a boy, his cello and his internal monologues.

Chapter 6: Nine Point Eight

You gotta do what you gotta do, you know?
Your life won't end if you take a chance, Rustie. You have to take chances, that's life.
Hell, I took a chance saying I'll stay in the same room as you, wahaha! So yeah, just..
Listen to your brother, and take a risk for once! Now go!

Maybe it wasn't his best decision to leave home suddenly, and his dad makes that abundantly clear to him as soon he walks in, yelling at the top of his lungs and telling Rustica off for not only ignoring everything he was sending (to be honest, he had a point. Rustica was ignoring him.) and then getting mad when he was worried.

Worried, huh.

Rustica sometimes thinks that it's wrong of him, to say that he was worried. He's never been worried, he doesn't care.
His mom did, she always cared. Maybe it's the lack of a parent and a wife getting to both of them, Rustica doesn't know.

He does know when his dad stops screaming however. He gets shooed off to his room, presumably to let his dad cool off before talking to him again, and he spends that time thinking about how it was nicer when his brothers were here, and how they'd back him up and make sure he was always alright.

Maybe his friends do that too, but he's probably lost them all now. Maybe.. ah.

Ah.
Ah, I like him. I like him so much. God I just got yelled at why am I thinking about him why why why why whywhywhywhywhywhy

Maybe he secretly kept in contact with someone? And perhaps he has a massive crush on him?
He met a boy. A boy he likes. A lot.
His name is Owen, and he's a year younger. He bumped into him randomly during a break and has been painfully in love with him since. It's stupid, he knows but Owen is cute and sweet and charming in all the right ways and... why is he thinking about this?

Rustica's face is flushing again. He can hear his dad coming towards his room and he's blushing so hard he can feel his face on fire, of course his dad is going to question it, and maybe Rustica will stand open-mouthed as if he has the guts to explain why he looks like he's somehow gained a fever in the past 10 minutes of being in his room. Yeah, that's probably going to happen.

His dad comes in to supposedly apologize, stops dead in his tracks and says "Are you alright, Rustica?" to which Rustica nods feverishly. Rhean looks suspiciously at him and then goes back to what he was here to do before, which was apologize for yelling. He apologized well, so Rustica accepted it, but he was told that tomorrow he would have to go back to school, and Rustica knows his dad could see the anxiety flooding him near instantly.

-

Catching up with school is a bitch. He doesn't skip his classes, but he avoids Mario as much as humanly possible and hides in the library to finish all of the homework he missed. This time Emothy comes looking for him, but they seem to find something else to look for and end up leaving.

He's safe, he thinks. Until Owen sees him. Owen smiles and walks over to him, he's holding a book Rustica doesn't know about, and he greets Rustica so sweetly he feels warm again. Owen sits in the chair beside him and starts chatting, but Rustica only pays a little attention to what he's saying and just focuses on how nice his features are and how sweet his voice is and how much he wants to kiss him.

Maybe he wasn't paying enough attention, because Owen notices and waves his hand lightly in front of Rustica's face and then giggles once he snaps out of it. Rustica opens his mouth to say something and once he hears Owen laugh again, he shuts it, face going red and looking down at the floor. Owen assures him that it's fine and starts talking again, but this time Rustica doesn't hear anything he says over the ringing of his ears and only waves at Owen once he excuses himself to go study before a test he has in 3rd period.

He spends an extra 20 minutes in the library after Owen leaves, feeling the books and just wandering. That is until someone stands directly in front of him. He looks up, blank-faced, and that quickly contorts to a very anxious smile as he sees the person is Emothy. She gives an obviously annoyed grin, grabs him by the back of his collar and drags him out of the Library. He thinks he's spared from the lecture, but as soon as the two of them get outside they begin babbling about his absence, being worried, being convinced he was dead and just straight up not going to where they usually sit at lunch to even say hi. They sigh, and rub their temples murmuring out a "What were you thinking..." and then letting go of his collar.

"Next time, when you suddenly disappear and don't respond to any of our messages, at least get someone to confirm if you're dead or not, 'kay GB?"

He nods, and they whisk themself away, leaving Rustica in the hallway alone. She's right. He knows. Maybe this is why he chose Leo to stay with, maybe not, he thinks it was just impulse but maybe he just had that reaction because he was running away.

He does make it to his third class. It's Drama. He's in the booth running the lighting board (which thoroughly hates him) for another group. They're performing a 2 page script with way too many lighting cues and two followspots (which means two extra people have to be in the booth. This means there are 5 people in a tiny room with giant technical equipment, the person running house lights, the sound director, the assistants trained on followspot and Rustica, the lighting director) which is always a recipe for disaster, because nobody can hear anything. After 3 dress rehearsal runs, the director becomes tired and beckons everyone from the booth down. She gives them notes and then their next class hits. Rustica already cleaned up all of the stuff in the booth, but in order to ignore Mario more, he shuffles up to the booth again and searches blindly for things he knows aren't there.

I'm overthinking again. I have two minutes to get to Comp Sci.

As expected, he bolts it to Computers, he makes it in time before attendance and just ends up slipping into his chair and running the exact same codes he learned over and over again. Ciboulette seems perfectly content bothering Mario and leaning over Rustica's keyboard to piss him off further, which is amusing, but other than that, everything in computers is relatively easy and goes smoothly.

He has to walk home though. He hates walking home. Lumie won't be home for another day which leaves Rustica alone to walk 45 minutes. He doesn't understand why he just can't take the bus.

Maybe it'll be okay. Maybe it won't.

He doesn't think he'll ever be able to talk to Finch ever again, though.