Safe House

LaVieEnRose

Honestly I should have seen it coming, though I think I still wouldn't have guessed it'd be as bad as it was. All the harbingers were there, though. We'd been at the beach house for two days and everything had been fine, so that should have been our first clue that everything was due to go to shit at some point. We'd found a local dialysis center so Evan didn't have to trek back to the city three times a week, I was gradually adjusting Kinnetik to the idea of me spending more time remote, and Justin spent all of four hours on his easel pulling together a masterpiece that would take any other fucker a lifetime.

So everything was pretty fucking peachy, and then Thursday rolled around, and Evan wasn't feeling well so he was snippy and that made Justin nervous because we're all used to Evan being rainbows and marshmallows even when he's bleeding from the eyes. It's a good sign that he's willing to be an asshole to us when he's feeling bad, because he's spent so many years having to be so fucking accommodating, but at the same time you can't really be short with Justin without him assuming he's done something horrible and falling into a guilt spiral, which may have had something to do with the seizure Justin had later, but more likely that was just God realizing we'd had too many good days and Evan being cranky wasn't enough drama on its own for the Kinney-Taylor clan. It wasn't an awful seizure, but it wasn't great; he didn't lose consciousness, but he did drop, and he was holding a bowl at the time and he hates when he breaks things. He was okay after, but he had a headache worse than his usual and the whole day he was a little bit spacey, needing questions repeated and messing up some of his handshapes in his signs.

I didn't think much of it—seizures aren't exactly the kind of thing we alter our days for around here—and we continued the day as planned, grabbing lobster rolls at this shack down the way and lounging around on the back lawn with margaritas and fucking in the outdoor shower while Evan napped. He'd wanted to see this action movie new release—movies without a lot of dialogue are good for him, easier for him to follow since he doesn't read quickly enough for subtitles—and we agreed because he wasn't feeling well and we're charitable, but it ended up being more graphically violent than we expected and both of us were a little edgy keeping an eye on Justin, who was sprawled out on the floor working with some oil pastels and told us he was fine and he wasn't really paying attention anyway. But it's like I said. All the warnings were there.

It's just that the beach was supposed to be...I don't know. Safe. It's stupid. It's just that it had been a while since Justin had a nightmare that bad.

Even though there are a ton of rooms at the beach house we always end up sharing when we're here, I don't know, and Justin usually sleeps in the middle for an extra bit of insurance against seizing himself off the side of the bed, and because he's a slut, but that night he hadn't felt like hands on him—again, signs—so he'd fallen asleep curled up separate while Evan worked on burrowing his way into my collarbone. He takes meds to sleep on his bad days because he's in pain, and Justin takes them every night because his brain doesn't work, and I'd had a few drinks during the movie, so we were all sleeping pretty hard that night and so God knows how long Justin was trapped in that bullshit before anyone woke up. He's not a quiet sleeper, so I've gotten used to sleeping through some wheezing and rolling and small seizures, and at first I thought that was all this was. I reached over without opening my eyes and put my hand on his back and rubbed in a light circle, which is sometimes enough to get him out of the early stages of a nightmare and doesn't do shit for a seizure but y'know, nothing else does anyway, so why not clear my conscience a bit that I tried.

As soon as I touched him, though, I could feel how hard he was shaking, and it wasn't his usual seizure jerking, where it's unsteady, dramatic. This was small and tense but nonstop and powerful, like I'd accidentally left him on vibrate or something. I thought maybe he was cold—he doesn't regulate temperature well, and his body freaks the fuck out pretty dramatically when he's off by a few degrees—so I pulled the quilt over him and started to pull him closer, and then he screamed.

“Jesus mother of fucking Christ,” I said. “Okay. Okay.”

Justin's normally more of the whimpery than the screaming type for nightmares, but it still isn't as rare as such a thing, you know, should be, but Deaf screaming isn't something easy to get used to, and, well, neither is Justin fucking terrified, for reasons we won't embarrass ourselves going into. I sat up, dislodging an oblivious Evan with nothing more than a small noise of protest, and climbed over Justin to get on the floor by the side of the bed to get the oxygen mask, because he doesn't really have the lungs for the sort of trauma he's been through nowadays. I switched on the lamp by his bed—Evan was already out again and didn't even flinch—and tapped Justin firmly on the collarbone as I pulled the mask over his nose and mouth.

His eyes flew open, but I could tell that he wasn't really with me yet.

Wake up, I signed firmly.

He watched me, chest heaving, still shaking like it was the only thing he knew how to do.

Come back to me now, I said.

It took a long time, a lot of him fighting against the nightmare trying to pull him back under, but finally I saw some awareness in his eyes as they darted over my face like he still wasn't quite sure who I was. I offered my hands so he could pull himself up, and he did, slowly, one hand over the oxygen mask like he would breathe better the harder he pushed it into his face. He was exhaling with his mouth open, these panicky, half-vocalized things, and it reminded me of when Jane starts to cry and she gets so worked up that she screams at some pitch you can't even hear, and it's like it's silent, but she's screaming.

I kissed his cheek.

“He has a gun,” Justin said.

No one has a gun.

“I felt it, I...”

We're at the safe house, bud. Nothing's gonna happen.

“I can't hear.” If you think it doesn't break my heart a little that a part of Justin still thinks something's wrong when he wakes up scared and he can't hear, well.

But I just signed Deaf, and he nodded like that makes sense, like always. He shivered and gagged, and I cupped my hand around the back of his neck.

“God,” he whispered.

Been a while since one was this bad, huh?

He nodded hard and then kind of collapsed in on himself with a sob, and I swallowed and rubbed his back and waited for the tears to dry up so I could coax him back to sleep, like I normally do. Sometimes he doesn't even remember in the morning, though that seemed like a pipe dream this time. Fuck, he wouldn't even stop crying, no matter how long I waited it out.

It's fucking awful, the stuff I can't get to.

After a while it started to seem like he was getting worse instead of better, and I felt like if he kept crying like this he was gonna work himself into either an asthma attack or a seizure, whichever came first. And he was also starting the thing where he apologizes, which pisses me the fuck off, so finally I said, Come on. Change of scenery.

I eased the mask off him and pulled him up in my arms—I don't trust him on the stairs when he's at his least shaky, thanks—and brought him downstairs. Justin was quiet, breathing heavy into my chest and twisting his hand in my shirt, but I could tell he was already starting to calm down. Sometimes you just need to get away from the fucking bed. I set him down when we got to the bottom of the stairs, and he got himself to one of the stools at the counter and put his head in his hands. I turned the lights on low and started making him some tea with a healthy slug of bourbon.

“It's been fifteen years,” Justin said after a while.

I shook my head. None of that. Doesn't matter.

“Yeah, I know.”

Hurting anywhere?

No.

Okay.

He ran his hands down his face. God, I could use a cigarette.

Yeah, I bet. Me too, frankly.

Did I wake up Evan?

He'd be down here if you had.

True. He took a shaky breath in. I'm sorry. For waking you.

I shrugged. Nothing to do tomorrow.

Still.

You want to talk about it?

He shook his head hard.

I put the mug down in front of him. Okay.

He was quiet while he drank, and I wiped down the counters to have something to do besides watch him and listened to his wheezy breathing and the mug trembling against the tile every time he sat it down, and the waves crashing outside. The city seemed very, very far away, and so did everyone we knew, and so did Chris Hobbs.

Just me and Justin for a little while.

It's not always this bad, is it? I asked him, when I couldn't not anymore.

“No.”

Promise.

He looked up at me, his eyes pink and puffy and warm. I promise.

I swallowed. Okay.

He stood up, still unsteady, but better. Let's go outside. I want to smell the ocean.

Just for a minute. You're not getting fucking pneumonia again.

He led me out through the back door, and we sat on one of the lounge chairs facing the beach, him perched carefully between my legs. I scratched circles on his back and tried to remember what I'd been dreaming about before the banshee here woke me up. I remembered feeling vaguely scared, so it must have been something with him.

“What does it sound like?” he asked abruptly.

I turned him so he could see me. You don't remember?

He shook his head.

I looked out at the ocean. Like applause.

He settled back into my arms, and I kissed the back of his neck and felt him breathe.