Chapter Text
ATLANTIC CANADA, APRIL 24TH, 12:35 AM - THREE WEEKS AGO
Pangi is angry.
He likes to believe that it's uncommon, his anger, but he knows the easiest way to say it would be as follows: he's angry, and that's not exactly anything new.
At the very least, it's a nice night—it's chilly, but that's not surprising, and there's no wall of rain that normally comes with the month of April. A breeze rustles the branches of a tree he walks past, apple-blossoms starting to bloom. The man who lives there is kind with gentle eyes, a grand-father. This past fall, he had let Pangi take home an armful of apples and given him a recipe for a pie, the one his wife used to make. He and Pili stayed up basically all night, despite his looming mid-term the next day, figuring out how to make it. They ended up with two pies, the second of which Pangi dropped off to the Apple Man on his way to class.
His shoes hit the cracked pavement and he keeps walking. It's quiet, save for the ringing in his ears that's been a constant since June.
Pili was right, is the thing.
He tries, he really does, to keep everything wrapped up in a neat little bow, beating down the anger, the fear, the shit, that threatens to boil over. He's stubborn, even though he tries not to be, so it's hard for him to admit that there is an issue to begin with, that he has an issue—that he is an issue. It's even more difficult when Pili is the one pointing it out to him, because it's then that he has to come to terms with how scared he is of losing that understanding. Pili knows him well enough to know him, and Pangi doesn't want to lose that.
He needs help. He knows that, okay? People don't need to keep fucking telling him.
Pili was right, but Pangi denied, denied, denied, and then they both started yelling.
Today was worse than usual. The ringing neared on deafening, and his skin felt tight where it was scarred. His joints were stiff underneath the muscle that protects them.
It goes like this: he says a lot of things he doesn't mean, Pili does too, and it ends with him slamming the door.
They've fought before, but never like this.
The further he walks, the less proud he gets, and his phone feels heavy in his pocket. Pili's contact is pinned to his phone, sitting above every other number. It would be so easy to just... click.
The street-light ahead of him flickers violently, then goes out. They live in a shitty, small-town neighbourhood with bumpy pavement and wires hanging from electrical lines, so electrical malfunctions are nothing out of the ordinary. Still, it puts him on edge. He's safe, he has to keep reminding himself.
There's a couple hundred people living here, and it's nice. It's a fresh start. It's on the outskirts of the city, coastal, with old people who give you pie recipes. The commute to school is longer, but it's worth it. His friends are further away than they've ever been, but so is everything else—the things he had to get away from. They come visit often, his friends; they sleep-over on their couch and do karaoke in their kitchen, and Pangi feels lighter than he has in years.
He's starting over, but old habits die hard, so he whips around to look behind his shoulder.
There's nothing there but the winding road, splintering off into cul-de-sacs.
Something beats its wings, he guesses it's an owl, over his head. He takes a deep breath, and pulls his phone out of his pocket.
He has a message from Aimsey, thirty minutes old, saying goodnight. He smiles, types out a response, and flicks over to Pili's contact, opening their message thread. His thumbs hover over the keys and he squeezes his eyes shut, thinking.
He types out "I'm sorry," about three different times before he decides that it's what he wants to say, and hits send.
No matter how often he gets angry, he doesn't like it. He hates it, hates the intensity of his own emotion, its unpredictability—his own unpredictability. He doesn't ever enjoy being angry. Especially not with Pili, because they both know how it ends, and it's never pretty.
The wings flap again, and he looks away from his phone and to the sky; a bat flitters through the open air, and Pangi watches as it soars down towards him.
It barrels into him, hitting his chest, and he stumbles backwards, flailing and cursing.
"Oh shit, fucking—" he says, trying desperately to get out of its way, and it does get away—scampering up, and past his neck.
It flies off. He stands in place for a minute, confused and a little shaken, before the stinging of his skin draws him back to reality. He reaches up to his neck and his hand comes back sticky with blood. Fucking great. No, that's awesome. Now he's gonna have to get a rabies shot.
He groans and turns around to head back up the road, he's gonna have to force Pili to drive him to the hospital or something. That won't be an awkward car-ride at all.
"I hate my life," he whispers, kicking a rock off of the road and into the ditch.
Wings flap again, and Pangi ducks when the sound passes over him. When he can't hear it anymore, he keeps walking—past the apple-tree, the play-ground, he sees the outline of the convenience store—and follows the route home.
He's fine. It's just...
He can't shake the feeling that something is watching him.
This is kind of what Pili was talking about, isn't it? Fear bubbles in his stomach, but he steels himself and refuses to check his shoulder. He's safe, he knows he's safe. He knows that he's not what he used to be, so he doesn't look behind him—if not to prove that to himself, to prove it to Pili.
It's then that teeth sink into his neck.
Pangi yells, swatting backwards and reaching around to grab at whatever's standing behind him—flying behind him, he bets it's that stupid fucking bat—but his hand hits cloth, and when he flails around more, it makes contact with something cold and clammy—if he didn't know any better, he'd say it was skin, straight out of the morgue freezer. A corpse.
This thing, apparently not a bat, obviously wasn't expecting him to fight back, to have an instinct to survive, because it leaves an opening for Pangi to dig his blunt fingernails into whatever he's touching and tear. Pangi has always been scrappy, and he knows how to fight dirty, deadly, when he has to.
It cries, hisses, makes some sort of disgusting noise and pulls its teeth out of his throat. Pangi can feel his own blood trickle down and seep into the collar of his shirt, spray out over Pili's jacket which he'd hauled on before leaving the house. Pangi gasps, stumbling backwards, overwhelmingly dizzy, and the bat flies over him again, body twitching with an injury.
"You bitch!" Pangi yells after it, deliriously, convinced it'll understand him.
He panics for a minute, the familiar feeling of blood dripping down his back, and then decides he has no fucking time to panic—his vision is going spotty, and he can see the silhouette of their house—suddenly, the only thing he can think is that he has to get there. No matter how angry Pili is with him, he'll help. He always helps, he'll know what to do, Pangi is gonna be fine. Pili always knows what to do. He's gonna be fine.
He just has to get there.
It's harder than it sounds.
He starts out in a limping run, knees buckling in on themselves, and refuses to count the number of times he falls onto the ground. He gets to the doorway, tries to knock, but his arm feels limp and doesn't move, so he throws his body into it. Blood smears onto the frame. Over the rushing in his ears, he can hear Pili jog over and unlock the door.
It opens, and Pangi half-falls into their porch.
"Holy fuck, dude!" Pili yells, grabbing him and holding him upright, "What happened, oh my god, what the fuck? What the fuck, Pangi?"
"The motherfucker bit me," he slurs, trying to blink away the black-spots floating around Pili's face. They don't go away when he waves a hand at them, and he realizes distantly that they aren't really there.
"Bit? What was it, a bear? Oh my god, there's so much blood, what the fuck, I need to call—"
Pangi topples over into the wall, Pili keeps rambling, and the only thing he can think to mumble out is, "Pili, 'm sorry I got blood all over your coat,"
"I don't care, oh my—Pangi, I need you to keep looking at me, okay? Yes, he said he got bit, I think it's in the, uh, the carotid, but—" Pili says, and it's only then that Pangi spots the phone he's holding to his ear. He doesn't remember when that got there.
Pili rattles off what he knows is their address, but he's struggling to remember who he's on the phone with, because their address is supposed to be a secret—the blood drips onto the floor, his blood, and Pangi remembers that he's bleeding out. Pili's eyes are shot wide-open, and his other hand is pressing something over Pangi's neck, digging into the wound. He blinks once, eyelids heavier than he remembers them being. He can't feel the hand on him. Pili looks to him, mouth forming the shape of words, but Pangi can't understand any of them.
He collapses onto the floor, Pili screams, and everything goes dark.