by A. M. Rose
“So, you left because people are dicks?”
“Yes… and no.”
“Stop being cryptic, Drew,” Mason growled.
“I left because I didn’t want to be fixed,” he said, feeling the edges of pain rise again as he skated the surface of the truth. He grimaced.
“Fixed by whom?”
“I…” Even shaking his head would bring him pain; he could already feel those snaking fingers climbing into his head and lungs, ready to squeeze.
“Who was it, Drew? What did they do?”
Broke me. They wanted to fix me, but they broke me… “I…”
“Drew! Answer me!”
Mason was getting agitated, and Drew felt his own anxiety spike up with it. He wanted to answer all his questions. He wanted to let Mason in and finally have this weight slide off his shoulders, but he couldn’t.
Silence stretched around them, and he could feel tension rising between them.
“So, I’ll get nothing… I... I went against my gut telling me meeting you would only make it hurt more. And you'll give me nothing? Empty excuses?” He ran a hand over his face in a move that showed his frustration and turned to leave.
No, no, no… don’t leave. “Mason…” he called out, taking a step forward with his hand extended, desperate to make him stay.
Mason spun back around but stayed just out of reach, looking as exhausted as Drew felt. “What, Drew? Aren’t we done for real this time?”
“NO… Mason, please… I’ll tell you… it was T…” he barely got the first syllable out of his mouth when he felt his head almost splitting open with pain and breathing became the hardest task on the planet.
He gasped, clutching at his chest, pain bursting in hot red flashes threatening to burn him from the inside. He knew what came next from the million times before when he’d tried to say something to someone. If he stopped right there, it would go away in a few minutes. If he tried saying anything more, the pain would grow until he’d feel like he was being flayed alive. His throat would close, his breathing would be cut off, and then he’d pass out.
“Drew?” Mason called; voice tinged with concern rather than anger. But he deserved to be angry. Just as he deserved the truth, and this was Drew’s only chance…
He gasped, “It was my…”
This time it brought him to his knees. Tears sprung from between his clenched lids, and he felt himself getting lightheaded from the lack of oxygen.
He couldn’t do it.
He was weak and couldn’t hold on long enough to tell Mason why he left. He couldn’t endure long enough to make sure Mason knew it was never anything he had done. He wanted him to know he had loved him from the very moment they met. Wanted to tell him that the night they spent together was the best night he’d had. There was never anyone else. And there never would be. But there was no way he’d be able to tell. Not if he wanted to stay alive.
“Drew?” he heard Mason’s voice calling out, but he couldn’t talk as he stared waveringly at the grass under him. There was nothing he could do.
He built up all the leftover energy he had and pushed himself off the ground. He was wobbly on his feet, and he was dangerously close to falling over again, but he had to get away. He heard Mason calling out for him; he could feel his hands on his elbows, and he wished with all he had to be able to bask in the sensation of Mason touching him again.
But the sole focus was getting out of there.
“DREW!”
“Sorry…” he managed to gasp out before he turned around and did his best to walk away.
Mason followed him for a while, trying to get him to talk before giving up, and it hurt so much… to leave him standing there. To be the one to walk away again. But there was no other choice, there was no way to give Mason what he needed, and he was only hurting him by staying here.
He was the only one who knew his secret. Well… his parents… Oh god. They knew. They knew and he’d never had to say a thing to them.
The journal!
They’d read Troy’s journal.
Eyes wide and a new hope blossoming in his chest, he felt himself fighting through the fatigue as he rushed home. He burst through the door, stalking into the kitchen where his mother was handling fifteen different things at once, stuff flying all around her in perfect synchronization.
“I need the journal!” he demanded in a hoarse voice still laced with lingering pain. She whipped around, startled enough to let everything she was balancing drop to the floor.
“Drew…” she murmured, glancing over him in distress as she took in his condition.
He shook his head. “Not here to talk. Just give me the journal.”
She rushed out of the room, and he slumped against the table, exhausted, but ready to have Mason know everything at last.
Mason had replayed the conversation with Drew over a thousand times by the time he got to work that morning. He had fluctuated between a confusing mix of anger and worry from then to now; the anger mostly stemming from the fact that he was worried. A healthy dose of frustration was sprinkled on top just for added flavor.
What had been the point? he thought as he carelessly stacked the brownie display.
Drew had asked to meet him to say… nothing. He gave apologies and platitudes freely, eyes begging for him to understand. But what? When pressed for answers Drew’s mouth was empty. Empty until he collapsed in pain.
The absolute terror he felt when Drew doubled over, gasping for breath… He had to push the disturbing image away. It didn’t make sense. Nothing about Drew made any sense anymore. They had spent their childhoods together, inseparable, and now they couldn’t be further apart.
Mason stacked one too many brownies, and the top-heavy chocolatey tower leaned left before succumbing to gravity. Before all of them hit the floor, he managed to cast a flimsy spell, saving some of them and him from an untimely death. Sage’s baked goods were like his children.
He flicked his wrist and had the chocolate rectangles float back to the tray, leaving the fallen soldiers where they were. Sighing out, he thanked the higher powers Sage was busy out back and they had no customers currently to witness his complete lack of domestic magic skills. He rubbed his hands over his face roughly, trying to snap himself out of this hazy state where all he could think about was Drew, Drew, Drew.
“Ben’s here!” the sign announced.
“I’ll be right out!” Sage called a second after. “I can’t leave this dough only half-kneaded!”
Mason removed his hands from his face, ready to offer Ben a smile and bribe him to keep quiet about this mini brownie breakdown he was witnessing. Only… it wasn’t Ben standing in the entryway.
“Sage needs to fix that thing,” he said out loud, at a loss for what else to say.
Drew was dressed sedately in another dark turtleneck and jeans under his winter coat. His hair hadn’t been styled and was falling over his forehead, and he had dark circles under his eyes which stood out against his pallid complexion. In truth, he looked like shit. Mason’s eyes ate him up greedily anyway. He had been starved of the sight of him for ten years, and now he was gorging himself despite his better judgement. He knew in the end he was going to end up regretting it, perhaps making himself sick, but it felt so damn good in these moments it was hard to resist.
“Hi, Mason,” Drew greeted quietly, shifting in his snow-covered boots.
Their eyes locked, and for a second Mason thought he saw in Drew’s eyes the urge to run again, his body tilting backwards before he stepped forward resolutely. The other man scanned him, head to toe, before settling on the mess at his feet.
“What are you doing here?” Mason asked, crossing his arms over his chest defensively and refusing to acknowledge his blush of embarrassment.
Drew swallowed as he stopped just short of the chocolate disaster, hands tightening on the tattered notebook in his hands Mason hadn’t spotted on first look. “I have something I want to give you.”
“I told you, I
don’t want your guilt gifts, save them for someone who wants them,” he retorted, but his attention was fixed on the notebook, a crease emerging between his eyebrows.
“I owe you an explanation,” Drew said, and Mason found his eyes again, heart tripping over the unnamed emotion swimming there. “I’m hoping you can find some of those answers in here.”
“Did you write it down?” he asked.
Drew grimaced. “Not exactly.”
He extended the book between them, and Mason hesitated as he stared at it. Eventually his own desire for any kind of answer overwhelmed him, and he snatched it from him before he could retract it and disappear again.
Drew sighed deeply in relief, giving a Mason a rueful smile. His eyes tracked upwards to Mason’s forehead and he gestured, hand reaching out before faltering, a heart stopping inch from his skin. Mason flinched back, wrestling with himself as his skin anticipated the touch it had never forgotten.
Drew dropped his hand and Mason told himself he was relieved. “You have something…”
Mason rubbed his head instinctively, and Drew gave him another wane smile. “It’s good to see you, Mason. If you decide to read it... and want to talk after... I'll be here…” His eyes fell to the book before he looked away, his skin turning a touch green, like he wanted to be physically sick.
Mason opened his mouth to do something stupid, say something stupid, but Drew was already retreating and exiting without another word. Mason stared at the door for a few moments, willing his heart to take a break and stop trying to chase the man. He looked down at the notebook in his hands contemplatively.
He couldn’t wait.
Begging off from work was both easy and difficult. Sage was amicable and allowed it without really thinking, yet he asked a million and one questions why. Mason had warded him off eventually without revealing anything, feeling slightly bad for playing on his best friend’s empathetic nature, but unable to potentially spill Drew’s personal information.
It was something to atone for later. As it was, he had been home for ten minutes and was simply staring at the book on the coffee table in front of him like it held the answers to the universe and he wasn’t ready for them. In a way it was true. Drew was his universe once upon a time.
“Toughen up, Mason,” he told himself, reaching for it.
October 1st, ‘96
This journal is ridiculous. Miss Pennyweight said we have to write in it every day for a month! A MONTH. Maybe I can get Drew to write in it for me, his handwriting isn’t the best, but that's nothing a bit of magic can't fix. It beats keeping a diary like a twelve-year-old girl!!!
The first thing he noticed was the date. The second was that these were clearly diary entries and the third was that this wasn’t Drew’s diary, it was his brother Troy’s.
Mason skimmed through the first few entries in confusion; the first months’ worth was short. Sometimes a single line in some cases, until it seemed like Troy began to like writing in it as the entries got longer and the mandatory month date passed by.
The more he read, the more his confusion built as to how this explained anything. A lot of the entries seemed to be your usual teenage complaints. Mason couldn’t remember Troy all that much back before the accident. There was such a big age gap between them and Troy that they didn’t often cross paths, but he remembered that Drew seemed close to his brother growing up. He was the golden standard to which Drew’s parents seemed to set the bar of expectation, and Drew had always tried his hardest to meet it. Until he died.
Growing slightly irritated, Mason was a second from throwing the book down when Drew’s name caught his eye on the next page.
January 8th, ‘97
We had magical history today, we were talking about the time before we all had to hide in our little bubbles and let the non-magic people take over. Yes, there's less of us and we were prosecuted, but that could have been handled differently. I don’t see why we have to be so restricted just because they’re too normal to function! They let Drew stay here in Daydream, when he was born without magic, but we can’t go out there? It doesn’t make sense. I wish there were a way we could just give them magic; then we wouldn’t have to hide all the time.
Mason frowned as he reread the entry.
It hadn’t been the first time this subject had come up in magical society. Being on the Town Council gave him added insight into just how much of a hot topic it could be with certain people. What struck him as incredibly odd, however, was that he had never known the Daley’s to be especially vocal about any views opposing their isolationist way of life, even though it had been expected since they had Drew.
Intrigued, he flipped another few pages, finding the musings of more everyday occurrences until something made him stop again.
January 25th, ‘97
Ever since I wrote that stuff about non-magic people and magic, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Pete says I’m getting on his nerves and ‘preaching’, but he’s just being an asshole about it. He doesn’t understand it like I do; he doesn’t have a little brother who has no magic.
Mason swallowed, a pit beginning to grow in his stomach.
It wasn’t that the words were necessarily nefarious, but the whole reason he had been gifted this diary had something to do with Drew. ‘I’m hoping you can find some of those answers in here.’ Did Troy have something to do with Drew leaving? He had naturally contemplated it. Troy had died, and only a short time after, Drew had left.
He began skimming through again, face close to the pages as he scanned the words carefully for any hint or sign. He stopped on an entry dated: February 18th, ‘97
I’ve been thinking about Drew and how he has no magic and realized... my parents must have tried to look into it. I dug up our old medical records and I was right!!! They did talk to a whole bunch of healers and witches. None of them said anything important. But there were pages missing. So I went digging. And I found a book in my parent’s closet. Under a false shelf. At first look, I thought it was some boring old textbook, it was so musty and thick, but once I pulled the rest of the cloth from the cover, I realized it’s not. It’s a grimoire! An honest to god GRIMOIRE! My parents had the same idea that I had; they were looking into giving Drew magic! I’ve hid it in my room for now, but I’ll show the guys tomorrow. I wonder why my parents never used it; they marked the page and everything...
Mason felt sick.
A grimoire. Drew’s parents had a grimoire. They were banned to any casual magic user; only trained witches being allowed access to them since they had been gathered up decades ago. Did Drew know this growing up? That his parents had seen him as incomplete, defective, because he didn’t have any magic. Drew’s words from the park came back to him then, and the anger began to build on Drew’s behalf, the kindling from their youth sparking and catching again. How dare they!
He angrily flipped to the next page and shuddered at the words written.
March 10th, ‘97
I told Drew I was going to give him magic. He was so stoked! Pete and Reggie are on board to help. Pete is better at spellcasting than me, and Reg likes reading all that boring stuff in textbooks. We’re going to meet in the woods once a week. I’ve told mom that I’m taking Drew out for that ‘brotherly bonding time’ she keeps going on about. This works out perfectly.
March 17th, ‘97
The first spell we tried didn’t go so great. Imbuing objects with magic. I guess because he isn’t an object? Drew passed out for a couple of minutes, and when he woke up he had a nosebleed. We’re going to try something else next week.
April 1st, ‘97
Only a few weeks in and Drew was talking about telling our parents! Little brat is going to ruin everything! I managed to convince him to keep his trap shut for now; don’t know how long that will last though. Pete suggested we spell him, make it so he can’t tell anyone anything even if he wanted to. None of us know how to do that though, so we’re going to take turns looking through the grimoire, see
if there’s anything in there we can use.
April 30th, ‘97
Reg finished the spell! We’re going to do it tonight.
Just got back! It was lucky we were in woods when Pete placed the spell. Drew screamed so loud I think my ears are still ringing. We tested it out though and it worked! Baby brother won’t be ratting us out any time soon. We can keep going now. It’s for his own good.
Mason threw the diary away from him, curling his legs up to his chest and covering his mouth with both hands to hold in the sob that ripped out of his very soul. Tears slipped between his shaking fingers as he stared into the middle distance, trying to understand, wishing that he didn’t.
Drew couldn’t speak. He couldn’t speak.
All those instances where he must have tried to tell him, anyone, and he couldn’t. His own brother had been experimenting on him and then made it so he couldn’t speak, couldn’t say no anymore, get help. Mason was beyond horrified; he could feel bile at the back of his throat.
How could he not know? How could he have missed this? Drew shouldn’t have had to say anything, he should have known.
Still crying, he picked the diary up again, determined to read everything despite how it hurt. This was the only way Drew had seen to communicate with him finally, and Mason didn’t want to miss anything again.
May 2nd, ‘97
That spell is really something. I’ve seen Drew try to open his mouth over and over and… nothing. It looks like it hurts him to try. He can’t tell our parents. He couldn’t even write it down when he tried. He ends up talking in circles around it, trying to mime things. Mom got so fed up she sent him to his room. I’ll have to be careful though; if he makes her too suspicious by acting weird, it could still blow this whole thing. I’ll talk with him tonight, remind him why we’re doing this. He’s always wanted to fit in, and he can if this all goes to plan, we just need to keep trying.
July 5th, ‘00
Drew said he doesn’t want to keep trying anymore. Three years of work FOR NOTHING! He’s an ungrateful BRAT! I’ve wasted all my time on this, and he just wants to give up? Well, he’s got another thing coming. He just doesn’t know what’s best for him. And once I help Drew, we can offer magic to all those normal humans and stop living in shadows. This is best for everyone.
