Human || Lams (Completed)

We're Just...

A/N: JUST A WARNING: Be aware that there's a homophobic slur in the second section! I'll put a [*] before the paragraph it's in so that you can skip over it.

It was raining when John stepped outside, Alexander following somewhat close behind. His phone was blowing up from Lafayette sending him drunken photos of himself and screenshots of him on a video call to his girlfriend in France with odd captions. He silenced his ringtone for Laf's messages.

"God Alex, why did you even drink anything?" John muttered.

------

A sixteen-year-old John sat on a rusty swing set, waiting for someone to come out to check on him. The screen door was only a few feet away from him, and the popping of fireworks made everything even more insufferable.

New Year's Eve.

He tried coming up with a resolution to think of something else for the time being, but his father's words overpowered anything he could have even thought about doing. He'd planned to come out to his father today, knowing that he was already at the legal emancipation age if anything went wrong. He could escape from any repercussions for his sexuality- he realized now how naive that was.

Of course his father already knew.

[*]He hadn't been very subtle about it anyway, especially with how many times he had to walk home with books and binders with three letters sprawled across them in big, black letters. "FAG." He pretended to pay them no mind to Peggy, who would stomp into the bathrooms and scrub at the covers, sometimes ruining the pages inside.

He could see the disapproving look in his father's eyes when he found them, his mother already phoning the school. She always knew what to do. Why couldn't she just have stayed alive for maybe just two more years?

John's mom had loved him- he had no doubt about that. She was a source of light, able to crack down even his father's hard, cold shell. He was being selfish in his thinking. She couldn't have stayed alive, she didn't deserve to stay alive in a weak body that looked nothing like herself.

He kicked his feet forward, a deafening creak coming from the swings. He'd been scared of breaking it before, but now it seemed appealing. Just another piece of my childhood, dead and gone, he thought, pushing harder and faster, the cold air fueling him on until-

The screen door slid open. His older sister stood on the lawn and stared at him. In her right hand, she held a champagne flute.

He'd almost forgotten about her when she was away at college. He'd thought he'd managed to pretend that it didn't hurt that she wasn't there. But then she'd just decided to pop up out of nowhere and come back home for a week.

She knew exactly what his ticks were, how he was feeling, his thought process, who he was friends with. He thought he knew the same, but she had packed up and left so suddenly.

She didn't even come to the goddamn funeral.

------

Alexander knocked into John's side, altering from his previous giggly mood to just moping about the current situation he was in. John hoped that he would be quiet enough to not wake his family once they got to his house.

"Everyone offered me a buncha cups and I didn't wanna be a party pooper," Alex tried explaining. He slurred a little, a tiny frown gracing his face. After another minute of them walking, he said, "Hey, John, I lied-"

He was cut off as he bumped into a lamp post he hadn't seen. He seemed to have lost his train of thought when he got back up, cursing its existence. John was left to just wonder what he'd been talking about.

------

John had panted, slowing the swing by dragging his feet in the bark under him. She walked up to the seat next to him.

"I know you're mad at me," she said.

"Martha-" he tried interrupting. It hurt so badly to say her name. He couldn't even bear to think it in the state he was in.

"I'm sorry. I should have told you." She took a sip out of the flute. She swung herself lightly on the swing, leaning her head on one of the chains. She continued, "Dad showed me some of the things you wrote." She let out a short laugh. "You never even call me by my name."

John froze. He thought he'd ripped those papers to pieces immediately after writing them.

"How's everyone else doing? Mary-Eleanor doesn't even recognize me."

He couldn't be surprised that Martha was like a stranger to the youngest in their family. John tipped his head back, looking at an especially odd shaped firework. "We're fine. Dad's- well, I think you can tell." He's built his shell back up, he wanted to say.

Martha hummed, finishing off her drink and carefully burrowing the bottom of the glass into the bark. "You know what John? One day, I'm going to get you out of this place."

John opened his mouth to reply, but from inside the house, voices were yelling something.

"...3!"

"...2!"

"...1!"

"Happy New Year!"

------

John distractedly put his arm around Alex's shoulder, walking forward. They were only about a block away from his house, the houses getting larger and more expensive looking the farther you got.

This was why he never invited anyone to his house; it was a constant reminder of all the advantages he'd been given at birth. He could only hope that his father was working as late as he'd been recently. Alex was gaping at the house, squealing about the water feature in the front yard and going up to touch it multiple times.

Once he managed to pull the boy away from it, John carefully opened the side door to the garage and lead Alex through the house, having to shush him multiple times. Excluding them, the house was quiet and still. The light in his father's office was off, but the time seemed late enough for him to have already gone to sleep. He could only hope for the best.

They made it to his room with little casualties, and when Alex was basically half asleep with leaning all of his weight on the other, John finally set him on the bed. He felt awkward about sharing the same one because of how Alexander had been acting with alcohol in his system and the current setting, but when he tried to walk away, Alex pulled on his sweatshirt's sleeve and forced him to stay.

Succumbing to his fate, John lay down next to Alex, his arm still half under the boy's head and stuck in a death grip. Just when he thought he was completely asleep, Alexander raised his head, eyes closed and words slurred with sleep and beer.

"Oh, what I was gonna say," he had that tiny frown on his face again, "Lied. 'M sorry."

John was bewildered. "What?" He whispered into the dark.

Alex mumbled his next few words, but all John could pick out from them was a lazy "I love you" that kept him from computing anything else around him. Thoughts raced in his mind, wondering what he had meant.

He turned on his lamp to look the boy in the eye, but he was already asleep, using his arm as a pillow.

A/N

Hi I fucking love water features like those fucking frog ones where they're spitting out the water or just weirdly anthropomorphic?? Like give me one please

This books coming to an end soon!!! If you've been following along to the lyrics (which I did have to cut off for this chapter title so that there'd be another chapter) you'd know that there's only one more word left in the song! I'm hoping to make an epilogue, and maybe a sequel with If I'm Being Honest for the song, but you'd have to let me know with how this turns out.

I'm also pretty sure I'm sick because I'm lactose intolerant and just ate SO MUCH CHEESE today