Inception/Mysterious Skin - Every Me and Every You (13/30)
Title: Every Me and Every You (13/30)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,016
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
Eric didn't speak right away. Neil watched the boy as he carefully drove over patches of ice, worrying his bottom lip under his top teeth as he tried to put together the right way to say it in his head. It took several minutes before he finally said something, and when he did it was, "Well… I still haven't been able to talk to him… I did see him though, once."
Neil waited for Eric to go on, but the boy didn't seem to have anything else to say. Frankly he just looked ashamed of himself for making so little progress. Neil sighed and looked back out the window. "Don't blame yourself, Eric. You didn't do anything."
"Exactly. I didn't do anything," Eric replied. "That's why I'm so pissed at myself, you know? Brian's my friend… he should be able to count on me for stuff."
Neil offered a smirk, but it was halfhearted at best. "You don't count on me for shit."
"Yeah, well, you don't exactly have the best track record, McCormick."
"I'm here now, aren't I?"
Eric looked at him, expression somewhat unreadable. "Yeah… you are. I wouldn't believe it if you weren't sitting right there though… What's with the sudden shift in attitude?"
"Nothing," Neil said defensively, looking back out the window. "I just know that… I have something to do with this, I guess."
"That never made you feel the need to take action before."
Neil looked down into his lap. "This is different."
Eric turned his eyes back on the road, falling silent for a moment before asking, "So, what's the story then? You still haven't told me."
"I'm not going to," Neil said, and when Eric scoffed in protest he added, "You don't need to know the details. You've already figured out what's going on so hearing me confirm it won't make you feel better. Besides, I don't want to fucking talk about it, and I know you'd never be able to look at me or Brian the same way again, so just drop it."
Eric paused, swallowed, and said, "I wouldn't look at either of you differently. Your past isn't what makes you who you are."
It was Neil's turn to scoff. "If you don't think what happened to us that summer shaped us in some way then you're even dumber than I thought."
"What you do or what you did… it isn't who you are. You can let it define you if you want, but… you don't have to. Trust me, it took effort, but I'm not labeled as that weird kid whose parents died."
"Yeah, you are," Neil said flatly. Maybe that was a little cruel, but he couldn't help it.
"To other people," Eric said, taking a corner gently, "but not to me. I know I'm more than that."
Neil wasn't sure what to say to that, so he just stayed quiet.
They stopped at Neil's mother's house first because he figured he needed to stash his clothes somewhere, and he really thought he'd feel better once he saw his mom. Ellen McCormick was stunned and squealing with joy at the sight of him, throwing her arms around him and hugging him just a smidgen too tight. Neil liked being able to breathe in her smell again though, and he didn't mind the split second where her hug rendered him unable to breathe.
She corralled them both inside and started bustling about the kitchen, making cocoa and offering some store-bought chocolate chip cookies.
"Neil, what on God's green earth are you even doing here?" she asked, sitting down next to him on the couch, close enough that their knees touched. She handed him a mug of hot chocolate and ran her hand through his hair.
"I got a new job," Neil said, glancing at Eric. "Thought I'd surprise you with a visit."
"A new job? Oh, honey, tell me all about it," she said.
"Well, it's nothing too spectacular, but the pay is good," he said, wanting to laugh at how the first half of the sentence was a lie and the second half was an underestimation. "I met this guy, uh, Eames, who hired me on to work with him. He's got like this… little tiny group of people, and they all do reconnaissance stuff for big expensive companies on the down low so it's not all over the news. He says I'm a natural."
Eric's eyebrows shot up on his forehead, and Neil could tell he was questioning the truthfulness of this story. Sure, it wasn't completely true, but it wasn't completely false either. He did have a feeling Eric assumed Eames was an older guy that Neil was fucking for money, hired on as his own personal whore, but whether or not Eric learned the reality of the situation, Neil knew the boy would be sorely disappointed (or hell, he might start going off on that whole "liking Eames" nonsense that Wendy had been doing, and Neil wasn't sure which response would be worse).
"Oh, baby, that's wonderful," she said, and she hugged him again. "You'll have to tell this Mr. Eames I said thank you."
"Oh, you just wait," Neil told her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and kissing her forehead. "This is going to change everything. I'm going to buy you a new house with a giant front porch."
"You're making that much money?" Eric clearly was skeptical now. "You don't even have a college education."
Neil shrugged. "Like I said, I'm a natural. Besides, as long as you handle the training well then who the hell needs a degree? It's just a piece of paper."
For the first time in a long time, Eric cracked a genuine smile. "Well, fuck, sign me up for that."
"Me too," Ellen said.
Neil just sipped at his cocoa, not wanting to go into any more detail or make any more promises he ultimately couldn't keep.
"So, where'd you meet this guy?" Eric asked, and Neil would have flinched if he wasn't in front of his mother. He knew what the boy would assume regardless of what he said. He knew Eric would think Neil met him at the hustler bar.
"He caught me on the way home from work. He was looking for the subway. He's like… British or whatever, so he didn't know his way around… and you know, we shot the shit, and things just kind of went from there. He's an all right guy."
Neil was surprised by how much he had to suppress the urge to talk about Eames, to lay him out in detail after detail until his mother and Eric could picture him perfectly in their minds. It was a little bit terrifying, if he was being honest with himself, that the details even existed in his brain in the first place, only magnified by the way they dangled off the tip of his tongue.
His mom may not have noticed the tiny mental crisis Neil was having over this fact, but Eric seemed to, and Neil wondered for a moment if the boy finally had achieved the power to read minds.
"Well, hey, Eric and me, we were going to cruise around a bit, get some celebratory drinks and stuff, but I'll be back later tonight, all right?"
"Oh, at least eat lunch first," Ellen laughed and went into the kitchen. Neil was pretty sure nothing could spoil her mood at this point. "I've got some Campbell's chicken noodle. Is that okay?"
"Sounds great, Mrs. M," Eric called and then leveled Neil with a stare.
"What?" Neil asked.
"Who is this Eames guy, really?" Eric whispered, even though it was severely doubtful Ellen could hear them over her loud, slightly off-key humming. "Did you meet him… you know?"
Neil rolled his eyes. "No, I didn't. Believe what you want, but the subway thing was the truth. He's not even my type… He's only a little older than me." He didn't look Eric in the eyes as he said the last of it.
"You're lying," Eric said.
"I'm not, okay?" Neil said defensively. "He's really around my age, I swear. He's like… the same height as me, brown hair and is not balding, kind of bulky, but not old. If I had a picture of him, I'd show you to prove it, but I don't."
Damn those fucking details.
Eric stared at him a bit suspiciously but said, "Okay then… Man, I've never seen you get so defensive of someone before."
"I'm not getting defensive," Neil complained. "I just think it's kind of fucking annoying that you think the only way I meet people is through sex."
"Well, forgive me for assuming what's usually true," Eric replied sarcastically, and then added, "Man, what happened to you in the city? You're like a completely different person. I'm not complaining, but… it's weird."
"How am I different?"
"You… give a crap about people besides yourself," Eric said. "I mean… I thought that living in the city was supposed to sort of have the opposite effect, like make you hardened and even less friendly, and when you came back for Christmas you were like that, but… suddenly you've had this huge shift in attitude, and I want to know the cause."
Neil shrugged, arms folded protectively around himself. "I don't feel all that different."
"Well… it doesn't matter," Eric assured him. "Let's just go eat."
Neil followed Eric into the kitchen and didn't say that yes, it did matter, because he knew Eric wouldn't understand.
Neil McCormick's walls were starting to crumble, and he didn't know what was on the other side. Eames may not have reached his secrets when he'd gone under with him on the PASIV, but he was doing quite a lot to get a hold of them now, even in reality, and Neil was pretty sure the man wasn't even trying. He'd been building up his defenses in his subconscious, but hadn't been paying much mind to the ones on the surface, and he knew that in the future he would have to be more careful.
He just hoped he'd be able to hang onto the control he so desperately worked for.
In the end, it was all he'd ever had.
Lunch was pleasant enough, Eric and Neil and Mrs. McCormick chatting idly about this or that. Neil effortlessly wove fantastic stories about his time in New York that weren't even remotely true, and Eric complained about the constant, ever the same boringness of Hutchinson and living with his grandparents. Neil could feel Eric's loneliness practically bleeding from every word. Neil's mother was still working at the grocery store and had interesting little anecdotes about certain customers, but more or less life was still routine. She also apparently had a date on Friday with a guy named Dallas, and Neil poker-faced his way through her description of him as he realized that he'd fucked said Dallas once or twice.
When the soup had been eaten and extended see-you-laters had been said, Neil and Eric piled back into the Gremlin and took off for Little River.
The drive was still slow and steady because of the weather, and Neil couldn't imagine the torture of driving down this plane of highway again and again, slow as a fucking turtle while having no company but the bitter, desperate, frightened thoughts of what one would find when they reached their destination. He felt bad that Eric had to endure it, but he didn't let him know that it made him feel bad. He'd slipped up more than enough as it was already.
"He might be even less willing to talk with you there," Eric offered after the silence had dragged on for too long.
Neil lit up a cigarette. "Probably, but he'll talk to me anyway, I'd imagine."
"Because of what happened?"
"Because I'm the only one who was there for all of it."
Neil knew one thing was for sure-whether or not he and Brian saw eye-to-eye (they didn't) about that rainy night in the summer at Coach's house, Neil understood better than anyone what Brian was living with. Their reactions might have been different, but the beginning of their stories was still the same. He had a hunch that Brian wasn't talking to Eric not because he didn't want to, but because he was trying to make sense of everything, and he knew Eric wouldn't understand. Eric would try, most definitely, but there was no way he could know quite what was going on in Brian's head.
Neil passed his cigarette to Eric who took a long drag off of it gratefully. "So, what are you going to do when we get there?" Eric asked. "What should I do?"
Neil took his cigarette back, puffed on it for a moment or two. "I'm sort of playing it by ear, I guess. You can't exactly plan for this kind of shit, you know? If he wants you there, then come along. If he doesn't, wait in the living room or in the car or whatever. I'll let him have his speech or whatever he wants, and… well, I don't know what'll happen, but it's all I can do. You can't be pissed off or upset if the answer isn't in your favor. This is just how it's got to be."
Eric nodded solemnly and said, "I know…" Neil knew that Eric would still be upset if Brian chose to cut them out of his life or do something even more drastic (Neil refused to put serious thought into what that would mean because it made him far too uncomfortable). He hoped that it would at least lessen the sting to know that there was nothing Eric could have done to start with.
Neil tossed his ashes out of the cracked window and rolled it back up, handing the rest of it back to Eric. It started to snow as they drove down the empty highway, and Neil looked out at the harvested fields and the skeletal trees with blackened limbs reaching everywhere. He thought of Coach's hand on his face, his fingers sliding across his lips and into his mouth. Then he thought of Eames, brushing the blood away from the cut on his face, the stain cherry red on his thumb.
"Neil."
He jolted when he felt a hand on his shoulder. When he realized he'd fallen asleep in the car, all he could think of was Brighton Beach's car, the one he'd slept in so peacefully before he'd-
"Neil," Eric said more earnestly, and Neil realized that he was flailing against his touch. "Relax, man… You must have been having one hell of a nightmare."
Neil refrained from saying you have no idea. "I'm fine. Just… you just startled me a little is all. I didn't realize I fell asleep."
"We're here."
Neil fell quiet, staring at the house presented before him. It was such an average house, so quaint and family-like. Neil had occasionally imagined houses like this for him and his mom when he was really small, back before he realized how stupid the traditional family unit was and how it would never suit them. It did fit Brian though, at least the fuzzy, blurry image of him he'd gotten before they actually reunited. It was a house a normal boy could grow up in.
They got out, Neil hunching into his coat as they climbed the porch steps to the door, and Eric knocked three times.
It took a couple of minutes, but the door opened, revealing an older, blonde woman that was probably Brian's mother. Neil couldn't help but think how different she was from his own mother.
"Oh, hi, Eric," she said, voice a little unsure. Neil betted that they had done this before, talking through the screen door about Brian when the boy refused to be seen. "Who's your friend?"
Neil swallowed a mouthful of saliva and said, "Neil McCormick. I knew your son when we were little. We were on the same baseball team."
He waited for a moment to see if any kind of horrible recognition dawned on her face, but when it didn't, that confirmed to him that Brian hadn't spoken of their night in Coach's house.
"Is… is he here?" Eric asked softly.
"He's up in his room studying right now. I can ask him if he wants-"
"This is kind of important," Neil interrupted, "and it'll only take a few minutes, so uh… can you just let us in?"
She stared into his eyes, and Neil sort of wished he'd come as Arthur with his suit and slicked back hair. She wouldn't have been so wary of him if he'd looked more presentable, he guessed… but then again, Eric had always had more dramatic flair in his clothes than Neil ever had, and she seemed to like him just fine.
She sighed. "Okay, but just for a minute." She opened the door and they wandered in. The heat inside was welcoming, but Neil couldn't help but look around at the living room where Brian had probably played as a child, the walkway towards the kitchen where he'd eaten his meals. Their Christmas tree had been taken down, but the furniture hadn't been moved back yet, so there was a large empty space in the corner.
He didn't wait for her to give directions, instead starting up the stairs towards what he figured was Brian's room. He could hear music playing inside, the kind of somber melodies Eric had always been so fond of. The door was locked, so he knocked.
"Yeah?" Brian's voice came from inside. It made Neil's stomach feel like it was on the spin cycle.
He couldn't speak for that moment, afraid he'd hurl all over the place, so he knocked again. A moment passed, and then the music turned down, and the doorknob clicked as it was unlocked.
"Mom, I'm-" Brian started to say but fell silent when he saw Neil standing in the doorway.
"Hi," Neil said, voice barely a whisper.
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,016
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
Eric didn't speak right away. Neil watched the boy as he carefully drove over patches of ice, worrying his bottom lip under his top teeth as he tried to put together the right way to say it in his head. It took several minutes before he finally said something, and when he did it was, "Well… I still haven't been able to talk to him… I did see him though, once."
Neil waited for Eric to go on, but the boy didn't seem to have anything else to say. Frankly he just looked ashamed of himself for making so little progress. Neil sighed and looked back out the window. "Don't blame yourself, Eric. You didn't do anything."
"Exactly. I didn't do anything," Eric replied. "That's why I'm so pissed at myself, you know? Brian's my friend… he should be able to count on me for stuff."
Neil offered a smirk, but it was halfhearted at best. "You don't count on me for shit."
"Yeah, well, you don't exactly have the best track record, McCormick."
"I'm here now, aren't I?"
Eric looked at him, expression somewhat unreadable. "Yeah… you are. I wouldn't believe it if you weren't sitting right there though… What's with the sudden shift in attitude?"
"Nothing," Neil said defensively, looking back out the window. "I just know that… I have something to do with this, I guess."
"That never made you feel the need to take action before."
Neil looked down into his lap. "This is different."
Eric turned his eyes back on the road, falling silent for a moment before asking, "So, what's the story then? You still haven't told me."
"I'm not going to," Neil said, and when Eric scoffed in protest he added, "You don't need to know the details. You've already figured out what's going on so hearing me confirm it won't make you feel better. Besides, I don't want to fucking talk about it, and I know you'd never be able to look at me or Brian the same way again, so just drop it."
Eric paused, swallowed, and said, "I wouldn't look at either of you differently. Your past isn't what makes you who you are."
It was Neil's turn to scoff. "If you don't think what happened to us that summer shaped us in some way then you're even dumber than I thought."
"What you do or what you did… it isn't who you are. You can let it define you if you want, but… you don't have to. Trust me, it took effort, but I'm not labeled as that weird kid whose parents died."
"Yeah, you are," Neil said flatly. Maybe that was a little cruel, but he couldn't help it.
"To other people," Eric said, taking a corner gently, "but not to me. I know I'm more than that."
Neil wasn't sure what to say to that, so he just stayed quiet.
They stopped at Neil's mother's house first because he figured he needed to stash his clothes somewhere, and he really thought he'd feel better once he saw his mom. Ellen McCormick was stunned and squealing with joy at the sight of him, throwing her arms around him and hugging him just a smidgen too tight. Neil liked being able to breathe in her smell again though, and he didn't mind the split second where her hug rendered him unable to breathe.
She corralled them both inside and started bustling about the kitchen, making cocoa and offering some store-bought chocolate chip cookies.
"Neil, what on God's green earth are you even doing here?" she asked, sitting down next to him on the couch, close enough that their knees touched. She handed him a mug of hot chocolate and ran her hand through his hair.
"I got a new job," Neil said, glancing at Eric. "Thought I'd surprise you with a visit."
"A new job? Oh, honey, tell me all about it," she said.
"Well, it's nothing too spectacular, but the pay is good," he said, wanting to laugh at how the first half of the sentence was a lie and the second half was an underestimation. "I met this guy, uh, Eames, who hired me on to work with him. He's got like this… little tiny group of people, and they all do reconnaissance stuff for big expensive companies on the down low so it's not all over the news. He says I'm a natural."
Eric's eyebrows shot up on his forehead, and Neil could tell he was questioning the truthfulness of this story. Sure, it wasn't completely true, but it wasn't completely false either. He did have a feeling Eric assumed Eames was an older guy that Neil was fucking for money, hired on as his own personal whore, but whether or not Eric learned the reality of the situation, Neil knew the boy would be sorely disappointed (or hell, he might start going off on that whole "liking Eames" nonsense that Wendy had been doing, and Neil wasn't sure which response would be worse).
"Oh, baby, that's wonderful," she said, and she hugged him again. "You'll have to tell this Mr. Eames I said thank you."
"Oh, you just wait," Neil told her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and kissing her forehead. "This is going to change everything. I'm going to buy you a new house with a giant front porch."
"You're making that much money?" Eric clearly was skeptical now. "You don't even have a college education."
Neil shrugged. "Like I said, I'm a natural. Besides, as long as you handle the training well then who the hell needs a degree? It's just a piece of paper."
For the first time in a long time, Eric cracked a genuine smile. "Well, fuck, sign me up for that."
"Me too," Ellen said.
Neil just sipped at his cocoa, not wanting to go into any more detail or make any more promises he ultimately couldn't keep.
"So, where'd you meet this guy?" Eric asked, and Neil would have flinched if he wasn't in front of his mother. He knew what the boy would assume regardless of what he said. He knew Eric would think Neil met him at the hustler bar.
"He caught me on the way home from work. He was looking for the subway. He's like… British or whatever, so he didn't know his way around… and you know, we shot the shit, and things just kind of went from there. He's an all right guy."
Neil was surprised by how much he had to suppress the urge to talk about Eames, to lay him out in detail after detail until his mother and Eric could picture him perfectly in their minds. It was a little bit terrifying, if he was being honest with himself, that the details even existed in his brain in the first place, only magnified by the way they dangled off the tip of his tongue.
His mom may not have noticed the tiny mental crisis Neil was having over this fact, but Eric seemed to, and Neil wondered for a moment if the boy finally had achieved the power to read minds.
"Well, hey, Eric and me, we were going to cruise around a bit, get some celebratory drinks and stuff, but I'll be back later tonight, all right?"
"Oh, at least eat lunch first," Ellen laughed and went into the kitchen. Neil was pretty sure nothing could spoil her mood at this point. "I've got some Campbell's chicken noodle. Is that okay?"
"Sounds great, Mrs. M," Eric called and then leveled Neil with a stare.
"What?" Neil asked.
"Who is this Eames guy, really?" Eric whispered, even though it was severely doubtful Ellen could hear them over her loud, slightly off-key humming. "Did you meet him… you know?"
Neil rolled his eyes. "No, I didn't. Believe what you want, but the subway thing was the truth. He's not even my type… He's only a little older than me." He didn't look Eric in the eyes as he said the last of it.
"You're lying," Eric said.
"I'm not, okay?" Neil said defensively. "He's really around my age, I swear. He's like… the same height as me, brown hair and is not balding, kind of bulky, but not old. If I had a picture of him, I'd show you to prove it, but I don't."
Damn those fucking details.
Eric stared at him a bit suspiciously but said, "Okay then… Man, I've never seen you get so defensive of someone before."
"I'm not getting defensive," Neil complained. "I just think it's kind of fucking annoying that you think the only way I meet people is through sex."
"Well, forgive me for assuming what's usually true," Eric replied sarcastically, and then added, "Man, what happened to you in the city? You're like a completely different person. I'm not complaining, but… it's weird."
"How am I different?"
"You… give a crap about people besides yourself," Eric said. "I mean… I thought that living in the city was supposed to sort of have the opposite effect, like make you hardened and even less friendly, and when you came back for Christmas you were like that, but… suddenly you've had this huge shift in attitude, and I want to know the cause."
Neil shrugged, arms folded protectively around himself. "I don't feel all that different."
"Well… it doesn't matter," Eric assured him. "Let's just go eat."
Neil followed Eric into the kitchen and didn't say that yes, it did matter, because he knew Eric wouldn't understand.
Neil McCormick's walls were starting to crumble, and he didn't know what was on the other side. Eames may not have reached his secrets when he'd gone under with him on the PASIV, but he was doing quite a lot to get a hold of them now, even in reality, and Neil was pretty sure the man wasn't even trying. He'd been building up his defenses in his subconscious, but hadn't been paying much mind to the ones on the surface, and he knew that in the future he would have to be more careful.
He just hoped he'd be able to hang onto the control he so desperately worked for.
In the end, it was all he'd ever had.
Lunch was pleasant enough, Eric and Neil and Mrs. McCormick chatting idly about this or that. Neil effortlessly wove fantastic stories about his time in New York that weren't even remotely true, and Eric complained about the constant, ever the same boringness of Hutchinson and living with his grandparents. Neil could feel Eric's loneliness practically bleeding from every word. Neil's mother was still working at the grocery store and had interesting little anecdotes about certain customers, but more or less life was still routine. She also apparently had a date on Friday with a guy named Dallas, and Neil poker-faced his way through her description of him as he realized that he'd fucked said Dallas once or twice.
When the soup had been eaten and extended see-you-laters had been said, Neil and Eric piled back into the Gremlin and took off for Little River.
The drive was still slow and steady because of the weather, and Neil couldn't imagine the torture of driving down this plane of highway again and again, slow as a fucking turtle while having no company but the bitter, desperate, frightened thoughts of what one would find when they reached their destination. He felt bad that Eric had to endure it, but he didn't let him know that it made him feel bad. He'd slipped up more than enough as it was already.
"He might be even less willing to talk with you there," Eric offered after the silence had dragged on for too long.
Neil lit up a cigarette. "Probably, but he'll talk to me anyway, I'd imagine."
"Because of what happened?"
"Because I'm the only one who was there for all of it."
Neil knew one thing was for sure-whether or not he and Brian saw eye-to-eye (they didn't) about that rainy night in the summer at Coach's house, Neil understood better than anyone what Brian was living with. Their reactions might have been different, but the beginning of their stories was still the same. He had a hunch that Brian wasn't talking to Eric not because he didn't want to, but because he was trying to make sense of everything, and he knew Eric wouldn't understand. Eric would try, most definitely, but there was no way he could know quite what was going on in Brian's head.
Neil passed his cigarette to Eric who took a long drag off of it gratefully. "So, what are you going to do when we get there?" Eric asked. "What should I do?"
Neil took his cigarette back, puffed on it for a moment or two. "I'm sort of playing it by ear, I guess. You can't exactly plan for this kind of shit, you know? If he wants you there, then come along. If he doesn't, wait in the living room or in the car or whatever. I'll let him have his speech or whatever he wants, and… well, I don't know what'll happen, but it's all I can do. You can't be pissed off or upset if the answer isn't in your favor. This is just how it's got to be."
Eric nodded solemnly and said, "I know…" Neil knew that Eric would still be upset if Brian chose to cut them out of his life or do something even more drastic (Neil refused to put serious thought into what that would mean because it made him far too uncomfortable). He hoped that it would at least lessen the sting to know that there was nothing Eric could have done to start with.
Neil tossed his ashes out of the cracked window and rolled it back up, handing the rest of it back to Eric. It started to snow as they drove down the empty highway, and Neil looked out at the harvested fields and the skeletal trees with blackened limbs reaching everywhere. He thought of Coach's hand on his face, his fingers sliding across his lips and into his mouth. Then he thought of Eames, brushing the blood away from the cut on his face, the stain cherry red on his thumb.
"Neil."
He jolted when he felt a hand on his shoulder. When he realized he'd fallen asleep in the car, all he could think of was Brighton Beach's car, the one he'd slept in so peacefully before he'd-
"Neil," Eric said more earnestly, and Neil realized that he was flailing against his touch. "Relax, man… You must have been having one hell of a nightmare."
Neil refrained from saying you have no idea. "I'm fine. Just… you just startled me a little is all. I didn't realize I fell asleep."
"We're here."
Neil fell quiet, staring at the house presented before him. It was such an average house, so quaint and family-like. Neil had occasionally imagined houses like this for him and his mom when he was really small, back before he realized how stupid the traditional family unit was and how it would never suit them. It did fit Brian though, at least the fuzzy, blurry image of him he'd gotten before they actually reunited. It was a house a normal boy could grow up in.
They got out, Neil hunching into his coat as they climbed the porch steps to the door, and Eric knocked three times.
It took a couple of minutes, but the door opened, revealing an older, blonde woman that was probably Brian's mother. Neil couldn't help but think how different she was from his own mother.
"Oh, hi, Eric," she said, voice a little unsure. Neil betted that they had done this before, talking through the screen door about Brian when the boy refused to be seen. "Who's your friend?"
Neil swallowed a mouthful of saliva and said, "Neil McCormick. I knew your son when we were little. We were on the same baseball team."
He waited for a moment to see if any kind of horrible recognition dawned on her face, but when it didn't, that confirmed to him that Brian hadn't spoken of their night in Coach's house.
"Is… is he here?" Eric asked softly.
"He's up in his room studying right now. I can ask him if he wants-"
"This is kind of important," Neil interrupted, "and it'll only take a few minutes, so uh… can you just let us in?"
She stared into his eyes, and Neil sort of wished he'd come as Arthur with his suit and slicked back hair. She wouldn't have been so wary of him if he'd looked more presentable, he guessed… but then again, Eric had always had more dramatic flair in his clothes than Neil ever had, and she seemed to like him just fine.
She sighed. "Okay, but just for a minute." She opened the door and they wandered in. The heat inside was welcoming, but Neil couldn't help but look around at the living room where Brian had probably played as a child, the walkway towards the kitchen where he'd eaten his meals. Their Christmas tree had been taken down, but the furniture hadn't been moved back yet, so there was a large empty space in the corner.
He didn't wait for her to give directions, instead starting up the stairs towards what he figured was Brian's room. He could hear music playing inside, the kind of somber melodies Eric had always been so fond of. The door was locked, so he knocked.
"Yeah?" Brian's voice came from inside. It made Neil's stomach feel like it was on the spin cycle.
He couldn't speak for that moment, afraid he'd hurl all over the place, so he knocked again. A moment passed, and then the music turned down, and the doorknob clicked as it was unlocked.
"Mom, I'm-" Brian started to say but fell silent when he saw Neil standing in the doorway.
"Hi," Neil said, voice barely a whisper.