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Kindness is an abstract.
Nathaniel didn’t know kindness. Not with a father that held up a cleaver and put it to flesh with a smile on his face. (To Nathaniel’s flesh. Fists and feet and steel on his skin, bruises and cuts. Sometimes, the iron scar still aches, burns when he puts his fingers to it. He’s small and he’s scared and his father is the boogeyman. But he’s real. He’s so much worse than the monsters in his closet because his father is real.)
Kindness is for normal families on television, with smiling moms and dads and kids playing with their fluffy dogs in the backyard. Nathaniel doesn’t have a dog. He has knives pushed in to his small hands by a woman with a broken, glacial smile. Nathanial has the sound of steel sinking in to dead meat and live meat with the squeal of piglets as Lola makes him cut and gut and bleed them.
Nathaniel didn’t know kindness. He knew his father’s big hands and his cold knives and the grip of a hand in his hair yanking his head back and forth.
He knew the hard clutch of his mother’s fingers on his upper arms, far away from Baltimore, when he stared across a repurposed stadium with a racquet in his small fists. His mother is not kind either, but she claws and holds and whispers to him “You must not tell them who you are. Here you are Abram. Swear it to me, that you will not tell them.”
He was 8 years old and his mother’s hands left bruises on his upper arms. She wanted to protect him. He nodded and she let him play, let him throw a ball across the court and let him pretend for just an hour that the cold house in Baltimore and the knives and the squealing men in the basement and the dying piglets did not exist.
Nathaniel did not know kindness.
Neither did Riko Moriyama.
The boy was only two years older but hardly an inch taller than Nathaniel. They’d stand by each other and look up at Kevin, tall Kevin with his broad shoulders and his green green eyes that were warm and bright in Evermore’s black, black stadium. Kevin who was tan and smiling and did not see what Nathaniel saw.
The bruises on Riko’s arms. The slow, stilted way he walked on to court as the plexiglass door banged shut behind him. Until adrenaline took hold and he’d race across the polished wood like a viper.
Kevin had his mother and he had Riko and he had Nathaniel every couple of weeks with a racquet in his hand and a desperation to forget. He had kindness.
The trips to the little league games end. Nathaniel is only allowed a racquet when he’s in the dark halls of Evermore, locked in to the court with Kevin and Riko against him.
Nathaniel is 10 when they begin to write numbers on their cheeks. A 2 and a 1, a matched pair, dark haired boys at each other’s sides, one tall and one short. Kevin has lost his smile, because Kayleigh Day is dead and Kevin’s green eyes are cold and they’re sad.
They’re number 1 and number 2, brothers and partners, and Nathaniel hates them with envy in his heart because they have each other and Nathaniel has no one. And he’s glad that Kevin is sad and that he’s lost his kindness because Riko and Nathaniel can’t have it. Why should Kevin? Special, perfect Kevin who never had bruises and who smiled.
Kevin’s chest is bruised, in Evermore’s locker room as they change out of uniforms that are black and red and unnumbered. (It feels like baited breath, those numberless jerseys.)
Kevin is bruised. Nathaniel is happy, and then he’s sad, because Kevin had kindness and now he doesn’t - now he’s just like Riko and Nathaniel, with their bruises and their scars and unhappiness in their lives.
Sometimes, Nathaniel looks at Riko and he thinks he looks like a doll. Glass eyed, his pale skin porcelain, one fall away from shattering to pieces.
Nathaniel is 11 and the master has Riko kneeling in the center of the court. He missed 2 cones in a drill. Nathaniel stands by the goal with a silent, hunched Kevin and they watch as the master’s cane lifts and falls, striking Riko again and again. Nathaniel feels empty, and angry, and cold.
He doesn’t hold Kevin’s hand, even though he thinks Kevin wants to. His fingers brush Nathaniel’s elbow but Nathaniel doesn’t move.
Riko is dry eyed and quiet as Kevin helps him to his feet afterwards, leads him off the court and to the stands. He’s not allowed to leave, not even with a body striped with bruises, a small figure dressed in black with a pale face up in the shadows, watching Nathaniel and Kevin are ordered through the drills.
They don’t miss.
They’re spared the cane.
Riko doesn’t ask for help when they retreat to the locker room, every step slow and wracked with pain. Nathaniel touches his side, where Lola held him down once and Lola cut three narrow lines through the bruise his father’s fist had left on his ribs.
They dress, and there’s a hairline fracture in Riko’s porcelain. Kevin has to help Riko out of his jersey, and then he strips out of his own. His bruises are older, green and yellow and fading, and Nathaniel doesn’t say anything about them. They don’t ask about his scars or his bruises.
It’s not a kindness, it’s an understanding.
“Riko. Are you okay?” Nathaniel bites his lip, wishes he hadn’t said anything at all.
Riko stills, only those dark, glassy doll eyes finding Nathaniel. “I’m fine,” he says, cold and mature. He’s 13 and that seems so terribly old to Nathaniel but 13 is still a kid.
Kevin’s locker slams shut, the sound thundering in the black, black locker room. (It’s black on black on black in Evermore. Like a cave or a dungeon. Nathaniel pictures Riko and Kevin living here day after day. It must be suffocating.)
“You’re not fine,” Kevin says. His voice cracks, but it’s not funny. He’s getting bigger, a little bit taller every time Nathaniel sees him.
He’ll never be big enough to protect Riko, Nathaniel thinks. Not from the master.
Or the master’s cane.
“Shut up,” Riko hisses. It’s a snake sound that leaves Nathaniel in goosebumps, leaves his stomach knotted. It sounds like Lola when she’s angry, when Nathaniel drops his knife during ‘training’ or flinches before cutting the piglet. He wants to tell Kevin to shut up too, but he bites his tongue.
It’s bad to call attention to himself. Riko looks deadly.
“No!” Shut up, Kevin. Stupid Kevin. “It’s not okay! He hurt you-”
“He hurts you too,” Riko says with a dead voice. He sounds tired.
Kevin stands over him, large hands hovering over Riko’s shoulders but not touching. He knows better than to touch because Riko is breaking apartment. They’re matching shades of pale, with their dark hair and dark clothes and black marker numbers on their cheeks. Nathaniel wonders if they’re ever allowed to leave the sunless halls of Evermore, if they go outside. Nathaniel always has to leave for Baltimore, with the big house and his father and Lola and Romero and Jackson - but at least he can taste the sun outside of the castle.
“We have to do something,” Kevin says, almost shouts. H’s all righteous fury and Nathaniel hates him for that noble streak until he reminds himself that Kevin used to know what kindness felt like. Love. Hope. Happiness. He still thinks he can fight, that the world has justice and boys like them deserve better. But Nathaniel knows. Riko knows. “Can’t you call your dad-”
The speed frightens Nathaniel. Riko must be striped from head to toe in swelling, purpling marks but he moves as deadly as he does on the court, slamming in to Kevin. He pulls him down, shoves him in to the black tile floor with a snarl that doesn’t hide the sound of the porcelain cracking more.
“Don’t talk about his father!” The light glints on steel and Nathaniel stills, muscle memory locking him up at the sight of the nothing. The blade is only as long as Nathaniel’s thumb and flimsy, but where it touches Kevin’s neck it still draws a bead of dark blood. Riko straddles Kevin’s chest, shaking with fury, with pain, his free hand bunched into Kevin’s shirt. “I’m fine,” he rasps, sounding like his throat has been squeezed. Nathaniel sounded like that once, when he’d angered Nathan enough to feel his hands at his neck. The bruises had lasted a week and Mary didn’t let him go to school.
“I can play.” Riko looks at Kevin but Nathaniel isn’t sure he’s seeing him. “I can still play and that’s all that fucking matters.”
“R-Riko.” Kevin shakes too, tears in his green eyes that don’t fall. He stares at Riko like he’s never seen him before, afraid to move. Nathaniel doesn’t say anything, wary of attracting Riko’s attention - he has enough knives to deal with at home, and doesn’t want to feel the cold bite of Riko’s either.
The glassy look disappears from Riko’s eyes from one blink to the next and he shoves his smaller body off Kevin, lurching in to the lockers. He hurts again, Nathaniel thinks, hunched and limping as he distances himself away from Kevin. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, wide eyed and lost. He stares at the knife in his hand like he doesn’t remember even pulling it out. “Kevin, I-” He steps towards Kevin, helps him up and Kevin grasps Riko’s hand and goes like Riko didn’t just have him pinned with a blade to his throat. Riko pats him down with trembling fingers, one hand still holding the knife. If Kevin notices, he doesn’t say anything.
Suddenly, Riko’s voice hardens. “Don’t talk about my father.” It’s an order that Kevin mutely nods at.
Nathaniel remembers that Kengo doesn’t talk to Riko, doesn’t visit him. He doesn’t know how he knows this, maybe some quiet conversation he picked up from the adults that he sometimes passes in Evermore’s halls. Nathaniel is small, and he’s quiet - he hears a lot of things.
Kengo is absent and Nathaniel is viciously jealous. He wishes that Nathan would ignore him, pretend he doesn’t exist, that he never fathered a son that he hates. But then maybe Nathaniel would have a Tetsuji too, with a cane and a cold stare.
Riko and Kevin remember Nathaniel is there when he closes his locker as quietly as possible. His jersey and his racquet are tucked away in one of the back lockers the college players don’t use, a promise that Nathaniel will be back. The boys stare at him, pale skinned and dark haired and numbered, a matching set. Nathaniel is jealous, so jealous of their numbers.
His cheek itches, and he thinks about being number 3
Nathaniel is just shy of his twelve birthday when he puts an axe through Nathan’s neck.
It’s not intentional, but it’s not accidental because Nathaniel has a gash about five inches long on his side from his father’s cleaver. He’s in the basement - the basement - and Romero had dropped the axe beside the door before leaving and throwing the door shut behind himself. The fact that it had been placed there at all was a threat.
Nathaniel didn’t think Nathan meant to let him out alive.
He’s not even sure what he did this not, not entirely. The house had been full of adults in their expensive clothes and smelling perfumes and colognes, milling about for one of Nathan’s parties he hosts for appearances sake. The suit his mother had forced Nathaniel in to sticks to his skin now, tacky with blood.
He’d leaned towards Mary, bored and tired, and thinking his voice was soft enough asked when he could go back to Evermore. It had been almost two months.
Nathaniel didn’t like Baltimore, always ducking under his father’s attention and forced in to lessons with Lola. The way she smiled at him, it was hot like the iron that scarred Nathaniel’s shoulder, and slimy. Evermore, even with Tetsuji’s frigid watch over their practice, even with Riko’s fractures and the way he’d taken to carrying a pocket knife everywhere he went, was paradise compared to Baltimore.
His mind was replaying the words in Japanese, because Riko has been teaching him and Kevin. They practice it on the court, shouting plays to each other as Kevin and Riko do their best to get around Nathaniel and get the ball in to the goal. They can smile at each other then, and pretend Tetsuji isn’t watching.
A hush fell as the words left Nathaniel’s mouth. He looked up, ice in his throat, and couldn’t look at his father. He already knew he’d been heard, and Nathaniel didn’t know why talking about Evermore was wrong but he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
A moment later, Mary had looked across the table at the woman sitting there and asked about her knew house. The woman’s perfume smelled like dusty magnolias and it’d been making him feel ill all night, but he couldn’t think about that then, or the food growing cold on his plate. He could feel his father staring him down, and knew the blue eyes they shared would be colorless with hate and his face red with fury. Tension hung like an anvil waiting to fall on Nathaniel’s head.
It didn’t surprise him when Nathan stood from the table as the maid cleared the plates away, taking Nathaniel by the upper arm in a grip so tight Nathaniel barely caught the pained sound in the back of his throat. It’d only be worse if Nathan heard him - if anyone heard him.
Nathan had all but dragged Nathaniel through the house, down the stairs, Nathaniel’s hand going numb from his father’s grip. He wondered how badly it would bruise later.
And then Romero had walked in and set the axe down and Nathaniel wondered if he’d be alive to see the bruises form at all.
Hysterically, Nathaniel wished she’d at least gotten to eat dissert before his father had dragged him down here to finally kill him. The cook had made a peach pie that had left the house smelling fruity all day, and Nathaniel had been looking forward to that small piece of happiness.
He tried to imagine the sweet tart taste as blood dripped down the back of his throat, his nose throbbing from Nathan’s fist. It probably wasn’t broken, but it was gummy and Nathaniel’s eyes watered. He stumbled back from his red faced father, eyes flicking between Nathan’s cold mask of fury and the well sharpened cleaver in his fist.
“Worthless piece of shit,” Nathan spat at him. Spittle hit the concrete floor. Nathaniel trembled against the large sink, hands wrapped around the edge, but he didn’t cry - crying made everything worse. Nathan couldn’t stand the sight of tears on Nathaniel’s face. “You’re never going back to that fucking exy court. You’re good for nothing! ”
Nathan wasn’t a tall man - Kevin, all of 14, was probably taller already, but Nathan is strong and he grabs Nathaniel by his bruised arm and yanked him close. A cry ripped out of Nathaniel, the cleaver slipped beneath his suit jacket and rending through dark cotton and his tender, tender skin, shooting fire up his side. “I’m- I’m sorry,” he stuttered, just a child trying to appease his father’s anger. It never worked.
Nathan’s eyes were like ice chips, mad and inhuman as they stared Nathaniel down. “Fucking pansy,” he growled. Nathaniel trembled, trapped and bleeding and so, so scared. He wished he got to taste the pie. “Couldn’t beat it out of you. Not even Lola could make anything out of you. And now I can’t even pawn your worthless hide to the Moriyamas. You’re of no use to me.”
Nathaniel didn’t know what that meant. Pawned to the Moriyamas? Would he have gotten to leave Baltimore and live with Kevin and Riko? Even with the master there, it had to be better, because Tetsuji only hit Kevin and Riko when they made mistakes. Nathaniel could be good. It wouldn’t be like Baltimore, where he’d get hurt just because he hadn’t stood still enough.
The cleaver was right there and the grip on Nathaniel’s arm was unyielding, but Nathan shoved him away anyway, watching him trip and fall. He liked to stalk his prey, trapped
Blood trickled a hot waterfall down Nathaniel’s side. It hurt. It hurt it hurt just like always and just like always Nathaniel couldn’t bite back the whimper that rushed out of him as he ran across the room. It only incensed Nathan further and he came rushing to Nathaniel, cleaver held over his head and read to come down on Nathaniel. To cut him, bleed him.
Kill him.
Nobody would heat Nathaniel down here, no matter how he screamed or pounded on the door. The basement was padded, sound proofed. He’d die, unwanted and forgotten while everyone sat upstairs, eating the peach pie that Nathaniel wanted to try so badly.
He remembered reaching the door, beating his fist on it. He remembered shouting.
He didn’t remember picking up the axe. He didn’t remember its weight in his small hands.
He remembers the sound of the dulled blade sinking in to Nathan’s neck, sticking in to his spine. It vibrates up the wooden shaft, blade meeting bone, vibrating Nathaniel’s palms. Nathan’s momentum doesn’t stop, keeping him moving with wide eyes and blood pouring from his neck like a geyser. Nathaniel grunts when Nathan’s larger body strike his, arterial blood spraying Nathaniel in the face, on his chest, taking Nathaniel to the ground with the axe still buried in his neck.
Steel shines as it comes down, leaving behind a trail of fire on Nathaniel’s face. Skin parts and drools blood, in to Nathaniel’s eye and for a horrible moment Nathaniel thinks he’s gone blind. That in one last desperate act to hurt Nathaniel, Nathan had taken his eye.
He can’t play Exy if he only has one eye. Why is he thinking about Exy at a time like this? Because everything else is wrong and awful and spinning around him, and Nathan is a dying weight that sputters and gurgles, a wet sound bubbling from his lips. Blood wells at the corners of his mouth, drips down the center of his bottom lip and on to Nathaniel’s face, hot and sticky.
Nathaniel watches, up close, as Nathan’s eyes go dull and his pupils dilate, one last shudder wracking his body before he goes still.
Everything hurts. His nose and his forehead and his side, fire and a throbbing ache, and his father’s body is crushing him. Nathaniel whimpers and wiggles his way free, drenched in blood and using the wall to drag himself upright on trembling knees.
He waits.
Nathan doesn’t move.
Nathaniel steps forward, the toes of his shiny dress shoes smearing the pool of blood, and kicks Nathan.
Nothing.
Cold fingers grasp the axe and Nathaniel pulls, wrenching it out of flesh and bone. The metal leaves flesh with an awful sucking noise and it’s so heavy, so much heavier than when Nathaniel drew it up and struck his father down with it. But he brings it up again, and down. Again. And again. And again.
The back of Nathan’s head is a pulpy mess and the basement reeks of blood and the throat choking sent of exposed brain. Nathaniel is light head and he lets out a dry sob, his throat filled with shards of glass that grind and grate.
It occurs to him in the ringing silence that he’d been screaming as he bashed his father’s skull to pieces and turned his brain matter in to a slushie.
Romero must have been waiting just outside the door, where the sound proofing is weakest, waiting for Nathaniel’s screaming to rise and end. There’s barely enough time for Nathaniel to bring the axe up again when the weighty metal door unlatches and swings open. It stops against Nathan’s sprawled body and for a moment Romero can only stare at it in wide eyed disbelief.
The axe cleaves his skull in two, split between his eyes that roll up in to his head. He shivers, making a strangled sound and then he crumbles, knees first, in the pool of blood, the axe jutting from his head like a horror movie.
Nathaniel leaves him there, leaves Nathan there.
His head feels like it’s underwater, the world around him muffled and wavering. He can’t hear anything, too much pressure in his skull.
His nose hurts.
His forehead hurts.
His chest hurts.
His arm hurts.
There’s blood in his eye and in his mouth and he’s been bathed in it, his fancy clothes sticking to his shaking body.
Nathaniel takes the steps slowly, on his hands, crawling up them, gasping open mouthed and tasting blood, smelling blood. The shards of glass in his throat grind together. It hurts.
He’s laughing. He’s laughing because it’s funny and because it’s awful and because he’s terrified and elated he’s free he’s free he’s free .
Nathan is dead and Nathaniel killed him. Nathan is dead and Nathaniel would do it again.
He wakes with his head stuffed with cotton and his body burning. He’s half upright, the seat beneath him vibrating and jerking, sending pain up his torn side. His face itches, and he reaches up to scratch at it and it comes away with dried blood beneath his nails.
The clothes he wears smell like laundry soap and they don’t stick to his skin like the awful, itchy suit. A baggy t-shirt that might be his but he can’t tell in the dark interior, his favorite sweatpants. They’re black, with a red lined raven on the left leg. Nathaniel fingers the white iron on ‘3’ patch he’d stolen from a store and attached himself in a fit of madness.
Nathaniel can still smell blood. It clings to the lines in his palms, black beneath his fingernails. It’s tacky and flaking on his side, and when Nathaniel lifts his shirt he finds his side haphazardly bandaged, blood slowly seeping through the white gauze.
“Abram.”
Nathaniel looks up, catching his mother’s eyes in the rear view mirror. They’re cold and careful, but Nathaniel knows enough to see the flicker of concern and the well of relief that escapes her when she realizes he’s awake and aware. Her narrow fingers grip the steering wheel with a white knuckled, tense grip.
He blinks, sluggish, looking around and finally grasping that he’s in his mother’s car, the Lexus, buckled in to the center seat where she can keep an eye on him. It’s dark out, winter bared tree skeletons rushing past them as Mary races down the deserted highway.
“Where-” His throat catches, sore and dry.
“Stop talking,” Mary orders. Nathaniel’s mouth shuts with a click of his teeth. When his mother is angry, her accent thickens, too broguish to be posh. Nathaniel cringes to hear it now, knowing what he’s done, the mistake he’s mead. He killed his father. Nathan is dead, Romero is dead. Nathaniel killed them with his father’s axe and he laughed. It felt good to make them bleed and it’s terrifying because it means he’s just like Nathan.
“You will not leave my side, Abram, do you understand me?” Mary is talking again, and Nathaniel has to drag his eyes away from the car window to look at her. It’s snowing outside, and the inside of the car is cold. He wants to ask his mother to turn on the heater, but all he does is nod. His head is heavy, bouncing up and down like a bobble head. All he wants to do is sleep.
He killed Nathan. And Romero. He laughed at their broken bodies and it felt so good to make his father bleed. For once, it was Nathan and not Nathaniel. For once, Nathaniel was the one to walk away.
Mary doesn’t say anything else, just passes a bottle of water back to him that he drains half of in one go. It’s cold and eases his shattered throat, but can’t completely wash out the taste of blood.
He drifts, eyes drooping and body sagging in to the seat. He hurts everywhere, bruised and cut and cotton headed.
Half asleep, Nathaniel listens to his mother speak in soft, rapid tones to someone on her cellphone. Her accent is still crisp, and he thinks he hears her say ‘Stuart’.
He’s so tired.
He wakes up in a motel room, laying on borrowed towels with his shirt gone and Mary kneeling beside the bed. She’s frowning, silent as she pulls back on a bent needle threaded with dental floss. The point of it pierces skin and Nathaniel hisses, alerting his mother to him waking up.
She says nothing, looking sallow, only gives Nathaniel’s shoulder a rough squeeze before returning to her work. Nathaniel knows better than to squirm, biting down on the inside of his cheek until it bleeds and the taste of fresh blood hits his tongue to keep himself quite. Every furrow of his brow tugs on something, and he lifts a hand to touch, coming away with a wince. There’s stitches through his eyebrow, down the side of his face towards his ear.
More scars. It’s the first one on his face, Nathan was always so careful not to do anything that would be visible.
His father is dead.
Nathaniel killed him.
It felt good.
Mary finishes and guides Nathaniel to sit against the headboard, pressing something in to his hands. It’s a paper to go cup from some unknown coffee house, but instead of coffee it’s tea that Nathaniel tastes. He drinks it, holding it in both of his shaking hands.
The hot drink eases his throat, and he’s so tired.
Mary trades the cup for a dry, tasteless sandwich and watches him hawk-like until he’s choked down at least half of it. It sits like a stone in his stomach.
Nathaniel wishes he’d gotten to eat the peach pie.
“Where are we?” he finally asks. There’s only one bed in the motel room. The walls are papered with an ugly fleur-de-lis pattern in dull orange, and it smells like stale cigarette smoke.
“West Virgina,” Mary says after a beat of silence. Nathaniel almost drops the sandwich.
West Virginia. Edgar Allen. Castle Evermore.
Riko and Kevin.
Suddenly, Nathaniel misses the older boys so fiercely it makes his eyes sting. He wants to play Exy with them, he wants to laugh as Riko taunts them both for their terrible Japanese while the ball flies from racquet to racquet and they pretend Tetsuji isn’t watching over them with one hand on his cane.
He wants to see his friends. He wants the night to end. He wants to laugh and cry and sleep and sleep and sleep until Nathan is a bad dream and Nathaniel never felt good about killing his father.
Staying upright hurts, until Mary crushes a pill into a plastic cup of yogurt and forces Nathaniel to swallow it down. The yogurt is too sweet and the fake vanilla gives him a headache, and the crushed pill on top of it is bitter.
If it’s night or day outside, Nathaniel can’t tell because the motel’s black out curtains are pulled. The dim table lamp starts to go fuzzy around the edges and Nathaniel’s wounds begin to numb, disconnecting from his body.
Nathaniel droops again and his mother tells him to sleep.
He wakes. He’s in the car again and Uncle Stuart is leaning in to the back seat through the passenger side door, a hand shaking Nathaniel’s shoulder. “Come on, Natty,” he murmurs. “Up ye get.”
Uncle Stuart looks exhausted, his eyes bloodshot and his normally well styled hair tousled. Nathaniel wants to ask what he’s doing here, but his head is aching and his tongue feels thick in the back of his mouth.
Unbuckling the seat belt takes more effort than Nathaniel imagined. Every shift of his torso as he slides out of the back sends dull heat up his side, and it’s only Stuart’s hand on his elbow that keeps him from tipping over as he puts his feet to the asphalt. He’s wearing his hard bottomed slippers, the ones he hates because they pinch his heel.
There’s no snow on the ground here, and the air tastes humid. It’s dawn, and Castle Evermore is a black monster on the horizon.
Nathaniel’s heart picks up.
His mother and uncle keep to either side of him, Mary’s hand tight on his wrist. It hurts, but Nathaniel doesn’t pull away from it. They descend in to the Nest. Black on black on red, dark and cavernous and suffocating, and for a moment Nathaniel is back in the basement in Baltimore with his father crowding him against the sink and trying to slide his skin off with his cleaver.
He thinks about Nathan and his body and the pool of blood.
Nathaniel walked out of there, Nathan didn’t.
He wants a bath, badly, and his stomach is twisting so tightly he might throw up the sandwich from before.
Someone touches him, someone with a larger, warmer hand that isn’t his mother. Nathaniel drags his eyes up and finds green, green and Kevin’s mouth turned down in to a frown. He says Nathaniel’s name, but it’s only because his mouth moves that Nathaniel knows. His head is full of cotton again.
Riko stands further back in the lounge, his mouth pinched together and his glassy eyes on the hand Kevin keeps on Nathaniel’s shoulder. He looks jealous, but Nathaniel doesn’t know why. Because Kevin is touching him? Nathaniel doesn’t have a number, he’s not part of their matching set, not a 1 or a 2 or even a 3.
“Abram.” Mary lets go of Nathaniel’s wrist and stoops. She looks sad, and scared, and Nathaniel thinks about hugging her. It’s a strange desire - he never hugs his mother. Hugging is for happy kids with normal families on TV shows. Her cold fingers take his face in her hands, her eyes darting back and forth like she’s memorizing him.
“Stay with Kevin and Riko,” she tells him.
Nathaniel frowns. “But you said to stay with you.”
She pets his hair, pushing it back from his face. The red brown hair he inherited from his father, and he hates it because it makes him look like Nathan. His red hair and his colorless eyes and his laughter when he makes someone bleed.
“You’re going to stay with Kevin and Riko now,” she says.
“Until you get back?”
“No, Abram.” Her voice is thick. On Nathaniel’s other side, Stuart is quiet. “You’re going to live here now.”
“But-” Mary’s fingernails dig in to the sides of Nathaniel’s face, gougin skin. He winces and stops talking.
“You’ll be safe here.” Nathaniel can’t speak, because his mother’s eyes look glossy, like she’s going to cry. Mary doesn’t cry, at least Nathaniel has never seen her do it before. She’s always been a strong, icy pillar in the face of Nathan’s wrath and abuse. “They can’t get you in here. All you have to do is be good and play Exy. Listen to Tetsuji. You can do that for me, can’t you Abram?”
Playing Exy with Kevin and Riko, it sounds like a dream. The kind Nathaniel wakes from in the morning and can barely remember, just a faint sense of longing beating in his chest. Right now, he wants to tell Mary to fuck Exy and just take him away from the house in Baltimore forever. Take him to England, take him to the other side of the world. Away from Nathan’s body and all the blood.
“Okay,” Nathaniel mumbles, because he does not argue with his parents - Nathan is dead, Nathaniel killed him. It’s just Mary now. Just Mary, and Nathaniel will listen to her.
She kisses him on the forehead and then she’s gone, disappearing with Stuart in to the Nest’s shadows. Nathaniel shudders and shrugs off Kevin’s large hand, every inch of his body aching and tingling with sickness. They’re staring at him, Kevin looking sad - he always looks sad, but right now he’s even sadder and confused. Riko is blank faced, unreadable as he gets closer.
Nathaniel thinks there’s more fractures in Riko’s porcelain now. His hand is cold - colder than Mary’s like ice - and thin when it takes Nathaniel by the back of the neck. “Come on,” Riko says, his voice barely above a whisper. There’s bruises on his exposed forearms that Nathaniel doesn’t ask about, just like they don’t ask him about his stitched face or the blood caked in his hair, or his Raven sweatpants and slippers that pinch his heels.
He lets Riko take him down the Black Hall, Kevin only a step behind on Riko’s left, past closed doors that must house the college team. Are they asleep, or down at the court, running drills for their 16 hour days?
Riko’s hand is possessive on Nathaniel’s skin, biting in to the back of his neck.
Nathaniel bites his lip. He’s not afraid.
He’s free from Nathan forever and he’s secure in the Nest.
He is not afraid.