Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Graham knew he couldn’t expect normalcy in any sense of the word, least of all after a meagre six and a half weeks. Definitely not while they were still holed up in the decrepit back-alley hotel, two floors up from the shitty back-alley clinic, that had become their temporary home until they were both well enough to figure out where to go from here. He knew he couldn’t expect anything, really—but he longed to go back to their apartment, the once-safety of it, to find a comfortable place to heal, to rest. To go back home.

It wasn’t safe there any longer. Not as long as Martin was still alive. So, instead, they were stuck here.

His partner sits beside him on the bed. Faded. Alive—mercifully, alive—but blank. Whenever he spoke, he did so with a soft hesitation. As if he needed to search for them first, before stringing them up on a sentence.

“It's… patchy. I’m not sure. Really… don’t remember a lot of it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. You never, ever need to—” Graham started, though pulling the cord on it before the protective anger in his voice could run too far away from him. In a bid for something more level, he took his partner’s hand. “Please don’t apologise.”

“It’s automatic,” Lev replied, a little laugh quivering in his voice. He closed his eyes. “And god, now I want to apologise for that as well. So that's… that’s a fun new thing. S'just…hard for me to think. I’m still, um. Still…”

Graham waited for him to finish, but the rest of the sentence never came. He gently squeezed the hand under his own, looking up at the grime-spotted ceiling.

He couldn’t even imagine.

The motel, as well as the clinic below it, didn’t ask questions, and didn’t keep records. Graham had known that when he’d picked the place, even near out of his mind with pain. It meant the rooms were simultaneously in a terrible state of disrepair, and inordinately expensive—the bedroom’s fluorescent lights flickered whenever a train rattled over the tracks overhead, and better still, Graham felt like he was contracting a different kind of fungal infection each time he used the bathroom—but all of that was just background noise. Even the throbbing that ran rampant up and down both of his legs, negligible. They were hidden, and safe… and whatever Graham was feeling, he knew Lev would be feeling far, far worse.

“I think I gave up. Around, I don’t know… must’ve been. Day three.” Lev tapped his fingers on the bedspread one after the other. “Or day four, um, it was early. I gave up trying to fight it, and… just… surrendered. I guess. I was only tied up if he… if he… thought it would…”

The rest of the words never came, but Graham could guess. He’d seen it.

This faltering conversation was the longest they had talked for since they’d been reunited. The first few days had consisted mostly of a disorganised yet worried buzzing around from Lev while they’d each been tended to, and once that was done, they’d both slept like the dead. 

Then, when consciousness had returned to each of them it seemed to have done so in different amounts. Lev was almost half-present, half awake. Dulled. He spoke like he was deciding what to order at a restaurant, and not trying his best to recount his own kidnapping. His torture. A graceful detachment, as if the words had been left on a plate in front of him, and he was just picking at them.

“I don’t think that I… ‘broke’. Not really. I think I… bended. In ways I didn’t know I could.” Lev poked his fingers through the holes of the crocheted blanket in his lap absently. “And he noticed. Said that I was pliable. I guess, I thought it was the same as, y'know, the same as malleable? But, now that I think about it… if something’s malleable it’s hard, but it can be, like, hammered. Into really thin sheets. Pliable means it’s already, it was already soft. By…”

A long pause. Lev squeezed his hands together, pressing a thumb into his palm. Squeezed his eyes shut. “By design. Like clay. It’s meant to be. So that you can work it.”

Graham hadn’t the faintest fucking clue what he was supposed to say to that. He had never been all that good with words, but he wished he was now, more than ever before. He knew he needed to try.

“I don’t think that’s true. You’re not soft. And you saved my life. You’re strong.”

What he lacked in words he continued to try to make up for in touch and warmth, letting his hand run lightly down over Lev’s forearm. His partner’s brown eyes flickered back and forth.

“I… how?"

Hesitant, Graham opened his mouth. Replied on a delay, as his mind tried to decipher his partner’s. “How…? We ran through woods, remember? You threatened Ma—him. With my knife.” Lev still looked lost, like he didn’t know what was real, so Graham pressed on. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember how strong you are. I’ll remind you every time you forget.”

The soft reassurance settled over the both of them. Graham watched as Lev took a deep breath. Turned away… and started to cry. Deep, full-bodied sobs, that shook the whole bed frame. Big tremors from such a small body.

"I don’t remember,” he croaked, voice high and tight. “I don’t remember anything properly…? But I feel it, it feels l-like, his, hands, are still on me… that f-fucking… on my neck… and…” his hand reached over his shoulder, fingers brushing along the patch of gauze between his shoulder blades. “I’m bro-ken, I’m broken…”

Graham knew it was far, far too early for anything to be normal—but knowing that didn’t make it any easier, and right now, he wanted to burn everything to the ground. Every single thing. 

He took his hand away from Lev, realising for the first time that it might not be welcome. Reached up to wipe at the tears that had started on his own face. “You’re not broken, love… you’re not… we can get through this.”

“I’m broken,” Lev shuddered, clutching at his chest, his throat. “He broke me,” before dissolving into wordless wails.

Graham placed his own hand over his heart, feeling it twist and grind in his ribcage. In the next pass of the train overhead, he could swear he heard the echo of three gunshots, and a fourth in ricochet.

Chapter Text

The rooftop garden had tomatoes, some sprawling zucchini plants, and something Lev was ninety-five percent sure were herbs of the medicinal variety.

He had come up here every night for the past three, leaving a note just in case his partner woke while he was gone. If he ever did, Graham didn't mention it—Lev would sneak back into the room in the early hours, the pad of paper where he'd left it, his partner snoring softly.

Which was fine. Better, honestly. Graham had done enough for him, pulling him out of that place. The least he could do was let him rest.

Lev would try for sleep himself, but that had quickly become more of a distant goal than a bodily need. Instead of staying up to stare at the ceiling, or sleep for thirty minutes and then wake screaming… God, he’d rather just go outside. Better to silently contemplate existence under a muddy light-polluted sky, than in fluorescent not-quite-darkness.

On the hotel's terrace there was a milk crate he could sit on, and fresh air he could take in. He'd been tempted the past couple of visits to start weeding the overgrown garden, and so tonight, he did—he dragged the crate over to the edge of the plot, because when he'd tried to sit on the concrete slab, the resulting echo of on your knees for me, baby, had rocked him so hard he needed to dig his fingernails into his thighs to keep from hyperventilating. Before long he'd not only dug up the weeds, but also re-trussed the tomatoes, and rolled the aphids from the leaves of the coriander.

He was halfway through propping up one of the wooden boards when he stopped abruptly. Hands clenched around the half-splintered board, eyes darting everywhere around the garden, seeing nothing but blur.

Lev tried to draw breath. Nothing. Tried again, but his lungs were stone pillars, his heart calcified. A bead of blood slipped from his palm where the wood had cut him, splashing and collecting in the grooves on the pavers, but he felt nothing, nothing.

What was he doing, here? Playing pretend, grasping at a stupid make-believe of something normal, as if he hasn’t already been chewed up and spat out by teeth he only half-remembers, as if he showered just one more time he would finally be clean, as if he wasn’t haunted every waking fucking moment by those eyes, that voice. That touch.

As if his life meant anything, now.

His heart was pounding almost too hard in his head for him to hear the footsteps approaching up the interior stairs—Lev scrambled to stand, quickly brushing dirt from his pyjama pants. He was still struggling to catch his breath when the door handle turned, and an older looking woman appeared in the doorway, an accusatory look on her face. She looked like she had fallen out of bed, long grey hair in a braid thrown over her shoulder, tiny feet in large yellow slippers.

“I heard a noise. Was you?”

He shook his head, tried to blink the burn from his eyes. Shame stuttered in his chest, along with worries that his fear was something tangible. Visible. “I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to, to, uh. Sorry.”

The woman peered up at him, about a foot shorter when he stood properly. “No need to worry. Thought it was a raccoon. Dumb shits get into compost all the time. Sit,” she commanded, pointing him back down onto the crate. He obliged.

Lev sat in awkward silence for a minute or so, fidgeting with his trousers. Not really sure he wanted to be here, anymore. But before he had fully mustered up the courage to leave, the woman turned to him again, frowning around an unlit cigarette. She held out the pack to him in one weathered hand. “Want one?”

He'd never been one for it, and after he had said he didn't like the smell much, Graham had quit cold turkey. Been bitchy for over a week, but the man would swear up and down it was for unrelated reasons. He shook his head, and she shrugged, lighting up with cupped hands around a zippo.

Moving to the small tank at the edge of the rooftop, the woman turned a little spigot at the base of it, and started to water the plants. A chimney of smoke trailed her wherever she pottered.

“You new?”

“I'm staying in the hotel rooms,” he replied, gesturing vaguely. “I didn't realise there were apartments, up here. I like your garden.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You steal tomatoes?”

“Oh, no,” he rushed to explain, “just wanted to help. Saw you had some weeds.” He held up a fistful of the spindly stalks he'd already vanquished, evidence of his innocence.

“Oh.” The woman put out her cigarette on an ashtray, which was balanced precariously on the balcony railing. After turning off the water, she stooped with a pained grunt to pluck a zucchini and a wet handful of basil, before hobbling over to thrust them into his hands. “You take some.”

He looked at them with shock.

“Hey. You cry?”

“Sorry,” Lev said, an embarrassed laugh falling from him. “Thanks, I'm just...”

If he began, he would scream and never stop. So he didn’t.

“...I’m just sad.”

She nodded thoughtfully, brow creasing. “I am sad too. My grand-daughter is very sick.”

“Oh. What's wrong?”

“Her immune system is not good.”

“I'm sorry.”

The woman nodded. “It is okay. Pretty man, cry on dirt, makes the flowers grow, eh? But do not cry on those,” she said, waving a hand at the weed. “They belong to my neighbour Douglas. He is an asshole. Cry on mine,” she said, tapping herself on the chest authoritatively, accompanied by a small nod.

“I am Gabriela.”

“Lev.”

When Lev came back to the hotel room, he walked as slowly as possible across the creaking floorboards to his cot. While shifting some of the blankets he was apprehended with a softly grumbled love?

Grimacing, he turned around. Graham was looking up at him sleepily, hair tousled against the pillows. Making gentle grabby hands in his direction.

He slipped in beside him, and curled his fingers into the warm palm of Graham’s hand.