BLAKE
It was Saturday. Creepy-men-with-boxes-would-move-boxes-in-Pontchartrain-beach-day.
Blake stood outside Andy's room, balancing on one foot, then the other.
He didn't want to do this alone. He knew Olivia had done dangerous things like this before, all by herself, but he had never done that, and he never wanted to.
He clenched his hands together. I'm doing this for Elijah, he thought to himself, and I will not drag Andy into this, and he closed his eyes and forced himself to imagine Elijah in an orange jumpsuit, and then his heart caved in, and he turned away from Andy's door and went to get a flashlight.
Besides never wanting to get Andy hurt, Blake couldn't exactly ask anything of him at the moment. Since that night ten days ago, he had been skirting around Andy, awkwardly making horrible excuses whenever Andy appeared and disappearing as soon as possible.
Logan had told him to let it be what it was, and Blake wanted so badly to do that, but he knew what happened to people who knew too much. He had seen the blood drenching Logan's clothes when Olivia had been shot last year.
There was no way he would put someone in that position again.
Blake finished pulling on his shoes and very quietly pulled Andy's keys from the hook at the door, silently apologizing profusely and promising to make it up to him later.
It was dark outside. Blake made his way to Andy's car and was just unlocking it when he heard a disembodied voice near his ear.
"Going somewhere?"
Blake let out a startled scream and then clutched his chest when he realized who it was, standing next to his car. "Dammit, Andy," Blake rasped, trying to hold in his weak heart. "I almost died." He took a deep breath and pressed both forearms and his forehead into the car hood. "Actually, I think I did die and then my heart restarted." He wheezed. "Oh, god, I think I'm going to die."
"How many times dying is that now?"
"Forty million."
"I have CPR training."
Blake immediately unfolded himself off the car and backed away three feet. "That will be unnecessary, thank you very much."
There was a hint of a smile on Andy's face in the dark. He held out his hand. "Are you going to give me my keys or what?"
Blake held the keys in his fist tightly and shook his head.
"Come on, Blake."
"I just need it for a little bit. I'll be back soon."
"I know where you're going. So if you're going, I'm going too."
Blake's heartbeat sped up to the rate of one minute ago. He could hear it in his ears. This could not be happening. He was not going to get Andy mixed up in this. He was not going to lose him.
He had to get rid of him.
"Fine," he said, tossing him the keys. "I'm not going."
Andy raised an eyebrow. "Why do I feel like you're lying?"
"I'm not."
"Why do I feel like you're going to take an Uber as soon as we go back upstairs to the apartment?"
Blake's face heated like a candle in the darkness. "I'm not!" he protested much too loudly.
Andy unlocked the car, opened the driver's door, and sighed. "Get in, Blake. There is no way you're going alone."
Blake wished he was braver because if he was, he would've denied ever wanting to go back to Pontchartrain Beach and go back into the apartment with Andy and find a way to get there by himself later.
But he was scared, and he didn't want to do this alone.
So he got in the car.
"Same address as last time?"
Blake clutched his hands to his knees and desperately hoped he wasn't making a huge mistake. Please let him be okay, he begged into the universe if anyone was listening.
"Yes," he said.
*****
The majority of the car ride went by in absolute silence.
Now Blake was actually positively sure he would die.
Going from kissing Andy to not speaking to him for a week to being enclosed in a three feet distance with him in complete absolute silence?
He should've written out a will before going through with this.
The worst thing was, he could see Andy's facial expression out of the corner of his eye, and sometimes Andy would take a little breath to say something and then stop, and then Blake would get all tense and anxious about what it was. Andy wouldn't say anything, and Blake would sit in agony, wanting to open the car window and throw himself out of it from the awkwardness of it all.
He knew he wasn't being fair to Andy. It wasn't for lack of trying on Andy's part that they hadn't talked. He'd tried to talk to Blake multiple times, and Blake was the one who would escape each time.
Now, however, there was nowhere else to go.
Blake had dug this hole all by himself.
Andy took another deep breath and Blake braced himself against his words.
"Do you really think this is going to help get Elijah out of jail?"
Oh. That wasn't too bad.
"I don't know," Blake admitted. "I hope so. I don't really know what I'm expecting to find."
"Do you think maybe we should call the police?"
Olivia's fear of the police had been correctly placed where they lived before. Was it okay to tell them now? Would they help them? Would they just make it worse for Elijah?"
"I think I'd better see what's happening first," Blake said. He chewed his lip. "Sorry, I know this isn't helping."
"Not really."
Blake sighed and leaned his head against the car window. What did he even expect to find? The mystery man Peters? The important hard drives they'd said they'd be moving? Some sort of large smuggling ring that he would jump in and take apart with his bare hands?
Was he stupid?
"Was it - was it really that bad?" Andy cut into his morbid line of thinking.
"Was what bad?" Blake asked, his mind going to all of the horrible things the Sons of Solomon had done.
"Kissing me."
The phantom pressure of Andy's hot lips melting against his own made his face flush.
"W-why...what was... bad?" Blake stammered.
"Did you not like it?" Andy looked straight ahead out the windshield. "You can tell me if it was weird and you're not into it but don't - I don't want to - you're avoiding me and I feel like shit about this whole thing."
Blake hated hearing Andy so upset when he didn't hate it at all, when really, Blake wanted to kiss him, over and over again. He wanted to see Andy's smile and he wanted to slide his fingers into his and he wanted to talk to him about anything and everything they had ever dreamed of.
But the cold hard feeling of dread resting like a bowling ball in his stomach would not go away.
"Blake?"
If you like him, then maybe...just let it be what it is, Logan had told him. Don't fight it if it makes you happy right here, right now.
The pit of unease didn't dissipate, but Blake had been waiting for some sort of resolution to his problems. Maybe Andy bringing this up was the world's way of forcing him to confront it.
He turned to face Andy, and he started with the easiest, most simplest thing. "I didn't hate it," he said slowly, his face warming when Andy's expression changed. "I liked it. And I like you."
Andy narrowed his eyes. "Then what's - what's the hang up?"
"My family..." He hesitated. He loved his family. He loved them to death. He would never trade them for another one. But it came with a cost. "My family is not normal, Andy."
"Why? Are you aliens or something?"
"Andy," Blake grumbled.
"Demigods? Wizards? Can you not be with me if I'm a Muggle?"
Blake rolled his eyes. "I would go out with you even if I was a wizard."
"Then is your family against you dating another guy?"
"No, that's not a problem."
"Then what's the problem?" Andy looked frustrated now. "Are you dating somebody else?"
"No! God, no."
Andy didn't say anything else. Blake stayed silent. Trees and houses and cars went by outside. Blake was beginning to get very sweaty. Andy was going to be mad at him, and Blake didn't want Andy to be mad at him. He wanted them to be friends, forever.
"Andy, we-" Blake's voice caught in his throat and he swallowed. He took a shallow breath. He had to give him something. He couldn't leave Andy thinking that he hated him, or that there was no reason why he didn't want to be with him. Even if it scared him away, he wouldn't leave him on edge, wondering what went wrong.
"We...we're going to a random dangerous thing in the middle of the night because of me," he said slowly. "That's me. That's what my family is mixed up in. We're in way, way over our heads. Anybody who knows us will end up in big trouble."
There was silence between them. The car engine rolled on under them, humming beneath their seats. Blake closed his eyes and waited for Andy to stop the car and tell him to get out.
"So what?"
Blake blinked. That was not the reaction he was expecting. "So what?" he repeated.
"You heard me."
Frustration welled up in his chest. "So you could die!" he said. "And I'm not overdoing it! I'm serious!"
Andy casually turned down the correct road for the beach. Blake wanted to grab him and shake him by the shoulders. This was stupid. Andy needed to care about his own life so he could make sure his sister was okay. If nothing else, Andy needed to care about himself so that he was okay.
"I'm serious," Blake repeated.
Andy clenched his jaw. "Then am I just going to have to wait for you to die?" he snapped.
Blake was a bit taken aback by his anger. "I'm not dying."
"Then what is all of this? Are you or are you not? Why is it that you can handle this and I can't?"
"I'm already in this!" Blake hardly ever got angry, but Andy was really not seeing the gravity of this situation. He didn't understand anything. "That doesn't mean I have to put you in danger too!"
"I'm here now, aren't I? We've done this once before, and now we're here again, and you're telling me you'd rather I wasn't here?"
"That's not what I mean!"
"Then what do you mean?" Andy demanded. He stopped the car a little bit up the street from where they had parked before. He waved a hand to the darkened buildings around them, the creepy warehouse that they had seen people coming in and out of last week. "Do you want me here or not?"
"I don't know!"
Blake wrenched open the car door and got out of the car, finally - finally. He leaned back against it, his head in his hands, his heart aching.
The night was already off to a not-so-promising start.
I apologize for my subpar writing and this lackluster chapter ending, but also I've gotten really busy and when I get a break I kind of just become a potato and watch Netflix.
Anyways, please stay tuned. Another chapter is in the works. I have no idea where my outline is but I feel like we're coming to the last arc of the book.
For next time: what is happening with the other three siblings...