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The bus smells sour and filthy, the seats cracked, peeling fake leather that DeBlanc picks at with nervous fingers, tears it off in pieces, dropping them at his feet and he feels Fiore shift next to him, his shoulders tense and pressed against DeBlanc’s arm. He leans into him more, exhales slowly, takes off his hat to rest on his legs and rubs a hand over the top of his head. They hit a pothole that sends him a couple inches off his seat and he grips the hot metal that winds around under the windows.
Those windows. The things they have yet to show them.
He glances at Fiore who’s looking straight forward, not blinking, hands palm down on his thighs, fingers curling slightly, nails pressing into his clothes, to his skin and DeBlanc reaches over, grabs at one of his hands, the one closest to him, turns it over, pulls their fingers tightly together.
“It’s okay,” he says and hopes that he can force feed those words with the confidence he wasn’t feeling, hadn’t been feeling since they walked back out of that church. “It’ll all be fine, my dear,” he says, calls him that again, hopes it’ll help but Fiore isn’t moving, his jaw tightening and DeBlanc grips him tighter. “Hey.” He gets his attention, tries to at the very least, and Fiore finally turns to stare at him, eyes wide. “Don’t look out the windows.”
“There are a lot of them,” Fiore says (so naive, so innocent) and DeBlanc almost manages a laugh. Almost. He’s fairly certain that’s what that noise coming out of his throat was supposed to be.
“I know,” DeBlanc tells him. “But try. I don’t want you to see— Please just don’t.”
“I won’t,” Fiore says, averts his eyes towards the floor and DeBlanc puts a hand up, presses it against the glass, feels the warmth, the air whistling through a hole in the frame and he focuses on a scratch, the way it bends and fits over the flat land that they’re travelling through. “DeBlanc.” He hears his name, spoken softly, fearfully, and he looks away from the window again, sees Fiore still keeping his gaze on the dust-cracked and rubber-lined floor.
“Just an hour or two,” DeBlanc says. “Not much traffic on the road to—”
“Stop,” Fiore says and DeBlanc does, frown deepening. There’s an angry noise from outside, trailing behind them, a whimper and a thud as if they hit something and Fiore starts to lift his head but DeBlanc stops him, holds his hand just a bit tighter once more.
“Don’t look.” He can hear how defeated he sounds, hopes that Fiore doesn’t.
“But you can?” Fiore asks and DeBlanc sighs, smiles sadly.
“I’ve seen it all before.”
“Then there’s nothing worth looking at,” Fiore tells him and DeBlanc opens his mouth, feels like he’s going to argue but he doesn’t, he can’t make the words come tumbling out further than his throat and he chokes on them, coughs, nods his head even though Fiore couldn’t see it.
“Maybe you’re right,” he says. There’s a screeching against the steel of the bus, on the other side away from them and the metal shakes, the wheels wobble like they’re going through turbulence but then it stops just as suddenly as it started and DeBlanc eyes the driver, but he doesn’t seem particularly perturbed by any of it, hands clutching the large steering wheel, turning it just this way and that when need be, sweat dripping from his beard.
A low hissing noise from everywhere all at once and DeBlanc thinks he can smell sulfur, but he doesn’t know if he’s imagining it or not, is too concerned about it to ask Fiore, who’s quietly mumbling careful words under his breath, so quickly that DeBlanc can’t figure out what he’s saying but it’s enough to know that it’s a phrase, a couple lines long, repeated over and over.
“This isn’t how I wanted things to turn out,” DeBlanc says.
“It’s my fault,” Fiore says, “I lost the phone.”
“No. It’s mine,” DeBlanc says, refuting him. “It’s my fault for being from here in the first place. If I wasn’t, we wouldn’t have had to make this decision. You could go home. You don’t deserve to be down there.” I do, DeBlanc thinks, I was made down there. Born of fire and dust and the screams of a million damned. “You should have found someone more suitable.” Someone more heavenly. Someone with light boiling inside instead of someone being gnawed on by darkness.
“There is no one more suitable for me. It has always been you.”
“Fiore…” DeBlanc starts to say, interrupted by another otherworldly howl. “Don’t look,” they say to each other at the same time but it almost doesn’t matter because they could still hear. DeBlanc would ruin Fiore’s ears if it meant he wouldn’t have to hear any of this but not looking is the best either of them can do. They’re still gripping onto one another and DeBlanc is losing feeling in his hand but he doesn’t care.
Deep breath in, another one out, the sulfur still dancing there in the air, tastes it on the back of his tongue.
He rests his head on Fiore’s shoulder, turns his face to press the side of it into his shirt, closes his eyes.
In. Out. Sulfur.
He feels Fiore put his other hand on his shoulder, pulling him just that much closer, moving his body and DeBlanc adjusts himself in his seat, makes a decision and sits up, moves his hat to a spot by his feet, let's go of Fiore’s hand, grabbing him by the arms, tugging at him slightly.
“C’mere,” DeBlanc says and manipulates him, moves him down so he’s on his side, one leg tucked under on the seat, the other with a foot flat on the floor, his head in DeBlanc’s lap. He removes Fiore’s hat, hangs it on the corner of his seat, fingers pulling through his short hair. He doesn’t fit very well, awkward and uncomfortable, his long limbs not quite fitting in that position, in that small space, but he doesn’t leave. Fiore grabs onto DeBlanc’s pant leg, fingers bunching the fabric.
He tries to be so stoic, so formal and in control and even when they weren’t in these bodies he had a way of holding himself like he was made of wire (except when they were alone but, until very recently, that was a rarity). They made sure to rein themselves in with their physical affection, it was none of anybody’s business, it never had been but now it almost didn’t seem to matter. There were nothing but invisible eyes on them from now on, there wouldn’t be a moment when they weren’t being watched.
“I’ve heard the stories,” Fiore says.
“Everyone has,” DeBlanc says, doesn’t tell him that no matter what he had heard—what his compatriots had whispered to him in Heaven—whatever they would deal with where they were going was worse. He could shield him from the worst of it, knew exactly where he was going, knew what shortcuts to take but he couldn’t hide everything.
“How much further?”
“Don’t think about it,” DeBlanc says, quiets him. There’s a scream and it sounds like it’s right there with them, red lips pushed up against the sides of their head, burrowing in like worms and Fiore jumps, flinches. DeBlanc puts his hand palm down over Fiore’s ear, the one that isn’t pressed to his thigh, and holds it there. “You’ll get through this,” he says, even though he knows Fiore most likely can’t hear him.
You’ll get through this, he repeats, says it again and again, closes his eyes, doesn’t look as a hundred fists start pounding furiously around them.