Chapter Eighteen
Micah
T his shift has been brutal. Not only is it unseasonably busy in the ER, but I’ve been a space cadet the whole fucking night. Dropping shit, misplacing shit, and taking ten times as long as usual to do basic math because I can’t fucking concentrate.
Tadhg. He’s all I can think about, as per usual. Which is starting to concern me all on its own. I realize that not only did we have a weird childhood, we’ve also been shoved into a situation where there is no guidebook on how to have healthy boundaries. Either way, even if there were, we’d be failing.
We were codependent little kids, and apparently, we’ve fallen directly into being codependent adults, as if there isn’t a decade of emptiness sitting between us.
All I can focus on is getting him better. In my entire career, I’ve never struggled to put my patients first until this moment. Stowing my shit and doing my job is my literal expertise.
But no. My brain is just Tadhg, Tadhg, Tadhg , on repeat, as if he can’t function without me around to babysit him.
I put out some feelers for getting off-books psych meds from doctors that I’m friendly with earlier, and was immediately shut down. Which is a relief, to be honest. I’m glad that’s not a thing that’s happening here. I’m also glad I gave myself enough conversational wiggle room to not get reported for it.
After that, I operate on instinct, pushing through hour after hour, trying not to fuck up too badly and just make it until I can go home and see for myself that he’s still okay.
He’s not okay, though. I know it. He needs help. Between his father’s abuse, his life of crime and his misadventures with medication withdrawal, he has the emotional regulation of a soup spoon.
How am I supposed to keep him from flying off the handle and doing something he can’t come back from?
Relief washes through me when I see Tristan toward the end of my shift. He’s riding a gurney, looking like he’s basically holding the patient together with his bodyweight, which isn’t a good sign and means I have a lot more work to do before the night is over.
But he’s my only connection for less-than-legal drugs. And I’m quickly coming to understand that when it comes to my brother’s safety, everything else takes a fucking backseat in importance.
I’ll take the gnarly patient if it means I have a chance at getting Tristan to help me with my psych med issue.
It takes four of us, plus Tristan’s EMT partner Cade, to lift the patient into the bed while Tristan extricates himself from whatever he was doing. I’m closest to him, so he grabs me and switches out our hands where he was holding off a sluggish bleeder.
From the pallid color of the man’s skin, I’d say he’s about running on empty, blood-wise. Who knows how long he was left for dead before whoever found him called 911.
It doesn’t take long for a gowned-up trauma doc to take my place. There’s hustle and bustle around us, and it looks like even though he’s pretty bashed up, each wound is individually superficial enough and non-surgical that they’re going to try to do a patch job here in the ER while we take care of evidence collection, before transferring him to ICU.
Of course, because I was the first qualified ER nurse to touch him, that means I’m the one assigned to forensics. So instead of clocking out in a few minutes like I was supposed to, I’m now stuck removing every item of clothing—which are weirdly clean, as if he was dressed after being beaten—and cataloging every single injury, from head to toe, in excruciating detail, for the legal record. And then waiting to talk to the cops, who I am historically not a fan of.
It’s an important part of my job, obviously. But today’s just not the day for it. Not to mention all the Nazi symbols tattooed on this guy’s body are automatically making it harder for me to feel sympathetic.
Not that he deserved this. He’s torn apart. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was attacked by a wild animal. But it’s pretty obvious he was in the life, so he knew what he was risking.
Fuck. I’m very hardened to death and violence, but if this is the kind of thing that Tadhg has been around all his life, no wonder he’s messed up. This is fucking savage. It’s hard to wrap your head around how it’s possible for one human being to do this to another, no matter how many times you see something this awful.
When I finally get home, it feels like I’ve been gone for days instead of hours. There’s a stillness over the apartment that I used to find peaceful, but ever since Tadhg moved in, I’ve come to find it unsettling. Hopefully, it means he’s just fast asleep after working hard all night.
I’m sure the bar was busy as well. I can only cross my fingers that he stayed out of trouble.
I toe off my sneakers at the door and throw my keys somewhere. It wasn’t a particularly fluid-filled shift, but I still feel like every inch of my scrubs are sticking to me. At this point, I think a hot shower is needed just to cleanse my soul.
Cold morning light slips around the edges of my blackout curtains, casting the living room in dim shades of gray. It’s dark enough that I don’t see the footprint until I’m almost on top of it, but as soon as I do, there’s no mistaking it.
Blood.
A bloody boot print, right in the middle of my carpet.
My chest clenches as a thousand scenarios run through my mind. If it were a couple of weeks ago, I would have run. Nothing would have been worth risking the chance of finding an intruder in my home, and running is always the safest course of action.
But not anymore. Because if there is an intruder, it’s probably someone who came for Tadhg, and I can’t leave him here alone. And if he’s the only one here, then that blood is his, and it’s possible that all my frantic worrying about his mental health has been for nothing, and I’m already too late.
Either way, my feet carry me deeper into the apartment before I have the chance to think any better of it.
I don’t try to pick up a weapon. If there’s someone in here, I’m not winning in a fight against them. Just like when Patrick first showed up, I have to rely on my wits, my charm, and sheer fucking luck to get me through whatever’s coming next.
The bloody footprints disappear behind the bathroom door. I can’t even decide what I want to find the least.
I just need him to be alive. Whatever else is happening, I can deal with. As long as he’s still alive.
Please.
I take one shaky breath before I twist the handle and open the door. It gives easily and inside isn’t exactly any of the scenarios I was mentally preparing myself for.
Tadhg is there. He’s covered in blood, and it’s immediately obvious that he’s the one who left the trail of prints. There’s no one else here. And although he’s covered in blood, he’s also standing over the sink, and I can’t see anything that immediately looks like a wound.
His back is bowed, his head lowered, and I don’t think he’s noticed that I opened the door. I don’t want to startle him more than I have to, so I keep my distance and say his name softly a few times.
Finally, as I get louder each time, one of them snaps through whatever is pulling his focus. He jerks away from the sink, looking at me in the mirror for a second before whirling around to take me in.
“Bambi?”
His head whips from side to side, like he’s forgotten where he is. I take a step toward him, one hand outstretched, treating him like the wild animal he’s embodying right now.
“Shh, it’s okay. It’s me. There’s no one else here. What happened?”
That was dumb. He’s clearly not in question-answering mode, but my brain is kicking up a million of them and I couldn’t stop that one from spilling out.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, his voice hoarse and barely louder than a whisper.
“What? No, Tadhg, look at me.”
Feeling more confident he’s not about to snap, I take hold of his arms, maneuvering him until he’s fully facing me, and then I grab his face to keep his focus. There’s dried blood flaking over his cheek and chin, but that’s not important right now.
“Are. You. Hurt?”
He just snorts and shakes his head, moving my hands with him. When I stay stuck to him, waiting for more information, he reaches up and knocks my hands away with more force than I was expecting.
“You shouldn’t touch me.”
He won’t meet my eyes as he says it. Everything he says sounds so hollow and numb. I feel like I’m not even talking to my brother right now but some shadow-version of him. Even more than when he first came to me and was out of his head with feverish delirium.
“Ok,” I say quietly, more to myself than to him. “Ok. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Because I’m not stupid, and I don’t know exactly what happened to him, but I can put together the shape of it.
I reach for his shirt to peel it off him, but he flinches away. We don’t have time to go through all the rounds of his self-loathing right now, though. I move in closer, trapping him against the sink with my body and holding his gaze with mine.
My fingers find the hem of his shirt and I pull it upward. If he wants me to leave him alone, he’s going to have to hurt me, and I know that’s where he draws the line.
He seems to realize the same thing, because he goes limp in my hands. He stands there, hanging from invisible strings, and lets me strip him down.
When I have his bloody shirt in my hands, it occurs to me that I need to put this somewhere. Preferably somewhere that’s not going to transfer evidence all over my apartment. Just in case whoever was bleeding all over my stepbrother wasn’t a willing participant…
There are garbage bags under the sink, and I’m able to kick open the cabinet door and fish them out with my foot, without getting my bloody fingerprints anywhere. I upend the roll, spreading the plastic all over the floor around us to catch as much debris as possible, before tearing one off to put his clothes into.
Tadhg continues to comply as I take his soiled clothes off piece by piece and toss them into the bag. I’ll find somewhere to burn them later, I guess. I also make a mental note of everywhere that needs to be deep cleaned once we’re done here.
As I’m doing this, my brain pulls up the images of a couple hours ago, when I was doing the exact same thing for my patient. Pulling off each item of clothing and carefully bagging it to protect the contents.
Although in that case, it was to preserve everything inside, while right now I’m already knee-deep in my plan to destroy evidence on Tadhg’s behalf.
The thought brings me up short. What are the chances that someone ends up brutally beaten and tortured—in an area where that’s not exactly an everyday occurrence—and then Tadhg shows up covered in blood immediately after?
I don’t want to think about the miniscule chances that the two things are not connected. Because I saw what someone did to that man. And it’s a level of violence I would never want to see from someone I love.
Those are later thoughts, though. Right now, I have evidence to destroy.
Medical ethics are well and truly in my rearview mirror, apparently.
Once Tadhg is stripped, I hustle him toward the big cubicle shower and turn it on as hot as I think he can stand. This shower is huge and never runs out of hot water. It was the reason I took this apartment, and until today, it was my favorite thing about it. I have a feeling that’s about to change though, after these new memories get attached to it.
I strip off my own scrubs and throw them in the garbage bag, because it’s possible that there’s traces of blood on them from coming in contact with him. Which I could also have gotten at the hospital, but why invite more trouble than I have to?
Once I’m down to my briefs and everything Tadhg touched is in the bag, I tie it shut, wrap it in another bag, scrape up all the others that were on the ground to toss them in there and seal the whole thing again. I’ll deal with it later.
I glance over to check on Tadhg, but of course, he hasn’t moved since I left him. He’s standing in the shower, half under the spray and half out, staring at the ground like he’s completely dissociated.
Fucking shitballs, this is not good.
I’ve seen him in a lot of terrible states since he showed up, but it hasn’t stopped each one of them from feeling like another string of barbed wire wrapped around my heart, squeezing it tighter.
I just want him to be okay. Which isn’t going to happen if he keeps going on murder adventures while I’m at work.
Or if he ends up in prison.
With a sigh, I step into the shower with him. The only times he moves are when I move him, so it’s clear he needs a little extra support right now in the form of babying. That’s fine. When he was injured and unconscious, I bathed him just like any other patient.
To be fair, I wouldn’t normally join a patient in the shower, but I need to shower the blood off as well. My underwear is still on, and if he can gather the wherewithal to be annoyed about me coddling him, frankly, I’ll be thrilled.
Right now, he doesn’t look capable of being annoyed about anything.
Standing next to him, I grab his arms and maneuver us until we’re both under the spray, more or less. I’m not getting a lot of it, but it still feels like heaven on my sticky skin, after the day I’ve had. I tip his head back, letting the water run through his hair.
It’s grown out a little at the back, long enough to curl around his neck. The water runs pink for a while, but I work my hand through his hair a couple of times, letting him sink into the contact, and eventually the blood fades away and the water turns clear.
When I tip his head back down, he blinks the water out of his eyes and looks at me properly. For the first time in a few minutes, I feel like he’s actually seeing me.
“No.” He speaks in a whisper, but when he goes on, his voice rises to turn into a plaintive sort of whine. “No, no, no, don’t touch me, please.”
I’m torn. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to force affection on him that he doesn’t want. But I know in my fucking gut, that this reaction isn’t about what he wants. It’s about what he thinks I deserve, or some other shit.
Like he’s tainted.
His hands come up, batting at mine with all the strength of a wet kitten. The weakness in his movements is what convinces me.
He needs me not to give up on him. He needs me not to run.
“Everything’s fine, Tadhg. I’m not going anywhere. You’re fine.”
He keeps struggling though, so I wrap my arms around him and squeeze, which is more difficult than I expected. He’s fucking thick.
As soon as I squeeze, he starts to thrash. It’s like holding on to him has given him permission to lose his shit. Which is what I wanted, I guess.
He’s still saying “no” and “please” and making noises like he wants to cry but can’t quite get there, and jerking so hard one of us slips and we both end up on the shower floor. With the water still pelting down into us, Tadhg pulls away from me until his back hits the tile wall, but I don’t let him go that easily.
I follow. And like I usually do when he’s crawling out of his skin, I climb into his lap to settle him. It’s worked before, and I think it’ll work now. Getting in his face, making it clear I’m not leaving him no matter how determined he is to give up on himself, weighing him down physically with the force of how much I’m not fucking leaving him… That’s the best I’ve got.
My legs are straddling his hips, and he’s splayed out under me with his head resting against the shower wall. Shower water and blood and tears are all mingled on his face now, and they cover an expression of unbearable anguish that I never want to see him wear again.
So he can feel me even more, I grab his face and hold it close to mine.
“It’s fine,” I whisper, over and over. “You’re okay. It’s okay. I’m here. Everything’s going to be fine. I’m not going anywhere.”
It’s all just babbled nonsense, but I need to get through to him.
And I do. He pulls himself together enough to sigh and look me in the eyes after a few minutes. But when he speaks, the voice that comes out of his mouth is completely devoid of emotion.
“You shouldn’t be here. I’m not worth it.”
It only makes me grip him tighter, my fingers digging into his cheeks hard enough that it probably hurts.
“You’re worth it to me.”
I lean forward, kissing him on the forehead. And he’s fucking trapped between me and the shower wall now, so he can’t duck away from me.
When I lean back and look at him again, his eyes are shining with unspoken emotion and hurt, so I do it again. I don’t know what to say. I just need him to understand that it doesn’t matter if he thinks he’s worthless right now, I’ll care enough about him for the both of us.
“You’re worth it,” I whisper, kissing him on one cheek. “You’re worth it. I promise, Tadhg, you’re worth everything. You don’t deserve this. I’m not going anywhere, because you’re fucking worth it.”
I kiss him on the other cheek, and maybe my words penetrate his thick skull, because he leans into it a little this time. His mouth is open, and his breath is coming in heavy pants, like just thinking about this is putting his body through a marathon’s worth of stress.
“You’re fucking worth it,” I say one more time, leaning in to kiss him again.
But this time, he leans into it even more, his features soft and his body sinking into my hold. I catch the corner of his mouth, instead of his cheek, and feel the barest pressure of him kissing me back.
I don’t know what comes over me. It’s like I spend so much time trying to figure out how to pour my affection into this man when he’ll let me. And now he’s finally letting me in. A mix of awe and euphoria hit me, and I’m so desperate to capture the feeling before it flickers out of existence again.
I turn my face the barest fraction of an inch and kiss his mouth, and he kisses me back. It’s small. Just lips pressed together. But it feels monumental.
It feels like him opening himself up to me, and I’m desperate for more.
When his lips part to take another raspy breath, I don’t let myself think before I capture his mouth again. With water running down both our faces, I kiss him, and he allows himself to be kissed.
His fingers tighten where before they were just resting on my sides. Like he’s pulling me in closer instead of pushing me away. I respond by opening my mouth on instinct, and he tentatively brushes my tongue with his.
I can’t help the pleased noise that slips out of me. That wasn’t supposed to be what this is about, but it feels like everything shifted in an instant.
Before I can process what’s happening, we’re kissing like two people starving for each other. Tadhg’s hands are everywhere, touching me, gripping me tighter to him, and I’m pressing myself closer on instinct where I’m riding his hips.
It feels like I’m losing my mind, but I don’t want to stop. It feels right. But I also don’t want Tadhg to realize what’s happening and freak out more. Then I feel him getting hard beneath me, and if I wasn’t sure how into this he was before, I am now.
He’s stiff, rubbing up behind my balls and into the crease of my ass and letting out needy little moans every time we break apart. I can’t stop myself from grabbing onto his hair to pull him back for better access, and the noise he makes at that is practically a purr.
I hesitate. Just for a second, because we really should talk about this. I’ve looked at him as a brother all my life, even though we’re not actually related, by blood or the law. He was my protector. And now I have my tongue down his throat.
At a time when he’s really fucking vulnerable, to boot.
But it’s that vulnerability that convinces me not to say anything. Because as soon as I open my mouth, doubt flickers across his face and I can see him retreating back to that place of self-loathing that he’s made his home.
I don’t want him to doubt how much I care about him. Not for a second. And I don’t want to give his father’s shitty voice the chance to break into his inner monologue, if he’s finally letting himself have something he wants. I can’t let him question it. I’m not fucking questioning it, either. I just want us both to feel .
We can go slow. I’ll let him lead, as much as I’m capable of doing that. But I won’t make him voice it, or listen to me break it down. Not until he’s less… raw.
I swoop in, tightening my grip in his hair hard enough to sting and taking ownership of his mouth for a few more minutes. His hard-on does not flag in the slightest, and soon he’s rutting up against me, panting and moaning in between kisses, grabbing at my hips like he’s trying to find friction.
This time, I break our kiss because I need oxygen. The shower water isn’t helping me find it, but I think we need it. The curtain of water feels like a barrier between us and the real world, and Tadhg needs that right now to be able to let himself go and ask for what he really wants.
When I look him in the eyes, he seems lost. But hungry. And whenever I try to pull back, even a fraction, he holds me tighter. Like he’s desperate to keep me close.
His hips grind up into mine again, even as he searches my face for some kind of reaction. His mouth is open, still panting softly, and I can see that no words are coming to him any time soon.
He looks almost innocent. Which doesn’t make sense, considering I came in here to wash off the blood of a man he beat, or tortured, or somethinged , but still. In this particular way, I guess he is innocent.
And scared.
I can’t let him doubt me.
“You’re so good, Tadhg,” I whisper, running my thumb along his swollen lower lip, collecting all the water droplets that have gathered there. “You’re so good and you don’t even know it.”
He shudders in my arms, and I can see the words taking hold of him in a way I haven’t been able to before.
He grinds up into me again. Not hard, just instinctive. Needy. Desperate, almost.
It lights a fire in me.
I’d burn the world down for him on a random Tuesday as it is, but it doesn’t help that right now he’s flicking every kink switch I have about getting a big, strong man looking vulnerable and submissive on his knees for me.
The part of my brain that had Tadhg categorized as “brother” is officially offline. The rest of me—who eats guys like him for breakfast—takes one look at him and sees a needy slut.
There has to be a middle ground. As long as I don’t let him get in his head.
“You’re my good boy, Tadhg.” Another shudder. “Does my good boy need to come?”
His breath stutters. He hesitates, like he’s not sure if this is a trick.
“It’s okay. It’s okay, you can come. You can have anything you want. You have me. I’m not going anywhere.”
Slowly, he nods, holding my gaze the entire time.
When his hips buck up again, it’s more deliberate. I shuffle back, getting my knees on the ground and giving him more space to move. Tadhg follows, like always, still holding me close, until we’re both on our knees, pressed together from sternum to pelvis, his hard, aching cock sliding against the declivity of my hip.
His movements are a little hesitant, so I kiss him again as a distraction. It works, and soon he’s grinding against my hip steadily, working himself against my skin.
In between kisses, I continue to whisper, telling him how good he is and how much he deserves this. He never speaks, but he continues to clutch me to him like he never wants to let me go.
When I move my hands down to palm his ass, I can feel the muscles work as he ruts into me. I want to let him continue controlling the movements, which is why I don’t try to escalate this into anything more. But I can’t help myself when I reach between us and stroke my fingertips over the leaking head of his cock just once.
He fucking whimpers. He whimpers like a good, needy boy, and I kiss him again as a reward.
“That’s it, Tadhg. You’re doing so well. Make a mess all over me, go on. You deserve this.”
When he stiffens, he holds me so tight to him I can barely breath. I feel every movement of his cock as it pulses and twitches, spilling warmth between our bodies. I feel the way his chest heaves and his body continues to shudder as it works itself through the orgasm, and I hold him tight through it all.
I’ve been hard for fuck knows how long, but I ignore it. I can take care of that later. This isn’t about me.
This is about Tadhg finally letting himself go, even if it’s just for a second. And if I have any say in what happens next, it won’t be the end of it. This is just the fucking beginning.