Page 28 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
In the awkward alcove of the hallway, tucked between the closet and the bathroom door, it’s okay. He wants to find whatever worm makes up Stagger’s jugular, or carotid artery, and press his forehead against it so he can feel it the way he feels for Tammy’s pulse. Align their heartbeats, or whatever passes for a heartbeat in Stagger’s body, if he has one, because Crane can’t control his pulse on his own. A little kid incapable of regulating emotions without Mommy.
The moment before Crane reaches for him, because god he wants to stop feeling like this, the apartment door whines open and slams shut. Something heavy hits the hardwood.
Crane pulls away quick.
“Crane. You here?” Levi’s footsteps thump into the kitchen. Cabinets bang one after another. What kind of question is that—where else would he be? “First aid kit. Where’d you put it.”
Crane wrestles on his bra and shirt, snatches the kit from the linen closet, and finds Levi in the kitchen, opening a beer with one hand and clutching a wadded-up towel to his shoulder with the other.
“He had a buddy,” Levi says, half turning and dropping the towel to show the murder scene swallowing the left side of his back. “Caught me off guard. Hurts like a bitch.”
Fuck.Levi’s shoulder is black with blood. How long has he beenwalking around like this? The whole drive back down from Maryland, feeding the hive, everything? Crane kicks over a stool from the shitty dining table they don’t use—jabs his finger at it,sit—and goes for the kitchen shears to get the shirt off before remembering they were confiscated two months ago. Fine. He peels up a torn edge of fabric from the wound and rips it until he can toss the whole mess on the floor.
Levi hisses. “I liked that shirt.”
Too late. There’s a perfect four-inch line across the shoulder blade smelling like pennies.
Crane washes his hands, because Levi ending up with an infection isn’t high on the list of things he wants to deal with, shooting a pointed glare across the kitchen. Levi sniffs morosely.
“I didn’t see him, okay? Sue me.” Then: “Hey.” Stagger’s lurking by the fridge. “Forgot to save a piece for you. Little busy.”
Stagger huffs, but Crane shoots him a look too. They can have one of their weird macho stare-downs later, thank you.
Cleaning a wound sucks. It’d be easier in the bathroom, but the room is tiny; easier to avoid staining the grout in the first place than attempt to get down there and scrub it. Bad enough in there as it is. Crane spreads a plastic sheet across the kitchen floor to catch the splatter, but the leaky dribble of homemade saline and diluted blood gets everywhere anyway. At least the wound isn’t visibly dirty. Only a few stray towel fibers.
God. The fibers look like the tiny white worms he’d find while helping Birdie with the garden. He plucks one out with tweezers and holds it up to double-check.
Just linen.
The wound’s too big for butterfly bandages—doesn’t look like it scraped the bone, but it definitely went through all the skin and hit the muscle—and absolutely will not hold with superglue, so stitchesit is. Levi winces into his beer but takes it like a champ. Push the needle through the skin, drag the thread through, pull it taut.
Leaving bloody fingerprints across Levi’s bare back, Crane seethes.
Levi hasn’t eventriedto help. It’d be stupid to expect Levi to be fully on his side; Levi is always going to put the hive first. That’s part of the deal. Crane would put the hive over Levi, too. Butnothing?
It’s not like he wants sappy, saccharine reassurance. If anyone offered soft-boy of-course-I-still-see-you-as-a-man platitudes, spouted “trans men are men” validity circle-jerk shit, or showed him seahorse dad memes, he’d gag. It’s that, okay, look, the hottest thing Levi’d ever done to him was shove his head down on his cock so hard he’d nearly vomited, and all Levi said was, “Come on. Thought you’d take it like a man.”
Crane yanks one of the stitches too hard. Levi grunts into his beer.
The least Levi could do is that. Give Crane something to take. But Levi hasn’t hurt him since that night in the parking lot. Hasn’t pushed him to the ground or left a bruise, not with Stagger breathing down their necks.
What it would take to change that.
Push, drag, pull.
He thinks about Levi ducking his head to Jess’s shoulder. Her dark hair and thin lips and big eyes.
It’s a stretch. It’s a low blow. It’s nonsense.
It’s perfect.
He stitches the last inch, ties off the thread, and cuts it with his teeth because he doesn’t know where the scissors are anymore.
And as soon as the needle is back in the first aid kit, he brings his fist down onto the line of sloppy sutures holding Levi’s newest hole closed.
Levi choke-screams, “Fuck.” The only kind of thing you canget out when your vision’s gone white at the edges. He rockets off the stool like he’s been shot and keels around, grabbing for him uselessly.
In an instant, Stagger bullies into the kitchen. The ever-present protector, of course. Can’t let a little domestic dispute go unchallenged. He jams himself between Crane and Levi with that deep-chest snarl, puts an arm out, ducks his head like some big buck in the snow.
