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“Ryan, hey,” Dylan says, grinning a bit when he sees the other teen loitering in the doorway, hoping this isn’t just a morphine-induced hallucination. “Th’ought you’d be home b’now.”
Ryan hesitates for a few moments before he collects himself enough to step into the small hospital room, his movements halting as he settles into the chair next to Dylan’s bed. “No, I, uh, was at the police station. They just let me go a little while ago,” Ryan explains, rubbing his eyes with one hand.
Dylan can tell Ryan is exhausted, brown eyes glazed with the look of someone who’s used adrenaline and stubbornness to push their body well past its usual point of collapse. “Y’look like shit, Ry,” he drawls, words slurring a little.
“You should see the other guys,” Ryan quips, but the joke falls flat, his face twisting in grief as he recalls that the “other guys” had mostly been the Hacketts. Caleb and Kaylee had been his friends, Chris his mentor—so many lives snuffed out in the span of a single night. “Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you were—” he cuts off, shifting in the hard plastic chair like that’s going to do anything to make it any more comfortable.
“M’good. Made it out in one piece. Mostly.” Dylan offers Ryan another quick grin, even as he cradles his bandaged wrist to his chest. It’s easier, somehow, to deal with the pain that lingers under the fog of too many pain meds and the knowledge that he’s—Christ, he’s missing part of his body.
Maybe it's because Ryan understands what happened to him—is one of the few people who ever will. Dylan lost his hand, Ryan lost a father figure. The horrors of their last night in Hackett's Quarry will stay with them both for the rest of their lives. “Think they’ll gimme a cool robot hand?”
“Probably not,” Ryan says, lips ticking upward in a small smile. It doesn’t quite meet his eyes, but at least it’s something.
“Ah well, can't have ev’rything, I guess.”
“Look, Dylan, I’m sorry, about—” Ryan gestures to Dylan’s throbbing arm. “I don’t—”
“Stop. No apologies,” Dylan says, focusing all his energy on making the words come out clear. Firm. “I asked you to. I would’ve turned into one of those things if you hadn’t.”
“Dylan, I cut off your fucking hand. I shot Chris. I—fuck, this is so fucking messed up.”
“Yeah.” Dylan reaches out with his good hand, resting it on Ryan’s shoulder. “It is.”
Ryan exhales, and the tension flows out of him like a puppet who’s just had its strings cut. “My biggest worry was supposed to be how to give you my number without coming off like a desperate creep.”
“Well, sharin’ your earbuds on th’ ride home woulda been a good start.” Dylan yawns, thoughts fading in and out as the drugs try to pull him under. “Was lookin’ forward to hearin’ that podcast.”
“Maybe some other time, then.” Ryan’s hand covers Dylan’s, thumb rubbing across the knuckles in a way that leaves Dylan shivering, before he gently removes it from his shoulder and guides it back to the bed. “You should get some rest.”
“You should too, y’know,” Dylan mumbles around another yawn. He pats the space next to him on the bed. “There’s room.”
Christ, how much morphine did they give him?
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“‘Sa great idea,” Dylan argues. “The best idea. Cuddlin’ hot guys promotes healing, y’know. That shit’s science.”
Finally, Ryan huffs out a small laugh, and Dylan tries not to preen too much at making him smile, like always. “Is that the painkillers talking?”
“‘S prolly my dick talking, but hey—” Dylan shrugs. “Still true.”
Ryan stands, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I should go.”
“Yeah. Yeah, m’sure you wanna get home.” Dylan nods, tries not to think about how this is probably the last time he’ll ever see Ryan, and raises his hand in a feeble wave. He knows he should offer a stupid quip or two to bring back some levity, but he’s tired, his arm hurts, and he doesn’t want to say goodbye yet.
Almost against his will, his eyes slip closed, falling in and out of awareness again as his desire to stay conscious wars with the morphine drip pumping straight into his vein. He jerks awake when the mattress dips next to him, greeted by the unexpected sight of Ryan’s face mere inches from his own. Ryan holds out an earbud, almost shyly. “I could probably stay for a podcast or two.”
Dylan slips it into his ear, the low voices of whatever Ryan queues up on his phone sounding like white noise to Dylan's foggy brain. He doesn’t know how much time has passed the next time he wakes. Ryan’s steady breaths stir against Dylan’s neck as the other boy sleeps on, a brief respite from the trauma of the previous night.
Dylan spots his phone on the table next to the bed, and he picks it up with a frown, trying to remember where he last left it. A contact card for Ryan Erzahler is the first thing that loads on his screen when he swipes it open, a phone number and email address added to it at some point during Dylan’s slumber.
It feels like a promise.
It feels like hope.
And after everything they saw in Hackett’s Quarry, hope is what they both desperately need—a precious commodity.
Dylan cherishes it accordingly.