A Promise Fulfilled [WattyAwards#2012]

Chapter XI: The Angel With Broken Wings

Chapter XI: The Angel With Broken Wings

........................................................

"Scars are not injuries, Tanner Sack. A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole."

― China Miéville, The Scar

........................................................

A year ago, a nameless stranger found Dex in a bar once more, took him home, wrapped himself around Dex's shoulders and led his fingers across the canvas, saving him in ways Dex had never expected, teaching him how to pour his emotions out through paint and tears and a hope that he might mean something more.

Now, Timothy Ryeille sat at Dex's dinner table, softly running his finger along the rim of a glass of sparkling cider, and this time he needed Dex to save him instead.

"Any New Year's resolutions?" Dex asked helplessly, desperate to break the silence that had settled between them since dinner begun.

"Not die," Timmy answered, not looking up from his glass. It was still full, as was his plate, and Dex had felt too uncomfortable to do anything but take a few bites of potato.

Okay, so maybe Dex should have expected that answer. Ever since saying goodbye to Haley two days ago and moving his meager collection of belongings to Dex's apartment, Timmy had been moody and pensive, curtaining his own loneliness and anxiety around himself and hiding like a caterpillar in a cocoon within it. He had curtailed all of Dex's attempts at having a normal conversation, and seemed perfectly content to curl up on the pull-out sofa and do all of the cross-word puzzles Dex neglected in the paper, occasionally switching on the television to watch I Love Lucy.

Dex, for his part, had tried to stay out of Timmy's way.  He had earned a week or two more of shutting himself off, Dex knew. Timmy had always seen himself as a waste of place—his parents left him, his sister abandoned him, society neglected him—and now, even Timmy had abandoned himself, and Dex thought that maybe it was harder for Timmy because he understood exactly how Haley felt as well. He was shouldering double the pain, in a head where he couldn't trust his own feelings, trying to hold all the emotions of two people in one head that had already had too much too bear. It was fair, that Timmy needed time to cut himself out, stay floating in time and letters and sitcoms, just to have time to piece his thoughts back together, allow himself to cope.

So Dex had stayed confined to his room, occasionally venturing to the kitchen for Pringles, finally starting on that list of books that he'd told himself he would read years ago, bought the hardcover version with matching bookmark, only to have them sit and collect dust on his bookshelf. Neil Gaiman was actually quite enjoyable, in a fantastically disturbing way, he discovered, and he remembered when Timmy had abused him over his book choices, back when things weren't easy but bearable.

Now, sitting at New Year's Eve dinner, Dex thought about the Timmy he had known a year ago, the Timmy he knew now, and how well the first had managed to hide the latter, so well that Dex realized he'd never really known Timmy at all, even as he fell in love with him.

Dex knew now that he still didn't know Timmy, not really. Not in any traditional sense.

But he was beginning to. He had seen it in the way Timmy smiled when he figured out a particularly difficult crossword, how he looked over with concern when Dex coughed. He had seen it in the way he loved Haley, in the way he held Dex's hand when they walked away from the oncologist. How he rolled his eyes and giggled softly when Lucy did something spectacularly stupid and Ricky was left with a disaster on his hands.

And he wondered what Timmy was like, back when he was younger and home where he belonged.

He didn't hear Timmy at first when he asked the question. It was surprising enough that Timmy was talking to him, let alone actually promoting a conversation.