#scratchbarry

 Barry Wheeler accounted for anything. His clients running off after an after-party to get drunker than they already were? More drugged than they already were? He could deal with it. His clients getting lawsuit after lawsuit after an excess of violence? He had five different lawyers he could call. Near death experiences? Depressive spirals? Mood swings? Dementia? He could handle it, God dammit.

 Barry didn't know why this was the thing that left him speechless.

 "…What?" He asked flatly.

 "Yes, yes, your friend Tom! The writer!" Odin exclaimed with a smile. "We saw him in a dream! He asked for our help, you know? To help him fight against the Witch!"

 "No, no, you're remembering it wrong." Chimed in Tor while he sat on the drums. "That old hag died already, bro, this was something else."

 "Was it?"

 "Yeah! We were up against the fucking... Prince of Darkness this time! Remember? That son of a bitch who stole Tom's face."

 Odin raised his eyebrows in disbelief, before shaking his head.

 "Oh yeah, right... Anyway, he asked us about you," he smiled again, an old man's kind smile completely at odds with reality, "he's a good kid, that Tom."

 "He's kind of a dick." Countered Tor, halfheartedly, and the brothers' conversation devolved into one of their usual arguments while they set everything up.

 All in all it was a pretty average Wednesday tone-wise, eccentric and delusional chatter that would become a great story for a song down the line. Barry usually cherished those days, if only for the sight of success in the horizon.

 This time he only felt a wave of dismay. Remnants of old nightmares crawling up his skin from the time his best friend died, old hopes and nightmares that he had definitely absolutely gotten over already.

 "Right." His voice tensed and he cleared his throat, infusing his words with as much managerial certainty he could muster, "Right, okay! Fellas! Are you ready for today? We've got a pretty big day comin'"

 "Hell yeah!" Echoed the Anderson brothers, thankfully way past a conversation that made Barry deeply uncomfortable.

-

 "So... what's up?"

 It was one of their usual meetings that Barry noticed something odd on Alice's demeanor. Or rather, something old. They've been sitting at the park for some time now, bringing each other up to date on the last month or so, and the haunted look behind her eyes worried him.

 "You're going to think I'm going crazy."

 He laughed, hoping it was contagious enough.

 "Too late for that."

 Alice gave him a sharp look, but he could see the hint of a smile at the edge of her lips before a scowl replaced it.

 "I... I've been seeing him."

 "Seeing who?"

 "...Alan."

 Barry tensed, and Alice avoided eye contact. Suddenly the park seemed to shine a little less bright.

 "Or... someone who looked like him. I don't really know."

 "Wha," he cleared his throat, trying to get his voice back to normal, "what do you mean by that?"

 Staring off into the distance, Alice seemed to be trying to remember something, and if she had been literally anyone else Barry would’ve tried to rush her. They weren't in bad terms now or much less, but it had been a while since she last looked this bizarrely brittle, and he didn’t want her to snap.

 That, and a familiar dread building at the pit of his stomach stopped him from pushing.

 Finally, Alice took a breath.

 "Do you remember a few years ago when I made a short film?" That eased him a bit.

 "Of course I remember. I’m still mad I couldn’t start my own film producer career with that one." He tried joking, weakly, and this time she graced him with the smallest of smiles.

 "Around that time, I... I thought I saw someone, sometimes, who looked a lot like Alan. He was always out of the corner of my eyes, or in the background, between the crowds of people… It felt as if he were stalking me." Barry frowned, concerned by this new information, when she looked at him with her hand lightly raised. "And before you ask, look, I just didn’t want to tell you, okay? We weren’t exactly friends back then.”

 He rolled his eyes, annoyance distracting him for a second from the matter at hand, before ultimately having to agree with her.

 “Sure. Fine. You were saying?” She grimaced.

 "After... the movie was done I stopped seeing him, so I just thought it was, I don't know, a hallucination. Grief." Biting her lip, a sad smile break through for just a second. “I even had a dream where I met with Alan again, the real him, so I thought, well, that it was over.” She swallowed. "But, lately I've been..." Her voice thinned, as she glanced at him for a second like she was weighing something, "I've been having nightmares. I'm at home, and he keeps appearing like this, this dark, angry thing. Screaming. Thrashing everything. Burning all the lights and leaving me in the dark..." she shook her head, closing her eyes tightly and shivering. "...I guess it is driving me a bit crazy."

 Alice frowned, her eyes lost on the cracks of the pavement, recalling whatever it was she saw in the aforementioned nightmares. She was too stuck on her own gloomy thoughts to notice the uncharacteristic silence of the man, when finally Barry admitted.

 "I gotta say, I'm kinda jealous."

 That snapped her of her own mind.

 "Excuse me?"

 “I mean don’t get me wrong, Alice, all this you’re telling me? Of course it’s terrible, but… Everyone I talk to seems to be seeing Al these days, y’know?” He laughed, leaving a bitter aftertaste. “In their dreams, nightmares. I swear, next thing I hear will be someone seeing him on a damp stain on the wall, or something.” He sighed, trying to act nonchalant. “I just wish he’d come haunt *me* for a change, honestly, been a while since he's been a pain in my ass.”

 Barry chuckled again, forced, and then winced at his own hollow tone. Part of him was aware of how that sounded, and he almost wanted to apologize for it. He cared about Alice, and the days where they spoke to each other with ill intent were long gone, but seeing her face twist in disdain brought his past resentment back, too.

 And, well, he was jealous.

 "Damn, tough crowd. It was a joke. Jeesh."

 Alice looked back at him with her mouth agape and a light frown, too astonished to say anything back, and in another time Barry would have probably felt satisfied with this outcome. This was hardly the case. With a slap on his legs he got up from the bench before she could come up with a clever response or, most likely (or at least most deserved), could tell him to fuck off.

 "In any case, you said it yourself. Grief is fucked up, Alice, you know that, we both know that. You want my advice? Go talk to a shrink about those dreams. They'll say 'oh this is because of this or that', give ya something and that'll be it. No more nightmares or hallucinations. No more crazy talk... It helped me, at least."

 He stretched his arms while saying all that, his back turned to Alice at all times and even as the silence stretched between them. Finally, when something close to guilt started tugging at his cords he checked something on his phone, before turning.

 "I uh, I should probably get going, promised a client I'll get back to him tomorrow about a thing, and it’s getting kinda late... D'ya want me to walk you home?"

 When he wasn't looking Alice composed herself, back reclined again and face inscrutable.

 "No, thanks. I'll stay here sometime. It's a beautiful day." The cold pang of her voice betrayed her words.

 "Right. Well... Take care."

 "Bye, Barry."

 And he walked away, trying to ignore the unpleasant mass of mixed feelings sinking on his stomach.

-

 Barry walked around the Alex Casey movie set making sure everything was going according to plan. The schedule on time, the expenses within budget, the actors...

 "...And not only I met him on that weird talk show, but he also wrote another book that I actually starred on, on the movie adaptation! It was this dark, very dark supernatural story about a detective who got sacrificed in a cult ritual, and the reason of the ritual? To get Alan Wake back from the death! It was a very bizarre dream." Sam Lake laughed candidly. "It even had a musical!"

 He exited the room with a slam of the door.

-

 Walking down the corridors of the Hotel, Barry wondered what was he even doing there. Did the Anderson brothers do something again? Was the movie production renting the hotel for a scene? He tried to recall which hotel he was at, exactly, but they all seemed to blend together at this point. Either way he kept walking, a quickly increasing feeling of dread being his only company.

 Suddenly, a crash. Loud music playing from a speaker bouncing through the hallways. And a couple of voices.

 Barry huffed, dread diluting into frustration as the familiarity of the scene brought him back to situations past. He marched with firm step towards the ruckus with the intention of shutting it down, whatever the hell it was, when suddenly one of the voices finally clicked in his mind, and he froze.

 He recognized it.

 "Al?"

 Standing there for a couple seconds the voices kept talking, yelling, laughing, intertwined with the loud party music, and when Barry moved again he wasn't walking but running, frantically trying to find the room where the noise came from. Frantically and, more importantly, furious.

 "Al, what the fuck?"

 Finally, he found it it. A room at the end of a hallway with the door slightly ajar, and he slammed it open to find his writer like so many times before: drunk, probably high, laying on a couch in such a giddy yet poor state that at no point Barry dawned on how long had it really been since he last saw him.

 "Hey, Zane, where the fuck did you-"

 "Al!" Barry shouted, cutting off the slurring talking of a madman. The fact that he distinctly heard two voices before never seemed to cross his mind. Never mind the strange color and shine of the scene before him either.

 Alan hummed in acknowledgment as he sank on the couch, and then hummed again in question with a burrowed frown. Before Barry could storm into the room —To scold him? Hug him? He needed to grab him, get a handful of him in one way or another, despite not quite understanding where the desperation clawing at his throat came from— Alan actually scrambled to his feet, taking off his stupid sunglasses to stare at his best friend with wide eyes. Did he...

 "Do you even know who I am?" Asked Barry, "Or are you so high you can't recognize me? Again?"

 Alan blinked, slowly, and tentatively asked.

 "You... You're Barry."

 "Great, good to know you at least recognize your agent and you know, your best friend? Because I sure as hell don't recognize you." He looked... unusual was being generous. Alan had his hair longer than Barry could ever remember, an actual goddamn beard and eyes more sunken than the Mariana's Trench. His heart ached with the sight, but something fueled the spark of anger instead. "Jesus Christ, Al, what did you do this time?"

 Once he crossed the threshold he felt how the atmosphere enveloped him, smell and light and music so thick he could drown in it. Of course this is where he found him after a talk show, after a party gone awry in the dead of night, those nights where he could practically hear Alice's cold voice throw daggers at him the morning after when he carried her husband home.

 "Look,” Barry tried to reason, rehearsing an old script, “I know you're upset you haven't been able to write anything but this really isn't-"

 His best friend moving quicker than he anticipated stopped him dead in his tracks. With long strides, sharper and more calculated than he expected him to make in that state, Alan met him in the middle of the room, and before Barry could say anything of the weird grime on his face or the odd way he moved he wrapped him in a strong hug, burying his head on his shoulders and his hands on his back.

 "I missed you, buddy…"

 Barry felt a knot on his throat, his anger melting for a few seconds as his eyes itched for some reason. What was that hug even about? Why was he acting like he hadn't seen him in an eternity?

 "Oh no, you're not getting off that easy, Bestseller, I'm still angry at you!" He said, voice wavering. "You, you, look at this place! It's a mess! I can feel my allergies acting up already!" Alan laughed, reverberating deep on Barry's whole body and making him shiver, his breathing sending hot and wet puffs of air down his neck. Barry took a breath, his nose runny already and his eyes threatening to spill. "Do you know how much I've been hearing of you? 'Oh, Alan Wake is doing this', 'Alan Wake is doing that' the entire night!"

 "Have you?" He couldn't see his face, but he could always recognize the smile on his voice. It sounded... wrong. Too giddy, too delighted. If only Barry were paying attention.

 "Yeah! I'm sick of hearing about you from fuckin— everyone! Why does everyone know what you're up to before your own fucking agent? Al…” His voice broke, hands clenching and loosening on empty air as they hovered awkwardly at his side, before he finally hugged him back. He grabbed a fistful of that weird suit he swore he hadn’t seen him use in over a decade, feeling it oddly damp and sticky to the touch. “If you were in so much trouble then why didn’t you just call me?

 Like you said you would, some nonsensical part of him thought. Alan simply hummed languidly, melting to the touch, and spread his hands across Barry’s back.

 “I really should’ve done that, shouldn’t I?”

 “You bet your ass you should.” He scolded him with was left of his anger while burying his face on his shoulder. “You know I’m here for you, Al. For anything!”

 “I know, I know…” Alan sounded… fascinated. He nudged Barry’s ear with the tip of his nose and he almost complained halfheartedly for the tickling, before Alan sighed against his neck. He swallowed. “Barry…”

 “...Myeah?”

 “What would I’ve done without you?”

 Cheeky fucking bastard.

 It annoyed him like crazy, but Barry couldn’t stay too mad at him when he got like this. With flushed cheeks he tightened his grip on his best friend, despite the odd use of past tense, and despite him slowly disentangling his arms off his back to cup Barry’s face on his cold hands.

 “Not a damn thing.”

 So far Barry had danced to the same old song he’d been dancing to in the past year or so, the panic of not knowing where he was, the anger at seeing him absolutely smashed, and the mix of annoyance and self indulgence when his best friend got… affectionate. But this time Alan shattered that strange feeling of déjà vu when he squished his cheeks one last time, before bending down to kiss him.

 The contact lasted just a second before Barry pulled away with a startle, without quite disentangling himself from his grasp. He gaped like a fish, completely loss for words. Looking at Alan, he hardly looked like himself in that moment, Barry knew very well how fucked up he could get and this was different. His eyes were wide, out of it, yet entirely conscious. A million questions started to pop up on his mind, about what exactly did he took, what was he even doing there, what was he thinking, and, perhaps more important than literally anything else, what about Alice?

 But God.

 He had missed him so fucking much.

 Swallowing, his grasp around Alan tightened again, and when his best friend tried to kiss him this time he didn’t shy away from the contact. Far from the revulsion he’d come to expect he suddenly felt light, feeling that same old prickling behind the eyes and a knot rising and then loosening on his throat.

 Barry dug his fingernails on his suit, anchoring himself to him with the irrational and desperate fear that he’d disappear forever in the blink of an eye, but the hunger behind Alan’s lips and touch quickly drowned any doubt. Cold hands slid down his face and down his body, grabbing handfuls of fabric and the flesh underneath like he simply couldn’t get enough of him. Like he wanted him closer than humanely possible.

 There was something that permeated through the rising euphoria, though, something at the edge of his mind that told him something was wrong, but Barry had no idea where that feeling came from. He had no piece of mind to think about the fleeting sense of vertigo the place gave him, the dread that he could never shake up, or the vague surprise at Alan's over-enthusiasm when kissing him. He didn't particularly mind the latter, with the way he sucked on his tongue and bit at his lip. It made him dizzy, dizzier with the taste of alcohol invading every one of his senses, dizzier with the way he groped at his body, pressing tightly against him.

 The sharp pain almost went unnoticed, and so did the taste of iron. But no amount of arousal could distract him from another, harder bite on his lower lip and the blood sluggishly dripping down his chin and rolling down his throat. Their throat, for when he opened his eyes in shock he was greeted with the scruff of his best friend's beard tinted with red. Eyes hungry and so, so, adoring.

 "Wh-"

 “Shhh…” He kissed him again, and again, joyful smile sliding wet against broken lips that were too shocked to react. “It’s so good to see you again.” This close his breath felt hot against his face, now reeking of putrefaction. “I really did miss you… Wouldn’t be here without you, you know?”

 He laughed, ecstatic, in the face of utter trepidation.

 “I mean it! Oh, all the booze and the parties and the fame and the fortune… I couldn’t have come this far without you, Barry… Thank you.”

 This... thing, that wasn't Alan —Couldn't be Alan— held his face on his hands again, smiling down at him with a cruelty that felt alien on his face, felt wrong, oh, so wrong, and kissed him one last time before starting making a trail down his neck. Every single thought screamed for Barry to run, but he couldn't move, hands still anchored on the other's man back as if that could prevent him from whatever the hell he pretended to do. Even the light seemed to anticipate his movement, growing darker and redder as time went on, although that might've been Barry's freaked out perception of reality as he could swear his heartbeat drumming on his eardrums sounded louder and louder when the man marked the spot with one final kiss down his throat and opened his mouth and—

 Barry woke up with a startle.

 His heart beat quick and loud in the silence of the apartment, before the night life of Hollywood came through the window and the sound of his altered breathing replaced it. The shifting of blankets and his own hand trying to feel his face, his mouth, his neck, for any kind of proof of something, also helped Barry to ground himself in the real world, his stomach twisting and head pounding painfully with the visions, the nightmare that was slowly untangling it's grasp on his mind.

 What the fuck, what the fuck was that? was all Barry could ask himself, sitting at the edge of the bed while trying to catch his breath. Wondering that out loud was the only thing that could distract him from far more pressing questions, and from the phantom touches he could still feel against his body, phantom shapes he could almost touch with his hands. What the fuck was his mind playing at? Why was it playing tricks on him? Why did he even do that? Why did...

 Taking a deep breath, he could almost catch the sharp smell of alcohol, and the taste of blood on his mouth.

 Why was that the only time he'd seen his best friend in the past ten years? Some days Barry could hardly remember the sound of his voice, tone mixing with so many other voices, his own face bleeding into itself at the different ages they've known each other. Why did this have to be the best recollection he had of Al since he—

 Since he died.

 Barry forcefully rubbed his eyes with a knot on his throat, uselessly trying to erase those last images of his dream-nightmare from his mind's eye before a wet gasp stopped him. Like a drowning man he tried breathing, lungs full of water. His eyes hurt, his throat hurt, his chest hurt. He didn't know which concept was worse: to see a bastardized version of his best friend, a corpse filled with his own... —what? His own what? God, he didn't even wanted to think about it— or...

 Or never seeing Alan again. Ever. For as long as Barry lived.

 One would think he could've gotten used to it already. Twenty something years they've known each other, proceeded by ten years of absolutely nothing. He knew there would come a time that second calendar would surpass the first, he knew that. It was only natural.

 (there was a third option buried deep beneath years of therapy and self deception, yet managed to bleed through with the truth from time to time, but that right now was as unfathomable as it was painful)