Chapter Text
John didn’t fully understand exactly what it was about him.
What it was that terrified him so utterly.
He wasn’t sure if it was his size- I mean, Jesus, hé’d never seen a human this big. He towered over his and Arthur’s small frame, made all the more little by their position tied down to the chair.
Maybe, he thought, it was the way he was looking at Arthur. Looking at John. Hungry, predator’s eyes tearing into him like into a cornered animal. Eyes of an unnatural hue. Blue and dangerous as ice, framed by thick lashes and a sharp brow. His alert pupils were far from dilated. Two black specks drowning in a freezing ocean, menacing and invasive in their pinpoint intensity.
On the few occasions John had seen Arthur’s eyes, they were brown. Hasty glances snatched in mirrors as he shaved. Glimpses caught in shopfront windows. Flashes reflected in the eyes of other men. The warm colour was deceptive, concealing John behind their amber windows. John loved them.
The Butcher’s blue stare lingered, curious, over the slope of Arthur’s scarred neck, his facial scars and torn right ear; the exposed collarbone that peeked through the rip of his ruined shirt, bloody from his oozing shoulder wound.
Maybe it had been the subtle smile on the butcher’s face as he’d tied them both to the chair. It was a private sort of smirk. A self-congratulatory smugness. This creature had taken far too much joy in hunting them, their mad goose chase through Daniel’s flat and the apartments above. It was a peculiar satisfaction; That of a long held grudge finally healed. Perhaps Arthur’s evasive stunt back on the train had irked him.
The fact was that even whilst Arthur squirmed, down in their spot in the chair, whilst John strained against the ropes tying him to its left armrest, he remained quietly and calmly amused. It unsettled John deeply.
Something was wrong with this man. Something inhuman. Was he a god of wrath in disguise? Some dreamland monster, returned to taste his host’s blood? Something was wrong. Something must be to have rattled him- a former god- like this. Something must be, for him to be raiseîng those non-existent hairs on the back of his incorporeal neck like so. Sweaty-palmed and jittery, John shuddered. There must be. Right?
John’s utter lack of freedom was jarring. Thick ropes secured by tight fisherman’s knots fastened him to the chair. Arthur’s hand, still as a statue, clamped onto the armrest with a vice-tight grip. Meanwhile, John’s nails clutched, clawed and scratched. Thin lines etched into its rough wood grain. An awful texture- sandpapered vileness. He felt His teeth gnash. He flexed his borrowed muscles once more against the restraints. A hot coil of shame wound through John’s belly at the agitated whine produced from his throat. Blinking in the harsh basement lights, he glared down at his similarly bound ankle. Unable to meet the wolfish gaze of their captor.
Did Arthur resent him for his weakness? How the loss of what little agency he possessed sent him toppling like a house of cards?
John felt as though he was an insect pinned down to a board for studying. Like he was stripped naked on a West End stage, caught in the cabaret spotlight. A new parasite under the microscope of a ten-thousand times magnified, fascinated eye. He’d never felt so perceived. So exposed. So unhidden behind the shield of Arthur’s blind eyes.
How the fuck were they getting out of this?