InsaneJournal

Lyra didn’t wanna go home; she’d been putting it off for days. Or… didn’t want to go to her old home, she guessed that's what she meant. Family home? No, but Avery was her husband, that made him family too, this was her family home. Sort of. First home? No, that sounded like a place a person bought with their husband, something which… oh, Lyra didn’t know how they’d ever get the money together for something like that— augh, and now she was thinking ‘bout money, again, and the stressed out energy was back, buzzing through her.

Every little feeling had been amplified, all week. Every emotion hurled itself full speed toward the surface. She didn't know if that was a symptom of almost dying or what. Just, hair triggers, all the time.

With an annoyed sigh, she uncurled herself from where she’d been not-sleeping under Avery’s arm, and sat up, pressing both her hands against her face. The hospital bill still hadn’t shown up and it was becoming this big thing, following her round like a maniac in a hot air balloon, a constant shadow over everything. She had no idea how bad it was gonna be. How they were gonna handle it. Or, how she was gonna handle it? Their bank accounts were separate things, after all, and it was her bill, her actions and choices that’d created it. If she hadn’t split all her Vegas money up— but she couldn’t regret that, couldn’t even regret the money she gave to Tammy. No, she’d have to figure something out. She’d feel too weird taking that amount of money from Avery anyway. Too much like she could picture his mom’s bitchy smug face, convinced she was after that Duffield cash.

Ugh, was that too neurotic? It was hard not to be neurotic, when it came to money. Especially this week. Everything was just... so much.

Fucking… dammit, she had to go home and find that bill. She could only think it’d been sent to her old place, cuz like, had she even updated her address? Jocelyn woulda messaged her if she’d noticed mail for her but maybe Jem’d put it somewhere instead, maybe Jemma’d used it for colouring, who knew, right? She had to go look for it. And it had to be today, cuz she had a bag of decorations to deliver so they could make the place look awesome for Jemma’s fourth birthday tomorrow. It couldn’t wait till tomorrow; she wasn’t gonna let adult money shit bleed into her little sister’s party.

But like, she didn’t want to go over there and look for a bill that was gonna ruin things, even though she knew that avoiding the issue wasn’t gonna make it go away. Knowing a thing and having the drive to do something 'bout it were two totally different things.

And like… she wasn’t totally looking forward to running into her mom either, even though she knew she should do something ‘bout that before Jemma’s birthday too. She wasn’t gonna let Jem-and-Lyra drama bleed into her little sister’s party, either.

Avery muttered something sleepy, then, about how she was letting the warmth out, and she knew she should get outta bed and get a move on but… fuck it, it could wait a little longer. Queen of avoidance, she was. And a bit of a coward, maybe, but nowhere made her feel as good as here, right now. Lyra snuggled down under the blankets with him again, tugging his arm to encourage him to curl up against her back. She could close her eyes and pretend like she hadn’t woken up early after all. Confrontations and shit, they were just so much easier when you were doing them on behalf of someone else, y’know?



Ugh, but Jocelyn was expecting her, so eventually Lyra made herself leave the apartment, but not until after watching Avery play video games for a while, sitting behind him on the couch with her arms round his waist, sneaking her fingers in under his shirt and making him mutter something about how she was gonna get him killed. “Or I’m gonna get you laid?” she suggested instead, pressing herself up against his back – it’d been even harder to keep her hands off him since recovering from the whole near-death experience thing. She just— just wanted to stick close. Not like, make a whole big deal of it or anything, but stick close.

Getchu a man who’d stroke your hair in the hospital, she thought, often. One who showed up and stuck around even though he hated seeing her all sick and miserable like that. Or, be supernaturally lucky and getchu two men who did that.

She had to talk to Patrick properly too, though. ‘Bout her mom. She had seen him since the whole hospital disaster. He’d come over with McDonalds on Monday but she’d been feeling too crap, too mad at Jake, too exhausted to face a Jem conversation when the alternative was burrowing into the couch between her dad and husband and eating fries and anger cookies and watching Wipe Out with them and Armaan.



Finally she made it back up to Bushwick, letting herself in with the key Jocelyn insisted she keep, taking a big, deep breath of how familiar everything smelled. Her new place with Avery kinda just smelled like boys. Not bad. Armaan was super clean and she dug the way Avery smelled. It was just— boys. Different. When Jocelyn hugged her, Lyra held on for a really long time, her face buried against Jocelyn’s cardigan.

“I was expecting you this morning,” Jocelyn said, as they unbagged the bunting Lyra’d brought for the party. It was made of brightly coloured fabric, triangles of all different textures and patterns she’d found in scrap bins around a few different fabric stores. She’d sewn them all up one night when Avery was hyper focused on something at his computer while Armaan chatted to her about his sisters.

“Slept in,” Lyra explained, with a quick flash of an apologetic smile. “Saturdays, you know?”

“Are you two going to be on time for dinner tomorrow?”

“Course. Ain’t letting Jemma down. How you think she’ll like this one?” Lyra passed over a velvet triangle, a soft dusky pink, and Jocelyn reached across the table to touch it too. “Nice huh? Could maybe sew these all together once they done being bunting, make her a duvet cover for her new bed, yeah?” With Lyra gone, Jemma had been moved into Lyra’s old room, and Jem had a room to herself for the first time in years. It wasn’t hard to see who was more excited about this arrangement, but Lyra knew Jocelyn was trying to prove to Jemma how cool having her own room was. Jemma was unconvinced and a little clingy, but slowly coming round.

“I think she’ll love it. It might even be finished by the time she’s five.”

“Five? C’mon, you take half, I’ll take half, we can get it done by winter, easy.”

“Easy,” said Jocelyn, with another hint of gentle teasing. “My half, at any rate.”

“Finished the bunting when I said I would, didn’t I?” Lyra grinned at her grandmother, refusing to accept that Jocelyn had a point. A long, repetitive project like sewing dozens of triangles together to make a patchwork duvet was exactly the kind of long, repetitive project that ran the risk of ending up abandoned when something more exciting came along.

“You did,” Jocelyn acknowledged with a smile, turning a floral triangle over to see the pattern on the back. Lyra watched the smile on her face fade as some thought occurred to her, and her forehead furrowed. “You weren’t here for her birthday last year…?” She trailed off, looking over at Lyra, who had frozen stiff.

No one had questioned where she was this time last year. No one had ever questioned it. No one remembered. They weren’t supposed to remember, Lyra thought, internally screaming what the fuck while her hands busied themselves with untangling a knot in the bunting.

“I was still in Tennessee,” she muttered hastily, without looking up, digging a blunt thumbnail into the fabric knot. This issue was not the issue she was tryna brace herself to deal with and she had no idea – absolutely no idea – how she was supposed explain her absence if suddenly the fairy magic had just gone and worn off.

“Of course,” Jocelyn said, with a shake of her head and a small laugh. “Silly me— oh, that reminds me, Paulie’s boy picked up a job pouring concrete up in Queens, he’s going to ask around, see if they’re hiring. I gave him your new number.”

“Oh, uh, thanks…” Lyra looked up from the knot, trying to see if there was anything weird about her grandmother. Was she suspicious? Shit, was it a memory thing? A— fuck an age thing?

Jocelyn looked up at her too, met her eyes, looked sharp as a pin. “I cannot believe you lost that phone. Addy was so generous to give you hers, I hope you got her something in return. You should look through some of Jemma’s old things, I think there’s a very nice summer dress that her Evie could grow into.”

Lyra didn’t think Evie was lacking in clothes (or like, anything) but Jocelyn was right, she did owe Addy something in exchange for the phone. She’d been thinking of putting in extra hours at the workshop and making something, but she’d take a look for that summer dress, too. “Thanks,” she said again, as the knot at last came free. Jocelyn didn’t seem to see anything strange about her answer, so all Lyra could do was pray that Jocelyn didn’t think too hard about last year. Pray it wasn’t a memory thing either. What else could she do?!

There wasn’t time to get sucked into it anyway, because a clatter of a shampoo bottle against the bottom of the shower made her realise she could hear the water going in the bathroom. “Mom’s home?”

“Mm, deep conditioning her hair for tomorrow,” Jocelyn said, the tone in her voice speaking volumes about how necessary she found the pampering of Jem’s hair for a four year old’s party. “Help me string these up so I don’t have to haul these old bones up onto a chair.”

“You ain’t that old,” Lyra said (still frantically praying it wasn’t a memory thing) as she clambered up, not about to let Jocelyn risk breaking herself. Her own ankle was still a little delicate (she’d skipped trapeze class this week, but that was kinda more about staying home with Avery than it was about being careful with her ankle, since if she was actually being careful she shouldn’t be scaling buildings for work, even if she was kinda desperate for the money) but not so tender she couldn’t manage a chair.

She was pushing a thumb tack into a pre-existing thumb-tack hole in the wall from some other birthday bunting when she finally got up the nerve to ask, casual, “Hey, any mail for me show up here?”

Not so casual, maybe, if the flip in her stomach was anything to go by.

Jocelyn passed up another handful of bunting as Lyra (ankle holding up fine) stepped from chair to the back of the couch, fingertips stretching to pin the decorations as high as possible. “Not that I’ve seen.”

Lyra couldn’t keep back the little sound of frustration. Seriously? Now that the bill was close, she thought, she was ready for it all to be over. Over in the definitive, this is how many thousand you owe way instead of over in the big, shadow question mark way.

Jocelyn looked up at that noise. “What are you expecting?”

“Uhm…” A brief internal struggle. Well no— not brief, just the final throes of a struggle she’d been having all week, one that hadn’t magically landed her at a decision one way or another. Tell her grandmother? Don’t tell her? And by not making a decision the decision had kinda made itself for her, so like… no… no she wasn’t going to tell her, she was going to let time pass till time swallowed it up… A decision that only held up so long as Jocelyn didn’t look right at her and ask.

And okay sure she hadn’t asked specifically, had she? ‘What mail are you expecting’ could probably be sidestepped… only… not by Lyra. She bit her lips together a moment, before she said, “hospital bill.”

“Excuse me?” said Jocelyn, and then, “get down off that sofa.”

Lyra pushed in another thumbtack first, then jumped down, landing in front of her grandmother (favouring the one foot, but only slightly.) Jocelyn was a little taller than she was. Jem was a little taller again. Patrick was taller. Lyra had no idea, genetically, where her height had ended up. Jocelyn somehow looked even taller when she put both her hands on her hips, and peered at Lyra as if she might have overlooked the fact that her granddaughter was missing one of her limbs.

“Tell me what happened.”

Lyra debated holding her hands behind her back or crossing her arms in front of her. Neither posture really seemed to make things easier. “I drank too much,” she said, grabbing one arm with the other instead. “Had to spend a night in hospital. I’m alright though— I’m alright.”

“Oh Lyra,” Jocelyn scolded, her voice harsh but her eyes widening like she didn’t recognise Lyra standing right in front of her, which was way worse than the voice. “What were you thinking?”

That was the question Lyra couldn’t answer, either. One that wouldn’t let her go. What had she been thinking? When had she stopped thinking? Why hadn’t she realised that she was no longer thinking?. “Well—" she said, the colour of shame creeping over her cheeks. "Kinda wasn’t.”

“No, clearly! When was this?”

“St Patrick’s Day.”

“Saint— Who was with you? Was Rosario there?”

“No, she can’t stand—”

“Avery then, where was he?”

“He was working, but he—”

“Aderyn? Henry?”

“Okay, stop, you don’t gotta list all my friends,” Lyra complained, though, Jocelyn had kinda reached the end of the list there anyway. “I was with Patrick and before you say anything he looked after me, real good, he got me to hospital, he stayed with, the whole time.”

“You were in hospital?” Jem’s voice, quiet, made Lyra turn around, and her mother was standing in the bathroom door wrapped in a towel. “Oh, babygi—”

“Don’t,” Lyra said, pointing at her in warning, party embarrassed to be caught off guard but mostly: “I’m still mad at you.”

“At me?”

“Jemima, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything! Ly, are you sick? Did you get hurt?!”

“You said some real inappropriate things to Patrick, mom!”

“You were there too?!”

“Oh yeah, she was there alright, she was there in all her glory.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“You hit on him!”

“Hardly, I—”

“‘Hardly’? No, you hit on him so hard—”

“You’re blowing this all up. So maybe I was a little flirty?”

“It was more than a little flirty! You were way outta line.”

“Oh, you know I come off a little strong when I’m drunk. You were drunk too, so was he! Everyone was drunk, it was a party!”

There was a sudden, loud series of bangs as Jocelyn slammed a glass down like a gavel, and both Lyra and Jem stopped shouting as Jocelyn pointed from one to the other, hand still around the glass. “You were there,” she clarified, pointing at Jem first before turning her finger toward Lyra. “And you left your intoxicated daughter alone with that man just before she ended up in hospital?”

“How is the hospital my fault?!” Jem protested, overlapping with Lyra’s voice as she protested too “‘That man’ is my dad!”

“He’s my dad,” Lyra repeated, firmly, to Jocelyn. “And he was there at my side the whole time. He deserves to be more than just ‘that man’.”

“And he’s a Saint,” Jem said, moving to stand at her daughter’s side and face her mother. “He deserves your respect.”

“He deserved not to get propositioned, is what he deserves!” Lyra glowered at Jem, sidestepping away from her mom. “How is that respecting him?”

“You propositioned him? Jemima!”

“Ugh! You two are impossible!” Jem threw her head back in frustration. “Neither of you are listening to me!”

“Jemma!” Lyra said, loudly, cheerfully, as her old bedroom door opened and a sleepy preschooler peeked out. “The almost-birthday girl!” Thank fuck, thank fuck thank fuck. She swooped in to haul Jemma up and make a big deal over her, tickling some laughter out of her armpits and trying not to look like she was about to lose her mind. “Have you got a whole room to yourself now, oh my gosh, show me what you done with the place?” She shot an angry look over Jemma’s shoulder at both Jocelyn and Jem (though mostly Jem) and closed Jemma’s bedroom door behind her.

It really wasn’t on, feeling rescued by your tiny sister when forreal, you should be the one doing the rescuing here. Still, getting the grand tour about Jemma’s room gave Lyra time to catch her breath, stop her heart racing so hard, and through the door she could hear low voices and then Jem’s footsteps thumping off toward her bedroom. Then it was just Jocelyn to deal with, a quarter hour or so later, when Lyra came out with Jemma riding on her shoulders.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” was the first thing that Jocelyn said, scrubbing at something burned on the bottom of a pot. “We can talk about this properly another time. How much is the bill?”

“I got no idea,” Lyra said, putting Jemma down on her chair at the table, pushing her juice cup toward her. Guilt and fear were still riding her, way heavier than Jemma had been. Shame too. “I don’t, um, remember a lot.”

Jocelyn put the pot down, and pulled off her rubber gloves. “Ring the billing department,” she said, pushing Lyra’s hair back over her shoulders. “Do it today.”

Ugh. “Okay.”

“Promise me. Today.”

“I promise.” She shoulda done that to start with. Rang them up days ago, see what address they had, bypassed all this. Sometimes, though, sometimes it was easier to do a thing you didn’t wanna do if you promised someone else you’d do it. Sometimes it was the only way. Lyra was pretty sure she made a really sucky adult.

“Good girl,” Jocelyn said, and pulled Lyra closer for a quick, one armed hug. “Call me tonight and we’ll figure out what to do. We got a little put aside, and we got a notice last week to say rent's dropping to make up for the 'inconvenience of improvements', if you can believe that. We'll sort this all out."

Lyra grabbed her round her waist before Jocelyn could let go, and pulled her in for a proper face-buried, arms-tight hug. She'd always been safe here, and right now the safety of the hug was offering her a place where she could let go of the reins of her panic, and freak out about— oh there was a whole smorgasbord of options, say… how much the dropping of rent felt like a threat cuz she knew who it was coming from, or maybe ‘bout how she couldn't shake how goddamn scary it’d been waking up in hospital, or how she couldn’t stop thinking about how she didn’t even remember crossing the line between in control and out of it and how maybe that was the scariest bit of all.

But instead she sniffed, hard. Jemma was right there and the kid didn’t need to know her big sister couldn’t handle shit. “Don’t yell at mom while Jemma’s in the house,” Lyra muttered, giving her grandma a pat on the back. “You guys suck at keeping your voices down.”




Put something off for as long as possible, then as soon as the bandaid was even slightly loose, rip it all off as fast as possible. Lyra was searching for the hospital’s billing department the moment she stepped back into the hallway, had found the number by the time the elevator arrived for her, then spent a really tense wait till it spat her out on the ground floor before she could dial.

And what they said really shouldn’t have freaked her out, but she’d been bracing for things to go one way for so long that when they went the opposite way, freaking was the only option that felt open to her.

She sent a frantic message with her new phone (and Addy had been right, the battery life was for shit, it was already on 41%) and then sprinted for the bus that would take her the closest to Patrick’s place.