where the milestones gather moss / eden+avriel 92nd

Nine is dead silent by the time the train finally rolls into the station.

He's the last stop, the only stop. When he steps away from the car doors, they glide shut with a gentle click and the train leaves the station once again, heading back to the Capitol. It was still for such a brief moment that it was almost like it was never even there at all.

Avriel Baptiste slips down the District's streets silently, steadily like a wraith, but he's the one that's haunted.

Storefronts that have been around as long as he can remember now feel foreign to him, as if years have passed since the last time he saw them. He was only gone for a month.

For some reason, he can't figure out how to move faster. There's a weight to his footfalls, a weariness there that only becomes more difficult to lift. And it takes him too long to realise that he's going the wrong way. It's not until he's standing in the bare silence of his childhood living room that he finally gets it.

If he thinks back, he can remember the last day they were all together. Not just Duke, Billie and him, Theo, mom and dad too.

It was a late summer day, like this one, where the heat seemed to grip the pavement, they all took turns sticking their heads in the freezer to cool down a little. When the day finally cooled into night they lay in the backyard beneath the stars and his parents told stories about when they were young.

Then Avriel pulled out sparklers he'd been hoarding from the start of the summer and it was all perfect in a way he didn't know how to appreciate back then. His dad and him had been awkward all day fighting over something stupid and they never had the chance to fix that.

But the point, is, there was a moment in time when they were all together.

And now he stands alone in the silence of a house that's been empty for three years. His parents and his aunt are buried up the street, Duke's across the district from him and Billie's in Six.

"Everyone is always going to leave you."

Avriel smiles.

He's afraid to go home, to Victor's Village.

Afraid he's going to open the door to a dark house and another missing person. Telling Eden he was coming home was more than just a 'see you soon' it was a warning.

It was a 'Now's your chance to go.'

He leaves his old home out through the overgrown back garden, moving through the brambles as if they're not even there and continues steadily on his way. The moon is near full tonight, he walks through a river of white light illuminating the centre of the street. If someone was to look outside and see him now maybe they really would think him some sort of vengeful spirit, returned from the dead.

The speed train didn't have a shower.

His clothes are stiff now with dried blood, the collar of his shirt chafes against his neck, rubbing the skin there raw. Each footfall is strained, his stump near vibrating from phantom pains that started the night before. He doesn't know how much longer he can keep moving.

Part of him knows though, he could keep walking steadily forward for hours if he needed to.

But He turns a corner and the gate that marks the start of Victor's Village appears down the street. Below it, a small, gently flickering glow stands guard.

Avriel stops for a moment. Part of him had wondered if Scout would wait for him or if the little kodama wouldn't understand and think that Avriel had left it behind at the station on purpose.

The light starts to move towards him and Avriel keeps walking forward to meet it, speeding up slightly as something in the core of him clicks back into place. "Scout," he whisper calls and the mutt makes a little sound like rocks being tumbled onto the frozen river in the wintertime. It runs circles around him as he walks, jumping up to latch onto the leg of his pants. "Hey, hey, I missed you too," he says as Scout rattles its head around in what he can only assume is joy.

All the houses along the street are dark save for his. The kitchen light glows in the night, a beacon to guide him home.

Avriel stands at the end of his walk and stares up at the front door. There should be something now, under his skin, there should be shallow breathing, fear verging on panic, but there's nothing. There's just his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm and the sound of the breeze running through the canopy of the trees that line the street.

Scout makes a light chirping sound, like birdsong.

"I know," he murmurs, but he doesn't.

Then he's climbing the steps and pushing open the front door as he's done so many times before this. He leaves his suitcase there and slips out of his shoes, then his socks too. The only light in the house comes from the kitchen, a yellow beam of bright florescent cuts through the centre of the living room, so sharp it could split the room in two.

Avriel stands there awkwardly, a stranger now in his own home.

But maybe, if he's still here, Eden's in the kitchen waiting up for him.

Slowly, he takes a step forward, then another. He's rounding the corner then, body passing through the doorframe into the kitchen, empty, save for himself and Scout who wanders in behind him. His chest tightens, that familiar feelings tries to settle but he grits his teeth and just turns to head for the stairs.

Then he stops, faltering on the bottom step.

If Eden isn't up there, then he's gone. He's allowed to be gone, Avriel couldn't blame him. He doesn't blame any of them, it's just going to hurt, but when you're already in pain you get used to it.

He tips his head back to look up the stairs at the dark hallway leading to the bedrooms. Then he shakes his head, "No, I can't," he whispers and he leans against the back of the living room couch and wraps his arms around himself.

"I can't."

He knows he has to stand up again, that he has to look for Eden in every single room because he can't bear the idea of sitting here in uncertainty until the sun rise.

The fatalist in him already knows what his heart doesn't want to understand yet, Eden's gone.

Of course he's gone. It'd take a lunatic to want to be around someone like him, not even his own flesh and blood can bear to look at him, how could he ever expect Eden to stay? He must have heard.

Someone must have told him about Xander and about the knife and the blood. Someone must have warned him about Avriel at the party and the shadows in his voice. And he must have known he had to go.

He drops his face into his hands and waits for the emptiness to dissipate, to feel something more than a flicker again but he's the same as he's been since the knife left his hand. There's just numbness with these small jolts of overwhelming feeling running through him like a current.

And this fissure cutting through him, pulling him apart, and his eyes feel heavy, wet again. There's pain in it, not sharp but like a weight pressing down on him, pushing him over and over again. This thing, it's fathomless but formed, a leviathan feeling, bigger than what he knows how to handle on his own.

But there's no one here to tell him what it is.

Then someone's touching him again, reaching out and taking like he belongs to them, he bristles, tensing before he remembers- he's home now.

The hand runs down his arm and he watches it. He knows that one, the fingers, the little scar on the back of the thumb, the lightness of his touch. It starts tugging gently, towards the left of the couch and Avriel looks up just in time to watch the top of Eden's head sink back down out of sight.

And suddenly Avriel can't move.

He just watches, breath caught in his throat as Eden's hand slips away and he disappears again and Avriel doesn't know what to do. His arm hovers above his head, fingers loose, remembering the feeling of Eden's hand slipping through them. There's a strangeness, a new feeling pushing back but this one's barely containable, it spills out of him.

Overflowing, onto the living room floor and he sits there, a fist in his mouth to keep from crying out and waking Eden up.

But it's not enough to just have him near, it's never going to be enough for Avriel.

He pulls himself to his feet slowly and moves as carefully as he can to the other side of the couch, trying to avoid the floorboards that creak so that he doesn't wake Eden up.

It's hard to think at this point, hard to run too many tasks at once mentally, he can't remember anymore the last time he slept. It doesn't really matter. He sinks to his knees beside the couch and unfurls one of Eden's hand slowly, carefully, entwining their fingers together and pressing his palm flat against his. There's dried blood on his wrist, disappearing up into the cuff of his shirt and Avriel knows what he is now.

He knows what he's capable of and why it's so simple when it comes to Eden.

He rests his cheek on the couch and watches his chest rise and fall and he knows that if he had to, he'd do it all over again.

All that feeling settles down slowly to coat the bottom of his stomach. It lays there heavy, flat, weighing him down.

Avriel starts to nod off like that, anchored by Eden's hand in his, warmth passing through the flat of his hand like a closed circuit. It's comfortable enough, legs folded, his head resting on the couch cushion beside Eden's sleeping form.

It's funny how with his hand in his, Avriel's body finally gives in to the exhaustion that's been biting at his heels all day. It doesn't take long to start to sink, thoughts move sluggish through his head, running into walls and getting lost. His mind starts drifting, body gone heavy in that warm, comfortable way that it does in sleep. He slips down towards the floor a little further but he doesn't let go of Eden's hand.

Then his arm is being pulled, stretching him in a way he isn't meant to be and he rises with it, grimacing from the strange angle. Eden's rolled over in his sleep and taken Avriel's hand with him. He gazes at the back of Eden's head and rests his chin down on the couch cushion.

He's never fully known what Eden's thinking. Yeah, Avriel can guess and mostly he's right, but that's not the same as knowing. Even after nearly a year and a half of living together, it's still always just an educated guess using an algorithm based on body language and careful observation of his day to day life.

But it's odd to spend so much time with a person and only know them partly.

Then Eden yanks on his hand.

Come on.

He doesn't move. He can still feel the pressure on his skin from Xander's touch. He can still feel the hands from two weeks worth of strangers running over his body, never asking for permission.

If Eden holds him right now, Avriel won't have to hold himself together anymore, that feels dangerous. It's a bad idea.

Let alone the blood.

"I'm all dirty," he says softly, breaking the silence. He squeezes his hand in apology.

His legs feel like lead but he should really go shower or something, wash Xander and the party away until the memory of that becomes a distant one.

And he knows he should stand up and go but he doesn't.

He just sits there in the quiet after his refusal and stares at Eden's back. The light cast from the kitchen is cut off by the couch, the two of them exist in this tiny pocket of darkness in a yellow-tinged living room, tucked against the upholstery. Their hands are still tangled up together, his arm almost raised above his head in order for his hand to be cradled against Eden's chest and it shouldn't even be comfortable anymore but it is. This is enough, he thinks.

Avriel will always take the bare minimum because he's still always going to think that it's more than he deserves.

Then Eden is shifting, turning slightly and he watches him move in silence, starved for sight of him for a month now. The last picture in his mind before tonight was of Eden at the top of the stairs as he was leaving, not quite looking at Avriel because he was so mad. And for a day or two, Avriel had decided not to care about that. Then the ache had settled in between his shoulder blades and it hurt to know that his leaving had put that look on Eden's face.

But he's just tired of fucking up all the time.

Eden's grip tightens on his hand as he rolls back over to look at him and for a moment, Avriel wants to look away. It's hard to be looked at by Eden sometimes, feels a little like all his armour he's spent years collecting is suddenly useless. It's not supposed to be like that, it works so well on everyone else.

Just not him.

There's a moment there when Eden's still waking up, when his expression is soft with sleep and Avriel wishes he could stop time, rewind back a few minutes and just kill the next moment before it happens. He should have just come inside and gone straight to the shower, should have just trusted that Eden was still here.

"No, sleep, I'm fi-" he starts a lie and ends it abruptly.

He isn't fine. His arm's still sore from the other day and he's got bruises that he doesn't want Eden to see. His head can't stop dancing around what happened the night before, like if he just ignores it then it'll go away, but it's also just there encompassing everything. It lies like a storm cloud over all of his thoughts and with one word, it'll downpour.

Eden's hand is squeezing his but then there's another rising up out of the corner of his vision near his face and it's too close. He pulls backwards, near cringing away before his brain catches up and realises it's safe, the hand is familiar, it's just Eden.

And Eden's always been allowed.

Eden's thumb runs lightly over his cheekbone slowly and it's so warm, Avriel didn't realise he was cold until his touch. He leans forward then into his palm.

"It's not mine," he admits softly in answer to Eden's question.

And it's then for some reason, that he finally breaks down. Kneeling there in the warm yellow light coming from the kitchen with Eden's hand cupping his cheek so gently, his mouth starts to tremble and a tear rolls down his cheek. But there's no explanation that he knows how to give on his lips, no justification for what he's done, just the shear horror of it tearing through him slowly like a stitch ripper through a seam, he feels himself unravelling.

Eden's touch is tender soft but his eyes are afraid and it'd be nice if he could be strong for at least one person in his life. But there's something about being touched so carefully that makes another tear roll down his cheek.

He turns his face further into Eden's palm as if he can hide there. His free hand lifts to pin Eden's hand to his skin, just hold him there for a hundred years or so. Maybe past that.

Strange how he can understand Eden so easily but also not at all.

When his shoulders slump it's as if there's a sigh along with it, words unspoken lacing the movement that are too low to hear, or maybe spoken from another room. It's like watching lips but not being able to read them, just that slight disconnect that makes it hard for Av to be certain.

But he does know relief when he sees it.

Avriel squeezes his eyes shut, hand tightening over Eden's trapped now on his cheek, pressing into bone and knuckle, curling over the edge of his thumb like a vice. He doesn't want to think about what kind of hell Eden grew up in for him to see Avriel covered in blood and only seem relieved. Words bubble in his throat, an admonition maybe for his laxness but they don't break through from behind his jaw, clenched too tight in the half light.

A shuddering breath runs up his throat and he feels Eden's thumb run over his cheekbone, wiping the tear rolling down his cheek away before it can fall. Avriel doesn't know if he deserves this, tender touch on bloody cheek, he wants to though. It's easier to overthink, find reasons why he doesn't, why he should push Eden back, but he takes too long.

Eden's forehead falls against his and there's a knee jerk reaction to pull away and he tenses the slightest bit but he doesn't. The weight is nice, the slight pressure calming to the point where he slowly pushes back, seeking more of it.

As if he should be allowed comfort at this point.

Av grimaces, his hand doesn't fall though, he doesn't let Eden go free. He knows that he should, that it's the right thing to do but he's done the right thing a hundred times over and it's gotten him nowhere. Near every single time he's made the selfless choice it's only caused him pain and if keeping Eden close is selfish then that's what he is.

But then Eden is pulling away and Av opens his eyes, a jolt of fear running down his spine at the departure. Then he's rising, Eden's free hand on his side, fingers spread over the fabric of his shirt, crusted with blood to his skin. Avriel sways slightly but Eden's hand is strong and warm against his side. So he stands there, silent as Eden pulls his hand out from under his where Av was still cupping it to his face so that he can entwine their hands instead. His cheek's cold now but their hands are locked together and so it's still okay.

It was stupid to even try and convince himself that he could be okay if Eden had decided to leave before he got home.

And they move slowly, Eden looking at him over his shoulder as if to make sure that he's still there and that's almost funny. The corner of his mouth lifts and this elation floods him, for the first time in weeks he feels light. Head swimming, Avriel lets himself be led into the hallway bathroom. It's like walking through a dream, it doesn't even feel real anymore, nothing does. Eden pushes him down to sit on the toilet lid and there's something about sitting in the half dark of the weak motion light with the other boy still tethered to him as he digs through the cupboard for supplies with just one hand that makes Av's mouth tremble again.

Strange how there are so many different ways to be held.

Every movement is careful, every touch deliberate. The water from the cloth is warm, dripping over the top of his hand onto the bathroom floor, cutting through the fibres stuck to his skin and freeing him. Eden works slowly, each brush of the cloth over his skin gentle and done wide because he knows without Avriel having to say that he doesn't know how to be touched right now.

How'd you know that? He wants to ask, but his mouth stays in a grim line.

And that's almost painful in its own way, being seen by someone else like that. It's been a really long time since he felt like anyone really knew him.

At that party, they all promised they did.

He shudders, hand tightening around Eden's even as he sees it again, the knife in his hand and cold words coming out of his mouth that only felt half like his. Avriel's never liked the person that he gets shaped into when he's pushed. It just makes him feel like how he always used to feel when he was a teenager being used as a weapon.

His jaw tightens again, anger trying to flood back into him at that thought but then Eden lets the towel fall onto the bathroom floor. His hand, clean now is cradled in Eden's and it's alien to see his skin clearly again. He's been looking at the blood on his hands for such a long time now, it was getting hard to remember what they looked like washed of it.

And his hand is being raised. Avriel watches in silent rapture, guessing that Eden's lifting it to inspect it closer and make sure that the blood's all gone. But he's not, his eyes are still on Avriel, like he's trying to tell him something again.

Then his lips press against the back of his hand.

Oh.

His skin tingles slightly in the spot that Eden kissed, like the nerves there are dancing.

Avriel stares down at Eden, mouth open slightly in surprise. There are a million things running through his head but nothing at all. It's like all of the stars in the sky are tangled up in there, making everything jumbled.

He feels hot and cold all at the same time, mouth dry but aching and like there are a hundred eyes on him but no one's ever looked at him in his life the way that Eden's looking at him now.

His fingers open in response, curling upwards slowly, his knuckles pushing into Eden's chin, confused, trying to hold him, then folding and pushing, unfurling to cup his jaw, shaking with tenderness but still so strong. Like a bird wing, extended.

That same near excruciating wave of feeling comes back over him and the little strength that he had left leaves him. Tears roll freely down his face and cut through specks of blood as he sits there in the half-dark with Eden. His thumb slides back to rest on Eden's jawline, Avriel can feel him swallow under his hand and it makes him so fragile to hold a person.

There's still a part of him that fully believes that everything he touches is doomed.

Except Eden's wearing one of Avriel's old t-shirts. It's a little big on him and there's a hole in the hem that happened when Av got it caught on his work bench a few years ago. Weird how he knows exactly what it's like to wear that shirt, how soft the fabric feels against his skin and that there's an oil stain on the sleeve from when he was fixing the lawn mower.

There's a faded '88th' printed on the sleeve, it's just some stupid promotional t-shirt handed to him in the weeks after his win. Avriel almost didn't keep it but he'd grown up hungry and a shirt's a shirt. Then when Eden came, it eventually found its way out of the back of his closet and into Eden's hands.

As most things have.

"I'm kind of dumb," he says quietly, mouth flicking up briefly into a smile before it falls again, his thumb running back down Eden's jawline, "I didn't know this was what love was."

He really didn't know.

Avriel grew up on the outskirts even when he stood in the centre of everything. Body numbed from years of overstimulation, he was the kid on the playground who sat in the corner with his knees to his chest and simply watched. It never seemed to bother anyone, he’d still get roped in to group hangouts and classroom discussions and his family still loved him on days he forgot to be human.

Somehow he still missed out on things, when his friends gradually all started dating each other and the only thing anyone could seem to talk about was who liked who, he always thought it was just a strange phase. Av couldn’t understand the feelings they were describing to him, he’d never felt them. He tried. Picked a kid that seemed safe and said he liked her but the words never fit quite right in his mouth.

The gap between himself and everyone else he knew only ever seemed to grow wider as their interests split further. After his parents died he liked it like that anyway. Dropping out of school is easy when there’s no one to really notice that you’re gone.

It all felt okay, even then, it really felt fine. He understood at a very young age that he didn’t quite fit in. After awhile Av just figured that things like that, romance, relationships, all that, they were for other people and not for someone like him.

He’s always viewed himself as side character, side characters don’t get stories, they're just in pieces of other's. And when you're lonely long enough you get used to it.

”Tu me manques,” he whispers softly.

His mother used to say it all the time when his father came home and Avriel never knew what it fully meant until now. You are missing from me. He isn't used to the loneliness anymore, he's bad at it.

”Yeah,” Av mumbles as Eden drops a towel in his lap. He gazes down at it, fluffy, white, just like the towels in the training centre, they came with the house. He needs to shower.

The other boy is moving, all action, but it’s like Avriel’s been working silently on a problem for two years now that he didn’t know he had. Fireworks are going off now. The quitting bell has rung, brain cells are hanging up their safety vests.

It just all makes sense now, everything's clicking into place.

Then he’s being pulled into Eden’s chest, warm there for a soft moment with the weight of Eden’s chin on his head but then the space is emptying and the pressure is gone and the door is closing behind his retreat.

And Avriel’s just sitting there on the toilet with blood painting his skin and this strange, giddy feeling inside him, like he’s eaten a balloon.

Like he didn’t kill a man less than a day ago.

He pauses, gaze on the tiling behind the bathroom sink. The reminder of what he’s done should send him spiralling but it doesn’t. He just sits there staring at the reflection of the top of his head in the bathroom mirror, hair crusted, blood speckled on his skin and this crinkling to the corners of his eyes.

Because he’s smiling.

But it’s empty.

”What does a hug mean?” he asks his reflection softly because there’s no one else to talk to about it with. ”What does a hug mean after you tell someone you love them?”

The corners of his eyes soften, his smile fading as he tries to figure it out. He’s got nothing to compare this moment to, no fumbled attempts from when he was younger to look back on, just this split second here in the bathroom under the light of the motion sensor.

Which suddenly flicks off, he hasn’t moved in so many minutes.

Av lifts a hand, waves it wildly, eyes squeezed shut until the sensor picks up on the movement and there’s light again. He’s been sitting there too long, he has to get moving.

Part of him forgot what this was like, the total exhaustion that holds you, cupped tightly in its palms after a long journey. His body aches with it as he stands to flick the shower on and get undressed.

The shirt comes off first. He leaves it in a heap on the floor and it sits there, peaks and valleys of white and red fabric at his feet. Avriel stares down at it for a moment too long. Steam starts to fill the bathroom, the heat coming off the water wicks off his skin, cold now with Eden gone.

And he doesn’t want to look in the mirror. It’s enough to see the bruises mottling his arms out of the corners of his eyes, to see the yellowed skin on his torso where he was slowly healing and the marks around his wrists where someone got a little too possessive of him.

It’s like it’s someone else’s body, like it’s not even his and the hands that he uses to unbutton his pants are almost too steady.

Not the hands of a boy who killed in self-defence but the callused touch of a man who has killed before.

Might kill again.

Hmm.

Av holds his hands in front of his face and curls his fingers in slightly, studying them. One cleaned by Eden, the other still bloody. Blood under the fingernails of both, trapped there.

He stares at it and continues to feel nothing.

No wonder Duke and Billie left him.

How soon until Eden wakes up and finally does too?

Maybe he'll take the opportunity now while Avriel's showering. Pack up his things and go because he doesn't love Av back, not like that. It's okay if he doesn't, Av's already decided that. It's really alright because maybe it's not even love, maybe Avriel's just confused anyway and he's an idiot. Maybe love is more complex than Av knows, maybe he's right and he's really not the kind of person that gets to have that kind of thing.

But if he tries hard enough maybe he can be?

"Right?" he asks. It's a good thing he's in the shower now, good that the tear slipping down his cheek can just be water and not even his.

Av rests his forehead against the tile for a moment, body unlocking as heat drums itself into the top of his head and his back. This is one of those times when he wishes that there was anyone left to talk him through this but it's been a long time since he had someone like that in his life. His aunt followed his parents, Billie left, Patricia died and that's his whole list.

And it feels okay, really, feels fine. Maybe he's just always going to be left in the dark.

He pulls his forehead off the wall and pink water runs down off the tile, then swirls into the drain at his feet. He's barely registered the soap in his hands or the water running off his skin, he's done this enough times now.

And even if he gets out of the shower and leaves the bathroom and Eden's gone, he'll be okay. He's lived through grief enough times now too.

The dry off process is all mechanical, focused but empty of thought. He's done thinking, used the last of his reserve processing power to wonder if there's anything to eat in the fridge. There's a calm cool quiet washed over him now, a balm on tired skin. His body is heavy with it, head empty, capable now only of tepid thoughts.

But he still hesitates at the bathroom door, hand stuck on the handle. He's done everything he can to put off opening the door to an empty house. Piled his dirty clothes up against the wall, then folded them, then hung them on the rack. Adjusted the towel around his waist twice, pushed his hair back then combed it down, then pushed it back up.

Because it's a lie. If Eden's gone, he's not going to be okay and he knows that.

Avriel tightens his grip on the door handle, stuck in that moment before twisting it down and pulling it open. If he doesn't open the box though, he'll never know and that's the horrible part, he needs to even though the inevitability is near corrosive.

It feels like the balloon is trying to come back up.

"Coward," he mutters.

He pulls the door open and a weight tumbles onto his feet, knocks into his shins and pushes him backwards into the bathroom wall opposite the door.

His brain skips a beat, heart rate spiking at the sudden attack. His hand reaches for the cupboard drawer, for the pair of scissors he knows are in there but then his eyes register what they're seeing and he stops, staring down at the threat.

Not a threat.

Eden.

He lays there, head tipped back on the bathroom tile to look up at Avriel, tears streaking his face. Avriel gazes down at him and the way his mouth trembles in an effort to hold back ragged breathes.

He's still here.

Avriel's hand falls away from the cupboard drawer.

There's this softness in Avriel's expression that he's only ever learned to give to Eden as he kneels slowly on the bathroom floor above his head. He reaches down, using his thumb to carefully wipe a tear away from his cheek. He's never seen him cry but there's this look in Eden's eyes that says more than most people ever will.

A wave of affection floods him and it takes a moment for him to collect his thoughts enough to speak. His palm finds the side of the other boy's face, callused fingers lightly graze Eden's jaw as his thumb slides back and forth gently over his cheekbone.

"I know," Avriel says softly, "But I'm sure about it."

And he is.

"I love you."