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The hallway didn’t belong to any house that Finney recognised—standing more as a fuzzy amalgamation of two places he faintly remembers, if he squeezes his eyes shut and tries really hard to recall. Underneath his feet, the floorboards creak in exactly the same way his kitchen floor used to; memorised flawlessly through a childhood full of trying to avoid the parts he knew would groan underneath his weight, and disturb the fragility of the precious, precious silence. Wallpaper the yellow of decaying sepia photographs—the kind that curdle underneath sunlight and decades of unbridled love—embraces where he stands at the very end of the hallway, fading in places where hands had once rested. Dust floats in the air, turning in the faint light, settling in the part of his lungs that makes it feel like it’s suddenly hard to breathe.
That breathless feeling is common, as of late. Finney is remotely, vaguely aware of having been asleep. A weightlessness in his limbs. That thick cotton feeling clouding his head. It doesn’t feel like any of his usual dreams, though—not the panicked ones, not the ones where the roles are reversed and the Grabber has the phone cord wound around his neck instead, and he’s breathless in a way that feels like it could be everlasting. Not the ones where he feels like he’s falling; falling from that window again, in a last-ditch, desperate attempt to get out, and inevitably jolts awake.
This is just quiet. The kind of quiet that has him listening, maybe for the drop of a bottle onto rotting wooden skirtboards, or for the heavy footsteps of a man with an ulterior motive, or for the ring of a phone that never quite seems to fade into silence, no matter how many joints he smokes or how many times he screams to try and drown it out with more noise. Listening for the things he’d become conditioned to.
Three knocks. Finney’s head turns sharply—but he’s simply met with more yellow wallpaper behind him. It’s flaking at the edges, peeling off the wall. The paint underneath is a chipped, sickly shade of almost-cream. He inhales, and it comes out shakier than he’d like to admit.
Knock. Knock. Pause. Knock.
Finney holds his breath. It burns where it catches in his lungs; but the sensation does wonders to remind him that he’s alive. That he’s not simply imagining the barely-there rhythm of those three knocks echoing against hollow wood. He’d only ever known one person who’d knocked like that; always like he was trying to avoid waking the entire house, even if the house was already awake. Gentle in a way he wasn’t with anyone else.
Finney’s hand is curling around the doorknob at the end of the hallway before he can even register he’d moved, clearing uneven wooden floorboards with complete disregard for the places they creak and groan underneath his weight. The metal feels too real beneath his fingertips—just like the silence that’s now on the other side of the door; the silence that is shaped like someone he knows intrinsically, someone he knows like they share a mind, a body, a soul.
The silence, that is shaped like a boy who leaned against doorframes like it was an afterthought, who wiped blood from his knuckles with the back of his wrist like it meant nothing, who grinned like daring the world to try him again.
Finney swallows. The dust in the hallway turns, turns, turns in the stillness—turns in sync with the movement of Finney’s wrist, the twist of the doorknob and the mechanism of the lock and the wall, the interplay between what feels like his dreams and what feels even realer than being awake.
And Robin is there.
Not the way Finney last saw him, on a final (supposedly, he thought, because Robin is here now) desperate phone call within four concrete walls—not bruised, not broken, not gone. Just him, in that half-grown, summery kind of way he used to be; like he had simply walked here from two streets over and not been whirled through the journey from whatever layer of the afterlife belonged to him now, to here, in Finney’s dream. He’s a little taller, hair messier, shirt wrinkled like he’d just fallen asleep in it. His smile sits small, tilted, familiar; in a way that makes Finney’s chest ache low and deep.
“Hey,” Robin murmurs, voice scratchy with disuse. It’s striking how similar he sounds. Like summer and smoke and scraped-up sidewalks.
Finney wills his throat to work. Air moves—but no sound comes out. It's like he’s choking on something that’s not even there. Robin's eyes flicker over him, in that familiar way of his where he’s not searching; simply just seeing. The way someone looks at something they’ve known for a very long time.
“You kept your hair the same,” he adds; a slight lilt of teasing in his voice like this is just any other day. The words come out smoother this time, as though he’s relearning what it feels like to speak.
Finney exhales—he’s been holding his breath for god knows how long now.
“You still bite your nails,” Finney murmurs.
Robin blinks and god, his smile widens. Softly; in that way that was always reserved for a glimpse of Finney in the hallway, or a really good vanilla milkshake. Not that sharp, taunting grin from fights. The one that belongs to Finney—or so he’d taken a liking to think.
There's a moment of silence, before Robin is tilting his head toward the crooked floorboards in the hallway—like it’s an invitation. The movement is so achingly familiar, that all Finney can do for a second is blink at him; slow, quiet, processing it all like this is the last time he might ever see it.
“Sit with me?” Robin asks; not come here, not don’t be scared—just that. Like they were thirteen again and in fourth period math; where the back row was never just a table and two chairs, but it was belonging.
Finney nods. They sit, shoulders barely touching—but enough to feel that he’s there. It's almost hard to remind himself that he’s dreaming; because even the briefest touch from Robin feels realer than most things he’d seen or heard or done in the years past. It feels like coming alive, it feels like breathing again; like he’d come up from underwater after a long time and is only just remembering what the world feels like when there’s colour and sound and light.
Finney doesn’t look directly at Robin—he’s not sure he can. Because looking too long means knowing. And knowing means—
“I didn’t wanna knock,” Robin says it and it’s quiet, like the dust is settling around them and on them and in the very, very bottoms of Finney’s lungs and Robin is acutely aware that if he speaks too loud, he will disturb it and Finney will be back to his perpetual state of breathlessness just like that. Robin's always been good at reading people like that; always been good specifically at reading Finney like that.
“I didn’t wanna knock,” he repeats again, and the words burn into Finney's chest, carve into something deep inside him until he aches, “but I promised you I would. If I could.”
Finney's eyes burn. He blinks. The tears don’t spill over, but they burn, and somehow that’s worse. Their backs against the wall, legs stretched out across the floorboards—it’s all reminiscent of them. Of their lost time. Of their missed opportunities.
Picking at the hem of his shirt, at a loose thread in a way that would have otherwise had his mami scolding him for even considering it, Robin is quiet in a way that Finney doesn’t recall seeing for a long time—and he doesn’t just mean the time that’s elapsed between when Robin died and this moment now (or as he sometimes likes to think, the time he’s been holding his breath.) Robin is quiet in a way that cracks quietly at the facade of his endless confidence, his unshakable nerve. The thread frays, twisted intricately around his fingertips like he isn’t quite sure how to become untangled—and maybe doesn’t even want to know.
Finney doesn’t rush to speak—he never has been that way; speaking just for the sake of filling a silence. Robin's always liked that about him, especially now, when Finney's silence helps to settle his nerves; takes the edge off in a way that would be imperceptible to anyone who isn’t him. Dark, dark brown eyes flicker from left to right; up and down the hallway, in that same perceptive way he used to catalogue the school hallways before the bell rang, or the way he would glance up and down the water pipe that ran adjacent to Finney's window—surveying whether or not the risk was worth taking. And when it comes to Robin, and going after Finney? The risk was always worth taking.
Finney is different—cautious, thoughtful, quiet. Or at least he was, before the basement. He doesn’t know whether or not it’s the confinement or the killing of the Grabber or Robin’s death that’s twisted him, but he does know that he feels bent and broken beyond repair. There are no shadows here in the hallway; but he feels like he brings darkness to the space just by existing—in the same way that the incessant ring tone of the landline trails behind him, even when there is no phone in sight, and in the same way that the quiet grief seems to tack onto him and follow him like a stormcloud in the wind.
“It's quiet here,” Finney remarks. His voice is not scratchy like Robin's was—even though he’s probably used it less in the four years since everything unfolded compared to Robin in the depths of the afterlife (he’d always had a mouth on him; what would be the fun if he never used it?)—but it comes out like he’s been underwater again.
Robin huffs a breath—not quite a laugh, more of an acknowledgement. It's dry and quiet and exactly the kind of sound that was reserved for those flickers of moments in Robin’s room; where Finney would tell a space joke that was inherently stupid and unfunny by all means of normal humour whatsoever, but Robin would still chuckle quietly like it meant something.
“It’s supposed to be,” he runs a hand through dark, long, hair. His fingers don’t catch on the knots that Finney knows were there when he died, "I think.”
Finney doesn’t ask what that means. There's a part of him; a subconscious little chasm deep inside his chest that tells him he doesn’t want to know, not yet.
Robin's sneaker nudges his—very slightly, like he’s testing the waters, testing the edge of contact. Where dream becomes reality. He never did like to adhere to the boundaries, but he’s careful with this. It's like he knows how quickly it can all slip away; how fragile this time and space is.
“You're still doin’ that thing,” Robin's eyes flicker to the side of Finney's face, “you’re thinkin’ too hard, forgettin’ how to breathe.”
Finney would deny it, but a slight flush rises on his cheeks; an imperceptible heat, one that used to be familiar in moments like these ones—one that he didn’t recognise the meaning of until it was just a second too late to matter, “no, m’not.”
Robin simply raises an eyebrow, expression skeptical as ever.
“...maybe.”
He grins, “see, ‘s what I thought.”
The cadence is the same, the tone, the faint crooked pride that sits in his voice at being able to read Finney like he’s an open book. Even here—wherever here is—Robin is still Robin. The thought eases some of the ache that sits heavy on Finney’s chest; like it’s a relief to know that Robin never lost himself. Finney's laugh is shaky when it comes out; mirroring the way Robin’s verged on more of a breath than a real, tangible sound. It slips past his lips before he can stop it. The smile he receives as a response is wide, genuine, real.
A silence passes; where the dust stirs slightly in the air. Finney can see it swirling in the…is it sunlight? He can’t really tell; and can’t really bring himself to care, not when he can feel the familiar weight of Robin’s eyes on his face. The sensation of being watched—when it’s like this, when it’s Robin—is nice. It makes him feel wanted, in a way that he hasn’t felt since the last time they spoke in the bathrooms, and Robin looked at him like he was something more than just ‘Finney the Fag’ or whatever other namesake had been tacked to him that week. Looked at him like he meant something.
Finney can’t quite meet his eyes yet. His gaze drifts across the yellow wallpaper instead, counting the faint, faded pattern of lighter cream roses against the once-vibrant backdrop. Roses, and vines that didn’t quite connect right. Like someone remembered the idea of it, but couldn’t quite nail the execution.
“Robin,” Finney murmurs, quietly.
Robin doesn’t answer straight away. Just keeps looking at him, rolling his head along the wall to look at him fully, instead of a sideways glance—like he’d been waiting for Finney to say his name first.
“Yeah?”
Finney swallows. The words sit heavy in the space just in between his throat and his mouth. A little too heavy for speech—but far too light to swallow back down.
He doesn’t ask, are you really here?
He doesn’t ask, am I dreaming?
He doesn’t ask, why now?
He just glances at Robin—fully, for the first time since he’d opened the door and been met with a sight he’d only ever seen in his imagination before; a seventeen year old Robin Arellano, existing in a way that he didn’t ever let himself dare to think was even possible.
And Robin understands, either way; because his expression doesn’t fall completely, but it does crack slightly. It softens, like years of tension melting away into quiet regret.
“I know,” Robin says, "I know.”
What he doesn’t say, is;
I'm proud of you or I want to go home or I miss you—even though Finney can see it in his eyes that they’re the words that are sitting on the tip of his tongue right now. It's there anyway; in the way that Robin sits close enough to touch. In the way he doesn’t pull back.
Finney's hands sit useless in his lap. He glances down at them—not shaking, not clenching, not even shifting like they usually do when he’s itching to do something he knows he shouldn’t (which usually now looks like throwing a punch or reaching for a cigarette).
Robin notices, because of course he does. His whole thing was always noticing even the imperceptible changes when it came to Finney. It was his way of showing he cared without having to stomach saying the words, Finney thinks—because they’re the kinds of things you’re stuck thinking about when you’re a thirteen year old boy who cares a little too much about the other thirteen year old boy who smiles a little brighter when it’s for you, and helps you with math homework whenever you ask him to.
His voice stays quiet, still rough at the edges.
“You could—” Robin begins, and stops. He's trying; but the feeling is foreign and the words don’t quite sit right on his tongue. “If you want, you can um, we can, uh…hold on. Just for now.”
Robin doesn’t reach out first. That's important. That matters—because after four years of tossing and turning over unspoken words, over lost time, over moments that only just slipped out of his grasp, Finney feels like it’s his turn to have something. He leans his shoulder, just slightly, into Robin’s; like he’s testing the waters, mapping out which touches are still safe, and which aren’t.
Robin exhales, like it’s something he’s been waiting on for a very long time. He doesn’t move away, just leans back with equal pressure, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. His voice comes softer than Finney remembers, breath brushing the skin on his neck in a way that makes the fine hairs there stand on end.
“You look different,” Robin muses. “Not bad. Just older.”
“You do too,” Finney murmurs, pointedly—and he lets himself look because it’s a sight he’d already spent so long resigning himself to the fact that he’d never see. An older Robin. He'd never thought it was possible.
Robin gives a small snort. “Yeah, well. Wasn’t planning on it, just happened.”
Finney’s breath catches—not painfully; but sharply enough that it’s real, like stepping into cold water for the first time.
Robin tilts his head—that same old, familiar, endearing action. “No, don’t do that. Don’t get all in your head again.”
Finney blinks hard. His throat is tight—but not with the dull pressure of his usual breathlessness. This is something raw, something aching, something real.
“I didn’t think you’d—”
And the sentence falls apart halfway, but Robin doesn’t make him finish.
“I know,” he says, “me neither.”
Finney turns fully to face him, and doesn’t really register the way that he’s shaking until Robin is crossing another boundary; reaching out—slow, giving Finney time to recoil if he really wants to (they both know he won’t)—and placing his hand over Finney’s, where it rests on his own thigh. Not grabbing, not holding tight, just covering; as though it’s more than enough just to feel the brush of warm skin and a live, thrashing pulse against fingertips that haven’t felt a lot of anything in what feels like forever.
Finney’s fingers curl like it’s muscle memory, lacing through Robin’s like this is enough, and this will always be enough. He hadn't known he remembered how to do that.
Robin exhales—and Finney watches the moment that something in the other boy’s chest softens so viscerally that it’s like watching ice thaw underneath gentle sunlight on a winter afternoon.
“There you are,” it’s barely above a whisper, when he chances the next words, “I missed you, y’know.”
Finney's breath trembles again—but no tears come. It's a feeling deeper than crying; older, somehow.
“You never came,” he says, and the words come out thinner than he meant them to—not accusing, just something he’d been holding for a long time. “That day. I was going to help you with math.”
Robin's jaw tightens—not with guilt, not necessarily; and Finney is glad that it’s not, because he would never, ever want Robin to feel guilty for how things unfolded that day. No, it’s something closer to memory in the tight set of his shoulders as he nods, eyes steady on Finney’s. Dark brown, like chocolate, meeting hazel—honeyed in the soft light of the hallway.
“I know.”
The hallway stays quiet around them; the kind of quiet that isn’t empty, but full of all the things that are a little too hard to say out loud. Finney can feel his own heartbeat—steady against his chest—can feel the weight of Robin's hand still resting intertwined with his. Nothing moves, for a split second.
He lets himself glance at Robin—the ache is still there, but it’s softer now. Like he’d come to terms with it; like he knows that it’s okay to look. The action is almost subconscious, when he brings his hand to brush against Robin’s jaw in the way he’d always wanted to; the kind of thing he’d dreamed about when his dreams really were just dreams, when they weren’t quite as visceral as this one. Robin doesn’t move—but Finney can see him swallow at the soft touch; like it’s tender in a way that he doesn’t really know how to receive.
Robin looks at him, then—really looks—eyes imperceptibly darker, and wet with something that’s not quite sadness, but something a little heavier.
“I wanted to,” he says softly, “God, Finney—I wanted to. I didn’t—”
He forces a breath in; like that’s something he has to remind himself to do now. It doesn't just come naturally, in the way that Finney’s gentle touch doesn’t sit quite right alongside the usually rough edges and sharp snark of Robin Arellano. Like he doesn’t quite believe yet that he deserves to have things that are soft and gentle; that don’t sting when you look at them, that don’t bite back in the way he’s used to.
“There wasn’t any time,” he just says—and it’s vague, but Finney thinks he gets it. “I didn't get to choose how I left.”
Finney closes his eyes, just for a second. This side of Robin is unfamiliar. It's soft. It hurts.
“I would've,” Robin speaks again, and Finney just looks at him. “You know that, right? I would've come to you. If it were up to me.”
The words feel like a promise; like if Robin has been thinking about anything for the past four years of whatever is on the other side, it’s this. Finney nods, but the movement is too small to feel entirely real.
“I know,” Finney responds, after a beat, "I know you would’ve.”
Robin closes his eyes; not like he’s tired, but like it hurts to look at Finney for too long.
Finney doesn’t look away—for one of the first times ever. He lets himself look; doesn’t try to make the moment smaller than what it is, than what it deserves. He just catalogues the way Robin’s breath catches, the tiny, uncharacteristic shake in his exhale.
It’s then that he decides to move, he thinks, because if this is the only time he gets to have Robin the way he wants, he’ll make the most of it. He’ll hold onto it.
Finney lifts their joined hands, tugs Robin slightly closer like he’s been wanting to for years; leaning, shifting, searching for the right alignment, like remembering how two bodies used to fit in the same shadow.
Robin's hand settles on the base of Finney's neck—not to push, just to feel. To know he’s there; to make sure he’s real long enough to hold. He lets out the first real laugh since Finney had opened the door—and it’s quiet, disbelieving, a little bit achy at the corners. Finney thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s heard in a long time; and he can’t help but respond with his own breathy laugh.
Robin doesn’t give words the chance to get in the way—never really liked them anyway. He always was better at showing his care through an action; a punch thrown, a brush of shoulders, a tight, firm embrace.
The kiss isn’t sharp or desperate—it’s like coming home to the quiet after a long day; or in this case, a long fucking four years, Robin thinks. A familiarity rediscovered, like muscle memory.
Finney kisses him back like it’s practiced; like somehow, without even trying, he already intrinsically knows how. No rush, no trembling—just steady and deep warmth; that feels entirely too real for a dream. Finney's free hand slides from where it’s come to rest on Robin’s shoulder down to his back instead, fingertips curling into the fabric of his shirt to hold him there, an attempt to keep him there.
They don’t move far when they do break—just far enough that Robin can see the way Finney’s curls shine a caramelised brown in the soft light of the hallway. Finney feels his words more than he hears them.
“You know, I always—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence—doesn’t really need to. Because Finney is smiling, and he’s nodding slightly like he gets it.
“I know,” Finney says quietly, and it makes Robin smile—not that sharp grin reserved for fights, or the one he throws at adults he’s trying to charm—something real, open and honest.
And Finney’s dream holds them like all of it is real as ever.