Chapter Text
“You’re a little early, fellas,” Gareth said, stepping around his drum set to face the approaching jocks. “Show’s not till next week.” “Oh, that was music?” Andy snarked back, and Gareth’s eyes sparkled with amusement. Before he could make a comeback, Jason cut to the chase.
“We’re looking for Eddie Munson. He’s in this band. If that’s what you call this.” Andy watched Gareth’s eyes darken. “What do you care?”
Jason stepped up to the drummer. “That’s our business.”
Gareth’s eyes moved beyond Jason and Andy watched his brow furrow. “Lucas? What are you doing with these douchebags?”
Jason slowly turned to face the youngest on their team. “You know these freaks, Sinclair?”
Lucas’s eyes darted around nervously before he gestured vaguely with a dismissive, “They know my sister!”
Gareth’s frown deepened.
“They tried to recruit me to their… club, cult?”
“Lucas, what the hell?” Another member of the band spoke up in disbelief. Andy didn’t care to know his name.
“We’re just trying to find Eddie, man,” Lucas said through gritted teeth, like he was trying to tell them something.
“Well, you have eyes don’t you? He’s not here.”
Jason didn’t appreciate the attitude from Gareth and with a nod, pulled his fist back and swung. He hit Gareth in the face and his bandmates sprung into action, but Andy and Patrick held them back.
Jason grabbed Gareth by the collar and shook him. “Where is he!?” “I don’t know!”
Andy had a feeling the drummer was telling the truth, but he wasn’t about to speak his mind to Jason.
“WHERE IS HE?”
“I DON’T KNOW!”
With the intensity of their voices came the intensity of Jason’s violence as he thrust his fist into Gareth’s gut. Garth cried out and doubled over, and Andy chewed on his bottom lip nervously, though he didn’t let go of Gareth’s struggling friend.
Jason pulled Gareth up while his friends yelled helplessly, only to throw him into his own drum set.
Andy swallowed heavily as Jason knelt over Gareth, his sneaker stomping on top of the boy’s hand. Gareth wailed as Jason applied pressure.
“It’s gonna be hard playing those drums with a broken hand!” Jason exclaimed, increasing pressure as Gareth screamed.
In his mind, Andy begged Gareth to stop being a prideful bastard and just tell Jason what he knew. Why did he have to make it so hard on himself?
“Dustin!” He finally cried out. “Dustin Henderson!”
“What?” Jason yelled
“He- he was going around looking for Eddie, maybe he found him!” Gareth cried. “Maybe he found him!”
“See?” Jason patted his back, shoe still crushing Gareth’s hand. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Drool and blood from Gareth biting his own tongue dribbled down his chin and Andy looked away. “Now, where do we find this Dustin?”
---
It was not guilt that had Andy coming back to Gareth’s house later that evening. Definitely not. Gareth had dug his own grave and if he had just cooperated with Jason in the first place, it never would have happened.
So why was he here?
He didn’t really want to dwell on that.
The garage was still open but Gareth’s friends were long gone. Gareth sat on the garage floor in front of his broken drum set, and Andy wondered if he had moved at all in the hours since the altercation.
Gareth’s back was to Andy as he approached, and when Andy reached the garage’s opening, Gareth spoke glumly. “Go away, Jeff, I said I’ll fix it myself. When my hand is better. Why haven’t you gone home-” Gareth cut himself off when he turned around to see that his unwanted guest was, in fact, not Jeff.
He scrambled backwards, clutching his hand to his chest, and Andy noted the blood stain on the front of his shirt.
“What the fuck do you want, I told you guys everything I know!”
“It’s just me,” Andy said, as if that would make this any better. He removed his hands from his pockets, raising them in surrender. “What’s the damage?” He gestured to Gareth’s hand, who had stopped scooting backwards but still eyed Andy wearily.
“Fuck you.”
Like he was approaching a scared animal, Andy got down and sat back on his haunches, bringing himself to Gareth’s eye-level. “Let me see.” He fully took a seat in front of Gareth now, crossing his legs, and Gareth looked at him like he was batshit insane.
Maybe he was.
Still, Gareth held up his injured hand. His knuckles were black and blue, slightly swollen, and if Andy’s past sport injuries were anything to go by, Gareth’s pointer finger looked suspiciously dislocated.
“No damage that won’t be gone by tomorrow,” Gareth scoffed dismissively. Any follow up he had disappeared as he choked on his breath when Andy gently caught his hand between his. By the wrist he pulled Gareth’s hand to himself to inspect it.
Gareth’s eyes were wide and he could feel his face heating up, but luckily Andy seemed far too focused on his hand to notice.
“You need ice. And you need to set this finger,” Andy declared, still cradling Gareth’s hand gently. He looked up when Gareth didn’t say anything, and once their eyes met, Gareth was snapped out of whatever trance he had been in.
He snatched his hand back.
“Gee, thanks doc,” he sneered.
Andy shrugged and got to his feet and Gareth sighed in relief, thinking the jock was about to extract himself from this extremely weird situation he’d created.
He was wrong.
To his utter disbelief, Andy walked up to the door of the garage that led into the house, tried the handle, and finding it unlocked, pushed the door open and welcomed himself inside.
“Hey!” Gareth squawked, jumping to his feet as fast as he could. He stumbled.
“What do you think you’re doing!? You can’t just barge into my house! What if my parents were home-”
Andy shut the door behind him.
Gareth stared at the door for a minute dumbly, jaw quite literally dropped, before following the intruder into his own house.
Andy was in the kitchen, rifling through their freezer. He took out a handful of ice and just held it in his bare fist before beginning to search for a bag to put it in.
He wasn’t the brightest, was he?
But Gareth’s kitchen was small and he found it soon enough. He filled the plastic bag with ice before wrapping it in a paper towel and then going to open the fridge.
Gareth coughed indignantly.
When Andy shut the fridge door, he had an apple between his teeth.
“What the hell-”
Andy took a loud bite of the apple before pulling it out. “Where’s a first-aid kit around here?” he asked with his mouth full. Gareth wrinkled his nose.
Seriously, who the fuck did Andy think he was?
“Probably in the bathroom, but you can’t just- hey!”
Ignoring him, Andy turned down the hallway, opening doors until he found the bathroom.
Gareth followed him, feeling like a lost dog in his own home. Andy had the apple held in his mouth again as he rummaged through the cabinets. He made a muffled “aha!” behind the apple and held up the first-aid kit.
He shuffled out of the bathroom and ushered a reluctant Gareth into his own bedroom, a door he had opened before he found the bathroom.
Wordlessly, he pointed at the bed and Gareth realized it was a command to “sit.”
He wasn’t a dog.
But he found himself obeying as Andy dropped everything he’d gathered onto Gareth’s desk and pulled the desk chair up in front of the bed.
“Hand,” he demanded, and Gareth really didn’t know why he was listening, but he willingly offered up his injured hand this time. The jock retrieved the ice pack and carefully placed it over Gareth’s knuckles. The drummer hissed. “I know, I know, just give it a minute,” Andy murmured, holding his hand still and twisting his torso to grab the first-aid kit. “The ice needs a few minutes to do its job before I splint the finger.”
“Well, aren’t you experienced with this,” Gareth sniffed. “Basketball finger jams are no joke,” Andy grinned. “These fingers have gone through it all.”
Gareth snorted.
The two fell into a weird silence as Andy held the ice to Gareth’s hand. Gareth’s breath hitched when Andy’s thumb began to gently swipe back and forth over Gareth’s. He chanced a glance at Andy’s face to find him smirking lightly, though he didn’t raise his eyes to meet Gareth’s.
Gareth looked away.
“He’s innocent, you know?”
Andy’s eyes snapped up.
“What?”
“Eddie. He’s innocent. We heard about Chrissy, okay, and we’re sorry. But Eddie, he didn’t kill her. He doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body.”
Andy’s eyes narrowed.
“Jason said-”
“Jason is wrong.”
Andy let go of Gareth’s hand and the drummer found himself strangely missing the warmth.
“Jason got his information from the cops,” Andy sneered. “And I trust Jason. He just wants to avenge Chrissy, she was so sweet, she didn’t deserve that, man.”
“I completely agree, I liked Chrissy, she was always nice to us. But Eddie didn’t kill her. He wouldn’t. Couldn’t.”
“Are you calling Jason a liar? Listen I agree he was overly rough on you, nearly breaking your hand and all, but you were kind of asking for it with your attitude, you just needed to tell him what he wanted to know-”
Gareth stood up abruptly, and the ice pack clattered to the ground.
“I was asking for it!?”
Andy stood up as well, and the first-aid kit joined the ice pack on the floor.
“Well…”
“GET OUT!” Gareth yelled. Andy clenched his fists. “Fine! Fix your finger yourself! I don’t even know why I came here in the first place!”
“Me fucking neither! And you’ve overstayed your welcome! So get out!”
So Andy did, slamming the door behind him. Gareth collapsed back onto his bed, looking at his hand once more after he’d calmed down.
Andy was right about one thing. His finger really did look like it needed fixing.
With a resigned sigh, he got up to take himself to the town’s only walk-in clinic.