Chapter Text
I was woken by a noise coming from outside. Probably the gardener in the shed. I could hear him moving the lawnmower, that metallic scrape of the blade over the lip of the shed door. He didn’t usually come in the house, so I was probably safe, and Ruben wouldn’t have wanted me to interact with his help anyway, lest I sully his image. I was lying on my side, oddly warm and comfortable despite knowing how much it would hurt when I moved. My head was pounding and fuzzy, thoughts coming slower than usual, like I couldn’t quite grab onto what I was thinking. It was as though I was grabbing at sand as it fell through my fingertips. Definitely concussed again then. It was amazing I had any cognitive function left really.
I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, they both felt swollen and crusted, the pressure on my eyeball intense on the left side. I could feel the scrape that meant at least one of them was bloodshot. Ruben had favoured that side last night, when we had been ‘boxing’.
~
I’d been staying at Ruben and Mona’s for months now, since everything went to shit and I’d found myself homeless again. Mum hadn’t been interested in me staying with her, not when Ruben had been so quick to offer. He’d been so reassuring to Lori, talking about how he could help me get back on my feet, give me a roof over my head and that she didn’t need to worry about me. I’d stood there watching the conversation between them, feeling like a child all over again whilst they discussed all my faults and inability to be a functioning adult over my head. Sure, Ruben goes to prison for a decade for stamping on some poor saps head, and I’m the one with the problems.
Jesus. Alby. It’s been a while since I thought about him. Not since the last time Ruben had made his feelings towards me known with his fists. I wonder what he’s doing now. I wonder about his life, what he’s thinking, who he meets up with. Joanna said he’s doing well, but she’s been hard to get hold of recently, since she said not to come round when she had the kids again.
Ruben had reinstated his boxing lessons from when we were kids pretty soon after I’d moved into the spare room. He’d looked me up and down, sneering and smirking at all my perceived faults. ‘You’re too weak’ he’d snarl, ‘too short, too skinny, not an ounce of muscle on you. You’re a pussy Niall’ he’d say. ‘It’s my responsibility to make you into a man’. My arguments that I was already a man, and a grown one at that fell on deaf ears. ‘Boxing lessons’ was just a nice way of phrasing ‘Ruben losing his shit and battering Niall until he felt better’ anyway. It had been a particularly rough one this time around. Ruben had taped my hands tightly in a facsimile of care, face in a smirk that didn’t meet his eyes. He’d put the gloves on me and then let rip, coming back for more and more, and just when I thought he was done he’d started all over again.
Mona was gone. Left. Escaped this life in the middle of a boring Tuesday, with her stuff in a duffle bag and the saved up cash that she’d been hiding for months. Decided that ‘irreconcilable differences’ with her husband covered all manner of sins, explaining everything whilst explaining nothing.
She was worried for me. Tried to get me to go with her. How could I? I told her so. ‘Ruben is going to go ape shit when he realises you’ve gone, what do you think he’s gonna do? Better me than some poor cunt on the street’. She didn’t like it, but what choice did I have? She made me promise that if I needed to, I would come to her. Hanging onto my hands and staring in my eyes. I’d never been offered an out before. Didn’t even know what to do with it. Just stumbled my way through a half hearted answer that we both knew I would never take.
~
Ruben had been so angry yesterday when he found out. Vibrating, spitting and snarling, storming out the house with his shoulders up to his ears and a black look across his face. I didn’t go after him. What was the point? I told myself he just needed a bit of time to cool off. I tidied up, turned off the lights and sat on the sofa with the lamp on, killing time until Ruben returned. I turned on the TV, watched some crappy English gardening show, before deciding it was shite and turning it off again. I went to bed in the end, thinking perhaps Ruben wouldn’t return tonight.
It felt like I’d barely been asleep when the light over my head turned on and my ankle was grabbed. I was pulled out of the bed and landed in a crumpled heap on the floor.
‘Get up’ snarled Ruben.
He looked like a wild man, eyes wide, stance tense and feet planted. His hands were clenched into fists at his side and he loomed over me like I was prey. His foot swung out, catching my hip,
‘I said get up’.
I couldn’t move, too stunned from the rude awakening, other than to try and cover myself with my hands. Thank god I’d gone to bed in my boxers. It was a hot night so I’d foregone the T-shirt, but I was regretting it now as Ruben’s eyes lingered on my chest. I could feel my blush spreading down my neck as I watched him watch me.
‘Come on. Garage’ he said.
I didn’t move. Just sat there, blinking up at him. He sighed deeply through his nose.
‘Move Niall, now. Or I will move you’.
His hands went to his belt and my heart thumped in my chest. He pulled it out of the loops and snapped it in half. I needed to move. I shuffled back on my hands and heels and my back hit the wall. His eyes narrowed further.
‘Wrong way, Bambi’, he spat.
‘No, no Ruben, I’m sorry, I’ll get up, please’, I babbled.
That belt had haunted me since I’d lived with Ruben the first time, when he moved with mum, Maura and me after being released from Juvie. He used to wrap it around my neck and pull it tight until I passed out and only then would he let it go.
Once, when Ruben was feeling particularly possessive, he pierced the belt with a hammer and nail, just at the right length to fit snugly buckled around my neck, leaving the long end for him to wrap about his hand and pull me along.
Mona was appalled when she found out, but it didn’t stop him wearing it, flaunting the newly made hole at me.
‘Jesus Ruben’ she had said, ‘I know you’ve got history with your brother, but this is fucked up, even for you’.
I sometimes wonder if I was part of the reason that she left, but I was never brave enough to ask. I felt the cool leather of the belt wrap around my neck and the clinch of the buckle. Ruben pulled hard, lurching my upper body forward off the floor and I grabbed his wrist with both hands.
‘Please Ruben!’ I begged, but it was no use and he began to drag me out the room. I managed to get my feet underneath me, and slide a few fingers between my neck and the belt so I could breathe. My heart hammered in my throat and I thought I was going to be sick.
What had followed was probably the worst beating of my life. Ruben had claimed it was boxing practice, had put the gloves on me himself, but none of that really mattered. He’d beaten me soundly, coming back for more even when I could no longer move, screaming and roaring in my face. I felt for sure this would be the time that he stamped on my head too.
The reminder of Ruben stamping on Alby’s face pulled me out of the weird half way to sleep place that I had been drifting in with a jerk. I opened my eyes, the left one stubbornly staying almost closed but the right one opening enough to let a slither of light in. The influx of bright light from around the closed curtains stabbed at my retina, shooting pain across my brain like an ice pick into snow.
I catalogued my body’s aches. My head was pounding, my eyes sore and nose stuffy, air whistling as I breathed. It probably needed to be set, and soon before it ended up sticking the wrong way. I ran my tongue around my mouth. My lips were split, and one of my teeth felt unusually sharp on one edge. My ribs were sore, especially on the right when I breathed in. Cracked maybe, or broken? I don’t know. The rest of me felt like a giant throbbing bruise.
Lying on my side was starting to get uncomfortable. I braved a tentative wiggle to see if I could think about sitting up.
‘Shhh Bambi, settle’ was sleepily murmured from behind me and my eyes shot open as wide as they would go, heart pounding again.
‘Ruben…wh-’ I started, but ‘quiet Bambi, I said settle’ was the stern reply I got back.
‘Be good, my boy, I’ll sort you out in a minute’.
I realised with a start that the arm extending out from under my neck, that I had been comfortably lying on wasn’t my own. It was Ruben’s arm, with Ruben’s arm hair, and Ruben’s tattoos. Ruben was lying behind me, his naked chest against my back. Fuck.
I felt my breathing pick up in speed, like I just couldn’t get my breath in fast enough. What was he going to do now? I heard Ruben sigh heavily through his nose behind me. I lay as still as I could, chest heaving, heart hammering and thoughts leaking from my ears as I waited for him to speak.