Michael lies awake the night of Trevor's death, splayed out across the soft linen sheets with his hands neatly folded over his chest.
And the night after that, and the night after that, until it's indistinguishable, and everything has blurred into one big, dull routine.
Like it had been before Trevor came crashing back into his life. Like being alive was a chore and waking up in the morning something optional.
Michael was no saint, but there had to be a limit, right? A fine, fine line between good and evil, heaven and hell, what it meant to be human and what it meant to be a monster. One that, despite all the murder and crime and hypocrisy, he hadn't crossed yet.
Trevor was still human deep down. Probably. Maybe. Unlikely. Or a rabid animal in human form, at least.
Unpredictable, feral. He was broken, somehow (if the brief snippets of what Michael had learnt about his childhood were anything to go by). Damaged goods shattered across the ground for all the world to gawk at. But Michael had never cared enough to pick up the pieces, so he had no other choice but to throw him under the bus when the road they'd carved to success began to disintegrate beneath the wheels.
In the nine years they'd been apart, it had become progressively easier for Michael to bear the guilt. To justify having broken him further. To think of Trevor as something worse than what he actually was, moulding him into this vague and distant idea of sin. Like some kind of boogeyman, or the monster that lurked beneath the beds of children with hooked claws and bated breath.
He passed by the bathroom and caught Tracey hunched over the toilet bowl once, dry heaving until the effort made her head spin. Cheap mascara smeared her cheeks in messy chunks, strands of tousled blonde hair fell over her face. He saw the pale skin pulled taut over her ribs and selfishly, he pictured Trevor lying face down in a gutter somewhere. Vomit drying at the corners of his cracked lips, a coyote tearing the decaying flesh from his withered bones.
Michael had to remind himself he'd moved on. Michael Townley was dead and rotting six feet under, and Brad Snider had never existed in the first place, and Trevor Philips— well, it didn't matter.
He'd probably overdosed, drowned in shallow water, something tragic but befitting for a psychotic methhead; Michael had moved on.
They've started sleeping in the same bed again—him and Amanda—and it's a start. Therapy has been good for them, he thinks. Sometimes he watches the subtle rise and fall of her chest until the sound of her breathing lulls him to sleep. Sometimes she lets him wrap his arms around the soft curves of her waist. He doesn't tell her about Trevor, but he's sure she's already put two and two together.
When he stares up at the ceiling now, squinting his eyes to peer through the darkness, he pictures the yellowed water stains of a shitty, run-down motel, curling in filthy blotches across the roof. He fists his fingers into the woollen comforter and imagines the feel of rough, pliant flesh beneath his own calloused palms.
He wills his eyes closed and thinks of sharing a bed on a cold North Yankton night, where the only thing to drown out their thoughts was the gentle drone of the heater in the corner of the room.
He'd seen how Trevor looked at him, caught the lingering stares and noticed the scowls directed at Amanda (his hatred for her ran deep, it was an open secret). But Michael had been the first to kiss him. It had been the drink and a sudden, unexpected urge to feel something new, something forbidden. One of the more selfish decisions he'd made when his mind was blurred by alcohol and drugs.
Trevor smelt of death and tasted of acid.
Of burning, of bile and venom. He had the narrow side teeth of a dingo and a stare you could feel in the dark. He choked down Michael like he was starving for him; savoured every touch and brief glance, would have eaten him whole if Michael had let him. Would have torn the flesh from his carcass and jammed his claws between the squishy crevices of his brain. Would have licked the grease from his fingertips and sucked the marrow from his bones until they were as hollow and brittle as the lies he'd been spoon-fed.
Michael jerked him off in rough, passionless strokes. Trevor sobbed into his shoulder and whispered his name under his breath. A pathetic sort of noise doomed to fall upon deaf ears. A declaration of love torn from his throat and quickly shushed by Michael's lips so he wouldn't have to entertain it.
The morning after, he hadn't even been able to look Trevor in the eyes.
He'd convinced himself it was better that way.
Miraculously, Michael does wake up in the morning. He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. The cover is peeled over on Amanda's side of the bed, and a quick glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table tells him it's 11am.
He moves to the bathroom and leers at his reflection in the mirror, tired eyes tracing the contours of his face, vaguely wondering when he'd gotten so old.
In the evening, Michael sits outside with a glass of tequila and feels the unsettling chill of dew. Trevor had always hated tequila. Said it tasted like piss. He thinks of him gunned down back in Ludendorff, bleeding out where the snowflakes fell around him and the cold tinged his lips purple. Like something from a movie; oddly serene, oddly beautiful, and Brad would never have held a grudge.
But Trevor wouldn't have gone down any other way than in a crimson splash of flames and gnashing teeth. Animalistic, deranged, that's what he was. That's what he'd always been. Clawing at the earth, slicked in gasoline and yet still managing to howl obscenities into the crisp air until the burn severed his vocal cords. Michael half expected Trevor's reanimated corpse to rise from the flames then, like a phoenix from the ashes. Because Trevor Philips did not know what it meant to die, he simply stared at what was horrible and defied it. He was the reaper, not the reaped.
Was. Michael's throat tightens. Funny, that.
"Surviving is winning," that's funny too. Fucking hilarious, actually. Like he's somehow on top of the world because no one's smeared his brains across the walls yet. Michael has survived a hell of a lot and yet he doesn't feel like a winner.
He thinks about Trevor rotting somewhere in that paddock, blades of grass wound around his ribcage. Reclaimed by the earth, bearing larvae in his charred eye sockets, maggots making a home of the empty cavern of his skull.
He makes the drive out there the next morning, when the sun has not yet risen and there's still a thin layer of mist hanging over the skyline, obscuring the powerlines and the old, rusted oil tanks. It's nothing compared to the bitter bite of North Yankton but Los Santos still gets cold in the winter. Cold enough that Michael can see his breath hanging in the air, and feel the way his muscles lock up and crack.
Frost glitters on the grass, it nips at Michael's ankles. It will be water by dawn, bleeding back into the dry earth and leaving it parched, forever thirsty.
He traces his fingers through the blackened mud and sits there in that paddock until the sky has blurred into a mixture of muted orange tones and the dirt has dried against his skin. He keeps a pistol in his side pocket and pulls it out to test the weight of it against his palm. He absently brushes his fingertips over the cool metal, stubbornly, wondering when he'll find enough courage to pull the trigger.