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It was with the sound of shattered glass that Sole was yanked back into consciousness. Their eyes flew open and they jackknifed to a sitting position. The vicious thud, thud, thud of their heart threatened to break a rib from the inside, jolting Sole in place as yowls and thundering footsteps ricocheted through the hallowed halls of their home. Beside them, Pickman was already awake, his eyes glinting like knives in the low light. Sole saw the sliver of moon reflected dangerously back at them, and decided not to flick on the bedside lamp.
“Burglars?” Sole asked numbly.
It sounded strange; silly even, as they said it. This was the wasteland after all, and the word for people who rolled out with anything that wasn’t nailed down was…well, everyone. If Pickman had thought Sole’s sundown hypothesis was dumb though, he never showed it.
“No, it’s not scraps or supplies they’re after,” he murmured.
The implication of what they were after hit Sole square in the chest. They shuddered.
“This hit is personal,” Pickman continued, throwing the covers off, and grabbing his pants from off the floor beside the bed. They hung loosely around his hips as he shoved his belt through the loops with one hand and went for the steamer trunk at the end of the bed to fetch his gun with the other.
“What are they here for?”
Pickman shook his head, disheveled and groggy still from their few hours of sleep.
“They warned me,” he mumbled, “they told me they would come back.”
“Who? Who said that?”
“’Mess with one of us, you mess with all of us’ they said,” Pickman rambled on, only semi-coherently.
There was a sharp clack in the dark as he cocked his gun. Meanwhile, the cacophony of the troupe of raiders rumbled on around the house outside their bedroom door, growing louder and more violent as the seconds tiptoed on.
Sole could feel the finality with which the raiders rounded on their bedroom door as tremors in the floor. The lamp on their nightstand trembled, and their headboard knocked against the wall.
Why couldn’t it be for the other reason, Sole thought glumly.
Expected as the assault was, Sole still flinched as the door burst open, revealing one thick raider leg, which, Sole would guess, had kicked the door down. When the intruders piled in, Sole was surprised to see that there was only three. Burly and hulking, but merely three all the same, one of which Pickman had already fired his gun at.
Sole watched in morbid fascination as in a flowered burst of crimson, one of the raiders dropped. As the corpse’s head lulled to the side, Sole got a clear view of what an eye – or rather, what was left of an eye – looked like after being run through by buckshot.
Disgusting. No doubt, Pickman would be using it in his next piece.
“Sole!” Pickman called in warning as he reloaded.
One of the raiders, having not caught on to what happened to their colleague, was approaching Pickman and his shotgun with valor that bordered on stupidity. Sole whirled around, bringing their fist around as they did so, and was unsurprised by the heavy impact of flesh against it.
Something heavy – or someone – landed sprawled on the floor as Sole managed a triumphant blow. In the adrenaline that thrummed and pounded through Sole’s veins, they barely registered the gunshot that rang out.
Sole crumpled to the ground in the next instant, their dead weight hitting the wood of the floor. Pickman never even skipped a beat; he turned sharply, barreling towards the last standing assailant. The last raider didn’t even have time to reload before Pickman’s form was looming before him – vengeance himself – and the artist reared his arms back to sharply crack the party end of his gun against the raider’s skull.
Then he was the last one standing, though it was only for the few moments it took him to kneel at Sole’s side.
Their eyelids fluttered feebly, head lolling to the side as a sinisterly red puddle spread beneath them.
“Sole,” Pickman urged, his fingers running over their cheeks and brow – so clammy - down their arms, fretting above their wound, but daring not to touch it.
Sole’s face contorted and a terse moan left their lips but as the blood continued to pool around them, wetting the wood floors and staining Pickman’s hands, it was clear that their energy was spent, and so they collapsed more insistently.
They were still then. Pickman felt his heart lurch, and it was then that raw panic surfaced, pushing past the refined poise he’d usually struck.
“Sole,” despite his instincts, Pickman shook their frame, “Sole!”
Their body responded to the motion, jostling slightly, but the reaction ended as soon as Pickman took his hands away. Meanwhile, the puddle beneath spread, seeping rust into the knees of Pickman’s trousers.
Pickman clutched at Sole, burrowing his hands into their damp pajamas, hoisting their dead weight onto his lap. Wake up, dammit, he thought, you must wake up!
-
The room blurred into vision, spinning with kaleidoscope-like grace before settling upright. The windows were still mostly dark, though with the creeping azures of morning at the horizon. A pounding pain drilled into Sole’s skull as light filtered in through their eyelids, just cracked open as they adjusted to their own waking, even though it was just temperate candlelight that fended off the darkness in the room.
Nausea lingered at the brink of Sole’s consciousness; not strong enough that they couldn’t ignore it yet, but gaining strength. Ugh, they must’ve been sick.
When Sole could open their eyes fully with minimal pain, they tried to push up into a sitting position, before an intense bout of dizziness had them veering sideways back down into the mattress of the bed. Something burned faintly at their abdomen, and as they raised their hand to inspect the tender spot, they found the hardness of layered bandages stiffening the circumference of their torso there.
Realization suddenly hit Sole, as a flood of memories came racing back to their sluggish mind – they weren’t sick, they were injured.
It was then that they noticed the IV stand holding a blood pack, that fed a narrow string of surgical tubing into Sole’s forearm.
Shimmering into clarity behind that, was a man Sole recognized even through their muddled grogginess, as Pickman. How they hadn’t noticed him before could only be chocked up to their body’s struggle to process the trauma sustained that night, as the man’s hand was secured warmly in Sole’s own, despite his limp, slack-jawed form laying devotedly at their side. He looked almost harmless from this angle, Sole thought, his face never betraying the perversions that fueled his inspire.
At the feel of movement, Pickman stirred from his light sleep, blinking with a mimicked grogginess from the one Sole had just shaken from themselves.
“Sole?”
His eyes went wide, his warm grasp slipping from Sole’s hand so that both of Pickman’s could cup their face. Despite the dull ache in their abdomen, Sole felt luxurious and soothed resting between the man’s strong fingers.
“You’re awake,”
Sole raised one hand to smooth tenderly over one of Pickman’s, holding him closer against them.
“I am.”
Despite the state Sole had awakened to find Pickman in, dark, bruise-like splotches still underscored the hollows beneath his eyes. His expression, if the flesh could’ve been considered such, looked threadbare.
Pickman’s relieved smile faltered into a grimace. Sole had never seen such hopeless sadness on him before.
“This is my fault – it’s all my fault.”
Sole stroked tenderly at Pickman’s hair which was uncharacteristically in disarray.
“No, you can’t-“
“I’ll kill them,” he said, his voice shot with steel. “All of them.”
Pickman’s eyes flashed, and his hold on Sole was suddenly just shy of painful, though beyond that, there was nothing shy about it.
For a single instance, Sole was afraid of Pickman. Of course, they knew about his nature, and his work. They weren’t so naïve to believe that they had not invited a monster into their bed, or rather, slipped into the monster’s bed themselves. This feeling would pass, it always did – though in Sole’s weakened state, it felt particularly taxing to push such fears down.
“Sshh,” Sole soothed, stroking a little bit more desperately at his hair, flinching as a finger caught in a snarl. Pickman didn’t seem to notice the tiny, stinging tug. “It doesn’t matter – none of it does,” Sole continued, “because I’m fine. Completely.”
The corner of Pickman’s mouth twitched, a testament to his stubborn restlessness but his grip on Sole was still iron.
Sole’s hands smoothed down to cradle Pickman’s face in their hands. They peered searchingly into his depths, willing him to cast away his murderous ire if only for tonight. Sole could still feel the throbbing of a tendon in his jaw though, could still feel the tautness in his muscles. Pleading would not be enough tonight.
Sole brought Pickman’s face to their own, lips moving against his in an effort to press the tensions from them. Pickman’s hold on Sole loosened ever so slightly and Sole kissed him harder, determined to leave not a trace of his rage inside him.
“You are feeling better,” Pickman remarked and Sole knew their efforts had succeeded.
Sole pulled away, tracing the pad of a finger delicately along the seam of Pickman’s shapely lips, before bowing their head to give him one final, chaste kiss for good measure.
When they broke apart again, Pickman was rising to his feet at once. Sole looked up, startled and momentarily wondering if they hadn’t dispelled his anger after all, but merely shoved it aside.
Pickman’s hands did not go to his gun, now leaning up against the nightstand. Nor did they form angry shapes quivering with a readiness to strike. Instead, they moved tenderly, shifting beneath Sole’s form to gently maneuver them a few inches over on the bed. One of his knees came up to brace at the grimy mattress, forming a divot in the bed as he pushed his weight down. Then the next knee came up and his arms remained at Sole – only changing in the slightest, like the colors of the leaves come Autumn, but before they dropped to the ground in gnarled, reedy shells.
They yielded to the curvature of Sole’s body on the bed, holding them. Pickman settled around Sole as if he were meant to be there and nowhere else for the rest of time.
Maybe he was.
They lay there as the minutes ticked by, waiting with great patience to find out.