With Eyes Wide Shut

📅  December 2018

【ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ, ʜᴇʀᴏɪɴ ᴀᴅᴅɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ/ᴀʙᴜsᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴄʜɪʟᴅ ᴛʀᴀғғɪᴄᴋɪɴɢ/ᴘʀᴏsᴛɪᴛᴜᴛɪᴏɴ】

𝒟𝑒𝒸𝑒𝓂𝒷𝑒𝓇 2010...

Chey had been gone for over a day before.

That was the nature of their employment, Anarchy knew; he’d been gone for two nights in a row himself, before. It wasn’t usual, but it happened. That knowledge didn’t keep the panic at bay. 
The two of them had fallen into this shit together; they were closer than brothers, closer than kin. Even if they had to go right back out immediately, even if it was thirty seconds between getting back to the squat and climbing into another stranger’s car, they checked in. They sought one another out, met eyes or found the moment to hug quickly, and promised each other to come back soon. To come back safe. 

Promises that couldn’t always be kept: Both had returned to one another’s arms with bloodied backs and bruised wrists, and Anarchy would never scrub the image out of his head of Chey appearing in that unfinished doorway, pale and unsteady, with that deep cut on his throat. 
But they promised, and they came back. 
So when two nights went by, and then the day after, and then it was dusk of a third night and there was no word—? Anarchy felt himself shattering. 

For two years, two straight years since escaping his father’s abuse, he’d never gone over 48 hours without Chey. Even when nodding out he felt dopesick; shaky and anxious and scared. Something fundamental was wrong; a core piece of him was missing, lost, in the hands of his absent best friend. And the pity in the eyes of the people he asked for any word—? Felt like poison.

Yes, people died in this life, Anarchy knew it. The previous summer had been a lesson in that. It had been one or two a week; bodies in the gutter, in the squat, on the sidewalk. A season of human vultures rifling through corpses’ pockets and of hiding paraphernalia and clearing off the lot so that when the cops followed up after someone called in the body, no one would get arrested. It was a season of hot sun and trying to make sure that the biohazard team got to your friends’ bodies before the blowflies did. Anarchy knew people died. Overdosed, vanished, were strangled or stabbed or shot, turned up dead in dumpsters or ditches or on the side of the highway.

But not Chey. He refused that one.

Refusal didn’t keep it from feeling as though the sun had gone out, though: Chey had been the holder of hope, had been the source, and Anarchy hadn’t realized how much he’d relied on Chey to carry the light until suddenly the world went black—and Anarchy was left nursing embers in his hollow chest.

“Chey’s missing; you’ve gotta look for him,” he said to the Boss the next time they saw one another, using too commanding a tone but unable to temper it. Mr. Doe’s impassive eyes sparked dislike in the back of Anarchy’s throat; searing like bile or the urge to cry.
“...That’s a pity,” Mr. Doe said. He sounded about as interested as he would be if handed the flyer for a lost dog. “I’ll see about the last client he was with, but there’s not much I can do. Young men sometimes just leave to chase their visions, don’t they?”
“So you’re saying he left?” Anarchy asked stiffly. He could feel his heart pounding in his ears and struggled to control the abrupt fury careening through him. He’d been apprehensive around Mr. Doe from the start but trusted him because Chey trusted him—without Chey as a buffer, with he left and their inability to leave; their reliance on Mr. Doe’s steady stream of dope and disgusting men—Anarchy was nearly floored by the wave of enraged revulsion that crashed over him. His shoulders shook; the edges of his vision darkened and started to swim. Mr. Doe waved a dismissive hand and returned his gaze to his ledger.
“Don’t let it get in the way of your job,” he said.

Anarchy only narrowly avoided slamming the door on the way out.

Despite the rage, he clawed his way into a similar view to Mr. Doe’s; that Chey was just out, somewhere, on a long errand. Caught up in something else or a string of jobs, or maybe he’d finally found someone looking for a mule and was hopping freight west again; free from these greedy, groping hands. He’d be back in a week with wind-blown hair and an apology on his lips, because of course he never meant to be gone so long. Of course, of course…He’d be back.
Try as Anarchy might, though, denial was no prosthetic for hope: Hope was warm and glowing and built on promise. Denial was cold and closed and heavy, and it curled up like a stray dog in the space behind Anarchy’s sternum to bare its teeth at anyone who might threaten its nest of ashes.

“I’ll take his Johns,” Anarchy found himself saying to Mr. Doe, one pre-sunrise morning, being handed a night’s payment in stamp bags and 20s; “If someone’s asking for him...I’d be a good enough replacement, probably.” 
Mr. Doe seemed to chew it over, and Anarchy managed not to bare his teeth at the words “It would be good if you could pick up some of the slack,” which accompanied the eventual agreement. They shook hands and Anarchy left, fighting desolation the six block slog back “home.”

He sank to the ground and shot up, alone, in the corner of the squat he and Chey had shared; letting the heroin flood his bloodstream and convince him his proposition to the Boss wasn’t as bleak as his heartache told him it was. 
It’ll all be worth it. I’ll have money for him when he gets back, Anarchy thought to himself. His eyelids felt heavy; he let the syringe fall into the dirt beside him. Yeah…For when he gets back. Anarchy stared at the empty, rotting doorway.

He’s coming back...I know he’s coming back.

∼∼∼∼∼

Eight full years had gone by.

Anarchy lay in bed beside Chey, whose sleek black hair spread in stark contrast over his white, moonlit pillowcase. Despite his heavy dying of it, his hair was silky and healthy and untangled, and Chey’s spine wasn’t nearly as heart-wrenchingly visible as it had once been, in those aching days where Anarchy could count his vertebrae; his ribs. Nine months ago, Chey had come back, with his too-big smile and his rose tattoo and almost-constant easy laughter. …Almost.
Over seven years apart hadn’t undone the familiarity of sleeping next to him in youth, and the fact that they’d so easily slipped back into the habit of spending the night side-by-side when they’d reconnected a little less than a year ago meant that Anarchy could always (always) tell when something was amiss: He knew his boyfriend, knew a fake smile from a real one even if no-one else could see past Chey’s chameleon-like mastery of social masks; could see the subtlest change of tide in those seafoam eyes, could always tell when the tension of their shared past was creeping into Chey’s thin shoulders.
And, well. Tonight something was undoubtedly wrong; normally Chey was talkative well into the night; stayed extroverted and day-vibrant until two in the morning or until Anarchy half-jokingly threatened to kick him out of the room, whichever came first. Now, though, Chey was quiet. Distant. Had started to drift into it sometime earlier in the evening, and seemed miles away behind the eyes when he’d murmured to Anarchy, “Can you come to my room tonight? I want to be somewhere with a window…” 

There in his own bed, Chey lay, still uncharacteristically silent, facing his window with his back to Anarchy, who furrowed his brow with concern.
“Chey,” he said quietly, propping himself up on an elbow, “What’s up with you tonight?...You’re so quiet. What’s wrong?”
Chey let out a long, soft sigh, but didn’t roll over; just gave a half-hearted shrug that read as young. 
“I dunno why, but...I just keep thinking about the past, tonight, for some reason,” he said, still facing away. “I don’t even remember what reminded me of it. Normally I’m fine, you know? But sometimes I just...Get stuck.” His voice was quiet and sad, an echo of who he’d been in a life buried eight or nine years deep, and Anarchy reached out to rest his hand on the covers over Chey’s hip, hoping to offer some semblance of comfort. 
“...I get stuck too, sometimes,” Anarchy said softly, having only just barely pulled himself out of his own head. “Just start thinking myself in circles; about things I could’ve done differently, or just...whatever. If you wanna talk about what’s fuckin’ with you...I’m here.”
Chey shifted slightly and let out a shaky breath. “It’s all fucked up, ‘Key,” he said; “I wish it was just bad memories. But I started thinking about the Boss. Ya know. ‘Mr. Doe.’ Stupid alias…” Chey’s voice cracked and he tearfully hugged one of his pillows to his chest as he continued, “It’s so fucked and I know it’s wrong, but I want him to have cared. I worked for him for two years before the…everything. I know, I know it’s wrong! But I want him to have cared about us.”
“...Chey, he fucking sold us,” Anarchy said, unable to be as comforting as he wished to be, bitterness still winning out over sympathy even in the face of Chey’s distress.

“I know,” Chey murmured, his voice choked up and guilty, “I know how fucked up it is. But I just…did he notice when I vanished? Did he care?”
“Chey…” Anarchy sighed, the reluctance in his tone obvious.
“Did he?”

“...I told him you’d gone missing. He said it was ‘a pity’ and to not let it get in the way of my job,” Anarchy said after a long hesitation. He’d known answering was unavoidable but still winced at the soft, sad, choked noise that escaped Chey’s chest.  
“Kas,” Anarchy said, trying to balance his tone between gentleness and conviction, “You can’t do this to yourself. You were a kid, of course you wanted to trust him. But you’ve gotta know by now that we were nothing to him. Why were we the ones he let sleep rough? He never offered us a place, not ever. Why did he send us to all his sadistic, abusive clients? Because we were scarred up already—we were damaged goods, Chey. We weren’t just commodities to him, we were disposable. We were never meant to survive it all.” Anarchy paused for a moment before finally running his hand up to Chey’s shoulder with a soft sigh. “…Please look at me?”

Chey sniffled but finally rolled over, and Anarchy’s chest ached at the sight of the tear tracks on his boyfriend’s cheeks. He gently ran his fingers through Chey’s hair, then brought his hand to rest at his jawline; ran a thumb over his cheekbone.
“I know,” Anarchy said, “I know how much it sucks. But please, don’t give him that power. He was a sick, greedy bastard. He doesn’t deserve to have you think about him, doesn’t deserve to have you care what he thought of you—he assigned a damn price to you! As if it’s possible to assign value to fuckin’ sunlight, or spring.” Anarchy’s gaze softened and he offered Chey a small smile. “You’re worth so much more than someone like him could ever comprehend,” he murmured, then pressed a soft kiss to Chey’s forehead. “Don’t let yourself forget that.”

Chey let out a shaky breath and gave a small, jerky nod as he returned the smile—which, though wavering, was real; the light and love behind his eyes proved that. 
“‘Sunlight or spring,’” Chey softly echoed, and brought one of his hands up to rest atop Anarchy’s own. 
“...Or peace, or hope, or safety,” Anarchy said quietly, “You've never been anything less than that. Not to me.” He pressed a gentle kiss to Chey’s mouth, and only pulled back far enough to speak; their lips still just barely brushed when he did.
“He bet wrong, Chey. Sure, I don’t think we were supposed to make it out alive. But we did. We did.”