Varian stared down to the bottom of the water bottle. He watched the distorted refraction of his finger move across the plastic. His eyes glazed over, following the movement while Padriac and Mary whispered to each other. He was distracted for a moment by their murmurs, furrowing his brow while still trying to focus on his finger. The blue tint of the bottle colored his hand blue and he was lost in the color for just a second before he lost the connection.

He closed his eyes and gave out a lengthy sigh. He pushed the bottle away. He’d been trying to keep his mind off—other things he didn’t want to speak of. 

“Maybe…”

Varian opened his eyes. Padriac and Mary were both looking at him.

He raised a brow. “What?”

They looked at one another. 

It was Mary who cleared her throat and leaned over the lunch table so she could look at him better. “We have something to tell you.”

He looked at Padriac, but he was avoiding eye contact. He wasn’t sure what this was all about. The way they looked at him was the same way his parents had looked at him when he was returned home. The pity was unbearable. Though he couldn’t really tell if it was pity or something else. It was becoming hard to make out the slight differences in emotions. They were blurring into one big jumble of a mess and he was too tired to untangle them.

The tight smile stretched over Mary’s mouth made him think he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear.

“Me and Padriac are dating.”

The room went eerily quiet. It must have been in his head because no one had actually stopped to look at them. The room was buzzing as ever, kids screaming across the tables, laughing, and being teenagers. They hadn’t stopped talking over one another—hadn’t stopped being the normal human husks they were. It was only Varian who was not normal. It was only him that had failed to notice he was losing his mind. 

Mary and Padriac shouldn’t have been a big deal. It wasn’t. Really. 

He just didn’t understand why they were telling him.

He blinked a couple times as if that would give him clarity or the situation would disappear all together. The awkward silence that had fallen over the three had carried on for too long. Padriac had turned his head to look at Varian now. Their eyes met.

“Okay…” He looked over at Mary.

She must have seen how confused he was. 

“We just wanted to tell you. We don’t want any secrets between us.”

Us meaning him and them. Maybe they felt like there were already too many secrets going on. Not that it could be helped. There were things he would never tell them. Things that made the nightmares more ravenous. Things that made him feel more like the monster than the victim. 

He clenched his hands into fists under the table. They were still looking at him—Mary more so. He couldn’t think in that one moment. She was staring at him, inspecting him like she was waiting for him to explode. He might. He didn’t understand the feeling flaring inside his gut. He didn’t understand anything most of these days.

He unclenched his hands and let out the breath he’d been holding.

Somehow, he managed to put on the fakest smile ever.

“Sorry. I’m surprised is all. You never—“ He didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

They never seemed close? Was that what he was trying to get at? The one person he thought Mary would end up with was Kacey. They hung out the most and they looked as if they were the perfect people to fall in love. They were so alike to one another that it was hard to think they would ever end up with anyone else.

It was only then, when Padriac and Mary announced weirdly to him that they were dating, that he saw how good Kacey and Mary seemed to be for each other.

But maybe he’d read all the signs wrong. He wasn’t a love expert. It was a surprise he’d managed to end up with Hazel. She saw something in him he didn’t see. That no one else had seen.

Guilt fell over him as he thought about his girlfriend. He still hadn’t spoken to her. She’d texted him a few times, called him every night, and he still hadn’t spoken to her. 

They’d run across each other in the halls. They didn’t have any classes together thankfully. It was hard seeing her a couple of times a day at school. It would be a lot harder if he had to sit in class and know she knew he was still ignoring her. 

He was glad she was giving him space. And that she was letting him go at his own pace. He still couldn’t stomach talking to her after what had happened to him. It was irrational. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But she would want something from him he wouldn’t be able to give. He couldn’t pay attention and he couldn’t stand touching anyone anymore. Just thinking about it made his skin crawl. 

He didn’t want her to think he was disgusted by her. Or that he didn’t love her anymore.

Because even after all that he’d gone through, he knew he wanted to be with Hazel. It was just he didn’t know how he could do that while also broken. He felt less than a man—less than a human.

He was trash not worth anyone’s time.

Mary threw her arm around Padriac’s shoulder. His cheeks blushed pink. He slowly wrapped his arm around her waist.

“We didn’t know this was going to happen either,” Padriac said. His voice was monotone. He was staring right at Varian this time. His eyes were unnerving for some reason.

Varian frowned, furrowing his brows so hard it hurt. Something was egging him in the back of his mind. He couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.

“Hm. That’s usually how it happens.”

It was small talk he was pulling right out of his ass. He tried to pay attention as Mary started talking about other couples that didn’t seem to go together but were more than happy. His heart once again wasn’t in it. He used to love hearing his friends talk non-stop. He used to love how vapid and unconcerned they could be about life.

But now, it did nothing for him. It was all meaningless.

Because in the end, death didn’t care about any of that.

And they were all going to die eventually.

***

“What did you want to talk about?”

Padriac leaned against the school building, scribbling in his frayed notebook. It was at the end of its lifespan. He was trying to finish his math homework due in fifteen minutes. 

Varian watched him intently only because he was trying to calm his nerves. His fingers twitched. He felt the memory of blood and the metallic taste bursting on his tongue. Around him the world was ripping at the seams. Anger swelled for no reason only because he was tired of feeling this way. He was mostly angry at himself for not being stronger than this.

He wasn’t angry at Padriac. Well, not that angry. Maybe he was angry at his friends just a little that they hadn’t been able to save him the night his world was turned upside down.

But he’d come to Padriac for a reason.

He was the one out of all his friends—including Hazel—he felt he could connect with. Padriac wasn’t as loud as the others and he seemed like he would understand why Varian was quiet all the time. Even before he was kidnapped.

However, he couldn’t get two words in before Padriac started talking about irrelevant things. He was tempted to give up and leave. 

“Pad—“

“I know it’s somewhere around here.” Padriac flipped through the notebook pages. “Here it is!”

He lifted up a strip of paper, a huge grin on his face.

Varian frowned. “I was going to tell you something. It’s important.”

He’d been patient when Mary and Padriac told him they were together. He couldn’t help but compare the situations. His was more important. Padriac should know that. He should know Varian was going through a lot more than he was at the moment.

Why the fuck was he ignoring him like this? Why was he brushing Varian off like he was nothing more than an annoyance?

“Yeah?”

“Padriac. Look at me.”

Varian wasn’t usually like this. He wasn’t always so angry. He wasn’t always so fucking frustrated.

Padriac looked up from his notes. He gave Varian a weird look.

“Please,” Varian said, “don’t talk until I’m done speaking. This is going to sound crazy. I…but I need to say this. I need to get this off my chest.”

Padriac straightened up. His fingers tightened around the spiral of his notebook.