Chapter Thirteen
Micah
H e’s laughing. My brother, who had a gun in his hand barely a week ago, is laughing. At a gay fucking movie.
I knew it was a risk putting on The Birdcage , but he’s been on this super intense kick of doing “normal” things for the past few days. So, I’ve been trying to accommodate him. We cook food and watch TV—he’s never even heard of Love Island —and go for walks in the evening to stop him getting an embolism from sitting around all day. Also because his jittery energy was really starting to grate my nerves.
It’s all lulled me into a false sense of normalcy, and I decided to push the boat out by making him watch the godfather of all gay movies. Maybe as a test to see how much of his father’s homophobia has seeped into him over the years and how much of it is just surface-deep.
And he’s laughing .
Tadhg is leaning back on the couch, one foot up on the coffee table and a bowl of popcorn in his lap, giggling like a dumbass at the constant barrage of slapstick slip-and-fall drag jokes on the TV. If it weren’t for all the muscles and the super violent tattoos, you’d never think he’s killed people.
I mean, I don’t actually know that he’s killed people. But I would assume. Not only is it common sense, given his line of work, but the amount of raw anguish he seems to contain goes way past just our childhood trauma.
You’d also never think any of the drama we’ve had for the past couple of weeks had happened, but I’m okay with that.
I’m not naive enough to think it’s going to stay this way. Issues like Tadhg’s don’t just go away, even if he’s doing much better. And Patrick will eventually show up to drag him back to work. We can only drag out the excuse of his “recovery” for so long.
When I saw how proud he was after he got that job the other day… I’d do anything to protect that. He acted like it was no big deal. And it is a shitty job, but still. I like that bar, and I think that crowd will be a good influence on him. I could tell he was pleased with himself, even if he was trying not to show it.
I have no idea how I’m going to pull him out of Patrick’s clutches for good so he can continue to laugh and eat sandwiches and whatever other normal shit he wants to do, but I’m here for it. I’m here for all of it.
I catch Tadhg looking at me out of the corner of my eye. His attention stays on me instead of the screen for a beat too long, then he reaches out to poke me with the foot he has kicked up nonchalantly on the couch beside me.
“Yes?” I have to control my face so I don’t fucking beam at him when I turn to look. He’s just so relaxed. It’s filling my cold, dead little nightshift-worker heart with warmth.
“Do you ever do that?”
“What?” He’s still looking at me, his expression more serious than I was expecting.
“That,” he says, tossing his head in the direction of the TV, where Nathan Lane is in full, glorious drag. Ah.
I give him a smile that I try very hard not to make patronizing.
“No, it’s not really my thing. Besides, I’m absolutely horrendous at makeup. I must have skipped that class at orientation. I nailed the dick-sucking final though, and that’s the important one.”
Tadhg looks at me for a minute, his eyes slightly wide, and I can practically see him trying to work through my answer. I’m a little worried I’ve gone too far but also pissed at myself for worrying about it when I told myself I wasn’t going to make myself smaller or straighter for anyone’s comfort.
But then it doesn’t matter, because a smile breaks out on his face again and he lets out a deep, throaty chuckle.
“Sure, Bambi. You do you, I guess.”
He’s smiling at me like I’m the ridiculous one in this conversation, but I’ll take him thinking I’m kinda silly over him being homophobic any day.
In fact, the whole conversation is so unexpectedly chill, it gives me the confidence to broach a topic I’ve been sitting on for a couple days. I have a friend from nursing school who does travel nursing, so I hardly ever get to see him. But we’ve been on and off fuckbuddies since school, and we normally hook up whenever he’s in town, unless one of us—him, let’s be realistic—is in a relationship.
He’s here now, and I’ve been blowing him off because I was worried about Tadhg. But I would really like to see him if I could manage it without causing problems. Not only is he my friend, but all this drama and stress has me pent up as fuck, and I can think of nothing better than taking it out on Scott.
It’s a shame we’re incompatible romantically because he’s everything I like in bed. Right now that’s all I need though. Just something to take the edge off. I’ve had too many life and death experiences in the past two weeks and no fucking orgasms. I’ve even been too stressed to jerk off in the shower, and I think it’s starting to get to me.
“Speaking of sucking dick,” I say, instantly regretting it when Tadhg cuts his gaze back to me with a wary expression. “I’m gonna go on a date tonight. If that’s cool.”
I swear I can see the color drain from Tadhg’s face. I know sometimes it’s a lot different to be accepting of gayness when it’s a concept versus actually in your face, but it’s not like he’s being asked to participate, for fuck’s sake. Or even watch. I’m just stepping out for the evening.
“A date ?” I don’t miss the way his tone immediately shifts from playful to intense.
Watching his face, I can’t tell what exactly about this is bothering him, but the whole mood of the room just changed. He pulls his outstretched leg back and puts it on the floor, sitting up and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. There’s tension in all the muscles of his arms and back, so much that I can see the definition through the soft cotton t-shirt he’s wearing.
When he suddenly straightens his back and turns back to face me again, his expression is cold.
“No. Absolutely not. It’s not safe.”
I swear my eyes double in size and I wonder if I’m hearing things.
“Um… There seems to be a miscommunication here. Tadhg, I was asking if you’re going to be alright to be home alone for a few hours. I wasn’t asking for your permission .”
He fists his hands and relaxes them over and over a few times, flicking his gaze between me and the ground. I can practically see the anxiety crawling into him, and normally I would prioritize making him feel more relaxed, but not when he’s treating me like a child.
“Who is he? How do you know him? Where would you go? There’s no way this is safe. He could do anything to you. Or worse, the Aryan Brotherhood could come looking for me and find you instead, and I won’t be there to protect you. This is un-fucking-acceptable, Bambi. I said no.”
There was a waver of uncertainty in his voice at first, but by the end of his little speech, he’s completely solid and sounds so much like Patrick during one of his commanding rants that it’s making me feel a little nauseous.
Part of me realizes that this is a regurgitated reaction from spending too much time with his father. But I can’t control my own anger. He’s so fucking out of pocket here, and I can’t even think of why.
“Look, I’m sorry I won’t be at your beck and call for the evening, but I don’t see what your problem is. I go to work without you, and no one attacks me there. You sound completely paranoid right now.” I look at him more closely and try to see beneath the hard outer shell to figure out what’s causing all this anger. Is it homophobia? Or something else entirely that I’m missing?
I take a deep breath in and let it out, forcing myself to relax, despite the anger that’s wrestling for control of my brain right now.
“What’s wrong, Tadhg? Why is this bothering you so much?” I ask softly.
For a split second, his face twitches and I think he might tell me the truth. But then the hint of vulnerability is gone.
Tadhg stands, his fists clenched and his shoulders up around his ears. He turns to face me, pointing at me and looming over me in a way that’s more intimidating than I want to admit.
Not only does it give me flashbacks to my childhood with Patrick, but it reminds me of something I’d forgotten. That this isn’t just my stepbrother. This is my brother in the shell of an angry, violent criminal, and I need to keep working to dig him out.
But I’m also not going to roll over and tolerate whatever bullshit toxic behavior he wants to throw at me. Not in my own home. Not when I’ve been cleaning up his piss and puke and kissing his booboos and holding him while he fell apart for a few weeks. I deserve a little more respect than this.
“It’s bothering me that I’m working hard to keep you safe, and you’re willing to throw it all away just so you can get laid. I heard that gay guys were loose, but I didn’t realize my own brother was this much of a desperate slut. Can’t you go a couple weeks without spreading your legs, or is some loser’s dick worth dying over?”
His hand is shaking as he points it at me, and a flush of rage is climbing up his neck. But any chance I had at containing my own anger went out the window when he called me a slut.
Springing from the couch, I shove him with both hands a lot harder than I should. I’m smaller than him, but I still make him rock back a few steps.
It doesn’t make me feel any better.
“How dare you call me names in my house. Do you have any idea how much I’ve sacrificed to take care of you? And you want to stand here throwing homophobic shit at me? You sound just like your father, by the way. I never thought I’d see the day you turned into that piece of shit.”
Tadhg crosses his arms, I think, to try to conceal how much his hands are shaking, and his face is going through a barrage of emotions. It was a shitty thing to say. But all my empathy is walled off behind my anger, along with how much he hurt me with the things he said.
“I said ‘no’. That’s final, Micah. You’re not going to slut around on my watch. Have a little self-respect and learn to get off your knees. I forbid it.”
My mouth is hanging open so wide I could catch flies. The bottom-shaming here is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s catching my attention for whatever reason.
Of course he assumes I’m a bottom. Just like he asked me if I did drag. Because even if he hasn’t been sitting here calling me slurs all week, he still thinks less of me for who I am. He still assumes that I’m girly and weak and submissive, and that all of those things are inherently bad.
He can take every single one of those thoughts and throw them in the trash, obviously. But I don’t have the wherewithal to explain that to him right now. I’m too pissed, and I’m letting myself embrace the anger because it’s the only thing holding back the stinging pressure behind my eyes.
Cocking my hip, I sink into a much sassier, camp persona, because fuck him.
“You know, I was going to be nice and go back to his place to fuck, even though he stays with his mom when he’s in town, and it would mean we’d have to be quiet. But if you want to act like a spoiled brat, then you can put up with me bringing my big gay date back here and having as much loud, faggy sex as I want all over my apartment. If you don’t want to hear it, I suggest you find somewhere else to be. Or you can stay here and fuck yourself. Be my guest. But I’m not dealing with your shit until you check your fucking attitude, Tadhg. Fuck you.”
I don’t let myself look at him while I grab my shit, including a change of clothes and my phone charger. I can change at Scott’s house; he’s seen me look worse. It was barely even going to be a date until Tadhg decided to start World War III over it like a brat.
I slam the door behind me without caring about my neighbors.
It hurts. My chest feels knotted, and my stomach is churning, and every inch of me feels hot.
Maybe I shouldn’t have left him like that. He’s fragile right now, even if he’s acting like a dick. But everything he was saying brought back too many fucked-up memories and I need a little space to process it.
In the wake of everything that’s happened, I’ve only been dealing with the soft, broken side of Tadhg. I’d let myself forget about the angry version of him, but apparently it’s back.
An hour later, the adrenaline has left my system. I’m tired in the wake of it, but I have a cocktail in front of me and Scott is smiling warmly at me across the small high-top table.
Of course we couldn’t go to The Feral Possum, because who knows if he’s there now. Instead, we’re in some bougie wine bar in Mission Flats that is a little too pretentious for my taste, but at least I know there’s no chance I’ll run into anyone with a snake tattoo on their neck for the next couple of hours.
“Are you okay, Micah? Have you been working too much?”
He raises a dark eyebrow at me while he gives me an evaluating look. Scott is a sweetheart, and I do miss him when he’s not around, even if I have no interest in anything more than a friends-with-benefits situation.
Not to mention, he’s 6’1” and has that thick, ex-athlete body type that I’m hopelessly thirsty for. Ortho nurses, man. I can’t help myself. They’re all so square-jawed and deliciously brawny, who wouldn’t want to put them on their knees for you?
“I’m fine,” I say with a sigh, rubbing a hand over my face. “I just… Did I ever tell you I used to have a stepbrother?”
Scott cocks his head, which I take as a no. I jump in and give him an extremely abridged version of the story, including our childhood trauma and the fight we had in the apartment just now, but leaving out anything to do with Tadhg’s criminal affiliations or the fact that he came to me with a fucking gunshot wound.
I give him a vague explanation about Tadhg being on sabbatical from work and needing a place to crash temporarily, which Scott politely accepts without digging deeper. The fact that he was a giant asshole tonight is the real point of my story, anyway.
“Wow,” he says when I finish. “That’s definitely an extreme reaction. It kind of seems like he was jealous. Is he really protective of you or something? Or possessive?”
The words hit me at a weird angle. I hadn’t really looked at it that way. I just assumed Tadhg was channeling his father and using me as a dumping ground for all that irrational rage and vitriol.
“I don’t think so. I mean, we literally hadn’t seen each other since we were kids. He’s just an angry person. Like I said, his dad was such a dick, and who knows what he’s had to put up with since I left.”
I fall silent for a second, taking a sip of my drink as an old, buried memory floats to the surface.
“You know how I’m dyslexic?”
Scott smirks. “Yes, I remember finding some very creative, practical ways to study anatomy together in school, thank you.”
I snort, but brush past the memory. “Well, it got a lot better once my mom was sober and I was in a decent school and had the support, et cetera. But when we were still in Oklahoma with Patrick and Tadhg, it was bad. I hated reading and it made me super anxious, but I loved books. Especially because watching TV or doing anything that made a lot of noise was risky because you never knew what would set Pat off.”
Scott gives me a sympathetic look that peeves me, but I ignore it and power through.
“So, Tadhg used to read to me a lot when we were kids. We’d squirrel ourselves away somewhere, even in a closet or something with a flashlight if Patrick was on a rampage, and he’d read to me in a quiet voice. Narnia , Lord of the Rings , shit like that. I actually don’t know where the books came from. Looking back, I think he might have stolen them from school for me.”
The thought makes me almost laugh, but the sadness washing over the whole thing makes me swallow it.
“Well, one day Patrick caught us. And it was bad. He was shit-faced and pissed about something else, he stumbled on us reading together under a blanket. Ripped the book out of Tadhg’s hand and tore it in half. Started yelling, called us little f-slurs, all that horrible shit.”
I keep my voice down so no one overhears me and gets offended, because even second-hand, it’s an unpleasant collection of words. I can already feel myself shutting down emotionally, becoming detached the way you have to when you want to recount a story like this.
“Anyway. Just like all the other times Pat was pissed, Tadhg took the heat for me, because you’re right, he was protective. He was a little older and a lot bigger, and it was his dad, so I think he felt like he owed it to me or something. So, he says it’s all his fault and Patrick ends up dragging him off to do fuck knows what. Awful shit, I’m sure. Like an hour later, Tadhg comes back to our room. He’s covered in bruises and looks like he’s been crying, but he isn’t crying. His face is like… stone. Totally blank. And Patrick stands in the doorway and watches while Tadhg goes through the room, pulling out every book from their hiding places and ripping them all to shreds in front of me.”
I can practically see it. It was a million years ago, but now that I’m thinking about it, it feels so fresh. Maybe because the anger that Tadhg held then is so identical to the anger I saw in him today.
“It was awful. I was crying, so he starts yelling at me, saying all the same shit his dad says to him. ‘F’ this and ‘F’ that. He was so angry. It was just… rage. We were always close, and having him turn on me like that, even though I understood it was because Patrick was making him do it; that hurt so much more than anything Patrick ever did to me. That night I was so scared I couldn’t sleep, and Tadhg crawled into bed with me and apologized a million times. But it was never the same after that.”
Shrugging, I look at Scott for the first time since I started telling the story, and he has a weird expression on his face.
“What?”
He frowns but doesn’t answer for a long time.
“I’m sorry, Micah. That’s a really sad story. I can see why today would be upsetting for you.”
A laugh slips out of me, but it sounds forced. “I’m not upset. It’s fine, really. I’m just pissed he thinks he can get away with acting like such a jackass after I’ve been bending over backward to take care of him. He’ll apologize once the moment passes, is my point. It’ll be fine.”
Scott still looks concerned, but I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I change the subject and ask him about work.
I’m determined not to think about Tadhg or Patrick or any of the rest of it until I get home. Just like I’m determined to get laid, and fuck Tadhg and whatever he thinks. He can have a front row seat for all I care. Maybe he’ll learn a few things.
I refuse to spend any more time feeling shitty about myself, especially not because of him.