aching /curt + pietro (solstice)

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

p i e t r o .

"Oh oh, you're in love
But I keep sinning, sin"

My face is hot. Dunno how long I've been staring at the bonfire but I can't look away, can't move. My elbows rest on my knees, my shoulders supported by them. My head falls a little to the side, I feel where my muscles stretch, where my bones give.

A tear streaks through the makeup on my cheeks. The kids are gone anyway, the remnants of my show beside me in the sand. I made enough money for a few good meals or a room for a night, whichever comes my way first I guess. Longest night is dwindling. The bonfires burn but most everyone has gone home, just the few left that watch and keep the fires stoked through the night. I haven't seen anyone I know in hours.

I guess that everyone's gone home to be together but I came here to be together so where does that leave me? The flames flicker, cold winds from the ocean push into my back, sending a shiver up through my spine, into my chest. I shudder and rub my nose with the back of my hand.

It's cold, but it's always cold.

I'm between couches right now because it's better that way 'round the holidays. I can't ruin christmas if I'm not there, can't be the wrong thing if I'm not trying so hard to be right. I've got friends I guess, couches that I've become good friends with, but it feels like taboo when the christmas tree is up. Warming shelters pop up in the games square on the really cold nights anyway.

I pull my knees to my chest and pull myself a little bit closer to the fire. Can't tell if this winter is colder than last or I'm just worse at being cold. People don't last long on the streets if they're not careful and I've never really been too careful. I've got that scarf I stole out of Kyle's closet a couple weeks back but lost the hat Flick gave me when i was asleep the other night.

An eye for an eye I guess.

My tin of rolling paper is open on my knee and I roll a spliff by firelight. The other bonfires still burn bright and I can see them going down the shoreline. It warms me a little, makes things easier.

Last year I was here with Curt and his girls. Met them at sunset and it was supposed to be great, but I messed up. Someone passed me molly and I didn't think twice. How old are the twins now? Hard to say, I've never been good at keeping track. My lighter keeps going out, it's too windy, so I lean forward, face so close to the fire my skin starts prickling, and I light the spliff like that.

Like usual, when it's quiet, I think about Curt.

"You alright?" I whisper as I blow out smoke, "You alright, you alright?"

I think.

There's a little wooden bird in my pocket, I made it as a solstice gift. There are cuts all over my fingers from where I nicked myself while carving. I held them under the water until it stopped stinging, even though it hurt.

The sand shifts, churns, someone's coming. It's probably the person responsible for keeping this bonfire lit. I don't look up, I'm trying to watch this one piece get eaten by the flame. "What do you think happens if a bonfire goes out?" I ask when the footsteps stop, "Heard a big wave comes to take us all out.

[calla]

C   U   R   T

Kody starts crying before the last bonfire's even lit. He's sitting on my shoulders, tiny little fists curled in my hair, when someone down the shoreline hollers too loud and sets him off. He hiccups first, like he's trying to warn us, and then comes the wet heaving sobs that no two year old should ever have to make.

Charlie looks at me like I've just spilled the porch paint on her new dress again.

She's holding Blue, but she takes Kody too and tries to shush him. I stay sitting beside her and watch as everyone else turns to look, one-by-one.

"Poor thing." Someone says.

"Awfully late for little ones to be out." Whispers another.

Charlie's got her hair tied up, and she's wearing one of my old work shirts. She's so damn beautiful, so smart when she looks over Kody's head at me, and I don't know why it doesn't seem to be enough.

"M'sorry." I tell her, but I think it's lost under the crackle of the fire.

She closes her eyes anyways.

I don't know what it's like to fall out of love with someone. We'd never fallen in the first place and I guess that's the problem. We'd tried watering a plant that was already dead and now all we're left with is the dirt and the pot and a dried out root system. I thought it would work. I think she'd thought so too.

I wonder if she regrets me as much as I regret me.

Kody starts to quiet down but there's still something stinging in my temple. I think I hit my head last week and never fully recovered. There's money in the boxing ring down by the docks, but not much, and Grizz punches hard enough to make my ears ring for days. Charlie hates it, just like I knew she would, but we both hate starving a little bit more.

"I'm gonna take them to Paula's." She says, already standing up, "More room there."

I just nod and stare down at the sand, arms itching. It's the third time this week that Charlie's spent the night at her sisters.

I don't know when I get up, but Charlie's long gone and so is half the crowd. The fire's a little lower and the air's a little colder, it settles on my shoulders like a balm and pricks at the skin behind my eyes. My hand goes to my face and comes away wet. There's sand in my shoes and an old blue band-aid across my palm.

I think there's a whisper in the ocean.

"What do you think happens if a bonfire goes out?"

It sounds heavy over the timber.

My skin feels off, like Charlie's rubbed that hot-to-cold muscle-relaxant all over my shoulders. The one Paula's always on about.

"They'll probably move on." I shrug even though Pietro can't see it. "There's always another fire."

I round the corner of the log he's sitting on, kick at the sand and watch the fire flicker. Blue had been looking forward to seeing him this year, kept making that Puh sound that I know isn't for Papa, but Charlie had stayed at the other end of the beach, and so the rest of us had too.

Pietro's not a good person. We don't want the kids around someone like that.

"Charlie took the kids home early." I say, more to the fire than to him, because it feels like I'm doing something I shouldn't. I feel like I need a reason to be here and not there. I feel like I'm not really a person anymore.

That's too harsh.

I love Charlie. I love the kids. I love Pietro in his own little fucked up way, the same way I love Kyle and Klaus and Tia. But it's like I'm made up of actions and not words. I can't explain it. I can't explain me.

"Didn't think you'd still be here." I tell him, like it's something I'm allowed to think, almost like we're friendly like that. "It's late."

Because even the junkies are smart enough to stay off the beach at night. The stragglers get the hardest benches and the windiest corners and Pietro's never been anything but selfish.

I stay standing there anyways.

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

p i e t r o .

"Oh oh, you're in love
But I keep sinning, sin"

It's not supposed to feel like a balm when Curt speaks but it does. I hear the low rumble-tone of his voice through the flame and that sore feeling between my shoulder blades eases. That makes me feel bad, sort of guilty, like I've done something I wasn't meant to.

But I'm always doing things I shouldn't be, it never really matters until it comes to him.

I can't look Curt in the eye when he comes around the bonfire so I don't. I busy myself with the white-heart of the flame, eating the wood slowly, turning it to ash in its maw until it all comes crumbling apart. My hand shakes a little but it's just the cold running over the back of it, making me unsteady.

"There's always another fire," he said. I guess so. White hot rage, eating up everything its path, my skin a battlefield after the fact. I've only ever been a campfire, never anyone's hearth.

"That makes me sad," I say but my tone is empty, no energy left in me to back my words up. Maybe it doesn't but I just know that it should. "You alone?" I ask.

No twins, no Kody reaching out for me, no Blue to make smile with a silly face. That's probably a good thing, it's really cold out. I'm sat in front of the fire but I feel like I can't hold in the warmth.

It also means no Charlie. I loosen a little further. The woman hates me but won't say it. Maybe that's why Curt's couch is my favourite, I love the look on her face in the morning when she realizes I'm still there.

I blow smoke in the opposite direction of Curt and the wind takes it away. He's still just standing there, awkward, looming, handsome Curt. "Didn't think you'd still be here," he says, tone built to cut, and I smile again.

He thought of me.

"Solstice night is my favourite," I tell him. I move over slightly on the sand, as if I have to make room for him when there's open beach all around, and pat the spot beside me. "I guess I don't want it to be over." It's the warmest place I could hope to be, beats the alley I slept in last night by a mile.

Part of me is scared that Curt won't sit, that he'll turn away and leave me here alone. I don't know why that's a problem, I thought I was alone before he came around the fire anyway. I try to think of what I can give him to make him stay but all I have is the spliff pinched between my fingers so I hold it up in silent offering.

[calla]

C   U   R   T

"Solstice night is my favourite," Pietro says, and I think I jump, but it might just be the cold.

Because it is cold. Even with the fire. There's still that lingering uneasiness. It's tense. I shouldn't be here because this isn't something I do - whatever this is.

"It's alright."

The ground's not moving, but it feels like it is.

"I guess I don't want it to be over."

And I guess I can't really remember the last time I felt like that. My whole life's just been me waiting for the next thing to end; four years of test questions, nine months of heatwaves. We've been strapped to a train since day one but it's like the brakes have been cut and the rails have been scrapped and there's no way off anymore.

It's been like that. It'll probably keep being like that. We just pretend we don't see it anymore.

Charlie and I take the kids to the park after dinner every Tuesday and we sit at opposite ends of the bench for the full hour. One of her friends will pass by sometimes, and then she'll move in closer, I'll put my arm around her while she waves and we'll both smile. Last week our neighbour invited us over for a Ratmas dinner, but I told him that we were spending the holidays with Charlie's family instead. We both knew that Charlie hasn't talked to her folks properly in months.

I think I'm just tired.

I can't give her the white picket house she wants. I don't even know if that's what she wants. I just know she doesn't want me. Maybe it's easier for people like Pietro, he doesn't have to worry about shit like that. He's just who he is, he's free like that, and here I am, trying to be something that doesn't really exist. This life's all shiny on the outside but I think there's something wrong with it on the inside. I think there's something wrong with me.

I guess somewhere along the way I became a pessimist.

Charlie'll be upset if I come home smelling like anything other than the bonfire, but it's not like she'll be home anyways. I drop down beside Pietro and stare at the fire, elbows on my knees, feet in the sand, the air seems warmer here, don't know why. I know Pietro's looking at me but I can't look back. I think that'd make it too real.

It burns a little, I think I'm holding my breath, shoulders up like we're about to get caught. But that's stupid, isn't it? There's nothing wrong with this, I know that.

I'm selfish enough to take two drags of the joint before passing it back.

"Do you ever wonder what it'd be like if you were someone else? If you could be someone else?"

Maybe that's too telling, hand against my forehead, eyes faraway, "No- nevermind."

I don't even know how to explain myself to myself, let alone someone else.

"Forget I said anything."

I've got a rolodex of lies somewhere in my chest - excuses and stories and ways to hide what's slowly happening. The ocean sounds like the sheets shifting at night. There's a stranger living in my body. I don't know what a real emotion is because these ones don't feel like they're mine.

"Why do you like this so much, anyways." Change the subject, be polite, normal, but it comes out flat, "Just seems like an excuse to get high."

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

p i e t r o .

"Oh oh, you're in love
But I keep sinning, sin"

I know it's sad, the way I unravel a little bit faster when Curt is around. It's not supposed to be this way, I'm allowed to love and be loved by so many things but not by him. I know that.

But when he sits beside me in the sand the joy of him being there is almost too much to bear and another tear rolls slowly down my cheek. He appeared right when I wanted him most. It's like I've dreamed him up and for a moment I'm not entirely certain that isn't what happened. My hold on reality is often fragile at best.

After a moment I decide not to worry about that, here in actuality or not, I'll always take him as he is.

Curt asks me if I wonder what my life would be if I could be someone else before quickly retracting his question. I turn away from him, using the pretence of taking a drag on the joint as my alibi. I just don't want him to see my face and see it on me, the way I carry sadness like a shield and the longing behind it.

Always.

I learned already a long time ago though that people like me, we better not think about those things. I'm going to die young, whether it's from exposure or the drugs I don't really know, but I'm counting on it. I don't know how to explain that to Curt, though I bet he's already guessed. When I showed up in the neighborhood, I came with my scars all already grown pink.

He tries to change the subject and I let him. I don't press people, if I do they become cold to me and that's pain. But that puts me between a rock and a hard place because when people start asking me questions I get antsy. One day someone's gonna look at me and know how to ask about the hard things and then that's when I'll really break.

"Guess it's kinda like Christmas for me," I say, joint still between my lips. I play with the sand, scoop it up and then let the wind take it from my open palm. "Warm all night and you're here, maybe." Except maybe he's not and I just want him to be so he is. Not going to worry about it.

I'm quiet for a moment, trying to work my mouth into a smile because I'm supposed to be happy. It's easier with weed in my system but winter is hard and part of me always wants to just let Curt see the pieces of me no one else gets. Can't really do that though, there's not much left there.

"Who would you be?" I smile and pass the joint back, "You gotta tell me, it's Christmas."

[calla]

C   U   R   T

"Christmas." I echo. Drifting. Taking the joint and just staring at it.

It's like looking at a bunch of images overlaid. Like one of those puzzles where you have to line everything up, but this one was made all wrong. There's the picture of the house I grew up in, with the winding staircase and the foyer with the big white tree. There's the one I live in now, with the sad little sapling that I pulled out of the ground from somewhere near the edge of the biz district because Char was so disappointed that we didn't have a real tree this year. Then there's this - the fire and the sand and the waves.

I don't know which one is the real one, or if I have to pick or if I'm even allowed to pick.

I take a drag and they all blur together again.

"Who would you be?" Pietro asks, and it's then that I realize, in all the time I've known him, I've never really been able to place the tone he uses. It shifts a lot, changes halfway through a word, like he's started off feeling one way and then it changes too suddenly for him to start the sentence over.

It's confusing. Makes it hard to focus on what he's trying to say because I can't do the whole feelings thing. Not with this bone-deep pessimism in me. Not with the career upbringing or the three other brothers or the father that stopped taking my calls once I told him I wasn't abandoning his grandchildren.

Sometimes it just feels like I care in all the wrong ways. I cared too much about Dad. I didn't care enough about Char. Still, I try to hold Pietro's question, try to make it dissect itself so I don't have to because I already know that my stupid brain will just fixate on the wrong part of it. Not the sentimentality, but the practice. Not the meaning, but the means.

Free, is my first fleeting thought, my first real answer, but then I recoil from it so immediately that the sand shifts.

"I'd still pick this." I say instead. Char and the kids. The things that matter. "Nothing wrong with it, don't see what good any change would do."

I feel a little bad lying to him, but not enough to do anything about it. I think he's used to it anyways.

The longer we sit, the later it gets. The double shifts make my back ache and the ring's broken my nose twice now, but I know the holidays aren't enough to stop the rush down at the docks. Grizz is setting up the matches for the new year and it'll be another early morning, I'll curse myself tomorrow if I don't get going now.

But I also know that I'll be going home to an empty house tonight. No Charlie, no kids, just me.

The house is different when it's like that.

It wasn't that cold before, but it is now. It's the ocean's fault, as much as we like to brag about having it, it's a real pain in the ass sometimes. Even if I have to go back to that empty house and deal with it being that way, Pietro shouldn't be sitting here in the cold.

So I shrug off my sweater and put it over Pietro's shoulders instead. I know he needs it more, even if he'd never ask for it. He's always like that though. Always been like that. I don't think he ever asks for the things he actually wants. Sometime when I can convince Charlie to let him stay an extra few days on our couch I'll wander through in the middle of the night and he won't be asleep, just sitting there with the throw blanket around him.

Usually I just duck out the back before he can see me, there's a little alley that curves around to the side of the house where our bedroom window isn't, so that when I light up my bi-monthly cigarette Char won't be able to smell the smoke.

I felt real guilty about it at first, until I learned that the first thing about being a real couple is you have to know there'll always be these sort of little secrets that you keep from each other. Like the alley and the cigarette. Like Charlie and whatever shit she says about me when she spends the night at her sister's.

Like this, I guess.

I should be leaving, but I'm not.

"What about you, or has this-" I use the joint to gesture to him, up and down, still can't quite look at him but that's okay, "gotten any more lucrative?"

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

p i e t r o .

"Oh oh, you're in love
But I keep sinning, sin"

I let him have his time to think because he always gives me mine. My face is all hot from the fire, that shiny kind of hot where you know you're probably singing all the hair of your skin but you don't want to pull away. I can't remember the last time I was this warm. I think I'd climb into the woodpile and make a home there if knew that it wouldn't burn me alive.

There's nothing to fiddle with while Curt has the joint and I'm all done with the sand. I could think, I guess, but it's not something I normally like to do. There's too many things waiting for me in the back of my mind.

So the quiet makes me antsy. I ball the hand that he can't see up into a fist and let it go again, over and over, waiting for the feeling to settle. How can my body be this empty and this full all at the same time? It's near painful, it's fireflies under my skin, sparking out the minute I try to catch them.

I feel like this a lot around Curt, it's kind of a high all in itself but it scares me a little. I want it to end but I want it to never stop and sometimes I forget how addicted to agony I am.

It just feels so much like being alive. I think it's all I've ever been chasing.

"I'd still pick this." It's not until he says it that I realize all this time I've been holding my breath.

And he's still speaking but his words are getting lost in the crackling of the logs burning alive in the fire and the sound of waves hitting the beach. I press my palm hard against my chest, waiting for my lungs to start working again so that I can draw in air, so that the pain can end.

I'm so stupid.

I dig my palm in deeper against the thin fabric of my costume and though I can feel the pressure on my bones it's not enough to keep my heart pumping. It feels sharp, heavy, like I've fallen off a tightrope and all the air has been knocked out of my lungs.

Of course he'd pick his pretty little house and his pretty little family over anything else and it's almost funny how much I want to laugh about it.

Another tear rolls down my cheek, and then another follows after it, trying too hard to keep up. I wipe them away while he's not looking then finally breathe in, this long, shuddering thing and I forgot that's what crying's like sometimes. I used to be a lot better at quiet tears, once upon a time when my hands were smaller and I had a christmas tree.

But I guess Curt saw the shudder and mistook it for something else because a moment later his sweater is over my shoulders. I didn't know my back was cold until the wool, warm from his body is laying across it. I raise a hand and pull the sweater tighter around my neck, pushing myself back into its warmth and the scent of dried sea salt and Curt's cologne.

It's not fair that he does these kinds of things for me, he makes me want to stick around the neighbourhood too much and this sweet kindness is addicting too.

Time ticks and I'm waiting for a shoe to drop, the moment when Curt will stand up and tell me that he has to get home to his family and I'll smile and wave him off. He'll take his sweater and I'll be here, trapped until the temperature rises and longest night ends.

"What about you," he asks me.

I don't really know about me.

Except I do, I knew it the moment he asked. It's just something I don't think I can convey without having to tell him more about me than I can. The problem with all of this, with me and my silly stupid heart, is i want him to love me in a way i don’t even know how to be loved.

And it aches so good, this useless longing, I want to hold onto it for forever.

I reach over and take the blunt back. It's become short between his fingers but I don't mind the sting of the end. And I won't tell him my answer, about how sometimes when I'm sitting on his living room couch in the middle of the night I pretend that I belong there.

"It's not about the money," I tell him, smiling again. "I just like making them happy, you know?"

I think that he does.

And it's a little about the money, a little about the medicine cabinets in the houses of the parties I clown at.

The wind picks up, the fire flickers in it, snapping back and forth like an untethered sail. I shiver, this time for real.

"You have to go soon, don't you?" I ask.

And I wish I was better at keeping the sorrow out of my voice.

[calla]

C   U   R   T

The quiet is nice. Soothing, after a whole year of endless crying and pointed pauses.

"It's not about the money," He says.

And I do that thing where I speak without thinking, mutter with my foot in my mouth, tilt my chin back, god my fucking back hurts, "Must be nice."

The words sting right away though, they settle strangely because Pietro's the one sitting here with nowhere to go and I'm the one with the perfectly fine house I don't want to go back to. The cringe works its way up my spine, stupid, but I don't know what to do to fix it, so it just stays there.

It hangs there.

"The kids really love it. I swear, they go nuts if they even see a balloon. Blue'll end up getting your name out before mine at this rate."

I hope I don't sound bitter about it, because I'm really not.

But Char always looks at Pietro like he's some kind of disease that she's trying to protect the kids from, and I hate it because he was my friend before I'd even met her, and I don't want to be the kind of guy that cuts his friends off just because his wife tells him to. She doesn't even try to hide it anymore, but just because Pietro isn't a good person, it doesn't mean that he's not a bad one either, she doesn't get that.

I'm not delusional enough to think that he's a fine influence. I know what he's like. I know him better than Char does but I still don't have any say in it and that's what makes the situation so wrong. She just looks at him, makes a face at me and raises her eyebrows when she sees him in our living room, she barely even tries to talk to him, she doesn't even try.

The weird part of it is that Char gets along just fine with Grizz, and he's the hardest guy to get along with that I know. She likes Kyle and Klaus and even organized a bake sale with Tia for one of the centres she'd been doing secretary work for during the pregnancy. There's just something about Pietro that she's decided to turn her nose up at.

It makes me feel small, cold inside, like by dismissing him she's somehow dismissing me too.

"You have to go soon," Pietro says. Asks. Tells me.

I think he's right. It turns me cold in a way that the breeze can't.

I hope Paula's telling Charlie how much of a scumbag right now, I hope the kids are out of earshot.

"Do you want to come crash? Charlie's got the kids at their aunt's tonight."

And I think it's worded better that way. Not Charlie's staying with her sister and she took the kids with her and I don't think I'm handling this time better than all the other times. Not I'm going to be alone on one of the most family focused nights of the year and the thought of that empty house scares me.

I think it comes out steadier that way. More of a statement than a problem.

"And," and, and, and, an excuse, something that's not just I don't want to be alone, "It's only going to get colder."