Loving the RIGHT Brother

Patient

C o l e

"Are you not coming to bed...?"

"Not until you're better"

His words were accompanied with an apologetic smile but I knew what that really meant.

'I don't want to hurt you'

"...okay"

I watched as Eros gave a smile that felt scarily unreal before leaving our room and as the door shut, a sense of emptiness filled me.

That was 3 weeks ago and Eros has been like that ever since the incident.

Distant, cautious, unwilling to get too close or do anything that can cause me any unintentional harm. It scared me honestly, I've never seen Eros this way before and it made me wonder how long he'd be like this before he'd return to his normal self.

Everything had happened so quickly that I could barely even make sense of it. There was nothing I could do about it either since Eros refused to key me in about anything he's been doing after the entire incident.

He barely even says goodbye anymore.

While my head didn't hurt too much, my shoulder was still a bit sore from where I was stabbed. Payback from that man as I had done the same to him during our fight.

I was a bit frustrated because I was missing school due to these injuries but Cinder and Jean had been texting me notes from the classes we shared so I was thankful for that. Harvey had apparently told them that I got really sick out of nowhere after the performance, he had said;

"Yeah, he was so nervous and practiced so hard that after everything was done he just 'plop!' and collapsed"

Leave it to Harvey to dramatize everything.

The only thing that sort of surprised me was the silence from Myles, not a text or call from him the entire time. It didn't bother me really but I did flag it as strange, maybe he was just busy or something, I don't really know.

Anyways, back to the subject on hand.

How to get Eros to understand that he is not the one to blame for all of this. It was going to be tough but eventually, we'll have to have this talk.

He avoids it every single time and I'm just about ready to tie him to the door so that he can't run away. For someone so open about everything, he's trying his damn hardest to keep this one inside.

So I decided to ask for help from a...friend?

With Johnny as my right hand man, the two of us set out on a small drive. I know he wanted to ask questions but I just didn't want to answer them. It's best for him not to know the reason either lest Eros interrogate him.

When we finally arrived, I stepped up to the door and pressed the door bell.

"Huh? Cole?! Oh my god!" The first thing I was greeted with as soon as the door opened was a shocked Carter.

On instinct, he had went head first into my chest in a greeting hug and I couldn't help but wince a bit as my shoulder ached from the pressure.

"Easy there..." I muttered as I steadied the young man. His hug had some impact to it since he picked up some muscle over time.

Carter honestly shot up over these past years. He was only sixteen and yet we were basically almost the same height now, his head coming up just above my chest. His short brown hair was frazzled, the unruly strands just as wild as he was but he didn't seem to care as he let it run free.