Chapter Text
I let them think they saved me
They never see it comin'
What I do next
Chapter Fifteen - TK
TK takes one bite of the egg sandwich before he throws it into the nearest trash can so he doesn’t have to smell it. He keeps the coffee, sipping it between sniffs and wiping the moisture from under his nose.
Most mornings, he would feel guilty about being wasteful when others have so little. Some mornings, he would go by his grandparents’ apartment to help them with groceries, or be at the gym to train, or study somewhere. Other mornings, he would wake up next to Carlos, snuggling in until the skin-to-skin contact filled the pit of loneliness in his chest.
Today, the world revolves solely around him and the last few miles to his apartment. He’s not thinking about how today will be the last day that he’ll feel like this. He thought about it all night at Jeremy’s before they smoked weed and watched reruns of Queer as Folk.
He’s no longer anxious about saying a final goodbye to the pills, or anything else for that matter. Not for a little while longer at least, though the effects are slowly dwindling.
TK greets Mr. Friedman with a smile that lasts until he gets through his front door. With his father at work and Carlos busy, he prepares for a day of nothing but a gentle come down and one more floating high.
Only, there are voices coming from the living room.
“TK?”
His mother. What is his mother doing here? The panic that sets in creates the first ripple in his happiness, because she has only ever stepped foot into this apartment once to check on him when he had laryngitis, and another time for a few minutes on his dad’s 40th birthday. The panic balloon when he hears Enzo’s hushed voice.
“Can you come in here, son?” Owen calls out.
TK downs his coffee as if the last drop will sober him up. The back of his wrist is caked and sticky when he wipes his nose one last time, cursing himself for not swallowing the pills like he used to. Everyone had snorted something at Jeremy’s, so TK did too.
At the last moment, he remembers to discard his sunglasses on a shelf as he walks over to the scene he hasn’t yet wrapped his head around. His shoes stay on, the zing up his left ankle becoming more noticeable as soon as he sees his parents and Enzo sitting tensely together on the couch. His mother gets up to hug him, her grip too tight, and the final stone settles into a foundation of foreboding in his stomach.
There’s enough free space on the couch but he is ushered into the nearby armchair, forced to face three people who are united for once. It’s all he used to want but now it sounds alarm bells in his clouded mind.
“Did someone die?” TK asks with a smile that none of them reciprocate.
Instead, Enzo squeezes Gwyn’s shoulder when she settles back between the men.
“No, honey,” she says, voice firm but warm. “We’re here to talk about you today.”
Who knew that his stomach could sink further in his current state?
“Okay?”
“We know that you’ve been feeling a lot of stress and pressure with one exam ending and another coming up over the past few weeks and months,” Enzo starts.
TK relaxes. “Oh. Yeah, no, that’s fine. You know I’m a good student. I can—”
“We know you haven’t been going to therapy,” his dad interrupts.
“Owen,” his mother says, a warning in her honeyed tone before she looks back at TK. “What your father means is that we saw the extra deductions and when I called the therapist’s office, they informed me that they were fees for no-shows.”
It’s not about his exams then, not about his stress. It’s about the therapy he might have missed twice now. It makes sense for him to say, “Sorry. I can pay you back if you want?”
“With what money?” Gwyn retorts, this time nudged by Enzo. TK huffs a laugh seeing it, which he regets at the way they all grow even more somber.
“It’s not about the fees,” she adds.
Owen steps in. “It’s about us worrying about your well-being.”
“You haven’t been yourself lately. We’re here today to make sure you get any support you need from us,” Enzo says, warm eyes watching through thick glasses.
“We love you and we want to make sure you know we’re here to support you.”
TK blinks at his mother. His mouth twitches until another huff makes it past his lips. “This sounds like an intervention.”
His parents look at each other, but he only fully realizes when his mother, his strong mother, grips the hands of both men at her sides. “Honey, this is an intervention.”
The plummet isn’t deep, but the world tilts nonetheless as TK’s mind pieces together the situation. He gets up abruptly, only to sit down right away, his eyes on the trophy case he’s facing. There’s a light shining on all his past accomplishments, on all of his father’s, as if they are the same.
“Intervention is such a harsh word—”
“Owen, we agreed we’d be pulling on the same rope tonight. Can we please stay on topic?”
“I just don’t want to scare our son before we can say what we need to.”
“What’s scarier is how long it took us all to understand how bad he’s gotten,” Gwyn hisses.
Bad.
Him.
It finally pulls TK down to where he’s human again. Flawed.
Enzo tilts into his vision. “TK—”
“It seemed harmless in the beginning,” his father defends himself. “We both thought it was harmless.”
“Was it harmless or were we all too busy to notice?” Gwyn asks sharply.
“TK, hey.”
TK’s eyes find Enzo but he doesn’t see more than a blur.
“I— I’m fine,” TK says, gripping the arms of the chair so as not to sink lower or worse, run. “I’ll be better, uhm, I’ll go to therapy. I promise. I can go right away if they have a free slot. I’ll prove to you that I —"
Something he read on a website a few days ago suddenly floods his mind.
If you, or someone you know is concerned about passing an oxycodone drug test, it may be a sign that professional medical intervention is needed.
No.
What he needs is to not be here. What he needs is for none of them to know how big of a disappointment he is after everything he did to hide it. Adulthood made gathering trophies a lot harder, so there is little that he can distract them with now.
Owen’s expression softens as he slides forward on the couch. His voice is suspiciously gentle. “We know you are hiding how bad your injury is.”
“I’m—”
“I found pills in your bed frame.”
The wingback chair wobbles under the force of TK sliding backwards. His arms twist around his torso, trying to contain the myriad of feelings blooming inside him despite the dampening blanket of the pills. “You went through my room?”
“I know it's a breach of your privacy, but I’ve been worried about you, especially the last few weeks. You’ve been staying out a lot of nights, acting differently. You’ve barely eaten.”
“You went through my room,” TK repeats while staring at the wall where there’s no one to look at and no light glinting off golden trophies.
He wants to run. He wants to run until his foot hurts again and gives out. Instead, he settles back into the place of ease within his mind and explains more calmly, “It was only to help with my ankle.”
His mother sighs. “We want to believe you, but before that it was only ‘at this one party’ and ‘at this other party.’”
“Everyone my age takes something at parties.”
“Maybe,” Gwyn admits. “But not everyone hides drugs in their bed frame and faints from dehydration. You’re not doing well and it took us until now to understand. We’re sorry for that.”
“You found nothing but painkillers, correct?” TK asks.
“Oxycodone, son. An opioid you haven’t been prescribed because you haven’t been to see a doctor,” Owen says. “Are you aware of how dangerous that is? How scared I was when I found them?”
“Addiction is an illness,” Gwyn cuts in.
Owen nods rapidly. “Of course. No one is blaming you.”
“All you have to do is accept our help to get better. You don’t have to do any of this alone,” Enzo says, cutting through his parents’ bickering.
TK looks down at his forearms, at the thick vein on the inside of his elbow and squeezes his eyes shut when he remembers how easy it would be to leave and take Van up on his offer; to get high enough to forget.
He’s wished to have these three people in one room, united, since he was nine years old. He wanted joint birthdays and dinners and a big family to come home to instead of being passed between apartments. He wanted them to notice him. Spend time with him.
They do now. His lungs tremble for it or maybe it’s his heart. Either way, a tremor runs through every nerve ending in his body while they watch him.
“I didn’t take much. Just when the leg acted up,” TK tries again, not knowing what else to say.
His mother looks heavenward, while his father rubs his mouth as he stares at the ground. Enzo’s expression is like someone has kicked his dog, but he looks right at TK.
“Let’s say we believe you—”
“Owen!”
“Gwyn, let me…TK, if your leg is still bad enough to warrant these kinds of painkillers, why did you insist on training with me?”
“Because of…” TK swallows the ‘you’ just in time. “Because of the entry exam. You know how important that is, Dad. I couldn’t slack off right before it.”
“TK,” Enzo says, softly, like he doesn’t want to scare a deer in the woods. “Is becoming a firefighter really what you want? Not what you think we would want but what you want from your life?”
Owen adds, “You know that I love you no matter what you do, right? That I never expected you to follow in my footsteps?”
TK opens his mouth to respond, the words well practiced, but then nothing comes out. It’s such an easy answer but right now he wants to bury his face into his hands and find some privacy in his palms until their burning eyes vanish. It hurts too much to believe them and accept that every trick he performed, every accolade he gathered, was for nothing.
It’s easier to say, “I’ll stop, okay? The drug test is in two weeks, I can prove to you I’m sober then, right?” He rubs his hands together to find them completely wet. “What else do you want me to do here?”
Both father figures slump back into the couch like he said the wrong thing after all. Only his mother sits ramrod-straight now, a rock that any wave will break on. That’s why he’s surprised to find tears gathering in the corner of her eyes.
“We have two ideas,” she says. “The first is a place upstate I researched—”
TK’s heart plummets. “A place?” He doesn’t grasp it right away but the lines of what it means take shape quickly. “Wait, rehab?”
“It’s a four-week rehabilitation program,” she explains, but before he can protest, she adds, “The other idea is for you to move back in with me for the summer. I’ve decided to work from home most days and on the others, Enzo will be there. And we want you to get treatment, therapy and a check-in with a doctor. We’ll take you to and from the appointments.”
“But I’m okay.”
She purses her lips and wipes the tear dripping down her cheek, because she hates crying and he knows she does. It’s why it slices right through him and it’s what makes him realize that this time, there is no way out. They found the pills; he can’t win.
“What if I don't want to do any of it?” TK asks, still trying not to show the full extent of the panic pushing through the haze. “Therapy, sure but the rest…”
“We can't force you,” Owen says, resigned. “You're an adult and unless you want to accept help, there is nothing we can do. But we really want you to understand how seriously we take this. We’re scared for you. We can’t bear another call from the hospital.”
It’s overdramatic.
That’s what it is.
TK sniffs and looks at the floor to mask it as a response to everything he’s hearing, when the truth is, he’s far from sad. The worst part about this is that he was caught. That his pills are gone now and that they all know there is no more shine to him. He’s lost it. Maybe he lost it long ago and didn’t even notice.
The muscles in his legs still quiver from the urge to get out of the limelight, to see if hiding will eventually make them forget. or at least go back to ignoring his flaws; ignoring everything about him.
It’s ultimately this fear that makes him stay seated. The three of them being oblivious to his existence is the one thing that would be worse. It’s best to give in, make good on the promise he gave Carlos and himself, and mean it this time. He tries not to think about what that means in practice, because there is instant pushback knocking against his ribcage.
“Okay.”
Owen’s mouth drops open slightly. “Okay?”
“I’ll move in with you this weekend, Mom.”
“Why not today?” Enzo asks gently.
“Carlos,” TK blurts out, his heart fluttering for a multitude of reasons. It feels wrong to drag him into this. “If I’m basically under house arrest, I at least want to see him before that.”
Gwyn lets out a breath. “It’s not house arrest. You can invite him over any time—”
“Let me have this? Please. Please, it's all I ask.”
Everyone on the couch opposite him exchanges glances, all varying degrees of disapproval, but ultimately his mother says, “We’ll pick you up on Friday morning.” Three days. The finality in her tone is a sharp contrast to the arms she throws open. “Can you come and collect your hug now?”
There’s no cell in his body that wants to, that doesn't want to run out of the apartment, but as with everything today, he follows her instruction. It’s an awkward hug, half sitting on his mother’s legs and having two men envelope his back, one gripping his nape like he’s still three, the other petting his back more gently than either of his real parents, like he doesn’t dare hold him as firmly.
“We’re so proud of you,” Owen says and they all chime in before the second word is fully uttered, echoing it again after.
It’s the first time that morning that tears bite in TK’s eyes as an apology pushes up his esophagus. He’s not sure he knows if he’s really ready to try.
For a second there he thunk he might. They’re noton the only people he promised to get better. For a moment it seems doable.
It’s over as soon as is able to go into his room. Door open he lies down and slides his hand into the gap where his pills used to be, eyes on the closet that used to hold his refuge.
Once the mast of the pills stop working, all that's left is fury.
***
It’s a while before TK can actually leave. He sits through a lunch forced down his throat with stilted conversation that somehow manages to avoid everything they talked about right before it. Even then, the three gazes speak louder than words could. By the time TK makes it out of the house, he has typed and deleted three messages to Carlos.
At first, he wanders Manhattan aimlessly, but eventually the pain in his ankle increases and it forces him to rest on a bench in a strip of grass barely counting as a park. None of his anger dries up in the scorching sun. Instead, it seems to take his emotions up a notch. There’s no pill he can swallow to bring it all down to bearable levels. Everything being too much makes every seam of his clothes itch, his shoes feeling too tight.
TK blinks up at the cloudless sky, watching the sun slowly wander away from this part of the world. His mind shifts from his parents to Carlos’ arms; the only place he actually feels loved.
But TK can’t bring himself to talk today and even if Carlos lets him sink into silence, the idea of disappointing one more person makes him shake until the bench creaks. The full scope of what has happened crushes him, transforming into self-hatred then and there.
If only he had hidden his pills in the shoe box again. If only he was better at covering his own messy spiraling. If only he hadn't spiraled in the first place.
He doesn’t know how he gets there with the fury roaring in his chest, but before he knows it, he finds himself in a place where everything has changed for him before.
It’s a tight crowd despite the early evening, loud enough to keep up with the metallic banging of the music. TK finds himself wanting to search Horns not for someone to love, but for someone who will sell him something to forget. He quickly focuses on the bar to stop that train of thought.
A drink will do tonight. It has to. A drink and an excuse to recalibrate the hatred for himself into a weapon against others.
He finds a target right away.
A guy with a denim vest leers at every girl walking past the restroom door he has deliberately sat next to. He looks like his thick fist could knock TK out with a single punch, but TK is planning to throw first. His body already feels like a bruise, stomach shaken up like a snowglobe, but the idea of making it worse thrills him.
First, TK orders a penicillin, for old time’s sake and because it’s morbidly funny.
This is one of two drinks he can afford with the crumpled dollar bills he found in an old pizza delivery flier in his kitchen. At least no one will know he was here, with no credit card bill to alert them. As soon as the drink is set down in front of him, he downs half of it. It’s only slightly warm in his belly, adding to the fire.
He orders his next drink, vodka neat, the cheapest on the menu.
With no other way to quench the turmoil inside him, he glances back over to the creep with the vest — and freezes.
There, in the booth at the back, his brain registers something familiar. If it weren’t for the fact that he had sat in the same booth before, he might not have wondered if the back of a head and the cut of a plain green shirt belonged to Arturo. Curious, TK leans over the bar and spots Kyle ordering drinks opposite him first, before finding the tiniest sliver of Carlos behind Arturo.
Carlos doesn’t seem to see TK. He’s enraptured by whatever Arturo is saying, his expression contorted in a frown. The rigidity of Carlos’ shoulders doesn’t ease as he listens to whatever his cousin is saying.
It’s why TK doesn’t go over, he tells himself.
Watching them, TK feels clammy and too large for his skin at the same time. The bounce of his right leg isn’t enough to calm the hot anger rising inside of him. He downs the vodka in continuous sips, accepting the burn.
The voice telling him not to join them has been quieted to a whisper, only to be drowned out when he watches as four strange men approach the booth instead. It’s like watching a snippet from his own past. Carlos stands up instantly, broad arms crossed over a broader chest. His expression twists when a stranger grips Arturo’s arm.
He looks just like TK felt when he got here; ready to strike. Only, TK knows that Carlos doesn’t lose his temper. Carlos’ anger is cold and controlled. TK’s burns.
He makes no conscious decision to do so, but TK is off the bar stool, feeling like he leaves scorch marks in his tracks despite his howling ankle. Even before TK’s hands collide with flesh, even before he understands the situation, he feels giddy for finally unleashing the pain and loathing he’s felt trapped in. This is what he actually wants tonight; this and its echo.
The stranger yells as he stumbles into his friend behind him, his hands flailing in the air.
For a moment, time is suspended.
No second passes.
In this span of frozen time, TK glances to his left and finds Carlos’ eyes and mouth gaping so wide, TK instantly feels scared. Vigor and anticipation meet at a border with dread.
It’s why TK doesn’t even pay attention to the man he shoved. He should have. Before he knows it, a hand is around his neck, squeezing. “What the f*ck is your problem?” the man spits through clenched teeth.
TK doesn’t have time to pry out an answer before Carlos slides out of the booth and barrels in between them. “Get your hands off of him!”
Maybe Carlos’ anger isn’t always cold, TK thinks, confronted by a heaving chest and a voice laced with fury. But TK doesn’t want that tonight. Tonight, he wants to fight his own battles and be as openly rotten as he feels inside.
He sidesteps Carlos but finds another hand gripping his shoulder. He swings on instinct. Misses.
The bartender glares at him, his head still tilted to the side after dodging TK’s fist. “Cut it out!” he roars, then turns to the rest of the table and bystanders. “I’ve had enough of your faces. Take your fight to the streets if you want, but not in my bar. Out!”
“What the f*ck is going on here?” Kyle asks as he joins the group, two glasses in hand.
“You’re leaving, that’s what’s going on.”
Ignoring his friend, Arturo glares at the bartender. “Are you sure you want to do this, Ollie?”
Ollie lets go of TK, stepping right up to Arturo and towering over him. “Out. Now!”
TK finds a hand on the back of his hip. He winds out of Carlos’ patronizing gesture and follows the group of men to a door that leads to the back entrance. They appear to move in an orderly fashion only because they know they’re close to resolving the issue.
“TK, what are you doing?” Carlos whispers, hand on TK’s lower back, this time holding him by the thin material that feels inappropriately colorful in contrast to the sticky anger that fills TK. “You shouldn’t even be here.”
TK strides forward, knowing that looking back at Carlos will weaken his resolve. “ You shouldn’t be here! But we are, and I won’t let you fight them alone.”
“This isn’t like practice, TK. No one will pull punches.”
“I know. But if they won’t leave you alone, we can make them.”
Carlos grips his shirt tighter, looking concerned. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing.”
“I can’t let you get hurt—”
TK rips away from his grip. “Too late.”
Carlos could have stopped him easily, they both know it. But both of them also know that he won’t, because he’d won’t allow himself to force TK to do anything. Even in the face of more danger.
TK pushes through the heavy door right behind Arturo.
Fresh air hits him like a brick, the thickness of it making him feel like he’s wading into a pool filled with vodka. He navigates the small steps into the alley slowly, his ankle pounding in pain as he reaches the bottom. Carlos is right behind him, like his shadow.
The strangers have formed a wall blocking their escape and it’s only then that TK recognizes one of them.
“Listen, hombre ,” Skylar spits, a lot more confident with three rugged men at his back, than when he approached their table a few months ago. “I have waited long enough. I want my f*cking money and I want it now.”
Arturo glances at Carlos and Kyle, then tilts his chin co*ckily. “Or what?”
“Or my friends will remind you guys why you shouldn’t have messed with me in the first place.”
“Oh my god,” TK hears himself say, not stopping even as Carlos’ hand grips his wrist. “Why so dramatic? How much can he owe you?”
Skylar scans him up and down and huffs. “What the f*ck is it to you?”
“You’ll get your money next week,” Carlos replies, calmly.
Arturo adds, “Yeah. Like I told you, hom-bre. ”
The last word is sharp as a knife. But not as sharp as what Skylar throws back. “I knew I should’ve never trusted a beaner.”
One word kicks it all loose; TK’s first, his fists itching for an excuse.
He hits his target, if poorly, grazing the side of Skylar’s cheek. It feels gratuitous, knuckles stinging from the raw contact with barely cushioned bones. Skylar’s head flies back and his hand comes up to his face. TK gets what he came here for, his head and body flying back from a right hook by one of the other guys.
He barely manages to stay upright, stars exploding in his vision. His mouth fills up, blood coating his tongue, but his cheek feels oddly numb.
Unlike Skylar, TK doesn’t hesitate to get back into the fray that the others have now entered. Just like in training, he thinks, oddly euphoric, just like—
His fist only meets air.
f*ck.
He finally gets one hit in, his knuckles screaming in protest before an answer in the form of a punch to his stomach steals his breath. He keels over and brings his arms up to protect his head.
Before he knows it, he can’t move.
“TK,” Carlos hisses into his ear, arm clamping tight around TK’s aching chest. “You need to leave. You need to leave now.”
Oh. The hands around him have only ever held him gently. Have never become a cage. His arms are pinned to his side, Carlos’ hands resting over where his heart is, feeling like a lock. TK doesn’t understand. He was helping! Arturo is over there, barely dodging one first, Kyle trying to get between the two men, getting shoved to the side and Carlos is here, with him.
“Carlos, let go of me—”
As TK starts to struggle, Carlos’ grip tightens. He’s only ever held him like this in training. Back when the stakes were miniscule and TK could always trust him to let go.
His breath is warm against TK’s neck, underlining his pleading, hissed tone, “Please, stay back. "We've got this.”
“Let go!” TK’s struggling doesn’t give him more than an inch.
“Kennedy, please, you’re not supposed to get hurt. I can’t watch you—”
“Let. Go!”
TK always thought he would use what he learned in training to defend himself. He thought self-defense would be used to get away from a dangerous situation. Tonight, he learns that he can twist it into something uglier.
His muscles have learnt what to do when he's trapped. Nothing else matters. Despite the dizziness he feels, he goes limp, slides down and puts a foot behind Carlos’ to make him stumble backward. It works, if only because Carlos didn’t expect it.
TK doesn’t look back. The guilt only makes him throw himself right into the middle of it, catching another stray fist to the jaw.
He gets to be the one to protect Carlos this time.
The hits that connect contain every ounce of anger he’s held onto for too long. The only thing distracting him is the familiar outline in the corner of his eye, the swiftness of Carlos’ precise punches. Everything is colored green, even his pain blooms in green spots when he’s hit. He never manages to knock someone out, merely trading blow for blow, until Kyle kicks the back of one guy's knees and he stumbles down.
Without an opponent, TK takes a painful breath in and observes the battlefield. Actual reality.
Arturo’s bloody nose, Kyle spitting something dark onto the grubby alley floor, and he watches in horror as Carlos flings someone coming for Arturo by the neck of the shirt against the bricks. The man crumbles.
The alley falls silent.
The hushed enmity falls away, even as most men remain standing, breathing heavily and assessing the others with a calculating stare. Skylar stumbles back, terrified as Carlos does nothing but look at him and for the first time, TK really understands why. He’s only ever observed Carlos with admiration, but with blood running down his pierced brow, his shoulders squared, he looks like a volcano, mountainous, dangerous from outside and within.
Right now, both their knuckles are stained. Stepping out of this alley, people will jump back from TK too, and his mind doesn’t settle on a conclusion about how that makes him feel. The itch in his skin has died and so has the triumph of helping, of not being on the outside of this. There is shame at not understanding what he’s got himself involved in.
TK’s brain, shaken and stirred, catches the sound of breaking glass.
Everyone stiffens as the sickly green of the exit sign bounces off the broken, monstrous teeth of a bottle that one of the strangers brandishes. He holds it like a swordsman in a movie, straight ahead to taunt the target he strides toward. Aiming for where TK and Arturo stand.
TK’s knee buckles, forcing him into place. His hands go up on instinct.
“Hey!” Carlos shouts from the side, feet crunching as he walks toward them. TK has never heard his voice sound like this, like he’s trying to flatten himself into nothing. “Don’t! We have your money. Hey!”
Carlos only stops in his tracks when the bottle swings around to him and presses against his stomach. His hands fly to the bottle without touching it, but then he doesn’t move a muscle. It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. TK’s mind flashes forward to blood on a couch, a new wound he’ll never be able to stitch in time if the bottle is pressed in.
That’s when Skylar speaks up, voice muffled from the hand he presses to it. “f*ck your money. You had your chance. Now we have ours.”
“I’ll double it!” Arturo pleads, eyes never leaving the bottle as if he can stop it from slicing Carlos open by sheer willpower.
Skylar laughs coldly, his expression distorting into a manic mask under the low light of the exit sign. “10k? I think triple is worth not slicing your hombre’s belly up.”
“Deal,” Arturo says. “Triple and we all leave peacefully.”
Skylar hums through a broken nose, evidently enjoying making them squirm. “You pay me now.”
“Yes.”
“And we’ll all take a walk together so you won’t vanish into the dirt again.”
Arturo’s jaw clenches. “Get your guy off of him and we have a deal.”
Another dragged out hum and Skylar nods at his friend. The guy raises his hand, lifting the bottle an inch. He clearly doesn’t intend to let Carlos go, the monstrous thing pressed to his back until they have the money. Money that TK knows they don’t have.
TK doesn’t think.
He couldn't have, or he wouldn’t have thrown his upper body down onto the crook of an armed man’s elbow.
He doesn’t miss this time.
In a millisecond, the bottle goes inward, then crashes to the ground.
A hand pulls at his front, as Arturo yells, “Run!”
TK can’t, he can’t, he can’t — somehow he does. Somehow, a hand at his front and one at his back propel him forward despite the nausea and the pain in his foot, his breath feeling as if it never reaches his lungs. A loud noise pops behind him, metal on stone, before Kyle yells, “Go, go, go!”
“Straight,” TK pants as they reach the end of the alley.
Cars screech as they rush into traffic. He doesn’t know if it’s for them, but they all make it to the other side of the avenue in one piece.
“Left!”
The rattle of his breath is nothing compared to the feeling of rows and rows of blunt teeth clamping into his leg by the time they book it down the next block. He has no idea if they’re still being followed.
“Here, here,” he wheezes as black spots dance in front of his eyes.
They fly through the thick double doors and TK is only held upright by two warm bodies flanking him. The whirring colors are familiar, the bright tiles burning his eyes in the best way.
“Hey! Get out! Get out or I’m calling security.” The booming voice truly tells him that he has led them to safety.
More stars pop up in his vision as he tells Mr. Friedman, “It’s me. TK Strand. They’re with me.”
“Mr. Strand? Mr. Reyes? Oh my god, what—”
The door bangs open behind them and TK knows who it is without turning. “N—not them,” he wheezes, arm trembling as he gestures behind himself. Something wet slides down his chin. “Only us.”
Mr. Friedman turns to Skylar and two of his henchmen, and TK feels oddly impressed by the way he stands up taller than he has ever seen him do so before. This is the man who has only ever had a smile on his face, and a lollipop held out for TK, even when he was too old for it.
“If I press this button, security will be here in ten seconds if you don’t leave the premises now.”
“But they—”
“I don’t care!” Mr. Friedman snaps and taps the button on his watch. “There’s the door.”
“This isn’t over!” Skylar snarls, eyes burning into them, but TK has never felt relief quite like it when the doors bang shut behind them.
Mr. Friedman turns to them. “Do I need to call 9-1-1, sir?”
TK shakes his head, a mistake as the world swings wildly. “No— And please don’t call my father.”
Mr Friedman’s eyes fly over them, men reeking of trouble, and he looks like he wants to protest. He doesn’t. Instead, he steps back behind the counter like nothing unusual has happened. TK owes him.
As they shuffle their way to the elevator, their loud breaths become the only background sound until the doors opens with a melodic chime.
They all get in, TK’s foot feeling leaden despite Carlos steadying him.
“I’m gonna bounce,” TK hears Kyle rasp.
“What?” Arturo snaps. “What are you saying, dude?”
“I’m saying that I don’t want to spend another minute breathing the same f*cking air as you two.”
TK squints his eyes back open and sees Kyle, blond hair streaked with dark red and his jaw discolored. His eyes look wild, like he’s ready to keep fighting if any of them argue. The closing elevator doors reopen as Kyle steps out.
“Fine, go get yourself killed out there,” Arturo spits, his words losing their impact as the elevator doors close, setting it instantly into motion.
“TK?” Carlos asks, his name warped with a tremble.
TK turns to him and is entranced by the mirror reflecting them on all sides. Arturo looks stoic, wiping crud off his wonky nose. Carlos’ lip is split and the blood from his brow now mingles with sweat, maroon and scarlet rivulets down his cheek. His expression is unreadable but TK follows the line of Carlos’ arm and sees the shaking hand on his own arm more than feels it.
Oh. There’s blood running over Carlos’ fingers where he grips TK’s wrist.
His first thought is that Carlos was cut after all but then he understands that the blood is his own. It drips past cuts on his forearms down to the cream tiles of the elevator.
TK’s eyes snap up and his own reflection looks back at him, bruised chin and cheekbone, eyes bloodshot, body heaving like he’s still running a marathon. His sky blue shirt sticks to him with sweat, his right side smeared with the color of rust distorting the flower print.
TK looks at the picture they make and presses a hand to his aching mouth, stifling a laugh.
