FIC: With Crooked Hands (The Office, Jim/Ryan), Part 2
Title: With Crooked Hands
Fandom: The Office (US)
Rating: R (for sex and violence)
Pairing: Jim/Ryan
Length: 19,700 words
Summary: Jim and Ryan, on their way home.
AN: For festschrift. This is a fic set in the Mosepocalypse (the still unpublished apocalyptic Office fic from Mose's point of view, veering off from canon in mid-season 3, that kyrafic and I have been writing for well over a year). It's basically a deleted scene, by which I mean that it's twice as long as the original fic, about events Mose doesn't witness. So yes, that's right, I am ficcing my own unpublished fic. I AM LOST IN A MAZE OF MIRRORS. Whatevs, anyway, it's apocalyptic Jim/Ryan hurt/comfort, if you're into that kind of thing, and it should stand on its own. Title from Tennyson. Thanks to kyrafic and agate for betaing.
Part 1
**
The only good thing that happens during that first day of walking is that they find an unopened bottle of vodka in the ruins of a liquor store. Ryan’s psyched -- three days before they left Dwight’s farm, Angela had confiscated all the alcohol and poured it out. Even Pam didn’t speak to her for a day after that, and most of the rest of them were still fuming when their little group left the farm.
It took Jim and Ryan the whole day to walk the few miles down to Lake Scranton, which is infuriating. They’re both in pain, and frustrated, and exhausted, and he and Jim are barely speaking to each other by the time they find a little forested area on the shore to camp for the night. The sun’s just starting to set, finally moving below the clouds that have been blocking it all day to show a little weak, reddish light on the horizon. It’s been a raw April day, damp and gray and windy, the kind of weather that chaps your hands and your lips. Not cold, exactly, but not warm either, and that’s with the sun up. It’s going to be freezing once it gets dark.
Jim sprawls onto the ground, propping his back against a tree and rubbing at the side of his leg, next to the bullet hole, like it aches. His jaw is clenched and he lets out a long sigh through his teeth.
"How’s that leg?" Ryan says, as he pulls the messenger bag off his shoulders and slings it onto the ground.
"Fuck off," Jim says.
Yeah, they’re both cranky. Ryan doesn’t see any fresh blood on the bandage though, so. He starts rummaging around for the bottle of vodka, and pulls it out along with one of the empty pineapple cans to use as a glass. He pours a good-sized shot into the can and holds it out to Jim. "Drink this," he says.
Jim looks at it.
"I’m going to have to retie up that bandage, so drink the fucking vodka," Ryan says. Jesus, he doesn’t have the energy for this, either.
Jim shakes his head a little bit, but takes the can and does the shot. Ryan takes it back and pours another one.
"Why, Mr. Howard," Jim says, in a terrible southern belle voice. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"
Ryan’s found that it’s best to ignore Jim when he gets like this. Instead, he hands him the second shot.
"You sly dog," Jim says. Ryan looks at him. Jim makes a face and drinks. "This is terrible vodka, by the way."
Ryan picks up the bottle and looks at the label. "Made in Wilkes-Barre," he reads out loud. He pours a third shot and hands it to Jim.
"Fantastic," Jim says, looking dourly into the can. He drinks, then shudders.
They haven’t eaten since the middle of the day, so Ryan figures it won’t take long for those three shots to start to kick in. While he’s waiting, he gets out another one of Jim’s extra shirts and starts cutting it into strips.
"I like that shirt," Jim says mournfully.
Ryan keeps cutting, and starts thinking about lighting a fire. On the one hand, it’s cold out. On the other hand, fires are pretty visible. God, he hates making these decisions.
"So Cyclops," Jim says. "How’s your head?"
"Okay," Ryan says. It still aches, but it’s feeling better, and he’s not so dizzy.
"Right," Jim says. "You probably need some vodka too."
Ryan finishes cutting the last strip, and grabs a water bottle to fill up in the lake. "After I tie up that leg," he says. He makes his way carefully down the muddy bank, crouching to fill up the water bottle. They’ve been out of drinking water since midday, which has not been a good scene.
"You sure we should drink that?" Jim calls from behind him.
He's got a point -- Dwight hasn't let them drink out of the Lackawanna River since it all filled up with ash, and if the river filled with ash, the lake probably isn't great either. But on the other hand, what are they supposed to do, die of thirst? "You got a better idea?" Ryan mutters, but so quietly Jim probably can’t hear him. Jesus. Like they have options.
Once he’s got the water bottle set full on the bank, he shoves his hands under the surface of the freezing water, rubbing them together to finally get the blood and mud off. He’s tired of being so sticky, wishes they had some soap. But it’s better than nothing, and once his hands are reasonably clean, he dips a few t-shirt strips in the water too, figuring he can maybe wash some of the blood off Jim while he’s at it.
He climbs back up the bank slowly, feeling very tired. It’s been a long day, and his head is starting to really throb. And now his hands are wet and icy, and he has to make sure Jim’s not going to get gangrene in that leg. Which really requires getting a better look at it, so Ryan sighs and says to Jim, "Take off your pants."
Jim looks at him. "Shouldn’t you at least buy me dinner first?"
Hilarious. God, he’s going to rip Jim’s arm off and beat him to death with it one of these days. "Jim," he says.
Jim rolls his eyes and starts undoing his belt, muttering something under his breath that Ryan ignores. He kneels down next to Jim, the wet t-shirt strips in one hand, and helps him wiggle his jeans down his hips until Ryan can see the bandage around his thigh clearly. He had just kept bandaging it over, not wanting to disturb the clotting, so it’s a thick lump of fabric. "Here," he says, handing the wet cloth he’s holding to Jim. Hands now free, he reaches for the knot and starts undoing it, doing his best to ignore how his knuckles scrape over Jim’s skin.
Jim winces a little bit. "Your hands are cold," he says.
"Sorry," Ryan says, but he keeps unwinding the cloth. As he gets down to the skin, there’s dried blood everywhere, brown and flaking. The last layer of bandage is really stuck to the wound, practically like it’s grafting itself in, so Ryan leaves it alone and just cuts the rest of the bandage off.
That done, Ryan takes the wet strips back from Jim. "This is probably going to be cold," he says, and starts to sponge off Jim’s skin. Jim shudders a little bit, but doesn’t say anything.
It’s weird to wash off Jim’s leg like this, him just in his boxers, the watery April sun casting ruddy light over them, catching Jim’s hair in a strange halo. Weird, but it has to be done -- there is seriously so much dirt around the wound it’s going to be a miracle if it doesn’t get infected.
"This is weird," Jim says, his voice a little slurred. Ryan’s getting the impression Jim's a nervous talker, and when he glances up, Jim’s face is flushed like the vodka’s kicking in. The blood and dirt is wiping off his leg easily, water dripping off in maroon drops. It must be tickling Jim’s leg. "I’ve never had a guy, like, wash me before," Jim says.
"Promise I’ll be gentle," Ryan says, almost under his breath.
Jim laughs. "Hey, have you ever... with a guy?" he asks.
Ryan’s concentrating more on trying to find a clean part of the t-shirt to keep using than on whatever Jim’s saying. "Have I ever what?"
"You know," Jim says, in the meaningful tone middle-schoolers use to ask if you like like someone. "With a guy. It’s no big deal if you have."
Oh. This is a weird conversation. He’s never actually seen Halpert drunk before. "Why?" Ryan says. "You offering?"
"No," Jim says. "I was just wondering." The cloth Ryan’s using is now so dirty it’s not doing much good, but Jim’s leg’s a lot cleaner, so maybe gangrene will be held at bay. "I mean," Jim says. "Everyone experiments in college, right?"
Uh huh. Well, that’s interesting. "Are we talking about me?" Ryan asks, starting to rummage through the messenger bag for the rubbing alcohol. "Or are we talking about you?"
"I’m straight," Jim says.
Ryan pulls the bottle out of the bag. "But everyone experiments, right?"
Jim shakes his head. "You," he says, as Ryan unscrews the cap, "are twisting my words. Don’t pour that on me, please. Please don't pour that on me."
"Sorry," Ryan says, but pours it liberally over the thin bandage sticking to the wound anyway, watching the alcohol soak right through.
Jim almost screams, "Jesus!" He winces away, grabbing at the skin around the wound, gasping for breath. "Motherfuck," Jim says, so pale under the dirt on his face that Ryan's briefly alarmed.
"Sorry!" Ryan says. He looks at Jim. "You want something to bite on?"
Jim glares at him, but Ryan actually hadn't been being sarcastic. Well, whatever.
"Okay, now the other side," Ryan says. "Turn over."
Jim looks at him, still white and sweaty. "That’s what she said."
"Oh my God," Ryan says, as Jim turns so Ryan can get at the exit wound. He douses that side with alcohol too -- Jim just gasps this time, more prepared for it --, and lets Jim turn back around so he can tie up the wound again with fresh strips of ironically sloganed t-shirt. Jim looks sort of small and vulnerable as he does, sitting there shivering and pale in his underwear, doing his best not to make any noise. Poor bastard.
Ryan finally gets it all wrapped up, tying off the knot and making sure it doesn’t rest on the wound itself. By this time, Jim’s shivering violently. "Cold?" Ryan says. Jim nods, his teeth chattering. Maybe they should have a fire after all.
God, the idea of gathering wood and building a fire, and getting it started, and feeding more branches onto it, all that lifting and carrying, makes Ryan’s head throb even more. But Jim’s blanched and shaking even harder as Ryan helps him shimmy his filthy jeans back up over his hips, so there’s not much help for it. At least it’s still daylight, so the fire won’t be so horribly visible.
"Here," Ryan says, as Jim does up his fly. He drapes Dwight’s space blanket around Jim’s shoulders, making sure it covers him. "I’m going to build a fire." He stands up shakily and his head pain sharpens, making him sway.
"Is that a good idea?" Jim asks through chattering teeth.
"Shut up," Ryan says, and goes to gather wood.
**
Building the fire’s hell, but once it’s going, it makes the dell more cheerful, the homey crackling of it, the heat on Ryan’s hands. Ryan puts a big log onto it, finally content that it’s going strong, then brushes his hands off and sits down next to Jim. God, his head is killing him.
Jim’s finally stopped shivering, and isn’t holding the blanket so tight around him.
"Better?" Ryan says.
"Yeah," Jim says. "Thanks."
Ryan rubs his non-swollen temple, closing his one working eye. Seeing everything without depth perception all day has been wearing on him, and probably isn’t helping with his headache. He hears Jim rustling around, but keeps his eye shut. He just wants quiet for a little while.
"Here," Jim says, and Ryan feels the metal edge of a can nudge his right arm.
When he opens his eye, Jim is holding a drink out to him, vodka bottle in one hand. "You look like you need it," Jim says. "It’s vodka and ginger ale."
Ryan looks at him. Jim’s hair is dirty and matted, sticking out strangely on one side, and his stubble has just gotten worse over the course of the day, making him look even more like a homeless guy. But his color’s come back some, and he’s got a friendlier look on his face than earlier, when they wanted to kill each other.
"Thanks," Ryan says, and takes a sip. Ugh.
"It’s terrible, right?" Jim says.
"Yeah," Ryan says. "Wow."
"I know," Jim says, and mixes himself the same combination in the other pineapple can.
They drink for awhile in companionable silence, looking into the fire as the sky gradually turns to twilight. Ryan’s head’s still throbbing, but after two of Jim’s vodka ginger ales, he doesn’t care quite as much. He’s halfway into his third drink when Jim gets some baked beans and spam out of their bag, pouring them into the Boy Scout fold-up camping frying pan Dwight gave them, and starting to get up to put it over the fire.
"Here," Ryan says, moving to take it from him. "Don’t get up."
"I’m not an invalid," Jim says, moving it away from Ryan’s hand. "I’m fine. You’re the one who needs to rest. You look terrible."
Ryan would protest, but he actually does feel terrible, and he’s mostly just relieved he doesn’t have to get up again. He’s not sure he wouldn’t fall over if he tried it. Instead, he sits back against a tree and watches Jim kneel over the fire, poking at the horrible concoction in the frying pan. Ryan’s so hungry it actually even smells good. Just goes to show, if you’re hungry enough, anything will do.
**
One thing about America’s power all going out at once, Ryan thinks, lying on his back beside the banked down fire, is it makes the stars really clear and bright. He is drunk. Comfortably drunk for the first time in weeks, and full of spam and baked beans, and Jim’s lying next to him, his side all warm down Ryan’s.
"I wish I knew constellations," Jim says woozily. Between the two of them, they finished the bottle of terrible vodka. "I just know the Big Dipper. And I’m not even totally sure about that one."
Ryan finds the Big Dipper in the sky automatically, traces the lines of it with his eye. Even the sky looks a little weird with one eye swollen shut. Flat, like looking up at the underside of a table, flat and a little too close. "I took an astronomy class in college," Ryan says.
"So you remember some?" Jim says.
"Nope," Ryan says. He knows Orion, that’s it. Because the belt is easy to find. "I know there are two stars that are really close together, though. The Romans used them as an eye test -- if you could see them as two separate stars, your eyes were good enough for... something."
"Hmm," Jim says. "Which star?"
"No idea," Ryan says. Jim's started jiggling his leg compulsively, and the vibrations of it are moving from Jim’s body to Ryan’s, through their hipbones and shoulders. It's annoying. "You ever stay still?" Ryan asks.
"What?" Jim says, distracted, like his mind’s somewhere else.
"Stop it," Ryan says, and bumps Jim's jiggling leg with his knee.
"Oh," Jim says, and stops. "Sorry." There's a brief pause, and Ryan enjoys the still silence of it. The ground underneath him's a little damp, soaking through his jeans unpleasantly, but that’s the least of his problems, and it feels so good to be lying down after limping along all day supporting Jim's weight. His bones creak with the relief of it, and he never wants to get up ever again.
"I think I’m going to break up with Karen," Jim says.
Jesus Christ, like he wants to be Jim Halpert’s confidante. "Okay," Ryan says, in a why-are-you-telling-me-this voice.
"Do you think that’s a dick move?"
Ryan shrugs, his shoulders shifting against the ground underneath him, against Jim’s shoulder next to him. "I broke up with Kelly."
"So that’s a yes," Jim says thoughtfully.
"Fuck off," Ryan says. He can see Jim smirking out of the corner of his eye. "I didn’t think I’d ever see her again."
"Yeah," Jim says, more sober now. The trees rustle, and at the noise his and Jim’s bodies tense until they realize it’s just the wind, high in the branches. Ryan wishes they had the rifle instead of Karen. Jim says, "Do you think if we get back and meet up with everybody, we’ll just go back to Dwight’s farm?"
The lake water’s lapping against the shore a little bit, the wind making ripples. "I guess," Ryan says.
"Will you hook back up with Kelly?"
"I guess," Ryan says again. He puts up his hand to touch his swollen face. He thinks it’s hurting less now, but maybe that’s just the vodka talking. "Any port in a storm. Or whatever."
Jim makes an amused, incredulous noise. "You’re such an asshole."
"You’re the one who’s going to dump a girl you have to see every day. For the rest of our lives."
Jim’s leg's jiggling again. God. "However long that might be," Jim says.
Man's got a point. "Yeah," Ryan says. They need a subject change. "Did you really have gay sex in college?"
"No," Jim says quickly. "Jeez."
"Just made out?" Ryan says.
"None of your business," Jim says, and he’s jittering like crazy, leg bouncing up and down. It’s driving Ryan nuts.
"Stop," Ryan says, and props himself up on one elbow so he can reach down and put his hand on Jim’s leg, holding it still. It’s Jim’s good leg, and Ryan’s hand is somewhere between his knee and his hip, higher than it probably should be because Ryan’s short enough that that’s as far as he can reach.
Jim stares up at him, eyes suddenly dark, his breath coming fast.
"You’re making me nervous," Ryan says, but with Jim looking at him like that and his hand on Jim’s thigh, all of a sudden his voice sounds kind of unsure. Jim’s looking at him like... something. His eyes flicker down to Ryan’s mouth. Fuck. They’re really drunk. Fuck.
"Jim," Ryan says. Jim looks up at him, scared, his muscles tense under Ryan’s hand. Ryan's very aware of Jim's body all of a sudden, his long arms, his pudgy cheeks. Jim looks at Ryan’s mouth again and swallows, and if Ryan doesn’t do something, something’s going to happen, he’s going to kiss Jim’s scruffy drunk mouth. Fuck. He wants to. Shit.
Ryan very deliberately takes his hand off Jim’s leg and lies back down next to him, looking up at the tree branches against the stars. Both of their breathing sounds ragged.
"Just stop jittering, okay?" Ryan says. His voice comes out all rough, and he has to clear his throat.
"Yeah," Jim says. "Um. Sorry." But he sounds like he’s apologizing for more than just the shaking.
Ryan still feels dizzy, his head fuzzy from alcohol and the concussion, and for a second he thinks he can feel the earth turning underneath him, the ground spread out and spinning, him pinned to it. The world’s less steady than he thought, just generally speaking.
**
When Ryan wakes up the next morning, the sun is just rising, bright and yellow on the horizon, and Jim’s not next to him. He props himself up on one elbow to look around, the muddy space of where they camped, the ashes of their campfire. His head hurts and his left eye still won’t open.
He finally sees Jim down on the bank of the lake, splashing water on his face, and sits all the way up. God, he feels like hell. He was sleeping with the hood of his hoodie pulled up over his head, but now he loosens the tie and pushes the hood back, standing to walk down to where Jim is. The water looks better now that the sun’s out, blue and not gray, like something that it might be okay to drink.
"Morning," Ryan says, stopping a couple feet behind Jim.
Jim turns and looks over his shoulder, water dripping off his face. "Hey," he says, rubs at his stubble.
He looks about as gross and hung-over as Ryan feels. "Maybe that vodka wasn’t a great idea," Ryan says.
Jim shrugs, going back to washing his face and hands. Ryan still wishes they had soap, but Karen was the one with that supply in her bag. Too bad. "Nice to be drunk for once, though," Jim says.
"Yeah," Ryan says. There’s a pause, while neither of them talk about the weird moment the night before. Whatever. It wasn’t anything. Just that Jim’s apparently kind of a fag, but who cares?
"Hey," Jim says. "Do you think I could shave with that knife Dwight gave you?"
Ryan raises his eyebrows, thinking about it. "You could try," he says, eventually. "Don’t slit your throat by accident or anything, though."
"Yeah, that’d be messy," Jim says, and passes his hand over his stubble again.
Ryan hands Jim Dwight’s knife and Jim hefts it experimentally, then looks up at Ryan. "Your face looks better," he says. "I mean, the swelling looks less."
"Yeah?" Ryan says. He reaches a hand up to poke at his face tentatively. It does feel a little better.
"It’s still all black and blue, but better," Jim says, taking the knife out and testing the blade with his thumb. "Hmm."
"Sharp enough?" Ryan says.
"I don’t know," Jim says. He puts it up against his cheek tentatively, and moves to scrape it down. He stops after just a tiny movement, though. "Uh... yeah, I don’t think this is a great idea."
Ryan shrugs, but is relieved. He doesn’t need more parts of Jim’s body to bandage. He bends down to wash his own face in the lake.
Jim shoves the knife back in the sheath and makes an annoyed face at it. "That sucks. I’m so itchy."
"Yeah, same," Ryan says. His three-day beard is really driving him crazy. "We can shave when we get back to Dwight’s, I guess."
Jim rubs his wet face on his sleeve to dry it. "Yeah. When we get back."
Ryan splashes some water over his hair for good measure. Head wounds always bleed a lot, and old blood from his is matting his hair down on the side, he’s pretty sure. Talk about disgusting. He rubs at it, trying to finger-comb some of it out.
There’s a pause, just the sound of splashing. Jim sits back on the bank. "Um," he says. "About last night."
Fuck. Ryan doesn’t want to have this discussion. "What about it?" he says in the most neutral tone he can muster.
He can feel Jim looking at him, but he resists the urge to look back, and keeps his eyes resolutely on the surface of the lake. "Nothing," Jim says finally, his voice a little disgusted. "Forget it."
Fine by Ryan. "My pleasure," he mutters, and cups water in his hand, pours it over his sticky hair. Jim pulls out his toothbrush and Ryan hands over the toothpaste without looking at him.
They’re ready to travel not much later, their few supplies packed up. Jim slings his arm around Ryan’s shoulder again and fuck, Ryan hadn’t even thought about how he was going to have to spend the whole day with his arm around Jim’s waist, like his fucking girlfriend or something. It’s just -- it’s awkward. It gives Ryan a lot of time to think about the night before, with Jim’s body pressed against his like that. A lot of time.
**
They spend most of the day skirting areas with roads and houses, instead mostly hiking through trees and underbrush. They haven’t seen anyone else since they left the Borders in Scranton the day before, and Ryan’s starting to relax a little bit, starting to think they’re maybe out of the woods. So to speak.
They come up on 380 mid-afternoon, the abandoned stretch of highway. There’s a flat expanse on either side of it, really visible, so the crossing is a little worrisome. Ryan makes Jim take a break before they try it, chew some beef jerky, but finally there’s no more putting it off. No one’s in sight, so they take off across the empty space, limping as fast as they can.
Just as they hit the tree line on the other side of the highway, they hear people walking, talking loudly as they do. Oh God. Any people who aren't scared of other people hearing them are probably armed like crazy.
There’s an embankment right where the trees start, and Jim and Ryan go sliding down it in a cascade of leaves and dirt. Jim ducks down behind a fallen log, and in the scuffle of sliding, Ryan ends up about 15 feet away from him, crouching behind a tree. They both watch as the loud people come into sight. About five guys swaggering down the middle of the highway, all with handguns on their belts. They might have been cops once -- they have that air of casual, dangerous authority -- but Ryan’s pretty sure they’re not cops now.
He and Jim look at each other with wide eyes, hunkering further down and hoping the group passes by without seeing them. They have bad luck, though -- the one farthest back says, "Hold up, guys, I gotta take a leak."
Ryan makes a face at Jim that he hopes signals that he should stay down, stay still, and stay quiet. Though Jim could probably figure that out on his own. The guy who has to piss heads into the trees just in between him and Jim, slip-sliding down the embankment himself.
The rest of the group keeps walking, barely slowing down. "Hurry up, Tony!" one of them yells over his shoulder.
Tony, unzipping his fly, mutters something that sounds like, "Yeah, yeah." He’s so close to Jim he could practically reach out and touch him.
Fuck. Ryan’s barely breathing, praying that he won’t see either of them -- but then Tony grabs for the handgun in his waistband and trains it on Jim. "Don’t move," Tony says. Oh God, oh shit, what now?
Jim puts his hands up over his head, keeping them where Tony can see them. Tony's got his back half-turned to Ryan, so Ryan’s pretty sure that Tony hasn’t seen him, even though he’s just a few feet from them, and he racks his brain trying to think what to do. Oh God.
"Easy there," Jim says in a very calm voice. "Everything’s cool."
"The fuck it is," Tony says. Ryan can see that his hand’s shaking. "Get up."
Jim gets to his feet very slowly, hands still up. "Okay, man," he says. "You don’t have to do this."
Tony’s still got the gun trained at Jim -- one shot, and Jim’s dead. One yell, and all five of those guys come down on them. Ryan very slowly moves his hand to his knife, pulling it out as slowly and noiselessly as he can.
"Keep your hands where I can see them," Tony says. He sounds like a cop -- or maybe more accurately, like someone who's watched a lot of cop shows. The knife's in Ryan’s hand. Jim’s being very careful not to let his eyes flicker to Ryan, but Ryan knows that Jim knows he’s there, about to do something. Jim’s very tightly controlled, still but ready, muscles coiled.
"Hey!" Tony starts to yell to the other guys, but before he gets the word all the way out, Ryan’s leaped up and is swinging at him with the knife. The knife catches the bicep of the arm holding the gun, slicing into it, and blood spurts out bright.
Tony swings around, surprised, ready to aim the gun at Ryan, but before he can quite catch his bearings, Jim’s grabbed a giant branch next to him and swung it at Tony’s head.
Tony’s brains and blood end up all over Ryan’s face and shirt, and Tony falls to the ground before any of the three of them are quite sure what’s happened. Ryan looks panicky up at the rest of the men, but from what he can see through the trees, they’re still walking nonchalantly down the highway, dawdling as they wait for Tony to catch up. They're far enough ahead that it looks like they didn’t hear anything.
Jim’s staring down at the body with a horrified look on his face. Tony’s head is bashed in, extremely dead, and fuck, they have to get out of there before those other guys come looking to see what happened.
"Come on!" Ryan whispers at Jim, grabbing Jim’s arm and putting it over his shoulder.
Jim seems to come to, finally, and they book it deeper into the woods, away from the highway, moving as fast through the underbrush as they possibly can while keeping quiet. They run and run, stumping through trees, Ryan's teeth clenched, and don’t stop moving for a long, long time, until after the sun sets. Jim’s leg must be killing him by that time but he doesn’t say a word. Neither of them say a word.
They finally collapse in a little secluded clearing in the twilight, more because their legs won’t seem to work anymore than because they’re making a rational decision to stop. Their breath is coming in deep gasps, so desperate Jim sounds like he’s sobbing. But when Ryan looks at him his eyes are dry; he just can’t catch his breath.
"Fuck," Ryan gasps out.
Jim reaches out and rubs at Ryan’s hair, and when his hand comes away, there’s something grayish pink on it.
"Oh God," Ryan says, remembering the splatter, how it felt when it hit him, how hot it was, how wet. "Get it off me." It’s all over his shirt too, all over everywhere. He tears his hoodie off -- he has to get it off.
"Okay," Jim says, and he grabs the stained hoodie from Ryan’s hand, uses the cleaner part of the sleeves to start rubbing at Ryan’s face and neck.
"Get it off," Ryan says, and he thinks he might be freaking out, just a little bit. The one corner of his brain that can still think is thinking, I am freaking out. I am having a real meltdown.
Jim’s hands are shaking as he rubs at Ryan’s head. "I didn’t mean to," Jim says. "I thought the branch was more rotted, I didn’t mean to. I was just going to knock him out."
That one lucid corner of Ryan’s brain thinks, Jim is freaking out. Then it thinks, we murdered that guy. Me and Jim murdered somebody. His hand can still feel the bite of the knife into muscle, like cutting a piece of meat, the sick clean carve into someone’s arm. The sound of the branch hitting Tony’s head.
He wishes he didn’t know Tony’s name. "I didn’t mean to," Jim says again. He’s saying it over and over, like it makes a difference, scrubbing Tony’s brains out of Ryan’s hair.
"Get it off," Ryan says. He can feel his whole body shuddering, and when he looks down at his bare chest, he can see pink stains where the gore soaked through to the skin. Jim’ll never get it off, he thinks, irrationally.
Jim finally slows down as the hoodie sleeves are more and more of a mess and Ryan’s head, presumably, is less of one. He ends up tossing the sweatshirt aside with two fingers, too disgusting to be salvaged, and looking carefully at Ryan as though he’s trying to see if there’s any still left on him. Jim puts his hand on the back of Ryan’s neck, turning his head a little bit so he can see all the angles, and they’re both still breathing like they’ve been running.
Ryan reaches up and holds onto Jim’s forearm, desperate for something to just grab. He’s still shaking all over, and so is Jim, and he can't catch his breath.
"I didn’t want to kill him," Jim says.
"I know," Ryan says. He does know, but he -- the brains got all over him, the brains and the blood, and it’s not -- he. It just. His knife blade is still all covered with Tony’s blood.
"Oh God," Ryan says. He holds onto Jim’s arm tighter, his fingernails digging in a little bit, but Jim doesn’t wince. Jim’s hand is hot on the back of Ryan’s neck, and none of Tony's blood got on Jim at all, not even on his hands, not even under his fingernails. Jim’s face is flushed, and he’s holding onto Ryan like he’s terrified.
"He was going to kill us," Jim says. "We almost died."
"Yeah," Ryan says. He doesn’t know what to do with his other hand, and he reaches out half blindly, touching Jim’s chest, his shoulder. He just -- he wants to touch. He’s still shaking.
"I didn’t think I could...," Jim trails off. Ryan knows what he means though. You think of yourself one way, as a nice guy, as someone civilized. And then. Jim stares over Ryan’s head, eyes vacant.
"I know," Ryan says. Jim focuses on him again, on his face. He brings his other hand up to touch Ryan’s swollen cheek. "Ow," Ryan says as he presses lightly.
"Sorry," Jim says, almost whispering now. His eyes flicker down to Ryan’s mouth. Ryan can’t stop shaking. His chest is bare and stained pink.
Jim kisses Ryan, pulling him in by the hand on the back of his neck, rough and shaky and desperate. Ryan doesn’t kiss him back, and then he does.
The ground under them is soft and muddy, and Ryan’s hands press down into it as he tries to get his bearings. His body’s still freaking out from the murder, weak and trembling, and the surge of arousal feels strangely steadying, warm in his muscles. Jim’s stubble scratches at his face, and his mouth is wet and hot. He puts his hand on Ryan’s bare chest, on his shoulder, fingers scrabbling against Ryan’s skin.
Ryan doesn’t wonder if Tony had a wife, had kids, if he really was a cop, if his parents were proud of him. He doesn’t think about anything at all.
Jim’s pressing Ryan back, hands everywhere, mouth on Ryan’s neck, on his chest. Ryan’s got his hands in Jim’s too-long brown hair, fingers catching in the tangles. "I’m sorry," Jim’s muttering into Ryan’s skin. "I’m sorry."
Jim’s fingers move lower, along Ryan’s abdomen, skimming across his fly where Ryan’s hard. Ryan’s whole body’s thrumming, vibrating at too high a frequency, the whole thing too much for him. He doesn’t think he’ll survive this, thinks he’ll probably fly apart. Jim’s breathing is still loud, gasping.
Jim’s fingers move under Ryan’s waistband, undo Ryan’s zipper, and then Jim’s got his mouth on Ryan’s cock. Ryan lets his head and shoulders fall back onto the soft ground behind him, his body sprawling and loose, his breath catching as Jim works his tongue. "Jim," he says, and his voice sounds strange. "Jim, fuck."
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see his stained sweatshirt in a lump, dark blood splattered all over it. He turns his head to the side so he can’t see it anymore. Now all he can see is the darkening sky through the trees, a firefly lighting up, the small buds of spring on branches. Jim takes him further into his mouth and he hears himself moan. He doesn’t think about anything at all.
**
That night Ryan wakes up to the sound of Jim crying in his sleep, tears slithering out from behind his shut eyelids, eyes moving in a REM cycle. Whimpering noises like a baby, or a dog.
"Shh," Ryan says, putting his hand on Jim’s forehead, palming his cheek. "Shh."
Jim doesn’t wake up, but he presses into Ryan’s touch and after a minute stops crying, his breathing becoming regular again, deep and even. Ryan can feel the damp of Jim’s tears on his hand, and he falls back into an uneasy sleep himself. He wakes up a lot, keeps thinking he’s hearing something. But nothing’s ever there.
**
He wakes up with his limbs tangled with Jim’s, chest still bare, both of them under both blankets. He feels like hell, and when he lifts his head, Jim’s looking at him with roughly the same expression, self-loathing and guilt and anguish. The sky’s barely getting light. Jim’s hair is sticking up, and they disentangle themselves without saying much. Ryan can open his left eye today. So that’s something.
He gets one of Jim’s spare t-shirts out of their bag and puts it on so he won’t freeze to death, though the thin cloth isn’t nearly as good as his hoodie. The shirt’s too big for him, hanging down too low, and Ryan feels vaguely ridiculous, like a little kid playing dress-up. He doesn't know why he couldn't have split up with Oscar or someone else human-sized, instead of with a monstrous giant.
Not monstrous. He didn't mean that.
He goes over to his hoodie to get his cell phone out of the pocket, prods at the filthy shirt with his toe, but that's not the most effective way to find something. Finally he has to lift it up and search through the pocket, but when he does, the phone's not there. He checks three times, even though with just one big pocket, it's not like there's anywhere it could be hiding. Fuck, it must've fallen out sometime when they were running. For some reason, losing his phone makes him feel like he's really going to lose it, like he's on the verge of having a complete and total breakdown.
"I lost my phone," he says to Jim, and his voice sounds uneven.
Jim doesn't really react. He's just unsuccessfully trying to push his hair flat with his fingers, his pants still undone from the night before. He doesn't even look at Ryan.
Ryan tries to take deep breaths. It's just a phone. It wasn't doing anybody any good, and it's not symbolic. It's just a phone. He drops the stained hoodie in a little indentation on the edge of the clearing, and kicks some leaves over it so he doesn't have to see it anymore. He was trying really hard not to look at the gunk on the sleeves, but some of it got on his hands, and he has to wipe them off on the grass. God, his phone is missing, and he's covered in a murdered guy's blood, and he thinks he might be about to hyperventilate. No, you're okay, he thinks, and breathes. Think about something else. As he counts to ten and tries to calm down, it occurs to Ryan that he hasn’t checked Jim’s leg wound since the morning of the day before.
"Let me see your leg," Ryan says.
Jim finally looks at him, his eyes still sort of dead looking, and then wordlessly pushes his jeans down.
Ryan kneels next to him and starts undoing the bandage. When his knuckles first brush Jim’s leg, Jim winces but immediately stills, trying to hide his reaction.
"Sorry," Ryan says. He can’t tell if that hurt, or if Jim’s just... well. Anyway.
The edges of the wound, Ryan can see once he’s got the bandage mostly unwound, are red and swollen, getting infected. "Oh no," Ryan says.
Jim looks down at it but his expression doesn’t change. Ryan thinks it’s oozing pus a little bit, under the layer of cloth stuck to it. Oh God.
"Does it feel worse?" Ryan asks.
Jim shrugs. He still hasn’t really said anything.
"Fuck," Ryan says, and gets out the rubbing alcohol. There’s barely any left, and they need antibiotics or something anyway, and Jim definitely shouldn’t be walking on that leg -- or running on it, like yesterday. But what are they going to do? Dear God, he thinks, panic throwing atheism to the wind, if we make it back, I'll do anything. I'll be nice to Kelly. I'll be nice to Michael. Anything you want, I swear, I'll do it.
He pours the rubbing alcohol over the wound as best he can, using the last of it, but Jim barely reacts, just winces and jerks away a little bit. It’s worrying Ryan, how expressionless Jim is, like he’s not really there.
"You okay?" Ryan asks.
Jim shrugs again.
"Jim," Ryan says.
Jim’s face tenses a little bit, annoyed. "Sure," he says. "I’m great. Let’s get going."
Once Ryan has him bandaged up again, Jim slings his arm over Ryan’s shoulder and they start limping along again, north and east, the sun a little bit to their right.
They’ve been walking for about an hour when Jim says, out of nowhere, "It didn’t mean anything." The sky in front of them is getting very blue, and the wind is sharp. A bright April day.
Ryan walks a few more steps before he answers. Finally he says, "The sex, or the killing?"
Jim’s arm tightens on his shoulders, and when Ryan glances up, his face is twisting. "Either," he says. "Both."
"I know," Ryan says. He can still feel Tony’s blood in his hair, over his skin, like some horrible miasma. Jim’s arm along his shoulder blade is hot.
**
They hit a reservoir sometime just after noon, the water blue and sparkling and no doubt freezing cold. Ryan shrugs out from under Jim’s arm. "I’m going in," he says, starting to strip off his clothes. He tosses the t-shirt of Jim’s that he’s been wearing off to the side. The day’s really not warm enough to swim, but he has to get the rest of the blood off him, he can’t stand it anymore. He can feel it, sticky, lingering on his skin.
"It’s going to be cold," Jim says. He’s standing unevenly, not putting weight on his bad leg.
"I know," Ryan says, undoing his belt and shucking off his jeans. "But I have to get clean."
"You are clean," Jim mutters, and sits down with a thump, very carefully not watching Ryan undress. The air is cool on Ryan’s bare shoulders, his ass, but he doesn’t care. He’s got blood all over him, he can feel it. He hurries into the water, and the cold of it almost takes his breath away but he doesn’t stop. When he plunges his head under the surface, it’s cold and quiet, like another universe, still and calm. He stays under for too long, until his lungs are burning and he almost breathes in water.
He rubs and rubs at his chest and arms, rubs at his hair, threading his fingers through it, splashing until he thinks he’s gotten all of the residue that he can without soap. His hair feels less grimy, less full of clotted blood and gore, so that’s something. When he comes shivering back to the shore, Jim’s staring blankly out over the lake, not paying any attention.
Ryan shucks the water off his arms and legs as best he can; he hadn’t thought about how he was going to get dry afterwards. He just thought about being clean, and though he’s naked and freezing he feels washed, scrubbed, better. As he comes up to Jim, Jim blinks and seems to notice him again.
Jim pulls his sweatshirt off and holds it out to Ryan. "Towel?" he says.
Ryan looks at him, shivering. "Thanks," he says finally, and uses it to dry himself off as best he can. Jim again very pointedly doesn’t watch him do it. Ryan’s teeth aren’t chattering quite so much by the time he gets dressed again, jeans sticking to his damp skin. His hair’s still dripping.
"Better?" Jim says. He doesn’t look like he feels better at all -- maybe he could’ve used a swim too.
"Yeah," Ryan says. He shakes his head like a dog and water droplets fly out. Jim winces when they hit him. Ryan kind of hopes that Jim’ll show some emotion, gets annoyed at least, but Jim just sits there. "How’s the leg?" Ryan asks. He sits down next to Jim, their shoulders touching. Which, after last night, gives him a little charge. God, it’s like everything’s upside down, killing some guy, sleeping with Jim. He needs to get off this nightmare trip and back to somewhere like normal -- or what normal is, now. Dwight’s farm. Great.
Jim just shrugs.
God. Ryan rubs at his good eye and tries to decide what to say to keep Jim from going catatonic. But that means thinking about what happened the day before, which he’s been resolutely avoiding. He pictures Tony’s body for a horrible split second and shudders. The sound of his head breaking, the look on his face just before, when Ryan cut him.
"We didn’t have a choice," Ryan says in an undertone, and then clears his throat. This would probably be more convincing if he believed it himself.
When he glances over, Jim’s expression hasn’t changed. "Right," Jim says.
Ryan breathes in, out. "It’s okay," he says. "We’ll get back to the farm, everything will go back to the way it was. It’s not -- it wasn’t anything."
Jim turns slowly to look at him, blinking a little bit too much. He looks at Ryan for a long moment. "Right," he says again.
Jim’s eyes are shadowed under his ball cap, and his scruff of beard is dark, and he looks terrible. As a last resort, Ryan reaches out and grabs a fistful of Jim’s t-shirt, pulling him down to kiss him as roughly as he can. Jim takes in a breath through his nose and then kisses him back, his mouth opening, his tongue moving. Ryan nips at Jim’s lip, just lightly with his teeth, and when he pulls back, Jim looks a little more alive than he did before.
Jim opens his eyes and says, "Back to normal, huh."
Ryan shrugs and gets to his feet. "More or less." He reaches out a hand to help Jim up, and Jim takes it. They limp on.
**
They’re moving faster than they were that first day, even with Jim's leg infected, so that’s something. For a little while around five, Ryan thinks they might even make it back to his parents’ house in Jessup that night, before it gets dark. But twilight comes on while they’re still a ways out, and they’re forced to take shelter in a copse of trees on the wrong side of route 6.
They’re getting a routine now, what they do when they stop for the night. First, check the injuries, while it’s still light enough to see. Jim’s leg is even more swollen, pink and hot to the touch. Ryan prods at the edges, hoping he won’t see pus, but it comes out anyway.
"That hurt?" Ryan says. When he looks up, Jim gives him a what-do-you-think look. "Sorry," Ryan says.
"Yeah," Jim says. "It hurts, thanks for asking."
Jim was limping more as the day went on, and Ryan noticed it, but there’s not a lot he can do. There’s nothing left to put on it, so Ryan just has to bind it up again and hope for the best. At least by tomorrow they’ll be with Karen and Oscar and Gil again. Or, they better be. Ryan’s trying not to think about what they’ll do if the car’s gone and they’ve been left.
"How’s your head?" Jim asks. He puts his hand against Ryan’s good cheek and turns Ryan’s head so he can see the swelling. It’s still going down; Ryan can see out of his left eye okay, so that’s good. Jim looks at it for probably a little longer than he needs to. His hand feels warm against Ryan’s cheek.
"Better," Jim says. "I think it's starting to turn green."
"Attractive," Ryan says, and Jim’s mouth twitches, a rueful half smile. His eyes flicker down to Ryan’s mouth, and Ryan’s stomach drops, just a little. Once they get back to Dwight’s, they won’t, but tonight, well. They’re just upset; no one could blame them. This whole trip is starting to seem unreal, like some kind of weird dream Ryan’s having. Jim bleeding on the street, reading Ender’s Game in the dark, Ryan pulling the shoes off a dead guy. Jim going down on him. Like something he doesn’t have control of, like something he’s going to wake up from, something happening to someone else. When they get back to Dwight’s, things will shake themselves back out and he'll be himself again. But until then, he’s not. He looks at Jim’s mouth for just a second.
He really doesn’t want to be practical right then, but it’s getting dark, and they’ve got to eat before they can’t see at all. "Um," Ryan says, pulling back. "We should eat." Jim sighs and drops his hand.
They’re almost out of food. Ryan gives the last can of peaches to Jim, and they split one of tomatoes and one of green beans. Jim’s stomach rumbles audibly even after they’re done, but that’s the end of what they’ve got, so. Ryan hopes Karen managed to scrounge something, so they can eat when they get back. When, he's telling himself, not if. When they get back to Karen and Oscar and Gil.
By the time they’re finished eating, it’s full dark, the nearly full moon rising over the trees. The pale light leaves Jim’s eyes in shadow, shows stubble thick on his cheeks. This time when Jim reaches out for him, Ryan doesn’t pull away.
**
When Ryan wakes up the next morning from a nightmare, Jim is poring over the map. He looks up when he sees Ryan getting up to take a leak and says, "We’re almost there."
"Yeah," Ryan says, his voice gravelly from sleep. It’s a gray, oppressive day, clouds low, and it smells like rain. Great.
"I bet we can get there before noon," Jim says.
Ryan was going to walk further into the trees to pee, but what the hell, it’s not like he can be shy around Jim now. He pulls up at the nearest tree and unzips. "Yeah," he says. "I bet we can."
He hears the map rustling behind him, focuses on patterns in the bark in front of him.
"You think they’ll be there?" Jim asks. Godfuckingdammit, why does Jim always have to bring up things Ryan isn’t thinking about?
"Sure," Ryan says. "Of course."
He finishes peeing and zips himself back up. "Right, of course," Jim says when Ryan turns around.
"How’s your leg?" Ryan says.
"Fine," Jim says, but even from a few feet away Ryan can see that it’s swelling. God, motherfuck. It’ll just -- well, they’re almost there. Someone else will take care of it, once they get there. Ryan just has to get him back. "How’s your head?"
Ryan’s pretty much gotten used to the low-level headache he’s had since that dude hit him, so he shrugs. "Fine."
"Yeah, we’re a couple of fine guys," Jim says, voice thick with irony.
"Shut up," Ryan says, pulling out his toothbrush. Everything that’s happened, and he’s managed to hang onto it. Ridiculous.
Jim grabs his own toothbrush out of his pocket and holds it out to Ryan for toothpaste, like asking for a light. Ryan squeezes some out for him, and they brush their teeth in silence, watching the sun come up over the horizon. This is the day, they get back or they don’t.
"What do we do if they’re not there?" Jim says, through a mouth full of foam. "What’s Plan B?"
"Fuck off," Ryan says, and spits onto the ground. "They’ll be there." He wipes his mouth on his sleeve and tries not to glower at Jim.
Jim shrugs and keeps brushing his teeth. All of Ryan’s muscles ache from walking, from Jim leaning on him, and he thinks he can barely face another day of traveling. He lies back down on the soft ground and lets his head rest. He listens to the rustle of leaves, the sounds of Jim finishing brushing his teeth.
"I think I’m going to turn myself in," Jim says from where he’s sitting next to Ryan.
Ryan blinks, looking up at the roiling clouds. "Turn yourself in?" he says blankly. Um. "To who?"
When he sits up, Jim looks a little perturbed, and Ryan can practically see him shuffling through his options. He finally says, "Dwight?"
"Dwight," Ryan says, "would probably just congratulate you."
"Yeah," Jim says, and rubs his hand over his face. He looks miserable and sort of old, lines pronounced on his forehead and beside his mouth. The pain from his leg’s made his face look white and pinched all week, and now this -- he just looks terrible, like a mirror of how Ryan feels, the same guilty desolate look. Jim leaves his hand over his forehead, covering his eyes.
"Jim," Ryan says, and reaches out a hand to touch Jim’s knee. Jim doesn’t move for a long second, then drops his hand and looks at Ryan, a long, measuring look. Then he’s leaning in and pushing Ryan back, all tongue and teeth and wanting, and neither of them have to think about anything for a little while longer.
**
Neither of them notice when it starts to rain, but it’s really pouring by the time they’ve both gotten off, lying panting side by side with big rain drops coming down on their faces.
"Gross," Jim says up at the sky, and Ryan agrees. It’s cold, and the t-shirt of Jim’s that Ryan’s wearing is already soaked through, and it’s going to be a long day without umbrellas. Good thing they don’t have to go far.
They lie there for long after they’ve caught their breath, neither of them wanting to get up. The sooner they get going, the sooner they’ll get to the car, and the sooner they’ll find out if they’ve been left or not. And maybe it’s easier not to know, like putting off looking at your grade on an exam.
Finally Jim sits up, wiping rain off his face. "We better go," he says.
Jim hauls his arm around Ryan’s shoulder for one more day, and all wet like this, it’s nice to have the body heat. They start slogging through the wet underbrush, up a ridge, down the other side. Jim’s walking even worse than the day before -- Ryan’s worried about that infection. If Jim loses that leg -- well. No point in thinking about it. Rain’s slicking Ryan’s hair to his forehead, getting in his eyes.
After an hour or two, they come out of the brush and into the suburbs, all dark houses, broken windows like gaping eyes, empty streets. Ryan starts getting really nervous, and instead of walking in the street, he and Jim cut through backyards, over old vegetable gardens and past swing sets. They don’t see a soul.
Soon they’re on streets Ryan recognizes, in the backyards of kids he went to elementary school with. Emily Irwin, whose parents got divorced in eighth grade and whose dad married the music teacher. Bryan Schultz, whose sisters let him drive when he was in fifth grade.
Jim’s breathing heavily. "Almost there," Ryan mutters. "You can make it."
"I know," Jim says, sounding irritable.
Then they’re turning onto Ryan’s street. Ryan’s heart picks up, beating faster, and God, he hopes the car is there.
He sees it. It’s there. No coworkers, though. It hadn’t even occurred to Ryan that they might get back and Karen and them wouldn’t be there yet -- that something might’ve happened to them, too. He doesn’t know -- what do they do? How long do they wait?
He and Jim limp up the driveway to the SUV and stand there next to it. Jim puts out a hand to touch it, like he’s not sure it’s really there, then leans against it, so Ryan can step out from under his arm. They look at each other. Well, then.
Just then, Ryan hears a noise behind him and jumps, turning so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. It’s Karen, coming out of Ryan’s parents’ house, with Oscar and Gil behind her. Oh, thank God. Oh God, they're there. Ryan's knees go weak with relief, so he almost falls over, and he hears Jim's breath go out with a whoosh. They're there, they waited, and Ryan's almost on the verge of tears, he was so worried. Karen's still got the rifle, and none of them look very badly hurt. God, he really never thought he'd see them again.
Karen beams when she sees them, but when she gets a little closer, her smile fades and she just looks concerned. Ryan tries to picture how they must look to her -- bedraggled and soaked, unshaven and dirty, blood everywhere, swollen and obviously in bad shape. "What the hell happened to you?" she asks, obviously rattled. Behind her, Oscar and Gil have matching horrified looks.
What happened to them. Ryan and Jim look at each other.
Jim clears his throat. "Let's never do this again, okay, guys?"
Karen nods, and comes over to give Jim a hug. "Are you okay?" she says. "I was really worried. We were going to leave tomorrow if you guys didn't show up."
Oh, thank God they made it. Oscar claps Ryan on the back, and Ryan lets himself finally relax, feeling a little shell-shocked. Karen kisses Jim on the mouth, then hugs him some more, and Ryan stands back with Oscar and Gil telling him they're glad he's okay. Over Karen's shoulder, Jim's giving Ryan the guiltiest look he's ever seen. Ryan looks away and tries to breathe.
**
END
Fandom: The Office (US)
Rating: R (for sex and violence)
Pairing: Jim/Ryan
Length: 19,700 words
Summary: Jim and Ryan, on their way home.
AN: For festschrift. This is a fic set in the Mosepocalypse (the still unpublished apocalyptic Office fic from Mose's point of view, veering off from canon in mid-season 3, that kyrafic and I have been writing for well over a year). It's basically a deleted scene, by which I mean that it's twice as long as the original fic, about events Mose doesn't witness. So yes, that's right, I am ficcing my own unpublished fic. I AM LOST IN A MAZE OF MIRRORS. Whatevs, anyway, it's apocalyptic Jim/Ryan hurt/comfort, if you're into that kind of thing, and it should stand on its own. Title from Tennyson. Thanks to kyrafic and agate for betaing.
Part 1
**
The only good thing that happens during that first day of walking is that they find an unopened bottle of vodka in the ruins of a liquor store. Ryan’s psyched -- three days before they left Dwight’s farm, Angela had confiscated all the alcohol and poured it out. Even Pam didn’t speak to her for a day after that, and most of the rest of them were still fuming when their little group left the farm.
It took Jim and Ryan the whole day to walk the few miles down to Lake Scranton, which is infuriating. They’re both in pain, and frustrated, and exhausted, and he and Jim are barely speaking to each other by the time they find a little forested area on the shore to camp for the night. The sun’s just starting to set, finally moving below the clouds that have been blocking it all day to show a little weak, reddish light on the horizon. It’s been a raw April day, damp and gray and windy, the kind of weather that chaps your hands and your lips. Not cold, exactly, but not warm either, and that’s with the sun up. It’s going to be freezing once it gets dark.
Jim sprawls onto the ground, propping his back against a tree and rubbing at the side of his leg, next to the bullet hole, like it aches. His jaw is clenched and he lets out a long sigh through his teeth.
"How’s that leg?" Ryan says, as he pulls the messenger bag off his shoulders and slings it onto the ground.
"Fuck off," Jim says.
Yeah, they’re both cranky. Ryan doesn’t see any fresh blood on the bandage though, so. He starts rummaging around for the bottle of vodka, and pulls it out along with one of the empty pineapple cans to use as a glass. He pours a good-sized shot into the can and holds it out to Jim. "Drink this," he says.
Jim looks at it.
"I’m going to have to retie up that bandage, so drink the fucking vodka," Ryan says. Jesus, he doesn’t have the energy for this, either.
Jim shakes his head a little bit, but takes the can and does the shot. Ryan takes it back and pours another one.
"Why, Mr. Howard," Jim says, in a terrible southern belle voice. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"
Ryan’s found that it’s best to ignore Jim when he gets like this. Instead, he hands him the second shot.
"You sly dog," Jim says. Ryan looks at him. Jim makes a face and drinks. "This is terrible vodka, by the way."
Ryan picks up the bottle and looks at the label. "Made in Wilkes-Barre," he reads out loud. He pours a third shot and hands it to Jim.
"Fantastic," Jim says, looking dourly into the can. He drinks, then shudders.
They haven’t eaten since the middle of the day, so Ryan figures it won’t take long for those three shots to start to kick in. While he’s waiting, he gets out another one of Jim’s extra shirts and starts cutting it into strips.
"I like that shirt," Jim says mournfully.
Ryan keeps cutting, and starts thinking about lighting a fire. On the one hand, it’s cold out. On the other hand, fires are pretty visible. God, he hates making these decisions.
"So Cyclops," Jim says. "How’s your head?"
"Okay," Ryan says. It still aches, but it’s feeling better, and he’s not so dizzy.
"Right," Jim says. "You probably need some vodka too."
Ryan finishes cutting the last strip, and grabs a water bottle to fill up in the lake. "After I tie up that leg," he says. He makes his way carefully down the muddy bank, crouching to fill up the water bottle. They’ve been out of drinking water since midday, which has not been a good scene.
"You sure we should drink that?" Jim calls from behind him.
He's got a point -- Dwight hasn't let them drink out of the Lackawanna River since it all filled up with ash, and if the river filled with ash, the lake probably isn't great either. But on the other hand, what are they supposed to do, die of thirst? "You got a better idea?" Ryan mutters, but so quietly Jim probably can’t hear him. Jesus. Like they have options.
Once he’s got the water bottle set full on the bank, he shoves his hands under the surface of the freezing water, rubbing them together to finally get the blood and mud off. He’s tired of being so sticky, wishes they had some soap. But it’s better than nothing, and once his hands are reasonably clean, he dips a few t-shirt strips in the water too, figuring he can maybe wash some of the blood off Jim while he’s at it.
He climbs back up the bank slowly, feeling very tired. It’s been a long day, and his head is starting to really throb. And now his hands are wet and icy, and he has to make sure Jim’s not going to get gangrene in that leg. Which really requires getting a better look at it, so Ryan sighs and says to Jim, "Take off your pants."
Jim looks at him. "Shouldn’t you at least buy me dinner first?"
Hilarious. God, he’s going to rip Jim’s arm off and beat him to death with it one of these days. "Jim," he says.
Jim rolls his eyes and starts undoing his belt, muttering something under his breath that Ryan ignores. He kneels down next to Jim, the wet t-shirt strips in one hand, and helps him wiggle his jeans down his hips until Ryan can see the bandage around his thigh clearly. He had just kept bandaging it over, not wanting to disturb the clotting, so it’s a thick lump of fabric. "Here," he says, handing the wet cloth he’s holding to Jim. Hands now free, he reaches for the knot and starts undoing it, doing his best to ignore how his knuckles scrape over Jim’s skin.
Jim winces a little bit. "Your hands are cold," he says.
"Sorry," Ryan says, but he keeps unwinding the cloth. As he gets down to the skin, there’s dried blood everywhere, brown and flaking. The last layer of bandage is really stuck to the wound, practically like it’s grafting itself in, so Ryan leaves it alone and just cuts the rest of the bandage off.
That done, Ryan takes the wet strips back from Jim. "This is probably going to be cold," he says, and starts to sponge off Jim’s skin. Jim shudders a little bit, but doesn’t say anything.
It’s weird to wash off Jim’s leg like this, him just in his boxers, the watery April sun casting ruddy light over them, catching Jim’s hair in a strange halo. Weird, but it has to be done -- there is seriously so much dirt around the wound it’s going to be a miracle if it doesn’t get infected.
"This is weird," Jim says, his voice a little slurred. Ryan’s getting the impression Jim's a nervous talker, and when he glances up, Jim’s face is flushed like the vodka’s kicking in. The blood and dirt is wiping off his leg easily, water dripping off in maroon drops. It must be tickling Jim’s leg. "I’ve never had a guy, like, wash me before," Jim says.
"Promise I’ll be gentle," Ryan says, almost under his breath.
Jim laughs. "Hey, have you ever... with a guy?" he asks.
Ryan’s concentrating more on trying to find a clean part of the t-shirt to keep using than on whatever Jim’s saying. "Have I ever what?"
"You know," Jim says, in the meaningful tone middle-schoolers use to ask if you like like someone. "With a guy. It’s no big deal if you have."
Oh. This is a weird conversation. He’s never actually seen Halpert drunk before. "Why?" Ryan says. "You offering?"
"No," Jim says. "I was just wondering." The cloth Ryan’s using is now so dirty it’s not doing much good, but Jim’s leg’s a lot cleaner, so maybe gangrene will be held at bay. "I mean," Jim says. "Everyone experiments in college, right?"
Uh huh. Well, that’s interesting. "Are we talking about me?" Ryan asks, starting to rummage through the messenger bag for the rubbing alcohol. "Or are we talking about you?"
"I’m straight," Jim says.
Ryan pulls the bottle out of the bag. "But everyone experiments, right?"
Jim shakes his head. "You," he says, as Ryan unscrews the cap, "are twisting my words. Don’t pour that on me, please. Please don't pour that on me."
"Sorry," Ryan says, but pours it liberally over the thin bandage sticking to the wound anyway, watching the alcohol soak right through.
Jim almost screams, "Jesus!" He winces away, grabbing at the skin around the wound, gasping for breath. "Motherfuck," Jim says, so pale under the dirt on his face that Ryan's briefly alarmed.
"Sorry!" Ryan says. He looks at Jim. "You want something to bite on?"
Jim glares at him, but Ryan actually hadn't been being sarcastic. Well, whatever.
"Okay, now the other side," Ryan says. "Turn over."
Jim looks at him, still white and sweaty. "That’s what she said."
"Oh my God," Ryan says, as Jim turns so Ryan can get at the exit wound. He douses that side with alcohol too -- Jim just gasps this time, more prepared for it --, and lets Jim turn back around so he can tie up the wound again with fresh strips of ironically sloganed t-shirt. Jim looks sort of small and vulnerable as he does, sitting there shivering and pale in his underwear, doing his best not to make any noise. Poor bastard.
Ryan finally gets it all wrapped up, tying off the knot and making sure it doesn’t rest on the wound itself. By this time, Jim’s shivering violently. "Cold?" Ryan says. Jim nods, his teeth chattering. Maybe they should have a fire after all.
God, the idea of gathering wood and building a fire, and getting it started, and feeding more branches onto it, all that lifting and carrying, makes Ryan’s head throb even more. But Jim’s blanched and shaking even harder as Ryan helps him shimmy his filthy jeans back up over his hips, so there’s not much help for it. At least it’s still daylight, so the fire won’t be so horribly visible.
"Here," Ryan says, as Jim does up his fly. He drapes Dwight’s space blanket around Jim’s shoulders, making sure it covers him. "I’m going to build a fire." He stands up shakily and his head pain sharpens, making him sway.
"Is that a good idea?" Jim asks through chattering teeth.
"Shut up," Ryan says, and goes to gather wood.
**
Building the fire’s hell, but once it’s going, it makes the dell more cheerful, the homey crackling of it, the heat on Ryan’s hands. Ryan puts a big log onto it, finally content that it’s going strong, then brushes his hands off and sits down next to Jim. God, his head is killing him.
Jim’s finally stopped shivering, and isn’t holding the blanket so tight around him.
"Better?" Ryan says.
"Yeah," Jim says. "Thanks."
Ryan rubs his non-swollen temple, closing his one working eye. Seeing everything without depth perception all day has been wearing on him, and probably isn’t helping with his headache. He hears Jim rustling around, but keeps his eye shut. He just wants quiet for a little while.
"Here," Jim says, and Ryan feels the metal edge of a can nudge his right arm.
When he opens his eye, Jim is holding a drink out to him, vodka bottle in one hand. "You look like you need it," Jim says. "It’s vodka and ginger ale."
Ryan looks at him. Jim’s hair is dirty and matted, sticking out strangely on one side, and his stubble has just gotten worse over the course of the day, making him look even more like a homeless guy. But his color’s come back some, and he’s got a friendlier look on his face than earlier, when they wanted to kill each other.
"Thanks," Ryan says, and takes a sip. Ugh.
"It’s terrible, right?" Jim says.
"Yeah," Ryan says. "Wow."
"I know," Jim says, and mixes himself the same combination in the other pineapple can.
They drink for awhile in companionable silence, looking into the fire as the sky gradually turns to twilight. Ryan’s head’s still throbbing, but after two of Jim’s vodka ginger ales, he doesn’t care quite as much. He’s halfway into his third drink when Jim gets some baked beans and spam out of their bag, pouring them into the Boy Scout fold-up camping frying pan Dwight gave them, and starting to get up to put it over the fire.
"Here," Ryan says, moving to take it from him. "Don’t get up."
"I’m not an invalid," Jim says, moving it away from Ryan’s hand. "I’m fine. You’re the one who needs to rest. You look terrible."
Ryan would protest, but he actually does feel terrible, and he’s mostly just relieved he doesn’t have to get up again. He’s not sure he wouldn’t fall over if he tried it. Instead, he sits back against a tree and watches Jim kneel over the fire, poking at the horrible concoction in the frying pan. Ryan’s so hungry it actually even smells good. Just goes to show, if you’re hungry enough, anything will do.
**
One thing about America’s power all going out at once, Ryan thinks, lying on his back beside the banked down fire, is it makes the stars really clear and bright. He is drunk. Comfortably drunk for the first time in weeks, and full of spam and baked beans, and Jim’s lying next to him, his side all warm down Ryan’s.
"I wish I knew constellations," Jim says woozily. Between the two of them, they finished the bottle of terrible vodka. "I just know the Big Dipper. And I’m not even totally sure about that one."
Ryan finds the Big Dipper in the sky automatically, traces the lines of it with his eye. Even the sky looks a little weird with one eye swollen shut. Flat, like looking up at the underside of a table, flat and a little too close. "I took an astronomy class in college," Ryan says.
"So you remember some?" Jim says.
"Nope," Ryan says. He knows Orion, that’s it. Because the belt is easy to find. "I know there are two stars that are really close together, though. The Romans used them as an eye test -- if you could see them as two separate stars, your eyes were good enough for... something."
"Hmm," Jim says. "Which star?"
"No idea," Ryan says. Jim's started jiggling his leg compulsively, and the vibrations of it are moving from Jim’s body to Ryan’s, through their hipbones and shoulders. It's annoying. "You ever stay still?" Ryan asks.
"What?" Jim says, distracted, like his mind’s somewhere else.
"Stop it," Ryan says, and bumps Jim's jiggling leg with his knee.
"Oh," Jim says, and stops. "Sorry." There's a brief pause, and Ryan enjoys the still silence of it. The ground underneath him's a little damp, soaking through his jeans unpleasantly, but that’s the least of his problems, and it feels so good to be lying down after limping along all day supporting Jim's weight. His bones creak with the relief of it, and he never wants to get up ever again.
"I think I’m going to break up with Karen," Jim says.
Jesus Christ, like he wants to be Jim Halpert’s confidante. "Okay," Ryan says, in a why-are-you-telling-me-this voice.
"Do you think that’s a dick move?"
Ryan shrugs, his shoulders shifting against the ground underneath him, against Jim’s shoulder next to him. "I broke up with Kelly."
"So that’s a yes," Jim says thoughtfully.
"Fuck off," Ryan says. He can see Jim smirking out of the corner of his eye. "I didn’t think I’d ever see her again."
"Yeah," Jim says, more sober now. The trees rustle, and at the noise his and Jim’s bodies tense until they realize it’s just the wind, high in the branches. Ryan wishes they had the rifle instead of Karen. Jim says, "Do you think if we get back and meet up with everybody, we’ll just go back to Dwight’s farm?"
The lake water’s lapping against the shore a little bit, the wind making ripples. "I guess," Ryan says.
"Will you hook back up with Kelly?"
"I guess," Ryan says again. He puts up his hand to touch his swollen face. He thinks it’s hurting less now, but maybe that’s just the vodka talking. "Any port in a storm. Or whatever."
Jim makes an amused, incredulous noise. "You’re such an asshole."
"You’re the one who’s going to dump a girl you have to see every day. For the rest of our lives."
Jim’s leg's jiggling again. God. "However long that might be," Jim says.
Man's got a point. "Yeah," Ryan says. They need a subject change. "Did you really have gay sex in college?"
"No," Jim says quickly. "Jeez."
"Just made out?" Ryan says.
"None of your business," Jim says, and he’s jittering like crazy, leg bouncing up and down. It’s driving Ryan nuts.
"Stop," Ryan says, and props himself up on one elbow so he can reach down and put his hand on Jim’s leg, holding it still. It’s Jim’s good leg, and Ryan’s hand is somewhere between his knee and his hip, higher than it probably should be because Ryan’s short enough that that’s as far as he can reach.
Jim stares up at him, eyes suddenly dark, his breath coming fast.
"You’re making me nervous," Ryan says, but with Jim looking at him like that and his hand on Jim’s thigh, all of a sudden his voice sounds kind of unsure. Jim’s looking at him like... something. His eyes flicker down to Ryan’s mouth. Fuck. They’re really drunk. Fuck.
"Jim," Ryan says. Jim looks up at him, scared, his muscles tense under Ryan’s hand. Ryan's very aware of Jim's body all of a sudden, his long arms, his pudgy cheeks. Jim looks at Ryan’s mouth again and swallows, and if Ryan doesn’t do something, something’s going to happen, he’s going to kiss Jim’s scruffy drunk mouth. Fuck. He wants to. Shit.
Ryan very deliberately takes his hand off Jim’s leg and lies back down next to him, looking up at the tree branches against the stars. Both of their breathing sounds ragged.
"Just stop jittering, okay?" Ryan says. His voice comes out all rough, and he has to clear his throat.
"Yeah," Jim says. "Um. Sorry." But he sounds like he’s apologizing for more than just the shaking.
Ryan still feels dizzy, his head fuzzy from alcohol and the concussion, and for a second he thinks he can feel the earth turning underneath him, the ground spread out and spinning, him pinned to it. The world’s less steady than he thought, just generally speaking.
**
When Ryan wakes up the next morning, the sun is just rising, bright and yellow on the horizon, and Jim’s not next to him. He props himself up on one elbow to look around, the muddy space of where they camped, the ashes of their campfire. His head hurts and his left eye still won’t open.
He finally sees Jim down on the bank of the lake, splashing water on his face, and sits all the way up. God, he feels like hell. He was sleeping with the hood of his hoodie pulled up over his head, but now he loosens the tie and pushes the hood back, standing to walk down to where Jim is. The water looks better now that the sun’s out, blue and not gray, like something that it might be okay to drink.
"Morning," Ryan says, stopping a couple feet behind Jim.
Jim turns and looks over his shoulder, water dripping off his face. "Hey," he says, rubs at his stubble.
He looks about as gross and hung-over as Ryan feels. "Maybe that vodka wasn’t a great idea," Ryan says.
Jim shrugs, going back to washing his face and hands. Ryan still wishes they had soap, but Karen was the one with that supply in her bag. Too bad. "Nice to be drunk for once, though," Jim says.
"Yeah," Ryan says. There’s a pause, while neither of them talk about the weird moment the night before. Whatever. It wasn’t anything. Just that Jim’s apparently kind of a fag, but who cares?
"Hey," Jim says. "Do you think I could shave with that knife Dwight gave you?"
Ryan raises his eyebrows, thinking about it. "You could try," he says, eventually. "Don’t slit your throat by accident or anything, though."
"Yeah, that’d be messy," Jim says, and passes his hand over his stubble again.
Ryan hands Jim Dwight’s knife and Jim hefts it experimentally, then looks up at Ryan. "Your face looks better," he says. "I mean, the swelling looks less."
"Yeah?" Ryan says. He reaches a hand up to poke at his face tentatively. It does feel a little better.
"It’s still all black and blue, but better," Jim says, taking the knife out and testing the blade with his thumb. "Hmm."
"Sharp enough?" Ryan says.
"I don’t know," Jim says. He puts it up against his cheek tentatively, and moves to scrape it down. He stops after just a tiny movement, though. "Uh... yeah, I don’t think this is a great idea."
Ryan shrugs, but is relieved. He doesn’t need more parts of Jim’s body to bandage. He bends down to wash his own face in the lake.
Jim shoves the knife back in the sheath and makes an annoyed face at it. "That sucks. I’m so itchy."
"Yeah, same," Ryan says. His three-day beard is really driving him crazy. "We can shave when we get back to Dwight’s, I guess."
Jim rubs his wet face on his sleeve to dry it. "Yeah. When we get back."
Ryan splashes some water over his hair for good measure. Head wounds always bleed a lot, and old blood from his is matting his hair down on the side, he’s pretty sure. Talk about disgusting. He rubs at it, trying to finger-comb some of it out.
There’s a pause, just the sound of splashing. Jim sits back on the bank. "Um," he says. "About last night."
Fuck. Ryan doesn’t want to have this discussion. "What about it?" he says in the most neutral tone he can muster.
He can feel Jim looking at him, but he resists the urge to look back, and keeps his eyes resolutely on the surface of the lake. "Nothing," Jim says finally, his voice a little disgusted. "Forget it."
Fine by Ryan. "My pleasure," he mutters, and cups water in his hand, pours it over his sticky hair. Jim pulls out his toothbrush and Ryan hands over the toothpaste without looking at him.
They’re ready to travel not much later, their few supplies packed up. Jim slings his arm around Ryan’s shoulder again and fuck, Ryan hadn’t even thought about how he was going to have to spend the whole day with his arm around Jim’s waist, like his fucking girlfriend or something. It’s just -- it’s awkward. It gives Ryan a lot of time to think about the night before, with Jim’s body pressed against his like that. A lot of time.
**
They spend most of the day skirting areas with roads and houses, instead mostly hiking through trees and underbrush. They haven’t seen anyone else since they left the Borders in Scranton the day before, and Ryan’s starting to relax a little bit, starting to think they’re maybe out of the woods. So to speak.
They come up on 380 mid-afternoon, the abandoned stretch of highway. There’s a flat expanse on either side of it, really visible, so the crossing is a little worrisome. Ryan makes Jim take a break before they try it, chew some beef jerky, but finally there’s no more putting it off. No one’s in sight, so they take off across the empty space, limping as fast as they can.
Just as they hit the tree line on the other side of the highway, they hear people walking, talking loudly as they do. Oh God. Any people who aren't scared of other people hearing them are probably armed like crazy.
There’s an embankment right where the trees start, and Jim and Ryan go sliding down it in a cascade of leaves and dirt. Jim ducks down behind a fallen log, and in the scuffle of sliding, Ryan ends up about 15 feet away from him, crouching behind a tree. They both watch as the loud people come into sight. About five guys swaggering down the middle of the highway, all with handguns on their belts. They might have been cops once -- they have that air of casual, dangerous authority -- but Ryan’s pretty sure they’re not cops now.
He and Jim look at each other with wide eyes, hunkering further down and hoping the group passes by without seeing them. They have bad luck, though -- the one farthest back says, "Hold up, guys, I gotta take a leak."
Ryan makes a face at Jim that he hopes signals that he should stay down, stay still, and stay quiet. Though Jim could probably figure that out on his own. The guy who has to piss heads into the trees just in between him and Jim, slip-sliding down the embankment himself.
The rest of the group keeps walking, barely slowing down. "Hurry up, Tony!" one of them yells over his shoulder.
Tony, unzipping his fly, mutters something that sounds like, "Yeah, yeah." He’s so close to Jim he could practically reach out and touch him.
Fuck. Ryan’s barely breathing, praying that he won’t see either of them -- but then Tony grabs for the handgun in his waistband and trains it on Jim. "Don’t move," Tony says. Oh God, oh shit, what now?
Jim puts his hands up over his head, keeping them where Tony can see them. Tony's got his back half-turned to Ryan, so Ryan’s pretty sure that Tony hasn’t seen him, even though he’s just a few feet from them, and he racks his brain trying to think what to do. Oh God.
"Easy there," Jim says in a very calm voice. "Everything’s cool."
"The fuck it is," Tony says. Ryan can see that his hand’s shaking. "Get up."
Jim gets to his feet very slowly, hands still up. "Okay, man," he says. "You don’t have to do this."
Tony’s still got the gun trained at Jim -- one shot, and Jim’s dead. One yell, and all five of those guys come down on them. Ryan very slowly moves his hand to his knife, pulling it out as slowly and noiselessly as he can.
"Keep your hands where I can see them," Tony says. He sounds like a cop -- or maybe more accurately, like someone who's watched a lot of cop shows. The knife's in Ryan’s hand. Jim’s being very careful not to let his eyes flicker to Ryan, but Ryan knows that Jim knows he’s there, about to do something. Jim’s very tightly controlled, still but ready, muscles coiled.
"Hey!" Tony starts to yell to the other guys, but before he gets the word all the way out, Ryan’s leaped up and is swinging at him with the knife. The knife catches the bicep of the arm holding the gun, slicing into it, and blood spurts out bright.
Tony swings around, surprised, ready to aim the gun at Ryan, but before he can quite catch his bearings, Jim’s grabbed a giant branch next to him and swung it at Tony’s head.
Tony’s brains and blood end up all over Ryan’s face and shirt, and Tony falls to the ground before any of the three of them are quite sure what’s happened. Ryan looks panicky up at the rest of the men, but from what he can see through the trees, they’re still walking nonchalantly down the highway, dawdling as they wait for Tony to catch up. They're far enough ahead that it looks like they didn’t hear anything.
Jim’s staring down at the body with a horrified look on his face. Tony’s head is bashed in, extremely dead, and fuck, they have to get out of there before those other guys come looking to see what happened.
"Come on!" Ryan whispers at Jim, grabbing Jim’s arm and putting it over his shoulder.
Jim seems to come to, finally, and they book it deeper into the woods, away from the highway, moving as fast through the underbrush as they possibly can while keeping quiet. They run and run, stumping through trees, Ryan's teeth clenched, and don’t stop moving for a long, long time, until after the sun sets. Jim’s leg must be killing him by that time but he doesn’t say a word. Neither of them say a word.
They finally collapse in a little secluded clearing in the twilight, more because their legs won’t seem to work anymore than because they’re making a rational decision to stop. Their breath is coming in deep gasps, so desperate Jim sounds like he’s sobbing. But when Ryan looks at him his eyes are dry; he just can’t catch his breath.
"Fuck," Ryan gasps out.
Jim reaches out and rubs at Ryan’s hair, and when his hand comes away, there’s something grayish pink on it.
"Oh God," Ryan says, remembering the splatter, how it felt when it hit him, how hot it was, how wet. "Get it off me." It’s all over his shirt too, all over everywhere. He tears his hoodie off -- he has to get it off.
"Okay," Jim says, and he grabs the stained hoodie from Ryan’s hand, uses the cleaner part of the sleeves to start rubbing at Ryan’s face and neck.
"Get it off," Ryan says, and he thinks he might be freaking out, just a little bit. The one corner of his brain that can still think is thinking, I am freaking out. I am having a real meltdown.
Jim’s hands are shaking as he rubs at Ryan’s head. "I didn’t mean to," Jim says. "I thought the branch was more rotted, I didn’t mean to. I was just going to knock him out."
That one lucid corner of Ryan’s brain thinks, Jim is freaking out. Then it thinks, we murdered that guy. Me and Jim murdered somebody. His hand can still feel the bite of the knife into muscle, like cutting a piece of meat, the sick clean carve into someone’s arm. The sound of the branch hitting Tony’s head.
He wishes he didn’t know Tony’s name. "I didn’t mean to," Jim says again. He’s saying it over and over, like it makes a difference, scrubbing Tony’s brains out of Ryan’s hair.
"Get it off," Ryan says. He can feel his whole body shuddering, and when he looks down at his bare chest, he can see pink stains where the gore soaked through to the skin. Jim’ll never get it off, he thinks, irrationally.
Jim finally slows down as the hoodie sleeves are more and more of a mess and Ryan’s head, presumably, is less of one. He ends up tossing the sweatshirt aside with two fingers, too disgusting to be salvaged, and looking carefully at Ryan as though he’s trying to see if there’s any still left on him. Jim puts his hand on the back of Ryan’s neck, turning his head a little bit so he can see all the angles, and they’re both still breathing like they’ve been running.
Ryan reaches up and holds onto Jim’s forearm, desperate for something to just grab. He’s still shaking all over, and so is Jim, and he can't catch his breath.
"I didn’t want to kill him," Jim says.
"I know," Ryan says. He does know, but he -- the brains got all over him, the brains and the blood, and it’s not -- he. It just. His knife blade is still all covered with Tony’s blood.
"Oh God," Ryan says. He holds onto Jim’s arm tighter, his fingernails digging in a little bit, but Jim doesn’t wince. Jim’s hand is hot on the back of Ryan’s neck, and none of Tony's blood got on Jim at all, not even on his hands, not even under his fingernails. Jim’s face is flushed, and he’s holding onto Ryan like he’s terrified.
"He was going to kill us," Jim says. "We almost died."
"Yeah," Ryan says. He doesn’t know what to do with his other hand, and he reaches out half blindly, touching Jim’s chest, his shoulder. He just -- he wants to touch. He’s still shaking.
"I didn’t think I could...," Jim trails off. Ryan knows what he means though. You think of yourself one way, as a nice guy, as someone civilized. And then. Jim stares over Ryan’s head, eyes vacant.
"I know," Ryan says. Jim focuses on him again, on his face. He brings his other hand up to touch Ryan’s swollen cheek. "Ow," Ryan says as he presses lightly.
"Sorry," Jim says, almost whispering now. His eyes flicker down to Ryan’s mouth. Ryan can’t stop shaking. His chest is bare and stained pink.
Jim kisses Ryan, pulling him in by the hand on the back of his neck, rough and shaky and desperate. Ryan doesn’t kiss him back, and then he does.
The ground under them is soft and muddy, and Ryan’s hands press down into it as he tries to get his bearings. His body’s still freaking out from the murder, weak and trembling, and the surge of arousal feels strangely steadying, warm in his muscles. Jim’s stubble scratches at his face, and his mouth is wet and hot. He puts his hand on Ryan’s bare chest, on his shoulder, fingers scrabbling against Ryan’s skin.
Ryan doesn’t wonder if Tony had a wife, had kids, if he really was a cop, if his parents were proud of him. He doesn’t think about anything at all.
Jim’s pressing Ryan back, hands everywhere, mouth on Ryan’s neck, on his chest. Ryan’s got his hands in Jim’s too-long brown hair, fingers catching in the tangles. "I’m sorry," Jim’s muttering into Ryan’s skin. "I’m sorry."
Jim’s fingers move lower, along Ryan’s abdomen, skimming across his fly where Ryan’s hard. Ryan’s whole body’s thrumming, vibrating at too high a frequency, the whole thing too much for him. He doesn’t think he’ll survive this, thinks he’ll probably fly apart. Jim’s breathing is still loud, gasping.
Jim’s fingers move under Ryan’s waistband, undo Ryan’s zipper, and then Jim’s got his mouth on Ryan’s cock. Ryan lets his head and shoulders fall back onto the soft ground behind him, his body sprawling and loose, his breath catching as Jim works his tongue. "Jim," he says, and his voice sounds strange. "Jim, fuck."
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see his stained sweatshirt in a lump, dark blood splattered all over it. He turns his head to the side so he can’t see it anymore. Now all he can see is the darkening sky through the trees, a firefly lighting up, the small buds of spring on branches. Jim takes him further into his mouth and he hears himself moan. He doesn’t think about anything at all.
**
That night Ryan wakes up to the sound of Jim crying in his sleep, tears slithering out from behind his shut eyelids, eyes moving in a REM cycle. Whimpering noises like a baby, or a dog.
"Shh," Ryan says, putting his hand on Jim’s forehead, palming his cheek. "Shh."
Jim doesn’t wake up, but he presses into Ryan’s touch and after a minute stops crying, his breathing becoming regular again, deep and even. Ryan can feel the damp of Jim’s tears on his hand, and he falls back into an uneasy sleep himself. He wakes up a lot, keeps thinking he’s hearing something. But nothing’s ever there.
**
He wakes up with his limbs tangled with Jim’s, chest still bare, both of them under both blankets. He feels like hell, and when he lifts his head, Jim’s looking at him with roughly the same expression, self-loathing and guilt and anguish. The sky’s barely getting light. Jim’s hair is sticking up, and they disentangle themselves without saying much. Ryan can open his left eye today. So that’s something.
He gets one of Jim’s spare t-shirts out of their bag and puts it on so he won’t freeze to death, though the thin cloth isn’t nearly as good as his hoodie. The shirt’s too big for him, hanging down too low, and Ryan feels vaguely ridiculous, like a little kid playing dress-up. He doesn't know why he couldn't have split up with Oscar or someone else human-sized, instead of with a monstrous giant.
Not monstrous. He didn't mean that.
He goes over to his hoodie to get his cell phone out of the pocket, prods at the filthy shirt with his toe, but that's not the most effective way to find something. Finally he has to lift it up and search through the pocket, but when he does, the phone's not there. He checks three times, even though with just one big pocket, it's not like there's anywhere it could be hiding. Fuck, it must've fallen out sometime when they were running. For some reason, losing his phone makes him feel like he's really going to lose it, like he's on the verge of having a complete and total breakdown.
"I lost my phone," he says to Jim, and his voice sounds uneven.
Jim doesn't really react. He's just unsuccessfully trying to push his hair flat with his fingers, his pants still undone from the night before. He doesn't even look at Ryan.
Ryan tries to take deep breaths. It's just a phone. It wasn't doing anybody any good, and it's not symbolic. It's just a phone. He drops the stained hoodie in a little indentation on the edge of the clearing, and kicks some leaves over it so he doesn't have to see it anymore. He was trying really hard not to look at the gunk on the sleeves, but some of it got on his hands, and he has to wipe them off on the grass. God, his phone is missing, and he's covered in a murdered guy's blood, and he thinks he might be about to hyperventilate. No, you're okay, he thinks, and breathes. Think about something else. As he counts to ten and tries to calm down, it occurs to Ryan that he hasn’t checked Jim’s leg wound since the morning of the day before.
"Let me see your leg," Ryan says.
Jim finally looks at him, his eyes still sort of dead looking, and then wordlessly pushes his jeans down.
Ryan kneels next to him and starts undoing the bandage. When his knuckles first brush Jim’s leg, Jim winces but immediately stills, trying to hide his reaction.
"Sorry," Ryan says. He can’t tell if that hurt, or if Jim’s just... well. Anyway.
The edges of the wound, Ryan can see once he’s got the bandage mostly unwound, are red and swollen, getting infected. "Oh no," Ryan says.
Jim looks down at it but his expression doesn’t change. Ryan thinks it’s oozing pus a little bit, under the layer of cloth stuck to it. Oh God.
"Does it feel worse?" Ryan asks.
Jim shrugs. He still hasn’t really said anything.
"Fuck," Ryan says, and gets out the rubbing alcohol. There’s barely any left, and they need antibiotics or something anyway, and Jim definitely shouldn’t be walking on that leg -- or running on it, like yesterday. But what are they going to do? Dear God, he thinks, panic throwing atheism to the wind, if we make it back, I'll do anything. I'll be nice to Kelly. I'll be nice to Michael. Anything you want, I swear, I'll do it.
He pours the rubbing alcohol over the wound as best he can, using the last of it, but Jim barely reacts, just winces and jerks away a little bit. It’s worrying Ryan, how expressionless Jim is, like he’s not really there.
"You okay?" Ryan asks.
Jim shrugs again.
"Jim," Ryan says.
Jim’s face tenses a little bit, annoyed. "Sure," he says. "I’m great. Let’s get going."
Once Ryan has him bandaged up again, Jim slings his arm over Ryan’s shoulder and they start limping along again, north and east, the sun a little bit to their right.
They’ve been walking for about an hour when Jim says, out of nowhere, "It didn’t mean anything." The sky in front of them is getting very blue, and the wind is sharp. A bright April day.
Ryan walks a few more steps before he answers. Finally he says, "The sex, or the killing?"
Jim’s arm tightens on his shoulders, and when Ryan glances up, his face is twisting. "Either," he says. "Both."
"I know," Ryan says. He can still feel Tony’s blood in his hair, over his skin, like some horrible miasma. Jim’s arm along his shoulder blade is hot.
**
They hit a reservoir sometime just after noon, the water blue and sparkling and no doubt freezing cold. Ryan shrugs out from under Jim’s arm. "I’m going in," he says, starting to strip off his clothes. He tosses the t-shirt of Jim’s that he’s been wearing off to the side. The day’s really not warm enough to swim, but he has to get the rest of the blood off him, he can’t stand it anymore. He can feel it, sticky, lingering on his skin.
"It’s going to be cold," Jim says. He’s standing unevenly, not putting weight on his bad leg.
"I know," Ryan says, undoing his belt and shucking off his jeans. "But I have to get clean."
"You are clean," Jim mutters, and sits down with a thump, very carefully not watching Ryan undress. The air is cool on Ryan’s bare shoulders, his ass, but he doesn’t care. He’s got blood all over him, he can feel it. He hurries into the water, and the cold of it almost takes his breath away but he doesn’t stop. When he plunges his head under the surface, it’s cold and quiet, like another universe, still and calm. He stays under for too long, until his lungs are burning and he almost breathes in water.
He rubs and rubs at his chest and arms, rubs at his hair, threading his fingers through it, splashing until he thinks he’s gotten all of the residue that he can without soap. His hair feels less grimy, less full of clotted blood and gore, so that’s something. When he comes shivering back to the shore, Jim’s staring blankly out over the lake, not paying any attention.
Ryan shucks the water off his arms and legs as best he can; he hadn’t thought about how he was going to get dry afterwards. He just thought about being clean, and though he’s naked and freezing he feels washed, scrubbed, better. As he comes up to Jim, Jim blinks and seems to notice him again.
Jim pulls his sweatshirt off and holds it out to Ryan. "Towel?" he says.
Ryan looks at him, shivering. "Thanks," he says finally, and uses it to dry himself off as best he can. Jim again very pointedly doesn’t watch him do it. Ryan’s teeth aren’t chattering quite so much by the time he gets dressed again, jeans sticking to his damp skin. His hair’s still dripping.
"Better?" Jim says. He doesn’t look like he feels better at all -- maybe he could’ve used a swim too.
"Yeah," Ryan says. He shakes his head like a dog and water droplets fly out. Jim winces when they hit him. Ryan kind of hopes that Jim’ll show some emotion, gets annoyed at least, but Jim just sits there. "How’s the leg?" Ryan asks. He sits down next to Jim, their shoulders touching. Which, after last night, gives him a little charge. God, it’s like everything’s upside down, killing some guy, sleeping with Jim. He needs to get off this nightmare trip and back to somewhere like normal -- or what normal is, now. Dwight’s farm. Great.
Jim just shrugs.
God. Ryan rubs at his good eye and tries to decide what to say to keep Jim from going catatonic. But that means thinking about what happened the day before, which he’s been resolutely avoiding. He pictures Tony’s body for a horrible split second and shudders. The sound of his head breaking, the look on his face just before, when Ryan cut him.
"We didn’t have a choice," Ryan says in an undertone, and then clears his throat. This would probably be more convincing if he believed it himself.
When he glances over, Jim’s expression hasn’t changed. "Right," Jim says.
Ryan breathes in, out. "It’s okay," he says. "We’ll get back to the farm, everything will go back to the way it was. It’s not -- it wasn’t anything."
Jim turns slowly to look at him, blinking a little bit too much. He looks at Ryan for a long moment. "Right," he says again.
Jim’s eyes are shadowed under his ball cap, and his scruff of beard is dark, and he looks terrible. As a last resort, Ryan reaches out and grabs a fistful of Jim’s t-shirt, pulling him down to kiss him as roughly as he can. Jim takes in a breath through his nose and then kisses him back, his mouth opening, his tongue moving. Ryan nips at Jim’s lip, just lightly with his teeth, and when he pulls back, Jim looks a little more alive than he did before.
Jim opens his eyes and says, "Back to normal, huh."
Ryan shrugs and gets to his feet. "More or less." He reaches out a hand to help Jim up, and Jim takes it. They limp on.
**
They’re moving faster than they were that first day, even with Jim's leg infected, so that’s something. For a little while around five, Ryan thinks they might even make it back to his parents’ house in Jessup that night, before it gets dark. But twilight comes on while they’re still a ways out, and they’re forced to take shelter in a copse of trees on the wrong side of route 6.
They’re getting a routine now, what they do when they stop for the night. First, check the injuries, while it’s still light enough to see. Jim’s leg is even more swollen, pink and hot to the touch. Ryan prods at the edges, hoping he won’t see pus, but it comes out anyway.
"That hurt?" Ryan says. When he looks up, Jim gives him a what-do-you-think look. "Sorry," Ryan says.
"Yeah," Jim says. "It hurts, thanks for asking."
Jim was limping more as the day went on, and Ryan noticed it, but there’s not a lot he can do. There’s nothing left to put on it, so Ryan just has to bind it up again and hope for the best. At least by tomorrow they’ll be with Karen and Oscar and Gil again. Or, they better be. Ryan’s trying not to think about what they’ll do if the car’s gone and they’ve been left.
"How’s your head?" Jim asks. He puts his hand against Ryan’s good cheek and turns Ryan’s head so he can see the swelling. It’s still going down; Ryan can see out of his left eye okay, so that’s good. Jim looks at it for probably a little longer than he needs to. His hand feels warm against Ryan’s cheek.
"Better," Jim says. "I think it's starting to turn green."
"Attractive," Ryan says, and Jim’s mouth twitches, a rueful half smile. His eyes flicker down to Ryan’s mouth, and Ryan’s stomach drops, just a little. Once they get back to Dwight’s, they won’t, but tonight, well. They’re just upset; no one could blame them. This whole trip is starting to seem unreal, like some kind of weird dream Ryan’s having. Jim bleeding on the street, reading Ender’s Game in the dark, Ryan pulling the shoes off a dead guy. Jim going down on him. Like something he doesn’t have control of, like something he’s going to wake up from, something happening to someone else. When they get back to Dwight’s, things will shake themselves back out and he'll be himself again. But until then, he’s not. He looks at Jim’s mouth for just a second.
He really doesn’t want to be practical right then, but it’s getting dark, and they’ve got to eat before they can’t see at all. "Um," Ryan says, pulling back. "We should eat." Jim sighs and drops his hand.
They’re almost out of food. Ryan gives the last can of peaches to Jim, and they split one of tomatoes and one of green beans. Jim’s stomach rumbles audibly even after they’re done, but that’s the end of what they’ve got, so. Ryan hopes Karen managed to scrounge something, so they can eat when they get back. When, he's telling himself, not if. When they get back to Karen and Oscar and Gil.
By the time they’re finished eating, it’s full dark, the nearly full moon rising over the trees. The pale light leaves Jim’s eyes in shadow, shows stubble thick on his cheeks. This time when Jim reaches out for him, Ryan doesn’t pull away.
**
When Ryan wakes up the next morning from a nightmare, Jim is poring over the map. He looks up when he sees Ryan getting up to take a leak and says, "We’re almost there."
"Yeah," Ryan says, his voice gravelly from sleep. It’s a gray, oppressive day, clouds low, and it smells like rain. Great.
"I bet we can get there before noon," Jim says.
Ryan was going to walk further into the trees to pee, but what the hell, it’s not like he can be shy around Jim now. He pulls up at the nearest tree and unzips. "Yeah," he says. "I bet we can."
He hears the map rustling behind him, focuses on patterns in the bark in front of him.
"You think they’ll be there?" Jim asks. Godfuckingdammit, why does Jim always have to bring up things Ryan isn’t thinking about?
"Sure," Ryan says. "Of course."
He finishes peeing and zips himself back up. "Right, of course," Jim says when Ryan turns around.
"How’s your leg?" Ryan says.
"Fine," Jim says, but even from a few feet away Ryan can see that it’s swelling. God, motherfuck. It’ll just -- well, they’re almost there. Someone else will take care of it, once they get there. Ryan just has to get him back. "How’s your head?"
Ryan’s pretty much gotten used to the low-level headache he’s had since that dude hit him, so he shrugs. "Fine."
"Yeah, we’re a couple of fine guys," Jim says, voice thick with irony.
"Shut up," Ryan says, pulling out his toothbrush. Everything that’s happened, and he’s managed to hang onto it. Ridiculous.
Jim grabs his own toothbrush out of his pocket and holds it out to Ryan for toothpaste, like asking for a light. Ryan squeezes some out for him, and they brush their teeth in silence, watching the sun come up over the horizon. This is the day, they get back or they don’t.
"What do we do if they’re not there?" Jim says, through a mouth full of foam. "What’s Plan B?"
"Fuck off," Ryan says, and spits onto the ground. "They’ll be there." He wipes his mouth on his sleeve and tries not to glower at Jim.
Jim shrugs and keeps brushing his teeth. All of Ryan’s muscles ache from walking, from Jim leaning on him, and he thinks he can barely face another day of traveling. He lies back down on the soft ground and lets his head rest. He listens to the rustle of leaves, the sounds of Jim finishing brushing his teeth.
"I think I’m going to turn myself in," Jim says from where he’s sitting next to Ryan.
Ryan blinks, looking up at the roiling clouds. "Turn yourself in?" he says blankly. Um. "To who?"
When he sits up, Jim looks a little perturbed, and Ryan can practically see him shuffling through his options. He finally says, "Dwight?"
"Dwight," Ryan says, "would probably just congratulate you."
"Yeah," Jim says, and rubs his hand over his face. He looks miserable and sort of old, lines pronounced on his forehead and beside his mouth. The pain from his leg’s made his face look white and pinched all week, and now this -- he just looks terrible, like a mirror of how Ryan feels, the same guilty desolate look. Jim leaves his hand over his forehead, covering his eyes.
"Jim," Ryan says, and reaches out a hand to touch Jim’s knee. Jim doesn’t move for a long second, then drops his hand and looks at Ryan, a long, measuring look. Then he’s leaning in and pushing Ryan back, all tongue and teeth and wanting, and neither of them have to think about anything for a little while longer.
**
Neither of them notice when it starts to rain, but it’s really pouring by the time they’ve both gotten off, lying panting side by side with big rain drops coming down on their faces.
"Gross," Jim says up at the sky, and Ryan agrees. It’s cold, and the t-shirt of Jim’s that Ryan’s wearing is already soaked through, and it’s going to be a long day without umbrellas. Good thing they don’t have to go far.
They lie there for long after they’ve caught their breath, neither of them wanting to get up. The sooner they get going, the sooner they’ll get to the car, and the sooner they’ll find out if they’ve been left or not. And maybe it’s easier not to know, like putting off looking at your grade on an exam.
Finally Jim sits up, wiping rain off his face. "We better go," he says.
Jim hauls his arm around Ryan’s shoulder for one more day, and all wet like this, it’s nice to have the body heat. They start slogging through the wet underbrush, up a ridge, down the other side. Jim’s walking even worse than the day before -- Ryan’s worried about that infection. If Jim loses that leg -- well. No point in thinking about it. Rain’s slicking Ryan’s hair to his forehead, getting in his eyes.
After an hour or two, they come out of the brush and into the suburbs, all dark houses, broken windows like gaping eyes, empty streets. Ryan starts getting really nervous, and instead of walking in the street, he and Jim cut through backyards, over old vegetable gardens and past swing sets. They don’t see a soul.
Soon they’re on streets Ryan recognizes, in the backyards of kids he went to elementary school with. Emily Irwin, whose parents got divorced in eighth grade and whose dad married the music teacher. Bryan Schultz, whose sisters let him drive when he was in fifth grade.
Jim’s breathing heavily. "Almost there," Ryan mutters. "You can make it."
"I know," Jim says, sounding irritable.
Then they’re turning onto Ryan’s street. Ryan’s heart picks up, beating faster, and God, he hopes the car is there.
He sees it. It’s there. No coworkers, though. It hadn’t even occurred to Ryan that they might get back and Karen and them wouldn’t be there yet -- that something might’ve happened to them, too. He doesn’t know -- what do they do? How long do they wait?
He and Jim limp up the driveway to the SUV and stand there next to it. Jim puts out a hand to touch it, like he’s not sure it’s really there, then leans against it, so Ryan can step out from under his arm. They look at each other. Well, then.
Just then, Ryan hears a noise behind him and jumps, turning so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. It’s Karen, coming out of Ryan’s parents’ house, with Oscar and Gil behind her. Oh, thank God. Oh God, they're there. Ryan's knees go weak with relief, so he almost falls over, and he hears Jim's breath go out with a whoosh. They're there, they waited, and Ryan's almost on the verge of tears, he was so worried. Karen's still got the rifle, and none of them look very badly hurt. God, he really never thought he'd see them again.
Karen beams when she sees them, but when she gets a little closer, her smile fades and she just looks concerned. Ryan tries to picture how they must look to her -- bedraggled and soaked, unshaven and dirty, blood everywhere, swollen and obviously in bad shape. "What the hell happened to you?" she asks, obviously rattled. Behind her, Oscar and Gil have matching horrified looks.
What happened to them. Ryan and Jim look at each other.
Jim clears his throat. "Let's never do this again, okay, guys?"
Karen nods, and comes over to give Jim a hug. "Are you okay?" she says. "I was really worried. We were going to leave tomorrow if you guys didn't show up."
Oh, thank God they made it. Oscar claps Ryan on the back, and Ryan lets himself finally relax, feeling a little shell-shocked. Karen kisses Jim on the mouth, then hugs him some more, and Ryan stands back with Oscar and Gil telling him they're glad he's okay. Over Karen's shoulder, Jim's giving Ryan the guiltiest look he's ever seen. Ryan looks away and tries to breathe.
**
END