Pari {{ Three (Re-sub) FIN

He holds a lifeline laced between his fingertips, tension at his heels, pinpoint anger on his mind.

"Pari, don't!" 

Eighteen years young and he is still tormenting his brother over something that his sibling cannot control, that he himself cannot control. If there is one thing that this family has taught him, it is that people do not change. Burnt curtain fires, melting bodies in the street, an axe to the head, choking out a child's last breath in the family bathtub.

And yet, still, they live on. Luci bitches, Topia organizes, Kinsey thrives under the wing of a cousin that he wishes he could call brother. 
Tsara Fer went to bed a brother and woke up a stranger in his eyes, lost in the sea that Pariah Fer drowned in years ago.

There are tears scattered on his her its cheeks, streaking down her face, leaving lines in the dust of her rebirth. There was a time when Pariah Fer would have done anything to dry those tears, would have split the clouds so the sun could dry them up, would have captured the moon and brought it down just so his brother could look at it. And the days, they slip by and by in his mind now, crumbled to dust and scattered up up up into the windstorm that had become his life. His teeth grind together and hands clenched around the fur of his

his- brothers teddy bear. And just as quick as he'd split the clouds for the boy in front of him, he'd watched tears fall from the heavens and drown them both. 

Tsara steps forward, and he draws the teddy bear closer to himself, tightening his grip around the treasure of his sibling. "Pari, please don't." But the words are empty, cold, distant. Nails dig into the flesh of a stuffed animal and it crosses his mind that his brother is much too old for the fantasies of a stuffed animal, anyways. Broken fears of change in front of him and he spits, venom in his voice, toxin in his heart. 

"Why do you even care about it?" He taunts, pulling the arm of the bear just that much farther away from it's body. 
Tsara Fer tenses.
His lips open, but Pariah Fer has never been fond of talking to strangers. 
"I don't get it. You know I don't, Tsara." 

Those last words escape his lips dipped in truth, not venom. His fingers rattle and he bites his lip, taking a step back away from the lost hope in front of him. Tsara Fer's change had come with knives and swords, ripped bullets through the fabrics of his reality and shattered the glass mirror illusion of Pariah Fer's life. Again, his brother (and he refused to call him anything else) opens his mouth to speak, to argue, to defend.

Again, Pariah Fer pushes the offense.

"I didn't ask you to explain it. I'm telling you, it's-..." 

He stutters, the front line of a war squadron falls back. "It's a phase." Its a phase. He'd spent countless nights under the moonlight, mind swirling in a bottle trying to convince himself that this thing in front of him was a phase gone awry, lost amongst the stages of life. Pariah Fer digs fingers into teddy bear and again, he watches a tear fall from his face. 

"Please." 

And there was a time when his brother's please could get him to stop time for his sibling for whatever he wanted, for whatever he needed.
Shatter. That time had ended when Tsara Fer had decided to take a childhood stage too far. 

"Grow up." He scoffs, before tearing into the bear in his hands. 
Its innards scatter the floor and drift drift drift down to lay amongst the tears of his brother. 
"You're too old for a stuffed bear anyways." 

---

His life consists of drowning himself in a bottle, eighteen years young and already on track to be the next death of his infamous family. 

FER TRAGEDY : BOY DIES OF ALCOHOL POISONING 

It didn't quite have the same ring to it as an axe to the head of your lover, or three drowned children floating life side up in the family bathtub. He shrugs, guess it could be worse. Maybe, if he we're lucky, he'd truly be famous one day for his death. And maybe, if he really hit the jackpot, someone would actually decide to change themselves, change something over it. 

Today, he decides, is not that day.
"Calhoune, toss me the bottle." 

His lips taste like sulfur and his mind reeks of intoxication. At this point, amidst high school and classmates and weekends and parties its become more of  crutch than anything. There'd been one point when on of his friends had told him he was drinking it to escape his families past. He'd snorted,  feeling the burn of his drink shooting up into his nostrils. 
Cough. 
He'd hunched over, slapping his chest in mock revival. 
"Oh, buddy. Thats a good one." 
 
Lift to lips, swig. 
"I don't drink to escape my family, bud. There's no escaping the people i'm related to." 

He'd tipped the bottle towards his friend. "Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get to meet 'em at my funeral." 
And they'd laughed and laughed.

He grips glass like broken teddy bear, burning his insides with the drink in his hands. He'd always found it strange that in the dead of the night he felt most alive, pumped through and through with the guilt of a broken bottle, shoved deep down the throat of an even more broken boy. The night is young, but his mind is old, stuck in the void of unrelenting change. Change. The word brings fire to his mind, burning up any sense of decency he had left.

This morning, he'd told Tsara he hated him.
This morning, he'd actually meant it. 

He raises the bottle to his lips but stops just short, wavering on the edge of his broken reality, rim just touching the edges of his mind. And maybe, he thinks, palms shaking with the chill of the night. And maybe, he tells himself, that tomorrow will be different, that Tsara's phase will end and that things will go back to the empty normalcy that had once accompanied a death covered household of the Fer family.
And maybe, the bottle speaks back to him, words fired into his mind.
And maybe, it won't. 

There's a burning in the back of his throat, but it is not from the alcohol that clings to the breath of the weekend nights. It's more of a fury, an anger of the purest form. He brings the bottle back down, burying it in the snow he sits on. The warmth of intoxication is fading fast, but raw fury covers him like a cloak and while his friend shivers next to him he sits, perfectly motionless, eye of the storm eye of a bottle.

Ripred, he would have pulled down the moon for his brother. He'd never realized that he didn't have the strength for that.
He pulls bottle from snow and buries himself in the temporary relief it gives him.

---

He remembers that her lips tasted like lavender, that they tasted somewhere between delicacy and normal.
It was the alcohol in him, he swears. 

There's a blanket draped over his crotch and he realizes, amidst the pound of a hangover that his pants have disappeared. The light feels like daggers and his head feels like its been hammered between two rocks. Sit up, groan. 
He'd always had incredible luck during the nights of parties.

The morning after, however, was a different story. 

Its always more of an obstacle course than a living room, with bodies strewn across the floor, draped in blankets and just slightly too close for comfort. Groan. He rubs his temples with his forefinger as he picks his way across the room, searching for his pants because the draft in this house is just a little too cold for him to be okay with. He passes by a window, and even though he makes every attempt to avoid the sunlight it throws at him just a few strands of the light make their way to his eyes and suddenly the world is spinning and his stomach bubbles and 

groan. He plops down on a chair in the kitchen.
"Dude, found your pants upstairs. You we're fucked up last night." 

The moon must have been laughing at him. He'd wanted to drag it down for his brother, last night. As if. "Thanks, Cal." The pants are soaring through the air and Pariah Fer doesn't even attempt the catch them, instead letting them land across his head, before pulling them off just slow enough to not set the headache off and dragging them one by one over his feet.

Creak. Creak. 
"Oh shit man, forgot to tell you. Eliza was looking for you..." 

Fuck. He shoots up just too fast and the world shatters for a second time. Broken glass reality falls to his feet as he gathers his things. 
"Stall for me. I'm out of here." 

---

He wanted the weekends to live forever. 

When his friend had told him that he'd been drinking to escape, he'd laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed, chest rumbling and heaving before shaking his head. No. Alcohol could never be his escape, because if anything, it was his prison. He guesses, if he had to call anything his escape, it'd be the nights when he reminds himself he doesn't have to come home, that he could sit under the moonlight all night, if he really wanted to. Because in school, it seemed, everywhere he looked there was a reminder that his last name was his burden.

That his burden was his prison. That there was no escape. 

He made every attempt he could to abandon his family when the weekend came, but he could not forget the memories his last name held. And when puberty had hit him like a truck, he'd decided that that was what the alcohol was for. 

He'd met Calhoune at the first party he'd ever gone to, and they'd been good friends ever since. 
Granted, he still hadn't invited the kid to stay over at his house, but he didn't think his friend would take him up on that offer, anyways. Besides, the  whole love leech role was dedicated to his little cousin Kinsey. When Tsara had..changed, he's been desperate to find another dose of testosterone that he could bond with. Granted, the white haired boy wasn't exactly normal-

But in the Fer household, no one was normal. Not even himself.
He loved Kinsey Fer like a brother, and the kid had gotten away with a lot of things in the years that he'd known him. Dust circles, chants, half-thought sentences, whatever it was. It was all a game to Pariah Fer, but he knew it meant a lot more to Kinsey. 

He didn't want to change the boy, he'd seen enough of that already. 

It's a friday, but the clouds haven't split and the sun hasn't been shining and the moon hasn't called them to the weekend yet, so they sit on the steps outside the school and twiddle their thumbs. Pari bundles himself up even further, pulling his coat close to himself for warmth. "Cal, I ever tell you about how I used to be fat?" 

His best friend nearly spits his drink out, catching himself at the last second.
Then, for dramatic effect, he does it anyways. 

"Gross, man. You got your spit on my pants." 
He wipes the spit globs off his khakis.

"Sorry bud, guess I just couldn't take the thought of the man himself, Pariah Fer, being fat." His friend stumbles, chuckling as he finishes the sentence. Pari grabs for his own drink, unscrewing the top before taking a few sips of it himself. 

"Well, believe it. I think I was six...?" 

If Pariah Fer had thought hangovers we're crude to him, he'd have to remember what childhood was like. His body had been the equivalent of a watermelon, too fat too round for a boy his age. Its the pictures that get to him, even today. Because family photos tend to have an uncanny ability to show what you really looked like as a kid. Plump, bulbous, too fat for your own good as Luci would say.

God, she was a bitch even before she realized it could work to her advantage. 
And surprisingly, he hadn't paid any attention to her. He guesses he just hadn't bothered to care.

"...And? You can't leave me hanging like that. If i'm gonna get dirt on you, I gotta get it now." 

Pariah Fer chuckles. 

"Yeah, I was a real fatso. I'll have to bring in an old family photo for you sometime. I was too young to realize just how big I was then, I guess." He raises his shirt to show a chest that, in all terms of reality, had nothing going for it. "Guess I didn't realize I needed pecs like these to survive school." 

"Pecs." Cal puts air quotes around the word. 
"So, Pariah Fer. What made you change?" 

 A boy who was much too comfortable with a bottle in his hands bites his lip. 
Truly, he doesn't know, nor does he want to know. Because he had been happy when his cheeks we're too plump, he had been fine with the way he looked. He'd been in a better place than he was now. So what had made him change? 

He shrugs, letting the words fall dead to the ground. 

"Guess I got too old to live the life of a fat child anymore." He sighs, recalling the organs of a ripped up teddy bear falling to the ground in front of him. He wonders if Topia had ever been able to fix it up like she'd said. He wonders if Tsara still cries over it. He swears he can hear him some nights, amidst the silence of a broken home. 

"Boy, you sound like you regret it." 

They both chuckle, but the laughter is cold. They both feel it. The conversation has died. But his friend, always admirable, makes one last effort to revive it. 

"After all, you wouldn't have met me if you hadn't slimmed down, bud." 

Pariah Fer is silent for a moment, before forcing a smile.

"Yeah." He grunts
"Yeah." His friend replies back.

Above them, the clouds split and rain begins to fall.