FIC: That Middle Road (21/?)
Mar. 22nd, 2011 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nilchanceTitle: That Middle Road (21/?)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nilchance
Pairing: Misha Collins/Jeremy Sisto
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: This isn't real.
A/N: Set inpoisontaster's A Kept Boy 'verse. This story deals with mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder, and with slavery as used in the AKB 'verse. There's also mention of rape, suicide, institutionalization and self-harm. And polyamory. And kink. And a partridge in a pear tree.
In the master bedroom of the silent house where Vincent lays sleeping, dying, Misha gets to his feet.
The time passed since the accident is hazy in Misha’s head, guilt and pain and the occasional narcotic; he isn’t sure how long he’s been sitting at Vincent’s bed. He grips the arm-rests of his chair, where he used to sit and organize Vincent’s pills for the week. He’s been stretching out his leg, slowly forcing the locked muscles to release in waves of sick-hot pain, until it’s extended flat with his heel against the ground.
He reaches over to retrieve Vincent’s cane from its position beside the bed. It was a gift from Adam, and the carved handle is worn from years of use. Misha positions it, awkwardly, like a parallel line to his own body. The chair is sturdy, and there’s nothing wrong with Misha’s shoulders or his back. He pushes himself up, by degrees, and that clammy pain sweeps through his bandaged head.
He will not throw up, he can’t pass out, they’ll hear. But he can’t stop, either. Nobody here is going to save him, and it will get worse. Of course it will get worse.
He is upright. His first stumble sends pain up from his knee like the cartilage was replaced with ground glass.
He whimpers, once, and sinks his teeth into his lower lip to muffle any further sound.
Vincent’s children have been roaming the house, with no father to cow them out of poking into his things (as if they could find anything valuable or interesting), and any sound could draw their attention.
If he had all the time in the world, he would wait to do this until he was steadier.
Vincent’s son slapped him this morning. Vincent is not waking up, and Adam is not coming back, and time is not on Misha’s side.
He goes to Vincent’s bathroom, limping badly. There is a small cabinet beside the toilet, piled with signs of domestic life: faded towels, wet-wipes, molded soaps for company. Before the accident, there had been pill bottles, but the children had removed most of those for use or sale.
Misha pops the cabinet open, wincing at the sound it makes. The sick sweat drips into his eyes and stings. For a moment, he thinks one of the children caught wise to their deception and he is afraid, but no, no, there’s the boxed bottle of no-wash shampoo. It was the sort of product that only a catch-all slave or a nurse might need to worry about, or so thought the children, and so it was safe. He pulls the box free and opens the top.
The insides of the box are plushy with cottonball padding stuck on with double-stick tape, so the contents don’t rattle. At the bottom of the box, cushioned in a snowdrift of white, there are the pills: muscle relaxants, sedatives, narcotics.
Misha looks down at his quiet suicide, his escape hatch from the intolerable, and doesn’t feel much but relief.
Vincent is extinguished. None of the usual suspects (Lord Waterston, Lord Burton, Adam) can or will intervene. Misha will be sold in a few days, a week at the outside. He’s crippled and mute and useless, and the children have no reason to be kind.
He will not become something to rape or beat. Better to die on his own terms.
Wouldn’t it be better to do it now? But no, he thinks not, too easily interrupted. It would be unfortunate to be found out, brought back to health and sold somewhere worse where he can’t escape. So he picks the pills out, wraps them in a washcloth, and he puts them in his pocket.
Wherever he goes, he’ll take them with him. And he’ll wait.
Just in case.
***
The car slides to a halt, stones chattering against the undercarriage. Misha jolts out of his microsleep in the passenger seat, and for a shocking moment, he thinks Vincent is beside him. That the last several months were a bad dream.
Vincent is dead, and Jeremy is looking sidelong, transparently sorry that Misha dragged himself along.
They have made stops on the way: once at an office building, once at a party, once at a Walmart, once at a truck-stop where Jeremy bought too much food and ate too little. They have taken a long weaving route as if Jeremy thinks they’re being followed. Mad Road Driving, Kerouac would say. It has been a long while since they left LA, and it has not been a fun while.
Misha’s knee throbs like banked fire. He does not want to reach for the pills, because they make him sleepy and slow. If he sleeps, he’s afraid of what Jeremy will do.
Clearing his throat, Misha unbuckles his safety belt and glances around. They’re far out of Los Angeles and into the desert. Misha hasn’t been out of the city since-- hell, probably since Vincent decided that Misha and Adam needed to witness the depravity of Las Vegas as a social experiment. Years now, in other words, and the metal trailer slumped outside looks nothing like the hotel Misha stayed in back then. It’s hitched to a rusting pickup truck.
“You wanted to come,” Jeremy says. His voice sounds papery. “So.”
I didn’t say anything, Misha signs. Not a finger twitch. When Jeremy doesn’t crack a smile, Misha adds, Is this your property?
“My sister’s. That’s all there is. I can call Denis to come get you.”
No ‘if you want’, no hedging or soft words or apologies. Jeremy is a man on an endurance march, stripped to the essentials of survival. Misha likes Jeremy unapologetic, but not on these terms, because he’s becoming more sure that it’s illness and not a broken heart.
Jeremy chain-smokes and pops caffeine pills and buys four fifty pound bags of large breed dog food. He ignores the humming of his cell phone to drive into the desert on a whim, ditching his business and his friends and his dog. He is afraid every time his phone rings, and Misha can smell it on him. These are not the actions of a well man.
Then again, Jeremy’s illness isn’t like Vincent’s, where symptoms and normal adaptive reactions were so easily separated. If Vincent had more tremors on the anniversary of Bess’s suicide, then it was just lack of dopamine, and the medication could be rationed out to fix things. Vincent’s emotions were his own problem to solve.
The same applies to Jeremy, in theory.
Bring my duffel, please, Misha tells Jeremy, and gets out of the car. It’s hard work, standing, his cane slipping in the loose arid dirt and his knee protesting the long hours of stillness without stretching. He doesn’t slip, because he can’t, because that would be unacceptable. Despite everything Misha’s ever heard about desert nights, it’s warm compared to the blasting air conditioning in Jeremy’s car. A shiver wrings Misha’s bones as his kinked muscles unwind.
Something heavy and warm slings across his shoulders like a dead cat. Misha nearly trips, grabs for whatever it is, and finds Jeremy’s suit jacket. It shouldn’t please him nearly so much. He blinks at Jeremy, awkward and ready to snark about them going steady, but all Jeremy’s attention is on the trailer. He brought a travel mug of coffee with him, in the hand that doesn’t have Misha’s bag.
“Meadow? Hey, kid, if you’re in there, put some damn clothes on! I need to--” Jeremy verbally stumbles, like he doesn’t know what he needs or what he came out here for, and then catches up again. “I need to talk to you!”
No answer. Looking frustrated and lost, Jeremy exhales through his teeth and reaches for another cigarette. Misha can hear him muttering as he lights up, sees the flare of the cherry and the flex of Jeremy’s ribs as he breathes in. After a few seconds, during which Misha can see him thinking furiously, Jeremy seems to remember that Misha is there.
“Put the damn jacket on,” Jeremy says brusquely. “It won’t be much warmer in there, but it’ll be out of the wind. Come on.”
Jeremy has a key for the trailer, but the door is unlocked. That makes a muscle flex in Jeremy’s jaw like he wants to kick dents in the tin can, but he opens the door and holds it for Misha. He flicks his cigarette away, bored with it, as he’s gotten bored with about three packs worth of cigarettes before they burned down.
There’s precious little room inside the trailer, enough for some small things, a bedroll and a pellet heater and an honest-to-God icebox. No electricity, judging from the row of 7-day candles in various states of burnout. Misha wonders where Jeremy’s sister gets the ice, and whether she was named Meadow at birth or in her rebellious teens. The idea of Jeremy being raised by hippies is both hilarious and confusing. A regular Alex Keaton: conceived in the grass at an outdoor festival, steeped in patchouli oil and green tea, until he grew up to serve the Man.
That or Jeremy’s sister is a Mennonite.
It occurs to Misha that his skills of deduction are a little compromised by sleep deprivation. Vincent would not be pleased.
“Damn it,” Jeremy mutters. He sits down hard on the edge of the bedroll, as if his strings were cut. “Damn it. Fuck.”
The temptation to take the weight off his knee, even after spending so long in the car, is too much; Misha lowers himself to the floor of the trailer and leans against the wall, curved as a metal womb. His knee throbs like it’s infected, and he’s not sure he can stand again. Maybe Jeremy won’t notice him crawling, instead. He’s crazy enough to--
Misha bites the inside of his cheek, an old habit from when he actually talked. It seems like decades ago, even though it hasn’t been a year yet. If he talked, he could talk Jeremy down.
They sit in the darkness for a few minutes, long enough that Misha indulges himself in the fantasy that Jeremy will just fall asleep in the absence of light like a pet parakeet. Then he realizes Jeremy has drawn his knees to his chest and is rocking in place as he gnaws on one knuckle. Misha doesn’t doubt that he’d chew it to the bone.
Misha pats at Jeremy’s jacket until he finds the lighter. He takes it out, flicks it to life and lights each of the 7-day candles. The trailer walls are illuminated enough for Misha to see that they’re painted and wall-papered with photos. There is a new-ish ultrasound image behind Jeremy’s shoulder that Misha looks at once, and then carefully does not look at again, because they are in deep enough shit already.
Light moves in uneasy patterns over the weary lines of Jeremy’s face. Misha reaches out and carefully, carefully eases Jeremy’s finger from between his teeth. When he cups Jeremy’s hand between his own, he can feel the caffeine jitters vibrating through them both. Jeremy blinks at him, and Misha lets him go before he can get skittish or angry. He doesn’t know what Jeremy might do if he gets out of control now, or what he might do in guilt afterward.
Tell me about your sister, Misha signs.
“I don’t know where she is. She should’ve taken her truck. I need to talk to her.”
Okay. She’s your younger sister? You don’t speak about her much.
“Little sister.” Jeremy shrugs, looking away and then jerking back. “Sorry, I should look at your hands. Sorry, Misha.”
It’s okay. Misha forces a smile. Your parents were hippies?
“What?” After a few seconds, Jeremy coughs out a laugh. His reactions are too sharp and too slow at the same time, like everything has to filter through to the dark chaotic place inside where he lives. “Right, because. Meadow. My dad’s pretty much a dictionary hippie, yeah. Pot brownies and prayer beads and everything. He’s a monk. I guess, we don’t really talk. Not while I own people, he says.”
Misha raises his eyebrows but says nothing.
Jeremy doesn’t bristle, only looks tired. “He and Meadow, they’re good people. You’ve got to take care of good people.”
Good people. The trailer and its ascetic virtue makes Misha think maybe they’re the kind of good people his mother was, riding the poverty line so they didn’t have own slaves. It didn’t work out for his mother, who chose that life, or for Misha and his brother, who didn’t. It’s a nice philosophy, Misha guesses, if you have a wealthy son or brother who would throw cash around whenever Escrow got too close. Upon Jeremy’s back, above the muck, there is a moral high ground.
An unfair judgment, given that he’s never met Jeremy’s family, but not necessarily the wrong judgment. If only the immoral owned slaves, then slaves were always owned by the immoral. No way out, only through.
“She’ll like you, though,” Jeremy says. His eyelashes are heavy on his cheeks, almost sullen. Misha wonders what they would feel like against his lips if he kissed Jeremy’s eyes closed, a fairytale in reverse. “You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re beautiful.”
Misha does not feel beautiful with grit in his eyes and road-sweat on his face, unshowered for days, his suit in wrinkles. But his mouth tugs in a smile, surprising him with its sincerity. He was raised to be charming, not sincere.
“There are feral dogs out here,” Jeremy says suddenly, nonsensically. “Strays that people dump because they say it’s better than drowning them, but then they just starve. I bring Meadow food. I ought to feed them before we go.”
Misha’s heart rolls over in giddy relief. Before we go home? he signs.
“To find her.” Grimacing, Jeremy gets to his feet. It looks like shoddy stop-motion animation. “She’s probably in town.”
His stupid relief bottoms out.
Jeremy thumps out of the trailer, door banging shut behind him, knocking against the frame instead of sticking. The night air is bitterly cold.
Misha considers what Jeremy would to do if Misha says he can’t get up. Leave him, probably; Jeremy is like a racehorse that will run until it cripples itself or its heart explodes.
So Misha will have to stand up. Jeremy’s not the only one who can ignore his body.
At least Jeremy left coffee, and his phone in his jacket. Misha takes a swig of the coffee and makes a face at its unvarnished greasy staleness. No sugar, naturally, because someone might think for a moment that Jeremy likes himself.
Fumbling for distraction to keep himself awake, Misha retrieves the Blackberry and thumbs it on.
The webpage on Jeremy’s Blackberry reads ‘How to Disappear Completely’.
Misha reads it twice, the intricate details of going off the grid and becoming someone new. It is all wildly illegal, and Jeremy’s an idiot to download it on his phone. Unless he’s not flirting with the idea, unless he truly intends to be gone before anybody tracks his IP.
Misha opens Jeremy’s browser history and finds a rental car company, a Mapquest query for a hostel in New York. A text to Wendy telling her to come get Misha, please, giving directions for the place where Jeremy intends to ditch him like one of those strays. It hurts like he’s been punched in the throat.
Fuck you, Misha says, his lips moving on the words before he quite remembers that he can’t speak them.
Misha has done his share of looking up illegal information. He covers Jeremy’s trail, waves erasing footprints in sand. Then he puts the phone away and looks at his duffel bag. He hooks the handle of his cane into the strap and drags the bag to him, and he guts the bag of its contents. His clothes get shoved into Meadow’s icebox. If his suits get trashed, well. Fuck it. Fuck everything.
There is a false bottom in his duffel. He pulls it out and there’s the baggie of Vincent’s pills, his suicide stash. Misha sections out some of the pills: muscle relaxants, some anti-anxiety medication, a sleeping pill. On further thought, he adds a second sleeping pill. Then he tucks the diminished stash in the icebox, next to his things.
Some of the pills are capsules; he pops those and dumps the powder into Jeremy’s coffee. For the solid pills, he removes one shoe and grinds them between his heel and the metal wall. It’s rough Macguyver pharmacology, but it’ll do. That goes into the mug. Misha swishes the concoction around a few times, to stir. Good thing the coffee is black and bitter. Good thing Jeremy is probably oblivious to everything outside his brain, anyway. He must be, to think Misha would prefer to be left behind.
Misha is just mashing the lid back on when Jeremy comes back into the trailer, looking wild-eyed and windblown. Jeremy’s eyes drop to Misha’s shoeless foot, and he blinks a few times.
“You hurting that bad?” Jeremy asks finally.
It’s easier to lie when the mark fills in the blank. Putting on Jeremy’s sheepish little shrug like he put on Jeremy’s jacket, Misha rubs his thumb across the arch of his foot. I just need a second, Misha signs, and then sighs. And some help up, please.
“No problem.” Jeremy sinks down on his haunches, watching Misha up close. His eyes are dark and worried, and Misha could almost feel a little bad, until he sees Jeremy pat for his keys and his Blackberry. Thinking about ditching him here instead of at the junction of two highways. Poor sad Misha, need to protect him from himself. “Listen, Mish, if you’re hurting, if you want to go home...”
I want to go with you, Misha signs, more viciously than necessary. Then he shoves the coffee at Jeremy. Give me a minute. Finish your coffee. You can get more.
It’s not the smoothest manipulation ever. Vincent would be ashamed. Vincent would be ashamed of a lot of things Misha has done.
For a tricky moment, Misha thinks he pushed too hard, but Jeremy finally looks away. He lifts the coffee to his mouth. His throat works as he swallows. How much? Enough?
Misha slowly gets his shoe, and slowly puts it on, as if he’s struggling with the laces. He has Jeremy’s phone. Jeremy won’t just leave him, because that would be irresponsible. That would be not good.
Then again, Jeremy could call Wendy from a payphone.
Then again, Jeremy could walk into the desert and kill himself by exposure. A lot of things could happen. In some games, one can’t cover all the angles.
Life is not a game, Vincent would say.
As he ties his bedraggled shoe, Jeremy lifts the coffee and drains it in one long swig.
Misha hopes he didn’t just poison him. That would be his luck, two dead owners in as many weeks. Two dead. Two dead...
All the tension leaves Misha in a hard shudder. He’s tired, so stupidly tired that his eyes are watery with it. His hands are tingly with adrenaline, or maybe it’s nerve damage, or maybe he’s just fucking sick of people leaving him behind.
Jeremy reaches behind himself and turns the door’s handle. Misha can see Jeremy bolting for the car and passing out behind the wheel and it would be Misha’s fault, like Vincent is Misha’s fault, and Misha makes a strangled not-word protest that hurts his throat, but Jeremy is only closing the door against the wind. Only sealing them in, where the cold can’t get them.
“Hey,” Jeremy says softly, surprised. Kneeling down beside Misha on the bedroll, he puts an arm around him and rubs his arm like he thinks Misha has frostbite. “Hey, no, it’s okay. God, you’re shaking like hell. I’m sorry. I didn’t do something, I didn’t-- You cold? You hungry?”
Misha chokes on a laugh and lets Jeremy tuck him against his side, turning his face against the scratchy warm curve of Jeremy’s neck. Jeremy leans them both back against the wall, his arm tight around Misha as he murmurs and soothes and briskly scrubs at Misha’s arm.
I’m a liar, Misha thinks but doesn’t say. I’ve only ever been a liar and a spy and a con artist. I don’t know how to fix you. I only know how to drug your coffee. I’m sorry I won’t let your heart explode. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Jeremy rubs his cheek against Misha’s head, his hair ticklishly trapped between them, rocking them both now, comforting them both. Misha closes his eyes, and he waits, and he feels it begin to slow.
“Misha,” Jeremy says, dawning realization. Clever, wary Jeremy.
Shame squirms in Misha’s belly. Resting a hand on Jeremy’s ribs to keep him propped up, Misha shifts out from under Jeremy’s arm. Jeremy lets him go, watching him through hazy eyes.
“Misha,” Jeremy repeats, slower, like it’s honey in his mouth. If he looked betrayed, it would be one thing, but he only looks shaken up. “Don’t... don’t let them strap me down.”
The shame grows teeth. I won’t, Misha signs, you’re safe, but he’s not sure Jeremy can even understand sign or see straight enough to read it now. Instead, he strokes Jeremy’s face and pets his hair and tries to hum to him, tries to push as much protection and affection into him as he can, until Jeremy’s eyes close and stay closed, and he’s asleep. Unconscious, if Misha is honest with himself.
He’s probably going to be sent away for this. He’s deserves that and worse. But he can’t say he would do differently, alone as they are, desperate as he is.
His stomach feels knotted up. One hand still on Jeremy, where it’s going to stay, Misha gets out the Blackberry. He deletes the text to Wendy, and opens one to Zach. His typing is horrible, what with the shaking, but he finishes and hits send. Then he sits back to wait.
W/ Jer, the text says. @ Meado’s. Need u 2 bring us home.
Author:
nilchancePairing: Misha Collins/Jeremy Sisto
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: This isn't real.
A/N: Set in
poisontaster's A Kept Boy 'verse. This story deals with mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder, and with slavery as used in the AKB 'verse. There's also mention of rape, suicide, institutionalization and self-harm. And polyamory. And kink. And a partridge in a pear tree.In the master bedroom of the silent house where Vincent lays sleeping, dying, Misha gets to his feet.
The time passed since the accident is hazy in Misha’s head, guilt and pain and the occasional narcotic; he isn’t sure how long he’s been sitting at Vincent’s bed. He grips the arm-rests of his chair, where he used to sit and organize Vincent’s pills for the week. He’s been stretching out his leg, slowly forcing the locked muscles to release in waves of sick-hot pain, until it’s extended flat with his heel against the ground.
He reaches over to retrieve Vincent’s cane from its position beside the bed. It was a gift from Adam, and the carved handle is worn from years of use. Misha positions it, awkwardly, like a parallel line to his own body. The chair is sturdy, and there’s nothing wrong with Misha’s shoulders or his back. He pushes himself up, by degrees, and that clammy pain sweeps through his bandaged head.
He will not throw up, he can’t pass out, they’ll hear. But he can’t stop, either. Nobody here is going to save him, and it will get worse. Of course it will get worse.
He is upright. His first stumble sends pain up from his knee like the cartilage was replaced with ground glass.
He whimpers, once, and sinks his teeth into his lower lip to muffle any further sound.
Vincent’s children have been roaming the house, with no father to cow them out of poking into his things (as if they could find anything valuable or interesting), and any sound could draw their attention.
If he had all the time in the world, he would wait to do this until he was steadier.
Vincent’s son slapped him this morning. Vincent is not waking up, and Adam is not coming back, and time is not on Misha’s side.
He goes to Vincent’s bathroom, limping badly. There is a small cabinet beside the toilet, piled with signs of domestic life: faded towels, wet-wipes, molded soaps for company. Before the accident, there had been pill bottles, but the children had removed most of those for use or sale.
Misha pops the cabinet open, wincing at the sound it makes. The sick sweat drips into his eyes and stings. For a moment, he thinks one of the children caught wise to their deception and he is afraid, but no, no, there’s the boxed bottle of no-wash shampoo. It was the sort of product that only a catch-all slave or a nurse might need to worry about, or so thought the children, and so it was safe. He pulls the box free and opens the top.
The insides of the box are plushy with cottonball padding stuck on with double-stick tape, so the contents don’t rattle. At the bottom of the box, cushioned in a snowdrift of white, there are the pills: muscle relaxants, sedatives, narcotics.
Misha looks down at his quiet suicide, his escape hatch from the intolerable, and doesn’t feel much but relief.
Vincent is extinguished. None of the usual suspects (Lord Waterston, Lord Burton, Adam) can or will intervene. Misha will be sold in a few days, a week at the outside. He’s crippled and mute and useless, and the children have no reason to be kind.
He will not become something to rape or beat. Better to die on his own terms.
Wouldn’t it be better to do it now? But no, he thinks not, too easily interrupted. It would be unfortunate to be found out, brought back to health and sold somewhere worse where he can’t escape. So he picks the pills out, wraps them in a washcloth, and he puts them in his pocket.
Wherever he goes, he’ll take them with him. And he’ll wait.
Just in case.
***
The car slides to a halt, stones chattering against the undercarriage. Misha jolts out of his microsleep in the passenger seat, and for a shocking moment, he thinks Vincent is beside him. That the last several months were a bad dream.
Vincent is dead, and Jeremy is looking sidelong, transparently sorry that Misha dragged himself along.
They have made stops on the way: once at an office building, once at a party, once at a Walmart, once at a truck-stop where Jeremy bought too much food and ate too little. They have taken a long weaving route as if Jeremy thinks they’re being followed. Mad Road Driving, Kerouac would say. It has been a long while since they left LA, and it has not been a fun while.
Misha’s knee throbs like banked fire. He does not want to reach for the pills, because they make him sleepy and slow. If he sleeps, he’s afraid of what Jeremy will do.
Clearing his throat, Misha unbuckles his safety belt and glances around. They’re far out of Los Angeles and into the desert. Misha hasn’t been out of the city since-- hell, probably since Vincent decided that Misha and Adam needed to witness the depravity of Las Vegas as a social experiment. Years now, in other words, and the metal trailer slumped outside looks nothing like the hotel Misha stayed in back then. It’s hitched to a rusting pickup truck.
“You wanted to come,” Jeremy says. His voice sounds papery. “So.”
I didn’t say anything, Misha signs. Not a finger twitch. When Jeremy doesn’t crack a smile, Misha adds, Is this your property?
“My sister’s. That’s all there is. I can call Denis to come get you.”
No ‘if you want’, no hedging or soft words or apologies. Jeremy is a man on an endurance march, stripped to the essentials of survival. Misha likes Jeremy unapologetic, but not on these terms, because he’s becoming more sure that it’s illness and not a broken heart.
Jeremy chain-smokes and pops caffeine pills and buys four fifty pound bags of large breed dog food. He ignores the humming of his cell phone to drive into the desert on a whim, ditching his business and his friends and his dog. He is afraid every time his phone rings, and Misha can smell it on him. These are not the actions of a well man.
Then again, Jeremy’s illness isn’t like Vincent’s, where symptoms and normal adaptive reactions were so easily separated. If Vincent had more tremors on the anniversary of Bess’s suicide, then it was just lack of dopamine, and the medication could be rationed out to fix things. Vincent’s emotions were his own problem to solve.
The same applies to Jeremy, in theory.
Bring my duffel, please, Misha tells Jeremy, and gets out of the car. It’s hard work, standing, his cane slipping in the loose arid dirt and his knee protesting the long hours of stillness without stretching. He doesn’t slip, because he can’t, because that would be unacceptable. Despite everything Misha’s ever heard about desert nights, it’s warm compared to the blasting air conditioning in Jeremy’s car. A shiver wrings Misha’s bones as his kinked muscles unwind.
Something heavy and warm slings across his shoulders like a dead cat. Misha nearly trips, grabs for whatever it is, and finds Jeremy’s suit jacket. It shouldn’t please him nearly so much. He blinks at Jeremy, awkward and ready to snark about them going steady, but all Jeremy’s attention is on the trailer. He brought a travel mug of coffee with him, in the hand that doesn’t have Misha’s bag.
“Meadow? Hey, kid, if you’re in there, put some damn clothes on! I need to--” Jeremy verbally stumbles, like he doesn’t know what he needs or what he came out here for, and then catches up again. “I need to talk to you!”
No answer. Looking frustrated and lost, Jeremy exhales through his teeth and reaches for another cigarette. Misha can hear him muttering as he lights up, sees the flare of the cherry and the flex of Jeremy’s ribs as he breathes in. After a few seconds, during which Misha can see him thinking furiously, Jeremy seems to remember that Misha is there.
“Put the damn jacket on,” Jeremy says brusquely. “It won’t be much warmer in there, but it’ll be out of the wind. Come on.”
Jeremy has a key for the trailer, but the door is unlocked. That makes a muscle flex in Jeremy’s jaw like he wants to kick dents in the tin can, but he opens the door and holds it for Misha. He flicks his cigarette away, bored with it, as he’s gotten bored with about three packs worth of cigarettes before they burned down.
There’s precious little room inside the trailer, enough for some small things, a bedroll and a pellet heater and an honest-to-God icebox. No electricity, judging from the row of 7-day candles in various states of burnout. Misha wonders where Jeremy’s sister gets the ice, and whether she was named Meadow at birth or in her rebellious teens. The idea of Jeremy being raised by hippies is both hilarious and confusing. A regular Alex Keaton: conceived in the grass at an outdoor festival, steeped in patchouli oil and green tea, until he grew up to serve the Man.
That or Jeremy’s sister is a Mennonite.
It occurs to Misha that his skills of deduction are a little compromised by sleep deprivation. Vincent would not be pleased.
“Damn it,” Jeremy mutters. He sits down hard on the edge of the bedroll, as if his strings were cut. “Damn it. Fuck.”
The temptation to take the weight off his knee, even after spending so long in the car, is too much; Misha lowers himself to the floor of the trailer and leans against the wall, curved as a metal womb. His knee throbs like it’s infected, and he’s not sure he can stand again. Maybe Jeremy won’t notice him crawling, instead. He’s crazy enough to--
Misha bites the inside of his cheek, an old habit from when he actually talked. It seems like decades ago, even though it hasn’t been a year yet. If he talked, he could talk Jeremy down.
They sit in the darkness for a few minutes, long enough that Misha indulges himself in the fantasy that Jeremy will just fall asleep in the absence of light like a pet parakeet. Then he realizes Jeremy has drawn his knees to his chest and is rocking in place as he gnaws on one knuckle. Misha doesn’t doubt that he’d chew it to the bone.
Misha pats at Jeremy’s jacket until he finds the lighter. He takes it out, flicks it to life and lights each of the 7-day candles. The trailer walls are illuminated enough for Misha to see that they’re painted and wall-papered with photos. There is a new-ish ultrasound image behind Jeremy’s shoulder that Misha looks at once, and then carefully does not look at again, because they are in deep enough shit already.
Light moves in uneasy patterns over the weary lines of Jeremy’s face. Misha reaches out and carefully, carefully eases Jeremy’s finger from between his teeth. When he cups Jeremy’s hand between his own, he can feel the caffeine jitters vibrating through them both. Jeremy blinks at him, and Misha lets him go before he can get skittish or angry. He doesn’t know what Jeremy might do if he gets out of control now, or what he might do in guilt afterward.
Tell me about your sister, Misha signs.
“I don’t know where she is. She should’ve taken her truck. I need to talk to her.”
Okay. She’s your younger sister? You don’t speak about her much.
“Little sister.” Jeremy shrugs, looking away and then jerking back. “Sorry, I should look at your hands. Sorry, Misha.”
It’s okay. Misha forces a smile. Your parents were hippies?
“What?” After a few seconds, Jeremy coughs out a laugh. His reactions are too sharp and too slow at the same time, like everything has to filter through to the dark chaotic place inside where he lives. “Right, because. Meadow. My dad’s pretty much a dictionary hippie, yeah. Pot brownies and prayer beads and everything. He’s a monk. I guess, we don’t really talk. Not while I own people, he says.”
Misha raises his eyebrows but says nothing.
Jeremy doesn’t bristle, only looks tired. “He and Meadow, they’re good people. You’ve got to take care of good people.”
Good people. The trailer and its ascetic virtue makes Misha think maybe they’re the kind of good people his mother was, riding the poverty line so they didn’t have own slaves. It didn’t work out for his mother, who chose that life, or for Misha and his brother, who didn’t. It’s a nice philosophy, Misha guesses, if you have a wealthy son or brother who would throw cash around whenever Escrow got too close. Upon Jeremy’s back, above the muck, there is a moral high ground.
An unfair judgment, given that he’s never met Jeremy’s family, but not necessarily the wrong judgment. If only the immoral owned slaves, then slaves were always owned by the immoral. No way out, only through.
“She’ll like you, though,” Jeremy says. His eyelashes are heavy on his cheeks, almost sullen. Misha wonders what they would feel like against his lips if he kissed Jeremy’s eyes closed, a fairytale in reverse. “You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re beautiful.”
Misha does not feel beautiful with grit in his eyes and road-sweat on his face, unshowered for days, his suit in wrinkles. But his mouth tugs in a smile, surprising him with its sincerity. He was raised to be charming, not sincere.
“There are feral dogs out here,” Jeremy says suddenly, nonsensically. “Strays that people dump because they say it’s better than drowning them, but then they just starve. I bring Meadow food. I ought to feed them before we go.”
Misha’s heart rolls over in giddy relief. Before we go home? he signs.
“To find her.” Grimacing, Jeremy gets to his feet. It looks like shoddy stop-motion animation. “She’s probably in town.”
His stupid relief bottoms out.
Jeremy thumps out of the trailer, door banging shut behind him, knocking against the frame instead of sticking. The night air is bitterly cold.
Misha considers what Jeremy would to do if Misha says he can’t get up. Leave him, probably; Jeremy is like a racehorse that will run until it cripples itself or its heart explodes.
So Misha will have to stand up. Jeremy’s not the only one who can ignore his body.
At least Jeremy left coffee, and his phone in his jacket. Misha takes a swig of the coffee and makes a face at its unvarnished greasy staleness. No sugar, naturally, because someone might think for a moment that Jeremy likes himself.
Fumbling for distraction to keep himself awake, Misha retrieves the Blackberry and thumbs it on.
The webpage on Jeremy’s Blackberry reads ‘How to Disappear Completely’.
Misha reads it twice, the intricate details of going off the grid and becoming someone new. It is all wildly illegal, and Jeremy’s an idiot to download it on his phone. Unless he’s not flirting with the idea, unless he truly intends to be gone before anybody tracks his IP.
Misha opens Jeremy’s browser history and finds a rental car company, a Mapquest query for a hostel in New York. A text to Wendy telling her to come get Misha, please, giving directions for the place where Jeremy intends to ditch him like one of those strays. It hurts like he’s been punched in the throat.
Fuck you, Misha says, his lips moving on the words before he quite remembers that he can’t speak them.
Misha has done his share of looking up illegal information. He covers Jeremy’s trail, waves erasing footprints in sand. Then he puts the phone away and looks at his duffel bag. He hooks the handle of his cane into the strap and drags the bag to him, and he guts the bag of its contents. His clothes get shoved into Meadow’s icebox. If his suits get trashed, well. Fuck it. Fuck everything.
There is a false bottom in his duffel. He pulls it out and there’s the baggie of Vincent’s pills, his suicide stash. Misha sections out some of the pills: muscle relaxants, some anti-anxiety medication, a sleeping pill. On further thought, he adds a second sleeping pill. Then he tucks the diminished stash in the icebox, next to his things.
Some of the pills are capsules; he pops those and dumps the powder into Jeremy’s coffee. For the solid pills, he removes one shoe and grinds them between his heel and the metal wall. It’s rough Macguyver pharmacology, but it’ll do. That goes into the mug. Misha swishes the concoction around a few times, to stir. Good thing the coffee is black and bitter. Good thing Jeremy is probably oblivious to everything outside his brain, anyway. He must be, to think Misha would prefer to be left behind.
Misha is just mashing the lid back on when Jeremy comes back into the trailer, looking wild-eyed and windblown. Jeremy’s eyes drop to Misha’s shoeless foot, and he blinks a few times.
“You hurting that bad?” Jeremy asks finally.
It’s easier to lie when the mark fills in the blank. Putting on Jeremy’s sheepish little shrug like he put on Jeremy’s jacket, Misha rubs his thumb across the arch of his foot. I just need a second, Misha signs, and then sighs. And some help up, please.
“No problem.” Jeremy sinks down on his haunches, watching Misha up close. His eyes are dark and worried, and Misha could almost feel a little bad, until he sees Jeremy pat for his keys and his Blackberry. Thinking about ditching him here instead of at the junction of two highways. Poor sad Misha, need to protect him from himself. “Listen, Mish, if you’re hurting, if you want to go home...”
I want to go with you, Misha signs, more viciously than necessary. Then he shoves the coffee at Jeremy. Give me a minute. Finish your coffee. You can get more.
It’s not the smoothest manipulation ever. Vincent would be ashamed. Vincent would be ashamed of a lot of things Misha has done.
For a tricky moment, Misha thinks he pushed too hard, but Jeremy finally looks away. He lifts the coffee to his mouth. His throat works as he swallows. How much? Enough?
Misha slowly gets his shoe, and slowly puts it on, as if he’s struggling with the laces. He has Jeremy’s phone. Jeremy won’t just leave him, because that would be irresponsible. That would be not good.
Then again, Jeremy could call Wendy from a payphone.
Then again, Jeremy could walk into the desert and kill himself by exposure. A lot of things could happen. In some games, one can’t cover all the angles.
Life is not a game, Vincent would say.
As he ties his bedraggled shoe, Jeremy lifts the coffee and drains it in one long swig.
Misha hopes he didn’t just poison him. That would be his luck, two dead owners in as many weeks. Two dead. Two dead...
All the tension leaves Misha in a hard shudder. He’s tired, so stupidly tired that his eyes are watery with it. His hands are tingly with adrenaline, or maybe it’s nerve damage, or maybe he’s just fucking sick of people leaving him behind.
Jeremy reaches behind himself and turns the door’s handle. Misha can see Jeremy bolting for the car and passing out behind the wheel and it would be Misha’s fault, like Vincent is Misha’s fault, and Misha makes a strangled not-word protest that hurts his throat, but Jeremy is only closing the door against the wind. Only sealing them in, where the cold can’t get them.
“Hey,” Jeremy says softly, surprised. Kneeling down beside Misha on the bedroll, he puts an arm around him and rubs his arm like he thinks Misha has frostbite. “Hey, no, it’s okay. God, you’re shaking like hell. I’m sorry. I didn’t do something, I didn’t-- You cold? You hungry?”
Misha chokes on a laugh and lets Jeremy tuck him against his side, turning his face against the scratchy warm curve of Jeremy’s neck. Jeremy leans them both back against the wall, his arm tight around Misha as he murmurs and soothes and briskly scrubs at Misha’s arm.
I’m a liar, Misha thinks but doesn’t say. I’ve only ever been a liar and a spy and a con artist. I don’t know how to fix you. I only know how to drug your coffee. I’m sorry I won’t let your heart explode. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Jeremy rubs his cheek against Misha’s head, his hair ticklishly trapped between them, rocking them both now, comforting them both. Misha closes his eyes, and he waits, and he feels it begin to slow.
“Misha,” Jeremy says, dawning realization. Clever, wary Jeremy.
Shame squirms in Misha’s belly. Resting a hand on Jeremy’s ribs to keep him propped up, Misha shifts out from under Jeremy’s arm. Jeremy lets him go, watching him through hazy eyes.
“Misha,” Jeremy repeats, slower, like it’s honey in his mouth. If he looked betrayed, it would be one thing, but he only looks shaken up. “Don’t... don’t let them strap me down.”
The shame grows teeth. I won’t, Misha signs, you’re safe, but he’s not sure Jeremy can even understand sign or see straight enough to read it now. Instead, he strokes Jeremy’s face and pets his hair and tries to hum to him, tries to push as much protection and affection into him as he can, until Jeremy’s eyes close and stay closed, and he’s asleep. Unconscious, if Misha is honest with himself.
He’s probably going to be sent away for this. He’s deserves that and worse. But he can’t say he would do differently, alone as they are, desperate as he is.
His stomach feels knotted up. One hand still on Jeremy, where it’s going to stay, Misha gets out the Blackberry. He deletes the text to Wendy, and opens one to Zach. His typing is horrible, what with the shaking, but he finishes and hits send. Then he sits back to wait.
W/ Jer, the text says. @ Meado’s. Need u 2 bring us home.
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Date: 2011-03-23 07:24 pm (UTC)