The Citizen Soldier (DNF)

36) Phone Call

*Clay POV*

I may not have known George all that well, but something that I did know about him already, just by his behavior, was that this is what he was like when he was truly comfortable and calm with himself. It made me unmeasurably happy to see him so comfortable, so I kept on with the conversation as normal for a while.

We had discussed all the really heavy stuff while George was passed out in my room, so we had the general idea of what mine and Christina's life cycles would be like. After only a few weeks, I had made an amazing amount of progress with my mental health, apparently. I still felt like if I were to be left all alone for more than four hours, other than the luxury of sleep, I would go absolutely bat shit crazy, but that was just me, it seemed.

I had started to associate safety with George, which was probably not a good thing to hear, because associating much of anything with a singular person is dangerous as I saw with my dad. If I were to lose George, it would probably destroy me.

Ignoring that for the moment, I decided to just start to sit there, curtains drawn and scented candles burning. It smelled like freshly baked cookies in the house at this point, even though to my knowledge nobody had actually baked any cookies in our oven unless Bad being in the kitchen earlier was some sort of interesting housewarming gesture.

I decided not to think about that being the case because I didn't really understand or see him doing that. Then again, I didn't really know him that well at all, so I couldn't say that for sure. Maybe he did bake. Bad made a scene of sniffing the air.

"Mmmm, is someone baking cookies?" I smiled and decided to pull a joke.

"Yeah, they're snickerdoodle." It didn't smell anything like cinnamon, so that should have prompted a laugh, and it did from most of the people present, but Bad got up and walked to the kitchen, seemingly to check on something. I felt bad for leading him on now.

"Well there might not be cookies in the oven," I was instantly confused about the happy tone that his voice held. "But you know what there are in here?" I could see Skeppy bury his face in his hands in embarrassment. "Muffins!"

"Whyyyy... why heeeeere..." Skeppy moaned. I was in agreement with him.

"Because you all deserve some! It's a treat on me!"

"Well, it's also weird..."

"Isn't everything in life weird? What you perceive as strange is my willingness to break the social normalcy a little bit to give you guys a tasty snack."

"Still doesn't change my perception of your strangeness."

"That's fine because I pride myself on being strange."

I laughed. "Why would someone pride themselves on that?"

"Because it's part of who I am!"

"Never stop, buddy. Never stop." I smiled fondly in his direction, seeing a new friend of mine do a little dance behind the couch. It was certainly an odd sight, but then it triggered a flashback that I immediately wanted to push down and ignore.

His dance reminded me of Christina dancing in the living room on a spring afternoon to one of dad's nicer songs, "ME!", which was partnered with mom and me playing guitar in place of any of the other instruments that were actually played. It was a very nice and fun day, but it reminded of dad and the quiet, lazy evenings, the energetic insane ones, and the ones that I'd spent all alone.

My heart rate and breathing instantly spiked and I tried to shrink away from everything that was happening. I couldn't hear anything but ringing in my ears, and the touch coming from everything suddenly stung. I could only hear one voice through my mind's chaos, and it was my sister's.