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When the smoke clears, it's the chill that leaks from the gaping hole in the elevator shaft, the chill of the dead, he's sure, that finally gets William stumbling to his feet. It's almost laughable, sneakers scuffing against laminated concrete as they struggle to support the weight of a second body. Almost laughable, that all of his limbs are wracked with tremors so severe that he trips with every other step like he's some kind of newborn animal. It's almost laughable. Almost.
It takes only two steps under the added weight of Xavier's body for him to keel over again, knees scraping against a now-exposed collection of screws. The world is moving painfully slowly, tipping in ways that it definitely shouldn't be, and after he meets the ground, it's enough for him to finally consider just laying down and seeping into the floor for the rest of his life.
Enough for him to finally consider just letting the rest of his body rot. For good, this time.
He gets up anyways. He gets up anyways because for all, all that he is, William Wisp is nothing if not a well-oiled fucking machine. And machine he is, even as the blood pumping through his veins works to warm fingers that have long since become numb, even as his heart thuds along at a rate that should not be acceptable. William is still machine. Not quite close enough to human, alive, well, to be anything more, but unwilling to surrender the scraps of humanity that still cling to his insides, tapping along to a sickening imitation of a drumbeat in his chest. And so he has resigned himself, rather officially, to a sum of cogs and frayed electrical wiring, to living as though he is the Frankstein-esque result of an electrician not-yet-out of trade school.
William Wisp is a goddamn machine. End of story.
He gets up. He stumbles and creaks and simmers and groans but he does not once collapse onto the ground, retching until his stomach makes peace with the rest of his body, like he so desperately wishes he could.
And it's, like, really, really okay. Because William is still standing, and David's tinny voice is walking him through each corridor, and the limp form cradled in his arms is not dead, not dead, not dead.
One of the last clear memories he has is of the shallow rise and fall of X's chest as he adjusts his hold on the vigilante.
And then, after he reaches David or sometime shortly before, William can't seem to recall specifics anymore. Everything is graciously foggy, though he remembers setting Xavier's body down atop a metal table, and he remembers turning away in disgust as David placed a gas mask over his face. Remembers his older brother grimacing before dusting his hands off against his suit pants with a shrug and a sigh. Business is business, he'd said, and it made the nausea crawling up William's throat all the more debilitating.
'The only good thing to come out of Deadwood.' William's head spins to the rhythm of heavy footfall.
He remembers David offering to call him a cab. He knows he must have waved the man off, because he now stands, lips parted slightly, on the sidewalk in front of BellTech. He doesn't remember how he got here. God, he doesn't even remember if he had stayed long enough to ask what David would do with them. He can't recall whether Xavier's chest still rose in soft, spluttering breaths atop the table he had been laid upon. Can't remember if the bleeding had stopped. Can't remember if Xavier himself had stopped.
And the fact that he doesn't, can't, remember is a fresh kind of terrifying all on its own. Because William doesn't forget like this unless something supremely bad is about to happen. Something that he usually prefers to wait out behind a locked bathroom door, hand toying with a cigarette he'll never actually light, until his insides right themselves again.
A tension nestles itself between his shoulder blades, its hold wrathful and unforgiving as he forces himself to straighten from his slouch. Despite the cold, clear air, despite the lack of physical activity, despite, despite, despite, William finds himself heaving again. He finds himself hauling in choked gasp after choked gasp before he can wrestle the feeling back into his body.
He must look absolutely fucking insane, he realizes, standing all disheveled and broken-up on the pavement. His heart pounds steadily along, every pump reminding him of the approaching migraine that lingers in the back of his head. He's taken to rocking on his heels, body screaming when he overextends the movement just a little too far. He's coated in soot and debris, hands sticky with things he doesn't want to imagine.
He's been standing still for too long. Like a sitting duck. The sentiment of it all stirs the disgust already settling in his chest, because he needs to be better than this.
He knows, somewhere distantly, that the few unlucky people still out at this hour can see him, rooted in place under a streetlight, panting and covered in darkening stains. The gas mask is still clutched in his hand. He hasn't had the presence of mind to bother with stashing it away somewhere. It's in a sheer streak of luck that the ax is absent from his side.
But honestly? William feels very, very far away from that now. He keeps blinking, and his body keeps moving, and that's generally to be expected of him, so it counts for something. He keeps taking unsteady steps, scanning the city block with a sense of terror that he only barely outpaces. But he does outpace it, and that's good, so he's good, and he really just needs to figure out where to go from here.
He spies Vyncent's jacket hung on the corner of a hotel's luggage cart. The relief that floods through him is so potent that he's sure the effects are visible to the collection of staring pedestrians that have gathered nearby, body collapsing inwards with a sigh that is unfathomably grateful. After that, it doesn't take much coaxing to get him off of the sidewalk. Before he can think it over too carefully, he's darting across the street. Cars honk as they swerve around his body. His brain feels all soupy, so it doesn't really, technically matter, but all he wants them to do is leave him be. He knows where he is. He's in the middle of the fucking street, dodging potholes and several lanes of traffic, below the low hum of a second, hovering roadway that spans the city. He knows what he's doing. He knows how to do his job. He knows how to do it well.
He flips a bony middle finger at a particularly shrill driver, jacket sticking reluctantly to his wrist as the motion tugs it down his forearm.
He doesn't want to even begin to guess what has saturated his sleeves so thoroughly for it to do so.
None of this feels real.
The sound of yelling, the fists waving out of open windows, headlights that are nothing short of cornea-scorching, blur into white noise all the same.
William, dignified as ever, nearly receives a mouthful of pavement when he finally meets the sidewalk again. The sensation of falling is only countered by his almost primal need to stay upright, to find his team, to make everything make sense again. He plants his feet firmly on the ground, feeling a bit petulant and more than a bit determined to stow away any remaining memories of Deadwood. He wills himself to stay standing, to stay as present as he can wrestle out of his half-conscious state. The breathless coughs, the mindless panic, he needs to be better than all of it. He's William Wisp, he's a Prime fucking Defender, and he forges on towards glass double doors with only a hint of a grimace left still flickering across his face.
Silently, he's glad that Vyncent thinks him redeemable enough to leave an indicator of his location behind. More shamefully, something inside of him glows at the idea that Vyncent knew him well enough to leave a trail like that in the first place, to trust him to piece everything together, to notice the finer details. Eager to stifle both feelings, he pushes the thought somewhere deep inside his gut. He storms through the entryway and into the lobby with considerably more force than necessary, abandoned jacket now tight within his grip.
The place is ridiculously bright, especially for how late it's become, and every surface is bathed in an ugly fluorescence. It's also just massive, with ceilings that dome out above his head several stories up. Everything in sight is tacky and huge, and William hates it the moment he walks in. The lighting does pitifully little for the rising migraine that's still creeping up on him.
It's in a second, very twisted instance of luck that William finds himself alone on the ground floor, clerk nowhere in sight. What's left behind in their absence is the kind of quiet that is deafening. As hard as he strains, he can't even pick out a single, twangy string of lobby music, not a single conversation seeping through thin walls as he stands, feeling incredibly small on the worn carpet. He pretends that the silence doesn't worsen the feeling of cotton stuffed to the brim inside his head, pretends that it doesn't crush him, doesn’t send him reeling back into hazy, recent excuses for memories. He won't let it come to that.
He creeps over to the desk, leaning into the shadows cast by failing streetlights that seep through the windows, and peers over the side. It's not hard to identify the room number that Vyncent must have checked in under; though William doubts that, given Vyncent's particular and rather gruesome history with banking, anything short of the phrase 'conned his way inside under' would be applicable.
He steals a keycard. Out of anything, this is what brings the guilt back, rushing into place again like undammed water. Really though, it doesn't matter. William is still floating. He's floating, and it doesn't matter anymore.
He's floating past the pool, past the breakfast bar, the stench of chlorine and orange juice and stale bread coming just short of truly unbearable.
He's floating up an unsteady staircase, and privately, he thinks that he might've really started to crack if he had to look at an elevator for too long.
And then he's floating down a hallway, and floating through a doorframe, and he's still floating as Vyncent bars him from moving further into the room, one arm planted firmly against the wall.
William can spot Tide from where he stands, laid out on the bed with an off-white comforter pulled to his chin, limbs splayed out across the mattress in a way that's only a little awkward. He looks… disturbingly peaceful. It's almost enough to stir feeling back into his hands.
Vyncent moves to close the door behind him while William avoids eye contact, and it's so, so okay. He stifles the way his breath hitches and flutters with a grace that he finds he is otherwise lacking today.
"What the hell was that?" And the question is so blunt, so immediate, that it startles a giggle out of the hollow of William's chest. He registers the crease between Vyncent's brows, the way it deepens and indents his forehead like a chasm. William forces his eyes to tear away from the face that stares down at him expectantly. He swallows the meaningless giggles. It's okay. They're okay. It's-
"I mean. That's not- that's not like you, man. And I've been trying so hard to make sense of whatever just happened out there, and I can't. I really, really can't. I need you to tell me, Will. I need you to tell me what the hell is going on, and I need it to happen before Dakota walks into the middle of this utter fucking shitshow. Because this has gone so, so far beyond anything I can deal with, and I don't know how to make sense of any of it, and I need- I need you to see how fucked up it's all gotten," Vyncent pleads, voice tight. He scrubs a hand across his face as he moves to sit on the edge of the bed, looking up with an expression that narrowly dodges being true desperation. For a moment, the only thing William can manage in return is the weak toss of a lost jacket back to its owner.
It takes him more time than he'd like to admit to gather anything coherent to say. "I couldn't just let it go like that," He starts, and really, isn't it telling that he can't stop himself once he gets going? "Couldn't let him tear them apart, couldn't let it all just fizzle out, as if it meant nothing. It's not- there wasn't a good choice, but there was a better one. We could be saving, what? Thousands of people, hundreds of thousands?" William pauses, scanning Vyncent's features for anything, anything at all. He gets a resounding nothing, save for the headache steadily building in the back of his skull.
"It's- there were just decisions, I had to make one and I did what I thought was right in the moment. Fuck, I just- I know, I know it wasn't good, doesn't make me good, but I can't- I-"
"It's beyond 'good' and 'bad', man. This isn't right, and you fucking know it."
The retort comes sharp, it stings his skin. Vyncent's voice is noticeably just a little too breathless, his face flushed, his eyes narrowed and dark. He bores holes into William's empty chest like it's what he was born to do. The scrutiny does nothing but fuel his rising defensiveness.
"We aren't heroes anymore, Vyncent. I couldn't just let all those people die, man. Just think about how many lives we've just saved, how many centuries we've advanced medicine by, in just a- just one night. Everything, everything that- that Alan could teach us is within reach. This wasn't a good answer, but it is the answer, and I swear to God, I'm going to make this right. I just need some time."
It's here that William can feel himself begin to dissolve. Can feel his voice quiver with something that is too close to grief or madness or both for comfort. Can feel the glazed distance that creeps over his eyes. Machine. Machine. Machine. He will power through this conversation, take a cold shower, and lay awake in his bed until the overexertion drags him under into fitful sleep. He is more than a pile of junkyard scrap, more than the unfortunately inhabited corpse of a dead boy, and he has some fucking work to do.
The sound of Vyncent's reply echoes inside of his skull all the same. "How the hell can you make this right?" Vyncent laughs bitterly, as if the concept alone is enough to stand in for a punchline. He stands back up again, too, which might be even worse, and he jabs a finger towards William's chest. "God, what is Dakota going to think? Are you just going to lie to him? Build up your own little world, where you and I are the only ones who are allowed to bear the weight of your horrible fucking decisions?"
"I just need some time," is all that William can say, tightening his fists' hold against his jeans in the hopes that they stop shaking so violently. Vyncent sighs, world-weary and still furious, but he steps aside. It’s a silent permission, and it makes William’s heart hurt in a way he doesn't care to quantify. He holds his breath so that his chest can’t quiver and his throat can’t choke him out. He just needs some time to make it all okay again. He’s so tired. He just needs some time.
William Wisp is still a machine, however foggy his world has become, however sick and horrified and anything else he can feel about today.
William Wisp is still a machine, and so he dumps what's left of his bag on the dresser and silently excuses himself to shower. He watches the blood on his skin swirl down the drain, watches the ash and smoke and tiny metal shards fall away from his body. He feels the chill of the water against his back.
The feeling is new, but the cold is not. He doesn't remember getting out.
He doesn't remember dressing, either, but he had to have at some point, because now he's fully clothed and clutching the sink like it's the last thing between him and a third, unceremonious descent into the spirit world. The mirror has long since cleared, condensation barely clinging to its edges.
He's in Vyncent's clothes. They're far baggier on him than they are on the other boy, which can be attributed to the several inches between them, but he doesn't remember Vyncent leaving them for him.
But it's okay, really. He very pointedly does not look at the pile of black fabric slumped on the floor near the door. He contemplates burning the thing, if only for a moment or two.
He doesn't, and he's wrapped in the soft cotton of one of Vyncent's shitty t-shirts, and it's all fine and cool and good and everything else a thing can be.
Instead, he focuses on prying himself apart in the mirror. Honestly, it's a poor alternative, but William can not, will not leave this place until he knows where, exactly, it went wrong. So he itemizes. It's one of the things he's good at, maybe the only thing, and it's the only way he knows how to understand.
He picks apart every inch of exposed, pale skin, every freckle and acne scar and microexpression. He knows it's there, somewhere. It has to be. He knows that whatever's wrong with him, all twisted and sick, is lurking in plain sight. The monsters under your bed always look the way they are supposed to. William stamps the idea that perhaps he is a more insidious kind of creature down firmly. Dressed in a human's skin, humming machinery hidden under layers of something horrifyingly fake. It's the correct conclusion, the only reasonable one, but William feels so very far away from anything resembling reasonable right now. He continues his assessment with a tightened jaw, teeth ground together with a frenzied kind of fury.
He settles on something in the eyes. Something not quite right. Something to scream it all to the world, confirm their worst fears, lay him bare. Something to scare them when the nightlight gets switched off.
They're a rich brown still, his eyes, just as they had been back in Deadwood. But there's something off about them, there has to be, because when he looks at himself he can't see anything left in there. Maybe it's the way the light shines off of them, the way his gaunt face frames the sockets, he doesn't know yet, but there is something very wrong with them. There has to be. How else can he explain it all, what he so intimately knows but no one else seems to see? How else can he prove to them that he's nothing more than a rotting body on borrowed time?
He knows now. He just hopes that whatever happens when he can show them, really show them, is quick. He wishes for mercy. He does not deserve it.
Somewhere along the line, he's started to grasp the sink again. If he was any stronger, William is fairly certain the porcelain would have begun to crack under his grip. But he isn't stronger, and that's fine, so he's fine right now.
His chest heaves like he still needs air to keep himself upright. It's doing a pretty convincing job, too, because his vision has started to turn all spotty and black around the edges. His head hurts. His heart hurts. He doesn't know why it hurts so much. Fuck, when did it start to hurt this much?
When the pain is enough to bring him to his knees, William almost makes a dash for the first-aid kit that he knows is stuffed somewhere in the peeling, painted cupboards. It only makes sense - he’s hurt, so he needs to mend whatever part of him is bruised or bleeding or not quite whole. It’s only instinct, only a practiced routine, one that W.A.T.C.H. had nailed into the heads of each trainee before they so much as glanced in the direction of field work. Something else, something louder, in his body screams out that it would be better if he just let it all pass. Let it work its way through him until he feels better or nothing at all. He finds that making peace with it helps ease him into a more painless haze. It makes the gripping panic ease its hold on him ever so slightly. Or maybe he's just dying again. Who can say, really?
When the sound of Vyncent's quiet shuffling filters through the wall, he attempts to quiet the whimpers that escape his lips. He doesn't deserve this. He doesn't. Vyncent is good. Good in a way that William doesn't know how to be. Not faultless, certainly, but truly, wholly good.
It's one of the only thoughts he can cling onto amidst the dizziness that tears the remnants of his body apart.
He's almost done, he thinks, when the pounding at the door shakes the floor his head has come to rest upon. Shit.
"Shit! William, open the fucking door before I- no, wait. Fuck. Okay." The voice pauses, and William feels his heart pause with it. "Whatever. Open up, asshole, or I swear to God, I'll kick this thing off its hinges."
Vyncent's at the door, and he's scratching viciously at the thing like he's a dog that's been left alone for a little too long. William tries to respond, to affirm that he'll 'just be five more minutes!' He does, really. Machine, and all. That's how it is, how it needs to be.
All that comes out is a desperate, keening whine. William barely registers he's made any noise at all, but he knows based on the dizzying increase in sound around him that he has to have. He feels, underneath everything that he's experiencing right now, deeply and profoundly embarrassed. And he'll never get to write another shitty poem about it, because he's lying on the bathroom floor of a hotel room, and he either dies here or he dies later, when a reaper wearing the face of Dakota Cole finds out exactly what he is .
The image makes his chest convulse further. He didn't think it was possible. He also isn't really thinking at all, so he leaves himself some room for error.
He knows that he is so, so fucking tired, though. He's tired of fighting. He's tired of barely understanding. He's tired of being a bystander within his own goddamn life. He gives up on swallowing it down, lets the panic sweep him away as his mind fully disconnects. He doesn't know if he has the energy to make any other choice.
He feels himself separate, consciousness wavering as it views his quivering form in a twisted sense of third-person. To be expected. When the body dies, the brain must protect itself.
He wonders where it might be going, whatever's left of that brain of his. All he can do is dig short fingernails harder into the skin still left on his bones. All he can do is pray that whatever is left of him is swept away too, before Vyncent is saddled with the unfortunate task of body disposal.
Vyncent, to all his credit, does not actually end up knocking the door down. William watches as he turns the knob, having figured out by now that William hadn't actually locked it before he'd stepped into the shower. It all feels dreamlike, far away. Steeped in a film of separation, unreality. Like it's happening to some other William Wisp, in a time or place distant and distinctly better than their own.
William decides that he doesn't care for this dream very much as Vyncent pokes his head into the room at last. He can't tell what he looks like, but he's sure it's not pretty, and he pities Vyncent for being left to pick up his pieces again. He can still guess, despite everything that rattles around in his skull, that he looks like absolute shit. The thought is all but confirmed when Vyncent stares down at him, meeting William's barely cracked-open eyes with a look of abject horror.
William can't help but echo the sentiment. A new terror builds inside him, finding a home inside the consuming panic he already can feel coursing its way through his veins, and taking up residence in every cell inside his body. He can't be seen like this, shouldn't be seen like this, because he's a machine, goddamnit. And if someone sees him like this, it proves that he's something less-than. Something worse.
He feels Vyncent's hands on his shoulders, the hold gentle but firm. He manages, through a throat that feels impossibly tight, a fucked up version of a mantra.
"No, it's- I'm fine, I promise, please, it's not what it looks like. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm-"
Vyncent doesn't like that one, apparently, because he frowns so deeply that it looks like his face might split itself in two.
William finds that there's not enough left in him to take it back.
The crushing feeling that pushes through his ringing ears and erratic breaths, settling somewhere within his chest, is debatably worse than anything else that now sits heavy in his body.
It's hard to tell whether or not he's actually done something wrong though, because immediately after, Vyncent presses William's face into the darkness of his chest and begins to stroke the base of his head, where dark curls meet the back of his neck. It doesn't make sense, doesn't line up. God, he can't figure out why . Vyncent should fucking hate him. At this point, William might have preferred the hands wrapped around his back to be firmly in place at his neck. It should have played out that way, and still it doesn't, and he can't fucking fathom why.
He supposes he'll never know, considering that whatever Vyncent says next filters into his ears only as static. He leaves William in his arms though, chest rumbling as he talks, so he supposes that counts as a win.
Some insidious part of him whispers that he's delaying the inevitable. The rest of his body screams out for the contact that he knows he can't possibly deserve.
Eventually, Vyncent seems to abandon whatever conversation he was attempting to hold, and the slow rumbling stops. Now, all William can feel is the slow, intentional rise and fall of Vyncent's chest against his forehead.
He suddenly feels very small again. And he suddenly feels. Neither is as gratifying as they should be. He realizes that he's been crying, still is crying, shoulders caving with violent sobs. His body aches in every conceivable place, still plagued with shudders. His chest hurts, and he's breathing too much and not enough at the same time. Every inhale feels like he's a drowned man gasping for air. He sucks in breath after breath, throat thick with oxygen that feels just a little bit too difficult to get down, and he considers if maybe he really is drowning. It’s a silly thought, stupid, really, but there’s a second or two that he shares that drowning man’s desperation. There are indents and scratches along his hands where he must have dug too hard at the skin in his haze, many of them now weeping tiny trails of blood down his palms. A non-zero amount of splotches have soaked into Vyncent's shirt. He wonders how many of the wounds are new, and how many of them were merely reopened in his little fit. His fists are balled into the soft material against Vyncent's chest.
William feels that, not for the first time, he's just about fallen off the face of the Earth.
And then Vyncent starts talking again. It's easily the worst thing about his newfound awareness.
"Jesus Christ, Will," the taller boy mutters, William's hair drifting between his fingers. "C'mon man, breathe for me. In and out. The uh, the mm... How's it go?" Vyncent takes a pause to poorly imitate a breathing pattern. By the time he gets through one round, his face is just a little too purple for the method to be considered effective.
It's fine though. It's fine, because it's the one that Tide taught him on the only occasion that William has ever been so stripped-bare like this in front of someone else. It's the one he walked Vyncent through back on Fauna, when he nearly concussed himself stumbling away from some of the wreckage, body lurching with breath after unsteady breath. It's the one that he had Dakota drill like clockwork, for when their voices couldn't reach under the headphones pressed against his ears.
The memories are enough to tear another sob out of him, deep and animalistic, because now they feel fraudulent. They don't belong to him, whatever he's become, and they never should have.
It doesn't matter, and it's fine, and William knows what's happening again. He can reorient the world upon its axis and watch it spin on and on and on again. He assesses. It's what he does best.
Vyncent's hair is a deep purple. It looks dyed, almost, but William knows that his roots will never show. The thin strands on his chin are just as vibrant. It's escaped from where it had been tied back into a ponytail, strands loose and stringy in front of his face. A few pieces drift across one of William's cheeks.
The bathroom tiles are cool against his skin where the oversized shirt has ridden up his stomach slightly. The grout is gray, but he can't tell if that's the case by-design, or if it might be connected to a couple years worth of grime. The wallpaper is a frankly hideous, striped blue, and the baseboard is pulling away from the walls in a few spots.
He can taste only rot when he swallows, so he discards the rest of the observation method and focuses on maintaining a steady pace as he breathes.
William can feel himself slowly return to his body again, drifting between conscious and not. Vyncent continues to smooth his hair down, whispering soft reassurances. The pain that had initially burned, wild and furious, through his body has dulled to a gentle ebb and flow. It's just enough to remind him that his nerves still spark and his wires still cross.
Time passes. Vyncent finally peels William's rickety body off of his own, and kindly does not mention the disgusting state of his t-shirt when he does so.
"You... back with me yet?" Vyncent asks, in a voice far too tolerant to be real. He chews his bottom lip absently, inspecting every inch of the body in his lap. William mostly just feels scrubbed raw. He manages a nod and slumps back against the solid form that holds him. It seems to be good enough this time, too, because Vyncent returns to rhythmically rubbing up and down his spine and talking about inane bullshit with the air.
He's midway through a heated discussion about Heavenly Sword when William finally manages to pull away again. Vyncent immediately loosens his grip and lets him up, instead settling for resting a hand against William's knee to maintain their contact.
But to William's utter dismay, when he opens his mouth to speak, he isn't even able to rasp out an apology before some obscure fucking pathway between his brain and his speech shuts down completely.
It's fine. Vyncent knows, he understands, it's fine. He pulls his own phone out of his back pocket before sliding a second out of the other, moving slowly so as to not startle the boy facing him. He places it into William's empty palms, pressing still-shaking fingers tightly over the smooth plastic. He waits attentively. In return, all William can do is struggle to string sentences together. Guilt nestles in his stomach, all too familiar with its placement.
4:12 AM
sorry. wasn't something you should have had to fuckin babysit me thru or anything. i know you don't like me and you don't have to. nothing i can say would fix this, but i swear that i'm trying to make it better
4:12 AM
thank oyu
you
Vyncent hesitates for a second and William can almost feel the sympathetic ache of his muscles as he attempts to carry the weight of their silence.
"I'm still mad at you, you know," he says at last, and the statement is as much of a relief as it is a stab straight through William's gut.
William, who should be a collection of wires and hydraulics and instinct , can not seem to make eye contact with the boy sitting across from him. Against his, admittedly weakened, will, his eyes remain firmly glued to the screen. He feels like he's being hollowed out again. It's a selfish thing, and yet it consumes him all the same.
"But," Vyncent starts again, "nothing about… that is worth an apology. It's whatever, man, I promise. Well, not like, whatever , whatever. I just mean that it's okay to need help. Just makes you human, you know?"
The response is almost immediate.
4:13
we both know you cant say that
Vyncent's face shifts, lingering first on confusion, and then onto an unplaceable sense of sadness, the kind of realization that drives horror deep into the heart. William gathers, somewhere far-off in his mind, that this is not the first time he's seen that look today.
"You know that's not true, right? Please tell me you know that isn't true." Vyncent's voice takes on that heavy, tired weight again, and William quickly decides that this is not the hill he wishes to die on today. It isn't about him. Don't make it seem like it is.
William shares a pointed look with Vyncent before the older boy sighs and shifts his weight to allow William to rest his head against his chest once again.
"You fucked up. You fucked up, like, so incredibly badly, and you hurt a lot of people," Vyncent murmurs, voice low and breath warm against William's ear. "But that doesn't mean that you're some great, irredeemable monster, Will. All it means is that you fucked up . It wasn't- You shouldn't- it wasn't right, but you know that. I can see that you know that. I know we'll fix it. Get as close as we can get, at least. All that's left now is… the things that come next. After."
4:17 AM
(...)
4:17 AM
(...)
4:18 AM
thank you
for everything
that can never be enough but i hope it helps a little
with understanding or whatever
how i feel
that's lame asf sorry deleting twitter and living in a hovel for the rest of my life goodbye
William watches passively as Vyncent's eyes scan the string of messages, and he can feel himself crack a smile when Vyncent punches him lightly on the shoulder.
"In sickness and in health, right, man?"
4:19 AM
literally what
we're not married
those are wedding vows
did u hit ur fucking head or smth.
christ
Vyncent only huffs out a laugh, wrapping the shorter boy into his arms to return them both to a full embrace.
He doesn't know how long they sit like that, Vyncent curled around him, warm and solid and so much gentler than William knows how to fully handle.
He's fucking exhausted. It hits him all at once. Without the adrenaline keeping him standing, William can feel the last day and a half of sleepless nights and overextensions of power finally take hold. Can feel the deep and chronic ache of the knee that never quite healed right, can feel the sore patches of muscle where he grasped or tensed or whatever-ed wrong. He can feel the tear tracks that have begun to stiffen against his face.
Most of all, though, he can feel the thrum of twin pulses. His own and Vyncent's, both hearts having cycled the same blood at one point, beating in near synchrony. It's equal parts beautiful and horrifying. For the first time in maybe years, William feels so very human. Not for the first time in maybe 24 hours, William feels so very tired, too.
It's okay, though. It's okay and William almost means it. He tugs on Vyncent's sleeve and they both move to stand up, Vyncent supporting almost all of his bodyweight. It's nearly 5, according to the clock on the bedside table, and sunlight has started to spill lazily through the blinds when they finally emerge from the bathroom. That's okay too. Vyncent all but drops William on the bed before placing himself between Tide and William's wide-eyed stare. William's breath has started to pick up again, the nausea returning to its original home, but Vyncent only taps his cheek sleepily, prying his eyes away from the sight of the man lying asleep across the room.
"'E's fine. Really. Played doctor with him for awhile, he's stable 'n shit. You checked him too, right? Fine. Go to bed before you eat yourself whole, however that thing goes."
"Definitely not the," William pauses to swallow thickly, voice hoarse and quiet. It's the first time he's spoken coherently since he left to shower, and even then, a single sentence is all that he really feels capable of. He finds that he doesn't mind all that much. “...right saying there, buddy."
He allows himself a brief laugh, squeezing himself desperately towards Vyncent while still giving him enough time to push away. He doesn't, and William fully embraces his teammate, limbs tangling together once more.
If William was still religious, it would've been an answered prayer. Now, it's only an incalculable relief.
They stay like that for a while too, all close and real , until WiIlliam can finally feel himself melting into unconsciousness.
He doesn't even dream.