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John opened his eyes with a start.
The bedroom was dark, just as it had been the three other times his body had so graciously taken upon itself to jolt his mind from the teetering edge of sleep, a primal survival instinct saving him from what it deemed to be a predator. Even though he had done so many times that same night, John couldn’t help scanning the room top to bottom, corner to corner, as though staring long and hard enough would grant him the ability to see through the pitch blackness to the objects within.
He knew a chair stood, there, by the westernmost wall, right beneath a picture-window, knew a sparsely-filled closet adorned the wall adjacent. If he reached out, he understood, with the same level of certainty he understood the earth currently rotated beneath him, that he would feel the smooth wood of a side-table and, eventually, the handle of a day-old coffee mug.
He knew all this with perfect objectivity and clarity of thought, so why did his chest feel like it was trying to expel its own heart?
John took a slow, deliberate breath (he actually needed to breathe now) and forced himself to remain in bed, no matter how desperately his itching limbs wanted to toss the covers aside, to move, to flee—
He closed his eyes and counted the heartbeats roaring in his eardrums.
One, two, three…
Something knocked against the glass of the window.
Four, five, six…
The ceiling creaked above him, rain pitter-pattering upon the roof in rapid percussion, each drop akin to a sledgehammer against the bone of John’s aching skull.
Seven, eight, nine…
The space behind his eyelids was just as black and dark as that all-consuming nothingness pressing in against him from all sides, sitting on his chest like a leaden weight or that elephant Arthur was always eating. He shivered, despite the sweat pooling on the back of his neck. His fingers were turning numb, as were his toes, all the blood leeching out of him and into the pitch that seemed to go on forever and ever and ever, and he was falling into it, tipping over into an abyssal black hole that consumed all it touched, that devoured the rotting carcasses of infinite worlds, all crumbling and abandoned.
Teneleventwelvethirteenfourteenfifteensixteen—
John lurched upright, wildly tearing off quilts now unbearably heavy.
He couldn’t see anything, not even the faintest outlines of furniture in the moonlight, because there wasn’t any moonlight. At least, none that cut through the thick curtains usually tightly drawn at night. He looked, unseeing, at his shaking hands, trying to will them to stop. This was his body, wasn’t it? Why the hell wouldn’t they stop? Was he doing something wrong? Did every human being receive a manual of operations when they were born, unlike him, who had only acquired a body through unnatural means? That would explain why he couldn’t fucking control anything. And, surely, his lungs must have been faulty, for they were acting as if they’d never taken a single breath in their entire life.
His vision was beginning to blur around the corners and John knew he was on the verge of blacking out, a prospect not completely unwelcome, as it meant he’d at least be unaware of the darkness suffocating him like dirt poured directly over a candleflame. But even stronger was the fear of never reawakening, never climbing out of that selfsame darkness.
John scrambled from the bed and found the handle of the door on the third try, pushing it open with all his bodyweight and tumbling into an equally dark hallway. His heart sounded like a typewriter in his ears as he half-ran, half-tripped toward the door just across the hall. It had never felt so far.
For a split second, he balked at entering his friend’s room so late and waking him from his own, well-deserved slumber. Hell, he didn’t even know what time it was. But the second passed all-too quickly and John collapsed into the room.
Vaguely, he saw a silhouette sit up in the bed; heard words, but couldn’t quite grasp their shape, nor meaning. It was only when liquid, blistering hot against the ice of his skin, carved its way down his cheek that he realized he was crying. He didn’t know how that was possible when he couldn’t fucking breathe.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, firm and blessedly warm.
Heard snippets of words.
“—ohn. John. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
Arthur’s face was a mess of shadows and John couldn’t figure out how to make his tongue stop sticking to the roof of his mouth long enough to answer.
“Did you have a nightmare? Are you in pain? John, please; I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
There was a strain of terror in his friend’s tone and a pang of guilt in John’s gut that said he was the one that put it there. He finally forced his tongue to move, to say something. “…see.”
“What?”
He tried again, channeling all his will-power into disentangling words from a buzzing cacophony of thoughts. “I can’t see.”
The warmth left his shoulder, then, and, if he wasn’t already, John could have cried at the loss.
Suddenly, light erupted through the room as a lamp was turned on, then another, and another, illuminating every nook and cranny and momentarily blinding John with the sheer intensity of it so soon after an aching nothing.
Arthur’s face swam into clarity, from his mussed hair down to his bare feet. Lines of concern creased his brows. “John?”
He released a shaky breath, fatigue sweeping over him like a tidal wave. “I— I’m fine.”
“You are not fucking fine, John. You just collapsed on my bedroom floor in the middle of the night.”
“Sorry.”
“No, that’s—” Arthur sighed. “That’s not what I meant. I just don’t want you pretending you’re alright when you’re clearly not. I thought we were past that.”
John massaged his chest, selfishly glad Arthur couldn’t see him. His lungs still ached, but less so; more the feeling of an overexercised limb than a raw wound. He was fine now, wasn’t that enough?
“You know you can tell me things, right? I don’t even have to respond, if you don’t want.”
Is that what he wanted? John honestly didn’t know. He didn’t even know why this was happening to him now, of all times. He’d never had a problem with the dark when they’d shared a body. Yes, waiting for Arthur to sleep eight hours (usually less) had been a trial in patience, but never a cause for fear. And, not that he had ever admitted it, simply lying there in the dark, with no immediate threat to their life, had been…calming. Meditative, even, and John had found himself looking forward to the moments when they were able to do so, when he had an excuse to inquire about Arthur’s dreams and gain insight into the inner workings of his mind.
What had changed?
He must have been quiet for too long, because Arthur sighed again. “Will you at least tell me if this has happened before?”
John stared at the floor. “Three.”
“Three times?”
“Tonight. Well, four times tonight. Sometimes more, other nights.”
“Jesus Christ,” Arthur swore. “Right. I— Right, of course, because why would a reaction like this be any cause for concern?” The words were bitter; not a bitterness born from cruelty, but, rather, worry on his behalf. “When did it start? I mean, first start.”
John curled in on himself like he’d been struck. He didn’t like that question, didn’t want to admit to his closest friend that these episodes had started the moment he was no longer housed in his skin, that being able to acutely feel every sense was beginning to seem more like a curse than a blessing and that, most nights, John would give anything to be able to return to Arthur’s mind and settle down in the gaps only he could fit.
But he couldn’t say that. Couldn’t look into Arthur’s eyes and tell him his pain and blood hadn’t been enough for him and he wished that the whole thing had never happened at all. “I don’t remember.”
And wasn’t that the greatest lie he’d ever uttered; that he wasn’t spending every second of every night thinking how that familiar darkness, at any given moment, might grab him by the throat and pull him bodily into a place he’d wanted nothing more than to escape and, now, never wanted to return to. The mere thought of it set his heart racing again.
He didn’t want Arthur to see him like this. Even without his sight, the man seemed to possess an intuitiveness rivaled by few others. Perhaps it was an inherent quality of every private investigator or simply a talent unique to Arthur, himself, but John found it nigh impossible to escape acute analysis of his mood on any particular day, most analyses of which rarely fell into the ‘100% incorrect’ category.
Arthur knew him, whether he liked it or not; cared for him, whether he liked it or not; would all-too quickly sacrifice his time and sleep and everything in-between just to make sure John was safe; had done so on innumerable occasions.
Which was precisely why he needed to leave.
John stood and, with trembling hands, fumbled for the knob of the door. “I-I need to get to sleep. Sorry for waking you.”
Somehow, in the blink of an eye, Arthur had crossed the length of the room to grasp him firmly by the wrist. “John, if you were able to sleep, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. Yes, you woke me up, but if you think I’m just going to turn around and blissfully return to bed after casting you out, then you can fuck off. I’m not doing that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no point in us both being awake.”
“Tough,” Arthur snapped, yet he pried John’s fingers from the door handle with a gentleness unwarranted for such a small action. He kept hold of his hand. “If you’re going to spend the night staring at the ceiling, it doesn’t matter where you do it, now does it?”
“Arthur, I’m not kicking you out of your own bed.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you did.”
For a moment, John simply stared at him, uncomprehendingly, before realization struck. “I don’t—”
“Just for tonight. To see if it helps. Or am I wrong in assuming these night terrors have gone on for a while?”
Arthur must have taken his silence for agreeance, because he was soon leading John in the direction of the bed, flicking off the lamps as he went, until the room, once again, plunged into darkness. John lingered at the edge of the mattress, heart beating a staccato rhythm against his ribs. He took to counting them again.
One, two, three…
He followed his friend beneath the heavy quilts and soft duvet, trying desperately to focus on the different textures, something he could tangibly feel, instead of the absence of everything everywhere he looked.
Four, five, six…
He tried to untense his shoulders and allow himself to drift along that current of unconsciousness singing a siren song to his drooping lids, and closed his eyes for what felt like the hundredth time that night.
Seven, eight, nine…
Blackness, all-consuming, all-devouring, cold, and lifeless, and infinite in its depth, reaching out with a thousand grasping tendrils, a million smothering hands pressing against his trachea, his chest, his lungs, his heart, voices whispering and hissing and shouting at him that he belonged here, that there was no other place which understood him, body and soul, that he was missed, that he had to come home—
John jolted from the brink of sleep, one foot over the cliff face, the other scrambling for purchase in the waking world.
Arthur jolted with him, either still awake or, as was becoming habit, woken by one of John’s endless fucking problems. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
His heart was beating so fast, he could no longer keep track, a knot in his throat he could hardly breathe around.
“Shit.”
John felt Arthur rather than heard him. Warm arms helped him sit upright, one hand pressed between his shoulder-blades, steadying and constant, the other reaching over to tug the cord of a lamp. The bulb flickered to life for the second time in— how many minutes had it been? Five? One?
He blinked the splotches of green from his vision and, pathetically, like a marionette with its strings cut, slumped in Arthur’s grasp, finally pulling in a shallow breath. Arthur didn’t say anything besides the occasional it’s alright and breathe, but John considered that to be for the best, as he couldn’t exactly respond to anything else. Only when his pulse had slowed to a countable speed and his heart returned to the safety of his ribcage, did he find the energy to speak.
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Live like this.”
“Like what, John?”
“Like this,” he repeated, slightly hysterically. Surely, Arthur knew what he was referring to; what John had robbed from him, no matter how unwittingly, and never returned; the one thing that hadn’t transferred when he had vacated his body. Without thinking, John lifted his hands to cup Arthur’s face and rest his thumbs lightly on the skin beneath each eye. “I… I can’t see anything when it’s like this, when it’s night. But you—”
He stopped.
What gave him any right to break down over a temporary loss of sight, when Arthur would never again experience it? On the contrary, he should have been grateful he even had the privilege of a dawn to look forward to, whilst Arthur had no choice but to walk, and talk, and function in a permanent oblivion. Did he honestly expect this man to comfort him? The same man who had survived caverns and mine-shafts and all the other godforsaken pits he had unceasingly stumbled into for anywhere from a few minutes to eighty-five fucking days; who had dragged himself on broken limbs through ice and snow, never truly complaining about the lot he hadn’t even drawn in life, but had been so cruelly given.
“John,” Arthur said, and his heart lurched at the tone, the softness of it. “Are you…scared of the dark?”
John yanked his hands away as if burned. There was something about hearing it spoken aloud—a cautious, if casual, query—that made him want to curl under a table somewhere and never leave.
Arthur cast his hand blindly through the air for a moment and caught hold of John’s sleeve. “Hey, it’s okay— It’s alright. We can leave the lights on; it doesn’t make much difference to me.”
“I’m not a child, Arthur.”
“I never said you were.”
“Well, you’re sure as hell looking at me like I am.”
Arthur blinked, his face overcorrecting and shifting through half a dozen expressions in an attempt to land upon the seemingly correct one. “I’m not thinking anything, John. I’m just looking at you.”
“I don’t need your pity,” he hissed. “It’s your room; you can turn the goddamn lights off.”
“I agree. It is my room and I could do that.” A stretch of silence, nearly as oppressive as the shadows still huddling on the sidelines of the room. “But I’m not going to.”
John wanted to scream, or bash his skull against the headboard; perhaps a little of both. Why did Arthur have to be so fucking infuriating at the worst of times? Did he really not see how idiotic this whole conversation was? John was a fragment of a god, the Great Prince of the Old Ones, Lord of Carcosa, a being who had lived for millennia, who had driven mortals so mad, they’d torn through their own flesh with their bare hands. He’d been feared, worshipped, looked upon with a respect and veneration unbestowed to many of his kind, and yet—because of a single man—had grown to want so much more than that. Dared to hope for it. And his wish had been granted. His wildest dreams met.
So, why did it feel like he’d fallen so far?
His eyes stung with heat and salt and John refused to cry again, but couldn’t quite bar a lone tear from trickling its way down his cheek, another weakness on full display. He tried to keep his breathing steady so Arthur wouldn’t notice.
He should have known nothing escaped Arthur Lester, for the hand at his sleeve moved to take hold of his forearm. “Come here.” Just like that, they were both lying down, John nestled in the crook of Arthur’s arm, face pressed in the soft cotton of his nightshirt.
“It's natural to have fears, you know. It's part of the whole ‘human being’ thing; a big part, actually. They just…evolve over time. I fear many things now that I never did, and I used to be afraid of a lot of things as a child that I’ve long since forgotten, including the dark.” Arthur chuckled softly. “I convinced myself I couldn’t sleep unless I was in my parents’ bed.”
John briefly imagined that: a smaller Arthur, not a sliver of gray in his chestnut hair, huddling between two bodies much larger than him. The thought brought a short-lived smile to his lips. “What changed?”
“Life, I suppose. My parents… Grief changes the way you look at things, feel about things, and some fears just seem…less important after a while. Not to mention being a private investigator. I don’t know how many nights Parker was dragging me on what felt like a wild goose-chase God knows where, most of which lasted well into the morning. And then, of course, you were bound to me and we’ve been through, well, all of this.” Arthur shrugged. “It’s all so normal now. Don’t get me wrong; I’m afraid of a lot of things, but that particular fear... I can almost call it a friend.”
They laid there in a comfortable silence for minutes, hours, John becoming a little lost with each warm pass of Arthur’s thumb against his shoulder-blade, a warmth easily offered and greedily taken.
“I keep thinking I’m back in the Dark World,” he whispered, and Arthur’s ministrations seemed to stutter. “Every time I close my eyes, no matter how tired my body feels or how much I want to sleep, I start to feel the darkness pressing down on me, squeezing me until I can’t think of anything else, and I can’t see, and it feels like, any second, I’ll wake up and—” He took a deep breath. “And I won’t be able to find my way back.”
“John, that’s…”
“Fucking ridiculous?”
“Terrifying,” Arthur finished.
For some reason, that sent the slightest bolt of fury pumping through John’s veins. He curled his hand, blunt nails digging through fabric and into Arthur’s chest. The man didn’t so much as wince.
“I shouldn’t be terrified. A young boy not knowing any better is vastly different from a god who should.”
“Should and shouldn’t has nothing to do with it, John. And you’re not a god anymore, you’re human. That means you have to deal with human feelings, human phobias; a heart that races, a stomach that churns, and a pesky brain—” Arthur punctuated this with a particularly strong jab to his forehead, “—that warns you of danger, even when there isn’t any. There’s nothing wrong with that. Ignoring it just takes some practice.”
“I shouldn’t need to practice one of the most basic fucking functions on the planet! It was easier—” He paused; tried to keep his voice from wavering. “Easier when I could see from your point of view, when I knew what was coming for us at any given moment and could calculate an exit. But now that we're separated, it's like I can only envision the most horrible things, each one worse than the last: you bleeding out at the hands of the King, or Larson cutting off more than your ear, or I hear Kayne's fucking cackling as he tears you limb from limb and all I can do is watch while you scream and thrash and— How am I supposed to protect you, when I can’t even—!" The words drowned somewhere in the awareness washing over his mind. “I’m a liability.”
Silence, less comfortable and so much more tense.
Then, Arthur did the unthinkable.
He laughed.
John scowled, vitriol building thick and cloying on his tongue. “What?”
But Arthur continued to laugh loud and unrestrained, suddenly hugging John tightly to his chest. “Don’t tell me you actually believe that? If you’re a liability, then I’m the fucking King of England.” His tone softened. “John, I promise you, I have never thought that for a second. I know you want to protect me—I know you do—and I understand you are frustrated and scared, but, what, you think that makes you worthless? Any monster or god that wants you back is going to have to go through me; the King and all the rest.”
John stared at him, as this stubborn, reckless, brilliant man before him, and wondered how it was possible his fractured soul could still be so entangled with another’s, despite flesh and blood and distance. Slowly, he slid a hand underneath the collar of Arthur’s shirt to press at his sternum. “I miss it, sometimes,” he admitted quietly. “Out here it’s— Colder. Sharper. Everything just feels like...”
“Too much?”
He nodded.
Arthur covered his hand with his own, warmth seeping into every knuckle and joint. “Do you regret it?”
A strong word, that. Regret. Did he regret being able to walk, to feel the soft dirt and rough pavement beneath the soles of his feet? Did he regret being able to taste the rain as it tumbled from the sky, flattening his hair and soaking through his clothes? Did he regret being able to breathe, to eat, to drink an over-sweetened mug of coffee every morning in a futile attempt to dampen the drowsiness deep in his bones? Did he regret this? Lying with Arthur, being able to feel his heartbeat pulsing through his fingertips like a mantra: alive, alive, alive.
“I don’t know,” John answered at last, lazily tracing a forefinger over the dip of Arthur’s collarbone. It was less prominent than it once had been. “Is it bad to say that?”
“I don’t think so. I think it just makes you human.”
“You don’t…hate me?”
Arthur’s eyes visibly softened, full of an emotion that John had never been very good at identifying. “I could never hate you, John. It’s simply not possible.”
He nodded. What else could he do? His eyelids were growing heavy again, exhaustion weighing him down and pulling him deeper into the mattress. God, he was so tired. And tense. And a little hungry. But mostly tired.
His thoughts scattered as something warm brushed from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck, making him shiver for an entirely different reason.
“Go to sleep, John. I’ll be right here.”
His eyes closed against his will. “Promise?” he mumbled, consciousness fading fast.
Arthur chuckled. “Promise.”
That was all it took.
John fell asleep, serenaded by the beating of Arthur’s heart and the feeling of gentle fingers combing through his hair.
The light stayed on until morning.