Chapter Text
As borrowed life colored in the revenant’s edges, its tattered wrists began to ooze fresh red. Andrew saw that his, too, were shorn open to the bone, gushing with slow, determined pulses—matched and matching, in death as in life. No wonder I’m cold, he thought with a horrified clarity.
The air in his lungs congealed like thick mud and he heaved, gagging as his diaphragm strained to force new air down his uncooperative throat—and then he was gagging for real, choking and clawing at the ground as a spurt of foul water hit the back of his throat, burning his nostrils as it forced its way inside.
He heaved himself sideways in a twist of animal panic and nearly blacked out again when the side of his head slammed into solid rubber. As his vision cleared, he realized he was staring at the underside of the Challenger, the side of his head pressed against one of the tires. His mouth tasted like gasoline and asphalt, and each ragged breath burned the back of his throat like sandpaper. Grit crunched between his teeth when he closed his mouth. Water from the puddle he had rolled into soaked the collar of his shirt and oozed slimy fingers down his back.
Groaning, he rolled onto one side and had to stifle a yelp at the bolt of pain that shot up his forearm. Blood and mud crusted the open seeping wounds that split him from wrist to elbow and for just a second his vision went black around the edges as a different flesh overlaid his own.
"Fuck. Off." He bit out as he dragged himself all the way out from under the car. Standing was a monumental effort and he staggered, flinching away from the bulk of the Challenger and nearly falling into the chain link fence around their yard. His head was a buzzing mess of barely restrained panic. Fractured images from his—dream. vision. summoning.—whatever the fuck that had been kept lancing through him, assaults that he had no way to guard against.
Even with reality fading in and out of his head he could feel the weight of evening pressing on the edges of the day like the descent of a suffocating hand. The shadows around him were longer than they should be, than they could be, unless he had lost a truly disturbing amount of time.
His forearms throbbed as he stared at the darkened back face of the house.
The sharp buzz against his thigh made him yelp. Swearing, he fished his phone out of his pocket, growling as ragged flesh caught on the waistband of his jeans.
Riley. Out tonight, staying with Luca. Catch up tomorrow?
Fuck. He cast another look at the house, sick at the thought of spending the night there without another breathing body around. He spun and made for the Supra, giving the Challenger and its haunted, haunting weight a wide berth. It was only as he was yanking futilely at the driver door that he realized he’d have to go inside to get his keys. He smacked his hand against the window in frustration, regretting it immediately as his vision greyed out from the pain it sent lancing up the lacerations in his arm.
Without letting himself think about it, he spun and marched up the path to the house, getting the door open with more force than finesse. His keys were on the counter in the kitchen and he grabbed them, along with a fistful of paper towels that he shoved against the worst of the bleeding. The house was eerily silent around him, his sharp breaths as out of place as laughter at a funeral. His hands shook. The paper towels were quickly turning red. It took him a moment to realize that the sounds of breathing in the kitchen had doubled. Something else hissed in an inhale, sighed out an exhale, beginning half a heartbeat before he did. The sounds were exaggerated, a mockery of actual breath. Every hair on the back of Andrew’s neck stood straight up. The paper towels dropped from nerveless hands. A floorboard creaked behind him.
He took the stairs down to the yard at a run. The pain had vanished under a surge of fresh adrenaline and his hands shook wildly as he slammed the door to the Supra open and shut behind him. His car lurched into first with a jerk, his foot on the clutch clumsier than it’d been since he was fourteen, and he muttered pleas and encouragement in equal delirious measure as he pulled out into the alley without looking, steering blind and desperate towards the only safety he could think of.
The drive was a blurry nightmare, his vision in ribbons, his pulse pounding thickly in his throat as the night pressed in around him. He swore he could feel a growing weight at his back from the direction of the Capitol house and the aching unhealing part of him that was forever pulling towards the home he’d buried months back wrenched at him to turn around. He bit down on his tongue until he tasted blood and drove faster.
The pressure eased as he got out of Nashville proper and into the corridor of trees broken only by the thin grey ribbon of the road and the occasional driveway. Night had fully fallen, and insects danced in the clear beam of his brights as he cut away the distance between him and Sam’s house. The Tennessee woods at night were nothing that he would normally consider a sanctuary, but right now the promise of a place to crash that had never been Eddie’s was all that was keeping him leashed this side of sane.
He slid around the corner of Sam’s driveway in a messy spray of gravel, overcorrecting and nearly clipping a tree before making it into the expanse of yard that cradled the house. Panting at the ragged end of his endurance, he spilled out of the car, barely catching himself from falling to his knees in the gravel.
The key was where Sam had said it would be, and it wasn’t until he had shut and locked the door behind him that he allowed himself to fully release the breath he had been holding. He braced his back against the door and slid until he was sitting down, hunched forward over his knees, forearms cradled in the space between his belly and his thighs. The house was dark and quiet around him, but it smelled familiar, and there was no weight to the dark, no pressure in the silence. As the tension started to ease, he became aware of the film of dirt and sweat and blood that coated his skin. His shirt was crusted at the collar from where he had used it to stop his nosebleed earlier, and the sleeves were dark and stiff with the blood from his forearms. Scummy puddle water had soaked the back of his shirt and hair and his jeans were covered in dust and streaked with gore from however long he had spent unconscious next to Eddie’s car.
From his position on the floor, the couch was long and inviting. There was a pile of blankets balanced on the arm, and he wondered dizzily if Sam had put them out for him or if he hadn’t gotten around to putting them back after the last time. Wincing, Andrew eased his weight to one side and pulled his phone out of his hip pocket. He pulled up his thread with Sam and then hesitated, tonguing absently at a raw spot on his lower lip as he considered. got blood on me, using your shower. After another moment he sent a single question mark, then leaned his head back against the door to wait.
T he hell
Yes Blur you can shower
Do not get blood on my couch
I got like three hours left before I can get home
don’t pull any dumb shit before I get there
hit my quota for the night i think
Looking at the expanse of room between him and the hall, Andrew considered simply crawling to the bathroom, but eventually summoned enough strength to get himself mostly upright and mobile.
He flicked the fan on but left the overhead light off in the bathroom, relying on the dim glow of a battered and faded nightlight that looked older than he was to get the water on and start stripping down. He had no interest in what he might see looking back at him from the mirror. He stripped out of his jeans and boxers and tried to tug his shirt over his head, only to spit a curse through his teeth when the fabric of his sleeves started to tear away from the cuts on his forearm. Not seeing another option, he stepped into the shower with his shirt still on, swearing steadily as the hot water soaked through the fabric, dissolving the dried blood and lymph that was holding it to his skin at the same time that it made his arms feel freshly flayed. When things had loosened enough, he pulled the sodden shirt over his head, dropping it on the bath mat with his other clothes to deal with later. The water scoured his various injuries, flaring pain subsiding to a buzzing numbness as he stood there, too weary to move. When the water started to run cool, he scrubbed a hand through his hair, loosening the last remnants of caked-in mud, then turned his face up to the spray to let it slick the crust of blood and grime away.
The peroxide and gauze were under the sink. He sloshed the burning liquid over the cuts on his arm and wrapped them as best he could before grabbing a towel off the rack and drying himself off. It wasn’t until he was straightening back up, towel wrapped loosely around his hips, that he realized he didn’t have anything to put back on. He had been driving back to the house to get a change of clothes when shit had gone down and now—he eyed the damp and bloody pile of his clothing with tired disgust. He kicked his jeans free of the tangle so he could grab his phone. Nothing from Sam since his last message.
Making his way into the hall, Andrew stared at the black rectangle that was Sam’s half-open bedroom door. He could make out the vague shape of the foot of the bed, clothes piled on the floor next to it. Approaching, he nudged the door open a few degrees wider and then stalled out, caught on the threshold. He rolled his bottom lip between his teeth, savoring the dull pain as his front teeth caught on a patch of raw skin. Unbidden, the memory of Sam’s knees pressing into the hollows of his own prickled over the skin of his legs.
With a jerk, he straightened up and turned away, heading back down the hall and cutting through the kitchen to the laundry room. Opening the dryer revealed a tangle of clothes that from the lingering warmth had finished not long before he had arrived. He dug through the pile, shrugging into a faded orange tank top and a pair of sweats that he had to cinch tight around his waist. The warmth from the dryer leeched into his skin as he made his way into the kitchen, stooping to dig beneath the sink for a plastic bag that he shoved his old clothes into before kicking it into the corner of the bathroom to deal with later. That done, he finally allowed himself to sink down on the couch, grabbing a fistful of blankets and tugging them around himself. Tipping his head back to rest it against the edge of the couch, he let the shifting shadows on the ceiling distract him from the pain in his body and the dull throbbing horror of his mind.
Work boots stomping up the porch steps jerked him from his doze an indeterminate amount of time later. He pulled himself upright in time to catch the sweep of Sam’s eyes as he came through the door. The other man’s face was half-shadowed, porch light limning his cheekbones and the edge of his lower lip.
“You get blood on my couch, Blur?”
In answer, Andrew stretched his bandaged forearms out in front of him for Sam to see. The other man’s eyes widened slightly.
“Shit, Andrew.” He turned away briefly to kick off his boots then crossed the space between them in two long strides. Andrew exhaled a surprised burst through his nose when Sam’s hands came up, loosely braceleting his wrists. He used the grip to tug Andrew’s arms further out from his body, eyeing the places where blood had seeped through and dried.
“So tell me, exactly what variety of fucked up is this?” He asked.
“The usual,” Andrew said quietly, tipping his head back to meet his stare.
Sam scoffed but didn’t say anything for a minute, rubbing his thumbs absently over the frayed line of the gauze around Andrew’s forearms. “If I go shower am I gonna have to come haul you out of another dead animal?”
Andrew shrugged. “I won’t sleep.”
Shaking his head, Sam let go of his wrists. Andrew tried not to notice the way his skin prickled in protest. “Holding you to that, Blur. Don’t go anywhere.”
Turning, he disappeared down the hall. A beat later, the shower kicked on. Sighing out a breath, Andrew propped his shoulders against the back of the couch and went back to watching the ceiling.
When Sam came back, Andrew rolled his head sideways to watch him cross the room. Ambient light from the window glistened off the water droplets still clinging to his shorn head, and he held two glasses and a bottle of whiskey. He sank down on the couch next to Andrew, close enough that he could smell the soap from his shower. Sam poured them each two fingers of whiskey and nudged a glass towards Andrew. “Talk,” he said.
The peremptory tone rankled. Andrew looked him in the eye as he raised the glass to his mouth. “Nice weather we’ve been having,” he said, taking a drink.
Sam stared back flatly, then snorted, tension easing out of his shoulders. “Yeah, and that’s a real nice shirt you’re wearing, princess,” he said, reaching out and tugging at the fabric.
Andrew felt heat flush his cheeks and looked away. “My clothes were—”
“Ruined, yeah.” When Andrew looked back at him, Sam shrugged, unapologetic. “You don’t talk to me for shit, so I snooped.” Then he grinned, a flash of teeth in the dark. “Better be careful, Blur, I’m gonna start to think you have a thing for me, amount of times you’ve ended up in my home wearing my clothes.”
Andrew scowled. “Fuck off, man, I got a nosebleed.”
“Oh really.” Like it was nothing, Sam grabbed his wrist, taking his glass with the other hand and setting it back on the table. His hand was big and warm and his forefinger lay right along the bottom of the laceration on Andrew’s arm. He tugged, pulling Andrew’s arm out so that it stretched between them, bandages white in the moonlight. “Tell me you’re gonna try that one again.”
Andrew pulled his arm back on reflex, hissing when Sam refused to let go and the pressure sent pain singing up the furrows in his flesh.
“Get off me, dude, it’s nothing.”
Sam pinned him with a glare. “Don’t pull that shit, Blur. I get that you’re ten kinds of fucked up right now, but sympathy ain’t enough to get me to leave Riley in your blast radius. If you’re aiming to put him through another phone call like the one he got about Eddie, you tell me now.”
Under the anger there was a deep weariness, and it hit Andrew again that there was grief here too, for all that the wounded animal of his own loss stopped him seeing it most times.
“I told you it wasn’t like that,” Andrew snapped, guilt and irritation warring under his sternum.
“What the fuck was it like, then, Andrew?”
“It was a nosebleed,” Andrew repeated, fixing his eyes on their hands. “First. Then it was something else.”
Sam broke away from their clinch with an easy twist and topped up their glasses, pressing one into Andrew’s hands.
“What was it?”
Andrew rolled the glass between his palms. “Eddie ever tell you what happened to us out here when we were kids?”
Sam paused, then drank, watching him. “No. For all he liked to run his mouth there was a lot that Ed kept private, most of it stuff involving you and him.”
It was a relief, or at least a really shitty consolation prize, to know that not all of the things Andrew and Eddie held sacred between them had been shared out among Eddie’s new crew, and Andrew wrestled with his deep-seated instinct to maintain their privacy for a moment before deciding to start somewhere else.
“He texted me. Not when we were kids. In August. Middle of the night he texted me and told me to come home. I had been—fuck,” Andrew broke off, blindly raising his glass, not caring as whiskey slopped against his chin. This was not fucking easier. “I had been waiting all fucking summer for that text.” He drained his glass. Sam refilled it silently.
“Do you know how I found out Eddie was dead?”
The air conditioning in the apartment was broken, and Andrew hadn’t bothered to tell the management company about it. All his shit was in boxes, anyway, and he’d be home within days. Still, it was sweltering with the muggy heat that even after nearly ten years of living here seemed incongruent with the city’s placement above the Mason-Dixon line. He had the windows open, and the sliding balcony door, a half-hearted attempt to conjure a cross-breeze out of the still night air. Too hot to be restless, he channeled the nervous anticipatory energy that had dogged him since Eddie’s text into rolling and smoking a joint from the last of the stash Eddie had left him after his whirlwind trip back for spring break, which to himself he could admit he had been rationing for a moment like this one. He lay flat on his back in the bedroom, watching the milky smoke curl ghostlike against the dark square of the window. It was nearly late enough to be early. The heat and the high collaborated to press him into the mattress, bones and viscera, an undifferentiated mass. He couldn’t pinpoint when his stoned daze slipped into dreaming. Later, he would hate himself for that, for not being able to remember with waking clarity every last heartbeat that he and Eddie shared between them.
“How’d you find out, Andrew?” Sam’s voice was level and quiet, and he wasn’t looking at him, giving him a space felt like grace as Andrew flayed himself open beside him.
He made a broken noise that might have once been laughter. “His damn corpse crawled into bed with me.”
The arms around him were almost warm, almost right. Half-high and half-asleep, Andrew curled into them on instinct, a thousand stolen moments in that move, nights that had ended tangled together, wrecked enough for plausible deniability. The motion shifted Eddie’s arm against him and cold liquid oozed onto Andrew’s stomach. He pushed half upright, something old and watchful waking up in his hindbrain, even as he tried to cling to the numbing warmth of sleep. The flop of dead flesh into his lap—the wounds that gaped obscenely up at him, still drooling thick ropes of blood—the terrible intent with which the thing on the bed turned its face to him, close as a lover—
Andrew nearly gagged as spit flooded his mouth, thin and metallic. He heard Sam suck in a breath next to him, caught an aborted gesture out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t stop, couldn’t stop, was driven by an urge past his understanding to finish this confession.
“I see dead people. That’s the line, right? I see dead people. But, fuck, man, they should have made a movie about what it’s like to have dead people see you back. And Eddie—”
He cut off, panting. Sam didn’t stop when he reached towards him this time, and Andrew bowed forward under the warm weight of Sam’s palm against his neck. He finished his sentence staring at the space where their knees almost met. “Eddie’s haunt is doing more than looking.”
Silence settled between them. He started to say more and stopped. Something fractious and lost was rising within him and he pushed back into the pressure of Sam’s hand.
“Fuck, Andrew,” Sam squeezed the back of his neck more firmly, keeping his head tilted down, and Andrew melted and bristled at the same time.
“Eddie could see them too.” It came out half statement, half question, and Andrew knew that Sam knew the answer already, was pushing for something else. He nodded, head down. Without letting himself think about it, he raised his hand and pushed the strap of the tank top down his shoulder. Sam whistled low when he noticed the pale ridge of scar tissue running almost to the point of his shoulder.
“I’m not telling you the whole story tonight.” He meant his voice to be hard but it came out exhausted. “But yeah. That time in the woods? I got sliced up shoulder to ass, and Eddie and I, we both got front row seats to a walking horror show for the rest of our lives.”
The fingers running across the exposed line of scar made him jolt, and Sam hushed hm absently, still petting his fingers over the thickened tissue.
“Damn, Blur, and you act so well-adjusted.” The words didn’t match the tone, and when Andrew looked up, Sam’s face was gentle. Sam caught him looking and the corner of his mouth hooked up.
“You know, I moved in here, I was a wreck. Fifteen years old. Dad put my ass through a storm door, and Mamaw was waiting when I got out of the hospital. Few years later, it was Riley’s turn. Shoulda figured it was ‘bout time another stray came rolling through.”
The implication took a second to sink in, but when it did, it brought a complicated tangle of feelings that Andrew was well past his capacity to decipher tonight. Still, he found himself blushing slightly, which annoyed him enough to retort, “Not a dog, man.”
Sam smirked. “Okay, Fido, whatever you say.”
Then he stood, hand sliding from Andrew’s shoulder. “C’mon, if sharing time’s over for tonight, I’m fucking beat and you look about thirty seconds from keeling over. Time for bed.”
When Andrew looked back at the blankets on the couch, he snorted. “Oh hell no. After the shit you just told me? I got no interest in seeing what else your spooky ass could find in these woods if you decide to take another nighttime stroll. Let’s go, princess. I’ll even let you be little spoon.”
He turned and left before Andrew could work up a response to that, leaving him without much choice but to set down his glass and trail after him into the bedroom. He gestured Andrew into the bed before him, and Andrew rolled to face the wall as Sam started to strip out of his shirt. A faint smell of laundry detergent, pot, and something that he was coming to think of as just Sam lingered on the pillowcase, and he could feel the other man’s body heat leeching into the bedding.
“Goodnight, Sam.”
“Night, princess.” Sam’s drawl was low and warm in the dark, and Andrew fell asleep to the sound of his steady breath beside him.