Chapter Text
Bret woke to the light brush of fingertips against his cheek. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, as one might against the sun coming in through the curtains in the morning. He didn't want to get up. He felt like he'd been asleep a while, but it was one of those traitorous sleeps that left his body aching and his mind in a haze with no energy at all. But those fingers pulled up a half-memory that fluttered at the edge of his fogged-up mind. That's right, he was… somewhere… a moment ago, wasn't he, lying down just like this, with someone leaning over him and touching him with hands that were bigger but just as careful. His lips pulled into a sleepy smile, and a name tumbled carelessly off them.
"Jemaine?"
"Oh, Bret, you're awake…" The voice that came in response was breathy, tense, and definitely not Jemaine's. Bret blinked open his eyes to see a blurry mass that gradually sharpened into Mel's wide-eyed face a few inches from his own. "That's good. That's really good."
Right. Of course it wouldn't be Jemaine leaning over him and touching his face gently, would it? That would be weird. Not that it being Mel was much better. Grimacing, Bret craned his neck to look past Mel at his surroundings. They were in a basement, it looked like, with the main light source being an ominous green glow that emanated from a fridge in the corner. Beside the fridge were a large freezer and a shelf filled with tools, and on the opposite wall was a door with a burnt-out exit sign. The smell of chemicals hung thick enough to choke on in the air. A cold feeling of dread seeped into Bret as he looked around, and his chest tightened. He sat up, brushing off Mel's lingering hand on his chest, and stepped off the bed he was laid out on…
And immediately lost his footing. His legs crumpled like a couple of paper wrappers for straws, and he pitched forward with a yelp. Mel was quick to grab him, hooking her arms around his chest and tilting him back upright with an impressive amount of strength. She eased him back onto the bed--actually, when he looked at it, it was more of a cot that didn't even have any pillows or blankets--whispering little calming phrases like he was a startled horse.
"Shh, shh, it's okay. Just sit down."
"No, I don't want to sit down," he protested. "What's going on? Why am I in a basement?"
"You know, Bret, you look amazing," she breathed, completely neglecting to answer his question. She ran a hand down his arm, eyes lingering for a moment on his shoulder. "I mean, you're really put together… like you haven't aged a day."
"Uh, thanks, Mel," he mumbled, eyes flicking around trying to avoid her gaze. "But I'd like to be going now."
"Oh… are you sure?" She grabbed his arm--the opposite one whose shoulder she'd concentrated on--to steady him as he took another shot at standing up. "If you want I could walk you home--or you could stay here a little longer, maybe a few days or even a week, just to make sure you have enough time to rest and recuperate…"
"No, I think I just want to get home," he told her. "Sleep in my own bed, maybe have a bath. See what Jemaine is up to."
As he said this, he took an unsteady step toward the door. His legs were still stiff and shaky, but he grew more sure of himself with each step, like his body was getting used to walking all over again. There was something very wrong about all this, and he hadn't ruled out the possibility that he was dreaming, but assuming this situation was real he wanted nothing more than to get out of it. All he could think was that Mel must have drugged and kidnapped him. That was extreme even for her, but how else would he have ended up in a basement with her leaning over him? The idea made him shudder. Oh yes, he'd definitely need a bath when he got home. Something to warm him up, ease his stiff and aching joints, and cleanse him of the slimy grimy sensation that permeated his body.
The basement's exit led up a flight of rickety stairs to a hidden door at the back of a hall closet, which in turn opened out to the familiar scene of Mel and Doug's house. Doug was standing outside, and when Mel stepped out into the hallway with Bret in tow, his eyebrows shot up and he flashed Bret a startled but genuine-looking smile.
"Wow, it's good to see you, Bret. I see Mel's finally got you up and about."
"Hi, Doug," Bret returned the greeting. He paused, wanting to ask about how he'd ended up in the basement and how long he'd been down there and what the chemical smell down there was from, but Mel looped an arm around his back and cut him off before he could.
"He looks really good, doesn't he, Doug? As good as ever," she purred. "I'm just taking him back to Jemaine now--he insisted on it."
"Oh, uh, that's…" Bret, whose strength had luckily returned by then, shifted out of Mel's grasp. "You don't have to take me. I can get there myself."
Despite Mel's clear disappointment, she let him go once he made it clear he was serious about making it home on his own. She lent him money to take a taxi home (saying he didn't need to repay her, but making some very wink-wink nudge-nudge suggestions about how he could potentially repay her if he wanted to) and handed him a spare key to his flat since his pockets were empty. Come to think of it, he was lucky he had pockets at the moment… could have woken up naked. That would have been even worse. Instead he was wearing a standard set of his clothes, which were clean but a little rumpled.
Outside, the sky was light but overcast. It must have been around midday judging by the temperature, and the sidewalk was wet and dotted with puddles and the occasional worm. The fresh air, though polluted as always in this city, was… well, it was a breath of fresh air. It felt like he hadn't been outside in weeks. Bret sat on the steps outside the building and watched the worms wriggling across the pavement until his taxi pulled up, at which point he climbed in without noticing the startled look that flashed across the driver's face.
The door to his and Jemaine's flat was locked when Bret got there. He used the spare key Mel had lent him and stepped inside, calling his roommate's name, but got no response. Eyebrows raising, he closed the door behind him and wandered through the living room and kitchen, then poked his head into the bedroom and bathroom--all empty. He wondered where his friend might be at this time of day (the laundromat? No, there was a pile of dirty clothes in the hamper) but didn't dwell on it, despite a slight niggling sensation growing in the back of his mind. He had bigger concerns. An unexpectedly forceful gurgle in his stomach tipped him off to how hungry he was, so he put his desired bath on hold and headed to the kitchen instead. There were no eggs in the fridge, so he settled on toast. When he went to sit down he found himself reaching for empty space--there was only one chair. Bret blinked and rubbed his eyes. When the second chair failed to appear before him, he shrugged and took a seat at the opposite end of the table, where Jemaine usually sat, and ate in vaguely uneasy silence.
He was still a little hungry once he finished his toast, but since they had such a perpetually tight budget (how long was it since they had a gig?) he decided against eating anything else and instead went to go have his bath. While the water was running, he noticed while undressing that his shirt bore a large dark stain around the right shoulder as well as a small tear that had been clumsily sewn up. He didn't think either of those were there before. Worse yet, there was a matching set of stitches on his actual shoulder, and the skin around that area was discoloured. That definitely wasn't there before. Actually, now that he really looked at himself in the mirror, all his skin was a shade paler than usual. Bret gulped, skin prickling with intense discomfort. What had Mel done to him, exactly? He didn't think he wanted to know.
The bath was good, though. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, letting the warmth seep through his skin down to the weary bones and coax the tension from his muscles. It was so relaxing he almost fell asleep, and was only spurred back into wakefulness by the sound of the door opening and a familiar set of footsteps coming in. There was the sound of something being set down, a bit of muffled shuffling about, and then those footsteps came down the hall towards him. By the time he realized what was going on and jerked upright in a panic, Bret didn't have time to get past the first syllable of "Wait, don't come in" before the door swung open and he came face-to-face with Jemaine.
Silence fell over the room. A sweltering flush rose in Bret's cheeks and he ducked, submerging as much of himself as he could in the tub with his knees drawn up to his chest. Head under water, he held his breath and screwed his eyes shut and silently prayed for Jemaine to back right out of the room and pretend that this hadn't happened. Instead, for reasons he couldn't begin to guess at, Jemaine crossed the room with a few fast heavy footfalls until he must have been right by the tub. Sure enough, when Bret poked his head out of the water and cautiously pried one eye open, he was met with his friend's face looming over him with an expression it was hard to put his finger on. Shock, yes… revulsion, no. Desire or anything like that, no--thankfully he wasn't even looking at Bret's body, just his face. But he also looked… haunted, almost. Like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Bret couldn't quite believe it either. His heart thudded in his ears, amplified by the tub. They were much too close right now. As if he were set on making this worse, Jemaine raised a hand and reached out, fingers extended, toward him. Bret recoiled, brow crinkling, just before those fingers could brush against him and he'd be forced to confront if that was something he was into.
"Hey, man, what…?"
"Bret… you-- ah." Jemaine's tone shifted, strangled disbelief morphing into something like understanding, though still tinged with heavy confusion. He dropped his hand to his side, ran the other hand through his hair, and flashed a nervous smile that didn't even come close to reaching his eyes. "Ahh, I'm dreaming. Yes, of course, I must have fallen asleep…"
"Nah, I'm pretty sure you're awake," said Bret. "I might be dreaming, though, because this is all pretty weird."
He pinched himself to check after saying this, and flinched at the subsequent pinprick of pain. Probably not dreaming, then. In that case…
"You'd better get out of here, man," he told Jemaine, who continued to stand there staring at him with that haggard look about him. "Don't want you looking at me when… y'know."
That seemed to flick a switch in Jemaine's mind, because a sudden awareness lit up in his eyes and he reared back, visibly gulping, like it had only just occurred to him now that Bret was naked in the bathtub. He backed out of the room in a hurry and slammed the door behind him, sputtering something about how he was going crazy. Bret was inclined to agree. Why would Jemaine barge in on him like that without knocking? The door was closed. They'd lived together long enough not to make those kinds of mistakes.
Yet another irritating problem came to Bret's attention once his bath was done and he headed to the bedroom with a towel wrapped around himself because he couldn't find his bathrobe. None of his clothes were where they should have been in the drawer. They must have all been in the laundry. He glanced over at the dirty laundry pile and considered pulling something out of it, but the smell was just ripe enough that he figured he'd be better off changing back into the clothes he woke up in.
"We'll need to go to the laundromat soon," he informed Jemaine upon coming out into the living room. "All my clothes are dirty."
Jemaine was sitting on the couch in a hunched position, facing the tv, which wasn't even on, with a hundred-yard stare. He jumped bolt upright at Bret's address. Bret walked over and came to a stop just behind the back of the couch. In their reflection on the empty black tv screen, he saw Jemaine's chest rise and fall rapidly, almost hyperventilating, and a dozen microexpressions flit across his face that few other people would have caught and that even Bret couldn't begin to interpret.
"What's going on with you, Jemaine?" Bret asked, brow furrowing with concern. "You're acting pretty weird."
Jemaine didn't answer at first. He sat frozen in place, back rigid against the couch, and though his breaths slowed they remained shaky. Finally, he swallowed hard and turned his head to face Bret without quite meeting his gaze.
"…'M not acting weird," he mumbled. There was a sheepish undertone to his voice that belied that he knew full well he was acting weird. "I'm just… surprised to see you, is all."
"You shouldn't be," Bret pointed out. "It's my place too. I live here. You see me here every day."
"Yes, well…" Jemaine rolled his shoulders, tilting his head back to stare vacantly up at the ceiling, and worried his bottom lip between his teeth. "You haven't been, actually. Haven't been around for a while."
That sounded obviously untrue, but when Bret opened his mouth to reject the claim he found that he couldn't, at least not as vehemently as he wanted to. It did feel like it had been a while, somehow, and there was a certain ache in his chest when he looked at Jemaine. Sort of a… nostalgic… longing? Nope, no, not longing. That couldn't have been it. Either way, he ended up indignantly flapping his mouth open and shut a few times without actually saying anything, and another tense silence began to settle in until Jemaine preemptively broke it with a long heavy sigh. It wasn't his usual exasperated sigh, though there was a tinge of exasperation in there. He sounded tired. Really, deeply, profoundly tired.
He patted the cushion next to him, beckoning Bret to sit down, and with some apprehension Bret did. He squeezed himself into the corner, tight against the arm of the couch, so there was more space between him and Jemaine--the bath incident had put a strange taste in his mouth and he didn't want to sit too close right now--and folded his hands over his knees to try to keep his legs from fidgeting. Jemaine just stared at him for a moment, still with that bizarrely haunted look, and Bret's legs ended up bouncing anyway because he had the nervous energy and his friend's disposition wasn't doing anything to help it. He jumped when Jemaine spoke up.
"Bret. What's the last thing you remember?"
"Well, you walked in on me when I was in the bath…"
"Before that."
"I took a taxi here from Mel and Doug's place."
"You were at…?" Jemaine breathed, eyes widening, but quickly cut himself off with a shake of his head. Leaning forward intently--prompting Bret to lean back--he pressed: "What's the last thing you remember before that?"
Bret opened his mouth only to find there was no answer to that question readily available on his tongue. He paused, frowning, and tried to think. Before he woke up… he was lying down, he thought, going to sleep. The details were fuzzy. It was all fuzzy, really. More of… just a big lying-down-shaped blur. But before that part, there was a bit he did remember.
"We were on tour in London," he said. "Well, Murray called it a tour."
"It was a vacation, really."
"Right. Yeah, I don't even know if it was supposed to be us going with him originally."
"Don't think so, no. I think he bought tickets for Shelly and Jim and neither of them were able to go, so he gave the tickets to us and called it a tour."
Bret nodded along--yes, he remembered all of this. As he nodded, some of the tension seeped out of Jemaine's frame. His tone was coaxing, encouraging, and it looked like he was starting to feel encouraged himself. There was even a faint smirk playing around the edges of his lips. It made Bret smile too. His legs had stopped bouncing, and he now stretched them out, leaning back against the couch and unconsciously shifting a little closer to his friend.
"He had one gig booked for us, though," Bret added, "So it was sort of a tour."
"Mm… no, think you'd need more shows than that to count as a tour," Jemaine said, pressing his lips together and shaking his head. "And it wasn't even a proper gig, remember?"
"Oh, right," said Bret--he'd almost forgotten, but not quite, because he did remember this. He did remember. "It was an open mic night he signed us up for." His hands came to rest on his knees again and there was a beat, as he hit a roadblock of something that he didn't remember. "How'd that go?"
And just like that the tension returned. Something flashed across Jemaine's face and he slumped against the couch with a sort of grumble-groan-sigh. When he shook his head it was like all the life had drained out of him.
"Not good. It… didn't go at all, actually."
"What, you mean we didn't make it to our only gig?"
"No." He took a deep breath, running his hands up and down his legs, gaze focused on the ceiling. Before Bret could ask a follow-up question, he changed the subject. "We went sightseeing. Do you remember that?"
"Oh, yeah," Bret said with a nod. "Yeah, that was pretty cool."
"Was it?"
Jemaine sounded a bit skeptical there. Bret thought back to what he could remember of the trip and came away smiling to himself at the memory of exploring an exciting new location. There was this one gift shop that particularly stood out, and an excellent souvenir he'd picked up from it.
"Yeah, it was. I don't remember how the trip ended, though," he added with a shrug. "Must've gotten really drunk on the last day or something. How about you, Jemaine? Have you got a hangover?"
That could almost explain his odd behaviour, Bret thought. Well, not quite, but he'd take any explanation to put this all aside and call it a day. But Jemaine shook his head, that haunted expression returning to his eyes along with a queasy pallor.
"No. I wouldn't have a hangover now, even if I drunk myself into a stupor on the last day of our trip, because…" He paused, drawing in a deep shaky breath, and his gaze shifted over to look Bret dead in the eyes. "It's been six months since then."