notes: if you think that i'm ever going to be over these two, you are wrong.
fun fact: canonically, chris apparently witnesses the most deaths out of everyone. what's that? you're right. this fact was not fun.
summary: Hell is empty and all the devils are here. Everything that never was and ever will be.
alternatively—in another lifetime, we could have been
x
[ oh, you're in my veins, and i cannot get you o u t— ]
x
what isn't—
Sam waits, fingers tugging nervously on the edge of her skirt as she looks out the coffee shop window. It's a rainy day, cold and miserable, the type that people normally use as an excuse to stay in bed late or just indoors in general. But there's something strangely peaceful about days like this for Sam. Time seems to slow down with the rainfall, and the gradual sense of drowsiness is calming. Days like these make her feel human.
Yet there's a gnawing anxiousness that's slowly tearing her apart from the inside out. It spreads like a disease—starts in her chest and streams steadily along her bloodstream until it reaches her fingertips and freezes her legs. It's paralyzing, icy cold and jittery, leaving her heart choking like a car that won't start.
This is ridiculous, she tells herself, get it together Sam. You're acting like a stupid, lovestruck teenage girl. It's just Josh. Josh. You've known him since you were nine. This is No Big Deal. It's just coffee and it's only happened like twenty fucking times.
But something about Josh always makes her nervous. It's nothing bad, no, not at all. In fact it's far from that, which is probably what makes her so anxious in the first place. And it's dumb, really, because they've always been close. She's basically his sister—except that she's not, and after last year, after losing both of his real sisters, somehow they've become closer than ever before.
There are two am text messages and panic attacks and white-knuckled pulls on her sweater in the middle of the night because oh god, his sisters are gone forever and he just—he can't. She's been there, they have been side by side together through the past year when even his parents don't want to talk to him, so much as look at him because he reminds them too much of their missing daughters. And it's unfair, dammit it's so unfair, she thinks, because this is when he needs them most and they're not there.
She's suffering here too. Both of her best friends are gone and—and it's weird and painful and she's not alone. Besides, Josh is getting better. Well, that's not really the term she wants to coin for how he's doing, but. He smiles and laughs now, and it's realtruereal and not just fake it 'til you make it because God knows she's seen enough of that from him. He doesn't collapse in her arms sobbing about how it's all his fault (and it's not, she will cry back as he holds him and tells him over and over that none of it was his fault) and he isn't all somber, quiet, and sad-eyed all the time anymore.
It's improvement. Slow and steady, but that is how the turtle won the race and that is how they are going to win this war.
(She might love him, she realized the night before when he'd sent her some beyond stupid picture of Chris and himself dramatically reenacting the famous helm scene from the Titanic. God, she loves him.)
So here she sits, thinking of how to tell him. She's become society's cliché—girl falls in love with guy best friend, or the homonym and more likely plot: Girl Realizes That She Has Actually Been in Love with Guy Best Friend All Along. It kept her awake last night, and though she had considered buying a coffee before he even showed up, somehow this realization has kept her running like caffeine.
What's she even going to say to him? 'I think we have a connection.' That is literally the only thing she can think of to say right now and it's awful and disgusting and hell will freeze over before those words spill out of her mouth. God, this was a stupid idea. She's stupid, stupid, stupid. Inviting him to coffee was officially the Worst Idea she's had all year and this, this is not going to happen.
Sam stands to leave, her chair making an ugly sound as it scrapes across the floor. That's when the bell above the door signals the arrival of a guest with its cheerful little ding-a-ling.
Fuck you, she grumbles at the bell under her breath as Josh walks in and practically lights up when he spots her.
"Samantha! C'mon, turn that frown upside, the party has arrived. Though—I know. It's always gloomy when I'm not around."
She can't help it—because this is Josh, and somehow he always manages to make her smile.
x
what is—
Sam sits in the police station, all aligned with the camera as it records her.
There are things up in the Blackwood Pines and all they do is destroy and eat and maim.
Her throat is burning and her voice shakes as the images replay over and over and over in her head. Josh was the Psycho. Josh was left in the mines. Josh is dead. Her heart hurts and she thinks she's going to be sick. The police have asked her dozens of questions, yet there's one she knows she'll never truly know how to answer.
And what about Josh, Samantha? What happened to Josh?
"I thought…I thought we were close. He said I was the only one who understood him. I—I thought we had a connection."
God, she loved him. She loves him even still.
tbc
notes: i am not sorry. well, maybe a little.