"Better Off Dead (than alive in here)" [part 2], Bandom RPF, Bill-centric
+
The next morning, Bill once again remembers why they all hate Ryan for having a vastly unexpressive voice; he knocks on Ryan and Brendon’s room and gets a yes of some description in reply. Of course, when he gets in there to find Ryan with his legs around Brendon’s waist, he finds it was a yes of an entirely different kind.
“Oh my God,” he says, “get a sex voice like a normal person.”
Brendon is giggling now, burying his face in Ryan’s neck, and the most disturbing part of this isn’t even all the nudity, it’s the fact that Ryan is still wearing pink eyeshadow.
“And lock your door next time,” he adds, leaving and slamming it behind him.
He can still hear Brendon laughing.
He knocks on Gabe and Vicky-T’s door with some trepidation.
“Who is it?” Vicky-T calls brightly.
Bill glances down and notes they’ve put the “please clean my room” sign on the door, which is never a good sign where Gabe Saporta is concerned.
“It’s me,” Bill replies.
“Oh, come in,” Vicky-T says, “it’s unlocked.”
He walks in to find that Gabe is stark naked and Vicky-T seems to be tying him to the headboard with what appear to be two of Ryan’s scarves. They’re paisley, anyway, which is usually a pretty safe bet that something belongs to Ryan.
Bill blinks expectantly.
“I’m leaving him for the maids to find,” Vicky-T explains, like this is something that girlfriends regularly do for the guys they’re dating.
Gabe flashes him his broad grin, made more creepy because the moon is getting close and his teeth seem to be very white and very dangerous.
“All right,” Bill says. “And this is going to... end in some kind of orgy? Because that doesn’t happen outside of porn.”
Gabe’s grin widens. “Baby, I am porn,” he says.
Vicky-T rolls her eyes.
“Doesn’t this count as cheating?” Bill asks, sitting down on the end of the bed. Sure, Gabe’s naked, but it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before. It’s nothing they haven’t all seen before.
“Well...” Vicky-T shrugs. “I slept with Ryland.”
“Who hasn’t?” Gabe responds.
Bill raises a hand, and then says: “I don’t get your pack. Or your harem. Or... whatever.”
“Neither do I,” Vicky-T responds, but she’s smiling. She sits down next to Bill, knocking their knees together. “It’s ok though. I think I’m mostly dating Gabe and Alex and Nate are mostly dating each other and Ryland is mostly dating this guy and this girl in a rival pack that ours has an alliance with.”
Bill doesn’t ask her to clarify ‘mostly’. It doesn’t need clarifying, though it does make for an interesting mental image.
“Don’t look so down, Billiam,” Gabe adds, kicking Bill with one bare foot, “you’re pack too. You’re possibly more pack than anyone else. You were pack before there was a pack.”
Bill turns around to tell Gabe that he doesn’t want to sleep with him when he catches Gabe’s eyes and sees all the places where Gabe isn’t joking, and it feels kind of weird that one of the things he’s needed to hear to fill up a place inside him that he didn’t even realise was empty comes at a moment involving bondage, nudity and Ryan’s stolen clothing.
“Ryan’s going to throw a hissy fit if you defile his scarves,” he warns Gabe.
“It’s ok,” Gabe says brightly, “he and Brendon are still getting jiggy.” He waggles his eyebrows in a wholly disturbing manner.
Vicky-T drops her head into her hands. “Please tell me you did not just say that.”
Bill frowns. “How can you tell?”
Gabe waggles his head. “Superhuman hearing, remember? We can hear them from three rooms away. It sounds kind of like Ryan is getting Brendon to fix his printer for him, but since Ross really didn’t bring anything but ugly scarves and make-up it probably isn’t his printer.”
Bill swallows a laugh and Vicky-T is giggling like this is an old joke. Given the superhuman hearing, it probably is.
There’s another knock at the door. Bill darts a glance at Vicky-T, who shrugs and shouts: “come in!”
Spencer appears, takes in the scene and lets the door close behind him. He gives Gabe an unimpressed onceover that actually takes some of the sparkle out of Gabe’s smirk, because no one has a bitchface like Spencer’s.
“Ryan’s going to lose his shit,” Spencer says, coming over to sit on Bill’s other side.
“Spencer Smith, you are my hero,” Vicky-T says, fluttering her eyelashes.
“Get in line,” Bill fires back, and watches Spencer roll his eyes like he doesn’t love them.
“I hate all of you,” Gabe informs them. “I’m naked and tied up and there is nothing fun going on.”
Spencer reaches for the remote. “I bet it’s early enough for there to still be cartoons.”
“Awesome,” Bill says with feeling, leaning over to snag one of the pillows from behind Gabe. He protests, but Bill ignores him.
Z joins them maybe ten minutes later (“I’m bored of listening to Ryan Ross’ miserable attempt at a sex voice through the wall, and I don’t think Brendon ever stops giggling, I’m pretty sure that they’re doing it wrong”), flopping down on Vicky-T’s other side without even glancing at Gabe.
Gabe clears his throat loudly and then leers at Z when she turns around.
“Wow, we’re starting early on the whole virgin sacrifice thing,” she remarks.
Bill laughs until it actually hurts. And just as he calms down, Ryan appears (still wearing hot pink eyeshadow, what the fuck, this had better not be his new fashion direction), unties Gabe and gives them all a seventeen-minute lecture on how awesome his scarves are or something, while Brendon bounces around behind him trying and failing to look sombre.
While everyone is packing their stuff up, Bill pats Gabe on the shoulder. “Sorry about your unlikely porn-inspired orgy.”
Gabe shrugs. “There’s always the next motel.”
Bill thinks that might actually be Gabe’s life motto, and resolves to get it put onto a t-shirt for Gabe’s next birthday.
{eleven months ago}
Bill is clicking idly through his emails and thinking that he should probably go to bed when a new one arrives.
So, apart from the inadvisable making out thing, we got on pretty well and it would suck to waste that. How’s senior year going?
Bill stares at Travis’ email address and worries his lower lip between his teeth for a while and then decides that if Travis can be awesome and mature and so forth, then so can Bill. Also; Vicky-T has Greta and Ryan and Spencer have Jon and Gabe and Pete seem to be forming some kind of evil cult thing through the magic of the internet, so Bill really deserves a vampire friend in Chicago of his own. It’s been a month since they left and Bill has missed everyone they met there, and maybe he’s thought about Travis a little too much. Maybe.
He hesitates and then reminds himself that just because he’s not in a mental or physical state where making out with people is ok - and maybe he should’ve kept attending that support group, but once Brendon dropped out to have an apparently enjoyably turbulent relationship with Ryan, Bill realised that he kind of hated everyone else there - it doesn’t mean he can’t make friends.
Bill has actually, genuinely, honest-to-God come to terms with being a ghost. In a variety of ways, it’s kind of better than being alive ever was, except perhaps for the whole not eating or drinking thing. He’s just... not sure that he’s come to terms with being him yet, except that sounds weird and crazy and desperate and so he squashes the thought flat and writes a reply that doesn’t in any way imply that he’s maybe falling apart a little inside.
Travis sleeps during the day and Bill sleeps - most of the time - at night, so it’s a little difficult to manage a phone or text conversation unless one of them stays up stupidly late. Bill asks Vicky-T and Ryan for advice; Vicky-T gets a knowing expression on her face that Bill pretends to ignore, and Ryan would probably get a knowing expression except that his face only moves on national holidays and when Brendon’s around, but both of them suggest lots of emails and a handful of patience. Patience was never one of Bill’s virtues, but a lot of things about him have changed since his heart stopped in the back of an ambulance, so he figures he can try it out.
Hey, Travis texts him at lunch a couple of weeks later.
Bill frowns, trying to swallow a smile. What are you doing awake? he asks.
All day party, Travis informs him. We’re hardcore or something.
Bill checks the watch on Alex’s wrist, who sighs but lets himself be manhandled: “‘cause it’s not like I’m trying to eat here or anything.”
Don’t you have school in like eight hours?
Hardcore, Travis repeats, and then, a minute later: I’m going to fucking kill Pete.
Bill actually likes Pete, in a wow-this-disturbingly-short-vampire-is-actually-crazy-but-also-a-weirdly-nice-guy way, but he can also see how knowing him could lead to doing lots of inadvisable things that you don’t mean to do. It’s probably like knowing Gabe, actually, but with more eyeliner.
Do you need an alibi? he offers.
“You’re smiling,” Ryan says suspiciously. And, well, yeah, it’s understandable that Ryan finds smiling suspicious because Ryan thinks that the majority of facial expressions should be kept in boxes and only taken out in private, like porn or mom sweaters. Bill is still bemused by the fact Ryan is dating a guy who smiles all the time, even when he’s unhappy; especially when he’s unhappy, actually, but that’s a whole other thing and Brendon promises he’s working on all that.
“He can do that because he’s not a robot like you, Ross,” Joe points out, and then flinches like Ryan’s just kicked him. Ryan’s shoes are frequently pointy, so Bill can sympathise.
Thanks man, but I think Keltie’s got my back here, Travis tells him.
“Are we going to have to get more pamphlets on dating ghosts to tease you with now?” Z asks, not looking up from the magazine she’s got spread out over the table.
That thought makes something cold and hard clench in Bill’s stomach. “No,” he says, and something must show on his face because everyone stops asking him about it.
He doesn’t reply, but he does get another message a few hours later - think I’m actually drunk at school, FML - and if he grins at this one too, well, there’s no one around to call him on it.
+
The day before the full moon rises just seems to be full of phone calls. Z stays on the phone with Tenn for most of the day, something sweetly soft in her face that she usually only gets when Bill is pretending not to be freaking out or when Ryan’s dad is particularly bad again. Gabe and Vicky-T are jittery, tense, and there’s nowhere to have a conversation about the logistics of trying to have a road trip with people who are going to turn into potentially murderous animals later because their superhuman hearing means that they overhear even the softest of whispers from several metres away and then there’s shouting.
“I’m not going to kill anybody,” Gabe literally snarls, “when have I ever fucking killed anybody, fuck you all.”
Vicky-T says nothing, sitting on the hot asphalt outside the gas station store, something sharp and not-quite-human in her eyes.
Bill and Brendon aren’t affected by the pheromones positively streaming off their friends because they’re not in any danger either way, but Bill can see Ryan twitching in the backseat, lips pressed together so hard they’re almost invisible, and Spencer’s driving is unusually erratic, swerving all over the road, so they wind up checking into a motel earlier than planned.
“Tell me what to do,” Bill says quietly to Gabe, who seems to have calmed down a little. Gabe exhales, dropping his head to Bill’s shoulder for a moment, just breathing in.
They all pitch in to move the furniture in Gabe and Vicky-T’s rooms, shifting it against the walls to leave a decent amount of floor space. They’ve only booked three rooms, but Bill is pretty sure the rest of them aren’t going to sleep at any point tonight anyway. Bill and Z deal with the drapes, because the darker the rooms are, the better.
“We need to block out the sound of the transformation,” Brendon offers, biting his nails. It’s kind of weird how their hair and nails still grow, Bill’s always thought; like they’re corpses instead of the aftershocks of emotions, but he’s not in charge of the rules of what makes a ghost and what doesn’t.
“We’ll just put the TV on really loud,” Gabe shrugs. “And then you guys can come turn it off when it’s over.” He looks pointedly at Brendon and Bill.
Bill doesn’t want to go in the same room as a werewolf, even if said wolf is apparently going to be unconscious, but he’d do anything for Gabe and Vicky-T and it’s not like they can risk Ryan, Spencer or Z. Well, ok, Bill knows (although Z swore him to secrecy) that Z and Tenn are quietly and thoughtfully discussing the logistics of turning Z into a werewolf when they’re both twenty-one, but that’s a whole other thing than Gabe or Vicky-T accidentally hurting one of their friends in a cheap shitty motel room hundreds of miles from home.
They spend the afternoon window shopping and sipping Starbucks coffee while Gabe and Vicky-T alternate between calling their parents and the rest of their pack.
“Ryland says he hopes you stop being so emo soon,” Gabe offers, draping an arm around Bill’s shoulders.
“Tell Ryland he’s an asshole,” Bill says, and can hear Ryland’s laughter cracking out of Gabe’s phone.
As sunset approaches, Bill wedges a chair under the door of Gabe’s room while Gabe strips off, putting his clothes on top of a closet, high out of reach. It’s not like Bill hasn’t seen Gabe naked a dozen times but he still winces at the raw scars crossing Gabe’s lower back, the lasting remains of the attack that turned Bill’s best friend into a werewolf. Gabe plunges a syringe of sedative into his thigh, grimacing slightly.
“This shit isn’t nearly as much fun as it should be,” he says. His smile is lopsided, less certain and predatory than it usually is. “Hey, Billy, remember that summer when we were, like, six, and we basically spent every day in your backyard having, I don’t know, adventures or whatever it was we did when we were six?”
“I do,” Bill says quietly, smiling his own crooked smile back.
“Now look at us,” Gabe tells him. “You fucking died and you’re a ghost, and I’m a goddamn werewolf.”
“We would’ve thought this was the coolest thing ever when we were six,” Bill reminds him.
“Yeah.” Gabe laughs and it isn’t his laugh. He weaves as though drunk when he walks over to Bill, wrapping his arms around him. He’s naked and it should be weirder than it is, but Gabe is shaking and Bill hugs him back, tight.
“We’re gonna sort you out, Bill,” Gabe says into his shoulder. “You know that, right?”
“I do,” Bill replies, because he doesn’t know a whole lot else but he does know that. Gabe pulls back and presses a clumsy kiss to the corner of his mouth, and then staggers backwards, a sound escaping him that’s half a gasp and half a whimper and none of it’s quite human.
“Television,” he breathes, and Bill reaches for the remote, switching it to a music channel they picked earlier, filling the room with really loud rap music until the speakers start buzzing.
Gabe is on his hands and knees on the floor, back arched at an impossible angle, keening spilling between his teeth. “Go,” he gets out, sounding like his teeth are too big for his mouth and, ok, wow, they probably are.
“I could stay,” Bill offers quietly, because he can’t leave Gabe like this, he can’t.
“I don’t want you to see this,” Gabe says, and whimpers again. “Fucking go.”
Bill backs out, passing through the door. He stands outside, shivering and feeling like his skin’s full of splinters for a moment, but he can’t hear Gabe anymore, just the television. He looks down the hall to find Ryan, Z and Spencer are standing in the doorway to their room, staring at him. There’s no sign of Brendon, but there’s music coming from Vicky-T’s room on the other side, so Bill assumes that’s going ok.
Right now he feels like shit for dragging them all on this pointless road trip, for making them leave their safe basements or the woods where they sometimes meet up with dozens of their brethren. For making them do this in a strange and possibly dangerous environment.
He counts ten minutes and then ventures back through the wall again. The wolf that’s Gabe - and Bill’s never seen him in his wolf form before, none of them have, and he’s unprepared for how large and dark the wolf is - is curled up asleep on the floor. Bill walks over to the television and switches it off, filling the room with sudden silence; Gabe twitches a little, but doesn’t stir. He stands still for a long moment, just watching, and then walks out again.
When he gets back into their room, Brendon is curled against Ryan with his head buried in his shoulder, and it sounds like he’s crying. Z is sitting on the other bed, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them. Spencer is twisting his fingers together, looking at his feet.
None of them say anything for the longest time because there’s really nothing to say. Brendon sits up eventually, forcing a smile as he wipes his shining cheeks, although the shoulder of Ryan’s t-shirt is still completely dry. Bill doesn’t need to ask: he can already tell that Brendon stayed in the room for the entirety of Vicky-T’s transformation, and God knows exactly what he saw.
“It’s gonna be a long night,” he mumbles.
+
All Gabe and Vicky-T want to do the next day is sleep, so it’s up to the rest of them to straighten up the motel rooms. Brendon drives the bus while Gabe and Vicky-T doze in the backseat, pressed close together. For all that they’re so casually relaxed around each other, Bill can see how defensive they are, Gabe’s fingers clenched far too tight in the back of Vicky-T’s dress, her legs thrown across his lap. Bill glances back later; Z is pretending she isn’t basically asleep between Ryan and Spencer. They’re all quiet, but relieved that that’s out of the way; they’ll all be home by the time the next moon rolls around. Bill silently promises himself that. He has one more month to sort this shit out.
“Do you remember what it’s like to be alive?” Brendon asks quietly when Spencer finally falls asleep against Z’s shoulder and they’re the only ones left awake.
Bill considers the question for a while because he gets the feeling that this is going to be one of those important conversations that come up from time to time since they both stopped attending their not-particularly-useful support group.
“I don’t expect to feel a heartbeat anymore,” he offers at last. “I’m used to not having a pulse. So... so I guess I’m getting there.” Brendon says nothing, eyes on the road, and Bill sighs. “It’s the little things that trip me up, like when my friends are getting drunk around me and I think fuck, I’ll never be drunk again.”
Brendon laughs a little, switching lanes. “I don’t know if it’s worse or better for me,” he says. “I’d never gotten drunk before I died, I’ve only had sex since I became a ghost; I never tried out the living counterparts.” He’s still smiling, but it’s thoughtful now. “Is it better to not be able to miss them, or is it just damn sad that I died before I had a chance to live?”
What’s damn sad is that Brendon was ten years old and his parents wouldn’t take him back into their home, leaving him to what sounds like a really fucking depressing orphanage type place for abandoned child ghosts, but Bill’s not ever, ever going to say that aloud.
“That’s too philosophical for me,” he tells him instead, and looks at the keyboard on Brendon’s arm so he doesn’t have to see his expression.
The last support group meeting either of them ever went to entailed the world’s most depressing game of “I Never”; in an attempt to help them all come to terms with dying, they had to list all the things they’d never be able to do. It was supposed to help, but all Bill can remember is Lyn-Z sobbing as she mumbled I’ll never have children. Brendon had spent about the next week moping about until Ryan managed to pry the reason out of him; it turned out Brendon’s admission of I’ll never have a tattoo was weighing on his mind. Frank, like the awesome guy that he is, found the answer, and so Gerard carefully drew piano keys onto Brendon’s forearm. Brendon doesn’t sweat and doesn’t need to wash, so provided he goes over the design with an ink pen from time to time, he’s got his tattoo.
Bill sometimes wishes it was as easy to compromise on everything else.
They drive on in silence for a while, and then a sign at the roadside catches Brendon’s eye.
“Oh, hey,” he says, “let’s go see the world’s largest wooden crucifix.” He turns off immediately.
Bill thinks about pointing out that none of them are particularly religious - the nearest thing Gabe’s ever had to a religious experience was that time he had spinal surgery and apparently had a very disturbing vision about cobras - and then remembers that Brendon used to be a bit Mormon. Besides, they’ve got an entire trunk full of stolen Bibles, swiped from motel room drawers, so it’s not like Bill can really say anything.
Brendon smiles at him. “Do you have any better plans for today?”
“Well,” Bill admits, “no.”
Brendon pushes his stupid giant plastic sunglasses up his nose. “There we are, then.”
+
“So, how long does the Fuck, I’m Physically Incapable Of Taking Prozac tour last?” Travis asks, sounding amused.
Bill is sort of impressed that he’s managed to make this sound less lame than it actually is.
“I don’t even know,” he admits. “How’re things your end?”
He can hear Travis roll his eyes. “Ever since Patrick turned eighteen Pete’s decided that now they’re both legal he’s totally justified in biting him. And then telling us all about it.”
Bill knows enough about vampires by now to know that biting people is something that’s very private and very intimate and not something they ever really discuss. He only knows Frank’s bitten Gerard a couple of times because he caught sight of the marks, and Gerard had flushed and started talking loudly and inanely about comic books until Bill took pity on him and went away.
“I’d point out to him that it’s about as welcome as hearing about different sexual positions he and Patrick tried but Pete told us all about those too.”
“Of course he did,” Bill laughs. He suspects Gabe would’ve done that too, but Vicky-T’s a classy lady and could almost certainly beat Gabe in a fight if it came down to it. “How’s Patrick holding up?”
“He’s got a mean right hook,” Travis tells him, sounding vaguely impressed. “He’s small, but he’s scrappy.”
They’re supposed to be Communing With Nature or whatever tonight, but neither Ryan or Z are large fans of Nature, and Spencer bitched that Nature was going to ruin his shoes, so they’ve wound up hanging out around their motel’s - somewhat unlikely - outdoor pool. Brendon is happily splashing about in it with Vicky-T and Gabe, while Ryan sits on the side and prophesizes various evil pool diseases.
“What are you guys doing?” Travis asks, and Bill wonders how much he can hear.
“Pool party,” he explains. “It’s pretty crappy pool, though, it kind of feels like one of the ones you’d pull bodies out of on CSI.”
Something occurs to him and he looks back to find that Brendon is, very carefully, keeping his head well above the water and sticking to the shallow end. Bill can’t blame him; Brendon’s never particularly detailed when he describes what drowning feels like, but the little Bill knows sounds horrible.
“Sounds like fun,” Travis says, a smile in his voice.
Bill shuts his eyes and tries to picture him, sitting somewhere with his phone. He hasn’t seen Travis for over a year now, and obviously hasn’t seen any photographs either; he wonders how Ryan coped with his pining over Jon from afar when he couldn’t even see him, and then reminds himself that he isn’t pining because there’s nothing to pine over. He’d just like to be reminded what his friend actually looks like.
“Are you doing any dates in Chicago?” Travis asks. His voice is light, casual, and Bill spends a protracted moment trying to work out exactly what Travis is asking.
“I don’t know,” he says at last. “I don’t know where we’re going. I kind of hope one of the people driving does.”
Z is sitting on the edge of the pool, and kicks a wave of water into Gabe’s face. Bill sincerely hopes that Ryan’s pool diseases are actually imaginary, because Gabe is no fun ever when he’s sick, and will presumably be even worse in an enclosed space.
“Take care of yourself, man,” Travis says quietly.
“I’ll be ok,” Bill says, “I mean, the worst has already happened, hasn’t it?”
Travis laughs softly, but it doesn’t sound quite real. “Seriously, Bill,” he says, “take care of yourself.”
He hangs up before Bill can say anything more, and he looks up to see Brendon dragging Z fully clothed into the pool. They start splashing each other, yelling and swearing, and Bill half-expects someone to come out and shout at them, but no one does. Spencer rolls his eyes and Ryan appears to be actually flailing because of how he is violently allergic to actual fun; Gabe leans in and kisses Vicky-T like Brendon and Z aren’t trying to duck each other a few feet away. Bill slips his phone back into his jeans and walks over to join Ryan and Spencer. Both of them are wearing matching ‘Oh my God, the world is full of idiots, how are these people my friends, how is this my life’ expressions, and it’s kind of stupidly adorable.
“Is this where we start mocking you for pining over a vampire?” Ryan asks.
“I’m not!” Bill protests. “And also: no.”
“You did it often enough to me,” Ryan points out.
“Actually, that was mostly me,” Spencer says, not sounding even remotely sheepish. He glances at Bill and then jerks his head and says: “come on.”
Bill and Ryan obediently follow Spencer away from the floodlit pool and the wet shrieking. They end up in the hotel’s badly-lit parking lot.
“Atmospheric,” Ryan remarks dryly.
“Shut up,” Spencer says, elbowing him and then abruptly sitting down on the tarmac.
“This isn’t some kind of suicide pact thing, is it?” Bill asks worriedly.
Spencer just levels his bitchface at them until Ryan and Bill sit down too. “We’re going to stargaze,” he informs them in his hardest, do-not-argue-with-me voice. “Ok?”
Ryan rolls his eyes but lies back, wriggling a little until he’s apparently comfortable. Bill shrugs but lies down too, staring up at the night sky, bright and clear and full of thousands of white pinpricks. It’s huge and overwhelming and would probably be breathtaking if Bill could still breathe, and Ryan’s fingers thread through the fingers of his right hand and Spencer’s fingers entangle with his left.
Bill has no idea how long the three of them lie there, attention fixed on the shining universe that’s so much bigger than any of them will ever be, but it’s long enough that Ryan’s practically asleep beside him when he rolls his head to look. He turns to Spencer, and whispers thank you.
Spencer just smiles, bathed in silver light.
+
Vicky-T abruptly swerves, causing the bus to make screeching noises Bill is pretty sure it shouldn’t be making, kicking up clouds of dust, and parking them off the road.
Bill was under the impression she was the one driving so that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.
“Everyone out,” she announces with a flick of her hair.
Bill looks at Z, who just rolls her eyes and pushes her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses further up her nose. They’re really good sunglasses; Bill’s are still green plastic and he’s stupidly jealous.
They all obediently troop out into the sunshine. It’s absolutely silent; no vehicles in sight at all, nothing but the dust to see them. Vicky-T is the last to get out; Bill belatedly notices that she’s wearing one of his clean pairs of jeans. They’re too long for her, but they look good. It’s possible that her ass is more awesome than his; Bill decides not to ask Gabe, he’d only want to attempt to conduct some kind of pseudo-scientific experiment.
“Is this the part where you kill us all and hide our bodies?” Brendon asks, bouncing on his feet. He sounds much too excited about that.
Vicky-T takes her sunglasses off so they can all appreciate her eye-roll. It’s not as bitchy as Spencer’s, but it’s a good effort. “Flaw in that plan, Bren,” she points out softly. “Also, you’d all have to dig your own graves first, and the only things we’ve got on hand are stolen Bibles.”
Brendon’s face falls ridiculously.
“So, why the stop in the middle of nowhere?” Bill asks.
Vicky-T puts her sunglasses back on but even through the lenses, Bill can feel her heavy, unrelenting gaze.
“I kind of wanted to see how you were getting on with that epiphany you were meant to get out here,” she says.
Bill’s stomach goes cold.
“I thought we were letting him figure that one out for himself,” Z says slowly.
“Yeah, but look how well that’s going,” Ryan mumbles. Brendon elbows him, but he’s chewing his lower lip like a nervous tic, gaze on the dusty ground.
“I have total faith in Billiam,” Gabe announces, and then slants him a look that Bill can’t read because Gabe is wearing fucking ugly shades.
They’ve wound up in a circle and Bill feels horribly exposed and guilty for making them all be here and still achingly, lingeringly lost.
“I don’t...” he sighs. “I don’t know.” He thinks about it for a moment longer, and though it hurts to say it, he adds: “let’s just turn the bus around and go home.”
The others exchange looks he can’t decipher, and then Brendon says, slow and hesitant: “the thing is, Bill, you’re not going home.”
“Way to make this sound like a shitty horror movie,” Ryan mutters.
“What?” Bill asks.
Gabe slings an arm around his shoulders. “Ok, walk with me here, Bill.”
The others stay behind, kicking at the ground and aimlessly throwing rocks at nothing, while Gabe drags Bill down the road, hot asphalt under their feet.
“I don’t understand,” Bill says.
“The thing is,” Gabe begins, “there was this guy who was my best friend for sixteen years, and he was great and he was amazing and he died in a car accident. And that guy is gone.”
“I’m not gone,” Bill begins, but Gabe claps a hand over his mouth.
“Shut up, I’m not done.” He waits until Bill nods before continuing. “You’re not going home because there’s nothing left in that town for you. The only thing left there are your friends, and we’ve kind of proved that we’ll go anywhere for you. You need to get out, you need to live somewhere else and try new things out and be the Bill who woke up with the ability to walk through shit.”
Bill thinks about this for a while. “Didn’t I already work this out for myself?”
“No,” Gabe says. “Because you ran away wrong.”
He turns them around so they’re walking back towards the bus. The bright white sunlight makes Brendon glow just a little blue around the edges; Bill wonders if it’s the same for him.
“How can you screw up running away?” Bill can’t help asking.
“Because you should have picked a destination, found a couch to sleep on, found a shitty job and then worked something out,” Gabe tells him, like this should’ve been obvious. “The aimless city hopping is just desperate.”
“So that’s what you want me to do?” Bill frowns. “Pick a destination?”
“Get your shit together, ghost boy,” Gabe replies, prodding him in the side.
Bill smiles a little; he can’t help it. “How come all you guys knew this and I didn’t?”
“Because we know the new you, Bill,” Ryan informs him. “It’s just... you don’t yet.”
Bill ducks his head, grateful for the shades because he can feel his eyes getting embarrassingly wet behind them.
“So you’ve got until the nearest bus station to pick a destination,” Spencer says, soft but firm. Spencer’s great at getting the shit done that needs doing, and Bill resists the urge to cling to him and beg him to put his life together for him.
They all pile back onto the bus; Bill sits between Ryan and Brendon, neither of whom says anything. There’s nothing left to say, really. Bill sits silently and listens to Z switching channels on their shitty little car radio, and makes his choice.
+
“Oh,” Mike says in tones of incredulity, “you’re shitting me.”
“Hey,” Bill shrugs. “Does this make us roadtrip soulmates or something?”
Mike smirks as Bill drops into the seat beside him. “So how’s the emotional breakdown going now?”
“As it turns out, all my friends knew why I was having the breakdown, even when I didn’t. So now I’m not having it anymore,” Bill explains.
“Right,” Mike says slowly. “That makes... no fucking sense at all.”
“I know,” Bill agrees. “But hey, this is unexpectedly awesome.”
Mike is clearly pretending that this is not unexpectedly awesome, but there’s something glittering in his eyes anyway.
They sit side by side and Bill tries not to think too hard about goodbyes, because everyone, even Spencer, got tearful. They all left before he got on the bus so his choice would be his choice, and now all he can do is hope he made the right one. He’ll call home later, he thinks, but he’s pretty sure his parents will be relieved because then maybe they can move on too; no one wants to stay in the town where their son died. No one.
It’s been a messy couple of years, Bill thinks, but they’ve been good, and he’s kind of looking forward to the future now, which is more than he has done in almost longer than he can remember.
Mike tells him that they have to meet up sometime when Bill’s settled, and Bill agrees; someone you repeatedly accidentally run into on buses is clearly someone you have to keep around.
“Good luck,” Mike says, and it’s gruff but it’s genuine.
And then Bill gets off the bus, taking a deep breath he doesn’t need, because it’s a new city and a new start and he can do this. He needs to do this.
Travis is leaning against the wall, a small smile on his mouth.
“How did you... how did you know I was coming to Chicago?” Bill asks blankly.
“I didn’t,” Travis shrugs. “But Gabe called me and said he hoped you wouldn’t be stupid enough to get on a bus anywhere else, so... we fucking hoped. That’s all it was.”
His friends know him too well, Bill thinks, and the thought makes him smile.
“So Pete and Greta have just bought an apartment near campus,” Travis begins, speaking a little too quickly, “and they’ve got a couch you can crash on, and Bob can get you a job in Starbucks, which’ll be shitty to begin with, apparently, but what the hell.”
“So when my friends told me to get a new start they actually meant go to other friends and get help there,” Bill muses. “Bastards.”
“What can you do?” Travis says, but he looks happy enough.
It’s been a year, and Bill isn’t supposed to be afraid of things anymore. He steps in a little, intent, and Travis slides an arm around his waist, tugging him in close.
“Are you gonna tell me ‘no’ again?” he asks quietly.
“No,” Bill says.
“Thank fucking God,” Travis mumbles, flashing him a swift grin that reveals just how white his pointed teeth are, and then he leans in to kiss Bill. Bill, with nothing to his name but a pair of jeans, an ipod, two-and-a-half notebooks and a battered copy of Ulysses, stands there and kisses him back.
{end}