Page 62 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 9-12
“I’m never going back to Dalia. None of us can. After Gramps, Howser was her favorite.”
What neither of them needed to say was what kind of horror Dalia would reign down on anyone who had had a part in making both Thaddeus and Howser disappear from her life.
In the car ride back to The Residency, Damian checked his own messages. He’d only been reading the most important. Dalia was blowing up both the app he’d told her to use and his regular texts.
Inside the app, he wrote a curt reply detailing the health of each child and referenced the case number the detective had given him the day before for Howser. She replied almost at once, spewing rage and accusations, cursing Armada and calling him names.
Damian stared at his screen.
There was nothing to say. Nothing left to say. She wouldn’t change. It didn’t matter. How many times did he have to realize all over again it was hopeless. Pointless. He’d already said goodbye to her in the police station.
So why didn’t it feel like they were done? Why was there still this Dalia-shaped emptiness in his chest? How many times did he have to tell the little boy in his head that his big sister would never love him? When would all the hate she’d leveled at him kill his need for her love?
There were marks on his soul where she’d held him once. Imprints of love, embraces of safety. They’d turned to bruises and wounds. Keys only she could turn had been turned too far, opening chambers of his heart that had never been meant to be opened and left empty.
He should drink that poison. He could taste it on his tongue. It was too painful to remember anything warm for this woman. Hate would be easier. He needed to forget that she, too, was a victim. Forget that there had once been something precious in her touch, in her care. Forget it all and drown in the rage of what she had done. It would be so much easier.
He needed to hate her.
And some part of him already did. Just not quite enough.
At The Residency, he changed into loose pants and crawled into the foldout bed in the lounge with the TV facing the end of the bed, ready for a day of doing nothing but watching TV and cuddling in a space large enough for everyone. Jun joined him within a few minutes, wearing nothing but basketball shorts. Émeric put out finger foods, including apple strudels, and Collin brought coffee and tea before stripping down to gym shorts and crawling under the covers with Jun. Émeric settled on old cartoons and joined them for an hour before disappearing into his office. Richard came out later for a replay of a few episodes of an old sci-fi show. Jun fell asleep on Damian’s chest. Collin napped on Damian’s other side, effectively pinning him to the mattress. It was the best kind of bondage.
Around six, Damian peeled himself out of the blankets and joined Richard in the gym a few floors down. They worked out in silence, running side by side on the treadmills and then spotting each other in the weight section. He only checked his phone to see if Hypatia or Cedric had messaged. They had not.
Silence was golden.
Jun
Jun woke before dawn Sunday morning. Damian slept heavily beside him, one thick thigh over Jun’s legs, an arm around Jun’s waist. Jun stared into the dark of the unlit room. The only light was the display on the alarm clock on Damian’s desk. 5:17 a.m.
He lay there, feeling the weight of Damian’s body against his and the warmth of his breath and listening to the softness of moving air inside lungs and heartbeats tied together in mirrored nervous systems.
It would be bliss to fall back to sleep, but his dreams were clinging to him, images full of screams and rage and longing: black and gray and red emotions leaking through his bloodstream.
He eased out from under Damian’s embrace and rolled out of the bed. His phone on the desk provided a bit of light. He found a bathrobe and slippers and slipped out of the room with his computer and notebooks. The rest of the house was still asleep. He made tea in the kitchen and took his things to the lounge where he could hum bits of melody without risking waking anyone else. Artemis found him, twining between his legs and jumping on the back of the couch he chose.
“You can help.” He stroked her back. She purred, encouraging more stroking.
He fiddled with his pen between his fingers. He should write a fun summer bop, something cheerful and closer to what 5N had been known for, something popular that would hit the top of the charts and secure their place without BBB3.
Everything that had been coming out of him of late was dark, not even a heartbreak love song in the entire lot. He’d written so many of those songs, those summer fling dreams before he’d ever let himself love. Even those last two years of meeting Damian secretly had been a halfway world, neither real nor unreal, a negotiation of denials. He’d loved him, but he’d never let himself believe it was anything but a dream. Dreams were safe, securely existing amorphously beyond the present. They had no consequences, enforced no irreversible changes in one’s heart. You could love the fantasy and never risk becoming someone new.
Now he’d tasted Damian’s tears, writhed beneath his body, and made promises he’d sacrifice to keep. He’d held hands with his man for the world to see. By crossing the world and answering Jun’s call, Damian had made himself real. He’d changed what they were to each other, and he’d changed Jun. Woken him up, because while Jun had been asleep, drugged inside of Bak’s world of lies, Damian had always been real, and he’d brought Jun out of the fantasy, text by text, stolen moment by stolen moment, when Jun wasn’t even looking.
He was different.
The light summer fling, the carelessness of fantasy, wouldn’t answer his call.
Love was heavy. It came with broken glass and choices, deep groans, and cold tears. Things he’d always known, always felt, but never let touch his art, never squarely stared at. He’d changed something the moment he’d crawled out that window, leaving Bak’s assignments behind. More than his skin had been rescued from Bak’s control.
Cutting the? (dao) man’s face with the saki bottle had cut open something inside himself. He’d ripped through the curtain of everything he’d denied. It was here now, crowding everything else, years of his various selves denied, demanding time at the pen.
Dreams were now memories. Hopes were now fortresses to protect. Imaginary companions in the sun had become fellow soldiers in a war.
He scrawled words on the page, separating them into two columns. Summer sun went on the left. Winter sun went on the right.
Winter sun. He rolled the words around. The phrase evoked splintered images, sharp like solar light at high noon but cold in the black and whites, like comic books when a hero leaped through a glass window. He wrote down the sensations: black, white, glass, splintered.
