He couldn’t sleep. He slept and slept and slept, but he woke up not because of the abundance of sleeping. It was the pain. Healing didn’t mean the wounds got better. Sometimes they got much worse. Sometimes he felt flushed, other times he couldn’t move his limbs, and he tried not to move his head so much as a millimeter lest he pull the scabs against his neck and face. He tried not to smile or frown or even talk sometimes as the burns felt as if they were on fire, sizzling even, and even cold water stung. He put on the numbing salve and burn creams, but so much as touching them killed him at times. It was the privacy of the bathroom that he choked down antibiotics and for a few days, ignored and let his own pride ignore the pain killers.

Looking in the dark ceiling and listening to the noises of the city flooding out from the open window (he insisted that they remain open at least a crack and the currents pulled no matter at ALL times), he tried to wait for sheer exhaustion to take hold. Nothing was working, and every time he glanced at the clock, hissing as his burns hurt, he watched the night get older.

Eyes drifting to the side, he watched Billy. The first night he slept with him in this bed, he had been too tired, too beaten, too everything to realize he had him here beside him, all night. Now that he was more aware, Billy had been sleeping long enough for the past few nights that whatever nervous giddiness he might have had never came. It was just nice. Despite the fact that some nights he just didn’t want to be touched, pulled away from Billy’s arms just to lay on his side of the bed and not be touched, he liked him here. He liked company. He liked the security of another pair of eyes and ears in the apartment that could offer help and protection. Even in his own apartment, Ladon felt he needed backup. Sometimes, he didn’t even feel safe in his own bed. He didn’t tell this to his boyfriend. He just asked for water and when the mood struck him, he would move in to sit up close to the other boy on the couch or, just like that, want to just be on his own and not so dependent on him. To continue to make Billy feel he was needed here as if Ladon couldn’t take care of himself and enforce that idea that he was and would be the victim.

He had to be strong.

Cold sweat rolled down his brow as he finally got up, slowly rising and moving in stiff motions off the bed and into the dark kitchen area to get some water. There was already a glass he used by the sink, and he filled it up to overflowing and drank a third of it down before he moved into the living area and eased onto the futon. Here too, the window was open, letting in an early spring chill that nipped at his bare feet.

Feet. He wonder how Uranophane was doing?

His eyes settled on the pill bottles on the table. Reminds to both Ladon and Billy to take his antibiotics each day. Don’t forget.

His eyes settled on the untouched bottle. He wanted to sleep. To forget. No dreaming. What a mess that had been. Leaning back, he closed his eyes, and let the chill from the window, it’s noises that said that he wasn’t in a cell, that he was just a jump away from an escape path, and that there was a sense of time, night and day, just there to listen to, pass over him. A pleasant song.

A tune.

He knew a song and didn’t know a song. He knew a tune. That was right. Some music number. Foreign. He wondered if it would be insulting to ask Tanzanite what it was. He couldn’t Google the lyrics. He didn’t know the words. What did they mean? It nagged at him. Her last long and he didn’t know her. Didn’t know the words.

So much blood. Large, butchered hunks and slabs tossed about. The sound of wet tissue hitting the ground. Pool and rivers and mountains. A geography of corpses.

His eyes popped open and he gasped, bolting upright and swearing with a sharp , whispered “********!” as he touched his neck and seized up, waiting for the spikes of pain to pass that came from skin that was too tight and the scabs that were too hard like razors glued to his skin.

Shaking, he reached out, knocking his bottle of antibiotics over as he picked up the pain killers. Twisting and turning, he couldn’t pop the top with his busted hand. He couldn’t get a grip, it nearly slipped out several times, and he twisted and turned and it moved in all the wrong ways in his hands he bite into the cap and pulled until his teeth hurt and then POP!

The pills bounced like tiny skittles across the beat-up coffee table and onto the carpet. The bottle soon followed after as he threw it down, giving up on the whole endeavor entirely even after all the work.

Breathing out, he ran his good hand through his hair. First somewhat scruffy, then short, then.

He winced, bringing his hand down and looking at a bit of liquid. A blister popped, and he felt a coolness against the tip of his ear.

His eyes looked at the table littered with pills, and then out the window where a chill breeze came. There were other ways to heal a Nega.

Rising, he glanced at the bedroom door, then, turning, pushed the window up to step out into the balcony. The sound of distant car horns and the hum of heavy trucks on late-night routes sang out into the blasting wind that whipped up around him, puffing up his pajamas and dotting him in gooseflesh. Gripping the rusted metal of the fire escape, he looked down.

He hadn’t been so much as outside since being taken to his apartment. Resting against the window – sure. Plenty of times. He liked watching the day pass by as Billy occupied himself in the apartment. It was boring here. He was sure the boy would want to do other things than tend to him.

“I’m not helpless.” He whispered, words silenced by the wind. Was he afraid?

His heart said yes. Terrified. Panicking.

He closed his eyes tight. It was all their fault. All their fault. All there fault.

Pajamas ripples into black and green. A pair of black heels clacked on the railing and, like that, pushed off and away.

Inside, the half-finished glass of water rippled from the wind from the open window and the curtains floated just slightly.