#like the grwoth between them.. AND me

[narcolini]

for brothers - 3.5

angel reyes x oc: tatiana ‘pidge’ clarke, 1797 words

an extension to the previous part of the series

for day 30 of whumpril: holding hands & ‘don’t let go’

a/n: is this the cheapest trick in the narrative book? yes. did i want any old excuse to get them to that ending? yes. what can i say!! more importantly, oh my fucking god, fic 30 of the month. i DID IT!!!!!!!! we did it!! whumpril done and dusted <3<3 thanku to the @whumpril​ for running the event!!!

tagging: @cositapreciosa​ @drabbles-mc​ @darqchilddaydreamz​

She’s in the middle of it before she even knows what’s happening. Gunfire, sirens. Smoke in the air like something’s been burning, something plastic, toxic. She doesn’t recognise the man beside her, just that he’s wearing a kutte, carrying the patches. He won’t stay still long enough for her to see any writing that matters, any identification that would help. The two of them are crouched behind a wall, of sorts, a folded sheet of metal that she can’t distinguish. Is it a car? The roof of one? Painted red with a strip of sun-bleached white down the middle.

‘Tati!’

It’s comes from the right of her, loud and desperate, shouted by someone she can’t see. Can’t look for, either, because the bullets are whizzing overhead still. Clipping the metal and leaving jagged tears in their wake. She shrinks into the cover, arms up around her head. If she stays still for long enough, then surely it’ll pass, surely, it’ll all pass. Whoever wants her can make their own way here. Duck under the gunfire, and join her behind the safety of their makeshift shelter.

‘You coming or not?’ The man beside her asks, still unrecognisable, still more shape and spirit than anything real. Even when she tries, she can’t make out the lines of his face. It’s blurred like a memory might be, lost beneath years and years of absence.

‘No, what?’ She’s panting, near crying, and trying to talk through the mix of both. ‘Come where?’

He runs before clarifying, out from behind their shelter, into the fire and the noise and the smoke.

‘Oh God.’ She sinks down again, leaving him to the chaos. ‘Oh, fuck.’ Her fingers digs into her eyes, willing it away. He’s dead, that’s for sure. If not now, then soon. There’s too much going on for anyone to dive in and out of that unscathed.

‘Tati,’ it’s her name again, closer and clearer now, ‘you can’t stay here.’

‘But where do I go? I can’t run.’ She can’t move at all, besides pawing at her face, covering her eyes and ears. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

It’s Angel, suddenly. Angel in front of her, from nowhere, saying her name over and over. Untouched and unmarred. Like they’ve plucked him straight from the shower and set him down in front of her, in the middle of all this shit. He’s shaking her by the arms, rings pressing into her skin tighter than they ever have before.

‘We gotta go, okay?’ he says, and he’s trying to pull her up already, indifferent to her resistance. ‘We gotta run.’

‘Run?’

‘I can carry you.’

‘You can’t carry me and run at the same time,’ she snaps.

He frowns deeply, like a caricature. ‘Do you want to die, or not, Tatiana?’

She’s definitely crying now, shaking as each whelp of fear slips out of her. There’s a car on fire, roaring to the left of her, up in flames before she’d even noticed it was there. She can feel the heat, smell the gasoline. How it started doesn’t matter, how any of this began is so far beyond mattering.

‘Where’s EZ?’ she asks, flinching as the glass of its windshield cracks into pieces.

‘He’s already gone,’ Angel answers, ‘we gotta follow him.’

‘You’re not making any fucking sense.’

He’s just making it worse. Confusing her more and putting fear in place of answers.

He takes her hand, gripping it tightly, before pulling her up to her feet like she weighs nothing. Like she doesn’t have feet and legs at all; one minute, she’s on the floor, and the next, she’s up and running with him. Moving fast enough that she can’t see anything besides the stretch of his shoulders and the tattoos down the back of his arm. There isn’t even a ground beneath them, she thinks, no sound of footsteps against the blacktop. Just movement, progress. Smoke-filled wind through her hair.

He looks back at her, eyes wide with panic. ‘Don’t let go, alright? You keep hold of that shit.’

She’s nodding, wild with it. Her fingers so tight around his own that it hurts. That she feels the bones crunching.

‘Where’s EZ?’ she asks again, because she still can’t see him. She still can’t recognise a single face they pass.

‘He’s gone.’

‘Gone where?’

Angel turns, questioning her with just a look, dark and searching and frantic. He can’t understand her. She can’t understand him. Nothing about this makes any fucking sense. He won’t tell her, he won’t pause to let her catch up. ‘Pidge, I—’

He gets shot. Right in the shoulder and twisting away from her with the force of it, his fingers tugged from her own as he falls. She goes with him, knees to the ground she still doesn’t feel the impact of, to pat manically at the hole in his chest. It’s bigger than a baseball, somehow. Bigger than any fucking bullet wound should be. Clean through him, no blood, no bones. It doesn’t make sense. She can see the grass on the other side of him. Feel his heartbeat still—maybe, softly—though he isn’t responding. He isn’t even looking. His eyes are shut like he’s sleeping, expression blank and slipping away from her.

This is too strange, she realises, too bizarre and impossible to be real. She isn’t really here. She can’t be. Angel is frozen in place, hole-punch in his shoulder, and no-one survives that. No-one dies like that either, clean of blood and agony.

This didn’t happen, she tells herself, this isn’t happening—

It was a dream. It was just a fucking dream, and she’s sweating all the same, heart racing like she was really running with him, hands held and desperate to stay so. Her face is even wet—because she’s been crying too, in real time, leaking tears subconsciously.

She sits upright, blinking a few times until the dark of Angel’s living room settles into recognisable shapes. The TV, the easy lounger, the paintings on the walls that were definitely already there when he moved in. None of it was real. No violence, no fear. No clean cut hole through her ex’s shoulder.

Great. Being here is no different than being at home.

She kicks her legs out, straightening the blankets again. Maybe this is punishment for rejecting Angel’s offer and insisting she took the couch, not the bed, as he’d wanted her too. It made more sense, he’s taller. She fits where he wouldn’t. But the couch cushions are clearly cursed, stuffed with bad juju that’s got her subconscious on high alert, dial cranked on the crazy scale.

God, she can’t take many more nights of this.

Her phone lights the room when she unlocks it to check the time. It’s only three thirty. That’s another five hours—at least—until Angel wakes up, or won’t mind being woken up; another five hours of nightmares alone, in the grip of this God forsaken couch. She won’t do it. She can’t, honestly. Her heart’s still racing, still pounding against her chest, blood rushing in her ear drums. If her eyes close again, here, she’ll be right back there, in the smoke. Thrown straight into the dream that makes no sense.

He’ll have to follow through with his offer, then. Late or not.

She pulls herself up, quiet as she can, socks to the floorboards. This will be the first time since the break up. First time in his bed, first time sharing it with him again, in the dark, the quiet. It only took a sort of brother in law’s near-death to make it happen. A week of bad sleep and hopeless determination to not be affected by it, and here she is, padding into his room in the pitch black of night. Leaving all images of EZ and her stupid fucking dreams, on the couch behind her.

The door’s open, of course. He’d walked himself in and collapsed onto the bed once she’d declared herself ready for sleep. Once she’d finished disturbing his nightly routine, and accepted that talking could only go so far. She can’t even tell if he’s undressed, or changed, or gone to sleep in the clothes he was wearing already. He’s just a lump on the bed, barely visibly in the sparse moonlight.

She crawls on from the left, because it has the most space, though really he’s stretched out in the centre of it. One arm over his head, across the pillow. Legs straight and out like a starfish. If she was any bigger, or taller, she wouldn’t fit. He’s too used to sleeping alone now, too used to having the whole spread to unwind on.

At least she’s brought the blanket she’d been using with her, so they don’t have to share that. She doesn’t have to fight with his legs to push her own under the covers.

He stirs, obviously, as soon as she’s got enough of her weight onto the bed to shift the mattress. It pours him toward her, his side to her back.

‘Don’t say anything,’ she orders, whispering it sharply. Harder than she needs to, honestly, but her ego is starting to wound pre-emptively. If he mocks her about this, or says anything at all, she might not be able to endure it. She wouldn’t even quip back in return, too embarrassed to slip into their usual routine.

He groans in response, eyes shut still as he mumbles, ‘Not even opened my mouth.’

‘I’m just saying.’ She settles, sinking into the pillow, his elbow brushing the top of her head. ‘I don’t wanna hear a damn word.’

‘Whatever, Pidge,’ he says, making no effort to enunciate or separate the words. It’s just noise, but she recognises it, her nickname in his half-asleep voice. He’s in no position to argue. Too tired to make any remarks about her crawling into his bed and curling up beside him. ‘Bad dream?’ he asks, tagging it onto the end of a yawn.

‘Too cold in the other room,’ she lies. ‘Go back to sleep.’

‘M’kay.’ He rolls after the humming agreement, putting his chest to the curve of her spine. ‘Night.’

Then he flops his arm over her waist, sleepy but intentional. A dead weight she can’t shift and feels no need to, really, though she might in any other circumstance. At least, she thinks she would, because that’s more than friendship, right? That’s more than the cards they’ve been dealt and agreed on. But if anything can keep the nightmares away, it’s that. Angel’s arm, warm and grounding, over the soft of her stomach.

She sighs. ‘Night, Angel.’

He doesn’t reply. He’s already asleep, blowing snores into the back of her neck.