Falling Falling Stars

03 - Threshold

AN: We'll get more Arden soon I promise. Right now it's Dr. Gary time.

Also warnings: sometimes Dr Gary pushes too hard. More homophobic hatespeech.

*

What Efnisien learnt from his green book was that most of the things in the deep sea were either scavengers of dead shit, or they were engaging in high tech bio-warfare against each other in a ruthless kill-or-be-killed kind of fight in a darkness so deep that it had never seen sunlight. At first, Efnisien was delighted by this, and he felt the same rush he felt while reading true crime books. Fucking nature being as disgustingly destructive as possible but with neon colours and infrared lights and everything.

But that night he slept badly, he woke up from nightmares feeling like maybe he was the Mariana Trench and maybe all that shit fought away inside of him and he wouldn't know and he couldn't do anything about it because they couldn't get submarines that far down to explore it properly. People were better at exploring the goddamn moon.

He thought about the bookstore and that kid, and stared at the forty fifth book in his bookcase and wanted to throw it out because Gwyn hadn't bought it for him. But he liked the book. But Gwyn hadn't bought it for him.

But he liked the book.

But...

An hour of that and he didn't know if it counted as an intrusive thought or not. Probably not. Because he didn't think anything violent.

That Thursday he went to see Dr Gary. Precisely four pm, the last client on Thursday, and he was never, ever late. Sometimes if he got there early, he walked around. This time he sat in the waiting room and stared at nothing and picked at his shirt sleeve while the receptionist typed a measly eighty words a minute if that. That kid at The Cosy Fucking Book Corner had criticised his clothing, and Efnisien stared at his sleeve and thought yeah, okay, it was crappy.

Efnisien had stopped wearing expensive stuff in Hillview because it wasn't really allowed. And then he'd gotten out and the An Fnwy mansion had already been sold and all his clothing sold with it. All his possessions. Everything that he'd thought of as his, and all of it was gone.

But he'd also never really cared about fashion. As far as he was concerned, clothing was the camouflage he put on to convince people he was rich and trustworthy. It was honey, a bait that worked every time. Crielle taught him that his body didn't really matter, except as a lure. He'd draw people to him with a good leather jacket or some nice boots, and people would come to him and want some of that richness to rub off on them, and instead they'd have to deal with Efnisien making them cry instead.

Really all anyone needed were some shirts, two pairs of jeans, a pair of sneakers, and a good all weather jacket, socks and underwear. That was something Gwyn used to say. It turned out to be true. Also Efnisien just didn't care. The size he automatically reached for didn't fit him properly anymore. He'd lost a ton of weight and he was no longer fit and toned. He was sedentary and skinny, shirts hung off him, and his hipbones annoyed him if he rolled over onto his stomach.

But he couldn't bear foods high in fat anymore, and he couldn't eat large meals anymore, and he'd never much cared about food in the first place. The fact was, sometimes Efnisien swapped Gwyn's plate with his own while Crielle wasn't looking. Not often, but sometimes. Crielle didn't label leftovers in the fridge to let people know what was Gwyn's and what belonged to everyone else, and she sometimes forgot to give Efnisien a heads up. It didn't happen often, but he'd eaten poisoned food intended for Gwyn and while he found it kind of hilarious, it left him thinking that eating was more than it was cracked up to be.

He didn't hate it, he just didn't care about it much.

Like everything else, it was grey.

'Efnisien?' Dr Gary said, peering at him from behind his office door. He said it like he'd called Efnisien's name once already.