Chapter Text
Believe it or not, but it was Monday again.
The air in Nockfell was as cold as ever, even if no snow could be seen. Travis was still laying in bed, his alarm went off almost half an hour ago, but his body seemed to not have registered that at all. Yesterday was like all Sundays, he did church work for his father, cleaned the house a bit and did his homework. Normal. Something that should be feeling normal for him to do after almost 17 years of doing the same thing over again.
But strangely his mind has been elsewhere entirely these last few days.
Even if he didn't go to school the whole week because he was feeling "sick", and his father magically let him stay at home, his mind was still on the school's bathroom's floor, crying his eyes out over a stupid love letter (if you could even call it that) and fucking Sal Fisher consoling him over something they didn't even know.
Probably.
Travis really hoped that Sally Face didn't know why he was crying like a brokenhearted girl on that shitty floor of the schools restroom. It would be embarrassing as fuck, not to mention that the stupid letter was supposed to be delivered to the bluenette HIMSELF.
It was humiliating, really. He had fell so downhill that he developed a stupid and childish crush on the freak of the school. Of the town. Maybe the freak of his whole little and meaningless world.
He hated it. He hated that he was still remembering that time in the bathroom, missing it even, just because he got to talk to the masked freak without him seeing his ugly face or punching plastic. It was like he got to feel what Sally Face probably felt, the sweet feeling of being able to show emotions without showing your face.
He mostly hated the fact that he fell for a boy. He wouldn't have so much emotional trouble accepting it if Sal was a girl. Yeah, maybe he would feel weird because mind you, it would still had been a girl with a literal fake face, but at least it would had been a...female. And that too, Sal was a very feminine man in some ways, like his hair and the fact that sometimes he would wear skirts, but Sal was a guy. He had a dick. Probably.
Maybe it was Sal's femininity that attracted Travis so much. In Travis's head Sal and him would have been married in a few years, she would be his perfect wife. She would care for him and he would care for her, but this "she" wasn't real, this "she" was a guy he bullies on a daily basis and that probably hates him and the bathroom thing was just a pity act because he saw Travis in his lowest.
"TRAVIS!" Travis was snapped out of his thoughts by the husky voice of his father. His beloved father. He could picture him, standing by the end of the stairs with his with his white tab in his hand , probably going to ask him to help putting it on.
"Yes father?" He yelled back, cringing at the sound of his own voice. He was still in that awkward phase of his late arrived puberty where his voice was finally deepening but still had those ugly moments where it randomly goes high and ear-splitting. He hated it.
"Come downstairs, and hurry up. You're gonna miss the bus." His father yelled again, sounding a bit annoyed. Oh no, was he stressed? Was he angry? Shit, maybe he found something Travis had hidden somewhere without even knowing? Travis felt cold, wait. Did he say he's gonna miss the bus? He thought he was going to stay at home today too.
"Coming!" He hurried up and put on some clothes he had on the end of his bed. Always the same white polo-shirt topped by the old magenta shirt his mother used to own. He opted for some jeans and his ugly neon green shoes that he hated with his whole heart, but was emotionally attached to. Weird, being attached to some ugly shoes. His older sister bought them for him, he was 8 back then and they seemed huge at the time. Now they were literally falling apart and starting to feel small.
He stepped down the stairs , the photos on the wall memories of a past he hardly knew. Some are really damaged, some even beyond repair, the face of a woman ripped away in a hysterical moment his father had. Travis remembered his mother, at least he swore he did. He doesn't remember why she left tho. If he was honest, he didn't know if he ever knew at all. He was young when she randomly took his second-older sister Mary with her, leaving Madeleine and him alone with their father, heartbroken at the time. He probably still is by now, Travis thought.
As he suspected, his father was by the stairs, the white tab in his hand and his hair a bit messy from sleep. "Ah, there you are son. Help me put this on and pass me the gel. Thank you."
Travis just nodded and walked behind his father, gently asking him to give the collar. His father and him weren't even that far from the same height, his dad was maybe two inches taller than him but Travis always felt way shorter than him. Like a little bug that could be crushed any second.
After he put the collar on, his father asked him to his hair, as the older man took a sit on a nearby chair. It was a thing his mother used to do when she was around, than it was Madeleine before she...
...
Now it was his turn to do this.
He loved his father. After all he was all he had. The only reliable figure he had, the only person he could trust, the only person he could look up to be and admire. And the fact that he had no friends made him even more dependent of his father, even if loving him was really difficult. Kenneth was a very hard-to-understand man, one who suffered a lot in his life and that shaped him in whatever he was now. It didn't help that he refused to ask for help and the only thing he really relied on was alcohol or something like that. Travis tried to get his father to talk, to help him get help, but it was utterly pointless. Either ending with him being hit or him getting punished in ways he prefers not to share.
Travis knew his father was bad towards him, but he also knows he can't do anything about it and just love him for the way he is. His mother seemed to love him until one day she didn't, but Travis was going to change that. He himself never experienced any kind of love, both platonic and romantic , but he knew he was going to change that for his beloved father.
(OFC HE MEANS PLATONIC LOVE, INCEST IS WRONG AND DISGUSTING AND YEAH, MAYBE BOTH OF THEM ARE SICK IN THE HEAD, BUT KENNETH AND TRAVIS ARE NOT IN LOVE OR TRAVIS IS IN LOVE WITH HIS FATHER. Just to clarify 😁)
"Thank you Kay-...Travis. Now go to school kid." Kenneth said as he raised from the chair, showing his shoulders to Travis as he walked out the dining area "You're not going to stay at home today or for the next months, you already have 5 absences." And with that, Travis was left alone with his thoughts again. In the small time he had he washed his teeth, brushed and straightened his hair and applied some mystery lotion on his face to make old bruises go away and hurt less.
Most of them were still there, hurting like a bitch and pulsing underneath his skin, but the one he had on his left eye was the one that hurt the most. He remembers how he got it, but he doesn't really remember when and how much time ago.
It was his father, who was under the influence of whatever he had been drinking, took out his anger onto him. He remembers the pain, the suffering of that moment, but he also remembers the soft, almost fragile moment that came afterward. His father said sorry multiple times, said that it wasn't him hurting him, he healed some of the pain he had just inflicted on his son and ended it all with carrying him to bed and sleeping next to him like when he was a child. Maybe he was a child when it happened. Maybe he still was a child now.
"Shit. The bus!" Travis hissed to himself as he hurried out the door, closing the house and taking the keys and sprinting off to the bus stop.
— — —
Sal's morning began like all the others. He got up from bed, untied his hair from the messy bun he slept in, letting it fall on his shoulders and forehead in a messy way, went to the bathroom and wash his mutilated face and applying some lotions to make the scar tissue softer, wash the inside of his empty eye pocket and finishing it all with putting his glass eye on. Of course he put on some clothes, so he opted for the ones on the floor. Today it was some old black pants with patches he made last year, a random skirt he had because today he felt like wearing one and topping it all with his everyday shirt: a short sleeve shirt with the Sanity's Fall logo. Since today it was pretty cold, he decided to put on one of his father's jackets, giving his outfit a kind of retro look.
He usually had breakfast in the car with Larry, but today his brother was going to skip his first 3 classes, so he had to take the bus and have breakfast at school. He took some money and shove it in his backpack, before moving to the mirror for one last check. He put his prosthetic on and tied it tight to his face, and yeah, today he'll keep his hair down.
He wished he could ask his father to take him to school, since he personally hated taking the bus, but he already knew the answer was going to be no. His father probably just fell asleep after a long night shift, and it would be very disrespectful to wake him up. Sal couldn't say he hated his father, but he couldn't say he liked him either. Since his mother passed, he had been really uncomfortable around the older man. Not to mention that in the early stages of the incident, his father actually blamed him, his son, his baby, of being the reason his wife died. Not actually caring or realizing that he was blaming a 7 year old who just lost their mother. Their mom.
With a sigh, he walked inside the dimly lit room to tuck in his fathers covers, whispering a muffled "Love you" before leaving the apartment.
He said goodbye to Gizmo after leaving some food for the obese cat and left.
Sal had always been a kind hearted guy, everyone had a spot in his heart, except for himself. He never thought about themselves as a selfless person, but not a selfish one either. He had a very troubled life that left him traumatized and with sever PTSD, which led to him almost forgetting he was a person, his own person.
He cared about his friends' health, their safety, their happiness , but never his own. He would literally kill himself if it was for someone he loved. He also had a bad habit of forgiving the people who hurt him, always trying to find a reason of why they hurt him.
In this case, this last week his mind had been all about his former tormentor, Travis Phelps. After that weird conversation they had in the bathrooms, his prospective of the blonde changed almost entirely. He knew Travis was the son of the towns former preacher and was it must be undeniably hard being his son, but Travis had been nothing but a bitch for almost all the years he had been in Nockfell. Sal suspected there was something going on with the boy, but that guy really made it impossible to have a proper conversation without throwing slurs and threats. That was until that day.
It was useless to say that Sal read the letter he found on the ground, but he highly doubted it was from Travis. They lived in a small and very religious town, any kid in that school could have written it and felt guilty. After all, Neil and Todd were the only open gay couple in the whole town and you could imagine what they had to go through, but that didn't stop them from loving each other nor hide it.
But still, hearing your bully cry and sobbing in one of the stalls was a weird thing. It was the least thing Sal was expecting to ever happen on his life until now. Travis sounded really desperate, not to mention the fact that he actually almost talked about whatever was happening to Sal. Sal. SAL. It was actually weird.
And the fact that Travis didn't come to school the week after was pretty unsettling for Sal. He was genuinely concerned for the boy. Was he hurt? He mentioned that his father was a really difficult man, and hit Sal with a "you don't know what's it like." Was Travis catching hands at home? He had that theory for a while now, and he was scared of what could be happening behind closed doors. Maybe his father found out before him the reason the blonde had been crying about and hurt him? Or maybe e it was his mother? Sal didn't really know. None really knew what was going on in Travis's family, it was a bit of a mystery. And he was good at solving them.
Sal arrived at the bus stop and regretted not putting on some gloves, because his hand were about to fall off. He shoved them into his pockets, trying to gain some war a from them. It didn't work.
From the distance he could see the bus coming, the headlights were flashing the street because the sun was still rising. As the bus stopped, Sal hopped in, hoping for some kind of heater inside, and thank god there was.
He walked down the bus and took a sit t the very end, before taking out of his backpack a Walkman with some headphones attached to. He didn't notice if there was anyone else in the bus, that was until he turned his head a bit just to see that he sitting not even two sits away from Travis, who was looking at him with wide eyes.
“Travis?”