#by.sky

THE PAST:

Sky didn't hear about the day he was born very often. His mother talked about it maybe twice as he was growing up. Once, when Sky was six, in a conversation to his uncle about just how terrible it had been, while he was preparing to welcome his first child into the world. And then again, when Sky was fourteen, while lecturing him about everything she had ever done for him. He knew he and his brother had been premature, scarily so, and his mom had nearly died during the whole ordeal. A couple of times, to hear her tell it. And both babies spent the first month or two of their lives in a warm box, held for brief moments of time by nurses mostly. Their parents were busy elsewhere; father "working" and mother recovering.

That was sort of always how things were. His mother was distant, held him at arm's length, though he thought the world of her growing up. She was graceful, and strong, and while she wasn't the kindest person in the world, she taught him how to rely on himself, and he figured that was a good thing. The only other person he ever really had by his side was his brother, and Sky relied heavily on his forever partner to get him through a lot of things.

His father taught him...other things. The man had never held down a job for very long, unlike his own hardworking immigrant parents. He fought, often, with anyone who dared look at him the wrong way. He did have "bosses" that Sky got to meet every so often, but he never liked them. They looked at him like he was a meal, something to be devoured, and it wasn't until he was older that he realized it was because he was collateral. If his father ever screwed up with his "bosses", Sky could be taken away. It was possibly the only thing that made Sky realize his father did, in fact, love him.

Sky knew how to pick a lock by the time he was five. He knew how to climb in windows, how to identify what was expensive jewelry and what was worth basically nothing. His dad often kept him up late, running jobs with him. Sky got good at keeping watch. He distinctly remembers being six years old and spending an entire afternoon learning how to whistle, thinking it was fun and hilarious that his father was teaching him something so silly and whimsical. Only to find out the next evening that when he saw someone coming, he was to whistle loud enough for his father to hear as he and his buddy were trying to break into cars left out on the street in LA.

His mother kept everything orderly in her home. When Sky wasn't out with his father, he was on a schedule at home. She believed in church a sort of silly amount, they often went two or three times in the evenings during the week, and absolutely spent Sundays at the church. He was expected to stay quiet and obedient at all times, or he'd be punished at home, and punishments were often cruel. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were all held at the exact same time every day, and portions were controlled. There were no seconds, and leftovers were disappointments. As a growing boy, Sky was often hungry, but he wasn't able to say anything about it to his parents.

School was difficult for him, likely as he was tired and hungry most of the time. When teachers discovered he worked harder for food rewards, they tended to get better results from him. It was information that passed to every teacher, all of them thinking it was a cute little quirk he had. Food-driven, not starved. As time went on, Sky became "average" in school. He flew under the radar, and he was happy to do so.

Flying under the radar came in handy as he entered high school, very aware of the growing feelings he had for other boys in his class. He found the locker room after soccer practice to be a stressful place, focusing more on averting his eyes than on anything else. It affected his performance for a while. Until he found someone who seemed to feel the same way, another guy on the soccer team. The two of them were the star players on the freshman team for a while, the chemistry between them on the field making them essential to winning nearly every game their freshman year.

Just a month or two before summer break, Sky invited his teammate to his house. They were already best friends, hanging out whenever they could, which was often difficult with Sky's mother's regimen she made him follow. But she was going to be out of the house, visiting a sick family member across town, and Sky sort of had ulterior motives. It didn't take long for the pair to get up to Sky's room and share their first kiss. Truth be told, it was an act that had been building for most of the school year, the two of them constantly staring at each other and just hoping and praying for a safe, secluded place where they could be alone. After the first kiss, there were many others. Shared in empty school bathrooms, once or twice in the locker room when the rest of the team had already made it to the field, that sort of thing. The two dated in secret for the remainder of their freshman year.

Sky clearly remembers the hot day in June when he brought his teammate to his house again, thinking his parents would both be out. He brought him up to his room, and before he could protest they were on his bed, making out. It was getting hot and heavy, going further than they'd ever gone before, and then his bedroom door swung open. His teammate's jeans were unbuttoned, and said teammate's hand was all the way up Sky's shirt, so there was really no way to deny what was happening. More than the hot day, Sky remembers the disgust on his mother's face. The way she screamed at them both. The tears in his teammate's eyes as he was chased from the house. He remembers the rage in her eyes when she spun on him, the names his father called him when she told him. It was only a week before school was out for the summer, but they didn't send Sky back to school.

No, they sent him somewhere else. A camp in a remote area, a four hour bus ride from his home. The bus ride was nearly silent, save for a couple of kids sobbing quietly into their hands as they rode up to the "summer camp" that was going to save them.

Sky doesn't talk about that summer very often. He came back home quieter, numb and unfeeling most of the time. He flinched away from his teammate on the first day of soccer practice. He kept to himself, wore sweaters even in the heat so he could hide himself in the back of the classrooms, became prone to daydreaming and not focusing on the lessons being taught. But he wasn't making out with boys, so his parents felt they'd done the right thing.

Any free time he had during his high school years were spent helping his father out on jobs. It kept him out of trouble, and his father figured it was a good way to get him working as soon as possible. Besides, they could use the extra income that another set of hands provided. What his father didn't expect was for Sky to graduate high school, turn eighteen, and steal as much cash as he could from his family before running away. Summers at conversion therapy disguised as "church camp" had gotten to him enough that running away just made sense. The only person that knew his plan was his brother, and only because Sky had asked him to come with. Jib likely had his own issues with his upbringing, because he didn't hesitate to agree to the plan and run away with Sky.

There was nothing anyone could really do, either. The money hadn't been obtained by legal means, it wasn't like his father could go after him for it. Or maybe he could have, but he knew if he went to his criminal buddies for help then Sky likely wouldn't live through the ordeal. Another small show of love for his son.

Sky used the money to go to cosmetology school, focusing on esthetics and makeup artistry. He was good at it, nobody would ever have said otherwise. For the first time, he didn't fly under the radar, he excelled. Still quiet, observant, with an unfocused kind of unfeeling gaze that made other squirm, but excelling. A year after running away from home, he'd started his own business as a makeup artist and esthetician. He wasn't making great money, but he was doing good enough. Being in LA meant also occasionally working on some bigger projects with recognizable names, which was often fun for him.

That was how he met Preecha. To hear Sky tell it, it was love at first sight. The hockey-star-turned-failing-model was beautiful, and being able to work on him was an honor that Sky didn't take lightly. As he lightly brushed makeup onto his skin, Sky conversed and smiled in a way he hadn't done since he was fourteen years old. Before the first shoot was over, they had exchanged phone numbers, and Sky took to texting Preecha almost immediately. Text conversations turned into hanging out, which turned into dates, and finally Sky was in a relationship with a man, something he'd never dreamed he'd be able to do. It took some effort to get him comfortable with everything, to forget the summers he'd spent unlearning his "unnatural urges", but he was with Preecha for a year or so before things fell apart.

Preecha moved. And didn't want to keep up a long distance relationship. Sky tried to understand, but he struggled with it. Still, he accepted that he'd been dumped and did his absolute best to move on. Truth was, his life had seemed amazing for that time they were together, and when he was gone Sky felt that emptiness he'd been holding on to for nearly a decade come creeping back into his life. It wasn't the only thing to come creeping back, though.

His father died. Sky had mixed feelings about it all, but he attended the funeral anyway. His mother didn't even look at him, which hurt, but he wasn't sure what he'd expected. It had been five years since he'd seen her. Longer since he'd seen his father's connections in the dark world of criminal activity. But they remembered him, and they cornered him after the funeral, dragging him into a van and taking him to another location mostly just to freak him out. One of his dad's old "bosses", a man that had always looked at Sky with a hunger that gave him nightmares, let him know that his father owed him, and since the man could no longer provide it was Sky's turn.

Makeup artist by day, criminal by night. For an entire year, Sky burned the candle at both ends, but he didn't seem to care too much. He was numb again.

THE PRESENT:

One day, he decided to look up Preecha online. He couldn't stop himself; the last time he'd felt any semblance of happiness in his life had been with the other. He saw that he was running some co-op in a small town in New York, and within two hours he'd packed up the few things he needed and bought a one way bus ticket across the country. Sky told only one person where he was going before he was gone, and that was his brother. He figured that was the only person he could really trust not to tell anyone where he'd gone. The entire bus trip was spent researching Preecha. Where was he, exactly? What was he doing? How was he doing? Was he dating anyone? Did he have any new hobbies? Any pets? Sky needed to know it all, couldn't fathom not learning everything before he got there. He was determined to win Preecha over again.

In Ennora, he found someone renting a shitty trailer in the outskirts and he jumped on the opportunity. Then he got himself situated as a desairologist as the local mortuary. He wanted to be settled a little bit, to not seem too eager or give away the fact that he was only there for one person when he finally met up with Preecha again. For a month he watched from afar, keeping tabs on the other, never very far away.

HEADCANONS:

his father was the child of immigrants, his mother was adopted by a white upper class family in northern california; they disowned her when she married a scummy criminal so sky never met his maternal grandparents. paternal grandparents were very involved in the naming of the grandchildren, his grandmother gave him his nickname at birth.