Seeking Spring

Liquor Tears

Chapter 2 | Liquor Tears

The day had come to a screeching end, that occurred so slowly and tentative with every scratch and mark, till the final bell. It sounded from the back of the classroom, and Stiles lifted the strap of his backpack over his shoulder, that still ached from his tensed muscles. He rolled it back, the sound of bones popping and shifting, was all that resulted, and more pain rose to the surface of his sweat risen skin. He had been on edge all day, everything around him felt odd. Almost like the people around him were walking to the wrong time of their own steps, spoke to off-tempo voices and the sun seemed to hang slightly too low; the trees almost appeared to be sketched in pencil marks, and... Just as that thought came to his mind, a sharp pain struck the nerve that clawed at the side of his temple. Pencil sketched trees.

Just before his mind could fall completely into yet another mindless phrase, a sudden brush of wind and contact pressed to his shoulder, "ah-I'm sorry I um-I tripped on the leg of the desk I'm so sorry-", a voice spoke out underneath a pair of red flushed cheeks, and a head turned downward towards her feet. He'd nearly forgotten the situation until he turned to see this girl he had never seen before, standing but inches away from him, with her hand pressed firm down on his hurting shoulder. However, what was strange, is even with her firm grip on his aching bones, surely disturbing his already throbbing nerves, it didn't result in the slightest bit of pain, at all. Oddly, it was as if it subsided completely. Even as she quickly slid her hand down from where she held to, to stop her fall. The pain was dull, near to none at all.

He must've been staring, because the moment he felt was but a blink of an eye, the girl's shoulder was dipping around the corner of the classroom door, and he was alone in some room, he had forgotten what subject was taught in.

-

Silver to nearly empty plates, rung through the silent air of the kitchen. The household creaked in places Stiles never knew of before, as if someone were shuffling around upstairs, or lying down for a rest.

Him and his father haven't talked since, the incident. Odd enough, Stiles and his father managed to draw closer after a minor demon-possession he [Stiles] had encountered in the past year some time. Perhaps there was something about bloody hands that made a father want to hold them, and wipe them clean; like a dad does after his son scraping his knee for the first time, something hauntingly soothing about it. Yet here they sat now, further away then where they were after his mom, and his wife passed. Casted further and further out into the waves of empty breaths that exchanged between them at every scheduled "family" dinner.

Was it that he [his father] simply didn't know how to approach such a situation? How do you talk to your 17 year-old kid about losing someone? That definitely wasn't it. Stiles had lost people throughout his life, he was practically accustomed to it, guilt and loss was his bedtime story; told by silent nights of conversations in the household ending with, "goodnight son," and, "goodnight dad." Never did he remember the sound of his mom and dad whispering about what to cook the next night, and who would go with Stiles to take in his jeep to the repair shop. He didn't know that world, of guaranteed life to his loved ones, that wasn't his.

So where was the tension? Where did the two of them push away, instead of fall closer, the way they did not too long ago? It chilled his fathers skin the way the wind did on a musky day, the thought, the thought of how similar him and his son were. Now with all that has occurred, it wasn't that Stiles' dad saw the writhing pain Stiles waged war with inside his mind on a daily basis, nor did he ignore that; it was what he recognized now of this moment, a new-found like father like son trait he never would have wished upon his kid. And that was the pain of losing the one he loved. This was a feeling Stiles' dad knew too well, something Stiles also knew yet in a different way; and painful all the same. But not only did his son hold the loss of his mother over his shoulders, he now also carried the subduing weight of the loss of his first love, and what seemed to his father, his only love. This wasn't a heartbreak set forth by a break-up or a "caught cheating with that dick from the football team" incident, this was death. Real, actual, loss. Something, yes, Stiles is in fact used to. But that was just it, it was something his father did not want his son to find normal. He didn't want Stiles to go on day by day, believing everything was temporarily at hand. He didn't want him to feel that, it was the last thing he ever wanted to see his son experience; and that was immunity. Immunity to love, to loss, to pain. As if it were a daily emotion that was inevitable to be felt by the hour hand, and for even Stiles, the minute.

So there was the length of their distance.

A few sets of clanking silverware, and a tragic trait the two shared.

Neither could recognize the cast-away love, each had as son and father, before their newly spread lengths apart.

Stiles stood, abrupt, to his fathers' thoughts, as he found how in depth he had plunged into them. Without a word, Stiles reached for his dad's plate, giving a quick baring glance to the bottle of jack near the side of a stained glass that almost seemed to become a part of the wooden table. Dishes shuffled in the sink with one another as Stiles began to clean them, and filled the air with some normality as they did. Even with his back turned, Stiles could hear the thick liquid spill from the bottle and collide with the glass cup of his fathers. Another dish was washed, the creak of the bottle being lifted once more sounded to the air, yet another wave of liquid to glass came from behind him. The silverware was now cleaned and tucked away; liquid to glass. Stiles dried the counters; liquid to glass. Stiles sips from the milk jug, and just before he turned toward the stairs past his father, another sound of trickled drips of substance to his father's cup, sound to the world around him once more. And he makes his way past his dad, up the stairs and to his bed.

A draft of cool night from outside, cascaded inward into his bedroom, blanketing him in a almost slumber paralysis, lying still above the covers. Yet he was not unconscious enough to dismiss the muffling noise from downstairs and more sounds of trickling drops of liquid. A heart tearing intuition consumed him, knowing it wasn't liquor crippling its way to his father's glass this time, because last he left his father, the bottle was empty on the table, and a tear was already peeling down his fathers' cheek into his stained glass, by the time Stiles was already on the top step.

These were their now typical nights, a nightly routine if you'd call it that. Stiles and his dad ate dinner together as if each other weren't there, Stiles cleans the dishes and heads upstairs to go to bed, all while pretending not the notice the aired out liquor bottle, he could have sworn his father had opened just the night before; or was it that morning?