forthedog | Derailment

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Derailment

He's not sure what wakes him. It could be any number of things. It could be the light on his face, the air moving over him, the shift of cloth against skin where before it had just been the cool of the sheets and the heat of two bodies. It could be the hard ground under his back, which would also explain the aches in him as consciousness drifts closer. He's gone soft, he thinks sometimes, fallen out of the habit of sleeping well on the ground, lost in the embrace of Tom's big bed. But he still roughs it sometimes, so at first the fact that he's clearly outside doesn't sound any alarms.

But it's the kind of outside. It's not the light but the quality of that light; not warm and glowing but thin, pale, anemic. When he opens his eyes it's not the trees swaying over him in the morning breeze but what they're like, them and the other plant life, still thickly growing and untamed but bad. Unhealthy. Sparse where it shouldn't be and dense where it shouldn't be. No birds, no fucking birds at all. The hints of a world knocked out of balance and gone horribly wrong.

There's a cold wet nose pressed against his cheek, and a weight pressing into his arm, numbing it. He rolls, pulls it away and sits up, shoving Neil harder than he meant to. Dexter steps back, whining softly, and Mike stares around and then down, absorbing it in quick shocked bursts. The car. The campfire, smoking ashes. Dexter. The two figures, curled together on the ground. Tom's old and ragged sweater. His own pants. Camo. Boots. The itchy feel of clothes that haven't been washed for a while.

His gun.

There's no mistaking what this is.

He doesn't want to wake them. As long as they're still sleeping, this is his nightmare and his alone. Maybe they never have to wake up. And yet he has no idea what's really worse: being back here or being back here on his own.

"No," he breathes, barely above a whisper. No louder, because he's honestly afraid that he might scream. "No. No. Fuck."

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"We're storming the fucking castle tomorrow," he says quietly. If the castle is even where it's supposed to be. If they can figure out how to storm it, three people with a few guns and God knows how many armed men holding down the inside. It won't just be Neil there, he knows that much. Lots of innocent, scared people. Lots of variables. Lots of potential collateral damage.

He clears his throat and pokes at the fire, kicking the flames a little higher. "Listen to her. We'll fuckin' force-feed you if we have to."

With a resigned sigh, Tom took the jerky, making a show of biting off a mouthful and chewing. Smokey and suspect, just like always. It brought back waves of sense memories, jolting in the dark reality of the Realm.

Dexter, ever present, flopped forward into Tom's laugh and he dragged his finger back across the mutt's skull, staring out at the forest around them.

"It's gonna be a long night," he said softly. "I'll take first watch if you guys want to tuck in."

Again, Florence shakes her head. Whatever she's been through, they've been through more. It's another one of those things she can feel and while she'd like to get some sleep tonight, she can wait a little while longer. It is going to be a long night, Tom is right about that much, but he needs the sleep.

With a faint smile, she lifts her eyebrows at them both. Listen to me, Mike's right.

He glances back at Florence again, feeling a flash of gratitude. How can he explain exactly why they're both so tired? But it's enough for her to see that they are. "If you can take the first one, I can take second watch," he says to her, and looks back up at Tom. "Hobbes, you got sunrise shift. Don't fucking argue with me."

He pauses, reaches out and picks a piece of jerky out of the packet, biting off a hunk and grimacing. Time was, this was the best food he had most nights. For three years he's been spoiled on tropical fruit, wild boar, plump jungle fowl and fresh-caught fish. He wonders how much it shows.

A part of him was annoyed, bitter about being coddled, ready to rebel against his own best interest and make the night worse for them all. He looked away, out at the dark, putrid ruin of forest and farmland with the shattered skyline of Chicago dim against the night. It looked like so much broken bones, splintered and sticking through the skin. Fallen from grace.

Tom slumped, looking out at the night. All they needed to do was keep him safe. That was all.

"Okay," he said softly, turning to peer out at the darkness ringed in around them.

Florence nods her agreement, a part of her still distant from whatever it is they're going through. She wants to push and hear more, she wants to make Mike tell her what's going on, but only to satisfy her own curiosity. She can sense enough to know that, whatever it is, it's serious. Their lives are and will be different because of this, so she says nothing.

Reaching over, she claps Tom's shoulder gently, then pushes to her feet and heads a distance away from the fire. Gun at the ready, she sinks down against a tree and looks out into the dark.

He watches her rise and settle herself, and he feels something tugging in the center of his chest. Even despite the weariness and fear, the horror at what's happened to Neil, at what might be happening now, the desperate need to see his daughters again--part of him still misses this. Being with her, with the two of them. Moving as a smooth, single unit. The kind of tight camaraderie that one only finds in trenches and foxholes.

He pulls out his canteen, drains it, sighs and glances at Tom. "How's your water?" Because running out for even a short time can be dangerous.

Tom picked up his water canteen, sloshing around the contents for Mike's benefit. "Half full," he said, sighing quietly to himself.

"We'll need extra, too," he said, looking up at Mike with tired, eyes, seeking confirmation. "For when we get Neil out. We'll need provisions for him, too."

Because it was impossible to think that they wouldn't find him, and that they wouldn't get him out unharmed.

He nods shortly, just a quick jerk of his head as his insides go chilly. For when we get Neil out. That's assuming a lot. And what condition will be he in? Just what is the aftermath of this going to be?

"C'mon," he says, getting to his feet. There's a stream a little ways away, running at a good clip and not looking or smelling too dangerous. They'd picked the site partially because of it. He glances back at Florence and calls, "We're gonna refill the canteens. Back in a few."

Tom gave Florence a fleeting grin before letting Mike lead the way through the rough. They weren't safe, here. They weren't really safe anywhere in the Realm and it throws him. At home, they'd been relatively safe for years.

"How're you holding up?" Tom asks, sliding a hand up onto the curve of Mike's neck as the walked. "Okay?"

"I have to be," he says dully, though he shivers just a little at the touch. Wondering if Florence can sense it. Wondering how much she guesses. She had already guessed an awful lot before anything even happened. "He needs us."

He shoves a low-hanging tree branch out of the way and breaks it with suppressed frustration, getting a few seconds of pleasure out of its snap. "I just never wanted this. Never, fucking ever. Not again."

Tom watched the outburst calmly, blankly. He reached out again, more firmly now, and gripped Mike's shoulder.

"I know," he said softly, voice rough with commiseration and something a lot like grief. "God, I know, Mike but...we just gotta keep moving. And...deal with it on Tuesday."

He looked at him intently. "That was the deal, right?"

"That's the deal." But Tuesday feels so far away, and now he's not even sure anymore what day it is now--in the Realm, each day bled into the other and all of them eventually stopped meaning anything. Christmas. Thanksgiving. Birthdays.

He can hear the water flowing a little way ahead. Behind and distant now is the glow of the fire. He stops and tilts his head back, trying to breathe, because suddenly it's hard, his throat choked with everything he's pushed to the side since Neil vanished. Because you have to. Because here, grief is a luxury that the bereaved can't afford.

"I should've held on tighter," he whispers. "I should've..."

"Don't," Tom said, quickly and severely. He got in front of Mike, forced eye contact, and stared him down, not without compassion. "Listen to me," he said quietly, earnestly, schooling his face.

"We can't do that, we don't have time to do that. We have too much we have to do."

He laughs once, quick and bitter, because wonder of wonders, here's Tom Hobbes trying to get him under control. But a lot's changed. He touches Tom's wrists, closes his eyes, forces his breathing to ease and slow.

"You used to hate it when I told you shit like that," he says, smile and voice both tight.

"You used to hate it when you had to tell me shit like that," Tom said, giving Mike a slanted, tight grin.

Tom curled his fingers around Mike's wrists and leaned their foreheads together, matching breaths for a few restless moments in the middle of the night. Here, together, incomplete but doing all that they could.

"Come on..."

He nods slowly, because he knows it's true, they do have to keep moving, not least because if they're gone too long Florence might begin to worry. But it's hard to concentrate on the canteens. It's hard to concentrate on much of anything but what it feels like to have Tom this close, close in a way that he never could have been before, in this place.

Part of him is still missing, and it just makes him want to cling harder to what he still has. So he nods again and he nods their mouths together, slow at first and letting out a shuddering sigh, until the canteen hits the ground and his freed hand tightens on the back of Tom's neck.

"Hobbes..."

Tom leaned in, one hand on each side of Mike's face and hauling him in close for a long kiss, desperate and clinging, too much like grief to feel good, but too much of a comfort to push away.

"I love you," he said fiercely. "And I'm going to fix this. We're going to make this right."

"I know," he breathes, hands tightening more. The sound of water not so far away, and but for the old clothes and the exhaustion and the eerie lack of nighttime animal sounds, they could almost be home.

Almost.

"Look, just..." He clenches his teeth against something and rakes a hand up through Tom's short hair. "Just stay here. For a few minutes."

He looked down at Mike, some of the resolve and the necessary coldness slipping off his features, softening.

"We don't have very long," Tom said, looking back at camp. They hadn't spoken of Florence to each other. That kind of pain was almost easier to keep to yourself. "And we're not safe here."

He tipped his head forward, face resting against the curve of Mike's collar bone.

"But we can stay."

"I know, I know," he murmurs, pulling in another slow breath. His body is betraying him. Maybe it's just stress looking for a release, maybe it's pure shock, maybe it's too many memories of too many nights alone and aching with something he wanted so badly so tantalizingly close. Probably, in the end, it doesn't matter.

"Kiss me again." He tugs Tom's chin up with his fingertips, hurting and needy. "Please..."

This is foolish, this is ridiculous, it's selfish and it's going to get us killed. The thought flashes, and just as quickly, is gone, wrapped up in the smell of dirt and sweat and Mike Pinocchio and something that felt dangerously like loss. They only had this. Everything else was fucked, but this was still here, as undeniable as ever.

Tom leaned forward, almost rough, and let his fingers dig into Mike's shirt as he kissed him, twisting futility in worn fabric, bringing him as close as he could. Dumb. Foolish. Necessary.

It was easy to feel like this was all they had left.

He's not sure when exactly kissing turns into movement, but somehow he's walking them blindly back, kissing Tom like his life depends on it, because what the hell, it just might be the case. He stops when he feels Tom's back hit something that might be a tree trunk and then he's pressing forward, groaning deep in his throat and his hands pushing up under Tom's ragged shirt.

It hasn't been desperate like this since the days when everything was still bad between them.

There's that violent, coppery feeling to this that makes him remember a long way back, before Neil, before Eostre, before anything but hurt and confusion and a long road home at night.

He let himself be shoved, handled, and a few moments later he was pulling Mike's shirt from his back pockets and mumbling desperately into the kiss. Some things, you just can't question.

When he'd thought about this in the old days, when he'd let himself think about it, it hadn't been slow or easy or anything like romantic. It had been all heated, rushed fantasies, just enough to get him off in the brief periods when he had that kind of privacy, when he wasn't with someone else who could be blessedly distracting. Brief, because it hurt. Flashes of something like this, pressing Tom up against a tree and taking what he wanted. Crippled, because he was crippled, in his head if not in his body.

And now... he's not sure what this is.

"Fuck," he mutters between kisses, already dropping a hand between them and palming Tom roughly, feeling hardening flesh pressing back and fumbling with his zipper.

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