Chapter Text
Zakk comes out of the bathroom after an hour, a cloud of steam following him, and he looks… Recognizable.
So different from the mud-covered, half-mad man who arrived at the doorstep, something crazed behind his eyes and clothes so torn they revealed more grime-stained skin.
Now, Brodie can see the extent of what Hell did to Zakk.
Around his wrists and ankles and, horrifyingly, neck, are red, raw marks, like that of too tight ropes, rings of bruises, a rainbow of sickening shades, new ones in dull blue and old ones in pea-soup green.
He’s thinner, too. Brodie didn’t see him shirtless much, but when someone consumes your entire life for months like Zakk had, you know them down to their flesh and bone. Where Zakk once had faint muscle definition is now the sharp edges of bone visible through the skin, his arms, once muscled and strong in the sort of way that comes through shitty nutrition and the toughness of life, now look breakable in a way they never have before; wiry, ropey. Presumably, rotting for three months doesn’t do the body good.
Brodie knows how Zakk moves, too; or at least, he did.
Now Zakk moves differently. Cautious isn’t the right word, but it’s the one that comes to his mind. More… Careful. Thought-through, compared to the fast-paced, never-stopping motion that took Brodie so long to get used to once.
“You my fucking guard dog now?” Zakk’s lip curls when he notices Brodie leaning against the wall where he was an hour ago, half amusement, half something else, indecipherable, and that’s different too.
For all Zakk was seemingly invulnerable, impenetrable, perpetually unbothered, Brodie never had a hard time reading his face.
Electric joy when they managed to play something that sounded half-good, infectious confidence during their not infrequent sessions of shoplifting, uncertainty and anger after his father’s death (
murder
), even the quick flashes of guilt after their fight over Medina.
Fear, cold and pure, like a child’s, when he lay in Brodie’s arms fighting the demon inside himself.
Now, the emotion passes too quick to identify and too warped by whatever he experienced post-mortem, and Brodie wishes, not for the first time, he could castrate Aeloth with his steel-toe cap boots for fucking with his best friend.
“Nah, just making sure you didn’t drown whilst you washed that shit out of your hair.” Brodie shoots back, the quip like something from Before , and that feeling comes back, like the opposite of longing, like when he first saw Zakk after opening the door, face dark with much except for the whites of his eyes and his teeth, sparkling in the dim porch light as he grinned maniacally when Brodie opened the door.
Zakk smiles again now, not as bright, but Brodie can see that it’s real. Even if he’s different now, they’re still best friends.
Probably.
Right?
Does death change that? Does killing him, even if it’s to save the world, mean they’re not brothers of steel any more ?
Before Brodie can overthink too much, Zakk hits him square in the face with the wet hand towel he’d been drying his hair off with, snorting as he walks past Brodie.
Once Brodie returns the towel to the rack in the bathroom, he follows Zakk, who’s planted himself down on the couch and has picked up the discarded packet of chips he had started on before his shower, leaning back into the couch and letting out a groan. (And it does not sound pained, and Brodie refuses to let it have any effect on him whatsoever.)
“Man, you don’t fucking know how good you have it. There’s not a thing I wouldn’t have done for a couch down there. And food .”
After the last word, he accentuates it by tipping the crumbs into his mouth, about half of them missing and falling onto his still-bare chest and the towel covering his lap.
As Brodie flops onto the chair opposite him, he feels the bone-deep exhaustion of today really sink in. He’s pretty sure Zakk fried his goddamn brains earlier, the headache still hasn’t left, and the shock of seeing his best friend alive again felt like adrenaline earlier, and certainly feels like it now, that familiar rush faded out for an empty shakiness and barely being able to open his eyes after they fall shut.
When he does wrench his eyelids open, he’s greeted by a sight that makes his chest ache something awful and his head feel fuzzier and more confused than it already was.
Zakk, still naked except for a towel, that goddamn towel, one of his aunts’, pale pink with a stripe of embroidered white flowers running down one of Zakk’s thighs, is poking about the (mostly empty) cabinets with greasy fingers and hair still dripping from the shower. He picks up a jar of something that looks like olives, and reads the label so fucking intensely, like it’s in Greek or some shit, eyebrows furrowed and a look of concentration across his face that Brodie’s only seen when he’s been plucking out some complex bass line, before his lips quirk up in a look of success and he places the jar down on the counter, going back to rummaging through the cupboards.
Brodie is hit with a single thought that would, given the state he’s in, would bring him to his knees were he standing, if I didn’t love him already, then fuck, and he doesn’t get a chance to even decipher what the fuck that means before Zakk is making his way back over to the couch with a jar in each hand.
He goes to throw one at Brodie, but seems to think better of it and places it down on the coffee table between them (taken from the abandoned house next door, as the one that originally stood there did not survive the showdown that took place in the living room) and shakes his hair out like a drenched dog, before sitting down and cracking open the jar in his hands.
He sniffs it before digging in, dipping his fingers into the dark red syrup and shoving a couple of Maraschino cherries into his mouth with all the grace that he’s ever possessed (that being precisely none).
Brodie contemplates the jar on the table for a moment - olives, he was right, stuffed with garlic - before grabbing it and twisting the lid off. He eats slower than Zakk, not feeling the same hunger he imagines Zakk feels, one that comes with being dead for three months, but finds it makes him feel better anyway.
They sit and eat in near silence, the dull chatter of the commercials playing on the near-forgotten television (yet another appliance pilfered from the empty neighbourhood).
Brodie gives his bed up to Zakk because it seems the decent thing to do when your best friend has come back from Hell, where you sent him after single-handedly nearly damning the world. Besides, the rest of the furniture has been trashed or sold.
Zakk doesn’t protest, not that Brodie expects him to, and after looking at the sad, muddy pile of his make-shift funeral suit (ruined jeans and sweatshirt, threads that once made up a pair of socks, one single boot, and his surprisingly intact if downright filthy
Death
shirt) sitting in a wet heap in the hallway where Brodie had kicked them after Zakk had pulled them off and haphazardly strewn them before showering, and starts rooting through Brodie’s drawers before pulling out a worn-thin blue sweatshirt and a pair of (thankfully clean, Brodie thinks to himself) boxers before flopping down onto his back on Brodie’s mattress, springs creaking alarmingly as he bounces with the force of it. He gestures toward the taped up window with a jerk of his thumb and Brodie just shakes his head with a tired smile.
He’s been between pure shock and pure elation since Zakk got back, all coated in the bleary deliriousness of exhaustion. If he’s honest, he still feels a little fried from yesterday, like the tail-end of an adrenaline rush, shaky with hollow energy, going through everything in a slight daze.
Zakk had been thrilled to find out what it had been like for Brodie when he… Resurrected? A little worried at hearing about the pain and the blood, a nod of understanding when he mentioned his lingering tinnitus and slight deafness (he’d consciously toned down his voice after that), but mostly thrilled, and had made Brodie go through it at least three times before he’d leant back on the couch, seemingly satisfied.
“ Sorry about microwaving your brains, bro .” He’d said with a crooked smile and gleaming eyes.
Zakk makes a grunt of irritation at him, one he’s too tired to be able to understand, and he cocks his head like a confused dog, and again some emotion just out of his reach crosses Zakk’s face before it’s gone in a second, and Zakk reaches down, tugging the tartan duvet out from where it’s tangled beneath his legs and holds it up, waiting.
Waiting for Brodie to get into bed with him? Or is this just Brodie seeing what he wants to see, because he’d intended to sleep on the floor, but a small, buried part of him had thought about it, and is this just-
His downpour of self-deprecating thoughts is brought to a crashing halt by Zakk shaking the duvet lightly and huffing a deep breath, and apparently that is all it takes to break whatever resolve he has, as he wrestles out of his jeans (that he’d been sleeping in already, gross) before diving under the covers, hearing the springs creak and Zakk chuckle, and fuck , he’s missed this dickhead.
“Don’t hog the covers, dude.”
“I’m like twice the size of you! That automatically means I get more.”
They bicker and pull the covers back and forth for a couple of minutes before ending up back to back, and Brodie can feel Zakk’s every breath through his shoulder blades.
He may not be able to hear Zakk’s breathing even out and his snores begin, but he can feel the vibration of it and it lulls him into a sleep that seems deeper than before and infinitely more restful.
Although he doesn’t think any more of loving Zakk, the warm comfort throughout him tells him enough.
Hot breath on the side of Brodie’s face wakes him, drawing him from dreams of sneaking through dark and dusty hallways, running from echoing footsteps and yells cut-off by slamming doors.
He jerks to the side, sharp enough to bury his face in the mattress and lose his balance lying on the edge of the bed and tumble out, disoriented by the fast transition from asleep to awake, blind in the dark of his bedroom.
A low groan startles him again, and just when he thinks he can’t take it, the fear, the racing of his heart caused by his dream, by the dark, by the sudden sound, he hears the most familiar voice utter, from behind him on the bed,
“...the fuck, Brodie?”
Zakk says it in that tired way Brodie’s come to recognize as his ‘cannot be arsed’ voice, which settles Brodie beyond relief. Zakk has become the point he’s magnetised around in the short time he’s been back, and knowing that Zakk is fine, that there’s no threat, nothing to be alarmed by, slows Brodie’s heart rate fast enough he wonders if the stop and start motion of his heart will be the death of him, when a warm hand lands on his shoulder where he’s leaning against the side of the bed, groping about until it rests in a firm grip on his upper arm and tugs.
He leans into it, finding his feet like a newborn foal until he can throw himself down, back onto the mattress, Zakk’s hand never leaving his arm until they’re lying side by side again.
Zakk drops Brodie’s arm, but before he can even begin to miss the contact, Zakk’s arm is flung over his waist, pulling him closer like a teddy bear, but he finds he doesn’t mind it whatsoever.
Zakk’s breath is hot against his face again, but now Brodie knows it’s just Zakk, it feels comforting in its closeness rather than oppressive and claustrophobic.
“S’matter?” Zakk’s never been a morning person. The thought makes Brodie smile into the pillow.
But he’s still checking on Brodie instead of just falling back asleep. That thought makes a hot flush creep up Brodie’s neck, and he’s glad for the darkness now, so Zakk can’t see his reaction to such a small thing.
“Nothing.”
Zakk seems to either believe him or not feel that any lingering shakiness in Brodie’s voice is a pressing issue, and so tucks his head into the crook of Brodie’s neck and squeezes him tighter to himself, flexing his hand resting on Brodie’s side, where it has snuck inside the wide sleeve of his shirt and rests against his skin, seemingly falling back asleep in a second.
Brodie doesn’t last much longer; Zakk is so warm where they’re pressed together, and he’s so tired, knowing he’s safe, knowing Zakk’s safe, and drifts into sleep once again.