Skurdulka's House (a LGBTQ chosen-family thriller)

Part 3: Heroes

Author's note: Trigger warning—mentions of self harm scars. If you're not in a good headspace for this, maybe skip this chapter for now.

Looking at Storm, now showered clean and dressed in a pair of Ari's silk pajama bottoms and their black David Bowie tshirt, Ari couldn't help but pause again. Even Storm's long, poppy-red hair somehow reminded Ari of themself.

"Feel better?" Ari asked.

Storm shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah, I guess. Thanks."

"Here." Ari extended two red tablets and a glass of water.

"What's this?" Storm's hazel eyes crooked with suspicion.

It was the same look Chris had worn when Ari offered them Advil. Why does everyone think I'm trying to poison them? "Advil. For the..." Ari gestured to their eye.

"Oh. Thanks." Storm threw back the pills and took a deep drink of water.

"Follow me." Ari led him down the hall. The red carpets over the halls were just as they had been decades ago, though now they were soft and new underfoot. The sconces, once for holding candles, were now electric and equipped with dimmers, casting soft, blue LED light over the restored paintings on the walls. Sometimes Ari missed the romantic orange luminosity of a real candle, but there was something darkly magical about the blue glow. "Try to be quiet, everyone else is asleep."

The floorboards creaked under their steps, which would surely wake up the lighter sleepers behind the closed doors in the hall. The two rooms next to Ari's, at the end of the hall, were taken—Chris in one, Heather in the other. There were five other rooms to choose from, some of them larger and nicer. But Chris and Heather seemed to sleep better the closer they were to Ari, though neither would ever admit it.

Opening a green door with a pineapple sticker—appropriately dubbed The Pineapple Room by Chris—Ari stepped quietly inside and clicked on a lamp on the desk. "You can stay here."

Storm's gaze wandered across the room—pineapple pillows, a pineapple bedspread, pineapple figurines and curtains, even a large pineapple beanbag chair. A bemused smile crooked his lip. "It's a little—fruity."

Ari rolled their eyes, but smiled. "Your daily serving of vitamin gay. Enjoy. If you need anything," stepping out, they nodded to the end of the hall, to the purple door "I'm at the end. Okay?"

Storm wrapped his long arms around his chest again, half-covering the rainbow likeness of David Bowie. "That's it?"

Ari's head tilted. "Was there something else?"

"You just let me into your house? How do you know I'm not, like, a serial killer or something? Or a robber?"

"How do you know I'm not? A serial killer or something?"

"'Cause David told me. You're cool. Like, weird. But cool."

"I see. Well, if you're a robber, you can steal all my pineapples and save me from my own awful taste. And if you're a serial killer, 'local weirdo killed by pineapple lamp' is surely the best headline I could hope to appear in. So. Good night." Ari started to close the door, but Storm spoke.

"Wait."

"Yes?"

The young man looked at the floor, then up, his sharp gaze slanting under the swelling bruise. "You didn't ask."

"Ask what?"

"About this." He gestured to his eye, then swiped a finger over the cuts on his arms. "Or this. Everybody asks."