“Never believed in hell before,” Damon says, voice cracking all the way along, like ice under heavy boots. “But I’m pretty sure I just went there.”
“Well,” I say, reaching over to slap him on the shoulder, “at least you came back.” See, I can be reassuring and nice, fuck everyone who ever said I couldn’t.
Damon doesn’t flinch at the slap despite the strength of it, his gaze sliding away to the floor as if disturbed by a thought process or feeling he can’t articulate.
“Most of me,” he murmurs to the van’s floor. I pretend not to hear it, because I get what he means, but there’s nothing to be done about it. OI took what they took, tore it out of us and cauterised the wound before we had the chance to fight for what we were about to lose. Damon will have to make his own peace with that. I don’t have any practical advice to give other than to bury it deep and don’t go digging for landmines.
Rex is doing a good job of looking like he isn’t worried about what any of this means for his boyfriend, but he threads his finger through Damon’s hair and tugs him forward to press their foreheads together. He doesn’t say anything, perhaps knowing there’s nothing to say that wouldn’t either be a lie or extreme conjecture at this point.
Damon, for his part, seems immediately soothed by the gesture, leaning into Rex’s space, like he’s trying to soak up all the warmth the other man has radiating off him. They share breath and heat and love as if it’s an infinite resource, like they have a vast ocean of it flowing and crashing between them, two rocks set between opposing coasts.
“You should have seen your boy, North,” I tell Damon once the intimacy between them begins to feel like something I’m invading. “He gunned down a shit ton of OI agents. I mean, seriously, he took them out like they were diseased dogs.” I pressa hand over my heart. “It was a really special moment for me, I have to say. I feel very good about it.”
If I expected Damon to be surprised by this news, I’m disappointed. He sighs, drawing back from Rex and giving him a measuring look, a cross between fond and exasperated, unsure which one to verbalise.
Rex looks back at him, unbothered, andshrugs. The little psycho offers no further comment, and Damon sighs again in defeat. It makes me very weirdly intrigued about what’s gone on between them in the past to elicit such a casual acceptance of Rex’s murder apathy. I’ve never had the urge to gossip before, but I’m feeling the magnetic pull of knowing information that’s none of my business right now.
We stop at some point, getting off the motorway and parking up next to an off-brand fast food place. Damon gets out of the van with Rex and goes to grab something to eat. Rohan goes with them, and they start arguing over whether they should find the last pay phone still alive and try to call Damon’s dad. Damon is predictably pro, for obvious reasons, while Rex and Rohan are firmly anti.
Since there’s no chance in hell that I’m leaving my brother here alone, awake and a potential flight risk, I have to trust Rohan and Rex to stop Damon from doing anything stupid, which is a bizarre shift. I’m not used to trusting any more than one person at a time, and that was difficult enough. I’m not sure I like this new team dynamic we’ve got going, but there are a lot of things in my life I’ve been forced to accept regardless of how feel about them, so at least I’ve had practice.
Leo comes around to join me in the back of the van, and the moment the door closes behind him, I become acutely aware of how vulnerable he is. My partner has just enclosed himself into a small space with two lethal superhumans, both of whom have tried to kill him in the past. But Leo, being the lunatic that he is,doesn’t hesitate to kneel down next to Dan. To be fair, he thinks he’s still unconscious, and it’s my fault for not warning him in time.
I should have predicted it, but as soon as Leo gets close enough, Dan stops playing dead and springs like a trapdoor spider, throwing himself at Leo. He hits him hard, full body, and Leo shouts in surprise as they roll across the van floor a couple times before Dan winds up wrapped around him like a vice, legs tangled with his and Leo’s back pressed to his front. He has a hand on Leo’s throat, and his free arm is curled securely around his waist, holding him pinned against him.
It all happens so fast, I don’t have time to react until Dan already has Leo trapped in an ironclad hold.
Without a gun or any glass to work with, I don’t even have a weapon to threaten him into letting Leo go, not that I think that would be possible since Dan’s clearly gone off the deep end. The man I knew wouldn’t kill Leo just to fuck with me, but this new version of my brother is as close to a stranger as he could be after all the years we spent fighting to survive together.
Still, I get up on one knee, preparing myself to tackle them if Dan makes any real move to seriously hurt Leo. I glare at Dan from across the van, and he stares back at me with the same obstinate expression on his face that I remember from when we were children, and he was willing to take daily beatings from the guards just to defy them, for no other reason than because he could.
“Dan, what the fuck are you doing?” I say with forced calm, the fear in my voice masked by anger, which is pointless because Dan will hear it anyway.
“Getting to know your boyfriend a little better,” Dan sneers, his hand around Leo’s throat, squeezing just enough to cut off his oxygen supply. He struggles for a second in Dan’s arms but quickly seems to realise how utterly useless that is and stops.
“Stop fucking around,” I snarl at him, unable to contain the panic I can feel building in my chest at the sight of Dan choking the air from Leo’s lungs. “Whatever you want, you won’t get it by hurting him, I swear.”
Dan's eyes narrow at my obvious desperation, but he loosens his fingers, allowing Leo to breathe. Leo gasps, sucking in much needed oxygen.
Relief hits my system like a fast-acting drug, the immense power of it too strong to hide from my face. Dan clocks it with ease, and his disdain for my lack of control deepens. There is a long silence where neither of us speaks, where we just stay exactly where we are, both primed to act but with nowhere to go that won’t end in disaster.
If I expected Leo to stay quiet and let me handle this, I’m broken from that delusion when he relaxes his body against Dan’s, allowing himself to become almost obscenely vulnerable to the other man.
“If you wanted a cuddle,” Leo says with the bravado of all grown-up little rich boys everywhere, “you could have just asked, Dan. You didn’t need to resort to body slamming me into it. I could’ve been a willing participant.”
Dan seems as shocked by this as I am, and I have a brief moment of satisfaction at the look of abject bewilderment on my brother’s face. If we ever get shit worked out between us, I can’t wait to watch Dan try to deal with Leo’s penchant for a reckless lack of concern toward his own safety.
“You’re very mouthy for someone whose neck I could snap before my brother takes his next breath,” Dan says, pressing his mouth close to Leo’s ear. It’s a gesture that could be mistaken for intimate if he hadn’t just threatened to kill him so brazenly.
“Don’t you dare!” I bark at him before I can stamp it down. My reactions aren’t helping, I can see that in how Dan turns a lookfull of venom on me every time I show too much concern for Leo, but I can’t stop myself.
Dan curls himself more tightly around Leo, like a snake protecting its prey. “If you didn’t want me to touch your boyfriend, then you should have taken better care of him,” he says, and it almost sounds like a genuine accusation as if he’s really pissed at me for letting this situation escalate to a point where Leo is in danger from him, which stumps the hell out of me.
Leo sighs, sounding more annoyed than anything, the absolute nightmare. “Jack, get out of the van,” he orders, shooting me a pointed glower of disapproval, like I’m a schoolboy being sent from the classroom by a teacher for messing around too much.
“What?” both Dan and I demand at the same time.
Leo has the actual audacity to look amused by that as if we’re two adorable little murderers he’s adopted. “I’m serious,” he tells me. “I want to talk to Dan properly, and if you stay in here, he’s just going to focus on pissing you off.”
