Chapter Eleven
Savage
A ll that manic, jittery energy from before is gone. My normal destructive urges, the ones that are directed both outward and inward, are gone.
The only thing that’s left is an endless expanse of numb exhaustion.
And Micah.
Micah with his calm, commanding voice telling me what to do.
Tadhg, don’t let your father bully you.
Tadhg, you don’t have to be a worthless, violent sack of shit if you would just put some effort in.
Tadhg, don’t spray your brains all over my linoleum, please. I really don’t want to clean it up.
He hasn’t actually said any of those things, but the implication is there. I hear it.
When Colm dragged my sorry ass inside after the meeting, he’d tried to hang out with me for a while, but I’d told him to get lost. I made some excuse about needing to rest.
As if he couldn’t tell I hadn’t slept properly for days. Maybe that’s what’s getting to me. I always feel shitty, but it could be the lack of sleep that’s specifically making me feel like the world ripped my skin off and keeps slow-dripping acid on every soft, exposed piece of flesh that it can find.
I just wanted it to stop.
I just needed to sleep.
I don’t know what I was thinking before. There was no plan. No real conscious thought. I just knew I couldn’t spend another goddamn minute on that couch where I’ve been for so many hours—staring at the ceiling, cursing my own existence and feeling like I’m losing it.
The kitchen wasn’t necessarily the better option, but I didn’t want to get blood on Bambi’s bougie, clean-smelling sheets. The cold, hard linoleum on my bare skin grounds me in the same way as the bite of metal against my skin did before Micah took the gun out of my hand.
“Come on, hun. Let’s get you up,” Micah says as he stands up, grabbing my hands to pull me with him.
He has the usual tone of command that always sneaks into his voice, which might be because of his job or might be because he’s fucking bossy. But something trips me up.
“Why are you calling me ‘hun’?” My voice sounds like I swallowed glass.
Micah lets out a little nervous laugh-exhale.
“It’s a nurse thing. Or a healthcare thing, in general. I don’t know, it’s just what we call people. It’s familiar, without being too familiar, and helps when you can’t remember their name. I promise it’s not an affront to your masculinity, if that’s what you’re worried about. I say it to everyone.”
That’s the part that seems to bug me more than anything. How generic it feels. But I’m absolutely not fucking saying that out loud. I narrow my eyes at him, but take the hand he offers anyway and do my best to stand up without making a pained sound. He steadies me, helping me move after I pull my pants back up, and I hate how pathetic I must look. Apart from the fact that the wound on my hip is burning like hellfire, my legs are about as stable as a baby antelope’s, and as soon as I’m upright, a wave of dizziness hits me.
My vision snows, and the only thing that keeps me upright is Micah looping his arms around my chest in a practiced movement.
“Whoa,” he says as he leans us both back against the counter. “What the fuck did they do to you?”
“Nothing.”
It’s true. They did absolutely nothing to me. In fact, they told me to go home and get more rest. Lie low. Everything I should have wanted to hear, considering before all this started, I was about to beg Father for my freedom from the Banna in the first place.
So why the fuck did him halfway giving it to me, unprompted, make me spiral so hard I nearly ended up eating a bullet?
That seems like it might be a later question, I realize, as my stomach flips and my knees threaten to buckle.
“Come on, bro .”
There’s a teasing lilt to Micah’s voice as he says it, which I kind of like. I’m glad I didn’t scare him too badly, even if I did make him cry for a second there. Which was enough to make me regret ever coming home to him in the first place.
If this ever happens again, it can’t be in his house. I’ve figured out that much, at least.
I don’t have the energy to decide if it’s going to happen again. Giving up on it happening today sapped the last tiny reservoir of strength that I had in me, and left me bled dry. All I can do now is let Micah pull me around and pose me like a doll.
Fuck, I bet he would have loved to have a doll when we were kids. If only we’d had that kind of childhood. He would have done its hair and outfits half the time, and spent the other half the time doing extravagant, fake surgeries.
The thought makes me giggle, picturing baby Micah wandering around dragging a Barbie after him, and my father laughing fondly, in this weird fantasy reality that I’ve created. Real-world Micah looks at me funny when I laugh, but he doesn’t say anything.
He’d laugh too if he could see what’s in my head.
Instead, he pulls me around and tells me he’s going to get me cleaned up. He doesn’t make me shower, thank fuck, because I don’t think I could stand for that long. And he also doesn’t make me sit back on the godforsaken couch.
He leads me into his bedroom and makes me sit on the edge of his mattress. The dark sheets are rumpled because he never makes his bed, but they’re clean and the whole room smells like fabric softener and whatever citrusy fucking aftershave he uses.
It smells like a nice person lives here. Homey.
He tugs my jeans the rest of the way off me, which is such a relief because I couldn’t do it earlier, even though it felt like the damn things were trying to squeeze the life out of me. It leaves me in just my underwear, but I’m well past caring about that. There’s no room for modesty when you’ve spent as much time as I have crying, vomiting and generally falling apart on your stepbrother’s living room floor.
And the kitchen floor now, I guess.
…yay me?
Variety is the spice of my abject fucking misery?
Micah gets a wet washcloth and gives me a general scrub down with it, trying to swipe away as much of the sweat and whatever withdrawal poison I’ve been excreting from my pores. Then he disappears for a minute and comes back with gauze and a pink liquid, which he uses to clean up my wounds before prodding at them for longer than has to be necessary.
Ultimately, he ends up rebandaging them. He doesn’t say anything during this, apart from asking me to move around this way and that and hold my limbs out of the way. Every time he touches me, it’s gentle but firm, and I don’t have to do anything other than what he tells me.
It’s nice. He’s in control. He just keeps talking in that calm, I’m-the-boss voice and I kind of want to let Micah be in charge of me for the rest of my existence.
That wouldn’t be so bad, I think. He’d make me shower and eat real food, and he probably wouldn’t let me murder anyone hardly at all.
The next time he disappears, he comes back with some of those buttery soft sweatpants that he bought me and a clean white undershirt. He wrestles them on me one by one, and when he’s done, I look like someone that you might let sleep in a real home. Everything that’s touching me is so soft, it lulls me into a sense of security that has all the rancid, disjointed thoughts from earlier walled up in a distant part of my brain.
I’m sure they’ll break out and hunt me down later, but right now I’m tired. I know I won’t sleep, but at least I’m exhausted enough not to care.
A knock at the door startles me, but it’s like my body is half-powered down and doesn’t have the wherewithal to respond. So, I feel the startle internally, but I don’t actually move in response. Instead, my face turns slowly in the direction of the front door, despite the fact that I can’t actually see it from Micah’s bedroom.
“It’s fine,” Micah says, taking hold of my face and forcing me to look at him in that way that always calms me down. “It’s Tristan. He’s dropping off meds I asked him for that I think will help. He’s not coming in. I’m going to go to the door to get it, and then I’m coming right back. Got it?”
I nod, feeling stupid and tongue-tied. This shouldn’t be a stressful experience.
There’s only someone at the door. I’ve literally tortured people to death without batting an eye. The discordance between these two things is tripping me up, but all those other parts of my life feel far away right now, and the life that Micah’s wrapped around me is down-soft and I don’t want anyone else to step inside this fragile cage.
“I’ll be right back.”
He looks at me sharply one more time before stepping away. I hear murmured voices drifting down the hallway, but they’re not loud enough for me to make out the words. Which is fine. I don’t want to hear what they’re saying about me, anyway.
I’m already aware of how pathetic I am. I don’t need to hear them confirm it.
I just need to sleep.
The thought kicks around my consciousness as I lie back on Micah’s soft, detergent-scented bed. But I know I won’t. I’ll lie on his couch all night, staring at that fucking ceiling fan while my brain twists itself into knots until I feel like the world is upside down, just like every other night since I ran out of my stupid meds.
There’s no point in even trying, but I’m out of other options. Father won’t let me work. Neither him nor Micah will let me off myself. And I really don’t have the energy to run.
I’ll just lie here until Micah comes back and he’ll tell me what to do. That’s something I can handle.
Micah
“Thank you-thank you-thank you,” I whisper as I open the door.
Tristan stares at me, waiting to see if I’m going to let him come in. I weigh the benefits and ultimately decide it’s better to risk him seeing Tadhg than my neighbors seeing what I’m about to give him. This is Mission Flats, but still.
Why invite trouble?
Tristan walks inside, looking as ragged as I feel after an exhausting shift and then being pulled out of bed by my 911 favor.
“Don’t move.”
I leave him in the doorway, with the door closed so at least my neighbors can’t see if any of them are awake and spying, then dart into the kitchen. I don’t even want to touch the fucking thing, my stomach flipping when I pick it up.
I have no idea if Tadhg even replaced the bullets that I stole when Colm first dropped this off with the rest of his stuff. I don’t want to know.
Frankly, I feel like how close I came to losing him isn’t really contingent on that. If he’d made up his mind, a lack of bullets wouldn’t have stopped him.
I held him back this time, but I can’t take any more chances. I don’t know if I can stop him again, but I can at least remove anything from the house that makes it easier for him to make a terrible split-second decision.
“Here, take this. Hide it somewhere for me, please.”
Tristan’s eyes widen in a shocked expression that I’m not used to seeing on him. He’s generally a take-everything-in-stride kind of guy. But I guess he knows the significance of what I’m handing him.
“Micah, does this belong to the Banna? This is a big deal. I can’t steal this.” He holds up his hand, refusing to even touch it.
“You didn’t steal it. I stole it, and you’re holding on to it for me. I’ll give it back to him when I can trust him, but I need it to be out of this apartment for a little while. You have no idea how bad things got tonight, Tristan. I’m really scared.”
I don’t know when my voice started to crack in my hysterical little whisper-ramble, but it was somewhere in there. And the sympathy that seeps into Tristan’s expression makes my stomach churn even more.
“Fine,” he sighs. “But if I get murdered over it, you’re going to have to answer to Ford.”
I can’t help but smile a little, despite the circumstances. I’ve been waiting for the tea on his secret boyfriend forever, and all the life-and-death family shenanigans have really derailed my gossip game.
“Mm, the super-secret burly boyfriend. Yes. Tell me, Tristan, how long have you been waxing the mechanic’s tail pipe?”
The snort that he lets out is incredibly undignified, and it feels nice to have the mood lightened for a second, even if it’s only by one percent. Today has been a lot.
“I don’t know, a couple months. Why, you jealous?”
My face scrunches up. “I do just fine for myself, thank you. When I’m not caught up in this shit.”
“I’m sure you do, sassy pants. Now, are you going to tell me why you wanted a sedative?”
“I just gave you his gun and told you I can’t have it in the house. I’m sure you can put the rest of the pieces together.”
“Are you in danger?” Tristan looks at me intently, his brow furrowed in concern.
I shake my head. “He would never hurt me. No matter how… off he gets. It’s not like that. Obviously, I can’t say the same thing about the rest of them, but we’re both powerless in that respect. All we can do is hope for the best. Tadhg I can at least help.”
Tristan sighs, and it’s a bone-deep sound.
“Okay, well, I’m sorry but this is all I have,” he says as he hands me a few one milliliter amber vials.
I turn them over to look at the label. “What the fuck? Are you seriously telling me you can’t find anyone to sell you normal sedatives in this drug-addicted town?”
“I told you, I’m doing this shit to pay off my debt so I can live my life. Not so I can lose my career when I get busted for buying street xannies from some undercover cop. If you wanna go out there and risk your own license, be my guest. Otherwise, you can take whatever weird expired shit I’m able to pocket or get from my veterinary contact. Besides, it’ll definitely put him to sleep.”
“Yeah, and give him an abscess in the process.” I keep turning the vials over in my hand, wondering if this is worth it. “This is gross. I don’t even like using promethazine when it’s not expired. It literally fucking burns the tissue where you inject it.”
“Well, it’s non-addictive, it’ll send him to sleep and most importantly, it’s not controlled, so it won’t send either of us to prison for the rest of our lives. You’ve got to pick your battles here, kid.”
“Fine.” I sigh again but stash the vials and then some syringes that he hands me in my scrubs. “Thank you,” I add as an afterthought, because he doesn’t actually have to help me with this and he’s doing me a huge solid.
“You’re welcome.” Tristan stares at me for a minute while he tucks the gun in his waistband and then makes sure his shirt is covering it. “Call me if you need me, okay? I know we weren’t exactly besties before, but this is a weird situation. There’s not a lot of people you can ask for help, and I’m one of them, so don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d rather get inconvenienced once or twice than get a call here when I’m on shift and find something I don’t wanna find, you hear me?”
I nod. “Same to you. Now go home and snuggle your man.” I only met him once, briefly, but he was like 6’5” and stacked. I bet he snuggles the shit out of Tristan, the little hussy.
He just laughs and opens the door, leaving as quietly as he came.
It doesn’t take me long to look up a dosage for the medication on my phone and then pull up a dose for Tadhg. Mentally, I’m cursing and second-guessing myself the entire time. This isn’t a good medication. It’s basically a jacked-up version of Benadryl, but the risk of doing damage to your tissue when you inject it, especially when you inject it into a muscle like I’m about to, is pretty substantial.
It seems risky. But on the other hand… Tadhg is already full of damaged tissue and that can heal. He can’t heal from a hole in the head.
He hasn’t been sleeping. I’ve suspected it for a while, but now I’m sure. The thing I don’t understand is why, though. It’s like a switch was flipped. He slept so well for a while, and then suddenly he became erratic, irritable and always seemed like he was just half a step out of sync with the world around him.
I’m sure he knows more about what’s going on with him than he’s telling me, and his stupid fucking macho pride is threatening to be the death of him. Maybe if I can just get him to rest, lower the cortisol in his body a little and let him take a breath, he’ll be more rational. Then I can talk him into telling me the truth, so we can find a solution.
Whatever it is, I know I can help him. And a hell of a lot more effectively than I’m doing right now.
One look at his face when I walk back into the room confirms it. He sits up immediately, like I’m calling him to attention, even though his movements are sluggish. He needs to rest, and he can’t be left alone. He’s too high-risk right now. His skin is chalky, looking pallid in contrast to all his dark tattoos. The clothes I bought for him seem to hang off him, even though he’s barely been here long enough to lose weight, and the expression he’s giving me is lifeless.
At least he’s looking at me.
“How do you feel?” Stupid question, but always worth asking to see what answer will float to the surface.
He shrugs, and his gaze flits to the ground.
My stepbrother sits on the edge of the mattress, his shoulders slumped and his body seeming to weigh him down into the ground. I move forward, the medication in my pocket for now, and stand between his knees. So far, I’ve figured out that the best way to get his attention when he’s dissociating or out of it is to get into his personal space. Touch him, talk to him, put myself in his field of vision.
He didn’t get nearly enough affectionate touch when we were children, and I can’t imagine that’s changed. It’s time to start filling that void ASAP.
Once I’m bracketed in between his legs, I let my hands rest gently on his shoulders. I think it’s a positive sign that he doesn’t startle or flinch away from the touch, but who knows? He could just be that numb. I rub his shoulders and down over his arms, trying to bring a little life back into this cold flesh.
It only takes a minute before I feel him shiver under my palms, and he tilts his face to look up at me.
“Bambi?” His voice is so small. I don’t think even he knows what he’s asking for, but whatever it is, I want to give it to him.
My heart thuds against my chest so hard I feel like tiny fissures are forming in my ribs, trying to hold it in. The depth of affection I still hold for him, even after all this time and distance, threatens to overwhelm me. I don’t know why.
Maybe it’s what we went through. It’s hard to suffer that much pain with another person and ever get over the bond that you forge. I don’t know. Either way, my body is screaming to wrap myself around him and squeeze him tight until he’s safe. Safe from his father, from himself, from everyone in the whole goddamn world.
I cup his cheeks, like I did in the kitchen before, and sweep my thumbs across them in a way that makes him shiver again. His eyes turn unfocused, but he’s still watching me like I hold the answers to the universe in my hands.
Maybe I do.
“I have a medication. I’m going to give you an injection and it’s going to help you sleep, and then I think you’re going to feel better. And you’re going to share the bed with me, because you need real sleep, and I worry that the couch is making things worse. So, it’s going to be a shot, drink a glass of water, and then sleep for as long as your body wants you to. None of this is up for discussion, got it?”
Tadhg nods. His eyes are heavy-lidded, and I don’t think he would have the energy to argue with me even if he wanted to.
Once I have him on board, the rest is easy. I decide to do the injection in his quad, because it’s a large volume and his legs are ridiculously sized. He barely even flinches, even though I’m sure it must fucking burn.
After that, he eats three saltines that I feed him in little pieces and drinks the glass of water I hold to his face. I plan to refill it and leave it next to him, but at the last minute, I swerve and leave a reusable bottle instead of the glass. Not that I realistically think he’ll wake up and immediately start smashing anything that could become sharp and harmful, but it’s more of a habit.
Once my danger-eyes are turned on, I see the threat in all the household objects.
I get him tucked in, and it barely takes fifteen minutes before he’s asleep. Thank fucking Krishna, Jesus, Troye Sivan, whoever. I don’t care. I’m just glad he’s asleep.
Once I’m confident I can get away for a minute, I do a quick round up of everything else in the apartment that seems too dangerous to leave, throw it all in a backpack and then take it downstairs to stash in the trunk of my car. When I get back, he’s still sleeping in the position I left him in, an expression of twisted pain on his face even in his slumber, but at least it’s something.
As soon as everything is done, my own exhaustion hits me like a brick wall. I yawn my way through showering and changing and then crawl into bed next to Tadhg.
It’s been over a decade since I shared a bed with my stepbrother. He’s more than doubled in size since then, and it’s weird to feel his immense presence next to me on the mattress. Especially when I’m generally not a sleepover kind of guy anyway. My dates tend to be get some and get out , especially because of my wacky work schedule.
Which is how I like it. It normally bothers me listening to another person breathe all night. But right now, the sound of him breathing is like a balm. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anywhere else. I need to be here so I can be sure he’s safe.
If no one else in the freaking universe is going to watch out for this man, then I can’t let him out of my sight.
Savage
Waking up before I went on the meds always felt like a sudden kick of adrenaline—a who-what-where arousal of fight or flight that had me go from resting to awake in a few seconds, taking in my surroundings with my heart screeching to keep up.
It was exhausting. That was one of my favorite things about the meds. One of the things that made it worth all the shitty side effects, that I was finally able to get some sleep and wake up in a way that didn’t feel like I’d been dumped into a bucket of ice water.
But this is something I’ve never experienced. This feels like clawing my way to the top of a swimming pool with a tarp tangled around my ankles. I swear I almost wake up—my eyes slitting open and my awareness scratching at the surface before diving back down—five or six times before I wake up for real.
When I do, Micah is next to me. I don’t know why, but that immediately soothes the thrum of anxiety already threatening to take hold of my chest.
It’s nighttime. Dark, at least, but it’s hard to tell with all the blackout curtains and shit he has in his apartment. He’s lying next to me in lounge clothes that make him look like something out of a catalog for modern, trendy, overpriced homewares, scrolling on an iPad.
“I didn’t know you had glasses.”
Micah jumps a little, inhaling and making an “O” with his mouth as he turns toward me. He blinks once before snatching the glasses off his face, and I swear I can see his cheeks coloring in the light coming from the iPad screen. They have thick, dark rims. Classic nerd glasses, and they suit him.
He looks less like a real nerd and more like a porn star wearing prop glasses. Nerd gets railed by the football team after practice . That kind of thing.
My mind feels completely scrambled. I wonder how much I’ve slept to feel this out of it.
“Yeah, well, I only wear them if I’m reading in bed,” he says, but I’ve already forgotten the question.
When I don’t reply, Micah shifts, sitting up further in the bed and turning until his entire body is oriented toward me. I feel like I should do the same, but my limbs are still too leaden and just the thought of it is exhausting.
At least my mind feels sleep-muddled, not the way it did before, though. I take one deep breath after another, carefully probing at the corners of my consciousness like I’m taking inventory, and it seems like the various wheels and cogs are much more lined up and in their places than they have been the last few days.
Finally.
“How do you feel?” Micah’s voice interrupts my thoughts.
I shrug. I don’t know how to answer him when he says that.
“Mmm.”
But he doesn’t prod any further. Instead, he reaches out and turns me to face him, manhandling me the way he’s started doing more and more often. His strong, deft fingers touch me over, peeling down my eyelids and smoothing over my skin until I feel like a horse at the market.
“Can I help you?”
That makes him smile—genuinely smile—and he looks so beatific I can’t help but smile at him. I’m not sure how long it’s been since we had a moment of peace like this between us, but I instantly feel fifty pounds lighter.
Yesterday seems far away. Like it was a different version of myself that did those things, not the body I’m in right now. Even though that version of myself is realistically the one that takes the wheel more often than not.
Maybe here, with Micah’s soft sheets and nice dishes and medications for everything instead of toughing it out, I can keep being this person instead. I like this version much better.
Maybe this really is my chance at a do-over, and I’m about to experience what it’s like to be a normal person.
Savage, the normal guy. Doing what normal people do.
Whatever the fuck that is.