Kit didn't even twitch when the light hit him, legs tangled in vomit-stained blankets, still in his clothes.

Charles swallowed. What did he do? He'd never taken care of anyone...

Should he just leave? Steeling himself, he took a deep breath.

No. 

He had to - he wanted to - help. 

There was one thing that always helped sober him up when he was this drunk. Swallowing, Charles took ahold of the blanket, and started dragging him towards the bathroom. 

It never occurred to him to call 911. 

Take care of your own, his mother had taught him. Don't involve strangers. And Kit was just drunk, right? He would be okay...he had to be okay. 

He knew very well that the body converted ethanol into acetaldehyde (a poison with a close chemical composition to formaldehyde) and then into acetic acid radicals (a combined form of the acetic acid you'd find in vinegar), both of them harmful in large quantities, if the body couldn't break them down fast enough. 

But ambulance, police, social services...Charles shied away at the very thought. Teenagers got drunk sometimes, he told himself. They...passed out as if dead...

His nephew came to when the water hit him, groaning and moving groggily. 

"What the... " he croaked. "No...leave me alone."

"I can't." Charles bit his lip. "Not while you're like this. We need to get you cleaned up - then you can sleep it off."

The teenager grumbled under his breath but collapsed back against the rough stone tiles, letting his uncle crouch before him and run the warm water over his face and hair. 

Charles tried to wash the puke out of his curls without using shampoo - their clothes were already wet enough. His own socks were soaked and Kit's T-shirt was plastered to his chest. Even under the shower hose, he was shivering. 

Turning off the water, Charles dropped a big, fluffy towel on top of him. 

Kit barely stirred, making no move to dry off, water dripping from the ends of his hair.

"Okay," his uncle sighed, grabbing another towel and the only robe he owned - a worn, checkered flannel that was way to big for him, much less for the much shorter youth. 

(It was embarrassing really, but it had belonged to his father - Kit's grandfather - and been one of the few things his mother hadn't thrown away after he disappeared.)

Tossing the towel and robe on the couch, he bent to pick Kit up, hauling him up under his armpits.

Charles was not particularly strong - he saw himself as a science nerd and never worked out - but Kit was so slight that he could lift him with relative ease, hauling him up by crouching, wrapping his arms around his torso underneath his armpits, and then slowly straightening his knees. 

Should he put him to bed?

No, the whole thing was covered in sick. And not his own bed - too creepy.

He really shouldn't be this light.

"Why are you so skinny?" he muttered, dragging him like an ungainly bundle over to the couch where he himself had woken up that same morning and nearly stumbling into it, half-falling so that they both ended up mostly on the cushions, Kit still in his arms.

He clambered up to a seated position and found his nephew across his lap - stirring and turning to bury his face in Charles's soft jumper.

"Your sister," he mumbled, curling in on himself, still clearly drunk.

Charles draped the second towel and robe over him, bundling him up and then realising that he was now effectively trapped - like a person with a sleeping cat on their lap, unable to move without disturbing the small creature draped over his legs. 

"Charlie, she loved me... She did." He gripped the fabric in his fists, eyes closed, insisting. 

He was almost...cute.

Tentatively, Charles brought his arms up around him, cradling his upper body. Slowly, gently, he stroked over his hair and back, like someone soothing a child.

"Of course she did, she was your mother..."

Kit had looked striking from the start - but prickly, thorns out. He had been full of sharp words, calculated movements, guarded, appraising looks.

Never once had he looked as vulnerable as he did now.

"But I...I..."

He made a pained noise, something a small, hurt animal might make.

"One day, I'll be like her."

"Don't - Don't say that..."

"I want to," he mumbled, heedless of the other man's words. "Sometimes, I want t'be like her. To prove tha - that I loved her too...that I...think she was good 'nough..."

"She - was. You - You are."

"And I'll - I'll die at thirty like she - she did. I know I will...sometimes I'm fr-frightn- scared of that. Sometimes I wan' to."

Charlie held him tighter.

"Why?"

"'Cause it... t'shows I don't hate her. Don't d'spise her. Blame her. It was me, I d'serve... But I'm afraid of it, too. Of endin' up like that. Dying...like that."

"Were you...there with her?"

It was a horrible thought - even more horrible since it had never occurred to him before. How could he have been so focused on himself?

You didn't want to know, Charles.

It was true. He hadn't wanted to ask - not out of respect, but out of self-preservation. So he would never have to imagine Kitty's death, so he would never have to really think about what happened.

"Hurts..." Kit mumbled, muffled by the merino wool.

"I know," Charles replied, arms tightening again reflexively, fairly certain that couldn't hear him.

"'Spite everything, I miss her so, so much..." his voice trailed off, breathing evening out as he relaxed in his uncle's arms. It took the blond a moment to realise that he had fallen asleep. 

Had Kitty been a good mother? he wondered. 

She had been so young...but she had been a good sister, he remembered. Volatile and unpredictable, sure - crying one moment, laughing the next, then joking, only to rush out and slam the door - but kind to him. As if she actually...liked him.

No-one had ever really needed him.

When he looked down at his nephew, sleeping in his arms, it occurred to him that maybe Kit did. Maybe he needed Charles.

He had never once acted like it. In fact, he had looked after his uncle so far, had expected to, had offered to.

As if that was the usual way of things.

Why are you looking after me?

You know why.

Now, sleeping, his face pale and worn, he looked even younger than he usually did.

Charles wondered what Kit had been like when he was smaller... If he had kept in touch with his sister, would he have known the answer to that question?

Would he have flown over to visit them, played with Kit, seen him grown up? Maybe they would have been close.

If he could have talked to Kitty, then perhaps they would both have had someone - someone who understood what it was like.

Sitting there on the couch, gently rocking Kit - so slight in his arms - Charles's thoughts were helplessly drawn to the last time he had ever seen Catherine Callaghan.

What could I have done differently?

"You're what?!!!"

Charles heard a crash from the kitchen. The apartment they rented was small and the walls were thin - he stuck his head out of his room carefully.

"You slut! You whore! You dirty little cunt!"

More crashes, his mother's voice growing increasingly shrill, the way it only did when she was talking to his sister.

Charles clutched his stuffed toy elephant closer to his chest. He was too old for it - turning eight soon. He should put it down and go help Kitty - should protect her.  Standing there, he knew that would be the right thing to do.

But all he did was hold on to the doorframe and listen.

"For ten years I've raised you!" his mother screamed, another plate crashing to the floor, shards flying out into the hallway, his sister hissing in pain.

"I kept you when your miserable father took off, even though I have a child of my own! And this is the thanks - ungrateful slut!!!"

He could hear Kitty curse back, her words muffled. 

"Get out of my house!!!" his mother screamed, and Charles's blood ran cold.

What?

"Get out you - you dirty - ! I should have never kept you! You're cursed, cursed like your father - I won't have you here tainting my child!" 

She paused, as if drawing more breath to yell.

"Catherine Callaghan - Get out right now!"

They moved out from the kitchen, his mother advancing on Kitty, crowding her towards the door, her face almost as red as her hair, it's tresses escaping from the tight plait she wore them in.

She gripped her rosary so hard her knuckles shone white and held a them wrapped around a short, sharp kitchen knife. 

"But I'm only fifteen!" Kitty yelled, hands thrown up. There was blood on her lip, her heavy make-up smudged, mascara running down her pale cheeks.

She was shorter than his mother and pixie-thin, wearing a short checkered skirt and a black hoodie, her dyed hair with its blond roots sticking out around her elfin face.

"I don't care!" His mother howled back, brandishing the kitchen knife like a madwoman.

"You bring drugs into my house - and now you're pregnant! You're going to Hell, and I won't have you dragging my Charles down with you - Get OUT!"

She thrust her black wooden rosary into Kitty's face and backed her bodily towards the door.

"Cursed! Out!"

"Let me get my stuff - !"

"Nothing here is yours. Leave or I'll call the police." 

Kitty was glaring at her, tears streaking down her cheeks. She dashed them away, stomping her foot.

"Fine!"

That word finally wrenched Charles away from his bedroom.

"K - Kitty?" he managed, voice small.

You have to stop them, he thought. 

As one, they both turned to look at him.

"Wh - Where are you going?"

Her face softened for a moment. "I'm out, Charlie," she told him.

She hugged him, shouldering past his hissing mother, sharp and fierce, even with her face streaked with tears, even though her hands were trembling. 

"Bye, lill' brother."

"N-No..."

"And you." She spun around and pointed her index finger straight at Charles's mother's nose.

"Fuck you. You're the one going to Hell, not me."

They seemed to get along better when one of them was unconscious.

Not a great start to a relationship, Charlie thought as he wiped Kit's ashen face with a corner of the damp, fluffy towel. 

He watched him shiver in his sleep, sweating out the effects of the alcohol, sitting wide awake as the waning moon rose outside their window. 

Ever since they had first met - only a few days ago - Charles had been hiding, he realised.

Trying not to let his nephew see, realise, and then judge him for his drinking problem. But somehow he had ended up showing him the worst of it anyway. Had ended up relying on him.

And Kit had accepted his condition just like that.

Don't deny it, he'd said.

This boy had lost his mother only weeks ago. He believed he would die in his 30's. He had looked after Charles - picked him up at the bar and told him to admit to his problems.

And all he had done in return was to run away.

Not try to get to know him. Not try to make things easier. He had not offered comfort of support - not even showed him around or given him money. A room and a school was nowhere near enough - Charles had to try harder.

He had wanted to help Kitty's son. He was failing.

His eyes snagged on the twin pictures on a cabinet next to the hallway - one a faded, green-tinged picture of Christ wearing a crown of thorns, and a photo of his mother, her ginger hair pulled back in a severe knot, her blue eyes staring, unsmiling, straight into the camera.

Charles shivered, glad of the warmth from the boy now snoring softly on his lap.

I have to come up with something.