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Mac wanted to hate Alex. He really did.
Unfortunately, death had an annoying way of putting things into perspective.
There was a time, weeks before opening night, when he might have actually hated him…
That day at the diner, Alex’s puppy dog ‘trust me’ eyes ambushing him right before the others arrived. Mac wanted to punch him.
Over those few weeks at the Abaddon, maybe Mac did hate him.
Maybe.
Hell, who was he kidding? Even then, Mac was mostly just worried about him.
The red-haired man had often joked about Alex ‘acting like a man possessed,’ turning things around when no one else could, lost in his own world of possibilities.
But this time…
It wasn’t just about the money. It wasn’t just about Alex’s pride. Something was happening to his childhood best friend, and Mac could do nothing but look on from the sidelines.
None of it mattered in the end.
Any resentment, any bitterness, any anger that had nested its way into Mac’s heart completely dissolved the second they went into that damned attic.
For whatever reason, Mac’s eyes were the ones Alex managed to find first.
Then Mac only saw panic.
Guilt.
Regret.
Fear.
Horrors beyond comprehension flashed behind Alex’s eyes as he clawed desperately at his own throat.
One of the last things Mac remembered was the quiet cries of the wooden rafter, straining against Alex’s limp, hanging body.
…But of course death couldn’t be that easy.
When had anything in their lives ever been easy?
Andrew Tully, the rat bastard, never gave them a moment’s peace.
Tony and Paul were the first to go, chewed up and spit out by this godforsaken building. Mac hoped that wherever they were, they were together.
Poor Paul was already practically gone by the time the rest of them joined him on the other side. Tully poked and prodded until their souls were nothing but mangled detritus for him to mold to his liking.
More brick and mortar for the Abaddon.
And Sarah, oh Sarah… Alex tried to convince himself that she at least got to leave the hotel in some capacity, but he saw the look in her eyes and he knew she was gone. A husk to be puppeted around.
It made him sick.
Which made Tully delighted.
See, once Tully started to get bored with playing with each of them individually, he eventually realized that he could hurt them all so much more by letting them see each other.
Especially Mac and Alex.
The two founders of Hell House quickly became his favorite playthings.
As soon as they were in a room together for the first time since opening night, Tully erupted into a too-wide grin dripping with condescension and malice.
He could feel their souls writhing; each of them riddled with guilt at the sight of the other but unable to twitch so much as an eye muscle, firmly locked in his grasp.
Oh, these boys really do care about each other, Tully realized.
How utterly adorable.
~*~
Mac prayed that what he was seeing was just Tully’s latest hallucination.
But deep down he knew, somehow, that this time was real.
Alex, his best and oldest friend, his partner, stared back at him. His eyes were sunken and lifeless, slightly glazed as though his mind were still trapped in whatever hell Tully had been putting him through.
The only thing Mac could focus on, however, – either by force or by his own volition, he couldn’t tell – was the mottled, decayed skin of Alex’s neck. Mac stared at the reddish brown, angry welts of rope burn that faded into thick purple and gray bruising.
God, I should have seen the signs, Mac thought to himself, I should have realized how far gone he was. I should have dragged him, kicking and screaming, away from the Abaddon while we still had the chance. Fuck the money, fuck the business. What the hell was I thinking?!
As if Tully could read his thoughts, the man suddenly slinked out from the shadows behind Alex, his crypt keeper- esque grin sending a shiver down Mac’s spine (or at least it would have, if Mac had any control over his own body).
“Oh Mac,” the hotel owner cooed, “I was so certain I was going to have to kill you before any of the fun had even started. Out of all of you, you were the one who could have convinced them to leave. Steadfast, loyal, logical Mac. They all looked to you. I was terrified!”
“But no,” Tully smiled warmly, practically salivating as he stared at the red head, “You were practically my assistant! You convinced the others to stay! I could have kissed you, really.”
Even with his body frozen, Mac still managed to feel his stomach twist in disgust, for Tully but also towards himself. Tully’s words stung like salt in his wounds.
“So loyal to this one, like a well-trained dog,” Tully cooed, smiling at Alex who remained frozen in place, “All for dear, sweet Alex.”
To Mac’s horror, Tully didn’t stop there, “So! As a show of my gratitude, I thought I’d do something special for you.” The tall, spindly man towered directly behind Alex’s shoulder, his long fingers slowly sliding around the boy’s collarbone.
Even though Alex didn’t (couldn’t, Mac reminded himself) react, Mac’s blood boiled at the overly familiar way the man touched his friend. Mac wanted to scream at him to ‘get your fucking hands off of him you bastard!’ He wanted to tear Tully apart limb from limb. If he were alive, he was sure his face would have been bright red in anger, a stark contrast from his pale, freckled skin
Alex once compared how Mac looked when he was mad to the planet Mars, said it was fitting for the Roman god of war and stability, or something like that.
At the time Mac was mainly focused on not punching him, but for some reason the comment had stuck with him.
Tully giggled, snapping Mac out of his distraction.
“Given that all big, serious Mac did in the end was sit and watch, I thought I’d give you front row seats. An encore! Consider yourself lucky, I don’t do this for just anyone.”
Mac’s confusion was only matched by his fury as Tully crossed behind Alex’s back, leaning close to stage whisper in the other boy’s ear.
“Now, be a good boy and give us a show, alright?” As he spoke, his hand drifted until it rested, feather light, against Alex’s neck, his thin fingers long enough to grip the brunette’s entire throat.
As soon as Tully so much as placed his fingertips on Alex’s skin, however, the boy’s body twitched, violently.
Mac felt his stomach drop as Alex’s eyes widened, marginally at first, then wide as saucers.
As though woken up from a trance, the brunette’s eyes came into focus that quickly devolved into panic. His dried lips cracked as they parted and a long, deep wheeze escaped.
Tully calmly pulled his hand away moments before Alex’s fingers flew up to his throat, clawing and gripping at his own skin.
All of Mac’s anger had melted away into abject terror as he begged, pleaded with his body to move just move just help him SAVE HIM GOD PLEASE NO NOT AGAIN NO NO NO-
Suddenly it was like Mac was right back in that attic all over again. He wanted to scream, wanted to sob in frustration and anguish but his body remained as motionless as ever, utterly indifferent as Alex’s struggles grew more and more desperate.
And god, the sounds he was making. The panic of that first night was filled with various cacophonous sounds, but now the hotel was deathly silent, like it was intentionally giving Alex’s torture the front and center stage.
Mac knew that from now on, for every moment of this cursed existence, those strained, stunted whines and whimpers would haunt him, burned into his mind and branded onto his heart.
The freckled boy had no concept of how long this went on for, every damned moment feeling like an eternity until eventually, Tully relented.
Alex dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, his crumpled body utterly motionless on the rotten floorboards.
The room was silent, and it wasn’t until Mac tore his focus away from Alex that he noticed Tully was nowhere to be found.
This was not wholly unfamiliar to him, Tully would often be tormenting Mac one moment and then suddenly disappear the next, some other duty or ward commanding his attention, no rest for the wicked and all that.
After a few more moments, Mac felt Tully’s binds loosen and he could once again move of his own volition.
Immediately Mac dropped to his knees, ignoring the ever-present aches and pains of his eternally broken body in favor of crawling towards Alex, still unmoving.
Mac reached out and gripped his friend’s shoulder. He turned Alex over, pulling his head and shoulders off the rotten wooden floor and into his lap in the process.
Alex began shaking, full-bodied tremors raking through him as though his body didn’t realize it could no longer warm itself up. His eyes looked out at nothing as he instinctively tried to curl inwards towards himself.
An emotion Mac couldn’t identify blossomed in his chest as he looked down at his best friend. He had never seen Alex look so small, so vulnerable, so thoroughly broken and tired.
And yet, warmth that shouldn’t have been possible pooled in his chest. It had been a hellish eternity since he had seen any of his friends. He hadn’t even known if Alex still existed at all, in whatever capacity they were bound to within these walls.
He found himself gripping Alex tighter, hunched over as though he could fashion himself into a physical shield between them and the Abaddon.
As if just realizing he was there, Alex’s eyes suddenly came into focus, brown eyes meeting each other as he looked up.
A choking sound punched its way out of Alex’s mouth, and Mac swore his already large eyes grew wider, misty around the edges.
“M-Mac…?” Alex wheezed, the word barely more than an intake of breath as the man attempted to move his lips.
“Shh, shh, don’t try to talk,” Mac whispered, sure he would be crying by now if he had any moisture left in his body, “I’m right here, it’s okay.”
He watched Alex try to move his lips as he forced air through them.
“Re-al…?”
Mac let out a curse that sounded more like a sob, “Fuck. Yeah, man. Yeah I’m real. At least I think so.”
Mac cursed his lack of body heat, but as he ran his fingers through Alex’s hair he felt the other man’s breath gradually even out. Now reduced to faint wheezing, Alex’s eyes eventually closed in an approximation of sleep, the closest thing to rest any of them could hope for.
Mac gently traced his fingers along the deep-set, purple bags under Alex’s eyes, knowing he likely was not faring much better. Still, it was comforting enough just to feel the skin under his fingertips, to remind himself that Alex was real, that he was still real.
Clutching the man tighter, Mac suddenly wasn’t sure if he was the one acting as a shield for Alex, or whether he was using the other man like a security blanket for himself. Either way, he didn’t intend to let go of him anytime soon.
And whether through mercy or boredom or cosmic indifference, the Abaddon granted them that moment of reprieve, and slept.