BRICE. [BOONDOCK SAINTS II NOVELLA]

BRICE - 8.

7.

Something about Connor was different.

Stripping off his shirt, Connor grabbed his kit and headed for the stone shed while he observed in silence.

On returning from town that first night, Connor had been lips-sealed. And closed off and distant since. Never mind that the whole point of Connor going into town alone had been to catch some break Connor felt he needed. Watching him undress now, it was plain that thoughts were still locked up within him.

Yet Connor seemed more. . . relaxed.

His assumption was that in going nightly, Connor was having himself a good time. For which he was glad. But whenever he asked to join all he got was his head nearly snapped off. And startled each time, he'd been unable to respond. Lying in bed now, in the darkness, he still didn't know what was happening between them.

Connor didn't pick fights with him, just had a mouth on him; it was generally vice versa. And prior to, they hadn't had any arguments past the normal ones they got into every fucken day on this farm. Before declaring his intent to go into town that first day, Connor hadn't shown any indication of being upset by anything in particular he might have done either. Connor had simply all but stopped talking to him.

No longer sniping, no longer cutting, altogether just stopped talking to him. This didn't happen between them. But the farm was weird and he had hoped, given days, it would pass. But it hadn't. And there in the darkness, knuckle to his teeth, mindlessly scraping his skin, he was not in a good fucken space.

And he was also confused because he didn't feel anger rising. It should have, Connor's selfish behaviour having cleared a field to the horizon on which to unleash justified fury. He should have been hard at the opportunity. A legit chance put some bruises on Conner. Down payments and interest and arrears and all that.

But he wasn't angry. He wasn't even breathing.

Instead he was fighting against thinking that it was happening. The one thing he couldn't imagine, the one thing that made him sore. To the point of breathlessness, of drowning out everything else, but to which Connor had been speaking practically since the day they arrived at the farm.

That Connor might at last be rejecting his constant presence.

It was impossible. Unthinkable.

Why wouldn't Connor want to be together at all times like at any other time in their lives? Why since their arrival wasn't Connor burning up with need like him, want like him. Why was it suddenly only him feeling the tug like a fishhook in his heart pulling in whichever direction Connor went. Growing up, everyone had said that their bond wouldn't outlast childhood—that by the time they grew up, got jobs, got families of their own, it would have long dissolved. And growing up, they had ignored everyone. You didn't grow up and start shedding limbs like a fucken salamander. The stupidity of most people had never broken into their world.

It was unthinkable. Yet it seemed the explanation for all that came from Connor's lips these days. When Connor actually bothered talking to him, that was, perpetually demanding that he back off, stop behavin' like the world of made up of just the two of them now—but hadn't it always?—and for him to go back to the way he had been in Boston.

Sure, he'd love to. But for the life of him he couldn't remember how that was. Not in this place that left him at sea, with no memory of the conception of land.

Turning, he punched his pillow. Then buried his face in it, feeling no relief at all.

Soon Connor came back, and without looking at him, climbed into his own bed across the cold room in the cold stone house. Chewing on his thumb, turned with eyes unseeing at the wall on his side, he waited for Connor to say something, "G'night, Murph," "Don't wake me for a shower in the morning, Murph"; anything.