What Happened To Normal- Well, Normal For Us

Reid stirred the Mac n Cheese in the quiet of the apartment. Calvin had taken a nap, so Reid decided that he should have the apartment running when his best friend woke up. Everything had changed, and yet, relatively nothing was different. In a technical sense of course. The apartment had returned to the way it had been just, what a year, maybe less, than it had before? The tv was still going, the food was still childish, toys were still there. But Reid had carefully sealed up all of Chase and Kitty’s things and hid them away.

But the cardboard flaps could not hold in their sadness. It was weighing Reid and Calvin down. Reid had mourned and he still found himself flung into sorrow when he thought of Chase. But what broke his heart more was how changed his best friend had been. Reid had survived this far because Calvin was so carefree and happy. As someone so paranoid and drowned by the fears of life, Reid needed someone to drag him out of his own terror. And Reid had always known his friend to be bursting with life. Sometimes, Reid shook Cal awake just to ensure he was alive.

Spongebob laughed at Reid’s trouble and Reid took the Mac n Cheese off of the burner and began looking for a drink, an alcoholic one, for himself. Reid was not typically a drinker, but he found himself turning to the bottle more often. Not too much, but a considerable increase. As he searched, his hand brushed another bottle, a bottle of cheering potion that a friend had slipped him. The bottle had been poured into a glass soda bottle for convenience and Reid considered it for himself. He picked it up and put it on the counter before deciding against it.

After a shot of vodka, Reid walked down to Calvin’s room and said, “Hey, Cal. Food. I have Spongebob on.” He knocked a few times on the wall and then went back down to the kitchen and poured two bowls of macaroni, before pulling out a glass bottle of soda and setting it down next to the disguised potion. He went to grab it when Patrick yelled, “NO THIS IS PATRICK!” Reid turned and laughed, his hand absent mindedly moving from the potion to grab his bowl. He went and sat down at the couch and began to eat.

((I’d say Cal grabs the potion by accident, and Reid notices halfway through that he grabbed the wrong bottle, but decides against telling him which results in GUILT))

Warmth pooled behind long-lashed sockets; the promise of the welling of tears. Such was the now seemingly permanent nature of his eyes, once lively with the rays of the sun, yet presently pale with sick and sorrow. The threat of the unfolding of his soul before those he stood amongst - it never left him. He would rub his dead orbs raw with the heels of his palms, but he had long since learned that such behavior would do nothing to rid him of the awful feeling; the wish-wash of the wavering flood.

“Hey, Cal. Food. I have Spongebob on.”

Food. Calvin had forgotten his need for it; his body’s desire for sustenance. His previously insatiable stomach had gone days on end without complaint of its hollow state, whereas a pancake had been required of him within hours of the last before –

Before.

Calvin’s lids fluttered against one another, and he laid eyes upon the small dialog clock, level with his line of vision across the room, and it read: 6:03pm. Two hours. He hadn’t found himself to be capable of sleeping for so long in several months. The nightmares were spacing farther apart. And he feared he had already begun to forget her - them. Her, her, and her.

Reid’s laughter drew Calvin’s attention across his rank and disorganized bedroom and towards the door, beneath which a light shone, bathing his crayon and trash littered carpet in a warmth with which it had grown quite unfamiliar. “OK, Reid,” Calvin replied so quietly as to have sighed the words aloud. No more strength could be expected of his faint lungs as they struggled beneath the weight of Calvin’s grief, which had nestled itself between every valve of his heart; every rib beneath his chest.

Slowly, he drew himself upward…

… and found himself sitting heavily atop the sofa; crawling into its deepest crevice, and burying himself in its cushions without recollection of the journey.

Another minute lost to Autopilot.

“Hi,” Calvin acknowledged his flat mate, and his gaze drifted softly towards television.

Reid had not been eating too long when he heard a voice. He turned and saw Calvin standing in the kitchen, glancing at the television unenthusiastically. Reid was not prepared for this- his frustrations and sorrow mounted and bucked inside him. He had never met depressed Calvin, and the fellow was quite unlike anyone Reid had ever met. Reid kept a look of gentle greeting on his face as he inwardly struggled- wanting badly to embrace his friend and to beat the sadness out of him.

Reid, however, was not too strong a person, and definitely not hard-willed enough for either of those options. He felt a sigh escape somewhere inside his being and he smiled, forced, saying, "Hey, Cal. I made you some food if you want. There's a bowl of macaroni and cheese and a soda on the counter. And Spongebob is on. It's one of your favorite episodes. When Patrick works at the Krusty Krab." He paused, hoping to see something of the Calvin he knew. "Remember?"

((/musefail))

A pebble of a memory amongst monstrous stones, of course, would be the catalyst to Calvin's collapse. At Reid's mention of said fictional cartoon character, Calvin was immediately overwhelmed by his own recollection of Katie's fondness of Patrick Star, due to his shape and his pink hue. For it was only these details that she had successfully made sense of, as she could not have comprehended Patrick's humorous words. She had not yet grown old enough. She had not been allowed to.

The pebble tumbled and stirred the haphazardly balanced waters to which it had fallen - splash!

Chase's scream, familiar in the sense that one might recall having experienced a present nightmare once before, burrowed deeply within Calvin's mind. And a searing spark of green crept across his mind's eye; by which he was shortly blinded.

As his levee crumbled beneath the rushing falls, Calvin's body slid from the couch upon his back in the manner of a dead man, simultaneous to the pebble-memory’s gradual decent to the floor of the pool. His knees collided softly with the hardwood below, and there Calvin remained; leaning brokenly against the sofa’s base upon his shins, with his eyes clenched shut for fear of revealing his struggles to his faithful companion. The Patrick to his SpongeBob.

Reid had not thought, as he often did. For a King Geek, Reid could often be a bit careless in his thoughts. He chuckled, plopping his fork into his mouth and biting his teeth together, letting the macaroni and cheese noodles fall onto his tongue. For someone with absolutely no culinary training, Reid took pride in the spectacular macaroni and cheese he made... even if it WAS just the boxed kind.

Reid tipped his head back in laughter nad turned to look at hs friend. He had slumped into the floor looking absolutely miserable "CAL!" Reid stumbled over, tossing the bowl and soda onto the coffee table with a large clank. "Hey, mate," he said, sitting on the couch and gripping his friend's shoulders. "Mate, I'll turn it off." He tried turning the television with the remote, but Spongebob laughed on. Frustrated, Reid turned and threw the remote, hitting the button and turning the television off.

He looked back at Calvin. "Cal, I... I don't know what to do. Could you tell me what I can do. I just- I just..." Reid dropped his head, his shoulders drooping low as he felt sorrow fill him. How had they gotten here? "I just don't know what to do, Calvin."

A hastily inhalation of the air that he'd confined to his cupped palms and a rough scrub of his knuckles along his lower lids was Calvin's instinctual response to Reid's expressed concern. "I'm sorry, Reid," Calvin breathed, following up his words with an unsteady laugh which possessed the properties of artificial sweetener, with its bitter aftertaste. "I'm being selfish," He murmured guiltily against his sweat-glazed hands. "I didn't mean to," Calvin admitted, and took gentle hold of his flatmates wrist where it rested atop his shoulder.

Despite his own internal agony, and in the hope of putting to rest his friend's panic, Calvin cast a glance in the direction of the food that Reid had prepared, "Mac and cheese?" he inquired as he rid of another stray tear.

Calvin apologizing for his anguished mourning was the absolute worst thing for Reid's spirits. He did not want his friend to think he was burdening Reid with his sorrow, or that Reid had no time or patience for handling it. Sure, it was trying and Reid did not necessarily have the capabilities to handle the present situation, but he did not want Cal to think he was not allowed to grive. To have possibly caused that emotion in Cal deeply pained Reid and he quickly tried to grasp at a way to amend his actions. All he came up with was, "No, Cal, it's okay, I just, you, get better, 'kay?"

He didn't understand it either.

Calvin brought up food and Reid nodded, standing up. "Yeah. Mac and cheese and a bottle of pop for you on the stove. We'll watch a movie. A funny one." She strolled over to the rack of movies and began thumbing through them, still nervous about upsetting his friend. "Uh, Cal?" he asked, still looking at the movies. Carefully, he asked, "What movie do you want?"

With the subtraction of the comforting weight of Reid's grip on his arms - that presence which acted as a tether, holding Calvin above the treacherous waters that awaited him - Calvin drowned. And in his attempt to climb to a sitting position on the sofa once more, he fell and lay flat in a tangled mess of haphazardly dangling limbs.

His chest began to restrict beneath his splayed fingers as Calvin's hands came to rest across his stomach. What was this sensation; so desperate and empty? Breath...

"Chase..." He exhaled dreamily as his consciousness faltered. But the damage had already been done, and thus with a heavy head hung over the couch's arm, Calvin drifted.

Reid had been one of those children who always knew when they were having a nightmare. He would slip and fall, turn around, and see the monster getting closer and closer and his brain would suddenly realize that it was all a dream. Still, the fear was real enough. Most kids learned how to wake themselves up or grew braver knowing there would be absolutely no consequences for facing these horrors since they realized that none of it was really real.

Reid, however loyal and snarky as he was, had never been brave. During those nightmares, he had turned from the fake monster and closed his eyes, until he finally looked back to see it take him in its jaws. Reid was just not a tough guy. In every 'fight' he had ever been in, he had only used one move. Cower. In a video game, there was not a cower button. Reid was not proud of his cowardice, especially being a Gryffindor. He had been cocky enough to look brave, and perhaps that had been a bravery in itself. But Reid was a very scared young man.

And he had never been more terrified than now. That was why he had busied himself with the movies, because it was easier. It was safer. Seeing Calvin in his state was horror. But when he heard his friend collapse and call out to the woman who could never answer again, Reid's sense of loyalty spun him around and sent him clambering for his friend, for his brother. He pulled his friend up and wrapped his arm's around him in a bear hug. "It's okay," he said gruffly, trying to forget his own memories with Chase. "I'm still here, mate."