[FIC] TIMW & YNU - Chp 2
Title: This Is My World & You'll Never Understand Rating: NC-17 Pairing: Two OC's - Kyle & Shane, however Clay becomes Kyle's adoptive father. Warnings: Contains a "gay" plot line. Also, Kyle is HIV+ Disclaimer: Don't know Clay, don't know his people, this is just a story I wanted to write for the hell of it. Author/Story Notes: Constructive criticism is always welcomed. If you are just going to leave some hateful comment that serves no purpose as to helping me improve my writing then don't bother commenting at all. I haven't done any fanfiction writing in a long time so I feel like a noob all over again, go figure. This is the third or fourth time that I have rewritten this specific work of fiction. It has never felt quite right to me. Now that I've taken more intensive writing classes I'm giving this another go.
I stood backstage while Clay performed his first few songs. I couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear the whole time. However I noticed that I was getting cold so I went back inside to the warm of the employee locker room. As I was sipping away at a warm mug of hot cocoa my insides tingled. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Clay walking around with a confused look on his face.
He asked one of our other staff members a question and chuckled. He must have gotten lost trying to find the bathroom. He must have drunk a lot of water or tea but on a cold day like this I couldn’t blame the guy. He would have to do anything he could to keep his voice from being shot to hell. I went back to sipping on my hot cocoa and minding my own business. A few minutes later I heard laughter coming from the common area.
Clay was kneeling down next to Ryan and they were excitedly talking about something. Ryan had only been coming to group for two months now. You could tell when he would talk about anything that he was still nervous to be here. It was a nice change to see him so excited about something. He was diagnosed as HIV-Positive three months ago. From time to time he still would battle depression as he fought to come to terms with his status.
To watch him interact with Clay really made my heart melt. The next thing I know Clay grabs a blanket to cover Ryan with and wheels him outside. “Just like Clay,” I thought, “Always looking out for other people and trying to make them happy.” When Ryan would come to the youth center I was always the one taking care of him at first until he started wanting to be more independent. It was like watching someone I’d taken under my wing fly free.
Slowly I turned and headed for the dorm section of the youth center. Out of nowhere I felt someone wrap their arms around me. “Guess who,” the mystery person whispered. “Shane, you twat,” I responded. Shane was my boyfriend of a year. He was one of the first HIV-Positive people I had met after I was diagnosed and he took me under his wing. It was like a fairy tale; a match made in heaven. His soft lips gently touched my cheek.
“Where you headed, lover boy,” he asked. “Upstairs,” I replied, “I figure Jayne can cover the rest of the day without me. I did my part and now I want to take a nap.” We hugged and looked into each other’s eyes before parting our separate ways. Our dorms were actually really nice. Each room had a bunk bed and a TV with a built-in DVD player. I put on a movie and curled up in bed.
I started to remember that it had been seven years since my dad died. At first it all felt surreal, almost like it was just a dream. Then it hit me that he was really gone and it made me angry. I felt a lot of resentment toward him and I also felt abandoned by him. Tears started to roll down my cheeks and I pulled the blanket up to my chin. I tried to cry as quietly as possible. I didn’t like it when other people would see me cry. I felt that it made me weak.
Deep down inside of myself I craved to have a dad again. A dad was something I never truly had the chance to know. He had died when I was just 10 years old. From what I could remember about him I knew that he was either at work all the time, at home drinking, at home sleeping, or there were the few occasional times that he really was a dad to me. It was hard to remember him as an emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive man when he got drunk. Just went to show what alcohol could do to someone.
Being 18 years old I wanted to know how bad things like that could happen to my mom and me. How could my dad leave us? How could I be diagnosed as HIV-Positive? It wasn’t that my mom didn’t bring me up right; it was that I had to raise myself for over half of my life. After dad died mom had to go back to work so she could support us and I had to be the man of the house. However at the same time I was sleeping around and getting into trouble without her knowing.
As I lost myself in thought, and tears, I hadn’t noticed that Shane had crawled into bed with me. His gentle hands held me close to him as he tried to comfort me. When I finally calmed down enough to be coherent I felt like there was someone else in the room and when I turned my head toward the door I noticed a tall, dark figure in the light. “Oh god,” I thought to myself. It was Clay. I don’t know how long he had been there but he was the last person I ever wanted to see me cry.
Feeling like a moron for crying I wanted to get out of bed and run away as fast as I could, but I couldn’t. Something told me to stay there and tell Clay everything that was bothering me. How I hated living alone, growing up gay, being HIV-Positive. Only my closest friends know that I’m positive because I knew they would understand. There wasn’t anyone else that I felt like I could tell.
Shane left and Clay sat on the chair across from the bed. We talked for over an hour about everything, including how I felt like I wanted to have a father figure in my life. He told me that he respected me and that while he had conflicted feelings toward homosexuality he wanted to try and make my life better. He could try to adopt me but didn’t know if the court would okay it because I’m 18. He even almost started to cry.