Disorder Ch. 08

"Yeah?"

"Charles?"

Gnawing at the inside of his cheek until it bled, he winced at his younger brother's bored tone crackling down the line, the phone giving out as the storm raged overhead. Signal was terrible at the best of times and, well, Charles... Breaking the news. Breathing shortly and shallowly, he clutched at his own hair, one hand digging into it and tearing at the roots even as he cursed the phone to his face, a single, solid lifeline in a storm that lapped at the bow of the boat, eager to turn it over into the depths of a hungry, unforgiving ocean. And yet he had to do it, he had to say, had to force the words by lips that felt like rubber, head pounding dully without pain. No... He could not. It was too much. No. No.

And yet he had to do it. He had to go through with it. Charles had to know. For there was no way he'd get John back to the car on his own.

*

All passed in a blur, bodies in bags, strapped stiff and tied up, sent to the bottom of a lake known for suicides. No one was going to be looking for them -- at least, no one in the realm of the lawful world that mattered. Maybe there was another family member or whatnot that wanted to see justice for Jaunt and the like but, frankly, Donnie could not find it in himself to care. There was only one that he cared about right then and there and he wasn't there anymore.

He'd never thought about the lives that had been snuffed out, even if not directly at his hands. John, of course, had gotten tangled up in some things that even he was not proud of in his younger days but all of that was a means to an end. He just didn't really see brawling and fighting and knives to be much of a use of his time. Firearms entertained him for a while but the ease of which they could be controlled in those days ended up boring him in the end. Drugs were unpredictable, their concoctions and influences always changing so that no one individual could be sure of what they were getting at any one time. They'd given him the motivation to dredge that up for others too, assisting the world in a strange yet individual manner. Even after his death, Donnie would not have had the heart to say that that kind of escapism was not the best. It was especially hard to say with vodka down his throat, empty shot glasses lined up before him and something furious seething through his system.

Leaning back on his sofa, he stared at the ceiling, although the usual euphoria did not come, eyes sunken into hollows that should never have been called eyes. The pits of such, maybe, the remnants of a man that he'd once been. He'd not had anyone in to clean and, while there had been little dirt to carry through the house, it ran rank with a musty aroma, dust heavy in the air. Smoking hadn't really been on his agenda -- who needed weed when he could get a far better hit from their own supply? -- so there, at least, wasn't the stink of anything of that nature in the air, although showering had not been a high priority either. He'd, at least, managed to sit on the floor of the walk-in shower beneath the rapidly reconstructed round showerhead. The overhead 'rain shower', set into a big rectangle in the ceiling, just felt too much like...well...rain.

Slipping away, he floated, but it was for nowhere near long enough. He'd never been an exceptionally heavy user of drugs for the need to get away but...circumstances must. They helped him not think about where they'd had to bury John's body. At least that had been a safe one to bury, not as if they were going to be calling in a police report or anything, although it had been many, many kilometres away, well off the beaten track. The others went in the opposite direction, somewhere where Donnie would never again care to go. Yet there was little either he or Charles could do to get the stench and darkness of blood off their hands, his little brother struggling to appear calm and cool and everything John had been. Only, he was not John and the strain in his jaw became harder and harder to bear with every passing moment as they dealt with the nastiness of the situation.

John would have been able to do it. He would have been stronger than them, stronger than both of them. Look at what he had done for them, let alone Donnie. He didn't want anyone to know that he actually gave two shits but, well, they did know in the end. Exhaling, Donnie half-closed his eyes, the living room taking on an eerie air, the flat screen TV on the opposite wall with a big crack down the middle. That would have pissed John off. That would have really fucking pissed him off.

Bodies sinking in the lake. Putting the last spade of dirt down over John's corpse, chemicals poured down to speed up the process of decomposition more naturally. It never hurt to be safe even though no one, of course, would be looking for him. Just Donnie. And Donnie knew exactly where he was if he needed to go back, sometime. Maybe sometime.

"Hey."

Charles stood in the doorway, hair pulled back from his face and tied up, stretching down his back to the small of it. Donnie laughed brokenly, turning his head to the side, although he had really intended to shake his head. Was he that tired? Or had he shot himself up so high that he could barely move? Either was okay, as long as that numbness throbbed through his gut, setting him back and away from the pain. Just for a time, a little while longer. He didn't have to deal with it as long as he was high.

Donnie did not answer, turning his head away, shutting out the sight of his brother. His only brother. Was Charles really now his only brother or did a dead one still count? The jury was out on that one.

"Donnie."

Why couldn't he just go away? Donnie's lips tried to turn down into a frown but he did not quite possess the muscle control, floating dully, thickly, as he was, to form the expression. The most he got was a twitch but it felt as if everything was coming through, flowing smoothly, as it should have been.

And yet Charles saw through it all -- how could he not? It as if they hadn't been living apart for years. They knew one another, after all, if not quite as well as John and Donnie knew each other. Donnie doubted very much that he would ever know anyone else as well as he knew -- had known -- John, but that was by the by. He didn't really want to know anyone anymore.

"You've got to get out. You can't just sit here."

Charles tried, bless him, but words weren't going to get him anywhere. The youngest of them all and the one who had never really been all that into making money or a name for himself, seeing it as John's game, Charles was the most innocent. He hadn't seen what they'd seen, flitting between boyfriends and the like as he did, doing what he needed to do to get by and amusing himself where he could. He was more a soul that wandered and explored rather than buckling down to make something of himself. Of course, most would have said anyway that there wasn't anything one could actually make of themselves in the criminal underworld, regardless of what John and Donnie had achieved in their short time there.

Ah, the business... Just the thought of it made him itch for another hit of their own goods. Before...leaving, John had brought in another strain that Donnie had grown particularly fond of. Even then, he could not have honestly said whether it was because that one had been orchestrated well and truly by John in sourcing suppliers and making good on the dough or if it really was that good of a high but it didn't matter to him, not even then, like so much else. He didn't have to think when he was on Hell, which, oddly enough, felt more like heaven if he allowed it to take him, pumping through his veins and intoxicating every last sweet, sweet inch of a body that no longer felt at all destined to remain within the bounds of earth anymore.

Not thoughts that he had not had before, he had to admit, but not pleasant ones either. If he was to go, he'd go quietly, but he pushed down the throb of guilt that threatened to, once again, rear its ugly head, a gruesome twist in the pit of his stomach. He coughed and tried not to think of the business he would leave behind; it was not as if Charles was capable or interested in that at all. If he sold it off, he would leave himself vulnerable -- Charles, that was. He had his own methods... Would it, in fact, be an idea to sell the drug business John and he had built up before something worse happened to him? Whether from his own hand or someone else's?

Donnie swallowed, although only a very small amount of saliva slipped down his throat. Stitches could only do so much and there was no number of stitches to pull back together the gaping, ragged hole in his chest or heart. It throbbed with a deep bellyache of pain as the drugs wore off and he became more active, slowly turning his head from one side to the other, questing after his next hit, his next high, just to keep the feeling at bay for a little longer. It was too soon, much, much too soon, to be thinking about how to keep things going or whatever it was that John would or would not have wanted him to do, even if that was already clear in his own mind and something that he very, very much did not want to have to think over, not even for the sake of his brother. It was just...

...too painful. Far, far too painful.

Yet his drug-fuelled mind veered off on its own as he closed his eyes and sank back into the comfortable, familiar sofa, trying to claw his train of thought back even as it steamrolled off without him. He'd never very much felt in control of his own thoughts but that was hardly something that he could be blamed for, of course, unless one counted being under the influence of one thing or another something that any individual could be blamed for at the crux of the moment. The business would have to keep going, John would never, ever forgive him if he let it fall, if he didn't set things up so that all that they planned could continue on. There wasn't going to be anyone to leave it to after all three of the brothers were gone but Donnie had rather hoped that his stealthy ways would have at least pushed them all up into old age before their time to pass on had come. And he wouldn't have gone easily, with that in mind, into the darkness of the abyss, kicking and screaming and clawing where, before, he may have shoved himself over that ledge and thrown himself a party too at the same time, just for good measure.

Ah, how times changed. Did he die or did he not? Which was the better option? As alluring as one was, he saw John's scowl in his mind's eyes, perfect lips turned down in disgust. What are you doing? The words would come so easily to him, knowing just what he had to say in a perfect balance of derision, shock and, strangely so, comfort at the same time. There's nothing for you if you do that. Come here. And he'd taken John's comfort that time and many, many other times after -- times that would only ever be shared between the two of them if Donnie too chose to take that particular secret of his life and his past to his grave.

Like choosing not to die, John would never allow him not to carry on, to breathe and pulse and live. The business would have to find its footing somewhere new with just the one of them, even if he had no idea where to begin in the middle of everything. John had taken over so much, a driving force and power in the vitality and virility of what they had built, it had surprised even Donnie. He hadn't thought, truly, that John was capable of showing such motivation but maybe it had not been himself that he had motivation for, in the end, but someone else entirely.

John... Exhaling deeply, down he sank, eyes half-open and yet resisting the view of the new world. It was no world without him. Something had changed and now he was gone and there was nothing more to it than that in the grand scheme of things. No one would see just how he had to grind through and pick up the pieces and neither would anyone care either. It would just be easier again still if he just stopped, stopped everything... Yes. Yes, that's what they would all want, want to see him do, falling and slipping, clawing at a slope from which he could never again crawl and hoist his way, resiliently back up. There was no resilience left without John.

"John."

Donnie blinked and looked up, yet there was only Charles there, lips set into a firm, definite line. Now that he was closer, it was a little more evident how his eyes were a little more sunken than they should have been, his skin paler as if he had not been eating. Donnie could not have said that he saw Charles' diet to be anything all that healthy, if the truth was told, but his clothes too hung a little more loosely on his body, shoulders jutting out and held more rigidly than before.

All small changes, imperceptible to someone who didn't know Charles. Yet things like that were just what stood out to Donnie, knowing him as he did, as much and as little as he did. And yet... Donnie took a deep breath, loathing how his skin seemed to tighten with lines of pain even as he drew it in, hating every last second of that life-giving essence of oxygen.

"What did you say?"

Charles frowned.

"What you were thinking. You didn't exactly react when I called your name and I've been calling it a while now." He paused, eyebrows pushing slightly closer together as if he was steadying himself for something more, something more that was very difficult indeed to come to. "Look, he was my brother too, although I know you two were...close..."

Swallowing, Charles deliberately averted his eyes, a little more heat in his cheeks and down his neck than he may have otherwise have cared to display. Against himself, Donnie chanced the tiniest of smiles, a twitch of his lips. Ah, so Charles had been astute. As much as John had scorned and scoffed the very idea of Charles suspecting that they were anything more than brothers, and bad ones at that, he had seen through everything in the end, although Donnie did not quite care to know for how long the knowledge had been there. Even he did not care to understand just how deep his love for his brother had gone outside the familial sense of caring, although none of them had had all that much of that growing up as it was. Maybe it was all pre-determined that they would slip into something seedier, something that no 'normal' family would have even considered. And yet that slip had saved him in the end too.

"Come on."

Charles shook his head and rocked back on his heels, arms folded across his chest as he exhaled a puff of air, blowing it out through his cheeks. For a moment, Donnie wondered if his chest felt as tight at his did, the aroma of cigarettes lingering around his younger brother. They weren't the worst poison in comparison to other things, he had to concur.

"Come out."

And, against beggar's belief, Donnie sat up, put on a jacket that had belonged to John, and forced his legs to carry him out the door, forcing him in the footsteps of the younger brother who still had the same dark hair as the oldest.

*

The streets were not much better but the cool air pulling through his lungs eased a little of the burn. Only a little but it was enough to keep him going, taking one step after the other as the street lights glanced off the wet sidewalks of the city, glittering in artificial light even in the dead of the night. It must have been a weekend for everything still bustled more than he could have otherwise have expected it too, tourists flocking and moving through like herds of wild animals that migrated from one place to another, rarely returning to any one location until they got caught in a rut. That was something, in particular, that humanity was very good at.

What could there be to see in the city? He hunkered down into the coat, pulling the collar up around his neck and chin, inhaling deeply. It hurt how much it still smelled like him and yet he drank it in greedily, hot and heavy gulps of breath fuelling the scent into his system, better than any manufactured drug. John's aftershave, the natural scent of him lingering beneath, a softer undertone of cleanliness and freshness. It had been the spicier scents that he filched for himself in his younger years and his liking for them had, apparently, stuck as he grew up, although Donnie didn't quite know where he had actually bought or even stolen anything from once things had ramped up on the drug side of the business. It seemed strange to just walk into a supermarket with a wad full of money from ill-gotten gains, yet perhaps less strange to steal the items of desire themselves: a converse conundrum indeed.

Charles strode ahead, although he was not John. John never kept his hair like that and he never had a set to his shoulders liked that. He didn't walk with his hands thrust into his pockets and he was not as casually 'dark' as Charles was, even though not even Donnie would have dared say that Charles was a Goth in any way, shape or form. Not quite, just...with his own unique sense of style that didn't quite match up with anything else and, truly, nor did it have to. A touch of funded elegance had come into John as time went on, the tailored suits highlighting his broad shoulders and slender figure even as Donnie retreated, craving the comfort of casual trousers or even jeans, sneakers the most comfortable. He wasn't about making an impression and would have been quite happy mooching off the rest of the world through hacking and draining bank accounts, even if he would have surely had some side projects just to keep himself interested in things. He'd have never gone into the drug business like John had. No...he had been pulled.

Exhaling sharply, he drew himself up tall, avoiding the eyes of strangers on the street, their laughter cutting through like a knife. Coming out and down from a high was as bad as the need that drove him there in the first place, shaky and jittery and striving to keep himself on course at all costs. He sweated under the jacket but no force in heaven or hell would have made him take it off, particularly as the rain, once again, pattered down, cooling his face and moistening his hair in a light mist. Did it ever stop raining these days?

Charles stopped at a hot dog stand and Donnie watched, unblinking, striving to push down every last feeling that may have otherwise risen up from the pit of his aching, hollow gut, watching the transaction. Wasn't it funny how money changed hands like that? He couldn't remember the last time that he bought something off the street. No, all of his purchases were online, directed through alternate bank accounts and identities so that nothing could be traced back to him. Maybe John had had someone do his buying -- non-drug, that was -- through the one that Donnie had set up for him too, although Donnie had not delved into that since he'd died.

The word tightened in his throat as if he had actually tried to speak it aloud and he shook his head, lips pressed together. No. No, it didn't have to be said: it would be either way.

Charles returned and nodded to him, eyes serious and closed off as if he too was experiencing a distant memory. Donnie had to understand too, of course, that John had been his brother too, just as Charles had said so very pointedly to him. Charles' world had turned upside down too with the loss of a figure that, no doubt, he'd looked up to, if only in some grudging, roughed-up way that he would never enunciate aloud. There was that to consider... Especially so the fact that he was now the eldest brother in the family and, well, the head of the household. Their father had never had much of a lingering presence that really counted for anything much, in all honesty.

He didn't pass the food to Donnie but held it awkwardly before him like an offering, jerking his head away. Like the sheep that he most certainly was not, Donnie followed him, step by step as the rain came down harder, soaking the bread and napkins clutched in Charles' hands. His younger brother cursed and crushed them in closer to his body, half-destroying them in the process even as he tried, desperately, to shield them from the elements. It was funny how one could tear apart the very things that they held close, even though it was not, technically, entirely Charles' fault but just an unhappy coincidence, a happening of events that could not have been stopped once they had come to pass.