Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Have you ever been in love, drummer girl?” Gripps asks her at one point.

It’s dark, 2am kinda dark and the two of them are sitting on the hood of the van, joint passing between fingers, Gripp’s voice rumbly in the night air.

Amanda doesn’t answer. Some meters away, the other three are trading stories over a fire, throwing in plastic and scrap metal and oily wood to watch it sputter and whine in the flames. They choke on the toxic fumes and laugh it out.

Amanda doesn’t answer. She takes a drag of the joint, pulls the smoke down into her chest until she feels it scratching at the bottom of her lungs, something alive. She breathes out.

“What do you know of love, rowdy boy?” Gripps hums, disgruntled, doesn’t answer. Amanda smiles into the night. Then she says “Andrew Waldenbeck.” He was from third grade. She mentions the guy from high school, the one whose name she never got. She talks about Clary Mondragon, beauty marks and red hair, all that brown skin. Freya with the two last name and the scars on her thighs, she mentions Ollie Clamburg with his curls and his eyes and his emails. She mentions seeing blood on their faces and quietly, briefly wonders if she could’ve fallen in love with any of them. Inhales herbs and roasted tobacco. Gripps hums again, plucks the joint from between her fingers.

“Love kills you, you know.” Gripps says.

Amanda doesn’t answer. By the fire, Vogel is screaming, hysterically and she traces the edge of Cepheus with a finger.

There's something ugly mixing in with the sweat on her skin, something that feels like sewer water. It sits like a smell in her nose and like a migraine behind her eyes, plugs up her throat like a sob you don't want to let yourself feel. Cross sits next to her, silently. No comment, no hand on her shoulder. Just the warmth radiating off of his body into hers. She wonders what his energy would taste like. The van starts and the sob dislodges itself in her throat, glides down and away with the pull and jumpy drive of the road underneath.

Cross and Gripps are next to her, flanking her. Vogel is on the other side of the truck, wild eyes looking at his nails and inspecting the sleeve of his jacket but he's got a foot hooked under her ankle, tapping with his toe every now and then. None of them are saying anything. In her mind, Amanda's still looking at Todd, anyway.

She keeps seeing him on the pavement, crouched over that fucking lottery ticket. Something roars in her chest, red-hot and hateful, something that is screaming at the sight of her big brother on his knees. He'd been fucked up. Skin around his eye purpling over the already discolored skin, hands shaking - he'd looked pathetic, desperate. Amanda had never felt like that. An ear-splitting concoction of something burning and something over-shadowing and indifferent. Turquoise fucking flames thrashing through her blood, twitching in her finger tips to reach out and grab and punch and destroy, all the while she felt nothing but ice in her throat.

And water. Sewer water.

She feels as though her skin is shaking apart with indecisiveness and it's not until Cross taps his knuckles against her thigh that she sucks in a breath, forcing herself to blink back to reality. She twists her head towards him, not quite meeting his eyes.

"You gotta chill, kiddo." He says and she huffs out a laugh that feels a little sick and winds her arms around herself when she realizes she's actually shaking.

"I thought you guys fed on that. What do you care how fucked up I get, it's all candy to you." She thinks there might be a question mark somewhere at the end of that sentence. Vogel taps his boot a little harder against her calf, once, twice, until she looks up at him, meets his eyes that are narrowed like he's offended. His bottom lip pokes out. Everything he does has the feeling of a child, too angry, too honest. Amanda can barely find it in herself to think of it as creepy.

"It's no fun if that's all you're feeling." Vogel says.

"And it's not like we runnin' dry on baddies." Cross says and Amanda looks at him now. Softly, he presses the edge of a crowbar to the space between her eyes - she lets him. He whispers the next thing, it slithers out through his teeth like a breeze, like a snake, like something inherently dangerous that Amanda trusts. "The world is full of scaredy cats."

Amanda smiles at that. Vogel taps her calf again, once, twice and she shoves back until his leg is bent over hers, her foot against his hip. Gripps is laughs next to her, low-pitched.

"We gotta get you a jacket." He says and that has Amanda startled, coiling around a twitch in her neck like a chain. Cross and Vogel immediately start talking, pushing at each other, voices loud and full of excitement. She looks at Gripps, looks at the back of Martin's head in the front seat. "A jacket?"

Martin called them his rowdy boys and in hindsight, panic from having a gun pressed to her temple aside, it sounds - kinda cliché. Kinda like a secret club. She's not sure what to feel about that and there's something like a laugh bubbling in her throat.

"A jacket." Martin confirms. He has an arm over the back of the seats, twists to look at her. Amanda thinks there's no bothering keeping your eyes on the road if you can't really see it. Martin eyes her bare shoulders, still shivering, lips pursed like he's thinking hard. "'Course we gotta get you a jacket."

They drive for another hour. Cross is mostly leaning over the front seats, talking to Martin over the rapid drum-beat from the radio. Vogel keeps clamouring for his attention, shoving at his back and pulling on his jacket, until Cross swings his arm back, catching Vogel around his neck, pulling him close. They writhe around and Amanda can feel the van rock with their weight. It all feels slightly too chaotic, with Martin letting go of the steering wheel more than once and Vogel's screaming laughter filling the small space. Gripps sees his chance to climb over the seats to sit next to Martin.

Amanda stays where she is, content to watch.

She thinks she might've assessed the situation differently. Talked to them more. Taken note of who they were. Their characteristics, their mannerisms. On the other hand, this doesn't feel like the kinda thing you prepare for. These people don't feel like the kinda people you could ever prepare for.

At one point Vogel shoots up, pushing away from Cross. He's stirring in the air, eyes wide open and directed to somewhere on the other side of the front window. Amanda thinks he looks a bit like a whippet detecting pray, if it weren't for the smile on his face.

"Jacket." He says, then again, louder. "Jacket, jacket, jacket!" He scrambles through the small space - space that is remarkably filthy with all kinds of junk, considering its area - and the van skidders to a whining halt just as he yanks the door open and throws himself out. Cross is right on his heels, whooping as he goes and then comes Gripps, throwing a grin and a wink in Amanda's direction. Martin is laughing as Amanda scoots closer to the open door.

They're in an small and empty parking lot that's mostly an elaborate sidewalk more than anything else. There's a thrift shop right in front of them. Vogel, Gripps and Cross are tumbling through the sliding doors and Amanda sits cross-legged on the edge of the van

"Are they gonna - they're not gonna like, trash the place - or anything. Right?" She asks as Martin sits next to her, open cigarette pack tipped her way. She takes one, noticing the brand. Martin presses a lighter into the palm of her hand.

"We're not savages. They're just excited." He says, which is definitely not an answer to her question. Amanda hums.

They sit like that for a while, breathing through their cigarettes. Amanda's lungs are burning - who the fuck smokes that anymore? She pretends not to perk up at the various sounds of destruction coming from the thrift shops. It's not too bad. There aren't any screams or anything, just a crash and a few bumps here and there - they're just excited. She'd like to think Martin doesn't notice.

"How do you know when to come?" She asks, pressing the filter of the cigarette to her lip. The first time, the fire outside of the grocery store where they carried her home, brought her groceries. The time next to the police car, where Cross said something that felt like a declaration. And just now, before, pulling the water out of her lungs, leaving her shaking and cold on the sidewalk - but lighter, somehow. Martin moves next to her, stretching his legs out on the asphalt.

"You're on a radar now. You light up like a ball of bhorium on a geiger counter."

"You know I'm not - entirely sure that's how a geiger counter works."

Martin shrugs. "I failed chemistry."

"God, did you though? I can't imagine you ever going to school. What are you?" She wonders at once when it's left her mouth if that was too much, if that's intrusive and mean. But Martin just turns to her and blows out, smoke billowing out towards her and around her face. She does her best not to blink.

"What are you ?" He asks. Amanda can't figure out the tone of his voice, but he gets up at once, drags himself over the front seats. The next second she can hear ratchet voices and there they come, galloping towards the van. Gripps has a bright orange boa scarf slung over his shoulders, Cross an ornate walking stick in hand, something silver glinting on the handle. Vogel jumps into the van first. He's wearing a wide-brimmed mottled green hat with dents on the top, but immediately throws something at Amanda. She catches it and looks at Vogel first, who looks back, eyes shining with excitement. He's sitting on his heels, leaning forward like he can't quite control himself. Gripps slams the door shut.

Amanda looks down at the jacket in her hands - it's supple, worn-out leather that feels soft under her fingers. She spreads it out on her legs - across the back, in sparse, cheap-looking rhinestones, the word "Tequila" spreads out, all capital letters. It's the trashiest thing she's ever looked at. It's the best gift she's ever gotten.

She looks up at Vogel, can't keep the smile off of her face if she tried. "I love this." She says and it sounds a bit lame in her ears, but all Vogel does is raise his arms in unadulterated joy and scream "tequila" at the top of his lungs. Gripps and Cross join in, beer cans raised between them and Martin starts the van, pulling out onto the road again. He presses his fist to the roof in three quick punches and yells tequila, Amanda grins and yells tequila, the jacket thrown over her shoulders. It feels like a re-awakening.

"Tell me, drummer girl, what do you wish for?" Cross asks her at one point.

Amanda doesn't know how long they've been driving. All she knows is that the windows that were lit up with gold when they started are black now. There's no music in the car. Martin and Gripps are in the front seat, Cross in the back. Vogel and her are lying against him, heads on his legs.

"On a shooting star," he continues when she doesn't answer, "shooting, shooting across the sky, a wishing, shooting star. What would you wish for?"

She rolls over to look up at him, eyes catching on the grime on his throat, the cut on the soft underside of his chin.

"Is that for real? Is that - do wishing stars actually work?" It wouldn’t surprise her really. She doesn’t think a lot of things will anymore. Vogel squirms in his sleep, huffing. Cross just laughs, squeezes Amanda's shoulder.

"Hey, boys." He says. "Fellas. Hey, fellas! The phsycic wants to know if wishing stars work for real."

They're laughing, all of a sudden, all of them loud and a little bit mean. Vogel moves around. Amanda smiles into the darkness, listening to their ugly, barking laughter, their "do they work, do they work" in between breaths and revels in the ignorance of the moment. It feels nice to be ridiculed by something other than the universe for once.

It's like they're being driven continuously forward by a sense of directional consensus. Martin drives like they're in a hurry to get somewhere, but none of them seem stressed, like they have an overshadowing and profound trust in who's behind the wheel - or in something stronger, Amanda thinks, something like energy in the air, blue and shimmering and blood-splattered hands.

"Hey, drummer girl." Martin says and she leans closer to the front seat. "What'd he do?" It takes her several seconds to figure out he's talking about Todd. She wonders if they could feel what she was feeling, wonders if that energy would have another color - it felt red in her stomach and electric yellow in her finger tips, sickly dark green-brown-blue climbing up her throat with Todd in front of her.

"He lied to me - about something really big, like really fucking major." Amanda says, leaning her head against the back of the front seat. "For like, the past six years he's been lying to me." Martin huffs and she almost expects to hear a noir-inspired bartender voice, that's rough, polishing the inside of a beer glass but instead he twists a little in his seat, drums his fingers on the steering wheel.

"Did you mean what you said? That 'don't ever talk to me again' shit?" Amanda startles, wishes for a second he'd look into the rear-view mirror so she can catch his eyes and figure him out. Martin is quiet, blowing smoke out the open window. Dude never fucking stops.

"Are you - I don't know. Maybe. Why wouldn't I?" There's something shaky in her voice and she knows that, knows it's obvious. She never bristles when she gets angry, never shouts or slams doors. The tears always come first.

"Are you defending him?" She asks, before Martin can say anything else. She's in her right. He lied to him, betrayed her trust in a way no one else had before. The three others have stopped talking and Amanda can feel their stares, unabashedly listening in on the conversation. Martin lets go of the steering wheel with one hand, plucks the cigarette from between his lips. He half-turns in his seat to look at her.

"'M not defending nobody. Just saying that family's hard to come by these days." He looks down, briefly, before turning around to the steering wheel again. "Your nail polish is flaking off."

Amanda's dumbfounded. She lets Gripps pull on her hand until she's sitting next to him, lets him unfold her fingers, one by one. He wiggles a nail polish bottle in front of her and she nods, smiles a little.

Her eyes are still locked on Martin when Gripps start coating her nails in neon green. She thinks about Todd again, about the weight of her words as she said them and how true they felt - like they were etched into everything she was, something indistinguishable from her heart, her mind. She thinks about how Martin fucked that up with honesty and a cloud of smoke.

Gripps hands are calm on hers, cautious, like he's done it a hundred times before. Something yanks at her and she can hear the military guy say something about your family to Gripps, something that made him growl and spit back fire. Gripps' smile is endlessly kind and everything is a little unbelievable.

Then the van stops, suddenly, and she's surrounded by blood hounds, curling lips and shining eyes. She can feel their growling reverberate in her throat hours after that, hours after she leaves Todd with something less than forgiveness hanging in the air between them.

There's a point, a notch on the timeline, where they're camped some side of nowhere, where something tips over. Like a switch, an open hatch previously shut and it's so imperceptible, that Amanda accepts it along with everything else.

The radio's playing something scratchy and loud and Vogel has dragged her onto her feet, all shining eyes and alarmingly wide smiles. He riles her up and she lets him - they're not really dancing, in the same way you don't really dance at raves or on the edge of mosh pits. The beat of the song, the beat of any song folds itself along Amanda's hands and feet and she lets her body shake and jerk to the music, twirls with Vogel when he laughs, ecstatic. The other three flank them, in broken arm chairs and fold-out camping furniture. Amanda can feel their smiles, listens to their howling laughter on the air and she wonders, not for the first time, about family. Vogel reels her in with hooded eyes, smile twisted into something like a challenge and Amanda is leaning towards him, squaring her shoulders when she hears Martin’s command, quiet but insistent.

"Get in."

It happens, easily, smoothly - suddenly, they're on the run in the most trivial way possible. Vogel is jittery, pent-up in a way the others only are when they catch the scent of something, pain and panic and anger. But Vogel is restless, half-way onto his knees and moving so much the van rocks even with the frankly nauseating speed Martin is leading it with.

"Shouldn't be running." He mumbles, one hand tightening around a bat, fingers finding the chains that hang from the ceiling and yanking until his skin turns white. "Shouldn't be running."

"Don't have much of a choice, Vogel."

"We could fight back, we could - we did that! Let's do it - "

"With her, Vogel. What could we have done with her?" Vogel's eyes land on Amanda, like he hasn't even considered that she's a factor. His eyes are calculating, eyebrows twitching like he's trying to come up with his next argument. Then he twists and kicks the wall of the van, hard.

Cross pulls at him until his head is on his thigh. He puts an arm on Vogel's chest, weighing him down as he struggles. Like a puppy, Amanda thinks, comforted and controlled.

“Tired of running.” He says, hands gripping. Cross just pats a flat hand against his chest.

Amanda leans against him. They drive for their lives.

"What are you scared of the most?" Vogel asks her.

His face is an inch from hers - she can see her reflection in his eyes. His breath smells of beer and weed and chili, his cheek bones glisten with sweat and Amanda can feel her own soaking through her t-shirt. They're cross-legged on top of a sand dune, the van somewhere to Amanda's right, the sun burning above them, unforgiving.

"In the whole, entire, wide, wide world, drummer girl, what rustles your nuggets the most."

Amanda thinks for a while, rubs the sand off of her neck with a flat hand.

"Hot people." She says. Vogel grins, rocks back and forth once like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard.

"Oh, yeah." He says, shoulders twitching. "Oh yeah, totally, man, to -tally.”

They don’t say anything for a while. Amanda falls back in the sand. It’s so hot , hot that even breathing makes her pulse quicken. She closes her eyes and the sun colors the inside of her eyelids blue and green and blinding white. The sand is coarse, rough against her back.

She opens her eyes and her heart explodes.

It’s a pain Amanda has never felt before. It unfolds in her chest, long whip-like appendages shooting out and coiling around her body, nerve endings frayed and igniting on their own. It’s breaking her rib cage apart and out, she can feel the bones break through her skin, transform in distorted shapes before breaking, snapping.

It’s drowning but she doesn’t taste sewer water, she tastes blood and acid and the soft inside of her lungs as they rip and crumple up in her throat, full of sand. It’s burning, but she doesn’t feel heat, she feels her skin coming off of her flesh, she feels her own nails drawing clean lines down her neck and ripping out tendons, muscle - her oesophagus feels cold in her fingers. It’s knives through her hands, but she doesn’t see herself, she sees clown masks and black suits drenched in blood, she sees blue, sees opens fields and nothing .

It’s everything Amanda has ever known of pain. It’s death. It’s nothing at all.

She doesn’t register the weight on her legs or the lips pressed to her palm, she doesn’t register Vogel screaming and leaning over her. She doesn’t register the three others, not until her pain vaporizes and is drawn out through her skin crystal, cold and singing.

When they stop running, it isn’t done with a purpose of giving up or giving in. It’s done with snarling and bleeding lips curled high and Martin doesn’t tell Vogel to take Amanda and run. Martin hands Amanda a bat, barbed wire wrapped around the head with his eyes to the horizon.

“Any minute now.”

They wait. While the sun melts into the horizon, blood red and golden, they wait. While the prairie turns the darkest color it can get, they wait. Amanda counts the constellations until the their backs are colored lilac with the rising sun and she thinks she can hear helicopters in the air.

“Do you ever want it to stop?” She asks Martin at one point, when she knows they’ve heard it as well. Martin doesn’t answer but she continues anyway. “The running.”

He laughs, looks back on her.

“Do you?"

Amanda feels something like a growl bubble in her throat and thinks that family isn't that hard to come by these days.