warnings: references to homophobic language and child abuse
Chapter 6: Wolfgang & Lito
In which Lito has a nightmare
Lito gets nightmares.
Of course he does, everyone on the streets does. Wolfgang does. Felix does.
But with Felix, Wolfgang always knows what to do — how lightly to touch him, how softly to speak when he wakes up hyperventilating, choking, cowering away from people who aren't there. With Felix it's effortless.
With Lito, it's... it's different. Lito wakes up crying. He cries quietly, so quietly that Wolfgang is pretty sure Felix sleeps right through it. He cries like someone who doesn't want anyone to hear.
So Wolfgang lies in bed silently and listens, day after day, as Lito wakes up crying, scoots to the edge of the mattress, and sits there sniffling for an hour, his face in his hands and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
Until one day Lito doesn't just wake up crying. One day he wakes up sobbing, "Papa, no, please, no, Papa, I'm sorry."
And— Well, Wolfgang knows all about shitty fathers. So this time, when Lito goes to sit on the edge of the mattress, Wolfgang does too.
o - o - o
For a while, neither of them speaks.
"I'm sorry," Lito says at last, with a miserable-sounding sniff. "I woke you up, didn't I?"
"No," Wolfgang says automatically. "Well, yes. But I wake up at everything." He glances at Lito, then carefully fixes his eyes on the boarded-up windows across the church. "Look," he says lightly. "I don't know if you want to talk about it or not, but if you do..." He clears his throat. "It could be helpful. Maybe."
Lito doesn't respond immediately. "No," is what he says eventually, "I— I don't need to talk about it. It's really nothing. God, I'm so pathetic, always crying at my stupid dreams."
"Lots of people cry at dreams," Wolfgang shrugs.
"Do you?" asks Lito, in a voice that suggests he already knows the answer is no.
Wolfgang glances over, unsure how to explain that the only reason why he doesn't cry is because he can't, because once when he was nine his fucking father beat him half to death for crying like a little bitch and ever since then it's like his eyes just forgot how to make tears. "No," he says at last. "I don't."
"You see?" Lito lets out a watery sort of laugh. "You know, my dad would like you. He always said crying was for little girls."
Wolfgang feels his jaw clench.
"He wanted a son like you, not me," Lito goes on. "Someone tough and strong, you know? I was never like that. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. My dad said acting was for fags." He gives Wolfgang a small, sad, lopsided smile. "Little did he know."
"Your dad sounds like a piece of shit," Wolfgang observes, but Lito shakes his head.
"He wasn't really that bad," he says. "Just very religious and—" He shakes his head again. "My mom left when I was ten. We got pretty close after that. I used to tell him everything," he says, then laughs bitterly. "Well, everything except about being gay."
He looks away, swallows. Wolfgang waits.
"I kissed a boy at my school's Winter Formal dance," Lito says finally, in a small voice. "And then I thought... well, that made it official somehow, you know? I felt like, I had to tell my dad. And I guess I hoped that... since I was his son, he might make an exception. Only he didn't. He kicked me out. So—" Lito's voice breaks, and he exhales slowly. "Well, anyway, that's what I dream about. About him telling me not to come back, he doesn't want to see me ever again."
"Fucking bastard," Wolfgang mutters, as Lito scrubs at his face with his sleeve.
"See, now I'm crying again," Lito moans. "Fuck. Why can't I just turn it off?" He looks at Wolfgang, his eyelashes glistening with tears. "Can you teach me your secret?" he asks. He says it like he's joking, but Wolfgang knows he's not.
He takes a deep breath. "Sometimes," he says slowly, "I get this feeling in my body. Like, a tightness? In my chest and throat and— heart, it feels like." He makes a fist, presses it to his sternum. "And I know... that my body wants to cry." He can feel Lito's eyes on him, but he stares straight ahead, straight at the broken stained-glass windows. "But I can't," he concludes.
"Why not?" asks Lito, softly.
"Because my father was like yours," shrugs Wolfgang, still not meeting Lito's eye. "Said crying was for bitches."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry."
Wolfgang feels it then, the tightness, the unbearable feeling that somewhere deep inside him there are emotions that he's lost the ability to process.
Suddenly Lito starts to sob. "I'm sorry," he repeats, through tears, "I don't— I don't know why I'm crying—"
But Wolfgang knows, somehow, and Lito is crying for him.
And somewhere in his chest, the tightness lifts.