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Leo’s up for a glass of water at some terribly odd hour, thinking with mild irritation about how tired he’ll probably be going into work tomorrow, when he finds Mikey: Sat on the couch with his knees pulled up to his chest, weeping quietly.
Instantaneously, everything else in the world is nil. He rushes over to the couch in an instant, no longer registering his own thirst, and settles himself down next to him. He would love to yank him right into his arms, but Mikey has a tendency to flinch when he’s touched unexpectedly – or, in episodes like this, freak.
So, he just sits with his hands hovering, calling out; “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Mikey jumps anyways, turning to look at him with wide, wet eyes that have a confusing mix of CAUGHT and relieved storming in them.
“Leo?” He croaks softly, almost in disbelief. “Leo…”
“I’m here, baby” He leans closer. “What’s the matter?”
He racks his brain, but nothing bad has happened recently. Did he get a message just now about maybe some like Angel suffering an overdose?
Or did he do drugs again?
“There’s” He gasps. “I-There’s a thing. Bad thing. Have to tell you. Can I tell you? It’s. It’s bad.”
You’re not making sense, he wants to say, but the old drug sitter techniques he’d carved into his skull are coming back with every quickening beat of his heart. He wouldn’t do drugs again, right? Would he?
“What is it?” He pries gently, and then adds as the words paranoia flash in his brain (an impending sense of doom is a symptom of a heroin overdose), “I won’t be mad, I promise.”
Relapsing is part of recovery. Relapsing is part of recovery. Relapsing is part of recovery.
Mikey gasps again, pressing himself against the back of the couch. Leo sits there with his heart running a million miles per hour in his chest as he gathers his breath and his senses enough to speak:
“I got raped” He rasps at last.
And just like that Leo’s rapid heart rate stills entirely with ice cold horror and dread. “… What?”
“Not-Not-In the past. Back in my childhood. In the-In the house. Mom’s house. That house. With her boyfriends. And also in the group home with other men. This one guy, Chris. Lots-Lots of times. Lots of people.”
Leo is going to burn the entire world to the ground and then eat its ash for breakfast. He’s going to find the men who dared hurt his brother like this and disembowel them piece by piece. He’s going to drink the terror in their eyes like he needs it to live as they realize they’re going to die by his hands. He’s make them scream out for their mommies, he’s going to hunt down every last person who hurt his brother, he’s going to-
Mikey’s breath hitches dramatically, and he covers his leaking eyes with his hand. “I’m sorry” He whimpers, sounding so impossibly young, “I know it’s shameful. I know I’m dirty.”
He’s going to hug his brother.
He holds him with all the passion he has for him that he can muster into his arms without just simply shattering them off with the sheer force of it. Mikey hesitates a moment before pressing his face into his neck, shaking like a leaf in a windstorm in his arms.
“You are not dirty” He hisses into his ear, “Okay? You hear me? You are not dirty. You are not shameful. Those… Those monsters… they’re shameful. They’re dirty. But never you, baby. Never you.”
Mikey sobs again, burying his face into the crook of Leo’s neck. It’s hard enough that it almost hurts, but Leo only wishes he could peel open the flesh of his neck and pull Mikey into it, tuck him safely away where he can truly make sure no one ever hurts him again.
But he can’t, so all he does is hold him and remind him of his worth, of how much he’s loved and will continue to be loved – and in the morning, even though Leo can’t promise he can make sure it’ll never happen again, Mikey’s got enough spring in his step that Leo might as well have cast a spell of it.