Haddock's sitting on the sofa behind them, Rae and Battered Sausage sitting on the coffee table. Battered Sausage has his arms resting on his knees, his legs open as he smiles down at his joined hands. He has a tablespoon hanging from his pierced ear, something he'd made from one of Rae's earring fixtures and the spoon he'd bent and broken in the garage one night, soldered together in the abandoned workshop there. Rae's looking away, at and past the playing TV as Haddock falls into a restless sleep, out of it. Their living room is dim and trashed, as it always is. The walls look like they've been scorched.
"What do you wish for, Rae?" Battered Sausage asks, looking at her. She looks at him in return, but again, seems to be looking past him. She answers him after a beat passes, sighing in half frustration, half warn out amusement.
"I wish I could see you as only a brother. I wish I could just love you like a brother but…I don't. I can't." she says, regretful. Battered Sausage smiles all too knowingly, pride lining his eyes that repulses Rae for a second. He looks away, back down at his hands as Rae returns her attention to the TV. The silence stretches between them all, and Rae knows Haddock isn't asleep, her words ensuring he'd keep conscious, listening to them both converse like a hawk. She doesn't look at him - doesn't want to. Battered Sausage speaks, tentative and slow, but steady and sure all at once.
"If you want, Rae, I can take you upstairs. We can go for it; I'll do ya. I've got johnnies, like, and I've got a big dick, so I've been told by other girls. Quite proud of it, actually." Battered Sausage looks at her, wringing his hands and smiling briefly, his gappy teeth showing before he face sags back into its previous inquisitiveness. Rae doesn't look back, keeping her eyes past the TV as she shakes her head slightly, her face lined with emotional exhaustion. She doesn't know what she's still doing there.
"Are you angry at me?" Haddock asks Rae from behind them, fatigued misery evident in his tone. His voice is also tinged with fear, but pain is the most prevalent feature and it pulses off him in waves. Rae's heart sinks, and she hates how Haddock still effects her after all this time. She wishes more than anything that her heart could be made of cold stone, that she didn't still love the fucked up boy laying, near comatose behind her.
"She says she wants my body, mate…not my balls." Battered Sausage says with a huff of amusement, knowing the dynamics of the three of them better than anyone. That's how he always referred to relationships: "She's got him by the balls." - yet Rae knew he didn't mean it like that, not quite.
Battered Sausage ups and leaves straight after the exchange, and Rae wishes he didn't. She hated being alone with Haddock and still refuses to look at him. She decides to follow Battered Sausage out, and she wonders if Haddock thinks she's taking him up on his offer. Part of her hopes he does. Part of her wants to punish him for the pain he's caused her.
—-
They're snorting from the washing machine again, the pair of them. Rae watches unseen from the garage door, Battered Sausage standing behind Haddock as the latter cuts the lines from a seat in front of it. That was one of their chosen surfaces, mainly because it was hidden away in the garage in the terrace house the three of them shared, but also because the washing machine could be pushed back against the wall, covered by a shelf, hidden.
She doesn't know why she watches them exactly, but she suspects it's because she wants to see the glint of hope in Haddock's eyes, the flash of excitement that he used to have when he beheld her, but now only had for the white line in front of him, as well as a cocktail of other hard drugs. The two teens had sunk so low, coke was considered lighter stuff now, if anything.
The boys laugh after they've snorted the stuff, Rae's stomach twisting in revulsion before she leaves, walking to her bedroom, sagging further and further into the familiar hold of misery with every step, an emotion so often felt it was twisting and turning into emptiness. With each day that passes, she feels more numb, and she's glad of it.
She knows Haddock will try and get into her room, had bought a lock for her door ever since the first night he'd tried it on. She had to near knock him out to get him off her, his need for her relentless and angry, but his weakened body no match for Rae's strength. It's a miracle Rae has managed to stay a virgin, she thinks, what with both Haddock and Battered Sausage after her, albeit the latter's attempts rarer and more light hearted. If Haddock hasn't succeeded in forcing himself on her yet, Rae wonders how she's managed to resist him for so long herself. She's proud of herself, proud of her moral strength and her sense, proud that she's managed to resist the drugs and the sex with Haddock and Battered Sausage, all temptations of varying power. If she has nothing else, she has that, her self respect and her purity, and the knowledge that when she does decide to get out of there, all she'll be taking with her is her heartbreak.
Her Mum's ready for her, back at home with their old cat and her foreign step father. That'd be her refuge for a while, but Rae knows she couldn't stay there for long, the presence of her two housemates still too near. She spends her time fantasising about where she'll end up going, hoping she'd maybe find another roommate, a friend to distract her from the mire of her thoughts. She'd get a job - a good job, a safe job, worlds away from the dark back alleys and jail bate dole merchants who dealt to her friends, the shady underbelly of Lincolnshire she's been haplessly exposed to. She dreams of bright days, of sweet smells and clean walls, of uncluttered carpets and clean faces.
Such fantasies replaced the ones she'd always had, the dream that Haddock and Battered Sausage would get better, would fight this horrible addiction and get well. They replaced the hope of Haddock and her getting together, being properly together, Haddock's love pure and untainted by chemically charged lust. The dreams have become dimmer with every passing month, and now in her fantasies there was only herself. Yet still, she stays. She couldn't leave them, not quite yet.
Sure enough, Haddock's at her door a few minutes later, his knock half hearted but his intensions undiminished. Rae wonders if he'll try and break the door down again as he had before, the coke making him feel invincible. She'd reinforced the door herself with thick planks of wood she'd found in the garden shed, ensuring Haddock's attempts failed, his body covered in bruises for at least a week afterwards. Once, he'd knocked himself out trying, Rae not realising until she opened the door the next morning, eyes dry and sticky with old tears, only to have Haddock fall into her bedroom after being slumped against the door, blood dripping from his head and onto the carpet. She'd fixed him up, ever their nurse. Haddock had tried to kiss her then as he often did, tearfully telling her how much he loved her, on the come down.
"You don't love me. You love drugs." Rae had repeated, a flat and soulless mantra. Haddock would always meet it with his own mantra of whispered denials, the word "No" repeated as he shook his head, face crumpling.
"Rae! Let me in, please."
Rae covers her ears. Sometimes he wouldn't speak at all, would only try the door handle and leave. Those were the good nights. Tonight, however, he's vocal.
"Rae! Please Rae…I just want to talk. I won't ask anything of ya…I just need to see ya…I just need…" The vehemence of his tone decreases steadily before his head lolls against the door with a thunk.
"Why won't you let me fuck you, Rae? Why?" his tone is hopeless and desperate, and for the millionth time Rae resists the urge to open the door, to hold him close and comfort him, his tone the only thing that translates as she's numb to his harsh words. Instead she stays silent, back pressed against her headboard as the tears fall as if of their own accord, and she wonders how she could have any tears left to cry after so long.
"Rae? It'd be good, I promise. I know you'll enjoy it…I'll make you cum and everything…I'll be gentle…just give me a chance…" he repeats, a tactic tried before. His words are so ridiculous and would never be spoken when he's sober, and Rae wonders if he's even capable of being sober any more. She struggles to remember a Haddock that made sense, who wasn't this shell of a person who operated on base instincts and violence.
Rae knows if she speaks it'll just ignite his fire, her voice a trigger for him. She knew he'd get angry of his own accord anyway. She'd tried drowning him out with music before, but it somehow made things worse as she didn't know what he was doing, couldn't hope to guess. He could have been unhinging the door with a screwdriver for all she knew. She wonders if the pocket taser in her bed side drawer would be enough to stop him if he ever got through. She hopes it will never come to that.
He's there for a half an hour more, only tries to knock down the door once. He seems too tired to shout, but he's said her name so much she's sick of the sound of it. He only blows up at the last second.
"Fine then, you frigid bitch - I don't need you. There's plenty of girls out there who would kill for me to shag 'em. I'm going out, and I'm bringing back a girl and I'm going to screw her. You've had your chance and you've blown it. I'm done w'you. Fuck you Rae. Fuck you."
His last words are dripping in venom, and she can visualise him size up the door like it's a random yob starting on him in a bar. She also knows he's standing there for a few seconds more, hoping she'd erupt in jealousy and relent, she guessed. When nothing happens, he kicks the door before retreating and the front door slams moments later. She continues to weep, the photo of the three of them before any of this shit happened pinned on the wall beside her, taunting her. There aren't any bags underneath Haddock and Battered Sausage's eyes, the pair of them meatier, no bones jutting out, only muscled physiques. Haddock's skin is brown, a natural tanner, a contrast to the ghostly, clammy paleness of his skin now. She doesn't know how long she's looking at the photo before Haddock returns, the sound of a girl giggling making her chest seize up. She's run out of tears, considering leaving the house, going for a walk to escape the performance Haddock has lined up for her. She doesn't, though. She stays and she listens. She listens to the pair of them ascend the stairs, the smacking of their lips as they kiss, the creaking of Haddock's bed, the delighted moans of the girl Haddock's managed to nab, Haddock's own grunts he makes dramatically louder for Rae's benefit.
Rae looks at the moon through her window, one last dream of Haddock forming in her mind, an image of he and Rae making love in a sun drenched bedroom, his soft, smooth lips dipping to kiss her before he looks at her with happy ecstasy, eyes bright and vivid like they used to be. She imagines his arms wrapping around her, skin bereft of track marks and bruises, strong, clean hands cupping her face with tenderness, all sanity and innocence, sobriety and health.
The sound of Haddock's girl's screaming orgasm brings Rae back to reality, and she sags, a wry, humourless smile forming. She allows herself this one last fantasy, and it would be her last, that much she knows.
—-
She hopes to slip away before Haddock or Battered Sausage catch her, Haddock and the girl still sleeping, all tangled limbs and shamelessly exposed flesh. Haddock must have heard the front door close, however, because he's out the front with her soon enough, wearing nothing but a pair of trackies and an oversized Stone Roses t-shirt stolen from Rae a while ago. She wonders if he even remembers taking it.
Battered Sausage is asleep in the front garden, not quite making it inside after a night of god knows what. She doesn't want to wake him.
"Your room's empty." Haddock says as the taxi driver helps Rae load her bags into the boot. She doesn't look at him, wondering if simply meeting his eyes would make her want to stay.
"I'm leaving now. It's gonna stick this time." she says, needlessly. She wonders if Haddock's going to protest, but they both know there's nothing he can feasibly do.
"Where will ya go?" he asks, quietly. Rae shrugs, loading another hold all in the back seat.
"Dunno. Away from you…away from him…" she gestures to Battered Sausage, who's still snoring, his t-shirt bloodstained. "…I don't care where, really."
"You going back to your Mum's?" he asks, as if making casual conversation. Rae resists the urge to laugh, wondering if she was even capable of the act any more. She shakes her head instead.
"I'm going where neither of you can find me." she states, forcing herself to look at Haddock, wanting to prove to herself that this was the end, that he had no power over her any more. His lips are smeared with lipstick, his hair mussed. He attempts to nod, but only manages a small jerk of his head.
"So that's it then?" he asks, glancing at Rae before his eyes fall to the floor. The edges of his face constrict in visible pain, but he suppresses it, forcing a look of nonchalance. His eyes are glistening as he looks back up in time for Rae to nod.
"Yeah." she concludes, glancing down at Battered Sausage one last time before making her way to the passenger seat. Haddock follows her purposefully before pausing at the open door, looking up the street, squinting, before pulling off his t-shirt and throwing it on Rae's lap in one swift movement. Rae looks down at it for a few seconds before moving to grab the door handle, Haddock hesitating before stepping back, allowing Rae to shut it.
She doesn't touch the t-shirt as the car drives away, and her heart dips as she hears her name being called from behind the moving car, obscured by the engine whirring. She looks in the side mirror before looking behind her, Haddock sprinting across the road towards the cab. She tries to make out what he's saying other than her name but can't, and still he runs, determined and on the verge of tears.
"Do you want me to stop?" the cab driver asks when he notices. Rae shakes her head immediately, throat thick.
"No. Keep driving." she chokes out, Haddock gaining on them. Still looking behind her, she rolls down the window and chucks her old t-shirt out onto the road before turning away, closing her eyes tight and clamping her hands on her ears to drown out his now clearer pleas. She catches the words: "…live without you!" before she does so, assuming it followed 'I can't' and she lets out a long, shaky sigh, longing for the driver to go faster. The cab driver nudges her after a few minutes, indicating it's safe to uncover her ears and open her eyes. She's met with only the sound of the streets as they pass her, the only remains of Haddock's voice being the echoes in her memory.