hamza/uzair (light on the romance) | 1.5k words | for @chaotickittydreamer who wanted Uzair whump. also @tojisloft c'm'ere. | T/M | tw: suicidal thoughts, drug abuse.
They took him to a shrink, once. Shortly after his parents’ death, though time went a little loopy, then, a little personal, the way it stretches and mellows and hastens for children, and then falls in line like a good soldier, marching on and on as adulthood settles.
Either way, he’d been young and death had a meaning, back then, but that meaning had been absence and blood, and it hadn't been as heavy as it eventually came to be.
Or light.
Sometimes, Uzair doesn’t care about death. Sometimes he just watches it happen with the same indifference as butchers slaughtering cattle, because that’s the way it is, isn’t it? Some things have to die for the world to go on properly.
But some other things should never, ever die…
So, they took him to a shrink. One of his older aunts, the one who didn’t want to take him in because she already had five children, and Rehman, young but grown to him, the way any somewhat adult-shaped boy is grown to one who is still firmly a kid.
The shrink had sat him on a soft couch and asked him a few questions about how he felt, how life was going, which was very funny, in the grand scheme of things, because life was not going at all. Life had stopped, but things still happened all around him. That’s how he felt about it, but that’s not what he said, because voicing feelings has never been too easy.
He’d stared a lot. In the end, the shrink prescribed some pills to take for a while.
He’d taken them, sometimes, but he also forgot about them quite often.
Coke was an easier sell.
He’d been fourteen and roguish and Rehman had given him a gun, so the whole world lay at his feet like an ever changing patterned rug. His friend Ali had another friend who sold quite a lot of things to the rich kids back at Clifton, and they’d tried to convince him to slip them into one of those parties, just so they could scream and laugh at the elite – maybe scare a few kids by waving that pretty gun around.
They’d worn him down. Uzair had laid on another soft couch and watched and seen true, real insouciance for the first time. He’d thought that he’d been free and happy since the death of his parents, with Rehman, but this, this was something else. Something he’d have been jealous of if it wasn’t so utterly alien, if he didn’t suddenly feel as though he needed to protect whatever he was and whatever he came from.
The party had awakened a sense of belonging.
Lyari, my Lyari.
He’d also snorted his first line of coke.
How wonderful the world can be, when you bend down and let things into your body.
Rehman had figured it out. He’d looked at him in that quiet, bird of prey way, and he’d ruffled his hair.
“Don’t do too much of that.”
It was always straightforward, with Rehman. He didn’t need to put much words behind his thoughts, not when he was asking for something. With time, Uzair had even learned to speak for him, when his brother felt as though the conversation wasn’t worthy of his voice.
Or when he didn’t have any.
Flickering hospital lights. Tears in Rehman’s eyes. Hamza with a meek gaze and meek hands and meek words.
Hamza hasn’t been meek for a while, now.
He’d listened to Rehman, because he always did. Not too much of that. Just every once in a while, when he needed some blazing glory, or when Donga was throwing a party under the cover of darkness. The comedown has always sucked, but the high is as wonderful as life can get. It makes him want to bite into the world whole, makes him feel as though he’s capable of putting it on his own shoulders.
Maybe that’s what he’s looking for, right now. A way to bear the weight of the world.
Except the comedown is even more awful, because snakes hiss into his ears about loss and about how death would feel better than whatever life is at the moment, because nothing makes sense and everything is about Rehman being dead, dead, dead.
Rehman is dead.
He wants to die so much. He wishes he’d have the strength. The gun, perhaps. A quick blast into his brain.
The coke is just barely enough to keep him up and running. It makes him want to throw things at the wall and kill every last one of the Pathans in Lyari. Slicing Arshad’s head off had been like a high, in a sense – died like cattle, died, died, can’t hurt Rehman anymore, Rehman is dead – but the SP’s still out there and he wants to spill his guts, watch him unspool in front of him in a dark puddle.
“Uzair, your nose is bleeding.”
The shiver runs through him. He turns his head, blinks soaked eyelashes, and watches Hamza’s shape move around the sofa. Uzair waves a hand, as if to bat him off, as if to tell him to go away.
Sometimes, he wants to live in Hamza’s skin. Sometimes, he wants him to go away and never come back, because he was there when Rehman died, because everytime he sees him he thinks about his brother dying, about Hamza carrying him to the hospital, about how it was too late, too late.
Rehman is dead.
A white cloth rubbing at his nose, wiping the blood off. He’s so numb. His whole body is.
He leans into the touch, grabs at Hamza’s wrist, and clings until he’s got all of him sitting beside him, breathing deep and slow.
Rehman isn’t breathing. Rehman is dead.
The tears gather around his mouth. He needs to take a line again, because this isn’t bearable.
The only thing he likes is the ritual of taking the little pouch out and lining up the powder, all nice and clean.
He knows that the ones who are really deep into this shit, who want the full effects even faster, will put the powder in their ass. Something about the veins there absorbing things quickly.
“Uzair, don’t. You’ll overdose if you take another hit.”
Hands clutching at his. He struggles weakly, like a lamb who isn’t quite sure it’s going for the slaughter, and then finds himself folded into some sort of warm embrace, rivulets of dark hair falling around him like a curtain.
“Calm down. Stop struggling. You just need to lay off for a little bit.”
He gasps with it, feels it wrench out his heart, the truth digging into his lungs, into everything, and he howls, then, howls and howls tears and hurt.
“It’s ok. Let it all out.”
“I want my brother back,” he gasps wetly, “I want my brother back…”
Broad hands rubbing at his shoulderblades. They can’t bring Rehman back. They carried him all the way to the hospital, covered in blood, gushing at the neck.
“I want to die,” he gasps, “I want to die…”
“Think about revenge. Think about the gang. Think about Lyari. People are counting on you. Do you understand?!”
Maybe those strong arms could wrap around his neck and put him to sleep.
He blinks, vision still blurry, and looks up into grey-green eyes.
“Revenge,” he mumbles back.
“Yes, Uzair. You can’t die without having taken revenge for Rehman bhai, right?”
“You should sleep. Come on, lean on me.”
He struggles a bit, but those hands are strong, stronger than his in this state, and so he’s leaning on Hamza’s ribcage, against the beating of his heart and the whooshing of his lungs. Everything sounds like life, in there, like soft and soothing life.
He listens. Hamza’s heartbeat is slow. Uzair isn’t even sure that Hamza is capable of panicking.
He’s whispering something, up above. It’s Balochi – Hamza’s Balochi is quite good, a bit accented at times, but native and familiar.
“Nestle on my lap and sleep.
Whenever you want to leave,
Just coo and forewarn me.
With civet-musk I’ll gild your beak,
With rose-petals your wings,
I’ll dispatch the clouds of mist
The story of Kiyya and Sadu. Sadu left waiting and waiting for her betrothed to return, fearing that the wedding will never take place.
Uzair’s breathing slows. He blinks, eyelids heavy, and only opens them to stare at Hamza’s face, at the way those lips move, nice and slow.
He’s going to sleep. He hopes he doesn’t wake up.
It’s been like this for a while. He keeps hoping that death will be kind and come in his sleep.
Lips brush over his brow.
“Nestle on my lap and sleep.
Whenever you want to leave…”
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