*airplane arms around the room*
Oh look, a character-building exercise for an RPG character!
*sidesteps the stampede of people fleeing for the exit*
No, but seriously. This is basically just for snakewhissperer so she can give me lovely, lovely XP in exchange for information with which she can proceed to torture my boy. Please feel free to skip without compunction, chickadees. ~3300 words
Dustin's Prelude (A Brief but Exciting Experiment in Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Very Bad Hair Choices)
He stole the ball from Tony, double-bounced it clumsily for a moment before getting it under control, and then made a wild break for the basket. Dad had nailed it above the garage door for them last summer and the windy winter months had left it drooping sadly to the left, but Dustin knew that he could still make the shot.
“Mom!” he shouted, “Mom, hey, watch this!”
Mom had her cell pressed to one ear and her index finger firmly planted in the other, pacing in the no-man’s-land between her car and the front door, work apparently having followed her home today.
“Mom!” he called impatiently, trying to stall while Tony feinted at him, grinning. “Mom, come on, watch me…”
Tony smacked the ball out of his hands, sidestepped neatly around Dustin on his growth-spurt tall legs, and sunk the shot with a neat little swish of net. Dustin blurted out one of the brand new cusswords that was currently circulating the elementary school, his shoulders slumping in disappointment.
“Language,” mom called over to him, snapping her phone shut as she grabbed her briefcase from the car and started up to the house. “Be a good sport, Dustin. Anthony’s trying to help you learn. Listen, if your father’s not home yet, I have to go get Amy from the sitter’s. Behave yourselves.”
Tony crossed his eyes and tucked his fingers into the corners of his mouth to pull a monkey-face at him when mom wasn’t looking, and as much as he worshipped the ground that his big brother walked on, for a split second Dustin was pretty sure that he hated the guy’s guts.
“Best out of ten?” Tony asked, making a valiant attempt to spin the ball on the tip of his finger. Mom disappeared into the house, shutting the door behind herself.
Dustin mentally shook it off and nodded. “Best out of ten,” he agreed, and lunged for the ball.
*
School was a joke. A really long, pointless, bad joke told by a committee of sadists.
He’d tried at first, he really had. ‘Applied himself’, to use the report card lingo. He was the quiet kid in the corner with the solid B-average across the board. But Tony was pulling in effortless As, making all the cool teams, running for student counsel president ‘just for kicks…’
Somewhere along the line, Dustin came to the realization that it really wasn’t worth it trying to compete with the guy anymore. Hell, he knew when he was beat.
But he what he could do was make the other kids laugh with his stupid jokes, and the teachers started to remember his name for his attitude, if nothing else. A shitty reputation was a step up from being part of the wallpaper, and his parents didn’t seem to have the time to give a damn one way or the other. The world didn’t end the first time he flunked a class, and Amy still adored him…
At the end of ninth grade, he slapped his D-studded report card down on the kitchen table right in between his dad’s mug of coffee and Tony’s nomination for class valedictorian.
His dad had looked at the report card with a puzzled frown, then up at Dustin. Dustin raised his eyebrows in challenge, waiting for judgment.
“Your hair’s getting pretty shaggy, isn’t it?” dad commented, “Doesn’t it bother you, having it in your eyes like that?”
For the start of tenth grade, Dustin had let his hair grow even longer and had dyed it bright, eye-watering blue.
*
“Jesus, what’s with the hair? You lose a bet or something?”
Dustin looked up from where he’d been attempting to scowl a hole in the ugly-ass carpet outside of the guidance counselor’s office while he was waiting his turn to be sentenced. He didn’t know the name of the guy across from him but he knew that he was an upper year, one of those hard kids that everybody kind of instinctively knew not to piss off.
For that reason, Dustin knew that he really, really should keep his mouth shut. (He also knew that he definitely wasn’t going to be able to.)
“What, this?” He grinned and waggled his fingers at his hair, gelled into wilting blue spikes today for the sheer hell of it. “Nah, this is my douchebag detector. See, I wear it like this and all the douchebags in the area just have to ask me if I lost a bet.”
There was a scary moment where the guy didn’t even blink and Dustin felt his stomach drop and take up trembly residence in his kneecaps,
“Kid,” the guy said seriously, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs, “I’m telling you this purely for your own good: you look like Sonic the goddamn Hedgehog.” And then he smirked, and Dustin figured it was probably safe to start breathing again. “I’m Peel. Who the fuck are you, smartass?”
“Dustin Bradshaw.”
Peel’s eyebrows rose. “No shit… You’re not Tony Bradshaw’s kid brother?”
Dustin shrugged and firmly instructed himself not to reply. “I figure one of us is definitely adopted,” he said cheerfully, his mouth two steps ahead of his brain as usual, “It’s probably Tony. If it was me, they woulda asked for a refund by now.”
Peel snorted. “You party, Sonic?”
“Sure…”
The door to the counselor’s office opened and Mrs. Sullivan stuck her head out into the hall. “Mr. Costa. We’re ready for you.”
Peel got to his feet, looking back at Dustin for a moment. “Cool. Friday then, I’ll find you.”
“Cool,” Dustin echoed, and watched Peel disappear into the office, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
And just like that, a door to a brand new part of Dustin’s life had swung wide open.
*
It was a nice feeling, being needed, and nobody appreciated an up-and-coming blue-haired drug runner more than a bunch of strung-out tweakers who’d been forced to wait a little too long since their last fix. It was way too easy to get caught up in the rush of partying and running, highlighted by the occasional break-and-enter just to mix things up; school and parents and the exhausting never-ending chase to keep up with Tony faded away into the background.
He was spinning out, spiraling, losing control…
Dustin had never felt so damn good in his whole life.
*
Everyone was looking at him and, for once, Dustin wished that they wouldn’t.
Principal Douglas sighed and thumbing his temple like he was getting a headache. “We’re dealing with a very strict no tolerance policy here. I’m afraid it’s not so much a matter of whether Dustin has to face the consequences of this as how severe those consequences are going to be.” His gaze ticked from parent to parent, then back to Dustin in the middle, raising his eyebrows. Your move, kid.
Dustin raised his eyebrows in return, putting what was probably an ironic amount of effort into trying to exude a total lack of interest.
“For one incident?” his mom insisted.
(A small, nasty voice in Dustin’s head wondered if she really gave a shit or if her natural realtor instincts were just kicking in, automatically trying to land him the best deal on the table.)
Douglas tightened his mouth in a sympathetic smile and managed to chuckle with an edge of condescension in it. “No, Mrs. Bradshaw. Not one incident. I wouldn’t have brought you both in here for one incident.”
Mom glanced over at Dustin with a tight, hurt look, and he looked down, scraping viciously at an imaginary hangnail with his thumb.
“So what are we talking about, exactly?” his dad asked. A high school teacher himself, he would know the ins and outs of the potential impending badness. “Suspension?”
“Or expulsion,” Douglas said, and folded his arms.
“He’s got one year left! If you expel him now and we have to find a new school,” his mother started to protest.
“Someone like Dustin might do better at an alternative school,” Douglas suggested. “They have the resources to give special students the supervision that they require.”
“Freak school,” Dustin said under his breath, “Awesome.”
“His brother graduated from Ross Sheppard, as valedictorian,” dad pointed out. As if anyone in the world had forgotten.
“I think,” Douglas said carefully, “that’s the odds of Dustin achieving the success his brother did at this school are… minimal, at best. And I believe you have your daughter registered to attend this school, don’t you? You have to consider the shoes she’ll be stepping into here…”
“So expel me,” Dustin blurted out. “Jesus Christ! Stop dragging it out. You want me gone? Fine. Fine, I’m gone. Where do I sign?”
Principal Douglas sat back in his chair, and smiled.
*
The drive home had been almost completely silent. Dustin wished that they would pull the car over, shake him ‘till his teeth rattled, and explain just exactly what he was supposed to do to fix his fuck-up of a life and pull himself out of this tailspin.
“This is so disappointing,” his mom sighed quietly, and pulled a compact mirror out of her purse to mess with her mascara. “I just don’t know what we’re going to tell Amy.”
Dustin gnawed on the inside of his lip, looking up to find dad studying him seriously in the rearview mirror. He held his breath and dad’s gaze, waiting.
“When did you dye your hair blue?” dad asked, sounding honestly baffled.
Dustin blew out of his breath in a huff, rolled his eyes, and gave up.
*
Before Amy had come home from school, Dustin had taken a long hard look at himself in the bathroom mirror. The blue hair, he decided, was ridiculous. He really did bear a striking resemblance to Sonic the Hedgehog…
He didn’t have the time to dye it, so he hacked it short with mom’s nail clippers and then shaved the rest of it off. The final result wasn’t as badass as he’d hoped. (And that was a bit of an understatement; he looked about five years younger and sick and scared. Plus, it made his eyebrows stand out all weird.)
He informed himself that he did not give a fuck, packed his backpack, and headed out the door.
Fifteen minutes later, he was shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and trying not to babble too much.
“It’ll only be for a little while, just until I figure something out, but I can’t stay there right now…”
Peel folded his arms, leaned against the doorjamb of his apartment, and looked at him steadily. “You know how many of my guys tell me that they need a place to stay ‘for a little while’, kid? It’s never, ever for a little while.”
“Just let me stay here, okay?” Dustin repeated miserably. “Please? I can help out, whatever you need. I can run extra jobs for you, anything you got…”
Peel reached out and buzzed his fingers across Dustin’s naked scalp. It felt weird.
“You should’ve let someone do that for you,” Peel told him, “It looks like shit.”
“It’ll grow back,” Dustin muttered, and hitched his bag up on his shoulder where the strap was starting to dig in.
“In the meantime, we’re getting you a hat,” Peel said, “I’m not having someone who looks like a goddamn twelve-year-old running for me.”
He stepped back, and opened the door wide for Dustin to come inside.
*
He was singing along with the radio at the top of his lungs, or trying to… The music kept slipping away from him and he couldn’t really remember the lyrics and the radio might not have actually been on at all.
“No more drugs for Dustin,” Peel swore grimly from the driver’s seat. “Seriously, you guys.”
“All the drugs,” Dustin chortled happily, “All the drugs for Dustin, the best drug runner in the town. In the world.”
It was really hard to see out the windows, but that was probably because he was looking at the roof. It was nice to be lying down across the backseat of Peel’s car like this, zooming through the city like they were in a… a rocket, or a submarine…
“Downers, next time,” someone advised, “This dude does not require uppers.”
Dustin tilted his head back, a dizzying move, and beamed at the blond guy whose legs he was sprawled across. “Hi! I know you! No, wait, do I know you?” He looked familiar enough; Dustin had vaguely memories of making out with someone who looked a bit like him in Peel’s washroom a few blurry weekends back, but he might’ve hallucinated that. It was very possible.
The guy petted Dustin’s hair absently. “I’m the guy who’s going to tie you to the roof racks if you don’t stop singing.”
Dustin snickered and attempted to sit up, which was actually a lot harder than it looked. His arms and legs weren’t quite on speaking terms with his brain tonight. “You should be honoured to be s… serenaded… You know what? We should stop and… and throw up now.”
Peel knew the drill and valued his upholstery: it took about three seconds for them to pull over and unceremoniously toss Dustin out of the backseat into the night air. He cracked his knees on the frozen curb and went down hard. The cold air did wonders bringing the feeling back to his extremities, but wasn’t enough to keep him from retching onto the sidewalk either.
There was an arm half-buried in brown slush on the pavement, he realized with a jolt, a tiny limb from someone’s broken toy, and he stared at it, spitting in an attempt to get the taste of sick out of his mouth. It was fucking surreal, was what it was, perfectly-formed graceful little fingers and the feminine curve of the long bare arm up to the ugly knob where it would’ve attached to the torso…
“You dying or what?” Peel called out to him.
Dustin wiped his mouth with his sleeve, shivering a bit too much for it to be healthy. He felt a hell of a lot more sober now, and that was sad. “Hey, what’s today?”
“Friday, numb-nuts. How much did you take?”
“No, I mean the date,” Dustin insisted, and got shakily to his feet, stumbling back into the car. Possible-drunken-makeout guy scooted over to make room for him, evoking a collective grumble of protest from the other kids crowded in the backseat.
“January 10th,” Peel sighed, pulling away as soon as Dustin had shut the door, “Year-of-our-lord, 2008.”
“It’s my little sister’s birthday in, like, three days,” Dustin said, and pressed his temple against the chilly window. He had one hell of headache coming on. “Shit. I forgot.”
“You’re a terrible big brother,” possible-drunken-makeout guy said, and Dustin snarled “Fuck off” before he could stop himself, even though the teasing tone had been clear in the guy’s voice.
“I need to get her something,” Dustin announced, trying to claw himself back to sobriety by sheer force of will. “Seriously, it has to be something good this year. She’s turning sixteen.”
“You got money? Any money whatsoever, oh best drug runner in the entire world?” Peel inquired dryly.
Dustin grimaced and Peel smirked at him in the rearview mirror.
“I figured,” Peel said. “Don’t worry, kid. I’ve got all sorts of fun jobs I’ve been saving up just for you…”
*
Dustin turned up on their old doorstep three days later with a birthday present and enough of a buzz on to be brave. Amy answered the door distracted, probably thinking he was a delivery guy, maybe someone with flowers, but her surprise made a quick shift into delight and she leapt at him for a tight hug. She’d let her hair grow even longer since he’d last seen her, dark as his and curling down past her shoulders in loose waves; his kid sister didn’t look quite so much like a kid anymore, and he couldn’t tell if that was more to do with her age or if he was seeing her with a stranger’s eyes after being away so long.
“Happy birthday!” he blurted out awkwardly, and she slugged him in the shoulder, grinning.
“You jerk! When did you forget how to pick up your phone, huh?” she demanded, “I must’ve left about a hundred messages….”
Dustin laughed and rather than trying to explain how he’d sold his phone because a couple of his I.O.U.s were reaching dangerous levels, he brought out the present to distract her. He didn’t have a box for it, just pulled it out of his pocket with a little comedy flourish and dangled it in front of her face, a brushed silver crescent moon with a diamond set in it like a misplaced star.
Sharp-edged suspicion wasn’t the reaction he expected, exactly. It wasn’t a great look on her.
“Is that real?”
“Course it is. Only the best for my kid sister. You like it?”
Her mouth worked as colour slowly came up in her cheeks. “Where’d you get it?”
Dustin felt himself flush too and his fingers tightened around the delicate chain. “A jewelry store, Amy, jeez. I didn’t yank it off some little old lady, if that’s what you think of me now.”
She folded her arms and fixed him with a grim stare that made her look so much like mom for an instant that it was scary. “I’m sixteen,” she told him, with only the conviction that a teenager could muster, “I’m not a freakin’ moron, Dustin. I know you can’t afford this.”
“Well, I did,” he countered, glad for the protective insulation of his buzz. (Sure, no little old ladies had been harmed in the getting of the necklace, but what he had done wasn’t exactly brag-book worthy either.) “I want you to have it.”
She looked away for a second and then look it from him without a word, ducked her head to fasten the clasp at the nape of her neck. He didn’t miss the two tears that drip-dropped to the front step between them while her head was bowed.
“Okay,” she said, brushed her hair back and dashing her wrist across her cheek in the same motion. “Thanks. Look, come inside. There’s… there’s cake. At least say hi to mom?”
He shrugged and jammed his hands into his pockets, feeling sick and miserable. “Nah, I gotta go. I just wanted to say hi to you anyway.”
She wrapped her hands around her elbows, mirroring his defensive posture and not even trying to mask the tears that were welling up again. “Fine. Whatever you want. Just thought you might be willing to play nice for five minutes on my birthday, but whatever. Have fun.”
He ducked in quick and kissed her on the cheek before she could react. “Sorry,” he muttered, “Love you, Amy. Happy birthday.”
He turned and walked back down the front path. There wasn’t a single damn thing that he could say or do that would fix everything he’d already wrecked here, nothing that wouldn’t just wind up hurting her more. It had been a mistake to come back at all.
“If you wind up dead or in jail or something, I’ll hate you forever, Dustin!” she called after him, voice shaking. “I’ll hate you, I swear!”
He hadn’t come back.
*
There was a guy knocking at Dustin’s door, and that was bad news.
He wasn’t going away, and that was worse…
A/N: Aaaaand then it joins up with the first session, booyah!
*sidesteps the stampede of people fleeing for the exit*
No, but seriously. This is basically just for snakewhissperer so she can give me lovely, lovely XP in exchange for information with which she can proceed to torture my boy. Please feel free to skip without compunction, chickadees. ~3300 words
Dustin's Prelude (A Brief but Exciting Experiment in Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Very Bad Hair Choices)
He stole the ball from Tony, double-bounced it clumsily for a moment before getting it under control, and then made a wild break for the basket. Dad had nailed it above the garage door for them last summer and the windy winter months had left it drooping sadly to the left, but Dustin knew that he could still make the shot.
“Mom!” he shouted, “Mom, hey, watch this!”
Mom had her cell pressed to one ear and her index finger firmly planted in the other, pacing in the no-man’s-land between her car and the front door, work apparently having followed her home today.
“Mom!” he called impatiently, trying to stall while Tony feinted at him, grinning. “Mom, come on, watch me…”
Tony smacked the ball out of his hands, sidestepped neatly around Dustin on his growth-spurt tall legs, and sunk the shot with a neat little swish of net. Dustin blurted out one of the brand new cusswords that was currently circulating the elementary school, his shoulders slumping in disappointment.
“Language,” mom called over to him, snapping her phone shut as she grabbed her briefcase from the car and started up to the house. “Be a good sport, Dustin. Anthony’s trying to help you learn. Listen, if your father’s not home yet, I have to go get Amy from the sitter’s. Behave yourselves.”
Tony crossed his eyes and tucked his fingers into the corners of his mouth to pull a monkey-face at him when mom wasn’t looking, and as much as he worshipped the ground that his big brother walked on, for a split second Dustin was pretty sure that he hated the guy’s guts.
“Best out of ten?” Tony asked, making a valiant attempt to spin the ball on the tip of his finger. Mom disappeared into the house, shutting the door behind herself.
Dustin mentally shook it off and nodded. “Best out of ten,” he agreed, and lunged for the ball.
*
School was a joke. A really long, pointless, bad joke told by a committee of sadists.
He’d tried at first, he really had. ‘Applied himself’, to use the report card lingo. He was the quiet kid in the corner with the solid B-average across the board. But Tony was pulling in effortless As, making all the cool teams, running for student counsel president ‘just for kicks…’
Somewhere along the line, Dustin came to the realization that it really wasn’t worth it trying to compete with the guy anymore. Hell, he knew when he was beat.
But he what he could do was make the other kids laugh with his stupid jokes, and the teachers started to remember his name for his attitude, if nothing else. A shitty reputation was a step up from being part of the wallpaper, and his parents didn’t seem to have the time to give a damn one way or the other. The world didn’t end the first time he flunked a class, and Amy still adored him…
At the end of ninth grade, he slapped his D-studded report card down on the kitchen table right in between his dad’s mug of coffee and Tony’s nomination for class valedictorian.
His dad had looked at the report card with a puzzled frown, then up at Dustin. Dustin raised his eyebrows in challenge, waiting for judgment.
“Your hair’s getting pretty shaggy, isn’t it?” dad commented, “Doesn’t it bother you, having it in your eyes like that?”
For the start of tenth grade, Dustin had let his hair grow even longer and had dyed it bright, eye-watering blue.
*
“Jesus, what’s with the hair? You lose a bet or something?”
Dustin looked up from where he’d been attempting to scowl a hole in the ugly-ass carpet outside of the guidance counselor’s office while he was waiting his turn to be sentenced. He didn’t know the name of the guy across from him but he knew that he was an upper year, one of those hard kids that everybody kind of instinctively knew not to piss off.
For that reason, Dustin knew that he really, really should keep his mouth shut. (He also knew that he definitely wasn’t going to be able to.)
“What, this?” He grinned and waggled his fingers at his hair, gelled into wilting blue spikes today for the sheer hell of it. “Nah, this is my douchebag detector. See, I wear it like this and all the douchebags in the area just have to ask me if I lost a bet.”
There was a scary moment where the guy didn’t even blink and Dustin felt his stomach drop and take up trembly residence in his kneecaps,
“Kid,” the guy said seriously, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs, “I’m telling you this purely for your own good: you look like Sonic the goddamn Hedgehog.” And then he smirked, and Dustin figured it was probably safe to start breathing again. “I’m Peel. Who the fuck are you, smartass?”
“Dustin Bradshaw.”
Peel’s eyebrows rose. “No shit… You’re not Tony Bradshaw’s kid brother?”
Dustin shrugged and firmly instructed himself not to reply. “I figure one of us is definitely adopted,” he said cheerfully, his mouth two steps ahead of his brain as usual, “It’s probably Tony. If it was me, they woulda asked for a refund by now.”
Peel snorted. “You party, Sonic?”
“Sure…”
The door to the counselor’s office opened and Mrs. Sullivan stuck her head out into the hall. “Mr. Costa. We’re ready for you.”
Peel got to his feet, looking back at Dustin for a moment. “Cool. Friday then, I’ll find you.”
“Cool,” Dustin echoed, and watched Peel disappear into the office, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
And just like that, a door to a brand new part of Dustin’s life had swung wide open.
*
It was a nice feeling, being needed, and nobody appreciated an up-and-coming blue-haired drug runner more than a bunch of strung-out tweakers who’d been forced to wait a little too long since their last fix. It was way too easy to get caught up in the rush of partying and running, highlighted by the occasional break-and-enter just to mix things up; school and parents and the exhausting never-ending chase to keep up with Tony faded away into the background.
He was spinning out, spiraling, losing control…
Dustin had never felt so damn good in his whole life.
*
Everyone was looking at him and, for once, Dustin wished that they wouldn’t.
Principal Douglas sighed and thumbing his temple like he was getting a headache. “We’re dealing with a very strict no tolerance policy here. I’m afraid it’s not so much a matter of whether Dustin has to face the consequences of this as how severe those consequences are going to be.” His gaze ticked from parent to parent, then back to Dustin in the middle, raising his eyebrows. Your move, kid.
Dustin raised his eyebrows in return, putting what was probably an ironic amount of effort into trying to exude a total lack of interest.
“For one incident?” his mom insisted.
(A small, nasty voice in Dustin’s head wondered if she really gave a shit or if her natural realtor instincts were just kicking in, automatically trying to land him the best deal on the table.)
Douglas tightened his mouth in a sympathetic smile and managed to chuckle with an edge of condescension in it. “No, Mrs. Bradshaw. Not one incident. I wouldn’t have brought you both in here for one incident.”
Mom glanced over at Dustin with a tight, hurt look, and he looked down, scraping viciously at an imaginary hangnail with his thumb.
“So what are we talking about, exactly?” his dad asked. A high school teacher himself, he would know the ins and outs of the potential impending badness. “Suspension?”
“Or expulsion,” Douglas said, and folded his arms.
“He’s got one year left! If you expel him now and we have to find a new school,” his mother started to protest.
“Someone like Dustin might do better at an alternative school,” Douglas suggested. “They have the resources to give special students the supervision that they require.”
“Freak school,” Dustin said under his breath, “Awesome.”
“His brother graduated from Ross Sheppard, as valedictorian,” dad pointed out. As if anyone in the world had forgotten.
“I think,” Douglas said carefully, “that’s the odds of Dustin achieving the success his brother did at this school are… minimal, at best. And I believe you have your daughter registered to attend this school, don’t you? You have to consider the shoes she’ll be stepping into here…”
“So expel me,” Dustin blurted out. “Jesus Christ! Stop dragging it out. You want me gone? Fine. Fine, I’m gone. Where do I sign?”
Principal Douglas sat back in his chair, and smiled.
*
The drive home had been almost completely silent. Dustin wished that they would pull the car over, shake him ‘till his teeth rattled, and explain just exactly what he was supposed to do to fix his fuck-up of a life and pull himself out of this tailspin.
“This is so disappointing,” his mom sighed quietly, and pulled a compact mirror out of her purse to mess with her mascara. “I just don’t know what we’re going to tell Amy.”
Dustin gnawed on the inside of his lip, looking up to find dad studying him seriously in the rearview mirror. He held his breath and dad’s gaze, waiting.
“When did you dye your hair blue?” dad asked, sounding honestly baffled.
Dustin blew out of his breath in a huff, rolled his eyes, and gave up.
*
Before Amy had come home from school, Dustin had taken a long hard look at himself in the bathroom mirror. The blue hair, he decided, was ridiculous. He really did bear a striking resemblance to Sonic the Hedgehog…
He didn’t have the time to dye it, so he hacked it short with mom’s nail clippers and then shaved the rest of it off. The final result wasn’t as badass as he’d hoped. (And that was a bit of an understatement; he looked about five years younger and sick and scared. Plus, it made his eyebrows stand out all weird.)
He informed himself that he did not give a fuck, packed his backpack, and headed out the door.
Fifteen minutes later, he was shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and trying not to babble too much.
“It’ll only be for a little while, just until I figure something out, but I can’t stay there right now…”
Peel folded his arms, leaned against the doorjamb of his apartment, and looked at him steadily. “You know how many of my guys tell me that they need a place to stay ‘for a little while’, kid? It’s never, ever for a little while.”
“Just let me stay here, okay?” Dustin repeated miserably. “Please? I can help out, whatever you need. I can run extra jobs for you, anything you got…”
Peel reached out and buzzed his fingers across Dustin’s naked scalp. It felt weird.
“You should’ve let someone do that for you,” Peel told him, “It looks like shit.”
“It’ll grow back,” Dustin muttered, and hitched his bag up on his shoulder where the strap was starting to dig in.
“In the meantime, we’re getting you a hat,” Peel said, “I’m not having someone who looks like a goddamn twelve-year-old running for me.”
He stepped back, and opened the door wide for Dustin to come inside.
*
He was singing along with the radio at the top of his lungs, or trying to… The music kept slipping away from him and he couldn’t really remember the lyrics and the radio might not have actually been on at all.
“No more drugs for Dustin,” Peel swore grimly from the driver’s seat. “Seriously, you guys.”
“All the drugs,” Dustin chortled happily, “All the drugs for Dustin, the best drug runner in the town. In the world.”
It was really hard to see out the windows, but that was probably because he was looking at the roof. It was nice to be lying down across the backseat of Peel’s car like this, zooming through the city like they were in a… a rocket, or a submarine…
“Downers, next time,” someone advised, “This dude does not require uppers.”
Dustin tilted his head back, a dizzying move, and beamed at the blond guy whose legs he was sprawled across. “Hi! I know you! No, wait, do I know you?” He looked familiar enough; Dustin had vaguely memories of making out with someone who looked a bit like him in Peel’s washroom a few blurry weekends back, but he might’ve hallucinated that. It was very possible.
The guy petted Dustin’s hair absently. “I’m the guy who’s going to tie you to the roof racks if you don’t stop singing.”
Dustin snickered and attempted to sit up, which was actually a lot harder than it looked. His arms and legs weren’t quite on speaking terms with his brain tonight. “You should be honoured to be s… serenaded… You know what? We should stop and… and throw up now.”
Peel knew the drill and valued his upholstery: it took about three seconds for them to pull over and unceremoniously toss Dustin out of the backseat into the night air. He cracked his knees on the frozen curb and went down hard. The cold air did wonders bringing the feeling back to his extremities, but wasn’t enough to keep him from retching onto the sidewalk either.
There was an arm half-buried in brown slush on the pavement, he realized with a jolt, a tiny limb from someone’s broken toy, and he stared at it, spitting in an attempt to get the taste of sick out of his mouth. It was fucking surreal, was what it was, perfectly-formed graceful little fingers and the feminine curve of the long bare arm up to the ugly knob where it would’ve attached to the torso…
“You dying or what?” Peel called out to him.
Dustin wiped his mouth with his sleeve, shivering a bit too much for it to be healthy. He felt a hell of a lot more sober now, and that was sad. “Hey, what’s today?”
“Friday, numb-nuts. How much did you take?”
“No, I mean the date,” Dustin insisted, and got shakily to his feet, stumbling back into the car. Possible-drunken-makeout guy scooted over to make room for him, evoking a collective grumble of protest from the other kids crowded in the backseat.
“January 10th,” Peel sighed, pulling away as soon as Dustin had shut the door, “Year-of-our-lord, 2008.”
“It’s my little sister’s birthday in, like, three days,” Dustin said, and pressed his temple against the chilly window. He had one hell of headache coming on. “Shit. I forgot.”
“You’re a terrible big brother,” possible-drunken-makeout guy said, and Dustin snarled “Fuck off” before he could stop himself, even though the teasing tone had been clear in the guy’s voice.
“I need to get her something,” Dustin announced, trying to claw himself back to sobriety by sheer force of will. “Seriously, it has to be something good this year. She’s turning sixteen.”
“You got money? Any money whatsoever, oh best drug runner in the entire world?” Peel inquired dryly.
Dustin grimaced and Peel smirked at him in the rearview mirror.
“I figured,” Peel said. “Don’t worry, kid. I’ve got all sorts of fun jobs I’ve been saving up just for you…”
*
Dustin turned up on their old doorstep three days later with a birthday present and enough of a buzz on to be brave. Amy answered the door distracted, probably thinking he was a delivery guy, maybe someone with flowers, but her surprise made a quick shift into delight and she leapt at him for a tight hug. She’d let her hair grow even longer since he’d last seen her, dark as his and curling down past her shoulders in loose waves; his kid sister didn’t look quite so much like a kid anymore, and he couldn’t tell if that was more to do with her age or if he was seeing her with a stranger’s eyes after being away so long.
“Happy birthday!” he blurted out awkwardly, and she slugged him in the shoulder, grinning.
“You jerk! When did you forget how to pick up your phone, huh?” she demanded, “I must’ve left about a hundred messages….”
Dustin laughed and rather than trying to explain how he’d sold his phone because a couple of his I.O.U.s were reaching dangerous levels, he brought out the present to distract her. He didn’t have a box for it, just pulled it out of his pocket with a little comedy flourish and dangled it in front of her face, a brushed silver crescent moon with a diamond set in it like a misplaced star.
Sharp-edged suspicion wasn’t the reaction he expected, exactly. It wasn’t a great look on her.
“Is that real?”
“Course it is. Only the best for my kid sister. You like it?”
Her mouth worked as colour slowly came up in her cheeks. “Where’d you get it?”
Dustin felt himself flush too and his fingers tightened around the delicate chain. “A jewelry store, Amy, jeez. I didn’t yank it off some little old lady, if that’s what you think of me now.”
She folded her arms and fixed him with a grim stare that made her look so much like mom for an instant that it was scary. “I’m sixteen,” she told him, with only the conviction that a teenager could muster, “I’m not a freakin’ moron, Dustin. I know you can’t afford this.”
“Well, I did,” he countered, glad for the protective insulation of his buzz. (Sure, no little old ladies had been harmed in the getting of the necklace, but what he had done wasn’t exactly brag-book worthy either.) “I want you to have it.”
She looked away for a second and then look it from him without a word, ducked her head to fasten the clasp at the nape of her neck. He didn’t miss the two tears that drip-dropped to the front step between them while her head was bowed.
“Okay,” she said, brushed her hair back and dashing her wrist across her cheek in the same motion. “Thanks. Look, come inside. There’s… there’s cake. At least say hi to mom?”
He shrugged and jammed his hands into his pockets, feeling sick and miserable. “Nah, I gotta go. I just wanted to say hi to you anyway.”
She wrapped her hands around her elbows, mirroring his defensive posture and not even trying to mask the tears that were welling up again. “Fine. Whatever you want. Just thought you might be willing to play nice for five minutes on my birthday, but whatever. Have fun.”
He ducked in quick and kissed her on the cheek before she could react. “Sorry,” he muttered, “Love you, Amy. Happy birthday.”
He turned and walked back down the front path. There wasn’t a single damn thing that he could say or do that would fix everything he’d already wrecked here, nothing that wouldn’t just wind up hurting her more. It had been a mistake to come back at all.
“If you wind up dead or in jail or something, I’ll hate you forever, Dustin!” she called after him, voice shaking. “I’ll hate you, I swear!”
He hadn’t come back.
*
There was a guy knocking at Dustin’s door, and that was bad news.
He wasn’t going away, and that was worse…
A/N: Aaaaand then it joins up with the first session, booyah!