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“Nick? What are you doing up?”
Nick yelps like a cornered cat, pivoting around with a fist raised in the air—but just as quickly, he relaxes, lowering his arm upon seeing the familiar figure before him.
“Má.”
The tall shadowy figure reaches down to flick on the nightlight plugged into the baseboard of the wall, illuminating his mother’s form in a dim yellow glow. “Nice pirouette. Sure you don’t want to shadow me at the dance studio again?”
“You can’t dance like that anymore, má,” Nick mutters crossly, realizing how it sounds only as the words leave his mouth. “I mean…”
If Morgan is hurt or offended, she doesn't show it. “It’s late, Nicho—Nick. It’s late, Nick. You should be in bed.” She tilts her head curiously. “Couldn’t sleep, con?”
Insomnia isn’t a new thing for Nick—if anything, insomnia has the dubious honor of being Nick’s oldest companion. But this is different—Nick can feel his eyelids growing heavy and the way his head jerks up every time he lets his chin dip down to meet his chest, but despite all of that, despite the fatigue weighing down his limbs and the way his temples ache in exhaustion…
“Nick?”
Nick can’t sleep. Nick can’t allow himself to sleep.
“Yeah,” Nick mumbles. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Morgan nods, her dark eyes sympathetic. She holds out her hand. “No use standing around in the dark. Come on. I’ll fix something up for you.” Nick nods and takes her hand, allowing her to lead him to the kitchen. He doesn’t bother asking why his mother is up at such a late hour. Unlike Nick’s, the demons that plague his mother are of the mundane variety, soberingly so.
“You shouldn’t be drinking coffee so late, má,” Nick says, staring at his mother’s half full coffee mug before turning his gaze to his mom bustling about in the kitchen, retrieving this-and-that and so-and-so for whatever “something” she has in mind for him.
Morgan scoffs. “It’s decaf. I’ll be fine.” She’s silent for a moment, watching whatever she’s put into the saucepan slowly begin to warm, swirling it around occasionally. “You on the other hand…”
Nick flinches, grateful that his mother can’t see him do so with her back turned. “Má…”
“You don’t want to talk about it. I understand. You don’t think I’ll get it. Maybe that’s true.” Morgan turns off the burner, pouring the contents of the pan into Nick’s favorite mug. “Just—” Morgan stops, pursing her lips in thought. She puts the dirty saucepan into the sink and fills it up with water from the tap before bringing Nick’s mug to the kitchen table and sliding it towards him, effortlessly cool even in a black terry cloth bathrobe.
Morgan retrieves her own mug and stares at it, silent for a long time. “I’ll always be here when you need me.” Her brow furrows. “You and your father.”
“Morgan? Nick?”
Morgan looks up again, calling out a casual, “We’re in the kitchen,” in the general direction of the doorway. She glances at Nick and her lips quirk up slightly at the corners. “Speak of the devil, huh?” Nick doesn’t smile back, just buries his face in his mug and takes a very long gulp to distract him from the ghost that appears at the entrance.
His father peeks his head into the kitchen, the unused fire poker from the equally unused fireplace gripped tightly in his hands like a baseball bat. He stops at the doorway, trying and failing to appear casual as he lowers his makeshift weapon. “Hey, you two.”
“Hey, yourself.” The lines of Morgan’s face soften almost imperceptibly and she stands to meet Glenn at the entrance. “You good, magpie?”
Glenn scoffs, leaning on the fire poker the same way Morgan might lean on her cane. “Yeah, I just…” He looks away uncomfortably. “ Having trouble getting any shut-eye. Was just gonna grab something to help me sleep.”
“Sit down, magpie. I’ll fix something for you,” Morgan says, patting Glenn’s hand comfortingly, but Glenn waves her away. “Nah, Freeman, it’s fine. You and Nick—I’ll just cramp your style. Don’t worry about me, babe.”
“‘Cramp our…?’” Nick can see the furrow in his mother’s brow deepen as she turns Glenn’s face towards hers. “Glenn, you know we always want you around, right? You’re not some… whatever that we keep around when you’re useful and then get rid of the first chance we get. You know that, right?”
Morgan’s staring hard at Glenn, like she’s trying to impart some deep, unspeakable wisdom into his mind telepathically or something. Maybe she is—after everything that’s happened, it’d be stupid as hell not to consider the possibility.
Glenn glances at Nick, just for a second, and it shouldn’t feel bad to look at his father, his face no longer lined and aged but once again boyish and youthful, but his pale brown eyes—both of them, and doesn’t that thought just make him feel worse—too old for his face, and Nick can’t help it—he looks away.
“Yeah, I got it, don’t worry, babe,” Glenn says. Nick peeks up again to see Morgan’s hard, scrutinizing stare bouncing between Glenn’s now closed off expression and what must be his own look of guilt. “I’m just gonna smoke a little before going to bed. You two have fun, OK?”
Morgan frowns. “OK. If you’re sure. Make sure the window’s open.” Morgan lets go of her death grip on Glenn’s face, extremely reluctantly. “Goodnight, magpie,” she says, brushing a stray lock of hair behind his ear with the utmost care before leaning in to plant a kiss on Glenn’s lips, one that Glenn returns with a desperate sort of fervor, and Nick averts his gaze again, this time from embarrassment.
“Coffee, Morgan? At this hour?” Glenn remarks once they pull away.
“It’s decaf! My God, you two,” Morgan says, exasperated, and Nick can’t help it, he laughs. Glenn looks at him again, this time surprised and just a little hopeful. “Hey Nick, make sure your mom doesn’t have any more caffeine, alright? You know how she is when she doesn’t get enough sleep,” his dad says, a tentative smile on his face.
Nick snorts. “Do I! Remember that time when she was chaperoning for the class trip to the zoo?”
“How could I forget?”
“Thanks, boys. Always good to know you’re in my corner.” Morgan remarks dryly, but she’s smiling, too, and for one blissful moment, it’s like nothing has changed.
But the feeling passes as quickly as it comes, and as Nick’s laughter fades, so too does Glenn’s timid smile (and fuck, it’s so wrong on his face), his expression falling as he looks at the fire poker in his hands. “...Anyway. I’m gonna… go now,” Glenn mumbles. “Night, you two,” Glenn can’t seem to leave fast enough, turning on his heel abruptly and hightailing it as fast as he can without outright sprinting out the door.
“Glenn,” Morgan says, but Glenn’s already gone, and Morgan sighs in frustration. She leans against the doorway, massaging the knee of her bad leg.
Nick stands, walking over to his mom. He reaches up and places a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Má?”
Morgan smiles at Nick, laying her hand over Nick's and squeezing it hard. “Let’s bring our drinks and move to the living room. It’ll be more comfortable there, OK, con?”
Both of their beverages were probably stone cold by now, hers more so than his, but Nick knows better than to argue. He nods and does as he’s told.
They settle into the old loveseat, Morgan’s leg propped up on the ottoman, her arm draped over Nick’s shoulders. Nick lays his head across her arm, solid and strong and there, and they stay like that for a long time, so long that Nick’s body relaxes despite his best efforts, the steady rise and fall of his mother’s chest quieting the storm in his mind.
Nick is so relaxed that he misses the way his eyelids drift closed, the way his fingers loosen around his empty mug until he feels Morgan shift beside him. Nick jerks upright with a gasp, just in time for him to see Morgan deftly catch his mug in her hand.
“Fuck,” Nick says.
“Language, con,” his mom chides mildly, no bite at all to her words. Morgan settles his mug on the floor beside hers. She runs a hand through his unruly hair—more wavy than curly, and speckled with tiny little baby whites, hard to see but once noticed, always there. Her smile is affectionate but pensive, and her eyes are troubled. “What will I do with you two boys?”
When Nick was a kid—when Nick was a younger kid—he liked to read stories and watch movies of people getting transported to other worlds. It was exciting, hearing stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, but it never sat right with him, the almost always inevitable return to normality in the end. The worst were the ones where the memories of their adventures slipped away, only distantly remembered as the long forgotten dreams of children. Nick had thought it sad, frustratingly drab and ordinary in a way only adults could conceive.
Now Nick knows. Forgetting is a mercy.
Or maybe it’s not, he thinks, as Morgan gently brushes the stray curls off his forehead as she stares at him in concern. There’s no way forgetting this, the love of his poor long suffering mother (or some version of her) could be anything but a cruelty.
Or maybe…
Nick shakes his head, burying his face in his hands.
Nick can’t sleep.
Nick can’t allow himself to sleep, because otherwise, he’ll remember.
Nick can’t allow himself to sleep, because otherwise, he’ll forget.
He’ll remember the things he forgot, and he’ll forget the things he remembered, and all the things he’ll remember and all the things he’ll forget will make him feel guilty, and he doesn’t want to feel guilty, he shouldn’t feel guilty. He has no reason to feel guilty, knowing what he knows now, knowing what he knew then.
Everyone had told him that.
Glenn—his dad—had told him that.
(Jodie had told him that.)
It plagues him all the same.
Nick turns away, heaving a huge, shuddering breath. He hopes his mother doesn’t notice, but he knows she does.
Morgan, mercifully, doesn’t say anything. She slips her arm around Nick again, eases his head back down on her shoulder and begins to hum very quietly.
Morgan loved music—everyone in their family did—but Morgan was the one who sang and hummed and whistled (but never at night) constantly, old French torch songs and obscure shoegaze, bits of old jazz improvisations and show tunes and the musical stylings of world renowned Swedish pop groups that his dad would scoff at in public but put on repeat during a quiet night in.
Most of all, Nick would hear her sing in Vietnamese, sad and slow and haunting. At his most uncharitable Nick would have called them veritable dirges, melancholic wailings of war and love and loss, or all three at once if it were a particularly cheerful piece.
Hearing one of those so-called dirges now, though, in his mother’s soft, wavering croon lamenting a love long since past… it breaks through the dark like a lighthouse in the fog—not enough to completely illuminate the gloom—but enough to put Nick’s tumultuous mind at ease in a way he thought he’d never experience again, and he lets out a wet, trembling sigh.
The quiet strains of his mother’s song washes over Nick, soothing the tension out of his body. Nick doesn’t fight it this time, when his eyelids begin to close again, and he lets the exhaustion ease over him like a comforting blanket. When he sleeps, it’s with the knowledge that he’s safe and though the darkness might not leave completely it was not nearly as endless as he feared.
When he dreams, it’s of family.
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