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John Anderton is having a terrible week.
He supposes that’s not much of a surprise, given the sequence of events, first Danny Witwer’s arrival and then the wood ball with his name on it, being chased through the city, the advertisements screaming his name. Desperate times, desperate measures, and now—
Well.
It was never supposed to end like this.
Another wave of pain, of hunger, hits him. He takes a hit off the empty pen, tries to let the placebo effect buoy him up from the seemingly endless pit deep in his belly. The sheets are scratchy, or maybe that’s just the overload of sensation, the world all too much as he lays with the blindfold still over his eyes. He exhales shakily, feels a part of himself leave with it. There’s some old movie playing in the background, coupled with the wind outside and the steady ticking of the alarm clock. Set for twelve hours. Set for when he can take the bandages off and get the hell out of here.
It hurt. Of course it did. All of it, this and even before that, back when Burgess appointed him head of Precrime and told him that there was just one operation he needed to undergo, an operation that would allow him to do his job, an operation that would allow him to be faster, better, stronger. He agreed. Of course he did. Of course, of course.
He groans. The light is too bright even through the bandages, what he imagines to be evening sun hot on his skin. He doesn’t burn. It’s not like the movies. He wasn’t even bitten. That’s almost worse, isn’t it? They strapped him to a table and fed something into his veins and watched as he thrashed on the cold steel, as he tried to rip himself apart. He doesn’t even know how it feels, how it feels whenever he bites, whenever he lets them go limp and quiet in his arms.
His mouth waters at the thought of it, the biting, the blood. He knows how this part goes. It would be so easy, so simple, even with the blindfold. Someone would stumble in here, the doctor or his assistant, maybe, or a neighbor or someone just as high as he is, and he’d rip into their throat and take and take—
He doesn’t have time for this. He has to get himself together. Recover his minority report, prove his innocence. Get to the bottom of this whole situation.
He fumbles for the pen, to get another hit, to try and stave off the throes of starvation. He’s contorted into the fetal position, knees pulled up tight as if that’ll make the jaws gripping him weaken, as if anything can make this better except for hemoglobin and lymphocytes and plasma. The fan whirrs lazily overhead and the hunger will rip him clean in half. He pictures it, steel beartrap closing on his torso, digging in like the spindly legs of the cruelly modern torture contraption that the doctor had used to pry his eyes from his skull. Maybe he’s still high.
Then again, if this is how he feels when he’s high, he dreads sobering up. The thought makes him chuckle. The movie is still spooling out, and there’s a crash of glass and a shriek. Canned laugh track. A broken vase, maybe, roses falling to the ground, water seeping into the floorboards. The hunger will claw its way out of his stomach and eat him alive. His new eyes sting and itch in his sockets and he tries to reach up, to rub at them through the bandaids, but his limbs are lead and the bone-deep exhaustion is setting in, byproduct of the drugs and the fact that he just had both eyes removed and replaced with new ones, as if he were nothing more than a customizable doll. Pinned back down to that table in the back of Precrime, the one where they started the IV, where they made him anew. With the blindfold on, there’s nothing to block out the memories. Blood and shackles.
It’s not a pleasant trip. He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. Nothing is pleasant when he’s like this, when he’s all hungering and disoriented and left with nothing but the ghosts in his mind. The cold water of the swimming pool, chlorine drenching his senses, the sun too-hot and burning on his back as he races faster, faster, keeping his knees high, not fast enough.
When he wakes, his breath is harsh and loud in his chest and the hunger scrapes his insides with broken-glass teeth. Some cop drama is on. Gunshots and too-happy theme songs. Sean’s name dies on his lips.
For a moment, he just sits, trying to get himself together. He has to get himself together, because he can’t afford to be knocked down like this, caught because his hunger made him sloppy, because he was thinking of that afternoon at the public pool rather than his task. He manages to swing off the bed, get his feet under him, avoid braining himself on the edge of the table. He is dead, he is dying, he is going to starve right here in this room if he doesn’t–
The biohazard bucket. His mouth waters, but no, he can’t, he won’t, he needs his own eyes if there’s any shot at this plan working. He shoves himself away from it and tries to remember the directions. Kitchen in front of him, surely, bathroom to the right. He can do this. He can do this, he has to do this, he’s head of Precrime for god’s sake he can put up with a little discomfort, he can and he will. Keep it together, John.
The fridge creaks open, but everything in it smells rotten, like mold. He shuts the door and leans against the cool metal and tries to— not catch his breath, he doesn’t need that, not much— tries to make himself feel a little less like he’s falling apart. Shaky inhale and exhale, grip the edge of the fridge door so that it almost cuts into his palm. He has to think. Has to make it through this, sneak into the Temple to get Agatha, find his minority report. Stop himself from murdering Leo Crow.
He’s like that, still braced against the metal, when the announcement starts. PRECRIME IS SEARCHING THIS BUILDING… over a scratchy megaphone, and his head snaps up because he knows what this means, he knows, and so he drags himself to the door even though his heart will stop dead in his chest, the blood in his veins will run dry, he’ll shrivel up and starve if he stays like this for much longer. But better to starve than to live in the fake world of the halo, corralled in those cabinets like nothing more than a file, ready to be pulled up only when needed. No. No, he has to keep fighting.
He grabs every scrap of fabric his wandering hands can find, old towels and scratchy blankets, shoves them in the crevice between the bottom of the door and the grimy tile. He grabs the biohazard bucket, staggers to the bathroom while trying to ignore the smell of blood, fills the tub and pours the ice into it with the splashing of a hundred tiny melting ice cubes. He lowers himself into it slowly, carefully, and the cold hurts so deeply that for a moment he can forget the drag of starvation’s teeth across his stomach..
He can hold his breath for a long time. His heart doesn’t beat quite as fast, and his lungs don’t hunger for oxygen quite as much. But he’s weak, and he’s tired, and his body is focusing all of its energy on healing his new eyes, and he blames that for why he eventually has to surface, coughing and sputtering, right into the midst of the spyders.
The shocks light up his neck, his back, muscles flailing and seizing. His teeth cut deep into his bottom lip and bitter blood floods his mouth. Maybe he’ll drown on it, maybe they’ll find him here in the bathtub, John Anderton on the run with stolen eyes.
The spyders don’t stop. His breath is knocked out of him and for a moment he forgets where he is, the slick porcelain under his back, the cold water sloshing against his chest, until he finally manages to hook a finger under the bandage, trying to ignore the doctor’s words in his head, and pulls. His eye blinks open and it hurts, it burns, nerves that were never supposed to exist. The light of the spyder scanner pulses over his retina and his eye waters so that a tear drips down his cheek and the hunger roars alive, freshly renewed by the bodily response to the pain, to the feeling of himself degenerating with every second in the light.
Nothing matters except for the rainbow pearlescence of the scanner, the pain in his eye, the starvation growing with every moment. Maybe this is the rest of his life, maybe this moment will go on forever, maybe the transplant didn’t work and the entirety of Precrime will be brought down on his head.
Footsteps. The door banging open, and then silence. He moves his head, as if to see who it is, as if he can see at all, and electricity arcs up his arm. He’s dead, he’s decided, already shot and bleeding out. Some Precrime officer who’s trigger-happy. That’s alright. He’s accepted it, maybe, or maybe it’s the delirious pain of his eye and the hunger in his stomach and the remnants of the drug in his system.
“Do it,” he says. “Shoot me.”
“Jesus Christ, Anderton.” It’s not any of his officers, and the man’s heartbeat is pounding in his chest, and it takes him a moment for him to pull it all together. And then slowly, incredulously—
“Witwer?”
—
Danny had known from the start that something wasn’t quite right with Precrime. The way they all walked, the way John Anderton appeared on the billboards, as if they owned the world. All of the flashy tech and fighting crime based on some idea of destiny, the three precogs lying in their pool.
This time, it didn’t feel very good to be right.
He’d done some digging into Leo Crow, found a trail of cash between him and Burgess. From there, it was easy to figure out. Burgess had paid him off to pretend to be Anderton’s son’s killer. A low blow, to be sure, and Danny still wasn’t quite sure what it was all for. So Burgess could play the part of the grieving department head, maintain his control of the department? So he’d be freed from Anderton’s moral code? Or, perhaps more likely, that he’d have tied up an old loose end: the bioenhancement project.
He’d read the files in a sort of frenzy, alone in Anderton’s dark apartment. Higher muscle mass. Faster healing rate. Lower resting heart rate. Chronically anemic. Need for blood transfusions, orally or intravenously.
A modern-day vampire.
The public could handle a lot, could handle the retina scanners and the panopticon and American Big Brother watching over them, but they couldn’t handle bloodsuckers in law enforcement. No, he could see the headlines already. So Burgess would get Anderton out of the way, dust his hands of the whole incident, and spread Precrime across America without so much as a backwards glance.
Now, Danny wouldn’t lie and say he was fond of Anderton. They had their disagreements— Anderton’s breath hot on his neck, gun pressed to his throat, and Danny’s weak in the knees and his heart is in his throat for all the wrong reasons— and he hadn’t forgotten the drug paraphernalia littering every square inch of his home, the utter recklessness he had by being presumably high on the job. But Danny still felt some sort of need to warn him, to come to his aid, to maybe, just maybe, tackle him off the path of fate that would lead to that broken window and the gunshot and Crow’s death.
So he had caught the next car to Precrime headquarters, strolled up to the helicopter with his briefcase in hand, told the cops on board that they weren’t going anywhere without him. He’d flashed his warrant and his teeth in what he calls his ‘lawyer smile,’ all fake pleasantry and cold eyes, and made it clear that it was either he came along or they wouldn’t go at all. They’d begrudgingly accepted and gave him a Kevlar vest and a weapon so flimsy it feels like a toy in his hands, and he breathes in while gripping onto the bar along the ceiling and tries to feel victory. For all he knows, this whole ploy could be useless. Anderton could be halfway out of the country by now, if he played his cards right.
But he didn’t seem like the type to run. No, he wanted to prove his innocence, which meant he would stay, which meant there was still a chance—
Danny grimaces, grip tightening on the bar as the city drops further and further away beneath them. No, there’s no chance. No shot. Even if Anderton was bi– unlikely, considering that he was a cop and a divorcee and a dad– no way would Danny stoop down to him. They were enemies, despite the fact that Danny was coming to find him, despite the fact that Danny had used his credentials to nab secret government files about his particular… health condition. No, he was doing this simply because he wanted justice, because he wanted to get to the bottom of this, and that’s all.
They finally touch down in what seems to be, for lack of a better term, a slum. Danny tries to hide how much the landing jolted him, rights himself with his hand still firmly on the little loop danging from the ceiling before it feels like his heart isn’t in his throat. There are deep puddles in the pitted asphalt of the alley, dim windows flickering in the building next to them. The building where Anderton could be. He smooths his tie and tries to look like he understands what’s going on.
“Deploy the spyders,” one of the men says. In all of his armor, he looks like some sort of bug. A robot out of an old sci-fi series. “You sure?” The woman in the cockpit raises her eyebrow, and the other man, the one whose voice grates on Danny’s ears like nails on a chalkboard, nods. “Easiest way to see if he’s in here or not.”
The woman seems to accept this, pulling something up on the windshield– there must be a display built in, like Anderton’s office– lit up in blues and greens and reds. A heat map, Danny realizes. “Twenty-seven warm bodies.”
Danny leans in, intrigued by the flickering of it, morbidly obsessed by whatever sort of panopticon they’ve constructed in Washington, D.C. People moving around, fucking, sleeping. Children playing. All of those lives playing out on that little screen. And then–
“We’ve lost one. Twenty-six.” One of the men grunts, clearly unhappy. “Could be our guy.”
“Could be a cat,” the woman says, glancing up at him. “Cats aren’t that big,” the one with the blond buzzcut interjects. “A very large cat, then.” The woman rolls her eyes at him. It’s a late-night shift, and they’re all eager to get home. Danny can take advantage of that, surely. Cops are just men. And he knows how to play this game, the game he plays every day in the courtroom, knows how to insert himself just right.
“We’re goin’ in.” The blond man backs away from the screen, turns towards the building. “Burgess’ll have my head on a spike if we miss him,” he mutters under his breath. Danny follows. The ground is slippery under his loafers and the air reeks of smoke and rotting things, death and decay and despair, but he pushes it all down. He’s seen worse. He can get through this. He isn’t just some twink from the Fed.
“Where do you think you’re going, prettyboy?” The blond one asks, raising an eyebrow and cocking his head in a way that leaves no room for interpretation as to what he would say if he were braver, if he wasn’t wearing a bodycam, if Danny wasn’t from the Attourney General’s office.
“This is my investigation, in case you forgot.” Tight words, clipped vowels, tighter smile. “You don’t go anywhere without me.” The blond man grunts– seemingly a favorite pastime of his– and glances at the other one. “Look, do you want to catch Anderton or not?” Danny asks, and Blondie finally nods. Bingo.
“Try not to get shot,” Blondie snarks, and then they’re walking inside, and if Danny thought the outside was bad, well. There’s grime caked into the corners and the only light is from some sort of illuminated grating system that snakes through the floor and there are people, so many people, down on their luck or out of their minds. His grip tightens on his briefcase handle out of instinct, as if anyone would snatch it from him, as if anyone is sane enough and not beaten down by the system already to try and take it.
He wonders why Anderton might’ve come here, and then thinks better of it. He doesn’t need to know. Maybe it was intel, maybe it was just to score another hit. None of it matters besides finding him and getting him out of here, to some sort of place where they can figure this all out.
Blondie does something to his helmet, and then his voice booms out. “Precrime is searching this building. Please remain calm. I repeat, please remain calm.” The spyders start to crawl out, sick little mechanical things, and the people start shrieking, and Danny keeps his gaze firmly and unwaveringly straight ahead. He has to find Anderton. He has to remember that. Get in, get out. Leave Precrime in the dust until the whole exposé.
He presses the device in his ear, the one connected back to the helicopter, talks in a careful whisper just loud enough for the microphone to pick up. “Where did you say our large cat was, again?”
He’ll find him. He’ll find him, and end this whole mess, and forget about it. That’s all. That’s all, he tells himself, even as his heart beats faster, even as his mind spins. Even as he thinks about himself and Anderton, alone together, on the run, and maybe, just maybe–
He’s jolted out of his thoughts by the response. “Second floor, sixth door on your right.”
He rips the earpiece out and crushes it under the heel of his shoe. He won’t need it where he’s going.
He tries to creep away from the officers, slinking through back corners until he finally finds a flight of stairs that he takes two at a time. He’d done track in high school, and he’s grateful for some of the muscle memory as he races down the hallway, counting doors, until— there.
The door is lodged shut, towels stuffed into the crack between the wood and the grimy tile floor. One of the ventilation grates is askew and Danny nudges it with his shoe, hears the glassy clatter, frowns. He didn’t know much about the spyders, but it seemed clear what had happened here. Anderton had blocked the door in an attempt to keep them out, but they had gotten in anyway. And if they scanned him, this whole thing, all of his planning, all of his ideas, were done for.
He shoves the door with his shoulder firmly once, twice, grimacing as the pain lights up his arm. He puts his briefcase down, shakes out his hands, gets a running start. He throws his whole weight into it, and only then does it start to creak open. Too slow, too slow, because for all he knows the men could be racing upstairs already, see him and Anderton together, and kill or halo them both.
But he can’t start catastrophizing. He’ll find a way, no matter what happens. It’s what he always does.
The apartment is somehow even worse than the hallway, dark and quiet except for some cop show blaring on the screen across from the bed. The sheets are mussed and there’s a vape pen on the bedside table, and Danny now wishes he got more than just a toy gun. He’s not entirely sure why Anderton would end up here, but none of the reasons could possibly be good.
There’s nobody in the main room, nobody lurking behind the fridge door– still open, revealing a rotting mess next to a neatly-made sandwich, in a move that puzzles him deeply– and so he advances further, not quite sure what he’s looking for, briefcase still in hand. At least he can bludgeon someone with that, maybe.
He can hear quiet breathing, the whirr of machinery, a pained gasp. Danny shoves his fear all the way down to the pit of his stomach and keeps walking forward, forward. There is a sort of dull whine in the back of his head and something about this whole scene makes him nervous, because something’s not right, something’s not right with the hulking shapes in the corners and the drugs by the bed and the rotten corpse of a sandwich in the fridge. Something’s not right, but that doesn’t matter, none of it can matter except getting Anderton and getting out. His breath is quick and harsh in his chest and he holds his briefcase like a weapon as he carefully, carefully nudges open the bathroom door.
He’s not ready for what he finds. Maybe he’ll never have been ready. Maybe there was nothing in the world that could have prepared him for this.
Anderton is in the bathtub, the whole room dark save for the fluorescent artificially warm glow of the ventilation under the floor. The advertisements outside cast reddish light across the edge of the pedestal sink, the tub, the cracks in the tile. Ice cubes glimmer in the low light and there’s a biohazard bucket next to Anderton, knocked over almost carelessly, but seemingly empty.
And then, of course— the spyders. Scurrying over Anderton’s neck, his shoulders, his face. One of them beams down its light into Anderton’s eye, and Danny fears for a moment that he’s somehow lost his other one before he sees the bandages.
A tear rolls down Anderton’s cheek, and then another, before the spyders finally seem satisfied and retreat back into the pipes. His eye is red and irritated and he blinks frantically, muscles spasming. Danny’s— Danny’s heard of this. He knows what this means. Knows what Anderton will need, after an operation like this, dependent on human blood.
He opens his mouth to say something, but all that comes out is “Jesus Christ, Anderton.”
—
“Witwer?”
John almost-laughs, then gasps because it hurts like a vice around his chest. He almost can’t believe it. Maybe this is just another hallucination. But everything feels a little too real, everything a little too sharp, and he rules it out immediately. The hunger still gnaws at him. But that doesn’t matter, does it? It’s over.
So this is it, then. Done in by the twink from the Fed, just like that. He lets his head fall back against the rim of the bathtub and waits for the halo to take his pain away.
It doesn’t. It doesn’t, because Witwer just leans in closer and slips the bandage back over his eye as if he knows what it means. As if he knows what would’ve happened to John if he hadn’t. His hand lingers for just a moment and yet it feels like it burns. Like he’ll wear that mark forever. Somehow, deliriously, he can’t bring himself to care.
“You shouldn’t be here,” John says. His voice is raspy and he hates how he can’t tell where Witwer is, whether he has a sick stick, whether he has the halo ready to snap around his head. The hunger sinks its teeth ever-deeper into him, and he’s painfully aware of the pulse at Witwer’s neck.
“And Precrime shouldn’t be framing you,” Witwer replies, and some sort of fabric— a suit, maybe— crinkles as he crouches by his side.
John’s lips part, but it takes him a moment to string the words together, because the stench of iron fills him so completely that for a moment he can’t think of anything else. Witwer’s so close. He’s so close, and all John would need to do is lean over and— no. No, he won’t. He can’t, because he can’t even see, because he doesn’t even know what Witwer’s planning on doing to him.
“Get away,” he grits out, and the words get stuck between his teeth. “Please.”
Witwer doesn’t move. “We don’t have time for this.” He makes a little annoyed sound in the back of his throat when John stays still. “I’m going to get you out of here, Anderton. Just get it over with and we can be on our way.”
He tries not to think about what it is. He tries not to think about it because he’s afraid he might take too much. Not that he’ll kill him— there would be a different red ball, another thing stamped with his name. He’s worried that he’ll take and take and that he won’t stop. That he’ll leave Witwer here, drained and pale, and then Burgess will find him; because it was always Burgess, wasn’t it, andthen John will have even more blood on his hands.
“How do I know I can trust you?” Speaking takes more effort than it should. God, his heart is pounding, his teeth scraping his lip. He knows the question means nothing. Witwer could ask him anything, could tell him to do anything, and he’d jump to the order as long as he got to drink from him. But no, he’s not thinking about that, he’s not, he can’t, not if he wants any hope at his innocence. He’s still a person. He has to remind himself of that. He’s still a person.
“You don’t. But you should.” Witwer’s voice is crisp, businesslike. It’s almost a reassurance, how familiar it all is. A buoy for him to cling to. Fabric wrinkles as Witwer— well, he can’t tell what Witwer’s doing, and he hates it. But better him than anyone else, right? Better him than Precrime. “I want to help you. I really do. So, let me ask– neck or wrist?”
Fuck. So they’re really doing this. He exhales shakily and he’s sure Witwer can tell because every single sound feels like it echoes off the walls and bounces right back at him. Nothing feels real, except for the hunger, except for the hunger that Witwer’s promising to fix.
“Anderton, we have to do this.” A pause. John manages to nod, and it feels as though he is simultaneously swimming through molasses and like the world has been sped up, rewinding a VCR in the old movies. “Neck or wrist. Which one will get us out of here quicker?” Witwer asks, making an effort to soften his tone, to cushion his words, and John remembers. Yes. They have to leave. Before Precrime realizes that Witwer’s missing. Before they remove John’s credentials from the security system. “Neck,” he says.
“Neck it is.” There’s no arguing about it. Nothing else they can do.
Witwer, John assumes, unbuttons his collar. He pictures it, the starched white dress shirt, the crisp black suit jacket, so out of place amidst the neon signs and smoke and grime of this part of the city.
It’s not like any of the few other times he’s properly bitten instead of being fed through a blood bag. It’s not sterile. It’s not clean. It’s not emotionless, not just him and one of his officers, not just him and Burgess. Witwer is warm and his heart is racing and he’s asking John to do it, come here—
His hand is tangling in his hair and John lets himself be guided to his neck, to at least what he assumes is his neck, faint hint of cologne and the edge of his neatly-pressed shirt collar digging into John’s throat.
He hopes almost deliriously that it doesn’t stain. That the blood doesn’t seep into the silk, that it won’t damage the shirt too badly, that he and Witwer will be able to find a car or a hotel or something without looking like they’ve just committed a murder.
Not that there are any murders. Not anymore. Not unless he manages to pull off whatever fate has planned for him.
But Witwer will stop him, won’t he? Witwer will ensure that he doesn’t do it.
It’s a more comforting thought than he’s willing to admit. Comforting, like Witwer’s breath, his pulse, here, not just John alone and out of his mind like before. Comforting, even though they both know what comes next, what this means.
John does as Witwer says. He bites.
Blood, iron, flooding his mouth. It’s instinct, trying to take and take, to sate, to stop the starving. The world is still and quiet and dark except for Witwer’s ragged breathing and the feeling of his quickening pulse and John can feel his optical nerves stitching themselves back together, he can feel the beartrap in his stomach easing, he can feel the way that his heart can now afford more than thirty beats a minute so that it matches Witwer’s own rhythm. He can feel it all, which is why he can feels when it’s too much, which is why he can finally rip himself away and try not to leave jagged gashes in Witwer’s flesh.
He feels like a wild thing, odd and too-sharp and dangerous, with Witwer’s blood thrumming through his veins and new eyes sewn into his head. But it’s not starving, and that means it’s alright, it’ll have to be alright, because he needs to fix this. Needs to excise whatever rotten part of Precrime that could have led to this, to him and Witwer in a dark bathroom in the slums, to him drinking from Witwer’s neck. He takes in one deep shuddering breath and then another, to remember breathing, to remember living. The jittery high is finally starting to fade as his blood levels balance and the cold of the night starts to seep in again and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand sloppily because the blindfold is still itching over his eyes. Witwer’s quiet, and John opens his mouth to speak, has to clear his throat because of the way that his blood has glued his vocal cords together. “Witwer?” He says, and then again when there’s no response. “Witwer?”
For a second, he wonders if he’s really done it, if all of this will have been for waste, if he’s just killed another man. He hunts desperately for a pulse, fingers rumbling across fabric and skin before, finally, he finds it slow and steady at his neck.
Not dead. Just unconscious.
Unconscious, which means that he’s just dead weight now. John should cut him loose and be done with it. There’s no room for him in the plan, no room for him in John’s stupid almost surely deadly plan.
And yet– well.
—
“Do it,” Danny says, and his voice wavers even though it shouldn’t. Water drips through the pipes and cars whizz by outside and Anderton’s breath is hot on his neck. “Bite me.”
Anderton’s hair is soft and short, spiky at the nape of his neck where it’s still damp. For some reason, Danny focuses on that, focuses on how he feels, cold from the ice but warming up steadily; how he breathes, deep and even save for the occasional hitch whenever the pain hits; how he’s blinded, the scrape of gauze against the skin of Danny’s throat, how Danny’s hand is in his hair to guide him as to where to bite.
And then, of course, undeniably: the little pinpricks as he sinks his teeth into Danny’s neck.
It hurts. Of course it hurts. Anderton makes a little noise, almost imperceptible, and there is blood, there is so much blood and he can’t see any of it because Anderton is lapping at the wound and his head is swimming and the moonlight is spilling across the tile, across the harsh planes of Anderton’s back, his shoulders, the edge of the tub. The world is melting and he is too, his vision is blurring and his muscles are going slack and for a moment he fears he might well and truly die here with Anderton’s teeth still in him, before he pulls off and smears the back of his hand across his bloody maw.
He looks dangerous, and maybe he is, but not to him. Not to him, because here he is, blindfolded and trusting, trusting him even when Danny was about to report him to the feds for doping. Trusting him, and for a moment it makes his heart twist even though it shouldn’t, because after the investigation they’ll part ways and Danny will go back to his own sad little apartment and Anderton will go back to shooting up and they’ll pretend they’ve never met.
The blood loss is catching up to him. He can feel it. He can feel it in the wooziness in his head, the way his heart starts to race to try and pump as much as it can, as how that just makes him bleed out more. At least Anderton will be fed, and then they can figure everything else out. None of his thoughts are making much sense and Anderton’s saying his name and he opens his mouth to respond but the world is spinning, the bathroom untethered from gravity, and before he can say anything his eyes slip shut and his head slumps forward, and the last thing going through his mind is the way Anderton looks stubbornly, unfairly, like all the men he crushed on when he was a teenager.
—
He could leave him here.
John considers it for a moment. Leave Witwer passed out on the tile, leave him with the bite mark in his neck and his stupid briefcase on the floor. Let Precrime find him and figure it all out.
But he knows he won’t do that. Not really. Because he can’t just leave him to die— because that would be what he would do, die, bleed out right here, if Burgess didn’t get to him first. No, he won’t leave him. He’ll get him out of the city, make sure he’s safe, and then continue with the plan.
John takes a breath, and then another. Witwer is warm and his body is heavy from how he’s leaning against him. John needs to do something, he knows he has to do something, even though the gauze is still over his eyes. The gauze over his eyes that no longer itch, that no longer burn. His exhale is shaky and he reaches up with the hand that he’s not using to support Witwer’s unconscious body and carefully pulls up the blindfold, blinks as if that will save him, as if anything could save him if he’s not right, if he takes the blindfold off and he really will lose his vision. But they don’t have time. He needs to get them out of here, and he knows why he was made like this, he knows the enhanced healing factor stamped on his profile.
It’s dark. It’s dark, and his eyes don’t burn, and he blinks a couple times before they adjust to the low light of the neon moon and the illuminated ventilation track in the floor. He waits until he can start picking out details, until the world resolves into solid forms rather than just shapes and colors, and only then does he look up at Witwer.
His dark hair is mussed, eyebags like bruises under his eyes, a stray blood splatter on his collar. His eyes are closed and his suit jacket is askew but there’s something about the light on his collarbones, the strong line of his nose, that makes John’s mouth dry. He looks like a painting, like an angel, and John tries to firmly not think about the delicate line of his throat as he gently shifts him off from where Witwer’s leaning on him and onto the tile.
Unconsciousness due to blood loss. He has to take a medical course every year, to know what to do on the job, just in case. What does Witwer need? Fuck, the anxiety is catching up to him, withdrawal staved off by the fresh blood and nothing else. People who have donated blood need food, don’t they, and rest, and all of those other things he doesn’t have.
There’s a bit of melted ice still in the biohazard bucket, and he uses that instead and watches as Witwer sputters to life. A few of the somehow still-intact slivers skitter across the floor, like the spyders, and the cold water drenches the remaining unblemished parts of his suit. John watches and wonders if maybe the shock has killed him, before Witwer finally chokes on his breath and sits up like Frankenstein’s monster, invigorated by lightning or the moonlight or the questionably-clean freezing cold water John’s just dumped on him.
“Come on,” John says. “Let’s get out of here.”
He offers his hand, and Witwer takes it.
—
It’s only a couple of hours later, in a red car that Anderton had stolen and bumping over the road to his ex’s house, that they actually talk about it.
“Sorry,” Anderton says, glancing at Danny from the corner of his eyes. “I don’t usually do things like that.” His mouth quirks up just the slightest bit, and Danny chuckles despite himself. “I would hope not.”
His eyes have changed, a darker brown than they used to be, closer to black. When Danny had woken up and saw him leaning over him, for a minute he thought he was facing the devil. But then Anderton had offered his hand, and they had stumbled out of the building and towards some sort of— well, to be honest, Danny doesn’t really remember. They’d found a car, a red one, and Anderton had cracked some sort of joke about how it was his lucky color, like last time, and Danny had nodded and eaten the chocolate bar that Anderton had scrounged up and tried to keep his mind strictly on business.
The road unwinds before them, long and beautiful, trees towering over them instead of the skyscrapers back in DC. It’s quiet for a moment and Danny rests his head against the cool glass of the window before Anderton speaks again.
“Earlier—“ he says, and then pauses, as if reconsidering his words. “You called me Anderton.” Danny hums, shifting so that he can look at him closer, his now-dull teeth and his hesitant expression. He’s not sure how this is going to go. How he even wants this to go. Anderton should, and probably is, about to abandon him outside DC and then turn right back around to forge ahead in whatever mad plan he has.
“I did,” Danny says, to prompt him to continue. His curiosity has been piqued. Then again, seemingly everything Anderton-related piques said curiosity.
“You can call me John.”
Danny smiles before he even realizes it. “We’re on a first-name basis?” It’s meant to be joking but comes out a little too vulnerable. Blame the blood loss. The bite mark on his neck itches from underneath its bandage and he touches it over the gauze.
Andert– no, John– chuckles. “Don’t push it.”