<me waiting for Fay lore
-@aftgphoenix
fay's masterpost | tw: major character death, hospitals, mental health issues, etc.
A week after Dylan's graduation, he and Marcus spent lazing around the apartment for the most part. Because of all their lazing there were no clean dishes when dinnertime came, so Marcus scooped up his keys and took Dylan out instead of washing any. Now they were at the park, on the swing set. It was a typical haunt for them, quiet and out of the way. Too late for kids to be around and too early for the nightlife to come out, which sucked because Dylan really wanted to see a bear in person one day.
Anyway, it was dusk and the streetlamps were buzzing overhead. A couple birds were arguing about something off in the trees. Dylan and Marcus sat on the swings, the chains twisted so they could face each other. Dylan had a small stack of envelopes on his lap; he'd hardly left them out of sight since they arrived. Marcus had asked more than once if he'd glued them to his hand. And he hadn't, but he might've considered it were he a bit more unstable.
"I have to be in West Virginia by 8 a.m. on June 1st, that's what it says. There's a try out. Wait," he squinted at the paper then angled it so the light was better. "No, there's three try outs."
"Seems excessive." Marcus said as he lit a cigarette.
"That's why they're the best!" Dylan told him. "I mean, think about it. Everyone wants to be a Raven and there's only so many spots on the team, so they have to weed out their applicants."
"Mm, I get it, little bird. What about UK? UT?"
Dylan scowled at him. "There is no possible future where I play for Tennessee. Ever." He ripped an orange envelope in two and dropped the two halves at his feet. He wouldn't leave them there of course, but he had to make a point. Marcus laughed at him.
"Guess I'll need to look into apartments over there, huh?"
"According to this I'll be living on campus." Dylan informed him. The idea of living in a dorm sounded sort of terrifying. He'd never had to share such a small space with anyone, well except his siblings. He shook them from his mind before they could really take up shop. He'd adjust. "But this says they pay for everything. Tuition and books and housing, of course. And there's a meal plan. So I'll be all set."
"Yeah, I read it too, when you first got it. I just want to be close to ya." Marcus said. Dylan almost swooned. He felt his face go warm and turned a bit to try and hide it. Marcus tossed his cigarette away and grabbed the chains of Dylan's swing, pulling so they met in the middle. "Because I love you."
"Love you too," Dylan said softly. Marcus kissed him, then let go of his swing. Dylan swung back into place, spinning laughing the whole way. "Jerk."
Marcus opened his mouth, then made a face before looking toward the treeline. "You hear that?"
"What? You think it's a bear?" Dylan whispered. There was chainlink between them and the woods, but bears could climb.
"No, it sounded like…" Marcus licked his lips. "I don't know. Maybe we oughta go home now, hm?"
Before Dylan could answer there was a crack of a sound, like reality had split right down the middle. One moment they were sitting there, the next Marcus had fallen backward off his swing as if shoved by an invisible hand. Dylan would realize far too late the sound was a bullet cutting through the air.
"Marcus!" Dylan hit the ground a second later, scrambling forward on his knees. Marcus's shirt was changing colors, gray to red. It made no sense. No sense at all. He was bleeding. He was bleeding so much. Dylan slapped his hands over the spot, to hold pressure over it.
Marcus grimaced. "Get outta here, little bird."
"What? No. It's gonna be alright. It's. I'll call an ambulance—" He nearly choked at the look on Marcus's face. Then he realized they left their phones in the car.
In the car.
At the entrance of the park.
He jerked his gaze toward it. Crimson red and two hundred yards away, Marcus's favorite set of wheels sat uselessly beyond the chain link. He couldn't do both. Dylan took Marcus's hands and put them over his injury. "You do this, I'm going to get my phone. I'll be right back."
"No. You gotta go. The keys are in the car, get away from here," Marcus hissed out. Dylan ignored him and started to rise to his feet. Reality split a second time and red hot pain lanced through his right shoulder. He fell forward with a strangled cry, and Marcus shouted something he couldn't hear from the blood rushing through his ears.
Hot tears burned as he gasped around the pain in his back, then there was a weight over him. "Marcus?"
"Gonna be okay. You'll be okay," Marcus murmured as more gunfire rang out through the night. Dylan couldn't move, could barely breathe. He laid still and smashed his face in the dirt, trying to keep as low as possible.
Eventually the noise stopped, everything stopped. He whispered Marcus's name and sobbed when he got no answer. He couldn't feel him breathing anymore. He couldn't feel much at all.
A lightning bug landed in the grass. Dylan watched its light glow and fade, glow and fade, glow and fade, until he lost consciousness.
Hospital
He woke up alone in a sterile white room.
It was dark except for a nightlight over the door and squinting at his surroundings he found nothing familiar at all. For a strange moment it reminded him of a movie set. Everything was placed just so, the way things were in the hospital dramas his mother liked to watch when she wasn't chain smoking her way through a carton of Pall Mall.
Oh. A hospital?
Dylan was confused.
He hadn't been to a doctor since he could remember, much less a hospital. But machines to his left were beeping and there was something attached to his face that made him feel claustrophobic. He coughed and his entire body rattled with it. When he reached for the thing on his face he realized something was stabbed into his hand. He shook it in a feeble attempt to dislodge the IV, but it only tugged at his skin.
When he moved his other hand, pain flared all the way down his arm. He quickly dropped it and felt tears on his cheeks. He waited for someone to come, but it must've been twenty minutes before the door opened. A woman wearing gray scrubs entered, the color of her uniform was so similar to Marcus's shirt. Dylan blinked fuzzily.
"Marcus." He said, throat scratchy. "Where's Marcus?"
The woman froze up at his voice, then she resumed and came to the head of the bed. In a soft voice she said, "Who?"
"Marcus. Butler. He was with me in the park. He's six feet tall and has his hair in twists. And an earring, he has an earring too. He got shot. In the stomach. Where is he?"
The nurse's face paled and she grimaced slightly, but Dylan didn't notice. "Um. I'll... go get him for you." She said with a smile, then she put down a clipboard and backed out of the room.
Dylan laid there waiting for decades. The next time the door opened, it was a very tall man that came in. But he wasn't Marcus. Dylan could tell without his glasses. The man left the door open as he started to check the readings on the machines. He didn't say anything at all.
"Where's Marcus?" Dylan asked finally. The man glanced at him as if he'd forgotten a person was lying in the bed. He fidgeted uncomfortably and sighed.
"I'm sorry. He's gone."
"What?"
"He was DOA. There was nothing we could do."
Dylan stared at him in disbelief. "You're lying. You're lying! The girl who was in here, she said she'd go get him for me!"
"Fucking Reagan." The man muttered under his breath. Then he sighed. "I'm sorry. She always does this. She hates being the one to break the news. He was dead when they brought him in. He had four GSWs."
GSWs. Dylan's addled mind tried to puzzle that one out, then it made sense.
"Four? No. He got shot once, then I got shot. And then..." Then he made himself into a shield, Dylan remembered. He choked and the beeping beside him got quicker. "You're lying. Marcus can't die! You get him. Get him!"
"I can't do that, kid. He's dead."
In the minutes that followed there was a lot of shouting and more people coming in. Dylan couldn't really say what happened. He just knew he was angry and hurt and lied to. He fought somebody, maybe everybody. Blood had come from somewhere and Dylan didn't think it was his.
Eventually he was shoved back onto the bed and suddenly couldn't move his arms anymore. They were stuck in place by what looked like Velcro straps. He flailed his legs, kicking and screaming Marcus's name, because when Marcus found out what these people were doing to him he'd whoop their asses.
Wait.
Dylan thought perhaps he'd already handled that. He took a moment to breathe and found the tall man holding his nose where he'd backed himself into a corner and Fucking Reagan was clutching her arm, crying. Someone brought in another bag and hung it on the IV rail. Dylan writhed and screamed himself hoarse, but no one cared. Eventually things went black again.
He later found out he'd broken a nurse's nose and an orderly's wrist. He did not care. What was a nose or an arm when Marcus was dead? He wanted to burn the place to the ground. They'd let Marcus die. None of them deserved to live anymore.
When he told that to some dumb old lady who insisted he talk to her, she was alarmed. And he was moved to a different room, where he stayed for a couple weeks. He doesn't like to think about his time in the ward. Thankfully he can't remember most of it, they kept him doing loops around the sun most of the time. So high he didn't know his own name, let alone Marcus's.
More therapists came to talk with him and he never understood what they were talking about. When he was lucid enough to ask about Marcus, someone would put a crayon in his hand and make him write 'Marcus is dead' over and over and over. He thought perhaps they were the insane ones, because any minute now Marcus was going to come and find him.
One of the worst parts of all was the actual crazy people, because Dylan wasn't really one of their peers. He thought. There was Molly who screamed at imaginary things and a boy everyone called Chicken who was constantly trying to take his clothes off. Worst of all was an older guy who was constantly touching his hair and telling him he was pretty. When Dylan threatened to bite the guy's fingers off and shove them up his ass, he was rewarded with liquidized brains— courtesy of pills in a little paper cup. Refusing to take them never worked, so he would swallow them and let them make things less awful.
Eventually the head bitch in charge told him he had visitors. Marcus's parents were there. For him. He'd only met them in passing, but they were nice enough. Camille Butler looked like her son and Dylan hated it. They told him they'd had a hard time tracking him down, then they weren't allowed to see him because they weren't related but Marcus Sr. had finally gotten through to the staff.
It was a bad day for Dylan brain-wise, and he couldn't articulate anything. But they took him away from there, to their place in Louisville. Marcus's older sister Olivia hugged him so tight he thought he might've broken, if he hadn't already. He asked her where Marcus was and she cried, pulling him to her chest.
It was then that he finally believed it.
Marcus was dead. And one of the last things Dylan did was call him a jerk.
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