Jester (Man x Man) ✔

36) p a r e n t s

"You want to go back to my hometown? And meet my family?" Eli gaped at Benjamin, looking like his eyeballs would soon pop out of his eye sockets.

"I know it sounds insane, but I really think it could help." Benjamin told him.

"I don't know.. I'm literally not allowed to see them, and I don't think being rejected by them again would do much good for my mental health." Eli scrupled, clearly not convinced by Benjamin's words.

"But what if they don't reject you this time?" Benjamin suggested. He lifted his hand and cupped Eli's cheek. "We don't even have to see them if you don't want to. We can book a nice hotel room, get drunk by the overpriced booze from the minibar. You can show me around."

"I must be out of my mind to even consider it." Eli chuckled nervously. "I'll think about it, okay?"

••••

Eli could feel a knot in his stomach when he leaned his forehead on the cold surface of the bus window. He could feel Benjamin's eyes on him, but he couldn't bring himself to answer the gaze. Instead they just sat there in silence, listening at the steady hum of the bus engine.

The closer they got to Eli's hometown, the more nervous he became. His hands didn't shake yet, but that was about it. His mouth had gone dry, he was feeling sick to his stomach and he just wanted to curl into a ball and hide from the world. 

Eli avoided Benjamin's gaze, when he turned from the window and buried his face on the crook of his neck. Benjamin wrapped his arm around Eli's lower back and let him nestle comfortably against him. Then Benjamin fumbled for his earbuds, handing the other to Eli and plugged another in his own ear.

"What is this?" Eli murmured, a smile tucking up the corners of his mouth. 

"I made us a playlist." Benjamin whispered. Eli's eyes fluttered shut when the music filled his ear. 

He smiled, falling in a state where he was nearly asleep but awake enough to feel Benjamin's arm resting on his lower back and the steady beat of his heart and hear the music. The knot in his stomach seemed to loosen slightly even though he knew where they were heading.

Benjamin had promised this time it would be different, but Eli wasn't so sure about that. He knew it would be painful to walk those streets, to welcome back all the memories that were still unprocessed enough to rip his heart open. Without Benjamin there was no way he would even have considered putting himself in that position all over again.

Eli's therapist, Kurt Ellwood, had sided with Benjamin's idea as well. He had this theory that Eli would have to start from the beginning and piece by piece move to his most current trauma. Ellwood thought that Eli needed to understand what had led him to trust an untrustworthy person before he could start dealing with the consequences of it. 

Ellwood wasn't old or gaunt like the physician Eli had had in the hospital, but a little too young to be a therapist looking guy with long dirty blonde hair. When Eli had heard his name was Kurt, he had cracked up and told Ellwood that the name fit him perfectly. Then he tried to explain that ever since he saw him for the first time, he thought he looked exactly like Kurt Cobain.

••••

"We're here." Eli awoke when he felt Benjamin gently nudging his shoulder. He rubbed his eyes and it took a while before he remembered where 'here' was.

"Ready to go sightseeing?" Eli nudged him back, his voice still drowsy from sleep. Once they were out of the bus and holding their bags, Eli looked around. The bus station looked distantly familiar, but he couldn't really tell if it was still the same as it had been the last time he had been there.

Their hotel was in the walking distance, so they started slouching in its direction. Eli lit a cigarette, taking a deep drag before he let his gaze wander along the familiar streets.

"I fell from that tree once." Eli gestured towards a tall tree at the end of the street. "I broke my wrist and scraped my knee."

"Oh, is that so?" Benjamin smiled, eyeing the tree intensively, like he was trying to picture the scene in his mind. 

"And this right here.." Eli began when they had barely made it past the tree. In front of them was an old abandoned looking house with a creaky fire ladder, which was covered in rust and had seen its best days. "I used to climb on that roof with Prisca and Lydia. Well, until one time a shingle got loose and I broke my tailbone when I fell."

"Why do I get a feeling that I'm going to hear how you broke all your bones before we even make it to the hotel?" Benjamin was grinning amusedly.

"Probably because that's exactly what's going to happen." Eli started grinning too. "I always wanted to get as high as I could, which didn't work well with my clumsiness. I meant it when I said I was a lot to take as a child."

The last sentence made Eli's expression dull, as another thought crossed his mind. A part of why his dad had no patience for him was because he was already quite old to have a child so young. Yet it had always made Eli feel like he needed to suppress the curious and lively part of himself whenever his dad was around. 

He didn't have to say a word, his eyes could tell it all. Just one glimpse was enough to tell how disappointed he was, to speak the unspoken words:

"You tire me out."

"Where did you go?" Benjamin's voice brought Eli back to the present. He didn't even notice how they had moved to another block, the one where their hotel was. Eli could see from Benjamin's expression that he had noticed the change of his mood.

"I was thinking.." Eli shrugged, letting the rest of the sense hang in the air. Benjamin just nodded, giving him an understanding smile.

"I'm starving. Are there any good restaurants?" Benjamin changed the subject, which was a relief to Eli.

"There was this one place, but I don't know if it still exists. It's near the hotel."

"Sounds like a plan. Let's just take our backs there and go find something to eat." And that's exactly what they did.

After the lunch, when they had stuffed their bellies just a little too full, Eli lit yet another cigarette. He barely even noticed where his legs were taking him. They knew the road home even if his mind was elsewhere, and even if it hadn't been his home for years.

"That's my elementary school." The building looked old, decrepit like everything seemed to be around there. Eli was thinking whether the town had lost its will to live around the same time he did. Maybe it had been waiting for him to come back, so that it could come back to life.. 

Eli's thoughts were cut short when he realized he was looking at something he had thought he would only see in his memories. He halted, staring at the pair of green eyes, now framed with wrinkled skin and heavy eyelids. Now more than ever the pained look filled with disappointment told Eli:

"You tire me out."

His hair was touched with silver and he seemed to have aged a lifetime. He was wearing a simple white shirt and brown trousers with leather shoes, looking as plain as ever. The woman walking by his side had a frail frame and her skin was wrinkled with age. She looked older than a woman in her early sixties should have, but she was still beautiful. And her hazel eyes still carried some remnants of the warmth they used to have when she looked at her youngest son.

Eli couldn't take another step while he stared at the old couple nearing them. Benjamin was looking at Eli and his parents in turns, but he didn't say a word.

Then they were right in front of Eli, both staring at him in the eye with expressionless faces. Eli opened his mouth, but the words never came out, when they just walked past him. No hello, no sign of recognition, not even a hint of relievement seeing that he was still alive. They just walked past him like he meant nothing to them.

The half-smoked cigarette slipped from Eli's fingers, landed on the ground and rolled a few times before coming to a halt. And the world went so very quiet.