Written at the end of two days without sleep as sun raised and the birds sang. The rating will go up for the next chapter due to scenes of a sexual nature and continued crudeness. If you happen to take a few minuets to review I will love you forever.

All of the Immediate Unknowns

(are better than knowing this tired and lonely fate)

The dreams never seem to happen for a particular reason, a pattern he can understand and start to prepare himself for. It wasn't as if they only took place on the anniversary or when his nephew eventually started asking questions about his father. It is not even like Liam ever forgets and stops thinking about what happened. It's not like he thinks he deserves to ever forget or find some kind of absolution.

The dreams are never a surprise even when they are rare because he had resolved himself to carrying it with him such a long time ago. It was just that sometimes he did not think he was strong enough for the constant bombardment, thinks that he is weak and that he wants to share the weight of his crimes. But Paul won't hear a word about what happened and no one else sees beyond that laid back easy charm. He always thought of himself as a simple bloke and yet so much of his life was built upon lies and complications.

And so it was the same fucking dream night after night, always the one where he wakes up with his chest desperately heaving for air and his mouth bitter from bile. But the images are memories and they never fade or dilute during the waking hours. He doesn't think that his imagination could conger up something as vile as the image of the way his best friend's neck had twisted at such an unnaturally violent angle.

How Dean's eyes had still been open and staring and Liam had wanted to close them like they did in films but Paul would not let him. His brother had been controlling, his panic restricted to short, efficient bursts of practicality. His eyes dark and cold while Liam had shook and cried and wiped away at snot like some pathetic toddler.

All he'd been able to think at the time was that he was sorry. Maybe it was the alcohol slowing his reactions, making it feel like he was walking through sand, but he had not been begging forgiveness just yet. It had been the same thought over and over again like a broken record 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Oh fuck I'm so sorry.'

So he had nodded mutely at Paul's frantic rationalizing and helped move the dead weight of his friend to the driver's seat. Sitting him up like a man condemned upon a twisted throne coated with broken glass. He had still been warm and if it was not for the empty stare and broken bones Dean might have seemed peaceful.

Liam remembers time and time again how Paul had talked and swore'fucking hell, fuck, shit, shitshitshit, stupid cunt, I can't fuck go to jail.' How he had shouted till Liam had jumped and swallowed before moving to numbly carry out his orders. Because Paul had always known what to do. Because he had always needed his big brothers approval. The same big brother who had him bent over and wheezing at the pain in his side and had caused the head wound and the blood slowly dropped down into his left eye and stinging. The same brother who had killed their friend. Their fucking brother in law, but Paul had given him a way out, a way of carrying on. The world had not imploded from all the shame but it remained inside him, slowly eating away at his insides like a cancer darkening his lungs.

And he had wanted to say sorry to Michelle when she rushed into the hospital already trembling. To little Ryan who didn't fully understand (probably never would) but whose face already held an uncomfortable darkness that was beyond his youth.

At the funeral he had wanted to make sure both God and Dean knew. Wanted to make sure he wasn't going to hell. And then he was terribly sorry for his selfishness but he was still so scared and he had just wanted to live. Liam had begged that day, he had fallen to his knees in desperation and questioned the existence of a higher being. He just wanted to stand by his brother and he did not think he could live through seeing the look of disappointment on his mother's face if she knew the truth.

That night (or maybe it was the early hours of the next day, time had seemed to stop and stretch that night) his mother had been like a tornado pushing nurses aside to get to her son. She had held him close like she hadn't done since he was five and had tried to run across a busy road. She had held him to her chest and cried hysterically as she stroked his too long hair and he had still felt frozen under the unmoving emptiness of Dean's open eyes.

And he had been sorry every day since but Paul would never talk about it. Paul would go into dark, silently sullen moods and have sudden eruptions of violence. Paul that would disappear for days or weeks and shower the bereaved in expensive gifts and refuse to face the truth. All Liam wanted was to find some solace in the only other person who understands what it felt like to carry this terrible secret.

But it was as if Paul did not feel or care. So while Liam woke from flashbacks that always started ten seconds before the impact (sometimes he counts down, one Mississippi…and then the deafening blast followed by painful silence). Liam remembered the way Paul's eyes had looked that night, the way his brother had took him by the shoulders. How the touch had been the only warm comfort he had allowed and even then Paul had dug his fingers in a little too tight and shook him a little to make sure he had Liam's full attention. Liam remembers staring into eyes so dark and feverish and yet so dull and unfeeling like his brother had died too.

Liam thinks that he lost two brothers that night. And he blames Paul for continuing to force him to keep it a secret, for letting him flounder and struggle when he thought he might burst at the seams from the volume of it all, for not correcting Michelle when she cursed the father of her child and removed all of his pictures. He blames Paul for being behind the wheel, for drinking too much yet again and killing their best friend and for giving him a mild concussion and two fractured ribs.

Sometimes he hates Paul even more that he loves and idolises him. Sometimes Liam is so desperate to find a release from that memory that he has to drink or fuck it into oblivion because it is his only option, the only thing keeping him sane. Because his brother never showed him any other way.

And he knows that he should spend more time looking after his kid sister who was still too young to be alone with a kid of her own. But he still feels like a child himself with an overprotective mother and a co-dependency with his controlling big brother. Sometimes it is like she is separate from him till she looks up at him with those big pain filled eyes and he can't help but wish she didn't exist. Liam loves his sister he really does but he could not comprehend the depth of the way he had hurt her already, he had never thought he was capable of such evil deceit.

He is a fucking mess and so when he wakes up alone after yet another dream he knows he will gone insane unless he drinks himself into unconsciousness. So he groans as he scratches his stubble coated cheek, doesn't bother to try and make sense of the mess of his hair and brushes his teeth against the growing nausea.

Liam pulls on dirty jeans over his boxers and an uncharacteristically dark and plain t shirt, slings a mood fitting leather jacket over his arm and walks in the direction of the nearest and dodgiest bar.