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“You’re going to wake up, right?”
The words feel familiar when they leave Jules’s lips as weakly as the ragged breath fanning against his face. But that...can’t be right. He’s never been in any situation like this one, not where he’s not the injured party. And yet, he can’t shake the feeling of familiarity as he whimpers out “Mason, please .”
There’s no response.
And this is where Jules realizes something is wrong. Because there’s no response from anyone . The room is empty, save for him and Mason.
He drags the injured man into his arms, no easy feat for someone as skinny as Jules, clutching him to his chest. There were people here, he was sure of it. Sanja, and Nate, and Felix and Adam. They were here, and those trappers. They were here.
Jules buries his face in Mason’s hair, squeezing his eyes shut as he clings to his one anchor. Feels the heat radiating off of him, even as Jules’s shirt grows warm and wet. The smell of iron is overwhelming, and Jules can’t even say it makes him feel nauseous, as he knows it likely should.
He hears flesh ripping, feels his neck grow wet while his jugular is torn open. Mason isn’t in his arms anymore, blood only runs through his fingers, and the wrists split cleanly open along the veins, like someone took a thread and ripped up.
He tries to say anything , but all that comes out is a choked gurgle, like he’s drowning. In a way he supposes he is.
He can’t breathe.
He wakes up with his sheet twisted around his neck, nearly causing him to panic more. Jules can hear his heart pounding in his ears, but what most frightens him once he extracts himself from the sheets is his arms are painfully empty.
Mason. He’s not here. What if he—
Jules’s stomach turns. His hands are shaking as they shoot out to grab his phone, nearly knocking it off the bedside table. But he can only bring himself to care about scrolling to Mason’s name in his contacts and hitting the call button.
Every unanswered ring ratchets Jules’s tension up higher and higher, until he feels like his spine is going to snap in two because oh god, something is wrong Mason’s hurt or dead or—
Click. “ Yeah ?”
Jules lets out a choked half-sob in relief at the sound of Mason’s voice.
“ Jules? Is that you? ” There’s an edge suddenly present that Jules can’t quite identify. If he didn’t know Mason he’d almost call it concern.
“Y-yeah. Yeah, it’s me. Sor-sorry, I just—” Jules swallows down another despairing noise, squeezing his eyes shut. “I just—”
“ I’m coming over. ”
“No, you don’t have to—”
“Who said I had to? I want to. I’m coming over.”
“I—” The call ends before Jules can get another word in. He’s left in silence, the only light coming from a crack in the curtains through which moonlight slices through the darkness. He scrubs tears away with the heels of his palms, biting his lip hard. The pounding of his heart has subsided a little, at least. It’s not painful anymore.
He can’t do anything but lay there in wait. The silence slowly, surely, becomes overwhelming. Time is stretching out—he can’t tell if he’s been sitting here for five minutes or five hours. The pounding of his heart is picking up again as he looks nervously at the dark shape of his covered mirror.
What if they’re listening?
What if this is a trap? Get in his head to lure Mason away from the team, kill him, kill Jules, shatter the team—
If he moves will his throat be ripped out before he can even scream?
The spine snapping tension creeps up once more. Jules doesn’t move a muscle. He thinks he hears shifting underneath the bed, and holds his breath. Every creak and groan of the apartment drives him further up the wall. He needs to stay still. He needs to not breathe. If he moves, if he breathes, they’ll catch him. They’ll rip him open, they’ll snap his bones, they’ll watch his blood run through the floorboards, they’ll do the same to Mason. They’ll rip into him like animals and not even his healing will save him.
Jules feels sick. He hasn’t felt this bad in almost a decade. Hasn’t felt this hunted . Except now, unlike back then, he knows he is. Now he knows he was right all along. Now he knows they can get in, into his home, into his life, into his mind, into his body. He still feels Murphy’s blood in his veins, and he knows it’s still there. He knows. He knows it’s creeping into his cells, infecting everything with Murphy’s decay, corrupting his insides. He can feel his body rotting, and he knows everything else in the dark can tell too. They smell it on him. They can smell Murphy’s poison becoming ingrained in him. Their hungry eyes are boring into him constantly, every second of every day, he knows it. Feels it.
He hears the front door creak open. There’s a moment of silence, but then heavy footsteps are pounding too fast, too hard, coming up to his bedroom door way too quickly before it slams open with a loud crack. The smell of cigarettes and spice hitting his nose keeps Jules from pissing himself in fear.
The light clicks on, and Mason is there, eyebrows knitted. Jules can’t figure out what the emotion on his face is, but he’s running his fingers along Jules’s neck, easing a little tension out of his body. His voice is softer than Jules has ever heard it when he says, “Tell me what’s wrong.”
There’s no way Jules should say something. If he says something, Mason could get hurt. But those gentle fingers that are now running through his hair can’t help but draw even more and more tension out of his body, slowing his breathing.
“Think there’s someone. Something. Here. Wants to hurt us.” He murmurs. The words tumble out of him in spite of his brain screaming at him to stay silent.
Mason tilts his head, and that’s recognisable. That’s confusion. “Jules, there’s no one here.”
“Hiding.”
“No, it’s not—” Jules flinches at the sigh of irritation, and Mason seems to pick up on it, because his voice softens again. “It’s only us. Just us, okay? I promise.”
“How do you know?”
“What, you don’t think I’d be able to sense if anything was here? All I sense is you.”
God, Jules is on the verge of tears again, eyes and face burning. “There are things you can’t hear, or smell, or see.” He breathes. His hands are itching to tug hard at his hair.
Mason pushes a hand back through his hair, the corners of his lips twitching downwards. The silence in the room is heavy. It hangs in the air for what feels like forever, before Mason lets out a slow breath. He starts walking around the bed. It’s Jules’s turn to be confused. “What are you—”
The bed behind him sinks under Mason’s weight, and there are strong, warm arms wrapping around him and pulling him close. “If there is something in here that I somehow can’t see or hear, it’ll have to go through me.” He huffs. Jules feels his breath on the back of his neck.
“I don’t want you getting hurt because of me again.” It’s the loudest Jules has been the whole conversation. The bed shifts behind him, and there’s a warm, calloused hand tilting his head up to look at Mason, who’s propping himself up on his arm.
“Is that what this is about?” He murmurs, grey eyes dark with something Jules still can’t figure out. “Come on, handsome. I thought we covered this, it wasn’t your fault.”
Jules swallows. All of a sudden he finds himself unable to find any words, anything to communicate his feelings verbally. Instead he does something he knows he shouldn’t—he slowly, hesitantly turns over, clinging to Mason’s shirt and burying his face there. “Can you just...stay for right now? So I know you’re safe?”
Mason’s head hits the pillow, Jules hears it make contact. Fingers are running through his hair again, and an arm is wrapping around him, confirming the answer without words.
Jules feels his body relaxing in spite of himself at the sound of Mason’s heartbeat. His eyelids grow heavy.
He wakes up from a dreamless sleep feeling none of the fear of last night. The rain is pattering softly on the window. Things are warm, and soft and cozy. Mason isn’t here anymore, though he can’t say he was expecting him to be. There’s still a soft ache in his chest when he turns over to check the clock—
“ SHIT!”
He rolls out of bed, hitting the floor with a huge thud. It’s eleven a.m . He is so fucking late to work. The first pair of pants he finds are the ones he pulls on. Unfortunately, they’re a pair of tight black jeans, and it’s fucking difficult —it has him trying not to fall over again and failing. The next is trying to boot up, and they’re tied wonky but whatever gets him out the door faster is fine.
He doesn’t even have enough time for coffee, just pulling on his jacket and scrambling for the door. He makes it halfway through the living room.
“I called you in sick.”
Jules stops. Mason is lounging on his couch, looking stony as ever, holding out a mug of tea to him.
“Well, actually I had Nate do it. I think he’s sure that I broke your hips, but that’s his problem.” He continues. Jules takes the cup, feeling very much like a deer in headlights. It’s...not bad, actually. A little weaker than he usually takes it. He never thought of Mason as the type to know how to make tea. His surprise must show on his face, what with Mason telling him, “I made Nate tell me how to make that too. Not that your goddamn beakers and crap made it any easier.”
“Do you...mean my infuser?”
“Whatever it is.”
“I have smaller, single cup ones, you know. They look like Nessie.”
“Just drink the tea, Jules.”
Jules does. He sits in the chair next to the couch, since he’s apparently not going to work now. It’s nice, for a while. Calm. Almost domestic.
Mason leans forward, staring at Jules with that unreadable expression again. “So.”
Right.
Jules sighs, setting the mug to the side. His throat feels tight already. “I’m sorry for calling you out so late.”
“Tell me what was going on and I’ll consider us even.”
Jules’s stomach hurts. He wants to throw up, or faint, or something. His body is revolting against him. The feeling gets worse when he meets Mason’s gaze, paired with heat blooming in his face and ears. Instead he looks at the rug, tracing out the constellations patterned on it.
He does speak, eventually. When the impatience radiating off Mason comes to a peak. He sighs, pressing his lips into a thin line before finally saying, “I had...a nightmare. About you. You were...we were in the sewers, and you were bleeding, and no one else was there but us and all I could do was—” he stops. Corrects course. Mason doesn’t need to know everything, he reasons, not least dream-Jules clinging to him like a scared child. “...eventually you were gone too, and I was choking on my own blood again. And my wrists, they were…split open.”
A shudder racks Jules’s body. He can feel the ghost sensation of his arms splitting along the blackened veins now found there. He rubs at them, as if that’ll dispel the feeling.
“So when you woke up, you called me to make sure I was okay. I’m touched, handsome.” He can hear Mason shift, and he’s way closer now. “But what about when I got here? Your heartbeat was so fast I thought you were having a heart attack.”
Silence from Jules again.
“Jules.”
He doesn’t want to tell him. How can he? If he does Mason will know he’s...broken. Defective. That something is wrong with him and has been since before they even met.
And worse, what if Mason lets something slip to someone he shouldn’t? They’ll know too. Use it to hurt him. Use him to hurt the others.
But on the other hand, if he doesn’t tell Mason, he’s likely to let even more slip to someone in his frustration. Someone who puts the pieces together. There’s no way for Jules to win. He either tells Mason or someone figures it out and tells everyone.
God dammit. If he hadn’t been so weak and gotten wrapped up in his own head again this wouldn’t be happening. Mason wouldn’t know, no one else would be at risk of finding out, he would be at work and no one would have to worry about how stupid and fragile and weak he is—
“ Jules, ” Mason is on his knees, cupping Jules’s face, “Look at me.”
Jules obeys, tilting his head into the warm hand on his cheek. The look from last night is on Mason’s face again. His voice takes on that soft quality once more, and Jules can feel tension melt away when it does. “You can trust me. I promise. What happened?”
“I, um.” Jules fidgets, wanting desperately to look away, but Mason’s stormy eyes are keeping him anchored. “It’s. I’m…I…uh. It was a, um. The nightmare, uh, it…triggered a…paranoid delusion.” When he finally forces out the words they’re barely above a whisper.
“What?”
“It triggered a, um, paranoid delusion. I got…so in my head that it just. Crept up on me and suddenly I was convinced there was something using my dreams and my mind to lure you out and kill us both. And if I moved it’d come out.” Jules can’t help but bark out an anxious laugh. “Seems stupid now.”
“No kidding. How long has this—”
“Since I was about 13, I think. I dunno.”
Mason frowns. “Have you talked to anyone about this?”
“No, I haven’t. You’re really the first one to know that anything is up in a little over a decade. Look, you have your fuckin explanation now, can we go back to pretending I’m not—”
“No.” Mason’s answer catches Jules off guard. From the way he looks for a moment, it catches Mason off guard too. He takes a deep breath. “Does Rebecca know?”
Jules laughs at that, but there’s no humor in it. It’s tight, tense. “Oh, great idea. ‘Hey mom, for the past decade and a half I’ve been experiencing hallucinations and delusions so bad I can’t leave my room sometimes and even had a breakdown when I was 18 but you never knew because you were gone so much and I didn’t want to make you feel guilty!’ That would go over fantastic with her.”
“So who’s the other person that knows?”
“Tina. Kind of. She doesn’t know the full extent of it.” Jules closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Are we done with twenty questions?”
“I just want to know who I need to keep quiet around.” The warm, calloused hands are moving down, holding his. “What does she know?”
Jules clams up. Again.
Mason’s tone becomes laced with frustration. “Goddamnit, Jules, I don’t want to tell anyone your shit, but if I don’t know when to bite my tongue—”
He can’t. Jules stands up suddenly, walking over to the window and staring out at the alley. Staring out at it, not really seeing anything. His hands tremble, and he clenches them into fists to stop them.
Mason huffs in irritation. Jules hears his footsteps move towards the door, then stop. Hesitate. They come back, and there are hands on his hips, a face buried in his neck. It’s meant as an apology, he supposes. His hands become steady. He reaches up to run his fingers through Mason’s hair, tilting his head back till it’s resting on the shoulder of the man behind him. When soft kisses start pressing along his scar he’s reminded he didn’t put on his makeup as he was running out—a good thing, then, that he was called in sick. He doesn’t think he could handle the questions.
Questions.
He gets too many of them lately. It’s exhausting. Constant probing, dissecting him like one of his specimens until he becomes a collection of disparate pieces and his whole self becomes invisible.
The kisses are nice. A lot softer than anything he’s received in a while, even from Mason. Especially from Mason. It has his tension melting away, puts his mind a little more at ease.
It makes him feel safe.
He sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“‘S fine, handsome. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“She just thinks I’m anxious. Doesn’t know about the delusions or anything.”
The silence in the room is heavy. Jules can’t possibly think of what to say now—not when he’s told Mason all he can bring himself to. And Mason is still here, with those soft kisses and his arms now around Jules’s waist, instead of calling him any of the number of names he’s worried about hearing.
“This doesn’t change anything.” Mason murmurs, as if he could read Jules’s thoughts. “Doesn’t mean I like you any less.”
Jules snorts. “Oh, you like me now?”
“Shut up. You know I do, or I wouldn’t be here.”
Jules smiles. “I suppose you’re right.” He lets out a deep breath, fully relaxing into the curves of Mason’s body behind him. “Thanks. For being here.”
Mason grunts in response. Jules shifts, turning around to face him. He wraps his arms around Mason’s neck, leaning back a little to get a better look at his face. He likes meeting the gaze of those pretty eyes Mason’s got. When he does, he sees Mason is staring at him with…this intensity that has Jules’s heart pounding. He smiles at him. “I suppose I should do something to show you my appreciation, hm?” He hums, running a hand down Mason’s chest to his stomach, down to his jeans, tugging at his belt loops. That brings out that smirk Jules adores, those wolfish eyes raking down his body.
“I can’t say I’d object.” He responds, and Jules is ready to take him right there when Mason’s phone goes off. He lets Jules go, annoyance palpable as he answers the call with a, “ What ?”
Jules can kind of hear Adam’s voice, but not what’s being said. From the increasingly annoyed look on Mason’s face, though, he can guess he won’t be getting lucky right now. Mason hangs up with an, “I’ll be right there.” and an exasperated sigh. He looks at Jules.
Before he can say anything, Jules says, “Raincheck?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Mm, how about…” Jules breathes, pulling Mason closer by his shirt collar. “You drop by tonight, when we have all the time we could want?”
Mason smirks. “You’re reading my mind, handsome.”
Their kiss is hard and fast, before Mason pulls away to leave. He stops, turns to look at Jules. “You’ll be okay?” Once again, that rare softness has Jules’s heart melting.
Jules nods.
Mason leaves.
Jules sits, sinking into his couch. He almost feels…lighter. Like a weight is lifted off his shoulders.
Weird.