Archive of Our Own

One lesson about being a detective Holland had forcibly crammed into Jackson’s mind over and over was the necessity of being observant.

It sounded rich, coming from him, but Jackson had to be honest: For how much of a trainwreck of a human being his partner was, Holland was actually surprisingly observant. So Jackson did his best to take that lesson to heart, and observed.

Now, two years and a handful of weeks in since ‘The Nice Guys’ detective agency had officially been baptised with a paper ad, he had a long, long list of observations catalogued in the back of his mind.

About cases, sure, but mostly about the small family he’d somehow found himself being a part of, a fact that hadn’t really been a conscious choice as much as a confluence of causality. He’d found himself suddenly homeless when his landlord decided he was too much of a hassle and trouble-magnet to keep around, Holland and Holly had just moved into a new rental with a guest room, and Holland had tossed the idea of him staying with them until he could get himself a new place as casual and natural as breathing.

Except Jackson had hesitatingly accepted the offer, made sure to keep his boxes packed for when he’d leave, and then… He’d sort of never left. That hadn’t been a conscious choice, either. For months he’d actively looked for a new place that was affordable while also not being an outright dump, which was a challenge, when one lived in LA, and in the meantime he made himself useful; he did his fair share of chores without needing to be asked, he actually cooked food with fresh ingredients, rather than counting on the TV-dinner crap Holland was used to stock his freezer with, and he slotted into this new family dynamic without a peep. Holland seemed to like having him around, if the fact he slowly, gradually stopped pouring whiskey in his morning coffee, kind of chilled out with the afternoon drinks, and mostly indulged in the evenings without getting blackout drunk quite as often anymore, was anything to come by… Holly seemed to like having him around, too, devouring the meals he cooked with a healthy teenaged hunger and playing crosswords with him, and asking him help with her homework, and told him about the drama in her friend group and about that boy at school she definitely did not have a crush on, no siree.

At some point he’d gotten into his ‘guest’ room and found all of his boxes unpacked. He had no idea who had done it, if it was Holland, or Holly, or the both of them, scheming behind his back— But he got the message loud and clear.

And so he stayed. And he observed.

For the most part he didn’t learn much of note beyond what he’d already learnt when he first got entangled with the March family by pure happenstance: Holland spoke too much and too loudly and never knew when to shut up, he was a clutz and a mess and barely functional adult, and he intermittently had these moments of keen insight and intuition that somehow managed to make him a damn good detective despite everything. Holly was sharp as a tack and far too mature for her age; she kept her father in check to the best of her abilities and always knew a lot more than she should, although Jackson's presence as a somewhat-more-responsible adult in her life seemed to have softened some of her sharpest edges, allowed her to be a teenager more often.

Holland still drank more than Holly wanted (which was a big fat ‘never’, if it was up to her), but he was getting a little better, tiny step by tiny step. He wasn’t a good father, but he wasn’t a bad one either, and he really tried, so that was something. Holly seemed to know that, and her grousing and scolding, as if she was the parent, was never overly venomous.

Most of the time, at least. Jackson had been observing, and it only took one year spent with father and daughter to notice that the both of them grew more weary and snappish around a specific date. Jackson didn’t need to ask why.

They were closing in on said date, that evening. Even if Jackson hadn’t kept an eye on the calendar as The Anniversary loomed ever closer, he would’ve known simply from the way Holly’s words were a lot more serious and cutting than usual, and Holland had been drinking more and more quickly than the average night.

“...You haven’t even visited,” Holly recriminated, moving the green beans she was supposed to be eating around her plate with a dark expression.

Holland ignored his untouched plate (seriously, the guy ate like a bird. No wonder he was such a lanky, easily breakable thing) in favor of taking another sip out of his mug (as if using a mug instead of a see-through glass could possibly hide what he was doing). He did not reply, did not even try to find an excuse.

Jackson had to admit he wasn’t quite sure Holly’s habit of sitting, with a book in her lap, on the untouched land that had once hosted a home was entirely healthy… And on the complete opposite side of the spectrum there was Holland, who seemed to avoid that plot of land like the plague even though he’d gone out of his way to find another rental in the area.

Perhaps that wasn’t healthy, either. Jackson couldn’t say, he wasn’t a damn shrink. And he wasn’t sure if there really were healthy ways to deal with the tragic loss of a beloved wife and mother.

“I’ll get a contractor, somebody,” Holland finally said, nervously licking the tiny drops hanging from his moustache. His tone was subdued, rough. “Get ‘em to come take a look, ‘kay?”

“That’s not why I—” Holly immediately snapped back, before throwing her hands up with a noise of frustration that was so very like her father’s. “Whatever. I don’t care. Do what you want.”

Jackson quietly watched her sit up with a discordant noise of a chair forcibly dragged and scraping the cheap floor, angrily stalk away toward her room, her dinner half-finished. Any other night Holland would’ve called her with that kicked-puppy tone of his, pleaded with her to finish her food, not go to bed angry and hungry—

But he said nothing, simply taking another sip from the mug, his own plate still pristine and untouched.

When he also rose without taking a single bite and started washing the dishes, Jackson let him. Sometimes he played the mediator during these types of spats between father and daughter, but not that evening. It wasn’t his place.

He found himself unsuspectingly having a place in this family, but in some ways he would never be able to fit into the grief the two shared, he knew that. And he knew when to keep his mouth shut, unlike someone else who was being uncharacteristically quiet.

There was nothing he could say to lessen the pain, really. Sometimes simply standing by, quiet yet present, was the best he could do.

Holland did not say a single word for the rest of the evening as it rolled into night. He filled and emptied his mug two more times, made a vague attempt at looking over some notes from their latest case, and finally gave up and went to sleep.

Jackson just as quietly finished tidying up the odd bits and bob, before returning to his own room with a heavy weight sitting in his chest.

It was not easy, that time of year, and likely would never be. But that was just life, he guessed.

**

The next few days, as the hours crawled toward The Anniversary, inexorable, were tense and oddly quiet.

The thing about Holland, Jackson knew, was that for all his endless filling the air with inane words, he rarely ever said anything of substance. He just talked and talked and talked and never really said a thing that meant something. It was rather hypocritical, for somebody who often accused Jackson of being an impenetrable fortress around his own feelings.

People like Holland were far more insidious, in Jackson’s opinion. Sure, he was stoic and a man of few words, but he honestly wasn’t that hard to read, he was sure. Holland, though, kept his most tender parts hidden in a safe with a ten-digit combination buried at the bottom of an ocean of empty words. He was full of misdirections, it was almost a magic trick, keeping someone’s attention away from the important part with flourishes and pizazz while he made whatever it was he did not want you to notice ‘disappear’.

Jackson had gotten quite good at reading through the smoke and mirrors of Holland’s boisterous and chaotic existence, though. He could tell that there was something that was bothering him beyond the way Holly was constantly trying to lure him into a fullblown fight and— Well, the obvious. The uncharacteristic silence, the way his eyes often fogged over as if he was lost in thought, the set of his jaw as he chewed on his cigarettes like they owed him money— Every single tiny thing seemed to point in the direction of Holland actually needing to open his mouth and speak, for once, and yet he refused to do as such.

For how much Jackson kept telling himself to butt out of this one, that it was not his place, he had to admit it was growing difficult to do so, especially once the actual Anniversary finally rolled around; he watched Holly return from school with a mismatched bouquet of flowers she’d clearly picked from gardens and front lawns as she walked her way back, pointedly keeping them in view as she stared at her father without speaking a word. He watched that silent stand-off that seemed to extend for an eternity, before she scoffed and got out with angry strides, no doubt directed to an empty, fenced-off plot of land nearby.

He did not say a thing, simply fixed a quick dinner and left a plate for Holly in her room, did not even bother to try and call Holland to come eat something. The man had gone into the backyard after that whole scene and stayed there, chain-smoking and drinking even once darkness fell, well into the night.

But Jackson’s patience snapped at around one in the morning. He was lying on his bed, unable to sleep as worry gnawed at him, unable to stop himself from wondering if he should’ve done something, said something— Then he heard steps of leather shoes on cheap flooring, uneven in a way they hadn’t been in months. Heard the vague rustling of somebody looking for something, the thump of glass on the counter, and then uneven steps going back outside.

He sighed and got up. Holland hadn’t drunk quite this much in quite a while, he might seriously end up in hospital, if he did not stop— Or if somebody did not make him stop.

When he got out in the backyard he found Holland exactly where he’d been most of the day; sitting on a rusted garden bench, watching over a lawn with uneven lengths of grass and weeds (none of them was much of a green thumb) with glassy eyes, a cigarette hanging from his mouth and a bottle of cheap liquor in hand.

“I think you’ve had enough,” Jackson simply said, softly, sitting down by his side. Holland let out a ‘pshaw’ noise, making a half-hearted attempt at throwing both hands up in exasperation, some of the liquid sloshing over the rim and spilling on his fingers.

Still, it was testimony to the steady amount of work they’d all put in, all three of them, that instead of drinking even more directly from the bottle, contrarian and challenging, Holland simply handed the liquor over, letting his hands limply hang between his knees once Jackson accepted the offer without a word.

Jackson silently located the cork, plugged it back in, and put the bottle down by his side of the bench. They sat there in the silence filled with a vague, distant noise of traffic and a city that never slept, for what felt like an eternity. Then Jackson sighed, softly.

“Do you… Want to talk about it?” He asked, not quite looking over at his hunched-over partner. Holland only grunted back. “It might do you good.”

A sarcastic snort was the only reply. Jackson waited for him to take a long drag out of his cigarette, the smoke rising out of his mouth and nostrils in lazy curls. Then Holland finally spoke. “There is not much to say.”

His voice was rogue with disuse and… More. Jackson resisted the urge to sigh again. “I think there is.”

“There really isn’t. You know it, I know it, what’s the point?”

“The point is that stewing on it all on your own isn’t doing you any good.”

Jackson waited, an eyebrow faintly tilted upward, but Holland remained stubbornly silent, so he pressed on. “At least maybe talk it out with Holly, tomorrow? You’re both hurtin’—”

“Won’t solve anything.”

“Maybe not, but I don’t think sitting there and letting her yell at you aren’t solving anything either.”

Holland shrugged. “If it makes her feel better—”

“I’m not sure it does,” Jackson intervened, softly. “She’s angry, but she doesn’t like being angry at you, you know that.”

“So, what,” Holland scoffed back, barbed and sarcastic. “Should I fight back?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jackson replied, calling upon his meager stocks of patience. Holland was ungodly talented at driving him up a wall, pressing all of his buttons like a pianist during a performance, but this was… Different. Their usual back and forth had no place to be,not for that night. “I’m just saying to talk to her. The way you’ve barely spoken a word the past four days— She needs you to be present, Holland.”

That seemed to immediately burst the bubble of defiance that had made a brief appearance, Holland’s shoulders going limp. “I know,” he muttered, dragging a slightly-trembling hand through limp, vaguely damp hair. “But I can’t— If I do that she’ll ask me something— Something I have to refuse to do, and that’ll hurt her even more.”

Jackson frowned. “Something you have to refuse to do? What do you mean?” He asked, confused, adding, once Holland failed to reply. “If it’s that whole idea of rebuilding a new home— Look, truth to be told I don’t think that’s like— Healthy. I know it’s none of my business, but—”

“That’s not it, not really,” Holland interjected, tiredly waving a hand in the air. “Trust me, that was never— Real. I know it, and she does too. It’s— That whole thing is—”

He seemed to struggle with finding the right words, mouth opening and closing slightly, before he sagged on himself tiredly. 

“It’s about something else,” he finally finished with, voice low and distant.

Jackson observed him for a long moment. Holland was always so effortlessly, casually handsome, as long as he kept his mouth mostly shut. It was something that helped them get clients, Jackson knew, and Holland knew that as well, since he ensured to make use of his lucky genes by also dressing the part.

But in that moment all of that was gone; the cocky smirks, the flashy suits, the carefully maintained hairstyle— Just gone, leaving behind a man who had worn the same creased shirt two days in a row, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a coffee stain on the limp collar… A tired, haunted man.

“What is it really about, then?” Jackson asked. He had the inkling whatever truly hid behind the wishy-washy idea of building a new house on that now empty plot of land, perhaps Holland really needed to talk about it.

But Holland only chuckled, raw and hollow. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“...What?” Jackson managed to utter, entirely taken aback by the declaration. Holland took another long drag of his almost-spent cigarette, his jaw shifting nervously as he chewed on it.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” he repeated, this time sounding more tense, almost peeved. Jackson squinted, confused and lost. He felt like he’d missed a step as he climbed up a flight of stairs, reeling for solid ground.

“You can’t know that,” he finally set on.

“Can.”

“Can’t. How can you know I wouldn’t believe you if you don’t actually tell me?”

“Because no one ever does,” Holland replied without missing a beat. “Hell, I wouldn’t believe me. Only Emma did,” his voice cracked a little on the name, but he trudged on. “I’m not quite sure Holly really believes it, either. We never really talked about it, not like— I guess part of her wants to, but I haven’t exactly given her reasons to trust what I say,” a cold, sarcastic chuckle broke the sentence, before he continued. “But she still wants— She never really said, but I know she—”

He let out a tired little groan, curling on himself even more.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” he added, almost a childish mutter, before falling silent again.

Jackson had never been more lost in his life, and for the first time ever since he met Holland he felt like he couldn’t really read between the lines, truly look at what Holland wasn’t saying. The sensation sat askew in his stomach, like left-overs left in the fridge for too long before being eaten.

“Try me,” he finally said, because what else could he do?

Another tiny groan rolled out of Holland’s mouth, both hands rubbing at his face. He took one useless puff out of the cigarette, threw the butt down, grinded it under his heel to let it join the carpet of cigarette butts that had collected there as the hours went. He rolled his shoulders, sitting ever so faintly more upright, took in a deep breath, clearly steeling himself, before speaking.

“I can see ghosts,” he said, sounding utterly, deadly serious.

Jackson stared at him. Holland did not properly look back as much as launching him a quick, sideways glance, before his expression visibly shut off and shifted into some sort of cold amusement that sat on Holland’s face like a badly-fitting mask.

“See?” He said, rising up on his feet, swaying but remaining upright. “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

Jackson watched his partner stumble back into their now shared home without another word, frozen by confusion on his spot, mind a buzz of nothing trying to wrap itself around the absurdity of what he just heard.

**

Neither of them spoke a single word on the topic, coming morning. In a way, Jackson felt like he’d been thrown a lifesaver, and he’d be an idiot not to grab it. So, for a time, it was easy to pretend Holland had been too drunk to know what he was saying (even though he hadn’t been, not to that point) and that Jackson could simply let it slide, the same way he had let things slide back at the start, when his partner got himself blackout drunk far too often.

So the days, and then weeks, passed, and neither of them brought the topic up. The open, raw wound of grief scabbed over little by little; Holly found a way to say ‘sorry’ for her abrasive attitude without actually saying sorry, and Holland accepted it with the tired, ill-fitting benevolence of a man who, deep down, knew he only deserved punishment. The atmosphere in the house relaxed, Holland resumed his endless chattering and his rotation of daily suits as they went to work, Holly started asking them to check her homework, things went back to normal.

But, truth to be told, Jackson couldn’t stop thinking about it. About those four, incongruent little words.

‘I can see ghosts.’

It was absurd, obviously. Ghosts were just… Not a thing. And Holland had never shown himself to be someone who believed in the paranormal nor spiritual. He wasn’t even remotely religious, as far as Jackson could tell, and heck, he could recall him mercilessly mocking a ‘psychic’ they’d once encountered during one of their cases, his mouth running an endless, scathing commentary about how stupid all that superstitious crap was as soon as they were alone in the car—

But he sounded deadly serious as he spoke those four little words. Not even a hint of amusement in his voice or expression.

Holland had been right about one thing: Jackson didn’t believe him. And, c’mon, who would? Ghosts, really?

But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Holland had literally never sounded quite as serious as he did in that moment. And for how much of a clown Holland could be at times, Jackson couldn’t imagine him pulling such a stupid, nonsensical joke on the anniversary of his wife’s death.

Occam’s razor, then. That was a term he’d learned from Holland— When looking for answers, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

And the simplest explanation, in this case, was not to believe that Holland made such a random joke while drunk and drowning in grief, but rather that he was telling the truth.

Or, well— At least he was telling what he believed to be the truth. Jackson had to leave a door open for skepticism. I mean, c’mon— Ghosts? Really?

But if that was the explanation, did that mean that Holland lived his life while seeing ghosts (or believing he was seeing ghosts) and just went about his business like it was no big deal? Is that what was happening? For how long had it been going on? Jackson had suspected it might be some brain damage caused by excessive alcohol consumption for all of five seconds, before re-examining that night and what Holland had said.

He’d said Emma believed him, which meant his late wife believed Holland could see ghosts, which meant this whole… Thing had been going on well before Holland’s fall into semi-functional alcoholism.

And he’d kind of waffled around it, but if Jackson was to assume from his words, then Holly knew, too. At least to a degree. But perhaps she did not fully believe it either?

He pondered if he ought to ask her outright, but rapidly threw the notion out. The idea felt… Cruel, especially when still so close to the anniversary of her mother’s death, and with the minefield that was her shaky trust in her father always laying there, waiting for someone to take a wrong step; he knew she loved Holland dearly, but she’d also had to basically raise herself for years, by that point. A kid usually doesn’t do that unless they are let down over and over again, and for how much Holland loved his daughter right back, the sad truth was that he’d let her down quite a lot.

So, asking her was just a no-go. And asking Holland was likely going to lead nowhere; all he would have to do would be to feign ignorance and hide behind the excuse of being too drunk to remember, laugh it off like Jackson was being silly, and the topic would be waved away as easy as breathing.

So Jackson did the one thing he could do, the ability he’d been honing ever since trying to make a (somewhat) cleaner living.

He observed.

**

The thing was, Holland had been a jumpy individual ever since the start, that was undeniable. The man was high-strung and ready to startle at any strange noise, or things moving out the corner of his vision, bees, his own damn shadow—

Jackson had got used to it quickly enough. Some people were just more prone to anxiety, he figured. There was nothing wrong in being a little jumpy, even if such a thing was hardly conducive to subtle detective work.

But he had to admit he was re-examining that knowledge under a different lens. Could Holland have a very specific, very unusual reason to be this tense? A reason he couldn’t really share with anyone without running the risk of losing credibility, at best, or being considered crazy, at worst?

Jackson kept telling himself he was overthinking it, but he just could not put the whole thing to rest. There was just something about how serious Holland had sounded, the context, and all these little shades of him Jackson was re-considering— They tickled in the back of his mind, unable or unwilling to leave him alone.

It wasn’t like it was all he thought about; he still lived his life normally, went along with the usual routine, did his job with the usual focus— But it was still something he carried along, something that made him want to keep a closer eye on Holland, just to see if he could figure it out.

And doing so allowed him to pick up on all sorts of tiny things that he would’ve been utterly blind to, hadn’t he been paying extra close attention.

Holland always checked his surroundings, catching all sorts of details that usually escaped Jackson’s attention with that streak of keen insight of his, but now Jackson noticed how, occasionally, Holland’s gaze seemed to linger on some specific spots with no apparent reason for him to do so, before he looked away and squared his shoulders. He noticed how Holland would sometimes slow down a little while driving around LA, as if expecting for an invisible pedestrian to suddenly try to cross the road, before returning to the previous speed.

He noticed the fleeting sad expression that came and went on Holland’s face when they visited the house of a potential client who had recently lost her son as he stared for half a second at a random corner in her living room. How he would casually move around something that wasn’t there when grocery shopping. How he sometimes looked like he was about to tell something to someone before his expression flattened in a strange, practiced sort of calm as he looked away, not a word coming out of him.

They were such blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, occasional moments that happened with no apparent rhyme nor reason. Easy to miss. So easy to miss that Jackson had missed them entirely until he had reasons not to.

And he noticed… Well, noticed more, how not only Holland avoided walking on the empty plot of land his daughter so often visited, but he pointedly made sure to never even look in its general direction, even when they inevitably had to drive by it on their way to or back from work.

And Jackson just had so. Many. Questions. Was Emma’s ghost lingering by the empty space the house once stood onto? Was that the reason why Holland avoided it so thoroughly? But if that was the case… Why? Did he not want to see her again? Speak to her? Was that what he feared Holly would ask him to do? To speak with her mother’s ghost? If that was the case, why would Holland deny her that brief moment of solace?

It was driving him insane, and he had no idea how to ask. He had no doubt Holland would absolutely refuse to answer and would try to play the whole thing off as a big damn joke, and Jackson was not in the mood to laugh, for sure.

He just wanted a straight, sincere answer, but he knew he wouldn’t get one, and what infuriated him more was that he couldn’t even find it in himself to be annoyed at Holland for it. After all Holland had told him, hadn’t he? He’d said Jackson wouldn’t believe him, and he’d been right. He hadn’t believed him at all, at the start.

The logical part of him still wanted to not believe, still wanted to wave the whole thing off as the flight of fancy of a drunk man—

And yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. And he had no idea how he could possibly get those answers he wanted more and more each passing day. It was ironic, in a way; extracting answers out of unwilling people was more or less his main job as Holland’s partner, and yet Jackson knew those same methods weren’t going to work— Mostly due to the fact he very much did not want to use those methods on Holland, thank you very much.

And so he was left wondering and waiting, not knowing a chance to get some clarity would soon present itself without much warning.

**

Her name was Annette Taylor, thirty-six, disappeared without a trace. Her older sister, whom she lived with, had contacted them the morning after she failed to return home, something that had literally never happened before, deciding to skip calling the cops entirely.

“They wouldn’t care to really look,” she’d simply said with the tiredness of somebody who knew wasn’t important enough for the police to give much of a shit about. Holland, ex-cop, did not comment.

She’d answered all of their questions to put them on a starting track and sent them off with bills for their usual rate already in their wallets and a promise to pay an extra full-rate if they could locate her sister, and off they went.

Annette was an at-home nursing practitioner by trade with a well-documented list of clients that gave them a starting trail. Her bookkeeping was immaculate, and every single door they knocked at resulted in getting more or less the same answers: They’d last seen her exactly at the date and time reported on her agenda, that she was a hardworking, sweet woman, and they had no reason to believe somebody might want to make her disappear.

It was late afternoon by the time they finally got a potential breakthrough. They were at the outskirts of LA, asking the exact same question they’d been asking for hours to a retired veteran whose wife was bed-bound.

“A friend called me while Annette was here,” he’d said, chewing on loose tobacco leaves with brown-stained teeth. “He’s a bit of a hermit and getting on with the years, never goes to a doctor, the stubborn bastard, even with those old injuries of his— I convinced him to accept a visit from Annette, and she was happy to squeeze in a quick appointment for him at the end of the day.”

Jackson and Holland had exchanged a silent glance: An unprogrammed visit at the end of the work day that hadn’t been jotted down in her agenda? It looked like they had a new crumb trail to follow.

The man did not seem to have an issue in giving them an address, which was relieving. Jackson did not exactly look forward to roughing up retired veterans who looked like they might crumble into dust under his fingers.

The address in question brought them quite a way beyond the outskirts of LA, slaloming through roads only peppered by the occasional, isolated little farmhouses surrounded by modest plots of lands where just as modest herds of cattle were grazing away under the increasingly more orange light of a sun approaching the horizon. They rolled to a stop over gravel once they reached what looked less like a house and more like a shack.

Jackson’s nose briefly prickled with the rather strong scent that hit him as soon as they got out of the car. Whoever thought they could escape the heavy, smog-filled air of the big city by going out on the countryside was a fool; farms carried their own, specific scents city-people were hardly prepared for, and pigs in particular had a very strong brand of pungent musk, to put it mildly. Jackson had recognized it as soon as the initial assault on his nostrils passed, and the not-so-distant squeals and grunting noises confirmed his suspicion right away.

He turned to glance at Holland, who seemed unbothered and was observing the surroundings. Right. Lucky him.

Holland looked back, an eyebrow tilting upward at whatever expression must be on Jackson’s face, but he did not ask, rather launching a quick nod toward the shack. “C’mon, let’s get this over with, I don’t want to be out and about all night long if I can help it.”

They did not need to knock; as they approached the door of the shack opened, and an old man stepped out, limping, spine curved by age, most of his weight pressed on a cane held by a knotty, calloused hand. His hair was a wispy cloud of cropped white and his face was wrinkly and tan, hardened by hours of work under the sun, but he was smiling, a couple of teeth visibly missing.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” He asked with a voice croaking with old age and friendliness, rather loudly, suggesting he must be half-deaf. “It’s not everyday we get door-to-door salesmen all the way out here!”

Jackson also observed the patch of land as Holland politely corrected the old man in the background, before explaining why they were there. The man hummed and nodded, thoughtful.

“Yes, Annette, what a nice young woman,” he half-shouted, smiling that toothless smile again. “What about her?”

“She hasn’t returned home, her sister contacted us to try and locate her,” Holland rapidly explained. “You might be the last person who saw her before she disappeared— We’d like to ask you some questions, see if she might’ve told you something that could give us a clue on her whereabouts.”

“Disappeared? Oh my goodness, that sounds terrible,” the man replied, a knotty hand on his chest. “Of course I’ll answer your questions, do come in!”

They watched him hobble inside, curved on himself. Jackson took a step closer, leaning in slightly and whispering. “Do you really think he might give us something useful? He looks…”

“Looks like he’s three hundred years old, yeah,” Holland whispered back, the two of them approaching the open door. “But he truly might be the last person who saw her before she disappeared, as far as we can tell. It’s not like we have any other trail to follow, so we might as well—”

Whatever he was about to say died in his mouth as he froze like a statue, going as rigid as one, and visibly paled. Alarms immediately went off in Jackson’s mind, but as he turned around to look at whatever Holland’s wide blue eyes might be pointed at, he couldn’t really understand what had him so spooked. The inside of the shack was cluttered with a mismatch of scuffed furniture and all sorts of items one might need when living in the countryside, but it was fairly clean. There was a kitchinette in the corner where the old man was fussing with a beaten kettle, a single door, ajar, seemingly leading into a tiny bedroom. No bathroom, there was likely an outhouse somewhere in the back.

The room smelled vaguely of firewood and mostly of that distinct ‘old-person’ scent, but overall it was in decent conditions. Jackson really couldn’t see anything strange nor out of place, with just a cursory look.

“Please, sit down!” The old man genially invited them as he turned a sputtering burner under the kettle, vaguely gesturing toward a peeled couch enveloped in a floral-patterned cover which must’ve seen better days. “I’ll be right there with you.”

“Actually, I think it’s getting a bit late,” Holland replied, voice stiff and noticeably high-pitched. Jackson turned back to him, confused, watching him keep his wide eyes trained on the old man. “We wouldn’t want to disturb you— Maybe we can come back tomorrow morning, yeah?”

Three things happened in rapid succession.

The first was that the fabric of Holland’s jacket creased on his left shoulder as if someone grabbed it rather forcefully and pulled. The second was Holland’s hand reaching for his gun. The third was Holland taking a shot, the noise deafening, followed by a grunt of pain and a thump, along with the rattling of something metallic and heavy hitting the ground.

It all happened in the blink of an eye, and Jackson only spared a shard of a second to stare at Holland’s trembling hand clutched around his gun before turning toward the old man, who was on the ground, holding his own shoulder while a visible patch of blood was already seeping through the cloth of his shirt, and trying to reach for the shotgun he must’ve dropped.

Jackson sprinted, basically leaping over the couch and diving to grab the weapon before the old man could, claiming it by the skin of his teeth; they looked at one another as he stepped back and away, shotgun in hand, and nothing was left of the jovial, benevolent expression of a man in his golden years, content with his simple life, on the old man’s face. A strikingly clear gaze stared back at Jackson, the eyes of a hawk on an entirely blank expression devoid of any emotion.

“We need— We need to call the cops,” Holland said, voice strangled. Jackson blinked, somewhat dazed, almost unmoored, by the sudden turn of events.

“I don’t think there is a phone here,” he replied, at a loss, but Holland had already stumbled out of the cabin. Muffled sound of retching followed right away, and Jackson grimaced.

He looked at the silent old man again, who was still staring right back with that predatory gaze without saying a word, studying him for a minute. The guy still looked like he might be knocked over by a gentle breeze, but somehow Jackson didn’t feel inclined to let him move around freely.

He popped the bullets out of the shotgun before putting it out of reach, and then proceeded to tie a kitchen rag around the old man’s shoulder to stop the bleeding, before making good use of the length of rope visibly stored between the many other items inside the shack, neither of them saying a word.

Jackson couldn’t help but feel like he was tying up a mountain lion. A tired one, who had somewhat surrendered to its destiny and was letting itself be manhandled, but who should not be underestimated, regardless.

Once he was sure the old man couldn’t free himself nor try to run away he also got out of the shack. There was only a hint of sunlight left, soon it’d be pitch dark, and Holland was nowhere to be seen. Jackson’s stomach immediately bottomed out— If the idiot got himself lost somewhere in the woods around the plot of land—

He relaxed minutely when said idiot stumbled out of the darkness already thick between the trees, traversing some low, half-flattened bushes with loud rustles. He was still so pale his face was like a misshapen full moon in the almost enveloping darkness of night.

“Annette’s car is—” he vaguely gestured toward the dark he’d just gotten out of, not quite meeting Jackson’s eyes. His voice was stiff, every word coming out like it had to be forcibly squeezed free from a too-tight place, dazed and emotionless.

Jackson worked his throat, chest constricted by the obvious truth he really would’ve preferred not to accept. “He killed her?”

“Not just her,” Holland cryptically said, still not meeting Jackson’s eyes, stumbling toward their own car so unsteadily that Jackson might’ve thought he was drunk, if he hadn’t been with him the entire day. Holland did not elaborate further, adding with that strangely flat, blank voice instead. “Check the pigs.”

Jackson was not a squeamish man, but he really did not want to check the pigs. He did so anyway, fishing a flashlight out of his pocket and carefully moving in the increasingly heavier darkness toward the pigpen further down the plot of land.

He only needed one quick glimpse, the animals turning toward him with beady eyes reflecting the thin beam of his flashlight, nausea churning in his stomach and sadness sitting heavy on his shoulders, like a ratty blanket.

When he returned to the car Holland was in the passenger’s seat rather than the driver’s, leaning over the dashboard, face hidden in his arms, breathing slowly and loudly like he was trying to calm himself down. His hair was dark and damp, sticking to his neck with sweat.

Jackson did not say anything, let alone needed to be told what to do. He drove them away, back toward the city, the darkness slowly chased away by artificial light the closer they got to civilization. He stopped as soon as he spotted a public telephone booth to call the cops, first, and then phoned home to warn Holly they’d likely return quite late into the night and remind her there were leftovers in the fridge.

“Is dad ok?” She asked, unable to fully hide the concern even as she tried to play it cool (as if she could chase away the possibility of her father being hurt by acting aloof). Jackson launched a quick look toward the car; Holland hadn’t moved an inch, Jackson might’ve thought he’d fallen asleep, if he didn’t know better.

“A bit shaken,” he replied, almost wanting to laugh at himself sarcastically. A bit. “Unharmed. Case took an unexpected turn, we need to talk with the cops.”

“...Ok,” She replied after a beat of silence, her voice suggesting she was going to grill them as soon as it was reasonable to do so. “Stay safe out there. Love you.”

Jackson blinked, taken aback, but before he could even start to wrap his mind around the words, the call had already dropped. He silently stared at the scuffed handset for a long moment, before hanging it back in its place and returning to the car.

“...Cops are coming,” he carefully said, voice calm and even as he sat back inside. Holland nodded, a tiny, stiff movement. “Are you ok?”

The answer he got was the least convincing thumbs-up in the history of thumbs-up, and nothing else.

He let himself heavily sag against the backrest, eyes set onto nothing and trying to put back in order in his mind the details of what transpired, knowing the cops were going to inevitably ask questions and that Holland was in no condition to answer, for the moment.

The distant sound of sirens echoed in the silence soon enough. Jackson figured that telling the dispatcher they’d found human remains being eaten by pigs was enough of an incentive to get law enforcement on site as quickly as possible.

The rest of the night passed in a whirlwind as he drove back toward the plot of land with the cops in tow and a partner who had gone mute by his side, pointed them in the direction where Holland said Annette’s car was, and the pigpen, and then waited by the roadside as police did their thing. He only caught a quick glimpse of the old man being escorted away as beams of flashlights moved to and fro all over, he heard a couple of people being sick in the distance when a group of agents approached the pigpen, and then they were sent on their way after giving one of the agents a phone number to contact them in the next few days, as they would undoubtedly need further questioning.

The idea of going home while Annette’s sister was waiting, hoping to see her sibling alive, did not sit right with Jackson, so he drove back to her place. Holland either did not notice or did not care enough to share his opinion but, when Jackson finally braked to a stop by the side of the road in front of the apartment complex they’d visited just that morning, he finally uncurled away from the dashboard and climbed out of the car without quite meeting Jackson’s eyes. He surprisingly offered quiet, rough condolences, staring at the floor, once Jackson went through the heavy, thankless job of telling her what had happened to her sister.

She still thanked them for their work as she sobbed. Neither of them made a single mention of extra payments, and they left after a handful of pitiful minutes keeping her company during her initial grief.

Jackson was exhausted, almost unable to even think, basically going through the motions as he finally drove them home. They were both silent and burdened when they quietly traversed the threshold, welcomed by the gentle light of a reading lamp painting the foyer and living room with soft strokes.

Holly was asleep on the couch, likely having tried to stay up, waiting for them to return, before succumbing to tiredness. Jackson found himself standing by the door, all but frozen, the tenderness of the scene clashing with the bitterness churning inside his guts; watching as Holland approached her, tucked her hair behind her ear and pressed a kiss on the top of her head, before hauling her in his arms with movements slowed by tiredness, taking her to her bedroom without a word.

Without her presence, the light of the reading lamp suddenly felt impersonal and cold, rather than warm and welcoming. Jackson finally pushed himself forward, going to turn the lamp off, the ordinary domesticity of such a gesture leaving him grappling with the way he felt unmoored and almost detached from his own body.

He was eyeing his own bedroom, feeling increasingly more tired by the second yet knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep, when Holland exited his daughter’s room and softly closed the door, before making a beeline for the kitchen cabinet.

Jackson couldn’t find it in himself to say a thing, even though he knew drinking wasn’t going to help, not in the long term, perhaps not even in the short term, with the night they just had. He joined Holland outside, in the backyard, instead; that way, at least, he could make sure Holland wouldn’t drain the entire damn thing on his own.

Neither of them said a word as they passed the bottle back and forth, not even bothering with glasses. The summer season had just started, and yet the night was hot, heavy and uncharacteristically muggy, an unexpected cloak of humidity sticking to their skin, their lungs, having moved over the city while they were out and about on the trail of an already dead woman.

That was likely the reason why Holland shed his jacket, first, then loosened his tie, then took it off entirely, popping open the buttons of his shirt midway through his torso, as they emptied the bottle. Jackson hadn’t even been purposefully looking— His tired eyes were simply resting in the right direction after he’d handed the bottle with the last mouthful of liquor back to Holland, inwardly, distantly feeling like if he didn’t leave him the last sip the man would certainly get up and grab more; Holland threw his head back to fully empty the bottle, the movement enough to jostle his open shirt just so—

Allowing Jackson a brief, yet chillingly clear moment to gaze upon the very plainly human-hand-shaped, angry red mark that was marring Holland’s left shoulder.

Then Holland sloppily let his hand drop, letting out a tiny noise between a huff and a burp, glazed, tired eyes looking back at Jackson for a second, before moving in the direction he was staring at.

He visibly stiffened, settling the empty bottle down between them with a loud thump, hastily tugging his shirt close and standing up. He swayed but remained upright, stumbling back inside without a word.

Jackson’s head felt heavy and light at the same time, the alcohol on an empty stomach muffling the world and his own thoughts, which just barely raced toward and finally managed to cross the finish line of the one, obvious deduction.

He’d witnessed the way the cloth of Holland’s jacket had twisted under some sort of force, the way he’d stumbled back just a tiny bit as if pulled by something Jackson couldn’t see. He’d witnessed the human-hand-shaped redness impressed on his skin, the silhouette of a human palm and spindly human fingers curled around Holland’s trapezius—

Both in the exact same spot

As if something had put a heavy hand on that exact spot, and then pulled, leaving behind a shadow of that grip. To warn him of danger? To claim his attention?

Holland had frozen the instant they got inside the shack, plainly shocked by something.

He killed her?

Not just her.

How many were there? How many had he seen? Hidden away inside the shack of an old man who tried to shoot them point blank with a deadly weapon while wearing a mask of harmless friendliness? 

Holland took the shot first, faster, without hesitation, ready to react in a way he’d never been, ever since Jackson first met him.

As if he’d somehow known right away that they’d accidentally, guilelessly stepped inside the den of a predator disguised as prey.

I can see ghosts.

Jackson did not make a noise as he curled on himself, pushing his face in his hands and softly hyperventilating until the first hue of a new sunrise started to lighten the sky.

**

Blessedly, Holly only needed to take a single look at him before she wordlessly circled the counter to go make breakfast, something Jackson usually did. He liked cooking, always had, so he wasn’t resentful of the fact he’d become the de-facto cook in the house— It felt nice, actually. In his youth he was subtly reprimanded, told to stop doing a woman’s job in only so many words and plenty of pointed looks. Even while he was married he only occasionally indulged with the excuse of wanting to spoil his wife, but June always seemed a little suspicious and weirded out when he did so too many days in a row.

And then, once he ended up alone with only fish for company, it just felt kinda pointless and meaningless. He couldn’t take any real joy in feeding only himself.

So, yeah. He actually liked being able to put warm dishes on the table for his two improbable room mates… But it was nice to take a break, for once. He doubted he was going to do a very good job of it, that morning, with how tired he was.

“It was bad,” Holly finally said, softly, after sliding a plate with scrambled eggs and a generous heap of bacon strips toward him. That was his most common pick for breakfast, but now he couldn’t help but stare at the bacon and feel his stomach clench. Hunger was very much MIA.

She did not intone it as a question. Jackson let out a non-committal grunt and unconvincingly poked at the eggs before forcing a tiny portion of it in his mouth, just to make sure she wouldn’t feel unappreciated.

“...Yeah,” he finally replied, feeling the weight of her eyes. “It was… It was bad.”

They both turned at the same time with enviable precision, looking at the closed door of Holland’s bedroom. The man was already pretty hit-or-miss when it came to his appetite, but breakfast was something he almost always skipped, running on caffeine and pure, unadulterated mulishness until lunchtime. Jackson had little doubt that ought to be true that morning more than ever, as much as he had little doubt Holland ought to be wide awake and perfectly capable of hearing them.

He wasn’t going to come out of his room for at least three more hours, though, Jackson would wager.

He scratched at his chin and forced himself to collect another unconvinced forkful of eggs. “You’re probably going to be reading about it in the paper soon.”

“Ah.”

“Do you need a ride to school?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll catch the bus,” she hesitated for a moment, before sighing. “Try to sleep. And, huh— Maybe shower.”

Jackson blinked and made a little theatrical show of sniffing himself and grimacing, managing to snatch a little laugh out of her.

He poked at his breakfast until she was done getting ready for school, seeing her off, and then decided he might as well follow her suggestion after putting the mostly untouched plate in the fridge. A shower sounded quite nice, admittedly.

It also helped him shed some of the tenseness that had kept a solid, unmoving grip on his body for hours on end, and he felt somewhat more human once he sunk into the couch in the living room with damp hair he hadn’t bothered fully drying off, eyes burning with tiredness. He likely wouldn’t be able to sleep, no matter how exhausted he was, but he might as well lie down and rest his eyes—

**

“...Waiting for an official press-release, but it seems a twenty-years long mystery has been solved. Thomas Preston, age 86, was arrested in the early morning hours and charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder…”

The words floated into Jackson’s mind lazily, distantly, as his consciousness emerged back from a dark, dreamless sleep. He slowly blinked, sight fuzzy, letting out a tiny, quizzical noise.

The TV channel skipped onto some type of sit-com right away.

He finally managed to focus his gaze, observing the lazy roll of smoke curling in the air, before stiffly sitting up with a grunt. Holland was perched on the armrest like a lanky scarecrow, one leg thrown over the other and elbow resting on top of it, shoulders hunched and a cigarette barely hanging on between his fingers.

He’d definitely showered too, but it was obvious he hadn’t caught a lick of sleep. His eyes were unfocused and smudged with bruises of tiredness, and his beard was less groomed than usual, along with his hair hanging limply in that way that suggested he’d ran his fingers through, once, and called it a day.

He did not look back as Jackson observed him, cataloguing the obvious, very heavy exhaustion that shrouded his partner in the back of his mind.

“Holland.”

“Yeah?” Was the vague response, voice sloppy. Holland’s eyes were still trained on the sit-com he was obviously not even seeing, the vague, tinny artificial laughs a discordant background in the silence.

“Are you—” Jackson did not finish the question. It was a dumb question. He decided to pivot. “—I think we need to talk.”

“Nope.”

The abruptness of that answer left him blinking. Holland hadn’t even missed a beat, blindly pawing at the side table by the couch to grab an ashtray and tap his cigarette on the side of it, before putting it back down, all of it done without looking away from the TV even once.

“...What do you mean nope.”

“I mean exactly as what it means,” was the stubborn response. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

“We really, really do—”

“We don’t,” Holland cut him off with no hesitation. His voice was as tense as a violin string.

Jackson frowned, watching him inhale such a long drag from his cigarette he worried the idiot might pass out for a second, before Holland let all of it out in a loud huff, the thick curls of smoke giving him the air of an irked dragon.

He grabbed the ashtray once more and smothered the cigarette butt on it, between what was like twenty other cigarette butts, before finally turning toward Jackson with eyes that were suddenly, achingly alert.

“We do not have anything to talk about,” he said, slowly, not looking away. “Am I clear?”

Jackson opened his mouth. Then closed it.

Holland’s expression was a stone mask of apparent calmness.

His eyes were terrified.

“...Crystal,” Jackson forced himself to reply in front of that wordless plea. Holland visibly worked his throat, nodded stiffly, and rose back up on his feet without another word, going for the kitchen, ashtray in hand.

Before Jackson could even begin to try and puzzle what the fuck was going on, he found himself startling and going tense, snapping his eyes to look back at Holland when the man hissed loudly in obvious pain, the rattling noise of cheap tin hitting the floor following a beat after.

Jackson sprung on his feet right away, but did not have time to do much more than that, watching as another angry-red, human-hand-shaped mark emerged on Holland’s forearm in rapidly expanding splotches painting that upsettingly clear design on pale skin. Holland moved as if tugging his arm free from something, stiffly pulling his rolled sleeve back down to cover the mark; a blatantly fake little laugh rolled out of his throat.

“Burned myself, silly me,” he exclaimed, almost high-pitched, leaning down on his knees to start collecting the mess of cigarette butts that had spilled all over at his feet on a carpet of ash.

Jackson did not reply. He simply went to grab the broom, heart hammering in his chest.

When Holland went to grab a fresh bottle of golden poison to crack open Jackson thought, for an unconvinced second, he really ought to try and stop him—

But he couldn’t find it in himself to do so.

**

The next few days felt like a reprise of some of the worst Jackson had witnessed ever since he was first welcomed in the March’s home. Holland coasted along between bouts of drunkenness and a constant, low-grade background of tipsiness that never quite went away, and Holly was clearly unhappy about it, but somehow decided not to tell her piece, this time around.

Jackson could only guess she had, in fact, read the papers, and put two plus two together. The sad looks she occasionally launched at her father, when his back was turned to her, were enough of a giveaway to deduce that.

Despite the fact he’d once more fallen all the way at the bottom of a bottle and stayed there for days on end, Holland looked like he was not sleeping. Period. Which did not exactly help the situation. His shins must be black and blue under his pants, with the way he was constantly hitting them against something.

He was also wearing his shirts with the sleeves firmly cuffed around his wrists and buttons closed all the way up to his collar, despite the oppressing, record-high heat.

The last few days of school rolled onward, but Holly did not seem particularly happy about it. It broke Jackson’s heart more than a little bit, the way she got ready the morning she was scheduled to leave for summer camp. She’d been talking about it non-stop for months, clearly looking forward to it, but as she packed her bag her shoulders were limp and her expression weighed with a sadness no kid her age should bear.

She hugged Holland like she didn’t quite want to let go as he blubbered that he’d miss her, but let go anyway, moving toward Jackson.

“...Take care of him,” she whispered in his ear when they hugged goodbye on the threshold of the house, the bus already half-filled with her friends waiting for her by the curb. Jackson only nodded against her shoulder, and they exchanged a secretive, sad little smile before she finally turned and marched away with the gait of a soldier directed to the front-lines.

He basically corralled Holland back inside before he could make a fool of himself with how out of it he was, and set onto the thankless job of watching over him as the man moved about the house from this to that chore with the attention span of a particularly distracted squirrel, falling asleep all over the most improbable of spots and startling awake with a strangled cry a minute later.

Jackson decided they couldn’t keep going like this. Something had to give.

So, once they were done with a dinner Holland barely touched and Jackson was drying the washed dishes, he took in a deep breath, steeling himself, and purposefully kept his voice steady and calm. “Holland?”

“Mh?” Was the vague reply. The man was sitting at the kitchen island in a way that suggested he was just about to fall asleep and then wake right back up yet again, eyes so bruised with exhaustion he looked like a damn panda.

“It seems you aren’t sleeping very well, lately,” Jackson went on with the same casual tone. “Maybe some company could help?”

Holland squinted at him with a clearly unfocused gaze. Jackson could basically see the cogs slowly churning away inside that skull, trudging along like a faulty machine, but somehow getting the point after several seconds of silence.

“I. Huh,” Holland said, the taken-aback expression making him seem a little more alive for a shard of a second. “I… Guess?”

“Alright. Let’s go, then.”

It was still fairly early in the evening, but that mattered little. Holland needed eight -possibly more- hours of uninterrupted sleep, and the sooner he got them, the better.

Still, Jackson found himself surprised when Holland veered toward the guest (not much of a guest anymore) room on sloppy steps. He’d figured he could sit down in the armchair in Holland’s bedroom and sort of watch over him from there, but the man was already welcoming himself inside Jackson’s, instead, before he could even finish putting the last dried plate away in the cupboard.

By the time he joined his partner, ready to clear the misunderstanding, Holland was already faceplanting onto his bed, one arm limply hanging from the side of the mattress, a mattress that very much could not comfortably fit two adult men, and all the words promptly flew out of Jackson’s skull.

Holland looked breakable, and more than a little pathetic— No, he looked already broken, if Jackson had to be honest with himself. He had definitely lost weight, as if he hadn’t already been far too thin, his usually fairly form-fitting shirts hanging limply from his bony frame and belts needing a new hole punched in to work as intended.

Jackson noiselessly sighed with a sort of soft tiredness settling onto his shoulders. If this was going to help Holland finally sleep then, whatever. He could deal with it.

When he climbed onto the bed after quickly going through his usual nighttime routine, and unceremoniously tugging Holland’s shoes off of his feet, he’d sort of expected Holland to stay on his side of the way-too-small bed, but the man immediately shifted closer and all but limb-locked Jackson, hanging onto him like one of those strange Australian animals he’d seen in a documentary once.

It wasn’t comfortable. It was way too damn hot to cuddle, if you could even call it that, Holland was all sharp angles digging into him, and he absolutely reeked of sweat and booze.

Jackson didn’t push him away.

He basically lied there, in the dark, something tight he hadn’t even noticed going loose somewhere in his insides, when Holland finally fell asleep, breath evening out— And stayed asleep.

He hardly slept himself, but it didn’t matter. Every time he woke up he was still being held like an oversized teddy bear, and Holland was still sleeping like a rock. He started snoring, at some point, loudly, and Jackson could’ve wept with relief at the sound of it.

Take care of him, Holly had said, and he’d silently promised.

He was so, so happy he could keep that promise.

**

On the second night of this new arrangement, which was not loudly spoken about in any way, shape or form, Jackson slept a bit more, even if he woke up positively drenched in sweat a bunch of times. On the third night the record-heatwave had receded, and sharing a bed with a very handsy scarecrow of a man that constantly released heat like a furnace wasn’t quite as torturous anymore, so he only woke up a couple of times. On the fourth he slept all the way through, lazily waking at the first lights of a new day with his partner, who one could only assume was at least in part octopus, snoring directly in his ear.

Finally being able to properly rest was definitely doing wonders for Holland. He’d gone about the day, after that first night sharing a way-too-small bed, looking dazed but not due to tiredness as much as some sort of unexpressed confusion. Strength was clearly returning to him, night after night, his appetite awakening in fits and starts, although he was still drinking far too much for Jackson’s liking.

And then on the morning of day fifth since-the-new-silent-arrangement he emerged from the bedroom with pillow creases still impressed on his cheek, after Jackson had carefully disentangled himself from the many-limbed hold of Octopus March and left him sleeping some more while getting the coffee machine ready, looking around like he’d lost something he needed to find at all costs.

Jackson observed him, unsure if he should say something, not really knowing what he should say, in case he should say something. Holland moved around the house like a man possessed, poking his head inside closets and cupboards, behind the bookcase, under the sink—

And then he finally stumbled back into the main living area, looking almost shellshocked, before dropping into an armchair like a stringless puppet, pushing his hands against his eyes while releasing a shivering lungful of air as he curled on himself, and stayed there, unmoving.

Jackson approached him like one might approach a spooked fawn. When Holland did not react, he slowly, carefully sat down by his side.

Holland didn’t seem surprised by the fact Jackson was all but boring holes into him with his eyes, by the time he let his hands drop. Jackson had suspected he might’ve been crying, but Holland’s eyes were dry, his gaze clearer than it had been in days and days, if a little manic.

“Now we can talk,” he said, voice breaking slightly at the end.

**

“What?” Jackson could only ask, confused.

“Now we can talk,” Holland repeated, unceremoniously tugging his sleeve up and plainly turning his forearm to show the hand-shaped mark on his skin. It was less angry-red, faded, if still quite clearly visible. “About this. And this,” he added, then popped open enough buttons to tug at his shirt as he craned his neck sideways, to also show the mark on his shoulder, which was just barely visible, by that point.

Jackson blinked, opened his mouth, and closed it, nodding wordlessly.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Holland asked him, and there was something somewhat manic in his voice, too.

“I don’t have a fucking clue,” Jackson replied honestly, gaining a brief bark of a laugh for his troubles. “Got a theory, though.”

“Well, let’s hear it,” Holland said with the same tone he used whenever inviting Jackson to share his train of thoughts, to see if he figured out whatever clues Holland had already figured out as they worked on this and that case.

“I suppose it has to do with that whole, huh—” he suddenly found himself having to forcibly pry the word out of his mouth, even though he was fairly sure that was the only sensible -somehow- explanation. “—Ghost thing.”

Holland’s shoulders dropped slightly, as if he’d been a little tense, and Jackson hadn’t even noticed. “Yep.”

He sounded so… Casual. Jackson stared at him.

“I didn’t believe you,” he blurted out. “Not— Not at the start. But the more I thought about it— And then what happened with Annette’s case—”

Holland silently looked back, expression entirely blank, for a beat of silence. It was long enough to make Jackson feel immensely guilty, words spilling out of him with the sheer force of mortification he felt. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I just— I mean—”

Holland shrugged, blessedly getting rid of that blank mask in favor of a self-deprecating smile, waving a hand vaguely. “Eh, it’s ok. I told you, didn’t I? I wouldn’t even believe myself,” his expression scrunched as he squinted. “...At least I think I told you that.”

Holland had been fairly plastered at the time, to be fair. Jackson decided not to voice that thought.

“So it’s like…” He started, instead, immediately trailing off to a stop, unable to put into words all of his messy thoughts. “I don’t have the faintest fuckin’ clue what it’s like. Can you explain?”

The self-deprecating smile grew larger, but Holland shifted on the armchair as if to sit more comfortably, as if to settle down for a long, long tale.

**

The first time it happened he was seven, he said. His little family of three had just moved into a new place, and he’d been out and about to explore.

“I saw a boy that must’ve been around my age, so of course the first thing I did was approach him with my scuffed knees and a ball under my arm, to introduce myself and ask him if he wanted to play. He seemed normal, from his left side… Then he faced me, and his right side was—” Holland gestured vaguely at his own face, grimacing. “You know, kinda like ground beef?”

Jackson decided not to comment, and Holland went on, telling him how he’d immediately freaked out, of course, and ran home in tears.

And the boy followed him.

“He was just… There, all the time. I couldn’t sleep,” a soft, tired chuckle. “He just stood by my bed and stared. He never spoke, never— He was just there, with those blank eyes and his half ground-beef face. I cried and I cried and I told my parents, who of course did not believe me. It went on for days— I only stopped when my father got sick of my whining and, huh, told me to man up.”

Jackson had the inkling the word ‘told’ was pulling a hell of a lot of legwork, in this case. He put a pin in the idea of finding out if March senior was still alive and, potentially, pay him a visit in case he was, and kept listening.

“I was exhausted and didn’t exactly have any other idea of what to do, since no one believed me, so I just… Started pretending he wasn’t there. And that worked,” a shrug. “At some point he disappeared, and never came back.”

“...I don’t understand,” Jackson had to admit, softly. Holland snorted.

“That makes two of us,” he replied. “When I was a little older I looked into it. I kinda had this morbid curiosity for years— I investigated, found out who he was. He’d died about thirteen years before we moved on that street. A group of kids were bored and decided that it would be fun to tie him to a bicycle by the ankle and go as fast as they could— I don’t think I need to explain the end result. He died a cruel, terrifying, painful death. But he never told me any of this. He never spoke. He was just there, and sometimes he touched me, and it hurt.”

Jackson felt himself go pale. “The handprints.”

“Yeah. It really fucking hurts when they touch me, I can tell you that much— It’s like, unbearably freezing and boiling hot at the same time.”

“Didn’t you show your parents?”

“Of course I did.”

“And they didn’t believe you?”

“Well— Yeah, they didn’t. I was always covered in scrapes and bruises, anyway. I guess it was easier to believe that some kid had slapped me around a bit too hard, and my father was of the opinion that if I got myself slapped then I must’ve asked for it, so that was the end of it.”

Jackson decided to not voice his opinion on March senior, in order not to derail the topic. Holland went on, seemingly unperturbed.

“After that boy I just started seeing them all over the place. There’s… A lot less of them than one might imagine, considering how many people die every damn day, but there’s still plenty around. After how fucking scared that boy got me, I made very sure to keep my distance,” he sniffed. “I think I met someone like me, one time. This old lady, although in retrospect she wasn’t that old, but I was a kid, every adult over the age of thirty looked ancient, to me— Anyway, I was at the shop down the street to grab some milk and almost stumbled right into a ghost— Sometimes it’s really hard to tell they are not, you know, actual people. But this lady managed to grab my arm and pull me away, speaking to me like I knew her, all friendly and stuff, and that managed to keep me calm enough not to attract its attention. She stayed with me until we got out of the shop, told me all hush hush to be careful and ignore them, and then off she went.” He paused for a moment, squinting. “I was twelve, I think? Never saw her again. And after that time I haven’t met anybody else who can see them. Or, if I did, we both must’ve been wise enough to keep our heads down and not notice one another, so there’s that.”

He paused for a moment, as if giving Jackson a chance to intervene, but when he didn’t he went on.

“That’s really it. I see one of them pretty much every other day, and I ignore them. Sometimes shit happens, or I make some dumb mistake, and one of them kind of latches onto me. At that point the only thing I can do is pretend they aren’t there until they go away.”

Jackson blinked dully. “That was why you didn’t want to talk about it,” he considered, slowly. “There was one. Here. In the house.”

“Yep.”

“For days?”

“Yeah.”

They stared at one another for a long, silent second. Holland was doing better, but he undeniably still carried the sign of tiredness and stress. Jackson tried to wrap his mind around the concept. They’d just been… Living, going on about their days, he and Holly trying their best to manage Holland’s mess and wait for him to get out of his funk, and all the while some kind of half-gored ghost was just hanging around, waiting to catch Holland’s attention as he resolutely ignored it by drowning himself in alcohol.

“...Was it Annette?”

“No,” Holland replied, surprisingly. “Some other woman I don’t know— But I saw her too, at the shack. She was, huh— Hard to recognize. The red hair tipped me in the right direction.

“Jesus, Holland,” Jackson exhaled, dragging a hand over his face. “How many of them were stuffed in that place?”

Holland smiled a thin, mirthless, painful smile. “How many victims were reported in the news?”

“Jesus.”

“I guess I should be happy we stumbled into a serial killer and accidentally solved a decades old case,” Holland considered with a forced light tone. “But, honestly, it just kinda sucked. Those people died a shitty, horrifying and painful death anyway, and the old bastard isn’t going to see a single day in a cell. The fact that he’s dying of cancer doesn’t feel like justice.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t,” Jackson could only, tiredly agree. He’d thought the exact same thing, when he heard the news.

“I’ve tried to speak to them, a couple of times, when I was younger,” Holland went on almost distractedly, nervously twisting the cuff of his shirt between his fingers. “Just, you know, tried to understand how, and why. And why me,” he paused for a moment. “But they just— They never talk. Never. Talking to them only makes it so they latch onto me even harder. And like, I really tried to figure out if it was some sort of movie shit, if I could help them go to the other side or whatever, but to be honest I don’t think it’s like that at all.”

“So how is it like, then?”

“Hell if I know. I have a theory, of course, but you know— No actual answers.”

“Well, let’s hear it, then.”

Holland offered him a tiny but sincere smile, before continuing. “I don’t think they are like… Somebody’s soul still hanging onto this plane of existence. I mean, I call them ghosts because I don’t have a better term, but they aren’t at all like ghosts as we think about them. I think… I think that sometimes, when somebody dies a particularly gruesome, painful and scary death, a part of them stays behind. Like— An impression of that exact moment, and all the horrid shit they were feeling. That’s why they don’t talk, why— Why their touch hurts. They aren’t conscious, they aren’t people, it’s just the pain and the fear they felt at the moment of their death, so strong that it left a trace—” he worked his throat for a moment. “—And somehow, for some fucking reason I can’t figure out, I can see them.”

Jackson observed him, feeling absolutely desolated.

“That… Sounds awful,” he weakly said when the silence stretched. Holland rubbed at the back of his neck, shrugging.

“Yeah,” he replied, softly. “It is.”

They sat in silence, stewing onto it, for quite a long pause. Jackson wished he could offer some comfort, but— What could he say? This was something only Holland could deal with. He couldn’t even, like, tell Jackson if there was a ghost hanging around inside their own fucking house, because talking about it out loud, acknowledging it, only made things worse.

There wasn’t really anything he could do or say to make things better, so he had to settle with the second best option.

“You know,” he started, slowly. “You were really freaked out at Shattuck’s party, for someone who sees dead people on the daily.”

“Hey,” Holland immediately replied, and Jackson could tell by his tone that he’d picked up on the friendly teasing, and was happily responding in kind. “There’s a difference, I’ll have you know.”

“Really, now.”

“Yeah! Once you get used to it it’s easy to tell them apart from living people, for the most part, and it starts to feel like some kind of movie trick. But an actual, real life corpse? That shit’s just gross, man.”

Jackson snorted a laugh, a bit of warmth seeping in his chest when Holland joined in. But then they went silent again, and there was nothing amusing in what Holland said next.

“Don’t tell Holly,” his voice was quiet, subdued. “I know she knows something. I’m not sure how much, I think she might’ve caught Emma and I talking about it a couple of times, but I’m fairly certain she doesn’t know the nitty gritty of it, and— I think I prefer it to stay that way. I already make her worry too much,” the self-deprecating smile returned. “She doesn’t need to worry even more.”

“I—” Jackson replied, breathless, mouth closing as he thought about it for a moment. If Holly ever found out the full truth she was going to be pissed they hadn’t told her, but he could see Holland’s point. She was still just a kid with enough weight on her shoulders already. She didn’t need more. “Alright. I won’t tell her.”

“Thank you.”

The second wave of chilling realization hit Jackson only a couple of seconds later. Emma. A house on fire. The empty plot of land Holland avoided like his life depended on it.

Nausea churned inside his stomach so abruptly he seriously thought he might throw up right there and then, but he managed not to. Still, something must’ve transpired on his expression, because Holland’s visibly shut off, suddenly eyeing him warily, almost suspiciously.

There was no point in pretending Jackson hadn’t connected the dots. “That’s why you never go there,” he managed to say, voice rough. Holland’s expression scrunched in pain, and he shrugged stiffly. “Is she there?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, almost muttering, nervously rubbing at his arm, over the hand-shaped mark on his skin. “I never— I never found the courage to check. The furthest I’ve ever gone was just over the fence, at the edges, and I— I don’t know if I can go further than that. I don’t think I’ll ever be strong enough to check,” he worked his throat, eyes going distant. “I don’t know what haunts me the most… The idea that I truly might never see her again, or that something of her was left behind, but that something is only pain and fear.”

His voice wavered and broke right at the end, and Jackson moved on pure instinct. He rose so abruptly Holland visibly startled, but before he could react he was already enveloped in a hug tight enough to crack some ribs.

He remained tense for one, two, three seconds before finally relaxing in Jackson’s arms.

“This is new,” he muttered, clearly trying to joke, unable to fully chase away the roughness from his own voice. Jackson grunted.

“Not really. You’ve been using me as a personal pillow for almost a week.”

That startled a sincere laugh out of Holland, and it felt… Good. Making him laugh felt good.

“I thought we weren’t gonna talk about it,” he added, the smile clear in his voice. He didn’t seem in any rush to free himself from the hug.

“We have to talk about things, sometimes,” Jackson replied.

“Yeah— I guess you’re right.”

He let out a soft sigh, far too thin arms finally squeezing Jackson back, face pressed against Jackson’s shoulder.

Jackson had no idea how long they stayed exactly like that, but it did not matter. He couldn’t really do much to help Holland deal with the terrifying spirits that inhabited his world, he couldn’t free him from that burden, or any other burden, for that matter— But this, he could do.

It was a small thing, but it was all he could offer. And he would offer it whenever necessary, no matter how many times it might be necessary.

**

He stared at the ceiling, feeling like an idiot. It had only been five days. He barely slept for most of them. Holland was a pointy, handsy furnace with no regards for personal space—

And Jackson still couldn’t fucking sleep now that he was alone in his bed. The whole thing felt too big. He kept trying to adjust his position while keeping into account limbs that weren’t there anymore. The lack of that sour scent of boozy sweat felt unmooring.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” He muttered to himself, rubbing his hands over his face, eyes burning with tiredness. It was late enough in the night that it was actually morning, by all accounts, and he hadn’t caught a minute of rest.

Then his ears picked up muffled noises right outside his room. Steps. Going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

When he got up and abruptly opened the door, Holland jumped half a meter in the air with a shriek.

“What the fuck, Jack?!” He snapped once he was back with both feet on the ground, a hand clutching at his chest, as if he hadn’t been the one pacing like a caged animal right in front of Jackson’s bedroom. Jackson did not reply, merely raised an eyebrow. Holland looked like he’d managed to sleep as much as he did, which was to say, not at all.

“Bed too big?” He offered, half-teasing, half-earnest. Holland’s tired expression blatantly lit up as he snatched that tossed lifesaver right out of the air.

“Yeah. Way too big,” he replied, wearing the hopeful expression of a sad, kicked puppy.

Holland’s bed was, in fact, bigger than Jackson’s. Big enough not to feel cramped anymore even for two grown men.

But when he woke up way too late in the morning, the summer sun already spilling cheerfully over them through the blinders, Holland had him in the now familiar octopus grip anyway, snoring like a chainsaw.

This he could do, too. Easily.

**

Summer slowly rolled toward a crispy autumn. Holly visibly relaxed, once she returned from her summer camp with a tan and a bunch of friendship bracelets adorning her wrists, and immediately saw the change in Holland’s attitude. When she went out of her way to surprise Jackson with his favorite cake for ‘no reason’, he accepted it as the quiet gratitude it was and shared it with father and daughter, the three of them munching away at too-big slices while enjoying the late evening summer breeze in the backyard.

If she noticed he and Holland sharing a room, she made no mention of it. Jackson’s things slowly started to migrate, and the guest room returned to its original purpose.

They made up a silent language they could use to communicate in case Holland ever returned home with an extra, invisible and unwanted visitor, but it proved unnecessary, for the time being. After all, Holland had been dealing with that shit for most of his life, and getting a shadow of terrified agony imprinting on him was a rather rare, accidental occurrence.

For the most part Jackson remained keenly aware of Holland’s small tells whenever he undoubtedly spotted one of them, offering small shoulder squeezes that were accepted with tiny, fleeting, grateful smiles.

Despite the fact Jackson could do absolutely fucking nothing to really help with the whole thing, it was clear that having somebody who believed and supported him was doing Holland worlds of good anyway. The man was in a good mood more often than not, and slowly started to diminish the amount of drinks he consumed on a daily basis once more, much to Holly’s relief.

By all means life returned to a baseline of normal, and the months chased one another. Holly turned sixteen, and at some point she was hit by a growth spur that suggested she was going to grow as tall as her father soon enough. The idea of her possibly gaining that extra bit of height on Jackson felt strange— It was hard to look at her, now more young woman than teenager, and not still see the little girl he met three years prior.

With the inevitable passage of time The Anniversary was also fast approaching, and with it the looming, cloying weight of grief. It was… Marginally better than last year’s, though. Holly still went quieter and more withdrawn, but wasn’t quite as combative. Holland was also far less prone to inane chattering, but at least the drinking didn’t get back on an uptick trend.

Still, the fact that Holly approached him one late evening, clearly intending to have some private words while Holland was nursing a cigarette (or ten) out in the backyard, did not surprise Jackson. She kind of looked at him expectantly, then nodded at the door of her room. He followed.

They usually did not set foot in Holly’s room unless given explicit permission. She needed privacy, and her own space. It had changed since the last time Jackson had gone inside to bring her some soup while she had a fever, a few months ago; posters of bands of pretty young men had gone up in numbers. The stack of magazines for teen girls had grown taller, likely explaining the increase of posters. Make-up cases and cheap jewelry had fully taken the space once dedicated to bright, childish bracelets and toys.

She heavily sat down on her unmade bed and silently patted the spot at her side. Jackson carefully perched himself on the edge of the mattress with a soft creak of wood unused to his considerably heftier weight.

“Let’s say, hypothetically," she started, her words sounding like something she’d rehearsed. “That you know somebody who might be able to— To speak to somebody else. Somebody who isn’t supposed to be there anymore.”

Ah. So that’s what this was about.

Jackson did not reply right away, patiently waiting as it was clear she was struggling to get the words out.

“And let’s say that you really, really want to talk with the person who isn’t supposed to be there anymore, but that other person always manages to escape whenever you try to approach the topic. What would you do? You know. Hypothetically."

Jackson took a moment to carefully choose his words. For how much he cared for Holly, and knew that she also cared and counted on him, he also knew certain things were simply never going to be within his rights to do or say. Certain things were things she needed to discuss with her father, and nobody else.

He’d argue this one was very much one of said things, but— Well. Therein lied the crux of the matter, didn’t it?

He noiselessly sighed, biding time by idly cleaning the reading glasses that had been perched on his nose, before carefully replying.

“If I were to know something about that, hypothetically," he started, slow and steady. “I would say that, maybe— Maybe things aren’t quite the way you think they are. That even if there was somebody who isn’t supposed to be there to talk to— Maybe they wouldn’t reply. Maybe they wouldn’t really be who you think they are. That they’d be more like a shadow, a trace, who’s not really conscious. It wouldn’t be that person, not anymore.”

He watched in quiet sorrow as his words did what they were supposed to, and the understanding dawned on her expression. He pretended not to notice how her eyes filled with tears as she looked away from him, politely giving her a moment to dry them away and compose herself, her hands going tight in her lap once she centered herself with a quiet, long intake of air.

“I see,” she simply said, softly. She did not seem particularly shocked by the concept, if pained. Perhaps, in some ways, she’d known enough and put together enough puzzle pieces to form a suspicion. Perhaps Jackson’s words were only confirmation of something she’d already known but was having a hard time accepting. “Thank you for… Answering.”

There was a soft but firm dismissal in her tone. Jackson stood up, hesitating but for a beat of silence to give her time to ask him to stay, if she wanted him to. But she did not, so he briefly squeezed her shoulder, receiving a small, sad smile in return, and left the room, softly closing the door behind him.

He immediately noticed Holland— He was still in the backyard, but instead of sitting on the rusted bench he was standing by the open door leading out, leaning against the frame. His shoulders were hunched, his back pointedly turned toward the inside of the house.

Jackson squinted at him, but did not press the matter. Father and daughter were really quite similar, sometimes, and he’d long learned that his best bet, when it came to March senior and March junior, was to let them come to him when they were ready, instead of pressuring them to open their damn mouths and speak.

**

That decision paid off in about twenty four hours. Holland had been jumpy and restless the whole day, his leg constantly bouncing, his fingers constantly tapping. He made it look like every single chair he sat on was lined with needles, the way he fidgeted endlessly. It drove Jackson up a wall, that constant background of squirming, but his patience had been whipped into shape, and was now able to go for marathon lengths of time, instead of running out of steam after a brief jog.

In the end he found Holland sitting on the edge of their bed at around the usual time they’d retire for the night, still fully dressed, shoes at his feet. He looked like he was yearning for a glass of something that would go down with a burning warmth, but his hands were blessedly empty.

“I need to check,” he finally blurted, sounding like every single word cost him a great deal to say. “It’s driving me insane. I need— I need to go check.”

Jackson did not consider himself a particularly smart man, but even he did not need to ask what Holland might be referring to.

“Do you want me to come with you?” He asked, instead, making sure to sound like he would accept whatever answer Holland might give him. Still, the devastatingly open look of silent gratitude Holland launched at him was enough to cue him that he’d done the right thing, by posing that question, the unexpressed answer to it really quite obvious.

Their home was located in a mostly peaceful residential area, away enough from the city center to not see much traffic at all once the sun went down, but decent enough they did not need to worry about unsavory individuals skulking by. The night was quiet but for the faint, distant sounds of traffic and the occasional voice coming from the houses they passed by.

Holland was as rigid as marble, and it honestly wouldn’t have surprised Jackson if he ended up turning around and marched right back home, yet the man persevered. He approached the chain keeping the fenced off area closed like a man walking down the green mile. His hands trembled as he opened the padlock with the set of keys that usually hung on the key holder by their door, mostly untouched.

The gate creaked open, the grass softly crunching under their feet. Holland stopped only four steps in. Right by the fence, at the edges, as far as he ever dared to be.

Part of Jackson wanted to offer him an out, tell him that he didn’t need to do this… But he did, didn’t he? He actually needed to do this. Holland said so himself: Not knowing was driving him insane.

So he kept his words to himself and simply stood by Holland’s side, waiting for him to be ready, like always. When a cold yet sweat-damp hand reached for his, he wasn’t even remotely surprised. He simply allowed Holland to hang onto him, squeezing back when their fingers entwined, reassuring him without words that he was right there, like always.

He watched Holland’s shoulder rise minutely and drop heavily, and then he moved forward.

Every step felt as if it extended like an eternity, even though it took them only a few seconds to get right in the middle of the empty plot of land. They stopped on that imaginary center, and Jackson watched his companion slowly look up from his feet, the point his eyes had been trained on from the moment they got over the fence, and look around the silent lawn.

A gamut of tiny, unreadable shifts passed by Holland’s expression as he slowly scanned the emptiness around him. He let out a tiny, shivering noise that could’ve meant anything and nothing. He nervously wetted his lips.

“She’s… She’s not here,” he finally said, voice barely a whisper, and Jackson could not tell if he sounded relieved or disappointed. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

So he simply nodded to show his understanding, and waited. Holland blinked dazedly as he took another long look around them. His shoulders raised a little; he sniffed wetly.

“I’m not going to see her ever again, am I?” He then asked with a tiny, broken voice, and for some reason Jackson couldn’t help but think of a child he’d never really known, seven years old, skinned knees and a ball under his arm, letting out a terrified scream when a boy his age turned around with the right side of his body reduced to grinded meat.

When a low lament rolled out of Holland’s throat he did the only thing he could do: He cupped a hand behind his neck, pulled him him, pushed Holland’s face against his own shoulder, stifling the inevitable wail of pain and grief he’d seen coming from a mile away. Holland all but hung onto him like he was a raft in a storm, and finally, finally accepted a loss he’d tried to deny with reckless bravado, with too many nights lost at the bottom of a bottle, and with a niggling question he couldn’t find the courage to seek a proper answer to until that very moment.

Jackson let him wail against his own shoulder, keeping Holland’s face hidden to make sure the noise wouldn’t attract the attention of every single family in the immediate surroundings. He did not gently shush him, he did not tell him that everything was ok. Nothing was ok, and Holland didn’t need to be silenced. He needed to finally let out all the shit he’d been keeping stuffed and hidden inside a ten-digit safe at the bottom of an ocean of empty words.

So he simply stood there, quiet but present, holding Holland and running his fingers through the brown-blond hair on the back of his head, waiting. The wails stopped, giving space for sobs, and then those stopped too, giving space for wet sniffles and, in the end, silence.

Holland didn’t move away right away even once he’d calmed down, his hands still resting on Jackson’s back even after the death-grip on the cloth of Jackson’s shirt had relaxed. After a long minute of utter silence he took a tiny step back, just about enough to dry his eyes and nose against his sleeve, not quite looking at Jackson.

“I dreamed of her, last night,” he said, voice low and raspy, like gravel. “We were walking in the park where I met her for the first time, and then I stopped and couldn’t move anymore, and she kept walking. I’ve— Dreamed similar things, in the past. Her walking away from me while I was frozen, unable to move, calling for her,” he paused for a moment. “But this time it felt… Different. It was different. She actually came back, and held my face in both hands the way she always did, looked at me— And smiled.”

Jackson had nothing to say, so he said nothing, quietly observing. A weak little smile pulled at Holland’s mouth, his still watery eyes stubbornly pointed downward.

“It felt like she wanted to tell me something. Like— Like she was giving me permission,” Holland continued, and Jackson blinked.

“Permission for what?” He asked, unsure, when Holland did not add anything else. The tiny, weak smile grew a little.

“Permission to do this,” Holland said, finally looking up, and then leaning in just slightly, to bridge the gap of that small difference in height between the two of them.

Jackson couldn’t say he was even remotely surprised to feel the press of Holland’s mouth on his. He might be stoic and a man of little words, and he might offer his help by quietly standing by someone’s side without spouting platitudes and inane words… And maybe he and Holland were both too stubborn, or too stupid, or both of those things to talk about certain things openly— But he was not an idiot. Nor blind.

The tiny, tiny groan of relief and approval that he swallowed directly from Holland’s mouth, when he kissed back, went down with a burn, warmer than any liquor. Holland let himself be pulled closer, his hand sliding upward along Jackson’s back to also cup his neck. For long seconds Jackson’s thoughts flattened to a sea of nothing, his senses falling into an abyss of only being able to feel the wetness and taste of Holland’s mouth, the tickle of his facial hair, his warmth, the scent of cigarettes and the cologne he’d put on that morning sticking to his skin, drowning anything and everything else in its familiar musk—

And then a tiny crumble of reason returned to Jackson, and he stepped back stiffly. Holland seemed almost shocked by that, his spit-wet mouth hanging slightly open for a second, before something horribly broken crumbled in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, I thought—” He rushed to stammer out, sounding on the verge of breaking down like cracked glass. “I guess I just— Misread the situation. We can— We can just forget about this and pretend it never happe—”

Jackson slapped a hand on his mouth, not violently, but pointedly enough to force him into silence.

“We are in a very visible public place,” he simply said, tone carefully measured, and understanding clearly dawned in Holland’s eyes. He blinked and gave a stiff nod, Jackson only hesitating for a moment before moving his hand away from those surprisingly soft, vaguely damp lips. “Do you— Want to stay here some more?”

“No,” Holland immediately replied with no hesitation, sounding dazed. “Let’s go home.”

They left the empty plot of land now home only to grass without speaking another word. By the time they’d walked the whole distance back to the rental, Jackson almost wanted to -gently- slap some sense into his partner; he could see the way Holland kept glancing at him and looking away the entire walk back, his badly masked expression suggesting he was talking himself into a panicked frenzy inside that twisted little mind of his.

But he didn’t really want to slap Holland, so he did the next best thing: As soon as they closed the door behind them, he unceremoniously pushed Holland against it and put that mouth to good use before it could start to spew some bullshit.

Holland let out a whimpering noise of relief, all but going boneless, eyes fluttering close as he pliantly let his lips fall open for Jackson. When Jackson stepped back again, this time a solid two minutes of sloppily making-out later, Holland did not look shocked or afraid he’d misstepped anymore, giggling almost drunkenly (even though he’d only had a single glass after dinner) when Jackson grabbed his wrist and dragged him toward their bedroom, following without putting up even a token hint of resistance.

Thank something that Holly had gone over at Jessica’s, that evening, because Holland was one noisy fucker, unsurprisingly— And Jackson wouldn’t have it any other way.

**

“Do you think I should take it off?” Holland finally asked, cheek smushed against Jackson’s exposed chest, after visibly fidgeting for a solid five minutes with the ring hanging from a thin chain always fixed around his neck.

Jackson blinked slowly and lazily, like a cat. “Why would you take it off?”

“I don’t know— It’s— Doesn’t it disturb you?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Holland squinted at him, clearly unconvinced. Jackson rolled his eyes.

“It’s your call,” he said. “If you want to take it off, take it off. If you want to keep it, keep it. My opinion is irrelevant,” that should be enough to clear it, in Jackson’s opinion, but Holland’s eyebrow jumped upward, so he patiently added. “I’m not trying to replace anyone. You lost the person you loved, then found another. That doesn’t erase what there was before, nor would I want it to. Our past shapes us, for good or bad, and we just have to accept it. I’ve accepted it from the very start.”

Holland’s expression scrunched into a pensive frown. He let out a thoughtful hum, and finally let the ring drop from his fingers. He made no motion to take the chain off.

And that was fine. Jackson meant what he said.

Holland shifted to press himself against Jackson even further, face hiding on his collarbones, an arm with a deadly pointy elbow whose stabbing potentials Jackson had long grown familiar with thrown over his chest.

“I still can’t decide if I’m relieved or disappointed,” Holland muttered, like a confession, voice muffled. “I just— Fuck, I miss her so much. And I know, I know that even if she had been there, it wouldn’t have really been her. That seeing the shadow of her pain might’ve destroyed me for good. But I still wanted to see her one last time,” he added, keeping his expression hidden, voice cracking a little as he finally asked. “Does that make me an idiot?”

Jackson snorted without any real heat. “You’ve always been an idiot,” he teased, with good-natured gruffness, winning a tiny, wet chuckle for his troubles. “But no, it doesn’t. It makes you human,” he stared for a long beat of silence at the ceiling, weighing the pros and cons of the word resting inside his mouth, and then deciding to set them loose. “Maybe she chose not to be there.”

Holland went faintly rigid, his face shifting just slightly, just enough so he could glance at Jackson.

“I’m not gonna pretend the way she went was a peaceful, calm one,” Jackson continued, carefully picking every word. “But I bet that— That she decided she wasn’t going to leave anything behind. Because she knew that, if she did, it would’ve hurt you so, so much.”

Holland did not reply beyond letting out a tiny, wet sniff. He did not cry as much as silently wept against Jackson’s collarbones, when he tipped his chin downward to press his face on them once more.

“I d-don’t think that’s how it works,” he managed to say, not even bothering to hide the wetness in each letter.

“You have no fucking clue how it works. No one does. Maybe that’s the whole point,” Holland did not reply, so Jackson went on. “If something happens to me— And fuck, I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure nothing does— But if something does happen, then I know I would chose not to leave anything behind.”

Because I don’t want to hurt you. That, he didn’t say. It was sort of implicit.

Holland sniffed again, and then gave a tiny, stiff nod. Acceptance, or understanding. Maybe both.

Jackson shifted with a grunt to lie on his side, tugging his partner closer, the two of them pressed flush from chest all the way down to their entwined legs, feeling the sharp edges of him slowly soften under the warm, calloused skin of his palms as they ran a lazy path along Holland’s body.

Sometimes they really needed to talk about things, and stupidly didn’t. But sometimes… Sometimes they didn’t need to say anything out loud to understand.

It was a quiet morning, and they weren’t fully ok. Maybe they would never be. But they were still there, real and solid, not spirits, not traces of pain and fear left behind like shadows on a lawn.

And that was enough.

For them, it was enough.