Morphine (Complete)

𝟐𝟐

(a/n: I'm back!)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Carter thought nothing strange of Rannia's appearance that morning, hair wet and skin clean. She was supposed to be tired from a long night driving in the streets, and most certainly not be freshly showered and exiting his brother's bedroom. Rannia thought that perhaps his lack of skepticism was due to the rose glass veil over his eyes, distorting all with pink and inevitably leading him astray.

Astray.

She had been astray with Mykel last night, in the darkness of his room, with not even the moon as witness. They were hidden from their own eyes and yet they could not forget the feeling nor memory; all was cast away, astray, yet far from distant.

She remembered the warmth of his body on hers, the squeezing on his hands on her flesh as she writhed beneath him. The breath of his lust touching her body in a place no man should have been allowed.

Carter was now cradling a squash in his arms like a baby, absentmindedly rocking it back and forth. He had intended to go to work that morning; to drown himself away and forget about his lost brother and uncle, but Mykel had bolted the door closed, leaving no escape. Carter was not good at dealing with his emotions too well—perhaps he was better than some, but he could not bear more fresh tears on his cheeks, so he busied himself on mundane things instead.

"Would this weigh the same as a baby?" The boy inquired curiously, slowly rocking his way towards Rannia. She cast him an unamused look and returned to typing away furiously at her computer. She was trying to decode any security networking surrounding the complex's building. She was not good with computers, and she found her fingers hitting the keys a little harder with each second that passed.

She'd released a lot—a lot of strain that morning in the shower. She had been coasting until she opened the door of Mykel's room, and looked down to see Carter trapped inside along with her.

"Do you really need an answer to that question?" Rannia replied moodily, slamming her pinky down on enter once more. She almost growled when she was once again denied access to the server.

Carter pressed a finger down on the squash's head lightly, tilting his head with his lips a little pursed.

"Well, I thought I did."

Rannia resisted the urge to glare at him. He wasn't helping. He was such...such a child. He was avoiding dealing with emotions by playing with an expired squash. His bank clothes were still on and they hung from his thin shoulders like a child trying on their dad's suit. He wasn't helping, and Mykel had been gone for the rest of the day.

Couldn't he have brought Carter along with him?

Carter started singing some popular tune as he sorted through cloths in the kitchen.

"Oh, this one's nice. A little festive but it'll do. Oh—babe, what do you think of this one? It's bluer. Doesn't it go well with the squash's beige? Um." The clattering of a fallen bowl. "The one under the display bowl? It'll wrap nicely. Don't you think? Rannia? Babe? Babe?"

Rannia's mind flashed to her father's scarred hand tapping anxiously against his metal chair. Tap, tap, tap. Time was running loose. And this...this child...this fucking boy—

"Can you stop?"

Carter froze in place, eyes stricken as he settled them on his glowering girlfriend. Her dark eyes were far more narrowed than they should have been....for him, at least. She was so nice to him. Maybe he was being annoying. Maybe he was a nuisance.

In her anger, Rannia accidently pressed a reset button. The code before her eyes re-wrote itself from the very-fucking-beginning.

"Fuck!"

She slammed the laptop closed and stood up. Carter winced and tried to walk towards her.

"Babe—uh, I mean, Rannia. Did I do something wrong?" I'm-I'm sorry." Carter's steps were timid, but he slowly approached the beast. Her thin shoulders rose and fell with heated breaths. Her nostrils were all flared and her hands kept fidgeting, darting towards her pants and looking for something to toy with.

When she didn't reply, Carter set down his emotional support squash and tried again. "Look, I know these past two days have been full of really, really bad things, but you can't take it out on me like this. You..." He trailed off and met Rannia's furious stare. "This scares me, Rannia. You look so angry with me and I don't know why."

Rannia hesitated and stared down the boy before he. Carter was weak, he truly was. He couldn't face emotions, he got locked away and pushed around by his older brother, and he couldn't fucking see how bad Rannia was for him—how much didn't love him. She wanted nothing more than to give him a chance, to tell him how she really felt.

I want your blood on my hands, Carter. Her eyes would glow and her fingers would tighten around her knife. And your brother's. And your sister's. Don't you see this?

"Don't you know that you're only going to get hurt in the end?"

The words left her in a whisper.

It was Carter's turn in silence. He paused, took in a breath and prepared to speak. But he stopped. His usual cheer left his shoulders and let them hang as small as they were, to show just how weak he was. Vulnerability was not something the strong could afford.

"And should that stop me?" Carter's voice was a little wobbly, and his eyes bared a few unshed tears. But he still spoke, and he spoke surprisingly clearly. Alone in Mykel's fancy loft with nothing but the city below them and the star's expanse above, his words carried.

To be heard you had to scream, to shout, to cry, to yell. But he did none of this and was heard all the same.

"I lost my brother, Rannia. My brother, my older brother. He meant so much to me." Tears dripped down his cheeks. "I'm still not over that. And I know I'll end up seeing my other brothers go after him, my sisters, too. My mom. My dad. I can't avoid the pain."

"You can avoid some of it, can't you?" Rannia whispered back, a little perplexed. It was so simple. He did not need to care for his uncle. He barely knew the man. He didn't need to love Rannia. It was so much unnecessary baggage. Couldn't he see that?

Rannia loved her brothers. She loved her mom and her dad. Seeing her father so...so debilitated, and knowing her brothers had scars of their own from that night... She shivered.

"Listen. This might sound kind of masochistic, but, if you think about it...pain is kind of the point, y'know? It's life. It's feeling. I've been avoiding it, I know that. I haven't done everything right, but I'm here. The rest of my family is alive, so I must've done something right." A hesitant finger reached out and touched Rannia's. She froze and felt as he slowly enveloped her hand in his own.

"And...I have you."

It was too romantic. It was too touchy. It was emotional, wasn't it? Rannia felt her chest constrict as she stared at the lost boy before her. He wasn't aware that he was lost, but God, he was. Maybe if his last name weren't Amir things would be different.

Maybe if she hadn't fucked his brother.

Rannia sucked in a deep breath and stared straight into his eyes as she lied. "I've not been feeling the best either. I've got some fucked up shit but I'm not ready to talk about it." Okay, maybe it wasn't a complete lie. "So I'm..." Lie, Rannia, lie. Make it a lie. You can lie. "I'm sorry." Didn't fucking feel like a lie.

"It's okay. You can talk when you're ready."

And the boy started to walk away. Rannia's arm shot out and caught him.

"Wait...actually." A slow grin crept onto her face. "I have a request for you."

"Huh?" Carter turned.

Rannia's grin was cat-like.

"Are you good with computers?"

(a/n: ARGH I WANNA REWRITE THIS BOOK FDNDFNJ I know I can do better. I'm gonna slaughter some sheep.)