I’m relieved he’s finally getting the fuck away from me. But then he turns and puts his hands on me, catching my shoulders when I do my best to pitch my broken, twitching body off the couch.
“Tadhg, stop! Stay still, you’ll hurt yourself.”
I need him to stop touching me. I think my skin is about to melt off my bones. The floor lurches underneath me, and I shove Micah away as well as I can before I nosedive into the floor.
The fall is barely a foot, but I land directly on my eye socket, so pain throbs through my face while the rest of my body crumples downward in slow motion. There’s a tearing feeling in my hand, and then I’m pretty sure I see blood and maybe water spilling over me and onto the carpet.
Micah keeps touching me, pulling at me with his fucking soft, warm hands, trying to move me to do I don’t know what.
My stomach clenches again, this time hard enough to make me double over. I’m on my side on the floor, I think, and I curl myself up as tightly as I can with the left side of my body too injured to cooperate.
Blood is everywhere now. My face is wet with it, and the world smells like iron. And Micah won’t leave.
My stomach heaves, and then I’m choking as something bitter fills my mouth. I can’t breathe, and whenever I try, there’s too much snot and vomit to get any air. I try to roll onto my back, but I’m too dizzy to tell which way is up, and my body is still jerking with those electric shocks that make it hard to move.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Micah’s voice is disembodied, floating around me. The world seems intangible, and all I can do is reach out and grab for something to hold on to.
My hands come up empty, because there’s nothing to grab. I’m anchorless. But then a strong arm wraps around my waist and a hand grips me by the hair. Someone comes up behind me,as my body gets twisted against my will. The hand pulls on my hair until my neck stretches out long, and when my stomach heaves again to puke, this time thin, bright yellow liquid spills out of my mouth.
Air rushes in to replace it, and it’s such a relief I feel myself sag. I blink a few times and take one deep, heaving breath after another, trying to reorient myself and chase away the blackness that was edging into my vision. My throat is screaming raw from where I think I inhaled some vomit, and the thought is so disgusting I almost puke again, but my stomach is empty when it lurches this time.
My hoarse breathing fills my ears, and my body is shaking so hard I know I can’t be holding myself up. Especially when I only have my right hand on the ground.
Awareness is coming back to me, bit by bit. I’m kneeling on the carpet. I can see a disgusting mess of blood and vomit underneath me, and my good arm is propping me up, seeping blood from the spot where I must have ripped out an IV, while my injured arm hangs limply.
Micah’s holding me up, I realize. It’s his arm around my chest and his hand in my hair. It’s a weird sensation, but I also don’t want him to let go. The moment I inhaled and choked on my own vomit was the most profound sense of terror I think I’ve ever felt, and this is not my first time almost dying. It was a visceral, whole-body sense of impending doom. And his hand in my hair—keeping me upright and not letting me collapse back into a scrunched-up ball of disaster-flesh—is the only thing keeping it from happening again.
I relax into his arms and breathe until the world makes more sense. A little at a time.
After a while, Micah must be tired, because he pulls us both down into a sitting position. He props himself up against the boxy couch and then leans my back against his chest. I’mnearly twice the width of him, but it doesn’t matter. It still feels anchoring.
His hand moves to the center of my chest, his fingers splayed as I take one rattling breath after another. I can feel him breathing behind me, and gradually I fall into the same rhythm as him. Deep, slow breaths. Mine sounds wet and putrid.
His other hand, I realize, has slipped out of my hair at some point because I’m laying my head back against his shoulder. He holds my wrist for a while, maybe checking my pulse again, and then presses his fingers against the bleeding tear in the skin where the IV used to be.
We lie together in a communal trauma heap for a long time before either of us speaks.
“Just let me help you.”
That’s the thing Micah eventually says. He whispers it, because his face is still next to mine. And he tightens his grip on my chest as he says the words. I can’t imagine what he thinks is the reason I freaked out and tried to yeet myself into fucking oblivion from his couch, but I’m sure it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Either way, here he is. Still keeping me upright. Refusing to let me go.
I sigh and lean more of my weight into his body. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here, but I’m too tired now to work it out.
Micah
I knew I would have my hands full with Tadhg’s injuries. And Iwas fully expecting Patrick and his goons to be a constant pain in my ass.
Reuniting with Tadhg once he woke up… That was something I was hoping would not be a big deal. Worst-case scenario, it was going to be a little awkward. Once the moron mafia packed up and left to plot their world takeover or whatever, I’d had a little peace and quiet to consider it.
I called out to work and then sat in the dark, monitoring my brother’s vitals as they slowly strengthened, waiting for him to come back to me. And in the meantime, I tried to picture everything that might have happened to him in the past twelve years.
In everything that crossed my mind, I never expected him to react like he did. But now I feel stupid as hell.
Of course he’s changed. Of course, he’s been warped and twisted and controlled until he’s a shadow of his shitty, abusive father, and nothing like the boy who used to protect me. His father is the only constant he’s ever had in life, considering his mother overdosed on heroin when he was too young to remember, and I abandoned him before either of us had the chance to truly grow up.
