Chapter Text
Billy had been dead for four days when Steve finally made a breakthrough, muffled cracks as bones restitched and the crushed chest cavity filled, the rasp of rusted lungs expanding with breath. He waited, held his own breath like that would encourage another from the sorry test subject lying inert on the table.
The chest deflated, but only a little—his heart leapt as it rose again, an easier inhale, and Steve would have sobbed, except he had no air, could only manage an anguished choke. It wasn’t anguished, though, just pure exhausted relief, hope, after three nights without sleep, using every trick in the book to keep going, keep trying, not give up.
An ear twitched, then—the tail, the tip curling absent-mindedly.
Within minutes, Mews sat on his haunches, staring at Steve fixedly, even more fixedly than normal, before he’d been hit by that truck, but other than that, he seemed—fine? Fine! Even the sickly-sweet eau de rot was dissipating, ginger fur shedding the greasy dullness of decay.
So it took every ounce of self-control not to go haring off to the basement crypt and work his magic there, on the true intended recipient of his tireless trial and error.
Gods in hell, so many errors. And such a trial. One attempt had backfired so badly that Mews had almost decomposed too far for restoration, crumbling before his eyes as Steve scrambled for the counter spell. Another had awoken the cat but hadn’t healed him, and also imbued him with a ravenous hunger for human flesh. He’d had to go for the bat that time, beating at the mangy monster like he was trying to win whack-a-mole at the fair, then gulped down every leftover antidote to zombie infection in the medicine cabinet he could find, the scratches that crosshatched every limb smeared in healing salve.
He'd been steadily working his way through the moldy copy of Untethered Netherworld: New Necromancies—several editions out of date, banned in every state but Ohio—and he was running out of both spells and time. Reanimation for more nefarious purposes—raising undead armies and whatnot—had more wiggle room, but true revivification had to be performed within a week of the victim’s death, and the sooner the better.
He didn’t want a shell of Billy, something better off dead. He wanted Billy. Needed him back.
For that, he had to be patient, thorough; do this right. Follow the checklist. Consulting the items hastily scribbled on the back of a takeout menu, he frowned.
1. Responds when called.
Well, fuck. Did cats ever respond when called? Mews certainly hadn’t, maintaining an aloof mulishness, a presumed superiority that placed you beneath his recognition.
Nothing for it but to try, though.
“Mews?”
The cat blinked, swished his tail.
Good enough, Steve figured, checking it off.
2. Reacts expectedly to stimuli.
Didn’t exactly have a toy mouse handy, but after rooting around in the junk drawer, he dug up one of those keychain laser pointers. Aimed it at the floor in front of the table, and… skittered it around.
Mews launched from his perch, paws extended—pounced on the zigzagging red and kept pouncing.
Another check.
3. Craves appropriate sustenance.
What did cats even eat, aside from… cat food, which he’d neglected to restock. Tuna? Saucer of milk? Cartoons all seemed to think so.
“Stay here,” he said, though Mews had never been the kind of cat that talked. Locking the workroom behind him, he set off for the kitchen. Pantry had to have at least one can of Chicken of the Sea.
~~~
The thing was—Steve should’ve known Billy was possessed. Should’ve been able to tell right away. He’d slept next to that… thing at least two nights and hadn’t noticed. How hadn’t he noticed?
He’d kissed him and really been kissing it—wrote off the delayed response, a pause before the returning press, as simple distraction. Held him but really held it, and attributed the strange stiffness to stress, stroked the broad back until he slept—or seemed to.
Because while Steve slept, Billy had been a marionette wreaking havoc, his hijacker attacking at random, opportunistic, installing its brethren on behalf of its master.
On the third morning, the day before he died, when Steve had been watching coffee drip into the pot, the shatter of ceramic spun him round, disoriented. And Billy… eyes streaming, so blue, burning blue—he’d shoved his waiting mug off the center island, was gripping the counter, teeth gritted with effort.
“Go,” he’d grunted between clenched jaws. “Go.” His hand gripped the other mug—Steve’s—and his voice sharpened, urgent. “Run.”
Steve barely dodged it, the mug cracking into the cabinet by his head with far more force than humanly possible, and his childhood training had kicked in. For once, it paid to have been born to parents whose vigilance bordered on paranoid, always on guard against rival families, enemy estates.
He grabbed a kitchen knife, threw every chair in its way, and bolted for the door, the car keys on the hook, slashing behind him as he fumbled with the locks. And fled. Because he trusted Billy with his life, implicitly, knew when a command was the kind performed without question—the tone, the bluntness, the context. It was how they’d survived as an unaffiliated pair, all these years.
But that also meant precious few allies to turn to in times of need. Billy’s coven sister lived closest, and a crisis put proximity at a premium.
To her credit, she’d tried—Steve didn’t fault her for her role in the outcome—Max had just placed her trust in the wrong people. In people that prioritized killing the thing in Billy, rather than saving Billy himself.
Of course, it didn’t help that Billy had been of the same mind.
Now that he’d found a means to bring him back, Steve could admit another reason he hadn’t closed his eyes longer than a blink since the moment Billy went slack: to avoid the endless replay projected behind his lids—of Billy standing between the girl and the monster, a conglomerate creature of melded prey, raw matter drained of humanity, remade into an ever-growing puppet of destruction.
He'd wrested control once more, like he had in the kitchen, long enough to speak the words to unmake the abomination—words he alone could know, unbeknownst to the puppeteer, as the son of a witch infamous for having contracted with a god of death so powerful none could speak its name and live. None could hear its name and live. And none knew it, save two, for a while. And then one.
And then none.
Billy spoke it. Steve saw his lips shape unfamiliar words. For the sake of the girl.
~~~
A checkmark next to every item on the list—that’s what broke him, finally. Not the most dignified position, kneeling over a litterbox, scooping sandy nuggets into a trash bin while fighting tears of joy, suppressing hysterical, ecstatic laughter, but—Mews was a cat, just a normal cat again, to all appearances, which meant—
He could have Billy back. Had proven wrong every tutor who’d dismissed Steve’s lackluster abilities as beyond the help of instruction. Sufficiently motivated, he’d managed every spell he tried—so it wasn’t his fault he didn’t fully know what each spell would do. This was on his teachers for slouching on the job, handwaving him through his studies to collect a paycheck.
Closing the lid of the bin, Steve stood to wash his hands and swayed, so light-headed he would have toppled were it not for a steadying arm flung to the wall. He breathed slow, eyes closed—opened, and the room had stilled its spinning.
Even so—he needed sleep. If he attempted the most important magics of his life and fucked it up from fatigue, he’d endure the rest of his days tormented by curdling regret.
“Bed, Mews,” he called, out of habit.
They’d held out a week, after Dustin had entrusted them with Mews’ care while he was apprenticing with the bigwigs at Know Where Corporation for the summer. Mewsy prefers sleeping with a buddy, Dustin instructed, among a litany of other highly specific edicts. Well, I prefer fucking my husband without witnesses, Steve had replied, just to see him pull a face, and Billy had chirped, faux-innocent, Unless the price is right. Or unless plied with endless mournful meows and wide, shining, plaintive eyes, apparently, because in no time they had a mound of fur curled at their feet from dusk till dawn.
Despite his exhaustion, despite the comforting warmth of Mews that bled through the covers, despite the meditation exercise to clear his mind, Steve couldn’t drift off for hours, couldn’t stop the steady leak of tears that oozed from the corner of closed lids to his unwashed hair.
Because Billy’s side of the bed was an echoing void at his side, an emptiness cold and loud as an arctic gale. Now and then he nudged Mews with a foot just to hear him snuffle, like an anxious mother checking her silent newborn still breathed.
Think of a wonderful thought, he heard—Billy’s voice, hushed and fond. And like he always did, Steve huffed, “Okay, Peter,” and finally sank into memories that didn’t stab at him the way they had for days.
Tomorrow, he reminded himself, and relaxed. By this time tomorrow, Billy would be whole and hale and back in his arms. He’d kiss him and hold him. Tell him he loved him.
Tomorrow.
🖤💀🖤