His knees crackle as he gets up. He stands frozen in place as he bats his eyelids, waiting for the black pixels to slowly recede behind his eyes. He continues admiring the cathedral, wandering between the pews through the arches at the sides of the main nave, to where the other altars are placed. There are gifted flowers around them, with a few rosaries dangling from open palms of some statues and hanging around the shoulders of others.
He can feel his eye twitch as it trails along the lines of the tangle of rosaries. His hands are clammy, it's wrong. Something might happen, they're so asymmetrical. He reaches for them. He tugs at the beads and pulls them down carefully. After getting them all he hangs them all on the saint's outstretched arm. But a thought pops into his head, like a little devil whispered it by his ear. He turns and speeds to the other saint, and then fixes his rosaries, and of the lady next to him, and then he fixes everyone on the opposite side.
He sighs, closing his eye. He slowly returns to one of the saints. The figure's eyes seem dead. He shivers. He does not like mannequins, but only now does he acknowledge that he did not like these statues either. You're such a dunce, he tells himself. Or does he just repeat his brother's words? He averts his eyes from their faces.
He is staring at the silver cross at the end of a rosary when he whips his head around, so much so that his neck stretches. A pang of pain shoots to his head. He winces, gripping at it with a palm, shifting behind a column and resting against it with his back. He breathes through his teeth. He concentrates on listening with his one free ear, registering a vague humming. It echoes throughout the vast space. It is familiar. He remembers such a tune and it's stuck on the tip of his tongue.
He takes that as his cue to leave.
He peeks behind the column but does not see anyone. He steps out from his hiding place and speeds to the opposite side of the nave and along the corridor, not casting a glance back. He appears in front of the heavy wooden doors of the crypt, pushing them open with his shoulders and hurrying down the stone steps. He follows the flashlight of his phone through the dingy room and to another, equally heavy. He accidentally brings his right eye to the keyhole. Wrong one. He shifts to stare out onto the street with his uncovered one. A small gust of air blows against it, but he manages to see no one. An empty street. Just how he likes it.
He pushes against it like the one before and slips out ot the cathedral, unseen. At least he hopes so. He steadies his heartbeat. He really just did that. He takes deep breaths, checking the side street again. Still no one. He walks to the park right next to the cathedral and climbs over the fence, not frightened by the sharpened points.
That was too easy.
...
It took some twenty odd minutes to arrive to the shrubs behind Athen's house. His house, the thought pops into his mind, like and angel quipped in from his shoulder. He stares at his window on the second story, then at the barely visible light in the window of the kitchen beneath it. There must be a lamp or something turned on somewhere. At least there were no silhouettes behind the short curtain. He knew it would be harder to get into a house with six sleeping residents than to get out of it, and now he mentally curses past Callahan who said this would be a problem for future Callahan.
He hums in thought. He begins slowly moving through the shrubs to the side of the house where he plans to dash under the window. The back door opens. He freezes.
A person steps outside onto tiles he knew to be navy blue. They seem to be staring at the place he had been hiding in just a few moments ago. Their curly hair is dragging along their shoulders as they look around, right until they stop in his direction. He fights the urge to drop to the ground behind the small fence. The movement would surely have him spotted. His heartbeat shakes his ribs and vibrates in his ears, especially the right one.
The person gently waves at him. He gulps.
They steady their arms on their stomach and push the back door slightly more open. His tired sigh is so loud in the night's quiet. They keep standing right by the door, quietly humming a familiar tune and staring at where he is still bent over some bushes until he wills himself to move. He clambers over the fence, steps over it, really - it barely comes to his hips - and slowly walks over the backyard.
He stops just in front of two small steps to the tiles and glares at them. He can feel Athen's eye drifting over his skinny frame before he raises his head to meet their stare. His eyebrows scrunch up slightly; they do not seem mad. No, they are the same as ever - eyes a bright splatter of green and blue with a golden ring circling their iris - sparkling and warming.
"You look like you are mentally preparing for a shooting," an amused smile pushes their dimples up with their cheeks. They visibly relax their shoulders. They seem relieved. "Come," they usher, extending their upturned palms for him to take. "I'm sure you've got to be exhausted by now; I know I am." He grips their hands and looks back down, slowly but surely stepping up. His face heats up; he remembers a time he would, and could , sprint and jump over the two minuscule steps for dinner or such, but he lacked that confidence in his vision now.
He enters the house and stops, glancing back as Athen locks the back door as quietly as they could before crossing the hall to the stairs. He starts behind them, eye locking onto their palm which rested on the railing. He comes behind them as they turn around to face him and scoot the length of the step to stand by the wall. He grips the railing for his dear life as they stand beside him and take steps in sync. This must be the slowest thing he's ever done in his life, he thinks. And yet, he finds Athen's presence does not make him feel like a child being pulled by their hands until they walk; they're just there , climbing the stairs with him. They also didn't climb the stairs at their pace and just wait for him on the first story, that would have been embarrassing.
The toe of his sneakers catches the top of a stair and his arms swing out for a hold on something, finding their shoulder. His breathing quickens. "Thanks," he whispers, "for making sure I don't break more of my face on the stairs."
"Oh, it's nothing," Athen says, placing a palm on his lower back. "I'm your guardian - it's kind of in the name."
Callahan makes a face, looking at them. "Not that kind of guardian."
They reply: "Same thing."
He sighs as he sees no other stairs in his field of vision and strolls through the hall to his room. He never thought that he would be happy to hear his brother's snoring - but he is - since his ear is in a situation right now. And for the rest of his life, probably. He opens the door and takes a single step inside. His eye immediately lands on the closed window he climbed out of, which he unmistakably left open. He prepared to come back to a freezing room.
"What were you doing in my room?" He asked Athen whom he had heard follow him through the hall. Athen grabs him under his arm. "That, right!" and guides him to his bed. "I was going to bed when I remembered your rosary." Callahan sat on his bed. "It was in the washing machine, but I managed to get it out somehow. Must have been in some pocket." He then stares as Athen turns to his desk and picks something up from beside his record player. His red - white rosary is given to him.
He feels his mouth hang open and something gross overwhelm his chest, like something warm is spilling in his rib cage. "Don't worry," Athen says. "I can leave if you want to pray some more." He tears his gaze away from the Cross to them and finds that his jaw, slack, won't move. Not like he had any words on his mind that could ever begin to thank this walking blessing of a person. "Yeah," he manages, "I probably have to thank him for some things, as well."
"Okay," they laugh, "just get out of those clothes." They turn around and grip the door. "Good night." He doesn't reply, not when he is staring at his rosary again. Truth be told, he doesn't know where it originally came from. It wouldn't be special if not for the fact that he was told it was his mother's. He falls onto the covers, his rosary resting on his chest, blankly staring over the room he didn't realize he had made his own until now. All of his records were here, his journal, his rainbow-ordered wardrobe. It really was his home. Kind of.
It's warm.
So warm, in fact, he falls asleep just like that.