Author's Note:
Hey guys! Thanks so much for the comments and support on the last chapter! They made me smile so much. I'm glad you still wanna read after all this time! Anyway, this chapter has a LOT of background information, but it's important stuff and tbh, I kinda loved writing it so I hope you enjoy it!!
<3
Q.
PS: check out this song I attached; I listen to it on repeat when writing this story, it gets me in the ZONE (plus it's a jam.)
https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/artist/celeste-buckingham/438920834?mt=1&app=music
^ if you want to buy it on iTunes; it's also on Spotify though :)
Devon:
Okay, it's official—Freddie Junior is the craziest motherfucker in the industry, and in the entertainment industry, that is saying a lot. I express this much to Kyle as we're sitting in the lounge by Studio C in Razor.
He barks out a brief laugh and puts up his feet to rest more comfortably on the couch. I shoot him a disdainful look, but at this point, I've learned that telling him off has absolutely no influence on his behavior.
"You are such a drama queen, Devon, I swear to god." He shakes his head, incredulously, a soft grin still on his face. I've decided that his reputation of not smiling a lot is utter bullshit, because he's constantly cracking up at all the shit I say.
"Dude, he made me spend an hour making a mind-map of what's most important in my life. He had me split it into categories." I emphasize each word, to stress how completely ridiculous the experience was.
Kyle's grin just grows wider. "What were the categories?"
I roll my eyes at him. "You are completely missing the point."
He doesn't answer, just raises his eyebrows to indicate he's still waiting for an answer. I scowl at him, but his grin is contagious, so I concede and allow myself to smile in surrender at him.
"Personal, romantic, spiritual, and occupational." I list, remembering how completely empty the corner of the page where 'romantic' was written was.
"Spiritual?" Kyle questions, and I'm glad he decided to focus on that one.
"I don't know what to tell you, dude. I mean, I went to church growing up, but it's not like I ever paid any attention."
"What denomination?" he asks, which surprises me.
"Methodist." I answer, looking at him curiously. "Why, you in need of a religious awakening?"
He snorts and looks down at his hands, which are playing around with his car keys in his lap.
"Nah, just have these vague memories of a huge church I think my parents took us to before we were taken away. I think it was a cathedral actually. That means it's Catholic, right?"
I stare at him, and while he doesn't look up, he squirms slightly in his seat like he knows he's got eyes on him.
"Not necessarily," I say, quieter than normal. "There are Orthodox and Anglican cathedrals too. Even a few Methodist ones. But in the States, yeah, Catholic's probably your best bet."
"Right." he says, as a means of indicating this particular route the conversation has taken has reached a dead end. I'm shocked yet oddly pleased that he revealed something else about his past to me, and while my curiosity is still burning, I'm not going to push it, especially because I don't want to have to tell him the reason I know all of that is because I did a project on religion in my seventh grade social studies class.
"So," he declares, looking back up at me as if that whole exchange hadn't happened. "Why'd you stop going to church? Were you declared a heathen?"
I shake my head at him. "Now who's being dramatic? Nah, it's because I started doing music more professionally when I was only fifteen. What with that and the fact that my mother insisted I finish high school or at least get my GED, I didn't really have time for anything else."
"Your poor parents." Kyle says, putting a hand over his heart, and I can tell he's being sarcastic. "They probably just wanted a nice churchgoing son who grew up to be something respectable but not too smarmy, like an accountant or a schoolteacher."
I look at him disbelievingly. "Your talent for spontaneously pulling this stuff from your ass astounds me."
Kyle just gives me a cocky smirk. "Don't worry, Dev, my ass astounds a lot of people."
I can't even stop my jaw from dropping slightly at that.
"You know damn well that's not what I meant, and don't ever call me Dev again, you prick."
Kyle just laughs again.
Kyle:
It hasn't escaped my attention that I've shared more with Devon Pine over the past two months or so than I have with Tay in the six years I've known her. The frustrating thing is that I don't have an explanation for it. I'm not doing it on purpose, it's just felt so natural, which is a completely different problem by itself. I'm so comfortable being around him that I don't even realize I'm revealing completely private details about my life until it's too late.
I haven't felt at ease with anyone in my life since I was twelve and Mrs. Ingram decided she no longer wanted to keep me as a foster child.
Mrs. Ingram was the fifteenth foster home I was put into in four years. I had been shuffled from here to there, never staying in one place long. A few homes just had too many kids and had to get rid of the 'expendable' ones. Other times, they just said I was more trouble than I was worth.
At the beginning, I tried to be good, I really did. But I was a scrawny little kid back then, and the other kids I was lumped with took every opportunity to get as much as they could out of me, like my lunch or my clothes or my books—any physical possession they could get their grubby hands on they took. And if I tried to stand up for myself, I got a bloody nose for my efforts. Then I was always accused of starting the fight. And thus, a pattern was born.
By the time I was ten, I was already jaded enough to not hold any false hope that the next foster home I stepped foot into would be my last. It had been three years and despite all my begging and bothering of my social worker, I still had no clue where my sister was and no way to get in touch with her. I was a dirty, bitter, angry little kid.
And then came Mrs. Ingram, a kind but firm woman in her mid-forties who owned her own bakery. She had four other foster kids with her at the time, which was actually a small amount compared to some of my previous placements. There were three girls—Brooke, Grace, and Kelsie—and one boy—a ten-year-old like me, with messy black hair and a mischievous grin that guaranteed he was no angel to have around the house. His name was Eric.
They were all incredibly well-behaved for foster kids, but Eric did like to push the boundaries a little. I went along with him, because as the only boy in a house full of women, he had welcomingly taken me under his wing. I was so happy to have a friend at last that I participated in any scheme he could come up with.
One time, Mrs. Ingram caught us sneaking back into the house at two in the morning after spending the night exploring the woods behind the backyard and climbing trees.
I was terrified, certain that she would tell me to pack up my things and get ready for my social worker to take me to a new home in the morning. But Eric was fearless. He stuck his chin out and launched into a full speech about how important it was for young men to learn about the environment around them so they could be prepared in case of an attack. It was utter nonsense, but he spoke with such confidence it had me in awe.
Mrs. Ingram just frowned and told us to go to bed. I couldn't believe it. The next day we got a proper scolding and we had to do double chores for a week, but that was it. Eric became not only my best friend but my hero.
I lived with Mrs. Ingram for two years. During that time, Brooke left, but only because she aged out of the system. She had a tearful goodbye with Mrs. Ingram, who promised to keep in touch, and Grace wept and hugged her for ages, and she told Kelsie to look after her and firmly instructed me and Eric not to cause too much trouble for Mrs. Ingram. Grace, who was only eight, actually got adopted by a couple soon after that and they seemed nice enough, if just a bit too reserved for my taste. Mrs. Ingram took on two more foster kids, both quite young, a four-year-old girl named Hayley and a five-year-old boy, Colin. They were a handful, and Kelsie and Eric and I were often tasked with watching over them.
Mrs. Ingram wasn't a woman you could get emotionally close to. She wasn't really a motherly figure to us; that had always been Brooke—until her departure, of course. But she wasn't cruel, and for us, that was enough. She had us on a strict routine, but it was fair, and the chores we were expected to do were all manageable. I was immensely grateful for her, and after living there for almost two years, after she and the other kids threw me a party for my twelfth birthday, I was starting to feel like maybe I had finally found someplace to call home.
I was wrong, of course.
It was a Thursday. Mrs. Ingram had a meeting with her bookkeeper so we weren't expecting her home till late. It was Kelsie's turn to take care of the little ones while Eric and I were on chore-duty. After we finished washing the dishes and putting away the laundry, we sat ourselves down on the couch and played an Imagination Game.
Eric had come up with Imagination Games, because there weren't all that many board games around the house and we had easily become bored of them. Besides, Eric loved making things up, he was always coming up with fantastically detailed stories of the creatures and monsters that secretly lived in the woods, that watched us as we walked through but quickly hid if we got too close. He had me hanging on every word and one day he saw me drawing the Oak Dweller and his eyes lit up. He began insisting that he would grow up to be a famous author and I would be his illustrator and we would make millions of dollars and build a "super-mega-ultra-awesome" treehouse that we could live in. It was a completely ridiculous idea, of course, but I was obsessed with it. I drew so much those days that I actually ran out of paper and began asking the teachers at school if I could have some to take home. My teachers were always good to me, largely due to pity since I was known as the foster kid. But it didn't matter, because they still helped me. It was at school that I first learned how to play guitar. I would skip recess to go and practice and the music teacher would let me, with a big smile on his face. He called me a 'prodigy' and I would duck my head to hide how proud I was of that.
In our Imagination Games, we would describe details of our future lives—things we wanted to do, places we wanted to go, the amazing things that we would see. We often got so wrapped up in our ideas and plans that we couldn't even hear Mrs. Ingram calling us for dinner.
That day's Imagination Game was different. It started the way it always did, with our cool treehouse in the woods and all the books he was planning on writing and the different creatures we were making up, but then it took a turn.
"And of course, 'cause we'll be super rich and famous, we get to have any girls we want, so we get to pick the coolest ones! They have to be able to keep the secret of the treehouse though, otherwise we can't let them in." he said, his big eyes twinkling with excitement. I paused.
"We're gonna let girls in our treehouse?" I asked. This was news to me; there had never been any talk of anyone being allowed in the treehouse besides us two.
Eric shrugged. "I mean, yeah, I guess eventually, right? That's what happens, you know." he lowered his voice slightly as he leaned in to tell a secret. "Kelsie kind of has a boyfriend now, you know? She says he's from her Chemistry class, but that we can't tell Mrs. Ingram 'cause she'll be mad."
Under normal circumstances, I would've been delighted to hear any information about Kelsie that could get me out of watching Hayley and Colin, but I was still too caught up on the whole girls-in-the-treehouse issue.
"I don't want girls in the treehouse." I said, stubbornly.
"Why not?" Eric asked, looking confused. It was a rare occasion when I openly disagreed with him.
"Because."
"That's stupid." He crossed his arms firmly.
"You're stupid." I retorted.
"You're stupider."
And then I did something incredibly stupid.
I kissed him.
Well.
If you could call it a kiss. I launched myself forward and pushed my tightly-pressed lips on his for a brief second and then immediately pulled away.
There was a terrifying moment of silence where we stared at each other, both of our eyes wide as dinner plates.
Then, Eric leaned in and put his mouth back on mine. We sat there, unmoving, not knowing what to do, with our lips connecting. It was so awkward but there was this warm feeling in my stomach, one that I hadn't felt in years, one that I could only place with a distant memory of laughing with my sister on a carousel as we waved at our mom and dad. I was happy, and it was such a perfect, sweet, little moment and—
Mrs. Ingram walked right through the front door.
We flew apart like we'd been burned, but the damage was already done. She didn't fly into a rage—on the contrary, she was terrifyingly silent for a few moments, before she quietly told us to go upstairs. We scampered away immediately and sat in our room in scared anticipation.
She came up and asked Eric to join her for a moment. He cast a wild look at me before following her out the door, a door I stared at for twenty minutes until he returned.
He wouldn't meet my eye as he walked back in the room. His face was pale and his dimples nowhere to be found. I kept trying to get him to look at me, but he just wouldn't.
Then Mrs. Ingram asked to talk to me alone.
I followed her.
She told me I was a good boy, and that she was proud of me for doing so well in school and always doing all of my chores, and that she saw my drawings and thought I was very talented, and then she said that it was probably best if I found another foster home. I sat there, frozen, as she tried to kindly explain that it would be better for the other kids and that she didn't want Eric to get confused and didn't want Hayden and Colin to think that it was okay since they saw us both as brothers. At a certain point, my brain tuned her out and her words transformed into white noise. It didn't matter what the reason was. I was leaving the only place I had finally felt comfortable in since I'd been taken from my parents' home with my sister.
The day I left, Hayley and Colin cried. Colin seemed to understand that I wasn't going to come back and Hayley just started crying because Colin was crying. Kelsie got a little choked up and squeezed me a little too tight in her hug and she made me promise to keep in touch if I was able to. One look at Mrs. Ingram told me that I was absolutely not welcome to do that. Eric's eyes were on the floor the whole time.
Then my social worker said it was time to go and I was about to turn around when he said, "See you in the treehouse, Kyle."
I looked at him and even though he didn't say it out loud, it was written in his eyes what he really meant to say. I'm sorry.
The next few years had me shuffling through various foster homes, never staying in one long enough to make any new friends. The advantage? I had time to focus on my studies and even get a part time job at the local newspaper. It was perfect, because I could easily work from home, so I didn't need anyone to drive me anywhere and it didn't matter that my home address kept changing.
And then of course, the music came along. I'd been playing guitar since I was eleven and the music teacher in the school I had attended while with Mrs. Ingram had taught me, and I continued practicing whenever I could get my hands on a guitar. It was usually only at school, with the practice ones locked up in the music room. Normally only music students have access to the instruments, but I weaseled my way in by playing the sympathy card. Poor foster kid can't afford his own guitar and all that shit. I didn't care about my pride at that point, all I wanted was to play and to write songs.
It was a music student who suggested I start posting videos online. She walked in on me in a practice room one day and told me that she really liked what I was playing. I shyly told her I had written it and she looked amazed.
"That's incredible! Do you have a soundcloud or something?"
I shook my head and she immediately insisted, "You need to! Or a YouTube channel at least, you should let people hear your stuff, it's really good!"
Her name was Nadia and she was my first real girlfriend. I lost my virginity to her. Probably the only real relationship I've ever had, despite us being total kids. After I got more 'famous', I had a few flings here and there, but most people were just in it for the attention. Nadia and I kept in touch for a few years after that though. Even after we broke up, she was always supportive.
She also happens to be one of the people I owe my current fame to.
I blew up on the internet and started receiving offers to play at events. People kept asking if I had a manager and then suddenly music executives were writing to me. My foster parents at the time couldn't give two shits about me, so I filed the paperwork to get emancipated.
It took a lot more effort to try and erase as much of my history as I could, but the positive thing was that I was so unimportant to every single foster home I'd been in that I doubted they would even remember me.
Except, of course, for Mrs. Ingram and her foster kids.
My pocket vibrates and emits a loud buzz and suddenly, I'm pulled away from memory lane. Shaking my head as if that'll clear my mind of thoughts from my past, I pull my phone out of my pocket to find a text from Devon.
hey, wanna do something tonite? kinda feelin a marvel movie marathon; maybe u will finally learn why cap's the best one
I feel the smile tugging at my lips, and have to consciously keep it from forming. I sigh and text back, maybe another time, got a night out with jax tonite.
Then, just so I'm not a total liar, I dial Jax's number.
"Yo." he answers on the third ring.
"KC's tonight?" I ask. Conversations with Jax are always to-the-point; no bullshit. It's one of the many great things about him.
"I'm down, my man. We drinkin' for fun or we drinkin' to get somewhere?"
"I don't know about you, but I'm in need of some shitty, meaningless, drunken sex."
Jax snickers. "Say no more, my man. What flavor you feelin' tonight?"
Jax is one of the only people—the other being Tay—that knows about my bisexuality.
"No gender preference, but I'm feeling something tall, young, brown-haired, and green-eyed." I say, biting my tongue and mentally cursing at myself.
"A'ight dude, but I have a feelin' after a couple drinks you ain't gon' care what no one's eyes look like." Jax says with a grin in his voice.
"I'll meet you there in twenty." I say. "Back entrance, yeah? I'll let Keen know. He'll drive us home."
"Dope, see you there."
I hang up the phone and open my close to change, determinedly not thinking about how I just described Devon Pine to a T.