Hayden Upchurch passes time. He sends out his radio transmissions, he waits to hear back from someone, anyone, like Connor Lassiter.
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@schroedingers-kater i always keep my promises! this is v short and basically nothing but i wanted a first try. unwind fandom please speak to me
It’s dark out, but Hayden can’t see it. Not really. He’s been hidden away from the sun, torn away from civilization by the Stork Brigade and forced to live out his days here, cold and shifty and in the dark. It beats being dead or unwound, sure, but there’s not much else to it.
As if he’ll give the rusting place any other sort of compliment. If he’s not talking back to Starkey or trying unsuccessfully to win over some of the other kids he remembers from the Graveyard, he’s back here, prepping another episode of his little talk show, wondering how many Unwinds are actually listening.
It’s a hopeless life, kind of sort of terrible but kind of sort of better than dying, but it’s not like Hayden has any great alternatives. He’s lingered over the door, told himself he’ll go and make it on his own, that his conscience can finally be clean or at least cleaner than it is, but he never takes that final step.
Hayden stays in the storks’ hideaway, and despite all his best bluster, he does not leave it. That’s survival for you, he supposes; even when you hate something, you stick with it so long as it keeps you alive. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, even when it belongs to some shadowy organization that won’t tell anyone who it is, not even Starkey. Hayden doesn’t like that degree of mystery, but he doesn’t like a lot here, and yet he stays.
It’s more comfortable than the Graveyard, at least. Maybe he’s losing his mind between Starkey’s dictatorship and the uncanny feeling that something out there much bigger and much more sinister than any Stork Club bully is pulling their strings, but it beats roasting alive in a broken down jet.
Hayden wonders if he’ll ever forgive himself for choosing to send his friends from the ComBom to harvest camps instead of dying back there in the overheated metal shell of their favorite grounded plane. There is quite a lot for him to forget, although he can patch over any cracks with some bad jokes and sarcastic one-liners.
The Graveyard was– a lot, really. Good and bad and ugly. It kept him from the parts pirates and the Juvey-cops. It trapped him in one spot and gave him the foolish hope that he could, at any point in his life, stop running. It provided him with good friends to lose to Chop Shop knives.
Still, he misses it whenever he closes his eyes. And, if he’s feeling particularly truthful, he misses Connor more than anything. Connor wouldn’t have put up with Starkey’s sadistic, aggressive nonsense. He would have shut the whole thing down before anyone got hurt, before doctors ended up strung from the ceiling at harvest camps.
If Connor was here, Hayden wouldn’t feel as alone. He doesn’t like it. Gives him the shivers. Hayden can push away everyone in sight, can laugh and scream over his own bitter, jaded jokes, but it’s not enough. Every comedian’s better when they have an audience, and Connor listened. Even liked him better than the rest. You feel something like that and argue that you wouldn’t miss it when it’s gone.
Connor isn’t here, though, because Connor’s clever, more clever than Hayden, and he found out a way to save himself without getting stuck under the bloody thumb of Mason Michael Starkey. Hayden has no idea where he is at the moment, but, swiveling back and forth in his chair before the computer no one should let him near, he simultaneously hopes it’s close enough to touch and far, far away. Far enough away that he won’t get stuck in Starkey’s grasp. Near enough to save Hayden before he has to do something troublesome like save himself.
Hayden nudges the computer, blinking in the sudden blue glow of the screen. He navigates to the recording app, clears his throat, and presses play.
“This is Radio Free Hayden,” he begins, “and any Whollies, if you’re out there, I hope you’re listening hard.”
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Nights pass in the Graveyard. Some are more interesting than others.
a/n my unhinged haycon agenda never ends
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Connor only ever comes for Hayden after dark.
That makes the whole affair seem far more treacherous and explicit than it truly is. In reality, Hayden stays too late in the ComBom trying to find some sign that other AWOLs are out there still alive long enough to run, then Jeevan or someone else will send Connor out to track him down and make him rest.
Connor’s job, then, is only to appear out of the murky darkness of the Graveyard, to stand in the frame of the door and tell Hayden to go to sleep. That’s all it should take, really. Connor doesn’t leave, though. Not when he should.
Instead, on nights like tonight, Connor shows up and closes the door behind him. It never shuts all the way– Connor likes to leave it open just a crack, enough that the ghostly sound of Risa’s piano can make its way inside and turn their rattling communications jet into a music box.
On nights like tonight, Hayden pushes his chair away from the computer with a flourish, and Connor sits on the desk next to him, stretching out on any available surface that isn’t covered in papers or pens. Connor will arch a brow, and ask, late night again? so Hayden can roll his eyes and spit out some bravado about how radio heroes never give up the fight, you know.
Only then, once they’ve both said the established opening lines, can they ever speak to each other like they please. It’s a strange routine, and even though it happens every night, it never fails to disrupt whatever tentative peace Hayden had managed to channel for the evening. Every time Hayden is alone in that small metal room with only Connor and the uneven glow of the fluorescent lighting to keep him company, he can take nothing for granted. Least of all his own irrational heart.
Connor swings his legs back and forth off of the desk. “Listen to anything interesting today?”
Hayden shrugs as casually as he can. “Nothing major. Tons of important people all clamoring for my capture, of course. I’m extremely popular with the parts pirates and unwind camps since I’m such a top tier rebel, you know. I’m basically a hot commodity.”
“I know,” Connor says, laughing once then falling silent. “I know.”
Connor’s eyes are wide and dark in the half-lit shell of the ComBom. Hayden can still hear Risa’s quiet chords echoing across the Graveyard. It makes him insane, a little bit. He wants to shout to anyone who can hear, Unwinds and Juvey-cops, everyone in the world– who cares about the rumors, whatever stories they’ve cooked up about the Akron AWOL and Risa Ward? Hayden’s got Connor right here, and he’s never letting him go. Connor would never let him go.
He turns abruptly to Connor, grasped in the throes of some sort of wild excitement he can barely name, much less explain. “What parts of me would you take if I was divided? My parents preferred to split me in half rather than let either of them have custody. If I was stuck between you and someone else, what pieces of me would you want?”
Connor’s eyes flicker shut briefly with horror. “That’s sick, Hayden. I’m not answering that.”
Hayden reaches across the gulf between them to swat Connor on the shoulder. He’s charged with this strange energy, practically euphoric. “You have to. What parts would you want?”
He moves to strike Connor again, but Connor reacts quickly this time, seizing Hayden’s hand before he can make any more contact. He doesn’t drop it, though, and keeps the fingers firmly interlocked with his own.
“I’d want your eyes,” he says at last. “They’re nice. Also, I know too many parts pirates who take the eyes as trophies. I don’t want to stare down some creep and see you looking back at me out of the face of a monster. If I have your eyes, though, I want your brain, so I know it’s really you who’s looking. And if I have your brain, I need your heart, so you know it’s me. Out of respect to your dedication to your braces, I’d take your teeth. Although I would make sure they took them out before the— before they divided you. No one deserves to die with metal in their mouth.”
Connor takes a wild, desperate breath. The air is charged now, like whatever freak energy was inhabiting Hayden has moved on to engulf Connor as well. They’re both practically vibrating with the need to continue, the urge to keep going until all words are both said and then heard.
“I need your hands too,” Connor continues, squeezing Hayden’s fingers between his, “for radio stuff, you know. Arms for strength. Your lungs and voice box so the transmissions can continue like normal. Then I would ask for legs, and ribs, and hair, and anything else I could get my hands on. I wouldn’t let anything go. Whoever I’m splitting you with can die over it, I don’t care.”
One more deep lungful of air. Connor’s grasp on Hayden’s hand is almost painful, but it’s a good kind of pain, reminding him that he’s still here, that this is real.
“I wouldn’t leave a single piece behind. Not if it was you. I want you, Hayden, and I want you whole.”
Hayden almost chokes on it. “You can’t promise that,” he whispers.
“I can,” Connor asserts, “I can and I will.” He leans back, proud and absolutely sure of himself. “Who would stop me?”
That, of anything, slows the tumultuous rhythm between Hayden’s ribs. There are a lot of things that could stop them. A raid of the Graveyard. Scores of Juvey-cops. The simple truth that neither of them were meant to live long enough to see their twenties. The night is not a good time for confessions, even if they were made with good intentions. When you open up your heart to sweet words, the deadly thoughts can get in as well.
But for now, Hayden is a boy who loves a boy, he is a boy who is loved by a boy like Connor, and he is never, ever going to change that. They’ll get up in the morning and forget about tonight, or maybe they’ll both keep the words they’ve said on loop in their heads just like Hayden always does, but either way, Hayden feels complete. For someone who’s destined to be unwound, that’s pretty much paradise.
unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes
