Chapter Text
As the sun came up, light inching its way through the windows, Kaitlyn watched a werewolf turn back into a teenage boy that she’d mostly tried to ignore over the summer. There was a massive hole in his side. A massive hole she’d put there.
“Oh,” Dylan said, his tone hollow, “Right. They turn back when they die. Good to know.”
She looked up at him, once again both frustrated and intensely grateful for the distraction. “Oh, my god. What is wrong with you?”
“What?” he asked. “It’s good to know. Kaylee was definitely a werewolf when that girl shot her, which means we didn’t send Ryan off with a human-murdering pirate. No human murder occurred. I like it when humans aren’t dying.”
Implying that she, too, had not killed a human. Kaitlyn pursed her lips, glanced at the body again, and then turned on her heel to start marching back across the lodge. “You’re such an idiot.”
“Um, okay.” He rambled along after her. She was still on edge, and every sound seemed amplified, so she noticed his feet shuffling. She looked back down at them, and then up at his face, and he raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said, but couldn’t quite bring herself to look away. He was… honestly, Dylan looked like shit. She imagined she probably did too. They had just spent the worst night of their lives constantly running from killer werewolves. But Dylan was sweating really, really badly… and he was even paler than usual… and… her eyes flicked down to his missing hand, and the angry red lines edging up under the bandages. “Oh… shit…”
“What?” he repeated. “What’s wrong?”
He slurred the ‘s’.
The adrenaline was running out. The fucking adrenaline was running out.
“Okay. Okay, um. Okay,” she said, holding out a hand. “We’re… um… okay.”
“Yes, Kaitlyn, you shot the werewolf, the sun is coming up, Ryan is not alone with a murder pirate, these are all ‘okay’ things,” he agreed, swaying slightly too far as he shifted his weight onto the other hip. “Let’s just… get – get Abi out of the storm shelter, and – and try and find the others, and –” He stumbled, falling against the fireplace, and then blinked rapidly, looking at the bricks like he didn’t understand what had happened. “Um.”
“Hey. Hey, stay with me,” she said firmly, hurrying over to grab his other arm. “Hey, we’re going to be okay. Come on, let’s go to the nurse’s office, I’ll get you some more pain killers.”
“What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. D’you think she kept like… codeine in there? I’ve heard you can make some super cool stuff with codeine,” he mumbled, stumbling upright again. “Maybe we can find some more beer. I don’t think we drank it all, and like… painkillers and intoxicants sound like a rad combination right now.”
She could hear Abi calling for her, begging for explanations, but Kaitlyn knew they were well past their borrowed time. Dylan had been in shock from the start, and clean cut or not, after all the shit they’d been through that wound had to be infected in the non-werewolf sense, and even Nurse Kelley’s best painkillers were only supposed to last like four hours. She’d given them to him more like six hours ago. They needed a doctor. A hospital. Something better equipped than their cleared-out nurse’s station that had only ever been designed for sprained ankles and food poisoning.
“Yeah, hate to tell you this, bud, but I think you might be off the booze for a while,” she said, and Dylan grunted.
“Well, since we have saved each other’s lives recently, I’ll tell you a secret. But you have to promise not to tell anyone here,” he said woozily, half-leaning on her as they struggled past the maze of benches. “I’m serious, no one can know.”
“Hacketeer’s honour,” she promised, and he snorted.
“As if that’s worth the shit it’s written on. Hey, so status update. My vision’s going kind of… like… funky. Kinda blurry and like… dark. Ish. That’s – that’s not a great sign, is it?”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
She made a point of tutting carelessly. “It’s the dawn light, I’m sure it’s fine. So, secret?”
“You are… the worst liar, for the record. Fuck me,” he sighed. “Fuck. Survived all of that bullshit and now I’m gonna like… shit. And I didn’t even get the radio station cleaned up, fuck me.”
“Again, Dylan, your priorities are like… absolute trash,” she said, and he grunted again.
“I put like two whole summers into that shit, man. This is the first year I was actually able to use it. And Ryan called it a dump!” He stumbled, almost making them both topple into the trashed stairwell. “Now it’s a dump covered in my blood and… oh no, my hand’s still in there, that’s so messed up.”
“Yeah, well, whose fault is that?” she asked absently, running through what very little she knew about shock and how to treat it. Keep them calm, reduce blood loss, treat infection and pain with meds, call for an ambulance, hah! Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “You couldn’t have cleaned it up before you left? I do not want to pick up your shit next year.”
“Excuse me, little miss medical assistant who never had to do a single minute of bathroom duty, I have dealt with way more shit than you this year, so you can just fucking deal with it,” he said, but then fell quiet for a few steps before mumbling, “Hey, um… you should… you should go find Abi. Yeah. She’s still downstairs, she’ll be freaking out. You should go – should go check on her.”
“Abi’s fine.”
“You don’t – you don’t know that.” He pulled away from her as they neared the door to the nurse’s office, almost falling into the open doorframe. He swore as he leaned against it, scrunching up his face as he tried and failed to straighten up.
Kaitlyn’s hands fluttered pointlessly, wanting to grab him again to lead him the rest of the way to the sick bed but also not wanting to exacerbate the obvious stress. “Hey. Hey, still with me there, bud?”
He slid about an inch, making her jerk forward, before he abruptly dropped the rest of the way to his knees. He lifted his hand and waved her off before she could touch him again.
“Just go – go – Abi. Don’t – don’t let her see the… oh, god, I want to hurl,” he mumbled, rocking his head into the doorframe. “Thanks for saving our asses earlier.”
“Oh, don’t you fucking dare start flaking out on me now,” she said firmly, and shoved her way past him to get into the office. “We did not get through this whole fucking night just for you to bail on me right at the finish line, you hear me?”
Blankets. Blankets, and pain killers, and she’d deal with the infection in a second, and –
When Dylan’s only answer was to slump to the floor, she felt her own stomach drop with him.
Getting arrested was a real fucking nice way to end the summer.
But even sitting in her cell as she waited for her parents and a lawyer, preferably not in that order, Kaitlyn wasn’t really that worried about it. Yes, she’d quite obviously shot Caleb Hackett, but there were cameras and evidence and a fucking body in the lake they’d been swimming in all goddamn summer. There had been some pretty severe shit going down, werewolves or no.
No, what she was worried about was her friends. Co-workers. Friends. Fuck.
They hadn’t seen Emma since the goddamn game. Jacob… last she’d seen Jake he’d been running off into the darkness after his not-girlfriend. Nick turned into a monster, so for all she knew he was still out there in the woods somewhere, coughing up little bits of Emma and Jake. Ryan, at least, she’d seen when she was getting processed. He’d been covered in blood and looking sick, but alive. His brow had furrowed when he caught sight of her, but they didn’t get a chance to talk before they were both escorted in opposite directions.
Abigail had still been locked in the office when Kaitlyn was slapped in cuffs and marched out, while Dylan had…
He’d still been crumpled in the doorway to the nurse’s office last she saw him.
He had to be fine, she told herself. He had to be. They had gone through too much shit together for him not to be fine.
More than anyone else, she needed Dylan to be fine.
Lawyers were a real fucking piece of work, even when they were on your side.
Hers was surprisingly expensive—thank you shockingly supportive parents—but it was kind of infuriating that he only believed her story once he and the other four lawyers caught up and realised all of their clients were telling the same fractured story.
“Werewolves,” he said, for the sixty-millionth time.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Or at least, people that turn into monsters on the full moon and can infect other people by biting them.”
He nodded slowly, but she knew he’d say the same thing in a few hours.
At the very least, he’d gotten her out without a ridiculous bail, so they were at least in her crappy hotel room rather than the local prison. They’d all basically been released with nothing but pretty smiles because there was either a cop with them at the time (Laura and Ryan) or some pretty clear signs of self-defense (her and Dylan). Now it was just about sorting out the details, but they were still stuck in New York state and not allowed to leave.
That was theoretically fine for some of them… she and Dylan were both attending New York colleges, at least, so theoretically their lives could have continued. Not that the start of semester was exactly going to plan, what with the whole criminal investigation and her school ‘suggesting’ she take a ‘study break’ until the court decided if she was a murderer or not. Ryan had been up in the air about school anyway and hadn’t finalised anything. Laura and Max seemed the worst off about it, but they were also saying they probably weren’t in the right place to focus on grad school anyway. Two months of unlawful arrest and all that.
No one had been able to get in to see Dylan yet, so they didn’t know what was going on with him.
“Okay, um, well,” Lawyer Henry straightened up in his chair, took a breath, and then leaned forward to grab his papers off the coffee table. “Okay. The good news is that we have a solid self-defense case. Assuming that we do go ahead with the joint trial, there’s certainly enough evidence to condemn the Hacketts, which adds a lot of credence to you being attacked by their son. And that fireplace is… well, it’s difficult to explain in any circumstance without the uh… supernatural force… but um. It does prove that something did try to get in to the lodge despite your barricades.”
She nodded quietly. “No one’s going to believe what happened, huh?”
“Ahh… look,” he said, leafing through to the blown-up picture from Emma’s phone, and a still from Chris’s security footage that clearly showed a werewolf. He set them down on the table and tapped them with his fingers. “This is… I don’t know what this is, and I don’t know if we’ll able to find anyone who does. Unfortunately, technology is less proof than it once was. We can say this is an untampered image all we like; we can get experts who can go under oath and say that it’s legitimate. The tapes corroborate them. But this is… an animal, at best. A wild animal. And you’re on trial for the murder of a human. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence, and I’m confident that the Hacketts aren’t getting out of this. But you, Kaitlyn… I hate to say it, but you are at the most risk here. This picture isn’t going to help our case.”
She nodded again. “So… what do we do?”
“We focus on the Hacketts. On their past actions, the secrets, the fact that Bobby Hackett stalked you in the lodge, that Chris Hackett knew there was real and present danger in the woods and yet continued the summer camp for six years, that you were in a terrifying environment that night, an environment created by the Hacketts,” he said, though his eyes lingered on the photo. “If necessary, we could also argue that Miss Kearney contributed to that environment by telling you her story, but I honestly think turning on your co-defendants would be detrimental. It also… if we don’t present a united front, we open ourselves up to attack by Mr Lenivy’s lawyer, who will definitely point out that you were the one to shoot Caleb while Mr Lenivy was merely present.”
“But that’s… true,” she said, staring at him blankly. “Dylan had… all he did that whole night was help me, you know? He didn’t hurt anyone. Ever. I don’t even get how he’s in any trouble at all.”
Lawyer Henry nodded. “We’re almost positive they’ll drop the charges against him soon. There’s no proof of his involvement other than his own testimony.”
Cold flooded her. “His what?”
He sighed, leaning down to shuffle his papers again, apparently searching for something. “Against his lawyer’s advice, Mr Lenivy is refusing to deny responsibility for what happened in the lodge. His fingerprints are on the gun, though his injury makes the idea he successfully shot anyone with it frankly laughable. Still,” He glanced up with a slight grimace. “He is insisting that it was the both of you that killed the Hackett boy, not you alone.”
“That son of a bitch; I’m gonna kill him,” she breathed, and Lawyer Henry winced.
“I suggest you refrain from saying things like that for now,” he said slowly. “But, if it helps, no one truly believes he is culpable for anything but accessory, and given the strength of our own case, it’s unlikely to proceed. The authorities are just trying to scare him into changing his testimony.”
She continued to stare at him for a second, then sighed and rubbed her face. “Any idea when they’re going to let me see him? I know you said it wasn’t a good idea for any of us to talk to each other yet, but… I mean…”
He hesitated, his hands fidgeting on a document, but whatever was showing on her face seemed to do the trick. He sighed again and reached for a pen to make a note. “I’ll see what I can do.”
So, unsurprisingly, it turned out that running around for eight hours with a recent traumatic injury—let alone while sweaty, terrified, covered in blood, and then operating a greasy, germ-covered crane—had been a bad idea. The adrenaline had kept him going, but Dylan was now dealing with the after effects of both infection and untreated shock. He was confined to a hospital bed and unlikely to leave for a while.
So even though it had been a couple of weeks already, he was still pallid when she walked into his hospital room, flanked by both of their asshole lawyers.
“Hey, Kaitlyn,” he greeted, sounding disgustingly normal despite how sick he looked, and something inside Kaitlyn slotted back into place. She marched into the room and smacked his leg, hard enough that he flinched back with an offended yelp. “Hey, what the fuck?”
“You fucker!” she said, and whacked him again. “What the fuck are you doing, trying to steal my victory? You were hiding in the goddamn kitchen! You didn’t do shit against that werewolf!”
He actually had the goddamn audacity to roll his eyes with a scoff. “Oh, good, I’m so glad you’re taking such a sensible stance when we’re talking to asshole cops. Great.”
“Don’t you fucking start with me!” she snapped, and he rolled his head back to give her a blunt look from under his eyebrows. She scowled back, but looked away in order to find the visitor’s chair. She dragged it over so she could drop down in it and fix him with a proper glare. “This is serious, Dylan. Like a literal murder trial.”
“And I am a weak ass white boy that’s missing a hand, while you are a mouthy Asian chick with literal awards on how to shoot guns, so…” He looked up over her head to the lawyers, licked his lips, and then gave her another pointed look. “Let’s maybe have a little think about the American justice system before we start turning down good sacrificial meat, okay?”
She heard fabric rustling and an exasperated sigh somewhere behind her, followed by the sound of a pair of expensive shoes clicking their way out of the room. But she was focussed on Dylan’s face, so she only guessed it was his lawyer leaving by his obnoxious little smirk. He reached out and took her hand, and didn’t react when she gripped it back a little too hard.
He was warm under her fingers. Not fever-hot, the way he had been, but just warm and dry and alive. And his eyes were so deep, and so brown, but undercut by deep shadows. She ignored the pricking of her eyes, pulling her lips into her mouth to chew on, because she refused to cry over this idiot. She was the strong one, damn it. Dylan was a freaking coward, who had cowered behind her half the night. He’d been helpless and pathetic and an annoying idiot who wouldn’t take things seriously while she was… Her nails dug into his hand, but he only gripped back tighter, and she had to bite her lips and clench her eyes shut. She was not going to fucking cry in front of Dylan of all fucking people!
“So… I’ve had some time to think,” he said slowly, “and I’m thinking… Zac Efron.”
It was enough of a non-sequitor that she forced her eyes open to stare at him instead. “What?”
“In the film about us. He’s who I want to play me,” he said, and gestured to himself with the bandaged stump of his left arm. “I don't know how cool he'll be with wanting to make out with LaKeith Stanfield, but I totally think that’s who it’s gotta be.”
She blinked rapidly, the beeping of his heart monitor echoing above the quiet sounds of the hospital outside the room. On the cabinet beside his bed, there was a single bouquet of flowers, and a stack of textbooks. All math and science.
What the hell was DJ Dylan doing reading about science?
“Bullshit,” she heard herself say, and caught up with it in time to add, “A) he’s too old, and frankly B) he’s way too fucking hot.”
“Okay, arguing those points in order,” he said with an offended scoff, “movies always cast people that are too old for our age. You are absolutely going to be played by like some thirty-year-old woman in a Japanese schoolgirl outfit—”
“Um, racist and gross.”
“—so I get a thirty-something in like, I don’t know, probably sequined booty shorts and some lame-ass pride shirt. And also, fuck you, I am very hot to certain members of the queer community.”
“Which ones, the goths that want skeletons in their beds?” she asked, and he jerked his head back, then looked back up over her head again, this time, gesturing incredulously.
“The lack of respect right here. Can you believe this?”
She smirked, shifting her grip so her nails weren’t digging into him quite so much. “Okay, okay, you’re right, I’m sorry. The ones that want to fuck weasels.”
“Holy shit, Kaitlyn, you are such a bitch.”
She laughed, and it wasn’t until she was back in her hotel room later that she realised it was the first time she’d done so since leaving the scrapyard.
The FBI showed up. The charges were dropped in exchange for some frankly terrifying NDAs. They didn’t get their phones back, which was really goddamn annoying because it meant she had to search out all her contacts again. Jacob was being a complete dick, refusing to answer her calls until she called his parents and bitched at them about their son. Apparently, he was having some kind of nervous breakdown, which was just really fucking selfish. He could have at least joined the communal one they were all having in Emma’s group chat.
And then Dylan’s parents just randomly showed up and kidnapped him out of state like they had the fucking right.
Thankfully the group chat was already up and running by then, so she at least had a way to contact him. Them. Everyone. Whatever.
God, dealing with them all was weird now.
“It’s really messed up,” she admitted to her brother as they drove back home. “It’s like… I legitimately never thought I’d talk to most of them ever again. Like Jacob, obvs, whatever, but like Emma and Abi? And Nick? Now, I don’t know, I feel like if I don’t stay active in the chat I’m being a total bitch. We went through hell together, you know?”
“Did you though?” he asked, glancing at her. “Did you even see this Emma girl most of the night?”
“Well… no. Except when I shot her a couple of times,” she said with a wince. “Which would make me even more of a bitch if I didn’t keep talking to her.”
“Sure, let’s pretend that makes literally any sense,” he said, and she ignored him.
“The worst one—the worst fucking one—is Dylan. I mean, all through camp, he was just like… there, you know? I mean, sure, we got along okay, and he was a pretty good counsellor. But like… I wasn’t going to like, miss him or anything. And now I can’t fucking sleep if I haven’t seen some lame-ass meme from him in the last three hours.”
Her brother grimaced. He’d met Dylan of course, but he didn’t really get it. He didn’t get their banter, and thought Dylan was checking him out because of course he did. Though, to be fair, Dylan was checking him out. It was just in more of a ‘judging the chances of you being a secret creature-feature monster’ sort of way, because apparently that was a thing he did now.
“Look, all I’m saying,” Dylan had explained when she questioned him, “is that if werewolves are out there, then vampires and stepford wives aren’t exactly off the table, are they?”
Dylan wasn’t actually the worst one, though. The worst one was Ryan, who she’d spent all summer crushing on. Even before That Night, she’d kind of prepared to leave him in the ‘dirty fantasies of could have beens’, with no intention of thinking about him seriously again.
But now, her vision of him as the mysterious and alluring wonder boy had definitely faded. The alpha male bullshit that had caused him and Jacob to butt heads over the summer had come to the fore, and now, after all this time…
The son of a bitch hadn’t even visited Dylan in the hospital.
Not once.
He hadn’t visited, hadn’t called to see how he was.
Dylan was fine with it, because “Hey, maybe it’s better this way, y’know? I mean… I kind of have to focus on me and the future hook-hand, right? Can’t really… y’know… Dating’s probably not a thing right now, let alone the like… long distance shit.”
Which was both true and such utter bullshit that it only pissed Kaitlyn off more.
Ryan was in the group chat, and responded when directly spoken to, but he mostly communicated only through reactions and emojis. Apparently he didn’t even talk to Laura, which was mind-blowing to Kaitlyn. They’d gone on a life-threatening, insane, totally batshit adventure together. Fought werewolves and psycho hillbillies! That was some fucking teambuilding, right there!
But no, apparently he and Laura had barely tolerated each other all night.
“You know what, I bet it’s some bullshit about how – I bet he blames her for fucking with his perfect image of camp or some crap.”
“Okay, Kaitlyn, let’s take a step back for a second,” Dylan said bluntly. They were facetiming, because Jacob was still barely answering her calls and would never have sat through her need to bitch about how Ryan was being an ass. Besides, sometimes she just needed to see Dylan breathe. She didn’t let herself think about why. “This isn’t even me defending Ryan here, I actually think you might be skirting the edge of being a bitch.”
“Ex-cuse me?” she demanded, and he gave her a blunt look.
“So let’s just say you’re right—”
“Because I am?”
“Let’s just say you’re right,” he said again, over the top of her, “and he’s upset that Chris was like, lying to us all. He’s upset that his pseudo-father figure or whatever was putting us all in danger and has been for the last six fucking years. Oh, and that same father figure, and associated pseudo-brother and pseudo-sister? They were also motherfucking werewolves, and Ryan never knew. Kind of a thing, yeah? Let’s say he’s upset about all that, and – and oh yeah! Yeah, he also shot that fucking father figure. That’s a whole thing. Let’s just say he’s upset about all that.”
She scowled, because so the fuck what. They were all traumatised. But it was obvious Dylan wasn’t finished, and he continued before she could change her mind about remaining silent.
“So maybe he’s misdirecting all that onto the one who like, proved all that to him. And put him in the position to shoot Chris. Okay? That’s who he’s unfairly blaming for all this. And he’s taking it out on her by like, not wanting to talk to her. Maybe ever again,” he conceded, and then leaned forward until almost all she could see was his dark eyes and raised eyebrows. “Is that really so fucking bad?”
“But that’s not all he’s doing!” she said. “He’s cutting the rest of us out too, and –”
“And yeah, maybe he’s entitled to that too, because you know… shit, Kaitlyn,” he said, pulling back a little. “Dealing with all this is hard. It’s really fucking hard. And Ryan had to – Ryan had to do a lot of crazy shit and not everyone is as strong as you, okay? I wanted to fucking bail on everyone and just walk outta camp and so if you’re going to be pissed at anyone for not behaving the way you want in the face of fucking trauma, I am right fucking here, Kaitlyn.”
She opened her mouth to swear at him, but even glancing at the screen again made her stop. Because Dylan was glaring at her, his bangs flopping over his dark eyes and pale face because he didn’t want to leave the house for long enough to get a haircut.
He didn’t want to be having this conversation. He didn’t want to listen to her bitch about Ryan. He was still at least a little in love, whatever bullshit he tried to tell himself.
But he wouldn’t hang up on her. He’d buckle the hell up and ride it out with her, whatever she needed.
So she just rolled her eyes and slumped down in her chair, extending the phone as far away as her arm would reach. “You know, I’m supposed to be the emotionally intelligent and mature one out of us.”
“If you want me to call you a butt-face, I will,” he said. “I will go all in on how you’re a stinky girl with cooties, and –”
“Oh please. I saw those books of yours,” she said, because she wasn’t sure she could deal with the emotional whiplash. That reminded her… “So when were you going to tell me you’re a physics major?”
He blinked, pulling back from the phone a little, and then grimaced and ducked his head away. His voice was much quieter as he admitted, “I’m not, officially. Not technically. And it’s more um… q- quantum… quantum physics.”
A few small memories appeared in her mind’s eye, of Dylan commenting on the stars and nerdy jokes about chemistry that made some of the more academic campers laugh. “Huh.”
He fidgeted awkwardly, clearing his throat. “Yeah, well, um. Gotta get back to school first, and who knows when that’ll happen. I can’t even drive my damn car anymore.”
“Yeah, but that’s just getting used to it,” she said, deciding to unpack the idea of Dylan being a nerd later. “One-handed automatics aren’t even that unusual, and all the important shit’s on the right side already.”
He peeked at her from under his eyebrow, and she offered an encouraging smile in return. “I’m an auto-electrical engineer. Maybe if you’re extra nice to me, I’ll make you a customised electric car for my senior project.”
He dropped his head into a cute, embarrassed laugh, and when he looked up again she didn’t quite recognise his smile. But he was still breathing, and blinking, and still had the same dark eyes that looked at her like she was tougher than brass. It was okay. They were okay.
But seriously, fuck Ryan.
Three months after they were all allowed back to their respective lives, Emma went to visit Dylan. Or rather, she went to make a ‘very special episode’ for her youtube series, showcasing Dylan adapting to using his new and notably not shiny prosthetic hand. None of them knew it had been planned until one day Emma posted a picture in the group chat of her and Dylan, rugged up against the snow and toasting steaming apple ciders. While Abi and Jacob marvelled over Dylan’s longer hair, Kaitlyn battled with something that felt a surprising amount like jealousy.
‘Uh, thanks for the invite?’ she texted him later, but Dylan just sent her a rolling eyes emoji in return.
It was actually the most contact she got out of him for a whole two days, which was annoying. And he rejected her facetime on the third day, insisting on voice only because he was too tired to hold up his phone.
“It’s just been a long couple of days, okay?”
“What? You and Emma have enough energy to run the fucking space station!” she teased, even though he did sound exhausted. His responding sigh was telling, and she hesitated.
Even back at camp, when Dylan hadn’t known he had an audience, he could be different. It was how they’d all figured out he actually really liked Ryan, because of his quiet, longing looks that he always denied if someone noticed. And it wasn’t uncommon, when there were no campers around, to hear him berating himself under his breath for some stupid comment or joke that didn’t land right. She remembered once barging into the radio station to beg him to take her lunch shift only to find him jerking back from holding his head in his hands, looking frankly exhausted by everything.
At the time, they’d always just shrugged it off as him being tired, or stressed, because they were understaffed and run off their feet.
After that one night and three months, she was starting to know better.
She didn’t really like it.
“How is the new hand?” she asked instead, offering him an out. “I’ve heard they’re harder than they look.”
“To put it mildly. It’s only a fucking hook, but I swear to god, my veins hurt from carting this thing around.”
“Jesus. And you said this one’s only temporary?”
“Yeah. Nothing useful until my arm finishes dying properly.”
She flinched, glancing at the phone in her hand. She didn’t know how to respond to that, or even how to take it. But he didn’t seem to be waiting for an answer, because after a few seconds he sighed again, heavy and tired. “You wanna hear something really wild, Kaitlyn?”
She chewed the inside of her lip, wishing he could see her nod so she didn’t have to try and sound brave as she said, “Hit me.”
He hesitated, but eventually said, “Emma had a really different last night of camp than we did.”
Something in Kaitlyn’s chest was bottoming out. It wasn’t a shocking statement, but… fuck, she wished she could see him. She wished they could exchange dry, dark looks about how much their combined lives sucked. She wished she could smell his deodorant, spicy sandalwood with that gross citrus tang that had cut through the overpowering smell of blood. She pulled her feet up onto her chair and hugged her knees one-handed. “Well, I mean… she spent like half of it as a werewolf, so… yeah. I guess she did.”
“Yeah.”
Her fingers twitched, feeling hard, heavy steel and solid oak, only pure muscle memory keeping her fingers steady as she loaded more shells. Green, glassy eyes staring at her, terrifying and threatening but somehow familiar. Dylan wasn’t sitting beside her. Dylan wasn’t there. He was supposed to be there.
“Hey, um… I’m kinda tired. New hand, kind of… wearing me out a lot,” he said, cutting through the creak and scrape of the minivan rocking. “I’m gonna go. Talk to you later, Kaitlyn.”
“Yeah, b-” was all she got before he hung up.
The video came out a week later, and it was really fucking weird.
It was like seeing ghosts; Dylan and Emma laughing and messing around just like they had at camp. No hint of the anxiety or trauma of the last five months, just two exuberant former camp counsellors imparting educational content in a fun and engaging way. It could have been one of Emma’s drama classes in the lodge, except they weren’t pretending to be an old married couple or campy brother/sister team the way they had whenever she’d dragged him in to help her encourage the kids.
Instead, they were playfully explaining the difficulties of learning to live with only one hand, Dylan showing off his ability to tie shoelaces and put on shirts and then Emma trying (and failing miserably) to do the same. They also cooked a meal together, each using only one hand, and made an absolute mess. Dylan’s temporary prosthetic was a big thing, as he showed how to get it on and off, and explained why he couldn’t get fitted for a proper one until the muscles in his stump finished reshaping. He showed, with incredible patience and good humour, how it was definitely better than nothing, but no replacement for what he’d lost or would ever get.
It was a good video. It blew up a lot more than most of Emma’s stuff, which was saying something, and the comments were full of people thanking the pair for talking about the whole thing in such a fun, approachable way. A lot of people wanted to know how Dylan had lost his hand, since they hadn’t bothered to address it beyond mentioning it happened earlier that year.
One of the top voted comments stuck with Kaitlyn though.
“If we see Dylan again (maybe when he gets his new one?), could he talk some about how it feels? This was all great and fun but I know losing a limb is really hard emotionally as well as physically. It would’ve been nice to hear how he got through it.”
She tried to put it out of her mind, but she kept seeing it in her head as she went about her day. Eventually, she picked up her phone and looked at her message history with Dylan.
He’d been quiet this week. He hadn’t been spamming the group chat with memes, or even sending her math puns. There were just a few supportive comments about Nick’s latest experiments in the kitchen and Abi’s therapy art. When Emma had posted the video in the chat, he’d sent heart emojis and complimented her editing.
Kaitlyn hesitated, and then sent him a screenshot of the comment, not bothering with any context. He read it quickly, but didn’t even start typing for maybe five minutes. It took almost twenty before he sent his response.
‘It wouldn’t have exactly fit the theme of Emma’s channel.’
She hadn’t wanted a response to the comment itself, and she knew he knew that, but she couldn’t exactly call him out on it when she hadn’t even tried to give it the proper framing. She closed her phone, but almost immediately reopened it, only to then put it down again.
It was hours later that she tried to go to bed, but she kept waking up anyway, and stared at the pasty white ceiling with its dark shadows until she abruptly sat up and snatched her phone off the nightstand.
‘What the fuck kind of answer is that? You saved my ass in that scrapyard and now you’re keeping all this shit from me. Hiding away in that backwater town of yours, not telling me about Emma coming to visit, you never talk about Ryan, and the best I get from you about that hand is that oh prosthetics are like so heavy and I’m tired and fuck that Dylan, I deserve better than you giving me this bullshit I’m fine shit. Stop being a pussy and actually call me bitch.’
Message sent, she threw her phone down and slumped back against the pillows, scowling at the far wall.
It was several hours later, in the dead darkness of 5am, that she got a message back.
‘OK. Bitch.’
She gave her phone a withering look. ‘You are such a fucking coward.’
‘Hey, punctuation matters, bitch.’
‘Fuck you Dylan.’
He didn’t even read the message.
She hadn’t slept properly in over a week, and her psychiatrist spent a total of five minutes looking at her before asking about it. She sighed and avoided her gaze.
“I dunno, I’m not having nightmares or anything. I’m just… I dunno, I can’t stay asleep,” she said. She did not say that all of her thoughts when failing to sleep were about random memories of Dylan looking at her in this stupid, very specific way he had. Looking out from under his eyebrows with his mouth slightly open, bouncing his weight almost imperceptibly. She did not mention her strange, almost obsessive internal debate about whether Dylan actually vaped cannabis the way they’d all just assumed he did, and he never actually denied. She certainly didn’t talk about how Chris had never seemed to like Dylan, despite the fact that he’d fixed like, six broken things around camp before the first month was out. And none of them had ever really noticed Dylan fixing shit of his own volition because he was always such an ass about it and –
“How is everyone?” the psych asked casually. “Is the group chat still active?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s okay. Ryan’s still basically non-existent, of course, but Jacob actually initiated a conversation the other day, which was weird,” she said, slightly confused by the non-sequitur. “He was asking if anyone else was going back to school this semester.”
“Good. It’s nice to hear he’s thinking about the future again. You told him you’re heading back?”
“Yeah, ’course. Abi, Nick, and Emma all are too. Laura’s deferred until August, but Max decided not to bother. He’s got some crappy office job that he likes for some reason.”
She nodded slowly. “I assume Ryan didn’t answer?”
“As if.”
She paused, as if waiting for more of an answer, before prompting, “And Dylan?”
Kaitlyn shifted on the couch, pulling her leg in closer to her body as she thought about it. Technically, he hadn’t answered either, but Emma had told them his whole deal anyway. He’d apparently been dealing with it when she was visiting, trying to arrange his enrolment only to find his parents were already talking to his school. He was a grown-ass adult, but the school was listening to them because they had concerns about his mental wellbeing or whatever, so he was being forced to take another six months off. It was such bullshit.
Abi didn’t think it was. She thought it was great that his parents and college were so worried about him, and the conversation moved on to how supportive or not their families had been. Like it was no big deal that his parents were basically holding him hostage.
The psych tilted her head, trying to catch her gaze again. “Is Dylan not going back to school this semester?”
“Dunno,” she said, and the psych raised her eyebrows.
“He hasn’t decided?”
She rolled her eyes and explained, secretly hoping she’d get some medically-qualified backup that it wasn’t okay. But she didn’t actually ask for an opinion, and when she’d run out of furious steam, her psychiatrist just nodded philosophically.
“Are you and Dylan still talking regularly?” she asked. “Outside the group chat?”
She shrugged, once again not following why that question mattered right now. “I guess. We kind of had a fight. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I dunno, it was dumb,” she said, and gave a very abbreviated explanation of the whole stupid video thing. The next day, Dylan had sent her another meme and acted like nothing had happened, so she guessed they were fine. It just… everything seemed weird now and she didn’t know why.
The psychiatrist listened attentively, and jotted down a few things, but at the end she just paused for a moment before slowly suggesting, “I think I’d like to talk some more about your relationship with Dylan this session. Would that be okay?”
“I mean, I guess,” she said. They’d talked about Dylan before. How he’d been there with her throughout most of the terrifying bullshit all night, only separating so she could run away from Bobby Hackett and he could let Ryan chop off his goddamn hand. She’d admitted to the shrink that she felt like Dylan had saved her life that night. Not just by dropping a car on a werewolf, but also by being an annoying asshole that kept her from freaking out about monsters and murder and whatever the fuck had been going on with Nick in the last half hour before he turned.
“You hadn’t met before last summer, right?”
“No. Me and Jacob stopped attending camp the year he went,” she said. “I think he and Ryan might have been on the same camp, but they didn’t really hang out or anything.”
“How did you find working with him?”
“With Dylan?” she checked, and then made a face, shrugging with her head. “I mean, yeah. He was a good counsellor. The kids thought he was funny, and he was always willing to help out when we needed it. He talked way lazier than he actually was, so it was easy to put up with his bullshit.”
“I’m not sure I’m following there. Can you elaborate?”
“Yeah, um… Basically, Dylan likes to bitch a lot. Like… you ask him to do literally anything and he’ll make this whole song and dance about it, but he’ll usually already be half-done with it by the time he’s through complaining, you know?” She sighed, rolling her eyes at the memories of him whining about Jacob and Emma bailing on dinner duty again as he refused to let anyone else speak long enough to volunteer to cover them. “And he’s like, ridiculously childish. It’s why the kids liked him. He’d make these stupid jokes and comments, and they were just so lame. I don’t think even he found them funny, but he’d say them and then grin at you like he’d just told the greatest joke ever. Oh, and he one hundred percent wanted everyone to think he was stoned half the time, which wasn’t possible, but my god did he act like he was, just so no one would ever think he was actually fucking capable of anything. Jesus wept!”
“So you didn’t like him?”
“No, I did! We all did! That was what was so fucking annoying!” she said, flailing her hands. “Because he was still good at his job, and he did all the stupid shit the rest of us didn’t want to do or didn’t have time to do. And the stupid jokes were stupid but they still made us all laugh, so…” She sank back against the couch, letting out a harsh breath. “It’s like how on The Night, he kept… he kept pissing me off. He bitched and said stupid shit that was so fucking inappropriate when we were getting hunted by fucking monsters, and he was such a god damned coward, but he was always fucking there, noticing shit and figuring out weaknesses and stopping Ryan from running his fucking mouth and –” She cut herself off, because there was a sob building up in her throat and she didn’t even know why. She pressed her fist against her lips and blinked until the feeling passed.
The shrink let her have a few seconds of silence before asking, “Do you think anyone ever realised they were relying on Dylan at camp?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, throwing up her hand. “Maybe. I think… yeah, we… you know, in the back of my head, yeah, I did.”
“Did it bother you?”
“No,” she said honestly. “I was just grateful to have somebody halfway reliable. Jacob and Emma were always running off together, Abi barely left the Art Cabin unless she was scheduled somewhere else, and Nick was basically incapable of doing anything outside the kitchen without being told how. Me and Dylan got shit done.” Ryan got all the credit, but honestly neither of them really minded as long as they got paid. Kudos only got you places you wanted to stay at. “I mean… I don’t know. We were work friends, you know? We worked, we chatted, we wrangled kids together. But I didn’t really think about him. We weren’t like… if The Night hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have missed him.”
“Do you miss him now?” she asked. “Do you miss seeing him?”
She couldn’t immediately answer, because her eyes were threatening tears and it was pissing her off.
They talked all the time. She put up with his shitty jokes and he let her bitch about whatever was pissing her off. Maybe not this week, but…
But even before then…
Ever since that stupid video, Dylan hadn’t facetimed her. They hadn’t called. She was relying on words and pictures and…
“I just…” She licked her lips again, realising the problem a little too late. “I don’t… don’t know if he’s okay, you know? And that… I dunno, I know he’s fine. It was one stupid night, and now he’s living with overprotective parents in like, the least dangerous sounding suburb I’ve ever heard of, so of course he’s fucking fine, but…”
Her psychiatrist watched her make the connections in supportive silence.
“We were apart for like thirty goddamn minutes, and he lost his fucking hand,” she said. “Thirty minutes. If that. And then he was in hospital with all these infections and shit. And I wasn’t even allowed to see him, and he was literally trying to like, fuck up the legal system for me, and…” She pressed her fist back against her lips and took a deep breath through her nose. “That whole night, I was – I was okay because Dylan was… I dunno. I dunno, I – I just need him to – I need him to be okay. I need to – to know he’s okay. And I don’t. I don’t know if he’s okay and that’s really scary.”
The shrink nodded silently, and Kaitlyn burst into tears.
So the problem, apparently, was that she had unknowingly formed a dependent-saviour relationship with Dylan. Not quite a saviour complex, apparently, but something kind of similar, in that over the course of the night, Kaitlyn had kind of become dependent on the idea that Dylan needed her. Which made no fucking sense when he was the one to save her, twice, while all she did was drag him from one life threatening situation to another.
But trauma wasn’t logical, and apparently it had more to do with how Dylan had spent most of the night creeping behind her and acting like the ‘weaker’ one, thereby making her feel stronger and more capable.
This was complicated by the fact that Dylan, apparently, had not formed a corresponding dependency on her. Her shrink said she couldn’t make any diagnoses without having actually met him, but she suspected his trauma response was more internalised, with Dylan convincing himself that whatever he was feeling was proof of his own weakness. It was fairly typical for male trauma victims to respond with self-recrimination, she explained regretfully.
“Fuck the patriarchy,” Kaitlyn muttered as she pulled Emma’s contact up on her phone. ‘Hey, Emma, give me Dylan’s address, my shrink says I need to go slap him.’
In actual fact, her psychiatrist had suggested she try and find a way to have an open and honest conversation with Dylan. She’d also recommended spending some time at school looking for other, more healthy ways to explore this protective side of her personality, but honestly, fuck the softly-softly approach.
Eventually, Emma did provide the address, though Kaitlyn had to threaten her to keep her from showing up with a video camera to film their reunion. She also had to promise to post lots of photos to the group chat to keep Emma from warning him ahead of time.
It was a long way to drive, so she packed a bag, booked a motel, and headed out early on Friday morning. When she was getting fuel half an hour away, she had a sudden burst of self-awareness and decided to send him a text to make sure he was actually going to be there.
‘Hey douchebag, I’m showing up at your front door in like twenty minutes. You better be ready.’
He called her back ten minutes later, just as she was pulling off the freeway. “Kaitlyn, what the fuck.”
“I’m coming to visit you!” she said brightly. “You’re home, right?”
“Ahh…” She could practically hear his internal debate about whether to lie. In the end though, he just sighed loudly and said, “I mean, I’m not, actually, but I can be. Jesus fuck, Kaitlyn, what are you even doing out here?”
“I literally just told you. I’m coming to visit you.”
“Why?”
“Is there a problem?” she asked bluntly, and he sighed again.
“I mean, aside from the fact I have a life and stuff I was gonna do today, um… hang on. Yeah, hi, a long macchiato, thanks… Dylan. Thanks, man. And no, Kaitlyn, I am not getting you a coffee,” he added to her. “You show up out of the blue, you can buy your own damn caffeine.”
“A long macchiato?” she asked. “Seriously? I would’ve put you down for some overly complicated soy-based flavour explosion.”
“Yeah, well, fuck your expectations, Kaitlyn, seriously,” he said impatiently, and she grimaced.
She probably deserved that. Her psychiatrist had suggested her incorrect expectations were contributing to her lack of sleep.
Camp had been two long months of Dylan being an unapologetic smartass, cracking immature jokes and acting like he couldn’t be relied on to do basically anything. She’d thought she’d had him pegged as some kind of media guy, just too lazy to commit to the grind of social media. Probably a bit of a slut, willing to jump into bed with any guy that laughed at his jokes but always chasing the unachievable, like Ryan. He’d coast through college, then wind up on some shitty talk-back radio show or cable network, probably a total loser that got high just to get through the day and drank himself to sleep every night.
But it was all bullshit. She’d fallen for some stupid fucking mask and she didn’t even know why he had one.
It bothered her.
She pulled up in front of his house and just sat there for a minute, because he wasn’t outside waiting for her and she wasn’t feeling sure enough of herself to meet his parents alone. Sure, it was Friday afternoon and they probably weren’t actually home, but what the fuck did she know? She didn’t know what they did for a living. Just that they apparently earned enough to live in a gorgeous, expensive suburb on the edge of town. Her crappy car looked almost aggressively out of place compared to the shiny SUVs she’d passed on her way here.
To distract herself, she focussed on a guy walking down the sidewalk. As she probably should have expected for the neighbourhood, he was dressed in a nice coat and shoes much too shiny for the cold weather, carrying a business folder in one hand and a reusable coffee cup in the other. Something about his lanky swagger seemed familiar, and she tilted her head, wondering if he was maybe related to –
“Holy shit, Dylan?!”
He paused as she shot out of her car, his shoulders rolling with the heavy, resigned sigh that she’d learned to recognise over that horrible last night. “Hey, Kaitlyn.”
“Oh my god,” she said, slowly coming around the car to look at him. She wasn’t surprised it had taken a few seconds to recognise him; the expensive coat and long hair had somehow transformed him. The Dylan they’d known at camp would never look like this, all mature and professional, with broad shoulders and a serious set to his jaw. He almost looked kind of hot, in a tired, overworked T.A. kind of way.
While she stared, Dylan shifted his weight uncomfortably and gestured toward the house. “So um… come on in, I guess. Since you’re here and all.”
“Oh, shit, yeah,” she said, spinning back to her car. The keys were still in the ignition. “Fuck, one sec’.”
Once she’d sorted herself out, he led her up the lawn and into the house. The inside was just as nice as the outside, but after she spent a second glancing around, she decided she kind of liked it. It was all soft and cream-coloured, with just enough winter mess around the coatrack to prove it was a lived-in house, not a display home like the neighbourhood had put her in mind of. She hung up her coat without asking, but when a lifetime of training made Kaitlyn start to unzip her shoes, Dylan actually paused messing with the security system to look at her.
“You don’t gotta do that,” he said, and she grunted.
“My grandma would actually kill me.”
“Okay, well, when your non-present grandmother deems you appropriate, feel free to head in and make yourself at home,” he said, and turned back to the alarm. Unlike her parents’ apartment, there weren’t a dozen new locks on his door, but she supposed she didn’t have a fancy security system that could probably detect a werewolf breathing halfway down the block.
Once he was done, she had to try not to stare as Dylan began the evidently difficult process of removing his coat, gloves, and scarf one-handed. Her boots helped, since the zippers always got stuck, but she had to take a second glance when the removed coat revealed he was wearing a nice suit underneath it. Complete with tucked in shirt and tie. Holy shit. She forced herself to look basically anywhere else.
“I like your house. You live in a really beautiful area.”
“Eghh, it’s great if you’re all about that suburban two-point-five kids thing,” he said. “Kinda sucks when you’re job hunting.”
She finally managed to get her second shoe off and straightened up with a triumphant breath just as he finished hanging his coat up beside her own. As he picked his coffee cup up from the side cabinet he’d put it and the folder on, her eyes caught on his left hand. Unlike the prosthetic from the video, this one had fingers, and was coated in something that almost looked like a white guy’s skin if you didn’t look too close or notice that Dylan was much paler. She wondered how it connected; how he could lever the stiff fingers around the coffee cup. Part of her wanted to try and take it apart.
“Is that what you were doing today? Job hunting?”
“Uh, yeah,” he said, briefly glancing at her before leading the way into the lounge. “I was uh, I was coming back from a job interview. It was stupid, they’re um… y’know, looking for a new presenter at the science museum. Making learning fun or whatever.”
Science. Fucking science again. Okay.
He dropped onto a couch and bent to start untying his shiny business shoes, and she awkwardly lowered herself onto an armchair, glancing around the room to try and give him space. There weren’t any photos in this room, but someone in the family was a fan of big open fields, sunrises, and life-affirming messaging. “Sounds pretty cool. How’d it go?”
His bangs fluttered as he peeked up at her. “Yeah, okay. I’m not gonna get it.”
“What? Why not?”
“You know how it is. You’re showing off elementary school physics, so of course they want like, a masters and ten years’ teaching experience.”
“What, no PhD?” she asked, and he huffed, ducking his head even as he finished with the laces and kicked off his shoes. Something in her stomach unclenched at the familiar sight. Suit or not, this was still her Dylan, who had made pirate puns and bitched about broken lights when they were being hunted by monsters.
“It was probably a waste of time, but I wanted to try for it. I’m getting sick of sitting around here, and even my old grocery store wouldn’t take me back,” he said, lifting his coffee cup to show off the hand. “Apparently I wouldn’t be able to stack shelves fast enough.”
“Fuckers,” she said, and he huffed again, nodding his quiet agreement but not commenting.
“Yeah, well. Waste of my good looks anyway, right?”
“Totally,” she said. “It’s escort work or nothing.”
He actually laughed this time, and finally, finally looked at her. “Guess it’s not entirely a bad thing. I’m writing some essays, trying to get some scholarships lined up. When they let me out I’m gonna fuckin’ slay that physics program, you got no idea.”
“What’s the deal with that, anyway?” she asked. “How can the school like, deny your enrolment just because your parents say so? Is it a fees thing?”
His smile immediately vanished, and he looked down again. “No. It’s um… it’s an insurance thing, um… they uh – I dunno,” He shook his head, then shrugged and peeked at her through his hair again, his jaw settling into something hard and unfamiliar. “But anyway… not that my crappy future prospects don’t make for scintillating conversation, I didn’t get much of an answer on the phone. What are you doing here, Kaitlyn?”
She blinked, caught off guard by the sudden change in topic. And because she hadn’t expected him to ask again. She shifted awkwardly, her fingers flexing against her knees. “I… wanted to see you. It seemed like a good excuse for a roadtrip.”
Dylan’s knee started bouncing, and his jaw worked, but his flicking eyes were more telling than anything. “Why?”
“Why what?” she shot back, immediately wishing she had managed her tone better. They were both weirdly tense.
“Why would you drive five fucking hours to see an ex-work friend?” he asked bluntly, and she jerked.
“I’m sorry, what did you just call me?”
He hunched forward, but then stopped and pushed himself back, obviously choosing to scowl at the fireplace instead of her. His hand clenched into the sofa cushions, his legs shuffling with frustrated purpose, and she found herself staring at him a little more furiously than she’d expected. Ex-work friend? Fucking ex?
Fuck, he was pale.
Pale, and he’d definitely lost weight. The lines in his throat were more defined, and his cheeks had lost some of their curve. His eyelashes were still stupid long, his eyes still impossibly dark, but the lazy confidence she’d always associated with him was gone. He was just nervous energy and anger and… and she didn’t know how much of that was trauma and how much of it was the real him that she’d never known because she hadn’t fucking looked past the fucking jokes.
“Fuck,” she spat, and then heard herself demanding, “Why the fuck haven’t I told you about my car?”
He balked for a moment, and then twitched his head but didn’t look at her. “What?”
“My car that I want to build,” she snapped. “A completely solar-powered family car, to use out in the desert. I’ve bored Jacob fucking blind talking about that thing.”
Dylan’s brow furrowed, but he did tilt his head back toward her, brow furrowing. “You want to tell me about your hypothetical car?”
“Yes!” she cried. “Do you or do you not know how to build a car engine?”
Aside from his constantly bouncing knee, he didn’t even move at first, but slowly asked, “What in ever-loving hell gave you the idea that I know shit about cars?”
“Because you rebuilt the fucking radio tower single-handedly!”
He jerked his head again, as if she wasn’t making sense. “That’s not a car.”
“It’s still fucking complicated!” she cried. “Why the fuck weren’t you bragging about it?”
“Um,” he said, straightening out of his hunch. “I’m pretty sure waking up everyone in camp by blasting Bicycle Race at 7am was kind of a brag.”
In hindsight, yeah, probably. It had happened a week in, scaring the shit out of all of them because the P.A. system had been barely holding itself together for the last like, five years, and suddenly it was belting music loud enough that several campers had apparently fallen out of bed in shock. But none of them had really said anything beyond Jacob threatening to beat the crap out of Dylan if he ever did it that early again.
“You know what I mean.”
“Uh, no, I’m pretty sure I don’t,” he said. “And you did not drive five hours to talk to me about engines, because as much as I’d love to bitch about Elon Musk with you, you know I will totally be making up anything I say about his cars.”
“Yeah, like you made up half your personality at camp.”
“Excuse me?”
She glared at him, and he stared back at her, still wavering between confused and angry.
“Kaitlyn, I say this with all the love and respect you deserve, which is fuck all right now,” he said, “but what the actual fuck is wrong with you? What are you talking about?”
She threw up her hands, because honestly…
She didn’t even know.
She didn’t know! But she did know that she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t sleep and she didn’t know Dylan and maybe she’d been letting him get hurt all fucking summer but maybe, actually, she was just the one who was hurt and he didn’t want to help her anymore. Maybe he never had.
“Do you not like me or something?”
His expression immediately dropped, only his sudden wide eyes keeping it from going completely blank. “W-what?”
“Is that what it is? Are you like, trying to move on, not have anything to do with me?” she demanded. “Trying to forget about Hackett’s Quarry by like, avoiding me as much as possible?”
“O-okay, even if those things were like, at all related,” he said, “I – where the hell did you get any of those ideas?”
“Uh, I dunno, you were the one saying I was an ex-work friend.”
“What? When?” he said, and when she just stared at him furiously, he furrowed his brow and looked off to the side, obviously trying and failing to remember the last two minutes. So at least his short-term memory really was as shit as when they’d just thought he was toasted. He eventually shook his head and grimaced before coming back to her. “We no longer work together, so obviously we are no longer ‘work friends’. Ergo, we are what you would call ‘ex-work friends’.”
“Oh, fuck your semantics,” she said. “Answer the question.”
“What fucking… ugh. Of course I’m not – I mean… shit,” He bent over, burying his face in his hand. “Fuck me…”
She just waited, because what else could she really do about it until he either confirmed or denied her ability to sleep for the next fifty years? But as he slumped further, she noticed his left arm extending out, the coffee cup tilting dangerously over the nice carpet, and it didn’t look like Dylan was aware of it. She scooted forward just enough to snatch it out of his hand before any remaining liquid could fall.
He lifted his head and watched her put it down on the coffee table, then let out a harsh, angry breath. “Still cleaning up my mess.”
She didn’t really know why the comment rankled. Maybe it was just his tone or something, but it immediately sharpened her fading anger back to a knife’s edge. “Are you honestly bitching because I don’t want you spilling coffee everywhere?”
“I’m –” He stopped the shout before it could actually get anywhere, staring furiously into the middle distance before abruptly sitting up, though he still didn’t look at her. “Okay. Okay, fine. You wanted this. Jacob fucked with the car, so it was his fault we didn’t leave camp. But I was the one who suggested the party. I started the game of Truth or Dare. Nick and Emma turned into fucking monsters because of me, and you and Ryan had to kill people and chop off limbs and… shit because I didn’t like the idea of sitting quietly in a cabin for twelve hours. So yeah, I’m pissed that you’re still babysitting me like a fucking toddler.”
It was very strange. Part of Kaitlyn’s mind went blank, and she honestly felt like she couldn’t move properly. She could only stare at him, her arms twitching with the urge to rise and do something but no idea of what. She clenched her eyes shut instead, brows clamping down because that was, possibly, the dumbest thing she had ever…!
“What the… fuck, Dylan,” she said, because she honestly couldn’t get anything out.
He turned his head away, and her disbelief immediately switched back to rage.
“What the fuck, Dylan!” she repeated. “When the fuck that entire night was I fucking babysitting you? You were the one constantly saving my ass!”
“As if you needed it,” he muttered, still refusing to turn back to her. “If I hadn’t distracted you, you could’ve –”
“When could I have done shit?” she demanded. “When I lost the damn gun you gave me and then took Abi and fucking Nick to that fucking pool house? Or when I was trapped in that car and you had to – to fucking…! Even if I could’ve gotten a shot off, I didn’t have any silver, so –!”
“You had the shell Abigail gave you for Emma!” he said desperately. “Remember? That shot I wanted you to take? The time I wanted you to kill one of our friends?”
“Well I fucking forgot she’d given it to me, didn’t I?” she yelled, and he flinched, finally looking up only because of her sudden proximity. She belatedly noticed that she’d lurched to her feet, as close to looming over him as it was possible for her to get, but she didn’t let the unconscious movement unsettle her. She took advantage of the new position to shove his shoulder. “And while we’re on this bullshit, how fucking dare you blame me for Nick and Emma? I was just trying to get Abi laid! I was not—” She smacked him again. “—responsible for the god damned werewolves!”
“I didn’t say you were!” he objected, and didn’t quite manage to jerk out of the way of another shove. “Hey!”
“The fuck you didn’t, bringing it up like that, asshole!”
“I just meant that if we’d stayed in the fucking lodge we would’ve been safe!”
“The fucking werewolf came in through the goddamn lodge fireplace!”
“Only because –”
“Shut the fuck up!” she yelled, and he did, but continued staring at her, and she scowled back for several long seconds before turning around. “Jesus wept.”
She dropped heavily into the too-small space between him and the couch arm, not caring that he had to yank himself out from under her or that it was probably the closest they’d ever gotten. She made a point of shoving back into his shoulder and shuffling until he resentfully draped his arm around her neck and pulled her into his chest instead.
“Watch the hand, it still hurts like a bitch,” he grumbled, but didn’t object to her snuggling in so her ear was up against his heart.
The agitated thump of it was music she hadn’t known she needed to hear.
“And you’re wrinkling my suit. Absolutely no respect.”
“As if you fucking deserve it right now,” she said, and he scoffed but didn’t actually argue, just curled his arm tighter around her. She pulled her lips into her mouth, breathing through the prickling sensation in her nose. She was fucking angry, and she could feel Dylan’s heartbeat, and feel his breath on her hair, and she was not going to fucking cry over him being a goddamn idiot. “Where the hell do you get off calling it babysitting? I told you I needed you, you asshole.”
He didn’t answer that, and she closed her eyes the better to listen to him breathe.
She must have fallen asleep like that, because the next thing she knew a purring cat was nudging at her hand and Dylan’s parents were very quietly debating whether trauma could have turned their son straight.
It was the best nap she’d had in what felt like years.