Say Something

She was in the room. He could feel it. He couldn’t feel even a smidgeon of his brother’s presence; he could feel nothing but hers. He heard the door swing and click shut. He heard a bolt, followed by several. That was funny; he hadn’t ever remembered having one lock, let alone several, on his door. If he had, then maybe things would’ve played out a little bit differently.

He was on the wrong side, though. Locks were supposed to keep people out. Not keep people in.

He couldn’t move, not an inch. Not even to lift his arm or crane. But he felt wide awake. He’d heard of this condition before – sleep paralysis? Was Aunt Cass the demon who visited him in the night?

“My little Hiro,” he heard her whisper. He didn’t dare open his eyes. She was right in his ear, chuckling breathlessly, sending sharp, numbing tingles all throughout his body. He tried to shift, even just to roll away from her, but it was as effective as trying to will boulders to move with his mind. She picked up one of his arms and held it, like it was nothing. “My darling. I brought you some cake. Are you awake yet?”

Where was his brother? Where was Tadashi? He thought he’d escaped all of this. He had left. Why was she here?

She traced little patterns on his palm with her fingertips. The touch was so gentle and persistent that he wanted to squirm. He felt hot and sick and aroused. “Are you having a happy dream, my darling? Are you dreaming about me?”

Help me, he tried to cry out. Tadashi, help me.

“Shall I give you an even happier dream?” She giggled – in a way that he’d only ever heard mischievous teenage girls giggle – and he felt her move down his body, sliding her hands down his ribs and stomach to rest at his hips. She started rolling down his PJ pants and underwear, and he was helpless to stop her. The only noises he could utter were whimpers, but, deep down, he was screaming. He could only move himself just enough to breathe, but, deep down, he was thrashing and fighting her.

This is how it always is. This is what she does. Nothing has changed. I got out, but nothing changed.

It was the most terrifying feeling in the world – being seconds from orgasm and not knowing how.

Hiro awoke with a start. He bolted upright, clutching his chest and gasping for breath. His heart was beating far too fast. His whole body felt hot and trembling and sticky. He touched his clothes and they felt damp with sweat. Sweat and… oh God.

For a split-second he was alarmed as to why he wasn’t waking up in his own bedroom. But he remembered. They hadn’t been able to find a good hotel room, and so they’d called upon the home of one of Tadashi’s friends out of desperation. It was the rich one, with the ridiculously posh manor. Freddy or something. A chill dude. He’d given them a room with a four-poster bed and an armoire and floor-length drapes, with tassels, and painted portraits and a framed mirror and a vanity table and everything. It was like a room straight out of a nineteenth century English castle.

Hiro looked over to the couch where his brother had slept last night, but he wasn’t there anymore. Just a couple of blankets and pillows remained. It was a nice couch, but it wasn’t anywhere near as comfortable as the bed. Honestly, Hiro had said that he didn’t mind if his brother and him slept in the same bed together. But Tadashi had still politely refused.

In hindsight, Hiro thought as he grimaced at his pants, it was probably good that he did.

In the corner, where the curtains were partially pulled to let some natural light in, Tadashi was sitting at an exquisitely carved wooden table – the kind fancy Englishmen took their early morning tea at. But Tadashi barely even had a coffee on him. He had about fifty pages worth of forms before him, and a tired look on his face as he went through them, occasionally scrawling a signature here and there.

Hiro slipped out of the large bed and reached for yesterday’s hoodie. It was long enough that it would hide any stains on his pants. He walked over to inspect the forms. Something about tutoring at the Institute, something about renting, something about an extension, something about legal guardianship…

Hiro looked into Tadashi’s eyes. He looked like he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep all night. His long-suffering big brother, who had been forced to adopt all of these new responsibilities on top of all his amazing work…

Hiro couldn’t help it. He started to feel selfish. Like he’d ruined his big brother’s life. Like he should’ve just waited it out until his brother had finished his study. Like he never should’ve complained. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry, Tadashi…”

It took his older brother a few seconds to withdraw his focus from the forms and put the pen down. There was no change in his expression as he stared at Hiro. “You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for, Hiro,” he said quietly. “You did nothing wrong. This isn’t your fault.”

“I still feel bad, though,” he admitted, staring at the cold floorboards. “I still feel like… I’m awful… for… I dunno. Letting it all happen to me in the first place…?” It sounded so stupid. Hiro didn’t know the specifics of how he felt. He should’ve just stopped trying.

He turned to go back to bed, feeling like he didn’t want to do anything else today, when Tadashi called him back. “Hiro.” Tadashi was wearing a hesitant expression now. It was almost scared. “Are you… OK?”

“Yeah,” Hiro lied. What answer was his brother even expecting? “Why?”

“…Bad dream?”

“Oh…” Hiro looked down and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. So he wasn’t as silent as he thought he’d been. His cheeks burned red. “Um… Yeah, just a stupid dream, that’s all…”

He crawled back into the plush bed and reopened a game on his hand-held console. He tried to look like he was too immersed in pixelated battles to keep talking, but he knew that his brother was still staring at him.

“Hiro, maybe we should consider some… therapy, or something.”

“Therapy?” Hiro made a disgusted face at the tiny screen before him. “Uh, thanks, but… I think I’ll be OK. Sounds expensive anyway.”

Tadashi sighed as he pulled himself up out of the chair and laid down beside his little brother. Hiro tried hard to ignore him. “I just want you to be OK again, Hiro,” he said softly. “You’re a smart kid. You’re destined for greatness. I don’t want this to be the thing that… takes that away from you, and stops you from thriving. I want to see you produce ingenious inventions again. I know it’s such a core part of who you are that you’re not really you when you’re not creating things…”

He put out a hand to touch Hiro’s knee, but Hiro witnessed him hesitate.

There was a lot of that last night, Hiro remembered. Tadashi always hesitated whenever he touched him now. Not even a week ago, Tadashi had no problem whatsoever just grabbing his little brother and swinging him around playfully, even if he was being shouted at to cut it out. It was that kind of rough-and-tumble play that Hiro loved. He felt like he was losing the carefree, fun, and teasing part of their relationship, which was a big part of it.

Even in gestures of support and affection, Tadashi was having trouble expressing them in physically-contacting ways.

And not just that, but the looks. All last night, after they’d arrived at the manor and were just settling into their new room, Hiro would catch his older brother staring at him, when he thought he wasn’t looking. His expression was always so… silently shocked and horrified. There was a lot of disgust there too. It was like, every time Tadashi looked at his little brother now, he could visualise all of the things Aunt Cass said she’d done to him. Aunt Cass and Hiro. His trusted Aunt and innocent little brother.

It had been silent for a while. Wherever Tadashi was going with that speech, he’d dropped it now. Hiro peeked at him to see that he was wearing that exact same expression. He wished that his brother wouldn’t. It only reminded him of what he’d been through. “Stop looking at me like that,” he asked in a low, embarrassed voice.

Tadashi blinked, suddenly present again. “What?”

“I said, stop looking at me like that. It… makes me uncomfortable.”

Tadashi twisted his mouth up into a nervous smile. “Sorry, Hiro. Just… thinking…”

“Yeah, I know what you were thinking,” Hiro uttered under his breath. He heaved a great sigh. “Look, it was just a stupid, gross dream, OK? It doesn’t mean anything. I’m fine. I don’t need that kind of help.”

“It’s OK to ask for help,” Hiro was reminded and he rolled his eyes. “And you can always change your mind later. If you have any more dreams, or… I don’t know. Things don’t improve on their own, then… We’ll do something.” He paused for a moment. Then, completely out of the blue, he said, “I love you, Hiro.”

Hiro glanced up, surprised. “You what?”

Tadashi was trying to smile. “I said I love you, Hiro… I don’t know,” he laughed a little, “I just thought it might be something you’d like to hear right now.”

“Yeah, because loveis one thing I definitely didn’t get enough of back home.”

“Wha…” The smile was gone. Instantly, Tadashi’s eyes welled with tears. “Hiro, I-I’m sorry, I-I didn’t mean to-“

“Kidding!” Hiro raised his hands up innocently. Christ, he’d only meant to make his brother flustered, not break open the waterworks. “I was kidding… Ha ha… Thanks, bro, I love you too! That was real nice of you to say, just when I needed it…”

But it didn’t make Tadashi stop crying. If anything, it made him cry harder. Twice in two days. God, Hiro hated to think that he had been holding back on him all this time. He must’ve been so stressed. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you,” Tadashi blubbered through the tears while Hiro did his best to soothe him. “Fuck,” he cried out suddenly, startling Hiro. “I so wanted to be strong for you. I wanted to be to you what Aunt Cass was to us when our parents died. But it’s so hard to…” His head fell into his hands. He seemed to be crying harder and harder by the second. Hiro was sympathetic at first but now he just felt scared for his brother.

“Dashi,” Hiro whimpered, wrapping an arm around him as best he could. “You’re doing a great job. OK? You were wrong about yourself – you are a good big brother.”

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” he continued, and Hiro strained to hear him. “I’ve never been on my own like this. I’ve always had help. I’ve always had Aunt Cass, and now…”

Hiro sighed. It was weird how they could both have completely different impressions of her. Hiro could barely remember the last time she had actually acted like a proper Aunt should. But, he supposed, that was all Tadashi could remember.

“…Look, why don’t you see your friends or something?” Hiro tried to roll his older brother into an upright position. “Go talk to Freddy or whoever, get those other nerds around here, and have a good time. Forget those forms for a day or two – they can wait.” He tried to think of what Tadashi would say in this situation, if he was his normal self and not a complete and total wreck. Years of watching him be the calming voice of reason had Hiro doing a pretty good imitation. “I think what matters most right now is that we both just… get used to our new lives away from home for a bit.”

Tadashi sat up, just as Hiro had directed him. He was already starting to calm down again. Of course, Hiro would’ve preferred that it was because his words were actually motivating his brother to seek the support of his peers. But there was no guarantee that he wasn’t just trying to “be strong” for Hiro and suppress all of his anxieties again.

“Yeah,” he said croakily, smiling. “I think some friends might do us some good right about now… No one ever said it’d be easy, right?”

Hiro smiled back. “It’ll get easier. Just… hang in there.”

“I should be saying that to you,” Tadashi laughed, wiping at his eyes.

“Yeah. You should.” Hiro bopped him lightly on the head. “Awful brother…” He quickly added, “That was a joke – don’t start crying again.”

--------

Things did become easier over time, for both of them. It had been incredibly hard at first. Hiro still woke up feeling vile and used, just like he did when he’d spent that first night with her. He still got sick whenever he so much as looked at cake. He still couldn’t even think about sex without being assaulted by those disturbing memories he so wanted to forget. Some things were definitely tougher than others.

But he doubted he would’ve even made it this far without the love and support of his big brother. The new changes in their lives had been hard on him too; Tadashi struggled to keep his fantastic grades as well as maintaining a well-paying job – not to mention becoming his little brother’s new, non-abusive, non-opportunistic legal guardian.

Fortunately, it didn’t take Hiro very long to get his spark back. Without the looming threat of Aunt Cass, Hiro had found himself feeling a lot more bored than he did in a state of perpetual limbo. It didn’t take Hiro long to pick back up his old projects and spend entire nights tinkering and inventing – just doing what he loved to do, and what he was destined to do. He was even looking at potential ideas to showcase for the Institute of Technology next year – to convince them that they had made a big mistake by not taking him in a moment sooner.

Things were so good now. They weren’t perfect, but they were close. Hiro could clearly remember that afternoon, after months of no new ideas or inventions, when he’d decided that he would just tell his brother what was going on. He could remember staring out the window and thinking, I could just throw myself down there, into oncoming traffic, and no one would care.

He was glad that he’d made the right choice. He was glad his brother had believed in him. Things could’ve easily been a lot darker otherwise…