Page 67 of Freedom
Them and me both, Toby.
~*~
Tobias was floatinghigh, but even before the drugs kicked in, dissolving the pain from the long gashes across his ribs, he’d been feeling surprisingly warm, safe. Good adrenaline burned through him, the fighting high that only came on nights when the hunt was hard and easy at the same time, when Jake looked simultaneously so scared and proud as Tobias helped him up over the body of another monster that would never hurt anyone again.
Tonight, if he’d been a hair slower, the yeti’s claws would have disemboweled him instead of just leaving marks that would probably fade into all the other scars. Every time, it amazed Tobias (and touched him, and made him feel like maybe he was just as good as Jake always said he was) how worked up Jake got over the possibility of one freak killing another if the other was Tobias.
Now he was stretched out on the motel bed, warm and safe and just as happy as he’d ever been, as Jake’s hands (just as warm and just as safe, cautious yet confident over his already-scarred skin) stitched him back together.
Hunts were good. Drugs were good, and Jake’s hands were good. The only thing that didn’t fit, the only flaw in this happiness, was the still-panicked edge under Jake’s voice as he talked, the tight lines of tension around his eyes as he looked down at Tobias’s skin closing up beneath the needle, blood slowly welling through the gap where before it had been freely flowing. He was talking on and on, and Tobias couldn’t follow, not with the dim painless haze in his head, but he understood that Jake was upset, unhappy about Tobias being hurt (but not angry at him). That was just silly.
“Jake,” he said softly, soothingly. “Hey, Jake. It’s okay. It’s all okay. Shit happens, right? And it’s not our fault. You told me that.”
Jake’s mouth twisted a little, amusement fighting through the concern. Maybe Tobias had said it funny because of the drugs. Maybe he hadn’t made sense at all and that was what Jake was laughing at. That was okay. Tobias didn’t mind how he made Jake happy, not when there were so many other things Jake wouldn’t let him do.
“It’s not okay,” Jake said quietly at last, holding Tobias’s gaze. “I’m supposed to take care of you. You’re my responsibility. I did not get you out of that camp just to take you places where you’d get sliced open.”
Tobias started to laugh. It was a full, body-shaking laugh, all helpless mirth, and he could barely feel Jake’s hands holding his sides and hear his alarmed voice saying the stitches weren’t tied yet, “calm down, Toby, breathe.” He tried, he really did, but it took several moments and long gasps of breath before he could regain control.
Then, not sure where the words came from, he said, “Shut up,” affectionately, catching Jake’s neck with his arm to pull him down, close enough to smell sweat and leather andJakeat the crook of his neck.
“Oof,” Jake muttered. “Hold your horses, tiger, gotta get this tied off. Damn, who knew Vicodin would turn you into a Tobiaspus.”
“Wha’s a Tobiaspus?” Tobias asked, hugging him closer.
“Like an octopus, but with more Toby.” Jake shifted, though he could have easily broken Tobias’s hold. “No, seriously, I got to get this wrapped up, just a minute, I promise.”
Tobias reluctantly let him go, but true to his word (Jake always kept his word, most reliable thing in Tobias’s world) Jake returned a moment later to stretch out along Tobias’s uninjured side. Tobias nuzzled his shoulder. “I like you,” he said decisively.
Jake laughed, low, still a little sad but better now. “Thanks, Toby. I like you too.”
“No, I mean it. I like you. An’ I like you even when you make me drive and brake hard and hit you when we spar and don’t let me do things for you. I like you. Not just for gettin’ me out. And that’s important.”
Jake’s hands traced the outline of his face, then slid down to his back, steady and warm. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is.”
~*~
It got easier. Everythinggot easier, really: hunting, talking to people, driving, and even just looking over at Jake while he drove with the windows down and smiling without thinking about it, without being afraid. Some days he could almost believe Jake was right and Tobias truly was a real, like Jake, laughing in the face of that wind, helping people and hunting evil.
Then without warning, he’d hear echoes of the Director’s words. They seized his throat, crawled down his chest, and then he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t lift his head, could only shake and think how very useless he was here, no matter how many monsters he killed or textbooks he read, because he was a freak.
Until one night, after a hunt for a nasty marsh monster in Louisiana, when they were both drained and battered; Tobias was exhilarated (the thrill of shoving a stake through the slimy thing’s heart and knowing it would never hurt someone again) and Jake was stumbling into trees and the side of the Eldorado, his flashlight and gun held in shaking hands.
They had hunted together, they always hunted together, but Jake had insisted on taking more watches, had told him over and over that Tobias could sleep, that he should rest (his voice strained, his eyes dark hollows after looking at one too many pictures of kids with their guts ripped out). Tobias had slept even though his dreams were filled with monsters inside and outside the walls, his eyes opening every hour just to check that Jake was still there, that the pictures hadn’t reached out to devour him yet.
So Tobias was rested, relatively, while Jake stood by the driver’s side door, head down, shoulders rising and falling as though even breathing were a struggle.
Tobias knew what he had to do, what he should do, what Jake might have asked him if he had been thinking straight, though Tobias was beginning to understand that Jake would sooner walk naked into a vampires’ nest than admit he was unfit to get behind the wheel of the Eldorado. Even if he was staring at the Eldorado’s polished chrome as though he’d never seen its like in his life. Tobias took a deep breath—unsteady for a reason beside the hunt they had just finished—and walked around the Eldorado.
“Jake,” he said. “You can take shotgun. It’s just a country road, I can get us back to the highway. For practice.”
Jake stared at him for a second. “Yeah,” he said at last. “Yeah, that’s a good idea, Toby.”
He fumbled the keys out of his pocket and nearly dropped them handing them over. Tobias was suddenly grateful and almost sick with terror-relief. If they had crashed with Jake behind the wheel, Tobias would have known he might have prevented that, even if Jake would never blame him for not taking the keys. He had come to value even his own life because he knew that it mattered to Jake. He valued himself now if only because of how much every bruise of his seemed to cause Jake pain.
Imagining Jake hurt, injured, or dead didn’t bear thinking about. So he didn’t. He just nudged Jake gently into the passenger seat and then settled behind the wheel.
There, he sat and shook for a while. He wanted to believe it was just the adrenaline, the comedown from the hunt (the latest in a line of hunts, the latest hour when he had felt good), but he knew that wasn’t it.
