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Takeshita says, "I don't think it's a good idea."
His English is getting so much better. And it was good before. It's probably all this time he's been spending with Danny.
Wheeler isn't jealous. He's run out of jealousy. He's run out of everything his body used to hold; a cracked cup at the back of a drawer, gathering dust. He never felt like he was dead, before. “Okay,” he says.
Takeshita has to stoop when he comes down the basement stairs. He carries sunlight with him. Or, he looks like sunlight. Or, Wheeler's been down here too long, and long before that he forgot what it would be like to be under the sun's warm touch.
Takeshita looks at him for a long, silent moment. Konosuke Takeshita, draped in light. Do you think he ever made a mistake? Probably not. A mistake from Takeshita would be, perhaps, tripping over a stick and falling, only to catch a baby bird flung from the nest on his way down, at which point the little bird would be rescued by its mother and Takeshita would smile.
"I just want to talk to him," Wheeler says. He is sitting on the basement couch, where he is not technically chained down but only because of several days' accumulation of good behavior. "It doesn't have to be about that. It doesn't have to be about anything."
Takeshita takes the tray. It holds Wheeler's three mugs of animal blood. The empty ceramic clicks. "I'll ask," he says. He's been pleasant to Wheeler. Close to kind. Takeshita is probably like that with everyone. "No promises."
"Thanks," Wheeler says. He means it. He wishes he didn't. But he does.
"It's hard for him," Takeshita says, gently. "But I know it's also hard for you."
Wheeler looks away. There is a sunbeam slanting across the floor. It's feeble and faint, like weak tea. "I deserve worse," he says.
Takeshita says nothing. With his predator's ears Wheeler listens to Takeshita climb the stairs, soft footed, and lock the door behind him. It’s dark down here. But Wheeler has good eyes. Better than before.
For the paperwork, Wheeler has an upper body injury. Seven to nine months.
He doesn't know what TK told everyone. But he wasn't in good enough condition to have anything to say but thank you.
That's a lie.
At first he could only draw out his fangs and scream.
-
Eddie carried Wheeler out. That's what Danny told him, when he told Wheeler anything, which was rarely. The implication: I wouldn't have. I would have left you there. You didn't mean enough to dust.
It was a big thing. A mess. They had no idea; they walked right into it. Or, they told Wheeler they had no idea. There was a lot Wheeler didn't know. There's a lot he'll never know, now.
It was after Bryan had come back. Danny was avoiding Wheeler. But Wheeler hadn't pushed it. Mox had said they would wait for Bryan. And for Takeshita to leave, to go back to his indy loops and away from Danny's side. Easy pickings, Mox had said, teeth gleaming in the light, a promise.
Not that they couldn't handle Takeshita. Of course they could. They could handle anything.
Except that, at the end, they couldn't. Because at the end Danny had the stakes, and the JAS, and Takeshita, but also - nobody saw it coming -
The show had wrapped. The arena was empty. It was just their guys, the crew. Bryan was laughing at some joke Mox was telling. He always laughed at Mox's jokes, even when they weren't funny. Wheeler felt good. It was always good when the guys were happy; it was bad when they weren't, but he shouldn't go looking for trouble. He belonged with them. They were his and he was theirs.
Mox was trying to decide who he wanted. Obviously he wanted Danny the most. But Danny was, for the time being, out of reach.
So maybe it would be the Jacksons, or someone else it was easy to reach out and take over.
They weren't speaking to Eddie, either. Something had happened after the thing with Danny, left Mox with a black eye and Eddie scowling whenever he saw them. Bryan and Claudio were smug about it. Mox and Regal were quieter, closer to the chest.
Wheeler wasn't talking. Usually if they wanted him to say something, someone would reach into his head and make him say it.
Danny Garcia cut across the concrete. He was wearing street clothes: a dark jacket over a white tank, black jeans underneath. Wheeler remembers that very clearly. He remembers it all very clearly.
He remembers thinking the jacket looked too big. He remembers wondering if it belonged to Konosuke Takeshita. He remembers that through the fog that was most of his thought he was, a very little, jealous. It nipped at the back of his mind. He tried not to think about it, because it was his own thought, and that was rare, and if Mox felt it it would go away.
Danny said, "Got a second, Moxley?"
Mox lifted his head. He grinned. Wheeler felt pleasure roll through the connection between them: pleasure so sharp it was arousal. He could never tell if Mox was sending it to him on purpose, or if he was just feeling it so strongly it ricocheted down their connection. He didn't think Mox would care much, either way. "Ready to play, puppy? I'm feeling peckish."
Danny grinned back at him. It was a bright smile, too bright. It showed too many teeth. He opened his jacket and drew out the stake. "Let's roll."
At the end it was close. Danny and Moxley were going; Takeshita had Claudio, he was glowing with something that might have been magic; it took all four of the rest of JAS to get Regal down. Mox tossed Danny aside like so much paper, grinning that bright blood-red grin.
Danny lay crumpled on the ground. Eyes half-open, gritted teeth bared. His breath was shallow. A wounded animal, ready for the hunt to descend.
"Hold him," Mox ordered. It rang through Wheeler's mind like the final bell. "You think this makes me want you less?" he asked Danny, bending his head all the way to Danny's soft, pulsing throat.
Danny coughed. Bright red blood spattered across Mox's face.
"You're gonna taste so good," Mox told him. "I hope you fight me all the way down."
Wheeler's hands curled around Danny's shoulders, holding him. He could feel Danny bucking beneath him, trying to get away. All his allies were too far away, even Takeshita. It was just the two of them. The three of them, counting Wheeler.
From the distance, that familiar low gravel voice, and those steady broad shoulders, Eddie Kingston cutting through the stadium dark: "Oh, I don't think so, Moxley." Eddie Kingston, his mouth set, his face wet with tears; his fingers wrapped around a wooden stake, so tight the knuckles were white.
It was over, after that.
It should have been over for Wheeler, too. But Eddie carried him out.
-
Danny bought a house in Buffalo, and now Wheeler is in the basement. Wheeler thought it was pretty impressive that Danny bought a house, you know, in this economy. Even if it's out in the Buffalo burbs.
Not that Wheeler knows much about the house. He knows a lot about the basement. It's a square area, maybe six hundred square feet. The floor is concrete, but there's a thin beige carpet over most of it. There's water damage in one corner, probably left over from the previous owner.
There's a bed opposite the water damaged corner, and a little bathroom with a shower and a toilet with a cistern with a crack in the lid. The bed is a double. The sheets are Target-sale blue. The pillows are always flat, even if you stack them on top of each other.
There's a washer and a dryer under the plywood stairs. Danny likes to run them at night. Wheeler usually pretends to be in the bathroom so Danny can do his laundry in peace. Danny doesn’t even pretend to want to see him.
It's a boring place to have spent two weeks. Danny won't even talk to him. Not that Wheeler can blame him.
All six hundred feet have some kind of radiant metal cast over them. Like a net. It. means Wheeler can't get in anyone's head, no matter how hard he tries. And he tried, at the beginning. He'd have cracked Danny's skull like an egg. He imagined it so vividly: he knew how it would taste.
Hobbs and Starks are vampires, too. They’re Danny’s friends. They held Wheeler down when nobody else could. He was so angry. He would have ripped their throats out with his teeth. There would have been blood everywhere.
He's not angry anymore. He’s not anything, anymore. He wondered if that was part of the warding, too, but he doesn’t think it is.
He thinks, maybe this is how he will always be. Would that be the worst thing? To be alone in his own head?
(Yes.)
Danny puts the mug down on the table. Blood sloshes up to the rim but not over it. He's always looked strong but he looks stronger now. There’s a scar under his eye that you can only see in a certain light, and a big one, on his shoulder, that you can’t miss. "It's cow," he says. "You hate cow, right?"
"Yeah," Wheeler says. There are no scars on him. He’s a vampire. He heals fast. "It tastes like preservatives. Thank you."
"You don't deserve it," Danny says.
"I know," Wheeler says. "But thank you, anyway."
Danny pauses. Considering. But he screws up his mouth and paces nervously in a sideways circle. He never turns his back on Wheeler anymore. "Take said you want to talk to me."
"I-"
Two weeks. He's been more or less conscious for the past eight days. Danny's spoken maybe five sentences to him, and they were all about the qualities of different types of animal blood. Some butcher in Buffalo thinks a Carrie situation is about to ensue.
"You and Takeshita. You're -"
Danny's mouth flattens into a thin line. He rocks forward onto his toes, then back onto his heels. "If that's what this is about, I'll save you the time. Yes. Me and Takeshita. He doesn't think I'm -"
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
"That's not what I meant." He thinks about it all the time. He thinks about it without stopping. But he doesn’t think about it like that. He just wants to - touch the edges of it. Like an old photograph. But he would leave his fingerprints all over it. He is doing that now.
"Okay," Danny says. "Because you don't get to have an opinion about who I'm sleeping with." He stalks towards Wheeler, grimly. "You did as much of that as you're ever going to."
"Why am I here?" Wheeler asks. "I could have been anywhere else. I could be in the dirt."
"You wanna? We can make it happen." Danny looks brittle. Like Wheeler could reach out with one hand and topple him, and Danny would break into a hundred little pieces.
Wheeler doesn't want to reach out with one hand and topple him.
"Danny," Wheeler says. The name feels thick in his mouth. Heavy.
"Eddie felt bad. Okay? Eddie felt bad because he was friends with Moxley and he didn't want you to die out there. So now you're here."
"Danny," Wheeler says, again.
"You were my friend," Danny says, fists balling up at his sides, eyes as bright as a stadium light. "And then you weren't. And I - used to think I was a good judge of character. That's it. That's all."
Wheeler swallows.
"Any more questions, Wheeler?" Danny snaps. "Or is that enough?"
I'm sorry, Wheeler thinks. But it's like Mox is leaning over his shoulder, like Mox’s hand is on the back of his neck. He can't say it. It won’t come out.
Instead, hands shaking, eyes on that one threadbare spot on the carpet next to Danny's shoes: "Are you safe with him?"
Danny stops. Wheeler wonders if it's like pressing a bruise, but Danny is shaking, too. "Yes," Danny says. Fierce, a fire. "If you ever ask me that again I'll stake you myself."
"Okay," Wheeler says. He would have said it about Mox. He did say it about Mox.
-
At first there was a killing rage. He was feral, from the loss of his sire and grandsire, his whole line. He couldn't speak words, he could only drag his hands into claws, his teeth into their sharp points; an alien, guttural yell of grief.
In some ways it was second nature. He was used to his body not belonging to him. He was used to his mind acting absent of his own will.
He doesn't remember much of it. There are marks in the walls from battering at them. He remembers, in flashes - Takeshita's hands around his wrists, holding them away from him; Danny with a crossbow pointed at his shoulder: Eddie wrapping him in a big bear hug, holding him down.
Dreaming about Mox. Screaming for him.
Once he made it out of the basement and up the stairs; lunging for Danny because he smelled like fresh blood. He got his hands into Danny’s shoulders and Danny went still underneath him, flat and terrified, and it was enough to knock Wheeler onto his own heels.
Takeshita caught him with a fistful of silver. It felt like a gift. To feel nothing; to lay down quietly; to go with grace.
-
When he remembers it - being turned, being one of them - it's a haze, mostly. Mox's thoughts overriding his own thoughts, and when it's not Mox's it's Bryan's, or Regal's. Claudio, too. But he came at the very end. Mostly it was just the first three.
It's not like he didn't want it. He did.
He wanted to be the best. He wanted to be one of them. He wanted -
He wanted to belong.
Look where that got you, kid.
Of course he feels bad about it. Of course he does. Look at what he did. Look at who he did it to.
-
Eddie comes by a lot. He might be living in the house, actually, with Danny and Takeshita. He’s here all the time. He and Danny snipe at each other near-constantly but they make each other smile, too.
Wheeler wouldn't know if Eddie is in the house. Wheeler only knows the pile of mats in the corner, and the big scar on his shoulder, and the way the foundations shake when it rains.
They don't talk about anything. They talk about old Japanese wrestling. Eddie cracks the window so he can smoke in the basement. It's not like Wheeler is using his lungs.
They don't leave Wheeler alone very much. It's okay. Wheeler wouldn't leave Wheeler alone, either.
So someone is usually with him. Usually it feels bad to be looked at like that. But it's not like Wheeler doesn't deserve it.
Eddie doesn't talk about Mox. It hurts, the absence of him. But the presence of him hurt, too. It's like a great weight has been lifted. But all his bones adjusted to carry it. Now that aches, too.
-
After the killing rage came the cold clarity. Like a hangover: the slow trickle of reason returning, realising you did too many shots and told your friend you hate his girlfriend right in front of her.
Everything was inevitable when he was doing it. He followed Mox, but he was excited about it, too. He wanted the taste of blood in his mouth. He wanted to be the strongest; he wanted to dig his teeth in, to watch - Danny - buckle beneath him. He wanted it so much he couldn’t think of anything else.
It's only now that he sees that part of him, a tiny part, was screaming the whole time.
That doesn't mean -
He should have listened to it. He should have been brave.
It aches to be without them. He wishes it didn’t. He wishes he didn’t miss them all the time. He wishes he didn’t long to be the person he was with them. That person was so sure.
That person never made any choices.
If Wheeler could, he would go back in time; he would take the stake from Danny’s hand and drive it into his own chest. Then he would be light as air. Then he would be flying.
But he did not take the stake from Danny’s hand. He just stood there while Danny did it. And then Eddie carried him out.
-
Wheeler woke up, after the rage had passed. Like a headache, like a bad match. He woke up alive, in the little blue bed beside the washing machine and the dryer, looking up into the plaster ceiling and the recessed lightbulbs.
Where the fuck am I?
Danny shrugged. His arms crossed over his chest; his shoulders bony and pale in the basement light. There was a livid slash across the right one, raised and angry. "Good news for Kingston. You wanna eat me, or are you feeling civilized?"
Wheeler's mouth tasted like grave dirt. "Fuck," he said. He shook his hands and chains rattled. Iron. They draped all the way down over the sides of the bed, set into thick rings anchored in the carpet.
Ricky Starks came up to the bedside. "We were worried about you," he said. "Thought you might have been one of the bad guys after all."
Wheeler blinked. His eyes were dry, too. It felt like scraping their lids together. "Mox," he said.
"Try again," Danny said.
A howl escaped him. Like an injured wolf. Danny lunged for his left side and Starks his right. That felt familiar. It came to him: they had been holding him. He was used to being held. He was used to being pinned down, restrained.
This was just his body. Relief washed over him, and he braced himself for the wall that always came -
But there was no wall. The thoughts were all unhindered. There was no hand reaching into his mind. No Mox, no Bryan.
Just -
Fuck you, Mox, he thought, like testing a loose tooth. Waiting for the dampening force of Mox's mind to settle over his own. Nothing. Just the thought, alone.
Oh, fuck.
"Oh, fuck," Wheeler said. "Danny - Danny, I-"
"Save it," Danny snapped. "They're dust and I'll put you down with them. Watch me."
Wheeler’s teeth clicked shut. His teeth tasted like blood. He remembered tearing - Danny - open. He remembered - the sound of it. Enormous. Unsurvivable. “I won’t,” he said.
“Good,” Danny said. He looked, Wheeler could see it now -
He looked so different. Wheeler had seen him with different eyes before (with Mox’s eyes). But now he was Danny, and it was naked fear in his face, even though Wheeler was the one tied down. Danny was never scared of anything. Danny would fight a fucking tiger.
Danny Garcia, scared of Wheeler - not just angry, but terrified -
Konosuke Takeshita put his hand on Danny's shoulder. He murmured something quiet, in Japanese, too faint for Wheeler to hear it.
Danny nodded and said something back. His accent was atrocious. But he leaned into Takeshita's touch; his face softened, the panic slipping from his eyes; he let Takeshita lead him away.
-
"I tried," Takeshita says. He is sitting on the couch, and Wheeler is sitting on the edge of the bed. They have been working out together; Takeshita has a good bodyweight routine. Takeshita has offered to do some floor work with him but Wheeler isn't going to risk touching him. Everyone seems to think Wheeler is going to get better, except for Wheeler. Wheeler is the only one who knows what Wheeler did. Those two things are related.
"Thanks for doing it," Wheeler says.
“He wants you here,” Takeshita says. “We could have taken you to other places. You would be safe there, too.”
"Then why won't he talk to me?" But Wheeler carries the guilt like a stone. Of course he knows why Danny won't speak to him.
Takeshita stretches out his long legs. His kneecaps are as big as the rest of him. Wheeler images Danny touching him; he imagines Danny’s hands on Takeshita, and Takeshita holding him in return. He thinks Danny would smile. Not the bloody smile, the one with too many teeth; the quieter smile, the one Wheeler only ever saw backstage, out of the ring.
Maybe this makes Wheeler honest: the image of Danny and Takeshita, the image of a Danny who is - bright, laughing, bold. A sharp contrast with the pale, drawn Danny Wheeler sees now. Danny who went to war. A war Wheeler dragged him into.
Takeshita is nothing like Wheeler. Takeshita would never have done what Wheeler did. He would have died first.
"I wanted to hurt him," Wheeler says. "I knew he didn't want it and I did it anyway. Maybe because he didn't want it."
Takeshita doesn't speak. But he doesn't look away. He is so beautiful. Looking at him you don’t think anyone could drag him anywhere. Takeshita has never even been tempted.
"It felt good," Wheeler says. It pours out of him like bile. "They wanted him first. I wanted to prove that I was better. I told myself that. I think I just wanted to be in control."
"You weren't?" Takeshita asks.
"I-" Wheeler says. His stomach hurts. "I was. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to turn him."
"Why?"
"Because -" Wheeler's head hurts. He can't think. It feels like when Mox was in his head. But Mox isn't in his head. Mox is dust. "I -"
"It's okay," Takeshita says. "I trained for a long time, you know. Not just in wrestling. In this," he spreads his palms wide, indicating the width of Wheeler's prison, his home, "as well. There is a lot to learn."
Wheeler's mouth is dry. He swallows.
"I am good at resisting," Takeshita says. He taps the side of his own skull. "But it was very difficult, with them."
"I bit Danny," Wheeler says, flatly. "That was -"
"Rape," Takeshita says. The word sounds different in his mouth. Blunt and oddly-angled. Overripe fruit.
"Yes," Wheeler says. Chin up, head up. Be a man. Take the hit. Don’t think about the way Danny moved. Or do think about it. Think about it forever, without stopping. "Why do you want me to get better after what I did to him?"
Takeshita turns his hands, palm up, on his thighs. He says, “Why do you want to get worse?”
-
Eddie called him "pup" once. Not even puppy. Just - casually, in a sentence. Wheeler doesn't remember the sentence. But he remembers freaking out. He tried to climb the wall and get out through the window, even though it was a tiny little window, twice as wide as it was tall, and there were bars on it besides.
Eddie would never - Eddie was always kind. Always. Even when Bryan was daring him not to be. Even when Mox was daring him not to be.
But Wheeler was hot with panic, trying to dig his way out of the iron grille, even though it hurt his hands to touch it. He couldn’t even imagine how stupid it looked. He wasn’t in his body. He was just -
"Shit," Eddie said. But he didn't try to reach for Wheeler. He didn't even try to talk to him: Wheeler's blood was rushing, so loud, in his ears, he probably wouldn't have heard anything Eddie tried to say.
Instead it was Danny who came, looking tired and grim in sweatpants and an oversized shirt with kanji on it. "Some of us are trying to nap," he said. "You gonna come down from there?"
"I don't -" Wheeler said, crammed up between the ceiling and the window and the wall, fear pulsing in his chest and rising in his throat, the feeling that in a moment, in a heartbeat, his feelings wouldn't be his to feel at all -
"Okay," Danny said. He stretched out along the couch, his eyes steady on Wheeler's face. "I'll wait."
Wheeler made a soft animal sound. It felt torn from his chest.
"You want me to get Takeshita instead?"
Wheeler couldn't remember what it was to make a choice. It felt like a long forgotten memory. "I-"
"Okay," Danny said. He took his phone out of his pocket. "WiFi down here sucks, you should really have said something. I would have moved the router."
"We have WiFi?"
"Yeah. The password's 'Appreciate Jericho', but the i's are 1s."
"Oh," Wheeler said.
"Mm hm," Danny said, scrolling through his phone. "You still like those cat videos?"
"Bryan says they're usually fake." Wheeler swallowed. He was getting a crick in his neck. He felt stupid but not stupid enough to move. "Bryan said."
"Okay," Danny said. "No cat videos." But he didn't leave, even though it took Wheeler three and a half hours to come down from the ceiling, and the battery on his phone died.
Wheeler's fucking dangerous, even now. Even crammed into a corner of the ceiling. That's what they made him. That's what he made himself.
Now they won’t even let him -
He just wants to be -
Anything. Not this. Please.
-
He has this dream. It's not a memory, but it might as well be. He’s standing in front of Moxley and Bryan and Regal. He’s trying to say no but his mouth can’t say it. His mind can’t even think the word.
Moxley is laughing. Moxley is laughing and his hand is on Wheeler’s shoulder, and then his fingers are in Wheeler’s mouth, and then -
If it were a dream he would wake up.
-
Trent came to see him. Not Chuck or Orange or Stat. Just Trent, ducking his shaved head beneath the doorframe, cramming himself down the stairs and saying, "Jesus, kid. You really got yourself in a mess, huh?"
"Fuck you," Wheeler said, but he was too tired to really mean it.
"They'll come by," Trent said. Maybe he was trying to be nice. "Eventually. They're getting used to it."
"Congratulations, your kid is a vampire?"
"Something like that." Trent shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. "You're lucky, you know. It's been a whole mess for the rest of us, covering this up."
Wheeler choked. "Sorry to inconvenience you," he said.
"I'll get over it eventually," Trent said. "Look, you know I gotta ask. The spooky mind control."
"You wanna know if I asked for it."
"Yeah," Trent said. His big shoulders mantled, underneath the swinging light bulb. "I guess that is what I'm here for."
"Don't feel bad or anything," Wheeler said. "You bullying me didn't leave me wide open for the dark side. I wasn't like, already brainwashed. It was my idea."
Trent flinched. "Well," he said.
"Okay," Wheeler said.
"All of it?" Trent asked.
I don't know, Wheeler thought. But he'd done it, hadn't he? Whatever he'd thought hadn't mattered. Because he'd done it. "Yeah," he said. "All of it."
-
They wanted Danny. Maybe he wanted Danny. It was hard to tell. It all blurred together in his head.
He knew what he was doing.
If he didn't know what he was doing - if they did all of it to him -
He wanted Danny, before. Not like Mox and Bryan. He wanted Danny because they were friends. They were competitors. He wanted to beat Danny, and he wanted to be with Danny. And sometimes he wanted to beat Danny.
But always Danny, the person. Bright and alive and fierce. The same way he knew Danny wanted to beat him.
Sometimes he thought about Danny the other way. Of course he did. Danny was so goddamn annoying.
So maybe it was his idea.
They wanted Danny, so he wanted Danny. Danny was hurt.
Wheeler wasn't hurt, was he? Wheeler did the hurting.
He signed up for it.
He did.
He remembers that, at least.
-
Danny and Takeshita do indy shows together, when they get time. Usually Eddie takes over. Sometimes Starks and Hobbs, but it's harder for them, because they come from farther away than the Tri-State Area.
It's Takeshita who told Wheeler. Not Danny. He showed Wheeler the footage from one of Danny's matches.
Something happened to Danny in the big fight, at the end. Wheeler didn't see it happen but he can see it now, when Danny moves. His leg isn't right. Maybe it'll never be right.
If Wheeler turned him, it would be perfect. It would fix itself immediately.
But Danny doesn't want that. And Wheeler doesn't, either. Now, in this mind, which he thinks of, maybe incorrectly, as his own, he knows that Danny's blood would taste like acid; it would bleed its way through whatever is left of his soul.
"Why did you save me?" Wheeler is looking up at the popcorn ceiling, listening to his own heartbeat. "You could have left me there. I was trying to hurt you."
Eddie is careful when he touches Wheeler. He keeps his hands where Wheeler can see them, and moves very slowly, like Wheeler is injured. Now, he has one hand on Wheeler's knee, and it doesn't make Wheeler want to crawl out of his own skin. "I am so fucking sorry."
Wheeler is sipping from his mug of reheated cow's blood. It tastes like Wheeler's high school science classroom; formaldehyde. He looks down into it. "What for?"
"I knew about Mox," Eddie says, quietly. "For a long time. He told me - I told him, of course I'd have his back. He was my friend."
Wheeler says, "He loved you."
"Did he?" Eddie shrugs. "When Garcia told me what he did I didn't hesitate. I knew he wasn't lying. I knew it in my bones. Right away."
"I felt it," Wheeler says. "How much he loved you." It used to feel good, being around Eddie. He liked it so much.
He likes it, still.
"Well, he should have -" Eddie shakes his head. "He hurt you. That's what I'm trying to say. They all did. I thought it wasn't - I thought you wanted it."
Wheeler says, "I did. I wanted it."
Eddie says, "He couldn't get in my head. You know that? The others could, but not Mox. Cause of how we knew each other. So listen when I'm telling you: I saw it, and I'm sorry."
"You shouldn't be," Wheeler says. "I don't deserve it."
Eddie looks so sad. Hollowed out, cracked open. "But you do," he says. "That's the thing. You really fuckin' do."
Wheeler says, “You were always kind to me.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Eddie says. “But I fucking should have been.”
-
At the last second, it was Danny and Mox, and Wheeler between them.
Wheeler looked at Danny, and Danny looked at him. He looked at Wheeler the way he'd looked at Wheeler that last time he tried to get in Danny's head. Like Danny was screaming.
Wheeler stepped aside. He moved out of the way. He could have done anything. He could have wrestled the stake from Danny's hand. He could have pushed Danny to the ground.
But he didn't. He stepped away. He stood still.
Danny put the stake right in Mox's chest, and Mox turned to dust.
-
It’s raining outside. The sound batters the roof, and the foundations of the house creak. It’s cold but Wheeler doesn’t feel it. He just notices it. Like before. He used to see things, all the time. He used to see himself, too. From the outside, just moving.
Danny clatters down the stairs and stops in front of the washing machine, chest heaving. He’s wearing shorts and a t-shirt and bright white sneakers.
Wheeler says, “Hi.”
"I would have done it," Danny says, abruptly. The laces of his shoes trail across the carpet. "That's why you're here. Because I would have done it if Eddie hadn't stopped me."
It doesn’t sting. Wheeler shrugs. "I think you should have."
"I know," Danny says. "You think one of them ever thought that? For a minute?"
"I-"
Danny looks away. The marks in his neck have healed. He just looks like some guy. A nice guy. The kind of guy Wheeler would look twice at, in a club, before he started going to clubs to look for guys that Mox and Bryan would like. If there is a Wheeler, before that. "I asked him," Danny says. “Moxley.” He spits the name like a curse. “He told me you did it and I believed him. He told me you were the same person - you were one of them, you were exactly like them - and I believed that, too.”
It hurts. It's true, isn't it? It hurts anyway. It hurts like a wolf ripping your chest open and tearing out your vital organs. Like seeing them all over the floor.
Wheeler closes his hands over each other. "But I was."
"I trusted you and then I didn't. You know what that's like? All at once. The world was safe and now it isn't. You were my friend and then you were - everything you'd ever done with me, for me. It became something you did to me."
Wheeler is shaking. I'm sorry. He wants to say it. But what use would it do? What are two words when it comes to that?
"Take told me," Danny says. "That they were in your head, too. I asked you. You didn't - why didn't you tell me? You could have told me."
Wheeler says, "It was my fault. I did it."
Danny says, "I'm not saying you didn't."
"Okay," Wheeler says. "Then it doesn't matter, does it?"
Danny wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. "It does. It matters to me."
Wheeler swallows. His teeth taste like cow's blood, chemical and weak. "I chose it. I asked for it."
Danny drops to one knee. His hand extends. His warm, living hand. His soft fingertips.
Wheeler's eyes water. The drum of Danny's pulse thunders in his ears. He could lean forward, and -
He doesn't. He doesn't. He holds himself very still.
"Did you like it?" Danny's voice, like clear cool water running over a fountain in a garden somewhere, far away from here. His eyes search Wheeler's face, and back away.
"Yes," Wheeler says. Stand up straight, puppy. "Yeah."
Danny's eyes flicker shut. A shudder ripples through his body. "Tell me the truth. You owe me that."
"I can't," Wheeler says.
"You can."
"Some of it," Wheeler says. "Okay? Some of it."
Danny jerks. Sharp fear lurches into his face before he takes a breath and throttles it down. "Some."
The parts where I could pretend you wanted me, too. The parts where I could pretend it was just me and you.
"I wanted to be better than you." Wheeler swallows. "When you were hurt. They liked that." Not me.
Danny bites his lip. He is going to leave. Wheeler can see it in the set of his shoulders.
But -
"Just because you chose one thing doesn't mean you chose all the others," Danny says, finally. Quietly, with determination. Like he is pulling himself through barbed wire, through broken glass. How could Wheeler look away, when Danny is giving him this?
Wheeler's eyes are wet. The world shimmers in front of him. Danny shimmers, in front of him. "You don't mean that."
Danny says, "I remember what he felt like, in my head." His fingers still in front of Wheeler: a question.
Wheeler leans forward. Please.
Danny rubs his thumb over Wheeler's cheek. The touch of him. Wheeler wants to turn his face and sink his teeth into the thick vein in Danny's wrist. Wheeler wants to turn his face and press his mouth to Danny's mouth. Wheeler wants -
"I didn't want to," Wheeler says, breaking apart, like a fucked up table, like Bryan when Eddie got the stake in him. "I hated that you were hurt. I hate that I hurt you. I want to make it up to you. But I don't know how."
Danny's breath is warm. "Me either," he says. “But I’ll unlock the door now, if you like.”
-
It’s raining outside. Wheeler has heard rain from the basement, and seen the little drops clinging in the corner, to the damp patch of carpet that peels back to reveal the wet concrete.
Climbing the stairs felt strange, unreal. Like making a choice; like choosing something. But Danny’s back was broad and strong in front of him, and he looked at it and felt his chest ache.
It takes Wheeler’s eyes a moment to adjust to the light. Rain streaks down the windows, which are edged by peeling paint. The rain is beautiful. The light is beautiful. The long fingers of the rain; the light through the trees; the soft glow from the road. He stares at the glass; it’s smudged, imperfect. He could stare at it forever.
It’s a nice living room. Well, not nice, exactly. But a living room that looks lived in. There’s a couch and a TV and a low scuffed-up coffee table, and a stack of sneakers in the corner on top of a panel of newspaper; Danny must be cleaning them.
Eddie Kingston is loitering by the other window. There are sounds from the kitchen; maybe Takeshita.
On the couch there are two men. One tall, one shorter. One in dark denim, the other in light.
“Oh,” Wheeler says. He wants to turn around, go back down the stairs. Dig in, stay there. Not come out.
Chuck Taylor rises to his feet. “Hey, Wheeler.” His eyes are big and deep. He looks ten years older. There’s gray in his hair and a rip in the collar of his Resident Evil t-shirt. “We should have come earlier.”
Wheeler says, “Fuck you.”
“Hey,” Danny starts, but Chuck puts out his hand, so it stops Danny in the middle of his chest.
“It’s fine,” Chuck says. “Hey. I’m fuckin’ sorry.”
“I left,” Wheeler says. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“Bullshit,” Chuck says, and then he’s crossing the floor, in those big long strides of his.
Eddie says, “Chuckie.”
But Chuck doesn’t touch Wheeler. He doesn’t do anything. He just stops, a foot away, and looks at Wheeler. The shape of his face is so familiar. The warmth of his eyes. The lines around his mouth, though they’ve deepened. “We’ll go, if you want. Say it.”
Wheeler glares. He bares his teeth. He says nothing. What would he even say?
“Okay,” Chuck says. He’s so close.
Wheeler could - reach out -
The soft sound of sneakers on the carpet. Orange Cassidy, with no sunglasses; Orange Cassidy, with limp hair, looking down at Wheeler’s feet. His shoulder against Chuck’s arm. “Missed you,” he says.
“I-” Wheeler says. Chuck's stubble is rough against his fingers. Chuck doesn't move. He just lets Wheeler stand there and touch his face. "You're here."
"Hi," Chuck says. Familiar crooked mouth. Familiar sweetness in his eyes. The regret is familiar, too.
"Hi," Wheeler says. His face is hot. He can feel Danny's heart beating behind him, hear it like he can hear all the blood in the room, rushing.
"Kiddo," Chuck says.
"I made a mess," Wheeler says. Chuck's shoes are neatly tied. Double knotted. He wonders if Chuck's hands shook while he tied them.
"Nah," Orange says. His voice is low. Barely conversational. "The mess was already made. You just got stuck."
"I don't think that makes it much better," Wheeler says.
Orange sighs. He tips his head up, so his bright, piercing, eyes catch Wheeler's and hold them. "Yeah. Probably not."
Wheeler considers. And then he takes one step, and the next. It is strange to put out his own arms. Stranger still to find that Orange and Chuck want to be inside them.
He puts his head on Chuck's shoulder, and his hand on the back of Orange’s neck. Around him is the world. Still, it moves.