Pacifier

🌿Della🍒

I lay flat along the bottom of his bed, ear to the mattress staring dead eyed at my reflection in the mirror.

I was lying on my back, ribs rising and falling slowly like my chest as I breathed. Trying my best to breath slowly. If I let myself panic my breathing shallowed and dizzied me. I  couldn't afford to be dizzy, i couldnt afford to pass out if I had to stand too quickly. I couldn't afford not to be able to at least try if anyone I didn't recognise walked through Sam's bedroom door. If anyone I recognised to be bad walked up to me, stood above me and smirked.

Like he was smirking now.

"Elle," he started, a light in his eyes only threatened by the stubbornly vacant glaze in mine. His jeans blocked my reflection now but that didn't make me turn to look up at him, "Elle you need to eat..." he said, just the same as he had said every day to me this week, just the same way.

He always started optimistic, this cheeky teenage smile I could only imagine he'd practiced in his youth for exactly these kind of situations. Tricks, lies and traps.

But the human body can survive for 3 weeks without food, so I knew he was wrong. I didn't need to eat. Not yet. And I was playing a game too.

If he was really on my brothers side he wouldn't let me starve. Larry wouldn't let someone starve me. I could push him into a corner, i didnt even have to look at him to do.

"When was the last time you ate? Before I picked you up? Had you had your tea?"

"Call Larry," i said, my voice tired and flat sounding.

"You know I can't do that lass," he sighed crouching down so that his eyes were level with mine. Blue and pooling with worry.

It made me wonder who was controlling him, who was pulling his strings and what would happen to him if anything happened to me.

His eyes remained locked with mine, he was unafraid to let me read them, to let me see his concern. It made me question his motives because that wasn't how Bottlemen played this sort of game.

Id only ever been forced to look into Van Mccanns eyes once. He'd wanted answers to questions about boys we went to school with and when at first I'd tried to weasle out of it, young and nervous and scared to admit that actually I didn't really know, he had held my cheeks between his thumb and forefinger, squeezed my jawbone just firm enough to communicate the severity of the situation, and he had stared me down with dead eyes. Blue like ice. Blank. Like a void. I'd looked into his eyes in hopes of finding some reassurance or some reasons but he'd given me nothing. His eyes had struck fear, they'd pushed me into a corner. I'd been forced to accept that it was either speak or remain, stuck, struggling to hold his gaze, terrified of the consequences.

Id lasted all of 10 seconds and hated myself for it ever since.

But Sam's eyes weren't like that at all.

They were serious, threatening a little perhaps, they sent a chill down my spine but not the same kind of chill.
Because there was a slither of sympathy, a slither of understanding. And that worry, that fear.

I was good at reading eyes, good at noticing the subtle details in people which could tell you all the things they weren't. Because no one had ever told me anything. I'd had to get good at that.

And now I was starring into Sams eyes and I could tell.

That fear wasn't fear for him but fear for me.

Still whether he was scared for me or not, he wasn't a bottleman and I couldn't give in to him.

So I remained quiet, tried to stare straight through him, eyes dead like a bottleman because even if they'd stopped watching my house, even if they'd cut me off, I was still one of them.