Page 14 of Heartless Heathens

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked, lifting the remains of the girl puddled into my arms closer to me so I could make sure he hadn’t hurt her any more than what was obvious.

“What’s your name? What happened?” Her eyes blew out wide and she pushed me away faster than I could react before she jumped through Corvin’s open bedroom window.

I should have crawled after her, but I needed to focus on my brother. I turned back to him and rolled him to his side, to make sure he didn’t bite his tongue or any shit like that.

“Hey, jackass. Come back.” I called out to him, knowing my voice was typically his way out of the darkness.

It took a few more tries, which was odd, because I could almost always get him out of a black out on the first try. After a few more attempts he came back, his eyes fluttered open and his breathing stayed sharp and shallow while he swallowed bursts of air.

“Sonny,” I shouted, hoping he was already home.

All our class schedules were so fucked that I wouldn’t have doubted it if Frollo had purposefully orchestrated it so we wouldn’t have time together. Sonny appeared at the door with little to no interest in our situation until his eyes wandered to Corvin on the floor.

“Fuck. Did he just have an episode?” He stepped into the room, quickly realizing his help was needed.

“Dude, he just attacked some chick.” I looked at him, not hiding the panic in my face.

“What? Why was there a girl in here?” he asked, arching an eyebrow and staying too calm for my taste.

“I don’t know dude, he fucked her up. She looked fucking terrified, and she jumped out the window to boot.” I told him.

We both heaved my brother into Sonny’s arms, getting him over to his bed so he could rest.

“I’m right here, you don’t have to talk about me like I’m dead,” Corvin mumbled through the fog of his fatigue.

“Well?” I asked him directly, surprised he could manage any coherency.

“I don’t know,” he breathed out heavily before continuing, “who she was.” He turned his chin to the side, looking away from both of our gazes as if he was ashamed to be admitting what happened. “She was in here and then, it was just some flashes.”

“Fuck,” Sonny shouted, kicking over Corvin’s nightstand.

“What if we find her before she gets to anyone? Maybe we can make it go away?” I asked, looking at Sonny for approval.

“Okay, let’s start there. We’re going to be royally fucked if we need to pull a favor this large from Arlan before we’re even a full week into the term.” He bit the cuticle of his nail as he thought about it. “Yeah. Go find her Felix.”

“What? Why me?” I shouted, “How the fuck am I supposed to find her?” I asked.

“Well, Corvin is out for the count, and I don’t know what she looks like, so that leaves you. Go fucking find her.” He pointed out the window, and I sighed heavily.

I fucked myself on that one, couldn’t blame anyone else really.

“And you, you fucking asshole. Have you been keeping this from us?” Sonny shouted at Corvin, uncaring that he looked like a remnant of himself.

He was gonna force him to drown in his own pathetic self-induced misery. If he hadn’t been keeping this from us there was no way in hell we would have left him alone, unsupervised, to hurt himself or someone else.

I knew he needed independence, to be self-reliant.

I wasn’t trying to take that from him.

But if he was getting worse, he needed to let someone help him through it.

“It’s been a stressful week.” Corvin refused to admit anything else and crossed his arms over his chest.

“You fuckin’ lyin’ to me?” Sonny knew but asked anyway.

Corvin sighed heavily and ran his fingers through his hair, the exhaustion from the blackout leaving a physical trace on him. He leaned his head back against the headboard.

“I don’t wanna be here just as much as you don’t. Okay? Is that what you wanna hear? That I don’t want to be Arlan’s errand boy and play fetch for him just so that we don’t end up in a poorhouse?”