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by Kate ElizabethDisclaimer: not mine, not a bit.
Notes: many thanks to elizabeth for speedy and brilliant beta, and all those encouraging exclamation marks.[ * ]
I.
Colin died on a Saturday. Amy cried for days. Or Ephram assumed she did, because he didn't see her again until Wednesday morning and her eyes still looked puffy and sore. They walked by each other in the hall without saying anything. But she nodded when she saw him; nodded and swallowed and bit her lip. She looked like she was going to cry again.
Ephram didn't cry. Not really. He lay on his bed with his cheek flat against the sheets, pillow over his head. Sometimes he fell asleep that way and woke up choked with heat, panting out breaths that sounded like words.
Wednesday was his first day back at school, too, and nobody said anything about it. There were only two weeks left.
His dad cried. Delia cried in sympathy. She hadn't known Colin well, but she had a sense of the wrongness of things. They both wanted to hug a lot, now. Like they could make up for the touches that hadn't been exchanged when Mom died. And maybe they could, so Ephram picked Delia up and let her wrap her small fingers in his t-shirt and press her hot little face against his neck. She smelled of glue and markers. She'd been making a card for Colin's parents.
His dad smiled a little, left the room. When he put her down, Delia trailed after Andy like a wan small ghost.
It was entirely Ephram's fault.
Colin screaming at him in front of school. Colin furious and spitting. Colin shoving him against the truck, bending his fingers. The stunned look on Bright's face when Colin hit him, the unnatural sheen of the skin swelling on Bright's cheek.
Ephram had pushed. Wanted Amy for himself. Wanted to stop the slow disappearance of Colin the Second. Wanted Laynie back. Wanted to replace Bright. Wanted everything, and somehow everything meant Colin: the boy with the shy smile who'd insisted that they become friends. The boy with a dead arm who needed Ephram to carry his books, the boy who had looked up from his homework in mute frustration. Looked up at Ephram as if he knew he'd find help there, and maybe something else.
But Colin had pushed back and everybody had seen the truth, the fragile structure behind Colin's carefully built façade. Everybody saw that he needed help.
Colin had been sick and angry. He had also been alive. He had loved Amy, spent time with Bright, traded short words with Ephram. Back to normal, the whole town thought. Ephram was the only one who'd looked beneath the shining surface. But maybe Ephram had just been looking for that hesitant Colin, the thin pale wide-eyed boy who'd been swallowed down into fury and hurt. Maybe he'd just been looking for what he wanted to find.
When Ephram put his head under the pillow, he thought about suffocating. He thought about all the Colins coalesced into one body in a box under a fresh pile of dirt. But he didn't really cry.
II.
Bright climbed through Ephram's window just before midnight. It was Thursday. The ladder scraped on the side of the house and he got his foot stuck on the sill as he clambered in. He caught himself on the dresser, knocked several of Ephram's cds onto the floor.
Ephram opened his eyes. He hadn't been asleep, not exactly. He knew what each of those sounds meant. Bright had never climbed up to Ephram's window before, but Ephram knew. He'd been waiting for it. Waiting for Bright to do... something.
He sat up, sheets pooling around his hips. Expecting maybe an embarrassed look on Bright's face. Maybe anger? Maybe Bright had come to beat him up for exposing Colin. Maybe Bright would take him outside and shove him up against a truck and finish what Colin started.
But now he saw Bright hunched over, leaning against Ephram's desk. Bright didn't look embarrassed. He looked exhausted, slumped, intent. He was wearing the same clothes he'd had on in school, the shirt wrinkled now, shorts hanging low on his hips. His feet were bare. They looked grey and cold as stone in the dim moonlight filtering through the window. Ephram could hear him breathe, taking lungfuls of air through his mouth.
"Where are your shoes?" Ephram asked. His whisper sounded harsh in the quiet room. Stupid but sensible, and a laugh caught sourly in his chest. Where are your shoes? Where's your sister? Where's your dead best friend?
Bright didn't say anything. He stared. The darkness hid his eyes in grey hollows but the look raised hairs on Ephram's skin. He started to open his mouth again. Bright stepped forward a little, almost a threat. Ephram closed his mouth. Licked his lips.
He watched Bright just stand there for a full minute, looking at him. The room emptied of air, made a vacuum around the two of them. The rest of the world cut off. Frozen in the moonlight.
"What are you doing here?" Ephram whispered finally. It was the easiest question, the one Bright might actually answer.
Bright shook his head. The sudden motion choked up Ephram's throat like the hot air under his pillow. "Shut up." He moved closer, blocking out the window almost entirely. He looked solid as a mountain. Improbable as the creeping thoughts of Colin Ephram had entertained before falling asleep for months and months. "Don't say anything. Shut up."
One of his knees landed on the edge of the mattress. The bed sank down. Bright crawled up toward him and Ephram didn't move. He just watched. Couldn't even think what else to do. He was shivering; it was faintly cold in the room with the window open. His skin prickled and heated in waves.
At the end of the bed, Bright knelt for a moment as if thinking. His face was closed. Ephram couldn't tell if he had been crying. Then something flashed in his darkened eyes, visible even in the low light. He shoved at Ephram's shoulder, knocked him back against the sheets. Sudden sharp contact of his hand on Ephram's skin. Ephram's head thumped back onto the pillows, a sound like Bright falling into the room. Hollow sound, soft sound. Dirt on a coffin.
"What--" Ephram started to say again, but Bright clamped a hand over his mouth and flipped him over. Ephram pushed up from the mattress, arms bent, palms flat to the bed. Tried to get his knees under him, but there were Bright's hands around his hips, lifting him up. Bright's knees between his. Bright's body landing heavily on him, pushing him back down into the mattress. Taller and bigger and he fit over Ephram like a lid. Pressed him to the bed, skin-warmed clothing all along Ephram's bare back. The glowing heat of Bright's cock against his ass through sheets and boxers.
"Fuck," Bright hissed, and Ephram was thinking, yes, fuck, yes. Bright smelled of heat and shower, deodorant and boy-smell. Comforting. His erection fit perfectly in the hollow between Ephram's upper thighs. It almost made sense. After Colin. That he would be doing this with Bright, in the middle of the night. Only five days later, and that was just it, he couldn't think any more. Couldn't think about Colin while Bright was here (in his room on his back in his bed), pushing his face into the back of Ephram's neck and groaning.
Every push of Bright's hips forced Ephram into the mattress. The rhythm was perfect, stupidly perfect. It made Ephram want to cry. "I hate you," Bright chanted against his ear. "I hate you, I hate you, I fuckin' hate you."
And Ephram made sympathetic noises, or maybe they weren't sympathetic at all. Maybe they were desperate. They were certainly agreeable noises, noises that meant "yes" and "I know" and "oh god" and "do it." His nose shoved into the pillow so hard the cartilage hurt. His mouth came open and the fabric brushed dully against his tongue.
Bright bore down hard and Ephram arched and bit randomly at the pillow, catching the wet corner of it between his teeth. Writhing beneath Bright's weight until it felt unbearable. All of Ephram's blood pounding in his head and Bright's blood pounding above him and Colin's blood cold and thick in the ground. Colin's blood running out around his father's gloved fingers. He shook all over. "Get off," he hissed, panting. "Get the fuck off."
He shoved Bright back, pushing with his hips and his shoulders, ignoring the other boy's groan. Bright reared up, greyed eyes wild. "What?" he growled.
"Wait," Ephram whispered, and wriggled around until he was on his back between Bright's legs. "Just let me." The sheet was messed up between them now, Ephram's boxers partly bared. So close. And Bright was still half-kneeling above him, a weird expression on his face.
"I-" Bright said, and then fell silent, chest heaving.
Ephram reached up for Bright and tugged hard. Bright fell partly on top of him, partly beside him. Ephram kicked a leg free of the sheets, wrapped it around Bright's hip and pulled them into sudden shocking alignment. Couldn't stop himself from moving a little. Bright moaned, a deep hurting note, and Ephram stilled suddenly and completely, a boneless hot sprawl. His foot rested on the back of Bright's calf. He put a hand on Bright's shoulder. The material clung to Bright's skin, slightly damp with sweat; beneath it he felt the solid arcs of muscle along Bright's shoulder blades, the weight of Bright's arm. "We're not gonna do this," he said. "We're just not."
There was a long pause. A rest.
"I hate you," Bright said, low and fierce. When Ephram lifted his head, Bright was staring at the wall.
He put his head down again, took a long shuddery breath. The air had flooded back into the room. Outside in the darkness, overenthusiastic birds were singing, faint and faraway. He could hear car doors shutting. Tires on macadam.
Bright's breath, slowing, feathering warm against his cheek.
"Bright," he said. "Where are your shoes?"
"Outside," Bright muttered, "fucking basketball sneakers," and Ephram understood. Thought about Bright's bare feet on the cold metal slats of the ladder, climbing away from Colin, leaving his shoes behind.
But he just said, "Dumbass," and hitched his arm over Bright's back. Warm muscle and solid living flesh. Bright didn't flinch away. Maybe even settled closer against Ephram's body, nuzzling like an animal. Warm breath on his ear. Bright's hair was the same color as Amy's, though it looked grey in the darkness. Strands of it brushed against Ephram's cheek.
"I hate this," Bright said on a hissed exhale, and Ephram knew exactly what he meant. He hated it too. Hated the absence of Colin. The deep certainty that it was all his fault. Because they were the ones who had done it. Bright started it and Ephram ended it and all of Everwood knew. They'd known at the funeral and they knew in the halls at school and they knew in the aisles of the grocery store. They knew in the quiet waiting rooms of the doctors' offices. They knew on the street and it showed in their faces, a subtle tightening around the eyes and mouth.
Soon they would know this, too, and probably that would be even worse.
Bright's mouth brushed hot and fleeting over his eyebrow, his cheekbone, his jaw. Ephram held his breath. Waited for a kiss, eyes half-open, but Bright rolled away and pulled Ephram against his chest. Curled him up like a girl with an arm around his shoulders. The whole motion was silent. Just the noise of the sheets rustling, Bright's dirty feet sliding on the bed. Ephram let out his burning breath.
They were quiet. Then:
"I miss him," Bright said. His voice rumbled beneath Ephram's ear. He had started stroking Ephram's side idly, a tiny unconscious gesture. His hand was warm and smooth.
"I know."
A little exhalation. Bright shifted, and said, "You miss him too." Ephram had thought Bright would sound surprised. He just sounded tired.
"Different Colins," Ephram said. Heard his own voice muffled by Bright's shirt. "Yours and mine."
Bright didn't say anything, but his hand still moved slowly over the cooling skin of Ephram's back. After a few minutes, Ephram lifted his head to look at the clock. It was nearly one a.m.
They were supposed to go to school in the morning. They were supposed to pass each other in the hall and say nothing. Nothing about the warmth of Bright's body beneath his cheek, nothing about the curious suspended silence of this moment, the reversed meaning of words. But Ephram knew he wouldn't be able to hide it forever. He couldn't ever hide his own pain. He always shoved his own darkness out into the light for others to see.
He knew this, and yet he couldn't make himself move. Couldn't struggle up out of Bright's embrace into the chilly air. Colin had returned from the dead once, but he would never come back again. Love and science couldn't reach him. Ephram had no faith in either one. But he had an arm folded up on Bright's chest, a heartbeat beneath his spread fingers. At that precise moment, he didn't really feel like crying.
"I still hate you," Bright said quietly, slurrily, like an afterthought. His breath hitched in his chest.
Lying there with Bright in the dark, Ephram closed his eyes. "Yeah," he said, and listened intently as Bright's breathing evened out, went smooth and steady and regular as a metronome.
(c) everfic. cue edna's voice: i don't own squat, private.
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