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The thing about Ryan is that he is always going to let Naim in. It's just one of those facts of life. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Ryan is never, despite all of his bluster and chat otherwise, not going to let Naim in.
That’s been his problem this whole time. He's always letting Naim in, into his house and his mind and his life. He hasn't stopped since the moment Naim got here, and even now, he can't bring himself to quit. He can’t stop himself from opening the door for Naim, opening the gate to his home or the curtain of the photoboth, ushering him into the school bathroom or into his backyard. Ryan is not neccessarily known as a good decision maker, not by any stretch, but there’s something about Naim that makes him worse. Worse only in this regard, because everything else about Naim makes Ryan feel better. He thinks that maybe if things hadn’t turned out the way they had, that Naim could’ve always remained beautiful and untainted by fear or violence, even the regular, every-day violence that it seemed Ryan and Hunter were so accoustomed to. There was something about Naim that felt different. He was kinder, maybe, but not really. Softer, possibly, but that’s not right either.
Unfortunately for everyone, Ryan thinks that what it was is that he loved Naim, more than anything or anyone, and he still does.
It’s a pain in his ass, really, but Naim almost makes it worth it.
Ryan tries to remind himself of that, bleeding out from his ear that’s been nearly torn off his head by Naim’s —not Naim’s, not really— teeth. Ryan thinks, through the throbbing, noisy pain that shoots through his head to the tune of his stuttering heatbeat, about Naim, and about why he even let Not-Naim get close in the first place, why he ever would have allowed it. Not just the bathroom, but the photobooth, but before either of those things. He thinks of Naim, wide-eyed and, if Ryan deludes himself enough, wanting. Naim who stared up at him with lidded, always tired, always sad eyes, and smiled like he could’ve wanted Ryan in the same way Ryan wanted him; who said sure when Ryan impulsively, stupidly, asked to hang out. He thinks of Naim who had always been unfortunately beautiful, even in his big, out of season jackets, or their boring uniform. Ryan had always wanted Naim, or, at least, he had wanted him from the moment he saw him.
It's one of those frustrating things, the fact that it was something like love at first sight. It makes the whole demonic curse thing much more annoying. It makes it feel like fate, or worse, like a cosmic joke, a divine punishment. This is what he gets, Ryan thinks, for his sin. Or, at least, that's what Ryan imagines he would think if he bought into any of that, which he doesn't, which almost makes it even worse. It would be easy, if all Ryan felt was guilt and shame and sin. It would be tropey, and overdone, and boring as shit, but it would be easy, or easier. Instead, all Ryan feels is anger. He is angry that he wants Naim, angry that he is not being allowed to want Naim, angry that there's some sort of curse placed on him not by God, or even Devil, but by man. By his own mother and father and useless, awful pastor, the one he's known since childhood. It isn't fair. None of this is fair, and Ryan is angry. He's always been so angry.
His cousin used to say —back when he still saw his cousins, back when his mother and father still talked to anyone outside of their tiny town— that anger was never anger, that it was instead something else: anger is either fear or sadness, she would say, so, are you sad or are you scared?
Ryan is terrified, and he is devastated. He has never been more scared, never been more sad, in his life. It seems that all anything is anymore is a toss-up between grief or terror or wanting, which is really just a combination of both. And, God, how Ryan wants. He's never been able to stop wanting, especially not with Naim. It's why he keeps letting him in, keeps opening the door to usher him in, or holding the door open for him on his way out. He remembers himself, so eager to please on the way to the photobooth, holding the front gate of his house fence open like a gentleman, like he could ever be someone polite. He remembers Naim, though it was never really Naim, smiling at him. His eyes had looked tired, and in retrospect, Ryan knows that it was the sign of the dead, awful eyes that Naim’s awful doppelganger couldn't seem to shake. It was Ryan's one way of telling them apart. It still is, if Ryan can get close enough to tell without getting his neck scraped open or his head bashed in.
The real Naim, the one Ryan loves without any fear or sadness or anger, the one Ryan can want with only the normal trepidation, the one that comes from being closeted in a non-supernatual sense, has kinder eyes. Naim is not necessarily mushy or cute or innocent, but he is good. He's sweet, in a lot of ways. He winces at the frog in the snakes mouth, and he's scared of heights, and when Ryan pins him to the ground, he doesn't fight back, not really. He doesn't throw rocks at Ryan, only just above him, knocking down tin cans and buckets in order to get Ryan's attention. He never hurts Ryan, though, just stares goadingly, temptingly with big, watery eyes, with long lashes and deep eye bags that Ryan wants to sink his fingers into, trace with his nails and kiss softly. He makes Ryan want to be tender, vulnerable. He makes Ryan show his throat, and he makes Ryan love the act of baring his most vital parts to the open air.
It’s how not-Naim always gets him. Despite the fact that the real Naim never forced him to bare his throat or chest, the fake Naim always makes him, and Ryan always does it, because it's Naim. Even when it isn't Naim, it is him, and Ryan wants, more than anything else, to listen to Naim. It’s pathetic, really.
It's how Ryan ends up curled up in his bedroom, hands trembling as he tries to pack and pack and pack, trying to leave and get out. Down the hall, he can hear his family, bothersome and whispering and clattering around their kitchen. At his window, he can hear Naim — Desperate, frightened, hurt Naim, with big eyes and soft hands and tears brimming and spilling and trailing down his face, his bangs messy and overgrown in a way that frames his victimhood purposefully.
Please, Naim says, It's here. I can't be alone. Let me in, just for a little bit, please— it's going to hurt me, you're hurting me. Ryan, you're hurting me. Please, Ryan, it wants to kill me, it wants to have you just let it kill me, you can't do this to me.
It's not Naim. If it were, it would be sorrier. The real Naim is guilty to a fault, self-flagellating, like he's put himself up on the cross and refuses to come down. The Naim in Ryan's mind is a little less shameful, but still carries all the guilt — it's just that he puts it on Ryan, usually. Ryan is hurting him, killing him, causing him pain. It knows that Ryan couldn't ever handle being the reason for Naim's crumpled up body, crumpled self.
Please, Ryan, Naim who isn't Naim says, I want you. I miss you. Let me in, please.
Ryan ignores it.
I love you.
Ryan pauses. He speaks slowly, quiet and cautious because his family could hear him: “You're not Naim.” Ryan shakes his head, but in doing so, he looks at the window, he looks at what isn't, but is. He looks at Naim.
Naim is as beautiful as he has always been. There is nothing wrong with him, save for scrapes around his face and wrists and neck, and a bloodied nose. He looks tragic and pathetic, like a wet puppy left out to die. He looks like he needs Ryan, and Ryan desperately wants to be needed.
“You're not Naim,” Ryan says again, both more sure and more desperate. Naim does not respond, he just smiles, soft and broken, defeated.
Ryan, it says, in lieu of an answer, I love you. Don't you love me?
There is nothing Ryan can say to that but yes. So, he says yes, and that is where things go to shit.
It happens in a blur. Ryan doesn't even see himself leaning towards the window until it's wrenched out of place. It's not broken, not shattered, because it's not like the spirit, the entity, the thing that wants just as much as Ryan does, wants anyone coming in to save Ryan, to see what's happening, if anything at all.
It nearly chokes Ryan, but Ryan is faster, at least in this moment, so Ryan runs. He grabs his bag, the one he was in the middle of packing, and he jumps out of his own window, and he just books it. He makes it out the window and onto the street and he is alone, at night, and he knows that it’s coming. He can’t go to Hunter’s, and he can’t go back home, and he doesn’t have any other friends, not really and not anymore, so he runs to Naim’s, because at the least, then he’ll be able to compare the two — really be able to tell the difference. He runs and he runs and he knows that it’s behind him, waiting and stalking. The fake Naim walks slowly, a persistence hunter, because it knows just as well as Ryan that it doesn’t matter when it catches up to him, so long as it does eventually. The moment it catches up, Ryan will let it in, let it kill him. They both know this. Ryan is running, because he cannot allow it to catch up to him, can’t allow it to kill him, to keep killing him. He can feel every thud of his sneakers on the solid ground that leads to Naim’s house. He’s not even sure if he knows where he’s going, entirely, but it feels right. It feels like he’s going somewhere, at least, and he hopes it’s Naim’s house. It looks like Naim’s house, from the brief moments of it he’d seen while dropping Naim off. It doesn’t look like anyone’s home, though, looks entirely abandoned and solitary, and Ryan feels that creeping, infectious dread spread even further throughout his body. The screen door slaps in the wind, a gaping hole ripped through it, and Ryan can see how dark blood sticks to the edges of the wire, can see it dripping down onto the porch and front steps and God—
God, he’s too late. Ryan’s too late again, isn’t he?
He thinks of Naim: the Naim from before Ryan knew what could happen to them, before Ryan knew what Naim said to everyone — or, not everyone, but the two people who then told everyone. He thinks of the softer Naim, the gentler Naim, the one that wasn’t turned off by violence, by roughhousing, but didn’t perpetuate it, didn’t engage. He thinks of the Naim who let Ryan pin his wrists up, and he imagines Naim, seeing something that looked like Ryan and sounded like Ryan but wasn’t him, and he imagines Naim allowing it to do the same things to him that he let Ryan do. He thinks of Naim, and the small of Naim’s back that Ryan hadn’t stopped holding because he had been too scared to let Naim argue with Jessica alone. He thinks of Naim and his stupid, pushy questions, and the way he never manages to say the right thing — Do you think Marnie saw you when she died? He had said, like an idiot, and Ryan almost smacked him. Nothing, he had said with a smile, blowing smoke in Ryan’s face teasingly, and Ryan almost cried. He thinks of Naim, who looked like he was in tears all the time, but looked especially scared when Ryan told him that Naim would never see him again. Ryan thinks of Naim leaving the car, and he thinks of how he saw all of his own wanting reflected back to him in Naim, and he still let Naim leave. He let Naim leave. He let Naim leave, and Naim is probably dead now, gone and dead with his head half-buried in the ground like Hunter, and Ryan is alone—
Ryan is alone.
Naim is behind him now. Just a few steps away. And it isn’t Naim.
Ryan runs, and he runs, and he doesn’t stop running. He runs to the fields, to the mill, to anywhere where he could maybe find Naim. It’s stupid, it’s dumb, it’s the worst decision he could make but Ryan doesn’t make good decisions. He makes emotional decisions, impulsive decisions, decisions based on want and all he wants now is to see Naim, the real Naim, not just something like him. It doesn’t matter to Ryan that there are surely more people elsewhere, people that could stop what’s chasing him from being able to get to him. It doesn’t matter to Ryan that he won’t be able to tell Naim from Naim, and Naim likely won’t be able to tell his Ryan from him, Ryan. Ryan wants to see him. Ryan needs to see what’s left of him, at the very least.
The mill feels hours away, feels like he’s ran for years. He can hear, behind him, the quiet metronome of Naim, humming quietly as he follows Ryan’s footsteps. It acts like it didn’t have its hands wrapped around his throat just minutes ago, or maybe hours ago. It acts like it isn’t going to kill him. He supposes that’s how it plans to get him. It plans to fake him out, to get him off-guard and comfortable and vulnerable. It’s done it before. It keeps doing it. It always works. Ryan hates how easy he is, really.
Distantly, Ryan can see Naim. He whips his head around, and he sees Naim, the same Naim he’s been seeing. He turns back, and the other Naim, the yelling Naim, the one that looks startled and afraid, is clambering into the mill. Ryan feels himself get a second wind, feels the Earth come into focus because yes, yes, he’s alive. He’s here. He’s afraid but he’s alive and Ryan can still do something, Ryan can still save something. He can feel the Naim behind him speed up, just slightly, twitchy and nervous now that Ryan isn’t all that alone anymore, now that Ryan could maybe stop being alone. Ryan rushes forward, towards the mill, towards Naim. As he gets closer and closer, he hears the Naim behind him get faster and faster, until Ryan can finally hear the real Naim and the one from before flickers out of view, out of existence. It shouldn’t work, it shouldn’t be happening — Naim can’t see Ryan, despite how much Ryan can see him, through the mill's grounded, grate-covered window. Naim is wrestling with nothing, which means that he’s seeing Ryan, he’s seeing it. Ryan bangs at the grate, screaming and crying and begging Naim to hear him. Naim doesn’t, Naim can’t. He’s scrabbling at something above him, frantic and wild and afraid, and Ryan is desperate to save him because Naim looks terrified, fighting for life. And then he’s not. Then, Naim is still, and Ryan screams, brokenly, because if Naim stops fighting then Ryan will lose him, then Ryan will be Jessica, alone and terrified and wanting. Naim reaches up, and Ryan hopes it’s to fight, and it’s not, it’s worse, because Naim reaches out and he just—
Naim cups the face of nothingness. Or, well, it’s nothingness in Ryan's eyes, which he’s almost thankful for, because it means he doesn’t have to see Naim being tender towards the face and body of Ryan without it being for Ryan. He doesn’t have to see the thing that stole his body and his face and his life and his happiness be gently touched by Naim’s soft hands. Naim’s hand moves, slightly, like something has leaned into it, and it almost makes sense to Ryan. It almost makes sense because Naim is Naim and Naim is beautiful and Naim would be the one to teach softness to a thing meant to kill them. Naim would be the exception. He’s jealous, but not of Naim, not really. It would be nice to have a spirit capable of kindness, but a nightmare in a whole other way. It would make it harder for Ryan to tell who was who, which was which, because the other Naim, the fake Naim, had always been rougher than the reality. He had made Ryan take off his shirt in the photobooth, half-naked and vulnerable in contrast to Naim’s closeted clothed-ness. He had bitten up Ryan in the school bathroom, nipping lightly before ripping at his ear. He had banged on windows and shouted insults and guilt-trips and constant, belittling words of violence, ones that were more like Hunter at his worst than Naim at his ever. He hadn’t been like Naim, but he had been what Ryan thought he deserved from Naim, because Naim deserved whatever he wanted, and Ryan deserved to take it. But, he can’t imagine being Naim, who has what seems like a more tender Ryan, a more careful Ryan, one that kisses and touches with care and caution and warmth, before extinguishing that soft heat with a hard choke, a hand down the throat. Ryan imagines it’s confusing. Ryan imagines that he’d be dead ten times over if the false version of Naim ever bothered to be nice for more than a moment.
So, Ryan isn’t jealous of Naim. He’s jealous of himself, or the warped version of himself that’s been conjured up from Naim’s memories. He’s jealous because he wants Naim like that, wants that gentle hand on his face and those soft eyes looking up at him. He’s angry, because he wants it and he deserves it and, in some other world, it could’ve been his. It was his, back before all of this really began spiraling down and out, back in the mill the first time. It was his when he and Naim were kissing on the dusty floor of the mill, in the middle of the abandoned field, in the back of the bus trying, and failing, to stay quiet. It isn’t his anymore, or it is, but not entirely. It also belongs to that other Ryan, the demon or the ghost or the entity or the thing. The worst part, the part that really makes him flare and boil with jealousy, envy, is that the thing indulges in it. It gets to indulge in it, allows itself to indulge in it and enjoy it and enjoy Naim, but it doesn’t stop hurting Naim. After a moment, Ryan sees Naim’s hand flail, his arm twist, and he knows they’re back to wrestling, Naim’s life is still in danger. That other Ryan had seen Naim soft and still decided to kill him. It’s criminal, really. It’s something Ryan can’t fathom. He supposes that’s what makes it a curse and not a person, because Naim should’ve been an exception, but he wasn’t.
Naim wrestles with it more, and Ryan bangs at the metal and the glass, trying to be let in. He refuses to take his eyes off of Naim, in case that makes them both more alone than before, but it really limits his options of helping. It seems, though, that he doesn’t need to help. Just as the last bit of air Ryan has left to scream with leaves his lungs, Naim lights something, nothing, it, on fire. He lights it all on fire. He looks beautiful while doing it, teary and terrified, but solid. He’s lit up by a warm glow and it warms Ryan too, waves the cold that’s taken hold of him since the ritual away from his body for a wonderful, brief moment. Naim tears himself out of the warehouse, and Ryan, briefly, loses sight of him. It’s not for long, because he hears Naim land, meters away from him, but it’s enough to terrify Ryan into stillness, into freezing.
Ryan wants to run. He wants to run towards Naim and he wants to run away from the fire and he wants to run towards a different city, a different country, a different continent. He wants Naim with him, but he doesn't want to ask. He watches Naim crouch down by another grated window, watches him stare wordlessly, helplessly, into fiery nothing, nothing that contains something that looks like Ryan.
I’m sorry, he sees Naim whisper against the glass. He's crying. Ryan hates when he cries, but he's beautiful when he's doing it. It makes Ryan feel like a bad person, but he's made peace with that. He's made peace with how much his wanting of Naim transcends normal boundaries, how it makes him want Naim at his toughest and his most fragile, every part of him.
Naim rises, and he runs, and he doesn't see Ryan, and Ryan is alone. Ryan is alone, and he is actually, truly alone. It's peaceful. He could live like this forever. He wants to live like this forever.
Ryan makes his choice then. He had already made it, but he knows it with certainty now. That next morning, he stops by his house when he knows his parents will be gone. He snatches up some more money, some valuables, and he takes a quick shower because God knows he needs it. He leaves in under 30 minutes, and he tries not to get too sentimental about it. He’s always been more tender than either of his parents would’ve liked, but it’s not as if they’ve given him much. He’s barely seen them in the last few days, weeks, ever since Hunter had been killed, ever since Hunter and him had been caught. They barely speak to him or look at him or even stay in the same room as him, so Ryan doesn’t feel like he’s missing much by leaving. He’ll miss what could’ve been, though, if he had been given more time. He thinks his mom might’ve figured out how to like him at some point, or at least love him the way a mother should. He thinks his dad could’ve figured out how to live with his son, the faggot, and his son, his son. It could’ve, maybe, one day, been nice.
It’s not going to happen anymore. It was never really going to happen. Ryan mourns for the tiny chance that it could’ve, though.
Ryan makes it to the bus stop, and he’s alone. It’s odd to be entirely alone, even if it’s preferred over being haunted. He can still feel it watching him, but it’s nowhere to be seen; it’s a real ghost this time, rather than the possessive, possessing, physical presence that it usually is. People eventually scatter around him. Mostly older people, though there are a few families, teenagers — going out for a day trip, maybe. It doesn’t matter much to Ryan, who’s got his headphones in his ears and his phone clutched tight in his hand, his backpack just as tightly grasped in the other. Distantly, he thinks he can see Naim, but he turns away immediately. He’s not alone anymore, so he’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.
Naim approuches. It looks like Naim. It must’ve gotten better, in the time between last night and this early morning. It looks sad, the way Naim always does, not in the way that it attempts to imitate him. It looks like Naim, in an outfit he hasn’t seen Naim wear yet save for the same jacket as the first day they kissed.
“Ryan?” Naim says, and it sounds like him. It sounds so much like him. Ryan wants to throw up. Naim approaches, and Ryan doesn’t flinch back, and for that, he’s proud of himself. There are people getting off the bus, people loading their stuff into the bottom area and taking their things out, and all Ryan can do is look at Naim. They don’t say anything, for a while, but Naim bites his lip, chewing at it in the way he does when he’s nervous and something in Ryan breaks.
“Please tell me it’s really you,” Ryan says, and even to his own ears, he sounds desperate.
Naim smiles, small and soft, with no teeth. There’s a scrape of blood on his chin, redness left over from last night. Naim tucks his overgrown bangs back, nervously, nodding slightly, and all Ryan can see is his own ring on Naim’s finger, getting caught in strands of hair.
They get on the bus, and it is soft, and quiet, and tender, and it’s all Ryan has ever wanted, more or less. He feels Naim tense against him, looking out the window, and Ryan doesn’t bother to look with him. He has Naim right beside him, the real name, the solid Naim that matters. He slips an earbud into Naim’s ear and holds him closer, tighter. When Naim finally drops his head down onto Ryan’s shoulder, comfortable and vulnerable, his throat open and available, Ryan feels whole. Naim kisses his collarbone, and it’s wonderful, and it feels like they’re almost normal. It’s a happy moment, and it’s happy enough to feel earned, to feel like it could maybe stay, like they’re allowed to be happy. Ryan thinks they might just be, on this bus rolling away from where it all started and ended for both of them, allowed to be happy. There’s still a million things Ryan wants, a million things to talk about, but in this moment, Ryan will let the music wash over him as he stares down at Naim, soft on his shoulder, halfway in Ryan’s lap. Naim makes Ryan, despite everything, feel okay. They’re going to be okay.
It’s cliched, and tropey, and all the things Ryan’s never enjoyed about teen movies or young adult fiction, and it’s true. It’s so fucking stupid, but it’s true. They’re going to be okay, on a bus leading to somewhere, because they have each other. It’s obnoxious, and codependent, and so, incredibly annoying to say, because he sounds like all the sugary cunts in the low-budget movies his mom puts on television, but Ryan means it. Naim curled around Ryan, and Ryan curled around Naim, and the warmth of knowing that, at least for a little bit, they can live. They can live with each other, in each other’s pockets and lives, and they can live happily.
It’s all Ryan wanted. Or, it’s the beginning of Ryan getting all that he wants, starting and ending with Naim. It’s not a bad start, all things considered, and it’s not the ending he’d thought he’d have, just a few days prior. It’s the worst, obviously, what’s happened to them, what they’ve done to each other and had done to them. But, it’s not the worst way things could’ve ended. Ryan could’ve lost Naim and Naim could’ve lost Ryan. They lost a lot, but not each other. That’s something. That’s a start. That’s a dream half-fulfilled, one of a beautiful boy on Ryan’s arm and a ticket out of Hell.
I love you, Ryan doesn’t say, but he feels it, thumping in his heart. Every beat a word, every silence in between beats a kiss. I love you, Ryan thinks, I love you.
The bus door opens loudly, letting more people on, and Naim blinks up at him, with lidded, lazy eyes.
“I love you,” Naim whispers. Ryan grins, and when he ducks down to kiss Naim, he can feel Naim’s laugh on his lips, and hope in his heart.