SLB fic: Kevin Sometimes 1/2
Title: Kevin Sometimes
Author: starflowers
Summary: A story about death, but mostly the things that happen after.
Rating: Maybe PG or a little higher for violence, also themes of death, dying, a little bit of creepiness, and some talk of suicide. Also a little bit of h/c. Maybe a lot of it, actually. But it’s not as dark as it sounds! Sort of. It’s kind of really just a sweet little love story. A vaguely Supernatural AU.
Notes: This story is hard to explain, but it wouldn’t exist at all without the handholding of la_fours or the beta work of lovelyhera. Special thanks to skoosiepants, for not minding the fact that I email and BBM her 24/7 about whatever I’m writing. Also, you can blame akire_yta for forcing me not to post this as soon as it was done in April, and making me save it for the Skippy Little Bang (but also for being a fantastic cheerleader). And thanks to solar_cat for running the Skippy Little Bang!
Wonderful mixes:
by sparrowsverse: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=44LONNBZ
by la_fours: http://www.mediafire.com/?miinb1qdgoa515a
Kevin Sometimes
Sometimes the boy tangled in the web would get so angry that he’d scream and writhe and tear at his own face, fingernails leaving lines like a plastic surgeon, like he was cutting away all the bits that didn’t agree with his idea of how he should look and who he should be. Other times, the boy went eerily silent and eerily still, fading and fading until there was only a twisted, broken shadow left. Sometimes he cried and sometimes he begged and sometimes he held still and breathed as best he could. Most times, though, he raged.
It was a feeling Mike could certainly understand, and maybe that’s why he’d been given the assignment.
“You can’t get too close,” William said, and Mike snorted. Like he’d been inclined, at this early stage, to leave the rafters where he and William crouched, watching from the shadows as the boy snarled, snapped, and tested the limits of his new prison. “No,” William said quietly, hand on Mike’s shoulder, forcing his attention away from the boy below and back to William. “Not ever, Carden,” William told him carefully, eyes wide and searching Mike’s earnestly. “You don’t even-you’ve never even imagined how he could tear you apart, you don’t even know. You can’t know.”
There were parts of William that were still shattered and broken; Mike knew he spoke from personal experience.
“I’ll be careful,” Mike promised. William didn’t look reassured. Maybe he’d promised to be careful once, too. Before Gabriel.
“See that you are,” William said faintly, closing his eyes.
Below them, the boy howled.
Suicides were the fucking worst.
*
When the Jonas Brothers stopped playing shows and making music, no one was all that surprised. Even the two remaining members didn’t have enough Disney magic to make it after all the shit went down.
When they disappeared from the public eye to fall apart and nurse their wounds and try to clumsily stitch together the ragged places Kevin had torn when he’d left, no one had really expected them to ever come back.
They broke apart in spectacular fashion-the Big Bang had nothing on the way the Nick, Joe, and Frankie shattered, their broken pieces scattering and forming chaotic and random orbits around the blazing, boiling hole Kevin had left behind.
Joe went crazy. Nick got married. Frankie stopped believing in God and started believing in other things-paranormal things. Nick thought that was about as close to crazy as you could get without being Joe. Sometimes it kept him up late at night, wondering what was worse-the beer and the sex and the despair that Joe lost himself in, or the occult and heresy that he’d lost Frankie to. He wasn’t sure.
Then Frankie called, late, late at night, breathing heavily into the phone.
“Frankie?” Nick asked, grimacing apologetically at Selena, who had stirred at the ringing of his phone.
“What is it?” He kept his voice gentle, leaving his bedroom, flicking on a light in the hall.
“I found him,” Frankie said, voice shaking with something deep and dark and terrified.
“What?”
“I found Kevin, Nick.”
Nick leaned against the wall, letting his knees give out, sliding down until he was sitting heavily on the floor, cradling his face in his hands. “Frankie,” he said softly. “Kevin’s-”
“I found him,” Frankie said, voice rising in pitch with excitement. “I found him, Nicky, he’s in New Jersey, near-”
“Kevin’s dead,” Nick interrupted, voice hard. He’d take drunken phone calls worried about STDs over this any day, he decided.
“I know,” Frankie said. “I know, I know, Nicky, and I found him. In an old house. Haunting an old house.” Nick just sat very still for a long, long moment, and then Frankie said, “You don’t believe me?” His voice was small, injured, and very young.
“Of course I believe you,” Nick lied quietly. “Tell me exactly where you are, Frankie, please? I’ll come and you can show me.”
Frankie rattled off the address of a motel in Jersey with barely-repressed excitement and Nick promised to be there the next day, hanging up with a weary sense of betrayal. It wasn’t enough for God to take one brother. Now he was after Frankie too?
Nick would drag him home and lock him in the basement until Frankie was better.
And if that didn’t work-if that didn’t work, he certainly knew some good therapists who could possibly help his baby brother. God knew, they’d helped Nick well enough.
*
The house was empty, which was why they’d chosen it. What few pieces of furniture had remained, shrouded in white sheets, hadn’t lasted long beneath the boy’s fury, and they were now splinters and bits of upholstery. Window panes had been knocked out, littering the floor in shards of glass, and the foundations of the place had been shaken, cracked.
Mike wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have loosened the web enough to give the boy even that much room to move. He’d kind of been hoping he’d wear himself out a little, but whenever the boy’s energy started to waver, if Mike even thought about coming closer, a protective wave of cold fury rose up and the whole cycle started again.
Mike didn’t really mark the passage of time, but he knew this was taking an unusual amount of time for first contact.
William had come back a few times, checking on Mike and his progress (or lack of it), sitting with him in the rafters, watching the boy pace and howl. He never stayed long, though.
Mike was thinking about maybe tightening the edges of the web again, tangling the kid up so he couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, and then just... just charging at him, screaming out all of his own fury and frustration until the kid just gave up and went silent and listened.
Instead, he just watched the boy raging, destroying the house, and waited. The boy knew someone was there, but he didn’t know where or who, only sensed a vague threat that he lashed out against if Mike made the slightest movement.
His joints were getting stiff from holding still. Patience was a virtue but it sure as hell wasn’t one of his.
Nothing really changed. Well, until the people showed up.
The house was empty. Empty and remote and abandoned. Damn it.
Apparently the two guys with sawed-off shot guns (loaded with salt? What did they thing this was, some urban legend? What the fuck good was salt going to do?) hadn’t gotten the message that this house was off-limits. Abandoned and isolated.
Mike’s web kept the boy inside but couldn’t keep idiots from wandering passed the boundaries, right into the boy’s path.
Fucking fuck.
He rose from where he’d crouched on the rafters for the first time in ages, and he could have sworn he felt his bones and his joints grinding. He grimaced, prepared to do something to save these idiots from themselves.
The boy rose up as well, a righteous wave of defensive anger, rushing towards the two men. Mike was about to intervene when that rush of pure, frigid emotion faltered, shuddered, and then washed away.
Without all his carefully constructed illusions of ice and cold, the boy was just that-a boy. Too young for this shit, smaller than Mike had thought he’d be, just barely an adult, stark lines of his cold face drawn, just now, into a frozen expression of horror and mingled confusion. His eyes were dark and nearly animalistic. His hands fell to his sides and twitched, fingers curling like he wanted to make a fist.
Mike had gone still has well, staring, because in all his time spent watching, waiting for his moment, he’d never, ever seen the boy hesitate. His eyes were locked on the door and Mike glanced there too, curious.
A younger boy stood there.
“Frankie?” Mike’s boy said, slowly and carefully, like he wasn’t sure how to form syllables any longer.
In all the time Mike had been there, his boy hadn’t ever even shown that much humanity. Mike had started to worry that whatever had happened had left his boy so broken that there wasn’t any hope at all, any strings left attaching him to the person he’d once been.
Before he could react, his boy was gone with barely a whisper of the same cold wind that had nearly blown the three humans from their feet.
Their hair ruffled in the faint, chilly breathe, and the little one-Frankie-said, “Did you feel that? Was it him? Is he still here?”
Mike’s eyes narrowed when the shorter of the two men cocked his shotgun and said, “A draft, probably. Let’s set up the equipment.”
Fucking ghost hunters. Mike was reluctantly adjusting his plans, resigned to the fact that maybe, maybe, these humans were going to do more good than harm. Which sucked. He’d been looking forward to scaring them off.
Unfortunately, it seemed his boy might actually have some attachment to them-at least the little one-which meant they got to stick around. For a while.
Damn it.
*
Frankie watched Gerard and Mikey setting up their equipment in what had once been the living room of the rotting old house. He wasn’t sure what the hell Kevin would be doing, haunting a place like this. He was pretty sure you needed some sort of emotional connection to haunt a place, but whatever. He’d take what he could get, and right now, that meant taking the fact that Gerard and Mikey Way, ghost hunters, had contacted him a few days before with information on his brother.
They’d even had a tape. The audio had been weird at first, all cracks and pops and stuff, but they’d cleared it up and he’d heard something-- which could have been his brother’s voice. Either way, the photo they’d showed him-which was a picture taken through the window of this place-showed a shadow that-if he squinted and prayed a little, looked like Kevin when Kevin was mad.
Either way, it was more of a sturdy lead than anyone else had offered, and when the Ways had invited him along for some more investigation, Frankie had taken them up on it.
He’d even called Nick, who had promised to come and see.
Which probably meant ‘come and find him and have him locked up’, but Frankie was pretty sure he could convince Nick to believe him. After all, Frankie had been a paranormal investigator for two years. He knew what he was talking about.
While Gerard and Mikey set up their sensors and cameras, Frankie wandered the house. There was definitely a weird energy here, one that seemed to waver and echo, like something had been there but now it was gone. He wondered where ghosts went when they weren’t here.
“Kevin?” he whispered, voice shaking. “Kevin, I’ve come to bring you home.”
A faint draft was the only answer.
*
There was cold and there was nothing but pain and fury and confusion, spinning cyclones of debris that, if he looked close enough, were shattered bits of memory, frozen in crystalline chunks of ice that had broken off from somewhere-he worried, sometimes, that they’d broken off from his edges, from what had once been fingertips and toes. That much self-awareness rose and fell like erratic breathing, however. The boy was about as aware of the fact that he was the eye of the hurricane as he was of his own name.
For a long while, there was only that dizzying, wild ride of cold fury, and then it had broken, a wave shattered on a rock, and he had been a boy again, a colder boy than he had been before, and Frankie was standing there, haloed by sunlight. Like an angel.
He’d stopped believing in angels ages before, but then, he’d stopped believing in Frankie, too-had given Frankie up for a fragment of memory. And Frankie was there.
It was like seeing another face reflecting back in a mirror that only showed echoes upon echoes upon echoes of his own shadow. It was him and he was nothing, again and again and again and again and then it was someone else and that someone else was Frankie.
Nothing made sense. The boy was terrified, his edges suddenly redefined, though ragged and broken where the wind had torn bits loose.
He was-what was he? He had been wind and now he was rock-rock chipped and chipped and chipped and coated with ice and snow and something slick and sickly sweet. He had been nothing and everything and now he was just-he was just-
It was impossible to define. He was a boy. He was a shadow. He was broken. He was bleeding. He was frozen cold and cauterized.
He was hiding.
He only became aware of that fact when someone very, very carefully fell to their knees beside the bed he had crawled under, and lowered their head to look.
The boy was a coiled spring. He was twisted around and around into a knot and at the slightest provocation, he would snap and lash out and destroy with whip-like ferocity.
The person who peered under the bed did not provoke him, just watched with a calm sort of curiosity that made the boy go very, very still but nothing more.
“Hello,” said the person, who was male with edges much smoother than the boy’s, as if he had never been chipped at by rage and circumstance-or if he had, a gentler wind had come along and rubbed and smoothed away the jagged edges where the rest of him used to be. “What’s your name?”
Did he have a name? Until very recently, the boy hadn’t been aware that he had anything other than fury, so he hesitated, considering the question very carefully. “No,” he said finally. His voice was grating and rusty.
“Oh,” said the man. Then he added, “The little one seems to think you’re Kevin. Are you Kevin?”
He flinched at the name because it was his, even if he had forgotten. His edges had begun to weep and leak again, confusion and terror disguised as fury snapping and licking at the shadows under the bed. “I’m,” he said, his head snapping back, mouth twisting as a shriek of cold and anger tore from his throat. His ragged fingers scrabbled for purchase on the floorboards as his body shook with tremors. “I’m,” he tried again. “I’m nothing.”
“You aren’t,” said the man. He slipped his hand under the bed, reaching for Kevin, and it was a mistake. Kevin snapped at his hand with his teeth, swallowed back a snarl, and the man said, “Why don’t you come out from under there.”
Kevin did, but only because the fear had caused him to tighten up even more and something undefined snapped inside him, an elastic band wound too tightly. He bent backwards so violently that something broke, and rage spilled from his fingers and his wrists and his toes and every little part in between, shrieking as it tore him apart. The bed flew up, up, and smashed against the wall, raining in pieces, but Kevin was gone, spinning spinning spinning, tearing at the walls, the floor, and the fading memories of his lines, his planes, and his hollows.
The man sighed and swore softly as he slipped from the room, and Kevin didn’t notice.
*
Frankie, Gerard, and Mikey set up camp in the living room, rolling out sleeping bags and such, for their overnight stay in the house. When Frankie had made a quick inspection of the rooms, he’d found beds and stuff upstairs, but no one had dared suggest that they use them.
“So many cold spots,” Gerard said, popping back into the room with a notebook and a thermometer. “I’ve also got EMF in some of the rooms.”
“Some of them?” Frankie asked, nervous for the first time. “It’s not just Kevin?”
“No,” Gerard said with a quick smile. “They leave traces. I’m pretty sure there’s just the one entity here.”
Frankie relaxed a little, and then the room went cold.
“Electromagnetic readings through the charts,” Mikey said, glancing up from his monitor, pulling his headphones off. “Sound waves too. Listen.” He pulled the headphone cord out of the machine and the room was filled with a crackling, snapping sound, like fire devouring sticks, like camping, like-
The lights flickered and died, something started scratching at the window, and the sound recording started howling, the low moaning sounding inhuman.
“Leeeeeeeave thissssss placcccce,” said a voice, and it wasn’t Kevin’s. Frankie wondered if it was supposed to be.
He was too busy freaking out to ask, though.
“Holy shit, holy shit, are you getting this?” Gerard shouted, and Mikey didn’t answer, just stared in mute and shared horror and excitement.
*
“Seriously,” William said, popping up out of nowhere, sitting beside Mike in the rafters. “This is how you pass your time?”
Mike grinned a little, watching the chaos below. “There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of the classics,” he said. “I don’t want to disappoint the ghost hunters.”
“And the boy?” William asked.
Mike finally looked at him, and below, the horrible moaning stopped, the lights came back on, and the temperature stabilized. Frankie and his friends were still shaking with delight and terror.
“Kevin,” Mike said. William blinked and then smiled.
“You made contact?” he asked. “He told you that?”
Mike grimaced. “Not exactly. Frankie told me.” He pointed at the boy below and said, “Frankie’s here looking for Kevin.”
“Oh.” William cocked his head. “That’s curious. You haven’t run them off yet?”
With a long sigh, Mike shook his head. “Kevin remembers. I’m not sure how much, but he reacted to Frankie the way he hasn’t reacted to anything else.”
“Anger?” William guessed.
“Fear. He’s hiding under the bed upstairs.”
“If he hurts them-” William began.
“I can protect them,” Mike told him. William sighed, nodded once, and disappeared.
Below, Mikey was rewinding the tape and playing it again, and Mike rolled his eyes, sighed, and propped his elbow on his knee, chin resting on his palm, and feet swinging restlessly, waiting for Kevin.
*
Kevin was darkness. He was creeping and crawling, sliding across the floorboards.
He was tumbling down the stairs without a sound or breath of wind, and he was moving silently through the doorway.
That’s where he stopped, hovering and hesitating, an inky stain on an inky night, staring at the place where Frankie curled up inside his sleeping bag and slept like a kitten. He would have him-he would pull the boy by his hair, out of the living room and up up up the stairs, under the bed, and keep him there, trapped in the floorboards, because even in darkness, Frankie shone like a diamond or a puddle of oil. Something opalescent and beautiful.
Kevin was darkness. A raven, attracted to something shiny.
He could not tell what it was about the boy that drew him-hazy memories were just shadows to a creature that no longer had memory at all. But curiosity had taken over where only fury had been before, and Kevin could and would have the boy, shining like a coin.
He moved closer, drawing up his darkness, the waves and hollows that made up his form when he did not want to have fingers and toes, and he rose up over the boy, ready to crash down and claim.
“Kevin,” said a voice-low and rough and musical. Water spilling over rocks of various size and shape.
He looked up and it was the man, the man who had peered at him while he hid under the bed. Now, however, standing up with shoulders braced and voice gently chiding, the man did not look like a man at all, but something different. Silver moonlight painted his edges, and around him, beginning at his shoulders and ending at the floor, the air seemed thicker and disturbed, shot through with hints of that same silver moonlight, like the man’s edges extended beyond his shoulder blades and fingertips.
Like wings.
“Don’t touch him, Kevin,” said the man.
Kevin should lash out-should main and destroy. Instead, curiosity and uncertainty kept him there, hesitating and boiling in a black cloud over Frankie. He didn’t say anything, but the man didn’t seem upset by it.
“You don’t want to hurt Frankie,” he said, and then he stepped closer.
Kevin reared up, the air around him tightening, going colder, and the man raised two hands up and said, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”
“I can’t,” Kevin said finally, voice no more than a breathy whisper.
The man cocked his head, tucked a lock of his hair behind his ear, and said, “Can’t what?”
“Touch him.” Kevin nodded, slowly, like his form had only just remembered that he had a neck to nod with at all.
“You don’t want to hurt him,” the man agreed.
“I want to keep him.” Kevin was growing sullen and bored with this discussion, and he looked back at Frankie, moving closer, reaching out, determined to surround him and drag him off, make him part of the house.
“Kevin,” the man snapped, impatient now. It startled Kevin into looking at him again, hesitating. The man took a deep breath and then tried a smile.
It was crooked and stupid and ridiculously charming.
Kevin’s edges dissolved a bit, the aggression easing a little, as the part of him attracted to shiny things focused on that smile instead of the boy beneath him.
“I’m Mike,” said the man, holding out his hand, like Kevin would shake it.
“I can’t touch,” Kevin said, voice fading as his focus faded, his energy faded. “I tried before.”
He was drifting away and Mike just watched him go, looking resigned and drawn in silver. “Before?” he asked, and Kevin sighed, “With Joe,” and then he was gone.
He didn’t know where he went when he wasn’t there, and he didn’t care. He just Wasn’t, and sometimes, that was his favourite place to be.
*
Frankie picked Nick up at the airport and studiously ignored all of Nick’s attempts to talk about coming home and therapy. Instead, he drove him straight to the house, parked behind Gerard’s ancient van, and dashed inside.
“Anything happen while I was gone?” he asked breathlessly, and Mikey shook his head, humming a little. “Gee’s got a cold spot upstairs, a few orbs on video, nothing major.”
“Orbs,” Frankie said, excited. “That could be him, right?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing to my brother?” Nick snarled from the doorway suddenly, and Mikey looked up, arched an eyebrow, and said in a careful monotone, “Which one, the little one, or the dead one?”
Frankie half expected Nick to shove him aside and maul Mikey for saying that, but instead, Nick crossed his arms over his chest and said coldly, “The little one.”
“Huh,” Mikey said, blinking at Frankie like maybe he hadn’t ever seen him before. “Nothing, actually. We remember to feed you, right, Frankie?”
“I can feed myself,” Frankie said, rolling his eyes. “Listen, listen, Nick. I know you don’t believe and that you think he’s gone, but we’ve got something here, I swear, we do.”
Nick was already shaking his head, so Frankie did the one thing he knew was guaranteed to make Nick give in. He widened his eyes and let his bottom lip tremble and said shakily, “Please, Nick? Please trust me?”
Only Frankie’s mother had ever managed to avoid falling for that.
Some of the tension eased out of Nick’s shoulders. “Okay. Okay, Frankie,” he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair and shooting Mikey a suspicious glare. “But only a few days.”
*
Mike frowned as he skirted the older ghost hunter on the stairs and came back into the living room. He couldn’t find Kevin. He knew he was there somewhere, even if Kevin did not want to be found, if he faded away, he was still there, he had to be. When Mike and William had dragged the writhing, shrieking ball of poltergeist rage from the streets of Chicago and shoved him into this house, they’d spun a tight web around it so that Kevin couldn’t leave.
The thing was-the thing was that until now, Kevin hadn’t ever really stayed faded for this long.
Frank and Nick were in the living room, sitting together, drinking tea-what the hell-while Frankie chattered excitedly about something in one of the photographs. Mike thought it might be the one with the dark spot in the corner that vaguely looked like a pig with wings. Mike was kind of proud of that one. He liked to think outside the box with floating orbs.
He shook out his wings out, huffing and unwilling to confess just how frustrated he was with his inability to find Kevin, and leapt up into his place in the rafters. Then he froze.
Kevin was there, dark and coiling as he sometimes was, curled up tightly, shadows curling and shifting over the lines of his physical form that were steadily becoming more and more defined. He was sitting there hugging his knees, chin propped up on his folded arms, and staring down in childlike confusion.
Mike had never been this close to him before and he wondered if maybe he should fade away, disappear, drift away before Kevin realized he was there.
Too late. “That’s... Frankie,” Kevin said, without turning to look at him. “Right?”
“Yes,” Mike agreed cautiously.
“And Nick.”
“Yes. Your brothers.”
Kevin turned, slowly, slowly, until he was looking at Mike, eyes dark and wide and aching. “But where’s Joe?”
“Chicago,” Mike said, because that was where they’d found Kevin-trailing his brother Joe like an angry puppy.
“He’s not here because he killed me,” Kevin said softly, but he didn’t fade away, just turned his head, watching Frankie shove Nick’s shoulder and giggle. Mike saw Kevin’s faint little smile because he was staring, frozen in shock.
Kevin hadn’t been killed, he’d killed himself. Hadn’t he?
*
“Something’s happening,” Gerard whispered, and Mike snorted. Yeah, it was, though it wasn’t Kevin. As far as Mike could tell, Kevin had gone shy, refusing to slip in front of a camera, to register on a single machine, or to cause so much as a sigh. He had faded away some time before nightfall and hadn’t been seen since.
Mike was amusing himself setting off random series of events in various machinery set up in the living room while he waited for William.
He lost his patience around midnight. “William!” he shouted. “Get the fuck down here!”
“Ohmygod,” Nick hissed, and Mike would have been vaguely amused that something he’d done had converted Nick to a believer, if he wasn’t so pissed off at William. “Did you hear that?”
They were replaying the tape, filtering it, taking out the white noise, and a disembodied voice was hissed, “Get the fuck...” The rest was garbled.
“Did he-that wasn’t Kevin,” Nick said shakily. “Did that say ‘get the fuck out of here’? Are we-we’re in danger, aren’t we? We should-”
“What?”
Mike narrowed his glare on William and crossed his arms over his chest. “You said it was suicide.”
William frowned. “It was. All evidence supports-”
“All evidence except the fact that Kevin, who was there, says that it was his brother Joe.”
William hesitated, thinking, and then Gerard was waving a handheld device in his face, excitedly saying something about EMF.
William growled and grabbed Mike’s arm, jerking him up and into the rafters. He shook off his irritation and then said, “It’s possible. We made the assumption based on the reaction of the spirit-anger like that, mostly self-directed, is generally the result and/or the cause of a suicide. But it’s possible that it was something else-accidental, even.” He grimaced. “Or purposeful. If it was murder, Carden, you’re going to be pulled off the case.”
“No-wait, what?” Mike shook his head. “Why?”
“Murder is a whole new thing, you’re entirely unprepared for that. You’re in over your head, you can’t expect-”
“You can’t expect me to back away now, not after-it’s been weeks, Bill.”
William shook his head. “And you haven’t made any progress, Carden. If it was murder, then maybe that’s why.”
“I’ve made progress,” Mike snarled. “You can’t take this from me now. He trusts me.”
William rubbed at a spot of tension between his eyes and said, “Telling you his name does not equate trust.”
“Give me a little bit of time,” Mike begged. “What can it hurt? He’s already dead.”
“Carden-”
“He’s mine, Bill.”
William’s eyes narrowed and he said, “I told you not to get close.” Then he sighed, slumping, and said, “I’ll give you time, but not very much. It’s the best I can do.” And then he was gone.
*
Kevin was giving the place a good, old fashioned haunting. It was exhausting. It was like with the appearance of two of his brothers, the rage melted away, replaced by a deep, cold depression that sent sounds like rattling chains echoing through the house. Doors refused to stay shut, lights flickered, and Gerard nearly passed out in excitement from the cold spots. It started to rain and didn’t stop and Mike was going crazy.
He’d tried talking to Kevin. He’d been gentle, coaxing, and sometimes firm and strict. He’d even tried balling his hands into fists and just shouting and screaming and waiting for Kevin to notice. Kevin seemed unaware of his presence, drifting through the house, moaning and carrying on like every bad cliché Mike had ever heard of.
Finally, desperate, Mike resorted to the one thing that he knew would cause a reaction-any kind of reaction. He walked up to the microphone that Mikey had hooked up and said as clearly as he could (because things could get garbled so easily), “Joe. We need Joe. Get Joe. Where’s Joe?”
Mikey jumped, watching the sound waves, played it back, cleaned it up, listened through the headphones, and frowned. “Uh, Frankie?” he called. “Nick? You guys like, have another brother, right?”
Frankie and Nick ducked into the room from the kitchen, frowning. “Yeah,” Nick said. “Joe. Why-”
“I think you should get him.” He nodded once, going back to his machines. “Yeah, you definitely should.”
“Why?” Nick asked, wary.
“The ghost said so,” Mikey said, entirely unconcerned. He tossed them the headphones and wandered off in search of Gerard.
*
The thing about Joe was that the one thing he never wanted to talk about was Kevin. Ever since Kevin had died, Joe had pulled away, gone off on wild road trips, done stupid things, pretended he was fine and then called Nick in the middle of the night, sobbing like a child, drunk and begging to be put out of his misery. But he never, ever wanted to talk about Kevin.
Nick wasn’t all that sure that Joe would take it well if he was to call him up and say, “Hey, Joe, so, Frankie got these ghost hunters to find a spiritual energy they think is Kevin, wandering around this random house, and apparently he wants to see you. So, I’ll pick you up at the airport?”. Double punctuation? No. Never.
So instead, Nick called him up and said, “Joe. I need-I need your help. It’s Frankie. He’s not well, Joe. He-he’s sick. Please. We need you. Can you come? I’m scared he’s going to do something stupid.”
Joe breathed heavily, drunkenly, into the phone for ten seconds or so and then said, “Sure I can. Where are you?”
Nick had told him and Joe had promised to be on the next flight and that was that.
Nick felt like a dick for using Frankie that way, but at the same time, even if this ghost thing turned out to be a scam and a waste of time, maybe being together, the three of them, could help heal all the broken places.
It was a shaky plan, but it was more than he’d had the week before, so Nick was okay with it. Mostly... mostly he just wanted to see Joe and cling to him and cry a little. He was okay with that, too, if only Joe would let him.
*
Mike had never really been aware of time before, but now he felt it, slipping through his fingers, and his progress with Kevin was nearly non-existent. It kept raining, Kevin kept drifting, and only Nick’s comment to Frankie about Joe being on his way was enough to offer any hope. William could return at any moment and take him from the assignment, and Mike was pretty damned sure that no one else would get Kevin the way he did.
Mike recognized Kevin’s moods by the pulsing of his energy, the movement of shadows that shifted around him, the temperature in the room. He’d had other assignments before, been charged with calming other restless spirits, and none of them had had the solemnity, the soft lines to their face, the endless loneliness and confusion in their eyes that Kevin had. He wasn’t just angry energy, he was a boy who had lost his life, and then lost his soul to so much anger that he’d spent the years before Mike and William had found him, trying to tear off his own face.
He was broken, battered, and his edges were ragged and practically bleeding. He was damaged and Mike thought, sometimes, when he didn’t mean to, that maybe if Kevin ever let him close enough, the places where Mike was broken and chipped might fit against Kevin’s ragged edges and then maybe, together, they could be whole.
Sometimes, he nearly got close enough to touch. Kevin would be drifting, aimless and aching, and he’d slide right by. Mike wasn’t able to help himself, would reach out with burning fingertips, desperate to touch him and to soothe him, but Kevin would flinch away like a skittish cat and be gone again.
Something had to give. The tension was unbearable. He almost preferred Kevin writhing and raging to drifting through the house setting off EMF meters and rattling the window panes.
Then Joe arrived, and Mike knew that nothing would ever be the same again.
He stood in the doorway, hesitating the way Frankie had done, but Joe was not haloed by sunlight and shadow the way his baby brother had been. The skies had rolled with gray rainclouds for days now. And Joe looked like hell. He was pale, sweating, too skinny, his hair a ratty mess, his clothing dirty and slept in, and as soon as Kevin became aware of him, he gathered up all his energy, wrapped it around himself like a cyclone, and charged.
He was howling, and for a minute, Mike thought the rage was back. Joe’s hair twisted at the onslaught, his clothing billowed. He flinched, covering his face and cowering, and still, Kevin beat at him with shadowed fists, his voice rising and falling in a wail that no one but Mike could hear.
It wasn’t anger, though, Mike realized, after Kevin’s energy started to waver. It was desperation.
“Joe,” Kevin said, voice finally sinking to a whisper as he began to fade. “Joe, Joe, please please, Joe, please. Please. Can’t you find me, Joe?” Then, just before Kevin was entirely gone, he said in a broken, aching voice that shook the window panes, “Can’t you feel me?”
Mike shuddered at the helpless ache in Kevin’s voice, and then Kevin was gone and Joe was alone, shaking badly. Nick and Frankie rushed to his side and Mike went in search of Kevin.
*
Kevin was under the bed again. Mike hesitated in the doorway and then sighed, running a hand through his hair before stepping into the room and dropping to his knees.
“Kevin,” he said, exhausted. “Kevin, hey.” He could see Kevin, curled up against the far wall, holding very still. “It’s Mike. Will you come out and talk to me?”
For a moment, he worried that Kevin didn’t intend to react to him at all. Then, Kevin shuttered a little and lifted his face, which shone pale and miserable in the darkness. “Mike?” he asked, voice small, shaking.
Mike relaxed a little. “Yeah, kid. Come out from under there?”
Kevin shifted but didn’t move to leave the shelter under the bed. “Joe’s here,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. D’you want to tell me what happened?”
“I couldn’t touch him,” Kevin whispered, closing his dark eyes.
“Probably for the best,” Mike told him gently. “I don’t think you want to hurt Joe.”
Kevin shuddered, moving like maybe he wanted to surge forward, to smash into Mike, but he pulled back at the last moment and wailed, “I don’t want to hurt Joe!”
“Then what were you trying to do?” Mike asked.
Kevin’s voice fell to a soft, lost little whimper and Mike kind of wanted to crawl under there and curl up with him and keep him safe so he never had to sound like that again. He was pretty sure William wouldn’t support that method. “Touch him,” Kevin whispered, curling up even more tightly. “Hold him.”
“Oh.” Mike paused. “But I thought he killed you?” Kevin flinched, eyes squeezed shut, and started to cry. “Oh hell,” Mike hissed, and William wasn’t there anyway, so he slid under the bed, crawling as close to Kevin as he dared to go. “Hey,” he said, voice dropping low. “Kevin, hey.” He reached a hand forward to touch him, slowly and carefully, and Kevin opened his eyes and stared, eyes sparking, lighting just a little, shades of hazel and green.
“I can’t touch,” Kevin told him quietly, his face streaked with tears.
“I can,” Mike said, and then he touched Kevin’s cheek, and all hell broke loose.
Kevin lurched forward, maybe thrown off-guard by the sensation of touch after so long without it. For a moment, it was an ordinary touch-Mike could feel Kevin’s cheek and his jaw, could feel where his thumb brushed Kevin’s bottom lip, but then Kevin opened his mouth and breathed and the force of his despair, his loneliness, and his pent up, confused rage, tore through Mike and shredded him.
It tore through Mike like claws, ripping him apart, and all he could do was fall back, open his mouth, and scream in the seconds before he stopped existing at all.
There were flashes of memory, all so heavy with emotion that Mike could not battle them back even if he knew how. Kevin poured through him tearing off pieces like gemstones. There were Christmas mornings with sleepy brothers with bedhead tearing through coloured paper, there were nights spent on stage, bathed in sweat and surrounded by screaming girls, there were quiet afternoons on tour buses, curled up in bunks with laptops, phones, or magazines. There were school gyms and locker rooms, all rubber, sweat, and running shoes. There were dogs lounging in the sunlight and chasing Frisbees, balls, or cats. There was a first car, a first girl, a first kiss. There were birthdays (twenty-five), and there were parents, smiling or shouting or lecturing or hugging or kissing or frowning with disappointment or crying with pride. There were Little League games and family holidays, camping trips and limitless beaches covered in sand angels and castles. There was endless, endless loneliness, and then there was a long highway, glittering wetly in the darkness, a wide, cloudless starry sky, and rolling fields of corn to either side. There was Bon Jovi on the radio, and Joe laughing in the driver’s seat.
And then there was nothing.
*
The house was shaking. Dust spun in dizzying streaks from the rafters. There was an unearthly wailing.
Nick wanted to go home.
Joe was drunk-Joe was always drunk. But now he was drunk and clinging to Joe Nick and shaking almost as violently as the house and Nick didn’t know what to do. Frankie had taken off, going upstairs shouting Kevin’s name, and Mikey and Gerard were at their computers, pale and consulting with each other in harsh whispers.
There was a low moan and then suddenly the house went still. Joe shuddered.
“You need to sleep this off,” Nick said quietly. “You’re no good to anybody like this.”
“What’s happening?” Joe whispered, ragged and broken.
Nick didn’t think explaining about Kevin was the best idea.
*
There was singing, faint and sweet, and Mike-what was left of him-was lying on a broken stretch of highway. The pavement was damp beneath him, he could feel it seeping into his skin with a distant sort of curiosity. The stars were above him, quick silver and cold and probably more of them than there should be.
The moon was missing. And still, someone was singing.
Mike wasn’t sure where he began or where he ended or who had so clumsily jammed his pieces together again, but he sat up gently, gingerly, and saw Kevin standing on the solid yellow line in the middle of the street, head tipped back and eyes closed. He was singing, something soft and sweet.
Behind him, the wreckage of a twisted car, flipped and crushed, tires still spinning, lay at an awkward angle against the concrete shoulder.
In the car, Mike could see two shadows. One of them was dead, and it was Kevin.
“You died here,” Mike said, and Kevin stopped singing long enough to turn his head and smile, shy and sweet.
“You were scattered all over the road,” he said. “I tried to put you together again.”
Mike grimaced as he stood up. “Thank you.” He stepped towards the wreckage.
“You don’t want to go over there,” Kevin told him quietly, head falling back to stare at the stars. “The ambulance will be here in a moment, but it’s too late. Not for Joe, though.”
“He was drunk?” Mike asked.
Kevin’s head snapped around again, eyes narrowed fiercely. “No,” he said. “Joe was fine.”
“Then what happened?” Mike asked. This wasn’t real-it couldn’t be. Kevin was caught up in a web that kept him in that no-longer-abandoned house and this was just...a memory. A nightmare. What had happened on this road haunted Kevin much more than Kevin had ever haunted Joe.
“A thousand stars fell from the sky and I was one of them,” Kevin said, singsong and sweet, and then there was a dull sensation of impact and Mike was falling and everything was silent.
Except for the screaming.
It took a while for Mike to realize that it was him.
continue
Author: starflowers
Summary: A story about death, but mostly the things that happen after.
Rating: Maybe PG or a little higher for violence, also themes of death, dying, a little bit of creepiness, and some talk of suicide. Also a little bit of h/c. Maybe a lot of it, actually. But it’s not as dark as it sounds! Sort of. It’s kind of really just a sweet little love story. A vaguely Supernatural AU.
Notes: This story is hard to explain, but it wouldn’t exist at all without the handholding of la_fours or the beta work of lovelyhera. Special thanks to skoosiepants, for not minding the fact that I email and BBM her 24/7 about whatever I’m writing. Also, you can blame akire_yta for forcing me not to post this as soon as it was done in April, and making me save it for the Skippy Little Bang (but also for being a fantastic cheerleader). And thanks to solar_cat for running the Skippy Little Bang!
Wonderful mixes:
by sparrowsverse: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=44LONNBZ
by la_fours: http://www.mediafire.com/?miinb1qdgoa515a
Kevin Sometimes
Sometimes the boy tangled in the web would get so angry that he’d scream and writhe and tear at his own face, fingernails leaving lines like a plastic surgeon, like he was cutting away all the bits that didn’t agree with his idea of how he should look and who he should be. Other times, the boy went eerily silent and eerily still, fading and fading until there was only a twisted, broken shadow left. Sometimes he cried and sometimes he begged and sometimes he held still and breathed as best he could. Most times, though, he raged.
It was a feeling Mike could certainly understand, and maybe that’s why he’d been given the assignment.
“You can’t get too close,” William said, and Mike snorted. Like he’d been inclined, at this early stage, to leave the rafters where he and William crouched, watching from the shadows as the boy snarled, snapped, and tested the limits of his new prison. “No,” William said quietly, hand on Mike’s shoulder, forcing his attention away from the boy below and back to William. “Not ever, Carden,” William told him carefully, eyes wide and searching Mike’s earnestly. “You don’t even-you’ve never even imagined how he could tear you apart, you don’t even know. You can’t know.”
There were parts of William that were still shattered and broken; Mike knew he spoke from personal experience.
“I’ll be careful,” Mike promised. William didn’t look reassured. Maybe he’d promised to be careful once, too. Before Gabriel.
“See that you are,” William said faintly, closing his eyes.
Below them, the boy howled.
Suicides were the fucking worst.
*
When the Jonas Brothers stopped playing shows and making music, no one was all that surprised. Even the two remaining members didn’t have enough Disney magic to make it after all the shit went down.
When they disappeared from the public eye to fall apart and nurse their wounds and try to clumsily stitch together the ragged places Kevin had torn when he’d left, no one had really expected them to ever come back.
They broke apart in spectacular fashion-the Big Bang had nothing on the way the Nick, Joe, and Frankie shattered, their broken pieces scattering and forming chaotic and random orbits around the blazing, boiling hole Kevin had left behind.
Joe went crazy. Nick got married. Frankie stopped believing in God and started believing in other things-paranormal things. Nick thought that was about as close to crazy as you could get without being Joe. Sometimes it kept him up late at night, wondering what was worse-the beer and the sex and the despair that Joe lost himself in, or the occult and heresy that he’d lost Frankie to. He wasn’t sure.
Then Frankie called, late, late at night, breathing heavily into the phone.
“Frankie?” Nick asked, grimacing apologetically at Selena, who had stirred at the ringing of his phone.
“What is it?” He kept his voice gentle, leaving his bedroom, flicking on a light in the hall.
“I found him,” Frankie said, voice shaking with something deep and dark and terrified.
“What?”
“I found Kevin, Nick.”
Nick leaned against the wall, letting his knees give out, sliding down until he was sitting heavily on the floor, cradling his face in his hands. “Frankie,” he said softly. “Kevin’s-”
“I found him,” Frankie said, voice rising in pitch with excitement. “I found him, Nicky, he’s in New Jersey, near-”
“Kevin’s dead,” Nick interrupted, voice hard. He’d take drunken phone calls worried about STDs over this any day, he decided.
“I know,” Frankie said. “I know, I know, Nicky, and I found him. In an old house. Haunting an old house.” Nick just sat very still for a long, long moment, and then Frankie said, “You don’t believe me?” His voice was small, injured, and very young.
“Of course I believe you,” Nick lied quietly. “Tell me exactly where you are, Frankie, please? I’ll come and you can show me.”
Frankie rattled off the address of a motel in Jersey with barely-repressed excitement and Nick promised to be there the next day, hanging up with a weary sense of betrayal. It wasn’t enough for God to take one brother. Now he was after Frankie too?
Nick would drag him home and lock him in the basement until Frankie was better.
And if that didn’t work-if that didn’t work, he certainly knew some good therapists who could possibly help his baby brother. God knew, they’d helped Nick well enough.
*
The house was empty, which was why they’d chosen it. What few pieces of furniture had remained, shrouded in white sheets, hadn’t lasted long beneath the boy’s fury, and they were now splinters and bits of upholstery. Window panes had been knocked out, littering the floor in shards of glass, and the foundations of the place had been shaken, cracked.
Mike wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have loosened the web enough to give the boy even that much room to move. He’d kind of been hoping he’d wear himself out a little, but whenever the boy’s energy started to waver, if Mike even thought about coming closer, a protective wave of cold fury rose up and the whole cycle started again.
Mike didn’t really mark the passage of time, but he knew this was taking an unusual amount of time for first contact.
William had come back a few times, checking on Mike and his progress (or lack of it), sitting with him in the rafters, watching the boy pace and howl. He never stayed long, though.
Mike was thinking about maybe tightening the edges of the web again, tangling the kid up so he couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, and then just... just charging at him, screaming out all of his own fury and frustration until the kid just gave up and went silent and listened.
Instead, he just watched the boy raging, destroying the house, and waited. The boy knew someone was there, but he didn’t know where or who, only sensed a vague threat that he lashed out against if Mike made the slightest movement.
His joints were getting stiff from holding still. Patience was a virtue but it sure as hell wasn’t one of his.
Nothing really changed. Well, until the people showed up.
The house was empty. Empty and remote and abandoned. Damn it.
Apparently the two guys with sawed-off shot guns (loaded with salt? What did they thing this was, some urban legend? What the fuck good was salt going to do?) hadn’t gotten the message that this house was off-limits. Abandoned and isolated.
Mike’s web kept the boy inside but couldn’t keep idiots from wandering passed the boundaries, right into the boy’s path.
Fucking fuck.
He rose from where he’d crouched on the rafters for the first time in ages, and he could have sworn he felt his bones and his joints grinding. He grimaced, prepared to do something to save these idiots from themselves.
The boy rose up as well, a righteous wave of defensive anger, rushing towards the two men. Mike was about to intervene when that rush of pure, frigid emotion faltered, shuddered, and then washed away.
Without all his carefully constructed illusions of ice and cold, the boy was just that-a boy. Too young for this shit, smaller than Mike had thought he’d be, just barely an adult, stark lines of his cold face drawn, just now, into a frozen expression of horror and mingled confusion. His eyes were dark and nearly animalistic. His hands fell to his sides and twitched, fingers curling like he wanted to make a fist.
Mike had gone still has well, staring, because in all his time spent watching, waiting for his moment, he’d never, ever seen the boy hesitate. His eyes were locked on the door and Mike glanced there too, curious.
A younger boy stood there.
“Frankie?” Mike’s boy said, slowly and carefully, like he wasn’t sure how to form syllables any longer.
In all the time Mike had been there, his boy hadn’t ever even shown that much humanity. Mike had started to worry that whatever had happened had left his boy so broken that there wasn’t any hope at all, any strings left attaching him to the person he’d once been.
Before he could react, his boy was gone with barely a whisper of the same cold wind that had nearly blown the three humans from their feet.
Their hair ruffled in the faint, chilly breathe, and the little one-Frankie-said, “Did you feel that? Was it him? Is he still here?”
Mike’s eyes narrowed when the shorter of the two men cocked his shotgun and said, “A draft, probably. Let’s set up the equipment.”
Fucking ghost hunters. Mike was reluctantly adjusting his plans, resigned to the fact that maybe, maybe, these humans were going to do more good than harm. Which sucked. He’d been looking forward to scaring them off.
Unfortunately, it seemed his boy might actually have some attachment to them-at least the little one-which meant they got to stick around. For a while.
Damn it.
*
Frankie watched Gerard and Mikey setting up their equipment in what had once been the living room of the rotting old house. He wasn’t sure what the hell Kevin would be doing, haunting a place like this. He was pretty sure you needed some sort of emotional connection to haunt a place, but whatever. He’d take what he could get, and right now, that meant taking the fact that Gerard and Mikey Way, ghost hunters, had contacted him a few days before with information on his brother.
They’d even had a tape. The audio had been weird at first, all cracks and pops and stuff, but they’d cleared it up and he’d heard something-- which could have been his brother’s voice. Either way, the photo they’d showed him-which was a picture taken through the window of this place-showed a shadow that-if he squinted and prayed a little, looked like Kevin when Kevin was mad.
Either way, it was more of a sturdy lead than anyone else had offered, and when the Ways had invited him along for some more investigation, Frankie had taken them up on it.
He’d even called Nick, who had promised to come and see.
Which probably meant ‘come and find him and have him locked up’, but Frankie was pretty sure he could convince Nick to believe him. After all, Frankie had been a paranormal investigator for two years. He knew what he was talking about.
While Gerard and Mikey set up their sensors and cameras, Frankie wandered the house. There was definitely a weird energy here, one that seemed to waver and echo, like something had been there but now it was gone. He wondered where ghosts went when they weren’t here.
“Kevin?” he whispered, voice shaking. “Kevin, I’ve come to bring you home.”
A faint draft was the only answer.
*
There was cold and there was nothing but pain and fury and confusion, spinning cyclones of debris that, if he looked close enough, were shattered bits of memory, frozen in crystalline chunks of ice that had broken off from somewhere-he worried, sometimes, that they’d broken off from his edges, from what had once been fingertips and toes. That much self-awareness rose and fell like erratic breathing, however. The boy was about as aware of the fact that he was the eye of the hurricane as he was of his own name.
For a long while, there was only that dizzying, wild ride of cold fury, and then it had broken, a wave shattered on a rock, and he had been a boy again, a colder boy than he had been before, and Frankie was standing there, haloed by sunlight. Like an angel.
He’d stopped believing in angels ages before, but then, he’d stopped believing in Frankie, too-had given Frankie up for a fragment of memory. And Frankie was there.
It was like seeing another face reflecting back in a mirror that only showed echoes upon echoes upon echoes of his own shadow. It was him and he was nothing, again and again and again and again and then it was someone else and that someone else was Frankie.
Nothing made sense. The boy was terrified, his edges suddenly redefined, though ragged and broken where the wind had torn bits loose.
He was-what was he? He had been wind and now he was rock-rock chipped and chipped and chipped and coated with ice and snow and something slick and sickly sweet. He had been nothing and everything and now he was just-he was just-
It was impossible to define. He was a boy. He was a shadow. He was broken. He was bleeding. He was frozen cold and cauterized.
He was hiding.
He only became aware of that fact when someone very, very carefully fell to their knees beside the bed he had crawled under, and lowered their head to look.
The boy was a coiled spring. He was twisted around and around into a knot and at the slightest provocation, he would snap and lash out and destroy with whip-like ferocity.
The person who peered under the bed did not provoke him, just watched with a calm sort of curiosity that made the boy go very, very still but nothing more.
“Hello,” said the person, who was male with edges much smoother than the boy’s, as if he had never been chipped at by rage and circumstance-or if he had, a gentler wind had come along and rubbed and smoothed away the jagged edges where the rest of him used to be. “What’s your name?”
Did he have a name? Until very recently, the boy hadn’t been aware that he had anything other than fury, so he hesitated, considering the question very carefully. “No,” he said finally. His voice was grating and rusty.
“Oh,” said the man. Then he added, “The little one seems to think you’re Kevin. Are you Kevin?”
He flinched at the name because it was his, even if he had forgotten. His edges had begun to weep and leak again, confusion and terror disguised as fury snapping and licking at the shadows under the bed. “I’m,” he said, his head snapping back, mouth twisting as a shriek of cold and anger tore from his throat. His ragged fingers scrabbled for purchase on the floorboards as his body shook with tremors. “I’m,” he tried again. “I’m nothing.”
“You aren’t,” said the man. He slipped his hand under the bed, reaching for Kevin, and it was a mistake. Kevin snapped at his hand with his teeth, swallowed back a snarl, and the man said, “Why don’t you come out from under there.”
Kevin did, but only because the fear had caused him to tighten up even more and something undefined snapped inside him, an elastic band wound too tightly. He bent backwards so violently that something broke, and rage spilled from his fingers and his wrists and his toes and every little part in between, shrieking as it tore him apart. The bed flew up, up, and smashed against the wall, raining in pieces, but Kevin was gone, spinning spinning spinning, tearing at the walls, the floor, and the fading memories of his lines, his planes, and his hollows.
The man sighed and swore softly as he slipped from the room, and Kevin didn’t notice.
*
Frankie, Gerard, and Mikey set up camp in the living room, rolling out sleeping bags and such, for their overnight stay in the house. When Frankie had made a quick inspection of the rooms, he’d found beds and stuff upstairs, but no one had dared suggest that they use them.
“So many cold spots,” Gerard said, popping back into the room with a notebook and a thermometer. “I’ve also got EMF in some of the rooms.”
“Some of them?” Frankie asked, nervous for the first time. “It’s not just Kevin?”
“No,” Gerard said with a quick smile. “They leave traces. I’m pretty sure there’s just the one entity here.”
Frankie relaxed a little, and then the room went cold.
“Electromagnetic readings through the charts,” Mikey said, glancing up from his monitor, pulling his headphones off. “Sound waves too. Listen.” He pulled the headphone cord out of the machine and the room was filled with a crackling, snapping sound, like fire devouring sticks, like camping, like-
The lights flickered and died, something started scratching at the window, and the sound recording started howling, the low moaning sounding inhuman.
“Leeeeeeeave thissssss placcccce,” said a voice, and it wasn’t Kevin’s. Frankie wondered if it was supposed to be.
He was too busy freaking out to ask, though.
“Holy shit, holy shit, are you getting this?” Gerard shouted, and Mikey didn’t answer, just stared in mute and shared horror and excitement.
*
“Seriously,” William said, popping up out of nowhere, sitting beside Mike in the rafters. “This is how you pass your time?”
Mike grinned a little, watching the chaos below. “There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of the classics,” he said. “I don’t want to disappoint the ghost hunters.”
“And the boy?” William asked.
Mike finally looked at him, and below, the horrible moaning stopped, the lights came back on, and the temperature stabilized. Frankie and his friends were still shaking with delight and terror.
“Kevin,” Mike said. William blinked and then smiled.
“You made contact?” he asked. “He told you that?”
Mike grimaced. “Not exactly. Frankie told me.” He pointed at the boy below and said, “Frankie’s here looking for Kevin.”
“Oh.” William cocked his head. “That’s curious. You haven’t run them off yet?”
With a long sigh, Mike shook his head. “Kevin remembers. I’m not sure how much, but he reacted to Frankie the way he hasn’t reacted to anything else.”
“Anger?” William guessed.
“Fear. He’s hiding under the bed upstairs.”
“If he hurts them-” William began.
“I can protect them,” Mike told him. William sighed, nodded once, and disappeared.
Below, Mikey was rewinding the tape and playing it again, and Mike rolled his eyes, sighed, and propped his elbow on his knee, chin resting on his palm, and feet swinging restlessly, waiting for Kevin.
*
Kevin was darkness. He was creeping and crawling, sliding across the floorboards.
He was tumbling down the stairs without a sound or breath of wind, and he was moving silently through the doorway.
That’s where he stopped, hovering and hesitating, an inky stain on an inky night, staring at the place where Frankie curled up inside his sleeping bag and slept like a kitten. He would have him-he would pull the boy by his hair, out of the living room and up up up the stairs, under the bed, and keep him there, trapped in the floorboards, because even in darkness, Frankie shone like a diamond or a puddle of oil. Something opalescent and beautiful.
Kevin was darkness. A raven, attracted to something shiny.
He could not tell what it was about the boy that drew him-hazy memories were just shadows to a creature that no longer had memory at all. But curiosity had taken over where only fury had been before, and Kevin could and would have the boy, shining like a coin.
He moved closer, drawing up his darkness, the waves and hollows that made up his form when he did not want to have fingers and toes, and he rose up over the boy, ready to crash down and claim.
“Kevin,” said a voice-low and rough and musical. Water spilling over rocks of various size and shape.
He looked up and it was the man, the man who had peered at him while he hid under the bed. Now, however, standing up with shoulders braced and voice gently chiding, the man did not look like a man at all, but something different. Silver moonlight painted his edges, and around him, beginning at his shoulders and ending at the floor, the air seemed thicker and disturbed, shot through with hints of that same silver moonlight, like the man’s edges extended beyond his shoulder blades and fingertips.
Like wings.
“Don’t touch him, Kevin,” said the man.
Kevin should lash out-should main and destroy. Instead, curiosity and uncertainty kept him there, hesitating and boiling in a black cloud over Frankie. He didn’t say anything, but the man didn’t seem upset by it.
“You don’t want to hurt Frankie,” he said, and then he stepped closer.
Kevin reared up, the air around him tightening, going colder, and the man raised two hands up and said, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”
“I can’t,” Kevin said finally, voice no more than a breathy whisper.
The man cocked his head, tucked a lock of his hair behind his ear, and said, “Can’t what?”
“Touch him.” Kevin nodded, slowly, like his form had only just remembered that he had a neck to nod with at all.
“You don’t want to hurt him,” the man agreed.
“I want to keep him.” Kevin was growing sullen and bored with this discussion, and he looked back at Frankie, moving closer, reaching out, determined to surround him and drag him off, make him part of the house.
“Kevin,” the man snapped, impatient now. It startled Kevin into looking at him again, hesitating. The man took a deep breath and then tried a smile.
It was crooked and stupid and ridiculously charming.
Kevin’s edges dissolved a bit, the aggression easing a little, as the part of him attracted to shiny things focused on that smile instead of the boy beneath him.
“I’m Mike,” said the man, holding out his hand, like Kevin would shake it.
“I can’t touch,” Kevin said, voice fading as his focus faded, his energy faded. “I tried before.”
He was drifting away and Mike just watched him go, looking resigned and drawn in silver. “Before?” he asked, and Kevin sighed, “With Joe,” and then he was gone.
He didn’t know where he went when he wasn’t there, and he didn’t care. He just Wasn’t, and sometimes, that was his favourite place to be.
*
Frankie picked Nick up at the airport and studiously ignored all of Nick’s attempts to talk about coming home and therapy. Instead, he drove him straight to the house, parked behind Gerard’s ancient van, and dashed inside.
“Anything happen while I was gone?” he asked breathlessly, and Mikey shook his head, humming a little. “Gee’s got a cold spot upstairs, a few orbs on video, nothing major.”
“Orbs,” Frankie said, excited. “That could be him, right?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing to my brother?” Nick snarled from the doorway suddenly, and Mikey looked up, arched an eyebrow, and said in a careful monotone, “Which one, the little one, or the dead one?”
Frankie half expected Nick to shove him aside and maul Mikey for saying that, but instead, Nick crossed his arms over his chest and said coldly, “The little one.”
“Huh,” Mikey said, blinking at Frankie like maybe he hadn’t ever seen him before. “Nothing, actually. We remember to feed you, right, Frankie?”
“I can feed myself,” Frankie said, rolling his eyes. “Listen, listen, Nick. I know you don’t believe and that you think he’s gone, but we’ve got something here, I swear, we do.”
Nick was already shaking his head, so Frankie did the one thing he knew was guaranteed to make Nick give in. He widened his eyes and let his bottom lip tremble and said shakily, “Please, Nick? Please trust me?”
Only Frankie’s mother had ever managed to avoid falling for that.
Some of the tension eased out of Nick’s shoulders. “Okay. Okay, Frankie,” he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair and shooting Mikey a suspicious glare. “But only a few days.”
*
Mike frowned as he skirted the older ghost hunter on the stairs and came back into the living room. He couldn’t find Kevin. He knew he was there somewhere, even if Kevin did not want to be found, if he faded away, he was still there, he had to be. When Mike and William had dragged the writhing, shrieking ball of poltergeist rage from the streets of Chicago and shoved him into this house, they’d spun a tight web around it so that Kevin couldn’t leave.
The thing was-the thing was that until now, Kevin hadn’t ever really stayed faded for this long.
Frank and Nick were in the living room, sitting together, drinking tea-what the hell-while Frankie chattered excitedly about something in one of the photographs. Mike thought it might be the one with the dark spot in the corner that vaguely looked like a pig with wings. Mike was kind of proud of that one. He liked to think outside the box with floating orbs.
He shook out his wings out, huffing and unwilling to confess just how frustrated he was with his inability to find Kevin, and leapt up into his place in the rafters. Then he froze.
Kevin was there, dark and coiling as he sometimes was, curled up tightly, shadows curling and shifting over the lines of his physical form that were steadily becoming more and more defined. He was sitting there hugging his knees, chin propped up on his folded arms, and staring down in childlike confusion.
Mike had never been this close to him before and he wondered if maybe he should fade away, disappear, drift away before Kevin realized he was there.
Too late. “That’s... Frankie,” Kevin said, without turning to look at him. “Right?”
“Yes,” Mike agreed cautiously.
“And Nick.”
“Yes. Your brothers.”
Kevin turned, slowly, slowly, until he was looking at Mike, eyes dark and wide and aching. “But where’s Joe?”
“Chicago,” Mike said, because that was where they’d found Kevin-trailing his brother Joe like an angry puppy.
“He’s not here because he killed me,” Kevin said softly, but he didn’t fade away, just turned his head, watching Frankie shove Nick’s shoulder and giggle. Mike saw Kevin’s faint little smile because he was staring, frozen in shock.
Kevin hadn’t been killed, he’d killed himself. Hadn’t he?
*
“Something’s happening,” Gerard whispered, and Mike snorted. Yeah, it was, though it wasn’t Kevin. As far as Mike could tell, Kevin had gone shy, refusing to slip in front of a camera, to register on a single machine, or to cause so much as a sigh. He had faded away some time before nightfall and hadn’t been seen since.
Mike was amusing himself setting off random series of events in various machinery set up in the living room while he waited for William.
He lost his patience around midnight. “William!” he shouted. “Get the fuck down here!”
“Ohmygod,” Nick hissed, and Mike would have been vaguely amused that something he’d done had converted Nick to a believer, if he wasn’t so pissed off at William. “Did you hear that?”
They were replaying the tape, filtering it, taking out the white noise, and a disembodied voice was hissed, “Get the fuck...” The rest was garbled.
“Did he-that wasn’t Kevin,” Nick said shakily. “Did that say ‘get the fuck out of here’? Are we-we’re in danger, aren’t we? We should-”
“What?”
Mike narrowed his glare on William and crossed his arms over his chest. “You said it was suicide.”
William frowned. “It was. All evidence supports-”
“All evidence except the fact that Kevin, who was there, says that it was his brother Joe.”
William hesitated, thinking, and then Gerard was waving a handheld device in his face, excitedly saying something about EMF.
William growled and grabbed Mike’s arm, jerking him up and into the rafters. He shook off his irritation and then said, “It’s possible. We made the assumption based on the reaction of the spirit-anger like that, mostly self-directed, is generally the result and/or the cause of a suicide. But it’s possible that it was something else-accidental, even.” He grimaced. “Or purposeful. If it was murder, Carden, you’re going to be pulled off the case.”
“No-wait, what?” Mike shook his head. “Why?”
“Murder is a whole new thing, you’re entirely unprepared for that. You’re in over your head, you can’t expect-”
“You can’t expect me to back away now, not after-it’s been weeks, Bill.”
William shook his head. “And you haven’t made any progress, Carden. If it was murder, then maybe that’s why.”
“I’ve made progress,” Mike snarled. “You can’t take this from me now. He trusts me.”
William rubbed at a spot of tension between his eyes and said, “Telling you his name does not equate trust.”
“Give me a little bit of time,” Mike begged. “What can it hurt? He’s already dead.”
“Carden-”
“He’s mine, Bill.”
William’s eyes narrowed and he said, “I told you not to get close.” Then he sighed, slumping, and said, “I’ll give you time, but not very much. It’s the best I can do.” And then he was gone.
*
Kevin was giving the place a good, old fashioned haunting. It was exhausting. It was like with the appearance of two of his brothers, the rage melted away, replaced by a deep, cold depression that sent sounds like rattling chains echoing through the house. Doors refused to stay shut, lights flickered, and Gerard nearly passed out in excitement from the cold spots. It started to rain and didn’t stop and Mike was going crazy.
He’d tried talking to Kevin. He’d been gentle, coaxing, and sometimes firm and strict. He’d even tried balling his hands into fists and just shouting and screaming and waiting for Kevin to notice. Kevin seemed unaware of his presence, drifting through the house, moaning and carrying on like every bad cliché Mike had ever heard of.
Finally, desperate, Mike resorted to the one thing that he knew would cause a reaction-any kind of reaction. He walked up to the microphone that Mikey had hooked up and said as clearly as he could (because things could get garbled so easily), “Joe. We need Joe. Get Joe. Where’s Joe?”
Mikey jumped, watching the sound waves, played it back, cleaned it up, listened through the headphones, and frowned. “Uh, Frankie?” he called. “Nick? You guys like, have another brother, right?”
Frankie and Nick ducked into the room from the kitchen, frowning. “Yeah,” Nick said. “Joe. Why-”
“I think you should get him.” He nodded once, going back to his machines. “Yeah, you definitely should.”
“Why?” Nick asked, wary.
“The ghost said so,” Mikey said, entirely unconcerned. He tossed them the headphones and wandered off in search of Gerard.
*
The thing about Joe was that the one thing he never wanted to talk about was Kevin. Ever since Kevin had died, Joe had pulled away, gone off on wild road trips, done stupid things, pretended he was fine and then called Nick in the middle of the night, sobbing like a child, drunk and begging to be put out of his misery. But he never, ever wanted to talk about Kevin.
Nick wasn’t all that sure that Joe would take it well if he was to call him up and say, “Hey, Joe, so, Frankie got these ghost hunters to find a spiritual energy they think is Kevin, wandering around this random house, and apparently he wants to see you. So, I’ll pick you up at the airport?”. Double punctuation? No. Never.
So instead, Nick called him up and said, “Joe. I need-I need your help. It’s Frankie. He’s not well, Joe. He-he’s sick. Please. We need you. Can you come? I’m scared he’s going to do something stupid.”
Joe breathed heavily, drunkenly, into the phone for ten seconds or so and then said, “Sure I can. Where are you?”
Nick had told him and Joe had promised to be on the next flight and that was that.
Nick felt like a dick for using Frankie that way, but at the same time, even if this ghost thing turned out to be a scam and a waste of time, maybe being together, the three of them, could help heal all the broken places.
It was a shaky plan, but it was more than he’d had the week before, so Nick was okay with it. Mostly... mostly he just wanted to see Joe and cling to him and cry a little. He was okay with that, too, if only Joe would let him.
*
Mike had never really been aware of time before, but now he felt it, slipping through his fingers, and his progress with Kevin was nearly non-existent. It kept raining, Kevin kept drifting, and only Nick’s comment to Frankie about Joe being on his way was enough to offer any hope. William could return at any moment and take him from the assignment, and Mike was pretty damned sure that no one else would get Kevin the way he did.
Mike recognized Kevin’s moods by the pulsing of his energy, the movement of shadows that shifted around him, the temperature in the room. He’d had other assignments before, been charged with calming other restless spirits, and none of them had had the solemnity, the soft lines to their face, the endless loneliness and confusion in their eyes that Kevin had. He wasn’t just angry energy, he was a boy who had lost his life, and then lost his soul to so much anger that he’d spent the years before Mike and William had found him, trying to tear off his own face.
He was broken, battered, and his edges were ragged and practically bleeding. He was damaged and Mike thought, sometimes, when he didn’t mean to, that maybe if Kevin ever let him close enough, the places where Mike was broken and chipped might fit against Kevin’s ragged edges and then maybe, together, they could be whole.
Sometimes, he nearly got close enough to touch. Kevin would be drifting, aimless and aching, and he’d slide right by. Mike wasn’t able to help himself, would reach out with burning fingertips, desperate to touch him and to soothe him, but Kevin would flinch away like a skittish cat and be gone again.
Something had to give. The tension was unbearable. He almost preferred Kevin writhing and raging to drifting through the house setting off EMF meters and rattling the window panes.
Then Joe arrived, and Mike knew that nothing would ever be the same again.
He stood in the doorway, hesitating the way Frankie had done, but Joe was not haloed by sunlight and shadow the way his baby brother had been. The skies had rolled with gray rainclouds for days now. And Joe looked like hell. He was pale, sweating, too skinny, his hair a ratty mess, his clothing dirty and slept in, and as soon as Kevin became aware of him, he gathered up all his energy, wrapped it around himself like a cyclone, and charged.
He was howling, and for a minute, Mike thought the rage was back. Joe’s hair twisted at the onslaught, his clothing billowed. He flinched, covering his face and cowering, and still, Kevin beat at him with shadowed fists, his voice rising and falling in a wail that no one but Mike could hear.
It wasn’t anger, though, Mike realized, after Kevin’s energy started to waver. It was desperation.
“Joe,” Kevin said, voice finally sinking to a whisper as he began to fade. “Joe, Joe, please please, Joe, please. Please. Can’t you find me, Joe?” Then, just before Kevin was entirely gone, he said in a broken, aching voice that shook the window panes, “Can’t you feel me?”
Mike shuddered at the helpless ache in Kevin’s voice, and then Kevin was gone and Joe was alone, shaking badly. Nick and Frankie rushed to his side and Mike went in search of Kevin.
*
Kevin was under the bed again. Mike hesitated in the doorway and then sighed, running a hand through his hair before stepping into the room and dropping to his knees.
“Kevin,” he said, exhausted. “Kevin, hey.” He could see Kevin, curled up against the far wall, holding very still. “It’s Mike. Will you come out and talk to me?”
For a moment, he worried that Kevin didn’t intend to react to him at all. Then, Kevin shuttered a little and lifted his face, which shone pale and miserable in the darkness. “Mike?” he asked, voice small, shaking.
Mike relaxed a little. “Yeah, kid. Come out from under there?”
Kevin shifted but didn’t move to leave the shelter under the bed. “Joe’s here,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. D’you want to tell me what happened?”
“I couldn’t touch him,” Kevin whispered, closing his dark eyes.
“Probably for the best,” Mike told him gently. “I don’t think you want to hurt Joe.”
Kevin shuddered, moving like maybe he wanted to surge forward, to smash into Mike, but he pulled back at the last moment and wailed, “I don’t want to hurt Joe!”
“Then what were you trying to do?” Mike asked.
Kevin’s voice fell to a soft, lost little whimper and Mike kind of wanted to crawl under there and curl up with him and keep him safe so he never had to sound like that again. He was pretty sure William wouldn’t support that method. “Touch him,” Kevin whispered, curling up even more tightly. “Hold him.”
“Oh.” Mike paused. “But I thought he killed you?” Kevin flinched, eyes squeezed shut, and started to cry. “Oh hell,” Mike hissed, and William wasn’t there anyway, so he slid under the bed, crawling as close to Kevin as he dared to go. “Hey,” he said, voice dropping low. “Kevin, hey.” He reached a hand forward to touch him, slowly and carefully, and Kevin opened his eyes and stared, eyes sparking, lighting just a little, shades of hazel and green.
“I can’t touch,” Kevin told him quietly, his face streaked with tears.
“I can,” Mike said, and then he touched Kevin’s cheek, and all hell broke loose.
Kevin lurched forward, maybe thrown off-guard by the sensation of touch after so long without it. For a moment, it was an ordinary touch-Mike could feel Kevin’s cheek and his jaw, could feel where his thumb brushed Kevin’s bottom lip, but then Kevin opened his mouth and breathed and the force of his despair, his loneliness, and his pent up, confused rage, tore through Mike and shredded him.
It tore through Mike like claws, ripping him apart, and all he could do was fall back, open his mouth, and scream in the seconds before he stopped existing at all.
There were flashes of memory, all so heavy with emotion that Mike could not battle them back even if he knew how. Kevin poured through him tearing off pieces like gemstones. There were Christmas mornings with sleepy brothers with bedhead tearing through coloured paper, there were nights spent on stage, bathed in sweat and surrounded by screaming girls, there were quiet afternoons on tour buses, curled up in bunks with laptops, phones, or magazines. There were school gyms and locker rooms, all rubber, sweat, and running shoes. There were dogs lounging in the sunlight and chasing Frisbees, balls, or cats. There was a first car, a first girl, a first kiss. There were birthdays (twenty-five), and there were parents, smiling or shouting or lecturing or hugging or kissing or frowning with disappointment or crying with pride. There were Little League games and family holidays, camping trips and limitless beaches covered in sand angels and castles. There was endless, endless loneliness, and then there was a long highway, glittering wetly in the darkness, a wide, cloudless starry sky, and rolling fields of corn to either side. There was Bon Jovi on the radio, and Joe laughing in the driver’s seat.
And then there was nothing.
*
The house was shaking. Dust spun in dizzying streaks from the rafters. There was an unearthly wailing.
Nick wanted to go home.
Joe was drunk-Joe was always drunk. But now he was drunk and clinging to Joe Nick and shaking almost as violently as the house and Nick didn’t know what to do. Frankie had taken off, going upstairs shouting Kevin’s name, and Mikey and Gerard were at their computers, pale and consulting with each other in harsh whispers.
There was a low moan and then suddenly the house went still. Joe shuddered.
“You need to sleep this off,” Nick said quietly. “You’re no good to anybody like this.”
“What’s happening?” Joe whispered, ragged and broken.
Nick didn’t think explaining about Kevin was the best idea.
*
There was singing, faint and sweet, and Mike-what was left of him-was lying on a broken stretch of highway. The pavement was damp beneath him, he could feel it seeping into his skin with a distant sort of curiosity. The stars were above him, quick silver and cold and probably more of them than there should be.
The moon was missing. And still, someone was singing.
Mike wasn’t sure where he began or where he ended or who had so clumsily jammed his pieces together again, but he sat up gently, gingerly, and saw Kevin standing on the solid yellow line in the middle of the street, head tipped back and eyes closed. He was singing, something soft and sweet.
Behind him, the wreckage of a twisted car, flipped and crushed, tires still spinning, lay at an awkward angle against the concrete shoulder.
In the car, Mike could see two shadows. One of them was dead, and it was Kevin.
“You died here,” Mike said, and Kevin stopped singing long enough to turn his head and smile, shy and sweet.
“You were scattered all over the road,” he said. “I tried to put you together again.”
Mike grimaced as he stood up. “Thank you.” He stepped towards the wreckage.
“You don’t want to go over there,” Kevin told him quietly, head falling back to stare at the stars. “The ambulance will be here in a moment, but it’s too late. Not for Joe, though.”
“He was drunk?” Mike asked.
Kevin’s head snapped around again, eyes narrowed fiercely. “No,” he said. “Joe was fine.”
“Then what happened?” Mike asked. This wasn’t real-it couldn’t be. Kevin was caught up in a web that kept him in that no-longer-abandoned house and this was just...a memory. A nightmare. What had happened on this road haunted Kevin much more than Kevin had ever haunted Joe.
“A thousand stars fell from the sky and I was one of them,” Kevin said, singsong and sweet, and then there was a dull sensation of impact and Mike was falling and everything was silent.
Except for the screaming.
It took a while for Mike to realize that it was him.
continue