Celadon

Chapter 10

We're standing in front of my home, and as terrifying as this moment seemed in the millions of times I had played it through in my head, the real deal takes the cake.
I know my palms are clammy as I hold Phil's hand in a vice grip, but he doesn't seem to mind. My fist is poised over the wood of door for what seems like dragging minutes, and I'm finally about to knock when it creaks open.
The round face of my brother upheaves a sick familiarity in my stomach. It hasn't been that long, but I've been floating far away from reality, and his face just focuses my mind back to the truth of my life. His eyes are wide, and my stomach drops even more when I see a certain fear in his eyes.
"Dan?" he squeaks. His eyes will not stay still, darting back and forth between Phil and I. "What are you doing here?"
"I-" I don't know how to continue, and I'm suddenly very self conscious of Phil's hand in mine. "I'm here to talk to mom and dad. And-" I shake in a breath and my eyes flit over to Phil, "introduce you to Phil."
Aaron shakes his head in a barely noticeable action, slipping out of the doorway and closing the door behind him.
"I don't know if they're ready yet," he says in a hushed tone.
"What?" I ask, as if it's a surprise. "What's been happening?"
"Well, mum's convinced you've gone insane, and that you're at the bottom of the Thames or under some bridge starving, and dad..." Aaron trails off, staring down at the pavement of our doorstep. "He hasn't really talked much. But he won't say your name."
I swallow. "What does he say instead?"
Aaron shrugs. "It varies. 'Bloody Cel,' 'Traitor,' 'Disappointment,' 'Useless Piece of Shit,' 'No Son of Mine,' 'Freeloader'-"
"I get it," I cut him off, my heart pounding.
"They won't talk to me about it, even though I've tried to start a conversation to tell them I support you."
My throat is painfully dry, and my mouth tastes awful, as if I'm about to be sick.
Phil leans close to me and murmurs, "If they aren't ready, maybe it's best if we go before they know you're here. Maybe it's safer."
I feel like I can hardly breath, but I shake my head. "No, I have to- I have to do this. Now. Please, Aaron, just let me in." I wipe a hand across my forehead, sliding my other out of Phil's grasp. "If it- if it goes poorly, I won't come back. I promise. If they want me out of their life...If they want me gone, I swear me and Phil will leave and not try to force our way into your lives."
"I don't think-" Aaron is cut off by my mother's voice, faint through the wood of the door.
"Aaron? Who is it, then?" She calls, and I see the knob turning.
Aaron sucks in a breath to stop her, but I shake my head at him and try to steady my limbs from trembling.
The door pulls open, and I can see what's happening does not quite register on my mother's round face.
"Dan?" she stutters out, gripping onto Aaron's shoulder.
"Mum," I murmur, unable to raise the volume of my own voice. I've only been gone for a few days, but so much has changed that it tightens my chest.
There's a hush, because no one knows what to say on either side, no one knows how to pick up the pieces of a conversation so recently dashed.
Suddenly, I hear Phil draw in a long breath, and I see his movement out of the corner of my eye.
"Hello, ma'am," he musters in the gentlest tone he can, outstretching a hand towards her. "I'm Phil. Dan's soulmate."
She mouths his name absent mindedly, eyebrows crinkling down, ignoring Phil's offered hand.
"I-" she begins, shutting her mouth and blinking at us both. Her eyes drop to the ground as figurative gears turn before she seems ready to speak again. "I thought I'd be angry," she murmurs, and Phil takes my hand again, his thumb stroking lightly over the top of my knuckles in reassurance. "I thought I would be angry if I ever saw you again. 'Specially if I met your new partner, but..." her eyes trail up, the corner of her mouth twitching into the ghost of a smile on arrival at our locked hands. "Now, seeing you, I'm not, I don't think."
My mouth splits into a tentative smile as I step forward, letting go of Phil's hand to pull her into a light hug. She squeezes me back for a second before letting go abruptly and glancing behind her.
"I don't know if your father will be so kind," she claims quietly. She checks over her shoulder once more. "I'm going to talk to him before you come in. Wait here." She pushes Aaron and I gently out of the doorway, back towards Phil, and shuts the door.
I'm shaking again, with the thought of my dad's coming words, the thought that he might hurt me or Phil, the thought that Aaron might have to watch me take our father's fist to the stomach, the thought that I may never see my brother or mother again. I'm shaking, and Phil pulls me into him, coaxing my head to fall to his shoulder and wrapping me in his arms.
"It'll be alright," Phil keeps whispering into my hair, but I can feel his nervous breath, the shifting of his posture and heart beat. I can see it in Aaron's restless eyes and tapping foot, in the faint voices I hear through the thin glass of the front window.
It really might not be alright.
I'm in the process of roughly estimating how difficult it would be to move to America and start over when the door opens with force again. I flinch into Phil, prying myself away from him and turning slowly to meet the cold eyes of my father.
We stare. I blink four times, he blinks once.
What do you say to someone that has become a stranger overnight?
"You have a lot of nerve," he says quietly, refusing to break our painful eye contact, preferring to break the silence. "Bringing him here. A lot of nerve."
I choke back the sick feeling in my throat to respond. "I-I couldn't just run away. I thought-"
"You thought? What? That I would be alright with this?" My mother places a light hand on his shoulder from behind, a concerned look in her eye.
A sudden rage bubbles in my chest, nearly unprovoked, spurred simply by his method of addressing my relationship with Phil.
"I thought," I continue, my voice shakier than I need it to be, "that you would be able to listen to us. To-to learn more about my celadon."
My father scoffs, head shaking to the side in disbelief. "And you think bringing him here helps?"
I turn to look at Phil, catching the furrow of his brow and the dark look in his eye, his steady eyes on my father.
"Phil," I answer, "is part of this. He's one of the most important parts of this." I blink back to my father. "Don't you think it's important that my soulmate is here when we discuss this?"
"Charlie was your soulmate," my father spits.
I'm shaking my head before he's completed his sentence. "No. No. Phil is. And we are no less valid than you and mum."
"You're just grieving. You'll get over this...this phase," he says, more to himself than anyone around him.
"No," I negate again. "My future is not a phase."
My father shakes his head. "You never had a future," he mutters. "Twenty years old, no direction, no job." His eyes glow, and there's disgust, but there's a tired dullness, too.
"I have direction now!" I retort, thinking hard so as not to stumble over my own words, clinging to what little tact I have left.
"What?" my father derides. "Following him," he gestures wildly to Phil, "around like a lost puppy until you get tired of him, too?"
Phil takes a step forward, and I can feel this turning to shit. I can feel it in the shake of my hands and the clench of my father's jaw, in the narrowness of Phil's eyes and the silence of my mother.
"I didn't get tired of Charlie, I-" I can't say another word, because everything is sticking in my throat. I realize that this is hopeless, that Phil and I, we're destined to only have each other. We're illegal by the judgment of the laws of nature and space, and the universe has no saving grace for those who have cheated its cruelty. "I just wanted to keep the peace," I say quietly.
"Worked out well for you?" he laughs bitterly. "You should have made the right decision while it still mattered."
"You can't begin to understand how hard that situation was for Dan," Phil intervenes. "He didn't know how to handle it, he was a teenager." Phil takes my hand again, only squeezing tighter when I try to shy away.
My father glares at Phil, but Phil doesn't drop his gaze, because to me, my father has always demanded respect, but he's just another human to Phil. Phil isn't afraid of my father.
There's a hush in which I believe my father thinks about what's been said. His eyes soften into a scared, tired haze for a few seconds before he turns away, considering my mother and brother, still silently watching.
"This is unnatural," he says softly, almost weakly. "What has happened to you is unnatural. It makes me sick to think about it." He turns back to me once more, and there's a moment in which I think he might state his openness to learning, to understanding, to accepting. But his mouth forms the words that cause my stomach to drop and my mind to stop. "As a family, I don't think we should be associated with your lifestyle. Come back if you've..." he looks Phil and I up and down with pain. "Changed your ways. You're only welcome back for your belongings."
"James!" my mother interjects, but my father holds up a hand.
I nod, past tears, only accepting the expected. The hole in my heart is not sorrow, but betrayal, defiance, and I may look and feel deflated, but at least its closure. At least I can pick myself back up and move on.
I look to my little brother. "Text me when they're out of the house so I can get my things." My eyes flit back to my father. "Wouldn't want you all to have to look at my face again. Risk making you sick." My voice is dripping with bitterness, sarcasm, the tone you hear from someone who would knowingly sit among the flames of a burning building just so their death might be ruled an accident as opposed to a suicide. I've torn down my world living to make everyone happy, and after so long, speaking my mind is a scorching relief.
We leave in silence, with a finalizing slam of the door by Aaron's hand. I want to think I don't hear the heated voices through the walls as we step onto the pavement, but I do, and it makes me think, what is the point of their screamed words? Why argue with someone you've just silently sided with? My family, they're just as fucking bad as I am, staying silent to avoid further conflict, even if a heard voice is crucial.
Phil and I are two blocks in silence before I collapse against him in a tired fit of tears. This is becoming a cycle, bitter ending after bitter ending, and it hurts me to always be the one to cry, to force Phil to pick me back up.
But now, everything is closed. Every possible door is slammed, and all we have left is to move forward. We've made our way, closure through closure, thrown into drama before we could enjoy the beauty of our celestial-chosen bond. Before we could enjoy each other.
The dictionary definition of celadon?
Cel-a-don (n) - 1. the state in which you are an individual's soulmate, but they, respectively, are not yours.
2. a willow-green color.
But this, in its technicality, does not encompass the state. It does not describe the experiences, the confusion and pain and hopelessness and sudden joy that I have felt. It divides us down to words, to the cones in our eyes perceiving colors, to a lesson in a sex-ed class. We're theorized about, supported, spit on, and shouted at. We've lived, we've succeeded, we've jumped from ledges to certain death. But the warmth of the hand clasping my hand and the fabric I'm breathing brokenly into are not a dictionary definition. They are not a science or a mystery of the universe. We do not have to sit and question whether we are born with the ability to love, but once the love differs from the straight edge of the world's supposed predestined nature, people find themselves panicking, terrified of something that does not relate specifically to them.
I'm heartbroken. I'm defeated. But losses always constitute gains in our balanced world. I leave behind green for an entire spectrum. I leave behind my family for an entire world. I leave behind Charlie for Phil.
They call it celadon. The condition I was in. Everyone learns about it in schools, once you're old enough to learn about your soulmate, you're old enough to know about celadon.
"Scandalous." That's what they say. "A curse. A sickness."
I disagree.