(no subject)
In The Hollows of Your Eyelids
Ack-Ack/Hillbilly
PG-13
Great swirls of letters to friends, mathematics and poems, they all feel different and so does this.
Disclaimer
There's soft drag against his skin and Ack-Ack blinks himself awake. He seems to doing that a lot lately, seems to sleep without knowing it, but as long as he’s got Hillbilly to wrap himself around then he doesn’t really mind. Hillbilly’s heavy weight pressing against his thighs, hand between Andy's shoulder blades holding him down and fast. He's had more than his fair share of strange lovers, knows the feeling of being written on. Great swirls of letters to friends, mathematics and poems, they all feel different and so does this.
"Eddie?" he gets a soft hum in reply, "what are you doing babe?" there's a soft chuckle, Eddie always laughs when Andy call him that. Like it's some great joke that Andy loves him and if it is, it's a terrible one.
"Writing, thought that would be obvious Andy." Andy shifts, feels the pen drag across his skin and Eddie huffs, muttering curses under his breath and pushes him down hard against the mattress.
"Where’d you get a pen?" there's no reply and the tight feeling that lives in his chest, like it's a cage, gives a rattle.
"Found it." the room provides everything. Things they need, things they don't. Packs of smokes and photos of times they don't even remember and sometimes, sometimes Andy finds himself finding things that he just wants, things that live in the back of his mind. Like the box of a thousand letters from home kept under the bed out of reach and maybe that's what Eddie found himself wanting.
His heart almost stops in his chest.
"Eddie? Come on, let me up.” The hand on his back clenches, knuckles pressing into his skin, “Eddie!"
He never shouts, never had to. There was always something about his cool calm disposition that people respected, but here, now, with this man, the one that tugs his heart string right out of his chest in one violent and defying movement, he can feel himself changing. He's used to Eddie responding to his calmness with his own, but Eddie's been shaking apart for awhile now and it's starting to crack the foundation of what Andy's built on.
There's a raw sense of emotion sweeping over him, the same kind that tore right through him when Eddie died and he swears that if he could just rip it from them both, he would. Eddie's weight lifts from him, so use to it now that he misses it when it's gone. The bones in his arms and back creak as they slide into more comfortable positions, toes curling against the cold of the floor and he’s looking for bathroom mirror that seems to be here some days, and gone most and there on the wall he finds Eddie dirtiest secret, in the form of his own reflection. The pen clatters, sounding like broken glass and Andy thinks that might just be his heart.
Eddie seems sad, repenting and closed off from him. Clean, handsome face masked by dark filthy shadows that says, no, you can't have what I'm feeling, fuck off and got get something of your own.
When he looks at Eddie like this, fresher than anyone he’s ever met, almost back to himself. When he can look at Eddie and feel disgusting in comparison, think his skin will never look as clean and feel the dirt under his nails practically growing, then he can pretend that this is fine. That this is perfect, the happy ever after that they were supposed to have until it was ripped from them by greedy murdering fates.
This isn't fine though. This is Eddie's fingers stained black with little secrets ad lies, stained deep to the bone and all telling of a man so wrapped up in grief over love that even in this nowhere place it haunts him. This is rows of neat block writing on Andy's back, words bitting into his skin, that tell of desperate trying, and oh god Eddie wrote a Christmas list, like he was going home any day now and needed to be ready.
“Jesus Eddie, why’d you write a Christmas list?” Eddie’s is drawn into himself, face tucked into his knees, shoulders shaking, one arm curled around his head and if there’s anyone in the world that Andy doesn’t want to ever see cry it’s Eddie. Kneeling by the bed he can feel his guts wrench, and god does this hurt, “Eddie, come on this isn’t good for you.”
“Stop, just stop it.” the pause is filled with Eddie lifting his head, eyes boring into him, tiny holes of hatred, more painful than any bullet could possibly feel. How did that even happen?
The shaking of Eddie's body is tiring, Eddie is tiring, and Andy wants to be selfish, to tell him to knock it off. Why can't he just pull himself together? Andy saying just as much does nothing to help. The slamming of the bathroom door shakes a picture frame free. A photo of them shattering on the ground.
"Fuck."
He waits, patience as always, back pressed hard against the bathroom door, enduring all levels of discomfort, until finally, finally he hears Eddie sigh, wet and shaky, knows he’s sitting on the other side of the door, the exact mirror of Andy’s position.
"I'm so sorry." Andy hums and waits, just waits because Eddie's gotta lot to say and maybe no way of explaining it all, even if they had all the time in existence, “I need something else, I need... I just, God! I want something more than this fucking room.” There’s the sound of something hitting the wall and it feels like it’s in his chest, living there and trying to get out, through his ribs, just looking for a gap.
Andy swallows down the part of him that thinks ‘you need more than me’, because he’s right. There has to be more than just this box, this living coffin, outside their shitty window is sky and clouds and a city, living and breathing, thrumming with others just like them. What ever made him think that they could just live in here forever?
“I gotta hope that out there, somewhere, maybe my family’s around wait for me just to come home so we can pretend this didn’t happen. I mean, who the fuck else am I gonna introduce you to?” Andy laughs, only Eddie could say that, make it sound like a chore and ‘I love you’ at the same time. They stay silent and Andy can almost feel the heat of Eddie body through the door and it makes him feel safe, makes him feel like everything is going to be okay and maybe it is, but he doesn’t know.
“Make me a promise?” the suddenness of Eddie’s voice causes Andy’s heart to leap into his throat in an uncomfortable way, “Get me out of here?”
Andy sighs, looks up at the ceiling, stares the at the water damage and just feels the warm feeling pump through his veins. The same feeling that he got the first time Eddie smiled at him, something stupid and lopsided.
“Sure, babe, you just say when.”
“How about now?”