A knock went off on his door and Z's voice said, "Can I come in?"
Phury stuffed the drawing into the belly of the firearms book. "Yeah."
Z walked in and didn't say another word. With his hands on his hips, he paced back and forth, back and forth, at the end of the bed. Phury waited, lighting up another blunt and tracking his identical twin as Z wore out the carpet.
You didn't push Z to talk any more than you'd try to coerce a fish onto the business end of a hook with a lot of chatter. Silence was the only lure that worked.
Finally the brother stopped. "She's bleeding."
Phury's heart jumped, and he splayed his hand out over the cover of the book. "How much and for how long?"
"She's been hiding it from me, so I don't know."
"How'd you find out?"
"I found a thing of Always stuffed in the back of the cabinet right next to the toilet."
"Maybe they're old."
"Last time when I got my buzz razor out, they weren't there."
Shit. "She has to go to Havers's, then."
"Her next appointment isn't for a week." Z started up with the pacing again. "I know she's not telling me because she's afraid I'll freak out."
"Maybe what you found is being used for another reason?"
Z stopped. "Oh, yeah. Right. Because those things are multifunctional. Like Q-tips or some shit. Look, would you talk to her?"
"What?" Phury quickly took a drag. "This is private. Between you and her."
Z scrubbed the top of his skull-trimmed head. "You're better with shit like this than I am. The last thing she needs is for me to break down in front of her, or worse, yell at her because I'm scared to death and not being reasonable."
Phury tried to take a deep breath, but he could barely get the air down his windpipe. He so wanted to get involved. He wanted to walk down the hall of statues to the pair's room and sit Bella down and get the story out of her. He wanted to be a hero. But it was not his place.
"You're her hellren. You need to do the talking." Phury stabbed out the last half inch of the blunt, rolled up a new one, and flipped open his lighter. The flint wheel made a rasping noise as the flame jumped up. "You can do it."
Zsadist cursed, paced some more, then eventually headed for the door. "Talking about this whole pregnancy thing reminds me that if I lose her, I'm fucked. I feel so goddamned powerless."
After his twin took off, Phury let his head fall back. As he smoked, he watched the blunt's lit tip flare and wondered idly if it was like an orgasm for the hand-rolled.
Jesus. If Bella was lost, both he and Z were going to go into a tailspin the likes of which males didn't come out of.
As the thought occurred to him, he felt guilty. He really shouldn't care that much about his twin's female.
As anxiety made him feel like he'd swallowed a swarm of locusts, he smoked his way through the emotion until he caught sight of the clock. Shit. He had to teach a class on firearms in an hour. He'd better hit the shower and try to get sober.#p#分页标题#e#
John woke up confused, vaguely aware that his face hurt and that there was some kind of bleating going off in his room.
He lifted his head out of his notebook and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The spiral binding had left behind a pattern of dents that made him think of Warf from Star Trek TNG. And the noise was the alarm clock.
Three fifty in the afternoon. Classes started at four P.M.
John got up from the desk, wobbled into the bathroom, and stood over the toilet. When that felt too much like work, he turned around and sat down.
God, he was exhausted. He'd spent the last couple of months sleeping in Tohr's chair in the training center's office, but after Wrath had put his foot down and moved John up to the big house, he'd been back in a real bed. You'd think he'd be feeling great with all that legroom. Instead, he was whipped.
After he flushed, he turned on the lights and winced in the glare. Damn. Bad idea to lose the darkness, and not just because his eyes were killing him. Standing beneath the recessed lighting his little body looked horrible, nothing but pale skin over evident bone. With a grimace, he covered up his thumb-sized sex with his hand so he didn't have to look at the thing and killed the lights.
There was no time for a shower. Quick brush of the teeth, little splash action on the puss with some water, and he didn't bother with his hair.
Out in his bedroom he just wanted to go back between the sheets, but he pulled on jeans that were junior-sized and frowned as he zipped up the fly. The things were loose on his hips, baggy though he'd been trying to eat.
Great. Instead of going through the transition, he was shrinking.
As another round of what-if-it-never-comes-for-me? rolled him over, his eyebrows started to pound. Crap. He felt like there was a little man with a hammer in each of his eye sockets, bashing the shit out of his optic nerve.