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“Ow, fuck,” Roman bites, wincing dramatically as Connor rolls his eyes, offers up a half-assed watch it as he presses the balled-up washcloth to his youngest brother’s split lip. It’s mostly stopped bleeding now, the cut leaving the start of a bruise the size of their father’s signet ring just below the swell of his mouth, and the thing is, it wasn’t even hard, not really. An unballed fist, an open fingered backhand. Hell, if dad hadn’t been wearing the ring, there’d probably be nothing to clean up at all. The thought dries in ink, certain in a way that eases that hot, panicked, hollow feeling from ten minutes ago, even as he tilts Roman’s peach-fuzzed chin sideways to double check.
“A day, maybe two,” he decides, letting him go, but not quite moving to stand just yet. “I reckon you won’t even know it was there.”
“Shit, was hoping it’d scar,” Roman replies. He’s sitting cross-legged on the closed toilet seat, his eyes cast downwards to where he’s tugging the sleeves of his sweater down over curled fingers. Like this, he looks younger than fourteen, bug eyed and round faced with hands and feet he hasn’t grown into yet. Scrappy, like Kendall was at his age. Like Connor’s pretty sure he was too. “Start my supervillain era.”
It’s then that Shiv finally makes a noise – that loud sort of scoff she’s been managing since she was eight – and Connor exhales, standing up from his crouch to toss the blood-spotted washcloth into the sink.
“Please, you have Henchman Number 3 written all over you.”
“Yeah, well, you have unidentified murdered body written all over you. Probably headless and like, mangled and shit, with someone’s dick stitched to your face.”
Which - - okay.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Shiv asks at the same time Connor says: “Hey,” giving Roman a sharp look, and Roman just rolls his eyes, slumping back against the toilet’s tank and pulling a face at Shiv, who’s gotta pull an ugly one back, if the faint grin twitching at the corner of Rome’s mouth is anything to go by. It makes it easier somehow, for Connor to glance back at Shiv himself, and at least some of the colour is coming back to her face.
She’d come into the bathroom after them, but only by seconds, closing the door behind her before deciding to glue herself to it, and in the moment of it, it had been too much. To have been on his own this morning at his place in Medina, to tonight, trapped in the crowded kids’ bathroom at their dad’s apartment on the Upper East Side, these three kids suddenly his to deal with, loud and needy and urgent.
Not that that was a straight line exactly.
No, of course, there was plenty between it, from the private jet to dinner, to - - all of that - - but he’s not really sure how productive that would be to think about right now when his fourteen-year-old sister is staring at him like maybe he has a few answers.
And maybe he does, he thinks, hands still damp from the washcloth.
Or maybe not, he thinks, because he finds himself still looking at Shiv to not look at Kendall.
Thing is, he'd only visited her a few weeks ago – flown to Kentucky to see her compete in the US Equestrian Pony Finals, where she’d ignored him the first day before attaching herself to his side the second – but he swears she’s grown since then. Another inch in height at least, plus - - you know. She and Rome might be twins, but they’ve never looked particularly alike, and now, well. Mom always did say girls grew up faster.
“You okay?” he asks her, and Shiv glances up at him, arms crossed behind her back where she leans against the wall, and he sees it. The way her eyes dart towards the bathtub, but she’s careful not to let herself linger. Rolls her shoulders back against the wall, pushes her hips out like she would when she was still a kid, and she sniffs.
“Shouldn’t you be asking him that?”
Which - - yeah, Connor thinks, finally turning his attention to where Kendall’s sprawled in the empty bathtub, skinny as a rake, all of 18 and more blitzed on your average Thursday night than Connor was at last year’s Burning Man. He’s distracted at least for now, entranced by the ceiling light, his hair still damp from where Connor had splashed some water on his face the second he’d pulled them in here, but after a quick search for track marks (there were none that he could find, at least, although the hand-grip shaped bruise on Kendall’s arm had made him catch his breath), and deciding he wasn’t at risk of slipping into unconsciousness just yet, figured he could wait a sec.
“Don’t know how I was the one he was pissed at with the tweaker here,” Roman huffs, but there’s nothing behind it really. Embarrassment if anything, Connor thinks, because they both know Dad wasn’t actually angry at Roman anyway. The evening is like a flip book in his head: Family dinner and Kendall moony eyed and loose limbed and Sally-Anne’s pointed comments and then Kendall’s slurred insult, then their father’s consuming anger, shrinking the room, climbing the walls. A hand on Kendall’s arm, yanking so hard Connor thought he might’ve pulled it from the socket, Roman standing up saying - - something, Connor can’t remember, just remembers he was too close, whatever he said too much, so their father’s hand had gone backwards, like batting away a fly. Remembers Shiv then, staring hard at her plate, white faced and stormy eyed, and if it wasn’t for Sally-Anne suddenly leaving the room, their father quick to make chase, who the hell knows where the night might’ve gone.
“You just don’t know when to stop,” Shiv tells him, and Connor ignores them, crouching at the edge of the bathtub, grabbing the glass of water he’d poured earlier off the floor and holding it out to Kendall again. His gaze slips to the finger shaped bruises on his arm, and sometimes, in his dumber moments, he kinda thinks that’s the nut cracked. That Roman’s smacked out of the way, shoved to the side, and Kenny’s yanked closer, Kenny’s held down, but that’s not - - Dad’s not - -
Connor shakes his head, reaches for Kendall’s hand, helps him grip the glass. They’re kids, just like he was, and they just need to learn to keep quiet and do as they’re told. That’s all.
“You with us?” he asks, and Kendall blinks bleary green eyes back at him, unfocused, but then - - there’s a little something. A vague flicker of recognition, of regrounding, and Connor’s knees ache.
“Con?”
“Yeah, Kenny, I’m here.”
It makes Kendall blink, mumble something Connor can’t quite make out, but there’s a smile at his lips, so Connor takes it for a win. He rests his elbow against the cool porcelain rim of the tub, easing the glass to Kendall’s mouth.
“You gonna drink some of this for me?”
“You always do stuff like this,” Shiv continues, and from the corner of Connor’s eye, he can see her finally push off the door, starting towards Roman “Like you’re away half the year and then you come back, and start inserting yourself into things that you don’t know anything about.”
“Oh, I don’t know anything about this? About fucking - - fucking Trainspotting over here?”
Which - -
Connor frowns, even as Kendall fumbles a hand to his wrist, holds onto him as Connor helps him take a drink.
“Aren’t you a little young to be watching stuff like that?”
“We’ve seen worse,” Shiv counters. “Pretty sure Roman’s been jacking it to Clockwork Orange since last summer.”
“Yeah, but only to the regular violence, not the rapey violence, so the internet says there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t like you guys messing around with that either,” Connor says, and he’d gesture to make a point, but Kendall’s really holding onto him now. Sobering up, maybe, something. Connor glances back, but y’know what? He has a point here. “The internet. You know, I’ve heard it was secretly invented by Al Gore, which means Clinton’s probably using it as a backdoor to Dad.”
“Oh my god, Connor,” Shiv groans, as Roman laughs, which chafes, and Connor half twists back towards them, annoyed because, y’know, they’re half his fuckin’ age, and he knows stuff about this, he does, but Roman and Shiv are just grinning at each other now.
“Ooo, yes, well, they’ll be getting all the super secret intel like his favourite sports ball team’s latest score as reported by literally everywhere, and pictures of like - - tits and buttholes.”
“I’m serious, you guys, it’s - - ”
Before he can finish the thought, Kendall suddenly sits up, thrusting his glass back at Connor, and okay, yeah, alright, Connor thinks, sensing the incoming mess. He drops the glass to the ground to stand and haul Kendall up as best he can. The kid’s green around the gills, is the thing, throat lurching and shoulders curling, and Connor glances sideways to Roman as he tries to move Kendall, who’s got all the grace of a reanimated corpse right now, and at least Rome’s already lurching off the toilet seat, fumbling around to help Connor pull their brother bodily out of the tub. There’s a bit of fumbling then, turning, but somehow they manage to link elbows with Kendall in the middle, their knees hitting the tiles simultaneously, just in time for Kendall to drop his head into the bath and vomit.
Behind them, he can hear Shiv gag, and Jesus, Connor’s pretty close to it himself. The splatter of bile (because apparently Kendall hasn’t eaten anything today) loud against the porcelain, and the smell something thin and acidic, diffusing in the bathroom, weaseling into towels and clothes.
“That’s good, Kenny,” Connor says, soothing in the way he used to use with his mom, which - - okay. Not something to spend too much time thinking on. He swallows, adds: “Bet you’re feeling better already, huh?”
Kendall makes a vague spluttering noise, and Roman’s face twists into something between sympathy and disgust, and Connor’s knees really aren’t what they used to be. He shifts on the tiles, feeling his pants catch in the grout line, leaving him off-balance, and he means to push a hand to Kendall’s back, half in quasi-comfort, and half to steady himself, only to discover that Roman’s hand is already there. They don’t acknowledge it, instead Connor just raises his own hand to the back of Kendall’s neck, squeezing gently at the clammy skin there, and watching as Kendall heaves out one last vomit, before he lowers his head to the rim of the bathtub.
“Here it comes,” Roman says, voice flat and hand still sprawled between Kendall’s shoulder blades. “You seen him crash before, man? It’s like watching a lizard fall off the ceiling into a trash compactor.”
“He’s done this before?”
Which is a stupid question, and they all know it. They’ve all seen him sneak off at parties, all seen him waxy skinned and red eyed in the mornings, and Connor’s more wondering when it started. He must’ve been Rome and Shiv’s age, more or less. Younger maybe, but that’s not really something he wants to think about either. Can’t quite balance that. His kid brother, always playing big.
Still, stupid question or not, Shiv and Roman play along.
“Just a couple of times,” Shiv replies, and when he glances back at her, she’s flattened her bare foot on to the back of Kendall’s, her toes curled around his heel, and it’s a weird sort of gesture, but then Kendall’s foot seems to arch to hold it there, and he thinks he’s got no leg to stand on, not really. After all, she and Kendall are the only two of the four of them who really live together right now, what with Roman at St. Andrews and Connor in Medina. The thought sticks, and Connor thinks - - next school vacation. He’ll get them out with him. He can - - something.
“By that, she means only Wednesdays through Mondays. He gives himself Tuesdays off.”
Roman’s voice is cloying, mocking, and it apparently inspires a fresh exhale. A proper, annoyed breath.
“Fuck you, bro.”
And okay, yeah, Connor can work with that.
“Oh! He’s awake!” Connor crows at the same time Roman says: “He’s aliiive!” in as disturbing a Dr. Frankenstein voice as he can manage, and between them, Kendall swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, resting on his haunches, and their arms are still linked, so it ends up being a whole thing that - - y’know - - not to belabor the point, but Connor’s really not sure his knees are up for anymore.
“Yeah,” is all Kendall says, and it’s weird – this moment where Connor feels him start to pull his arm in, closer, before seemingly changing his mind and disentangling. Instead, Kendall drops his hands to his thighs, curling there for a second before uncurling, and he glances at Connor without actually looking at him, before suddenly turning to Roman. Like this, Connor can’t see his face, can only see the back of his head and the slope of his narrow shoulders, but he can see Roman just past him, and then Shiv too, as she moves from behind them to sit on the edge of the tub, and that’s - - not weird, it’s not. Him and Kendall looking at Roman and Shiv, Roman and Shiv looking at - -
Well.
Not them.
Kendall.
Always to Kendall first.
It’s out of the corner of his eye that Connor sees Kendall raise an arm, his hand coming up to the corner of Roman’s mouth, just enough to thumb at some of the dried blood beneath the cut, and Connor can’t see Kendall’s face, he can’t, but he can hear his hoarse, wet breath, hear the mumbled ‘m sorry, and it’s all it takes for Roman’s face to crack open and for Shiv to stare at the floor like she’d stared at her plate at dinner, her own look closed and stormy again, and Connor thinks he might not even be there. Connor wonders if this is a dream, if its astral projection, if he’s never really with them, always on the outside, looking in, and there’s something inside him that tells him stupid, that tells him they’re teenagers, and Shiv is staring at the floor like she knows not to look up and Roman’s got their father’s ring stamped on his face, and Kendall’s got their father’s fingers wrapped around his arm, and he thinks he can’t look at them.
These kids.
He’s supposed to take care of them.
He drops his gaze to the floor, a tentative hand falling to Kendall’s shoulder, and he hates that it’s a relief, when Kendall doesn’t flinch.
The moment sits, but then, like everything else, it breaks.
“Whatever,” Roman says suddenly to Kendall, loose and warmer than he has any right to be, especially when he adds: “Will you throw up again if I stick my finger in your eye?”
(Which yeah, for the record, he will).