thecapitol | Every Wall I Lean on Transforms [Closed]

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Every Wall I Lean on Transforms [Closed]

Who| Howard and Wyatt
What| Howard's got another confession to make.
When| A week after aliens.
Where| Hospital and physical therapy center in the Capitol.
Warnings/Notes| Teen sexuality.

It's hard to pinpoint the reason behind the storm. Any hope that the tension surrounding him would break with the alien attack, the clear delivery upon the prediction of hard times. But all the drama and carnage did nothing to dispel the sense of heaviness that lingers. The air feels humid, electric, every sound muffled as if giving way to a silent voice saying that things are about to get worse.

Maybe this is the way things always are before Arenas, and this is just the first time he's noticed it. He tucks his hands deeper into his coat (some overly-ornate embroidered thing from his stylists, etched with feathers) and waits by the hospital door. He knows Wyatt's been here lately, and as Wyatt can wait by Maximus' bed, Howard can wait for his sheriff to emerge.

His chin feels like it's hanging heavier these days. There's a weariness in the very cords of his eyeballs. He tip-tip-tipped up on the scale under John's weight-gain diet, but in the last week, since quarreling with Eponine, those numbers have sagged. There's a sore on his lower lip in the shape of an incisor-bite.

He waits for Wyatt to come out.

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They approached the elevator bank and Wyatt stabbed at the button, looking over at Howard as they waited, the numbers glowing above the shining silver doors.

"Sounds like ya want to be with her, but that ya also wanna be elsewhere." He studied the boy's face, relaxing slightly as it turned out problem was something internal between them, rather than a trouble they'd gotten themselves into. "Not an unheard of occurrence, son. Is it someone else?"

Howard's whole body jerks when the elevator door opens, some kind of nervous twitch.

"No. No one else. I tried, um." Howard breathes deep and shakes out his hands. "I tried kissing someone else. And it was better. And worse."

He can't imagine Wyatt's got much sympathy for wandering eyes or mouths.

Wyatt stepped into the elevator, reaching out with one hand to hold the door closed - a trait he'd developed absently, watching others in this strange future world of metal boxes moving up and down buildings - and holding out the other, touching Howard's shoulder gently to encourage him forward and into the car with him.

"The worse bit likely comes from knowin' goin' around behind yer lady friend's back isn't the on thing to do," he said mildly, easier perhaps then Howard would have expected. There was no judgment in his tone.

Howard was hardly the first man to realize what he'd thought he'd wanted, wasn't. The heart was a funny thing that way.

"But it happens, Howard. Things often don't go way the way we planned, especially when it comes to matters like this."

Inside, he poked at the button for the bottom floor, elevator dinging softly and the doors rolling shut.

"The important thing is how ya handle it. If it ain't workin', don't try to drag it out."

"I guess." Howard sounds unconvinced. Sure, the guilt ate away at him corrosively, but he has to admit that the dead clay-like lump of tongue in his mouth and the brittle teeth and dry, sore-riddled lips weren't exactly pleasant.

Kisses are supposed to be about warmth. Intimacy is. Both of these have left him cold in different ways.

"There's no way I can just end it where she doesn't think it's her. And I don't want her thinking it's her fault, but if people know it's my fault..." Howard stares at the lights moving across the top of the elevator door. The colors start to blur, rippling out with the tears that create a film over his eyes. They don't fall.

"No way everyone's getting it out of this without hating themself, you know? I hate myself right now. I kissed R and it was okay and now I hate myself."

Wyatt's lips parted, mouth hanging open by an inch as he stared, silent and unblinking. It was an uncomfortable pause, he knew that, knew he was supposed to say something, wanting to say something... but uncertain what, or how.

R? ...But R was - dead. Perhaps not in the most official of senses, but certainly enough that sort of activity seemed rather regrettable.

(The other part, that R and Howard both were male, was entirely secondary. He didn't know any personally, but it wasn't unheard of and while he hadn't given it awful much thought, he didn't much care, whatever the thumpers liked to say.

The heart was a strange beast.

And what business was it of his, what folks did together so long as it wasn't breaking the law or hurting anyone?)

"Howard... I..." He watched Howard's eyes fill, his face tightening as he struggled to hold them back, and Wyatt's uncertainly fell away.

This was Howard. What else really mattered?

His head shook, a hand coming out to rest on the boy's shoulder, to squeeze warmly. "It won't be pleasant either way ya go at it, I won't try to deny that, but it'll be worse if ya let it go on. 'Specially if... if she finds out 'bout R from someone else."

For anyone else, Howard might explode if he was grasped in a trapped space like an elevator. He may just burst into tears or rage or panic. But instead, it's Wyatt, and by some instinct that he doesn't even understand he throws his arms around Wyatt's waist and hugs him as close as he can.

A sigh and a sob rock his chest, battling each other up his chest, and he pulls back for a moment and wipes his eyes.

"Please don't shove me off and go bolting out that elevator, okay?" He takes a deep breath. "I can't take that, okay? You're the only good thing I got. Do it later if you have to, just..."

Let him pretend a little.

He was surprised, the action rather far from anything he'd ever known Howard to offer, but he recovered quickly, an arm wrapping around the boy's thin shoulders, the other hand patting him gently.

"Son, I ain't goin' anywhere," he soothed, sounding almost amused, if tiredly. "I would like to get outta this hospital, but I ain't goin' without you."

"I'm trying not to be like this but it isn't working." He's reluctant to let go of Wyatt, but he does when the doors open to first floor. "I thought you might be angry, because you, because you're old-school."

Howard's image of the west is filled with vigilantes and duels at high-noon, conflated with the stereotypes of the South somewhere in his mind. Wyatt's from an older time, too, which Howard always interprets to mean less open. He imagined outright rejection if not hatred.

"Well, I'll admit, Howard, it ain't somethin' I saw a lot of where I'm from."

His lips pushed together into a line, twisted at the corner into an uncertain curl. The boy had pulled back, but his hand remained, warm and callused on his shoulder as they left the elevator, arm a weight against the narrow back.

"R ain't... he ain't exactly normal, for the dead or the livin', so I won't try to deny that I ain't a bit confused, but I ain't got any reason to be angry. Not if yer happy."

"I'm not happy." Howard would think Wyatt would find that obvious, from the brittleness in his voice or the hopeless expression on his face. The idea that this is something he can't fight, that he's somehow got it coded into him to be a freak and an outcast, has drowned out the last flickering hope he had for normalcy.

Maybe if he were someone else, he could have had a nice relationship with a girl who loves him, who tells him he's wonderful and feeds him ice cream.

"You're so much more chill about this than I am."

"I know yer not, son," he replied in that slow, steady drawl, walking Howard down the hall toward the front entrance. "But my meanin' wasn't for this moment right here. I'm talkin' 'bout tomorrow, the day after. Once ya get this bit sorted."

They rounded the corner, crossing into the waiting room, nearly empty this time of night, just the soft rush of their shoes against the carpet to disturb Wyatt's soft words.

"There ain't nothin' ya can do about what's already been done, so there's no sense in gettin' yerself all worked up about it. Focus on what yer gonna do next."

"I don't know where to start," he whispers. He follows Wyatt, moving mechanically, animated only by the need to get somewhere and not fall behind. He doesn't know how to ask Wyatt to stay with him throughout this all.

In a way, he feels as if he doesn't need to know how to ask. That's something. There isn't certainty that Wyatt will be there for him, but there's a significant lack of dread that he'll leave. It's progress.

"By the way, zombies are awful kissers. Taste like roadkill."

Wyatt blinked, drawing in a long, steadying breath. He wasn't going to judge Howard for his predilections, but damned if he understood them.

"No offense, son, but that ain't really somethin' I needed the details on."

He glanced over his shoulder, slanting Howard a look.

"As for the other, that's the way it aught'ta be. I'd be more upset if ya were well versed in this kinda thing."

"I'm just saying, like..." He breathes deep into a tent of his folded hands. "I guess the writing's on the wall if making out with a corpse is better than kissing my girlfriend."

He shakes his head, looking a bit abashed at his elaboration being rebuffed.

"I'm not versed in shit. I didn't exactly get a normal adolescence."

The heavy glass doors swept open as they approached and Wyatt slipped his hands into his pockets, tucking them away against the Fall chill.

"Ain't gonna argue with that. Yer gonna have to tell her, it ain't fair for either of ya, an' it'll only be worse the longer ya wait."

"How do I even start that conversation?" Howard looks at Wyatt, searching his face for something, for anything. "Maybe I should just tell her I have crabs or something."

"I... I don't know what that means, Howard," Wyatt frowned.

Though he could guess.

Another attractive image.

"In my experience, honesty is yer best bet as lies have a way of comin' back on ya. Jus' tell her the truth, she's lovely, but it ain't for you."

He folds his arms as if he's cold.

"She'll tell everyone. She'll tell everyone and people will be gunning for me even more than they do already." Howard shoves his tongue up against his front teeth, trying to suck away his fear. "You don't understand, Wyatt, standing out like that gets kids like me killed. I knew a guy who got shot in the face just for having the wrong skin color. I don't need more reasons for people to hate me on sight."

"People ain't all that different in that respect, from me to you," he mused. "So I understand yer reservations, but, son..."

They turned down the street, heading back toward Tribute Tower.

"She's gonna find out eventually. If yer doin' things like that here, knowin' how the Capitol watches.... I expect it's goin' to come out, whether ya like it or not. An' if she's made now, she's gonna be even madder when she finds out ya lied."

"I'm fucked." Howard tilts his head back, looking at the sky, taking a deep breath. "Royally, royally fucked. The Capitol's probably broadcasting this all right now."

Oh, God. He didn't even realize they probably knew that. Probably have his confession on tape.

"I just want to be normal like you, Wy."

There was a sudden snort, a low sardonic sound. His head shook and he freed one of his hands to reach out again, draping his arm around Howard's shoulder.

"Ain't sure that's the word I'd pick. Ain't much of anythin' 'normal' here. Includin' me."

Even if it had been true once, and he wasn't saying it was, it was less and less so everyday.

"Normal-ish. More normal than me. The only way I could be more of a freak is if I fired lasers out my nose." He shakes his head, falling into an easy comfort with Wyatt's embrace.

"I thought you'd be mad. I really did."

His mouth twitched, but he was silent. The moment stretching and broken only by the gentle fall of their footsteps and the occasional passing of a car up and down the road beside them.

Quiet, though his thoughts tumbled: the things he'd seen, and done. The man he'd become. The things he felt.

Things he tried not to dwell on - fears, and wants - half-formed.

"Ain't gonna deny that I find it a might odd, an' dangerous, R bein' what he is..." he said finally, a soft, thoughtful drawl. "But I ain't here to judge. Not when it comes to things like that."

Howard's too trapped in his own fear to really try and hear where Wyatt's coming from. He's starting to panic now, realizing that soon enough the Capitol will be editing this for John, for Orc, for Julie, for everyone to see.

He tries to take a deep breath to calm himself. Whenever a car passes he flinches and feels his heart crawl a little further up his neck.

"You'll protect me if other people do judge, right?"

He couldn't help but think of Max again. Of Sigma, of the things the old man had said, and screamed, at him, trying to convince him to leave the Roman to die.

"Howard," he gave the boy's shoulder a fierce squeeze, and gave a little tug to pull him closer - safe beside him, "I ain't goin' anywhere."

Not so long as he had any say in it.

"Okay," he says quietly. "I trust you."

There are no more meaningful three words in Howard's vocabulary.

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Every Wall I Lean on Transforms [Closed]

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