#panic response tw

Her other hand is hard at work, and he hates it, he always hated it, he never wanted hands there. Or anything. His wrists jerk, he wants to push her away or tap or hit or do something, but his body is still, only shifting his hips into the rhythm of her hands on sheer instinct from training that his body hasn't forgotten, no matter how badly he wants to.

"I'll make you feel better," She says. Her voice is so soft and sweet, higher-pitched, entirely unlike Laken's deeper husky almost-growl. There's no maliciousness in her face when she pulls back to meet his eyes, no sparkle of joy at how helpless he is.

There's something else there.

Genuine, open desire.

Is that better? Or worse?

"Nova," He says, voice strangled and barely-there, nearly a whimper, "You h-have to stop to, touch-... stop, stop, touching m-me, I can't, I can't do, I I I I-"

"But you were crying," She replies, rubbing her thumb over him between his legs in a way that makes his legs jerk under her weight, his breath catch in his throat. "Because of your fight. I can fix that. You had a bad day, and I'm here. I'll make it better, Chris."

Something filters into Chris's thoughts, cracks through the ice of his fear.

Don't be shy, sweetheart, I've had a hard day and I want something pretty to fix it.

She tucks her chin just a little, head tilted to the side. Her top teeth press, just a little, into her lower lip.

Tell me how much you want it, darlin'. You know that always cheers me right up.

"I want to do this with you," She whispers.

It breaks the spell.

Chris lets go of the sheets, puts his hands up, and shoves.

Nova falls backwards off of his legs, tries to twist and catch herself, loses her balance and goes off the bed, smacking hard on one side into the rug on the floor. She looks up at him, long hair hanging in her face, nearly covering up one eye.

He stares back at the shock, the lack of comprehension. His heart is pounding in his ears, the unwanted awful warmth in the pit of his stomach is still there demanding attention, release he doesn't want. He looks down at himself, face red with shame, and back up to meet her eyes as they fill with tears.

"I'm trying to help," She says, and he has to force himself not to apologize at how hurt she sounds.

"I-I... I, um, I know you are," He manages, with difficulty. Words are getting harder. There's a noise inside of him, more feeling than sound, buzzing against his fingers and toes, pushing against the inside of his skin. It makes the words he needs to say harder to find. "But, but, but, but this-... this, this doesn't, um, this-... doesn't... it, it, it it it doesn't, doesn't, doesn't... help me."

"Yes, it does." Nova sits slowly up. One of her shoulder straps is falling down her arm. "It's what makes us feel better, because we're-"

"Not," Chris interrupts, putting a hand up to stop her before she can finish. He knows what comes next. He knows.

Don't cry, Handler Petrus whispers in the back of his mind. Not my fault you had second thoughts about this, slut. Should've had them before you signed up to get on your back for me.

"I tried-... I tried to, to say no." He pushes himself further back into the corner where the headboard of his bed meets the wall. Pulls his knees up to his chest, hands up over his face. One thumb rubs over the healing scar on his forehead, the other hand runs back and forth over his hair, feeling the softness of it, soothing himself with the motion.

"That's how you do it," Nova says, sounding puzzled. He doesn't look up at her again. "One person says don't do it, stop, please, and the other person does anyway, and then everything is better after."

"Better for-... who?"

He doesn't really need the answer to the question. He knows.

"You," She says, pulling herself to her feet. He sees her as a blur in the corner of his eyes and he doesn't look. He feels himself rocking, forward and back - tries to still himself - then starts rocking again. "And my Miss. Her friends. Everyone feels better, after."

"Not me. Please, please, please go."

"But-"

"Nova." He looks up at her, tears building, and she looks back, wide-eyed and startled by the expression on his face. "Please. Please."

"You really didn't like it?" She tucks her hair back behind her ear. "But... you didn't?"

He shakes his head, slowly, digs his hands into his own stomach, starts to tap, desperate to soothe the disgust slithering around underneath his skin.

"Was I not doing it right?"

"I don't-... I, I, I don't, um. I don't like... being, being t-touched... there." He can barely force out the words, they're spat out like disgust and not the fear he really feels. "I, I-I don't want y-you to, to, to to to to... touch me. At all."

For a second, he thinks she'll hit him.

Her face goes very pale and then suddenly bright red in the cheeks, and she turns away from him, races from his room, slams the door shut behind herself. He hears the sound of her footsteps down the hall, another door slamming - probably the room she shares with Sarita.

His phone, long-ago forgotten on the bed, vibrates with a text. He looks over, but the words swim and don't come together. He can tell the text is from Laken, but he can't read what it says.

He can't read.

Chris slowly slumps sideways, against the wall, lets his head thump there once.

What now?

-

FIRST | SECOND | THIRD

She just holds the card out for Jamie to look at as heat burns behind her eyes, her heart racing. She feels inside her the absurd urge to be polite and sweet and well-mannered. To somehow try to ensure safety in an unsafe space.

But she’s not there anymore.

She’s not there. She’s here.

And still... 

Jamie takes the envelope slowly, looking over it himself, his lips moving as he reads the return address. Then he pales, lips thinning. “How-”

“I don’t know,” Izzy whispers. “She’s not supposed to know where we live, Jamie. She-... she’s n-not allowed, but that’s... that’s her handwriting, that’s-... she isn’t supposed to know-”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Iz.” Jamie glances towards the door - Jax is inside, and he’ll know if they’re more than ten minutes late either way, he’ll be looking at the clock and thinking about their safety, worrying over them the way Izzy worries over everything, too. “Look, hide it and we’ll look at it in your room, yeah? I’ll handle Dad.”

She nods, a jerky sort of motion, but she stuffs the envelope into her school bag and the two of them head inside. Izzy blames a headache for being quiet and if their dad suspects, he doesn’t say anything, just lets her go to lie down in her room. Jamie takes more time, talking about his day, getting something to eat and drink.

His skin prickles with impatience, with the need to go look. Izzy’s terror doesn’t translate to him - he mostly feels curious about the woman who makes up half his genes, who he has no memory of at all. Curious, and angry on behalf of a father and sister who struggle with what she did to them. Maybe a little angry that this shadowy woman built the boundaries of his life and made the fears that keep his father and sister up at night, and he doesn’t even remember her. 

Plus, he doesn’t want Izzy to be scared alone. That’s been their deal his whole life, their agreement - Izzy doesn’t have to be scared alone. They’re scared together, and brave together. 

His lips move in memorized words like a prayer as he heads down the hall. He’s been prepared for them to have to be brave together his entire life, urged on by Izzy’s careful planning, the go-bags they still keep hidden from their fathers, just in case. 

My name is James Timothy Gallagher and my sister is Isabella Nicole Gallagher...

Please don’t let this be something like that.

She’s not on the bed when he comes in with a bag of crisps and some water. He finds her pushed against the wall under a blanket between the bed and her desk with a flashlight, still staring at the writing on the envelope.

“Someone e-else wrote the address,” She says when Jamie pulls up the edge of the blanket and sits beside her, squeezing into the tiny space as best he can. Her voice is shaking and her eyes are red-rimmed but dry. “Not M-Mom. She wrote my name, but... but that’s it. Oh, God, she started writing Isabella M-Marcoset and had to cross it out-”

“Bint,” Jamie says amiably. “Everything’s Gallagher now. But there you go.” He nudges her with an elbow. “She doesn’t know where we are, still, right? Someone else wrote it for her.”

“That’s n-not helping,” Izzy says, and sniffs. “That means someone helped her send it, someone who does know, someone w-who-... I can’t. I can’t look.”

“Probably her lawyers or something, they’d have our address I guess. If we tell Dad he’ll rip them to shreds over it, you know his lawyer chews them up for breakfast. If you can’t look, I can.” Jamie takes the envelope from her before she can stop him and tears it open, casually ripping half the envelope apart to get to what’s inside. 

When he finds it, he blinks. “What the fuck?”

“Don’t let Dad hear y-you say that,” Izzy says automatically, with a weak smile.

“Like he’s one to say much. I think you mean don’t let Kie hear me say that.” Jamie’s eyes roam over the contents of the envelope. “Iz, this is a card for you.”

Izzy looks slowly over, peering through her fingers.

On the front, it’s pastel pink bordering a black-and-white print of a child’s chubby hand against a polka-dot dress. 

It’s okay to miss your mom, the outside of the card reads.

Izzy’s lips pull back from her teeth in a snarl.

Jamie opens the card to read what’s inside, in his soft voice. He might look more like the Marcoset side than his sister does, but his voice is nearly indistinguishable from his father’s when he speaks softly like this. “... Because she sure misses you. Though we've grown apart, I really do miss you. I remember my sweet little girl on her special day. Happy birthday, Isabella. And she wrote in here her prison address to write back. Tell me about you. Love, Mom.”

He sits there for a second in silence and then says, slightly dumbfounded, “Well, shit.”

Izzy starts to cry, hands pressed over her mouth to keep it silent.

The tears run in a waterfall, burying themselves in the minute space between hands and skin. She tastes salt at the corners of her lips. Jamie slides an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close, pressing a kiss to her chopped-short hair, starting to slowly grow out on one side. 

“Oh, Iz. D’you want me to get Dad?”

She shakes her head viciously, little hitched sobs and half-sounds coming from her and little more. Even if Jax had his ear pressed to her door, he wouldn’t hear her, Jamie thinks. His big sister learned how to cry silently, to keep herself safe by not doing anything to bring her mother’s attention on her.

She knew how to be silent out of fear before she learned how to speak in full sentences. Jamie heard someone say that, once, he can’t remember who. He wasn’t supposed to hear it.

They tried not to let him see how hurt she was, but Jamie has always known his sister was shattered and he wasn’t, and he’s always felt like he has to be the one who stays whole for her. 

“Please, Iz. He’ll know what to say. I, I don’t know what to do-”

“It’s not my birthday.”

Her words are muffled behind her hands at first, and so quiet he nearly misses them even in the stuffy silence under the blanket.

“What?”

“The-... the c-card said happy birthday, but my birthday was... was seven m-months ago.” Izzy’s tears turn to bitter, cynical laughter, no less worrying than the crying had been, still nearly soundless. “She doesn’t even know when my fucking b-birthday is. You’d think since s-s-she’s the one who fucking made me-... oh, my God. She doesn’t even know my birthday.”

“No, I-... I guess she... doesn’t.” Jamie opens the card again to look it over. He hadn’t even thought about that, but now looking, he can’t help but start to laugh, too. “Iz, why’d she-... she could have just asked someone when your birthday was, it’d be in the court stuff, right? Birth certificate and shit?”

“Right. She wouldn’t want people to kn-know she didn’t remember. Or she just didn’t care.” Izzy’s shoulders shake, now, laughter or tears or both. “She doesn’t want to know me, she can’t even bother to know my fucking birthday. She’ll just-”

“Ask about Dad,” Jamie whispers.

“Right.” Izzy stares down at the card, then hands Jamie the flashlight and takes the card right out of Jamie’s hands and tears it right down the center, then again, and again, and again. The sound of the thick cardstock paper shredding is the loudest sound in the room.

“She doesn’t fucking know me, she doesn’t know anything about me, she doesn’t know she doesn’t know me and she doesn’t even fucking want to try-”

Finally, when all that’s left is a scattering of little bits of paper with the occasional visible word, like the world’s most irritating puzzle, Izzy shoves the blanket off entirely, picks up the pile in both hands and throws it up into the air, giving another bitter laugh as the pieces float down like confetti. 

“She can’t even be scary right,” Izzy declares, and Jamie watches his big sister force down her fear to mock the monster under the bed, the nightmare mother who never quite leaves her mind. “That’s how awful Mom is. Even when she’s trying to scare me, she can’t do it r-right.”

“I don’t think she meant to be scary,” Jamie says, a little hesitantly. “I think that was her trying to be our mam and fucking that up.”

“Well, she’s not a mam, is she? She’s not. She’s a fucking... she’s... Fuck her!” Izzy sweeps up the scattered bits of card and dumps them into the little bin she keeps by her bed, covers them with some tissues to hide them from anyone who might see. 

She turns to look at Jamie. “Don’t tell Dad, okay? He doesn’t need to know about this.”

“Iz...” Jamie stands and reaches out to pluck a piece of card that had gotten stuck in her hair. There’s a clearly recognizable Isab- visible on it. “You should tell him.”

“But you won’t.” Izzy’s eyes search his, looking up at her younger brother. They’ve always trusted each other, been each other’s backup more than anyone else, in the way of children who know they might have to keep each other safe when adults can’t. “Promise, Jamie. Promise you won’t tell Dad.”

“I promise,” Jamie says, uneasily. “I won’t tell, Iz. But you still should. Or at least tell therapy, or... something. Not just sit on this like it didn’t happen.”

Izzy doesn’t say anything either way, half-chasing him from her room so she can duck into the little bathroom and wash her face, wiping away the evidence of her tears, leaving only the hint of red in the corners of her eyes to give her away. 

She comes out and blames it on her headache, promises Jax she’s taken something for it, disappears back into her room. He can’t tell if Jax believes her - their dad is hard to read sometimes. But... Jamie thinks maybe he knows something’s up. 

Jamie settles down to play his game on his phone a while longer in the living room, and he wonders if she’s in there digging the pieces of the card back out to put in the box under her bed she thinks nobody else knows about.

But he knows.

He’s seen the CD cases, printed out photos from old interviews, an old magazine she’d nicked from a hair place after getting her hair cut once. Their mother’s face again and again and again, younger or older, in prison and before prison and between prison, too. 

The monster literally under the bed. 

He should tell Jax, probably. It can’t be healthy, to keep all those things. Right? But he can’t bring himself to break her trust, when Izzy trusts almost nothing and no one outside her own home. He can’t be the one to wreck even that for her. 

He can’t.

He promised. 

Jamie glares down at his game, the little tinny sound coming from his phone’s speakers, a repetitive melody, the soft sound of explosions. 

He should tell Jax.

He should tell Kieran, maybe.

But he swore he wouldn’t, and they’ve always been there for each other even when no one else could be, and so Jamie doesn’t tell anyone at all.

-