Alive

Assistance

TW: Cursing, homophobia, very brief mention of electroshock therapy, yelling

Remus' POV:

I press the doorbell and rock on my heels, worried that they aren't home, or won't let us in. I haven't been here for a few months, but I remember what the inside of their house looks like from memory.

We walked around town for a few hours, but it started getting dark, so we figured this was the only place we could go.

After about thirty seconds, the door swings open.

Remy looks at us concernedly. "Oh. Good to see you boys. And what the hell happened to you two? You look like shit." He remarks. The makeup that was covering my bruises has now all rubbed off.

"We, uh, we don't have anywhere to stay. We can catch you up on everything but.."
"Yeah, yeah, of course, boys. Come out of the cold. Emile isn't home, by the way."

Janus shuts the door before responding. "Emile.. Picani? You guys live together?"
"They're dating." I whisper to him.

"Oh. Right, okay.." He raises an eyebrow. "Wait, really? I get you being gay, Remy, you kinda radiate that energy. Dr Picani surprises me."

"Yes, really. I'll pretend I didn't hear that comment for your sake. Anyway, what would you know about being able to tell who's gay and who isn't?"
I interject. "Oh, it might be worth updating you, Jan and I are dating."

The man looks over to us. "Right. Well, good for you. You shouldn't say things like that out loud though, might find yourself in trouble."

Remy clicks the kettle on before walking back into the living room. "Oh, and uh, it's good to see you Janus. Glad you didn't die, and all."
"Gee, thanks."

"So, I'll take it that you didn't get re-admitted?" He knocks a spoon on the edge of a mug, tapping off the excess water, still standing in the kitchen.
"Yeah. I'm not too sure it's a good thing, atleast if I was there I would have somewhere to live."

Remy hums. "And, Virgil?"
"Uh, no. He's there now. They found out he was gay and he's been doing that electroshock shit."

"Yikes. Is he.. doing okay?"
"God knows."

The man brings the mugs of tea to his coffee table, taking a seat on one of the sofas, next to me and opposite from Janus. "Well, go on then."

I look to Janus and back to Remy. "Huh?"

He crosses one leg over the other and leans back into the sofa.
"Well, you have to have some kind of story as to how you ended up homeless. I'd like to hear it, if that's okay?"

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"And, uh, here's the tape recorder."

Remy takes his sunglasses off, putting them on the table.
"Right.." He pauses. "Can we listen to it? I'd like to think that, as a responsible adult, I can gauge how serious this is."

I nod, and Remy picks up the tape recorder, walking over to the tape player and pushing it in.

I raise my eyebrows, remembering something.
"Oh. I, uh. I promise it was so he would trust me, but, I kinda called Roman a slur. He would've been fine with it but I just wanna warn you. I didn't.. I didn't mean it."

He sighs. "Yeah, whatever babes, I'm not all that bothered."

Remy presses play to the sound of me knocking on the door. He has a notebook on his lap, holding a pencil to jot anything that comes up down.

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Virgil's POV:

We're having our morning free time right now. And, we plan to get out of here. Neither Zariah or I have any stuff that's important here, other than that picture of the six of us, which I have stuffed into the pocket off my hopsital-issued trousers.