Still Sunlight

📅 April 2018; ~2 weeks after Chey's Reappearance

【ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ ғᴏʀ ᴅɪsᴄᴜssɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴅʀᴜɢ ᴀᴅᴅɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴀɴᴅ ғʟᴇᴇᴛɪɴɢ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ】

The moon was approaching full, lending its light to the ever-bright nighttime of New York City, which never managed to quite grow dark even after sunset. The blue cast of the post-midnight hours found Chey—sleepless like the city—at the end of the hall; standing once again in Anarchy’s bedroom doorway. He sighed softly and leaned his head against the doorframe. He felt tired, not just in that it was late and nightmares had wrenched him from sleep and brought him again to count Anarchy’s breaths for reassurance—but tired too in that even though Kohao had told him to just go in; to wake Anarchy and talk…Chey couldn’t bring himself to step over the threshold. He felt bound to the hall by the hesitation in his chest: Hesitation rooted in guilt; hesitation rooted in things he neither knew if he had a right to feel nor wanted to have to face feeling. And it seemed like so long as he stayed on the outside looking in—out in the hall, breaching no boundaries—he could avoid everything knotted up inside. It was a mess, anyhow, and the risk of addressing it all just felt far too great.

Chey found his avoidant resolve tested by Anarchy’s voice: In sleep, Anarchy sounded the same as he had back when the two of them were fifteen and sick and sleeping side-by-side in a derelict building; hollow and meek even through the heaviness of unconsciousness. Most of his mumbled words were lost to the incoherence of sleep, but what little Chey could decipher made his heart ache: A soft, pleading ‘no, please’, a pause and then a murmured, ‘Don’t, I’m sorry...’ Anarchy’s hand twitched in his sleep, and suddenly it was Chey’s name on his lips:
“Chey, no—you can’t…” he started, but the words dissolved into a whimpered noise that Chey couldn’t bear: He shoved his reservations out of the way, into the space left by his heart’s skipped beat, and crossed the room to gently shake Anarchy’s shoulder. 
“‘Key. It’s alright. It’s just a dream,” he said quietly, “It’s okay.”
It took a couple moments, but Anarchy eventually opened his eyes and squinted sleepily at Chey.
“...What’s goin’ on?” he asked blearily, and Chey felt relieved to hear that his voice, though tired, had returned to normal with consciousness: It wasn't the helpless one it had been before.
“You were mumbling my name in your sleep,” Chey said softly. 
“Mm. That’ll happen,” Anarchy mumbled with a half-stretch, “...You’re in my room?” The question would have made Chey nervous, but Anarchy’s sleepy voice lacked any apprehension; he just seemed confused.
“Yeah. Sorry,” Chey said, “I have nightmares sometimes where we’re back on the streets and you’ve overdosed and you’re not breathing, so I wake up and have to make sure you are...I was in the doorway to check.”
“I’m breathing, don’t worry,” Anarchy said, and Chey thought it was a dismissal—but then Anarchy scooted over on his bed to make room and patted the mattress. “You can lay down if you want.”
“...Are you sure?” Chey asked uncertainly.
“Yeah, of course,” Anarchy said, sounding less tired even as he stifled a yawn; “Like you said that first night after you got back: We slept next to each other as kids enough.”
Chey hesitated for only a second before carefully laying down beside Anarchy, facing him and mindful to stay near the edge of the bed so as to keep a few inches of space between them. 
“Thanks,” Chey murmured, and Anarchy half-shook his head in response; a silent ‘don’t mention it’. 

Quiet fell between them there, but it felt slightly unnerving to Chey; Anarchy’s eyes seemed strangely searching.
“...What’s up?” Chey eventually asked, rather nervously—but to his relief, Anarchy smiled.
“Sorry, I was staring, wasn’t I? Dunno. Just kind of thinking,” he said.
“...Proud of you, but don’t strain yourself,” Chey murmured with a nearly shy smile, drawing a good-humored huff from Anarchy with the callback to one of their oldest go-to ribbings, “But for real though—whatcha thinking about?” 
“...You,” Anarchy said casually, shrugging one shoulder and cracking his neck, “You ask me a lot about what I’ve been doing these past few years...but I feel like I barely know what happened with you.” 
Chey hesitated, feeling self-conscious and wilting slightly as he glanced away.
“I have told you about it, though,” he said, “I’m not, like, hiding—”
“Don’t worry, I know that! I know you give me the big picture of it all; I get the gist,” Anarchy said, reassuring Chey with the warmth of his voice, “But there’s that hesitation right there, Chey: You don’t like talking to me about it. I keep having to piece together the details from the little anecdotes you tell around everyone else. Like, yesterday at the club. You were talking about that dentist who fostered you whose entire medicine cabinet was just Vicodin.”
“Ah, yeah,” Chey said with half of a smile and a breath that wavered on its way to being a chuckle, “I called him ‘Dr. House.’ Boy, did he not like that. Liked it less that I was swiping his pills, though.” The smile faded from Chey’s face. “...It’s not that I ‘don’t like’ talking to you about it—or not in those words,” he said, somewhat dispiritedly, “It’s just different to talk about it all when it’s only you.”
“Why?” Anarchy asked, tilting his head, and Chey gave an uncomfortable half-sighed shrug as he haltingly tried to gather his thoughts.
“It feels like...with the others—around everyone else, you know—I can tell this stuff like it’s all just stories, or just fragments of my life and my life alone, and then they can be funny. Ya know? But when it’s just you…” Chey gestured vaguely, trying not to let a lump rise to his throat, “The guilt seeps back in. I vanished; you were alone. I’m supposed to tell you about whatever the fuck I was doing like it’s funny? Like it even matters?” The tone of Chey’s voice brought something heartbroken to Anarchy’s eyes.
“It does matter, Chey,” he said, clearly concerned, “We talked this all over; I know you didn’t just...abandon me or anything. And you got out, like, of trafficking, and the squat! I mean, what—were we supposed to have died on the streets together?”
Chey quailed at the question; narrowly avoiding flinching, and frowned, eyes averted. 
“...Sorry,” he whispered.

“...Where do you go when we’re alone, Chey?” Anarchy asked after a pause, and Chey looked up at him again, feeling confused.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, it’s just like...When we’re around other people, your eyes light up. You laugh. So much! You smile constantly and it looks so fuckin’ genuine, like you’re in love with life and the universe and everyone you meet,” Anarchy said with a small smile of his own and a minute shrug, “I want you to smile like that when we’re alone, too.”
Chey blinked in blushed, wordless surprise that Anarchy noticed and suddenly seemed self-conscious about having caused; one of his hands jumped to rub the back of his neck and he forced an awkward laugh.
“Okay, uh. That sounded pretty gay, huh? Sorry. I’m not trying to be weird or anything, I just—I want you happy, man,” he said.
“No, I—it wasn’t—okay, yeah, it did sound gay as hell, but it wasn’t weird; I don’t mind,” Chey said haltingly, then thought over his phrasing and laughed equally awkwardly, “I mean—when I say I don’t mind—I appreciate the sentiment. Thank you.” They both went momentarily quiet, and in that messy silence that fell, the space between their bodies on the bed suddenly seemed like both far too much and far too little, though neither of them moved to fix it.

Chey finally gave a smiled sigh bordering on one of surrender and tentatively raised his eyebrows at Anarchy.
“Maybe talking about it will help me,” he said, “I’m really not trying to keep you in the dark or make you puzzle my stuff all together on your own. So...what haven’t I told you about?”
“Well I wouldn’t know what I don’t know, would I?” Anarchy laughed, his humor putting Chey at ease before he continued more seriously; “But...I mean, I don’t wanna pressure you into talking about shit you don’t want to have to talk about....I don’t know. You know what 2011 and 2012 were like for me. But all I really know is that you were back in the system. I’m just...I’m insecure, I guess. So maybe what I want to know is if it sucked as much, for so long, at the beginning for you, too? Like, after we got separated.”
“‘If it sucked?’” Chey asked, his throat tightening painfully, “I ended up thinking you were dead. I ended up thinking I’d lost you for forever, ‘Key. But—okay, sure, at the beginning—I was detoxing, right?—I couldn’t tell the dopesickness and my emotions apart. That’s how bad it was. I didn’t know if I was puking because I was jonesing or because being away from you felt so fucking wrong. If you’re asking if I missed you, if I was scared for you or scared being without you? No, none of that’s enough. It felt like being separated from my own soul or something.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to—” Anarchy started.
“No, don’t worry. I’m not, like, upset with you,” Chey said, “It’s just...It did suck for me. It sucked a lot for me. And I did a lot of stuff I’m ashamed of because of how bad I was hurting.”
“...Do you want to talk about it?” Anarchy asked, with that pressureless curiosity that Chey had found in next to no one else; that left space for a ‘no’ despite the interest in a ‘yes,’ and had this underlying warmth that intimated he’d be there to offer comfort no matter which he got.
“...No, but I’m going to,” Chey said, swallowing hard and sitting up, “Because I want you to know me and I was me then too, even if I didn’t feel like myself.”
Anarchy silently sat up beside him and waited.

“...It sucked,” Chey said, and the repetition felt like enough to loosen his tongue and open the floodgates: “It hurt, ‘Key, it hurt to be away from you; to not know anything, to be gone. That’s what it felt like; I was the one who was gone. I was meant to still be with you but I was gone and I felt gone and I acted gone. I know I’m not making sense but nothing did back then. I was gone and was back in the system and it brought so much shit to the surface, too—and without heroin, like—I had nothing between me and memories and the pain and the fucking everything, right?”Anarchy gave a shallow nod of understanding, one with the heavy eyes of someone who, too, knew what it was to have gone through the initial agony of sobriety; to crash more than come down. Chey steeled himself with the solidarity and continued;
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the shit I pulled convinced a few people to stop fostering. Everything people say about addicts—that they’re pathological liars, that they steal, that they’ll do or destroy anything for a fix? That was me. They kept an eye on me as best they could in the homes and shit—I told you before, it was open information I was a junkie, they knew—but there were usually other, younger kids to distract them or there would be a few minutes I could catch...I was such a piece of shit, ‘Key, I was desperate. If there weren’t opiates in the house—you’d be amazed how many normal people just keep around old prescriptions from past dental work or a broken rib—but if there weren’t, I’d just swipe alcohol or whatever they had that could be abused: Benzos, stimulants, fucking paint thinner to huff—whatever. I’d steal anything I could get my hands on and lie my ass off about it. If I could, that is. I got caught plenty—I mean, sometimes I’d take so much I’d get too sick to deny it; I got shoved into a ward a couple times because they wouldn’t believe I wasn’t trying to kill myself—maybe I was! I don’t even know, I was totally out of control—” Chey gestured his self-disgust with a sharp, mid-sentence sweep of his hand—only to have Anarchy catch it in his own and bring Chey’s discourse to a grinding halt.
“You were suicidal?” Anarchy asked, sounding distinctly pained, “You overdosed on purpose?”
“I—I mean…Maybe...sort of. Yes. I’m sorry,” Chey stuttered meekly, and Anarchy’s grip on his hand tightened.
“Cheyenne…”
“It wasn’t that intentional, ‘Key, I promise,” Chey said hurriedly, trying for reassurance, “It was...it was like everything else I did; the stealing shit and acting out and all of it. The overdoses...I mean, intent is sort of a spectrum, isn’t it? I don’t know how bad I wanted to die. Sometimes I think I just wanted to be an inconvenience! I was just…fucking erratic, on all fronts. From when we got separated until, like, 2014 or even later...I wasn’t a good person; that’s what keeps eating at me. I don’t want to be like, ‘I wasn’t myself, it was the addiction’ because that’s such a shitty, lazy way to deny responsibility—but fuck, I really didn’t feel like myself, lying or stealing or...anything. Guilt. Guilt on guilt on guilt, that’s where I’m at.”

Anarchy stayed pensively quiet for a few moments; silence that would have been nerve-wracking if it weren’t for the fact that Chey’s hand was still clasped between both of Anarchy’s.
“...You were suffering, though, Chey. Clearly,” Anarchy said finally, looking up, “It wasn’t just the addiction, nah. But that doesn’t mean it was actually you. Even on the streets with me you didn’t steal and shit. Like, addicts aren’t supposed to be able to trust one another like we did: I’d leave cash with you, you never swiped it or spent it. And of course I still trust you: You can’t fuckin’ clean up after yourself but you’re leaving shit all over the apartment, not taking stuff from me and K...other than my shirts, but you’re allowed those. Being back in the foster care system must’ve just...flipped off your personality for a while or something. I know you.” Anarchy released Chey’s hand in order to gesture emphatically: 
“You, you’re the kid who threw crumbs to the pigeon with the bum leg even though it was the first time in days that we’d bought food instead of dope. You’re the guy who laughs at every joke you hear and who goes ‘hey, did you guys hear what they said, it was funny’ when the quietest person in a conversation is getting talked over. You always seem to see the love in people. Whoever you were then, when you were swiping pills and all that? Wasn’t really you—I mean, you...you’re like...human sunlight.” Anarchy was smiling by the time he finished speaking, and Chey found himself pleased and incredulous and blushing again, his heart skipping like a record. Anarchy seemed to notice the color in Chey’s cheeks and laughed his own sudden embarrassment into the hand he brought to his face.
“God, I’m on a fuckin’ roll tonight: That came out some type of way again, didn’t it? Sorry,” he said, rolling his eyes at himself and dropping his hand, “I swear I’m not trying to weird you out.”
“No, no, don’t apologize! I’m not weirded out; I needed it,” Chey replied, smiling himself and reaching out to briefly touch Anarchy’s arm, “I mean—I’m not faking happiness around everyone else, you know? Like you said before—I smile more, I laugh more. And it is genuine. It’s just...you said you were insecure, and God knows I am: I’m ashamed of the shit I did after I got put back in the system. I’m ashamed of the shit I did after I got out, too. And I’m most ashamed of the fact that I got you involved in...in everything, and that I vanished and I gave up and I didn’t come find you. And sometimes I feel like when we’re alone you might pick up on that and realize you do hate me for it all. So...it’s good to hear that I’m still sunlight to you.”
“I told you already, Chey, I don’t blame you. For anything,” Anarchy said softly, “I definitely don’t hate you: I can’t imagine hating you. I...” He paused long enough for Chey to wonder, but ended with “...I really hope you can forgive yourself soon.”
“...Yeah. Maybe someday,” Chey murmured, looking away, feeling suddenly weary. He tried to shallow a yawn that crept up on him and watered his eyes.
“Someday soon,” Anarchy said, brushing his hand against Chey’s arm and laying back down on the bed, “C’mon, lay down. It’s late.”
“...What? Are you sure you don’t want me to go back to my own room?” Chey asked.
“You can if you want to. But I don’t mind you staying here if you’re havin’ nightmares.”
Chey slowly lay back down beside Anarchy and gave him a tentative smile: Trying to ease the tension in his own shoulders, to bring the humor and the light Anarchy had professed wanting to see when it was just the two of them...and to test the waters, if he could.
“Well, since you seem so committed to not weirding me out, I might as well give you the fair warning that if you do let me stay, I might cuddle you in my sleep. I’m very clingy,” he said, half-joking, and Anarchy’s eyes glinted with amusement.
“Oh, I remember,” he replied dryly, “You always have been. Even in July! You were a menace, we could’ve both died of heat stroke.” Chey couldn’t help but laugh, and gave Anarchy a mischievous tilted-grin of a simper.
“Let’s see: Human sunlight, heatstroke-inducing… Anarchy Keystone, are you calling me hot?” he teased.
Anarchy snorted and rolled over to bury his face directly in his pillow; an exaggerated I-am-done-with-your-shit gesture… that doubled as hiding the flush that Chey had glimpsed rise in his cheeks.
“Goodnight, Chey,” Anarchy said, his pillow muffling his words but not the affectionate amusement he spoke them with.
“Goodnight, ‘Key,” Chey smiled softly; a timid optimism glowing through the anxiety that had held him in the hall before. Comfort eased in, carried by the familiarity of having so little space between them; in being close enough that Chey could feel Anarchy’s body heat. Chey relaxed.

He still counted out Anarchy’s breaths until he fell asleep.