Work Text:
Time Bomb
I am sinking to the bottom,
coming up only to breathe
He fidgets something awful, when the nurses finally leave and Sarah’s gone home and it’s just the three of them again, sat in silence. His mother’s been huddled in the same chair for two days now, unmoving except to pace the hallway just beyond the window, her fingers worried into knots with every visitor.
There’s been a lot of them – a steady stream of Dingles stopping by to wrap his mother in a hug and shoot a look of pity or confusion or both his way. They don’t understand, not a single one of them, what’s happened or why he did it and it’s frustrating, suddenly, to know they all think he’s the bad guy.
But he’s not, Danny is.
Vanessa shuffles closer, running her hands down her arms as she settles a hip gently against the end of his bed. She’s not been home, either, it looks like; her hair’s going greasy like it had after her dad died and she’d not done much else but shuffle from bed to the couch and back again for a whole weekend.
It’s comforting, a bit, even though it’s sad.
He tries to picture them, stuffed up on chairs beside his bed, attempting to sleep amidst all the beeping and vitals checks and the steady glow of light from the hallway. It’s been hard enough for him, now the sedation has worn off.
Certainly, he’ll hear about the sacrifice, though. Something his mum will use for ammunition later, when he’s not done as she’d like. You know, I didn’t leave you in hospital, Noah, you could be grateful for that.
He is, for the moment, even if he knows Vanessa’s only here out of a loyalty to his mother and his mother’s only here for… Well, he’s not really sure why. An impression, maybe; proving to someone that she can be caring and thoughtful and a good mum.
Not that it’s been much of a priority, lately, though.
The anger pricks again, then, the hurt welling up where he’d tried so hard to squash it down. The pills had made it quiet for a bit, bearable, almost, to feel like there weren’t a soul in the world who cared about him.
They’ve made a real good show of it now, when he’s laid in hospital and the doctors have all those worry lines etched into their faces.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Vanessa asks uselessly, her eyes soft like they are when she looks at his mum sometimes. Like she cares so much it’s going to seep right out her face.
He grunts, twisting his head away from the exchange he knows will follow. Always talking without words, they are, always deciding something between themselves with the lift of an eyebrow or a tilt of the chin. He doesn’t want to see it – not tonight, not when everything still feels fresh and raw.
“Where’d you get the pills, Noah?” his mum whispers.
Sarah, he wants to yell, but her name clogs up in his throat. Because she’d been right, really, about what will happen if he tells. All this good and happy and in love junk they’ve been filling the house with will turn back into anger and he’s not sure if they’ll all survive it.
And his mum needs Vanessa, of that much he’s sure.
“We’re not mad, Noah,” Vanessa offers, a hand settling on his ankle where it squeezes gently. He can hear his mum set free one of those almost-laughs she does when she doesn’t agree, can already picture the look that Vanessa must shoot her way that makes her go silent. “We’re not,” she repeats, “We just want to know what happened so we can help you.”
“No, you don’t,” he manages, choking on the words. It’s because they’d had a tube down his throat and it still hurts something fierce, he tells himself, not because it feels like there are tears pushing incessantly against the backs of his eyes and a sob brewing in the center of his chest.
He cries now, sometimes, when no one’s home and he’s sure he won’t be caught. There’s lots to cry about when he lets his mind wander just a bit and all the things that feel wrong start spiralling back into the places he’s tried so hard to push them out of. Joe and Sarah and Moses and his mum and all the things he can worry about but never fix.
He won’t cry in front of them, though; he can’t.
“We do, Noah,” Vanessa insists, settling more of her weight on the end of the bed. He could kick her off, he thinks – would, even, if today was a year ago and she were trying to weasel her way into something that should just be him and his mum. It’s never just him and his mum anymore, though.
Never just him and anyone.
He shakes his head, trying to will away the tears that well up in his eyes. “You won’t help,” tumbles out on the edge of a hiccup, his shoulders heaving as it all starts to escape. He squeezes his eyes shut, pleading with himself to stop.
But then Vanessa’s hand is stroking his calf and his mother’s fingers are in his hair and it’s worse, somehow, to even imagine that they could care. That anyone at all could care about him even the tiniest bit.
His mother presses kisses to his temple, though, and murmurs something he can’t quite hear over the hitching of his own breath but that sounds an awful lot like scared. And he’s been scared, too; terrified for weeks on end, so he leans into her touch.
She swipes her thumb across his cheek, collecting tears, and it feels like he’s six again.
He wants to tell her, then, wants to blurt it all out. What Sarah’s been up to and what Danny’s truly like and where the pills really came from and how it had seemed so easy to just swallow them and let go for a little bit. To be normal and take pills, just like everyone else. How desperately he wants to be like everyone else.
Only, it all jams up and his throat goes tight and it just makes him squeeze his eyes shut harder.
“We love you, Noah,” Vanessa swears, like that’s not a ticking bomb. Like she can’t see the detonation wire laid across the floor, ready to make everything explode.
Like it might just feel good instead.
“Stop it,” he begs – to himself or to them or to everything.
And it works, for a moment, because everything goes still again. Not dark and frozen and quiet, like it had been before he woke up, but his mother’s hands stop moving and Vanessa’s lift off his leg and the next sob that pushes up into his throat gets swallowed down before it can break loose.
It’s enough, for a second, to feel a little bit of control.
It will destroy them, if he tells, he thinks. Vanessa will leave again because his mum and her kids and her grandkids are too much to handle sometimes. And his mum will go quiet, all the light in their life snuffed out in the absence of Vanessa. It’ll be his fault, if they all fall apart, his truth that will do the unravelling.
They’ve only just woven it all back together.
“You should rest,” Vanessa suggests, the sound of her hand tracing down the back of his mum’s blazer filling the room. He knows that sound, now; hears it every morning as they move around each other in the kitchen.
That sound alone is enough to silence the voice inside that pleads with him to free himself of this heavy burden. And it’s such a heavy load to bear, when even Sarah herself had begged him to keep carrying it. It feels as though it might crush him.
But he can’t crush them, too. He won’t, if he can help it.
So, he tilts his head into the pillow and wills himself to sleep and pretends he doesn’t hear the ticking of the bomb that’s been buried in his chest.
Even if it carries on incessantly.