Chapter Text
Johnny doesn’t look different. Bobby hasn’t seen his little brother in more than twenty years, most of his memories of him are through a haze of medicated fog. Bobby had expected Johnny to look different, maybe unrecognizable, but Bobby can see him, recognise him, clear as day. At twenty-eight the baby-fat has faded away, but Johnny’s strands of floppy brown hair and his big, brown, concerned cow eyes, are still there. The world hasn’t hardened him up, apparently.
Bobby is interrupted from his musing by a loud, “Excuse me?” from a no-nonsense looking woman sitting behind the admit desk in the ER.
He jolts, slightly, and quickly reorients his thoughts to the time, place, and appropriate body language. He’s practiced at blending in, being normal. He pastes a smile; knowing it will be similar to the one his brother uses to ensure patients are comfortable. “Sorry,” he says, purposefully making his tone bashful. “Distracted for a moment.”
She rolls her eyes and snaps her gum in response. “How can we help you?”
Bobby wants to rip the gum from her mouth. If her tongue comes with it, that’s a bonus. He forces himself to breathe, re-settle into the unassuming man he’s pretending to be. “I’m here on follow-up. My name's Robert Smith.” He lies, the words coming out smooth. “Here to see a… Doctor Carter.” He rustles through his jacket pockets, hamming up the act. He pulls out a stack of papers, some medical, some junk, all messy. “I think his name is John?”
“He’ll meet you in chairs.” She says, and uses one sharp fingernail to direct him to the waiting area.
While he waits, Bobby imagines how fun it would be to use pliers to pull each individual nail off her fingers.
—
Johnny looks peaceful, almost in a state of blissfulness. Well, that’s what seven milligrams of diazepam will do to you. His little brother continues to rest, unaware, on a thin cot, both his hands bound. He’s been stripped of his doctor's coat, his stethoscope long discarded. A thin scrape rests on his upper right cheek, an accident in the midst of Bobby hauling his little brother away from the hospital and into his trunk.
Bobby sits; watching his brother in his drug-induced sleep. His calm and relaxed demeanor is enough to send his thoughts drifting back to his few intact and unaddled childhood memories of him and John.
Bobby had been eight when he’d first been diagnosed as sick. He’d never heard an official diagnosis, not really, only the flimsy excuse of leukemia that his parents had fed the board members as a salve. A dying kid was better than a mentally ill one.
Johnny, at five years old, had been his shadow, his own little mini-me. He’d spent hours curled on the hospital bed, squeezing his tiny body next to Bobby's, his little hands patting the blankets and saying “the doctors’ll fix you.”
Even then, Johnny had been an optimist.
Bobby could never relate.
—
John wakes up and the world is fuzzy. His head pounds, he has cotton-mouth that could rival the Sahara, and everything feels heavy. He blinks, trying to push the grit and sand and build up of rheum from his eyes. “Urhn.” He moans.
“You awake Johnny?”
Johnny? John hasn’t been called Johnny since he was thirteen and pimply, begging his Gamma to please, please don’t let his parents send him off to military school. “N’n-n.” He slurs.
A large shape - blurry - looms. Gently, one thick hand comes to rest on his head. A thumb swipes over his forehead. Despite the hand being rough, toughened and calloused in a way that clearly identifies its owner as someone who works for a living, it’s comforting. John is unused to the action of comfort. “Johnny, wake up.” The voice sing-songs.
“‘M ‘wake.” John insists, trying to will his body to respond. He goes to lift one hand, scrub at his face, and finds he can’t. They’re tied together.
A panic begins to set in. I’ve been drugged. I’m tied up. I’m…. I’m….
He’s having an anxiety attack. His breaths are ragged, a rush in his ears.
“Breathe, Johnny.” The voice… John’s face wrinkles, his breathing slows - not purposeful, but due to the confusion. He knows that voice; the measured calm and carefully hidden aggravation. “Johnny, breathe.” And John does, like a trained dog, slow and purposeful. In and out, in and out. They’re deep breaths in through the nose, long slow exits from the mouth.
John finally manages to open his eyes, and although the world is blurry and hazy, eyes sticky with drug-induced sleep and eye grit, John sees.
Even in the sliver of light from the single bulb in the room, the man is easily visible. He’s crouching low, close to where John lays, half-propped, on the thin cot. He’s well-dressed and casual looking. He has thick, brown curly hair. It’s short, not cropped, but kept out of the man's face. His skin is pale, slightly sallow looking, like he hasn’t spent too much time in the sun. There’s a few scars scattered across his skin. Truthfully, there’s nothing about him that stands out - he’s extraordinarily ordinary. Well, there is one thing that nags at John. The thing that catches Johns’ attention, the thing most unsettling, is his eyes. They’re a deep brown, nearly black. They swallow the pupil.
They capture John's attention because he sees them in the mirror each day.
—
“B-Bobby?” John stutters out.
The man breaks from his frozen position, slaps one hand on his knee - it echoes around the small room - and lets out a bark of laughter. “I knew you’d get it!”
John must be more addled from the medication than he’d thought. Bobby is dead. Bobby has been dead for twenty years. Bobby died at eleven years old. John doesn’t know what he’d look like as an adult; though he could hazard a guess. It’d be eerily similar to the man sitting in front of him.
“You can’t be Bobby.” The words are slow, stilted. His sentence sounds dumb. “Bobby was eleven.”
“And now I’m thirty-one, Johnny. That’s how time works.”
The way he says it - “That’s how time works.” - transports John back in time. He’s small, chattering on about what he learned recently in school. “An’ we learnded about the life of a chicken an’ a frog.” He sounds excited, the words slightly muffled as he munches on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Bobby breaks the animated prattle, his tone cutting even at eight years old.“It’s learned not learnded. Don’t be stupid Johnny.”
John had looked abashed at his brother's chiding back then. There’s no difference to that now. His face feels slack, too slow on the uptick, practically bovine. “But you’re dead.”
Dead. It echoes around the room.
A shudder passes through Bobby’s face; like the word is sharp and dangerous. Then, a burst of laughter comes from him. It’s just as sharp as the word ‘dead’ was, and John flinches. “Is that what they told you? That I died?”
Bobby spins, raking his hands through his hair, digging through his pockets, angrily making a fist. It all happens in rapid succession. A blur. The only thing John’s addled and shock brain takes stock of, truly keeps within his grasp, is that Bobby has a knife.
It’s not long - nothing more than a steak knife - but it looks dangerous nonetheless.
John flinches. He blinks.
The knife grows. The handle lengthens, as does the blade. It sharpens. In John’s mind, it’s no longer a simple steak knife. It’s the eight inches of cool steel that stabbed him in the back on Valentines Day.
“P-Please.” He doesn’t mean for the word to stutter past his lips, but it does, unbidden. “Please don’t.” A phantom pain charges through him and John tries to push his bound hands towards the scar on his lumbar spine. It’s useless; they flitter in a panic by his hip.
His brain overlays Bobby - fucking Bobby, dead but alive Bobby - with his hazy memory of Paul Sobricki. Bobby’s curls grow darker, more wild. His eyes become deadly. “Please, please.” John begs, feels the tears begin to trickle down his face. “Not again.”
—
There’s something in John’s voice that makes Bobby pause. Or maybe it’s the tears. Whatever. It’s inconsequential. Not again. He re-adjusts his grip on the knife. He twitches, cracks his neck. Not again. “What,” he licks his lips, “do you mean not again?”
John must not hear him. Gone is the confident, easy-going doctor who had navigated the ER with deftness. Instead, the drugs and apparent fear have rattled him. John sits awkwardly, on his knees, with his hands still bound. His body rocks forward with each sob. “Please.” He repeats the phrase, once, twice, again, and again. Finally, something new breaks through: “I-I can’t do it again.”
It’s pathetic.
Bobby has spent years waiting for this moment. Years tucked away in hospitals, secluded half-way homes for the derelict, and boarding schools designed for delinquents. Years secluded from those who were supposed to be his family. Distantly, a memory slides forward: a chubby little hand patting him, like he’s a stuffed animal and the whisper of a childish promise. He feels a ghost-like sensation: pat, pat, pat.
He repeats himself, the words coming out rougher and louder - anything to shake away the dregs of the memory. “What do you mean not again?”
John whimpers, his breath spent from the heaving sobs. “I-I don’t wanna be stabbed again. P-Please.” Bobby is willing to dismiss his little brother and his theatrics; categorize them into some pampered rich kid sniveling. He’s about to leave John. Let him stew in whatever emotional breakdown he’s having. The next tear soaked words stop him seconds before he passes through the threshold.
“I’d rather die this time.”
He pauses. Continues walking.
—
It must be hours later when Bobby finally reappears. John is spent; wrung out like a dish rag. His body aches, like he’s been running for miles and miles instead of kneeling on the thin mattress that rests on the cold, hard floor. His head throbs too - whether it be from dehydration or withdrawal from the drugs, John doesn’t know.
Bobby chucks a bottle of water at him with one simple instruction: “Drink.”
John does, going for the water bottle with all the grace of a newborn giraffe, and manages to only slough half of the water down his front. The water that does manage to rush past his lips is enough to seemingly reactivate his voice box. His voice is a croak. “Bobby, please, let me go.” The words are rough around the edges. “I won’t tell anyone. I won’t tell mom and dad. I won’t–.”
Bobby takes his steak knife from the depths of his pocket and jams it, tip down, into a small wooden table in response.
“John-ny.” His childhood name sounds harsh in his ears, like Bobby has spent his time away sharpening it on a whetstone. “Haven’t you been listening?” Bobby whirls, pushes his body close to where John is curled on the mattress. “Mom and Dad declared me dead-to-them.” Each word, a roar that echoes around the small room, is spoken with a period at the end.
Spit hits John’s face.
“You got everything! You took my life!” Bobby grips his face with one hand. His fingers grip around John’s jaw, his grip tight like a vice. John’s skin is bunched forwards under the pressure, leaving him with his face puckered like a fish. John vaguely feels that way, like a fish pulled from the water unexpectedly with a hook embedded in his cheek. Pain blooms where Bobby’s fingers dig into his soft flesh. His jaw throbs under the pressure, his nerves seemingly sending out warning signals as to where bruises will appear later.
He tries to pull back; wrench his face away, but Bobby holds tight. His voice is much calmer than before, like John’s face is some sort of emotional anchor. “You took my life Johnny. Someone has to pay for that.”
—
The words drill into John’s head; like Bobby’s fingers may have smacked them into him. You took my life. It creates a sudden rush of anger; burning hot through his body. The heat eats, like lava, into the remnants of drugs and the epinephrine and cortisol that the fear has left behind. “I didn’t want your life!”
John takes his bound hands and pounds them into the mattress, suddenly crazed.”I didn’t want your life. I didn’t want to be the Carter heir!” He pounds his bound fists for emphasis, and continues to scream. He vents the frustrations he never could to his family. “I-I don’t like helping Gamma with the development of funding strategies. I don’t like choosing which charities are the best for grant distribution. I hate board meetings. I don’t enjoy any of it!” John goes on and on; until the words don’t come anymore. He hiccups, gasps for air.
The tears boil, like the lava, and slip from his eyes uninvited. “I didn’t want your life.” A sniff, the anger quickly settling into a slow simmer. “I don’t want to be here.”
—
It should be enough to stimulate some sort of response in Bobby. Seeing his brother, once again, weak and feeble without even the drugs in his system to blame. Had Bobby grown up in normalcy, maybe the scene would’ve tugged at his heart strings.
Bobby didn’t grow up in a house that felt like a home. He aged in sterile hospital rooms, crowded bunkhouses, and sitting on the couches in psychiatrists offices. Bobby feels something akin to disgust instead. He rears back his right arm, makes a fist, and lands one solid punch square on Johnny’s jaw.
John’s head snaps back, blood and spittle flying.
Bobby’s left hand, his non-dominant hand, clutches at the front of John’s shirt. Props him up, holds him solid. He pulls John in close, drops his own head nearby to whisper in his little brother's ear. “Even if you didn’t want it, you have it.”
He pushes John back, feeling something satisfying in his gut when he hears the thunk of the prodigal son's head hitting the hard flooring instead of the mattress. He knows when John sits up, there will be blood left behind.
—
Siblings fight. John knows this - both firsthand, from brief scuffling, hair-pulling, and verbal sparring with Barbara, and through anecdotal evidence, gathered from television shows and off-hand stories from friends, co-workers, and patients. Anna, over shared breakfasts-lunches-and-dinners, had shared more than one scuffle with her brothers and sisters that left them icing their wounds with bags of frozen vegetables. Patients, both adults and children alike, have arrived in the ER marred by the handiwork of their siblings.
John and Bobby had never gotten into real physical fighting; only older sibling teasing from Bobby growing to barbs due to irritation. The only times growing up Bobby had ever left a bruise on John came from pinching his skin. John was too little for physical alterations and Bobby had been deemed too sick by doctors and their parents, confined to hospital beds and connected to tubes and wires.
When his head hits the concrete, and his brain rattles around his skull, John distantly thinks - likely due to a growing concussion - this is something to mark off the sibling bucket list.
Bobby doesn’t stop. John takes another punch to the jaw that causes him to bite his tongue bloody. The metallic taste coats his mouth. He’s forced to swallow and it makes his gut churn. A kick to his ribs has him curling up on his side, tucking in tight like an armadillo. He gags, the punt-like motion causing his stomach to roll. John’s going to heave.
“Urg.” He moans, squeezing his eyes tight. He wills it to remain nausea, not develop into John puking. It’s to no avail. Bobby aims another kick at John’s ribs. On impact, his body reacts and suddenly there’s an acrid smell in the air. Drool trails off his lips and lower jaw. “Ngh. Sorry.” John hates that he apologises, the word sneaking out just like the tears that leak from his eyes; more something ingrained in his body and less a voluntary action.
Bobby’s hand fists in John’s hair and pulls. John finds his upper body lifted off the ground by inches. His scalp screams. The world begins to grow grey around the edges. Bobby’s words are just as acidic as his stomach acid. “Looks like you need to get cleaned up, Johnny.” Bobby drops him and John lands in his own mess.
—
John wakes to a piece of fabric - a kitchen towel, maybe a pillowcase of some kind - draped over his face. It’s startling, and he goes to sit up, pull off the piece of fabric, only to find his body has unwittingly been adjusted while he was unconscious. Whereas before his hands were tied to his face, giving him some sense of balance and stability, they’ve been pulled back and re-tied behind his back. John can do nothing more than angrily arch his back and hiss as his shoulders ache. Whatever kind of cloth is over his face is too large to dislodge by shaking his head like a dog drying off. When he tries, his head protests and pulses of pain appear.
The room is silent. John lays on his back, hands bound, face covered, and hates the way his breath is the only noise in the room. The towel over his face begins to hold onto the moisture from his open mouth breathing.
“Hey!” John yells, desperate for attention, “Get this off me!” Bobby’s my brother, his adrenaline soaked brain thinks. He won’t really hurt me. He loves me.
Heavy footsteps grow closer, much faster than John anticipated. Anxiety burns in his gut, further fueling the pre-existing nausea. “Bobby–” John begins, prepared to plead his case.
He’s stopped short by the fabric being removed from his face, Bobby looming large and towering over him. “Johnny,” His brother's voice sounds practically jovial. “I said I was gonna help you clean up.” He begins to tsk like John is an errant and needy child. “You need to learn some patience.”
Bobby drops the fabric back over his face, hands working like they’re tucking someone small into bed.
Any thoughts John had of his brother releasing him, letting him leave without being harmed further, fade.
The water first hits his face in a slow trickle and as it grows, so does John’s panic. His nasal passages, his mouth, all areas where oxygen should flow in and out with ease are clogged with an influx of water. John chokes, tries to spit some of the liquid back out, and is unsuccessful. It goes for twenty, maybe thirty seconds. For John, it feels like hours of drowning.
Bobby takes off the towel and the relief is immediate. John sputters, half swallowed water landing back on his face. He’s desperate to heave air into his lungs, so he pants open-mouthed. His respite is brief. His head is covered again and before John can protest, his older brother is pouring water again.
The process repeats three or four times. In reality, it’s no more than five, six minutes. John has waited longer in line for coffee. Laying here, bound and dripping and his lungs aching and head spinning, John feels like it’s been forever. Grey spots dance in his vision.
Through the underwater haze, Bobby’s cheerful voice breaks through clear. “Feeling clean Johnny?”
John can’t find it within himself to respond. Instead, he sucks in air greedily when Bobby lifts the rag for what John hopes-prays-wishes will be the final time, eyes wide with fear and locked on the towel fixed within his brother's grip.
The clucks of disapproval at his silence that his brother makes sit heavy in his ears for a moment, paired with his “Oh, Johnny.” like he’s chiding his brother for skinning his knees playing outside.
Finally, John thinks that he’s panting and his lungs have regained enough O2 to sustain him. He’s about to wheeze out something - a protest, a plea, John isn’t sure - when he’s interrupted again. Bobby’s foot kicks hard into his ribs and this time John feels them snap.
—
The physical damage does eventually stop. Bobby’s interest in John wanes, like a shark circling a tank at the aquarium. Bobby grows to notice that John has no fight; he’s resigned himself to this treatment. And, for someone like Bobby, that takes a good chunk of the fun away.
He studies the huddled mass in the corner. Bobby has only had John under his care for a day, and he’s a far sight from the reassuring and attentive doctor. His work clothes are ruined with blood, dirt, and his own bodily fluids of vomit and spit. His skin has been split, bloodied, and bruised while his body has been drugged and drowned. Bobby’s boots are responsible for breaking at least three of his ribs.
Still… Bobby has one thing left to do.
He digs in his front pocket, coming away with two items. The first is a sturdy, white gold signet ring. On it, the Carter family crest is engraved. It’s one of a trio, rotated through the three oldest sons of the family. Bobby knows, from his research, that his grandfathers and fathers still rest on their wrinkled fingers; almost as if they’re welded in place. The second, a zippo. He tests the lighter and feels a flicker of excitement when the flame jumps to attention.
It’s perfect.
Bobby crouches, ignoring the seep of cold into his knees as he kneels, near John’s curled body. His brother breathes; lungs rattling with each breath and a hiss of air escaping his lips as he does. Bobby grabs his hands, covered in dried blood and dirt and all sorts of filth, and unties them for the first time since John was stuffed into the trunk. He takes the right one and splays it out. John’s hand is spread-wide; all five fingers being driven into the dirt. “Stay.” He commands.
John doesn’t even flinch. His arm stays lax, without Bobby’s force driving his hand, and it flops a little carelessly into the flooring. Bobby rolls his eyes - he’ll fix it. John’s practically comatose. Briefly, Bobby wonders if there’s a medical word for it. John would know a little voice whispers. Bobby ignores it.
Instead, he takes the lighter and ignites a flame. He watches as the orange-red-blue begins to grow and stay steadily. He takes his other hand and holds the ring, face down, over the heat. As the ring grows warm, his fingers twitch, slightly bothered by the heat. He forces it down - a minor annoyance.
The ring begins to glow with heat.
Bobby removes it from the flame. Then, he begins the final stages of his plan. He uses his non-dominant hand to reposition John’s; so it’s fanned out and spread in the way he had pushed it earlier. Using his right, he takes the still faintly glowing ring and presses it deep into the sensitive skin on the back of John’s hand.
There’s no sizzle, no sudden ooze. It’s subtle, the way the white gold begins to burn the flesh and it blisters in response.
John and his response are not so subtle.
—
John wakes to searing pain and the faint smell of singed flesh. He feels. He feels heat and pain and ouch and oh my god and a churning nausea. His brain - finally - registers that the burning sensation is coming from his hand. He tugs, blindly, seeking freedom. But his arm is stuck in a vice of sorts.
A tutting reaches his ears; another chide. “Leave it be Johnny. We’re working on something here.” Bobby’s voice is far too calm.
John can only make a high-keening sound in response; keeps jerking his arm back.
Bobby’s voice goes tight and his grip on John’s arm gets tighter. “I said knock it off.”
The pain swallows John. He’s not sure if it’s seconds or minutes later, but Bobby does eventually release his bruising grip and the burning sensation changes. It doesn’t stop; it stays an aching thrum centered on the dorsum - the back of - his hand.
“Urnnnnnnnnnnn…” John moans. He’s not sure if it's a moan of relief. He takes back his hand and curls, pushing it into his chest protectively. The pulses of pain from his hand seem to reawaken his other injuries and John has an onslaught of anguish. His body shakes. His lungs gasp and hiss. His broken ribs continue to throb. The cuts, bruises, and other injuries on his body sting in a continuous smarting. “I wanna go home.” The childish words, softened by pain, exit his mouth without his permission.