Chapter Text
Sunlight woke him, streaming through the dirty panes of his window. Trickling into the corners of his eyes. His head ached slightly - felt somehow to heavy on his neck. Steve rolled over - stretched and looked around the room. Silently greeting his drawings.
There was one of the house, one of Mama holding Didi - a whole series of ones that he was pretty sure were going to turn into a comic. He knew he couldn't draw the same slick way that his Daddy could. At least not yet.
But Steve new he had an idea forming in his mind - Birdland. He knew he had a head full of ideas - Steve rolled off the mattress and he pushed open the door of the bedroom. He walked down the hallway towards the kitchen. He saw the blood on the walls - before he saw his Mama.
It would come out in the autopsy report - which Steve didn't read till years later. That Daddy had attacked her near the front door. That they must have argued - that there had been a struggle - and he'd driven her back toward the hall before he'd killed her. That was where Steve later picked up the hammer.
Mama was crumpled in the doorway that lead from the living room into the hall. Her back rested against the frame. Her head lolled on the fragile stem of her neck, her eyes were open. As Steve edged around her body - they seemed to follow him.
For a heart stopping moment he thought she was still alive. But then he saw that her eyes were cloudy, and filmed with blood. Her arms were a mass of blood and bruises.
Silver rings, sparkling amid the ruin of her hands. Seven fingers broken, the autopsy report would say, along with most of the small bones in her palms. As she raised her hands to ward off the blows of the hammer.
There was a deep gouge in her left temple - another one in the center of her forehead. Her hair was loose and fanned around her shoulders. Stiff with blood. A clear fluid had seeped from her head wounds and dried on her face.
Making silvery tracks through the mask of red. And on the wall above her, a confusion of bloody hand prints trailing down, down ...
Steve spun and ran back down the hall - towards his sisters room. He did not know that his bladder had let go - did not feel the hot urine spilling down his legs. He did not hear the sound he was making, a long high moan.
The door of Didi's room was closed. He hadn't closed it the night before, when he'd looked in on Didi. High up on the door - was a tiny smudge of blood, barely noticeable. It told Steve everything he needed to know. He went in anyway.
The room was thick with the smell of blood and shit. The two odors together were cloying, almost sweet. Steve went to the bed, Didi was laying in the same position that Steve had left her in the night before.
Her head was burrowed into the pillow - one small hand curled into a fist near her mouth. The back of Didi's head was like a swamp - a dark mush of splintered bone and thick clotted gore. Sometimes during the night because of the heat - or in the spasms of death.
Didi had kicked off her covers. Steve saw the dark brown stain between her legs, that was were the smell came from. Steve had lifted the blanket and pulled it over Didi - covering the stain, her tiny ruined head - the unbearable curled hand.
The blanket settled over her tiny body, Where it covered her head - a red blotch appeared. He knew he had to find Daddy - Steve's mind clung to some tiny, glittering hope that maybe Daddy hadn't done this.
That some crazy person had broken into their house and killed Mama and Didi - and left him alive for some reason. That Daddy might still be alive too. He stumbled out of Didi's bedroom - and felt his way along the hall.
That was where he was found later - found by his Mama's friends. They had driven out to see why Mama hadn't been showing up for work. The front door was unlocked, they saw Mama's body first - and they worked themselves into a hysterical frenzy.
When someone had heard the high toneless keening.
They'd found Steve squeezed into the tiny space between the toilet and the porcelain sink. Covered in blood - holding the hammer that his Father had used to kill his Mama and baby sister. Curled in as compact as a fetus.
Eyes wild and empty - fixed on his Father. Bobby Harrington was strung up from the shower curtain rod. It was the kind that was bolted into the wall. It had held his weight all night and day, he was naked - his body was thin nearly to the point of emaciation. He was luminously pale, his face so swollen that it was almost featureless.
The rough strand of hemp cut deep into his neck, his hands and torso were still stained with the blood of his wife and daughter. As someone had lifted him and carried him out - Steve was still curled into the smallest possible ball - Steve had his first coherent thought - it would be his only one that he would have for days.
He hadn't have needed to worry about accidently stumbling across the Devil's Tramping Ground.
The Devils Tramping Ground had come to him.
***
The air was thick and hot, the sky was a painting of dusk blue - then deepening to a smokey violet - where you could no longer see the dying sunlight. Steve let out a slow exhale, he could smell the memories - the faintly exotic sweetness of too many journeys. The industrial strength disinfectant they used to slop out the rest room at the back of the bus.
Steve had spent years on Greyhound buses - nameless travel, moving from one place to the next - hiding out and re-starting his life. Reforming his shape to fit into the world around him.
It was an odor that he knew well - as well as the quiet despair of a thousand bus terminals. Where he'd spent time under the small dim lights above his head, while drawing in his sketchbooks his hand moving to the rhythms of the music he could hear inside his head while he drew. Lost in that, and occasionally he'd look up and out the window - the outside world fading out.
Till only his hallowed out reflection could be seen in the glass of the window.
That particular night, that particular journey - a redneck sitting a few seats up from him - he was large, sweaty - and wearing a John Deere baseball cap. He'd growled out, "Hey! You, Fucking Hippie!" Steve had lifted his gaze, just a fraction - "Me?" He'd said in a too quiet voice, raspy.
"Yeah you, who the fuck else would I be talking to? Him?" The redneck scoffed and motioned with his finger to an old black man sitting a few seats away on the opposite side, whose gnarled hands were clutching around a nearly empty bottle of Night Train in his lap.
Steve had shook his head, and the redneck growled at him - "You mind turning that goddamn light off? I got a headache, you know?"Hangover more like. Steve had shook his head, "I can't, I have to work on this drawing."
"The hell you do." The redneck had risen over his seat, "What's a freak like you drawin' that's so goddamn important?" Without saying anything, Steve had turned his sketchbook around so that the redneck could see it. The light showing every detail of the drawing, a slender woman - half seated, half sprawled in a doorway. Head thrown back, yawning mouth full of blood and broken teeth. Her left temple and forehead were smashed in, her hair and face and the front of her dress was black with blood.
The drawing was stark and flawless, the frozen agony eloquent in every line of her body, in every stroke of her ruined face.
"My Mother." Steve said.
The redneck's fat face quivered, his lips twitched - his eyes were shocked. Momentarily defenseless - then flat. "Fuckin freak." He muttered, but he didn't say anything else. Not about Steve turning off the light, not for the rest of the trip. Steve stared down at the drawing, he frowned at it. In the lower right hand corner - he had labeled the drawing, Birdland.
He didn't erase the label, it was too heavily penciled and it would fuck up the paper. He wasn't much for erasing anyway. Sometimes the mistakes showed you the really interesting connections between your brain, your hand and your heart, the ones that you might otherwise never know were there.
They were important, even if you had no idea what they meant.
Steve couldn't remember everything about that morning - the morning when he'd been carried out of the house - and that was all he'd known for a while. He knew that someone - a man with large hands, had been brave enough to edge past his father's dangling body to pry Steve from his hiding place between the sink and the toilet. It had kind of doubled into a utility closet. It was where his Mama had kept the brooms and mop. He'd been wedged in there between the sink and the cleaning equipment.
It had been Jim Hopper that had pulled him out of his hiding place.
The next thing he remembered was being in a blank white room, smelling medicine and vomit. Then screaming at the sight of the tube that came out of his arm - hanging out and snaking up - the needle making the crook of his arm sore. Steve had thought it was alive, burrowing into him as he'd slept. He would never really trust sleeping again, he'd closed his eyes and went somewhere else for a few hours. While you were gone anything could happen, anything at all.
The whole world could be ripped out from under you.
The nurse told Steve that he'd not been able to hear people trying to talk to him. That he couldn't eat or drink. The tube had been giving him medicine - he had another one going down through his noise into his stomach to give him food - to stop him from starving to death. Or so he understood it. Steve had been wearing a diaper - he knew even Didi was too old for a diaper. Then he remembered that Didi wasn't anything anymore.
All she was, was a memory or a smashed shaped on a stained mattress. His family had been dead five days - had been buried while Steve floated in the hazy twilight world.
The Doctors at the hospital called it Catatonia.
Steve knew it was Birdland. Not just a place where no one else could touch you. But the place you went when the real world scared you away. After it became apparent that no relative or friend of the family was going to claim him, and a series of cognitive tests proved he was functional (if withdrawn) the court declared Beau Harrington a ward of the State. He was placed in a boys Home on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia.
An orphanage and school whose operating budget had been shaved to the bone the previous year. There was no foster family program, no special training for the gifted - no therapy for the disturbed. There was only an enormous drafted school building and four outlying dorms all built of smooth gray stone that held a chill even in the middle of summer.
There were two hundred boys, aged five to eighteen, all kept crew-cut and conservatively dressed. Each with his own personal hell and none of them were much inclined to help ease the weight of anyone else's.
The place had no color or texture, Steve's time there was quiet - he kept to himself and his room was a cold square box. It had been safe because he could draw - without looking over his shoulder. Mostly he'd been left alone. He was awkward in his skin, in his body. Never feeling like he fit - his body felt wrong to him. Steve dreaded the afternoons where he was forced to be outside with the other boys.
He never tried to make friends, sometimes a group of predators would try to target him - eventually they would attack. Steve learned that he could fight back - he could land a hard punch with his left hand, he could kick and claw and bite. He would come off the worst - he wasn't a big kid - a skinny, scrawny little thing - but he was fast. He never risked his right hand because it was his drawing hand. Then that group would leave him alone.
Steve would mind his own business, till the next time. He'd read and suspected it was like being in prison. He just had to keep his head down - and wait. But then he'd been shipped out of the home - moved to a different one. That's when Steve's life shifted from survivable to a nightmare. Where he couldn't escape, when things turned from manageable into Hell.
Somewhere amidst all of it - he had lost his ability to talk, he didn't have anything useful to say. After he'd been taken from the house in Violin road - Steve didn't see Eddie again. He didn't even know where he'd gone. He had blanks in his memory - things he couldn't remember. Parts of his memory just blanked out.
They'd said that Didi had high levels of sleeping pills and other drugs in her body - that Daddy had drugged her. Steve had high levels of the same drugs in his system too. So Daddy had drugged them - why had he not killed Steve too? He.. didn't understand why he'd left him behind, alone - he had to stay behind. Trapped and alone.
***
The Yew was the kind of place that got all the run aways and people off the Greyhound bus - it was the first port of call in Chapel Hill. Kinsey had been running the place for a long time - and he had all kinds of food - drinks. The beer he sold was National Bohemian - and at a dollar fifty a bottle - it was pretty popular. One of his locals Terry, ordered one - and Kinsey cracked it open, placing the frosty Beveridge in front of him.
"I talked to Ghost and Mikey today." Terry told him - they were two boys that had formed a band Lost Souls - they were the two members, best friends - Ghost's real name was William - but he was a strange kid - he preferred to be called Ghost - Mike stuck to him like glue. Mike played a dark - fierce guitar and Ghost had a golden voice like gravel running through a clear mountain stream. A couple of weeks ago they'd returned from a cross country gig - in New York, before promptly leaving again in Mike's old T-Bird.
San Francisco was their ultimate destination - but they would plan their route as they travelled - they might be gone for as much as a year.
"They're in Texas right now." Terry said, "Mikey said they played in a coffeehouse in Austin - and everyone loved them. Even sold some of their tapes too." Terry snickered and Kinsey smiled - "You ever been to Austin?" Terry asked. Kinsey shook his head, "Nah - one of my favorite cartoonists came from there though, Bobby Harrington."
"Wasn't he that guy that.." Terry asked.
"Yup.." Kinsey answered, sighing heavily.
"That house is still standing out on Violin road." Terry mused, "I was only sixteen when the murders happened - but I remember, they say its haunted."
"Of course they do, and it might be haunted - but he was brilliant - hey have you ever looked at that new one that's out? Birdland - I think the guy doing that he must have been a fan of Bobby's... its called Birdland." Kinsey asked Terry, the younger man shook his head, but said, "Didn't he leave one of his kids alive?"
Kinsey served Terry up a bowl of noodle soup. "Yeah... a eight year old son I believe - and no, I don't know what happened to him."
"I bet he was fucked up real good." Terry said, slurping his soup.
"Excuse me, could I get a bowl of that soup?" said a quiet, soft voice from the end of the bar.
Kinsey turned - Neither him or Terry had noticed the boy before. The bar was crowded - and the kid fit right in. Tall and slender - plain black t-shirt and tight black jeans. He had dark brown hair that was down just past his shoulders - with flecks of blonde through it. And he had a back pack slung over one shoulder. His eyes were lined with smudged eyeliner. He looked to be about eighteen or so - but carried himself like someone younger. Unsure of himself, and not particularly wanting to be noticed.
But it was his eyes that were arresting. They were chocolate brown, but when the light caught them - they had an almost golden honey color at the same time - they didn't meet Kinsey's gaze - they seemed big and wild - startled, hidden behind glasses that were too big for his face. Waif-eyes, thought Kinsey - Hunger eyes. His Mama used to tell him about creatures with eyes like that, a long time ago.
"You new in town?" Terry asked through a mouthful of noodles.
The boy nodded, "I came in on the bus about an hour ago."
"That's new all right." Terry offered his hand, but the younger man looked confused - and he didn't take it.
"I'm Terry Buckett, I run the record store here, in case you need any sounds - Everything from Bowie, to Hank Williams." Terry said, and Kinsey interjected, "Hank William's Senior."
"Senior, absolutely. For Bocephus you have to drive to Corinth - he's a little too all American for us. Who are you?" Terry asked the younger man.
"Steve Black. I usually listen to jazz."
"Got some of that too." Terry grinned at Steve. After a moments hesitation - the younger man smiled tentatively back. Terry's friendliness was hard to resist - and he would keep talking till a person started answering. Kinsey set down a bowl of the soup - in front of Steve Black. The kid seemed familiar - and yet he wasn't sure why.
"I usually buy my new customers a drink - a coke if you're under twenty-one." Kinsey said.
Steve said quietly, "I don't drink - a coke will be fine thank you." He didn't say how old he was either - the night went on and Kinsey kept a quiet eye on the new kid. He was on his third coke - and Kinsey said, "So kid - are you just passing through or.. are you sticking around?"
Steve said, "Sticking around for a little bit, got some things to do.."
"What do you do? Do you need a job? Could you start now?" Kinsey was wiping the bar - he paused as Steve said, "I draw - do comics. But sure I can.. start now." He stepped behind the bar, putting his back pack down in the corner.
"Wait... a minute, you're Steve Black? The.. Birdland is your graphic novel?" Kinsey asked - the younger man looked uncomfortable - he was staring at the floor as he scuffed his shoe against it. "Yes.." He said softly.
Kinsey had thought his name was familiar. "Didn't you have a page in Drawn and Quarterly?" This was an underground comics magazine featuring some of the newest - most bizarre talent around.
Steve looked surprised, maybe a little disconcerted - but then he nodded. "Yes. That was me."
"It was a good strip, it made me think of..." Kinsey didn't get a chance to continue - the next wave of customers came in - clamoring for Natty Boho's - Steve turned away so quickly that Kinsey wondered whether he was glad to get off the subject.
As Kinsey rang up the purchases, he thought about the strip - it had been an odd story. A brief tale about an epiphany of sorts - something about a flock of birds, rising from a charred mans corpse like a feathered, jewel eyed soul. Kinsey had been about to say how much it reminded him of the late Robert Crumb. The sharp inking and graceful lines. He was sure that Steve must have been a fan of Bobby's work. At least read it.
Birdland was a beautiful series - maybe even more so than Bobby's work had been. Possibly the younger man knew that Bobby had died here. But the band was winding down - the crowd was starting to thin out. And then it was closing time - money to count, spills to wipe up . By the time they were finished it was after 3am. Kinsey watched the younger man quietly, and then he cracked open a beer - taking a swig he flicked on the radio.
Miles Davis, something from the fifties - the sound of a trumpet filled the room - as slow and smooth as eggnog spiked with whiskey. Steve had his head down on the bar - and Kinsey leaned against it, and let his eyes close. The music ended and the announcers voice came on - his voice was deep, white and somehow distilled the essence of the music. "Well yeah, Miles Davis - Remember you still can have plenty of time to get to Birdland."
Kinsey heard a strangled sob, he opened his eyes and stared at Steve - who was holding his head in his hands - tears poured down his face and he was breathing harsh - Kinsey could see his tears falling down - and landing on the bar. He moved closer towards the boy, "Hey Steve, What..."
"I don't have plenty of time to get to Birdland..." Steve cried, his voice sounded like it was being pulled out of him - dragged over hot coals, tortured out of his body. "I don't have any time at all, and I'm scared."
"Birdland?" Kinsey said softly.
Steve caught the puzzled question, he looked up at Kinsey - eyes not meeting his exactly, but Kinsey could see the torture in his eyes - the fear. And suddenly Kinsey knew his face - he recognized the little boy on the side of the road with his Mama. "Birdy Harrington." Kinsey said softly.
"Oh Goddamn.." Steve rasped out - and then he was sobbing again. Kinsey went around to the side of the bar where he was sitting - and cautiously placed a hand on his shoulder. He felt the younger man flinch and tense up.
"Don't touch me!" Steve said shakily.
"Sorry I didn't mean too." Kinsey said softly.
"Just don't!" Steve said hoarsely.
They stared helplessly at each other, Steve's face was slick with tears. Everything in the way he held himself was screaming Don't Touch Me. But Kinsey thought his eyes looked like a scared little boy, he thought the younger man might hate him - might maybe lose his shit. But he very carefully wrapped his arms around Steve and held him close.
He felt the younger man's body go completely rigid, felt him try to pull away - and if he'd kept trying Kinsey would have let him go. But Steve sagged against him - exhausted. "I remember you, and your Mama - your.. I remember." Kinsey said quietly.
Steve breathed out harshly, embarrassed as the sobs wracked his body - "You poor, poor child." Kinsey said quietly - his long arms holding Steve. Kinsey could feel the sharp angels of the younger man's body, he felt like a fragile bird - Kinsey imagined Steve's fear unfolding like treacherous wings to carry him back to that house. Back to the strange and painful year - and to the death he no doubt thought he deserved.
As the crying faded and turned into an occasional long tremor - that jerked hard against Kinsey. He could feel the bones of the younger man's body digging into his own. Steve pulled away and slumped down against the bar. Kinsey realized, that Steve was a lot younger than he'd realized - he was at least fourteen - maybe fifteen. Kinsey watched as he wiped his face - deciding to give him time without making him feel more embarrassed.
"Let's go." He said quietly, firmly.
Steve gave him a wary, questioning look without making eye contact.
"You shouldn't be by yourself." Kinsey told him. "You're coming home with me." He expected an argument - maybe refusal. But Steve just let out a soft little exhale and then he nodded. Kinsey wondered whether he'd been planning on hiking out to Violin road - to sleep in that bad memory of a house.
The house of Birdy Harrington's thwarted doom, and perhaps the house of Steve Black's impending destiny. Steve slung his backpack over his shoulder - and turned off the bar lights. He followed Kinsey out of the club and down the bad end of Firehouse Street. Into the silent, silver-lit night.
***
Being back in Chapel Hill, if only briefly - had been a strange disconnect from his reality. He didn't just carry the weight of the murder/suicide now - he had new battles. New scars - new trauma to deal with. Steve had become catatonic again on and off in different periods. Detached from himself - floating through reality rather than being present in it.
He didn't want to be anchored in the weight that it sucked him down into. People were too much - everything was just too much. Steve detached further as parts of him died. He lost more of himself - but then he had a feeling that maybe, he had never really ever had those parts to begin with.
Once he'd been moved out of the first boys home. The second one became a living hell - he was targeted, and bullied and then shipped from one foster home to another. By the time he was fourteen, he'd endured so much abuse that he was determined to try and get out of the system altogether. He didn't know how he was going too at first. But he knew he had to do something.
Steve wondered, he wondered where Eddie had disappeared too - Does he ever think about me? It hurt to think about him. The fact that he just disappeared - gone ... like a shadow. Steve had to push it down, the emptiness. The feeling that he couldn't shake off - that he didn't understand. After he was shipped from Foster home to Foster home - he was made to go to therapy. Put through all kinds of tests, both psychological and medical.
He was told that he was autistic, but he wasn't mentally retarded like some had first assumed. Seemed he was the opposite and had an extremely high I.Q. Steve really didn't care about that. He learned to keep his drawings a secret - nine years old and you're drawing the murder/suicide of your family - wasn't seen as healthy.
He'd been put on a bunch of medications, for anxiety - depression. Steve was only a few months shy of thirteen when he'd first slit his wrists, bleeding out on the floor of a bathroom in the abandoned church. Jim Hopper having sent him to a facility to get rehabilitated.
Steve kept his darkness to himself. His thoughts, and his dreams - his nightmares.. he buried it. Kept it hidden away.
Steve learned to play the system - telling them what they wanted to hear. He leaned how to wear a mask, and a perfectly crafted one. He could adapt and be whatever it was that he had to be to survive. Steve survived the best way that he knew how.
After he met Kinsey - something shifted in him however. The fact that he'd endure six years of nearly constant abuse - he just reached a point where he didn't want to have to endure it anymore.
He didn't stay in Chapel Hill for long. He worked at the Yew - saving money, till he had enough that he could set himself up in New Orleans. Kinsey was a nice guy - and together the help of Ghost and Mike - Steve had a plan to get to New Orleans.
Steve knew how to manipulate people into getting what he wanted if he needed too. Kinsey wasn't someone that Steve had to manipulate however - he was just a genuinely nice person. Steve had still been drawing, doing his comics - Kinsey was the only one in Chapel Hill who knew who Steve actually was.
He'd met Ghost and Mikey, they'd stopped in at the Yew - to catch up with everyone. Steve had been so swayed by their music that he'd drawn them into one of his stories. Ghost was quiet, he had too big eyes that had some kind of spell in them.
Mike was the kind of guy that was noisy and hectic - calmed only by the grounding from Ghost. They were like to pieces of one person, and it was the first time that Steve realized that boys could like each other that way. He didn't know it wasn't a sin.
Steve had seen them kissing, all tangled up together - Mikey's fingers curled into Ghost's hair - as Will grabbed Mike's ass and they rocked into each other while they kissed. Steve had been left feeling flustered and not sure what to do about the fact that watching them left him hard. He'd never really been aroused before, not that way.
The two boys asked Steve if he wanted to ride with them to New Orleans - he had agreed to go with them. Will had given him a lazy smile, and then when it was just the two of them alone - he'd said softly, "You are afraid of New Orleans.. but you don't have to be, you'll find some answers there.. about who you are."
He hadn't known what to say to that. Ghost just seemed to know things - without being told. His big eyes were pretty - they didn't scare Steve. Mike seemed to understand that Ghost calmed him - "He's just a calming spirit - I get that... I am the opposite of calm." Steve just let out a soft laugh, and Mike smirked - smoking a clove cigarette, and then shrugging.
"It's okay though - I get you know.. the thing - not wanting to be touched, or.. whatever.. I used to be like you, until I met Ghost." Mikey said softly, "You'll meet someone one day, maybe it might change."
Steve thought about Eddie, and then he pushed that away.
The two older boys gave Steve a quiet sense of calm in different ways. They had got to New Orleans - and it was Mike that dragged him to Cafe du Monde for the first time. "You have to try the Beignets." He had muttered softly, ordering a plate of them along with coffee.
It was the first time that Steve ate something that was as close to Heaven as he could imagine food could get.
Soft pillowy goodness - drenched with powdered sugar. And the coffee - was the best he'd ever had. Steve got a job working there, and it was the beginning of the shift - Kinsey had helped Steve to get emancipated from the ward. He was free - he didn't have to be in the system anymore.
Ghost and Steve didn't stay for long - the three of them sharing one room in a dingy motel on Bourbon street - Steve would sit out on the balcony - breathing in the smells.
The buildings, the streets - it didn't seem so scary anymore. Not like when he was younger. It felt alive - with its hidden secrets buried underneath - Steve wanted to explore and dig deeper. He wanted to feel it pulsate under his skin. He could feel the sweat clinging to his skin, the air was hot and cloying - and he drank alcohol for the first time. Sweet delicious bourbon - that was warm on his tongue and deep in his belly.
He sat outside, sweat clinging to his skin - listening to the sound of Mike fucking Ghost into the mattress. Their breathless - dirty moans and the squeaking of the bed - making him antsy, he was flushed and aroused and Steve didn't even understand really what was happening to him. Just that he liked listening to them - he secretly liked watching them too. Because he'd seen them, a couple of nights previous - they'd thought he was asleep in his bed.
Mike had started kissing Ghost, and then there was the soft sounds of the two of them breathless - Steve hadn't been sure what they were doing - just that Ghost was laying on top of Mike, doing something to him under the covers - while they breathed each other in, Mike groaning softly, "Fuck Will - I'm so close.. I'm.. gonna cum.."
Steve had felt like his heart was going to leap out of his chest. They were pretty together, sweaty and flushed - and he could see their tongues slicking together. Mike had made a strangled noise into Ghosts' mouth - and then Ghost was licking his hand.
Steve had laid awake long after they'd fallen asleep - he didn't know they were doing. But he know he liked the sounds they made. He knew they were going to San Francisco - Steve had never really had a connection with anyone before. So when Ghost said softly, "We'll miss you, you know... I.. wanna write to you? Will you write me back?"
He'd nodded, blushing and said softly - "Yes, I'll write you back." They helped him find his apartment. When they both decided it was time to get back on the road - Steve had felt sad, tears welling up in his eyes, but both of them - had promised to see him again soon. Strangely enough - Steve actually let them both hug him goodbye. And once they'd left, he sat in his empty apartment on his mattress and stared up at the ceiling.
Steve realized that he didn't really completely like being alone.
It was a few weeks after that he saw Jim Hopper again for the first time in a while. Jim helped him get enrolled in classes at the university - Steve put an ad up for some room mates. Which he got pretty quickly. Dougie and Garrett.
Dougie had a girlfriend named Selena and they weren't around a lot. Most of the time it was Steve and Garrett that were in the apartment - Garrett was into art too, so sometimes they'd just hang out and draw - talk about all kinds of things.
Steve had a lot of work with his classes - he had work at the cafe too. Jim was weird when he'd come and visit - making comments about Garrett - Steve realized that Jim thought he was queer. He didn't like it - everyone seemed to assume Steve was queer. Including Garrett.
The blond had tried to kiss him - and Steve lost his temper - punching him. Garrett moved out the next morning - and then eventually Dougie did too - moving in with Selena instead. And Steve was on his own again. Steve decided that it was better if he just lived by himself - he threw himself into his school work and focused on that instead.
He caught up with Garrett again, who had moved into an apartment deeper in the quarter - near the river. Steve went home with him one night, the two of them drunk - Garrett had tried to put the moves on him again, and Steve didn't remember what happened - just that he woke up the next morning covered in blood - and Garrett went missing. Steve had bloodied and bruised knuckles - and scratches on his arms. He knew he'd done something to the other boy - he just didn't know what it was.
It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last that Steve did things while he blacked out - it wouldn't be the first time he woke up with blood on his body and bruises. That kept happening for the entire time he was in New Orleans.
Steve didn't know that he would find the answer in an unlikely place - that the answer would come with him finding that he'd always been something else. He would find the answer when he went out to the Bayou - the swamp country calling to him, the whispered voices on the wind - he would find the answers there.
Across a doorway, stepping over red brick dust.