Mysterious Skin - I Wish I Was (13/15)
Title: I Wish I Was (13/15)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Pairings/Characters: Wendy, OC Jay, Eric, Brian, JayxWendy, EricxBrian
Rating: light R
Warnings:language, mentions of abuse, drug abuse, sexual situations
Summary: Brian's not through with Neil. Neil's not through destroying himself.
Read
Chapter 13
(Wendy Peterson)
I called Jay in a mess of tears after Neil fell asleep. After he calmed me down, he asked me what had happened, and I told him what he'd said. I bit down on my bottom lip hard enough to make it bleed to prevent from flying into another hysterical fit. "I don't know what to do, Jay. I can't help him this way."
"Wendy… it's okay… Just remember that it's the withdrawal talking and keep him away from anything he can use to hurt himself."
I sniffed and dabbed my eyes with my wrist. "This isn't Neil. This isn't him, Jay. Neil is cocky and self-assured and swaggering. He never cries or wishes bad on himself. He's always so cool about everything and smooth-talking, and now he's just… he's not."
"Wendy…" Jay said slowly, and my heart skipped a beat for a less than romantic reason. "I have to tell you something…"
"Wh-what?"
"I think that something happened to Neil. I don't know what it was, but something happened to him. Something drove him to drugs and to this self-destructive nature."
"I know… I know that, but he won't tell me. All I have to go on is this shift in demeanor and… and…" I could have sworn my heart actually stopped there for a second.
"And what, Wendy?"
"There's… There's a shirt that he tucked away in his bottom drawer that I found when I was cleaning… It was… It was covered in blood. I thought that maybe something happened when he went back to Hutchinson because he came back so different, but now I'm not so sure. Do you think that maybe something happened at work, and that's why he didn't go back when he was supposed to?"
"I don't think so."
I was grasping at straws. I wished I could find an answer in my head that didn't inevitably lead me in the direction of having a panic attack and throwing things for being so stupid, but there wasn't really any options that didn't. Maybe he beat someone up. Maybe someone beat him up. Maybe he saw Coach Heider again. Maybe nothing happened, and he was already doing coke, and he just got a nosebleed.
"I hate this," I mumbled, leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom. "I'm sorry that I forced you guys into this. I shouldn't have… Maybe I should just take Neil back to Hutchinson and have his mom and Eric take care of him… but there are so many crazy fuckers even there."
"I don't know, Wendy… All I know is that there's something fucking with him up in that head of his, maybe even more than one thing. Julian set him off today, the jackass. I've put the chain on the door so he can't get in, so I'm guessing he's staying with someone else tonight. Do you want to come over?"
"No. No, I can't leave Neil here by himself."
Thunder cracked outside.
"Okay… well, call me if you need me to do anything. I can get you some take-out or something."
"Yeah, or something… Okay…"
Before he hung up, he said, "I love you." I wished it made me feel better.
(Eric Preston)
It was raining so heavily I could hardly see the road when we got into New York… not that it mattered. Traffic was bumper to bumper, so we were just sitting ducks most of the time. "Pretty bad storm, huh," I said to Brian.
Brian nodded, staring contemplatively out the windshield. I knew he was thinking about Neil and this meeting, and I could practically hear his heart racing from the nerves. "You okay?" I asked.
He nodded again and swallowed. "I'm sorry… I just have a… real bad feeling."
I didn't like that. It made me have a bad feeling.
"Well, everything'll be all right," I offered, squeezing his shoulder before turning my attention back to the road. "This traffic is fucking ridiculous. We aren't even moving!"
Brian turned his gaze on me then, and I couldn't help but look back as soon as I felt his eyes on me. "This could change everything about everything," he said, voice shaky.
"Or it could change nothing," I said, and I assumed he was talking about Neil. He probably was.
Still, I forgot about all that when he leaned in and kissed me in earnest, upgrading from a grandmother kiss to a fourth-grade kiss. When he pulled away, he went back to looking out the windshield, and traffic didn't seem so bad anymore.
I couldn't shake that bad feeling he'd transferred to me though.
I parked on the curb illegally just like everyone else. "Here we are," I said slowly.
Brian looked up at the building that had been the address I'd sent my unanswered postcards to. It loomed before us under the rain clouds like some kind of beast threatening to swallow anyone who came too close. There were police sirens in the distance, which I seemed to have been unable to avoid the sound of since I'd gotten into the city, and I heard a dog bark for good measure.
"Nervous?" I asked him.
"Yeah," he said, fists clenched on his knees. "I'm not sure why… I think that's why I'm so nervous." He looked at me for a long moment, and I was ready to tell him that we could just turn around and drive back and no one would be the wiser because I didn't want him to feel so pained and sick and uncomfortable if I could help it. That moment passed though while I sat there, dumbly not saying anything, and he mumbled, "well… let's go."
We got out into the downpour and ran to the stoop in the attempt to maintain a certain level of dryness. We were still soaked through while we climbed up staircase after staircase, passing by some pretty sketchy looking folks who didn't give us so much as a second glance (gratefully).
I knocked rhythmically.
I heard some shuffling around and the door cracked open just barely, chain tight against the doorframe. Wendy's familiar eye peeked out. "Oh, my God… Eric?"
"Surprise," I said, smiling the best smile I could muster.
She shut the door, undid the chain, and stepped out into the hallway. "What the hell… What are you doing here?" she asked, hugging me despite how much I must have looked like a drowned rat.
"Spring break," I said. "Brian said he'd like to see New York."
"Brian?" she questioned, knitting her eyebrows together. She then seemed to realize he was standing there. "Oh, I'm sorry… Hi… I'm Wendy." She extended her hand and Brian shook it awkwardly, and I could tell that he was thinking exactly what I was thinking.
Neil hadn't told her about him.
Neil told Wendy about everything.
"Nice to meet you," Brian mumbled.
"So, what, no welcoming cup of coffee? No towel with which to dry ourselves off?" I teased, but all my humor was gone when she turned back to me with a pale, kind of nervous look.
"Um… I hate to say it, but now is kind of… It's kind of a bad time."
"Why? What happened?" I asked. That bad feeling Brian gave me was quickly magnifying itself into an absolutely dreadful, horrible, despicable feeling.
"Neil is… he's sick. You can't see him."
That was a lie if I'd ever heard one. She wasn't good at it like Neil. Here I would have thought he'd have taught her how by now.
"Is he okay?" Brian asked.
"Um… sort of… Let's go get coffee somewhere else. I get a discount where I work-"
"I need to talk to Neil," Brian said. She stared at him as if he had just sprouted from the earth suddenly, like she'd just now noticed him all over again. "I don't care if he's sick. It's important, and it can't wait."
"Why do you need to… How do you even know him?"
Brian swallowed, knowing what he would reveal with the information, but said it anyway. "Neil and I were on the same little league team."
Her eyes widened as the sentence sunk in. She understood exactly what that meant. "Oh, my God…" she whispered, questioning Brian with her eyes. He just nodded curtly.
"All the same," Brian continued after the initial shock seemed to wear off of her, "you guys can go get coffee… I'd kind of like to talk to him alone, if I can."
"He's not… really in the right state of mind for discussion," Wendy said, expression like she'd swallowed something unpleasant and was trying to hide it.
"Why? He can't be that sick," I said.
"He's…" she hesitated, and I realized it must have been the truth leaving a bad taste in her mouth. "He's sick. He's going through cocaine withdrawal."
My heart dropped to my feet, and all I could do was stand there. Useless, as always.
"When did he start…?" I started to say.
She answered with a shrug. "I don't know. He's been kind of fucked up since he got back. You wouldn't happen to know why, would you?" She wasn't accusatory; she was desperate.
"I might," Brian said, and I looked at him standing there, dripping, fists clenched to his sides, jaw set… fearless… and I thought… he looked so grown-up.
"You'll stay with him?" Wendy asked Brian then. "Even if he pisses you off, you won't leave."
Brian shook his head. "I won't leave. I owe him that much. Both of you should go catch up. Come back in a couple hours."
She placed a hand on his cheek in a mom way… no… in the way she had placed her hand on Neil's cheek the day she had left. "I don't know who you even are… but… if you can fix him…"
Brian shook his head. "I can't do that. No one can… except him. I might be able to help him though. I should at least try."
I wanted to kiss his whole face and shout from the rooftops that I loved him more than anyone in the whole universe. Instead, I just let Wendy take me by the hand and pull me down the stairs, all the while with her yelling, "You should be careful! He can get violent! He has really random triggers, and don't give him any money!"
I watched him slowly grow smaller as we descended the steps; I never took my eyes off of him. I even looked up at him through the floor when I could no longer see him, and I wished, hoped, and prayed… Please let everything be okay.
"Why did you bring him here, Eric?" Wendy asked suddenly.
I realized we were in the lobby. "I had to. He told me that he needed to come here and see Neil again."
"He saw him before?"
"Yeah… Christmas Eve. Brian couldn't remember what happened to him. Neil told him the truth."
Wendy opened her mouth and closed it a second later. "Jesus…" she said in exasperation, touching a hand to her forehead. "So… why did Neil come here all messed up when that guy, Ryan-"
"Brian," I corrected.
"-Brian is perfectly fine? That's some shitty logic for you there."
"He wasn't fine when we left. He's been getting better… slowly…" I said, admiration shining through.
"Is he your boyfriend or something?" she asked, apparently wanting to change the subject somehow.
"Not exactly," I said. There wasn't much more I could add to that.
It seemed like a long time passed where we just stood there, her still holding my hand like a lost child and looking at the floor like she'd just been punished. "Did… Did Neil say anything to you about something happening to him?"
"No," I said. "Does he ever?"
"I guess not."
I thought back on that Christmas Eve when I'd seen him again, discovering this new, colder, harder Neil McCormick in his place and… "He was all bruised up. Said he got mugged on his way to the airport."
"Do you think that's true?"
"I wish I did."
She looked like she was about to cry. I had a feeling if she started the waterworks, I wouldn't be far behind. It left me with a squirming fear in my gut. Just how bad off was Neil? I felt guilty for leaving Brian there, and I was tempted to go running back up those stairs, proverbial guns a-blazing to rescue him from the beast Neil had apparently become.
But again, I just stood there.
Useless, as always.
Wendy squeezed my hand tightly as if she would never let go.
I had a feeling she could relate to how useless I felt. I wished I had called her beforehand and found out what we were up against in all that time I'd spent hoping that Brian would change his mind.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, after all.
Author: osaki_nana_707
Pairings/Characters: Wendy, OC Jay, Eric, Brian, JayxWendy, EricxBrian
Rating: light R
Warnings:language, mentions of abuse, drug abuse, sexual situations
Summary: Brian's not through with Neil. Neil's not through destroying himself.
Read
Chapter 13
(Wendy Peterson)
I called Jay in a mess of tears after Neil fell asleep. After he calmed me down, he asked me what had happened, and I told him what he'd said. I bit down on my bottom lip hard enough to make it bleed to prevent from flying into another hysterical fit. "I don't know what to do, Jay. I can't help him this way."
"Wendy… it's okay… Just remember that it's the withdrawal talking and keep him away from anything he can use to hurt himself."
I sniffed and dabbed my eyes with my wrist. "This isn't Neil. This isn't him, Jay. Neil is cocky and self-assured and swaggering. He never cries or wishes bad on himself. He's always so cool about everything and smooth-talking, and now he's just… he's not."
"Wendy…" Jay said slowly, and my heart skipped a beat for a less than romantic reason. "I have to tell you something…"
"Wh-what?"
"I think that something happened to Neil. I don't know what it was, but something happened to him. Something drove him to drugs and to this self-destructive nature."
"I know… I know that, but he won't tell me. All I have to go on is this shift in demeanor and… and…" I could have sworn my heart actually stopped there for a second.
"And what, Wendy?"
"There's… There's a shirt that he tucked away in his bottom drawer that I found when I was cleaning… It was… It was covered in blood. I thought that maybe something happened when he went back to Hutchinson because he came back so different, but now I'm not so sure. Do you think that maybe something happened at work, and that's why he didn't go back when he was supposed to?"
"I don't think so."
I was grasping at straws. I wished I could find an answer in my head that didn't inevitably lead me in the direction of having a panic attack and throwing things for being so stupid, but there wasn't really any options that didn't. Maybe he beat someone up. Maybe someone beat him up. Maybe he saw Coach Heider again. Maybe nothing happened, and he was already doing coke, and he just got a nosebleed.
"I hate this," I mumbled, leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom. "I'm sorry that I forced you guys into this. I shouldn't have… Maybe I should just take Neil back to Hutchinson and have his mom and Eric take care of him… but there are so many crazy fuckers even there."
"I don't know, Wendy… All I know is that there's something fucking with him up in that head of his, maybe even more than one thing. Julian set him off today, the jackass. I've put the chain on the door so he can't get in, so I'm guessing he's staying with someone else tonight. Do you want to come over?"
"No. No, I can't leave Neil here by himself."
Thunder cracked outside.
"Okay… well, call me if you need me to do anything. I can get you some take-out or something."
"Yeah, or something… Okay…"
Before he hung up, he said, "I love you." I wished it made me feel better.
(Eric Preston)
It was raining so heavily I could hardly see the road when we got into New York… not that it mattered. Traffic was bumper to bumper, so we were just sitting ducks most of the time. "Pretty bad storm, huh," I said to Brian.
Brian nodded, staring contemplatively out the windshield. I knew he was thinking about Neil and this meeting, and I could practically hear his heart racing from the nerves. "You okay?" I asked.
He nodded again and swallowed. "I'm sorry… I just have a… real bad feeling."
I didn't like that. It made me have a bad feeling.
"Well, everything'll be all right," I offered, squeezing his shoulder before turning my attention back to the road. "This traffic is fucking ridiculous. We aren't even moving!"
Brian turned his gaze on me then, and I couldn't help but look back as soon as I felt his eyes on me. "This could change everything about everything," he said, voice shaky.
"Or it could change nothing," I said, and I assumed he was talking about Neil. He probably was.
Still, I forgot about all that when he leaned in and kissed me in earnest, upgrading from a grandmother kiss to a fourth-grade kiss. When he pulled away, he went back to looking out the windshield, and traffic didn't seem so bad anymore.
I couldn't shake that bad feeling he'd transferred to me though.
I parked on the curb illegally just like everyone else. "Here we are," I said slowly.
Brian looked up at the building that had been the address I'd sent my unanswered postcards to. It loomed before us under the rain clouds like some kind of beast threatening to swallow anyone who came too close. There were police sirens in the distance, which I seemed to have been unable to avoid the sound of since I'd gotten into the city, and I heard a dog bark for good measure.
"Nervous?" I asked him.
"Yeah," he said, fists clenched on his knees. "I'm not sure why… I think that's why I'm so nervous." He looked at me for a long moment, and I was ready to tell him that we could just turn around and drive back and no one would be the wiser because I didn't want him to feel so pained and sick and uncomfortable if I could help it. That moment passed though while I sat there, dumbly not saying anything, and he mumbled, "well… let's go."
We got out into the downpour and ran to the stoop in the attempt to maintain a certain level of dryness. We were still soaked through while we climbed up staircase after staircase, passing by some pretty sketchy looking folks who didn't give us so much as a second glance (gratefully).
I knocked rhythmically.
I heard some shuffling around and the door cracked open just barely, chain tight against the doorframe. Wendy's familiar eye peeked out. "Oh, my God… Eric?"
"Surprise," I said, smiling the best smile I could muster.
She shut the door, undid the chain, and stepped out into the hallway. "What the hell… What are you doing here?" she asked, hugging me despite how much I must have looked like a drowned rat.
"Spring break," I said. "Brian said he'd like to see New York."
"Brian?" she questioned, knitting her eyebrows together. She then seemed to realize he was standing there. "Oh, I'm sorry… Hi… I'm Wendy." She extended her hand and Brian shook it awkwardly, and I could tell that he was thinking exactly what I was thinking.
Neil hadn't told her about him.
Neil told Wendy about everything.
"Nice to meet you," Brian mumbled.
"So, what, no welcoming cup of coffee? No towel with which to dry ourselves off?" I teased, but all my humor was gone when she turned back to me with a pale, kind of nervous look.
"Um… I hate to say it, but now is kind of… It's kind of a bad time."
"Why? What happened?" I asked. That bad feeling Brian gave me was quickly magnifying itself into an absolutely dreadful, horrible, despicable feeling.
"Neil is… he's sick. You can't see him."
That was a lie if I'd ever heard one. She wasn't good at it like Neil. Here I would have thought he'd have taught her how by now.
"Is he okay?" Brian asked.
"Um… sort of… Let's go get coffee somewhere else. I get a discount where I work-"
"I need to talk to Neil," Brian said. She stared at him as if he had just sprouted from the earth suddenly, like she'd just now noticed him all over again. "I don't care if he's sick. It's important, and it can't wait."
"Why do you need to… How do you even know him?"
Brian swallowed, knowing what he would reveal with the information, but said it anyway. "Neil and I were on the same little league team."
Her eyes widened as the sentence sunk in. She understood exactly what that meant. "Oh, my God…" she whispered, questioning Brian with her eyes. He just nodded curtly.
"All the same," Brian continued after the initial shock seemed to wear off of her, "you guys can go get coffee… I'd kind of like to talk to him alone, if I can."
"He's not… really in the right state of mind for discussion," Wendy said, expression like she'd swallowed something unpleasant and was trying to hide it.
"Why? He can't be that sick," I said.
"He's…" she hesitated, and I realized it must have been the truth leaving a bad taste in her mouth. "He's sick. He's going through cocaine withdrawal."
My heart dropped to my feet, and all I could do was stand there. Useless, as always.
"When did he start…?" I started to say.
She answered with a shrug. "I don't know. He's been kind of fucked up since he got back. You wouldn't happen to know why, would you?" She wasn't accusatory; she was desperate.
"I might," Brian said, and I looked at him standing there, dripping, fists clenched to his sides, jaw set… fearless… and I thought… he looked so grown-up.
"You'll stay with him?" Wendy asked Brian then. "Even if he pisses you off, you won't leave."
Brian shook his head. "I won't leave. I owe him that much. Both of you should go catch up. Come back in a couple hours."
She placed a hand on his cheek in a mom way… no… in the way she had placed her hand on Neil's cheek the day she had left. "I don't know who you even are… but… if you can fix him…"
Brian shook his head. "I can't do that. No one can… except him. I might be able to help him though. I should at least try."
I wanted to kiss his whole face and shout from the rooftops that I loved him more than anyone in the whole universe. Instead, I just let Wendy take me by the hand and pull me down the stairs, all the while with her yelling, "You should be careful! He can get violent! He has really random triggers, and don't give him any money!"
I watched him slowly grow smaller as we descended the steps; I never took my eyes off of him. I even looked up at him through the floor when I could no longer see him, and I wished, hoped, and prayed… Please let everything be okay.
"Why did you bring him here, Eric?" Wendy asked suddenly.
I realized we were in the lobby. "I had to. He told me that he needed to come here and see Neil again."
"He saw him before?"
"Yeah… Christmas Eve. Brian couldn't remember what happened to him. Neil told him the truth."
Wendy opened her mouth and closed it a second later. "Jesus…" she said in exasperation, touching a hand to her forehead. "So… why did Neil come here all messed up when that guy, Ryan-"
"Brian," I corrected.
"-Brian is perfectly fine? That's some shitty logic for you there."
"He wasn't fine when we left. He's been getting better… slowly…" I said, admiration shining through.
"Is he your boyfriend or something?" she asked, apparently wanting to change the subject somehow.
"Not exactly," I said. There wasn't much more I could add to that.
It seemed like a long time passed where we just stood there, her still holding my hand like a lost child and looking at the floor like she'd just been punished. "Did… Did Neil say anything to you about something happening to him?"
"No," I said. "Does he ever?"
"I guess not."
I thought back on that Christmas Eve when I'd seen him again, discovering this new, colder, harder Neil McCormick in his place and… "He was all bruised up. Said he got mugged on his way to the airport."
"Do you think that's true?"
"I wish I did."
She looked like she was about to cry. I had a feeling if she started the waterworks, I wouldn't be far behind. It left me with a squirming fear in my gut. Just how bad off was Neil? I felt guilty for leaving Brian there, and I was tempted to go running back up those stairs, proverbial guns a-blazing to rescue him from the beast Neil had apparently become.
But again, I just stood there.
Useless, as always.
Wendy squeezed my hand tightly as if she would never let go.
I had a feeling she could relate to how useless I felt. I wished I had called her beforehand and found out what we were up against in all that time I'd spent hoping that Brian would change his mind.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, after all.