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“We both know Lord Voldemort has ordered the Malfoy boy to murder me. But should he fail, I should presume the Dark Lord will turn to you. You must be the one to kill me, Severus. It is the only way. Only then will the Dark Lord trust you completely. There will come a time when Harry Potter must be told something. But you must wait until Voldemort is at his most vulnerable.”
“Must be told what?”
“That he’s not allowed to name his kid after both of you assholes!”
“Fef, shhh!” you exclaim, tightening your grip on her. “You’re ruining the moment. And Snape is one of the best anti-heroes—”
“Okay, okay!” she cuts you off, snuggling in closer. “I don’t want to get into another fight about Snape, let’s just both agree to disagree.” She mutters something under her breath, and you assume it’s about what a douchewad she thinks the potions master is.
“What was that?” you ask innocently.
She shushes you this time, and you sulk, turning back to the TV and pulling the comforter around you. Fef puts her head back on your shoulder as you watch Snape’s doe patronus prance around the room.
The worst part about ABC Family’s Harry Potter Weekend (besides that they skipped the fourth movie) is the commercials. Sure, you own all of the movies and could watch them whenever you wanted, but there’s something special about them being on cable. Fef mutes the TV and the Rice Krispies ad goes silent, and she tugs you down to kiss her.
You think she’s noticed your hesitance lately, but she hasn’t pressed you about it. It’s not that you detest being with her like this—you love being with her, you really do. But sometimes, when you hit a certain point, you can’t help but think of past experiences and your libido shuts down and you become the most insufferable cuddleslut known to man.
She told you she bought condoms a while ago—they’ve been in her nightstand since February, and you think that was a clear sign that she was ready to take the next step, but you couldn’t bring yourself to so you tried to pleasure her enough to make up for it, never asking for anything in return.
Now, Fef runs her hand down your stomach, then scoots over, pulling you so you’re straddling her on your knees as she sits, leaning forward to pull your shirt over your head. You let her, feeling a rush of energy at the action, and as she leans in to trail kisses across your chest, you take off her camisole, tossing it onto the pillow behind her. She’s not wearing a bra and this certainly isn’t the first time you’ve seen her breasts but she’s so exquisite, so beautiful that you lean down, but Fef makes a small noise of protest and lays her forehead on your clavicle instead, letting her hands roam across your stomach and to your hips. “You always focus on me,” she says, laughing a little. “Let me work on you for once, hmm?” One of her hands reaches around to caress the slight curve of your ass, and you think yeah, this time you might be able to go through with this.
You let her leave kisses across your sternum as she works off your sweatpants first. You have to wiggle around quite a bit but once they’re off she squeals at her victory then tosses them across the room, leaving you only in boxer briefs. You’ve been here before, like this, and Fef is still nearly reverent with you, rubbing a thumb across your inner thigh and making you shiver. She nearly purrs at the reaction, leaning in close and leaving a trail of lingering kisses down from your belly button to the waistline of your boxers; her neck rubs against your hard-on and you moan something resembling her name, and she laughs but it’s not a mean sound. You let her slide one hand under the elastic of your boxers and she starts to tug.
But then it stops, and you’re confused for a second until you realize you grabbed her wrist reflexively. Noticing this takes you out of the moment and you gulp, pulling her hand off your ass and resisting the urge to sit down. “Eridan?” she questions quietly.
Come on, Ampora, you can do this, you tell yourself as you hook one of your thumbs into the elastic of your boxer briefs, placing the other on her waist to steady yourself. She’s going to make you feel lovely, you know, but you can’t make your hands move, can’t make you reveal yourself to her.
What’s holding you back?
“You’re shaking,” Fef murmurs, placing one of her hands over yours on her hip. Her lips part when you flinch at the contact and oh God, she’s going to hate you if you don’t go through with this; you know you’ve been stagnating and now it’s painfully obvious that she noticed, and you don’t know what you’re supposed to say to her to fix this.
Removing your hand from your boxers and pushing her hand off, you move it down between her legs because after all these years, you’d think you could give a decent hand job, even if you won’t let yourself receive—
“Eridan,” Fef says before you can get a finger inside of her. “Eridan, stop.”
You don’t try to protest, taking your fingers away and biting hard on your lip. Instead you sit up, still straddling her, and slip both thumbs under your waistband but you still—
You still can’t—
“Oh honey, you’re shaking even worse now,” she murmurs, and you know she can tell that it’s not from pleasure. “Stop, stop, we don’t have to do anything else.”
Tears spring to your eyes, but you blink them away. “I’m sorry,” you croak.
“You don’t need to apologize,” she says, propping herself up on her elbows. You know she’s trying to control her voice for your sake, but it’s still filled with lust. “It’s okay if you’re not ready.”
She doesn’t make fun of you or ask questions or make you feel worthless, but that makes you feel even worse. When she doesn’t make a move for the camisole behind her head, you lay down next to her and wrap your arms around her waist, burying your face into her ribs and curling around her like she’s the only thing keeping you afloat.
“I’m sorry,” you start rambling, “I’m so sorry, it’s not your fault, I love you; it’s all me, Fef, it’s all me I’m sorry.”
She shooshes you, petting your hair. “It’s okay, Eridan,” she soothes. “Everything’s okay.”
It’s not.
So you tell her.
It comes out in fragments, but it’s still understandable. She makes small noises to let you know she’s listening, slowly combing her fingers through your hair all the while, and most words are hard to say but it’s Fef; you should’ve told her a long time ago, but you were too stuck in revulsion and shame to even consider it. Once you’ve said all you wanted to, she’s deathly quiet and you’re still wrapped around her like a shroud. Her hand has frozen on your head, but her thumb still makes little circles on your scalp.
“Have you told anyone else?” she asks quietly, her first words since you began.
“My therapist,” you say, “but I didn’t say it was him. I told her it was some uncle that’s dead now, so she wouldn’t tell anybody.”
Fef sighs, long and kind of shaky, and you know this is some heavy shit you just dropped on her. You kiss her ribs as she goes back to carding her fingers through your hair, slower this time. “So you haven’t gone to the police?”
“No,” you say, and your throat closes up out of fear. You swallow a bunch of times so you can get out, “I can’t.”
“I know he’s your brother,” Fef says, and you’re just starting to pick up on the repressed rage in her voice, “but—”
“I don’t want to go to court,” you rush out. “I really, really don’t. Anyway, it’s just me. I know he’s too much of a coward to do it to anyone else. He thought he could get away with me.”
“And he has!” she snaps.
The lump in your throat you’d willed away before comes back, and this time you can’t hold back a couple of tears; you remove a hand from Fef so you can bite one of your knuckles, squeezing your eyes shut, and Fef coos, “Hey. Hey, babbie, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not crying,” you say, sounding pathetic. You suck in another breath, and you don’t let any more tears leak out.
She twists so you’re splayed across her lap instead, and she takes your hand and strokes your cheek with her thumb. “You don’t have to do anything about it if you don’t want to,” she relents. “Eridan, you don’t have to feel obligated to… to have sex with me, or whatever. This is your relationship, too.”
“I do want to, though,” you emphasize, sniffling. “I can’t let him ruin this for me.”
“We’ll go at your pace,” she says, leaning down to kiss the crown of your head. “Everything is going to be alright.”
For some reason, you let yourself believe her.
And at your pace you go. It takes another month to work up to the biggest thing—which is very slow, considering the fast pace the relationship had been moving at before—but when you finally do sleep together, you wish you hadn’t been so afraid because it feels wonderful. You’ve been working so hard to feel like a fucking person again, and maybe it culminated in finally being able to share all of yourself with her.
It’s a nice thought, and you’re the sort of person who likes dramatic, sweeping statements like that. It’s not necessarily true, though. Your meds have helped. Your therapist has helped. Avoiding Cronus like early 2000’s fashion—even though the fuckface still hasn’t moved out—has helped. Fef has helped all she can, asking questions about anything she doesn’t understand and making sure you felt supported and loved, and the urge hurt yourself has died down to an ache that only surfaces on occasion. You’ve only broken twice, since Cronus had set you off back in August, and for you that’s very, very good.
Spending time with Fef makes you feel safe and alive. You work on homework together and kick each other’s asses in Mario Kart and spend a lot of time intertwined, and it was only a matter of time before someone caught you, once you got comfortable. You talked it out afterward, though, and everything was okay.
(Did Fef really not tell Glenys and Meenah you’d started dating? You guess the news was just forgotten, and there really wasn’t a clear outside transition in your relationship, since you kept your shenanigans private, and you wish you’d been more tactful instead of going the “holy shit you walked in on us naked” route. At the end of the day, though, they’re your family too, and you don’t know what you’d do without their support.)
Then high school is over, and you’re ready to go to college and get the fuck away from your house. Your dad was pissed, at first, that you weren’t going to the Naval Academy like he did, but when you told him you were going to your mother’s alma mater, he softened and accepted it, even if it was thousands of miles away. Fef will be a two hour drive from you, and that seems so long, because you’ve lived in the same neighborhood your entire lives, but there’s a solid bus route between your cities and you’ll have a car, so you figure you’ll try to spend most weekends with her, when you’re not buried in homework.
The night after graduation, you both get a text from Kanaya.
GA: Porrim Is Throwing Me A Graduation Party Tomorrow Night At Eight
It’s been a while since all of your friends were together. You’re sure you’ll end up in one place again before the summer is over and you all go to your respective schools and positions, but you’re excited for this; you haven’t been to an actual party in ages. You’ll get to dress all pretty and play drinking games (and tell off everyone who makes fun of you for only drinking soda and orange juice). You’ve never been into alcohol, and with your experiences you can’t imagine you ever will be, but Fef’s tipsy self is adorable. With you and Kar as the designated babysitters, you can’t imagine anything could go wrong.
It turns out to be a reunion for Porrim’s class as well—all of your older siblings knew each other when they were in high school, and that means even Cronus is there. You had no idea he’d been invited, seeing as you’d spent the hours leading up to the party at the Peixes estate, and he’s a very unwelcome sight. You purposely avoid him, not caring if anyone notices your coldness towards him, and he seems to get the message and leaves you alone.
The two groups aren’t really mingling. Porrim’s house is a reasonable size, and since it’s for Kan’s graduation you guys get the living room and the older kids are all stuffed into the kitchen and bedrooms. There’s plenty of stuff to drink—soda and juice are always available to mix, but you drink the add-ons straight, because you’d like to remain on the moral high ground (plus you’re really not supposed to drink on your meds)—and as always, you remind Fef to take it easy. She just sticks her tongue out at you and goes for the stash of Mike’s Hard.
The first couple of hours are pretty fun. You sip on a vanilla coke, which Porrim bought at your request, and play some old video games. You’re surprised no one breaks an ankle during DDR. Playing Singstar proves, once and for all, that absolutely no one here has a good singing voice. By the time you make it to Mario Party, played with three people to a team, you think a couple of them are drunk enough that they’ll commit murder if someone else steals one of their stars. You and Fef are stuck with Vriska, and at one point she chucks the controller at your face for getting a shitty roll, and you narrowly avoid a head injury.
You don’t end up winning—Sol, Ara, and Tav do, and your team comes in third. You’d hate to have been last, but you think it’s good revenge for Nep and Eq’s team, since they beat you in chicken fights last summer. Terezi, you have to admit, didn’t deserve to be saddled with them after such a devastating loss.
People start drinking even more at around midnight, and you consider taking peoples’ keys, but you doubt any of them would try to leave before the sun comes up anyway. Some go back to the TV for more Singstar and others start riding the bus—which is some stupid drinking game, you much prefer quarters—but Fef slides across the floor on her butt over to you, where you’re sitting on the ground with your back against the couch. She plops her way into your lap without asking, and you oof a little but she just snuggles into your neck and wraps her arms around your back. “I’m in the mood for hugs,” she says, closing her eyes. Her face is flushed, but you don’t think she’s drunk. Just tipsy.
“I saw,” you acknowledge, thinking about how she’d thrown her arms around Nepeta and Terezi’s shoulders before making her way over here.
“Don’t be jealous,” she singsongs, dragging one of her fingers up and down your spine. It makes you shudder. “You’re still my favorite.”
“I better be,” you joke, and she leans up and kisses you sloppily, not even faking chastity before shoving her tongue into your mouth. You feel yourself turning as red as she is, and you push down on her shoulders until she detaches herself from you with a small pop. “Ms. Peixes,” you say breathlessly, “I didn’t know you could come on so strong.”
“I can be softer,” she says, leaning forward to peck you on the lips. “See?”
“Not here,” you say quietly, very aware of the ten other people in the room, even if they didn’t seem to be paying any attention to you.
Her expression becomes concerned. “Did I upset you? I’m sorry, Eridarling.”
“You didn’t,” you assure her, and your eyebrows raise. “What kind of nickname is that?”
“A cute one!” she exclaims.
“Is it though?” you question, eyes narrowing.
She looks taken aback for a moment, but then she realizes you’re joking and slumps back into you, moving her arms so they’re wrapped around your neck instead. “More like Eridoofus,” she sulks.
“Rude!”
“Mwah!” She leaves a loud kiss on the underside of your jaw. “You suck!”
She stays with you for a while on the fringes of the party, playing with the rings on your fingers then the buttons on your shirt before she gets bored and heads over to the karaoke group. You normally wouldn’t miss the chance to watch her embarrass herself in song form, but it’s starting to feel kind of hot in here, and you kind of want a break from watching people drink themselves stupid. Getting up, you head further into the house, passing the kitchen and heading down a hallway to the back porch. You’ve been here a couple of times before, so you know where it is, and you’ve always been a fan of the back porch of Porrim’s home—it reminds you of a greenhouse, with three out of four walls made almost entirely of windows, each pane about two feet across with a slab of white wood in between. A panel of the same homely wood runs under the rows of windows, coming up to your hip. There’s a simple, light-colored desk in one corner and a bench couch takes up two walls, covered in floral print cushions that look like they belong on outdoor chairs. It’s a nice room to sit and collect your thoughts.
When it’s empty, that is. Right now, it’s not.
Just when you’re about to walk in, you hear the voice of Sollux’s brother, stilted and nervous. “Hey. Hey, can you not—”
The reply is low and you can’t hear the words, but you recognize the tone. Hesitantly, you creep closer and press yourself against the wall so they can’t see you through the archway. “Why are you touching me?” Mituna questions, sounding a bit amped up.
“Come on, chief,” your brother laughs breathily, and you hear the shift of fabric. That’s all it takes for your skin to crawl, goosebumps making your hair stand on end and spine automatically curving defensively. “We’re friends, right? Friends touch each other. It’s nice, understand?”
“Stop it,” Mituna says, and it sounds like he’s trying to move away. You know Cronus enough to know he won’t let him. “You’re a fucked up cuntflap, stop.”
“You’ll like it, if you let yourself,” he purrs, and you think you might throw up because he’s said the exact same thing to you.
He’d said it back when you thought he was just messing with you, and you alone.
God, how could you have thought it was just you?
Cronus knew he could get away with you, once upon a time. Since you grew up and he realized he couldn’t do it anymore, he needed new prey. Vulnerable prey. He thinks he can get away with it because he’s drunk, and despite that mindset being a regular one of his, your brother’s judgment is still as impaired as it was the first time he really felt the buzz almost a decade ago.
He won’t do anything else if you don’t intervene, you tell yourself. There’s a difference between a young man with previous sexual experience and a little boy that was trained from birth to never say no to family when they asked for something. You’ve always been convinced that Cronus was too much of a coward to do things to anyone but you, because he knew he could rely on you to stay quiet while anyone else he touched could talk.
It won’t really escalate from here without Mituna’s consent, you’re convinced—you watch him slap your brother’s hand away and take a step back, and Cronus doesn’t reach for him again, getting the message—but you’d never be able to live with yourself if you just walked away.
Oh God, you don’t want to do this. You want to walk away and pretend you never heard, never saw, to drive home and curl up on your bed and cry a little bit. (You lied with the “little bit”. You meant to say “a lot”.) But you can’t and that sucks, because you’re not supposed to be a hero of any kind, for anyone.
“Hey,” you say, stepping into the room, keeping your shoulders squared back and trying not to look defensive. “Cro, come on, he said to stop.”
It’s Mituna that’s facing towards you, so your brother has to turn, a snarl pulling his lips down. Mituna shuffles a few steps back but doesn’t bolt yet, staring at Cro with thinly-veiled contempt. Mituna’s gaze then shifts to you, and he looks at you with an uncomfortable enough expression that you wonder what you actually interrupted, but soon you see a belated spark of gratitude. Cronus scoffs, quirking an eyebrow and smirking with everything he’s got. “Don’t get jealous,” he chastises, and your teeth grit together painfully. How dare he. “Just go back to the party.”
“Jealous?” you find yourself growling, taking a step forward like you’re going to leap at him, fists clenched at your sides. Here it is, you think a bit hysterically, the confrontation. “Never, you fucking sicko.”
I’m not stuttering, you realize. While Cronus blinks owlishly and cracks his knuckles, saying something you don’t quite comprehend, you try to find the usual terror that comes with talking to your brother, but the only thing you can find is a dull sprinkling of fear. The predominant emotion, for the first time ever, is not terror. It’s something that has been building in your mind and in your chest for years and years, simmering but not daring to boil over because of consequences and shame.
Rage.
You’re sick of him getting away with everything he does wrong. You’re disgusted he can make jokes about the mental disfigurement he’s left you with, about spreading the filth he’s done to you to others. He’s made you hate yourself, he’s made you terrified of anything sexual, he’s made you feel rank with disgust and coated with you in sticky indignity. You never want to see that surly smirk grace his face ever again, because that’s the expression he gets when he knows he’s won, and you never want him to win a single thing ever again. He does not deserve victory over anything.
Since he’s wearing that smirk now, you close the distance and punch it away.
This is the fight everything has been leading to, you think. Mituna scampers from the room as Cronus headbutts you straight in the chest, knocking all of the air from your lungs and sending the two of you tumbling into a heap on the floor. He knees you in the ribs once, twice, three times, and then you’re thrusting the heel of your hand towards his face and his nose breaks with a crunch and gush of blood. You kick hard against his stomach and he goes flying backwards, hitting a desk in the corner of the room and knocking over the lamp that was perched on it.
Then you’re on top of him this time, pent up aggression finally bursting through as you try to remember the good places to punch so you don’t break your hand. For the first few hits, you can only think of face. You want to make him hurt, like he’s abused you all these years, and you want to make him understand how he’s made it so how you’ll never be able to touch someone without thinking they might not want it, how you’ll never be able to look at yourself and see skin unmarred by scars, how you’ll never be able to be in complete control of your sexuality because he’s been there since day one, manipulating and marring and—
He somehow manages to get a leg up, kicking you in the balls and sending you sprawling back. It was a dirty play. You should’ve seen it coming. (You should’ve done it to him.)
As you lie there, riding off the waves of pain, he somehow manages to grab you and pull you up, pushing until you end up pressed against a window by one of his fists grasping your shirt; the other is twisted in your hair. You kick out but he’s unaffected as he takes you head and slams it back against the glass, making your vision explode for a moment. The glass cracks but doesn’t shatter, and as you struggle, he does it again, smashing a hole in the window.
You scream as glass cuts your face. Immediately, blood starts running into one of your eyes and when you pull your head back inside, a shard makes another cut near your ear and suddenly the room is loud and full of activity.
Someone pulls Cronus off you, and he’s still swinging and cursing and practically foaming at the mouth, but you don’t care as you sit hard on the floor and clutch your head. There’s blood, there’s so much blood, and you feel bits of glass still stuck in your scalp just behind one of your temples. Your thoughts are foggy and muddled and you just might throw up. Someone is making gross gasping noises like something is stuck up their nasal cavity, and it makes you think of a wounded animal. As you try to suck in more air, you realize it’s you.
“Let me see,” someone coaxes you, lightly cupping your jaw and slowly turning your wounded side towards them. “Come on, Eriglub, let me see.”
You lay your head in Fef’s lap, already getting blood on her skirt as she carefully smooths your hair back to get a better look. You wrap your arms around her legs, shaking like mad; you don’t want to be comforted, you want to fight, but you think this is over.
Cronus’ yelling starts to turn coherent, and you lift your eyes to see him being restrained by Kankri and Porrim. “Were you trying to fucking kill me, after all I’ve done for you?” he’s snarling, legs flailing in the air as he tries to run at you. His face is a bloody mess, nose crooked and a blood spray across his mouth and down his chin, dripping onto his shirt. His sneer shows two gaps where teeth once were, and that makes you run your tongue across yours. Nope, nothing missing. “You’re fucking mine, you don’t get to make choices like that—”
“Shut the fuck up, you pathetic, appalling monster!” Feferi screeches, turning a snarl on Cronus with fire in her eyes. You want to tell her to stop, but you can’t make your mouth work, so you loosen your grip on her and try to stand. An arm catches you around your waist and helps you rise, and when you look over dazedly you see the familiar mop of Kar’s hair. “I know everything that you’ve done,” she emphasizes, and you like the spark of unease that flashes through his expression, even if it’s just for a moment. A tiny part of you that’s unaffected by the adrenaline is saying you should stop her, because what if she tells? What if everyone will know? “You are the scum of the earth and you know what?” She sets her jaw, nostrils flaring. “I’m done. This is it. I will go to the police and you will be arrested unless you leave town by this time tomorrow. You have a truck, you have money. I don’t care where the fuck you go as long as you never come back!”
“You don’t get to make those kinds of decisions for families that aren’t yours, you crippled cunt,” he hisses, leaning away from the people restraining him and that’s it, you’re rushing him again, adrenaline blurring away the pain.
But you don’t make it over there, because Kankri and Porrim yank Cronus back and Karkat pulls you away with all his might; when that’s not enough, Sollux lunges for your other arm and wrenches back. (“Holy shit,” you think you hear Vris snickering in the background, and you think you hear the older Medigo join her. “Holy shit.”)
Some of the wrath has leaked from Fef’s expression, and all that’s left is coldness. “You may be related to him by blood,” she retorts, “but you’re not family. You never will be.”
“Kankri, let’s get him outside,” Porrim commands, and Tavros’ brother holds open the door for them, following only to avoid the stares. Meenah plows through the crowd gathered at the door leading to the hallway, sparing a quick glance for her sister and you before storming outside after them. You can already hear her starting to yell.
“Bring him into the bathroom!” Kanaya calls from down the hall, and Kar and Sol start tugging you along that way.
You stumble constantly, nausea building in your system as Karkat coaxes softly, “Come on, you pestilent sack of dildos, one foot in front of the other.”
“I don’ feel good, Kar,” you slur, one of your hands awkwardly reaching up to pat the side of your head. You only find slippery blood. “M’ head…”
“Of course it doesn’t feel good, you got it slammed through a window,” he says bluntly. “Kanaya went and got their first aid stuff, just a little further.”
“Should I call 911?” Fef asks from where she’s trailing down the hall behind you. “There’s—” You can hear her swallow. It echoes in your head. “There’s so much blood…”
“No,” you protest, shaking your head weakly as you’re led through the door of the bathroom. It just makes you dizzier. Kanaya pats the lid of the toilet from where she’s perched on the lip of the bathtub, and you sit, Sol and Kar finally releasing your arms and allowing you to droop like a wilting plant. “No, don’t. Kan,” you say as she turns your bloodied side towards her with her fingertips, “Kan, ’m sorry ‘bout the window. I’ll pay for it.”
She shooshes you, gently padding a wad of gauze on the worst of the cuts. It makes the stinging worse, somehow, and you make a small pained sound in the back of your throat. “I think you’re going to need stitches, and there’s still some glass in there,” she reports, trying her best to stem the flow of blood as spectators gather in the doorway. You’re torn between screaming at all of them to go away and bursting into tears. “If you’ll calm down a bit, we’ll get someone to drive you to the hospital.”
“Don’ wanna go,” you mutter, flinching away from her touch. Fef places a hand on your knee, keeping you in place.
“Hey, bozos, don’t just stand there and stare,” Karkat hisses at the people crowded in the doorway. You can tell that he doesn’t want you to notice or hear, but you’re concussed, not deaf. “Help out or go the fuck away.”
“Who’s sober and has a license?” Feferi asks before they can disperse. The only ones you can think of that wouldn’t be drinking are the Vantases, and you don’t think Kankri has a car and Kar doesn’t even have a license, so the question will probably go unanswered.
Which is why you’re surprised when a deep voice says, “I can drive.” It’s strange; you don’t think you’ve ever heard Kurloz Makara speak. His voice is rough and damaged, like he drank a mouthful of something that burned. For a second, you wonder why he looks blurred, and when you look at Kanaya she’s out of focus as well. Your glasses are missing.
“Kar?” you ask, and he turns towards you. “Can you find my glasses?”
“Yeah,” he nods, slipping from the room.
Kanaya mops all the blood off your skin, from the area with the cuts itself to where it’d trailed down your neck and parts of your face. She piles gauze onto the lacerations while trying not to push any of the glass further in before wrapping a bandage around your head to keep it on. The pressure hurts, as the adrenaline is starting to wear off, but you’ll live. Karkat comes back with your glasses; one of the temples got skewed, and instead of putting them on your face you slip them into your pocket.
When you get up, Kanaya’s steady hand on your elbow, Fef pats her lap and says, “Want to sit?”
“Nah,” you say when the world doesn’t spin as much as it did; it feels more like a merry-go-round than a tilt-a-whirl, now. You still feel nauseated, but you’re sturdier than you were a few minutes ago. “I’ll be fine.”
Kurloz drives a very large, very black truck, and you need both Kar and Kan’s help to climb into it. You take the back seat so you can lie down with your back propped against the side paneling, and the damn thing is so wide that your feet don’t reach the other end. When you look behind you at your ground crew, Fef smiles and says, “I’ll meet you there in a little while, okay?”
“You’re… not coming now?” you ask in a small voice.
Shaking her head, she reaches up and pats the side of the truck; it’s lifted too high for her to be able to reach you. “I’m sorry, love, I’ll be along soon, I promise.”
You shouldn’t be surprised, really; she hates hospitals just as much as you do. Your dread must show on your face, because Karkat heaves a sigh before pulling himself into the truck and sitting on your legs. “Okay, chop-chop,” he commands Kurloz as he shuts the door, “let’s fucking move it.” Even though the man is big enough to squish Kar with one finger, he listens, pulling away from the curb.
It takes Kar a couple of minutes to realize you’re staring at him. When he finally notices, his eyes narrow and he snaps, “What?”
One corner of your mouth tugs up, “Happy graduation present to me,” you say.
He slaps your knee and rolls his eyes. “Dude, you are so fucking pitiful sometimes I don’t know what to do with myself.”
You snort as he leans back, his butt falling into the crack between the seat and your legs. You’re just out of high school and it looks like he could still be a freshman, and when you voice this, he says, “I will attribute that bit of word vomit to your possible concussion, you’re fucking welcome.”
After an hour, you’ve got stitches in two places, glue in three, and there is considerably less glass in your head. In every reflected surface you find, you look dejectedly at your new bald spot, just above and behind your temple. The top of your ear got nicked, but luckily it didn’t cut all the way through, or else you’d feel like a stray cat. There’s a slit over your right eye, too, but it didn’t cut as deep as the ones on the side and it’s already scabbed over. Your possible concussion becomes a certain concussion, and you only throw up once, in the parking lot of the ER. Kar has the patience of a saint, because you know he’s wanted to burst a gasket on numerous occasions, and yet he has refrained. Kurloz stayed for the first half hour and then went back to the party to see how everything was going there, and while you’re waiting for chest x-rays—the nurse who examined you said she suspected broken ribs, but you’re not exactly convinced; it’s probably just a way to make you give them more money—Fef shows up, and now you know why she was delayed.
“Oh, honey,” Glenys says, rushing forward and kissing your forehead before wrapping her arms tightly around you. There’s a sharp jab in your chest that turns into an ache when she lets you go, and maybe that nurse was right about your ribs. “What are we going to do with you? Have they given you any water? You must be thirsty. Did you show them your insurance card? Did they give you pain medication yet? Is there anything else wrong?”
That’s all it takes for you to burst into dumb, dramatic, childlike tears. You love Glenys Peixes like a chick loves a hen, but she makes you miss your mother more than you already do.
You do have some chest issues, it turns out—two cracked ribs and some patchy bruising. The bruising you could’ve easily figured out on your own, and they don’t do anything about the ribs besides write you a prescription for pain meds.
Kar comes in the car with you once you’re done, at around three in the fucking morning, and Glenys drops him back off at Kan’s, where the party doesn’t seem to have dispersed much, though Kurloz’s truck isn’t there. Kan had texted you, asking how you were doing and saying you could pick your car up tomorrow, and you were grateful for that; you didn’t think you’d do well behind the wheel right now. Before Kar hops out of the car, he bumps your fist and says, “Text me tomorrow, alright?”
“Yeah,” you say, and then he’s gone.
Glenys hadn’t pressed you much at the hospital, and you wonder how much Fef had told her. Now that Kar is gone, though, she sighs, “So what brought this on?”
You swallow. “Cro was being a bastard so I hit him. He punched back and slammed my head through a window.”
“Dirty fighter,” she chastises, reaching back to pat your knee. “I bet you’re tired.”
“Yeah,” you agree. She probably is too—you don’t doubt that Fef woke her up with some sort of frantic phone call.
“Feffy said that you’d probably want to stay at our house for tonight,” she says.
Gratitude wells in you. You love that girl to bits. “Yeah,” you say again.
“It’s fine by me,” she says, and you love Glenys too.
You push Fef’s wheelchair because leaning on it is easier than walking unaided. Glenys gave you a Look when you both go into her room, but seeing as you’d been crying on her about an hour ago, there aren’t a lot of reasons she would currently be able to say “no” to you. You don’t even bother turning the light on, closing the door and immediately getting into bed; Fef spoons you, and you like being held, though you’re too amped up to sleep.
“What if he does something?” you question, voice uneasy, and you know she realizes you’re talking about your brother. “There are more than enough guns in the house, and he’s mad, and even though I know he’s a coward he might be angry enough to do something about it—”
“It’ll be fine,” Fef assures you, running her fingers through your hair, wary of your stitches. “Our security system is top notch, and you’ll be staying over here for the next two nights until your dad gets back from Norfolk, so you don’t need to worry. Anyway, you’re right—he’s cowardly, he wouldn’t dare do anything now.”
You know she’s making sense—she usually does. However, you’re still riddled with anxiety. You’re going to miss a couple of medication doses, he’ll have the opportunity to fuck with your stuff, he might not even leave. You hope he does. God, that would be wonderful.
“Make sure I wake up tomorrow,” you remind her, because you still feel mildly concussed.
She kisses your neck. “Tomorrow and always.”
Your dad calls two days later. “Eridan, where the hell are you?” he demands. “And why is all of your brother’s stuff gone?”
Ah, yes. This must be what true elation feels like.
Though Cronus doesn’t come back for the whole summer, your problem isn’t necessarily solved. He’s always a little whisper in the back of your mind, but you don’t let him dictate your thoughts and actions anymore; wherever he is, he’s irrelevant now, and it feel so good to not have him constantly imposing on your life. When you leave for school, standing on the tarmac of the tiny private airport in your town and ready to board the Peixes jet, your father hugs you for the first time since he picked you up from the rehab center in Miami, a bit over a year ago. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come help you move in?” he asks you for the twentieth time.
“I’ll be fine,” you say. “I don’t have that much stuff.” Your wardrobe has the biggest container, but you can lift it yourself so you don’t see why moving in would be a problem.
“Alright,” he relents, clapping you on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, kid. Call anytime.”
You nod, and make your way into the jet, where Glenys and Fef are waiting. You’ll move Fef into her dorm at Columbia first, make sure she has good roommates, then go to Connecticut to drop you off. Grandma says she’ll be back to check on you in a couple of weeks, and you already know the semester will go by fast, even if you don’t get to see Fef daily anymore.
“Bring enough scarves for the winter?” Fef jokes as you sit down next to her. Glenys knocks on the pilot’s door to let her know you’re ready to take off.
“Definitely,” you say, and she jabs you in the side, then leans her head on your shoulder, running her finger lightly up and down your wrist, perpendicular to the very faint scars that still line it. Glenys squeezes your shoulder as she walks by the pair of you and sits down in a seat behind you. She’s the person you’ll want to see the most when you come back to visit; you don’t think you want to live here permanently ever again. “It’s the end of an era,” you tell Fef as you take off, and you’ve discussed your future enough with her that she knows you don’t really want to come back all that much.
“Nah,” she says softly, moving her attention to your hand and twisting one of the rings on your finger. “It’s the beginning.”