aware (peterick)

15

"Yes, I understand it's only been a few weeks, but he doesn't need anymore. Why? He doesn't live with me anymore. Meaning he got better and now he's living quite peacefully alongside his undead friends, and for his sake I'd rather him not be under anyone's radar. No, don't come to my house. You've trundled down my road in your big red van once; any more is going to make my neighbours suspicious. Is it really that difficult to shred a piece of paper? Yes, thank you. My God... Alright, thanks for your help.

"What a bitch," I mutter under my breath, flinging my phone carelessly onto the coffee table. "Sorry about all of this. I'm sure Brendon is deeply sorry for dragging you out here so late." I'm talking to the tall boy with the blue eyes we'd encountered during our trip to Walmart last week. The same boy Patrick had said he wanted to kill, no less. "You must be shattered enough, what with Brendon's lack of skill for sleeping. You sure you don't want any coffee?"

His eyes do not squint when he smiles, and neither does he acknowledge my light-hearted mockery while Brendon sifts noisily through his collection of very official looking documents, humming to himself absentmindedly. From the moment Dallon sat down next to Patrick (begrudgingly close, might I add) he's been gazing at him thoughtfully like an exquisite piece of art, his shoulders rising and falling at such a slow, calm pace he may as well be sleeping with his eyes open. "I'm good," he says. "Thanks for the offer, though."

Patrick stares, unblinking, at my lap. So far these are the first words Dallon has spoken to us since stepping foot in my house, and already the younger boy is shaking like a leaf in the wind, thumbnail gnawing into the small of my back, close to ripping the skin and drawing blood.

"Alright, my lovely," Brendon announces. He slips a sheet of paper out from the middle of his thin, crinkled wad and places it on the coffee table in front of us, hovering a biro under my nose. "If you'd like to sign your name on the dotted line..."

I suck in a breath and snatch the biro from him, eagerly scribbling my name at the bottom of the page and violently crossing my T's before throwing the pen away as if it's contaminated with some kind of disease. The bundle of nerves in my stomach evaporates instantaneously as I exhale. "So, that's it? It's official?"

Brendon crosses his arms over his chest and grins smugly. "Peter Wentz, you are now officially the legal guardian of Mr. Patrick Stumph." He kicks his feet up onto the coffee table and leans back against the couch, hands brushed beneath his head. He's still wearing that godawful scarf, though we're not in public, so I'm not sure why he'd need it. "The VCA can suck my dick."

Dallon sniggers. "Forgotten my name already?"

"Course not, Dal," Brendon muses. "That's what I said."

"Hear that, Patrick?" I say, lacing our fingers together in an attempt to tug his attention away from the stranger of a being sitting on my couch. The thumbnail he'd been digging into my back a few moments ago now sits snug between his teeth, and it takes me a few moments more to notice the slick, stinging sensation crawling up my spine as he suckles fervently at his thumb. "You get to live with me forever."

Patrick glances up at me through his empty, dilated pupils. "Forever?"

"As long as you want to stay, you can stay," I promise.

My heart warms to see his eyes light up, swirls of natural blue seeping through the tangled grey of his irises as he smiles around his thumb and presses his nose against my shoulder. In my peripheral vision, I can see Dallon's gaze continuing to inspect, so I snake my arm around Patrick's waist and pull him close, inching him away from hands that have no right to touch him. He sighs contently, falling against my chest and curling up in my lap, but the protective gesture is far from blatantly screaming out our affection for one another; his age may be that of a legal adult, but months of trauma have since reverted him to the status of a dependent child.

"I can tell you're doing an excellent job of dominating him," Dallon says out of the blue.

I turn my nose up at his choice of words. "Well, I'm not sure dominating is the right word-"

"Well-behaved," he intervenes, nodding at Patrick, who looks close to falling asleep, but I know he's using me as a hiding place rather than a resting place. "It's all in his body language; how he listens to every word you say; how easily he obeys every instruction without fail. Whomever raised him must have taught him well."

I scoff defensively and instinctively cradle Patrick closer to my chest. "Like you would know."

"I've worked with children all my life, Mr. Wentz, I think you'll find I would."

"Get to the point, Jackass."

"I was merely trying to complement your dedicated work."

"Well, I don't need some lousy ass care worker telling me how to parent a child."

"Patrick is a vampire, not a child."

"You think I don't know that?" I hiss.

"Ladies, ladies!" Brendon flounces in that overdramatic way of his, seamlessly disappearing from his spot on the couch and reappearing behind Dallon within the same eyeblink, akimbo arms draped around his boyfriend's shoulders. "Quieten down," he soothes, somewhat motherly. "You're scaring the poor thing."

Dallon makes to shoot me an apologetic smile, but before I give him the chance to do so, my guilt-ridden self has already taken the opportunity to shoot up from the couch, bustling down the corridor and bursting into the bedroom carrying a shaken, whimpering Patrick in my arms, his face streaked with tears the colour of blood.