Today (Morning)

The moon was a faint watermark against the hazy indigo sky as the horizon lightened, the stars faded, and the black night became gray twilight. The end of his cigarette crackled as Theo inhaled. The cherry was hot against his knuckles, glowing red like the neon vacancy sign across the street, two spots of bright color in the pre-dawn haze. Everyone was still asleep. Cars lined up in front of the motel rooms, a cat curled beneath one of them, and the roads were untraversed yet except by a scattering of leaves blown by the breeze.

Theo always woke early like this if he could help it. Before the sun came up, between day and night when he felt like the only person in the world. Like yesterday did not exist and tomorrow would not come. Like maybe he was a ghost and could remain in the in-between place while the rest of the world climbed out of bed, poured coffee, and started their cars—water vapor billowing from their tailpipes, lit up by the rising sun, whose warmth would never touch Theo because he was stuck in the veil.

The door handle by his shoulder rattled, and the door swung open. Abel stepped out, bedraggled. His eyes, still swollen with sleep, landed on Theo and narrowed even further. The cherry on the end of the cigarette burned Theo's knuckles as he took a final drag.

"I didn't know you smoked." Abel's voice was deep and cracked. Theo wanted to crawl inside its timbre, to crawl inside his chest, another place where he could feel safe from the world. Although with Abel, he would not be a lonely, wandering ghost. He stubbed out the cigarette.

"I don't."

"Oh."

Abel scratched his belly beneath the hem of his shirt and yawned. He held out his hand. The pack of cigarettes lay with the lighter on a small glass table. Between every motel room door, there was one of those small glass tables with an ashtray on top and a chair to the side. Theo had curled up in their room's chair, knees to his chest and heels digging into the flat cushion. He handed the cigarettes and lighter to Abel, who stuck one between his lips and cupped his hand around the lighter, the flash of the flame illuminating his face.

Theo looked away. The cat had woken up and was now licking itself beneath the car.

"Sorry for taking one. I just wanted to try."

"I don't mind," Abel plucked the cigarette from his lips and exhaled a stream of smoke. Then, in a disbelieving tone, he said, "You've never had a cigarette?"

The cat shook itself and got up on all fours to stretch and scamper away.

"I have, just not since..."

Theo let the thought trail off.

Abel's eyes were on him, darker than usual in the gray early morning. "Well, don't start now," he said. "It's a terrible habit." Then he took another drag.

Theo smiled up at him, and Abel frowned back. His eyes were so dark this morning that Theo couldn't tell his pupils apart from his irises, and they looked like mirrors. He liked that.

"What are you doing awake so early?" Abel asked.

"Communing with the veil." Theo gestured around them to the neon red glow, the faint blush of light on the horizon, the crescent moon hanging in the sky. Abel looked around, took all this in, and then nodded slowly like he always did when Theo said something he did not understand. He could try to explain, but then a car drove past, and the spell broke anyway.

"Well, we can get an early start." Abel bent to tap his cigarette in their neighbor's ashtray. As he did so, his shirt rode up around where he still had one hand beneath the hem, resting over his flexing torso. Theo felt certain that exposed skin would still be soft and sleep warm. "If we make good time, we'll be there by early afternoon."

Theo squished his cheek against his knees and peered up through his eyelashes. "Or we could get back in bed."

Two doors down, someone came out of their room and unlocked their car. Theo was not ready yet to watch the plumes of vapor rising from the cars as they readied themselves to merge onto the road with the rest of the morning commute. He wanted to crawl back into the safe bubble of pre-dawn. He wanted to crawl back between the sheets and into Abel's warm embrace. A stroke of pink now lay across the horizon like a splash of watercolor that would quickly seep into the rest of the canvas. He was not ready yet.

Abel smoked and looked at the light bleeding into the dark sky. "Or we could do that."

Yesterday

A snack bag popped open between the police officer's hands, and even from several feet away, Theo could smell the sweet scent of cheddar popcorn. The inside of the detective's office was much quieter than the whirlwind of activity bustling on the other side of the blind slats and bulletproof glass.

Even though it was the middle of the night, several phones rang faintly somewhere. Beat cops in uniform gathered around a coffee machine, cradling mugs with blue line flags or their favorite sports team on the side. A few people who had been pulled off the streets for driving drunk or whatever other nefarious things they had been up to sat at the desks across from officers who were filling out paperwork. But inside the detective's office, there was only the sound of the clock ticking, the snack bag crinkling, and the chewing of cheddar popcorn.

"You sure you don't want something to eat?" the police officer asked. Theo ignored him. He was curled up on the couch against the window overlooking the rest of the police station, knees hugged to his chest, pressed as close to the arm of the couch as he could squeeze himself.

When he was released from the hospital, they brought him a pair of worn sweatpants and a sweatshirt emblazed with the department's emblem. The fabric was scratchy against his skin, and he hated it. But they were better than either the hospital gown or the bloodstained clothes he'd had on before it.

They were now somewhere in an evidence bag, just like the samples a lovely male nurse with a steady stare and firm hands had taken from beneath his fingernails and other places. A rape kit, he had called it. When he said that, Theo had laughed, making one of the other nurses uncomfortable. He was used to the side-eyes by now. It came with the territory of being crazy.

But the firm nurse had looked him dead in the eyes and said, "That's what happened to you, you know. You were raped."

"Sure," Theo had said easily. They could call it what they wanted.

There was still blood caked around his fingernails. He picked at it and watched the flakes fall onto the detective's couch cushion. The police officer wiped cedar cheese from his snack onto his pants so he could check his phone.

Theo gazed back through the blind slats and saw a familiar face entering the precinct. He wanted to leap up and run out of the office to greet him. He wanted to crawl under the couch and never be seen or heard from again. The detective led the man closer to the office. Then the door opened.

"Theo?"

It was too late for Theo to hide, so he just watched with wide eyes as Abel crouched in front of the sofa and looked up at him. The detective murmured something to the cheddar cheese cop, who was still looking at his phone.

"Hey, man." Abel picked up Theo's hands from where they fidgeted atop his knees. He looked at them, saw the black stains around his nails, and folded his fingers so they were out of sight. Then nodded to the bandage on Theo's forehead. "That looks like it hurts."

"It's okay," Theo murmured, throat aching too much from screaming and the ring of bruises on his trachea to speak much louder.

"The detective told me what they think happened, but he said you haven't really talked to them enough for anyone to be sure."

"I don't trust cops." Theo stared at Abel, resolutely ignoring the two police officers in the room with them. "They won't believe me."

"Why don't you try them?" Abel asked, "The detective seemed pretty nice to me on the way here."

"No," Theo turned his hands over and threaded his fingers through Abel's, the tips pressing between Abel's knuckles, blood on display again. "Nobody is listening to me. I already told them. There is a demon hiding in the shadows, always behind my back, but never there when I turned around."

Abel squeezed his hands. "Are you talking about Ken?"

"Yes," Theo nodded slowly, "But he wasn't always. Sometimes, the demon was not there. It was always with me, and that's how it found Ken. They said it was gone once before, but then it came back...and, oh god," he gasped wetly into his knees, throat aching, eyes burning, "Ken, Ken, Ken."

"That's about the gist of what he's been saying to us the whole time." The detective wove a dismissive hand. "Not exactly the best material for a statement."

Abel searched Theo's eyes, looking for tears he had already cried out, then squeezed his hands again and let them go. "I'm going to step out and speak with the detective for a moment, alright, darling?"

"I'm okay," Theo told him. Abel pressed his lips together and stood. He and the detective went outside, where Theo could see their hands moving and catch snippets of their conversation.

"The tox screen won't come back..."

Abel shook his head, arms crossed with one hand on his forehead. "...says stuff like that sometimes. It's not..."

They said a bunch that Theo could not hear. He picked at his nails and eyed the cheddar cheese cop, who quickly looked back down at this phone like he hoped Theo had not caught him staring.

"...family..."

Abel shook his head.

"We found..." The cop held out a file to show Abel, who took it and frowned at the contents, flipping back a page to look at the one beneath. "...should be in a facility, but they need identification."

"No parents?" Abel asked, which Theo could hear clearly because he looked in the direction of the window, and they made eye contact through the slats. The cop looked, too, so Theo could hear when he said, "Both dead."

Theo dropped his eyes. So, his parents were both dead. The cops wanted to throw him in the loony bin. Abel probably should want that, too, if he knew what was good for him. After all, the demon would find him eventually, just like it found every bright spot in Theo's life and stained it rotten. Blackened blood caked beneath his fingernails.

"It should have been me," he whispered to himself.

"What?" cheddar cop asked.

"It should have been me!" Theo screamed at him, unfurling from the couch.

The cop shot up from his seat and blocked the door, one hand on his belt and the other bouncing in the air, palm down. "Just calm down, now."

Abel appeared, pushing past the cop and reaching for him. Theo stumbled back onto the couch and shook his head back and forth. "No, don't. It'll find you, too."

"It won't," Abel assured him.

"No, it already did!" Theo babbled. "Ken knew! That's why and...oh my god," he choked out, "I never should have told them to find you."

"Ken knew?" Abel frowned.

Theo nodded, "It made him mad. I tried...to," he paused to take a shuddering breath, "I didn't want...I pushed him away. And he said...he said he'd find you and..."

"Oh, Jesus." Abel palmed his face. "So, he threatened me and attacked you?"

"He...he..." Theo hiccupped, unable to get any more words out past his aching throat and stinging nose. He had thought there were no more tears to cry, but they trembled along his lash line, blurring his vision and scalding down his cheeks.

"Okay, darling. I need you to listen to me because this is very important." He shuffled closer, crouching again and putting his hands on either side of Theo on the couch cushions. Theo wiped his face and sniffed, listening intently. "It was not a demon. It was just Ken. You know that, right? And he's dead now, so he can't come after you or me anymore. He deserved to die. You did not."

"But –"

"Have I ever lied to you, Theo?"

Theo drew his knees up and hugged them against his chest. He shook his head.

"It was just Ken," Abel said firmly, "And now he's gone."

When he was little, they told him that the demon did not exist, either. His mom would look in the closet and show him that there was nothing except shadows, begging him to stop scaring himself when he insisted it was only because she was looking. And for a long time, Theo kept vigil until he finally forgot, which was when it came back again—because he was not looking.

The detective had just said his mom was dead.

"My parents are dead?" he asked.

Abel's brow furrowed like it always did when Theo lost the conversation thread or jumped topics. He searched Theo's eyes and then said, "Yes."

Theo nodded, "Do...do you know when?"

"I don't. How about you let me speak with the officers so I can find out some information, and then we can get out of here? How's that?"

"Okay." Theo pursed his lips and sniffed back his tears. Abel patted him on the knee where Theo could see the touch before it came, then straightened to his full height. Before he could turn away, Theo grabbed the hem of his shirt and peered around the edge of his hip at the detective and cheddar cop. They both were looking at Abel instead of him, which was comforting.

"What is it?" Abel asked.

"Could you...I had a, um, stuffed shark," he looked away from the officers when their eyes landed on him and instead peered up at Abel, trying not to feel very stupid, "with me when they took me to the hospital. I don't know...they took my clothes as evidence. Could you find the shark for me? And maybe," his eyes darted to the officers, "I could have it back?"

"I'll see what I can do." Abel squeezed his hand, then waited for Theo to release his shirt before turning to the detective. Theo pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to soothe his hot, aching eyeballs but that made the room too dark, so he snatched them away and stared around. Abel did not leave this time, staying in the room to speak with the detective.

"If she has his birth certificate and social security card, then we can just drive up and get them from her, right?"

Yesterday (a few hours after the police precinct)

"But his Aunt doesn't want him to stay with her?"

Abel's mom did her best to keep her voice down, but the incredulous note kept dragging the register up. Theo scooped up another spoonful of his yogurt parfait, making sure to get a heap of strawberries and crunchy granola. She kept glancing in his direction like she wanted to make sure he could not hear her, even though he could. But for some reason, being crazy made people think he was deaf or couldn't understand adult conversation.

She probably thought he was having a full-blown conversation with his shark plushie since he was staring it dead in the beady little plastic eyes while he ate his snack. He shrugged at it like oh well, what can you do? When he glanced up, he saw her eyes dart away.

Abel twisted to add the shirt he had been folding to the pile of clean laundry on top of the dryer. "No, but I didn't plan on leaving him with her anyway."

"No?" His mom was leaning against the doorway to the laundry room between Abel and Theo, who sat on one of the stools at the kitchen counter. His hair dripped onto his neck, soaking the collar of the shirt Abel let him borrow after stuffing him into a shower to 'get the hospital smell off you, Jesus.' Now Abel was throwing a bunch of clothes into bags to pack the car so they could drive to his aunt's house.

Because, apparently, Theo needed to have an ID. When he insisted that he could not drive anyway, Abel patiently explained that a state ID was different from a driver's license. Theo did not understand why it was important to have one. He was just happy that Abel wanted anything to do with him, so he would go along with anything he said.

"What is he going to do then?" Abel's mom asked him.

"I'm going to take care of him," Abel told her. "The first step is to get him an ID. Then, we can figure it out from there."

"Are you..." She tilted her head, lips pressed together, and lifted her hands in surrender. "Look, when I said I was happy because it seemed like you had finally found someone, I didn't realize it was..." She glanced toward Theo again, "He belongs somewhere that can help him. Is he even able to have a normal relationship?"

"He knows enough to make his own decisions. And it's not like I'm going to fuck him over. I treat him right, Mom, and he knows enough to realize that."

"But, you..."

"Look, Mom," The shirt Abel was folding collapsed between his hands as he dropped them to the top of the dryer with a thud, "He called me, alright. I'm not going to leave him hanging. He has literally nothing else because he relied on that fuckhead for everything."

He looked over his mom's shoulder and met Theo's eyes, which widened and dropped back to his shark.

"You don't even have your own place," his mom hissed. "If you think I'm going to be okay with—"

"I've had enough saved up to move out for years." Abel went back to folding the shirt in his hands. "As soon as we get back, I'll look into apartments."

Abel's mom rubbed a hand across her forehead, defeated for now. She glanced over at Theo again, then started to approach him. He sat up a little straighter and fought the urge to grab his shark and cradle it against his chest. Instead, he braced an elbow on the counter and casually poked around in his parfait.

"So...Theo," she sat beside him and smiled. He smiled back because he was in her house, and she was Abel's mother, and that was what you did when people smiled at you. It always seemed to make everyone feel more at ease. It never really made Theo feel at ease. He preferred people to show him exactly how they were, but he knew she was just trying to be polite, not patronizing.

"How are you feeling?" she asked because what the hell else was she going to ask? Even this was terrible. If he were not trying to be nice because this was Abel's mom, he would have laughed in her face. Instead, he took the question seriously, not even answering with the little "I'm fine" that maybe she expected and would be totally, absolutely, unequivocally false.

"I'm better than I was last night," he told her. He still felt like a singular raw nerve about to snap, but it was daytime now, and the previous night felt like it had been an entire month ago in an alternate universe. The past few years felt like an alternate universe when he sat in Abel's mother's house eating parfait. "This yogurt is good. Thanks for letting me eat it and letting me use your shower."

He wanted to say thanks for giving birth to a wonderful person like Abel, but he held himself back. She already thought he was weird enough. Her smile tightened as if it was growing more challenging to keep it on her face. Something about him thanking her made her uncomfortable. He ducked his head and scooped another spoonful into his mouth.

"Has anybody asked you what you want to do next?" she asked.

"Mom," Abel admonished from the laundry room.

"I don't know," Theo told her honestly, letting his fake smile drop. He really did not know. He had not been a real person for a long time—if he could ever have claimed to be one. He was a pet who'd been kept in captivity, and now that the cage was unlocked, he hardly even knew how to leave through the open door. She made a face like she was thinking the same thing.

The parfait suddenly was far less appetizing. He dropped the spoon into it and pushed it away. He could not even have a normal conversation with a regular person. And he knew this lady, as nice as she was, disapproved of her son taking care of him. That much was clear. Because Theo was an adult and should not need to be taken care of. But it was always so nice when Abel made him feel like everything would be okay. He forgot sometimes that relying on somebody else like that was not acceptable.

"I need to use the restroom," he told her with another quick smile, far less convincing than the first one. Then he grabbed his shark and hurried down the hallway to the bathroom. It was still muggy from the shower he had taken. Condensation clung to the mirror despite the fan that began to run as soon as he turned the light on.

He did not have to pee, but he had not lied. He needed the privacy of the restroom to center himself. Sometimes, with Abel, he forgot that he was awkward at best while interacting casually with others when he was not actively self-sabotaging. Abel was patient and always made it seem like what Theo said and did was reasonable. And if he did obviously think Theo was being odd, he never acted like it was a negative thing. He was so comfortable to be around. Other normal people were terrifying, though.

He stood there and massaged his shark between his hands for a little while. Then he flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and crept back out. Abel had finished the laundry and joined his mom in the kitchen. Theo hovered in the hallway, still mostly out of sight, not wanting to interrupt their conversation.

"You're telling me that the cops told you he belonged in an institution?" His mom's hip was propped against the counter so she could lean toward Abel while he dumped a box of granola bars into a bag of snacks for the car ride. Again, she probably thought she was keeping her voice low enough. But she was not.

"Since when have you ever given a shit what cops say?" Abel tossed the empty box in the recycling bin with a weary expression.

"I'm just saying that maybe they knew what they were talking about this time," she said, hands emphasizing her words. "He just killed his boyfriend, but he seems fine to me. Smiling and everything."

"Mom, come on." Abel braced his hands on the counter and leaned heavily on them, shoulder blades popping beneath his shirt. "You didn't see Dad having a mental breakdown every time he came home from a job he did for Dario. Did that mean he needed to be in a mental institution?"

"Maybe." She lifted her chin.

Abel dropped his head and sighed. "Besides. You didn't see him at the station."

"I still just think- "

"He's been cooped up in that asshole's hellhole where he couldn't make his own decisions for a long time, alright?" Abel stood up and crossed his arms. "I'm not going to stick him in somewhere they are going to do the same thing to him – drug him and tell him what to think all day long. Maybe someone should listen to what he wants for once."

"He doesn't know what he wants. You're telling him what to do," his mom pointed out. "It's not like he asked you to take him on this little road trip."

"No, not specifically. But he asked the police to contact me. He trusts me, and I'm not about to throw him in an insane asylum like he's some abused dog who needs to go back to a shelter because he's too aggressive to be placed with a family, alright? Let me try with him first, goddamn."

Theo stroked his shark and thought about all the times that Ken told him he was insane, he should be locked up, and he should be grateful that someone took time out of their life to put up with his nonsense. He had constantly threatened to have Theo committed if he threw too many temper tantrums. Maybe he had been right. It seemed like he was driving a wedge between Abel and his mom just by being here.

But Abel spotted him hovering in the hallway and gestured for him to come into the room. "Are you done with your yogurt?"

Theo looked over at the little half-eaten cup on the counter. He nodded and looked back at Abel, keeping his eyes from straying to Abel's mom.

"Good," Abel nodded, closing the snack bag and putting it with the duffle of clothes he had just put together. "Let's get going, then." 

A/N: So it begins <3