Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I'll be with you boys forever—

There's something thin, something off, about the air on the day in which Gary Barkovitch is born.

Maybe two seams of time and space pass by each other, too close, too silent, imperceptible as they trade their secrets. Maybe he tumbles from one life and one death into the next, or maybe he's just born with his grip on reality all wrong, cracked like an egg, popped and runny and translucent.

It's of no matter which is the truth. None of it's tangible outside his head, after all.

Gary takes longer than average walks.

The whole thing starts when he's developing a consciousness— maybe six, maybe seven years old, he's a toothpick of a boy, one who can't make sense of the twisty feeling in his stomach when someone says walk or when his ma tries to take him on a stroll to the grocery store.

"I don't want to," he senselessly repeats when she tells him we're going for a walk, and she looks at him in bewilderment as she drags him by the arm and his breath comes out loud in his ears.

It's an odd fear for a child to have, to walk. And when he does walk, he refuses to do so slow; he goes as fast as his little legs will carry him, and the thought bounces around the back of his mind, insistent, not fast enough not fast enough. He needs to go faster, but he can't, and he'll feel like he's one step away from collapsing in on himself.

"Pull yourself together," his ma will say sternly, and he'll shove it all into his arms and legs and chest, he'll be careful not to let any of it out.

When his ma tells his pa, his pa tells him he needs to be a brave man, that he's not meant to cry. His pa shouts at him, and grabs Gary's shoulder with the force of a shockwave, and he doesn't know how to keep it all contained, here.

"Enough of this nonsense," his pa snaps when he's fed up, takes him out to the yard where it cobbles itself into the forest, and forces him to walk until the sun sets. His pa's always two paces behind, and Gary tries to walk faster, and doesn't let himself stop, doesn't let himself slow, because if he does, he's gonna get— he's gonna— he doesn't remember, what it is he'll get. But he knows he can't get it.

He loses time in those hours, and he finds it odd that he stops crying. It's like there's nothing left in him to shudder or leak, like he's outrun it all. There's a cool, blissful abyss between Gary and everything else. He doesn't realize he's supposed to stop until he's pulled back with a, "Christ, you hear anything I say, boy?"

So, Gary thinks, if he walks fast enough, everything will be okay. If he walks for long enough, he'll forget why he was afraid. When he walks, then, it's for a long time, and it's at a pace that has him sweating; there's bone-crushing fear, most of the time, but there's also a lot of nothing that follows it. He chases it like a dog to a bone.

Pound, pound, pound, goes his heart. Step, step, step, goes his feet.

He sees them in the corners of his eyes when he's nine. They never come close, and they're never still, marching past his window, marching around his room as he hides under the covers, marching past him on the street as he walks home from school.

Sometimes it's only one of them, these walkers, and sometimes it's more than he can count without looking at them. They're silent, and their backs are slouched, exhausted. Sometimes they look dead, and he watches red stain the pavement behind their footsteps— but nobody notices them. Nobody says anything about the dead boys in the road or the blood they leave behind.

He thinks they might be ghosts. Of what, and for what reason, he isn't sure. But they're there, spectral against the neighborhood and the sky, dead-on straight down the road.

"Ma, are ghosts real?" he asks one day out on the porch, shaded from the sun.

She's got a cigarette pressed to the seal of her lips. She blows out a ring of smoke. It catches in his nostrils, and he scrunches his nose. His ma's face does that thing where it goes saggy and twisted, like a sad statue, and she pretends he isn't there until she realizes he won't go away.

"Fuck kinda question's that?" she mutters. "No, boy, ghosts ain't real. There's just us. The living."

He wants to say more, wants to ask but what if you saw one, what if you saw dead boys walking in the street, ma. But the words dry in his mouth, and his ma is quiet again, so he slips through the door in two breaths.

That night, as Gary hides himself under the impenetrable wall of his quilt, one of the dead boys stands still in his room. They aren't meant to stand still, he thinks, and then realizes that they make sounds.

The boy stands over his bed, eyes wet, one side of his face red and popcorn-y in one blink, his jaw blown off in the next. The one who stands over his bed has shaky fingers, folding a paper crane, green paper, it looks so green, and the red on his face, red, red—

Your fault, someone says, or maybe it's himself that says it. Your fault, he knows, and his skin goes cold. My fault. He's too afraid to look the ghost in the eyes; he spends the night staring at the ceiling, hyperventilating, watching as dawn crawls across flat white. The boy standing over his bed breathes very loudly in gurgling, gasping heaves. There are moments where Gary can't tell the difference between the boy's and his own.

His eyes are dry, and they hurt when he blinks. There's crust built up in his tear ducts, and it burns when he reaches his trembling hand up to wipe it away. Gary gets up, and the boy is gone, and he spends the day a wraith, willowy and brittle. He twitches at every sound, twists his head around to corners and the street, terrified that another one of the walkers will have stopped, staring at him, breathing.

"The fuck is the matter with you," his pa spits, and Gary wonders what he sees when he looks at his son. "Quit this sissy shit. You're a man, men don't do this— this queer shit, thought we already dealt with this—" and Gary walks away into the evening with blue and violet on his skin, with the urge to hit something until his knuckles burst open. He tugs at his hair, tugs harder when it doesn't hurt enough, and slams his fist into the side of his head when that's not enough, either. He does it once, twice, thrice, and spits onto the ground.

You fault, comes the rattle through the breeze, your fault, and he stands there, limbs leaden, like the wind will let him flake away into the sky.

His ma gets him a camera for Christmas, and her face is the brightest he's seen it all year, as if the lights in the house have seeped into her skin. Gary almost cries, and smacks himself in the temple, don't ruin this, he thinks, don't make her sad.

He finds that he likes taking pictures. There's a lot of pretty things, a lot of interesting things, and he likes being able to see them outside of his memory.

Gary takes a lot of pictures of the road. He takes them when he sees the ghosts walking on it, and they never show up on the tiny, scratched screen, but he can imagine them there, sun lit against their backs.

He never deletes the pictures of the empty roads. He doesn't think he can.

He dreams of speaking, and his words diffuse into anger, into death.

He dreams of searching for forgiveness, his words are pleas, and they sink into nothing.

He wakes, and wonders if it's better if he were to never speak at all.

He wakes, and wonders if he's meant to be one of those ghosts, walking down the street; if the world messed up, put him in the wrong spot. He wonders at what boy's life he's stolen, and if he could give it back.

Many other dead boys stop their walking, over the years. Gary comes to notice that they all wear dog tags around their necks, one to fifty, and they all wear the same watch, the same belt, the same look on their faces.

The boy with the crane is number nineteen, and Gary still does not look him in the eye. There's a stocky boy, with auburn hair, sometimes with red soaking through his shirt at his abdomen, sometimes with a hat, number forty-seven. There's a boy with a scar along his face, muscled arms, and he stands straight, tall, number twenty-three. Twenty-three never looks dead, never bleeds, and Gary is almost more scared of that than the ones who do look dead.

There's a boy who's taller than the rest, more built than the rest, like he's a soldier, and sometimes the skin on his face looks sunken, sick, and he'll cough outside Gary's window, or his footsteps will sound in a steady rhythm as he marches in place. He's number thirty-eight. There's number forty-six, whose face hides beneath a baseball cap, chewing gum; there's number six, blood trailing from his nose, rosary beads clanking together, glimmering under moonlight; number forty-eight, hands red, hair matted over his face, he hums a song; number twenty-four, holding a radio that cracks and plays all night, all night—

They must be ghosts, because what else could they be? And yeah, Gary's fucking crazy, because he's been hallucinating dead boys since he was shorter than the kitchen counter, and they're almost always there, walking, watching. Maybe they're waiting for him to join them, on their endless walk, waiting for him to become empty, to tether himself to the road.

Gary doesn't have friends.

He's not blind, he's not stupid: he sees the way everyone makes a wide berth around him, like they're scared he's going to cling onto their very soul and leech the sense from their bones. He thinks he might have tried harder, in a different life, one where he doesn't see things in his room or out in the open world, one where he could care enough about what everyone else thinks about him.

Gary's not usually focused enough to listen to what anyone has to say, anyway. No, he's usually watching the road, for the people who are walking. He's looking at the corners of the room, for six, nineteen, twenty-three, thirty-eight, forty-seven; it's almost compulsive, and he tries to slap himself out of it.

"What are you always looking at?" a boy asks him curiously, once.

Panic wells beneath his skin, and he isn't sure if he wants someone to believe him, or if he wants nobody to notice at all. "None of your fucking business," he says, like his pa would, and the other boy's face goes red.

"Fine," the boy frowns, and he mutters, "Crazy."

The boy walks away, and Gary almost asks him to come back, that he didn't mean it, but he says, "The fuck you just call me, you cocksucker?"

And he gets into his first fight, and he goes home with a split lip, and his ma only looks at him with heavy eyes, and he wanders around the house in silence.

It's easier to be a little mean. It's easier to send people back in the direction from where they came, and he hates it, but he doesn't know what else to do. He's tried, before, but his jokes don't land, his demeanor is too off-putting, and they call him basket-case Barkovitch in the same room because they must think he doesn't hear, or don't care that he does.

So he drifts, some large rift separating him from what he thinks he should want to be a part of. He lingers in between, unsure of what he's meant to be: alive, dead, alive, dead. Walking, or still, walking, still.

He dreams of dying for the first time when he's fifteen.

In his dream, he stops— warning, number five —in the middle of the road, the air is thick, warm, and there's a spoon in his hand. The metal is hot beneath his palms. There's eyes on him, wary, like he's a feral animal, and he thinks he might be, and they said they forgive him, and he can't stop feeling sick whenever he thinks about— about— so he thinks he's done. He's done, done done done—

Gary gasps awake, hands flying to his throat, and he coughs, hacks, for minutes and minutes until he gets the thick, tacky feeling out of his airway. There's a buzz, a jolt, that keeps passing through his skull, and he knocks himself in the head to make it stop.

Restlessness keeps him from going back to sleep— he can't even lay his head down on his pillow without feeling like he's suffocating, so he gets up, right out of his bed, right out the front door, and he goes for a walk.

He walks until the sun rises, barefoot, and the soles of his feet are rubbed raw, but he doesn't pay it any mind, doesn't stop until that first ray of sunlight strikes his face, the fear and tears and guilt swallowed whole by the miles behind him.

Gary moves in with his meemaw after his pa dies in a factory accident and his ma can't bear to see him anymore. She drives him thirty-six miles west, past flat fields and telephone poles, withered one-story buildings and crumbling fence posts. The truck drives so fast he doesn't see anyone walking on the pavement.

His ma pats him on the back before she goes, and Gary can't muster up the courage to do something like hug her. He can't muster up much at all, actually, beyond the movement of his eyes to see if his pa walks with a number hanging from his neck. He doesn't, and he can't explain the reason why his shoulders loosen in relief.

He likes his meemaw. She's old and she looks like she's one flu infection away from kicking the bucket, but she moves in a way that he admires. She's lived alone, before this, and she curses up a storm when he tries to help her make dinner. She laughs at him when he asks how he can help.

"You gonna go to school, Gary?" she asks him with the voice of a lawnmower as she stuffs a corn cob into her mouth.

"I'm still in school," he answers.

She waves her hand. "No, no, not that," she says. "College."

He takes a moment to think. He hasn't really thought about it. Thinking multiple years in advance kind of disagrees with the way he drifts through his life, and he finds himself unsure. Doesn't think he can see himself anywhere solid, can't see himself as anything solid. "Dunno," he mumbles. "Maybe."

She kisses her teeth. "Don't waste what you could have, son," she points at him, suddenly. "That's what you'll do for me."

He blinks at her. "Huh?"

"You'll take your sorry ass to college, son. There ain't nothing for you here, and we both know it," his meemaw says like it's a principle of the universe. Gary can't figure out a way to argue with her.

He does help with the dishes. Then, he goes to bed up in the cleared-out attic, to a different mattress with different sheets, a different window, a different house, and number nineteen stands over his bed, again. He shuts his eyes and goes to sleep.

His meemaw's a persistent woman. He shapes up over time, he tries to focus on his classes, and he doesn't talk to anyone because he doesn't know what fucked up sentence is going to come out of his mouth next.

The dead boys trudge on by the window five times an hour, and number twenty-three leans against the wall much like alive-boys do. He stares at Gary, and Gary isn't sure what the ghost wants from him. He taps his pencil against his desk, the noise meant to distract, as eyes sear into the top of his head. He scratches his neck until it burns.

After class, Gary stumbles out of the classroom, and into the bathroom. Boot-falls follow behind him, the pace he knows like he knows his own limbs. He shuts himself into one of the two tiny stalls; there's toilet paper all over the floor and the lock doesn't work. It's fine.

"What do you want from me," he hisses through his teeth, leaning against the door. The footsteps stop, and he hears something drip onto the floor, drip drip drip. Gary breathes, in, out, in, out.

He twists his fingers into his hair. "What do you want?" he repeats. "Look, I don't know what I did, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, leave me alone,"

There's nothing but the drip drip drip onto the floor. He can tell they're still there, and he hates it, he wants them to go away, wants to stop feeling like he's one of them, a dead boy walking. "Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off," he heaves, and pulls at his hair until he feels his scalp sting.

Drip drip drip. "Fuck off!"

He straightens up in the stall, limbs like leaves, and he turns around and shoves the door open before he can think otherwise.

There's nothing there. Just his own reflection in the mirror: his face, dry of tears, dark circles under his eyes, and he looks illusory, pale and gaunt, spooked at his own face looking back at him.

Motherfucker, he mouths to himself, and in a fit of anger, terror, or some mixture of the two, he swings his fist at the mirror and feels it crack, feels himself bleed.

His knuckles are still bandaged when he applies to a few colleges, mostly in Maine. He submits a portfolio of his photography; there's a lot of pictures of roads, and in their supplemental descriptions he does not attribute them to wanderlust. He gives their meaning to grief, inexplicable and hollowing. He wonders how different the roads are in Maine.

"Go up north," his meemaw had said. "The weather will do you some good."

Gary doesn't think it matters where he goes. The dead boys will follow, and with them, there is nothing for him to do but drift.

His meemaw snaps a finger at him. "Get out your head, boy. I need you to make the grocery run this week."

The campus is pretty. Prettier than the town Gary grew up in, prettier than his meemaw's city. He isn't entirely sure he's really here, but he's holding a big box in his hands, his life inside of it, and his meemaw is chattering up a storm beside him.

It's fall, and the trees are orange and red and yellow. The sky is cloudy, and the ground is slightly wet, reflective in quality. If he wasn't holding his box, he'd be taking a picture. The air is crisp, and he thinks he can feel it wisp through his nose all the way down to his lungs; it makes him feel awake.

"You're in a good place, here, Gary," his meemaw tells him. "I'm proud of you, y'know."

Today, he walks slow, because his meemaw can't walk fast. He couldn't leave her behind, even for the unsettling hum he feels creeping up his legs at the pace. "Thank you," he says quietly, and they don't say anything until they get to his building, but it's alright, it's peaceful.

"You're in a broom closet," his meemaw chortles after the door creaks open.

It is tiny: there's two twin beds, as far apart against opposite ends as the drywall will allow, two desks, two small wardrobes, and a shelf on the wall above each desk. The window's blinds are drawn closed, and slats of light hit the floor, an old, musty carpet. There's a faint odor, one that's probably been brewing since the very walls of the university went up, and Gary breathes through his mouth for a few minutes.

He sets his box down near the bed closer to the door, and he presses a palm down into the blue mattress. It's not particularly soft, but neither particularly hard, and he doesn't think his quality of sleep has anything to do with how comfortable his bed is, despite what his meemaw claims.

The other bed is empty, his roommate not yet moved in, and Gary tells his meemaw he's going to get the other box from the car, because nausea is building at the back of his throat at the thought of this roommate. Gary knows he's weird. He's not right, and his roommate is going to know, and maybe if he's lucky they'll want to switch out and he'll be alone.

Those thoughts ebb away, a bit, as he walks faster and his lungs burn. He's at the car much faster than it took to walk away from it, and he grabs his other box with steady hands. He's back at his dorm in even faster time, out of breath, and his meemaw asks if he jogged, and he realizes he might have.

His meemaw doesn't stay for long, and Gary wouldn't want her to, anyway. The trip out's taken its toll on her, and he has her promise to be careful on her way back home. She punches him in the shoulder, and when she pulls him in for a hug before she steps out the door, he finds it in himself to smile.

Gary puts the sheets on his bed, his blanket, his thin pillow; he has one poster, for a random movie he'd found for a buck at someone's yard sale, and several prints of his own photos, ranging from the sky to the trees to buildings to the fucking road he can't leave behind. There's other various things in his two boxes: his clothes, his notebooks, his pens, his camera. It all gets tucked away; the pictures on the wall and the camera on his desk are the only hints that someone lives on his side of the room. It's enough for him.

It's late afternoon when the door creaks open, and Gary's not quite sure where the time went, looking out the window, watching for any dead boys walking across the lawn. There haven't been any, and rather than relief, there's a big well of trepidation deepening in his gut, like an hourglass, waiting for its sand to run out.

Gary turns, and his roommate— because that's who this has to be —is tall, with a sharp face, tanned skin, his eyes are dark, and Gary thinks he knows those eyes, hidden behind long, matted hair, but this boy's hair isn't matted, it's nice and smooth and pulled back, and his hands aren't red—

"Uh, hey," number forty-eight says in the doorway, no tag hanging from his neck, no watch on his wrist, and— no dead boy has ever spoken before. Gary stares, because he doesn't know what else to do, isn't sure if this is real, hates that he can't tell.

Forty-eight is wearing something different than what he wears normally; he's wearing a t-shirt, loose denim jeans, and dull boots, and Gary can't look away from where the tag reading 48 is supposed to be sitting.

Number forty-eight shifts on his feet, and he's looking at Gary like he's running out of patience. "I'm Collie Parker."

Collie Parker, says number forty-eight, and the ghost has a name, and Gary might actually throw up.

"Gary. Barkovitch," he manages to get out, and can't form anything else, looking only to the hall behind number forty— Parker, and his legs carry him over, pushing past his roommate, ignoring the muttered hell's your problem? and he lets his feet take him outside.

"Goddammit, shit, shit," he rambles, and he can't get the image of number forty-eight's bloodied face out from behind his eyes, so he hits himself in the side of the head, like it'll knock it all out. It doesn't, and his skull smarts. The stinging pulse makes it all clearer, at least.

Okay, he thinks. The dead boy is an alive-boy. That can happen, right? Even though that's not how this works, because none of the dead boys are real. They're not supposed to be real. They're all in his head, because Gary Barkovitch is a basket-case, clean and simple.

But number forty-eight is real. Gary doesn't understand how, or why— so he walks, and he walks, and he keeps walking.

Chapter Text

He comes back to his dorm well after the sun has set, knees aching and wobbly. He's not sure how far he walked, or where, but he'd left campus at one point, and then had come back to walk in wide loops around its perimeter.

However many hours it was that Gary walked for, it wasn't enough— his chest tightens and squeezes as he approaches the door, praying that num— Parker isn't inside, and Jesus, he still can't get over the fact that number forty-eight has a name. Collie Parker, Collie Parker, he's got the sudden urge to repeat the name over and over into the air, listen to the way the consonants and the vowels land, watch as Parker will turn his head and answer because he's real.

And that— the realness, Parker's tangibility —is wonderful and strange and mostly horrifying, because Gary doesn't know why. Why he's seen Parker dead and stumbling, steps still brisk, why he's seen any of them, either walking or standing grotesque at the side of his bed. Why Parker exists, as a person, when Gary'd spent so long resigning himself to the truth that he's got a one-of-a-kind, no-good, fucked up mind.

It makes him a little angry, he thinks. How dare Collie Parker walk through that door, how dare he be real, how dare it all scramble the thoughts he'd so carefully stuffed away, how dare any of it happen, how dare Gary be born at all and try to make sense of this clusterfuck—

He takes a deep breath. "Get," he mutters to himself, hitting his head, "yourself—" another hit, "together—" and one more, for good measure. Okay, he can go in, it's just his fucking roommate, he can open a goddamn door.

Collie Parker is sitting at his desk, on a laptop, and Gary doesn't miss the way he goes still before he turns his head to the door, like some great evil's just entered the room, and maybe it has. Maybe it's Gary, and maybe the deformed, nonsensical foulness compiled into his flesh is going to ruin Parker for real, and there'll be another specter to haunt him, to peel him apart with a stare.

"…Hi," Gary says, and it's so fucking awkward that he wants to turn around and go spend the night sleeping in a bush.

Parker gives him an odd look, and he doesn't say anything back, but there's a slight inclination of his head as he turns his face back to his laptop screen. The air in the tiny room is thick, not just from its piss-poor ventilation, but from hesitance, and a still-forming discomfort. Gary realizes he's stalling at the door, and closes it a bit too harshly, then kicks the damn thing because he'd momentarily forgotten about the slight burn in his feet, and he needs everything to be quieter.

"Do you mind?" Parker says as Gary stumbles to his side of the room.

"What?" he snaps, kicking off his shoes.

"Just— stop with all of that, it's distracting," Parker gestures vaguely.

"The fuck is 'all that'?" Gary scoffs.

"Look, you got a problem with me?" Parker asks. "You push me outta the way, you slam the damn door, and you don't seem to be real happy that I'm in the room we share."

Gary's shoulders raise. "Not everything's about you, jackass," he bites.

Parker's face goes through several emotions very fast— too fast for Gary to figure out what any of them mean —before he settles with a half-frown, eyes closed-off. "Whatever. Whatever shit you've got, man, tone it down, figure it out, I don't care," he says. "I'm not gonna deal with someone who can't respect that they live with someone else."

Gary feels a bit like a scolded child, and his shoulders weigh with shame, his neck warm; his nails dig into his palms, hard, harder. Day one, and he's fucked it up— he's consistent, at least. "Fine," he says curtly, and Parker nods after a few moments, and it's silent in the room for the evening until they shut the lights off and sleep in beds, pretending neither of each other are there.

The first night, Gary dreams about walking, vivid, more vivid than when he'd dreamt about his own death.

His breath is loud, he's heaving, there's more heaving around him— they're going uphill, and his thighs are burning like fire's spreading through every layer of his skin. It's dark, and he can see where his hands tremble in front of him; he's wearing a watch, and it says on one of its dull little faces, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, and he sucks in lungfuls of cold air through his teeth— he needs to go faster.

The landscape becomes a blur— he's walking next to forty-seven, and he thinks he might be saying words to the boy. There's a gun to forty-seven's head; Gary feels air push out of his lips, don't look behind you, his mouth might say, and then he goads, you aren't gonna make it, because forty-seven needs to wake the fuck up from the bleary-eyed haze he's not going to be able to speed-walk through. He feels his throat vibrate as he yells, and he blinks and forty-seven's ahead, and crack, crack, goes the fire of the guns behind him, and he sees someone roll down the incline out of the corner of his eye.

He blinks again and the sun's on his face; he's cold, he's still walking, he doesn't know where or when, and forty-eight-Collie-Parker's eyes are watching him, condemning, and number-five-Barkovitch basks in the sting of disgust; the crack of another gunshot shoots through the air—

Gary launches straight up in his bed like a reed, ears ringing, and his body is stiff, locked, too afraid to do anything else. He's gasping for air like he did in his dream, up that hill, and it scares him, so he slows it down, ignores the burn in his chest as it begs for more.

It takes several minutes for his body to loosen, and he slumps, his face cradled in his hands. His eyes are dry; they're always dry, because he keeps it together. Fucking hell. That— it's never been like that, he thinks, never felt so real. He swings his legs off his bed, because he's not going back to sleep, not tonight, and maybe not the next night, either.

It's dark in the room— a glance at his phone and it's 3:43 in the morning. Great. The thought of walking right now makes him nauseous, but what else is there for him to do? There's nothing else that lets his mind slide, weightless, into a bottomless ocean; it's crushing, it's all-encompassing, it's dread and doom and soundless, it's so whole and absolute that it's perfect. So he toes his shoes on— he's not repeated the foot-shredding incident of his death-dream, it made walking the next day far too impractical —and he slips out the door, quiet.

He has to put a hand over his mouth a few times as he walks, because he really isn't certain that he won't hurl on the sidewalk, and he can't stop thinking about the frantic in-out-in-out of his breath, the deafening boom of a gun— a carbine, it's carbines —and then he thinks about the other dreams; the spoon in his hand, the way he choked and gurgled; nineteen, face-down on the blacktop, his green paper crane—

As he walks, another pair of footsteps scrape against the path behind him, and another, another, another. Fabric shifts in his peripherals, he sees a glint of metal. He hears the whir of a machine moving along asphalt, but there's nothing there.

"Stop it," he pleads to nobody, to anybody, because that's all Gary wants, for it all to stop.

Gary and Parker dance around each other's toes; they trade the barest amount of words possible, they don't dare cross the invisible line between their halves of the room, and they don't get into any big spats, nor do they become anything like friends.

Gary doesn't know how to fix it, or if Parker wants anything to be fixed in the first place. Not that Gary would blame him— Parker got stuck with the one guy who couldn't be any crazier, and probably the only one who's pastime is to hallucinate him as dead-or-dying. It's probably for the better if Gary steers clear of him, as much as possible, as much as the thought makes him feel cold and spindly and jittery. He tugs at his hair. He can't afford to mess up whatever Parker's got going on in his life— he may not know why he's seen number forty-eight for damn near a decade, but it can't be good, to mix the living with the not, so he'll just— he'll keep drifting. What he wants is a moot point, insignificant, and he needs to get that in his stupid head.

Classes start, and he's got to take a bunch of irrelevant general education requirement courses, even though he's here for photography. The big lecture halls feel safer than his small classes back home did, weirdly enough— there's so many heads that there's a fair amount of anonymity where he knows no one's looking at him, and he can sink into the background, one with the countless rows and columns of students.

He's in one of those irrelevant classes, a writing course, and he doesn't really give a shit about writing— the professor assigns a mile-long list of readings and writing assignments due in a week and half, and Gary tries his best to think of it as important.

The one after is actually a class related to his major, Intro to Photography, and it's sequestered away into a humanities building half taken-over by the sciences. It takes him three minutes to figure out the right entrance, and as he's about to open what he thinks is the right one, someone clears their throat.

Gary pauses, turns around— oh, motherfucker, what kind of fucked up joke is this—

"Are you in Intro to Photography?" says number fucking forty-seven, auburn hair falling into his eyes, wearing a brown and gray sweater, standing still, still, still. "I can't find the entrance, and no one else I've asked has known so far," there's a small quirk to his lips, a what can you do, and Gary stares at him for what is probably longer than socially acceptable.

"Uh, yeah," he says, hoarse. "It's in here, I think. I've also been— looking."

Forty-seven's face brightens, and he's not angry at Gary, and he's real, too, what the fuck, and Gary tries not to lose it. He can't run away, not like he did with Parker, because he's going to the damn class he's paying for, but— he watches his hand open the door, like he's in the backseat of a goddamn car.

"What's your name?" forty-seven asks, easy as breathing. "I'm Ray. Ray Garraty."

Ray Garraty. Ray Garraty. Boy with the bullet holes, Ray Garraty. "Gary Barkovitch," he hears himself say.

"Nice to meet you, Gary," Garraty pats him on the shoulder as they walk down the hall, and Gary twitches. The room's all the way at the end of the hall, and Garraty walks with an obnoxious, infectious bounce to his step.

It's a smaller room, not a big lecture hall, and Gary makes a beeline for a seat in the corner. Garraty sits right down next to him, chattering about his schedule and his major— "Poli sci, I know, I know, tell me about it," —and he asks questions that Gary frankly doesn't want to answer.

"Have you thought about what you wanna do after college?" Garraty asks after he's talked about his mom and the fact that he lives an hour and a half away from the college by car, two and a half by train, and the corner Gary picked feels like it's folding in on itself.

"I don't fucking know, alright?" comes out of him, like the pop of a balloon, fast and over as soon as it started.

Garraty tilts his head, and Gary expects him to be at least a little annoyed, a little offended— but Garraty's a fucking weirdo, because he taps Gary's desk with his pencil and asks, "Hey, do you wanna come with me and my friends for lunch tomorrow?"

Gary blinks. This has never happened before, ever. Never in a dream, never in his waking moments, never even in the half-baked wishes he made to the night sky when he was twelve. An offering, one of friendship? Gary doesn't know how to navigate that. He doesn't know the first thing about it, and maybe he's longed for it, in the vaguest sense, without knowing what exactly he could even want in something as elusive as a friend.

"Maybe," he says, to the boy who isn't dead, either.

What if he just… tells Garraty he can't go?

The boy had put his number in Gary's phone, and Gary's got the chat open, fingers hesitant over the keyboard. He's slightly out of breath from speed-walking back from his 11 AM. It would be simple, to say sorry, i'm not feeling up for it, but his fingers won't move. He turns his phone off and throws it farther down his bed, laying down on his back, staring at the ceiling. God knows where Parker is right now, and Gary's slightly relieved that he can lay here like a corpse, with no eyes to judge him or pick him apart.

Well, there's number twenty-four in the corner, but twenty-four never really looks at Gary— he's always looking at the little radio in his hands, and today he's managed to get it to play a stream of old rock music. He listens to it as he counts pock-marks in the ceiling paint.

He doesn't pick his phone back up until it buzzes, and Garraty's said meet at dining hall in 20?

Fuck, his hands are sweaty.

Parker and Garraty must have been the setup for a punchline, because Garraty's friends— thing is, Gary's not sure how much shell shock he has left in him. He feels strung out, dry, empty: forty-six, he's chewing gum at the table, just like his ghost, Hank Olsen's the name; forty-nine, the one with the bent, squishy ankle, Richard Harkness; twenty-three, who Gary isn't sure is actually real at all until Garraty talks to him, because he looks exactly the same as his ghost always does, different clothes, but the same, and his name is Peter McVries; and there's six, a necklace with a cross hanging from his neck, so much smaller than the rosary he'd carried, Art Baker.

And Parker's at the table, too, because of course he is— he locks eyes with Gary, and he looks displeased, and Gary nearly tries to leave before Garraty shuffles him between himself and Harkness.

"This is Barkovitch, everyone," Garraty says as he tears open a ketchup packet to squirt all over the pale white dining hall fries. "Found him in my photography class!"

Gary's plate has a plenty balanced meal on it— there's a salad and a piece of bread and some marinara pasta, but his stomach feels like it's shriveled, and as he lifts a forkful to his mouth, it tastes like nothing.

"So, how lucky did you get with the room lottery?" McVries asks him, and Gary finds he doesn't really like the way everyone's eyes laser-focus on him within two seconds.

"Uh," he starts, eyes drifting over to Parker. Parker's not looking at him, poking around the chicken on his plate. "It's fine, I guess? It's, uh, a double."

"What floor, though?" Baker's the one who speaks next. "Neber Hall's got no elevators, and they got me put up all the way on the seventh floor. Move in was hell."

"First," he says. "Neber, too. Came with my meemaw, though, she couldn't carry nothing big if she wanted to." Parker hasn't said anything, and Gary finds himself tensing, because—

"A meemaw? Dude, where the hell are you from?" Olsen laughs, and Gary bristles—

And that's familiar, like he's heard those words before. But they'd been different, right? He means to bite back, means to chase away the embarrassment with a jab, but it fades on its own as his mind searches through any scrap of memory or dream for what he's thinking of; he doesn't know, can't find what he knows is just out of his grasp.

"—well, how's your triple with the roommates from hell, Olsen?" Garraty is saying, and Gary realizes he never answered.

But these boys don't seem to mind that he didn't answer. They carry on like it's nothing, where Gary lingers back over each second he's fucked up, and it's almost mesmerizing to watch people who aren't like that.

He spends most of the lunch quiet, a spectator, clueless at how easily the group of them mesh and meld and banter. He tries jumping in on a joke he thinks is funny, and he laughs, but the others don't, really, and it sends him spiraling, again. He almost snaps, and as he's forming words to say that will probably hurt, he thinks of his dreams.

He thinks of his dreams: he says nothing, and he keeps it together, and it all stays inside, like it's meant to be, like he's always done. Not outside, never outside, because nineteen's face is permanently burned into his retina, and he thinks— no, he knows, he's known for a long time, it had to have been Gary's fault. Because Gary is who he is, and unfettered, unbound, he's an affliction, one that claws and bites until it's clamped tight.

"Didn't know you were friends with Garraty," Parker says stiffly when they're both in the dorm.

"I didn't know, either," Gary says, defensive, but it's subdued.

"Look— I don't want it to be awkward, with them," Parker says. "We can say our grievances or whatever, and start over."

"…Yeah, that's fine," Gary answers belatedly. He's trying to pay attention to what Parker's saying, truly, but he can't think straight, with the faces of Garraty's friends fighting for the most prominent spot in the forefront of his head, whether it be how they looked at lunch or how they look dead. It doesn't help when their ghosts walk past outside the window, as if summoned by his own inner turmoil, and his gaze flickers between them and Parker, unsure of what to track.

Parker's eyes follow his, and he looks like he's trying to figure out what Gary's watching, or maybe he's wondering what's wrong with him. "You wanna have this conversation another time?" Parker asks. "When you're not— whatever this is."

"Hey, fuck you, man," Gary says, irritated. "You wanna talk now? We'll talk right fucking now."

Parker's face goes stony, and he visibly draws in a breath, holds it for a few seconds, and exhales. "Nah, see, this is what I mean. Why do you blow up over the most random shit?" his voice is frustratingly smooth. "It feels like I've gotta walk on eggshells around you, and I can't leave 'cause we're living in the same fucking room."

Gary huffs. "I don't 'blow up' at everything," he denies. "We're having a normal goddamn conversation."

Parker blinks at him. "Yeah, sure, why the fuck not," he says. "Okay. We're having a normal conversation. Like normal roommates. Tell me your favorite color."

"Huh?"

Parker looks strangely determined. "Mine's orange. Now. Yours?"

"…Blue, I guess?" Gary says, mystified. "Why are you asking me this queer shit about— about colors?"

"First thing," Parker crosses his arms. "You've gotta stop saying shit like that. Someone's not gonna be forgiving, and I don't know where you came from, but it's not gonna fly here."

Jesus fucking Christ on a stick. Sissy shit, his pa would say, and he almost says it too, but, but— contained, he's perfectly fucking contained, more than anyone in this whole damn city. "Fine," he says, flat.

Parker eyes him warily, like he's going to jump out the window if he looks away. "Great," Parker says, and he's got to be making it as condescending as possible, drawn out and grating. "Favorite, uh… pizza topping?"

Gary sighs, long, and briefly casts his gaze to the ceiling. "I dunno, cheese," he says.

"Ham and pineapple."

Gary wrinkles his nose. "What's wrong with you? That shit's— nasty."

Parker rolls his eyes. "Bet you haven't tried it."

Gary opens his mouth, and, hm— "Well, it probably tastes like horseshit."

And they continue like that, trading surface level facts and secrets. Gary thinks Parker's a self-absorbed asshole, because no one's hair looks that thick and shiny if they aren't, and he's rude; Gary thinks he's trying to keep himself contained, too, and just happens to be better at it than Gary, that fucker. He learns Parker's a poli sci major, and met Garraty in lecture; he's got two sisters and one brother; he hates key lime pie; he plays guitar and is allegedly famous on the reservation he's from for it.

They talk for an hour, maybe two, and they almost get into a fistfight over a geographical argument, but it's— it's kind of nice, to talk to someone. He's never told anyone he likes peach cobbler, or what his favorite song is— one that played on twenty-four's radio years and years ago —or that fall's his favorite season. They curse at each other, and they go for stretches where not a curse drops at all. Gary's mouth is dry by the end, and he thinks it's because he's never talked so much for one stretch of time.

That night, he goes to sleep feeling lighter, and forgets all about the promise he made to himself that he would never interfere in Collie Parker's life.

They bicker. They fight. They're like unruly children in a preschool— at each other's throats one minute, calm and complacent the next. Gary hesitates to call it friendship, a word he doesn't really understand the definition nor any example of. It just is, he thinks.

He dreams of— of Olsen, this time, and he's never had this dream before.

Olsen's stumbling, slowing, holding something small and pale between his thumb and forefinger. Gary watches, because he always watches, for God knows what reason— Olsen runs backwards, screaming, towards the massive tanks rolling in pace with them.

Crack crack crack, and he's on the ground, and Baker's running back, and Garraty and McVries are shouting, and it's so loud—

I did it all wrong, I did it all wrong, and Baker's repeating he said my name, he called my name, and he sees only darkness, then, but he hears it all—

He's choking on his own snot as he wakes, and he coughs and coughs and coughs until it's all gone, until Olsen's body on the ground goes away, and he pictures the boy as he was earlier that day, eyes bright and lucid, chewing on a celery stick.

As per routine, he puts on his shoes, he does not look at number nineteen at the foot of his bed, and he goes for a walk.

"Parker, what's got you looking like that?" McVries chortles one afternoon, and Parker's head is pillowed on his arm as he uses one hand to unwrap a burrito. There's shadows under his eyes, like he hasn't slept, and he blinks long and slow.

"Someone can't go two nights without screaming himself awake," Parker snaps, taking the largest bite of his burrito Gary thinks is physically possible. And, shit— how many times has Gary woken up from a dream, and how many times has Parker heard— there's a bowling ball in his gut, weighing heavier and heavier, and he shifts in his seat.

"Not my fault you can't sleep deeper, dipshit," he curses. Parker throws a spoon at him, and Gary's off-kilter enough that the sight of a spoon makes him flinch.

"Wait, wait, you two are roommates?" Harkness looks wildly between them, scratching his head. "How did we not know about this?"

"Never came up," Parker grumbles. Gary can't stop looking at him. Has he— has Gary ever spoken, during his dreams? After them? He doesn't know, can't tell, and the thought weasels its way under his skin, and he scratches at his wrist, trying to get it out. It won't, it won't, so he smacks at his head, quick and sharp, and the fear still won't go away.

"And it'll come up now!" Harkness exclaims. "How do you two stand each other, genuinely, 'cause I didn't think you two could be civil for more than an hour—"

"Nah, I wanna hear about these nightly going-ons. Whatcha dreaming of, Barkovitch?" McVries chuckles. "I bet it's clowns."

"No, no, I bet it's the never-ending readings list, growing longer and longer," Garraty says, eyes flicking up and down across his laptop screen, reading some hundred-page excerpt about metaphorical translation or whatever it was. McVries strokes a sympathetic hand up and down his arm.

"Fuck off," Gary says hotly. "None of your damn business."

"It's totally clowns, McVries," Olsen snorts, and they all try to press Gary for the next twenty minutes about it, on-and-off, but he's stubborn, and they get nothing. He'd never tell them something about what he sees; not just because he's crazy, but because he doesn't think he could stand it if their faces morph to be any more like they are in his dreams.

Parker watches him, and he watches Parker, and he commits the exasperated exhaustion to memory— so, so different from the bone-tired, weary, crest of death and despair he's seen on him before. Gary thinks he isn't afraid of looking him in the eye.

He leaves lunch early and takes the long way to his 2 PM.

"This is Stebbins," Garraty says, a month and three days into the semester.

Gary nearly drops the fork from his mouth. He'd thought he was done with all this ghosts-come-to-life shit, but there stands number thirty-eight; broad-shouldered, healthy, olive-green bomber jacket clean, a little weathered. But it's his face, more than anything, that Gary stares at.

Stebbins has a certain look in his eye that Gary recognizes. It's the same one he's seen in the mirror, after he's dreamed or after number nineteen haunts him for three days straight.

Stebbins looks at them all like he's in a dream himself, floating along, passive, lost.

Gary wants to stand up, walk right up to him, to that look in his eye, to ask him— ask him what, exactly? Have you seen dead versions of these people walking out on the street? Have you seen them standing in your room? Have you dreamed of them? Have you dreamed of yourself dying? Or were you just born looking like that?

Stebbins sits across from Gary, on the edge, and he means to say something, he really does, but there's nothing coming up out of his throat; his mouth feels like it's been stuffed with cotton, and when he looks at Stebbins, the other boy looks like he's frozen solid, too. Their eyes land on each other, stuck, and it's like recognizing something or somebody after a long, long time— someone coughs off to the side.

"If you're done looking at each other, I need you both to fill out this form for my management class," Olsen waves his phone across the table.

"Fuck you and fuck your form," Gary says listlessly. He stabs his fork into his pasta with vigor.

He doesn't get the chance to question Stebbins, and he doesn't for weeks. The guy's prone to vanishing like vapor, and he's quiet, just like in the mosaic of scattered dreams Gary knows. Stebbins hasn't really been as off as he was on that first day, but Gary doesn't know the first thing about what normal is for Stebbins, anyway.

But he— he needs to know what made Stebbins look like that. Why it felt like that, to look at him, like they both knew. Maybe Gary's gotten ten times as selfish, maybe his misery has grown greedy, maybe it's grown eyes and fingers and is going to replace him, one cell at a time: he has the arrogance to hope.

"Dude, how long have you been laying there?" Parker's voice snarks from the doorway. "It's four. On a Saturday."

"Not in the goddamn mood, Parker," he says, staring steadfast at the ceiling, again, because number nineteen is standing at the foot of his bed, today, and Parker's own bloodied face is right over nineteen's shoulder. And— number seven's in the other corner, and Gary's not looking at him, because he knows he'll see tear tracks cutting rivers through red, won't see his jaw, because the whole thing's nearly gone. So he's not looking anywhere, and the dead boys and his dreams and the marching of feet outside will swallow him whole, and he really needs to go for a walk, but his limbs are limp, molded to his bed like jelly.

Footsteps— slow, they're alive-Parker's, he knows —come up to the side of his bed. A hand cuts into the expanse of the ceiling, waving up and down.

"Yeah, this is weird, even for you," Parker says when Gary doesn't respond. "Are you, like, sick?"

"No." No, he's not sick. He's just so goddamn tired, and he's been ignoring it for weeks, but the thought's returned, burrowing a little hole into his bone marrow: you should stop pretending. Because he's let himself forget that these boys are alive and healthy, and that he's not meant to be one of them. He can't, because Gary Barkovitch needs to stay contained, dead-boy-fanaticism and jagged edges in all. The dead boys in the room are persistent in reminding him. But, he…

"Okay… up you get," Parker's hand pulls at his arm, and fuck, Parker's strong, because his body follows his arm, and he's cursing as his feet hit the floor.

"The fuck was that for?" he spats, blinking out dark spots from his eyes, and he swings his gaze up—

Seven's looking right at him, and a shiver goes through him, because seven's eyes are wide, and those tears are still falling, he watches one run down, down, down. His throat's moving, like he's trying to speak, but there's no sound, and his jaw is— the bits that are—

Gary rips his arm free and books it to the disgusting communal bathroom, where he doubles over a toilet and throws up bile.

"Shit, man," Parker says behind him, and why did Parker follow him in here, he can't see this— "Fuck, I'm sorry if that made you feel sick," the other boy's rambling, and Gary doesn't care. He just wants that image of seven out, and he thinks about it again, and leans right back over the toilet.

A hand hesitantly rubs up and down his back, and he can't tell if it makes his skin crawl or if it's helping— he twitches, hunching into himself, and he groans. His stomach feels like it's spasming, and there's nothing in it, so he thinks it's a little unfair that it keeps trying to lurch shit up out his throat.

"Talk," he demands, still on the floor.

"What?"

"About something, anything," he says. "Need a— need to think about something else."

"I— alright." Parker doesn't ask questions, and he talks. Something about his lit professor, a balding man in his thirties, who routinely gets on a video call with his wife in the middle of class.

"I think he's having an affair," Parker says, "Because that might not actually be his wife. We saw the contacts in his recents, because he always has that shit projected onto the wall. It's like, the names of five different women with heart emojis next to their names."

And it's enough, at least, to make him stop thinking about number seven.

Parker gets him water, and once Gary's gotten up from the floor and put himself back together into a semblance of a person, he tries not to feel awkward. Thanks for telling me about your professor's possible affair while I retched into a toilet. It was really, really helpful. All he mutters is a quick thanks, and he realizes he does not want to go back into their room.

"I'm gonna go for a walk," he tells Parker, and his mouth still tastes a bit like vomit. Maybe he'll buy breath mints.

He's on his way out from the bathroom when Parker goes, "Uh, maybe you shouldn't?"

"And why the hell not?" Gary grunts, turning around.

Parker gestures between Gary and the stalls. His face is more panicked than Gary's ever seen it. "Because of that? Look, man, you just don't seem like you should be going outside right now."

Gary scowls. "God, I'm fucking fine. I'm not gonna pass out on the side of the street, or whatever."

Parker rolls his eyes, and gives Gary a look made of steel. "I'm coming with you, you asswipe."

Gary blinks at him. "No, no you're not," he says, a little too quickly. Nobody goes on his walks with him. They're only for him, for the dead ones, still walking. Parker is not going to walk with Gary.

"Yes, I am," Parker doesn't budge, and Gary feels himself slump, sucking in a deep breath, a singular preparation to curse the idea out of his head.

"Why are you walking so fast?" Parker complains.

"This is how fast I normally walk. Maybe you're just slow," he mutters.

Parker ends up walking with him. It's perfectly fine. The pace, with forty-eight-Collie-Parker, feels slightly too surreal, and he tries to slow down, but his legs won't let him, marching onward. He feels a little nauseous, but not like earlier, and he doesn't try to fill the silence, the slide of their shoes against the ground loud enough.

They end up at the campus convenience market, because Gary's gonna buy those fucking mints, and twenty-three's standing by the candy aisle. Are breath mints in the candy aisle? He'll go the long way around, because twenty-three's blocking an entire side—

"Barkovitch?" twenty-three— no, it's McVries, shit, says— it's McVries in the store. Gary blinks at him for a few moments, dumbfounded and significantly creeped out. How could he not tell the difference?

"McVries," Parker's voice comes from behind Gary, bright and incessantly cheerful. Parker knocks Gary on the shoulder. "I don't know how you lost me so fucking fast. McVries, don't let him out of your sight, I swear."

McVries looks between the two of them, and Gary's still staring. "You chasing him or something?" he says, looking delighted at the concept. Fucking weirdo. "That what you two're doing here on this lovely afternoon?"

"Just stopping by," Parker says vaguely. Gary has half a mind to thank him for not bringing the past thirty minutes up.

Then Stebbins pops out from around the aisle behind McVries, and he looks between the three of them and nods, like this all makes sense, somehow. Gary realizes his eyes are oscillating between Stebbins and McVries, but he can't seem to get them to stop, much like his legs.

"You're always staring, Barkovitch," McVries raises a brow. "You tryna suck this dick?"

The words give him deja vu, and he blinks for a second longer as he sifts through his memories to figure out where he's heard them, but he can't, and then the words fully process. His lip curls, and no, he's not a queer, he would never be, can't be, "I ain't—" he starts to sneer, and then— stops. "No, I ain't."

McVries' eyes are calculating as they bore into him, but, "I see it how it is, Barko," is all he says, face stretched with one of those little grins of his. Gary steers himself down the candy aisle before he can do anything else. He glances back, expecting Parker to be right up in his fucking shadow, but he's still with McVries— he points at Gary, though, and he mouths I'm watching you. What is he, a convict?

Well, the breath mints aren't in the fucking candy aisle. He huffs to himself, turning down the next aisle.

"You can't tell which is the real one," Stebbins' voice says softly from behind him.

Gary's head whips around, his heart skipping a beat. "What the fuck?" he blurts. How did he get there?

Stebbins looks at him, really looks at him, and Gary feels like he's being seen down to the very basal sparks of his soul. "I can't tell either, sometimes," Stebbins is saying, but Gary barely hears it, like he's underwater, like his ears are ringing.

"Stop, fuck, stop," he brings a hand up to snag into his hair. "What're you talking about—?"

The blond blinks, like he hadn't expected Gary to be confused, to be completely lost, unsettled. "Twenty-three. They look the same, always."

Gary's blood goes cold, and his veins sing at the same time, like his body doesn't know how to respond, flip-flopping between elation and terror. Stebbins, does he— is he really—

"…You see them?" he asks, scarcely above a whisper, and it sounds so meek and uncertain that he wants to punch himself, but he rips at the strands of hair wrapped around his fingers, and it hurts just the right amount.

"Yeah, I do," Stebbins says, like it's a normal Saturday, like this is a normal thing for people to have in common, like any of this is normal.

Twenty-three. They look the same, always. No one's supposed to know that. Nobody but Gary basket-case Barkovitch.