Chapter Text
Niall stared at the bottle of pills on his white porcelain sink and contemplated whether the remaining six tablets would do the trick. The small bathroom was dim, illuminated only by moonlight filtering through the curtains, but he could read the Vicodin label perfectly.
He gripped the edge of the sink hard enough for his knuckles to blanch, using it to anchor himself against the violent static thrumming through his body. With his other hand, he twisted the tap on full blast, letting cold water crash into the basin in hopes that it might drown out the noise in his skull.
It didn’t, but that didn’t surprise him. Nothing ever really did anymore.
His thoughts collided so fast they barely registered as language, just sensation, panic, and dreadful memories that were spiralling out of the pandora’s box he ungraciously stuffed them in.
Ruben was out.
Released and free to go. Back into the world, back in the city, back within reach.
Niall pressed both palms over his face, dragging them down slowly as if he could peel himself out of his own skin. His pulse pounded so hard it hurt. Every muscle in his body was wound tight enough to snap at any moment.
He picked up the bottle. The plastic clicked softly against the porcelain as he turned it over in his hand, staring at the pharmacy label until the letters blurred. The corner was beginning to peel where the water had splashed onto it.
Hydrocodone-Acetaminophen.
The words felt strangely detached from reality, clinical and harmless in a way that almost offended him. It wasn’t even his prescription, it was Alby’s. Leftover from surgery three weeks ago, facial reconstruction number five, though somewhere around the third they both stopped pretending this was temporary. Stopped pretending there would be one final appointment, one final procedure, one final attempt at some fucked-up semblance of an apology.
Niall’s stomach lurched so sharply he had to brace himself against the sink again. The bathroom suddenly felt too small, too warm, the air too thick to breathe properly.
He twisted the cap loose and the childproof seal cracked beneath his trembling fingers. He tipped the bottle, watching six white tablets tumble into his palm. Only six. Not enough to guarantee anything, probably, but enough to make everything stop for a few hours.
That thought alone felt enticing.
Enough to stop the static. Enough to stop the looping images behind his eyes every time he closed them. Enough to stop imagining footsteps outside the apartment. To stop hearing Ruben’s voice in every stranger’s laugh on the street. To stop feeling like his own skin was one size too small.
Niall stared at the pills sitting in his hand. So unimpressive, just small white ovals no bigger than his thumbnail. It was almost funny, in a bleak sort of way, how insignificant relief looked.
His throat burned. He bent forward, cupping water into his free hand, bringing it toward his mouth—
His phone lit up.
The sudden burst of brightness sliced through the darkness and he physically recoiled, water spilling down the front of his shirt. His pulse lurched, making his vision blur.
For a second, all he could do was stare. The screen covered the room in a pale blue that taunted him.
Unknown number.
Well, not unknown.
Unsaved, but memorized so thoroughly it might as well have been carved directly into his skin. His stomach dropped so fast it felt like he was freefalling through the sky without a parachute to slow his fall.
It was Ruben.
Of course. Of fucking course it was.
The tap still ran, water crashing into porcelain in an endless hiss as his phone continued to ring. The pills sat in his damp palm, dissolving slightly at the edges from the nervous sweat that had begun to gather between his fingers.
The phone buzzed once. Twice. Three times.
Niall couldn’t breathe properly. He knew he should let it ring out, he knew that. Knew it with the same bone-deep certainty of knowing that touching a stove burner would blister his skin. And yet…
His body had always betrayed him first. His thumb was already sliding across the screen before he consciously decided on his next action.
“...Hello?”
His own voice startled him. It was thin, too quiet, smaller than he intended, as if speaking too loudly might somehow make this real.
There was a pause on the other end. Not dead air, but intentional, measured silence. Just enough time for Niall to picture Ruben leaning back somewhere, mouth curled into that infuriating half-smile, enjoying the effect he had on Niall before saying a single word.
“Missed me, Bambi?”
The question landed like a fist to the sternum. Niall’s fingers snapped shut around the pills so hard their edges dug into his skin, pain blossoming sharp and immediate. It was grounding, and he welcomed it as he dug his nails deeper.
Niall should hang up. He should end the call, throw the phone across the room and wake Alby, tell someone, do literally anything other than this. Instead, he stood perfectly still, frozen in place like prey that had already decided resistance was pointless. Every nerve ending in his body lit up all at once. His pulse ricocheted violently against his ribs as a cold flush crawled down his spine. His breathing had gone shallow, quick enough to hurt.
And beneath all of it—worse than the fear, worse than the nausea, worse than the instinctive terror curling in his gut—
“You sound awful, sweetheart. Rough night?”
Relief.
A sick, immediate loosening in his chest so humiliating it nearly made him gag. Ruben sounded exactly the same, warm, calm, and almost fond. A voice built to disarm him before he even realized what was happening. Built to make the worst kind of human cruelty sound blushingly intimate. Like he hadn't detonated Niall’s life and walked away from the wreckage without a backward glance. Like prison had been an inconvenience, a nice little getaway far away from Niall.
As though no time had passed at all. As though Niall had simply been waiting for him to call. The worst bit was that part of him had; some rotten, starving part of him had remained suspended in time, still orbiting Ruben. Not quite like the Earth orbiting the sun, but like how a planet gets sucked into a black hole, eternally trapped in its gravity with no hope for escape.
Niall squeezed his eyes shut. He hated that voice. Hated how little time it took for it to slip beneath his skin, how easily Ruben’s cadence rewired something in him before logic could catch up. It was like warm honey poured over broken glass.
Niall pressed the phone tighter to his ear, as though proximity might somehow help him understand what the fuck was happening. Outside the bathroom, the apartment was silent. He could almost hear Alby breathing from down the hall if he concentrated hard enough.
“What do you want from me?” Niall asked, the question came out exhausted rather than angry.
Ruben was quiet for a moment. Then, with infuriating softness:
“You changed your ringtone.”
Niall blinked. “What?”
“It used to be that one song– what’s it called?” Ruben asked, and Niall could hear him shuffle on the other end of the line. “It went like–’bum bum bum bum, ba da ba da ba dum’, or something like that. By—oh they’re on the tip of my tongue now. Stupid minds? Silly minds?”
“‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ by the Simple Minds?” Niall helpfully supplied.
“Yes! Those numpties!”
A cold shiver slid down Niall’s spine. Not because the observation was threatening, because it wasn’t. It was casual, absent-minded, almost like commenting on the weather. As if they were picking up a conversation paused earlier that afternoon instead of years ago.
Niall stared at the dark tile beneath his feet as memories of their lives swarmed behind his eyes.
He remembered their room. Not his room, not Ruben’s room, their room. Two narrow beds shoved against the same wall, Ruben’s clothes perpetually on the floor, the summer heat trapped beneath cheap bedding. The humiliating intimacy of adolescence performed in front of another person.
No privacy or distance. No escape.
He remembered nights pretending to be asleep while Ruben climbed in through the bedroom window long after curfew, smelling like cigarettes and blood and cold air. Remembered Ruben dropping heavily onto his mattress and saying things into the dark like:
You awake?
Always knowing he was. Always talking anyway.
“You remember that?” Niall asked before he could stop himself.
A soft sound on the other end, not quite laughter. “‘Course I do.”
Something in Niall’s chest twisted.
God. That voice. That certainty. Ruben didn’t sound like someone reconnecting, he sounded like someone retrieving misplaced property. Niall hated how accurate the thought felt.
“You can’t just call me after—” Niall broke off, jaw tightening. He exhaled through his nose. “After everything.”
“Everything?”
The word was repeated back to him mildly, as though Ruben genuinely needed clarification, a quick reminder of his own wrongdoings. Niall let out a short, incredulous breath.
“You beat Alby half to death.” There. Ugly and blunt and finally said aloud.
Silence. He could hear Ruben breathing slow and measured, completely unaffected.
“He put his hands on you.”
The response was immediate, matter-of-fact. Not defensive, or apologetic, but a simple statement of logic, as if that explained everything. As if it should.
Niall felt something dark and complicated move through him. That was the problem, wasn't it? On some diseased level, part of him still understood Ruben’s math, still knew exactly how his brain worked.
Action and consequence. Touch and retaliation. Mine and not mine.
The simplicity of it all was revoltingly grotesque—
“No one gets to touch you like that,” Ruben continued, quieter now. “Not like I do.”
—And incredibly seductive.
Niall’s stomach dropped. There was something in Ruben’s voice that made his skin prickle. Not anger, but something calmer, colder, more deeply rooted. Like this wasn’t about Alby at all, not really. This was about principle, about violated order.
Niall leaned back against the sink, suddenly lightheaded. “You don’t own me.”
The words sounded embarrassingly fragile, like recited dialogue from a script he no longer believed in. Ruben was quiet for just long enough to make Niall regret saying it at all.
“No,” Ruben agreed. “But no one’s ever looked after you better than I do.”
Niall physically recoiled like he’d been slapped. His face burned, not because the statement was true, because some hideous, damaged corner of him still wanted to argue about the specifics. As though there were terms under which that sentence could be partially defensible. To make it okay for his pseudo-brother to speak to him like that.
Which was exactly how Ruben got inside him. Not through brute force, but through erosion. Through years of tiny recalibrations until dysfunction started feeling natural.
“Tell me why you called,” Niall said finally, attempting to sound brave, but his trembling breath gave him away.
“I wanted to hear your voice.”
Simple and uncomplicated. It shouldn’t have worked, but it absolutely did.
“What are you doing?” Ruben asked.
The question was so ordinary it almost made Niall laugh. “What?”
“What’ve you got on?” He repeated, as if there was nothing untoward in his line of questioning.
Niall stared at his reflection in the mirror. The question should have been ridiculous, absurd, even. And yet something warm and shameful still unfurled low in his stomach with humiliating immediacy.
He hated that. “I thought you would’ve learned better conversational etiquette while you were in prison.”
A soft laugh crackled through the speaker.
There it was again, that horrible little thrill.
Ruben laughed like he was in the room already. “Answer the question.”
Not a request, and never phrased like one.
Niall swallowed.
His shirt clung damply to his chest where he’d splashed himself moments earlier, the cotton semi-transparent in places, an image of ET faded away from the grey fabric. His sleeves were pushed messily to his elbows and his sleep shorts hung low on his hips. His bare feet were cold against the tile.
Niall should not be cataloguing this, he especially should not be cataloguing it for Ruben.
And yet…
“A shirt,” Niall said dryly. “Very scandalous.”
Ruben hummed. “A shirt.”
The repetition was thoughtful, like he was trying to picture it. Trying—and succeeding. Niall’s face heated again despite himself. He hated how easy this was for Ruben, how quickly he could turn something stupidly innocuous into something charged just by paying attention to it.
“The grey one with ET?”
Niall froze.
“How the fuck—”
“You wear it when you’re nervous.” The words were delivered so matter-of-factly they barely registered as speech, more like observation.
Niall felt suddenly, acutely visible. His pulse skipped another beat. “That’s insane.”
“No,” Ruben said. “It’s pattern recognition.”
Niall let out a disbelieving breath that bordered on laughter, or panic. Hard to tell anymore.
He leaned his hip against the sink, pressing his fist into his eye socket until colors burst behind his eyelids.
“You always did this.”
“What?”
“This thing where you say objectively deranged things like they’re normal.”
Another soft laugh.
“You always liked it.”
Niall’s eyes snapped open, his grip tightened around the phone. “No,” he said, too quickly, too defensive. “No, I don’t.”
Ruben was quiet for a beat. “Still lying badly, I hear.”
That one landed.
Outside, the apartment remained painfully still. He could picture Alby asleep in bed, one arm thrown over Niall’s side of the mattress, probably still warm from where he’d left it. A normal life waiting just outside this bathroom door. A version of himself he had fought embarrassingly hard to build.
And here he was.
Leaning against a sink at one in the morning letting Ruben slowly dismantle him molecule by molecule.
“What do you want from me?” Niall asked again, quieter this time.
This time it sounded less like an accusation, and more like a confession.
Ruben exhaled softly, the sound alone made something in Niall’s chest constrict. “I told you.” His voice had gone lower now, as if the line between them had somehow narrowed. “I wanted to hear your voice.”
Niall stared at himself in the mirror, at his own flushed cheeks, at pupils blown slightly wider than they should’ve been.
He looked unwell. He looked like he was almost possessed. He looked like someone halfway through making a terrible decision.
“You could’ve heard my voice without bothering me.” Niall muttered.
“That doesn’t sound like you.” Ruben whispered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Niall asked incredulously.
“You used to talk more.” The statement was unexpectedly soft. There was no teasing nor smugness, just an observation tinged with something that sounded suspiciously like loss. Niall blinked and his heart constricted painfully. Ruben continued before he could respond. “You used to tell me everything.”
It was true. He had once told Ruben everything, but that was before knowing each other started to feel less like closeness and more like captivity.
“That was a long time ago.”
Ruben was quiet. Then, with maddening certainty: “Didn’t feel that long when you picked up.”
The words slid under Niall’s ribs with surgical precision. He shut his eyes again, a slow, shaky breath escaped him. His fingers loosened involuntarily, the pills slipped from his palm one by one, dropping into the sink with soft, chalky clicks before disappearing beneath the rushing water.
Neither of them said anything, but Niall knew Ruben heard it.
Of course he did.
A beat passed.
Then, Ruben, almost smiling, “There you are.”
Niall’s breath caught. Not because of the words, but because of what they implied.
Not there they go.
Not good choice.
Not concern.
Recognition.
Like Niall had simply been returning to himself. Or worse, returning to Ruben.
He stared at himself in the mirror, pulse still fluttering too fast beneath his skin.
His own reflection looked unfamiliar. His cheeks were flushed red, his pupils were blown wide, and the cool breeze chilled his damp collar. He looked like he’d been caught doing something shameful.
He hated that Ruben could still do this to him.
He needed to puncture it, to remind both of them that things were different now. That there was a life outside of this. A real one.
Niall wet his lips. “I’m getting married.”
Silence.
Not the playful kind. Not Ruben’s usual weaponized pause. This one was different, vacant, as though the sentence had briefly knocked something offline.
Niall’s stomach tightened.
Good.
Let him sit with it.
Finally, Ruben spoke. “To him?”
The words came out flatter than before. No warmth or humor, just stripped clean.
Niall swallowed. “Yes.”
Another pause, long enough to become its own presence in the room. Water continued rushing into the sink. Somewhere in the flat, old pipes knocked softly in the walls.
Niall could hear Ruben breathing and nothing else.
“That’s stupid.”
The bluntness of it almost startled a laugh out of him, a bitter, exhausted sound. “Well, thank you for your blessing.”
“I’m serious.” Ruben’s voice had changed, becoming uncharacteristically quieter, like something dangerous being forced into a small container. “You can’t marry him.”
“Watch me.”
A short exhale crackled through the speaker, something between anger and laughter. “Niall.” Ruben just said his name, but he said with such immediate familiarity it made his spine stiff. “He doesn’t know you.”
Niall frowned. “That is such bullshit and you know it.”
“Is it?” Ruben sounded almost thoughtful. “He only knows the version of yourself you’ve built after I left.”
Nial didn’t say a word, and Ruben didn’t wait for him to. He continued on, voice low and horribly certain. “The cleaned-up one. The polite one. The one who apparently stays up until 1 in the morning.”
“Fuck you.”
“But he doesn’t know you.”
The repetition was methodical, cutting deep into him with painful accuracy, pulling at his heartstrings as if he was going to rip them out entirely.
“He doesn’t know what you sound like when you wake up from a nightmare.”
Niall felt his eyes burn and he shut them tight to block the tears that threatened to well up behind his eyelids.
“He doesn’t know you stop eating when you get anxious.” Ruben let out a soft chuckle, as if the memory itself was amusing. “And you’d need someone to force feed you by hand to keep you living.”
A shudder ran through Niall’s body and he swayed on his feet, entranced by Ruben’s scratchy voice.
“He doesn’t know you scratch at your wrists when you’re tryin’ not to spiral.”
He instinctively glanced down, only now realizing his nails scratching at his skin. Embarrassment burned hot across his face.
“Stop.”
Ruben ignored him.
“He doesn’t know that you only sleep through the night if you’ve got someone there to hold you through it. Or those little noises you try to hide when someone touches you just right.” He said, every word calm. His voice wasn’t raised, and this was no dramatic declaration. Just facts, delivered with devastating confidence. “He doesn’t know half the shite I know.”
The most awful thing about this whole situation was that Ruben was saying nothing but the truth. Not in a romantic way, but a parasitic one. Years of forced proximity had made Ruben less a person and more a second nervous system.
“You need me,” Ruben said quietly with naked certainty.
Niall laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Need you?”
“Aye.” Ruben didn’t hesitate “You always have.”
The arrogance of it should have made Niall furious. Instead, it made his pulse kick painfully, because buried beneath the offense was recognition. Like hearing a lie shaped from real materials.
“You’re delusional.”
“Am I?”
A beat.
Then, softer, “Would you be speaking to me right now if you didn’t?”
That shut Niall up completely. Niall stared blankly at his own reflection, at the evidence of himself and what Ruben does to him. He kept the phone pressed to his ear, still there, still listening.
Ruben made a small sound, almost thoughtful. Then, to Niall’s complete surprise, his tone shifted. The tension seemed to bleed out of it all at once.
“Alright.”
Niall blinked. “What?”
“If you want to marry him,” Ruben said, almost lightly, “then marry him.”
The words were so unexpected that Niall nearly missed them. He straightened, suspicion curled immediately in his gutt. This was too easy, too smooth, and Ruben was not someone who yielded.
“What?”
“I said fine.” Ruben took a deep breath, as if he were gathering his thoughts to put them in proper sentences. “Marry him.”
Now, he almost sounded amused. Not happy, but something much worse—patient.
“Buy the wee venue. Pick flowers, write your vows. Wear something hideous and expensive.”
“Ruben—”
“Invite me, if you like.”
The very image of Ruben in the crowd during his vows made Niall go cold. He didn’t know what he would do if he saw Ruben there.
Ruben laughed softly at his silence. “Go on, Niall. Build whatever little life you want.” The intimacy in his voice was unbearable now as it cosplayed a distorted imitation of affection. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Niall’s mouth had gone completely dry, as if he hadn’t had a drop of water in decades. Suddenly, this didn’t sound like surrender at all. It sounded like inevitability. Like Ruben was granting him temporary freedom the way one might let a cat wander, fully certain it would eventually return to the same doorstep.
Not if, but when.
And somehow that was so much worse.
He lifted his head, eyes flicking automatically to his own reflection—
And stilled.
Beyond his shoulder, blurred faintly in the dark rectangle of the bathroom window, something shifted. So slight he almost convinced himself he imagined it, just a disturbance in the layering of the shadows. A simple trick of the moonlight or a branch moving in the wind.
Niall’s pulse detonated, the blood in his body seemed to cool all at once. Slowly, far too slowly, he turned. The window was small, old, the lower pane cracked slightly at one corner from winter expansion. Beyond it was only darkness and the faint outline of the neighboring buildings. Nothing else.
Nothing, but his heart didn't get the memo.
“Niall?” Ruben’s voice was silk against his ear. Too close, too knowing.
Niall couldn’t breathe. “What?” He whispered.
A pause.
“You should really close your curtains.”
Every muscle in Niall’s body locked, the words not computing at first. Not fully, they arrived in pieces, like debris after impact.
Close. Your. Curtains.
His gaze snapped to a thin curtain hanging uselessly to one side of the window, half-open and letting the moonlight slip through, exposing him in fractured silver.
His damp shirt. His bare legs. His phone pressed white-knuckled to his ear.
All of it was visible. Completely visible.
A sick wave rolled through him so violently he had to brace himself against the sink.
“Ruben,” Niall said, barely even getting the word out.
On the other end of the line, Ruben exhaled softly. Almost fondly. “You really should be more careful.”
Niall lurched forward, yanking the curtain shut so hard the metal rod rattled. His hands were shaking so badly he nearly dropped the phone. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
It came out sharp and panicked. Too loud, his voice bounced harshly off tile.
For the first time all night, Ruben laughed properly. Low and warm and intimate in a way that made Niall feel physically ill.
“There you are,” Ruben murmured.
As though this—this spike of panic, this unraveling—was the emotional register he’d been searching for all evening.
Like he’d finally gotten Niall back to somewhere recognizable.
Niall backed away from the window, chest heaving. He hated himself for it, but some humiliating, involuntary part of him was now picturing Ruben outside. Leaning against the fence, maybe. Hands in his pockets, his head tipped upward toward the apartment. Watching for any sign of Niall. Patient as anything.
“How long have you been there?” Niall asked.
His voice had gone dangerously shaky.
Ruben chuckled darkly.
“Long enough.”