The Leandros boys never do things like a real family. There are no birthday candles on cakes and the one year Niko had tried a stale Twinky and a lit match, it had proven a really bad idea. They don't have noisemakers or shiny hats. Three-year old Cal doesn't want any of those things really; he wants to sleep through the night without fear and, more than anything, he wants Niko to have a reason to smile.
He's never pined after the things other kids want like new bicycles or skateboards, or even his mother's love. He isn't altogether sure what that words meant anyway. He's only ever had a few examples of the word used in a sentence.
The first, and only one he craves, is the "I love you, Cal," that his brother says each night before tucking them in. Sophia – it is never mom or mother – Niko refuses to call her that, so he won't either – says all the time that she loves her whiskey or loves to make fools of the ordinary rubes (not Rom). The only other context he's ever heard that word used is something Sophia only says when Niko isn't around, "I'd love to drown you." He vows to never tell Niko about that, but he's not afraid to ask his older brother what love is. Niko is so damn smart, he always knows.
"Is it like Sophia loves her drinks?"
"That's addiction," his big brother corrects.
"What about how she loves money?"
"That is avarice."
"Um, what about those men who come –"
"That's called…" Niko thinks of a thousand words that are inappropriate for his younger brother to use. "… lust." As a biblical word, it can't be too bad.
"Does that mean I lust you? We share the same bed every night?"
"No, lust is not for family members. Love is."
"But I still don't understand," Cal whines.
Niko drops to one knee and forces Cal to look at him.
"I love you. I would kill for you, or die for you. That's what love is, little brother."
Cal cries because of the intensity of his brother's words, but he finally understands that love is loyal and fierce, it shows understanding and expects discipline. It is still confusing to little Cal, but he knows that there was one person in the world who will always love him.
Every year on the anniversary of Cal's birth, Niko tries to make it a little better than the year before. The week before Cal had come into the world, four-year-old Niko had stolen a book on babies from the library. He only needed the second to last page, the one about what the doctors did when the baby arrived, but he couldn't bring himself to rip the page out. Books were friends, friends that chased away the loneliness and he couldn't harm them, but he needed that information.
It had been nothing like the book, when he first saw his brother, lying quietly in Sophia's bloody afterbirth in the tub. He'd flipped back and forth in the book, looking for anything that could help him, but he was alone. He'd managed to clean up the baby and keep him alive, and he'd repeated that feat every day for three years now.
For his present this year, Niko thinks very carefully. Everything he's scrounged for before had been sold off or pawned by Sophia almost as soon as she'd seen it, so a physical present is out of the question.
Instead, they spend weeks gathering all the lose money they can find – coins in the change return of payphones or vending machines, pickpocketed funds from strangers, stolen bills from Sophia's laundry – and Niko goes to see the moonshine man at the edge of their camp. No one bats an eye when he asks for the liquor; he's Sophia's son after all.
After hiding Cal away, he takes the bottle to her. She grabs it by the neck and spits at him.
"Where's the monster?"
He doesn't answer; he refuses to acknowledge that she's said a word.
"Where is Caliban?" she slurs.
"I sent him outside."
"Maybe the other monsters will finally take him away and have mercy on me. Or maybe a serial killer will relieve me of the burden – either way – good riddance!"
She stumbles away to the trailer's only bedroom. The door slams shut.
"Is she –" Cal whispers from his hiding place huddled under the couch.
"Stay under there until I'm sure she's out cold," Niko replies.
He sits on his knees, because it is more efficient even if his legs do go all pins and needles, and faces the bedroom door. He takes a comb from his back pocket, placing it across his lap. It isn't really a comb anymore, but a weapon called a shiv that he learned about from a book – and he made it by very carefully grinding it down against concrete until the end was as sharp as a razor.
Sophia is not going to ruin Cal's birthday this year, no matter what.