Half Sick of Shadows, Part One
Half Sick of Shadows, Part One
Band(s): Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance
Pairing(s): Mikey/Brendon, Gerard/Ryan
Word Count: 33 000
Rating/Warnings: NC-17. Warnings for swearing, obviously. Torture disguised as medical procedure, and a required suspension of disbelief.
Summary: Wing!fic. When Ryan is born with wings, those who learn that secret assume he's either an angel or a monster, though Ryan doesn't consider himself either. At least, not until he is forced to run away from his foster home in Vegas with his foster brother Brendon, both of whom lack any sort of common sense, which Spencer realizes when he goes to find them in New York City. Instead of meeting up with Spencer, Ryan and Brendon are attacked by a government agency who want Ryan, and aren't afraid to go through Brendon to get to him.
That's how Brendon gets involved in this whole mess, dead at Ryan's feet with a bullet through the chest, and Ryan brings him back again. All of a sudden, those who'd killed Brendon don't care about Ryan at all, and are much more interested in figuring out how Brendon came back from the dead, and how far they can push him before he won't come back at all.
NOTES: This was pretty difficult to write, actually, worse than anything I've ever done, and requiring so many rewrites and new drafts and new versions. I want to thank Donna for looking over it for me a few times, though she seems to have since forgotten that she did! I don't know if that's a good sign or not. I also want to apologize to my non bandom friendslist for the spam. Sorry. I shall post my SPN story soon to make up for it, okay?
I particularly wanted to thank x_smartie for giving me a dose of confidence when I needed it most, when I'd almost given up on this, and skoosiepants for reading my babbly emails when I was particularly stuck for ideas.
Half Sick of Shadows
Part one
When Brendon died, Ryan didn’t know what he was meant to do. Brendon and his father both believed that Ryan was more than what he seemed, an angel, even, but when it came down to it, a back alley in a dirty city on a winter’s night was not the place for a miracle.
Ryan had never believed in miracles anyway. Or angels, despite all evidence to the contrary.
But Brendon was dead and his blood was already soaking into the knees of Ryan’s torn jeans, his eyes were opened and staring straight up at the pale clouds that were barely visible against the night time sky, his mouth was hanging open in shock, and a bullet had torn through the coat Spencer had insisted he wear. It had ripped through his skin, his ribcage, and his heart, but the coat seemed, at that moment, the most sacrilegious part because, as it had been Spencer’s idea.
It was quiet and still now, after the gunshot had shattered whatever noise was left, and that was fitting. The noise had scared their attackers off faster than the rusted blade Brendon had held in trembling hands before he’d fallen.
“Brendon,” Ryan said, his voice hushed in the quiet, still startling. “Brendon. This isn’t funny.”
The wind blew then, almost gently, sending curls of snow racing down the dark alley. Flakes caught on Brendon’s chapped lips, his eyelashes, and they did not melt. Ryan brushed them away impatiently.
“Spencer is going to be so pissed when he hears about this,” Ryan growled finally, shifting so that he stood on his knees at Brendon’s side. He pressed his left palm to the ragged hole in Brendon’s coat, then curled his right one over top. Taking a deep breath, he held it in his lungs until it burned, and then, when pinpricks of light and dark warred in his eyes, dizziness making the world lurch sickeningly, he pushed with something he could never explain, something inside him, some sort of light that pulsed inside him with every heartbeat and pooled in his palms and his fingertips.
Ryan had always had some instinct for forcing broken bits of skin and flesh back together, though not as gently as such a thing should require. Mostly, though, he’d had no cause to force anything to mend other than a sprained ankle, a cut, or a headache.
Besides, that skill was the least of Ryan’s strangeness.
There was a lot of damage, though, and Ryan had known it would be like this-not a miracle, but more like hell. He felt every nerve, muscle, bone, and vein begin to knit, his own chest beginning to bleed with it, phantom pain.
It wasn’t until Brendon’s body shook with the shock of his first heartbeat that Ryan flinched away from the pain. Blood ran from his mouth, his chest, his ears. The pain had been too much, and even as Brendon sucked in a sharp, startled gasp, his eyes blinking suddenly, Ryan gave in to weakness and sank into a small, vulnerable ball beside him, knees held to his chest, and blood staining his clothes.
His wings curled around his shoulders and narrow back protectively, and the frigid wind ruffled the edges of pale brown feathers, protecting Ryan from the cold, and his heart stuttered and stopped even as Brendon’s found its rhythm again.
**
Brendon went from feeling nothing to feeling everything in the space of that moment between his heart lying still and starting to beat again. It was agony, blood being forced to move again through veins and tissue, an aching, curling pain searing in his fingertips and all the other bits of flesh that had already been suffocated into atrophy.
It wasn’t half as scary as forcing himself up on his elbows, blinking away blood and tears, and finding Ryan lying beside him.
Brendon remembered the crack of the gunshot, he remembered the flash of shock and terror that hadn’t left him enough time to feel how much it should have hurt. He’d thought he’d been shot.
Now, though, staring at Ryan, bloodied and broken beside him, as his own pain faded into phantom twinges too quickly to have been real, Brendon realized that reality was worse.
He hadn’t been shot at all, it had been Ryan, and Spencer was going to kill him.
“Ry,” he croaked, voice hoarse, cracking. He grabbed Ryan’s shoulder, shook him, pushed him onto his back so that his wings were forced to spread behind him, awkward and bent without muscle memory to guide them. Ryan’s eyes were closed, blood stained him all over, but most obscenely his lips, the line of his jaw, and one cheekbone. His chest was a mess of dark, sticky blood, and Brendon tore at his clothes before flinching at the mess of Ryan’s chest.
Torn ridges of skin and muscle were coated in blood. Brendon had to look away, curling into himself a bit and breathing raggedly to keep from throwing up.
But Ryan made the faintest sound, a bare breath of a whimper, and Brendon’s head whipped back around to stare at him. He was alive!
Fumbling for a pulse and struggling to remember CPR, Brendon let out a breath he’d been holding when he felt the faintest, staggering heartbeat in Ryan’s neck.
“It isn’t safe,” Brendon told him. “We need to find Spencer. Get up, Ry, you need to get up. Wake up, wake up, please?”
**
At first, Gerard didn’t notice the younger boys, as he struggled with the door to his crappy Subaru in the freezing cold. The door had jammed shut again, it always seemed to do that on the coldest nights, and he only had one hand to work it open with, the other busy holding a paper bag and a cigarette. It was only after he’d sworn a few times, kicked the rusty side of the car, and given up, that he happened to notice the two boys staggering down the sidewalk outside the small comic book shop he’d just left. His eyes narrowed warily and he kicked the door again. This time, the lock gave with a small, exhausted snapping sound, and he wrenched it open, hesitating for one moment before getting in, looking at the boys again. Now that his car door was open, he didn’t feel quite as threatened.
After a moment, he decided that maybe he shouldn’t have felt threatened at all. They were both tiny. The smallest one, a shock of dark hair and a very pale face in the darkness, seemed to be supporting most of the weight of the taller one, who was rail-thin and hunched into him, staggering badly. His head kept falling to the smaller boy’s shoulder weakly, and the smaller boy seemed to be struggling to hold him up at all.
It was instinct for Gerard to want to flail his hands a bit, drop his comic book and cigarette, and dash over there to help. Bob was always cursing that particular instinct, which had caused Gerard to bring home more than his fair share of bedraggled kittens and homeless puppies in his time.
Gerard did step closer, but the shorter boy shot him this look, filled with defiance and fury and hopeless violence that Gerard froze and just watched them pass.
It was only after he’d climbed into his car and they’d stepped into the weak light from a street lamp that he noticed that both boys were covered in blood.
Gerard intended to let them pass. He’d promised Bob to stop doing stupid, foolish things, and getting involved in this was the most stupid thing that he could imagine.
Then the taller boy stumbled and fell to his knees in the gold glow of the street light, and the other boy was beside him instantly, arms wrapped around him, speaking earnestly and quickly, probably coaxing him to get back up again, and Gerard was lost.
They got up again, staggering down the street and turning the corner, and Gerard turned on his car, the rumble of the failing muffler loud in the dark, cold silence. He drove down the street, hesitating at the corner, and then turning to follow, without a single logical excuse to offer himself. He turned off his headlights, as if that would keep them from noticing his pursuit, and drove slowly down the road, keeping as far from them as he could.
Of course the one who wasn’t intoxicated or whatever would notice him, glancing over his shoulder a few times and trying his best to speed up. The other boy stumbled but tried to keep up, and they cut across the road towards a skate park, which Gerard knew was used more for drug deals than skating, and mostly at this hour of the night. He sped up.
Rolling down his window let in a shock of frigid air, and he flinched but still called, “Wait, okay, just, don’t do that.”
The taller boy froze, back to Gerard, and then slowly turned, eyes narrow, and his free hand shakily clutching a knife. “I’ll cut you,” he threatened. His voice cracked near the end.
“Okay, okay, look, I don’t want to hurt you, I just...”
“He’s not gonna-look, he’s not going to suck your dick, okay? Neither of us-we’re not-we don’t.” The boy said wildly, and Gerard blinked, looked at the taller boy, then back to the one with the knife.
“Uhm,” he said. “Okay. I just want to help?”
The boy snorted, but was quickly distracted when the other boy’s head rolled a bit on his shoulder, pressing his face to the smaller boy’s neck. “Bren,” he breathed. “Brendon, I can’t...”
Gerard could see the way his face was turning gray despite the blood, his legs starting to shake.
“Fuck, fuck,” Brendon whispered, Gerard all but forgotten as he shoved the knife into his pocket and turned to catch the other boy’s weight. “Ryan, c’mon,” he begged. “A little further, there’ll be a bench, we can rest, just a little further, okay?”
Ryan nodded, face still pressed to Brendon’s neck, and Gerard was pretty sure he wouldn’t make it anyway. He had a larger jacket wrapped around his shoulders, but Gerard had seen enough to know that his clothes were covered in blood. He must be pretty seriously hurt. Then he glanced at Brendon’s clothes, and blinked, because there was a hole... through his shirt and-
“Holy fuck, were you shot?”
Brendon snapped his head around, having forgotten Gerard was there at all, his eyes wide and wild. “No-I don’t know-I don’t know, okay, I was-I just-it doesn’t matter, does it, I just need to get Ryan somewhere-I don’t know what to do, just, can’t you fuck off? I don’t know what to do.”
Gerard had had his share of panic attacks before, and his eyes narrowed as Brendon began hyperventilating. He opened his door, got out, and jerked the back door open. “Get in,” he said, and Brendon just stared at him. “Get the fuck in, I’ll bring you both to a fucking hospital or a police station or whatever, I’m not fucking leaving you out here to bleed to death.”
“Neither of us are bleeding anymore,” Brendon said faintly, still looking terrified. Ryan whimpered and pressed closer to his side.
“It doesn’t matter! You need to go to the hospital!” Gerard’s voice was getting steadily higher.
Ryan turned to look at him, face colourless, lips gray. His dark eyes stared at Gerard for a moment, looking pained and glazed, and then he blinked slowly and said, “I know you. I think I know you. Will you take us home?”
“Ry,” Brendon whispered. “You don’t know him, he’s a stranger.”
Gerard and Ryan both ignored him. “If you tell me where you live,” he allowed.
Ryan shook his head a little bit and said, “No, we don’t live anywhere anymore. Take us home with you?”
Gerard barely had to consider it, with Ryan looking at him with wide eyes like that, with Brendon looking lost and very young now that he’d put his ridiculous knife away. “Yeah,” he said. “Of course. Just-just get in the car.”
With a nod, Ryan lurched forward, stumbling a bit before crawling into the back seat. Brendon just watched, shaking his head slowly, and mumbling, “Spencer is gonna kill me.” Then he glared sharply at Gerard. “If this is some Stranger Danger bullshit, I’m seriously gonna fuck you up.”
Gerard hid a tired grin, and tried his best to look properly frightened. “Of course, no, no, of course,” he said, closing the door behind Brendon and climbing back into the driver’s seat.
For all that his car was a piece of shit, the heater worked perfectly, and Gerard blasted it when he saw how Ryan and Brendon were shivering and soon the car was warm enough that Ryan relaxed against Brendon’s shoulder in the back seat, falling asleep. Despite how exhausted he looked, Brendon stayed awake and suspicious, and Gerard didn’t speak, not knowing what to say.
The silence was finally broken, however, when Ryan’s jacket slipped from his shoulders to pool around his hips on the seat, and the motion caught Gerard’s eyes in the rear view window.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, and Brendon met his eyes in the mirror, looking solemn now, and nodding once.
“Yeah,” he said. “Watch the road, okay?”
Gerard jerked his gaze back to the road, but still couldn’t get the image of Ryan, small and delicate, covered in blood, and far too pale, curled up against Brendon’s shoulder, with sparrow wings folded against his back.
**
Brendon was freaking out, but doing his best to do it quietly. He was in the back seat of a stranger’s car, Ryan was sleeping or unconscious next to him, and there was blood drying on his clothes. In fact, if Brendon thought about it, this was the most freaked out he’d ever been, next to waking up, freezing cold, stiff, and confused, in that alley with a healed bullet wound in his chest and Ryan passed out beside him.
When he’d sat up, a bullet had fallen from the tangle of his jacket and hit the concrete. He still had that bullet clutched in his hand, because he was pretty sure he died tonight, and wasn’t quite sure how to take that.
But it was important to focus, to get through this, to get Ryan safe and hidden, and then to find out how to find Spencer now that they’d missed the meeting time.
He glanced up at the back of the driver’s head, shifted a bit, and then said, “You never told me your name.”
The man jerked, startled, and then said, “Oh. Uhm, it’s Gerard.”
“I’m Brendon. This is Ryan. Uh, do you have a phone?”
Gerard glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Yeah. We’re almost at my place, though, you can make a call when we get there, okay?”
“Yeah, sure, if we’re not bound and drugged and gagged and stuff,” Brendon mumbled, tightening his arm around Ryan’s shoulders. Ryan whispered something in his sleep.
“He drunk?” Gerard asked.
Brendon snorted. “No. He’s exhausted, I think. I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
It was quiet again, until Gerard pulled up in front of a rundown apartment complex, parking his car. They sat in silence for a moment, and then Gerard got out. While Brendon was still fumbling with his and Ryan’s seatbelts, Gerard opened the opposite door, undid Ryan’s, and scooped him up carefully in his arms.
“Hey!” Brendon snapped, scrambling after him. “Hey, you can’t-”
“You can’t carry him. C’mon.” For all that Gerard sounded casual about it, Brendon could see the way Gerard struggled under Ryan’s weight, though he still managed to carry him into the building and up to the third floor. Brendon followed sullenly.
The apartment was a mess of dark shadows and clutter that Brendon couldn’t make sense of in the darkness.
He hovered uncertainly in the doorway, and only kicked off his shoes and stepped into the kitchen when Gerard disappeared that way with Ryan.
He put Ryan carefully on the floor, and Ryan didn’t make a sound, still deeply asleep. Gerard looked at him.
“Do you want-I mean, there’s a lot of blood, do you want a shower? I can get you some clothes, they’ll be too long, but they should be okay.”
Brendon glanced at Ryan, hesitating. “What about Ryan?”
“Uhm, I guess, I mean, he probably won’t wake, will he? I was going to clean him up a bit and put him in bed, then you could sleep too, if you want? We could figure this out in the morning. It’s pretty late and, no offence, but you look wrecked.” He hesitated, darting a look at the hole in Brendon’s jacket again. “Unless you need to go to the hospital?”
“No!” Brendon said quickly. “No, no, uhm, I mean, I’m good. We can’t-” He gestured vaguely at Ryan. “He can’t go to the hospital. But a shower, a shower would be good. And clothes. Uhm, thanks. You know, unless you turn out to be a pervert or something.”
Gerard smiled faintly at him. “Yeah, I mean, I’ll try. Shower’s down the hall, there should be towels. Let me find you something to wear.”
Brendon gave in with one last look at Ryan, before following Gerard down the hall.
**
While Brendon was in the shower, Gerard was left alone with Ryan, whose breathing, at least, was even and soft, which had to be a good sign. Still, he was filthy and bloody.
He got a bowl of warm water and a soft cloth and knelt beside him, still carefully not looking at the wings, because Gerard wasn’t quite sure he could deal with that just yet. As it was, every time the back of his hand or his wrist brushed against the soft feathers, Gerard’s heart seemed to stumble a bit. He wanted to shake Ryan, hard, until he woke up so Gerard could ask him thousands of questions.
The most important being ‘where’s Mikey have you seen Mikey I need Mikey’, but it seemed rude to prioritize that way, when Ryan was bloody and on his kitchen floor.
It had waited years; a few minutes more wouldn’t hurt.
He carefully wiped the blood off Ryan’s face, and other than a faint mumble, Ryan didn’t wake. After a brief hesitation, Gerard unbuttoned Ryan’s shirt, baring his chest, and then he froze, eyes widening a little bit. In the center of Ryan’s chest, there was a mess of deep, vivid bruises, black and purple with blood smeared and dried over top, but no open wound. Ryan was so skinny and pale, all bone and white white skin, that the bruising and blood looked even worse, and Gerard reached out and gently pressed his palm to the worst of the bruising, feeling radiating heat and unbroken bone. He washed the dirt and blood away, and there, in the center of his chest amongst the bruises, was an old scar, white with age, and slightly raised, circular, like a gunshot.
He brushed his fingertips over the scar, and Ryan whimpered, eyes fluttering open, still dazed and dark.
“Spencer,” he said in a faint moan, and Gerard snatched his hand away.
“He’s not here,” he told him, and Ryan’s eyes fixed on his face at the sound of his voice. “I’m Gerard, do you remember? You and Brendon are staying with me for a bit.”
He seemed to struggle for a moment, but then let his eyes slide shut again.
“Hey, no,” Gerard said quickly, touching his face. “We need to get you into some clean clothes, you need to help me. Ryan.”
Ryan’s eyes flew open at his name, and he nodded vaguely. Gerard helped him sit up and they worked his shirt off together, though Ryan seemed incapable of offering much help. He tried, his breathing speeding up, catching on faint sounds of distress, and Gerard was as quick as possible, though he struggled to tug the shirt off Ryan’s wings. Someone had cut jagged slashes in the back of the shirt to make room for them.
His old sweat pants swallowed him up, and Gerard left him shirtless, carrying him into his room and carefully set him on the bed, covering him up. Ryan didn’t wake up at all.
**
Ryan was safe. Brendon made sure of it, before he left. He checked on Ryan and saw him clean and comfortable, sleeping like a child with one hand beneath his cheek, his wings pressed tightly to his back, curled up like a baby bird.
It didn’t count as abandoning him if Brendon only left him because he was safe and sleeping. Besides, Brendon intended to be back by dawn, before Ryan even knew. He left Ryan his knife, folded it carefully in his hand.
It was not abandonment. But he had to do his best, he had to get to Spencer, because surely Spencer would wait for them, for however long it took. Brendon had tried to call from Gerard’s place, but there had been no answer. That couldn’t mean anything good, and if Spencer wasn’t waiting at the library, Brendon wouldn’t ever find him. He couldn’t imagine having to confess that to Ryan, that he’d let them get shot and miss their meeting with Spencer, who had left everything to be with them.
So Brendon waited until Gerard was distracted, locked up in the living room with a sketchpad, before he’d sneaked out, dressed in Gerard’s old pajama pants and an ancient, holey purple hoodie.
Maybe it was stupid to trust a man based on the colour of his hoodies, but there was also the careful care Gerard had put into taking care of Ryan, and the way he hadn’t freaked out at the wings. God knew, Brendon nearly had a heart attack, the first time he ever saw them.
But he had no choice, he had to trust Ryan to Gerard. He had to find Spencer. This whole mess was his fault, and he had to fix it.
So Brendon sneaked out, arms wrapped around himself, face ducked against the cold.
How hard could it be to find the library, after all?
Some how, his feet naturally let him to that alley instead, still stained with blood, and Brendon just stopped and stared, cold all over.
He should be dead, he died, he should be dead. But he wasn’t.
Brendon’s hands started shaking with the horrific implications of that, and just what it meant about Ryan that he could do that. Brendon was frozen with terror.
Then a car slowed along the road and Brendon could feel the driver staring, so he turned and began to wave frantically, stranger danger forgotten. After all, Gerard had turned out okay.
“Help me,” he called, beginning to pant with terror. “Please, I need to find Spencer, please. Where’s the library?”
The car did stop, and the passenger side door opened slowly, a man climbing out and staring. Brendon suddenly realized that he was covered in blood himself, which must explain the horrified look on the man’s face. Then he realized something worse; it was the man who’d shot him.
“I killed you,” the man said slowly, though not uncertainly. “I fucking killed you.”
Brendon backed away, shaking his head wildly, and then he spun around and tried to run.
He didn’t get far, hit with something that hurt less than a bullet (except it had been Ryan who’d been shot, hadn’t it?). He staggered and fell, muscles going lax, some sort of drug, and Brendon couldn’t fight sluggish waves of panic as his body began to betray him.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” the man said, leaning over him, eyes dark and sharp. “I watched you die.”
Brendon’s last breath was a gasping sob as he realized that somehow, he’d gotten in way over his head, and, worst of all, he’d left Ryan alone with a stranger.
Then there was only blackness, and the vaguest sensation of guilt.
**
Nearly dawn. There was a hint of color over the rooftops of the buildings across the street, and Gerard grunted faintly, sipping at his coffee, which had gone cold. He grimaced, turned back to his work, and continued carefully, carefully shading in a crosshatching of black along the delicate arch of a raven’s wing.
His apartment was a disaster, which was nothing new. Piles of clutter and crap layered every surface, the floor barely visible beneath old newspapers, cut up for collages that the detectives on CSI or something would have a field day over. The fridge was covered in articles, the National Inquirer’s best. Most of them had something to do with angels, and a very few, with mutants.
Gerard always had had eclectic interests.
He tried not to think about it. Not the angels, the mutants, whatever fucked up things were in his head, because Gerard had been so, so fucked since Mikey had left. It wasn’t like he hadn’t imagined things like this before, angels or pretty boys or what the fuck ever, appearing and then disappearing before morning. He shouldn’t have been surprised to wake before dawn to find that Brendon and Ryan were gone as if they’d never been there at all. Too many long nights, too much booze, too many marathons of drawing, plotting, imagining boys with wings...
The bloodstains, though, and the ruined clothing. Those were new.
He shied away from thinking about it.
He set his pencil aside and grabbed up his cigarettes, absently studying the drawing for any flaws and finding none. Satisfied, he went out onto the fire escape, lit up a cigarette, and breathed deeply, clear, cold night air with smoke that burned in his lungs.
He was on the bottom floor of an ancient, stone building in a bad part of town, all litter blowing like tumble weeds in the snow, drug deals on corners, and people locking their doors at night against whatever else happened in the shadows around here. His grandmother would have been appalled to know where he’d ended up, but Gerard liked it. It fuelled his imagination in ways that her little house in Jersey never had.
He felt a bit of guilt for that, but brushed it aside.
He’d just flicked the cigarette butt down into the street when there was a sound nearby, a shuffling, crack series of faltering footsteps, and he sighed. For all that Gerard was drawn to the darker side of things, he wasn’t stupid enough to wait around on his fire escape for them to come and drag him off, so he went back inside, slammed the window shut, and went to get a drink.
Rye or whiskey, or something stronger, he still wasn’t sure, when the scratching came on the window. He froze, breath catching, shaky memories of high school English, Catherine haunting the moors and begging Heathcliff to let her in...
But that was ridiculous, and soon enough, the scratching became a desperate sort of pounding.
There was a boy on his fire escape, a delicate, bruised boy who was pale, eyes wide, dark, and nearly vacant with sheer panic. He was crying, and Gerard shouldn’t have let him in.
It took a moment. Maybe Gerard was more fucked than he realized, more broken, because he thought for a second that it was Mikey, because Mikey, at least, had been real. There were photographs to prove that.
Besides in the glowing dawn and the weak street light, there was just enough illumination to see the wings folded at his back, and Gerard had spent his whole life looking for angels.
There was no way he’d leave this one broken and bloodied on his fire escape.
He opened the window and the delicate boy fell through it, landing awkwardly against Gerard’s chest with a shaking sob.
“I didn’t think you were real,” Gerard said dully, reproachfully.
“Help me, please, help,” Ryan said, twisting dirty hands in Gerard’s shirt. “I lost him, I’ve lost him, please.”
“Hey,” Gerard said, startled at how rusty his voice was. He’d forgotten, again, to speak, to engage in human contact, to check his damned phone. Bob was going to kill him. He cleared his throat to try again. “Hey, it’s okay. Are you alright? Brendon...” Was real also, evidently. Bob really, really was going to kill him.
Ryan’s face was pressed to Gerard’s chest, and he shook his head wildly, but seemed to calm a little bit, though still trembling against him.
“Are you hurt?” Gerard asked, manoeuvring Ryan into the living room, onto an armchair, a shower of old newspapers brushed aside.
“They tried to kill me before, me and Brendon both,” the boy said feverishly. “They killed Brendon instead, but I fixed it, and he left. Gerard, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to just-he was gone and I went searching but I was too late, and they took him. The ones who shot him before. But I don’t-he’s just a guy, he’s not, he’s not like me, he was supposed to be safe, I wouldn’t have brought him if I’d known, he was supposed to... Oh god.”
“I need-I should call the cops,” Gerard decided, though he hesitated at the way the boy’s eyes went so wide and frightened. “Bob. I’m going to call Bob.”
“You can’t,” he whispered. “Please, just help me find him.”
“Who’s trying to kill you?” Gerard found a blanket, which was dirty and smelled of smoke, but wrapped it around the boy’s shoulders anyway, until he was just a pale face and dark eyes peering from a mass of fleece. He felt a vague stirring of unease, because Bob had said, so, so many times, but was it paranoia if it was true?
“I don’t know, I don’t know, but they shot Brendon, and I fixed it so they took him.”
“Hey. It’s okay, hey, okay, let’s just. Let’s call Bob, Bob fixes things.” The heroes in his books would have a better plan than that, and for the first time, Gerard felt terribly unprepared for having to be brave, courageous, strong, and a hero. He was just an art school dropout, fucked up alcoholic failure who couldn’t tell what was real sometimes, especially at night after too many nights of not sleeping. What sort of hero would he make?
He’d slay enemies with the power of his charcoal, or something, shit.
Ryan had pulled his knees up, was hugging them tightly, face buried in his arms, and Gerard said helplessly, “Why were they trying to kill you?”
The boy lifted his head slowly and said, “Because they think I’m an angel.”
Gerard wasn’t all that sure, but he was almost convinced that suspecting a pretty boy of being an angel was no cause to kill them. Weren’t you meant to protect angels, instead? Or were they supposed to protect you?
He shied away from remembering all the angels he’d ever tried to protect, and could only hope that he’d finally be brave enough, smart enough, to protect this one, the way he hadn’t protected-
“I’ll call Bob,” he said suddenly, to stop the memories.
“We need to find Spencer.” He smiled, faintly, weakly, and not all that pleasantly, and added, “He fixes things too.”
Gerard went for the phone but hesitated a short distance away, glancing back over his shoulder, biting his lip. “You’re real?” he asked, voice cracking on the question. “It’s just, it’s hard to tell sometimes.”
Ryan blinked at him and then his smile grew a bit more sincere, though much more bemused. “Yes,” he said. “I think so. I’m sorry, I’m sorry we left, I don’t know what Brendon was thinking, probably going to find Spencer, but I got scared. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”
“It’s okay,” Gerard said, turning away. “You left bloodstains, so I thought you must be real. Mikey didn’t even leave that, and he was an angel too.”
“Oh. Hey, no, I’m not an angel.”
Gerard just shook his head and didn’t argue. After all, in his limited experience, you didn’t deny an angel anything, or you’d regret it once they were gone. And they went away so, so suddenly.
**
The thing about Bob was that he was really, really busy. He was frequently out of town, or on a job, or sleeping (he’d told Gerard over and over again that he really couldn’t blame Bob for needing to sleep like a normal person, just because Gerard didn’t). But it was okay, really, that Bob was so busy because he’d told Gerard over and over again that he could call, for anything, if he needed it. Gerard hadn’t really taken him up on the offer, other than that night, a few years before-but that had been a very bad night, and probably what had prompted Bob to make the offer at all. He’d learned to deal with his insomnia, his fucked up brain, all of it, he took the medication that Bob’s doctor had him on, and if that didn’t work, he drank himself into darkness. But the only reason he was able to do that at all was that he trusted Bob to be there, no matter what.
So he called him, while Ryan trembled in his living room and Brendon was missing, because Gerard’s brain had gotten so backwards that nothing was making sense.
Bob answered on the seventh ring, with a gruff, “The fuck?”
“Bob,” Gerard said, hesitating and feeling smaller than he had in a while.
Bob instantly sounded more awake. “You’re fine. Where are you? Wait for me.”
“No, no, Bob, it’s not that, I’m not-I’m okay, I am, I mean, it might not be real, but I’m okay.”
He heard sheets rustling, felt a spear of guilt for catching him while he was sleeping, and then Bob said carefully, “What might not be real?”
“The boy with wings sitting in my living room.”
There was a beat of silence. “I’ll be right there.”
Gerard made him coffee and Ryan looked surprised but took the mug, holding it. They waited in silence for a while, Ryan clearly fighting exhaustion, jerking himself every time he started to drift off, and Gerard not knowing what to say.
Gerard’s phone rang and he answered it.
“Gee.” It was Bob again, and Gerard could hear passing traffic, and relaxed a little, knowing that he was on his way. “He’s still there?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I need you to do something for me. I’ll be there shortly, but I need you to tell me something. Is he wearing a collar, Gee?”
Gerard blinked, glanced at Ryan and the patch of pale neck visible above the blanket. “No?”
“Shit,” Bob hissed.
“What’s going on? What-why would he?”
“Nevermind, just-is he dangerous? Does he seem dangerous?”
Ryan’s eyelashes were fluttering again and he listed to the side, so Gerard gently took his coffee and set it aside. With a tiny, bemused smile in his direction, Ryan finally let himself sink down into the chair, pulling his knees up, dark circles like bruises beneath his eyes.
“No,” Gerard told Bob quietly. “He seems small.”
“Don’t let that fool you. I need you to do something, now, before I get there, because he might hurt you. I need you to tie him up, have you got something you can do that with?”
“He won’t hurt me, why would he-”
“They aren’t all like Mikey was, Gee,” was the quiet reply, and Gerard flinched, because he’d been so startled to find another one, had been so sure that Mikey had been the only one, but apparently Bob had known much more than he had said.
“Gee? Gerard. Are you-”
Gerard hung up and set the phone aside, to find Ryan watching him warily, still curled up like a baby bird or a child.
“Who’s Bob?” he asked in a small voice.
“A friend. He works for, well, the cops, I guess, sort of. Like, a detective. He thinks you’re going to hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t,” Ryan said quickly, eyes going wide. “I don’t do that-why would I do that?”
Gerard shook his head slowly, biting his lip, and then finally let the curiosity he’d been trying so hard to control come out. “Will you tell me what happened?” he asked.
Ryan hesitated, and Gerard would have let him sleep if Bob wasn’t on his way, worried that Ryan would hurt him. Finally, slowly, Ryan said, “Everything?”
“Anything you want to tell.”
He closed his eyes, hesitated a moment, and then said, “I was born this way. I don’t know why. My mother didn’t know why.” He grimaced. “The doctors either, they hadn’t known, and something happened to her, so she wasn’t okay. She died a few days after I was born.” He looked away, took a deep breath, and confessed, “My aunt told me that my mom thought I was an angel. My dad didn’t agree, and drank enough every day to forget that his freak of a son killed his wife.” Ryan hugged the blanket tighter around his shoulders.
“He killed himself, though some said it was an accident. Driving, drunk, smashed into a tree and didn’t try to stop or slow down, so. My aunt didn’t want me, but. But Spencer did. He’s my friend, has been since forever. I hid the wings from everyone, with sweaters and just-I didn’t go out much and no one ever looked, but Spencer looked and he didn’t care. They took me in, after. Then his mom and dad were killed, another drunk driving thing, only they weren’t the ones who were drunk-it’s irony, right?” He looked a little desperately at Gerard. “It takes everyone. Spencer went to stay with family in Chicago, six months ago, and I had nowhere to
go. I ended up in Vegas, with Brendon, and his family.”
He grimaced again and shrugged, looking down at his hands. “They were really religious and they found out about the wings, it’s hard to wear sweaters in Vegas. They thought I was an angel.” He shook his head, shrinking in on himself. “But I’m not. I guess I fucked up, and Brendon-well, that’s his story to tell, I guess. But I had to leave, and I was going to find Spencer, he agreed to meet me here but I-we got lost in that alley and there were men, Brendon’s dad had called and reported me for-for being a freak, I don’t even know, but they were after me. And Brendon saved my life.” He hesitated, eyes wide, locking with Gerard’s. “He died doing it and I brought him back. I wasn’t shot, Gerard, just Brendon. I didn’t know-I knew things stopped hurting sometimes, but I didn’t know I could do that.”
He shrugged again, looking down, and Gerard frowned thoughtfully. “You’re a runaway? Is that why you don’t have a collar?”
Ryan lifted his head slowly, cocking it to the side. “Why the fuck would I have a collar?” he asked.
Gerard just shrugged helplessly and looked away. “You can sleep, if you want. I’ll tell Bob all this when he gets here, and he’ll help us find Brendon and Spencer.”
“Why are you helping me?” Ryan asked suddenly, as Gerard stood to go into the kitchen.
He hesitated, considering, and then said softly, “Because I’d have hoped that someone helped my brother when he needed it.”
“Your brother?”
“Sleep, Ryan. You’ll need it.” Besides, Gerard didn’t talk about Mikey anymore.
He went into the kitchen and poured himself a drink of whatever booze he had in the cupboard, but before he sipped it, he hesitated.
He cursed when he poured it down the sink, hands shaking, but it didn’t seem fair to get trashed after Ryan’s story of everything alcohol had took from him.
**
“He’s a child,” Bob said blankly.
“He’s not. Well, he’s, I think he’s seventeen, eighteen? He looks young, huh?” He shifted on his feet, shoving his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders. “I didn’t tie him up.”
“No, yeah, I mean, he’s. He looks harmless. Tired.”
Gerard nodded, biting his lip and looking away. “He lost Brendon. I mean, there was another one, even smaller, named Brendon, I found them on the road, all bloodied.”
“Okay.” Bob ran a hand through his hair, looking pale, tired, and irritable. “I need coffee. Then we’ll figure this out.”
“And you’ll tell me everything?”
He sighed and shrugged. “Yeah. Coffee first.”
Gerard turned the coffee on, and while he got mugs out, Bob picked up his whiskey bottle and shot him a look. “How much did you have?” he asked.
Gerard shrugged. “None. I didn’t-I wanted to, but. You know. It didn’t seem fair.”
Bob was watching him carefully when Gerard set out the mugs, dug around in the fridge for cream, and Gerard didn’t look at him or acknowledge the massive issues that probably needed discussing.
They never talked about the alcohol that made things easier when the medication didn’t fix everything it was supposed to.
Bob sipped his coffee and listened quietly, while Gerard told him about the comic book he’d bought, the boys he’d found on the way home, and how he’d practically kidnapped them and then taken care of them, how it only struck him that maybe they weren’t real after they’d disappeared again.
He hesitated then, cheeks flushing, because he was never all that okay with the idea that sometimes he got so exhausted, so caught up in his imagination, that he couldn’t tell what was real. Bob said gruffly, “He’s real.”
So Gerard told him everything Ryan had said, as best he could remember.
“So it’s not just Brendon,” Bob said, finishing his coffee. “We’ve got to find Spencer too.”
“We do? I mean, I do. Because I promised. But you didn’t promise.”
Bob rolled his eyes. “Shut up. I’m not going to leave some homeless kids wandering the fucking city... They don’t even own squeedgies, how would they support themselves?”
Gerard smiled a little, relieved. “Good. Okay.”
Taking a deep breath, Bob said carefully, “We need to talk, though. About Ryan. Gerard, he’s not supposed to exist. If what he told you was true, then he’s-the people after him, they’re not going to stop.”
He stared at the tabletop, cleared his throat softly, and said, “No, we need to talk about Mikey. You didn’t tell me, I thought he was the only one, until Ryan... You said you’d tell me when you knew something.”
“No, I said I’d tell you when I had something you needed to know.” He grimaced. “I don’t know anything helpful. I haven’t found him. Just... just more like him.”
“And they wear collars.” He glanced up and away quickly.
“Yeah.” Bob was quiet a moment. “There is a small facility that specializes in medical research and experimentation, mostly with military correlations. They’re the reason that any child born like Mikey was, with something extra... They’re why no one finds out, because they find out first, and take the kid. Usually the parents are too happy to get rid of them, get paid off, and it’s very rare that one manages to grow up as Mikey did, protected and hidden, and like Ryan did. They always know, Gee. It’s a miracle you had him as long as you did.”
“Should have had him longer,” Gerard snapped, and Bob sighed.
“Yeah. But Gee. I’ve found mentions of these places, and from what I can tell, they don’t last long. They’re-the things they do, Gee.”
“And you haven’t found Mikey.”
He shook his head slowly. “But I haven’t found much. Just that they’re dangerous, they’re kept in captivity. They’re, officially speaking, not human, and the government is trying to alter them, to...” He grimaced. “Make them dangerous. As weapons. But I haven’t heard anything of any of them being able to do what Ryan said he did, healing Brendon.”
“I saw the marks,” Gerard said.
“If they knew, if they have Brendon, he won’t last long. They’ll want to know what they can do to him, what he can survive, how Ryan changed him, and when they’re done with Brendon, they’re going to come after Ryan and nothing will stop them from finding him. If he can heal, bring back the dead? I don’t know if we can protect him.”
“We can,” Gerard said. “We have to. Someone has to, he’s just a kid! Someone is supposed to protect-”
“He’s not Mikey,” Bob interrupted.
“No, I know. It’s just. It’s just...” His eyes stung, exhaustion and tears. “It’s just. What about Mikey? If you’ve found out all this, why haven’t you found him?”
“It’s been years.” Bob’s voice was rough and he couldn’t look at Gerard. “If he’s still alive, Gee, he’s not recognizable. He’s not-there’s nothing to find.”
He flinched, closed his eyes, waited for it to hurt, but the hopelessness in what Bob had said was no different than the aching hopelessness he’d dealt with since Mikey had gone missing. He let out a tense breath. “I should have protected him.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“He’s my brother,” Gerard snapped. “I promised him, I promised our grandmother, and I was too fucked up to even notice that he was gone, I-”
“Gerard.”
“You didn’t even tell me there were others like him,” Gerard snarled, shoving away from the table. “You should have told me.”
“I wanted to find out for sure, about Mikey,” Bob said, unapologetic. “I had nothing you needed to hear.”
“And now what? What do we do with Ryan? Tie him up? Put a fucking collar on him? Because he’s so fucking dangerous, just as dangerous as Mikey was, he’s not even fucking human is he?”
“Gerard-”
“They can’t have Ryan, they shouldn’t have ever gotten to have Mikey, and if-if we can’t find Mikey... we need to find Brendon, it isn’t fair, Bob, we can’t just-”
“We won’t,” Bob said, gruff again. “Christ, Gerard. You need sleep. It’s too early for this shit. Just-just get some sleep and let me handle it, okay?”
Gerard hesitated. “You won’t-if they come, you won’t let them take Ryan?”
“No,” he said easily. “Of course not.”
“Would you have let them take Mikey?”
Bob gave him a scornful look and didn’t bother to reply.
**
Next
Band(s): Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance
Pairing(s): Mikey/Brendon, Gerard/Ryan
Word Count: 33 000
Rating/Warnings: NC-17. Warnings for swearing, obviously. Torture disguised as medical procedure, and a required suspension of disbelief.
Summary: Wing!fic. When Ryan is born with wings, those who learn that secret assume he's either an angel or a monster, though Ryan doesn't consider himself either. At least, not until he is forced to run away from his foster home in Vegas with his foster brother Brendon, both of whom lack any sort of common sense, which Spencer realizes when he goes to find them in New York City. Instead of meeting up with Spencer, Ryan and Brendon are attacked by a government agency who want Ryan, and aren't afraid to go through Brendon to get to him.
That's how Brendon gets involved in this whole mess, dead at Ryan's feet with a bullet through the chest, and Ryan brings him back again. All of a sudden, those who'd killed Brendon don't care about Ryan at all, and are much more interested in figuring out how Brendon came back from the dead, and how far they can push him before he won't come back at all.
NOTES: This was pretty difficult to write, actually, worse than anything I've ever done, and requiring so many rewrites and new drafts and new versions. I want to thank Donna for looking over it for me a few times, though she seems to have since forgotten that she did! I don't know if that's a good sign or not. I also want to apologize to my non bandom friendslist for the spam. Sorry. I shall post my SPN story soon to make up for it, okay?
I particularly wanted to thank x_smartie for giving me a dose of confidence when I needed it most, when I'd almost given up on this, and skoosiepants for reading my babbly emails when I was particularly stuck for ideas.
Half Sick of Shadows
Part one
When Brendon died, Ryan didn’t know what he was meant to do. Brendon and his father both believed that Ryan was more than what he seemed, an angel, even, but when it came down to it, a back alley in a dirty city on a winter’s night was not the place for a miracle.
Ryan had never believed in miracles anyway. Or angels, despite all evidence to the contrary.
But Brendon was dead and his blood was already soaking into the knees of Ryan’s torn jeans, his eyes were opened and staring straight up at the pale clouds that were barely visible against the night time sky, his mouth was hanging open in shock, and a bullet had torn through the coat Spencer had insisted he wear. It had ripped through his skin, his ribcage, and his heart, but the coat seemed, at that moment, the most sacrilegious part because, as it had been Spencer’s idea.
It was quiet and still now, after the gunshot had shattered whatever noise was left, and that was fitting. The noise had scared their attackers off faster than the rusted blade Brendon had held in trembling hands before he’d fallen.
“Brendon,” Ryan said, his voice hushed in the quiet, still startling. “Brendon. This isn’t funny.”
The wind blew then, almost gently, sending curls of snow racing down the dark alley. Flakes caught on Brendon’s chapped lips, his eyelashes, and they did not melt. Ryan brushed them away impatiently.
“Spencer is going to be so pissed when he hears about this,” Ryan growled finally, shifting so that he stood on his knees at Brendon’s side. He pressed his left palm to the ragged hole in Brendon’s coat, then curled his right one over top. Taking a deep breath, he held it in his lungs until it burned, and then, when pinpricks of light and dark warred in his eyes, dizziness making the world lurch sickeningly, he pushed with something he could never explain, something inside him, some sort of light that pulsed inside him with every heartbeat and pooled in his palms and his fingertips.
Ryan had always had some instinct for forcing broken bits of skin and flesh back together, though not as gently as such a thing should require. Mostly, though, he’d had no cause to force anything to mend other than a sprained ankle, a cut, or a headache.
Besides, that skill was the least of Ryan’s strangeness.
There was a lot of damage, though, and Ryan had known it would be like this-not a miracle, but more like hell. He felt every nerve, muscle, bone, and vein begin to knit, his own chest beginning to bleed with it, phantom pain.
It wasn’t until Brendon’s body shook with the shock of his first heartbeat that Ryan flinched away from the pain. Blood ran from his mouth, his chest, his ears. The pain had been too much, and even as Brendon sucked in a sharp, startled gasp, his eyes blinking suddenly, Ryan gave in to weakness and sank into a small, vulnerable ball beside him, knees held to his chest, and blood staining his clothes.
His wings curled around his shoulders and narrow back protectively, and the frigid wind ruffled the edges of pale brown feathers, protecting Ryan from the cold, and his heart stuttered and stopped even as Brendon’s found its rhythm again.
**
Brendon went from feeling nothing to feeling everything in the space of that moment between his heart lying still and starting to beat again. It was agony, blood being forced to move again through veins and tissue, an aching, curling pain searing in his fingertips and all the other bits of flesh that had already been suffocated into atrophy.
It wasn’t half as scary as forcing himself up on his elbows, blinking away blood and tears, and finding Ryan lying beside him.
Brendon remembered the crack of the gunshot, he remembered the flash of shock and terror that hadn’t left him enough time to feel how much it should have hurt. He’d thought he’d been shot.
Now, though, staring at Ryan, bloodied and broken beside him, as his own pain faded into phantom twinges too quickly to have been real, Brendon realized that reality was worse.
He hadn’t been shot at all, it had been Ryan, and Spencer was going to kill him.
“Ry,” he croaked, voice hoarse, cracking. He grabbed Ryan’s shoulder, shook him, pushed him onto his back so that his wings were forced to spread behind him, awkward and bent without muscle memory to guide them. Ryan’s eyes were closed, blood stained him all over, but most obscenely his lips, the line of his jaw, and one cheekbone. His chest was a mess of dark, sticky blood, and Brendon tore at his clothes before flinching at the mess of Ryan’s chest.
Torn ridges of skin and muscle were coated in blood. Brendon had to look away, curling into himself a bit and breathing raggedly to keep from throwing up.
But Ryan made the faintest sound, a bare breath of a whimper, and Brendon’s head whipped back around to stare at him. He was alive!
Fumbling for a pulse and struggling to remember CPR, Brendon let out a breath he’d been holding when he felt the faintest, staggering heartbeat in Ryan’s neck.
“It isn’t safe,” Brendon told him. “We need to find Spencer. Get up, Ry, you need to get up. Wake up, wake up, please?”
**
At first, Gerard didn’t notice the younger boys, as he struggled with the door to his crappy Subaru in the freezing cold. The door had jammed shut again, it always seemed to do that on the coldest nights, and he only had one hand to work it open with, the other busy holding a paper bag and a cigarette. It was only after he’d sworn a few times, kicked the rusty side of the car, and given up, that he happened to notice the two boys staggering down the sidewalk outside the small comic book shop he’d just left. His eyes narrowed warily and he kicked the door again. This time, the lock gave with a small, exhausted snapping sound, and he wrenched it open, hesitating for one moment before getting in, looking at the boys again. Now that his car door was open, he didn’t feel quite as threatened.
After a moment, he decided that maybe he shouldn’t have felt threatened at all. They were both tiny. The smallest one, a shock of dark hair and a very pale face in the darkness, seemed to be supporting most of the weight of the taller one, who was rail-thin and hunched into him, staggering badly. His head kept falling to the smaller boy’s shoulder weakly, and the smaller boy seemed to be struggling to hold him up at all.
It was instinct for Gerard to want to flail his hands a bit, drop his comic book and cigarette, and dash over there to help. Bob was always cursing that particular instinct, which had caused Gerard to bring home more than his fair share of bedraggled kittens and homeless puppies in his time.
Gerard did step closer, but the shorter boy shot him this look, filled with defiance and fury and hopeless violence that Gerard froze and just watched them pass.
It was only after he’d climbed into his car and they’d stepped into the weak light from a street lamp that he noticed that both boys were covered in blood.
Gerard intended to let them pass. He’d promised Bob to stop doing stupid, foolish things, and getting involved in this was the most stupid thing that he could imagine.
Then the taller boy stumbled and fell to his knees in the gold glow of the street light, and the other boy was beside him instantly, arms wrapped around him, speaking earnestly and quickly, probably coaxing him to get back up again, and Gerard was lost.
They got up again, staggering down the street and turning the corner, and Gerard turned on his car, the rumble of the failing muffler loud in the dark, cold silence. He drove down the street, hesitating at the corner, and then turning to follow, without a single logical excuse to offer himself. He turned off his headlights, as if that would keep them from noticing his pursuit, and drove slowly down the road, keeping as far from them as he could.
Of course the one who wasn’t intoxicated or whatever would notice him, glancing over his shoulder a few times and trying his best to speed up. The other boy stumbled but tried to keep up, and they cut across the road towards a skate park, which Gerard knew was used more for drug deals than skating, and mostly at this hour of the night. He sped up.
Rolling down his window let in a shock of frigid air, and he flinched but still called, “Wait, okay, just, don’t do that.”
The taller boy froze, back to Gerard, and then slowly turned, eyes narrow, and his free hand shakily clutching a knife. “I’ll cut you,” he threatened. His voice cracked near the end.
“Okay, okay, look, I don’t want to hurt you, I just...”
“He’s not gonna-look, he’s not going to suck your dick, okay? Neither of us-we’re not-we don’t.” The boy said wildly, and Gerard blinked, looked at the taller boy, then back to the one with the knife.
“Uhm,” he said. “Okay. I just want to help?”
The boy snorted, but was quickly distracted when the other boy’s head rolled a bit on his shoulder, pressing his face to the smaller boy’s neck. “Bren,” he breathed. “Brendon, I can’t...”
Gerard could see the way his face was turning gray despite the blood, his legs starting to shake.
“Fuck, fuck,” Brendon whispered, Gerard all but forgotten as he shoved the knife into his pocket and turned to catch the other boy’s weight. “Ryan, c’mon,” he begged. “A little further, there’ll be a bench, we can rest, just a little further, okay?”
Ryan nodded, face still pressed to Brendon’s neck, and Gerard was pretty sure he wouldn’t make it anyway. He had a larger jacket wrapped around his shoulders, but Gerard had seen enough to know that his clothes were covered in blood. He must be pretty seriously hurt. Then he glanced at Brendon’s clothes, and blinked, because there was a hole... through his shirt and-
“Holy fuck, were you shot?”
Brendon snapped his head around, having forgotten Gerard was there at all, his eyes wide and wild. “No-I don’t know-I don’t know, okay, I was-I just-it doesn’t matter, does it, I just need to get Ryan somewhere-I don’t know what to do, just, can’t you fuck off? I don’t know what to do.”
Gerard had had his share of panic attacks before, and his eyes narrowed as Brendon began hyperventilating. He opened his door, got out, and jerked the back door open. “Get in,” he said, and Brendon just stared at him. “Get the fuck in, I’ll bring you both to a fucking hospital or a police station or whatever, I’m not fucking leaving you out here to bleed to death.”
“Neither of us are bleeding anymore,” Brendon said faintly, still looking terrified. Ryan whimpered and pressed closer to his side.
“It doesn’t matter! You need to go to the hospital!” Gerard’s voice was getting steadily higher.
Ryan turned to look at him, face colourless, lips gray. His dark eyes stared at Gerard for a moment, looking pained and glazed, and then he blinked slowly and said, “I know you. I think I know you. Will you take us home?”
“Ry,” Brendon whispered. “You don’t know him, he’s a stranger.”
Gerard and Ryan both ignored him. “If you tell me where you live,” he allowed.
Ryan shook his head a little bit and said, “No, we don’t live anywhere anymore. Take us home with you?”
Gerard barely had to consider it, with Ryan looking at him with wide eyes like that, with Brendon looking lost and very young now that he’d put his ridiculous knife away. “Yeah,” he said. “Of course. Just-just get in the car.”
With a nod, Ryan lurched forward, stumbling a bit before crawling into the back seat. Brendon just watched, shaking his head slowly, and mumbling, “Spencer is gonna kill me.” Then he glared sharply at Gerard. “If this is some Stranger Danger bullshit, I’m seriously gonna fuck you up.”
Gerard hid a tired grin, and tried his best to look properly frightened. “Of course, no, no, of course,” he said, closing the door behind Brendon and climbing back into the driver’s seat.
For all that his car was a piece of shit, the heater worked perfectly, and Gerard blasted it when he saw how Ryan and Brendon were shivering and soon the car was warm enough that Ryan relaxed against Brendon’s shoulder in the back seat, falling asleep. Despite how exhausted he looked, Brendon stayed awake and suspicious, and Gerard didn’t speak, not knowing what to say.
The silence was finally broken, however, when Ryan’s jacket slipped from his shoulders to pool around his hips on the seat, and the motion caught Gerard’s eyes in the rear view window.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, and Brendon met his eyes in the mirror, looking solemn now, and nodding once.
“Yeah,” he said. “Watch the road, okay?”
Gerard jerked his gaze back to the road, but still couldn’t get the image of Ryan, small and delicate, covered in blood, and far too pale, curled up against Brendon’s shoulder, with sparrow wings folded against his back.
**
Brendon was freaking out, but doing his best to do it quietly. He was in the back seat of a stranger’s car, Ryan was sleeping or unconscious next to him, and there was blood drying on his clothes. In fact, if Brendon thought about it, this was the most freaked out he’d ever been, next to waking up, freezing cold, stiff, and confused, in that alley with a healed bullet wound in his chest and Ryan passed out beside him.
When he’d sat up, a bullet had fallen from the tangle of his jacket and hit the concrete. He still had that bullet clutched in his hand, because he was pretty sure he died tonight, and wasn’t quite sure how to take that.
But it was important to focus, to get through this, to get Ryan safe and hidden, and then to find out how to find Spencer now that they’d missed the meeting time.
He glanced up at the back of the driver’s head, shifted a bit, and then said, “You never told me your name.”
The man jerked, startled, and then said, “Oh. Uhm, it’s Gerard.”
“I’m Brendon. This is Ryan. Uh, do you have a phone?”
Gerard glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Yeah. We’re almost at my place, though, you can make a call when we get there, okay?”
“Yeah, sure, if we’re not bound and drugged and gagged and stuff,” Brendon mumbled, tightening his arm around Ryan’s shoulders. Ryan whispered something in his sleep.
“He drunk?” Gerard asked.
Brendon snorted. “No. He’s exhausted, I think. I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
It was quiet again, until Gerard pulled up in front of a rundown apartment complex, parking his car. They sat in silence for a moment, and then Gerard got out. While Brendon was still fumbling with his and Ryan’s seatbelts, Gerard opened the opposite door, undid Ryan’s, and scooped him up carefully in his arms.
“Hey!” Brendon snapped, scrambling after him. “Hey, you can’t-”
“You can’t carry him. C’mon.” For all that Gerard sounded casual about it, Brendon could see the way Gerard struggled under Ryan’s weight, though he still managed to carry him into the building and up to the third floor. Brendon followed sullenly.
The apartment was a mess of dark shadows and clutter that Brendon couldn’t make sense of in the darkness.
He hovered uncertainly in the doorway, and only kicked off his shoes and stepped into the kitchen when Gerard disappeared that way with Ryan.
He put Ryan carefully on the floor, and Ryan didn’t make a sound, still deeply asleep. Gerard looked at him.
“Do you want-I mean, there’s a lot of blood, do you want a shower? I can get you some clothes, they’ll be too long, but they should be okay.”
Brendon glanced at Ryan, hesitating. “What about Ryan?”
“Uhm, I guess, I mean, he probably won’t wake, will he? I was going to clean him up a bit and put him in bed, then you could sleep too, if you want? We could figure this out in the morning. It’s pretty late and, no offence, but you look wrecked.” He hesitated, darting a look at the hole in Brendon’s jacket again. “Unless you need to go to the hospital?”
“No!” Brendon said quickly. “No, no, uhm, I mean, I’m good. We can’t-” He gestured vaguely at Ryan. “He can’t go to the hospital. But a shower, a shower would be good. And clothes. Uhm, thanks. You know, unless you turn out to be a pervert or something.”
Gerard smiled faintly at him. “Yeah, I mean, I’ll try. Shower’s down the hall, there should be towels. Let me find you something to wear.”
Brendon gave in with one last look at Ryan, before following Gerard down the hall.
**
While Brendon was in the shower, Gerard was left alone with Ryan, whose breathing, at least, was even and soft, which had to be a good sign. Still, he was filthy and bloody.
He got a bowl of warm water and a soft cloth and knelt beside him, still carefully not looking at the wings, because Gerard wasn’t quite sure he could deal with that just yet. As it was, every time the back of his hand or his wrist brushed against the soft feathers, Gerard’s heart seemed to stumble a bit. He wanted to shake Ryan, hard, until he woke up so Gerard could ask him thousands of questions.
The most important being ‘where’s Mikey have you seen Mikey I need Mikey’, but it seemed rude to prioritize that way, when Ryan was bloody and on his kitchen floor.
It had waited years; a few minutes more wouldn’t hurt.
He carefully wiped the blood off Ryan’s face, and other than a faint mumble, Ryan didn’t wake. After a brief hesitation, Gerard unbuttoned Ryan’s shirt, baring his chest, and then he froze, eyes widening a little bit. In the center of Ryan’s chest, there was a mess of deep, vivid bruises, black and purple with blood smeared and dried over top, but no open wound. Ryan was so skinny and pale, all bone and white white skin, that the bruising and blood looked even worse, and Gerard reached out and gently pressed his palm to the worst of the bruising, feeling radiating heat and unbroken bone. He washed the dirt and blood away, and there, in the center of his chest amongst the bruises, was an old scar, white with age, and slightly raised, circular, like a gunshot.
He brushed his fingertips over the scar, and Ryan whimpered, eyes fluttering open, still dazed and dark.
“Spencer,” he said in a faint moan, and Gerard snatched his hand away.
“He’s not here,” he told him, and Ryan’s eyes fixed on his face at the sound of his voice. “I’m Gerard, do you remember? You and Brendon are staying with me for a bit.”
He seemed to struggle for a moment, but then let his eyes slide shut again.
“Hey, no,” Gerard said quickly, touching his face. “We need to get you into some clean clothes, you need to help me. Ryan.”
Ryan’s eyes flew open at his name, and he nodded vaguely. Gerard helped him sit up and they worked his shirt off together, though Ryan seemed incapable of offering much help. He tried, his breathing speeding up, catching on faint sounds of distress, and Gerard was as quick as possible, though he struggled to tug the shirt off Ryan’s wings. Someone had cut jagged slashes in the back of the shirt to make room for them.
His old sweat pants swallowed him up, and Gerard left him shirtless, carrying him into his room and carefully set him on the bed, covering him up. Ryan didn’t wake up at all.
**
Ryan was safe. Brendon made sure of it, before he left. He checked on Ryan and saw him clean and comfortable, sleeping like a child with one hand beneath his cheek, his wings pressed tightly to his back, curled up like a baby bird.
It didn’t count as abandoning him if Brendon only left him because he was safe and sleeping. Besides, Brendon intended to be back by dawn, before Ryan even knew. He left Ryan his knife, folded it carefully in his hand.
It was not abandonment. But he had to do his best, he had to get to Spencer, because surely Spencer would wait for them, for however long it took. Brendon had tried to call from Gerard’s place, but there had been no answer. That couldn’t mean anything good, and if Spencer wasn’t waiting at the library, Brendon wouldn’t ever find him. He couldn’t imagine having to confess that to Ryan, that he’d let them get shot and miss their meeting with Spencer, who had left everything to be with them.
So Brendon waited until Gerard was distracted, locked up in the living room with a sketchpad, before he’d sneaked out, dressed in Gerard’s old pajama pants and an ancient, holey purple hoodie.
Maybe it was stupid to trust a man based on the colour of his hoodies, but there was also the careful care Gerard had put into taking care of Ryan, and the way he hadn’t freaked out at the wings. God knew, Brendon nearly had a heart attack, the first time he ever saw them.
But he had no choice, he had to trust Ryan to Gerard. He had to find Spencer. This whole mess was his fault, and he had to fix it.
So Brendon sneaked out, arms wrapped around himself, face ducked against the cold.
How hard could it be to find the library, after all?
Some how, his feet naturally let him to that alley instead, still stained with blood, and Brendon just stopped and stared, cold all over.
He should be dead, he died, he should be dead. But he wasn’t.
Brendon’s hands started shaking with the horrific implications of that, and just what it meant about Ryan that he could do that. Brendon was frozen with terror.
Then a car slowed along the road and Brendon could feel the driver staring, so he turned and began to wave frantically, stranger danger forgotten. After all, Gerard had turned out okay.
“Help me,” he called, beginning to pant with terror. “Please, I need to find Spencer, please. Where’s the library?”
The car did stop, and the passenger side door opened slowly, a man climbing out and staring. Brendon suddenly realized that he was covered in blood himself, which must explain the horrified look on the man’s face. Then he realized something worse; it was the man who’d shot him.
“I killed you,” the man said slowly, though not uncertainly. “I fucking killed you.”
Brendon backed away, shaking his head wildly, and then he spun around and tried to run.
He didn’t get far, hit with something that hurt less than a bullet (except it had been Ryan who’d been shot, hadn’t it?). He staggered and fell, muscles going lax, some sort of drug, and Brendon couldn’t fight sluggish waves of panic as his body began to betray him.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” the man said, leaning over him, eyes dark and sharp. “I watched you die.”
Brendon’s last breath was a gasping sob as he realized that somehow, he’d gotten in way over his head, and, worst of all, he’d left Ryan alone with a stranger.
Then there was only blackness, and the vaguest sensation of guilt.
**
Nearly dawn. There was a hint of color over the rooftops of the buildings across the street, and Gerard grunted faintly, sipping at his coffee, which had gone cold. He grimaced, turned back to his work, and continued carefully, carefully shading in a crosshatching of black along the delicate arch of a raven’s wing.
His apartment was a disaster, which was nothing new. Piles of clutter and crap layered every surface, the floor barely visible beneath old newspapers, cut up for collages that the detectives on CSI or something would have a field day over. The fridge was covered in articles, the National Inquirer’s best. Most of them had something to do with angels, and a very few, with mutants.
Gerard always had had eclectic interests.
He tried not to think about it. Not the angels, the mutants, whatever fucked up things were in his head, because Gerard had been so, so fucked since Mikey had left. It wasn’t like he hadn’t imagined things like this before, angels or pretty boys or what the fuck ever, appearing and then disappearing before morning. He shouldn’t have been surprised to wake before dawn to find that Brendon and Ryan were gone as if they’d never been there at all. Too many long nights, too much booze, too many marathons of drawing, plotting, imagining boys with wings...
The bloodstains, though, and the ruined clothing. Those were new.
He shied away from thinking about it.
He set his pencil aside and grabbed up his cigarettes, absently studying the drawing for any flaws and finding none. Satisfied, he went out onto the fire escape, lit up a cigarette, and breathed deeply, clear, cold night air with smoke that burned in his lungs.
He was on the bottom floor of an ancient, stone building in a bad part of town, all litter blowing like tumble weeds in the snow, drug deals on corners, and people locking their doors at night against whatever else happened in the shadows around here. His grandmother would have been appalled to know where he’d ended up, but Gerard liked it. It fuelled his imagination in ways that her little house in Jersey never had.
He felt a bit of guilt for that, but brushed it aside.
He’d just flicked the cigarette butt down into the street when there was a sound nearby, a shuffling, crack series of faltering footsteps, and he sighed. For all that Gerard was drawn to the darker side of things, he wasn’t stupid enough to wait around on his fire escape for them to come and drag him off, so he went back inside, slammed the window shut, and went to get a drink.
Rye or whiskey, or something stronger, he still wasn’t sure, when the scratching came on the window. He froze, breath catching, shaky memories of high school English, Catherine haunting the moors and begging Heathcliff to let her in...
But that was ridiculous, and soon enough, the scratching became a desperate sort of pounding.
There was a boy on his fire escape, a delicate, bruised boy who was pale, eyes wide, dark, and nearly vacant with sheer panic. He was crying, and Gerard shouldn’t have let him in.
It took a moment. Maybe Gerard was more fucked than he realized, more broken, because he thought for a second that it was Mikey, because Mikey, at least, had been real. There were photographs to prove that.
Besides in the glowing dawn and the weak street light, there was just enough illumination to see the wings folded at his back, and Gerard had spent his whole life looking for angels.
There was no way he’d leave this one broken and bloodied on his fire escape.
He opened the window and the delicate boy fell through it, landing awkwardly against Gerard’s chest with a shaking sob.
“I didn’t think you were real,” Gerard said dully, reproachfully.
“Help me, please, help,” Ryan said, twisting dirty hands in Gerard’s shirt. “I lost him, I’ve lost him, please.”
“Hey,” Gerard said, startled at how rusty his voice was. He’d forgotten, again, to speak, to engage in human contact, to check his damned phone. Bob was going to kill him. He cleared his throat to try again. “Hey, it’s okay. Are you alright? Brendon...” Was real also, evidently. Bob really, really was going to kill him.
Ryan’s face was pressed to Gerard’s chest, and he shook his head wildly, but seemed to calm a little bit, though still trembling against him.
“Are you hurt?” Gerard asked, manoeuvring Ryan into the living room, onto an armchair, a shower of old newspapers brushed aside.
“They tried to kill me before, me and Brendon both,” the boy said feverishly. “They killed Brendon instead, but I fixed it, and he left. Gerard, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to just-he was gone and I went searching but I was too late, and they took him. The ones who shot him before. But I don’t-he’s just a guy, he’s not, he’s not like me, he was supposed to be safe, I wouldn’t have brought him if I’d known, he was supposed to... Oh god.”
“I need-I should call the cops,” Gerard decided, though he hesitated at the way the boy’s eyes went so wide and frightened. “Bob. I’m going to call Bob.”
“You can’t,” he whispered. “Please, just help me find him.”
“Who’s trying to kill you?” Gerard found a blanket, which was dirty and smelled of smoke, but wrapped it around the boy’s shoulders anyway, until he was just a pale face and dark eyes peering from a mass of fleece. He felt a vague stirring of unease, because Bob had said, so, so many times, but was it paranoia if it was true?
“I don’t know, I don’t know, but they shot Brendon, and I fixed it so they took him.”
“Hey. It’s okay, hey, okay, let’s just. Let’s call Bob, Bob fixes things.” The heroes in his books would have a better plan than that, and for the first time, Gerard felt terribly unprepared for having to be brave, courageous, strong, and a hero. He was just an art school dropout, fucked up alcoholic failure who couldn’t tell what was real sometimes, especially at night after too many nights of not sleeping. What sort of hero would he make?
He’d slay enemies with the power of his charcoal, or something, shit.
Ryan had pulled his knees up, was hugging them tightly, face buried in his arms, and Gerard said helplessly, “Why were they trying to kill you?”
The boy lifted his head slowly and said, “Because they think I’m an angel.”
Gerard wasn’t all that sure, but he was almost convinced that suspecting a pretty boy of being an angel was no cause to kill them. Weren’t you meant to protect angels, instead? Or were they supposed to protect you?
He shied away from remembering all the angels he’d ever tried to protect, and could only hope that he’d finally be brave enough, smart enough, to protect this one, the way he hadn’t protected-
“I’ll call Bob,” he said suddenly, to stop the memories.
“We need to find Spencer.” He smiled, faintly, weakly, and not all that pleasantly, and added, “He fixes things too.”
Gerard went for the phone but hesitated a short distance away, glancing back over his shoulder, biting his lip. “You’re real?” he asked, voice cracking on the question. “It’s just, it’s hard to tell sometimes.”
Ryan blinked at him and then his smile grew a bit more sincere, though much more bemused. “Yes,” he said. “I think so. I’m sorry, I’m sorry we left, I don’t know what Brendon was thinking, probably going to find Spencer, but I got scared. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”
“It’s okay,” Gerard said, turning away. “You left bloodstains, so I thought you must be real. Mikey didn’t even leave that, and he was an angel too.”
“Oh. Hey, no, I’m not an angel.”
Gerard just shook his head and didn’t argue. After all, in his limited experience, you didn’t deny an angel anything, or you’d regret it once they were gone. And they went away so, so suddenly.
**
The thing about Bob was that he was really, really busy. He was frequently out of town, or on a job, or sleeping (he’d told Gerard over and over again that he really couldn’t blame Bob for needing to sleep like a normal person, just because Gerard didn’t). But it was okay, really, that Bob was so busy because he’d told Gerard over and over again that he could call, for anything, if he needed it. Gerard hadn’t really taken him up on the offer, other than that night, a few years before-but that had been a very bad night, and probably what had prompted Bob to make the offer at all. He’d learned to deal with his insomnia, his fucked up brain, all of it, he took the medication that Bob’s doctor had him on, and if that didn’t work, he drank himself into darkness. But the only reason he was able to do that at all was that he trusted Bob to be there, no matter what.
So he called him, while Ryan trembled in his living room and Brendon was missing, because Gerard’s brain had gotten so backwards that nothing was making sense.
Bob answered on the seventh ring, with a gruff, “The fuck?”
“Bob,” Gerard said, hesitating and feeling smaller than he had in a while.
Bob instantly sounded more awake. “You’re fine. Where are you? Wait for me.”
“No, no, Bob, it’s not that, I’m not-I’m okay, I am, I mean, it might not be real, but I’m okay.”
He heard sheets rustling, felt a spear of guilt for catching him while he was sleeping, and then Bob said carefully, “What might not be real?”
“The boy with wings sitting in my living room.”
There was a beat of silence. “I’ll be right there.”
Gerard made him coffee and Ryan looked surprised but took the mug, holding it. They waited in silence for a while, Ryan clearly fighting exhaustion, jerking himself every time he started to drift off, and Gerard not knowing what to say.
Gerard’s phone rang and he answered it.
“Gee.” It was Bob again, and Gerard could hear passing traffic, and relaxed a little, knowing that he was on his way. “He’s still there?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I need you to do something for me. I’ll be there shortly, but I need you to tell me something. Is he wearing a collar, Gee?”
Gerard blinked, glanced at Ryan and the patch of pale neck visible above the blanket. “No?”
“Shit,” Bob hissed.
“What’s going on? What-why would he?”
“Nevermind, just-is he dangerous? Does he seem dangerous?”
Ryan’s eyelashes were fluttering again and he listed to the side, so Gerard gently took his coffee and set it aside. With a tiny, bemused smile in his direction, Ryan finally let himself sink down into the chair, pulling his knees up, dark circles like bruises beneath his eyes.
“No,” Gerard told Bob quietly. “He seems small.”
“Don’t let that fool you. I need you to do something, now, before I get there, because he might hurt you. I need you to tie him up, have you got something you can do that with?”
“He won’t hurt me, why would he-”
“They aren’t all like Mikey was, Gee,” was the quiet reply, and Gerard flinched, because he’d been so startled to find another one, had been so sure that Mikey had been the only one, but apparently Bob had known much more than he had said.
“Gee? Gerard. Are you-”
Gerard hung up and set the phone aside, to find Ryan watching him warily, still curled up like a baby bird or a child.
“Who’s Bob?” he asked in a small voice.
“A friend. He works for, well, the cops, I guess, sort of. Like, a detective. He thinks you’re going to hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t,” Ryan said quickly, eyes going wide. “I don’t do that-why would I do that?”
Gerard shook his head slowly, biting his lip, and then finally let the curiosity he’d been trying so hard to control come out. “Will you tell me what happened?” he asked.
Ryan hesitated, and Gerard would have let him sleep if Bob wasn’t on his way, worried that Ryan would hurt him. Finally, slowly, Ryan said, “Everything?”
“Anything you want to tell.”
He closed his eyes, hesitated a moment, and then said, “I was born this way. I don’t know why. My mother didn’t know why.” He grimaced. “The doctors either, they hadn’t known, and something happened to her, so she wasn’t okay. She died a few days after I was born.” He looked away, took a deep breath, and confessed, “My aunt told me that my mom thought I was an angel. My dad didn’t agree, and drank enough every day to forget that his freak of a son killed his wife.” Ryan hugged the blanket tighter around his shoulders.
“He killed himself, though some said it was an accident. Driving, drunk, smashed into a tree and didn’t try to stop or slow down, so. My aunt didn’t want me, but. But Spencer did. He’s my friend, has been since forever. I hid the wings from everyone, with sweaters and just-I didn’t go out much and no one ever looked, but Spencer looked and he didn’t care. They took me in, after. Then his mom and dad were killed, another drunk driving thing, only they weren’t the ones who were drunk-it’s irony, right?” He looked a little desperately at Gerard. “It takes everyone. Spencer went to stay with family in Chicago, six months ago, and I had nowhere to
go. I ended up in Vegas, with Brendon, and his family.”
He grimaced again and shrugged, looking down at his hands. “They were really religious and they found out about the wings, it’s hard to wear sweaters in Vegas. They thought I was an angel.” He shook his head, shrinking in on himself. “But I’m not. I guess I fucked up, and Brendon-well, that’s his story to tell, I guess. But I had to leave, and I was going to find Spencer, he agreed to meet me here but I-we got lost in that alley and there were men, Brendon’s dad had called and reported me for-for being a freak, I don’t even know, but they were after me. And Brendon saved my life.” He hesitated, eyes wide, locking with Gerard’s. “He died doing it and I brought him back. I wasn’t shot, Gerard, just Brendon. I didn’t know-I knew things stopped hurting sometimes, but I didn’t know I could do that.”
He shrugged again, looking down, and Gerard frowned thoughtfully. “You’re a runaway? Is that why you don’t have a collar?”
Ryan lifted his head slowly, cocking it to the side. “Why the fuck would I have a collar?” he asked.
Gerard just shrugged helplessly and looked away. “You can sleep, if you want. I’ll tell Bob all this when he gets here, and he’ll help us find Brendon and Spencer.”
“Why are you helping me?” Ryan asked suddenly, as Gerard stood to go into the kitchen.
He hesitated, considering, and then said softly, “Because I’d have hoped that someone helped my brother when he needed it.”
“Your brother?”
“Sleep, Ryan. You’ll need it.” Besides, Gerard didn’t talk about Mikey anymore.
He went into the kitchen and poured himself a drink of whatever booze he had in the cupboard, but before he sipped it, he hesitated.
He cursed when he poured it down the sink, hands shaking, but it didn’t seem fair to get trashed after Ryan’s story of everything alcohol had took from him.
**
“He’s a child,” Bob said blankly.
“He’s not. Well, he’s, I think he’s seventeen, eighteen? He looks young, huh?” He shifted on his feet, shoving his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders. “I didn’t tie him up.”
“No, yeah, I mean, he’s. He looks harmless. Tired.”
Gerard nodded, biting his lip and looking away. “He lost Brendon. I mean, there was another one, even smaller, named Brendon, I found them on the road, all bloodied.”
“Okay.” Bob ran a hand through his hair, looking pale, tired, and irritable. “I need coffee. Then we’ll figure this out.”
“And you’ll tell me everything?”
He sighed and shrugged. “Yeah. Coffee first.”
Gerard turned the coffee on, and while he got mugs out, Bob picked up his whiskey bottle and shot him a look. “How much did you have?” he asked.
Gerard shrugged. “None. I didn’t-I wanted to, but. You know. It didn’t seem fair.”
Bob was watching him carefully when Gerard set out the mugs, dug around in the fridge for cream, and Gerard didn’t look at him or acknowledge the massive issues that probably needed discussing.
They never talked about the alcohol that made things easier when the medication didn’t fix everything it was supposed to.
Bob sipped his coffee and listened quietly, while Gerard told him about the comic book he’d bought, the boys he’d found on the way home, and how he’d practically kidnapped them and then taken care of them, how it only struck him that maybe they weren’t real after they’d disappeared again.
He hesitated then, cheeks flushing, because he was never all that okay with the idea that sometimes he got so exhausted, so caught up in his imagination, that he couldn’t tell what was real. Bob said gruffly, “He’s real.”
So Gerard told him everything Ryan had said, as best he could remember.
“So it’s not just Brendon,” Bob said, finishing his coffee. “We’ve got to find Spencer too.”
“We do? I mean, I do. Because I promised. But you didn’t promise.”
Bob rolled his eyes. “Shut up. I’m not going to leave some homeless kids wandering the fucking city... They don’t even own squeedgies, how would they support themselves?”
Gerard smiled a little, relieved. “Good. Okay.”
Taking a deep breath, Bob said carefully, “We need to talk, though. About Ryan. Gerard, he’s not supposed to exist. If what he told you was true, then he’s-the people after him, they’re not going to stop.”
He stared at the tabletop, cleared his throat softly, and said, “No, we need to talk about Mikey. You didn’t tell me, I thought he was the only one, until Ryan... You said you’d tell me when you knew something.”
“No, I said I’d tell you when I had something you needed to know.” He grimaced. “I don’t know anything helpful. I haven’t found him. Just... just more like him.”
“And they wear collars.” He glanced up and away quickly.
“Yeah.” Bob was quiet a moment. “There is a small facility that specializes in medical research and experimentation, mostly with military correlations. They’re the reason that any child born like Mikey was, with something extra... They’re why no one finds out, because they find out first, and take the kid. Usually the parents are too happy to get rid of them, get paid off, and it’s very rare that one manages to grow up as Mikey did, protected and hidden, and like Ryan did. They always know, Gee. It’s a miracle you had him as long as you did.”
“Should have had him longer,” Gerard snapped, and Bob sighed.
“Yeah. But Gee. I’ve found mentions of these places, and from what I can tell, they don’t last long. They’re-the things they do, Gee.”
“And you haven’t found Mikey.”
He shook his head slowly. “But I haven’t found much. Just that they’re dangerous, they’re kept in captivity. They’re, officially speaking, not human, and the government is trying to alter them, to...” He grimaced. “Make them dangerous. As weapons. But I haven’t heard anything of any of them being able to do what Ryan said he did, healing Brendon.”
“I saw the marks,” Gerard said.
“If they knew, if they have Brendon, he won’t last long. They’ll want to know what they can do to him, what he can survive, how Ryan changed him, and when they’re done with Brendon, they’re going to come after Ryan and nothing will stop them from finding him. If he can heal, bring back the dead? I don’t know if we can protect him.”
“We can,” Gerard said. “We have to. Someone has to, he’s just a kid! Someone is supposed to protect-”
“He’s not Mikey,” Bob interrupted.
“No, I know. It’s just. It’s just...” His eyes stung, exhaustion and tears. “It’s just. What about Mikey? If you’ve found out all this, why haven’t you found him?”
“It’s been years.” Bob’s voice was rough and he couldn’t look at Gerard. “If he’s still alive, Gee, he’s not recognizable. He’s not-there’s nothing to find.”
He flinched, closed his eyes, waited for it to hurt, but the hopelessness in what Bob had said was no different than the aching hopelessness he’d dealt with since Mikey had gone missing. He let out a tense breath. “I should have protected him.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“He’s my brother,” Gerard snapped. “I promised him, I promised our grandmother, and I was too fucked up to even notice that he was gone, I-”
“Gerard.”
“You didn’t even tell me there were others like him,” Gerard snarled, shoving away from the table. “You should have told me.”
“I wanted to find out for sure, about Mikey,” Bob said, unapologetic. “I had nothing you needed to hear.”
“And now what? What do we do with Ryan? Tie him up? Put a fucking collar on him? Because he’s so fucking dangerous, just as dangerous as Mikey was, he’s not even fucking human is he?”
“Gerard-”
“They can’t have Ryan, they shouldn’t have ever gotten to have Mikey, and if-if we can’t find Mikey... we need to find Brendon, it isn’t fair, Bob, we can’t just-”
“We won’t,” Bob said, gruff again. “Christ, Gerard. You need sleep. It’s too early for this shit. Just-just get some sleep and let me handle it, okay?”
Gerard hesitated. “You won’t-if they come, you won’t let them take Ryan?”
“No,” he said easily. “Of course not.”
“Would you have let them take Mikey?”
Bob gave him a scornful look and didn’t bother to reply.
**
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