They Who Slaughtered Hope 🌈| Slow Updates/Editing

Chapter 14

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 𝙻𝚎𝚗𝚗𝚘𝚡

┗━━━༻✿༺━━━┛

𝘍𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨

Some time after the nerve-wracking meal, Lennox's mother whizzed out of the house, allegedly going to purchase sheets and other things Renato would require. He had been dragged along, and Chase was eating dinner in his bedroom. Which left Lennox to clean his room alone. He had been staring at the door for a few minutes already, his shaking hands unable to grasp the frigid metal of the doorknob.

He tried to calm his trembling, clammy hands. He had a lot to do, and he couldn't afford to linger. A wave of memories hit him as the florist faced his old room—and not many of them were positive. Lennox regretted standing up for Renato in front of everyone. He never wanted him to stay with him, but now he had to clear a space for him. And not just any space. No, of course it was the space that used to be his.

Lennox's ears picked up on footsteps closing in on him, and fear took hold. It could have been his father, and Lennox wouldn't let himself be seen wavering by the door.

And so, he whisked himself inside a bedroom rife with memories from eighteen years of his life, leaning against the closed door.

The first thing to seize his gaze was the mint wallpaper, covered in stars faded by the sun. The sight of it welled up the tears lying dormant in Lennox's eyes. He spied a streak of dried blood tainting the room's nostalgic facade, and bile rose in his throat.

The florist shook his head in refusal. He couldn't do this. All his possessions... He was supposed to simply rid himself of them and ignore the suffering and torment that coated them like tar? 

His mother was asking the impossible.

Lennox wandered up to the peeling paper, his nimble fingers tracing an invisible constellation, moving from star to subtle star. When he was younger, he would stare at them for hours on end, caught up in a world of his creation. It fascinated him that the shining, twinkling dots in the pictures were really orbs of fire and unbearable heat, and in his dreams, he'd dance among them, immune to any burns.

Immune to responsibility.

After Chase was born, things became much harder for six-year-old Lennox, but the florist never resented the new subject of his parents' affection, not once. Lennox, in time, transformed into the afterthought, the one held to unreachable standards for no apparent reason. Eventually, he also became the one who was left to do the jobs everyone else didn't bother with.

Lennox shifted over to a framed picture on a cherrywood bedside table. It featured him and his brother, the former straight-faced and the latter all smiles. In the image, their blond hair was caught blowing in the wind against the backdrop of a fallen Syndicate Mech, a source of great pride for the pair, who found it on the street right before it was torched. Even now, one of its arms remained in Chase's living quarters, sleek against the boy's countless art supplies.

A glimpse of the dreary grey streets dragged him to the present. Wispy, moss-like fog submerged Hewler Street, appearing to reach even the bay window on the second level, where Lennox peered from. He grimaced. The mist reminded him of the skirts his first—and only—boyfriend always wore. They were brazen and translucent, just like him. At least, that's how he recollected him.

It was a love from long ago, prior to the pressure to be 'normal'. Prior to the pressure to date a girl.

In the end, Lennox gave in to the pressure.