Antidote by LC Lehesaho

10

"Are you ready to go home or what?" I grumble to Puma, who's still watching the crowd with an expression that tells me he is not entirely OK.

None of us is OK.

I'm not fucking OK.

"Home." He pushes himself up from the couch. "Let's take an Uber, I don't have the energy for the family right now."

I agree. Completely.

We've been sitting on this couch since… that, but Puma doesn't know what's tormenting me, and I don't know what's tormenting him, so that makes us a perfect pair.

I walk behind him, unable to concentrate on anything. She left me. She fucking left me, even when I begged her not to. Everything was perfect until it all exploded into a million fucking pieces.

"Well, at least one of us is having the time of their life," Puma declares, and I trail his eyes to the side street when we get outside.

My blood goes cold and it feels like my heart is being ripped from my chest. I know those heels. I know that hair. I know her. And she is fucking someone against the wall. My brain is having a hard time figuring out if this is really happening or if it’s just my imagination.

Puma sees it too.

Cobra is actually having sex outside of the club with… that's the Aussie. I just know it's him.

"C'mon, our Uber is there." Puma jerks my arm, but I don't move. I just stare at them. The rhythmical pounding. Her pink hair flowing down his arms. Her arms around his neck.

"Stop staring, and let's go." Puma jerks me again. "Tiger? Man, seriously, what's wrong with you? Come on."

"I…" I turn my eyes to him. "I can't come. I need to…"

I don't know what I need. Suddenly I don't know who I am or what I should do. This can't be real. She can't…

"Tiger, Jesus Christ." Puma steps in front of me, hands on my shoulders, and looks me in the eye. "I know you're overprotective of her, but you can't seriously be thinking about interrupting that? Cobra will kill you, and I'm not even kidding."

Am I going to interrupt? I don't know. I seriously don't know. I don't know what I should do. I'm drowning on dry land. My heart is pounding through my chest and not in the right way.

"Come home with me, bro. We are both done for today." He practically pushes me inside the Uber and I let him. There is not even an ounce of strength left inside me.

I thought I knew pain before, but after this… it's all been child's play compared to this. All these years I've wanted to tell her how I feel, that she is the only thing I see. The only one that matters to me.

She was the one who made me want to live, and not put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger after Leo brought me here. He saved me, but at the same time, he gave me the freedom to end my life if I wanted.

I was ready to die.

I had lived through all the fucking sick and twisted things for three years before he came to kill the man who we thought was our father. He'd fucked-up his business with Leo. Just like he'd fucked us upafter our mom died on our twelfth birthday. Three years in hell made me want to die, but I wasn't allowed to—he wanted me to suffer.

Leo gave me the gun a week after he'd brought me home and told me that I need to think it through. He said that if I want to, I can give up and kill myself or keep that gun and make sure nothing like that happens ever again. He promised that when I recovered, he'll help me find the rest of them and I can kill them the way I want.

I didn't say a word to him.

I hadn't spoken for over a year before he took me out. But then she came, sitting outside my door and reading Peter Pan to me. I'd never heard of the story before, my mother had read Grimms’ Fairy Tales to us when we were little, but I listened to her even though I had no idea who she was or why she was sitting outside my door every night. I didn't step out of the room for a month, and the only one who came in to bring me food and ask if this was the day I wanted to come out was Leo. He told me about his own children, and then I concluded that the girl reading a bedtime story to me was one of his daughters.

She read Peter Pan over and over again, and one day when the story ended, she spoke. Before then, she had only read. But then she actually talked to me and said that she would love it if we could be like Peter. Never grow up and meet the cruel world, but because the world is fucked-up already and there are bad people, we need to grow up. That we can't let them win, and we can be bigger than our monsters. Her voice was always so innocent and angelic that I couldn't imagine that she could know anything about the cruel world.

So, I opened the door she was leaning against, and she fell on her back on the floor. Her hair was pink already then, but what got my attention was the black eye and stitches on her cheek. There, lying on the ground next to my feet, she looked up at me with her beautiful hazel eyes and smiled.

I'm Cobra, and I would like to teach you how to shoot with that gun of yours.

And she did. She also taught me how to use a knife, and when we weren't training to kill, we watched movies and studied because I was three years behind from the other kids my age.

I've always loved her.

She's the reason I decided to stay alive. Cobra never asked what happened to me, nor have I ever told her. Leo is the only one who knows because he said to me that he needs to know what he’s dealing with.

I told him without looking at him the entire time. I was so ashamed of it that tears fell from my eyes, not because of the memories but because of the feelings. The shame. The guilt. The filth. After that, he tracked down every one of those sick fuckers, and I made them pay. It didn't take away the shit they did to us, but it felt so damn good that I still remember the first actual deep breath I took in three years after killing the last one of them.

I'm grateful to Leo for everything he has done for me. And I know he would probably slaughter me for wanting his daughter, but I'd be willing to risk it. Leo knows I'm not worthy of her, and I know it too, but I don't care. For five years, Cobra has been the light of my life, the air feeding my fire, and I can't fucking lose her.

But I did.

I just fucking know I lost her today. I'm mad at her for rejecting me, but at the same time, I want to beg her to forget everything that happened today so we could go back to being at least friends.

But...

I don't even know if I would want to go back.

Maybe this was the wake-up call for me that I can never have her, no matter how much I want us together. Perhaps Cobra was right when she said that there are no happy endings for people like us. Maybe I am Peter Pan, after all, the boy who never grew up. Perhaps those kids never grew up and went to Neverland because they were already dead. Like I was dead inside five years ago.

Like I am now.

Maybe it's time for me to actually accept that I'm one of the lost boys who won't find their way back home.

The Uber moves, but I don't even realize it until the car stops in our yard. Puma pays the fare and drags me out just like he shoved me inside. I end up sitting on Puma's couch with a joint in my hand.

"Smoke it," Puma orders while sitting on the low living room table facing me. "I don't know what the hell happened to you tonight, but I saw that look on your face five years ago, and there it is again, so no. I'm not letting you drown."

I don't smoke it. Yet. "Why do you loath relationships?"

Puma takes the joint from my hand and sucks in a long breath. He observes the sizzling gleam for a moment while holding his breath. Then he exhales it, the thick cloud floating lazily in the air, and turns to look at me. "Loving any of us is a death sentence. Everything we touch dies, no matter if we want it or not."

He’s not exactly wrong. I take the joint, dragging in the smoke. It tastes like shit, but I don't care. "Have you ever been in love?"

"What kind of love do you mean?"

I pass the joint to him. "Any kind of love."

"I loved my mom," Puma says quietly. I've heard his mother died of an overdose when he was ten. "And she loved me, I know she did." He lifts his eyes to mine. "Do you know why she did it? Killed herself?"

I shake my head.

"I came home from training, it was hunting season, and you know, Dad wanted us to practice these things by hunting, so we won't freeze when we see death." He grins, but it's not a happy one. "I handed a deer's skull to my mom, which I'd boiled myself, and I still remember what I said to her. I was so fucking proud 'cause Dad was proud of me. I said, 'Mom, look. I killed it myself. Isn't it pretty?'" He lets out a sigh. "Well, she didn't think so. She was fucking terrified that her son was a monster and didn't want to see me growing up and becoming an even worse one. That night she tucked me in bed and walked to the bathroom and came out the next day feet first. She'd left a letter which I found in the sink."

I don't know what to say.

We never speak about these things, never share the darkest corners of our lives because we have enough to deal with handling our own dark places. But now… I get him. Puma is who he is because of what happened that day. Just like I am who I am because of what happened to me. To us.

Why is it that the darkest things in life make us who we are and the little glimpses of light don't matter?

Because pain conquers all, not love.

"Why are we still alive?" I ask him.

"Because we are too afraid to die after all we've done, brother."