Page 21 of Fear
It seemed like the woman hadn’t been a monster after all. Tobias had just misunderstood because he was so stupid. But he had to be sure, even though it sickened him to ask. Part of him didn’t want to be sure, because then his worst fears would be confirmed—fears he hadn’t even known existed until Jake had said those things and Tobias had suddenly remembered similar words in Crusher’s voice, in Victor’s, in all the guards at Freak Camp who had told him what he and every other monster should expect.
“B-but if she was a, a monster . . .”
Jake gestured in an oddly hopeless motion, his hands open and imploring. “But she wasn’t, Tobias. With monsters, it’s different.”
Tobias shuddered, the dread that had been haunting him for so long coalescing at last in a sick, dead weight inside him. He had been told that his entire life, but it had never meant what it did when he heard it from Jake.
Jake went on. “I can’t say . . . fuck, I want to say that I don’t want to hurt anyone, and I don’t normally, but monsters . . . A monster is a monster, yeah, not because they’re supernatural, but because they hurt people. And sometimes when you’ve finally dusted a djinn or tracked a shifter that’s been slaughtering entire families wearing the face of a grandmother . . . yeah, it feels good to stab a fucker like that in the heart.” Jake folded his hands over Tobias’s, careful of the bandages. “I’m sorry, Tobias. I fucking wish I were better for you.”
Tobias felt something break loose in his chest. Sure, his heart was still beating like a rain of bullets on a barracks roof, but the horror that had consumed him since the bar—the thought that the life he’d have with Jake would become just like the pain, anguish, and constant dread of Freak Camp—was gone. Not snuffed out, but broken, shattered, snapped into pieces so tiny that yes, they hurt, but they weren’t like knives in his chest anymore, hurting every time he took the shallowest of breaths. This was like dust in his eyes, a shard of something under his skin, and it would work its own way out of him. He would heal from the damage it had done.
It still hurt; his terrible fears had hurt and still left him twitching, but he knew they were temporary. In a day, in an hour, they would be gone like the dust and not even the memory would linger.
Tobias stared down at Jake’s hands wrapped over his. There it was: everything good about Jake contained in the image of his hands resting over Tobias’s bandaged ones, so gently that Tobias could hardly feel them.
When Tobias hurt himself like the stupid freak he was, Jake put him back together. When Tobias had clearly caused Jake pain in some way that he did not understand, Jake still touched Tobias so carefully that even open wounds weren’t hurt. Jake took care of him. Jake cared for him. In spite of the freak Tobias was, Jake was there, patient, and he wouldn’t get rid of him for these stupid weaknesses—at least, not yet.
That was euphoria. That was joy.
But better yet was the reassurance that Jake was nothing like the guards. Not that Tobias should have ever, ever doubted that. He had almost felt a laugh bubbling up in his chest when Jake talked about what gave him satisfaction in a hunt. Beheading a shifter with silver? Shoving a bloodied knife into a djinn’s chest?
Tobias had done those. Both of those, under the Director’s orders. The Director and Crusher had called it too fucking good an end for a filthy freak. Tobias had always thought of it as a mercy.
Jake’s idea of cruelty, of harshness, of harm, was Tobias’s definition of kindness. And Tobias’s definition of kindness had always been far more than he could ever hope for in Freak Camp.
Tobias bent over their closed hands. He wished he had permission to kiss Jake’s fingers, to thank him for everything he had done, to thank him for being so good that it hurt. He was so good that it threatened to break Tobias in half from the joy and unnatural, intense release from fear; it was a freedom he had never felt before.
He managed to force out words, even with his throat closed up from the relief, the heady, blessed, euphoric relief. “You’re so good, Jake,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, thank you so much.”
“Hey, Tobias.” Jake moved over to the couch, sitting close next to him. “Toby.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” was all Tobias could say, but at least for now, as Jake shushed him and cradled his head against his shoulder, that seemed to be enough.
Chapter Five
Jake couldn’t sleep that night. He lay in bed, staring at the blank white ceiling, listening to his heart beating too hard in his chest, sometimes turning over to punch his pillow with a viciousness that had no target in life. He couldn’t punch something and make the problems with Tobias go away. He couldn’t even toss and turn too much because part of him was convinced that Tobias would hear and think that Jake’s rage was directed toward him.
It wasn’t just the anger, the desire to light something on fire, that kept him awake. There was the inescapable image, emblazoned in his head like the picture he saw once of his mother’s pyre, of Tobias leaning against him, arms scratched and bleeding, and his soft, pitifully grateful words.
Sometime between the blank rage and the broken feeling that felt suspiciously like tears, Jake came to a realization.
He, Jake Hawthorne, was in so far over his fucking head that it was a wonder he and Tobias were still breathing. He should have realized that after the horror that had been the grocery store—no, fuck, even before that, he should have known from that nightmarish first night he got Tobias out of camp. But he had ignored Tobias’s twitches. He had kept moving, kept talking, hoping that the power of momentum would make anything wrong with Tobias just go away.
But tonight, he had to face the whole, long, brutal, bloody, appalling string of disasters because he couldn’t fix this by lighting it on fire. Every setback pointed to one truth lit up with neon lights:
You don’t have a clue what you’re doing. You can’t tell the difference between helping and hurting Tobias. Every time that thought crept into his head, he had told it to go fuck itself because he wanted this—a life with Tobias—and there weren’t any other options.
Yeah, that was selfish. Wanting to keep Tobias to himself, to protect him, to make him smile. But that didn’t change the fact that Tobias didn’t have a lot of choices out there. He had Jake, and maybe Roger or Alejandra, but Jake couldn’t go to anyone else with something like this, not when he couldn’t even begin to explain what had gone wrong or what the problem was. He just knew that something had fucked Tobias sideways, and Jake had no control over how that was affecting him.
Of course, finding someone to help would also require finding someone that Jake trusted to let help. Even Roger—yeah, maybe Roger could come in, but what could he do? Especially when Jake knew enough now to feel more than a little uneasy about pushing Tobias into close contact with other people.
Jake flipped over, twisting his sheets, punched his pillow and then froze, listening, hoping that he wouldn’t hear Tobias’s whimper, that the kitchen and the living room between them would keep Tobias from hearing Jake and thinking something else completely fucked up. When he didn’t hear Tobias, didn’t hear anything but the distant sounds of the city, he relaxed into the pillow and breathed through the fabric.
So it was just him against the world, trying to help Tobias, and Jake knew there weren’t many people who would give a damn if he died, and not a single soul that really gave a fuck whether or not he ever managed to make Tobias marginally less afraid, let alone happy for a minute at a time.
And after tonight, he couldn’t deny that he was afraid down to his core—something he hadn’t felt in years—about the other ways he might fuck this up. About how anything might happen to Tobias, even when he was right next to Jake, just because Jake didn’t realize how what he was doing or saying affected Tobias, or he just didn’t notice.
Jake twisted again, remembering just in time not to punch the headboard (two indents in it already, nothing that would even draw the eye, but Jake’s knuckles remembered the particle wood). Instead, he stumbled out of bed, swearing at the carpet that snagged his feet, and staggered to the bathroom.
