Heathens Chapter Twelve

I was a three day conference and am actually sick, so this was a little late because I was too tired to edit it. But yay, it's here, and I never get tired of using bops for chapter titles.

xii. I Think We’re Alone Now

They don’t talk to each other for the rest of the ride. A sits in the passenger seat, B sleeps the rest of the drive off in the backseat. They sit across each other during diner stops and don’t meet each other’s eyes. They keep the glass wall between the front and the back of the car closed. 

B catches A talking into their phone every now and then, but he doesn’t pay attention to what they’re saying, too tired. 

The driver glances at them both, something akin to concern in his expression, when they stop by to refuel, but neither of them say a word. A just gets out of the car, taps away at their phone and sits in front of the gas station mini mart with it pressed to their ear. They hate phone calls with a vengeance. In fact, he'd thought they only started making them because it's necessary in their line of work. 

It's not for a case. He sees it in the vulnerability of the set of their shoulders, the looseness there that he's become familiar with from spending years in the same room with them. Their eyes are dead and tired and he knows what corner of their head they're in, knows why their hands are trembling and have tiny moon-shaped indents carved into the palms. 

A laughs, suddenly, dryly. Then they approach the car, only to take a bottle of gatorade, drink it down without pausing for breath and ask, “Happy?” to whoever they're talking to over the line. 

They laugh again after a few seconds. It sounds… a little more relaxed. A bit more at ease. That's new, for them to be relaxed by a phone call of all things. 

He catches their gaze and they turn away without saying anything, making their way back to the station mart. 

He frowns again as he thinks about it. It’s ridiculous to be upset. The Wara Ningyo cases weren’t even for them, so they weren’t obligated to pay close attention to it. They were working at the time it happened too. They were busy, didn’t have time.

He stomps the thoughts down violently, not leaving them enough room to echo about his head and repeat the cycle again. Focus on the good things, other things, like maybe the fact that MONIKA’s controls can be overriden because she’s sophisticated enough to be able to form opinions, and who should be trusted and who shouldn't be; if he can figure it out, he’s free. 

Except, well, he really hasn’t been thinking about his escape, as of late. It’s mostly just been surviving at this point. 

That, and the mess with getting A out of being kidnapped by an honest to goodness cult. The ungrateful shit. 

God forbid you be second best all your life.

He closes his eyes. 

He doesn’t open his laptop again, even when it’s still got a case currently on pending. There’s no point in that, anyway, when he’s too exhausted to register anything. 

The driver pulls them up into a shitty motel, and A’s already walking into the building without him. He clicks his tongue and starts towards them with his crutch, the driver kind enough to open the car door from him. 

A books them two rooms. 

Two actual separate rooms. 

He tests his surveillance out immediately, by reaching for his ankle monitor to try and take it off, which then tazes him. He’s staring up at the ceiling when his vision is finally clear, and then he goes to get dressed, get himself food, and avoid A more. Bit of a stretch to expect for everything to have changed because he and A weren’t in the same room anymore anyway.

His phone buzzes on from where he's left it by his dresser. 

“My instructions regarding your surveillance have been reset, sir,” MONIKA says helpfully. The ‘sir’ is new. Probably because the atmosphere isn't the best. 

“I got that,” he says, staring at the unholy mess that is crushed oreos, kitkats, and cheap jam he'd bought out front along with even cheaper bread that's about to reach its expiry date tomorrow. The candy's supposed to be A’s but fuck them. 

He slaps a slice of bread on top of the mess, bites into the whole thing and then grabs one of the Gatorades that's now his by right of his pettiness. 

MONIKA seems to be waiting. In his exhaustion, it takes two seconds late for everything to click.

When it does, he sighs, and mumbles, around a full mouth: “Son of a bitch.”

“If it helps,” MONIKA says, “At least you can request for everything face to face.”

“Uh huh, nice try, Matt.”

MONIKA makes a noise that's almost offended, and B has to give Jeevas credit, because he's outdone himself this time. He wonders why the boy never applies all that to his actual schoolwork. The amount of research he can conduct, the papers he can write, the scientific breakthroughs… 

Trauma, maybe. He went from detective-in-training to serial killer, he's not one to talk. 

“Sir Matt isn't online, sir.”

“He doesn't need to be, he made you.”

“To be adaptable and competent, sir,” she says, and he can hear the bristling. 

“MONIKA,” he says, “Little bit o’Monika. I hate to break it to you, but you're still code and I think you have a module that makes you bullshit something to appease the humans you're watching over.” He takes another bite of his disgusting sandwich, the bread too soft while a chunk of oreo that's too big crunches under his teeth. “Even if you learned and adapted most of this from A because they're a horrible, emotional mess, you're still code.”

“People try to help you and most of what you do is throw it back to their faces.”

It's getting better at tearing down walls. Interesting. He wonders how many hours it's spent listening to A hyperventilate and cry in an empty bathroom that it's learned so much in so little time. 

“Someone would think that someone with your record would know that lashing out due to being emotionally inarticulate is immature,” MONIKA says, and he actually stops mid-chew. “But I suppose numbers are really circumstantial and half made from luck.”

“Look who's talking, and about lashing out, of all things,” he says. 

“Speaking in someone's language often helps facilitate better grasp at a concept you're trying to introduce them to.”

Matt is probably so smug about this. He hates it. He hates this stupid motel room, and he hates the ankle monitor that makes him feel like he's a chained animal, he hates the robot that pretends like it's better than him when all he has to do is delete a strip of code to render it useless, and he hates -

He hates -

He frowns. 

He finishes the rest of his sandwich without saying anything, face blank and cold, trying not to let his anger simmer up to the surface. He drinks the rest of his gatorade. 

The plastic bottle is crushed when he tosses it into the trash bin. 

-

A doesn't stop by the next morning. Which is fine by him, he doesn't need them to babysit and he's fared well on his own, back at the glass house, in New York. He doesn't suddenly need them around. 

MONIKA turns on his phone as soon as he's awake. She tells him the time (6:00 AM),  the weather (cloudy, with a slight breeze, certainly cheerier and brighter than you, sir), that he is not allowed to get any breakfast by himself since the driver has left them, and it's just him and A in their motel rooms, and that he has several notifications from the case he was trying to break earlier.

He tells MONIKA the most ridiculous order he can think of for breakfast (“Medium rare steak, a bottle of Carbenet Sauvignon, Corn Flakes, a unicorn-shaped cake pop, and Monster.”) and then asks her if he can access Netflix. 

“You'll have to ask A.”

“Ah, no.”

So he resigns himself to sitting on an old, lice-infested armchair in his room and flicks through channels with the old CRT tv. The images that come up are grainy, and of people who're either retired or dead (as some of them don't have lifespans over their heads anymore,  which he supposes is the closest he can get to seeing everything the way normal people see things; small joys, animated films and movies starring dead people) and they're as mind numbing as the static that crops up every time there's interference. 

His laptop stays untouched, and he dozes off in the chair twice, the television still droning on. 

Breakfast does not come until lunch, which arrives with three knocks on his door. 

He grumbles a ‘come in’, thinking it's room service, but he sees A's dress shirt and pants in place of the shitty blue staff uniform this place has, and his drowsiness is immediately replaced by alertness. 

They look pissed. 

And tired. Mostly tired. They’re still sick after all.

There are three paper bags in their arms. 

“The Cababernet is mine,” they say, marching up to him and dumping two of the paper bags on him. He has to move fast to catch them, and lets out a hiss of pain at them hitting his legs. 

“That is not fair, I ordered that,” he says, checking the bags to find the steak. The packaging still hot. Huh. 

“It's my money.”

“You didn't have to spend it.”

That seems to throw them in a loop, for some reason, but he favors savoring the moment of triumph rather than question why that is. A flashes teeth. 

“This is nice,” he says, popping open the steak’s custom-printed box. He reaches for his crutch on the floor, setting the steak aside for a moment, and then remembers his motel room does not have a kitchen. 

A catches on, of course, and reaches into their paper bag. They toss him a plastic bowl. 

He should be infuriated they know him enough to get this. He is infuriated. It's got Thomas the Tank Engine on the outside. 

Still, he takes the cornflakes out from its paper bag, dumps a considerable amount of it in the bowl, then drowns it in Monster. He sticks the unicorn cake pop at the side like those tiny umbrellas in drinks. 

“Bon appetit.”

A gives him a flat look. 

He starts slurping the whole thing down, too lazy to ask if they've gotten him a spoon, making sure the unicorn pop doesn't sink into the mass of cornflakes and Monster. The crunching is enough to get a disgusted look out of A so he keeps doing it, looking them in the eye every time he brings the bowl up to his mouth. 

He reaches for the steak to tear a piece off of it.

A shakes their head, looking up the ceiling, and starts to walk off. 

“Hey, hey, hey,  where's my Cabernet.”

A holds up their paper bag. “My Cabernet, you mean.”

“Ordered it.”

“Bought it,” they say. 

“Credit to where credit is due, it was my idea,” he says. 

The flat look is back again, but then A just gets out the room and closes the door behind them without a word. 

Only to come back later with the wine bottle open. They look him in the eye and drink it without a glass. The point is lobbed at him better given that it’s a small, thin bottle that looks like one person can finish it after a few glasses.

Well, he's never touching that shit. 

“You're disgusting.”

A flips him the bird. “You're one to talk,” they say, reaching up to wipe their mouth with the back of their free hand. 

He crunches extra loudly when he slurps his Monster cornflakes again. 

“That's a no on the Netflix,” A says, and B stops to shoot MONIKA - or, well, his phone -  a glare. 

“Didn't take you to be that petty.”

“Figured I was done circumventing rules with you,” they say, taking another swig of the wine. “The bare minimum of you being alive is complete surveillance. Obviously, I've been lax with that.”

“So, what, you're going to make case-breaking harder?”

A motions the bottle towards his laptop. “Are you working on it?”

He isn't. He hasn't been. He doesn't dignify that with an answer. 

“I'm taking over it if you're not going to work on it, no sense in completely dropping an almost-solved case because someone's sulking.”

“Pot, kettle,” he says. “And since when did you drink? Aren't you sick?”

“One, since now because I hate you. Two, yes but fuck you.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you.” He tears off a piece of steak rather violently at that, making his words sound mumbled. 

“I'm arming myself with the same shock-and-awe mentality you seem to have at the moment,” they say, “For sending me out to order fucking Cabernet Sauvignon at seven in the morning.”

“Of your own volition,” he says. “I forced you to do nothing, you're just a moron.”

“We're going to do name calling, is this the most you can scrape up?”

“You're not doing any better.”

“At least I'm not insulting an AI trying to do her job,” A says. 

B barks a laugh, glancing at his phone again. “What, did you go running to tattle, or something, MONIKA?”

“That is low, B.”

“Why are you siding with our glorified bodyguard?” he snaps. “Getting too comfy in your cage, A, is that why you've been staying in it for years?”

“I'd advise you to not talk about things you don't know anything about, B,” they say with a strained smile. 

“It looks like it.”

“Your eyes have better uses, then.”

“Fawning at L, are we?”

That strikes a nerve, because not only does A suddenly stiffen, his ankle monitor beeps.

The expression on A's face melts into impassivity, all traces of tolerant anger gone. Their shoulders set straight, their posture guarded. They take another sip of their wine, but their demeanor has changed. 

“Nothing I do is ever for him,” they say, in a soft voice that makes a shiver race up his spine anyway. “Nothing.”

“How long have you worked for him?”

A snorts. “Never.”

Ah, they're playing. He can find the rules. 

“How long have you worked with him?”

They take another sip, and smack their lips rather smugly. A drop of red stains the white of their collar. “Never.”

He can find his way around this, it's just a matter of being general enough that he'll hit the mark either for them to answer or to give him something else to work with. 

“How long have you associated with him?”

“Hm, let's see.” They make a show of looking up at the ceiling, crossing their arms before deciding to bring their free hand up to tap manicured nails - since when did they get bored enough for that - on their lips. “Probably when I was first brought to an orphanage in Winchester. I was a child and didn't know what I was getting into.”

Okay, this is getting old. 

“How long have you been associated with him since you faked a suicide?”

A clicks their tongue. Gotcha. 

“About a year and a half after I faked my death,” they say. 

Plus the year they'd spent waiting for him to recover, that's two years and a half, and then some. 

“And why did you stay that long?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Let's hear them.”

“Says who?”

All enjoyment he's getting has waned to very, very little at this point. “Me.”

“Sorry, love, I don't answer to you,” A says, smiling cheekily, and just a little bit tipsy. “Try again when you're a little less pissy.”

“You are the one who blew everything out of proportion,” he snaps, slamming the bowl he's holding onto the table beside him. 

A just takes a drink. God, he should have expected them to be a lightweight. 

“You know I hate being pressured,” they say. “More than anything.”

“You're doing the pressuring - “

“You hold your tongue before that gets any further lest you want it bitten off.” A actually holds a hand out at him, which makes them look ridiculous, but the volume of their voice and the sharp edge to their syllables makes it not funny at all. “You're forgetting I'm pressuring myself to keep you walking, talking and breathing, Birthday, and you fuckin’ shouldn't be.”

He wants to stand. He should stand. He pushes himself off the chair, aware this is the second time his injured leg is getting aggravated in a fight between both of them. If he bleeds, who cares. 

“I don't owe you gratefulness,” he says, taking a step towards them. “I don't owe you my life, I didn't ask you to fish me out of whatever rat hole you found me in to keep me in a dolled-up bird cage.”

“And I don't expect you to!” A is yelling now. He should stop fighting with them when they're either sick or mildly drunk, but he's angry. None of last night's quiet anger. If A’s going to be loud, so is he. “I don't give a shit what you do, B, because I know the most I could do stops at trying to give you something to do when you're bored, getting you ridiculous food and bringing you to hospitals. But the least I ask is you not make me feel like I'm being choked to death by my own best friend.”

That -

That makes him pause. Not the conditional part, the very last part. 

They're not friends. 

“And barring that,” A spits, “Not ever imply I would fawn for fuckin’ L.”

“You didn't fight, you didn't fly, you didn't freeze,” he says. “You hate L.”

That's not the right thing to say because the anger in A's eyes just intensifies. They look like they can crush the wine bottle. 

“I can't fly and I don't freeze,” A says lowly. “But I sure as shit can fight.”

Well. 

B grins. Fuck it. Caution can take a vacation leave, because so can he. 

“Go on, then.”

They click their tongue again, and look away, scoffing in disbelief. 

Then - 

“MONIKA, run your emergency protocol. Turn safety off.”

“A, I would advise against - ”

“Do it unless you want B dead.”

A pause.

There’s a beep. B looks down at his ankle monitor.

But then, A lifts one of their perfectly manicured fingers (candy red, how nice), drinks down a good portion of their wine, and then smashes the bottle over his head. 

-

Given that he hadn't actually expected them to fight dirty (or fight at all - the fight at the Red House basement was one thing, but A has never been the best at their PE classes, way before the original curriculum at Wammy’s changed because everyone eventually thought, hey maybe these clowns don't need to learn how to wrestle, they're just going to be armchair detectives anyway; A had been the absolute worst at any of their physical training. While he'd passed with flying colors, A usually keeled over after twenty squats) - he staggers when the near-empty wine bottle smashes against his skull. 

His ears ring, and on instinct, he shuts his eyes to avoid any bits of glass that would blind him. The small amount of remaining wine spills out violently at the bottle shattering and drenches his head and his shoulders. Balance tipped, he starts to fall back; before he can think to catalogue the damage or right himself up, stunned, A’s already kicking the underside of his jaw. 

B crashes onto the floor, still-healing shoulder and arm knocking onto the edge of the coffee table and sending everything on it crashing along with him. 

He feels his stomach suddenly being squashed, and it's only on the second blow that he realizes A is stepping on him.

Unprotected area. Vulnerable to internal bleeding. Loss of air from diaphragm being affected. 

He barely manages to let out a wheeze as he thinks that. 

Okay, they're angry enough to do actual damage. At least they evened out the playing field earlier. That’s as good as permission to go all out.

Gritting his teeth, he grabs their foot before it can make contact again and pulls, yanking A down and making them knock their head on the ground. They try to wiggle their foot in his grasp, but he holds on, giving himself a few seconds to catch his breath and bearings as everything is blurry right now, but then A twists and crawls over to his legs, striking the injured one with an elbow. 

“Shit!”

He lets their foot go at the sudden pain, and A, with their torso already half-facing the floor, pushes both hands downwards to lift both their legs out of his reach, twisting again counter clockwise so they can place one foot carefully on his other side, quickly joined by the other as they pull themself up. 

They stagger, taking two steps back.

“Where the fuck did you learn that?” he manages, tongue thick in his mouth. A is a splotch of color against the motel’s rust red wallpaper with his fucky eyesight right now. 

A just adjusts their collar from where it's nearly choking them.

Legs, then. They're swift and flexible, so he'll need to limit the movement as much possible. He’s already disoriented them with the fall to the ground and they haven’t done themselves a favor by being drunk.

He sucks in a breath, focuses on where they are, and lunges forward, the motion somewhat reminiscent of an uncanny valley type jumpscare, what with the uncoordination of his limbs, but it works because he manages to tackle their knees, pulling them down again.

His injured leg is folded under him, unfortunately, and it hurts like a bitch. The still-healing shoulder isn't doing any well either.

A makes an irritated noise and strikes an elbow towards his head, but he leans back, and they miss. They'd been aiming for his temple. 

They bend forward suddenly and their other elbow hits his throat. Not as hard as they seem to have been aiming for, with the awkward angle they struck from and the fact that they'd had to fold themself in half, but it's enough to make him feel like he's choking. 

With all the focus he can muster, he keeps their legs in place. His vision blacks out for a second at the lack of air. 

Before they can strike again, he sits up, his leg shrieking with a sharp pain, but A yelps as gravity pulls their torso down, and they have to use their arms to hold themself up. Glass scrape against their skin, drawing blood. 

They grit their teeth and try to bend their knees, but B quickly gets to his feet, although not without a cry of pain, and throws A across the room. 

A hits the couch and it topples over, them rolling a few feet past it and landing on their stomach, wide-eyed. 

B hisses as he straightens out his injured leg and feels something drip from his chin. He lifts a hand to wipe it off. There's blood. 

He'd bitten his tongue when they kicked him under the jaw. His face likely has lacerations from how he’s feeling small stings from the wine. 

“Fuck,” he croaks. His throat hurts. 

A is picking themself off the ground, disheveled and bleeding, red staining the sleeves of their white button-up. One side of B’s pants isn't doing any better, already sticking to his skin from how much he's bleeding. 

He doesn't miss the flash of worry that flits across A's face when they notice it, although it's immediately covered up by that cold, silent anger again. 

MONIKA lets out an alarmed chime. “A, I really wouldn’t - “

“It's okay, MONIKA,” they say, voice kind and gentle and very out of place. “It wouldn't be a fair fight otherwise.”

“I think it would be best if you both ceased blows.”

“Too late for that now,” B grunts. He looks at the fallen table. 

One of its legs is broken. 

He snatches it up just as A scoops the largest shard of glass within their reach, already running at him. 

He ducks at their first swipe that barely misses his face, and then swings the broken leg into their stomach, hitting a part of their left rib from the odd angle he's batting, and making them stumble back, winded. 

He probably broke something there, as their hand immediately goes to the sore spot when they're a decent distance away from them. 

“Ran out of tricks?” He grins. They just glare at him. 

He lifts the broken table leg, bringing it down to collide with their shoulder, but A ducks and slips to the side, so he only hits their arm instead. 

That still gets a pained yell out of them. They try to stab the glass shard into his side, but he moves out of the way, nearly tripping.

There's a nervousness thrumming in his limbs, now. No, not nervousness. It's almost excitement, but really, he knows it's just adrenaline, buoyed by a good dose of anger. 

A snatches another glass shard from the ground and nearly embeds it into his cheek with a clean throw. He manages to duck. 

“What the fuck did they do to you in two years.”

The only response he gets for that is A's furious scream as they charge at him. The fallen couch is in their way, so they step on it and use it to boost their jump. B swings up, but A's hand grabs onto his arm, the other digging the glass shard in their hand into his shoulder, before the unarmed one quickly moves to his other shoulder. 

The glass is pulled out, and A twists so they're sitting on his shoulders instead, legs wrapped tight around his neck - they spin, letting gravity and his imbalance take their weight to the floor.

They both hit it, B crashing first while A stays on his shoulders, legs coiled around his neck like a snake, bloody glass shard in hand. 

He presses the broken table leg under their ribs. If he pushes, it could break through their skin enough to do some damage. 

“I don't know what they've been having you do,” he says, voice scratchy from all the hits his throat has taken. “But mother of god.”

“They had me stop being a coward,” A says, still out of breath. Their arm, the one holding the bloody glass shard, is shaking. A drop of red hits B’s face, right under his left eye. 

“I thought you just had a crash course on getting angrier.”

They snort. “I've been angry for a long time, in fact, I think I need therapy for this.”

Despite it all, B laughs, although he immediately chokes on air. A sighs, shifting so they’re sitting down instead of putting all their weight on their knees. They lower the glass, folding over so they're resting their forehead right beside him, just above his bleeding shoulder. 

B lowers the table leg. 

“What are we doing?” A asks, voice low but not in anger. In fatigue. It's more a murmur in his ear more than anything. “What the fuck are we doing?”

“I thought we were trying to kill each other.”

A laughs, and the first word B thinks of to describe the sound is sickly. With a bit of deliberation, he thinks perhaps hysterical might be better, although it doesn't capture the undertone in their laughter that makes his stomach roil. They sit up. 

“Since when - “ Their voice fails them at the last word, going high and faint and nasally, and he can hear their tears before he sees them. They don't let them fall, wiping them furiously, his blood smearing across their face and the bandage on their cheek like a bad parody of a mural. “Since when did we try to kill each other, B?”

They're pulling their lower legs up, letting him go so he can fully rest his head on the floor. 

“Apparently, since today,” he says. He shouldn't be a smartass, but even he's aware it's all he knows how to do in this situation. “Scratch that, last night.”

A laughs again. It's as horrible as the last time. 

“God, what have we come to, what is wrong with us,” they say, still wiping at their tears. A few are leaving tracks through the red all over their cheeks. Their nails, he notices with some desperate need to pay attention to anything other than them breaking down, are blending in with his blood now. “We don't try to kill each other, B.”

“That's a pity,” he says.

A gives him an unamused look. He steadies them in silent placation, letting them sit without listing to the side. 

“We're not friends, A,” he says. “Remember?  We haven't been friends in three years. Maybe four.”

A doesn't answer right away. Slowly, they nod. 

“Right,” they say. “Right, we're not friends.”

“Correct,” he says. “And I think the sooner we both understand that, the easier it's going to be for the both of us.”

“Probably wouldn't question us beating the living shit out of each other.”

He laughs this time. He doesn't know what he sounds like. 

A is staring down at him when he's quieted. 

“What?”

“Your face looks messed up,” they say, not maliciously. 

“I recall you being the one kicking me around and smashing a bottle over my head.”

“You deserved it.”

“And the stabbing?”

“Okay, maybe that less so,” they say. They glance at the widening stain on his sweater, the one by his stabbed shoulder, visible on the grey cotton. The blood's probably pooling under him too. 

They're not doing too well, themself. Their breathing looks laboured, maybe from the rib damage, and their sleeves have lines of red all over the forearms. He'd thrown them towards the couch. They'd have to be checked for spinal injuries once the adrenaline rush dies down. And for concussions. They both need to get checked for concussions.

“I think we should get cleaned up,” he says. 

A nods, but doesn't move. 

“A?”

“Are - “ They stop. They lick their lips, slowly, deliberating over their words. “Are we okay?”

Well, that came out of nowhere. 

He considers it. 

“Do you want to be okay?”

“Yeah,” A says. They're not looking at him. The look on their face seems distant, in fact. “Yeah. I hate fighting with you.”

“Feeling's mutual,” he says, and then immediately mentally kicks himself. A turns to him in surprise. 

He snorts. “Whatever, it was a knee jerk reaction. Get the fuck off.”

“You broke my ribs, I think I need payback.”

“You stabbed me, you little prick.” He pokes their sore side at that, and A immediately hisses and tries to lean away. “Fair’s fair.”

“So we're okay?”

They look hopeful. Like they hadn't just looked at him with a fury that shut down every ounce of mirth in their expression earlier. 

He looks at the bandage on their cheek, stained red. 

He sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we're okay.”

-

A reluctantly calls the driver that brought them here while B calls room service. Between the both of them and the extra backing of A’s associates, B's room is quarantined with only suspicious, flustered looks from the staff and none of the usual fuss and arrests for property damage. 

They get to the hospital to be patched up. The hospital staff are disgruntled, of course - what with the obvious signs of them already being injured when they were ‘mugged’, and then gaining additional injuries and wanting to check out as soon as possible - but they let them go after all their wounds are stitched, their pain medication refilled, and their scans completed. B’s lucky the wine bottle that had hit him was almost empty and small (which - he suspects that had been why A’d drank as much as they could before breaking it over his head). A only has a mild concussion and the couch had impeded them from being injured further when they’d snagged it along the way as the trajectory of B throwing them had been towards a wall. Their ribs are slightly cracked, but aside from the bruising, they’ll be fine.

They both crash in A’s shitty motel room that's only different from B's old one in that the walls are pastel green rather red. 

“Very Bikini Bottom, vibe-wise,” he says, claiming the bed by immediately falling down on it and letting his crutch clatter onto the floor. A, drugged up and more than a little out of it, steps out of the bathroom while struggling to get their right arm into the sleeve of their sweater. 

“It was the only other free room they had,” they say. They fight with their sleeve for a little bit, going over to their desk to sit on it so they don’t have to focus on keeping themself upright while they’re trying to relearn how shirts work. Their laptop is on the table, closed.

“I thought you were a hotel sort of detective.”

“Hah.” Their arm finally slips through. They look at it proudly. “Believe it or not, I'm not a hotel sort of detective.”

“What are you, then?”

“Usually, I just check in motels,” they say, “If a client’s made arrangements for me, I take it. Sometimes I stay in inns. Very rarely, with friends. Sometimes I keep moving.”

“All that luxury for none of the luxury.”

“Don't be ridiculous, B, I don't have enough for the luxury,” they say.

He raises an eyebrow. “I can't say that's been the vibe I'm getting.”

“I tailor my vibes,” A says.  “This is yours.”

“Gee thanks.”

“You're welcome.”

He just lets out an amused grunt. A kicks the desk chair out from under the table and goes for their laptop, booting it up.

He hasn't even realized how tired he is until his eyes start drooping less than a minute into the silence and him staring at the water-stained ceiling. He's on more drugs than he has been before. So is A, actually, and they have to check in for the hospital again tomorrow for their back and ribs, and him as well for the concussion, but they're still hammering away at the laptop. 

Although, as B's eyes close and he drifts in and out of sleep, he notices that the noise of their keyboard clacking is getting more pauses in between. 

He lifts his head up weakly to see how they're doing. 

They're slumped over the chair, head lolling, arms hovering but he can't hear the keys clicking. 

Their head starts to bob towards the side. They right it up like they've snapped awake, but a few seconds later, it's lolling again. 

“A,” B says. He still sounds hoarse. “A, get to sleep.”

A takes too long to reply. “I'm - M'okay.”

“You have a concussion and you're drugged up, idiot, get the fuck to sleep.”

“I'm fine, I've got a case to finish.”

“The cops can take care of it for now, just give them their homework.”

“It's the child murders.”

Through the fog of his brain, he manages to recall then saying they're taking over his case if he didn't want it. He sighs.

“I didn't say yes to handing it over to you.”

A quiets. “ ...I might have assumed.”

“Sleep.”

A grunts, and then lifts their arms up in a stretch. They let out a tiny ‘ow’ at their injuries being pulled.

He snickers. 

A looks affronted, although since their chair doesn't swivel, they have to actually stand up and face him. “You utter bastard.”

“I can't say you didn't deserve it.”

He scoots to the side as best as he can without falling off the edge, letting out a tiny huff as he finally lays down. 

A's Adventure Time socks pad all over the motel's cheap carpeting. B feels the bed dip on their side. 

“Yeah, I was being a bit of an asshole, wasn't I?”

“Very.”

They laugh. The one good thing about them when they're angry is that when it passes, they're not hard pressed to admit to their fuck up, and they don't expect any coddling from him. The same can't be said for him, but the novelty of their acquaintanceship is that they form one functional adult together but aren't expected to be one on their own. 

A's little ‘oof’ is muffled by a pillow when they collapse face-first into it. “Ow, shit,” still muffled, follows. 

“I love it when we're even.”

“Can't say I didn't deserve it.” They're rolling over so they can stop suffocating themself with the pillow. “You didn't get to stab me though.”

B snaps awake. “Excuse me?”

“I meant it was unfair that I dealt you with an injury like that,” A says, unamused. “Not consensual stabbing.”

He can't help the cackle that escapes him at that. “Consensual stabbing is not a phrase I expected you to say at - “ he glances at the clock “Two in the morning. Holy hell, it's late.”

“It's two in the morning?”

“Yeah.”

A runs both hands over their face. 

“I have - I have to be at the doctor's early so I can get on with the rest of the day quicker.”

“Get to sleep.” He picks up an unused pillow from underneath the one they're lying on and smacks them on the face with it. 

A shoots him a frown. He grins. 

They sit up and start taking all their extra pillows - which unfortunately only amount to two - and place it between them and B. Seeing the very low wall between them, they pout. 

“A pillow wall?” he asks, “Really?”

“Someone's forgetting they have limb length to spare and kick in their sleep.”

He pauses. “Okay, fair enough.”

A drops down again, settling for hugging one of the pillows close to their chest and curling around it. They sigh, letting their fatigue out with their breath. 

B reaches to the lamp to click it off. 

“Thanks,” A mumbles. 

“MONIKA, what time do they have to be up tomorrow?” B asks into the darkness. His phone, now resting on the dresser by the door and charging, lights up. 

“Seven, sir.”

“Oh god,” A groans. 

He laughs, gleeful at their plight of having to wake up early. “Good luck.”

“I hate it.”

“Snatch every minute of rest you can, then,” he says. “Otherwise, you're shuffling on fumes tomorrow.”

“Thank you, now stop being insufferable.”

“I wouldn't be me if I wasn't.”

They huff. Their chuckle is small and drowsy. “Yeah, you wouldn't,” they say. 

He almost thinks they're asleep, and nearly drifts off to sleep himself, after a few minutes of silence. 

Then, they say, when his eyes have been closed long enough that opening them again gives him only pitch darkness, “B?”

His own voice is a tired whisper. “Yes, A?”

“I'm sorry.”

He turns to them, slowly.

They're barely awake, eyes mostly closed than half-lidded, curled up around a pillow in a fetal position. Their shirt's sleeves have pulled back, and he can see their bandages wrapped around their forearms, over their new wounds and old scars. 

There's a spot of red on one arm. He reaches out to graze a finger on it. 

“You were right, I blew something out of proportion,” they say, “Just because I was sick didn't give me the right to lash out at you.”

He thinks about his words, as best as he can through the haze of his own exhaustion and the drugs. They're okay. He feels no tug of anger at the mention of what's happened, and whether that’s just because tired or not, it's almost a relief. 

It hits him, then, that being angry is so exhausting. 

“You tried to help,” they say, “And tried to approach me after. I still deliberately pissed you off after you tried. I'm sorry.”

“I didn't do any better,” he says. “I didn't apologize.”

A just smiles. The last time he'd seen that smile, he'd been a teenager, busy with schoolwork, saying, ‘yeah, okay' distractedly for a certain reason. 

“Saying you were fawning over L was out of line,” he finds himself saying. “I think you're the only person I know who hates him as much as I do.”

A laughs, then. This time, it sounds like summer. “Yeah, and the same to you,” they say. “Ironic.”

“Eh, when a parent lives vicarously through their kid, the kid grows up to resent them; why's this any ironic surprise when we weren’t being raised by any sort of family figure? Felt like being a lab rat a lot of times.”

“Mhm. Point.” A yawns and buries their face into the pillow. “We had it… a little differently. Maybe way worse.”

“You're still scared, that's worse enough.”

“Yeah…” A trails off. They look up at him and sigh again. “I really am sorry, though. I hurt you too.”

They're the one to reach out this time, fingers skimming over the bruise under his jaw, the bandage on his shoulder, his sore stomach. 

“We both look like idiots like this,” he says. He still hasn't pulled his hand away from their own reddened bandage. 

“Sorry.” 

“Okay, you're at that again.”

“So - oh.”

He moves his hand to slap it over their mouth even when they've already shut up. They roll their eyes. 

“You blew something out of proportion and I said something out of line,” he says, “Not in the same incident, but it happened. And then we nearly killed each other.”

He feels something warm hit the side of his hand, and he realizes A is holding back their sobs. 

Okay, maybe talking to someone while they're on pain meds and very tired is not the best thing to do. 

“Oh no, hey hey hey -” 

There's tears. He hates tears. They're salty and wet and they don't stop unless you say the right words. They're also too close to him and it's two in the goddamn morning and he's also too drugged up for this. 

He pulls his hand back so A can wipe their tears without it being too awkward. 

“I…” he tries, and then immediately fails. He doesn't know what to say to make this stop. He's not ten years old, consoling a panicking roommate and reminding them how breathing works because their own lungs are seizing up against their wishes. 

He's twenty two, he's killed three people, attempted to kill himself as a fourth, and nearly killed A this morning before they could kill him. 

A's not a panicking child having an anxiety attack either. They're anxious still, sure, but they've fired a gun, killed people in front of him and has stabbed him once in the shoulder.

He sighs and puts a hand on the nape of their neck. 

“It's okay, A,” he says, in a voice he hasn't used in a very long time. “We're okay.”

A's sobs are familiar, the choking, breath-starved kind that wracks their shoulders and makes them feel like their chest is too tight and too full but empty of any actual air. He scoots closer to their pillow. 

“Hey,” he says. “It's alright. I'm not dead and I'm not holding a grudge on you for trying to make me dead.”

“B n-no,” they manage, appalled by the misplaced sense of humor. 

“What? It's true.”

“It's not funny!”

“It is to me,” he says, shrugging. “You're alright, sweetheart, just keep breathing.”

A nods, shaky, clearly still remembering what comes next after that. They uncoil their legs so they're not wrapped around the pillow and move one of their hands over their stomach, the other over their chest. 

“Good. Now concentrate,” B says. 

A nods again and tries to breathe, watching that their chest and stomach are even as they breathe, all attention directed at the action instead of their distress. 

After several minutes, their eyes start to close, and their breathing steadies. 

B draws his hand back, taking their arm to drape it over the pillow still close to them, letting them tuck it to their chest. 

“Thank you,” they mumble. Still awake after all. 

Maybe he still does know the words to make the crying stop, even when he's no longer ten, and they're not kids or friends anymore. Memory is a muscle too. 

“You're welcome,” he says, meaning the words for the first time in a long while. “Get to sleep.”

They do.