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When Ralph Ferguson took the witness stand, an icy-hot tightness took over Lorenzo’s body. He clenched his jaw, shifted in his seat uncomfortably. It was like his whole past was on display for everyone to see, to judge him for it. Lorenzo’s cheeks were becoming pink and there was a sick feeling stirring in his stomach. Everything started to feel like a twisted dream. He could feel Carol’s eyes on him but he couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t look at anyone. Because it wouldn’t make any sense. He was fourteen again and they weren’t real. They weren’t here. He was back at Wilkinson and Ralph was looking at him like he always did - like he wanted to hurt him. No, like he wanted to devour him.
Someone tapped something and Lorenzo flinched. He looked at his arms and saw all the hairs were sticking straight up. Carol touched his arm. Her palm was warm and soft in a way he didn’t deserve. He wanted to cry. “Are you alright?” She asked. But it must have been to someone else because again, he wasn’t there.
Michael started talking to Ralph, and the casualness of their conversation made Lorenzo want to scream. When Ralph spoke it was like static and nothing made sense. He talked about Nokes like he was a great man, a wonderful guard, doing an honest day's work at Wilkinson. Lorenzo clutched his stomach. He wished the floor would open up and swallow him. Carol's grip on his wrist became tighter.
Then Snyder came up and the conversation shifted. “What exactly happened at Wilkinson? Were you allowed to use corporal punishment? Did you anyway? Be honest. Come on - be really honest. So you did - I see. Did Sean like hitting little boys? Did he like touching little boys? Did you? What about the boys at Wilkinson? Did you touch them? Did you fuck them?”
A gavel about language. Lorenzo jumped. He realized he was sweating. He caught Michael's gaze and it was horrible, like Michael could see every bruise Lorenzo had ever had on his body. Lorenzo looked back into Michael’s eyes and he didn’t see a lawyer. He saw a scared teenage boy curled into himself, pants still wrapped around his knees as he sobbed. He saw himself, climbing into the bed with Michael, Michael screaming and fighting him off, thinking Lorenzo was someone else. “Mike, hey, it’s Shakes. It’s me. Shh, it’s me, hey, calm down, please.” Lorenzo had wrapped his arms around Michael’s small shaking body, held his friend in his arms in a way he’d never done before. Michael had buried his head in Lorenzo’s chest which only slightly muffled his cries. Nokes watched them from the doorframe, smirking and smoking a cigarette. It was the only way Lorenzo was able to get Nokes to let him visit Michael at that hour. If Michael saw Nokes in the doorway he let out a gasp and a shudder. “Don't look at him,” Lorenzo said. “Look at me. It's okay. I'm here now. It's okay.”
The gavel came again. Lorenzo’s entire body was rattling. “Shakes?” Came Carol’s voice. He couldn’t look at her. He tried looking at his hands instead but everything was blurry. There was an aching tightness in his chest. His throat was closing in and every breath he took hurt and made him wince. He looked up again and Michael was still looking at him with the same kind of look he’d give Lorenzo after a bad night at Wilkinson. The kind of look that said, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry god damn it. Lorenzo suppressed a sob and looked back down at his shaking hands before tucking his fingers under his knuckles and clenching them tightly.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Carol whispered. She put a hand on his shoulder and he let out a whimper, like it would pain him to move. He looked up to Ralph again just to torture himself and he felt a throbbing pain throughout his body before letting out a few quickened breaths. “Come on,” Carol said softly, “you don’t have to be here for this. Let’s go.”
Carol lifted him from the seat. He wasn't sure how because he could swear he weighed two thousand pounds in those moments - every ounce of hurt and sadness and shame just boiling inside of him and weighing down his feet and his limbs until he felt like he was going to fall over if he didn't have someone guiding him out of the courtroom. He felt somehow old and like a child at the same time and couldn't come to terms with it, couldn't make it make sense in his head as Carol's gentle palms half-pushed half-pulled him into the hallway which was absurdly silent. When the courtroom door closed behind him, a ringing started in Lorenzo's ears. Carol was guiding him towards a bench tucked away and he knew he'd collapse into it. He could see it happening in his head already. Then Carol's hands let go - only for a second - and everything was hazy. He felt something beneath his body and he clung to it, hoping he didn’t vomit. He felt the tears coming to the tops of his eyelids.
“Carol,” he let out, panicked now, lost. Her finger came at his cheeks as if from a fog in the darkness. He couldn’t make anything out.
“I’m here,” she said softly. She sounded upset but he couldn’t see her anymore. He was fading quickly. “Shakes, I’m here. Stay with me, please. It’s okay.”
“God,” Lorenzo said through quick breathing. “I’m in there.” The sound of a gate slamming shut. The sound of his friends’ cries. Everything faded away.
Michael left the courtroom feeling lightheaded and trying his best not to faint. When he got into the hallway, he started feeling able to breathe again. He could focus on trying to find his friends - his friends, who he needed so badly, who he’d been putting through hell.
He turned a corner and found Carol kneeling on the floor in front of a bench in a small room. In front of her was Lorenzo, his eyes full of tears. A few had started to escape and slide down his cheeks. The sight filled Michael with guilt and dread. He knew that look all too well. He knew where Lorenzo was.
“Shakes?” Carol was trying. “Shakes? Honey? Can you hear me?”
Lorenzo took in a quick gasp, like he'd just seen something frightening. He didn't reply to her. Carol squeezed his hands then looked over and saw Michael. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to do.”
Michael swallowed hard before walking close and kneeling in front of Lorenzo himself. He tried looking into his eyes, but Lorenzo’s eyes weren’t seeing anything right then - not anything physically around him anyway. Michael felt like he was going to get sick.
“Let’s…” Michael started, before realizing his mouth was incredibly dry and he had to clear his throat. He stood and Carol stood beside him. “Let’s bring him to mine. I live close. He can… maybe he can sleep… or… I… I don’t know.”
“Mikey, are you okay?” Carol asked.
Michael winced and looked away from her then back to Lorenzo.
“I’m fine, let’s just-”
“You’re shaking too, you know.” She reached for his hand but he pulled it away.
“Can we focus on him, please?” She didn’t say anything - just kept looking at him. But he must have looked more desperate when he again said “please” because she nodded and helped Michael move Lorenzo into a taxi. In the car, Lorenzo fell against Michael's shoulder like he was a child. Michael could feel him shaking against his body, like every bone and muscle in Lorenzo's body was shaking. “You're gonna be okay,” Michael whispered, though he himself was finding it hard to believe.
Carol reached over and squeezed his hand. It filled him with a melancholy he couldn't explain. As if when she touched him it reminded him of everything he’d lost.
When they got back to Michael's place, he and Carol guided Lorenzo into the bedroom. As soon as Lorenzo sat down on the bed, he started to sob. “Mikey? I- I don't…” He grabbed at the sheets, confused and scared.
“I'm here, Shakes. You're safe. You're home. You're at my home. This is my bed you’re in.”
Lorenzo shook his head like he was disagreeing about his whereabouts. “Nothing makes any sense.”
Michael swallowed a sob in his own throat. “I know. I… I'm sorry.”
“We have to get out,” Lorenzo whispered. “I can't take it.”
“Shakes, honey…” Carol came into the room slowly but her entrance made Lorenzo flinch so she stopped, putting her fingers to her mouth.
Michael put a hand on the back of Lorenzo’s head and pulled him close until their foreheads were touching. “Why don't you go to sleep, Shakes, huh?” It was just like at Wilkinson, and they’d try anything just to get the other to calm down enough to sleep.
Lorenzo clutched on Michael's shirt. “No. No- don't leave me. Don't-”
“I'm not leaving. I'm right here - I promise. No one's going to take you, okay? Not tonight. Not ever again. You just need to sleep, Shakes. Please.” Lorenzo whimpered as Michael tried repositioning him on the bed. “You'll be alright. I swear. Do you believe me?”
There was a long silence as Lorenzo took in and let out horrible breaths. Michael just gave a small smile, as much as he could manage when inside he felt like he was crumbling to pieces.
“Okay,” Lorenzo finally said. “Okay - god - okay.”
Carol reached for the light but Michael quickly asked her not to. “Don’t,” he uttered, his voice cracking.” She just nodded before leaving the bedroom.
Lorenzo sank into the bed and Michael pulled a stray blanket over him. He watched how quickly Lorenzo’s eyes became heavy and finally Michael started letting his own eyes become wet with tears.
“Mikey?” Lorenzo asked, sounding like a child.
“Hmm?” Mikey replied, wiping at a damp corner of his eye.
“Why us? Why’d they pick us?”
Of course, Michael had a thousand theories in his head about himself. The main one being - he’d always been inherently bad, or evil, and he deserved it, and the rest of them all just got caught up in it. It was fate, or punishment, or something. It was just his divine right to suffer like he had. And Shakes and the rest of them were punished by association. But he’d never say it out loud. He’d never tell anyone what he really thought of himself.
“I don’t know, Shakes,” he said, putting his palm through his friend’s hair in a way no one should have to do. “I don’t know. Please go to sleep.” He transferred his hand from Lorenzo’s head to his back, slowly tracing circles, and he could hear Lorenzo’s breathing slow down, could hear it even out. Until eventually he knew Lorenzo was asleep, because he knew what his friend sounded like when he was asleep, having soothed him to sleep many times and vice versa, but not for a long while.
Michael carefully and quietly pulled his hand out of Lorenzo’s hair as Lorenzo drew his legs up to his chest a bit in his sleep. The lump in Michael’s throat was growing larger and larger. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and saw his teenage self looking back at him - a bruise from fingers on his neck, tears in his eyes. He jerked away from it. On the bed Lorenzo had shrunk into the teenage version of himself - half the size, shaking, whimpering, shriveled.
Michael stood up so suddenly he crashed against a piece of furniture.
“Mikey? What’s going on?” Came Carol’s voice almost immediately. That’s right - he wasn’t alone in his apartment. For the first time in who knows how long he wasn’t alone. But maybe he should be. He looked out into the hall and saw her, and he felt sick. She shouldn’t be here. It was all too much, too bad for her. She should have never known, never found out. He put his hand to his aching heart and felt it speeding towards something terrible.
“Mikey-”
“It’s okay, just - hold on.” He darted into the bathroom and locked it and leaned on the door for a moment for the support. It felt like his legs were going to give out at any moment. He’d had panic attacks before - of course he had - but never with someone around. Never with Carol around. He knew she’d want to comfort him, make him feel okay, but something in him couldn’t let her, couldn’t let her be so close to him in that way. And why not? Was it because he was broken? Because his past had hurt him in a way where he’d never be able to be vulnerable with anyone? With her? When that was all he fucking wanted?
She knocked on the door and he jumped. “Mikey, please, open the door.”
“Just - hold on, please.” He said desperately. He turned the faucet on freezing and put his wrists underneath. For a moment it felt nice, it felt right, due to the fact that it felt like the rest of his body was on fire. He tried to focus on it - on the cold water running over his skin - tried to focus on that instead of the memory of thumping on his thighs, the memory of a hand way too big wrapped around his neck, squeezing as if trying to squeeze the life out of him. The water, the cold water, so cold it felt hot. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath, and it was as if the ice went into his veins, through the rest of him. He opened his eyes again, looked at himself in the mirror, tried to ignore the bruised teen looking back at him.
Michael let out a small cry as he bowed down and stuck his face under the running water, letting it flow over his pink cheeks. He could hear the words the guards at Wilkinson would whisper to him. Brat, good-for-nothing, punk. But it was almost the other ones that were worse, the ones that really stuck with him, when certain guards would really - take a liking to him. Seek him out, call him beautiful, pretty-boy, an angel, a gift. These were the men who made him need to go to the toilet after and get sick.
Michael didn’t even realize how much he had been crying into the sink when Carol knocked again. “Mikey, come on…” Her voice was hoarse, like she’d been crying again. Had she been? The thought made him feel so responsible.
He leaned his wet forehead against the bathroom door, still practically panting, wanting to open it, to hold her, to have her hold him, but he was afraid - so damn afraid - and he couldn’t even pinpoint exactly why.
“You… you should go,” he said quietly through the door.
“I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving either of you.”
Lorenzo, curled up on his bed in the other room. Michael felt sick all over again.
“Carol-”
“I’m not leaving,” she repeated.
He reached his shaking hand towards the doorknob and twisted. When the door opened he practically fell into her arms, void of all strength. She slid them to the ground. “Mikey, oh god-” She ran a hand through his hair and it made him shiver. Nobody had ever done it before in a way he’d wanted, in a way he’d welcomed, except for now. He tried to repurpose the feeling, twist it into something good, something comforting. This is good, he tried telling himself*, touch can be good*. He closed his eyes, focused on the smell of Carol’s hair and the feeling of her nails as they scratched against his scalp. Behind his eyelids as always he saw the smirking guards of Wilkinson, felt their canes press into chin and dig into his back.
He must have let out a pained sound because Carol pulled him in tighter as they sat together on the ground. He tried to push away all the feelings of longing he had for her, that he’d had for years, and just focus on this momentary comfort she was trying to give here and now.
“You’re great with him,” Carol finally said. “With Shakes.”
As if Lorenzo was a scared child. But in these moments he was a scared child.
“I just…” Michael said, his voice shaking. “I just want to take care of him. I… I need to take care of him.”
His bottom lip was quivering and he clenched his jaw. Carol reached forward and put a hand on his cheek. Michael’s breath hitched under her touch. “But what about you, Mikey?”
He let out a small whimper. He didn’t want to think about himself. He couldn’t. It was too much. It was easier to think about Shakes - to think about other people, about their… their stuff. He saw the image of his bloody teenage self curled up on the floor of a solitary cell, starving and wishing desperately to die, praying for the courage to make it happen or that one of these guards would slip and go too far one day.
“What about you?” Carol repeated. “Who takes care of you?” Her hand was still on his cheek and all he could think of was how he didn’t deserve this - this comfort, this sweetness, this tenderness. His friend was suffering in the next room over and it was all his fault, didn’t she know that?
Michael could feel himself breathing heavily, could feel the warmth on his cheeks, on her cheeks, and he hated it, how out of control everything felt. He wanted to cry, wanted to scream or do something but he felt so paralyzed.
From the bedroom they heard a small series of yelps. Shakes. Suddenly Michael was able to move again and he pulled away from Carol's touch, trying hard not to think about it for another second, and went into the bedroom. Lorenzo was twitching and sweating in his sleep and the sight broke Michael's heart. He suppressed a sob within himself only it didn't quite work.
Michael moved slowly to the bed, taking in the pained look on his friend's face. Is that what he himself looked like all those nights when the nightmares got the better of him? When he woke up screaming, sheets drenched, heart pounding? They'd all gone through the same thing and done it all alone.
Michael carefully sat on the empty side of the bed where Lorenzo was clutching the sheets. “Don't,” Lorenzo muttered. “Please, please.” Michael pinched his eyes closed for a moment and a few tears finally fell. Carol stood frozen in the doorway.
After debating for a second, Michael reached out and put a hand into Lorenzo's hair. He could feel him quivering, could feel the sweat on his scalp. He scratched at his friend's head as he whimpered a few more times before waking with a jolt. Lorenzo pushed up a bit immediately. He was panting, and his eyes were already incredibly full of tears. “It's you…” was all he could mutter.
Michael was too stunned to speak. His heart was aching in a thousand ways. He felt like he was crumbling apart. He couldn't handle anything else.
Then Lorenzo just pushed himself into Michael's chest and wept. Michael just paused for a moment, still so unsure and feeling lost. But after a bit he raised his arms and went back to threading the fingers of one hand back through his friend's hair and using the other to scratch his back. Carol came in a moment later on the other side of Lorenzo, whispering to him, telling him it was okay. Michael could hardly meet her gaze but God was he glad she was there.
“I’m so afraid,” Lorenzo cried. “Of sleep, of everything.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Michael replied. “Not anymore. I’m right here. I’m staying here.”
“Do you go there when it’s dark, too?” Lorenzo said in a low voice.
Michael swallowed. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, all the time.”
It was all so horrifying.
“We’re not going anywhere, Shakes,” Carol said. Her voice sounded so shaken. God, the guilt the guilt the guilt… “We’ll sleep in this bed with you all night, I swear we will.”
Michael allowed himself to look at her, thinking god, how sweet she would be too him if he would only let him. How happy they could be if he wasn’t stuck in this darkness, warped by it eternally.
The three of them lied down on Michael’s bed together, Lorenzo in the middle, still trembling.
“You’re okay,” Carol whispered, grabbing Lorenzo’s arm. “I’ve got you.” Then she moved her hand and grabbed Michael’s arm too, just for a second. “I’ve got you,” she repeated.” Michael buried his mouth into Lorenzo’s hair and cried until they all fell asleep.