Work Text:
The sky watches down on him. John imagines himself a speck across the grass that is brushing his shins in the breeze, a lone specter of the bright blue space above. The sky touches down to the plains at the horizon, and the world is all hush with the whisper of swaying green. And nothing — because nothing has a sound, too. That blood-rushing void in your ears, the sudden shouting of your own thoughts. So terribly loud, so terribly real.
But the breeze remains a cool breath of sky, and John turns around. A house is sitting on top of the ground. Backdropped by the valley and sky, it looks picturesque, an old cozy home resting its bones into the lush earth.
“John.” John’s heart jumps. He’d been alone, wasn’t that right? He tries to remember what he’s doing out here. The memory seems… not right.
Martin is standing next to him. “John?” he says again, more like a question this time.
“Yes?”
Martin hesitates like he’s going to ask something big. But then he must change his mind because he takes another breath and asks, “What are you looking at?”
“I thought I saw something out there.” After he says it, he realizes it’s true. He thought it might be a trick of his eye as he searched for patterns in the thin margins of the skyline.
“But it must’ve been my imagination.”
“Do you buy that?”
There it is again — out between the shivering grass, something dark moving across the plain. It was an animal. Except it’s gliding on its horizontal path of travel, moving much too fast under the sky.
“Let's go inside,” he says and turns.
“That’s not an answer,” Martin chides. John realizes he hasn’t seen it. It’s clear to him, a dark figure loping across the field at inhuman speed, but maybe he really is just seeing things.
He decides to not find out, let the situation be a Schrodinger one. He waves at Martin, gesturing harder for him to follow. “I mean it. I don't like the feeling I get out here.”
Martin’s body blocks the thing as it passes far behind him, looking like its dipping behind the sleeve of Martin’s shirt.
He's slow about moving, shrugging and looking around himself. When his eyes are up in the sky, he speaks. “It does rather feel like something is watching you out here, doesn’t it?”
“Martin,” John goads, and Martin acquiesces.
“Okay, okay.” He walks forward finally, and John turns back toward the house quickly and continues making his way.
Nerves cluster in his stomach and he ignores it, matching steps to his breaths until they’re at the door, and even then he feels something out there watching them. The tickle of eyes on his back doesn’t go away until he’s shutting the door with more force than necessary. He turns the deadbolt and it slides into place with a metallic chink. Martin raises an eye at his haste.
“Is everything okay?”
“I just really don’t like it out there.” His answer is a grumble but he can’t help it. John’s eyes dart around the room and he frowns. It’s their place — he sees the living room around the corner of the hall, couch and lamp and table situated as an audience to the large television. Curtains drape against the windows softly illuminating the room with the weak, pale light behind the fabric. The floor is hardwood because they both agreed carpet was horrible.
The kitchen is beyond an entrance across from the living room, white glossy floors reflecting distortions of shadows. The place smells still.
Then there are stairs in front of them. For some reason, John can’t picture what the bedroom looks like.
“Let’s cook tonight, okay?” Martin breaks the silence that John hadn’t noticed was permeating. Everything was dead quiet and he realized the power wasn’t on. Funnily enough, he can’t remember seeing power lines outside. Surely they were there and were just blending into familiar scenery. They had electricity in their home.
John blinks, confused because actually there is a humming: the steady whir of electrics and blowing heat rising up from the core of the house like one, long breath. From the corner of his eye, a light goes on, somewhere at the top of the hall in one of the bedrooms. They might need to check the breaker, but when John tries to imagine where it is, somewhere in the basement, he can’t visualize it.
Martin doesn’t seem to notice any of this. His eyes watch John, brows pushed together in a concern he’s attempting badly to hide.
Right, he asked a question. John clears his throat. “Marvelous idea. I can't remember the last time we actually used the stove.” He laughs, but damn, it sounds forced.
“Oh, I know.” and Martin smiles; the worry doesn’t leave, eyes wavering as they search across John for another answer, but John isn’t giving him anything. Martin doesn’t need the worries of a maniac. They pass into the kitchen. When John throws a glance up the stairs, the light is off again, and there’s only darkness up there. He swallows hard.
They decide to make breakfast for dinner: pancakes, bacon, and eggs. Classic. It’s the kind of comfort food they need tonight. The air in the kitchen is stiff at first, but once bacon is crackling and the fan is on, and Martin’s whimsical lighthearted commentary finally breaks through John’s defenses, they fall into old habits (these are old ones, right?).
He whisks some milk into the bowl of eggs. Martin drops two cups of flour into a bowl, which lands with puffs that send a light cloud into the air. “You want cinnamon in these?”
“Sure.”
“That’s a rather uninspired answer. We don’t have to have cinnamon in them.”
John rolls his eyes and smirks, jutting the whisk at Martin. “You,” he starts, “nag me too much. Dump a whole bottle of cinnamon in the batter if you want.”
“Oh you watch, I will.” He reaches for it in the cupboard and instead of popping the cap, he starts twisting the whole thing off. John goes back to whisking eggs, pointedly not watching as Martin sets it down with a loud clunk on the table.
Something creeks on the floor above them. This old place settling with the cooling air, he’s sure, but looks up anyway. Just to check. Then his head falls back down in time to watch Martin start to tip the cinnamon into the bowl.
“Martin!” he reaches out and grabs his wrist. The motion causes him to tip it anyway, and a large dollop of cinnamon puffs into the flour. Martin twists away, laughing. “Finally! Where are you at, John?” he waves his hands in front of him.
“Oh you tormenting fool,” John says with a scoff. “And here I am making wonderful scrambled eggs just for you.”
Martin snickers at their silly drama; it makes John’s chest tighten. His heart beats like seconds passing, and he’s suddenly aware of time. Painfully aware: time and its bruising, suffocating descent. Martin deserves more than this bloody world.
But they’re together and here and making dinner — what’s there to feel so stirred over? It seems silly again.
Martin says, “Just you wait. These are still going to be delicious.” He pulls more bottles out of the cabinet. John didn't know pancakes could be so complicated. He frowns at his puddle of eggs.
There’s no warning for when things change. It’s seamless, more so than drifting off to sleep. Like stepping through a doorway: you’re somewhere new, but the motion that got you there is almost as identical to the one that let you leave.
He looks back up from his eggs and lifts a fork to his mouth, warm pancake setting into his mouth. His breath catches and he barely stops from inhaling the pancake. He swallows the piece almost whole, coughing on it as it goes down hard. He is dimly aware the coughing fit interrupts someone speaking.
Martin is across from him, a plate of food before him; he stares with common concern.
John grabs for a glass of water nearby his plate and drinks.
“You okay there?” Martin hesitates.
He slams the glass on the table. “What happened?” His head whips left and right. Everything looks normal, like a typical evening dinner. “We were cooking…”
“... John?”
He prepares to explain more, jaw dropping and choosing one of a fumble of first words. He stops. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything,” Martin insists. “You’re worrying me.”
He should hold still, but he can’t help looking around the kitchen for a sign that he wasn’t going crazy. Their cooking dishes are piled in the sink. The egg whisk is poking out of the stack, silver with drying globs of yellowy goo.
The clock on the wall shows 6:32. They couldn’t have started cooking later than 5:30. He’d been whisking eggs. They’d barely started the process of preparing their meal. And now they were seated at the table and his plate was half gone.
“Wh-what were we talking about?” He stammers, trying hard to keep a steady composure. He desperately wants to enjoy a single night with Martin without some encroaching threat. He frowns at the thought, unsure of what sorts of threats he might be referring to.
“Don’t try to change the subject, John.” Martin sets down his fork and sits back. His arms cross. “Do you take me for a fool?”
“No, of course not. I’m just a little tired. I— I zoned out there for a —”
“You can’t lie to me.” His arms pull tighter around him like he’s having to hold himself. This is upsetting him more than it should.
There’s a knock at the door; John’s head turns toward the sound, and he is grateful for the interruption, but Martin grabs him by the wrist before he can rise from the table.
“What, are you just going to leave?”
“Someone is at the bloody door,” he hisses. “Didn’t you hear that?” It’s too late by the time he wishes he could take back the words. Shit.
“I didn’t hear ANYTHING!” he asserts. When he speaks again, his tone is suddenly softer, and it makes John pause. “Are you — are you okay? Really. Talk to me.”
John winces as the door is knocked on again, louder this time. Then again. He pulls out of Martin’s grasp and shoves his chair back. He rises. “Damn it, just give me a minute.” John starts to make his way out of the kitchen — and there! There’s a silhouette beyond the curtained window on the door.
“John, don’t just walk away from our conversation! What’s wrong with you?” He glances back to see that Martin isn’t following him, though he’s stood, hands at his side in defiance. Martin doesn’t get angry like this often. “I just wanted one night!”
“One night for what?” The knocking comes again. “You HAVE to hear that. Get over here.” John waves his hand frantically for Martin to come, but he doesn’t.
“There's no one here but us.”
What is that supposed to mean? John sighs and goes up to the door. He unlocks it and throws it open.
No one is there. Of course, no one is there.
Nothing is there.
Just a torrential tear in view of the greying sky, blotting out where the setting sun would’ve been. His arms fall to his sides.
As the fields of grass, distant trees, and twilight seep into the growing rip, feeding it, his own thoughts seem to be sewing themselves back together. He remembers things.
This was just another one of those universes stuck between all the other, bigger ones, that eventually just get absorbed into them. Their own entropy shredding them too fast thanks to the instability of being squashed between bigger things.
He wouldn’t remember this — and neither would Martin. They never did.
A hand is on his shoulder and he twists with a start, already forgetting he wasn’t just alone in this voiding world.
Except he is. No one is there, either, and the ghost of a touch on his shoulder fades.
John closes his eyes and allows it to all be sucked down to a point.
Before the last thought fades, he smells the sweet, tingling scent of cinnamon.