"I want an explanation."
Derek looked haggard like he hadn't been sleeping or eating, but he had certainly been drinking. He reeked of cheap whiskey.
"How's this for an explanation," His voice was graveled. Isaac didn't want to be here when he started breaking things. "You're a liability."
"I can take care of myself."
"Can you?"
There was a labored silence.
"That's what I thought."
The house was a part of him. A thin layer of dust had settled on the surface of his bones. Derek had watched it burn. He lost himself in the fire. His lungs were full of smoke and he was clawing at the floor, his nails bending back and cracking, but he was weak—too tired to save them, too broken to drag himself out of the past.
"I can't protect you and Cora." Derek whispered. He had already lost Cora once.
"So I'm safer by myself?"
"I can't be responsible for you."
"Must be nice, being able to walk away."
"I'm not walking away, Isaac." Derek didn't want to look at him, but Isaac made him.
His eyes drew him in. They were strange and terribly beautiful. He couldn't be hurt anymore.
Someone who had felt pain—real pain—wanted to hide, to absolve it in confession, to forget it in tall glass of whiskey, but he couldn't forgive himself and he wasn't the forgetful type. He heard their screams. He felt their blood on his hands. They haunted him. Isaac was different. He was a part of the pain. He had known little else.
A smile tugged at his lips. There wasn't anything pleasant about it. It was almost as if he enjoyed the game they were playing and it was a game, albeit a cruel one. "No, you're running."
Isaac stopped. A dead halt from his run. The wind was cutting through his hair and his heart was pounding sickeningly fast.
"Hello," He called out into the nothingness. His voice didn't shatter the illusion of silence. The trees didn't answer him. The birds didn't startle and take flight. It was still light out. He looked up at the mottled blue sky. Such a calm, perfect day put him on edge. The rain was easier to understand.
He didn't feel like he was being watched. He felt like there was something under his skin. The hair on his arms was standing on end and there was a chill that ran down his spine.
Someone or thing was waiting for him. He wasn't scared. He was tired of being scared.
"Derek—" He breathed out a sigh. "Is this a test?"
Some sort of joke.
"Your sense of humor always was shit."
It was as if a bad storm was on the horizon, threatening to wash everything away, but there were no warning cries. It was a reckoning coming for him only.
And he ran.
He ran straight to Scott.
I'm sorry. He hated those words. They were hard to get out and he didn't understand why he had to apologize, but he knew it was the only way to make Scott look at him.
"Scott…I'm sorry."
"It's alright." Scott said quietly.
"No, Scott, I really am. You were right." If there was one thing he had learned it was that not everything had to be true. It just had to sound sincere. Scott didn't want the truth.
"Did something happen?"
"No, nothing happened." Isaac smiled. He wasn't sure if Scott was concerned or distrustful.
"Let's just go."
"What? Where?"
"Home."
Isaac didn't know what that meant anymore, but he was beginning to think it was wherever Scott was.
Isaac looked at him and Scott smiled infectiously. There was warmth in his eyes. It was a boy's smile. Isaac had never smiled like that.
"I can miss one day of school."
"Can you?"
Scott laughed. "Yeah come on."
They climbed on the back of the motorcycle. Scott had just gotten off of it. He found himself thinking Isaac had the worst timing.
His words were hollow like on the other side of a wall. His heart thrashed like a bird with a broken wing when he was with him. Close enough to run his fingers over his skin, to put his mouth on his mouth, to hold him and not let go. Isaac thought Scott said, "Sorry I don't have a helmet for you."
Helmets, school, it all seemed meaningless now. They were still convinced a part of them was normal. Isaac always wondered if his head was split open would it stitch itself back up before he bled out.
Isaac muttered, "I trust you."
They might have been careless and in the moment and foolish, but the words clawed at Scott. It didn't matter the engine hummed.
"You should probably hold on."
Isaac wrapped his arms around Scott tightly. He rested his head on his back and listened to him breathe. It reminded him of the ocean. Each inhale was a brushstroke of pale blue sea and every exhale was a crashing wave. He would follow him out to the deep, the ink spilled waters quivered over his mouth and nose, and there was no shore to wash up on.
He closed his eyes for half a second, smiling softly, and clutched the throttle. Scott pressed down hard on the accelerator. He loved the feel of wind of his skin, the intoxication of smells (coffee, pinewood, a barbeque), and then there was the warmth of Isaac holding him. He wished he could lean back into him and put his hands over his, lacing their fingers together, but there were grey skies that cried for him and open roads that beckoned him. They were splintering glass in his brain.
Pale buildings, blurred faces, the quiet greens, the dark concrete passed them by. In his gasping, shuttering heart there was only them. They slowed. They were 'home'. Four walls built a home. It was a memory, constructed by sight and smell and touch. Mom's cooking and the tree house dad had made, but they were incomplete…broken. There was no place to hide.
Isaac remembered where dishes had been thrown, voices raised, where he had never known his mother. He remembered being safe and small and lovely, swaddled in a blue blanket, but he had had no memory of her face or voice. Home was a place people left and could never return to. He didn't know how Derek stayed in that house. He couldn't live with ghosts, but that didn't mean he wasn't haunted.
He wanted something good to want him, to stay with him.
Scott took off his helmet and Isaac reached up, combing out his dark locks with his fingers. He breathed his name and arched his neck back to rest on his shoulder. His lips brushed over the freckles on his lower jaw. Isaac was a phantom in his skin, setting him on fire. He licked at his earlobe, biting it gently. The little sounds he made were like black spots on his soul.
Isaac pushed him forward. Through his half-closed eyelids he could see the sky. His blood was running hot and fast and in his delirium he swore it was painted. The pale blue was a brushstroke and the grey clouds were dots on a canvas. The glass of fabrication spider webbed. He heard traffic. He smelled garbage and factory smoke. Someone could see them. He was sure someone already had. Isaac had one hand on his hip, the other on his throat and he left reddish purple marks in his wake. His fingers tore upwards. He traced his lips. Scott opened his mouth, kissing the fingertips that danced to the curve of his body. Isaac was on war path and he would consume them both. His mouth was at the base of his neck, planting kisses down his spine through the thin fabric of his shirt.
"Isaac." Scott whispered. He wanted to shut up. He wanted Isaac to keep going and never stop.
"Please,"
Isaac knew that 'please'. He wasn't asking him to stop. It was desperate and frustrated, but it was in control.
"I've seen how you look at me." He gripped his hip. His nails dug into his skin. His fingers inched over the zipper of his jeans.
There was an ache in his throat that made it hurt to talk.
"Not here…"
"But somewhere,"
"Yes." Scott sighed.
"Come on."
Isaac followed him like a stubborn dog on a leash.
"What happened with Allison…that can never happen again,"
"I won't hurt your girlfriend."
"No, you won't hurt anyone." It sounded almost like a warning. "Isaac, listen to me. You have to learn to control this. Derek doesn't care if you hurt someone, if you get hurt. But I do."
Derek. Scott said the name as if it meant nothing and it did, to everyone, but Isaac. To him it was a knife sticking out of his back and it bled him dry.
They were standing close, their hands almost brushing together.
"I'm not going in there." Isaac said simply. "Do you know what my father did to me?"
Scott nodded. He had seen the scratch marks and dried blood.
"I'll be right here with you. Trust me." Isaac did and that was the problem. That was the funny thing about anchors. They could drag you down to the bottom of the sea.
Scott opened the closet door and pushed the rack of clothing aside and stepped in. Isaac was almost surprised at how neat it was, Ms. McCall's influence he was sure.
Isaac was like a caged animal. His hands were balled into fists and his head was bowed. He took two steps until he was standing face to face with Scott and pulled the door shut behind them. It was a tight fit and dark.
His heart pounded. He remembered screaming and kicking. He had been so sure his father would forgive him and let him out. His screams grew faint and tired, and turned to sobs. He sobbed until his voice gave out and he curled up in a ball, knees pulled into his stomach, arms folded over them. His throat was raw. His skin was bruised and cracked. Isaac gasped for breath, like he was having a panic attack, but they didn't get panic attacks. They didn't need inhalers, glasses…they didn't get hurt, not like they used to. "Scott, I can't do this."
"Yes, you can. You can."
His fingernails, turning into claws, dug into his palms and drew blood. It pooled in his hands, dripping out between the small spaces his clenched fingers left.
"Then I don't want to." Isaac snarled. He reached for the doorknob, but Scott wrapped an arm around him and pulled him close. Isaac felt his breath on his ear.
"You're right I don't know what it was like, what you went through, but I want to help you. I'm your friend. I'm more than that."
"Breathe."
He drew in shaky breath after shaky breath. It was a horrible, rasping sound. The noise an animal made when it crawled away, somewhere dark and alone to die.
Isaac was himself again, or as close to it as he had ever been. He felt far away like he was drifting out of a picture frame. He relaxed in his embrace. He wasn't fighting anymore and hadn't been for a while. He was resigned, like someone who checked themselves into a mental hospital when there was nothing wrong with them just to sleep in a bed and listen to another patient's breathing and the shuffling feet of the staff. Even if he knew what he was he couldn't say it, not to himself, and especially not to Scott. It was easier to play the victim, and he had been a long while back. His bruises had faded, but he would always have this indescribable fear of being alone. Scott didn't have his asthma anymore, but the suffocating need to fix people, when he couldn't even help himself, clung to his bones.
He was tired of being in the dark, but he couldn't step out. Not even when he was drenched in sunlight. Scott was on a crash collision course with the sun and he was pulling Isaac along with him.
Scott had a hand on the back of his head. He rested his forehead against his. "Somewhere is here, with me, now."
He kissed his forehead, his eyelids, the side of his mouth, and then his lips. It was starved, aching and breathless. Isaac returned the kiss roughly and pushed him back onto the bed. He pushed his shirt up over his head and pinned his wrists above his head. His tongue traced his collar bone. He undid the button on his jeans, unzipping them, and tugged them down. Isaac drew a line down his navel with his fingers, pulling his boxers down his hips. His lips followed, kissing every inch of sweat sheened skin. He licked at his navel, his hipbone, his thighs, his pale cheeks.
Scott had his bottom lip in between his front teeth. He inhaled through his nose slowly. His fingers were wrapped around the sheets. All he could say was, "Isaac," in a low voice and it was all Isaac wanted to hear.
His bright blue eyes looked up at him. His eyes said so much when his words filled him with so little.
His toes curled and his cheeks burned red.
His hands were on the back of his thighs, pushing them up. Scott arched his back and let out a moan. Isaac sucked on his fingers and pushed inside of him. Scott grasped the bed sheets tighter.
Isaac smiled. His eyes were flecked with gold. His tongue circled around the head of his cock and his fingers pulled out of him, only to push back in, harder, fucking him with two fingers and his mouth. Scott stared up at the ceiling fan, breathing heavily.
His lips were around his cock and Scott whispered, "I can be your home."
He would have given him anything (at that time).