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He’s in a 7/11 when he realizes his life is maybe falling apart.
There’s chips already in the bag, the name-brand kind that they really shouldn’t buy so often but Victor would kick his ass if he forgot. The cashier is scanning the milk, weighing bruised apples that are only there because Damien really doesn’t want to get scurvy. He’s pretty sure they’re both at least halfway there, and he’s seen the pictures, doesn’t really want to see where that goes. He’s rooting around his pockets, fishing for that last nickel—he has real bills in the other pocket, dirty and crumpled but more than they’ve had in a while, but old habits die hard and there’s no reason to waste a good nickel—when he looks up.
There’s a television there, scratched and blurry and god, he should be getting more sleep if he really can’t see just a couple feet away, but it doesn’t matter how blurred it is. He can still see perfectly well the important part, the yellow-tape-blue-sirens part, the scorched concrete part, the god I know that corner, I know the bend of that streetlamp, I know that parking lot—
The cashier has been saying something sharp and irritated to him for seven heartbeats now, but his world is the tiny text scrolling across the bottom of the screen. ‘Four dead in southside explosion, suspected drug deal, unknown cause, no survivors, more news incoming at 11...'
Southside explosion. No survivors.
He’s on the street and running, and he can hear the cashier shouting something at his back, but the words don’t connect. He’s pulling his phone out, slamming his finger into the only number under favorites, holding it to his ear as a car honks too close. It dials, it rings, it rings, but all that comes back is the sharp sound of his own gasping breaths as he skids around the corner and runs on. He should’ve gone to the fucking corner store, it’s closer, why did he need to go to the 7/11? He should’ve stayed home, he should’ve never have sent the deal, he should’ve told them—
He pushes the button again, but he already knows, he knows. Victor never misses a call twice. Not now, not like this, not on a job. The phone’s shoved back in his pocket so he can use both hands to search for the keys, yank them out and stab them into the lock that won’t jam today, because if it does he’s going to have to tear down the building. That tremble-scream-howl hasn’t burned in his throat for years but if this lock doesn’t fucking open—
The stairs have never felt so tall. He’s almost tripping over them, keys still biting into his palms as he stumbles onto the landing.
Their door is ajar.
He doesn’t know what he’s choking on, but it tastes like copper and something dark, something guilty, something like please I’ll go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life.
He doesn’t shout, not ever, doesn’t raise his voice. It’s not safe to shout when whatever lives in your lungs wants to swallow the world whole, but he’s crying out now as he crashes into the doorway. There’s no response, dead silence, and he barely registers the door slamming shut behind him as he scrambles down the hall. Empty, empty, and he’s dragging mud behind him—or was it there already?—as he whirls into the kitchen.
It’s perfect, exactly in order, but the dreadweight in his gut is telling him that something is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong and then he steps into the raggedly living room and there they are.
The world is six feet and gutted. Damien is falling to his knees by the couch. The windows are shaking, and Damien realizes it’s him, he’s saying Victor, he’s saying his brother’s name, loud and cracked and the living room is trembling around him. There’s something wet on his hands, something ugly and clinging and he doesn’t think about it. He just shakes them by the drenched-torn-burned, god, it burned, they burned, and doesn’t care if he brings the whole apartment crashing to the street as he pleads Victor again into hollow air.
There’s an aching pause, and Damien thinks for a wild sick lonely moment—
Victor’s eyes crack open. Just barely, a flicker of green and a pained swallow in their throat.
“Di’n’t get it ‘s time, Damien,” Victor says, slow and thick like he’s choking on the air in his lungs. “Got me first. Sorry.”
Damien knows he’s saying something. He’s saying something back, but he doesn’t hear it. He could be dropping lead from his tongue to the floor, for all he recognizes the words he’s begging to Victor. Victor’s eyes are shut again, and Damien’s fumbling, grasping for their wrist and pressing his fingers there, and he almost crumples when he feels the fluttering pulse there.
Stop the bleeding, stop the bleeding—
The medkit is in the bathroom, and he’s about to scramble to his feet when he forces himself to stop. The medkit is cobbled together, is good for deep cuts and dark bruises and even a sprained wrist, sometimes, and Victor looks like he’s held together with spiderwebs. With sinking realization, Damien follows the burns up their arms, follows the shreds of something shiny and dark digging between their ribs, follows it all up to his sibling’s face, and, like a car into a river, he sinks back to the floor. And he stays there, because there is nothing he can do to stop the life blood gushing into the cracks of the couch.
The world is so quiet.
His brother is dying.
Damien’s hands are slippery, but he’s got his phone pulled out now. It’s shaking in his fingers, slick with burning scarlet my fault my fault it’s fucking everywhere how much did you lose is it still you under all that red, he almost drops it. But he has it now, one hand wrapped around Victor’s wrist just to keep feeling the faint pulse there, and he opens the phone and—
And he doesn’t know who to call. He forgets how to breathe.
There’s an image burning behind his eyes, cuffs and blue sirens spilling into their mother’s kitchen. Hands tearing through their photographs, fingers prying up floorboards, eyes finding the only choice he could’ve made. He’s seventeen, that’s not a juvie trip anymore, that’s seven, nine, ten years, and he can feel the suffocation of a grey room pressing around him already. The phone almost slips between his fingers, and he tightens his grip, doesn’t dial.
There’s a rattling breath from the couch. Victor’s ribs expand and then stutter on the way down. It takes seconds, minutes, Damien’s going to scream, but then Victor takes another shuddering breath and he has another few heartbeats to decide. He looks at his sibling, silent and still and breathing like something shattered, thinks about watching them die on this blood-stained couch, and he dials three numbers without thinking, goes to click the call button—
There’s an image burning behind his eyes, cuffs and blue sirens spilling into their mother’s kitchen. Hands tearing through their photographs, fingers prying up floorboards, eyes finding the only choice he could’ve made, and Victor paying for it all.
And with cutting clarity, Damien realizes two things.
He’s caused this.
And now he’s going to fix it.
Because Victor can’t, and Damien promised, he promised—
He calls a number he got months ago. Before it was Victor on those streets, before Victor had found the worst—what should have been the worst—of what he was brewing under the floorboards, before they knew no amount of dirty money was going to save her. He never wrote it down, never dared, but it had been hours before he could scrub the spider-crawl numbers written across his arm clean. And he’s a genius, he’s brilliant, such a bright fucking student, he’s forgotten every birthday and remembers every compound under the sun, and he’s never been so bitterly grateful for that in his life.
He’s holding Victor’s wrist so tight, he’s scared the bone will crack under his fingers. If it’s not broken already, and the thought, that thought makes bile burn the back of his throat, makes him want to let go like he’s the one with burns like second veins.
He dials one-handed instead, keeps his eyes locked on Victor’s face. There’s something wrong, a sickening yellow spreading under his skin, and Damien’s fingers shake on the last few numbers.
He was never supposed to call. He was never supposed to have to. He was never supposed to come home to find a mess of blood-bone-burn-brother on the couch.
He calls.
The voice that picks up is quiet and cold like iron. He doesn’t remember what he says. He thinks he may have pleaded, may have promised—no, he knows he’s promised, because there’s a pause and then a pleasure finally doing business with you, a click as the call drops. It occurs to him, vague through the scarlet that’s slowly coating everything, that he should try to remember what exactly he offered up. He can almost see the black fingers stretching out in front of him, feel the ink staining into his palms too, and all he can do is drop the phone and press both shaking hands to Victor’s wrist.
There’s a heartbeat.
For a second, he thinks about crying. He’d let that ink sink into his veins and grow like mold if it meant the pulse would just keep beating. He feels sick. Victor’s exhale rustles the slick hair that’s sticking to him like a leech, and Damien’s eyes have never been drier.
The shadows at the corners of the room congeal, grow darker until they’re swallowing all the warmth from the room, and he barely sees the two figures that step through. They say something to him, and he thinks he answers. All he can focus on is that he has to move away, has to pry his own vice-like fingers free of his dying brother, and he has to keep his mouth clamped shut because if he doesn’t he’s going to kill them all first, and Victor doesn’t need any more help dying—
A hand claps him on the shoulder, and he looks up without seeing. The face above his is vague and familiar and he thinks, for a moment, he’s going to die like this.
“He’s gonna live,” she says, cold as winter but somehow not unkind. “Nice to have you aboard, kid.”
It’s not grey walls closing in, but he still can’t breathe. He looks back at Victor. Thinks about ink-stained fingers. Looks at the red slick covering his own.
And with that same sharp, gutting clarity—
It’s worth it.