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The apartment is full of sand and unanswered questions, but it’s a roof over their head and a wall between them and the darkness outside. It might as well be a palace compared to everywhere Arthur has been recently. If the god of this place wasn’t a vengeful monstrosity, he would have called it a godsend.
“We should rest,” John insists again.
Arthur knows John is right- even covered in sand, the bed is a welcome prospect- but he feels as though they’ve missed something. “We will,” Arthur says. “Just take another look around, will you? Can you see anything else?”
“No- wait, yes. There is a door to your left, along the wall.”
Arthur runs his hand over the plaster wall until he finds the metal door handle. It turns easily in his hand, and the door opens with a creak. John doesn’t immediately gasp in horror, so Arthur takes that as a good sign. “John? What are we looking at?”
“It’s a bathroom,” John says, sounding amused. “The floor is made of gray tiles with sand caught in the grooves between them. A sink and toilet are to your right, and on your left is a bathtub. The porcelain is a little worse for wear and time, but everything seems intact.”
Arthur laughs. “A bathroom. I wasn’t expecting something so-”
“Ordinary?”
“Yes.” A thought occurs to Arthur. “Do you think the water still works?”
“I don’t see how it would. But I don’t see how this apartment got here in the first place, either.”
“Only one way to find out, I suppose.” Arthur feels his way to the sink and turns the faucet handle.
The sink shudders and groans, and sand pours from the faucet onto Arthur’s outstretched hand. Another creaking groan from the plumbing, and water begins to trickle out.
“Don’t touch that,” John warns. Arthur snatches his fingers away from the water, and John sighs in relief. “It came out black at first,” John explains. “But it’s clearing up now.”
Arthur can’t stop a grin from spreading across his face as he turns off the sink. “Brilliant. I know what we’re doing next, then. Do you see any towels?”
“There are some in a basket next to the bathtub. Move left a bit. There.”
Arthur bends down and picks one up. It smells clean enough, if a bit musty. But he’s hardly in a position to be picky. “Is there any a soap?”
“A small, half-empty bottle of shampoo sits on the corner of the tub in front of you.” Arthur can hear the frown in John’s voice. “Arthur, you’re not seriously going to take a bath in here.”
“Oh? And why not?” Arthur picks up the shampoo bottle and follows the edge of the bathtub to the faucet. “It’s been ages since I felt properly clean.”
“I wouldn’t call this place properly clean, personally,” John says, with a hint of disdain that is comically out of place.
Arthur chuckles. “Not up to your standards, is it? We can’t all be kings, you know.” The joke slips out before he can think twice about it, and John falls silent. “I’m sorry,” Arthur says after a moment. “I didn’t mean to-”
“It’s fine,” John snaps. “We have bigger problems than bad jokes.”
“Still-”
“Drop it, Arthur.”
Arthur sighs in annoyance but says nothing else. He turns the handle beside the faucet of the bath, and listen for the creaking of pipes and the whoosh of sand pouring out. He waits for a minute or so after he hears the water, giving it time to clear up. When he at last reaches out, the water is cool against his skin. Arthur turns the handle to the left and feels the water begin to warm up. Satisfied, he closes the drain and sits back to wait for the tub to fill up.
John is still quiet. Arthur can’t tell if he’s still annoyed or simply has nothing to say. The first is infinitely more likely; Arthur has never known John to run out of conversation topics. But everything else here in the Dreamlands is so strange that perhaps John too is different.
Regardless, Arthur leaves John to his own thoughts and sits down on the edge of the bathtub. He hasn’t had the chance to properly inspect their left hand since the forest. Arthur runs the fingers of his right hand over the back of his left until he feels the roots under the skin like thick veins. John gasps sharply at the contact. “Jesus, Arthur, don’t-”
“Does it still hurt?”
“There’s a fucking tree growing out of my finger where you bit off the end of it. Of course it still fucking hurts.”
“You never said anything,” Arthur says, frowning.
“We’ve had other things to worry about, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Arthur ignores that comment and returns to inspecting John’s hand, more carefully this time. The finger itself doesn’t feel warm or swollen, which is a good sign. The cauterized wound hasn’t reopened, and the wood seems to join up with the skin surprisingly smoothly. “It feels as all right as can be expected,” Arthur says. “If it was infected, it would probably be swollen by now. How does it look?”
“It looks fucking wonderful,” John says sarcastically. And then, more seriously, “The skin around the wound is healing. It’s slow going, but I don’t think there’s any sign of infection. We’ll just have to get used to it, I suppose.”
“Yeah. Just like everything else.”
John hums in agreement and goes quiet again. Arthur reaches into the tub to feel how high the water is, and sits back to wait some more. He taps out a rhythm on his left palm with the fingers of his right hand, a habit he’s kept from his composer days. His fingers follow the rhythm of a song in his head, keeping perfect time.
“What are you doing?” John asks, and his voice sounds oddly strained.
Arthur stops tapping. “If it hurts, I can-”
John makes a sound like a shaky inhale, even without lungs of his own. “No. I just- I wasn’t expecting that. It feels… nice.”
“You like it?” Arthur resumes the tapping. “I suppose you haven’t had many chances to be touched by something that doesn’t want to kill us.”
“It’s a nice change,” John says, a hint of laughter in his words. “And it distracts me from the pain.”
“I’m glad.” Arthur pauses, then adds, “If it gets worse, tell me. We can figure something out.”
“I will. The bath is almost full.”
“Wonderful.” Arthur stands up and begins stripping off his clothes. The fabric sticks to his sweaty, bloodstained skin, and he winces as he pulls his shirt over his head. Beneath, his chest is more scar tissue than skin. He can’t see it, but he feels the rough patches and raised skin, the more recent wounds half-healed, the dried blood still stuck to him.
He doesn’t linger over the scars for long. No use dwelling on what’s happened.
The water, when Arthur sinks into it, is so blissfully warm that it almost burns. It feels like heaven to his aching, battered body. Arthur leans his head back, letting the water cover his ears and listening to his own breathing echo through the water with every rise and fall of his chest.
“You missed this,” John says. It’s not a question.
“More than I ever thought I would,” Arthur says, sitting up just enough to lift his head above the water. John said there was shampoo, so Arthur should at least wash his hair, but for now, he just wants to soak in the warmth. The desert outside was scorching hot, but this is a wonderfully welcome heat that settles into his bones and stays there. It’s enough to make him feel something like human again.
Arthur’s hand finds John’s again in the water. He runs his fingers over John’s palm, tracing the crisscrossing lines there, and is rewarded with a contented sigh. “You remind me of a cat,” Arthur murmurs, rubbing his thumb over the callouses.
“I’m not a pet,” John says indignantly, but if he had a face of his own, Arthur thinks he would be smiling.
“No, not like that.” Arthur’s fingers move gently over the back of John’s hand. “You act like you hate everyone, but you can be… endearing, I suppose is the word. In the right circumstances.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“It’s not supposed to be an insult.”
John laughs. “For us, I guess that’s practically the same thing.”
“Exactly.” Arthur sits up all the way and stretches. “Where is that shampoo you mentioned?”
“To your right, next to your shoulder.”
Arthur opens the bottle and sniffs it cautiously. When nothing immediately smells amiss, he pours some out onto his palm. The contents of the bottle are a bit dried out, but it retains some of its original scent- pine, maybe- and it still forms bubbles when he rubs his hands together. Good enough.
His hair has gotten longer than he would usually let it; it must have grown more than he thought during the hospital stay. It reaches just past his shoulders now. He briefly considers cutting it, but looking around for scissors or a knife would take more time and effort than he is willing to spend.
“You should keep it,” John says, as though he knows what Arthur’s thinking. “The beard was a hard no, but long hair suits you.”
“As soon as we get home, I’m cutting it.”
“You’re no fun.”
“Pot, meet kettle.”
“What?”
“It’s an expression.” Arthur leans back under the faucet to rinse his hair out. “The pot calling the kettle black. It means you have the same problem as the person you’re criticizing.”
“You think I’m boring, then?” John teases.
“No.” Arthur pauses for effect. “I think you’re grumpy as hell, that’s all.”
“Hey!” John’s hand splashes Arthur in the face.
“You’re proving my point.”
“Oh, fuck off,” John grumbles, but without any heat behind it.
Arthur laughs. “Only joking. Though it wouldn’t kill you to lighten up a bit.”
“In the right circumstances, it very well could.”
“This is exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Pot and kettle, as you put it, Arthur. You’re not exactly known for your blinding optimism.”
“I take it back, you don’t remind me of a cat. I used to have this neighbor who would sit on his apartment balcony and yell at everyone who passed by-” John splashes him again and Arthur grins. “Oh, it’s on.”
It is, as Arthur quickly discovers, very difficult to win a splash fight against one’s own arm. Still, he puts up a good effort. He is aware that this is probably the dumbest possible use of their time, but it makes them both laugh like a god isn’t hunting them, like they have all the time in the world, and so it isn’t entirely a waste.
At last, Arthur is forced to surrender. By then, the water has lost some of its warmth, and his fingers are wrinkled like raisins, much to John’s amusement. He dries himself off and decides to put his old clothes back on, in order to save the clothes from Frank’s suitcase for the next day.
Arthur leaves the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. He brushes sand off the bed and sits down, tired but not ready to go to sleep just yet. John is about to protest, but when Arthur clasps their hands together, John cuts himself off mid-sentence.
“This is unfair,” John says, but curls his own fingers around Arthur’s just the same. They sit like that for a while, in a comfortable silence, until Arthur has an idea.
“May I try something?” Arthur asks. “It won’t hurt.” He half-hopes John will say no, and more than half-expects him to; it’s the kind of idea that only occurs to him when he’s sleep-deprived or intoxicated, and usually ends with a killer headache either way.
“All right.”
Part of Arthur can’t believe he even suggested this, and another part thrills at the prospect, as he raises John’s hand to his lips and presses a kiss to the knuckle of John’s index finger.
When John speaks, his words are soft, as though afraid to disturb something- the word reverent comes briefly to mind. “Why did you do that?”
Arthur shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought you might like it.” A pause. “Did you?”
“I’m not sure. It was new.”
“Should I try again?”
“I suppose it can’t do any harm,” John says, and now his voice takes on a gently teasing tone that makes Arthur sigh in feigned exasperation even as he kisses John’s hand again.
“Well?” Arthur says, like he’s interviewing a witness for a case, rather than… whatever the hell he’s actually doing. Really, it’s amazing he can say anything at all, because his thoughts are flying in all sorts of different directions, and none of them are coherent.
John hums thoughtfully. “A strange feeling, but not an unpleasant one. Quite the opposite.” He coughs, as though clearing a nonexistent throat. “Regardless, you’re very tired. We should sleep.”
“We will. Just one more thing.” Arthur’s thumb finds John’s pulse in his wrist. Carefully, his lips find that same spot, and he kisses John’s wrist just above their shared heartbeat. John sighs in that way that puts Arthur in mind of a purring cat again. “There. Perfect.”
“I agree,” John says softly. “Good night, Arthur.”
“Good night, John.”