Page 22 of Fear
His eyes hurt when he flicked on the lights, but he stared at the mirror anyway.
He looked like shit—which wasn’t surprising, as he hadn’t been sleeping—with bloodshot eyes and crazy hair sticking in all directions. He looked like a guy who could fail spectacularly at the most important job of his life, not a problem.
Shit, no, he would not fucking accept that. He would not quit less than a week into this. Yeah, he had no right to take care of Tobias—no matter what that little piece of paper said. Yeah, it seemed sometimes like the only competent thing Jake had done was get Tobias out of FREACS—and wasn’t it cold fucking comfort to use that for a standard? But he had gotten Tobias out, and even if this entire catastrophe now was at least partly his fault for taking too fucking long about it, Jake wouldn’t stop trying to make Tobias smile, to give him some kind of security and life.
Jake must have stared at himself for a good ten minutes, letting the yellow light bleach him, his eyes soaking in the exhausted bastard in front of him, until he finally flicked it off and went back to his cold, lonely bed. He would do better for Tobias. Maybe then he could actually sleep.
He was learning every day, he was, though each lesson hurt like blessed salt in an open wound. He knew better—now, sometimes—what was going on in Tobias’s head. Like after tonight, he was pretty sure that Tobias hadn’t even been conscious of hurting himself. Maybe that should have made Jake feel better, but it didn’t. Not when he had an inkling that Tobias would never have taken the initiative to deliberately hurt himself, not when he was always looking at Jake for clues for when to pick up a fork or sit down on the sofa. Tobias wouldn’t take that much control with his own body (shit, did he think that he was Jake’s property or something? That was another sick thought Jake didn’t have the faintest idea how to go about correcting). And for all that he hated Tobias’s unhesitating obedience, Jake had to hope that maybe Tobias had listened to him tonight, maybe he understood that Jake didn’t want him hurting himself. Even if it had happened on some fucked-up level of Tobias’s subconscious, maybe he would catch himself and wouldn’t do it again.
If nothing else, if Jake couldn’t prevent Tobias from sliding into the bad spaces, he could at least learn to recognize them and catch Tobias before they hit the bottom.
JAKE HAD NO PLANS FOR the next day, and he intended to keep it that way. Maybe they’d avoid disaster if they stayed inside the salt lines.
One step at a time.
Tobias read on the couch. Jake hadn’t put much thought into finding a couch sized for two lanky guys, but when he’d seen this murky orange-brown one at the local thrift store, he’d jumped on it. It was a steal for fifty bucks, especially since it didn’t have any weird smells and the armrests had extra padding.
He was grateful he had, and not just because the living room would have looked really empty without the couch and the coffee table. Tobias looked so comfortable, head propped on one saggy armrest, feet not even touching the opposite edge, that Jake wouldn’t have changed anything.
Of course, Tobias hadn’t started out sprawling. Getting him to actually relax had been a gradual, step-by-step process. At first, Tobias had sat stiffly on the edge of the couch, book held in front of him like he was preparing a lecture on American History. Jake wasn’t even sure why he had that textbook; he’d found it buried in the car when he was digging through the trunk for bungee cords to hook the couch to the roof.
Jake couldn’t deal with seeing Tobias perched there like he didn’t belong, like he expected a pop quiz at any moment. Jake had decided then and there that getting him to damn well relax in their apartment was a great first subgoal. After all, this was his place just as much as Jake’s.
He dropped down onto the couch next to Tobias, who started up like Jake had sat on the other end of a seesaw. Jake nudged him back against the cushions as he sprawled out like a starfish or a douchebag on a subway. “You know, this couch was actually the first piece of furniture I bought? Like, in my life. It felt big, you know, and I wanted to get a really good one, but the guys at Wise Buys told me, ‘You sleep on it, you buy it.’ So I had to head out before I gave it a really good test. I know plenty of bad couches from the places we holed up in when I was a kid, and you can’t just sit on one for five minutes and think you know what’s up. You have not known a bad couch until you spend the night with that one piece of rebar digging into your back. So we gotta test this one out, right? Whaddaya think so far?”
Tobias blinked at him. “It’s, um—good. Nice.”
“Awesome. But just to be clear, I dragged this home on top of the Eldorado, not, like, from a European imports emporium, and I don’t give a damn if you put your feet up on it. Or on the coffee table.” He kicked his feet up onto the basic pine coffee table that had cost five bucks because one of the legs wiggled, and he rested one heel solidly on the worst coffee stain, sinking deeper into the cushions. “Try it out.”
Tobias studied him like he was trying to figure out the joke, but when Jake just smiled, he slowly stretched his legs out, resting his heels on one of the lighter water rings.
Jake beamed at him. “So, where are you at in history? Did ol’ George Washington swim the Delaware yet?”
Tobias’s mouth curved up in a smile too, which was damn nice to see. “It’s the War of 1812.”
Jake squinted. “Is that eighteen-twelve military time?”
Tobias’s smile widened. “No, in the year 1812. Against the British.”
“Oh yeah, round two. We kicked their asses then too, didn’t we?”
Tobias made a face. “Sort of. They did burn down the White House first.”
“No way!” Jake feigned shock, clutching the back of his head. “How’d that happen in the great US of A? Dude, can you even imagine torching that place?”
Tobias looked a little alarmed, sitting up straighter and eyeing Jake uncertainly.
Jake held his hand palm out, conciliatory. “That was just a joke, don’t stress. I’ve got no plans to burn down any government buildings, even if it might be a little fun. Anyway, what happened in 1812?”
Tobias told him about the Battles of Bladensburg and New Orleans, all the warships that sank in the Great Lakes (and the ghost ships that still hadn’t all been put to rest, which of course Tobias knew about from the Freak Camp library even though Jake’s twenty-year-old textbook didn’t), and what an absolute dick Andrew Jackson turned out to be (that last part was maybe more Jake’s words than Tobias’s).
Tobias had seemed initially startled by Jake’s invasion of the sofa, but as he talked, animation replaced his nervousness, and Jake recognized that whip-smart, nerdy kid he’d known for what felt like all his life. Jake paid attention to what he was saying, but mostly he just soaked in the sight of Tobias at ease, maybe even happy, with a slight flush in his face and a brightness in his eyes.
Jake finally got up to inventory the kitchen to figure out their next few meals, as well as to try to ram the pizza pan into a cupboard that was too damn small. He let himself glance over the breakfast bar to see that Tobias had actually slid down onto his side, the book propped in the crook of one elbow and his legs folded up on the couch.
Jake counted it a solid victory. When he brought over a glass of orange juice, he let himself sit on the edge of the couch next to him—though he had to put his hand on Tobias’s shoulder at once to keep him from sitting up. He sat there quietly for a minute, rubbing Tobias’s shoulder and watching his face, which was very still but had none of the warning signs that said this was bad. Jake thought he had learned to recognize those, though it still felt like an awful risk to trust himself that far. But when Tobias’s eyes fluttered shut, Jake was willing to bet that was a good thing.
At last, he made himself get up and grab another book off the shelf to read on the other end of the couch. He had had about enough of wandering around the apartment, trying to think of something else to do, and anything Tobias loved so much was good enough for him.
