Work Text:
It’s too early.
The rational part of Nick’s brain knows this, knows that it’s been less than two weeks since he woke up from the coma being unpossessed put him into, two weeks since Willie came back to life. He’s still rail-thin because Caleb found nutrition boring, haunted by nightmares (and not just at night) because Caleb found torture fun. He finds eating hard, coherent speech harder, and sleep almost impossible. He’s got a slew of medical terms riddling his vocabulary that he didn’t know before—dissociation, aphasia, depression, anxiety, PTSD.
No official diagnoses yet, because the doctors are still “doing some tests” and “waiting to see how he recovers” and “trying to figure out what the fuck actually happened to him.” But that’s even more of a reason why it’s too early for him and Willie to go out on the town.
“You’ve been in bed for the better part of a fortnight,” Willie informed him this morning, like he didn’t know that, like the missed calls from Julie and sad looks from his dads and passing minutes on his bedroom clock weren’t eating him up inside. “Just come take a walk with me. Get some fresh air, some exercise—we can go down to Julie’s so you can officially meet the band.”
At the time, the idea made Nick feel physically ill. The Molina house was blazoned in his memory as the place where Caleb found him, where he first took control of Nick’s body and mind and tried to use him to harm the nicest girl who ever lived.
He couldn’t go back there. Willie’s insistences that Julie forgave him 100%, that Julie didn’t even blame him in the first place, and that Julie’s eclectic band of ghost strays were in fact fun, loving people and not the dangerous, worthless, disgusting threats Caleb had always made them out to be did nothing to assuage Nick’s fears.
And yet here he is, walking slowly down the street away from his house. He’s honestly not sure how he got here—he doesn't remember Willie convincing him, or himself relenting, doesn’t remember telling his dads he was going out and not to worry about him because he would be totally fine. It’s entirely possible he dissociated through all that and Willie brought him out here through that ghost teleportation thing he does, but Nick doubts it. Willie knows what even the implication of Nick doing something against his will can do to him these days.
But anyway, they’re walking now—or, well, Nick’s walking, while Willie glides next to him, rolling on his skateboard at a glacial pace. Nick considers speeding up so he’s not holding Willie back so much, but it’s enough of a struggle not to get dizzy as it is. And then he considers apologizing for not being able to go faster, but he decides against it.
It’s only been two weeks, but he knows how heart-wrenchingly sad Willie gets when Nick tries to apologize for things that are in no way his fault.
“See?” Willie nudges him with an elbow; the touch sends shivers up Nick’s spine and leaves him aching for more of it. “This is nice, yeah?”
Nice? Nick guesses the weather’s pretty good—hot; it’s June; but not too humid, and the clouds are all fluffy and plump. He’s not entirely sure what time it is—or even really what day—but he thinks it must be work hours because the streets are practically abandoned. It’s just him and Willie and the summer sun.
Willie curves around to skate backwards, facing Nick. “We’ll take it slow, okay?” he promises. “Julie just wants to talk to you, see for herself you’re all right. You don’t have to meet the boys yet. Or even go inside.”
The boys. Nick shakes his head against a flash of memory—three boys, young and legendary, then dead, and him with them, and a searing pain in his stomach—
It must be the flashback that distracts him, because it’s easier to keep his footing if he stares at the ground, so there’s no other way he wouldn’t have seen the curb come up ahead of them before—
Willie, with a startled yelp, flips backwards, board over helmet, off the curb and lands flat on his back, hard. The sound that leaves his mouth following the tumble is one Nick has unfortunately come to be all too familiar with: the scream of someone in unimaginable pain.
“W-Willie?” Nick tries, but it’s like the words get stuck somewhere between his stomach and his throat. He tells himself to step forward, get down, make sure Willie’s okay—he could be bleeding, or something could be broken, he’s not a ghost anymore, he could be hurt—
His feet must not listen to his brain, because the next thing he knows, he’s stumbled back a few steps, and then he’s on the ground, curled up on the sidewalk, and Willie’s whimpering, but Nick’s vision is starting to white out at the edges, and then—
Then he’s trapped in a memory. Trapped, like he was for the eight months before Willie and Julie saved him, in his own mind.
His awareness went in and out a lot, in the early days. He’s not sure which memories are actually his, viewed through Caleb’s eyes, and which are Caleb’s filtered through their shared connection and into Nick’s mind while he slept. It doesn’t matter, really—Caleb kept him in a state of such pain—not physical, but soul-deep—that Nick can’t trust much of anything he thinks he remembers of his stolen life during his time possessed.
But he remembers this: His first lacrosse practice after Julie played the Orpheum. Caleb taking Nick’s muscle memory and his own aggression and channeling them into the scrimmage until he made moves Nick would’ve been too cautious to make.
A few minutes in, Tommy G. tackled him, and Caleb landed hard on his left side, shoulder sliding into the dirt. It wasn’t, all things considered, that bad of a fall—he was all padded up in his practice gear, and Nick’s instincts protected his head and vital organs from the worst of it.
But Caleb had been dead for ninety-four years. Caleb was a master of pain—of inflicting it and finding new, creative ways of using it to his advantage—but he hadn’t actually felt it, not more than a papercut or the ache in his jaw from Nick’s tendency to grind his teeth, since 1926.
Feeling it now, after almost a century of pure liquid power flowing through his veins, almost broke through Caleb’s defenses. If Nick had been stronger, more aware of himself, less terrified, maybe he could’ve taken the opportunity to wrench control back while Caleb was weak. But that wasn’t something Nick even knew he could think about. And more than anything, the pain made Caleb furious.
He dealt with it by transferring it, taking all the hurt of his physical form and directing it inward, until Nick’s soul burned with such agony that he blacked out for a month.
It was the longest stretch of time Nick lost while Caleb lived his life for him, so far as Nick can tell. And as Willie’s awful scream echoes in his head, Nick feels it all over again—the fury caused by someone feeling pain for the first time in decades, and the certainty that Nick is going to pay for it.
There was a very long time where Alex didn’t have an opinion about Nick.
He was the guy Julie liked, so he was Luke’s competition, and he was a jock and a guitar player, so Alex figured he was probably an asshole (because all guitar players are, at least in part, assholes, and yes, Luke and Bobby are examples, not exceptions). But it’s not like Julie talked to Alex or any of them about her high school crush, so most of what Alex knew about Nick came from Luke, and after something like thirty years (if you really want to get technical about it), Alex knows well enough to take everything Luke says with a pound of salt.
He was neutral, all through Luke’s complaints about Julie’s new “study buddy” and Julie’s odd comments when “Nick must be having a bad day, he was acting weird” and Carrie Wilson showing up at the studio door with apology cookies and a shamefaced expression to say, “Something’s wrong with Nick.”
They planned a rescue mission within a day and then had to alter that plan because Nick actually went missing, and the guy was fucking possessed, by Caleb fucking Covington, so of course Alex felt bad for him, of course Alex wanted to help the poor kid, it’s just—
It was a little harder to stay neutral when Alex tried to bring Willie in on their adventure and his summons went entirely unanswered. When he helped his friends storm the Hollywood Ghost Club and found not only Nick, channeling Caleb’s maleficence through his prettyboy face, but also Willie, broken and bloody in the way only ghosts can be, at the soul-deep level rather than the physical, crying and begging Alex for help.
It was hard to stay neutral when Alex’s boyfriend was dying and for all intents and purposes, Nick was the one killing him, even if Alex knew it was only him on the outside. And it didn’t help that the second they all got free, Willie went straight to the hospital to keep an eye on Nick and barely even spared Alex a second glance.
Things are okay now, he guesses, Willie and Alex have spent some much needed time together, and Alex—as far as he knows—is still the only person Willie feels comfortable talking to about his time under Caleb’s spell. But for every moment Willie’s spent in Alex’s arms over the last month, he’s spent twice as many at Nick’s house.
Alex gets that Nick had a really fucking awful time, and that Willie might be the only person in the universe who can truly understand what he’s going through and help him get back on his feet. He gets that Nick’s the guy who practically brought Willie back to life, through some post-possession power-of-love magic none of them really understands (though the parameters of that are still unclear—he doesn’t seem to be as alive as Luke, Alex, and Reggie are, but they have had almost a year to get used to it, and they weren’t consciously dead for nearly as long).
It’s just hard for Alex to like a guy who takes up all his boyfriend’s time like that, who drags Willie back into a world of hurt Alex is certain he’d prefer to just move on from, and whose face, despite Alex’s brain telling him otherwise, is the face of the person who made Willie cry.
The point is, when Willie calls to ask if he can bring Nick over to meet everybody, Alex is not exactly enthused.
“Luke, get your feet off the table,” Julie says, snappy enough that Luke obeys without a word. She’s been giving Alex a run for his money on the “most miles paced across the studio floor” award ever since she got off the phone with Willie-via-Nick’s-phone and said, “Look alive, boys. We gotta clean this place up.”
Alex doesn’t know why she’s so nervous. He does know why her nervousness makes Luke bring out his best pout, but even Luke is smart enough not to try and compete with “guy who just got out of a coma and whom Julie didn’t realize was possessed for eight months.”
Not at this moment, anyway. Alex is sure once Luke gets a look at Nick with his own eyes, he’ll start competing again pretty damn soon.
“What do you need from us, Julie?” Alex asks, to avoid saying something like, Will you calm down already? “Place is spotless.”
Julie nods, even as her eyes flit around the recently-scrubbed studio like she’s expecting them to have missed a spot. “I know. I’m okay. Thanks, guys, seriously, for helping me out and dealing with… I just want Nick to feel safe here, you know? Like we all do.”
Alex thinks if Nick were to feel unsafe, it wouldn’t be from the state of the studio’s cleanliness, but he does sort of get where Julie’s coming from. It can’t be easy to welcome someone into your home when your home is the place where he got ambushed and possessed.
“He’s gonna love it here, Boss,” Luke says, jumping up to pull Julie into his arms. They were all three of them super clingy with her at the beginning, like they were all waiting for the other shoe to drop, for their touches to suddenly pass right through again, but while Alex and Reggie have dialed it back in the last few months to normal levels (or at least Sunset Curve levels) of physical contact, Luke never really stopped being clingy.
Not that Julie seems to mind. She melts into Luke’s hug, looking more relaxed than she has all day. Alex exchanges a look with Reggie, like, he couldn’t have pulled out the boyfriend arms before we scrubbed every inch of the studio?
But then Reggie asks, “Does Nick like snacks, Julie? I could go out and get us some snacks,” because he just has to be helpful, and Julie hops out of Luke’s embrace and right back into pacing.
Alex tunes her out, staring down at the floor in concentration as a strange burning sensation starts to grow in his chest.
The way that ghosts (or… ex-ghosts) can always find each other is weird and unexplained and it used to really freak Alex out (still does, honestly, but only if he thinks about it too hard). It’s like… there are candles living inside his chest—four big ones (Luke, Reggie, Julie, and Willie) and a bunch of tiny flickery ones like the electric kind you put in jack-o’-lanterns. The big ones burn bright and strong whenever his people are near, and he can always tell which one of them is which. Sometimes, it’s like the flames are different colors, if one of them is feeling something particularly intensely—it’s not quite mind reading or even empathy, and usually it’s stuff that Alex could pick up just from their faces if he didn’t have the magic ghost candles in his chest, but like. Right now, he can feel the bouncing green flame of Julie’s anxiety, the smooth yellow licks of Reggie’s desire to please, the hot blue of Luke’s complicated feelings about Nick, which, okay, Alex can relate.
But the fourth candle, the one that usually burns the brightest when Alex and Willie are together and the dimmest when they’re apart, is barely even a color at all. It’s like someone’s blown the candle out and the smoke it emits is made of poison and the wick is burning from the top down, buried in the wax and—
Alex shoots to his feet, cutting Julie off mid-rant about whether Nick prefers soda or seltzer water.
“Alex?” she says, eyes wide with worry.
Reggie steps closer, reaching out like he’s waiting for permission to touch. “Dude, what’s wrong?”
Alex can also tell, through the candles in his chest, where his people are. Willie and Julie and the boys are the easiest, of course, because they’re connected, through love or magic or whatever the fuck brought him and his friends back to life, they’re part of his soul, but the tiny candles, too, a new one popping up each time Alex lets himself open up to someone—they give him a general idea of those people’s locations, Flynn and Carlos and Julie’s dad and aunt, Trevor and even Carrie Wilson, who every once in a while decides to be less of a bitch and lets Alex dance with her and her group.
He knows where they all are, and he knows where Willie is, and he knows he needs to get there right now before it’s too late, because if the poisoned candle dying in his chest means anything, it’s that—
“Willie’s hurt,” he manages, and then poofs out before his friends can respond.
He follows the candle’s call to a little side street just a few blocks from Julie’s house. As soon as he drops back into reality, Willie’s candle flares to life, making Alex almost sick with relief, but there’s still something so wrong about it, and it doesn’t take long for Alex to see what.
Willie’s on the ground, cracked helmet knocked askew, his skateboard rolling lazily a few feet away. He’s not quite curled up, but he’s not flat on his back, either— it’s like he fell off the curb and landed so hard it crumpled him, just a little bit, like the burnt edges of a piece of paper curling away from the flame.
Alex’s heart drops out of his chest.
“Willie!” He’s too terrified to realize poofing would be faster; instead, he just rushes forward on foot, dropping to the ground next to his boyfriend’s curdled body. “Willie. Hey, can—can you hear me?”
His hands flutter uselessly over Willie’s chest, not sure if he should touch. It doesn’t look like there’s too much blood—some scraping around Willie’s elbows, maybe—but that doesn’t mean nothing’s wrong, there could be broken bones or internal injuries, Alex doesn’t even know if Willie’s conscious—
“Hey, hot dog,” Willie breathes, the words strangled and slurred like it hurts to get them out. “Y’ came.”
Alex ducks his head, blows out a long, teary breath of relief. “God. Yeah, baby, of course I came. You called for me, didn’t you? I could feel something was wrong.”
Willie blinks up at the sky, eyes a little glassy. “I—it—um…” He takes in a deep, shuddery breath, exhales, “hurts.”
“God.” Alex hovers his hands again, ever so gently touching Willie’s cheek. “Yeah, Wills, I’m sure it does. Pretty bad fall you had there, huh?”
Willie’s eyes screw shut, and he gives a tiny shake of his head, lips pursed tight.
Alex doesn’t know what to do. He can’t call 9-1-1—over the last nine months, they’ve pretty much figured out the physiological space between life and death that Luke, Alex, and Reggie occupy now, at least enough to know what medicine will work on them and what not to let doctors get too close a look at, but it might not be the same for Willie. He’s only just been brought back to life again, and not by Julie and the power of love, but by…
“Nick,” Willie says weakly, and Alex only just then realizes they’re not alone.
He’s sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, just a few feet away, curled up in a ball with his arms wrapped around his legs and his face buried in his knees. He’s shaking visibly, rocking back and forth, and now that Alex is paying a little more attention, he can hear the kid’s voice muttering, over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Anger flares hot in Alex’s chest. He can see it, what must have happened—Nick walking toward Julie’s while Willie skated happily alongside him; Nick, in a fit of Caleb-infused rage, pushing Willie off the curb; Willie calling for help through the deepest reaches of his soul, in too much pain and shock to move.
His injuries might not even be that bad. Alex remembers all too vividly the first time he got hurt after coming back to life—some bumps and bruises from falling out of Reggie’s top bunk after he insisted on a sleepover. The fall wasn’t actually that bad, all things considered, but the shock of it was almost unbearable. Alex hadn’t felt pain like that—physical pain, not like Caleb’s jolts—in months, in some ways in twenty-five years.
Willie probably hadn’t felt it in even longer, before whatever happened here today.
And now, what? Nick has the nerve to feel guilty about it? To apologize, like a few desperate “sorry”s will make it all better?
“Hey!” Alex barks, keeping one hand cupped to Willie’s cheek as he turns to address Caleb Covington’s former host. “What the hell did you do to him, huh? Were you just gonna sit there until he bled out? You weren’t gonna call for help?”
Nick goes unnaturally still, and his eyes when he raises his head are scarily blank.
“Alex,” Willie whimpers. “No—wha—”
“It’s all right, speed bump,” Alex shushes him gently, shoving his temper down so he can give Willie his full attention. “I’m gonna call Mr. Molina, okay? He’s gonna take you home, get you all sorted out, you’re gonna be okay.”
Nick still hasn’t moved. Alex can feel his creepy eyes on him, watching him, and clearly the kid’s going through something here, but Alex can’t bring himself to feel sympathetic about it. He wants to snap, “Pull yourself together,” and demand Nick tell him exactly what happened, because obviously Willie can’t.
But it’s not worth the wasted time. Alex just focuses on holding Willie’s hand and whispering gentle reassurances while he takes out the cell phone Ray got him—an old model, because Julie’s iPhone 12 freaked him out, that Carlos affectionately dubbed the “Fliposaur”—and places a call.
And if he notices the wide-eyed, horrified look Willie’s giving him, he figures it must be from the pain.
The shock fades.
Willie doesn’t know how much time has passed when he finally has enough brain function to think something other than I need to help Nick and Oh my god it hurts so bad I’m gonna die.
He’s not, he now realizes, actually going to die. He’s lying in a big comfortable bed—not as fancy as Nick’s, but nicer than any Willie ever slept in when he was alive—in the Molinas’ guest room. There are bandages on both his elbows and an ice pack under his lower back, melting slush into the sheets, but the pain has dulled mostly. He had way worse wipeouts before he died. He had way worse wipeouts when he was a ghost.
He just… couldn’t feel it, then. The pain. The impact. Everything was muted, cushioned, carefree.
It’s not that he hasn’t been hurt in thirty-five years—Caleb made fucking sure of that—he just hasn’t been hurt in this way. In his body.
It was scary.
Slowly, he sits up, cautiously rolling his neck and shoulders, twisting his torso this way and that. He’s definitely bruised—God, he’ll probably be sore for days now—but he’s pretty sure nothing’s broken.
He used to be really good at being able to tell.
He scrubs a hand over his face, trying to get his thoughts in order. Nick. He needs to check on Nick—Nick was panicking, Willie probably scared him half to death, god, Willie tried to tell Alex that Nick needed him, needed firm touch and gentle voices but his brain was too scattered to get it all out and Alex—
Willie’s stomach sours at the memory of it. Alex was so mean.
There’s a knock on the door. Willie swallows against his dry throat and manages, “Come in.”
He doesn’t realize he’s hoping it’s not Alex until the door opens to reveal Ray Molina, and Willie breathes out a sigh of relief.
“Hey,” Ray says, offering Willie a kind smile. “Good to see you’re awake.”
Willie bites his lip. “Was I asleep?”
“As good as.” Ray inclines his head, a silent, Can I come in?, and Willie nods.
“How are you feeling?” Ray asks as he shuts the door behind him and comes to sit on the edge of the bed.
Willie gives a little shrug. “Shaky? Mostly. I don’t… remember everything, after Alex showed up, I hope I didn’t cause you too much trouble.”
“No, hey, of course not.” Ray puts a hand on his knee; Willie tenses, breath catching, but the touch lands. It doesn’t always, not every time or with every lifer. “I’m just glad you’re all right. Can you tell me what happened?”
“I just tripped.” Willie cringes. It sounds stupid when he says it out loud. “I, uh. I guess scrapes and bruises are something I’m gonna have to get used to again.” He ducks his head, embarrassed. “I think it just freaked me out.”
“Which is completely understandable.”
Willie hesitates. There’s a question nipping at his tongue. He doesn’t think Ray would be this calm if something were really wrong, and he doesn’t want to be rude, but… He has to ask.
“Is Nick okay?”
He sees it—Ray’s little intake of breath, the way his eyes flash with anxiety, just for a moment. But Ray’s voice is steady when he says, “I took him home. He’ll be fine.”
Willie blows out a breath, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “I scared him.”
“I don’t know what happened, exactly,” Ray says. “I’m not sure Nick does either. But his dads are looking after him, you just go talk to him when you’re ready.”
Willie’s stomach churns with guilt. “His dads don’t—”
“I know.” Ray gets to his feet with a stifled groan—whatever he did to have bad knees at 45, Willie doesn’t know—and adds, “I’m not sure that’s what’s best for Nick, but it’s not my place to say anything.”
Willie’s not always sure it’s what’s best for Nick either—not on days like today, when Nick’s hurt and scared and could probably use a loving family who knows what he’s been through—but he completely understands Nick’s reluctance to talk about it.
“Thank you for your help, Mr. Molina,” Willie says, stretching out his arms with a wince. The sting in his scraped elbows is still weird, but he doesn’t think it’s gonna deny him higher brain function again. “I should go check on Nick.”
“You don’t want to see Alex first?” Ray checks, hand on the door. “He’s been worried sick about you.”
Willie experiences a series of complicated emotions, somewhere in the general vicinity of his large intestine: reluctance, because he really doesn’t want to see Alex first; guilt, because since when does he feel dread at the idea of talking to his boyfriend?; then anger, because it’s Alex’s own damn fault that Willie doesn’t want to talk to him, because Alex was mean to Nick!
Damn. He really should talk to Alex.
“You’re right,” he tells Ray, settling back against the headboard so he can hug his knees defensively. “Send him in?”
Once Ray is gone, Willie takes a minute to close his eyes and breathe and think about what he’s going to say.
It’s not like he and Alex have never fought before—he did sort of help in the almost-destruction of Alex and his bandmates and then ghost him (pun always intended), that is a very real thing that happened and caused a pretty significant rift in their relationship. It’s just that they’ve never fought about Nick. Ever since Nick got unpossessed, he’s been kind of a taboo subject between them, admittedly because Willie’s been spending more time with him than with Alex, but they haven’t talked about that. Willie’s actually been mostly hoping that, if he’s lucky, it would just resolve itself and go away.
Willie’s never been very lucky, now that he thinks about it.
He looks up as the door opens, and Alex looks so tired, so sweet, so worried about him, that Willie almost forgets why he’s mad.
“Hey,” Alex says, rushing over to sit on the bed at Willie’s feet. “Hi. Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re okay. You scared the potentially-nonexistent-but-I’d-really-like-to-find-out-for-sure-before-we-die-again Hell out of me!”
He pulls Willie into his arms, gentle against all Willie’s scrapes and bruises, and Willie lets himself breathe in Alex’s scent for one moment, then two, before he reluctantly pulls away.
“Alex, I gotta talk to you.”
Alex’s eyes flash with worry. “Okay. About what? Are—you’re not badly hurt, are you? Ray said—”
“You can’t talk to Nick like that.”
Alex’s expression freezes, and then he huffs out an awkward little laugh, like he thinks Willie’s kidding or something, says, “Yeah. Okay.”
Willie swallows. His stomach hurts. “Man, I’m serious. I wasn’t—I couldn’t talk, when I was—but I could hear you. You got intense.”
“Intense?” Alex echoes. “Willie, you were on the ground, not moving, and the kid was just sitting there! God, he was apologizing! I couldn’t just let him get away with hurting you!”
“He didn’t hurt me! I tripped, Alex, Nick didn’t do anything wrong! But he’s got a lot of shit going on right now, and you yelling at him while he was having a panic attack probably made it all worse!”
He doesn’t realize he’s shouting until the words are all out, and then when he does, he feels so guilty about it that he has to put his hands over his face so he can’t see Alex looking at him.
Silent seconds go by. One second, two. After a while, Alex says, voice tight with frustration, “I’m sorry I didn’t immediately figure out the situation, since nobody could tell me what actually happened. All I knew was you were hurt, and he was the only one there, and—for God’s sake, Willie, the only thing you could say to me was ‘Nick’—!”
“I wanted you to help him,” Willie tries, tears spilling over his cheeks. “I was scared, and I knew I’d scared him, and I… I thought if anyone could calm him down, it’d be you.”
Alex makes a tiny sound, like a scoff, but he doesn’t respond. And then, after a pause, he mutters, “I just don’t get what you see in him.”
Willie very slowly moves his hands away from his face so that he can see Alex—head lowered and turned away, hands twisted together in his lap. It’s a textbook picture of Alex in distress—Alex guilty and anxious, Alex overthinking all the ways he could lose an argument he’s not even sure he’s having, Alex pushing people away before they can leave him.
Willie knew Alex did this—Luke told him after Luke and Alex had a bad fight over Trevor Wilson—he knows there’s a good chance Alex doesn’t mean what he’s saying.
That doesn’t make it hurt any less when the person Alex is trying to push away is him.
“Please don’t,” is all Willie can say.
But Alex shakes his head. “No, really, Willie, what did you expect me to do? Nick is not some helpless wounded bird you’re nursing back to health, he’s not someone you gravely wronged and need to make amends to, he’s not even Julie’s friend! You have no obligation to him, and honestly, I don’t understand how you can even stand to look at the guy, when for all we know, he could be—”
“Caleb?” Willie interrupts, spitting out the name like the poison it is. Alex shuts his mouth with an audible click, his jaw tight. “Is that what you were going to say?” Willie presses. “‘For all we know, he could be Caleb’? ‘He could be evil’? I have no obligation to him, Alex, when he was imprisoned in his own mind for the better part of a year because the man who owned my soul wanted to use him as a pawn in his epic plan to destroy you and your friends, who I introduced him to, by the way?”
He’s shouting again. He might also be crying. At some point, he stood up, because he’s standing next to the bed now, pointing a trembling finger at Alex, and he can’t stop the tears flooding his cheeks and he can’t lower his voice and he can’t back down, even though Alex is sitting there looking, frankly, horrified, and it’ll be a miracle beyond belief if Willie leaves this conversation with a boyfriend.
“Alex, you don’t know the things I’ve done,” he continues. “The things Caleb made me do. I was a slave, for thirty-five years, grasping desperately at my tiny slices of freedom and telling myself they were enough. Nick had no freedom, and he had no one to tell him he would be okay, and now his family and friends don’t even know what happened to him because he can’t tell them without being sent to the nuthouse. I am all he has. And if I don’t do everything I can to help him get his life back, to help him move on from something more painful and traumatic than you could ever even imagine—Alex, if I don’t help him survive something so much worse than death, then I won’t be able to live with myself. I’m sorry if that’s not good enough for you.”
He barely lets his last word land before he poofs out, willing the universe to take him away. He doesn’t even have a destination in mind, he just knows he needs to be anywhere but here. He doesn’t want to hear what Alex has to say in response to his little speech, doesn’t want to see his face when he tells Willie that no, it’s not good enough.
He can’t stick around for Alex to make him choose. But if he has to choose, he will.
Eventually, he makes his way to Nick’s house, once he’s wiped most of the evidence of tears off his face. He finds Nick in bed, curled up on his side still in his clothes and shoes, shivering on top of the blanket. He thinks Nick might be sleeping, but Willie’s feet have only just hit the floor when Nick’s eyes snap open.
To Willie’s constant relief, they’re Nick’s own baby blue.
“Oh my god,” Nick says, immediately bursting into tears. He sits up and reaches, and Willie practically falls into his arms, holding him as tight as he possibly can.
“I’m sorry,” Nick sobs into Willie’s shirt. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
But Willie just shushes him. “I got you,” he whispers, breathing past the ache in his heart, so much more painful than any skateboard scrapes. “I'm sorry, too. It was too soon, okay? I’m gonna stay right here from now on. We're not going anywhere.”