His lips parted, and he was screaming.
One word, the only one that mattered.
“THOMAS.”
“THOMAS.”
“THOMAS THOMAS THOMAS—”
Around Andrew, monsters peeled their teeth from the trees, and trained their yellow eyes on him. Bones rattled and the underbrush turned over in a snarl. Their rot, their malevolence, washed over his face and he sucked it in with a sob.
Ahead of him, a shape formed among the trees and began tomove toward him. It came up quick and lithe, and he was moving too fast to stop even if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t want to stop. He was a boy close to the end of infinity and he would run off the edge of the world if that was what it took.
He was anguish and speed, his fingers outstretched for the only thing left in the world that made sense.
They collided like trees felled in a storm, arms flung around each other and heads cracking together from the force of their entwining.
He flung his arms around Thomas’s neck and crushed him breathlessly close, breathing him in, all forests and charcoal pencils, his body hard and lean and impossible to break. Thomas tossed his hatchet to the side so it thumped dully on the leaves. Then his mouth pressed hard to the side of Andrew’s sweaty hair, then against his jaw, so close to his mouth it felt like dying. He palmed tears from Andrew’s cheeks and then simply held him like nothing else mattered.
“I n-n-n-need you to be real.” Andrew could barely pull the words bound in thorns and wicker switches. He wanted to bite Thomas’s jaw just to feel that hot, sweaty skin, already flecked with blood and damp dirt.
“What?” Thomas said. “Of course I’m real. I figured you ran down here, and I came as fast as I could but—”
“Bryce is—”
“It’s not your fault.” Thomas slipped from Andrew’s arms and scooped up his hatchet.
He spun with a graceful agility that made Andrew’s heart skip a beat and then slammed the blade into a monster scuttling across the leaves. It shrieked, and blood splattered the front ofThomas’s white dress shirt in a hot streak of red. One of his suspenders had slipped, but he didn’t seem to notice as he flipped the hatchet with deft ease and cut down another monster.
Then he turned back to Andrew, blood flecking his cheekbones, his eyes smoldering coals. He reached out a hand to see if Andrew was okay, just as he always did.
But Andrew stepped back. He grabbed at his hair, his head shaking, a low moan escaping from his raw throat. “I don’t know… I don’t know if-if-if you’re real.”
Thomas took Andrew’s wrist and turned it over, placing his thumb on the frenetic pulse. “Hey,” he said, so softly. “What do you need me to do?”
“Is this all in my head?” Andrew went on, barely coherent. “Did I make this all up? The m-monsters, the-the stories, the—”
“I’m real, Andrew. Do you see the blood on my shirt? How can—”
“Kiss me, then.” It burst out of him, frantic and feral. “Kiss me.”
Thomas took Andrew’s face in his hands, thumbs tracing his lips as he tilted his head down. Their lips almost touched, Andrew’s swollen and crusted with blood, Thomas’s warm and soft as a story.
Then he whispered, “I am real. You are real.”
“Make mebelieve you,” Andrew said.
And Thomas kissed him, hard and fierce and merciless. All teeth and tongue as he took everything from Andrew and devoured him whole. Andrew’s teeth sank into Thomas’s lip until the old scab burst open again, and then it was impossible to do anything but breathe as one.
They were a catastrophe, exploding.
Thomas pulled back and grabbed Andrew’s face, rough and hard. He pressed their foreheads together. “Do you feel this? I am here and I am here and I am here.”
He couldn’t make this up, could he? The extraordinary wonder of pain and blood and Thomas.
“Dove said it was all in my head.” Andrew could barely get the words out, he shook so hard. “She s-said I make stuff up and you were gone, but you can’t leave me, I-I can’t be without you—” He choked on a sob; he felt like an autumn leaf, disintegrating to the touch. “When she catches up, you have to—have to make her see the monsters so that—”
“Wait.” Thomas pulled away slightly, his hands still cupped around Andrew’s cheeks. “When she… catches up?”
