Evenfall

Dye

Today (Noon)

"Hey, Teddy," Abel said, and Theo blinked in confusion. "You with me?"

"Sorry, I was thinking about the last time we ate pho."

Abel hummed as though the memory were a particularly fond one. Theo tapped his chopsticks to adjust his grip on them and scooped up a mouthful of noodles. As he tipped his head to the side to eat them, he caught sight of a familiar figure. The chopsticks slipped from his hands. They fell to the table in a clatter, and one rolled to the floor. Theo flinched as the noodles plopped back into the broth and splashed his face, but he kept his head down as he watched the man walk by.

"Woah," Abel watched the chopstick on the ground roll to a stop. " Is everything alright over there?"

"I thought I saw..." He trailed off, shaking his head and forcing his spine to straighten. "I'm just being crazy. Sorry."

Abel did not comment on whether he was crazy or not. He never did, even when Theo could tell by other people's reactions that he was acting it. Everything that Theo said or did was of grave importance to Abel, although he probably took most of what came out of his mouth with a grain of salt. It was refreshing for someone to actually listen to him instead of dismissing him immediately.

Whether he thought Theo was having one of his breaks with reality or not, he asked, "What did you think you saw?"

"Somebody that I knew once."

"From when you were a kid?" Abel asked. This was the town where Theo grew up, after all. He shook his head, and Abel's expression darkened from confusion into concern. "From when you were with Ken?"

Theo nodded, his voice stuck in his throat.

"What did he look like?" Abel was already scooting out from his side of the table. Theo's heart leapt right up beside his voice to lodge itself in his trachea. He did not want Abel to meet any of the demons. They would charm him and rip him to shreds in front of Theo, either by turning him into one of them or by splattering his blood at Theo's feet. He'd seen it happen before and they'd threatened already to do it to Abel.

"I...I don't," he stammered when Abel looked down at him expectantly. Then Abel crouched beside him and put his big hand over where Theo's were clasped together in his lap. He gave him a reassuring smile.

"It's alright," he said as confidently as he might declare that the sun would rise again in the East tomorrow. "You said you thought you imagined it anyway. I'm just going to go check. What did he look like?"

"He's white with a shaved head and has a tattoo of a rose on his skull," Theo said. The words were drawn out of him by some charm in Abel's eyes. Whenever he looked at Theo like that – completely open, honest, and patient – it simultaneously made him want to bare himself completely and hide away forever. It was a look that cut through all the shadows and the cobwebs in his mind and made him feel warm and safe.

Abel nodded and stood to go look outside the entrance to the restaurant. He would not find anything. Even if Theo had not imagined the figure, they were masters at deception and hiding themselves. Perhaps they were just trying to remind Theo that they were only a step away despite his little road trip. It had been in this town where he met his first demon, after all, the one who found him again all those years later. It would find him again in the future, no doubt, and perhaps already had.

Thirteen years ago

Theo had friends when he was very little. His mom took him on playdates with neighborhood kids, and he had a best friend in pre-school, although they moved away. But by the time he was in third or fourth grade, he spent recess alone. The other kids would whoop and holler as they swung around on the playground or played life-sized tick-tack-toe on the tennis courts. The teachers would sit on the benches under the shade of a big magnolia tree, whose leaves rattled whenever there was a breeze.