Instead, they’re all shoved right in my face now. Front and center. All my constant gnawing concerns about his well-being, combined with my concerns over justhowconcerned I am. Because if there’s one thing I’ve always been with Tadhg, it’s over-attached.
I can’t help it. As soon as my mom walked me into that house, I was afraid. I could sense what kind of man Patrick was before I was even old enough to really understand what I was frightened of.
But with just as much conviction, I knew that Tadhg would protect me. And he took one look at me and seemed to know the same thing. It was set in stone, right from the start, and as kids, neither of us ever questioned it.
It feels like now it’s my turn to protect him, and I’m terrified I’m going to miss something and fuck it up.
He deserves better.
I’m getting ready for my shift tonight when Tadhg finally emerges from his third sleep of the day. He looks a little like a zombie. There’s a deep pillow crease running down his left cheek, his tawny hair is sticking up in every direction and curlier than he usually lets it get—I will never understand why some straight guys have a thing against having curly hair, as if it’s innate effeminate or something instead of hot as fucking hell—and he’s got an eye crusty that I’m dying to reach out and clean for him.
He’s a mess. But he’s my mess.
“Sleeping Beauty finally rises, I see,” I say, before filling the apartment with the sound of my NutriBullet as I make a smoothie for the road.
Thank fuck, Tadhg wipes that crust away before it drives me insane. He’s rubbing his eye with his fist in a gesture that’s endearingly juvenile but looks so out of place with the rest of him.
I swear, he’s mostly naked in this apartment more than he’s clothed. Right now is no exception, because he’s stumbled out of bed in nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs that I accidentally bought a size too small, and his canned-ham thighs are straining to bust out of them.
I’ll never totally get used to it. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of hot guys naked. My tastes specifically mean that I’ve seen a lot of hot, masc, muscular men on their knees for me, begging for my cock.
Something about Tadhg is different. He’s masculine, sure. But between the muscles, the tattoos and the sheer size of him, there’s a certain lethality to his body that always seems tohammer home for me just what he’s been doing with it since we last knew each other.
The men I fuck build their muscles in the gym, and then I like to make them cry and have messy orgasms. Tadhg spends his time building muscle by lifting dead bodies or kilos of cocaine or god knows what else. Honestly, a good weeping orgasm on his knees would probably do the man wonders, but that’s not my place and it’s certainly not something he’s ready to emotionally cope with.
“You going to work, Bambi?” he asks when the blender finally stops whirring.
“Yep.” Okay, I’ve been thinking about asking him this all day, and I think I just need to do it. Rip off the Band-Aid, and if he has a hissy fit about it, so be it. “And I was thinking that you could come with me?”
Tadhg doesn’t say anything, but he does freeze, standing in the middle of the living room, his hand unmoving where he was just scratching his stomach a moment before.
“What for?”
I start to move toward him, but when he instinctively flinches away, I think better of it and stay in the kitchen.
“Maybe we could get some bloodwork done and check if your electrolytes are fucked up from your detox. Maybe we could get your prescription transferred to a pharmacy here and get a refill. I know you couldn’t go for the gunshot because of the paper trail, but this is different. No one’s going to care about some random guy coming into the ER for a medication detox issue. No one’s checking RX fills.”
I can tell before he even speaks that it’s going to be a hard‘no’. His face immediately turns to stone, and it’s like my sweet brother has been swallowed whole by the mafia monster that his father created in his place.
“Are you insane?” he spits. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? I might as well walk up to the Aryan Brotherhood—wait, I might as well walkyouup to the Aryan Brotherhood with a bag over both our heads and beg them to kill us. Fuck no. My name is not going on any fucking paperwork, and my face is not going anywhere like that where someone might recognize it. All it takes is one nurse, one pharmacy tech, one person in the waiting room who has a connection and overhears the wrong thing and then they know where I am. Not to mention the shitstorm that would follow if my father heard.”
He’s bristling, standing tall as he leans into this growly, aggressive side of his personality that I hate so much.
I’m not going to push it. He sounds beyond paranoid, but I know that fighting him on it isn’t the answer. I’ll think of something. Maybe I can get the meds prescribed to myself through one of those online services or something.
It should probably be a cause for concern that I don’t even hesitate before planning to commit what is technically medical fraud, but I don’t care. The second he pointed a gun at his own head, my ethics went out the window. I could give a fuck, to be honest. It’s actually a little scary how few fucks I give about right or wrong at this point.
Before I get the chance to backtrack though, Tadhg spins on his heel and heads toward the bathroom, muttering something about going to work.
He’s barely started this new job at the Feral Possum, but so far it seems good for him. He comes home when I’m still at work, so I don’t get to see the immediate aftermath, but the next day, he always seems more calm than usual. It’s Friday night, so they’re bound to be just as busy as the ER will be tonight.
Hopefully, it’ll distract him from whatever anger I just stirred up in him like a hornet’s nest. At least Gunnar will be there to attempt to keep him out of trouble. I don’t know the owner well,but every interaction I’ve had with him has been very chill, and he seems uniquely suited to keeping mouthy assholes in line.
I take a deep breath in and out, the condensation under my fingers making me aware that I’m still clutching my smoothie.
It’ll be fine. He’ll go to work, I’ll go to work, we’ll both be run off our feet, and we can revisit this topic tomorrow in the light of day.
And this weird pang ofsomethingthat I get because I have to leave him? The feeling that’s creeping into my awareness more and more with each passing day, but I can’t possibly name or begin to understand? Yeah, that’s a stone that’s going to remain unturned.
