Hey! It's me! I haven't uploaded here in forever. Unfortunately I JUST saw that there was a problem with this fic... so I fixed it. Hopefully.
There was a time when he thought he'd never be looked at the way he'd always wanted to be looked at. Not at his scars or his ears or his body, strong and wrecked and his fists, calloused and crooked fingers, but looked at through his eyes, into his eyes. He wanted it, he never really thought he'd get it.
He doesn't know Anton Shudder, then he knows the darkest parts of him.
There was no pause. One moment it was him and Skulduggery - who is stupid, by the way, more reckless than any one of them - and then it was seven men. A suicide mission turns into suicide missions and he didn't know Anton Shudder, but Anton has a Gist, so Ghastly knows the broken parts before he knows anything else. He's younger than them, by a little, sicker and younger and still, looked at by his scars.
He's drawn to Anton before he's drawn to the others, the quiet man with long hair and sullen eyes doesn't look like he holds every dirty kind of thing inside his own chest.
Ghastly never expects to live til the next day. He never really wants to live til the next day. All's he tries to do is survive the next few moments, the next few hours.
It's the quiet parts of the night that creep up on all of them, he thinks.
"You know," Skulduggery breaks the silence. Ghastly wants to stop him. "We should have a nickname."
"No," Hopeless says before any of them.
"Come on," Skulduggery insists. "We can be 'The Horsemen of No Apocalypse'."
The fire crackles, burns on. Ghastly follows the parts lifted by the wind with his eyes, straining to see them disappear into the starless night. They sit in a circle around the fire. Ghastly and Skulduggery will keep watch, then Skulduggery and Erskine and so on. No one answers him. He knows it's stupid already. Later, he won't tell Valkyrie that Skulduggery learned to laugh during the war. She'll know it on her own.
They learn each other best during the fights.
Or, maybe, Ghastly just learns Anton best during the fights. He searches for Anton when he can't see him, pushing at the air until he feels it, feels that it's Anton's body and Anton's magic and Anton's fury. Skulduggery knows he does it, tilts his head at him in askance while they regroup.
They'd been ambushed in a small town. All the occupants slaughtered when they arrived, but now the murderers are the murdered and Ghastly finds some solace in this justice. It's not the justice he should like, he knows, and his gut rebels from the way he enjoys the blood on his hands.
Ghastly pants, breathing hard and aching. "I just like to know where everyone is."
"You're looking for him."
It's not a question. Ghastly looks away.
Erskine puts his hand on Ghastly's shoulder. None of them are far apart in age, yet Ghastly will always be the baby of the group. Erskine offers him water and Ghastly takes it, gulping greedily. Slowly, The Dead Men climb over bodies and weapons and blood and stand in a circle, Erskine letting Ghastly rest against him lightly.
"Well," Saracen says brightly. "At least we can steal a house for a night. Bye-bye ground."
No one laughs.
There's an unspoken rule. You're not allowed to fall in love during this, you're not allowed to break like that. Skulduggery broke the rule. Whenever someone needs a reminder of why they need to obey, Skulduggery stands in the corner, unmoving, silent, terrified. Ghastly looks at Anton across the wooden table in a house with five rooms. They'd had to put the bodies of the family outside. Saracen had vomited.
He wonders what it'd be like if Anton smiled right now. He imagines that smile when he closes his eyes, sometimes.
Skulduggery shifts in the corner and Ghastly raises his eyes to the ceiling.
They don't talk, no one has the energy for it. Hopeless had been lost last week, snuffed out like a flame, gone from Ghastly's line of sight just like that. Instantaneously. Larrikin is here instead. None of them have mourned. None of them can afford to mourn. It's just six of them for this mission, quiet and subtle, in and out. Ghastly didn't know how to tell the council that The Dead Men don't know subtle. But they're here, and they're moving, getting closer and closer every moment.
He tries not to imagine Anton without his shirt.
In its own way, this cannot be afforded either.
Skulduggery knows this, knows Ghastly better than the others. He splits up the six of them into the five rooms. Ghastly gets his own. He doesn't say a word, doesn't even care, just walks up the stairs on silent feet. He'd always liked his body, the simplicity of it, the way he didn't have to think about much beyond what it needs. He's never liked the way they look at him, never liked his face, but that hatred only exists skin-deep.
Skulduggery comes in when Ghastly is meditating, and leans against the losed door. It's quiet, so quiet Ghastly can hear Erskine and Larrikin arguing while they prepare for the first watch. He wonders if this is a habit that will stick with all of them, waking in rotation, sleeping lightly. He thinks so. The problem with bodies is that they remember things long after the mind has forgotten.
"You think he's different,"
"You don't know what I think." Ghastly slides off the bed, stands, faces his friend.
"I do. You think he's dirty on the inside and you're dirty on the out."
Ghastly doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what Skulduggery will say, he rarely does. They've known each other since they were teenagers, since they were afraid and cautious and hardly ever hopeful around girls. He'd never hoped to fit into the world Skulduggery could slip so easily into, like wearing a jacket, on and off. So easy.
He looks at Anton and sees that he can't either, he's got a monster in his chest.
He wonders if Skulduggery knows how Ghastly has always wanted to be looked at. How he's always wanted to be treated tender. His father was a runner, his mum a fighter. He could've chosen to follow either's footsteps. The war made him follow his mum. No one ever asks how she is. Ghastly doesn't even know.
"You'll have to wait," Skulduggery says. "And I won't tell you not to do it, because I didn't listen either. I am telling you this , though, just so I can say I warned you: it's a bad idea."
Ghastly looks out the tiny window, sees the stars in the sky for the first time in a while. It's quiet out here, he thinks, so quiet. Maybe the quiet could eat him up, spit him out, lose him so he'd never have to look at Anton again. He wonders, briefly, how obvious the wanting on his face is. He doesn't know what to say until he says something.
"Any one of us could be next." he raises his eyes to Skulduggery's. "I could be Hopeless. You could be Hopeless. How would you feel if you wasted your chance because of this war?"
Skulduggery's grey eyes grow cold. He's always scared for them, underneath each of his movements is a subtle horror, constantly wondering if someone will use his family against him. (Later, the answer will be yes. Ghastly won't ever bring up this conversation again). But Ghastly knows, despite this, beyond this, he's glad they got their chance. He's ecstatic whenever they're in Ireland, grinning and laughing more than he does here.
"Fine," he says, opening the door, stepping out. "Don't waste your chance."
It feels very bitter, all of it.
He's not going to do anything, Ghastly knows, slipping between the sheets and shutting his eyes. With the door open, he can leave if something comes through the window. If something comes through the window, he can leave through the door. He'll never say a word because wanting is strange to him, being treated as an object of disgust is not. He couldn't bear to see Anton with that look on his face.
It's maybe midnight when Erskine knocks on the frame of his door. Ghastly sits up without pause, easily woken, no transition moment between sleep and alertness. He pulls on his shirt from the floor and straps on his pistol holster, reaching under the pillow to grab his gun. He slips downstairs silently, and he watches Erskine join Skulduggery in one room.
He meets Larrikin at the kitchen table, sharpening a dagger from the light of an oil lamp.
He sees the exhaustion in Larrikin's eyes and offers nothing, sitting down and lacing his fingers behind his head. Larrikin is kind, kinder than any of the other Dead Men, including Ghastly. Sometimes he wishes he'd retained so much kindness, but the bullying has made him tough and the war even tougher. He hides behind himself, he knows. Larrikin doesn't.
He gestures at Ghastly with his knife. "You ever try to fix that?" his voice is hoarse, barely a whisper of sound.
"My face?" he says, and he knows his eyes turn dangerous in the lamplight.
He has. Many, many times. He's read books, tried salves, asked wizards and magicians far more skilled than him. All he ever received was pity and remedies that never worked. This hatred may only run skin-deep, but it has plagued him his entire life. It will plague him even in death. He knows this, too, somehow.
Larrikin looks at his dagger, glinting sharply. Ghastly could kill him despite it, they both know. His mouth runs faster than his brain, Ghastly can forgive him for that. He can never forgive him for the disgust. Ghastly hasn't told anyone why, save Skulduggery and Hopeless, and he'll never tell anyone again.
As far as they'll know, he's earned these scars.
(Even though they're meant to be a curse.)
Larrikin shifts in his seat, uncomfortable under Ghastly's gaze. He does that, sometimes. Stares too hard, watches too intently, exists so loudly it makes others uncomfortable. That's why he's here, he thinks, because he didn't care whether he lived or died, but among these men, he learns to fight for another day, for just a bit more time.
"Sorry," Larrikin says, and he sounds it, genuinely. Ghastly lets his eyes soften, leans back against his chair and looks away from him, out the kitchen window and into the dark shadow of the street outside.
He clicks his fingers, summons a tiny spark, snuffs it out against his palm. He does this again and again, playing out a tune. He's always liked music. His mum less so. She'd always looked at him, panting and sweaty, fists raised to go another round against the dummy, learning to mirror her. And she'd smile quietly and sadly.
"You get your tenderness from your father," she'd say, sad and holy and angry too. He hadn't known it then, but war was brewing.
And he'd say, "Just teach me how to hit."
His father, a Christian before he was anything else, taught Ghastly to sew, to love. He gave Ghastly trust as a first response, quietness and respect the second and third. His mum, borne to a family that only needed to survive, taught him anger, fear, she taught him how to be alone. He hadn't wanted to fight, at first, but she dragged him to it.
He learned, ten years old and smaller than the other boys, how to be a Dead Man.
He doesn't know if the lessons from his father have stuck, hasn't had a chance to see.
Some wicked, furious part of him doesn't want to.
At what must be forty minutes into midnight, Larrikin stands up, kills the flame from the lamp with a swipe from his dagger. Ghastly sits in the dark, listens to Larrikin tromp up the stairs and knock, quietly, on someone's door.
It's Anton at the table.
Ghastly looks to the stairs, silently berating Skulduggery. The man is an idiot. He's never careful enough, never cautious, never looks ahead like he should. (Later, Ghastly will regret thinking this, because he says it, and then, after the war, Skulduggery thinks with every sort of caution).
Anton doesn't say a word, serious face quietly moulded to something painfully neutral, hair tied up messily. He's not like Ghastly, none of them wake like Ghastly, and he blinks away the last dredges of sleep. Ghastly watches his face in the weak moonlight. Too sharp, he thinks, cheekbones and jawline make him look perpetually half-starved.
He stands up, abruptly, and Anton watches him move to the tiny stove crammed in the corner. He lights a fire in the kindling, hunts around for a pan while it heats. Anton doesn't ask what he's doing. He's surprised and delighted to find two chocolate bars and a pail of fresh milk hidden in a store with salt and ice. It's cold when he reaches his arm in and extracts his prizes.
"That's stealing," Anton murmurs, and Ghastly glances at him, head pillowed on his arms, laid out against the table, moonlight spilling across his face and mouth like water. His sharp eyes track Ghastly across the kitchen.
Ghastly unwraps the chocolate and drops them in the pan, carefully adds milk as it melts and starts casting his eyes around for something to stir with.
"They're dead." his voice is dispassionate, level and flat.
"I would not steal from you, if you were dead."
Ghastly looks at him over his shoulder, meets dark, amused eyes. He turns back to the pan and smiles at the hot chocolate despite himself.
"Thank you," he murmurs.
When Ghastly offers him the cup, Anton accepts it, but does not raise his head. He looks so tired, Ghastly thinks, fragile and more breakable than the rest of them.
He knows he's fucked. So fucked. He drinks his hot chocolate.
They're stuck here, because Saracen twisted his ankle and they cannot go on without him. If all the rest of them were out of this mission, the only necessary people would be Erskine and Saracen, carrying on for the rest of them. It's not time-sensitive, the council said, thank God (Although, it was a bold face lie. Everything in a war is time-sensitive. They know this).
Ghastly had heard it happen, sitting up in his bed like a shot at the first sign of a stumble. He'd ran to the stairs and saw that Dexter was leaning over him, fallen at the bottom of the stairs, caught between laughing it off and submitting to his own, very human, body.
"Three days," Erskine says, and they know he's being as generous and kind as he can. "Then we have to keep moving."
It's Ghastly that bandages him up, quiet and efficient, never tender, always careful. Saracen leans back against the wall, hissing at the sound of bones cracking.
"Guys," he calls to the others. "It might actually be broken."
None of them say anything.
There's nothing they can do.
It's the second night they're grounded that Anton shows up in his room and Ghastly just looks at him in the doorway, pistol cradled in the palm of his hand, ready and whispering. He doesn't know what's going to happen, he doesn't really expect anything to.
Anton just shifts inside like a shadow, closes the door with the barest of click s behind him. He reaches the foot of Ghastly's bed, sits there and breathes.
"I know you look for me," he says, so quiet, and Ghastly's heart stops beating in his throat.
He tries to spend as little time alone with Anton as possible, has always been afraid of looking the fool, admitting he thinks more of Anton's mouth than he thinks of the words spoken by them, afraid of telling people he liked men like he liked girls. He knew he would, if pressed by the steadiness in his eyes, after seeing the hatred buried in his chest.
He didn't know Anton, then he knew the dirtiest parts of Anton, then Ghastly got to know Anton.
The order is a bit mixed up.
He doesn't know what to say, mouth dry and awkward, an instrument of nothing but embarrassment. He lets himself watch, instead, and Ghastly snaps his fingers, cultivates the spark into a flame. It burns, feeding on his body, dances across his knuckles as he and Anton look at each other. They fight together, and they fight together well.
Maybe it's because of this that Anton leans forward, puts his hands on either side of Ghastly's hips and climbs on top of him. Their bodies know each other, and bodies have a harder time forgetting.
Ghastly kills his flame.
He lets Anton push him down, cover Ghastly with his broad shoulders and sad eyes. Ghastly wishes for a light, pointlessly, one that won't burn anyone, just because he wants to see Anton's face, see if he shies away or if his lip curls in disgust. He wants to look at those eyes that always seem to droop, just slightly. He wants to see if he can coax a smile from that mouth.
He doesn't know who moves closer first, just that Anton's breath is ghosting across his mouth and his hands are stroking Anton's strong thighs, moving of their own volition.
"Tell me if it's too much," Anton whispers, and even though Ghastly's head is nodding yes, yes, yes he knows he'd never ask Anton to stop anything.
Anton presses the softest kiss to the corner of Ghastly's mouth, tongue licking along the ridge of a scar. Ghastly, surprised and vaguely confused, gasps into Anton's cheek. Then he's being kissed in earnest, hot mouth, the one he thinks about almost constantly, moving against his. Anton pulls away, then presses close, careful, like he's afraid Ghastly might disappear under his hands.
Ghastly won't.
Anton kisses along Ghastly's jaw, breathing softly against his neck, and Ghastly lays there, hands on Anton's back, against his soft skin where his shirt has ridden up. He stares, sightless, at the ceiling. A blind man has finally seen God, he thinks, hysterically, and maybe his father's lessons did stick with him after all. Anton's hands are touching his face, trailing along the bumpy ridges of the scars on his cheekbones, his nose, his chin.
He doesn't say it, but Ghastly knows he's counting every one of them.
When Anton licks his collarbone Ghastly sucks in a sharp breath, buries his fingers in Anton's hair and can't decide whether to push him away or drag him closer. Anton's hands creep down his sides, deft and clever, and Ghastly doesn't sleep with a shirt on, but maybe he should. He tugs on Anton's shirt, gentle, asking. Anton takes it off for both of them, tossing it to the floor.
Logically, Ghastly knows what he was expecting, a soft expanse of smooth skin, occasionally interrupted by tiny rough patches. Magic hardly leaves its mark on man. Yet, there it is, a giant, ugly thing in the centre of Anton's chest where his Gist rips out of and he's not surprised. Ghastly touches it. It doesn't feel like a scar.
Anton ducks his head, ashamed.
Ghastly grips his shoulder, lifts a leg around Anton's waist and lifts up. He flips them over, and Anton lets out a huff of surprise as his head hits the pillow. His hair, long and silky to the touch, fans out against the sheets. Ghastly licks the mark, raises his eyes to meet Anton's. Anton, quiet and stoic always, watches Ghastly butterfly kiss is Gist mark and his eyes flutter closed, fingers tangling and gripping the sheets.
He makes a sound, only one, quiet and keening and broken. Ghastly pulls down his pants, presses his mouth to Anton's hard cock and feels Anton's shiver all throughout his own body.
At the end of the third day, they're all gathered around the kitchen table and Ghastly has successfully avoided looking Anton in the eye entirely. Saracen is the only one sitting, leg propped up on the second chair, looking woefully from Skulduggery to Erskine, and he even offers a smile for Ghastly.
Saracen shows no signs of recovery, is what they're saying. Ghastly's not really listening, eyes fixed outside the window. Vaguely, he hears Larrikin say, "We should split up. Erskine leads three of us ahead, then the rest of us follow with Saracen a little behind."
Skulduggery says, "Yeah, okay."
And he already knows he's part of the first group without being asked, without discussing it in the slightest. He steps out of the tiny house, onto the porch and over the rotting corpses of townsfolk and mercenaries. The wind is blowing, cool across his forehead and taking away the stench.
He hears the wooden door close behind him, boots against the porch and Erskine's voice.
"You're eager to go," softly amused, teasing him like an older brother.
He misses Corrival, right then, but he's back in Ireland, defending the Sanctuary against Zombies and Necromancers. Erskine is so like him, quiet and kind and deadly. If he'd been here, in America, Hopeless wouldn't have died, then Hopeless could've healed Saracen and they'd be on their way. He turns, looks at Erskine.
"We've wasted enough time."
Erskine nods, and Anton says, "This town smells too much like death for me."
Ghastly lets no reaction pass his face. He stares, instead, over the dusty plains of North Dakota. Erskine decides to head toward the Sensitive's supposed location. They're hoping she can give them something about Serpine's whereabouts. They take some horses that Dexter's been feeding out of the barn and take off, trusting in Erskine.
Ghastly rides faster than the rest of them, and he pushes at the air, searching for Anton when he falls out of sight.
They stop under the mid-afternoon sun, exhausted from leaving earlier the day before and riding all through the night. Erskine stops them in a forest, breathing hard. He calls to Ghastly, a hundred feet ahead, asking him to turn back.
North Dakota isn't all desert, dry and cracked and dusty, there are plains of grass and buffalo and forests, small and scattered among the flatlands, but there nonetheless. There's almost no one around, Americans haven't quite got the concept of 'expansion' with their government still young and immigrants starting to leak in tenfold across borders and overseas. Most of them are still crammed in New York.
Erskine has wandered away from the makeshift camp they've haphazardly thrown together,
searching for a river he swears he heard running. Ghastly is curled on his side, attempting to pretend he's asleep, ignoring the electric heat of Anton on his left with a pathetic sort of desperateness. If he wants to talk about it, they'll talk about it, and Ghastly would really rather not.
Anton's breathing is steady, and Ghastly thinks about the way his thighs trembled last night, the way he'd stuttered out soft gasps, muffling sounds in the crook of his arm. He breaks, and sits up, positions his body so it mirrors Anton's and they sit side by side like twin gargoyles. The forest is relatively quiet for forests, Ghastly guesses. There's the occasional bird call and breeze that rustles the underbrush, but nothing else sounds as loudly as his own heart in his chest.
"I wouldn't mind," Ghastly says, eventually.
"What?" Anton asks, and Ghastly can feel Anton's dark eyes on him.
"If you stole from me when I'm dead."
"Oh," Anton says.
That shouldn't make any sense, but it does. Anton relaxes a fraction, and Ghastly summons the courage to look at him. The long slope of his nose, slightly too big for his face, the curl of his eyelashes. Ghastly feels totally, completely, achingly out of his depth. He looks at his boots, at the tight, sensible laces and lets that weird thing his his chest unfurl.
Erskine comes back right then, crashing through the brush like a very uncoordinated lion, carrying two full skins of water triumphantly. Ghastly looks at him, amused at how proud Erskine is of finding so much drinking water when either of them could have pulled moisture from the air. He pauses, looks between them, brow furrowed.
"Did I interrupt something?"
Ghastly laughs. "You always interrupt something."
It's dawn when they enter the town. It's dusty and quiet, hushed like every person is holding their breath. Ghastly wasn't expecting a warm welcome, but war has taught him many things about eerie towns and streets that run too quiet. Erskine slides off his horse, landing on the road like a cat. The town seems large, the buildings tower at least three storeys high, but it runs only with three main streets and only one grocer.
There are two hotels, and Erskine seems too tense to settle. Instead, they wait with bated breath, staring down the largest of the three roads, heavy with storefronts and gently glowing lamplight. The Sensitive has agreed to meet them in a bar the following night and Ghastly doesn't see it on this street. Saracen may refuse to reveal his magic to the Dead Men, but he's most useful in these moments. He knows things.
Serpine may have hidden himself back in South Dakota, but they're closing in on him again, like sharks to blood. They're meant to be scouting support for the Ireland front, but if the agenda of the Dead Men turns the tide of the war, so be it.
Nothing happens for fifteen minutes and Ghastly swings off his horse, landing less gracefully beside Erskine.
"There's nothing," he says, and heads toward one of the buildings painted red on the side. Over the red, in yellow 'hotel' is written pragmatically, large and almost glowing.
"Ghastly," Erskine hisses, but he follows, Anton behind him.
Patience has never been Ghastly's strong suit, neither is caution. Maybe that's why he followed Skulduggery into this whole mess in the first place.
"This could be a mistake," Erskine warns, and Ghastly leaves his horse and goes inside.
The front desk is occupied by one man, and he looks up at Ghastly slowly, eyes sunken and dark circles stark against the strange paleness of his skin. The carpeting is red and plush, and the front room has a sofa where guests could wait. Anton slides up behind Ghastly, and cool air pushes its way in before the door slams shut. The finality of it is almost enough to creep Ghastly out.
"Hello," the man says, accent slow and midwestern. "Two rooms?"
"Three," Erskine says, irritated. The door slams behind him.
Ghastly isn't exactly looking forward to more fighting but as the days creep on and nothing happens, his muscles tighten in anticipation, adrenaline lighting up every nerve in his body. Ghastly feels the exact moment Erskine meets the eyes of the concierge, feels the moment his hands tighten into fists.
Either he's really ugly and sleep deprived or he's a vampire, coming off the last dredges of a really, really bad night. Whichever, the pink light of dawn is starting to filter through the front window of the hotel and Ghastly is watching the concierge close enough to catch him staring crossly at the sunlight creeping across Ghastly's boots. He turns, pulls out three keys from the weird holes in the wall.
He says, "I'll take y'all to your rooms, sure? You got your bags?"
"No," Erskine says. "We travel light."
The second he's in the room, Ghastly falls onto the bed and sleeps.
When he wakes up, the sky outside is dark as pitch. He looks at the door, to the sound that had awoken him, and it's Anton's dark figure in the doorway. Ghastly exhales messily and lets his revolver slip from his fingers.
"Thought you were the vampire."
Anton breathes out and steps forward. "Are you okay with this?"
Ghastly lays back down. He stares sightlessly at the ceiling. He knows what Anton's asking, he knows that he wants it, but the danger of getting too attached, it's frightening. The bed dips with Anton's weight and Ghastly pulls his knees up to give him some room at the foot of the bed. He sits up slowly, pressing his back to the headboard.
He lights his hand on fire, and Anton's eyes are dark. He's feral, beautiful and dangerous and forbidden in a way that just makes Ghastly want him more.
"I am," he says, and it doesn't even sound like a lie.
Anton's eyes flicker, and Ghastly thinks he's almost got a smile.
He gets up as if to leave, and Ghastly's heart hammers in his chest because that's not really what he wants. He reaches for him and Anton turns, grabs his hand and pulls Ghastly up onto his knees. They're so close, and his eyes are bright in the fire that burns on Ghastly's knuckles. He closes his fist and it's gone, and Anton laces their fingers together, pulls him closer.
"If that's what you want," Anton says.
And Ghastly says, "Oh, you have no idea."
Anton kisses him, then, sharp and soft and his canines against the bottom of Ghastly's lip. They fall back onto the bed, somehow, still holding hands, and Ghastly runs his free hand through Anton's hair. It's long, impractical in battle, but his Gist has it even longer. Black and silk and fascinating, and Ghastly's never thought so much about a single person before.
They make out, kissing along the lines of each other's throats, careful to be as soundless as possible, and quietly, in the dark, Ghastly starts praying. He's never been overly religious himself, God more of an abstract idea to him, like time travel, but now seems like the time to believe in a higher power. You grow up during the golden age of piracy, you volunteer for a suicide group in a war you barely understand the politics of and your mom pisses someone off so you come out looking like a corpse, God seems just a little out of the realm of possibility, but Anton takes off his pants and says, "I read a book about this, once,"
Ghastly sort of dissolves.
He has no idea what he's doing, neither of them do, barely figuring it out as they go.
Anton looks at him, and Ghastly can see his sharp eyes glittering from the light of oil lamps on the street outside. He's like a knife, Ghastly thinks hysterically, and it's a knife he's going to let get buried in his ribs.
"I want to be on top."
Ghastly just closes his eyes and thinks, If you can hear me, I think I want to die beside this man. (Years later, of course, the request would be fulfilled).
The war rages on.
This becomes the quiet moments. Hours stolen in hotel rooms, and it becomes a sort of locked thing between them, somehow dirty and clean all at once. Dirty because it's them, ugly meet ugly, dirty because they're men, because it's not really Christian, because Ghastly can't figure out if Anton feels. It's clean because when it's just them it's simple.
Anton, surprisingly, is very simple. That is not one of the words he'd have ever used to describe Anton Shudder just over a year ago.
But he is, in the small ways. The ways where he's unhappy (he doesn't like the death, he doesn't like the fighting), the ways where he just wants to sleep and touch and all the times they're not of the battlefield.
Skulduggery usually reaches Ghastly first after they've won a fight. Skulduggery patches him up, muttering and joking and laughing, too. He shouldn't joke about death, Ghastly's father always said it was distasteful. Ghastly knows how to distract him, though. He just brings up home.
It's weird, having such a strange, nosy fucker as a best friend, watching his eyes light up when he talks about his wife.
I want that, Ghastly thinks, and automatically looks to Anton.
Anton is already looking back at him.
They lose Skulduggery.
It becomes an obsessive point for Ghastly. It's an ache so raw it feels like it's going to be the very end of him. All of them are dead - he saw the heads, he saw the bodies. They were his family, too, and now they're gone.
He can't explain it to the rest of the Dead Men. He'd known Hopeless and Skulduggery since they were kids. They were his first friends, the first people on earth who'd looked past his cheekbones. And they've been ripped away from him. He can't express that grief, that long agonizing scream that he wants to let out.
They're sitting at a table, gathered to discuss the formulation of some tactic that'll turn the tide of the war. Ghastly's fuming, quietly, and Anton's at the other side of the table.
They haven't talked in awhile. Ghastly knows who's fault it is.
Erskine notices the crackle of Ghastly's energy. He says, "You're not going in like that,"
"Like you can keep me out," Ghastly snaps. "Sir," he adds, because he wants Serpine dead, and he wants it at his own hands.
Erskine's eyes are searching his for a long time. Eventually, Erskine looks away.
And they ride.
It is a scream, he discovers, long and agonizing and horrible. He's off the horse in an instant, going after Hollow Men and Zombies alike, grunting and shooting. He shoots a Hollow in the shoulder, steps close, presses his revolver against the stomach of the thing and shoots through it, once into the head of a zombie and hard, into the chest of another Hollow.
He runs out of bullets, reloading expertly with one hand while he snaps his palm against the air, hard, like pushing a heavy cart, his mum used to say. Three of the Hollow Men tumble to the ground, and a Zombie's arm falls off.
He doesn't know how long they fight like that, only that Ghastly can hear the grunts of his team members, of cleavers and other mages alike. It's just one battle, he thinks. He's fought a lot worse. Something hits him across his back, hard, and he stumbles, loses the air from his lungs for a moment before he spins, hands losing his guns to grab the assailant's weapon. It's a wooden plank, heavy and flat. The Hollow Man brings it down on Ghastly's palms and it stings.
He feels the sharp sting of a knife in his thigh and he twists, kicking out, dislodging the Hollow from the hilt of it, and he yanks on the board at the same time. It rips from the hands of the Hollow, and for a moment Ghastly swears it looks confused. He smacks it across the face with the plank, all the while wondering where it had gotten it.
He feels the rake of another knife down his shoulder blade. He's caught mid-swing already, so he decides to just keep it going. He twists his hips, feet following behind, and he catches the Hollow upside the head. He ducks, quick, just barely sensing the wild swipe of a broadsword before it kills him. He stands, brandishing his board like a shield.
Distantly, he hears Larrikin shout his name. Too late, the warning comes, because something beans him across the back of his head. He drops like a sack of potatoes.
There are about three places, total, that Ghastly has never wanted to wake up. Number one would be under Doctor Nye, two would be any variation of the place Skulduggery sleeps, number three would definitely be a battlefield.
He wakes up in one of those places, blinks a few times up at the blue sky. He pokes his tongue around, checking for all his teeth and discovers a tiny bit of dried blood at the corner of his mouth. There are deflated Hollows and pieces of zombies everywhere, he can smell it. Larrikin's concerned face floats above Ghastly's vision.
"Great," he mumbles. "I've died and managed to take you with me."
"Not quite, mate," Larrikin grins. "Gotta say you gave it a sure shot."
"Is he alive?" Dexter Vex asks. "Because if not, I think you're talking to a corpse."
"He's always looked like a corpse," Erskine says. "I don't see that much will change."
"Shut up," Ghastly mumbles and closes his eyes against the bright sun. "Did we win?"
"Yeah," Larrikin says, but his voice has turned runny and blurry, and Ghastly can barely decipher what he's being told.
"Nasty bump, though," a softer voice is saying, and that's when it all fades out permanently.
This time I've really died, Ghastly thinks.
That theory is shattered sometime later when he wakes him in a small room, tucked into some sheets and a ghost of a man sitting on a chair, leg crossed over knee, flipping pages idily.
"Hello," Ghastly whispers, and he can feel that he's been stabbed in quite a few more places since being knocked out. This is embarrassing.
Anton looks at him, and the dark circles beneath his eyes are atrocious. His hair is matted with blood and Ghastly wonders whose it is, why it's still there. His cheekbones are hollow and his forehead is gleaning with sweat. The skin on his knuckles is white and sickly, and all Ghastly wants to do is wrap him in a blanket and carry him far away from this war. But he still wants to kill Serpine.
"You look like the plague," Ghastly says, because he knows what that looks like now.
"You're delirious from lack of blood," Anton counters swiftly. He stands up and walks toward Ghastly picking up a glass of water on the bedside table.
"Do I look like the plague?" Ghastly asks, trying to keep it light. "I know I didn't have much going for me before all the almost dying, but do I look like a necromancer's pet?"
Anton's eyes soften, inexplicably. "I've always thought you were beautiful."
And Ghastly says, "Oh," and he takes the water and drinks it in one go.
The war ends and they win, haggard and exhausted but they win, and Skulduggery is alive in a sense, some sort of weird, twisted joke where he looks like a perpetual grin, and they rename it The War, capital double-u and everything. He's happy, sure, they dance on the night it's officially over, and he can see Skulduggery out of the corner of his eye, standing stock still, brim lowered across his face. He's propped against the wall and Ghastly tightens his hold on the woman he's dancing with, and they almost trip over each other.
"Sorry," he says.
"No," she says, and offers him a sad smile.
They stop, after a while. Because it's not fun, because Ghastly is focussed on Skulduggery. Because he just wants to drink and drink and drink. So he does, and he can't find Skulduggery anywhere anymore, and he's lost the woman he'd been dancing with. He's trying his seventh, eighth, ninth, he doesn't even know, drink when hands reach out and steady him. Concerned yellow eyes swim into his vision and Ghastly offers a wobbly smile.
"Maybe we should get you to a bed," Erskine says.
"Maybe," Ghastly agrees. He knocks back the drink in his hand and Erskine takes the empty glass, grips his elbow and steers him out of the dance hall and up out into the cool night.
The air that hits him is hard and sobering, and Ghastly has to lean against the doors for a moment, breathing against the stars. Erskine takes a few steps away to say something to Dexter in a quiet voice, glancing back and Ghastly periodically. He closes his eyes, tilts his head against the wood, and he feels the other side of the double doors swing open.
When gentle hands coax him into a standing position, he opens his eyes and discovers it's not Erskine any longer.
"Anton," he breathes out. It feels like a dream.
"You're not alright," Anton says, and Ghastly barely knows what happens next, except they find a hotel, they collapse into the same room, and Ghastly closes his eyes against the spinning of the room. He reaches for Anton, but his head is at the foot of the bed, so all Ghastly succeeds in doing is scrabbling his fingertips against the cuff of his pants.
They lay there, breathing deep and slow, and Ghastly can feel the aching pull of sleep but he's got a question, he remembers, something to ask Anton more important than anything. His brain isn't cooperating though, and he can't quite remember what he wants to say.
"Got a question for you," he mumbles.
He feels the shift of the mattress as Anton sits up. Ghastly feels the strands of his hair tickle his nose. He can smell him, clean and warm and all the things Ghastly wants.
"What?"
"It's important," Ghastly says, and then he falls asleep.
Ghastly wakes up alone, the sun is shining bright through the window, and his mouth feels like sandpaper. His head is throbbing and everything feels disgusting, and he hates this. He hates himself. He's not happy now, if he was even happy last night. He lays there, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, feeling weird and lost.
What's it supposed to feel like when a war is over?
He wouldn't know, would he.
He'd love to bounce back immediately, he'd love to find direction and create a life for himself after this ordeal, but it's just after the turn of the 20th century and he still wakes up in rotation, he still pauses, listening for a beat too long before opening doorways. He sleeps with his revolvers under his pillows. He just wants a soft life.
He always has.
Anton shows up, occasionally, presses Ghastly into the wall and then leaves for months. It drives him crazy, sleeping in the house where he grew up, the tailor shop his father left him out front. It's been dark since he found their bodies, empty and uncomfortable. Ghastly avoids it at all costs, it's too laden with dust, too haunted for a haunted man. He's alone most of the time and most of the time he misses Anton.
The weather breaks on one of the August days. It'd been hot and suffocating for weeks and then, suddenly, Ghastly had woken up to a darkened sky, a complete ceiling of grey. At five a.m. while he was staring out the window and shovelling cereal into his mouth, the skies opened up with a thunderous crack. Now, Ghastly stands at the window of his sitting room and watches raindrops leak down the leaves of a plant.
"It's so dark," Anton says from the doorway.
Ghastly doesn't turn to look, instead, he grips the edges of the blanket draped on his shoulders a little tighter and huffs out a breath against the glass. It fogs and Ghastly watches as the steam fades.
He feels Aton enter the room, air that's been undisturbed for hours shifting from his presence.
"How long have you been standing there?" Anton asks, softly, and Ghastly feels his warm body pressed against his back. "Oh," he says. "You're all cold."
He takes Ghastly away from the window, one arm wrapped around Ghastly's waist, the other wrapping around his right wrist. Anton lifts it up and then presses a kiss to the knuckles, and tucks his chin in the crook of Ghastly's shoulder.
They start swaying, like a dance to no music. Ghastly closes his eyes and lets it happen. It's unhealthy, he knows, but he only feels safe when Anton is here. Somehow their feet find a rhythm.
"It's dark in here. Light it up."
Ghastly lets his hand hang limp and Anton rubs each knuckle lightly, putting the circulation back into his hands, warming them up. Anton hums against the side of Ghastly's throat and Ghastly can feel the sharp corners of his smile.
"Come on, baby, light it up."
Ghastly snaps his fingers and it sparks, travelling down his index to the palm of his hand, dancing across his knuckles. Anton takes his own hand away and wraps himself firmly around Ghastly as they continue to sway, moving so they face each other. The light dances with them, tossing strange shadows all over the room, like animals reaching out from the base of the sofa, from the coffee table, like Dr Nye, ready to steal Ghastly's soul. The only problem with that,Ghastly thinks, is that mine's been taken.
It's a slow crawl, desire, like aching in his bones. Anton pulls him to the bedroom, forehead pressed against forehead, slow breaths like he's trying not to break his own heart. Anton leads him, even as he walks backwards. His hands cradle Ghastly's face, fingers rubbing against the ridges of his scars. Anton's back hits the door and Ghastly drops the blanket.
"You don't have to go very soon, do you?"
Anton's hands slip down and trace Ghastly's scars.
"No. I've got a bit of time."
So Ghastly kisses him, kills the fire and presses the heels of his palms against Anton's sharp hip-bones. Anton finds the doorknob and they stumble in, Ghastly collapsing onto Anton. It takes a moment for him to get his bearings, and he spreads his fingers against the blanket on either side of Anton's head.
He pauses in peppering kisses over Anton's cheeks.
"Did you get a haircut?"
Anton laughs and flips him over.
As September leaks into October, Anton stays. Ghastly wakes up with Anton plastered to his back, drooling into the pillow. Ghastly watches as he sits up, runs a hand through hair that no longer spills down his shoulders like ink. He doesn't move, but he hears Anton wander into the bathroom and start the shower.
Time feels gooey, they hardly leave the house but Anton props him up, holds Ghastly steady. He no longer wakes in rotation and violence no longer lives under his skin. Life, finally, feels quiet. But Anton looks at him, and he looks at Anton. They miss it. They miss the blood and that's something neither of them can really can live down.
He's lost count of the days, but at least Anton spends all of them with him, feels less alone during the nights and more awake during the days. Ghastly was always told to count his blessings. These days, he only counts Anton.
Ghastly makes breakfast and Anton watches him, catlike and perched on the edge of his seat, from the kitchen table.
"What?" Ghastly asks, and it sounds too harsh in the early morning light.
"The store…" Anton ventures and Ghastly shuts down.
"I don't want to talk about it." He says, hoping the finality in his voice will shut Anton up. He places the plate in front of him with a vicious clatter.
"Ghastly, I really think-" Anton tries, but Ghastly scoffs.
"It doesn't matter what you think. You don't know how that store feels to me. God, you don't understand. You can't."
He turns on his heel and flies out the door, needing to avoid that conversation, those memories, that loss. His mother taught him how to always face his demons. Being in The Dead Men taught him that sometimes you have to run.
Later, though, they do talk about it. It isn't until Anton leaves for good that Ghastly starts running it again.
He doesn't know what it is. Time, maybe. But he feels it happening. It's not the fights they have because every fight is inconsequential, but Ghastly can feel the thrumming in the house, the unchecked energy building up in both of them. Ghastly takes to the punching bag again and ignores everything else he can.
He's down there, now, and he can see Skulduggery in the doorway, brim tilted over his eyes, grinning at nothing.
"Hi," Ghastly says, because he can't think of anything else.
"When did Anton leave?"
Sweat is dripping off his forehead and stinging salty in his eyes. He can feel it gathering on the top of his lip, sticking in his armpits and sliding down his chest in rivlets. He can feel it, slippery on his fingers in his gloves, encircling his wrists like some sort of anger bracelet. His chest heaves and he knows he must look like an animal, like something wild and dangerous and untouchable.
Ghastly's muscles twitch and the air ripples around them violently. Skulduggery doesn't stir, and maybe that's what calms Ghastly, maybe it's because he's so tired, or sad, or alone.
He drops onto a sandbag and Skulduggery follows, right next to him.
"This morning."
Skulduggery nods thoughtfully, looks up at the ceiling lights.
"Any particular reason why? Do you snore? Is it because you don't clean the shower drain? Keep in mind, women have left men for crazier reasons. A friend of mine-"
"We're both men, Skulduggery," Ghastly reminds him.
"Ah, yes," Skulduggery agrees. "That's your problem. Maybe. Too much silence, you know. Non-emotionally communicative. It ruins relationships," he whispers, like it's some great wisdom he's imparting.
Ghastly laughs hollowly. "You know, I don't think it was ever really a relationship, Skul."
And the air around them both ripples.
It's definitely Anton that goes down first, all those years later. Ghastly feels a sharp stab of fear and regret in his stomach, but they look at each other across a room of Cleavers, across a room of betrayal and the only solace he finds is in the fading light of Anton's eyes.
His chest his gored open, and there's blood at the corner of his perfect mouth and his hair is shorter and matted to his skull with sweat. It makes Ghastly tremble, makes him weaker by the way of blind anger. He's found God only once, but this is the moment Ghastly loses him.
Ridiculously, Ghastly's last thought before he dies too is I never asked him to stay.
"I have something to ask you. It's important."
Anton looks up. The room is blurry and he's reading a book. He looks older than when they used to live together and it takes a moment for Ghastly to get his bearings. Anton stands, walks across the living room and leans over Ghastly.
"You've said that before," he says.
"Yeah, well," Ghastly murmurs and slides his arms around Anton. He notices that Anton is wearing his pyjamas.
It goes quiet, like they're underwater, and they begin to sway. There's music from afar, something slow, something that puts a small smile on Anton's face. They haven't' seen each other in decades, wounds too raw, wounds they never told each other were there. Ghastly thinks of that old saying: if you really love it, let it go. If it comes back, it's yours forever. Ghastly wonders if they've finally found forever. It'd be a good ending, he thinks. He's lost so much, it'd be nice to keep this feeling forever.
"Stay," he whispers. "Stay. I'm tired of missing you."
Anton's hands slip up his back and up further to trace Ghastly's jaw. His eyes close, like he's in pain, and he sighs out, like he's relieved.
"Yeah," Anton murmurs. "Yeah. Always."
So Ghastly kisses him.