[ r ] Alarm ( Jason & Luke )

[lizbot]

With both an important plan for his coming weekends and a certain concern for their mom since the past week, Jason dragged Luke home and even made sure they stopped to buy her some flowers. Cheap ones, of course, but it's not like she'd care about that part.

"She was so out of it last week, when I got done with the dishes, I hadn't even realized she'd gotten home from work and I just saw her there, lying on the stairs." The memory was a particularly grim one. "I thought she'd had a fall or something, but she'd just fallen asleep. On the stairs! Who does that?"

Since Jason had been worried about their mom all week and came up with a plan to get his brother to train in a different way, Luke had the benefit of not being the focus of all that worry, fussing, and overbearing for-your-own good efforts. For the very first time months!

As the boy's made their way up to the porch, a muted but very present alarm was sounding inside the house. It was the fire alarm.

orangeish sherbert

 

[lizbot]

Brushing past Luke, Jason entered the house first, immediately hit by the smell of something burning. "It's coming from the kitchen, I'll check it out. You go find mom." It didn't seem like there was much smoke, at least not enough to cause too much worry, but still...she should be down here and swearing up a storm.

The kitchen was, thankfully, not on fire. But the kettle on the stove was now a metal husk, the bottom completely burnt out. Grabbing it up with a pot holder he tossed in into the sink and turned off the stove, face scrunching at the intense smell and damage done to the surface around the burner. It took a minute, but eventually he he got the smoke alarm turned off to, leaving the house in an almost earie silence.

Luke would find their mom in her room, still in her work clothes and passed out, only halfway on the bed. She was breathing fine, but she wasn't waking up.

orangeish sherbert

 

[lizbot]

After several, too long moments, she gave a little groan and opened her eyes to give Luke a bleary look. He hand reached up to touch his cheek and she gave him a wan smile, "Baby." And then her eyes shut, hand drifting down, asleep once more.

Which is what Jason saw as he entered the door and exhaled, "It was no bog deal. At least it wasn't yet." His eyes shifted to the woman slumped on the bed, echoing that moment on the stairs last week.

"Mom? Mom!" And he was much less gentle than Luke, reaching forward to pull at her cheek and initiate the most obnoxious drone of Moooooooooooooooooom he had in him.

Her peaceful expression scrunched up and she wearily tried to bat him away, slurring with her eyes closed, "I'paid....'lot fer this sleep. Lemme 'ave it."

Orangeish Sherbert

 

[lizbot]

She groaned and started rolling back and forth across the bed in a very familiar, bratty manner. Jason gave Luke a very she learned this from you, look and sighed.

Eventually she realized her sons were not budging or giving in and she finally sat up. "Okay! Okay...fine. I'm up, god. Why are you guys acting like this? What's wrong with me taking a small nap."

"We came home and the fire alarm was going off," her eldest bit out, like he was trying not to burst out into a full blown hour-long safety lecture. Again.

Gross.

How did she raise someone like this? Turning her head, she gave a more hopeful look to her younger boy, her baby angel.

Orangeish Sherbert

 

[lizbot]

The more he talked, the more sulky she got until their mom just finally stood up and wrapped her arms around Luke. "Awwwww, baby, I'm sorry I worried you." She sniffed and then...started crying, pressing her face into his curls. "I've just missed you guys so much, and it's so weird being alone here all the time! I wasn't sleeping at all, for like weeks outside of the weekends when you boys got back. I was alost thinking about trying a dating site just so things weren't so lonely outside of work, but then I thought, No! All those guys are scumbags and murderers probably! Or just like, have really bad taste and I don't want to expose you to some random greasy cologne man, you guys deserve better than that. organic dates only! So then I was like..." she was doing little woo-woos and rocking them both side to side, "...maybe I should invite some of your other cousins to stay for awhile? The little guys, Tori and Jammies, you like them right?"

They did not.

While he left his brother to the kinda gross onslaught of Mom, Jason had been inspecting the room, eventually picking up a paper gift bag that said At Ease, sleep therapists on the side. Lifting it up he said, "That's why I told you we need to get a dog. Anyway," he went on like his mom wasn't in the middle of a crying breakdown, "...what's this?"

Orangeish Sherbert

 

[lizbot]

"Yeah, we gotta get you guys out of there. I'm so sorry, I should've looked past the orchestra and not..." Assumed that she could use a break from being a mother of two teen boys, just for a little while.

"...no that is not drugs!" Giving Luke a hurt look, she pulled out crystal from under her pillow. "They've been helping me! It'd where I got this. I know it scared you this time, but before I went to them I wasn't hardly sleeping at all, and now I'm getting the best rest of my life." A pause and then she admitted, "Maybe a little too much, but it's not drugs. It's good for me! Really." As she went on, there was certain hollowness to her tone, her attention no longer transfixed on them but on the crystal. Something about it felt really, really off.

Jason listend and thought before giving Luke a look and then sighing at their mom, "Okay...okay. You lay down and finish your nap. We'll deal with the kitchen and get dinner ready tonight. Tomorrow, we're going to the shelter and picking you up a dog."

Ushering his brother out of the room and closing the door behind him, he leaned in to whisper, "Something's wrong."

Orangeish Sherbert