dead hands (my mh/creepypasta crossover au)

chapter three 💕

(TW: violence/gore/general uncomfortable imagery, medical situations, mention of spiders)

(also hot take alert: eyeless jack is from northern england and has a fun accent)

tim opened his eyes to find himself sitting on a wooden chair in an alarmingly strange room. the yellow, flower-patterned wallpaper was peeling at the edges. art hung on the walls as well, ranging from intricate paintings of gory scenes to a child's scribbles of various people, all of it in chipped, colorful frames. the floor was carpeted with a light blue that was stained with blood: not the kind of stains that come from violent crimes, but type of stains that come from an injured person letting their wounds drip freely. there were a couple of other wooden chairs sat next to him, and there were two white doors on either side of the room. tim jumped as he noticed the door to his left beginning to open.

a tall, demonic-looking creature awkwardly made his way into the room, almost tripping over his own feet on the way in. he had a bulky but skinny figure, and he looked to be a little over six feet tall. short brown hair fell in front of his face in messy curls. on a more alarming note, a mysterious black liquid dripped from his empty eye sockets and down his ash-gray skin. tim sat in mild fear and quiet contemplation. this scene certainly wasn't the strangest thing he'd seen today. the man took a cautious step forward and began to speak in a quiet voice.

"hello! sorry, i might look a bit frightening, but i'm jack. pleased to meet you," he spoke in a mild northern british accent.

tim opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't seem to form any words. words were the last thing that he expected to come out of that thing's mouth. spiders or fragmented bones seemed likely, but articulated language did not. he immediately feared that the man would be upset with him for his silence, but instead he was met with a warm, fanged, and for lack of a better word, dorky smile. 

"at a loss for words? don't worry, i get it. this place is definitely a bit strange. you'll get used to it. you're tim wright?" he said. tim nodded.

"lovely. well, you're in slenderman's realm now. i'm another one of his proxies. the others are probably outside, but i'll introduce you all some other time. this is the infirmary. i work in here a lot of the time, since before all of... well, this," he gestured to himself, "happened, i was studying in the medical field. my friend ann works here as well, but she's not in at the moment. i think she's on a mission. anyway, at the moment, i'm trying to fix brian up a bit, and i figured that you ought to see him. would you like to?"

with an enthusiastic nod, tim nearly jumped from his chair. brian was okay. jack gave a soft giggle before leading the way into a similar room with a small, raised bed pushed up against the wall. next to the bed was a table with a large array of medical equipment that, surprisingly enough, seemed to be properly sterilized. on the bed lay brian, sleeping peacefully.

"do you want to wake him up?" jack asked quietly, giving tim a reassuring glance.

he hesitated before quietly giving an "um.. yeah," and stepping a bit closer to the bed.

he reached down to cautiously grab brian's hand and squeeze it slightly, to which his eyes fluttered open. the very second that they locked eyes, a childlike happiness danced upon his gaunt features, and he began to murmur excitedly. however, the moment was soon ruined when he caught a glimpse of jack and jumped a bit, which caused him to wince in pain before curling up slightly and continuing to mumble incoherently.

"if you couldnt tell, hes kind of out of it," jack sympathetically spoke in a hushed tone. brian was still conscious, but he wasn't reacting.

"is he going to be okay?" tim asked. obviously he was a bit worried to see his best friend a semi-conscious mess.

"mostly. he won't be exactly the same, but he'll still be able to function as he did before. when slenderman reanimates someone, he can only fix the thing that actually killed them. in brian's case, it seems to be spinal fracture. the rest, however has to take time to heal. he will heal a little faster seeing as he's a proxy now, and us immortals are pretty fast healers, but it'll still take a bit." he answered. tim was a bit concerned about the "us immortals" part, but he figured that he could only handle so much at once, and made a mental note to just ask about it later.

"well, what.. what else is it besides the spinal fracture?"

"spinal displacement, head trauma, and shoulder and rib fracture,"

"what's recovery gonna look like?"

"well, he's going to be really out of it for a while. once he's fully conscious again, which should be in a week or two, he'll most likely struggle with speaking and clear thoughts for a few months. after that, his brain will have re-developed and will be back to normal. he'll most likely suffer from major scoliosis, so he'll have to occasionally wear a back brace. it'll improve, but it won't heal permanently. there is a surgery to fix it, but it's kind of inconvenient, and i think that he should be able to make that decision for himself. the fractures, on the other hand, can be fixed pretty easily by a couple months of rest. again, slenderman's proxies heal really easily,"

tim nodded silently. he couldn't seem to take his eyes off of brian, who was absently staring back. the two hadn't seen each other in years now, and yet it somehow felt routine to be sitting there, just looking at each other without even saying anything.

jack softly interrupted, "do you want me to leave you guys?"

again, tim nodded. jack quietly left the room, gently closing the door on his way out. neither brian nor tim had broken eye contact, silently and somberly lamenting something, some memory or feeling that neither could recognise (or more specifically, brian couldn't recognise, seeing as he probably couldnt tell the difference between pope francis and the headless horseman for the time being).

they simply sat there wordlessly until the night fell, when jack asked tim to come join him outside of the room.

"i'm sorry if this is a bit awkward, but patients with forms of memory loss induced by head trauma tend to recover better if they're close to familiar people, places, and things. call me controversial, but i don't think that being in an entirely foreign room in an entirely foreign plane of being is going to be so helpful on that front, so i think it would be best if you stayed there with him for the night. if you need to lie down, the bed is probably big enough to fit both of you, unless you're uncomfortable with that, in which case we'll just sort something else out. are you okay with that?"

tim didn't hesitate to say yes. he had missed brian so much, and he truly and honestly didn't want to leave. and sharing a bed wouldn't be a problem at all, as they had done it all the time throughout their years knowing each other. they had dated from junior year of high school up until brian's disappearance, and even before then, they had never really had many physical boundaries around each other.

and so jack sent tim back into the room, where he sat down next to the bed once more and laced his fingers in between brian's, both of them narrowly slipping into sleep.