Blasphemy

The sun beats down on the face of the small boy, the bath of warmth bringing a smile to his face as he breathes in the cool, fresh air of the meadow surrounding him.

He reaches his hands to the sky, shielding his young eyes from the blinding rays of the sun to give himself a better view of the white, fluffy clouds above him. His fingers point and trace the moving figures, quickly painting the images in his minds before the wind forced him to say goodbye to the ones he would never see again and hello to the newer ones in his vision, only to repeat the process again.

His brown eyes dance happily across the sky, capturing every object that comes into view, taking a mental picture for the endless book of memories in his head. If he doesn’t take a picture of the plane flying by, he will never remember all the people that he saw but never met on that day. If he doesn’t photograph the bird soaring overhead, he will never remember where it began and where it was going.

He has to remember.

He has to remember all the good of today, so he can forget all the bad of tomorrow.

The trees sway in the wind, their leaves whispering a hushed lullaby in each rattle and shake to the brown-eyed boy in the field of flowers a few yards behind his house, and he can’t help but feel his eyes sink with heaviness, no matter how hard he tries to fight the sensation.

This is his peace, his sanctuary, with his eyes trained on the bright blue sky, tracing each nomadic cloud and watching every fleeing bird. It felt almost as though he were on another planet, a planet that only he and nature inhabited.

Mother nature whispers her deepest secrets and joys into his ear through the blades of grass beside him, and he whispers his into the air, allowing the wind to carry his hidden tale up to her home in the sky.

He can feel her unconditional love when he touches her earth, digging his small fingers into her roots and allowing his coveted emotions to plant and grow in his place. Spreading throughout his fanciful world.

In his solitary world, there are no worries. 

There is only happiness.The young boy closes his eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun slowly fade as a large cloud shields his body from the beating rays. With his sense of sight retiring, he becomes acutely aware of the strengthening on the others.

His hands seem to feel every divet and streak on the flower in the palm of his hands; His olfactory can recognize the intermingling smell of fresh water and grass, and quickly places the information into the schema of “Home”.

His ears, however, become his strongest asset. Alongside the dancing trees, he can hear every conversation between the birds perched in the tree, every song the insects in the sod of the earth play in their tiny orchestra. But out of the cacophony of noises, he can clearly hear the rhythmic crushing of grass a few feet away from him, signifying an incoming intruder to his sanctuary.

He has yet to open his eyes, even when the crunching gets closer then stops once the foreigner comes near him. The person suddenly grunts as they sit down next to the boy, and eventually lay down beside him, touching their shoulder to his and releasing a sigh of contentment.

The two lay in silence, enjoying the array of sounds the outer world had made for them. 

After a while, the young boy cracks open one eye, then quickly puts his hand on his forehead to shield his single eye from the emerging sun. He lolls his head to the side, focusing his gaze onto the stranger.

His mother lies beside him, her eyes closed and her chest slowly rising and falling in tandem with the breeze of the trees, blissfully unaware of her son’s fixed gaze on her. Her face is clear of any scrunched-up features, the lines between her eyebrows and around her mouth smoothed out, under the glow of the light.

She reminds him of the color yellow. Not a dark yellow, but a bright one that fills the room with joy and provides a lightness to people and reminds him of only good things.

The boy is blue, like cerulean, or so his mom says. She says it’s rich and heavy but still a beautiful color that can express every hidden emotion, no matter the occasion. 

“You’re my favorite color.” She told the boy at the dinner table, after he talked rambunctiously about his newly acquired knowledge on primary colors.

“And together, we make green!” He told her, a wide smile on his face.

She looks like an angel.

He’s always been told that he looks like his mother. He took it as a compliment, always finding his mother to be very beautiful, and the many anecdotes told by the few friends and family they had, only reassured that belief.

She was young, younger than most mothers at his school by a wide margin, and while she always received strange looks, she never dwelled on them for too long. She always kept her head high, continuing on with her path, holding her son’s hand proudly.

(She wouldn’t find out until later that he’s always been aware of the strange looks people give her. And it wouldn’t be until much later when she learned that the carefree attitude that she exhibited is what shaped her son into the young man that he was.)

He would always hear adults discussing behind closed doors how they weren’t able to understand how she did it—he’s not entirely sure what it means—but he was able to see almost immediately, that while there was a unanimous agreement to treat his mother as an outcast in their town, there was also a deep rooted respect for her.

Living in a small town doesn’t grant you many immunities; If one person knows a detail about you, the rest of the town is going to know. This posed a problem for a young, single mother who was less than inclined to talk about her upbringings with friendly, albeit, nosy neighbors.

When passing on the street, people manage to always give he and his mother a sideways glance and a sneer, as though she had done a horrible crime before his birth that they were unable to forgive.

He remembers asking his mother about it once, but she had told him it was nothing to worry about. 

He still worried.

His mother, despite her beauty and her wisdom and her generosity and her sense of humor, didn’t have many close friends in the small town of Green Back on the outskirts of Georgia. She only had one (one that he actually liked) and that was Pete.

Pete was the only person in town who never gave them a strange look. In fact, he didn’t even look at them when they first arrived to the small town. The rough man just drank his coffee and continued to read the newspaper at his table.

Everyone in the town had said the same thing about the strange man: He wandered into town and never left. No one seemed to question his sudden appearance, nor did they try to divulge into it, they simply let the man be.

He understands why. The man appears to be the definition of danger. He has a strong stature, not too unlike the men the boy used to see in the fitness magazines at the front rack in line to checkout at the grocery store. He wears loose shirts, interchanging between grey and black and no other color, that shows the muscles on the man’s arms that are larger than the boy’s head. 

Pete walks with a swagger, something he would have never noticed had his mother not brought it up. She said he must have been in the military with the way he walks, taking long strides and holding his body with a dark confidence, as though he’s proud of the work he’s done and yet would never come outright with it. Pete didn’t understand at first, but after close inspection (AKA, “discreetly” watching the man whenever he passed by in town) he soon was able to grasp the concept of his mother’s words. 

Pete’s shoulders were always hunched over displaying a weaker disposition, but his arms swayed with an unspoken power. Pete underestimates himself with the hunch of his shoulders, but boasts to everyone watching with the strength of his arms.

It was a fascinating thing to see, so fascinating that the boy ended up mimicking his walk.

The boy found himself infatuated with Pete, the man who he could only describe as the color green. A dark, forest green that holds a deep character in it that is just dying to be let out, and yet it maintains its smooth exterior on the easel. 

He felt a connection to the man he didn’t know and, much to his mother’s chagrin, he forced himself into the man’s life with full speed ahead.

While his mother was at the building next door, buying some supplies to fix a leak in their new house, the young boy wandered over to the diner almost breaking the door off its hinges when he saw Pete sitting at his usually seat, drinking a cup of coffee. The boy quickly gathered his cool, and sauntered his way over to the man’s table, trying his hardest to hunch over his shoulders and stiffen his arms in homage to the man.

(Pete saw the boy coming out of the hardware store from a mile away, preparing himself as he saw the boy pose himself like an ostrich and stroll his way to him. Pete tries to not laugh.)

The young boy stood in front of Pete’s table, waiting for the man’s acknowledgment, only to not receive it. The boy readjusted his chest, puffing it out a bit more in hopes that the man would complement his physique.

Pete sipped his coffee, keeping his eyes on his newspaper.

The boy sighed, dropping the ridiculous mimicry and slumping his body, dejectedly moving into the booth seat across from Pete.

The boy propped his head on his elbow, picking at the napkins in the container next to the grey and white bottles representing salt and pepper. He lets out another sigh, a much louder and dramatic one, glancing at Pete once again to see if he caught his attention.

The man still has his hard eyes fixated on the newspaper.

The boy sucks his teeth, straightening his body in the seat and crossing his arms over his chest, “It’s rude to ignore people.”

Pete flips a page in his newspaper, his gaze moving upward as he scans the new words on the page, “’s also rude to stare at people.”

The boy’s eyebrows draw together, his lips puckering along with them, “I don’t stare.”

Pete lowers his newspaper, revealing the lower half of his face to show the dark, coarse beard on his jaw. He raises an eyebrow at the boy, telling the boy with one motion that Pete was aware of his “discreet inspections”.

The boy feels blood rush through his face and it pinches and pokes at the skin there. He tries to diffuse the feeling by aggressively rubbing at his nose, to no avail. It only serves to make the blood pump even faster and leave him with a sore nose.

“I wasn’t… staring. I was just watching.”

Pete folds his newspaper up, laying the item on the side of the table and leaning his forearms on the table, leveling his eyesight with the boy’s, “Still the same thing.”

The boy opens his mouth to retort, but find his voice dying when Pete raises his eyebrow once again at him. Pete gives him a smirk, letting out a light chuckle as he picks up the mug of coffee and places it against his lips.

Pete has a certain grace to him that is hard to pinpoint. He’s not graceful like the boy’s mother, but he has a purpose with each movement that captivates the boy. He has a certain air about him that reeks authority and commands respect, but the smile on his face and the glint in his eyes shows there is something more… meaningful about the man.

He was pink inside. A beautiful, soft pink.

The boy shakes his head free of his thoughts and rubs his deep blush away before thrusting his small hand across the table, his hand open for a shake.

“I’m Jonah,” he says confidently, a closed lip smile accompanying the phrase.

Pete glances down to the open hand in front of him, looking back up to the boy in question, then looking back down at it. Pete places his hand in the boy’s, firmly grabbing it and shaking it. The boy squeezes back with an equally strong grasp.

“Pete,” the handshake lasts for only two shakes before they remove their hands from one another.

“I know.”

“That’s quite grip you got there.”“My uncle said that’s how men shake hands. It lets them know I mean business,” Jonah shrugs, stretching his arms across the table to grab the newspaper that Pete had put down. He opens the large paper, examining the bold lettering at the top and the many pictures that accompany it.

The newspaper is too large for him to handle. The top of the paper is folding downwards onto his head, and the entirety of the paper covers his body from Pete’s view, but the boy doesn’t seem to mind it. He’s perfectly fine reading about proposed policies on tax cuts that he knows nothing about.

What the boy doesn’t see, is a heading on the front page of the newspaper under the directory guiding the readers to the different pages of the different stories that says:

THE SEARCH FOR FRANK CASTLE CONTINUES.

Pete instinctively lowers his head, hiding his face from the people passing by the window beside him. A chill runs down his spine at the words, providing a bitter reminder to the poor man.

Pete stares off to the side, watching the hands on the wall clock tick with each passing second. It’s barely even ten o’ clock yet, “You eat yet, Jonah?”

Jonah, seemingly bored with the articles, suddenly slams the newspaper down, not bothering to fold it and crinkling the material in his closed fists. He stares at Pete with wide eyes, his raised eyebrows subtly lifting the grey beanie on his head.

Pete was in the diner for so long, he seemed to forgot that the weather of the outside world indicated the forthcoming tides of winter. Jonah’s winter jacket is large, large enough to keep him warm, but also makes the boy puff up in his seat. 

Jonah shakes his head rather aggressively, adjusting the beanie on his head. Jonah stays quiet at the implied offer, although his eyes convey his wants and desires so clearly to Pete. If it weren’t for his mother’s teachings about manners, Pete suspects the young boy would have already asked for a meal.

Pete grabs a menu from the end of the table, placing it in front of the boy, “Order what you want.”

The boy takes a double glance, as if he were asking for permission to look at the menu. When Pete nods his head, the boy eagerly opens the menu, his eyes widely scanning each item with a vivacity that reminds Pete of another boy he knew.

And that’s when Pete knew he was hooked.

From that point on, Jonah was drawn to the gruff looking man with a permanently broken nose, following him around like an overexcited puppy, asking questions upon questions about anything. Pete never seemed too happy about the boy’s constant presence, but he surely didn’t push him away. He let the boy pester him and invade his personal space because he was just that: a boy.

A boy with his heart on his sleeve and curiosity in his eyes.

He was a handful no doubt, almost feeling sympathetic to the kid’s mother until he actually met her. A young woman, but she had a fire and determination in her eyes that let Pete know, she knew exactly what she’s doing. 

She apologized to him on behalf of her son’s poor manners, and assured him that he would no longer be bothering Pete anymore. Pete, of course, denied the idea that the boy was disturbing his peace, stating that the boy was quickly becoming a part of his everyday routine and he would hate to see him go.

He didn’t miss the apprehension in her eyes, the very obvious suspicion about the intent of this man battling in her deep orbs, but the sweet smile on her face never leaving.

With no reason, other than faith alone, she allowed to man into her son’s life, and by association, hers too. Pete quickly became a staple in the duo’s daily schedules, eating dinner together, going into town together.

Pete became an irreplaceable figure in their lives within a span of a few months, scaring not only Pete to the bottom of his core, but the mother too.

Jonah, on the other hand, was all too excited at the new member of the family, having been so used to it just being his mother and him.

Despite having to move to a new town and a new house once again, life was quickly becoming good for Jonah and his mother, something he knew he should take advantage of while he had it.

The young boy is startled out of his reverie, remembering his location and the subject of his intense gaze. His stare focuses in on his mother, and he soon realizes that she also has one eye cracked open, with a hand on her forehead, and a loving gaze set upon his face.

She gives him a sweet smile that he readily reciprocated as he scoots himself closer into his mother’s body. She lifts her arm up, placing her soft hand onto his head, and gently stroking his hair.

“Penny for your thoughts?” She asks him, the soft timbre releasing an indescribable wave of tranquility over the boy’s soul, and he suddenly has to redesign the other world he had dreamed of. In his other world, his planet of peace, he wants only himself, nature, and his mother. The only things that would grant him eternal happiness.

Oh, and Pete too. Pete makes him happy. Even if the man seems grumpy half the time.

He lifts his hand to the sky, a short finger pointing at the slowly moving cloud above the two, “That cloud looks like a monkey riding a surfboard.”

“Huh,” she replies, her hand still undergoing the peaceful motions through his hair, “I thought it was a bunny climbing a mountain.”

Jonah very quickly sits up, his face scrunching up in confusion, obviously offended by her observation. His head blocks the sun in her eyes, and she is able to fully open her eyes under his shadow, smiling at his incredulous expression.

“Why would a bunny be climbing a mountain?”

“Why would a monkey be riding a surfboard?”

“Monkeys are bipedal,” he says matter of factly, as though everyone else in the world knew of this bit of information and it was just his mother who decided to not board the train heading to “Infinite facts about monkeys” station, “They also have more of a brain than bunnies do, so it would make more sense that a monkey would ride a surfboard, than a bunny climbing a mountain.”

“Ah,” she says, raising her eyebrows in amusement. Her son nods his head, satisfied with his point before laying himself back into the embrace of his mother on the grass.

“What if it was a small mountain?”

“Mom!”

“I’m just asking!”

The boy gives a dramatic sigh of frustration, rolling onto his side with his back facing his mother and crossing his arms.

“Oh, come on, Einstein,” she giggles, wrapping her arms around the boy’s stomach and pulling his body back to her, “’m just teasing. Does being smart make you a party pooper?”

“I’m not a party pooper,” he says defiantly, squirming out of his mother’s grasp.

“Are you sure?” she asks, the smile very evident in her voice as she starts to wiggle her fingers around his stomach, earning reluctant laughs from her son.

“No! Mom! Stop! Mommy!” the boy pleads when her fingers begin to tickle the boy, pinning him down to the ground and holding him still for her incessant torture. She releases him once his laughs turn silent, and tears are streaming down his face.

Her laughs mix with his gasping ones as he tries to regain his breath, but still feeling the effects of her fingers. She is propped over him, her elbow holding her up and she leans over her son. She leans down and places a few kisses on his check and forehead, before moving back to her spot on the grass.

The silence that resumes between them is comfortable, and for a brief moment, the young boy forgets his reason for having to escape to his sanctuary in the first place.

But, of course, happiness can never stay too long before being interrupted. The thoughts plague him once again, and he is reminded by the horrible truth of reality: Not everything is perfect.

“Mama?” The young boy questions.

“Hmm?” She answers.

“Why do you love me?” His voice is quiet, a very sharp contrast to his confidence displayed during his trivia, and automatically draws the attention of his mother. There’s a slight shake to his voice, like an unsteady bridge linking two separate spaces together over a deep chasm. It’s a light tremble, not too noticeable to a regular person, but glaringly obvious to a mother. He’s hesitant.

“Why do I love you?” she takes a deep breath, unsure of how to approach the question, “That’s a tough one.”

She could talk for years about the many things she loves about her son, about the deep love she has for the young boy of twelve years who solidified her love from the first moment she saw him. She could talk about how powerful her love is, but she doesn’t think it will ever truly encapsulate just how strong she feels it for him.

“Well,” she begins, her voice treading lightly as she tries to discover the answer, “I could say I love you because you’re my son, but I think that’s the easy way out.”

Jonah scoffs, rolling his eyes at no one in particular before turning his head to look at his mother, “That’s not even a good answer.”

She lift her head to rest on her propped up hand, brushing her fingers against his round cheek and slightly furrowing her eyebrows, “Why not? It’s the truth.”

“I’m dad’s son, and he doesn’t love me.”

All the playfulness seems to drain out of her body in an instant at his words, her eyes becoming steely as she stares into his pained ones. Her tongue dries up, all saliva suddenly vacant from her mouth and she can do nothing but stare at the young boy with a slightly agape mouth, and hesitant features.

He responds to his mother’s sudden apprehension with a slight shrug of his shoulders, “It’s okay. It’s not a big deal."She sits up, her back straightening and towering over his supine body, 

"It is a very big deal. Why would you say that? Does he– did he do something?”

Jonah shrugs his shoulders again, “He forgot my birthday. Again.”

“Well, that could be anything.”

“He doesn’t call me when he says he will.”

“He could just be busy.”

“Mom, he’s had to reschedule our weekends six times.”

“…I got nothing for that.”

Jonah lets out a sigh, folding his hands over his chest and closing his eyes once again, “He doesn’t want me around. I get it. He chose to not want me, you didn’t. You got stuck with me.”

The mother’s eyes soften as she stares at her son’s face, and she gently grabs his jaw, turning his face towards her, her beautiful face meeting his charming one, “I didn’t get stuck with you. I chose you.”

“Why?” he whispers, and she can hear the choking in his throat and see the tears welling up in his eyes, “Why didn’t he want me?”

“Oh, baby,” she coos, taking the young boy into her arms and holding him tightly as the sobs rack his body and subsequently shake her. She squeezes him harder, as if it will force all the negative feelings of insecurity to ooze out of his body into the floor, as if her arms will protect him from the outside world.

She knew a day like this would come, where Jonah would realize that his deadbeat father’s inconsistencies would turn against her precious son, forcing depressing thoughts into his innocent mind. 

No one should ever have to think they aren’t good enough for a parent. 

She wishes she never allowed the man into her baby’s life. She wished she would’ve never told him she was pregnant, and let him live his life in ignorant bliss. But a small mistake eventually turns into a bigger one, and she’s left with having to deal with the repercussions of introducing her son to his father.

“Your father was never ready to be a dad. He still isn’t,” she says against the hair on his head, listening to his shaking sobs slowly quiet down and feeling his fingers tighten around her arm, “And even though he tries to see you and tries to be what he thinks a father should be, sometimes it falls short.”

His trembling slowly ceases, and he lies in his mother’s arms, lying witness to her soothing voice as he watches the sun slowly start to return to its resting place beyond the clouds.

“You shouldn’t be in the middle of his problems. He should always be making time for you, and if you don’t want to see him this weekend, just tell me and I’ll keep you home.”

“No,” he croaks out, his chest rising and falling deeply as he struggles to regain his sense of self, “I want to see him.”

He sits up before his mother, his beautiful doe eyes staring into her worried ones, the setting sun providing a beautiful glow over his body that she can only resemble him to an angel.

“I’m not a problem that he can avoid forever."He gives a self-assuring nod, before turning his head to look back towards the sky– the bright orange, endless sky. His mother keeps her eyes trained on the young boy as she wonders, just how much pain she has to ready herself for.

Jonah puts his large duffel bag onto the dining table with a small grunt, adjusting the navy-blue jacket on his shoulders with a shrug, before glancing up at you with a small smile. 

It looked sadder than he had anticipated.

"You got everything?” A voice calls out to him, and his attention is suddenly focused on the man leaning against the island behind him. The man has his arms crossed, his muscles bulging through his grey shirt and his iron eyes studying the young boy.

And all at once, Jonah feels vulnerable under the man’s gaze, as though he were stripped of his clothing and laid naked in front of the adult, his soul subject to his judgement. It makes him swallow and quickly avert his eyes to avoid the judgment of the man as though he were God in that moment, deciding his fate.

But the man isn’t God, not anything close to it. 

He has the scars that reiterate his mortality, and an unspoken edge to him that resembles one of the devil, himself.

Pete is no heavenly being, he is all earth and everything under it, Jonah knew that for a fact, even if Pete never said anything to him.

He just didn’t know to what extent. Not yet anyways.

Jonah nods his head, training his eyes back to the duffel bag and muttering a “yeah” under his breath. He watches his mother stand up from her seat at the mahogany dining table, moving to the duffle bag and unzipping it, examining the contents inside.

“Are you sure?” She asks him, taking the folded clothes out and moving others around to look, counting the pairs of outfits in her head, “It’s a whole week, you don’t want to forget anything.”

Pete pushes himself off of the counter, coming to stand at the other side of Jonah, peering into the duffel bag as well, “You got your toothbrush?" 

"Yep,” Jonah pops the ‘p’ with his mouth.

“Do you have enough underwear?” She questions, her tone becoming more of a frantic mother as she continues to remove the pairs of clothes in the bag and place them on the table. 

“Yes ma'am.”

“Socks?" 

"Uh-huh.”

“Deodorant?”

“Ma–”

“Your sunglasses?"Jonah turns his head to the side, meeting his eyes with Pete’s, who stands beside him with an amused smile on his face. 

”(Y/N),“ Pete’s voice calls out to her, her attention quickly torn away from the pile of various colored clothes and items on the table to their inquiring stares. A heat floods her cheeks at the realization of her brief entrance to panic, and she sharply turns her head back to the duffel bag and begins to put the clothes neatly back in order.

"Sorry,” she shyly laughs, “’m just worried, is all.”

Jonah reaches over the table, grabbing a blue folded t-shirt and helping his mother place the clothes back into the bag, “Are you sure you want me to go?”

“I should be asking you that,” she glances at him from the side, smirking at the young boy. He returns the same smirk, the action almost identical to his mother’s.

“Yes, mom, I want to go.”

“Okay then,” she bobs her head, putting the last shirt in and zipping the duffel bag up, “Then I want you to go. Even if you are leaving me for a week and I have to be in this house all alone and pretend to be happy about it.”

Her lower lip protrudes, her face contorting into a pout. Jonah playfully shakes his head, a grin on his face before he wraps his arms around his mother’s torso, burying his face there. She quickly embraces him, tightening her hold around him and placing her lips upon his head.

“It’s only a couple of days,” he states, voice muffled by the fabric of her shirt, “I’ll be back before you know it. Besides, Pete is gonna take care of you. I made him promise.”

She keeps him in her arms, placing her cheek on his head, her eyes briefly meeting Pete’s who stands watching the two with a look that she could only describe as longing–longing for what?– and a tiny curl of his lips. He hangs his head down, breaking the connection with her.

“I’ll hold you to that, kiddo.” She whispers, keeping her focus on the side of the Pete’s face, watching his solemn features deepen under the shadows as he separates himself from them.

He stays a distance away, not wanting to intrude on a moment of a family that he was very much a stranger of. He thinks that if he keeps his head down long enough, it would grant them enough privacy to embrace and love one another as they say their goodbyes.

Because this isn’t his family. He’s brutally reminded of that every time he looks at Jonah, with dark eyes– not unlike his own– and a smile all too similar to his mother’s, with a mind too smart and too wise that’s beyond normal for a boy of only twelve years.

The connection between the mother and son is obvious to anyone even looking around the room, their bond strengthened by their years of solitude and hardship that shaped how they both grew up. It’s then that Pete realizes that (Y/N) was just a kid when she had a baby, no older than 16 at max having to raise a baby by herself.

But she did a good job. 

She did a great job.

So yeah, this isn’t his family, far from it in all qualifying aspects, but he finds that he doesn’t mind it as much as he used to. 

In some twisted ways, he finds himself enjoying them more and more, betraying the ones of his past and slowly embracing the ones of the future.

He tries to keep himself detached in every way, but when she brings him into the quiet embrace between her and her son, and pulls his body close to her warm one and grips onto the back of his shirt as though he would float off if she didn’t, he can’t help but be pulled closer.

He wants to resist, but at the same time, stay in the embrace for as long as they’ll let him because Lord knows he needs it.

Pete stands in the irregular circle the three of them have made, and gently holds on to them, encircling his arms around the two smaller individuals. He can feel Jonah move his head between the two adults’ stomachs, before pulling his head out from the wall of bodies to take a dramatic gasp of air.

His hair is ruffled as he gulps for air, earning a small chuckle from his mother, that vibrates through Pete from proximity alone.

“Geez!” Jonah exclaims, his eyes widening as he glances from his mother to Pete then back to his mother, “Are you guys trying to kill me?”

(Y/N) extends her arm, brushing Jonah’s hair into its place with a dreamlike expression on her face that only arrives when she looks at her son. It’s a sweet look that Pete can’t seem to tear his eyes away from.

“We’re trying to get you to stay,” she says, looking over to Pete—whom she was still hugging tightly—and it forced Pete to suck in a quick breath, trying to tame whatever the hell was running through his blood.

Her eyes sparkle and stare into his soul which sends numerous chills down his spine. He feels uncomfortable at how close they are, as he can feel her chest rise and fall against his and their faces are close enough to suggest something intimate to anyone unaware of what was happening. 

He can feel his body break out into a cold sweat. 

He knows this feeling.

Oh man, does he know this feeling. 

He has to get away.

He only briefly becomes aware at the meaning of her statement when she raises an eyebrow at him.

We. He and I. You and I. We. Together.

His heart pumps faster.

“Right Pete?” She asks him, her smile spreading even further across her face, almost blinding his retinas from how dazzling it was, and he has to avert his eyes over to Jonah for relief. 

He doesn’t get any.

The boy stares at him with an imperceptible stare, with his eyes slightly narrowed and his focus solely on Pete. He stares like he knows something that Pete doesn’t, as though he could see everything Pete was feeling in those few seconds like he was a pop-up book. Despite his closed lips, Jonah seems to relay only one message to Pete in that moment:

Answer her.

Pete looks back to (Y/N), forcing an equally charming smile onto his face as he fixates at her innocent one, “I do whatever you tell me to, ma'am.”

She barks out a laugh, softly hitting his shoulder with her free hand before letting go of him and heading towards the pantry in the kitchen. Pete can only watch her go, feeling a flutter in his stomach at her laugh.

“You’re ridiculous, Pete.”

She opens the pantry door and begins to rummage through the contents there, pulling out an arrangement of pasta boxes and jars of sauce.

“Alright then,” she turns her body to face the two guys in her kitchen, “Let’s cook some dinner before your dad gets here, shall we?”

“Sure,” Jonah replies. His mother nods her head happily, turning her body to the stove to begin cooking. Pete can feel Jonah’s gaze on him once again, and when he turns head to meet it, he is once again seeing those young, perceptive eyes that seem to know every secret Pete’s ever had. It’s unsettling.

Those eyes don’t belong to a 12-year-old; Those are the eyes God.

Judgmental, soulful, wise.

Pete needs to leave before things gets worse. He has to separate himself before they know, before he gets attached. He has to–

“Are you boys gonna stand there all day, or are you gonna help me?” (Y/N) calls, looking over her shoulder to them. 

The trance between them is broken and Jonah seemingly reverts back into himself as he happily goes over to his mother, grabbing a wooden spoon and helping her stir the pot.

“C'mon Pete,” Jonah says from his spot beside his mother, “We need you.”

And just like that, Pete is suddenly given another reason to stay. Another reason to prolong the torture. Another reason to betray.

Is this his torture? His consequence for all the things he’s done wrong? Is this what he has to deal with as penance for his sins? Is this his Hell?

He watches as the two jokingly begin to stir the pot of pasta, eagerly calling to Pete to join them in their cooking, smile bright and laughter filling the room. This is the semblance of the past he used to know; This is the beginning of a family.

If this is his Hell, then he’s ready to burn.