Work Text:
Someone somewhere is playing a piano. A complex yet soft melody that can be just barely heard over the murmurs of patrons, sometimes they spice it up with a little harp, and isn’t that nice . There’s an occasional clink of a glass, methodically timed rounds of too light laughter, and gratuitous drinking of champagne. The whole place smells like money, over indulgence and privilege.
He can’t really say he’s surprised; they are surrounded by people whose combined net worth is easily in the millions, if not hitting a billion. The best of the “best”; politicians, entrepreneurs, esteemed coaches. Anyone with any relationship to the mayor, anyone that can carry power and ensure his stay in office, all in one overtly pearled mansion that is way too big for a three person family.
“Hey Fetch, check it out, it’s a snail.”
“Ew what the fuck! Get that away from me,”
And then there was them.
“Come on, you love clam chowder, what’s the difference?”
“The difference is it’s clam chowder, not a snail! You eat it,”
Fetch bats at Delsin’s hand with blatant disgust as the taller cackles, dropping the sad little thing to be forgotten on his tiny, tiny plate.
Eugene grimaces just a tad at the site of the green tinted creature. Drenched in enough butter and garlic you can almost forget what it is, but his memories of them leave little nostalgia. Gagging them down because it was either that or water crackers and sparkling water.
“Guys, come on. At least pretend you’re not twelve.” Reggie scolds from behind them, as if he wasn't also taking a wide berth around the hors d'oeuvres trays lurking around every corner.
Something tells the youngest they’ll be taking a trip to the Fish Fry after this. Or maybe that really good taco stand they found back in October.
But that felt like a mirage in a dessert, with the way things were going.
They’ve been there three hours too long and haven't even had a chance to talk to the Mayor about their new budget request, about the housing plan, about support groups for young, traumatized conduits.
This was supposed to be a work thing, after all. That’s the only reason any of them had RSVP’d the stupid soiree in the middle of a regular work week, sacrificing precious time that could be dedicated to literally anything else. Eugene’s advocacy programs, Delsin’s PR buildup, Fetch’s seminars and reach out. Hell, Reggie took a night off for this to help them out.
“It’s not my fault they decided to serve snails. I mean come on, we’re literally on the coast, shrimp would be better.” Delsin half defends, half complains, toying with the accouterments he tried to enjoy.
Not all of it was bad; it just wasn’t for everyone. Not every person on the planet got to try things like caviar and stuffed dates, those were weird and new and even if flavors were familiar, the new delivery was hard to take. Eugene recalls several nights working his way through luxurious tables of food, willing to try it, but seldom coming out with good results.
Fetch was like the pickiest eater he’d ever met, so she’d eliminated everything besides the cheese and crackers, favoring the bubbly that was always floating about on fine silver trays.
“Not everyone has a down to earth palette, Del. These people probably haven’t eaten a hotdog in twenty years. If ever,” The oldest mutters into his fine crystal glass, eyeing the pond of tailored black suits and thousand dollar dresses.
For all of his complaining, he fit in the most among their quartet. He had a real, actual title—a position that he was elected into. Looking foreign and foreboding in his formal Sheriff’s uniform, adorned with his badge and singular medal of Valor he makes great effort to hide. He had influence, weight to throw around and his appearance meant something.
While the three of them were labeled as ambassadors to satiate their violent demands for things to be different.
The D.U.P may have been disbanded, Augustine may have been arrested and things may seem good on the surface. But she hasn’t been tried; there’s hundreds of people still missing, and conduits come to their doors near daily looking for help of any kind. It’s dirty business, and gets even dirtier when every politician in the tri-state area suddenly wants a piece of the PR pie now that it’s acceptable to support conduits.
They’ve already had to turn down six marriage proposals. Four for Delsin, and two for Fetch, who had laughed so hard she’d almost cried.
“God, a hot dog sounds good right now,” The still platinum blonde sighs, “ How long is Mayor Man gonna keep everybody waiting? If I eat one more cube of marinated mozzarella I’m gonna turn into a stick of string cheese.”
“At least you can eat that,”
“Your lactose intolerance is so not my problem, D.”
“Maybe we should split up,” Eugene prompts, turning towards his friends and trying to abade his swell of affection at the sight of them. For all their bickering and their griping, they were making a night full of flashbacks for the nerd bearable. It’d been a long time since he’d put on a suit, combed his hair back and straightened his shoulders. Pretending to have it all together. If not for their loud and colorful personalities, he’s certain he’d forget he’s not fourteen anymore, wandering finely decorated halls in search of a purpose, or companionship in a sea of faceless individuals. “Maybe if one of us finds him and corners him we can lay out our proposal, get the okay, and schedule a real meeting.”
“‘Gene’s right. He’s probably swamped by people, the only way we’re gonna get this out of the way is to find him.”
“Ugh, why is my life becoming chasing idiots?” The smoke conduit complains, rolling his head off to the side dramatically.
“I asked myself the same thing the first time you ran from Chauncey,” Reggie mutters, the slightest smile coming forth when Fetch snorts into her drink and has to cough in her arm.
Delsin gapes, looking like he’s about to go into a wild tangent about his brother being so mean to him, and how unfair he is all the time, and how dare he do this in public, when Eugene intervenes, trying to stave off his amusement.
“Splitting up,” He reiterates pointedly, "Try to find him in an hour?"
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I call going with Reggie!” Fetch rushes, taking hold of the taller’s arm, gluing herself to his side. “No way am I walking around a mansion full of old men by myself.”
“You and I both know you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself,” Even with the objection, Eugene notes the way the eldest makes no move to peel her hands away, unable to help himself in raising a brow just slightly.
“You and I both know how taking care of myself works out,” With that, Reggie relents and lets her corral him off, pointing to the two remaining men in reminder.
“An hour, meet outside, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Silence falls momentarily, Eugene unable to help himself when he utters,
“So…you saw that too–”
He doesn’t get to finish, pursing his lips tightly when Delsin makes a grand sound of disgust and horror, heading off in the opposite direction.
And then there was one.
Eugene...kind of regrets his plan as soon as he starts meandering through the grand walls of the mansion, dodging plates of appetizers like crème fraîche and caviar tartlets, grilled figs, and other morsels that scream “I paid a lot of money for this catering, look at me, look at your mayor ,” thankful he didn’t hit the juice as hard as his shorter counterpart had. He’s certain he’d be drunk enough that his hunger would win over his dislike of it all.
The place is a labyrinth of uncreative decorating and white paint that’s probably called something like pearl at sunrise, full of paintings in garish frames, classic clashing with modern none too gracefully. It’s dull without his friends gleefully mocking each aspect they find asinine, and leaves him feeling more lonely than he’d been prepared for. Thankfully there are a couple representatives he and the others had worked with, grateful to have a conversation with someone that seems just as out of place, and equally perturbed by interrupting their schedules.
If you told him this would be his life a year ago, he’s not sure how he’d have reacted.
Full of meetings and brown nosing, shaking clammy hands and trying to pretend he doesn’t know all the people in this “luxurious” mansion had once decried his, and his friends' existence. It was unpleasant business, full of fights and court battles and money management and god , the amount of emails they received in a week. None of them had any clue how much it would take to do more than just be free of the D.U.P, but somehow the overwhelming responsibility felt as good as it felt stifling. Like he was keeping his promise to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.
He’s not sure how long he’s meandered when he makes it into a secondary dance hall, and just how big is this place? It feels like everything looks the same yet different. He chooses to pause and take a breath just at the back of the room, lost in a darkened corner to watch drunk couples try to execute the proper waltz and drown their first world sorrows in expensive liquor. But then, something makes his jaw prickle. The faintest sense of being watched - it's unfortunately a familiar sensation this far into being a secondary political figure. People are always looking at him, or trying to look through him to his more charismatic companions. It’s not a new feeling, but it’s…different. it compels him to turn his head, to seek it out.
It’s. It has to be a trick of the light, when he meets the eyes of someone across the fine dancing hall.
Is that…?
“Mom?” He whispers, lost in the piano and low conversation surrounding him. The person however seems to hear him, the way those features stare back at him with staunch familiarity.
What is she doing here? He has to be hallucinating, what reason would she ever have to be in Washington? Let alone at this very function, at this very moment?
No, it has to be his brain messing with him, turning sharply and blindly taking a hall he’s (pretty) sure he hasn’t taken yet, desperately maintaining his breathing.
None of them find the Mayor.
Fetch and Reggie both seem frazzled for reasons they won't name, and Delsin received three new phone numbers of deprived housewives that he spends the car ride viciously scrubbing off.
They end up going to the taco stand, because it’s easier, eating messy burritos in their formal wear and decompressing from the odd night.
Eugene merely chokes down his nachos and tries to make it seem like he’s not rattled to his core while his friends laugh and joke around him.
That night, he dreams of heels clacking against concrete, well manicured nails digging into his scalp, whispers meant to be kind morphing into cruel jeers, growing into a wild cacophony of screams, gasping awake in the dark of his hideout. The buzz of the machines and televisions echoing off the walls of his skull.
They have an office.
It’s nothing fancy, just a little place above an eclectic gems shop they use to stave off all the fan mail (and hate mail), herding it into the office’s P.O box instead of the Rowe's personal address, as well as a place for meetings.
It’s furnished more like a studio than a business, a well loved couch and forgotten personal items scattered about when they had to spend a day in the space actually doing their job . Eugene spent the most time there, he was the closest to it and the most likely to do the “boring shit” like crunching numbers and answering emails. Delsin preferred ground work. Fetch would help when he asked in sorting out the mail, keeping him company on especially trying days.
Today he was alone. Fetch had a lecture across town and Delsin had a full schedule of commitments he'd pushed back as far as he could. Eugene didn’t mind; he kind of needed the space. The peace and quiet of the clumsily decorated interior, the lazy drizzle of rain, too restless in his own skin to handle the constant stimulation of his hideout.
The box is full, it always is these days. A true indicator of how far their message was starting to reach, the locations and ZIPS ever changing and ever growing in range.
The repetition was easy to get lost in, sorting letters by whom they’re addressed to, separating them into each of their own personal bins, (he’s not sure how he feels about his starting to fill up, the blue and shoddily written bubble text of his name feeling like some form of mockery. He always waits until he’s had a couple beers to dare reading them.) and burying himself within emails, Latte Owl hot chocolate and J-pop.
He’s not sure how much time has passed when the buzzer goes off, barely heard over the blasting of his headphones and the vicious clacking of his keyboard. He’s been arguing with a few journalists about privacy invasion, as well as getting that email to the Mayor’s secretary, and doesn’t even think to check who could possibly be trying to get in. Delsin is certainly not done with his day, otherwise he’d have texted Eugene, and Fetch’s last text had bemoaning the bias behaviors set in place of universities, so she was obviously having a great time.
For all he knows, it’s someone mistaking their rented space for the one on the other side of the hall, buzzing them in without fuss. Hell, it could be a delivery guy who’s day he just made easier, doesn’t matter when he has to manage and update the website and check their joint instagram.
There’s eyes on him. It works its way up his spine and tingles his jaw once again, sets shivers across his neck--his flawless and thoughtless pattern of typing falters with wild twitches in his fingers, pausing his music to listen to the suffocating silence.
“Delsin?” He prompts, even if it feels wrong. The taller conduit seldom makes a silent entrance, and would have already ruffled Eugene’s hair beyond repair and decried his dislike of the evening and whatever event he had to make a face at.
“No, not Delsin.”
The conduit pivots sharply in the chair, pulling his headphones down to cradle his neck and--
You have got to be kidding.
She looks exactly the same but--different. He had known from a young age he’d inherited most of her physical traits. Same brown eyes, same light hair, same oval face. He had never been a child to look up to his mother in awe, bask in her beauty and the supposed unconditional love he’d been told so much about, but she is beautiful in a strange, powerful way. She is elegant. High posture, clean and prim at every corner. In many aspects, aging has done her a service. Or perhaps it was money, maintaining minimal wrinkling and just enough gray to not be mistaken for a young, doe-eyed thirty year old.
Irene Sims is many things. Was many things. She was a hard worker, an ice cold political candidate, and a stout believer in preserving the image of her state. There was once a time in Eugene’s life that he had admired her. When he was young, oblivious to the cruelty of the world and just how far down the list he was on the list of his mother’s priorities. Before her career took off, before his pains became too great for her lukewarm comfort.
Before he became the very thing she denounced.
He had wanted to believe the event at the mansion had been a fluke. A hallucination of some kind brought on from hardly eating and surrounded by foreign faces. A trick of the eye, a mistaken identity, and he has never been so disappointed in being proven wrong.
Brown eyes skim over the messy office. The strewn blankets, the loved pillows, forgotten snack wrappers. Akin to the few scant times she managed to invade his bedroom, judge the state of his bed, the posters and figurines he had bought with his allowance. Break his peace to make him practice piano or entertain another politician's child.
“Hello, Eugene,” She says after what feels like an eternity, there is jelly where his knees used to be, “Care for some lunch?”
He’s not sure what compelled him to follow her out the door, numbly locking it and trailing beside her onto the bustling streets of Seattle. They end up at some pretentious Italian restaurant after she had turned to him with her tasteful bob and neutral make up, “You still like italian, right?”
He doesn’t tell her he only made spaghetti because that’s all he was really good at all the nights she left him alone.
He orders the cheapest thing he can find on the menu, gripping his own knee to stop its errant bouncing, looking everywhere but at her. At the street ahead of him, the milling bodies and rushing cars, the usual activity of the city. At the shitty, gentrifying decorations and indie music playing out on the patio.
Irene sips her sparkling water like this is normal. Like there wasn’t nearly ten years of separation between them, like she bothered to take him somewhere that wasn’t a work luncheon for the first time since his twelfth birthday.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised to see you at the fundraiser last night,” She starts after an agonizingly long stint of loaded silence. “I knew there was a team of conduits pulling demands forward, it’s what most offices talk about these days. I just wasn’t expecting...you.”
So many responses come to his mind; some of them less than tasteful, and sounding an awful lot like his friend's Jersey inclinations
. Others feel pathetic. Some of them aren't even words, the itch of energy under his skin thrumming with the influx of adrenaline.
“How did you find the office?” Gold star for self control, he thinks.
“I told the mayor I was interested in speaking to you about conduit management in my state. He happily provided me with your address.”
God. Damnit. He closes his eyes and sighs, scrubbing at his jaw in exasperation.
“Lucky me.”
“So...how have you been?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
The words feel like tar on his tongue, hot in his throat with old emotions. Clashing against his new confidence, and his ever low simmering sensation of self hatred. “Act like this is normal.”
For a moment, his mother says nothing. And Eugene dares to think maybe she has nothing to say for once in her forsaken life, too many memories of his stuttered, hurried arguments being shut down with sharp precision.
Because, what is there to say? The memory of her turning away from him as the D.U.P soldiers took hold of his shaking arms, dragged him away.
Augustine’s whispered words of assurance. A new school, a place where people would understand him.
“I can’t catch up with my son?”
The scoff leaves before he can stop it, biting his tongue between his teeth to stave off his sneer.
“I was barely your son when I–” was taken. “Left.”
“I will admit I…” a purposeful twirl of her straw, ice clinking against the metal and glass in a nauseating, musical tone.
The metal clasps on his restraints clacking against the chair, gasping for breath ,agony pulsing along his temple, his wrists, face sticky with tears– “I may have overreacted, back then. But I did what I thought was right at the time for our country–”
“Country, right,” He mutters, voice dripping with contempt he didn’t even know he harbored, unable to stop the jostling of his free foot now. “I'm not your election board, you don't need to sell me the whole 'unfettered american' spiel, yeah?”
He almost dares to believe she’s annoyed, the way she looks at him, straight faced and eyes just a little wide. As if she can't believe her son has the gumption to talk back to her, to reveal his attitude. His jaded, bitter soul that had rotted away inside his ribs until all that was left were scraps of the scared teenager who just wanted connection with someone. Anyone.
"Don't do that, Eugene." And isn't that so--poignant. The knee-jerk reaction his whole body has, memories of her well maintained hands taking hold of his shoulders, of his arms. Righting his neck ties and straightening his hair, clicking her tongue in a constant feedback loop of disapproval.
"Which part? call you out on your bullshit? Remind you what exactly you signed off on in that defense bill? What you sent me to?"
“I didn’t know at the time they--”
“What, mom, tortured me? Us? Used me as some kind of tool to train literal children to be killing machines? Do you know how many kids she ruined? Do you know how many lives she destroyed?”
“Yes, Eugene, I read the case file.” Her voice is clipped, sharp and pointed, and if he were a young boy he would shrink away, take it for what he knows it is. His mother losing her patience.
“But you didn’t live it,” He says, swallowing down the dim halls and lonely nights locked away shivering on a cot. Sometimes if he closes his eyes he can still hear the newer conduits crying, many in the same boat as him. Wondering if Cay truly was the end of his life, the way he’d spend his final years. “You knew people didn’t come back from it, you knew no one knew what happened in there. And you were okay with me being one of the statistics.”
“That is not--”
“That’s how it felt ,”
“What was I supposed to do, Eugene?” There it is, the hidden layers of her temper, her low scolding voice as she gets close enough for others not to hear. Admonish him for speaking out of turn without making a scene in front of her very important colleagues. Her silly son, so shy and ridiculous. “You nearly killed over twenty students, one ended up in a coma . How could I stand in front of city hall and defend you when your entire high school body saw you unleash literal hell?”
He thinks back to what Fetch said, only a few months after everything. On that too warm spring day, the crashing of the waves and the smell of the sea, her hand on his back.
They hurt you too.
He looks at her. Really looks at her. Sees the age lines and gray hairs in much closer detail like this. She’s tired under the makeup and air of indifference she has carried for as long as he could remember. He gets it; he does. In the eyes of many he is no different than any other white kid that snapped after too many hurtful words. He’s not Fetch; he didn’t drown in drugs and live on the street, and then do the most unspeakable thing to the only person he had in the world. He’s not Delsin; he didn’t destroy his body while wrought with grief and loss, lost in a world that feels like it's forgotten him.
No, he’s a wealthy white kid from a good area, in a good school, who had a future ahead of him.
But he’s not at the same time. He was all of these things, hypothetically, yet he felt like the opposite. He was never wealthy enough, never smart enough, never good looking enough to skirt by and make it to a point in his life he could just simply be.
He was That Kid. The one that got shoved in the halls, swirlied, called slurs in the locker room well before he even grasped the concept of what made him who he was.
Misery is misery. Loneliness is loneliness. Anger is anger.
“If it hadn’t been them,” He says slowly, a chilling sort of acceptance as he vocalizes the scariest part of it all, gaze unblinking “It would have been me .”
Irene rears back as if he’d slapped her, gathers herself by carefully flipping her hair back into place. The air is staggering, two pairs of brown eyes boring into one another. One daring to respond, the other at a loss.
That was the part she’d never get; how heavily his torment rested within his chest, his soul. Yearning for relief in the worst possible form. How much pain, and anger, and injustice he experienced.
He knows where he’d be if He Who Dwells hadn’t exploded from his veins, conjured angels and demons, physical manifestations of every torrid emotion he’d experienced. Gave him the power to reap the consequences he believed were deserved.
He wouldn’t be there. Or home. He’d be another half hearted advertisement of why you shouldn’t bully. He’d haunt his schoolmates' thoughts with their behavior. Maybe. He’s convinced Tyler Barron is a bonafide sociopath.
He’d be dead, and she doesn’t like that thought when he couldn’t be forgotten. Written off as a bio-terrorist never to be seen again.
Irene still hasn’t said anything, swallows around the tension when their food arrives. It smells like canned tomato sauce and he can tell the chicken is prepackaged.
Reggie makes better chicken parm. He makes everything better.
He misses his friends.
“What you don’t seem to get,” He says, ignoring the steaming plate of food and the tight clenching of his stomach, “Is that we’re past the point of salvaging any form of a relationship. You let me be tormented for six years because you didn’t want to sully your career. If you want to get to the nitty gritty of it,” He meets her eyes, if not for the fact he knows his mother better than she knows him, he’d say she seemed ready to cry. “This has nothing to do with Curden Cay at all.”
“Eugene, I--”
“If you’re serious about the support system back in state, I can give you my card and I’ll work with you. But that’s all our interactions will be.”
“That is not—“
“That’s all you get,” he interrupts, and for a moment he could almost believe the faux confidence in his voice, ignoring the wild thrumming of his heart, just on the cusp of panic and pressing it down as tightly as he could.
He’s losing the battle, feels it in the way the panic climbs to his throat, asking the waiter for a box when the girl does her two minute check. Irene has nothing to say, or perhaps her politician brain recognizes nothing she says will improve the situation.
She does meet his eyes when, true to his word, he places his card (and isn’t it wild he has a card? Thoughtfully made and identical to his friend’s own) pointedly on the table without a verbal goodbye.
He tries to walk, but his jaw is too tight, his clothes are too hot, and his holowings spring from his back before he can stop it.
Delsin is in the office when Eugene arrives, a blessing and a curse. The dark haired male spins in the chair he’d been previously occupying, that sunshiny smile of his brightening the room.
Though it swiftly falls when his friend really takes in the sight of him.
“Whoa. ‘Gene, you good?”
“I’m fine,” The words leave before he even really thinks about it, dropping the styrofoam container into his friend’s lap, as he walks with purpose towards the bathroom. “In fact, I’m great . Great, great, great.”
He of course doesn’t see the suspicious squint the older sends him, too focused on ripping his glasses off, pulling back his shaggy hair to jam his face under the sink and let cold water run over his heated skin.
It doesn’t help. It reminds him too much of getting swirlies in the boys room. Being woken up by a cold bucket of water and dragged down the stone halls of Cay.
How many times did he shiver in his wet clothes in both situations? How many nights did he cry himself to sleep in his never ending assault of his youth?
Brown eyes peering at him impassively, words of chilled assurance, looking through bloodshot eyes and wishing, wishing for—
What was he always wishing for?
He flinches and pulls his head back when a warm hand settles onto his shoulder, snapping his gaze to Delsin, who’s frown of concern turns to alarm.
“Oh. Uh. Your eyes are brown right?”
“What?” He responds, tongue too big for his mouth and too cold, yet too hot, and he hates how Delsin is looking at him.
The man in question points to the mirror, gently nodding his head to encourage Eugene to follow his focus.
His eyes are blue . Unnaturally so, a brilliant cerulean glowing at the edges with his pupils the size of pinpricks.
He stutters a breath, rubs furiously at his eyes so fireworks break out under his eyelids, holding his hands there until the chorus of his thoughts and emotions start to abade back into their barely there murmurs.
Dull brown looks back at him, purple underneath from exhaustion and years of sleep deprivation, forever stained into his skin, doomed to never catch up on the rest he was denied.
He hangs his head, breathes through his nose as he white knuckles the sink, Delsin’s presence pushing into just too much.
“Dude,” The taller starts, soft yet firm in its delivery and everything Eugene doesn’t need right now. “You’re obviously not fine.”
“No,” The nerd mutters in agreement, his own concern dully mixing in with the cocktail of other unpleasant sensations he’s experienced in the last hour. It felt as if all the progress he’d made, all the promise he gave himself towards being something close to well adjusted, gone. In a blink of an eye, drowning in his own internal struggles, giving into the whispers of intrusive thoughts that wriggle in the back of his mind like a virus.
“Do you…wanna talk about it?”
He should. He knows he should. And he can see himself doing it. Sobbing into the sink and pouring his heart and soul out to his best friend for the second time in their friendship. Tell him everything. Tell him how scared he still is. How angry he is. How he wishes, for one goddamn second, he could catch a break.
He feels it in his throat, the growing lump that desperately wishes to be released.
Then…something takes hold of his chest, a tight, constant grip that isn’t necessarily uncomfortable. It feels the same as when Reggie rests a hand on the back of his neck, a thoughtless act of navigating the youngest of their quartet to where he wants him. Authoritative. Benevolent.
No.
“N…No.” He repeats the word, somehow feeling compelled to listen to whatever that was, able to raise his head and glare into the mirror, brows knit tight and mouth straight. “No I’m–I’m okay. Just a bad day.”
Delsin doesn’t seem fully convinced, hand rubbing between his shoulders and almost ridding him of tension in that one act. The barest sense of guilt clenches his insides, especially meeting his friend’s deep, dark eyes and seeing only the endless well care and patience he’s imparted on the nerd since that fateful day.
“Just know I’m always here to talk. We’re always here to talk.”
Eugene forces a tight smile back, inhaling deeply through his nose as he pulls away from the sink.
“I know…I know.”
Irene never does reach out to him.
But that’s fine.