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Seth has never been shot before. Sure, he’s been shot at a couple of times and even grazed during that Sioux City job, but never before has a bullet made its way through him. Not until this job. Not until five minutes ago. There are twenty different colored lights clouding his vision but he knows that can’t be right. It’s night, it should be dark. It should be dark and they should be unlocking a ludicrously simple cabinet- no. No. Seth tries to grab hold of his thoughts, pull them back into reality. They resist, swerving hard away from the flashing heat that feels like it’s eating his leg. His leg. Gunfire. His leg.
"Fuck."
Seth blinks hard and focuses in on the shape next to him. Richie. His arm is stretched around Richie’s shoulder and the two of them are stumbling through a dark copse of trees.
"Little help here, brother?" Richie grunts and Seth realizes with some surprise that he isn’t moving his legs forward properly. He tries to focus on walking. How. How does it work. He manages to get three solid steps before his leg reconnects with his brain and the pain drives every thought away. Its only when Richie’s hand clamps over his mouth that he realizes he’s cried out.
His senses zero in on the sensation, Richie’s hand, warm and familiar on his face. His mind greys and he’s in the thin stand of trees behind the house they grew up in, Richie beside him. They’re crouched and shuffling through the stream from the storm drain. Seth can feel the water on his leg. But its flowing down instead of splashing up, everything is moving wrong. Richie’s hand is over his mouth, its another year before he’ll teach Seth to breathe quietly, even in a hurry. Dad is at the back door shouting, shouting but Seth can’t make out the words because the stream is on fire his leg is on fire burning-
There’s a sharp slap to his face and Seth is back in Kentucky. Kentucky. The mansion. Antique jewelry and an old couple on vacation. And a security guard. One who shouldn't have been there. One with only just enough muscle to look intimidating and just enough inexperience to panic and shoot Seth in the leg even as they retreated.
His thoughts burst away through his scalp as Richie dumps him into the car and lifts his legs inside. Everything goes white and then black in a flash and Seth is in the stream again. He’s pressed against the wall of dirt where the storm drain is carved out. He and Richie are waiting, quiet, silent. Waiting for the sound of the front door and the truck creaking to life and disappearing south to the bars. Seth stares into his brother’s face and his brother stares back. The air is hot and thick around them and there are rocks pressing into their bare arms and legs but they stay still and safe and hidden, pinning each other in place, gaze to gaze.
They've played this game before, fifty times, a hundred times. When they have to wait. Richie’s plans are good but they revolve around their father. How long until he leaves. How long until he calms down. How long until he passes out. How long. How long. How long. So they’d wait. tucked into bed or hidden underneath it. Squeezed into the hall closet or sitting in the snow behind the neighbor’s house. But when the whole point is not drawing attention you can’t play Guess What I’m Thinking or tell ghost stories and you can’t fidget or fall asleep. So they just stared. Minutes or hours over and over until it was as much a part of their brotherhood as catch phrases and secret handshakes.
It happened by accident the first time. The old man’s fist was thicker than Seth’s cheek and it was the first time his rabid dislike for his son had drawn blood. Seth sat on the his bed and Richie dug through their dusty second hand desk, finally emerging with a ancient box of novelty bandages with the Roadrunner stamped all over them. Seth turned his face to the side so his brother could patch him up. It took three of the plastic-y yellow strips to cover the cut. When Seth turned his head Richie was staring at him. They stayed silent, the sound of their father slamming cabinets fading backward. Seth stared into his brother’s eyes and his brother stared back and it felt like Richie was pulling the pain of it away, into himself, and feeding it back to Seth clean and fresh. Still pain but now it was theirs, not an inch of space for their father or anyone else to enter the equation. It passed back and forth, one to the other, and on and on until they could forget that they were separate people at all.
"Seth!"
Back in the stream - no back in Kentucky. Richie’s face is the whole of Seth’s vision as he tries to stay in the right place, the right day, the right crisis. He looks hard at his brother, pulling the tiniest point of focus he could to Richie’s eyes, more familiar to him than his own reflection. The look Richie gives him is serious with a sharp edge of panic. “You gotta stay conscious, alright, brother?” Seth feels his body convulse and realizes Richie has him by both shoulders, leaned in close, shaking him hard. “Say something.”
Seth opens his mouth and the words tumble out before he even thinks them, “Got your balls on?”
Richie’s eyes close so Seth closes his too and he feels Richie’s mouth press hard against his forehead and feels more than hears, “Screwed on tight.”
-
In the morning Seth wakes in the motel bed with his leg in so much pain he wishes he could pass out again. He tries to shift into a sitting position but curses and smashes his fist into the mattress at the spike in pain.
"Don’t be a baby, it didn't hit anything important." Richie closes the door behind him and tosses a paper pharmacy bag onto the bed. Inside are prescription pain pills made out to someone named Mullins, Ashley and a box of novelty Roadrunner bandages.