Sativa.

23. Independence Day

Travis was nineteen when he decided to join the army. Working as a bike messenger, he'd was hit by a drunk driver and a serious concussion left him temporarily blind. So much for the army then.

As a kid, he never had interest in helping his step-dad with construction aside from an occasional weekend job. He was a paperboy but a blind nineteen year old on a bicycle is a liability.

Months later, his vision restored but his original ambitions weren't. Travis started manning most of the jobs and, at the end of that year, his Father passed away. In a way, the construction business was his legacy. Now it's been taken from him too.

The surgeons stitched his hands back together but even a metal plate couldn't repair the damage to his bones. Once he referred to his fingers as, "merely decoration," and that tore Blaine to pieces.

Caring for him helps distract her from her own illness. Travis refuses to take his pain medication, not wanting to rely it. Frequent spasms of agony leave his whole arm twitching.

After choking down her three pills of the morning Blaine wanders into the kitchen. "I think we should go out for breakfast. We're out of coffee again."

Her voice withers when she sees Travis standing in front of the stove. Steam clouds around his body like mist and he has his hand deep in a pan of water boiling over.

"What the hell are you doing?"

He doesn't even flinch, appearing immune to the pain. "The fucking thing just locked up on me again. I can't feel anything."

Impulsively, she lunges to latch onto his forearm and yanks his arm back. "You're insane!"

Travis's skin is bruised red and the black stitches bubble like someone was trying to dig them out. She's had a month to adjust to the grisly sight but sometimes it's hard to bite back a reflexive gag. After hours of scrubbing on her hands and knees the blood stains in the tiles eventually washed away. Yet the memory of that day still gives Blaine night terrors.

Suspended between angry and horrified she turns the knob to the stove off. "You can't do this to yourself." Her tone is clipped.

"I have to get back to work." Travis's jaw clenches and his eyes are flinty as jagged crystal. "I can barely make a fist."

"Just give it time and-"

Apparently he's as bad at self-control as she is. His tone raises to a bellowing shout. "Its been a month and nothing's changed!"

Desperate to make him see reason, she rests her palm gently over his stitching. "There are other ways. You're alive and that's what matters to me."

The ringing of the phone echoes through the house. They remain in the kitchen, standing in front of each other gazes unwavering. Eventually the answering machine picks up the call.

"Hey." An unfamiliar husky voice emits from the speakers. "It's your Mother. I haven't seen you, son. We're having a Fourth of July party this evening. Don't miss it cause Nana has already told me you'll face her wrath if you do. Hello?"

After a brief static pause the line drops with a click.

They suspend in awkward silence. His eyes rest upon her intensely, unblinking, and emotions cascade through his pupils like a tide. In that moment she understands he isn't acting upon rage. He's terrified. She's the first to blink.

"We should go." Blaine whispers. "It's Saturday and we've been cooped up here long enough."

Whenever it concerns matters of his family she's prepared for a polite refusal. It stuns her when he replies, "Ok."