Page 18 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Right there. There’s the motherfucker who did this to him. That’s the man who came in him, whose cock knocked him up and put him here.
Does he know? He has to. Why else would he be here.
The man with the worms under his skin and the neck gaiter pulled up, unnaturally still, watches.
Crane is aware that all he needs to do is talk to the hive. Get out of the car and walk into that dark back room and unravel himself. He is such a good follower. He has enacted every order and given every piece of himself to this. He is grateful for everything.I’m sorry, his expression will say,I should have come to you first. Please help me.
But his teeth are chattering.
He throws open the door and steps out into the gravel.
Levi pushes away from the truck, spreading his hands like Crane’s reaction to all this isn’t perfectly reasonable or, at the very least, hadn’t been telegraphed two years in advance. “So were you gonna just let me find the test in the trash or what?”
He takes the first step into range, and Crane yanks the pipe from the car frame and swings.
The problem is that Crane bought this pipe after Harry suggestedhe might have an easier time getting lug nuts off his tires with extra leverage, more length on the wrench, so it’s long and light and completely hollow. If Crane had thought this through any, he could’ve gone for the actual lug wrench, or the still-bloody hammer wrapped up in his go bag, but all that is in the trunk and pregnancy brain, hormones,I’ll kill you, the panic nausea is creeping up his throat and he isn’t thinking right.
The first hit connects right at the cheekbone, makes a dull sound, and smacks the cigarette clean out of his mouth. Levi grunts, stumbles, slaps a hand over his cheek where a snag in the iron ripped the skin.
The second hit doesn’t land.
Levi bodies Crane against the back door. Smashes him against the car with his full weight. The pipe clangs against the gravel. “What thefuck—”
Crane can’t fight his way out. Even with everything Levi taught him. He’s so tired and Levi is so much stronger, and usually he’d twist this around as a fetish thing—what’s that one video he has bookmarked?Merciless Male Domination, that—but Levi is actually really for-realhurtinghim, and yeah, most of the time he likes it but—
“Let go.”
Levi does. Instantly.
Crane collapses.
“He’s fine,” Levi says above him.
The man with the worms under his skin is there now, backlit and towering, taller than Levi and broader across the shoulders. Crane presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until they’re about to burst.
“He’s fine,” Levi’s saying, and “Wait, you—” and “Fuck, fuck.”
Crane knows he’s making some stupid animal noise, but he can’t stop, can’t make himself shut up.
“Look,” Levi says, “he’s fine. I didn’t hurt him, I didn’t hurt the baby. See? It’s fine.”
Crane crams his wrist into his mouth because if he doesn’t bite down, he’s going to scream. The red marks turn black like the perforated half-moon in the crook of Levi’s thumb.
Get me pregnant and I’ll kill you.
I’ll kill myself.
The man with the worms under his skin shoulders Levi out of the way and gets on the ground, puts himself on Crane’s level, and pulls him close. All Crane’s muscles are rigid. Curling him up like a bug. He’s hyperventilating and trying to get his fingers under the skin of his face to tear it off.
He should’ve set himself on fire. The swarm should’ve let him do it.
“Shh,”the man says, peeling nails away from skin.“Shh.”
It’s not a baby inside him. It’s barely not a blastocyst. According to the website he’d been looking at a few hours ago, a nine-week fetus (it can’t have been longer than nine weeks, itcan’t) is a wet insect, a grub waiting for a cocoon. Crane can’t rip away his skin, so his hands flap helplessly, over and over. The man doesn’t stop him. Just holds him.
You call it a baby only if you want it.
Back over at the truck, Levi’s got his shotgun. He makes it cough up all its shells and pockets them, one red cylinder after the other. The sharp glance he cuts at Crane is obvious. Levi’s not stupid. He remembered that night in the back seat. A sharp line of blood runs down his cheek.
