#thts a whole other...... realm of chaos tht im gna develop nw shes back

[lanasaved]

gibson 1959 | self

 “I think that’s everything, chicken. Yeah? You got everything, Caleb?”

Eyes dim on a patch of grey linoleum, it took a gentle tug of the larger hand Lana had clasped in hers for her brother to dawn back to reality.

“Hm? Oh... Yeah. Yeah, think so.”

Down by his side, a clear plastic rubbish bag dangled limp from a loose fist, contents occasionally rustling whenever he so much as cleared his throat.

“He does,” Lana interjected, face soaked in the kind of sunshine bright optimism you’d expect from a Labrador puppy anticipating its lunch bowl. “I checked and, like… folded everything, so. Yeah! We’re good. He’s good.”

She wouldn’t have been able to hide the pride in that statement if she’d been trying to, eyes skimming his features with her dimples so pronounced, you could have stashed an entire football trophy cabinet in them. 

“Yeah,” he repeated, gaze flitting over after a pregnant pause to find the nurse’s, regurgitating her polite smile in the seamless way he’d learned he had to. “I’m good.”

He’d been in the hospital for a grand total of two hundred and eighty four days, six hours and twelve minutes.

It seemed like years since she’d seen him outdoors, at all -- he’d been offered trips outside of the facility, if he wanted to, but he’d always declined under the grounds that he wasn’t ready yet. 

It was strange, unlocking their front door after an Uber ride home in which she blabbered endlessly and he merely nodded and listened, occasionally resisting a smile when she got her tongue tied and mispronounced something because she was too excited to talk any slower than supersonic.

She felt kind of like a child that had smuggled a candy bar off the corner shop counter, fingers continuously sifting the crinkles of wrapper inside her pocket just to check that she’d actually had the guts, that she hadn’t just dreamt it. 

“Welcome back to the lurv shack, bay-bee,” Lana enunciated with a lame kick of one leg in halfhearted cancan, forgetting to finish the routine and turning back, instead, to make sure he’d made it through the door okay.

After such an extended period of bed rest -- due to many contributing factors, he’d had to have restraints that sporadically forced him to be mattress bound for days and nights at a time -- his joints were somewhat stiff. He’d joked in monotone on the front steps that he was the Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man in dire need of oiling, and while Lana had returned his small smile, she’d also made sure to squeeze his hand as a wordless encouragement.

“Come on, Ol’ McCreaky.” Flashing him a grin, it was with a lone nod down the corridor that she started shrugging off one sleeve of her faux fur jacket, black and white star print slipping another three inches to reveal a narrow shoulder. Even then, schlepping down the hall with her hair in a barely combed tangle around her cheeks, she looked like a burlesque girl intent on providing a show, framed photos on the walls practically blushing over every glimpse of skin they managed to reflect back.

“I got those dinosaur shaped pancakes you say you hate. So juvenile, those pancakes!” she impersonated, laughter bubbling up from her throat like caramel brought to boil. Twisting around so she could face him as she walked backwards, she quickly reviewed the shuffle of his feet as she continued speaking, monitoring for any lulls in pace. “Honestly, you’re such a fake. I saw you gobble a pterodactyl off my plate, once, when you thought I was peeing. Jokes on you, hombre! She’s a urine scammer. I didn’t even have to go, I totally just spied on you from the banister.”

“That’s a lie.”

Grin only doubling, she started prancing from foot to foot like an evil little hobgoblin delighting in a wicked scheme, red cowboy boots echoing a wild patter around the walls. 

Lips tweaking in a lame attempt to match hers, he rolled his eyes as he continued to follow her towards the kitchen. “Alright, stop that.”

Regardless, she continued, drenched with so much giddy energy that she felt like a jack-in-the-box wound one time too many, rocking around its mechanism in a dangerous frenzy that threatened to break the spring.

“Fucking hell,” he exhaled, unable to help but let out a short laugh, for once. She wasn’t half ridiculous. “I hate this, Lana. That looks horrible.”

Finally ceasing, it was with a breathless swipe at her skirt to right the fluttering pleats that she spun back to yank at the next door handle, jacket still dangling off just one shoulder since she’d forgotten to finish removing it.

“That was my Niall Horan on bath salts impression, actually. If you knew your Irish jigs, that would’ve been obvious. Point deducted, yer wee cunty!”

She felt like she had a firefly jarred inside her chest for the entire duration of their back and forth banter, body of it bumping and glowing against the confines of her rib cage as she clattered into the kitchen.

In fact, she’d been so wrapped up in the fact that Caleb was finally home -- her Caleb, her entire world -- that she hadn’t even noticed the murmur of voices drifting in from the large conservatory, the room their parents reserved for dinner parties given the long table and the view overlooking the garden. 

It was only once she’d turned back from rustling within her shopping bag to produce a carton of eggs that she noticed how tense Caleb’s shoulders were, eyes stuck on something past the wall, staring further into the heart of the house -- if you could even call it that.

A heart implied life. Warmth. 

“They’re here.”

“Fucking hell, is that Caleb Jameson? Fuck me. Just take a look at him! There’s nothing of him!”

Screeching back from his chair to get to his feet once they’d entered the room, Jensen Peters lumbered sideways over the leg he’d somehow managed to position as an obstacle, clearly already drunk at a mere three in the afternoon.

Shirt unbuttoned to just above his belly button, chest hair rampant and just a lone middle finger flecked with black nail polish, he looked like a long lost rock oracle washed ashore on a desert island, eyes red rimmed from salt water and the terror of a stormy shipwreck.

He had a raven’s face, long and thin -- all beak and peck and black, somehow, despite his pale eyes and sandy hair to match.

Next to Caleb, Lana shrank like an under watered tulip, immediately fascinated by the panels of the hardwood.

“Hi. Teeth still unbrushed as ever, I see,” Caleb commented, eyes moving from the hand that Jensen extended to shake his to the face of his father. He made no effort to reach out and complete the greeting, ignoring him completely. “I’m home, Robert. Are you shitting yourself with excitement, yet? Or did you already wipe yourself down so you wouldn’t stink out the dinner table? Incontinence woes.”

Unimpressed, their father merely took a sip from his glass and exchanged an apologetic look with another member of company. 

Gnawing on her bottom lip, Lana held Caleb’s hand a fraction tighter as she shuffled slightly forwards to glance around the occupants of the table, shooting them all a brief smile. 

“Hi. Sorry, Caleb has a migraine. We were just, um... I mean, we’ll get out of your hair and stuff. Nice to see you all, though. Caleb? Should w--”

“Lana, Lana, Laaaaa-naaaa. Lana!” Enamel of his teeth blotted with plaque stains from chain smoking and gargling whiskey for breakfast in the place of Listerine, Jensen thrust his hands out in exclamation, acting as if he’d just been bestowed with a vision of Christ to inform him about his immaculate conception. “Look at you! A fuckin’... tiny thing. Could pick you up and put you in my pocket, couldn’t I?!”

Heart thumping inside her throat, she peeled back her lips to reveal her teeth, a take on a grin that looked more like an animal baring its fangs after it’d been backed against a wall.

 “C’mere,” he enthused, fingers waggling her in. “You gonna give me a fuckin’ hug, or what?”

“Um... Yeah, of course. Yeah, sorry,” she forced out after a stuttered delay, about to take a step forwards when Caleb yanked her back by the hand she’d forgotten she was still holding, startled yelp parting her lips.

“I don’t think she feels like it,” he interrupted, shoulders tense and eyes burning so intently into Jensen’s that it was as if he was willing them to sear black holes through the sockets. “Feel free to sit down and stop talking. Robert,” came as his chin flinched sideways, focus returning to their father as he sat wordlessly at the head of the table, observing the situation in the odd glance before he resumed his thumbing at his phone screen. “We’re gonna go. Just wanted to say hi.”

For as long as Lana could remember, Caleb had never referred to their father by name.

“Mhm?” He barely lifted his eyes from his phone.

Stomaching a scoff, Caleb shook his head and stared briefly at the floor by his shoes.

Lana could sense the frustration unfurling inside his stomach like a fighter’s fist, knuckles twitching every time Jensen dared to so much as look at her.

“Dad,” she started softly, gently letting go of Caleb’s hand so that she could take a step forwards and rest both on the back of a stately designed dining chair, easily priced within three figures to buy just one. “Caleb got discharged today, remember? I, um... I called you, about it. We spoke on the phone. Remember?”

Lie. She’d circled it thrice in red on the calendar, texted him seven times over the past month, and tried to ring eighteen only to be put through to voicemail. But it was better, this way, for Caleb to have a pitiful scrap of compassion for him to gnaw on to keep the starvation at bay, to think that their father had actually been invested at all in his recovery, enough to check in.

“Ah... Yeah,” came as he clicked his lock screen shut, lips a thin line that quivered into action like it took him a great exertion of effort to do so -- the smile he produced was condescendingly pitiful, easily the equivalent of a kindergarten doodle submitted to a university grade portfolio. “Yeah, of course.”

“Fuckin’ right! Yeah, yeah. Fresh out the loony bin, isn’t he? Fuck me,” Jensen got out with a snort, clapping a hand down onto Caleb’s shoulder after closing into his personal space once more. With it, he shook him gently, a carnival guest rapping at the bars of a tiger’s cage to incite a snarl. “Our own resident Girl, Interrupted. Forgot about the whole... slittarooski. Damn. Not quite got the tits for Jolie, though, do you? Then again,” he chided, voice lowering as he shot Caleb a wink, “neither do any of the Jameson’s.”

“That’s enough,” Robert nipped in the bud after his eyes drifted to observe the way Lana’s expression faltered, voice surprisingly apathetic given the derogatory observations of his own wife and daughter. Holding his hands up in mock surrender, Jensen backed up and took a seat at the table once more, immediately tracking a thumb down one of the strings of his 1959 Gibson. Attention back on Caleb, it was as if, to Robert, Jensen had never said anything at all. “That’s great. Well done.”

Dull twangs reverberating whenever Jensen’s rings clacked against the neck of his Gibson, Lana could physically feel Caleb’s rage stilling the air around them, almost suffocated by the dead silence that came with standing in the heart of a hurricane.

“Yeah, um... Anyway, yeah,” she attempted to brush it off, apples of her cheeks so flushed that they almost looked darker than the mahogany tabletop her father propped his elbows against. “It is great. He did really good. And he’s basically, um... You know. Like, all better, now, kind of. So... yeah. Won’t keep you, or anything. Just wanted to... let you know -- that he’s home, I mean.”

“Yeah, great.” He barely cared enough to keep his eyes away from the table. “Cool stuff. I’ll call Stella, in a bit.” Their mother. “She’ll be happy to know.”

“Yeah, ‘cause she’ll take the time out of sunning topless in Monaco to take that call,” Jensen joked with his back turned, shoulders quivering slightly with the effort it took to subdue a laugh. “Fucking drag.” Still dusting down his strings with a soft, mottled cloth, he craned his neck slightly in order to throw a distracted question back over his shoulder, eyes straining to remain on his handiwork all the while. “Say, Lana? About this, uh... facility. You happen to volunteer there, at all? Get about in a little pinstripe thing, give any sponge baths to the rest of the cabbages?”

“Um...” trailed off as her eyes flit to watch Caleb, three casual steps seeing him moving to reach Jensen’s side. “No,” she admitted, hands clasped together like she was front row in a local church choir, fingers clutching one another until they glowed red from the amount of pressure. “No, nothing like that. I don’t think they do, um... a pinstripe, like, thing on--... Caleb, what’re you doing?”

Blinking up at Caleb as Lana’s question prompted him to, Jensen furrowed his eyebrows.

Above him, Caleb loomed like a pillar about to topple down any second and crush someone.

Unblinking, he simply stared. 

“Yeah, Caleb,” he began, delightfully curious at the fact he’d managed to rile enough life out of him at all. On his face, a shit eating grin began to creep into view as he echoed her same sentiment. “What’re you doing?”

It was only when Caleb reached down and wrenched the guitar from his hands that he lost his smugness.

“Wait,” Jensen quickly objected, but Caleb was already gripping the neck in both fists and marching towards the conservatory door, unlocked and looking out over the rest of the garden. “I said fucking-- Rob, stop him. Rob, fucking stop him, that’s my Gibson. That’s my fucking Gibson!”

“Caleb,” Robert warned, chair legs scraping as he rose to his feet, finally paying attention. “That’s enough.”

Racing after him with hands outstretched, Lana almost managed to trip and fall three times in the length it took to reach the patio Caleb had just strode across, chill of the air outside enough to coax goosebumps from her forearms.

“Yeah? Is it your fucking Gibson, is it? It’s your fucking Gibson?” Caleb shouted back, military issue boots clunking hard against power washed stone. “Not the fucking Gibson.”

“Caleb--”

“--Anything but the fucking Gibson, am I right? The Gibson!”

Wrenching the vintage model up and above his head, it was with a sky splitting yell from Jensen that Caleb smashed it down as forcefully as he could against the ground, wood immediately erupting into a catastrophic splinter.

Within another deafening whack, a dial pinged off and landed in the pool.

“Fuck, there goes the fucking Gibson, Jensen!” came heaved breathlessly from a tired chest, arms trembling as he did it again and again, over and over, buttons and strings scattering. In front of Lana, Robert gripped hard at Jensen’s arm in order to keep him from racing forwards and killing him, too wary of the potential newspaper headlines should he have to ring an ambulance. “Whatever will you do without the fucking Gibson, Jensen? Form an actual personality? Brush your fucking teeth with all the extra free time, maybe? Did you a fucking favour, you ugly fucking cunt.”

Tossing the last of the mess into the pool, Caleb wrenched his eyes to review Lana’s wide pair that were merely blinking back at him, completely stunned. 

All her life, she’d never dared to stand up to any of them. 

She’d only ever managed to cower with her tail between her legs in the face of those men with their oily palms and dirty fingernails, a kicked puppy still intent on nuzzling at your ankles, afterwards, to try and earn its favour back.

As much as Caleb hated him personally, she knew this was for her.

Guilt welled up in her chest like a helium balloon.

“Jesus,” Robert whispered, disbelief reducing his face to a blank and gaping slate. Hand up to clasp his forehead, he dropped the one checking Jensen as another of his associates tread forwards to take over the responsibility. “You’re a fucking... disgrace.”

“Yeah?” came out ragged, eyes wilder than a caged fox as Caleb stared down his father in the face, ignoring the blathering expletives that Jensen was still barking in the background like an Alsatian that just heard the house alarm. “Take a look at who you fucking keep around you, Robert. You’re the disgrace.” Tossing the last bit of jagged wood he held clutched in a trembling fist, it landed gracelessly by their father’s feet. “You’re the fucking disgrace.”

Silence settled like a wet blanket to smother the stove fire, pieces of guitar still bobbing about the pool’s surface like the shrapnel pieces Caleb had to have plucked out of his right leg after his abrupt discharge from duty, nerves salvageable enough that he was only left with a slight limp.

The association had something dark fluttering across his face, although Lana had already hurried forwards to take his hand, again, a panicked glance tossed back between Caleb and their father to assess the potential damage.

“Get out,” Robert breathed after a significant delay, barely able to look either of them in the face as his voice was reduced to a mere whisper.

“Both of you, get out,” he repeated, eyes complete devoid of warmth as they flit between the both of them. “I mean it.”

“But dad, he didn’t me--”

Holding up a hand to cut Lana off, he used the same one to point at her, jaw completely tense.

“Lana, get him the fuck out of here before I call the cops.”

#self para #hospitalisation tw #mental illness tw #suicide attempt tw #ptsd tw #abuse tw #all of these things r..... only rly rly vaguely touched upon/implied/interpreted from the way ppl act around each other bt #better safe than sry am i right ladies #anyway this jst explains where lanas been basically #her brother gt discharged frm hospital n then. this happened #so they had to go stay at one of calebs friends n she wanted to stay w him fr a while to make sure he was on his feet so she #took a semester off #after this para took place i feel like. their dad probably cut them off so #thts a whole other...... realm of chaos tht im gna develop nw shes back #ANYWAYS! this isnt my best bt jst explains things so. hits post