Work Text:
If it wasn’t sick enough that they’d left him alone in the first place, Ryan’s parents had gone out on a date night. Way to rub it in, really, all things considered, fuck up your son and go enjoy your happy marriage at some shit dive bar with the other merry fucking forty-somethings. No, he wasn’t scared shitless. Or bitter, or something. He sat on his bed with the windows completely covered for fun, all the time.
He wanted to slam his hands into his head, over and over until he finally passed out, or lost sight. Could the ‘thing’ still get him if he couldn’t see? If he fell asleep, and slept all day and night and only woke up to piss and eat? He didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to get killed, for one, didn’t want to see Naim, for another. For a lot of reasons, none of which he wanted to think about, despite the constant pain in his chest, the thoughts he still wanted to slap out of his thick fucking skull.
Pointedly, he did not get up. Ryan didn’t venture outside his room, didn’t look outside the windows, turned his headphones up as loud as possible, skipped every song that even mentioned love, and did not open his eyes. When it got too much, the paranoia, the feeling that something was tapping right outside the glass, something peering in from the driveway, something clawing at the boundaries of his peripheral, he slammed the headphones down, and went to rifle through his mom’s medicine cabinet. He found some shitty melatonin pills from her ‘insomnia’ issues, took two, and tried to shove his head as far underneath his pillow as it would go.
-
The distinct sound of their screen door shuttering, someone try to rattle the locked handle, woke him up from even the most chemical-induced sleep. He blinked, shook his head to try and clear the sleep from it, and, without necessarily thinking through the action, stepped out into the hallway. The front door had opened, at some point, slammed slightly into the wall, though the screen door was still shut securely– he didn’t know what time of the night it could be, didn’t know if his parents were even home. It didn’t matter much, as through the screen, Naim was staring at him with a hand resting on the frame.
“Ryan, please help me,” he said, shaking his head slightly and eyes wide, the same terrified expression as when he’d been locked out of the bus, that awful minute. “Let me in, let me stay with you.”
“Piss off,” Ryan said, but didn’t move, not quite ready to take his eyes off of Naim, who looked beautiful, in his slightly-too-large windcheater. Not-Naim. Naim, who lied, who fucked him over, who created Not-Naim in the first place. Not-Naim, who only stared at him through the screen door, tears in his eyes. Fake tears. Maybe.
And Naim, real-Naim, who was probably suffering the same terror as Ryan, Ryan who couldn’t help him, who told him he never would– it made him feel sick, the thought of Naim scared, hurt, by something who looked like him, kissed like him. But hadn’t he hurt Naim the same? Hadn’t Naim hurt him?
“I’m sorry, Ryan, I know you told me to stay away from you, but I’ve been running from it all night, and I didn’t know where to go but here,” Not-Naim said, choking up, folding himself into that windcheater. Ryan couldn’t look right at him, like looking into fire for too long, his eyes hurting, burning, with something that couldn’t be water. “I didn’t want any of this to happen. This is what they wanted, Ryan, they wanted us to be scared. You’re the only one that understands.”
“Why’d you do it, then, huh?” It pours out of him, sharp, biting words, before he can think it through, his desire to do anything but argue with Naim, Not-Naim, his desire to not think about it. Ryan realizes that he’s been stepping forward, that he is almost at the doorway, before he can stop.
Naim, Not-Naim, bites his bottom lip into his mouth, still petrified, looks pensive for a second, and it wrecks Ryan, the way Naim seems so scared of him, of the question. “I wanted you to myself. I’m so sorry, Ryan, I’m selfish, I covet, I ruin things, I killed Hunter– you shouldn’t forgive me. I was just so scared of it, Ryan, scared of how I felt for you, I couldn’t confront it.”
Ryan just wants him to stop saying his name like that, with that break in his voice, still standing outside, probably cold, hiding behind his windcheater. Naim puts his hand on the screen, tentatively, looking like he’s the scared one. Like he’s afraid of what Ryan would say. Like he’s afraid Ryan won’t let him in, after everything he’s done, after everything he’s started. Naim opens his mouth to say something– as the first syllable breaks, Ryan slams the front door in his face, and collapses to the ground below in hysterics.
Naim, Not-Naim, out in the cold, terrified, shaking– Not-Naim, surely, the entity, the creature, trying to trick him, to get him to let it in and rip his scalp from his skull. And what if not? The real Naim, stuck out in the cold, scared, surrendered to the Not-Ryan that’ll surely kill him as well. It’s that thought that scares him, and the anger still inside him, the petty, childish, awful, terrible part of him that wants to leave Naim out in the cold, to fend for his fucking self. He doesn’t want that to be there, doesn’t want to listen to it, wants to swing the door back open and let him in. But that’s what it wants. What he wants.
It blurs until Ryan is stumbling down the hallway to vomit into the sink. He spits and heaves forward with shaking breaths, dry sobs, until his parents peek open their door, come to check on him. His mother rubs his arm, asks him what’s wrong. Ryan can’t know where to begin, can’t begin to say anything, not that they’d care, not that they’d help.
His mother checks his temperature with the back of her hand, kisses his forehead, tells him to get some sleep. “Pray on it,” she says, and retreats back into her darkness.
-
In the morning, when day first breaks, Ryan shoves everything that seems important, and all the cash he’s ever earned from odd jobs or birthdays or Christmas, into his backpack, throws on a jacket, and starts walking. When he starts, he’s not even entirely sure of where he’s trying to go, but it comes to him in Naim’s voice– the bus they took to the hospital, it goes to the city, where he’ll be away from Naim, not a danger to him, not like last night, and surrounded by people. Whatever he’ll do when he gets there is an issue for a future Ryan, a Ryan with a more coherent mind, not so broken by fear and sleep.
He walks until the sun comes higher into the sky, until he finds the bus station out on the outskirts of his outskirts, of the place he might not ever return to. He doesn’t feel that much sadness, that much remorse, for the town itself. He doesn’t think about Naim. His Naim. Not even slightly, not at all.
It’s that much of a surprise, then, when he looks up from the dirt, where he’d been staring and trying very pointedly to not think about Naim, and sees him across the street, looking tired, beaten, and as lost as himself. The old fear spikes, the same fucking bus, and he only decides in the last second to not run, as the bus pulls up in front of him. It’s no use fighting it off. It’s Naim who’ll haunt him for the rest of his life, physically or in his own mind, and it’s fittingly Naim, Not-Naim, who’ll kill him as well. Ryan, letting out a last, shuddering sigh, thinks it might be nice, to pretend the demon-hands are Naim’s own, at least while they choke him out with an uncharacteristic strength.
Even stranger than it all, is that Not-Naim doesn’t disappear, not when people come streaming off the bus, flowing around him as if in a stream of light, sound. Not-Naim, who must be Naim, his own Naim, his actual own Naim, who has survived the night, who had the same idea as Ryan.
“Please tell me it’s really you,” Ryan says, and can’t be embarrassed at the softness of his own voice. Naim nods, and Ryan believes him, and can’t be embarrassed, either, at the way he clings to Naim for long seconds, too long, his Naim, his boy, his alive boy. He doesn’t think he’ll let go, either, ever, not when they’re both alive, by some miracle, despite everything, despite miracle.