Work Text:
Kieren breathes a sigh of relief when Ron wakes up, groggy and disorientated, but alive. Kieren’s knees are planted on the scratchy carpet of the main bedroom. It had been a pain in the ass to haul the blond up the stairs, but Kieren had done it. That was twelve hours ago. He’d watched Ron’s breathing even out, laying on his back, thigh cleaned and wrapped. There had been nothing to do but wait and see.
Luckily, the bull shark hadn’t bothered with them once she’d gotten through the door. Kieren had used her moment of distraction to grab Ron and pull him up the stairs.
Briefly, Kieren entertained the thought of Ron not waking up at all. What he’d do if Ron died. They’ve been stuck in Ron’s foster home together for two days, surviving something out of a horror movie. Kieren confided in Ron about the worm.
He doesn't do that with people he just met, he doesn’t do it at all really. The intervention his family threw in his living room didn’t count. He’d been forced to talk about it then. But it was different, telling Ron. He’d done that of his own free will.
Kieren trusts Ron, is the crux of it. Trusts him with his life, beyond that. Kieren considers him a friend. The only friend he's ever had. So losing him isn’t an option. He only just found Ron. The one person in a long time who can stand to be in his presence for longer than a few minutes, and he might lose him, too.
Please, let me keep him, he looked up to the sky and prayed, for the first time since he lost his dad. I’ve never had a friend. Please, don’t take him, too.
Then Ron had woken up, prayers answered. Kieren had sucked in a breath, heart racing, relieved. He silently thanked whatever being had listened to him, and blinked away his tears before the other boy could see.
“What happened?” Ron slurs, wincing in pain as he tries to sit up. Kieren gently pushes him back down. He backs up, giving Ron room, not wanting to crowd or overwhelm him.
“You, uh, passed out. Shard of glass fucked your thigh up, so you might have to stay off it for a bit.” Kieren answers, quietly.
Ron’s eyes widen a fraction. Something passes between them. Brief, and then gone.
“The shark is still downstairs,” Kieren adds, trying his hardest not to look in Ron’s eyes. He doesn't think he could stomach what he might find there. “She rammed through the door but guess we weren’t tasty enough,” the corners of his mouth crook up. “She just swam right past.”
“You got me up the stairs.” Ron says, resting on his elbows, face screwed up in pain.
Kieren nods, watching as Ron swallows before speaking again. “It’s a three story house.”
Kieren shrugs, looking down at the brown carpet. “I pulled you most of the way.”
“Thank you,” Ron whispers, eyes glassy. His throat sounds tight, like he may cry. Kieren wouldn't know what to do if Ron started crying. Kieren is good at that, making people cry. He does it all the time to his mum. He doesn`t want Ron to cry over him, though.
Kieren shrugs again, a little sheepish. Nobody has ever thanked him before. He’s never saved anyone in his whole life, until now.
He’s never been needed, is the thing. He’s not dependable like his mum, he’s not strong like Astrid, he’s definitely not like any of his cousins. Even his dad before he died had his own thing. He protected people, took good care of them all. People needed Allen. His Nana needs his mum and Astrid.
Nobody needs Kieren. Until last night, when Ron needed him.
His fingers pause over the bandage, grazing Ron’s thigh. He flushes as he remembers having to pull the damp jeans down the blond’s legs, having to pull out the shard of glass and staunch the wound so Ron wouldn’t bleed out and die.
He moves his hands, letting them hang limply at his sides.
“You saved my life yesterday too, so. It’s whatever.”
Paying it back in kind, all that. But it means more than that to Kieren. And he’s afraid that Ron knows it. That he can sense it, that Kieren is see through. He’s such a fucking mess.
Ron chuckles, coughing after, grimacing. “Can’t you just take the fuckin’ thanks?”
“It’s nothing.” Kieren shrugs, biting the inside of his cheek. He picks at his fingernails, a nervous tic he picked up weeks after hearing the worm for the first time. There’s a thin layer of dirt beneath his nails that he can’t get rid of, no matter how many times he scrubs them. The dirt is part of him.
“It’s somethin’ to me.” Ron whispers, letting his blood stained hand fall atop Kieren’s. “It’s everythin’ to me, Kieren–” Ron licks his bottom lip, screws his face up like he's deep in thought, like he wants to tell Kieren something, but the words never come. Kieren interrupts him pointing to a raised, pink scar on Ron’s leg.
Kieren traces his pointer finger over the healed scar. It’s recent. A year old or less. Kieren has a myriad of scars of his own to judge by. But Kieren’s are clean, precise. Ron’s scar is jagged, accidental. He didn’t do it to himself. It was done to him.
“What happened to your leg?”
Instinctively, he covers his forearms, staring down at Ron’s scar. The blond boy isn't perturbed, though. He just glances down at the raised skin, regards it briefly. “Billy.”
Kieren fumes inside. How anyone could think they have the right to lay their hands on Ron like that. To cause him pain, especially Ron’s foster father, a man who should have been protecting him. Kieren’s fists clench. He’s glad that Billy Olson is dead, glad that he’s shark chum, because there’s a violence brimming beneath his bones.
You could’ve killed him, the worm taunts. He hurt Ron. You could have made him suffer.
“Shut up!” Kieren snaps, feeling his cheeks heat as Ron’s eyes snap toward his. He must look crazy and deranged. It’s what Astrid says about him. That he’s insane, that he’s hiding behind the worm as an excuse, that he’s an attention seeker.
“It's talking to you, isn't it?”
Kieren ducks his head. “It always talks to me.”
It never shuts up. It won’t let him rest, or sleep, or eat. He lives his life by a routine the worm enforces on him. Sometimes it makes him go days without food, days without showering, days without speaking to anyone. Most days it tells him to hurt himself, tells him to hurt others.
The night before he left for South Carolina, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, watching as droplets of blood slid down the toothpaste stained porcelain.
He hasn’t heard the worm since the hurricane, and hasn't felt its pull. He’s not naive or hopeful enough to think that it means he’s free or something. The worm is still out there, calling out to be found, to be squished. It’s still inside of him, tugging at his nerves like a marionette.
“Maybe the hurricane washed it away," Ron offers, and Kieren wants the ground to open and swallow him when he realises he’s said all that aloud. Ron doesn’t seem put off by him or anything, so that’s a win.
Kieren feels his cheeks heat, but Ron changes the subject. “Fancy, eh, helpin’ me into the bed? My ass is gettin’ numb.”
Minutes later, they’re laying side by side in bed. Ron’s bedroom is in the attic, and there’s no way he’s making it up there on his injured leg, so they’re hauled up in the Olson’s bedroom.
Ron had wrinkled his nose about sleeping in his foster parents bed, hating that the smell of them still lingered on the sheets, but it was either the bed or the carpeted floor.
Kieren would’ve happily taken the floor, used to sleeping rough, but Ron had insisted. He’d limped to the left side with Kieren’s help, stripped down to his boxers, with his jumper being left downstairs and probably ruined, and his jeans soaked with blood. Kieren keeps his long sleeve shirt on, but slips into his own boxers, unable to sleep in jeans. He looks down as he lifts his corner of the duvet, scooting in.
Ron keeps moving, unable to find a comfortable position. The mattress is old, and one of the springs is digging into his back. He turns on his side, facing Kieren, who is laying with his arms beneath his head. Kieren is staring at the water stains on the ceiling. Where the yellow bleeds into the white.
“What will you do if you can’t find them?”
Ron sucks in a breath beside him, acknowledging Kieren’s question. “Dee and Will, y’mean.”
Kieren hums, mattress squeaking beneath him as he readjusts.
“I don’t know. All I know is I have to find them. They have to be alive.” Ron says quietly, almost a whisper. All of the lights are off, on account of the wires outside submerged. Still, Kieren can make out the side of Ron’s face through the moonlight sneaking in, the expression his features are tucked up into. He’s thinking.
“But if they’re dead—“
“They ain’t,” Ron cuts in, sharply. “They can’t be.”
Kieren grimaces at the desperation in Ron’s voice. It’s clear that he loves his siblings. That he’d do anything for them. He can’t even fathom the thought of them being dead. Has anyone ever loved Kieren like that? He wonders. Maybe his mum. But he’s fucked that up, too.
It feels wrong to witness it, the magnitude of Ron’s love and his pain. He wants to look away, to give Ron time alone, but there’s nowhere to go. The covers rustle as Ron tugs them higher. “How can I think about a life without them when all my life has been about them? Hell, I woulda probably been dead already if it weren’t for Dee.”
Ron turns his head as he speaks. His eyes meet Kieren’s in the darkness of the bedroom. Something shifts between them. Something falls loose.
“You can tell me about them, if you want.”
Kieren doesn’t exactly know why he extends the offer. It’s not something he ever does. He usually doesn’t have the time or the energy to care about what other people think, what other people have to say. But Ron is different. They’re tethered, now. They survived the hurricane, they survived the sharks. This is the last hurdle, the last night in this goddamn house before they’re hopefully rescued.
Ron does. “Dee is wicked smart. The kinda smart that makes other people look dumb. But it ain’t ever meant badly. She’s loyal, too. I can’t tell you how many times she’s saved my ass. We fight a lot, but I’d do anything for her. And Will, obviously. He’s sweet. Quieter than Dee, definitely quieter than me.” He looks down. “There’s a softness in Will that the world ain’t beat out of him yet. Though Billy tried.”
He finishes with a dry chuckle, but Ron hears the intake of breath, the swallow that follows. Ron is holding back tears.
“I don’t know who I am if I'm not their brother.”
“You’re Ron,” Kieren speaks, conviction bleeding into his voice. “That’s enough.”
Ron is quiet for a few seconds, then he sniffs. “And you’re Kieren.”
Kieren bites back a smart ass retort of, yeah, don’t wear it out.
“It’s not the same,” Kieren starts, wringing his fingers. “I’m not like you.”
“In what way?” Ron prods, quietly, gently.
“I’m not good.”
“Bullshit,” the mattress squeaks again as Ron moves. “That’s fuckin’ bullshit, Kieren. You saved my life. You hauled my ass up the stairs, pulled glass outta my leg and helped me so I wouldn’t bleed out. How is that not good?”
“I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else,” Kieren breathes. “I only did it for you.”
“That doesn’t mean you ain’t a good person.”
Kieren doesn’t know who closes the distance between them first, but it doesn’t matter, because Ron has him in his arms not a second later. Ron kisses him with the fervour of a starving man, the desperation that only comes from knowing bone deep hunger.
“Ron,” Kieren gasps, breathing heavily against the blond’s lips. Ron’s fingers have snaked their way around Kieren’s shoulders, keeping him close. “I—“
Outside, a siren sounds. They spring apart, covering their ears and groaning. Bright lights shine into the bedroom, and Kieren almost twists his ankle as he jumps out of the bed, running toward the window.
“It’s a police boat!” He yells, running back to Ron, who’s sitting up, eyes wide. Ron laughs, happily, tears in his eyes. “We’re gonna be okay.”
Kieren nods, gripping onto Ron’s fingers, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek before darting back to the window and flinging it open.
“We’re in here!” He cups his mouth and screams, squeezing his eyes shut as a flashlight is shone directly into them.
“Ron!” A blond girl screams, clutching onto a short blond boy. Kieren can only make out the color of their hair, but he knows they’re the spit of Ron, knows they’re his siblings.
“Dee?!” Ron yells back, hobbling to the window, shaking his head as Kieren grumbles at him to stay off his injury. He peeks his head out, bursting into tears as he sees his brother and sister. “Will!”
Ron all but jumps into Kieren’s arms, shoving his face into the shorter boy’s neck, squeezing him. Kieren’s hand comes up to the back of Ron’s head, playing with the nape of his neck.
“Come with us,” Ron whispers. “Wherever we go next. Come with us.”
Kieren smiles as he nods, not trusting his words. He kisses Ron gently, sighing happily.