Chapter Text
Work’s been an absolute bastard, and Oscar’s in a miserable mood with his head throbbing and his jaw locked and his godforsaken shoulder acting up, so of course tonight’s the night he comes home to a mess of candles laid out on their cramped little kitchen table.
The lights are off, but their ratty little sun-stained curtain is pushed back to see the lights of the city outside, soft orange glows stretching off into the distance. They can’t see the moon from this side of the apartment, but Oscar had seen it rising as he’d walked home, a little whitish smear like a hole punctured in dark fabric.
The candles are flickering.
“Christ,” Oscar mutters. “Morris.”
“Don’ get mad.”
Morris is at the kitchen counter, and he should have his back to Oscar but he’s sort of half-turned himself, like he’s afraid of what Oscar might do but can’t stop what he’s in the middle of. Oscar only figures out exactly what that is when another match is struck to life and lights up Morris’ profile in yellow. The light doubles as he carefully holds the match to the unmarred wick of a small new candle, and he then shakes the match out and discards it atop the counter with the rest. There’s a little pile of them, crooked and blackened.
This candle’s a prayer candle. The fancy type, smooth pale wax in a glass cup. Morris must’ve paid for it, he don’t steal from the church. And Oscar’s stomach twists thinking about what it might’ve cost - a week of meals, maybe. Sacrificed for this.
“‘S’her birthday,” Morris says, real quiet. Oscar could scream.
“It ain’t nothin’, Mo. She’s dead. It’s Tuesday.”
“‘S’March 14th, her birthday—“
“She’s dead .”
Morris’ hands curl tightly around the candle, both of them cradled around it in some white-knuckled imitation of prayer. Oscar hopes he’ll throw it, but after a few long seconds his grip only loosens and he carries it carefully to the table.
“This the last one?” Oscar mocks, staring at his little brother’s narrow back, at how the bones at his shoulders jut through the drape of his threadbare shirt as he leans over the table to place the candle down. “Or is the next one gonna bring her back?”
“You’re an asshole,” Morris says quietly.
He sets the candle in the centre of all the others, a mass of flickering light that gives Oscar a headache to look at. It’s all reflecting off every wall in the darkness, something like being underwater, like drowning in flame.
Morris sits himself down in one of the chairs, facing it all.
“You ‘member that time Ma threw a candle at you,” Oscar asks him sharply, talking loud despite the delicate atmosphere. “Burnt all your arm an’ chest with the flame an’ hot wax, an’ you was screamin’ for hours while I was holdin’ a cloth on it. Scarred, didn’ it?”
It did. Oscar knows it did. Morris’ skin is thin and pink one side of his collarbones, a few smears of silverish skin down one arm where the wax had splashed.
“She didn’ mean to hit me,” Morris whispers. Which is a defence that usually works - most of the times Ma did something like that, threw something, she was aiming for Oscar. But Oscar hadn’t even been in the room that time.
He still vividly remembers hearing Mo scream from down the hall. Remembers dropping the pot he was scrubbing and running to his little brother as fast as he could, already terrified of what had been done to him and more terrified of what would be if Oscar didn’t get there fast enough.
He tries to pick out the scars now. Morris’ forearms are bare, sleeves rolled up, but it’s dark in the room and Morris has so many damn scars that it’s hard to pick one from the rest. All Oscar can really look at is the thicker white lines, the ridges of them shadowed by the firelight. They’re just like Ma’s were.
“Christ,” he breathes. “I need a drink.”
He steps around the altar their little dining room table has been transformed to and goes for the counter Morris had been working at, intent on helping himself to Wiesel’s whiskey in the cupboard. As he goes, he looks past the pile of burnt matches and the mess for the first time, and all of a sudden notices the chipped dinner plate with a squat cake sat atop it, forgotten in the chaos.
Morris isn’t the best baker by any means, nothing like the stuff in the windows of the fancy bakeries they’ll walk past, but he does what he can - and he’s a damn sight better than Oscar would be. The cake is short and a little lopsided, bare, but it’s golden on top. Shining a little with sugar. God, Oscar’s hungry.
“Help yourself,” Morris says, quiet. “‘S’that one Ma liked. Ain’t got the berries in ‘cause I couldn’t afford ‘em. An’ ain’t got the raisins in ‘cause you don’t like ‘em.”
Oscar. Can’t quite help but smile, real soft. Feels safe to with no eyes on him, not even Morris’.
“You ain’t had any?” he asks.
“Ain’t hungry.”
Oscar goes for the cutlery drawer. Takes a stout knife from the mess of mismatched silverware, then takes two little plates from the cupboard above. The cake’s slightly stale, must’ve been out a while without Mo touching it, but it’s still real soft inside, cuts nice. Just plain cake without the berries and raisins it usually has - how Ma used to make it.
Oscar sets one of the plates down in front of Morris, between him and the candles, and Morris is effectively startled out of the listless stare he’d been caught in, gaze instead on the little slice of cake.
“Told you I ain’t hungry,” he says. Oscar shoves a fork at him and sits down beside him with his own - larger - slice of cake, and a glass of a couple fingers of whiskey.
“Eat it,” he says. “‘S’Ma’s birthday. An’ she was always worried ‘bout you not eatin’ enough.”
Morris still doesn’t. Oscar doesn’t. Food is in such short supply that it feels a little stupid to be eating cake - it’s stupid that Morris made it, there’s a million better things they could do with milk and flour and eggs. But. Christ, if Ma’s gotta be dead, maybe she can at least have her birthday. Especially if it means Morris picks up his fork without too much fighting for once.
“Happy birthday, Mammy,” he sort of whispers, and takes his first tentative bite, other hand fidgeting with the cross hanging from his necklace.
Oscar takes a swig of his whiskey. Picks up his own fork.
“Yeah. Happy birthday, Máire.”