liminal

Written for August Fic Challenge 2023, Prompt: Harbinger. First try at Quarry fic, hopefully no one is too OOC. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!

The Harbinger Motel really lives up to its name, Ryan thinks, upon approaching the building with the others. It looks like something straight out of a horror movie and if he'd seen it prior to getting to Hackett's Quarry Summer Camp, he probably would've heeded the warning it was clearly meant to be and gotten the fuck out of Dodge long before any werewolf nonsense had the chance to upend his life or his understanding of the world.

But, he hadn't.

So he's here.

At a shitty, run down motel on the side of some backwoods road. There's a marquee board outside the main office proclaiming 'VA AN Y, COLO TV, R DIO.'

Ryan's pretty sure no one was wondering about the availability of this place or its stunningly modern amenities. He wonders when the last guests were here – 1995?

"4 rooms," one of the officers who'd escorted them here declares upon his return from the main office. He hands the keys (actual metal keys, what even is this place?) to Ryan to distribute. "Work it out amongst yourselves."

"Us girls gotta stick together," Emma declares, motioning to Abigail and Kaitlyn over her shoulder. Jacob pouts, but they all opt to ignore that. She takes a key.

Laura takes another. "Max and I'll take one."

"Boys?"

"I'll bunk with Dylan when he gets back from the hospital," Ryan offers, which leaves Nick and Jacob to share the last room. That decided, they gather their bags from the back of the cop cars and split for their respective rooms.

Ryan frowns upon entering the small room he's claimed. The space is mostly dominated by the large bed in the center of it. It's topped with a faded, ancient blanket that is covered in a wide array of stains and what he can only assume to be a lot of bodily fluids, though it's hard to tell beneath the horrendously out of date pattern on it. He avoids it, heading instead for the small table set in the corner of the room (which is also covered in various questionable stains and is also quite sticky) where he leaves his bag. Attached, he finds less of a bathroom and more of a small closet with a toilet, sink, and shower stall all awkwardly shoved into it; a cockroach scurries across the floor when he flips on the light, which flickers ominously overhead. Gross.

"Suddenly, I'm thinking another night in the cabins might not have been the worst idea," Ryan comments to himself, "Even with the werewolves."

The color television the sign out front had so proudly boasted of does not work when Ryan flicks it on. The only station the radio picks up is playing some garbled, old country music and honestly the static seems like a better option. There is an outlet available, though, so he plugs his phone in to charge. With a frustrated sigh, he finds that there is no signal, and no Wi-Fi. He has a few episodes of bizarre yet bonafide saved to it but the idea of listening to them now to kill some time is not quite as appealing as it was yesterday.

It's still early in the evening, and with nothing else to do, and no idea when (or even if) Dylan will show up, he decides to take a shower. He desperately needs one. Two days of dirt and grime and… blood are all over him. He's no cleaner than this motel room. He strips, considers asking the cops for some sort of biohazard bag for his ruined clothes and heads for the bathroom.

The water pressure is practically nonexistent, it smells faintly of the rusty pipes it's no doubt just run through, and the temperature only ever manages to work itself up to something barely lukewarm, but at least it gets the evidence of this nightmare off his skin. Still, he stands under it for far too long and he barely even registers when it goes cold on him – completely exhausted but still far too on edge to consider sleeping yet. Lost in the too vivid memories of everything that's happened since camp ended.

Eventually, he makes himself get out. Dries off with a scratchy towel of questionable cleanliness and changes into clean clothes, claims a seat at one of the wobbly chairs at the equally wobbly table.

Now what?

Now they all get to wait until the cops have put enough of the pieces together to want to question them all again. Now they all hope there's enough there to keep the cops from thinking they somehow orchestrated all of this supernatural insanity. Now they all have to find a way to get on with their lives.

And Ryan doesn't even know what that means for him, what life looks like from here on out. He goes back home to his family and then what? Does he go to school and leave his grandmother to watch over his sister? Does he stay with them and turn into some paranoid hermit after this trauma? Does he turn into some wild hunter and make sure nothing like this ever happens to anyone else? Does he…

He thinks of Dylan and he wonders if their futures overlap at all after this. How could they? He cut off Dylan's hand! He can't imagine Dylan wanting him around after that, a constant reminder of just how badly this place fucked up their mundane lives.

But there's a part of him that wants that, wants Dylan with him, he thinks.

He can see a future there, too, more easily than he can see some of the others.

A knock at the door draws him from his thoughts and he's more than a little surprised to find that it's gone dark. Now that he's paying attention, he can hear the pulsing hum of neon, the flashing lights bleeding red and blue in through the shitty curtains. He moves to answer without really caring who's on the other side. Could be one of the other counselors coming to chat, could be the cops here to ask more questions, could be-

"Dylan," he says, breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of the other boy. Before he can stop himself, he launches forward and pulls the other boy into a desperate hug that Dylan just kind of slumps into. He's exhausted, too – probably drugged up on all kinds of painkillers, his freshly bandaged arm in a sling across his chest. "It's good to see you."

A cop is with him, carrying Dylan's bags and also a stack of pizzas (Ryan has absolutely no idea how far away the nearest pizza place is (or, for that matter, where the nearest hospital is)). "We're talking to you all again in the morning. There'll be an officer on watch here all night – stay put."

"Yes, sir," Ryan responds, stepping aside so Dylan can get in. He takes the bags and the pizza box the cop offers and closes the door.

"Wow, this place is a shithole," Dylan so readily observes. "No wonder you were so excited to see me."

Ryan rolls his eyes but helps Dylan settle in one of the wobbly chairs. He claims the other for himself once more. They gorge themselves on mediocre pizza and tepid sodas from the vending machine in the equally ramshackle motel lobby, bantering easily with each other as if nothing so fantastical has happened to them in the last two days. Dylan even smacks the radio into picking up a station that at least plays music from this century. When the pizza box and soda cans are empty, he finally broaches a more serious subject – with a pointed glance at Dylan's arm, he asks, "So, are you… you know, okay?" It is a profoundly stupid question. Dylan is short one hand. Of course he is not okay.

But Dylan laughs, some near hysterical sound. "All things considered, you were surprisingly adept at field amputations, apparently."

"I'm sorry," Ryan tells him.

"Don't be. I told you to do it. We didn't even know what those things were when I got bit – even if we had known that much, we didn't know there was any way to cure it," he reasons. He reaches out, his remaining hand landing on Ryan's. "We didn't need any more werewolves running around, either."

Ryan knows he's right. That if he hadn't done what Dylan asked, he would have been infected, too. He flips his hand over, curls his fingers around Dylan's and wonders once more what will become of their future, if they have one together or if this ends here in this shitty motel room with nothing but awkward flirting and a truth or dare kiss between them.

No. No, he tells himself, no. He can't let that be it.

"Can I kiss you?" he asks.

The question catches Dylan off guard, but he lets out a shaky breath and nods, and Ryan bridges the scant distance between them. It's a real kiss this time, not like the quick peck by the campfire before their world changed forever. He kisses Dylan soundly, one hand coming up to curl into his hair (still faintly damp from a shower at the hospital, he assumes). Dylan leans into it, his good hand fisted in Ryan's t-shirt like he never wants it to stop.

"Never had to cut a limb off to get a guy to kiss me before," he jokes when they finally separate. "Does that make me desperate?"

Ryan sighs, exasperated, and shuts him up with another kiss. "A little bit," he answers.

Dylan grins against his lips and drags him toward the bed. They curl up together there, the two of them trading lazy kisses until Dylan finally succumbs to the pain killers he took with dinner and falls asleep. His head resting on Ryan's shoulder, his bad arm strew across Ryan's chest.

And Ryan revels in this moment, in the easy rise and fall of Dylan's breath against his neck, even the soft snores. He holds a little tighter and he's pretty damn okay with whatever the future holds so long as it looks like this.