“Clark? You awake?” His mother’s voice was tentative outside his room.
He struggled out of the blankets in a panic, knocking a pillow off the edge of the cot. “What? What’s you okay?” That didn’t sound right. His brain was made of glue. It had to be the middle of the night.
“I wondered if you might want breakfast.”
Fuck, it was not the middle of the night.
He rubbed his face, thought about slapping himself a few times. “I’ll be out in a sec.” He didn’t want the breakfast but he couldn’t keep needing her to wake him because he’d overslept.
Only problem was, the dreams were back. Sometimes they were memories like the frostbite scare, recognizable even fractured and distorted. Clark’s parents giving him half of whatever was in a can, none of them sure where more food would come from. Watching his comics blacken and curl in the fire that would keep them from freezing.
Sometimes he wandered hazy landscapes with no shelter, no food, no warmth anywhere. No other people. Even an armchair psychologist could figure that out. Clark didn’t need to hear it unless said psychologist had recommendations for making it stop so he could get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. He had shelter, food, and a town full of people waiting for him to get to work.
When he pulled open his curtain, his mother was still standing in the hall. Arms crossed. Fed up, probably.
“Were you still planning to head to the creek?” she asked, and rubbed her hands up and down her upper arms. “The temperature dropped overnight.”
Oh. Not fed up. Chilly.
Clark had been going to the creek every morning when the sun was barely up to incidentally freeze his junk while trying to calm his leg down so he could start his day. Today might not be the day for it.
“I have an extra fleece,” he offered. “If you need it. The zipper’s busted but I rigged it so you can still close it.”
Melina smiled. “I’m all set, but thanks.”
He couldn’t think of anything else to offer, so he nodded. “Okay, well, I should get out to the gardens before I need to do other stuff.”
“Before you go, is there anything I can do? I heard you in the middle of the night.”
He froze. He hadn’t gotten up; he must have yelled in his sleep. That hadn’t happened in a while. “Sorry.”
“It wasn’t a problem, I just… sweetheart, can’t I help? At all? I know I came on too strong when you first got here. I’m sorry. I could listen, at least?”
Sweetheart. It was like he was still sitting at their scratched-up kitchen table doing his homework amongst his parents’ tools and various little projects and she was letting him know dinner was almost ready.
It felt so far away. And he didn’t want to keep hurting her feelings over and over when she reached out, but what would he say? Everything wrong in his life was the same story as anybody else, aside from his lamentable and seemingly unavoidable habit of being a thorn in the side of the town’s defense team lead.
“I’m fine,” he demurred. “I’ll get something to eat later.” He ducked back into his room to get the fleece for himself.
He stayed there until he heard her sigh and move away. It took longer than he expected. Fuck knew what she thought he was doing in there since he’d slept in his clothes again.
By the time he left she’d vacated the kitchen as well so he was able to get some food without insulting whatever she’d been going to make. The leftover potatoes with goat cheese he’d made the day before were almost as good cold.
He was finishing garden chores when he heard the new R-town truck pull in. Well, Clark assumed it was that truck since no siren went off. He relaxed a bit. Not that he’d been worried while the defense team had been off to Doberman. Anyone in town would relax when their defense team came home, especially with the Dollars roaming around. It was normal.
He hadn’t seen much of any of them since that night, and Van not at all. Of course Clark had been working hard to be elsewhere. Last time they’d had a dustup Van had left town right after and Clark had figured replicating the effect was safest. Unlike last time when he’d had (mistaken) righteous indignation to fuel him, this time all Clark had was a creeping sense of unease.
Surely people didn’t get kicked out of Freshtown because they fucked and wanted different things after. Not that Clark was entirely sure, in retrospect, that Van had been asking him for anything. He’d been dumped. He might have just been processing.
Clark didn’t want to be processed with.
He didn’t want to get told to leave town either, which could happen if Van decided Clark was all uncooperativeness and sharp edges. If it went down that way, he had no one to blame but himself. It had all seemed so straightforward at the creek, working on Ximena’s porch step together, and laughing with Van at the fence. That last memory stung extra hard now.
So did the contrast between falling asleep with Van warm at his back and waking up to everything going sideways.
And if he didn’t put that disturbing observation out of his mind while he worked, he’d end up cutting off one of his thumbs. The house some of the families with kids used for schooling had shoddy weather stripping. By the time he’d finished upgrading it around lunchtime Trinity arrived to nurse her toddler.
“Makes you wonder how long before they’re coming into the towns,” she said to Clark through the screen door as she kicked something off her boots on the porch. Her dark brown skin was dusty as well; he couldn’t tell if she’d been farming or cleaning out an attic somewhere.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh wow, sorry, I guess nobody told you yet. They’re back, but Van got shot.”
Clark wouldn’t have thought his stomach could drop so hard and not rupture. For a moment all he could remember from his entire life was Van’s disappointment in the darkness. He tried to breathe.
Trinity looked at him with concern. “I don’t think it was a big deal. He was walking on his own when I saw him on his way to Dr. Day’s. And they didn’t get the truck.” She paused. “Are you okay?”
No. He bit it back. He was fine. Just shocked. Perfectly normal reaction.
“Your tools will be okay here on the porch,” Trinity offered, “if you wanna get some fresh air or something?”
He shouldn’t need to. He didn’t need to. Clark found himself stumbling down the porch steps anyway.
Van hated having his skin sewn. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him, it was the tugging sensation. It wasn’t normal.
Dr. Day frowned pointedly as she tied it off, trimmed the thread, and got a cloth bandage tied around his bicep. “You be gentle with this arm for a few days or I will make you wear a sling.”
He’d do whatever she wanted as long as she was done stitching. “I promise.” He picked up the t-shirt Zoe had run to get him and gingerly worked it on.
The doctor called, “You can come in now!”
Hadas peeked around the doorframe. She’d been all business since the attack, and Pace had walked Van here so she could go see to the horses. She couldn’t have gotten everything done by now.
“Hey.” Her voice was scratchy, tense.
Dr. Day finished washing her hands. “I’ll leave y’all to it.” She untied the cord that had held her locs back, shook them out, and patted Hadas on the arm on her way out the door.
Van reached for Hadas. Her first steps into the room were slow, then in a rush she was in his arms. He got organized so the stitches didn’t pull and stroked her hair.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I love you.”
She shivered when she exhaled. “I love you too. Fuck, though. This is going to suck.”
Going out searching, she meant. Gunfire and blood. “You kept it together. Proud of you.”
Hadas snuggled closer. “Last time I had to see you hurt, I barely knew you. This time when you got out from under the truck...” She took a breath. “What if I can’t do this?”
All he could do was hold her. “You can stay here. No judgment.”
She laughed into his shoulder. “Yeah no. You can’t wander around unsupervised. Fuck knows what you’d get up to.”
Van kissed the top of her head. “Where’s Zelpha?”
“Barn, I think. So I guess I’ll head there. You coming?” Hadas grimaced at the discarded shirt on the floor. “I liked that shirt. Maybe Ximena can patch it.”
He didn’t think he flinched but Hadas caught something. She put a hand to his cheek. “Sorry. Sore subject.”
Van waved it off. He couldn’t avoid Ximena any more than Clark, and truth be told he’d barely even thought about the breakup given everything else, even with Jaime on the road with them. That probably told him something about how invested he’d been in the sex part of their relationship. He still had the friendship. Time to move forward. “I’m over it. For real.”
Hadas nodded sympathetically. “Then can I ask about the Clark thing? I’d love to be wrong, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going well.”
The rush of embarrassment wasn’t as bad this time. Maybe getting shot had given him a sense of perspective. “I figure I’ll get over that too.”
It was probably going to take a while longer than the Jaime thing had. The embarrassment might not be so bad now, but everything else was still there. He’d have to see Clark’s broken-a-little nose and those damn tattoos, listen to him flirt with whoever. Remember hearing his breathing slow and even out as he fell asleep, Van curled around him to keep him warm.
Dwelling on it wasn’t going to help. Van had to pick himself up, dust himself off, and get on with it.
Would have been easier if the guy wasn’t standing outside when he and Hadas stepped onto the porch hand in hand.
Clark looked like he didn’t know whether to come or go. He stood there, rocking on his heels a bit, hands shoved in his pockets. He had dark circles under his eyes and stubble Van hadn’t seen him with before. To be honest it was not a great look on him. Kinda patchy.
“Hey Bayes,” Hadas said, in a neighborly way. “You need the doc?”
Clark tore his eyes away from the blood-stained flannel Van had grabbed as they left. He looked at Hadas, and then at Van. Stricken was the only word Van could come up with for his expression. Was he hurt? Sick?
“Uh, no,” Clark said. “I’m fine. I heard what happened and… sorry. I’ll go.” Clark took two halting steps back, whirled, and headed back the way he came.
“Hang on,” Hadas called. “Are you free? Somebody needs to walk Van back to the house, make sure he doesn’t keel over from blood loss or anything, and I have to head out.”
Van took a breath to object but she squeezed his fingers.
Clark turned back, way more slowly than he’d turned away. “Uh, sure. Okay. I mean, I don’t know if I could catch him. I’d try.”
Van was getting more uneasy the more Clark talked. The man wasn’t himself. He wasn’t cracking jokes or pissed off, or acting like he could take on the world.
I heard what happened, he’d said.
It finally clicked. The Dollars were fucking things up for everybody. People getting shot or killed, stuff getting stolen, folks in the circuit towns wondering if they’d be next. Van didn’t know what Clark had been through in the war beyond what Melina had said, but anybody who’d been in the thick of it would be even edgier than the younger folks. Van didn’t want that. Whatever was going on, or not, between them, Clark shouldn’t be worrying about this mess. That’s what the circuit and the defense teams were for.
“I doubt you have to worry about them turning up here,” Van reassured him. “We’ll take care of it. Get things back to normal.”
Hadas gave Van’s hand another squeeze and let go. “Love you. See y’all later.”
Van waited until she was out of sight. “I rode all the way here,” he reassured Clark. The man didn’t need to worry about whether the defense team lead could manage. “I can get home fine. Go back to what you were doing. Everything’s okay.”
Clark seemed to deflate a bit. “Yeah. Sure.”
Van watched him go. He wished he’d found some better words, something to set Clark’s mind at ease. Maybe there weren’t any words. Clark would know as well as Van, or maybe better, how it was to fight an enemy that only gave a damn about their own.
It was time to get back to work. He had to make sure beds were ready for the R-town folks who were coming for their new truck tomorrow and he’d only escaped updating the Council right away because of the hole in his arm.
Maybe he should have gotten two holes in his arm.