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Kobra hated a lot of things. Doctors, control, loud noises, bad people, feelings - be it his own or somebody else’s. He also hated when Party Poison and Fun Ghoul were in the seemingly never ending state of ignoring each other and walking around all devastated, tensed and annoyed. He hated how he understood everything, how he could build the cause-and-effect diagram in his mind without any struggle. He hated the long, brown hair and seemingly the root of all the problems, he hated the pills and the runaways.
He also kind of hated how those arguments seemingly disappeared into thin air the same unpredictable way they’d appeared, like no one really cared about the anger and tension, like it was all just a stage play all along, after which Ghoul and Poison became their usual selves, listening to some shitty music none of them liked and laughing about something Kobra didn’t even try to understand.
If so, Kobra was affected by those plays. A lot.
Every room was basically drenched in tension during the times like these, dripping down from the walls and spilling onto the floor, staying as a bitter taste on the tongue.
The list of things Kobra hated experienced some changes every new argument. He hated how calm Jet was, he hated how every time he’d asked something, Ghoul just shrugged and tried to look as unaffected as possible. He hated how Poison couldn’t even hold his shoulders straight, looking smaller than usual. He hated noticing all of these details, he hated the way it’d always felt like a sick, twisted joke on him.
He hated the burning feeling he got in his chest and his gut every time he had to spend time in the same room as one of them. He hated how weak he was, he hated the fear eating him from inside and holding him back from doing something, - anything, - to stop this.
But most of all he hated running away himself. It was unfair - mostly to the Girl, who had to be left there in between two flames. Jet was there for her, sometimes, but there were moments where he did the same as Kobra, disappearing somewhere with someone new every time.
The familiar squeak of the door, and Kobra was outside, throwing a glance at the place they called ‘home’ probably the last time in the next couple of weeks. Then he was gone, trying his hardest to keep his heart from racing. Just a little leap and he would be safe again, away from the slithering tension in the air.
By the time he was standing in front of the beat-up wood of the door, the sun had already framed the horizon with a palette of yellow shades, pushing the blue tint of the night away. His legs hurt from the endless walk, his skin was covered in goosebumps from the cold night air, and his mind was still filled with the flow of thoughts. He just wanted this to stop, lay down, to feel calm, to rip out the knot of guilt in his stomach and just stop caring.
The door opened almost without any sound, spilling some light on the ground still covered in shadows. Kobra raised his eyes from the ground, being met with Sandman’s warm, a bit crooked smile. “Hey,” he said, his voice raspy from the long silence and the cruel desert air.
“Hey,” his words got mirrored. He heard a quiet creak of the floorboard under Sandman’s feet, then felt a soft touch of Sandman’s lips on his. “I missed you.”
“Yeah,” Kobra whispered in response, because saying it louder would break the soothing, fuzzy feeling of comfort. “Yeah, me too.”
They stood there for a couple of seconds, silent, examining each other’s faces like it could reveal some bizarre secret any one of them was hiding. Then Sandman stepped away from the door frame, letting Kobra in and closing the door behind him.
The inside of the house wasn’t much warmer than the desert air by itself, but it was drenched in light from different sources, like always. Sometimes it felt like the Suitehearts never went to sleep at all.
“Hey, Kobra,” Donnie said the moment they stepped into the room, not even looking at them. The absolute indifference in his voice made it seem like Kobra’d been here just yesterday, only leaving for a night.
“One day it won’t be him, and you’ll embarrass yourself,” Sandman chuckled, intertwining Kobra’s fingers with his and basically dragging him upstairs.
“We all know you’d rather die than bring someone else here,” Donnie answered.
Kobra pulled on Sandman’s hand and skipped a couple of steps to get down and peek at the Catcher from the door frame. “And what about Viper or Bachelor?” he asked.
“Viper and Bachelor don’t knock, dude, they just let themselves in like its their base and they live here,” Donnie sounded annoyed.
“Considering the amount of time you spend with them, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they did come to live here,” Kobra lowered his voice so only Sandman could hear him.
“Too bad they’re the only ones with any leadership skills in this shithole,” Sandman huffed, pulling Kobra up the stairs again, like they were on a freaky roller coaster they had to work themselves.
“You could be such a great leader too, though,” Sandman continued casually, but Kobra almost felt the way his body tensed up in expectation.
Kobra worried his bottom lip between his teeth, preparing for an uncomfortable conversation that came up every single time. He fell silent for a couple of moments, enough for Sandman to open the door to his room and pull them both in, his palm sweaty from the quickly rising heavy atmosphere.
“Sand, please, we’ve discussed it a billion times. You know I can’t do it,” he finally said, when it started to feel like the atmosphere could crush either one of them.
“But you can! You so fucking can, you just,” Sandman stumbled over his own words, getting riled up immediately, and seemingly out of nowhere. He let go of Kobra’s hand, pacing around the room.
“You just don’t want to, you don’t understand what I’m trying to give you,” he shook his head viciously, “you don’t understand that you don’t have any future there! Kobra, you will get yourself killed because of them, because you don’t understand what you’re getting yourself into, because you will follow Party fucking Poison anywhere he goes!” Sandman exhaled, panic rising in his voice like it always had. Sometimes it felt like he had a ticking bomb inside of him, and any move Kobra made could detonate it at any second.
“You know it’s not like that,” Kobra said, avoiding Sandman’s eyes and looking at the cracks on the wall instead. He was so fed up with all the fighting. It felt like the higher powers held a grudge towards him, so that when he ran from one fight, they’d immediately throw him into another.
And yet, fights with Sandman were never really bad. He still hated them, but not as much as the battlefield that was his home at times. Sandman was angry, yes, but Kobra understood the reason, and understood how important it was for him. It was much better than having to be a third party in a fight that didn’t have any rules, and if it actually did, no one considered it necessary to disclose them to him.
“Kobra, I just want you to be safe. And you will be safe with us, I swear,” Sandman slowed down his pacing, then completely stopped, sitting down on the bed and letting his head fall backwards, rest against the wall. “You will never be safe with them. You four think you are the fucking saviours of this place, but you are not, no one is.” He closed his eyes, pitching his lips. “I thought I could be the one.”
The rest of the sentence fell unspoken, lingering in the air like an annoying fly. Kobra mentally swatted it away, but it stayed somewhere in the background, buzzing quietly, waiting for him to come back and finally take away its misery.
Kobra stayed silent, looking at Sandman from above. It wasn’t the first time he’d stopped midway through sentence, omitting the most important part. It was interesting the first time, even more interesting the second, and then it just became annoying, akin to the imaginary fly. Kobra had decided that if Sandman had wanted to tell him, he would have done it already. It didn’t seem like an easy topic for him, so Kobra just didn’t ask. He had his secrets too, and he also had some secrets that weren’t even his, so he knew how it felt.
Another moment of silence had passed without any movement from Sandman, so Kobra finally did something, exhaling shakily, getting down onto the bed and laying his head on Sandman’s lap.
“Sand, I’m really sorry, I am, and I really want to just fuck it all and stay here with you,” and he almost meant it, the heavy air of his home still bitter on the tongue. But that was the thing - it was his home. No matter how hurtful, no matter how hard. “You know you are important to me, Sand, but…”
“…but they’re more important. Yes, Kobra, I get it,” Sandman sighed, slowly running his fingers through Kobra’s hair. “Whatever. Just forget it. I’m sorry for bringing this up every time,” he continued, stopping his movement and just cupping Kobra’s cheek in his palm.
Kobra knew he meant all of it, up to the last word. And Kobra was sorry too, for not being able to make Sandman feel the way he made Kobra feel - safe and needed, for not being able to show how much he actually meant.
After a while of comfortable stillness, Sandman shifted his weight, forcing Kobra to raise his head from his lap. Not letting him return to the previous pose, Sandman hooked his fingers under Kobra’s chin, tugging him upwards until he was propped on his elbows with his head tilted backwards to maintain eye contact.
“C’mere,” Sandman murmured, and instead of waiting for Kobra to do something, he just leaned in, kissing him upside down - hot, deep and a bit awkward.
Kobra hummed against Sandman’s lips, pulling away to change his position and sit instead of lying on his back. Sandman protested weakly, but still waited until he was done, closing his eyes.
He took his time observing Sandman’s face. His dark hair, totally fried with Benzedrine’s dyes, the way his eyelashes fluttered even with his eyes closed, the metallic glint of an eyebrow piercing, almost hidden behind the bangs.
“I really like you,” he said under his breath, resting his forehead against Sandman’s, trying to make the simple phrase convey everything untold.
Sandman didn’t open his eyes, whispering, “I really like you, too,” and seeming to have understood everything Kobra meant.
Something fell down in the neighboring room that was in use as the shower, making the loudest noise Kobra’d ever heard in his life. Sandman twitched, glancing at the door. The next sound was a mix of such exquisite swear words that Kobra didn’t know the meaning of half of it. He slowly looked Sandman in the eyes, then let his lips twist into a smirk. He could already tell Sandman was battling with himself not to laugh out loud.
“Do you think that was intentional?” Sandman huffed quietly, biting his lip in laughter. Kobra raised an eyebrow - since when did people make such noises on purpose?
“Crab’s in there,” Sandman elaborated and everything fell into place. Kobra buried his face in his hands and half-sobbed from laughter. “Come the fuck on, hes gonna hear you,” Sandman begged, failing not to laugh himself.
“He hates me so much,” Kobra said, calming down a bit and taking a deep breath that sounded like a sigh. It didn’t bother him much that a guy in Sandman’s band was totally in love with him, which meant he was also jealous and trying to get rid of Kobra in any way possible. Kobra never understood jealousy. He didn’t understand love either, until recently, although that had changed, and his attitude towards jealousy didn’t.
Sandman was a completely different story. It’d taken Kobra around a week to get what was happening when Sandman was especially touchy and intimate with Viper after Kobra’s absences, when he suddenly paid more attention to Crab, when he shot small glances at Kobra while doing all that, and when he seemed disappointed, irritated and a bit desperate after seeing the indifferent look on his face.
It’d taken him a bit more time to understand the way Sandman’s brain works. To understand why those things had been happening. To understand that Sandman needed reassurance, that he needed to see he was needed, to see jealousy, fear and sadness not to crash down. That actions meant far more to him than words. That he was actually really, really manipulative and egoistical, maybe without knowing that himself. And that Kobra loved every single trait of his.
So Kobra’d started pulling a sad face every time Viper’s arm was swung around Sandman’s shoulders, started shooting hateful glares at Crab, started pulling Sandman by his waist every time any other member of the band was close. Started showing jealousy, all while still being completely indifferent. Because Sandman wanted that. Because Sandman felt safer knowing someone was scared to lose him. Because Sandman was as broken as all of them, albeit trying to look strong.
Kobra ruffled Sandman’s hair, feeling the need to do so after the long train of thoughts. He really did like Sandman, and it was weird, the feeling just existing in the background of his life, multiplying proportionally to the distance between them.
The noises from the bathroom stopped, and Sandman stood up slowly, pressing his ear against the wall. “He isn’t crying in there,” he said, like that actually had a probability of happening. From what Kobra had learned about Crab, he would sooner surrender to a draculoid than let someone see how weak he was. He winced from how close this hit to home - not his home, though, but Party Poison’s. Kobra mentally stuffed the thought somewhere far away, promising to come back to it when the time comes.
“Can I take a shower? I probably smell like a bunch of dead,” he paused, thinking of the next word, then decided to just end the sentence there.
Sandman moved away from the wall, burying his nose in the crook of Kobra’s neck and breathed in. The warm air tickled the skin, so Kobra shivered involuntarily and lightly pushed Sandman away. He chuckled, saying, “yea, you smell like shit. Go take your monthly shower.”
Kobra shook his head, then decided it wasn’t worth arguing about, even playfully, so he just flicked Sandman on the forehead. Sandman didn’t let this go unnoticed, catching Kobra by the back of his neck and half-biting half-sucking on his skin, probably leaving a mark. Satisfied with his work, he let go, pushing Kobra towards the door.
Sandman was right - Crab wasn’t crying. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still there, sitting with his back to the wall with closed eyes and earbuds in. The black wire streamed down his body, connecting to a what Kobra guessed was an mp3 player. Crab didn’t notice Kobra, focused on something inside his head.
“Whatcha listening to?” Kobra asked, looking at Crab from above. He opened his eyes, his expression immediately changing to a hostile one. He scrambled himself up, still looking Kobra in the eyes – he had to tilt his head upwards a bit to do that. Crab looked borderline pathetic, and Kobra felt a bit sorry for him, almost guilty.
Crab broke the eye contact, sliding his gaze down until his eyes were fixed on the blooming field of pink-purple bruises on Kobra’s neck. He pressed his lips together in a thin line. “The Smiths,” he spat, once again looking Kobra in the eyes. “Crying and harming myself, y’know. Such a great band for when you feel like shit,” he hissed. The flickering screen of the mp3 player was showing slowly gliding words “Enter Sandman - Metallica.mp3”. Kobra sighed.
“I’m so sad, I have problems at home, I wish I had a caring fucking boyfriend to run to at any moment for him to console me at the first call and bail on everyone else, and whom I could leave to be for months at a time,” Crab continued, his voice laced with venom so much that even Kobra could feel it under his skin. He hoped Sandman didn’t hear the monologue, or it could play out badly for Crab himself.
“Whatever. Take your fucking time,” he finished off, storming out of the bathroom. Kobra could hear Donnie’s faint voice asking if everything was alright.
Shrugging the conversation off together with his clothes, Kobra stepped into the shower, turning the water to barely warm. He didn’t like showering with hot water, maybe a habit from back home, where they didn’t have water the temperature of anything above the room temperature.
He sat down on the still cold floor, hugging his knees to his chest and resting his head against the wall, letting the water run down his body with a methodic pace. Kobra didn’t like to be left alone with his thoughts, hence the regular visits to Sandman and hatred towards silence.
The sound of running water made his ears feel stuffed with something close to cotton, working like white noise, drowning any thoughts he had, not letting him drown in them the same style. He suddenly felt very sleepy – the water washed off the adrenaline from the day before, and now he was just exhausted, both physically and mentally.
He washed himself half-heartedly with someone’s shampoo. Doing that at the Suitehearts’ residence was a risky move, since almost everything that could be hand-crafted by the means of chemistry was hand-crafted by the means of chemistry and Benzedrine. And only hell knew how safe it was.
The towel Kobra took was also not his, just like everything else in the house. He looked at his clothes in a pile on the floor and decided to go out in the towel only and then wash the clothes too. They probably stunk more than he did, and he wasn’t about to check that.
Sandman was waiting for him on the bed, taking up more space than a person his height should’ve. He raised his eyes to look at Kobra, then pat the remains of free space next to him. Kobra nodded, crawling in the bed to him and pushing a pile of clothes away with his foot. Sandman never bothered to keep his place clean, and Kobra liked the chaos of his much more than sterile cleanness anyways. It made the whole room feel like Sandman felt, close, soft, warm, safe.
He didn’t bother to ask Sandman for clothes - it’s not like they’d never seen each other naked, and he was also just too tired to do that. Kobra struggled to get into the space between Sandman and the wall, spooning him and burying his face into whatever part of Sandman was closest to him.
“Wanna sleep,” he announced, the words coming out muffled. Sandman nodded, - or, at least, Kobra made a guess that he did because of the movement he felt, - and shuffled around a bit trying to find a more comfortable position, then quieted down, breathing in unison with Kobra.
He fell asleep quickly, waking up when Sandman wiggled out of his arms and left him in the bed alone. Without something warm near to him it took a little longer to fade into darkness, but he still did, for whoever knows how long.
When he woke up, it was already darkening behind the windows. Also, Viper was sitting on the bed next to him and actively gesturing at someone, - probably Sandman, – out of his view.
Kobra stretched his arms, sitting up with his back to the wall. Viper turned to him, smiling widely. “There he is! G’morning,” he said. Kobra remarked the way it was definitely not morning, but still raised his hand in a jumbled attempt at a wave. Viper examined him closely, then raised an eyebrow mockingly. “Are you naked?” he asked, but it sounded more like a statement.
“Completely fuckin’ naked,” Kobra drawled with pleasure, suppressing a yawn. The same as with Sandman, Viper and him had both seen each other naked more times than is possible to count.
“Don’t believe you,” Viper said, tugging on the blanket Kobra’d pulled over himself while sleeping. Kobra did not like the course of the events, tugging on his side of the blanket instead. It all went like a weird tug-of-war game.
“Do you want to see me naked?” Kobra said, highlighting the word “want” and wiggling his eyebrows.
“Alright, alright, I don’t know if he does, but I most definitely don’t.” Oh, right, Kobra had already forgotten about the other person in the room, or, more specifically, brushed it off, thinking it was Sandman.
“Why is there a Youngblood leaders’ Consilium in the room I sleep in?” he cried out, tugging the now free blanket over his head. “Bachelor, get him the fuck out of here,” he commanded from under the blanket.
“Yeah, Bach, get me out of here,” Viper said with such emotion Kobra had to peek at the situation, putting the blanket back over his body. Viper was holding his hand to his forehead in a dramatical way. “I’m getting bullied and denied a human right.”
“Seeing Kobra naked is not a human right,” yet another voice remarked, and again, not Sandman’s. Kobra growled. This room wasn’t the only room in the building, moreover, the Suitehearts had more free rooms than could ever be needed.
“Where the fuck is Sandman?” Kobra asked, addressing the question to no one in particular. When no one in particular answered, he turned his head to Downpour, who was probably the most reasonable out of all Sandman’s friends.
“He went to take a piss,” Downpour answered, still being a fleshless voice in the room, since Kobra just couldn’t see him from behind Viper.
He changed his position on the bed, sitting next to Viper on the side of it instead of his previous place. Sure as day, Downpour was lying down on the carpeted floor with Bachelor’s hand going through his hair. They all were wearing their usual “outside” clothes, having only lost their shoes somewhere downstairs, Kobra guessed. That led to an assumption they hadn’t been there long, arriving just less than an hour ago, probably. Even Viper’s jacket was still on, the big patch of an Uruguayan flag on the back still there as a proud statement. It had always reminded Kobra of Jet, and sometimes made him wonder if it had something to do with Jet and Viper messing around some time ago. Viper, of course, swore it wasn’t just messing around, and it’d all been very serious, and they just weren’t there at the right time, and it was so “star-crossed lovers”, and so much more stuff, but considering how at the moment Jet was probably making out with Benzedrine somewhere next to a dead body, he was probably wrong.
“He’s drunk,” Bachelor dead-panned, not looking Kobra in the eyes. “He’s throwing up in the first-floor bathroom. I think he might’ve taken something Benz had in his cabinets.”
Kobra battled the urges to smash his head against the wall. He clenched then unclenched his fists, feeling his nails burrow into the skin. Viper looked at him cautiously, his eyes a mix of understanding and warning.
“Why are you all fucking here and not there with him?” Kobra asked, barely managing to keep his voice low.
“He told us to fuck off,” Downpour shrugged, looking indifferent.
“Give me some fucking pants,” Kobra said, feeling both angry and absolutely consumed by fear.
Viper threw him one of Sandman’s from the pile on the floor. Kobra didn’t even care they were dirty or too short at the ankles, at the moment he only cared for whatever the fuck Sandman was going through.
He got to the first floor in record time, having almost fallen on the stairs. Crab and Donnie were sitting on the couch, throwing worried looks at the closed bathroom door.
“He’s locked in there,” Donnie confirmed, sounding concerned, “and won’t let anyone in.”
Kobra breathed out shakily, nodding and and walking up to the door. He knocked, waiting for an answer. The response he received was a total silence, so he tried again, calling out, “Sandman, please, it’s me,” he waited again, continuing, “I’m worried about you. Please, talk to me.”
A quiet noise came from the other side of the door, then it opened, revealing a thin patch of darkness from inside, and Sandman’s wet, almost animal-like eyes. “Go away,” he said quietly, “I don’t need your help. I’m okay.”
He tried to close the door again, but Kobra pushed it open, and Sandman just stopped resisting, backing away to the wall and sliding down to the floor. He hugged his knees to his chest, just like Kobra himself did earlier, pressing his forehead against them and shutting off from the world.
Kobra locked the door from inside, blinking to get used to the darkness of the room. The only light came from the moon through a small bathroom window.
He took a small step towards Sandman, then stopped and looked around the room instead, searching for any hint he could use. Empty and half-full bottles were scattered around the tile floor, the remaining contents spilling out and forming a small puddle. Next to the bottles lie a small cardboard box, the white pills covering the ground. Kobra’s heart skipped a beat as he knelt next to the package, examining it closely. It was to no use, as Benzedrine never labeled his creations, but it was better than nothing.
“You were doing so well,” Kobra whispered sorrowfully. He felt the panic rise in him, heart beating fast.
“What did you take, Sandman?”
The only sound other than his voice were fast, ragged breaths from Sandman. He tried again, “please, it’s really important. What did you take?”
His mind slowly filled with blurry pictures – dark hair framing a painfully young face like a halo, deathly pale, almost blueish skin with sharp fins of ribs underneath, and pills, so, so many pills.
“What did you take?” he said again, squeezing Sandman’s shoulders, his voice louder, almost angry. Sandman let out a hitched sob, his small frame trembling under Kobra’s gaze. He raised his eyes, filled with fear, anger, guilt and despair.
“Bilvy,” he choked out, averting his gaze. “I killed them, Kobra,” he continued, his voice quiet, shaky. “It’s all my fault. They’re both dead,” he sobbed, clinging to Kobra, his fingers almost painfully clutched on the shoulders.
Kobra breathed in, then out, hugging Sandman tightly and drawing circle shapes on his back with his fingers. He deserved a moment of stillness, but Kobra still needed to know what he took more than what his words meant. The images in his brain were choking him, making him act irrational and scared.
“Sand,” he said softly, “what did you take?”
Sandman didn’t answer, still sobbing into Kobra’s chest. Kobra tried to calm down, but he could already feel his own hands starting to shake. Blood dripping from the corner of the mouth, so red in comparison to paper-white lips. Dilated pupils making the eyes almost black. Bruises on the inside of the elbow.
“Sandman,” he sounded panicked even to himself. “I don’t want you to end up like him. I don’t want you to be like Pretty,” and he doesn’t want to be like Poison, he let himself think, the sentence sour and sharp. He breathed in and out, letting a bit softer sentence slip from his lips, “because I’ll be like Queen. Tell me what you took.”
Sandman mumbled, “it’s not drugs.” He coughed, continuing, “it’s just antidepressants Benz made,” his voice raw and bare.
It was much better than what Kobra’d thought. Just alcohol mixed with antidepressants. Just a slow fall into despair and as slow of a rise. Not death. Not that serious. He let himself breathe out and relax as much as he could.
“And I don’t want you to be like them,” Sandman whispered so quiet that Kobra almost didn’t catch it. “I don’t want to feel like this again. Don’t want to be like this.”
Kobra still didn’t understand. He caught little pieces of information, he arranged them neatly into a puzzle, but there were still too many blank spaces for him to get it.
“Shh,” he mused, lulling Sandman in his arms. When his breath stabilized, and he practically stopped trembling, Kobra took him by the shoulders, moving him away and looking him in the eyes. “You wanna talk about it? Tell me more?”
Sandman shook his head and, well, that wasn’t what Kobra’d expected. He still went with it, though, nodding and holding Sandman to his chest again.
After a while, Sandman spoke up, mumbling, “before you,” then went quiet again. Kobra squeezed him, showing that he was listening, believing there was something to come after that. “Before you came, we weren’t such an influential group. We were ambitious, we were dumb, and we thought we could change this place, save it.”
Kobra nodded, recognizing his own situation in those words. His own gang. “We had much less people, but all of them were ready to fight, to jump headfirst into the battlefield and surrender themselves to the greater good,” Sandman continued, speaking so quietly Kobra had to stop breathing just to hear him. “Bach and Viper were usually more reserved than the others, trying to talk everyone out of it, to hold everyone back. I never liked it, thought it was dumb. I always told everyone to go further, to give up everything they had.”
The words hit insanely close to home, and Kobra didn’t like where it was going. The most of all he hated how he’d already known all of this, down to the last word, and how deep down he knew how Sandman’s story was going to end. It was the same end he himself was going to meet, the fact both he and Sandman chose to ignore.
“Bill and Travie, they were one of my first and closest friends. Viper, he’d known them before me, they were literally inseparable. Will was the calm to his storm in the daily life, but when it came to fighting, both Bill and Travie were in the first rows, while Viper stayed in the back, trying to stop them, to not let them risk everything,” Sandman swallowed heavily, biting his cheek. “I’ve always told him to stop that, to let them do what they want and need to do, because I believed we were untouchable, that it was all just a game. I always praised them for being so initiative and active, for believing the same things I believed, for not listening to the ‘dead weight’ that was Viper.”
Sandman looked Kobra in the eyes, then averted his gaze, sucking on his lip. “But you know, even while pushing them forward, I usually stayed behind, with Viper and Bach, with people who were ‘wrong’, waiting for the others to do what I was too scared to,” he was fidgeting with his fingers. “And then they told me they were scared, they told me it was becoming worse by the minute, that it was more dangerous, that they wanted to stay home just for once. And what did I do? I told them they were strong, I told them they could do that, I told them I believed in them,” Sandman said bitterly, and Kobra could see his hands shake. “Travie didn’t come back. Bilvy had his liver shot through, there was no way we could save him,” he closed his eyes, breathing heavily. “Not even Benzedrine. He died because we could do nothing. They both died because I was fucking stupid, because of me.”
Kobra clenched his jaw, not able to respond in any way, freezing without any ideas of what to do next. He felt – deep and burning, he wanted Sandman to know that he did, that he wanted to help, to do anything, to bear at least half of the weight, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t. Sandman glanced at him again, and Kobra hoped with his whole heart that he got what Kobra was trying to convey.
“I’m so sorry,” he muttered, understanding just how dumb that sounded. Sandman shrugged, curling his lips in a frown. “God, I’m so fucking sorry,” again, but this time Kobra hugged him again, trying to shelter him from this, from everything. Sandman’s body was still tense, but his breathing stabilized, and he just buried his face into Kobra, just breathing.
“Please, be careful,” he whispered, squeezing Kobra in his arms. “Please. Kobra. Swear that you’re gonna be careful. That you’re not gonna blindly follow Poison if you know you’re in danger. Please. I need you here, I need you to stay with me.”
“I swear,” Kobra lied, trying hard not to let his voice shake. “I swear I’m not leaving.”