Chapter Text
The last thing Scary saw before she woke up was Willy’s face.
She blindly reached up, clammy hands tugging at her own hair to pull off the Nightcap before he came back from wherever he was in the void and dragged her back into sleep.
After a moment of thrashing, though, Scary couldn’t find the hat. Maybe she’d successfully flung it off.
She hesitantly opened her eyes to nothing but the sound of a box fan and her still-heaving breath.
Judging by the pillow under her head—thrown askew by her jerking around—and the posters tacked to the ceiling above her, Scary wasn’t in a bathroom or on a battlefield: She was safe, as long as she kept her eyes open.
She sat up to catch her breath.
The Nightcap wasn’t on the floor, either. In fact, Scary realized, it wasn’t anywhere in the room; she hadn’t had it for years.
God damn it.
Was she really still having nightmares about that creep at nineteen?
Willy was dead. Scary would never have to see his stupid, smug, old face again. She would never have to feel his cold hands grabbing her shoulders and shaking her, or hear his voice shouting all the things she already hated about herself. Not in real life, anyway.
But, when she closed her eyes, there he was.
Touring was supposed to help—get her away from San Dimas and all the people who’d known her back then and somehow still loved her anyway. This was supposed to be a new start for a new Scary.
Now, though, she wished she was home. She missed her mom. Since sophomore year, whenever Scary had a particularly bad dream, she would clear her throat at her parents’ bedroom door until Terry Jr. got the hint and slept on the couch while Scary crawled into her mom’s warm bed and warmer embrace.
Scary sighed and rested her chin on her knees, trying not to cry on this stranger’s bed sheets. Her mom would be so disappointed (even more than the Willy in her dreams) if she knew where her daughter was spending the night.
Which was actually a good question. All Scary could tell, still blinking the sleep out of her eyes, was that she wasn’t in a hotel room or her bassist’s tour van.
She thought back to last night’s show as she tried to get a good look at the guy sleeping beside her. He was turned away to face the wall, which was also covered in soccer posters, string lights illuminating the chiseled legs of… Frederico?
Oh, God.
Scary nearly fell over and off of one Lincoln Li-Wilson’s elevated dorm room bed as the realization startled her fully awake and the events of last night rushed back to her.
Butthole Ricochet’s first show back in California was at some shitty little amphitheater in Eureka—just meant to be a midpoint date between Portland and the Bay—and it certainly wasn’t Scary’s best performance. The exhaustion from months of touring and the nerves of being back so close to home got to her, especially when she’d spotted one of her best friends in the tiny crowd.
Scary hadn’t been expecting to have to deal with people from high school until the LA show. She’d all but forgotten Lincoln had started college in northern California (to be closer to his great aunt or something).
Really, Scary hadn’t talked to any of the guys much since graduation: Normal had deleted their group chat the night of the Teen High commencement and wouldn’t pick up Scary’s calls, and Taylor was apparently busy ‘getting his grindset on’.
Lincoln did try to stay in touch, but Scary was the one who wouldn’t answer his calls.
He was the only one of them finally starting a normal life. He’d gotten into a mediocre university with a mediocre soccer scholarship (even though he’d been accepted to some marginally better schools near LA; he’d wanted to get away from everything, too).
Maybe he’d get to live out a repeat of the simulation life he always talked about—meet someone in college, marry young, have kids, and live a simple life.
It was their whole group’s one shot at normalcy. Scary couldn’t mess that up for Link.
Still, he had to go and buy a ticket to her show. Of course he did. Idiot.
She’d caught him in the small crowd of teenagers right away, sticking out like a sore (and very tall) thumb in his Lumberjacks jersey, tossed him her guitarist’s pick without asking first, and dragged him backstage to catch up after the concert.
Lincoln filled her in on his classes and family and new friends (which was so, like, whatever), and Scary shared her juiciest tour stories until the venue’s cleaning crew kindly asked them to pack up.
At that point, Scary should’ve let Lincoln say his goodbyes for the night.
But Link’s dorm at Cal Poly Humboldt was only a few minutes’ drive away, she’d reasoned. Besides, Scary’s bandmates were just going to crash in a nearby motel that night, anyway. They’d never worried about her spending the night elsewhere after shows before.
When she’d assured Lincoln of that, he had seemed a little worried. Whatever. Scary was finally an adult living out her punk rock dreams out in the real, non-apocalyptic world; sue her for having a good time!
Link’s roommate was conveniently pulling an all-nighter at the library, anyway. Scary wasn’t even sure that the library was open all night, but she wasn’t going to complain. She and Lincoln almost never got to hang out without their friends or parents listening in.
Not like it was a big deal or anything.
The most important thing, Scary remembered, was that they did not hook up—not that Link was a bad looking guy or anything, especially at twenty, but she hastily shook that idea from her head. Gross.
As far as her still sleep-addled mind could recall, they’d just stayed up exchanging gossip and watching bad movies on his laptop until they’d both passed out.
Link’s roommate was still out, Scary noticed as her eyes adjusted to the dark. They were still a little blurry.
She reached up to rub the tears out of them.
Stupid, she thought in Willy’s voice.
Scary suppressed a sniffle as she glanced around the room for Lincoln’s alarm clock, and—shit. It was nearly 4:00 am.
Link had offered to drive her back to her bandmates’ motel early in the morning before they headed toward Oakland. There was no way any of them were awake to come pick her up now. Besides, running back crying after spending the night with a boy from high school? They’d never stop picking on Scary… especially if they ever figured out which songs she’d written last year were about him.
She would just have to stick it out.
Her breathing remained quick and uneven as she rubbed her face.
It wasn’t like she could go back to sleep. Scary had to keep her eyes open. She wouldn’t be caught with them closed. Not right now.
She leaned down to dig through her tote bag on the floor for her phone. Maybe she could text—
“Scary?”
Scary flinched and dropped the strap of her bag. “Hey,” she said without turning around.
“Mm. What…” Lincoln mumbled, barely awake. “What’s happening? Oh—tour. What time is it? Driving?”
“No!” Scary wiped her face one more time and sat up. “You don’t need to drive me yet. I just, uh…” She cleared her throat.
Lincoln sat up, too. Damn it. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Scary said, aiming for nonchalant but landing somewhere closer to dismissive. She fished around for any lie that sounded less pathetic than the truth. “My stomach kinda hurts. Girl stuff. I’m fine.”
“Okay,” Link conceded. After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “Were you crying?”
Scary scoffed and turned away. “Wh—no,” she said in a voice that told Link he was being stupid. It wasn’t fully a lie, considering she was still crying. “Fuck off.”
“Scary.”
It would’ve been extra pathetic to look at him now. If she was going to be a coward, she should’ve at least stuck to her guns. She didn’t need his help, his sympathy, his stern but loving— nice voice.
But she didn’t need Willy’s voice in her head, either.
Scary pushed on her temples with her hands, trying to shut him up. “I’m fine,” she hissed at neither of them in particular.
She only needed herself.
And maybe her mom. God, Scary fucking missed her mom.
“Scary,” Lincoln repeated, and there was more confidence in the way he said it than in high school. He sounded like he always did in those rare moments when he recalled something from his own life in the simulation: too old for his body, too self-assured for his nervous posture. When Scary still didn’t respond, he tried, softer, “Terry?”
Scary felt her face scrunch up. Her old nickname didn’t ignite as much rage as it used to, but she still felt possessive. Only her mom got to call her that now. Sure, it got a little confusing with Terry Jr. in the mix, too, but her house was the only place where Scary had an identity outside of her stage name—even in her own head. “Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry,” Link said quickly. “Scary. So, do you wanna talk, or…”
“Ugh.”
Lincoln sighed, and Scary’s stomach turned at the sound. He was annoyed. Disappointed. Tired of her. “Okay, well. That’s not a ‘no’,” he said. “Is it about your adlib guy?”
Fuck, Scary forgot she’d told Link about all of the drama with trying to get AI Fred Schneider on this reality’s Scorpion Slut remix. Thinking about that right now was just going to give her a headache, too.
“Or… sophomore year?” Lincoln asked. That was how Scary and the guys usually referred to everything that happened back then, trying to avoid specifics so they could have a chance of moving on. The world was more or less normal now, anyway. Their parents were still fixing up D.A.D.D.I.E.S., but Terry Jr. was adamant that Scary and the others didn’t get involved.
He was also adamant that avoidance was a bad coping strategy, but that had never stopped Scary.
Well, maybe until right now. Lincoln’s gaze was unreadable and fixed on her—she wasn’t looking, but she could feel it prickling at the side of her face—and something about Link’s stupid honesty always made Scary want to be honest, too.
“Nothing. Willy,” she blurted out. It was so involuntary that it freaked her out. “I’m fine.”
Scary was choked up and sounded scared , like she did in her dreams.
With the arm facing away from Link, she slowly reached up again to double-check for the Nightcap. Still gone. Obviously.
“Willy?” Lincoln asked in a sharp whisper. He tried (and failed) to hide how he glanced around his dormitory, like Willy might somehow be in the room. “He’s dead. He’s dead, like, for real. Permanently. Oh, God. He’s not showing up in your dreams again, is he?”
Scary made another showy sound of annoyance and turned away briefly to wipe her face again. It was dark enough that she couldn’t see Lincoln’s face well, but, with the way the lights on his wall were angled, he could probably see hers, all pathetic and streaked with undried tears. “No! No. Not for real…”
“What do you mean, ‘not for real’?”
“Dude, stop freaking out,” Scary said, her voice wavering as she laughed weakly. In a mumble, she added, “It’s just bad dreams—at least, I think so.” She hoped so.
“But not real dreams,” Link made sure. “Nightmares.”
Scary scoffed. “Yeah, dumbass. Nightmares.”
“Hey, it’s cool!” Lincoln shouted as Scary turned to face entirely away from him, her shoulders trembling out of her control (and not helped by how he’d raised his voice). “I get nightmares, too.”
What? Okay. “Everyone gets nightmares, Link.”
“No, I mean, about Willy,” he said, “and… you know—everything else. Scary, it was all really awful shit! It makes sense that it still bothers you—us.”
But most of that ‘really awful shit’ was Scary’s fault, a voice in her head said. If she had to guess, Lincoln’s nightmares probably featured their principal’s blood in his living room, a scar through the center of his chest, Willy , who wouldn’t be in his nightmares at all if Scary hadn’t let him out in the first place.
She tightened her fists and cursed her unsteady breaths, louder than the box fan between the two beds that blew cold against her wet face.
A hand cupped her shaking shoulder.
“Don’t,” Scary said tightly, although she didn’t pull away.
Lincoln’s hand was strong, but he made no attempt to hold her in place or move her, either. His hand was big, but it was warm against Scary’s bare shoulder and the strap of her tank top.
Warm. Scary wiped her eyes again, letting her own hot hands rest on her cheeks. She leaned, almost imperceptibly, she hoped, into Link’s touch.
“Scary,” he said gently, “do you wanna talk about—”
“Shut up,” Scary mumbled, turning to hug Lincoln tight. She squeezed around his arms with all her strength so he was trapped. Good.
He tried to pull his arms out, but Scary wouldn’t let him until she realized he was trying to hug her back. Hesitantly, she let up—just a little—so Link could wrap his arms around her shoulders.
Scary sighed, turning her head so it wouldn’t rest against Link’s shoulder.
She couldn’t remember a time he’d hugged her since that night in Normal’s house. Maybe he was worried she was going to try to kill him again.
Sometimes Scary worried about that, too.
Link didn’t seem worried now, though. He was a good hugger (not that Scary paid much attention to that stuff) with his height and his strong but gentle touch, and he was so warm .
After a moment’s hesitation, he rested his chin on top of her head. Scary normally would’ve told him off, but she didn’t have the heart to, since Lincoln hummed happily when she let him.
Mostly, his weight there was just a reminder that she wasn’t wearing the Nightcap.
So maybe she could risk resting her eyes, just for a second. Besides, it wasn’t like she could see much when Link was hugging her so close. She simply had no choice but to rest her face against his shoulder.
The warmth was so unlike the cold pleather seats of the tour van, or the void of her nightmares, or Willy’s voice there.
It almost felt like she was home again.
For the first time, as she slowly closed her eyes, Scary was glad to be back in California.