(no subject)
It's a hot night. Too hot. He's left Tom dozing with the girls on the basement floor and come up to look for a glass of water and something to take his mind off things. Even in the air conditioning, the days of heat have gotten to his brain and he's found himself more distracted, more short-tempered even than usual. Certain things in his mind feel too close while others are far too far away.
He wanders into the rec room and finds it fairly sparsely populated, considering. A couple people look like they're napping, but he figures they won't mind if he watches something if he keeps the volume low. Glass in hand, he heads over to the shelf and looks the selection over. Saving Private Ryan. Full Metal Jacket. Platoon. All of it mostly the same old shit, no interest, until a title catches his eye.
Mysterious Skin.
Does he know it from somewhere? It's tickling something in his brain like he does. He looks at it for a few moments and then puts it on, takes a seat on the couch and a swallow of water, and really he's only half paying attention until Neil says, "The summer I was eight years old, I came for the first time."
And that's where it starts.
It takes him a little longer to be certain that it's Neil and not just a Neil clone, and by then he's sure that he's seeing things he shouldn't be seeing, but he can't look away. The rest of the world fades into the background until the world on the screen is all that's real. Neil as a child. Neil having that... thing... done to him. The first threatening waves of nausea. Jesus. Jesus Christ.
It's not all horrible. There's moments of sweetness, with Neil's mother (Not bad, he thinks distantly), and moments of familiarity, and he remembers what it had been like to be riding the crest of puberty and feeling the first stirrings of things it would take him years to fully understand. Seeing someone he's fucking as a child is a little weird, but he's seen Tom that way and he'd gotten over it.
But there's things he doesn't want to see. And he sees them. And they don't stop. It's like being caught in a cyclone, whirled up and out of control; he sits and watches with the glass forgotten in his hand and if there's anyone around him now he doesn't know it. It all blurs together. Neil. Neil hooking in the park. Neil's friend Brian, looking so desperately for answers. Neil's friend Wendy, standing with him in the gently falling snow. Neil with his johns, and in some ways that's the hardest, because Neil as a child is still somehow alien and distant, a face he doesn't know. But he's seen Neil's face like this many times now, screwed up or lax with pleasure, and seeing him with these men feels like an obscenity. It makes him angry, even as it draws up a treacherous little snake of possessive arousal inside him. They can't have you. They can't ever have you like I do.
And then time folds back on itself.
It starts with a feeling of slow dread as Neil rides along with the beefy older man. He's not even sure where it's coming from, but he hasn't felt a stronger urge to look away, get up and turn the fucking thing off and try to pretend he's never seen it at all. He watches, horrified, fascinated, and Neil is raped in front of his eyes.
He doesn't remember anything after that. When the world comes back into focus he's standing, the screen is blank, and when he looks down there's glass all over the floor and a single huge, glistening shard sticking out of the meat of his palm, blood dripping onto the floor with a quiet pat pat.
And his mouth tastes like gun oil.
He wanders into the rec room and finds it fairly sparsely populated, considering. A couple people look like they're napping, but he figures they won't mind if he watches something if he keeps the volume low. Glass in hand, he heads over to the shelf and looks the selection over. Saving Private Ryan. Full Metal Jacket. Platoon. All of it mostly the same old shit, no interest, until a title catches his eye.
Mysterious Skin.
Does he know it from somewhere? It's tickling something in his brain like he does. He looks at it for a few moments and then puts it on, takes a seat on the couch and a swallow of water, and really he's only half paying attention until Neil says, "The summer I was eight years old, I came for the first time."
And that's where it starts.
It takes him a little longer to be certain that it's Neil and not just a Neil clone, and by then he's sure that he's seeing things he shouldn't be seeing, but he can't look away. The rest of the world fades into the background until the world on the screen is all that's real. Neil as a child. Neil having that... thing... done to him. The first threatening waves of nausea. Jesus. Jesus Christ.
It's not all horrible. There's moments of sweetness, with Neil's mother (Not bad, he thinks distantly), and moments of familiarity, and he remembers what it had been like to be riding the crest of puberty and feeling the first stirrings of things it would take him years to fully understand. Seeing someone he's fucking as a child is a little weird, but he's seen Tom that way and he'd gotten over it.
But there's things he doesn't want to see. And he sees them. And they don't stop. It's like being caught in a cyclone, whirled up and out of control; he sits and watches with the glass forgotten in his hand and if there's anyone around him now he doesn't know it. It all blurs together. Neil. Neil hooking in the park. Neil's friend Brian, looking so desperately for answers. Neil's friend Wendy, standing with him in the gently falling snow. Neil with his johns, and in some ways that's the hardest, because Neil as a child is still somehow alien and distant, a face he doesn't know. But he's seen Neil's face like this many times now, screwed up or lax with pleasure, and seeing him with these men feels like an obscenity. It makes him angry, even as it draws up a treacherous little snake of possessive arousal inside him. They can't have you. They can't ever have you like I do.
And then time folds back on itself.
It starts with a feeling of slow dread as Neil rides along with the beefy older man. He's not even sure where it's coming from, but he hasn't felt a stronger urge to look away, get up and turn the fucking thing off and try to pretend he's never seen it at all. He watches, horrified, fascinated, and Neil is raped in front of his eyes.
He doesn't remember anything after that. When the world comes back into focus he's standing, the screen is blank, and when he looks down there's glass all over the floor and a single huge, glistening shard sticking out of the meat of his palm, blood dripping onto the floor with a quiet pat pat.
And his mouth tastes like gun oil.