Work Text:
Morning seeps into the night with gray light. Shadows retreat reluctant, dragging their silhouettes along the walls and the floor boards of Philip’s room. Nights are so dark in Tivoli, dawn is never a quick burst of light over the eastern horizon. It’s a battle fought behind ageless woods and barren hills; a luminous creature rising through the mist. It throbs behind the blinds of his window in a silver haze, its pace serving no tell to the pass of minutes Philip doesn’t count.
The beat of Lukas’ heart sounds like the march of an army in his ear. The warmth of his skin under his hand grounds him in the moment, reigning the cold of fear before it takes hold, before it drains the heat from his limbs and leaves nothing but a buzzing numbness in its wake.
Lukas has saved his life twice and he still saves him even when Philip won’t ask to be saved so that sleep keeps holding him in its quiet grasp.
Philip has never been a heavy sleeper. His childhood was full of rude awakenings that taught him to be quick and alert. Breaking glass, sounds of shouting, his mother crying… He remembers so many nights he woke up with his heart in his throat, moving through the tacky furniture cluttering their little apartment before his eyes even adjusted to the dark. Now sleep is barely a walk along the shore of dark waters lying dormant in his mind. His body longs to submerge itself under but terrified of what’s lurking beneath the surface.
Some nights, he slips to find himself drowning.
The bottom blade of his window blinds is bent inwards and dawn cuts the light at an angle against it, slicing the dark in his room with a tunnel of soft gray. Specks of dust fall idly from shadows into its path, shimmering as if the filaments of life were woven with tinseled threads. Philip listens to the march of his army and watches the light change from a diluted gray to pulsing white, wondering why the dark in their heads refuse to die.
He realizes the rise and fall of Lukas’ chest has lost its depth and looks up to see blue eyes watching him beneath heavy lids. Sleep sits at the corners of Lukas’ eyes and Philip reaches with a hand to brush his thumb along the line, watching him close them at his touch. Lukas’ arm tightens around him, his hand running down his shoulder, past the ridges of his ribs and the slight dip of his waist before settling over his side, fingertips stroking absent lines on his hip.
Are you okay, Lukas whispers to him, eyes still closed. Philip turns his head and tucks his face into the crook of his neck, his hand resting, palm down, over the spot where his shoulder meets his chest. Philip doesn’t reply but he folds himself into him, as if the warmth of their closeness could weld them together and draw him back into the rare lull of the dream Lukas was having. Lukas’ lips find his hair, his breath ghosts along the crown of his head. His free hand finds Philip’s on his chest, his fingers card through his. Which one was it, he asks and Philip doesn’t understand how he knows every time, doesn’t understand how he can soften the shadows around them, how his voice is as calming as the marching of his heart and how the warmth of him somehow lights embers in the marrows of his bones, a kind of heat that leaves no room for the cold of their cockcrow hours.
They have as many nightmares as they have kisses. Philip has an illogical thought that one day they will have more kisses than their nightmares and only then will they find peace at night. One day they will wake up and realize they haven’t been afraid in weeks, haven’t had their breaths robbed and their warmth stolen at the edge of dreams for months. He told this to Lukas one night (or early morning) and Lukas pushed him on his back, eyes dark like midnight and into his mouth he swore, Then I’ll kiss you until you can’t think anything else.
They both have nightmares worse than any others they share. Philip has two and they are his own, terrors living behind his ribs, dwelling in the halls of his mind where he chases his mother’s ghost in swamps and woods without pathways and where every beat of his heart is a gunshot that kill him over and over again even though no bullet ever touches him. A nightmare for the man he almost lost, and a nightmare for the mother he did.
It was you, Philip mutters against his pulse and his fingers curl into his palm over his chest, Lukas’s hand still entwined. Lukas hums and holds him tighter, pulling him closer. Philip splays his fingers and feels the tiny ridges of his scar beneath his palm. His heart twists in his chest. Lukas kisses his forehead with dry lips. M’here, he whispers, half slurring. M’okay. You saved me.
Philip closes his eyes, his throat aflame. Lukas tilts his head down and nudges his forehead with the tip of his nose to make him meet his gaze. Do you want your white noise thing, he asks as the blue of his eyes turns empyrean with the spiriting dawn. Philip aches with the life of him. No, he replies, shaking his head and burrowing into him.
They lie quiet in the blanching dark. Lukas coasts the edge of sleep with his lips parted in Philip’s hair and his fingertips trailing feather light across his hip, unable to hold any pattern or consistency as he slips in and out of fleeting dreams. The warmth they are cocooned in feels listless and heavy; soft and anchoring in a way that makes the icy chill of fall pressing against his windows a weightless memory. Philip’s own fingers trace along the ridges of Lukas’ scar, seeing more than the pale mark on his chest, full of dark possibility like empty school hallways and the black of ocean waves. The what-if of it throbs stout in his throat.
Lukas’ hand tightens around his on his chest. Philip looks up to see him staring at the ceiling. I’m glad you don’t have one, Lukas says as light ascends slowly between timber beams.
I don’t have what, Philip returns, watching the way Lukas sighs and his Adam’s apple moves beneath his skin.
Lukas flattens his hand over Philip’s, pressing them both lightly down on his chest. A scar.
Philip doesn’t reply. He lowers his eyes to their hands and watches Lukas’ thumb brush along his knuckles. Something raw and uncultivated burns inside him. Lukas tilts his head down and the hand on his hip moves up to card into his hair.
I’d freak every time I see it. It’s already…
He swallows.
I look at you and I remember how many times we were so damn close and shit, sometimes it feels like all I can do is remember.
Philip listens.
If you had a scar, I wouldn’t know how to deal. The thought that someone would hurt you that much. I…
Philip hooks his fingers around the curve of Lukas’ shoulder and pulls himself up to kiss him on the lips. He can’t say what he feels, doesn’t know how to put all of it into words but he can kiss him. Kiss him and hope it’ll replace one of his nightmares for a moment.
Lukas sighs into the kiss and tilts his head. Both of his hands move in Philip’s hair. The quiet of the room breathes around their whispering kiss. The slowness of it stretches endless in the lull of breaking dawn.
I’m here, Philip tells him, running the tip of his nose against his and staring into the blue of his eyes. I’m okay. You saved me.
Lukas smiles, catching on. Philip kisses the laugh lines at the corner of his mouth before lying back down on his chest.
Does it gross you out, Lukas asks after a while.
Philip thinks how Lukas had felt against his roaming hands before he got shot at the clearing. Remembers the smoothness of his chest where no bullet hole had yet left the pale imprint of death’s touch. Remembers when firecrackers and 4th of July celebrations didn’t unravel him hands flat on the ground without an ounce of air in his lungs. He remembers touching him and knowing nothing of how easy it was for their lives to be snuffed out like the lights at his mother’s apartment that went dark at 6pm on a Friday evening with a stack of bills that read ‘past due’ on a shelving.
Philip runs his palm flat over the scar, meeting Lukas’ eyes. No, he tells him. You think it reminds me how you almost died. He voice trembles with feeling as he bows his head and presses his lips to the scar even though he knows Lukas won’t feel a thing. When he finds his gaze again, dawn’s silver light catches on the shimmer of emotion in Lukas’ eyes. It reminds me you are alive, Philip whispers to him and Lukas cups the side of his face, his other hand brushing lightly through his hair.
Lukas stares at him for so long dawn builds itself full behind the blinds. Shadows fold themselves into the nooks. With the touch of soft, honeyed light, the room comes alive around them. Lukas gazes at him endless. I could never be strong like you, he mutters at last, voice low and dazed.
Philip watches the way his eyes move over him, watches the way they follow the paths his hands make in his hair, over his skin. He watches Lukas and thinks of him attacking a serial killer not once but twice to save him. He watches him and thinks of Lukas holding his hand in hallways and kissing him full on the lips in the midst of everyone they know while his whole body is shaking. He has seen the blues of his eyes blown wide in fear and shame, has pulled him from the parapet of rooftop drops, watched with held breath as he pulled a gun from his waist and handed it to Helen two minutes before they became the kind of history neither would ever speak of again.
It doesn’t take much to try and do the right thing. But it takes everything to go back and take something wrong and make it right again.
Philip tilts his head and huffs into the space between them.
What, Lukas asks, the corner of his lips already turning upwards at the sound.
Oh nothing, Philip drawls. I’d tell you how amazing I think you are, he says unenthusiastically. But your head is big enough.
Oh is it now, Lukas grins and Philip barely has a second before Lukas is poking him in the sides and he lets out an embarrassingly childish yelp.
All that flattery...you are just… trying to… get into my pants, Philip manages between fits of laughter and wriggling. Lukas pushes him back and rolls them over, pinning Philip’s hands above his head and settling between his bare legs.
Which pants, he asks, raising his eyebrows with a shit-eating grin and Philip loses himself chasing the march of his heartbeat as the morning light dances on his skin.