51 candles.

More of this, please (linked for those who read on mobile).

No time to write today. In the celebrated red Valentino dress and I can't actually breathe. Heading out to dinner en masse. Then home where I will change really fast to serve birthday cake to the Devil because I wouldn't dare do it in this.

Thou art dust.

Sam asks me what I'm giving up for Lent this year like he always asks even though Easter is a sort of minefield for Unitarian ministers and everyone else alike. Last time I checked I walked a rather casual lapsed-Baptist line through town but if you ask some people I'm a heathen, a Satanist, an outlier.

It makes me laugh because I'm nothing but I answer the same way I answer him every year.

I'll give up the Devil. 

And then he'll ignore that and get right to the point because Sam wants pancakes for dinner Tuesday night and all important events are merely gateways to food in the end, aren't they?

This week will be very busy school and work and foodwise and Caleb's birthday tomorrow and I fucking HATE pancakes with the heat of a thousand suns because my mother never made breakfast for dinner and so my pancake education came from diners and McDonalds alike, where the pancakes are so sweet they float though they look like they should be salty and greasy and taste better than they actually do.

We're having pancakes, no worries. And Wednesday morning you can give me the copper box so I can grind ashes into my forehead and masquerade as a mortal like the rest of you.

Tell me what's wrong, Bridget. 

I want to sleep. 

Are you going to tell me what's really wrong then?

I smile tightly. I'm okay. I just need PJ to hurry up and get his stuff off the counter so I can bake. 

Want me to move it?

No, he can damn well come and do it himself. I've asked twice already. 

I'll ask him again. It'll be gone in two minutes, okay?

Less than a minute later PJ clears the counters and then Sam wipes them down for me and I sit at the island and try and hyperventilate in silence. I fail and Sam drops the towel and comes to rub my back. Inhale deeper, Bridget. All the way down. What happened?

I just tried to think past the end of the daylight. That's all, I swear. 

Overwhelmed?

Yeah. 

Want me to get Loch?

Yeah. 

Loch comes in from outside, hands covered in grease, boots full of snow and slush, hair full of rain, flat curls pressed to his neck and he sees my face and grabs me in a hug.

Hey now. The future isn't scary, Peanut. It's fireworks later on. It's a trip around the wheel in the morning before breakfast. Orange juice and sausages and fried eggs. We'll get slushies when it gets too hot to move and then when it cools down we can have a walk on the beach. You can tell me about your progress in the book and then I'll tell you a story about when you read to me when I'm old and my eyes get bad but for today...for today it's only a worry about hunger pangs and sunburns and nothing else. Nothing at all. Sunshine. Stars to count. A funnel cake if you're up for it and maybe some singing later by the fire. What color flames would you like tonight?

Blue. I'd like blue. 

Blue flames, some marshmallows to roast. Nothing past the early part of the week. One minute after another. 

Slushies.

Slushies, baby. 

My book. 

I can't wait to hear about it. 

They're all dying, Lochlan. 

Not today they aren't. Everyone here will be here tomorrow too. I finally have the nerve to look at his expression and it's grim because I scare him. He's holding it together by a thread.

So I cut it.

Sunrise guys.

Duncan finally called me.

At 5:45 this morning because time zones. He doesn't plan ahead. I thread my phone down under the covers with me and talk quietly into Lochlan's neck while Ben's arm rests uncomfortably under both our heads.

Cozy. Not sorry.

Dunk. Are you okay?

I'm fine. I'm just getting old and if I'm going to do this I had to figure out a way to do it without being fucked up all day and straight all night. You know? 

I know. 

I just want to be efficient and good and not needing a bottle on the table out here but then when I tried to just put it away I couldn't. 

You can come home. I know someone here can hook you up with something local. With Ben. 

Naw, I'm good. They're supportive. They had warned me a couple of times already. I think they're relieved. 

But you don't have to do it there. 

Do what? I'm just learning some new things. Ben makes a lot more sense to me all of the sudden, you know? 

I turn my face and look at Ben's sleeping face. I don't know but I think I understand. 

We want to be good men, Bridget.

Good Humans. 

That's right, Good Humans. What comes easy for men like Lochlan isn't easy for guys like us. 

Loch took his knocks early in life, that's all. He never had it easy.

True. But you know they say we're all more resilient when we're young. 

That's bullshit. All it does is become responsible for how you finish growing, how you are molded into the person you become. Later on it's simply bad luck or bad planning or both. It doesn't shape you in development.

Your brain is complicated.

Just like the rest of me. 

I'll think on that for a while then. 

Not so long. Will you call tomorrow?

I'd like to. 

Okay, please don't do it at quarter to six in the morning.

Jesus Christ! I'm sorry. Why did you answer it then?

Because it was you.

Feels like Saturday.

Because in my head there’s a greyhound station
Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations
So they may have a chance of finding a place
where they’re far more suited than here

Duncan didn't want to talk to me at all since we found out he sought a sponsor. I called and called, I muscled in on Skype calls where Dalton stood firm, refusing to let me in the frame, fighting me out of the room, talking over me until Loch swooped in and lifted me right off the floor to carry me out.

I yelled at the screen I love you Poet and got simple silence in return.

For fucks sakes.

This will be my fault too. Even though many times I told him to leave the collective, to go and find his way and have a life and he said he did have one, here with his family and that he was fine. Fine, he said. Stop worrying, I'm good. Unless you're offering yourself, and I would blush furiously and change the subject because damn. What a waste.

But still, my fault somehow.

***

Ben, on the other hand, is all LIKE-MINDED INDIVIDUALS, planning to turn the house into some sort of straight-edge punk band with big black sharpie X's on the backs of our hands and Loch and I are like hell, no. Celts like their whiskey so fuck off kindly, ye.

The difference is we don't need it. It's nice here and there, but definitely not missed and hardly ever necessary. That's where the line is drawn, I am told, between people who can remain obediently on the proper side of the line and those who barge right through it on their way to self-annihilation.

***

Caleb and Henry are doing better today, just when I was about to hit my limit with panic, just as I was thinking we need to go back to the doctors and tell them the treatment isn't working, Jesus, fix this, Henry's in pain and Caleb is too strong to admit he's hurting plus what a delicate dance with his already strict and barely balanced pills. Both of them just wanted Ruth and I to stay away so we didn't get sick too but so far so good.

***

So far, so good. Loch said that to me once soon after I wasn't a child anymore but I didn't understand what he meant until words became everything to me and every time I hear it or see it now it makes me smile. A literal use. So far. So Good. You were worth it. So, so worth it.

Bah. You have to hear him say it or it makes no sense. Your fucking knees would cave in, I promise.

***

Batman calls me in a rush of concern, interrupting lunch, telling me to ask Caleb what in the hell the CP is. I guess he's reading through the papers again. He doesn't trust anyone, the poor soul. I shouldn't either but so far so..uh..good?

Capital planning? I venture. Cross platform? Cash percentage?

Go ask him.

No, he's resting. It can wait until Monday.

Bridget-

He's not working right now, he's sick. Let him be. It's a weird position to be in, protector, defender but I hold it lightly anyway, turning it over, letting it catch the light and then setting it gently down on the floorboards, leaving it behind as I press the button on the phone to end the call when the confusion as to how I can stand on both sides of this line so easily when I wouldn't cross the other ones under threat of death threatens to eat me whole.

Patchwork.

I'm so tired today I feel slow and drugged, I probably am drugged, it would be one way to keep me in the big bed upstairs and not out on the chilled bricks leading to the boathouse. Lochlan isn't mad, he just keeps his undercurrent of frustration with him at all times, a steady drone that hurts my ears if I pay too much attention to it.

(I don't know, Jesus. Sometimes I think I should just sell out and show you my fucking Outfit of the Day or talk about mindfulness or paint swatches or cooking for the week for a large family but no, I won't. That isn't what this is.)

I told him I loved him until my face hurt and my lips were blue from the effort and the cold and the drone finally quieted down to a dull hum.

He ran his fingers across my cheek and smiled today and suggested we stay in and watch television. I have heard rumors that season 4 of American Horror Story visits the circus and my heart did a double flip-flop of excitement but since it is unconfirmed I will happily continue on with Asylum (season 2). Love this show, it's all strangeness and horror and inexplicably and over-the-top ridiculousness.

Just like you, he says.

Yeah, just like me.

(For the record the outfit was old jeans and a new Lucky Brand Triumph motocycles tee. Not worthy of a blog post but I've seen those OOTD blog posts and some of them aren't putting any more effort into it than I did, just so you know.)

(PS: Duncan joined AA. Not sure what that means yet. I'll talk to him tonight. Apparently he's been nothing but a lit arsehole since he got off the plane. Which is not good for him because he is the sweetest, most laid-back man you will ever meet. Maybe we really do take turns falling apart.)

(PSS: Henry and Caleb have an amazingly bad case of strep. Which is so horrible. Both are on penicillin and aspirins and cold cloths and juice around the clock and I want to cry at this point, really I do. It's been a while since Henry was this sick and PJ is keeping care of the devil because I'm not allowed.)

The bond between the hopeful and the damned.

Heavy hung the canopy of blue
Shade my eyes and I can see you

I swim into consciousness slowly, molasses underwater, heavy lids and limbs. Lochlan is whispering over my head, his arms shaking to accentuate the words as he holds me tightly against him. I don't think I can breathe and I have no idea what he's talking about for a long time until I realize he is trying to make Ben understand that enabling my whims or Ben's proclivities will do nothing but harm us all. Ben is oblivious to the strain in Lochlan's voice and thinks the whole thing is amazing, amusing and wicked. I keep my eyes closed and listen and try to remember to tell Ben not to rip the bandages from Lochlan's never-healing fears constantly by permitting me open access to the Devil. It's not as if Ben requires Caleb, Ben just likes to watch. Lochlan is more than capable of taking up that mantle without any help whatsoever and so therein rests the argument. Why can't you just stay home? Loch's voice breaks and I wake up enough to die again.

My God. What have we become?

Finally Ben whispers an apology back and says he puts me first. Loch reminds him that you don't do that with a child, someone prone to poor decision making in the first place. He uses Ben himself as an example with substances and then he keeps going, recalling how often I would ask him for cotton candy for dinner on the midway and precisely how often he would acquiesce.

Which was never.

Not even once because Loch is of such incredible strength of character. Persistence and integrity are his middle names. Stubbornness his cross to bear. He wants so badly to change both past and present I think sometimes he firmly believes if he is loving enough and true enough that it will magically happen.

We don't know that sort of magic though. Our magic consists of cheap tricks and illusion, turned on the street with pockets picked inside out and cards marked to within an inch of our lives.

Ben leaves, because he is trying to put his head back together and still goes to near-constant meetings and the counselling too. And then he swims because he says it feels good. 

So if I am not first, that makes me second. The procurement of the prize is the prize and not the prize itself. It's the journey, not the destination. I am the destination. They are already here, still marveling at the route they've taken and not the view that lies before them. Ben will continue to give me whatever I want and Lochlan will insist that I get none of it.

I should tell him it's not important, that I don't love Caleb the same way, that I can be fine without Diabhal but then I know better and besides, I'm so tired and Loch is so warm so I repeat the only thing I have said for hours now. I'm sorry. I slur it in my sleep, eyes still closed and he looks down at me and holds me tighter, telling me it's not my fault, that I am suggestible, that Caleb is evil and Ben is weak. I get annoyed then and tell him I am weak and evil and the rest of them, wait, the rest of YOU are suggestible and he just stares at me wearily for a very long time and tells me I just need more sleep. That tomorrow we can go out for breakfast and have a walk down by the water and I will be okay.

I wish he wasn't so delusional but I nod anyway because what do you have if you don't have hope? I'm not going to be the one to drown his optimism. It's hanging by a thread as it is.

Lochlan.

The words fall apart first, letters dropping everywhere, some haphazardly listing against each other, some teetering on the brink of obsolescence and finally he presses his forehead against mine in silence. He didn't believe me when I told him I was unhurt, choosing instead to rip everything off me, lifting up my arms, turning me this way and that, sharing in my expression of hot angry tears because he doesn't understand this and he never ever will.

His relief though. I feel it washing over me, forcing the evil away. I watch it run in gritty grey rivulets across my skin, soaking into the ground. He conjures flames to burn the rest away, his heat autoclaving my soul, or the reasonable facsimile I still carry, fusing the pieces of my heart together just a little more securely.

I'm sorry, I venture when the last of the fire smothers itself, having nothing left to burn.

And he laughs. No, you're not. That's the hardest part. He pulls me in against his heart and my heart speeds up to match.

Pop and scratch (category 5).

I knew it wasn't what he said it was but I played along.

I don't protest all that much. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not actually strong or stubborn. Mostly I'm submissive, willing and easy to control. I was never under the impression that it was a bad thing to be that way. It made their lives easier, from Lochlan right down through the line to Ben. The only time it fails is when they think they are controlling my emotions too. Those aren't something that can be shaped with orders, plans and schemes. Those just strike like natural disasters, without warning, so unpredictable and devastating that they have categories for severity and damage. Just like tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes.

So there we go across the driveway just before midnight, ostensibly for a late snack and a chance to get some family business out of the way before the week actually begins. It's a short week with a school holiday and some much-needed time off for Lochlan and the past day and a half my arm isn't hurting much at all. I'm game for a jump on the week.

I'm loathe to say no to Caleb too, as that's all I've done lately and he's tried and failed to find a way to make things up to me from afar.

Oh, and Ben is a big old perverted enabler who all but disappeared the moment we walked in, saying he wanted to borrow some vinyl. Jazz masters and classical. Ben might eat the records but Caleb is a casual listener, not some collector of rare editions or anything like that. I hear strains of Glenn Miller coming from the tiny den and I smile because it sounds pretty and jazz is like some incredibly sophisticated other life to me sometimes.

Like Caleb is.

Only it's fleeting. I feel his arms close around me and I press into him. I will blink and be back home later. I feel his lips against my jaw and I fight to clear my mind. I shudder as he exhales into my shoulder and he promises not to bite me so I know this one will be allowed to slip past. I pause, and I know I'm evil too but it's black and warm washing over me, pulling me down, drowning me from the ground up, a rushing torrent of malevolence and corruption that doesn't scare me at all when it should and scares me to pieces when it shouldn't.

That makes it hard.

Hard is the theme of the evening though. He barely pauses to unbutton his shirt, choosing to engage in a mostly-dressed frantic strong-armed indulgence of me and I surrender to that. I surrender mostly to Cole's memory because I still miss him even as I hate him and I still love them both dearly even though these days my busted heart is full. I never meant to apologize for the part of my brain I don't try to control and I wouldn't change a thing save for Lochlan's torrid resentment of the entire arrangement.

But Lochlan doesn't control this world, because this is compartmentalized away from the rest of everything. In this world I'm not a child, I'm a equal and a whore and a submissive and a slave.

A slave with a master who pretends he is nothing of the kind, even as he orders me to the door. The big white door where he prefers me to stand, my back pressed against the chilled wood, arms raised above my head, up on my toes, eyes closed, nose up, shoulders back, mouth open to taste his fingertips as he traces my lips and tongue, eyelashes and earlobes.

When my toes leave the floor and the white lights begin to flash behind my eyelids I start to look for the way back because the path to get here is dark and confusing and difficult to follow back. I call out in the dark for Ben and he responds only his voice is thick and dangerous. I shift and call out for Loch instead but he never answers because he isn't there and then the roaring orders of the Devil begin, the frustration and rage replacing the soft encouragement from before. His time is almost up and he hates that. The record is finished and he hates that too, listening the bump of the needle at the end of the spiral groove.

One of these things was never like the others.

My house was so loud in the wee hours of the night that I've hardly slept. I didn't even try to stay up, because I was dropping off with alarming focus during Bad Movie Night as it was, thanks to Solomon Kane, the most incredibly interestingly-written movie I've ever seen make it that far. Like a low-rent Van Helsing, it was.

Caleb chuckled every time my chin dropped and Lochlan rolled his eyes and pulled me further away from the Devil and closer to himself. Ben was upstairs with Sam, playing guitar, doing a little field triage, a casual meeting for two because sometimes Ben feels really damn shaky and gets some extra help and then he returns to me until the next tough spot. 

When the Olympic gold-medal game third period was over the roar from the living room made me give up on sleep entirely and venture downstairs for the replays and medal presentations and now the only thing I've managed to do all damned morning is fold one load of t-shirts and spoil Fight Club for myself, something I've managed to avoid for the better part of the past fifteen years or so, because I read one of those '15 things you didn't know about Hollywood's Biggest Blockbusters' or some such nonsense.

We never finished watching that movie, Cole and I, because it was difficult and uncomfortable and so I saved the ending. I was going to save it forever because everyone always told us we should finish it but we didn't and it's too late but now I know and he never will. It's still fucking stupid but it's closure of a sort I wasn't even looking for. I'll take what I can get anyway, for an albatross is an albatross, after all.

This is how I win.

Caleb ordered me to appear before him to inspect whatever change he had heard rumblings of and I dutifully obeyed, though this time I'm pretty sure he knew that PJ was standing on the other side of the kitchen door with his hand on the lever. Some days are like that.

I stepped out into the heavy wet snowfall in unzipped Docs and a long black sweater with my leggings making my legs little splindly black toothpicks and figured Caleb would harp on my outfit first but no. He knew damn well I have red hair now because I bet a million dollars and change that Loch told him two days ago.

What have you done. It's not a question, therefore I provide no answer. Your hair was such a beautiful color. 

Like Jacob's. 

No, like Bridget's. What is this, some effort to align yourself with Pyro for all the world to see? A cheap parlor trick if I ever saw one. 

No, it was an effort to do something radical before the white takes over. I don't know if you've noticed but I'm getting old. 

You will never get old in my eyes. 

Always twelve, huh?

No, Princess. Always twenty-three and rolling around in money in Vegas, smiling and drinking champagne with me. Always turning every head in the room when you entered. Always concentrating, learning everything you could about mutual funds and capital gains in order to keep up. Always refusing to abandon my brother because you wanted to believe in him so badly. Where's the spitfire who does things her own way and stays stubborn? 

She died when Cole died and Jake flew. I roll my eyes. This is not news.

No, she was silenced, choked off by the past she isn't allowed to forget because her fairweather boyfriend is so inadequate at helping her move on with her life. 

What life? I have no life. 

Exactly what I mean.

But you have to admit, I make a stunning redhead. 

Yes, surprisingly enough I am completely taken aback at how incredible your eyes look now.