Chapter Text
Daniel had thrust his fist into his eyes, angry at his tears, and couldn't see when he barreled into him. Although he had wanted to be alone, after his father's innocuous gay joke hurt him out of all proportion, he was grateful for the human contact, no matter how brief it might be; and though there was hardly a moment after that when shame didn't dominate him, he never thought to regret their meeting. He shrank away, with no sense of irony said, "Watch where you're going," continued on his path to Anywhere But Here, and froze reluctantly when he heard "Hey, are you all right, man?" Concern for his well-being was a foreign concept. He turned back, wiping again at his eyes with his sleeve. "Yeah. I'm fine." He kept rubbing at nothing. "Who are you?"
"Adam Faulkner. Freelance photographer and buddy band promoter." The man, cleanshaven and wearing unbuttoned plaid over a graphic tee for an obscure industrial band from the 1990s, displayed his camera in a lazy pose, and Daniel was young enough to find his self-deprecating humor charming. "Mind if I take a quick photo?" Daniel scratched his head then shook the same arm out in some form of a shrug, saying, "O-Okay." Adam gave no direction and captured him as he was: distant glare, arms crossed over his chest, crumply sweatshirt half zipped, vulnerable and confused. He was telling Daniel something about Polaroids when he saw he wasn't listening.
"You sure you're all right?" The man reached a hand out and almost but didn't quite touch his arm. "Yeah. It's just--" Daniel smiled, a flicker, at the thought, the feeling, the prospect too dangerous, of being heard. He wanted to offer a real smile but couldn't and hardened instead.
"All right." Adam slid the camera strap over his shoulder. "I gotta go." Daniel made a few half turns with his shoulders, making to leave then thinking Adam had something more to say. "Oh yeah." Like out of thin air he pulled something from his pocket and held it out. Daniel took it while Adam explained. "Cool." "All right. See ya." Adam walked past him then spun back around. "Oh. And uh. Sorry. What's your name?"
Not expecting for a moment to meet him again, Adam forgot about him until he developed the photograph in his red room. As his visage formed out of blankness Adam whispered: "Daniel."
Eric Matthews, apparently having managed to offend his son during the barrage of mindless comments he made while channel surfing, was cautious when he entered the boy's room later that evening. Daniel sat in bed, back to the headboard, computer in his lap, and didn't seem to notice his father's intrusion. "What's this?" Eric picked up something from the edge of the bed. "You join a cult?" He showed a small smile in case Daniel didn't recognize the joke. The boy snatched it away. "Just a flyer some loser gave me." He balled it up and tossed it.
"Okay. Daniel." The father sat on the edge of the bed, causing Daniel to close his laptop but not to look at him.
He didn't know how to ask why Daniel was angry. He said, "How's Mom?" "Why don't you ask her?" "We're not exactly on speaking terms at the moment." "Yeah. Well, Dad. That's not my fault." "I didn't say it was--" "Mom's fine. What do you care how she is anyway? What do you care how anyone is?" "What did I do, Daniel?" "That's a stupid question."
Daniel continued to stare straight ahead while his father, to his right, dragged a hand through his own short hair. Eric sighed through pursed lips. "Then give me a stupid answer." Daniel rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. Finally he looked at his father but only as long as he spoke: "You love people for the wrong reasons. You follow the wrong rules."
The silence that followed made Daniel sigh. "You probably don't know what love is." Eric flung his hands out. "Why doesn't my teenage son enlighten me then?" The boy balked at making such observations, especially under the circumstances, even if it meant eternal discontent. "Whatever." He reopened the laptop. "Doesn't matter. You'll never get it." Keeping his eyes on the computer monitor, he never felt the pressure on the mattress lessen, but when he finally looked away his father was gone.
Left alone, he found the flyer again and smoothed it out. He called to mind every detail he could conjure, true or invented, of the exchange that afternoon. Simple subtraction began the countdown of days, which he mostly spent avoiding his mother and taking walks and masturbating in the dark, until the show. Before he laid the flyer down again and returned to his computer he spoke its most prominent words: "'Wrath of the Gods.'"