Author's Note: I've had this on the backburner since mid-August. Now that school's out, I finally had the time to finish it. It's a little bit based off of personal experience.
The timeline and continuity are a little messed up here. In the original draft, it was supposed to take place not long after "Mr. Brightside". But since Eli didn't really find the rationale and calm needed for this fic until after "Extraordinary Machine", you would have to set this after his official bipolar diagnosis and after he started getting into some serious long-term help. So I guess it's somewhere after that. Again, the continuity doesn't really add up, but hey, that's what happens when your initial idea gets pushed back nearly six months. Besides…Degrassi? Continuity? Aren't those two concepts like oil and water? Milk and pizza? Cake and established character development?
Also, despite the strange similarity to an incident in "Nowhere to Run", I had this idea outlined three months before that even aired. So I assure you, I didn't get the plot of this story from that episode. It's just a really weird coincidence.
The quotes at the beginning of the sections are from the poem "Wooden Heart" by Listener.
Twitter: AlbatrossTam14 (protected tweets)
I don't own Degrassi, nor do I own "Wooden Heart".
I.
"I've been haunted by standard red devils and white ghosts, and it's not only when these eyes are closed."
Eli reached over and turned down the volume on the television as Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf were outrunning a Decepticon trying to blow up the ground underneath them.
"Dude!" Adam protested. "Leave it!"
"Your mom already came down twice and told us to turn it down," he reminded Adam. "I don't need her getting more pissed. She's already mad we were eating pizza on the couch."
"She needs to chill," Adam grumbled. "This is our bonus room. It's not like we're eating in her precious living room."
"Well," Eli said, "for the sake of not blowing any parental gaskets again, let's just turn it down a bit. This movie causes enough explosions."
"Yeah," Adam replied, "and that's what makes it awesome."
Eli grinned. "And I'm sure Megan Fox has nothing to do with the reason why you love this movie."
Adam shoved him on the arm. "Can't hurt."
Eli laughed and took another slice of pizza. He and Adam had gotten two – a small Supreme Meatlovers for Adam, who could consume a nightmarish amount of pizza even by Eli's standards, and a medium stuffed crust cheese for the two of them to share.
"You know what kills me about this movie?" Adam asked. "Why are humans holding so much power over the Auto-Bots? If I were one of them, I would have blown a hole through the earth by now." He pointed at the screen. "And since when did JetFire become a Decepticon in the first place? They totally destroyed canon with that."
"That's the only thing that bothers you?" Eli asked. "Cause I can pick out at least ten more plotholes that happened in the scene before this one. I mean, how do they go to a museum in D.C., and suddenly come out in Arizona?"
"Why don't her pants ever get dirty?" Adam added, pointing to Megan Fox. "She's running through the red desert in white pants, and they're perfectly clean."
"Robot Heaven," Eli finished, shaking his head. "That's all I'm gonna say."
Adam laughed.
The door to the basement swung open and slammed against the wall, startling both of them.
"Adam!" Eli heard Mrs. Torres shout from the top of the stairs. "Come here, now."
Adam made a face at Eli. "Wonder what we did this time," he grumbled, jumping off the couch and heading up the stairs. "Be right back. You don't have to pause it."
Eli nodded and turned back to the screen.
He could hear voices from the top of the stairs, most of it drowned out by the sound of more robot explosions and Megan Fox screaming (she made this weird face whenever she yelled, and it kept making Eli laugh during the rare quiet parts. Something about the way her face stretched looked more funny than serious. How much community theatre had she done before someone picked her up for these films, anyway?) until Adam came back a moment later, his face pale and strangely blank.
Eli sat up in surprise. "What's wrong?" he asked.
Adam stood there for a moment, wringing his hands nervously.
"My mom's taking my brother to the hospital," he answered. He sounded dazed. "She told me to look up my dad's hotel phone number in the emails. His cell's busy, so she needs me to call the hotel and see if I can get a hold of him."
Eli's eyes widened. "Is Drew okay?"
Adam shrugged.
Eli glanced at the door at the top of the stairs. He grabbed the remote and muted the television, silencing the big head-to-head Megatron/Optimus showdown in mid-blast. The door upstairs was slightly ajar and he could see a sliver of light filtering in from the kitchen, but he couldn't hear anything more than the steps of feet and rumble of indistinguishable voices. It sounded like the rustle of trapped, beating wings.
Adam was running his fingers through his hair, still standing in place, swaying slightly on his feet.
"Dude," Eli said, "what happened? What's wrong?"
Adam shook his head, his eyes wide.
"I don't know," he said. "They're leaving for the ER right now.
He stumbled to the home computer, sitting on a desk in the corner of the bonus room.
"I need to call my dad," he muttered. "I gotta get that number."
Adam nearly tripped over the cords, which sprung Eli into action. He stood over Adam's shoulder at the modem, feeling useless and hating it.
Adam drummed his fingers against the desk and tapped his foot anxiously.
"Hurry up, slow fucking modem," he swore. "Hurry up. Hurry the fuck up, already. Jesus Christ, hurry up!"
Eli heard the hysteria seeping into his voice, the crackle and wobble of a high pitch he kept at bay in everyday conversation threaded through his empty pleas. His hands shook visibly on the keyboard, and he was mumbling even more curse words under his breath.
"Dude," Eli said. He touched Adam's shoulder and felt his friend twitch underneath his hand, but kept his hand where it was. "It's all right, take a breath. It's loading. Do you know your mom's email password?"
Adam slammed his hand down on the desk so hard it made Eli jump.
"Shit!" he hollered. "No, I don't. Shit! I need her to text it to me."
Adam reached into his hoodie to pull his phone out of his pocket, but his hands were trembling so badly the phone slipped out of his grasp and clattered on the floor.
"Shit," Adam repeated, nearly falling out of his chair in his haste to pick it up.
Eli knelt down beside him, picking up the phone, and reached over and touched Adam's arm. This time, he didn't flinch or try to pull away.
"It's okay," he said. "I've got it. I'll text her."
Adam nodded, biting his lip furtively. His face was drained of color. Eli looked away pointedly, pretending to be absorbed in the text he was sending to give Adam a moment to collect himself.
A moment later, Adam's phone buzzed in his hands.
"Your mom texted you back," Eli called. "Password's torresfamily4." He tried for a smile. "Leave it to parents to be original like that."
Adam tried to grin, but his face froze in a grimace instead as he typed in the password.
"Shit," Adam said a moment later. "She has, like forty new messages. How the hell am I supposed to find it?"
"Try using the search engine," Eli offered.
"I don't even know the name of the hotel!" Adam said.
Eli maneuvered around Adam and scanned Mrs. Torres's new messages – mostly PTA-related stuff, and some emails that looked like updates from friends and family members – before finally finding one at the bottom for a reservation at a hotel and convention center in Winnipeg.
"Got it," Eli said, clicking on the email and opening the reservation. "Number for the hotel's at the top." He looked at Adam's pale face. "You want me to call them?"
"Do you mind?" Adam asked. "I'm gonna try my dad's cell again."
Eli nodded. "Sure, man. I'll call the hotel."
Adam nodded gratefully to him, then took his cell and darted out the back door.
Eli grabbed the house phone and dialed the number for the front desk. It redirected him to the room number, where he left a quick message for Mr. Torres to call his wife as soon as possible. He tried to keep his voice neutral so he wouldn't give the guy a heart attack when he heard the message, but hoped Mr. Torres would get back to her soon.
Adam came in a few minutes later, his face flushed red and his jacket dusted with light snow. He was shill shivering, but Eli figured it wasn't just from the cold.
"Any luck?" Eli asked.
Adam shook his head. "I called twice. All I got was a busy signal. You didn't get him?"
"No. But I left a message in his hotel room. I told him to call your mom as soon as he got in."
Adam nodded.
"Good," he muttered. "Good."
"Dude," Eli asked, "what happened? Is he hurt?"
Adam paced nervously, tossing his cell phone from hand to hand.
"I don't know," he said. He continued to pace the room. He sat back down on the couch, but kept jumping up, walking around the furniture in agitated circles.
"He said he couldn't breathe," Adam said after a minute. "He said his chest hurt really bad."
"Did it just happen all of a sudden?"
Adam shrugged. "I don't know. He didn't say anything except that he couldn't breathe and his chest was hurting. He couldn't really talk. He couldn't…"
Adam rocked on his heels for a moment, then fell back onto the couch, rubbing his temples.
"He'll be all right," Eli said. "I'm sure everything's gonna be fine."
Adam sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. Things are just messed up all the time now."
"All the Spring Break stuff?" Eli asked. He remembered when Adam had called him a month or so ago, talking so fast and high-pitched he didn't sound like himself, telling Eli about his brother getting jumped outside The Dot and that they were in the ER with him right now. Adam hadn't talked much about it since then, but Eli could tell it was still worrying him.
"I don't even know the half of it," Adam said. "It's like he's in another world these days. He just hides in his room all the time and when he comes out, he's all tense and jumpy. It's like being around a freaking landmine." He sighed. "I guess it just exploded."
He pressed a hand on his forehead, rubbing his temples. "I told you about the fighting thing, right?"
Eli nodded. "Did something else happen with that?"
Adam shrugged. "I don't know. He punches a hole in the wall and I hear him at, like, four AM out here, beating the crap out of that punching bag. He gets all these weird bruises and won't talk about where he got them or how."
"He's trying to deal," Eli said.
"Well, the Idiot's gonna get himself killed," Adam shot back.
"I didn't say it was smart," Eli replied. "I'm just saying. He's trying to deal with it all his own way."
"Or he's not," Adam said. "I wish he'd just fess up about him having PTSD and get some help, already. He's gonna explode one of these days. Or some Andre The Giant is gonna snap his neck in a fight."
Adam raked his fingers through his hair, making it stick up, and lay prone on the couch, staring at the ceiling.
"He's just so out of control lately," he murmured. "And I have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to do."
"Come on," Eli urged. "Try calling your mom again. They might have seen a doctor by now with him."
Adam nodded, and scrolled through his contacts list with shaking fingers. He was pacing to the dial tone Eli could hear crackling through the tiny speaker. It was like a message across oceans, deserts, skies. And other things that seem completely impossible to get across. Things like loss, grief, terror; the lockdown of someone's own headspace. Eli knew all that feeling too well, and it made his own pulse jump.
There was a voice at the other end of the line, something low and muttering. It sounded like radio static on a dark highway, like the last contact to the world in the middle of an endless road, lined with shadows made of thought and moonlight.
"Mom?" Adam's voice was still in that dangerously high range, the one he avoided and colors out of his voice in everyday conversation. But he was chewing on his lip hard enough to draw blood, and Eli wondered if he kept pacing because he didn't trust himself to stay standing up if he stopped moving.
"Well, are they sure nothing else is wrong?" More crackle at the other end of the line. "So what does that mean? Does he need to be checked out? Do they need to keep him overnight?" Crackle, crackle. Eli remembered those old Peanuts cartoons where the grown-ups spoke in mumbles and muffled non-syllables.
"Are you sure?" More Peanuts-talk. "Mom, if he really needs it, don't you think…"
Adam frowned, but he looked more tired than angry to Eli.
"Yeah," he mumbled. "Okay. Yeah. I got it. I'll try calling Dad again. See if he answers. See you soon."
Adam let the dial tone echo in his palm, staring at the phone like he was wavering between throwing it and just letting it fall to the floor.
"So," Eli asked. "What's the verdict?"
Adam blinked at his voice, like he'd forgotten Eli was there.
"Panic attack," he said.
Eli winced in sympathy. He knew the feeling well. After Julia died, he'd had a bunch of panic attacks, and had been hospitalized for them a few times. He'd been on an anti-anxiety prescription for them for a while, but had stopped taking them because he hated being medicated, and his parents didn't push the issue. Since his bipolar diagnosis, the meds he was taking kept his anxiety under control, so he hadn't had one since right after he and Clare had broken up. But that didn't mean he didn't remember, with Technicolor-vivid pain and clarity, exactly what one felt like. Once you'd felt a complete loss of control like that, you weren't likely to forget it.
"And they're coming home?" he asked.
Adam shrugged. "My mom said they gave her two options – hook him up to an IV and give him some medicine to help him chill, or sign out without seeing a doctor and just come home. Since he's not exactly dying, she's just checking him out."
"So he's all right?" Eli remembered his own hospitalizations, feeling like he had fire under his skin. Even those attacks that hadn't been bad enough to warrant an ER visit hadn't been a picnic. It took hours of recuperation, until the stammering heartbeat and trembling limbs finally drained away the last of the lockdown from panic's grip.
Adam slid his cell phone shut, cutting off the persistent clang of the dial tone. He put his hands on his hips, then folded them across his chest, then on his hips once more, as if he couldn't figure out where to put himself. He settled on burying his face into them.
"I don't fucking know," Eli heard him mumble into his palms.
II.
"We all need grace that we're never given."
Hours after Adam had fallen into a tense, unsettled sleep, Eli tiptoed out of the bedroom and into the empty bonus room, lying down on the couch with the latest issue of Gothic Tales. He thought about turning the TV on mute and flipping through the TiVo catalog, but didn't want to make any noise or disrupt after the night everyone had had. So he propped himself up on the couch cushions and rested the magazine up on his chest, hoping to read himself tired enough to fall asleep sometime before the sun rose.
The bang didn't worry him so much as the clatter he heard afterward. Whatever he thought it was, the first smash he heard didn't make him get off the couch. But the second wave of crashing, like demented wind chimes and slick skin meeting in angry, clash-chord rhythm, made him sit up.
The second clang was followed by perfect stillness too eerie to be real. A sound trying not to be a sound.
Tiptoeing down the hallway towards the artificial silence, Eli found a light sliding like a blade from underneath the closed bathroom door. He placed the palm of his hand against the door and leaned closer, hearing the tense breath being held through the wooden barricade.
He twisted the knob. Whoever was trying so hard to hide hadn't bothered to lock the door.
Eli was used to seeing weird things. He'd walked in on his parents having sex twice – once when he was ten and again at fourteen. He'd seen Adam's boobs once, one morning after Adam had slept over and left the bathroom door unlocked and Eli had accidentally walked in on him getting out of the shower. He'd seen Clare's face turn purple at the mention of her vibrator incident, and oh was it ever magical in so many ways to see her face when she realized he had acquired that bit of knowledge. And since Julia had been living with them for nearly six months before her death, he'd seen her do all sorts of weirdness that she usually did in the privacy of her own house but was now doing in his – her habit (she had called it a talent) of picking up things with her toes instead of bending down to grab them with her hands like any normal person; curling her eyelashes as he sat and watched, mesmerized, wondering how she didn't accidentally yank them all out instead; how she took apart her sandwiches before eating them. And, a few times, her masturbating.
But seeing Drew sitting on a cold bathroom floor, surrounded by chunks of broken glass and his hand dripping blood was a weird sight, even by Eli's undemanding standards.
Eli glanced around the bathroom. There was blood smeared on the gleaming marble countertop, and more dripping from Drew's hand onto the white tiles. Eli's eyes followed the bloody tracks to above the sink, where a mirror hung. Or what used to be a mirror, anyway. Now it was just an outline of one, the black frame hanging empty and askew. Eli stared at the shattered glass on the floor, the blank outline of the mirror, the drip drip drip of blood, and felt a sad, tired understanding.
Drew's head whipped up and his face drained of whatever color remained when he realized he was being watched. He narrowed his eyes in a glare, but the look disintegrated before it could set on Eli.
Eli held out his hands, trying to look as impassive as possible. Even through the layers upon layers of fatigue and the residual tension he knew uncomfortably well as the aftershock of total panic, he could feel Drew's embarrassment at being caught in the act, and even more so the hostile annoyance that Eli was here. Eli could tell he was trying to hold his poise; or whatever of it he was attempting to summon at the moment, which was a pitiful amount that wasn't doing the job.
Drew lifted his head and peered at Eli through sweaty hair and heavy eyes.
"Did you see me?" he asked.
Eli could tell by the look on his face that he already knew the answer to that.
Eli made the joke in his voice as clear as possible, a way to save face for both their sakes.
"What, saw you break that mirror?" He made sure to grin. "No. Thanks for the seven years of luck, by the way. Though I think I already had it coming, so it's most likely not your fault."
Drew didn't crack a smile. His head drooped low again, cradling his bleeding hand. He didn't move, as if holding still would make Eli disappear.
Eli took a step closer to the mess of broken glass. He could also see hunks of green and blue porcelain, a shattered soap dish Drew must have thrown to break the mirror. The misshapen pieces surrounded them, numerous as stars, fallen to earth.
At least it was pretty, he thought. He could see the overhead lights twisting in the glittering shards, reflecting off the glass and spreading rainbow light that flickered like wings against the white walls. At least it didn't look like much of a disaster.
He dared another step closer, taking care not to step on the glass in his bare feet.
"Hey, dude," he said. "I get it." He thought of the computer he smashed in the M.I. lab back at Degrassi, the one Imogen had taken the fall for – literally, he remembered. "Sometimes, we just need to break shit to make ourselves feel better."
Drew still was staring at his bloody hand. Eli could see it was shaking.
"I feel like I'm going nuts," Drew whispered.
It sounded like the swoop of your belly when you miss a step going down the stairs. Unexpected and terrified, totally off-balance and airborne. Who knew when you'd hit ground, or what state you'd be in when you did. It made Eli take a step closer and push aside the glass with the edges of his feet, clearing a place to sit down.
"Trust me," Eli said. He folded his legs underneath him and scooted as close to Drew has he thought they could both be comfortable with. "You're not going nuts." His voice was light, but not remotely joking. "People who are going nuts think they're normal. Not that they're going more nuts."
Drew lifted his eyes, his head still hanging down gracelessly. The pride was rinsed out of them, all cocky attitude and swagger and empty arrogance gone.
"I lost it," he murmured.
Eli paused, his hands on his knees, staring across the bloody tiles. The lights above them rattled and flickered, the whole room feeling deep and heavy and exposed.
Drew stared at Eli's face like he was looking for something there, though Eli had no idea why, but before he could try and figure it out Drew dropped his gaze again, making a sound somewhere between a sigh and a hoarse laugh.
Silence followed again, the most weary and distressed Eli had ever known. There were no steps from upstairs, indicating that Mrs. Torres had woken up, and Eli couldn't hear Adam padding down the hallway to see the commotion, either. It was just the two of them, thrown out of some atmosphere to this island of broken clarity. Eli felt strangely distant from everything, as if he'd just discovered a whole new level of alone he never realized was there before.
"Dude." Eli was a little startled by the sound of his own voice echoing through the hollow belly of their little world. It sounded smooth and remote, like river stones or still water. It calmed him with its unfamiliarity, like he'd taken a backseat in his own life and was letting this other person switch into manage-crisis mode. "You mind?"
It was a strange role reversal. For once, Eli wasn't the one trapped in the Hell of his own headspace.
Drew flinched at the words, pressing his blood-free hand to his temple like his head was killing him. Eli took hold of the other one, looking at the jagged cut along Drew's palm. Eli wondered if he'd need stitches eventually, but they wouldn't know anything until the blood was cleared away.
Drew stared at his hurt hand in Eli's, blinking slowly. He was either confused or irked, but whichever it was, he didn't pull away. After a moment or two, Drew relented, shoulders slumping and the tension draining out of them like he couldn't keep the defense up any longer.
"I'll take that as a yes," Eli answered.
III.
"We all have the same holes in our hearts. Everything falls apart at the exact same time."
Everything stank.
Even though he'd changed his clothes since he had gotten home from the hospital, he could still smell it on himself. A mix of grease and industrial cleaner. It was overpowering and refused to let him sleep. Even burying himself into the center of his pillow and trying to bury himself in his own scent didn't work. The stench was everywhere, as if it had soaked into his bones.
A dull headache that had been building ever since he and his mom had left the ER was beating full-force against his temples, like hammer strokes. It ached behind his eyes and made his vision swim at the edges, and every time he smelled that smell, the headache seemed to kick up another notch.
Shower, he thought absently. He could use a shower – stand under the cool water, let himself breathe in warm steam, wash that stink off of him. A shower could clear his head, help him relax, just like the nurse had said. Just relax, take a deep breath, sleep it off, you'll feel better in the morning.
Like he had a fucking cold or something. Like he hadn't gone to that hospital feeling like he was fucking dying.
Clutching his head with one hand, he climbed out of bed, his knees still shaking and arm hanging heavy and useless at his side. He crept into the hallway in silent socked feet and found himself in the bathroom he and Adam shared.
Instead of getting into the shower, he stood in front of the sink. His fists were clenching and unclenching uselessly, his back tense and shoulders rigid. The bathroom lights were an unkind white. They were harsh, loud, and naked, rattling through the hollow cathedral of his skull and pounding against his temples like a pulse, matching the erratic thump of his heart.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Suddenly, everything that had been burning through him earlier turned cold, settling like melting ice in the pit of his stomach. He saw his reflection, smelled his own rank sweat, saw the hair sticking up at every angle like a compass spinning out of control. He reached up and watched the unrecognizable face in the mirror drag filthy, blood-caked fingernails through the greasy mop, as if it were trying to scratch through the scalp, trying to tear the memories right out.
He looked at the wild thing in the mirror, and saw Hell staring back at him. It looked like gunmetal and lies, smelled like cold, dark nights and felt like the icy smooth curve of a gun in his palm, sickeningly snug in his shaking hand.
He could NEVER take that out of himself. Even if Drew scalped himself alive. It would never leave. He would have to live with what he and Bianca had done, forever.
So what was the point of it all – showers and breathing and relaxing and shit and shit and SHIT – when he knew he was just barely holding it the fuck together?
And there it was – a bomb going off in the dented cage of his still-bruised ribs, exploding with too much heat and light and energy to contain, rage and terror and unbearable frustration with no end or even relief.
Before he knew what he was doing, he grabbed the soap dish resting on the counter top and hurled it straight through the center of the mirror above his and Adam's sinks. He smashed the mirror in the place where his eyes met the crazy ones of the creature in the glass. He watched it shatter as the bomb blast of his heart roared out of his bones and into his arm, destroying the image of that pathetic Hellthing reflected back at him.
Some of the shards stuck on him, cutting through his t-shirt, stinging his skin, cutting jagged scars along his arms and feet. He fell to his hands and knees, feeling his hand sting when he realized he had cut his hand on a jagged edge as he hit the ground.
His quarterback hand. Damn it.
But it felt good.
Satisfaction bloomed in his chest. It momentarily relieved the never-ending panic that settled in his stomach since Spring Break.
And standing in the doorway, calm and quiet as a shadow that had been there all along, was Eli Goldsworthy.
They stared at each other for a moment, Eli unreadable and Drew too fucking tired to do anything but stare back. He was in no mood for a witness to a private meltdown. Especially now. Especially this one, his brother's weird friend.
Other than Adam
(whom Drew always placed outside any system of classification or configuration because he was Adam, and most of the time Drew didn't know what that meant even though he knew every inch of him inside and out)
there were two kinds of people he knew – the ones he could figure out and figure with, and those who never fell for his usual ways of getting people on his side. Eli was the latter of those.
But Eli wasn't looking away, and Drew couldn't just zap him somewhere with a pissed-off look, because he couldn't summon enough energy and facial muscles to do the job. The guy had a stare that looked too patient to break.
Acknowledging he'd been outmatched, Drew broke eye contact, gaze falling on the floor. Eli didn't move. After a beat or two of nothing more than the A/C humming around them, Drew reached the unfortunate conclusion that Eli wasn't going anywhere.
"Did you see me?" he whispered. Stupid, because he already knew the answer.
"What, saw you break that mirror?" Eli's voice was too innocent and serious, so much so it was joking. "No. Thanks for the seven years of bad luck, by the way. Though I think I already had it coming, so it's most likely not your fault."
Eli's lips twitched, like he was trying not to laugh at his own joke. Drew didn't crack a smile. He stared back down at the floor, then back at his hand. Anywhere but directly at the dude standing in front of him, scrawny and pasty skin, twig legs in a pair of black shorts and a black t-shirt that swallowed him. He looked like a giant bat.
"Hey," Eli said. He stepped into the bathroom, careful not to step on the glass in his bare feet, "believe me, I get it. Sometimes, we just need to break shit to make ourselves feel better."
Drew shook his head, cradling it in his good hand. He wondered if he should fight the urge to take more of the energy from his Hulk-out on some other inanimate objects.
There was also the other, frighteningly not-too-distant thought of just curling into a ball on the tiles to cry.
A burst of agony shot through his temples when his eyes accidentally caught the overhead light. Advil, he thought, but it was a fractured thought, and in the hazy, confused space between thought and application, he lost that connection, as if he'd forgotten what the hell Advil even was.
"I feel like I'm going nuts," he mumbled.
Eli slid into an Indian-style across the floor from him. A blood-spattered pattern of freezing, dirty tiles and a couple of hunks of broken glass separated them. Eli sat close enough for Drew to smell the pizza on his breath from the Guys' Night he and Adam had been having, the one he'd interrupted with his trip to the ER.
"Trust me," Eli said. "you're not going nuts." The smallest of smiles, then it was gone. "People who are going nuts think that they're normal, not that they're going more nuts."
That creeping feeling he'd felt before he went to the ER, like fire leaping up his stomach, flickered back like a lit match. Drew's head pounded, eyesight greying around the edges as he forced his eyes to stay open and clamped down harder on the breath he was holding, determined to force the flame out.
"I lost it," Drew admitted, when he finally felt it burn out in the pit of his gut.
Shame flooded him, as well as the burn of that fire. He sounded like such a wussy girl.
Eli leaned his head to one side, his hands on those stick legs. If he had heard the pussied-out tone of Drew's voice, he acted like he didn't.
Drew looked up at Eli, surprised to see the look on his face. His head was tilted to one side, mouth slightly parted, eyes focused on him. He was staring, but not staring at the same time. Not staring in the way people look at someone who's weird or doing something stupid. Staring like…like Drew didn't know how. But not in a bad way.
He didn't like not knowing what people's faces meant. He didn't have the slightest fucking clue what a simile was, but he could read people better than books. It was easier than anything school had ever thrown his way. No one got popular hitting the books. It was charm, people skills. He had plenty of that and knew how to pull the right strings on people. It was now he'd been able to get under Riley's skin, cool Adam down when he was pissed at him, charm his way to any girl's graces.
But he couldn't place this look, and it was…not scary. He knew what scary was now.
But worrying.
Jesus, it was like he was in fucking school and had no idea what he was right in front of him. Nothing was making sense. This whole thing was crazy. Like him.
The thought bubbled madly. It spilled out of him in a choked-off, manic sound that wasn't a laugh but wasn't a cry, either.
Yeah, he wasn't losing his fucking mind or anything.
He blinked his eyes until they hurt and itched from the need to sleep. Or cry. That was still an option lingering for Drew, and he hated it at the same time that he would probably welcome it.
When he stopped, Eli was still sitting on the floor a few feet away from him, hands resting on his pale, thin knees, looking small and familiar and calmly off his game.
"Dude," he said. It was a freakishly nice voice. "You mind?"
Before Drew could figure out what the hell he was talking about, Eli took his hand.
"I'll take that as a yes," Eli replied, answering his own question.
Nobody had touched him since Bianca. Once, Adam had tried to wake him up from a nightmare, and when his brother had touched Drew's shoulder, something so powerful and terrorizing had raced through him that he'd jolted awake and shoved Adam to the floor before he knew he was even awake. He had Adam pinned under his weight, then Adam screamed and his mother came in and asked what the hell they were doing in a heap of sweaty bed sheets, wrestling on the floor at two in the morning. Adam hadn't come back to Drew's room since that night, though sometimes Drew heard his brother outside the door when he awoke gasping from another nightmare. He saw the shifting shadows from under the crack in the door and heard the footsteps of Adam sneaking back to his own bedroom.
Eli turned Drew's hand over in his own, examining the long cut along his palm. Drew hissed, but Eli didn't let go of him.
"I'm gonna clean this," Eli said. He looked up at Drew. "Okay?"
Drew nodded. Eli stood up at the sink, turning the hot water on and dabbing the edge of a blue hand towel.
It would have been funny to think about it, if he could process it all. He'd lived the past two months of his life thinking that a genuine gangster would jump out of the nowhere and go all Get Rich or Die Tryin' on him. Now he had the school freak trying to save him from the pain of a cut to his hand.
"Shit," he muttered when Eli dabbed the warm water over it, because it did hurt, a little bit. It was a really long cut. His hand started bleeding more, but it wasn't not bad bloody – not like the black blood he'd poured all over the slush and icy pavement before he'd blacked out in the wet, freezing street weeks ago.
He swallowed, hard, and forced himself to hold his breath. He didn't want to think about that. Couldn't think about that. No. Go away, go away, go away,stop it, and Jesus fucking Christ will it ever END…
He bit down hard on his lower lip. He was here. He was safe. He was home.
He was sitting on a bathroom floor at three in the morning with a half-healed rib cage and headache bad enough to blind him.
And instead of staring at him or running the other direction, Eli Weirdsworthy was sitting cross-legged on this cold bathroom floor, barefoot and bed-haired, surrounded by bits of broken glass, calmly cleaning Drew's bloody hand like he did this kind of thing every day.
Maybe Drew was just too tired, but it still seemed really fucking weird.
"Is it bad?" he asked.
"Nah," Eli said. "You'll live." He grinned at Drew. "You could just find me some thread and count to five."
Drew stared at him. "Huh?" His tongue felt heavy, like someone stuffed his mouth with cotton and sand.
"Ever seen Lost?"
"No."
Eli sighed. "Ah, never mind."
Drew blinked and looked up. He tried to register that Eli was smiling at him. A real smile, not a smile that meant there was something else there that Drew had to figure out, like when he was in English class and he had to explain what the hell some stupid symbol or shit meant and he made up some half-assed response that made half the class giggle and the other blush at his stupidity, and he threw out some lame joke before slinking back into his seat with his ears burning and the teacher rolling her eyes in exasperation.
But that was too much to think about, so all he could do was think, smile, and then all coherency dropped off again.
Eli's fingers pressed against a bruise on his wrist – at this point, with all the fighting, Drew had lost track of how many he had and where he had gotten them all – and Drew winced before he could stop himself.
"Sorry," Eli said, all polite and smooth on the edges, and Drew could barely think straight enough to put the thought together in his mind that this was a completely different tone than Eli has ever used with him before. Instead of being sarcastic and really meaning something else, there was nothing else there except for the "sorry". Like he really meant it.
"Sorry I woke you up," Drew said, because he didn't know what else there was to say.
Eli shrugged. "Wasn't sleeping. Lifelong insomniac."
He dabbed the towel with more warm, soapy water, then ran it over Drew's bloody knuckles. It stung horribly, the raw cuts burning on contact. Drew bit down on his lip again and tried hard not to make a sound.
"What about you?" Eli asked. "After the night you had, you look like you could use it."
Drew rolled his eyes. "Easier said than done. I haven't really slept in months."
The moment he said those words, he wished he could take them back. He glanced up at Eli, wondering how he would look at Drew now. God, he sounded like such a little bitch.
But he just did that strange head tilt thing again.
"No offense, dude," Eli said, "but you look like it."
He dabbed the cut in the center of his palm again, and this time, Drew couldn't contain the choked gasp of pain. The burn on his open wound made him shut his eyes, almost biting his tongue as he tried to bite down a yelp. Holy shit, that hurts.
"Are you getting any help?" Eli asked.
Drew's eyes flew open. "What kind of help?"
How much was his brother telling this guy, anyway? Did Adam tell him about the shrink his mom was trying to force on him these days? Did he know about the PTSD? The nightmares? The fights? How much did Eli know about him, how fucked up everything was, how fucking so close he was to being at the end of it all?
Eli didn't look concerned. He wiped his wet fingers on sheets of toilet paper and tossed them into the garbage can with a shot Drew thought wasn't half bad. "Like, a sleep aid or something?"
"Oh," Drew said, deflating a bit. He shook his head. "Nah. I used to swipe some of my mom's sleeping pills, but I was afraid she'd realize they were missing."
Eli nodded. "You might want to break one out now, if you have any left. Get some rest. Got anything to wrap this hand with?"
Drew thought about getting to his feet, then realized he'd momentarily forgotten how. His legs just couldn't seem to unfold. Instead, he pointed to the medicine cabinet next to the sink. Eli got up, reached into the cabinet mounted on the wall, and pulled out a box of leftover gauze wraps.
"I got rid of them," Drew said as Eli finished cleaning his palm. "I hated how they made me feel. I was like a zombie. I had a hard time concentrating on anything."
Eli unwrapped some of the gauze loosely between his fingers.
"I need to be awake," Drew whispered before he knew he'd said it out loud.
Eli was giving him another look he couldn't figure out. He didn't like it.
"What about you?" Drew asked. He needed that look to go away. "No sleeping pills?"
Eli shook his head. "No. I had a prescription for them a while ago, but I had bad reactions to them. Really bad nightmares I couldn't wake up from." He rolled his eyes. "And if you think it sucks not being able to sleep, try not being to wake up."
Drew nodded. He thought he could understand that much.
"So," Eli said. "It was a panic attack?"
"I don't know," Drew said. He braced his good hand on his head, pressure pulsing against his brow. The overhead lights felt like they were getting brighter, and every time he caught a glimpse of their flashes, he closed his eyes and pressed his uninjured hand harder into his forehead. Between his head and his hand, he was starting to feel nauseous from the pain. "It felt more like a heart attack."
"Yeah," Eli said, "they're pretty horrible. I'm sorry, dude."
Drew shrugged. "Not your fault," he grunted.
"Still," Eli said, "I know how that feels. It's really scary."
Drew grunted again, an acknowledgment of the words as well as a need to stop the conversation.
"Adam asleep?" he switched.
Eli nodded. "Yeah. He's out."
Drew's eyes wandered to the doorway.
"He's pissed at me, isn't he?" he murmured.
"He's just worried," Eli said.
Drew snorted. "Yeah, well, he doesn't have a reason to. He doesn't have a guy with a gun out there waiting to kill him."
He waited for Eli to say something, but all he said was, "you should drink some water. It'll help."
"You a doctor?" Drew bristled. He wasn't sure why he was being so obnoxious, but he was exhausted and probably tripping out on the leftover anxiety coursing through his veins and was half-positive he was having some sort of panic hallucination and making this whole thing up, anyway.
Eli shrugged. "Just trying to help."
"Yeah, well," he mumbled, "you don't have to."
Eli's shrugged one shoulder, one more gesture Drew wasn't sure how to take, but at any rate, it seemed to have the desired effect of shutting down the conversation. Instead of talking, they sat in silence on the floor, Eli dabbing away the last remains of blood with a handful of dry toilet paper.
Jesus, it was weird seeing Eli like this. And not just playing House with his hand. Drew would have laughed at his own joke if he wasn't trying to not slide apart on the tiles, or if he could even make his brain remember how to laugh right now.
Instead, he tried to make his eyes – which were itching more than ever, the vision greying around the edges like a shitty out-of-focus camera – focus on Eli's face. It didn't look very friendly, but then again, Eli never had looked very friendly, marching through the halls in combat boots and nail polish and guyliner, a look that was both a scowl and a sneer, a "fuck you" and "fuck off" rolled into one. Like he was looking down at everyone. Which was pretty funny, considering he was shorter than Drew – and Drew was embarrassingly short for a dude.
Eli didn't look that way now, though. He just looked…focused. Busy. Like there was nothing else he needed to be doing right now, and was absorbed in what he was doing 100%. Like Drew felt during a football practice jog, focusing completely on the pattern of his breathing as he pushed himself forward with every step, hearing his feet eat up the ground and his heart whoosh in his ears and not seeing anything else but the track directly in front of him, all the other players melting away from his line of vision.
Maybe it was that look and the head-tilting and the smile that was a real smile, or maybe it was the way Drew's head was swimming, his eyesight blurring into shifting lights and colors like runny paint, or the fact that he'd been in the process of losing control for months and now it was finally coming to head, but he let the words slide out of his mouth.
"What do you do?" he whispered.
Eli paused, gauze in hand. "What?"
Drew stared at his burning, aching hand. "When you have one."
Eli patted down a light layer of gauze over the cut.
"There's not really much you can do," he said. "Lay down. Turn lights off. No loud noises. Drink water. The worse the attack is, the longer the effects last. It's like a hangover. You just have to let it pass."
"Great," Drew muttered. "Awesome."
Another pickaxe pain dug into his temple. He took his good hand and pressed it to his forehead, closing his eyes and trying to ride it out. He could feel still feel his heart pounding in his ears, albeit less intense as it had been when his mom had called the ER and he'd been sitting on the kitchen floor propped up against the drawer under the sink, holding his hands to his chest and gasping and not getting any air no matter how hard he tried. It didn't hurt anymore, but he could still feel the pulse and beat, the harsh rattle of his breath like a hot poker against his bruised, aching ribs and the swish of his empty lungs.
"I don't know how you deal with it," Drew said, after another long silence.
He ran his good hand through his hair. It was greasy to the touch and left a filmy slickness between his fingers when he pulled it away.
"I just had one and seriously thought I was dying," he finished. "I can't imagine doing it again."
If Eli heard the bad attempt Drew made at hiding the shake in his voice, he had the grace to pretend he hadn't. Instead, he took another handful of toilet paper and used it to wipe the drying blood from between Drew's pointer and middle finger on the injured hand.
The quiet made Drew feel bolder. Like he was protected from any witnesses, like he was talking to the wind. Nobody was forcing him for answers, but he didn't feel like anyone was waiting for them, either.
"I'm standing on the edge of a fucking cliff here," he continued, feeling something unravel in his stomach. "Like I've been standing on one for months."
He stared at the ground and shook his head, causing another painful bolt through the temples. "I take one step, and everything changes." He made a diving motion with his good hand. "Like I turn into someone else. And I have no fucking idea who that person is, but it's not me."
"The Holden Caulfield Moment," Eli said, almost in a whisper.
"What?" Drew asked.
Ellie looked puzzled. "Catcher In The Rye?"
Drew shrugged. "Haven't seen it."
"It's a book," Eli said.
Drew's lips twitched into a grin that he was too tired to form. "Well, then you know I haven't seen it."
Eli tossed the dirty tissue into the trash can, sinking another shot. Damn, the dude wasn't half bad, even though Drew had never seen him with a basketball before.
"It's not like you ended up in the ER for fun," Eli told him. "You can't control it."
Drew rolled his eyes. "Tell that to my mom," he replied.
Eli's mouth tilted down, a small gesture of sympathy. Drew found he didn't mind it, because he didn't look at Drew like he pitied him. Eli didn't pity him. He didn't look at him like he was a huge wuss, either.
"My dad's coming home early," Drew said. "He called my mom and said he was getting a flight tomorrow afternoon." He sighed. "I have no idea what I'm gonna say to him."
"He's probably just glad you're okay, dude," Eli told him. "And so's your Mom. She's just freaked out right now."
"Yeah, well, she has a funny way of showing it," he said. Bitterness hardened his voice, the injustice still stinging. "Like screaming at me in the car all the way home."
"Give it some time," Eli said. "She'll cool off. She was just worried. It happens. Parents get scared, they yell, they feel bad about it later."
His voice sounded so convinced. Drew wanted to believe him.
"Yeah, well, you don't know my mom," he answered instead. "She's pissed, and she's going to stay pissed at me forever."
Eli rolled his eyes. "Come on, dude, forever? A little dramatic."
Drew jerked his hand back.
"Yeah," he shot. "Says the guy who crashed his hearse on purpose."
Drew regretted the words as soon as he'd said them. He scooted back the slightest bit and closed his eyes, expecting Eli to either hit him or throw some angry, sarcastic jab his way. Some smart phrase that meant Drew was stupid and whatever else Eli no doubt thought of him, and that he didn't know what he was talking about.
When neither came, he dared to open his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "That wasn't cool."
Eli looked up at him, fingers dripping with healing.
"It's the scariest feeling ever, isn't it?" Eli said. "Like you have no control."
He pulled the gauze wrap around the curve of his hand. He tied it neatly, almost prissily. Like some damn Boy Scout badge depended on it.
"It feels like you're dying," he continued. He met Drew's eyes. "Or just gonna explode."
Eli moved his fingers out of the way, taking a moment to study his handiwork.
Drew held his newly-mended hand in front of his face. Except for the bandage, you'd never know his hand had been a bloody mess earlier. It didn't even sting anymore.
Eli pushed himself up off the tiles. His limbs creaked as he stretched upward, towering over Drew and momentarily blocking out the glaring lights above them, before reaching one of his hands down, an offering.
Drew's hand jerked up, then downward, then back up again. Eli grabbed it, and helped him to his feet. Drew was suddenly glad for the help when he realized how unsteady he was. His legs swayed beneath him, and he gripped the counter top, closing his eyes and trying to balance against the porcelain as it cut into his belly.
When he opened his eyes, Eli was picking up some of the larger glass hunks, careful not to cut himself on the jagged sides. He scooped up a handful and dumped them into the trash can, then brushed away the rest of the smaller bits to the side. He grabbed the towel from Adam's towel rack and wet the edge, dabbing away the bloodstains his hand had painted on the floor.
"We'll just shut the door," Eli said. "And fix it tomorrow."
He gestured towards the sink. "Water will help. And trying to sleep."
Drew turned the tap and ran his good hand underneath it. He splashed his face, eager for the cool water, and swished some around in his mouth, trying to rinse out the sour iron taste of terror left over.
"I can't really sleep," he said, fumbling for a towel to dry his face. Even if his mind was screaming for it, the rest of his body felt too wired, like he'd been drinking coffee. He doubted he'd do anything more than toss and turn if he tried to lie down and sleep now.
"Join the club," Eli said, rolling his eyes.
Drew squinted, pressing on the bandage. His head felt too damn heavy to hold up any longer.
Eli took a step closer. "Hey. Just because you can't sleep doesn't mean you can't sit down."
He gave Drew a small smile. "Wanna move this party to that sweet TV you guys have?"
IV.
"I am made of shipwrecks, every twisted beam. Lost and found like you and me, scattered out on the sea."
"What do you do?"
The question made Eli pause and look at Drew, who was glancing at Eli in a haze of delirious exhaustion. His eyes were heavy-lidded, rimmed underneath with faint shades of purplish shadows that turned the whites of his eyes almost pink with bloodshot.
It was a rare moment when Eli could look someone directly in the eyes. He was used to having to look up for guys and down for girls. But he and Drew were almost the same height, even bent this low to the ground.
Eli leaned forward the slightest bit. "What?"
Drew looked hollowed out, blinking owlishly at Eli under the heavy fluorescent. "When you have one."
Eli took the injured hand back. Unlike before, Drew didn't seem startled. He just stared at his palm, mouth hanging open slightly like he couldn't make his face form a legible expression.
"There's not really much you can do," Eli told him. He patted the gauze down over the top of the cut and began to wrap the low swoop of bone and muscle. "Lay down. Turn lights off. Drink water. The worse the attack, the longer the effects last. It's like a hangover. You just have to let it pass."
Drew scowled, wincing at the facial movement. "Great. Awesome."
Eli watched him press the heel of his good hand against his brow, eyes squeezed tight, mouth frozen in a silent gasp. It made Eli's own head ache just to watch. Instead, he stayed silent and absorbed in bandaging the hand. The elbow holding the injured hand up was beginning to buckle, so Eli gripped Drew's wrist tighter and held it in place.
"I don't know how you deal with it." Drew said after a pause.
He watched Drew card his good hand through his wild hair.
"I just had one and seriously thought I was dying," he continued. There was a hitch in his voice Eli pretended not to notice, letting Drew keep whatever tattered bits of pride he could in the closeness and need of this moment. "I can't imagine doing it again."
Eli pulled the band around the bruised knuckles. They were dotted with cuts in various states of healing, some brown and crusting and others splitting the skin clean, still bright red with newness. He then reached over and grabbed some toilet paper, cleaning away the blood between the fingers.
"I'm standing on the edge of a fucking cliff here," Drew continued. He was staring at the floor, and sounded like he was measuring every word. "Like I've been standing on one for months."
He stared at the speckled tiles. "I take one step," he mumbled, "and everything changes." He made a diving motion with his good hand. "Like I turn into someone else."
Drew shook his head, and once again clutched at his skull. "And I have no fucking idea who that person is, but it's not me."
"The Holden Caulfield Moment," Eli muttered to himself.
Drew gave him a blank look. "What?"
"Catcher In The Rye?" Eli prompted.
"Haven't seen it."
"It's a book."
Drew's lips twitched. "Well, then you know I haven't seen it."
Eli thought about the book. The themes of loneliness, alienation. Of innocence lost. Of no longer believing in things like wings, shapes in the clouds, symbols in the stars, nursery rhymes of children running through a field of rye; learning that some people couldn't be saved, that there was no escape. It made him feel anxious and claustrophobic; it was the kind of thing he didn't want to think about right now.
"It's not like you ended up in the ER for fun," he reminded Drew, tossing the dirty tissues he'd been wiping up blood with into the trash. His fingers were in even worse shape than the knuckles; some of the nails were bent back, some ripped off entirely, but most of them were almost black and had what Eli suspected was dried blood caked underneath. "You can't control it."
"Tell that to my mom," Drew said, sounding weary and punished.
Eli kept up his purposeful movement. He wondered if Drew noticed how much he was blinking; if he knew he looked like someone trying to look directly into the sun, or how much he kept clutching his head like it was going to explode.
"My dad's coming home early," Drew added. "He called my mom and said he was getting a flight tomorrow afternoon."
He looked back down at the floor. "I have no idea what I'm gonna say to him."
Eli thought of Bullfrog, of that night he crashed his hearse. The look on his dad's face when he saw Eli in the hospital, casted and bruised and broken in more ways than one but alive, alive, alive.
"He's probably just glad you're okay, dude," Eli told him. He wished he hadn't summoned Bullfrog's sad face to mind. It made his stomach cramp. "And so's your Mom. She's just freaked out right now."
"Yeah, well, she has a funny way of showing it," Drew said bitterly. "Like screaming at me in the car all the way home."
Eli felt another twinge of sympathy. He knew Mrs. Torres was probably scared and worried, but screaming at Drew wasn't going to fix anything.
"Give it some time," Eli said. "She'll cool off. She was just worried. It happens." He shrugged one shoulder. "Parents get scared, they yell, they feel bad about it later."
"Yeah," Drew mumbled, "well, you don't know my mom. She's pissed, and she's going to stay pissed at me forever."
Eli tried not to snort. "Come on, dude, forever? A little dramatic."
Drew's eyes snapped to his face, zeroing in angrily. He jerked his hand back.
"Yeah," he said. "Says the guy who crashed his hearse on purpose."
Eli's slippery hands froze. A brief, wounded flash struck through him, a twinge in the empty canyon where that landslide once fell.
He watched Drew close his eyes, knowing he'd crossed a line, and maybe he was expecting a strike for it. Maybe Eli was expecting himself to want to strike for it, but he didn't. He sat still, the heat of humiliation and draining stiffness, as well as the smell of fresh blood and stale antiseptic Eli knew as purely hospital hanging in the few inches between them.
Just when the silence started getting oppressive, Drew mumbled. "I'm sorry. That wasn't cool."
"It's the scariest feeling ever, isn't it?" Eli offered the understanding of undeserved forgiveness. Because he was living off of borrowed grace, too, from people he'd hurt who kept trying with him. Because Drew all but had a sentencing hanging over his head these days, and there were still some mornings when Eli woke up feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders. "Like you have no control."
Eli came to the end of the gauze, tying it off as neatly as he could.
"It feels like you're dying," he continued, checking the wrap, how it fit against the smooth curve of muscle and bone. Damn, maybe he would make a good House someday. He already had the cane, the pills, and the attitude. He tried not to laugh at his own joke. "Or just gonna explode."
Drew didn't say anything. He was staring at Eli with baffled suspicion, like he had no idea what they were talking about. He held his hand in front of his face with the same focused, almost violently intense look, and it was a little unnerving to Eli, honestly. The look was fierce in its confusion, and not just because Drew was about to disintegrate from exhaustion. It was as if neither of them were entirely sure who they were talking to anymore.
At any rate, it made Eli decide that now was as good a time as ever to get out of this bathroom.
He stood up, limbs aching with the stiffness of sitting for so long, and reached a hand down to Drew. Drew hesitated, reaching one arm up then bringing it back down, then reached up and gripped Eli's arm with his good hand.
Drew swayed and almost buckled, taking Eli down with him. He gripped the porcelain and caught his balance, and Eli stepped back, one hand outreached to brace for another fall.
When it seemed like he was steady enough to stand, Eli bent down and started picking up the biggest bits of glass scattered on the ground. It wasn't an ideal pick-up, but they'd have to wait until morning to make sure all the broken glass was completely cleared away. He grabbed a wet towel and dabbed the bloodstains away as best he could from the floor and sink.
"We'll just shut the door," Eli said. "And fix it tomorrow."
Drew was glancing at him, hunched over himself at the sink.
"Water will help," Eli offered. "And getting some sleep."
Drew ran his good hand underneath the faucet, and placed a dripping palm to his forehead.
"I can't really sleep," he mumbled, reaching for a towel to dry his face.
Eli rolled his eyes. "Join the club," he replied.
Drew's head fell down, as if he couldn't hold it up any longer. Arms still locked and straining to hold himself up against the porcelain, Eli watched him almost jackknife over the counter top. It was so quiet Eli could hear every plip plop of the water dripping from the sink, the gurgle of the drain. Even in the garish bathroom light, it was one deep, dark nothing that had settled in between them.
"Hey," Eli said quietly. He took a step closer, as much as an invitation for resolution as much as a way to break the unnerving vacuum of silence. ""Just because you can't sleep doesn't mean you can't sit down. Wanna move this party to that sweet TV you guys have?"
Drew didn't answer. His head still hung low, he swayed against the counter, eyes shifting in and out of focus, his mouth twitching as if he was trying to say something, but kept forgetting what that something was before he could get it out of himself.
Eli wondered what his next move should be, or if there was anything else he could do at this point. If whatever made Drew listen to him in the first place was gone, and Eli should just crawl back to Adam's bedroom with an unannounced promise to never bring this moment up again.
But before he could figure something out, Drew let go of the sink and took a hobbling, unsure step towards him.
V.
"I am the barely living son of a woman and man who barely made it. But we're making it taped together on borrowed crutches and new starts."
If Spring Break took anything from him, it took Drew's disregard for normal. Because now, Drew really missed being able to do normal people stuff. He missed being able to chill with Adam on the couch and watch stupid reruns of Jersey Shore and Family Guy for hours, ignoring their mother yelling at them from upstairs to stop watching so much television.
He snuck a quick glance at Eli, sitting in the armchair Drew normally claimed for himself when he and Adam watched TV or played video games. He was studying the TiVo catalog like a textbook.
He'd probably never seen a reality show in his life, Drew thought. Or one with a laugh track, or one where there were many laughs at all. Though from what Drew had glimpsed of Eli and Adam's Guy Nights, they did watch a lot of movies where people solved crimes and blew shit up.
He looked at Eli again, and tried to picture him doing this at a younger age. Being a little kid in Thomas the Tank Engine PJs and rumpled hair, watching Rugrats and Looney Toones, thinking everything was funny. But the image was too damn weird, and oddly enough, depressing – a Little Boy Eli, with flyaway black hair like Drew's own had been, hunched intently on the couch with a bowl of milk-bloated Cheerios and a too-serious expression on his face as Tommy and Chuckie escaped the playpen or Bugs Bunny pulled the rug from under Elmer Fudd's jellyrole nose.
Eli paused at a history documentary for a moment, the kind of black-and-white boredom Perino would force them to watch in class, then take notes over and write a paper over Drew would either would write in the M.I. lab thirty minutes before class or just not do at all because to hell with it, no matter if he did it or not he would be guaranteed the same flunking grade. Drew would normally have complained, but he couldn't make himself say anything or even think of any words to say at this point, so he just stayed silent, his head still throbbing too badly to string his thoughts together.
Luckily, Eli switched the channel, then started flipping through the onscreen TV guide for something else.
It was weird, how nothing about this whole thing felt awkward, no matter how weird it all was. The silence between them was long and heavy and strange, but not awkward. But the constant looking and running and never stopping of the past few months had made Drew appreciate the quiet more, so much that he'd rather sit here in the silence with someone he barely knew than turn on the damn television and watch whatever was cataloged on their TiVo.
Another headache racked him. He pressing his hands over his eyes and tried to lessen the pressure.
"Dude," Eli said to him, still flipping through the guide listings. "Will you please drink something? My head hurts just looking at you."
"I'm so not hungry right now," he mumbled. The dull ache pounded him harder.
"I don't need you to eat something," Eli said. "Just drink."
Through the slats in his fingers, Drew could see the shifting lights and colors of the flickering TV screen. It made his eyes hurt even more, and he pressed his hands harder against his temples, feeling sick to his stomach and clutching his skull.
There were footsteps, then the feel of something cold and dripping pressed into his hand. Lemonade. Can. The condensation dripping on his good palm, slipping through his shaking fingers.
He pressed the cool can to his forehead, and felt the cool chill of instant relief. He could finally open his eyes, and settled on the TV without needing to shut his eyes against the light.
"Who died in the explosion?" he murmured.
Eli glanced at the screen, then back at Drew, eyebrows raised.
"Dude," he said, "it's called a preview for a reason. Namely, we haven't seen it yet."
"Oh," Drew said. He stared at the TV, trying to process the information. "Right."
He pressed the can harder to his face, rolling it across his forehead and welcoming the cold press against the pressure. He kept trying for that elusive deep breath, the one he needed to clear his mind so he could think; or rather, not think, which meant he could finally rest. Not feel like he'd been awake for two solid months, even when he was sleeping.
When he opened his eyes, Eli was looking like he was trying not to look at Drew the way he was looking at him.
"So," Eli said. "Just take a few sips. Don't get dehydrated."
Drew's fingers clenched and unclenched around the can. He peeled the cool relief off his forehead and popped the top with slick, fumbling fingers, and tipped the can back.
He felt the relief at once. He felt his head stop pounding the slightest bit, his scorched throat was soothed, and the sweetness of the lemonade washed down the last of the sour taste the whole night had left in his mouth. He could only manage a few sips before his already turning-stomach began to rebel, and he took a final swig, a silent moan of relief in the back of his throat before resting the can on the coffee table. His head finally had stopped spinning so much, and he felt a little bit better.
Just a little.
VI.
"This war-ship is sinking, and I still believe in anchors. Pulling fist-fulls of rotten wood from my heart, I still believe in saviors."
Eli took the armchair that rocked and leaned all the way back like a cradle. Drew took the couch opposite him. Now, his late night movie and popcorn companion wasn't Adam, but Drew. Eli controlled the remote, surfing the channels, grunting or sighing when something met or failed to pass muster. Drew sat curled in a scratchy wool blanket and a hoodie that swallowed him, the hood pulled over his eyes. He was mostly catatonic, not offering any expression when Eli paused briefly on a documentary about Jack Churchill on the History Channel.
Everyone remembers Winston, Eli thought, as he watched the flashing black and white images on mute. But nobody knows Jack. How can you not know a guy badass enough to say, "any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed?" and earned himself the nickname "Fighting Jack"? He was a badass. He got shit done.
He changed the channel again, surfing the extended cable channels for something on this late besides infomercials and pawn shop reality shows.
Eli cringed at the sharp lines in Drew's face, the narrowed eyes, even in the dim light of the flickering television screen, and the way he kept pressing on his forehead.
"Dude, will you please drink something?" Eli asked. "My head hurts just looking at you."
Drew threw him a squinted, bitchy look that Eli would have laughed at under normal circumstances.
"I'm so not hungry right now," he muttered, pressing his hands over his eyes.
"I don't need you to eat something. Just drink." Drew stayed seated, burying his face in his hands. "Hold on. I got it."
Eli headed over to the mini fridge and peered inside. He bypassed the blood-red Gatorade, the bruise-blue Capri Sun, and settled on a can of Minutemaid, the condensation dripping between his fingers.
Eli wondered if he should check the medicine cabinet for some Nyquil and spike the drink. Drew could use the knock-out.
"Who died in the explosion?" Drew asked.
Eli handed him the can before setting in his own armchair. Drew pressed it to his forehead, focused on the television with painful intensity.
Eli raised his eyebrows and followed Drew's eyes to the screen. He had been watching a promo for some new show called Terra Nova, slotted to come out next fall.
"Dude," Eli said lightly, "it's called a preview for a reason. Namely, we haven't seen it yet."
"Oh," Drew replied. He flinched, like the information hurt to understand. "Right."
Eli could see the gears working behind Drew's eyes, his mind trying to process and sort out the information he already knew but couldn't access through the exhaustion. Eli studied him carefully – the ragged breathing, the yellow-tinged skin, the hands that still had a slight tremor. Factoring in the disorientation, and maybe he could have used that IV. If only Mrs. Torres hadn't signed him out without seeing a doctor.
"So," Eli tried again. "Just take a few sips. Don't get dehydrated."
To Eli's relief, Drew popped the tab and took a small sip, then placed the drink on the coffee table. He rubbed his eyes awake, something Eli might have found funny – a childish gesture on a muscled, almost grown body – but this half-aware, confused, sullen shadow wasn't funny.
Keeping one eye on him as he continued flipping through the channels, Eli finally found one playing Independence Day. Drew perked up the slightest bit, and Eli figured it was good enough for the both of them, so he settled back in the armchair and rocked it back and forth, letting a weariness he hadn't realized he'd been holding back seep into the soft microsuede of the cushions.
Funny, he mused, watching the aliens destroy the White House, how Adam - the one link between them, the common denominator to their fractious, splintering lives – wasn't here right now. Whatever this was, it was forged in absentia of the only thing they ever had in common.
Yet here he was, and here they were, and now this was happening.
Eli snuck a glance at Drew. Those eyes were flat, his back was rigid, his shoulders slumped. Eli could practically see the invisible strings propping him upright.
He wondered, randomly, how hard he fell for Bianca. He wondered if it could even have been a fraction of what Eli felt for Clare.
Felt. Past tense.
There was a twinge where that shipwreck used to be.
He turned back to the screen, choosing to focus on fire and ash, quiet explosions, the end of the world.
Oh come on, Eli thought, as he watched Will Smith slip the ring on Vivica A. Fox's finger and listened to the vows being said. In the middle of an alien invasion, they're gonna get married? The world is about to end, and they're having a wedding? And where did they get the ring, anyway? They just happened to find it? Where, in a jewelry store that's still in business or survived the alien attacks?
"You know," said, after they had been watching in silence for a while, "I never realized it before. But this is kind of a shitty movie."
"Oww," he heard Drew say.
Eli glanced over at him, thinking he meant a headache, more chest pain, or his damaged hand. But instead, he was giving Eli a small, weak grin.
He slapped his hand weakly against his chest. "Hitting me where it hurts, man," Drew rasped.
"It just has too many plot holes," Eli said, feeling a grin of his own come on.
Distraction. A patented way to fix things. This he could do well.
"I mean…" Eli continued, hoping to egg him on, "okay. First of all, why didn't the aliens go to an uninhabited planet first?"
Drew rolled his eyes. "Because that movie would suck."
"Yeah," Eli argued, "But still. The aliens are still dicks for torching Earth when they could have gone to, like, Neptune, or something." He shook his head and gestured at the screen. "And you're telling me the Air Force really has no missiles left?"
Drew shrugged. "That could happen."
Eli raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
Drew threw him another bitchface, and this time, Eli could laugh at it.
"So you're telling me that a superior alien race that is way smarter than humans can be hacked by a Macintosh and Windows 95?" Eli asked.
"Why not?" Drew protested.
"And you're gonna tell me," Eli wheedled, "that a nuke big enough to fry a 15-mile long alien spaceship, doesn't destroy Will Smith's shitty little plane? And he survives reentry, and the plane crash, then he just walk through the desert like it's nothing? How does he NOT die?"
"Because he's Will Smith, that's why." Drew shook his head and laughed, a sound like sand and saltwater being poured over a cut. "Dude, you're thinking way too much into this. It's got aliens and explosions. And Will Smith. What more could you want?"
Drew suddenly clutched his head again, closing his eyes and pressing his palm against the center of his forehead, this time sure his head was going to explode.
"Still the Spring Break Scramble up there?" Eli asked.
Drew nodded, wincing at the slight motion.
"Feels like I got hit by a…" he searched for the right word. "Planet."
Eli smirked. "An alien planet?"
They both laughed. They laughed like they hadn't laughed in a while. Like they weren't sure they should, but it felt so good that they just kept doing it.
VII.
"So come on and let's wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief, and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach. Come on and sew us together, tattered rags stained forever. We only have what we remember."
It was some time around ten in the morning when Eli started and jerked himself awake. It took him a minute to realize where he was and what the huddled, grey shape across from him was. Drew's hair was shiny with grease and he was curled into himself, chin tucked to his chest and head buried in his arms.
The room was filled with white morning light, gliding in through the filmy curtains across the giant glass doors of the bonus room. The world was white again, sunlight from the early spring coming through the windows. The white snow and daylight outside was all-consuming and overbright, but not entirely unwelcome. It wasn't like the white of the bathroom last night. This morning didn't resemble those spotlight fluorescent; that shared, temporary world.
Jesus, had that really been just last night? To Eli, it felt like forever ago. It seemed like such a faraway thing, dulled by time that hadn't happened yet and history that hadn't come to pass.
Eli watched the sun move through the room. It caught and lined the walls in shapes like symbols. Not too long ago, he had woken up every day feeling like the world was melting down. Now, though, with the sun streaming into the room, it didn't feel that way. Maybe it was the meds he was on, or the therapy, or whatever. But it was too quiet to feel like the end of the world.
He shrugged his shoulders, creaking with stiffness and the weariness of last night. Hell, all year, maybe. His stiff muscles began to feel and respond, and he shook his head lightly, bringing himself out of last night's haze and into a room full of symbols; of light, shadow, and thought.
Eli got up, ignoring the rusty creak of his knees, and closed the heavy curtains across the backdoor, blocking out most of the blinding, icy dawn outside before hobbling to the shower.
The bathroom wasn't the same as it was last night. Eli felt it as soon as he walked in. The biggest pieces of glass and porcelain were in the trash can, where Eli had left them, and the ones he hadn't had a broom to sweep were pushed into a corner to avoid anyone stepping on them. There were still some bloodstains he hadn't completely wiped up. It looked exactly as they had left it, but it wasn't the same. Just another room in a house that had too many.
The water spray was a little colder than Eli would have liked, but he couldn't seem to make his brain tell his arm to reach up and twist the knob. Briefly, he wondered if Drew's exhausted confusion from the night before might have seeped into him, as well. But the cool shower felt good. Like spring rain. Like a cold, bright morning. A fresh start.
Careful, he chided himself. Next description you might come up with is baptismal.
He let out an involuntary laugh, some harsh noise that sounded like a sandpapery cough. He pressed his forehead against the cool shower tiles and closed his eyes, letting the water sluice down his back. He was too tired to do anything else. For now, it just felt good to feel the water and know nothing but the damp, clear silence misting around him, blotting his sleep-deprived brain with a white, welcome nothing.
Sometimes he felt like he'd never really returned from the upsweep of his recent life. Julia, Clare, the way his parents couldn't seem to look him in the eyes these days, how CeCe put on extra eyeliner to try and hide from him that she'd been crying in the shower again. Sometimes, it felt as if all that happened was that the gap between "dealing" and "most definitely NOT" just got deeper and wider until he couldn't straddle it anymore. Until he fell through it and couldn't stop falling, never stopped falling.
He spent a lot of time wondering if, after everything, he'd be able to ever put himself back together again.
He used to think Clare would be able to help him do that. Could find those pieces and reach out to them, like pulling the stars out of the sky. Like that kid's song Eli thought always had a vaguely creepy tune: catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, never let it fade away.
Wishing on fallen stars. How pathetic. That wasn't going to cure anything, fix him. There was no such thing as magic.
Whatever was holding him together these days – therapy, medication, coffee at the Dot with Imogen, movies with Adam, sushi with Fiona – was like Scotch tape at the fraying parts, restitched thread at the stretched seams, ABC gum where the levees had broken. Not much of anything. But it was just enough to sustain what was left of him.
Eli turned the shower spray off, silencing the pounding of water on the bathroom floor like the drum beat of war. He stepped out and wrapped a towel around himself, staring at the wall a half a second before he realized there was no mirror to look at himself in. Oh well. No huge loss. Eli wasn't a huge fan of looking at himself these days, anyway. Whenever he did, he thought the color of his eyes had dimmed, the once vibrant green faded to a dull mint color. He'd taken down the mirror hanging on his bedroom wall directly across from his bed so that he didn't accidentally look at himself.
At first, he thought it was because of the new meds he had been taking. If Imogen had been right about anything, she was right about this. At first, the meds did make him distracted, and it made it harder to concentrate on anything, whether it was the page of a novel he already knew by heart or the lyrics to an overplayed song or the plot of a sitcom.
But when time wore on and he'd gotten used to them, he figured it had less to do their effect. Instead, it was directly about him.
He'd made peace with some things since the diagnosis. True. But that didn't mean he didn't stop wondering about whether he'd ever really be able to fix the things that were wrong with him, the things medication couldn't cure and bipolar disorder couldn't excuse.
He'd give just about anything to finally be able to. To find the scattered remnants of himself like driftwood on the flat expanse of a sunless beach, and build a fire to torch them all. Let it burn. Start all over again. But too much of him was gone for that to happen now. Too much had been let out of him and scattered to the wind. And at the same time, he had too much that made him up now to sort it all out and figure which parts of him were worth saving and which ones he wished he'd never known.
Putting on the same clothes he wore to bed last night, he slung his wet towel over the rack and shut the door behind him. He thought he should put a sign on the door or something, keep Adam from using it until he could clean the place up for good and clear the last bits of broken glass away.
Drew was still fast asleep on the couch, head tucked down and hands thrown up. He looked like he was guarding himself, even in sleep. Eli paused a moment, then turned and walked back towards Adam's room, turning away from the room full of symbols made of cracked spring light.
As he walked through the dim hallway, he remembered the sound the bathroom fluorescent had made the night before – a slight rattle, like wings flying beating against the light – and the way they had reflected off the broken mirror pieces, surrounding the two of them like a thousand glittering suns.
Upstairs, he could hear the ping of a coffee maker, and the light step of feet on the kitchen floor above his head.
He passed the bathroom, door shut and ventilation fan humming inside.