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He’s rattled. He must be rattled. Things knocked loose when his skull got fractured.
Nothing’s real. He’s lost himself. Lost track of everything. It can’t be real. It—
He came up from under the Earth, he came up, he saw the surface, he breathed the sweet air— or did he? Is he still buried? Dead and buried.
Is this hell? Is he wrong? Does God really exist? God God, the unloving God from the bible, always looking for a way to punish.
He blinks, trying to blink away the fires of hell that climb the walls in front of him.
He came out from under the Earth— he said goodbye to Alfie and came up from under the Earth. Crawled up into the Bacchanalian orgy. All drink and bare limbs and John—
John is still here, beside him, in hell with him.
He blinks again. Hell becomes a room with white walls, a bed.
In front of him is—
He blinks.
It’s him, isn’t it? The darkhaired beast working away between pale thighs. Him or—
Is it his dad?
If it’s hell it could be. That man was never going to end up anywhere else.
‘Tommy—?’ he hears John say, voice like a child’s, pale eyes wide as pits in a pale face.
It echoes in his head, becomes another voice, the drunken, beaten, confused mewling of ‘Tom’ and ‘What’s happening?’ and ‘It hurts.’ It deepens, becomes the voice of the Devil himself. ‘If you don’t do it, my boy, I’ll cut his fucking throat. Don’t think I won’t.’
What he had seen, what he had witnessed, the abomination. His father’s way of keeping his mouth shut. Stopping him telling their mum. Their mum would have done something. She would have gotten Uncle Charlie and they would have done something.
It would have been their dad that got fished out of the cut.
It would have been him too, after, if she ever knew.
Arthur was her baby, her little prince, for all everyone else always said she loved him best instead.
There’s a little noise. A tiny little noise. A tiny voice caught in the back of a throat.
It’s not pleasure he hears. It’s a sob of pain, of fear—
Something snaps.
It’s not him, he was little more than a child, not this broad, full-grown man he sees before him, and it’s not his dad, because his dad is dead. No. No. It’s—
Someone else has dared to transgress.
There is a moment, a moment between him standing in the doorway and him standing over the dark-haired, rat-faced man, his fist striking, striking, pulverising. He knows there is a moment. He does not experience the moment, doesn’t remember it, ceased to exist in the time it takes to grab and haul away and hurt.
There is a thing to be done. A duty to commit.
Recompense.
A vengeance to get, a small vengeance, the only vengeance he can reach for.
His dad is dead and he is—
But still, as that fist slams into that dark-haired face again and again and again he sees his own face staring up at him, his own face crumbling away, swelling and splitting and bleeding.
The things he has done.
The thing he did.
The knife in his dad’s hand, held to Arthur’s long, skinny throat. ‘If you don’t do it, my boy—’
‘He doesn’t mean it,’ Arthur had tried to tell him, at first, before the old man’s fists had started to rain down, had knocked him silly, and then had raised the bottle of gin and made the other drink until the last sense was gone from him. Until he didn’t even know where he was, what was happening. ‘He doesn’t mean it—’
Of course the old man fucking meant it.
That’s why he’d had to— there was no choice. The blade had dug in, a little rivulet of red had run down and pooled in the curve of those protruding collarbones.
A sin shared between them, him and his dad. Him where his dad had been just before, still hot and red and swollen.
He’d never even had a girl before. He’d never—
He’d never forgiven Arthur for those words. ‘He doesn’t mean it.’ Still trying to tell himself that it was love, that their dad would never hurt him, all the while their dad was gnawing away at his very soul.
The way Arthur used to flinch when their dad got close— Flinch and then wince, condemning himself for the way his body knew what their dad was, that what he was doing was a cruelty, was sadism, was abuse and not love— even if his mind refused to recognise it.
Arthur was twenty-four before he ever went after a girl. Twenty-four. He, himself, has been fifteen when he’d felt he could try— not quite John’s precocious thirteen, but still of the right kind of age. Not twenty-four. But then— Their dad had ruined Arthur, damaged him, but ruined Arthur.
Maybe that’s a lie. Maybe it has ruined him too.
Elsie Cummings, the first girl he went after himself, fucked, had long, straight, light auburnish hair, pale green eyes, a little waist but no tits to speak of. He’d fucked her from behind and thought of someone else and felt ruined himself.
Even Grace, sometimes. From behind, kissing the back of her long, slender neck.
Ruined.
‘Tommy! TOMMY!’ John is shouting, bellowing.
‘I can’t find Arthur! Tom, I can’t find Arthur!’ that’s what had greeted him when he came up from under the Earth. John, come back from talking to the lad, frantic. ‘I can’t find Arthur.’
They’d found Arthur all right.
His legs are still long, slender like the rest of him. Still so easily spread.
All those years—
He has hated his brother, but as his other brother, as John, tries desperately to pull him off the man he has pinned down, the man whose face is more pulp than flesh, he realises he’s hated his brother because he couldn’t face hating himself.
He should have taken that knife and stuck it in their dad instead.
Pretended it was his cock and used it to ruin the man the way his real cock had stabbed into—
It’s amazing the things you can live with, the sins you can commit and keep going. He’d learnt that years before the war. It had just been confirmation. The human animal is a selfish one, always striving, always seeking to survive, even when it shouldn’t.
The night Grace died he thought her death would take him with her, but it didn’t. The night after he did what he did to Arthur, their father's knife pressed to his brother’s throat, he’d thought he’d die as well. Die of shame.
He’s still here.
‘Tommy!’ John finally yanks him back, and he goes, his flailing fist wet with blood that splatters over the white of the wall. ‘We have to get out of here!’
The man, dark-haired, face obliterated, looks like he’s dead. Is probably dead. He has done as Arthur has done. The same blood. The same flesh.
Arthur— his head whips towards the bed. Empty. ‘Where is—?’
John’s head turns as well, a hissed curse escaping from between his lips.
‘Fuck! John, where is he?!’
‘I don’t fucking know, do I?’ his younger brother snaps, ‘I was too busy trying to stop you killing some fucking Russian toff.’
‘He fled,’ Tatiana’s voice, sharp, colder than he’s ever heard it, pierces through the air. He looks over, looks to the doorway, and sees her standing there, face grim. Sees others behind her, peering into the room. ‘Naked,’ she adds— and in this moment he despises her. How dare she look at him like that, as if her fucking hands weren’t all over Arthur earlier, weren’t hurting him. He’d seen the look on his brother’s face. He’s seen it before. He hates it.
It had been all he could do to remember the business he was here for, they were here for. Breaking every one of her fucking fingers would have been satisfying, but it would have led to more trouble in the long run. More danger, for all of them. For Arthur as well as himself.
‘Where?’ he hisses at her. ‘Where did he go?’
‘I imagine out the front door,’ she says, ‘That’s where he was headed. That’s where you must head now—’ her dark eyes, lovely, mad eyes, flick down to the remains of the man at his feet, ‘The Duke will not be pleased—’ she sighs, ‘But his displeasure can be dealt with— As long as you leave. Now.’
He nods, the only acknowledgement he’s going to give her, all the thought of the consequences of what he’s done driven from his head in the fire of righteousness. Something right, for once, fuck what’s good for business. ‘Get our coats and get the car,’ he tells John, ‘I’ll get Arthur.’
His little brother nods, something wary, strange and wary, in his gaze, but he doesn’t linger to ask what that look means. No. He has to find Arthur. Make sure Arthur is safe.
But he can’t find Arthur. He can’t. It’s just like before, just like when he came up from under the Earth and John was there and Arthur wasn’t. No. Arthur was under some strange man, dark-haired like him, like their dad. Arthur was crying. Again, Arthur was crying.
Arthur better fucking not be crying right now. No one better be making Arthur cry.
He’ll do it right this time. Make it right.
It’s all slipped and that’s his fault. He’s lost. Lost his way.
He can remember their mum, remember her sitting on a blanket on the grass under the trees, just the three of them gone on a picnic, her and him and Arthur, the Devil off somewhere like he was, the little ones at school, Arthur asleep with his head in her lap, her sneaking some time with just her eldest, trying to drive the devils from her head. The way she’d sung, those sweet words, and the way she’d looked at him with her pale eyes, the way she’d made them both promise to look after each other. Her long, pale fingers running through Arthur’s hair.
Her long, pale hair floating around her in the water, her pale eyes already milky.
She used to take Arthur with her when she’d go round reading the cards, palms, tea leaves. She’d say he had the sight, just like her— But Arthur made himself blind long ago. Or maybe it was their dad, the Devil poking out those eyes that looked and really saw. You can’t see if you can’t trust what you see.
He needs his brother. He’ll make him a crown of daisies, the way Arthur used to make for him, and put it on his head and beg forgiveness.
He’s a new man, made anew, reformed as he came out from under the Earth, journeyed up and out and through his hell. There has to be redemption on the other side.
‘Arthur!’ he shouts, bellows, as he races through the halls of Wilderness House. Well named, it feels like where he is. In the wilderness.
Let it scour him. He’ll come out clean. He’ll come out better.
‘Arthur!’
He bursts out onto the drive, past all those eyes that look and judge, all those tongues that waggle. ‘Arthur!’
There is a figure there, all dark, all dressed in black, walking towards him like death or salvation. A friend and enemy rolled into one. One that his brother is never glad to see, and he should kill Alfie for that, he should, for what he did, but Alfie is his mirror, there is something in the man’s pale eyes that rests in his own, and it’s always felt like killing Alfie would be killing himself. There’s no sense to it, but that’s how things are.
‘What the fuck is going on, mate?’ the man says as he approaches. ‘I was in me car, we was driving down the road, and out the window I saw this pale flash. I look over, right, I look over, and what do I see? I see your fucking brother, I see Arthur, stark bollock naked, running down the road like a bat out of fucking hell. Right fucking peculiar, that. Made me think maybe something had gone wrong— but here you are, all bits attached as far as I can see— Mind you, you are a bit bloodier than you was last I saw. Something happened, has it?’
‘Where?’ he splutters out. ‘Where did you see him?’
‘On the road. As I said, mate,’ Alfie replies, gesturing vaguely towards the road into Wilderness House.
‘Fuck,’ he hisses, taking off at a run, ignoring the way the man calls after him.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he hears, fading, as his legs eat up the space between him and where Alfie said his brother is.
The shiny car Alfie arrived in sits just outside the entry to the park. He bolts past it, out into the night, eyes desperately searching the dark for a hint of a pale figure. There, up ahead— Arthur is so far away though, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to catch up.
‘ARTHUR!’ he screams into the night, chasing that figure down, the wolf hunting the hare.
The pale figure doesn’t stop, doesn’t hesitate, just continues to flee. Flee from him.
‘Arthur!’
All the things he’s done wrong. All the things he should have done better. All the blood he’s spilled. All the blood he’s made Arthur spill. His own seed, spilled on Arthur’s thighs.
‘Arthur!’
The car, Alfie’s shiny car, pulls up beside him as he runs, the man’s large, handsome head poking out the window. ‘For fuck’s sake, mate, get in. You’ll never catch him on foot. I never knew the bastard could run so fast.’
‘Don’t talk about him like that!’ he snarls, skidding as he comes to a stop, the car stopping a moment later, Alfie staring at him with something like shock. ‘I’ve let you talk to him, talk down to him, hurt him and I’ve never tried to stop you. But enough, Alfie. Enough. You do it again and I’ll have to do something about it, something you won’t like.’
The staring continues, wordless, until, ‘What’s brought this on? You’ve never given a shit before.’
‘Well I was wrong!’ he snaps back. ‘Wrong, Alfie, wrong. I’ve been a total fucking idiot, but enough’s enough. Arthur is mine, he’s my blood, my flesh. You treat him badly, you wrong him, and you’re wronging me. Remember that.’
‘You’ve obviously lost your marbles, mate,’ the man says, but before he can give vent to the fury that rises in him at the words, Alfie adds, ‘But if that’s how you want it, fine. I will try to be nicer to your precious bloody brother, alright? Now get in. He’s only getting further ahead, and I can’t imagine it’s that comfortable running around in the nuddy in this kind of weather.’
Alfie has a point. If Alfie didn’t have a point he wouldn’t agree, wouldn’t stomp over to the car and climb inside as Alfie scoots over, sitting beside the man as the driver starts off again, actually gaining on Arthur this time.
They’re almost upon him, he can see how tired his brother is, staggering a little as he runs, uneasy, drunk, sore it looks like, and something wells up in the heart of him. Hot and painful and protective. Erupting, bursting, when Arthur stumbles over something in the faint light of the car’s headlights, lurching, almost catching himself, before going down hard on one knee.
A pained yelp escapes him at the sight, at the way his brother struggles for a moment, trying to get back upright as they pull up behind him. Blood is running down his milky leg from his knee, skinned, full of gravel.
Arthur’s head whips around, spots the car, pale eyes wide, face almost blank, a moment before he starts scrabbling across the ground, trying to flee and pull himself upright at the same time. ‘Arthur!’ he shouts as he bursts out of the car, chasing after. In his panic his brother tangles himself on his own long, flailing limbs, going face down with a grunt. ‘Arthur!’ he shouts again, darting those last few steps to reach the other’s side. The road is hard, stings his knees, as he collapses beside his brother. ‘Are you hurt?’ he demands, reaching out and trying to pull his brother back upright.
Arthur doesn’t answer. Arthur instead flinches away from his touch, flinches the way the other would from their father, flinches maybe worse. That long face is down, eyes averted, shame in every line of that slender body. Shame and fear. A kind of resignation as well— and he doesn’t understand it, doesn’t understand it, doesn’t— until the tiny blurt of sound, the words, ‘I’m so sorry, Tom,’ and then he does.
Arthur expects him to hurt him.
‘It’s alright, it’s alright—’ he rushes to say, his breath coming out in clouds from the cold. ‘I’ve dealt with him. You’re safe. We’ll get you home— you’ll see, it’ll all be alright.’
A tiny, bitter, blurt of a laugh as Arthur finally pulls himself back up to his knees, still facing away, head down, the lovely, graceful curve of his back on display, his paleness making him shine in the weak light from the car.
For a moment he’s paralysed, doesn’t know what to do, to say— the cold starting to press in close, seeping through his shirtsleeves now he’s no longer rushing. He sees Arthur shiver.
‘Are you two just going to sit in the road all night or what?’ Alfie’s voice breaks the moment, the man once more sticking his head out the car window and peering at him. Them, this time.
Arthur flinches away from the sound, the man it belongs to, all of it, slowly hunching forward, curling in on himself like the fragile flesh of his back is a shell to protect all the tender underparts. He looks at the figure of his brother, he looks at Alfie, he looks up at the moon, pale in the dark sky, partially obscured by clouds.
God, though there be no God, give him the strength to make it through the night.
‘I need your overcoat, Alfie,’ he says, still looking up at the sky, the vast emptiness of it, the place he knows no other resides, for all so many of his family are still so eager to get to their knees for the great, unloving, Father.
‘What?’ is the man’s reply. ‘My overcoat? Why do you need my overcoat—? Actually, no, forget that mate. Why would I give you my overcoat?—’ then, almost concerned, ‘He doesn’t look so good. You going to do something about that, Tommy?’
‘I’m going to put your fucking overcoat on him, Alfie,’ is his reply. He wishes he had his own. He wishes he even had the jacket from his suit, but he’d stripped it off as he came up from under the Earth and he doesn’t know where it got to in all the commotion. ‘Which is why you’re going to give it to me, instead of being a bastard for once.’
There is a sullen, offended, pause, and then, ‘I suppose I could, at that. But if I do, you’re going to have to get it cleaned and returned to me, mate. I don’t want it back all smeared in the sweat of moral hypocrisy. Or blood, come to think of it.’
‘Just hand it over, Alfie,’ he says with a sigh, getting to his feet so he can walk over to the car and wait expectantly as his friend struggles his way out of the large weight of heavy black wool and pokes it out through the window.
He takes it, feeling the other man’s warmth still lingering in the cloth, as he goes over to Arthur, getting back to his knees so he can drape it over the tiny, huddled form. Of course Arthur flinches again. Of course it’s like being stabbed again. Run through. ‘Come on,’ he says, soft and sweet, ‘We need to get off the road.’
Arthur says nothing, does nothing for a long while, until he eventually reaches out and takes his brother by the shoulders, easing him upright a bit so he can get a better grip, can tug the other to his feet. Arthur lets him, and that’s something.
When they are upright he takes a moment to make sure the overcoat is wrapped around the other properly, then he wraps an arm around Arthur’s waist and starts to usher him towards the car. This Arthur balks at, ‘No,’ he spits out, shaking his head. ‘Not with him in there. I won’t. Tom, I won’t. I don’t care how angry you are, you can fucking shoot me here, beat me here, you don’t have to wait until we get home— I don’t care. I’m not getting in the same car as him.’
‘I’m not—’ it comes out a blurt of sound, helpless as he feels. ‘Arthur, I’m not going to hurt you. Why would I hurt you?’
A pause, pale eyes still refusing to meet his, to so much as glance in his direction. ‘I saw what you did to him,’ his brother says, eventually. ‘I saw it. I can’t believe you don’t want to do the same to me.’
Him—? The man he very probably beat to death? ‘He was hurting you!’ he squawks, then quietens his tone, remembering Alfie. ‘Arthur, he was hurting you. Why would I hurt you for someone else hurting you?’
‘But I let him,’ his brother protests, ‘I went with him knowing what he was after.’
What? No. No, that can’t be right— ‘You were crying,’ he points out, trying to make things make sense. ‘I heard you. You were crying.’
There is a pause, Arthur’s shoulders inching up as his head ducks down, shame in every line of him. ‘At first I let him,’ his brother corrects himself, ‘I thought I could do it— but then I couldn’t, I didn’t want to, I kept remembering— and I couldn’t work out how to get him off me. It was like my whole body forgot how to work, like I was half paralysed or something. Weak, I know. But still, it was my fault Tom, not his.’
‘No,’ he says, shaking his head, reaching for Arthur and turning him around, ducking his head down, trying to make eye-contact. ‘No, Arthur, whether you went with him or not—’ and that’s something he doesn’t want to think too closely on. That’s something that makes him angry in a way he doesn’t want to feel right now. Covetous. Possessive. ‘—you were crying. He had to see that. He must have known, known you didn’t want it anymore, and he kept going. That’s not your fault. He should have done better.’
‘Still. I went with him,’ his brother says, sounding defeated. ‘Dad was right. There really is something wrong with me.’
Dad was—
He doesn’t meant to do what he does next, it’s all impulse, all rage, all the need to get away before he hurts Arthur like Arthur expects him to. Still, he does it. He reaches out and scoops up the other’s slight weight— because Arthur has always been skin and bones, eats like a bird, barely ate at all when he used to drink— and marches over to the car, opening the back door and shoving his brother inside, onto Alfie’s lap as the man squawks and protests, then slams the door shut after.
Each breath gets stuck in his throat as he marches away from the car, out into some farmer’s field, hands, body, all of it shaking. Rage and the wrath of God rising in him. If he could somehow revive their dad, bring him back from the dead, he would right this moment. Raise him up here, in front of him, and then beat the man worse than he beat that other one earlier. Beat him black and blue, until every bone was powder and all his flesh was pulp.
Dad was—
What had the man said to Arthur? What?
Some foul fucking justification, he can see that now. He’d thought it was some version of you’re my special boy and I love you so much, won’t you just do this one thing for me, just give me this one more piece of your crumbling soul, but if it was something else.
He wants to march back to the car and demand to know what it was, wants to rant and rave and argue and use his words to scrub Arthur’s soul clean of it. Dad was—
Their dad was a fucking monster.
Their dad made him—
But Arthur had tried to stop it. The thought shatters through him, acknowledged for the first time in his life. Arthur had tried to stop their dad. Arthur, who would never, not ever, go against what the old man wanted, had tried to stop their dad from using him to— ‘Leave him out of it,’ Arthur had begged, and ‘Don’t hurt him, please Dad,’ and ‘He won’t tell no one, will you Tom?’ and when the knife had gone to that long, pale throat, ‘He doesn’t mean it—’ but also ‘He really doesn’t mean it, Tom, so you can go. You can. You should go, get out of here, it’ll all be alright. He doesn’t mean it.’
In this moment, this reality, it seems suddenly clear that all of this was because Arthur was trying to save his soul, not excuse their dad. Arthur was trying to save him. Protect him from—
A noise escapes him, pinched and shrill, a strangled scream of wrath and grief tearing its way up out of the wretched tatters of his wounded soul. He throws his head back, wails up at that lonely, icy moon, the noise escaping nothing so pure and picturesque as the howl of a wolf. It’s a mad-man’s cry, a terrible screech, the sound of a banshee foretelling loss.
His whole body moves into the sound, buckling inwards as it explodes outwards, until he’s staggering forward on uneasy legs, hunched in at the waist, knees knocking together, elbows pinching his sides, wrists clenched and shaking, still wailing like a dying thing, the sound tapering, tapering, fading, stopping.
For a moment he just breathes, sucking in great, whooping gulps of air, until he can make himself straighten, can turn, can stagger back towards the car, pulling himself together with every step. When he gets there Alfie is standing beside it, staring at him. Blue eyes go from his face to the car, the window to the backseat, something uncertain there, uncertain in the way Alfie is standing, the way he almost looks like he’s going to move, to step between him and where Arthur must be. He doesn’t question it, not now, just moves past the man, opening the back door and climbing inside.
Arthur is there, Arthur is huddled up in the far corner, all wrapped up in Alfie’s overcoat. He inches in close, scooting across the seat until they’re pressed side to side. Arthur flinches as he reaches out, but he ignores it, gently taking a long, pale hand in his own and raising it to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the back of his brother’s knuckles. ‘Nothing that ever happened was your fault,’ he says with a wrecked, gravelly voice. The words hurt, bring tears to his eyes— both from the physical action of pushing them out through his scream-raw throat, but also the pain of what they mean.
Pale eyes finally meet his own, something uncertain, something as raw as his throat feels, in that gaze. ‘We’ll get you home,’ he adds in his frog-croak of a voice, ‘Deal with it then— but you’re safe now, Arthur, you’re safe. I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.’
His brother opens his mouth as if to speak, but before the words can slip out the door is opening again and Alfie is saying, ‘Budge over, it’s colder than a witch’s tits out here. Feels like I’m freezing my balls off.’
Very carefully he does, pressing a little closer to Arthur’s side as Alfie climbs in beside him. A large, bearded head pokes in beside his own, as the man says, voice soft, breath wafting across the side of his neck, ‘His feet are all fucked up— he must have run across something sharp at some point, glass I think, and there's still gravel in his knee. It needs cleaning out. Wounds like that can go putrid easier than you’d expect.’
He startles, looks at Arthur, ‘Are you hurt?’ he demands.
His brother shakes his head, ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Arthur,’ he admonishes. ‘Are you hurt? Alfie says your feet are bleeding.’
A tiny shrug, ‘Someone must have broken a bottle— champagne I think— on the drive, but it’s nothing. I’ve had worse every week of me life.’
‘Let me—’ he begins, reaching for one of his brother's legs. They struggle, a little, and there's not much room, but eventually he manages to get it up, get it where he can peer at it by the faint light coming in the windows from the headlights. The sole of his brother's foot is lacerated— made worse by the fact he must have continued running on it all the way down the road. ‘Jesus, Arthur, you should have stopped,’ he sighs, letting go of the foot, only then realising that what he’s done has made most of his brother's leg escape the overcoat, a long slice of pale, inner thigh exposed for anyone, for Alfie, to leer at. He quickly reaches out, readjusting the coat, ignoring the way Arthur complains and insists he can take care of himself.
Obviously he can’t.
This is when the other car, his car, pulls up beside them, a fretful John behind the wheel. ‘Ah, fuck,’ he sighs. He’d better get Arthur out of the car and into the other one, though the thought of making him walk on those injured feet— ‘I’ll drive the both of you home, shall I?’ Alfie says. ‘Or, well, Joseph will— won’t you, Joe?’ a sound of affirmation from the driver. A man who must have seen many things, and worse, than what has happened this night. ‘He needs to keep off them feet until you can get them cleaned up.’
A snort from Arthur. He understands why. Alfie actually sounds a bit concerned, and it’s hard enough for him to believe, let alone his brother. Still— it’s something almost like a good idea. Arthur looks— if not entirely comfortable, then comfortable enough in the back seat, all wrapped up in Alfie’s coat, and he worries— oh, how he worries, that if he does try to get his brother out of the car before they get home the other might not only have to stand on those feet, but might decide to take off running on them again, hurting himself worse. ‘Thanks Alfie,’ he croaks out, then, ‘I’ll just go tell John.’
There is a pause before the man realises what that will have to mean, that he’ll have to get out of the car first, before he can follow after. ‘Be right back,’ he tells Arthur as Alfie opens the door and climbs out, grumbling, annoyed.
He scoots backwards himself to follow, stepping out into the cold air, intending to head straight to the other car, to John— Alfie catches him by the arm as he passes, pulls him in close, speaks softly in his ear. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, mate. I don’t. But— Look. If you need someone killed—’ there’s something knowing there, in Alfie’s blue eyes. Blue eyes that dart back to the back seat, back to Arthur, the expression there becoming unreadable.
He looks down at his own hands, the blood he can see dried there in the light of the headlights. He thinks of the man he left on the floor of Wilderness House. He thinks of his dad, dead overseas, somewhere in America, at another’s hands, a supposed punishment for his arrogance that was instead a gift. ‘Thanks,’ he replies, meeting Alfie’s pale gaze with his own, wondering if he asked if Alfie would kill him.
Wondering if he has the strength to utter those words. The strength to raise a gun to his own head, to get a final vengeance for Arthur, wronged.
He brushes the thought away. If he’s dead he can’t protect Arthur— his eyes go to the backseat, to the slender form huddled there— Arthur is his. His by blood. His by seed.
His in their mother’s eyes when she told him to keep the other safe. His when their dad held that knife to that long throat and gave up that slender body to his touch. His in his own lost, bewildered heart, wounded to the point it has been blind to its own wants.
His by love, by duty, by conquest—
But Alfie is his mirror, always has been, ever since they first met, pale eyes to pale eyes. He thinks of the man, shifting as if he wanted to move between him and Arthur, to protect Arthur from him, from him— even though Alfie hardly likes his brother to begin with.
Perhaps that could change.
Alfie is strong, he can’t deny that, strong enough to help keep Arthur safe.
‘When we get back to Arrow House you could stay for a few days,’ he finds himself offering. ‘If you want.’