2019-09-24 - Like This I Love You, Beloved

The hotel room that Sutton's irascible lover has been calling home for the past couple of weeks is presently quiet. Lights off, save for a single lamp hazily illuminating the entryway. Boots kicked off a few feet from the door, suit jacket tossed across the back of a chair somewhat haphazardly. His service pistol and ID and badge sit askew on the nightstand, like they were tumbled there in a pile without much care for order. Unlike the other firearms he keeps in his room; an H&K 416 assault rifle, a sig sauer of some model, and a Walther PPK, all laid out atop the table in a neat row, clips unloaded and set beside each one.

The man himself appears to be sleeping. His sturdy frame sits mostly in shadow, half-sprawled against the bed, though curiously he hasn't bothered changing out of his shirt and pants and tie tonight. Which is.. odd for him. Very odd for him. That might be the only immediate clue an interloper would have, that something's off.

That, and the powdery film scraped into criss-crossing lines on the bathroom sink, as well as an empty bottle of some sort of prescription pain meds. Dilaudid, the label reads, and does actually have his name on it.

Sutton's down the hall having a difference of opinion with the vending machine. She thinks it took her dollar and needs to cough up the lifesafers candies she just hit the buttons for. It thinks she can go blow. She's currently body-checking it into the wall until it drops her fucking candy. "Give if up you asshole." WHUMP! The whole machine unsettles and slams back on the ground, then teeters forward a little before it drops back again. On the second of these, the candy drops. It's at the far end of the motel, probably too far for Ruiz to hear that commotion.

She's back shortly, though, probably having spread her germs all over the motel. She is just popping a pineapple flavored candy into her mouth when the light flickers over, and she pushes into the motel room. She makes her way into the bathroom to start a shower, without turning on the light. She flips it on in there, unaware Ruiz is even in the room. It's dark outside, some of the lights out. Only once she's got the shower going does she turn back pulling off her shirt and notice his legs across the bed. "Bebe." She glances down at the sink after checking her teeth in the mirror, tucking the candy between her teeth and check. "Are you asleep in your clothes?" She drops her tee onto the floor.

She brushes her fingertips across the powder on the counter, bringing it to her lips to taste it. The pill bottle is noted, and she reads the label carefully, checking the date to see just how fast he's blown through that prescription. "Javi?" She steps out of the bathroom and reaches for the room light.

The prescription is a recent refill. A week ago, though there can't have been more than twenty 4mg pills in there. Plenty, still, to do some damage. The cocaine, it's hard to say how much he took. Though with the two put together, it seems likely it was intentional.

The shower's spray runs steadily in the background, steam misting the bathroom as the water heats up. No answer from the cop slumped in the bed; though it wouldn't be the first time he slept like the dead, after a particularly wretched shift. An inked arm's draped off the side of the mattress, shirt sleeves turned up to his elbows as he hates having them fussing at his wrists. His lips look a little bluish once the light's flipped on, though it doesn't seem to jar him awake like it normally would.

Sutton stands there for the space of ten seconds, the taste of cocaine still on her tongue, staring at Ruiz's sprawled form, the stillness in it. "Javier." The way she says his name is almost hesitant. She swallows.

"Bebe. Wake up. You're still in your clothes." She says this, almost like it's normal. Almost like she doesn't see the tinge in his lips. Maybe he'll snap awake and be fine. Maybe the tinge is a trick of light.

The only indication on her face that she has any idea something is amiss is the part of her lips and the drop of all expression when she moves suddenly, over and onto the bed, over him. She feels him first, her hand going to his throat for a pulse. She knows precisely where his pulse point is without feeling for it. It's one of the places she kisses most often. She bends over him, her face close to his, adjusting the seat of her fingers.

It's weak and thready, but he has a pulse. His oxygen saturation is redlining though, and his breathing is extremely shallow, like his body doesn't have the strength to move his diaphragm much longer. He doesn't move when she climbs atop him, which is a travesty, because she's warm and probably smells all coconutty and sweet, and he loves that she doesn't love the cherry lifesavers, because that means more for him.

His skin feels cool to the touch, and his body's mostly dead weight if she tries to move it. His eyes are closed almost entirely, save for a sliver of darkness where lashes don't quite meet cheek.

Her hands slide down his throat and across his chest. She takes one deep, harsh and ragged breath. "No." Not a no, sad no, like no, not you. This is a no of no. Not today. Just no, flatly. Not happening.

This here, this is something she knew in the abstract might happen. Something she knew was a possibility. She didn't know he had a prescription. She didn't know he was mixing. After the conversation they had, she thought he had it more or less under control. All of these things flash through her mind, and she slaps him. She slaps him hard. If he's down with an overdose of dilaudid, that isn't going to do it.

"You better still be in there, cabron." She's seen this so many times. She knows the signs. There's a single kiss pressed to his lips, leaving them tasting of pineapple. "Also fuck you for doing this to me." He didn't, of course, do it to her. But she's walked in on him nearly dead for the second time in, what, two months.

By the time Sutton gets up and off of the bed, her hands are shaking. She takes the two strides to her large bag, shoved against the wall, and she pulls the zipper, dragging it with her back to the bed. Nausea may rise, but she doesn't fall victim to it. She pulls it up, digs in with both hands for what she needs, and comes back to the bed kneeling over him. She one packet and takes the Narcan in hand, reaching under Javier's neck to tip his head back. She slides it into his nose and depresses the plunger on the nasal spray and waits, moving to roll him onto his side. She kneels over him, one hand on his shoulder. Wake up, wake up, wake up. If one dose doesn't do it, she administers a second. She should be calling 911 between them. She doesn't, not yet.

His tie's been loosened slightly, because it was irritating him too. Loosened, but not removed; he's still mostly dressed for a day riding a desk. Signing off on search orders and bail hearings and being called out to put eyes on a guy found in the pier, missing his head. Like where the fuck did his head go? Someone's going to find it, one of these days, and he'll be relieved because it's one less loose end to tie up.

The slap, of course, does nothing. And when she climbs off him, he still doesn't move. He's still wearing his rig, but he was careful to remove his gun from the holster first. Go figure. He's annoyingly heavy to maneuver around, to get the injector lined up with his nose so she can dose him up with it. Silence and stillness after the first, save for the rush of water from the shower that's still going. The second, though, is enough to jolt a sign of life out of him: a brittle sound in his throat, and a pair of dark, glassy eyes slid open a fraction, though completely unable to focus on Sutton's face. Then 2.5 seconds later, he shoves his head toward the edge of the bed and throws up violently. His fingers clutch the bedsheets, and he pants a couple of times before another bout hits.

With any luck, the blonde's anticipated this and already gotten the hell out of the impact zone.

If it's one thing Sutton's familiar with, it's junkies and the various delights they bring to the table when that Narcan hits their system. Some fight, some wake up, some hurl. Some just ... never do.

Sutton nearly slides off the bed moving once he's responded, her legs not quite ready to deal with all that. She comes up facing her dead twin brother, wearing just her boots, bra, belt, and pants. "What the fuck." The blonde's glassy fix on the ghost, and she goes to shove him out of the way, but her hand passes right through him. She stumbles, rights herself, and gasps out a breath. "Jesus fuck." Sutton slides back against the dresser across from the bed. Her heels thump hard against it.

"What did I say. I'm you... you cannot be here right now."

Javier has no fucking clue that the ghost of his ex-lover is standing ten feet away with that judgy stare, suggesting that his girlfriend dump him while he's pretty much at his lowest. Eli probably suspected that he used, but it never actually happened right in front of him; the shame would probably have killed de la Vega.

So he clutches the bedsheets, his body contorted, curled in on itself as his stomach protests again and again, until there's nothing left to protest with. And then he drops back against the pillow, sweating profusely, breath a jagged pant dangerously close to hyperventilation, eyes rolled back in his head as he tries to resist the urge to tear his own skin off with his bare hands.

This is the moment Sutton returns to the bed, sliding her hand up his side. "Breathe. Breathe." She just watched him vomit copiously onto the floor, and she's still joining him on the bed to touch him. "Breathe, bebe. It'll pass." She's trying to speak soothingly to her lover while her dead brother glowers in the corner of the room, and she can't keep an eye on both.

She pulls the stethoscope up to her ears and presses it to his chest, reaching for his wrist to check manually. Narcan blocks but doesn't eradicate the drugs from his system, and without treatment, he could lapse back into unconsciousness and die. It depends on how much he took and how much he's already metabolized. Her feet hang off the bed and she's precariously balanced.

How much he took is questionable; how much he's metabolized is a little easier to guess. She hasn't been out of the room for long; he must have taken the drugs within the past hour, at most. He's barely aware of her hands on him, if at all. His body reacts violently to the touch, like she'd slapped him; he jerks away, hisses, "Fuck off," in between the shaking, and the pounding headache building behind his eyes. He was trying to go to sleep. Just lie the fuck down and not get back up again. Why is she trying to stop him? And who's that- "Eli? What the fuck? Get him the fuck out of here. Sácalo de aquí!"

He reaches for the lamp atop the nightstand, pulls on it until the cable's ripped from the outlet, and flings it across the room at the apparition of his old patrolmate with a vicious snarl. If it unseats poor Sutton from her perch nearby? Too damned bad.

Sutton's looking at Elias and making the go now face, which is right about the time Ruiz knocks her back a little with that jerk. She only sees it peripherally, so she jumps. The lamp coming out off the table, pulling out of the wall socket and shooting past her doesn't knock her free so much as the followthrough clipping her shoulder. The smash hits when she also lands on the floor with a thud. "Goddamn it, Ruiz. You were nearly dead!"

She hits the bed again, coming off the floor a little sideways with a stumble. "What the fuck. You're sick and I'm sick and you need a goddamn ambulance." She hasn't called yet. "I had to dose you twice." She should back off, but she doesn't. "Your heart—"

Leave him. You need to leave him. The shower's still running, pumping steam through the open bathroom door. His heart's pounding like a jackhammer in his chest, working hard, far too hard. It's tired, too. Every inch of him is tired. And Eli's standing there with murder in his eyes, and suddenly the betrayal's too keen to bear.

"Like fuck you're leaving me." It's not Javier's voice. It's his voice, but it's not. It's like something's taken his pain and twisted it to its own purpose. He lunges for the gun on the nightstand, fingers scrambling for it. He's slow, though. Much, much slower than Sutton.

Sutton's attention is on Eli again, a mistake. "Stop interfering with my fucking love life." It could dissolve into a sibling fight, one of them invisible to those by which he doesn't wish to be seen. He doesn't care of Ruiz sees him, which was, perhaps, a miscalculation. The blonde twin freezes only briefly at the voice, at the pure rage in it. She's never heard that tone come out of her lover's mouth before. The lunge for the gun she's seen, and that's what kicks her into action on top of him. She basically bodyslams him, but high enough up that she can reach the gun first, knocking it away and over the edge of the nightstand, wedging between the wall and the furniture.

"Javier!" She tries to get control of his hands, her nails digging into his wrists, straddling his torso. She wrenches him hard enough that they might end up on the floor between the beds, but that gun is lost to sight for now. There are more in the room, though. She jams an elbow into his pec, bony and sharp.

Room 15 is empty tonight, owing to its owner being ferried out by friends earlier. The room on the other side is empty. There's no one sharing a wall with them to hear either of those crashes or the yelling. No one walking by.

Eli, thankfully, cannot, or Javier might be in trouble. Like his sister, he always had an annoying knack for finding a way to get a leg up in a fight. Literally, sometimes. The gun skitters out of his hand when Sutton slams into him, and a guttural snarl issues from his throat, like raw fury given voice. He fights her like a wild animal when she climbs on top of him and wrestles him to the floor; his hands pull into fists, one tearing free of her clawing at him to crash into her jaw. Once, twice, three times before she's able to trap his wrist. The elbow sunk into the meat of that surprisingly muscular pectoral draws a grunt of discomfort, and then his head pulled back and smashed against hers, full-force and with absolutely no warning.

If he manages to stun her with that, his next attempted move is to get his hands around her throat and squeeze.

Sutton has had combative patients before, but this is a new level. Part of her is horrified this is happening, part of her is still in need of a good panic over finding her lover unresponsive on the bed they've been sharing in this crap motel. She's strong, but he's stronger. Even ill like this. Rage makes him strong.

Sutton's head jerks back with the fist, but she's learned to take a punch and he doesn't have the best leverage. It hurts, yes. But it's not enough. She's starting to try getting up when he moves again, her feet on the floor. The heavy crack of his head against hers snaps her head back, dropping her against the bed's edge. She's slow to get her hands back up, and his hands lock on her throat, squeezing, squeezing. Her face pales out when the blood and oxygen start to darken the edges of her vision, a choking hack the last sound she makes before her lungs struggle to find air. Spittle drips into her face and Sutton's left looking up at her lover's bared teeth. It could be the last thing she sees. She jams her knee up against his belly before he comes down over her, so he can't lean in closer.

Sutton's hands come up and dig into his hands, ripping small chunks of flesh from them. That does nothing. She dips her hands between his to push out at his wrists apart with her forearms, hard as she can. At the same time, she jams her other foot up on his hip and shoves hard as she can with both legs. It'll break his hold, but could leave some jagged scratches in its wake too. She almost slams into the dresser.

The rage and the screaming are like music in his ears. The pain sings through him; pain as his knuckles meet bone again and again; pain as his skull collides with hers and blood vessels burst and screaming and her throat is warm and soft and delicate beneath his hands. He wants to squeeze the life out of her, watch her take her last breath; out and then in and then out on a sweet sigh, her body going limp in his arms. This is what he wants, but what he gets is her knee in his belly and her nails tearing ribbons of layers of skin off his wrists. He's strong. Vicious and strong; stronger than her. But she's utterly desperate, and after what seems an eternity of her lungs on fire, his lock on her throat is broken as he tumbles sideways with a thud and a grunt. He lands on his hands and knees, still wearing his tie, and it drags on the floor as he coughs a couple of times and brings up blood.

Does Eli feel the surge of glimmer that almost seems to trace through the pattern of ink covering his arms, filaments of white hot fire that spark and fade, and leave the scent of ozone momentarily? He looks up at Sutton, and his eyes are like nothing she's ever seen before. They've had their spats, and even the worst ones usually end in sex. But this? Cold, calculating fury. He pushes to his feet and prowls in slow, like he means to hunt her down and corner her, leave her no option for escape. If she tries to scramble to her feet, his foot is aimed at her midsection to try to bring her back down.

She does, she does move to get up, popping to her feet in a move that sends a wave of dizziness through her. She catches that foot, right to the ribs, and something cracks. Her response? She throws herself backward to put some distance between them, and then she throws a motherfucking chair. she throws it hard, up and over her head, her hand on the arm till the last minute. She nearly bounces off the wall with the force of that follow through.

Sutton's breath comes hard and harsh. She watches him, turningwith him, dropping into a stance he will undoubtedly recognize as Eli's favored. This is Krav Maga, not her usual ring fighting. This isn't Muay Thai, her play around in the ring. This is the serious business of fighting, fighting for you life, doing some damage and not getting dead. Maybe it's that heightened sense of hers that comes of bleeding and nearly going out from lack of flow to the brain. Maybe it's the flu and she's hallucinating this, but she sees that white fire work its way down his arms, and smells that ozone bite, feels like if he touches her now, it's going to burn into her like lightning.

She can feel it. He's trying to kill her. He means to kill her. And she may have to take his life for it. Something inside her fractures, but she doesn't have time for triage. How dare he. How dare he. Try to leave her, try to hurt her, try to love her and then leave. Something in her answers that flare in him. Sutton's right behind the chair, hoping to catch him in a mid-defense, to shoulder check and drive him with everything into the corner of the wall behind him. Calculated risk.

He feels something snap when his foot connects with her side, and it quickens his breath. His upper lip pulls back over his teeth, and it may also be a trick of the synapses in her flu-riddled brain, but that snarl he makes sounds animalistic; the warning growl of a wolf seconds before it launches an attack. He lunges for her, and he may as well have claws and razor-tipped teeth for how he moves. Vicious, brutal efficiency; every ounce of him now going into trying to subdue her, take her down to the floor where he can control her. He lunges, and is cracked by the chair, right across the face and shoulder, and it startles a hoarse yelp out of him as he crashes back into the wall with that bulldozing shoulder.

Rather than be closed in on, though, his arm swings in a hard, fast backhand across her face. He'll try to stun her with it, then snatch the nearby empty glass off the table and smash it against her head.

The same table that contains his guns, all three of them. Not loaded, though it wouldn't take long with the clips sitting right fucking there.

They slam into each other with furniture and fist, elbow and knee. Sutton throws her hand up and her arm catches the glass, it thumps against her head, but doesn't shatter, glancing off her hard skull and shooting free of his fingers to crash into the dresser's edge where it flashes apart into at least thirty pieces. She still has her boots on, and that's a good thing, because she throws herself back and stumbles through the crunched glass, grinding it into the carpet. Her ribs are making it hard to breath, the bruising a deep burn.

Still, she launches herself again at him, right hook, left jab, and a hard knee to the abdomen. She grabs hold of his shoulders and drops, sacrificing the high ground to try to pull him down and flip him over her, kicking hard with her legs, her strongest asset, and flip him right into the table of all those guns. If his solid form slams in, it'll break the table, scatter the weapons and slam the other chair into the wall. Unfortunately, she rolls in some of the far-afield glass, slicing into her back through the tee and dribbling the first substantial blood into this particular crime scene. She grunts hard and tries to get to her feet before him, unsteady. The flu is coming for her, and she's flagging fast. Nausea rises, but she fights it down.

The sound of the glass shattering is high-pitched and quick; fragments litter the rug and wind up peppering an armchair and a potted plant. Her hook is batted away. Her jab batted away, like she's a little fly pestering him. The knee, though, comes out of nowhere, and sinks into his belly hard enough to have him trying to bring up his dinner a third time - fortunately, to no avail. His head drops forward, his body half crumples, and for the second time he falls for that damned annoying move of hers. This time, it sees him launched into the table; it doesn't hold up to 190 pounds of pissed off Mexican. The sound of it splintering and then snapping is heard as he crashes into it, scattering guns and laptop every which way.

And then, there's an unsettling silence. He's still, probably from slamming his head into the corner of the wall on his way down, bulky frame sprawled in the shattered remnants of the table. Her blood, his blood, the shower's still running and someone passes by in the hall outside the door, blissfully oblivious to what's transpiring within room 14.

Trust Sutton to sacrifice her own flesh to fling her fireplug of a boyfriend into a table to scatter all his weapons and probably ding his laptop, if not outright crack the screen and shift interior components. Oops, hope you backed up your shit. Something in her back shifted with that move, and a dull, warning ache begins low in it. She gets to her feet slowly, falls against the dresser, then sucks in a hard breath and spins, going down on one knee. One knee into glass. Something bites into her skin. A wave of vertigo hits her, and all she can do is clutch the dresser and try to stay conscious, clenching her teeth, her muscles, just trying not to go out when the room teeters madly and the back of her skull pulls back.

How long later? A minute? Five? She pulls herself up off the floor. How did she end up on the floor? She moves to get up, falls against the bed, then drags herself over to Ruiz. She has to get his hands. She has to secure the firearms. She has to make sure he's down.

She can barely breathe and a tingle has started in her lower back. Her ribs are on fire. Her face hurts. Her jaw aches. She's bleeding, warm running blood staining the back of her shirt, sliding down her leg and into her sock. Her shaky hand reaches into the cardboard box, tipping the lid, to go for his cuffs.

He doesn't move, though a shard of wood tumbles to the floor after a few moments. His body pretty much lies inert across the shattered table and what's left of the other chair, and the fact that it took this to bring him down (while sick, and recovering from a narrowly-reversed drug overdose) possibly speaks to how annoyingly resilient the man really is.

But for now, he lies there and drools into the carpet, and Sutton might get a glimpse of the damage she's managed to inflict upon him in return for what he's bestowed on her. Plenty of bruises and cuts, including a nasty one currently gushing fairly profusely from his forehead where it impacted the corner of the wall. It doesn't, though, answer why he would have done this. Any of it. It wasn't him looking at her, and yet it was. And yet it wasn't.

There are many things he no doubt wishes he could tell Eli right now. How does one watch their relationship with their dead ex-lover go up in smoke, in front of their eyes?

"I can't listen to you right now." Sutton's voice is raspy. Heavier than it was before. "I love you so much. You left me. He tried to leave me, and I can't. You're too close to me and I don't have the strength to pull him into the bathroom—" Her voice breaks. She pulls the thin comforter off the bed, spreading it onto the floor. She rolls Ruiz's solid frame onto it, nearly vomiting twice. She uses that to help drag his bulk across the room. It protects him from glass. His skull could be fractured for all she knows, but she can't check him. Not yet. If he comes for her again, she will have to kill him.

"Do you understand that I love him? Not like some silly girl... not because we fuck. He's the only part of you I have left to hold onto. You love him too. He's part of my life. Even if he leaves me. I can't. If he comes for me... again." She gives one last long haul, groaning with effort, dragging his ass to the bathroom. "Fuck, stop eating so many goddamn churros." She kicks the toilet with her heel and almost goes over into the toilet. "If he comes for me again, I'll do what I have to. I won't turn him in unless I find out why and I don't like his answer. There's something wrong with him." Or there isn't. Maybe this is who he is.

The terrifying thing is, she doesn't really know in this moment. And she can't think. She uses the handcuffs to secure him to the pipe under the sink, yank, yank, yanks the blanket out form underneath him, and leaves him sprawled in an extremely uncomfortable position on the bathroom floor. His shoulder is going to hurt like a motherfucker when he wakes. If he wakes.

His skull doesn't look fractured, but looks can be deceiving. His body is in rough shape though, that much is for certain. Her body is in rough shape, too. She's got youth on her side; he's a middle aged man who was already treating himself like shit before tonight rolled on up and laid waste to them both.

He's dead weight as she drags him into the bathroom, has her words with Eli, and cuffs him to the sink sitting down. His head flops against the porcelain, tie dragging against his lap and then the floor, blood leaked into his dark hair and greying beard, sticky now that it's clotted and started to dry.

Maybe this is who he is. A guy with a vicious temper, homicidal tendencies and a scrap of paper in his pocket (the corner of which might be visible with him positioned as he is) with the handwritten words:

What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.
And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.

<3 you always,
Javi

Some minutes later, when she's recovered enough to walk over to the med bag, still fighting dizziness, she drags back a rally pack, also known as a banana bag, bends and then sits hard on the floor next to him. She sets up with that drip taped to his arm. She adds a little something extra, some muscle relaxants, to tone down his aggression. It's a gamble, giving him anything. She dumps the sharp into the trash in his empty pill bottle. She follows it with some wrappers, and sits there looking at him, noticing the paper sticking out of his pocket. She takes the time to strip off his extra clothes, the things he'd take off himself in normal circumstances. She's already halfway through doing it before she realizes it's to make him more comfortable, and how fucked up that is.

She throws his clothes overhanded into the other room, the tie, the pants. She shoves him into a less contorted position. Still not comfy. Less painful probably. Then she chucks his pocket contents in the sink, and flips the note over, because she sees his handwriting. She reads it. She pauses in the middle, goes back and reads it all through again, the note held scissored between her fingers.

It becomes very real then, that he tried to kill himself on purpose. She has the note in her hands.

She folds it up, very precisely, and puts it on the ledge of the sink. She turns her head and presses the back of her hand to her mouth. Her abs roll, and then she pulls the lid up and heaves over it, emptying her stomach into the toilet. The shower still runs, though the hot water just warm now.

Sutton gets up strips out of the rest of her clothes, and steps into the shower. Ruiz is probably peppered with water when she doesn't pull the curtain all the way shut. She stands there till the water goes cold, then longer still, until she's shivering.

She turns the water off, steps out, and steps over him, picking up the note to take it to bed, her fingers blurring some of the ink, she opens it and reads it again. She recognizes the poem, and pulls it up shortly on her phone, reading the full text. When she hits the line Like this I love you, Beloved, she flips her browser closed without finishing. Her finger hovers over the call button for a long time.

She picks up Javier's phone and scrolls through the messages on the front screen, pausing at one, then shoving both phones, side by side, onto the bedside table. She curls up naked and wet on the bed, bleeding onto the crisp white sheets, on a bed that still smells like her lover. The bed he almost died on. The one he tried to strangle her on.

"Could you just shut up? Could you just shut up and come over here and sit down and tell me some dumb stories about your stupid boyfriends and the bullshit times you almost got caught doing it in public places?" Sutton pulls the sheet up over her body, because it's weird being naked with your ghost brother in your bedroom. She can feel him staring. "I have the fucking flu. Get in this bed and speak."

She rolls over and reaches for both phones, putting them next to her face in bed, so she can see if either goes off. No one can come over until she's had time to think. She picks up her phone, unlocks it. And opens up Candy Crush. She glances up at Eli, gives him a wide-eyed well look, and goes back to smashing candies. It's zen, this stupid game. Her throat is too swollen to do much more talking anyway.

Sutton doesn't yell at him for telling her Javier & Eli conquest stories, she just plays her mindless little game and listens to the sound of her brother's voice, and Javier's heavy, slow breathing in the lulls sometimes in the story. If she doesn't move too much, she can listen to both, at least until exhaustion drops her into a deep and dreamless sleep.