Who: Felix [Narrative] Where: The barn When: Mid afternoon Warnings: Mentions of abuse, underaged sex
Felix was generally never a fan of clothes shopping, doubly so when he barely had a damn thing to choose from. But gift horses, and blah blah blah. The selection hadn't been entirely tragic, even if he was pretty sure he'd seen much of it in Cassi's and generally in the reject pile. He'd actually managed to find a couple of shirts he'd left behind due to a lack of space in his bag rather than anything else, and they were the first to go in the new bag. After clothes, he rummaged around in the piles of other things someone had dragged out of the stalls. The traps seemed....interesting, but he wasn't sure about trying to sneak one into his bag in broad daylight when anyone might decide to wander in to shop. Taking one also meant being compelled to use it at some point in the future, and his forays into physical harm towards others hadn't always made him feel....great about it. That wasn't a moral conflict he really wanted to shove onto himself again if he didn't have to, and he didn't. He was certain that with so little competition at the moment he wasn't in any danger of losing his title, so to speak. A lack of violence probably wouldn't do him any harm. The toys were interesting enough, even if he wasn't entirely sure why they were there, or why there was specifically so few of them. He'd surmised it was probably something special that he wasn't catching onto right away, his minds eye immediately going to the creepy vintage toys Edwin had voluntarily claimed back at the first house. Though, while they weren't new, none of these toys seemed particularly unusual at first glance, aside from their presence. Just...used. Appreciated. He nonchalantly patted a stuffed animal on the head as he passed, wondering if maybe he shouldn't take something for the hell of it. After all, they were there.
It was a little odd that it took him as long as it did to notice it, settled amongst the rest of the toys, a dark purple and gray clump of plastic and coiled cord. The faded Gameboy Color logo was a little unmistakable to someone who had looked at it as often as he had, but the idea that it could even be there, despite all the knew about this place and the people who ran it, was just so ridiculous that it was easier to think he was seeing things. Or that it wasn't his, despite the fact that he could have closed his eyes and picked out every place a worn out, outdated sticker either had, or current was residing. It didn't belong here. It belonged in the very back of the top shelf of a closet in a house he hadn't lived in since he was fifteen, shoved so far in the back he didn't think anyone would have found it.
The memory of his own slightly smaller, slenderer fingers sprouting from scar-free hands, and attached to wrists and forearms that wouldn't see ink any harsher than doodles from a sharpie or pen for almost another decade. He'd done it mostly to himself back then, but there were others too, tracing lines and patterns across the back of his hand and up his arm for him in class, or outside away from everyone else. Words that were funny to 8th graders, and if they'd had more responsible parents, they wouldn't have been caught dead saying out loud. He'd been more openly receptive to touch back then, before there was that voice in the back of his head reminding him that touch was something normal people did, that touch meant trust, which meant a place to potentially dig in and take something from later when it was convenient. As a kid he remembered someone telling him that the human body shed its top layer of skin completely in a span of about three weeks, and wondering to himself if that meant whenever someone touched him, or he touched them, some part shed away and stayed for a while even when they were gone. It had been a little comforting as a kid, like you weren't really alone even when you were, but as he'd gotten older that thought had always felt almost suffocating when it occurred to him again. Like you were never getting away from anyone, that they were still on you even after they'd paid and left, or you'd taken what you needed and disappeared.
Those younger fingers had pressed into the buttons of the little game console slowly, almost uncertainly. He'd done his best to focus on them instead of the draft coming from the windows in the room, making him feel even more naked than he'd been at the time. He'd never owned anything that expensive before, even though the machine was already a few years old by then. It had felt important, like a gift, even though it wasn't. It was a trade, and one that had seemed easy at the time he'd made it, but increasingly less so as the minutes had worn on. He'd focused on the dull click of the buttons even as he'd heard Kyle shifting around behind him, muttering unintelligibly in annoyance and the clink of metal as a pair of car keys slid from a surface to the floor, and a drawer opened. Kyle had only had the hunk of junk of a car for a year, and had only been legally allowed to drive it for a few months earlier than that, but it made his friend feel so much older than that despite the fact that they'd be in the same school the next year.
And then he was back in the barn, larger hands now turned the little machine around, tracing over stickers that had been there longer than he'd been in possession of it, and a few he'd added himself. One was missing, the stupid sticker from the cheap photobooth in a mall that no longer existed, where two boys, one young and dumb and maybe a little in love, and the other, older and getting the fuck out as soon as possible, hammed it up for a pixilated camera where no one else could see them. He'd scraped it off with a screwdriver the day after Kyle had left for the military, just over a year after they'd first had sex. Because Felix's life had been falling apart, and Kyle had still left. Which, in retrospect, the adult Felix knew had been the smart move. He'd have fucking left too if he'd been old enough to drive and smart enough to have hustled a little harder for money when he was younger. He could have been fucking Kyle for actual cash, rather than his stupid unwanted hand-me-downs.
He'd taken two steps away from the toys before he realized he hadn't grabbled the gym bag with the clothes he'd picked out, turning and scooping it up like someone was going to catch him there and get him into trouble. He didn't want to run into anyone, especially considering as how the barn was majority populated by people who would be inclined to ask him how the fuck he was doing, and fuck that, and fuck them. And not really, because that was actually kind of nice even though he sure as fuck didn't fucking want it. Fuck. He'd made it a few steps back towards the barn door, his escape route clear, when it occurred to him that anyone could pick up that stupid fucking Gameboy. With all the nerds in the house, someone would grab it. They'd touch it and keep it and it knew things, and he was aware how stupid and insane that sounded, like as if it could projects the things it had seen into the head of anyone who touched it. And then other people would be touching it, and he's probably have to see it and pretend it didn't fucking matter because no one would even fucking know it was his. But he'd know, and dammit, it was his. He'd earned it that day. Fair and fucking square.
And it had kept him company, and helped him drift when his brain couldn't decide if it wanted to contemplate all the things that had happened in his life, including with Kyle, or never think about them again. He'd picked the the purple plastic lump up before he'd realized it, the cord that was wrapped around it unraveling slightly, and nearly detaching the the plug-in adapter light. Couldn't play in the dark without it, after all. Stupid piece of junk. His thumb traced over the scratches on its surface where the sticker had been, deeper and rougher than they'd needed to be.
"Teen fucking angst," he muttered to himself, rolling his eyes if only to distract him from the thought that, if this little machine was here, They probably knew what it meant. This could have been a test to see how he'd react, like every other thing in this place. He flipped the Gameboy, then found himself snorting, because of course it was fucking Tetris shoved into the cartridge holder.
He didn't have to take it. He knew that. There was a nice, happy middle ground where he could bury it in a hole somewhere and never have to think about it again...until TPTB dug it the fuck back up and set it on his bed in a pile of dirt or something. That would be just like them. He could shove it into the little drawer, in the little side table he'd stuffed into the closet. They might bring it back out again, but whatever, he could just put it back in. Maybe the thing didn't even work anymore. It had the cord, obviously, and when he checked there were batteries, but that didn't mean shit. But he knew without following through that he'd click the power button and it would chime to life in that all-too-familiar way, and he'd feel like he was a stupid fourteen-year-old, trying to think of something other than how weird and not great what Kyle was doing to him felt even as he stared at himself, lopsided in the little machine's reflective screen, holding onto it like someone might still try to take it away. And wasn't it supposed to be romantic or something, even if there wasn't a girl? It hadn't felt romantic. Or an angry fifteen year old trying to tell himself that he didn't give a shit that no one else gave a shit, and he didn't need a stupid kid's game anyway.
"Teeeeen fucking aaaangst," he repeated to himself, like he could play it off like a humorous mantra now, even if it didn't feel funny yet. He sighed, unwrapping the cord and unplugging the light to shove them into his bag, and the handheld into the pocket of his jeans. He could figure out where it was actually going to live later, after about twenty cigarettes. And maybe a couple shots. Just a couple. The last thing the house needed was another drink-your-feelings alcoholic running around.