Chapter Text
“Nadir?”
Something— someone— a cold hand— Erik grabbed his shoulder and gently shook him awake. Nadir groaned as the thick haze of sleep dissipated, leaving him with nothing but pain and discomfort. His entire mouth was bone-dry. He lifted his head from the dining room table and tried to focus his vision on Erik— both difficult tasks. Once the world stopped being so blurry and the lamp on the table stopped being so bright, it occurred to Nadir that Erik looked… different. The half of his face Nadir could see was uncharacteristically concerned for him, brows knitted with worry, hard, gaunt lines tamed and docile, eyes turned into pools of molten gold.
Either that, or the heat in the room was making Nadir hallucinate.
His voice was hoarse. He spoke past the ache in his throat. “What?”
“Are you feeling alright?”
“I…” Nadir sat up straight and got to work pretending that he was. He ran a hand through his hair, smoothed out the kinks in his beard, rubbed grit from his eyes. Tried to put himself back together, even though he hadn’t gotten anything done. “I’m fine. It’s just unbearably hot in here. I don’t know how you can stand it.”
Erik tilted his head. “I don’t feel hot.”
“You don’t?”
“Not at all,” Erik said softly. “Hold still.”
Nadir closed his eyes as Erik placed the back of his hand on his forehead. Never before had Nadir thought he would find the coolness of Erik’s skin so soothing. As if unsatisfied with his findings, Erik moved his hand first to one side of Nadir’s neck, then to the other, and finally placed it on his back.
Erik frowned. He hummed almost disapprovingly. “I knew it.”
“Knew what?”
“You’re feverish.” Erik rubbed Nadir’s back up and down. Nadir’s eyelids grew heavy again. “You’re lethargic. You sound unwell. What are you doing here? You ought to be in bed.”
“No,” Nadir shot back. “What I ought to be doing is filing our biennial statement, because God knows you won’t.” Some of us don’t have the time to lay around all day, wallowing in our own misery.
Nadir looked away before he could see the inevitable hurt cross Erik’s face. He convinced himself he didn’t care how Erik felt. Yes. That sounded about right. Of course. He didn’t care. Nadir had only held his tongue ever so slightly because, had he started a fight, he wouldn’t have had the energy to maintain it. He went back to staring aimlessly at the paper in front of him. His skull pulsated. His vision swam. The heat… heavens above, the heat… he wasn’t sure how much longer he could tolerate it. A thin layer of sweat enveloped Nadir’s whole body now. Periodically a shiver rolled through him. Keeping his eyes open was becoming more and more of a struggle.
“Who says I can’t file a statement?” Erik demanded. Nadir could tell from his tone, all thorns and bitterness, that he’d folded his arms.
“You can’t do it the way I can.”
Erik scoffed. “It’s all just numbers, isn’t it? Let me—“
“No!”
Before he could say anything else, Nadir’s voice cracked. He broke into a painful coughing fit. An insurmountable amount of phlegm rose into his mouth and scraped his throat on the way up. Swallowing it again hurt even more.
“Easy.” Erik patted Nadir’s back until the coughing stopped. “Breathe. That’s better. You really aren’t feeling well, are you? You’re never irritable like this.”
Something about that rankled. Nadir shifted in his seat until Erik stopped touching him.
“I wouldn’t be so irritable,” he grumbled, “if you’d leave me alone.”
As witty as ever, Erik’s retort was immediate. “I’d leave you alone if you would listen to me. Whatever it is you require of me, I can do it. I will. You, my friend, need to lie down.”
Nadir didn’t protest as Erik pulled his chair back, reached under his arms, and attempted to hoist him up. It made him feel rather like a soaked and angry cat, but he would have preferred if Erik didn’t know that. Illness be damned. He had dignity to maintain. Predictably, Erik— frail as he was— struggled against Nadir’s weight. Nadir thus put a hand on Erik’s shoulder for support and slowly rose to his feet. His legs shook.
He hadn’t realized he was stumbling until Erik caught him.
“Careful, now,” Erik said. He didn’t let go. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can.” Nadir’s entire body flushed. He was on the verge of collapsing. Beads of sweat clung to his forehead. “I don’t need your help.”
Erik ignored this. He only looked at Nadir with immense sympathy and guided him toward his bedroom.
“Poor thing.” Erik stood over Nadir and brushed a strand of hair out of his face. His eyes were soft. Benevolent. More so than Nadir had ever seen them. “Stay there. Don’t move. Erik will take good care of Nadir.”
As he lay in bed now, blankets strewn all around him— he could hardly tolerate being in the same room as them— Nadir thought he felt a nervous flutter in his stomach. A half-coherent thought emerged from the fog in his head, the fin of a whale breaching the surface of dark, inscrutable water. Taking care of things was never Erik’s strong suit.
Erik continued. “Would Nadir like some water?”
Yes. Oh, God, yes. He was parched. Nadir nodded.
“Good.” Erik smiled approvingly. He patted Nadir’s head. “Very good. Nadir needs plenty of fluids to get better. Erik will be right back!”
With that, he left the room.
Now that he had nothing else to think about, nothing to distract him, Nadir’s fever steadily grew worse. His skin was on fire. He shivered. He had to get out of his body, out of his bed, out of his clothes. Yet he was powerless to do any of that. Nadir could only fumble uselessly with the buttons on his waistcoat before giving up, exhausted. A part of him refused to accept that he belonged here. He didn’t. Couldn’t Erik see that he had work to do? Couldn’t he see that it had a hard deadline? That it was important? Of course he couldn’t. Nadir huffed resentfully. Were it not for him, the pair’s venture would never have gotten off the ground. Erik made his share of contributions, of course, most of them structural and conceptual; but when he wasn’t wallowing— which wasn’t very often— his head was firmly in the clouds. No wonder he’d taken a liking to Christine. In that regard, if nowhere else, he was just like her.
Nadir closed his eyes. Just for a moment, he told himself. He’d open them any minute now. After all, he had to be careful. Sleep lurked around every corner. If he didn’t pay attention, he would…
He’d…
Something was definitely wrong.
It was his apartment, unmistakably. His and Erik’s. And yet, from the moment he set eyes on it, a sense of deep foreboding invaded Nadir’s body. An ancestral fear leaked from his muscles into the marrow of each bone. He couldn’t bring himself even to tremble. Something in him knew that the slightest movement would awaken it.
Awaken what?
He was closer now. He could see the inside. He didn’t remember opening a door. The corridor was derelict, moldy. Was that mold? Nadir couldn’t identify the black sprawling substance that clung to each corner of the ceiling. It shifted. Pulsated. Like veins. The more Nadir looked at the dark webs overhead, the more he could hear a rhythm, a heartbeat sending little pearls of blood one by one through their tendrils. This was not his home after all. It was not anything any reasonable human being could or should have called a home. This was not a home like a house but a home like the carapace of a beetle, or the epidermis of a snake, or the hide of a bear. Something was inside. Living here. Asleep for now.
For now.
Nadir lingered in the doorway for a while longer before stepping inside. The maw of the beast. A great, hideous, wet heat awaited him there. Beneath every footstep, the carpet— such as it was— squelched nauseatingly. Its fibers wriggled like cilia, inundating the soles of his shoes, ushering him in or perhaps urging him out. The humidity made the walls weep. Already Nadir felt smothered. He struggled for breath. The pulse in the walls seemed to quicken. More unforgiving heat radiated throughout the apartment’s body, pulling him deeper and deeper down a hallway that wasn’t supposed to be this long. Thus Nadir continued against his will, almost unaware that he was progressing.
There weren’t supposed to be this many doors, either. None looked like his. Some looked like Erik’s in his periphery, but became unrecognizable when he faced them. Nadir was suddenly very preoccupied with finding the Right Door. He couldn’t ascertain why. ‘Why’ didn’t matter in a place like this. He was looking for something. Someone? Erik? A way out? A way further in? How far had he gone?
Where was he?
Hours passed. Hours and hours and hours, in the same damn endless hallway, surrounded by the same damn shapeshifting doors. Every time Nadir thought he’d reached the end, he found himself inexplicably back at the beginning, the veins thicker, the walls sweatier, the cilia on the floor more frantic. His skin crawled something fierce. Something itched and wriggled underneath, feeding off the heat, growing until it had spread across his whole body. He couldn’t scratch. Something in the apartment had infected him. Something in its spit or in its foul blood was making him sick.
He stood at the end of the hallway for the nth time. The fibers of his flesh writhed within him. Nadir was face-to-face with a door now. His door. It didn’t seem to change or move. It must have been the real thing, then. At last. He could go to bed, fall asleep, wake up and it’d all be over. Nadir reached for the doorknob, ignored the sting of hot metal against his fingers, and—
—there was no room behind the door.
He had opened it to reveal a slab of skin and a single, enormous eye. It noticed him immediately. The pupil expanded, a beast’s gaze upon a frightened rabbit. Nadir staggered backward. He knew for certain now: this place was going to kill him. This place wanted him dead, this place did not belong to him, he was going to die in here, the hallway went on forever and ever behind him and he would never get out in time
because the fluid started rising
and rising
and rising
it started with a pool flooding up from the carpet at the height of his ankles
and from there it continued to climb
climb
climb
hot and viscous
getting hotter
suffocating
he was drowning
he blinked once and all the walls turned to mirrors
a glimpse of his own terrified, struggling form
he was back in the chambers underneath the opera house
and they were about to finish what they’d started.
A cold sweat fastened Nadir to the bed. He awoke panting, his entire body aching and spent and hot and wet as though he’d been spit out by a dog. His shirt clung to his chest. The apartment really had eaten him alive. It had broken his spirit down to its barest enzymes, then thrown him unceremoniously back into the real world. Restless malaise compelled him to toss and turn. Whenever Nadir thought he’d settled into a safe position, a hideous, nameless feeling rose up inside him again, until he had no choice but to move.
He was just making the transition from writhing uncomfortably to thrashing in frustration when Erik walked into the room. At last, irritated by the mere sight of Erik, Nadir tried to regain some control over his circumstances. He grabbed the twisted comforter off the bed, flung it onto the floor in a fit of temper, and curled up in a shivering ball against his pillow.
Erik stood in the doorway, looking perturbed. “Should Erik come back later?”
“Go away.”
“But Erik has Nadir’s water.”
“I don’t want water anymore.” Nadir’s voice came out as a harsh growl. “I can’t swallow anything.”
“Nadir has to try,” Erik said.
“Nadir doesn’t care.”
Erik’s footsteps drew closer. “Here. Sit up.”
“I told you, I—“
Nadir coughed again. Once. Twice. Then, all at once, all hell broke loose. He hacked until he was afraid he’d run out of air. Whenever he inhaled— or tried to inhale— mucus rumbled in his lungs. Every breath hurt. While Nadir was too busy coughing to snap at him for it, Erik gently grabbed hold of him and helped him sit upright.
“There we are,” Erik said, and offered him a glass of water. “Take your time. Nadir can drink when he feels better.”
Nadir knew, as his cough subsided again and he reached desperately for the glass, that he should have thanked Erik. He was in too sour of a mood to bother. He swallowed a mouthful of cold water and winced at the pain flaring up in his throat.
“Little sips,” Erik encouraged. His hand returned to Nadir’s back. When Nadir obeyed— when he fended off the spiteful impulse to do the opposite— Erik said, “Excellent. Does that help?”
“No.”
Erik sighed. He sat at the edge of the bed and moved to gently caress Nadir’s face. Before Nadir could stop himself, he leaned into Erik’s touch. A low whine escaped his chest.
He couldn’t remember the last time someone had cared for him like this.
Oh, Erik, said one train of thought. You’re so kind. I know you are. Buried deep under all the rage and confusion and despair, you have a kind heart. I wish you could always be this gentle. This tender. I wish I knew what to do to draw out the real you. I wish I didn’t have to be sick to see it.
I think I’m in—
The other hissed. You’re pathetic, Nadir. Letting yourself become bedridden. Leaving yourself vulnerable in front of him. Forcing him to take care of you. And you don’t even appreciate it. You ought to consider yourself lucky you’re not dead yet. He’s just giving you amnesty now because he pities you, like you did for him. It’s not your body that’s ill. It’s your brain. Him? Kind? Really? Have you deluded yourself so easily?
Are you really so desperate for attention that you’d—
“Erik is sorry.” His thumb rubbed the coarse hairs of Nadir’s beard. Just like that, every worry melted away. “If Erik could take away all this sickness and pain, he would.”
Nadir finally had to admit it. “It’s not your fault.”
“Would sleeping make Nadir feel any better?”
“I tried,” Nadir lamented. He decided not to tell Erik about the dream he’d had. “It went horribly. I couldn’t seem to get any rest.”
Erik made a small, considerate noise. “Is there anything else Erik can do?”
“Um…”
Stay.
“Actually,” Nadir began, the embarrassment making him even more feeble, “there is something.”
Erik tilted his head expectantly.
“Could you… er… could you please… if it isn’t too much of a bother, of course…”
Nadir swallowed and remembered too late that it would hurt him. He could have sworn that, without warning, his fever was getting worse again. His face burned unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
“…could you please unbutton my waistcoat? If— only if you want to. You don’t have to—“
Erik’s eyes lit up. “Of course! Just a moment.”
Nadir lifted his head. Partly to give Erik easier access, but primarily so he could stare at the ceiling while Erik undid his buttons, his hands deft and delicate, every motion befitting only the best of musicians. Nadir’s heart skipped several beats as Erik’s hands traveled further down. The sensation of busy fingertips working away at his clothing moved from Nadir’s chest to his stomach, bringing with it another wave of uneasy fluttering. Once he’d opened Nadir’s waistcoat, Erik slid it off his shoulders and folded it on his nightstand.
Then— Nadir thought he might faint— Erik put a hand on his chest.
“Shall Erik undo Nadir’s shirt, too?” he asked.
Nadir’s heart pounded against Erik’s palm. His head spun. Blood roared in his ears. “I— I— I—”
“Just the first few buttons, perhaps?”
That sounded far more manageable. Nadir made a soft noise of agreement, and Erik got to work at once.
“Goodness,” Erik muttered to himself, “Nadir’s fever is worse than Erik thought. No wonder Nadir has been so grumpy today.”
Nadir sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Erik understands. Erik has been there, too. Whenever Erik has a cold like this, he feels useless. He gets angry because he can’t sing; and if he doesn’t have his voice, he has nothing.”
Erik suddenly paused, as though coming to a hitherto unseen conclusion.
“Does Nadir perhaps feel useless, too?” he asked, that same uncharacteristic sympathy in his voice. “Erik knows Nadir was upset because he couldn’t work. And being this ill would make anyone cross.”
Nadir wasn’t sure if he trusted Erik enough to answer the question. He went back to staring at the ceiling. “Even so, that’s no excuse for my behavior. I don’t have the right to lash out at you simply because I’m unwell. I… I owe you after this.”
Erik only chuckled, as though he disagreed but couldn’t have been bothered to argue. He undid the fourth button on Nadir’s shirt, and… oh, goodness, God almighty, the change was unbelievable. His skin could finally breathe. Nadir closed his eyes and, to show his appreciation where words failed him, squeezed Erik’s hand.
Erik squeezed back. “Better?”
Nadir could only nod.
“Good,” Erik said. Nadir thought— probably a longing febrile hallucination on his part— that he heard a wistful undertone to Erik’s voice. Maybe even adoring. There was a sound of bedsprings creaking as Erik stood. “Now, Erik is going to finish our annual statement thing.”
“Biennial.” Nadir didn’t open his eyes.
“Yes, that.” Erik’s voice was cheery. “Get some rest in the meantime. And drink more water.”
Nadir allowed himself his first smile in what felt like ages.
“I must say—” he cleared his throat “—I must say, I’ve at least gotten some entertainment out of watching you fret over me like a mother hen.”
He opened his eyes just in time to see Erik smiling warmly at him before leaving the room.