Chapter Text
2
Larry was remarkably cool given the circumstances, and it was starting to make Travis incredibly nervous. Was Larry one of them? Maybe he was some kind of a psyop to try and gain his trust, just to betray him at the last minute. Travis stepped back from him as his mind began to race. He was disoriented already from the crash and the alcohol, Larry would’ve had a pretty easy time trying to kill him even if he hadn’t just been beaten by his father.
“Relax,” Said Larry, picking up on Travis’s stress and putting his hands out in front of himself defensively. “I know a lot, like a lot a lot. Maybe even more than you do, but it’s only because me, Sal and Todd have been investigating them for years.” He tried to step forward, but Travis only stepped backwards.
“Investigating what?” Travis questioned with increasing fervor as he realized he was up against a wall.
“The Devourers of God.” Larry stated, putting his hands at his sides.
Travis stood in his place in Larry’s bedroom, body frozen while his mind sped at a hundred miles a minute. There’s no fucking way Larry was telling the truth, how in the fuck did he know anything about what the Ministry was doing!? How in the hell had Larry and Sal and their rag-tag group of idiot friends figured out anything? Sal was maybe crazy enough to do it, but he had a hard time believing that any of the rest of his friends were crazy enough to actually join in.
If there was any truth to what Larry was saying, they were all going to get themselves killed.
“Let me get this fucking straight.” Travis finally broke free from his thoughts. “You mean to tell me, that this entire time, you have been fully aware of who my father actually is, and you have been trying to put me in danger by telling me to move away from him!? Are you fucking crazy!?” Travis was just as baffled as he was angry, thrusting his arm in Larry’s direction aggressively.
“I had a plan!” Larry shot back, raising his hands up defensively again.
“Was the plan to get me killed!?” Travis spat, now stepping forward.
“No, the plan was to get you away from your dad, y’know, safe, and to make you one of our allies to help us get him arrested!” Larry tried to explain, but Travis wasn’t having any of it.
“You are seriously underestimating how powerful my father is if you think he can just be arrested.” Travis punctuated his point with a glare, annunciating that last part carefully to emphasize how ridiculous it was, the idea that his father could just… Go to jail after everything he’s done, after all the power he’s accumulated.
“First of all, Sal’s idea. I wanted to kill him, I wanted him dead, just seemed like the easiest way to put all of this to a stop, but no, Sal has morals and shit, so whatever.” Larry threw his hand up in the air and rolled his eyes dismissively as he continued. “Second, you’re seriously overestimating how powerful he is!”
“We all need to get the fuck out of here as soon as possible.” Travis began to panic as he realized that Larry wasn’t taking this as seriously as he should. He started to pull his fingers through his hair, tugging at his scalp to keep himself grounded. “Do you know how many people he’s had disappeared or killed and just covered up!?”
Larry threw his arms up. “Yes, actually! And the amount of times he’s done it one hundred percent successfully, without scrutiny from any authorities is a lot smaller than you think.” Larry stepped closer to Travis, who was looking at him with wide, fearful eyes, and he grabbed the blond’s hand tightly.
“I promise you he is not as powerful as you think he is, he just wants you to think that because he’s trying to keep you under control. But we’ve been watching them. We have a whole shed full of what we’ve investigated, and we’re building plans to take them down. We need you on our side, Travis.” Larry looked into Travis’s eyes intensely, and the blond’s mouth went dry.
Maybe it was disorientation from the crash and being drunk, from having had the shit beaten out of him by the man just hours earlier, but Travis softened. Larry spoke with such conviction and determination that he wanted to believe it. That the Ministry could be taken down. That his father could be put behind bars. That all of this could just stop, and he wouldn’t have to spend every waking second making this his first priority in life.
If Larry was saying there was hope on the horizon, then Travis was going to believe him. It’s not like he had anything left to lose for it, he wasn’t believing in anything else, anyway.
“Okay.” Travis said in a quiet voice, eyes still wide before he started to get his bearings back, and he smoothed his hair down compulsively with the hand Larry wasn’t holding. “Okay, I’m- I’m on your side.”
“C’mon, lets get you cleaned up and we can talk more about this.” Larry said, dragging him by the hand out of his bedroom.
The taller man dragged Travis into the bathroom and sat him down on the toilet. He then went to his knees, grabbing a first-aid kid from under the sink, popping it open and sifting through it for various creams and disinfectants and bandages and whatnot. He pulled out a paper towel and wet it under the faucet, washing the dirt out of the scrapes and cuts in Travis’s face. The blond winced in pain, but Larry did little more than looking a bit apologetic, the asshole.
“What do you know about them?” Is what Larry eventually broke the silence with.
Travis sighed as he thought about how to answer. “Well, I’m not an incredibly high ranking member just because I’m Kenneth’s son. They’re not telling me a lot, they’re still kind of trying to indoctrinate me and trying to make sure I’ll be loyal and whatnot- ow .” Travis frowned when Larry bumped his bruised nose.
“Sorry.” Larry whispered, giving it a once over. He turned Travis’s face around to get a look at it from other angles, and Travis tried to ignore the way it made him feel when Larry moved him around like that. “It doesn’t look broken, just kinda fucked up, so that’s a good sign at least.” Larry gave him a corny thumbs up before he set the paper towel down and replaced it with an alcohol pad.
Travis continued as Larry went back to wiping his face down. “I had my own plans to take down the Ministry. I was going to kill my father. I’m still not sure I don’t want to do that.” His tone of voice was neutral and bland as he looked away from Larry.
“I don’t blame you, I want that guy dead too. But we’re pretty sure with how old the cult is, they have an idea of how to function in case their leader is assassinated, which is why we’re going for the judicial approach.” Larry frowned as he applied a couple of band-aids to Travis’s cheek and nose after cleaning them up. “Take your shirt off, let me see what everything else looks like.” Larry instructed, having seen a couple of bruises and scrapes on his torso as he was changing earlier.
Travis did as he was asked, revealing the bruises that had started to form after his father beat him. They were darker now than they were earlier, and everywhere. There was a particularly nasty one developing on his stomach, where his father had punched him, one from where he fell on his hip before, and a couple bad looking ones on his ribcage from where the bike’s handlebars had hit him during the crash. That’s what Travis told himself, at least.
Larry whistled in a descending tone. “Good thing I’ve got some arnica in here.” He said quickly, pulling out a cream, applying it to his hands to rub on Travis’s bruises.
“I don’t think submitting the evidence to the NPD is going to go very well.” Travis said, but Larry snorted and shook his head.
“We’re not submitting it to them, are you kidding me? They’re completely corrupt, even outside of everything the cult is doing. Hah, no.” He said, and Travis winced as he rubbed the cream on his bruises a bit harder than Travis would’ve liked. “We’re planning on sending what we have to the FBI. Not from here, though, it’s way too risky. Once we have enough solid evidence, we’re planning on taking a trip well out of town. The cult’s estimated reach isn’t very far outside of the county, so we figure we’ll go a couple hundred miles north and send it off from there. I have a buddy up there willing to take some heat.” He spoke so casually as he continued looking around Travis’s torso for more bruises. His eyes seemed surprisingly warm as he took care of Travis, looking up at him from the ground through those thick lashes, and then Travis remembered that he was mad at Larry about this morning.
“What have you guys seen from them, exactly? What do you know about them?” Travis tried to distract himself by continuing the conversation, looking away from Larry’s hooked nose and the gap in his teeth that forced Travis to remember that he had a heart.
“We know several bigwigs in Nockfell are a part of it, we know they kill and disappear people pretty easily, and we know they’re kind of trying to end the world, or they think they are. Do you believe in ghosts at all?” The question tacked on at the end seemed pretty random, but Travis knew exactly why he was asking it.
“Well…” Travis trailed off, looking to the side.
“Well what?” Larry asked.
“It’s hard not to when you’re surrounded by proof.” Travis laughed nervously. He scratched his cheek awkwardly as Larry raised a brow, and he continued. “My family has tons of secrets, not just the child-beating and all that, but tons of other stuff, too. I think it was Kenneth’s way of attempting to prepare us for our initiation into the cult later on by, like, creating this culture of shame and secrecy and mistrust of everyone else.” Larry nodded as he followed along.
“This is gonna sound really stupid, but one of those secrets is that Kenneth, Mary, Madeline and I are all mediums. As in, we can see and communicate with the dead. It runs in the family, like some kind of genetic thing or something, and they use it to say we’re special. Only we can run the Ministry, and we have a duty to do so, because of our abilities.” Travis shrugged as he casually dropped that bombshell.
“Seriously!?” Larry balked. “And you’ve been telling me all my ghost stories were bullshit this entire time.” He leaned back from Travis, hands covered in arnica, and he pouted. The six foot grown ass man pouted.
Travis scoffed at his behavior. “Yeah, sorry for not taking any of your ghost stories seriously, I’m sure the PCP has nothing to do with any of that.” He rolled his eyes, and Larry stuck his tongue out at him before he continued rubbing his bruises down. What a child he could be, sometimes.
Travis laid his elbow on the counter, leaning against it as Larry worked and he told some of his story. “We aren’t allowed to talk about it outside of the Ministry meetings, though. Before I became a part of them at eighteen, I used to think I was crazy because I was seeing all this shit nobody else was seeing, that’s how little I knew about it. I’d talked about it with Madeline, that was the only reason I didn’t end up running myself to the hospital first chance I got.” He sighed.
“Wait- is that why you hate being here?” Larry asked, and Travis just shrugged in affirmation. He’d always hated being here, always asking to go to the lake together, or to hang out in a cave or something. Not that Larry didn’t like hanging out in weird, secluded areas, but it was more fun to get high when you had a nice place to sit, and there was a lot more planning involved in cave sex than one might think.
“I mean, yeah. This place kind of has an awful presence. It’s gotten better over the years, though, weirdly enough.” Travis replied.
“Wait, did it very suddenly get better right around when you were, say, fifteen or sixteen?” Asked Larry, remembering the damage that the red-eyed demon had done to the ghosts of the Addison Apartments.
Travis thought for a second. “Yeah, actually. Did you guys have anything to do with that?” He looked over to the other man on the floor, and he was smirking.
“You know it.” Larry said as he began to put away the first-aid kit now that Travis was all taken care of. “There was this demon or evil spirit or whatever it was, we called it the red-eyed demon. It haunted this place for decades, since before I was even born, we think. It even cursed me.” Larry’s tone turned rather melancholy as he placed the kit back before going back to normal. “It was terrorizing the ghosts here, and we even think it was behind the murders of the Holmes family back in, like, the eighties. But me and Sal killed it with a cool thing Todd made.” He seemed pretty proud of what they’d done.
Travis recalled some of the Ministry’s previous meetings he’d been privy to, where one of the more recent ones had discussed how a spirit known as Red Eyes was healing. “Oh, I investigated that one a bit. Red Eyes is a spirit that the Ministry uses, the spirit of Luke Holmes himself, actually. I don’t know what the cult did to him after he died, but his spirit got incredibly powerful. It’s inundated with this hatred and disgust for humanity, so the Ministry is weaponizing it for their own agenda.”
“Woah, so we were way off.” Larry raised his brows, surprised.
“Huh? What did you think Red Eyes was?” Travis looked down to him.
“We thought it was an external entity that possessed Luke Holmes and drove him to kill, and that it was already affiliated with the cult before that somehow.” He shrugged, resting his elbow on his knee.
Travis shook his head, reaching to the bathtub to grab the shirt Larry had given him earlier to put it back on now that he was all cleaned up. “Nope, I did my own investigating into that. No mention of Red Eyes until after the Holmes murders, and it reacts pretty badly to being asked about them.” He pulled the shirt on over his head, wincing at the pain that shot through his torso as he moved.
He continued. “Before Red Eyes showed up, the Ministry was more specifically focused on some really vague stuff that I still haven’t been able to quite figure out. I think the idea was to sacrifice an unknown number of people in order to empower some kind of vessel to bring an entity into existence, but I don’t really know the full story. All I know is that they’re planning on doing something big next year.”
Larry hummed as he stood up. “What is Red Eyes doing for them now?” He held his hand out for Travis to grab as he did the same, but of course the blond just smacked his hand away and grumbled something to himself about not being an invalid.
Travis walked out the bathroom door. “Well, their goals haven’t really changed exactly, but I do think they’re trying to get Red Eyes its own vessel again, but I didn’t get to figure out why. Mostly what it’s been used for is keeping the other ghosts under control, spreading fear and negativity throughout the apartments specifically, and they’ve even used it to frame certain people. Remember the Sanderson murder?” He turned around to see Larry’s shocked expression.
The pit Larry had in his stomach ever since Charley disappeared from the public consciousness hit him full force. He felt a bit sick as he finally got the confirmation that Charley hadn’t done it, and he brushed his fingers through his hair.
“Sal and I were the ones that put him away.” He said with a shake in his voice. “We’d only known each other for an hour or two, it was the first thing we ever did.” He stood in the bathroom doorway, looking down at the floor. He felt pretty stupid knowing what he knew now.
Travis stood beside him, close. “Don’t feel bad. They were trying to set him up anyway, and like you said, you saw him do it. You had no way of knowing what was actually going on.” Travis said, the two of them looking at each other’s feet. It was a nice gesture from Travis, but it didn’t help Larry much because that wasn’t the point. The point was that Charley was just another victim of the Ministry; a normal guy who had his life ripped away from him, forced to enact a murder under the possession of a powerful spirit, and then was disappeared, probably long dead now. Whether he liked it or not, he and Sal had a hand in that, and that was something he just couldn’t let go of.
“The Ministry uses Red Eyes for all kinds of things like that, but it’s not all powerful, especially after what you and Sal did to it.” Travis changed the subject and tried to reassure him. “Spirits tend to have the strongest ties to wherever they died, and if they want to go anywhere else, they need to be bound to a physical object, ideally a small one that can be taken places.”
“Does Red Eyes have one? What is it?” Larry fidgeted with his split ends, leaning against the door frame as he looked in Travis’s direction.
“I don’t know, they keep shit like that pretty tight-lipped. But it’s the only way the Ministry could be using it like that. None of the literature talks about a spirit being able to just walk around without one.” He shrugged and walked away from the bathroom as Larry raised a brow.
“Literature? There’s literature on this shit?” He asked, and Travis snorted.
“Yeah, tons of literature on ghost shit. You’d know if you bothered to take your research seriously.” He teased with a roll of his eyes, but Larry just scoffed.
“I’ll have you know we take our research so seriously, we’re risking our lives out there after all.” He crossed his arms.
“Okay, well, ‘seriously’ doesn’t mean ‘intelligently’.” Travis shot back as he went back into Larry’s bedroom.
“So, wait, if they’re using the ghosts, does that mean the shit they’re talking about with the shadow plagues and the demon gods are real?” Larry chased after him.
Travis paused as he thought about his answer, back turned to Larry. “…I don’t know what’s real.” He confessed, tone shifting dramatically as the memories began to resurface. “They’ve done so many things, I just…” The stone altar, the way he woke up with no scars or wounds—not physical ones, at least. There was just too much to put into words. “I think they’re drugging me. And a bunch of other stuff.” Travis looked at his hand, feeling disappearing from his mind and body as he remembered the sensation of his flesh breaking, nail after nail in his unwounded hands and feet like Jesus Christ.
Larry watched as Travis remembered, watching the story unfold in Travis’s face.
“I wouldn’t put it past them, they’re trying to make you question reality, make you rely on them for what’s real.” Larry stepped forward, putting a hand on Travis’s shoulder. “They also do sleep deprivation, too, because you’re so exhausted that you can’t think straight, makes you easier to control.” The two looked to each other, Larry’s expression sympathetic. He didn’t forget that comment Travis had said offhandedly a couple weeks ago, where he said he hadn’t been sleeping for much more than four hours a night for months. Not unless he’d been to Larry’s.
Larry was more than familiar with what exhaustion did to people, his best friend had PTSD nightmares so chronic that he’d developed a mild phobia of sleep. There weren’t enough cold spoons in the world that could hide the loss of cognitive function that came with sleep deprivation. He’d had been trying to prevent it, but with the state the cult had put Travis in, it was only a matter of time until he did something so stupid and impulsive as coming out to his father and drunk-driving his bike into a ditch. It was honestly a testament to Travis’s strength that he didn’t do something like that sooner.
“Fuck.” Travis sighed, putting his palm to his forehead. He hated to admit that he’d been had by his father more than he would’ve liked, but his father was a smart man. He was smart enough not to completely trust Travis, of course he’d try to get him in the most vulnerable state possible to try and control him, and of course Travis just walked into it and accepted it like he did with everything else his father told him to do.
More than that, now that he’s had enough time to calm down in the aftermath of everything that evening, the exhaustion was starting to hit him in a way it hadn’t when he’d spent the last several months in survival mode. He was so tired he was getting dizzy just closing his eyes, and he wanted to just collapse.
“Speaking of sleep deprivation, I think you need some rest, dude.” Larry interrupted his exhaustion.
“Yeah.” Travis didn’t even bother arguing this time.
Larry tried to help Travis onto the bed, but Travis ripped himself from the other’s arms and collapsed onto the bed himself, with a concerning cracking noise coming from the bed frame. But, the bed was still standing so Larry considered that a tomorrow problem. He patted Travis on the shoulder in a manner he hoped the other would find somewhat comforting as Travis began to roll back up in his sheets.
“I’m gonna go make something to eat, and, I don’t know, probably text Sal and Todd, let them know what’s going on.” He paused. “Well, I don’t know if I wanna bother Sal while he’s visiting Ash.”
“He’s back.” Travis mumbled from under the blanket.
“What?” Larry asked.
“Saw ‘im in the park today.”
Larry paused. “…That’s weird, he wasn’t supposed to be back for, like, another week. Did you talk to him at all?” Larry furrowed his brows, leaving his hand on Travis’s shoulder to keep his attention.
“No. Wanted to leave ‘im alone, seemed stressed out.” Travis threw an arm over his eyes.
Larry sighed as he cursed, “Fucking dammit, Sal.”
He pulled his hand down his face and pulled his fingers through his hair again. Sal had been doing a lot of that kind of thing lately. Shutting people out, not telling them anything, lying for no reason. It’s only been getting worse, and while he didn’t talk much about it, Larry had a feeling that his relationship with Ash was about to go south.
Even before they went long-distance Larry knew it wasn’t a good idea, but he knew better than to say something about it. Sal and Ash were just too different as people for it to turn out well.
Ash was a new person, a greenhorn that didn’t know what she wanted out of life. She needed to run out and explore, make mistakes, and figure out who she was, and more than that, she needed someone who could do that with her.
Sal couldn’t be that person. He’d spent more than enough time alone to figure out who he was and what he wanted out of life. His problems were that he’s built his entire personality around trusting nobody and hiding himself at all costs, and it’s made him an incredibly unstable and paranoid person—a really bad thing to be in a town being secretly run by a death cult.
Neither he nor Larry wanted to admit it out loud, that was a word that had gotten Sal thrown around by hospital staff more than once, but it was hard for Larry to ignore when he knew what Sal was hiding under his clothes, his mask. Not just the scars, but the intense, blood-boiling emotions that he kept away from everyone else, even Larry these days. Vicious anger that left contusions on his body, self-loathing sharpened to a fine point above his wrist.
Sal was very good at hiding it, hiding in general really, but all of that emotion had to go somewhere, and if it wasn’t being vented out with Larry, then that meant it wasn’t going anywhere, because Sal just didn’t trust anyone else. Really, if he wasn’t talking to Larry, that meant he wasn’t trusting anyone.
Ash needed a rock, someone that would be there no matter what, and Sal was flighty, like a deer. Larry wasn’t sure what he needed, but he knew that he wouldn’t be the person that Ash needed him to be. They were doomed from the start, really.
Travis rolled over in the bed to look at Larry. “Everything alright?” He asked.
Larry stood, back turned to the other. He had one hand on his hip and the other on his forehead, deep in thought. Travis poked him in the back of the leg to get his attention.
“Yeah… Yeah, I’m okay, I’m just… Sick of some of his shit, I guess.” Larry said, shaking his head. “I need to go make us something to eat, or something.” He started to leave, but Travis stopped him.
“Wait.” He said, his voice weak from the fatigue. Larry turned around, holding onto the bedpost as Travis continued. “You should stay.”
Larry took a moment to consider. He was a bit conflicted with himself at first, antsy to talk to Todd and to pick a fight with Sal, but he ultimately got into the bed with Travis, wrapping an arm around him and burying his nose in that bleach blond hair. The scent was an odd mixture of dirt and rain, plus whatever coconut shampoo he used, and frankly it suited the kind of person that Travis was.
The blond turned his head to look at the other man, and the two looked into each other’s eyes. It was one of those rare moments between the two, where Larry’s eyes were soft and warm, and the hardness of Travis’s face had melted away into something tender and mild.
Travis leaned up to kiss him—a rare action. He never liked to take initiative too much, his thoughts would always stutter around in Evangelical shame and humiliation. But after everything he’d gone through tonight, looking into the face of the man who’d picked him up out of a ditch just hours before, the shame had begun to wash away. Even if it would come back, because it always came back, he wanted to take advantage of this moment, to put his hand onto Larry’s warm, stubbled jaw and to kiss him for being the way he was. For being kind. Patient. For putting up with all of his shit.
Travis shifted and deepened the kiss as Larry returned it, wrapping his arms around the blond more. It was soft and intimate, in Larry’s bed with that awfully stiff mattress, in his basement that smelled like must with a hint of mold, but to Travis, this was the only place besides the forest that had ever given him refuge. As far as he was concerned, this is what Heaven looked like.
As Travis closed his eyes, his fatigue made him dizzy once again, and his movements began to slow. Larry pulled away and rubbed a thumb on his cheek slowly.
“You should sleep.” Said Larry softly, looking at the lids of Travis’s closed eyes.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Travis replied, shortly before snuggling closer and pushing his face into Larry’s shoulder. The brunette exhaled through his nose, amused at Travis’s constant efforts to be a shit, even when he’s been beaten and sleep deprived. The upside to this is that it took only a few minutes for Travis to be completely out, pliant and curled up in Larry’s arms as if he were this sweet and soft when he was awake.
Larry wished it could be like this all the time. Travis was so tender like this, sitting back and letting Larry take care of him. Asking him to stay and cuddling up next to him was a new one, too. Usually Larry had to beg for even the most basic reciprocation outside of sex, and he never wanted to just lay there and talk to each other afterward, to just feel the sensation of skin on skin without having to take it much further. He chalked it all up to Travis’s own internalized bullshit, telling himself that the blond would get over it eventually, but it hurt. He wanted Travis to look at him in full without shame and guilt clouding his mind, he just couldn’t stand it when the other man got caught up in his head about it, worrying about what everyone else thinks.
Larry looked at the blond’s sleeping face, covered bruises and scrapes that he’d taken care of as his thumb brushed over the blond’s cheek. These were bruises and scrapes he’d been taking care of for a while now, and he thought back to that plan to just kill Kenneth himself and get it over with.
He knew the cult was going to come after Travis over this, and he and his friends were going to be the first people they start combing through looking for him, so the next steps were their first priority. They might be able to fake Travis’s death somehow, and maybe there was some merit to whatever he was talking about with the cave systems around Nockfell. They could probably do something with that.
He sighed as he got up out of the bed. Now that Travis was asleep, it was time to get up and make some food for the apartment, and while he was up, he should call Todd about everything that’s happened that evening. He thought about talking to Sal first, but for the time being, he felt it was best if Sal didn’t know he knew he was back early. He’ll handle that situation later.
He went to the kitchen, digging around in his fridge for some random crap he could throw together in a pan, shortly before he pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed for Todd. Corn, black beans, some kind of ground mystery meat, rice, whatever seasonings they had left, and some cheese, whatever, throw it in the pan and make it hot.
“Yo, Todd, buddy,” Larry said as he began to dump his ingredients into his pan, “I’ve got some unexpected info on the Kraang.”
Todd didn’t miss a beat, sounding awake as ever this late at night. “Where the hell did you get information from?” He almost sneered from the other end of the line. Larry was far from willing to do tons of work and research in his spare time like Sal and Todd were, he was more of a hands-on kind of person and left all the boring stuff to the other two, so it was pretty surprising whenever Larry came up with new information.
“Travis, believe it or not.” Larry replied as he stirred. When it was hot, he’d served it into some tortillas that he’d warmed up in the microwave.
“Ah, that makes sense. Go on.” Todd said, confusion eliminated as he realized that it wasn’t Larry who’d done any significant work in this investigation.
“Turns out he’s been forced to become a part of them, for I dunno how long. He just broke off from his father a few hours ago, he was tryin’a ditch the cult.” Larry walked over to the couch, turning the TV on at a low volume and watching as he sat back on the couch, starting on his burrito.
“What made him do that?” Todd asked.
“I don’t know, he was drunk and sleep deprived, says the cult’s been drugging him, and he…” Larry paused, trailing off a bit as he thought about what Travis actually did that night. “He came out to his father.”
“Oh shit, he’s serious.” Todd said, before getting much more stern. “If he actually did that. How do you know he’s not being a double-agent? Trying to get intel on us, or even trying to feed us the wrong information to throw us off? Please tell me you didn’t give him anything vital.” He could practically hear Todd pinching the bridge of his nose at the end of that sentence.
Larry rolled his eyes. “Calm your tits, I’m not that stupid. The only things I told him were that we’ve been investigating the cult for a long time and that it was us who got rid of the Red Eyed demon—which, apparently, not a demon and not dead, by the way.”
“Shit, really? Wait, what is it then if it’s not a demon?” Todd asked.
“It is the powerful spirit of Luke Holmes, which the cult uses to kill and spread fear, and some other stuff. We didn’t kill it that day, we just severely weakened it, and so it’s been slowly healing this entire time.” Larry took another bite from his burrito.
“Wait, are demons real? Does the cult use them at all? Shit, I didn’t read up on this specific subject, I guess that’s my bad.” Todd inquired with increasing fervor and started commenting to himself, but Larry ignored his ramblings.
“I don’t know, I didn’t actually think to ask, and he’s sleeping right now, so that’ll have to wait.” Larry took another bite, watching the television. “Oh, and apparently the entire Phelps lineage are mediums.” He added hastily between bites.
“Wait, what?” Todd stopped in his tracks.
“Yeah, I don’t know either, dude. Something about Phelps family secrets, and I guess I have no reason not to believe it after everything that’s happened.” He shrugged to nobody.
“That actually kind of seems to track, I’m pretty sure somewhere in here I have it written down or something, but somewhere in the cult’s lineage is a lot of discussion of what appears to be a psychic. Her name escapes me, but I believe a lot of the cult’s beliefs were based on her prophecies.” Todd explained.
“Huh. A mystery that wasn’t a mystery and didn’t need to be solved, but by god we’ve done it. We seem to do a lot of that lately.” Todd scoffed at Larry’s snide comment.
“Fuck do you mean ‘we’? This was me and Sal’s work, and now apparently Travis’s. Get off your lazy ass and do something.” Todd snapped lightheartedly, but Larry laughed and rolled his eyes.
“Nah, you sound like my mom now, I’m not listening to shit.” He said.
“Maybe I’d sound less like your mom if you were useful.” Larry could hear the eye-roll from the other end of the line.
“I’m useful, I got this twink over here. You guys couldn’t have done that.” Larry chuckled to himself. Speaking of, it seemed like a good time to get up and check on Travis.
“Yeah, about that. Obviously, the next step is making sure to lay low for the time being, especially Travis, and that’s not gonna be easy. We need to touch base on this and come up with a plan for this tomorrow, so I’ll let Sal know what’s going on- er-” Todd paused as he realized his error.
“It’s fine, I already know he’s back.” Larry said flatly, looking over Travis’s sleeping body. Todd breathed a sigh of relief, but Larry cut him off. “Don’t tell him I know he’s back, though.” Pinning his phone between his ear and his shoulder, Larry adjusted the blankets over Travis to keep him warm.
“You guys! I fucking hate this shit, just talk to each other like normal people.” Todd complained, nearly whining. He hated being dragged into situations like this, forced to pick sides and play stupid games because nobody wanted to talk their problems through. As far as Todd was concerned, he was friends with a bunch of toddlers.
“He’s the one making it weird by not talking to me, so don’t give me that!” Larry shot back in a harsh whisper.
“Fine, whatever, I won’t tell him. Have fun with your mind games or whatever.” Larry could once again hear the eye roll over the phone, clear as day.
“I will. Talk to you tomorrow.” Larry hung up, walking out of his room to continue watching whatever late-night reality crap he’d thrown on to numb his brain while Travis slept.
About a half an hour later, Lisa came home from a late night fix, scaring the shit out of Larry. She ate with him on the couch for another half hour before she decided to go to bed, and Larry took that time to explain to her a watered-down version of the events of that evening. Obviously, she was more than glad to take Travis in, and understood why they wanted to have him lay low for a while, even if Larry didn’t give her the full story. Having a transgender son, Lisa knew a thing or two about keeping secrets, so she knew to keep her mouth shut when it came to Travis. She had a kind of understanding with the two that they’d both been endlessly grateful for these past several months.
After she went to bed, Larry stayed up. The paranoia and the fact that they needed new plans kept him from being able to sleep, so he split his time between watching whatever was playing on late night television and scribbling half-baked ideas on a legal pad. Maybe they could send Travis to Canada for a while, or something.
Not to mention he’s been worried about Sal, lately, and the fact that he came back without saying anything really isn’t helping. The fact that Todd basically confirmed that Sal had asked him not to tell Larry that he was home made his face twist up. He didn’t know how to feel about this growing sense of distance that had coming between him and Sal lately. He wished he could sort himself out with paint and a canvas, but he’d just run out of canvases the other day when he started another project.
Larry sighed in exhaustion and crumbled up another flawed idea of what their next steps should be as a group, endlessly frustrated that this had to be what their lives were about. They couldn’t just be forced to focus on surviving homophobia like the normal gays, no , they had to deal with all this fate-of-the-world death cult bullshit. Larry groaned and dropped his forehead onto the legal pad in his irritation.
Travis’s voice disturbed his thoughts. “Hey.” He said quietly, lingering at the door frame of Larry’s bedroom.
“Hey.” Larry said, looking up from more of his incoherent notes. “What are you doing up? Go back to bed.” He insisted, but Travis just shook his head.
“I woke up and I just can’t get back to sleep. My sleep schedule is pretty fucked from… Everything.” He waved his hand around and hoped Larry would get the point, and he nodded. Travis walked over to the couch and sat down next to him, closer than usual. “What’s keeping you up?” He asked, his voice still low and scratchy.
Larry sighed. “Just tryin’a come up with the next steps, I guess. Planning on meeting with Todd and probably Sal tomorrow.”
“So, you’re paranoid, too?” Travis leaned back on the couch, looking at Larry out of the corner of his black eye.
“…That obvious?” Larry asked rhetorically, setting the notepad on the coffee table face-down. He wrapped an arm around Travis, taking in the scent of his hair as they watched late night trash TV. They sat like that for quite a while, finding their way to enjoy the other’s presence in the space of all the fear that surrounded them. If they couldn’t have much else, they figured this could be nice enough.
“Sorry.” Larry broke the silence between them, staring straight ahead at the TV.
He paused for so long that Travis looked to him, about to ask him what he was apologizing for when the brunette continued. “About this morning. That fight. I said some shit…” He didn’t finish his sentence, hoping that Travis would pick up on what he was trying to say.
The blond sighed through his nostrils, looking back to the TV. “We both said some shit.” Travis replied.
“Yeah, we did.” Said Larry.
Travis knew in the way that Larry squeezed his shoulder, and Larry knew in the way that Travis pushed himself up close. They didn’t need to say it out loud, they just needed to be there.
“I think I know how we can make it up to each other, though.” Larry said, looking at Travis through the corner of his eye with a small and tired smirk that complimented the bags under his eyes. In the late TV lighting, he almost looked predatory in a way that made Travis’s stomach do flips.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” Travis asked, raising a brow.
Minutes later, Travis was right back on Larry’s bed, pushed against the mattress as Larry kissed him hard. They were getting hot and heavy, now, Larry having already migrated his mouth from Travis’s lips to down his jawline and onto his neck. Larry pulled back only briefly as Travis pulled his shirt over his head, then it was right back to giving Travis his umpteenth bruise of the night.
While he did that, Travis’s hands moved underneath Larry’s shirt, feeling his hips, his stomach, his ribs, and further up to his-
“Wait.” Larry grabbed Travis’s wrist and pulled back from marking up his shoulder as he had been. “Are you sure?” He asked.
Travis had a hard time knowing what Larry was talking about, until he saw the expression on the brunette’s face, nervous, looking off to the side with a furrowed brow.
“I’m the one trying to take your shirt off. Are you sure?” Travis asked flatly. He brushed hair out of Larry’s face and tilted his chin back toward his own.
Larry paused before he answered, closing his eyes before looking back to Travis, more confident this time. “Yeah, yeah. I’m sure.” He said, leaning in and kissing Travis again as he began to pull his shirt up. They briefly parted once again when he pulled it over his head, and Travis quickly put a hand on Larry’s soft chest as they leaned back in. Larry gasped into the kiss as Travis did, once again grabbing Travis’s wrist nervously.
“Yeah?” Travis asked while Larry paused, deliberating quietly as Travis wished he could hurry up and figure out what he wanted.
Larry just shook his head. “Keep going.” He said under his breath, low and husky. He let go of Travis’s wrist, and sighing as the blond’s hands continued to grasp and rub at his body eagerly.
The tone of their make out went from hot and heavy to deep and intimate very quickly after this as Larry began to let himself relax, trying to find it in himself to enjoy another person’s touch. He wasn’t normally one who much appreciated that kind of attention on himself, so Travis always savored it in the rare times that he did, pulling his hands up the other’s rugged flesh and losing himself in the other body. He rubbed circles into that sensitive flesh, pinching the sensitive bud of his nipple, and Larry sighed into it while his own hands migrated around Travis, grasping and groping and rubbing his chest, his waist, his stomach, and lower still.
Larry pushed Travis back onto the mattress, the blond’s wrists pinned above his head as they looked each other in the eyes; Larry’s warm and deep, Travis’s soft and dark.
Lips plump and wet, faces flushed, they dove back into each other and under the blankets, and for the first time in a while, they were slow. Sweet. Close. This didn’t mean they were soft—they could never be soft on each other—but there was no anger to blow off between hot kisses, no punishment to be found in handfuls of tugged hair. Only passion could be found between their flat open palms and raw, reddened skin, in the way that Larry pushed his face in between Travis’s neck and shoulder, the way that Travis held Larry’s hand as let his body relax and finally drift off into sleep.
…
Travis awoke hours later to the sound of Larry’s voice, mumbling in conversation with someone else.
“Shit, dude…” He said, and Travis could hear him pacing around. “Yeah, yeah, totally, just one second.” Larry walked over to the bed, seeming relieved that Travis was just beginning to stir. “Good, you’re awake.” He whispered.
Travis started to talk, but in his groggy state, Larry was faster. “I’m only awake because of your loud ass fucki-” “Shut up, am I busy right now? It’s Sal.” Larry held his cell phone to his chest to mute the sound.
Travis rolled his eyes, flipping the bird at Larry. “I guess not, asshole.” He glared, but there was no heat behind it. It’s not like they’d be doing much anyway, Travis was still exhausted and the effects of last night on his body were just starting to hit. Every muscle in his body felt sore, and the only thing he wanted to do besides lay down was maybe to take a hot bath.
Larry darted off, digging through one of the clothing piles around his room. “Thanks babe, I should only be a couple of hours. There’s still food from last night in the fridge, too, I just threw something together to put in a tortilla.” Travis was too tired to comment on the nickname, instead just lazily watching as Larry got dressed. He pulled on a loose pair of jeans over the harness he forgot to take off, then a dubiously clean shirt and his thick, denim jacket.
Larry walked back over to the bed, Travis staring up at him rather pathetically from below. He put a hand on Travis’s head, ruffling his already well-ruffled hair. “Take a bath or something, take it easy. Call me if you need anything, okay?”
Travis just rolled his eyes and turned over onto his side. “Don’t patronize me, I’m not five.” He mumbled, ready to go back to sleep.
“On a scale from one to ten you are, booyah!” Larry pumped his fist in the air, while Travis just looked back at him with an exhaustedly baffled expression he could only imagine Lisa has had to make many times over.
“You’re stupid, and an idiot, and I can’t believe I’ve let you fuck me more than once. Goodnight.” Travis dropped his head back onto the pillow, no more energy left for creative insults. Larry laughed to himself, petting Travis’s head one more time before walking to the door.
“I’ll be back later, don’t do anything stupid. Love you!” Larry quickly shut the door behind him.
Travis mumbled out a vocalization of acknowledgement before his eyes snapped open, realizing what Larry had actually said. He sat up in the bed, suddenly wide awake, but the sound of the apartment’s front door slamming shut gave him no time to question it. That asshole was already gone.
He laid on his back in the bed. His body had no energy, but his mind was wired with what Larry had just said. He stared at the cracks in the plaster on the ceiling, the worn posters on the walls across from Larry’s bed, taking in the scent of paint fumes and skunk. Travis found it hard to believe that Larry could’ve meant it. They said things they didn’t mean during arguments all the time, how could he trust that Larry wasn’t just caught up in everything that happened last night?
More than that, and the morning dread started to set in, how did he know that he was going to be able to protect Larry and his friends from the Ministry after this?
He couldn’t sleep now, he needed to start figuring out where to go from here. He already had some plans brewing, and unfortunately, he wasn’t sure that everyone else was going to like them, but this was the only way Travis saw all of them being able to survive this.
As he pulled out a pen to develop his plans, he hoped that Larry would forgive him for it.
…
Larry shot out of the front door as quickly as possible, face burning and hoping that Travis would, for once, just let it linger instead of chasing after him. Relief found him smoking a cigarette as he walked down the sidewalk and Travis hadn’t run out to confront him over it.
The sky was still brightening up with the sunrise, and the morning chill still hadn’t subsided yet. It was surprising that Sal had called him this early, but Sal seemed just as surprised that Larry was even awake when he called, as if he were planning to just leave a voicemail when Larry answered.
He’d at least confessed to coming back early without saying anything, which was a step forward. He had wanted to be alone for a bit, because he and Ash had broken up just a few days ago, some fight they had that left him pretty drained. Not that Larry couldn’t see it coming from a mile away, but he would still be there to try and cheer him up, and to chew him out for his recent behavior.
Not to mention the fact that they’re gonna have to make some big changes in their plans, now that Travis is out.
He stubbed his cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and tossed it to the side, looking at the front yard of the house his friends had gotten together. He sighed, pulling his hand down his face, somewhat dreading the mess that awaited him inside. Surely thinking about the different approaches they could take to stopping a death cult would cheer his friend up, and that this would have little effect on his deteriorating mental state.
He sighed. It’s like his bastard of a father used to say; ‘well, no better way to do it than to just do it.’
He put on a smile as he stepped through the door, greeting Todd at the kitchen table with news and throwaway plans he’d been half-heartedly developing last night as Travis slept beside him.
“What have you got for me?” Todd asked, looking just as exhausted.
“A lot. And when Travis wakes up, he’s gonna have more, so let’s start with 1999.” Larry pulled a chair out, flipping it around and sitting in it backwards as he began to explain some of what Travis had told him last night as Todd wrote things down in his journal.
Larry was glad things were moving, but wished that it didn’t have to be so god damn difficult. Then again, that’s just kind of who Travis was. He wasn’t generally one to blow up his life willy-nilly, but when he did, he certainly went for the nuclear options. That’s what made him fun. Larry wouldn’t want him if he weren’t such a difficult bitch, so it was only right that the rest of his life also had to be difficult because of it. He’d be lying if he said he wanted it any other way.
Now that Travis was on their side, it felt like they might have a fighting chance at getting someone to do something, but 1999 was just around the corner, and that hung over the two’s heads as they talked over their plans. They tried not to think about how Neil was sleeping peacefully upstairs, the only one who hadn’t been touched by all of this, and they spoke quietly.
Eventually Sal walked out of his bedroom, a bit tired and disheveled. The three stared at each other for a few moments before Larry peacefully pulled a chair out next to him, and with a tone of voice much more lighthearted than he’d felt upon seeing the man, he invited the bluenette over.
“Come sit, mi amigo, we have much to discuss.”