texas rot.

this hurts.

leland's shoulders ache and cramp from the prolonged strain of being strung up like carved meat. he can only guess it's on purpose, that his toes barely touch the dirt floor. that sheer exhaustion forces his dead weight onto his wrists when he can't keep himself up. no matter how he twists and struggles — nothing helps. fresh wounds flare on his back. the now filthy shirt he'd come here in clings painfully to his skin. he can't feel his fingers when he flexes them, trying to coax blood back into them.

he lets out a low whine at nothing. but he tries not to cry, anymore. out of frustration, out of pain. out of something stupid. like loneliness. anyway, there's nothing to look at, in the dark. his unfocused gaze hangs on dust particles, and the faint slots of light through the cell door. his company is his own ragged breathing, and the rats in the walls. the occasional phantom sound from elsewhere in the basement.

it's just so cold. the rusted metal pipe above his head radiates a consistent chill, and sometimes it rattles — for hours. the basement air steals away any warmth he manages to generate. makes his skin prickle — like it's so cold he's burning up. feverish. his head feels hot. but he knows his teeth haven't stopped chattering. it felt a little like when he got sick as a kid, and his mom kept him home from school.

but, he's not home, now. and the only one that bothered to take care of him down here, sometimes, was that man with the horrible mask. and johnny — when he felt like it. the big guy communicated mostly by mumbling and gesturing, leland had noticed. and he had been weirdly gentle, when he had first stitched leland's wounds closed.

after johnny had thrown him in here barely alive. after the graveyard.

not that he seemed interested in letting leland die, either. at least, not yet. the more he started to understand about the man — his schedule, his habits, the sounds of his footfalls — the more insane leland felt.

mostly, johnny comes in here to hurt him. slices him up with that skinning knife, taunts him. sometimes he likes to use him as an ashtray for his cigarettes. usually leaves him something awful looking to eat. then, like today — sometimes forgets him altogether. like a chained up dog.

it's a cycle he's gotten used to, though. johnny disappears, and leland waits for him to bring the light back in.

leland doesn't know how long he's been gone, this time. a day, a couple hours. everything passed so slowly in this room. he feels worse than ever. weaker, sicker. god — he used to be strong enough to fight back. he used to have it in him to escape this fucking prison. and now he just waits here. for something. to be acknowledged, to be tormented and left alone again.

leland's thoughts list faintly; maybe he found another victim he liked torturing more than you. he doesn't know why the thought makes him sadder.

you'll die, soon, anyway. of starvation, or infection, or the cold, damp air seeping through the walls. your body will go quiet, and still. didn't you want that, at one point? didn't you want to —

— he startles as the door creak on its hinges. the dim bulb above comes on. flickers, flickers over his head. like the colour blurs dancing on the edges of his vision. room is washed in dim, nauseating yellow. leland barely lifts his head, squinting in the sudden sting of light, even as the scuffing of the man's boots grows nearer.

" hey, pretty boy. ya miss me? "

leland wants to grimace. but he doesn't bother to flinch when he feels johnny's hot breath against his cheek. when the man presses into his space smelling like dirt and blood and stale liquor. comes close like an animal nosing around roadkill. he feels like roadkill. and he wishes he had the strength to pull away. but he's so freezing. and he's so tired. and he doesn't want to play the part, today.

he doesn't want to be brave, anymore. he wants his mom. he wants a warm bed. he wants to sleep. what had fighting ever gotten him, anyway?

leland feels his eyes stinging, again. dried blood on cracked lips, and a failed vocalization is all that comes out of him, at first. his laboured breath puffs out in a weak vapour.

he tries again.

❝ what... are you gonna do, this time? ❞ there's a certain defeat in his rasp. a simultaneous deadening of his nerves, while his body trembles uncontrollably like the caught prey he is. pain-glazed eyes flutter, trying to track johnny’s features. catching on the scar, and the sharp cut of the shadows against his brow. there's a heat radiating from him that had been absent in this room before. something both menacing, and oddly comforting. warm. real, in the darkness. delirious, leland thinks he would take the cigarette ember against his skin, or a punch in the gut, now, just to have something save him from the cold.

it was moths, that gravitated to flames, right?

❝ please. ❞ he offers, thinly. a crack in his voice. a cough. unsure of what exactly he was begging for, this time. leland tries to lift his head slightly, feeling a wave of awful pin-prickles down his arms as he adjusts. his eyes want to squeeze closed again, the light hurts. but he forces himself to look up at the man properly. he swallows the lump in his throat.

it's almost two days before johnny can make it back down to see him again. a little longer than intended because nancy's keen eye has been a little too watchful and the old man has made demands of him that he obliges if only to buy himself the privacy and the time for this. this, here. him cracking open the door fully expecting the gnashing teeth and the snarling dog caught on a leash, maybe even gnawed through its own paw.

but that isn't the image that greets him.

that isn't the strong protective jock, ready to die for his friends.

he's a shadow of his former self.

a ghost.

another to add to the many that crawl and sift through the damp halls carved out in this basement. his body would look pretty propped up on the mattress that sits on the floor now, just out of reach of the tips of his toes. stained and springs exposed and hardly comfortable.

under the harsh yellows, the college boy is looking a little gaunt. dark shadows beneath dark eyes and his teeth chatter against his lips that look like they're raw from the cold, from neglect, from the passing of his own teeth as time cleaves chunks from his resolve. something awfully close to concern knits itself in a thin veil across johnny's jaw. what use is he if he's sick and frail and clinging to death now anyway?

his voice is rough. rough and barely there, strained, johnny nearly misses it, too. a sound absorbed into the walls of this little makeshift cell. the boy who was so bright and so big has already begun to deteriorate and there's equal parts amusement and discontent that tug at the center of johnny's chest because of this revelation.

"well shit," he finally speaks, not bothering to unfurl the furrow at his brow. "what i wanted to do was a lot more excitin' than this. buuuuut, since you asked so nicely," he moves from the doorway, the small room flooding with some more of that faint light, a wave of cold with her luring curls of air and bone chill following. with his boot, he wedges the door closed to prevent that air from touching leland. then, the distance between them is closed enough that johnny can wrap his arm around leland's body, fingers merciful against his bruised ribs and torn up back. he smells like meat left on the counter for a little too long, long enough that the flies would've been swarming him if it were warmer down here. long enough that maybe if he hadn't been strung up, the rats would've tried to feast on his soft flesh. johnny holds him firm, but tender, weight held in his curled arm so he can reach up with the other and cut loose the ropes that dig and feed on leland's wrists. crusted blood sits in the winding threads. he leverages leland's dead weight, holding him close to his own body while he cuts through them. a few seconds, maybe a minute at most. his warmth bleeding into leland's cold body. for a second, he swears he can feel the jackrabbit humming of leland's still beating heart against his own chest and the familiar pulse of electric current he's felt when this boy is close webs at the center of his chest.

defibrillator. proof of life. for who? he's not the one strung up and yet...

with his arms cut free, johnny doesn't haphazardly drop leland's body, though the thought occurs to him, he drops his knife instead. it doesn't make much more than a dull thud against the dirt floor. it frees his hand to allow him to wind that arm too around him. holding him close. feet on the floor now, but he's pressed against johnny. close enough that he can see the haze in his eyes and the beads of sweat indicating a fever that pool at his temples despite the frigid air. briefly, without warning or permission, he presses his lips to leland's forehead. checking his temperature. attempting to hold his focus through the apparent illness.

"i leave you down here for a few days and you go 'n get yourself sick. thought you could handle anythin' i throw at you?"

had he pushed too far? was he already broken? he clears his throat, chest tight again with the pinching sensation he has no name for, no root cause for. something only leland causes. like thorn pinpricks against his skin, a splinter he keeps thumbing over even when the skin gets raw.

he should let him die down here. alone and forgotten. he should.

but then what?

gently, johnny helps him down onto the mattress. laura-jean looked small sunken into that same mattress about a month before all this happened with leland and his little friends. she had begged for her life, too. had enough fight to keep johnny amused for all of two seconds and then he snapped her neck. her ribs were tender. the old man is annoying, but he sure knows his barbecue. callused fingertips slip beneath the tattered, bloodied shirt clinging to leland's wounds. fingers catching at the rungs of his ribs. he's thinner now. thinner than he had been when he was all muscle and all grit, throwing himself at johnny and hands and anyone who dared to look anywhere other than him.

"easy," he murmurs, settling onto his knees beside the mattress. "if you think you can just slip away and die like a pussy after all'a that fight you put up, you got another thing comin'," his tone is colored with play. with jest. with something near affectionate were it not laced in that same stale liquor on his tongue. johnny reaches then for leland's hands, his wounded wrists, and starts to rub circulation into them. he isn't gentle now, rough hands used to rough work, but he takes care to not rip open the raw wounds already there. he's deliberate about the pressure he applies, dragging and coaxing blood through leland's hands. and then his hands dip further, along his forearms. beyond his elbows, along his biceps. not unlike a sick dog, but this one he knows won't bite hard, even if he had the strength to do much more than lay there and take this. "how you feelin'?" johnny dips down closer, brushing hair from leland's brow, his skin feeling clammy to the touch. with that same hand, he rubs at the center of leland's chest. small, soothing circles, and then stops completely. he stops and lets the cold air settle between them again. all teeth when he asks, a mask of earnesty,