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Sweet. Precious. Adorable. Cinnamon roll.
He didn’t always hate those words. But when they were accompanied by those big, chibi eyes and clasped hands because they thought he was justso cuteand “had to be protected from the world”, they made him want to set things onfire.
“I’m old enough to drink. And to drive if I want. And to work, and pay rent, and live as an adult. I don’t need Ravi to put me on a leash.”
Caleb’s cheeks were pink. “He dragged you to a bar and left you alone with some creep. And you can’t deny that you were upset! You vomited on that guy and then begged me to come save you.”
“I didn’t beg,” Bodhi countered, feeling his chest get tight and hot.
Caleb laughed, the expression on his face unkind. “I have texts to prove you did. You needed help, and it was thanks to your brother. Why can’t you admit that?”
Bodhi’s head started buzzing and his ears were ringing, and he realized that the rush of anger coursing through him was about to cause a meltdown. And he was not ready for Caleb to see that. Sometimes he could suppress them until later. He’d become the master of that on campus, so his professors and classmates didn’t think he was some kind of ticking timebomb.
But after his long night, and the emotional upheaval with Caleb—and the goddamn yo-yo he was keeping Bodhi on—it was too much.
Turning on his heel, he started for the door. He got it open before he felt Caleb’s hand on him, and he turned his head. “Don’t,” he snapped aloud.
Caleb blinked in surprise and let go, and Bodhi hurried down the stairs before Caleb could yell at him for using his voice again. He was starting to feel fuzzy around the edges and the need to just scream and hit himself was starting to overwhelm him. He could feel a long, loud hum vibrating in the back of his throat, and his were hands shaking.
Then he started to lose time. It felt like only seconds had passed when Bodhi realized he was standing in front of his dorm building, his chest heaving with his breath and his thighs burning like they were on fire. Something in the back of his head told him he wasn’t supposed to be there, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember why.
It didn’t matter in that moment. It couldn’t. He needed to get upstairs. Get safe. Wrap up in his tight blanket and just let go.
He climbed the stairs because the ache in his muscles was keeping him grounded in the moment, and his hands only shook a little as he fumbled with his key and got the door open. His room smelled the same—like old pizza and weed—and it was blessedly empty. It allowed Bodhi a single moment of relief until everything came crashing down around him.
Once upon a time, he’d tried to explain what it felt like to meltdown when Ravi had asked him. He compared it to the pressure of magma beneath the earth. It was a burning sensation that traveled from the base of his skull to the backs of his knees, then wrapped around him and squeezed until he couldn’t do anything except let it all out.
After that, it was like fight or flight—the sensation of needing to hurt so he could feel something physical. And to scream even though he could barely hear himself because the way it ripped at his throat let him feel like he was being heard. And to run so he could escape the claws of whatever was trying to get him.
His muscles tensed and relaxed, but he had no control over it, and the only thing he could do was keep himself in one place. He slid under his weighted blanket and just let go.
When he was a little kid, he didn’t know how to manage it. He’d flail and hit the walls and throw himself around because he needed that heavy impact on his body in order to calm down.
He squirmed under his blanket, his mouth open—pillow over his face to muffle his screams—and his back arched so deeply he could feel the stretch in his toes.
Somewhere, in the back of his mind where he could think, he understood why his grandparents had never been fully convinced he wasn’t possessed.
Oddly, it was the thought of Caleb and what he might think if he saw Bodhi like this that brought him down. Not with shame, but with a bubble of laughter in his chest that was so new and so unfamiliar, it allowed him to relax.
Would Caleb laugh to see him like this? Would he freak out? He’d never been a casual observer of one of his own meltdowns, but his imagination was active enough, he could picture it.
Gasping for air, he dropped the pillow to the side and fixed his blurry gaze on a ceiling stain. It was one of his focal points, and in the moment, it kind of looked like a woman’s profile. On bad days, he’d lie there and let his mind create shapes, and then he’d create stories out of those shapes. He wrote wordless, intangible novels that only he could access, and sometimes he wished he could let other people crawl into his brain so they could enjoy those moments with him.
“She looks like a goddess,” he signed with an exhausted hand. He smiled to himself and rolled onto his side.
His world shifted and he was too shocked to panic when he realized he wasn’t alone.
His gaze fixed on the stern face of his grandfather, very much like an old man since the last time he’d seen him. He had more wrinkles, the skin under his eyes was sagging and dark, his hair and beard iron grey with no more hints of black. His grandmother was beside him, hair was freshly colored if the stain on her temple was anything to go by, and her makeup was perfectly done.
She looked horrified while his grandfather looked furious.
“Ravi,” his grandmother said. Bodhi couldn’t hear her because his hearing aids were long-dead and in their box God only knew where. But he was fairly an expert at reading her lips. She’d made sure of that over the years.
He shook his head and sat up, clearing his throat before deciding he wasn’t going to speak. He was a grown adult. He was not beholden to these people anymore. They had nothing to sink their claws into.
He was his own person.
His grandfather took a step closer and began speaking, turning his head from side to side and waving his arm around the room. Bodhi imagined he was bitching at him about the mess, or the smell. Not that it mattered. Bodhi had never been able to understand him, and not just for his inability to read lips under all his facial hair.
