don't go home without me | nemo/tate

The water churns below and I can't see Tate down there and he must have been swallowed by the currents already. His body is going to wash up on the shores of the slums and good Old Gary would dig him a grave but there'd be no name. I wouldn't know which one was his. There doesn't have to be one if I rescue him. I don't waste anymore time. I bend my knees slightly and raise my arms above my head as adrenaline pumps through me. I ju-

Strong arms grip me from behind and they pull me off of my precipice and every mile that they pull me away is a mile further from Tate who is drowning below and I need to save him, again. I need to save him because he never had to jump but he didn't know it until I told him. I couldn't get here in time, I couldn't save him in time, and there's never enough of it, time. I'm always needing more and I didn't realize that there would be a time when I couldn't save Tate.

I land in an embrace of arms and I'm screeching, struggling to get free. "NO, NO, NO," I shout, desperate. My face is damp from tears and I'm sobbing, kicking to get free. "TATE," I cry. Tate was supposed to save me and I was supposed to save him and if it's like this then I'm all alone. I can't be alone. He can't leave without me. Desperately, I bite at the hand that has pulled me off of the bridge like a little kid trying to break free. I leave holes in his arms and he bleeds and his blood is all over me but he does not let me go.

"Tate, please, Tate," I whimper pathetically.

Tate would be dead by now. The water would have swallowed him whole. I thought I could save him. I thought I could keep him safe from the bridge and the river and the water like before but I can't. I can't get anything right tonight. Tonight? I blink through my tears up at the sun above me. Today. It's the day or the night but there are stars and they are beautiful but Tate won't ever know them again and oh god please, please please please, why do the important ones always die on me?

Without me?

My cries for Tate turn into sobs and my whole body hurts with the pain that the needle brought to me and it burns like fire so bad that I bite into my lip. It's worse than the time my father cut my face open with his knife and worse than the pain of Sean dying on me and leaving me with a mom and dad who can't remember me or just refuse to. I'm still struggling to get out of the grasp of whoever it is who has saved me and for a moment I think it must be Sean again but I left him back at the house with mom and dad and I don't think he could have followed me.

Whoever it is, they've damned me.

"No no no no no," I say between sobs, "My friend, my friend, he was on the railing, he was on the railing and he fell, I couldn't get to him in time, I wasn't fast enough, oh god, Tate, please, Tate." My words turn into shouting and I go limp in the embrace of the person who pulled me away but I'm so full of sorrow, oh my sweet, I am so heavy with it that I cannot stand, "You were supposed to wait for me, Tate why didn't you wait?" I ask the dead man and I see him again, there he is on the railing and there he is falling and I shout and I bite and I struggle.

I'm going to reach him this time, I'm not going to let him go.

The world spins in on itself and I'm nearly thrown off of the planet. Stars swim above my head and they disappear and I'm looking at concrete and I'm looking at Tate.

Tate?

He's got his arms wrapped around me like I'm the one who's drowning and things suddenly feel so much more vast, so much more endless. I crane my neck around to look at the railing of the bridge but three is no one there and all I can hear is rushing water but I swear to god that that was him up there on that railing, I know it was him because I'd know that head of hair anywhere and I don't understand? Confusion paints my insides a vibrant blue and I turn my head back around full circle to look at Tate again. "Tate?" I ask, and one of my tears drips onto his cheek and makes a ripple in his skin and I wonder if we're all just puddles today.

"Tate, I saw you?" I try to tell him but it turns into a question. Uncertainly, my hands find his face and then his hair and then the back of his head and his neck and he is s solid like wooden doors on a factory and he is so here beneath me and I don't understand. My face screws up and I try to put two and two together but the addition sign keeps running away from me and I'm running down a parallel road equal in width. He presses his forehead to mine and I don't take my eyes off of him or at least I try to but it's like he's swimming and we're underwater because his voice is muted and he sounds like drowning.

Or like I'm drowning?

(Did I make it down to the deep?)

"You jumped?" I ask him as if to confirm it but he's here. I don;t understand how but he's here and he's not even wet and the floor falls away beneath the two of us and suddenly we're in the stars and it's all around. We're in space but there's no air in space I know it because of science and we're breathing still, we're breathing. I cup his face in my hands, too tightly and I press my forehead back into his and I've never been so relieved in my life. It hurts like knives in my skin to think about him dead and I don't know how but he isn't. "You've gotta get out of the river Tate," I tell him off like how my mother used to when she still knew me, "It's dangerous, you're gonna drown."

I don't know how to keep him with me. For all of my words I am a hopeless mess and I've never learned how to keep a person with me,not once. All I can do is hold on tightly and now there is no bridge, there are stars and the sun, bright and hot and just us. Pain is relevant but so unnecessary that I stow it away, down with my feet in my shoes and we glide here, alone and restless and alive here.

I'm so glad to have found him and if we are dead then we are together and it's okay. My chances of survival were always low anyway. "It's okay Tate," I tell him as the current sweeps us away and beneath the fence and down to the sea and into the waves to smash against rocks, "I've got you now."

Tate is crying.

What's he doing that for?

I don't know.

I lift my head away from his and it's like trying to move the world over. I think that someone put rocks in me while I wasn't looking and suddenly we are back on concrete and it's cold out but my body is numb, I can't feel a goddamned thing, not one thing. It's the most blissful feeling in the world, like begin crafted from air. I'm going to float away. I shut my eyes thoughtfully, concentrating on the feeling of staying. It's because I want to stay here, with Tate and in the distance my home awaits me but it is dark there, it is cold there and it hurts there.

It is warm here, with Tate. I like the sound of his voice in my ear and the smell of him. It wafts through the night sky and paints pictures with smells and there's smoke there, in the scent of him. Like the start of an Autumn day, and it's like the woods on this bridge, the trees sprout up, iron things with snarling branches that catch at hands and clothes, ensnaring him and I. He smells nice, like a shower and I know that I don't. I wasn't able to pay the water bill this month. We get our water from the river and we boil it on the stove.

I smell like sweat and I smell like fear.

Fear is tart on the tongue and freezing to touch and it's on my skin, burning like wildfire and I see the icy blue flames, licking at Tate's shirt, begging to burn him up too but I hold them back. I reign them in absentmindedly, collecting them in the bottom half of my lungs. He tilt ourselves at a ninety degree angle from the ground and he steadies me, aligning my vertebrae in a straight line. The sun disappears, trading spots with the moon and the night is here and I didn't know it but maybe it was here all along.

He kisses me then and I nearly let out a cry against his mouth because his lips taste like salt but if he opens his mouth too wide the ocean will drown him but then I forget. It's because of his lips. They take up every space in my head and when he pulls away I let out a sorrowful sigh and my lips chase his but he's taken them too far from me and I can't find them. He reaches forward then and my breathing grows more shallow and quick as Tate grasps the needle and tugs at it and it's a force that sends me forward and him back like a sword pulled from a stone.

And just like that, he's a king.

I slump forwards and land against him and he's steady like a wall. I read about a wall once, a big one made from stone and and bodies. It was long as the borders of the country it surrounded and I never really figured out if the wall was meant to keep people out or in because it never really said but I feel like a country in this moment. I shut my eyes and let my head rest on Tate's shoulder and he runs his hand through my hair again and again and again and it feels good and safe and warm.

"It's ok, I can't feel a thing," I say against his neck and I kiss the skin there because it's close and it's calling my name, "Nothing hurts." I curl my hands up in his shirt and sigh happily, glad that he's safe, glad that we aren't drowning. I'm glad that he's with me.

He draws maps onto my back and traces the constellations from above us and I feel changed. Crop circles make me wary and I don't need anyone else discovering me due to the messages he paints there, but it's soothing. He's carving me into something new. I feel like I could sleep here, on his shoulder, face in his neck and I nearly let the earth fall completely away beneath my weak knees but I know that I can't, that it's dangerous to do so but I can't remember just why.

I'm trying so hard to focus on his face in front of mine but I can't linger here, in his arms. My head is running away from me and I forget about my feet, I leave them behind, they're only slowing us down anyway. His words break through my barriers easily enough, I hear the question in them, the tones of fear and worry and I feel sick about it, or maybe it's the drug doing that. I never wanted Tate to worry about me. He was the desperate one on the bridge- I turn my head to look at the railing again but he isn't on it -I'm the one who coaxes him off of the railing. I'm the one who cares for him and so this isn't right.

I focus on the warmth of his hand on my chin, and let my head rest in it, unable to hold it up fully with my own strength. I've been trying but my head just keeps nodding forwards, as if I used all of my energy just to get here, to the bridge. Someone has buried my bones twenty thousand leagues under the sea and my skin is desperate to join them.

I know who did this to me and I forgot that Tate doesn't know about my parents, about why I blow things up, about who I am and what I do and it's odd. I can't remember the last time I met someone who didn't look at me with pity because they knew I was going home to a father who used me as a punching bag. I know my ribs should be killing me right now, that a bruise must have formed on my lower torso from the kicking I took but I can't feel it. I feel so light empty of anything and it's so blissful that I nearly understand why Mom and Dad take this shit all of the time.

"Dad did it," I tell him this as if he should know.

My eyes roam over his features and I smile slightly, trying to lighten the moment so that Tate can stop worrying about me because I don't plan on being dead tomorrow so we're going to be okay. I raise a hand, to smooth his hair back into place and that's when my eyes catch on the movement behind him, so threatening and so there.

Two men, wearing all black and they've got a gun and I watch them aim it right at Tate's back and I watch as they shoot and the bullet flies and I scream, "NO, TATE, LOOK OUT," all at once and I try to push Tate down to the ground but I'm too slow. I'm too slow and the bullet goes right into his back and red blooms on his white shirt like ink in water and I shout, again and I scream and scrabble at his clothing and I look up but the men are running away and away and they are far and Tate is dying again. He's dying again, beneath me.

"No, NO!" I shout, wanting to be angry but only managing to sound pathetic beneath my loud cries, "We can fix this." I pull up his shirt to see the wound and it looks so bad, like someone has gouged out his insides and there is red everywhere, hot and sticky and I can barely see trough my tears and my arms feel heavy as I pull my scarf from around my neck and press it firmly against his stomach in an effort to stop the bleeding. "Stop it Tate," I sob out, "Stop dying on me."

But my scarf becomes damp with his blood too quickly.

My shoulders shake and I desperately attempt to remember any of the first aid that Old Nan has taught me but none of it comes to mind. Tate is dying and there is nothing that I can do. There never is. I don't know what I'm trying to kid myself for. People die everyday. Sean died. He died even though he'd said that he'd always be around watching over me but he hasn't been, not for years. He lied to me about surviving together because he isn't here. Tate can't go too because I've only just found him and I haven't even been able to sleep with him yet and I can't even appreciate his bare torso because he's dying.

His blood runs red and hot beneath my fingers and they slip against his skin and Tate looks so scared. This is my fault. My fault. It echoes and it taunts me and I can hear Tate, he's shouting at me and he's begging me, asking me why I did this to him and I shut my eyes, I don't know what to say to him. Snot drips from my nose and I duck my head down to my chest, trying to hide the sobs but my whole body shakes with them. My fault, my fault, my fault because Tate wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me but I'm the asshole that moves too fast and hit on him. I shouldn't have hit on him because I know my life and I know that people die and I'm often one of the linking causes.

My fault my fault my fault my fau-

He catches at my wrist with more strength than I'd expect a dying man to have and I struggle weakly, trying to pull away because we can't take pressure off of the wound yet. "Nemo, I'm not dying. Look," he says and he moves my scarf out of the way and my breath hitches. The wound looks so bad that my face screws up and a wave of fresh sobs escapes from between my lips. I press my hands against my chest as if to hold my heart inside of me. Tate is so out of it that he can't even see he's dy-

He runs his hand over his skin and when he pulls his hand away, it's gone. Confusion hits me like a freight train and I press my hands to his skin, feeling the firmness of it. There's no hole in him, none at all. I spread my fingers over his abdomen and no matter how much space I take up, I don't feel anything. I lift my hands away and turn them over and horror grips me as I look at them. They are so slick with his blood that it oozes red and thick between my fingers. I clench them and it drips onto his skin and it won't go away, it won't get off of me. "But the blood?" I ask desperately because he says he isn't hurt and if he isn't then why is there so much blood?

I don't understand.

I wipe at my eyes with the backs of my hands as he promises me that he's not going anywhere but I don't know how I can trust him on that. He's already tried to leave me twice tonight. I feel like all of my insides are leaking out through my eyes and I've got no energy left inside of me. My heart is beating a mile a minute, the fear is taking me away in pieces, disconnecting from my mainland and taking me out to sea. The world grows more confusing and terrifying each minute and I don't know how to tell tate that we'll be okay when I don't even know where the hell we are. I can't remember how we got into the woods, but it must have been when we fell into the river.

"We've got to get out of here Tate," I tell him, wiping my hands off on the grass. When I pull them away they are scraped and raw.

I'm thoughtful as he wipes my hands on his shirt, quiet. I stain the white blue and all the blood that was there drips off of the white and leaks into the grass, feeding it. It makes the grass turn purple. I don't know if Tate is aware of the art he's doing but I fall in love with him over it. He makes things good just by breathing but somehow I don't think that he knows this. I open my mouth to tell him but suddenly I have a problem with my lips. They don't cooperate. With great care, I hook my pointer finger into the corner of my mouth, where the scar is rough and and angry, pulling further to open my mouth wide. To get it working again.

It's like my heart has stopped beating with the danger that has passed. I don't understand where the blood has gone but Tate says he's okay and because he seems like an honest fellow I trust him. He's really mad about my hands though, which is silly. They're only hands after all, and I have three other sets. It's a wasteful outlook, especially coming from a slums brat but I'm cheerful right now because no one is currently trying to kill Tate.

He pushes me then and because I have no resolve in me to stay sitting, I fall backwards, landing on my back with a thud that knocks the air out of me. I watch as it leaves in confusion, eyes watering with it. It doesn't hurt but it does take a second to remember how to breath in. Tate is standing now and also seems very tall from down here. I feel limp and tired and heavy. All the energy seems to have come out of me and I wonder if it's because of the needle that was in my chest or if my resolve is simply gone now that Tate's okay. I think I'm lying in a puddle of my own thoughts because they tackle me all at once and thinking takes so long that the sun sets and rises twice before I can figure out what Tate is saying to me.

"Of course I can walk," I say, trying to sound annoyed but my voice comes flat and heavy to my ears and I wonder if I somehow misplaced the melody again. I'm always losing it. "How do you think I got here?" I continue and then I realize that I don't actually have the foggiest idea of how I ended up here in the desert but it's always good to act tough. Sean taught me that. He was always chalk full of good street knowledge.

With a grunt of effort, I pull myself up to a sitting position, or maybe it's Tate who does that as he traces my collarbones with expert precision. I don't know. I guess it was a team effort. It's then that I notice that I don't have any feet. My legs end in stumps at my ankles and all I can do is roll my eyes and sigh, "Oh hell, Tate, they're always running off." I can't very well walk on my stumps. I don't know why my feet always insist on leaving without me but that's the joy of having such a curious body I suppose. "Have you seen my feet around anywhere?" I ask him, gaze roaming over his features, unable to focus on just one of him.

He offers to carry me and I suppose it's a good idea. We can always search for my feet tomorrow, when there's more light to shed on the situation. So gratefully, I hook my arms around his neck in response. "Yeah okay but Tate you can't carry all of me at once, i'm too heavy so do it in trips, okay?" I advise him.