Enano

msmooseberry

Summary:

It's Daniel's birthday and Sean brings him a special treat. What he doesn't expect is to get a present in return.

Notes:

The quotation in italics, which is split between the opening and the closing phrases, comes from the poem "Start Here" by Caitlyn Siehl.

Work Text:

When is a monster not a monster?

Today is your birthday, and yet you are the one who's waiting for me in the living room with a gift on the coffee table. A plain cardboard box tied neatly with a string. Another one. And so soon. Barely two weeks have passed since the last one.

My palms get sweaty in an instant and the plastic bags I'm holding with one hand, the keys grasped in the other, nearly slip from my trembling fingers. I absolutely can't drop them though, or my two hour drive to Caborca will be for nothing.

"Sean," you greet me with a grin that stretches your lips but doesn't reach your eyes. It never does really. "You're finally back. Took you long enough. Did you get it?" You stand up from the couch and walk up to me, swiftly and quietly, like you usually do. I'm thankful when you take the bags, levitating them in mid-air with your power so that you can look inside.

"Yeah, of course, enano." My voice is hoarse but I don't bother clearing my throat. "Triple chocolate. Your favourite." I struggle to get the words out and to hold my only seeing eye on you because it keeps flickering to the unassuming box on the table as I'm wracking my brain, trying to remember what could've caused it. Everything seemed to be fine these past several days. What triggered you?

"Oooh, yes!" You pull the cake out and open the lid to inhale the sweet smell. "Let's eat it now!" you say, heading back to the couch right away. And once the cake is in your hands you immediately let the bags fall to the floor, uncaring if there's anything fragile inside, and leave the mess for me to clear. I can't even be mad at you for it right now, scared as I am to find out what you prepared for me in return.

"So, birthday boy," I start, hesitantly walking past you to the kitchen. If I don't get the plates and forks you'll just eat the whole cake with your bare hands. And make me do the same. "I thought today we would just chill and celebrate." You're nineteen already. Nine whole years living here, in Puerto Lobos, in Dad's old house that we turned into a garage. Sometimes it feels like we've been stuck here together for twice as long.

I grab the plates almost blindly, itching to turn around because I can feel your cold dark eyes boring into my back. When I take two forks my gaze fixes on the knives for the shortest fraction of a second. I close the cupboard and work up the courage to ask. "What's with the box?"

You sit on the couch with your feet resting on the table right next to it. The cake is in your lap and already missing a good chunk from its side that you tore off with your fingers and shoved into your mouth, smearing the chocolate sauce across your lips. I put the plates down but don't sit beside you yet. I need to know.

You aren't in any hurry to answer me though and take your sweet time chewing and licking your lips and fingers clean. Then you float the cake off your lap and pat the empty cushion, inviting me to sit. I don't want to. But I still do. With my back hunched and stiff and my hands gripping my elbows defensively. If you notice, and I'm sure you do, you don't comment on it.

Instead your palm lands on my shoulder and you squeeze it in what you must think is an amiable gesture because you give me a smile as well, one of those frozen calculated smiles that only strangers could take for genuine ones. Then you start to speak.

"You're such a good brother, Sean. You take care of me, hang out with me, drive out of town to buy me cake, and return home, just like a good brother should." The fingers on my shoulder tighten a bit, punctuating the hidden jab and reminding that running away from you is not an option. As if the slight limp I've had ever since my leg healed after that one time I tried is not enough of a reminder already.

"I do," I manage to say in a whisper, staring at the cardboard box so hard my head starts to throb. Or maybe it's just the stress.

"You do," you repeat, then sit back comfortably and slide the box closer to me with your power. "But you get carried away sometimes, don't you?" you say, easy and innocent, as if you are talking about the weather outside. "You start wishing you could take care of someone else, someone nicer, maybe," you say, your voice never changing its quality, but I can feel the heaviness of the implication. "I just want to show you that I can be nice too. So I got you this. Open it."

I knew this was coming, but the order makes me jump a little nonetheless. Refusing your 'gifts' is not an option either. I had to learn it the hard way when I threw a fit once and you made me watch what happens before you package them.

I shift anxiously on the edge of the couch and glance at you from the corner of the eye. Your expression is neutral but this time your eyes become alive with twisted anticipation.

I've seen it enough times to recognise it for what it is – the sick pleasure you get from watching me squirm and get appalled by your awful deeds.

You watched me with the same expression as you crushed the cougar that almost attacked us near the abandoned cabin in the woods – that's where I started suspecting that something wasn't quite right with you. And then it happened again – when you shoved Chris with your power under the speeding police car to get a distraction for us to leave. And later at the weed farm – where you watched Finn get killed despite me begging you to do something to stop Merrill. At least then you were shot as well. I never told you this, and definitely never will, but I think you pretty much deserved that.

Yet the most vivid memory I have of this razor sharp and hungry look of yours is about the day I came to get you from the church cult, foolishly believing you needed to be saved. You didn't want to leave and I remember thinking that perhaps faith really did a trick on you and pulled you out of the darkness that you were plunging into deeper and deeper since the day Dad died.

Then Jacob, Karen and I came to 'rescue' you only to find the church ablaze with all the members of the commune piled unconscious under the cross I saw you lift. And on that cross was the woman who wanted to manipulate you and was certain that she was successful probably until the moment you pinned her there to burn alive.

I still hear her screams in my nightmares sometimes. As well as the screams of the police officers at that detention centre at the border. It's ironic that the only place where I felt relatively safe after months of being with you on the run was the interrogation room there. But then the officer told me you were awake and that the bullet only grazed you, and I realised that he wasn't going to make it. And he didn't. Nobody at the station, nor at the entry point did either.

I wished you would stop with the killings when we got here. In the first months I wanted both of us to have a clean start, to leave all the horrors we'd been through behind, in the country that chewed us up and spit us out. The house was a complete dump back then, yet I was determined to rebuild it and our lives together with it. I thought we'd be able to make it work. I thought you'd be able to change.

I was wrong of course. And I was forced to accept that the night some local thugs came to our house at night, perhaps expecting it to be empty like it had been for so many years. They found me and you, curled up on an old mouldy mattress upstairs and went for me first, asking what valuable possessions we had. After I admitted that we were broke, they decided to have some fun and used me as a punching bag, threatening to hurt you if I tried anything against them.

And while they were at it, you watched. With that same sick, fascinated expression you are wearing right now. You drank in my groans and sobs, knowing full well that I would never ask you to stop them because then they would be doomed. So I held out as long as I could, taking one punch after another, hacking up blood and barely seeing anything from the tears that streamed down my cheeks. I was hoping you'd spare them. For the first hour or so. Then, and I am disgusted with myself for that to this day, I started wishing that you would step in.

You did, eventually. Broke their bones and then their necks without batting an eye, sat down next to me, sprawled there on the dirty floor, all bloody and bruised, and told me, "This is what you get for being nice to people all the time."

I shudder at that memory and then jerk in surprise when you suddenly clap your hands.

"Did you fall asleep? I told you to open it." You're only nineteen and if you were a regular teen you would've sounded like a whiny brat, but there's so much steel in your voice I find myself nodding dumbly and reaching for the box.

My hand knocks into the side of the table because in my haste I forget how messed up my depth perception is, you let out a chuckle.

"So eager," you say, mocking me. "Good."

I take the end of the string that you arranged into a bow on top and pull it slowly, holding my breath. The knot comes undone too easily for my liking, and now I have to take the lid off.

I wish I didn't as soon as I catch the sight of what's inside.

"Do you like it?" Your voice sounds distant and muffled from how loudly blood is ringing in my ears. Bile rises in my throat and the smell of the chocolate cake that is standing on the table just a few inches away from your 'present' makes it much more difficult to swallow it back down.

Because inside the box there is a crudely severed hand, with three rings on the middle and pointer fingers and long nails painted red.

"I think you should. You definitely liked it groping you last weekend at the club."

I look up at you in a daze. The words don't make sense to me for a couple of seconds, then it hits me. The club last Saturday. Me agreeing to go after Diego from the hardware store had pestered me for a whole week, saying it would be his cousin's birthday and that I must be there. You tagging along just like that because you never need a special invitation.

And Diego's cousin, whose name I can't recall to my utter horror and shame because what my treacherous memory supplies me with instead are her long nails, painted red, and her equally bright red mouth, whispering something suggestively into my ear as she pulled me closer by the waist.

I didn't get to spend much time with her though because you dragged me onto the dance floor and spun and jerked me around until I felt so sick I had to go puke in the bathroom. You were there with me, making nasty comments about how I can't handle hard liquor at all. You weren't wrong. I barely have any other recollections of that night.

But what I do remember is enough. You see it in my haunted look and smile.

"So..." You lean closer. I stop breathing completely, afraid that I'll throw up after all. "Do you want some cake?"

There's a strange clinking sound behind me and I just begin turning my head further to the left to compensate for my blind side when a knife zaps past me and into your waiting palm. I blink down at the shiny blade and gulp, glad that I didn't make any sudden movements. You got way too comfortable using your power without any warnings.

The box with the cake slides across the table, pushing the box with less savory contents down to the floor like it's a piece of garbage. To you it must be already. And to me it is another sad addition to the unofficial and unmarked graveyard behind our house where I bury similar remains of all the unfortunate people who happen to bother us, or sometimes simply strike a conversation with me and by doing so piss you off somehow. It started with those thugs nine years ago and has been growing progressively worse since you turned fourteen and hit puberty apparently. I still have hope that you will gradually grow out of it. And if you don't-

"Here." You interrupt my gloomy train of thought by shoving a plate with a huge piece of cake into my hands. How generous of you. Normally you hog all the sweets in the vicinity.

"Thanks, enano," I mumble on autopilot.

"Oh, it was my pleasure," you say, shoveling your own helping into your mouth with a happy moan. "This cake is amazing. Try it."

I get a piece of gooey chocolate mass on my fork and put it in my mouth, cringing inwardly at the sickeningly sweet taste. You watch me from the side, chewing with considerably more enthusiasm. I briefly wish that you would choke on it.

But then I reprimand myself for such ugly thoughts. It is your birthday after all.

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself," I say, giving you a weak smile. "Happy Birthday, Daniel."