When I don’t reply, Micah shifts, sitting up further in the bed and turning until his entire body is oriented toward me. I feel like I should do the same, but my limbs are still too leaden and just the thought of it is exhausting.
At least my mind feels sleep-muddled, not the way it did before, though. I take one deep breath after another, carefully probing at the corners of my consciousness like I’m taking inventory, and it seems like the various wheels and cogs are much more lined up and in their places than they have been the last few days.
Finally.
“How do you feel?” Micah’s voice interrupts my thoughts.
I shrug. I don’t know how to answer him when he says that.
“Mmm.”
But he doesn’t prod any further. Instead, he reaches out and turns me to face him, manhandling me the way he’s started doing more and more often. His strong, deft fingers touch me over, peeling down my eyelids and smoothing over my skin until I feel like a horse at the market.
“Can I help you?”
That makes him smile—genuinely smile—and he looks so beatific I can’t help but smile at him. I’m not sure how long it’s been since we had a moment of peace like this between us, but I instantly feel fifty pounds lighter.
Yesterday seems far away. Like it was a different version of myself that did those things, not the body I’m in right now. Eventhough that version of myself is realistically the one that takes the wheel more often than not.
Maybe here, with Micah’s soft sheets and nice dishes and medications for everything instead of toughing it out, I can keep being this person instead. I like this version much better.
Maybe this really is my chance at a do-over, and I’m about to experience what it’s like to be a normal person.
Savage, the normal guy. Doing what normal people do.
Whatever the fuck that is.
Chapter Twelve
Savage
It’s been one week since The Incident™. I’m finally over the hump of my medication withdrawal, thank fuck, but that doesn’t change the fact that Micah has permanently installed me in his bedroom instead of the couch.
He claims it’s to support my “healing”, and it was a mistake to leave me out there in the first place. But if he meant physical healing, then I feel like he’d be taking the couch instead of sleeping in here with me. He wants me here so he can spy on me and make sure I’m not rummaging through the kitchen knives or something.
If he thinks I haven’t noticed the sudden absence of sharp things and overdosey things inside his apartment, he’s underestimating me. I’m a wreck, but I’m not an idiot. He’s watching me every minute of every day that he’s not at work, like I’m a block of C4 with a really, really long fuse that we’re both waiting to finally go off.
But it’s whatever. I hate feeling like I’m being babied, but I don’t hate the company. It’s making me realize that I’ve been lonely basically since the day he left me the first time, so having his warm, solid, confident presence around is settling something turbulent inside me. Day by day, hour by hour, the knot in my gut untwists. Like every time he hands me a bowl of pasta or a fucking peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I one-up in the “normal” column and get another inch away from the murderous, violent version of myself I hate so much.
He can babysit me all he wants, if it makes him feel better.
As well as being farther from the precipice of insanity, I’m also back to being mostly a functional person physically. I don’t think I’ll be lifting dead bodies anytime soon, but that’s fine by me. At least I can get up and walk around without looking like a plague victim on the verge of collapse.
The downside to all this is that I’m fuckingbored. Not only am I functional again, but all the twitchy, anxious energy I had that pushed me to take the damned meds in the first place is back in force. It’s like an itch in the back of my brain that I can’t scratch, constantly telling me that I need to be up and moving, that I should be on the lookout for some kind of threat, but it refuses to give me any additional information.
It has me checking the perimeter of Micah’s shoebox apartment twenty times a day, which is worse than useless and only makes me feel more like a prisoner.
My dick is waking up as well, which is another crisis that I don’t have the energy to deal with. I’ve fought a lifelong battle with that motherfucker. It never works when I need it to, and then it perks up at the most inconvenient possible moments.
After more than a decade of feeling hollow and betrayed whenever my cock wilted on the spot while I was trying to use the fucker, I didn’t mind the side effect of the meds making it worse. It already felt numb and useless half the time anyway;what’s wrong with escalating that to all the time? I was already having to fabricate my sex life for the sake of my reputation.
I’d rather make up lies for the rest of the Banna, then have it get back to them from some girl that I soft-cocked halfway through sex, had a panic attack and kicked her out. That shit is more humiliating than anything else my trash brain and broken body can throw at me.
Except now I’m waking up with boners every morning. Thank fuck Micah is working swing and nightshift, so we’re mostly on an opposite sleep schedule. It’s bad enough having to talk myself down from the ledge of trying to jerk off, because Iknowit won’t work, and I’ll just be disappointed again. I don’t want Micah to see me going through the stages of grief every morning and asking me what’s wrong, when I’d rather put a rifle in my mouth than tell him the truth.
That I’m not just an evil man, I’m a useless one as well.
My dad always told me I was a worthless piece of shit, and it turned out he was right. He’s an asshole, but he probably knows me better than anyone else. He’s the only one that sees through my mask ofSavage, the mafia enforcer, and sees the weak, scared kid that he loved to beat on. It’s only for the sake of his reputation that he doesn’t let the men know the truth about me, I’m sure.
