Six Weeks to Recovery (part two)
Jan. 18th, 2012 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeSix Weeks to Recovery Part Two (Part one is here. Read that first.)
Prompt: ‘Weeks’
Summary: Biff gets shot, M.D. falls apart, and Raige reads a lot of books about princesses. Set a few weeks following ‘After the Fall.’ Warnings for self-harm.
Word Count: 17,777
Notes: This story was supposed to be done a long time ago, but things kept adding themselves. For all his dangerous lifestyle, I’ve never written Biff getting really clobbered, while both Raige and M.D. have taken big-time damage in canon. Obviously, this needed to be remedied. Also, I wrote a lot of this either post-op or sick, can ya tell?
Week Four
“Message box is full. Later, please try again. Goodbye.”
Biff hangs up. He didn’t expect an answer, but it was worth a shot.
Outside, the noontime sun hangs overhead. Biff swigs instant coffee and grimaces at the taste. He hasn’t woken up before two in the afternoon in ages, but he’s making an exception.
He shoves a few Tupperware containers into his cooler, then a couple ice packs. Fuck this. It’s been three weeks now; he ain’t letting it slide no more. Either the kid forgot him, in which case he’ll kick her ass, or something worse than getting shot happened to her, in which case he wants to know what it is so he can kick its ass. He still ain’t feeling great, but he’s well enough for the important shit now. He’s mapped out plenty of time to rest.
He slings the cooler over his good shoulder, shoves the Vicodin in his pocket, pats his arm band and his pockets for wallet and keys, and heads out. The bag lady squints out the door at him as he leaves.
“You done with my phone yet?” She demands to know.
He hands it over.
“Who you calling so often? You got a girlfriend or something?”
Biff snorts.
“When you be back?”
“Late. Don’t touch my shit. Here, this is for you.” Since he can’t pull guard dog duty so good right now, he’s been cooking for her. He hands over a Tupperware and makes his way down the stairs. It hurts and he has to lean hard on the rail the whole way down, but finally he makes it.
Biff wishes the kid lied about his healing time. His left arm is mobile, but still pretty stiff, and he still moves with a bad limp to favor his thigh. It’s a mild day in October, too warm for a jacket, which means Biff’s bandages are painfully obvious under his shirt, forcing him to slap on a vanish job so he doesn’t look like a sitting duck. His leg is already starting to throb but fuck it, he’s almost to the subway station, and he’s going to make it to Oasis Valley if it kills him.
As he passes down 34th, he hears a whistle. He doesn’t look up, but a shadow detaches from the alleyway and plants itself in front of him. It turns out to be a muscular woman in sunglasses and a motorcycle jacket—she’s from one of the lower gangs in the area. Force, but mostly drugs, so they aren’t competition, not most of the time anyway.
“Hey, MacGilligan,” she says. “Ain’t seen you on the street in a while; word was you left.”
“Nah,” Biff says, trying not to sound impatient. “Just on vacation.”
“Mm-hmm.” Even with the sunglasses, he can feel her eyes on him, searching. She can’t see through his work, but a lot of people feel something’s up when their eyes lie to them. They just don’t know why. “Some vacation, all right. What you got in the cooler?”
“I ain’t working right now.” And he left the gun at home. “You want something or what?”
She looks at him in long silence, then moves back against the wall, letting him pass. “Watch yourself, boy. You ain’t at your best, I can tell.”
Biff’s already storming by for the C line.
Getting to the ritzy white suburbia Fagboy lives in is an ass; Biff hasn’t been near the area for years, not since he staked out his territory on the south side. He has to take the C to Main Crossing, then take the rail out to Oasis Valley. It turns out he needs more rest to make it than he plans, and thanks to the pusher accosting him, he misses the train just barely, so he has to take the next one, which is standing room only. He survives that, but then his leg gives out on him at Main Crossing, which means he misses the rail. He finally gets to the Valley, rushes the four blocks to the school as much as he can, at a stiff, agonizing hobble, but it’s too late; the school buses are rumbling off.
Biff growls and curses, clutching a stitch in his side and trying to ignore the pounding in his thigh. Great. All the travel for nothing, and now he’s sore, tired, and not sure how he’ll make it back.
Then he hears a blast of noise. When he raises his head, he sees the marching band trooping out to the parking lot. He stands up straight. He smiles through the pain.
Then he goes to find some place to rest until they finish up.
At five-thirty, the white kids in their khaki uniforms troop back into the building with their instruments, then flood out again without them. Biff waits impatiently on the curb, cooler at his feet. He feels better after the rest but doesn’t dare hang around too long; if he wants Fagboy to recognize him, he can’t use another vanish job, and with his worn clothes and two day’s stubble, he’s obvious as a mutt at a dog race. At the moment, he doesn’t want to deal with campus police.
Fagboy isn’t hard to find; he’s taller than most everybody else. He has a pair of drumsticks in his back pocket and his nose buried in a book. Biff can tell the guy is stuck on his own planet, so walks up and plucks the book out of his hands.
Raige looks up, then jumps. “Oh. Um. Hi.”
Biff glances at the book. There’s a princess and a rock man on the cover. He keeps it. “Where’s the kid?”
Raige looks away. “Uh…”
“Look, she told me you can get to the Jaunter’s League. So,” Biff tucks the book under his good arm, “get me there.”
“She’s not seeing anybody. I haven’t seen her in ages.”
“Thought she had you getting me groceries.”
“That was over the phone. I haven’t seen her face to face since…”
He touches the new scar on his chin and lets it hang. They know when he last saw her.
“She’ll see me. You gonna take me there or not?”
Raige looks at Biff like a grenade he’s supposed to take to someone’s dinner party and crosses his arms. “I guess that depends. What exactly do you need to see her for?”
“What do you care?”
“Whether she wants to see me right now or not, she is my best friend and she’s not doing so great. If you need to sort out a groceries deal, I can take care of it.”
“It ain’t about the groceries. Though…” Biff bends over, pops open the cooler, reaches in, and pulls out a jam jar crammed with ones, fives, and an immense amount of change. He lobs it to Raige, who fumbles but catches it. “There. That’s what the receipt said I owed you.”
Raige looks at him suspiciously. “I thought M.D. said you were broke. How did you get this?”
“Don’t matter.”
Raige tries to shove the jar back at him. “I don’t want it.”
“Whatever. I ain’t being in debt to you, Fagboy, and I want to talk to her, not you. Keep it.”
Raige looks at him. He smiles sadly. “She doing that bad?”
“Huh?”
“I worried she was. If you’re so worried you made it all the way out here hurt…”
“I don’t give a fuck about her.”
The smile turns to a sigh of exasperation. “Look, can you just… stop it for a second? I know you and M.D. have this weird… I don’t know, ‘I pretend I hate you so I can like you’ thing going, but that’s really not a game I’m interested in playing right now. If you’re seriously going just to give her hassle, I’m not taking you anywhere.”
Biff scowls, but when he glances over his shoulder, he notices one of the campus security starting to casually amble towards them. He turns back to Raige. “Okay, fine, I want to make sure she ain’t dead. Happy now?”
“Good enough. May I have my book back, please?”
Biff pulls it out and looks at it, flipping through the pages. “The hell is this, anyway?”
“Sword, sorcery, and half-baked Judaism. You wouldn’t like it,” he adds. “It has gay people in it.”
Biff nearly throws the book back at him. Raige catches it.
“Thank you. What’s the cooler for?”
“None of your business.” Biff wipes his hands on his jeans, bends over, and picks it up. “Now how do I get to the Jaunter’s League?”
“You follow me home.” When he sees Biff’s expression, he adds, “I’m not a citizen of the Jaunter’s League; I don’t have one of those jaunt-watches M.D.’s got. All I’ve got is a portal in the washing machine at home.”
Biff stares at him blankly. “The washing machine.”
Raige spreads his hands. “It needed to be somewhere my dad wouldn’t run into it by accident. He never does the laundry, so…” he shrugs. “Washing machine.”
Biff considers making a retort, but he can’t think of anything. Sure, he makes shit vanish, but that’s just freak accident, just another nasty little secret that he thought only he had. Then he met the kid, who uses crazy woo-woo like he uses duct tape. He still isn’t used to the amount of weird that follows her around, and the offhand way it gets implemented half the time. “Whatever. Just get me there.”
Raige heads off towards the parking lot, digs into his pocket for keys. “Well, come on. Home’s not in walking distance.”
And of course, Fagboy would have a Lexus. The seats are leather and everything works and the dash is digital. Still, Biff keeps his mouth shut; he wants to get to the Jaunter’s League, and it’s a relief to sit down.
Raige checks his mirrors, puts on his seatbelt, then turns the car on. “You like Joplin?”
“Her voice is okay, I guess.”
“I meant Scott.”
“She had a brother?”
When the bag lady doesn’t do it by hand in exchange for home cooking, Biff washes his clothes at the Haitian laundromat down the street. The machines are rusty and clank so loudly you can’t hear the soap operas playing, but it’s the cheapest place in town, and hey, they can get blood and motor oil out of boxer shorts.
Raige’s family’s washing machine is about twice as big, and ten times as expensive. It’s fucking digital. The fuck do you need a computer in a clothes washer for?
Raige pushes the buttons for ‘delicates,’ ‘hot,’ and ‘extended cycle,’ then gives the lid a smack. The washer begins to shake and whir, then starts to glow. Biff eyes it suspiciously. It looks radioactive.
“Go on,” Raige says, pulling open the door. Inside is bright light, and even though Biff hasn’t been a practicing Catholic in years, his first impulse is to not go towards it. “It’s kind of unpleasant, going through, but it should be okay. Are you well enough to crawl?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Damned if Biff came this whole way only for his body to crap out on him now.
It hurts like hell, but he manages to get on his back, push himself in, and then use his good arm to pull himself through. Even though he isn’t using his left arm, the core muscles tug on the injuries, and despite the glowing, he half expects to smash the back of his head into the washer wall.
He doesn’t, of course. Instead, the washer drops out from under him. There’s a terrifying moment of free fall, a sickening lurch, and then he’s standing in an oval off-white hallway built at angles that aren’t quite right. His stomach is heaving and his body throbs.
He doesn’t see Raige arrive; suddenly he’s just there.
“You okay?”
“Ngh. Fine. Fuck.”
“Come on. Her room is down this way.”
Biff limps after Raige down the sterile hallway, trying not to stare. All the doors and hallways have no corners, only curves, and everything looks exactly the same, so he can’t tell how Raige knows the way. The place doesn’t look like a nuthouse. It doesn’t look like anything Biff’s ever seen before, except maybe a clean room on TV. The floor is something yielding that soaks up all the noise, and Biff and Raige don’t have anything to say to each other.
After a moment, Raige stops at a door that looks identical to all the others.
“This is hers,” he says. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
“You ain’t coming?”
“She asked me not to see her.” He points to a panel at the side of the door. “This one’s the handle, this one’s the doorbell…”
Biff instantly grabs at the handle section. The door doesn’t open like he expects. Instead, it dissolves with a rush of air, showing M.D. in her room, facing away. Biff hesitates, then moves in before the door changes its mind about existing.
The past few weeks, she hasn’t been looking good, even by her standard, but now, she looks dead. Slouched, staring at the floor, hiding in the voluminous jumpsuit and thick gloves the Jaunter’s League stuffs her in.
She doesn’t look up when Biff comes in. “I told you not to disturb me.”
“Since when did I ever listen to you?” He replies.
For a moment, she manages the energy to be surprised; she jumps and turns to stare at him, and her eyes jolt back into focus. Then her expression fades out again.
“Oh. It’s you.” No disdain. She just sounds blank. “How’s the shoulder?”
He shifts it experimentally. “Sore. Stiff. Shitty.”
“Leg?”
“Worse.”
“Told you.”
He doesn’t respond; he’s looking around her room. It’s small, round, and (Jesus Christ) padded. There are a couple books, a pad on the floor with a blanket, and a couple whitish blobs that might be furniture, and that’s it.
“Damn,” he says, “and you bitch about my place.”
It’s an easy opening line, but all she does is shrug and say, “Your place has no hot water.”
“It ain’t fucking padded. Shit. They let you use scissors in here or what?”
It’s supposed to be sarcastic, but she says nothing.
“‘S like the desert all over again.” The place smells stale, like she ain’t left it in a while. “When’s the last time they let you out of this place?”
“I’ll have you know I’m allowed to leave.” Her voice is flat. “How’s your grocery situation? Raige said he’d been taking care of it.”
“Yeah, yeah, he got me some foo-foo organic shit.” Biff pokes the wall. It feels like putty and it leaves a crawly after-feeling on his skin. He wipes his hand on his jeans. “Tell him to knock it off, it’s fucking expensive.”
“The word is ‘frou-frou,’ and tell him yourself; I’m not your secretary. You can sit down, if you want.”
He looks around, but the amorphous furniture is too shapeless for him to figure out which if any are supposed to be chairs, and she just lets her legs curl up under her so she’s sitting on the floor, so he follows her lead. It’s a relief to get the weight off his feet. The floor doesn’t feel nasty like the walls, but it gives under him, which he doesn’t much care for.
She looks at the cooler. “If you brought the Jungle in that thing, I’m not reading to you.”
“Nah.” He pats it. “Brought you groceries.”
“I have a food synthesizer here, you know.”
“Yeah, but you ain’t eating it. You always eat my stuff, cuz I make it better than anyone else in the state.”
She eyes the cooler expressionlessly. “Yippee skidoo.”
“Wait till you taste it. You ain’t had my mac and cheese yet, I think.” He’s already pulling out Tupperware and silverware. He thrusts the Tupperware at her. “Heat it up.”
She takes it, and a hint of a wince goes over her face. She holds the container with just her fingertips, like it’s burning her skin. Her brow furrows with concentration, but it takes a few minutes for the container to steam up. Sluggish, very sluggish. She’s low on energy, which means he was right about the not eating thing.
He takes the container back from her, opens it up, and starts scooping servings. When he hands her a fork, she holds it at an unnatural angle, not letting her palms touch it.
Biff serves her a gob of macaroni and cheese. “Cutting yourself again, huh?”
For a moment, he thinks he succeeded in getting her angry, but she just slumps and rubs her eyes with one gloved hand. “Don’t call it that.”
“It’s what you’re doing. You want one or two?”
“One. And you know what they say about teenagers who cut themselves and get their stupid mentally diseased carcasses institutionalized. I don’t want to be one of them.”
Biff decides not to mention she already is and that he’s pretty sure kids don’t lose their shit for fun—he didn’t, for sure. He keeps his voice unmoved and starts eating, trying to encourage her to start. “You told Fagboy ‘bout it?”
“No.” She looks at him, eyes hard, and for a moment, he almost recognizes her. “And no matter how many times you bring it up, I’m not going to. I promised him I’d stopped. I’m not about to disappoint him again.”
“What about me?”
“I can’t disappoint you.”
Biff shrugs. No point in denying it. After all, he hangs around her for the same reason. “’Kay.”
She stares at him.
“What?”
“Just… that’s it? ‘Okay’? Aren’t you going to tell me to stop?”
“Yeah, cuz y’know,” he gestures at the padded walls with his fork, “you can do all sorts of shit right now, it’d be just that easy…”
She looks at the room as though only just now realizing where she’s at, and her expression crumples. “God. I’m really not doing so hot, am I?”
Biff shakes his head.
She looks down at her macaroni and cheese with disconsolation. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, really. All I was supposed to do was get you groceries, read you Steinbeck and Sinclair, and I couldn’t even do that…”
“You hear me bitching? You sent Fagboy; you got it taken care of. Shut up and eat your mac and cheese; it ain’t half as good cold.”
She rubs at her eyes with her sleeve and hiccups, but she picks up her bowl and starts to eat. After the first couple bites, a little life comes back into her face, and she starts to wolf it more like she usually does. Biff continues eating and pulling Tupperware out of the cooler.
“Got salad too. And protein smoothie shit, if you can’t keep solids down.”
She looks up. “You made salad?”
“You like that crap. It takes five seconds, and I make good strawberry vinaigrette.”
“Really now.”
“It goes good on nuts, okay?” He holds out the bottle. “Now take it.”
She does, and her tone gets somewhere close to her usual sarcasm. “You need not defend yourself with me. I know you make nothing but the manliest of dishes, all involving the flesh of the innocent that you killed yourself.” She reaches for the jam jars of brownish pink glop. “So what’s in this?”
Biff shrugs. “Strawberries, bananas, yogurt, chocolate protein powder. I use it when I’m too hungover to eat.”
“Charming.” She unscrews the lid, sniffs it suspiciously, gives the edge of the jar a hesitant lick. Then she takes a full gulp. “Huh. Not bad.”
Biff waves a hand. “It’s easy. You could make it yourself even, you got a blender. You should tell Fagboy what the hell’s going on.”
“You should stop smoking, stop binge-drinking, and stop acting like you’re in any position to dispense advice on life.”
Biff grits his teeth, but he pushes on. “He worried ‘bout you.”
“Of course he’s worried about me. I caused him bodily harm in the grip of a violent psychotic episode, and it would be in very poor taste to whine for his help now.”
“Aw please, you give me bodily harm all the fucking time.”
“You volunteer. You’re a violent loudmouth, and Raige is a pacifist. There are a few degrees of separation between the two of you.”
“He can handle it—hell, he hangs around you all the time, I’m surprised he ain’t got beat up before this—”
He sees M.D.’s face, remembers the dent in his apartment wall, and shuts up. They glare at each other and savage their meals for a while. Which is fine with him; M.D.’s better pissed than depressed. Pissed, he can work with.
“Why,” she snarls as she chews, “are you here?”
“You started it. You got me groceries and books and shit. I ain’t being in debt to you any more than Fagboy. Besides, I wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.”
Her head jerks up. “I don’t do that.”
“Uh huh. Thazz why you’re here, I’ll bet.”
“What? I wouldn’t… you don’t think I’d…” she almost laughs. It hurts. “Come on, Biff, you know me better than that. I’m fine.”
“Uh huh.”
She’s getting louder. “Just because I’ve turned into exactly the kind of squirrel food that’s supposed to be kept away from the general public doesn’t mean I’m going to die, all right? I don’t die. They specifically made me not to die.” Her voice is starting to get high. “I’m going to therapy, and I’ve got a job, and I’m going to be just fine.” She glares at him, blinking furiously.
Biff isn’t fazed. “They still letting you work?”
“I’ve got it under control.”
“Sent you home, didn’t they?”
She looks away. “Two weeks ago.”
He nods knowingly and gestures at her hands, where she’s still holding the fork like it’s burning her. “You don’t gotta do that. You need to bleed, you come to me. Don’t do it yourself.”
She raises an eyebrow at him. “That improves the act how?”
“It’s like drinking. S’okay, long as you don’t do it alone.”
“Biff, you always drink alone. And even if I thought beating the stuffing out of each other wasn’t messed up, it doesn’t matter anyway, because now you’ve got ventilated body parts. You look wrecked just from getting here; what, did you forget your painkillers?”
“Didn’t wanna fall asleep getting here.”
“Yeah, well, take some; you look how I feel.”
He shrugs, grabs the pills from his pocket, and washes one down with protein smoothie. The important part was getting here without them, and anyway, he isn’t feeling so great. The burning throb seems to lessen just knowing that soon it’ll be gone. With a contented sigh, he rests his weight on his good arm.
“’Kay, so I ain’t much good for the fight right now. But I mean it. You feel like you gotta hurt, you come to me. Don’t…” he looks around the padded walls. “Shit, what do you do when you don’t do it with me? You just…”
“Go berserk in this padded room until I wear myself out? Yup. Until I learn to keep it from happening, that’s exactly what I do. Great recreation, very wholesome.”
“Jesus. Okay, you gotta stop doing that, cuz… fuck.” Biff knows how busted up she gets after going berserk, and he can’t imagine how much worse it’d be alone in a padded cell with nothing and nobody to distract her and pull her out of it.
“Yeah, well, it’s a lot safer than letting me wander around attacking people. That’s kinda the idea behind mental institutions, to separate the harmless from the harmful. It’s why I’m here.”
Biff rolls his eyes. “Look, you didn’t make it to my place in time is all. Thazz… what, once in six months?”
“Biff, we’re not talking some minor crying fit in the street here, we’re talking—”
“You pounded the shit out of Fagboy once, and if he’d just gotten the fuck out of the way—”
Her voice hits a dangerous hiss. “This is not his fault. The issue isn’t his idea of self-preservation, it’s the fact that I’m violently insane.” She shakes her head. “I’m not letting it happen again. I don’t care what I have to do, I’m going to take these fits and cram them right back where they came from.”
“So you’re cutting yourself.”
“Yup, and you know what? I’d say that’s a far healthier thing than what I’ve been doing.”
“The hell you say. Just because you hit me dosn’t mean you hurt me.” But he can tell this isn’t an argument he’s going to win. The kid is freaked, and the Vicodin will be setting in soon. And anyway, it’s not even the point. He sighs. “If you gonna do that, at least don’t do it alone.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh yeah, because you never do self-destructive things alone, oh no, not you. You never drink yourself unconscious, certainly not regularly. At least my coping mechanism won’t give me liver damage.”
Any minute now, he’s going to lose his patience and try to do something stupid, like hit her, and all this work will be for nothing. He wrestles his temper down, tries to think of a way to get through to her. Then he remembers how she got him to take the books. “How ‘bout a bet?”
She pauses. Looks at him suspiciously. “A bet?”
“Sure. I stop drinking, you stop hurting yourself alone. Same terms as the old bet. Whoever caves first owes help on the job for the other. Deal?”
He puts out a hand. She stares at it, then at him.
“You. Stop drinking.”
“Uh huh.”
“You’re serious.”
“Yeah I’m serious, you gonna say yes or not?”
She pauses, then grabs his hand so hard it hurts and shakes. “Deal.”
He nods and goes back to his food, acting like he’s not relieved she went for it. “All right. Stop hanging ‘round here all day and come do shit with me instead. I can move ‘round now, but my arm’s still fucked to shit.”
“Told you it wouldn’t be better in a month.”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up. So I can use you. I got a couch, I got shit for you to do, shit that’s better than cutting yourself. I ain’t going nowhere; I’ll be home all week, pretty much.”
“Stop it.”
“What?”
“Just… stop it.” She rubs the bridge of her nose. “Stop being nice to me. I come to you specifically because you don’t pity me.”
Biff snorted. “I ain’t being nice to you. I’m just making sure you don’t kick it. I’d have to find someone else to beat on for fun.”
“Dang it, Biff, I’m not going to do that anymore.”
“Sure you ain’t.” Then he gets up—not without effort—snatches his cooler, and swaggers out the door like it doesn’t hurt. “Eat the food. See you ‘round, kid. Still got your book.”
He can feel her glare on the back of his neck but he doesn’t look up. He hopes the challenge works; pissing her off means at least she’ll do something, and he isn’t much good at helping any other way.
Then he goes out the door and sees Fagboy, and he gets another idea, a better one because he knows it’ll help and piss her off. Double win.
Fagboy jumps to his feet immediately. The gay princess book is under his arm, but he obviously wasn’t reading it. He sees Biff’s smile and his brow furrows. He opens his mouth to ask.
Biff doesn’t let him. “She lied to you,” he says casually. “She cutting herself again; you should—”
But he doesn’t have to say anything else; Fagboy’s already gotten the fire in his eyes and slammed through the door.
Biff waits till he hears M.D.’s voice raised, then nods to himself. Yeah, they’re going to be just fine.
He puts his back to the wall, awkwardly to favor the bad side, and lets himself slide to the floor. The Vicodin is coming on now, and he’s starting to feel sleepy and fuzzy. There’s nothing for him to do for a while anyway, so he lets the pills work their magic and nods off. The noise doesn’t bother him; he sleeps through car alarms and domestic disputes all the time, back home.
He jerks awake when Raige comes back out. He looks calm, though worried.
“Hey. Sorry I kept you waiting.”
Biff grunts noncommittally, and tries to give Raige an offended glare when he stoops for the cooler.
“I got it,” Biff says, but it sounds a little drugged up even to him, and he gets to his feet only on the second try. At least Fagboy doesn’t offer to help.
“She pissed?”
One side of Raige’s mouth turns up. “At me? A little. Mostly at you.”
Biff smiles. “Good.”
Raige starts moving, and Biff follows, because normally his sense of direction is pretty good, but right now he can’t remember the way for the life of him. His shoulder hums a dull displeasure, but it feels unimportant.
The portal lurch is even worse on painkiller and Biff stumbles. He makes it through, though, and the dizziness fades in a couple seconds, leaving a lingering queasiness in the back of his throat. Crawling out of the washer is an ordeal, but he makes it, and he leans on it for support until Raige comes out.
Raige heads up out of the laundry room. Biff takes a second to shake off the nausea and pain, which is just as well, because when Raige opens the door, he hastily shuts it again.
“Crap. Dad’s home.”
Normally, Biff wouldn’t be fazed, and he isn’t particularly concerned, thanks to the Vicodin. But he knows through long experience that his vanishing gets steadily crappier when he’s tired, hurt, or high, and now he’s all three. He tries to ease his mind into that balance that lets him disappear, but it slips and slides away from him, and he just can’t get up the gumption to fix it. Really, all he wants to do is sleep.
But Fagboy is back. “He’s gone upstairs. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Which is fine. There aren’t that many explanations for why someone like him would be in Raige’s laundry room, and Biff isn’t interested in tackling old man Unnigrutt. From everything he’s heard, the old fart can be pretty high energy. Which Biff definitely isn’t right now.
Somehow, they get Biff out. By this point, it’s taking all his concentration just to stay upright and moving, and once they’re outside, Raige asks, “Do you need a ride home?”
“No,” Biff says automatically. Then he remembers where he is, and what condition he’s in, and for a moment, he contemplates the monumental task of staggering his drugged way through Oasis Valley to the rail. Getting on the fucking rail. And then switch trains, and fuck, then he has to cart his ass through the rough part of the south side all the way home… on the fourth floor.
He sighs. At least the Vicodin sedates his pride. “Yeah.”
Raige already has his keys out.
They’re silent on the ride. Biff is no big talker, even when he’s fully awake, and Raige probably has plenty on his mind.
When they stop at a red light, Raige asks, eyes still on the road, “Why did you tell me?”
“Uh?”
“About what she was doing. Why did you tell me?”
“To piss her off.”
“What?” There’s a hint of steel in the voice, which is unusual enough that Biff manages to pry his eyes open. Raige is staring at him now, not angry yet but getting there.
An explanation isn’t required, but he’s on drugs, so he talks. “She hadn’t left that room in ages. I can’t do comfort and shit, but I can piss her off. Mad, at least she’ll do something. And you can do comfort and shit.”
That makes Raige blink, but he relaxes and turns back to the road, shaking his head. “So you told me.” He chuckles incredulously. “God, you two are just too much sometimes. Why didn’t you just—”
“Cuz I’m shit at it. And she won’t let me.”
“What do you mean, she won’t—”
“Look,” Biff interrupts, getting annoyed. “You the good guy. I’m the bad guy. ‘Kay? So I can’t do that shit for her. You can, but when she say ‘don’t come back,’ you listen to her, even when you shouldn’t. She had us both going.”
“So… since you’re the ‘bad guy,’ you know when not to listen to her, and since I’m the ‘good guy,’ I’m the one who can actually help.”
“Uh huh.”
Raige shakes his head again, but this time, it’s not with incredulity. “I don’t believe you.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t. You can help. I mean, don’t get me wrong, your disguise as raging asshole is ironclad, but you got her to talk to me for the first time since… since she fell.” He fingers the scar on his chin. “I never did thank you for that, so… thank you. For keeping me from getting hurt worse, and for keeping her from hurting anyone else by accident. And for finally giving me an excuse to come to the Jaunter’s League and really talk to her, instead of just waiting around agonizing.”
Biff doesn’t know what to say. Finally, he defaults. “Whatever, Fagboy.”
Raige shrugs. “Suit yourself. Can’t blame me for trying.”
“Why’d you get me those fucking groceries?”
“You were just saying I’m the ‘good guy.’” Sarcasm isn’t Raige’s usual. Huh. “Is it possible, just maybe, that I thought it was the decent thing to do?”
Biff snorts. “Ain’t nobody that good. I used to beat on you for your lunch money, Fagboy.”
“Well, yeah, but you haven’t done that in years. Anyway, I figured that if you didn’t get it from me, you’d get it from someone else, in a way that might get people hurt. It’s not that much money to me; it’s not a big deal.”
Biff just stares at him and waits.
Raige sighs. “Okay, fine, M.D. asked me to.”
Biff laughs. He isn’t offended; it’s good to see Fagboy act something like a normal human being for once.
Raige jumps. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh.”
“’S the Vicodin. Does shit to me.”
“I know, M.D. told me it’d soften you up, but Jesus. It’s kind of creepy, no offense.” Pause. “How’s your shoulder?”
“It fucking hurts. Stop asking like that’ll make it stop.”
They drive, the street lights and neon glowing over Raige’s features.
“I’m never going to understand the two of you,” he says, finally.
“Nobody asked you to,” Biff says amiably, and passes out in the passenger seat.
Week Four, Day Two
M.D. crawls through his window and glares at him.
“You told him,” she accuses. “I can’t believe you frogging told him.”
Biff chortles nostalgically. “Yup.” He adds olive oil to the pan. “You like eggplant? I got eggplant.”
“Sodomize your eggplant! Now Raige’s forgiven me, and he’s visiting all the time, being concerned and caring and I swear to god, if he’s nice to me one more time I’m going to murder him. What is wrong with him, why can’t he realize I’m a horrible person—”
“That reminds me, he gave me back my money, snuck it into my cooler when I passed out in the car. Make him take it back.”
“I’m not your frogging secretary! Do it your own stupid self! God, I hate you.”
“I hate you too. Go get me some fucking cumin and then you can read more of that jungle book for me.”
She goes and gets him some fucking cumin, and then she reads more of the Jungle to him.
Week Five
The moment she comes in through his window, he knows. Her posture is slumped, defeated, exhausted in the way she never was in the PIN cells. She’s still in the Jaunter’s League jumpsuit she hates.
She doesn’t tell him. She just looks up at him with a broken expression and holds up her hand. It’s bandaged.
He shrugs. “’S okay. We’ll try again.”
And they play gin and poker and read Upton Sinclair until the sun comes up.
--cont in Part Three
Prompt: ‘Weeks’
Summary: Biff gets shot, M.D. falls apart, and Raige reads a lot of books about princesses. Set a few weeks following ‘After the Fall.’ Warnings for self-harm.
Word Count: 17,777
Notes: This story was supposed to be done a long time ago, but things kept adding themselves. For all his dangerous lifestyle, I’ve never written Biff getting really clobbered, while both Raige and M.D. have taken big-time damage in canon. Obviously, this needed to be remedied. Also, I wrote a lot of this either post-op or sick, can ya tell?
Week Four
“Message box is full. Later, please try again. Goodbye.”
Biff hangs up. He didn’t expect an answer, but it was worth a shot.
Outside, the noontime sun hangs overhead. Biff swigs instant coffee and grimaces at the taste. He hasn’t woken up before two in the afternoon in ages, but he’s making an exception.
He shoves a few Tupperware containers into his cooler, then a couple ice packs. Fuck this. It’s been three weeks now; he ain’t letting it slide no more. Either the kid forgot him, in which case he’ll kick her ass, or something worse than getting shot happened to her, in which case he wants to know what it is so he can kick its ass. He still ain’t feeling great, but he’s well enough for the important shit now. He’s mapped out plenty of time to rest.
He slings the cooler over his good shoulder, shoves the Vicodin in his pocket, pats his arm band and his pockets for wallet and keys, and heads out. The bag lady squints out the door at him as he leaves.
“You done with my phone yet?” She demands to know.
He hands it over.
“Who you calling so often? You got a girlfriend or something?”
Biff snorts.
“When you be back?”
“Late. Don’t touch my shit. Here, this is for you.” Since he can’t pull guard dog duty so good right now, he’s been cooking for her. He hands over a Tupperware and makes his way down the stairs. It hurts and he has to lean hard on the rail the whole way down, but finally he makes it.
Biff wishes the kid lied about his healing time. His left arm is mobile, but still pretty stiff, and he still moves with a bad limp to favor his thigh. It’s a mild day in October, too warm for a jacket, which means Biff’s bandages are painfully obvious under his shirt, forcing him to slap on a vanish job so he doesn’t look like a sitting duck. His leg is already starting to throb but fuck it, he’s almost to the subway station, and he’s going to make it to Oasis Valley if it kills him.
As he passes down 34th, he hears a whistle. He doesn’t look up, but a shadow detaches from the alleyway and plants itself in front of him. It turns out to be a muscular woman in sunglasses and a motorcycle jacket—she’s from one of the lower gangs in the area. Force, but mostly drugs, so they aren’t competition, not most of the time anyway.
“Hey, MacGilligan,” she says. “Ain’t seen you on the street in a while; word was you left.”
“Nah,” Biff says, trying not to sound impatient. “Just on vacation.”
“Mm-hmm.” Even with the sunglasses, he can feel her eyes on him, searching. She can’t see through his work, but a lot of people feel something’s up when their eyes lie to them. They just don’t know why. “Some vacation, all right. What you got in the cooler?”
“I ain’t working right now.” And he left the gun at home. “You want something or what?”
She looks at him in long silence, then moves back against the wall, letting him pass. “Watch yourself, boy. You ain’t at your best, I can tell.”
Biff’s already storming by for the C line.
Getting to the ritzy white suburbia Fagboy lives in is an ass; Biff hasn’t been near the area for years, not since he staked out his territory on the south side. He has to take the C to Main Crossing, then take the rail out to Oasis Valley. It turns out he needs more rest to make it than he plans, and thanks to the pusher accosting him, he misses the train just barely, so he has to take the next one, which is standing room only. He survives that, but then his leg gives out on him at Main Crossing, which means he misses the rail. He finally gets to the Valley, rushes the four blocks to the school as much as he can, at a stiff, agonizing hobble, but it’s too late; the school buses are rumbling off.
Biff growls and curses, clutching a stitch in his side and trying to ignore the pounding in his thigh. Great. All the travel for nothing, and now he’s sore, tired, and not sure how he’ll make it back.
Then he hears a blast of noise. When he raises his head, he sees the marching band trooping out to the parking lot. He stands up straight. He smiles through the pain.
Then he goes to find some place to rest until they finish up.
…
At five-thirty, the white kids in their khaki uniforms troop back into the building with their instruments, then flood out again without them. Biff waits impatiently on the curb, cooler at his feet. He feels better after the rest but doesn’t dare hang around too long; if he wants Fagboy to recognize him, he can’t use another vanish job, and with his worn clothes and two day’s stubble, he’s obvious as a mutt at a dog race. At the moment, he doesn’t want to deal with campus police.
Fagboy isn’t hard to find; he’s taller than most everybody else. He has a pair of drumsticks in his back pocket and his nose buried in a book. Biff can tell the guy is stuck on his own planet, so walks up and plucks the book out of his hands.
Raige looks up, then jumps. “Oh. Um. Hi.”
Biff glances at the book. There’s a princess and a rock man on the cover. He keeps it. “Where’s the kid?”
Raige looks away. “Uh…”
“Look, she told me you can get to the Jaunter’s League. So,” Biff tucks the book under his good arm, “get me there.”
“She’s not seeing anybody. I haven’t seen her in ages.”
“Thought she had you getting me groceries.”
“That was over the phone. I haven’t seen her face to face since…”
He touches the new scar on his chin and lets it hang. They know when he last saw her.
“She’ll see me. You gonna take me there or not?”
Raige looks at Biff like a grenade he’s supposed to take to someone’s dinner party and crosses his arms. “I guess that depends. What exactly do you need to see her for?”
“What do you care?”
“Whether she wants to see me right now or not, she is my best friend and she’s not doing so great. If you need to sort out a groceries deal, I can take care of it.”
“It ain’t about the groceries. Though…” Biff bends over, pops open the cooler, reaches in, and pulls out a jam jar crammed with ones, fives, and an immense amount of change. He lobs it to Raige, who fumbles but catches it. “There. That’s what the receipt said I owed you.”
Raige looks at him suspiciously. “I thought M.D. said you were broke. How did you get this?”
“Don’t matter.”
Raige tries to shove the jar back at him. “I don’t want it.”
“Whatever. I ain’t being in debt to you, Fagboy, and I want to talk to her, not you. Keep it.”
Raige looks at him. He smiles sadly. “She doing that bad?”
“Huh?”
“I worried she was. If you’re so worried you made it all the way out here hurt…”
“I don’t give a fuck about her.”
The smile turns to a sigh of exasperation. “Look, can you just… stop it for a second? I know you and M.D. have this weird… I don’t know, ‘I pretend I hate you so I can like you’ thing going, but that’s really not a game I’m interested in playing right now. If you’re seriously going just to give her hassle, I’m not taking you anywhere.”
Biff scowls, but when he glances over his shoulder, he notices one of the campus security starting to casually amble towards them. He turns back to Raige. “Okay, fine, I want to make sure she ain’t dead. Happy now?”
“Good enough. May I have my book back, please?”
Biff pulls it out and looks at it, flipping through the pages. “The hell is this, anyway?”
“Sword, sorcery, and half-baked Judaism. You wouldn’t like it,” he adds. “It has gay people in it.”
Biff nearly throws the book back at him. Raige catches it.
“Thank you. What’s the cooler for?”
“None of your business.” Biff wipes his hands on his jeans, bends over, and picks it up. “Now how do I get to the Jaunter’s League?”
“You follow me home.” When he sees Biff’s expression, he adds, “I’m not a citizen of the Jaunter’s League; I don’t have one of those jaunt-watches M.D.’s got. All I’ve got is a portal in the washing machine at home.”
Biff stares at him blankly. “The washing machine.”
Raige spreads his hands. “It needed to be somewhere my dad wouldn’t run into it by accident. He never does the laundry, so…” he shrugs. “Washing machine.”
Biff considers making a retort, but he can’t think of anything. Sure, he makes shit vanish, but that’s just freak accident, just another nasty little secret that he thought only he had. Then he met the kid, who uses crazy woo-woo like he uses duct tape. He still isn’t used to the amount of weird that follows her around, and the offhand way it gets implemented half the time. “Whatever. Just get me there.”
Raige heads off towards the parking lot, digs into his pocket for keys. “Well, come on. Home’s not in walking distance.”
And of course, Fagboy would have a Lexus. The seats are leather and everything works and the dash is digital. Still, Biff keeps his mouth shut; he wants to get to the Jaunter’s League, and it’s a relief to sit down.
Raige checks his mirrors, puts on his seatbelt, then turns the car on. “You like Joplin?”
“Her voice is okay, I guess.”
“I meant Scott.”
“She had a brother?”
…
When the bag lady doesn’t do it by hand in exchange for home cooking, Biff washes his clothes at the Haitian laundromat down the street. The machines are rusty and clank so loudly you can’t hear the soap operas playing, but it’s the cheapest place in town, and hey, they can get blood and motor oil out of boxer shorts.
Raige’s family’s washing machine is about twice as big, and ten times as expensive. It’s fucking digital. The fuck do you need a computer in a clothes washer for?
Raige pushes the buttons for ‘delicates,’ ‘hot,’ and ‘extended cycle,’ then gives the lid a smack. The washer begins to shake and whir, then starts to glow. Biff eyes it suspiciously. It looks radioactive.
“Go on,” Raige says, pulling open the door. Inside is bright light, and even though Biff hasn’t been a practicing Catholic in years, his first impulse is to not go towards it. “It’s kind of unpleasant, going through, but it should be okay. Are you well enough to crawl?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Damned if Biff came this whole way only for his body to crap out on him now.
It hurts like hell, but he manages to get on his back, push himself in, and then use his good arm to pull himself through. Even though he isn’t using his left arm, the core muscles tug on the injuries, and despite the glowing, he half expects to smash the back of his head into the washer wall.
He doesn’t, of course. Instead, the washer drops out from under him. There’s a terrifying moment of free fall, a sickening lurch, and then he’s standing in an oval off-white hallway built at angles that aren’t quite right. His stomach is heaving and his body throbs.
He doesn’t see Raige arrive; suddenly he’s just there.
“You okay?”
“Ngh. Fine. Fuck.”
“Come on. Her room is down this way.”
Biff limps after Raige down the sterile hallway, trying not to stare. All the doors and hallways have no corners, only curves, and everything looks exactly the same, so he can’t tell how Raige knows the way. The place doesn’t look like a nuthouse. It doesn’t look like anything Biff’s ever seen before, except maybe a clean room on TV. The floor is something yielding that soaks up all the noise, and Biff and Raige don’t have anything to say to each other.
After a moment, Raige stops at a door that looks identical to all the others.
“This is hers,” he says. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
“You ain’t coming?”
“She asked me not to see her.” He points to a panel at the side of the door. “This one’s the handle, this one’s the doorbell…”
Biff instantly grabs at the handle section. The door doesn’t open like he expects. Instead, it dissolves with a rush of air, showing M.D. in her room, facing away. Biff hesitates, then moves in before the door changes its mind about existing.
The past few weeks, she hasn’t been looking good, even by her standard, but now, she looks dead. Slouched, staring at the floor, hiding in the voluminous jumpsuit and thick gloves the Jaunter’s League stuffs her in.
She doesn’t look up when Biff comes in. “I told you not to disturb me.”
“Since when did I ever listen to you?” He replies.
For a moment, she manages the energy to be surprised; she jumps and turns to stare at him, and her eyes jolt back into focus. Then her expression fades out again.
“Oh. It’s you.” No disdain. She just sounds blank. “How’s the shoulder?”
He shifts it experimentally. “Sore. Stiff. Shitty.”
“Leg?”
“Worse.”
“Told you.”
He doesn’t respond; he’s looking around her room. It’s small, round, and (Jesus Christ) padded. There are a couple books, a pad on the floor with a blanket, and a couple whitish blobs that might be furniture, and that’s it.
“Damn,” he says, “and you bitch about my place.”
It’s an easy opening line, but all she does is shrug and say, “Your place has no hot water.”
“It ain’t fucking padded. Shit. They let you use scissors in here or what?”
It’s supposed to be sarcastic, but she says nothing.
“‘S like the desert all over again.” The place smells stale, like she ain’t left it in a while. “When’s the last time they let you out of this place?”
“I’ll have you know I’m allowed to leave.” Her voice is flat. “How’s your grocery situation? Raige said he’d been taking care of it.”
“Yeah, yeah, he got me some foo-foo organic shit.” Biff pokes the wall. It feels like putty and it leaves a crawly after-feeling on his skin. He wipes his hand on his jeans. “Tell him to knock it off, it’s fucking expensive.”
“The word is ‘frou-frou,’ and tell him yourself; I’m not your secretary. You can sit down, if you want.”
He looks around, but the amorphous furniture is too shapeless for him to figure out which if any are supposed to be chairs, and she just lets her legs curl up under her so she’s sitting on the floor, so he follows her lead. It’s a relief to get the weight off his feet. The floor doesn’t feel nasty like the walls, but it gives under him, which he doesn’t much care for.
She looks at the cooler. “If you brought the Jungle in that thing, I’m not reading to you.”
“Nah.” He pats it. “Brought you groceries.”
“I have a food synthesizer here, you know.”
“Yeah, but you ain’t eating it. You always eat my stuff, cuz I make it better than anyone else in the state.”
She eyes the cooler expressionlessly. “Yippee skidoo.”
“Wait till you taste it. You ain’t had my mac and cheese yet, I think.” He’s already pulling out Tupperware and silverware. He thrusts the Tupperware at her. “Heat it up.”
She takes it, and a hint of a wince goes over her face. She holds the container with just her fingertips, like it’s burning her skin. Her brow furrows with concentration, but it takes a few minutes for the container to steam up. Sluggish, very sluggish. She’s low on energy, which means he was right about the not eating thing.
He takes the container back from her, opens it up, and starts scooping servings. When he hands her a fork, she holds it at an unnatural angle, not letting her palms touch it.
Biff serves her a gob of macaroni and cheese. “Cutting yourself again, huh?”
For a moment, he thinks he succeeded in getting her angry, but she just slumps and rubs her eyes with one gloved hand. “Don’t call it that.”
“It’s what you’re doing. You want one or two?”
“One. And you know what they say about teenagers who cut themselves and get their stupid mentally diseased carcasses institutionalized. I don’t want to be one of them.”
Biff decides not to mention she already is and that he’s pretty sure kids don’t lose their shit for fun—he didn’t, for sure. He keeps his voice unmoved and starts eating, trying to encourage her to start. “You told Fagboy ‘bout it?”
“No.” She looks at him, eyes hard, and for a moment, he almost recognizes her. “And no matter how many times you bring it up, I’m not going to. I promised him I’d stopped. I’m not about to disappoint him again.”
“What about me?”
“I can’t disappoint you.”
Biff shrugs. No point in denying it. After all, he hangs around her for the same reason. “’Kay.”
She stares at him.
“What?”
“Just… that’s it? ‘Okay’? Aren’t you going to tell me to stop?”
“Yeah, cuz y’know,” he gestures at the padded walls with his fork, “you can do all sorts of shit right now, it’d be just that easy…”
She looks at the room as though only just now realizing where she’s at, and her expression crumples. “God. I’m really not doing so hot, am I?”
Biff shakes his head.
She looks down at her macaroni and cheese with disconsolation. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, really. All I was supposed to do was get you groceries, read you Steinbeck and Sinclair, and I couldn’t even do that…”
“You hear me bitching? You sent Fagboy; you got it taken care of. Shut up and eat your mac and cheese; it ain’t half as good cold.”
She rubs at her eyes with her sleeve and hiccups, but she picks up her bowl and starts to eat. After the first couple bites, a little life comes back into her face, and she starts to wolf it more like she usually does. Biff continues eating and pulling Tupperware out of the cooler.
“Got salad too. And protein smoothie shit, if you can’t keep solids down.”
She looks up. “You made salad?”
“You like that crap. It takes five seconds, and I make good strawberry vinaigrette.”
“Really now.”
“It goes good on nuts, okay?” He holds out the bottle. “Now take it.”
She does, and her tone gets somewhere close to her usual sarcasm. “You need not defend yourself with me. I know you make nothing but the manliest of dishes, all involving the flesh of the innocent that you killed yourself.” She reaches for the jam jars of brownish pink glop. “So what’s in this?”
Biff shrugs. “Strawberries, bananas, yogurt, chocolate protein powder. I use it when I’m too hungover to eat.”
“Charming.” She unscrews the lid, sniffs it suspiciously, gives the edge of the jar a hesitant lick. Then she takes a full gulp. “Huh. Not bad.”
Biff waves a hand. “It’s easy. You could make it yourself even, you got a blender. You should tell Fagboy what the hell’s going on.”
“You should stop smoking, stop binge-drinking, and stop acting like you’re in any position to dispense advice on life.”
Biff grits his teeth, but he pushes on. “He worried ‘bout you.”
“Of course he’s worried about me. I caused him bodily harm in the grip of a violent psychotic episode, and it would be in very poor taste to whine for his help now.”
“Aw please, you give me bodily harm all the fucking time.”
“You volunteer. You’re a violent loudmouth, and Raige is a pacifist. There are a few degrees of separation between the two of you.”
“He can handle it—hell, he hangs around you all the time, I’m surprised he ain’t got beat up before this—”
He sees M.D.’s face, remembers the dent in his apartment wall, and shuts up. They glare at each other and savage their meals for a while. Which is fine with him; M.D.’s better pissed than depressed. Pissed, he can work with.
“Why,” she snarls as she chews, “are you here?”
“You started it. You got me groceries and books and shit. I ain’t being in debt to you any more than Fagboy. Besides, I wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.”
Her head jerks up. “I don’t do that.”
“Uh huh. Thazz why you’re here, I’ll bet.”
“What? I wouldn’t… you don’t think I’d…” she almost laughs. It hurts. “Come on, Biff, you know me better than that. I’m fine.”
“Uh huh.”
She’s getting louder. “Just because I’ve turned into exactly the kind of squirrel food that’s supposed to be kept away from the general public doesn’t mean I’m going to die, all right? I don’t die. They specifically made me not to die.” Her voice is starting to get high. “I’m going to therapy, and I’ve got a job, and I’m going to be just fine.” She glares at him, blinking furiously.
Biff isn’t fazed. “They still letting you work?”
“I’ve got it under control.”
“Sent you home, didn’t they?”
She looks away. “Two weeks ago.”
He nods knowingly and gestures at her hands, where she’s still holding the fork like it’s burning her. “You don’t gotta do that. You need to bleed, you come to me. Don’t do it yourself.”
She raises an eyebrow at him. “That improves the act how?”
“It’s like drinking. S’okay, long as you don’t do it alone.”
“Biff, you always drink alone. And even if I thought beating the stuffing out of each other wasn’t messed up, it doesn’t matter anyway, because now you’ve got ventilated body parts. You look wrecked just from getting here; what, did you forget your painkillers?”
“Didn’t wanna fall asleep getting here.”
“Yeah, well, take some; you look how I feel.”
He shrugs, grabs the pills from his pocket, and washes one down with protein smoothie. The important part was getting here without them, and anyway, he isn’t feeling so great. The burning throb seems to lessen just knowing that soon it’ll be gone. With a contented sigh, he rests his weight on his good arm.
“’Kay, so I ain’t much good for the fight right now. But I mean it. You feel like you gotta hurt, you come to me. Don’t…” he looks around the padded walls. “Shit, what do you do when you don’t do it with me? You just…”
“Go berserk in this padded room until I wear myself out? Yup. Until I learn to keep it from happening, that’s exactly what I do. Great recreation, very wholesome.”
“Jesus. Okay, you gotta stop doing that, cuz… fuck.” Biff knows how busted up she gets after going berserk, and he can’t imagine how much worse it’d be alone in a padded cell with nothing and nobody to distract her and pull her out of it.
“Yeah, well, it’s a lot safer than letting me wander around attacking people. That’s kinda the idea behind mental institutions, to separate the harmless from the harmful. It’s why I’m here.”
Biff rolls his eyes. “Look, you didn’t make it to my place in time is all. Thazz… what, once in six months?”
“Biff, we’re not talking some minor crying fit in the street here, we’re talking—”
“You pounded the shit out of Fagboy once, and if he’d just gotten the fuck out of the way—”
Her voice hits a dangerous hiss. “This is not his fault. The issue isn’t his idea of self-preservation, it’s the fact that I’m violently insane.” She shakes her head. “I’m not letting it happen again. I don’t care what I have to do, I’m going to take these fits and cram them right back where they came from.”
“So you’re cutting yourself.”
“Yup, and you know what? I’d say that’s a far healthier thing than what I’ve been doing.”
“The hell you say. Just because you hit me dosn’t mean you hurt me.” But he can tell this isn’t an argument he’s going to win. The kid is freaked, and the Vicodin will be setting in soon. And anyway, it’s not even the point. He sighs. “If you gonna do that, at least don’t do it alone.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh yeah, because you never do self-destructive things alone, oh no, not you. You never drink yourself unconscious, certainly not regularly. At least my coping mechanism won’t give me liver damage.”
Any minute now, he’s going to lose his patience and try to do something stupid, like hit her, and all this work will be for nothing. He wrestles his temper down, tries to think of a way to get through to her. Then he remembers how she got him to take the books. “How ‘bout a bet?”
She pauses. Looks at him suspiciously. “A bet?”
“Sure. I stop drinking, you stop hurting yourself alone. Same terms as the old bet. Whoever caves first owes help on the job for the other. Deal?”
He puts out a hand. She stares at it, then at him.
“You. Stop drinking.”
“Uh huh.”
“You’re serious.”
“Yeah I’m serious, you gonna say yes or not?”
She pauses, then grabs his hand so hard it hurts and shakes. “Deal.”
He nods and goes back to his food, acting like he’s not relieved she went for it. “All right. Stop hanging ‘round here all day and come do shit with me instead. I can move ‘round now, but my arm’s still fucked to shit.”
“Told you it wouldn’t be better in a month.”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up. So I can use you. I got a couch, I got shit for you to do, shit that’s better than cutting yourself. I ain’t going nowhere; I’ll be home all week, pretty much.”
“Stop it.”
“What?”
“Just… stop it.” She rubs the bridge of her nose. “Stop being nice to me. I come to you specifically because you don’t pity me.”
Biff snorted. “I ain’t being nice to you. I’m just making sure you don’t kick it. I’d have to find someone else to beat on for fun.”
“Dang it, Biff, I’m not going to do that anymore.”
“Sure you ain’t.” Then he gets up—not without effort—snatches his cooler, and swaggers out the door like it doesn’t hurt. “Eat the food. See you ‘round, kid. Still got your book.”
He can feel her glare on the back of his neck but he doesn’t look up. He hopes the challenge works; pissing her off means at least she’ll do something, and he isn’t much good at helping any other way.
Then he goes out the door and sees Fagboy, and he gets another idea, a better one because he knows it’ll help and piss her off. Double win.
Fagboy jumps to his feet immediately. The gay princess book is under his arm, but he obviously wasn’t reading it. He sees Biff’s smile and his brow furrows. He opens his mouth to ask.
Biff doesn’t let him. “She lied to you,” he says casually. “She cutting herself again; you should—”
But he doesn’t have to say anything else; Fagboy’s already gotten the fire in his eyes and slammed through the door.
Biff waits till he hears M.D.’s voice raised, then nods to himself. Yeah, they’re going to be just fine.
He puts his back to the wall, awkwardly to favor the bad side, and lets himself slide to the floor. The Vicodin is coming on now, and he’s starting to feel sleepy and fuzzy. There’s nothing for him to do for a while anyway, so he lets the pills work their magic and nods off. The noise doesn’t bother him; he sleeps through car alarms and domestic disputes all the time, back home.
He jerks awake when Raige comes back out. He looks calm, though worried.
“Hey. Sorry I kept you waiting.”
Biff grunts noncommittally, and tries to give Raige an offended glare when he stoops for the cooler.
“I got it,” Biff says, but it sounds a little drugged up even to him, and he gets to his feet only on the second try. At least Fagboy doesn’t offer to help.
“She pissed?”
One side of Raige’s mouth turns up. “At me? A little. Mostly at you.”
Biff smiles. “Good.”
Raige starts moving, and Biff follows, because normally his sense of direction is pretty good, but right now he can’t remember the way for the life of him. His shoulder hums a dull displeasure, but it feels unimportant.
The portal lurch is even worse on painkiller and Biff stumbles. He makes it through, though, and the dizziness fades in a couple seconds, leaving a lingering queasiness in the back of his throat. Crawling out of the washer is an ordeal, but he makes it, and he leans on it for support until Raige comes out.
Raige heads up out of the laundry room. Biff takes a second to shake off the nausea and pain, which is just as well, because when Raige opens the door, he hastily shuts it again.
“Crap. Dad’s home.”
Normally, Biff wouldn’t be fazed, and he isn’t particularly concerned, thanks to the Vicodin. But he knows through long experience that his vanishing gets steadily crappier when he’s tired, hurt, or high, and now he’s all three. He tries to ease his mind into that balance that lets him disappear, but it slips and slides away from him, and he just can’t get up the gumption to fix it. Really, all he wants to do is sleep.
But Fagboy is back. “He’s gone upstairs. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Which is fine. There aren’t that many explanations for why someone like him would be in Raige’s laundry room, and Biff isn’t interested in tackling old man Unnigrutt. From everything he’s heard, the old fart can be pretty high energy. Which Biff definitely isn’t right now.
Somehow, they get Biff out. By this point, it’s taking all his concentration just to stay upright and moving, and once they’re outside, Raige asks, “Do you need a ride home?”
“No,” Biff says automatically. Then he remembers where he is, and what condition he’s in, and for a moment, he contemplates the monumental task of staggering his drugged way through Oasis Valley to the rail. Getting on the fucking rail. And then switch trains, and fuck, then he has to cart his ass through the rough part of the south side all the way home… on the fourth floor.
He sighs. At least the Vicodin sedates his pride. “Yeah.”
Raige already has his keys out.
They’re silent on the ride. Biff is no big talker, even when he’s fully awake, and Raige probably has plenty on his mind.
When they stop at a red light, Raige asks, eyes still on the road, “Why did you tell me?”
“Uh?”
“About what she was doing. Why did you tell me?”
“To piss her off.”
“What?” There’s a hint of steel in the voice, which is unusual enough that Biff manages to pry his eyes open. Raige is staring at him now, not angry yet but getting there.
An explanation isn’t required, but he’s on drugs, so he talks. “She hadn’t left that room in ages. I can’t do comfort and shit, but I can piss her off. Mad, at least she’ll do something. And you can do comfort and shit.”
That makes Raige blink, but he relaxes and turns back to the road, shaking his head. “So you told me.” He chuckles incredulously. “God, you two are just too much sometimes. Why didn’t you just—”
“Cuz I’m shit at it. And she won’t let me.”
“What do you mean, she won’t—”
“Look,” Biff interrupts, getting annoyed. “You the good guy. I’m the bad guy. ‘Kay? So I can’t do that shit for her. You can, but when she say ‘don’t come back,’ you listen to her, even when you shouldn’t. She had us both going.”
“So… since you’re the ‘bad guy,’ you know when not to listen to her, and since I’m the ‘good guy,’ I’m the one who can actually help.”
“Uh huh.”
Raige shakes his head again, but this time, it’s not with incredulity. “I don’t believe you.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t. You can help. I mean, don’t get me wrong, your disguise as raging asshole is ironclad, but you got her to talk to me for the first time since… since she fell.” He fingers the scar on his chin. “I never did thank you for that, so… thank you. For keeping me from getting hurt worse, and for keeping her from hurting anyone else by accident. And for finally giving me an excuse to come to the Jaunter’s League and really talk to her, instead of just waiting around agonizing.”
Biff doesn’t know what to say. Finally, he defaults. “Whatever, Fagboy.”
Raige shrugs. “Suit yourself. Can’t blame me for trying.”
“Why’d you get me those fucking groceries?”
“You were just saying I’m the ‘good guy.’” Sarcasm isn’t Raige’s usual. Huh. “Is it possible, just maybe, that I thought it was the decent thing to do?”
Biff snorts. “Ain’t nobody that good. I used to beat on you for your lunch money, Fagboy.”
“Well, yeah, but you haven’t done that in years. Anyway, I figured that if you didn’t get it from me, you’d get it from someone else, in a way that might get people hurt. It’s not that much money to me; it’s not a big deal.”
Biff just stares at him and waits.
Raige sighs. “Okay, fine, M.D. asked me to.”
Biff laughs. He isn’t offended; it’s good to see Fagboy act something like a normal human being for once.
Raige jumps. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh.”
“’S the Vicodin. Does shit to me.”
“I know, M.D. told me it’d soften you up, but Jesus. It’s kind of creepy, no offense.” Pause. “How’s your shoulder?”
“It fucking hurts. Stop asking like that’ll make it stop.”
They drive, the street lights and neon glowing over Raige’s features.
“I’m never going to understand the two of you,” he says, finally.
“Nobody asked you to,” Biff says amiably, and passes out in the passenger seat.
Week Four, Day Two
M.D. crawls through his window and glares at him.
“You told him,” she accuses. “I can’t believe you frogging told him.”
Biff chortles nostalgically. “Yup.” He adds olive oil to the pan. “You like eggplant? I got eggplant.”
“Sodomize your eggplant! Now Raige’s forgiven me, and he’s visiting all the time, being concerned and caring and I swear to god, if he’s nice to me one more time I’m going to murder him. What is wrong with him, why can’t he realize I’m a horrible person—”
“That reminds me, he gave me back my money, snuck it into my cooler when I passed out in the car. Make him take it back.”
“I’m not your frogging secretary! Do it your own stupid self! God, I hate you.”
“I hate you too. Go get me some fucking cumin and then you can read more of that jungle book for me.”
She goes and gets him some fucking cumin, and then she reads more of the Jungle to him.
Week Five
The moment she comes in through his window, he knows. Her posture is slumped, defeated, exhausted in the way she never was in the PIN cells. She’s still in the Jaunter’s League jumpsuit she hates.
She doesn’t tell him. She just looks up at him with a broken expression and holds up her hand. It’s bandaged.
He shrugs. “’S okay. We’ll try again.”
And they play gin and poker and read Upton Sinclair until the sun comes up.
--cont in Part Three
no subject
Date: 2012-01-18 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-18 05:51 pm (UTC)Why aren't you doing the crowdfunding thing again?
Lack of demand.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-18 05:28 pm (UTC)--Rogan
no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 11:48 pm (UTC)A wasted afternoon (not with this), and now I'm going out to Sushi & Singing in the Sukkah, and when I get back I'd bloody well better stay off the machine if I want to get some sleep tonight.
... All means I won't get to Part Three till tomorrow.