Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The nightmare starts like it always does.

Thick, fleecy clouds drift aimlessly across the sky, sometimes veiling the sun—but not enough to dim the clear, blue expanse. It’s mid-afternoon, school has just let out, and students pour en masse from the exit, Robin Arellano among them.

After a parting nod and a quick, toothy grin in Finney’s direction, Robin starts on his way home, his pace unhurried and calm, his reputation already cemented as someone you should know better than to provoke lest you want the hard ridge of his knuckles to make nice with your face. (Most people don’t.)

Minutes later, after crossing the street in front of the convenience store kids from their school like to frequent (including Pinball Vance, who everyone knows to avoid when he’s in the middle of trying to break his own record), Robin cuts through an empty back lot, turning a corner where a black van awaits with the word Abracadabra painted across its side in thin, stylized, green-and-blue letters. He thinks nothing of it at first, until he goes to walk past it and a man outfitted as a magician dressed head-to-toe in black, complete with a felt top hat, a flowy cape, and a pair of square sunglasses, moves to intercept him, a slew of black balloons erupting from the back of the van. The last thing he sees before utter blackness engulfs him is the man’s wicked smile and a steel can of spray coming for his face—

—Then nothing, for what feels like an eternity...surrounded by a darkness so thick that it’s like wading through quicksand, only impossible to see; a wide expanse of obscurity that is as unnerving as it is confusing.

Until Robin suddenly springs from the shadows and seizes Finney’s arms, chipped fingernails digging sharply into his skin. “Look,” he rasps around the torn, jagged strips of skin marring his throat, blood oozing from the grooves gouged into his neck like a dark red choker. “Look what he’s done to me—what he’ll do.” His voice is a hoarse whisper, like someone wrapped a cord around his neck and twisted and twisted until his trachea collapsed.

Choking back a sob, Finney squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, trying to tug his arms free even as the grip tightens to an uncomfortable degree.

“Look!”

Finney startles awake, his elbow slipping off of the edge of his desk, a sharp jolt of pain radiating from where his chin smacks against the hard, smooth surface. There’s a desperate scream lodged deeply in his throat, trapped in his vocal cords, and his pupils are large enough to swallow the brown of his eyes as he looks wildly around, taking in the various faces staring back at him.

A ripple of smothered laughter, suffused with stinging ridicule, sweeps through the classroom. Nothing like a good ol’ nightmare to send his peers into a fit of guffaws and snickers.

Mrs. Pearson casts the classroom an admonishing look before shifting her attention to Finney, a concerned frown on her face. “Are you all right, Mr. Blake?”

Before he can answer her, however, Donna leans toward him and whispers, worry in her tone, “You’re bleeding, Finney.”

It’s only after she points it out that he realizes blood is dribbling from his nose. With a muttered, “thanks,” Finney tilts his head back and pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to stem the blood flow. “May I be excused, Mrs. Pearson?” He breathes through his mouth, feeling sick to his stomach.

Mrs. Pearson inclines her head, watching in worried silence as Finney hastily gathers his books and bolts from the classroom, nearly tripping on his way to the bathroom. More laughter escorts him from the room, but he doesn’t care; his only thought is to find a safe space in which he can have his mental breakdown out of sight of anyone who will laugh and point at his tears, a place no one will bother him so he can fall to pieces unattended—hidden in the last stall with his knees tucked under his chin and his arms wrapped tightly around himself.

Once he slips into his preferred stall and slams the door shut, locking it with a flick of his wrist, Finney clambers on top of the toilet and crouches there, waiting for the storm to pass—if it’ll pass. Tears burn his eyes, his stomach twisting into a ball as a wave of nausea washes over him...as the nightmare returns with a vengeance, dark and terrible, clutching at his heart with icy fingers.

Seeing Robin like that, a sickly gray with sunken eyes and skin overlayed with slashes and cuts and bruises, masking the usually warm golden tone of his arms in shades of red, purple, and gray, makes something like bile want to crawl up his throat, hot and bitter and stomach-churning. His friend (his only friend save for his younger sister) has always seemed larger than life, strong and fearless and more than willing to face down guys twice his size to prove a point...But that macabre version of Robin Arellano is anything but.

Finney brings his clenched fist to his mouth and bites down hard, trying to stifle the scream caught in his throat, on the verge of escaping. He succeeds, mostly, except for the muffled cry that punches through his gritted teeth. God, no. Not today...Or ever. Please. Buzz will never let him live it down if he finds out, nor will Matt or Matty for that matter.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, screaming silently into his fist as tears spill down his cheeks and cold shivers wrack his body, before he hears the unmistakable sound of a hinge squeaking followed by the deliberate opening of a door, heralding the arrival of his personal tormentors.

“Oh, Finney,” the familiar, jeering tenor calls from the door, too-casual, almost sing-song, as if looking out for a friend. But Buzz is no friend of his; friends don’t punch you in the stomach for no reason or stomp on your leg when you’re down. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, Finney. We know you’re there.” The heavy thump of a closed fist making contact with a stall door echoes through the bathroom, a burst of childish laughter ensuing.

He flinches away from the noise, his teeth leaving half-formed crescent marks on the skin of his hand as he coils into an even tighter ball, willing them to go away.

Exhaustion is already beginning to invade his body, spreading into his muscles where they’ve grown taut from the fear of discovery. He’s just so tired of it all, tired of having to pretend everything is normal and that he’s not experiencing total mental deterioration like his mom and so very close to giving up. Tired of having to tip-toe around his dad, of having to clean up after him when he goes on a drinking binge, which is pretty much all the time now. If not for Gwen, he probably would have up and abandoned the man years ago, become a street kid who didn’t have to think about school or his future. (School lost its shine long ago, when he’d taken his first fist to the mouth for looking too...girly? At least that had been the gist of it from what he can remember. He wouldn’t even bother showing up if Robin wasn’t around to make him laugh, to give him something to look forward to rather than a night of avoiding his dad’s drunken bouts of rage.)

“Get out here, Blake!” That sounds like Matty, and he sounds past the point of playful—like he just wants to get this over with. Finney can relate. “We’ll go easy on you, promise—”

The door to the bathroom suddenly slams open, hard enough to hit the wall, and Finney nearly falls off the toilet with a startled yelp.

“What are you dipshits doing?”

Robin.

“N, Nothing,” Buzz grits out, sounding about as sullen as a three-year-old forced to kiss his favorite swing goodbye.

“Nothing, huh?” He can practically hear Robin cracking his knuckles, the air thick with the threat of violence. “Well, then you chucklefucks won’t mind vacatin’ the premises, yeah?” Finney holds his breath, straining his ears, his heart knocking around inside his chest like a bundle of clothes in a dryer. It’s pounding so hard and fast that he can all but feel it in his ears, making his head hurt.

There’s some mumbling and a groan or two but after a moment, he hears footsteps retreating, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing and then Robin’s scoff. (He clearly isn’t surprised by their cowardice.

He never is.)

Finney waits and listens, holding himself so stiff that his legs are beginning to cramp, refusing to budge an inch—until Robin’s soft, “Finn, you can come out now. They’re gone,” sounds on the other side of the door. Dashing the tears from his cheeks with his shirtsleeve, he slowly lowers first one leg and then the other to the floor, reaching to unlock the stall door and gently pushing it open...only to reveal Robin standing in a loose, relaxed manner on the other side, shoulder-length dark hair tucked beneath his signature bandana. “Hey, you.” He’s grinning at Finney, pleased as punch to see him.

His grin falters, however, when he notices how red and swollen Finney’s eyes are, the consequences of having a good cry. “You okay, Finn? Do I need to teach those dipshits another lesson in manners?”

Finney swallows down another useless sob and launches himself at Robin, hugging him tightly, relief flooding him at the sight of his very alive, very larger-than-life friend. With the nightmare fresh in his mind, he can’t help but cling desperately to him; Finney can’t even begin to tell you how many times he’s dreamt of Robin being dragged away by some creepy magician and turning into a bloodied specter straight out of a horror movie. How many times he’s watched his best friend die, helpless and petrified.

The only person who knows is Gwen but only because his earsplitting screams once jolted her out of a sound sleep—her words—and she refused to leave him alone until he told her what was wrong. (Little sisters can be annoying like that.)

“Finn?” Robin asks hesitantly, his arms slipping around Finney’s waist. He leans into his hug. “What’s brought this on, huh? Not that I’m complainin’.”

“Sorry,” Finney mutters into the crook of Robin’s neck, simply breathing him in, uncaring of how this may look from an outsider’s point of view. Anyone can walk in at any moment, can see him embracing another boy, but he doesn’t care. He’s flagging, too exhausted to pay the fear of discovery any mind—so exhausted, in fact, that his knees threaten to buckle, struggling to keep him upright, which just makes him cling even tighter to Robin...who doesn’t seem to mind.

“It’s cool, compa,” says Robin, his tone indulgent, “I don’t mind kicking ass for you. But you’re going to have to learn to stand up for yourself one of these days.”

“One day,” Finney agrees and pulls back, forcing a smile. It’s the kind of smile that looks half-assed, bearing a closer resemblance to a grimace, as though his lips refuse to cooperate. Robin notices—of course, he does—but he doesn’t say anything, merely nudges Finney’s arm with his elbow, his mien laid-back. “Hey, wanna ditch?”

He shouldn’t. If the school calls his dad, if the man ever finds out Finney ditched his last period, he’ll be in so much trouble...His dad would probably tan his hide with that belt he likes to keep on display (as a deterrent against bad behavior.) He may even go so far as to forbid him from seeing Robin again, especially if he ever witnesses them hugging. Because men don’t hug. But he can’t bring himself to care, not when Robin is here now, asking him to ditch, otherwise healthy and alive and injury-free. “Yeah.” His brown eyes are misty but warm and so, so happy. “Let’s ditch.”

With a whoop, Robin slings an arm around Finney’s shoulders and leads him from the bathroom and out into the empty hall, knowing exactly where to go to bypass the usual teachers who like to patrol the hallway in order to catch unsuspecting rule-breakers. Too bad for them, he’s an excellent pupil when it comes to rule-breaking 101. And Finney lets him take the lead, allowing himself to forget for the moment that something bad (evil) lingers on the horizon, waiting for the perfect opportunity to knock him silly and steal his best friend away. The man insists his dreams aren’t real, that they're not God’s way of preventing the bad from prevailing, but Finney disagrees; so does Gwen, who understands him in ways no one can or ever will.

If he’s dreaming it, then one way or another it’ll come to pass. Evil is one of the strongest, most oppressive emotions one can encounter, after all—it corrupts and harms in equal measure.

But that evil, Finney thinks to himself as they sneak away from school, rejecting the thought with every fiber of his being, will not touch Robin.

Not now.

Not ever.