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“There’s bugs in my mouth, Leo” He sobs, voice shaking with fear, “There’s bugs in my mouth, there’s bugs in my mouth, there’s bugs in my mouth.”
Leo is out of the bed by the time the first sentence has left his mouth.
“Okay, okay. Where are you, baby? I’ll come get you” He assures, forcing his voice to keep steady as he rushes to the door, man-handling a jacket on with one arm while he clumsily jams his feet into the slip-on sneakers he bought just for occasions like these.
Don’t interact with delusions. Don’t deny or encourage them. Just try to keep the person calm.
“Leo?” Comes Yuichi’s bleary voice as he shuffles out the door. “Wh’s it… Mike? I’s Mike again, yeah?” His voice tapers off into something solemn as he says it, concern rippling underneath his sleepiness. Whatever did Leo do to deserve such a fantastic boyfriend?
But this isn’t the time to wonder this, to fawn. His baby (brother) is out there, lost and alone and out of his mind with fear. His heart is beating a terrible rock-n-roll beat in his chest, but he only allows himself one moment to show it as he turns to Yuichi with eyes he’s sure are terrified.
He has to be strong for Mikey. But right now the only person staring at him is Yuichi – who’s crossed the distance between them within one second and the next, suddenly alert and bleeding with compassion he never seems to run out of. “Do you need me to come with?”
“No” He rejects, even as his heart gives a despaired little crack at it. Mikey doesn’t know Yuichi like Leo does, it’ll probably stress him out even more to have a somewhat stranger sat in the car with him – almost as much as it’d probably be insanely awkward for Yuichi. Still, he offers anyways at the fear in Leo’s eyes – but as a big brother before anything else, Leo has to put Mikey’s needs first.
“Just get the couch set up, okay?” He instructs, unlocking the door in one swift motion. “And get some water. Make the place calming. I love you” And, as a knee-jerk after-thought, twists around briefly while half-way out the door to add “Please.”
But Yuichi is already gone, rushing about to tend to their living room – and Leo has far bigger fish to fry.
It takes him a hot minute to get Mikey coherent enough in order to weasel a street name out of him, a hot minute he spends flexing his hands agitatedly over the steering wheel as the engine rumbles beneath him. On the passenger side of the dashboard, a colourful sticker catches the glow of the streetlights, mocking him. He still remembers his joyous little Mikey, the Mikey who never seemed to stop smiling and loved to plant stickers from his sticker books everywhere he could. How could he have let him die?
He’d thought it was puberty making him miserable. Puberty and the general despair of their life. So he’d waited, waited for him to get better, to become the Mikey he knew again – like a fucking fool who thought anything in his life would ever be easy.
He finds Mikey huddled on a bench dressed in nothing but a pair of torn-up jean shorts, shaking like a leaf in a windstorm as he rocks back and forth, hugging himself. As he rushes towards him, he can hear the low, incomprehensible, terrified mutters tumbling out of his lips. It isn’t until he’s only a sparse few feet away from him that they begin to form into actual words: “Leo’s coming, Leo’s coming, Leo’s coming, Leo’s coming.”
“I’m here” He calls, settling a hand he hopes is comforting over Mikey’s shoulder. “I’m here, baby, I’m right here. You’re okay.”
In response, Mikey bursts into tears and lurches his shaking hands up to his mouth, clawing at his already cracked and bleeding lip.
“There’s bugs in my mouth, Leo” He sobs. “There’s bugs in my mouth!”
Don’t interact with delusions. Don’t deny or encourage them. Just try to keep the person calm. “Okay, okay. I…”
“There’s bugs in my mouth!” He wails. “I’m gonna die! Leo, I’m gonna, I’m gonna-”
Leo moves his hands from his shoulders to his cheeks in an instant. “You’re not gonna die, Mike, okay? Look at me,” Mikey shakily attempts to make eye contact with him, “There you go. There’s no bugs in your mouth, okay? I promise.”
Mikey shakes his head, tears pouring down his cheeks as he gasps in shallow, hiccupping breaths. “I feel them Leo. I feel them, I feel them, I feel them, I feel them-”
He stubbornly forces a deep breath in and out through his lungs, against the wishes of his rabbiting heart to just panic and yell until his brother gets his head on straight enough to come home with him.
“Baby, I’ve got my hands on your face right now. I can feel your teeth with my hands” He’s so skinny…, “But I can’t feel any bugs with my hands. I can’t. Look at me” He repeats and waits until Mikey’s eyes regain enough focus for him to be confident enough that he’s still listening to continue with as much firmness as he can muster, “I can’t feel any bugs in your mouth.”
Another sob bursts forth out of Mikey’s mouth, eyes wide with a pleading terror that make him look so impossibly young. “But I feel them.”
Another forceful deep breath in and out of Leo’s. He doesn’t have time for this, he needs to bring him home where it’s safe and warm before the gas runs out of his idling car. “I’ve got my car right here waiting. Yuichi’s already got water ready for you. Let me bring you home and you can wash those bugs out of your mouth.”
Several rapid breaths rush through Mikey’s body like shot arrows. “Promise?” He asks brokenly.
“I promise.”
Trembling, he nods, and with Leo’s help manages to rise from the bench on unsteady legs without falling over despite how hard his body tries. They don’t talk much on the car ride home, but after Mikey whines about the sounds of non-existent barking surrounding him, the car ends up filled with the noise of the radio. Despite it, though, Leo keeps his ears sternly fixated on the noise of Mikey’s soft crying and shallow breaths.
“Yuichi!” He calls as kindly yet urgently as he can while gently ushering a staggering Mikey through the front door, “Could we get a glass of water over here?”
“On it!” Comes the instantaneous reply.
Leo heads forth with the intent to lead Mikey to the couch, but before he can make it more than a step a cold hand reaches out and clasps his forearm tightly. Pressed so close to it, he can feel the sharp bones of his fingers digging into his flesh, and thinks almost hysterically in the panicked back of his mind that this is what it must be like to be grabbed by a skeleton. The thought fills him with such a nauseous sorrow that he has to spare a sizeable amount of his focus for a few long seconds into making sure his knees don’t collapse out from beneath him, in blinking away his own tears and swallowing down a sob with strength only given by the knowledge that showing distress would likely make Mikey more upset – the way it is with all children.
“Don’t go” Mikey begs, his small voice cracking with desperate fear. “Don’t go, please, I’m so sorry-”
Leo spins around in an instant, raising both of his hands to lay them against Mikey’s cheeks, trying to ignore the way his cheekbones and jaw stab into them to focus on Mikey’s barely-focused, glassy eyes. “I’m not leaving you” He tells him firmly, “I would just like to take you to the couch, where you will be comfortable and warm. We could even watch a movie if you’d like.”
“Wh-What about the bugs? It’s-They could get out of my mouth and on the couch. Then your couch would be infested and you’d have them too” He mourns despairingly.
“We’re going to wash them out with water, remember?”
“What if they infest the pipes? And then get in through the toilets and infect you?”
“I’m sure there are many bugs in the pipes already, and none have gotten in my toilet for as long as I’ve been alive – and bugs don’t usually like water. They’ll probably die.”
Yuichi’s pale hair bounces in the corner of his vision as he bounds up beside him. “Hello, Mike” He greets in a soft, friendly way as though his brother has just showed up to visit instead of being brought here to wait out a terrible high. “I brought you some water. Would you like it now or later?”
Mikey’s bulbous eyes flit to him, flashing with suspicion as he spends a moment running his trembling eyes up and down his body, sizing him up. If it were any other circumstance, Leo would be offended – they waited two years into dating before moving in, two years in which Yuichi was nothing but good to all of his brothers, and on top of that he’s been living with him for almost eight months wherein every single one of his brothers has been frequently invited for visits. But this is Mikey, terrified out of his mind on some backstreet hallucinogenic, Mikey who was sent to a(n awful, as Raph told him bitterly and a little shakily when the subject reared its ugly head a few weeks ago) group home instead of into a loving one with Leo – because he and Raph were ‘bad kids.’
He distrusted Yuichi too, at first, snapped at him and even yelled at him more than a few times in their early months as the way his rapidly growing love for him made something young and terrified shriek wildly in his chest. But over the years, it had mostly entirely quieted as his boyfriend proved time and time again that he was good, that he wouldn’t just get up and leave randomly someday.
Eventually, though, the same genuineness that won over Leo must win over his skittish brother, too, as he nods and hesitantly reaches out a shaking hand to grasp the glass in Yuichi’s hands. Leo reluctantly releases his face to allow him to bring it to his lips, watching him with the same sensation of being unable to look away from a gut-wrenching car wreck.
He jumps as warm, slender fingers slide in between his own, but quickly settles and works his own hand around to fit more smoothly into Yuichi’s. Once their hands are successfully intertwined, Yuichi squeezes his hand firmly, and more strength gathers in his dwindling stores.
He squeezes Yuichi’s hand back in gratitude.
Before them, Mikey finishes off his water and swishes it around in his mouth aggressively, swaying from side to side slightly while he gazes into his empty cup with a furrowed brow, a spark of focus igniting within his terrified gaze.
After a few silent seconds of deliberation, he spits the water ungracefully out of his mouth and into the cup, only managing to get about half in. The other half splits into two other halves that spill down his chin and splatter over the floor respectively. In the cup, mysterious dark daresay reddish specks swirl around in the now-greyish water. Dread pools in Leo’s stomach at the sight, but he forcibly keeps his face calm.
“I’ll go get a cloth” Yuichi says kindly, squeezing his hand once more before releasing him and hurrying off into the hearth.
“Sorry” Mikey mutters, staring into the dirty, pale water in his cup. “I… I think I got the bugs out though. Tell Yuichi thank you for me. And. Thank you to you too.”
The relief that shines in Leo’s chest at the news is quickly shattered by the way Mikey sets the water down on an empty spot on the wooden shoe-rack and promptly staggers back towards the door. Now it’s Leo’s turn to lurch forth, grabbing onto his bony arm with his hand.
“Where are you going?” He asks, unable to keep the desperation out of his voice as it cracks.
Mikey only turns his head back to look at him in bleary confusion. “Out…? I’m-I’m better now. I got the bugs out.”
Leo can feel the gap between his ulna and his radius just by laying his hand on his arms. Tremors still wrack through his body, his eyes are swollen with tears and his skin is uncomfortably cold.
“I-I’d rather you stay” He explains at last. “I haven’t seen you in a while, Mike. Please stay the night.”
Mikey’s eyes glance him up and down, sparking with the quick realization of Leo’s true desires – because despite how many drugs Mikey had pumped into his system over the short years he’s been alive, he’s never been stupid. For a long moment, silence stretches between them, making Leo’s heart still with terror as his mind races through the awful possible reality of his baby brother running out of his home and back into the night in this state.
But, in a motion that could make Leo collapse with relief, he nods, and allows himself to be guided to the couch where Leo lays a blanket over his frigid body. By the time Yuichi finishes mopping up the mess on the floor, returning the cup to the kitchen, and wiping off the speckled water still dribbling from Mikey’s mouth, his little brother is mostly asleep against the cushions.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” Yuichi whispers. “I could sleep on the other couch.”
On any other day, Leo would say no – the couch is far less comfortable than the bed and Yuichi deserves to get a good night’s rest.
But that young, terrified thing is still shrieking in his chest – DON’T LEAVE ME, DON’T LEAVE ME, DON’T LEAVE ME. And with Mikey finally asleep, he doesn’t have it in him to be strong anymore.
“Yes” He croaks, unable to fight the betrayal of everything he’s supposed to be in front of Yuichi. A hysteric fear flits across his mind as soon as he says it, that Yuichi will just go to bed anyways or worse be horrified by how weak he truly is and leave him right this moment for someone better, someone he deserves.
But Yuichi doesn’t do any of those. Instead he replies, “Okay” and leans forth to press a long kiss to Leo’s forehead before shuffling off to the other couch, laying the soft white blanket they keep next to it over himself.
“Get some sleep, okay?” He says drowsily, staring at Leo through half-lidded eyes with a look of pure love that he’s only ever seen on his young brothers before. “I love you.”
“I love you too” He replies automatically, and with a reassuring smile Yuichi fades into sleep himself.
Leo stays awake for much longer, though, watching over the rise and fall of Mikey’s chest, looking over his sunken, pallid face and wondering horribly for the millionth time where he went wrong, what horrors he’s been up to on the streets where Leo can’t follow. Statistics of overdose and death from various hallucinogens run screaming through his mind.
But all Mikey does is continue to sleep peacefully, breaths deep and even. If Leo squints, he can almost pretend that he’s a little boy again, sleeping the night away after a long day of playing video games with Donnie and rough-housing with Raph. But even that doesn’t change the haunting, clinging memory of his hand on his arm. This is what it must be like to be grabbed by a skeleton.