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The blood that coats his hands and his shirt and face is sticky and still warm and it steams off the body that lies at his feet.
Time swirls, slows, ebbs backward and forward like the tide from the ocean he hasn't seen in years. He's really forgotten what it looks like. Things speed up - flash past, images, broken hearts and that stupid, broken watch he still wears.
He looks down and the eyes are closed on the body - it's face calm in the rigor that's coming. Rick kneels and his knees are immediately soaked, dew and blood mixed and the fog fills his mind and the knife that he'd used he finally drops from his tight fingers and fuck fuck fuck
YOU made me do this! It wasn't me! It wasn't!
The words boil from him, burning his throat, bursting into the night air with the force of a volcano, lava thick with pain and anguish and all the things he feels and felt and this is Shane, after all, and fuck's sake what has he done
A stereotypical stress dream is how he sees it. But after all that's gone on, after everything that's happened recently, Dale's death, everything - Rick jerks awake anyway, stereotype, yeah. The coming winter is crisp in the air, forcing the red to his nose, making it run, matching the wetness in his eyes. He sits up, scrubbing his face, searching for Carl first, then Lori. They're both there, asleep for once, and he steps as silently as he can on socked feet through the house, their first night indoors in a long time.
Yet he's going outside, because he knows Shane won't be in the house. Not yet. Maybe not ever, but Rick's not worried about that just yet. He'll convince him.
Shane's awake in the bed of the truck he's commandeered, Andrea's stuff piled next to his in the back, shotgun pointing skyward, as though to blast one more hole in the night sky. One more meaningless star, too far away for anyone living there to care about the chaos on the tiny blue planet that's torn through with strife and weirdness.
Rick laughs and rubs his face again, the unwanted tears from the dream spilling onto his cheeks and he rubs harder, turning the skin red. Shane looks at him over his shoulder, then continues to stare into the nothing that's through the woods that ring Hershel's property.
Rick sits. Shane doesn't move over, so they're sort of squashed together. Rick doesn't mind. He finds it sort of comforting, even though both of them stink of three day old clothing and guy sweat and dirt. It's been worse - when they were younger and dumb and didn't care about much but drinking and girls and their time together -
"You alright?"
"Yeah, you?" Rick answers automatically, knowing Shane may see through the lie, but things have been so strained the other man may not give a shit. Rick clears his throat to add the truth, but Shane waves a hand through the air and Rick stems the tide of whatever he was going to say. Probably damn well better anyways.
"Carl?"
"He's asleep."
"Good," Shane grunts. "He needs somethin', Rick," he adds quickly, his voice low and rough and Rick sees the empty bottle of rum that rolls next to him in the truck bed. It tinks against Shane's booted foot, his legs crossed like he used to sit as a kid. Rick lifts a hand, used to being able to put it on Shane's neck, the top of his head, his shoulder...
He lowers it.
"Yeah, he does," he answers, but he has no more ideas than that. His eyes burn still and he wipes his face again, thick fingers shaking, the sweat beginning to build in his armpits despite the cooler weather. He shucks off the long sleeve shirt he's wearing over his undershirt and slaps it against his thighs, the material stiff and salty.
"You dreamin'?"
"Something like that," Rick says after a minute of thinking - the breeze picks up and he can hear the night birds calling and animals (he hopes; he checks for his gun, which is there at his back) shuffling in the rustling brush.
His face still aches from where Shane had headbutted him. He wonders if the other man is still in pain - and his smile is bitter and tight when Shane takes his turn to laugh. "No good dreams ever again, I'm thinking." Shane rubs his head and laces his hands on top of the short hair that Rick wonders if it feels like a bristle brush.
"Yeah." the knife is slick in his hands and he cries out a wordless shout of feeling that he can't identify and he's kneeling in Shane's blood and he sees the other man's heart beat once twice three times and then stop and he's responsible and he just can't imagine anything worse no matter the wrench and the bus he'd almost left Shane in
"Fuck," he whispers, and wipes the tears from his face. He shakes.
"Put your shirt on," Shane says, softly, no sign of malice in his tone - and he lifts his jacket from behind him, draping it messily over Rick's shoulders. "Here."
The cracked brown leather smells like Shane and Rick remembers suddenly, everything, the things that mattered when he was younger and how this man had taken his staid life and turned it on its head and he's trembling uncontrollably now, and Shane turns his head to him and his eyebrows are narrowed. Concern, warring with anger and resentment and Rick wipes tears again. The moon, brighter than the sun it seems, blasts them with its intensity and Shane lifts his left hand and places it on the back of Rick's neck, benediction, forgiveness. Futility, too, but Rick doesn't care. He smiles again through the crying and it's real.
"You sure that's what you want?" Shane whispers.
Time for you to come back.
"Oh, yes," Rick replies, in his own whisper that does not crack or waver. His smile broadens when Shane's rough mouth presses against his jaw and then his temple.
Rick reaches down and fits his hand in Shane's, helping the other man to stand up from where he's lying on the dew soaked grass, bloody face calm and serene, wound in his heart closing and then gone. They stand together, hand in hand, the fog rolling in slowly until it totally obscures them from view.