#* 001.

niko loves the cold. 

there’s something about the crisp, cool air of a winter morning that soothes him — and these days almost nothing soothes him. so he allows himself a moment to bask in it every morning that it’s in town, waking up an hour (sometimes two or three) before school to breathe it in, feel it on his skin. he only retreats inside when he feels like he’s had icicles for breakfast and his naturally pale complexion is reduced to an angry red. 

on the weekends he takes his time. he doesn’t even wear a coat unless his girlfriend — who doesn’t let him go anywhere in the winter without him being covered head to toe — is around. if it weren’t for kodi, niko would sit outside until his fingers turned blue. sleep outside and wake up blind with the weight of fresh dew on his eyelashes. burrow his body into the snowbanks until he crystalized, finally just as delicate on the outside as on the inside. one sudden movement away from shattering. 

but today is different. there’s no school and kodi isn’t around and for once, niko has somewhere to be. 

so when the wind whistles through niko’s hair as his bike cuts through a particularly rough patch of grass, it’s with a renewed sense of purpose that he swallows a lungful of air, savoring the sharp pain as it drips down his throat and leaks into his bones. a chill runs through him and sends him slightly off path, but as soon as he’s regained control he’s skidding to a stop. 

he dismounts, letting his bike fall to the ground as his feet move him towards the most familiar unfamiliar place he’s ever known.

his body seems to know what to do even as his brain screams for him to go home and his heart thumps in agreement. before he can reason with himself, his hand moves of it’s own volition and the confident knock knock knock starkly contrasts with the way he shrinks back into himself at the sound of footsteps following it. 

a woman stares blankly at him from the doorway, clearly waiting for him to announce himself.

“uh.. hi. are you nina?” 

his voice is small and timid and not niko-like at all and her reply is something of the affirmative — he thinks, at least. his ears are too concentrated on the sound of his own heart that he only sees her lips move, but he knows he’s at the right house.

“i.. i’m niko. your son.”

the revelation should have gone accordingly:

she’d fall to her knees. maybe cry a little. call his dad over. he’d cry, too. they’d invite him inside. hug him tight. tell him how this was all one big misunderstanding and they’d been looking for him all along. that they never should have been separated. 

they’d wrap him up in a nice cozy blanket that covered his feet and didn’t smell like bile and tell him he didn’t need to be frozen to feel something. his mom would cook them all a hot meal, and he would spend the evening with a full belly — not at all reminiscent of sleepless nights and hunger pains and that time he got suspended in the second grade for stealing other kids’ lunches. 

he would tell them all about school and kodi and his friends and his foster family and how he’d wished every day that he was back where he belonged. they’d laugh and talk and cry some more and then they’d let him watch his favorite shows on their brand new tv while they sat on a couch that didn’t sag under their weight and sometimes house bugs. 

the night would end with his parents tucking him into a nice big bed that definitely was NOT an old army cot in his nice big room that couldn’t possibly be a small uncluttered section of the basement. he would fall asleep feeling happy and loved.

how it actually went:

a shrill scream of his father’s name is the only sound loud enough to permeate his eardrum and suddenly it’s like his heart isn’t beating at all. 

a disheveled, skinny figure stomps and grumbles its way to the door, revealing the ghost of someone he once knew. 

it’s only then that he registers his mother’s haggard appearance; a gaunt woman with her face sunken in and sallow. his father isn’t in much better shape, and as his mouth opens to reveal a grimace, niko catches a glimpse of the few teeth left in his mouth. rotten and clearly decaying. 

“how the hell did he find us..? —”

“i told you he’d be back some day.. —”

“..thought he was too young to remember.. —”

“..you said we’d never have to..”

bits and pieces of hushed conversation compute in his brain but now it’s the wind that’s overpowering all other sound. it feels loud. protective. like it knows that if he could hear everything it would ruin him for good. 

“i just — i know it’s been a long time.. but i’m here now. i’m staying in a foster home close enough to bike over, so i thought — i don’t know, if i can’t stay maybe i could just come visit? after school. or before school, even,” his words flow like a running tap, fast and without trepidation. there’s so much he needs to say, so much that was supposed to happen, and he can’t help himself.

“my school’s only a few miles from here, so it’s not that long of a trip and my foster family won’t even notice i’m gone — not that they would care if they did notice but.. i could introduce you to my girlfriend. she’s —”

“listen, kid. i want you to get out of here. get back on that bike and don’t ever come back here.”

his father’s gruff voice isn’t at all what niko remembers, and for a second he allows himself to believe he’s made it up entirely. his father would never say that to him. not now. not after they’d been apart for so many years. surely he was hoping to reunite with niko, too. he just had no way of knowing where he’d gone. that had to be it. 

“wait.. you don’t understand. dad..” 

“are you fucking deaf? get out of here! you’re not my son.”

niko recoils at the venom in the man’s tone, feeling like he’d just been burned even in the cold winter air.

“what..? no, dad, it’s me. niko..”

“you think i don’t know who you are?” 

a split second of hope. he’d been kidding this whole time. of course his dad recognized him. he’d be inviting him inside any minute. telling him he should’ve worn a coat. and for once it’d be his family caring about him, not just his girlfriend.

“you’re the same as you were when you were a kid. naive. always with that stupid smile on your face. never understanding when you’re not wanted.”

“but.. dad —”

“call me dad one more time and i’ll remind you why you got taken away.”

niko’s blood runs cold, like the air he’s been inhaling is finally starting to freeze him from the outside in. memories that he doesn’t want — that he’s worked for years to forget — resurface in a paralyzing succession. 

“what are you waiting for, dumbass? get the fuck out of here!” 

it’s the shove to his chest that brings him back to reality, his parents looking much more menacing from his new position on the ground. disoriented, niko scrambles to his feet, running to his bike and pedaling away as fast as he can.

x

his skin crawls as painful flashbacks flit through his mind, almost completely ready to jump out of it by the time he’s off his bike again. shoving down the memories as best he can, he climbs through his girlfriend’s window, managing to shakily land on his feet.

“shit! niko, what the fuck are you — niko..? hey.. hey, what happened? are you okay? baby, look at me. are you hurt?” 

the sound of kodi’s voice sends him completely over the edge, the loud sob he’d been holding in for what felt like years ripping through his throat. he collapses into his girlfriend’s arms for the first time in the three years they’d known each other, and he cries. 

he cries while she holds him and rubs his back and tells him how much she loves him. he cries as he tries to form coherent sentences, desperately wanting to answer her questions. he cries until the icicles in his lungs are gone and all there is is fire and an ache worse than anything he’s felt before. 

x

it isn’t until later that night when niko’s home — after being kicked out by kodi’s meddling cousin, of course — that he allows himself to truly feel his loneliness.

he walks inside, unnoticed by the family that’s supposed to love him, apathetic towards his existence just like the one he was born into. he doesn’t kick his shoes off like he’s been told to, doesn’t particularly care if he tracks snow into the house. he walks straight to his room — which is not a basement but sometimes feels like one — and immediately makes a beeline towards his bed.

hidden underneath it, a box inside another box, is a baggie full of pills of various shapes and sizes. he knows what some of them are. he’s acquired some of them through friends, some taken from doctor’s offices, his foster mother’s medicine cabinet. all promise a trip far away from here. 

he empties the contents of the bag into his mouth. it took him a while to learn how to swallow pills dry, but he’s something of a pro now.

his vision is already hazy by the time his phone lights up.

                       ɪ ɴ ᴄ ᴏ ᴍ ɪ ɴ ɢ    ᴄ ᴀ ʟ ʟ    ғ ʀ ᴏ ᴍ    ᴋ ᴏ ᴅ ɪ  .  .  .

“heeeeey kodes,” niko greets in a lazy drawl, unconsciousness quickly beginning to creep up on him. 

“niko? are you okay? i’m sorry about eden. i can come over if you need me.”

“it’s allllll good, baby. i’m gooood. no worriesss..”

“what? why are you — are you high right now?” 

there’s concern in his girlfriend’s voice, but niko’s dangerously close to blacking out and isn’t finding himself capable of picking up on small details like the inflections in her tone. instead, he falls onto his bed with a lazy smile, phone propped up against his ear. 

“mhmmm.. took a bunch of pills.. a lot of preeetty pills.. pretty.. like you..” he dissolves into a disoriented fit of laughter that isn’t reciprocated. instead, kodi’s words come through hurried and scared.

“pills? what? what kind of pills?! .. niko? niko, what did you take? .. baby. baby, please answer me. what pills did you take? oh god, niko, what did you do?”