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Miles let the door slam, panic coursing through him in a cold, ugly flood. He could feel frost forming spiderwebs between his ribs as he sat down hard and curled in on himself. It was like trying to breathe through syrup.
“Miles?” Waylon's voice, worried, off somewhere to his right. He had to give the man credit for learning as quickly as he did. The programmer sat down next to him on the ratty couch they'd shoved against the permanently closed curtains. One arm around the reporter's shoulders. “Let me see.”
It took far too much effort just to open his eyes against the chill. Waylon rested a hand against his jaw, looking straight into his eyes and watching as the sclera slowly darkened to hard black. Ever since the asylum, whatever had gotten hold of Miles occasionally decided to dig into him with everything it had. Chills and tremors followed quickly by a wicked and painful sharpening of his teeth – all of these he'd come to recognise as symptoms of a disease known as Walrider.
Waylon knew these signs best from an unfortunate incident not long after the two had met up in the outside world, away from Mount Massive and the living nightmares inside its walls. It had been raining that day and somehow, Miles was starving...
He could place the feeling well enough but this... this wasn't typical hunger. Even now, Miles barely remembered the details. If he was calm and could focus for long enough, he might recall Waylon dragging him by the collar of his shirt, moving them back into an alley as the sirens grew louder. He might remember the feeling of his newly sharpened teeth ripping into the poor man's throat, the flesh he'd torn from his collarbone, from his arms when he'd tried to fight, and simply swallowed without a second thought.
Most days, it made him ill to relive it. Occasionally, he would cringe but accept it. And every now and then, when he could feel the hunger pangs starting again, the stabbing ache in his bones, he thought it was almost... fun. Just a game. Just food.
Miles had curled on his side, resting his head against the back of the couch. When he forced his eyes open again, staring through the faint red tinge the strain put over the world, he caught a glimpse of Waylon in the kitchen. He watched him walk back from the counter, heard the refrigerator door open and close once, and tried to ignore the burn in the back of his throat.
“Glad we caught this when we did,” Waylon said as he sat back down beside him. “I can't handle you when you're... like you were last time.”
Miles barely heard him. He was alternately restless and too tense to move, resulting in faint convulsions. He was breathing too hard. He could hear it – deep gasps and quiet snarling, muffled slightly by the fact that he couldn't seem to stop drooling. Everything ached, bone-deep needles slowly digging in deeper.
Miles took a breath that sounded like it hurt and shoved himself back to a sitting position. He grabbed Waylon by the wrist, nails digging into the glove where it covered the programmer's skin. His teeth cut into the meat and the diluted copper taste of cold blood coated his tongue.
“Easy,” Waylon took his hand back a little too quickly to lift another piece of raw meat from the plate. “I don't know if this'll be enough to bring you out of it completely. I thought we had a few more days.”
It took three thick cuts, each drooling pale blood down his arms, but soon after that, Miles was starting to calm down. He clasped his trembling hands and rested his forehead against his wrists. The needles hadn't stopped but they were sure as hell a lot duller than they had been. Waylon held a fourth piece out to him.
“I can't...” Breathless and shaking, but at least he could speak again.
“You think you're okay?” he asked, setting the plate on the small coffee table. “I can leave that out if you want. It's only been a few minutes.”
Miles shook his head, keeping his eyes on the floor between his shoes. Covering several stories on slaughterhouses early in his career meant that the thought of eating meat didn't exactly sit well with him, even under normal circumstances. This, he felt justified in calling a curse.
“I'm fine,” he said, his voice raw and faintly raspy. Waylon hesitated before stripping off his gloves and wrapping an arm around the reporter's shoulders again. He pulled him over against him this time and Miles either didn't have the strength to fight him on it or didn't mind being held.
Waylon clicked his fingers once. “Look at me,” he said and was relieved to find that Miles' eyes had changed again, bright white around blue-gray. He smiled in spite of himself. “I think you'll live.”
“Oh, joy.” Miles rested his head on Waylon's shoulder, letting the man run his fingers through his hair. He was grateful, all in all, that they'd found something that worked when he fell into fits like these, but that didn't mean it didn't take a lot out of him. He caught himself drifting, almost falling asleep before he felt Waylon shift a little and something damp and cold touched his hand.
Leaving blood on his hands and around his mouth wasn't the smartest idea and Miles sat up while he ran the cloth over his remaining fingers. “Hell of a thing,” he said, cringing.
“Yeah,” Waylon ran another washcloth through his hands. He never seemed comfortable around Miles after episodes like this. Who could blame him, really? Seeing the man who had gone out of his way to keep him out of Murkoff's hold snap and start ripping into some random passerby would have given anyone pause.
Waylon leaned forward, pressing the cloth to Miles' mouth. “You look tired” he said and froze when Miles set his hand over his for just a moment. This was how it usually went anymore. Something would go wrong and Waylon would step in to do damage control. It was a dynamic they just seemed to fall into somehow.
Miles dropped his hand and tried to smile. “What are you, my dad?” Half-hearted. Tired. Trying to joke.
Waylon laughed but it sounded strained. “Obviously not.” A pause and then, “I've got two boys back home, you know? I don't know if I ever told you. They're right at that age where they get into absolutely everything. I feel like I'm always picking up after them and taping them up when I'm home.” He ran the washcloth through his hands, his knuckles turning white. “I miss them.”
Miles shifted, uncomfortable for a moment. “I know you do,” he said, quiet, like maybe he hadn't spoken at all. Then, trying to be reassuring, “But I'd imagine they're pretty tough kids.”
This time, Waylon really did laugh, a short bark of a sound. “Yeah... Unlike their dad.”
“Hey, you survived the worst kind of shotgun marriage imaginable – I'd call that a victory.”
Waylon cringed, leaning forward with his arms on his knees. “Ugh, don't even mention that...”
Miles hesitated and then threw an arm around his shoulders, ignoring the grating burn in his joints and pulling him close. “Still alive, Park,” he said.
After a few seconds, Waylon relaxed against his side. “Still alive, Upshur.”
Neither of them realised it the first time, but gradually those two words had started meaning so much more than they had before. Between Murkoff hunting them both down like wounded gazelles, Waylon's sleepless nights spent in a state of panic over some imagined footstep in the hallway, and Miles' near-constant internal fight with the very thing that was likely keeping him alive, it was all too easy to slip into either apathy or hysteria.
But that was exactly why the both of them had, at some point or another, sworn to themselves that as long as the other kept living, they would too.
After all, they were survivors.