He’s A Drowning Man

📅 April 14, 2018; 17, almost 18 days after Chey's reappearance

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴀʟᴄᴏʜᴏʟ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ + ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴs ᴏғ sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ〛

Sleeping lightly had been a necessity for the vast majority of Chey’s life; safety had depended on it. The newfound security that his reconnection with Anarchy afforded him wasn’t enough to break such deeply ingrained hypervigilance, and just over two weeks into his new living situation he was startled awake and sent scrambling to the bedroom doorway by a resonant thud from the apartment overhead.
“What was that?” he asked, stepping out into the hallway and seeing that he wasn’t the only one who’d heard; Anarchy had already left his own bedroom to stare worriedly at the ceiling. Chey approached him and Kohao’s bedroom door opened too.
“That was Seth having a fuckin’ night again, it sounds like,” Kohao said as he joined the other two in the hall. “At least it wasn’t his mirror again this time, though. Why the fuck has he kept replacing that thing?”
“So that he can smash it again?” Anarchy hypothesized bleakly. The worry in his eyes was too deep-set for his tone to read as dry humor. “...Maybe we should call ‘Thena.”
Chey stared blankly at Anarchy, then at Kohao, who was also grimacing upwards.
“Wait, what? Does that happen a lot?” he asked them, confused. “Like...sorry. Seth smashes mirrors?”
Anarchy looked over and gave him a sympathetic, if hollow, half-smile. It didn’t reach his eyes. 
“Not a lot, no. But yeah, he does. Or he’s done it a couple times before.” Anarchy sighed. “Welcome to the family, Chey: K-O’s a failed school shooter, you and I are ex-addicts, and Sethfire is a soft-spoken, college-professor-looking-motherfucker by day and a raging alcoholic by night. I’d imagine ‘Thena and the kid sometimes manage to sleep, but they’ve gotta deal with us and we’ve ended up calling one of ‘em or Jazz to deal with him, too, so.”
“To deal with him…? Why don’t either of you go up?” Chey asked awkwardly. Looking at the scar running up Anarchy’s cheek, he was suddenly struck by a disturbing thought and hushed his voice. “Does Seth actually get...like...violent? He doesn’t, right?”
“Only with himself,” Kohao replied, sounding bitter, as usual. “We don’t go up, though, no. Fuck that.”

“Sethfire has been drinking hard for ages,” Anarchy said, offering a gentler tone and more of an explanation; “Like, it started getting a bit worrisome when I was eighteen—but, you know, not like this. Just in order to check out a bit and sleep without nightmares, I guess.”
“Which he also hated us asking about,” Kohao cut in, then made challenging eye contact with Chey. “We’ve all tried checking up on him, but he shuts down around us. He always has; he won’t open up to anyone. Athena and ‘Tae he’ll at least let babysit him, though. Last time I tried to talk to him about his drinking he just opened the door, looked at me, said ‘No offense meant, but I don’t think you should be the one dealing with this,’ and closed the door again.”
“I wonder if the kid knows why the fuck he does it,” Anarchy said, bitterness just barely lapping at the edges of his voice. “It’s gotten worse ever since Aetos got his own place.”

Chey blinked and shook his head, still baffled, and needed to backtrack. 
“Sorry, I just—I don’t know anything. Aetos lived with Seth? And then moved out? And now Seth breaks things?” he asked, searching for clarification. 
“Pretty much,” Anarchy shrugged. “He started before Aetos came around, but he wasn’t smashing mirrors drunk when he had a roommate.”
“Probably helped that his roommate was a highschooler,” Kohao added ruefully. “Aetos moved in when he was sixteen, after we stopped him from chucking himself off that bridge. He only moved out last year. ‘Wanted not to impose.’ Honestly though—he should’ve fuckin’ stayed. Him being around as a buffer definitely kept Seth from hitting the bottle this hard.” 
Chey tucked his tongue to his cheek and glanced up at the ceiling, deeply concerned.
“And you call him to help with Seth, still, sometimes?”
“Seth listens to him,” Kohao responded, a defensive edge to his tone. 
“And we should probably call him or ‘Thena now anyway, before we hear something smashing,” Anarchy sighed. 

As if on cue, there was the unmistakable sound of glass breaking from overhead; making Chey jump and Anarchy curse and bury his face in his hands.
“That was probably the damn living room mirror. Again,” Anarchy said. “I swear he punishes himself with the things. Bathroom mirror, bedroom mirror, living room mirror—”
“Not that how much shit he breaks is a good indicator of his safety,” Kohao interrupted darkly. “Fuckin’—what, five months ago now? When all the shit was going down. Totally silent night as far as I know. But Seth manages to slit his own damn throat, get to the hospital, get stitched up, talk his way out of being committed, and come back home. The next day he comes downstairs to check up on me when his neck’s totally wrapped in gauze. We were all just like, ‘What the fuck happened to you?’” Kohao shook his head and gestured aggressively upwards. 
“I wish this wasn’t a fucking rarity! I wish he lost it like this every time, then we’d at least know shit was up! Instead we’re always in the fucking dark. What are we meant to do when he won’t tell us anything and can just silently disem-fucking-bowel himself?”
Kohao’s graphic question set the hairs on the back of Chey’s neck on end, and he cast another apprehensive glance up at the now-silent ceiling. 
“You don’t need to call ‘Tae. I’m gonna go check on him,” he said, feeling the need to reassure himself of Sethfire’s safety.
“Knock yourself out,” Kohao huffed, looking frustratedly hopeless; “I’m going back to bed.” He retreated back into his room and shut the door.

Anarchy reached out to rest a sympathetic hand on Chey’s arm.
“You don’t have to, Chey. We can call the kid. Or ‘Thena. Jazz might have already heard that shit and gone down.”
“No, I know I don’t need to. But I want to.”
“...You’re not gonna get answers, you know,” Anarchy said gently, maybe mistaking Chey’s insistence for curiosity. “We all know each other’s baggage, that’s how it is, how it’s been. But Sethfire? Athena doesn’t know what his deal is. If it was anybody else I’d think you could do it; you could get blood from a stone by smiling at it, but he’s—”
“I’m not looking for answers,” Chey interrupted, tentatively smiling. “I really just want to make sure he’s okay. That’s all.”
Anarchy gave him a soft smile and gently squeezed his arm. 
“Yeah, no, that’s you, isn’t it?...Thanks, Chey.”

Chey tossed on a shirt before heading upstairs, fiddling with the hem as he hesitated outside Seth’s door before he managed to steel himself and knock. For a moment there was silence and Chey wondered if it had been too long, if Seth had passed out drunk by now or worse; maybe he should go, call ‘Tae, find someone with a spare key—but then he heard the lock click and the door opened.

“‘T—oh. Cheyenne.” Sethfire sounded more tired than drunk, and Chey felt distinctly that he didn’t look like an alcoholic. Anarchy had talked about his dad, and foster kids that Chey had known had talked about their parents—people who were angry or sloppy or violent when they drank; people summed up by stained shirts and vomit, yelling and lashing out, piss-soaked couches and kids who’d had to parent or hide in closets. Sethfire didn’t fit the trope; he wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up; had eyes that stayed gentle despite their cloudiness.
“Just ‘Chey’ is fine. I wanted to make sure you were alright,” Chey said, offering a tentative smile. “Are you?” 
Sethfire looked like he might have tried to return the smile, but he only managed the ghost of a grimace and a flicker behind his bleary eyes.
“Right, sorry. Chey. ‘m fine. Sorry’f I woke you up.” Sethfire’s words were slurred and distant, his usual verbosity having given way to something exhausted and monosyllabic.
“I’m not here for an apology, Seth,” Chey said gently. “Just to reassure myself you’re safe. Are you gonna be okay tonight? D’you need anything?”
Sethfire waved Chey off tiredly and started, ever so slowly, to close the door. 
“I’ll be ‘lright. Go back t’ your place,” he mumbled. “Sorry ‘m like this. What must y’think of me.”
“I just think you’re dealing with something rough,” Chey said, putting his palm up to the door. “I’ve been there too.” He wasn’t applying any pressure, but Sethfire stopped slowly closing it. 
“Your friends care about you, Seth—me included.” Chey dropped his hand. The door stayed open. “...You saved ‘Key, there’s no way I could repay that. When you’re ready to talk...We’ll be here for you. In the meantime, are you sure you don’t just need some help cleaning up?”
Seth glanced tiredly over his shoulder, then shook his head.
“I’ll be fine...Take care of it in the morning.”
Chey wanted to insist; to smile warmly and duck inside anyway—but he studied the creases in Sethfire’s brow and the shadows of his forested eyes, and knew instinctively that it wasn’t the time: The walls up now needed windows and not a wrecking ball.
“Alright, I hope you get some rest,” Chey conceded with a soft smile, taking a step back. “Still call me up if you want help in the morning, though. The door’s always open. And stay safe, yeah?”
Sethfire gave him a searching look, something impressed—maybe even hopeful—just barely sparking in his eyes. 

“...Yeah. Thank you, Chey.”

Chey headed back downstairs deep in thought. Checking up on Sethfire had been troubling, sure, but had gone just fine, it seemed—and that made space for Chey to get hung up on something else: “when all the shit was going down.” 
Chey knew already that there had been shit which had gone down; even just a couple weeks past having met Anarchy’s friends, he knew. But conversations about “last fall” tended to get cut short or redirected before any details surfaced, and so Chey was left knowing without knowing—aware that Kohao had done something, had some episode, and that that was when Seth had had one of his more disfiguring ones, too—but in the dark entirely about what had triggered either…just able to observe that whatever it had been tended to draw his friends’ expressions darker and turn them quiet.

Anarchy was sitting at the breakfast bar when Chey walked back in and he immediately stood from his stool when Chey opened the door. Chey quickly responded with as soothing a wave of his hands as he could and shook his head not to worry. 
“He’d broken one mirror but seemed lucid enough for someone slurring,” he explained quietly; “He didn’t want help cleaning up but assured me he’d be okay. I believe him.”
Concern still danced behind Anarchy’s eyes, but he nodded and seemed to relax some, anyway. “Okay. Thank you, Chey...I hope so.”

Chey hesitated for a moment and in light of how drained Anarchy already looked, contemplated not asking—but he couldn’t not know, couldn’t keep not knowing; not when what he didn’t know had so clearly devastated all these people he now found close to him.
“‘Key…” he started, tentatively, “K-O mentioned…before I went up. A few months ago. What was it that happened back then? I know it affected everyone. But what was it?” 

Anarchy hesitated, then looked around as though checking whether they’d be overheard. He collected himself before sitting back down at the breakfast bar and sighing.
“...A lot,” he said. “Long story short, we lost…a lot of friends. And we don’t really know why.” 
“...What about long story long?” Chey ventured.
“Ah…” Anarchy looked out toward the balcony window; the multicolored lights of Brooklyn glinted in the reflections in his eyes. “...You know that Fawkes and K-O dated, right?”
“Uh, yeah, I thought she mentioned something like that the other night,” Chey said. He couldn’t read Anarchy’s tone and frowned as he settled into the empty stool beside him. “It doesn’t seem like it ended too badly. I’ve seen them talk.”
Anarchy snorted, suddenly. “Believe me, it ended badly. They just managed to get past it. At first she broke his nose.”
Chey’s heart jumped in his chest. “What?! For breaking up with her?” He suddenly felt the need to protect Kohao, to try harder for a heart-to-heart, because if that was how he was used to being treated, then—
“No, for breaking up with her and then disappearing for almost four days and making us all think he had killed himself. It wasn’t like that,” Anarchy half-soothed, albeit through a grimace. “Or…they didn’t last long enough for it to really get to be like that. He hit a wall once. That’s why he left.” Anarchy shrugs; he seems older, somehow, aged by the conversation. “That’s kinda just the set up, though. Not really relevant. What blew everything up was what happened after the punch… Has anyone talked to you about Nightshrike?”

No one had, and Chey’s blank expression must have said it for him. Anarchy sighed again.
“They were this other band we knew…”

Chey had felt the blank space before; had sensed the missing puzzle pieces from what Anarchy talked to him about in the same way Anarchy had sensed Chey omitting his own, and it had been uncomfortable. But where Chey had felt like there was no reason to necessitate sharing the mistakes he’d made—he didn’t want them to have defined his life, even that section of it—Nightshrike was too big a puzzle piece to leave unspoken about. 
Anarchy explained that Athena and Kohao had known the twins from highschool; that with them as wingmen, Astra had given EoI a venue for shows. Their friend Bryluen was well-connected and had gotten some strings pulled and favors done and managed to have them sitting damn pretty on occasion in regards to band photos and shows, because Philipp Plein or Alexander McQueen would chip sponsor money in in exchange for promotion of their fashion lines; they were getting to wear high-end alternative fashion onstage and still cut costs; Anarchy shook his head and muttered that maybe it should have been evident that it was too good to be true. Colin would take photos on a discount. Everyone was friendly. In the end, Anarchy said, it was Nightshrike that got EoI off the ground. 
“We owe them that, owed them that, and we were close, you know, our bands. A conversation between Athena and Gabe was what sparked this—” Anarchy gestured with his right arm in indication of the wing tattoo which had drawn Chey’s attention so easily at the concert. “And just…everyone had someone. It was like our bands themselves were best friends. It was bigger than any of us, or it seemed like it. And then last year it all fell apart…” 

┄∞┄

“She called him an inconvenience?” Chey asked, aghast, after Anarchy told him about the October afternoon that had apparently ended it all. “She looked her suicidal friend in the face and called him an inconvenience?” 
Anarchy shrugged; it seemed like outrage had long since been replaced by resignation for him. “And told him to grow up and that he deserved to be punished, yeah. Then when he went over to hash it out with her, apparently she tried to convince him that he’d ‘misinterpreted’ her or something. It fucked him up even when we all reassured him we knew what was true, ‘cause he has reality issues sometimes…It’s fucked. And there’s no closure.” Anarchy’s resigned expression drew closer to troubled; he frowned.
“At first, when it was happening, before Bry did that, I thought the thing with K had really brought all of us closer. Nightshrike was there, you know, essentially everyone was desperate to find him. Then he got home and shit hit the fan and everyone just…vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Like…withdrew.” Anarchy’s eyes looked duller; he mindlessly started to tap his fingertips on the countertop. “I was closer to Coah but Bayer stepped up for me hard, there, in October. He didn’t need to, but he did. That’s why I’m saying that during it all, I thought we were all going to end up tighter. I mean, Bay…Bayer was the person I came closest to saying your name to. I hadn’t told anyone what happened in full or what it meant, in case…but I don’t know. While K was missing it came up, and I nearly told him. But then afterwards he couldn’t even do me the favor of explaining why the hell everyone was dumping us. He sent a few messages that were vague as hell, just stuff like ‘things are messy and if you don’t hear from me it’s not because I don’t care,’ but when I told him the only thing we needed to clean shit up was for Bryluen to apologize and, you know, fix herself, he just told me he thought us getting an apology would be unlikely. Then everything basically went quiet. Any messages they sent were shallow as hell, like, ‘Hope you’re doing fine,’ and nothing of substance afterwards. People in my life were falling apart; Sethfire cut himself bad, like, the weird small-talk wasn’t worth it to me after a while…” Anarchy’s frown deepened.
“Everyone went cold or silent. Athena was struggling for ages, hell, she probably still is but found people to help fill the void by now. But Astra was like an older sister to her and Gabe was one of her best friends. ‘Thena tried everything at first, yanno, messaging more and messaging less, asking questions, not asking questions. Trying to talk it out, trying to give them space, trying being pissed. I know K-O did the same thing but more…his style. Reached out and got nothing but couldn’t out-silent-treatment the silent treatment. Wrote Gabe a song and sent him it; no response, blocked him. Unblocked, apologized for existing and tried to talk about why he was hurting, got nothing, wrote essentially a prosecution’s statement about all the ways he’d been wronged, sent that, blocked again…It was killing both of them. ‘Thena and K. Especially when they’d try so hard and just get left waiting. They already knew any responses would be impersonal as fuck, so…I told ‘em to just block those numbers for good and be done with it. Make the loss concrete. You can’t move on otherwise.”

“....That’s wisdom,” Chey said softly. “...Difficult wisdom.”
Anarchy looked up; his mouth twitched but his eyes softened. “...It was hard learned. I never let it be true that I’d lost you, you know. Not fully. And now I'm glad I didn’t! But it ate at me the whole time.”
“I’m sorry,” Chey breathed, guilt knotting itself up in his chest.
“Stop saying that. You’re back.” Anarchy offered a sad smile as he put his hand on Chey’s leg and gave it a soft squeeze; his expression crumpled slightly as he drew back. “...Maybe they will be too, one day…”

Anarchy glanced back toward the hall. “Bayer texted me just over a week ago. You’d just shown back up, everything was crazy. He said that things had changed and wanted our bands to talk or something…” Anarchy shook his head. “But I just don’t think it's the time now. Everyone’s still hurting too badly. Even if Bryluen apologized…it’s been months of pain. And K-O still has to get used to you. It’s too much all at once…” Anarchy glanced over his shoulder again. His voice dropped to a near whisper. “...He scared the shit out of me then. He’s scaring the shit out of me now. He treats himself like an inconvenience. I know he’s rude to you and I’m sorry about it, but—”
“No, it’s okay, I want to protect him, too.” Chey felt like he understood even better, now, why K-O acted so unapproachable; why trust—his, and Seth's too—wasn’t up on easy offer. Betrayal was too recent, and betrayal could only happen when trust was a factor. “He’s suffered enough.” Chey leaned his head against Anarchy’s shoulder. “All of you suffered enough. If the connection was bigger than any of you individually, like you said…? The healing will have to be, too. You’ll know when the time is right.”
Anarchy leaned into Chey’s comfort and let out another soft sigh. “Thanks, Chey…I hope so.”