“Crushing” ch2 - Liam Enters The Chat”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
His voice following Morrigan down the hall. The scraping of the bed on the hardwood lost to the sounds of his voice.
“You can't do this! You fucker! Let me go! Please!!”
Were the last words he heard before he was out the doors of the house. His breathing was erratic, his heart beating faster than it ever had. In Iraq, bombs going off didn’t compare to the words Thatcher had said, not five minutes before. The rage he had felt was there, like a blanket of barbed wire wrapped around him, sharp edges pushing into his skin in various places. On some level he knew he was being overly sensitive, entitled for the way he was acting. But everything hurt, and that was why he felt his tears falling down his bearded cheeks to collect at his chin, to fall into the bitter puddle at his feet.
“Why are you standing outside catching a cold?” A soft voice with a teasing tone of their Scottish accent said. The voice was older, more reserved then his. He opened his eyes unaware of when he had closed them to see his older brother, Liam. The man stood in one of his usual expensive suits, under a heavy leashes coat. Liam's dark green eyes watched him with a curious sense of concern. Unlike him, Liam's face was smooth and handsome with none of his wildness. Liam was always the picture of reserved and controlled, calm. They shared the strong brow, long nose and thin lips of their parents. Though the amount of plastic surgery that Liam had undergone to distance himself from how he was in the nineties made them less similar.
“Having a manic moment, brother, why don't you go back to your rich house and we try this reunion another day?” Morrgan asked with a throat laugh.
“Oh no, no, no you gob, you brought home a wet bear, whom I had to steal things from the hospital to keep off death's fucking doorstep. And you're saying I can't hug you!?!” Liam exclaimed glaring down at Morrigan. And there it was, the older brother he had missed so damn much.
Morrigan tried to wipe his messy face with the back of his hands but was handed a pale green handkerchief. The moment he pressed it to his face, long arms were around him and for a moment, he forgot that his heart was in the worst pain it had ever known. He was with his older brother again, the sense of home that he only felt when he and Liam were together enveloped him. Morrigan closed his eyes and allowed himself to just be held.
“Whatever has you out here, crying like a child out of a Bronte novel, we deal with together. Now can we get inside the f'ecking house it's colder here, than Glasgow?” Liam asked as he released his younger brother with an affectionate shove towards the house.
Morrigan, was out of sorts. All his days he had blurred together since the cliff.
The two men moved into the home’s coldness, Liam in front. His eyes narrowing as he moved past the moving boxes stacked against wall to the left of the hallway back towards the bedrooms.
“How long has the power been out?”
Liam fought a growl growing in his belly.
“You brought a man, freshly drowned, not to a hospital where he could have been taken care of, assuredly.” Liam paused on the word assuredly as he came to the open door.
There lying on the bed, dead to the world as he snored softly was Thatcher. His head to the left, it was clear that he had perspired by the amount of sweat drying on his skin. Liam didn’t take another step into the room. Just stared at the large man on the bed, he took in the coloring of his skin. A healthy pink under the warmth of the heater and lights that were hooked up to a generator that ran on gasoline.
“This was better than a hospital?”
“At the time, when I pushed him off a cliff…yes”
The sound slap to the back of Morrigan’s head was instantaneous.
“Brother, you must have been affected by the ocean's freezing temperatures. This isn't better, are you forgiving him for stepping out on you?” Liam said the words slowly as a realization dawned on him,
“You haven't kidnapped him to fall in love with you, have you?”
“I'm going to go and pretend I have no knowledge of what my younger brother is getting up to.” Liam said turning to leave only to have Morrigan grab his left forearm holding him in place.
“Don't. Leave me with my bad decisions.” Morrigan asked in a voice he no longer thought he could create. It was one he hadn't in over a decade, sitting on the lawn of their old home. The house was being consumed by flames Hamish had started. His mind was clearing from the brain fog their father created with his intermixing of violence and cutting words. The reality that he had killed their father and what it meant for his short life was pressing in on him from all sides.
Liam had pulled up to the teen and yanked him from the spot and practically thrown him in the back of his car before speeding away.
“Don't leave me. Don't leave me. Should I kill myself? I should yea,? Its prison now, right? Thats where I go?”
Hamish’s words were empty. No emotion attached to them. Liam watched from the rear view mirror in glances as he drove out of their cuddiesack.
“No brother, prison is not your next stop. Close your eyes, sleep. It'll be better when you wake up.” Liam said sincerely
Liam paused now, his next step should be to leave, but looking at his little brother in the dim light of morning through the shades and the light of the bedroom. He knew he would stay, help in whatever capacity he could. Maybe by the end he would still have his brother.
