Page 18 of Sidhe
“Nathan, you should eat more, you haven’t touched your food.”
“Nathan, what’s in that flask, let me see it?”
“Nathan…”
“Nathan.”
“Nathan?”
With everyone else Nathan wasn’t nearly as agreeable. If Alex or Iain asked him to do something, he’d always pause a minute, look at them like he hadn’t heard what they had said, and they would have to repeat themselves. But with Jim it was instinct. With Sasha it was similar but nowhere near as prominent as the power Nathan’s brother held over him without even trying.
Eventually, Jim started to notice. He was watching Nathan pick at his food again—the healthy appetite he’d had when he first got back had vanished—and he suddenly asked if Nathan would please bring his plate to the kitchen if he wasn’t going to eat anymore. Nathan got up and did so without thought.
When he got back, Jim watched him walk across the bar and asked if Nathan would grab him a drink. A soda. Nathan did. Jim accepted then asked if Nathan could get him water instead. Again Nathan listened and replaced the soda for water. Jim accepted it again, his eyes downturned in a way Nathan didn’t understand. Then Jim asked Nathan to give him his necklace, their father’s wedding ring, something Nathan had taken to habitually wearing around his neck again as soon as he got back.Nathan didn’t even hesitate to undo the chain and hand over his most cherished possession.
Jim didn’t take the ring. “Nathan…what is wrong with you? Do you even know what you’re doing? I’ve been ordering you around for ten minutes and you’ve done everything I asked like a damn drone. No snide remark or ‘go do it yourself, you lazy ass’, nothing. I never asked you to be my General, Nathan. Malak can’t make you be that, so stop acting like this. Stop following orders.” There was venom in the words much as Jim tried so hard not to sound angry with him.
Nathan stood for a minute processing what Jim had said, going over in his mind all the things he had done. He put his necklace back around his neck. “Geez, Jim, I’m finally not complaining that you’re a whiney little bitch and you’re reaming me for it?” The words sounded like him but the tone was flat.
“Nathan, you’re walking around like a robot. It’s been three days and instead of starting to wake up it’s like you’re falling further asleep. Like we’re losing you all over again. You’re not in the Veil. This isn’t the Veil. Stop looking at me like you have to do everything I say or I’ll…” Jim just shook his head; he couldn’t think up something that would befit the Jim that Nathan had dealt with in the Veil.
Nathan could think up plenty. “Well, excuse me, sorry I got so used to guarding my own ass by behaving instead of taking your shit that I’m having a hard time shaking the reflex. Oh, of course I meanMalak’sshit. So sorry I keep screwing that up.” Nathan turned sharply back toward the bar.
“Nathan,” Jim called after him with a twinge of regret and sorrow to replace his own sharpness.
Sasha and Alex were in the bar with them, but Iain kept finding excuses to be in the library, and not only because it honestly needed a lot of work. It had to be hurting the guysomething awful that instead of taking his advice, Nathan was shitting all over it.
“Sorry,” Nathan choked, even though he wasn’t sorry, not like he should be, “I’m just…gonna go up to my room.” He continued his trek to the bar, reached over the top to snag a bottle of Jack, and didn’t look back. It’s not like they didn’t know how he had been coping the last few days.
Three days. Three fucking days and he didn’t feel better, he felt worse. He felt dead.
When Nathan got up to his room, he thought this time would be like all the others, and that even if someone followed after him they would at least give him some time alone first. It was late. They had eaten late because Nathan kept forgetting to eat at all. But this time he wasn’t given any reprieve. He had chucked the cap to the bottle of Jack and was lying back against the headboard taking a long pull when Sasha came in without knocking.
“You know it’s usually better if you mix that with something,” Sasha said with a blank expression, shutting the door and walking in like he meant to stay.
Nathan took another pull. “It’s not fucking Everclear.”
Pain danced through Sasha’s eyes, marring his vain attempt at feigning apathy. “The way you’re drinking it, it’ll probably do the same damage,” he snapped. Snippy. Angry.Hurt. Nathan was getting pretty good at hurting the people he loved. And he almost felt justified in it since as far as his senses had been able to tell they had hurt him for a year.
Then he caught the incubus’ stare again, caught the look in those eyes that had dropped all pretense of being strong, and he had to pull the bottle from his lips for fear of the tears he saw building there drowning him. He set the bottle of Jack on the nightstand. His body was warm from drinking, buzzing, but hewasn’t gone enough that he wasn’t in control. Sweet oblivion was still far off. Of course there were other ways to achieve that.
Sasha came up to the bed as if he meant to fall upon Nathan, but he merely sat on the edge, far enough away that Nathan would have to sit up further if he wanted to touch him. “I don’t know what to say anymore, Nathan. I’ve said it all. So you’re either not listening or it’s so bad…you can’t. And if it is that bad then I don’t know what to do.” He spoke the truth Jim couldn’t, that Jim would never accept, and the tears Nathan had feared would fall began a steady, slow stream down Sasha’s pale cheeks.
There was a part of Nathan that still felt the instinctive urge to brush those tears away, so he clung to that passing feeling, hung on as tight as he could. “Stop trying to do things then,” Nathan said, scooting forward so he could wipe at those tears like he wanted. “Stop talking at me about how it’ll get better and thinking you need to remind me every two seconds that you’re the good guys and I’m safe here. You’re the ones who said I didn’t have to get over this in a day.”
“I know, Nate, but when you look at me…” Sasha closed his eyes and further tears fell, his face pressing into Nathan’s touch, something Nathan hadn’t offered much since he’d been back, “when you look at me…sometimes I can see it. I can see you remembering and seeing me as something…someone that would hurt you. Nathan, I’d never hurt you,” he said as his eyes opened again and he grasped the hand touching his face.
The part of Nathan that still wanted to soothe Sasha knew the incubus’ words were true. But the feelings in Nathan were fleeting, and he had to hang on to them so damn tight it almost hurt.
“I love you, Nathan,” Sasha said again, like he kept saying even though Nathan had yet to say it back. The incubus was waiting to hear those words on Nathan’s lips; it was clearly written acrosshis anguished face and in the way his hand clung to Nathan’s and held it to his skin.
Yes, there were other ways to seek oblivion, and Nathan would have felt guilty for wanting to seek it in Sasha, but he told himself that if it helped, if it dulled the pain enough for even a short time then maybe he could finally start remembering how to be okay.
He scooted closer to Sasha on the bed until their hips touched, turned the hand that was pressed to Sasha’s face into a hold, and drew that face and those full soft lips toward his own.
“Show me,” he whispered, alcohol and the haze of bad memories making anything justifiable now. “Remind me what it’s supposed to be like…”
Chapter 7
