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“Can I ask you a fucked-up question?” Kyle asks, from where he’s leaning against the front of his living room couch.
Across from him, Jason gives him a sideways look. He still hasn’t gotten used to the way Kyle looks now, as Ion. He’s got this weird flush to him all the time, like he’s just a little more alive than everyone else - but it’s his eyes that really give it away. He has thousand-year old eyes, Jason thinks. Nobody who’s 24 has a gaze like that. Nobody except Kyle.
“Yeah,” he answers, slipping out of the armchair so he’s on the floor across from Kyle. It’s a movement made easier by the buzz of alcohol at the edges of his vision.
They’ve been drinking off and on for hours, fueled by the kind of existential dread that seeing the entire universe gives you - that unique, terrible sense of absolute fucking insignificance. Jason’s happy to stick with his one near-death outer space experience. He doesn’t know how Kyle does it every day. Tipping his head back, he blinks sluggishly at the ceiling. “Shoot. Bet I’ve heard worse.”
Kyle’s silent for a second. “What’s it like?” he asks finally, reaching for a bottle of beer on the table between them. “Dying, and the- part after.”
Jason tips his chin down to look at him. “Seriously?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.
Kyle looks so solemn that Jason almost feels guilty for questioning him. “You said shoot.” His eyes are doing the far away thing. Jason wonders which fucking planet another him is saving right now.
“Wish I had an answer,” Jason says honestly, because he hasn’t got much of a filter right now, and because he doesn’t see the harm in telling the truth. He knows Kyle’s lost a lot of important people. They’ve talked about it. He’s sort of surprised Kyle’s never asked before. “I don’t remember being dead.”
“But you remember coming back,” Kyle prompts. Something in his voice is different.
Jason gives him a wary look. He doesn’t like the new expression on Kyle’s face. “Yeah. It was fucking terrible,” he says bluntly. “Wouldn’t recommend it. Choking on dirt and wood splinters is up there with my least favorite life experiences.” There’s not much to relive that he hasn’t already played back in his head a million times, but the words still feel heavy in his mouth. Talking is fine, as long as he doesn’t have to think about it too hard.
Kyle doesn't react to the bluntness of that. Doesn't matter that Jason kind of wants him to. All he does is shift his weight, sitting forward to rest his elbows on his bent knees. He hasn’t sipped from the bottle in his hand, and it dangles forgotten from his fingertips. “I think,” he says slowly. “I think I could do it.”
“What, die?” Jason asks, snorting. “Yeah. Feels like we get pretty damn close every day.”
“No,” Kyle says. He leans forward, eyes flickering with green light. “I could bring her back.”
Jason’s stomach turns as he sits up straight. He’s suddenly feeling a lot more alert. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Kyle’s lips twitch upward slightly in what’s not quite a smile. It hits Jason, again, that Kyle has the kind of power in his veins that’s unimaginable. Something surprisingly close to fear starts curling in his chest. “Alex,” Kyle says, running his free hand through his hair. “I- I keep thinking about it. Now that I’m, y’know.” God, Jason thinks. Now that you’re God. Kyle's staring at something he can't see. “I don’t think it’d be hard. I mean, I can be in infinite places at once. Why can’t I bring someone back from the dead?”
“Kyle,” Jason says slowly. He’s trying to choose his words carefully, despite the fog in his brain. “Alex has been dead for years.”
“What if she wasn’t?” Kyle’s eyes are fixed on him again, no longer staring into space. Their color is unnerving. “What if she was here, sitting next to me? No deals with the devil. No catch. I could just… make it happen, Jason. By myself. Right now.”
He’s looking through Jason, all of a sudden. It’s so hard to tell where he goes. “Stop,” Jason says sharply, trying to break the spell. “Fucking stop, Kyle.” He doesn’t know if Kyle can do shit just by wishing, or if it takes more than that, but he’s not gonna risk it. “You wouldn’t say shit like this if you were sober.” It’s fucked up, how casual Kyle is about it. Like he's deciding what to have for dinner. Jason’s never heard him talk like this. It hits him, all of a sudden, how wrong all of this is.
Kyle’s eyes go suddenly dark and glaring. Jason swallows. “I’m not fucking around,” Kyle says, hand tightening around the glass. “I’ve thought about it every single day. As long as I've been this, I've thought about her. You know what that feels like?”
“But you haven’t done it yet,” Jason points out, pushing past the feeling that he’s in danger. He never really listens to that feeling. “Because you know better. I know you miss her, but you can’t just do whatever the hell you want now. You’d be playing with people’s lives.”
“Sometimes I think that’s all I’m doing,” Kyle mutters. He sets the bottle down next to him and rests his forehead in his hands, the tension in his body slowly diffusing. A beat passes, long enough that Jason thinks about walking over to him. “Do you resent it?” Kyle asks then, before Jason can move. “Being brought back?”
“Don’t ask me that,” Jason says quietly. He’s long past the I wish I were still dead phase. He’s here, and he’s alive, regardless of whether it had a net positive impact. But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about it, wonder who'd be better off if he'd stayed in the ground. Sometimes he's pretty sure that list includes him. “It happened. It’s over.” He exhales, staring at the old scars on his hands. “But I didn’t get a choice. And that fucking sucked.”
For a second, Jason wonders if Kyle’s going to hit him. Then Kyle drops his arms and turns his head away, shoulders tightening. Jason wonders if he’s imagining the shine in Kyle’s eyes. “Fuck you,” Kyle says, without much force behind it. “Fuck you for talking me out of this.”
“You wouldn’t have brought it up to me if you wanted permission,” Jason says. He reaches for his own bottle on the table and tilts it, feeling the weight. It’s empty. That’s probably a sign, he figures. Letting it go, he sits back, watching Kyle for a second. “You have to set a boundary,” he says, trying his best to skew gentle. “This has to be the line you don’t cross. You can’t bring everybody back.”
“Didn’t want everybody,” Kyle says, reaching up to swipe at his eyes. Fuck. Those are tears. Jason tries to pretend he doesn’t notice. “Just her.”
Jason hopes that past tense is a good sign. “You’re gonna be okay,” he says, without knowing where it’s coming from. He just feels like it needs to be said. “Alright? Kyle. It’s gonna be okay.”
Kyle’s quiet for a minute, then another. Then he gets to his feet. He’s not nearly as unsteady as Jason had expected. “You should go,” he says abruptly. His eyes are a little red, but there’s no other sign that he’s been crying. “It’s late.”
It’s ten o’clock, but Jason stands up anyway, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair. “You can call me,” he says, trying to catch Kyle’s eye. “If you need… someone.”
“I have friends, Jason,” Kyle says calmly. He opens the front door and stands aside. “I think I’ll be fine.”
“Just call, alright?” Jason shrugs his jacket on and steps out the door, because there’s really nothing else to do. As he’s reaching for his phone, ready to order a ride, he swears Kyle says something under his breath before the door closes.
If Jason didn’t know better, he’d have thought it was thank you.