'Don't!' Má seizes my wrist before I can roll up the blinds from the kitchen window. Her fingernails indent my skin and I let go of the beaded string so she can yank the fabric back down, plunging us in the dark. 'They're looking.'

Her skin is sallow, the circles around her eyes darker than usual. She hasn't been going to work, I assume. She hasn't even gone outside if the drawn blinds and empty fridge are owt to judge by.

Iris is staying at Chloe's for their GCSE period and Má has gotten worse than I judged over the phone. I might have to come stay for a bit — left alone, she'll only get worse.

'Who?'

'The neighbours. They'll phone the police. They want to take you away from me.'

Challenging her when she gets like this does nowt but make her angry, so I don't. I ease my arm out of her grip, tugging my sleeve over the crescents, and turn on the lights so I can unpack the groceries.

I'm s'posed to be watching Before Midnight with Ziri right now. We've been looking forward to it since it were announced and booked tickets to the premiere a month ago, but instead I'm here.

I were on the phone with Má for four hours yesterday, trying to stop her from reeling into paranoia. When I came back Ziri had already gone to sleep, having done the washing up and covered my half-eaten dinner with a plate. He said he's not angry about it but I imagine that he is, or maybe he didn't expect enough from me to get angry. After three years of us living together, he no longer expects enough from me to get angry. What am I s'posed to do though? I can't ignore her, she's my mother.

Má stops peering out the window and turns to me. She crosses the room before I see her take a step. Then she's yanking at my hoodie as if to pull it off me. 'Aren't you hot in this?'

'No,' I lie. Though I do roll up the sleeves so they don't get into the food; my tattoos only start two-thirds down my arms.

Má's glare is an oil burn on my hands as I stab open the packet of chicken. I decided to make bánh xèo because they're quick and I don't think Má's eaten in days, but she don't seem pleased by the alteration of the recipe.

'I don't understand why you can't eat pork.'

We've had this conversation enough times for me to know how it'll go, so I don't answer. It's just much easier for us to eat the same food, but Má refuses to believe it were my idea even when she's not... like this.

Her stare hooks into mine and reels in an invisible wire until I'm forced to face her. Her reddened eyes brim with tears though I can't tell if it's just her body trying to counteract the dryness or if she's genuinely crying. 'He's trying to turn you against me.' When Má whispers, it's somehow thrice as loud as when she yells. 'He brainwashed you to move to Brighton just to take you away from me.'

'No, he didn't.' I bite the words too late and catch only my tongue. I scrub the taste of iron against the roof of my mouth as I wash my hands. 'He's my boyfriend.'

'You're my husband!'

'I'm your son.'

Drying my hands, I try to breathe through the grave opening in my chest. I might collapse inward into it. I struggle to meet her eye as if she's the sun and I'll go blind if I look directly, though it's more like a black hole.

Má's voice is splintered and shrill. 'I know that. Why d'you think I don't know that?'

The watery aura seeps from her eyes to the rest of her, like she isn't entirely solid. When she collapses into my chest, I almost expect her to pass through, to become a puddle permanently inside me. Her hands root to my back. Somehow, it feels as though she's inside my skin.

'He's going to take you away from me. Just like your dad, just like his parents, just like those fucking police. They're going to take you away from me.'

Wrapping myself around her, I allow my eyes to fall out of focus. My body knows how to hold her even if my mind floats to the attic. Má don't notice the absence — or more correctly, she never notices my presence and can't tell when it's missing.

When she pulls back, though my clothes are dry, I feel drenched. Her clammy palm adheres to my cheek to angle my eyes to hers, fishing my mind down from the attic where it were comfortable.

'He already has, hasn't he?'

I think Má blames Ziri for turning me gay.

When I came out to her, all she said were "why are you telling me this?" We were in this kitchen. Iris, unbothered by grief in her youth, had gone to play, and Má and I were left to pick at our food in silence. Neither of us had much appetite: it were Ba's death anniversary.

I kept glancing at my phone. Ziri had told me to stop texting him after our argument but I couldn't help it — I needed to apologise. And I did, over and over and over again. I'm sorry. I know you hate me and it's okay but I'm sorry.

Of course, Má noticed. The anger were audible as it started to boil under her skin — How dare I be texting when I should be honouring my father? When had I become so disrespectful? I know she don't allow phones at the table and today of all days?

I like him. It were only a whisper but it rung over her yelling like a gunshot. A shot that tore out through the back of the gun and pierced my own chest. Since it were too late to undo the wound, I fished out the bullet from between my lungs and launched it a second time. I'm gay, Má.

Why are you telling me this? she asked. It weren't me being gay that were the primary issue, it were me burdening her with that knowledge. I should've kept it to myself rather than bleed all over her kitchen carpet.

She thinks Ziri killed the son she wanted me to be but that son were stillborn. Má will lug around the body though.

Dominic only craved me in segments; maybe Má is the same. She wants me to be around, she wants me to drop everything for her whenever she asks, she wants me always on her side, but she's happy to ignore the rest. The gay part will be left uneaten.

When Ziri picks up the scraps from her plate, she becomes furious. They were hers, whether or not she wanted them, they were hers.

Hers to throw in the bin.

I peel her hand from my face and hug her again. 'No one is gonna take me anywhere, I'm on your side. Always.'

            My eyes venture up the dark skin of Ziri's arm. Our evening snack has passed with the only conversation coming from the fan standing at the centre of the flat like a guest waiting for an invitation to sit. Ziri, who first spent twenty minutes trying to figure out what to eat and finally settled on a nectarine, stares into the distance with the fruit forgotten in his hand.

'You ain't gonna eat that?'

He takes several seconds to focus his eyes on me, then to process that I'm speaking. His response finally comes over a minute later. 'It's too salty.'

'Salty?' I repeat. 'It's a nectarine.'

'It's too salty.'

'Are you angry with me?'

'Angry?' Ziri says the word like it's from a foreign language. His chest is bare to ease the heat and the afterglow of the sunset catches the trail of a drop of juice that has dried on his skin. 'No.'

I swirl my chopsticks around my stir-fry crickets. 'I think I have to go stay with my mum for a bit.'

'Calm.'

He don't seem angry but he also don't seem to process owt I'm saying. We were supposed to watch Before Midnight today and spend the weekend together — he'd have every right to be angry. How many times have I bailed on him because of Má?

I return to my stir-fry, though I don't get to eat much before Ziri stands without a word, comes to my side, and tries to scoop me from my chair.

'Oi! What're you doing?'

'I need to see if I could carry you.' His voice strained from the effort of lifting me and he takes two reet unsteady steps toward the door. 'If there was a fire and you were passed out, I need to see if I could carry–'

Ziri crumbles before he can finish. Then we're both on the floor.

'Why am I so weak?'

A laugh unravels in my lungs before I realise he's entirely earnest.

Retracting from me, he folds his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them, tucking his head down. Braids frame him like the beaded curtains on our windows. 'It'll be my fault when you die.'

'Are you planning to commit arson?'

He don't laugh.

I sit up from the sprawled position he left me in and shuffle to his side. 'Love, there's not gonna– If there were a fire, it would not be your fault I died cause it would be an accident.'

'But you would be able to carry me out if there was a fire.'

Sure, but a four-year-old would be able to carry Ziri out of a fire — he's skin and bones. He's gained some weight over the years but it's difficult for him to keep it; loss of appetite is often the earliest and last symptom of both manic and depressive cycles, and food is a major trigger of his PTSD. Any weight he gains, he usually loses within the year. It's three steps forward, two steps back.

Ziri lifts his head from his knees and the fairy lights, which are all the illumination we have on, snag on the tears in his eyes before he drops to the floor and stares at the ceiling.

'There used to be this old man in East Trough who always bought all the lemons from Barua's — I mean, kilos upon kilos. Nobody knew what he did with em but there were never any left and my mum would always complain. And when he died, Barua kept ordering too many lemons and they'd rot because nobody else wanted so many. I cried for two weeks. I couldn't look at a lemon without crying for months. I didn't even know him!'

His voice quakes. 'You're not allowed to die before I do.'

One knee on either side of him, I crawl up his body until Ziri has to look at me despite refusing to move his eyes. 'I'm not planning on dying anytime soon, love.'

'I have to die before you do.'

I make a noise of staunch disagreement. 'My dad's already dead so it would be totally unfair for you to die too.' When he's not amused, I try affection instead. 'We'll just have to live forever.'

His lips twitch and, for a moment, I think I've pulled him back from the edge but then he's gone again. I sit back on his lap and allow his eyes to glue to the ceiling again. A segment of conversation climbs through our open window as a group leave the Nepalese restaurant below. The fan continues to hum.

'You're getting in your head.' I'm not sure what I hope to accomplish by stating it — like he don't know.

Ziri hums to confirm. 'I was thinkin, like, you know how sometimes I call myself asexual but what if I'm not and I'm only like this because I've been medicated since I was thirteen and they've completely butchered my libido but maybe I would actually be thinking about sex all the time so maybe I'm not really asexual.'

He speaks in one meandering sentence and I take a moment to chop it up into digestible parts. 'Do it... matter? I mean, it don't change what it is, that you feel like that.'

'I've been medicated since I was thirteen, Miles. That's ten years. I don't even know who I really am. I'm never goin to know who I really am.'

'Why do meds make you less real?'

My reasoning falls on deaf ears. Ziri retreats so deep into his head that he could pass for dead. I won't be able to get him back, not for a couple of hours anyway. So I grab my bowl and chopsticks and eat the rest of my portion on the floor beside him.

'You should eat summat. Or you'll be too hungry to sleep.'

When he don't respond, I grab a cricket with my chopsticks and wave it in front of his face. He lurches back to life and tries to crawl back but it's too slow of an escape so he covers his head his in arms instead.

'You have to eat it before it eats you.'

'You know I'm afraid of insects. Stop it!' He peeks out only to scream. 'It moved!'

'It didn't move, it's been stir-fried.'

'I can see it movin. Stop.'

'If you wanna get stronger, you have to eat protein. You can't just eat fruit.'

Ziri peers out again. He jerks away with genuine terror and I pull the cricket away but it's me he's staring at.

'Sorry,' he exhales, pressing a hand to his erratic heart. 'For a second I swore your head was doin a full one-eighty.' Ziri shakes his head at himself. 'I think I just have to sleep.' But rather than going to bed, he lies back on the floor, eyes stapled once again to the ceiling.

I pop the cricket into my mouth but the crunch fails to satisfy.

As if it's my anxiety that finally pulls him back, Ziri stretches out. Because he can't reach my hands, he holds my ankle. 'I'm sorry I'm so out of it today. It's good you cancelled — I wouldn't've been able to focus.'

'It's fine.' I set my bowl on the floor, resting my chopsticks over it, and take his hand. I run my thumb over his knuckles. There's a notch in that of his ring finger as if it's been broken though I've asked and he said it never has. I think I could recognise his hands blindfolded. 'I love you.'

He smiles. Though it's small, it's genuine. 'I love you.'

AN: Sorry for such a long wait for this chapter. My confidence has just been so low this whole summer and everything I write just feels so awful -- certainly doesn't help that Miles's character voice is so different from my natural purple prose and this book is so dialogue heavy because of his nature as a character which I feel like is somehow less-than. But I hope that isn't translating onto the page and you're still enjoying reading. Updates should be back to regular now.

In case you missed it, I added some new scenes to I Was Just Trying To Be Funny. The specific details are posted on my message board!