Chapter 39
He was going.
It didn't hurt. That was the strangest part. He'd expected pain. Some final, definitive sensation to mark the end of an existence, but there wasn't one. There was just... less. Less weight, less color, less sound. The world was pulling away from him, or he was pulling away from it.
The distinction didn't seem to matter anymore.
He could hear Dustin. Distantly, as if through water. There were hands on his shoulders that he could barely feel. A voice saying his name, saying stay with me, and Greg wanted to — he wanted to so badly — but wanting wasn't enough.
He couldn't hold on to a world he was no longer made for.
His thoughts were scattering. He tried to hold them together but they slipped like sand through fingers, each one dissolving before he could finish it.
He thought about the diner, the hospital, thought about ice cream melting on his skin, but the memories blurred.
He thought about the motel. Dustin's mouth, the dark room, stay with me.
A part of him caught on that memory.
But at the same time, the teaspoon of soul-stuff that had been Greg—that had walked through walls and filed paperwork and discovered milkshakes and fallen in love—was thinning back into the everything it had been pulled from.
He couldn't fight it. He didn't have the strength.
He was almost gone, and he thought: worth it.
He thought: all of it, every second, worth it.
He thought: I hope Dustin got the right onions—
And then something pushed.
Not pulled. Pushed. A force at his back, like a hand between his shoulder blades shoving him forward.
It was a foreign presence that almost felt familiar. Reckless and bright and almost like Dustin, but not quite.
It shoved him, and Greg stumbled. Not physically, since he didn't have enough body left for that, but something in him lurched toward the world he was leaving.
Toward Dustin.
Toward the thread between them that he'd been too weak to hold on to.
It was still there. Faint, almost gone, but still there, stretching from the dissolving center of him out toward something solid and warm and loud and alive and gripping his shoulders and shouting his name.
Greg struggled to reach.
The foreign presence pushed again. Harder.
Grab it, you idiot.
Greg could almost hear the words in his ears.
Whatever this thing pushing Greg was, it wasn't going to accept Greg giving up.
You can do it. C'mon.
Greg tried with everything he had.
He grabbed the thread.
It held.
A tether to Dustin—not the clipboard, not the system, not anything the reaper bureaucracy had built.
Something that had formed in a motel room when Greg had been flickering out of existence and Dustin had cupped his face and said stay with me and something between them had fused. Soul-stuff to soul-stuff.
Greg held on.
It was like swimming against a current. Every part of his dissolution pulling him backward while the thin, stubborn line between him and Dustin pulled him forward. The foreign presence stayed at his back, steady now, no longer shoving but bracing. Keeping him upright while he fought.
The world came back in fragments. Sound first: Dustin's voice, ragged and desperate. Then pressure: hands on his shoulders, fingers digging in. Sight came back in a beautiful burst of colors.
He had a body.
He was on a hill. There was rock under his knees and sun on his face and wind in his hair and his hands hurt. A bright, screaming, physical pain that was so real it almost made him laugh.
Dustin's face was inches from his. There were tears on it.
“Hi,” Greg said. His voice was rough.
Dustin made a sound like he'd been punched.
“I'm here,” Greg said. He looked at his hands. Burned and blistered, the skin across his fingers raw and red, but solid. “I'm still here.”
“You were gone.” Dustin's voice was barely a whisper. “What happened?”
Greg opened his mouth and closed it. How could he explain?
“I think,” Greg said. “I held on to you.”
“I couldn't hold you. I was trying. My hands went through you.”
“Not your hands.” Greg pressed his burned palm against Dustin's chest. The heartbeat under his fingers was fast and hard. “There's a thread between us. I followed it back.”
Dustin stared at him.
“I almost couldn't,” Greg admitted. “I wasn't strong enough. But something...” He trailed off. He could still feel that foreign presence like a fading echo. “Something helped. Someone. It almost felt like you.”
Wind moved across the hilltop and through Greg's hair. He shivered.
Dustin pulled Greg against him with both arms. He didn't say anything. He just held on, face in Greg's neck, his body shaking.
Greg let himself be held. He pressed his face against Dustin's shoulder and felt the connection between them — solid, real, no longer a thread but something stronger.
They stayed like that. Foreheads together, breathing the same air, on a hill where two brothers had once spread their arms and said what if.
Greg's hands hurt. The sun was warm. He was here.
He didn't know what he was. Not a reaper. Not a human. Something new, held together by a bond he couldn't name and a shove from something he'd never fully explain.
But he was here.