Chapter Text
“I am so sorry for your loss, but I’m afraid you can’t adopt them until you are financially stable.”
Jack rolled his eyes and tilted his head back, opting to stare at the patterns sketched into the ceiling instead of listening to the conversation his brother, Peter, and a random woman were having. Dee poked his arm a few times before she also forced her head back to look at the ceiling, her ginger hair sliding down her back and red scarf.
The ceiling was quite interesting, really. It was a dark garnet color with a lighter shaded pattern stretching across it, making the whole thing seem more like a painting than a roof. The room’s ceiling met at a point in the center, making all four sides of the pyramid symmetrical with swirls and fancy lines. The walls were a more modest red color, less of a garnet and more of a lighter and less saturated color. Jack couldn’t guess for the life of him why the room was entirely red. If anything, it should be literally ANY other color. Does red not remind any of the other orphans of their dead, bloodied parents?
Like it reminded him?
Against the back wall, a fancy desk was set up with an older woman sitting behind it. She seemed utterly disinterested in whatever Peter was in her face about, tracing her fat fingers along the embroidery of the red (of course) leather chair she sat in. She had many papers in front of her, each seeming to hold detailed information about each of the orphans that unfortunately resided in the building. A few pens were scattered around as well, adding to the “I’m always working” type look.
Jack scoffed quietly once he heard the woman speak again. “If I am correct, you don’t even have a job yet, therefore, you can’t adopt them and take them home.”
“What the heck are you saying?” Peter sneered. “I’m their brother, for God’s sake! Do you really think I couldn’t afford to keep them?
The woman sighed. “It’s not only about you being able to afford it, but it’s also about the responsibility that you probably don’t have.”
At that, Jack saw Dee furrow her eyebrows and give the woman a one-sided, yet nasty, glare. He smiled to himself as he watched her squint her eyes in hatred.
“Doesn’t this place suck?” she harshly whispered into Jack’s ear after tugging it towards her. “Mom and dad wouldn’t have ever let this slide.”
They wouldn’t have. They would’ve been on Peter’s side until the end, defending their children until the end. But, alas, would any of this be happening if they had been there?
Jack nodded, trying not to respond with his thoughts. The event had been tragic, one car that turned too fast caused two of the most important people in his life to vanish before he could say goodbye. He remembered trying his hardest not to scream and pull his parents off the hospital bed. He’d failed, and he’d tried anyway, but Peter pulled him back, fussing at him through tears for his poor behavior. He knew Peter would’ve tried the same if he’d been any younger or less mature, and he knew that he wanted to so badly. But someone had to be the adult.
Speaking of that adult, he angrily stomped his foot on the ground in a childish manner. “Are you kidding me? I am responsible, I’ve been so responsible since our parents died!”
“Rules are rules,” the woman said, lazily tapping her chubby fingers against the desk, finally having moved on from the chair. She pointed lazily at Jack and Dee. “Now, I suggest that you two pack your bags with as much as possible. Just remember that you only get one suitcase, so you better have a big one, or only fit the important stuff in there.”
Peter huffed but inevitably stormed back towards Dee and Jack, now under his breath. Jack had half the mind to joke about his “convincing abilities” that he’d previously claimed were incredible, but decided to keep his mouth shut once he noticed the stressed and frustrated face on his brother.
It didn’t suit him.
Dee hopped up from the couch she and him had been sitting on while waiting for Peter. She grabbed Jack’s arm and forced him up, causing him to stumble and nearly trip over a poorly placed red rug. Red, just like everything else in the fucking place.
The three walked out quickly, shoving the door to the orphanage open and hesitantly getting in the car. Peter didn’t talk as he got into the front seat with the driver, and Jack slid into the back seat with Dee at his side, silently. He wanted to make jokes, he wanted to lighten the mood, but he feared Peter wouldn’t be a fan. As much as he loved annoying Peter, it was certainly easier back when their parents were alive.
Dee leaned against him and wrapped her hands in the cloth of her scarf. “This is so stupid, isn’t it, Jack?”
Jack nodded. “The dumbest thing, ever,” he responded as the driver slowly began to drive away.
—————
Jack shoved his suitcase across the floor, grinning madly as it made a loud scratching noise against the wooden floorboards. He watched as the old woman from behind the desk grimaced and her face contorted into a frown. The further Jack pushed the suitcase across the floor, the closer the woman looked to strangling him and shoving his head into a blender.
He continued to slide it across the floor, his grin widening every time the woman inhaled sharply or opened her mouth to speak. He could get used to that face the woman made when she looked so angry that she could burn the orphanage down.
And on that topic, Jack wouldn’t mind at all if the orphanage burned down. He didn’t exactly want people to die, but if it meant that he could get out of the stupid orphanage mess, then he’d easily be the one to throw gasoline all over the place. He’d stand outside and watch as everything burned to the ground, and he’d smile as the stupid red room melted into the dirt and smoked so much that people could see from miles away.
He shoved his suitcase again, realizing he’d accidentally stopped once he began thinking, and felt his grin stretch from ear to ear as another sharp exhale was heard from behind him.
“Dear,” a bitter voice spoke, hissing through her teeth, “how about we get someone to take that up for you tomorrow? It’s quite late, you know.”
“Nah, I’ll be fine, just a little further,” Jack replied as he shoved the suitcase again, causing an obnoxiously loud grating sound to reverberate around the room. After a moment of hesitation (he was trying to trick the woman into thinking he’d stop), he shoved it again.
“What do you want?” The woman finally snapped, her eyes bigger than her double chins. “Is this because I separated you from your sibling? Just because you’ll be sleeping in different rooms? It’s the rule, boys in one, girls in another!
“Nope,” Jack responded happily, pleased with the annoyance on the woman’s face. “I don’t give two shits about being in a different room than Dee, ‘cause I know I’ll see her tomorrow.” His grin widened as the woman groaned and narrowed her eyes at his vulgar language.
He stopped next to the stairs that led up to the quarters. Jack awkwardly lifted his suitcase up so that it was parallel to the stairs, and began dragging it up, forcing the terrible scratching noise to carry up to where the other children were too. He smiled as he listened to groans from the other children and teens, and continued to be a menace.
Once he’d made it to the room he’d been assigned, he finally picked up the suitcase and carried it over to his bed, seeing no reason to annoy the people there anymore. Most kids were already sitting on their beds, chatting about activities or gossiping about the new kids that arrived. All of the beds were taken except for one in the back that happened to be the lower bunk of a bunk bed. Jack sighed in annoyance. Apparently, he couldn’t even get the top bunk in the wretched place.
“Whatever,” he mumbled to himself as he set his suitcase down and unzipped it, obviously ignoring the states of the other children. He forced himself to focus on his suitcase and not the stares of the kids that were curious about him and wanted juicy gossip. The urge to snap his head around and insult their appearances only grew as one kid tried to sneak up behind him.
Finally, after trying his hardest to ignore the kid slowly moving to stand behind him, Jack turned and yelled, “what the hell do you want, you creep?”
The boy had brown hair and an abnormally large grin that made Jack shudder. He was wearing blue collared pajamas, and his unwavering smile made the situation all the more unnerving.
“Hi,” the boy said, ignoring the fact that he was just called a creep, “I’m Matthew Virginia, but everyone calls me Matt! Want some fireworks?” He reached down into his pant’s pockets and pulled out a small box of the snapping ones. “You only have to pay a few quarters.”
Jack knew right away that he wanted them, hell, he could probably cause some real damage with them. Maybe even a fire, and he could get rid of the place for good. However, Matt’s smile made him a little more than uncomfortable, so he settled for cussing him out until he walked away. It seemed to work for a moment, until Matt quickly turned back around.
“Do you know who you’re bunking with?” he asked as he seemed nervous.
“No, nor do I fucking care,” Jack responded, readying himself to hurl insults at Matt again.
Matt raised his hands, still smiling creepily as Jack began berating him with words again. “Well, just remember that there’s a reason nobody bunked with him,” he mumbled as he shoved his fireworks back into his pocket and scurried away, making others uncomfortable with his presence.
Jack rolled his eyes, because who in their right fucking mind would look at Matt and think he isn’t creepy. And, more importantly, why on Earth would he heed his advice on bunking with someone he hadn’t seen yet? The only reason he’d request to move bunks is if he was bunking with Matt, which some random kid seemed to have the misfortune of.
Jack grabbed one of his pairs of pajamas and hid behind his bunk to change. Once he’d changed into his pajamas, he stepped out from behind the bed and ultimately decided to skip brushing his teeth. Why bother if he didn’t know where the bathroom was, and if he was just going to in the morning?
He climbed into his bed and watched as a few of the teens began turning the lights off, asking each person if they were finished before doing so. Once they reached Jack, he nodded and they turned the lamp off that hung on the wall. His world went from bright to pitch black as the final lamps were turned off, and he adjusted onto his side.
His eyes were still slightly irritated from all of the crying he’d done days before, begging for his parents to wake up, praying, even though he didn’t believe in God. He remembered how puffy all of their eyes had been, red from all the tears that flowed down their cheeks and left tear stains. Despite all of the exhaustion that seemed to hang over him, Jack found himself too uncomfortable to sleep.
The orphanage sucked already, and as if the several wishes to burn it to the ground wasn’t enough, he began getting ideas of blowing it up with Matt’s stupid fireworks (he’d probably bribe a kid to get the fireworks for him, he’d barely met Matt and already had some kind of one-sided grudge against him). And on top of that, where would he put them? There were so many good options, like the woman’s office, or into the kitchen, or someone’s food. Or, even better, the urinals! He could already see it, the entire bathroom exploding in a flash of bright light, ranging from red all the way to purple as it engulfed the entire building. Maybe he’d try to throw Matt in there too, nobody should exist with a smile that creepy, anyway, so he’d be doing everyone a favor.
Just as he began to think of ways to prank Matt to the moon and back, the door to the room slid open and a tall, skinny figure stepped through. The figure seemed to be Jack’s age, despite its height making its movement awkward. It stepped through the doorway and shut the door behind him. Jack listened eagerly and he heard a soft sigh, right before a lamp turned on.
“Dave! You idiot, go to bed! You’re disrupting the rest of us!” a boy whined from underneath his quilt, eyes peeking over the top and narrowing at the now visible figure.
Jack’s interest piqued as he observed the boy. His skin was an unnatural shade of purple, looking far too textured to be fake. His hair was a darker shade of the same color, and it looked to be about shoulder length, but Jack had a hard time telling with it in a ponytail. His eyes were black with white irises that seemed to slightly glow as they snapped towards the boy and then narrowed. His neck was a little too long to be human, wrapped in bandages and cracked in all the wrong places, but he still stood and acted like one anyway. He donned purple pajamas that seemed fitting, and he crossed his arms in the light.
“I’ll have ya know that whateva I was doin’ is none of your fuckin’ business!” the purple boy, Dave, scowled in a strong accent that sounded nothing like any of the others’. “Plus, I wasn’t tryna wake ya up, honest!”
The boy scoffed before turning over and sighing. “You’ve got a bunk mate anyway, so good luck with that. He’s about as weird as you.”
Dave’s attention shifted to Jack, who tried his hardest to squeeze his eyes shut and pretend he was sleeping the whole time. He listened to Dave’s light footsteps creep closer to the bunk, and became uncomfortable once he wasn’t sure where Dave was. Jack opened one of his eyes to find that the lamp had been turned off, and he couldn’t see anything again. The only difference was the light shuffling coming from above him.
Jack hesitantly went to sleep, ignoring the feeling that he was being watched.
—————
“What kind of food is this?”
Dee sat down on a cushioned chair next to Jack. Her hair was still messy with sleep and she wore a frown accompanied by furrowed brows. She had thrown her scarf over her shoulders like she did every morning, but she seemed more hesitant about actually wearing it. Jack couldn’t quite remember a time where she had felt embarrassed to wear it, so when another girl with curly black hair walked by and yanked on it, Jack quickly connected the dots.
“Assholes…” Dee muttered before slapping her hand over her mouth and looking up at Jack guiltily. “Don’t tell Peter I said that.”
Jack shrugged. He, out of Dee’s two older brothers, cared the least about the cussing she did. As a matter of fact, he had quite a vivid memory of teaching her a few to shout in Peter’s ear when he got home from school. Jack snorted as he remembered Peter’s face, wide eyed and shocked before grabbing Jack by the ear and threatening him, only getting raspberries blown at him.
“I won’t,” Jack said, his attention drifting back to the girl who’d bothered Dee, “but he’d be so upset about those girls. Have they been bothering you?”
Dee hesitantly looked at the ground. “Only all of yesterday and today. They think my scarf’s funny.”
Jack could feel his skin sizzle in anger. Dee, one of the least problematic and extremely funny kids here, was being teased by a bunch of nobodies. A bunch of clones of each other, all in the same bright clothing that was so trendy with little care for anyone around. Jack was known not to care about many things, but not to that extent.
“Knock her teeth out,” he sneered as he narrowed his eyes at the girl, who was suddenly surrounded by a bunch of other ones.
Dee scoffed and rolled her eyes, but a smile stayed on her face. “Not sure if that’d be smart, but if you want to upset Peter, get in trouble, and have her be even more annoying, be my guest.” Dee kept a thin, yet happy smile on her lips as she began to eat breakfast.
Jack looked at his own tray as his anger slowly dissipated. There was a green looking piece of sausage sharing a section with an undercooked biscuit that was sloppily cut into two pieces. In the section next to it, light colored strawberries (which meant they’re sour, Jack grimaced) and squished blueberries were mixed in a careless manner. The only relatively good part of the meal, in Jack’s eyes, was the milk carton. They’d had normal, chocolate, and strawberry. Jack, who’d desperately wanted something strawberry related that didn’t taste like shit, grabbed the strawberry flavored one and had hoped for the best.
Dee was drinking her chocolate milk when she spoke again, forcing Jack to stop observing the food he’d be stuck eating for a while. “How was your night? Any interesting things happen? Any interesting people?”
“Definitely interesting,” Jack lamented, groaning at the thought. “There’s this weird guy; his name’s Matt or something. He seems to always have this weirdass, creepy smile on his face.” Jack paused. “Fucking virgin.” Another pause as he slowly remembered who he was talking to. “Don’t repeat that, or remember it, for that matter.”
Dee snorted, but rolled her eyes. “Yeah sure,” she said, “but is that it? The girls always say that there is weird stuff happening in the boys’ quarters.”
Jack took a second to wonder how any of them would know, but ended up shrugging instead. “Well, not really, they were pretty normal I guess,” Jack tapped on his chin.
There was something else he wanted to say. He wanted to tell Dee about the purple boy, because there’s no way that Jack was the only person infatuated by him. He was purple, for fuck’s sake! How could everyone else in the boys’ quarters gloss over the fact that they were in the same room as someone who was purple! Maybe Dee would get it.
“And… there’s this boy,” Jack started.
“You’ve already found a boyfriend?” Dee interrupted.
Jack elbowed her, “no! What I meant to say was that there is a boy who’s purple! Like, actually purple, skin, hair, everything!” Jack became fascinated even just speaking about Dave, the purple kid, the boy.
“Yeah, sure,” Dee stretched out the word ‘yeah’ and spoke disbelievingly. “Lemme guess, there was an orange boy in there too, right?”
Jack elbowed her again, desperately looking for a way to explain the tall, skinny, so very interesting, purple boy to her. He tried to think of a way to prove it to her. I mean—he could always look for him, to prove it (definitely not because he wanted to see him up close, haha, never!!).
“How about when they let us outside, we go look for him!” Jack smiled, challenging her. He hadn’t ever been happier to memorize a schedule than the one at the orphanage. After all, they would all be let out in thirty minutes, to play or scheme or whatever it was these children did in their free time,
“Deal.” Dee replied, sticking out her hand despite Jack never giving her an option.
When a woman came in and announced their breakfast’s end, Jack hurried through the halls and followed the other children, Dee close on his left. The halls, like the red room, were various shades of red and garnet, giving the building a slightly eerie feel to it. Jack didn’t know how people could live there for years, never getting to leave unless it’s for an emergency. It was like school, but permanently, and nobody could call in sick or skip.
Jack stood on his toes and he tried to scan the group of children for the irregularly tall, purple boy that had been on his mind. When he found nothing, he frowned to himself and let Dee walk ahead, falling back to stare at Matt’s creepy smile as Matt walked casually, hands in his pockets.
“Hey, creep,” Jack began, realizing too late that’s not a great way to get information out of someone. “Have you seen a tall kid, probably over six feet in height, and maybe purple?”
Matt stared at him for a second, his creepy smile never faltering. “If you mean Dave, then no, I haven’t seen him yet, this morning.” Jack wanted to grab those fireworks out of Matt’s pockets and throw them at him. “He usually shows up around now, though, so you’ll catch him sooner or later.”
“What can’t you just be helpful?” Jack growled.
“I mean, I have fireworks and cocaine if that will work—“
Before Matt could finish his sentence, two hands gripped Jack’s shoulders and yanked him harshly to the ground. The rest of the group of kids began to walk away, heading down the hallways to God-knows-where, leaving Jack, ass aching, sitting on the ground in the middle of a random hallway.
He felt anger bubble up in his throat as he whipped around to find who pulled him back.
He was shocked when he purple filled his vision.
“I don’t know ya yet, Old Sport, but I had to save ya from that creep,” a strong New York accent said, a smile audible in the voice.