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It is not apt to describe the night as dark and stormy, but Orlam feels the urge to paint the scene as such anyways. He is, as all good dashing deuteragonists begin their stories, bored onto the verge of insanity on a fine Friday night.
He is of two minds about his situation: of one, he is Lady Luck’s besotted sycophant, granted early release from the perils of final assignments and examinations through Her will. Of the second, his social vivacity hebetates under the strain of isolation. He is in abject agony.
His peers are too busy preparing for their own judgement days to even consider congregating. His perennial desire to club could not be, unfortunately, afforded by his wallet. There is nothing, frankly, to do. He has been debating, for the last half hour, whether it was worth it to solicit a charming suitor to his door. His dear roommate had left in a hurry a few hours prior for a similar reason, on the prowl for an entertaining soiree to open the weekend.
He sighs to himself in forlorn sorrow, but before he has the chance to make a proper decision, his door is met with a loud BANG, BANG, BANG. He does not jump out of his own skin at the sound. Before he makes any further movement, the doorknob turns.
Gidget’s eyes are red rimmed and there’s considerable unfortunate bruising underneath their eye bags.
Orlam looks up from his phone. “I’d lament your current distressing display if I did not know it was fortunately temporary.”
“Cut my hair,” they demand, throwing a pair of scissors next to Orlam onto his bed.
“You’ve barrelled into my room as if to announce a siege to instead fulfill the onerous desire for a trim?”
“It’s too long.” They grab one of the gold locks near their face with barely contained resentment. Pulling it, it reaches almost the collarbone. Orlam’s worried that with their vicegrip strength, they may even pull it all the way out.
“Oh dear,” Orlam says, deadpan.
“There aren’t any barbers awake right now and if you don’t do it, I’m going to snip it again myself and it’ll look like sophomore year of high school when Iggy said it was an ‘interesting shape’.”
“Why me and not say, your trusthworthy stooge Cecil Harvey? Last you remarked, you quite disapproved of my own…” He gestures at the rattail.
“Cecil disapproves of my mother,” they spit out with sizzling acid
Ah.
Orlam raises an eyebrow, “And you think you’d find sympathy in me?”
The resulting glare he gets in response is quite charming. He raises his arms in faux surrender. “I will then, at the present moment, don the role instead. As the prince decrees.”
He sweeps his hands in a lavish motion towards his dresser. His dorm doesn’t have a personal lavatory so he supposes it’ll make do. Suitor forgotten, he reflects this certainly wasn’t the worst way he could spend a Friday night. A more uniquely entertaining experience.
And then he hears a soft sniffle. One of those nights. He lets the tension bleed out of his shoulders. This is fine. He instead pats the duvet of his bed instead. “Would you find the soft throne of my bedstead more to your preference?”
They sniffle harder, wiping at their eyes with the palm of their hands. “No, no, it’s fine. Just give me a moment. Sorry for snapping.”
“If it makes you feel better, at least your current dire visage is temporary. You could be Genzou.”
They snort a laugh. “Can’t helping getting a dig in at him huh? Bit unfair when he isn’t even hear to defend himself.”
“His inevitably crude riposte would only further my point. In truth, I’m saving him from further embarrassment by saying it behind his back.”
They hum, “Sure, sure.”
Orlam goes back on his phone to give them a minute to themselves. What haircut would look good on them? He was unaccustomed to cutting hair, only doing it to himself as a child on occasion when really, he could no longer stand the length around his eyes. He couldn’t imagine it being too hard. No, he thought with an addendum: He couldn’t imagine it being worse than what Bordelle, 16, walked into 1st period that previously shining Thursday morning donning. ‘Interesting shape’ was the nicest way Orlam had heard anyone, including Gidget, describe it. Genzou had begged gleefully for descriptions.
He looks down at them fidgeting listlessly with their fingers in his seat.
“Did your royal highness want anything tailored to their countenance?”
Picking up the scissors, he approaches them from behind. They laugh, wet and give their hair another furious tug, “I want it to be short enough that she can’t fucking–” They paused with a furious inhale, “Talk about how much better I look when I let myself look like a girl.”
“Yikes.”
Ever the wordsmith, Gidget cups a wordless scream into their hands. Time really is of the essence. Orlam’s gaze traces over their cranium and concludes the least intimidating beginning to this endeavour would be the back of the head. He pulls a few long strands and begins cutting.
“Why are you frowning?”
“I’m doing no such action.”
“I can see your face in this mirror Orlam.”
Orlam stares down at the floor of his domicile where clumps of golden hair have fallen. Some of which are considerably longer, or larger, than other clumps. He stares at the back of Gidget’s head.
“Everything’s fine.”
Gidget raises an eyebrow, “You’re saying that ever so suspiciously.”
He can fix this with the bangs. Not that there’s anything that needs fixing, but there was a considerable amount of hair piled in front of Gidget’s eyes. It’d be good to cut it too. He pulls them straight and cuts to a reasonable–
Okay.
Gidget narrows their eyes and turns around.
“You thought you could do better than me in high school!” They accused with vindictive glee, grinning.
“This is better than you in high school,” Orlam hisses. “Did you suddenly hit your head? Do you need medical assistance? Should I take you to the doctor if you’re suddenly suffering from memory loss? If I suggested a diagnosis of retrograde amnesia and showed them the photos I’m sure they’d agree with me.”
“The lady doth protest too much,” Gidget orates, in what is assumedly, a terrible impression of Orlam that he does not grace with a response. “Three rhetorical questions in a row? You’re talking so much because you know I’m right!”
Gidget retorts, barely containing their laughter, “I lived with it for 3 months before it grew out to be tolerable! This is definitely worse.”
“No it isn’t.”
Maybe it’s time to follow Iggy’s lead in situations like these and bury himself underground. Another sinless Vestal virgin condemned to living burial. His face is turning red. The indignity so concentrated that it would simply be the preferable fate. Gidget, in the cruel wake of Orlam’s humiliation, gives up on discipline instead. Guffawing at his suffering. They turn their head around to examine the damage on the sides, pulling at two strands that are distinctly not equal in length, “Maybe I should’ve cut it myself.”
There’s no hope. He cannot have Gidget walking out of his dormitory looking like this. What if there were witnesses? Also, it looked repulsive.
“I’m going to find a razor,” he announces. He’s sure Tobias had one.
“You’re going to buzz it better?” Gidget is doubling over themselves.
“Yes,” he says forcefully, as he checks the terrible luggage his roommate has all his amenities stuffed into. He’s seen this razor strewn around before. Gidget has not stopped laughing.
“Are you stealing someone else’s razor?”
“And you’ll be an accomplice to this crime,” Orlam retaliates without looking away from his quest, “Nay, an instigator.”
Gidget, useless in this plight, bursts into another fresh wave of giggles as Orlam triumphantly digs out clippers from behind his shaving cream. He raises it forward.
“Stop laughing,” Orlam demands. “I need a still surface to work on.”
“I was still before and it didn’t help!” But, obediently, they make an effort to muffle their convulsions until they can sit still, taking several large deep breaths. Orlam finds the nearest power outlet and shoves it in with resentment.
“It is not worse than sophomore year,” Orlam re-establishes. Nothing could be worse than sophomore year.
“You need to stop talking about sophomore year if you want any hope of me staying still for this.”
He turns the razor on as a violent threat. Gidget raises their hands in surrender. A much easier task than cutting even, Orlam quickly finds a rhythm to it and works in a pattern. Ribbon strips of hair are cleared off one after the other and before he knows it, he’s finished the whole head. He admires his work. Gidget looks handsome. It accentuates their face.
Gidget runs a hand through it, turning once again to admire his handiwork. This time they turn back and smile, shining, at Orlam, “Hey, this isn’t half bad!”
“It does suit you,” Orlam agrees.
Gidget pulls themselves taut yawning as they exit the chair, “Where’s your broom? I’ll go clean this up.”
Orlam waives them away, “I’ll go get it, it’s in the common room.” but Gidget is already at the door, leaving him once again dreadfully alone.
“I insist!” They yell from the hallway so Orlam instead busies himself with the axiomatic succeeding events: inebriation. He feels no guilt taking two of Tobias’ last three cans, tearing at the cardboard with a satisfying rip. He still owes him for mending his last three pairs of dress pants. And forcing him to be accompaniment to the world’s most asinine trivia night (failing to even woo the host).
As expected from cheap canned beer, it tastes disgusting. He masks the taste by pinching his nose. Gidget raises an eyebrow on their re-arrival at the sight of Orlam’s middling beverage.
“Should I be concerned for Toby? First you steal his razor and now his beer?”
Orlam feels a smile rising, “How do you know this is not my own liquor?
Gidget gives him an unimpressed look, “How long have I known you?”
Orlam snorts and shrugs, doing a grand flourish with both his hands.
“What’s mine is his and what’s his is mine, and so the saying goes. Besides,” and he smiles and unfurls his tongue, “I more than make up for it in other ways.”
Gidget raises an eyebrow and wrinkles their nose in faux disgust. “Put your tongue back in your mouth. I get enough of that when you visit Cecil.”
Orlam gasps in insult. “You dare denounce my sincere craft? Perhaps it’s time for a hands-on lesson, to make up for your careless ignorance.” He bats his eyelashes.
Gidget rolls their eyes, brandishing the broom toward Orlam as if threat. “Just pass me the beer Brewbacher.”
With a crisp hiss, Gidget cracks open the can and takes a gulp before laying it to the side so they can deftly sweep on their golden locks into a pile. Orlam watches disinterestedly, focusing on the wretched effervescent tang of his drink, legs crossed on his bed, back against the wall. Gidget dumps everything into the nearest bin before climbing onto the bed next to him, shoulder to shoulder.
They sit in stillness momentarily, Gidget taking large sips of their can and Orlam as much as he can bear. With every quick glance, it seems their expression darkens. Orlam doesn’t speak, just watches and waits. Before long they’ve downed the entire can, making a small noise of frustration and crinkling it slightly to see if there are any last drops.
They turn to Orlam with a look of regret on their face. “Look, I’m really sorry for barging in here like that and yelling at you. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Orlam blinks owlishly at them. They seem to understand the fact Orlam’s tongue has become leaden in his mouth, so they go on, “I’m really grateful you did this for me. I was just so frustrated, and I didn’t want to go to Cecil or Iggy because they would’ve made me even angrier.”
They glance back guiltily, “You don’t need to say anything, I’m just sorry.”
Orlam takes a big gulp of beer to fire his pain synapses. It electrifies his mouth back into action. “It’s… fine.”
Gidget makes a doubting expression so he emphasises, “Really, it’s fine. It’s not like you started caterwauling and screeching at me.”
He addendums this statement quickly with a pinched sharp-pitched laugh, “If you want me to say anything more, I’m going to have to stray far further past the demarcation of sobriety. What about you? I sense there’s something else charging your lachrymose behaviour.”
They turn their head away, knees tucked close to their chest, “You don’t need to hear about that.”
Orlam smiles dryly, “It will not hurt my delicate orphan sensitivities to hear you complain about your mother.”
Gidget says nothing in response to this, merely tucks their head between their knees. Orlam finds himself… appreciating the diplomacy. It makes what he says next easier.
“Really, it’s fine… It’s not as if my mother was the paragon of maternity either. Perhaps we’ll have common sympathies.”
Now he is the ostrich burrying itself in the sand, looking down at his duvet and refusing eye contact with Gidget. He hears their muffled voice from his side, the press of their body next to him. They sniffle a little, “I think we both need to be more drunk for this conversation.”
He bumps his still half-full can next to their knee, “Here. Liquid courage. I really can’t stand any more of that putrid waste.”
They laugh quietly, “So you’re making me drink it?”
“Clearly you enjoyed it more than I do.”
“Enjoy is a strong word.” But nonetheless, they pluck the can from him and chug the rest, wincing as they rest it down. “Ugh, it’s terrible. You might be doing Toby a favour.”
Orlam leans down and rests his head against the warmth of their body, in the crook between their torso and their knees. Gidget begins running a hand through his hair, thinking.
“Did it ever feel like, no matter what you did, you couldn’t make her happy? Like her standards were always so confusing, and you couldn’t do anything right?”
Orlam didn’t think about her often in the context of her life. It was hard sometimes, to remember his mother as a person, when the negative space of her death felt so much larger than she ever was. But he could, if he tried, remember the place she had in her life. Back when her blank expression made his heart drop instead of… whatever happened next. It was hard. She was never violent, and that had mattered when he was young. Now? Now.
“I thought I was broken sometimes,” he murmurs, “I saw the way Genzou’s mother treated him and I thought I was defective.”
Even Iggy, or Bucks, or Gidget themselves. Going to other people’s houses was like entering another world. He didn’t understand how they operated. Their homes were warm. He dreamed of that.
Gidget hums in half agreement. They pulls Orlam slightly closer.
It was not the first time they had heard this. When they went out sometimes, and he got brain blisteringly inebriated, he would say things that were not supposed to see the light of day. They were too painful to say out loud, even if he meant them, but alcohol softened both his tongue and his heart. In the bright mosaic lights and behind the thrumming of the bass, Gidget would grab him tightly by both his shoulders and tell him that he was wrong, that he wasn’t broken, with such a sheer intensity he could almost believe it. They said nothing now, just nodded with a melancholy understanding.
“Yeah, I get it,” they sigh, “Everyone else knew– knew the code! And you just didn’t. And you’d try forever to fit in and it still wouldn’t be perfect and you just didn’t know how everyone else knew their place so easily.”
“Adolescents are cruel,” mutters Orlam, “When they see something different they can’t help but poke at it regardless of if it was bruised already.”
“Yeah but it wasn’t just the kids, was it? Our parents too. And I know, I know you and Cecil think I should just stop talking to my mother, but–”
The words die on their lips. Orlam fills in the rest that was too miserable to say, “But you love her. And sometimes it’s almost good.”
“Sometimes it is good. Look I know she’s a bitch, I lived with her for 18 years. Nobody probably knows she’s a bitch better than me, but also, she’s funny, and witty, and sometimes she knows me so well and does something so nice I think that everything might be better again.”
Was it ever better? Orlam did not ask, even as it was on the tip of his tongue. This was an old argument, with old wounds, that would devolve if he prodded it too sharply. He knew the answer, and Gidget did too. They were willing to tolerate the hurt because they had hope she’d get better. Orlam couldn’t lie and say he did not understand, but perhaps it was worse that he understood. For him, it would always be a fanciful hope. Gidget believed in their mother with every tentative moment of peace, that it would bloom into understanding. One day she would sigh with affection, and say “my kid” instead of “my girl”. One day she’d understand Gidget had never been a girl in the first place.
When Orlam remembered his father saying “my son” he could only feel dread. When he thought of affection, he had to pull from memories so weathered he would not have been surprised if they were phantasmagorical.
“She’ll understand one day,” Gidget says, voice breaking, “It’s just hard to get her to try. This will settle down because Dad’s already reached out and we’ve talked about it but Mum just isn’t there yet.”
They rest their forehead onto Orlam’s hair so he could not see their face.
“I hate her so much sometimes, I just want to yell and scream at her to understand how awful middle school and high school were. I felt so bad, and every day I’d get home and she’d make it worse. I resent her so much, but I like her too, and I can’t even get her to understand I resent her because she doesn’t think she did anything wrong. She was trying to make me better in her own fucked up way.”
“I trust your judgement, and I respect your choice,” he says, gazing down. Orlam squeezes their forearm. It’s a poor attempt at comfort, but they accept it. He hears them sob and stays quiet.
Quietly they whisper, “Yeah, but you think I’m being stupid about it.”
He did not respond. They laugh wetly, wiping away their tears. “Yeah, I know you do. It’s okay.”
They stretch as if to get up, “I should get going soon, Cecil’s going to get worried.”
The “You can stay” dies on Orlam’s tongue. Instead he says, “Goodnight then, Bordelle.” and moves so they could have room to climb off his bed. The conversation had wound him tight. He feels a bone weary tired he had not felt in a long time.
“Thanks for the chat Orlam,” They say, still brushing the tears off their face as they go to open the door.
“You look good with the hair,” Orlam returns.
“Don’t I?” and it makes him happy that they beam a little bit at the reminder. One of their hands reach out and combs through the back, and he sees the way they feel at peace with nothing to pull on. He did something good tonight. He feels happy with that, even with the slow sinking dread that’s built in his chest.
They wave goodbye with a small smile. The quiet peaceful Friday night ushers them out of his room as if they were never there. Orlam does not throw away their crumpled beer can. He stares at it instead.
His phone vibrates.
Gidget: I love you
Gidget: Thank you
He lies in the imprint they had made in his bed and knows it is true. It has already become a good memory.