Don't Let the Forest In

by C.G. Drews

He needed Thomas, but he’d always known Thomas didn’t need him in the same way.

Lately, his father didn’t seem to have time to remember he had kids.

“And classes are going okay? You’re sleeping? Eating? Did you talk to the school counselor?” Andrew, who wasn’t doing any of those things, said, “Yup.”

The air felt wrong. Alive. Breathing.

He was l s i n g o his goddamn mind.

He climbed the fence and dropped down the other side without a sound.

“I’m not afraid,” he said to the trees. “Nothing bad has ever happened in the forest.”

“Get up, GET UP. Andrew! Goddammit. STAND UP.”

A kiss, but not. Comfort, but useless. The promise, I’m here, without words.

Thomas swung again and again, as if it were a baseball bat and he wanted nothing left but splinters.

He wiped his mouth, smearing blood across his cheek. Finally, he looked at Andrew. “Please don’t hate me,” Thomas whispered.

Andrew still clung to Thomas’s hand, their fingers laced and palms slick with blood and mud. One of them had forgotten to let go.

Thomas’s voice cracked around the edges as if he’d been screaming too long. Maybe he had, before Andrew got there.

They’d never had so much bare skin between them, so much blood.

“I can’t protect you and fight monsters, too.”

“No,” Andrew said. “We’ll stop this. Everything that starts has a way to end.”

All day he hovered around Andrew, stood too close to him, found every excuse to touch him with anxious fingers. It felt like he’d crawl inside Andrew’s shirt if he could, sew himself inside Andrew’s skin.

Because Thomas, beautiful and harrowed and magical, was falling apart.

He craved Thomas’s affection, with an intensity that left him dizzy. If he never had more, he had this. It was almost worth being ripped apart by monsters.

think … it’s because everything wrecks me. Everything. I’m so freaked out all the time and there’s no reason, just my brain imploding on itself. But monsters are something we can kill, and I think I like that.”

Andrew didn’t know. Life didn’t fit against his skin and it never had and sometimes everything was just too much.

“I like how you are. There’s an entire world of ink and magic stuffed inside your head, and I think it’s beautiful. I just wish everything didn’t hurt you so much.”

Try to kill Thomas, and Andrew would lose his goddamn mind.

“Someone always has to be the sacrifice.” “That someone doesn’t have to be you. This isn’t your fault.”

The monsters knew how weak these boys were and they found it delightful.

Thomas slumped his forehead against Andrew’s shoulder. “I need to be treated softly, like a delicate egg.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” he said, low and venomous. “And you know less about Andrew if you think he’s some delicate wallflower that you need to ball up in cotton wool. He could cut me to bloody pieces if he wanted. I couldn’t stop him even if I tried. So can you stop pretending he needs saving from me? Back up and leave us alone.”

There was something so raw about being known this intimately, being understood down to his darkest parts. Andrew’s heart felt swollen to twice its normal size.

“All I care about right now is you and dealing with the”—Thomas’s voice dropped low—“monsters. Nothing else matters.”

All I care about right now is you.

Thomas fell asleep on Andrew’s shoulder, his mouth open and the angry lines of his face softening in a way that made Andrew ache.

It burrowed between his ribs, the frustration of it. Everyone saw Andrew as shattered and fragile, and maybe he was to them.

when Thomas looked at Andrew’s sharp edges, he thought them dangerous and beautiful—not weak.

He could cut me to bloody pieces if he wanted. Andrew hated the way ...

Thomas had him. He would never have nothing.

Thomas flashed a wicked smile like a feral changeling, a creature you’d bargain your heart to and not even mind.

Andrew did not need this right now. Eating felt like a sickening concept when the forest was filling him with nightmares.

“I can’t survive this.” Thomas sounded hollow. “I pretend it’s fine, but every time I look at you, I think about monsters ripping open your stomach and feasting. And … and you just lying there. Torn to nothing because of me. It’s stuck in my head, Andrew, it lives there. I can’t win this with a goddamn garden spike.”

The night was a living thing, breathing with them as they stood in the forest.

First his art, now the woods. They used to belong to Thomas. This was the place where he roared and grew taller, where his smile could make flowers bloom and his energy could flow endless and untamed.

Monsters had eaten that out of him. The trick would be to stop them before there was nothing left of Thomas to save.

Andrew understood it then. They were the bait.

The night pressed close to Andrew’s spine, cool hands sliding up his sweater and over his ribs. It seemed fascinated with the concept of his beating pulse, and it left inky fingerprints along his collarbone. If it asked to kiss him, he thought he would say yes.

If the trees belonged to Thomas, midnight was in love with Andrew.

They felt, more than saw, the monsters wake.

“I hate this,” Thomas said, his voice cracking. “They’re waiting.” Andrew tilted his face to the black-painted sky. “So something else is coming.” “Something worse,” Thomas said.

October arrived with cold teeth sharp enough to split bone.

His chest was a broken cage for his emotions, and they spilled out of him like paint.

“You can talk, Andrew. I won’t bite your head off,” Lana, known-head-biter, said.

Having a crush on Thomas would be a little like putting a blade to your mouth and then being surprised when it cut you.