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John tipped his toes in the water, leaning back with rest in his heart. It was nice here. No one else around, the wind soft and gentle for being by the sea, the evening summer air perfectly cool against his skin.
For once, he wasn’t alone. He looked out at the great expanse of the sea; certainly, he didn’t have company. But that wasn’t quite the same thing, was it? Alone was a place. It was a feeling. It was something John almost always felt, unless he was home surrounded by bickering family, or unless he somehow stumbled into the company of the most exceptional person he’d ever met.
He took a sip of his whiskey, the warm feeling running through him. Philosophers could argue that maybe John really was alone; Lovecraft wasn’t here, after all. He was resting somewhere else, out there in the gigantic ocean. A completely different form, an apparently hideous creature. A small smile reached John’s lips as he looked out; it just filled him with peace knowing he was out there. Was Lovecraft thinking about him too? There was a chance. The creature was hard to read, especially when you make an effort, which John always did. His eerie attempts at smiles, the cold deadness in his eyes, the dry fascination with which he viewed the most normal of human responses. It was easy to assume, like many had, that he just didn’t care about anything. That he truly was just an eldritch horror, a monster out of one’s nightmares, a prey animal with no goal but to taste fear. He’d never stop and think about someone as inconsequential as John Steinbeck.
John’s smile only grew – they were wrong, but those assumptions were sexy too.
Of course, Lovecraft was far simpler than that. Strip away all the abject horrors of human life, all the different ways that people wanted to project their fears onto a single being, and he was just another life. Just another existence in this world, trying to survive and find meaning. And maybe he’d found a little bit of meaning in John. Someone eager to understand him, and to help him understand. Someone whose heart hurt with love for him. Lovecraft was all these things, a simple existence, a disgusting monster, a fearsome nightmare – but more than that, he was just… gentle. His touch was cold but it was soft, delicate. God, the fool didn’t understand kisses, let alone anything more than that, but after John showed him roughly how it was done, he’d caught on fast. Just the memory had John’s heart racing, had his eyes searching the ocean out of some desperate, unfulfilled hope to see a dark figure rising. Oh, how he missed him.
But for all the ways other people feared him, for all the strange looks he received when he let slip his feelings for the creature, all their judgements and worried looks and gentle lies, he knew Lovecraft missed him too. He wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t in denial. Lovecraft was excellent at proving himself, and John was content with his patience.
Lovecraft would always come back for him. John had never been so sure of anything in his life. They’d both found love, they’d both found the absence of alone. It was something the horror craved as much as anyone else.
John tapped his fingers, breathing in warm salty air. It was healing; the sounds of the ocean whispering sweet nothings to him. His love was out there. He was coming back to see him, just as soon as he’d had his rest.
“Right?” He breathed against the wind, so quiet nothing could possibly truly hear him.
Yes, the ocean whispered back to him. Of course.