#i'm not sure if can continue to sustain it and killian's voice is harder to write

[ecoustsaintmein]

ghosts (part iI of ????)

part i here

part iii here

part iv here

part v here

pairing: paddy x eoin; rating: M. slow burn.

this was the first time they'd had this conversation as eric and killian. but it was as if they'd had this conversation, many years ago, many times before.

(or, paddy mayne and eoin mcgonigal, reincarnated as eric love from 'starred up' and killian from 'angel'. they meet again, during the heights of the pandemic -- but they don't remember - until much, much, much later).

--

killian's been setting up shop, selling videos of himself to viewers who would pay ridiculous amounts of money just to see him strip and touch himself without sacrificing his anonymity.

that interlude in his life - spending time with his pals at that farm, it was fine playing at being lord of the flies once in a while, but it had to end.

eric reminds him of matt, in some ways. it's his colouring, killian thinks, the way his hair shines golden in the sun, but that's where the similarity ends. eric is closed off when matt is so open, eric is a professed agnostic when matt speaks about heaven and angels and god without any fear of judgment.

no, killian decides, categorical. eric isn't like matt at all, but more like katrin, whose fierce eyes and determination can turn cruel without warning.

instead of colliding head on like he did with katrin and jess and sammy, killian tiptoes around the edges of the cliff that is eric, because he never knows what will happen if he plunges head first into the abyss. will eric consume him whole, will eric spit him back out?

killian thinks that him and eric could not be any more different from each other, but maybe they're only pretending to be the people they aren't, with the masks that they're wearing. it's easier to hide when everyone seems interchangeable with the green scrubs and the ppe gear, breathing the same chlorine detergent and stale piss scent. maybe deep down they're just the same, with the violence and savagery that they're both capable of.

it's just that killian hides it better.

the only time that he really can be himself, he thinks, is when he's in front of a camera, anonymous, faceless.

--

as cu chulainn, killian has the freedom to act out his fantasies. he's a man still, but he sees nothing wrong in being in touch with his feminine side, while retaining his masculinity. there was a time when he was ashamed for even considering this as a possibility, it having beaten into him growing up catholic in rural cork. it's something that he keeps close to his chest, though, and it's not as if he could casually discuss this part of his life with anyone.

so yes. there is still shame there, maybe.

he'd come up to london and experienced soho and experimented with other boys who were much more confident than himself, but perhaps it's the inner irish farm boy in him that makes him want to isolate himself; safely cocooned by his insularity.

he's traded wide spaces with rolling green hills and the sunshine for packed clubs between brewer street to old compton street, bathed in fairy dust and neon lights. the bassline still beats in killian's ears, in his toes, sometimes, and he thinks he wasn't born for this kind of life. so he retreated back into the peaceful eden that is his flat, with his potted chilli and herbs and anything that will stay alive if killian takes good care of them. the wild side of him still yearns, the part of him that wants and craves.

he started off small, with the videos. he didn't want to give anything away, hence the false name and the fake accent, after years of living on the farm in west sussex and sharing good craic with those english lads who'd spent their gap year to live life off-grid. they came and they went, but killian had stayed. until matt came along and told them that he needed to leave the farm altogether.

and killian's response, instead of anger, or resentment, was to kiss matt.

and then ran away like a fucking coward.

(it was a choice).

but the wild side of him still yearns, the part of him that wants and craves.

it really took off when pandemic hit, when the clubs closed and every transaction is conducted through grainy pixels and splodgy screens, the black mirrors to their souls. the numbers of his subscribers rose.

names and handles indeterminable from one another, some direct and downright rude, some a bit more hesitant and quiet, happy to just enjoy the show.

sometimes he would talk about himself -- his likes, his dislikes, without giving too much away. he rambles a lot, sometimes, about sweet nothings and on vague enough topics that no one can pinpoint who he is. his monologues tends to get the chat going, even when he's not stripping down or touching himself, and there'd been a flurry of questions about whether he's got a boyfriend or a girlfriend or maybe both. killian's laughed a hearty laugh, then, because he feels that he's some kind of a mini-celebrity and his subscribers are so nosey about his personal life.

one of the quieter, but eagle-eyed subscribers, user @/blair_e once asked about his handle, and his supposed englishness. 'if ur english why cu chulainn', the question went, and killian had switched effortlessly to his native accent, playing coy, asking, challenging: who says i'm english?

killian's begun to calling him blair, now, in his head, though they've never had a direct interaction. blair never replied after the 'who says i'm english?' comment -- like he's been chided by a teacher and has learnt his lesson and doesn't want to cause any more trouble. he's interesting, this feller, because before that he did occasionally send comments like 'you're gorgeous' and 'i want your cock in me' and 'fuck me hard', plus every other iteration of such phrases known to man, since the time of catullus who had written so eloquently:

'pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,' killian thinks. 'i will sodomize you and face-fuck you.'

but sometimes, blair would also type things like:

'i would undress you in the summer heat, and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came,' or --

'give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred', or,

'i love you. i love you, but i'm turning to my verses and my heart is closing like a fist,'

-- but doesn't follow up on any of them, as if he's scared that killian would notice, would know where the lines had come from.

oh, but killian did notice.

two can play at this game.

--

blair, he thinks. it's a lovely name.

but he's not a real person, just a name on the screen. it's only as real as cu chulainn's only a fragment of himself, that he hasn't got the guts to show the world in real life.

tonight the show is over.

tomorrow morning, he's killian again. the same killian who waits up for eric, who's always scatty and late (the alarm clock doesn't go off, he says, or his toast burnt, or he's lost his ear buds). eric's flat is a miasma of three bottles of different lynx fragrances, and killian's nose always twitches when he opens the door, the way one's nose twitches when walking past a lush store.

then they'll walk up to st george's, together. 'saves up the bus fare, innit?' grins eric.

this, killian thinks, is more real to him.

killian grins back and puts an arm around eric, because they're pals.

eric lets him.

--

the experience they'd had, eric and him -- as volunteers, in this hospital, has humbled them. there are things bigger than themselves. they're just specks of dust, and yet, the things that they do still matter.

eric, especially -- he'd spoken openly about his time in prison, what a twat he'd been. killian would be lying if he'd said he couldn't see it, because he could. eric is intimidating, sure, but killian doesn't fear him. he's like a lost stray dog who wants affection but doesn't know how to ask for it, because all he's known is danger and hunger and learning how to become the bigger, vicious dog in order to survive.

there is no room for vulnerability, because in that world you'd get eaten. you fight for scrapes. you fight for honour. but you fight dirty. you walk around with red-tinted glasses and everything's a red flag, but you don't realize that you're a fucking red flag yourself.

he'd seen the people coming through into a+e for knife crimes, and eric says to killian, there'd been a time when i'd been the prick who'd done that.

and then he'd worked in the wards and saw the realities of life and death and between the prison and the hospital and the halfway-house that is their council flat, something in eric seems to have shifted.

--

killian's seen the way eric balls up his fists and grits his teeth when he's trying not to talk back at a demanding relative, an entitled patient, a sneering charge nurse, a snobby junior reg who graduated from oxbridge.

they're all burnt out.

killian's seen, in a span of an eight hour shift:

a respiratory consultant screaming in the men's urinals after another death on his take. a med reg having a panic attack in the chaplaincy after a resus gone wrong. a medical student dissociating from the reality of their future; what their career paths will lead them down to--

-- this feckin' shite.

--

people dying.

politicians roared in laughter behind closed doors, like the pigs and the humans at the end of animal farm.

killian's seen the injustices. the failing systems, the trolleys in a+e corridors, paramedics rushing in and out helplessly as ambulances whizz past. nurses joking that their piss look like fucking irn bru because they didn't even get the chance to drink a gulp of nothing for a whole twelve hours. doctors skipping lunch because they just had no time to even breathe so they stacked up on those sweeties from them bright red celebration tubs that relatives brought in as a thank you gesture. stuffed them in their scrubs' pockets and gobbled them up between running from one end of the ward to the other. the bounty sweeties were always the last ones left.

killian doesn't mind them, but eric swears that it's the filthiest thing on earth.

--

eric still speaks about religion distastefully, and seems to shudder every time a chaplain comes around. killian's grown fond of one of the chaplains, a wise lady of caribbean descent who grew up in clapham (her parents were on the windrush, she'd said), but retained her trinidadian accent. he got her to hijack their lunch table one day, and eric had grunted then -- but by the end of fifteen minutes he could tell that even eric was charmed, and by half-an-hour he was openly laughing at a joke that she'd made.

killian had seen her at work, how she put people at ease - even if they're religious -- or not. killian watches how she helps people grieve, and through this it also helped killian work through his own unspoken, unprocessed grief. his da. losing his friends.

katrin. sammy. jess.

matt.

what could have been if they hadn't been kicked off that farm. what could have been if killian hadn't broken off all contact. what could have been if killian had stayed in dromena, with his mam, instead of fucking off to west sussex. what could have been if his real da hadn't left them.

what could have been, killian wonders, if he hadn't been a coward; hadn't run away after he'd kissed matt under the grey skies crying mourning tears over the choices killian had made in his life.

and then, he thinks, he wouldn't have taken the first train up to london. he wouldn't have been lost. he wouldn't have been found.

he wouldn't have found himself.

he wouldn't have found eric.

--

eric doesn't talk about his dad a lot, but he'd shared enough for killian to know that they were in the same prison. he talked about the therapy group and the posh fucker who fucked off to canada, and he spoke about dr wilson and made a joke about how the prison psychiatrist and the hospital chaplain could probably be best pals.

he talked about ashley.

killian could tell that eric's grieving about ashley, too.

--

one night, on the bus home, because it was raining again and it was dark as sin and neither could be arsed to walk, eric fell asleep on his shoulder. head lolled back, a sudden snore.

the bus jolted, and the moment passed.

eric woke.

stared at killian, bleary eyed like he had no idea where he'd been or who he was.

when things were.

'eoin,' he'd said, and something in killian snapped. eric looked like he'd caught himself, as if to say, 'i didn't mean to say that'.

when they got home killian paused at eric's door. it was a split-second decision; a choice to make -- maybe he could lean by the doorframe and stand over eric and kiss the stubble off his cheek.

or maybe he could just say 'good night, paddy,' with a curt nod, and take the extra ten paces to walk to his own door.

killian chose the second option.

eric didn't correct him.

he'd said, 'good night, eoin,' back.

killian didn't correct him neither.

--

eric turns on the computer, as he often does. finds out if cu chulainn's posted anything new.

finds out if killian's posted anything new. he wishes he could stay away, he wishes he could stop. but now that he knows, he needs more. and it's not like he's a predator -- it's not like he's doing this without killian's consent. he's posted the videos for all the world to see. it just so happens that killian's his pal, the same killian who makes amazing sausage rolls from scratch but is so bad at fifa. and he's helping out a friend, innit? even if it means that eric would be running out of pocket money before the end of the month?

there isn't a new video, but there is a dm.

it's a voice note, from cu chulainn.

from killian.

eric presses play.

--

killian-as-cu-chulainn recites:

'my heart’s aflutter! I am standing in the bath tub crying. mother, mother who am I? if he will just come back once and kiss me on the face his coarse hair brush my temple, it’s throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes I guess, and walk the streets.';

then --

'give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred; then, when we have performed many thousands, we shall shake them into confusion, in order that we might not know, and in order not to let any evil person envy us, when he knows that there are so many of our kisses;'

and --

'the fist clenched round my heart loosens a little, and i gasp brightness; but it tightens again. when have i ever not loved the pain of love? but this has moved

past love to mania. this has the strong clench of the madman, this is gripping the ledge of unreason, before plunging howling into the abyss.

hold hard then, heart. this way at least you live.'

--

that night, eric dreams:

eric-as-paddy, and killian-as-eoin, reciting poetry,

sitting at the piano,

singing percy french songs, together.

playing chess instead of gta v on the ps,

drinking rum instead of cans of monster.

'i will join the sas too,' eoin says, the grip on paddy's arm burning like a furnace.

'let's fuck off to burma,' paddy says, and --

'he reminds me that underneath i am a poet.'

and then they jump.

--

eric wakes and rushes out and knocks on killian's door, breathless.

he's wanted to say, 'i want to see that notebook again. that notebook with those names on it -- paddy and eoin.'

but when killian opens the door, with a confused look on his face, all eric could think about is,

'i am stretched on your grave and will lie there forever if your hands were in mine I'd be sure we'd not sever',

and -- 'eoin eoin eoin eoin eoin,' and 'i don't want to lose you again.'

so he kisses killian-who-is-eoin-but-not-eoin, and killian responds back, his body singing,

'do not stand at my grave and cry, i am not there. i did not die,'

and -- 'i'm still alive, paddy. i'm still here. the sand of the desert couldn't keep my soul buried, just like you said,'

before they break away from each other, panting, wondering what the fuck's just happened.

--

this time, killian doesn't run.

but eric does.

--

tbc.

part iii here