fairybeeb

[fairybeeb]

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I nearly jump out of my skin. Enté barks and jumps off the bed to the window and starts licking it. I see a shadow outside my window and roll my eyes. Once my heart falls out of my throat back into my chest, I walk to the window and unlatch it. “You son of a bitch! You scared me.”

Keaton climbs through the window and into my room, just like he’s done hundreds of times before. He’s wearing a white t-shirt he always sleeps in and flannel pajama bottoms that are green and blue. “Hey boy!” He greets Enté by rubbing both of his ears rapidly. You never would have guessed Enté was knocked out for a solid three hours just before this. “I can’t sleep.”

I lock the window again, not sure why I locked it in the first place. Keaton was always crawling through it at least three nights a week. We still acted like we were kids. “The idea of your sister getting married and flying off keeping you awake?”

Keaton shot me a look and sat on my bed with his back against the wall. Enté collapsed in his lap. “She’s not flying off, AJ. She’s going on a honeymoon, not running away. She still has a kid.”

I sat with my back against the headboard and pull the covers over my legs. I look at the other side of the room and see the outline of my desk and my computer in the shadows. The void was gone. I rubbed my face and groaned. “Fucking pills.”

Keaton kept scrubbing behind Enté’s ear, making his leg kick in the air. “I take it you can’t sleep, either?”

“When have you ever known me to get a solid night’s sleep?”

“There was that one time in junior year when you-”

“Fuck, Keaton.” I knew where he was going with that. I don’t need to recall the night I mixed a number of substances to dull whatever rioting teenage emotions I was experiencing. I couldn’t even if I had wanted too. But Keaton, for some reason, loves to bring it up. Probably because he was as sober as a priest the night. I can’t remember why I was the only one who wanted to get that fucked up. But that’s been my signature move. If I can have fun while forgetting every stupid thing I do or say while doing it, then why not?

“You must have slept for fourteen hours straight.” There it was, Keaton’s smile that I was thinking about just before that void showed up again. It pulled his whole face up and dimpled his cheeks. He was always outstandingly attractive, even by model standards. He looked like he was crafted with care and precision to be a Greek god. Lucy was the same, always out-of-this-world beautiful. Every time she saw me, her brows came together like two magnets and her pink pout turned into a frown. But she was still gorgeous.

I hummed and brushed Enté’s tail on my lap. “Where can I get Jäger and drugs at 4am?”

It was a joke, but Keaton shook his head with partial disappointment. He didn’t like that part of me. As if that were even possible. But if it were, he would like me less when I’m not sober. I don’t know if it was because he was so straight edge (he grew up with strict Christian parents, church every Sunday, bible study every Wednesday), or if it was because he genuinely didn’t like seeing how I can get. “You can’t show up to the wedding tomorrow hungover.”

“I can’t show up at all because I’ll be sleeping for fourteen hours.” Keaton punched my leg through the covers, and I snorted. It wasn’t abnormal for Keaton to be awake this late before a big event. He used to climb through my window every night before a test. The poor thing had crippling test anxiety and couldn’t do anything but study through the night. He always made perfect scores. Mom told me once if I put in half the effort, that could be me, too. No, thanks. I have enough anxiety already. Is what I told her. “How are you holding up?”

The smile on Keaton’s face had faded. It was still there, but in ghost form. He continued to pat Enté’s head, who had his mouth closed and was nodding off again. “It’s weird. I know she’s not going anywhere. But it’s still weird. Knowing that she’s committing herself to some guy for the rest of her life.”

“Some guy?”

Keaton shook his head. “I take that back. That’s not fair. Shino is a really good guy. He takes care of her, and he wants nothing for the best for her like I do. I just can’t help but feel like she won’t need me anymore because she’ll have him.”

I nodded and listened. It’s what I did best. If I opened my mouth, I would just end up saying stupid shit. This is how we do things. Keaton vents to me, I keep my mouth shut, and he talks out his problems on his own.

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[fairybeeb]

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I’m thinking of Keaton’s heartbreaker smile when I feel the air chill around me again. I force my eyes open and look to Enté, whose still asleep. Something on the dark side of my room clicks and his ear twitches. I sit up on my elbows and freeze. I’m preparing myself for whoever, or whatever, is in my room to come out and face me. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears and my body goes fuzzy. I give two quick pats on the bed to my side, and Enté sits up right away, his eyes tired.

“C’mere boy.” I whisper, and he follows. I feel less alone when Enté’s by my side and breathing in my face. I hold onto his body while staring at the other half of my room. You know how your eyes get used to the dark and you can at least see outlines and shadowed silhouettes of your surroundings? Well, I can’t see anything on the other half of my room. I’m not even sure it exists anymore.

I realize I have Enté between me and whatever it is I’m shielding myself from. I’d rather be taken one thousand times than to let anyone touch a hair on his head, so I pat my other side and Enté hops over me to the opposite of my legs. Whatever is over there, I have to face it. My hand doesn’t feel like it’s a part of my body when I grab the covers and pull them off myself. I slowly swing my legs out of bed, and when my feet touch the floor, they’re numb.

I don’t know if I should call out to the darkness. It’s not like it would change anything. Or maybe it would? Do I address it as a person? Well, duh.

“Is someone there?” I whisper, standing up without rushing. Enté sniffs my palm and licks it, unconcerned. Does he really not see it too? Is there anything to even see? I stare harder at the void on the other side of my room. It doesn���t move, its just there. A big black spot casting on that whole side of the room. It feels like something is there. There’s a weight in the room that’s tipping the scale, drawing me closer. A sucking void. I’m standing in the moonlight, about to cross the threshold into the darkness. I open my mouth, ready to call out again when there’s a knock on the window.

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[fairybeeb]

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I don’t know why I’m thinking of this. It’s now 4:10 and I’m thinking about my first kiss with my next door neighbor of eighteen years. It wasn’t the worst kiss I’ve had, and I’ve had plenty since then. I know Keaton wished I would let him kiss me again, though. I know he’s liked me this whole time. I realized it the next year, in eighth grade, when I nearly fell asleep in his room the night of a school dance. He thought I was asleep and kissed me while my eyes were shut. I don’t count that one on my list of kisses. I don’t think he does, either. The next week he was wracked by guilt, and I know this because he ignored me solidly. It was better that way; I didn’t know what to say either.

Fast forward a few years when I was anxious at high school graduation because I thought he would confess to me. I guess I thought too highly of myself. Lucy still hates me. She probably thinks I have Keaton wrapped around my finger, and while I do, it’s not because I want him there. He coiled up around me all on his own. She can’t blame that on one kiss five years ago.

Once again, I’m worried Keaton will try to confess to me at Lucy's wedding. I’m piecing it all together in my head. Lucy is marrying Shino – a good guy, they were high school sweethearts and have a two-year old son – and running off on her honeymoon tomorrow. Who knows what kind of emotions will be bubbling inside Keaton? Regret? Loneliness? Hopefulness? Any one of those alone would be enough for Keaton to come to me. They have been in the past. After all, what are best friends for? 

Sometimes I wish we weren’t best friends. Not because he’s a bad guy or I’m weirded out by the fact he likes me. But because I don’t know where I stand with him anymore. I can’t tell if I’m dragging him along or using him. Where is the line between being best friends and outright emotional abuse?

Since high school, I became more aware of Keaton’s feelings. Even though he dated a lot of girls back then, I knew he was only doing it to save face for everyone – the school, his sister, his parents. It hurt to watch. But he took care of it on his own, obsessively playing sports every season and working out in between. We spent less and less time together, but I think he was just avoiding me because he knew I didn’t see him that way. Was he that perceptive, or did he think he still had a chance? Still has a chance? Maybe he thinks I really am that dumb. It doesn’t hurt my feelings if he thinks that. All I make are mistakes, you’ll soon find out.

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[fairybeeb]

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The moon is already setting, and I see her light through the window next to my bed. The moonlight almost reached the wall across from me, about a foot short. I can see my five-year-old Golden Retriever, Enté, in a deep sleep on his fluff of a bed. If anything were actually in my room, Enté would be the first to know. Seeing him asleep brought my mind some ease. I could focus on my regular nighttime thoughts, which my doctor calls anxiety.

The most pressing thought is tomorrow. It’s Lucy Kelly’s wedding, my best friend’s sister. She hates me, I’m sure. She walked in on me snogging her brother once in seventh grade and hasn’t liked me since. She’s not homophobic, she just doesn’t like me. Maybe it’s because ever since then, Keaton has been chasing me rather than spending time on their super connected twin-bond thing. Maybe she could feel him slipping away, and that’s when I became the target of her demise. That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted a first kiss at the same time everyone else was getting their first kisses, and Keaton was always there by my side. I don’t even think I asked if I could kiss him. We were just on my bed, eating popcorn and playing our handheld consoles with greasy fingers.

Hey, have you kissed anyone before? I was always comfortable enough with Keaton to get right to the point.

Yes. Ally Beckman in fifth grade. He said. I remembered Ally Beckman; she was in my class. Keaton wasn’t, which meant he had to go out of his way to even talk to her. I remember that fact annoyed me. I went on to tell him I hadn’t had my first kiss, and I thought it sucked he had his a whole two years before me. He said I would find someone to kiss soon because I was a “cool guy”, and girls go crazy over cool guys at our age.

Somehow, I convinced Keaton to kiss me. I say somehow, but everyone knew Keaton was as malleable as dough. At least when it came to me.

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[fairybeeb]

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It’s 4am and I can feel it again. Something is in my room. It’s not a blatant presence, more like a whisper. Like if I reached out from my spot in bed, I would feel a heaviness there. It was like an ink drop in water, permeating my room. It happened twice last week, too. But in the midst of imagining all the possible demons and ghost phenomena, I remembered reading a bizarre list of symptoms on the medicine bottle on my counter. I chalked it up to standard paranoia. I know nothing is there. But the more I breathed life into it, the more unsettling it became. I braved myself. I opened my eyes.

Nothing was there, just the kernelled ceiling of my room. No demons. No ghosts.

I haven’t told mom. She would make a scene of it, barreling into my room with a cylinder of salt in one hand and a wand of Sandalwood in the other. She would park herself in my room for a whole day, sighing incantations and spritzing my room with something from a glass spray bottle. It’s not that I minded her doing her best to protect me. Like, when I told her I had a bully in middle school. She gave me a necklace with a homemade amulet and a bracelet with a single bell on it and told me to shake it whenever the bully came around. I did. He walked right past me. From then on, he left me alone. To this day, I can’t reason it. That’s when I realized mom wasn’t actually insane and her way of doing things worked.

But I didn’t want her to go through all that cleansing when there wasn’t anything there.

I know nothing is there.

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[fairybeeb]

♡  pastel gradient cups  ♡

✧  please click the link and reblog if you can!  ✧

[fairybeeb]

New prints for Comic Fiesta 2018

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#n

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아카츠키 좋아여

#dei

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relaxing Namine and Kairi doodles (◡‿◡✿) + flower crowns ✿✿✿

#kingdom hearts

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? What did I forget? ….

Keep reading

#kingdom hearts

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Shootingstars and moonlight lover ~ 

#kingdom hearts

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with the new kh3 trailer released, i’m getting excited again :O 

#master riku

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The Devil wears Prada

#devilman

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domestic au where the amicitias run a flower shop and gladiolus falls in love with the baker across the street

#ffxv

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“Through the years” Or, the Gladnis thing that has been sitting in my folder for at least a month, that I’ve been screaming about with a friend on Twitter since then (they got to see the first sketches, lol) and that I’ve finally finished at 5 am today. And now I have feels again.

#ffxv

[fairybeeb]

Lookin spiffy in those new outfits! Can’t wait to get Kairi and Lea in there so we have our four-person fashion show. :D

#kh