Chapter Fourteen: Pantoufles

.

The battered sign hung loose on a rusted ring, swinging gaily in the breeze. Spencer could almost hear the whining creak of the rotted wood, the dull thump of the sign smacking into the overgrown slash pine behind it. Mon Abri was etched and painted into the wood, long since faded from sapphire to a baby blue, but overtop a clumsy, young hand had at some point in the distant past splashed Pantoufles! in a violent black.

The car bumped over a hump of dirt as Ethan turned carefully into a narrow drive. Shivering and flushed all at once, despite the chill December air, Spencer pressed his mouth against the glass and watched his breath fog as the sign vanished from sight into the dawning blue morning.

"Slippers," Ethan grunted, and it was the first time he'd spoken since they'd left DC, beyond 'do you want a sandwich' and 'don't puke in the car'.

"Hmm?" Spencer asked, looking at him. Ethan looked wrecked. Skin white in the sick gleam of the dash and eyes shadowed black, he looked like Spencer felt.

"Slippers," Ethan repeated. "Pantoufle is French for slipper. I hated what this place was called. Refuge or shed or some tweedy French bullshit… I renamed it when I was ten. Thought it was funny."

"Oh." Spencer looked back to where the sign hung, feeling some strange feeling bubble up as they bumped down the drive and he imagined a younger Ethan jauntily strolling under the overgrown trees with spray paint in hand. Maybe making his own sanctuary to hide away from the world in, just as two other boys had far from here. "This was your house?"

"Mm."

Headlights turned as they rounded the last bend, revealing a sweep of what had probably used to be lawn; it was now silver-frosted mud. Behind it, a battered house perched on the side of a slow-flowing river, tilting forward as though peering down to check its reflection in the black depths below. The yellow light of the car illuminated blank, staring windows and the peeling façade of a weary home, before it chugged off with the motor. Ethan huffed, his breath already twirling white around his scruffy mouth as the cold air stole in, his eyes dark and locked on the battered front door.

"Does anyone live here?" Spencer asked uncertainly, rubbing at his arms and finding them sticky where he'd itched the sores open.

"Yeah," Ethan said quietly. "Wait here." He stepped out of the car, striding up the grassy drive and letting himself in. The door, unlocked, banged shut behind him, and Spencer saw lights flicker on upstairs. He huddled down into the sweater Ethan had thrown at him to put on, folding his arms back into the sleeves and covering his mouth and nose with it. Waiting for something to happen, anything to draw his mind away from the hurting and the sickness and the dreary, broken misery of knowing there was no nearby relief from his growing temptation.

And then the door opened again and Ethan leaned out, waving his arm. Spencer slid out after him, wincing as the crack of the door shutting burst through his aching head, and slouched towards his friend. Creaaaaak complained the wooden boards under his feet, bowing with his weight, and he slunk past his silent friend and into the house.

Inside, unlike the gloomy exterior, was warmly inviting. Spencer blinked, finding that he was standing on a plush rug in a house polished to a fine sheen. Every inch of the wooden floors was shined and worn, the tables and cupboards clustered against the wall littered with photos and knickknacks. The entire place smelled of wood smoke, of lavender, a whisper of something else familiar and comforting.

"Who's this then?" asked a woman on the stairs. Spencer looked up at her, quailing back a bit from her cold eyes. She was Ethan in a woman's frame, and her expression was fierce. "Didn't know you had friends, Eth."

"Shut up, Fiona," he snapped. From above their heads, floorboards creaked. A baby squalled. "Where's Gram?"

"You can't do this again," the woman hissed, folding her arms. "Rocking up, middle of the night—"

"Morning, actually," Ethan correctly mildly.

"—probably skunk drunk—"

"I'm sober."

"—with some kid. Gram isn't well, I don't know who the hell this is, and you're bringing him around Joshua—"

Ethan made the noise. The growling hmph he did when he was really pissed off, and Spencer and the woman both looked at him. "I'd never put Josh in danger," he said, his voice dark. "You gonna throw us out, Fi? Better get the balls up before Gram sees us here. She'll be pissed if you do."

"You're a shit of a brother, Ethan Jackson," Fiona said finally, after a long pause. "A right shit. You eaten?"

"Is that Ethan?" someone called. Spencer blinked. He'd expected a withered old woman to appear at the top of the stairs, but the lady who appeared was thin and hale looking, her eyes bright and clear. A toddler kicked in her arms, held easily in a strong grip, his fingers bunching into a white-laced nightgown. "Oh, Ethan! Love! You're visiting, how wonderful! And a friend, hello Ethan's friend! Oh, Fi, honey, take Joshy. I want to hug my grandson and his friend."

Suddenly, 'Gram' had an armful of Ethan, bounding down the stairs with the exuberance of a woman in her twenties instead of—actually, try as he might, Spencer couldn't place her age. Ethan hugged back with a voracious kind of affection he never showed anyone, and Spencer swallowed.

And before Spencer could slink back into the dim shadows of a coat rack behind him, Gram grabbed him. "Hello, tiny thing," she declared, hugging him tight with her narrow hands roaming his back. "Good lord! Tiny thing indeed—when was the last time this boy ate?!"

"Oh, rarely," Ethan said innocently. Spencer managed to twist his body around so he could glare at his friend from within the bounds of the embrace. Ethan was smiling, wickedly. "We never cook. Not ever. I think all we eat is fast food, and Spencer never eats enough. Growing boy like him, travesty really…"

"Oh, you're such a prick," Fiona breathed from the stairs, burying her face into the boy's hair as she hid a smile.

Gram, as Ethan had clearly intended, was mortified. "I'm cooking breakfast!" she declared, holding the whimpering Spencer at arm's length and looking him up and down. "No one comes here and leaves unfed!"

And she bounded away.

"You look confused," Ethan said smugly, as Fiona flickered past them with a sniff, a smile still curling one corner of her mouth. The toddler watched them curiously.

"Yeah," Spencer croaked, aware his voice was wrecked by exhaustion and misery. "How do you have such a nice grandma? Is she aware that you're awful?"

Ethan's laugh was shocked, sharp, and probably the only thing Spencer could cling to that was currently good. He followed Ethan into the kitchen and the scent of cooking and wondered what came next.

What came next, he discovered, was this.

"We'll sleep in the guesthouse," Ethan said over a plateful of syrupy pancakes, stirring the syrup with his fork. Spencer stared down at his and felt sick, eyes burning into the top of his scalp as the family watched him curiously. "Just for a week or two."

"I don't like it," Gram replied, tapping her fork on the table. "That place is a ruin, Ethan. It's drafty and damp and we never did fix that window before your Pop died, bless him. Why can't you stay in the house with us?"

"And sleep where?" Fiona cut in. Spencer lifted his gaze and watched numbly as she fed her son, Ethan's nephew, and the boy pulled excited faced at his mushy peas. "One on the couch and what, one in with you, Gram? Or do we fold the skinny bit there into the crib with Joshy?"

"Wit' Doshy," the boy decreed, flicking his peas at Ethan. Ethan wiped his sleeve and frowned at him, earning a scowl in return. "Yuck."

"We have sleeping bags in the attic, somewhere," Ethan said, dropping his fork. His food half-eaten. Spencer took it as an excuse to lower his as well. "And we won't have much time to sleep anyway." His eyes flickered to Spencer, and Spencer knew he could see the shivers beginning to work their way through him, the tell-tale trembling of his hand. He tried to hide it, desperate not to seem broken in front of this compact little family. Something he didn't have.

Something Ethan seemed to almost… resent. Pushing his nephew's grasping hands away, sniping at his sister, only really warm to his grandmother. There was something there Spencer was missing.

He suspected it had something to do with Fiona slipping away into the living room, only just visible to Spencer's curious eye, and locking the alcohol cabinet set high into the wall, pocketing the key. Maybe Spencer wasn't the only one with vices.

"We'll clean it up a bit," Ethan was continuing, standing and peering out the window. "Windows could use a scrub too. Bit of paint on the sills. We'll make ourselves useful while we're here, Gram. Teach this kid the meaning of hard work." He looked at Spencer coolly as he said this, and Spencer shivered again, his stomach twisting and his face turning cold as bile began to bubble in his throat. "Come on Spencer, let's go check the place out."

Spencer tried not to stumble as he mutely followed his friend out the back-door, leaving behind the warm kitchen and the childish babbles of the baby. They crossed a lawn more weed than grass. Spencer staggered, seeing a tumble-down building set quietly back into a copse of trees, and barely made it there before dropping to his knees and hurling into the frosty flowerbed.

A hand touched his shoulder as his body buckled forward and expelled everything he'd put into it, another twist low in his body warning him that he was about to head into a hell of a time.

"Water works in there," Ethan murmured, fingers working gently across Spencer's sweaty back, nails catching on the wool. "Bathroom, shower, kitchenette. It's private, if a bit dirty and unheated. Fi doesn't care enough to poke around, and Gram always gives me space if I stay out here."

"So, we're just going to hide here until I get money?" Spencer croaked, wiping his mouth and summoning energy from somewhere to stop from slumping into the mess he'd made.

"Nope," Ethan replied, and hauled him back up by his collar, the kindness vanishing. "You're going to work, kid. No free rides at Gram's house. How good are you at painting?"

Spencer had a feeling he was about to find out.

.

.

Their new abode was everything it had been promised. Damp and cold and Spencer didn't have the chance to appreciate either of these things because his body was swinging wildly from 'overheating' to 'freezing' and he was barely coping with either. When he started shivering and stammering, Ethan would hand him a block of sandpaper and get him working on the walls ready to apply the basecoat. When the heat returned in a burning flush, he sent him outside to awkwardly split logs so they'd fit into the small fireplace in the main house. After showing him how to do it. Spencer, thankfully, had managed not to chop a limb off. Yet.

The first day, Spencer hit the ground twice. Ethan told him to sand, and sand he did. Refusing to listen to the cues his pathetic body keep spitting at him, unsure if it was withdrawal or exhaustion or something more sinister and deciding he'd push through whatever it was. Twice, spots danced and told him he'd gone too far; twice, he woke seconds later on his side with Ethan leaning over him.

"You sit for ten minutes every half hour," Ethan finally informed him, frowning as he run his fingers over Spencer's sweaty cheek. "I'm starting to think this is a bad idea."

"No," Spencer said, swallowing down water that tasted coppery and rank. "This is the best idea."

And he worked and he worked and he worked with a searing, single-minded focus until the sun was down again and his breath was fogging from his lips and he tumbled, exhausted, into the sleeping bag.

He slept deeply and didn't dream.

The next day, they did it again. He only passed out once. He threw up eight times. He managed to eat some soup that Ethan appeared with around lunch time, prying the sanding block from cramped and blistered hands and putting the bowl in its place.

After lunch, the axe slipped and thunked neatly into the ground by Spencer's foot. Ethan, always hovering nearby when Spencer split the logs, quietly said, "That's enough," and that was the end of Spencer's lumberjacking days.

Not once did he say well done or you're working hard or that's it, you're doing it right.

Spencer, determined to get it right, decided that meant he had to do better.

Instead, Ethan waited until Spencer's energy flagged, muscles and body betraying him and dragging him down, and he'd say things like, "Missed a bit there," or, "Is that all you've got?" or even, "Mm, bit disappointing."

Spencer hated him. He hated the grit in his eyes, he hated the sweat, he hated that all he could smell was vomit and damp. He hated his head that told him everything was awful and hateful and cold and cruel. He hated himself. He hated blowing his nose and having the tissue blot with black from the particulates he was inhaling. He hated the blisters on his hands and feet, the muscles that shook when he stood, the screaming pain in every part of his body.

But he kept going. And going. And going, until he couldn't anymore—six days in and so tired he couldn't even think to hate anymore—and threw his paintbrush at the wall with a screamed fuck off! and stormed from the house. Found himself curled on a swing on the porch, broken and bleeding and with nothing left in him but tears that burned as he shed them.

A creak of the wood. Spencer curled tighter and moaned as his back spasmed. "I can't," he sobbed, and bit down savagely on his lip. "I can't, I'm done, just let me go."

"May I see your hands?" said a voice not Ethan at all. Spencer jerked up, staring at Gram as she stared back at him, curiously and a little sad, a small box held gently in front of her. "If they're anything like Ethan's when he gets in one of his moods, they'll be needing some love, love."

Spencer couldn't talk to her. Not this bright, affectionate woman skirting the edges of Ethan's life. Instead, he just mutely held his hands out, palms up, and winced at the weeping blisters splashed across his skin.

She sat next to him, just as mute, and quietly cleaned and dressed them. And then they watched the clouds scud across the December sky.

"Do you like to read?" Gram asked suddenly, looking away as though to give Spencer privacy for this answer.

Spencer managed, "Yes," and missed who he'd used to be.

"Ethan used to read," she said, and sounded gloomy now. "Nose in a book, all the time. Or hands on the piano. Always singing or reading, sometimes both. Fiona used to say that the words went in one hole and tumbled immediately out as noise from another, never sticking around to make him smarter. His room is the second on the left upstairs. Perhaps he still has some books in there that may interest you. I'm going to go see how much you two busy bees have done. Take your time—Ethan always forgets that when he feels driven by his demons, not everyone around him is as fixated. You know, I did say to his mother 'your boy has stopped singing', but did she listen? She did not. I'd so love to hear him sing again."

Spencer blinked, opening his mouth to reply, but she was gone. And he had so many questions, fading in the silence. Instead, he kicked his sneakers twice against the scuffed boards of the porch, and then finally stood and stole into the big house. Into that homely kitchen, a far cry from the broken apartment they lived in or the desperate attempts of a ten-year-old on his own to make a cooking space he'd had previously. He crept through that room, like a mouse, and made his way upstairs on feet that ached.

He found the room in a narrow, faded hallway. The door was unadorned. Glancing around, Spencer for a moment imagined the lives that had been lived here, and then he pushed open the stubborn door and stepped inside into Ethan's life.

"Oh," said Spencer, because it wasn't at all what he'd expected. It wasn't a teenager's room, loud and brash with all the force of an abrasive personality. There weren't girls on the walls or music posters littering every surface. There were no sports trophies or model aeroplanes or photos of friends.

It was a child's room. Dust lifted under his sneakers from a dinosaur-patterned rug under the toe of his shoe, and the bed was small and narrow. Stuffed toys huddled together for safety on the untouched bed; a lion and a monkey and something patchwork and well-loved. ETHAN JACKSON COIRO was painted on the wall above the bed in bright colours faded by time.

But the bookshelf and desk… they told a different story. One that Spencer trailed his fingers over, and knew. Knew like he didn't know the bitter rivalry between the two Coiro siblings; knew like he didn't know the kitchen downstairs or how to respond to a grandma's hug or a toddler's curious touch. Complicated textbooks were stacked neatly, sorted carefully. The notebooks that Spencer cautiously opened were filled with a tight, childish scrawl that nevertheless wrote at a college-aged level. Tucked behind the books, like a source of shame, dust covered academic trophies, awards, framed certificates. Another notebook was filled with music. Nothing Spencer recognised as he skimmed the notes. Ethan, however old he'd been, had written it all himself. Composed it, himself.

And then, only noticed because Spencer leaned closer to the books on the shelf and felt glass crunch slightly under his knee, he found a broken frame kicked furiously under the bookshelf. It took all his care to force his still-trembling hands to work it free, and find a yellowed clipping torn by a reckless blow. He read it silently, and then he read it again. And he wondered how he fit into all of this; just what his worth was to the man who kept trying to save his life.

Young, gifted, and purposeful: Intellectual prodigy, Ethan Coiro accepted into The Juilliard School in New York at fourteen-years of age!

"What happened to you?" Spencer asked the smiling boy grinning proudly up at him with his acceptance letter in one hand, trying to parse that image with the image of the scruffy and world-weary man with the barely-passing grades still trudging through college—for behavioural psychology, not music—at twenty-three.

"What happened to you?" Ethan responded, leaning in the doorway. Spencer winced, lowering the frame and looked up at his friend as heat rushed across his face and turned his cheeks red. "Don't infer anything from that."

"Like what?" Spencer asked, anger battling with the cruelty withdrawal always left in him and leaving him callous. "That you're only helping me because you're trying to make up for fucking your own life over?"

Ethan didn't answer, and Spencer threw the frame down and strode out, barely pausing to brush beside him.

"I'm not you," Spencer murmured, hesitating with their elbows brushing and his head buzzing with something that felt almost like disappointment. Like some small voice inside him that whispered, Ethan hasn't given up on you so you must be worth something, had been finally silenced by the realization Ethan was in it to save some past potential he'd once had, not anything Spencer could offer him. "I'm not you, Ethan… so don't project whatever you did onto me."

He left Ethan standing there, and went back to work. At least when he was working, painting, he wasn't thinking. And that was something.

Ethan didn't rejoin him and he finally fell asleep alone, the sleeping bag beside his empty.

.

.

On the final day, Ethan woke him at the crack of dawn with a shovel and a bag. Spencer blinked, recognising the bag. Froze at the sight of the bag.

"Where did you get that?" he stammered, slipping up out of the sleeping bag and being thankful that they'd spent the last two days sealing all the gaps in the building and replacing the broken panes of the window. It was warmer now, notably, the walls freshly painted and the floors swept clean. A changed façade. Spencer wished he could change himself so easily.

But the bag. The bag wasn't change. Inside it was a box. Inside that box were two sections, one hidden by the other. The top held needles. Two vials. His out, for when just pausing the torturous thoughts wasn't enough anymore. He doubted he'd ever take that out, at least while his mom and Ethan were still around to be hurt by that choice, but he always liked to have options.

The bottom section held letters. The worst of them. The best of them. The ones that hurt him beyond what he could stand. In there was a no and the end of his halcyon days.

"Move," was all Ethan said bluntly. Spencer moved. Dressed quickly and warmly and picked up the shovel Ethan pointed out, stumbling out after him into a clear-sky morning. They tramped away from the river, back into the trees, until they stopped by a knurled pine with knotty roots. And Ethan pointed at the ground in front. "Dig," he said, and Spencer dug.

After a beat, Ethan joined him. The ground was hard. Rock-solid and they were both panting before they'd even broken the surface. But once they did, the ground under gave way, filling the air with a beery, loamy scent, and then Ethan started talking.

"Dad," he grunted, slashing the shovel down across a wayward root, "always used to tell us to bury problems that were too big to solve. Worms, he said, solved everything. No one gives a shit about things that are worm-eaten."

Spencer kept digging.

"I don't think it's good advice. I think things that are buried deep are still there, just waiting for someone to unearth them. But then again, I think Dad was full of crap most of the time. Only smart thing that man ever did was leave. He's in Florida, somewhere, travelling. Mom too. They've got good lives apparently, now. They never did like having kids. Think we were burdens, me and Fi. Right from the start. Maybe they could have dealt with one, but when we both popped out? I think they checked out right then. And it was me and Fi against the world, from the get-go."

Spencer paused for a moment, before resuming his work. He'd… assumed. He'd been wrong.

"We're gonna bury our problems today, Spence. It's not gonna solve them. They're still going to exist. For a stupid long time, probably, because these tins are fucking waterproof and worm-proof and logic proof too, I assume, since we both kept them to torture ourselves with." Spencer looked up, just in time to have his box thrust at him. He took it, shaking with more than cold now. "We'll bury them and we'll go home and you'll probably relapse again. You've had a fright, but not enough of one, and… we'll deal with that. But without these. No more blaming these. When we go home, if you fuck up, you fuck up because of you. Not whatever is in here that I keep finding you staring at when you're coked out of your mind and desperate to hurt."

Spencer hefted his own box, the letters within, and then looked at the one Ethan held. Smaller. More compact. Just as deadly.

"What's in yours?" Spencer asked suddenly, rudely, and Ethan tilted his head.

"What's in yours?" Ethan replied pertly, and Spencer should have seen that coming.

And then he made up his mind. They'd go back to DC tomorrow, tired and blistered and dirty, and they'd pay back the money Spencer had stupidly borrowed. One narrow escape. And something had to change; he didn't trust himself that it would be him.

"Rhosgobel," he answered, and threw the box into the hole. Something within smashed as it thumped home among the dirt and the worms. Down among the dead things, rotting in the forest floor. "It's Rhosgobel."

Ethan didn't reply. Just threw his own box in and began turning the soil back into the hole. Spencer helped him. He couldn't help but feel this was a turning point, but not the one Ethan intended it to be. Because he didn't always get high to forget. Sometimes he got high to remember.

And if he didn't have the letters, how else would he remember Aaron?