After The Fall

Foley was right, he knew Eddie's schedule perfectly well. Which meant he knew exactly when Foley would be taking him to nursery school for the day and about when the older boy should be back to his room, and he was fucking sick of this. He wouldn't talk to him over the journals, he wouldn't let him into his room, wouldn't let him see his god damned son? Fuck him, he wasn't getting a choice anymore. It only took a fraction of a second to ash the door, and he stooped to pick up the door knob from where it had fallen on his way in before dropping down onto the edge of Foley's bed to wait.

He lay sprawled across one of the tree's lower branches, arms and legs dangling and tail hanging limp. Looking for all the world like a giant blue cat, if anyone could have seen him in the shadows near the trees trunk. He wasn't looking at anything in particularly, wasn't thinking anything in particular, focused instead on the dull ache in his ribs and the sharper pain along his jaw and in his knuckles, the faint tang of blood in his mouth. Anything to avoid thinking about the fact that Billy was gone. That he seemed to think a message over the journals, no explanation and no regret, was all that it took to end things.

That he felt like someone had ripped him open and scoured him clean and left him empty and bleeding and he didn't have any clue how to deal with it. Other than to sit here, alone and aching, where they'd spent so much time together the last few months. Wondering what had gone wrong. What he'd done. Why he'd left. It was easier to focus on the other pain, and he shifted deliberately, jaw tightening for a moment as the pain in his ribs spiked.