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When he opened his eyes, the blue-dark light of the moon outside did little to illuminate the room before Ray. He was still huddled under the covers from when he went to sleep, head resting on his too-flat pillow, its covering yellowed with age. The ceiling was too far to see but he trusted it was still there. He blinked hard a few times, spurring his mind to retreat out of its dreamlike state as he shifted himself into a sitting position. The red digits of the clock on the nightstand confirmed what the darkness around him already told him—it was still nighttime. Barely three in the morning. Something had woken him up, or from what he could tell even in his half-awake state, the absence of something.
“Or someone,” he confirmed in a whisper after a pat of his hand to the mattress space at his side revealed no sleeping form beside him. That could only mean one thing.
Kicking the blanket to the foot of the bed, Ray stood to his feet with practiced caution. It had been some time since he’d experienced The Walk, but that didn’t mean that time had left him. His body would always remember what he’d put himself through, and the ever persistent ache in his joints made sure that he would too.
His knees must have creaked just as much as the floorboards, but Pete didn’t seem alerted to his approach. Ray found him in the living room, seated on the couch. His mother had given it to them when the two moved in together, shortly after Ray was released from the hospital. Said two young men should have something nice for when they had company over to sit, and insisted when Ray explained they could buy their own couch. It was the usual spot he could expect to find his boyfriend when he couldn’t be found in their shared bed.
Pete continued sit motionlessly, gaze cutting through the darkness to focus his attention entirely at his hands in his lap. He was deep in thought, startling only after the third time his name was spoken softly from across the room. In the dark, Ray hadn’t noticed he was crying until he was quickly wiping the heel of his palm against his cheeks.
“Ray, I didn’t hear you get up,” His voice wobbled as he said Ray’s name in return.
“Neither did I,” He made his way to sit next to the other, legs protesting that he’d been on his feet for this long already, “How long have you been out here?”
The response was a long inhale, followed by a back-and-forth motion of his hand as he gave his estimation, “Hour? Too dark to check my watch.”
“Was it that dream again?”
Silence. The hand returned to its position on Pete’s lap. Ray followed it with his own, letting his fingers grip loosely around Pete’s.
“I told you to wake me up when you have those, Pete. I don’t want you going through the worst of it alone.”
The flashbacks. The panic attacks. The need to realize that they’re both far away from the walk now, both in time and in place. There had been one night Ray had woken up and Pete wasn’t in the house at all. Ray drove around for over an hour before he found him, a figure walking aimlessly in the dark, already miles away from home. He’d fought Ray on getting back into the car, screamed at him that he was trying to make him get his ticket. To Pete, he was back on The Walk. His mind traveled back there often, sometimes on his own like that time, sometimes taking Ray along with it in his dreams.
“I don’t want to lose you again,” Pete had sobbed one night, after Ray was finally able to calm him enough to realize where he really was. That he wasn’t in front of The Crowd anymore, and that Ray wasn’t lying on his side, eyes empty of his soul and blood pooling on the pavement faster than the rain could wash it away.
Ray was no stranger to those dreams— re-experiencing the death that surrounded them, taking their friends, almost taking him before Pete used his wish to save him. It almost didn’t work, he’d been told. Not that The Major wasn’t willing to fulfill it, but that Ray’s chances of survival were slim to none by the time help got to him. He wasn’t conscious through most of his recovery, but nonetheless he would still wake up with that lingering rawness in his throat like he’d been freshly unintubated; he smelled those chemical white walls, heard the overlapping beeps of the monitors, felt the iv drip that buried obtrusively under his skin.
Sometimes he would dream that he never woke up, died and rotted in that hospital bed, forgotten by Pete, by his mom, by his friends. Sometimes Pete was the one who died, in his intended spot as second place during the walk, and Ray would startle awake to the gunshot that would continue to echo around in his skull. Sometimes he saw himself as the other walkers, experiencing each death as if through his own eyes. Sometimes he just watched them play out again, right in front of him, always unable to stop them, just as he had been when they really happened.
“The worst of it was when it really happened,” Pete’s words shook Ray out of his thoughts. Their fingers were intertwined now, so he gave the other man’s hand a squeeze. The responding squeeze was grounding. He hadn’t realized he was starting to spiral in those short moments after his last response, “and you were already there for that part.”
Ray sighed. Pete was right—the worst of it happened back then, on the long stretch of road, under the watchful eyes of those damn soldiers and The Major. He couldn’t argue with that.
But he heard the way Pete’s words caught in his throat, like his mind was trying to take him back to that time again. He felt the nervous jostling of movement next to him, as Pete’s leg bounced up and down. Eyes finally adjusting, he caught the gleam of a fresh tear in his boyfriend’s eye, daring to escape again.
With his free hand, Ray reached up to extinguish the tear with a gentle touch of his finger. Pete turned his head towards him, allowing him to do the same on the other side. He watched with the touch of a smile as Ray brought their clasped hands to his lips, and peppered kisses across his knuckles.
“And I’m with you now too,” He reminded, bringing Pete’s hand into his own lap, where he held him tightly in both of his, “I’m here because of you. I can be here for you too.”
Pete scoffed, but nodded his head, stopping the movement to rub his eyes into his shoulder, drying his face once again from new tears. He rested his head there, the short coils of his hair tickling softly against Ray’s ear as his tears fell more freely, silently, onto Ray’s sleeve. He heard the occasional disgusting sniffle, and lamented at the absence of tissues for him to blow his nose. They cried enough between them that they should really make sure to never run out.
A few moments passed with the two leaning against each other, neither saying a word. Ray suspected Pete was wary on speaking in his state, worried about the way despair would crack his voice. He was surprised when he felt Pete’s body tense next to him, just before he sat up away from him, back straight, but hand still held warmly in Ray’s own two. The absence on his shoulder made him feel cold.
“Ray…”
“Uh, yeah?” He responded tentatively, both of his thumbs worrying against Pete’s skin.
“Where are your crutches?”
Shit.
He’d walked the distance from the bed to the couch without even sparring a thought to his mobility aids, he was so concerned with finding Pete. His muscles were already charging him for the error now, but he knew he’d be feeling it worse in the morning. He still needed to get back to bed after all.
“Hey, man, I don’t recall feeling a brace on that fucked up knee of yours,” Ray countered flatly. He laughed at the way Pete dropped his head back in mock defeat.
“You got me,” He admitted, facing forward again so he could swipe a pajama sleeve under his nose. His words shook slightly, but Ray was relieved to hear they were also shaped with a smile, “I’ll wake you up next time.”