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inthewildwoodTitle: and you know it's really hard to hold your breath
Fandom: The Black Phone (Movies - Derrickson)
Summary: "Before" and "after" have become clearly delineated time periods in his mind, Before Basement and After Basement, like a line of tape running down the middle of his bedroom floor. Before when he was just Finney Blake, and After when he's something he doesn't recognize, doesn't want to look at.
Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Internalized Homophobia, Character Study
Rating: T
Finney gets in his first fight three months after - well, after. It takes that long for the mystique to wear off, for the story of the kid who killed the Grabber to fade into the background noise of gas prices and tax hikes and war in Iran. For those three months, he's more or less left alone, for better or for worse. No one wants to mess with him, but no one knows what to say either. And it's not like he had enough friends to count on two hands before, anyway. He has Gwen, who sticks close when she can, but they're on different schedules. He had Robin, but that's obviously a moot point now. So he eats lunch alone and goes straight home after school.
It's Rob Costa who starts it. Makes sense; he usually did, before. He and of his buddies slime up behind Finney one afternoon at his locker, and Rob leans in real close so that Finney can feel moist breath on the back of his neck. "Hey Finney," he says, and Finney doesn't need to turn around to picture the gloating grin on his face, "I heard the Grabber stuck his dick in your mouth, huh?" He poked him in the small of his back with one knobby finger. "Huh?"
"Heard he stuck a finger in your ass, too," his buddy adds. Finney, who had frozen with a hand on his science textbook as soon as he felt someone coming up behind him, clenches his fist at his side but says nothing. He's glad they can't see his face, which is doing all kinds of things he didn't give it permission for. The finger at his back - which, now that he thinks of it, might belong to Rob's buddy rather than Rob himself - prods again, harder. "Well? Did he?"
"Bet he did," Rob says. His voice dropped the earliest out of all the guys in their grade, and he sounds almost like a grown man when he wants to. Sounds more like a grown man than some grown men, even - Finney slams the door on that thought before it can enter. "And you liked it, right? I bet you fuckin' did."
"Look at him," his friend jeers, "of course he did. He probably gets hard thinking about it, huh? Bet he's got a boner right now. Why don't you turn around so we can see?"
Finney does not turn around. Finney does not do anything except stare at the peeling spine of his textbook and try to go somewhere else in his head, somewhere that doesn't smell of floor polish and gym shoes and the sweat of a hundred kids all mingling together into a rank miasma. Problem is, he can't think of anyplace to go in his head that isn't worse than this.
"Oh, you for sure liked it," Rob said. Another poke to the spine. "You were always such a fucking fa-"
That's when he breaks and takes a swing - although swing isn't even really the right word for it. It's more like a wild, two-handed flailing motion, accompanied by a yell that dredges itself up from somewhere beneath his solar plexus. It takes Rob enough by surprise that Finney is able to bear him down to the floor, punching and kicking and biting with all the strength he never knew he had, strength he's pretty sure he didn't have until recently. Rob's so shocked that he doesn't even hit back at first, and by the time he tries, it's way too late; Finney's already bloodied his nose, slammed his head against the linoleum, ripped out a chunk of his hair. If his buddy hangs around to watch, he doesn't seem driven by any urge to jump in and pull Finney off. Not that he'd be able to, even if he tried. In the end, it takes two teachers to break it up, one grabbing his wrists while the other hoists him in the air, and he's still howling and thrashing all the while.
He doesn't get in trouble for it, is the thing. They pack Rob off to the nurse's office and send Finney home early, but there's no call to his dad, no threat of detention or suspension. They handle him so gingerly, now. And, truth be told, they all know what Rob's like; even though Finney refuses to say what the fight was about, they can probably put two and two together that Rob said something that deserved a punch in the nose, even if they wouldn't admit it themselves.
He's glad they don't press him as to what caused the fight. It's not that he's ashamed to admit it, not exactly - he's already had to recite every little detail of what happened in that basement to the cops, and then to a court-appointed psychiatrist, and then to the school counsellor for good measure. So it isn't like they don't know. And bringing that kind of shit up unasked for is probably justification enough for getting beat. The fact that the Grabber's fingermarks are still all over him, blazing in neon for everyone to see, isn't the problem. The problem - the thing that keeps him up at night, the thing he can't ever admit, not to the police or the counsellors or even to his sister - is the nauseating, bone-deep terror that Rob Costa might be more right than he knows.
He knew it before ("before" and "after" have become clearly delineated time periods in his mind, Before Basement and After Basement, like a line of tape running down the middle of his bedroom floor. Before when he was just Finney Blake, and After when he's something he doesn't recognize, doesn't want to look at.) Or at least, he had suspicions before. The boy next to him in class would stretch a certain way, arms up over his head so that his biceps flexed and the shadow of his pit hair was visible, and he would feel suddenly as if the temperature in the room had shot up by thirty degrees. Or he'd be in the locker room after gym class, eyes fixed on the floor, because something told him that looking up at the others would confirm something for him that was too awful to face. Or he and Robin would be studying together and Robin would lean over his shoulder while Finney was explaining something and his hair would brush Finney's shoulder, and there would be a sick sort of jolt in his stomach, like he'd taken a step and found nothing there to catch him, only a black chasm under his feet.
He would have known for sure, if he'd been brave enough. If he'd looked over, looked up, met Robin's gaze, then it would have been undeniable. But Finney's always been good at shutting his eyes. Always known when to stop worrying a loose tooth, or picking at a scab. If you don't push, there's no possibility of anything pushing back. Don't ask Gwen questions about her dreams, and you won't have to know what's coming. Don't challenge Dad when he's drunk, and he's that much less likely to take his belt off and start hitting. If you suspect something, something awful, it's always better not to know. That strategy kept him safe, more or less, for thirteen years. The one time, the one time he asked a question when he shouldn't have - are those black balloons? - just look what happened. And now here he is. Knowing so much more than he ever wanted to.
He wonders, often, if the Grabber could smell it on him somehow. If he could see. He must have, right? He talked so much about liking Finney, about them being the same somehow. Like attracts like. He saw Finney coming down the street, and some kind of lizard instinct said, that one's like you, you need to take him. Take him, keep him, teach him all the shit he'll need to know to be a good pervert, because surely it doesn't all come by instinct. Surely, someone taught him, too. And now he's dead and Finney isn't, so does that mean he's up next?
That's usually the point at which his racing thoughts get the better of him, and he has to roll out of bed and sprint to the bathroom to stick his head in the toilet. He's got a near-permanent sore throat from puking so much. When it's done and his stomach is empty, he usually lays on the floor with his flushed cheek pressed against the cold tile, thinking, please no, I don't want to be like him, I don't want that, please just take it out of me somehow, please. But he's not Gwen; he knows that, even if someone's out there, they're not listening. They haven't been for a long time.
Two weeks After, he grabs a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer and stands in front of the bathroom mirror, hacking his hair off in chunks. Partially, it's because he can't stop thinking about the feel of the Grabber's greasy hair brushing his cheek when he leaned in close, the huff of stale breath on his face. But he's also thinking about Robin's hair, how it had ruffled in the breeze when they hung out at the drive-in, how shiny it had been. How he'd thought, sometimes, of how soft it looked - how much he would've liked to run his fingers through it, like you would pet a cat. How he'd like to let Robin do the same to him, if he wanted. And he's thinking as well of one of the boys at school jeering that Finney looked like a girl, of walking past a Star Wars poster at the movie theatre and hearing someone nearby scoff about Mark Hamill's faggy haircut. He can't cut out the thing inside him that they can all sense, but he can at least get rid of the hair.
It ends up looking like a disaster, obviously. Gwen gets home from her friend's house, sees him, and says, "what the fuck did you do?" before she drags him back into the bathroom to try and salvage the mess he's made. It still doesn't look great when she's done with him, but he can at least show up to school looking semi-presentable. But he hates the feeling of cold air whistling around his neck, and the need to pull a beanie down around his ears to stay warm walking home after school. And most of all, he hates that he can't duck his head and have his hair cover his face anymore. So he grows it back out. Having it short only emphasized the delicate bones of his face, anyway, too much like a girl's. Something else for people to recognize.
Gwen sees a lot, but she doesn't see everything. She can tell he's quiet, upset, fidgety - but who wouldn't be? And he brushes her off when she brings it up, redirects her to homework or TV or her friends, and she lets him do it. Dad's making a half-assed effort to be better, but he's still unreliable at best, so Finney and Gwen are more or less on their own. At least the demands of keeping the cupboard full and the laundry done ("what the fuck are you, someone's mom?" Rob Costa had sneered at Finney as he was coming out of Home Ec; the fact that they all had to take it, Rob included, didn't seem to make any difference) occupy enough of his brainspace to keep the worst of his thoughts at bay. There's a reason they tend to come at night.
Time passes. High school isn't quite as bad as middle school, mostly because two separate middle schools get folded into one high school, so half of his new classmates don't know him from Before. It's easier to be invisible in a crowd of five hundred than two hundred and fifty. He doesn't go out for any of the sports teams (baseball was another thing that got left in the Before) and he doesn't sign up for any of the clubs. He just drifts.
The one good thing that happens is wandering under the bleachers one day, looking for an isolated spot to eat lunch - normally it would be occupied, but it's thirty degrees and sleeting outside, so everyone's crammed in the lunchroom instead - and finding a small cluster of boys there passing around what he briefly takes for a cigarette before the smell hits him.
"Hey, man," one of them says, spotting him. He must have no self-preservation instinct - or else he immediately clocks Finney as the non-narking type, which is kind of nice - because instead of trying to hide the joint, he holds it out. "You smoke?"
He doesn't, or at least he didn't. Fifteen years with Dad have put him off drinking or smoking anything that might fuck with his head. But fuck it, why not? It's the closest to an actual offer of friendship he's gotten in years. He takes the joint, drags on it, and is grateful when he coughs up a lung and the other guys don't even laugh at him. Much.
It doesn't take away the worst of the thoughts, or the sleepless nights, or the shifting, formless rage that drives him, or the fever-hot dreams of skin on skin that have him waking up with his pajama bottoms soaked through and a sense of disgust with himself that no amount of showers can wash off. But it takes the edge off, at least. It's the most he can hope for. If he's in a semi-permanent haze, maybe that will neutralize him, make him too inert and useless to do anything. He can't be completely useless - Gwen still needs him - but if he's sleepwalking through life, that seems far preferable to the alternative.
The fact that he gets into college at all, much less on a scholarship, seems like a minor miracle. It's not that far removed from home, but it's another step away from anyone who might recognize him, and that's a fucking blessing and a half. Campus is anonymous, swarming with freshmen clutching piles of textbooks and walking in circles trying to find their classes. He fits right in. Doesn't make friends, but that doesn't stop him from getting invited to parties, just because most of them are open-door. He goes because he figures it's a good place to score.
It's at one of these parties, the October of his first year, that he winds up on the couch next to a guy who introduces himself as Jay and passes him a joint. He's got close-cropped blond curls and a slack expression that Finney suspects might be permanent, but the silence of sitting next to him and passing the joint back and forth is companionable, so Finney doesn't mind. Their fingers brush together every time, and after the first five or so, Finney's pretty sure he's doing it on purpose. He sits with his shoulders hunched in and his spine crunched, the gnawing heat in his stomach not at all appeased by the buzz he's got going, and Jay blinks at him before breaking into good-natured giggles. "Dude, you need to chill."
"I'm good," Finney says, and takes another hit off the joint. Jay's knee is pressing against his, hot through two layers of denim. Finney can feel sweat dripping down the back of his neck, and if he pukes in the middle of this party - well, he wouldn't be the first one tonight, so he's at least got that going for him. But he doesn't feel like puking, which is worse in a way, because he knows he should. He knows he shouldn't be feeling his pulse jump at the smell of Jay's sweat so close to his nose, the bump of his shoulder against Finney's, the bulge he can see in his jeans that's probably just from the way the fabric's bunched up, but might not be. He shouldn't be thinking, I heard he stuck his dick in your mouth, I heard you liked it. He tries to think of the basement, hoping the memory of cold will bring his own temperature down, but it doesn't work; all it does it make him clammy.
"Hey," Jay says, swaying in close to speak next to his ear. "I got better stuff in my room upstairs. You wanna try?" His expression is still guileless, but Finney's not stupid, he knows what he's being asked. They're pressed together hip to ankle now. He hopes, a little desperately, that no one's looking at his jeans, because several things will become obvious extremely quickly if they are. Why don't you turn around so we can see?
"Yeah, sure," he says, just for the sake of getting out of that room. Jay hauls himself up off the couch with far more dexterity than Finney would've expected, and waves a hand at him in a gesture that says, vaguely, come on. Finney follows.
The house they're in has three floors, and Jay's room is at the top. Finney trails in after him, shutting the door behind them and putting his back to it. Sense memory tells him it's better to make sure nobody can block his exit. He stands there, feeling a little useless, while Jay bends down (and he doesn't look, he can't look) to pull a box out from under the bed, cracking it open and flourishing it with a grin. Like a magician, Finney thinks, and feels dizzy.
"'Mere," Jay says, sprawled out on the floor, and Finney goes to sit next to him. He rolls a new joint, lights it, and hands it over for Finney to take the first puff. He wasn't lying, it is better than the stuff they had downstairs. Not that that's a high bar to clear.
"You look like -" Jay puts his head to one side like he's trying to puzzle something out. Then he snaps his fingers. "That dude from Top Gun."
"Val Kilmer?" Finney scoffs. "Like fuck." Maybe pot goggles are a thing, like beer goggles, but even allowing for that, he does not look like Val Kilmer. Especially not since he let his hair grow back out.
"Naw, man, the other one," Jay says. "The one who was in Risky Business, dancing and shit. You know, the guy with the pretty eyes? Tim something."
"Tom Cruise," Finney says, then doesn't say anything else. He saw Top Gun when it came out last spring - or saw part of it, anyway. He fled halfway through to go be sick in the bathroom, and stayed there until the movie was over. Too bright, too much skin, too much - everything. And it had been a bad night afterwards, too. Bad dreams. Or good dreams, too good.
Jay leans in a little closer, puts a hand on Finney's thigh in a way that can't be mistaken for accidental. He leans in close, taking a drag off the joint, and Finney recognizes what he's doing. Parts his lips so Jay can pass the smoke to him. Breathes in. It settles his roiling nerves a little bit, but that's not saying much, because his whole body feels like a rubber band about to snap.
"Hey," Jay says inanely, then keeps leaning in until their mouths are touching. Finney doesn't react, but he also doesn't pull away. Jay scoots across the floor, puts his hands on Finney's shoulders to draw him in. His mouth tastes like gum and fruit punch, and it's sugary. Sugary and warm and a little sloppy. He reaches again for thoughts of the basement, of a creaky mattress and concrete walls and wet kisses pressed to his face and neck while he tried to squirm away. A hand holding his head in place. It's there, it's right there, but it's also not: that isn't this, isn't Jay's sweet, clumsy pawing at his sides, isn't the dull thumping of music from the party below, isn't his jeans getting tight or his mouth watering. Photo and photo negative. He wants it so bad. You were always such a fucking faggot.
He puts his hands on Jay's chest, not to push him away, but to pet at him like he thinks Jay probably wants but can't be sure of. Nipples, right? He doesn't touch himself, except in those half-awake moments when he's too horny and stupid with sleep to think better of it, but he's pretty sure most people like having their nipples touched. He runs a hand under Jay's t-shirt and Jay grunts, rocking forward until he's practically in Finney's lap. Finney's stomach is squirming. He runs his hands up and down, up and down, and feels his spine drawing tighter and tighter, his shoulders tensing. He is such a fucking faggot. His mouth, even with Jay's tongue in it, tastes bitter.
Jay pulls back, so suddenly that Finney almost loses his balance. He's blinking at him, more lucid than Finney would've thought him capable of at this point in the evening. "Hey," he says, and he sounds genuinely concerned. "Hey, man, are you like - into this? 'Cause you don't gotta fuck for weed, you can just pay me tomorrow."
He should take the out, he really should. Scoot back until they're not touching anymore, make his excuses, and go home. And he means to, opens his mouth to say as much, but what actually comes out is a horrible noise like a rusty hinge. Like a padlock being opened, a gate creaking in the wind. The noise seems to keep going and going, and his lungs feel tight, and fuck, he can't breathe and he's crying and he's going to keel over and fucking die on this stranger's dorm room floor, probably with cum on his jeans. So everyone will know what he did, what he was. If he were able to move his arms, he would stick a finger down his throat for the familiar relief of throwing up, but all of his limbs are too heavy to lift. All he can do is pant, open-mouthed like a dog, and choke and wail and seize like he hasn't since he was twelve.
"Whoa, dude," Jay says, and scrambles to his feet. "No, hang on - I've got - uh -" Finney thinks he loses some time, then, because there's a gap between Jay getting up and the feeling of a water bottle being pressed to his lips. Jay tilts it, and a lot of it runs down his chin and into his shirt, but at least some makes it down his throat. It doesn't calm him down, exactly, and the blanket Jay drops around his shoulders (mostly; it lands half on his head, then slides) doesn't either. There's a sinkhole opened up inside of him, sucking up everything he's felt in the past seven years and spitting it out, the aftermath of a hurricane with detritus strewn everywhere. It's a good thing the music is so loud, he thinks distantly, or someone would definitely be banging on the door and asking what the fuck is going on.
He couldn't for the life of him have said how long it lasts, or even when he falls asleep afterwards. All he knows is that one minute he's sitting on the rug, screaming, and the next he's blinking awake and it's mid-morning. His mouth tastes stale and there's a blanket thrown over him and a pillow shoved under his head. He aches, but not any worse than he might after a workout. His eyes feel gummy when he blinks.
He sits up, looks around. The room is empty, the door closed. Panic sends him lurching to his feet, but when he grabs the knob and twists, it opens easily. The only sound from below is feet shuffling and dishes clattering - someone must be in the kitchen, maybe making breakfast. He shoves the door closed and backs away from it on wobbly legs, and sinks back down onto the rug, contemplating his options. A walk of shame is the absolute last thing he wants, but short of climbing out the window -
The door opens, and another flare of panic nearly paralyzes him, but it's just Jay standing in the doorway, looking - more confused than anything else, really. Confused, and maybe a bit relieved. "Oh," he says, "you're awake. I figured you should probably, uh. Sleep it off." In the morning light, his expression isn't nearly as slack as it was last night, though there is still a certain fuzziness around his eyes. "Do you feel . . . better?"
Finney grabs the hem of his shirt for want of pockets to stick his hands in. "'M fine," he says. He feels like he should probably say something else, so he adds, "thanks for. Um. Taking - care of me?" That is what he did, isn't it? It feels weird, off-kilter. He can't remember the last person who took care of him. His mom, probably.
"Don't worry about it, man," Jay says, suddenly earnest. "Sometimes people, like, trip the first time they toke up. Gotta be careful with the strong stuff."
"That's," Finney says, then thinks better of finishing his sentence. Might as well leave things there. It's easier than explaining himself, at least. "Well, I'm still - sorry. I mean, you wanted -" He swallows. "I wanted -"
Oh god, he'd wanted. Still wants. The fire that burned out in him last night didn't take that. And he'd woken up in a strange room, with a strange man, and it had been - okay. His clothes are all still on. There's no barking dog, no smell of mildew, no ringing phone. And there could've been. It wasn't like he'd been in any kind of state to fight back, if Jay had tried anything. But he'd given him water, tucked him in on the floor, like a little kid at a sleepover. Hadn't done anything but be nice to the freak he'd tried to hook up with and who'd had a fucking meltdown in his room.
What are you, somebody's mom?
Maybe there were worse things to be.
Jay waves a hand. "Don't even worry about it. You're not into it, it's no big deal."
"Yeah but, uh -" Finney's crumpling his shirttails in his hands. "I kind of - maybe - later, if you - ?" He doesn't know how to finish that sentence. Doesn't know how to do any of this. While other people were figuring it out, he'd been getting baked to avoid even having to think about it. He feels, painfully, his own inexperience. And if he tries again and loses it again - ? Well, at least on a campus this big, they can avoid ever seeing each other if they don't want to. No running into each other in the lunch line, no whispers following them in the halls.
Jay's expression isn't slack, no - but it is clear, and simple, and sweet. When he grins, Finney can see a gap between his front teeth. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." He gives up on his shirt, mostly because he can feel the hem unraveling. "I don't, uh. Often." Or ever, but he doesn't have to say that. "But if you - tonight, maybe, or . . . ?"
"Yeah," Jay says in a rush. "Yeah, I don't have any classes tonight. If you want to - the drive-in, maybe? I got a car."
The drive-in. Of course. Maybe this is where he was meant to end up - back where he and Robin would have been, in a different world. "Cool," he says. "I can meet you there? At, like, eight?"
"Show starts at eight-thirty," Jay says, nodding. "They're showing Maximum Overdrive. It's about, like, a killer truck or some shit."
"Huh." Sounds stupid, but stupid isn't a bad thing for a first - whatever this is. "Okay. I'll see you then." He takes a step towards the door, then pauses. "Are your roommates, uh - ?"
Jay looks confused for a second, then blinks. "Don't worry about it. There's still, like, six people from the party last night in the living room. They won't even notice you."
"Oh. Good." Drive-in or no, he doesn't want people watching him leave. "Well, I'm gonna. Go." He's definitely missed his first class of the day, but he can make his second if he hurries. "And - thanks, again."
Jay grins again. He looks a little bit like Mark Hamill, Finney thinks, and decides to tell him as much tonight. He edges past Jay, who reaches out to do something - clap him on the shoulder or maybe even ruffle his hair - but what he does instead is sort of briefly cup his elbow, which is a little weird, but also kind of nice. Holding hands without holding hands. Maybe they can hold elbows until Finney's got his shit figured out.
As promised, no one downstairs - including the half-dozen partygoers Jay mentioned, blinking fuzzily as they peel themselves off the floor - give him a second glance as he leaves. No one outside does, either. He's anonymous here, completely. He can be something other than what he was, something beyond Before and After, something that isn't cringing or puking or screaming. Something no one ever touched or hit or called - any of the things they used to call him. Here, he can pick names for himself.
The wind is picking up, not cold enough to cut, but enough that he can feel it through his shirt. He hunches his shoulders - which feel looser than they did last night, for all he slept on the floor - and sets out across the quad. The air is clear, the sun bright; the breeze ruffles his hair. It feels like a hand, stroking him gently. It feels like something new.
Fandom: The Black Phone (Movies - Derrickson)
Summary: "Before" and "after" have become clearly delineated time periods in his mind, Before Basement and After Basement, like a line of tape running down the middle of his bedroom floor. Before when he was just Finney Blake, and After when he's something he doesn't recognize, doesn't want to look at.
Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Internalized Homophobia, Character Study
Rating: T
Finney gets in his first fight three months after - well, after. It takes that long for the mystique to wear off, for the story of the kid who killed the Grabber to fade into the background noise of gas prices and tax hikes and war in Iran. For those three months, he's more or less left alone, for better or for worse. No one wants to mess with him, but no one knows what to say either. And it's not like he had enough friends to count on two hands before, anyway. He has Gwen, who sticks close when she can, but they're on different schedules. He had Robin, but that's obviously a moot point now. So he eats lunch alone and goes straight home after school.
It's Rob Costa who starts it. Makes sense; he usually did, before. He and of his buddies slime up behind Finney one afternoon at his locker, and Rob leans in real close so that Finney can feel moist breath on the back of his neck. "Hey Finney," he says, and Finney doesn't need to turn around to picture the gloating grin on his face, "I heard the Grabber stuck his dick in your mouth, huh?" He poked him in the small of his back with one knobby finger. "Huh?"
"Heard he stuck a finger in your ass, too," his buddy adds. Finney, who had frozen with a hand on his science textbook as soon as he felt someone coming up behind him, clenches his fist at his side but says nothing. He's glad they can't see his face, which is doing all kinds of things he didn't give it permission for. The finger at his back - which, now that he thinks of it, might belong to Rob's buddy rather than Rob himself - prods again, harder. "Well? Did he?"
"Bet he did," Rob says. His voice dropped the earliest out of all the guys in their grade, and he sounds almost like a grown man when he wants to. Sounds more like a grown man than some grown men, even - Finney slams the door on that thought before it can enter. "And you liked it, right? I bet you fuckin' did."
"Look at him," his friend jeers, "of course he did. He probably gets hard thinking about it, huh? Bet he's got a boner right now. Why don't you turn around so we can see?"
Finney does not turn around. Finney does not do anything except stare at the peeling spine of his textbook and try to go somewhere else in his head, somewhere that doesn't smell of floor polish and gym shoes and the sweat of a hundred kids all mingling together into a rank miasma. Problem is, he can't think of anyplace to go in his head that isn't worse than this.
"Oh, you for sure liked it," Rob said. Another poke to the spine. "You were always such a fucking fa-"
That's when he breaks and takes a swing - although swing isn't even really the right word for it. It's more like a wild, two-handed flailing motion, accompanied by a yell that dredges itself up from somewhere beneath his solar plexus. It takes Rob enough by surprise that Finney is able to bear him down to the floor, punching and kicking and biting with all the strength he never knew he had, strength he's pretty sure he didn't have until recently. Rob's so shocked that he doesn't even hit back at first, and by the time he tries, it's way too late; Finney's already bloodied his nose, slammed his head against the linoleum, ripped out a chunk of his hair. If his buddy hangs around to watch, he doesn't seem driven by any urge to jump in and pull Finney off. Not that he'd be able to, even if he tried. In the end, it takes two teachers to break it up, one grabbing his wrists while the other hoists him in the air, and he's still howling and thrashing all the while.
He doesn't get in trouble for it, is the thing. They pack Rob off to the nurse's office and send Finney home early, but there's no call to his dad, no threat of detention or suspension. They handle him so gingerly, now. And, truth be told, they all know what Rob's like; even though Finney refuses to say what the fight was about, they can probably put two and two together that Rob said something that deserved a punch in the nose, even if they wouldn't admit it themselves.
He's glad they don't press him as to what caused the fight. It's not that he's ashamed to admit it, not exactly - he's already had to recite every little detail of what happened in that basement to the cops, and then to a court-appointed psychiatrist, and then to the school counsellor for good measure. So it isn't like they don't know. And bringing that kind of shit up unasked for is probably justification enough for getting beat. The fact that the Grabber's fingermarks are still all over him, blazing in neon for everyone to see, isn't the problem. The problem - the thing that keeps him up at night, the thing he can't ever admit, not to the police or the counsellors or even to his sister - is the nauseating, bone-deep terror that Rob Costa might be more right than he knows.
He knew it before ("before" and "after" have become clearly delineated time periods in his mind, Before Basement and After Basement, like a line of tape running down the middle of his bedroom floor. Before when he was just Finney Blake, and After when he's something he doesn't recognize, doesn't want to look at.) Or at least, he had suspicions before. The boy next to him in class would stretch a certain way, arms up over his head so that his biceps flexed and the shadow of his pit hair was visible, and he would feel suddenly as if the temperature in the room had shot up by thirty degrees. Or he'd be in the locker room after gym class, eyes fixed on the floor, because something told him that looking up at the others would confirm something for him that was too awful to face. Or he and Robin would be studying together and Robin would lean over his shoulder while Finney was explaining something and his hair would brush Finney's shoulder, and there would be a sick sort of jolt in his stomach, like he'd taken a step and found nothing there to catch him, only a black chasm under his feet.
He would have known for sure, if he'd been brave enough. If he'd looked over, looked up, met Robin's gaze, then it would have been undeniable. But Finney's always been good at shutting his eyes. Always known when to stop worrying a loose tooth, or picking at a scab. If you don't push, there's no possibility of anything pushing back. Don't ask Gwen questions about her dreams, and you won't have to know what's coming. Don't challenge Dad when he's drunk, and he's that much less likely to take his belt off and start hitting. If you suspect something, something awful, it's always better not to know. That strategy kept him safe, more or less, for thirteen years. The one time, the one time he asked a question when he shouldn't have - are those black balloons? - just look what happened. And now here he is. Knowing so much more than he ever wanted to.
He wonders, often, if the Grabber could smell it on him somehow. If he could see. He must have, right? He talked so much about liking Finney, about them being the same somehow. Like attracts like. He saw Finney coming down the street, and some kind of lizard instinct said, that one's like you, you need to take him. Take him, keep him, teach him all the shit he'll need to know to be a good pervert, because surely it doesn't all come by instinct. Surely, someone taught him, too. And now he's dead and Finney isn't, so does that mean he's up next?
That's usually the point at which his racing thoughts get the better of him, and he has to roll out of bed and sprint to the bathroom to stick his head in the toilet. He's got a near-permanent sore throat from puking so much. When it's done and his stomach is empty, he usually lays on the floor with his flushed cheek pressed against the cold tile, thinking, please no, I don't want to be like him, I don't want that, please just take it out of me somehow, please. But he's not Gwen; he knows that, even if someone's out there, they're not listening. They haven't been for a long time.
Two weeks After, he grabs a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer and stands in front of the bathroom mirror, hacking his hair off in chunks. Partially, it's because he can't stop thinking about the feel of the Grabber's greasy hair brushing his cheek when he leaned in close, the huff of stale breath on his face. But he's also thinking about Robin's hair, how it had ruffled in the breeze when they hung out at the drive-in, how shiny it had been. How he'd thought, sometimes, of how soft it looked - how much he would've liked to run his fingers through it, like you would pet a cat. How he'd like to let Robin do the same to him, if he wanted. And he's thinking as well of one of the boys at school jeering that Finney looked like a girl, of walking past a Star Wars poster at the movie theatre and hearing someone nearby scoff about Mark Hamill's faggy haircut. He can't cut out the thing inside him that they can all sense, but he can at least get rid of the hair.
It ends up looking like a disaster, obviously. Gwen gets home from her friend's house, sees him, and says, "what the fuck did you do?" before she drags him back into the bathroom to try and salvage the mess he's made. It still doesn't look great when she's done with him, but he can at least show up to school looking semi-presentable. But he hates the feeling of cold air whistling around his neck, and the need to pull a beanie down around his ears to stay warm walking home after school. And most of all, he hates that he can't duck his head and have his hair cover his face anymore. So he grows it back out. Having it short only emphasized the delicate bones of his face, anyway, too much like a girl's. Something else for people to recognize.
Gwen sees a lot, but she doesn't see everything. She can tell he's quiet, upset, fidgety - but who wouldn't be? And he brushes her off when she brings it up, redirects her to homework or TV or her friends, and she lets him do it. Dad's making a half-assed effort to be better, but he's still unreliable at best, so Finney and Gwen are more or less on their own. At least the demands of keeping the cupboard full and the laundry done ("what the fuck are you, someone's mom?" Rob Costa had sneered at Finney as he was coming out of Home Ec; the fact that they all had to take it, Rob included, didn't seem to make any difference) occupy enough of his brainspace to keep the worst of his thoughts at bay. There's a reason they tend to come at night.
Time passes. High school isn't quite as bad as middle school, mostly because two separate middle schools get folded into one high school, so half of his new classmates don't know him from Before. It's easier to be invisible in a crowd of five hundred than two hundred and fifty. He doesn't go out for any of the sports teams (baseball was another thing that got left in the Before) and he doesn't sign up for any of the clubs. He just drifts.
The one good thing that happens is wandering under the bleachers one day, looking for an isolated spot to eat lunch - normally it would be occupied, but it's thirty degrees and sleeting outside, so everyone's crammed in the lunchroom instead - and finding a small cluster of boys there passing around what he briefly takes for a cigarette before the smell hits him.
"Hey, man," one of them says, spotting him. He must have no self-preservation instinct - or else he immediately clocks Finney as the non-narking type, which is kind of nice - because instead of trying to hide the joint, he holds it out. "You smoke?"
He doesn't, or at least he didn't. Fifteen years with Dad have put him off drinking or smoking anything that might fuck with his head. But fuck it, why not? It's the closest to an actual offer of friendship he's gotten in years. He takes the joint, drags on it, and is grateful when he coughs up a lung and the other guys don't even laugh at him. Much.
It doesn't take away the worst of the thoughts, or the sleepless nights, or the shifting, formless rage that drives him, or the fever-hot dreams of skin on skin that have him waking up with his pajama bottoms soaked through and a sense of disgust with himself that no amount of showers can wash off. But it takes the edge off, at least. It's the most he can hope for. If he's in a semi-permanent haze, maybe that will neutralize him, make him too inert and useless to do anything. He can't be completely useless - Gwen still needs him - but if he's sleepwalking through life, that seems far preferable to the alternative.
The fact that he gets into college at all, much less on a scholarship, seems like a minor miracle. It's not that far removed from home, but it's another step away from anyone who might recognize him, and that's a fucking blessing and a half. Campus is anonymous, swarming with freshmen clutching piles of textbooks and walking in circles trying to find their classes. He fits right in. Doesn't make friends, but that doesn't stop him from getting invited to parties, just because most of them are open-door. He goes because he figures it's a good place to score.
It's at one of these parties, the October of his first year, that he winds up on the couch next to a guy who introduces himself as Jay and passes him a joint. He's got close-cropped blond curls and a slack expression that Finney suspects might be permanent, but the silence of sitting next to him and passing the joint back and forth is companionable, so Finney doesn't mind. Their fingers brush together every time, and after the first five or so, Finney's pretty sure he's doing it on purpose. He sits with his shoulders hunched in and his spine crunched, the gnawing heat in his stomach not at all appeased by the buzz he's got going, and Jay blinks at him before breaking into good-natured giggles. "Dude, you need to chill."
"I'm good," Finney says, and takes another hit off the joint. Jay's knee is pressing against his, hot through two layers of denim. Finney can feel sweat dripping down the back of his neck, and if he pukes in the middle of this party - well, he wouldn't be the first one tonight, so he's at least got that going for him. But he doesn't feel like puking, which is worse in a way, because he knows he should. He knows he shouldn't be feeling his pulse jump at the smell of Jay's sweat so close to his nose, the bump of his shoulder against Finney's, the bulge he can see in his jeans that's probably just from the way the fabric's bunched up, but might not be. He shouldn't be thinking, I heard he stuck his dick in your mouth, I heard you liked it. He tries to think of the basement, hoping the memory of cold will bring his own temperature down, but it doesn't work; all it does it make him clammy.
"Hey," Jay says, swaying in close to speak next to his ear. "I got better stuff in my room upstairs. You wanna try?" His expression is still guileless, but Finney's not stupid, he knows what he's being asked. They're pressed together hip to ankle now. He hopes, a little desperately, that no one's looking at his jeans, because several things will become obvious extremely quickly if they are. Why don't you turn around so we can see?
"Yeah, sure," he says, just for the sake of getting out of that room. Jay hauls himself up off the couch with far more dexterity than Finney would've expected, and waves a hand at him in a gesture that says, vaguely, come on. Finney follows.
The house they're in has three floors, and Jay's room is at the top. Finney trails in after him, shutting the door behind them and putting his back to it. Sense memory tells him it's better to make sure nobody can block his exit. He stands there, feeling a little useless, while Jay bends down (and he doesn't look, he can't look) to pull a box out from under the bed, cracking it open and flourishing it with a grin. Like a magician, Finney thinks, and feels dizzy.
"'Mere," Jay says, sprawled out on the floor, and Finney goes to sit next to him. He rolls a new joint, lights it, and hands it over for Finney to take the first puff. He wasn't lying, it is better than the stuff they had downstairs. Not that that's a high bar to clear.
"You look like -" Jay puts his head to one side like he's trying to puzzle something out. Then he snaps his fingers. "That dude from Top Gun."
"Val Kilmer?" Finney scoffs. "Like fuck." Maybe pot goggles are a thing, like beer goggles, but even allowing for that, he does not look like Val Kilmer. Especially not since he let his hair grow back out.
"Naw, man, the other one," Jay says. "The one who was in Risky Business, dancing and shit. You know, the guy with the pretty eyes? Tim something."
"Tom Cruise," Finney says, then doesn't say anything else. He saw Top Gun when it came out last spring - or saw part of it, anyway. He fled halfway through to go be sick in the bathroom, and stayed there until the movie was over. Too bright, too much skin, too much - everything. And it had been a bad night afterwards, too. Bad dreams. Or good dreams, too good.
Jay leans in a little closer, puts a hand on Finney's thigh in a way that can't be mistaken for accidental. He leans in close, taking a drag off the joint, and Finney recognizes what he's doing. Parts his lips so Jay can pass the smoke to him. Breathes in. It settles his roiling nerves a little bit, but that's not saying much, because his whole body feels like a rubber band about to snap.
"Hey," Jay says inanely, then keeps leaning in until their mouths are touching. Finney doesn't react, but he also doesn't pull away. Jay scoots across the floor, puts his hands on Finney's shoulders to draw him in. His mouth tastes like gum and fruit punch, and it's sugary. Sugary and warm and a little sloppy. He reaches again for thoughts of the basement, of a creaky mattress and concrete walls and wet kisses pressed to his face and neck while he tried to squirm away. A hand holding his head in place. It's there, it's right there, but it's also not: that isn't this, isn't Jay's sweet, clumsy pawing at his sides, isn't the dull thumping of music from the party below, isn't his jeans getting tight or his mouth watering. Photo and photo negative. He wants it so bad. You were always such a fucking faggot.
He puts his hands on Jay's chest, not to push him away, but to pet at him like he thinks Jay probably wants but can't be sure of. Nipples, right? He doesn't touch himself, except in those half-awake moments when he's too horny and stupid with sleep to think better of it, but he's pretty sure most people like having their nipples touched. He runs a hand under Jay's t-shirt and Jay grunts, rocking forward until he's practically in Finney's lap. Finney's stomach is squirming. He runs his hands up and down, up and down, and feels his spine drawing tighter and tighter, his shoulders tensing. He is such a fucking faggot. His mouth, even with Jay's tongue in it, tastes bitter.
Jay pulls back, so suddenly that Finney almost loses his balance. He's blinking at him, more lucid than Finney would've thought him capable of at this point in the evening. "Hey," he says, and he sounds genuinely concerned. "Hey, man, are you like - into this? 'Cause you don't gotta fuck for weed, you can just pay me tomorrow."
He should take the out, he really should. Scoot back until they're not touching anymore, make his excuses, and go home. And he means to, opens his mouth to say as much, but what actually comes out is a horrible noise like a rusty hinge. Like a padlock being opened, a gate creaking in the wind. The noise seems to keep going and going, and his lungs feel tight, and fuck, he can't breathe and he's crying and he's going to keel over and fucking die on this stranger's dorm room floor, probably with cum on his jeans. So everyone will know what he did, what he was. If he were able to move his arms, he would stick a finger down his throat for the familiar relief of throwing up, but all of his limbs are too heavy to lift. All he can do is pant, open-mouthed like a dog, and choke and wail and seize like he hasn't since he was twelve.
"Whoa, dude," Jay says, and scrambles to his feet. "No, hang on - I've got - uh -" Finney thinks he loses some time, then, because there's a gap between Jay getting up and the feeling of a water bottle being pressed to his lips. Jay tilts it, and a lot of it runs down his chin and into his shirt, but at least some makes it down his throat. It doesn't calm him down, exactly, and the blanket Jay drops around his shoulders (mostly; it lands half on his head, then slides) doesn't either. There's a sinkhole opened up inside of him, sucking up everything he's felt in the past seven years and spitting it out, the aftermath of a hurricane with detritus strewn everywhere. It's a good thing the music is so loud, he thinks distantly, or someone would definitely be banging on the door and asking what the fuck is going on.
He couldn't for the life of him have said how long it lasts, or even when he falls asleep afterwards. All he knows is that one minute he's sitting on the rug, screaming, and the next he's blinking awake and it's mid-morning. His mouth tastes stale and there's a blanket thrown over him and a pillow shoved under his head. He aches, but not any worse than he might after a workout. His eyes feel gummy when he blinks.
He sits up, looks around. The room is empty, the door closed. Panic sends him lurching to his feet, but when he grabs the knob and twists, it opens easily. The only sound from below is feet shuffling and dishes clattering - someone must be in the kitchen, maybe making breakfast. He shoves the door closed and backs away from it on wobbly legs, and sinks back down onto the rug, contemplating his options. A walk of shame is the absolute last thing he wants, but short of climbing out the window -
The door opens, and another flare of panic nearly paralyzes him, but it's just Jay standing in the doorway, looking - more confused than anything else, really. Confused, and maybe a bit relieved. "Oh," he says, "you're awake. I figured you should probably, uh. Sleep it off." In the morning light, his expression isn't nearly as slack as it was last night, though there is still a certain fuzziness around his eyes. "Do you feel . . . better?"
Finney grabs the hem of his shirt for want of pockets to stick his hands in. "'M fine," he says. He feels like he should probably say something else, so he adds, "thanks for. Um. Taking - care of me?" That is what he did, isn't it? It feels weird, off-kilter. He can't remember the last person who took care of him. His mom, probably.
"Don't worry about it, man," Jay says, suddenly earnest. "Sometimes people, like, trip the first time they toke up. Gotta be careful with the strong stuff."
"That's," Finney says, then thinks better of finishing his sentence. Might as well leave things there. It's easier than explaining himself, at least. "Well, I'm still - sorry. I mean, you wanted -" He swallows. "I wanted -"
Oh god, he'd wanted. Still wants. The fire that burned out in him last night didn't take that. And he'd woken up in a strange room, with a strange man, and it had been - okay. His clothes are all still on. There's no barking dog, no smell of mildew, no ringing phone. And there could've been. It wasn't like he'd been in any kind of state to fight back, if Jay had tried anything. But he'd given him water, tucked him in on the floor, like a little kid at a sleepover. Hadn't done anything but be nice to the freak he'd tried to hook up with and who'd had a fucking meltdown in his room.
What are you, somebody's mom?
Maybe there were worse things to be.
Jay waves a hand. "Don't even worry about it. You're not into it, it's no big deal."
"Yeah but, uh -" Finney's crumpling his shirttails in his hands. "I kind of - maybe - later, if you - ?" He doesn't know how to finish that sentence. Doesn't know how to do any of this. While other people were figuring it out, he'd been getting baked to avoid even having to think about it. He feels, painfully, his own inexperience. And if he tries again and loses it again - ? Well, at least on a campus this big, they can avoid ever seeing each other if they don't want to. No running into each other in the lunch line, no whispers following them in the halls.
Jay's expression isn't slack, no - but it is clear, and simple, and sweet. When he grins, Finney can see a gap between his front teeth. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." He gives up on his shirt, mostly because he can feel the hem unraveling. "I don't, uh. Often." Or ever, but he doesn't have to say that. "But if you - tonight, maybe, or . . . ?"
"Yeah," Jay says in a rush. "Yeah, I don't have any classes tonight. If you want to - the drive-in, maybe? I got a car."
The drive-in. Of course. Maybe this is where he was meant to end up - back where he and Robin would have been, in a different world. "Cool," he says. "I can meet you there? At, like, eight?"
"Show starts at eight-thirty," Jay says, nodding. "They're showing Maximum Overdrive. It's about, like, a killer truck or some shit."
"Huh." Sounds stupid, but stupid isn't a bad thing for a first - whatever this is. "Okay. I'll see you then." He takes a step towards the door, then pauses. "Are your roommates, uh - ?"
Jay looks confused for a second, then blinks. "Don't worry about it. There's still, like, six people from the party last night in the living room. They won't even notice you."
"Oh. Good." Drive-in or no, he doesn't want people watching him leave. "Well, I'm gonna. Go." He's definitely missed his first class of the day, but he can make his second if he hurries. "And - thanks, again."
Jay grins again. He looks a little bit like Mark Hamill, Finney thinks, and decides to tell him as much tonight. He edges past Jay, who reaches out to do something - clap him on the shoulder or maybe even ruffle his hair - but what he does instead is sort of briefly cup his elbow, which is a little weird, but also kind of nice. Holding hands without holding hands. Maybe they can hold elbows until Finney's got his shit figured out.
As promised, no one downstairs - including the half-dozen partygoers Jay mentioned, blinking fuzzily as they peel themselves off the floor - give him a second glance as he leaves. No one outside does, either. He's anonymous here, completely. He can be something other than what he was, something beyond Before and After, something that isn't cringing or puking or screaming. Something no one ever touched or hit or called - any of the things they used to call him. Here, he can pick names for himself.
The wind is picking up, not cold enough to cut, but enough that he can feel it through his shirt. He hunches his shoulders - which feel looser than they did last night, for all he slept on the floor - and sets out across the quad. The air is clear, the sun bright; the breeze ruffles his hair. It feels like a hand, stroking him gently. It feels like something new.
