fic: a new start (ficuary)

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: a new start
Chapters: 1/1
Author:csi_sanders1129
Genre: Friendship/Romance
Ratings: T
Word Count: 1733
Pairings/Characters: Eddie McDowd/Justin Taylor
Synopsis: In which Eddie wakes up human and has a promise to keep.
Comments: Written for Ficuary 2021, Prompt: Cooking. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!

Eddie wakes up more than a little confused.

For one, he thinks, he doesn't remember this bed ever being quite so cramped. It should have been, with a lanky 19 year old boy and a decent sized dog all sprawled across it, but it's always been a comfortably snug fit if they settled in the right way.

And then there's his dog senses. They seem dulled, like someone's shoved cotton in his ears and stuffed up his nose. He's still got his eyes closed, hasn't quite mustered up the willingness to open them just yet, but he suspects that will be different, too. Maybe he's getting sick? He wonders if dogs can get colds – he hasn't yet.

He yawns, stretches out, and is even more perplexed when he feels his toes hit the footboard at the end of the bed. And they are very clearly toes - wiggleable, flexible toes - and not the pads and claws of canine paws.

At that, his eyes shoot open. He finds comparatively blurry color in place of the sharp black and grey tinted landscape he's become accustomed to in his time spent among the canines.

And then there are hands, hands in front of his face. His hands. His face. His body. He's human.

Speaking of hands, there's one settled on his stomach and another equally human nose buried against the back of his neck, warm breath ghosting across his skin.

Justin.

Carefully, very very very carefully, because he does not want to have to explain this unexplainable shift back to human to Justin right now, he extricates himself from the covers and from Justin's arm, and moves soundlessly across the room.

He's wearing the clothes he had on when the drifter shifted him, down to the wrist cuffs and the bandana. He even has his wallet, with a very outdated school ID still tucked into it – some help that will be.

First on his list of things to do is take a shower, because short of the flea baths Justin has forced him through, he hasn't had one in literally years. Even though the shitty off-campus apartment Justin's renting has less than impressive water pressure, it still feels amazing. Hot - well, arguably warm - water on his skin, with none of that pesky wet dog smell that's he'd gotten so used to. His hair, thankfully, has not suddenly sprouted five years worth of growth, so he's quick to lather that up, reveling in the use of thumbs and fingers and his own dull nails in the process.

That done, he wraps himself in a towel and quiet claims a pair of pajama pants and an old t-shirt from Justin's dresser, unwilling to put back on the clothes he's been sort of wearing for half a decade. Somehow, it's really only then that he realizes how much taller than him Justin ended up. Justin's clothes hang loose on his smaller frame – he looks ridiculous.

But now what?

Now he has to try to figure this out, why he changed back. Now he has to explain it to Justin and figure out what the hell he's supposed to do with his life when technically he didn't even graduate high school, when Justin is technically older than him now. He wanders out to the kitchen, glad now that Justin's roommate has mostly been crashing at his girlfriend's place lately and is almost never home, and tries to come up with a plan.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is not alone for long.

"Edward," comes the abrupt booming voice of the drifter. "Human again, I see."

"Not that I'm complaining, but care to explain why?"

The Drifter shrugs off his concern as if Eddie didn't wake up to a life-altering change with no explanation. "Oh, we did some recalculating – just some general housekeeping, you know how it goes, dotting the i's, crossing the t's – and it turns out you hit 100 good deeds sometime last month, actually."

Eddie blinks, frowns, resists the urge to strangle the mysterious man before him because he has a feeling that would likely undo at least half of his deeds and probably get him turned into a rat or a caterpillar or something equally unhelpful for his trouble. "What?"

"You're free, Edward. Your deeds are done."

"Just like that?"

"Would you like it to be more difficult?" the old man offers, "Do you need the rhyming couplets and the lightning?"

"I'll pass on the theatrics, thanks," Eddie counters. He still has questions, so very many questions, but he's not sure he can put them into words right now. All he really wants to do right now is tell Justin.

The Drifter takes the hint, offers a wave goodbye and vanishes in the blink of an eye. Eddie wonders if he'll see the strange man again.

But, back to Justin.

It's stupid, but he remembers something he'd said the first morning he'd woken up in the Taylor household, after Justin freed him from the pound and begrudgingly accepted Eddie's absurd story about drifters and curses and good deeds. He remembers he has a promise to keep.

Eddie's never been a fantastic cook – hadn't really grown up in a home where family meals were a thing (chances were if his parents were in the same room together for more than five minutes something would end up broken). He'd spent a lot of time avoiding his house, fending for himself, but as his mom was usually working nights and not home when Eddie left for school (or left for whatever he was doing instead of going to school) and his dad was usually still passed out from the previous days drinking, breakfast was the one meal he could actually passably manage to make for himself with any sort of skill at all.

He quietly starts digging through the cabinets and the fridge for the supplies he needs. He can do this. Bacon. Eggs. Toast. Easy.

Sure enough, ten minutes later the smell of breakfast cooking coaxes Justin out of bed and out of his room. "What're you doing home?" he yawns, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he wanders into the kitchen. No doubt he's sure it's his roommate actually there for once. "Did you get in another fight with -"

Eddie watches alarm flash on Justin's face for a second – fair, considering the stranger cooking in his kitchen – before recognition and then amazement settle in.

"Eddie?"

"Surprise?"

Justin sits down hard in one of the wobbly kitchen chairs. "You're done? How? Did you do a good deed in a dream or something? Why are you cooking breakfast? Are… are you wearing my clothes?" Then, a brief pause – "What am I doing?" Justin wonders to himself, before he's up out of the chair again and pulling Eddie into a hug.

Eddie revels in it, holds tight to his best friend.

"You know, I don't remember you being so short," Justin teases, from his considerably higher vantage point. "You're not nearly as intimidating as 14 year old me thought you were."

"Yeah, yeah," Eddie rolls with the jokes, "You were a lot smaller the last time you saw me," Eddie reminds him, offering a friendly shove before he moves back to the stove to stop the bacon from burning. With that successfully salvaged, he plates up their breakfasts and joins Justin at the table, considers him promise fulfilled even if Justin probably doesn't remember him making it. Besides, he's looking forward to enjoying a meal that he doesn't have to eat out of a dog bowl. He smiles at the thought – no more table scraps, no more food clumsily stolen from Justin when his attention wandered away from his plate. No more dog-limitations on what he can eat.

But after that comes the serious conversation. The 'what the hell do I do now?' and the 'how does any of this work?' of it all. Just as Eddie's beginning to panic from the weight of all the decisions he needs to make in this new reality, Justin throws out an offer Eddie hadn't dare hope for: "You could stay, if you want," he says, "With me, I mean. Here."

And the idea of staying with Justin, where things can be how they've always been (or not – he's pretty sure Justin might not be quite so willing to share a bed with him anymore), sounds like it might be the one thing that keeps him sane in all this chaos. He hadn't wanted to go back to living with his parents, not after he's accepted his place with the Taylor's so long ago. He doubted they'd even let him back – but then there are a lot of details about how everything about this works that he doesn't quite know – is he's not sure if he's still technically 17 or if he's 22. He's not sure if they'll think he's been missing for five years or if he's been in some weird void outside of time and space thanks to magical drifter powers. Still, the only place he wants to be is here, with his best friend, always.

"I'd like that," he agrees.

---

A week later, and things have settled down a bit. Eddie, with considerable help from Justin, has figured out of most of what he needs to do to catch his life back up to where it should be – looking into his GED, looking into getting a job, looking into maybe taking classes. He had gone back to his family, but only long enough to grab important documents he'd need and confirm they were still exactly the same as he remembered – and then he'd more or less unofficially moved in with Justin.

The two of them are sprawled out on the shitty couch in the living room on Sunday night, trading their usual witty banter. Eddie's playing some game he'd been eager to try with actual thumbs and Justin's working on writing a paper for one of his classes.

But then something changes, some small imperceptible shift in the air between them. In the end, Eddie's not sure who made the first move, only that both the controller and the history textbook end up on the ground and he ends up pinned under Justin, the two of them tangled up together and trading desperate kisses for quite some time.

And, well, it turns out that Justin is absolutely still willing to share the bed.