Sasha Martin Stanford (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beautifulday) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamlikenewyork2017-05-29 02:17 am
beautifulday) wrote in dreamlikenewyork2017-05-29 02:17 am
"I don't believe in self pity, it only brings you down."
Who: Sasha Stanford and Justin Campbell
What: Skyping
Where: New York and beyond
When: After this and this
Sasha’s phone call with Justin was literally just, “I’m just going home now. I’ll Skype you as soon as I get there. Love you. Bye.” Because he didn’t want to start completely venting in the school corridor where anyone and everyone passing by or lurking around corners could hear. It’s why he mostly texted with Justin during the day. The phone call was, no doubt, because Justin had read his rant on Facebook. One he had no intentions of removing because he was still pissed off as all fuck.
As soon as he got in, he pulled out his laptop and set it up on his bed. Everything else had been dumped just inside the bedroom door. Zeke had been right. He needed to talk to Justin more than anything else right now. They were a couple, and one that had built up on a foundation of open communication and open judgment-free understanding. Sasha was just less seasoned than Justin of having mental illness in his life. He was still a metaphorical baby when it came to being in love with someone who was mentally ill. He fucked up sometimes, he got angry and defensive easily when Justin was threatened. It was just the way it was.
He brought up Skype and dialled Justin in. He hoped Justin hadn’t disrupted any plans with his dad for this. The whole point of him getting away was for a breather from life, and father/son time for them to get back on the same page. Sasha knew Justin had been excited about the time with his dad. Even if Justin had complex additional needs, he was a pretty simple guy who just wanted the people he loved close, without complications and pain. Justin’s face popped up on the screen and Sasha gave him a wave. “Hi, baby,” he greeted him, blowing him a kiss. “I miss you.”
“What happened to your face?! Did someone hit you?!” Justin shrieked. He grabbed his iPad and put it close to his face to try to see Sasha better via the screen. It probably looked weird from Sasha’s end, but that was the least of his worries. Of course he knew something was wrong the minute he read Sasha’s Facebook post. Which hadn’t been all that long after it was put up, because he had the notifs for Sasha turned on. Reading Sasha’s social media posts was important to him, especially on the days he was really busy and their time was rationed. About the only time he didn’t follow his best friends closely was when he was depressed and didn’t touch social media. He barely even interacted with people in the same room as him.
“No, I hit myself. With my locker door. Like, not on purpose. I was angry and pulled it too hard, and lost my grip on it. It bashed me in the face,” Sasha confessed sheepishly. He hadn’t forgotten what he had done because he had a headache now and his nose and cheek were swollen. Seriously, if he took anymore hits to the head, he was going to end up knocking his brain out. “Not like in a way that I’m method-research self-harm to take better care of my boyfriend.” He sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a rush. Thankfully, the bleeding had stopped and it wasn’t gushing out in a messy spray every time he breathed.
Justin wasn’t any less horrified. HIs love had been bleeding and his face was bruised. He hated seeing him hurt, regardless of how it happened. “There’s blood all over your shirt! Fuck, baby. Don’t let those bitches get to you. People that shallow shit-talk everything they don’t understand. They think I’m the one with the screw loose, but they lack the ability to see that if you’re that fucking judgmental of something, they have a few of their own screws pretty damn loose. Like, compassion, integrity, and maturity. Thinking they’re fucking perfect and their shit doesn’t stink. Screw them. Do you think I care what petty little shallow high school bitches think about me? They’re a dime a dozen. They’re going to be overlooked a million times in their life for being sheep and carbon copies of the masses, doing the same shit everyone else does thinking they’re ‘cool’. Talk to me, beautiful. C’mon. What happened?”
Sasha glanced down at his shirt to make sure it wasn’t a special one. One he had inherited off his dad, or one Justin or Andi had bought for him. Luckily, it was just a generic Hot Topic Star Wars offering. It didn’t matter if there was blood on it. “I was doing something fucking nice for them. I said yes to joining their community bullshit for the prom because they were bitching about having no boys want to do it. No fucking wonder, if they treat boys like cunts. I overheard them saying all this. They thought I was gone, but I left my book bag and doubled-back to pick it up. They started shit-talking us as soon as I left the room. It’s not even the shit-talking I’m pissed about! It’s what they were saying, like they have a right to judge how sick you are! What gives them the fucking right?”
“Nothing,” Justin agreed, shaking his head sadly. But it was more because of how much this had upset Sasha. It upset him too, but didn’t make him angry. More just tired and fed up fighting it. “But, baby, this is what I have to face for the rest of my life. The mental illness stigma. It’s always there, bubbling away under the surface. My real fans don’t engage in that shit. They understand. They appreciate that I’ve kept it real. But none of them even know the full story. No one does, beyond us and my family and friends. Even then, no one but me knows everything. I don’t need them to. Because I don’t have to prove jackshit about my illness to them. Not because they believe it, but because they’ve lived it with me.”
It was Sasha’s turn to shake his head, but his was definitely out of an angered frustration. “I don’t get how they don’t get it! Have you see the statistic. The rise in young people with depression and anxiety has increased something ridiculous, like tenfold, in recent years! How can they not know?”
“Because depression and anxiety is better understood because so many people have experienced it in varying degrees,” Justin explained quietly. He pointed to his head. “This? Me? My head? It’s got the trifecta of shit. Bipolar, CPTSD, and sexual abuse trauma. Most people don’t even know there is a C that can go before PTSD. Most barely even identify what PTSD is or why it’s a thing. Those bitches certainly don’t know. They’re too busy trying to psycho-analyse why One Direction broke up and no one has come out as gay.”
Sasha snorted in amusement at that, but it hurt his nose and he winced, touching it carefully with his fingertips. “Well, I hope their prom goes to shit and fucking toilet explodes all over them.”
“Their prom…?” Justin asked, tipping his head a little. He pointed at the screen. “You need to get ice on that. Go get the icepack you use for your migraines out of the freezer now. I’ll wait for you.”
“It’s passive bullying!” Sasha objected as he got up and left the room as directed. He was still clearly fuming and no matter what way he looked at, he was getting more and more averted about the prom. To the point he wanted to ditch it all and just watch movies at home with Justin that night. Justin was already taking the night off work especially for it. They could still have a special night together. Somehow. He had built up so much to it, though, he was feeling lost and wanting to smack something because of it. He just hadn’t meant for it to be his own face with his locker door. He came back with the icepack in its special little pouch so the chill wasn’t going directly on his skin, and sat holding it up to his cheek. “I don’t want to take you to prom anymore.”
Justin had been about to say something but he stopped, blinking. “Okay, wow. Blunt.”
Sasha frowned, waving his free hand. “I don’t mean it like that. Sorry, that sounded really asshole. I don’t want to take you because I don’t want anyone there near you. Like, beyond our friends, I mean.”
“Are they all still going?” Justin asked.
“Yeah. I mean, I think so? They even found a way for Amarlie, Zen, Ash and Blaize to come. I tried to convince Cas to ask Merlin, but she won’t.” Sasha had talked to her about it a little, but she just said something like he was done with high school, so why would he want to bother? Then she changed the subject.
Justin raised his eyebrows. “How did they do that? So, um, you want everyone else to go, but not me?”
Sasha realised he hadn’t thought about it like that, until Justin was framing his question in that way. Then he felt like a dick when he did see that was how it was sounding. Like, maybe he was just using what these bitches said as an excuse to pull out. “No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t want to go either. Not just that I don’t want you to go. Zen is going as Layla’s date, Ash is going as Maryanne’s, Amarlie’s going as--”
“Why don’t one of them go as Cas’ date? Come on! I leave y’all lone for a few days, and everything goes to shit! Can’t y’all see she’s crying out for love and company? For fuck’s sake. I’m calling Merlin,” Justin bitched. By default, the prom was giving him anxiety now when he had previously been excited that his boyfriend asked him to be his date like a normal teenager. He started scrolling through his phone, looking for Merlin’s number.
“She’s stonewalling. I don’t think she’s going to go.” Sasha couldn’t elaborate, or he would spill the beans on the fact he went shopping with her and Ajay for prom stuff. The way Cas seemed uncomfortable about it all, it felt like she was going to pull out at the last minute.
“Bullshit. She wants to go. She just wants to be treated like every other girl going to their prom wants to be treated. She wants to be asked by someone to go, she wants to feel like the normal girl she is. But she also doesn’t know that’s what she’s feeling. Because no one is reminding her that she deserves it. Am I living in a Twilight Zone? Can’t anyone else see she’s crying out right now?! She’s weeks away from her surgery, her whole identity is going to change. Fuck, you all need bitchslapping.” Justin didn’t mean to be taking this out on Sasha, but he was venting. If he was back in the city, he would be poised to kick a few asses on Cas’ behalf right now.
Sasha sat there, feeling suitably chastised. He had been so dense, he knew it. But he was gay and had a date. It would seem contrived if he tried to hook her up and she would tell him to go fuck herself anyway. “She said Merlin hasn’t called her or anything.”
“Merlin’s been back in his hometown with Jesse trying to sort family shit out. He wasn’t going to go to your party because he was exhausted, but I convinced him to go for a little while. He’s been working every night since then because Billy wasn’t feeling well, and he’s also been doing more training for being my second understudy. But her brain is like mine, she’ll be translating it into him being grossed out by her being trans and avoiding her, like it feels to her like everyone does when they get too close and she starts opening up to them. Hey, you keep that icepack on your face!” Justin said, noticing Sasha had let it drop to his lap while they talked.
Sasha went quiet and looked down at his lap, holding the icepack to his face again. This prom this had suddenly become weird and stressful. It wasn’t fun or exciting. And worse, the way he had been fun and exciting before had helped take his mind off the fact he should be at a prom with Andi in an alternate universe where she never got cancer and lived. He just wanted everyone to feel happy, but not in a way it was forced. He also wanted people to feel safe.
Justin saw the look on Sasha’s face. He put his phone aside, knowing that somewhere here, he accidentally tripped off the path of why they were Skyping at all - Sasha had been upset by the bitches at school. “Hey. I’m sorry, baby. I got caught up. Let’s talk about his.”
“No, you’re right. It’s dumb. I shouldn’t have let them get to me. Call Cas or Merlin, or whoever. She needs you. I’m just being stupid. I should be studying anyway,” Sasha murmured, shaking his head.
“Sash. We’re going to your prom. Together. Nothing’s stopping that,” Justin resolved.
Sasha looked up. “I don’t want anyone shit-talking you.”
“Let them. They’re cowards. They won’t say anything to my face. But you can bet I’m going to be saying something to theirs,” Justin told him.
Sasha shook his head, waving his hand again. “No. No, no, no. I don’t want them anywhere near you! They have no right to say anything to you. They’ll just go away and make up more bullshit about you, and fuck them all. No. I’d rather not go than it create all this stupid shit. I thought this was supposed to be fun?”
“It will be. I promise you that. I’m not going to stir shit with them. I just want to ask them to say it to my face and then explain to me what they think it all means. If they can’t, then I want a chance to set the record straight. Not just for me, but everyone else living a life similar to me their close-minded ignorant judgments are lumping in with me. And to offer ways to educate themselves rather than jumping to petty conclusions about worldly shit far too beyond their realm of intelligence. Sometimes merely keeping your mouth shut and admitting you don’t know enough to make any calls is the most intelligent thing someone can do, Because sometimes - more often than anyone wants to admit - we don’t know enough to make any calls,” Justin explained, hoping Sasha could see why he was pushing this and not just palming it off as dumb bitches being cruel. Which they were, but not cruel enough to quite be a lost cause. Yet. “They’re not ruining our prom, baby. You know why? Because they can’t ruin us. Not with words. It would take more than the words of strangers to come close to it.”
Sasha was nodding by this point, because Justin was saying exactly what he needed to hear. He was saying what Sasha hadn’t been able to scramble to see himself when all this happened. He had just gone from zero to angry in 0.2 seconds. “Are you sure you still want to go?”
“Is that what this was, baby? You were scared I was going to immediately pull the plug, so you tried to pull it yourself so you weren’t disappointed?” Justin asked him, giving Sasha a soft smile. “C’mon, you can tell me. I won’t spill your secrets. If it was, it’s okay. I get it. I’ve been through a lot of shit. I’ve had a lot of people try to hurt me. It would probably make sense for me to pull the plug before I went through with it. But I won’t. I’d have to be on death’s door not to go.”
Sasha’s brow furrowed at the question, and then he was nodding. Just a little at first, before it picked up momentum. “Yeah, I think maybe that was it? Not completely, though. It was just as much not wanting anyone to hurt you, that I kind of wanted to pull you out of the firing line before it happened too.”
“Sash, I’ve told you before, no one can hurt me as much as I hurt myself. Now, come here, give me a kiss. Finish your study and enjoy the Indy500 on Sunday with your dad, okay?” Justin told him, beckoning his boyfriend closer to the screen. They made a joke of this for the first time ages ago, until they found every time they Skyped, they ended it both kissing their screens in lieu of a real kiss. “I love you, and I’m going to have the hottest prom date there.”
Sasha could laugh now, making good on their little ritual. After he kissed the screen, he wiped it off with the sleeve of his shirt. “I love you, and no one. Impossible. Because I will. I’ll call you when we get there, okay?” He paused, finding himself gazing at Justin intently. “Baby? I love you. I can’t say that enough. I’m sorry I somehow felt like, I don’t know, I needed to protect you because you can’t protect yourself. Really, you’re strong enough to protect us all. You’re already doing it.”
Justin shook his head, smiling. “Never apologise for that. I spent my whole life hoping someone would do that for me. I still want you to protect me, I just don’t want you getting hurt and unnecessarily worked up in the process. They’re not worth it. I’ll call you to say goodnight, okay? I need to go see if Dad needs anything. He’s having a bad day. We might need to come back early.”
“Oh, shit. You let me go on about this dumb prom stuff?” Sasha asked, concerned. “How bad?”
“It’s not dumb. It’s special and important to us. It’s important to Dad, too. He’s been going on about wanting to take embarrassing dad photos of us going to prom,” Justin said with a snort of amusement. He looked over his shoulder into the cabin where Dory was lying with his dad. “He tried to get up this morning when I was still asleep. He fell because his legs weren’t working, and when he tried to grab the bed to catching himself, his hands had no strength in them either. He was trying to get to the bathroom. It was just real bad. I had to help clean him up and get him back into bed, and then I had to feed him. But it’s okay. I did it without losing my shit. I just think we need to get home in case he’s getting worse. It’s been good, though. We’re better. In a better place.”
Sasha nodded, though he was concerned as he listened. But the one thing in this world he understood was having a disabled and physically incapacitated dad. “I know how hard it is, baby. Are you okay? I mean, I know you’re not. I know you’re really not, but you’re coping?”
Justin nodded. “Yeah? And I’m scaring myself how calm I am about it. But it’s like… now I know no one’s blocking me or trying to hide any of it from me, and Dad’s letting me help him and take care of him, I feel like I can do it. I promised I’d say if I couldn’t. But all this? I can. It’s not like I’m physically sick, is it? I know it’s only his body, and for me, it’s my mind. If we work together, we each get a part right.”
“Go to him, okay? But call me if you need to talk, it doesn’t matter when it is. If you need to talk, I’m here,” Sasha promised. “Say hi to him and Dory for me. I miss you all.”
“We miss you too.” Justin kissed his fingers and touched them to his screen. “Have a lie down if you need to rest that head. Before you get a migraine.”
Sasha did the same, and for a few moments, their fingers were joined electronically through the screen. “I will. Why don’t you go lie down with your dad too? He’d like that. I do it on my dad’s bad days.”
Justin nodded. “I think I will. Talk to you tonight, okay? I love you.”
“Love you back,” Sasha replied and ended their call.
LOG, COMPLETE
What: Skyping
Where: New York and beyond
When: After this and this
Sasha’s phone call with Justin was literally just, “I’m just going home now. I’ll Skype you as soon as I get there. Love you. Bye.” Because he didn’t want to start completely venting in the school corridor where anyone and everyone passing by or lurking around corners could hear. It’s why he mostly texted with Justin during the day. The phone call was, no doubt, because Justin had read his rant on Facebook. One he had no intentions of removing because he was still pissed off as all fuck.
As soon as he got in, he pulled out his laptop and set it up on his bed. Everything else had been dumped just inside the bedroom door. Zeke had been right. He needed to talk to Justin more than anything else right now. They were a couple, and one that had built up on a foundation of open communication and open judgment-free understanding. Sasha was just less seasoned than Justin of having mental illness in his life. He was still a metaphorical baby when it came to being in love with someone who was mentally ill. He fucked up sometimes, he got angry and defensive easily when Justin was threatened. It was just the way it was.
He brought up Skype and dialled Justin in. He hoped Justin hadn’t disrupted any plans with his dad for this. The whole point of him getting away was for a breather from life, and father/son time for them to get back on the same page. Sasha knew Justin had been excited about the time with his dad. Even if Justin had complex additional needs, he was a pretty simple guy who just wanted the people he loved close, without complications and pain. Justin’s face popped up on the screen and Sasha gave him a wave. “Hi, baby,” he greeted him, blowing him a kiss. “I miss you.”
“What happened to your face?! Did someone hit you?!” Justin shrieked. He grabbed his iPad and put it close to his face to try to see Sasha better via the screen. It probably looked weird from Sasha’s end, but that was the least of his worries. Of course he knew something was wrong the minute he read Sasha’s Facebook post. Which hadn’t been all that long after it was put up, because he had the notifs for Sasha turned on. Reading Sasha’s social media posts was important to him, especially on the days he was really busy and their time was rationed. About the only time he didn’t follow his best friends closely was when he was depressed and didn’t touch social media. He barely even interacted with people in the same room as him.
“No, I hit myself. With my locker door. Like, not on purpose. I was angry and pulled it too hard, and lost my grip on it. It bashed me in the face,” Sasha confessed sheepishly. He hadn’t forgotten what he had done because he had a headache now and his nose and cheek were swollen. Seriously, if he took anymore hits to the head, he was going to end up knocking his brain out. “Not like in a way that I’m method-research self-harm to take better care of my boyfriend.” He sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a rush. Thankfully, the bleeding had stopped and it wasn’t gushing out in a messy spray every time he breathed.
Justin wasn’t any less horrified. HIs love had been bleeding and his face was bruised. He hated seeing him hurt, regardless of how it happened. “There’s blood all over your shirt! Fuck, baby. Don’t let those bitches get to you. People that shallow shit-talk everything they don’t understand. They think I’m the one with the screw loose, but they lack the ability to see that if you’re that fucking judgmental of something, they have a few of their own screws pretty damn loose. Like, compassion, integrity, and maturity. Thinking they’re fucking perfect and their shit doesn’t stink. Screw them. Do you think I care what petty little shallow high school bitches think about me? They’re a dime a dozen. They’re going to be overlooked a million times in their life for being sheep and carbon copies of the masses, doing the same shit everyone else does thinking they’re ‘cool’. Talk to me, beautiful. C’mon. What happened?”
Sasha glanced down at his shirt to make sure it wasn’t a special one. One he had inherited off his dad, or one Justin or Andi had bought for him. Luckily, it was just a generic Hot Topic Star Wars offering. It didn’t matter if there was blood on it. “I was doing something fucking nice for them. I said yes to joining their community bullshit for the prom because they were bitching about having no boys want to do it. No fucking wonder, if they treat boys like cunts. I overheard them saying all this. They thought I was gone, but I left my book bag and doubled-back to pick it up. They started shit-talking us as soon as I left the room. It’s not even the shit-talking I’m pissed about! It’s what they were saying, like they have a right to judge how sick you are! What gives them the fucking right?”
“Nothing,” Justin agreed, shaking his head sadly. But it was more because of how much this had upset Sasha. It upset him too, but didn’t make him angry. More just tired and fed up fighting it. “But, baby, this is what I have to face for the rest of my life. The mental illness stigma. It’s always there, bubbling away under the surface. My real fans don’t engage in that shit. They understand. They appreciate that I’ve kept it real. But none of them even know the full story. No one does, beyond us and my family and friends. Even then, no one but me knows everything. I don’t need them to. Because I don’t have to prove jackshit about my illness to them. Not because they believe it, but because they’ve lived it with me.”
It was Sasha’s turn to shake his head, but his was definitely out of an angered frustration. “I don’t get how they don’t get it! Have you see the statistic. The rise in young people with depression and anxiety has increased something ridiculous, like tenfold, in recent years! How can they not know?”
“Because depression and anxiety is better understood because so many people have experienced it in varying degrees,” Justin explained quietly. He pointed to his head. “This? Me? My head? It’s got the trifecta of shit. Bipolar, CPTSD, and sexual abuse trauma. Most people don’t even know there is a C that can go before PTSD. Most barely even identify what PTSD is or why it’s a thing. Those bitches certainly don’t know. They’re too busy trying to psycho-analyse why One Direction broke up and no one has come out as gay.”
Sasha snorted in amusement at that, but it hurt his nose and he winced, touching it carefully with his fingertips. “Well, I hope their prom goes to shit and fucking toilet explodes all over them.”
“Their prom…?” Justin asked, tipping his head a little. He pointed at the screen. “You need to get ice on that. Go get the icepack you use for your migraines out of the freezer now. I’ll wait for you.”
“It’s passive bullying!” Sasha objected as he got up and left the room as directed. He was still clearly fuming and no matter what way he looked at, he was getting more and more averted about the prom. To the point he wanted to ditch it all and just watch movies at home with Justin that night. Justin was already taking the night off work especially for it. They could still have a special night together. Somehow. He had built up so much to it, though, he was feeling lost and wanting to smack something because of it. He just hadn’t meant for it to be his own face with his locker door. He came back with the icepack in its special little pouch so the chill wasn’t going directly on his skin, and sat holding it up to his cheek. “I don’t want to take you to prom anymore.”
Justin had been about to say something but he stopped, blinking. “Okay, wow. Blunt.”
Sasha frowned, waving his free hand. “I don’t mean it like that. Sorry, that sounded really asshole. I don’t want to take you because I don’t want anyone there near you. Like, beyond our friends, I mean.”
“Are they all still going?” Justin asked.
“Yeah. I mean, I think so? They even found a way for Amarlie, Zen, Ash and Blaize to come. I tried to convince Cas to ask Merlin, but she won’t.” Sasha had talked to her about it a little, but she just said something like he was done with high school, so why would he want to bother? Then she changed the subject.
Justin raised his eyebrows. “How did they do that? So, um, you want everyone else to go, but not me?”
Sasha realised he hadn’t thought about it like that, until Justin was framing his question in that way. Then he felt like a dick when he did see that was how it was sounding. Like, maybe he was just using what these bitches said as an excuse to pull out. “No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t want to go either. Not just that I don’t want you to go. Zen is going as Layla’s date, Ash is going as Maryanne’s, Amarlie’s going as--”
“Why don’t one of them go as Cas’ date? Come on! I leave y’all lone for a few days, and everything goes to shit! Can’t y’all see she’s crying out for love and company? For fuck’s sake. I’m calling Merlin,” Justin bitched. By default, the prom was giving him anxiety now when he had previously been excited that his boyfriend asked him to be his date like a normal teenager. He started scrolling through his phone, looking for Merlin’s number.
“She’s stonewalling. I don’t think she’s going to go.” Sasha couldn’t elaborate, or he would spill the beans on the fact he went shopping with her and Ajay for prom stuff. The way Cas seemed uncomfortable about it all, it felt like she was going to pull out at the last minute.
“Bullshit. She wants to go. She just wants to be treated like every other girl going to their prom wants to be treated. She wants to be asked by someone to go, she wants to feel like the normal girl she is. But she also doesn’t know that’s what she’s feeling. Because no one is reminding her that she deserves it. Am I living in a Twilight Zone? Can’t anyone else see she’s crying out right now?! She’s weeks away from her surgery, her whole identity is going to change. Fuck, you all need bitchslapping.” Justin didn’t mean to be taking this out on Sasha, but he was venting. If he was back in the city, he would be poised to kick a few asses on Cas’ behalf right now.
Sasha sat there, feeling suitably chastised. He had been so dense, he knew it. But he was gay and had a date. It would seem contrived if he tried to hook her up and she would tell him to go fuck herself anyway. “She said Merlin hasn’t called her or anything.”
“Merlin’s been back in his hometown with Jesse trying to sort family shit out. He wasn’t going to go to your party because he was exhausted, but I convinced him to go for a little while. He’s been working every night since then because Billy wasn’t feeling well, and he’s also been doing more training for being my second understudy. But her brain is like mine, she’ll be translating it into him being grossed out by her being trans and avoiding her, like it feels to her like everyone does when they get too close and she starts opening up to them. Hey, you keep that icepack on your face!” Justin said, noticing Sasha had let it drop to his lap while they talked.
Sasha went quiet and looked down at his lap, holding the icepack to his face again. This prom this had suddenly become weird and stressful. It wasn’t fun or exciting. And worse, the way he had been fun and exciting before had helped take his mind off the fact he should be at a prom with Andi in an alternate universe where she never got cancer and lived. He just wanted everyone to feel happy, but not in a way it was forced. He also wanted people to feel safe.
Justin saw the look on Sasha’s face. He put his phone aside, knowing that somewhere here, he accidentally tripped off the path of why they were Skyping at all - Sasha had been upset by the bitches at school. “Hey. I’m sorry, baby. I got caught up. Let’s talk about his.”
“No, you’re right. It’s dumb. I shouldn’t have let them get to me. Call Cas or Merlin, or whoever. She needs you. I’m just being stupid. I should be studying anyway,” Sasha murmured, shaking his head.
“Sash. We’re going to your prom. Together. Nothing’s stopping that,” Justin resolved.
Sasha looked up. “I don’t want anyone shit-talking you.”
“Let them. They’re cowards. They won’t say anything to my face. But you can bet I’m going to be saying something to theirs,” Justin told him.
Sasha shook his head, waving his hand again. “No. No, no, no. I don’t want them anywhere near you! They have no right to say anything to you. They’ll just go away and make up more bullshit about you, and fuck them all. No. I’d rather not go than it create all this stupid shit. I thought this was supposed to be fun?”
“It will be. I promise you that. I’m not going to stir shit with them. I just want to ask them to say it to my face and then explain to me what they think it all means. If they can’t, then I want a chance to set the record straight. Not just for me, but everyone else living a life similar to me their close-minded ignorant judgments are lumping in with me. And to offer ways to educate themselves rather than jumping to petty conclusions about worldly shit far too beyond their realm of intelligence. Sometimes merely keeping your mouth shut and admitting you don’t know enough to make any calls is the most intelligent thing someone can do, Because sometimes - more often than anyone wants to admit - we don’t know enough to make any calls,” Justin explained, hoping Sasha could see why he was pushing this and not just palming it off as dumb bitches being cruel. Which they were, but not cruel enough to quite be a lost cause. Yet. “They’re not ruining our prom, baby. You know why? Because they can’t ruin us. Not with words. It would take more than the words of strangers to come close to it.”
Sasha was nodding by this point, because Justin was saying exactly what he needed to hear. He was saying what Sasha hadn’t been able to scramble to see himself when all this happened. He had just gone from zero to angry in 0.2 seconds. “Are you sure you still want to go?”
“Is that what this was, baby? You were scared I was going to immediately pull the plug, so you tried to pull it yourself so you weren’t disappointed?” Justin asked him, giving Sasha a soft smile. “C’mon, you can tell me. I won’t spill your secrets. If it was, it’s okay. I get it. I’ve been through a lot of shit. I’ve had a lot of people try to hurt me. It would probably make sense for me to pull the plug before I went through with it. But I won’t. I’d have to be on death’s door not to go.”
Sasha’s brow furrowed at the question, and then he was nodding. Just a little at first, before it picked up momentum. “Yeah, I think maybe that was it? Not completely, though. It was just as much not wanting anyone to hurt you, that I kind of wanted to pull you out of the firing line before it happened too.”
“Sash, I’ve told you before, no one can hurt me as much as I hurt myself. Now, come here, give me a kiss. Finish your study and enjoy the Indy500 on Sunday with your dad, okay?” Justin told him, beckoning his boyfriend closer to the screen. They made a joke of this for the first time ages ago, until they found every time they Skyped, they ended it both kissing their screens in lieu of a real kiss. “I love you, and I’m going to have the hottest prom date there.”
Sasha could laugh now, making good on their little ritual. After he kissed the screen, he wiped it off with the sleeve of his shirt. “I love you, and no one. Impossible. Because I will. I’ll call you when we get there, okay?” He paused, finding himself gazing at Justin intently. “Baby? I love you. I can’t say that enough. I’m sorry I somehow felt like, I don’t know, I needed to protect you because you can’t protect yourself. Really, you’re strong enough to protect us all. You’re already doing it.”
Justin shook his head, smiling. “Never apologise for that. I spent my whole life hoping someone would do that for me. I still want you to protect me, I just don’t want you getting hurt and unnecessarily worked up in the process. They’re not worth it. I’ll call you to say goodnight, okay? I need to go see if Dad needs anything. He’s having a bad day. We might need to come back early.”
“Oh, shit. You let me go on about this dumb prom stuff?” Sasha asked, concerned. “How bad?”
“It’s not dumb. It’s special and important to us. It’s important to Dad, too. He’s been going on about wanting to take embarrassing dad photos of us going to prom,” Justin said with a snort of amusement. He looked over his shoulder into the cabin where Dory was lying with his dad. “He tried to get up this morning when I was still asleep. He fell because his legs weren’t working, and when he tried to grab the bed to catching himself, his hands had no strength in them either. He was trying to get to the bathroom. It was just real bad. I had to help clean him up and get him back into bed, and then I had to feed him. But it’s okay. I did it without losing my shit. I just think we need to get home in case he’s getting worse. It’s been good, though. We’re better. In a better place.”
Sasha nodded, though he was concerned as he listened. But the one thing in this world he understood was having a disabled and physically incapacitated dad. “I know how hard it is, baby. Are you okay? I mean, I know you’re not. I know you’re really not, but you’re coping?”
Justin nodded. “Yeah? And I’m scaring myself how calm I am about it. But it’s like… now I know no one’s blocking me or trying to hide any of it from me, and Dad’s letting me help him and take care of him, I feel like I can do it. I promised I’d say if I couldn’t. But all this? I can. It’s not like I’m physically sick, is it? I know it’s only his body, and for me, it’s my mind. If we work together, we each get a part right.”
“Go to him, okay? But call me if you need to talk, it doesn’t matter when it is. If you need to talk, I’m here,” Sasha promised. “Say hi to him and Dory for me. I miss you all.”
“We miss you too.” Justin kissed his fingers and touched them to his screen. “Have a lie down if you need to rest that head. Before you get a migraine.”
Sasha did the same, and for a few moments, their fingers were joined electronically through the screen. “I will. Why don’t you go lie down with your dad too? He’d like that. I do it on my dad’s bad days.”
Justin nodded. “I think I will. Talk to you tonight, okay? I love you.”
“Love you back,” Sasha replied and ended their call.
LOG, COMPLETE