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itsawhumpthing-blog · 6 years

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Phantom and Alex, Part Two

Part One

Phantom wakes up to the muffled sound of voices, some unknown time later. The sun is high in the sky, and the heat behind the dumpster is sticky and smelly. One of the voices belongs to Alex, and the others are stern in a way that Phantom hates, because he’s only ever heard that sort of sternness from people who have enough power behind them that they’re sure they can’t be wrong. He stays still and listens.

“…gone when we get back.”

“Oh, I will be.” Alex’s tone is one of practiced politeness. Footsteps fade away; a minute or so passes, then the kid himself appears in the gap between the wall and the dumpster, hands clenched into fists.

“What happened?” Phantom asks, though he’s pretty sure he already knows.

“Someone called the goddamn cops on me,” he growls. His accent is becoming more pronounced in his anger, though Phantom still can’t place it. “Apparently I’ve been making people nervous with my hanging around.”

Hanging around? “Alex, how long has it been?”

“What? How long since when?”

“How long have I been back here?”

“Oh. Thirty-six hours or so, I’d say.” Thirty-six hours! Damn! Phantom can’t decide whether it feels like it’s been longer or shorter- the time seems to have passed in a blur, and none of his memories of it are clear. “They said if I’m not gone when they come back in half an hour, they’ll arrest me.”

“Then go,” says Phantom. “I can get to my apartment by myself now. You’ve done enough for me.”

Alex looks taken aback. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he lies, pushing himself up on his elbows and quickly transferring his weight to his uninjured arm. There’s no strength in his muscles at all; he gets halfway to sitting up before falling back with a hiss of pain. Alex immediately runs to his side, eyes wide in alarm.

“What are you, an idiot?” the kid yelps. “You were practically cut to pieces, I mean, you probably lost half the blood in your body-“

“N-no… then I’d be dead.” Phantom manages to grin. He feels like shit.

“You can’t even get up! What are we supposed to do?”

“It’s easy,” says Phantom, suddenly thinking very clearly, seeing the path laid out before them in sharp focus. “You go. I stay here.”

“But-“

“Nobody’s gonna find me. I- I’m the Phantom, remember? I’ll be fine.”

“Right.” Alex nods, looking uncertain but determined. “And then, when night falls, I’ll come back and help you get to your apartment.”

“Yeah.” That’s the part of the plan that Phantom doesn’t like very much, though he’s already made up his mind that Alex is trustworthy. The instincts of years of caution don’t go quiet that easily. “Now hurry up and get out of here. I won’t be responsible for you getting arrested.”

“Right. Okay. But here, take this.” Alex drops his backpack on the ground and pulls a bottle of water and a granola bar out of a side pocket. He turns away and says over his shoulder, “I’ll be back. Please don’t die.”

Then he’s gone.

Phantom’s fairly certain that he’s not dying, at least not anymore, though the feeling of pervasive weakness is annoying and his continued inability to take a proper breath is alarming. He’s never felt this fragile before. The pain, at least, is something he understands; that he can deal with.

He manages to hold off the temptation for all of five minutes before picking up the granola bar. He’s absolutely famished. His hands shake and he fumbles with the wrapper, irritation growing, until finally he tears the top of it off with his teeth and spits it off to the side with a savage grin of triumph.

This is a sorry state I’ve fallen to, he thinks in a detached way as he devours the bar. It might be the most delicious thing he’s ever eaten.

The day drags on. The water bottle shares the same fate as the granola bar about an hour later. Footsteps and voices come and go, and once they get too close; it takes a concentrated effort of both calculation and willpower to camouflage himself with the shadow of the dumpster against the wall. In the end he can only maintain it for about ten seconds, which is just long enough, but his head aches and his heart flutters afterward.

The frustration hurts almost as much as the multiple stab wounds.

He closes his eyes and tries to rest, but even he knows that the effort is fake. He doesn’t want to rest; he wants to move, and not be stuck behind a dumpster, and to rewind the past two days so none of this ever happened.

“Fuck!” he snarls at nothing in particular.

His mind drifts.

In half-conscious dreams, he goes through the motions of his fight with Sickle and tries to figure out where he went wrong. Her smile taunts him, her composure drives him to rage, and as much as he tries to channel his anger into power, he falls, again and again.

“Phantom?”

“No!” He jerks back to reality, then groans as the pain of that sudden movement hits.

“Ah! A-are you okay? I’m back.”

Back? Has it really been that long?

“I’m fine,” he grunts, rubbing at his face with the palm of his hand. No time to waste on feeling sorry for himself. “We’ve gotta get moving. Can you help me up?”

“Yeah.” Alex crouches next to him and takes his hand. Phantom had been planning on pushing himself into a sitting position, with as little help as possible (he was pretty sure he could do it this time), but he doesn’t even get a chance to try. Once again, the kid’s strength surprises him; suddenly he’s sitting up, having apparently done nothing at all. His head spins.

“Uh. Okay. Good. Now… uh… this is gonna hurt me when I get up, but I’ll try not to make any noise, and in exchange you’ve got to promise to ignore me if I do. Got it?” His voice is deadly serious; maybe it’s just his jittery heart making him feel as though death is nearer than it really is, but he knows that every second they spend out in the open will drastically increase their chances of discovery.

And discovery means death for him, and prison for Alex, most likely. He can’t let that happen.

“Got it,” Alex replies, in the exact same tone.

Getting up is hell. He leans against Alex (vaguely surprised to find that the kid is significantly taller than him), and Alex leans against the wall, effectively supporting both their weights. His legs don’t want to work. His muscles scream in protest. The pain in his side and his hips is so intense that his already-unsteady breathing is cut off entirely for several terrifying seconds.

He doesn’t make a sound, though. It’s satisfying to have at least that small measure of control.

They walk, and walking is hell, too. How did he ever manage this the first time, with the blood running down his legs and pooling in his shoes? He doesn’t want to remember, or let his mind slip back into the state of desperation that had brought him through that torture. Focus on the now.

The now hurts, but that’s fine. The effort, the sheer concentration of willpower required to move at all, is what’s going to break him. But only if he lets it.

The light of the entranceway to the building approaches slowly. Phantom staggers and almost falls a metre from the door. Alex grabs the handle and manages to get them both inside, and the nearest solid object to support them is the dingy payphone next to the door. “Shit,” the kid whispers to the empty alcove, breathing hard.

Phantom’s breaths, on the other hand, are quick and shallow. He’s bleeding again, he can feel it, from his shoulder and his legs. Am I dying?

“Which apartment is yours?”

“Three… three f-fifty-nine,” he gasps.

They make it as far as the elevator before his knees give way suddenly and without warning. “Shit! No!” Alex exclaims.

No! Phantom’s mind echoes, but his strength- physical and mental- is used up.

“Goddamn it, you better not be dead, you bastard.”

There’s a familiar sound in the background- the clatter of an ageing air conditioner. His air conditioner. He’s at home. The perspective is baffling, though, when he first opens his eyes; it takes him several seconds to realize that he’s laying on his kitchen floor, looking up at the refrigerator.

Phantom tries to say something cool, like I’m not gonna die that easily, but all that he can manage is a fit of coughing that turns into hungry gasps of air.

“Oh! God!” The relief is plain in Alex’s voice. “You stopped breathing- I was scared!“

“I’m…”

“Are you gonna say that you’re fine again? Goddamn…”

Phantom shuts up.

He raises his head, barely even surprised to find that not only is he laying on his kitchen floor, he’s laying on his kitchen floor in his underwear. There’s a line of fresh duct tape strips crisscrossed up his left thigh, and over his left shoulder and collarbone, and though he can’t see the ones on his hips he can imagine that they’re there.

He looks to the side. Alex is sitting there, cross-legged, next to a pile of bloody rags. The kid looks down, embarrassed. “I didn’t-“

“I believe you. I’m- I’m more interested in… how we got here.”

“I carried you,” Alex explains, looking relieved. “Ran into these guys in the hallway, but I just told them you were drunk.”

“They… bought that?”

“I think they were drunk, too,” he says with a small smile.

“But how-“

“-Did I get in the apartment?” The smile widens, and he holds up Phantom’s door key. “You’re not the only one who keeps your most valuable possession in your shoe, you know. It wasn’t too hard to figure out.”

#I did not expect to enjoy this pairing so much #expect a part three soonish #phantom #alex meyer #phantom and alex #comfort #my ocs #mine #my writing #whump #oc whump

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