Blood Rising - Part Seventeen
Title: Blood Rising (Part Seventeen)
Author: gregoria44
Rating: 15+ for situations, this part
Word count: This part 2,359
Summary: Keep on moving.
A/N: Same as Part One. All comments and concrit always welcome. Special thanks to haldoor, rivers_bend, ladywillin and everyone who's been asking for more. Also, if you are having trouble accessing any of the previous chapters, please message me and I'll try and sort something out for you.
Warnings: These are teenagers and this is gay fiction. Stuff happens.
Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen
In the quiet time afterwards, we lay on our backs together, his head turned into my neck as I idly stroked his shoulder. Somewhere near my hip, the sharp point of his belt buckle was digging in, but I was barely aware of it, and had no motivation to move.
“You okay?” he murmured. I’d thought he was asleep; I was half-way there myself.
“Mmm,” it was almost too much effort to open my mouth and speak, “I’m fine.”
Watching reflected sunlight move across the ceiling with each passing car, I was more than fine; I’d never felt so relaxed, muscles and bones melted into pleasant heaviness.
From somewhere far downstairs, the sound of Mrs. Doran pottering about in the kitchen reached us. Des sighed and started to shift away from me. “We should get moving.” I held onto him for another moment, pulling him back for one more kiss.
Ignored, the music centre had been playing the ferric whisper of empty tape for some minutes; as we parted, it abruptly turned itself off with a loud thunk. Des’ whole body flinched at the sound, and several old concerns began to rise to the top of my mind.
Clumsily, we got cleaned up and redressed. It didn’t seem too controversial to sit next to each other on the bed, not once we’d straightened the covers a bit. I was leaning on the windowsill, and Des kept glancing past my arm at the clock he kept there.
“Can I ask you something?” I kept my voice low, mainly because I was wary of his reaction, but also because it didn’t seem right to be speaking normally after what we’d just done. It did, however, seem right to try and talk about things. One question in particular was bothering me.
“Yeah,” he was distracted, looking down into the road.
“What does your mam do when Thomas hits you?”
For a few seconds he froze, eyes fixed on the tarmac below. I thought he was going to ignore what I’d said, or tell me to fuck off. At least then I’d know he didn’t want to talk about it.
He took a faltering breath. “She…” His gaze flickered as he searched through the memories, and I saw that it wasn’t reluctance that held him back, but inexperience: no-one had asked him about it before. “Sometimes she’s out when he starts... If she’s here, she shuts herself away… I’ve heard her crying… but, I don’t know.”
I thought of my own mam, skinny and distant and full of excuses, but even she wouldn’t stand back while anyone got terrorised, let alone me.
“Doesn’t she tell him to stop? Doesn’t she tell him he’s wrong? Doesn’t she do anything afterwards?”
His answer was hard and defensive, as if she was the one needing protection. “She’s not always here when it happens.”
Not always, but often enough.
“Anyway,” he went on, remembering other things which had been said, “Things are better at the moment. He’s okay.”
There was a closed look creeping across his face, even as his fingernails picked at the paintwork of the windowsill. I placed my hand over his to stop him, no longer bothered by the cold, hard plaster. Sullen eyes met mine, but at least I’d regained his attention.
“So how come he was acting like he was scared of you, back in the park?”
An intense frown then, but of confusion, not anger. “What?”
“He didn’t know what to do with himself - or you.”
“I don’t…”
We were interrupted by a call from downstairs, and the light step of tentative feet on the first few treads. With movement quicker than I could register, there was immediately a good foot of daylight between myself and Des. “Boys? It’s nearly five o’clock; I think Steven should be heading home now.”
“All right,” Des called back, managing to sound careless and unconcerned. To me, he muttered, “It’s gonna be all right. It’s been a while since things were normal, that’s all.”
“Right.” It felt stupid to agree, but there was nothing to achieve by telling him he was wrong. If that’s what he wanted to believe, I had to go along with it.
I held him tight before we left the room, breathing in the smell of him, of us. “See you tomorrow, yeah?”
Neither of us added, ‘at school’, though it hung in the air all the same.
*
But the next day, he wasn’t at school.
And the day after that, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking and he got another detention from Raleigh.
*
I was sitting on my own in the library, head in my hands, when Mark slammed a book down on the table, nearly sending me into orbit.
“Any chance of having a word?” he hissed, face a twitching intensity of rage, “if you’re not too busy, that is.”
My stomach swooped, both in fear at his fury and the inevitability of the conversation that was to follow. I nodded, and we went outside to a mould-streaked, litter infested corner of the school that even the smokers had abandoned.
“Why couldn’t you just stay away from him?” he shouted, too irate to start at the beginning. “Why couldn’t you leave things the way they were?”
When I didn’t attempt to deny anything, or to argue, he switched to an angry sort of entreaty instead. “I know, okay? I could have guessed from that first morning, up at the farmhouse, but now, I know.
“And it’s not that it matters, all right? It’s not as if I care about that. But I care what happens to Des, and if this is how Thomas reacts just ‘cos you’ve been alone together, what do you think he’ll do if he finds out that you’re…” he drew to an awkward halt, unable to express it out loud.
“You don’t have to say it,” I offered numbly, the words bumping into each other. I was willing to take everything he was firing at me, because it was all I’d been able to think about since the weekend. I couldn’t convince myself that I wasn’t responsible for the latest flare-up, and Mark was only confirming the worst of my beliefs.
The anger in his expression slowly dissolved into aggrieved sympathy. “This is the last thing Des needs right now. You of all people should understand that. I’m not saying it would be different if you were…” he stumbled again, and I screwed my eyes shut, not wanting to hear the bald, illogical truth, “but please… stop it, okay? Stop it now, before things get any worse.”
I had no control over my facial muscles; I fought each spasm, but tears still threatened to erupt at any second. I held on, determined to retain some shred of dignity, unable to offer him an answer.
Seeing the state I was in, his belief in the selfishness of my actions started to collapse. “I’m sorry things are like this,” he said, and he meant it, “I’m so sorry.” Reaching out, he touched my arm, once, stiffly, and then quickly walked away. I turned to the green-streaked wall and pressed my forehead into the pebble-dashing until it was all that I could feel.
*
The following dinner time, we were all slumped in one of the long-disused cloakrooms, morosely watching the rain’s redundant attempt to rinse grime from the windows. It was increasingly rare to have Wayne’s company without Kelly as an attached extra, but she was off with the girls at singing club, and he looked as fed up as the rest of us.
More co-incidentally than anything, Des was sitting next to me, but he was still quiet after whatever had happened on Sunday night. The fact we’d hardly spoken had briefly made things easier, putting off the time I’d have to tell him about my decision.
Mark hadn’t said anything more on the subject, either. Like everyone else, he was resigned to wait for a change in atmosphere.
“Right, sod this,” Will suddenly announced, coming out of his own stupor and sharply standing up. “We need something to occupy our creative little minds.”
“Oh, Jesus,” groaned Wayne. “We need that like we need a hole in the head.”
“Well, you’d be doing a lot worse without that cake-hole in your face,” Will said, making the rest of us crack a smile for the first time in days.
He frog-marched us through the rain to the main corridor, where the walls were covered in year-group notice boards. Stabbing a finger into the mess of timetables, team listings, and forthcoming events, he pointed at a half-filled piece of paper.
“That should do nicely. Get out your pens, lads: we are going to join the tech-crew for the school play.”
“Last year, we were the tech-crew for the school play. No-one else bothered.”
“Quite. That’s why it’s so perfect.”
Wayne and Mark both started to say something, but Will held up a professional looking ballpoint and clicked it at the two of them. “There are five of us, right? And only three needed on the actual nights. So between us, we’ve got it covered. You,” he motioned at Wayne, “can still have time off for mooning around with Kelly, and you,” he turned to Mark, “can still work at the restaurant when you’re needed.
“Of course, we may need to appeal to our parents’ and guardians’ sense of pride and achievement, but what could be more wholesome than their sons and wards getting involved with such an artistic endeavour?”
Des was nodding thoughtfully, but Wayne wasn’t sold on the idea until I pointed out that Kelly had put herself down for the auditions. Will shook hands with me. “Nice work, Stevie Wonder.”
“That’s right,” said Wayne, struggling to write his name straight amongst all the papers, “blind as well as irritating.”
Mark was too busy scanning down the list of other names to notice the smile that Des gave me. It was like a crushing weight landing on my chest, and it refused to lift, no matter how I breathed under it.
*
When the phone started ringing that evening, I knew Duncan was sitting nearest to it, so carried on staring blankly at the coursework in front of me. After a minute or so, he came thundering up the stairs and threw open my door, car keys already in hand.
“We’ve got to go: Nan’s in hospital.”
“She’s what? Why?”
“Come on.”
Twenty minutes later, I was waiting in a hard plastic chair while Duncan spoke to the Doctor. For all of her complaining, Nan had always been a robust sort of woman, and I couldn’t remember her ever being sent to hospital before. The idea of her being genuinely ill had shocked both of us.
When Duncan came back, his whole body showed relief. “Don’t worry, mate. It was a bad angina attack, but she’s gonna be all right. She’s asking to see you. You want to go in while I grab us a cuppa?”
Nan was in a sweltering side room that reeked of antiseptic, with mysterious equipment beeping away next to the bed. The vinyl floor absorbed any sound I was making, and she was unaware that I’d entered the room, her paper-thin eyelids staying shut.
Everything about her was shown frail and vulnerable in the fluorescent lights: her flattened hair, her wrinkled skin, her sunken throat. Both hands were loosely gripping the bed sheet, as though she’d lost interest whilst tidying up.
I spoke quietly enough for church. “Nan? It’s Steven.”
One of her eyes cranked open. “What is?” she croaked, and then tried to grin at me. The old devil was still dancing in her, even if they’d both had to pause for a sit-down. “No need to look so worried, lad. I’m not ready for me grave just yet.”
She sounded exhausted, but I managed to smile. “S’ a good job. The Co-op’s all out of empty cardboard boxes.”
“You cheeky bugger.” Her other eye opened with a little more sparkle. I watched it fade as her face turned more serious. “Listen, about the other day…”
“Oh, Nan. Forget it.”
“No… I’m sorry, Steven. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I know. It doesn’t matter, honest.”
There was a lull while we absorbed each other’s words, the echoing noise of other wards and corridors filling the silence.
“Your mam told me she’d spoken to you.”
“Yeah.” The memory of that particular phone call was suddenly embarrassing; there were more important things than maintaining a lengthy sulk.
Lifting a mottled ivory hand from the bed sheet, Nan waved towards her bedside cabinet. “My handbag’s in there. Get it out, would you?”
Once I’d hauled the mammoth beast onto my knee, I offered it over, but she shook her head. “Just look in the front zipper. There’s a piece of paper in there for you.”
With a speed bordering on reluctance, I posted my fingers into the worn leather. The paper looked like it had been waiting for me for some time, but the writing was still instantly recognisable as a phone number.
Nan and I looked at each other for a moment or two, a mixture of anticipation and weary kindness in her wet eyes. “If she’s not in, there’s an answer phone,” she said earnestly, as if that explained everything. “You can always leave a message.”
“Sure,” I pocketed the number, unwilling to argue, and unable to do so when she was gazing at me with such clear pleasure, “but keep it between the two of us, all right?”
“Mm-hm,” she sighed, shutting her eyes and relaxing back into the pillows, job done. “That’s fine, love.”
*
Part Eighteen
Color Contact Lenses
Author: gregoria44
Rating: 15+ for situations, this part
Word count: This part 2,359
Summary: Keep on moving.
A/N: Same as Part One. All comments and concrit always welcome. Special thanks to haldoor, rivers_bend, ladywillin and everyone who's been asking for more. Also, if you are having trouble accessing any of the previous chapters, please message me and I'll try and sort something out for you.
Warnings: These are teenagers and this is gay fiction. Stuff happens.
Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen
In the quiet time afterwards, we lay on our backs together, his head turned into my neck as I idly stroked his shoulder. Somewhere near my hip, the sharp point of his belt buckle was digging in, but I was barely aware of it, and had no motivation to move.
“You okay?” he murmured. I’d thought he was asleep; I was half-way there myself.
“Mmm,” it was almost too much effort to open my mouth and speak, “I’m fine.”
Watching reflected sunlight move across the ceiling with each passing car, I was more than fine; I’d never felt so relaxed, muscles and bones melted into pleasant heaviness.
From somewhere far downstairs, the sound of Mrs. Doran pottering about in the kitchen reached us. Des sighed and started to shift away from me. “We should get moving.” I held onto him for another moment, pulling him back for one more kiss.
Ignored, the music centre had been playing the ferric whisper of empty tape for some minutes; as we parted, it abruptly turned itself off with a loud thunk. Des’ whole body flinched at the sound, and several old concerns began to rise to the top of my mind.
Clumsily, we got cleaned up and redressed. It didn’t seem too controversial to sit next to each other on the bed, not once we’d straightened the covers a bit. I was leaning on the windowsill, and Des kept glancing past my arm at the clock he kept there.
“Can I ask you something?” I kept my voice low, mainly because I was wary of his reaction, but also because it didn’t seem right to be speaking normally after what we’d just done. It did, however, seem right to try and talk about things. One question in particular was bothering me.
“Yeah,” he was distracted, looking down into the road.
“What does your mam do when Thomas hits you?”
For a few seconds he froze, eyes fixed on the tarmac below. I thought he was going to ignore what I’d said, or tell me to fuck off. At least then I’d know he didn’t want to talk about it.
He took a faltering breath. “She…” His gaze flickered as he searched through the memories, and I saw that it wasn’t reluctance that held him back, but inexperience: no-one had asked him about it before. “Sometimes she’s out when he starts... If she’s here, she shuts herself away… I’ve heard her crying… but, I don’t know.”
I thought of my own mam, skinny and distant and full of excuses, but even she wouldn’t stand back while anyone got terrorised, let alone me.
“Doesn’t she tell him to stop? Doesn’t she tell him he’s wrong? Doesn’t she do anything afterwards?”
His answer was hard and defensive, as if she was the one needing protection. “She’s not always here when it happens.”
Not always, but often enough.
“Anyway,” he went on, remembering other things which had been said, “Things are better at the moment. He’s okay.”
There was a closed look creeping across his face, even as his fingernails picked at the paintwork of the windowsill. I placed my hand over his to stop him, no longer bothered by the cold, hard plaster. Sullen eyes met mine, but at least I’d regained his attention.
“So how come he was acting like he was scared of you, back in the park?”
An intense frown then, but of confusion, not anger. “What?”
“He didn’t know what to do with himself - or you.”
“I don’t…”
We were interrupted by a call from downstairs, and the light step of tentative feet on the first few treads. With movement quicker than I could register, there was immediately a good foot of daylight between myself and Des. “Boys? It’s nearly five o’clock; I think Steven should be heading home now.”
“All right,” Des called back, managing to sound careless and unconcerned. To me, he muttered, “It’s gonna be all right. It’s been a while since things were normal, that’s all.”
“Right.” It felt stupid to agree, but there was nothing to achieve by telling him he was wrong. If that’s what he wanted to believe, I had to go along with it.
I held him tight before we left the room, breathing in the smell of him, of us. “See you tomorrow, yeah?”
Neither of us added, ‘at school’, though it hung in the air all the same.
*
But the next day, he wasn’t at school.
And the day after that, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking and he got another detention from Raleigh.
*
I was sitting on my own in the library, head in my hands, when Mark slammed a book down on the table, nearly sending me into orbit.
“Any chance of having a word?” he hissed, face a twitching intensity of rage, “if you’re not too busy, that is.”
My stomach swooped, both in fear at his fury and the inevitability of the conversation that was to follow. I nodded, and we went outside to a mould-streaked, litter infested corner of the school that even the smokers had abandoned.
“Why couldn’t you just stay away from him?” he shouted, too irate to start at the beginning. “Why couldn’t you leave things the way they were?”
When I didn’t attempt to deny anything, or to argue, he switched to an angry sort of entreaty instead. “I know, okay? I could have guessed from that first morning, up at the farmhouse, but now, I know.
“And it’s not that it matters, all right? It’s not as if I care about that. But I care what happens to Des, and if this is how Thomas reacts just ‘cos you’ve been alone together, what do you think he’ll do if he finds out that you’re…” he drew to an awkward halt, unable to express it out loud.
“You don’t have to say it,” I offered numbly, the words bumping into each other. I was willing to take everything he was firing at me, because it was all I’d been able to think about since the weekend. I couldn’t convince myself that I wasn’t responsible for the latest flare-up, and Mark was only confirming the worst of my beliefs.
The anger in his expression slowly dissolved into aggrieved sympathy. “This is the last thing Des needs right now. You of all people should understand that. I’m not saying it would be different if you were…” he stumbled again, and I screwed my eyes shut, not wanting to hear the bald, illogical truth, “but please… stop it, okay? Stop it now, before things get any worse.”
I had no control over my facial muscles; I fought each spasm, but tears still threatened to erupt at any second. I held on, determined to retain some shred of dignity, unable to offer him an answer.
Seeing the state I was in, his belief in the selfishness of my actions started to collapse. “I’m sorry things are like this,” he said, and he meant it, “I’m so sorry.” Reaching out, he touched my arm, once, stiffly, and then quickly walked away. I turned to the green-streaked wall and pressed my forehead into the pebble-dashing until it was all that I could feel.
*
The following dinner time, we were all slumped in one of the long-disused cloakrooms, morosely watching the rain’s redundant attempt to rinse grime from the windows. It was increasingly rare to have Wayne’s company without Kelly as an attached extra, but she was off with the girls at singing club, and he looked as fed up as the rest of us.
More co-incidentally than anything, Des was sitting next to me, but he was still quiet after whatever had happened on Sunday night. The fact we’d hardly spoken had briefly made things easier, putting off the time I’d have to tell him about my decision.
Mark hadn’t said anything more on the subject, either. Like everyone else, he was resigned to wait for a change in atmosphere.
“Right, sod this,” Will suddenly announced, coming out of his own stupor and sharply standing up. “We need something to occupy our creative little minds.”
“Oh, Jesus,” groaned Wayne. “We need that like we need a hole in the head.”
“Well, you’d be doing a lot worse without that cake-hole in your face,” Will said, making the rest of us crack a smile for the first time in days.
He frog-marched us through the rain to the main corridor, where the walls were covered in year-group notice boards. Stabbing a finger into the mess of timetables, team listings, and forthcoming events, he pointed at a half-filled piece of paper.
“That should do nicely. Get out your pens, lads: we are going to join the tech-crew for the school play.”
“Last year, we were the tech-crew for the school play. No-one else bothered.”
“Quite. That’s why it’s so perfect.”
Wayne and Mark both started to say something, but Will held up a professional looking ballpoint and clicked it at the two of them. “There are five of us, right? And only three needed on the actual nights. So between us, we’ve got it covered. You,” he motioned at Wayne, “can still have time off for mooning around with Kelly, and you,” he turned to Mark, “can still work at the restaurant when you’re needed.
“Of course, we may need to appeal to our parents’ and guardians’ sense of pride and achievement, but what could be more wholesome than their sons and wards getting involved with such an artistic endeavour?”
Des was nodding thoughtfully, but Wayne wasn’t sold on the idea until I pointed out that Kelly had put herself down for the auditions. Will shook hands with me. “Nice work, Stevie Wonder.”
“That’s right,” said Wayne, struggling to write his name straight amongst all the papers, “blind as well as irritating.”
Mark was too busy scanning down the list of other names to notice the smile that Des gave me. It was like a crushing weight landing on my chest, and it refused to lift, no matter how I breathed under it.
*
When the phone started ringing that evening, I knew Duncan was sitting nearest to it, so carried on staring blankly at the coursework in front of me. After a minute or so, he came thundering up the stairs and threw open my door, car keys already in hand.
“We’ve got to go: Nan’s in hospital.”
“She’s what? Why?”
“Come on.”
Twenty minutes later, I was waiting in a hard plastic chair while Duncan spoke to the Doctor. For all of her complaining, Nan had always been a robust sort of woman, and I couldn’t remember her ever being sent to hospital before. The idea of her being genuinely ill had shocked both of us.
When Duncan came back, his whole body showed relief. “Don’t worry, mate. It was a bad angina attack, but she’s gonna be all right. She’s asking to see you. You want to go in while I grab us a cuppa?”
Nan was in a sweltering side room that reeked of antiseptic, with mysterious equipment beeping away next to the bed. The vinyl floor absorbed any sound I was making, and she was unaware that I’d entered the room, her paper-thin eyelids staying shut.
Everything about her was shown frail and vulnerable in the fluorescent lights: her flattened hair, her wrinkled skin, her sunken throat. Both hands were loosely gripping the bed sheet, as though she’d lost interest whilst tidying up.
I spoke quietly enough for church. “Nan? It’s Steven.”
One of her eyes cranked open. “What is?” she croaked, and then tried to grin at me. The old devil was still dancing in her, even if they’d both had to pause for a sit-down. “No need to look so worried, lad. I’m not ready for me grave just yet.”
She sounded exhausted, but I managed to smile. “S’ a good job. The Co-op’s all out of empty cardboard boxes.”
“You cheeky bugger.” Her other eye opened with a little more sparkle. I watched it fade as her face turned more serious. “Listen, about the other day…”
“Oh, Nan. Forget it.”
“No… I’m sorry, Steven. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I know. It doesn’t matter, honest.”
There was a lull while we absorbed each other’s words, the echoing noise of other wards and corridors filling the silence.
“Your mam told me she’d spoken to you.”
“Yeah.” The memory of that particular phone call was suddenly embarrassing; there were more important things than maintaining a lengthy sulk.
Lifting a mottled ivory hand from the bed sheet, Nan waved towards her bedside cabinet. “My handbag’s in there. Get it out, would you?”
Once I’d hauled the mammoth beast onto my knee, I offered it over, but she shook her head. “Just look in the front zipper. There’s a piece of paper in there for you.”
With a speed bordering on reluctance, I posted my fingers into the worn leather. The paper looked like it had been waiting for me for some time, but the writing was still instantly recognisable as a phone number.
Nan and I looked at each other for a moment or two, a mixture of anticipation and weary kindness in her wet eyes. “If she’s not in, there’s an answer phone,” she said earnestly, as if that explained everything. “You can always leave a message.”
“Sure,” I pocketed the number, unwilling to argue, and unable to do so when she was gazing at me with such clear pleasure, “but keep it between the two of us, all right?”
“Mm-hm,” she sighed, shutting her eyes and relaxing back into the pillows, job done. “That’s fine, love.”
*
Part Eighteen
Color Contact Lenses