Chapter 25
The rest of the week proved to be drama-free. Harrison slept a lot, but also managed to shower every day and began to eat a little more at each meal. Jeremy continued going to work, occasionally staying late to send out extra orders. He went back to exercising regularly and generally made an effort to keep his shit sorted.
Most importantly, he stopped attempting to change or cater to Harrison’s mood. He came to the conclusion that just because Harrison was off wandering around in the darker corners of his mind right now, didn’t mean he needed to be wrenched back out again by some fuckwit who’d never been depressed a day in his life. Once he worked that out, he discovered there were still ways to enjoy the other man’s company. Even if they were only hanging out watching television or listening to music.
Jeremy did start to rethink the enjoyment part, though, on Thursday night when Harrison put on a playlist that could only have come from the seventh dimension of hell. Despair and desolation coloured every lyric and, by the third song, Jeremy was ready to tear his own hair out.
“Dude,” he said, throwing a balled-up piece of paper in Harrison’s direction. “This music is depressing enough to make a Tibetan monk consider drinking the Kool-Aid. Shouldn’t you be listening to pop music or something? It makes boppy teenagers happy.”
“Only if I want my ears to bleed.” Harrison was lying on the floor on the far side of the coffee table. Sitting up, he snagged a men’s health magazine from the lower shelf. He ripped out a couple of pages and wrapped them around the ball of paper Jeremy had thrown at him, making it bigger and a little weightier. “I’m sad today. I like listening to sad music when I’m sad.” He threw the paper ball and it bounced off Jeremy’s forehead. “It’s cathartic.”
“It doesn’t make you worse?” Jeremy leaned backwards over the couch, twisting his body until he managed to snag the paper ball with two outstretched fingers.
“Sometimes it can, but not today.” He rubbed at the centre of his chest with one hand. “I’m feeling the need to, kind of, lean into the sadness. It can hurt but, trust me, it’s better than feeling nothing.”
Jeremy clambered off the couch. “Lean into the sadness,” he said, adopting a thoughtful expression as he took the magazine from Harrison’s lap and ripped out a few pages of his own. Once he’d added them to the ever-growing ball, he dropped it on Harrison’s head. “All right. Let’s do this.” Grabbing Harrison’s phone off the coffee table he collapsed onto the couch and started a search on the music app Harrison had hooked up to the speaker. “I’m picking the next song.” He’d located the one he wanted when the paper ball hit him in the nose. He laughed as he fell onto his back. “Good shot.”
He turned to look at Harrison, who eyed him with frank suspicion. “No bop or pop.”
“Babe, trust me,” Jeremy said with a lop-sided grin. “This song is so sad it’ll make your tear ducts writhe in ecstasy.”
“We’ll see.” Another page ripped, and Harrison made a second paper ball, since Jeremy had made no move to return the first one. “Bring it on.”
The ensuing debate over who could produce the most melancholy song was interspersed with a paper ball war that saw the once-glossy magazine decimated and the living room floor littered with its scrunched up remains.
Harrison sat on the floor in the living room again, halfway through a Hellboy comic, when Jeremy came through the door on Friday night. He tilted his head back to receive Jeremy’s greeting kiss, grateful for the bubble of pleasure that expanded inside him.
“How are you doing?” Jeremy asked.
“Good,” he replied, closing the comic and tossing it onto the pile in front of him. “I went for a walk today.”
“You did?” Jeremy smiled as he sat on the floor beside Harrison and leaned back against the couch. “That’s a good thing, right?”
“Yes, it’s a good thing.” One corner of Harrison’s mouth lifted. “It means I’m on the way up. Time to recharge.”
Jeremy lifted a sceptical brow. “This is how you recharge? By reading comics?”
Harrison nudged Jeremy’s shoulder with his own. “There are worse ways,” he pointed out, picking up the hardcover book that sat on his other side. It described the origin stories of all the greatest comic book superheros. Opening the front cover, he showed Jeremy the inscription on the inside.
“To my young warrior,” Jeremy read out loud. “Always keep fighting. Love Uncle Jeff.”
Closing the book, Harrison ran his hands over the cover. “When I first woke up in the hospital, after the great tequila incident, my uncle was furious with me. He told me he was mad because I was letting that bastard win.”
“Your father?” Jeremy guessed.
Harrison nodded. “He gave me this book and brought me a stack of superhero comics to read while I recovered. Each one was based on a character whose past was as screwed up as mine. There were guys whose parents had been murdered, or they’d been in horrific accidents, all sorts of random crap. Except none of them tried to escape—not the way I had anyway. They found a reason to go on. Revenge, protecting others, bringing someone to justice. Whatever the reason, they used skill and discipline to find a way. They never gave up, never stopped fighting.
That’s when I decided to take Uncle Jeff’s advice and fight for my own life, instead of giving up on it. I figured if these guys could use discipline to keep a level head, and keep going, so could I.”
There was a look in Jeremy’s eyes, like pride. “It must have been hard,” he said. “Building yourself back up from nothing.”
“Hell, yes.” He’d had to make the same decision every day, to keep fighting. Some days had been easier, other days he’d barely managed to hang on. “A while after I started seeing Laurel, I told her about my little epiphany and she totally ran with it. She started helping me develop my own set of rules to live by. I started to run, show up to school, learnt how to make friends. It took a long time to get it all working together, but I had good people helping me and over time I learnt to trust them.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been living by the same rules ever since. When I start breaking them, or I can’t summon the energy to get through them… I know I’m heading for a relapse. Time to batten down the hatches so to speak.”
When Jeremy met his gaze, Harrison saw the concern that filled them. “Don’t you ever worry one day you’ll fall too far… be tempted to give up?” He spoke cautiously, as if he wasn’t sure he should ask, but needed to.
“Hey,” he said, cupping Jeremy’s cheek as he stared into his eyes. “I can’t promise it will never happen. But I’ve been close to death enough times to know what the ground tastes like. Now all I want is to live my life, as best I can. And if that changes… let’s just say my uncle and I have promises in place to deal with that, too.” When Jeremy bit down on his bottom lip, Harrison’s fingers tightened around his. “I need you to trust me, Jeremy. Every day when you walk out the door, trust I’ll still be here when you get back.”
Jeremy swallowed hard. “Even when I’m a pain in the arse?” He took a shaky breath. “Or when we piss each other off or have an argument about whose turn it is to cook?”
