Work Text:
There are nights when Sean wakes up if Marion so much as rolls over in his sleep. Hell, there are nights when Sean would be awake long before Marion starts mumbling half phrases and nonsense words, before his fingers start twitching or his feet kick restlessly under the covers. But there are also nights like this one, when all his hyper-vigilance leaves him exhausted, when his face is worn out from smiling, (because he’s fine, honest, everything is fine) when the blankets are warm and the rain on the roof is as good as a lullaby. So when he feels Marion get out of bed, Sean just rolls over and falls back into the darkness behind his eyes. Not everything is a crisis. Marion is probably just taking a piss or making a cup of tea and when Sean opens his eyes again, it’ll be morning and Marion will be back in bed, all tucked in and safe under the covers.
When Sean opens his eyes again, the bedroom is still dark and Marion’s side of the bed is as cold as trench mud.
“Marion?” The bedroom could be a cave from the way Sean swears his voice echoes. Reflexively, he reaches up and digs his thumbnail into his left earlobe. If this is a nightmare, he won’t feel anything at all, because he can’t hurt himself in his nightmares, only bullets and claws and the scared faces of children who aren’t children (they weren’t children they weren’t) can hurt him there. The slight sting tells him this is real.
He couldn’t sleep. Sean tells himself as he slips out of bed. He couldn’t sleep and he didn’t want to wake me up so he went into the other room to read and fell asleep in his chair. That’s all.
The living room is dark, and Marion’s familiar shape does not occupy the well worn armchair. The bathroom is empty. There is no kettle on the stove in the small kitchenette, no Marion making tea. His coat is still on the hook by the door, above his well-worn but polished shoes, next to Sean’s shoes that are so worn that he can feel the cobbles through the soles. The door that had been locked hours ago (Sean had checked, Sean always checks) is open just the tiniest bit, letting in the flickering gas lamp light from the hallway. No signs of a struggle. No forced entry.
Sean’s heartbeat is as loud as mortar fire in his ears as he runs back to the bedroom for his socks, as he ties his shoes too tight with hands that shake, as he flings his coat on over his pajamas, making sure to grab Marion’s keys and lock the door behind him.
Should have woken up the first time, Sean berates himself as he thunders down the three flights of stairs that lead out onto the street, making sure to peer into every dark corner as he goes. If you had, he’d be safe now.
Marion’s been sleepwalking for as long as Sean’s known him. “Kid has restless feet and a wandering soul,” Sean’s father (rest in peace) had been prone to saying, and fuck, the old man had been right on both counts, hadn’t he? How many times during the endless cycle of sleepovers had they found Marion wandering the kitchen in shambling circles or jerkily trying to open the front door? Once, Sean had woken up in the middle of the night and had almost screamed to discover Marion, having sleepwalked three blocks from his house, standing outside on the fire escape, his scar glowing a faint blue under his pajamas. Sean had coaxed him inside and tucked him into his own narrow bed, curling tightly around him so that if he tried to go wandering off again, Sean would know.
Marion had stayed for breakfast of course, Sean sure that any moment Marion’s mom and dad would be knocking at their door, looking for their son. If Sean had been the one to go missing, he knew his Ma and Pa would have been frantic looking for him, and there would have been hugging and shouting. When Sean had walked with Marion back to his house, Marion’s father had just looked down at his son with an expression so utterly devoid of emotion that Sean had almost jerked Marion away from him.
It’s still raining when Sean all but flies through the building’s front door, chilly fat drops that drip through the holes in the awning. There are a few electric street lamps trying valiantly to glow through the dark and wet, the power lines strung through the city above humming and snapping. A quick glance left and right doesn’t reveal Marion, because Sean isn’t a believer in luck and it doesn’t believe in him right back. There’s no way to tell where Marion might have gone, not for Sean. He has a feeling that if Jean were here that she would know which way Marion went, would feel some sort of pull, and for a moment he wishes desperately that she was standing next to him.
“Focus, Finnerty,” Sean growls at the empty street. Jean isn’t here. All Marion has right now is Sean, and while Sean doesn’t have any powers whatsoever, he has sharp eyes and good old Finnerty stubbornness. That’s going to have to be enough. Sean picks a direction and starts walking.
What had been a common occurrence as kids had become a rarity by the time the war had rolled around and swept them all up. Once every few months, Sean might see Marion wandering through the trenches towards him with his eyes half closed, his shoulders hunched, a far cry from his perfect posture. Had it been coincidence that it had only happened on nights when Sean had night patrol and Marion didn’t?
Sean had never told Marion about the nightmares he’d had while in the Ghost Platoon, about Marion sleepwalking over enemy lines and being cut down by Otherwhere soldiers. He hadn’t told him about the nightmares that had been worse than that, the ones where Marion had walked right into the arms of Dr. Nero, who had been thrilled to have his own pet oracle to experiment on, who had deemed taking Marion apart piece by piece to figure out how his premonitions worked beneficial to the war effort. (In those dreams Marion had been strapped to a table, his skull open, his brain a beautiful, horrible blue, his eyes wide and frightened. Sean had been chained to a wall, a heavy iron collar around his neck that had choked him as he had strained towards Marion.)
The first hour of searching is the worst. Ma had always said that the higher powers looked after sleepwalkers and fools, but Sean stopped believing in the Ascendency and all that bullshit at a young age, so all he can do is run though all the ways Marion could be hurt, could already be dead. Could have been hit by the trolley or one of the few motorized carriages that sometimes venture down into South Soffit. Could have walked down into the Steel and into one of those rusted and rotted sewage grates down by the factories. Maybe the Periphery had spotted him and picked him up and he was sitting in a jail cell, shivering and shoeless. Worse, maybe he was on his way to Grayslate right now. At least Ma would have a familiar face to look at besides Auntie Bee’s.
The second hour isn’t much better. Sean’s shivering, soaked to the skin and worse, his socks are wet and all he can think about is trench foot, never mind that it would take more than a few hours walking in the rain for his toes to rot off. Searching down alleyways and side streets gets him territorial looks from unhoused war veterans curled up in their trash nests. Sean rolls up his sleeve at them, showing them the skull and lightning tattoo of Echo Company (not the dead eye on his shoulder from the Ghost Platoon) and they calm down, a few of them getting downright chatty. Sean asks them if they’ve seen a man with dark hair and a mustache dressed only in his pajamas walk by, pays for their answers, all of them negative, with the cigarettes in his coat pocket.
The thought of not finding Marion is a impossibility, a horror Sean shoves back behind enemy lines with everything else that he doesn’t want to think about. Sean’s going to find him, simple as that. (Unless there’s nothing to find because he’s just gone, ripped apart and thrown away by a creature wearing his face and you hadn’t thought of that, had you Sean? You leapt straight to the mundane when you know there are things that are so much worse that can happen. Maybe someone from EONS snatched him up off the street, maybe he’s drugged up in a lab right now because you were just so comfy in bed—)
Someone else might have missed the soft snuffling, shambling sounds coming from the alley up ahead, especially over the rain and the whispers of self-loathing from within one’s own head. But Sean has ears as good as his eyes, and they work just fine without the rest of him being fully present. His head whips around just in time to see Marion lurching towards him like a puppet missing half his strings, his wide, unfocused eyes full of fear of something only he can see. Sean has just enough time to put his arms out before Marion smacks right into him, almost knocking him down.
“Hey,” Sean says quietly as he gently but firmly puts his arms around Marion, feeling almost weak with relief even as Marion struggles against him. “Mar, hey, it’s all right, it’s me, it’s Sean.”
Marion stops struggling at the sound of Sean’s name, his forehead resting on Sean’s shoulder as he shivers and sniffles. Sean doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything else, just waits. There’s an old wives tale that you aren’t supposed to wake sleepwalkers, that when you sleep your soul leaves your body and if you wake up too fast your soul might not be able to make it back. That’s all bullshit, Sean knows that, and even if it wasn’t, the ship had already sailed on Marion losing his soul. No, he doesn’t shake Marion awake because the first and only time Sean had tried something like that, Marion had punched him in the jaw before realizing who he was. Sean’s jaw had hurt him less then the horrified look on Marion’s face had.
Marion looks up, eyes half closed, head tilted slightly as he doesn’t quite look at Sean. “Empty,” he says mournfully, and it’s not just rain that’s running down his cheeks.
“Nah,” Sean says, stroking Marion’s hair away from his eyes, running a thumb over his cheekbone. His tears are the warmest part of him. “You’re not empty, Mar. You’re so full of love I don’t know how your heart doesn’t burst from it.” Sean’s not empty either. The war had hollowed him out and filled him with orders. When the orders had run out, there had been plenty of room for doubt and self-loathing and survivor’s guilt to take their place. Sean isn’t sure how love wasn’t squeezed out of him entirely, but it’s still clinging to all the cracks and crevices in what’s left of his heart. He takes off his coat, wraps it around Marion’s shoulders. It’s too thin and it’s soaked through like everything else, but it might still have some warmth to offer. “C’mon. Let’s go home. I’m going to carry you, all right?”
Marion just stands there, slowly blinking. He has told Sean that sometimes he hears what’s going on in the world around him when he sleepwalks, that occasionally he sees what’s really in front of him, but that a lot of things get tangled up in dreams. Maybe he’s dreaming that he’s answering Sean, maybe he’s saying yes, because he doesn’t struggle when Sean sweeps him up into his arms.
The route back to Marion’s apartment is more straightforward now that Sean doesn’t have to duck down every alleyway, search every side-street. That should make the walk easier, faster, even with Marion’s weight in his arms. But the adrenaline that had kept Sean going through the search is giving out, the temporary shield keeping him from feeling how cold and exhausted he is fading. He clenches his jaw and keeps putting one foot in front of the other, looking down at Marion, his lips a faint blue in the gaslight—
Marion’s lips are flecked with blood that looks black in the mortar flashes, his skin ashen and his eyes glassy as they look up at Sean. He tries to say something and the word is a cough that spatters Sean’s chest with blood like freckles.
“Almost there,” Sean says with air he can’t spare, his eyes stinging with blood from a cut that has no right to be bleeding so damn much. “Almost there, Mar, so stay with me. Rounding third and heading home.”
It’s a lie. They’re five miles out from base camp and the enemy is hot on Sean’s heels and the mud that sucks at his boots isn’t even slowing them down. It’s a lie that Sean’s going to turn into the truth even if his damn heart bursts in his chest like an overworked racehorse.
The whine of a bullet followed by the thud of impact propels Sean forward just a little bit faster, and he laughs deliriously as he feels heat spread out from his right shoulder. How many bullets will he have to take to get Marion across home plate?
“Sean.” Marion’s voice is as clear and commanding as LT’s. “Sean, come back.”
Sean blinks rainwater (not blood) from his eyes. He’s standing in the middle of the sidewalk, breathing as hard as if he’s been running five miles over bad ground. Marion is looking up at him from the safety of his arms, his eyes bright and clear. There’s no blood. No mud. No enemies. Just Marion.
“Hey, sleeping beauty,” Sean manages to say as he gets his breathing under control. “Good to have you back.” He starts walking again, eyes darting to his surroundings and back down to Marion. Somehow they’re three blocks from home. Sean can feel the muscles in his legs twitching and fuck had he just run thirty-four blocks? If Sean believed in miracles, he’d definitely say running down the cracked sidewalks of South Soffit in the rain without tripping and eating serious shit was one.
“What happened?” The sharp clarity in Marion’s voice has been replaced by fuzzy confusion. “I dreamt—” He shifts slightly in Sean’s arms, raising a swollen hand almost purple with cold to rub at his eyes. “I don’t remember. It was just bad.”
“You unlocked the front door and went for a walk,” Sean says calmly, like he hasn’t spent hours trying to shove fear down into his guts where it wouldn’t paralyze him. “I don’t know how long you were out here before I found you.”
“I unlocked the door in my sleep?” Marion voice shakes. “I’ve never done that before. I could have—“
Sean’s been running through the what ifs for hours. Marion doesn’t need to do that too. “Don’t worry,” he says before Marion’s imagination can really get going, forcing a chuckle into his voice. He feels a smile spread across his face like a straight razor, much too sharp. “Tomorrow we’re going to get you a real pretty collar with a bell on it and that way I’ll be able to find you a lot faster if you get out again.”
Sean doesn’t have to look down at Marion to know the joke didn’t land, but he keeps smiling until Marion’s hand touches his cheek.
“Sean.” Marion’s voice is so gentle and soft it makes Sean want to snarl, because he doesn’t deserve it. “This isn’t your fault.”
Sean doesn’t say anything for a whole block, doesn’t look down at Marion. He just keeps walking, his jaw tightly clenched to keep his teeth from chattering.
“Sean.”
“You a mind reader now?” Sean makes the mistake of looking down at Marion, at the wounded expression in those big brown eyes of his.
“No.” Marion’s voice isn’t gentle now. “I just know you put a lot of blame on yourself that you don’t have to.”
Damn it. “I was half awake when you got out of bed. If I’d just opened my eyes or tried to talk to you—“
“It’s not your fault,” Marion says again. “Say it, Sean,”
Sean huffs out a sigh, a cloud of vapor rising into the night. “It’s not my fault,” Sean says, feeling his heart twist in his chest. He hates lying to Marion like that, but he’s too tired to argue. It’s easier to just let Marion be wrong.
The elevator in Marion’s building is working tonight, even though it creaks and groans alarmingly, shuddering when it stops on Marion’s floor. Sean doesn’t let go of Marion even while his numb fingers fumble with the door keys. It’s only when they get into the bathroom that Sean finally puts Marion down, leaving him to sit on the closed seat of the toilet while Sean kneels down to take a look at Marion’s feet.
The luck that shuns Sean must love Marion, because even though his feet are so red they look like they’re blushing and Marion gasps when Sean gently prods at them, Marion has somehow avoided stepping on broken glass or any of the other junk that can wind up on the streets. “Can’t tell if they’re bruised or not,” Sean says, patting Marion’s leg. “But I think you’re going to live.” He says it with a smile, but he feels something wobble dangerously in his chest.
“What about you?” Once again those brown eyes are turned on him. “Are you all right?”
“Course I am!” Sean says quickly. “Nothing that a shot or two of whiskey won’t fix.” He gets to his feet. “C’mon, let’s get you out of these wet clothes and I’ll even make you that hot leaf water that you like.”
Sean throws himself into taking care of Marion, going from task to task while trying not to think about anything but what’s in front of him. It’s only when he’s waiting for the water to boil for tea that he realizes that he hasn’t changed out of his wet clothes, and surely that’s why his hands are shaking. The two shots of whiskey he downs steadies his hands long enough to dry off and get changed, and by that point the tea’s ready. He delivers that to Marion and goes about checking that the windows are locked (again), stacking furniture in front of the door as if he’s barricading the place against malicious phenomena and hiding the key under the coffee tin in the kitchen before adding another kitchen chair to the furniture pile. They’re going to need a better system than this, of course. Maybe something like those fancy horse harnesses with the bells on that he’s seen on the carriage horses over in Briar Green, how hard could it be to get some scrap leather, sew a few bells on it, and hang it over the doorknob—
“Sean?” Marion’s voice breaks the silence and Sean’s train of thought.
“Yeah?” Sean walks quickly back to the bedroom, talking all the while. “What’s up? Do you need more tea or another blanket or—“
Marion waits until Sean is close enough that he can grab the sleeve of his pajamas to hold him in place. Sean looks down, relieved to see that Marion’s fingers are no longer red shading toward purple. When he reaches down to touch them, Marion takes his hand.
“You’re cold,” he declares. “Come to bed. We can keep each other warm.”
Now that Marion’s pointed it out, Sean realizes he’s been cold this whole time, save for when the whiskey had made him feel warm for a moment. The perimeter is secure, and Marion’s fingers and toes aren’t going to fall off. Maybe he can sleep. “Yeah, all right,” Sean says as extinguishes the gas lamp on the bedside table. He slides into bed and oh the blankets feel even warmer and more soft than they had hours ago. Exhaustion ambushes him the moment he lays down. “How warm do you want me to keep you?” Sean asks, sliding his arms around Marion, one hand resting on his scar as he pulls them close, fitting his front to their back. “I’m bushed but—“
Marion’s chuckle is as warm as the blankets. “Not tonight,” Marion says, and Sean isn’t disappointed at all, though he certainly would have made an effort if Marion had been interested. “Just sleep.”
“Can do,” Sean says with a yawn. “Love you, Mar.” Don’t go walkin’ anymore, Sean wants to say, but he knows Marion can’t promise that, as much as he might like to.
“Love you too.” The words are a whisper, a sigh. Sean feels Marion’s heartbeat slow under his palm in a matter of minutes, his breathing soft and even. It should be just as easy for Sean to fall asleep. The crisis has passed. Marion is warm and safe in his arms. Sean’s done everything he can do. He should be able to just close his eyes and drift off.
That wobbling, shaky feeling in Sean’s chest, the one he’d been smothering with tasks, gets stronger.
Sean grits his teeth. Everything is fine. Marion’s safe, he’s not going to sleepwalk out of the house again, not just because there’s so many obstacles between him and freedom, but because Sean’s going to wake up if Marion so much as twitches. There’s no reason to feel anxious, to think about Marion in the cold, about what could have happened, because none of it had happened.
The trembling spreads through his chest and down into his arms. Sean holds Marion a little bit tighter, breathes a little bit harder as he fights for control. The blankets, warm a moment ago, can’t keep off the sudden chill that sweeps over him.
“Sean?” Marion’s voice is soft and sleep-slurred. “You cold?”
“Go back to sleep,” Sean manages to force out. His whole body is shaking now, his own personal earthquake. “I’m—“ I’m fine is what Sean would have said, but his jaw clamps down on the lie.
As tight as Sean is holding Marion, it doesn’t seem to cost Marion any effort at all to turn in Sean’s arms. Under his pajamas, Marion’s scar glows a faint, gas-fire blue, softly lighting his face as he reaches out and touches Sean’s cheek, his hand feeling warm now against Sean’s chilled skin. He doesn’t say anything, just sweeps his thumb soothingly over Sean’s jaw.
“I was so scared.” The words are barely a whisper, but they seem to hurt Sean’s throat as much as if he had shouted them. “I was so scared that I had lost you.”
Marion shifts so that his forehead rests against Sean’s, his breath warm against Sean’s skin. “I’m here,” Marion says gently. “I’m here. You found me. You brought me home. You always bring me home.”
Sean staggers into the medical tent, ears ringing with the gunfire of his fellow soldiers as they fend off the enemy that had followed them back to base. Years later, he’ll realize that this was his first time meeting Dr. Jinnah Basar, that she had been the one to save Marion’s life. That’s knowledge for the future that this Sean can’t even imagine as he lets Marion be taken from his arms. Only then does he pass out, knowing that whatever else might happen, at least he had scored the most important home run of his life.
Sean closes his eyes as he finds Marion’s lips, his kisses hungry and desperate as he pulls Marion as close as he possibly can. “You’re here,” he says breathlessly between kisses, and somehow that helps to ease the shaking inside like nothing else had. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” Marion says, and keeps saying as the shaking and the fear slowly ebb away, as Sean finally falls asleep, the words bringing a much needed peace, following him down into dreams. A shield against nightmares, at least for one night. “I’m here.”