As per usual, the boy is climbing on the window sill. He’s saying something under his breath but Evan can’t catch it because tonight he doesn’t want to listen, so the spirit throws himself down below. It looks like he’s throwing himself in the arms of someone he trusts but who will move away at the very last minute on purpose. To hurt him. Evan realises that the boy has been betrayed by someone who deeply loved, the same way Evan had been betrayed in the past.
«You’re not dressed yet?»
Evan jumps out of his skin, he swears under his breath and turns abruptly towards the door. He feels like a savage animal that has just been scared to death. He would have attacked if it was someone else instead of him. He would have attacked him as well, if only it wouldn’t have caused Evan a bunch of problems.
He’s not welcome. Not anymore, but it still feels like Eean doesn’t care if Evan feels threatened.
Eean shouldn’t even be surprised anymore by his brother’s reactions, yet again he frowns and holds his hands up in a defeated gestures. His green eyes, as dark as Yvonne’s, are wide open and if someone would walk into the room to look at them, he wouldn’t see any resemblance between the two. Not when they’re both afraid and lost. They wouldn’t think they’re brothers.
Evan is completely dishevelled, compared to the tidy look Eean chose for that night—chooses every day. Almost elegant. He’ll always be the incarnation of the perfect balance between Yvonne, with her soft and straight hair, her rosy skin, her long lashes and the nose that points a little upwards, and Uriel. Eean has his sever expression and determination, the same cut when it comes to the shape of the eyes, but the iris are full of affection and humanity instead, like their mother’s. He has Uriel’s cheekbones, high and pointed, his big and knotty hands, whilst Evan has been left with nothing. He doesn’t have any traits of his parents anymore. He’s just a hollow body that moves due to circumstances. He can’t die, otherwise he would’ve long ago.
«I thought I told you you were coming to the circus with me tonight.»
“No, you didn’t,” Evan would really love to reply. “It’s Yvonne who gently asked you to do this.” But he keeps quiet. He’s already spoken to Eean enough, so he just lets his teeth crush together until a jolt of pain doesn’t shake him so violently he has to bring his hand to the temple to smooth the feeling. It’s no use.
It’s hard to deal with Eean, lately. It’s almost like he’s everywhere all the time, always trying to make him talk a little more. Evan is sure he has told their parents about their conversation in the car and they decided all together to interrupt Evan’s self-isolation without his consent. Eean is nothing but their mean to make him leave the house and embrace the real world again. He’s not doing it out of love or because he really wants to make things right between them—And even if this was the case, Evan wouldn’t agree, he wouldn’t help his brother to get the forgiveness he’s longing for. Evan is positive their parents are supporting Eean in the name of that special bond they had before Eean gave him a one way ticket to an asylum. Two asylums, actually.
He reminds himself he shouldn’t make it so tragic, that the facilities weren’t as bad, but he can’t help but think about how lost and lonely he felt back then, how broken and lost he still feels when he looks at his reflection in the mirror. How scared.
Evan won’t go anywhere with Eean. The lift he got some days before was a big enough mistake and Eean should give up once and for all. He should understand that’s too late to fix whatever he’s done to Evan and get things back to how they were before.
«Oh, no.» Eean sighs, irritation taking over the guilt. He rubs a hand on his face and rolls his eyes. «Stop giving me the silence treatment. I prefer you when you shout at me,» he admits. His lips curl up in an ironic smile. If he’s hoping to get some reaction out of Evan, he’s very much mistaken. Evan won’t give in.
He has to bite his lips because despite his resolution, it’s very hard to keep quiet when Eean behaves like that, above all when the pain and the rage are still wildly boiling inside of him. If Evan was to be a balloon and someone would make him explode, he would release nothing else in the air around. He would poison the atmosphere the same way he’s poisoning his own existence.
«Joël thinks a bit of fun would do you good?» Eean tries again, unsure. He doesn’t know what else to do to convince him to leave with him, that night.
“Joël doesn’t know shit,” Evan thinks. He’s decided to keep quiet as much as possible, hoping that Eean will eventually get the message and leave him alone. This, despite the fact that Evan is sure that his thought deserves its own place in the one way conversation Eean is having.
Joël doesn’t know how life is after months and months spent in an asettic hospital room, he doesn’t have a single clue of how hard it is to behave like a normal person when one has spent years feeling like a glass ready to shatter into million pieces. He doesn’t know what it means to leave the house and being assaulted by spirits it’s getting hard to ignore day by day, trying to be invisible so people won’t question him, so they won’t find him. And if Joël doesn’t know, let alone Eean, who always acts without thinking about the consequences.
Eean makes his tongue click against his palate and makes a resigned gesture with his arms. He sighs and shrugs, then he gives his back to Evan and gets ready to leave the room.
Evan is ready to breathe, feel safe again in his bubble of static and quiet life, when Eean speaks with a defeated note animating is low tone. It almost feels like he’s provoking him, but also like he’s disappointed and hurt, and Evan would really love to be strong enough to ignore those feelings, but his brain decides to make it echo louder than necessary.
«I thought you would’ve loved to see Finn again…»
Fucker.
Evan is not sure whether he just thought the word or if he said it out loud. Maybe he just whispered, but the door is the only thing that could’ve heard him.
When he turns to the wardrobe, the boy is there, looking at him with his blank stare. Evan doesn’t know when he got back, nor how much of the conversation he heard – if he heard it at all – and it doesn’t matter if he’s been drumming his fingers on the doors following the rhythm of a song Evan doesn’t know. He made himself invisible. Evan envies him.
«I choose to wear black, that night. You know, it helps if you want to hide and disappear in the darkness. That’s why they found me the day after, at dawn.» The boy shrugs and stops his drumming. He smiles a little and then disappears as usual. The wardrobe door opens without a sound and Evan shivers. It’s unbelievable what they can do despite their being just energy that couldn’t pass on. Or so books say. It’s not like Evan bothered to get more information about them. The less he knows, the better; he’s sure that pretending they don’t exists it’s the easiest and the best way to make his own existence as easy as possible. But the words the boy has just spoken make him curious enough.
Evan would like to know more about him, about what happened, why he died. He seems to be different from the ones he met so far but when the boy talks about his past, Evan has the feeling it relates to a present he can’t no longer live. Is he giving Evan advices without being obvious? Is he trying to warn him? Who is that boy, really?
Evan sighs and reaches for the wardrobe door, then he opens it wider. He lets his eyes roam over the pile of clothes stacked neatly in the shelves. He considers the shirts for a moment but changes his mind because it’s just the circus, it doesn’t have to be formal, and then he sighs.
The smell of naphthalene makes Evan’s nose wrinkle in disgust. It’s been too long since the last time he wore something different from a tracksuit. He wonders if he’s still able to combine pieces of clothes without looking like a clown as a result.
He shrugs at himself and swears a little under his breath. He curses himself and he curses Eean, the circus, Finbar, because the ending he thought for that day was supposed to be much different from the one Evan’s about to give to it. Eean wasn’t supposed to win him over, Evan thinks whist he grabs a black shirt and a pair of dark jeans from one of the shelves.
He changes quickly, stumbling on his feet, and then leaves before his parents realise he’s about to do something out of his character once again and start asking questions he doesn’t want to answer to.
When he opens the front door, Eean is already sitting in the driver’s seat of his car. He’s turned the engine on and he’s driving backwards in the driveway, so he doesn’t realise Evan is outside, bent forward and attempting to fix one of the shoes. And that’s why once on the road, he presses the pedal and sprints in the direction of the circus without worrying about anything else.
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