(no subject)
Well, here goes. Just as a warning, this chapter made both me and my beta reader cry. Eheh.
Chapter Twenty-Two
// Rowan whistled on his way up to the counter. He was in a ridiculously good mood, given that it was his birthday and his and Neil’s anniversary besides. His mood called for popcorn, soda, and possibly candy; he was undecided as of yet. He knew that Neil was taking him out to dinner, and he didn’t want to spoil his appetite.
“Well, well,” a familiar voice said, “What do we have here?”
Rowan stopped dead in his tracks and didn’t move. He had spent months trying to stop having panic attacks every time he saw someone that even looked like his father. Now that he was face to face with the real thing, he wondered how he could have ever forgotten how terrifying the man really was.
“So nice to see you again,” the man said, and his hand clamped down on Rowan’s wrist. “Let’s go for a little ride.”
It did not occur to Rowan to argue. Quite frankly, it never occurred to him to argue with anything the man said; he was far too afraid to do so. He let his father tug him out of the movie theater. He didn’t even drag his feet, already petrified at the concept of further incurring his father’s wrath.
The car ride across town was about ten minutes in good traffic; mid-afternoon on a weekday, it took a little longer. By the time five minutes had passed, Rowan’s mind had cleared of the sheer terror and he started to wonder if jumping out of the car would kill him. He looked down at the pavement rushing by and decided that it probably would.
Once they reached the apartment, he started trying to struggle, to run, to get away, but his father was much stronger than him, and he was dragged unwillingly into their old apartment. He opened his mouth and let out as loud a scream as he could, but that didn’t seem to hinder his father any.
As soon as they were inside, his father tossed him across the room and followed up with a punch to the stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Rowan’s scream was cut off abruptly, and he went to his knees, gagging and gasping for breath.
He knew that no one was going to come running at the scream. His father did not live in the best part of town, and God only knew that no one had ever helped him before, no matter what he did. His only hope was to hold on long enough for Neil to realize that something was wrong, then hope that Neil could figure out where he was.
“So,” his father said. “How’ve things been? Haven’t seen you in a while, boy. Enjoying your life of sin?”
Rowan saw his father pick up a chair and heard a sharp crack of wood. It didn’t really register until he saw his father holding the chair leg, and even then, he was somewhat confused until it hit him squarely in the jaw. He reeled backwards, hitting the wall.
“Told you I’d get you one of these days, didn’t I?” His father drew back and swung again, hitting him in the same place, but harder. Rowan hit the wall again and coughed. He could taste blood in his mouth; he wondered if he had bitten his tongue. His entire jaw had gone numb from pain.
“Answer me!” his father yelled, hitting him again. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Rowan tried to make his mouth work. “Y-Yes,” he managed.
“YES WHAT?”
Rowan went sprawling on the floor at the next blow, hard enough to send him skidding several feet away. “Yes sir,” he said. He couldn’t tell if the words were intelligible or not. His jaw was numb and his ears were ringing so badly that he couldn’t really hear what he had said.
“Good.” His father’s voice was quiet, and Rowan knew that he was always his most dangerous when he was quiet. “Get up.”
It took Rowan a couple tries, but he got to his feet. He spit out blood and heard a small click as one of his teeth hit the floor. Without conscious thought, he assumed his usual position, hands clasped in front of him, head bowed, eyes fixed to the floor.
“Good,” his father said again, sounding a little more satisfied with Rowan’s behavior. “You think your Prince Charming’s coming to save you, huh? Think you can hold out that long?”
Rowan was torn. If he said no, it would be admitting that he could take it, which was little better than an invitation to have the shit kicked out of him. If he said yes, his father would undoubtedly hit him again for being rebellious. He settled for no answer at all.
“You think he’ll come for you?” Rowan’s father swung the piece of wood again. Rowan knew better than to duck or dodge; he caught the blow squarely on the side of the head and went flying backwards. “You think you’re worth loving or saving?”
Rowan curled into a little ball, eyes closed. He couldn’t think through the pain in his head.
“Get up.” His father nudged him in the ribs with his toe. When Rowan didn’t move, he drew back and kicked him. Rowan let out a choked noise and spit out more blood. “I said get up.”
He made it to his hands and knees before another kick caught him solidly in the stomach, lifting him off the floor and making him skid several feet before hitting the leg of the kitchen table. It shuddered ominously, and several dishes fell off, hitting Rowan on the way down.
“Get up.”
It took a long minute and sheer willpower that he didn’t realize he possessed. He got to his hands and his knees. His father kicked him in the wrist. Sharp pain flared up his arm, and Rowan heard one of the bones snap. He collapsed forward again with a choked whimper.
He started trying to get up again before the words escaped his father’s lips, knowing that they were going to come and he probably wouldn’t be able to hear them anyway. Cradling his broken wrist against his chest, he pushed himself up with his other arm. Then, with legs shaking, he got to his feet.
“You think you’ve beaten me, is that it?” his father asked. His tone was amused, but Rowan could plainly hear the anger underneath it. “Think that you’re better than me, now that you’ve gone off to be a little faggot and gotten out of this slum?”
Rowan stood up straighter and looked his father in the eye. “No. I was always better than you.”
The apartment was silent for a few long seconds.
“That’s what you think, huh?” his father asked, his voice strained with anger barely held in check.
“I - ” Rowan had no idea what he was going to say; he only knew that he needed to backpedal, and fast. Before more than the first word could escape his mouth, his father swung the chair leg and hit him again, harder than before. He stumbled across the room, tried to catch himself, and crashed through the window. Before he had even registered the pain, his father grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back through.
Rowan sagged to his knees. There was shattered glass on the floor all around him. He hurt all over, but was going numb very quickly.
He looked up at his father, who looked back in a triumphant sort of shock.
He raised his hands to his throat.
They came away covered in blood. //
^^^^
Rowan sat up with a gasp. His hands clenched down in the sheets, and it took him several minutes to regain his composure.
“Are you remembering?” the ghost said quietly. “That day?”
Rowan closed his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Yes, what?” the ghost asked, amused.
“Piss off,” Rowan snarled.
Silence, for a few long minutes. The room was dimly lit by the night light Rowan kept in one corner. The music was still playing, but the CD had switched and it was only softer classical music.
“Did you mean to kill me?” Rowan asked quietly.
“No,” the ghost said. “Didn’t think you were that much of a wuss, to be honest.”
“You put my head through the window.”
“It’s not my fault that you snagged your throat on the edges when I pulled you back in.”
Rowan sighed. “Never mind. I don’t know why I bother talking to you.”
“I didn’t mean to kill you,” the ghost said, “but that doesn’t mean I regret doing it.”
Rowan ignored him. He looked down at Neil, who was crying in his sleep, and wondered what the other man was dreaming.
^^^^
// Initially, Neil had called the police from the theater payphone, but after waiting for them for five minutes, he decided that he simply couldn’t wait any longer. He got into his car. There was only one place he could think of that Rowan’s father must have taken him. He broke just about every moving violation on the way there.
He ran into the building, his heart thudding in his chest. The door to the apartment Rowan and his father had lived in, and his father now lived alone in, was locked. He slammed his shoulder against it a few times, then gave it a well-placed kick. Given that the apartment building was not particularly nice, it shuddered once and then gave.
He skidded into the apartment, his momentum carrying him nearly halfway across the room before he regained his balance and looked around. For a heart stopping fifteen seconds, he didn’t see Rowan anywhere. Then his gaze was slowly drawn to the crumpled figure lying beneath the broken window, covered in blood and shattered glass.
“Jesus.” Neil stumbled over and knelt next to Rowan. It did not occur to him that he probably shouldn’t move him. He reached out and gently put his hand on Rowan’s shoulder, shaking him. “Rowan? Rowan, baby, wake up. Wake up, look at me.”
The movement rolled Rowan onto his back. Neil stared down at the gaping wound across Rowan’s throat. Slowly, his brain filtered in the other details of the situation, the pool of blood Rowan was lying in, the broken window, the shattered glass, the blank stare in Rowan’s wonderful blue eyes.
“Rowan, wake up,” Neil said, his voice choking through his rapidly closing throat. He shook him again, harder. “Rowan, damn it, WAKE UP!”
He got up and stumbled across the room to the phone. He called 911 and said - something - he wasn’t ever sure exactly what he said. Then he dropped the phone as his knees gave. He crawled across the room, back over to Rowan. “Rowan, sweetie, it’s okay,” he said, his voice barely audible. “It’s okay, he’s gone now. You c-can stop pretending. R-Rowan? Are you listening to me? It’s me, it’s Neil. I’m here. I w-w-won’t let him hurt you.”
When the police and the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, Neil reluctantly allowed himself to be pulled away from Rowan. He knew that shock was setting in. He couldn’t think. One of the paramedics steered him into the lone remaining kitchen chair.
“He’ll be okay, right?” he asked anxiously, trying to escape the officer who was asking him questions. “I mean, he’s just . . . he’s just . . .”
“You need to answer our questions, son,” the officer said, although not unkindly.
“But they’re not doing anything,” Neil protested, standing up. “They’re not trying to help him, they’re not - ”
“Son - ” the officer began.
The paramedic walked over, cutting him off. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “There’s nothing we can do for him.”
Neil’s knees gave again. The police officer caught him. “I think we’d better go somewhere else,” he said. He guided Neil into what had once been Rowan’s bedroom, which was now completely empty, and brought the chair with him. “Can you answer a few questions for me, Neil?” the officer asked. “I know it won’t be easy for you.”
“Huh? I . . . okay,” Neil said dazedly. He had gone completely numb. He stared at the police officer with a total lack of comprehension.
The officer asked a few basic questions; Neil’s name, Rowan’s name, whether or not he was the one who had called the police, both from the movie theater and the apartment. Then he asked, “How do you know Rowan?”
Neil was in too much shock to lie. “He’s my lover.”
“Oh.” The police officer’s eyes widened a bit. “Ah. All right.” He jotted something down. “And you were out at the movies today?”
“Yeah.” Neil started to cry soundlessly. “It was his birthday, and our anniversary.”
The police officer stared at him for a few moments.
“I don’t feel good,” Neil managed, and he slumped out of the chair, unconscious before he hit the floor. //
^^^^
// The next few days passed in a blur for Neil. He hurt too much to comprehend what was going on around him. He endured endless bouts of questions with the police. He was aware, on some abstract level, that he too was a suspect, since they only had his word that he had found Rowan that way. He knew he should probably care, but he didn’t.
Eventually, they apparently agreed that he couldn’t have done it, given that he had called from the movie theater at approximately the same time Rowan was killed, according to the coroner. Since the apartment was at least ten minutes away in good traffic, it wouldn’t have been possible for him to make it that quickly. His mother was watching him like a hawk, and he didn’t blame her. He would have liked nothing better than to have thrown himself off the nearest convenient high place.
However, when she asked him about it, he gave her nothing less than the truth in its entirety.
“No,” he said. “I’m not going to kill myself. I can’t, at least not yet. Not until they catch him and I see him behind bars.” He managed a weak, watery smile for his mother. “Then you can start worrying about me.”
She accepted this, for the time being, but spent most of her time at home with him anyway. If left to his own devices, Neil did not get out of bed; nor did he eat. He simply lay in bed and stared at the wall most of the day, sometimes indulging in fits of hysterics.
After the first week, his mother started working half days again, leaving him alone in the house for a few hours at a time. Neil was drifting in and out of sleep when he heard his door open, one week after Rowan had died.
“Mom?” he asked wearily, lifting his head.
“Not quite,” a familiar voice said. Neil sat up in bed and stared at Rowan’s father as he crossed the room.
“Are you here to kill me?” he asked quietly.
Rowan’s father grinned. “It had crossed my mind,” he said. “After all, if I kill you, that’s it for the case against me for what happened to Rowan. You’re the only witness to any of the shit I did to him.”
Neil wanted to be angry, but all he felt was tired. “You say that like they wouldn’t put you behind bars anyway. Like no one would figure out that you killed me. Don’t be stupid. The only suspects were you and me - if you kill me, who does that leave, genius?”
He shrugged. “Random act of a maniac?”
“Maniacs don’t happen to know where their victim used to live. Besides, violent crimes are almost always committed by family or someone known to the person.” Neil felt cold, detached, listing these facts as if this was someone else’s life. “If you’re going to kill me, hurry up. I’ve had enough. They’ll catch you eventually, and then they’ll throw you in jail, and hopefully you’ll get a big hairy roommate for your trouble.”
“Yeah? Maybe then I’ll understand my son a little better, huh?”
Cold rage filled Neil, washing away the fuzziness that grief and insomnia had left him with. “Don’t you ever imply that I hurt Rowan,” he snarled, getting out of bed. “That’s not how things were between us.”
“Oh, yeah?” Rowan’s father was clearly amused. “Then how was it? You’re trying to tell me that you didn’t take advantage of a kid who would do anything you said, who was pretty much incapable of defying orders or thinking for himself? That’s what you’re saying?”
“I was helping him,” Neil said in a low voice. “I was helping fix the damage you did. I didn’t EVER take advantage of it, and don’t you dare imply that I did. Don’t even talk about him. You didn’t have the right to even KNOW him.”
“Aw, was it true love?” Rowan’s father asked, then said in a disgusted tone, “fucking faggots.”
Neil’s tenuous hold on his self-control snapped with those words. He launched himself across the room and caught the man in a flying tackle. Apparently, he had not expected this, because he was knocked out the door and into the hallway, where Neil pinned him to the floor.
“Don’t you ever talk about Rowan that way!” Neil screamed, punching the man across the face. “Don’t you ever! Don’t you EVER!”
He was caught off guard when the man retaliated, and went sprawling as his fist caught him squarely across the jaw. They wrestled around for a few long minutes before Neil got to his feet and tossed him backwards. Rowan’s father slammed into the door of Neil’s mother’s room, and came charging back.
Neil tried to duck, and lost his balance. He felt himself starting to fall, and pinwheeled his arms for balance, trying to keep from tumbling down the stairs. Rowan’s father laughed and gave him a solid push, sending him flying. Neil knew there was no way to stop his fall, so he reached out and grabbed the man’s wrist. They both went tumbling down the stairs together. Neil landed hard and heard a sharp crack.
For a few moments, he lay very still, trying to do a self-inventory. The crack had definitely been a bone breaking, but he didn’t hurt that much, no more than he would have thought after taking that fall. He didn’t think he had broken anything.
He shoved the man off him and got to his knees.
It was then that he realized that Rowan’s father wasn’t moving.
“Jesus,” he managed. Even someone with no medical training could tell that the man’s neck was bent at an angle far too severe to be normal.
He felt for a pulse. There was none.
He barely made it to the bathroom before he threw up. Then he called the police. He wound up in the station again, where he called his mother, not wanting her to go home and find the police there before he’d had a chance to talk to her.
The detective who questioned him was the same one who had handled the majority of his questioning after Rowan’s death. Neil told the truth in a flat tone, beyond caring whether or not he was in trouble, whether or not he went to jail. After about an hour, the man pushed back from the table. “I’m going to go see if your mother’s here yet,” he said. “She can take you home.”
Neil blinked at him. “Can’t I just go?” he asked wearily.
“No, I’m afraid you can’t,” the detective said. “Because I know the instant you’re out of everyone’s sight, you’re going to be looking for a way to kill yourself, and I’m not prepared to let you do that.”
Neil nodded silently, wondering if he was that obvious.
He sat in the small room and waited until his mother came to take him home. //
^^^^
// Neil was never charged for killing Rowan’s father, although he was unsure why - and frankly, didn’t care enough to try to find out. He hadn’t meant to kill the man, but he wasn’t exactly sorry he’d done it, either. He figured it was best to not mention that to anyone.
For the next few days, his mother hovered nearly unbearably. Neil knew that she was just worried about him, so he tried to take it in stride. Then again, he was so focused on his grief that he hardly noticed most of the time. He wasn’t sure he would have the energy to kill himself even if she did leave him alone.
He started seeing a counselor about a week after Rowan’s father’s death, at his mother’s insistence. He wasn’t sure what good it was doing; he spent most of the sessions crying. At home, he stayed in bed. He didn’t have the energy or motivation to get up or do anything. He allowed his mother to coax him up and around the house when he felt up to it, which wasn’t often. He had stopped caring where he went or what he did.
No matter what happened, his mother said the same thing: it would get better. She had gone through the same thing when his father died, she insisted, and time did make the pain fade. Neil tried to believe her. But in truth, he didn’t want the pain to fade. He didn’t want Rowan’s memory to fade.
He simply didn’t bother to point out to her that although his father’s death had indeed been a tragedy, it had been nowhere near as bloody, and she hadn’t found his body minutes too late to save him. He figured saying that would only make things worse.
He had nightmares about finding Rowan nearly every night, sometimes more than once. He woke up either screaming, or twisted in his sheets and covered with sweat. Sometimes he couldn’t even cry himself back to sleep, but instead lay there crying for hours on end, long past the point where he thought his body could no longer produce tears.
After a while, though, his mother seemed to think he was getting better. Neil wasn’t sure if she was right or not. He had stopped crying as much, that was true. He was easier to coax out of bed. It hurt less, sure, but that was mostly because he had gone so numb that he no longer felt anything at all.
However, his mother seemed satisfied, at least to some degree. She started going to work again for half-days, having taken time off after Rowan’s death to try to coax Neil back into some semblance of life. She came home often, and sent neighbors to check on him, but after the first month, she apparently decided that Neil could be trusted on his own for short periods of time.
He wondered if he had really gotten better. He paid so little attention to his surroundings and what was going on that he honestly wasn’t sure.
“Honey,” his mother said once, a few weeks after Rowan had died, “I know you’re hurting right now, but you have to remember that Rowan would want you to be okay. He wouldn’t want you to spend your whole life in misery because of what happened. He would want you to live on, to be happy.”
Neil knew she was right. The problem was that he didn’t really give a damn what Rowan would have wanted. Rowan was dead, which meant, in Neil’s opinion, that what he wanted didn’t really matter at all anymore.
It wasn’t about what Rowan wanted, or even what he wanted. It was about what he was truly capable of - and living without Rowan did not seem to be on that list of things.
His mother was treading very carefully one particular day, and Neil looked at the calendar. He realized, with the same dull pain that accompanied nearly everything, that it had been three months. He was rather surprised; he had not expected to last that long.
“Mom?” he asked the silence at breakfast.
“Yeah, honey?” She, too, was surprised. It was not usual to hear voluntary conversation from him.
“Can we go see Rowan today?”
She blinked a few times before recovering. “Of course, honey.” Neil had not asked to go to Rowan’s grave since the day he had been buried, nor had he attended the brief funeral that she had arranged and paid for. “I’ll take you when I get home this afternoon, okay?”
Neil nodded. He spent the day in his usual mode of activity - sitting, staring at the television, and doing nothing. When his mother got home, she drove him to the small cemetery where Rowan (and incidentally, Rowan’s father) had been buried. Neil sat down on the grass in front of Rowan’s grave and stared at it. He wondered if he should cry, or scream, or feel anything at all.
After quite some time, he got up, dry-eyed. Maybe Rowan wanted him to live, but could wandering around in this pain-blurred haze really be called living at all?
His mother took him home, and he went to bed, despite the fact that it was barely five o’clock. She didn’t bother him.
He lay there for a long time, staring at the wall. Apparently, quite a few hours passed, because his mother came in to say goodnight and that she was proud of him for the progress he had made today. She reminded him for what seemed like the hundredth time that Rowan would want him to be happy, and then went to bed.
After a few hours - if it was really that long - he got up. He had no real purpose or direction, but he dressed and left the house. Unsurprisingly, he wound up back at his and Rowan’s apartment. The key was still in his jacket pocket, so he let himself in and went up the stairs.
No one had been there since that morning except his mother, who had come by for some of his clothes. Other than that, it was untouched. He suspected that his mother had been planning to bring him back someday as a healing project, but they never got that far.
He lay down on the bed. A cloud of dust rose up, and he sneezed. He had hoped it might still smell like Rowan, but time had worn that away. He lay there for an interminable amount of time before he got up and started to look around the apartment.
He opened the fridge on a whim and found two bottles of wine. His mother had given them to him as an anniversary present, and he had left them to chill in the fridge so he and Rowan could get cheerfully drunk, or at least tipsy, when they got back from dinner. For a long moment, he stared at them, then he took them out and opened one.
It was fruit wine, mildly alcoholic, but he figured two bottles would be more than enough to get him drunk, especially given that he was rather underweight at this point and did not recall the last time he had eaten. After half of the first bottle, he felt a little better, so he drank the rest at a rather good clip.
He went to use the bathroom and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.
For a long moment, he did not recognize himself. He was disturbingly thin; so much so that even his face had changed. His eyes were hollow, and so dull that he wondered abstractly how he could still see out of them. His clothes nearly hung off his once-well-proportioned frame. Dark smudges stared out from beneath his eyes. His hair was longer now, nearly as long as Rowan’s had been, and matted and tangled from ill care.
With a strangled scream, he grabbed the nearest heavy object, which happened to be a can of shaving cream, and smashed it into the mirror. He continued to repeat this action until the mirror had shattered into hundreds of pieces, littering the counter and the floor.
It reminded him of shattered glass.
His knees gave and he started to shiver uncontrollably. Images which he had tried to keep pushed to the back of his head sprang forward again, carrying all the sharp pain that had turned to dull emptiness. He felt sick. He fumbled for the second bottle of wine and took a few drinks, then nearly threw up.
He slowly got to his feet, tugging open the medicine cabinet so he wouldn’t have to look at the mirror anymore. A small orange bottle caught his eye, and he reached out for it. Not long before Rowan had died, Neil had convinced him to see someone about the panic attacks he had around people who looked like his father. The doctor had given him a bottle of sedatives, which he had only barely started to take.
Neil started to laugh. Although he hadn’t come to the apartment with the express purpose of killing himself, it suddenly seemed like a very good idea. He popped the lid off the bottle and swallowed a couple with another mouthful of wine. The pills were small, and went down easily. He swallowed them two, three, even four at a time.
He wasn’t precisely thinking about what he was doing, at least, not on a conscious level.
He finished the pills - twenty-two of them, to be precise - and tossed the bottle into the trash. The wine was nearly gone. He felt queasy and dizzy. He took the last few swallows and dropped the bottle. It hit the floor and didn’t shatter.
Neil stumbled back into the bedroom he and Rowan had shared.
He fell heavily onto the bed and closed his eyes.
They did not open again.
^^^^
Chapter Twenty-Two
// Rowan whistled on his way up to the counter. He was in a ridiculously good mood, given that it was his birthday and his and Neil’s anniversary besides. His mood called for popcorn, soda, and possibly candy; he was undecided as of yet. He knew that Neil was taking him out to dinner, and he didn’t want to spoil his appetite.
“Well, well,” a familiar voice said, “What do we have here?”
Rowan stopped dead in his tracks and didn’t move. He had spent months trying to stop having panic attacks every time he saw someone that even looked like his father. Now that he was face to face with the real thing, he wondered how he could have ever forgotten how terrifying the man really was.
“So nice to see you again,” the man said, and his hand clamped down on Rowan’s wrist. “Let’s go for a little ride.”
It did not occur to Rowan to argue. Quite frankly, it never occurred to him to argue with anything the man said; he was far too afraid to do so. He let his father tug him out of the movie theater. He didn’t even drag his feet, already petrified at the concept of further incurring his father’s wrath.
The car ride across town was about ten minutes in good traffic; mid-afternoon on a weekday, it took a little longer. By the time five minutes had passed, Rowan’s mind had cleared of the sheer terror and he started to wonder if jumping out of the car would kill him. He looked down at the pavement rushing by and decided that it probably would.
Once they reached the apartment, he started trying to struggle, to run, to get away, but his father was much stronger than him, and he was dragged unwillingly into their old apartment. He opened his mouth and let out as loud a scream as he could, but that didn’t seem to hinder his father any.
As soon as they were inside, his father tossed him across the room and followed up with a punch to the stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Rowan’s scream was cut off abruptly, and he went to his knees, gagging and gasping for breath.
He knew that no one was going to come running at the scream. His father did not live in the best part of town, and God only knew that no one had ever helped him before, no matter what he did. His only hope was to hold on long enough for Neil to realize that something was wrong, then hope that Neil could figure out where he was.
“So,” his father said. “How’ve things been? Haven’t seen you in a while, boy. Enjoying your life of sin?”
Rowan saw his father pick up a chair and heard a sharp crack of wood. It didn’t really register until he saw his father holding the chair leg, and even then, he was somewhat confused until it hit him squarely in the jaw. He reeled backwards, hitting the wall.
“Told you I’d get you one of these days, didn’t I?” His father drew back and swung again, hitting him in the same place, but harder. Rowan hit the wall again and coughed. He could taste blood in his mouth; he wondered if he had bitten his tongue. His entire jaw had gone numb from pain.
“Answer me!” his father yelled, hitting him again. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Rowan tried to make his mouth work. “Y-Yes,” he managed.
“YES WHAT?”
Rowan went sprawling on the floor at the next blow, hard enough to send him skidding several feet away. “Yes sir,” he said. He couldn’t tell if the words were intelligible or not. His jaw was numb and his ears were ringing so badly that he couldn’t really hear what he had said.
“Good.” His father’s voice was quiet, and Rowan knew that he was always his most dangerous when he was quiet. “Get up.”
It took Rowan a couple tries, but he got to his feet. He spit out blood and heard a small click as one of his teeth hit the floor. Without conscious thought, he assumed his usual position, hands clasped in front of him, head bowed, eyes fixed to the floor.
“Good,” his father said again, sounding a little more satisfied with Rowan’s behavior. “You think your Prince Charming’s coming to save you, huh? Think you can hold out that long?”
Rowan was torn. If he said no, it would be admitting that he could take it, which was little better than an invitation to have the shit kicked out of him. If he said yes, his father would undoubtedly hit him again for being rebellious. He settled for no answer at all.
“You think he’ll come for you?” Rowan’s father swung the piece of wood again. Rowan knew better than to duck or dodge; he caught the blow squarely on the side of the head and went flying backwards. “You think you’re worth loving or saving?”
Rowan curled into a little ball, eyes closed. He couldn’t think through the pain in his head.
“Get up.” His father nudged him in the ribs with his toe. When Rowan didn’t move, he drew back and kicked him. Rowan let out a choked noise and spit out more blood. “I said get up.”
He made it to his hands and knees before another kick caught him solidly in the stomach, lifting him off the floor and making him skid several feet before hitting the leg of the kitchen table. It shuddered ominously, and several dishes fell off, hitting Rowan on the way down.
“Get up.”
It took a long minute and sheer willpower that he didn’t realize he possessed. He got to his hands and his knees. His father kicked him in the wrist. Sharp pain flared up his arm, and Rowan heard one of the bones snap. He collapsed forward again with a choked whimper.
He started trying to get up again before the words escaped his father’s lips, knowing that they were going to come and he probably wouldn’t be able to hear them anyway. Cradling his broken wrist against his chest, he pushed himself up with his other arm. Then, with legs shaking, he got to his feet.
“You think you’ve beaten me, is that it?” his father asked. His tone was amused, but Rowan could plainly hear the anger underneath it. “Think that you’re better than me, now that you’ve gone off to be a little faggot and gotten out of this slum?”
Rowan stood up straighter and looked his father in the eye. “No. I was always better than you.”
The apartment was silent for a few long seconds.
“That’s what you think, huh?” his father asked, his voice strained with anger barely held in check.
“I - ” Rowan had no idea what he was going to say; he only knew that he needed to backpedal, and fast. Before more than the first word could escape his mouth, his father swung the chair leg and hit him again, harder than before. He stumbled across the room, tried to catch himself, and crashed through the window. Before he had even registered the pain, his father grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back through.
Rowan sagged to his knees. There was shattered glass on the floor all around him. He hurt all over, but was going numb very quickly.
He looked up at his father, who looked back in a triumphant sort of shock.
He raised his hands to his throat.
They came away covered in blood. //
^^^^
Rowan sat up with a gasp. His hands clenched down in the sheets, and it took him several minutes to regain his composure.
“Are you remembering?” the ghost said quietly. “That day?”
Rowan closed his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Yes, what?” the ghost asked, amused.
“Piss off,” Rowan snarled.
Silence, for a few long minutes. The room was dimly lit by the night light Rowan kept in one corner. The music was still playing, but the CD had switched and it was only softer classical music.
“Did you mean to kill me?” Rowan asked quietly.
“No,” the ghost said. “Didn’t think you were that much of a wuss, to be honest.”
“You put my head through the window.”
“It’s not my fault that you snagged your throat on the edges when I pulled you back in.”
Rowan sighed. “Never mind. I don’t know why I bother talking to you.”
“I didn’t mean to kill you,” the ghost said, “but that doesn’t mean I regret doing it.”
Rowan ignored him. He looked down at Neil, who was crying in his sleep, and wondered what the other man was dreaming.
^^^^
// Initially, Neil had called the police from the theater payphone, but after waiting for them for five minutes, he decided that he simply couldn’t wait any longer. He got into his car. There was only one place he could think of that Rowan’s father must have taken him. He broke just about every moving violation on the way there.
He ran into the building, his heart thudding in his chest. The door to the apartment Rowan and his father had lived in, and his father now lived alone in, was locked. He slammed his shoulder against it a few times, then gave it a well-placed kick. Given that the apartment building was not particularly nice, it shuddered once and then gave.
He skidded into the apartment, his momentum carrying him nearly halfway across the room before he regained his balance and looked around. For a heart stopping fifteen seconds, he didn’t see Rowan anywhere. Then his gaze was slowly drawn to the crumpled figure lying beneath the broken window, covered in blood and shattered glass.
“Jesus.” Neil stumbled over and knelt next to Rowan. It did not occur to him that he probably shouldn’t move him. He reached out and gently put his hand on Rowan’s shoulder, shaking him. “Rowan? Rowan, baby, wake up. Wake up, look at me.”
The movement rolled Rowan onto his back. Neil stared down at the gaping wound across Rowan’s throat. Slowly, his brain filtered in the other details of the situation, the pool of blood Rowan was lying in, the broken window, the shattered glass, the blank stare in Rowan’s wonderful blue eyes.
“Rowan, wake up,” Neil said, his voice choking through his rapidly closing throat. He shook him again, harder. “Rowan, damn it, WAKE UP!”
He got up and stumbled across the room to the phone. He called 911 and said - something - he wasn’t ever sure exactly what he said. Then he dropped the phone as his knees gave. He crawled across the room, back over to Rowan. “Rowan, sweetie, it’s okay,” he said, his voice barely audible. “It’s okay, he’s gone now. You c-can stop pretending. R-Rowan? Are you listening to me? It’s me, it’s Neil. I’m here. I w-w-won’t let him hurt you.”
When the police and the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, Neil reluctantly allowed himself to be pulled away from Rowan. He knew that shock was setting in. He couldn’t think. One of the paramedics steered him into the lone remaining kitchen chair.
“He’ll be okay, right?” he asked anxiously, trying to escape the officer who was asking him questions. “I mean, he’s just . . . he’s just . . .”
“You need to answer our questions, son,” the officer said, although not unkindly.
“But they’re not doing anything,” Neil protested, standing up. “They’re not trying to help him, they’re not - ”
“Son - ” the officer began.
The paramedic walked over, cutting him off. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “There’s nothing we can do for him.”
Neil’s knees gave again. The police officer caught him. “I think we’d better go somewhere else,” he said. He guided Neil into what had once been Rowan’s bedroom, which was now completely empty, and brought the chair with him. “Can you answer a few questions for me, Neil?” the officer asked. “I know it won’t be easy for you.”
“Huh? I . . . okay,” Neil said dazedly. He had gone completely numb. He stared at the police officer with a total lack of comprehension.
The officer asked a few basic questions; Neil’s name, Rowan’s name, whether or not he was the one who had called the police, both from the movie theater and the apartment. Then he asked, “How do you know Rowan?”
Neil was in too much shock to lie. “He’s my lover.”
“Oh.” The police officer’s eyes widened a bit. “Ah. All right.” He jotted something down. “And you were out at the movies today?”
“Yeah.” Neil started to cry soundlessly. “It was his birthday, and our anniversary.”
The police officer stared at him for a few moments.
“I don’t feel good,” Neil managed, and he slumped out of the chair, unconscious before he hit the floor. //
^^^^
// The next few days passed in a blur for Neil. He hurt too much to comprehend what was going on around him. He endured endless bouts of questions with the police. He was aware, on some abstract level, that he too was a suspect, since they only had his word that he had found Rowan that way. He knew he should probably care, but he didn’t.
Eventually, they apparently agreed that he couldn’t have done it, given that he had called from the movie theater at approximately the same time Rowan was killed, according to the coroner. Since the apartment was at least ten minutes away in good traffic, it wouldn’t have been possible for him to make it that quickly. His mother was watching him like a hawk, and he didn’t blame her. He would have liked nothing better than to have thrown himself off the nearest convenient high place.
However, when she asked him about it, he gave her nothing less than the truth in its entirety.
“No,” he said. “I’m not going to kill myself. I can’t, at least not yet. Not until they catch him and I see him behind bars.” He managed a weak, watery smile for his mother. “Then you can start worrying about me.”
She accepted this, for the time being, but spent most of her time at home with him anyway. If left to his own devices, Neil did not get out of bed; nor did he eat. He simply lay in bed and stared at the wall most of the day, sometimes indulging in fits of hysterics.
After the first week, his mother started working half days again, leaving him alone in the house for a few hours at a time. Neil was drifting in and out of sleep when he heard his door open, one week after Rowan had died.
“Mom?” he asked wearily, lifting his head.
“Not quite,” a familiar voice said. Neil sat up in bed and stared at Rowan’s father as he crossed the room.
“Are you here to kill me?” he asked quietly.
Rowan’s father grinned. “It had crossed my mind,” he said. “After all, if I kill you, that’s it for the case against me for what happened to Rowan. You’re the only witness to any of the shit I did to him.”
Neil wanted to be angry, but all he felt was tired. “You say that like they wouldn’t put you behind bars anyway. Like no one would figure out that you killed me. Don’t be stupid. The only suspects were you and me - if you kill me, who does that leave, genius?”
He shrugged. “Random act of a maniac?”
“Maniacs don’t happen to know where their victim used to live. Besides, violent crimes are almost always committed by family or someone known to the person.” Neil felt cold, detached, listing these facts as if this was someone else’s life. “If you’re going to kill me, hurry up. I’ve had enough. They’ll catch you eventually, and then they’ll throw you in jail, and hopefully you’ll get a big hairy roommate for your trouble.”
“Yeah? Maybe then I’ll understand my son a little better, huh?”
Cold rage filled Neil, washing away the fuzziness that grief and insomnia had left him with. “Don’t you ever imply that I hurt Rowan,” he snarled, getting out of bed. “That’s not how things were between us.”
“Oh, yeah?” Rowan’s father was clearly amused. “Then how was it? You’re trying to tell me that you didn’t take advantage of a kid who would do anything you said, who was pretty much incapable of defying orders or thinking for himself? That’s what you’re saying?”
“I was helping him,” Neil said in a low voice. “I was helping fix the damage you did. I didn’t EVER take advantage of it, and don’t you dare imply that I did. Don’t even talk about him. You didn’t have the right to even KNOW him.”
“Aw, was it true love?” Rowan’s father asked, then said in a disgusted tone, “fucking faggots.”
Neil’s tenuous hold on his self-control snapped with those words. He launched himself across the room and caught the man in a flying tackle. Apparently, he had not expected this, because he was knocked out the door and into the hallway, where Neil pinned him to the floor.
“Don’t you ever talk about Rowan that way!” Neil screamed, punching the man across the face. “Don’t you ever! Don’t you EVER!”
He was caught off guard when the man retaliated, and went sprawling as his fist caught him squarely across the jaw. They wrestled around for a few long minutes before Neil got to his feet and tossed him backwards. Rowan’s father slammed into the door of Neil’s mother’s room, and came charging back.
Neil tried to duck, and lost his balance. He felt himself starting to fall, and pinwheeled his arms for balance, trying to keep from tumbling down the stairs. Rowan’s father laughed and gave him a solid push, sending him flying. Neil knew there was no way to stop his fall, so he reached out and grabbed the man’s wrist. They both went tumbling down the stairs together. Neil landed hard and heard a sharp crack.
For a few moments, he lay very still, trying to do a self-inventory. The crack had definitely been a bone breaking, but he didn’t hurt that much, no more than he would have thought after taking that fall. He didn’t think he had broken anything.
He shoved the man off him and got to his knees.
It was then that he realized that Rowan’s father wasn’t moving.
“Jesus,” he managed. Even someone with no medical training could tell that the man’s neck was bent at an angle far too severe to be normal.
He felt for a pulse. There was none.
He barely made it to the bathroom before he threw up. Then he called the police. He wound up in the station again, where he called his mother, not wanting her to go home and find the police there before he’d had a chance to talk to her.
The detective who questioned him was the same one who had handled the majority of his questioning after Rowan’s death. Neil told the truth in a flat tone, beyond caring whether or not he was in trouble, whether or not he went to jail. After about an hour, the man pushed back from the table. “I’m going to go see if your mother’s here yet,” he said. “She can take you home.”
Neil blinked at him. “Can’t I just go?” he asked wearily.
“No, I’m afraid you can’t,” the detective said. “Because I know the instant you’re out of everyone’s sight, you’re going to be looking for a way to kill yourself, and I’m not prepared to let you do that.”
Neil nodded silently, wondering if he was that obvious.
He sat in the small room and waited until his mother came to take him home. //
^^^^
// Neil was never charged for killing Rowan’s father, although he was unsure why - and frankly, didn’t care enough to try to find out. He hadn’t meant to kill the man, but he wasn’t exactly sorry he’d done it, either. He figured it was best to not mention that to anyone.
For the next few days, his mother hovered nearly unbearably. Neil knew that she was just worried about him, so he tried to take it in stride. Then again, he was so focused on his grief that he hardly noticed most of the time. He wasn’t sure he would have the energy to kill himself even if she did leave him alone.
He started seeing a counselor about a week after Rowan’s father’s death, at his mother’s insistence. He wasn’t sure what good it was doing; he spent most of the sessions crying. At home, he stayed in bed. He didn’t have the energy or motivation to get up or do anything. He allowed his mother to coax him up and around the house when he felt up to it, which wasn’t often. He had stopped caring where he went or what he did.
No matter what happened, his mother said the same thing: it would get better. She had gone through the same thing when his father died, she insisted, and time did make the pain fade. Neil tried to believe her. But in truth, he didn’t want the pain to fade. He didn’t want Rowan’s memory to fade.
He simply didn’t bother to point out to her that although his father’s death had indeed been a tragedy, it had been nowhere near as bloody, and she hadn’t found his body minutes too late to save him. He figured saying that would only make things worse.
He had nightmares about finding Rowan nearly every night, sometimes more than once. He woke up either screaming, or twisted in his sheets and covered with sweat. Sometimes he couldn’t even cry himself back to sleep, but instead lay there crying for hours on end, long past the point where he thought his body could no longer produce tears.
After a while, though, his mother seemed to think he was getting better. Neil wasn’t sure if she was right or not. He had stopped crying as much, that was true. He was easier to coax out of bed. It hurt less, sure, but that was mostly because he had gone so numb that he no longer felt anything at all.
However, his mother seemed satisfied, at least to some degree. She started going to work again for half-days, having taken time off after Rowan’s death to try to coax Neil back into some semblance of life. She came home often, and sent neighbors to check on him, but after the first month, she apparently decided that Neil could be trusted on his own for short periods of time.
He wondered if he had really gotten better. He paid so little attention to his surroundings and what was going on that he honestly wasn’t sure.
“Honey,” his mother said once, a few weeks after Rowan had died, “I know you’re hurting right now, but you have to remember that Rowan would want you to be okay. He wouldn’t want you to spend your whole life in misery because of what happened. He would want you to live on, to be happy.”
Neil knew she was right. The problem was that he didn’t really give a damn what Rowan would have wanted. Rowan was dead, which meant, in Neil’s opinion, that what he wanted didn’t really matter at all anymore.
It wasn’t about what Rowan wanted, or even what he wanted. It was about what he was truly capable of - and living without Rowan did not seem to be on that list of things.
His mother was treading very carefully one particular day, and Neil looked at the calendar. He realized, with the same dull pain that accompanied nearly everything, that it had been three months. He was rather surprised; he had not expected to last that long.
“Mom?” he asked the silence at breakfast.
“Yeah, honey?” She, too, was surprised. It was not usual to hear voluntary conversation from him.
“Can we go see Rowan today?”
She blinked a few times before recovering. “Of course, honey.” Neil had not asked to go to Rowan’s grave since the day he had been buried, nor had he attended the brief funeral that she had arranged and paid for. “I’ll take you when I get home this afternoon, okay?”
Neil nodded. He spent the day in his usual mode of activity - sitting, staring at the television, and doing nothing. When his mother got home, she drove him to the small cemetery where Rowan (and incidentally, Rowan’s father) had been buried. Neil sat down on the grass in front of Rowan’s grave and stared at it. He wondered if he should cry, or scream, or feel anything at all.
After quite some time, he got up, dry-eyed. Maybe Rowan wanted him to live, but could wandering around in this pain-blurred haze really be called living at all?
His mother took him home, and he went to bed, despite the fact that it was barely five o’clock. She didn’t bother him.
He lay there for a long time, staring at the wall. Apparently, quite a few hours passed, because his mother came in to say goodnight and that she was proud of him for the progress he had made today. She reminded him for what seemed like the hundredth time that Rowan would want him to be happy, and then went to bed.
After a few hours - if it was really that long - he got up. He had no real purpose or direction, but he dressed and left the house. Unsurprisingly, he wound up back at his and Rowan’s apartment. The key was still in his jacket pocket, so he let himself in and went up the stairs.
No one had been there since that morning except his mother, who had come by for some of his clothes. Other than that, it was untouched. He suspected that his mother had been planning to bring him back someday as a healing project, but they never got that far.
He lay down on the bed. A cloud of dust rose up, and he sneezed. He had hoped it might still smell like Rowan, but time had worn that away. He lay there for an interminable amount of time before he got up and started to look around the apartment.
He opened the fridge on a whim and found two bottles of wine. His mother had given them to him as an anniversary present, and he had left them to chill in the fridge so he and Rowan could get cheerfully drunk, or at least tipsy, when they got back from dinner. For a long moment, he stared at them, then he took them out and opened one.
It was fruit wine, mildly alcoholic, but he figured two bottles would be more than enough to get him drunk, especially given that he was rather underweight at this point and did not recall the last time he had eaten. After half of the first bottle, he felt a little better, so he drank the rest at a rather good clip.
He went to use the bathroom and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.
For a long moment, he did not recognize himself. He was disturbingly thin; so much so that even his face had changed. His eyes were hollow, and so dull that he wondered abstractly how he could still see out of them. His clothes nearly hung off his once-well-proportioned frame. Dark smudges stared out from beneath his eyes. His hair was longer now, nearly as long as Rowan’s had been, and matted and tangled from ill care.
With a strangled scream, he grabbed the nearest heavy object, which happened to be a can of shaving cream, and smashed it into the mirror. He continued to repeat this action until the mirror had shattered into hundreds of pieces, littering the counter and the floor.
It reminded him of shattered glass.
His knees gave and he started to shiver uncontrollably. Images which he had tried to keep pushed to the back of his head sprang forward again, carrying all the sharp pain that had turned to dull emptiness. He felt sick. He fumbled for the second bottle of wine and took a few drinks, then nearly threw up.
He slowly got to his feet, tugging open the medicine cabinet so he wouldn’t have to look at the mirror anymore. A small orange bottle caught his eye, and he reached out for it. Not long before Rowan had died, Neil had convinced him to see someone about the panic attacks he had around people who looked like his father. The doctor had given him a bottle of sedatives, which he had only barely started to take.
Neil started to laugh. Although he hadn’t come to the apartment with the express purpose of killing himself, it suddenly seemed like a very good idea. He popped the lid off the bottle and swallowed a couple with another mouthful of wine. The pills were small, and went down easily. He swallowed them two, three, even four at a time.
He wasn’t precisely thinking about what he was doing, at least, not on a conscious level.
He finished the pills - twenty-two of them, to be precise - and tossed the bottle into the trash. The wine was nearly gone. He felt queasy and dizzy. He took the last few swallows and dropped the bottle. It hit the floor and didn’t shatter.
Neil stumbled back into the bedroom he and Rowan had shared.
He fell heavily onto the bed and closed his eyes.
They did not open again.
^^^^