*Trigger warning: conversation about self harm. Read someplace safe, lovelies, you are loved.*

{Cary}

It felt good to lather up that evening in Tru's tiny shower, to get the dirt off his hands and arms, shampoo the sweat out of his hair and let the water sluice over his exhausted body. Cary sighed deeply as he stepped out, finally clean. He towelled off, catching a look at himself in the mirror. Droplets of water tracked down the reflection of his face like tears.

He could hold his own eyes steadily: the scars on the outside of him didn't matter so much—he knew who he was on the inside now. Years of abuse had knotted him into someone who brought hurt to others and himself—but his original shape, the person he was becoming again, was someone who loved and protected others like he had loved and protected his sister when they were small. This knowledge filled his body and made him aware of the length of his arms, the nimbleness of his fingers, the strength of his back—in a way he had never been able to appreciate before.

Jon was sitting in the hall, waiting with his clean change of clothes bundled against his stomach. He ducked into the bathroom as soon as Cary came out in his towel. Cary found the room clean and the blankets tidied. His drawing book was arranged on the pillow. He changed into pyjama pants and stretched on the bed, exhaustion weighing him down.

He paged through his drawings, trying to see them how Jon must have seen them. He realized where Jon's apology had come from—it was there on the page, how isolated Cary had been, how close to a knife edge he'd lived day to day through those long, lonely weeks. He breathed out slowly and closed his eyes. He didn't have words for how good it had felt to hear Jon say that he respected him and wanted him as a friend again. The little criticisms and snide remarks—even just the way Jon had looked at him—had hurt more than he'd been willing to admit. The apology felt like medicine cream, taking the sting out of that wound. Maybe there wouldn't even be a scar.

Jon reappeared, fully dressed, his hair wet and flopping over his forehead. Cary sat up. "You want the bed?"

"You take it. I'm okay." Jon touched his upper rib self-consciously. "Healed up, pretty much. You should have a turn."

Cary slid between the sheets with a sigh. He wasn't going to argue.

Jon paced a step, twitching the blankets back on the floor, but not settling. "You said you...wanted to check my cuts?"

"Oh, yeah," Cary's sleepy voice rumbled in his chest. "You wash them?" Jon was silent, and Cary opened his eyes to look at him.

Jon pulled up his shirt sleeve, uncovering the old cuts, his face pale and his fingers pressing white marks into his skin. Then, shutting his eyes, he lifted the hem of his shirt as well. Cary sat up, biting back a sharp exclamation. There were new cuts repeating down the side of Jon's stomach, like an angry red arrow ending just below his waist.

Cary hid his face, rummaging under the bed for his backpack with first aid supplies, blinking his stinging eyes. "Sit." The tears he wouldn't cry roughened his voice. The bed dipped as Jon sat on the edge. He twitched away from Cary, taking the tube of cream to smear medicine over his stomach himself, then tugging his shirt down and handing it back without looking at him.

"You're gonna have to wear your pants low," Cary said. "Or those will rub." Jon was silent, wiping his fingers on the sheet. Cary pushed Jon's sleeve up his arm, re-applying the cream to the cuts there. Jon kept his face turned away, his ears hot and red. "These are healing. If you leave them a day or two," Cary said. He looked at the side of Jon's face, his fingers tightening a moment on his arm, wishing he could make his friend let them close and heal.

Jon shook him off, getting up to snap the light off and crawling into his nest of blankets without a word.

Cary fumbled with his backpack in the sudden darkness, returning the supplies to a pocket and zipping them in securely. Moments when his own mother had silently tended his broken skin, and he had silently twitched his clothes down to cover it when she was done, rose like ghosts to stand in the room with him. All he could think to say was what Kadee had asked him days earlier: "You going to be okay tonight?"

"Yeah. That was yesterday." Jon's voice was rubbed soft.

Cary sat still, tasting metal in his mouth. It was probably too much to ask, but he couldn't keep silent. He wasn't the person he used to be. "You have the sharp on you?"

"I'll be okay," Jon said again.

Cary rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the shape of his cheekbones, the soft brush of his eyelashes and eyebrows. His breath was shaking in a way he recognized as the start of an anxiety attack. He scrubbed his hands into his hair, working his fingers deep into the damp tangle, trying to dial the panic down, tick by tick, by grounding himself with the feel of his hair against his skin, the pressure of his fingers against his scalp.

"Jon, can you pray?" he asked shakily, like it was months ago and this was the same Jon who had said their bedtime prayer each night, when Cary was still wearing bruises all over his body.

"No." Jon's voice was small. "You do it."

Cary pressed his fingers against the base of his neck, dug the soles of his bare feet against the worn carpet and counted the heartbeats shaking his chest. He thought of Split-lip's face bent over him and managed to speak the words of the prayer Pete used to pray for them. It felt like a lifetime ago. "Dear Jesus, give us a good sleep with no bad dreams. Spread your tent of peace and love over us while we sleep. Amen."

There was a long silence.

"Can I ask you...?" Jon's voice trailed up.

"Yeah?" Cary was trying to rub the tension out of the muscles bunched in his shoulders.

"Where did Split-lip come from? In your drawings?"

Cary took a slow breath, seeing Split-lip's look touching him across the fire, warm and knowing. "Saw him. After you said to ask Jesus where he was. Met him in the basement—with me. Getting the shit kicked out of him too. All the stuff I drew—I saw him doing that." He rolled his shoulders in a careful stretch and laid his cheek on his knees. Tears had welled up, finally, sliding out of his eyes and taking the toxic edge of his panic with them.

Jon made a soft, strangled noise. "How do you know? How do you know he's like that and you didn't just make him up the way you needed him to be?"

Cary closed his eyes to think, brushing a tear off the edge of his jaw. They were tickling, running over the bridge of his nose, and they made his voice soft. "All I did this summer was work and read the Jesus parts of the Bible. And draw." His laugh hurt his chest. "And watch 'toons with Bea."

Cary hugged his arms against himself. God, he missed Jon's house. He exhaled shakily. "I don't think I could—make Split-lip up if I tried. He did things to take care of me...I didn't even know I needed." He sank into silence a moment, reflecting on how he'd felt when he was drawing, how he'd known he was capturing a true thing. "When I'm drawing, I ask myself—is following what I see him doing making me scared or angry or numbing me out again? I know what that feels like. I never felt loved like I do now. That's new. That's something I couldn't come up with by myself."

There was a long silence. "That's not what I hear." Jon's voice was thin. "When I pray—" The word broke off, and when he spoke again, it was flat and dull. "Cutting hurts less. I guess that's just what I get."

"That can't be right," Cary said, shaken. Jon's ability to pick out Jesus' voice and follow it had been such an essential part of him. "Jesus doesn't want you cutting."

"Cary, don't you get it yet?" The words were muffled. "Jesus doesn't want me—at all. I keep fucking up and he's sick of me. He's not just love—he's holy. There's things he just can't stand to have around."

Cary tasted the salt of tears in his throat, remembering the new cuts in the soft skin of Jon's stomach. "Jon—you're not one of those things. How can you believe that?"

The was a damp, shuddery breath from the bed—the sound of someone trying to bury their tears. "Go to sleep, Cary," Jon whispered. "I told you I wouldn't cut tonight. I promise I won't."

{Mel}

The girls' room was softly lit by a moon-shaped nightlight plugged into the wall next to the dresser. Mel sat between her daughters' beds, Bea's damp hand clasped in hers. Tabitha's expression was relaxed as she watched her mom say their bedtime prayer with her hand tucked between her cheek and her pillow. When Mel breathed "Amen," Bea had her eyes closed and her thumb in her mouth, and Mel thought her littlest was already asleep.

But then Bea stirred, her hand squeezing Mel's. "Mumma?"

"Yes, love?"

"How big is the tent of peace and love?"

Mel laughed softly. "Pretty big. It's made of God's love."

Bea's eyes opened, her forehead wrinkling. "Does it cover my friend Jaqueline's house up the street?"

"Yes, love."

"Even if she says she doesn't believe in God?"

Mel thought for a moment. "God's love doesn't turn on and off like a tap. It's always flowing, like a big river."

"Like Niagara Falls, Bea," Tabitha said. Their family visit to that place of thundering water had been a memorable one.

Bea was quiet, puzzling through this new picture. "Mumma. I just want to be sure: Jon is under the tent of peace and love, right? Even though he's so far away?"

Mel sighed, closing her eyes briefly to lift that tent high in prayer and stretch the edges over her son and Cary, wherever they were. "Yes, honey. Jon is under God's tent. God stretches and stretches so wide so no one is left out. His tent of peace and love stretches as big as the world."

"Big as the galaxy." Tabitha's word was swallowed in a yawn and she turned on her back, pulling her covers up to her chin.

"Big as the universe?" Bea asked.

"Even that big," Mel said. Bea wiggled more deeply into her bed with a satisfied smile, and Mel tucked the blankets more snugly around her body, kissing her forehead. "Sweet dreams, lovelies. See you in the morning."

She heard the squeak of the back screen door and went into the kitchen. Pete was navigating past the table and chairs with his arms full of boxes. He met her eyes briefly over the stack.

"Cleaned out my office," he said. "It's done."

She waited until he had unloaded the boxes in the basement and returned, then asked, "How do you feel about that?"

He took a tight breath, arching his back in a stretch. "All right, I think. I'm not—sorry. To not see any of those people again." His mouth tucked in at the corner, and she thought maybe that wasn't entirely true. "It's a relief to know I don't have to care anymore what their Board thinks of me." His voice was a little flat.

She stepped in and put her arms around him. Pete's body was stiff, and it was a long moment before he exhaled and curled his body around hers.

"God is going to take care of us," she said softly. She felt the trembling in his body as his tension released.

"I know." His voice was low and rough.

She touched the side of his beard as he drew away, then put the kettle on the stove. "Can we talk about the offer on the house?" It had been hanging over them all day: after months of silence, their real estate agent in Ontario had reached out. Someone was finally interested in buying their old house. The idea of being released from those monthly mortgage payments and no longer carrying that property was at once a huge relief to Mel, but also came with a huge feeling of sadness.

Pete sat at the table, his eyes shadowed in the unlit kitchen. "Do you want to move back? We can put in our two weeks' notice with the rental company here and just—go."

She wove her fingers together, squeezing the ring on her finger. "Not without Jon. Not without seeing Cary settled in a good home."

He closed his eyes, his shoulders bowed. "Of course not without Jon or Cary." He straightened his shoulders with visible effort. "Perhaps the only good thing we did here was make a home for Cary. For a time. It would be good to see that through."

"If that's true—I think it was still worth it to come," she said softly. "Do you?"

"Yes." Pete met her eyes again, touching his fingers to his chest like he wasn't conscious of the gesture. "Have you heard from them?"

She shook her head. Pete's eyebrows drew together as he looked down the darkened hallway. "We don't need to make a decision until the buyers make an offer on the house that's worth considering," Pete said. His mouth was firming up; it helped him to make a plan. "If that happens, I'll drive out to check on Cary. And pick up Jon. We need him back to move forward together."

*Okay lovelies, we're going down in the dark with Jon...if you know me by now you know we're coming out again! This bedtime prayer with Mel and her girls is one of the last scenes added to WAKE to break up the difficulty of Jon's emotional arc here. Like it?

Thanks for the reads, votes and comments! Readers are my favorite people ;)*