i never dreamed you'd leave in summer /amos+paxton

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

The fragility of the room breaks all at once.

Because here's the thing about Amos - he's stupid. He's impulsive and he's self-centred and he barely even takes the time to think something through before he's already out and doing it.

He'd been numb before, last night when he first saw the blood on Paxton and it made everything else fade away, he was stuck in one place like his head was deep underwater. He'd been numb before, but now it's been cranked up to the max, just in the opposite direction.

It's like all his nerve endings are firing off at once. There's pins and needles in his fingers and his toes and the blood drains from his face so fast that it makes him lightheaded. His ears start ringing, he can hear his own heartbeat, he feels like a rabbit caught in an electric fence.

His wrist falls back onto the bed and it's like he's just been impaled.

Funny, since he's not the one that'd been stabbed.

So he's already on edge when Pax suddenly hunches over, halfway through one thought and running into another. The movement makes him jump a little, and he just watches, wide-eyed, hand hovering above Paxton's leg because somehow he's too wary again to touch.

"There's no going back there." He thinks he hears Pax say, but that can't be right. He leans a little closer, shaking his shoulder out to stop the ringing in his ears.

"You have to go."

And Amos just kinda

freezes.

He hears the whole sentence, some part of his brain registers it, but the strongest part of him latches onto that.

You have to leave. You can't be here anymore.

There's a bag under the bed that he'd stuffed his clothes into the first time and it's still half packed. He's got a toothbrush in a cup in the bathroom and Pax's old shirt somewhere in the corner. He probably wouldn't be able to take the spider plant with him, but that's okay, he'll just give it back to Rowan so it at least gets watered while he's gone.

He's barely even been told that he has to go before he's making an escape plan. Because - running away - that's what he's good at, right? That's what he's always been good at.

"What do you mean?" He's got a hand stuck in the fabric of the bedspread because he's panicking now. Contrary to popular belief, he wouldn't survive living on the run. "Pax, what do you mean they're coming?"

He wants to reach over and shake him, but he's still a little too afraid to reach out and touch even though he can't ever remember a time where he was afraid of Paxton, not even a little bit.

"What are you talking about?" He tries again, more plea than anything, but it's like he's talking to a wall. He's out of breath and he can't see and his fingers are bloody from trying to tear down the bricks. He isn't even sure that Pax didn't hit his head at this point. He still rambles, and he still mutters, and Amos still tries to get the slightest silver of an understandable answer out of him.

Then the rest of it catches up to him, slams him back into his body, and he's suddenly seeing stars. Pax makes a sound that sends the hair on Amos's arms up straight.

"You think I would let you bleed out? You think I would just leave you?"

But then his mouth snaps shut, and all that anger bubbles and boils over, his pulse hammers away in his wrist, because he did leave. That's how he got here.

And he shouldn't be sitting here like this, telling Pax that maybe the next time would be different because they both know it wouldn't be. Amos would leave again eventually, he'd take the spring with him because they're both inevitable like that. He's too proud to admit it and he's too stubborn to apologize so it all just sits like bile in the back of his throat.

It doesn't sting because it's cruel, it stings because he knows Paxton is right. It's the first not nonsensical thing he's made out. But he's seen Pax cry more in the past twelve hours than he has in the past seven years and it snaps the last little bit of whatever was keeping him still before.

"You're the one that came here." Amos says terribly, accusatory, with something writhing under his skin.

Don't blame me. It says. Don't blame me when it's easier to blame you.

And Amos might be crying now too, he can't tell, there's just this giant empty pit in the bottom of his stomach. It's like there's flames licking at the bottom of his ribcage, the room gets warmer. He's frustrated and panicky and still somehow exhausted after just waking up.

"You came here. If you really wanted to die so bad, you would've fucked off in a gutter somewhere. So don't gimme that shit. Whatever this is? Stop it."

Because the sound of Paxton weeping is the sound he'd never wanted to hear.

"Stop it." He says again, to cover the crack on the last one.

Then he raises a finger, because it feels like the right thing to do, and it shakes but it's stern, because some kind of emergency response kicked in awhile ago. Amos takes a deep breath, tries to summon up the voice he used when he was particularly pissed off, when Paxton was too drunk to listen to reason so he had to listen to something sharper and less kind.

"Now I'm gonna go get clean sheets, and when I get back, you're gonna tell me why you showed up here last night looking like a corpse."

'You're gonna tell me what you did.' is what he doesn't say.

Because he's not an idiot. He sees the guilty slope of Paxton's shoulders underneath the way he tries to mask the pain. He knows him too well to not recognize the same signs he'd come home with after a botched job or a late meeting or a particularly nasty bar fight.

Maybe Paxton's predictable, maybe Amos is too, that's why it's so hard for him to stand up and to walk away and to not turn right back around and crawl into his arms, to forgive and be forgiven. It's like he's suddenly been made from glass but it's all jagged and the slightest movement threatens to shake him out of his own skin.

He crosses the threshold in a way he forces to be neutral, and he only lets himself look back once this time. The sunlight seems to illuminate Paxton, giving him a back-light and a halo, and Amos leaves the room like he's been burned.

[gamemaker kelsier]

p a x t o n .

"I never dreamed
you'd leave in summer
I thought you would go
then come back home."

"Stop it," Amos says.

Pax turns away, a hand over his mouth as if that could be enough. Amos is right, he usually is. Coming here was selfish. He squeezes his eyes shut, silently willing the tears to stop or for Amos to just go away. It's not supposed to be like this, he's not supposed to see this.

Embarrassment washes over him and Paxton tenses, his hand still over his mouth, wordless as Amos demands answers from him before leaving the room.

He's mad at him but that's a standard at this point and for one tired moment, he wonders when Amos stopped actually seeing him. When was the last time Amos looked at Paxton and actually understood him?

That steady ache comes back, the needle through his heart. There's a sliver of memories of sunny afternoons in the apartment, just the two of them. They're coloured different for Pax now that he knows how to label what he was feeling then, that he was falling in love with his best friend.

More tears slip down Pax's cheeks and he pushes the back of his hand over his eyes to clear them.

"Stop," he says, frustrated. "Just stop crying you fuck." Paxton's good at this, at turning himself off when he has to. He's cried like this before but always where no one else was, so they couldn't see him losing it. No one needs a gang member that cries, no one wants a boy that feels anything working for them and Paxton learned that so long ago that now it's just an innate belief, he can't feel, he's not allowed to.

He gazes at the blood staining the duvet cover and wills himself to move. While Amos is off getting new sheets, he could disappear again, just go. Maybe this time he could go for good, find a hole in the fence just big enough to wiggle through and be out of Amos' life for forever.

It seems like it'd be the good thing to do, the right thing.

Pax looks down at his hands, at the dried blood staining his fingers, stuck under his nail bed and he knows that he deserves all of this anguish. It makes sense that Amos doesn't love him back, he's not good enough for him.

Amos can't even bear touching him.

Sadness pushes through him again and Pax looks back towards the window but his body won't move. He places his hands on either side of him and tries to shove himself off the bed but it's pointless. His body is too weak, he lost too much blood and it hurts so much. Tears form again and he curls his hands into fists, frustration poisoning his feelings, "I said stop it," he whispers.

He breathes in one long breath and holds it for a moment before releasing it again.

Then his shoulders fall, his expression calms and Paxton gazes down at the duvet again but he's not really seeing it.

Eventually, the tears dry on his cheeks and he shuts his eyes, waiting calmly for Amos to come back. His head hurts, there's a dull throbbing behind his eyes and he feels raw, like he's the hting in the room that's too bright. He's hungry but even the idea of eating makes him feel sick.

There's a fragility there, like every breath is just another piece of tape over a vase filled with hundreds of tiny fractures. He has one normal thought and then the next is just Tank and the knife and the blood. Maybe that's what it's going to be for the rest of his life.

And he doesn't want Amos to have to think about that and blame himself.

So when he comes back, fresh sheets in hand, Paxton doesn't quite look at him. It's easier to lie that way. "Tank threw me out. I... I betrayed him. So they're gonna come after you too, to send a message I guess." It's close enough to the truth that it comes out fine. "This is my fault, I didn't tell them you left me, I didn't want to."

Pax doesn't know why he didn't. Maybe he just thought Amos might come back to him, but he hadn't.

"I didn't see the knife," he says, bitter, "I wasn't looking for it, I didn't think he'd– I thought–"

I thought he loved me.

It still stings. Pax clenches his jaw and looks away. Turns out he's as stupid as he looks.

"I can't move, can you help me?" he says after a moment, "For the sheets?"

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

Amos shuts the door behind him and then leans against it for a few seconds. He tries to breathe behind the hinges, feels the wood grain dig into his shoulders and a familiar sort of burn behind his eyes.

He presses his thumb to the inside of his wrist, pushing down on the pulse point and staring at a little piece of wallpaper that's started to peel near the hallway ceiling. The window's covered but Amos still feels like he's burning up. It's like there's a hidden sun somewhere except it's not the light, it's just the heat, and it rises through the ducts like smoke.

He forgot to clean out the ashtray.

Amos counts the slats of the floorboards when he goes to find Maria to ask for clean sheets. He avoids her eyes when she squints at him and shrugs when she asks about a body. She'd called some clean-up crew in and they'd been scouring the alley all morning to make sure there was nothing left for the Keepers to find. Maria presses a bundle of dark fabric into his hands first and Amos blinks down at it, flinching at the feeling of Paxton's jacket in his hands, free of blood now, but with a little slash across the front. Amos runs his finger across the tear and holds his breath.

He feels everything too much. It's always been like that. Paxton has always been the cold chill and Amos has always been the sun scorch - impatient and impulsive and exhausting.

Maria hands him sheets, and Amos avoids her hands so he doesn't burn her.

He goes back to his room then, back to Pax, and tries not to look like he's hiding behind the stack of linen in his arms. Paxton's jacket hangs over his arm but he hangs it from the doorknob on his way in.

Pax doesn't need it - the room isn't cold anymore, not when Amos is there.

He sets the sheets at the foot of the bed and picks at a loose thread, smooths out the top of the pile so his hands have something to do. It's weird for it to be awkward - it's never been like that before. When he glances up, Paxton isn't looking at him, so Amos looks away too.

He's still angry, the burn of it is still there, simmering somewhere deep in his gut. His skin shudders like there's wasps under it and it's a wonder Pax can't hear the buzz of it.

"You betrayed him." Amos repeats, only once he's let Paxton talk first, voice catching on the implication of it. He looks at Pax then, gaze unsteady but still cutting. Because Tank - Amos knows what Tank meant to Pax. He knows what that gang meant to Pax.

Amos knows that they were Paxton's everything.

Are.

He looks at the blood staining the duvet again and suddenly feels very, very sick.

Something tipped the scales then. Something cataclysmic. Something happened that made Paxton lose his family. Because he's not someone who would play them at the tip of hat. Pax's better than that. He's loyal and he's strong and he's good. He's a good man, better than anyone could ever deserve and

"He hurt you?" Amos asks abruptly, "Tank hurt you? That doesn't make sense."

That terrible little thing sparks again, like a match across paper.

"Pax," He says, tripping over syllables that are achingly familiar, "You almost died. He tried to kill you."

He almost did.

The blaze is all-encompassing. There's three seconds of invincibility, three little seconds where Amos feels his back crack and his hands ache and the reckless stripe in his lungs tells him distantly to run. There's a line of stitches across Paxton's torso and somewhere out there there's a building waiting to be coated in kerosene and there's a man who turned out to not be much of a man after all.

But then just as soon as it comes, it goes, and Amos is standing in front of Pax and they're in a little flat above a bar in a part of town that they shouldn't have even looked towards. Amos looks at the state of his best friend and feels the bird bones in his fists creak.

If Tank did this to Pax - then what chance does Amos have? Paxton isn't his shadow anymore. He'd get three steps in and be gunned down without a second thought. Or maybe Tank would stick Amos with a knife too, right where it hurt, except Amos wouldn't be strong enough to crawl back to Pax the way Pax had dragged himself across the District for Amos.

And Amos doesn't want to die alone.

His body moves on auto-pilot, he slings one arm around Pax to help him sit up while fifty different scenarios flit across his mind, each one making him a little more panicky, a little more stiff.

Amos's voice is small then, his arm is across Paxton's back but he glances at where the bedpost meets the floor because that's where the emergency bag is, packed and ready to run with, an escape plan because he's not himself without one, "Why would they even want me?"

He's Amos. He's a nobody, not wanted, not looked for.

Selfish little boy. The insolent leading the blind, there are no weapons in that bag - "I didn't do anything."

He shrinks in on himself even while supporting Paxton, curling one arm in while the the other stills against a spine. He stops them both when Pax is halfway out of bed, just sort of freezing there, slowing down as all the molten cools.

It's like his heart stops, like the chill spreads all the way to the tips of his fingers and he holds Paxton tighter without even meaning to. He's scared suddenly. Like he's all alone again.

"Do they know we're here?"

[gamemaker kelsier]

p a x t o n .

"I never dreamed
you'd leave in summer
I thought you would go
then come back home."

He doesn't want to be weak. Mornings spent training with the gang, fingers laced behind his head counting to one hundred situps with weights strapped to his wrists. He carries and carries and carries.

Amos gets scared when he's weak, he doesn't want that so Paxton holds everything close. A wound is a secret, a bad feeling a flaw.

Pax has always been loyal to a fault.

"You betrayed him."

Amos repeats him but it doesn't sound like he believes him, disbelief pulling back every word like a screwed up fist before the punch. "Yeah," Pax mutters, not quite looking at Amos.

"Tank hurt you? That doesn't make sense."

"That's what happens when you betray the gang."

"You almost died. He tried to kill you."

"Guess I hurt his feelings."

Amos pokes holes in his story as easily as ever and if it wasn't so endearing, Paxton might be annoyed. He watches Amos carefully, feeling raw. Normally at this point, Pax probably would have left for a walk or something. It's hard to lie to him, Pax has never been good at it. Something about those eyes, they unpack him in seconds and suddenly Paxton is laid out neatly in pieces in front of him.

His best friend is still catching up and Pax lays there useless, body heavy as a range of emotions pass through Amos all at once. For a moment, he almost looks angry. At me? No.

Maybe angry at Tank.

Pax shuts his eyes, his head is spinning. He's already tired again, as if he didn't just wake up. It's a body-heavy sort of exhaustion, the kind of thing Pax didn't think he'd feel until it was the end.

Amos is right, it almost was. That should make him sad but Paxton doesn't feel anything at all. He'd blame the morphine if he hadn't already been feeling this way for weeks.

Why would Amos be angry at Tank for him?

Amos arm wraps around him and Pax leans into him a little without thinking, always searching out that heat instinctively. Then Amos shifts him and Pax forgets about breathing for a moment. Pain, fresh and burning and alive all over again pushes through him from the point in his stomach where Tank stabbed him. White hot light runs over everything until Paxton can't even make out the blanket on his lap.

"Why would they even want me?"

Amos' voice comes from beside him and Paxton tries to focus on it. His thoughts edge around the pain that is taking up room over everything else and he almost slips.

Because I want you.

But Amos hadn't meant it like that. 

Pax squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them again. He attempts to breathe through the pain but it's like he's swallowing glass with every intake. Amos moves them slowly and Paxton focuses on staying conscious but it's hard. He doesn't remember much about last night, just wanting to find Amos and then waking up here. Feeling this, he's grateful for that.

It's hard to think of a lie like this but he can't say anything that might make Amos think that it's his fault. Pax doesn't answer him.

Amos stills beside him and Paxton winces then wraps his hand up in his shirt, shaking from the pain.

"Do they know we're here?"

"Mmhm," Pax says, "That's what I've been trying to tell you."

He shudders and leans more into Amos. Sweat drips down his brow and his mouth is dry again. He's cold but he's not at the same time. It's pathetic how weak he is, he hates himself for it but part of him is so happy to see Amos that tears threaten again. These peaks and valleys, he doesn't know what to do with them. He tells himself it's just the morphine, that he doesn't have time for this; Amos is still in danger.

"Get your shit and head into angel territory, okay?" he says softly, "I'll wait here and slow them down. You just can't come back here again."

Pax pushes off Amos a little so that he's sitting on the edge of the bed on his own. His head feels light but heavy all at once, his skin burns, he's in no shape to go anywhere.

"Where's my gun?" he mutters, surveying the room slowly. "Ames?" he asks, "Seen it?"

The room spins again and Pax shuts his eyes again against it. His heart takes up so much space in his chest it can barely move to beat. He feels so heavy, so damned tired. He rests his head in his hands as Amos changes the sheets. The scent of fresh linen lays beneath the heavy scent of iron in the air. His skin is dry, flaking off bits of his own blood.

"Really, go, it's okay," he says, and opens his eyes to look at Amos, who looks terrified. Pax winces again at that, all he ever seems to do is hurt him. "Doesn't matter how far, I'll come get you."

Always, he pinky swears. He's thirteen years old again and shit like that is for stupid little kids but Amos had a nightmare and can't fall back asleep. Even if you're in hell, I'll come there next.

"Please Amos."

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

"So now you want me to leave." Amos says irritably. Utterly irrational in their situation.

Finality. He finally hears it.

This is exactly what he was trying to avoid in the first place. It's the line that kept him up at night, leaning over the bed and staring at Pax while he snored on the floor, wondering how soon after he woke up he'd decide enough was enough and kick Amos out. Better to leave then find out right? He saved them both the trouble but now Pax is taking it back and saying it anyways.

There's a metronome in his chest ticking between terrified and enraged, so quick that it gives him whiplash.

Paxton's not invincible anymore. He isn't standing on the front stairs keeping the dark away. He asks for his gun like he's going to sit there in the bed and wait for his enemies to come up the stairs in a nice little shootable line.

"It's probably gone." He has no clue. He doesn't want to know, he just wants to go home and have none of this ever happen.

He looks at bloody sheets, twists them between his hands.

"It doesn't matter, we can fake our deaths and- we-"

He looks at Pax and then at the wall, can't stay in one place, there's something floundering and lost in the space between them.

“And we can-“

But what can they do?

He doesn't know what to do, he never knows what to do. He was angry and then scared and then angry again but now it's all messed up, it just all sits there simmering near the surface of his skin. Volatile, his temper's always been short and he's always been a coward, he's not strong, he's just a stupid little boy; he's mean and nasty and he doesn't know how Paxton's put up with him for so long because Amos has spent just a couple of weeks dealing with himself and it's already driven him half crazy.

He looks out the window instead of looking at Paxton, like the answer they need will just suddenly appear on the street outside. They're losing precious time.

He's always gotten his way through tantrums and stake-outs and out stubborning every other person he's come across. Sometimes it's harder with Pax, because he knows all of Amos' tricks but usually Amos still wins. It's almost cheating though, because Amos holds so much anger without a proper reason to. It lives in him, makes him brittle around the edges and toxic on the inside and just generally unpleasant to be around.

He can lie and say that he wishes he wasn't like that, but he doesn't. The anger is familiar, settles along his shoulders like a warm shawl, or like a mangy cat, and he holds onto it the way a child holds a security blanket.

"Doesn't matter how far," Paxton says. "I'll come get you."

"Don't lie to me." He snaps. "Don't"

Maybe it's not the principle of the lie; Pax could fully believe that he'll survive facing down whatever comes after him and then still have enough fortitude to run.

Except Amos is supposed to be the delusional one, the one who never thinks shit through, and it sets him of-course that he's not.

"You can't even stand up." He says, accusatory.

But then he goes to block Pax from testing it because Amos knows him well enough to know that he'll take it as a challenge.

"Please." Pax says, with the tone Amos' ever only heard him use a handful of times. Amos sets his face stern and holds him by the shoulders so he doesn't stand up.

"No." He grits out. The syllable sticks to his teeth and starts the bitter-fear-rush that Paxton will somehow overpower him and force him out the door. Doesn't matter if he's just been stabbed, the mind is a tricky thing.

Amos takes a deep breath and steels himself like he's about to jump in a pool. Someone has to be the bigger person here, and it's not going to be him. He knows what to mean but he doesn't know what to say. He grips Paxton's shoulders and stares at him and tries to gauge how much damage he'll cause to both of them by saying the words that on the tip of his tongue. The ones that have been there for a while, actually. But he'll deal with the fallout later. He'll say near anything to get Pax out the building in one piece and in his sight at all times.

Nevermind how different his tune is now. The situation's changed.

Ten seconds turns into thirty and in the worst display of self-control he's ever had Amos says very carefully-

"If you die, I die."

Then he has to focus somewhere else so he picks a spot just above Pax's eyebrow.

He means it in a survivalist sense, but in personal one too. One's more obvious than the other - Amos doubts he could navigate to any kind of safehouse on his own.

"So don't be a dick about it." He adds.

[gamemaker kelsier]

p a x t o n .

"I never dreamed
you'd leave in summer
I thought you would go
then come back home."

"So now you want me to leave."

He opens his mouth to agree but nothing comes out. Despite all logic and sense and the danger Amos is in just by being here, Paxton doesn't want him to go anywhere ever again. "No," he whispers, despite himself and everything that brought him here. It's too quiet though, lost to Amos under the sound of linen stretching across the bed and Pax's laboured breathes.

I never wanted you to leave, he wants to say but he knows it won't matter. There's always an excuse as to why Amos can't believe him. Intoxication, bleeding out, even kissing him in relief, Amos will never believe Paxton when he tells him that he loves him in a hundred different ways. He might as well be speaking gibberish.

So when Amos left him, Paxton let him. He's unlearned, a gang member from birth, but if there's one thing Paxton has figured out in his short life it's that loss is common and it's to be expected. There's little he can offer Amos except the possibility that he'll end up in an early grave just like his parents. No one in their right mind would want to stick around for that.

And you find ways to forgive the person that you love for every transgression because when you love someone, you love all of them. Paxton loves Amos.

He always has.

"Don't lie to me." Amos says and Paxton grimaces because smiling feels impossible. He wants to say that he never would but that would just be another lie after the one where he said he betrayed Tank. It's not that he likes lying to Amos but he has before and will again to protect him. Truths are hard, beautiful at their best but deadly at their worst.

Amos holds him down, hands on his shoulders and Paxton pretends that it doesn't hurt, push down on the wound in his side and burn him. It's wordless, the pain, worse than anything else he's gotten and Pax has broken himself so many times before this. He's right, Pax can't even stand up, but that's never stopped him before.

"Then I'll crawl," he says stubbornly in the tide of Amos' anger and he means it. That's what love means to Paxton because home hasn't ever been a geographical location but a person.

Then Amos' hands are gentle on his shoulders and his best friend is staring at him in a way the he hasn't in a very long time. Paxton stills, hands in his lap, waiting. There are parts of him that can't handle being looked at like this, parts of him that want to look away in these moments because Amos is going to say something truthful. Beautiful or terrifying, he never knows which one it's going to be.

"If you die, I die."

"Yes," Paxton says almost immediately, "That's how it is." It's how it's been for years. It's why he was so relieved that night in the alleyway where he found Amos breathing instead of dead. Even if Amos leaves him again, if he's still alive then so is Paxton, just in pain.

He can live with that particular pain, he can try to at least, he can lie to himself and say it's not just another slow death.

He's uneducated, never went to school, but not stupid. His ears ring with Amos' words because it finally feels like an answer to the offer he's made again and again. If you die, I die. He drops his gaze, skin burning, shoulders warm but only in the spots where Amos' hands are touching him.

He has no choice but to concede, olive branch wrapped around his neck like a noose.

"So then we go together," he says finally, "And you won't-"

Promise you won't leave me again.

Paxton pauses, the accusation in the back of his throat begs to come out. The hurt he's been building all these weeks like a funeral pyre wants so badly to be set aflame. Paxton isn't a petty person though, he's straight forward, easy, according to Amos and in the end, he doesn't want to hurt him. He's never wanted to do that.

"I'm only ever going to slow you down," he says slowly as if that's all he was trying to say. Pax can't quite look at him, his hand half raised to his cheek, shaking from the effort, he gives up and lets it fall weakly against Amos' chest."You deserved a life out of the gang and here I am, destroying it."