No Other One, Chapter 44
Title: No Other One, Chapter 44
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, and Chapter 43.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show.
“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.” - Jan Glidewell
Though it was impossible to say what exactly, Kyle could tell something had changed. When Horatio returned, he seemed… distracted. Even more so than when they’d been under the threat of Clarissa Bennett, talentless hack extraordinaire. Which made no sense to the teenager, because, despite not feeling this way himself, Horatio should have been relieved. The custody thing was settled, so the tension between them should have relaxed.
… Right?
Kyle didn’t really know anymore. Or maybe he never knew the answer. He would have just thought that, since Dragon Lady had gotten off their backs, things would be more relaxed. But he clearly seemed to be wrong. The redhead nervously put on his sunglasses, and the teenager, in turn, took another sip of his sickly sweet soda.
“Are you ready to go?” Horatio asked in a hurry.
Nodding his head, he didn’t say anything, as he followed the man back out to the car. Horatio’s pace was quick, faster than Kyle could comfortably keep up with. So the blond stopped trying, preferring to trail behind the redhead.
Thinking back to only an hour or so before, Kyle couldn’t remember Horatio walking so quickly. Maybe he had - the teenager had been a little distracted by the whole custody issue, so he might not have noticed. But still, Horatio seemed even more aloof and hurried than he’d been in the last day or so.
What the hell had Yelina said in the parking lot to cause this?
They were silent when they drove out of the parking lot and remained that way long after they’d left. And Kyle thought then that… well, actually, nothing had changed.
Okay, so the redhead was being weirder than normal.
But… nothing really had changed; Horatio still didn’t really know him. He didn’t really know the man responsible for half of his genes. Things were still awkward and bizarre, and they’d made it over this one hurdle, but they weren’t off the racetrack yet. Or something, Kyle thought, his nose scrunching up at the weird metaphor.
However he wanted to put it, the bottom line was still the same: things weren’t over yet. And… the teenager couldn’t see how this situation would ever resolve itself. Horatio had custody, but that couldn’t automatically undo sixteen years of abandonment. That much seemed obvious; after all, the DNA test had confirmed it and all that, and yet, Kyle couldn’t exactly call the redhead “dad.”
So, in a way, he supposed it didn’t really matter what was bothering Horatio or what Yelina had said. Those were things he could think about for hours on end, the blond figured. And they were also things he had no control over, so… his only job, Kyle decided, was to stay out of jail.
And foster care.
Of course that seemed to be easier said than done.
Rarely did Kyle seek out trouble. Naturally it happened some of the time, like when he would occasionally smoke weed. And if he were arrested for that, then even he would have admitted that that was totally his fault.
But more often than not, he just seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrongest time possible. So when the city bus turned a corner, he was the one to get splashed with stale rainwater. So when he decided it wasn’t all that bad to sleep with his foster family’s nympho daughter, he got caught… among other things.
The teenager had never liked to believe in fate, or luck for that matter. True, he could understand why some people did - and more than that, he could see why someone might say his own life had been destined to… be this. But that didn’t mean he could accept it himself.
The idea that everything that had happened was supposed to be that way was impossible to accept.
But sometimes the proof seemed to be so overwhelming; every now and then, when things were really bad, it really did feel as though he was playing by someone else’s rules and completely out of control. And if that was what was happening, how could he avoid the unavoidable?
How could he stay out of trouble now if trouble was something written all over his DNA?
Kyle shuddered at the question plaguing his mind. And quickly, he pushed it away, afraid of where the train of thought might be headed.
Luckily (or maybe not), though, Horatio didn’t seem to notice his demeanor at all, the redhead focusing on driving. Honestly, the teenager didn’t know how to feel about his… father’s lack of awareness.
Shouldn’t Horatio have been, like, a little better at noticing these things? If only cause of the cop thing?
Kyle didn’t really know what to think about it at all.
Initially he thought it was kind of nice to have the space to think about all the random crap popping into his brain. He could ponder anything he wanted to, he supposed. And Horatio wouldn’t - or at least he didn’t - seem to notice. Which was nice, because he would have thought would be nice, because he didn’t have to be self-conscious.
This particular moment in time was completely different than the brief interlude in front of the vending machines with Yelina.
She, unlike Horatio, hadn’t missed a thing; really, she’d been so in tune that it had felt like she’d been accessing some portal into mind. His words had been few and far between, but the brunette had somehow… understood what he’d wanted.
Which wasn’t really all that great. Especially since Kyle had been trying to keep everything to himself.
But Yelina had pretty much trampled all over that plan, and her ability to see him had been - was - scary. She’d paid close attention to him, to everything he did, without any reason to. When it was happening, he’d hated it, because… Kyle liked to think of himself as untouchable, apart from everyone else.
And she’d seen beyond all of that, even though she easily could have ignored him.
His gaze instantly flicked downward to the warming can in his hands.
It made no sense; here Horatio was, essentially giving him the space Kyle wanted, but it felt all wrong. And Yelina had done absolutely everything he hadn’t expected or wanted or even liked, but that felt… right in some bizarre way.
Horatio was doing all the things that the teenager would have normally wanted in this situation. But there was something wrong about it, about this complete lack of interest.
Well… Kyle hesitated then, thinking that maybe he was being too harsh. Maybe Horatio just needed time to deal with whatever had happened with Yelina, he thought.
Ugh, the teenager immediately told himself. It really was a crappy situation when he was telling himself essentially to just hang in there and give the man sitting next to him the benefit of the doubt. And somehow, everything inside of him seemed to get all tangled up; the very act of trying to think positive filled Kyle with resentment. For Horatio and everything else.
Nothing ever came easy to the teenager. And, not that he really believed parenting and family were an exception to that rule, but, like, it should have been. Right?
Well, who knows, he thought with a shrug. He was lamely attempting to forget the question all together, he understood. All that mattered, Kyle told himself, was what was directly in front of him.
But for the rest of the day, it seemed like everything placed in front of him heightened the query trapped in his mind. Wonderful.
Was this father-son thing supposed to be easy? Natural?
There were moments where things appeared to be easy to handle. At least easier, Kyle mentally corrected. Horatio had kept his word about going to lunch and then shopping, which was kind of cool. The teenager had had things bought for him before - well, obviously that had happened or else he’d have been running around naked.
Still, this felt different.
He’d never had his own computer, never really been given the option to pick out his own clothes. And even though Kyle pretty much let Horatio lead him into what to buy, for now, that was okay.
It wasn’t as personalized as Yelina picking out the soda for him, but… still. The teenager had never had anyone do this for him; this was different, and maybe it was just the material possessions talking. Each time he picked up something new, though, a little piece of him thought that maybe things could be okay.
But at the same time, they weren’t talking - Kyle noticed. Well, they said stuff about how he would need a raincoat and how a laptop would be good for carrying around and things like that. But there was no real… conversation going on.
And because of that fact, he couldn’t help but keep going back to earlier with Yelina. She’d only gotten him a soda - something that could hardly compare to a computer. But she had also talked to him, had explained things to him, even if he wasn’t sure he believed what she was saying. Of course, he told himself, it would suck if she really were lying. And yet Kyle could still appreciate the conversation anyway. Because, even if it was all lies, they had been talking about things that only the two of them could talk about.
Not like this with Horatio, where both of them could have been talking to anyone else on the planet. There was nothing personal about gigabytes and shoes; there was no inherent meaning in it.
And so… despite how uncomfortable she had made him feel, at that moment, Kyle kind of wished… he were with Yelina instead.
000000000000000000000000000
He had a cousin, Ray Junior thought to himself for the five billionth time that hour.
Vomit, he told himself, rolling his eyes.
He had a cousin.
The whole thing still really grossed the teenager out. Pissed him off too, because Horatio was supposed to be his uncle, who was kind of cool but not really. Horatio was supposed to be one of those people who you could always depend on.
But this whole “I have a kid” business put all of that into question for Ray.
And sitting at his computer, trying to fix the kinks in his videogame, the teen couldn’t help but think about this change in events again.
Horatio had a damn kid.
The entire concept made his stomach twist into knots, which really didn’t feel good, cause right now, his stomach was loaded with tons of Chinese food.
His mother had warned him against scarfing down all of the egg rolls. But at the time, he’d been convinced that her words of advice were more about her own desire for the crispy logs of goodness. And so Ray had, selfishly, munched each and every one of them down while she was too busy trying to scoop nasty broccoli onto his plate to notice.
Now, though, he could clearly see that had been a mistake.
Not because it was kind of cruel or anything like that, but because it, in combination with his family’s drama, made him feel like hurling all over his computer. The fake blood and chunks of brain added to his videogame weren’t helping either, he thought grimly, hitting the pause button.
At some point, Ray Junior had accepted that thinking about this new family member was… a waste of time. It wasn’t like doing it got him any closer to understanding just how it had happened. Spending all of his time pondering it didn’t do anything except make him feel sick to his stomach.
But he couldn’t stop himself.
It was like one of those paper cuts that a person got in the creases of their hands. Those were the kind that were impossible to avoid hitting, the kind that Ray sometimes liked to run a fingernail over; it would hurt, but digging at it hard for those few seconds would make the general throb of the injury less annoying.
By thinking and overthinking about Horatio and this newbie, he was making the overall situation more bearable.
Or something… cause that didn’t really make that much sense, Ray Junior thought to himself.
His stomach gurgled loudly at that moment, reinforcing the fact that he didn’t feel well. Like he could really forget, he thought miserably.
Even more painful was a memory that popped into his mind, vivid and lush and so complete that he was absolutely sure he’d be reliving it if not for the eminent threat of barfing.
It had been the first Halloween since his father had died. His elementary school had carried on like nothing had happened, because for his classmates nothing had happened to them. And so they had been excited with the idea of trick or treating and getting tons of candy. The teachers wanting to make the best of this had taken the opportunity to teach them all about Halloween and what the holiday meant.
They’d scrubbed the whole lesson of anything bad or negative; they hadn’t talked about witches or dead people or anything scary. But that hadn’t exactly stopped the other kids from doing that. And one in particular - Jenny Francis had taken the opportunity to tell him all about how the dead came back to life on October Thirty-First.
Even though it had been years since their conversation, Ray could still recall what Jenny had said. “Everyone who’s dead wakes up on Halloween like they were just taking a really, really long nap. But their bodies stay the way they were when they died. My mom once saw a headless guy try and get in his car. But he couldn’t find the door handle cause he had no eyeballs!”
And then she’d laughed - something heartier than her usual giggle - her braids flopping back and forth as her body had shook with glee.
Of course, Ray didn’t still believe her. Though he figured that he had more reason now to believe that his father could come back to life… But at the time, Jenny’s story had terrified him.
If Toaster Oven (did Halloween apply to parakeets he’d wondered) had come back to life, his younger self had reasoned that that would be okay. Because his bird would look normal and not scary.
His father, on the other hand…
After hearing that story, Ray Junior hadn’t been able to sleep, his dreams filled with gruesome images of his headless father trying to eat cheerios.
The little boy had become so afraid of the holiday that he’d thought the only way to avoid seeing his dead father was to hide from it. So he decided to build a fort out of the couch cushions and wall himself in with a flashlight and Stove Top, his stuffed bear. Ray wasn’t sure if this was related to the memory or not, but he could also recall throwing a box of cheerios away.
Anyway, stuck in his ghost-free fort, he had refused to come out. His mother had tried to lure him out with candy; it hadn’t worked, and she’d quickly given up, probably because she had still been trying to deal with her own pain.
And Ray had been prepared to stay in his hidey-hole all night by himself until the dead went back to wherever they were supposed to be. But then his uncle had poked his head into the fort, and, though he couldn’t really remember what had been said, somehow Horatio had gotten him to explain what was going on.
“Well,” the redhead had said, his blue eyes filled with a sadness that Ray could still recall perfectly. “I don’t think… that’s gonna happen, buddy.”
“It could.” Squeezing his ratty teddy bear close, Ray Junior had explained, “So I gotta stay here.”
“So you’ve gotta stay there,” Horatio had parroted to himself. The teenager could remember how his uncle had cocked his head then, which had made the couch cushions shift just enough to make him nervous. “Okay… want me to join you?”
“No.”
“No?” he’d asked, confused. “But… you are forgetting… the first rule of forts.”
“What’s that?”
“Every fort,” Horatio had explained, “needs a guard.” Ray could remember looking down at Stove Top and thinking that a stuffed bear was hardly any protection at all. “I think… I’d be pretty good at that. What do you think?”
Ray Junior had nodded his head and scooted over in the cramped area, letting his uncle in. And the two had huddled together in there for a while until the little boy had fallen asleep, his head resting on Horatio’s knees.
The teenager wasn’t exactly sure what made him think of that. And part of him was distinctly amused at how neither he nor his uncle had thought about bringing his mother into the fort.
Well, maybe it was understandable for Horatio not to be concerned, since he hadn’t believed dead people were gonna break into the house. But Ray had, and still… he hadn’t exactly tried to protect his own mother.
Then again, he doubted - and probably had then - that anyone would mess around her. He’d seen her pissed a lot, but for a while there… the teenager had almost forgotten how angry she could be. Without his father around in the past year, there had been fewer opportunities for her to be that angry.
But yesterday had been a reminder of just how far she could and would go.
And today, right now, was a reminder of just how stupid he could be when it came to his family members. He’d trusted his dad and probably shouldn’t have, and now the teen had gone down the same path with his uncle.
Ray didn’t know exactly why he’d thought of that memory from all those years ago. But what did seem perfectly clear was that he and his uncle were never going to be close like that again. Because Horatio had lied about who he was and had this kid, and there was no way Ray Junior could ever really trust him again.
That time was over.
And… maybe the worst part of all was him sitting at his desk thinking about how there was this other family member now who… could have that relationship with Horatio. It was bad enough, Ray thought sadly, to lose that trust and love. But it was absolutely unbearable to think about somebody else gaining those things at his expense.
His stomach tightened further, twisting furiously inside of him. Jealousy and anger like he’d never felt before began to stir within in, swirling in his gut along with the stomach acid and egg rolls that threatened to bring him to his knees.
He had spent so much time thinking about what his uncle had done that he’d completely ignored what this newbie was getting. And now that Ray had thought about it, the need for revenge became all encompassing.
He would take this kid down.
He would make him pay.
He would make sure that this boy lost everything that he himself had lost.
All Ray needed now was a plan…
End (45/??)
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, and Chapter 43.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show.
“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.” - Jan Glidewell
Though it was impossible to say what exactly, Kyle could tell something had changed. When Horatio returned, he seemed… distracted. Even more so than when they’d been under the threat of Clarissa Bennett, talentless hack extraordinaire. Which made no sense to the teenager, because, despite not feeling this way himself, Horatio should have been relieved. The custody thing was settled, so the tension between them should have relaxed.
… Right?
Kyle didn’t really know anymore. Or maybe he never knew the answer. He would have just thought that, since Dragon Lady had gotten off their backs, things would be more relaxed. But he clearly seemed to be wrong. The redhead nervously put on his sunglasses, and the teenager, in turn, took another sip of his sickly sweet soda.
“Are you ready to go?” Horatio asked in a hurry.
Nodding his head, he didn’t say anything, as he followed the man back out to the car. Horatio’s pace was quick, faster than Kyle could comfortably keep up with. So the blond stopped trying, preferring to trail behind the redhead.
Thinking back to only an hour or so before, Kyle couldn’t remember Horatio walking so quickly. Maybe he had - the teenager had been a little distracted by the whole custody issue, so he might not have noticed. But still, Horatio seemed even more aloof and hurried than he’d been in the last day or so.
What the hell had Yelina said in the parking lot to cause this?
They were silent when they drove out of the parking lot and remained that way long after they’d left. And Kyle thought then that… well, actually, nothing had changed.
Okay, so the redhead was being weirder than normal.
But… nothing really had changed; Horatio still didn’t really know him. He didn’t really know the man responsible for half of his genes. Things were still awkward and bizarre, and they’d made it over this one hurdle, but they weren’t off the racetrack yet. Or something, Kyle thought, his nose scrunching up at the weird metaphor.
However he wanted to put it, the bottom line was still the same: things weren’t over yet. And… the teenager couldn’t see how this situation would ever resolve itself. Horatio had custody, but that couldn’t automatically undo sixteen years of abandonment. That much seemed obvious; after all, the DNA test had confirmed it and all that, and yet, Kyle couldn’t exactly call the redhead “dad.”
So, in a way, he supposed it didn’t really matter what was bothering Horatio or what Yelina had said. Those were things he could think about for hours on end, the blond figured. And they were also things he had no control over, so… his only job, Kyle decided, was to stay out of jail.
And foster care.
Of course that seemed to be easier said than done.
Rarely did Kyle seek out trouble. Naturally it happened some of the time, like when he would occasionally smoke weed. And if he were arrested for that, then even he would have admitted that that was totally his fault.
But more often than not, he just seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrongest time possible. So when the city bus turned a corner, he was the one to get splashed with stale rainwater. So when he decided it wasn’t all that bad to sleep with his foster family’s nympho daughter, he got caught… among other things.
The teenager had never liked to believe in fate, or luck for that matter. True, he could understand why some people did - and more than that, he could see why someone might say his own life had been destined to… be this. But that didn’t mean he could accept it himself.
The idea that everything that had happened was supposed to be that way was impossible to accept.
But sometimes the proof seemed to be so overwhelming; every now and then, when things were really bad, it really did feel as though he was playing by someone else’s rules and completely out of control. And if that was what was happening, how could he avoid the unavoidable?
How could he stay out of trouble now if trouble was something written all over his DNA?
Kyle shuddered at the question plaguing his mind. And quickly, he pushed it away, afraid of where the train of thought might be headed.
Luckily (or maybe not), though, Horatio didn’t seem to notice his demeanor at all, the redhead focusing on driving. Honestly, the teenager didn’t know how to feel about his… father’s lack of awareness.
Shouldn’t Horatio have been, like, a little better at noticing these things? If only cause of the cop thing?
Kyle didn’t really know what to think about it at all.
Initially he thought it was kind of nice to have the space to think about all the random crap popping into his brain. He could ponder anything he wanted to, he supposed. And Horatio wouldn’t - or at least he didn’t - seem to notice. Which was nice, because he would have thought would be nice, because he didn’t have to be self-conscious.
This particular moment in time was completely different than the brief interlude in front of the vending machines with Yelina.
She, unlike Horatio, hadn’t missed a thing; really, she’d been so in tune that it had felt like she’d been accessing some portal into mind. His words had been few and far between, but the brunette had somehow… understood what he’d wanted.
Which wasn’t really all that great. Especially since Kyle had been trying to keep everything to himself.
But Yelina had pretty much trampled all over that plan, and her ability to see him had been - was - scary. She’d paid close attention to him, to everything he did, without any reason to. When it was happening, he’d hated it, because… Kyle liked to think of himself as untouchable, apart from everyone else.
And she’d seen beyond all of that, even though she easily could have ignored him.
His gaze instantly flicked downward to the warming can in his hands.
It made no sense; here Horatio was, essentially giving him the space Kyle wanted, but it felt all wrong. And Yelina had done absolutely everything he hadn’t expected or wanted or even liked, but that felt… right in some bizarre way.
Horatio was doing all the things that the teenager would have normally wanted in this situation. But there was something wrong about it, about this complete lack of interest.
Well… Kyle hesitated then, thinking that maybe he was being too harsh. Maybe Horatio just needed time to deal with whatever had happened with Yelina, he thought.
Ugh, the teenager immediately told himself. It really was a crappy situation when he was telling himself essentially to just hang in there and give the man sitting next to him the benefit of the doubt. And somehow, everything inside of him seemed to get all tangled up; the very act of trying to think positive filled Kyle with resentment. For Horatio and everything else.
Nothing ever came easy to the teenager. And, not that he really believed parenting and family were an exception to that rule, but, like, it should have been. Right?
Well, who knows, he thought with a shrug. He was lamely attempting to forget the question all together, he understood. All that mattered, Kyle told himself, was what was directly in front of him.
But for the rest of the day, it seemed like everything placed in front of him heightened the query trapped in his mind. Wonderful.
Was this father-son thing supposed to be easy? Natural?
There were moments where things appeared to be easy to handle. At least easier, Kyle mentally corrected. Horatio had kept his word about going to lunch and then shopping, which was kind of cool. The teenager had had things bought for him before - well, obviously that had happened or else he’d have been running around naked.
Still, this felt different.
He’d never had his own computer, never really been given the option to pick out his own clothes. And even though Kyle pretty much let Horatio lead him into what to buy, for now, that was okay.
It wasn’t as personalized as Yelina picking out the soda for him, but… still. The teenager had never had anyone do this for him; this was different, and maybe it was just the material possessions talking. Each time he picked up something new, though, a little piece of him thought that maybe things could be okay.
But at the same time, they weren’t talking - Kyle noticed. Well, they said stuff about how he would need a raincoat and how a laptop would be good for carrying around and things like that. But there was no real… conversation going on.
And because of that fact, he couldn’t help but keep going back to earlier with Yelina. She’d only gotten him a soda - something that could hardly compare to a computer. But she had also talked to him, had explained things to him, even if he wasn’t sure he believed what she was saying. Of course, he told himself, it would suck if she really were lying. And yet Kyle could still appreciate the conversation anyway. Because, even if it was all lies, they had been talking about things that only the two of them could talk about.
Not like this with Horatio, where both of them could have been talking to anyone else on the planet. There was nothing personal about gigabytes and shoes; there was no inherent meaning in it.
And so… despite how uncomfortable she had made him feel, at that moment, Kyle kind of wished… he were with Yelina instead.
000000000000000000000000000
He had a cousin, Ray Junior thought to himself for the five billionth time that hour.
Vomit, he told himself, rolling his eyes.
He had a cousin.
The whole thing still really grossed the teenager out. Pissed him off too, because Horatio was supposed to be his uncle, who was kind of cool but not really. Horatio was supposed to be one of those people who you could always depend on.
But this whole “I have a kid” business put all of that into question for Ray.
And sitting at his computer, trying to fix the kinks in his videogame, the teen couldn’t help but think about this change in events again.
Horatio had a damn kid.
The entire concept made his stomach twist into knots, which really didn’t feel good, cause right now, his stomach was loaded with tons of Chinese food.
His mother had warned him against scarfing down all of the egg rolls. But at the time, he’d been convinced that her words of advice were more about her own desire for the crispy logs of goodness. And so Ray had, selfishly, munched each and every one of them down while she was too busy trying to scoop nasty broccoli onto his plate to notice.
Now, though, he could clearly see that had been a mistake.
Not because it was kind of cruel or anything like that, but because it, in combination with his family’s drama, made him feel like hurling all over his computer. The fake blood and chunks of brain added to his videogame weren’t helping either, he thought grimly, hitting the pause button.
At some point, Ray Junior had accepted that thinking about this new family member was… a waste of time. It wasn’t like doing it got him any closer to understanding just how it had happened. Spending all of his time pondering it didn’t do anything except make him feel sick to his stomach.
But he couldn’t stop himself.
It was like one of those paper cuts that a person got in the creases of their hands. Those were the kind that were impossible to avoid hitting, the kind that Ray sometimes liked to run a fingernail over; it would hurt, but digging at it hard for those few seconds would make the general throb of the injury less annoying.
By thinking and overthinking about Horatio and this newbie, he was making the overall situation more bearable.
Or something… cause that didn’t really make that much sense, Ray Junior thought to himself.
His stomach gurgled loudly at that moment, reinforcing the fact that he didn’t feel well. Like he could really forget, he thought miserably.
Even more painful was a memory that popped into his mind, vivid and lush and so complete that he was absolutely sure he’d be reliving it if not for the eminent threat of barfing.
It had been the first Halloween since his father had died. His elementary school had carried on like nothing had happened, because for his classmates nothing had happened to them. And so they had been excited with the idea of trick or treating and getting tons of candy. The teachers wanting to make the best of this had taken the opportunity to teach them all about Halloween and what the holiday meant.
They’d scrubbed the whole lesson of anything bad or negative; they hadn’t talked about witches or dead people or anything scary. But that hadn’t exactly stopped the other kids from doing that. And one in particular - Jenny Francis had taken the opportunity to tell him all about how the dead came back to life on October Thirty-First.
Even though it had been years since their conversation, Ray could still recall what Jenny had said. “Everyone who’s dead wakes up on Halloween like they were just taking a really, really long nap. But their bodies stay the way they were when they died. My mom once saw a headless guy try and get in his car. But he couldn’t find the door handle cause he had no eyeballs!”
And then she’d laughed - something heartier than her usual giggle - her braids flopping back and forth as her body had shook with glee.
Of course, Ray didn’t still believe her. Though he figured that he had more reason now to believe that his father could come back to life… But at the time, Jenny’s story had terrified him.
If Toaster Oven (did Halloween apply to parakeets he’d wondered) had come back to life, his younger self had reasoned that that would be okay. Because his bird would look normal and not scary.
His father, on the other hand…
After hearing that story, Ray Junior hadn’t been able to sleep, his dreams filled with gruesome images of his headless father trying to eat cheerios.
The little boy had become so afraid of the holiday that he’d thought the only way to avoid seeing his dead father was to hide from it. So he decided to build a fort out of the couch cushions and wall himself in with a flashlight and Stove Top, his stuffed bear. Ray wasn’t sure if this was related to the memory or not, but he could also recall throwing a box of cheerios away.
Anyway, stuck in his ghost-free fort, he had refused to come out. His mother had tried to lure him out with candy; it hadn’t worked, and she’d quickly given up, probably because she had still been trying to deal with her own pain.
And Ray had been prepared to stay in his hidey-hole all night by himself until the dead went back to wherever they were supposed to be. But then his uncle had poked his head into the fort, and, though he couldn’t really remember what had been said, somehow Horatio had gotten him to explain what was going on.
“Well,” the redhead had said, his blue eyes filled with a sadness that Ray could still recall perfectly. “I don’t think… that’s gonna happen, buddy.”
“It could.” Squeezing his ratty teddy bear close, Ray Junior had explained, “So I gotta stay here.”
“So you’ve gotta stay there,” Horatio had parroted to himself. The teenager could remember how his uncle had cocked his head then, which had made the couch cushions shift just enough to make him nervous. “Okay… want me to join you?”
“No.”
“No?” he’d asked, confused. “But… you are forgetting… the first rule of forts.”
“What’s that?”
“Every fort,” Horatio had explained, “needs a guard.” Ray could remember looking down at Stove Top and thinking that a stuffed bear was hardly any protection at all. “I think… I’d be pretty good at that. What do you think?”
Ray Junior had nodded his head and scooted over in the cramped area, letting his uncle in. And the two had huddled together in there for a while until the little boy had fallen asleep, his head resting on Horatio’s knees.
The teenager wasn’t exactly sure what made him think of that. And part of him was distinctly amused at how neither he nor his uncle had thought about bringing his mother into the fort.
Well, maybe it was understandable for Horatio not to be concerned, since he hadn’t believed dead people were gonna break into the house. But Ray had, and still… he hadn’t exactly tried to protect his own mother.
Then again, he doubted - and probably had then - that anyone would mess around her. He’d seen her pissed a lot, but for a while there… the teenager had almost forgotten how angry she could be. Without his father around in the past year, there had been fewer opportunities for her to be that angry.
But yesterday had been a reminder of just how far she could and would go.
And today, right now, was a reminder of just how stupid he could be when it came to his family members. He’d trusted his dad and probably shouldn’t have, and now the teen had gone down the same path with his uncle.
Ray didn’t know exactly why he’d thought of that memory from all those years ago. But what did seem perfectly clear was that he and his uncle were never going to be close like that again. Because Horatio had lied about who he was and had this kid, and there was no way Ray Junior could ever really trust him again.
That time was over.
And… maybe the worst part of all was him sitting at his desk thinking about how there was this other family member now who… could have that relationship with Horatio. It was bad enough, Ray thought sadly, to lose that trust and love. But it was absolutely unbearable to think about somebody else gaining those things at his expense.
His stomach tightened further, twisting furiously inside of him. Jealousy and anger like he’d never felt before began to stir within in, swirling in his gut along with the stomach acid and egg rolls that threatened to bring him to his knees.
He had spent so much time thinking about what his uncle had done that he’d completely ignored what this newbie was getting. And now that Ray had thought about it, the need for revenge became all encompassing.
He would take this kid down.
He would make him pay.
He would make sure that this boy lost everything that he himself had lost.
All Ray needed now was a plan…
End (45/??)