by Helen Scott
"I'm, uh, sorry, you know, for being such an ass to you. You did what you needed to do and got out. You couldn't have predicted how Rumple would react."
Crax's jaw literally drops open as he stares at me.
"Or maybe I'm not if this is how you're going to react," I say, pushing to my feet to go and clean up the pizza.
"Sorry," Crax says finally as my back turns to him.
"Don't worry about it," I mutter as I put my plate in the sink, rinsing the remains of my pizza massacre from the scene of the crime.
"Hyde, stop for a minute, please," Crax says, and his voice is closer than before.
I feel his hand on my shoulder and turn to face him. "Look," I begin as he wraps me in a hug. A bro hug where he pats me hard on the back, but still, a hug, and for the life of me I can't remember the last time someone voluntarily hugged me. I pat him on the back as well and we separate after a couple of moments.
"If I'd known--" Crax begins but I cut him off, raising my hand in the air.
"I don't want to talk about this. I just wanted to say sorry, you didn't deserve my anger."
"Can I ask why now?" Crax raises an eyebrow.
"Our little brother is very wise." It was all I said before I left the kitchen area and retreated to my room. They both let me go in silence, knowing that I'd said as much as I was going to say tonight and I appreciated it.
When I get to my room, I strip down to just my boxer briefs and look at myself in the mirror. It's something I do every once in a while. I feel like it's important to remember what happened and what I survived, so I stare at the scars that cover my body. They aren't terrible, not like some I've seen, but they were caused by my father and that is what hurts the most.
My fingers trace some of the longer lines and the anger I wondered about earlier comes rushing back with a vengeance. It's not directed at anyone in particular now, though. Whatever grudge I'd been holding against Crax is finally gone. Why? I wasn't sure, but I knew that it would be better for us with it no longer hanging over our family. Now, I just need to shower the scent of the pizzeria off and I'll be back to normal, well, as normal as I can be. But first, a nightcap was in order. With all this talk of our father, if I didn’t have a few drinks then I’d be having nightmares, and no one wanted to hear me screaming in my sleep. No one wanted to deal with that kind of trauma, least of all me.
17
Alexis
I'd excused myself to go to bed in hopes that it would make them go to bed earlier as well, but as I sat and listened in my room I could still hear the TV going and low conversation drifting up the stairs. I couldn't even remember what we'd been binge-watching, all I knew was that Zard loved it and his laugh was one of the few things in life that I enjoyed anymore so I wasn't about to do something to stop him from enjoying himself. That being said, I wish they would hurry up and go to bed.
Something I'd been thinking about ever since I found out Smith was alive was why he'd made a deal with Rumple. He knew, he knew, what a shit idea that was, but he did it anyway, so now the question was why?
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, they go to bed. I'm trying to wait, to make sure that none of them are awake and able to disturb me, so I picture them getting ready for bed. Which leads to me imagining them naked, which is not a good idea. I know they must all look damn good, given how good they looked with clothes on, but that won't get me any closer to answers.
Instead, I start singing softly to myself to pass the time, knowing all the words to a few songs lets me figure out how long I've been waiting since the average song is about three minutes in length. Why am I doing this and not just using my phone? Because I left it downstairs. I thought it was a smart move at the time, leaving what I would need where I would need it, but my dumb ass didn't think about a situation like this.
Finally, when I've covered most of the songs I know by heart, I ease my door open and creep downstairs, not just to the living area either, but all the way down to the shop. My phone is still by the area I'd been cleaning earlier. I swipe across the screen to turn on the flashlight function and head over to the counter where the register is, the one that blocks the door Crax had opened with a code when we needed to deposit Lady White's voice.
The numbers are worn on the keypad so I know which have been pressed repeatedly, but I don't know the order. I hadn't been able to see it when Crax typed it in before. I try a few combinations, sequentially increasing numbers, then decreasing numbers, then repetitive numbers. Each time I'm met by a red blinking light.
I sigh and turn back to the counter, looking through all the paperwork that is laying around, the dust rising into the air and ticking my nose. The urge to sneeze is strong but I pinch my nostrils closed and breathe through my mouth, willing the feeling away. Someone had told me once that saying the names of fruits made you not sneeze, so I start mumbling. "Banana, pineapple, strawberry." I pause and the urge is still there so I pinch and go back to naming fruits. "Watermelon, apple, orange,--"
"Grapefruit," a male voice says behind me. It sounds sleepy so I don't recognize that it's Crax until I turn around and see him standing there in his boxers, his hair already mussed from sleep. He raises an eyebrow at me in question. "Why are you down here naming fruit in the middle of the night?"
"I was looking for my phone," I lie smoothly.
Which only makes him raise his eyebrow again. "You mean the one in your hand with the flashlight on?"
"Yep. Left it down here when I got distracted by pizza, needed to use the flashlight to see."
"And I suppose the alert I received on my phone that someone was trying to break into the vault was just a coincidence?" he asks as he approaches me, crowding my space and making my mind go blank of anything except him. The pine and musk scent of him that invades my nostrils seems to have a direct connection to my core as I ache with need. I am in trouble though, judging by the expression on his face. "Are you going to tell me what you were doing?"
Fuck. I hadn't even thought anything like that would be possible with how rundown this place is. I can't imagine it being Rumple's doing so I know it must be something Crax did himself. Which means that there's not an easy way out of this. If it was installed by a company or something I could maybe claim that they had fucked up and sent him an incorrect notification, but if he'd installed it and created it himself, which seems like a very Crax thing to do, then I wouldn't be able to get away with my lie, or rather lies.
"Fine. You caught me. I was trying to find out what Smith died for. What he'd offered Rumple and what he'd needed so badly to make a deal with your monster of a father," I say, all of which is true. Theoretically, Smith had died since there had been a body. The fact that he was either alive once more or had never been completely dead was irrelevant to the current conversation.
"Why didn't you just ask?" he responds, sounding hurt.
"You guys get weird about the family business sometimes, so I thought I'd investigate myself. That way I wouldn't fuck up the good thing we've had going lately."
"Is this because you saw your mother earlier?" he asks, his tone softening.
"Partly," I reply carefully.
"All you had to do was ask," he says quietly. "We're weird about it because we still expect our father to pop up from around the corner, and Hyde still expects to get a beating from him for breaking the rules. I think we only started really believing he was dead and not coming back when you poured that sauce on the couch."
I chuckle, still proud of that moment and also still mourning the loss of sauce.
"I'll show you the ledger. Just try to keep from looking at every page; it will break your heart," he says as he types in the code, hiding it from my prying eyes.
The thick door swings open silently and I follow Crax in, the glowing bottles reminding me that each one contains something precious, just like Lady White's voice. We travel down the center of the narrow room and eventually come to a stop at the other end, my heart already breaking just from the sheer n
umber of bottles that had been collected.
When Crax moves to one side I see the pedestal with the ledger resting atop it. The book is thicker than an encyclopedia and twice as wide. My stomach churns at the thought of what it contains. I lose my nerve. "Can you find the entry for me?" I ask, looking up at Crax and seeing the sorrow I feel welling in my chest on his own face.
"Of course," he says without batting an eyelid as his hands smooth over the cover, which is made of rich, mahogany-colored leather with gold leafing. It looks like something that should be in a rare book shop instead of being used as a ledger for people's hopes and dreams.
The book creaks as he opens it, the leather protesting the disuse. His fingers skim lightly over the pages as he looks for what I assume is Smith's name. I glance over his arm at the other pages and see that some lines of the chicken scratch handwriting have been grayed out, like someone took a highlighter to it, but instead of yellow it's more of a mucky brownish-gray color.
"What are those?" I ask, pointing at the discolored lines.
"Collected debts," Crax answers shortly before going back to looking for Smith's deal.
I don't know if the thing is in any kind of order, but after a few minutes I start to get bored and begin looking at the bottles. Some just glow different colors, others glow with actual objects inside them. One contains a fairy's wings, another ogre tusks, one is just a jar of dirt which is weird, but whatever. Who was I to judge what was precious to someone? My eyes travel along the rows upon rows of jars, some with scales, some with dust, some with fangs, each one containing something that meant the world to someone else and Rumple took it.
The sorrow that had been welling up in my chest started to threaten to overflow. I unceremoniously slump to the floor and just huddle there where I can't see any of the jars, can't see anything except Crax's feet, and then suddenly his eyes as he drops down in front of me.
"What's wrong?" he asks.
"Why do people give these things up if they’re so precious? I can't imagine parting with something so important," I say, my voice hushed as though I don't want to offend the items in the jars.
"That's because you're not the same kind of person as they are. Whatever happened to them made them think they had no choice, that to get what they want they had to make a deal with the devil, also known as my father," Crax says, trying to make me laugh.
"Sometimes I just don't understand people," I say as tears pool on my eyelid. I refuse to cry enough for them to fall though.
Without hesitating, Crax leans forward and wraps his arms around me, pulling me close. For a moment I don't react, but then I wrap my arms around his neck and breathe deeply, trying to memorize his scent, the feel of him in my arms, the rhythm of his heart that I can feel thudding against my own.
"I thought you might have changed enough that your beautiful heart had hardened, but you haven't at all, have you? You suck it up and do what's necessary but you're still a big softie, just like the first time we met." He sounds relieved, which is funny since I don't think of myself as what he just described.
"You haven't either," I say quietly. "You're still taking the world's problems on your shoulders, just like you were before."
"We do what we have to do," he says as he pulls back from me, just enough that I can look him in the eye, those stunning gold eyes of his.
There's a moment between us, as though the air itself is being pulled taut, and all I can do is wait with bated breath. His thumb strokes over my cheek and I lean in, relishing his touch. My eyes flutter closed, which causes a single tear to roll down my cheek.
I freeze, hoping he doesn't notice, but I should know better. Crax leans in and kisses the tear from my cheek. His lips are soft and firm against my skin. He doesn't stop at the tear though; he kisses his way down to the corner of my mouth before claiming my lips. The way he touches me is masterful, and as we kiss I feel myself turn to jelly in his arms. I pull myself closer to him, trying to savor this moment, because I'm sure it won't happen again.
When he pulls away, breaking the kiss, I know that he has control of himself once more, and my heart sinks a little.
"Alexis," he groans my name as though it causes him physical pain. "I've been thinking about doing that ever since I saw you again. I don't want you to think I'm taking advantage of our... agreement though."
"I don't," I breathe, and lean in to kiss him once more.
He pulls back. "Also I found Smith. That's what I was about to tell you when you dropped to the floor."
"Show me?" I ask.
Crax pushes to his feet, holding me against him still. He might be verbally saying that he doesn't want to do this because of his high ethical standards, but his body is saying something completely different. Gently, he lets me down, my body sliding over his as my feet touch the floor. I feel every inch of him through the thin fabric of his boxers, and it takes my breath away. I'd thought cocks like that were fairy tales that girls tell one another to give themselves hope after a bad lover.
He points to the book and I do my best to pull my thoughts away from his cock. "Smith sold his firstborn so that he could clear all debts of one Skye Matthis. It also stipulates that some form of magic was to surround her to prevent her from ever getting herself into debt of that kind again."
"He did this for someone else?" I murmur. My heart breaks all over again. I'd assumed the worst of my best friend, and he'd let me.
"Looks that way," Crax says, his professional demeanor slipping back into place. "It's unusual, but it does happen sometimes."
"But the magic forces you to collect?" I ask.
"Unfortunately. If we don't, then we will be in pain, as will the debtor after a while. It's almost like a compulsion. If we neglect it then it only gets worse until it's all-consuming, for both parties," he says, sounding like he has experience, which makes me wonder how quickly after their father's death they decided to start collecting his debts.
"I see I found the party." Hyde's voice comes from the other end of the room. "And what might you two be doing in the vault at this time of night with Crax just in his undies?"
Heat flares in my cheeks at his suggestive tone. Even if I had just been kissing Crax, that didn't mean I wanted someone calling attention to it, or to the fact that I would have happily gone back to his bed with him. "I was showing Alexis the ledger," Crax says coolly.
"Oh, is that what we're calling it nowadays? I've got a ledger you might want to look at as well, sweet girl," Hyde says as he waggles his eyebrows. Is he drunk? When did that happen?
"You should get to bed, brother. I think your beers have finally caught up with you," Crax says.
"I'll go to bed... if you two come with me, eh? Eh?"
I'm not sure what to make of this Hyde but I kind of like it. He stumbles into the vault a little further, his hand reaching out to catch himself, rattling the jars on the shelf in a way that makes me nervous. What happens if a jar breaks?
I pause for a moment, glancing up at Crax with what I hope is pleading in my eyes as I say, "I'll take you to bed, might even strip you naked, but I'm not staying."
"Boo! Where's the fun in that? One of these days I'm going to spank that perfect ass of yours until it's as red as the blush on your cheeks, then you'll be begging me to fuck you... You'll see!" His speech is slurred and he hiccups at the end.
Nothing good comes from a drunk person hiccuping.
As soon as the thought crosses my mind he turns and grabs the trash can under the register, vomiting until he has nothing left. Crax leaves him to it for a while as he says to me quietly, "We had a chat about dear old dad tonight, which I think may have stirred up some memories."
I nod in understanding. Alcohol is a good distraction, for a time, but there’s always a price to pay, just like with magic.
When Hyde heaves again but nothing comes out, Crax launches into action, ready to help his brother now that the danger of him getting vomited on has passed. I help him get Hyde upstairs and into his bed, seei
ng his room for the first time, and yet not seeing it because all the lights are out. I’m curious about the middle brother, always have been. Crax and Zard I understood, but Hyde, even after spending this time with him, is still a mystery, one that smelled of pizza, beer, and vomit.
18
Crax
Sitting beside my brother’s bed, I stare down at him, and my heart aches. Even in sleep, he looks so broken. So miserable and alone. It’s almost unbearable that my actions led him to become this man.
It was the last thing I wanted.
I would’ve made a deal with Rumple himself to stop this from happening.
How fucked up was that? After everything I knew about my father’s magic, I still would’ve done it. I would’ve done anything for Hyde.
The past comes back to me like a knife twisting in my gut. When we were boys, I’d tell Hyde stories to help him fall asleep at night. I’d make him “magical” spells to keep the monsters he feared away. He just always seemed so young and so perfect, and I felt like it was my job to keep him that way.
To be father’s perfect successor and to protect my brothers. That’s all I knew.
Even though I was only three years older than Hyde, I’d threaten bullies that bothered him. I’d meet him outside of his classroom and walk him home. I’d save my allowance to buy him and Zard the kinds of foods my dad never wanted us to have, like ice cream, and we’d sit outside the ice cream shop around the corner laughing and talking.
Then, I was Hyde’s hero. Then, I could take away all of his problems.
Now though, I seemed to only make them worse. Just apologizing to me had sent him into a downward spiral, and I only had myself to blame.
And our father. Our fucking horrible father.
I brush his blond hair out of his eyes and pull his blankets up higher, tucking him in the way I did when we were children. Going to the kitchen, I grab two Advils and a bottle of water, then set them beside his bed before dragging a small trash can over. I want to stay with him all night and make sure he doesn’t need anything, but I’m a coward, because I don’t. I don’t want to deal with the ramifications of doing such a thing. Of risking Hyde’s wrath in the morning.