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Hollis managed to make it up the stairs and into the bathroom.

Closed the door and locked it.

Stared at himself.

Hollis took off his coat and let it fall to the floor. Peeled all the rest of it off until he was naked, dusty, and shaking with exhaustion. He washed his face, wiped it clean with his ma’s decorative hand towels until he could see himself as he was again.

Hollis sniffed and dashed his palms across his eyes.

Thought about gouging them out, but he stopped.

Turned around quick.

It was so hard to see dust suspended in the air. The tincture was almost too dry to track, but he knew.

Heart racing, he walked backward into place until they fit.

“Walt,” Hollis breathed, and it choked him sweet. “Fuck, I just—”

Wait a second. Let me look.

“At what?”

Your eyes. I want to remember them.

Hollis stood there unbound until he shivered with need. Stared at himself in the mirror for Walt, green-eyed and filthy.

All right, I’m ready.

Hollis turned on the shower and turned off the lights. Drew the shower curtain back like a veil and carried them over the threshold.

Waited until Yulia’s good work ran down the drain and Walt settled into him again.

Together together together, like a promise.

Walt’s wrists, Hollis’s hands, their neck, their feet. They twisted together beneath their skin like a pit of snakes, delirious. They pressed their forehead against the tile and breathed hard so they could focus on the feel of it.

The rightness of what they should be. Full to bursting and complete. Greedy.

Then Hollis Brown washed them clean.