Whatever the Cost (33 page)

“What if I can’t? What if I don’t know how? What if there isn’t enough of me left under all the bullshit to give to him? He deserves better than someone like me.”

“Hey. Timothy is dead,” Clay says seriously. “He’s been dead for a long damn time, but
you’re
still alive. You can do anything you want to, as long as you stop trying to hurt yourself. It’s not your fault he got sick and it’s not your fault he’s gone. Now how about you start being the sort of man he’d want you to be, instead of the kind of douchebag that hides from his problems?”

Liam’s fingers claw at Clay as he loses himself in the embrace for one more precious moment.

“Oh god. I hate this. I’m... scared,” he admits.

Clay gives him a supportive smile as Liam regains his feet and backs off a step, his mouth bloody and right eye preparing to sport a healthy, dark bruise. “He’s gonna be real happy to see you. I think I’m the one should be scared once he sees your face.”

Liam laughs. It’s a bright, honest sound that lifts years of weight from his shoulders. Drawing himself up, gathering his resolve, he nods. “Okay. Let’s go up.”

They take the stairs, slowly. Each step is a battle, and the closer Liam gets to the third floor, the more he wants to give up, be a coward and run the other way. It becomes nearly unbearable. Somehow he makes it. They stand awkwardly at the closed door for a prolonged moment, as Liam is unable to bring himself to knock. Rolling his eyes, Clay warns, “You owe me for the ass whoopin’ your boy’s about to give me.”

Liam nods gravely, going paler by the second which only makes his injuries stand out more starkly. “If you want to take off, I can handle this. Probably.”

“Yeah. Right. I bet it’s real easy to handle confronting a closed door.”

Clay knocks soundly, and his fist is barely able to draw back away from the door when it swings open, revealing Valery Savaria wearing a hugely relieved expression of pure joy. “Oh thank
Christ
,” she swears.

They get a partial glimpse of Jacen struggling to his feet and Yasha behind him before Jacen barrels toward them. Valery gets hastily out of his way before Jacen throws the door open wide. He scans Liam’s face, registering the state of it but unable to stop himself long enough to react to it before he’s scooping him up in his arms, lifting him off the ground and moaning desperately into the side of his neck.

“Maybe we should go,” Valery starts to say, looking to her husband. “Let you two talk....”

Liam returns the embrace, though he holds on to Jacen somewhat more gingerly. At first the apology is too big to voice. It lodges in his throat, threatening to stick there and choke him to death. When Jacen seems unable to relax his grip or put him down, Liam gives in, surrendering. His voice is hushed and shame-filled as he hisses, “I never meant to hurt you.”

Valery waffles, wanting to give privacy, and Jacen shows no sign of letting go of Liam. Yasha speaks up with a much-needed authority as Clay awaits the backlash of Jacen’s anger for hitting Liam. “TJ, put him down. He’s bleeding and we need to make sure he’s okay before you suffocate him.”

The words spur Jacen to action. He sets Liam down but doesn’t let go, merely pulling back enough to be able to see him. Liam’s eyes are downcast, the right one nearly swollen shut, beginning to color with an ugly bruise. His lip is split and bleeding, the flesh there swelling up as well.

“I’m fine,” Liam mutters. “It’s not a big deal. Really. It’s not important.”

“Not important,” Jacen echoes robotically. “I thought you were dead. I thought I’d never see you again! I—I thought—”

Liam catches echoes of Jacen’s nightmares, reflected in his tortured gaze. He hushes softly, “I’m okay, baby.”

“It’s all my fault. You left because of me. Because of what I did. To you. But you came back. You came back to me. I thought I’d lost you. Lee... Lee I was so scared.” His voice breaks apart, cracking, “I was so scared.”

Liam nuzzles against Jacen’s neck and holds on to him more tightly. “It’s okay.”

“I’m so sorry, Lee. Please, I’ll do better. I’ll be better for you. I’ll do anything. Anything, just please don’t leave me. Please. I need you. I love you so much and I’m nothing without you. Without you nothing matters.”

“I love you too. I promise not to leave again. I won’t leave you. Okay?”

“What happened? You’re hurt. Who hurt you? What...?”

Liam tries to dismiss it with a shrugging shake of his head, but Jacen catches his chin, tilts it up so that he can examine Liam’s injured eye, his mouth.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No. Jace, can we not get into it right now? Please? I swear I’m fine. It’s really not a big deal, and it’s kind of my fault anyway.”

“No, I want to know what happened to you,” Jacen frowns. “Do you need to go to the hospital? Do we need to file a police report? Why didn’t you say he was hurt? You said he was fine!” Jacen accuses, shouting at Clay who is still standing behind Liam in the hall.

“That’s because he
was
fine,” Clay argues, riling at Jacen’s anger. “Look, I—”

“We got in a fight,” Liam interrupts before Clay can say anything else. “Me and Clay, downstairs. But we’re cool now. It was an old argument. It was my fault.”

“
You
hit him
?!” Jacen releases Liam, turning to Clay, his fists balling up tightly at his sides, his arms and shoulders tensing, the muscles flexing in preparation.

“Jacen,” Liam says, catching hold of him, pushing him back.

“You fucking
hit him
?! You’re supposed to protect him! What kind of a brother are you? What kind of a
cop
are you, to hit someone when they’re clearly already in pain?! I’ll fucking... I’ll fucking kill you, you piece of shit....”

Liam speaks up, “Yasha, help me! Jacen, stop! It’s not his fault! It’s
my fault
!”

“And you have him making
excuses
for you, too?!” Murder shines red and ready in Jacen’s eyes. Clay says not a word, unwilling to throw Liam’s angry confessions, his professed behavior that night with a stranger, in Jacen’s face in defense of his own actions.

Yasha helps Liam pull Jacen back into the apartment. Some of the other tenants are peeking out from their own doorways now, looking up the stairwell to see what the fuss is about.

“Jacen, please,” Liam sobs, broken, with almost no more fight left in him. “I wanted him to. I was egging him on. I was doing everything I could to get him to hit me; it’s not his fault. He’s my
family
. Don’t hurt him. Please.
Please,
just let it go,” he begs. “Please.”

“I apologize for hurting Liam,” Clay says calmly. “We’ve got a heavy past, and I should have known better. He’s my little brother and I love him, and you two obviously have a lot of talking you need to do, so I’m going to go and give you your space.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Jacen spits. “I don’t want to fucking see your face again and if you lay your goddamn hands on my husband again you’ll fucking regret it. I guarantee it.”

Liam moans. Valery reads the utter lack of strength left in him, the nearness to collapse put off by sheer force of will alone, and winds an arm around him, bringing him to the kitchen to sit. Once she has him seated in one of the few available chairs, she grabs a handful of ice cubes from the freezer, wraps them in paper towels and presses the compress gingerly to his injuries. “Steady,” she says softly to him. “Just breathe. That’s it. Don’t worry about them, okay? We’re gonna take care of you now.”

Yasha plants a hand on Jacen’s chest, pushing him back. “Clay, it was nice to meet you. I promise that Jacen is just acting this way because he’s had a very rough day. My apologies on his behalf.”

“No problem. I’m just glad I was able to find Avery. Take care of him.”

Clay reinforces the words with a heavy stare and turns to leave, descending rapidly back down the three flights of steps. Yasha gets Jacen back inside and shuts the door, standing between him and it.

“Jacen!” Valery calls from the kitchen, leaning over Liam. “Get your head out of your ass!”

The sharp edge to her voice more than anything is what snaps Jacen out of his rage-filled haze. He turns to see Liam shivering faintly with a fearful pallor, his eyes closed and seemingly ready to fall over. The chair and Valery are the only things keeping him upright.

“You need to get the mattress out and ready so we can lay him down and let him rest,” she instructs. “Yash, get Liam a glass of water.”

“I’m fine. I just need a sec,” Liam protests. “Just got kind of dizzy but I’m fine.”

“So you keep telling us,” Valery frowns, watching Jacen hurry to the bedroom to drag their mattress set into place. Yasha returns with a cup of water from the tap and sets it in front of Liam, who doesn’t even register the cup’s presence. There’s a disturbing emptiness behind his barely-opened eyes. It’s a look both Valery and Yasha have seen before in their combined experience with counseling—that of a person who’s pushed themselves past their limit of tolerance for survival’s sake alone, and who’s run out of both the fuel to sustain their course and the ability to maintain a functional state of being. As they watch Liam, and catch each other’s reactions, communicating wordlessly about the things they’ve observed throughout the day and night, they see him gradually come undone. It’s quite subtle and could almost be mistaken for calmness, but as the tension in Liam’s face slowly disappears, smoothing out fine lines around his eyes and mouth, the sense of poorly-masked emptiness only grows. He’s not calming down at all, he’s giving up and mentally breaking apart, letting the stark desperation of his condition wrest loose his hold on things.

I don’t like this
, Valery tells Yasha with a glance.

Neither do I
, he agrees.

The nightmare lasts an eternity. It goes on and on for hours, folding in on itself at times, doubling back, replaying on a loop where the soundtrack is nothing but screaming—bloody, raw, soul-shredding.

Liam has always loved his characters, his creations—the people he becomes for the pleasure of others. They are his haven, the roles that he plays to keep sane, the hard shell of his exoskeleton in which he hides, safe from harm. He clings to them like he clings to nothing else in the whole of his life. No one can take them away. And they are his outlet, his way to bleed out the creeping urges, the simmering curiosities, and the untapped reserves of his consciousness. They are all him, but they are also none of them him.

In the nightmare, he is his creations, each of them in turn.

He’s a punk. He’s a gentleman. He’s a twink.

He’s Leah, in a cornflower blue silk slip of a dress that skims over his thighs like a cool breath. The soft auburn curls of his cascading wig tickle his shoulders, his middle back, and the sides of his neck. His open-toed shoes bite at his feet, but it’s a good kind of pain. He doesn’t mind it. The flowery perfume he’s sprayed on fills his senses, anchoring him to the persona. He’s more at home in her than he’s been in any building he’s routinely slept in as far back as he can remember.

In his mind, he knows the room number. It keeps changing, though. Sometimes it’s twelve, sometimes it’s twenty-one, sometimes it’s one hundred and twelve, and sometimes it’s all of them at the same time. Standing in front of the door, he sees all of the numbers at once and each of them alone.

I’ve been here
, he thinks.
This is the place.

He knocks, slightly alters his pose, composes his expression, shifts his stance, and pushes out his hip, his fake breasts.

When he hears the footsteps approaching from the other side of the door, that’s when the dream splinters.

He’s confident and ready.

He’s panicked and sweating; a voice inside his head yells at him to
RUN! RUN NOW! RUN!

He’s sobbing and stumbling.

The door opens.

There’s a heavyset bald man standing there.

There’s no one standing there.

Dice is standing there.

It shifts back to being the bald man but Liam knows that if he looks too closely at him, his face will melt off and drip down to the carpet and Liam will see who it really is, and if he sees that, he’ll lose his mind. His sanity will break clean off like a rotten limb bearing a too-heavy weight.