For most of Luis’s life, he’s known walking through the faded purple front door of the house he’s grown up in means he will be assaulted by noise. For so many years, he would even hear the sounds of yelling and banging and general chaos before he even made it up the steps. Several siblings tended to to that, he supposes. His key in the lock meant prepare for a whirlwind of motion and sound, for rapid Spanish and crashing sounds of clumsy people walking into each other and the calamity of home.
He tenses, even now, walking through that front door, reflexively preparing for an onslaught of noise that doesn’t come. Even though he struggled to get the key through the lock with one hand, the other holding a tired Lance, he prepared without realising what he was doing, only to become violently aware of the silence as he kicks the door shut behind him.
He freezes, right there in front of the door, keys and diaper bag clutched in one hand, Lancito gently cradled in the other, head resting on Luis’ shoulder and thumb stuck in his mouth.
It has been months, since his parents…since his parents. A new year has passed. A quiet, silent Christmas, locked in their own rooms. He has walked in with a child in his arms, after stopping at the campus daycare for the first time this semester, no different than what he’s been doing for the entirety of last semester. There is no reason for him to have walked into his home and forgotten, however briefly, how empty and quiet their home has become. (It feels, vaguely, like one of the first crisp days of autumn, stepping out of your house in the early morning and smelling the almost-frosty air, and blinking away the sudden memory of October when you were eight. Like the sudden snap out of your past, the trippy feeling of walking up in the present without realizing how far your nostalgia had driven you out of it. Startling and aching, really, the direct comparison).
Lance makes a whiny noise in the back of his throat, startling Luis into action. He starts to bounce the toddler, pressing a kiss to his forehead as he slips off his shoes and sets the diaper bag by the door.
“I know, I know, baby. Let’s go sit down for a bit.”
All of them are, in some way. Rachel has just turned fifteen years old, but Luis wakes up to find her curled up at the foot of his bed more than twice a week, driven out of her room by something she refuses to voice. Marco spends every lunch period situated in the school office, hogging the phone to methodically call the rest of them to make sure they’re alive. Veronica cleans, obsessively, sorting through everyone’s things and scrubbing everything she can get her hands on like she can leave her imprint on them for when she’s not there.
“Yes, yes, I hear you.” Lance whines louder when Luis sets him down on the couch, babbling something nonsensical but stern enough on Luis’s direction that he cracks a smile. “Yeesh, do we need that tone? I’m just putting a movie on.”
He nonetheless tries to hurry things up, lest Lance get too antsy and start to cry. Once Finding Nemo starts playing — and Jesus fuck everyone in the household hates that movie so fucking bad, at this point, but it is the only fucking movie that Lance will watch and that keeps him calm — he scoops the toddler back up, collapsing back on the couch and tucking him under his arm. Lance snuggles into him easily, little elbows digging into Luis’ skin as he settles himself, and let’s put a huge, long sigh once he stills.
Luis snorts. “Stressful day at work, pal?”
“Shhhh,” Lance hushes, flailing a hand at Luis’ face area, presumably aiming for his mouth. “Nene. Sh.”
Worryingly, even at fourteen months old, Lance hasn’t really begun to talk. They’ve yet to hear him form any actual words, let alone a real sentence, in either of the languages used around him. But he has several vocalizations for things he wants — nana for food, nene for Nemo, and regular old toddler ‘no’. Lots of ‘n’ sounds. They’re saving up to take him to a specialist, but for now they just try to encourage any sounds he makes that are word-like.
“Okay,” Luis mumbles, kissing Lance’s palm. He hums, distractedly patting Luis’ cheek, eyes trained on the blue of the TV as if it’s the first time he’s seen the movie instead of the three billionth. “I’ll be quiet for Nemo.”
He lets his eyes unfocus on the screen in front of him, mind wandering, slow and lethargic. He can hear the ticking of the clock from the kitchen, almost echoing in how loud it is. It makes him tired, slow; the only time he used to hear it as a kid was on late summer nights, up late, falling asleep on the kitchen table as his mother hummed in the kitchen, making fried plantains with the fruit she’d gotten in the morning market. Lance’s weight is heavy on his side, tired and burnt out as he is, and the ebb and flow of the movie is numbingly familiar, and clock ticks steady. Tick, tick, tick.
“Luis.” He whines, low and rumbly as something pokes his shoulder. “Luis, dorkbrain, get up.”
He groans, louder this time, cracking open one bleary eye. His eyes burn, contacts dried out, but he can make out the blurry outline of his sister, mouth twisted in a half-smile, grease smeared across her nose.
“Get up, doofus. You left the baby unsupervised.”
The words take a moment to register, but he shoots up in panic when they do. He looks frantically around the room, sighing in relief when he finds Lance sitting quietly in the corner, playing with his toy planes. He’s making tiny little crash noises every time he crashes then into each other, walking one of Rachel’s old Polly Pockets across the scene and giggling to himself.
“Jesus H. Christ,” he mutters, dragging a hand down his face as the panic starts to seep from his heart. “You fuckin’ scared me, Ronnie.”
She smirks. “And I’ll be doing it again.”
Luis decides not to tell her about the face grease. He was going to, but now she can suffer for being a dickhead. Maybe she’ll even break out.
He glances over at Lance again, just to double-check, but he’s still playing happily by himself, so he gets to his feet.
“C’mon,” he says, inclining his head towards the kitchen. “Kids’ll be home soon. Let’s make dinner.”
“Dibs on not doing cooking!” Veronica’s hand flies to her nose, cackling at Luis’ indignance.”
“Hey! Dinner is a shared endeavour! You can’t just dibs on not doing it!”
“Can too, loser! C’mere, Lancey-baby.” She scoops him up, planes and Pollys and all, and lugs him too the kitchen.
“Using the baby to avoid arguments is illegal.”
“Eat my farts, lunch boy.”
“That’s a stupid insult,” Luis mutters to himself, glaring at his sister one last time before turning to the fridge. She ignores him gleefully, picking up a plane and gently crashing it against the one Lance is holding. Instead of any amusement, he looks at her in such comical offense, gobsmacked that his sister would have the audacity to smack around his planes, that the young mechanic’s apprentice bursts out laughing. She hunches over, wheezing, as Lance scolds her in baby-talk.
Rolling his eyes fondly, he turns back to the fridge, finally opening the door and glancing inside.
If his life was a cartoon, there would be tumbleweeds rolling through the white, cooled shelves. That’s how fuckin’ bare it is.
“Well that’s…not good,” Veronica says when Luis fails to say anything.
Luis swallows roughly. “We forgot to budget for fucking groceries this month.”
Veronica hangs her head. “Fuck.” Even little Lance goes quiet, look between them in concern, bottom lip stuck out and trembling. Veronica reaches out a hand and brushes through his hair to comfort him, which kind of works. He abandons his toys to curl into her, thumb back in his mouth.
Luis opens and closes the fridge three separate times, hoping food will magically appear. When that doesn’t work, he wonders if he can make soup out of ketchup, or something. Add onion skin for flavours.
“We’re not cut out for this, Ron.”
She laughs sharply. “Yeah, no shit.”
She opens her mouth again, and from the look in her face Luis knows she’s about to say something dumb, so he beats her to the punch.
“I’m quitting school,” he blurts.
She blinks in shock. A second later her eyes narrow, and her face goes steely. “Like fucking hell you are.”
Luis sighs. He turns, slightly, reaching over and grabbing Lance from her arms. He bounces him gently, leaning in and blowing raspberries onto his cheek so he doesn’t have to look at Vero.
“My tuition eats up half of our funds,” he says quietly. “And the library job barely puts a dent in it. I can’t…if I don’t have as many hours in school, I can get a job that’ll get me money fast, and I can —”
Before he can finish, and before Veronica can argue, the sound of the lock turning in the front door interrupts them both. There’s no giggling, no banter, no even squabbling as Rachel and Marco walk through the door.
Luis would trade anything to have it back.
“Hi,” Marco says slowly, reading the tension in the room. “Everything…okay?”
Luis smiles tightly. “Fine, buddy. We were just talking.”
Marco’s expression flattens. “I’m not stupid, Luis.”
“I know.” A beat. “It’s just nothing for you to stress about.”
Marco says nothing for a moment, staring at Luis flatly, before he tosses his backpack agains the wall and squares his shoulders.
“We are four and six years younger then you,” he starts. Rachel nods resolutely beside him. “We’ve been — obviously we’re not doing super stellar. I know the fridge is empty. And that you cried over the mortgage last night. And we heard you arguing from outside.”
Luis and Veronica look at each other guiltily.
Rachel stares at them, eyes flat and annoyed, fingers pinching the bridge of her noise. She hasn’t spoken in months, but Luis has learnt to read her unspoken — that’s a bitch, please if he’s ever heard one.
“Stop apologizing for stupid shit,” Marco says for her. “We’re not trying to make you feel guilty. We’re trying to say that we can help.”
“Not your job,” Veronica says immediately. “Your job is graduate highschool and develop your brain.”
“Not a single person here is done developing!” Marco explodes. “All of us are still fucking growing! We lost our fucking parents, all of us, and instead of letting us be a part of the solution you’re blocking us out and treating us like babies!”
“Wanting you to be safe is not babying you,” Luis says shortly.
“Oh, did you read that in one of your parenting books?”
Yes, actually. He did. But he’s annoyed that Marco knows about those, so he pretends he didn’t hear like the mature grownup he is.
“Piss off,” he says, like an adult.
“Yeah,” Veronica agrees. “We’re the adults, and we say cool it with the crazy talk.”
Marco glares harshly at them. Rachel joins him. Lance makes a short, cut-off whine, turning to shove his face in Luis’ neck. His hands come up to pat his back reflexively.
“I quit violin lessons,” Marco says eventually.
Luis’ jaw drops. Veronica joins his indignation.
Luis feels like something is wrapped around his throat, choking him. His heartbeat pounds in his ears. The desperate hope he’s been clinging too, the goals to get Marco and Rachel and Vero everywhere they want to go in life, come crashing to the ground around him.
“Julliard,” he says weakly. He can’t force his voice to say anything further.
Marco juts put his chin. “They were two hundred dollars per session. I talked to my tutor. She said…” he trails off slightly, voice getting gravelly, but gathers himself again when Rachel grabs his arm and squeezes. “She wrote a reference letter for me,” he continues softly. “Even though I’m only a junior. And she’s apparently been talking to the admission staff since I first started taking lessons with her. As long as I keep practicing every day, she says I have nothing to worry about. But I’ll have time for a part time job, now. On weekends at least.” He locks eyes with Luis. “Don’t fucking quit school, stupid.“
Luis holds his gaze for several minutes. He wants to contest it all. He wants Marco to take his lessons every day and come back exhilarated, like he always used to. He wants Veronica to focus on building projects in the garage in her free time, instead of picking up hours to blow through her apprenticeship as quickly as possible. He wants to hear Rachel’s voice again. He wants Lance to stop flinching every time things get even playfully tense.
But there are things he can get, and things he cannot.
“Okay,” he says softly. “Okay.”
Plans will have to change. He graduates in a few months, so long as his final courses go well. The original plan was med school, but that’s obviously no longer an option. Not with everything.
But if Marco can adapt, so can he.
“We’ll work things out,” he says, trying to channel his father’s voice. It must work, somehow, because Veronica smiles in that bitter way of hers, that she does when she remembers.
