Take Your Goddang Meds
TW: Semi self-harm, actually it's sorta graphic? no blood or anything, crap this is dark, kinda a vent?, mentions of past self harm, mentions of ADHD, boredom, mentions of a panic attack, shorter chapter because I hafta explain some things before the action starts
Finn P.O.V
Two days later I find myself being pinned to the floor five minutes after my dad left at the crack of dawn to get to work impossibly early.
“Just swallow the goddamn pills, Finn,” Issie complains from her place straddling my stomach, her curly black hair falling in my face . Unfortunately, despite how strong I am, Issie still outweighs me (thanks to the scrawny ass genetics I inherited). So all she really has to do is grab my arms and sit on top of me and I can’t get up. “You’re usually good about this.”
While she’s talking she shifts a bit, and I immediately take the opportunity to flip us over and rip my wrists out of her gasp before sitting on her stomach and grabbing her hands before she could push me off. I lock my legs around her waist, and after a second she must realize I’m not budging because she sighs loudly and lets her head fall back to hit the floor with a thump.
“I’ll take my meds when you eat breakfast,” I barter, and she groans, shaking her head.
“I don’t want to,” she says, well more like wines.
I can tell she’s surprised when I don’t start arguing with her and instead make myself as comfortable as I can be while sitting on my best friend, trapping her arms under my legs and grabbing a photo album from the pile near her head. “Then I’m not taking my meds, and we can both stay on the floor as I read this photo album of my childhood and slowly spiral into a panic attack.”
She doesn’t cave right away, staying still on the rug in the middle of the coffee-scented front room that doubles as an entrance, dad’s office, the living room, and mini library. Dad’s room and my room are accessible through two different doors on opposite side of the kitchen (which is through an entryway on the side of the front room), though we usually end up passing out in the front room with Dad in the reading chair and me on the leather sofa. Both of us were surrounded with books, which is how Issie found us this morning. My best friend and I go to the skate park every Saturday morning, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was woken up by her tackling me to the floor (making sure not to let my head slam against the ground), and waking up my dad by default. I, once seeing what time it is, started making coffee, pushed Dad to go get dressed and brush his teeth (which he did very groggily) and handed him coffee about three minutes later as he stumbled out the door.
Then Issie asked if I’d taken my meds, and I asked if she’d eaten, which is how we ended up wrestling on the floor like a couple toddlers. Unfortunately it had gotten a bit rougher than we planned, ending with a large bruise on my right cheek that I see Issie notice now with a pang of guilt, and a knot on the back of her head.
“Fine,” Issie groans, the slightly shorter girl making eye contact with me as I lower the album from my face. “I’ll eat if you cook and agree to take your meds.”
“Promise?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. She wiggles, and I release one of her arms so she can hold up her pinkie towards me. I stare at her. “You’re joking.”
“Just do the pinkie promise, Fin,” she says.
I sigh, caving and locking our pinkies while muttering. “This is utterly ridiculous, we’re in high school.”
“You’re still fifteen,” Issie says, scrambling to her feet after I get up and immediately stretching and cracking her back.
“You’re only sixteen,” I point out.
“Still older than you. Plus I can drive.”
“You’re only a year older.”
“Still counts.”
“I can beat up three men twice the size of me at the same time.”
“I can convince bouncers I’m 21.”
“I chose to make good decisions.”
“You chose to be a goody two shoes.”
“.... I cussed out an elementary school kid a few days ago.”
Issie freezes before she huffs loudly, and I smirk, realizing I won. Suddenly my best friend gives me a look. “Hey, did your dad eat breakfast this morning? I don’t think I saw him grab any lunch.”
I freeze, thinking for a moment, and curse loudly. My dad isn’t anorexic, nor am I, unlike Issie used to be. However, sometimes we’re so wrapped up in our brains that eating just seems like a waste of time. I flipped out once after realizing Dad didn’t eat the entire time he was on a three day long case, and he lost his mind after I went a week without eating while solving the ‘hardest math equations in the world’.
“Why don’t you make something for him and run it over while we’re at the skatepark?” Issie asks, scrolling through her phone. “I don’t think I’m allowed in the shmancy FBI building, but I’m pretty sure you could sneak your way into the Pentagon.”
I grumble. “That was one time.” She simply grins at me, and I roll my eyes, pushing her towards the kitchen table. “Fine, I’ll cook breakfast, but you have to do dinner.”
She teasingly tilts her chin up at me. “Hmm, I dunno. I may not be here later… may have something to do.” I give her a look and she holds her hands up in surrender. “Geez, alright. I was kidding. Why are you all grumpy?”
“Well someone did tackle me to the floor as a way to wake me up in the morning,” I say, going to grab the eggs out of the fridge, a glass of water, and my pills. Issie shrugs, placing her phone on the table, and turning up the volume to blast ‘Mr. Loverman’ by Ricky Montgomery.
I absentmindedly start swaying to the music as I wait for the frying pan to heat up, spraying it with cooking spray as it does. My pills get popped into my mouth, and I swallow them with a gulp of water, opening my mouth to show Issie it’s empty afterwards.
The eggs cook fast after that, as does the bacon. I make a little extra bacon and cut up some avocado, lettuce, and tomato while I’m waiting for the food to cool down. I place the ingredients between two slices of bread, wrap it in tinfoil, and place it in a paper lunch sack along with an apple, a granola bar, and a mini water bottle.
I then grab the two plates of scrambled eggs and bacon and two forks before bringing them to the table, setting one down in front of Issie and sitting next to her. My body must have been more hungry than I thought, because I wolf down the food almost too fast. Once I finish, I realize Issie’s eating at the speed of a turtle, and I grumble at my suddenly bouncing knee. My fingers start tapping individually on the table in a steady rhythm, and I start fidgeting with the butter knife I got, getting dangerously close to cutting myself with it before I hop up from the table.
Issie doesn’t look up, used to my sudden bursts of boredom and energy by now since I was diagnosed with ADHD seven years ago.
I grab my plate and my utensils and bring them to the sink, setting the water as hot as it can possibly go before shoving my bare hands under it to start scrubbing the dishes that had piled up. Usually dad does the dishes and I dry them, but when I’m home alone I get super bored with my own thoughts, so I blast music in my earbuds and clean.
As soon as the water hits my hands, a wave of tingling pain makes its way from the apendages up my arms, over my shoulders, up my neck and to my brain. I breathe a bit easier as the pain reduces my energy a bit, praying for the meds to kick in soon as I take to cleaning each and every one of the dishes for just a little bit too long.
Issie finishes eating, and goes to bring her plate up to the sink before dropping it on the ground when she sees me. “Finn, stop!” she cries, and I yank my hands out of the water in shock, noticing quickly how much steam had gathered in the room. Issie reaches over to turn the faucet to cold before going to grab my hands, flinching away as she makes contact with them.
We both look down at my hands, and I hiss at the sudden throbbing that comes from them as soon as I take in the extent of the injury. My hands are bright red and a little swollen, obviously scalded. How I didn’t notice this is beyond me.
Issie curses, looking up at me with hurt in her eyes. “Finn you promised you’d stopped this.” She gestures to my hands and my forearms that are exposed thanks to the Star Trek t shirt I’m wearing and are littered with scars
“I did,” I protest, pulling my hands and arms away from her. “I seriously didn’t realize the water was that hot. I just got a lot of energy and I was really--”
“Bored,” Issie finishes with a sigh, reaching out for my hands. When I don’t offer them to her, she gives me an earnest look. “I believe you, Finn. Just - be careful next time, alright?” I nod, making her relax almost immediately as she reaches once more. “Now gimme your hands, we have to wash them under cold water and bandage them up.” My body offers my hands to her, and she takes them with an easy smile and pushes us both towards the sink so she can run the appendages under cold water.
I sigh in relief once my hands are submerged, the throbbing calms down quite a bit thanks to the cold temperature. We stand there for a few seconds before I hear sniffling and turn to Felix to see her blinking back tears.
“We’re really screwed up, huh?” she asks, smiling around the tears. To my horror I feel the same expression spread on my face, only without the tears.
“Yeah,” I say, not seeing the point in lying. “I mean, we have been through a lot of shit.”
She shakes her head. “You’ve been through a lot of shit, I’ve been through a little shit.”
I gape at her, ignoring the tears welling up in my eyes. “Did you just swear Issie?”
She gives me a watery grin. “It’s a special occasion.” I return the look and we fall back into silence, the occasional sniffle coming from either of us for the next few minutes before Issie pulls my now numb hands from the water, and leads me over to the couch. She makes me sit down on the leather cushions, and jogs over to rummage through the cabinet over the blue refrigerator before pulling out a first aid kit. My best friend comes jogging back over and sits down indian style next to me, gesturing for me to turn to face her, which I do. She then takes my hands and starts loosely wrapping them in gauze.
“... So how are you doing?” she eventually pipes up, and I face her with dread already building in my stomach. “With, um, Emily’s passing and all.”
Pain shoots through my chest, but I shove it down, done crying for the morning. “I’m fine, it was a year ago so I’m over it.” She unwraps a couple bandaids to secure the gauze in place, and I see my chance. “Did you know Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages were invented in 1920 by Earle Dickson? He was a young cotton buyer at Johnson & Johnson, and his wife was really clumsy and prone to kitchen accidents while he was at work that he couldn’t help her secure until he got back home at the end of the day. So he took surgical adhesive tape and gauze and--”
“Please stop changing the subject with facts, Finn,” Issie says, not buying my bullshit for a second. “As much as I love hearing you rant about bandaids, I need to know if you’re really okay.”
I sigh, shifting slightly when she pulls a bandage a little too tight and nodding at her apology. “I mean, I miss her, of course I do. She was like my older sister.” I curse out loud, coughing away the lump in my throat that suddenly appeared. “But it’s not like I’m gonna throw myself off the roof again or anything, I’ve gotten past that.”
A clear expression of pure relief comes over Issie and she relaxes. “Are the meds working?”
I nod. “Yeah, definitely.” Suddenly a thought pops into my brain and I groan. “Dad’s gonna ask about my hands when I bring him his lunch,” I say in response to my best friend’s questioning look.
“Just explain to him that it was an accident--” Issie starts, but her phone suddenly rings as she secures the last bandaid. She gives me an apologetic look and I wave her off.
My best friend picks up the phone and holds it over, her ear, immediately going off about something in Spanish. After a few minutes of her conversation that I don’t have the mental capacity at the moment to translate she hangs up, and gives me a guilty look.
“Sorry Finn, but I can’t go to the skatepark today. I have to watch my cousins when they come over,” she says, looking crestfallen.
I shrug. “It’s fine, it’s only Saturday, we can still go tomorrow. Plus now that the team knows about me I could probably ask my dad to let me hang out with him at work today.”
“... Are you sure?” she’s staring into my eyes now, trying to get an honest reaction.
I give her the most open expression I can. “Definitely. You go on, I gotta grab my dad’s lunch and my skateboard.”
A smile stretches on her face, and she pecks my cheek quickly, leaving a lipstick stain I childishly wipe at. Then when I look back up, my friend is gone.
Suddenly my phone buzzes, and I open it to find a text from Issie.
Isabellzzz: WEAR A HELMET.
******