Disclaimer: See initial chapter.
Warning: This chapter contains some imagery which readers might find disturbing, and which might be triggering to some. There are allusions to sexual assault and child abuse, and there is a depiction of cruelty to animals.
A/N: I know that it has been a long time. I won't insult anyone by saying that life was busy, etc., especially since I have been writing and posting other stories. The truth is, I was kind of wiped out by that last bit, and needed a break from this story.
The disjointed nature of this chapter is intentional (Juice does have a head injury), as are the use of repetition and fragmented sentences. I was flexible, and liberal with conventions of grammar as I was experimenting with form in an attempt to provoke an emotional response from the reader. This, as opposed to concerns of grammar, is what I would prefer any feedback to reflect, should you choose to offer any (for which I would be grateful).
"Open your eyes, honey," a soft, kind voice says.
Juice obeys, forcing his much too heavy eyelids open.
He didn't realize that his eyes were closed in the first place.
Darkness is comforting.
Soothing.
Safe.
Darkness keeps the monsters away.
Or, maybe Juice has that backwards, and the darkness just hides the monsters, making it easier for them to get at him, and tear him apart.
He hurts.
The light hurts.
Everything hurts.
"Can you open your eyes for me?"
The repeated words remind Juice that he's real, that this is real.
Real.
It's a trippy word, the way it rolls off his tongue, even when he's just hearing the word in his head and he's only thinking it, and his tongue isn't even speaking the word - it sounds…good, in his mind, the way that he says it.
Real. Real. Real.
He can roll his r's.
He can make the word, real, sound Spanish. Rrrrrreal.
He opens his mouth to try the word out, to see if it really sounds like Spanish when he says it, or if it will come out sounding like one of those lame YouTube videos that people post of their 'talking' cats.
Juice had one of those, a talking cat, once, when he was a kid.
Thing never shut up, howled and scratched and clawed and bit, and just never shut the fuck up, no matter how many times Juice begged it to.
That's why one of his mother's boyfriends – Paul or Phil, or Rico – killed it.
Shoved it into a pillowcase, one of Juice's prized Batman ones, tied a knot at the top of the pillowcase, so the cat couldn't escape, and then just kept hitting the pillowcase over and over and over again with a baseball bat until, finally, finally, the damn thing just stopped 'talking.'
Juice remembers the last sound that the cat ever made. A muffled, pathetic sounding long, drawn-out meow. Sometimes it haunts him.
He remembers the blood, staining his pillowcase, the floor, his hands.
He remembers the soft, squelching thud that the pillowcase made when he'd lobbed it up over the lip of the dumpster, and it landed, in the midst of the other garbage with a dull splat.
He remembers crying, sobbing his eyes out, and Paul-Phil-Rico whaling on him for being a sissy. He doesn't remember anything else about the rest of that summer.
Before Juice can get the word, real, out, though, to test its Spanish-ness, something's shoved into his mouth, and it presses on his tongue. It feels like wood, tastes like wood, and Juice wonders if it'll leave splinters in his mouth.
He's gagging. Choking. He can't breathe.
He can't breathe, and it hurts, and he wants it out of this mouth, doesn't want it shoved down his throat. Doesn't want to swallow.
'Swallow.' It's a dirty word.
Juice has done dirty things with it.
Done dirty things because of it.
Be a good boy, Juice, and swallow. That's it. Fuck, fuck, fuck, yeah, that's it. Fuck.
"Sweetie, can you open your eyes for me?" so kind, the voice.
The monsters lurk in the corners at the edge of the darkness in his mind, biding their time.
Juice opens his eyes. The monsters can't get him when he's in the light, even if the light hurts. They – the monsters with their claws, and too-sharp teeth – can hurt him far worse than the light, with its stabbing, brain-poking pain, can.
He winces and tries to jerk away from the overly bright light that some unseen assailant shines into his eyes. He scowls and closes his eyes, risking the monsters, as he ignores the next, kindly spoken command to open his eyes.
He's tired, and doesn't want to be here. He wants to go home, crawl into bed and sleep all the way through until late Sunday afternoon, or maybe until Monday morning.
He isn't needed right now, anyway. Least, he doesn't think he's needed now. Clay hasn't come around lately.
Juice can't remember the last time that Clay's come to him, and it kind of scares him, not knowing, because maybe Clay doesn't need him anymore, and if Clay doesn't need him, then what use is he to the club?
He doesn't matter to anyone else, not really. Chibs only pretends to like him half of the time. Juice knows the truth though, that Chibs doesn't trust him, and only acts like his friend so that he can keep an eye on him, and make sure that he doesn't fuck things up.
At least with Clay around, Juice knows that he has a purpose, a reason for being. Even if that reason isn't exactly pretty, and can't be broadcast to the rest of the club.
Without Clay, Juice has nothing.
Juice is nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Floating on the wind.
A feather floating aimlessly from place to place, nowhere to belong, nowhere to rest, nowhere to be.
Maybe Juice should be the one to go to Clay. Remind the man of the reason why he keeps Juice around. What he can do with his mouth, his hands, how good he can beg.
"Can you lay back for me, son?" a tired, grandfatherly voice asks, and Juice jerks backward when the man's soft, leathery hand touches him, coaxing him down, down, down, until his back hits cold metal.
Though Juice is afraid that obedience will just cause him more pain, like the stabbing light, he complies.
Disobedience might cause him far greater pain.
He's learned that the hard way – Clay's hands, rough and demanding, fingers pinching bruises into his skin when Juice so much as thinks of telling the man, 'no'; his mother's ham-fisted boyfriends, quick with a backhand and a belt when he doesn't want to do as he's been asked.
Juice can hear people moving around him– the hustle-bustle of a busy hospital – tries to ignore the warm-cool, impersonal hands on his skin.
It has nothing to do with him. None of this has anything to do with him. If he concentrates hard enough, he won't even really be here.
He's only at the hospital, because Chibs had drug him out of bed earlier that morning, and brought him here. Juice hadn't wanted to come. There's nothing wrong with him that a beer and some painkillers won't be able to fix.
"I need an SAE kit in exam room one," the kindly voice from earlier says, a touch of pity coloring her words.
"You certain?"
Chibs' voice wafts over him, and Juice knows that, once again, the words aren't meant for him, but for someone else that he can't see because Chibs is blocking the way, and the doctor with the soft leather hand is touching Juice's leg. It makes his skin itch and crawl and he wants to get away.
To go away.
To float away.
Juice thinks that maybe, he shouldn't have taken that tiny, white pill that had been lying on the dresser. The pill that hadn't taken away his pain, but had made things a thousand times worse –amplifying sound and thought and that prickly sensation on the hairs of his arms, that made it feel like there were spiders crawling all along his skin even when there weren't any spiders.
"It's just…he's a guy." Chib's voice trails off, and Juice doesn't understand what, or who, Chibs is talking about, or who he's talking to.
"He's not…he isn't…"
Chibs' hand falls heavily on Juice's shoulder, and Juice flinches away from the touch.
"He's not gay."
Unable, and unwilling to keep track of the conversation that's going on around him Juice retreats into himself, where it's safe. It isn't the darkness, and it's not the too-bright light. It's a safe place; one that Juice had found that summer when Paul or Phil, or Rico had killed his cat.
"Sir, it's standard procedure under these circumstances. He's bleeding…" that soft, kindly voice gets lost in the lights that are boring into Juice's eyes, so he closes them, thinking that maybe, without the interference of the light, he can hear better.
The words swirl around Juice's head, buzz in his ears. He can't seem to make sense of them, though he knows that he's heard them before – maybe in a TV show, or, maybe when he was a little boy, sitting very still and quiet, holding his mother's hand, listening to her crying, shouting at the doctors and police in broken English.
The kindly voice is speaking, saying something else to someone else, not him, and Juice finds that he doesn't much care who it is that she's talking to.
When he opens his eyes, all he can see is the white and blue of the bottom half of hospital gowns, the feet of the nurses and doctors that move and work around him. The light isn't as bright anymore, and he's happy about that.
The doctors and nurses are busy, rushing around like headless chickens. The thought makes Juice laugh, the sound gets stuck in his throat, and he feels like he's choking.
He can't think, can't remember correctly where he's heard those words before: …SAE kit in exam room one. Bleeding. Gay.
Doesn't know if the words matter anyway.
Chibs is holding Juice's hand, squeezing it, and talking to him.
Juice feels sick, and hot, and Chibs' hand feels too hard, too tight, too…heavy – Juice can't yank his own hand free, and he can't hear what the man's saying, just knows that Chibs is talking, because Juice can feel the man's voice coursing through his veins.
Juice can't remember how he got to the hospital, can't remember when Chibs got there. There's an entire blank spot in his mind when he tries to recall it, even though he thinks that he knew it just a moment ago. It's hard. Remembering.
Has Chibs been holding his hand the whole time?
Sons don't hold hands like Girl Scouts going door-to-door, selling cookies, even if they are in a bustling hospital, one of them lying on an exam table, covered in little more than a flimsy gown, naked ass splayed for the entire world to see.
Though Chibs' lips are moving, and he's looking right at him, Juice can't hear the man's words over the droning sound in his ears; it feels like there're a million bees swarming around inside of his head.
All of them have angry voices that buzz, buzz, buzz, making him dizzy and ill with their raspy zzzz…z…zzz's.
His head hurts – feels like it's splitting in two, and Juice knows that if he isn't careful, his brains are going to fall out of it at any moment. He can't keep them in, his thoughts, his brains. Can't keep the secrets within them from spilling forth and ruining him.
Ruining Clay.
Killing them both.
Juice is glad when the doctors and nurses stop touching him, and when, Chibs, with his overly large hand isn't weighing him down anymore, anchoring him in place. And, he doesn't miss the feel of leather hands slip-sliding over and across his thigh, even if they did remind him, briefly, of Clay.
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