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

[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."

It's kind of hard to breathe, like he's trying to suck water in through a broken straw.

Paxton pulls himself up slowly using a nearby trash bin, hand already dyed a dark rust red colour with his own blood. No matter how hard he holds his hand to the wound, it still spills out through the cracks between his fingers. He's been shot at before, had knives brandished at him, taken a few punches but nothing quite like this.

He stands there in the dark of the alley, his head empty as he tries to catch up with what's just happened. It's hard to think about it, hard to think about anything, but Pax is pretty sure that he's dying. It must be what dying feels like, this sharp pain that cuts through him every single time he takes a breath.

He can't move for a long moment as he comes to understand that everyone who promised to care for him has turned their back on him. There's no one he can go to for help, he has nothing left. Amos is gone, Tank's excommunicated him, he's got no one and soon he'll have nothing. He can't go home, but that doesn't really matter, home doesn't even feel like home anymore, not without Amos.

But he can't grieve now, that's not going to close his wounds.

Pax looks up the alleyway, then down it. There's no one around, it's past curfew so everyone's either inside or hiding before a peacekeeper can find them, everyone except him.

Shaky legs take him over to the wall and Pax falls into it, palm hitting brick in a way that only half stings. It's hard to feel anything but the stab wound, hard for anything to actually hurt any more than that. It's almost a blessing that it hurts so much, it takes his mind off Amos for the first time in a long time.

Amos.

He looks up and glances over his shoulder briefly at the closed door he was just thrown from. There's no way that they'll leave Amos alone, if they find him they'll take care of him just as fast. The last thing the gang wants is for anyone to think that they'd just let someone leave.

There's always a consequence.

Paxton smiles a little bit and then he pulls a used napkin out of the pocket of his jacket and presses it to the knife wound until his own blood sticks it there. His white shirt is drenched but it's dark anyway, it's hard to see the blood.

It's funny how a couple weeks ago, the idea of Amos bleeding out in an alley was his worst nightmare and now here he is, barely able to walk.

It's enough to make him chuckle to himself as he pulls himself along the wall, brick by brick by brick by brick by bri-

A noise.

Paxton stills and slides down to sit beside a garbage can as a Peacekeeper passes by the mouth of the alley, probably looking for people breaking curfew, people like Paxton. He doesn't know what will happen if they catch him outside but whatever it is, he doesn't have time for it.

The gang will be after Amos pretty quick, Pax should know after years of enforcing. They don't believe in putting off until tomorrow what can be done today.

The threat gone, Pax pulls himself up the wall slowly, fingers clawing at the bricks in the wall for purchase. He feels the exact moment he splits the nail on his pointer finger but he hardly registers it. The wound in his stomach is all consuming, every nerve is centered around it, every step amplifies the pain.

He wishes he had that cigarette now.

For a long time, Paxton just walks. It isn't possible to think at the same time, there is no room left for it, only the feeling of agony that pushes itself into every corner of him.

"He doesn't want to see you," he whispers to himself, "He left you for a reason- stop."

It doesn't matter what Amos wants, he's in danger. He's in danger and Paxton never got to say goodbye, just got to come home to empty drawers and that emptiness that never seemed to stick around when Amos was there.

"I just have to warn him, then I'm gone," he promises, "Just gotta say goodbye."

Because this feels final.

Pax stops for a moment to lean on a lamp post. He clutches the pole, forehead resting against it, as if he'll drown if he lets go. The metal is cool against his skin and he swears he can hear a slight buzz from the electricity coursing through it. There's the sound of footsteps hurrying away at the top of the street and he hears a dog barking faintly in the distance.

He's so tired.

It'd be easy to just shut his eyes right there and let himself rest. He doesn't know how long he's been walking, it's hard to remember where he even came from. The only thing he can focus on is where he's trying to go, and that's to that place with the blue neon sign.

He's going to where Amos is, Bella Luna.

The napkin falls off his torso and lands wetly at his feet.

Pax stumbles away from the lamp post, palm pressed to the wound beneath his jacket. Tank stabbed him in such a way that if he hurries, he can still get help and survive this whole ordeal but in doing so, he'd have to forget about Amos.

He can't do that, he's never going to be able to do that.

The bar's lights are on but the open sign is flicked off for the benefit of the Peacekeepers. Paxton watches a couple head down the alley alongside it and when they don't come back, he figures the party's still on as long as you know where to go. He walks slowly, footsteps heavy, a singular goal on his mind.

Getting in is easy, since he's not a peacekeeper they let him walk right in. The bar is busy, not as much as the other night but good enough. Paxton beelines for a booth. It's hard to stay upright, he almost falls to his knees halfway there.

"Easy does it" someone says, "I'll get you a water."

There's a gentle hand on his shoulder to steady him and Paxton almost cries out. He feels like a giant bruise, every part of him is sore as if his body has been tensed for hours. Finally, tears of pain form in the corners of his eyes. Getting here took so much of his focus that he didn't have time to be afraid, but now he is.

There's a round tray under the arm of the person who steadied him and Pax grabs their sleeve, desperate.

"Wait, can you tell Amos I'm here?" he asks.

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

He can hear Poppy busking out on the floor when the door cracks open, then her song muffle when it closes again. Rowan slips into the back room in time with the music, and there's a weird look on her face when she stops and takes a breath and then stops again.

She looks at him like that sometimes, when it's too hard to pretend he's okay so he just doesn't.

Rowan doesn't know the whole story, but she hasn't pried either.

She kind of looks like she's about to, though.

“You got a stalker?” She asks instead.

And Amos just looks up at her, confused.

"There's a guy out there asking for you." Rowan goes on, nonchalantly, but her hand's restless on the doorframe and she's bouncing her ankle against his chair.

“He looked pretty out of it." She says, "I can tell him to get lost.”

"I don't-"

“I can call Rod, he’ll take care of it.”

And that's how he knows that she's a little freaked.

“It's probably just Hanson." Amos says, waving his hand. He puts his pen down and pushes the chair back from the desk, "I still owe him for coming in last week.”

"Well if it isn't him- you need anything, you just yell."

"It's a public place, Ro."

"Not at this hour it ain't."

"Don't you have a job you should be doing?"

"What do you think this is?"

"Just go before Maria sees, I'll be out in a minute,"

Rowan huffs but she goes, moving her tray to her hip and beelining for the bar counter. Amos unlocks one of the desk drawers and pulls out the envelope that has Hanson's pay in it. The guy'd been out of work with all the shutdowns so Maria had let him do a window mural for the building a while back - a pretty thing with stars and a moon and Bella Luna painted in a curling font.

Amos stuffs the envelope in a bigger envelope and then locks the drawer again on his way out. He passes Rowan and she makes some kind of complicate hand gesture that he doesn't follow, and then her face changes to something more exasperated and she points to a booth in the corner.

Amos rounds the corner of the bar and sees the back of his head first.

Seeing Pax again, just a little sliver of him, it does something weird to the air. Because it is Pax. Of course it is.

It's a little like taking cold medicine - you know it's good for you, but you squirm and turn away and do everything to avoid it. It's only been weeks but he's acting like it's been years. It's only been blocks of distance and he's acting like it's been miles.

Amos looks at Pax and tries not to think of the old shirt shoved under his bed upstairs. He looks at Pax and tries not to think about the carton of cigarettes sitting in his jacket pocket, even though he doesn't smoke.

Amos slides into the booth across from him without saying anything. The envelope lands down on the seat and he feels halfway between overjoyed and enraged. Pax is here, but it took weeks. He's here, but he looks like shit. He's here, but Amos has been trying to move on and move away but

he's here.

Some part of him had expected it, and it's that part of him that wants to cry and crawl into the space beside him and forget about the past month. But it's the bigger part of him, the stronger part of him, now, that makes him feel scorned and forces him to stay put. Too little too late. Too much too early.

Amos just sits there and looks at him for a minute. Like this isn't quite real.

There's still bleach in Amos's hair, there's a bruise on Paxton's cheek. There's two stories there that neither of them know, and maybe that's what hurts the most. They used to know everything about each other and now they don't. Amos used to be able to tell Pax anything but now he can't. He can't tell him about the shirt upstairs or about that night in the alley or about what happened on his lunch break yesterday.

He wonders if Pax has been on the verge of exploding too.

Everyday he turns his head to tell someone about his day, and everyday there's no one there.

Amos wonders if he looks as different to Pax as Pax looks to him.

“If you’re here for your darts, you can have them back.” He says, and his voice doesn't shake because he got all the shakes out in the first week. He digs the carton out of his jacket and tosses it on the table and watches it slide across the wood grain.

“They’re shit anyways.”

Because they are. They were. There's one less in the pack because there'd been one bad night near the middle of all this, when the drip of the tap drove him crazy and the window wouldn't shut quite right and everything was too quiet so Amos had taken one out just because.

Just because.

It took him five minutes to light and ten minutes to stop coughing and then he tucked the butt into the sad little plant in the corner of his room.

A spider something.

Rowan had brought it up there and forgotten to take it back down, so that meant that it was Amos's indefinitely. He feels sorry for it though, it doesn't get enough light during the day and every time he looks at it he gets a sort of sad feeling.

It looks kinda sad. It kinda looks like it's dying.

They never really had plants back in the apartment because they were too busy to take care of any. Pax probably has a plant now that he doesn't have to take care of Amos all the time. He's probably got a plant and Tuna probably likes to knock it over when he isn't looking.

"The other stuff I took," He starts, only hesitating once because he's practiced this, Pax might've owned that apartment, but Amos had his own stuff in it. Pax didn't own Amos's socks and his sweater, those were his. "- You can't have that back."

If they were together, he'd be entitled to half that apartment, and half of all the stuff in it. But they're not. And they both know that. Amos could have taken a lot more than he did, but he didn't. And they both know why.

[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."

Paxton sits there in the booth for what feels like hours. He keeps his head low, there shouldn't be anyone he knows here, not yet at least, but it's better to be careful.

His hand is loose now against the wound, his palm glued to his skin from the blood. He's lucky that the lighting in here is so dim, lucky that the girl who helped him into his seat didn't notice the way he'd become so small.

There's one of those little napkin dispensers sitting against the wall on the table and a couple of sugar packets in case someone needs a coffee before their attempt to get home. Paxton reaches out slowly and drags the dispenser off of the table onto the seat of the booth beside him. The napkins are packed so tightly and his hands are so weak at this point that he struggles to get any out, his fingers travel over the metal and then the cotton, searching for purchase, but there's none.

Then he finally pulls one and a wad of twenty spring out with it, spilling all over the cushion beside him. Paxton sighs and folds a few into his hand before pressing the new wad against the wound.

It occurs to him that he's about to die in a back booth of a shitty bar in Nine.

The thought is fleeting, already banished to the back of his mind where he won't have to think about it. It makes sense for this to be his end when you consider his parents and where he's from, it makes sense that he's just another cog in the machine that is Panem. He lives in a society manufactured to keep him in the dirt, a pig in its pen.

The pain recedes a little as it grows harder for Pax to think. A lovely sensation starts to move through his body, as if it's no longer just his body but the environment's. As his blood leaves him, air filters in, reclaiming him and Pax can't be sad to die anymore.

you're not dying-
you're becoming.

Ahh.

He smiles a little as another tear of pain trickles slowly down his cheek from his right eye. He has to focus, he can't lose his grip until he tells Amos about the danger he's in and gets himself out. He wants to die beneath the stars he's decided.

Amos slides into the seat across from him.

Paxton stares at him.

He forgot about how pretty Amos is, the freckles on the bridge of his nose are like little stars themselves. He forgot about those eyes, the curve of his jaw and those lips, like a painting. You look like a painting, he wants to say. But he doesn't do that.

Amos already walked away from him once.

"Your hair," he compliments instead.

Unfinished, finish that.

"-It's nice."

Good. Be normal.

Have you been sleeping well? he wants to ask because Amos looks tired but Paxton isn't sure that's allowed. He doesn't know what's going to make Amos leave him. He knows he has to be fast, that he doesn't have much time but Pax no longer knows how long a minute is, he barely feels it anymore, the ticking of time and maybe a minute could be hours or seconds, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter anymore.

Amos looks angry and he's saying hurtful things. Paxton flinches a little after the fact when Amos tosses his cigarettes at him. They land on the table in front of him and Pax knows he should be reaching out to take them. It was only a few minutes ago that he thought he could kill for a cigarette.

Now he just looks at them for a second before training his gaze on Amos again, as if he can take this memory of his best friend to the afterlife with him.

If that even exists.

He watches Amos' lips move and he thinks about kissing them again. He thinks about waking up in the morning wrapped around Amos and scrambling to get back on his side of the bed before he woke up too and caught Pax like that.

"Amos," he starts, unsure if he's interrupted something or not, "You..."

What am I here for again?

"Left a sweater but I'm... I'm keeping it. I hid it under the couch so even if you come back to take it, you can't do that."

Doesn't feel right.

His thoughts drip down slow and Amos grows a little taller in his seat. Amos, hair like starlight; freckles like little stars.

Amos I want to die beneath the stars?

Not in front of Amos, he knows that. He can't die in front of Amos, can't show he's in pain, has to do it alone, he's always had to do it alone before Amos so why can't he do it alone now?

"Why'm I here?" he murmurs.

Amos does not want him here.

Pax gazes at him and it feels like Amos is taking him apart with that look, that thing he reserves for Paxton when he's so angry he has no words.

"I have to tell you-"

What do I have to tell him?

Oh.

Paxton leans forward in the booth a little, voice low but tone urgent, "I can't protect you no-anymore. The gang knows you're here, you gotta go someplace else, further."

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

Amos watches Paxton watch him and the silence between them gets a little thicker. It almost gets to the point where it's ridiculous. Is there something on his face? Pax just keeps looking at him and Amos shifts in the booth and tries to stay aloof. He tries to keep up whatever wall he's thinking is protecting him but the dim lights of the bar do funny things to Paxton's eyes and one of the neon signs from outside cuts in through the window and hits the side of Paxton's face and makes him glow.

It's almost not fair.

And so he's just about to throw his hands up, he's just about to walk away but

The cigarettes are still on the table, and when Paxton doesn't reach for them, Amos glances down and somehow that just makes it worse. The one thing Amos couldn't get him to give up, the one thing he wouldn't budge on, now it sits between them and Paxton is ignoring it like it's one of the fucking napkins at his feet.

What, now that Amos is gone he's decided to clean up? No one to take care of anymore, so he can focus on himself? It was probably the stress of having to chase after some kid no-one wanted that got him smoking in the first place. No wonder he's quit now. He's quit both of them - the kid and the darts.

Good riddance, because at least he won't die from lung cancer now. At least Amos won't have to sit at his bedside while his body starts failing him all because he started a nasty habit and wouldn't listen to reason. At least Amos won't have to grow old knowing that he killed his best friend because he's the one that caused that habit and he's the one that couldn't get him to listen.

Because Amos would be so pissed off it that happened. If the cancer sticks didn't get to Pax first, then he would. If Pax left him alone like that -

But

maybe it happened anyways.

He's alone now isn't he?

Amos can't quite shake Paxton's gaze, but he can damn well try.

"Your hair-" Pax says, and he sounds so fucking drunk that Amos wants to shake him. Because this is what happens. This is why he left, this is what happened the night he left.

Paxton's allowed to have his vices, Amos knows that, he's just tired and it's an easy thing to blame. It's an easy thing to get angry about because the alternative is being angry at himself and he isn't quite ready for that yet.

"-It's nice." Pax finishes, and Amos's hand goes up to the back of his head subconsciously, without even meaning to.

"...Thanks." He says. Because that's polite. He can be polite. He can do this, he can try.

Even if he can't, he can.

He can't make a scene here.

"Why are you-"

"Amos."

"What."

"You..."

"What."

Pax starts and stops and starts again and Amos can't do anything but stare at him while he rambles. There's the faintest sense of worry in the back of his mind, just lingering, slightly growing, because this is familiar, but not quite.

It reminds him of something, but he can't put his finger on it. He knows Pax is hammered now, he knows that's what it has to be. It's like the nights when he would come home from the bar with the guys and Amos would crawl out of the warm bed and cross the cold floor and help him take his shoes off.

It seems silly now. Paxton could've taken his shoes off on his own but Amos had gotten up to help every time.

Every time.

"It's just a sweater. You didn't need to come all the way here for that."

Then Pax says something to himself, looking lost suddenly, and Amos puts his elbows on the table and puts his head in his hands and pushes his palms into his eyes.

He's tired, okay? It's the shoes all over again. It's Paxton bringing that cat home all over again.

"I have to tell you-" Pax starts up, and Amos glances up at him wearily from between his fingers.

He half expects him to pull another kitten out from his jacket.

"They don't care, Pax. They never have." He sighs. "They're probably happy to lose the liability."

"How much have you had to drink?" He asks then, and he tries not to sound gentle, he tries not to sound so soft but he can't help it. The longer he looks at Pax the more something inside of him melts and slips between his fingers and falls to a puddle on the floor.

Amos starts to get up before he slips, Steel is probably still somewhere at the bar and his shift will be over soon.

"I'll get someone to take you home."

[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."

It's getting harder to focus.

Every time he blinks, his eyes stay shut a little bit longer and the sounds of the bar fade in and out, like an old radio station, as if he's already half-gone.

"Mmm," he nods along to Amos' voice, too caught up in the sound of it to register what he's actually saying. He sounds like the beam of moonlight where it hits the wall at the foot of the bed. There's something about a sweater maybe. He doesn't know what sweater and if he's talking about the one he left behind, "'m not giving it back," he mumbles, stubborn until the end.

Someone places a glass of water down in front of him and Paxton forgot how thirsty he was. Lifting his hand to drink seems like too much though so he justlooks at it for a long moment, lost in how pretty the condensation on the outside of the glass looks in the flickering neon light of the bar. He starts to wonder, was it all always this pretty?

Or has he only just started to notice it now?

Then he sees the carton of cigarettes on the table and Paxton blinks. Those weren't there a moment ago, at least he doesn't think they were. It's getting hard to think. His reactions are slowing, repeating, a sputtering engine in its last few moments of work.

When he looks up again, Amos' mouth moves up and down and then up again and then closes, and he's saying things and the anger is draining out of his eyes, being replaced by–

worry.

He wasn't supposed to worry him, just warn him and get out before he bled out on his best friend's shoes.

"I mean it Amos," he says but he's so tired that it just sounds like he's whining, "They're comin', here even maybe, you gotta go, you gotta go now, tonight."

"How much have you had to drink?"

How many beers did he have? Not enough.

"I…f-four? Maybe five"

It’s hard to remember now. He squeezes his eyes shut, searching for the answer through the pain. There was that first beer with Erica, tasted like lightening. It'd sparked his tongue, and paxton had definitely had a few more after. It hadn't mattered then if he was going to crawl home drunk because Amos wasn't there waiting.

What had he done between then and now? If he thinks hard enough he can remember the poker game and Tank looking at him so damn hurt.

Yeah I probably beat him at rusty cage again.

That'd make sense. He’s not dying, he can't be, he’s just drunk.

Paxton smiles then, lopsided, shaking, silly little boy, it doesn’t hurt, it can’t hurt. So it doesn't anymore. He drops his hand from his side and the wad of napkins slowly detaches itself and falls onto the bench beside him.

He picks a cigarette out of the carton and slips it into the pocket of his jacket but he doesn't need the rest.

"I’m drunk," he nods in agreement, tongue heavy, "I just wanna go home."

But not to that home, the one waiting for him just six blocks away with the window open for the cat and half the dresser drawers empty. He wants the one with Amos in the armchair using the coffee table as a footstool, laughing because Paxton just said something dumb.

But Amos is already rising, already disinterested in him, already looking for someone else.

Nothing he says matters.

"Please, Ams," he says and he darts out a hand to grab his as he tries to leave, "Gotta get out of here, please."

But Amos' hand is so warm and Paxton forgot about that. He squeezes his eyes shut tightly and tips his forehead into the back of it.

He doesn't need to be held.
He doesn't need to be held.
He doesn't need to be held.

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

Amos makes eye contact with Steel at the bar and starts to wave him over.

Pax can barely even sit up straight now, he's slumping in the booth when Amos stands. Amos slides himself out of the seat and turns away a little bit, just so he doesn't have to face that look head on. His insides all feel like they're melting.

He hates all these little vices and the hold they have on Paxton, but he has so many memories of easier times with them. It's always been complicated like that - Pax has always been more free with something in his system, more affectionate. He drops his gang facade when he's buzzed, and Amos hates that it's the alcohol that does it, he really does. He wants to be loved soberly too, he wants to have those conversations with Pax where they're both a little loose-lipped and they're both a little stupid.

He wants to be remembered fondly, instead of just as some useless kid that nobody wanted.

He wants to know if he made a difference at all. Because for a while, it was like Amos was the change. It was almost as if, when Amos was around, that's when Pax changed. That's when he softened and spoke louder and laughed more. That's when he lived. He wasn't just some grunt for the gang anymore. He wasn't the scary son of a scary man. He was Paxton. He was just Pax.

But then the alley happened, then the fight happened, then the stumbling in at an unholy hour happened, then a million little small thing happened, and Amos found out that he wasn't the change. Not the good one anyways. It had never been him.

Pax's hand grabs Amos's then, and it makes him jolt. His hand is wet, and Amos passes it off as condensation from the water glass. He wiggles his palm back and huffs, wipes the water off onto his pants without a second thought.

Paxton's never been a clingy drunk - or not this bad at least. There were some nights in the winter when he'd have a few beers and then come home and wrap his limbs around Amos like some kind of octopus. But that was because it was cold, and their place always had shitty heating and never enough blankets.

Amos very purposefully doesn't think about that last morning. He doesn't think about waking up to see Pax asleep on the floor, right beside the bed, even though he'd been on the couch the night before. Amos doesn't think about how long he sat there, legs dangling over the edge, just watching him breathe.

"Gotta get out of here." Pax says again, and it's enough to tip Amos over the edge a little. He's tired. He's frustrated. His hand is clammy. He turns finally, once he sees Steel wrapping up the night's tabs.

"Paxton-" He says sharply, exasperated.

But that's as far as he gets.

There's red right there, right against the skin of the hand that Paxton's still holding out towards him.

Amos looks down slowly, at his hand that had the water that wasn't actually water, to the spot on his pant leg where he wiped the water that wasn't actually water.

There's red there too.

He's suddenly in that alley again, when Pax had touched him gently to check for injuries, when his hand had come away wet and he'd panicked.

Liability.

But this is different. He's not in that alley. The roles haven't been reversed. Because Paxton doesn't get hurt. He's the one that does the hurting. Amos is the one that gets in shit and Paxton is the one that fixes it. Amos is the one that gets hurt and Paxton is the one that saves him.

Was.

He was the one that saved him.

Amos looks at the blood smeared on his hand, then he looks at Pax again, at the state he's in. Some kind of uneasiness coils deep in him and he tries not to let the beginnings of fear show on his face.

Because he's not afraid of Pax. He never has been. He can't be.

He just desperately hopes there isn't a body outside that they have to get rid of.

"Pax," He says again, quieter this time, so quiet that he's not even sure if the sound comes out or not, "What did you do?"

[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."

Small hands pressed against rain spattered glass, palms flat, eyes trained on an empty street as he waited for his dad to get home.

Sitting quiet, kicking his feet at the kitchen table as he heated a can of soup up on the stove. The instructions were posted to the fridge door at eye-height. His dad had signed it with a heart.

Creeping into the apartment at four in the morning dripping wet from the rain and shoes pinched in his fingers so that he wouldn't wake Amos up.

Memories start to drift idly through Paxton's head and he smiles fondly, not able to hold onto one long enough to fully grasp the moment but just happy to keep them briefly.

"Paxton-"

Amos' tone is sharp but he turns to look at Paxton again and so it's worth the pain of the steel. His best friend seems to shine in front of him, he's hard to look at. Maybe it's just that it's getting hard to focus on anything in particular. The room has been spinning slowly for the last ten minutes and Paxton thinks of the night they set up the fair.

He must have been about five that summer. Slowly, the sounds of the bar fade and flux into the chatter of a happy crowd and carnival music. He remembers the stallion between his knees, the excitement he'd felt as his horse had risen up and down slowly, spinning round and around.

And the lights and the music and his dad's hand on his back keeping him steady.

Pax shakes his head drowsily and the memory lies still again.

Amos is looking at him like he might look at something stuck to the bottom of his shoe and Paxton gazes back at him, eyes soft. "If the carnival ever comes back," he whispers, but then he forgets about what he was talking about and he's so thirsty.

He looks down at the glass of water in front of him and takes it slowly with both hands. Pax hardly feels his fingers anymore as they wrap around the glass, slick with condensation. It's too heavy, he lets go again and the glass shifts on the table and nearly topples over.

Standing on the riverbank beside Uncle Henry, watching as the fish they just caught flops back and forth in the dirt, drowning on air.

Pax looks up again and there's Amos, always Amos at the end of all things, watching him.

He smiles and reaches out to touch his cheek but he misjudges the distance and his fingers stroke air.

"Pax, what did you do?"

His hand falls again and hits the table top.

He gazes back at Amos and tries to think, to figure out what he could have done this time to piss him off. There are so many things, like the cat sitting at home and the stolen hoodie he shoved beneath his bed. There's the ash tray full of nervous cigarettes too full on the coffee table and last month he accidentally got blood on Amos' favourite shirt when he borrowed it.

His palm laying flat against Amos' stomach as Paxton kissed him in the alley.

Pax reaches up slowly and presses bloody fingers against his own lips at the memory.

What did you do?

He pretends he can't see the fear on his best friend's face when he looks back at him.

Paxton just smiles a little, then slips a little bit further to the side. Amos is getting hard to look at anyway. The sounds of the bar are fading and it doesn't hurt anymore, not in a way that Paxton can articulate at least.

What did you do?

"I kissed you," he tells him. Then he tips his head back against the seat slowly and lets his eyes fall shut. He's tired now and it feels as if he's been unable to sleep for a very long time.

But Amos is here, so maybe he can.

"...nd I got scared," he says, voice getting softer, "But now I'm not."

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

There’s even more blood on Paxton’s hands when he reaches towards the glass and it mixes with the condensation there, turning it a sickly shade of pink. Amos reaches out to steady it without even thinking and the liquid runs down his fingers to puddle on the table. That sense of wrongness is back, and it clots the water in a way that water isn’t supposed to clot.

Pax falls a little, kind of slumping in the booth, and Amos blames it on whatever’s in his system. He blames it on the alcohol and the beer he’s admitted to having, and the rush of whatever adrenaline he’d gotten when he ended up with that blood on his hands. Whatever the excuse is, Paxton starts to tip, and Amos moves without really thinking.

Steel is already making his way over when Amos reaches for Pax, hands on his shoulders, fingers in the collar of his jacket. He’s lost and nine years old again, clinging to a boy that was never supposed to be his saviour. He stares at the line of Pax’s jaw, and the little spot between his eyebrows, and he tries to remember the last time he’d looked so relaxed.

Certainly never when Amos was around.

Amos just kind of holds him there for what feels like too long, but it can’t be, because when he glances back again Steel hasn’t even moved, except it still feels like an eternity of him standing there, swaying there, watching the way that Paxton isn’t quite looking at him.

It’s a little like looking at the moon, when you know there’s another half there, you just can’t see it. It’s like looking at something a million miles away and realizing how much you depend on it.

”I kissed you.” Pax says, and Amos just blinks slowly at him.

It takes a second to realize that he’d answered his question.

But then that’s not right. Because it was Amos that had kissed Pax. He’d convinced himself. Why else would Paxton want him out of the house? Why else would he be coming home so late at night, smelling like cheap booze and something foreign? Amos left because he’d fucked up the easy understanding they’d had between them. He’s crossed a line he couldn’t walk back from and Paxton was supposed to get him for it. He wasn’t supposed to sit in a shitty little bar and look at Amos the way he is. He wasn’t supposed to look like the moon.

And Amos recoils in a way that sends him upright, ready to raise his haunches at this bruise of a boy. That’s his defense mechanism, that’s his muscle memory. He’s impulsive, and the easy way that Pax just says it makes something move inside of him. But when Amos lets go of Pax, Pax just sort of slumps over a bit more. It shifts his jacket and nudges it open further and it takes about two seconds for Amos to hone in on the movement.

His stomach drops and the floorboards start to shift a little but he still just stands there, tips of his fingers going numb. Then it’s sudden, and as quick as Amos had taken his hands off of Pax, he reaches back out.

He gets whiplash from it, but he barely flounders, he doesn’t know what to do. The whole world sharpens down to one little point and the little bit of fear he’d felt suddenly slams into his chest.

He remembers Paxton coming home with a shiner once and holding a bag of frozen peas to his face but that’s it. Anything bigger was kept away, kept closer in the gang, and Pax would waltz back in later with a bandage around his shoulder and it was careful - the way neither of them would mention it.

Now, Amos presses his hands against the dark spot under Paxton’s jacket that seems to be growing larger even though he knows it isn’t, as hard as he can. That’s the only thing he can remember how to do through the fog, apply pressure, and he leans onto the booth seat to hold his palms there.

“Hey,” he says, a little shaky, a little panicked, and then again when Pax doesn’t look at him, “Hey.”

Steel rounds the corner then, stopping short at the sight, an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth like a toothpick.

”The hell?” He says eloquently, and Amos just glances up and snaps at him. He can’t even hear his own voice when speaks, because he’s adrift, and it doesn’t sound like begging, because Amos doesn’t do that. The panic comes a little more full force when Steel turns around and books it to the back and Amos is left with his hands over Pax’s abdomen and he can’t tell if his hands are getting wetter or if Paxton’s shirt is getting darker or both.

He doesn’t know what to do. He can’t be Pax and he can’t save anyone or win any fight, he can barely even be Amos. He lives in a perpetual state of running away and the more he feels the heat of the blood between his fingers, the more Amos wants to desperately turn around and hide somewhere and pretend that this is nothing but a nightmare. His brain tells his body to move but he just ends up pushing his hands harder, like that’ll make it all stop.

Paxton’s eyes are closed now and Amos wants to shake him but he can’t lift his hands up because he has to keep the pressure because that’s all he knows how to do. He just stares at his hands over the blood until Steel is back a heartbeat later, at his shoulder, and ”Let’s get him upstairs.” He’s saying, but Amos doesn’t move because if he does then Pax will bleed out and it’ll be his fault again, and again and again.

”Pax,” Amos says, and it doesn’t sound like a plea, because he doesn’t do that. ”Just open your eyes, ‘kay?”

Because that’ll mean he’s fine. And since Pax is always fine, he’ll do it.

”C’mon, this isn’t funny.”

[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."

It isn't as scary as he thought it was going to be.

Paxton's seen people die before, horribly or sudden, didn't matter, they were never ready to go.

But the dark that settles over him is warm and heavy and welcoming and Paxton sighs a little bit, content to leave whenever. His hands lie motionless beside him and he knows that he couldn't lift them even if he wanted to. His eyelids are heavy and it feels as if they aren't part of him anymore. He's separating slowly, a seam ripper pulling out the stitches that keep him tied together.

He's aware briefly of Amos letting go of him, of slipping further down, but it hardly matters anymore, that's a different place. Paxton has already left there, Amos exists in another time, a loop running around itself again and again, a closed circuit, this was always going to happen.

Paxton has died here before, he'll die here again because it's his fate. He's nothing special, just another gang kid in Nine, no one will miss him. Amos won't miss him, Amos will fall in love with a stranger and Paxton will just be a memory, fading, fading, gone.

"Ah," he whimpers softly as Amos puts pressure on his wound and fresh pain races through him. His whole body curls inwards the slightest bit, a hand raises a little off the booth cushion and then falls again, palm up.

He recedes further, the black opens up before him and the further he goes, the less it hurts. So he slips forwards, farther and farther as Amos' voice gets quieter, harder to understand.

”Pax.”

Soft and scared and gentle and pleading.

Pax stops slipping away by holding onto the pain pulsing slowly up from down below. It's like grabbing onto a rock in a fast moving current, his fingers scramble at the surface but he's still slowly losing his grip and it's getting harder to hold on.

"Pax."

Amos. He wants to open his mouth, say it back, but his lips are so heavy. His jaw hasn't opened in a very long time and Pax isn't sure it can again.

He's losing control so fast.

"Just open your eyes, ‘kay?”

Amos sounds scared.

His voice is far away, as if he's speaking to Pax from down the street.

Paxton remembers getting knocked out one time, just for a few seconds but it was enough to send him tumbling to the alley floor. That one guy was there, big, too strong for his age, and he was rounding on Amos. "Pax, get up!" Amos had shouted and he'd sounded scared then.

But now he sounds more scared.

Pax listens again, hand laboriously curling into a fist at his side because if he has to, he'll protect Amos. Even here, two steps from dying on the couch in a shitty bar in a shitty part of nine, Pax will protect him.

"C’mon, this isn’t funny,” Amos says and Pax decides he never wants to hear that shake in his voice again.

He opens his eyes a little but it's too difficult to focus them. He sees the shape of what might be Amos over him, warm, his hand on his skin, burning, a tear of pain slips down Pax's cheek.

"Amos," he mumbles, "You're here?"

He's grateful to be held, grateful that it's him, it's his Amos.

It's so hard to see him, so hard to keep his eyes open. He lets them slide shut again and raises his hand to cup Amos' neck, pull him down close, safe. Keep him close and safe, close and safe always.

It's okay.

He's just coming home late, fresh stitches under his shirt but out of sight, Amos can't see them and if Paxton pretends they aren't there then they aren't.

His hand slides away, he can't keep it up there, it's so high up and it's so heavy and his arm shakes with the effort. It lands back on the booth cushion with a muffled thud and Pax sighs.

"Stay," he says.

Then sinks.

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

Paxton opens his eyes for the slightest of seconds and Amos jumps on it.

"I'm here." He says too fast, too panicked, it makes all the words bump into each other and come out jumbled, but "I'm here, see?"

He wipes away Paxton's tear without even meaning to. Because Pax doesn't cry. Amos isn't sure if he's ever seen him cry. But he winces at the little streak of red his finger leaves behind. It stands out like a stain and when Amos tries to wipe that away too it just gets worse.

He feels Paxton huff beneath him more than he hears it, then there's a warmth against the back of his neck and he's falling, falling forward, falling into Pax and his hands get stuck between them, all bloody and trapped. The smell of gunpowder hits him first, then the sweat and the smoke and the little hint of something underneath that he knows is just Pax. Because it's that little something that's still in the shirt he stole, even though it's faded and ratty and so big on him that it falls to his knees, it's home. And it hits him so suddenly then, that Pax is home and home is Pax, of course it is, and now his home is bleeding out against the leather of the booth seat and Amos can't do anything about it.

"Of course I'm here." Amos says into the crook of Paxton's neck.

Of course of course of course.

He caves into it easily, because he's scared, and he's tired, and maybe he just wants his best friend back, but it's more complicated than that.

Isn't is always?

If Amos tries hard enough, he can just imagine that they're back home under the quilt, with the shitty radiator and the too-loud coffee pot and the cat that he didn't really want but would put up with if it meant he could go back.

And then the hand holding him falls, and Amos looks up and Pax isn't moving anymore, he's just still and pale and

"Pax?"

"Amos-"

Steel.

"Pax?"

"Amos, he needs to go-"

"He's fine." Because Pax is always fine. He has to be fine. "He's fine, see?"

Then the sternest he's ever tried to be, he lifts both hands to straighten Pax's head out, puts his palms on either side to steady him, "Open your eyes." Amos says, like there's no room for argument.

He's demanding, he' the one giving out the orders this time, he's the one that can't make his hands stop shaking, he's the one that isn't okay. "Show them you're fine."

Then quieter, just for the two of them, "You can't leave." He jostles Paxton's head a little, just enough to try to wake him, "That's my trick."

But then the red from Amos' hands starts to shine through his fingers, sticking to Paxton's cheeks, so he scrambles back away and pushes against his stomach again. There's two matching handprints left behind, standing stark like facepaint when Pax's head lolls back over.

It's that dream all over again, where they're both standing in front of the water and there's a knife in Paxton's back and it drips black onto the sand.

Then there are arms around Amos' middle and a pressure pulling him away and it must activate some kind of fight or flight in him, because he latches onto Pax's jacket and digs his fingers into his shoulders and holds onto him like a starving man. The bar is suddenly ten times noisier than it was before, it keeps shifting like some kind of mirage, and Steel's voice is suddenly in his ear.

"Let Maria take care of it."

"I need to-"

"No."

Steel detaches Amos from Paxton, prying him away, pulling him up and against his chest and Amos suddenly feels so cold, even when he reaches back to push Steel away. Pax slumps over without the support and Amos cries out, but it gets lost in all the other sounds. Someone else starts to ease Pax out of the booth, lifting under his arms, then another comes to carry his legs and then they're leaving and Amos is still trying to kick and scratch Steel but it doesn't do anything.

"You freaking out isn't going to help." He says from behind him.

"Fuck off." Amos snaps back, and Steel's arms just wind around him tighter.

The door to the second floor swings shut behind the guys hauling Paxton.

"He needs me." Amos tries again.

I need him.

"You need to take a walk."

And then Steel is guiding them both towards the side door and Amos digs his heels into the floorboards as hard as he can. They've made a scene at this point. The people that didn't leave during the commotion are just staring, but Amos doesn't care anymore. He's vibrating from it, hands all stained, it's like suddenly waking up from deep sleep. He whirls on Steel once they're outside, but he just takes both of Amos's fists in his hands and uses the momentum to push him further down the alley.

The door slams shut behind him, and Amos only wastes a few seconds trying the handle.

He sprints around the building to the fire escape then, but the ladder is too high up for him to reach. He screams at it, calls Steel every fucked up name he knows. He picks up a rock and throws it at the metal, listens to it clang and then fall back down. He's about to consider just throwing himself against the brick wall when Rowan appears through the window, peeking over the sill with a finger to her lips. She reaches over to let the ladder down and Amos almost starts crying right there.

He trips his way up, stumbling over the grate and through the window and reaching out when Rowan tries to steady him. She tries to say something but he's already gone, running down the little hallway and crashing into the other end, half sliding against the wall where his hand leaves a blood smear on the paneling.

The door to his room is open and he barges in, panting. It feels like his heart is about to jump out of his chest, like his ribcage is turning inside out. There's Paxton lying on the unmade bed, stomach a big mess of red and Amos turns straight into the bathroom and throws up in the sink.

He leans against the doorframe and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and then he's stepping out again, moving, moving, moving, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other because if he doesn't then he'll just collapse. The distance from the bathroom to the bed has never felt this long before, it's like a chasm, it takes him three breaths to even take a step.

Steel isn't in the room but Maria is and Amos just stops at her elbow, watching the way she won't look at him.

He stares at the side of her face, because when he sees Pax out of the corner of his eye he starts heaving again. Maria's up to her elbows in blood and so are the guys that brought Pax up, but she's fiddling with something, leaning over Pax and then straightening back up, then doing it again.

"He's fine." Amos says.

Not quite a statement, not quite a question, not quite anything.

Everything narrows down to a two foot radius and Maria still doesn't look at him.

So "He's fine." Amos says again.

"Do you know his blood type?"

"Do I - what?"

Maria turns then, looks at Amos in a way he's never seen before.

"Do you know-" She says very carefully, "-his blood type?"

And Amos pauses for longer than he should.

That's something he should know right? They've lived with each other long enough, their jobs are dangerous enough. He knows every little thing about Paxton, from the way he takes his coffee, to the weird things he likes to ramble about in the middle of the night. He knows the year his father died, and he knows the year he first shot a gun. He knows how he always runs cold so Amos had tried to knit him a pair of socks one winter and even though one turned out way longer than the other and had two openings, Pax still wore them.

So, knowing his blood type should be easy. The gang probably knows it. That's something Tank would know and Amos would have to run all the way back to him to ask, but the way Maria is holding her breath makes it seem like they don't have that much time.

Amos feels his throat start to close up, and there's a sudden sting in the back of his eyes when he looks at the blood on Maria's hands and then follows it back to where Pax is breathing so shallowly. His whole stomach is doing loops even though there's nothing in it anymore and Amos turns back to Maria so slowly, so foggily, that it feels like he's moving through molasses.

"No." He tells her softly, and it breaks his heart a little.

"He's lost a lot of blood." Maria says, and she's not looking at Amos anymore.

"I know."

"He needs a transfusion."

"I know." But this time his voice breaks halfway through.

"I won't ask what happened-"

"I don't know-"

"You just stay here."

Then she's gone, and it's just Pax on the bed and someone standing over him with their hands pressed down and suddenly Amos is on the floor. It's like his knees just suddenly give out, losing tension when Maria passes by, and he stares at the edge of the bedspread and feels his nails drag against the wood floor. Amos curls his knees into himself, making himself small against the bedpost and reaching for the hand that Pax has dangling off the mattress.

It's more red than anything, Amos can barely even see his skin through it all, but he still takes it and squeezes as hard as he can and tries to ignore the way their palms stick together.

He's so tired, and the floor is uncomfortable, and eventually his hand starts to fall asleep, but he doesn't move. Not until Maria is back and she shoos him out of the way and he sits under the window instead. Someone reaches over and opens it eventually, because the smell of iron gets too overwhelming too fast and the breeze that comes in makes Amos shiver.

It feels like weeks when Maria finally crouches down in front of him, and he looks at her, dazed, until she's suddenly moving forward and her arms are around him and he just collapses. He lets himself be held and he cries into her shoulder until there's nothing left in him but dry hiccups and short breaths. He's not angry anymore, he's not even upset, he's just tired.

He's overwhelmed and numb at the same time, moving on auto-pilot because he can't quite force his lungs to work properly on his own.

But he's up eventually, when Maria is gone and Amos can't feel his fingertips anymore. He goes to the bed blindly and there's blood on the sheets, but he crawls in anyways, pressing his forehead against Pax's bare shoulder. There's still a tremor in his chest, like an off-tick in a clock, and he squeezes his eyes shut and finds Paxton's hand again without looking.

If he holds on to him, he won't lose him. He can't leave.

"Idiot." He says accusingly to the empty room.

And the silence sends him to sleep.

[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 comes to slowly, the rough pads of his fingers catching on cotton sheets.

Amos he says, the lights. The words don't form, the stomach isn't there. Paxton shudders, tries to push air out his lungs and fails–

it's so much harder than it was before.

Someone lifts him, pain flows from his side in mountain run-off, tumbling down the sides of him, icy-cold. He wants to scream with it, to hold the pain in his jaw and hide it, but he isn't attached anymore.

When he looks down, he is separate. There is Amos, the top of his head, his hands on his skin, no, that was before. Now there's the bed, there's the cotton, there's the sheets, there's the needle and the thread. They sew him shut like that will solve it.

But he's back in the booth, blood-letting, Amos' hands on his cheeks, his voice in his ear, I'm here, of course I'm here.

Pax isn't. He's there in the booth but also not, fingers soaked with his own blood, cold sweat trickling down the back of his neck but then he's back at the hide out playing poker and stealing Erika's smoke, but he's not, he's being carried up the stairs and each step is agonizing but he's not, he's laying on a bed, hands pressed down on his open wound and unfamiliar faces all around and

Amos isn't here.

Pax is.

Where are you, he asks.

There's a light, shining so brightly above his head that it makes it hard to see but then there's Amos, climbing through the window and he squints, suddenly uncertain. He's on the bed but he's not because he's also in the bathroom reaching out to hold Amos' hair back as he vomits.

And he forgets about his body.

Forgets about the pain.

Pax thought that all this would be scarier, that he'd be sad but he isn't. There's a softness blooming at his centre, an acceptance he didn't know that he had. The truth is, he's been hurting so badly for weeks now, decaying from the inside out, nail beds chipped and bleeding.

It's just nice here, under the light, eyes on Amos, eyes on himself, fingers on cotton, needle in skin, then out, then in, then nothing then

they shift him, his hand falls because Paxton can't lift it. Amos talks to a lady but Pax can't hear what they're talking about and for a moment, he's staring up at the light from the bed, cotton under his fingers, fire burning, brimming, running over his skin, charring–

Amos is falling to his knees, the needle and thread is gone and Pax sits beside Amos in the dark beside the bed, fingers running through his hair carefully, doing nothing at all. Maybe this is just what death is, maybe he gets to stay here forever, being with Amos until Amos comes with him.

He's always been good at that, always been so good at chasing Amos to wherever he runs to.

Amos takes Paxton's hand that's hanging off the bed and Pax blinks, flexing his hand in front of his face, feeling the places where Amos' skin presses against his from his spot beside him on the floor.

Detached, he's supposed to be detached, but Amos' hand places him back down quickly and suddenly he feels it again, the cotton beneath his palm on his left hand and Amos in his right, tethering him down like an anchor in a rough sea.

Amos, he tells him, Amos, I'm happy I'm happy, I can go, it's enough I don't want you to be sad it's enough it's enough it's enough.

And the room is darkening, the light above dimming and Amos' hand is so warm and holds on so tightly that for a long time it's all Paxton can feel.

He's so tired, tears forming at the back of his eyes, exhaustion pulling him down, Paxton stands up, leaving Amos alone on the floor and then he lays down on the bed, settling into his skin in the same way a snake might shed it.

Sensation moves through him and the dark eats at the corner of his vision, at the floor, at the window, at the people standing around his body in the tiny room and Pax lets it.

The pain starts slow at first, eating and eating and eating and he's so heavy and the room is black and he can't see, his eyes are shut and the only thing he wants to feel is Amos' hand in his, holding him in place.

But then his hand slips away.

All there is, is the pain.

And then the dark eats Paxton too.





He comes to slowly.

Sound is first, the lack of it, then the sound of a bird on the windowsill. Paxton's brow furrows. He forgot to close the window again, Amos is going to be annoyed. Then he remembers that Amos is gone, left him weeks ago.

No.

Paxton found him.

Wait.

Weight on his shoulder, Pax' brow furrows, his thoughts sluggish and half-empty. He'd stayed out too late again last night, he remembers the fifth beer and then nothing past that. Urgency filters back in but Paxton can't remember what was so important.

Scent is next.

Iron, thick and heavy, it's blood. Pax must have gotten wasted last night and gotten in a fight. No, wrong, wait.

Amos.

Feeling third.

His head on a pillow, cool air on bare shoulders, skin against skin. There's a slowness in his veins, a dull thudding of pain near his waist masked by morphine.

Pax opens his eyes slowly to a weak, grey morning light pushing through the open window and he blinks, then furrows his brow. The ceiling isn't his, wood painted white and too low, it's wrong. He tries to shift his head, to look for more clues, but his body reacts slowly to his commands and his thoughts drip slower, percolating and disappearing like steam.

He can't remember what happened between that last beer and waking up here, body burning.

He's sick, sweat on his forehead, his stomach hurts, the light is too bright, he squeezes his eyes shut.

And there's that weight on his shoulder.

His mouth is so dry he could choke and Paxton shifts slightly, the movement sending spikes of pain through him despite the painkillers. A soft cry leaves his lips and he opens his eyes, confused tears muddling his view of the ceiling.

Last night, something happened last night and he has moments to figure it out before whoever's sleeping on his shoulder wakes up too. Then a familiar scent makes it through the overwhelming smell of his own blood and Pax's brow smoothes. "Amos," he whispers.

He knows that, even like this, lost and in pain, he knows him.

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

The sounds of the District start to filter through slowly. Someone calls out from a street corner. A door gets slammed shut. Amos' brow furrows at the breeze that drifts in through the window and he tries to burrow himself closer to the warmth of the bed.

He always shuts the window at night, to keep out the noise and the light and the cold because he likes to sleep in more often at night. He always shuts the window at night because he grew up in gang territory and it always just seemed like common sense. And if Amos forgot, then Pax would usually remember. Pax would be the last one home so he'd lock the door and close the window while Amos pretended to be asleep, pretended not to wait up for him.

Amos groans at the chill that cuts through him again and reaches to pull the blankets up higher but his hand is trapped, and when he tries to tell it to move it just raises up and then falls back down again, tethered to something. He's disoriented enough not to question it. His body feels heavy, like he's either slept for too long or not long enough. His nose is cold but one of his hands is warm and his arm feels like it's sticking to something. He pushes his face further into the pillow, but then the pillow shifts, and Amos finally stills.

He blinks his eyes open slowly, and it takes him a moment to realize what he's looking at. There's a bare shoulder in front of him, his face is lying half on a bicep and there's an arm lying parallel to his, all tangled up. He stares at it blankly.

Then he follows it up, over a familiar shoulder to a familiar jaw and Pax is already looking at him with those familiar eyes and Amos feels like he suddenly can't move again.

"Hi." He says quietly, and then almost smacks himself.

He doesn't know what to say, it's like the anger's all been bled out of him and smeared onto the sheets. Everything comes back at once and it hits him like a truck. Pax, the bar, the jacket, Pax, the blood, the window, Pax.

Amos glances at the bandages around Pax's morse without even meaning to, then he looks back at Pax guilty and tries not to look at anything else.

He focuses on the heat from Paxton's body first, because that's the first weird thing. That's something he can latch on to. Because Pax always runs cold. It's Amos who's the furnace and who lies in the sun without feeling a difference. But the longer Amos lies there, the warmer his skin feels, the more uncomfortable it gets, his face starts to burn where it touches Pax's shoulder and then he realizes that his face is still touching Pax's shoulder and he pulls back, warm for an entirely different reason, Paxton's feverish and Amos is having a crisis and this isn't the time.

Amos pulls away completely, suddenly much more awake, he untangles his hand and sits up and perches on the edge of the bed, wincing at the slide of his shoes, still on his feet.

"Sorry." He says, even quieter then before, because he's sure that waking up to your ex-best friend trying to cuddle after you've been stabbed isn't a great way to start the morning.

Any shred of confidence from the night before his gone now. Amos had a grocery list of things to say then, he was ready to give Paxton a piece of his mind, he really was, but it all got wiped clean as soon as Pax gave him that look. He feels like a different person now. Like someone took his insides and shook them up and then tried to force them back.

But Amos is starting to think that may just be an occupational hazard. He looks at Pax and wants to run as far as he can. He looks at Pax and wants to grab him and never let go. The adrenaline's like a coin flip. It gives him whiplash.

There's a glass of water and a handful of painkillers on the nightstand and Amos silently thanks Maria, wherever she is. He leans away from the bed to grab them, then back again to force them into Paxton's hands. It takes a while for him to get a grip, and even then Amos has to tilt the glass for him once he's propped up. He focuses on a spot on the bedspread while he does it, avoids the column of Paxton's throat and the bruise stuck to his collarbone.

They're both covered in so much blood now that it's going to be a sanitary issue soon. Amos will have to throw out those sheets, because there's no way the stains are coming out.

"Easy, easy." Amos repeats when Paxton's whole body seems to protest lying against the headboard. He finds the cleanest corner of the sheet he can and uses it to dab at Pax's forehead. He holds the fabric tight in his hand and uses it as an excuse to avoid Paxton's eyes.

"They had to give you blood." He says when the silence gets to be too much, "No one knew your blood type, so Maria had to guess."

I didn't know your blood type, is what he means, because it's such a small little thing, but it still picks at him. The most subtle bit of annoyance comes back, just enough for him to grind his teeth and for his jaw to click.

"Looks like she guessed right."

[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."

Amos is slow to wake but he always has been. Even when Paxton was home later he was always up before him. "It's the ghosts," Pax would joke, "They wake me up with the sun."

Really it was just the dreams but mostly the memories, the running through endless allies, feet wet and breathing short, the hairs on his neck standing up. It's always been easier for him to rest, propped up against the wall at the end of the bed, eyes shut, a cigarette in his lips. It's nice to smoke himself out, a kindness to die slowly in that way.

Amos shifts beside him and his movement hurts Paxton, every tug, every shift sends pain through him but he just squints at the ceiling, silent. It's easy to burn up from the inside out, he's done it so many times. Achingly slow, he turns his head to watch Amos came to life for the morning. He's always been bad at mornings, always stumbled through them while Pax was patient.

When his eyes open and lock onto his, Pax just lays there, silent, staring, waiting. It's been so long since he saw him, long since the last time when Paxton had told him he loved him and then Amos had been gone in the morning. With cheeks already rosy from fever, it's almost too hard to catch the blush that blooms on Paxton's cheeks when Amos says a simple, "hi."

But the tear trickling down his cheek almost immediately is right there and frustratingly, Paxton can't even lift his hand to wipe it away. His body is deadweight, his thoughts difficult to keep in line, as if someone has muffled them.

"Hey," he manages back, but it isn't enough, he knows that.

"Sorry, I-" he tries but his tongue stalls when Amos glances down the bed at something. Paxton's body, detached and aching so close to him.

The room seems to spin a little, the light dizzying to look at, so he shuts his eyes briefly focusing instead on Amos skin touching his. His left arm is tangled up with his and there's a sandy feeling in his shoulder from Amos cutting off the blood flow by laying on it. Pax doesn't mind that, feels kind of good actually, feels kind of right, like regular. Except one wrong thing is that Amos' skin is freezing cold.

But Pax is always the cold one.

Am I dying?

He wants to ask but maybe he shouldn't.

Amos is pulling away from him anyway and suddenly all that heat is gone. Pax tries to reach for him but he's too far away and his hand falls onto the bed, palm open.

"Sorry," Amos says and Paxton winces the littlest bit. It's hard to remember what's going on, all he can think of is how when he told him that he loved him, Amos was gone the next morning. His cheeks burn, embarrassment tugs at him through the thick haze of morphling so Paxton closes his hand into a fist and drags it back.

pathetic. pathetic. pathetic.

Then Amos is passing him a glass of water and more painkillers and Paxton tries to hold onto them, he really does, but the pill falls on his chest and then the glass– his hand is too weak to hold it. He furrows his brow, too stubborn to ask for help until Amos wraps his hand over his. Pax stills for a moment, as if he's just gearing himself up to sit up but it's really because Amos' palm against the back of his hand is all he can think about.

He's so cold.

Or maybe Pax is just too hot.

"Thanks," he mutters and he was so thirsty that it didn't matter a second ago that Amos wouldn't look at him, but now it does.

His side burns from the way his torso is bent and the pain of it brings fresh tears to his eyes. "I can't–" he tries and then grimaces from the way it comes out like a whimper.

But then there's a cloth on his forehead and Amos is leaning in close again and it's cold but he's warm. It feels awkward laying there so quiet, seeing the way that his blood stains Amos' shirt and there's red on his neck too, on his hands, his arms.

Mine.

Pax licks dry, cracked lips, opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out as Amos leans over him. He sees the way Amos' mouth is turned down and the shake in his hands.

Paxton thinks about the alleyway and the night he ruined everything between them and thinks about how Amos must hate him for that. They used to be best friends until Pax kissed him, there's no way Amos doesn't.

"O positive," he whispers, "For next time."

His eyes are trained on the ceiling now so he doesn't have to look at Amos not looking at him anymore. It's quiet still, wherever they are, no one else seems to be awake yet. Pax gazes out the window, eyes falling on the dingy building across the street. He remembers it from a few weeks back when he found Amos before.

"We in the bar?" he asks like he doesn't know.

Like he didn't come looking for Amos last week. There's shame there, lain out shallow in the reeds between his words and Pax turns to look at the other wall. Speaking is easier than thinking, but both are still hard, like moving through thick fog.

"I shouldn't have come here," he says, "I know that, this wasn't right, I'm not... I'm not right, you don't want–."

He bites his tongue. That still hurts but that doesn't mean Pax can just barge into his life like this. He pushes at the mattress, sliding up to sit. White streaks across his vision, and he shudders, pausing for a moment before trying to move again. "I'll just, fuck, I'll just get outta here, gotta make sure the others know I'm good anyway."

Then Amos is pushing him back down, so gently but Paxton is too weak to fight him. Last night's still hazy, he remembers poker and Tank's hand on his shoulder, the scent of gunpowder, blood on Tank's shirt, then cobblestones.

He doesn't even know who else is hurt yet. Amos tries to pull back again but Paxton catches his wrist.

"Something happened last night, Ams," he says, "Something bad, I-I can't remember."

[tick 12a / calla]

A    M    O    S

"For next time." Amos repeats, tone heavy instead of incredulous, a little more unsteady than usual.

"I thought I told you no more bar fights."

But the words feel all wrong, because maybe once upon a time Pax had come home with one too many bruises one too many times, and so Amos had locked himself in the bathroom with the first aid kit until Pax agreed to stop going out and doing whatever he was doing. It was stupid, because Pax needed the bandages and the antiseptic that Amos had hidden himself away with, but that kind of melodrama, that kind of tantrum, that's the only way Amos's ever known to get his way.

Not that it matters anymore, because Pax isn't under his jurisdiction anymore, and if Amos locked himself in the bathroom with the pain killers now then Pax could just get up and walk away and Amos would have to let him.

"We in the bar?" Pax asks the silence, and Amos is surprised that he could even recognize the place that he'd stumbled into last night.

"Upstairs."

My room.

"You scared a lot of people last night."

You scared me last night.

He's not trying to make Pax feel guilty about that. Not on purpose. He aches like he's just been the one stabbed and he doesn't know why. There's a sharp pain across his shoulders from sitting so tensely. He doesn't know what happened downstairs after they hauled Pax away. He doesn't know if Rowan cleaned up the blood before close or left it for whoever was on the morning shift.

"I shouldn't have come here-"

"You probably shouldn't have."

Because that's okay. It's okay to admit that. Amos can say things like that now without wincing at the feeling in his chest and the look on Paxton's face. But it's like Pax doesn't hear him, he keeps going on, a little like runaway freight car. Amos wondered if he hit his head sometime between the booth and the bed. He doesn't know how to check for a concussion let alone how to treat one.

His neck is starting to itch where the blood's long gone tacky, and his shirt is sticking to him in different places. Amos is pretty sure it's in his hair now too, because he'd had his face shoved into Paxton's shoulder which means his head was near up against his chest where all the blood streaked up to. Amos wonders if that'll stain him like it did the sheets, if his hair will turn pink next time he washes it.

Pax would probably laugh at that.

His face is still warm from where it was pressed against his skin.

He's still hyperaware of the way Pax just exists there. Even sitting a body's width away, Amos can feel every breath he takes and he can hear the rattle of his chest when the air flows too shallowly. He counts the seconds between the inhales and uses the timing to force the furrow out of his brow.

Call it a habit - there's a reason why he could never sleep until Pax was back home.

The sheet's all bunched up between them now and Amos smooths it out subconsciously. Paxton's fringe is in his eyes again and Amos has to physically wind his fingers together to stop himself from fixing it.

The sun starts to peak in through the window, catching on the very edge of Pax's face, a little like the way the moon waxes over a handful nights.

Amos feels like he's about to combust.

The room goes awkwardly quiet again, both of them studying different spots of the wall, and Paxton holds his wrist with a strength that a man who almost bled out shouldn't have. Or maybe Amos is just suddenly very weak. It's different in the moment. There'd been something he'd wanted to say to Paxton last night, something harsh, something he'd probably regret, but he can't put his finger on it now. The past month feels like a year.

"Someone should tell Tank you're okay," But Amos doesn't quite look up when he says it, he picks at where the blood's flaking off his palm. He's not agreeing with Pax, they're not there yet, they probably won't be again, it stings, "He's probably worried."

He doesn't want to go back, but he would. He would do that for Pax. It'd be his last big hurrah of repayment before they're even and they part ways for good and they never see each other again. Because why else would Paxton have shown up here? For a casual visit?

He's not the type.

Amos can be the messenger one last time, one last visit into the belly of the beast.

It's not like he's forgotten the way.

"You're in no shape to walk." He says, before he even really catches himself. "I can go."

[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."

I shouldn't have come here-

You probably shouldn't have.

That doesn't sting like it should. It just hits him dully, like another stone against a brick wall. There's a feeling of loss below the surface but it's hard to think about like this. All of that feeling, that pain he was feeling only minutes ago is less.

The fog settles thick.

He shouldn't have come here but there was nowhere else to go, there was nowhere else to go because–

because why?

He furrows his brow and doesn't let go of Amos' wrist, as if it's the very last safety line he has left. There's the scent of smoke on his shirt, he remembers the cigarette with Erika. He'd shared one with her and she'd been looking at him like– like he was broken.

He was.

Pax loosens his grip a little.

He doesn't have any right to be here. He drops Amos' wrist and lets his hand fall into his lap again, empty. He thinks about that guy he saw him with at the bar the other night and wonders for a moment what he's screwing up just by being here.

The sheets are bunched between them, the linen soggy still from Paxton's blood. There'd be no getting the stains out of them, just another thing Paxton has ruined for Amos. That sense of loss flows in deeper, all things he used to just take for granted about their friendship seem like trespasses now.

Heat pools in the back of his eyes so he squeezes them shut. He's just tired, it just hurts, it isn't that again, the bad feeling. Paxton isn't like that anyway, he's strong. Losing Amos, it's just a new chapter. He punches the blanket up in his fists, squeezing as hard as he can.

"Someone should tell Tank you're okay, he's probably worried."

"Yeah I-"

Tank's hand on his shoulder.

Pax opens his eyes.

A knife in Tank's hand but Paxton isn't fast enough.

His shoulders curve inwards, his arms crossing his chest to hold himself, self-soothing in a way he hasn't done since he was just a little kid. Amos is still talking but his words come through too slow, as if they have to travel a long way.

The heat comes back.

The knife goes in and it goes out, he flinches and puts his hand over the stitched up wound, pressing down gently. He's breathing faster, that hurts too but he can't stop it. He's thinking about the alley wall, how he wanted to just rest there, how he hid from a peacekeeper and waited to be found.

Paxton made it, all the way across the territory, just because he had to tell Amos something.

"No," he whispers after a moment, "There's no going back there."

This wasn't a problem last night. When Paxton was bleeding out on the pavement, when the bar lights were so far away in the distance and the only thing he could think of was finding Amos, he was certain he was going to die anyway. It didn't matter to him if that was cold and alone somewhere in some shitty alley. The gang doesn't want him anymore, Amos doesn't want him either.

"That's why I came here for, to warn you, they're gonna come for you, I'm sorry, you have to go."

Pax raises a hand and holds it over his eyes, turning away from Amos as he does so. He can't keep the tears back anymore. He's lost absolutely everything and he doesn't want Amos to see him like this, to lay that guilt on his shoulders. Pax could have done things differently, could have explained that Amos had just left him because he kissed him, it wasn't treason.

But Paxton was too scared to say that because maybe that would have put him here anyway.

"You should have just let me die," he says with a sob.

It would have been easier than all this.