Anyone who has read Zarla's fabulous "Vargas" knows that it can't end well. My imagination insisted on showing me this particular variation of Not Well. Like Zarla, I am not responsible for the mental damage--I just perpetuate it. Don't worry, it'll be over quickly...


OUT
by rueyeet

It was no kind of night to be out.

The steady rain matted his hair, plastering it to his face in straggling strands. It soaked his coat, weighting it heavily on his shoulders. It obscured his vision, droplets collecting on his glasses. He dripped as he stumbled along.

Not all of the drips were water.

Things had gone so badly. He ought to have known; all the worst developments in this little soap opera they were all mired in seemed to happen at Johnny's dilapidated house. With every dogged step, he relived the pain of the knife to his gut, each footfall jarring the wound anew. Each gasping breath was drawn against the anguish of betrayal.

He had been rejected, turned away by the one who should have been closest to him. What had always been precarious, a thing of carefully managed extremes, had come suddenly, shockingly undone. The hurt was magnified by the surprise--why hadn't he seen this coming?

The streets were unfamiliar, and he looked around at a loss, reaching out for a nearby telephone pole for support. He'd known that a 911 call from Johnny's would be useless, and had escaped into the dark with the vague idea of finding a pay phone from which he could call, or maybe a cab he could take to the hospital, but around him were only lightless and apparently empty buildings. How had he gotten out of Johnny's neighborhood so quickly? He ought to have knocked at somebody's door or something, asked to use their phone...

Shoving off from the telephone pole, he continued on, not entirely sure where he was going. Where did he have to go, anyway? And why hadn't he thought of that before?

Doesn't matter, he tried to convince himself. Must find help.

He looked down. Clothes wet with rain were stained with the blood that had spread down from the gash in his belly, a smear of redness that reached all the way to the knees of his jeans. The sight made him faintly nauseated, and he refocused on the deserted street, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. He didn't know how long he staggered blindly onwards, but he still saw no one. No cars passed him. There wasn't a soul to hear his ragged breathing, to watch his steps waver, to see him sink back against the wall of the empty alley, sliding down to sit with his arms loosely at his sides like a discarded toy.

Head back against the brick, he tasted metal in the raindrops that fell in his open mouth, runoff from the fire escape above him. He tasted blood as well.

Scriabin closed his eyes dizzily against the falling rain.

Again he felt the curious stretching pulling sensation as they were separated, and one became two. Saw the crazed hatred in Edgar's eyes as he snatched the knife from the floor, saw the flash of the blade as Edgar lunged at him with a hateful scream, saw Johnny's horrified astonishment at the sight of his own knife in Edgar's hand, smeared with blood. Heard Johnny cry out, "Edgar, NO!" as he leapt to restrain a second attack. Felt the pain and the hurt and the betrayal.

Edgar had kicked him out.

Just pull you farther out of myself and eventually I'll go back to normal, Edgar had said to Scriabin the day he'd given him a name. And he'd finally succeeded--except that the result had been anything but normality. Scriabin had been forced to run for his life from an Edgar who was no longer passive, no longer a doormat, no longer under his control.

The irony of it cut worse than the knife. Scriabin, who had so scornfully claimed that he didn't need Edgar, that he would be fine on his own--who had so castigated Edgar for not needing anyone, for not feeling loneliness--was now dying, friendless and alone, bereft of the one person who made his existence relevant.

He would have laughed, if it didn't pull so at sliced muscle and torn flesh. Would have wept, if he had any strength left to him.

The dizziness increased, and he felt his body grow heavy and distant. It seemed like he could hear each and every raindrop as it struck the pavement, the fire escape, his upturned face. He was obscurely comforted; if he could not weep, at least the world wept for him.


Some time later, a thin figure entered the alleyway in the wan sunlight that filtered through the dissolving clouds. It stopped, hesitated, then bent over the motionless form that slumped against the brick in a red-tinged puddle, checking.

The silence was broken by a soft curse, then the figure stood. "Fucking bastard," Johnny said softly, and with venom. There was desperation in his eyes, and bruises on his face. "You would go off and leave me with this."

He stood a moment longer, then turned and walked away, leaving the body to the rats.

END


This story can also be found at Zarla's site--www(dot)ashido(dot)com(slash)igtky--under Fanfics.

Author's note: This fic is completely Scriabin's fault, for showing up on the doorstep of my half-sleeping brain in this condition.