Eventually they both stopped crying and Richie began to move restlessly as if he wanted Duncan to let him go. Duncan did not oblige him. Instead he stood them both up, but kept an arm around the boy, pressing Rich close to his side. He led them to Richie's bedroom and sat the boy on the bed.
Richie sat there avoiding Duncan's eyes, making quiet sniffling noises and surreptitiously swiping at his eyes as if he was embarrassed by his breakdown. Gently, very gently so it wouldn't be misinterpreted, Duncan lifted the boy's chin to look into his eyes.
"Richie, it's going to be ok. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but it will be. And Tessa and I will be here for you, always, no matter what." Duncan straightened, rubbing his hand absently over Richie's back as he thought about where Tessa's sleeping pills were.
"Why don't you lay back and I'll…" Richie hopped up as if burned.
"What's the
matter?"
"I can't…" Richie took a breath as if
gathering his courage. "I can't sleep there. In the bed, it
reminds me…"
"Oh Richie," Duncan's words were a sigh as he pulled the boy into a hug again. "How bout the couch? Could you sleep on the couch?" Richie nodded against his chest and so he shepherded the boy there.
He sat Richie down before getting blankets, pillows and a glass of water to go with the sleeping pill that he found in the bathroom. And when Richie was tucked into his makeshift bed, Duncan just sat in the nearby chair and stared at him.
And worried, worried about what to do now. He had already made so many mistakes. But he refused to be sorry for taking the boy in, there was no point in it. Richie needed him now. All he could do was try to make it better, try to fix everything that had gone so terribly wrong.
He felt so terribly angry, not at Richie, at her. The her who had hurt Richie, the woman he had barely spared a thought for until now. He had thought her simply a pawn of the immortal, just a victim of the immortal, forced to help kidnap Richie. Obviously he had been wrong. What he wouldn't give to get his hands on her now.
And how would he tell Tessa?! How was he going to tell her that he had almost let Richie kill himself? The only answer he had was to get on the phone immediately in the morning to one Sean Burns.