Work Text:
This is a lesson.
The mask is inert and cold, or it is warm and alive, and it is heavy, always.
Vessel has ventured into the in-between reality that Sleep inhabits, heavy with the god's presence, heavy as the mask: Sleep rides the drag of breath that reaches his lungs and invades his blood, carrying Sleep further inside him.
(He has wished to exhale Sleep out before. Sleep does not go.)
What is it that is troubling you now?
What a question to ask.
“I don’t know.”
How am I to guide you if you close yourself off to me?
This is a lesson.
Vessel is sitting in a room that nature has overtaken. He’s been here before. So many times before, he’s been here, sitting, breathing Sleep in, trying to exhale Sleep out. Wondering if the mask that rests on his face is cold clay or some hard, immutable flesh. Questions sit like blood on his tongue and he is thinking, thinking, thinking. What is the best way to speak to Sleep? Has there ever been a proper way, or is he breathing in traces of his god in this ruined room like it is the adytum of a temple, fishing for an oracle to speak?
There is a lesson here, but Vessel doesn’t know how to interpret it. He sits with his back bowed on a piano bench, elbows resting on his knees, his fingers laced together tight. The charcoal over his skin erases the edges of his body, lets him blend into the shadows that gather around him.
Vines crawl serpentine over the piano this bench belongs to, the boxy instrument turned with its keys to the wall in a far corner. Leaves press, smothering, over the glass that remains in the windows. The ceiling is bloated from rain that sloughs plaster away like dead skin.
(He is sheltering in a corpse made new by rot.
There is a lesson here.)
Why would you come to me now, if you have nothing to say? Do you think my time is yours?
“You take enough of mine. Can’t I waste a little of yours?”
The mask tightens on Vessel’s face, like a hand has taken him by the chin - it is not a cruel touch, but something in him braces for…he isn’t sure what. Vessel’s head tilts back as though Sleep’s grasp is guiding him to look up. The room is a room is a room is shadow-empty-vines-leaves-eyes and eyes and eyes-
Sleep waits. Sleep watches. Sleep is in Vessel’s mouth as his lips part, in his lungs as he breathes in, carrying traces of the god into his blood. His body thrums with sympathy pains of apotheosis; Vessel’s soul is submerged in Sleep and his body wicks in divinity.
“This isn’t where I was,” Vessel says. Eyes blink at him. Eyes scan him, studying him from angles Vessel cannot comprehend. “Why did I come here? Did you want to see me?”
I see you whenever I wish. The mask trembles; an adjustment of grip. Did you feel so alone you made the excuse of this moment?
This is a lesson.
Vessel was somewhere else, before this room. There were others around him, surrounding him, grounding his presence in the real. III, who was saying something that Vessel realized he found funny. II, answering with a wry grin as he wrung his mask dry (Vessel realized he finds this funny too. II’s masks are permanently stained and smell constantly of sugar and the astringent bite of caffeine). IV, who was sliding Vessel a sidelong look that said plainly, can you believe these two?
Divinity curls in Vessel’s nerves. The memory is a coronal flash that Sleep finds in his brain: what Sleep thinks of it, Vessel doesn’t ask.
You weren’t alone.
“I never am.”
Not true. You hold yourself separate to spare yourself the risk of stumbling. To be seen is to risk it. To speak is to risk it.
Did you flee to me in this moment, because you believe you cannot stumble with me?
(Lesson. This is a lesson.)
(Vessel’s gut clenches.)
“I didn’t–”
You did.
The piano bench creaks as Vessel stands. Divinity lays like ropes over his shoulders, fetters his steps as he tries to walk forward. The floor is soft with moss that pushes up the old stone tiles. The room is breathing in a way nothing should breathe, uneven waves of rise-fall-fall-rise. Sleep squirms in Vessel’s lungs, learning the automatic process, copying it without success.
I think, his god says, that for a moment you were content. When you realized this you retreated, came to me as though I must shrive it from you.
“I don’t need–”
The mask presses against his cheeks, the red prongs flexing like insect jaws. Sleep speaks and the voice reverberates from Vessel’s throat – the god is soaked into his tongue, plucking vocal cords.
Solitude, Sleep says. The word rolls from Vessel’s mouth like the tide. A perfect shell to hide within. What cannot follow you, cannot see you. Nothing speaks to you, touches you. There is only what you allow around you.
Do you not want them around you?
Do you think my eyes on you are enough?
Vessel can’t reply: his mouth is numbed, full of saltwater. The memory spins up in his mind again and it’s so fresh it feels as though it’s not a memory at all, but a moment still happening:
III, waiting for Vessel’s reaction. A joke that quirked Vessel’s lips into a smile, and there’s a laugh building in his chest, slowly rising like it’s afraid it will get lost on the way out of him. II, patiently accepting his fate as a punchline. IV, sitting on a couch with his guitar over his lap, turning tuning keys– a string had broken, he was replacing it, Vessel had come in with a pack of new strings in one hand but IV had already repaired it and it’s alright, Ves, I got it. Thanks, though.
– a moment Vessel had entered a room to find the three of them talking and comfortable and safe among each other, and he had felt as an intruder among them, even though that wasn’t true it wasn’t true it wasn’t true –
Let me go.
You wanted to speak to me. For my permission to hide from them.
Did you stumble –
– or did you flinch?
(A lesson. A lesson. A lesson.)
Let me go, I said.
Speak it aloud.
“Lhh–hh. ” Cold saltwater spills out of Vessel’s mouth. He doubles over, wipes his hand over his lips; the charcoal on his palm is wet and running off his skin. More water wells in his throat, falls from his mouth and carries his words out in a cough. “Let– hhk – let me–”
Go.
Sleep’s presence is heavy, so heavy. A stone Vessel has learned to cradle in his arms, letting it carry him into the god’s depths. The room is flooding, water pouring out of Vessel’s mouth, and he looks up quickly at the eyes of his god. They stare back, impatient and cold and tender and fascinated, observing this vibrant, weary little creature that by turns embraces and recoils from divinity.
Vessel’s lungs are cold, bubbling as the god leaves and water remains.
He coughs, drops to his knees as saltwater chafes his mouth raw.
He flinched.
He flinched.
He flinched, and he fled, retreated to this room he has been in so many times before - how many times before? How many times did he retreat here like it was a sanctum carved for him, to speak to his god? - he ran to Sleep because staying outside himself meant…
…is he so afraid of them? Or is it an instinct to flinch?
All he had done was walk into the room.
It was them being glad to see him that made him flinch. That moment of acceptance, welcome, given with such open hands as though it wasn’t even a question.
Vessel had recoiled from them like it was a trap.
A tired instinct.
(Here, then, is the lesson: wounds remain, and their pain can echo. Echoes can lie. Echoes can drown out the voices that speak without hidden intent. To shrink from every offered hand is not always survival.)
(Vessel flinched, because it was once second nature to brace, to endure.)
Water rises and the lesson is thudding in Vessel’s skull. He doesn’t have to flinch anymore. His own need to protect himself can loosen its grip. Sleep watches, always, but Sleep does not have to serve as a shell to hide in so constantly.
There is another room and it is warm and there are posters on the walls and a muted TV playing a foreign country’s nightly news and a couch that is so old it has forgotten the better days when it didn’t creak, and in the room too are parts of Vessel that he wants to see, that he wants to reach for, that he-
“Ves?”
Vessel sways. He blinks, gaze refocusing, though the eyehole slits of his mask don’t show this. III’s hand is on his shoulder, fingers drumming against him to catch his attention. Vessel clears his throat.
The nature-devoured room is gone. This new place lacks any familiarity, though it is well-used; another little backstage greenroom to camp out in, waiting for soundcheck. Vessel doesn’t know how long he’s stood silent, retreated into himself, looking for guidance. He touches a fingertip to his lips: they are dry. His mouth is clean of the taste of saltwater.
“Hm?” Vessel replies. III watches him, curious. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
What a question to ask.
Vessel glances from III, to II, to IV. The pack of guitar strings is still in his hand, and he hasn’t crushed it in a panicked grip. If the others saw him retreat from them, they don’t call him on it. They just look at him, and Vessel feels rooted back into the real, back into this small room that smells like years of cigarettes and perfume. A side table beside the couch bears a folded cardstock note that reads Welcome, Vessel and Co.! written in red permanent marker, a friendly overture from the venue staff before they were left to themselves.
Vessel shakes his head. II is still wringing his mask dry - he was washing it in the greenroom’s bathroom sink, Vessel recalls, and III was joking about spare masks and energy drink stains and IV had sighed and Vessel had laughed -
“Nothing. Nothing, just checked out for a moment.” Vessel ducks his head down as III gives his shoulder a friendly squeeze. The moment passes. Vessel tosses the pack of strings onto the side table; it clips the folded note, but does not knock it over. He sinks into the couch beside IV – IV moves over obligingly, giving Vessel space to sit – and the urge to flinch does not return.
Sleep is not present in the room’s corners. Sleep is not a lingering taste of saltwater in Vessel’s mouth. But still, but still. Sleep is always here, always in him, but Vessel does not reach for the god again.
The room is warm, and his friends are with him, and the contentment returns.
He does not flinch again.