Winged Cupid Painted Blind Chapter 22 - Beauty is Bought by Judgment of the Eye
A/N- Since it has been a minute since I have updated this I thought some reminders were needed, the story is taking place in 1992. Kevin and Nat are seniors 17 years of age about to turn 18 and Edd is 14 about to turn 15 in a week when we last left them. I will apologize in advance to you all, but the chapter is kind of political in statement with the current mode of the country, I broached it earlier with Soren in a previous chapter but feel it needs more discussion. Rave belongs to KirKurryArt/Eyugho
Edd spent a few hours that Sunday over at Nat's house learning a few of the fundamentals he would need to know before they would teach him self-defense, for example they explained the different weight lifting exercises they were going to do to help him build muscle and endurance. They also showed him the proper way to position his feet and body along with how to form a fist, with so little experience he kept wrapping his fingers around his thumbs, they explained to him that he would break it the first time he punched someone like that. The last portion of today's lesson from his two trainers was how to properly stretch his muscles before working out, to make sure your body was ready for the strain of the workout before lifting. It was during these stretches that the conversation turned from lesson to light conversation. Edd and Kevin were on the floor facing each other with their legs spread apart stretching to touch their toes, while Nat lay upon the bed separating the stems and seeds from his pot, prepping to role a joint to relax to once they were done. "So Edd," the smaller boy stops looking at his toe as he stretched and turns his head to face Nat, "Once we turn you from Prince Adam into He-Man are you going to beat the shit out of Tim?"
"No Nat," Edd comes back up and stretches toward the other toe, "My intention is not to seek out violence, but to prevent it from happening to me."
"Good answer," Kevin says looking toward his boyfriend from his stretched position.
"If I had said yes would you still be helping me Nat?"
"Nope, there are enough bullies around already," He pulls a paper from the pack and folds it to form a pocket, "I was pretty sure that was your answer anyways, but you never know, you could have surprised me." Picking up the separated bud from the tray he begins to sprinkle it into the pocked he had just made.
The boys grab onto each other's forearms and Edd stretches forward while Kevin leans back, "Do you mind if I ask why you so readily agreed to this, I mean yes we're friends but." Edd leans backwards and Kevin stretches forward, "With the schedule you've proposed this will eat up a lot of your time." Nat's suggested schedule was a simple one, they would weight train for two hours focusing on endurance the first half then strength the second half, then thirty minutes to an hour of self-defense depending on how Edd felt after the exercise. They would do this every other day as to give Edd's muscles some time to heal in-between workouts to help prevent injury since he wasn't use to the strain of weight training.
"Just a promise I made to myself some time ago, to help those that needed it." In all honesty Edd couldn't think of a moment when Nat had been a bully or even mean to someone that didn't deserve it. As a matter of fact from Edd's observations in the hallways Nat would step in with some farce or another when he saw someone getting severely bullied. Either claiming he needed to "discuss" why the brainiac hadn't done his homework for him yet or use his clout to convince the bullies to leave the dork for him to take care of. Leading the prey away from the predators safely before letting them know not to let it slip what he had done for them, this helped maintain an image for himself while keeping him in a position to help people.
"Sounds like theirs an interesting story behind that," now done with their stretches the boys relax, Kevin moves so he is now sitting next to Edd leaning against Nat's dresser. Wrapping an arm around the boy as Edd puts his head in his lap while lying on his back.
"Oh, there is."
"A tale of betrayal and deceit?" Kevin asks.
"Of a great love and its tragic lose?" Edd adds, Nat thought the both of them were acting like elementary school kids settling down to hear a Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale.
"Something like that," He puts the joint into his mouth and lights it, takes his hit then leans over to pass it to Kevin, "You sure you two want to hear this?" The two of them nodded as Kevin took his hit and passed the joint to Edd. "Alright, well our story begins back in the glory days of 1988, and the hero of our story had just begun his eight grade year in school."
"God I was only in the fifth grade," Edd passes back the joint to Nat.
Nat gives him a shut the fuck up look, "A probably not a pub on your balls yet."
"Hey I had pubs," Edd huffed and Kevin snickered into his hand.
"May I continue?" He looked at Edd who was smacking Kevin on the arm playfully, and settled back down a moment later, "As I was saying, the hero of our story was a handsome lad who had carved his niche into the schools social structure using his own two hands. He was a bully and very good at what he did, praying upon the weak to further his own selfish gains of climbing the social ladder and taking the easy life of others doing his homework for him. A different girl under his arm every so often as though he had something to prove to the world by doing it, but in truth he was trying to fill a hole within himself with something he could not find."
"Sounds like he just wasn't in the right angle," Kevin said making a motion with his right hand as thought he was bending someone over in front of him while making an exaggerated sex face, unable to go further with the joke due to Edd's head in his lap.
"How rude," Nat replies in mock repulsion, "But seriously there was something missing and he didn't know what it was. That is until he went to the fall play the high school drama club had that October, his current piece of arm candy dragging him there for a date. The play was a Midsummer's Night Dream and the boy who played Puck was stunning, as he danced around the stage beguiling the two sets of star crossed lovers with his fairy tricks."
"Sounds like the boy had it bad," Edd said taking in the look within Nat's eyes.
"It was like being hit with a sledge hammer to the face for the boy once he realized why he was so intrigued with the older boy. The actor was in the eleventh grade and already getting lead parts, he was that good, the boy must have seen that play every night it was open to the public that season. Each night he hoped to talk with the actor, if for only just a minute, each night he chickened out at the last minute, his brain and heart fighting a battle that his brain was slowly loosing."
"Sounds rough," Kevin said under his breath he was now hooked on seeing how this story ended, praying for a happy ending.
"Probably about as rough as you had it only a short time ago when you fought with yourself about Edd," He motioned to the boy in Kevin's lap. "But eventually, on the last night of the play as a matter of fact, the boy worked up the courage to actually stop the actor and start a conversation."
"What happened," Kevin asked excitedly.
"I no uncertain terms the actor told him to fuck off because he was late to the closing party, but that didn't deter our hero." Nat laughed the beginning of the next part, "He told his father to follow the actor's car because he was a friend he was going to hang out with for the closing party. Dropping his son off at the Ponderosa with a twenty in hand our hero, with determination in his eyes goes in and orders the salad bar and plops right down next to the object of his affections. Which only earned him a few more choices words from the older boy, but he did let him stay and even included him in their little get together, telling everyone that the hero was their number one fan."
"Was it true love for the both of them from then on?" Edd asked with a hopeful look in his eyes.
"Not exactly, the road was bumpy and harsh for the two of them, age differences, different schools, social standings and crowds made it difficult for them to see each other."
"He did at least get his number that night?" Kevin was just as excited as Edd was for this romantic tale.
"Yes of course he did and they quickly became friends, each one stepping on egg shells with each other in regards to anything further. The boy wanted more, the actor seemed to want to keep that at arm's length by playing dumb to the hero's advances. Eventually though he had enough, and a full six months later from when they first met and our hero was then fourteen, he made it clear what his feelings were by shoving his tongue down the actor's throat." Nat laughed a little, "Well it seemed more romantic to the hero at the time than it actually turned out to be."
Edd lets out an aw, "But I still think its romantic, to make yourself so vulnerable to prove your love."
"Thank you Edd, I do to, and for a time the two of them were on cloud nine doing everything together, pushing their friends aside so they could spend as much time together as they could." Nat lets out a sigh and the saddest look that Kevin has ever seen enters his eyes, "Unfortunately for a star crossed lovers the actors parents got suspicious of their relationship, asking the boy straight out if he was gay. The actor denied it with every ounce of his being, knowing how religious and very republican his parents were, sure they would disown him if they found out. This caused the boy to distance himself from our hero, still being the summer between eight and ninth grade he had no way of getting a hold of him except going to his house, and every attempt was met with a suspicious looking mother or father telling him the boy wasn't home. Eventually they told our hero that their son never wanted to see him again, apparently their thought process was if anything funny was going on it must be this boys fault."
Nat wipes a tear that had not fallen yet from his eyes, "In a moment of desperation our hero sends his love a letter in the mail with no return address, hoping that his parents wouldn't notice it and just hand it to him. Oh how naïve he was, he hand delivered all the proof they needed that their son was exactly what they feared right into their hands." Edd and Kevin were on edge at this moment hoping that like Cinderella once released from the evil step mothers grasp the actor could be reunited with his love, but Nat's words spoke another truth. "They shipped him off to Love in Action," Nat started to quietly cry at this moment, "I only know this for he somehow found a way to call me before he left, so I knew he didn't leave me on purpose. I begged him to run away with me, but somehow his parents had gotten into his mind," he taps the side of his head with his finger, "And made him believe he was sick and needed help, and that this place was going to give it to him. I never heard from him again, I found out a few months later that he committed suicide while in their care."
Kevin and Edd pull him to them and enveloped him in a hug, though it was an old wound it still brought pain to Nat, he felt responsible for Rave's untimely death. Telling himself that if he had just been smarter about it and waited for school to begin again they could have probably made it through that minor separation, and Rave would still been here. "I did some digging shortly afterwards," Nat said through sniffles, "And found out that those places pretty much torture you while they try to convert you, shamming you into hating that part of yourself. What kind of parents would put their only son in a place like that, when they even tell you that there's a fifty percent chance your kid will commit suicide."
"I don't know Nat," Kevin squeezed a little harder on the hug.
"Assholes I tell, fucking assholes, you should love your kid no matter who they are, at least that's the Christian way I was taught." The three of them stayed like that for several minutes allowing Nat to work the pain the memories had brought to him out of his system before pulling himself out of their embrace. "Sorry guys, I didn't mean to get all emotional on you."
"Its fine Nat," Edd said and Kevin confirmed, getting up Nat lights a cigarette and opens the window in his room to let the smoke out. For the next couple of hours before they took Edd home, the boys sat around and talked a little more, trying to cheer their friend up as best they could while trying to patch the hole in his heart with their love for him.
A/N- I have personally never been in one of those places and therefore cannot attest to whether love in action does the shock therapy or other things that can be construed as torture. But a lot of places that do conversation therapy do things like that to make a person view the gender they are currently attracted to negatively, and reward the person when they are shown a member of the opposite sex, thus thinking they are giving positive reinforcement. And yes the suicide rate for places like that can reach fifty percent, and those who survive are left scarred but not changed.