Homophobia and toxic masculinity run deeper in Patrick than anything else. Based on the way his associateswatchedme, I’m assuming that’s the standard he enforces across his crew.
I should never have laid down next to Tadhg like that. Something that was innocent and comforting when we were little kids carries different connotations now that we’re adults. Even if I still think of him as a brother, we’re not actually related. We were never even legally considered stepbrothers, because Mom and Pat didn’t bother with a marriage license.
And now we’re practically strangers. Strangers who laid next to each other on a single sofa.
It must have been enough to trigger his “no gay shit” reflex and make him nearly kill himself trying to scrabble away from me. Watching the color drain from his skin while he aspirated on his fucking vomit… That was an experience.
Knowing it was all because he was so desperate not to touch me? Yeah, that wasn’t a high point of my existence.
Now, he’s exhausted, lying still in my arms, and I can’t tell if his initial reaction was a knee-jerk panic response and this is the real him, or if that was the real him and this is him being too exhausted to fight anymore.
I can put up with a lot. The way I move, the way I talk, everything about me screamedqueersince before I was old enough to understand what it meant. Which isn’t ideal for a child in the Bible Belt, even if things are better than they used to be. But I learned to embrace it, and to stand up for myself, and it ultimately made me stronger. If I had the choice to go back, I wouldn’t change anything about myself.
I’d change the fucking world to make it less shitty, so other kids aren’t forced to be that strong, but I wouldn’t change a thing about me.
Tadhg continues to breathe, propped up against my chest. The rattle I hear tells me he definitely aspirated, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. He’s already getting all the antibiotics I have. If that’s not enough, Tristan will have to come back with something else.
I just need him to calm down. He looked fucking terrified. First, terrified of me, then he had that look in his eye patients sometimes have right before they die.
A ‘sense of impending doom’ is a real medical symptom, and I’ve seen it in too many people’s faces not to believe them when they say it. That was how Tadhg looked. Like his body was falling out from under him, and he was preparing to be detached from it.
But we’re both still here.
In the dim light, I look down at the tattoos crawling all over his body. They’re all violent. Knives. Guns. Skulls. A lot of symbols I vaguely recognize as gang signs, and some that I’m pretty sure are meant to represent things like the kills you’ve made.
I don’t know what I’m going to do about this situation. If Patrick has genuinely turned my brother into a monster, Tadhg might not be willing to let me take care of him once he’s strong enough to put some distance between us. But now that he’s here, I realize I still love him as much as I used to.
I’m going to try. Even if I have to tolerate some homophobic bullshit. His recovery is going to be slow, and they don’t have anyone else to take care of him. If Patrick has spent the last decade being a devil on his shoulder, this is my chance to be an angel.
A very gay, exhausted angel.
Chapter Six
Savage
Idon’t know how long we sit together. Long enough that the adrenaline drains out of the room. Quiet settles over us both, the only real noise being the harsh, rattling sound of my breathing.
Eventually, I feel more like myself. Or at least the numb, detached version of myself that I slip into after I have one of these little panic whatevers. The part of me that was concerned about infecting Micah with my toxins is walled off in a distant section of my mind, letting out occasional muffled screams, while the rest of me is too selfish and desperate for comfort to care about the consequences.
My head is resting on his shoulder, so it doesn’t take much strength to turn to my left until I’m facing him. I’m too close to see his whole face, but it doesn’t matter. He fills my field of vision, and the smell of whatever fruity soap he uses is wallpapering over the scent of vomit in my nostrils, so I’ll take it.
“Why are you being nice to me, Bambi?” I ask. My voice is rougher than it was before my little couch-diving vomit adventure, so I sound even more like a cartoon villain. It’s fitting.
Micah leans back a little to get a better look at me. I can feel the warmth rolling off his skin, and we’re both sweaty from exertion. I think that if he pulled away from me right now, I might dissolve.
“Because you’re still my brother, asshole.”
I snort. He never did mince words, even if he used to be a lot more shy about it.
“You should kick me out,” I mumble into the pale, sweaty skin of his shoulder.
“Yeah, well, you’re not the boss of me. And neither is Patrick. You should be in a hospital, but he’s made it clear that’s not going to happen. Without legal medical care, I’m the next best thing. I don’t trust him not to put you in a dog kennel and let you bleed to death. So, you’re stuck here until you’re healthy enough to fight me over it. Thankfully, your father seemed to be happy to have one less thing to worry about, so he didn’t put up much of a fight when I offered to have you recover here.”
A swirl of conflicting emotions hits me right in the breastbone, but I don’t have the energy to deal with any of them right now, so I let the numbness shove them aside.
“He left?”
“Yeah, hun,” he says, his voice going soft. His hand comes up and rests on the back of my head, right where he grabbed me by the hair earlier. It rests there, hovering like he wants to stroke my hair or something and is stopping himself.
