Work Text:
“Is this the part where you leave?”
The lamp flickered from the roar of thunder outside, and the dim yellow lit North so warmly as he knelt on the bed besides where he lay, propped up on his elbows.
North sighed sombre and quiet, pulling the quilt down off of Night’s lower half and sliding in next to him, chin nestled to his mussed hair, using the wet hand towel to wipe down his chest; it was warm, and Night opened his eyes from where he was prepared to wince at the touch of ice cold wetness to his sensitive abdomen. Melting into the pleasant sensation, Night let his head fall against North’s shoulder. Though the hot water North had soaked the towel in had cooled, it was still relaxing. Night — in his dazed state — quickly felt his brain fogging up.
Maybe it wasn’t just because of the warm towel tenderly wiping away the proof they were together tonight. Maybe it was just North. The towel was rough, but it slid over his skin so gently. Was it the hand that gave it that gentle touch? That bloody, bruised hand, skirting over his body so slowly? As if it was something to treasure. As if he was somebody to North.
Night lifted his dazed head and saw a force. Nothing short of it. But his features, they were so soft; parted lips, eyes focused and eyelashes long, fluttering; the mellow curve of his cheek that he’d never notice in any other lighting than this, here — his bedside table lamp and the open curtains, allowing the moonlight to seep through — the way his bangs fell over his eyes, their endless black hues refracting the warm light from his lamp so rightly. Night’s chest felt tingly, and he almost laughed at the ticklish sensation from North wiping the last of his release from his stomach.
Before he spoke, North breathed in, swallowed that gulp of air and looked Night dead in the eye with a tentativeness that cut him to the bone; as he bled, North’s eyes fell back down to his skin as he sharply inhaled again.
“…Do you want me to leave?”
Night couldn’t look at him any longer. He let his face turn into North’s shoulder, hair ruffling as he slowly shook his head side to side against it. Now, in this post-coital silence — bare, soiled — there was nothing Night wanted to be less than alone. The prickly hair adorning North’s thigh against his own itched, but his skin was scalding hot in this barren, barren cold. It gave comfort to Night’s bareness, held his naked body.
“Okay.”
It was a whisper, one that Night could barely hear as North spoke it into his hair, as if he hoped his words would get lost and tangled in the strands — but there was light, how could anything get lost here?
Able to look down, Night saw North’s hand as it swiped the towel downwards, down his tummy and right past his flagging cock to his thigh; peeling himself back from Night, he sat up and parted his legs, half-situating himself between them as he separated them further apart to clean his remnants from Night’s body.
Oddly — Night thought, — he didn’t feel embarrassed, not even as North let his eyes linger all over his bareness. Though the open air hitting every cell of his skin was biting, exposing… It was almost a pleasant sort of rush; he was seen, North saw him, every single inch of him unhidden and he was safe, safe under those eyes, the sleepy one on North’s left and North’s right eye, too, tinged the faintest shade of red from his recovering black eye. The surrounding skin was twin painted with his knuckles: beautiful shades of purples and reds — the injury had been ghastly whilst fresh, but in its recovering state was striking.
He felt safe underneath this scary, torn boy — and he hoped, he hoped and hoped and prayed that North could feel a fraction of it in return, that Night could blanket him in the essence of his name: night, too dark for the monsters to find them; night, when you hide away where it’s warm and everything is right; night, when there are no expectations or images to live up to, when you can just be, be as you’re supposed to, be the most stripped back version of yourself until there’s only a scrap of your most vulnerable self remaining, bare in the safety of someone.
Reaching out slowly, Night briefly paused his hand by North’s face, letting him see it, know what he’s doing, before holding one side of his face and feeling North crumple under the gentle touch; crumple? No, he… He looked fractured by it, by the thumb caressing his cheekbone — the slight widen of his eyes and his shaky swallow, North closing his eyes and leaning his head into it impossibly further. Night wanted to smile. He did.
Like a puppy, Night thought; a big, bumbling puppy. That’s all North was.
But that wasn’t right. Because when North opened his eyes, Night didn’t just see the subtle glimmer of unshed tears; in the depths of North’s dark eyes the bedside lamp illuminated them honey brown — the stark glimmer in them was so bright, so, so bright — and with a light to that darkness, Night was able to see the boy hiding behind it all.
Just a boy.
His heart thudded with a resounding ache, shattering his ribs as if a mirror to North’s own cracks, breaking off in such small, shimmering fragments refracting that golden light in colours Night had never known to exist — a tear fell from North’s eye, the unbruised one, and he wiped it before it could be reflected out to paint this room. It didn’t need to be seen. Not now. Night would take it into his skin, hold it there like a promise to his heart; a vow; an oath.
North glanced to Night’s hand before blinking them back up, swallowing back a choke and sharply exhaling through his nose.
Folding over the wet rag and parting Night — a knife, dulled and blunt — he wiped him over where he was sore and sensitive and Night bit his lip to hold back a wince. It was nice to get the lube and release out of him, nice to hold North and be taken care of in return. And North needed it, he knew.
Their breathing was barely even audible as North finished cleaning him up, standing up from the bed as Night’s touch on him skimmed down his arm, loosely holding his wrist before falling, watching him walk back to the bathroom. North… North was walking normally, he was, but there was a slight slump to his shoulders — his high, prideful posture — that sent a wave of something so palpable down Night’s spine and he knew, he knew he should’ve immediately ran after North at the sound of the bathroom door closing.
Pulling on his boxers, Night’s tumble to the bathroom was a blur as he ignored the shaking of his legs (and the way they first faltered), swinging open the unlocked door to see North half-sat against the sink hissing a curse and wiping his tears. The overhead light was cool toned and flickering, white and blinding in the blueness of the tiled room.
“I need to go,” choked North, trying to barge past Night — still wiping the tears from his red, puffy eyes — and failing, Night shutting the door behind himself. “Night, I need to go,”
“No,” Night said. “You’re not going,” and that was all it took for North’s head to fall down onto his shoulder, for his bruised hands to grip at his shoulder blades, trembling.
“I’m sorry,” North weakly said.
“Why?”
“I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
At that, Night sighed with his eyes closed, tight, forehead resting on North’s own shoulder as he shook his head. No, he wanted to say. No, don’t ever say that, ever. His arms came to rest on North and his hand lay on his hair, stroking it rhythmically.
North continued after a large breath. “I— I just have a lot going on, and… Shit, I— I’m fine, really, this is pathetic—” but Night shook his head again, wordless, keeping his fingers tangled in his locks. He already knew North had a lot going on. He already knew that North was closed off, not the type to talk to anybody about any of it. If Night’s presence allows him that all-encompassing safety for long-suppressed emotions to bubble up, then Night would hold him through it. North wasn’t fine. He was failing his repeat year, his home life wasn’t stable (though Night didn’t know much,) and he was in fights every other day. Of course he wasn’t fine.
It must be so much strain for someone… Someone—
“I’m here,” he says, whispered against North’s collarbone.
— for someone who, through everything, despite everything, was just a boy beneath it all.
And, when Night cradled his cheeks to look at the tear-stained face in his hands, North was kissed on the forehead for the very first time in his muddled memory.