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Sometimes, he stands in the backyard and stares at the shed.
Sometimes he’s certain the shed stares back.
It’s four in the morning. He hasn’t slept. He’s not sure how long it’s been since he last woke up, but it’s been days, at least. How many, he couldn’t say.
The beer can crumples so easily in his hand. Would a human be able to do that so effortlessly? He’s not sure anymore. It hits the ground with a little wet thump. His toes are sinking into the mud. It’s cold. Really, he should be wearing more clothes than just his boxers, but it doesn’t matter. He’s dead already, after all.
He’d bought a lot of beer, a little while ago. Couldn’t say why. Something in him just said to. Picked up several cases of the cheapest shit he could find. Maybe overdrew his bank account a little, since he’d just paid rent. Not like that matters, when you’re dead. He’d gone through the checkout line with absolutely nothing else and the cashier had asked, “Big party?”
“Sure,” something puppeteering him had said. “Real big.”
It wasn’t for a party. Obviously. Dead people don’t throw parties.
He's still going to work. He’s not sure why. Routine, maybe? An attempt at a distraction? The other day he tried to clock in at 6 in the morning, and the machine wouldn’t let him. His shift didn’t start ‘til 6pm, as it turned out. So he just sat in his car, in the parking lot, for twelve hours.
Somehow, it seems none of his coworkers thought that was strange.
He thinks about the gun in the hollowed-out Quran in his nightstand. It killed him before, why not try it again? But he thinks putting another bullet in his head might just be overkill. (He’s not sure if that’s one last remnant of cowardice, of his monstrous body desperate to stay alive for its own nefarious purposes.)
It’ll catch up to him eventually.
He lies in bed. Not because he’s going to sleep, he’s certain he can’t, but because that’s what he does. He goes to bed, he waits for his alarm to go off, and he goes to work. There, he does whatever’s asked of him, and then he goes home, and he stares at the shed while drinking before bed. Rinse, repeat.
It’s so easy to let it all get away from him.
He’s lost track of days, by this point. They never end yet they seem to come and go so fast. The sky lightens at dawn so quickly. Darkens at sunset only a little slower.
He wonders what it is in him that keeps him going. He doesn’t even have anger, not anymore. He’s accepted it. Accepted that he’s dead.
It’ll catch up to him. Any day now.
He’s always been the kind of person who experiences things that aren’t there. He learned to hide it pretty quick. Didn’t make him fit in better, but it kept him a little safer, maybe.
The pills the doctor handling the whole insanity-plea thing gave him helped, but only so long as he took them. And they made him feel awful, kind of, as if in exchange for setting his head straight. A bit dizzy and nauseous and the sun hurt his eyes much more. Didn’t help his mood much, either, honestly.
He’s not sure when he last took them.
He’s also not sure he wants to go back to taking them.
It doesn’t really matter. Monsters are real and he and John are the only people left who can see them. He’s never going to escape being “Crazy Dave, who knifed a kid once.” He’s never gonna be normal. He can still see it, sometimes, in the faces of people who come to Wally’s Viddee-Oh. That sort of wariness. Like they’re being handed their DVDs by a wild bear someone’s stuffed in a nametagged green vest rather than a human just like them.
Though, to be fair, he’s not really a human just like them anymore.
Problems only arise when he finally sleeps. He wakes to seven missed calls and 36 hours gone. His boss is, to put it lightly, not happy. He works overtime to compensate. Things smooth over. He gets a day off, but by this point, he’s not sure how long a day even is. He does know that he’s grateful to go home and lie down once more. His body hurts in ways he’s not really capable of understanding at the moment.
Time has ceased to exist, in a way. Intermittently, he finds himself believing time is going backwards. He would swear 9:36 starts coming before 9:35 when he’s staring at the clock. It unsettles and nauseates him and he keeps trying to sleep normally, if only to escape, but it’s just not working. His brain is full of bees, or something. It certainly feels like something behind his eyes is buzzing. It’s been like this before. He has to wait. It’ll go away. He just has to wait.
(Something in him asks, But what if it never goes away again?)
Today may or may not be another day off. No one has called him, this time. No ringing on his nightstand. (In reality, his phone died yesterday. He thought he plugged it in. His boss has called him thrice; John, ten times.) He’s lying in bed, gazing at the wall. It’s midday, or so he thinks, the room sunlit but not directly like the sunset does, with its fingers groping into the room. This is an ambient glow of light. It’s pleasant. It makes him feel like he’s melted, somehow.
A loud knock sounds at the door. Dave ignores it. He’s had that hallucination plenty of times before. If it’s urgent, they’ll break down the door. If it’s John, he can fuck off. If it’s not real, it’ll stop eventually. Dave hasn’t ordered anything online—nothing he can remember, anyway—so he doesn’t need to open the door. It’s probably just in his head, anyway. He ignores it as it continues, staring intently at his wall. He’s so certain he sees shapes in it. Eyes, mouths, faces. They disappear as he tries to look directly at them, like when you’ve got sun-spots in the corner of your vision, and trying to look right at them just feels like chasing them around the room.
He closes his eyes, unwilling to see that shit anymore.
John has known—or, rather, has had the sneaking suspicion—that Dave is doing bad again. Missed calls (Dave almost always picks up, no matter what, unless he’s shitting or asleep), ignored texts; the final straw was Dave’s boss calling him up to demand John fetch him. As if John were the responsible one and Dave was the fuckup. The role-reversal was rare and always deeply unwelcome.
When Dave doesn’t answer the front door, John sighs in aggravation, if only to avoid shivering in nervous anticipation. He knows Dave’s home, his car is in front of the house, and he doesn’t have anyone else he could ask for a ride from nor can he afford a taxi (as if there are any of those in Undisclosed, but still). This is never good. Fuck, for all he knows, Dave had gotten got by some monster, and John’s about to walk into the aftermath of a massacre. He fishes his set of keys to Dave’s place out of his pocket, and unlocks the door with hands much steadier than his stomach. He opens the front door slowly, ready for something to pounce.
It’s just Dave’s living room.
Honestly, it’s not even that messy, by Dave metrics. John knows him well enough to see this as a massive red flag. When Dave’s too depressed to make a mess, that means he’s not even fucking eating. Normal Dave depression is stacks upon stacks of takeout and pizza boxes. Advanced Dave depression is a few of those, and then, nothing.
John paces slowly in—perhaps whatever monster ate Dave had licked the room clean, and is just lying in wait—looking around all the while, but it’s the same house he’s known for a year or so now. It got bleaker when Jen moved out, and a little nicer when Amy moved in. Even though Dave had tried to force her to take all her belongings to college with her or keep them in her parents’ place, she’d left little traces of herself behind—A little bobblehead on the counter, a pad of paper with her bubbly handwriting still on it, a sweater she forgot draped over the couch, magnets on the fridge. Photos of the two of them on the wall. John eyes one and thinks to himself that they make a good picture together.
A thin layer of dust coats most everything in the living room. Even the answering machine. John knows Amy calls him all the time, certainly he’d be listening to her voicemails, right? But it’s obviously been untouched. The light blinks rapidly, urgently. John wonders if its mailbox is full. He thinks about Amy. He worries.
For some reason, John feels the urge to case the whole house, really check it out, like he’s expecting Dave to be hiding in a corner somewhere. Honestly, part of him wouldn’t be surprised if he walked into some Blair Witch shit.
John pauses in the kitchen for a second. Sometimes, Dave’s in here. If he’s not rotting on the couch, sometimes he’s eating straight out of the fridge, and if he’s not there, then…
He can see, through the backdoor situated in the kitchen (right next to the fridge), an absolute mountain of beer cans on the back porch. John can only assume it’s months worth of beer… Right? Dave’s not usually a heavy drinker. Come to think of it, though, John hasn’t seen him in weeks at least, if not a month. He knows he saw this porch last month, and it wasn’t like this at all. So it could only be, at most, 6 weeks worth of drinking. No matter what, it’s a lot of beer, for Dave.
Unsettling.
Dave is probably in the bedroom. That’s the last spot, other than the bathroom, which, well—John’s not super inclined to butt in on him when he’s in there but if it’s a dire enough situation he will do it. Not like he hasn’t seen Dave’s dick before, or been rightfully smacked upside the head by somebody. He’ll tolerate getting yelled at and shoved out of the room if it means he knows Dave’s still alive.
Something about how silent the house is is really, really bothering John. It’s not usually like this. The air is so stagnant. He feels a little like his stomach is trying to crawl up his throat, trying to escape. He paces slowly down the hall, hesitates outside Dave’s bedroom door—if he never opens it, maybe he’ll never see Dave’s corpse again!—and…
“Hey, man,” John greets him as if nothing’s amiss. Dave says nothing. This isn’t the first time John’s appeared in his room. He expects this John will say more of the usual John-pep-talk type shit only to vanish mid-word. It’s hardly worth talking back to them, at this point. Dave knows this is just his mind playing tricks on him—summoning the one person who’s always comforted him when shit’s this bad. Some kind of bizarre self-soothing attempt from his fucked-up mind. Because he hasn’t had the balls to reach out to the real John, to admit he’s doing bad again, to be that dead-weight burden again. Fake John From His Brain is all he’s got and, hey, that’s good enough. Better than dragging the real one out of his ever-chaotically-fun life. Dave honestly doesn’t know how John doesn’t utterly hate him for all the times Dave’s ruined his fun by being such a dysfunctional piece of shit.
“Not even gonna say hi? Or tell me to fuck off? You must be doing bad,” he says, his tone light and joking. As if none of this is a big deal. Maybe it isn’t, really. Dave can’t tell.
Dave is simply waiting for the lecture to begin. Go on, he thinks. What are you going to try and tell me this time? You know I’m not listening. You’re in here with me, technically.
John steps into the room properly then, a bit slowly. He looks down, steps over the beer cans carefully like he’s trying not to trip on them. “You, uh, you been taking your meds?”
No, Dave thinks. But you know that. You’re inside my head. He keeps staring at John, who’s within arms’ reach at this point. Funny, he looks a little different this time. Different outfit. All of John’s terrible outfits are seared into his brain, after all, but this actually isn’t one he knows—maybe his brain’s playing a little mix-and-match with memories of previous outfits. He recognizes the leather pants, at least. They squeak obnoxiously whenever John moves. Dave can't stand it.
John huffs out a sigh and Dave’s convinced he almost feels it on his skin, somehow. Well, get on with it, he thinks, sure the lecture is imminent now. John reaches for him. Oh, here it comes, I guess—he’s going to disappear now. Nothing in my head can touch me.
And then the hand makes contact, and the jolt of realization shocks Dave so badly he instinctively lashes out, harshly slapping John’s hand off him, recoiling. They both mutually skitter away from each other, John tripping over beer cans and thudding into the wall, Dave scrabbling backward on his mattress. Then, there’s a pause, wherein they’re both staring at each other, wild-eyed.
“You’re real,” Dave finally rasps, dumbly, gawking at him.
John, now flat against the opposite wall, says, “Uh… Yeah?” He’s got his back pressed to it, hands on either side, staring at Dave once again like he’s beholding a dangerous wild animal. Dave wonders if he really is a dangerous animal now. Is that how John sees him right now? Or does he look at Dave like that when Dave can’t look back? “What’s gotten into you?”
Dave doesn’t answer. Now that he knows this John is real, he doesn’t really want to talk to him, actually. Doesn’t want him there. Would like him to go away again, even. But he knows John well enough to know that getting him to go away when it isn’t his own idea takes much, much more energy than Dave’s got in him.
“David?”
Dave doesn’t want to answer the question. His gaze falls from John’s face to rest on the opposite wall again. John turns to look at it like he’s expecting to see something. It’s only a wall. Dave doesn’t see anything over there, either. Not at the moment anyway. “I’m fine,” he lies. His voice sounds oddly weak. When was the last time he spoke? Really spoke? He doesn’t usually have to say much at work—he’s gone whole shifts without saying more than a mh-hm.
John turns back to him, looking at him like he’s annoyed Dave thinks he’s that stupid. “Are you, really?” He deadpans. Dave doesn’t answer. It’s not even a question, it’s light bullying. He’s clearly not fine, he’s curled up in bed defensively, pulled away from John. He won’t stop staring at the wall.
There’s something just kind of… wrong, in his eyes. John’s seen it before. They’re blown wide but so glassy and unfocused, yet not like they seem when he’s just zoned-out mid conversation, or at least not in an ADHD way. He’s got trouble focusing, John’s aware, but this isn’t that.
It always freaks him out, if he’s being honest. It feels like he’s not quite looking at Dave himself, like he’s seeing something else in him, like Dave’s been fucking possessed or something. It just isn’t him. It’s too stiff and… lifeless. He’d assume it’s Monster Dave, but this kind of thing happened to Human Dave, too. It’s just a Dave thing.
John pulls himself further away from the wall, still eyeing Dave, and he nearly flinches when Dave’s eyes finally leave the wall to rest on his face. It feels like Dave isn’t even seeing him and yet also like Dave sees right through him. As if Dave’s on some other plane of perception at the moment. If he were stupider, he’d ask if Dave took the Sauce, but that’s not really possible. He does wonder, briefly, if Dave might be on something else. But he doesn’t want to ask.
Dave feels like his brain is full of sludge. He can’t really parse what’s happening. He’s still surprised John is actually here, is actually real—Maybe he’s dreaming. That must be it, he’s fallen asleep again and is having one of those weird dreams where you just get up and go about your life, that kind of thing. He’s just dreaming that John’s come over to help. This isn’t real. He’s still dead. That must be it. Do corpses dream? He wonders, as he lies back down, slowly, achingly.
Maybe he could dig up his real body and ask.
John is watching him the way someone might watch a bear they’ve just unexpectedly run into on their morning jog. Wary, trying to decide if running away or standing still is the best course of action. He almost reaches out again then seems to think better of it, folding his hands into his pockets instead. “We should go out,” he says, as if this is a normal afternoon. “Go do some shit.”
Dave stares at him.
John stares back for a long moment, then shifts on his feet as if uncomfortable. “We can—can go to a bar, or maybe just Taco Bell and eat in the parking lot like normal, or…”
Dave doesn’t even blink.
John grits his teeth and rubs the back of his neck, dragging his hand through his hair, finally looking away from Dave. “Your boss called me,” he says finally, speaking as if Dave’s forced his hand. “You, uh, you still have me as your emergency contact.” He doesn’t ask Why didn’t you change it to Amy? And he doesn’t say When did you change it from Jen? I have to assume you replaced me with her there, too. He wouldn’t admit to thinking that. “He said he hasn’t seen you in three days, and he’s worried. Says he gave you enough chances and—”
“Well, I died,” Dave speaks up finally, voice still hoarse and cracking from disuse.
John blinks at him, looking confused, as if that doesn’t explain anything. Dave waits a moment to see if it’ll sink in. It clearly doesn’t.
“So… I don’t have to go to work,” he elaborates.
John is silent for a long moment, and when he speaks again, his words are slow and careful, like explaining something to a toddler, or trying to convince a rabid raccoon not to maul you. “David, you’re not dead.”
Dave makes a face like he’s confused. It’s hardly a change from his usual expression, but John knows him well enough to recognize his eyebrows just barely cinching together for what it is: immense confusion.“You’re the one who buried me. We both did.”
“That… that wasn’t, uh… wasn’t you you. That was—”
“The real me. I know.”
There’s a long, awkward stretch of silence. John somehow looks like he still doesn’t understand. Dave isn’t sure how he can make it any clearer.
“So, uh… You’re… you aren’t gonna die, Dave.”
“Of course not. I already did.”
John stares, yet again. He’s wondering if Dave’s even speaking English—or if he’s had a fucking stroke.
“I’m just waiting for it to catch up to me, y’know.”
“Catch up to you?” John echoes, sounding truly, utterly bewildered, lost in a way he isn’t usually. “Fuck does that mean?”
Dave shrugs as best he can while lying down. “My body just doesn’t know it’s dead yet.”
John takes a quiet deep breath. The room is so deafeningly silent that Dave hears it sharply. “David,” he begins, gently, patiently, yet with an almost irritated edge to his voice, “you’re not gonna die. You’re not actually dead. The Dave we buried—that was another Dave. Human Dave. Not you.”
Dave stares at him. He knows this. He’s not sure why John isn’t understanding him. They’re saying the same thing—Well, John’s saying half of it. Dave’s saying all of it. Yet somehow that other half just isn’t sinking in through John’s thick skull.
Oh, well. That’s about how explaining things to John goes.
John takes a little step closer. “Can I sit with you?”
Dave considers. Doesn’t really matter, he supposes, if John wants to sit next to a corpse. That’s his business, not Dave’s. “Sure.”
John settles in, gingerly, like he’s not certain Dave won’t bite him. He sits at first, then lies down, spreads out next to Dave. This is a little confusing, but Dave doesn’t ask about it. Not like he minds. John’s safe, after all. Can do whatever he wants. Dave knows he’ll back down if asked. And if for some reason he doesn’t, well—Dave knows he’s stronger than John. Even like this.
They’re there for a long time. Dave had been on his side but after a little bit, he feels strange staring right at John, who’s on his back, and so he rolls painstakingly onto his own back. His body feels disconnected from him, like it’s hard to coordinate. But he does it. He leans his head back and gazes at his own ceiling and he feels a little like it’s going to fall on him, somehow. It seems wobbly and off.
“What’s going on, David?” John’s voice is so quiet. He never seems like the kind of man who could be quiet, but he can, when he needs to be. When he knows someone else needs it. He’s far better with people than Dave could ever be. Dave doesn’t understand why John bothers with him—especially not now that he’s dead.
“Nothing,” Dave answers, because he can’t even begin to figure out how to tell John what John evidently can’t understand. “I’m just dead.”
A hand lightly smacks into his face and he flinches. John squishes his cheek with icy, bony fingers. “You feel pretty alive to me.”
“Your hand’s cold.”
“Yeah.” John spreads his fingers out over Dave’s face and Dave closes his eyes, just letting John do… whatever this is. The fingers brush his hair off his forehead, ruffle through his eyebrows, disturb his patchy facial hair. “Fuck sake, man. Nothing? No reaction.”
“M’already dead,” Dave mumbles, trying not to let John put a finger in his mouth. He knows the bastard, he knows he’d do that.
“I died,” John points out, and his hand finally—well, it doesn’t leave Dave’s face unfortunately, but he pulls his fingers back together, quits trying to bother Dave so much. His hand just rests on Dave’s greasy forehead now, as if checking his temperature. “You don’t see me lying in bed for days about it.”
“Shut up. That’s not the same. You didn’t come back as someone—something—else. You still came back as you.” He doesn’t say it because he doesn’t want more argument but he does think about how John’s had the privilege of not coming back in a rotting corpse. In a dying husk. John gets to still be John—ever unbothered by everything that happens to him.
John makes a sound, a sort of you got me there, I guess sound, the noise he makes when he doesn't really agree but can’t come up with an argument (reasonable or otherwise) about it. He changes the subject, instead. “Why didn’t you call me?”
I didn’t want to. You were already here, kind of, in a way. I don’t think I can tell you about that, though. I think that’s too weird. “Didn’t think of it.”
John huffs. “Bullshit, man. What’re you hiding?”
Dave shuts his eyes. John knows him too well. He’s not about to open up about this, though.
Maybe he should. Should tell John about this. About not taking his meds. About how for his whole life he’d sometimes had episodes of wondering if he was alive—he’d measure his breathing, stick fingers to the side of his neck to feel his pulse, think about the way his organs function and freak himself out over the notion they’d just stopped and he hadn’t noticed yet. About how it all got worse when he died, when they buried his human body, when he had to come to terms with the fact that his fear was right, that he did die and he didn’t even notice. After his human body died, his monster self was only still alive for a mission, wasn’t it? And wasn’t that over-with, didn’t it fail when they killed Korrok?
So why is he still around?
His body feels like a house of cards. One wrong move and it’ll all fall apart, he’s so, so certain. So sure something somewhere is rotting, poisoning the rest of him, and soon he’ll wither away.
Something nudges his arm and he recoils, curls into himself, the touch sending spidery discomfort all over his skin. Somehow, his face is fine, but his body—off-limits. Bad. “Stop.”
There’s a pause and that’s probably as best he’s going to get in terms of an apology from John. “Y’know you’re still the same guy, right?”
“I’m not.”
“You are. In a way. You’re the same and you’re different just like everyone else is every single day. Nobody’s ever the same person they were last month, last week, two minutes ago. You never get to be that again, just the current you.” John lifts his hand at the same time Dave peels his eyes open; John jabs his hand, fingers together, flat, like a knife, into the sky: “We move forward.”
“Sure,” Dave mutters, watching the arm drop back down again, thumping into the bed. Because isn’t that always the way, with John? Always forward, never looking back. Never reflecting or apologizing or learning from goddamn anything. Maybe if John did a little less we move forward, Dave would’ve spent less of his life hauling him to and from hospitals. They would’ve had more time together, before Dave died.
He’s a little bitter, to say the least. Especially now that it’s too late.
John turns over, sits up on his elbow and looks down at Dave. Dave doesn’t look back at him. John studies him for a moment, trying to figure this out. Dave’s not known to be a talkative guy, anyone who’s ever met him feels this way, but—in reality, when Dave’s doing badly, he is talkative. Good god, he never shuts up about how fucking miserable he is in the moment, and it’s only when he loops back around to clamming up again that John knows he needs to worry.
Being Dave’s friend is hard. It’s somewhat thankless work. But it’s the one job John won’t let himself get fired from. He does not touch Dave again, he knows better, but he does lean in just a bit, trying to catch Dave’s eye. “If you’re not gonna talk to me about it, that’s fine. You don’t gotta. But we have to do fucking something, dude.”
Dave finally looks at him. For a second he just stares blankly, unreadably emotionless. “Why?” He asks, finally, seeming genuinely confused.
“You can’t just rot here—”
“I’m already rotting in the dead mall.”
John closes his eyes reflexively, takes a slow silent deep breath. He hates these conversations. He really does. Because he always has to put it all away, pack up his own anguish at having buried his best friend and yet currently being laid down next to his (living, breathing) best friend. He lost Dave, too. It feels so often like Dave forgets that.
“Sure,” John says, tone a little clipped now, even though he’s trying so hard to be sweet, to be nice, to be the soft support Dave surely needs in the moment, “the human you is under a bunch of pine boards and still wrapped up in your firewood tarp. He’s mostly bones now. And—And nobody’s even…” Emotions clog his throat for a moment, his voice quieter: “No one visits.” He grits his teeth and swallows it all down again. Now isn’t the time. “Whatever. Whatever. You’re dead and you’re not. You’re still right here. You got handed a second chance he’ll never get and you wanna spend it lying here?”
Dave shakes his head, closing his eyes again. “You’re not getting it,” he mutters, and John feels red-hot anger flash to life in his chest—not something he commonly feels but goddamn if Dave doesn’t know how to bring out the worst in him.
“What am I not getting? What the fuck are y—”
“I’m already dead, John. This body—it’s dead, too. It’s decaying. Or—It’s going to. I know it. I can practically fuckin’ feel it, something sick inside. Wilted and melting like…” He pries his eyes open just a smidge, a crack, for only a moment. “A while back, I tried to… to fix my shit. Eat right, stop being such a fat lazy piece of shit. So I bought this big ass bag of lettuce thinking if I had it around I’d eat it. And I opened it, and I had some, one day. And then I never touched it again, until one day, fuck knows how much later, I noticed it again, and it was just… this bag of sludge. Unrecognizable brown goop that smelled like death.” He closes his eyes again. “I’m that lettuce bag.”
John pauses, anger draining away as he starts to piece it together. Kind of. He’s not dealing with the average suicidally-sad Dave, this isn’t a very slow suicide attempt. This is something-or-other else.
A delusion, John supposes, some sort of psychosis thing. He’s not great at dealing with that, if he’s honest. Dave’s never actually talked to him about what the hell goes on in his head when he’s like this, John’s just been guessing. And he’s just been hoping he gets it right, when he tries to help.
“I miss you too, you know,” he says finally, voice quiet enough it almost cuts out.
That gets Dave to look at him again. Look at him genuinely. A sort of surprise on his face.
“You’re really not all that different from him. He—You’re… You’re nicer than you were. That’s the biggest difference. You’re nicer. But no one else would—” Something catches John, something in the back of his throat feels a touch sharp. He swallows and looks down, away from Dave, tone resigned when he speaks again. “No one else would notice. Not really. I noticed, because of course I did. But you’re—you’re him. You’re always you.” He sighs, heavily, realizing in that moment the absolute pointlessness of his words: “You’re always gonna be you.”
By the end of the sentence he no longer feels it’s so reassuring.
Despite that, though, Dave is reassured. A little bit. Maybe when this body dies, John will get some closure. He doesn’t understand that, to John, that would be worse, not better. He can’t understand that yet.
“When was the last time you ate?”
Dave doesn’t answer right away but John can tell he’s actually thinking, trying to remember. “I’ve had a lot of beer,” he offers eventually, by way of dodging the question. He doesn’t need to eat. Even if he weren’t dying, he could stand to lose weight. What better way than that?
“C’mon,” John says, hauling himself up. “We’re getting Taco Bell. Even if you’re already dead,” he cuts Dave off before he can even start, lifting one hand, “everybody could do with a fuckin’ bean burrito or whatever. C’mon, don’t make me haul you off the bed.”
“Doubt you could lift me.” Dave pulls himself up off the mattress. He feels so strangely dizzy. He almost wants to ask John to help him stand but he’d rather die, actually.
“Well, don’t make me try. ‘Cause I fuckin’ will.”
They end up in Waffle House, actually, because Undisclosed’s only Taco Bell is, per the sign on the door, “cloesd now for violate halth coed sorrry,” which seemed to have been hastily printed and even more hastily typed. John’s driving them, because Dave’s really in no state to drive. This isn’t great, because John drives like he got his license out of a cereal box, but Dave is still too numb to the world to be gripping the dashboard and panicking like a sensible man would be.
They have a “usual table” here, a booth along the outer wall, close to the far corner of the restaurant. Out of sight, mostly, but not wedged into a corner where John would feel claustrophobic. Dave takes his spot—facing the door—and John sits across from him.
They don’t speak for quite a while.
“Think you might get fired?” John asks.
“Does it matter?”
There’s silence again. John looks down at his hands, folded together on the table before him. Neither of them glance at the menus; they know what’s on there. They know what they’re going to order.
What John doesn’t know, is how to reach Dave.
This shit is hard, and feels all slippery, like trying to hold piss in the palm of your hand. Sometimes John feels like he’s got enough of a grip on things to help, and other times he feels like he’s just helplessly watching it dribble out from between his fingers. At the very least, with Dave sitting across from him, he can be certain the man isn’t dead. Again.
It’s not something they talk about, because, well, it would just be awkward and unpleasant for the both of them, but… Dave’s death weighs on John, too. He’s not going to assume it weighs more or less for him than for Dave, but it weighs. He thinks about it frequently. When this new Dave does something that’s just a little bit off, or when John’s looking at him in low light and he’d swear he can see something else in Dave, or when… when things like this happen.
When it’s obvious the death has Dave all broken-up, too.
There are no self-help guides for this sort of thing. Not like John’s much of a self-help-book kind of man, he picked up one once and it was written so condescendingly he won’t touch any others, but still—there’s no advice to be had. They’re left floundering in situations no one could have possibly accounted for. All John knows is that Dave isn’t rational, but he’s still alive, and that’s what’s most important.
He’s been isolating, clearly, which is never good for him; John’s going to have to pull him out of it. At least it doesn’t seem like he’s going to have to talk Dave off a ledge, at least not immediately. He still doesn’t seem actively suicidal, though John is well aware he’s constantly passively so, that’s just part of his nature. If a car were barrelling right at him, he wouldn’t move, but he’s not about to go play in traffic. A tiny mercy, but a mercy nonetheless.
Dave fumbles through ordering food, forgetting words and avoiding eye contact. The waitress has no reaction to this, because it’s a Waffle House. John can’t even count the amount of times he’s ended up in here post-bender whacked out of his mind and in desperate need of some bacon; they see this shit all the time. She leaves with the promise their food will be out soon, taking the menus with her. Which is great, because they’re about 50% syrup, have been for years, and are disgusting to handle. Nobody wants to touch them.
John lifts his fist, holding it in front of Dave, like an offer. Dave pauses and stares for a moment before remembering what a fist bump is. He lifts his own fist and gently knocks his knuckles into John’s. John’s fingers immediately unfurl and he twists his wrist, wrapping fingers around Dave’s hand. “Gotcha,” he says cheerfully, and Dave blinks at their conjoined hands in confusion.
“Why,” he deadpans. John just shrugs, grinning. Dave still doesn’t understand, but, well—he doesn’t move his hand, either. It’s strange, he finds himself wondering when he last touched another human. Things feel a little more real, now, with John’s fingers wrapped tightly around his fist.
And then he remembers the way John doesn’t wash his fuckin’ hands, and he quickly disentangles his hand from John’s. Gross. It brings a little bit of a smile to John’s face. Dave’s still in there, deep in this hollow shell he’s wearing at the moment. John’s sure he can coax him back out, if given time.
Their food is just alright. The Waffle House is actually one of the better restaurants around, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. Still, they both leave nothing behind, and if John didn’t know better he’d say Dave almost looks a bit healthier by the time they leave. He wonders how long Dave went without eating. Time blindness is a huge issue for him that only gets worse when he’s like this, after all. John’s also thinking about whether or not it’d be a good idea to steal some of Dave’s beer—not for himself (although, he would drink it) but to keep Dave from having any more of it. Not like John can really judge, his own vices are going to fucking kill him someday, but… the idea of Dave drinking himself to death before he even hits 30 is one of those things that makes John nauseated to think about. He won’t let that happen.
He pulls up to Dave’s house, parking shittily out front as per usual, and, instead of just letting Dave out, turns off the car and gets out, himself. Dave doesn’t seem to realize until he’s already shuffled to his front door and turns to see John a pace or two behind. He doesn’t seem too surprised—it’s still rather early evening, maybe John will leave soon but not yet—and opens the door for them.
For some odd reason, Dave is tired, for once. He feels it coming on again—another crash, like when he slept for over a day straight. He waddles into his home, shuts the door behind John and locks it, and then contemplates having to stay up further to entertain John and feels overwhelmed at the very idea. He has half a mind to just open the door again and tell John to get out.
John kicks off his shoes. “Wanna watch some TV?”
TV is something that doesn’t require Dave to think, or even exist, really, so he agrees, a touch relieved. On the couch, he feels like he’s melting into the cushions. He can’t focus, but that’s fine, he doesn’t have to. It’s just Family Guy. Dave doesn’t even really like the show all that much, but it’s something to fill the air, and John’s got a love-hate relationship with it that keeps him coming back for more, somehow. Regardless: it’s not a show anyone needs to pay attention to. It’s no Grey’s Anatomy.
Dave still feels dead, to a degree. It’s nice to have a full belly—he didn’t realize how hungry he was until he ate, and then he felt almost sick with hunger, but he’s finally starting to stabilize in more ways than one. Maybe that’s what’s got him so tired, all that food. He really could do with a nap, or something. Maybe he could just fall asleep right here and John wouldn’t even notice… He tries to stay awake. And fails.
He dozes, off and on. John notices. Dave’s couch is a little on the small side, and they’re practically wedged together on it, Dave being so wide and John being unable to sit like a normal human being, all of his gangly limbs always spread out everywhere. He’s got a leg in Dave’s lap and the other propped up on the coffee table. When Dave passes out, his head first slumps forward, and then slowly, very, very slowly, his upper half flops to one side, head resting on John’s shoulder. John doesn’t mind. The man needs his rest and John’s not territorial of his personal space. Dave’s not one for platonic physical affection so it’s not like they do this often, but John couldn’t give fewer shits about what people consider “acceptable” in terms of physical affection. He does, however, remind himself not to put an arm around Dave, he would not appreciate that no matter how comforting John is aiming to be. John simply sits still, as a good pillow would.
Intermittently, Dave wakes, usually with a slight jolt. He always seems surprised by this, like he’s not sure how any of this could have happened; he straightens up and pulls his head off John and pointedly says nothing about it, and he can focus on the TV again for at least ten minutes before he’s asleep again. Eventually, John just feels bad for him, and turns the TV off before gently shaking him awake. “D’you wanna just go to bed, man?”
“Huh?” Dave’s mouth is dry and his brain seems… fuzzy. He feels unwell. He rubs his bloodshot eyes as John stands up, knees creaking, before looking up at him. “…Kinda.”
“I’m staying over,” John informs him, like this is his house, not Dave’s. Like Dave doesn’t hate having people over.
He doesn’t hate having John over, though.
Much.
“Okay,” Dave replies, voice flat, as he stands up. And then he thinks of the effort it’ll take to do up the couch for John and he feels just exhausted. Today has been so much. He feels less dead now, but…
Lucky for him, John knows where the spare bedding is. Unlucky for him, the closet where it’s kept is empty. Dave had had some inclination a long while back to wash the sheets and it just never happened.
John steps back from the closet and points into it, looking at Dave like do you see this shit? “Where’s the—?”
“I don’t know.” Dave truly doesn’t. He put them somewhere… maybe the laundry room. He doesn’t know and he’s not about to remember. He’s too tired. “Just come with me.”
“Huh?” John’s bewildered, somehow, but Dave just pushes past him. John has no choice but to follow. His pace slows a bit in confusion when Dave passes the threshold to his bedroom but he decides to just roll with it. He gets there as Dave’s opening his dresser drawer. He lingers in the doorway. “What’s, uh…”
“Bedsharing,” Dave says. Not even a full-sentence answer, just the compound word.
John’s eyebrows shoot up but he doesn’t answer right away. They’ve not really done that. Probably the closest they’ve been to bedsharing, post-high school anyway, was that time John dragged him to a music festival to get his mind off a breakup and they shared a tiny-ass tent. It’d been a sweaty nightmare for the both of them. But John’s not the kind of guy to make shit weird, and it’s not like he’s opposed to the idea, just surprised Dave would propose it. He’s the kind of man who defends his personal space vehemently, after all. “Alright,” John shrugs it off.
There’s an awkward pause of sorts, when John’s trying to figure out where to go from there. Dave’s rummaging around in his dresser drawers like he’s looking for something, and then a bigass t-shirt hits John in the side of the head while he’s looking at the mess surrounding the bed and he lets out a sound somewhere between a yelp and huh?, clawing it off his face immediately. Right—Sleep clothes. Dave always lends him at least a shirt if he’s unprepared. A pair of old sweatpants in winter, too. John doesn’t know it, but Dave actually keeps a pair of pants he’s too fat for just to throw at John whenever he’s spending the night and doesn’t want to sleep in jeans. “Thanks,” John says a little belatedly.
Dave is not paying attention to him. He is, for the first time in over a month, thinking about the fact that he should probably shower. He’s in his own body enough to feel dirty, and… itchy. “I’m gonna shower.”
John, who had noticed that Dave reeks, but didn’t say anything, because that is somewhat a normal state for Dave, replies, “Good idea.”
Surprisingly, a shower makes Dave feel more… Well, he couldn’t say human. Alive, maybe. It saps whatever energy he had left, though, and he just dries himself off half-heartedly and throws clean clothes on. It’s good enough. Yes, he’s still damp, and yes, that might give him some rashes or something later, but he just can’t be fucked to care about it in the moment.
He waddles back to his bedroom, where John’s got that shirt on, which hangs off him so loosely that it makes him seem puny. His clothes are folded neatly at the foot of the bed. He’s scrolling aimlessly on his phone, but glances up when Dave comes in. “Hey, man.”
“Hey.” Dave’s a little surprised that when his voice comes out of his mouth, it really feels like him, this time. It’s comforting, somehow. He doesn’t understand why. “Gonna turn off the light now.”
“Alright,” John hums, locking his phone and leaning to put it on the floor. Dave flicks off the light. It’s not pitch-dark in the room, the window’s blinds are only half-shut—Dave hates the dark, if he’s being honest. Doesn’t like not seeing what might be lurking in it, never has. He climbs into bed next to John while John’s settling in, shimmying around trying to get cozy. The room is silent save for the sound of fabric scratching and Dave grunts at one point, trying to tug the sheets up a bit further. He finally falls back with a sigh and gazes at the barely-lit ceiling, tinged blueish-white from the moonlight.
The only sound in the room is their breathing. He can hear John’s start to slow, dipping into a more relaxed pace. Dave can feel himself winding down, as well. “John?”
His voice is so soft it barely even reaches his own ears, but John still hears him. “Yeah?”
“Thanks.” Dave can’t make himself elaborate, to say what he’s thanking John for. But John knows, to a degree.
"Anytime." John reaches over and runs a hand through Dave’s hair, ruffling it. “You’re still my favorite idiot. Whether you like it or not.”
Dave huffs, always annoyed when John does this to his hair—it makes it feel like it sits on his scalp wrong—but he doesn’t make a move to fix it, too exhausted. To his surprise, though, John does, reaching back over and smoothing it down again. “G’night, Dave,” John says fondly.
“Night,” Dave mutters back, feeling very conflicted. He hears John shift around, feels the covers tug as John bundles himself up like a blanket-hog. He doesn’t mind; ordinarily he’d sleep naked but he’s not about to do that while John’s here. Bad enough he’s just in boxer shorts and a shirt. Having fewer sheets on him might keep him from getting overheated, so really, John’s doing him a favor. Unintentionally, of course. It’s funny that sometimes even when he’s being selfish he’s doing Dave a favor.
Dave hopes he wakes up alive, and with John still there—hopes that none of this was a hallucination. Maybe he should take his meds in the morning.