warning for suicide ideation (part v.)
you were born
seraphim. connection to the gods.
you were born
black
in the mountains,
to a mother like a child.
you were born
of heavy bones,
the ache of breaking dawn.
iii. his first semester he takes 13 credits and convinces himself it's enough. when laura gets home in the mornings she makes him breakfast, offers to walk him to the train station. he declines, every single time, but it doesn't stop her from asking every day.
when he gets home from his classes she's usually asleep. she'll wake up, briefly, and pad out to the kitchen, where he usually sets up all his stuff, laptop buzzing as he digs into calculus problems. the whole place will smell like pad thai, gyros, arepas - whatever he picked up for them on the way home. their bedroom has no door, and is approximately half-bed. no frame, piled with blankets. it smells like a cheap knock-off of what their home used to smell like.
"school okay?" she asks, and he always says, "great." on wednesdays and thursdays he gets home too late to see her; he works in one of the libraries, figures work-study will help him manage his time. it does, a little too well, and more often than not he finds himself curling up in bed alone, all his homework done, and trying to remember the exact way his mother's eyes would crinkle when she smiled.
he doesn't make friends. not really. laura pushes him, tries to get him to join clubs. he finds a non-credit figure drawing class instead, two hours every friday evening. he relearns the colors of fire and coal. he meets a boy named alec.
valencia malabe isn't introduced to them until thanksgiving, the first thanksgiving where it's just the two of them. laura doesn't bother pretending that they're doing anything akin to what they used to, and they take the train up to the bronx, trying to ignore the smells of the subway.
the malabes are dozens strong, scattered throughout the bronx. the alpha lives with her immediate family, with other members drifting in and out of their home as needed. it's larger on the inside than it looks, but even that doesn't erase the fact that there's a minimum of eleven people living in a four bedroom home. derek tries not to, really, but he can't help but remember that there were fourteen people in their home, and that exactly eleven perished.
and the malabes are not their friends, no, but it's thanksgiving, and laura's done nothing to make them dislike them, and their alpha is actually smiling at them today instead of watching them with eyes too predatory even for a werewolf.
"derek!" mireya exclaims, too loud, even if there's about two dozen people in the malabe home for the moment. there's a tall woman on her arm, about six-feet tall from where derek's seeing. he's right around 5'10, last he checked; "say hi to my sister. i was telling you about her last time you were here."
the woman - girl? - is valencia, then, and she smiles indulgently at her older sister. "what exactly were you talking about, then?" her skin is as dark as mireya's, her eyes nearly black even in the bright lighting of their home. she catches derek's eye and smiles, a tiny curl at the corner. she's pretty in a "rip your heart" kind of way, a calculating look in her eye that might come from simply being what she is in a city like new york, or from the way the hierarchy of the malabes is upkept. she says, "nice to meet you," and doesn't offer her hand.
"likewise," he says, before mireya's pulling her away to attend to some cousin or other, valencia's eyes still honed in on his.
iv. he fucks the boy from his art class.
alec's a sophomore, bronze hair and a habit of ducking his head when he smiles - he's unlike anyone derek knows, unlike all the women he's met, unlike everything he knew back in california. he didn't like guys back then, he tells himself, but he does wonder why not when he's got alec wrapped around him.
it doesn't last long. he doesn't want it to, because four months can feel like a lifetime for him. laura doesn't comment on it, though, grins slyly when she catches the new scent on him.
the house is quiet, when his scent starts to fade after finals.
"you survived," she finally says, five days into winter break, "congrats."
v. the night he takes his last final for the year ("you're a sophomore, now, you're as smart as i am!" laura had said. he'd ignored her), he takes the bus down to the hudson and just sits there for a few hours. wonders how dirty the water is, how strong the current is, how much better off laura might be if he had the audacity to throw himself in and let himself sink.
he's starting to forget what cora's favorite shows were, the songs she used to sing because she knew it would make him snap. the meals his mother used to make weren't all that appetizing, but he finds himself aching for pascina andina instead of microwaved ravioli. home doesn't exist for him, any more.
when the sun starts to set he thinks, seriously, about letting himself fall and calling it a day.
instead, he stands up, checks his backpack for his wallet, and catches a bus, then a train, back to their apartment. he walks the last half mile, walks in smelling like the docks and salt. laura watches him from beneath her fringe, doesn't ask where he's been. she curls up on top of him, that night, ear pressed to his heart. he thinks about what paige would be up to, if she'd gone to juilliard like she'd always hoped.
.
.
.