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Tapping his fingers nervously against the small box in his pocket Pete glanced around frantically as he continued walking determinedly back home. It was only just beginning to snow, a faint powdering of flakes covering the ground. There was a dumpster out behind a block of restaurants in a few blocks, as soon as he got there he could get rid of the box sitting heavy in his pocket.
His breath was coming out in large clouds lit up by the streetlights that lent down over the dark street. The sky was a dark grey blanket resting heavy over the city which held promises for more snow in the ever closer future. He pulled his too-light jacket closer around him in a feeble attempt to keep the biting wind out. He would be home soon enough, he could be warm and calm and safe soon enough.
And so he kept walking down the quiet streets, shops and businesses closed up for the evening and restaurants with dim lighting and quiet chatter, not many people where out this late and even fewer were actively out on the streets. This left Pete being the only one wandering down side paths and cramped alleys with nothing but his jacket and the constant presence of the boxes tucked deep into his pocket.
Pausing beside the dumpsters he slid the plastic sheets out of the box and hurriedly shoved them back into his pocket and began tearing up the thin card and tossing pieces into the open bins. He had to make sure to make the pieces small enough that they couldn’t be pieced back together, that his name was completely eradicated from the sticker slapped haphazardly onto the box. Eventually the pieces where small enough and his task was complete and so once more be began his meandering and long walk back to the house.
He wasn’t sure if it was entirely home yet to him, the house as a whole, but the small attic room he managed to keep affording was. He had really barely spend much time outside of the room to be entirely honest and while his roommates did seem like decent enough people, he could never be sure. It was that lack of assuredness which lead him on the winding path to and from the pharmacy, swapping the far too noticeable bottles out for plastic bags and disposing of the boxes as soon as possible. A few times he had discovered printing on one side of the blister packs and had to hurriedly discard of them as well.
It was a couple more blocks from the restaurants to the house, but Pete decided to take a different route down a couple more side streets and exiting onto a main road and then turn to head back home. It was a good fifteen minute walk along the main road to get home and he settled himself in for a steady trek home through the increasingly cold evening as snow continued to fall down.
Shoving his hands into his pockets and pulling the collar up to help insulate his neck he berated himself for not picking up a warmer coat when he had left earlier that evening. Just that morning he reminded Cody to grab an actually warm coat when he was heading out and then failed to do so himself.
Cody was a wildcard in this whole situation he was in. The new place was excellent and the roommates all great, he was getting along with Nasir and friendly Britta and Lars, Josh was fine, nothing great but nothing horrible, but Cody continued to be a thorn in Pete’s side. One of the first things the man had ever done when Pete had first met him was somehow sold his soul to such a small time devil that it was almost impressive.
He was trying to be friends with Cody, but the man just didn’t know when to shut the fuck up sometimes and it was getting on Pete’s nerves. Also the guy had no sense of privacy and refused to knock at all which when mixed with the fact that him and Pete were now working together lead to many times where Cody had pretty much slammed his door open in the middle of Pete changing. Once it was in the middle of Pete giving himself a T shot which had been far too awkward and now Cody kept looking at Pete weirdly and he was pretty sure he knew what the guy was thinking about him.
It wasn’t like the others didn’t know that he was trans, he openly walked around the house without a shirt on sometimes with his scars on full display, but him injecting T himself wasn’t a thing he’d brought up for a reason. He was lucky that he had never gotten into injecting anything before, he had a couple spots here and there on his arms from the few times he’d tried heroin— and the one time he injected speed and then found out that it was an utterly horrible experience —but he’d never enjoyed the feelings it had brought and so he managed to avoid the tell-tale scars that dotted so many of his friends’ arms.
The fact that Cody had walked into him injecting T continued to gnaw away in the back of his head, what if he told the others about it? What if they too got the wrong idea about it? What if, what if, what if? It continued to swirl around in his head drowning out any thoughts he tried to force himself to focus on instead. He felt like he was falling down an endless pit trying desperately to grab onto any rungs of a ladder but whenever he felt his fingers wrapping around one his hand would slip and he would continue to plummet even further down.
He didn’t realise he had gotten all the way back home until he felt the doorknob turn under his hand and stepped into the warmth. Pausing, frozen for a second he blinked back into the present and hurriedly shut the door behind him to lock the warmth in. Toeing off his sneakers he shoved them onto the shoe rack which had run out of space about eight pairs of shoes before Pete had even moved in. His boots were scattered around the entry way, kicked into corners by people passing through and himself moving them out of the way. The warmth of the inside of the house flooded into his lungs and he stretched, rolling his neck and listening to each individual pop.
Considering the snow he should’ve left his coat hanging up on the rack to dry off but he couldn’t risk moving the hidden items from the coat pockets to his jeans. He quickly brushed any remaining snow off of his shoulders and started up to his cramped but safe little room. Once he was in there with the door safely shut behind him nothing could get to him, it was protected and warded almost completely and nothing could get in which he didn’t want— magically speaking, keeping his housemates out of his room was a completely different problem that he faced day in, day out.
One thing that he did not think at all would happen when he got home was Cody standing in his room, rifling through his dresser. Without even thinking Pete
lashed his hand out and Cody froze in place, his body locked in its position by hold person. “What the fuck are you doing in my room?” He hissed out, pushing his door halfway closed.
“What the fuck did you just do to me?” Cody twitched violently, trying to escape the spell. “Why can’t I move?”
“You’re the one in my room! You don’t get to ask questions right now!” Pete stepped forward waving his hands in the air for some kind of emphasis or to just have them moving he didn’t quite know. “What the fuck are you doing in my room?” He repeated, he could almost hear the magic crackling between his fingers and felt the hair on the back of the neck raise.
“Maybe if you let me out of whatever the fuck this is I’ll tell you!” Cody snapped back, glaring awkwardly to the side at Pete since he couldn’t turn to face him entirely.
Pete almost growled as he stepped closer to Cody again. “Let me remind you that you are in no position to be asking questions here,” He spotted his reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall. His eyes were glowing a bright purple, the light leaking out of his eyes and trailing off into the air, even despite Cody’s platform boots— that he was wearing in Pete’s room and tromping over his nice rug that he knew for fucking sure that he didn’t have enough money to get professionally cleaned —and Pete’s hunched form he managed to tower over him, raw magic flowing through his veins and warping the world around him to better fit his mental state.
He paused once more, moving back away from Cody who continued to twitch, trying to escape the spell. Or escape away from Pete more likely. Taking a deep breath he dismissed the spell on Cody who slumped down and turned to face him but didn’t move to leave. “Dude, I know me coming into your room is crossing the boundaries that you got, but also I’m worried for you,” Cody most of the time would talk with his hands, but right now he stood awkwardly, hands down by his side and gaze unable to meet Pete’s. “Like I know I should knock and all that shit, but last week when I came in and caught you injecting… whatever that was—”
“It was testosterone,” Pete interrupted him, sighing and pressing the base of his balms against his eyes. “I’m trans, you know that, I give myself testosterone shots once a week, that was what that was about. Also it was an intramuscular injection, you don’t shoot up into your fucking muscle, that leads to abysses and infections and a lot of bad shit, you need to go into the veins if you shoot up.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh indeed,” Pete rolled his eyes. Jesus, this boy was stupid and had no sense of anything sometimes. “Now what the fuck were you doing in my room?”
Cody paused, still not quite looking at Pete, before he held up his hand which was holding a plastic ziplock bag filled with tablets. “What is this then?” The worst part of it was that he didn’t even sound mad or angry or even sad, it was just empty and his voice was almost too quiet to hear. “Am I supposed to believe this isn’t suspicious? Am I supposed to believe there is some reasonable explanation for random bags of random pills hidden in your fucking sock drawer?”
“I can explain those,” Pete stepped forward but Cody stepped away from his outreaching hand. “I can explain everything if you just let me,” His voice wavered and he had to push down the anxiety that held its claws to his throat, threatening to shut him up and rid him of all his words before he ever had the chance to say a word. “Those are my medications, the ones I’m prescribed because I’m mentally ill.”
“Why aren’t they in their packaging then?”
“Because would people really want to be friends with me if they knew that I’m insane?” Pete’s voice broke and the tears that he had been pushing back the entire conversation finally forced their way through. “People already hate people like me enough as is, I don’t need to give them any more reasons to!”
Cody didn’t respond as he stared down at the tablets he was holding. “I- fuck dude. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah because I didn’t tell you,” Wiping his tears away he stepped forward and grabbed the bag from Cody’s hand. “Now get out of my room.”
Nodding he stepped around him as Pete turned to face him as he left. As he lingered in the doorway, his hand resting loosely on the door handle he glanced back. “I don’t think any less of you because of any of this. I just wished you trusted me enough to tell me.”