Chapter Text
There was nowhere to get cigarettes in this goddamn town.
This fucking town. If you could call it a town. Rand was used to small populations, this place being around 1,000 people. The problem with this town wasn’t the size.
Walking down the street with Barc who leisurely pitter pattered at his side loyaly, Rand’s shoulders were slumped with his hands in his pockets, chewing on a piece of gum. It’s what they would give him instead of cigarettes, and he had quickly switched from hating the condescending feeling of being told no to his nicotine addiction to desperately craving a substitute in just a couple of minutes, and he had taken a pack that they had offered to him. Or two.
He didn’t have his jean jacket, they had taken it from him, but he was wearing a white plain tee. Just like the clean white sidewalks, the perfect white steps leading up into all these perfect, one story cookie-cutter houses that looked fresh off the factory line. Every house was the same, clean white siding with a slightly blue gray roof, a front porch and overhang, and right near where the doorbell should be a speaker embedded into the wall, like those fancy kind that rich people had in gated communities.
He hated it. The pristineness made him pissed. It felt like a mockery, a mimic of heaven after the white blinding lights. He liked when he reached Kian’s house and before walking up the front steps he spat out his gum on the ground. Even if it would be cleaned by nightfall, it gave him some satisfaction, even if just a little.
But boy would he kill for a cigarette.
Kian was already waiting for him. They knew each other's schedules by now. He was sitting slumped on the top step, an acoustic guitar sitting on the porch behind him. Kian made eye contact as Rand approached, and scooched over so Rand could sit down next to him. Barc came and curled up next to their feet, tongue out and panting.
There was comfort. Comfort that Rand couldn’t seem to get enough of. Sitting next to Kian, there was comfort staring out at the house opposite, one that looked just like all the others, with a perfect grass lawn and the same flowers in the hanging potted plants on the streetlights.
He didn’t shiver when Kian leaned into him, his bare arm of the cut-off sleeve shirt he had ripped himself brushing against his. It was another stupid shirt they had been given, Rand understands why he ripped it up. The stupid blocked letters of POSD logo was shredded like moths had taken to a feast, and he knew that the inside of Kian’s house looked much worse. No matter how many times they came to fix whatever Kian destroyed, ripped furniture, cracked counters, shattered mirror, paint on the walls that Rand still had no idea how he got, he always broke it again. Eventually, they stopped fixing it. Rand likes sleeping here more than sleeping back at his house.
With a small, routine movement Rand slipped his hand over Kian, both of them leaning on each other, Kian’s blond curls resting in the crook between his shoulder and chin. Rand remembered the first time he had grabbed Kian’s hand. The fear that had arisen in his eyes, glancing not in panic at Rand but in panic of those who may be watching.
“I don’t fucking care." Rand had declared. "I don’t care anymore. These people have bigger issues they are dealing with then us fucking holding hands.”
It wasn’t how he was used to love being. It wasn’t like any relationship before, with the crush, the build-up. The flirting and the chase.
It just got to the point where Rand thinks he would die without Kian.
It’s a little fucked, actually. Sometimes he questions if he likes Kian or if they went through so much shit together that something broke in his brain. But he knows that something is there because the thought of being separated from him was enough to make him ill, the thought of never seeing him again tastes like vomit in the back of his throat.
They kissed once. It was horrible. Kian ended up vomiting and sobbing, screaming how he didn’t want to die again. Rand hadn’t tried to kiss him since.
“How’s the song coming?” Rand said after a while, the sun starting to set in bursts of vibrant oranges and yellows.
“It’s done.”
The neighborhood smelled like freshly cut grass and vanilla, and now Kian’s hair smells like cinnamon. He wished it still smelled like cigarettes and cologne. But they had neither of that here.
“Another one? Already?” Rand raised an eyebrow.
Rand and Kian were similar. After being released, they both had fallen back on something that they could distract themselves with. Rand had requested dnd books and had been supplied, and a typewriter. He had written his own campaigns before, but given the absurd amount of time he had he had started writing the beginnings of a module. It felt silly, after everything that had happened, to be writing for a game. But it felt good. For a while. He had even left spaces for him to add in drawings. He had been working on getting better at coloring, even if his pencil sketching was alright.
Kian had locked himself away as well. Pieces of paper strewn about his floor, all lined with five lines: a treble clef and a bass clef. Lyrics that made no sense, chords that sounded like screaming, painfully sad and slow songs that made any crowd sob. And of course the one song that he would write down on a sheet of paper and then burn with a lighter that Rand didn’t know where he got.
Kian had a habit of having things that most people here did not.
It had taken forever for Rand to get the knife off of him.
Anything sharp was contraband.
Rand had given the knife to his mother, so she could have something sharper to cut the fresh food they had instead of the jagged tooth kid knives that you had to put so much pressure behind just to cut strawberries.
Even though you could ask for pre-cut pre-made meals, Donna still asked for the fresh produce.
“I didn’t want to spend too much time on it. Reminded me of Rolan.”
_______________
“You can’t keep ignoring what happened, Kian! You can’t lose yourself to this-”
Rand gestured to the wall of pinned up music sheets that were placed in such a way that reminded him of the map of Galloway.
“I need you here. I need you sane.”
Kian had a wild look to him. Hair unbrushed. It was clear he hadn’t slept in a while. His wrists were red.
“I needed you sane too!” Kian had screamed back, pointing a finger that had its nails painted black, with nail polish Rand didn’t know where he got it from. “Where were you the first four months? Huh?”
“I was in a psych ward! Padded white walls?! Ring a bell?!” Rand spit as he spoke. “At least I take my meds!”
“Fuck you, Timothy Rand. You know I hate- hate the feeling of things going down my throat.”
“I am working to be here, I am working to live!”
Kian has tears in his eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like to die.”
Rand shook off the memory of the fight as he finished his walk back home as soon as the sun had set. Curfew was at nine after all. Barc excitedly ran inside ahead of him through the open door, where his mom was in the kitchen, reading a book at the counter. Rand kicked his shoes off as his mom cooed at the dog and tossed Barc a piece of her dinner she had been working on, a second plate left out for Rand. His father should already be in bed by now.
Ever since Barc holed up with his mom in the basement, protecting her from anything that came inside (nothing did, if they had both Barc and his mom would be dead), Barc had been allowed table scraps.
“How was the doctors, Tim?” His mama looked up, pushing her reading glasses back into her hair.
“Alright.” He pushed the chair back and sat, looking at the biscuits and gravy his mom had made for him.
“And Kian?”
“Doing well.” Rand grabbed his fork and a bite. “He’s been thinking of applying for a release eval. He wants to go back to Hollywood and assess the damage, see if he still has anything left.”
“Good for him.” Donna sounded genuinely happy.
The thought made Rand’s stomach turn. Kian had something left. A life to return to. Everything Rand had was destroyed. Everything he had left was within walking distance of where he was now.
He thinks he would die if Kian left him.
“Do you think he’ll get released?”
It was the goal of POSD to see people in the program released, they wanted to move people as fast as possible out of here. But Kian and Rand and all of Galloway was an anomaly. This was the first time that the security of the United States was breached so violently.
When he had first arrived with the rest of the survivors, he was too numb to be shocked that the government had a program in place for people who had been affected by these types of events. He didn’t talk to many people outside of the Galloway survivors, or the Gallians as the rest of the town started to call them, but his mother told stories in sort of a gossipy astounded way of meeting people who had been on a boat capsized by a deep sea tentacle creature, or had ran from aliens, or had survived a cult sacrifice.
POSD. Protection Of the Supernaturally Displaced.
“I don’t know. No Gallians have been relocated yet. It’s been a nine months.”
“I’ve been thinking about where to request to be relocated. I think somewhere along the coast would be wonderful. Like a vacation.” His mother dazedly said, a far-away look in her eyes.
“You deserve a vacation.”
“Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” His mom slightly smiled, a look that almost reminded Rand of being high. Everyone here was medicated up. At least the Gallians. His mom seemed to be a bit more… ditzy when taking her meds.
Rand just felt numb.