The rain hammered relentlessly against the metal roof of Ewan's battered pickup, each drop serves as a painful reminder that nowhere - not even inside his beat-up truck - was truly safe. Lightning cracked the sky open, illuminating Ewan's swollen face in harsh white flashes that revealed what darkness had mercifully concealed. Blood was drying in crusty rivulets down his temple, mixing with rainwater that dripped from his drenched dreadlocks.
He hadn't bothered checking the damage before peeling out of his driveway. The moment jij's text lit up his phone, nothing else mattered, not Jedediah's biblical rage, not the ceramic lamp that exploded against the back of his skull, not even the ringing in his left ear that wouldn't stop. Seven words. "Need you. Can't be here right now." That was all it took to make everything else completely irrelevant. The drive to collect them had been instinctual, like an animal dragging itself home despite mortal wounds.
Now parked on this empty side street, miles from both their personal hells, the silence pressed against his eardrums. Rain transformed into white noise, and white noise transformed into memories. His father's voice slithered through the static: "Worthless boy… abomination… your mother knew what you were…"
His mind wasn't here. It had fractured, splintered and scattered back to the trailer where his father's Bible lay open on the table, where the shattered remains of the lamp littered the floor, where the accusations of blasphemy and perversion still hung in the air like poison gas.
Ewan's hands began to shake harder. His jaw clenched so tight he could hear his teeth grinding past the ringing. The tremors spread up his arms, through his shoulders, and all the way down his spine. He was coming apart at the seams, unraveling in real time right there in the driver's seat.
Without conscious thought, his arms that were mottled with fresh bruises atop old scars, reached for jij. He pulled their warm body across the center console and into his lap, burying his face against their neck. His embrace tightened to the edge of pain, desperate and clinging, as if they might dissolve into the storm if he loosened his grip.
"He said—" Ewan's voice cracked, it was already barely audible above the rain. "Said I was prayin' wrong. That I wasn't… wasn't repentin' hard enough." A violent shudder ran through him. "Caught me packin' a bag. Just some clothes and shit. Nothin'… nothin' worth…"
His words dissolved into uneven, labored breathing. The confession seemed to have been pulled from somewhere deep and wounded, each syllable was tearing something loose inside him.
"I just wanted somewhere quiet to sleep tonight. Just… just one fuckin' night." His arms constricted further around jij, compressing their lungs with that familiar desperate constriction they’d both grown accustomed to, the way he always caged them in like they were both his prisoner and salvation. "Then he started in 'bout Mom again. 'Bout how she left 'cause of me. 'Cause I was unclean."
Another lightning flash revealed the tears now streaming unchecked down his face, his eyes were wide and unfocused, staring through the rain-streaked window at nothing.
"The lamp—" His voice cracked yet again. "Caught me right here." He gestured vaguely to the bloody matting in his hair, hand trembling in the air for only a second before snatching back to complete the cage around them. His arms locked even tighter than before, crushing them against his chest with a desperation that bordered on violence, like he was trying to absorb them into his very skin. "I was almost out the door when he threw it. Didn't even see it comin'. Just heard him screamin' 'bout how I better not come back if I was leavin'."
