No Other One, Chapter 65
Title: No Other One, Chapter 65
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Yelina Salas, Horatio Caine, the whole Caine family
Author's Note: WARNING: SPOILER FOR SEASON 6.
Summary: Almost two decades ago, Horatio made a decision that would change his family forever. Will they ever forgive him? Will he ever tell Yelina how he feels? This is an alternative to the beginning of season 6. A Horatio and Kyle story; H/Y romance in the future.
Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26, Chapter 27, Chapter 28, Chapter 29, Chapter 30, Chapter 31, Chapter 32, Chapter 33, Chapter 34, Chapter 35, Chapter 36, Chapter 37, Chapter 38, Chapter 39, Chapter 40, Chapter 41, Chapter 42, Chapter 43, Chapter 44, Chapter 45, Chapter 46, Chapter 47, Chapter 48, Chapter 49, Chapter 50, Chapter 51, Chapter 52, Chapter 53, Chapter 54, Chapter 55, Chapter 56, Chapter 57, Chapter 58, Chapter 59, Chapter 60, Chapter 61, Chapter 62, Chapter 63, and Chapter 64.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show.
“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.” - Carl Sagan
The longer Ray and he stayed in the living room in silence, the more convinced Kyle was that something dirty was going on in the bedroom. He didn’t exactly want to consider Horatio and Yelina sleeping together, but all signs pointed to “We have sex together.”
Ray didn’t want to believe it obviously. He was a moron, too emotional to accept what was right in front of his face. But Kyle, not really attached to anyone in the situation, couldn’t deny what he saw. And as Horatio came out of the bedroom, Kyle told himself that if there weren’t any sexin’ going on between those two now, at some point, there would be.
That was just how these things worked.
Having slept with his foster family’s daughter, after all, Kyle thought he should know.
But maybe he didn’t, he thought, as Horatio walked coolly down the hallway with his jaw clenched together tightly. His tense demeanor coupled with Yelina’s infuriated gaze watching him intently didn’t exactly paint a happy portrait of two adults seemingly desperate to be with each other.
If those things did, Horatio wouldn’t have practically barked at Ray, “Did you apologize?” Ray nodded his head, but apparently it wasn’t enough of a signal for Horatio. Kyle figured that this made sense as the man who was his father didn’t seem capable of subtlety. Turning to look at Kyle, Horatio asked, “Did he?”
“Yeah.” There was no emotion in the word, no hint that an apology meant less than nothing to him, which was just as he wanted.
The way Kyle saw it, everyone had moments in their lives where they did something they didn’t intend to do, committed unspeakable acts out of anger, lust, or whatever to achieve a short-sighted goal. Everyone did it, and the reason why never really mattered to the people hurt or affected by your impulsive behavior. If you did something bad, it said something about you.
Period.
Apologizing didn’t change that any more than shutting Pandora’s Box after it had been opened worked. Trying to fix or undermine your mistake didn’t negate the fact that there had been a mistake to begin with.
And maybe that was harsh, but nobody had ever treated him any differently, so why should Ray be the exception?
Of course, Kyle kept all of this to himself.
He recognized that saying any of it aloud would lead to trouble; Yelina would probably pity him for it (her pity for him seemed to know no bounds), and that would enrage Ray Junior. And Kyle didn’t really care about that little shit, but Kyle did care about how his… father might react.
It wasn’t about getting approval or love or the fear of continuing to get neither. It was just that Kyle understood that even hoping to get something from Horatio in this situation was nothing short of foolish. Because Horatio was without a doubt an unyielding force.
Kyle didn’t know much about the man, but he knew that much was true.
Horatio was… kind, sure, but in a sort of way that was cold and uninviting. He might have been a cop; he might have been willing to take his bastard son in, but Kyle knew that there was no warmth behind any of it. It was duty, not love that motivated Horatio, and because of that, Kyle knew that any bid for sympathy would fail.
So he said nothing about his feelings for Ray or anything else for that matter when Horatio said, “All right. Then… I guess… we’ll go.”
Yelina apparently took that as an opportunity to step forward and speak up, her anger temporarily giving way to thinly veiled concern for Kyle. “Right. Well, you’ll need to grab your medicine, Kyle,” she reminded in what he could describe as a maternal manner.
At least he thought it was something a mother would say. Since it had been so long since he’d had one, he didn’t really know anymore.
Not that he asked for clarification, of course.
Instead, he noticed the way Ray seemed to scoff at his mother’s concern. As though he couldn’t believe the display of emotion, Ray looked at his mother with disdain. But that didn’t last very long, because, catching his disgust, Yelina shot a harsh glare in his direction. And that shut Ray up pretty damn quick. Which only confirmed in Kyle’s mind that this cousin of his really had no idea what thug life or whatever you wanted to call it was about.
The kid might have wanted to look tough, but at the end of the day, he still obeyed Mommy. Angered by this entire situation suddenly, Kyle wanted nothing more than to taunt the fucker right then and there over this piece of information.
But he didn’t.
Rage might have been boiling inside of him, but he was smart enough to know that there was a time and a place for everything. And in this case, if he were to explode now, the adults would pull them apart before anything ever happened.
Kyle didn’t care about upsetting them obviously. But he was opposed to looking like a fool; he was opposed to being interrupted in his desire to smack his cousin around, so he simply decided to wait. He could do that, of course; they went to the same school, and there would be eventually an opportunity should Kyle continue to feel the need to take it.
So he would wait.
But in a way, he wished he hadn’t as soon as he got into Horatio’s Hummer. The smell of new car and some unknown chemical that his… dad used on a daily basis assaulted Kyle’s senses; it heightened that deep-seated feeling that everything about his relationship with his father was nothing more than a clinical, cold one. And feeling just as trapped as Ray must have, Kyle felt with renewed desire the urge to scream at the other teenager.
It was impossible to explain why all of his anger was directing itself to Ray. There was no rational explanation behind it, no conscious motivation on his part to allow that to happen. Especially since, if he thought about it for a few seconds, Kyle realized that he had more in common with Ray than anyone else in this family. Kyle couldn’t be sure of this, of course, but it definitely seemed like the children in this part of the family tree paid for the mistakes the adults made on a regular basis - if all the animosity was any indication. And so it really seemed insane to want to fight with Ray.
But he did, and there was no stopping it. The numb need to lash out was burgeoning inside of him, a beast awakening, stretching, and growling for blood, and there was nothing he could do to end it.
Horatio was naturally unaware of this. He asked, “Are you all right?” But Kyle knew that he was referring to Kyle’s nose and nothing else, and nodding his head, he told himself that he should be appreciative of this slight concern aimed for him. After years of having no one and nothing but an uncaring system care for him, he wanted to feel like this was an improvement.
It was an improvement.
Yet in his heart, he knew he didn’t see it that way. This did not feel better or even all that different. The man who was his father didn’t care any more than his social workers did or had. Horatio wanted to care, felt obligated to love. But at the end of the day, he clearly must have felt burdened by Kyle’s presence.
Who wouldn’t though?
People were surprised by the existence of children all the time, yeah, but that usually happened when the kids were still the size of rice grains. Their offspring buried deep in some chick’s uterus, the idea of parenthood was one they could ignore for a short while. It was something they could get used to over time.
There was no easing into parenting a sixteen year old.
Horatio might or might not have thought about having kids over the years, but surely, if he had, he’d only thought about that life-changing event happening in one way. A timeline etched in the redhead’s mind in black and white, it went adopt/have a baby and then watch said child grow; it did not start with a sixteen year old kid.
It did not start with a sixteen year old kid who you’d just arrested, who had just attacked you and whom you’d attacked back.
Yes, if Horatio had thought about having children at all, and Kyle sort of doubted that he had, he’d always envisioned a fairy tale ending. Because no one, not even someone as immune and exposed to the atrocities of the word as Horatio was, ever gave themselves the nightmare scenario that this current situation was.
Even Kyle himself had never imagined something like this happening.
Resting his head against the passenger side window, he carefully sifted through the broken memories of his childhood. It was always in this manner that he reflected on his sixteen years of life; unlike some people who could traipse about through their minds as though the past were some open field covered in cornflowers and the smell of fresh daisies and grass, he could not. If he had a field of memory at all (and in his mind, it was more a thorny forest than open area anyway), it was one that required him to tiptoe through the tulips, landmines everywhere threatening to rip him apart.
But he was good at that tightrope walk. Seriously, if there were one thing he was capable of, it was this; it was knowing exactly where those mines were and being able to avoid them.
Granted, it was harder to do all of that with Horatio sitting next to him in the car. His father’s presence making itself known every so often with a concerned glance his way, Kyle couldn’t help but be a little distracted. Maybe that didn’t make much sense; it probably didn’t, but part of him really did worry that Horatio could tell, just by looking at him, what was going through his mind.
Yeah, okay, it was insane. Especially since Horatio’s default position was clueless, chances were there was no way he’d ever figure out what Kyle was thinking about. But the idea that Horatio might deduce what was going on was enough to distract Kyle nevertheless. Bothered him to the point where he had to close his eyes to focus on the matter at hand.
And when he was safe behind the thin veil of his eyelids, his vision surrounded by the inky orange of sunlight filtrating through his skin, he tried to remember how he’d envisioned his father being.
It wasn’t an easy task by any means. Most of his life, he’d never actually wanted a father, much less dreamed that the man who held the title would pop up one day. In fact, searching his memories for some trace of desire for a fatherly bond, Kyle didn’t find any such thing after he’d turned six.
Not after his mother had died, anyway.
Swallowing hard, he immediately forced the thought out of his mind and focused on the part of his life that had happened before her death. Back then, he’d been naïve and desperate enough to want a father, a real father. Back then, there’d been enough childish delusion, thanks to Disney and his mother’s blind eye towards her husband, to let Kyle believe that things could be better with his father in his life.
He’d imagined a man with the same blond hair that he had. He’d imagined a man who would come into their lives and scoop Kyle and his mother into big brawny arms and take them away from their little slice of Hell forever. He’d dreamed of love, of Old Spice aftershave, and acceptance. He’d pictured a man who would fill in all of the gaps in Kyle’s life, a man who would smooth out all of those rough edges until everything was perfect.
He had not pictured what he currently had with Horatio.
And then, Kyle thought, getting himself back on track, his world had been violently altered, and he’d never cared about having a dad again. All he’d ever wanted was his mother back, and when that couldn’t happen, all Kyle had wanted was to be left alone.
His first foster home had been painfully good at that second part. His social worker had made a big deal about the fact that, at the time, he’d refused to speak. But what she’d failed to see was that those people hadn’t cared about him either. And in the end, he’d appreciated that more than he would have ever appreciated someone trying to make him feel better. Somehow that would have felt like making light of the situation; because if he could have felt better, then that would have meant that his mother’s death hadn’t been that horrible.
And God only knew it had been.
It was.
So if he’d allowed himself the luxury of thinking about family after that life-altering event, it sure as hell hadn’t involved his biological father.
And Kyle knew that that wasn’t him retroactively punishing Horatio.
It had nothing to do with Horatio.
It was just that, if Kyle had ever allowed himself to dwell on something most people took for granted, he would have focused on the one tangible aspect of family that he’d had.
His mother.
These days he didn’t remember much about her. It had been so long since she’d been alive that part of him almost wondered if she’d ever existed. Had there ever been anyone to tuck him at night? Had her soft hands, the wrists dabbed with jasmine-scented perfume, rubbing circles in his back ever been real?
Sometimes those events seemed too tender and special to belong to him. Sometimes it felt like accepting those memories as real would cleave his heart in half from the pain of losing someone so important, so kind. But for the most part, he knew that she had been real, as real as the uncomfortable vibe with Horatio was.
And occasionally Kyle allowed himself to wonder if all of this was his fault. He hadn’t considered that theory in a while, instead preferring to place the blame on everyone else around him (it was easier to think that the world was full of assholes). But now that he also had to deal with Horatio, Kyle could only think that he was paying for some sort of crime.
True, he’d broken the law many times over the last couple of years. However, that wasn’t what he was thinking about; the crime he committed must have been one he’d been guilty of as a very young kid… maybe one he’d done before he’d even been born, one he’d committed in another life time.
Maybe it was stupid to think that. Okay, it was stupid to think that. But somehow it was more comforting to think that he’d earned every bad thing that had happened to him than to be a hapless victim in all of it.
Opening his eyes once more, Kyle glanced down at his hands, half expecting to see blood smeared across his palms. That there wasn’t left him feeling… disappointed - slightly. He would have preferred to be the reason he had no mother and a father who was disconnected from the situation (at best). He would have taken some solace in that.
It would have been better for him if that were true.
But as his entire life had proven thus far:
What was best for him was rarely what he received.
Continue on to the next chapter
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Yelina Salas, Horatio Caine, the whole Caine family
Author's Note: WARNING: SPOILER FOR SEASON 6.
Summary: Almost two decades ago, Horatio made a decision that would change his family forever. Will they ever forgive him? Will he ever tell Yelina how he feels? This is an alternative to the beginning of season 6. A Horatio and Kyle story; H/Y romance in the future.
Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26, Chapter 27, Chapter 28, Chapter 29, Chapter 30, Chapter 31, Chapter 32, Chapter 33, Chapter 34, Chapter 35, Chapter 36, Chapter 37, Chapter 38, Chapter 39, Chapter 40, Chapter 41, Chapter 42, Chapter 43, Chapter 44, Chapter 45, Chapter 46, Chapter 47, Chapter 48, Chapter 49, Chapter 50, Chapter 51, Chapter 52, Chapter 53, Chapter 54, Chapter 55, Chapter 56, Chapter 57, Chapter 58, Chapter 59, Chapter 60, Chapter 61, Chapter 62, Chapter 63, and Chapter 64.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show.
“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.” - Carl Sagan
The longer Ray and he stayed in the living room in silence, the more convinced Kyle was that something dirty was going on in the bedroom. He didn’t exactly want to consider Horatio and Yelina sleeping together, but all signs pointed to “We have sex together.”
Ray didn’t want to believe it obviously. He was a moron, too emotional to accept what was right in front of his face. But Kyle, not really attached to anyone in the situation, couldn’t deny what he saw. And as Horatio came out of the bedroom, Kyle told himself that if there weren’t any sexin’ going on between those two now, at some point, there would be.
That was just how these things worked.
Having slept with his foster family’s daughter, after all, Kyle thought he should know.
But maybe he didn’t, he thought, as Horatio walked coolly down the hallway with his jaw clenched together tightly. His tense demeanor coupled with Yelina’s infuriated gaze watching him intently didn’t exactly paint a happy portrait of two adults seemingly desperate to be with each other.
If those things did, Horatio wouldn’t have practically barked at Ray, “Did you apologize?” Ray nodded his head, but apparently it wasn’t enough of a signal for Horatio. Kyle figured that this made sense as the man who was his father didn’t seem capable of subtlety. Turning to look at Kyle, Horatio asked, “Did he?”
“Yeah.” There was no emotion in the word, no hint that an apology meant less than nothing to him, which was just as he wanted.
The way Kyle saw it, everyone had moments in their lives where they did something they didn’t intend to do, committed unspeakable acts out of anger, lust, or whatever to achieve a short-sighted goal. Everyone did it, and the reason why never really mattered to the people hurt or affected by your impulsive behavior. If you did something bad, it said something about you.
Period.
Apologizing didn’t change that any more than shutting Pandora’s Box after it had been opened worked. Trying to fix or undermine your mistake didn’t negate the fact that there had been a mistake to begin with.
And maybe that was harsh, but nobody had ever treated him any differently, so why should Ray be the exception?
Of course, Kyle kept all of this to himself.
He recognized that saying any of it aloud would lead to trouble; Yelina would probably pity him for it (her pity for him seemed to know no bounds), and that would enrage Ray Junior. And Kyle didn’t really care about that little shit, but Kyle did care about how his… father might react.
It wasn’t about getting approval or love or the fear of continuing to get neither. It was just that Kyle understood that even hoping to get something from Horatio in this situation was nothing short of foolish. Because Horatio was without a doubt an unyielding force.
Kyle didn’t know much about the man, but he knew that much was true.
Horatio was… kind, sure, but in a sort of way that was cold and uninviting. He might have been a cop; he might have been willing to take his bastard son in, but Kyle knew that there was no warmth behind any of it. It was duty, not love that motivated Horatio, and because of that, Kyle knew that any bid for sympathy would fail.
So he said nothing about his feelings for Ray or anything else for that matter when Horatio said, “All right. Then… I guess… we’ll go.”
Yelina apparently took that as an opportunity to step forward and speak up, her anger temporarily giving way to thinly veiled concern for Kyle. “Right. Well, you’ll need to grab your medicine, Kyle,” she reminded in what he could describe as a maternal manner.
At least he thought it was something a mother would say. Since it had been so long since he’d had one, he didn’t really know anymore.
Not that he asked for clarification, of course.
Instead, he noticed the way Ray seemed to scoff at his mother’s concern. As though he couldn’t believe the display of emotion, Ray looked at his mother with disdain. But that didn’t last very long, because, catching his disgust, Yelina shot a harsh glare in his direction. And that shut Ray up pretty damn quick. Which only confirmed in Kyle’s mind that this cousin of his really had no idea what thug life or whatever you wanted to call it was about.
The kid might have wanted to look tough, but at the end of the day, he still obeyed Mommy. Angered by this entire situation suddenly, Kyle wanted nothing more than to taunt the fucker right then and there over this piece of information.
But he didn’t.
Rage might have been boiling inside of him, but he was smart enough to know that there was a time and a place for everything. And in this case, if he were to explode now, the adults would pull them apart before anything ever happened.
Kyle didn’t care about upsetting them obviously. But he was opposed to looking like a fool; he was opposed to being interrupted in his desire to smack his cousin around, so he simply decided to wait. He could do that, of course; they went to the same school, and there would be eventually an opportunity should Kyle continue to feel the need to take it.
So he would wait.
But in a way, he wished he hadn’t as soon as he got into Horatio’s Hummer. The smell of new car and some unknown chemical that his… dad used on a daily basis assaulted Kyle’s senses; it heightened that deep-seated feeling that everything about his relationship with his father was nothing more than a clinical, cold one. And feeling just as trapped as Ray must have, Kyle felt with renewed desire the urge to scream at the other teenager.
It was impossible to explain why all of his anger was directing itself to Ray. There was no rational explanation behind it, no conscious motivation on his part to allow that to happen. Especially since, if he thought about it for a few seconds, Kyle realized that he had more in common with Ray than anyone else in this family. Kyle couldn’t be sure of this, of course, but it definitely seemed like the children in this part of the family tree paid for the mistakes the adults made on a regular basis - if all the animosity was any indication. And so it really seemed insane to want to fight with Ray.
But he did, and there was no stopping it. The numb need to lash out was burgeoning inside of him, a beast awakening, stretching, and growling for blood, and there was nothing he could do to end it.
Horatio was naturally unaware of this. He asked, “Are you all right?” But Kyle knew that he was referring to Kyle’s nose and nothing else, and nodding his head, he told himself that he should be appreciative of this slight concern aimed for him. After years of having no one and nothing but an uncaring system care for him, he wanted to feel like this was an improvement.
It was an improvement.
Yet in his heart, he knew he didn’t see it that way. This did not feel better or even all that different. The man who was his father didn’t care any more than his social workers did or had. Horatio wanted to care, felt obligated to love. But at the end of the day, he clearly must have felt burdened by Kyle’s presence.
Who wouldn’t though?
People were surprised by the existence of children all the time, yeah, but that usually happened when the kids were still the size of rice grains. Their offspring buried deep in some chick’s uterus, the idea of parenthood was one they could ignore for a short while. It was something they could get used to over time.
There was no easing into parenting a sixteen year old.
Horatio might or might not have thought about having kids over the years, but surely, if he had, he’d only thought about that life-changing event happening in one way. A timeline etched in the redhead’s mind in black and white, it went adopt/have a baby and then watch said child grow; it did not start with a sixteen year old kid.
It did not start with a sixteen year old kid who you’d just arrested, who had just attacked you and whom you’d attacked back.
Yes, if Horatio had thought about having children at all, and Kyle sort of doubted that he had, he’d always envisioned a fairy tale ending. Because no one, not even someone as immune and exposed to the atrocities of the word as Horatio was, ever gave themselves the nightmare scenario that this current situation was.
Even Kyle himself had never imagined something like this happening.
Resting his head against the passenger side window, he carefully sifted through the broken memories of his childhood. It was always in this manner that he reflected on his sixteen years of life; unlike some people who could traipse about through their minds as though the past were some open field covered in cornflowers and the smell of fresh daisies and grass, he could not. If he had a field of memory at all (and in his mind, it was more a thorny forest than open area anyway), it was one that required him to tiptoe through the tulips, landmines everywhere threatening to rip him apart.
But he was good at that tightrope walk. Seriously, if there were one thing he was capable of, it was this; it was knowing exactly where those mines were and being able to avoid them.
Granted, it was harder to do all of that with Horatio sitting next to him in the car. His father’s presence making itself known every so often with a concerned glance his way, Kyle couldn’t help but be a little distracted. Maybe that didn’t make much sense; it probably didn’t, but part of him really did worry that Horatio could tell, just by looking at him, what was going through his mind.
Yeah, okay, it was insane. Especially since Horatio’s default position was clueless, chances were there was no way he’d ever figure out what Kyle was thinking about. But the idea that Horatio might deduce what was going on was enough to distract Kyle nevertheless. Bothered him to the point where he had to close his eyes to focus on the matter at hand.
And when he was safe behind the thin veil of his eyelids, his vision surrounded by the inky orange of sunlight filtrating through his skin, he tried to remember how he’d envisioned his father being.
It wasn’t an easy task by any means. Most of his life, he’d never actually wanted a father, much less dreamed that the man who held the title would pop up one day. In fact, searching his memories for some trace of desire for a fatherly bond, Kyle didn’t find any such thing after he’d turned six.
Not after his mother had died, anyway.
Swallowing hard, he immediately forced the thought out of his mind and focused on the part of his life that had happened before her death. Back then, he’d been naïve and desperate enough to want a father, a real father. Back then, there’d been enough childish delusion, thanks to Disney and his mother’s blind eye towards her husband, to let Kyle believe that things could be better with his father in his life.
He’d imagined a man with the same blond hair that he had. He’d imagined a man who would come into their lives and scoop Kyle and his mother into big brawny arms and take them away from their little slice of Hell forever. He’d dreamed of love, of Old Spice aftershave, and acceptance. He’d pictured a man who would fill in all of the gaps in Kyle’s life, a man who would smooth out all of those rough edges until everything was perfect.
He had not pictured what he currently had with Horatio.
And then, Kyle thought, getting himself back on track, his world had been violently altered, and he’d never cared about having a dad again. All he’d ever wanted was his mother back, and when that couldn’t happen, all Kyle had wanted was to be left alone.
His first foster home had been painfully good at that second part. His social worker had made a big deal about the fact that, at the time, he’d refused to speak. But what she’d failed to see was that those people hadn’t cared about him either. And in the end, he’d appreciated that more than he would have ever appreciated someone trying to make him feel better. Somehow that would have felt like making light of the situation; because if he could have felt better, then that would have meant that his mother’s death hadn’t been that horrible.
And God only knew it had been.
It was.
So if he’d allowed himself the luxury of thinking about family after that life-altering event, it sure as hell hadn’t involved his biological father.
And Kyle knew that that wasn’t him retroactively punishing Horatio.
It had nothing to do with Horatio.
It was just that, if Kyle had ever allowed himself to dwell on something most people took for granted, he would have focused on the one tangible aspect of family that he’d had.
His mother.
These days he didn’t remember much about her. It had been so long since she’d been alive that part of him almost wondered if she’d ever existed. Had there ever been anyone to tuck him at night? Had her soft hands, the wrists dabbed with jasmine-scented perfume, rubbing circles in his back ever been real?
Sometimes those events seemed too tender and special to belong to him. Sometimes it felt like accepting those memories as real would cleave his heart in half from the pain of losing someone so important, so kind. But for the most part, he knew that she had been real, as real as the uncomfortable vibe with Horatio was.
And occasionally Kyle allowed himself to wonder if all of this was his fault. He hadn’t considered that theory in a while, instead preferring to place the blame on everyone else around him (it was easier to think that the world was full of assholes). But now that he also had to deal with Horatio, Kyle could only think that he was paying for some sort of crime.
True, he’d broken the law many times over the last couple of years. However, that wasn’t what he was thinking about; the crime he committed must have been one he’d been guilty of as a very young kid… maybe one he’d done before he’d even been born, one he’d committed in another life time.
Maybe it was stupid to think that. Okay, it was stupid to think that. But somehow it was more comforting to think that he’d earned every bad thing that had happened to him than to be a hapless victim in all of it.
Opening his eyes once more, Kyle glanced down at his hands, half expecting to see blood smeared across his palms. That there wasn’t left him feeling… disappointed - slightly. He would have preferred to be the reason he had no mother and a father who was disconnected from the situation (at best). He would have taken some solace in that.
It would have been better for him if that were true.
But as his entire life had proven thus far:
What was best for him was rarely what he received.
Continue on to the next chapter