Our Space

☆ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴇɪɢʜᴛ☆

★彡[ɴᴇᴘᴛᴜɴᴇ'ꜱ ᴛʀɪᴅᴇɴᴛ ᴛᴡᴏ]彡★

☾☉☉☉☽

Waiting for Sao and Cupid, Caju's only company is his thoughts: the worst company of all. They brew like a storm, and no matter how hard he tries to block them out, they're more deafening than thunder. He squeezes his eyes tighter and pulls his hair harder.

It's annoying. It was a play fight, it was fun, so why does he feel so miserable?

Shut up, he urges his brain. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Something about telling another person flipped a switch in him. It's embarrassing now that it's not a secret between him and Saturn. It's embarrassing that he's the one crawling back to Cupid with a broken ship while Saturn is still out there with a ship (mostly) unscathed. It's embarrassing that Caju was fine with Saturn winning but now it feels like the worst loss of his life. It's embarrassing, that sudden and stupid feeling of weakness.

Caju ducks and punches him in the stomach with as much force as he can muster. The kid crumples over in pain-Caju doesn't remember who this kid is, nor does he remember the kid he beat before. Who cares who they are? Look at me! I'm strong, too!

His mother looks at him with widened eyes, her hands over her mouth, mortified. It's an expression he's seen before-one he saw earlier that day. "Why are you acting like this? Girls-"

-don't fight. Girls are too weak to fight. Boys are the strong ones.

Caju stares at his mom. If that's the way things are, if that's what it takes to be seen, he'll be the strongest boy of them all. If he can't do that at least, then what kind of boy was he? What worth did he have?

None.

He had no worth. Because he lost.

I let him win, shut up, Caju urges his brain once more.

"Are you alright?" Sao asks. Somewhere, stories above them, Cupid inspects the Ursa Major with great diligence. Cupid had gotten to work right away while Caju and Sao kept busy swimming through inner turmoil.

"Probably. Are you?"

"Probably."

And they leave it at that.

Sao doesn't like to talk about anything that matters. Caju, in comparison, is far more open... but he has things he's hiding, too! If he shares a secret, he'll shed a tear, and he can't do that. He'd never.

✦✧✩✧✦

It hurts more than anything he's felt before. The world spins. The cracking noise had made his stomach lurch, and the immediate pain that followed made his nausea increase tenfold. Every nerve in his leg is screaming so loud, it can't be ignored. There was nothing more he wanted to do than to die-or scream or sob. But he wouldn't.

"Fuck," Caju says. "Let me go, will you? I can walk."

Sao slows down for a split second like he wants to obey... before resuming as if Caju never said anything. "No. You can't. Have you looked? It's swollen-it looks so bad. How are you not crying?"

"It's not that bad," Caju insists. He hasn't looked, and he doesn't want to. "You should see the other guy. He's far worse off than I am."

Caju's not wrong. Somehow.