, what John had told him was absolutely horrifying. He regretted wanting to know what made John disassociate, why his doctors thought he needed such serious medications. John had explained his other pills to Alex as he looked on curiously while he'd swallowed them that morning. A pill for his sleeping to be taken at night, another for his depression to be taken before breakfast, a booster pill to help his body with the antidepressants to be taken with the other one, and another pill he carried on him for "as needed" anxiety and panic episodes that he told Alex he didn't even like taking because it was little more then a high dose tranquilizer and simply knocked him out so he couldn't panic in the first place. Alex had asked if therapy had helped him at all and John had just shrugged. "Honestly, this is probably as better as I'll ever get."
He wished he'd asked for Lafayette's number. He had a feeling the French man knew so much more about what was going on with John and right now Alex could really use someone to talk to, someone who could tell him what he needed to do to help. But then, he'd also noticed how deflective Lafayette had been about John's episode at lunch the other day, brushing off his weird behavior so that John's parents didn't think he was acing strange, and Alex wondered if he'd even feel comfortable opening up to him about the guy. No, if he was aware of how bad John was hurting then Alex had to believe Lafayette would appreciate Alex's desire to help; even if Lafayette wouldn't tell him John's story at the very least he would tell him what to do to keep from fucking John up even more, right? Well, he hoped so, anyway.
Alex shut the textbook in front of him with a sigh and leaned back in his chair. Brushing away the tears that still clouded his eyes; he told himself he needed to think of something else for a minute, that he couldn't do anything for John now, that the last thing his roommate probably wanted was to be treated like some fragile glass doll that would break if Alex dropped him. He got up and went to pour himself another cup of coffee, but when he realized he'd already finished off what John hadn't he sighed again. This was probably why he felt so antsy.
A walk should clear my head, he thought to himself, and brushed off the fact that he'd already gone for one earlier. He liked going for walks early in the morning, before people were awake for the day and he could roam the streets talking to himself a little louder then he tended to otherwise. If he did that kind of thing when people were awake and around to see him they tended to look at him with pity; with his own broken in shoes and the hoodie that was two sizes too big for his slender frame and the loose fitting jeans he kept up with a belt that were tattered at the bottom and the backpack that he'd had for the last 5 years being held together with duct tape and a prayer, yeah, he looked enough like a homeless bum that people wanted to offer him some kind of charity. The thing is, he hid himself in clothes that didn't fit and carried around a bag that had seen better days because then people thought he wasn't worth shit and left him alone. They didn't steal his things, and they didn't think he was anyone they should care about getting to know. They kept their distance. On a few occasions they just handed him bus money, which always made him laugh before he handed it back to them with the assurance that he did in fact have a job. He just never told them what that job was and of course it wasn't one where you'd walk into a store and see him there behind the counter.
By now of course the college campus was coming alive again with life, shops opening their businesses, eagerly awaiting the students that would bring in new revenue and the regulars that kept them afloat in between. Fraternities and Sororities already had stations set up looking to recruit new members, clubs and extracurricular activities competing with their own signs and banners and fliers. He scurried past the more assertive recruiters, keeping his head down and blending in with the crowd of people around him as they moved from one place to another. Alex disliked navigating foot traffic, but eventually he made it to the Starbucks shop on the corner of one of the more busy shopping streets. He opened the door and was relieved to see the morning rush had already passed through.
"Good morning welcome to—" the barista behind the counter started to say, but stopped as soon as Alex stood in front of him smiling. James Madison sighed almost forlornly at the scrappy youth in front of him and put a hand on his hip. "Hello, Alex."
"Hi James," Alex replied and bounced a little in place. "Glad to see you still work here. Got a minute?"
"You need to order a drink first," James replied, a small smile tugging at his lips.
"I've had like five coffees already tho," Alex told him.
"In a row?" Alex held up a hand and wobbled it, making James laugh pitifully. "Who let you drink five coffees in a row?"
"My new roommate," Alex said with a grin. "He has a coffee machine. I quite like him."
"Oh lord, that poor soul," James nearly whispered. "I get off in about an hour, but a friend was coming to pick me up."
"You mean your booooooyfriiiiiiiend?" a co-worker said as she popped up from the cabinet she was cleaning below. She flashed Alex a grin when she saw him. "Oh shit, it's your first boyfriend!" she laughed.
"First boyfriend," Alex asked as he looked between James and the girl he recognized as Mimi, James's coworker. Alex put on dramatic voice and added, "I thought I was his only boyfriend?! James! What's this I hear about you having..." He dramatically pressed the back of his hand to his own forehead. "Another Lover?!"
"Oh no," James sighed.
"You said I was your most passionate lover ever, was I still not enough?! Oh, is my sweet Caribbean caramel body just...Not to your tastes?!"
"Well, it would seem I'm just a little more fond of chocolate."
Alex's eyes flashed and he grinned at James who smirked quietly back at him. "Daaaaark?"
"Milk."
"Ooooo. Tall?"
"And handsome."
"I thought I was handsome?"
"You're scrappy. He's...a little more sophisticated."
"I can be sophisticated!"
"But you're still pushy. Besides, he's a Virginian, like me."
"Ahh I see. Easier to take home to mom and pop then, eh?"
"Yeah."
"You ask him out yet?"
"I get the feeling he wants to ask me."
"Has he asked you?"
"Not yet."
"So ask him out!"
James shook his head. "I'm letting him case me until I catch him," he replied.
"That makes no sense," Alex huffed.
"If I chase him, he'll run and I'll never catch him. So I have to let him chase me."
"What if he wants you to chase him?"
"Oh, he does. But that's exactly what all his other suitors do, it's what he's used to."
"And if you do exactly what all his other suitors do, he wouldn't distinguish you from any of the rest of them."
"Exactly."
"Huh," Alex mused, thinking that over. "That's kind of cleaver. I'll have to remember that."
"What do you want to drink, Alex?"
"Do I have to order a drink? I really just wanted to talk."
"The fee for mt therapy is one large drink, Alex. You know this."
"Well, what do you recommend?"
"I recommend you don't get any more coffee if you've already had five cups. Would you like me to make you a strawberry and cream frap? They're really good."
Alex sighed and nodded, even tho he was sick to death of the taste of strawberries and whipped cream. It was too common a request in his line of work; but of course, James didn't know that and Alex's wasn't about to lie about having a food allergy when he didn't, lest it come back and bite him in the ass somehow. He fished out some money and handed it to the barista, the carefully filed away the change he was given.
"So," James said, moving down the line since it was slow to fill Alex's order. "Tell me about your woes."
"I upset my new roommate already."
"Oh noooo," James said with mock concern as he measured out the ingredients for the drink. He just thought Alex was being melodramatic, as he was sometimes prone to do. "I think that's a record, Alex. Didn't you just move in yesterday?"
"Less the 24 hours, shit you might be right. When was the first time I upset you?"
"You can't upset me Alex, I'm unfuckwithable."
Alex chuckled. "That's not a word."
"You said it was a word when we were playing Scrabble that one time."
"And you told me it wasn't and you wouldn't let me have it."
James smiled at him as he turned the blender on and allowed the drink to mix for a moment. As he stopped the machine and began pouring Alex's drink into a cup he said, "Well, maybe it is a word now."
"Then you need to concede that I won that game."
"The thing about language is that it's constantly changing and evolving, Alex. What wasn't a word one day can find itself becoming a word the more people begin to use it in their everyday lives."
"Absolute fucking balderdash."
James slid Alex his drink and handed him a straw as he leaned over his side of the pickup counter. "I think someone is just mad that they lost a little game of Scrabble."
"I think someone is just smug they think they won because they wouldn't let their then roommate have an ingenious word that they've now stolen and used against said roommate," Alex said with a smirk.
"Hurts to have your own work turned against you, eh?"
"I tire of talking about my woes," Alex said with a dramatic flourish, nearly tipping the drink all over himself. He caught it just in time though and licked off what little had made it up and out the hole at the top of the domed lid. "Oh, this isn't that bad...but tell me about this boy you like. What's his name? What's he like?"
"His name is Thomas," James said, moving away to do some cleaning of his own. "He started coming in two months ago and we got to talking."
"About what?"
"Well, Virginia at first. How much we miss it." James ignored the way Alex made a face of disgust. "Where our families are from. They're actually pretty close, just an hour drive away."
"That'll make the holidays convenient."
"I don't think he's ready to bring me home to his family."
"Why not? You're a catch."
"Thomas says he has a big family."
"How big?"
"Fifteen kids."
Alex choked on the sip he was swallowing. "Holy shit! Fifteen Kids?!"
"They're not all his full siblings."
"Jesus," Alex sighed. "Thank god for that, I can't imagine his mother would have been too happy otherwise. Also, aren't you an only child?"
"I am."
"Think you can handle a huge family like that?" Alex smirked. "It's gotta be quite chaotic at dinner."
"I imagine so, but only ten of them are still at home. Thomas says he has two full sisters, one older then him and one younger. Then there's his four step siblings from when his mother remarried, that brought him two more sisters and two little brothers. Then they had three more kids, those are his half siblings of course, and he got another two sisters and another brother. And then they adopted three more girls and two more boys. They just adopted the youngest one nine months ago, Thomas met him for the first time when he went to visit over the summer."
Alex sighed and shook his head, still in disbelief at the large number of siblings this Thomas fellow had to contend with. He'd lived for a time in a group home that had housed 12 other minors and then himself, so Alex was well aware of what it was like to be one voice in a sea of many but seeing as he'd also decided to make his stay there as short as humanly possible he couldn't fathom having to be raised and brought up in a family that big. He also wondered about the children that were being adopted into it. As a kid from the foster system himself he'd seen both the good and the bad side of where wards of the state wound up. "Do you think they're doing the right thing?" Alex asked. "Taking in more kids when they got so many already?"
"He showed me pictures," James replied. "I didn't get the feeling that any of his siblings were unhappy. But you can ask him yourself if you'd like, he just pulled up." James nodded toward the door and Alex turned to see the same Thomas from yesterday as he pulled it open to step inside. He pushed back half of his hair and strode forward, beaming at James until right before he noticed Alex standing in his way; Alex laughed to himself as his mind played the sound of a record being ripped off a player when Thomas's smile fell off his face upon seeing him.
"Hamilton," the taller man said as he looked down on him.
Alex let go of the straw he'd been sucking from. "Thomas," he answered. "What can I do ya for?"
"You couldn't afford me," Thomas started to say but stopped when Alex snickered. "What?"
"Oh nothing. It's not important." He turned and gave James a look. "Is-thop is-hop our-yop ister-mop ilk-mop ocolate-chop?"
"The hell's the matter with you?" Thomas asked as James squinted at Alex's brightly grinning face. The barista was still salty Alex had cracked his secret code of note taking.
"Thomas, what can I get for you?" James asked, distracting the man from eyeing Alex distrustfully.
"My usual," Thomas replied, smiling at James. He waited for the barista to step back to the cash register, then turned a steely gaze back onto the smaller male standing in front of him. "So, Hamilton—"
"Call me Alex."
"Whatever. I heard you fucked with John this morning."
Alex frowned as he set his drink down. "Who told you that?"
"People talk. You want to explain your side of it?"
"I don't think I have anything to explain. Unless you wanna tell me what it is John told you?" Thomas fidgeted and Alex eyed him, suspecting it wasn't John that he had spoken to at all. Which means whatever John told Lafayette this morning had leaked out to Thomas and now he was catching heat from some twisted game of telephone. Great.
"Listen, you little shit," Thomas said lowering his voice, "John is a really good friend of mine and if you play games with him or screw with his head I'll make sure no one ever finds a single piece of your body, understand?"
"Are you threatening me?" Alex answered, bristling despite the chill of fear that nestled inside him.
"I don't make threats, Hamilton," Thomas replied coolly. "I make promises. Don't mess with John."
"You know, John's a big boy, Tommy. Why don't you let him and me figure out how we wanna deal with each other and you can step right off, asshole."
Thomas opened his mouth to reply but a hand on his arm caused him to turn the glare he was fixing on Alex onto James. Unflinchingly, the barista held out his finished drink order and softly said, "I'm off for the day, we can go now, Thomas."
"The other two are out in the car," Thomas told him, his voice resuming a casual conversational tone and his glare was gone in a blink. "So you'll get to meet the besties, finally. But we'll have to throw Lafayette in the back of the truck, my cabin only holds three."
"Oh, I can sit in the back, I don't mind," James replied, smiling at Alex as Thomas widely shook his head.
"Nonsense, you'll sit in the front with me. The boys can play rock-paper-scissors for the other seat if they want, but driver gets final say."
"Well, if you insist, Thomas."
"I do."
"Have you met my friend Alex?" James said, gesturing to the other male and watching Thomas's reaction.
"I have," Thomas replied pleasantly, but Alex could hear the hesitation to say anything more in it.
"We shared a room," Alex offered, grinning at the jealous look he received. "Last semester, we were roommates. So I think if anyone wanted to know anything at all about James, they would have a harder time finding a better source of information then me."
"Haha, I think I'll be okay. We should really get going now, James."
"Alex, would you like to come with us? I can show you that thing we were talking about earlier."
"Oh, of course!" Alex replied before Thomas could block him. "I have nothing better to do then pal around with some buds. And Thomas and I can get to know each other better. After all, I'm roommates with his best friend now."
"Oh, small world," James said pleasantly. "Then I assume you'll be coming to his party?"
"Party?" Alex looked to Thomas who grinned at him in a way that clearly told Alex he didn't want him to come.
"Oh, just a very private get-together I host at the start of the year, to welcome everyone back to school. Strictly invited guests only."
"Wow, I've never been to such an exclusive college party," Alex replied, pretending he didn't catch the hidden meaning in the man's stressed words. "I'd love to come, sounds like John and I would have a great time."
"Great," Thomas said through gritted teeth. "I'll text you the details later."
Not one to be brushed off so easily, Alex pulled out his phone and opened up a new text message, then waited expectantly for Thomas to give him his number. With reluctance, Thomas recited the number from memory not daring to use a fake number in case James called him out on it, and forced himself to grin as Alex shot him a text message that just said, You're not the only one who can make vague little promises. James is MY good friend. Be good to him.
"Got it?" Alex asked him.
"Got it," Thomas replied.
"Good."
"We should get going," Thomas said, moving toward the door as he pocketed his phone.
"What was all that about?" James whispered to Alex as they moved to follow but the other male just waved dismissively. "Alex, I know how to read between the lines."
"We can talk later," Alex said. He decided he'd warn James about Thomas's attempt to threaten him, even though he got the distinct feeling it was little more then hot air. Thomas struck him as the kind of guy who was used to people giving him what he wanted, and using idle threats or intimidation to get what he wanted when they didn't. He wasn't like Aaron who could find out everything about you with a few strokes of a keyboard or deport a man with a click of his mouse and Alex relaxed knowing that if things came to blows at least he had Aaron on his side. But then, Alex doubted it would come to that. As he calmed in the wake of his brush with Thomas, he realized what the threat really meant; just that John was someone he cared a lot about and wanted to protect. Alex would have probably said the same thing if their roles were somehow reversed. It still rubbed him the wrong way, but hey, he didn't even have intentions of messing with John. He knew it would be fine. He told himself it would be fine. He really thought it would be fine.
END CHAPTER