Chapter Text
The boy lay sprawled out on the asphalt, his dark hair sticking to his skin from the rain pouring down on them, expression lax with sleep.
Evan felt his chest tighten in a confused panic, when he first noticed him. A mere meter away from where he himself had stirred awake, collapsed in the same alleyway that he had been.
The apartment building behind him raged with flames, heating up his skin and making sweat stick to his brow regardless of the rain pelting down from the dark sky. The air tasted wrong, thick with smoke and something metallic, making his tongue feel too big in his mouth.
Wrong.
A loud crack from the complex was what finally startled him into movement, the wet gravel digging into his skin, seeping through his jeans, as he lifted up onto his knees and hurriedly crawled over to the other boy. His only company in the foreign place.
He grabbed him by the shoulders, fingers digging into the stranger's skin as he shook him hard. Just as desperate to confide in someone about his confusion, as he was to get the guy out of there.
"Hey," he shouted when the boy's features creased in displeasure, his eyes scrunching up tight as the rain hammered down onto his face. Evan swiped the guy's damp hair away, before shaking him again. "Hey, man, you okay?!”
The other boy groaned, then turned his face away from his touches and the wetness, before finally squinting an eye open.
Similar to how Evan had roused mere moments ago, he quickly startled upon gaining awareness of their environment.
The boy immediately bolted upright, his hands reaching behind him to steady himself on the wet cement. Brown eyes widened in shock at the blaze happening, the flames reflecting in the warmth of his eyes and face in a way that made Evan freeze for just a second. Only brief.
A moment ticked by, and then there was something steady in the way that he looked at it, even through the shock. Like he wasn’t just seeing danger, but he was already measuring it, assessing. It made Evan feel, weirdly, like he was lagging behind. Like this guy had already caught up to a situation Evan hadn’t even processed yet.
He didn't like it.
The boy rubbed a fist at his eyes, as though that would change anything about what he was looking at, before peering around at the rest of the alleyway they sat in.
"Where am I?" He asked, having to raise his voice to be heard over the torrential rain, and the fire, and the shrill sirens bellowing in the background.
And Evan felt something in his stomach twist, at the shared lack of knowledge. Sobering up quickly from his momentary fascination with the other teen.
"Uh... I was hoping you'd tell me?" he laughed awkwardly, running his fingers through his own hair, pulling a little at it to subdue the panic. He then stood up, offering a hand out to help the other boy as he did.
The stranger eyed it before accepting, squeezing his palm tightly, as Evan hoisted him to his feet. They didn't let go for a beat, both in need of someone to rely on in such a confusing situation, but eventually the stranger pulled away.
"I was at home," he then said numbly, still examining their surroundings, appearing equally as lost as Evan felt now.
A loud crack lit up the sky, striking near the flaming building, and they both almost jumped out of their skin before hastily deciding that it really was best to move out of there.
"I was at school," Evan shouted back, having already noted that he didn't recognise the boy from there, so it made sense that they hadn't come from the same place. "Do you think we were drugged or something?"
He tried to make it sound like a joke, but his voice came out too sharp, too fast. Too real a possibility.
Were they drugged?!
The sirens grew louder as they exited the alley out into the street, where a crowd of onlookers were cowering from the rain, gawking up at the burning building as multiple firetrucks crowded around them.
The other boy stared at him at his question, his shoulders hunching in on himself from the chill that was no doubt seeping into his bones from the sleeveless shirt he had on, the material practically see through from how wet it was. But before his companion could answer, something else caught Evan's eyes.
Atop one of the firetrucks was a ladder, extended high up to the building, and from it dangled a limp man. Another guy stood at the top of it, reaching uselessly for him.
"Holy shit, is that guy dead?!" Evan grabbed the other teen's shoulder, drawing his attention to the sight. And together they stood, wordlessly pressed to each other’s sides for both support and warmth, before taking off into a sprint towards the trucks as the limp guy was lowered all the way down onto a gurney, and it looked like the team was about to leave.
They needed help. And both seemed to be in agreement of the urge to get to that group immediately, before they left.
"Excuse me? Sir?!" The other teen called out as they approached a middle aged man- one whose coat read Captain- but he stood staring in horror at the limp man, not acknowledging them. Evan stalled in his steps, to look at the guy too. Watching as two paramedics pumped at his unmoving chest, and a third guy, the one who'd climbed up the tower, screamed and grabbed at his hand. The word Buck on their tongues, repeated over and over again with a desperation he could feel.
He felt something strange settle in his gut. Something heavy.
"Sorry, is this a bad time? We just—"
Evan stepped closer, and heedless to any thought or common sense he reached out and touched the dead man's foot.
The second his fingers made contact, something snapped under his skin, sharp and electric, like static bursting to life. Not pain. Just wrong. Just enough to make his breath hitch.
With that, one of the paramedics turned to look at him, her eyes wide and wet behind her rain smudged glasses, but before he could be shoved out of the way or shouted at for interfering, the apparantly not dead guy heaved in a breath.
Evan pulled away, stumbling back several steps, as the guy's body jerked upright on the gurney. Elated exclamations and gasps of disbelief left the team of firefighters, the one who’d scaled the ladder grabbing at him again and crying.
And for a split second, less than that, Evan had the strangest, most overwhelming sense of knowing him. Not recognising. Not remembering. Just… knowing.
And then the man was pushed onto the ambulance before he could get a proper look at his face, the other guy clinging on to his hand still.
“What the fuck?” The second paramedic said, standing in the doorway of the ambulance, gawking at him as though he were the marvel.
And Evan hunched in on himself, unsure what to say or do as the paramedic's comment garnered the attention of the older man, the one that his friend had been trying to talk to.
The Captain finally acknowledged them with a frightfully pale face, appearing as though he had seen a ghost. Which… yeah, their coworker had almost died. But Evan felt something strange, something freezing him to the spot, settling into his bones beneath the man's gaze. Like he was being looked through, not at. Like the man was trying to place something that didn’t make sense.
His hands clenched into fists at his side, as the man belatedly instructed the paramedics to "Get Buck to the hospital, I'll be right behind.”
The shouts of the man who'd climbed the ladder from inside the ambulance, demanding that they move, added to his point.
The ambulance doors slammed closed, and the vehicle took off not a moment later, its sirens deafening, and the three of them watched it dissappear in a flurry of movement.
Then the man once again looked at them, his eyes flickering between them both before settling on Evan's brow. His birthmark, no doubt peaking out beneath the saturated mop of hair in his face.
He stiffened, uncomfortable. Not used to being looked at with such… intensity. Interest. Merely the skirting gazes of his parents and passive interest of teachers.
"You two," the man spoak hoarsely, pausing again before shaking his head. Clearing his throat. "Did you need help?"
Evan looked to his friend, who stood stock still, imploring him to talk on their behalf. His heart pounded in his chest, echoing in his ears, as he dug his nails into his palms.
"Sorry to bother you, Sir. But we're just a little... Lost?" The other teen eventually said, his back ramrod straight and hands neatly clasped behind his back. Evan could only see them fidgeting because of the angle he stood at, but other than that he appeared strangely calm about their utterly bizarre circumstances.
A little lost? Fucking understatement.
It had been a sunny midafternoon. He'd been at school lacing his sneakers up in the locker room. Blinked, then opened his eyes in that dark alleyway, flooded by rain, in an area that he didn't recognise in the slightest.
Evan sucked in a breath, and stepped to the other boy's side. Cocked his chin up, to try and appear as collected as his friend.
"We woke up over there, and we have no idea how we got here. We don't even know where here is... I'm thinkin' maybe we were high—"
"I'm not on drugs," the other boy interjected firmly, and Evan cursed himself because of course, he shouldn't say things like that to a city official.
Anyway, weed wouldn't do this...
The Captain stared at them, before extending out an arm to guide them to the truck, opening the door for them to climb inside and escape the rain.
Evan shivered against the seats, cold seeping into his bones. He scooted closer to the other boy, wanting to share their body heats, and fought the urge to wrap his arm around his shoulders. He didn’t know him. Didn’t want to scare him off. Didn’t want to be alone, either.
The Captain guy got in the front and cranked on the heaters, the windows fogging up from the humidity. He spoke into a radio for a few seconds, giving out orders to those still subduing the fire, before turning around in his seat to face them.
Evan clenched his hands to keep fidgeting, trying to resemble the other boy who- other than the stiff posture- continued to appear entirely nonchalant about what was going on. The panic and fear erased from his brown eyes, replaced by a hollow brown.
"Okay. What are your names, and where did you come from?" The man asked, as he took off his helmet and wiped a hand over his own wet face. Pain and worry were etched into his pale features, evidently close with the guy who'd looked dead.
And he felt bad, bothering him like this, but...
"Evan, and I was at the High School for the soccer game."
"The High School where?"
He stilled.
There was only one High School in their district. People never needed to specify which they meany, nor did people ask.
Evan looked out of the window again, still just as unfamiliar with their surroundings. And he spent a lot of time just roaming the city, knew it like a mouse knew their cage...
They weren't in Hershey anymore.
Definitely not. But how? Why?
"Hershey."
The man stared at him strangely, and Evan bit at the inside of his cheek, wondering if he thought he was lying.
"Eddie Diaz. I was at home, in El Paso. Then I woke up here," the other teen- Eddie- said when it didn't seem like the man was going to stop staring at him. Mercifully pulling the guy's attention away.
Evan felt his face scrunch up, as he tried to pinpoint where the hell El Paso was.
Silence ticked on. Evan always hated silence, but this one felt especially heavy. His knee began to bounce and he squirmed in the seat, feeling incredibly small pressed up against it as the man looked at them with such a strange expression.
"Where are we, Sir?" Eddie asked eventually, quiet and tense once more.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. They all knew it.
The man let out a long breath, before shaking his head as a thin smile spread across his face.
A woman got into the truck's driver's seat, just as another fire engine appeared on scene to take over from them.
"Welcome to Los Angeles," the Captain said after a beat, and Evan and Eddie unanimously turned to gawk at each other in shock, wondering if they'd heard that correctly. Los Angeles? Like, West Coast California?
What the fuck.
Oh, his parents were definitely going to kill him... If they had even noticed he was gone, that was. Maybe they were enjoying the peace and quiet too much to be anything more than perturbed.
He felt his heart race, chest tightening as he wondered how in the hell he'd gotten across the country without any memory of it.
Stared down at his sneakers, the laces still undone as he last remembered them being, now brown and damp from the wet ground.
If his Mom hadn't noticed him going missing for what had to be several days, she'd certainly be pissed when he came back with dirty shoes. Probably wouldn't let him back in the house, even after this adventure.
He was startled out of his thoughts when the man reached over and placed a hand on both of their knees, squeezing.
Evan's nails bit into the palm of his hands in an effort to keep his body still.
"We're going to figure this out. But for now have you two ever wanted to ride inside a fire engine?"
Not like they had any other options, other than to go along with whatever this guy said. When Eddie didn't reply, Evan nodded for the both of them. And the Captain must have been in a hurry to get to wherever they were going because the driver soon took off with the sirens on full blast.
And Evan wasn't a little kid or anything. He wasn't going to gush in awe at a big truck. But it was admittedly pretty cool, whizzing through traffic.
More cool was the sights of LA. There was something so different about it to any other city he'd been to, granted the furthest he'd ever travelled was Philadelphia, his parents not caring to take him on vacation with them. But everything here was different, startlingly so. The cars, the billboards, the lights. It all looked so… new? Strange?
He tore his eyes away from the window to look at Eddie, who was still sitting stiff in his seat, arms crossed tight around his chest as raindrops fell from the ends of his hair and rolled down his shirt.
Evan nudged him with his leg.
"This is the freakiest trip I've ever had," he whispered with a laugh, but the other teen just blinked at him. Evan felt irritation spark under his skin. Not at Eddie, not really… just at the way he wouldn’t meet him halfway. Like Evan was reacting to all of this wrong. Like there was a right way to handle waking up in a burning alley across the country. He figured the kid was a bit of a tight ass, if the way he'd reacted to him implying they were high was anything to go by. He huffed. "Oh-kay.”
The other boy's brown eyes studied him for a moment longer, and Evan was annoyed that he couldn't quite get a read on him. That the teen wasn't confiding with him over just how freaky this all was.
That was until Eddie leaned over, with a mistrustful glance thrown at the adults in the front of the truck, to quietly ask "Do you think we were kidnapped?"
And there it was. The panic etched itself into the other teen's face again, shining in his wide eyes. Evidently not so cool as he'd been pretending.
God. If they were, just to be ditched in a random alleyway, his parents were going to have a field day. They'd always said that they didn't have to worry about him getting kidnapped, because they were certain he'd be returned as soon as he opened his mouth.
"I don't remember anything," he shrugged, not that that meant much. Something must have happened whether he remembered or not, and he couldn't think of any normal reason as to why he was in California all of a sudden. Why he and this random boy from another State had both ended up together, with memory loss.
Kidnapping wasn't so far-fetched. Maybe their kidnapper had burned in that building, or seen the flashing lights of the trucks and freaked out and left them.
Something twisted in his stomach, completely unsettled at the thought of being missing for days but having no memory of the time.
And as much as he'd like to joke… he hoped his parents had noticed and were looking. He didn't know what he'd do if he got home and they hadn't cared. He told himself not to be surprised. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t still hurt.
What if they thought he'd run away, and that it wasn't worth looking?... What if he had run away but didn't remember?
"Me neither," Eddie agreed, his mouth pinching in thought.
Evan looked at his shoes again. Pulled at the sleeves of his shirt as it stuck to his skin.
"I'm still wearing the same clothes I had on, and they aren't dirty," he realised then. They were wet, and his shoes and the knees of his jeans were muddy, but otherwise they were exactly as they had been back in his school's locker room. "But somehow I travelled cross country in them?"
He wasn't sure how long the drive was to LA, but it had to be several days. How was that possible?
He shifted, and felt something dig into his side as he did. Belatedly remembered his phone, bulging in his back pocket, and grabbed it.
Flipped it open to find no new messages, no missed calls, and no signal. But that wasn't what caught his attention.
"Whoa, weird.”
"What?" Eddie leaned over to look, and he saw the Captain guy glance at them in the rear view mirror.
"It was just past six last I remember, but my phone says it's only been forty minutes since then?"
That didn’t make any sense. None of it did. His brain kept trying to explain it as something normal- missed time, a prank, anything- but every explanation slipped through his fingers.
Maybe he had the wrong date in his head, but he was pretty sure that today was April 6th, which his phone was still in agreement with.
Eddie frowned, potentially from a different time zone than he was and trying to piece it together for himself too. "Maybe it's broken.”
A thought occurred to him then. As he stared at the time changing by the minutes, functioning perfectly fine.
A grin took over his face as he whispered conspiratorially to the other teen "Or maybe we teleported."
He was only half joking. Of course he didn't believe in magic, but… it would certainly explain a lot and be pretty damn cool. Definitely the best explanation as to how this happened.
He'd wanted superpowers ever since Maddie bought Matilda on DVD, and he'd sympathised with her for being left alone so much. Used to practice trying to move things with his mind. Of course, he'd stopped that some years ago. He wasn't a dumb baby anymore.
Regardless of the fact that he himself didn't really believe what he was saying, he still prickled when Eddie scoffed and looked at him like he was stupid for suggesting such a thing. Not because Eddie was wrong, but because he’d dismissed it so easily. Like Evan was ridiculous for even trying to make sense of all this.
"Think about it, it'd make a lot of sense," he insisted, purely to make a point.
"No it wouldn't," Eddie replied, rolling his eyes.
And before Evan could come up with a proper argument for his case, the truck slowed down as it pulled into a hospital parking bay for emergency service vehicles.
He went still again.
"I'll remind you of that when we're getting poked and prodded for superpowers," he muttered, caught off guard when the fire Captain turned around, evidently having been listening in on their conversations the entire time.
"That's not going to happen," he said insistently, a promise.
Evan would like to note that the adult did not deny that something freakish was going on. Superpowers or not, he seemed to think that them being marvelled at was something to genuinely worry about. The reply had been too quick. Like he wasn’t just reassuring them, but like he needed it to be true too.
The heavy rain had lessened now. The grey clouds that had darkened the sky having sparsed out, parting way for the dull blue of the evening.
A police woman stood outside, waiting, and when the Captain climbed out of the fire truck to speak to her Evan met Eddie's eyes in alarm.
They leaned over to the window, watching the exchange as the two hugged, abruptly pulling away when the woman peered up at them with a raised brow.
Two minutes passed by in silence, the driver of the truck clicking at a small screen she held in her hand.
They tried to listen to the exchange happening outside, wondering if they were in trouble. And Evan startled when the door was eventually pulled open, having been lost in thought of the last time he'd gotten caught up with the police.
God, it had certainly been successful in garnering his parents’ attention, but he'd never seen them so pissed before. Usually he didn't mind, a part of him loving the shouting and the way they looked at him, desperate to be acknowledged at all. But it reached a point that he'd been certain they'd kick him out to the streets, when he talked back and ended up with a split lip from his Mom backhanding him. She'd never hit him before then, and the heavy silence that followed the act wasn't something he'd like to experience again.
So when the Captain stood in the doorway, the police lady at his side, both looking at them like… like they were something extraordinary, his heart began to race.
"Okay you two. My wife here is a police Sergeant, she's going to help us get to the bottom of this," he said, his eyes gravitatinf to Evan's brow again, and he squirmed self consciously when the Sergeant's did too. He ran his fingers through his hair to hide his birthmark from their sight. The man then frowned, something pained in his expression, and looked at the woman again. "I need to check on my team, but I'll be back soon.”
Right. The firefighter who'd been almost dead.
That was probably why they were at a hospital.
Not for them to be tested on like freaks of nature.
"Yes, Sir, thank you for the help," Eddie said unprompted, and Evan almost rolled his eyes at how dorky it was.
The Captain, who belatedly introduced himself as Bobby, turned on his feet and made a B-line for the ER doors, leaving them alone with the woman who introduced herself as Athena.
She took them from the truck, and over to her car. Eddie followed along obediently, but Evan was hesitant, shuffling along after them.
The last time he'd been in a cop car, he'd been mouthy and smirked, but something about this woman told him she really wasn't to be messed with.
Even as she was perfectly nice, going so far as to grab a weighted blanket out of the trunk to drape over their shoulders as they sat in the back seats together.
Being pressed close to Eddie, their bodies shuddering a little as they warmed up, made him relax ever so slightly.
That was until the questions started.
She asked them for their full names first, pausing in contemplation after making them repeate them. Then she asked for the date. When they both replied with April 6th, she specified that she wanted the year as well.
And had Eddie not also confidently replied with 2006, he would have wondered if maybe at some point he'd moved to LA and was suffering with amnesia of the last year or so of his life, based on the way the woman's face pinched in response.
Evan noticed it. He always noticed that kind of thing, the tiny shifts in adult expressions right before things went bad. Right when he was doing something wrong, or being too much.
She quickly collected herself, then went on to ask them for their birthdays. And Evan had been hesitant to share his, certain she was using the information to find their profiles which, in his case, would bring up his past history. That was until Eddie gave his birthday, June 26th 1992, and he excitedly added that he was born June 27th 1991. Their birthdays were a day apart!
Eddie didn't find that as cool as he did, though.
Next she asked for their parents' names and phone numbers. Evan had no qualms with providing their house phone number, correctly anticipating that they wouldn't answer. He didn’t even feel disappointed as it endlessly. That part was familiar enough to be almost comforting. Predictable… Even if a part of him had been hoping that they would, for once.
In contrast Eddie appeared surprised when his Mom didn't answer, the call instead disconnecting after one long dial.
Athena lowered the strange device she was making the calls on to her lap when there was no response, sighing.
And Evan felt a lot like a little kid waiting in the school's reception when his parents had forgotten to pick him up, again. Watching the staff stare so pitifully. Something to be dealt with, not wanted.
"Do you two have any siblings?" Athena asked next, presumably to try and find someone who could help.
"I have a sister, Maddie. But she's busy, she won't come," Evan admitted, arms crossing over his chest. “She's at nursing school,” he belatedly added, in his sister's defense.
Because it wasn't like she wouldn't care… If she even knew he was missing, that was.
"I have two sisters, but they're younger," Eddie added. And yeah, Evan could see that. He definitely had an older sibling vibe to him. "My aunt lives in LA. In La Cienega Heights, I think. But I don't remember her telephone number.”
"What's her name?"
"Josephina González.”
Athena wrote that down, before rubbing at her forehead, closing her eyes for several moments. And it felt an awful lot like everything they'd said had been wrong, not what she wanted to hear.
And he just didn't understand.
He was more confused than ever, and still cold, and getting a headache, and a little (okay, a lot) shaken up after waking up by an apartment building on fire. He just wanted to be in his room, get the baggy rolled up beneath his wardrobe for special occasions, and smoke it out on the roof before climbing into bed.
But he was a long way from home.
"Okay," the woman started. "I think I'm going to take you two somewhere safe for now, until we get this cleared up. How about—"
Evan's attention was drawn outside, when he caught sight of the reflective stripes on Bobby's uniform as the man approached their car.
With him was another man, one also in firefighter gear, and it didn't take him long to connect that he was the one who'd been screaming, climbing up that ladder after the other guy.
But now he stood without the helmet, and Evan got the first proper look at his face.
The pale, exhausted, pained expression, similar to Bobby's, after the ordeal they'd been through. But something so breathtakingly familiar, too.
He looked at Eddie, who stared wide eyed out of the car window at the other man, with the same round brown eyes. Evidently noticing the same thing.
"Is that your Dad?"