"So...are you guys, like, all right?" Trent asked as he pulled on some fresh clothes.
They'd finished with the shower, dried, and walked back into the bedroom to find everyone in basically the same position they'd left them. They had definitely been talking while he and Jess had been showering, but they shut up as soon as they came back in.
"We're good," Bea replied. "Just...it's stunned silence. In a good way. We're blown away by how fucking hot that was."
"I should probably go, to keep this from getting any weirder," Candy said. She walked over and gave Trent a hug and a kiss on the mouth, then addressed both him and Jess. "Thank you for letting me be involved in this. I know that it was a deeply personal and private thing, and I promise, I will never speak of it again to anyone else." She turned to Jessica now, who seemed to wilt slightly under her gaze, which was surprisingly intense. "Jessica, you have been handed an opportunity that, honestly? Too many people get. Whatever happened between you and Trent, it hurt him, it clearly left scars, but he has allowed you back in his life. He's given you another chance...don't fuck it up, Jessica. There's a very good chance that Trent might be the best man to ever enter your life."
"I...will keep that in mind," Jessica replied awkwardly.
"God, I hope that isn't true," he muttered.
"So do I," Candy agreed, "but you are a very good man. If I was single and twenty, I'd do...well, exactly what Mae's doing right now: fuck your brains out, share you with my friends, and never let go. Shit, if I was single now I'd do that."
"Ugh, mom…" Mae groaned.
She giggled. "Right, right. Well...good luck with everything, Jessica."
"Thank you, Mrs-um, Candy."
"You're welcome." She walked out.
"I...should go, too," Claire murmured.
"Why?" Bea asked.
"I think she needs to go masturbate," Ann said, grinning.
Claire sighed. "Oh whatever! I just-ugh! Goddamnit, now I wish he was my fucking brother just so that I could have a brother I actually want to fuck."
"You know, we can pretend," Trent replied.
"It's a lot of fun," Bea agreed. "He's very good at acting."
"Hmm. Well...I will take that into consideration. Now, I'm going to go. Thanks for inviting me. Trent, if you need anything, let me know. And if you want to...pretend, also let me know."
"I will. Thanks for the help, Claire," he replied.
She left and he looked at Jessica, who had finished getting dressed and was interacting with her phone.
"So what's gonna happen now?" Mae asked.
"Jessica is gonna leave. She's getting an Uber. After that...um...I'll let you know," he replied.
"Cool. I'm...going to take a shower," Bea said.
"Have fun," Mae said, giggling.
"Shut it," Bea growled, and walked out of the room.
Trent looked at Tabby, who was sitting on the bed now. "Shit, um...I'll-we can talk after I see my sister off. Sorry."
"Trent, I came down here to help you," she replied, "do what needs doing. I'm fine."
"Thank you. So much."
"You're welcome."
"Okay, it's on the way," Jessica said.
"Are you sure you don't need, like, clothes or something?" Ann asked.
"I appreciate it, but I'm going to buy some replacement stuff at the airport, and I should be back home before midnight tonight."
"All right, then."
"Really though, um...thank you. Shit, should've said that while everyone was still here…"
"It's fine, we feel your appreciation," Mae said. "If we didn't, believe me, this would be going down a lot different right now."
"Oh. Right. That's a good point. Well...I hope you all are happy, and everything works out," Jessica replied.
They said their goodbyes, and Trent walked her downstairs, out to the front step. They sat down beside each other.
"This is so weird," she muttered after a moment. "Suddenly feels like we're kids again, sitting here like this, waiting for someone to pick us up."
He chuckled. "Yeah, that's true." A moment of silence went by. "So...you are good, right? With everything?"
"I mean, yeah, basically. I think I'll need some time to...process everything, but yeah, I'm happy. This...went way better than I could have even dreamed. Also, Trent," she whispered, looking around really quick before leaning closer to him, "your. Fucking. Dick."
He laughed. "Okay, okay, we should...be careful," he muttered. "But I feel the same way about your pussy."
"I can't believe I let my actual brother creampie me," she whispered.
"I can't either. It was fucking amazing. It was...different. Than anyone else."
"Better?"
"I'm not answering that."
She smirked. "Yeah, okay. So...when am I going to, uh, visit again?"
"Why don't you put some time aside over winter break?" he suggested. "Obviously I'll need to check with everyone, but you could come do this again, except it'll be expected and much calmer."
"That would be fantastic, and I will plan on it," she replied. They both looked over as they heard a vehicle approaching and a moment later it parked in their driveway. "Well," she said, standing, "time to go."
"Yep." He walked her to the car and they shared a long, long hug and, before he could realize what she was doing, Jessica gave him a quick kiss on the mouth.
He sighed. "Jessica."
"Sorry, can't help it. See you later...I love you."
"I love you, too," he said.
Jess lingered for just a minute longer, then she got in the car and was gone. Trent watched her go, not entirely sure what he was feeling. The only things he knew for sure were: Candy was definitely right, there was no going back from this, and that was some of the best pussy he'd ever had. That had been an orgasm for the ages.
A couple moments after the car was gone, Trent headed back inside. He found Mae, Ann, Molly, and Tabby waiting for him. He could hear Bea upstairs showering still. He came to stand before them in the living room, looking at them uncertainly.
"So...you okay?" Ann asked.
"I'm not sure," he admitted. "Um...I think maybe I need to be alone for a few hours. Ugh, fuck, but you just got here Tabby and came all this way-"
"Trent," she interrupted serenely, "I chose to come down here for you. To help with your mental health. So do what makes sense to you...that being said, I do have to leave tomorrow morning. So be ready to fuck me in the ass tonight."
"I am very ready for that...can I have an anal threesome with you and Bea?" he asked.
She laughed. "Yes. Although I'm not, like, doing anything with her, exactly."
"Totally cool and thank you. I'm...going to go to my office, I have to work on lyrics."
"If you gotta, then you gotta," Mae said. "Seriously though, if you need or want anything, you have to tell us. This is the shit we're here for, this is the shit we've been talking up for six months, being here for each other, during the downtime but also when it really counts."
"You are exactly right, Mae, and thank you, everyone, a lot. And I will not hide if I need help," he replied.
"Do you promise?" Mae pressed.
He couldn't help but chuckled. "I promise."
"Okay. Go write lyrics. I'm really curious about them, because the stuff you showed me so far that you wrote down is, like, amazing."
He paused. "Did I show you?"
"Yeah, you were stoned off your ass," she replied.
"Oh, right. Well...okay, will you let Bea know?"
"We will let Bea know," Ann replied.
"Okay. Um. I'm going to go upstairs and do this."
"Good luck," Molly said.
Trent nodded and headed up to his office. His laptop was on his desk. Good. He turned it on, then headed for the bedroom and grabbed his journal. He sat back down, signed in, and opened up the lyrics he'd written so far. When he had first begun entertaining the barest hints of an idea of writing lyrics for Bea and Jackie to make an instrumental track to and perform, he'd been envisioning something early Linkin Park-ish.
He looked over what he had written. Rereading it, he spent about five minutes making some minor adjustments, and finally titled it. He'd been wrestling with the title the whole time, but now that he'd just reread everything, it seemed obvious: Fighting Myself. He titled it, then put it in an e-mail and sent it to both Bea and Jackie.
Once that was done, he opened a new document and set his journal on the desk, opening it to the first page. He frowned as he saw the words. They were written in a shaky hand, scrawled chaotically, but at least legibly. He stared at that page for what felt like a very long time, feeling almost locked into his own head.
Slowly, he set it aside and typed ASHAMED.
He paused, then added (OF BEING BORN).
Trent prepared to think about these lyrics, about what came first, what was important, what wasn't…
Except that it was all important.
And he didn't have to think.
He began typing:
I know I shouldn't have come here
But I've got nowhere to go
I know I shouldn't call after dark
But I've got no one
No one in this world
And it just kept coming.
It was like bloodletting. Like lancing an infected wound. The bloody infection leaked out, burst out, because his body was expelling it, expelling it violently.
It was like it had been here, waiting to be discovered, all this time.
Pain. It was a lot of things. It was rage, it was anxiety. Sadness. Despair. Regret. Jealousy. Shame. Guilt. Humiliation. It was so many things, but mostly it was pain. Pain hung over it all like a blackened miasma, like a descending mist of agony. It had soaked into everything, good and bad. Writing this was like getting a peek. It was like cresting a hill you'd been making your way up for a really long time, knowing that what was on the other side was bad, really bad, and yet you still weren't prepared for just how bad it was.
However bad he'd thought it was going to be, this was worse.
Because this felt liberating, but this hurt.
Every word he punched in, he remembered.
He remembered his drunk, coked out father, and how loud he was. He could recall, with perfect clarity, the exact timbre of his father's voice when he had crossed the threshold into the redline of true anger. He remembered how good he was at conveying that cold, dangerous fury.
He remembered his mother, flying into a rage every time he cried starting in middle school onward. Evidently, that was the cut off age for crying for boys in her mind, though even now he remembered her being a bit harsh in elementary school.
He remembered his brother, and the bullying. All the bullying.
He didn't think of his sister as he wrote this.
It did hurt, it ached and burned and cut and scraped and tore, but it felt so good at the same time. It was liberation. It was truth. It was the harshest yet purest expression of raw emotion he had ever created in his entire life. It was an act of creation the likes of which he had never experienced, nor knew existed. It felt like performing surgery on himself without anesthetic, pulling cancerous tumors out of his body and feeling a burst of relief each time he worked one out.
At some point, he thought of Gregory House, sitting alone in his bathtub, sweating and crying as he sliced his own leg open to do something similar.
The lyrics he wrote weren't just sad, they were angry. They were indifferent, at times. They were pained. In his head, he could her some ghostly Chino Moreno-like vocals. Jackie said she could do it, for both her and Bea. He was so curious what this was going to sound like. He was curious about all of this, how it was going to shake out.
But in all honestly, what he was most curious about...was the notion that something about this was somehow off. Not wrong, necessarily, but off. In some way he had never felt before, except that it almost felt like…
No, but it couldn't be.
It couldn't be.
It felt like the Black Goat.
Only no, that wasn't right. It didn't feel like the Black Goat, it felt like...awareness. Like something was aware of him, looking at him from some invisible place. Something similar to the Black Goat, but without the nebulous evil presence.
What did that mean?!
Trent was still pondering this when it occurred to him that he had finished. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he did. He was actually panting, like he'd just run a ways or carried something heavy. He realized he was sweating. And thirsty as hell. And he had to take a leak really bad. He looked at the time and realized three hours had somehow passed.
"Fuck," he whispered, scrolling slowly back up the document.
He'd written a lot. But it wasn't done, he realized. He was done for tonight, but this still wasn't finished. He'd laid the skeleton and most of the meat in, but it still needed more to be...whole. To be what he was intending it to be. Trent closed down his laptop and got up.
He was done for the night, and it was time to get some anesthetic for this surgery of the self.