A/N - Thank you for your lovely reviews last chapter. It was great to get some new readers too :) I'm frantically trying to write as much as I can for this story before I go away on a two-week vacation so that I might be able to give you guys a finished product (but I can't make any promises) There aren't too many more chapters to go so I really hope you enjoy this :) Don't forget to review!
A Fairytale By Another Name
Erin's body jerks violently and she only realises as she's opening her eyes that she'd fallen asleep. Her heart leaps into her throat when she realises that the basement door is open and she can hear a series of dull thumps coming from the bottom of the stairs. In her haste to reach Jack, she forgets the gun but finds him sound asleep in his crib and so looks out of the window. The car is back - although looks like it's been abandoned haphazardly - signalling Charlie's return.
Something inside of her chest twists and she has zero intention of deciphering what it is.
Another sickening thud sounds out and she runs downstairs, grabbing her gun from beside the couch. Bile rises in her throat when she descends the basement stairs and sees Charlie attacking the man who, only the last time she was awake, had held her more gently with his hands bound than she'd ever been held before.
"You want some?" Jay asks, managing to make a tear in the plastic packaging even with the cable tie still in place. Briefly, Erin wonders if she hasn't tightened it enough.
She makes no attempt to check - or pull the strip of plastic tighter.
"I'll pass."
"Come on," he tries, nudging her a little and it feels unequivocally like a line has been crossed. She's almost certain there's no going back now.
She rolls her eyes. "Fine."
She holds her hand out and Jay tips the packet so around eight pieces of candy land on her palm. He's watching her, she knows, like she's some strange species that hasn't been identified yet. Self-conscious, she pops one of the pieces onto her tongue and feels rather than sees him smile beside her. He shouldn't be smiling about this. He shouldn't be smiling about anything.
"It's good right?" Jay says, shoving at least four pieces into his mouth at once.
"It really just tastes like sugar," Erin decides, but adds another piece to her mouth regardless.
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
She shrugs and the action makes their arms brush. Her toes curl inside of her boots and she wants to do it again. She doesn't.
Instead, she finds some words from somewhere inside of her, strings them together and manages to form a question.
"Do you eat the Halloween candy you buy before the trick-or-treaters come?"
There's a grin crossing his lips and all Erin thinks is that she doesn't deserve this - this moment of pleasantness in such a horrendous situation. Still, Jay answers. "So much of it that I always have to buy it twice."
"You get dressed up?"
He shrugs and their arms brush again. This time though, she thinks he shifts a little closer so that their bodies are resting against each others from their shoulders to their elbows. A warmth spreads from where he's touching her down to her fingers and Erin feels them twitch a little. "Sometimes. I went as my boss one year to a party one of the guys in my unit was throwing. It didn't go down well."
Despite everything, she finds herself smiling. "I've never been to a Halloween party."
It feels like a more significant admission than it should, but Jay doesn't dwell on it and she feels a sense of gratitude towards him.
"Would would your costume be?" he asks "If you went to one next year."
Unsurprisingly, that seems like the last thing she'll be doing come October 31st. For the sake of this precariously constructed fantasy world they're engaging in however, Erin thinks of her answer.
"Miss Honey from Matilda."
Jay's lips quirk. "Not the answer I would've predicted."
"She seemed like such a good person," Erin sighs, and doesn't realise she's said the next part until she feels Jay's bound hands rest over hers. "The complete opposite to me."
"You're not a bad person Erin."
She swallows and blinks back the tears threatening her vision. She is. She's worse than bad. She's monstrous. Evil.
"I am," she whispers. "And I'm sorry."
She feels his body shift, accompanied by a grunt of discomfort but then, "Do you trust me not to hurt you?"
She knows she shouldn't. Turning to look at him though, his blue eyes are so clear and so honest that the word slips out, unchallenged. "Yes."
He lifts his arms and stretches his elbows apart to form an oval which slips over her so that she's in the centre. Then, Jay draws them back inwards so they close around her and she's resting against him. Being held by him.
His breath feels warm and comforting against her ear and she sniffs as a tear forges a damp path down her cheek.
Charlie's alternating between hitting Jay, tugging at his own hair, and scratching at his skin as though he has an uncontrollable itch. She says his name - loudly and in broken syllables - and only when he looks up does she realise what this is: he's using.
It's been years since she's seen him like this - wild and impulsively lunging with such black eyes; high (or, coming down from one) off of heroin - and she knows there and then that she has to get out.
"Stop it!" she shouts, tugging at his leather jacket, recoiling from the smell of him: he hasn't showered in a couple days and she knows from the stains on the front of his sweater that he's vomited without significant effort of a clean up. "Hey!" Her voice is suddenly loud and clear and he does stop, looking at her and for a moment, her whole world stops spinning. She's unsure as to whether he's about to do the same to her as he did to Jay but his limbs go lax and she lets out a quiet breath.
"Go take a shower," she whispers. "Go to bed. I've got this."
It's a lie. She doesn't have anything remotely resembling the unvoiced 'under control'. What she does have is a three-month-old baby with shitty parents, a boyfriend she's only just realising has been using probably the whole time she thought he was clean, and an innocent cop tied to a radiator in her basement.
Charlie heads up the stairs without a word and Erin can barely bring her eyes to look at Jay's. He's breathing, which is probably the only good in all of this, his laboured inhales clogged by blood and a swollen face.
"I'm not going to let him kill you," she says, decision made. Her voice is barely audible but she knows he's heard.
This time, Erin leaves the light on when she heads back up to the house. She closes the door but doesn't lock it, ascending the stairs towards Jack's room. Miraculously, he's asleep and so she carefully bundles him into a snowsuit, sets a hat over his head and then secures the fluffy hood with a scarf. She can't leave him up here with Charlie and it's too cold to let him sleep in the car without the engine running so the only option is to keep him with her. Jay's not going to hurt him.
She listens while Charlie forgoes the shower in favour of heading straight to bed, waits a few minutes in case he's unable to sleep, but hears nothing. Jack's little dark eyes stay closed as Erin fills a bowl with warm water in the bathroom. There isn't a spare flannel anywhere and so she figures a teatowel will have to do. Navigating her way back downstairs with the bowl of water in one hand and a sleeping baby in the other proves a difficult challenge, some of the water sloshing over the sides so her coat gets wet, but she makes it down the narrow basement stairs and finds Jay watching her through swollen black eyes.
"He's sleeping," she tells him in reference to Charlie. "I…" Looking at Jack, she sniffs, voice cracking. "I'm going to keep him with me. Please just don't -"
"I won't," Jay manages to grit out.
Erin nods. Thank you seems too hard to say.
She uses the pillow behind Jay and the blankets dumped haphazardly away from his feet to form a bed of sorts, on which she sets Jack. His eyelashes flutter briefly, but he stays blissfully unaware and so Erin unties the rope from around Jay's wrists before soaking the towel in the warm water.
He flinches a little when she guides the material across his skin and so she raises her hand in a no doubt failed bid to alleviate the pain as much as possible. He watches her face the entire time, eyes taking in the thin curve of her lips; the mole she has on the side of her face that she hates; the dark circles she knows have been a permanent feature under her eyes, probably for the last few years.
Her knees on the floor, Erin bends closer to Jay, holding the side of his head as gently as she can in her left hand so she can wipe the blood away with the cloth in her right.
"I should've brought some ice," she says aloud - not really for his benefit but he still manages to find it within him to reply.
"There must be plenty of snow outside."
She nods. He continues, somehow. "Your hands feel better."
"I told you I won't let him kill you," Erin tells him for the second time. "So you don't have to be nice."
There's a movement in his eyes that she can't attach an emotion to. It' something akin to hurt but it's not quite that. He doesn't say anything else.
Jack continues to sleep while Erin soaks the towel again, squeezing it out before carefully wiping at the blood around Jay's nose and lips. They look soft, she decides, like they'd be comfortable to rest her own on.
The thought catches her off guard and she gasps, flaming from her neck upwards despite the cold of the basement.
"What?" His voice is gruff but not sharp. There's a dangerous lilt to it though that she can't place.
"Nothing."
"Erin…" He leans closer, so close that his breath is hot on her own lips as she can taste the sweetness of the candy corn. Can make out the metallic smell of his blood too.
"I -"
He closes the gap then. Leans forward just a little so there's barely a breath of air between them and dusts his lips over hers. She doesn't move. She can't move. There's some pressure - his lips pressing further against hers - and her eyelids sweep downward and her heart feels like it's stuttering out of rhythm.
She pulls back and he's watching her like she's a feral animal. "Why did you do that?"
"I…" he winces and tries to shift his body. "I wanted to see if you felt it too."
Her lips feel like they've been stung. It seems horrendously inappropriate that she likes it.
"Leave him Erin."
"I…"
His hands - still bound by the cable tie - are lifting her chin. "Leave him. Give your kid a chance."
"What about you?" She whispers.
"We both know he's going to kill me," he grits out. "And you can't stop him."
"I can," she protests weakly.
"You can't," Jay repeats, closing his eyes. "And that's okay."
"I want to." She wishes she'd realised sooner. Or, maybe it would be better if she hadn't realised at all.
"I know."
Her hands are touching his wrists. "Why would you want to help me?"
"You remind me of someone."
"Who?"
He's silent for a moment and Erin wonders if all of the words have stolen the last of his breaths. But then, in almost less than a whisper, he says "Nadia."
There's an expression on his face that halts the follow-up question and Erin purses her lips closed. Her cheeks feel hot all of a sudden, and she realises she's crying. "I was the one who drove you here you know. I brought you here!"
Jay only seems to stare at her. He doesn't look surprised.
"I was the one who drove you here," she tells him again, like he might've misunderstood the first time. "I could've driven to the police station or refused or done anything to keep you from being stuck in this basement, but I didn't.
He's still silent and her tears are hot and angry.
"I thought about killing you. Even picked out a place to hide your body."
He doesn't flinch.
"I was going to shoot you," she's nodding, she realises, like maybe it's herself she's trying to convince. "Drag you out to the silos and burn your body to hide the evidence."
"What do you want me to say?" he finally asks.
"That you hate me. That you want me to suffer."
"I don't."
She tosses the towel onto the floor and water sprays upwards. She wipes at her tears and picks up Jack who's started to stir with the raised noise. The rope stays on the floor.
"You should."
X
She's crying harder by the time she reaches the living room, skin burning from the hot, wet salt and the feel of Jay's body against hers. Jack is screwing up his face too, getting ready to announce his own discomfort and all Erin can do is cry harder. At one point, not too long ago, this would have been the time where she gave in to the impulses in her fingers; that burning desire within her to head out onto the corner, sell herself for a bag of heroin and shoot up as soon as she got back to the house. But now there's Jack and she will not be Bunny in this equation. And so she clenches her fingers towards her palm, sucks in a shaky breath and heads up to his nursery for a diaper.
She changes him almost robotically, redressing him in the snowsuit from earlier because she just needs to get out, wherever out might be. Jack settles quickly and looks at her with such innocence that she finds herself looking away, picking him up and holding him to her chest so he can't yet recognise what a bad hand he's been dealt in life.
On the way back downstairs, she pushes open the door of her and Charlie's bedroom open just a fraction so she can determine whether or not he's asleep, and yeah, Erin knows she's seen a lot in twenty-three years, but nothing could've prepared her for the scene in front of her.
She gasps in a breath which sounds more like a strangled sob as she pushes the door all the way open.
"Charlie!" she screams, her tone sending the baby in her arms into an eruption of screams. Something kicks in - instinct maybe - and she rushes Jack to his crib despite his escalating cries.
Maybe she expects the scene to have changed when she returns to the bedroom but it hasn't - it's still the same view of her boyfriend, needle in his arm and eyes open, slumped against the wall unmoving.
She knows he's gone.
