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“Mom?” Braxton keeps his eyes on the wall over her head, tapping his thumb anxiously against the edge of the metal desk. She doesn’t look up from the needle she’s slowly filling, just hums, soft, under her breath in question. Braxton doesn’t look at the needle either, if he thinks about it too long, he’s going to let his mind wander to all the ways it could kill him. It would hurt if she slipped, fell forward, shoved it through his elbow all the way to the other side. “Do you remember, what you said,” he hesitates, longer, “about letting me eat when this is done?”
“You have to fast before blood tests, Callie, you know that.” His mom reaches up, unknots the tourniquet. Braxton twitches at the wash of pins and needles down his arm, watches his veins bulge a little, under the translucent stretch of skin over them. “You need to be patient.”
“Okay,” Braxton subsides, chewing on his lower lip. “Can I watch you paint instead?”
She does look at him then. Tips her head back to do it, tossing long blond hair out of her eyes. She looks tired. She is. She was talking about papers that she had to stay up grading, because her research aids have been making a mess.
The door at the top of the stairs locks now. It didn’t before, most of the time if Braxton was down here just making it to the top of the rickety, uneven steps was enough of a deterrent.
The basement is finished, but poorly lit. Thick, expensive drapes drawn over the tiny barred windows that look out on the street. Lined with filing cabinets, more of Mom’s books. None of Braxton’s stuff is in here, just the pullout sofa that’s been converted into a mattress for him. The IV poles, cast off, expired medical equipment harvested from waste companies. Or something. The labels are all different, Mom complains about having to adjust to new equipment.
When Mom was still doing rounds with the fire department as a volunteer EMT, she would steal stuff from them, but she hasn’t done that in a while. She’s been busy.
“Callum,” she says, and he flinches. Callum is his dad, and she hates him. She still screams about him sometimes, after a long day at the university. How he ruined their lives, ruined everything. She only calls Braxton Callum when he’s pissing her off.
He looks at her obediently.
“You haven’t done anything to earn time upstairs,” Mom says, she’s annoyed, “be quiet, I need to focus.”
Some days, Braxton would push. Sometimes he can push. Needle her, beg or plead or bargain his way into getting what he wants. But there’s a chill in her voice that warns it wouldn’t go over well this time, and Braxton knows better than to ignore it. He snaps his mouth shut, nodding quietly.
Mom finishes the blood draw. Holds up the vials to the exam light perched over Braxton’s shoulder. “Good,” she says. “A little more this time. Keep drinking water. We’ll run another test on Endo tomorrow. I want to see if this version is more stable. The hospitals said that they’ve been puking blood, I can’t have that.”
Braxton wishes she’d do it today. It’s been nine days since he last shot up, and he’s feeling it keenly. He hasn’t slept, because every night it feels like he’s a corpse being picked over by roaches. He’s craving it, he’s craving a lot of things right now. He feels so hungry, all the time.
Braxton licks his lower lip, nervous. She walks around him, and Braxton doesn’t move, even though he wants to twist around and follow her with his eyes. He hasn’t been stupid enough to do that since he was five.
“Thirty-four people, Callie,” Mom says, disgusted. She pops off the cap of a pen, and Braxton can’t see what she’s doing but can imagine her scribbling the date and time out on the label, before the fridge opens, and it’s slotted into place next to everything else. The rest of the campaign. Braxton hears her shift something around. “I’m better than this,” she says, “it should have been zero. I don’t understand why it hasn’t killed you, but it killed them.”
Probably for the same reason the high gets lower and lower every campaign. It doesn’t feel like cloud nine anymore, like the first time, endless good and nothing bad. Braxton’s building up a tolerance.
It’s bullshit. He hates it.
Braxton hedges, slightly confused, “Do you feel guilty?”
“What?” Mom sounds confused now. Still behind him. “Why would I—? Callie, honestly, honey.”
He draws his knees up to his chest, squinting at her. The examination light makes it hard to see the shadows, her silhouette wandering out of his periphery to write something in her logbook. He hooks his chin over his knees, hugging them with his good arm. He can already feel a bruise forming in the crook of the other one. More ruptured blood vessels, on top of the pock marked, streaky skin. Scarred in places by track marks.
“They’re just sample data,” Mom says, dismissive, “it’s to be expected there would be outliers. When I launched the drug, I knew there would be deaths. I just didn’t think it would be this many. Frustrating, but manageable, of course. You’ll help me.”
He always does, doesn’t he?
“Mom,” Braxton feels weird. She’s somewhere to his left, the lights are haloing, he can feel his nose bleeding, “this…” are there bugs on his hand? “Doesn’t.” Those are roaches, aren’t they? There have been some in his bed. “Mom?”
There’s fabric under his face, under his cheek. Something warm shifting beneath him. Or maybe he’s the warm thing. Maybe he’s split into two, like… mitosis. And now there’s a tumorous, fleshy blob that’ll be attached to him forever, moving when he does.
“Tell me how it feels,” Mom’s voice, somewhere above him.
Braxton feels his vision go out of focus. He licks his upper lip to swipe away the blood. He doesn’t… “Like I’m…away.”
A hand touches his hair, thin. Skeletal, carding the strands back. They’re going to take it. His heart is pounding in his chest. Braxton sucks in a long, long breath, but there’s no air in the room, and he can’t see. He feels smothered.
“I want to try something,” Mom says. “Are you with me, Callie?”
Braxton blinks a few dozen times, like staccato, “I don’t know. Where are you?” Where is he? He’s laying down, he thinks.
“You remember when you broke your father’s commendations. Chewing on the little ribbons? You were always such a difficult child.”
Braxton nods, tries to. It feels like his head isn’t attached to his body. He does remember that, suddenly and in perfect detail. He was five or six, the metal tasted like pennies on his tongue. Dad was out, doing something. Maybe at work, and Mom was out. And Braxton was hungry in their bedroom. It was close to evening, sitting on their carpet, just chewing.
He tries to lift up his hand to wipe at his face, because the blood is getting worse, but his wrists are strapped down. So are his ankles. Braxton subsides, feels the blood trickle down to his chin.
“You remember that your father was angry,” Mom carries on, “very angry, and how he got out his belt and beat you up against the dresser. You were so bloody I had to give you a bath. You remember that. Tell me if you do.”
Braxton squeezes his eyes shut. It’s like he watches himself, like he’s in a movie. The blurry silhouette of his dad coming home, his warm, gentle face twisting in anger. The clink of his belt buckle. All of it warped, distorted by darkness.
Dad didn’t hit him. He doesn’t…
Mom did.
That’s…
“I think so,” Braxton’s heart is in his throat. “I forgot about that.”
“Come on, Callie,” the thing under him shifts, and Braxton remembers to be scared. His limbs spasm, and he realizes he can’t move. He’s paralyzed. He’s dead, he’s already dead, he can’t move and he can’t see, and all he can hear is his mom above him. “Try a little harder. What shoes was your father wearing? Where did he hit you first?”
“I don’t,” his heart is pounding, he feels scared. He wants this to stop, he wants to go back to bed. “I don’t…he was wearing…” that blurry memory takes focus. “His boots, the ones that you kept telling him to throw out, that were cracking at the sole, with the blue patch on the front.”
“His duck boots,” his mom’s lip is curling, he can hear it in her tone, “yes.”
“Yeah,” Braxton curls in on himself. “Mom, something’s wrong. I feel weird. My… my heart feels weird.”
Like it’s skipping beats. Or going too fast. Like there’s a stick of dynamite under his ribcage, and he’s going to explode outward and leave bits of himself smeared on Mom’s clean floorboards, in the grooves where it’ll be hard to get out.
“Yes, I imagine,” Mom says, tapping something. It clicks, like glass, “your bpm is 169 right now. Take deep breaths. It might explode if you don’t, did you know that?”
Braxton can picture it. The muscle going faster and faster until it squeezes in and ruptures like a supernova, exploding blood and tissue everywhere, something for Mom to clean off her shoes for the next few days as she wanders around her lab.
Braxton tilts his head to the side, retching. He doesn’t expect for anything to come up but bile, but something does, something heavy and fleshy, that tastes like blood all the way down, and for a terrifying second it sits on his tongue. Braxton is sure that it’s alive, that it’s one of his organs, and it’ll slither back down his throat and into his body. He chokes on it, spits, wildly, and hears the slick sound it makes when it hits the ground.
“Oh,” Mom says, somewhere over him, vaguely interested.
“Mom,” Braxton begs. His voice is thick with it, clogged up like he’s swallowing himself whole. “Mom, help me, Mom—”
“Stop whining, Callie,” Mom says, and Braxton goes quiet. He cries quietly instead as she sets a mask over his face. “I need to fix this. Why do you always have to be so difficult?” Braxton is still coughing up into the mask when the nitrous oxide fills up his lungs. His last conscious memory is of aspirating.
“Mom,” Braxton breathes, “I’m cold.”
He’s laying limply in the corner of the tub as his mom hoses him down with the shower faucet. Her expression is impassive and bored, and Braxton can’t stop shivering. She didn’t make it hot. The water, she didn’t make it hot, and he’s too scared to move over and adjust the temperature himself.
“My office hours were full all day.” She's still wearing her teaching clothes. A pencil skirt and a cardigan, sensible heels. She has her phone in one hand, scrolling through. She sighs. Clicks the power button and shoves it in her pocket, switches the setting on the shower head so that the stream of water is more concentrated, directing it at his feet. “Full of complaints about the quiz. How hard is it to read a textbook? Well.” She looks down at him. Braxton doesn’t meet her gaze, watching the water swirl down the drain. It’s a gross, dirty brown. “Unless it’s you, I suppose. But they’re not all illiterate idiots, are they? They’re in uni, for God’s sake. You didn’t even finish seventh grade. I expect this from you.”
Braxton says nothing.
He’s not stupid. Not that stupid. He knows what Endo is. He knows during her… campaigns, a little of what she does when he’s high. The first few times were fine, if she wanted to run tests. He was too out of it to remember, too doped up to feel anything but good everywhere.
Now he’s got the afterimage of his dead dad in his eyes, and he can’t get it out. He can’t stop thinking about it, feeling it, like it happened yesterday. Cold leather biting into his skin, fury.
Mom leans over and turns off the faucet. “Clean enough, don’t you think?” she looks down at him, raking her eyes up and down for a second.
Braxton keeps his arms wrapped around himself, breathing heavy. He says, thin, “Mom, can I eat today?”
“You just threw up everywhere, what do you think the answer to that question is, Callie?” She leans down and grabs his arm, hauling him up and out of the tub.
“Can I sit in the window?” He can’t stop himself from asking. He can’t. The darkness is killing him.
“You only want one thing, do you?” Mom asks, pushing him out of the bathroom, still naked. “Always trying to get out of work.”
“I just—” he struggles to get his legs underneath him, struggles to keep up with her. “Mom, it’s been so long. Please. I’m trying to behave, I swear, please, I don’t know what I can do to earn it this time, you have to tell me.”
“Shut up, Callie,” Mom looks a little surprised at the audacity, but she only sounds mildly annoyed. When he stumbles, she puts a hand in his hair, their hair, they have the same kind. The same color, the same soft waves, and shoves him onto his mattress. “What is whining going to get you, huh? Grow up. You’re not thirteen anymore.”
He hits the mattress hard. Feels the breath wheeze out of him. He’s still shivering. He wants to ask for clothes, but he doesn’t want to push her. He’s not sure if he can risk being beaten on top of everything right now, not sure if she needs him untouched and he can risk that. “Mom.”
She paces away from him. He grabs hold of his blanket, it’s green and thin, there’s holes. He remembers when he was younger he used to worm his fingers between the gaps of the fabric to widen them.
Someone crocheted it. He’s not sure who, he remembers a tag with his name on it in the corner. Not Callum, CJ.
He flinches when Mom goes to the desk and swipes the contents off of it. Everything. Glass shatters when it hits the ground, papers and books, and equipment, it all goes, and Braxton watches it horrified.
“When things get hard, we don’t cry, Callie,” Mom says, voice rising, getting sharp and loud. Braxton curls fetal, puts his hands over his ears, trying to ignore her. Trying to suck in wet, cold breaths. He’s freezing. The basement is freezing, and the blanket is getting wet.
Mom comes back to him, grabs his wrist and yanks it off his ear. “Listen to me when I’m talking to you, you fucking brat,” she shoves his hand away and takes him by the throat instead. She squeezes hard.
“Stop it,” Braxton says, shoving at her hands, trying not to cry. He’s seventeen, he’s fucking seventeen, she can’t do this to him anymore. He’ll be eighteen in a few weeks, and then he can leave, just like he threatened her he would, once he gets out of the fucking basement. He shouldn’t have said anything, that’s why she started locking it.
Mom punches him in the face. Grabs him by the hair to force his head back up and meets his eyes with her own wild ones. They have the same green, Braxton looks more like her than he does his dad, he always has. “Batman just came by the house, Callie. He wanted my consultation on Endo, said he thought one of my students was doing it, he brought his stupid little brat with him, too, he fucked up your book. We’re on a fucking time table now.”
He says nothing. The words feel caught in his throat. He doesn’t know what she’s saying. Doesn’t know if he’s hallucinating, if this is real.
He’s died so many times in his dreams, he’s not sure he isn’t. If this is hell, and he really did die in that car accident when he was twelve.
“Maybe you’re too stupid to understand what that means,” Mom tosses hair over her shoulder, “so let me make it clear to you that if they catch us,” she says us heavily, spits it, “we’re both going to Arkham. You want to go to prison, Callie? You want to be put up with all the other psychos? You need to start complying, so I can stop putting myself on the streets to get Endo out. We’re going to fix this, it’s your fault it didn't work. If you would just behave.”
Braxton lets his eyes close. In New Jersey, they try fifteen-year-olds as adults. That’s why Kenny’s doing time for possession with intent to distribute.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Braxton breathes.
She scoffs. “No, you will be. I’m going to make this next batch susceptible again, we’re going to be here all night. I’m going to fix this. And you’re going to behave, or I’ll take you upstairs and I’ll put your whole face on the grills this time.”
Braxton swallows thickly. He wraps his arm close, where the scar is. He keeps quiet. She doesn’t hit him again, and he gets up to unsteady legs and puts himself in the chair beside the desk. He watches his mom withdraw a clean needle and her little bottle of the hazy blue Endo.
She doesn’t take him upstairs, but that’s almost worse. He doesn’t even know what he did, she just…his face is aching, from where she slammed it into the table and held it there while she smoked an entire cig to calm down before she put it out next to his eye.
Sometimes she forgets about him. Gets caught up in a long synthesis step, or gets busy at the university. Braxton knows it’s not been long enough to worry. The brownstone apartment they—she— lives in is too well sound-proofed for her to hear him scream. Especially this part, this basement. Braxton doesn’t call out for her, even when he starts vomiting again, just lets it collect in a puddle beside the cot, blinking down at the bright red streaks.
He doesn’t feel great, but he hasn’t felt passable in a while, so it’s not like that’s new. His entire abdomen is throbbing and twisted up into knots, and he has a headache severe enough he can’t even move it, but that’s fine. The dark is helping.
He knows what a come down feels like. Knows what the withdrawals feel like. He hears someone saying his name, over and over, moaning it like they’re in pain, and he knows that’s just the hallucinations. He aches down to his bones, pain flaring in waves behind his eyes, but that’s familiar too. Braxton tries to let himself list, tries to go away in his head. To think about Kenny’s plan. Both of them, in a shitty stolen van, a hundred miles west where no one knows their name. Maybe they’ll join up with the army, maybe they’ll just disappear. Hike up a mountain pass somewhere and camp for the rest of their lives, like when their dads took them when they were seven.
He hears the door to the basement open. Mom’s come back. He can’t say so soon, because he doesn’t know when she left. It could have been days ago, maybe. He’s thirsty enough for it to have been days, and she hasn’t given him an IV in a while.
Footsteps. Braxton closes his eyes. If he pretends to be asleep, sometimes she’ll check her lab notes first. Then he can pretend he’s upstairs, and he won’t be hurt, because he’s never hurt while Mom paints. When he sits in the window, and she lets him eat whatever he wants to and flip through graphic novels and manga as long as he’s quiet.
There are voices, multiples. Braxton turns his face into his pillow and shudders. Tries to go as still as possible, to even out his breathing. He doesn’t know if she has the heart monitor on him, he can’t feel his limbs. Maybe he’s lost some. He feels cold enough to. Mom told him stories about people whose fingers just fell off. Got so cold that when they took their gloves off, there were just stumps left behind, not even bleeding.
“B!” A voice says, speaking unevenly, “I need you now. Downstairs.” Something touches his head. Braxton doesn’t twitch. “Hey, can you hear me? Are you awake?” Fingers jab against his throat, bare skin to bare skin, and Braxton shivers at the warmth. He still doesn’t move, hears the voice above him murmuring, counting, “nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.”
It sounds like… young. The person sounds young. Braxton opens an eye, like an idiot.
There’s a figure leaning over him, one that he’s never seen. It’s not Mom. It’s a boy, young, pale skin, dark, dark hair. There’s a mask over his eyes, he’s in thin, shell-like armor, there’s a giant R plastered to his chest like a badge. Like one of Dad’s medals. The one he chewed on and got beat for.
Braxton stares. “The hell?” he slurs, or tries to. The words run far together. He doesn’t know if he’s intelligible.
“Hey, hey,” gloved hand cupping his face, the other one is bare, when it shifts. “Look at me, man. You gotta keep your eyes open. What’s your name?”
Hands down, this has got to be the weirdest hallucination he’s ever had. And Braxton’s had some out there hallucinations.
He doesn’t answer, it’s not like he doesn’t already know. His hallucinations come from his brain.
“Can you hear me?” The boy touches his hand, and Braxton startles. He can feel warm metal around his wrist that he hadn’t noticed before, handcuffs keeping him on the bed. Only his right arm is restrained, Braxton was probably trying to get up again. “Kid?”
Braxton makes a soft annoyed sound. Then he reaches out to hit the boy, because usually when he makes contact they’ll go away and just become auditory, and that’s better, sometimes. He could just let himself go back to sleep that way. “I’m sleeping, dipshit. Go away.”
He’s not sure who startles more—him or the boy when Braxton hits him and makes contact. Braxton’s brain skips over itself for a moment. He stares at the boy, and big white lenses look back at him, like a giant spider. Okay, so it’s just tactile this time. Braxton puts his head down into the pillow and exhales hard through his nose.
“What?”
Braxton rolls his eyes behind his closed lids. Yeah. Okay. He adjusts himself, trying to get more comfortable without straining his stomach, tilts his head and then opens his eyes again to watch.
The boy falters, visibly, looking back at the stairs, and then down at Braxton. He taps the side of his head. “B? You there? I could use some help.”
Braxton lifts up his wrist, gesturing to the handcuff. “Little tied up at the moment.”
The boy ignores him, paces away a beat, before turning abruptly on his heel to stand over Braxton again, staring at him like he might explode. “Yeah there’s a…” Braxton hears his voice drop, to an almost-whisper. “Kid. Here. He’s tied up.”
The door to the basement opens, maybe twenty seconds after that, as the boy watches him anxiously. Braxton watches as a tall, large figure slips down all the steps without making a sound at all. A cape billowing after him.
He squeezes his eyes shut. This is a lot more in line with his usual fever dreams. He doesn’t look as it approaches—it’s big, it almost eclipses the hall light coming in from up the stairs. He saw glimpses of horns, like some sort of demon.
He stops beside the smaller boy, passing his hand over his shoulder and the back of his neck for a moment, then approaches Braxton. He’s so much larger with every step as he gets closer, there’s some sort of—thing on his face. Hard. He doesn’t have skin? Why doesn’t he have skin, the boy didn’t have eyes, but there’s just smooth black. He could reach out and touch it and it looks like it would feel like glass.
“He’s really out of it,” The boy tells him. “I think he might be on something.”
It’s like the worst kind of acid trip. They almost sway in the shadows of the basement, looking down at him. Braxton curls away as much as he can, held in place by the cuff, but he can’t get his limbs to cooperate.
The demon kneels in front of Braxton, he presses his gloved fingers against the side of Braxton’s neck. He doesn’t bother to twitch. “What’s your name?” the voice is gravely, Braxton doesn’t think it’s entirely real? Some sort of modulator or something, it’s got an inhuman quality to it.
“You can’t take a pulse with gloves on.” Braxton tells him, because he’s stupid, but he’s almost offended that his hallucinations think he’d fall for that. His mom always had to pull off her winter gloves if she wanted to check.
He has a mouth. He has to, because he just talked to Braxton, but Braxton doesn’t realize until his lips twitch in a slight grimace, and there’s a flash of teeth behind them. Human teeth. Regular, dull teeth.
Braxton exhales hard, trying to squirm away from him. The man. He’s got the same beetle-like armor as the boy, but it’s all black, and there’s a stylized bat in the center of his chest.
Oh. Fuck. Oh fuck.
Mom was just ranting about Batman earlier, how he’d picked up on what she was doing, how they were both fucked, and he was going to go to prison.
“Don’t touch me,” Braxton says, and the panic gives him enough strength to nearly roll backward off the cot, stopped painfully by the handcuff going taught. He shoves at the mattress, but his core won’t engage enough to sit up. Braxton twists, looking toward the door, the steps leading up. “Mom?” he says, panicked. Then, louder, “Mom?!”
Was she up there? Where is she now, she’d never let anyone down here. All her research notes are down here, her active campaign, her samples. Braxton.
“Hey,” Batman says, his voice not gaining any sort of edge, still calm and even, “stay still. You’re injured, we’re not going to hurt you.”
Braxton yanks on the handcuff a little harder, desperately. He feels the metal dig into the soft tissue of his flesh. He hasn’t fought a restraint like this in years, not since he was twelve or thirteen and he thought he was dying. It hurts just as badly as he remembers.
“What did you do?” Braxton breathes. Mom said Batman was asking her for… help or something. A consultation. He kicks at the hand Batman extends to him, and this time he does fall off the cot, yelping when his ass hits the ground and the railing snaps, and gives. “Where’s—”
“Callum,” Batman says. Braxton freezes, sprawled ungracefully. He thinks he’s sitting in a puddle of his own vomit. “Calm down.”
Braxton sucks in a heaving breath. Mom’s patience is always gone when she gives him orders with his name, and if he doesn’t behave, she’ll hurt him. He doesn’t know if Batman will hurt him, too, but Mom promised they were both going to be in shit if he didn’t behave.
She’s not here, Braxton is. He’s high, coming down, right now. The drugs will still be in his system, his finger prints are all over the evidence in this basement.
No one should know that name. The only people who know that name are dead, or in jail, or Mom. Braxton hasn’t been anything but Braxton in years.
Braxton pulls his legs up to his chest, breathing hard, but forcing it to even, as he looks up at Batman, his wrist still outstretched for the handcuff. It’s twisted at a weird angle, but he ignores the pain.
Batman is looking at him, his expression is unreadable.
“You’re scaring him, B,” The boy—Robin, Batman plus little boy in green underwear equals Robin—shifts closer, looking between Braxton and Batman. The mask is startlingly expressive, the white, lifeless lenses wide.
“Callum,” Batman says, after a moment, ignoring Robin, “how long have you been down here?”
Braxton doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure what day it is. He doesn’t want to answer that question, he wants his mom. He wants to wake up and this to have been a weird nightmare, because it’s slowly sinking in what this means.
If she’s not here, and Batman is…
“You’re bleeding,” Batman says, reaching out to dab under Braxton’s nose. Braxton flinches badly, and Batman hesitates, then withdraws from his nose to look at the blood, like there’s something he can actually see there. His head turns, but only slightly, toward Robin. Then it comes back to Braxton. “I need to do a trauma sweep, you might need a hospital.”
Braxton shakes his head. He hears the handcuff click as he yanks on it without thinking. “I can’t go. Where’s Mom? What did you do to her?”
“Your mother isn’t here,” Batman says, “she’s been missing for two days.”
Braxton’s stomach sinks. He glances at the IV pole next to his cot, untouched. The last time he saw his mom, she’d been setting up the drip.
Two days.
“Has anyone been by?” Batman is looking at the pole, too. He seems to be able to figure this out on his own, and he turns toward Robin again. This time to actually talk at him. “Go upstairs and get him some water.”
Robin nods, head bobbing, stumbles back a few steps. The lenses of his mask are locked on Braxton, jaw set, almost nauseated. He turns on his heel and takes the stairs two at a time, boots thudding on the old wood.
Batman turns back to him as soon as Robin has crossed over the doorway, a grim, unhappy set to his jaw. He hasn’t shifted any closer or further away from Braxton, but now that they’re alone, he seems to be practically sitting on Braxton. “Your mother has been giving you her drugs.”
Braxton doesn’t know what will get her in the least amount of trouble. He doesn’t say anything.
Hands reach for him, and this time Batman doesn’t stop when Braxton jerks away from him. He moves carefully to lift Braxton back on the cot, holding him there with a heavy gauntlet on his shoulder. Braxton feels frozen out of his body. The movement sends black spots through his vision, every inch of his body aching.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Batman asks.
“I don’t know,” Braxton manages, swallowing thickly several times. The saliva is coating his throat. “‘m not stabbed or anything.”
Batman puts Braxton’s own hand on his stomach. He can feel how it’s trembling. “All of your muscles are locked up,” Batman says, “are you in pain?”
Side effects. Or maybe withdrawals, Braxton’s not sure. He doesn’t remember the last time he ate something, if Mom’s been giving him liquid nutrients, maybe weeks. He can’t feel his body, not really. Just the kickdrum in his skull and the rioting panic.
“Just…feel weird,” Braxton says. Somehow, it still seems like admitting too much.
“Don’t be scared,” Batman says, as he reaches for his belt. “You’re safe now. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
“She didn’t hurt me,” Braxton mumbles, and he doesn’t even know why he says it, because she did just hurt him, but he doesn’t want Batman to get angry. “I’m helping her.”
He shouldn’t say that. He thinks of his last phone call to Kenny, shifting from foot to foot in a shitty rundown booth, back pressed to the glass. It had been more rumors than fact going around that he got picked up, Braxton spent an hour and twelve dollars calling all the police departments and correctional facilities in Gotham and Blud, and when he finally had gotten Kenny on the line, they’d only been allowed to talk for fifteen minutes. Kenny tried to tell him not to go back, to just… walk away. Leave. Kenny said even if the state finally got sick of his status offences and sent him to juvie, lockup is still better than Maggie.
“That’s fine,” Batman says, he pushes on Braxton’s abdomen, it feels weird. Mom did that after he starting puking up the black thing a week or two ago or whenever that was. “How are you helping?”
He pushes on something, and Braxton twitches everywhere. The world is spinning very slow circles in his vision. “I feel weird,” he says again. He expects to hear Mom asking him to explain it, somewhere in his mind’s eye, she’s there. Floating in the background like unattached audio files.
“Weird how?”
“Weird.” Braxton blinks, the black spots in his vision are getting worse, collecting together to maximize the disorientation. “Don’t think…I’m…”
There’s blood pooling in his mouth, he can taste it. Blood and bile and probably more of his visceral organs. He wonders if he can puke up his heart, and feel it beat the last few times in his esophageal tract.
“Callum?”
It’s all been too much. He wasn’t ready for that. The moving or the talking or the—the anything, he thinks. “Mom,” he says, and he doesn’t know if he’s half begging for her or some pathetic part of him is still clinging to the idea of this being a hallucination. “Mom…”
It doesn’t have to be a hallucination. You remember that your father was angry, very angry, and how he got out his belt and beat you.
This isn’t real, none of this is real. This is the warped phantom memory of a leather belt stinging his skin. The hazy memory of his dad’s warm face twisted up with fury. His voice spitting vitriol, those big duty boots slamming into the ground next to Braxton’s head, when he finally let him slump from against the dresser onto the floor.
Braxton starts to cry again. Nothing loud, he hasn’t cried loud in years. He feels his head tip back when he’s adjusted again, when a hand pats at his face and the world just keeps getting darker and darker, and there are voices now, and the handcuff is shifted, and then he’s lifted up and up and straight out of his body until he passes out.
At around eight in the evening, they finally stop making everyone mill around aimlessly, and bring out the food. It’s only then that Tim finds out who their family has been strategically sat next to, and he’s a little disappointed to realize it’s nobody interesting.
Tim’s spent more time poking the bubbles out of his cider than listening to the man talk. He talks a lot. Tim’s French isn’t good enough to really understand a lot, his tutor has been taking it slow.
Tim hasn’t picked up his name yet. Mom likes him, though, she likes him a lot. She spent some time in Paris when she was younger, as an exchange student. That’s where Dad took her on their honeymoon, too. They still have the pictures, and in some of the shots her pregnancy bump is almost visible.
They haven’t been back with Tim, even though Mom keeps saying she wants to. Let him experience the city with his own eyes.
Dad pats Tim’s chest with the back of his hand, still talking animatedly to the man. “Maybe you could teach Timmy here, I know his classes at Brentwood have been doing fuck all.”
“Jack!” Janet laughs, a little tersely. “Language.”
The man across from him laughs. He has a wide smile, it shows all his teeth. His long, dark, well-maintained dreads fall over his shoulders as he leans forward.
There are beads in them, silver, catching the light. He’s wearing a lot of rings, too. And his suit looks nicer than Dad’s stiff tuxedo, the kind of thing Mom’s always saying she should buy for special occasions. Dad would call him metrosexual.
“That’s alright,” the man says, his accent is kind of thick, “I’m familiar.” He turns to Tim, smiling brightly. He has a nice smile. “You’re learning French? At what level?”
Tim chews on the inside of his cheek. His French isn’t as good as his Spanish isn’t as good as his Russian.
“Low,” Tim says.
The man huffs. “I felt the same about my English when I was your age.”
“Well, it pays to be well spoken when traveling,” Janet adds. She smiles at the man, and then at Tim.
Yeah, which would be great if he ever traveled. They always go places and leave him at the house, or they take him to Brentwood and drop him off there to die and the only places he goes is to school or home. This is why his French is poor, he doesn’t get why he has to learn.
“Yes,” the man says. He leans back, resettling, and he picks back up his fork. The meat they’re having isn’t very good, but the man slices through it with his fork and knife so slowly, like he’s trying to savor every cut. Tim flicks a piece of basil across his own. He thinks it’s lamb, but he’s not sure.
“How is LexCorp treating you, Laurent?” Dad asks, slicing into his own meal. They’re on the main serving by now. Tim’s pretty sure a speech or something was supposed to happen, but the hosts aren’t that organized. Everyone had to stand downstairs in the lobby for half an hour before the building staff seemed to realize which dining hall was sectioned off for whatever event this is.
Tim’s pretty sure it’s a charity. Or maybe a fundraiser. The last time he had to go to a gala, it was the annual one Brentwood put on and Tim had to sing with the other boys.
“Ah, well,” Laurent, apparently, what a weird name, says. It sounds like laundry. “Lex can be a passionate man. I’m afraid he keeps getting himself into trouble, but,” Laurent shrugs some, “at least he keeps me busy.”
Dad huffs. “I’m surprised he’s managed to keep you on this long. You know how entire legal team quit after that, ah, latest Superman debacle. He really needs to learn when to let something go. Does he have you working on that weapons deal?”
“No, thankfully,” Laurent says.
“I’m sure you’re unhappy he’s pulled you away from Paris,” Janet offers. “The change of scenery isn’t exactly for the better.”
Jesus, can they talk about something less boring? Tim flicks the basil around the lamb some more, gathers it up on one of the prongs to flick it across the piece of meat, around the plate, it’s like kicking a rock down the street. Around and around it goes.
Laurent’s eyes find him again, brow flicking down. “Have I met your son before, Janet? He has such a familiar face?”
“Does he?” Mom asks, mild. She glances at Tim. “I doubt it, he’s a shut-in, have to drag him out of the house if he goes anywhere, I swear. He’s always on his computer or reading, it’s like having a cat for a son.”
“Well,” Dad tempers. “If you’ve been around Gotham a while you might have seen him on that godawful billboard.”
Tim scowls. He hates that billboard. Mom is always dragging him out to those photoshoots, for magazines, or photoshoots, or the fucking billboard. She says that she’s taking interest in his hobbies, which is not true. She said that it helped him get into photography, but that isn’t true either, he started taking the pictures because he just wanted to know if it was better on the other end.
It was, for the record.
He didn’t hate getting his photo taken any less.
“Ah,” Laurent’s smile grows a little wider. “Yes, and the commercial. For Gap.”
“And the commercial,” Jack adds. “Tim can be entrepreneurial.”
“Got a little celebrity in the making, I see,” Laurent gives Tim an approving nod, “that’s good, you’ve got the face for it. You’ll be very handsome when you grow up.”
Ugh.
“Thanks.” Tim says, after Mom kicks him under the table, “That’s very kind of you to say.”
“Speaking of,” Mom cuts in, smoothly. “How is Monica’s career going? Wasn’t she dabbling in acting?”
The thread of disdain there. Which means whoever Monica is, she’s not a very good actress. Or maybe just not very big. Mom doesn’t like it when people are half-ways at something. She thinks someone should either be very good or very bad, but never in between.
Laurent’s smile turns brittle. “I’m afraid since I’ve last seen you, my love, Monica and I have parted ways.”
Tim puts his elbow on the table, propping his cheek up with the heel of his palm. He glances over the rest of the dining hall, wondering idly if he could steal the mint chocolates off an empty table.
Probably.
It wouldn’t be hard.
“Oh?” Mom asks. She puts a fork in her mouth so she doesn’t have to speak after that, because it was awkward, and that’s what she tells him to do if he says something that puts his foot in his mouth. Mom very subtly reaches out her free hand to grab Tim’s sleeve under the table and pulls on it. Tim takes his elbow off the table. “I’m sorry to hear that. When?”
“A few years now,” Laurent says. “We’re still on good terms of course.”
“Of course,” Mom says. Her voice drops. “I hope it wasn’t contentious. And it’s a good thing there were no kids involved.” Beside Tim, Dad’s jaw clicks together around his fork.
Laurent’s smile gets tighter. Frozen, almost. He looks between Mom and Dad, and Tim shrinks in his seat. They got into an argument last night, it was a bad one. Dad threw a big, heavy glass at her, and it shattered over Tim’s head instead. She was up until two picking all the fragments out of his hair, fuming.
Tim’s just not sure if she was angry that the glass hit him or that he didn’t duck.
That’s why Dad only has wine and champagne tonight, and not any of the cocktails from the open bar at the other end of the room.
“Small blessings,” Laurent says. “But sometimes rot needs to be excised for new growths to bloom.”
“Yes,” Mom says, through her teeth. “Sometimes.”
Tim shrinks further. God, he wishes he could leave. He doesn’t know why he had to be here. They weren’t even planning on taking him, Tim thinks that they only brought him because they were too angry to speak and they needed something to keep their tempers in check.
Dad clears his throat, standing, just shy of abruptly. He picks up his and Mom’s glasses between two fingers, tapping his thumb against the rim. “I need to excuse myself for a minute. Laurent, can I get you anything from the bar?”
“Jack,” Mom’s smile is big, too big, “I thought you weren’t drinking tonight, darling.”
“Of course not, Jan.” Dad winks at Laurent, “Maybe count your blessings. Sometimes the old ball and chain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
He leaves the table. Mom’s fingers are clenched tightly around her fork, the pads of her fingers flat against it, making her nails—unpainted today—go white at the tips.
Laurent reaches across the table and takes her hand in his, his eyes softening a little. Tim watches his mom relax, forcibly, chin jerking a little as she writes her smile back on her face. “I’m sorry about him, it’s been a long day for both of us.”
“There’s no need to apologize,” Laurent soothes, stroking the back of her palm with his thumb the movements slow and repetitive. He looks at Tim. “I know how he can be, believe me.”
Tim is chewing on his lower lip, and he only notices when he tastes blood. He lets it go, taking in a deep, slow breath. He doesn’t say he’s an asshole Mom, that’s what he does, because they’re in public, and he thinks she might actually hit him for that.
Mom doesn’t like to be reminded how much Dad sucks until she’s had at least two Ambien.
Tim relaxes, fractionally, as Laurent comforts Mom, though. Not a lot of men do that. Not really any. There was one time, when Tim was little, maybe six or seven, when Dad made a ruckus at some sort of gala or event or something, and Bruce Wayne comforted her, but that’s because he’s Batman, and Batman just does that.
“You know, Janet, I’ll be in Gotham for a while longer,” Laurent says. Tim shoots him a look, disgusted.
Mom pulls her hand out of his, eyebrows rising. “Excuse me?”
Laurent’s smile doesn’t freeze, and he doesn’t look caught or guilty or anything, just…the same, even though he just…with Tim’s mother? In front of him? What the fuck? “That’s gross,” Tim tells him. “Mom’s married.”
Laurent smiles at Janet, and then at Tim. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to imply anything. Your friendship is invaluable to me, Janet.”
“In as much as it gets you a warm bed, right?” Mom snaps. “Is that why you agreed to this meet? Are you serious? Do I look like I don’t have enough problems? I knew that this would be a conflict of interest, given Luthor, but I didn’t think—”
“Janet,” Laurent lifts up his hand, “that wasn’t what I was saying. Breathe, my love. I have nothing but good intentions, I assure you.”
“Then what are you saying, Laurent?” Janet asks, quietly.
“I know divorce lawyers,” Laurent says, “good ones. They can handle all of this quietly. Obviously, given that you hadn't heard about Monica.”
Tim sits up a little straighter. “What?” he says. He looks at his mom. The shock feels unreasonable. He only just remembers to lower his voice when he says, “You’re getting a divorce?”
Mom rubs at her temples, “We’re not, Timothy. We’ll work through this, just like we have everything else. I haven’t put twelve years into this marriage for nothing.”
“I’d like to help however I can.” Laurent’s voice is earnest. “In any way.”
Mom huffs. “Unless you can convince Jack into couple’s therapy, I doubt there’s much you can do.” She rubs at her face, looks at Tim again, and her expression steels.
He doesn’t know why she looks upset about it, Tim has heard them fight about therapy before. The one session they did come back from, they didn’t speak to each other for two weeks. Tim had to play messenger back and forth, it was awkward. And frustrating. They never went back, Jack threatened to take Tim and leave, but what he actually ended up doing instead was hitting her so hard in the face she bruised for a week.
Tim was so angry he couldn’t play messenger anymore. He’d begged Mom to take them to her parents instead, but she refused. And then they left the city, and Tim didn’t see them for three months. Mom still had a bruise when she came back. It was a different one.
So yeah, they haven’t gone back to therapy.
“I’m sorry, my love,” Laurent says, frowning deeply. “If I could take this pain from you I would.”
Mom laughs again. Wipes at her face with the back of her hand. “Thank you, but there’s nothing you can do.”
Laurent frowns. He looks at Tim again, says, soft, “We’ll see.”
Brentwood is an international baccalaureate school, highly accredited. The kind of program designed by really fancy psychologists, who do research into regression and learning best practices. For that reason, or maybe just to make Tim’s life more reasonable, it’s a year-round program. Forty five days on, fifteen days off.
Tim resents this.
Most breaks, Tim stays in the dorms. They’re open all year. But when his parents fly home to Gotham, Tim does too. To spend quality time with them.
Lately, Tim hasn’t been a big fan of quality time. When he was younger, it was a lot like being on a long vacation. Mom and Dad took him to operas and plays. Movies. In between photoshoots, of course.
The house never feels empty when they’re both there. At least since Tim turned nine or ten. It’s always filled with the fuming, thick tension between Mom and Dad, like a fourth person living with them, sitting at their table, eating their food, sleeping on the couch.
This particular return home, Dad decides that they should go to a baseball game. Apropos of nothing. He just comes into Tim’s room holding up tickets, and says, “Get up, we’re going to have father-son bonding.”
Father-son bonding involves a lot of waiting around. The baseball game is fine, Tim isn’t much of a sports person, and Dad isn’t either even though he pretends to be, nudging Tim occasionally when a particularly profound pitch is thrown, whooping.
Tim’s pretty sure the last time Dad played baseball was high school, if ever. But he gets a slushie from one of the stands and there’s random mascot races between the innings, and those are fun to watch. The announcer is loud and everything vibrates uncomfortably, and the metal benches are uncomfortable, and they buy popcorn that comes in a long bag and tastes like it was born and raised in butter.
There’s a lot of music. Dad seems disappointed Tim doesn’t know the words to any of the songs. At the end, when the sun’s set, they set off fireworks so loud Tim’s teeth rattle and his ears ring the entire drive home.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Dad asks. “You enjoy your day, sport?”
“So much,” Tim says, looking out the window. He draws his knee up to his chest, setting his forehead against the cool glass. The sugar and the noise have given him a headache, and all the lights on the car dashboard have turned into strobe lights. He can taste bile and pennies at the back of his mouth.
Dad sighs, a little. “Tim.”
“I had fun,” Tim lies, “I had a lot of fun.”
“I’m a good dad, aren’t I?” Dad asks, “I’m trying here, kid.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Tim reaches out and closes the vents. The air on his face is making him nauseous. Dad always gets cold at night, but it’s almost June and seventy degrees outside. “You’re the best.”
Dad drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “I know your mom talks about me to you. You know it’s more complicated than all that. I love you, kiddo. No matter what Jan says.”
Tim doesn’t say anything for a long minute, he just keeps looking out the window. He answers eventually, “Okay.”
Dad’s face creases. The car idles to a stop in their driveway, and Dad turns the headlights off. He sighs, unbuckling his seatbelt and slumping back. He pinches at the bridge of his nose, like Tim is paining him.
“Tim.” Tim reaches for the door handle, and Dad grabs his wrist. Hard. Tim stops. He doesn’t look at Dad until he says to. Dad’s eyes are frustrated and cold and a little wet. “Don’t let your mother come between us.”
“I have a headache,” Tim says. “Can I go to bed now?”
Dad sighs again. He lets go of Tim’s wrist. “Be that way,” he says. “You’ll regret this when you’re older and I’m gone.”Tim doesn’t think so. He looks away for a moment. Jack snaps, “Don’t roll your eyes at me.”
“I didn’t,” Tim says. He opens the car door, unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out. He doesn’t slam the door, because Dad gets pissy about scratching the paint on his nice Volvo. He has to key in the code to the garage, even though his vision is blurring, and then wait for the garage door to inch all the way up.
Dad gets out of the car. “Sweetheart, why do you hate me so much? Why can’t you see that I’m trying?”
Tim hits the pound sign a few more times. He could duck the edge of the door, but he doesn’t want to look that desperate yet. It’d probably just set Dad off more.
“I don’t hate you, Dad.” Tim says.
“You do,” Dad insists, furious, “and it’s because of your bitch of a mother. If I had just gotten sole custody like I wanted, then none of this would have happened and you wouldn’t be such a little asshole.”
Tim’s shoulders tighten. He ducks the hand Dad tries to put on his shoulder, and makes a bee-line for the garage door. He hates this. Dad didn’t do this for him, he did it to one-up his Mom.
The door opens before he can even get there, and Tim startles badly. Mom is one blur to him, as she steps out from the doorway to the stairs. “Timothy!?” She sounds terrified. “Where have you been? Are you okay?”
Tim is frozen for a second.
He winces at the tone of her voice, recoiling a little when she grabs him by the shoulders, stumbling the rest of the way up the stairs.
There’s a man in the doorway. A familiar man, one who has been coming by more and more often the last three months, just like he promised he would, even if he stays nights with Mom where she’s alone, and he’s been forced to endure more than one awkward dinner with him.
Tim doesn’t like Laurent. Even if he helps Tim with his French homework, and he always makes Mom so much happier, and he’s nice, and he has cool clothes. Even if he takes Tim out for icecream whenever he gets Tim from the subway when Mom can’t make it. It’s not Laurent’s fault, he’s a nice guy. A really nice guy, but it’s like whenever he’s around Mom and Dad are at each other’s throats that much more.
“He’s alright?” Laurent asks, he actually sounds concerned.
Mom nods into Tim’s hair. “Yes. Where were you?”
“Baseball,” Tim says, numb.
Mom pulls back a little, frowning, brushing her knuckles over his forehead. She raises her gaze to Dad, eyes going hard. “Jack the lights.”
Dad rolls his eyes. Tim sees it. “What about the lights, Jan? He’s fine.”
“His migraines.”
“He took his meds, he’s fine. Look at him, he’s fine, isn’t he? We had fun together, you don’t need to know every little thing that goes on his life, he just wanted to spend time with his old man.”
Laurent takes a step down, to stand beside Mom. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and then Tim’s. “Jack,” he says, he sounds frustrated, “Tim is her son as well. You should have told her where he was, she’s been worried sick.”
“Has she?” Dad asks, “You’re looking a little rumpled there, Lau. I think she just enjoyed her day off, huh?”
Mom lets go of Tim, nudges him to the side, so Laurent takes Tim instead, putting a hand on the back of his neck. She takes the steps two at a time, brushing her hair out of her face, swallowing as she walks up to her husband. She stands nose-to-nose with him, exhaling hard. Dad doesn’t get the chance to even open his mouth before she pulls back, and slaps him hard across the face.
“Don’t ever,” she says, exhaling the words. “Speak about me like that again.”
Dad wipes spit from his cheek and punches her in the stomach. Mom gags, wet, and hunches over his fist, and he grabs her by the back of the neck, hauling her back up. “I’ll speak to you how I want to.”
Tim feels Laurent’s fingers leave his neck, and that’s about all that he can process, the world is moving in slow motion. Mom is still trying to get her breath back, and Dad still hasn’t let go.
He gets close, between them almost, and withdraws a pistol from his coat. He sets it against the side of Dad’s head. Calm. His expression doesn’t change.
Dad blanches.
Tim feels his heart stutter in his chest. He stumbles backward into the steps, crashing onto his ass, the air knocked out of him. Mom makes a wounded noise, grabbing Laurent’s forearm and trying to drag at him. It doesn’t work, Laurent is strong. Tim knows, he’s picked him up by the arm a few times.
Laurent cocks the weapon. “Hush, dear.” He says to Dad, without any warmth in his voice at all. It turns Tim’s entire body to ice, makes him feel like setting cement, viscous and immovable. “Apologize to your wife.”
“Put the damn gun down,” Jack says.
“Apologize.”
“You gonna kill me in the middle of my own garage, are you serious?”
Laurent huffs, distinctly amused. He tilts his head, the beads in his dreads clink as they shift together. “You think I won’t?”
Janet pulls at his arm, then shoves at his chest. “Lau, don’t,” she says. She glances over her shoulder. “Tim is here.”
Tim doesn’t know if he is here. He feels a little outside his body. Like he’s in a dream. He watches Laurent, horrified, as the man just tilts his head at Tim’s father.
Dad glances at Tim. “Fine, fine, I’m sorry, Janet.” He doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds angry, still and annoyed. “I’m going to go.”
“Good, leave.” Laurent says. He doesn’t put the gun away until Jack leaves.
Mom cries after he does, pressing a hand to her mouth. “I can’t,” she whispers, and walks past Laurent, slipping away from Tim back into the house.
Tim turns to watch her leave, his stomach lodged in his throat. He can’t free his tongue enough to call out for her, but he hears her footsteps retreating for a while, and she doesn’t shut the door.
For a while, Tim doesn’t move, and doesn’t breathe, and isn’t a person. Laurent sighs, very soft. He comes over to where Tim is sitting on the ground and he kneels down next to him, slow and careful, hiking up his dress slacks a little at his thighs to do it. He clasps his hands together. “Timothy.”
It takes three calls of his name before he looks up. He’s biting on his hand. Laurent reaches over and pulls it out. He holds his wrist for a second, staring at the bite, looks up at Tim, eyes calculating. “You have nothing to be afraid of,” Laurent soothes. “I would never hurt you, you know that.”
He pulled a gun on Tim’s dad.
“You tried to kill my dad,” Tim whispers.
“I didn’t though,” Laurent says, “did I? He hurt your mother. He couldn’t get away with that, you understand. You love her.”
Tim swallows. He looks away from Laurent’s piercing eyes, but that only makes Laurent shift forward more, bracing his elbows on his knees and holding out both hands. “Timothy, my love, you have nothing to fear from me.”
Tim shakes his head.
Laurent wiggles his fingers a little more insistently, until he reaches out and carefully takes Tim’s. “I protect what I love, even if it means harming someone. I would never have killed your father, not now anyways,” he flashes a smile, quick, private, “it would have upset your mother. You don’t like him much, do you?”
Tim looks at their joined hands. Laurent’s nails are clear and clean, little white bumps on the end. Tim doesn’t remember what that’s called. “No,” he admits, quiet, “I didn’t say I love you back.”
“You don’t have to,” Laurent says. “Come here, child.”
Tim lets himself get pulled in. The hug is warm and Laurent smells nice, like vanilla. Tim buries his face into Laurent’s chest and the man wraps his arms around him. It’s different than getting a hug from Mom or Dad, Laurent spreads his fingers, strokes up and down Tim’s back, like he’s trying to touch as much of his as possible.
Tim doesn’t mind, much, he’s shivering.
“Let’s go do something about that headache, hm?” Laurent says, he kisses the top of Tim’s head, smoothing his hand through his hair, “I’ll take care of you, I promise