Chapter One: The Fall
Trigger warnings for this whole book will include - Blood, vomit, depression, injury description, alcohol, homophobia (I will be censoring words such as the f word), violence, vv strong language.
Thanks for reading, check out my other books if you haven’t already, I have an awful lot of Remdy fanfics and the vampire one’s pretty hot.
Trigger warnings for this chapter: Blood, injury description, strong language
Andy is on the phone when it happens.
The thud is loud. It couldn’t be missed. Then the inevitable yell follows. Andy stops listening to Lonny on the phone and waits for another noise from upstairs. A voice shouting that he’s fine, a laugh, a shaken but largely unharmed laugh. He hears nothing.
“Remington!” Andy calls, cutting Lonny off mid-sentence. “Remington! Are you alright?” He gives his husband time to respond but gets no response. “Fuck,” he says now, “Lon, I’m sorry. I think he’s fallen in the shower. I’ll call you later.” He hangs up and begins for the bathroom, skipping steps as he ascends the stairs and opening the door to a rather sickening, stomach-lurching scene. “Oh my God,” Andy whispers, frozen in the doorway for a moment as he processes what’s in front of him. “Oh Jesus, no.”
What he’s looking at is the blood. The blood that swirls down the drain with the water. The blood pooling alarmingly by Remington’s very still head. Andy can’t move at first. He expected to find the singer sitting against the wall in a daze with a headache or crawling out of the shower dizzily. Not this.
Not what looks to be the beginning of a horror film or a Halloween prank.
God, please, not this.
When he finally can move, Andy is quick. He grabs a towel and rushes into the shower, not caring that water is hammering down onto him. He lifts Remington’s head and has to look away, detach his mind from the feeling of hot blood dribbling onto his hand. His stomach turns as he, trembling more than he can cope with, presses the messily folded towel to the wound. On the floor, his phone is ringing. Andy reaches for it.
“Is everything okay?” It’s Lonny.
Andy looks at Remington’s face.
“Andy? Is he okay? You said he fell in the shower. Is he okay?”
“Blood,” the man mumbles, “so much.”
Lonny hangs up and Andy just continues to stare at Remington’s face. It seems he’s getting paler by the second. Paler and colder and more...
More dead.
When the paramedics arrive - Lonny must’ve called 999 - Andy finds he is unable to talk. Even after they’ve taken Remington and temporarily dressed the head wound, all he can see is the blood and the whiteness of his skin and - and oh God, the blood!
The hospital is big and Andy has to wait while they take his husband. He sits rigid in a chair and doesn’t look away from the clock when Lonny joins him. Soon, Emerson and Sebastian are here and they all sit without talking. Sebastian almost finds it funny; Remington has been hanging off beams above stages for years and yet he falls while he’s at home.
Andy is the first to snap. He cries wildly for a while and his state brings on everyone else’s tears. No one says anything, still. There is no ‘he’ll be okay’ or ‘he’s strong’, not even a ‘he’s had a good life’. If they were to be said, it would make this too real. There’s no way Remington could die, no way his last moments could be slipping over in the shower, no way he’ll never get to experience another concert, another hug, another stupid fight.
“Biersack,” a doctor finally announces, after hours of nothing.
The group stand up.
“Remington is suffering from a fatal traumatic brain injury.”
“Fatal?” Andy asks, “what do you mean, fatal? Is he okay? Will he be okay?”
The doctor sighs. “He is stable and in a state of sedation.”
“Is stable good?”
“It means he is alive, sir. However, I’m afraid there is a chance he has memory loss.”
“Memory loss?”
Sebastian puts a hand on Andy’s shoulder.
The doctor nods. “Yes, memory loss. We can’t be certain until he wakes, but from the looks of the scans, there is a high chance.”
Andy’s eyes are blown wide with the shock of the day. “What sort of memory loss?” He asks, agitated. “Will he remember who he is? Where he lives? Who we are? What will he forget?”
“Sir, I can’t answer these questions until we administer further tests following his awakening.”
“And when will that be? Can I see him? When will he wake up?”
“Andy,” Sebastian says, “calm down.”
“My husband might not know who I am, how am I meant to calm down?” He pushes Sebastian’s hand from his shoulder.
“Unfortunately, I can’t let anybody see him until further tests have been taken.”
“Bullshit!” Andy shouts. “Let me see him. I need to see him.”
“Andy,” Sebastian says again, “it’s okay. Let them do their job. Remington’s alive, that’s good.”
The man turns and walks away.
