what we bring

[sideways]

Title: What We Bring
Rating: PG
Genre: Modern
Wordcount: 1129
Warnings: Very vague allusions to child abuse.
Remarks: origfic_bingo prompt - family. Still trying to get these guys to mesh. Either I haven't got Don's voice down yet, or I've got it down perfectly and he's just waiting for me to realise this. Also I'm hoping one day the missing bit will come to me; I still find the ending rather jarring.

He’s been asleep for less than an hour when there’s a name being barked in his ear and a rough hand on his shoulder and Alex doesn’t wake so much as slam into full consciousness with every ounce of strength he has.

He’s on his feet in an instant, jerking away, shoving at the body above as he steps backwards, but there isn’t flat ground beneath him and his heel strikes the stair hard enough to hurt. It tilts him, sends him reeling too far to the side where the rest of the flight is just waiting for him to tumble, but then one of the hands shifts to splay a palm against his chest while the other grips his shirt harder, and somehow both he and the other keep their footing, wedged between the wall and the railing.

His attempt to get further away has only brought him closer still, with the other’s arms around him and his shoulder in their ribs. Close enough to smell cigarettes, to see dark skin and sweat-darkened fabric. Don.

“Hey, hey hey, just me,” Don is saying, and the bracing hand moves to press against the back of his neck, tilt his head forward, so that Alex’s protest is heard only by Don’s shoes. “The fuck’d you do this time?”

It’s a question that makes no sense and so has no answer until he feels fingers on the back of his head, pressing, probing—searching for a wound that isn’t there, he realises. Suddenly he can see what Don would have seen. On his back, on the stairs, stretched out…

He ducks down further, away from the fingers. “I was asleep.”

The hold on his shirt doesn’t slacken, but Don leans back slightly, looks down. “What?”

“I’m fine.” He takes a step away, further up the stairs, and finally Don lets go. “I didn’t fall.”

From this position he can just about meet Don’s scepticism dead-on, but there was no blood on his head and he knows there will be no haze in his eyes, and at last Don gives a snort, somewhere between indulgent and irritated, and turns aside.

Alex hesitates, moving no further up or down, and watches the eldest foster-child stalk back down to the first floor, roll his shoulders once, glance at the door.

“You,” Don says, and then shakes his head. “Where’s everyone else?”

He shrugs—don’t know, not here, out—and Don snorts again, but this time amusement colours the sound, loosens his stance, eases what lingering tension there was. There's a pause that lasts one second, two, and Alex is starting to think it’s fine, it’s good, he’s free to retreat, when Don abruptly flattens that hope with a flicked look over his shoulder and a jerk of his head in the direction of the kitchen as he begins to move towards it.

The signal is clear enough, and after a second Alex follows, fingers trailing reluctantly along the bannister.

Half a loaf of bread is sitting on the counter, along with a jam jar and a sticky knife propped across its lid, but Don heads straight for the fridge, burying himself in it as Alex slips up onto one of the stools by the bench. He hasn’t been called here to play audience to Don’s lunch and he knows that, but he also knows he doesn’t need to be the one to start the conversation, so because he doesn’t want to anyway he just waits. It doesn’t take long.

“Y’know, anyone else’d walked in and you might’ve woken up to their tongue down your throat—all in the name of savin’ your life, of course.”

Alex frowns. “You didn’t think I was dead.”

Don straightens, knocks the door shut with a foot, and raises his eyebrows over the bottle he brings to his lips. “I know the difference. You eaten?”

Not question Don asks often, and almost never seriously. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah.” Don swirls the liquid in the bottle, squints out the window to the backyard lit with midday sunshine. “So. That a regular habit of yours?”

“What?”

“Sleeping on the stairs. Maybe I missed the screamin’ last time.”

“No.” Between all of them, the house is rarely empty, and normally he wouldn’t have bothered anyway. He just… “I was tired.”

“And instead of any of the beds, the couch—fuck, even the floor—you choose the stairs.” Don leans back, as if to peer through the kitchen door and remind himself what they look like. “They’re timber. Not exactly five-star.”

There’s truth in that, in the ache along his lower back and his shoulder-blades, but Alex just shrugs.

Don doesn’t look satisfied, exactly, but then this is already more interest shown than usual and he doesn't feel anything is owed. They all have their reasons, and they usually aren’t anyone else’s business. Why Don is pushing this, here, now, makes no sense.

He hopes the interest is starting to wane when instead of more questions there's a minute of silence, or at least of no words. There are still sounds, of course, because wherever Don is there are always sounds. A slosh of liquid, a contented sigh, the jingle of keys in his pocket as he shifts against the bench, the solid clink of glass on marble. Don is not a quiet person. Don is never a quiet person.

Alex rubs his thumb along the side of the bench, over the chip in its side and back again. Over and back, over and back, and then the words are coming before he can clamp his lips shut, slipping free into the not-quite-silence even as he clenches his fingers together as if to catch them before they are heard. “Did you come in the side?”

“Hm?” Don turns slightly, gives him an appraising look, and he knows he should have stayed quiet. “No, the front. Called your name and didn’t even get a twitch.”

That gaze doesn’t leave him as Alex hunches down further in his seat. Didn’t twitch because he didn’t hear him, didn’t hear him until he was grabbed, and he was grabbed because he didn’t twitch because he didn’t hear.

He’d always heard. That was the point.

There’s a rustle, and a soft, unusually thoughtful exhale.

"You know...I always preferred to keep somethin' handy. Metal, if I could. Hell, even a window pole was better'n nothing."

Alex looks up sharply.

“Funny,” Don says, “what we bring with us. Isn’t it?”

He narrows his eyes, and the white stripe of Don’s teeth spreads in a smile.

“C’mon,” he says, pushing away from the bench and walking around, one hand lightly clipping the back of Alex’s head as he passes. “I’ll show you somethin’ you can do with that chair in your room.”