8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
T obias isn’t sleeping. It’s been three days since he showed up at my apartment, and I don’t know if he’s slept more than a couple of hours in total.
In fact, ever since he installed himself on the couch so I could have my bed back, he’s barely moved at all. The TV is on twenty-four hours a day and it’s always turned to the most gruesome, traumatic shit he can find. There’s only light if I turn them on. He eats and ices his injuries and takes ibuprofen if I make him, and other than that, he lies there.
Every single day I want to at least ask him to put on a sitcom or something, before he slips deeper into whatever dark place his mind is in. But I don’t want to risk another verbal takedown.
He continues to insist he’s fine. We don’t have any other incidents like we did the first day, where he let some of his emotion and vulnerability break through. Which I suppose makes it easier for me to stick to all those stupid rules I made for myself while I was down in the bar the first night, not thinking about my business.
No touching other than to help him move around.
No looking more than you have to.
Nothing that he could misconstrue as flirting or romance.
No pet names.
And don’t fucking kiss him, you idiot.
They seemed simple enough, but they’ve been harder than I’d like to follow. Even if Tobias has continued to be distant with me since we had that fight.
The fight that I still don’t totally understand. Was I really being that much of a dick? It didn’t feel like I was. I want to protect him. It doesn’t mean I think he can’t protect himself. I just… want to.
I want to protect myself as well, before I become even more fixated on someone that I can never let myself get involved with. I have a business to run and a lifetime’s worth of issues to continue mostly avoiding. Tobias can recover from this, and then he still has his whole adult life ahead of him.
The thoughts continue to swirl until it’s so frenetic in my head that I realize I’m clenching my jaw and have to manually make the effort to unclench.
“How you doing, boss? Boy troubles got you down?”
Kasia looks at me with an exaggerated pout, as if I couldn’t already tell she was making fun of me when she called me ‘boss’.
“Your disapproval is scathing, as always.”
Some of the smarminess drains out of her face. “Give me some credit. I don’t disapprove of you helping him. He deserves all the help he can get. You know I’ll barricade that staircase with my own body before I’d let anyone up there to hurt him more than he’s already been hurt. I’m just pointing out that getting overly involved with broken things you promised to stay away from is definitely your calling card.”
I stare at her. I still can’t tell if she wants to tease me or make a serious point here.
Kasia takes a step toward me, lowering her voice so there’s no chance anyone could overhear.
“Seriously. What are you going to do when he decides to go back? Because the chances are, he will. And it will completely break your heart.”
Now that I’m looking more closely, I see the strain around her eyes. She always wears heavy, sort of gothic makeup, so it’s difficult to penetrate down to the real her. Which, I assume, is the point. But once I noticed it, it’s impossible not to see how worn out she looks.
“Are you okay? Because this doesn’t sound like you. You should know better than anyone that it’s possible to get out of a terrible relationship. You never went back. And now look at you.” I wave my hand at the bar. “Queen of all this glory.”
I’m trying to make her laugh, but it falls flat. Instead, she averts her gaze and stares into the distance with dull eyes before sighing.
“Yeah, well, I know better than anyone that just staying away isn’t enough. No matter what, that ex is going to keep finding ways to ruin your life until he finally gets what he wants. We all die in the end.”
The morbid take doesn’t sound like her. I’ve never known anyone who can speak so eloquently on the complexities of domestic violence as Kasia, both from a survivor’s perspective and an academic one. I want her to eventually take the hint and become a social worker or something, once she’s crawled out of the debt her ex left her with and her kids are a little older.
This isn’t her talking.
“What happened? Did he come to the house?”
She shakes her head and takes a step back from me.
“Nothing happened. It’s fine. I’m just feeling morbid.”
I don’t believe her. And I’m also getting to the point where I want to ban the word “fine” from my presence.
But I also know my friend well enough to know that if I push, she’ll only push back.
I watch her for a few seconds. “I’m always here, Kasia. Never forget that. Even if it seems like I have my hands full. Screw it, we can put you, your sister and all your kids up there too and then turn that apartment into a fortress. Maybe put in a drawbridge and install Sav as the guardian who makes you answer riddles before you can cross over.”
It doesn’t get a laugh, but half of her mouth lifts in a smile.
“You’re a moron.”
“Yeah, I know.” The words come out softer than I mean them to. The moment feels tender between us, mostly because it’s surrounded by all the pain we survived together and the weight of our history. It drowns out the din of the bar, that it isn’t until Kasia finally turns away to serve someone at the other end that I realize I have a new customer.
“Oh hey,” I say, pleasantly surprised to turn around and see Micah leaning against the bar. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“I don’t feel very fancy,” he says with a sigh, looking down at some dirty, rumpled scrubs. He leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek, anyway, and something about it lightens me.
I made this place to be welcoming and inclusive. But there’s an inherent neutrality in that, which we needed to have in order to survive in an area that didn’t exactly treasure queer-owned small business. And while I left all my ‘straight’, fake macho bullshit in the past a long time ago, that hasn’t stopped me from forcing a lot of neutrality on myself.
Not hiding. Not lying. But always so, so neutral. Voice a little lower. Gestures careful and a little smaller. Nothing with even the slightest touch of lavender. At least when I’m in a mixed group. Combine that with my build, and people are going to assume what they’re going to assume. I don’t have to lie about myself to pass.
But I went from deep in the closet here, to the polar opposite when I moved to Chicago for school and threw myself as hard as I could into every stereotype in existence to overcompensate. Then I finally came back here to this careful, inoffensive blandness. It makes me hyper aware of the fact that I’ve never really known where I would lie on the spectrum if I weren’t always performing for a crowd.
All I know is that being around people like Micah, who are from here and get it, but are also queer and about as safe as can be, makes me relax. It makes me relax muscles I didn’t even realize I had.
Definitely all the bullshit code-switching muscles, which get a daily workout.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“God, yes,” Micah says as he slumps on the bar. “I’m never covering for a day shifter again. I hate days. There’s so much talking. It’s all the work, but you also have to follow dress code as well as deal with all the high-up doctors who think they deserve to get their ass kissed just for showing up. And, I swear, the clickety-clack of anyone in management following me down the hallway ‘for a quick word’ will haunt my fucking dreams. I would like approximately seven margaritas and a large-bore IV to dump them into my veins.”
I can’t help but smile, because Micah has that effect on people. Even though he never really stops rambling.
“Hey, Sav!” I yell the words into the ether, because he’s always lurking somewhere. And even if he’s (hopefully) not still doing whatever crime he used to do for a living, his situational awareness is still unimpeachable.
“Yes?”
He steps next to me, silent and graceful in his motions, even though he had some kind of terrible injury when he started here that I don’t know if he fully recovered from. Sav’s standing next to me, but he’s looking at Micah, who is still leaning on the bar and giving his brother the warmest smile.
“You look terrible,” Sav says.
“Well ‘hello’ to you, too. I feel terrible. I need a drink, but Gunnar’s stalling. Will you break his kneecaps for me? Pretty please?”
He’s fluttering his eyelashes at Sav while I sputter out a laugh and hold out my hands.
“ Wait wait wait . I need my kneecaps. Sav, your brother—”
“Stepbrother.” They both cut me off in unison, just like they did back at the apartment. It’s becoming a thing, but I decide that’s a rock I don’t need to look under.
“Micah asked for a very large margarita. Why don’t you show him what you learned?”
Sav’s face freezes like I just asked him to recite pi to ten decimals, but Micah’s grin only widens.
He lets out a quiet squeal. “Look at you! Learning big boy normal job shit.”
That earns him a glare from Sav, but it at least cuts through his momentary glitch of panic. The glare is kind of terrifying, but Micah is completely unperturbed.
“Show me-show me-show me!” He stretches one long arm out over the bar and touches Sav softly on the wrist, and I swear for a few seconds I can see the man blush .
“Whatever,” he grumbles before reaching for things and ignoring us.
I don’t look at him, because I know that won’t help when he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t care about impressing his stepbrother. I’m watching Micah, who is watching him rapturously as he fumbles around behind the bar, but the lull in conversation makes me realize something.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Hmm?” he answers, dragging his gaze over to meet mine several seconds after he makes the sound. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“I’m worried about Tobias.”
Micah tilts his head from side to side and blows out a breath. “I mean, that’s to be expected. Is there something specific you’re worried about?”
“Everything, obviously. But he stopped getting up and moving around a couple days ago. I know he needs to rest, especially with his ankle looking so bad, but is it really good for him to lie completely still for twenty-four hours a day? It’s been three days, and I’m worried he’s going to be absorbed into the couch. I feel like he should be moving at least a little. Sitting up. Talking to me, even if it’s to yell at me. I don’t care. Just something.”
I can see all the words being absorbed into Micah’s brain and then run through whatever mental nursing calculator he has that tells him how to fix people like a wizard.
“Yeah, that’s not great. I’m not surprised, though. Being in an abusive situation takes a huge toll on your body, even when you’re not actively being physically harmed. It’s being constantly on edge that wears you down. Now that he’s somewhere safe, it makes sense that he’d need to recoup a lot of that. But not moving at all isn’t going to help. Especially if he’s lying flat all the time. He needs to sit up and breathe like normal or he could eventually fuck up his lungs. And at least be moving the ankle, so it’s not freezing up.”
I turn the problem over in my mind. I’m pretty sure, after the last conversation we had, that if I try to tell him what to do, he’s going to tell me to shove it up my ass.
I’m not sure what I’m about to say, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s when Sav finally finishes making the world’s slowest margarita. It’s pretty, though. It is, in fact, an excessively large serving, on the rocks with a tidy little salt rim and a nice garnish.
The whole thing makes me disproportionately proud, because it’s such a small thing and he’s a competent adult. But I feel less ridiculous when I look at Micah’s face. Because he is gazing at Sav like the man really did break my kneecaps for him and it’s the most amazing gift he could ever have received.
He doesn’t say anything, but he gives his stepbrother a wide smile that has him blushing all over again before taking a big sip. As soon as he does, he acts like he’s going to swoon sideways before taking another one.
“Yes. Thank you. You have brought me perfection. I’ll take one million more, and you can also start making these for me at home. Much obliged.”
Even while he’s sipping—gulping—his drink, you can tell he’s smiling by the crinkle in his eyes, and Sav continues to squirm silently under the praise.
I don’t understand anything about their dynamic, and I’m not sure I need to.
“Wait. Gunnar, let me ask you a question,” Micah says when he remembers that I exist again. “What’s your goal here?”
“Where?”
He tosses his head in the direction of my apartment. “With him. Helping him. What do you want to get out of it?”
I don’t like the feelings that phrasing brings up in me.
“I don’t want anything. He needs help.”
Micah waves his hand at me as if he can brush my words away.
“Yeah, obviously. And you’re a decent human being. We all want him to be safe. But do you want to be the one to help him? Or do you just want him to get help, however’s easiest? Like, how involved are you in this process?”
Not a single word in the English language exists for me right now. And even if they did, I still wouldn’t be able to string together an answer to that question. Either because I don’t know, or I’m not willing to admit it. Maybe both.
“Look, I’m fried. He isn’t sleeping, so I’m not sleeping, and I can’t think straight anymore. It’s quiet tonight, so I’m going to go upstairs to check on him. Sav, can you watch the bar for me? Kasia’s closing tonight. Maybe you two could swing by before you go home and you could check on him, Micah? He might talk to you.”
Micah nods. His expression is neutral, but he’s watching me with a level of attention that definitely isn’t.
I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I dig around until I find my spare key and give it to Sav, then tell Kasia I’ll be upstairs tonight unless they need me. She seems to have it under control, though.
It’s more proof that she’s stressed out by something. Whenever she is, all she wants to do is work. She suddenly has the capacity to be three bartenders at once, as well as bossing the rest of us around about not cleaning enough or stock levels or anything else she decides to throw her anger into.
It’s barely a few minutes before I’m trudging up to the apartment and letting myself in. The lights are off and the curtains drawn, as I expected. I’m not sure which horror movie is on the TV this time, but it’s really fucking gross. I think a woman is sawing at her own neck with piano wire.
I don’t know what to do about any of this. I feel completely powerless in a way that I never have before, and this is hardly my first rodeo.
“Tobias?” I whisper, in case he is asleep.
Of course, he’s not. His head pops up so he can look at me over the back of the couch as I move closer. He wears the same blank, withdrawn expression I’ve been seeing on him for a while now. There’s no way this kind of exhaustion isn’t eating away at him, even if he’s not moving around.
I want to touch him. Hug him. Anything to bring him a little more back into this reality, but I agreed with myself that all that contact would only cause problems.
“Hey,” he says. Nothing else. He doesn’t ask me why I’m back so early, because I’m sure he has no idea what time it is.
A sudden surge of anger hits me.
Not anger at him. Anger at the situation and my incredible impotence in it. Anger that I’m not helping him, no matter how hard I try. And definitely anger at that asshole for putting him here in the first place.
“Are you okay?” His mouth quirks as he looks at me, but just like earlier, I have no idea how to put my torrential emotions into words.
“I hate that you won’t stop watching this shit. It can’t be good for you. Your life was nothing but violence, and now you’re spending all day, every day, watching people get dismembered. It’s morbid. Why are you doing this?”
His face hardens. For a second, I think he’s about to yell at me. I almost want him to. When I opened my mouth, I didn’t intend to complain about this because I’m aware that it’s probably none of my business. But it’s also been irking the shit out of me for three days, so apparently my brain decided now was the time for my petty thoughts to spew out like hot bile.
When he finally speaks, it catches me off guard. His voice is quiet, but there’s no mistaking the ire in his tone.
“Why don’t you just tell me how far we’re taking this daddy kink of yours? Because you won’t fucking touch me, so it can’t be sexual. Unless you wish it was, but you’re too disgusted by me and my life of ‘violence’ to bear it. But you fucking love telling me what’s best for me. What’s next? Are you going to give me a speech about my moral character or the dangers of violence in media leading me astray and then go jerk off over your own self-righteousness?”
I’m beginning to sense a pattern in our arguments, and it isn’t me winning.
I make a conscious effort to keep my posture soft, trying to de-escalate the tension that’s already filling up the room.
“I’m asking, not telling. And I’m not getting off on it. I know you’re suspicious of anyone who acts like they care about you. That makes sense. But I would appreciate it if you didn’t use everything I said to make me feel like a piece of shit.”
Tobias laughs, and it’s a cold, dead sound.
“I’m just pointing out the obvious. I’m too tired to dance around the truth with you. Kick me out or don’t kick me out. I don’t care anymore. I’m fucking exhausted. And I’m completely alone here. Just me and all my fucked-up thoughts. So, yeah. You may think my horror movies are all macabre and shit, but I promise they’re so much better than what’s in my head. It relaxes me. I don’t know why. But I do know that if I tried to watch a rom-com right now, I would put my busted ankle through the fucking flat screen. You wanted me out of your orbit, so here I am. I’m taking care of myself. It’s not your problem to worry about that.”
I can’t stop rubbing at my temples, because now I definitely have a tension headache of some kind forming, tugging at my thoughts and my will to exist in equal measure.
I always thought I was so good at dealing with people who were in their darkest moments, but when it comes to Tobias, I’m incapable of doing anything but mis-stepping.
“I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean that. I don’t want you out of my way. I just don’t want to fuck you up by being too close.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, his head dips down, so I can’t see his eyes anymore behind the back of the couch. I move around to perch on the edge by his feet.
Fuck it .
I can already see my rules teetering in the face of all this sadness surrounding him. He looks so alone. And I saw how tired he was—how fragile, I thought—but I don’t think I really saw how much he was pulling into himself to get away from me because of the arbitrary boundaries I tried to set.
Without letting myself second-guess it, I pick up his hand. He fights me, but it’s weak.
“You’re not supposed to touch me, remember. I’m young and impressionable. Who knows what I’ll start thinking? And then I’ll get my damage all over your perfectly moisturized skin.”
“I’m sorry.” I grab his hand again, although not too tight that he can’t pull it away if he really wants. “I’m sorry. I fucked this all up. I was trying to treat you well, and I think I just made it worse. I’m sorry.”
The words keep coming out on repeat because it’s the only thing I’m thinking clearly.
Tobias isn’t looking at me. He’s staring forward with a stony expression, but his eyes are shining in the dim light of the TV screen. It gets worse and worse until he finally wipes at them with his free hand and sniffs.
“I’m fucking sick of this. I feel insane,” he mumbles, his voice thick. “I feel a thousand times worse now than I did before. It doesn’t make any sense.”
It does, but I don’t think now is the right time to explain that to him. He looks so fucking tired.
“I’m sorry. It’s awful and I made it worse. I shouldn’t have left you so alone.”
He nods, still not looking at me. On the TV, credits are rolling with some creepy music over the top. I’d absolutely love to turn it off, but I manage to control my asshole urges for once.
I can’t tell him what to do. But I can encourage him. So, I tug his hand a little, pulling him in my direction. That makes his gaze snap to mine, a question in his eyes.
All it takes is a small nod, and then he’s climbing across the couch to me. It’s the most movement I’ve seen from him in so long, it already feels like I made the right choice for once.
Tobias climbs on top of me as I move more of my weight onto the couch until I’m sprawled out. He hesitates a little, but as soon as he seems convinced I’m not going to push him away, he nestles into me. It takes a minute, but I end up lying against the arm of the old sofa with his entire body laid out on top of mine, his face in my chest and his arms around my sides.
I don’t deserve anywhere near this kind of trust, but I can still feel the way his body relaxes into me. I’m able to snag the blanket that’s tangled around his legs and pull it over him, then I start rubbing my fingers gently up and down his back.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he says, the words muffled by my body.
I don’t say anything. Only my actions are going to convince him, anyway. Pretty words are worthless.
When the movie finishes, it autoplays onto something else equally horrific. But it’s dark and the volume is low, so I don’t want to risk disturbing whatever equilibrium he’s found. I focus on stroking his back as steadily as I can, and it doesn’t take long for him to fall asleep.
Idiot .
I can’t believe I convinced myself that this would be bad for him.
I don’t fall asleep, but I’m lulled by the steady rise and feel of his chest on mine. Time passes, which I vaguely keep by the movie I’m trying not to look at. I’d put my phone on the counter when I walked in, so I can’t check it.
The first hint of noise coming up the stairs makes my blood run cold, but it only takes me a few seconds to connect the dots. It’s confirmed when I hear the key that I gave Sav turning in the lock.
I completely forgot that I’d asked them to come up. They step inside quietly, although Micah must have had a few more margaritas while he waited because he is visibly swaying, and I can see Sav reaching out to hold him steady.
As soon as they walk around to see both of us on the couch, I’m staring at two sets of raised eyebrows.
I put one finger to my mouth and shake my head.
“Don’t wake him,” I whisper, barely audible. “This is the first time he’s slept in days. Maybe come back tomorrow?”
They don’t speak. They do look at each other, and have some kind of silent communication through eye contact that I can only begin to guess the meaning of. But then Sav shrugs and Micah smiles at him before turning the warm expression to me.
He raises his hand in a silent little wave, and Sav nods at me politely before guiding a very wobbly Micah out of the apartment. I can hear the door close behind them, Sav locking it behind them, and then we’re alone again.
I just need him to sleep. I can worry about the rest of it tomorrow.