Pacifier

🌹Isabelle🌼

That night I lay in my brothers bed pretending to be asleep, listening to him and Camille talking quietly by the window.

There was this grave expression shared between them as they shared the chair and she rested against his chest. A grave expression like they were waiting for the end of the world. News that the buttons had been pressed, that the bombs had gone off.

John had put me to bed with the same expression, serious and sincere and though he had tried to hide his regret he hadn't hidden it well enough. Id been able to see it in his eyes when his smile hadn't quite reached them.

And all the little things Meghan had told me about my family, were beginning to make sense. Even this even now when John sat in the window watching the street, guarding us. I knew that the time would come and if I hadnt slipped away by myself they would come for me.

To take me to Billy Reid and give me up in exchange for peace.

At least if I managed to slip away, at least if I managed to give myself up instead they would never get the chance to let me down. I could protect myself only by protecting myself from reality. Doing as they would inevitably do before they could.

And if I did it right I might still be able to save them. I might be able to stop the war. It was me after all at the centre of it all. I understood that now.

So I lay there, waiting to hear their conversation stop, waiting to sense them both lulled to sleep but the moment never came because Johnny wouldnt close his eyes. Wouldn't settle.

I could sense him, watching through the window, refusing to relax. The more I concentrated on him the more tense I wound up so that when someone started hammering on the door, deafening and mad, nearly knocking the door from its frame, i jumped up immediately. Too quickly to have been roused from my sleep, but with all the adrenaline of someone who had been lying in wait.

Still my brother didn't notice that and Camille didn't notice that, and Van, when Johnny opened the door, didn't seem to notice me at all.

He looked at me once, eyes flickering over me drowning in one of Johnnys sweaters, and then he looked to my brother, their eyes locked as he demanded he meet him downstairs. He was frantic, veins coursing with adrenaline, heart racing and lodged in his throat. He looked angry but more than angry he looked mad. Oh so slightly unhinged.

When his eyes fell on me again I felt all the blood drain from me. Felt myself freeze.

"Aye tink," Johnny kissed me on the forehead, "go back to sleep ey, think yourself lucky," he held my face in his hands and stroked my hair down gently as he stood and turned away.

He had been smiling when he'd said it, classic Bondy crooked smile but he hadn't really meant it and i knew I was being lied to. Not just by him but by Camille as her hand found mine and tugged me back towards the bed.

When my brother left she rolled her eyes at me and took out a packet of cigarettes.

She held it out to me and though I hesitated when she nudged them closer to me I realised that if I wanted her to see me as anyone but her boyfriends baby sister I ought to take the cig and stop worrying about what my brother would say.

Besides I wanted one. I wanted to smoke with her and roll my eyes and pretend for even a minute or two that I was just as cool as she was, that I could be just as calm and removed from these end of the world situations we both kept winding up in.

If I could pretend we were the same, that we both knew this world inside and out, that we both knew those lads inside and out, then i could feel calm like she did. I could feel tired and worn out and roll my eyes just as she did.