|
Chapter 3 Theo sighed backwards then looked around the room. He shrugged his shoulders. "It's just a room." Tickling his hands forward, Hayden hit on the paper Theo was so obsessed with. So obsessed that he'd misheard the question. Perhaps it was for the better. What if he'd given the wrong answer? Hayden would have had fallen into a fit of rage and no one would have been safe from his wrath. Inside his head he giggled like a madman. He saw his own skinny self rampaging through the hotel, smashing things, swearing and crying. Crying, he thought, yes that was more likely. Jerome was the melodramatic violent member; Hayden just wept like a little girl when things got rough. Sometimes Theo made him feel like a man, though, capable of manly reactions. As his fingers curled around the paper and started pulling it back towards him, Theo caught his eye, looked at him hard, actually leaned forward. He put one delicate finger on the paper, stopping its movement. "Have you taken something?" he asked. Hayden's eyes fluttered, then firmed themselves again. "What is it?" Hayden shrugged his shoulders. "You don't know?" "It's safe." He smiled, reaching out a finger, stroking its tip against Theo's hand. "Safe?" Theo asked, voice high and girlish. "How do you know it's safe if you don't even know what it is?" Hayden curled his hand over Theo's. "Are you worried about me?" he whispered. |
"Of course I am." But Theo tore his hand away from the touch. He turned around, arms folded over his chest, a pout on his lips. "Don't be grumpy with me," Hayden said. Theo sighed. "You shouldn't be up in this state. Go to bed." "I can't sleep." He sounded proud. "I'm like you now." Theo closed his eyes. Those words sounded so familiar. They were the ones that Hayden always spoke at him after he'd tried something new. I'm like you now, The'. Except he wasn't anything like Theo - and the more he did the less like him he was becoming. Couldn't Hayden see that? How much he'd done in these two years while all Theo had succeeded in doing was writing hit records and receiving royalty's cheques. Hayden had lived, Theo had just dreamed. And what would happen to Hayden's love for him when he did learn the truth? "Go to bed, Hayd'," he said again, voice sad, deflated. A fountain of songs was just bursting from his broken-hearted chest; he needed Hayden gone so he could mourn his life in peace. "Go and be with Brett." The words nearly stuck in his throat. He tasted bile upon their departure. He heard Hayden's mouth opening and closing as he tried to find the words to speak, the perfect words that would make Theo change his mind. Theo didn't think those words existed for him in this life. An artist was always alone. "Fine," he heard Hayden breathe. Then his feet were stomping across the studio floor, the door being pulled open. Leaving, just like Theo had wanted. Except that wasn't what he wanted it was just what he knew he should do. Hayden was high, he needed to be with his boyfriend, with someone who understood drugs, who at least knew the crap he put down his throat - or did he snort it up his nose? Inject it into his veins? The only thing Theo knew about drugs was what he saw on the TV. No one had ever offered him any in a club, not like they seemed to with his friends. But then his friends were offered everything on a plate; it seemed only Theo, and his ill-fated brother, had to work and beg and plead for their treats. |