NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY | updates every monday

66: of love and other demons

            I try not to let fresh tears well in my eyes at the hair that cobwebs between my fingers. I keep Cece's two-strand twists as loose as I can but the clump of fallen curls is growing in mass so quickly it might turn into a black hole. I wish I could siphon every painful thought out of his head. I wish I could open a black hole, make all of it disappear, undo the whole universe, if it would help them feel even a little lighter.

The white hairs crawl up his spine like a shiver until they're lost into dark wisps. They cover his whole torso like a layer of frost, though thankfully he's nestled in enough blankets to keep me from seeing all that now.

'Are you gonna go back to school?' My voice is hoarse from lack of use.

Though we slept through the entire Saturday—Cece thankfully agreeing to stay in my bed so I won't have to get up to check they've not left every ten minutes—we're too exhausted to talk much and Sunday has been spent slack on the sofa, watching Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Cece nibbles on the final bite of the same black bean arepa from Friday. They've managed a crumb every few hours but the way they cry at each swallow annihilated any threat of me forcing them. Even if I probably should. Or should I? I haven't had the energy to google it.

'What's the point? I thought it'd be different this time—that I could actually hack it... Clearly not.'

'But it is different.'

'How's it different?' they bite, shoulders hardening against my legs. 'I barely made it a term before I got suspended.'

'Yeah,' I agree, abandoning a twist halfway. 'A term. You've not got through a single full term without being suspended in the past three years. And you got suspended, you didn't get expelled. It's just a week, Cece. Don't catastrophise it.'

They scoff and mutter summat about plying out my fingernails next time I use "therapy speak" in their presence. My chest flutters; I must've learnt it from Joe.

'You–'

'Yeah, I know,' they snap. 'I have a tendency to bury things before they're dead.'

Groaning, Cece drops their head onto my lap. 'Can I not just live off giro?'

'No, cause unlike the Tories think, you can't sit round at home and get giro. You have to prove you're searching for a job, haven't ya? It's called job seeker's allowance—it's in the name.'

Cece covers his face in his hands, their voice muffled against palms. 'Why the fuck would I think doing an extra year of school would be a good idea?'

'But you get to do art now. You're enjoying that, aren't ya?'

'Yeah.' Their voice softens, fingers parting so they can peek through. 'It's mint, actually. The teacher's loads better than Miss Lemberg.'

I smile. Miss Lemberg is an idiot for not seeing the skill and impact of their style. A teacher who actually has faith in them will hopefully be exactly the validation they need to pursue it to whatever extent they want.

'You've not heard back from those art programmes,' I say when they stay silent. I tread carefully: no matter how champion their current teacher is, I think Cece will always be suspicious of the arts as an institution and their place within it. 'I'm sure you'll get in to one of those. And then school won't be so bad, maybe...'

They hunch again, hide their hardened expression from me. 'But I got suspended. They'll reject me again.'

'You're doing a lot better.'

Cece shakes their head. 'I promise I'm trying. But what if it is too late for me?'

'You're seventeen.'

'But I've already killed half of my brain with zoot and the other half is all fucked up. It's not wired right—and I don't mean the OCD or the schizophrenia. I just can't not cock things up. I can't help it. I know what I'm doing and I still... do it.' Their fingers rake through fresh twists, digging into their scalp like they want to rip their skull open. 'What if I never get better?'

Don't: Minimise. Do: Validate–

Ah, fuck it.

'Then you won't get better, I guess.' I ease my fingers between his to guide them out of his hair. 'We'll keep doing this.'

'But I promised I'd get better, I promised that I'd sort it out. I'm not–'

'You're not forcing me into anything. I don't care if you're forty-seven, you always have a home with me—siempre. You have no idea how much I miss you. Every time you leave for Bobbi's, I have to wallow for three days—ask Caleb. He'll tell ya. You don't spoil my life, you make it so much better. Even when you're like this.'

I twist the rest of his hair in silence. When I declare it done, they don't move until, slowly, Cece worms onto the sofa beside me, new twists framing their sunken cheeks. Their skin is still pale and raw, the ice set so deep in their bones that it'll take all of next week's half-term for them to warm up, but the black of his eyes is saturated and rich again, if not currently strained.

I rub the ghost bruising around my left wrist, bruising that hasn't healed for eight years. This is what I get for resting. Why did I let myself fall asleep? 

'D'you think I have to go on pills?'

'Cece, that's not a decision I can make for ya.'

They hunch, chewing on their fingernails. There's nowt left to bite and the furious red of their nailbeds screams against the rest of their sandstone skin. I nudge him, shake my head—"please don't".

'I don't want to,' he confesses and a white-capped tidal wave follows. 'And I know everyone thinks that's self-destructive but it'll all still be shit with pills, it'll just be different shit, and I've just started to understand this shit. I'd rather deal with that than learn a whole other kind of shit.' Cece buries their face into the sofa's backrest.

I plant a hand on his knee and when he don't flinch, keep it there. 'So don't. But you have to give yourself a chance. You have to let people help ya.'

I jut a silencing finger out when Cece snaps upright, ready to call me a hypocrite. They arch pierced eyebrows but I don't back down and eventually they drop their focus to their hands.

'You can't make it go away. I know you want to. You can't.'

'It's– Okay, yeah, I do. I want to make you feel better. But it ain't about that. Meds or no meds, it won't work out if you don't learn to accept help.'

They frown, lift a hand to bite their fingernails, rethink, and shuffle forward. Cece is hugging me before I have the chance to register the movement and it's my turn to be stiff with shock until I thaw into the embrace.

'You do make me feel better. I wouldn't bother fighting it without you.' Cece tucks himself around me, hides his face over my shoulder. 'When you and Joe date, will you really still have time for me? You don't have to. It's fine.'

I hold them as tight as I dare. 'I would never bring someone into my life that has a problem with you being in it.'

Joe wouldn't mind. Joe were never cross when I answered the phone regardless of what we were doing or when I found a way to talk about them in every conversation. She didn't once question the fact that Cece had a room in my house and that I dreamed of the day he'd move back into it. But I never stopped to think if he would mind, if he would ever move into a house with foreign variables. Can Cece still consider it home? Or have I just reminded them that it's my home where they sometimes visit?

Notes

This chapter title is in reference to the novel Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez.

Giro: Giro cheque. Slang for job seeker's allowance.

Half-term: School holiday roughly in the middle of each term.