The cold was still there, on his ass and legs where the denim did little to protect his skin from the icy tile, but Quinn felt very little of it seeping through. His face ran hot with tears, his lashes sticky with salt as he rocked Miki back and forth, rooted together at the base of the toilet’s porcelain sides. Miki’s tears seared Quinn’s neck, burning rivers of grief pouring from his anguish-filled eyes. At one point, Quinn heard the door open, then close quietly soon after, the stilted peace of the bathroom settling down on them again.
“She can’t fucking die.” Miki’s whisper feathered over Quinn’s neck.
“She’s not going to.” It felt like a lie, one he would tell a child after seeing their dog get hit by a car, but Quinn had to believe it. Had to. To think otherwise would change his world too much… too soon… too hard.
“She just fucking can’t,” Miki spat out, hot and furious. Then he broke, catching a sob up in his throat. “I haven’t told her I love her.”
The walls pressed in on them, a flat pewter cage drenching them in shadows. Everything sharpened as Quinn’s mind shook off what little control he had remaining, and the world rushed in all at once. Miki’s shirt rasped over his skin, prickling the hair on Quinn’s arms, and something metal—probably the rivet from a jeans pocket—ticked on the tile floor. Quinn cringed under an assault of smells, everything from the lemon hint of soap on Miki’s skin to the astringent stink of hospital antiseptic burning his nose. He was thankful for the dullness of the stall. Color was the last thing Quinn needed. His eyes would bleed with the loud of it if there was something other than beige and muddy gray. As it was, Miki was an explosion of textures and prickles, a vivid swatch of noise violating all of Quinn’s senses.
Now was not the time for him to lose his shit. It took Quinn one shuddering breath and then another to shove back at the world before it cracked his skin. The two-dimensional flatness receded slowly, reluctant to snap back into reality.
Quinn shifted—or at least he thought he did—his knee made contact with the bowl, and the smack sent pain tingles up into the base of his skull. The pain shot him back, telescoping the stall back to nearly normal, but he resisted the urge to strike himself again.
It was an addicting pain. One he knew well. He still wore a few scars on his arms from a time when he needed pain to feel real… to feel alive. The pain was a siren, seductive and sweet, promising to leave him in a numb reality when he was done.
Thing was, Quinn knew he’d never be done. Not if he fell into that hole again. He’d come too far from its edge. Quinn’d be damned if he danced along its lip once more.
Miki felt small in his arms, shivering as much from shock as the cold. Quinn hiccupped, unable to swallow down the bitter guilt gurgling up from his belly. His brother Ian’d been right. If their mother died, it would be on him. Just like Simon and LeAnne. And he had no way of stopping the killing.
He must have said something under his breath, a murmuring of guilt… something to draw Miki up stiff, because damned if Miki didn’t slide back away from Quinn’s arms, then shove at Quinn’s chest in disgust.
“You didn’t do a fucking thing. Shit, why do you do that to yourself?” The fire was back in Miki’s eyes, gold fallow leaves rich with flames against forest greens and bark. “How many times do you got to hear that, huh? Why doesn’t that shit stick in your head?”
It wasn’t the best place to have that particular conversation. Hell, curled up into one another on the floor of a hospital bathroom stall probably wasn’t the best place to have any conversation, but Miki didn’t seem like he was willing to budge.
Miki was also using the anger to burn off the desolation lurking in his heart. Quinn understood that. He needed some anger of his own.
He just couldn’t find anything but fear.
“Can I borrow a cup of anger?”
The shift on Miki’s expressive face was priceless, and Quinn laughed despite himself… despite the cold. They were sitting wrapped around one another in the ugliest of times, and Miki’s confused head jerk still made Quinn chuckle.
“I think I need to get angry.”
“Yeah, well, shit. I’ve got a lot to spare,” Miki muttered.
He made no move to get away, a sullen, sulky hedgehog reluctant to admit he liked being stroked. They both disliked contact, Miki probably even more so than Quinn, so it felt odd to sit there—just being together—while their mother lay in shattered pieces on a table somewhere close by.
Their mother. Brigid’s heart was large, all-encompassing, and sometimes overwhelming. Often overwhelming, Quinn corrected himself, and two of her worst damaged sat huddled around each other hoping beyond hope she’d pull through to harass them a bit more.