Chapter Text
Savacir stood outside his father’s office, his back pressed so firmly to the wall he could feel the sharp jut of his bones scrape against its surface through his shirt. Being mainly a faculty floor, the hallway was barren, only the odd student rushing through with their fingers curled tight around the straps of their backpack as they returned from or made their way to a staff office to be no doubt berated. Many students, including him, had just received their mid-term tests back, and so, consequently, the air was thick with disappointment and the weight of resitting tests that were so monotonous it made you mad to even have to do them once, let alone twice.
He licked across his teeth and swallowed once, his lip twitching minutely at the lingering taste of tobacco, a faint reminder of the cigarette he’d huffed down behind the building. Or, attempted to, for a janitor had spotted him and scolded him - the university, in all its pro-health, hippie grandiosity, had a strict no smoking on the grounds rule, and so smokers like him were forced to huddle in dark corners for even a brief respite. He saw the janitor’s face in his mind, a sour old crone, and the thought of her manifested on his face as a foul grimace. Didn’t she know who he was, anyway? He should be able to smoke where he liked in this damn place, seeing as he was already being kept prisoner here.
Exhaling deeply, ridding himself momentarily of his hatred, he looked down at the carpet, and the chair next to him that he’d refused to sit in out of nerves alone. He couldn’t sit, or lounge, not now, not when he was about to face the dragon in its den. In his peripheral, he spotted his shaking hands, pale and lithe, and curled them into fists, digging crescent moons into his palm as he yearned desperately for the half of the cigarette he’d been forced to stub out and throw away.
His phone buzzed, and he flinched, before looking up quickly to see if anyone had spotted. Hallway empty, as usual. He sighed and pulled his phone out.
His lockscreen was a landscape picture of a running stream and the grassy shore that led down to it. Not by his own choice, of course, but his friend, Favian, had somehow deciphered his password and broken into his phone to take the picture and made it his lockscreen before tossing it back to him, stating some nonsense about how ‘He needed something natural in his life’. Savacir hadn’t had the energy to change it back to the default or change his password.
Just two notifications. One read: ‘Smoke later? B)’. His thumb hovered over it, contemplating replying, but the other caught his eye and he quickly swiped it away with a grimace. He had bigger things to think about than getting high, unlike some.
‘Come in.’
He sucked in a breath, and bit his cheek. He never bit his lips, it didn’t do good for his looks, but the insides of his cheeks were mauled, torn by ever-gnawing teeth. Hurriedly, he shoved his phone back in his pocket and lugged his bag off the ground, turning to push open the door of his father’s office, steeling his sharpened features as it creaked.
“Sit down.”
He hadn’t even had the chance to lift his head. He turned, shut the door carefully, dropped his bag by the chair opposite to his father’s desk, and lowered himself solemnly into it before he dared look up.
It happened every time, it should’ve softened in its intensity over the years, but every time he looked at his father his mind was tormented with a flurry of images, the full eighteen years of his life cycling through his thoughts before settling on the current moment. To him, his father was abstract, like a Picasso portrait, a being made up of disdain, fat fingers, yellowed nails, slitted eyes with blackened irises, crescent glasses hanging low on a pig nose, nothing like the hooked, avian nose he himself had inherited from his mother. He had a cigar shoved between downturned lips, and ash had somehow gotten atop his heavy stache, making the hairs look greyer than they already were.
The office mimicked his father’s unpleasantness. Monotone furniture with sharp edges, faded carpet, blinds drawn so light had to fight its way through the gaps and most of the light came from the stale overhead light. It was clinical.
“‘Savacir Kroqis Jr.’.” His father paused to clear his throat, tapping a stack of papers on the desk as he began to read from the one atop the pile. Savacir felt his mouth dry out, and cursed smoking for making the phlegm in his throat worse. He ached to speak, defend himself, but he knew it’d be useless, and he didn’t put it past his father to hit him in the privacy of his office, grown as he may be.
“‘Savacir Kroqis Jr. Business Studies. D.’” His father let the grade hang in the heavy silence between them. A clock on the wall ticked once, twice, thrice, and, unable to take it, unsure of what was expected of him, Savacir opened his mouth, his attention focused on the wall just behind his father’s head, hoping he could pretend to be staring back at him.
“I can explain, I-” He started, dry mouth making him croak. Internally, he cursed his father for not having the decency to at least open a window when smoking. It was midday, the sun was glaring, it was too hot to bask in cigar smoke inside. More evidence he could catalogue to further convince himself his father wasn’t human.
“Shut up.”
He shut up.
His father stood up in a dilatory manner, reaching for his varnished, steel-tipped cane, and, with the grace of a three-legged swine, limped his way around the grand, mahogany desk to stand by his chair. His father was only thirty-nine, but abuse of drink and drugs had gotten to him young, and health issues had quickly left him crippled. Not killed him, as Savacir had so prayed, instead just equipped him with a tool with which to smack him with. Sometimes, Savacir was certain his father had gotten his cane steel-tipped for that purpose alone.
As he approached, he went on.
“I put money into this shithole. I sent you here as an example. Who’s name is that on the paper?" He grumbled, coming to stand beside his son so he could leer down at him.
Savacir fought the instinctual urge to sink down into the wood, and briefly yearned for the ground to swallow him up and drag him down. If he suffocated under there, it’d surely be a better and overall more pleasant experience than this. Yet, being scrutinised under the eye of a predator who derived a sick sort of joy out of noticing every one of his nervous ticks, no matter how small, he straightened his back and swallowed thickly.
“Mine..?” He said, uncertain if it was a trick question.
“No!” His father spat, and Savacir felt the fear of a little boy rattle his heart, “It’s mine. So to see it paired with such pitiful results only sours my image and convinces me once more that enrolling you here has been more a wound on my reputation than anything good!”
“I’m sorry-” Savacir began, averting his gaze momentarily to alleviate some of the searing pain that narrowed glare brought to him.
“Shut up! Your voice...it grates the same way your whining bitch of a mother’s does. Spare me the excuses.” His father waved a hand around, exasperated, looking around as though a joke was being played on him, before he placed two hands atop the handle of his cane and rested his weight atop it so he could lower his head and Savacir could smell his tobacco, whiskey-laced breath and feel the heat of it smack him in the cheek, “You reek of smoke. You mope around uselessly. Mr. Lions caught me in the hallway, and I knew he was about to waste my time drivelling on about my incompetent, sorry excuse for a son, and he did! You know what he said?”
Savacir nodded, his face still as he focused intently on a web in the corner of the ceiling, a flimsy structure that swayed from the smallest of breezes. He heard more than saw his father scrunch his report sheet up in his hand.
“He said you hadn’t attended a single class on Friday. A single one. Do you know how that looks, paired with this shit grade?”
A pause, as if he expected Savacir to say something. Savacir wouldn’t fall for it, his thin lips pursed into a line.
“It makes you look fucking incompetent, and in turn, me!” His father took a breath, unable to yell for as long as he used to, his lungs blackened and frail. He leaned back, turned his head away, and shook it, dramatically, his nose scrunched like he’d just smelled something particularly foul.
Savacir flickered his gaze briefly to his father’s face, spotting the string of spit that connected his father’s lips as he opened his mouth to speak yet again, and he was too slow to turn his head and pretend he hadn’t been looking as his father returned his attention to him, so, like a cornered rat, he had to face his mistake and look his father in the eyes. Empty, so incredibly empty of everything but rage, simmering constantly.
“Get your shit together! …Another incident like this, and I might as well take you out of my will and leave you on the street, you fucking leech. Do you understand?”
Savacir nodded, quickly taking his bottom lip between his teeth and biting it harshly as he felt it threaten to tremble. He wasn’t sure which gesture was worse, because either way an unmatched disdain lit up once again in his father’s stare.
“Answer me! Don’t just stare at me like you’re slow.”
“I understa-”
As soon as he made the mistake of obeying, his father thrust the crumpled up piece of paper, made slightly damp from where it’d sat clenched in his fist, collecting palm sweat, into his mouth, causing him to choke and splutter. He spat it out into his hands, chest heaving, bones aching from the adrenaline, and stared at the wet ball of paper in his trembling palms as he listened to the uneven steps of his father walking back to his armchair. He was grumbling about a useless something or other, but Savacir couldn’t focus on the words through the blood roaring in his ears. It’d been a long time since his father had done something so visceral like that. He would’ve preferred to be clipped upside the head. Parts of his gums hurt from where the sharp edges had stabbed into them.
Through the haze, though, he heard, said more mellow now, like his father had had enough for one day, “You’re doing extra credit to fix this mess. Go to A-304, it starts at one.. Try not to draw any attention to yourself. It’s not where you’re meant to be, not in this family.”
He looked at the clock. It was one-fifteen.
Closing his hand around the paper, he stuffed it into his pocket and stood up on legs that trembled slightly, though he fought to compose himself and nodded, picking up his bag with one hand and using the other to push his hair out of his eyes.
“Okay.” He said, voice flat, and left the office.
The walk to Building A was nightmarish, the hallways and paths flooded with the hustle and bustle of students free from class and making their way to extra curricular or to waste time with a fruitless social life. All Savacir could think about was how much he hated them all. Every damn laugh, or nudge to his shoulder as someone ignorantly hurried past him, it pulled his nerves tight and made him want to drop to his knees in the middle of the path and tear his hair and teeth out in a freeing display of all his irritation bursting forth.
He didn’t, of course. Just lit another cigarette as he walked between buildings and ignored the perplexed looks he got along the way. If that janitor found him again, he’d tell her right where she could stick it.
By the time he got to the third floor of Building A, he felt hot and his shirt collar felt tight around his neck, but he shrugged the feeling off and wiped a hand down his face, hoping his usual pallid skin hadn’t turned an unappealing shade of red with the exertion of climbing that many stairs. Despite himself, he had rushed here, his father’s lingering threat urging him to take two steps at a time instead of one. He didn’t know what this extra credit would entail, but he hoped it didn’t involve groupwork, and that whoever was in charge would be generous enough to mark him down as attending and ignore how obviously late he was.
He came to a halt outside the room, taking another breather and once again pushing his hair back, rubbing his eyes, and hoping that his father had just been exaggerating when he said he smelled of smoke. Weakly, he tried to grit his teeth and convince himself that the opinion of whatever stupid idiots were in extra credit didn’t matter anyway, ignoring the fact that he himself was in extra credit. It wasn’t because he wasn’t smart, no, he just…hadn’t tried, really.
The room wasn’t a welcoming place, though not that any room in this godforsaken university was, no matter how much the hippie professors tried to spruce up the place with plants and bright colours, beaming smiles and too lilted voices. To him, it was all still so clinical, so miserable, and certainly not the sort of educational institution he would’ve ever attended if he’d had the damn choice. He ignored the spike of fear that went down his spine as he entered, a few eyes darting to him in natural curiosity before returning to their work, and, just in case any lingered, he kept his features stern, disapproving, inviting zero conversation if he could help it.
However, he was so focused on steeling his outward image, that he hadn’t paid any attention to where he was actually supposed to be going, or what he was even supposed to be doing. Damn his father for the useless scraps of information he’d given him, no doubt just to make him look daft.
“Savacir?” An unfamiliar voice, far too loud. He jumped, snapping to face the speaker, and did little to hide his deepening frown as he surveyed the table of two. A woman, the one who’d said his name, sat stock straight. He eyed the unwavering stillness of her features, the green lanyard with flowers on it that he could’ve sworn meant…something, but couldn’t for the life of him remember what, and her stationary, laid out perfectly in front of her as though she was about to sell him a 2B pencil.
“Yes..” He said, cautious, and came to stand awkwardly by the table, his hand tight around the strap of his bag, wringing it slightly.
“You’re late. Sit, please.” She said, and, just because he was so drastically taken aback by her strange demeanor, he sat. He supposed he could appreciate the straightforwardness, no small talk. What was her authority here? She was clearly just another student - god, if this was a tutor, he’d never outlive the shame.
Across from him sat another, a student he recognised vaguely though couldn’t place it, though he suspected it was something to do with sport, he had that sort of stocky look about him. He, too, looked displeased to be here, but kept an awkward smile on his lips and leaned back in his chair, swinging it back so it balanced on two legs. He nodded at him, and, uncertainly, Savacir nodded back.
He’d clearly interrupted the two mid-conversation, for the other student turned to the woman and continued to speak, “Anyway, yeah, I don’t really need to be here, you know, but who doesn’t love some extra credit?”
Savacir tried not to take it personally that he wasn’t greeted. He didn’t want to talk to anybody, even as much as a simple hello, but he couldn’t help but wonder if they knew of him, or just didn’t like the way he looked. Not that it mattered, anyway. He didn’t seek validation from strangers, especially not those in extra credit.
“You’re here because you failed, Ukon.”
Ukon, as he was apparently called, just laughed, clearly caught, and shrugged, “Yeah..but…uhm..”
Savacir felt a little lost, and it was a feeling he didn’t appreciate. Whoever these people were, they clearly were not his sort, and he felt distinctly alien in his skin, but he shifted it to irritation, and just bowed his head, wishing he was anywhere else and having the likely correct feeling that this was about to be insufferable. Curse his grades, curse his father.
-
Savacir winced at the sharp, high-pitched voice of the lady who’d just sat herself down next to him, sparing him less than a glance. He wasn’t offended - he appreciated it, being anonymous, irrelevant, only in this case, for being disregarded was tolerable if it meant nobody knew, or cared enough to realise, that he was the son of the university’s second in command and sponsor. Though his father could put up a charitable image when it suited him, his charisma had weakened with his age and many could now see through the thin veil of his act, sense his rotten aura and cruelty within squinted, grey eyes. So, subsequently, many didn’t like him for much more than his money. Savacir already had enough social issues thanks to his own personality, he didn’t need his dad’s sour and pretentious reputation to make people grimace at him even more.
As soon as the conversation between Tyrone, as was apparently his real name, and Blossom sprung into full force, he subtly allowed himself to recline in his chair, his head dipping forward slightly as he let the conversation pass through one ear and out the other, muffled by the dozens of thoughts rattling around his head, banging against the inner surface of his skull and starting what he could tell was the beginning of a numbing headache.
As if it’d soothe it and not make it unbearably worse, he pulled out his phone and swiped up on the prior message he’d ignored from Favian.
‘‘Smoke later? B)’
He gnawed at the inside of his cheeks, the metallic taste of fresh blood rich on his tongue as his fang caught a piece loose of skin and tore it sharply off. He grimaced, let it sit in his mouth, and then swallowed reluctantly, licking across his teeth to ensure no blood stained the front of them before typing out a response with weary hands.
‘Sure.’
“- if she's not even in our majors?”
The question was loud, jarring, and he only realised that it was half-directed to him at the last moment. He met Ukon’s (Tyrone’s?) curious stare for a brief moment before it shifted back to Blossom, and, though he opened his mouth to speak, he just made a useless croak of uncertainty before shrugging his shoulders and looking back down at his phone though he had nothing left to do on it. He felt a flash of pain, sharp, in his chest, and attributed it to the many random pains he’d get throughout his body over the course of the day. It lingered, and he shifted on his seat, stuffing down the urge to clutch his chest through the thin fabric of his shirt. Maybe it was lung cancer. It’d be a little early due, but not unexpected.
“Then why are you here?” Blossom turned to him, fully, the question solely dedicated to him, and he steeled his features to not settle into their usual combative scowl when people he didn’t know tried to strike up fruitless conversation with him. He shrugged once more, silently cursing himself for acting like an incompetent mute though he really had no desire to talk to any of these people, all of them strange and in no ways he could appreciate.
She scoffed at him. Scoffed, and he felt rage, red hot and painful, swarming his chest, all encompassing, for he hadn’t even done anything wrong, he’d kept his face so straight, and she had the audacity to scoff at him like he really was incompetent. He couldn’t help himself - he surveyed her quickly, up and down, critiquing her tacky jewellery and overstimulating attire, her face packed with layer upon layer of extravagant, unconventional makeup that evoked in his mind images of classic clowns in black and white children’s movies. Perhaps she was compensating for something - that foul attitude, maybe? She had the demeanor of someone who’d never been effectively told to shut up. Not that he was willing to dare.
It made him feel a little better, his subconscious stream of hatred, and he exhaled a steady stream of air through his nose and averted his gaze, once more, downwards, staring at his hands as he picked at the fabric of his jeans. He wanted to check the time, but he didn’t dare, terrified he’d find out no time had passed and it’d worsen his mood even more. It wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to go and smoke with Favian either, but at least it’d settle his nerves after the day's catastrophes and give him something to do, even if he entirely yearned to go to his room and sleep the rest of the afternoon away. He just hoped Favian didn’t let those tiresome children follow him again.
Whilst in the midst of his wandering thoughts, he raised his head and eyed, out of his peripheral, the straightened-up, stoic form of the woman who was meant to be at the head of all this. She’d spoken to them all when they entered, but now said nothing, staring down at her stationary and notebook like it was their job to suddenly animate and lead the study session.
Not that there’d be much of one now - he’d arrived late, and Blossom later, and nobody seemed particularly eager to do any work, thank god, so he’d presumably just be sat listening to Blossom and Ukon’s tiresome, winding conversation about family or something of the sort till the end.
Then, he could’ve sworn he saw the woman glance at him ever so briefly, and he, unwillingly, frowned, but she’d already looked back down at her paper and begun to neatly scribble something down, so he chalked it up to a simple curious look or even his own mind playing paranoid tricks on him. Still, he put his phone back into his pocket and folded a hand inconspicuously over his arm, ensuring his sleeve wouldn’t slip down. This pitiful excuse for a study session had to be over soon, the excruciating strangeness of being sat in silence with the strange woman whilst the other two chatted away beside them was beginning to drive him crazy, and he again began to wish for the remaining half of the cigarette he’d had to stub out.
At least he wasn’t the only one sitting in silence. That, to some degree, made him feel better, even if it was just knowing someone shared in one aspect of his misery.