WHO: Kaden, Tragos, Marcie WHEN: Christmas through to the present, then Thursday WHERE: A hospital, the Hole, Aphrodite's place WHAT: So many fun conversations WARNINGS: A bit of toxic masculinity, a touch of cancer
Kaden didn’t know how to tell Tragos anything.
At home he was a miserable knot of wretched knowledge. Marcie was so sick and Tragos didn’t know, and Tragos should know, and he should be able to do something. Except it was cancer and what could anyone do? Kaden knew enough about the world to know that, at least academically. Sometimes you fought cancer but you couldn’t cure it. But he had a hard time believing that in a word that contained god things that had been around for thousands of years, nothing could be done.
He really wanted to know what Tragos would think. What Tragos believed. But he couldn’t ask him. Didn’t know how.
He didn’t know how to describe what the inside of the hospital was like. How many people were there sick or dying or hurt or working, so many people working, so many who looked stretched thin by the work.
After he left Marcie so she could sleep (at the insistence of a really big nurse) Kaden didn’t go home straight away. He wandered past vending machines and he peered over the desk the nursing station and he sat on the edge of a waiting room and rubbed a leaf of a pot plant between his fingers and he didn’t cry and he didn’t cry and he didn’t cry. He kind of wished he was allowed to nap beside Marcie, like he had that time after the shooting, after Barak’s beating, when they’d fallen asleep together on the couch. That time when, in the morning, Tragos had come out of Marcie’s room and found them there and asked him what the hell he was playing at in a voice that made Kaden laugh, and kiss Marcie on the cheek, and zip away before Tragos could smack him upside the head and call him a little shit. That time when, somehow among the horror of the shooting and Barak, Kaden had still found a place he felt safe and two people he felt safe with.
He couldn’t tell Tragos he wanted to go back to that time. He could imagine what Tragos would say – something like, you can’t go back in time, use your damn energy thinking about something else.
Why was he wasting time and energy hanging around the hospital when the only person he wanted to visit was asleep? Tragos might have asked him that too. Why not just go home, or go see if the Warmoths had any decent Christmas presents (they wouldn’t, unless Barak’d given Cin something before he was bashed) or Cin was feeling generous enough to take her eyes off their food enough for Ruth to sneak Kaden something (she wouldn’t – Cin always stuck to her rule; she was fine with Kaden hanging around the house but he wasn’t allowed to eat their food.)
Why wait around here like he was waiting for something? Like he just needed to wait till the boredom of doing nothing drove him so mad he forgot about the fear of asking: Hey, can you tell me where Marcus Murphy’s room is? Tragos wouldn’t understand using boredom to break through fear. Tragos would think there were better ways to do it. Man up, dickhead Kaden told himself, in Tragos’ voice, in Barak’s voice. But even when he did get up the courage to go and ask, it still didn’t feel very manly, maybe because he’d put it off for too long. All he felt was a sick, tight feeling of terrible nerves.
Can you tell me where Marcus Murphy’s room is?
He didn’t know how to tell Tragos that he was so scared of seeing Barak, because they didn’t talk about thing like being scared, except to say it was for pussies.
He didn’t know how to explain to Tragos his decision to visit him anyway because he didn’t even know how to explain it to himself.
His reasons might’ve come out with therapy, if that option had been open to him. Someone who knew the ways of these things might have been able to make him see: Kaden went to visit Barak hoping to find a way to soften the blow. When Barak healed back to his old self, maybe it would go better for Kaden if Barak knew Kaden hadn’t abandoned him. A therapist might have helped him look at this relationship in a different light.
But there were no therapists, no brothers, no friends that would get it, not even a dog. Kaden would’ve spilled his goddamn guts to Sniper.
Even if he did have someone to tell, seeing Barak was also impossible to describe. First, he wasn’t in a room of his own like Marcie, he was in with seven other guys, separated by curtains on rails, and Kaden thought that put him beneath Marcie and he wouldn't like that and Kaden was very careful about avoiding things that Barak wouldn't like.
He looked a bit smaller in his hospital bed, he was hooked up to machines like Marcie hadn’t been, and things were beeping some rhythm Kaden didn’t know how to read. Not like a heartbeat or anything, but much slower. He was lying there with his eyes open a slit like he was lying in wait and was about to spring up and catch Kaden in the act of doing something he shouldn’t be doing. That’s what it felt like; he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be witnessing this, it was too private and too personal and Barak would be so mad he’d bash him if he got caught.
And then the nurse said, “Why don’t you take his hand?” and Kaden didn’t have an answer for her she’d accept. He didn’t have any answers that anyone at all would accept. Kaden didn’t know what he was doing or why he was doing it or why the sight of Barak in bed made him want to scream, and he didn’t know why the nurse should have any influence of his behaviour but she was looking at him like she expected something out of him and Kaden reached forward and touched Barak’s hand and Barak’s eyes fluttered.
Kaden pulled his hand back like he’d been bitten as Barak opened his eyes, and then smiled, widely, like he was genuinely pleased to see him. “Oh, that’s great, he remembers you,” said the nurse and Kaden wasn’t sure it was great, actually, but he said “Hi” anyway. Barak made some kind of ungodly, wordless happy noise and fear spiked in Kaden but it still wasn’t enough to drown out the very real and very desperate shot of pleasure that came from doing something Barak approved of.
“That’s the best reaction we’ve had out of him yet,” said the nurse, smiling. “Christmas, eh? What can’t it do?”
It couldn’t save Marcie’s life, that’s what Christmas couldn’t do.
It couldn’t bring Tragos home from his endless, endless job. Couldn’t give Kaden the words he needed to talk to his brother. Couldn’t do any of that.
Christmas could go fuck itself, is what Christmas could do.
The days passed by. New Years came and went, Kaden stayed up with the Warmoths but all he could think was, welp, this is the year Marcie’s gonna die.
He told Sniper’s grave as much as he could put into words. In the fence above it, he’d woven a circle of willow, because the internet said that was one of Hecate’s plants and he’d wanted to do something, though he was worried it was not right. Every time he saw it, though, he couldn’t help the tiniest of smiles. He found himself walking past it, every day, brushing his fingers against it the way his uncles used to touch his grandfather’s portrait on their way out the door, a luck thing, a ritual thing. When someone ripped it down a couple of days into the year, he cut another and put it back up.
School went back. Kaden saw signs that Tragos had been around the house when he got home from school. There was some more food in the fridge, for one thing, and he doubted that had been Cy. But he didn’t see Tragos, not till Thursday, when he came home after school and found Tragos asleep on his futon on the floor.
Kaden didn’t think about it before he kicked the side of the mattress. Tragos woke up instantly and he woke up armed, knife in his hand pointing at Kaden before he realised where he was. He blinked at Kaden in exasperation. “Fuck off,” Tragos said, and the knife disappeared, and his voice was heavy with sleep.
“Have you talked to Marcie?” Kaden asked, kicking the bed again.
Tragos lashed out at him again, this time just with his hand. “I’ve got a fucking fight tonight, Kaden, I need a couple hours of fucking sleep.”
Kaden punctuated every word with a kick. “Have. You. Talked. To. Marcie.”
“I’ll fucking end you,” Tragos grabbed Kaden’s foot and tried to throw it sideways, and Kaden overbalanced and sat down on his own bed.
“So you haven’t,” Kaden said, and maybe there was something in his voice, some gravity, some seriousness that it took other people more than fifteen years to gather, some agony, because something made Tragos push himself up on one hand and peered at Kaden.
“Why?”
“Just go see her,” Kaden said. Marcie had said she couldn’t tell him this over the phone. Marcie had asked Kaden how to tell Tragos but oh man, Kaden didn’t know a goddamn thing and he was so mad at himself for this, he aimed another kick at his brother’s bed. “Get off your lazy ass and go see her!”
“Lazy? You have no fucking-”
“Yeah yeah, I don’t know anything! Except I do! I do know something! And you have to get out of bed and go and see Marcie and you have to go and do it RIGHT NOW!” Kaden yelled as he stood up and stormed out, quickly, before the tears could get him. He slammed the bedroom door behind him and he slammed their living room door and he slammed the front door and there weren’t enough doors in the world to slam to make him feel better. He broke into a run as soon as he hit the cold air, the afternoon already dark, and ran as hard as he could. Sometimes, like this, he could escape the tears.
Tragos, slowed down by blankets, couldn’t catch him. Well, he could have if he’d tried, but then what? Make him talk? Nah, Kaden just needed a breather, he'd be alright.
Well, Tragos though, he was awake now, and something was clearly going on. Something Kaden knew and he didn’t, which rubbed him the wrong way, and so, maybe he gave up a few hours of sleep to see Marcie. The thought excited him. As soon as he had this excuse to see her, it was impossible to convince himself he should go back to sleep, or that it looked better if fewer people saw them together after he'd dumped a body for her, or any of that shit.
Tragos sent her a message, then started pulling on clothes.
You home? I got a few hours before I gotta be anywhere.