Page 111 of Icarus

“I don’t think my old dose works the way it used to,” Helios murmured. “I only took half. I’m sorry.”

Icarus was starting to tremble. He paused, clenched his eyes shut tight, and held his breath, then let it out. Listened for where Mr. Black was in the house. He could still hear him tearing about outside. They had time for this. This needed to be gentle.

He put a hand on Helios’s cheek and put as much tenderness into his voice as he could manage.

“What did you take?”

“Methadone. Hid some in the lining of my shoes.” Helios giggled. “For emergencies. Some emergency, huh? I think my ribs are broken, not bruised.”

Icarus sighed in relief. Okay. Jesus fucking Christ. Terrible timing, but not nearly as bad as he’d thought. “That’s okay, we can deal with that later. I’m not upset. But now we have to take the bus to the hospital,” he said softly.

“I love you, Icarus,” Helios said suddenly. “I love you so much.”

The back door slammed and they both jumped.

Icarus gritted his teeth. “Yeah yeah, I love you too. Come on, we’ve got to go to your closet.”

The last place he assumed Mr. Black would be searching for Angus was Helios’s room. He could still hear commotion, but it was heading away from him, not toward him.

To Icarus’s immense reassurance, Helios could walk unassisted, even if he was slow and kind of hunched over. Icarus took the flashlight from the bedside and put it on the floor, then unwrapped the insulation and began stapling it to the wall of the closet until it covered all the wall that he could reach. He pushed the remaining insulation under the crack of the door and pulled out the rest of the supplies.

“He never checked to see if I was okay afterward. He started leaving food outside my room instead of seeing if I could come downstairs,” Helios said at a normal speaking volume.

“Please be quiet,” Icarus hissed.

He cracked the closet door open and felt around on the wall outside of it until he found an outlet for the handsaw and plugged it in. Then he grabbed Helios’s leg, pushed the tracker up as far as it would go, and started wrapping Helios’s ankle in thick rubber.

“That hurts,” Helios whined.

Icarus ignored him. He pushed the tracker over the protective rubber sheath and picked up the handsaw.

“Helios,” he whispered. “If you move, I swear to god.”

“What?”

He grabbed Helios by the chin, hard, meeting his hazy eyes. “I need you to stay still or I’ll accidentally cut off your fucking ankle. Please for the love of god don’t flinch,” he said as loud as he dared.

Helios swallowed hard and nodded.

Icarus braced one knee against Helios’s foot and steadied his arm against his thigh. He listened. Mr. Black was still in the yellow wing on the first floor. They had time and distance, but not nearly enough of it.

Icarus looked up at the ceiling.

“Domine, exaudi vocem meam: Fiant aures tuae intendentes,

in vocem deprecationis meae. Please.”

Then, he turned the handsaw on.

Helice

Icarus tried not to speed up the process out of anxiety. Slow and steady was best. He tried not to think about Helios staring at him, the blood pumping through Helios’s veins. His delicate ankles. Ankles that Helios needed to walk, to run, to dance.

The sparks were much brighter in this little dark room, the sound much louder than they had been behind the hardware store parking lot.

The whine of steel against steel gave way to another sound and Icarus turned off the saw immediately.

Sweat dripped into his eye and he wiped it away. There was a narrow band of steel left, with a wire beneath it. On either side of it, the saw had torn into the rubber in deep gouges. But Icarus didn’t see any skin; he didn’t see any blood.