COMPLEMENTARY [GxG]

Chapter 15 | Scars and Ink

a/n: this chapter is dedicated to ilackserotonin for taking the time to draw eris and ef!!! picture is on the header above; thank you so so much! <3 and now onto the chapter:

Fitz is up to something. He comes home late, the door to our room squeaking in the middle of the night when I'm half-asleep. He avoids my questions. When Dad gets a call from school about him skipping class, I decide to interrogate him, and he finally admits the truth:

"Uh, I've been filming a music video. For my song Catatonic Shock."

He showed me the track a few weeks ago. I think it references what he experienced after the crash that killed our mother—something he's never talked about to me directly. For weeks he was in a motionless stupor, barely reacting to his environment, sitting in the same position for hours at a time. The doctors didn't know if it was brain damage or post-traumatic stress. Before the accident, Fitz got perfect scores on exams without trying, skipping a few grades in elementary school and mastering German far better than I did. He said he wanted to be an engineer or a doctor. After the crash, everything changed. He had issues with memory, even forgetting key pieces of our childhood. I'd reminisce on funny moments with our mom, and he'd stare at me blank and confused, then go silent for hours. I let him read the journals I'd kept since I was five years old, chronicling each day in detail like I do now, and he went through every single one. There's always been the impulse in me to catalogue every memory, stowing it away to use in my art.

"Did you get that feature you were excited about?" I ask.

"Yeah, we been meeting up," he says. "Got it recorded in the studio, mixed and mastered all professional."

He's talking about another rapper in the San Diego area. The kid is a half Black, half Mexican high-school dropout with a hundred thousand followers and a few popular songs.

"And how much is all this costing?" I ask. "Is it important enough for you to completely neglect school?"

"Not much," he mutters.

"Fitz, I can tell when you're lying."

"It's a couple grand..." he admits, rubbing his forehead where the memory of his trauma is now permanently inked in the word CATATONIA.

"A couple grand? What? Where are you getting this from?"

"Oscar's paying."

"Don't bullshit me. You told me the kid is literally couch-surfacing while he's recording his debut album and blows all his spare money on Xanax and LSD."

Fitz stares at the ground. His chest is moving up and down at a faster pace than usual. His capacity for regular human levels of fear and anxiety have been stunted since the car crash, so this is not normal.

"What's going on?" I press.

"Uh... me and Oscar... we went to Tijuana in his car... picked up a package... and took it back here. Border patrol don't even check the cars that come in, and coming back all I needed was my driver's license and they let me through."

My chest clenches, more panic rising in me now than he's probably felt throughout the entire development of this astronomically stupid decision. My worst fears with Fitz and his recklessness since he came out of his "catatonia" are now a reality. I thought the height of his delinquency would be getting that tattoo and running away from Munich to Barcelona for a few weeks, but this is an actual crime.

"You were a drug mule?" I ask, trying not to shout because Dad and William are currently having dinner in the next room, and William could very well kick Fitz out of the house if he finds out. "You don't even have a US passport, and you went to Mexico?"