Work Text:
Late at night, there were few awake in the House, and fewer still who could hear Nightmare walking, steps soft as a predator’s despite their shape, weightless and half-Real. The doors posed no barrier to It, shifting through the space without moving Dorian’s mechanism. When she ended in the laundry room, they paused, only for a moment, to see their Caller asleep, his form half-laid across Washford’s frame.
Despite the lovers' renewed contact, Drysdale was not without Fear, nor without Pain.
He Called, tonight.
Carefully, silently, gently, it ghosted her hand to his hairline, lips pressed to the temple, and fell into his mind, the only evidence outside a wisp of shadow in the dark.
The River of Drysdale’s mind behaved more like air than water, shifting constantly in the breeze of his thought, revealing and hiding sharp Fears and clouds of Memory in their waves. His core Self floated, poised like the acrobat he was, suspended midair like he was about to perform. His dreams were rarely subtle. It was plain what plagued him, tonight.
After taking in the environment, Nightmare crossed to the Core of his Self, and dragged her hand across massive wound that spanned his chest, tasting the bitter tang of adrenaline mixed with the metallic, dust-laced burn of what he had almost done, to the man he loved. As she pushed into his mental landscape, his Dream forming around him, he found himself, Aware, of the sensation of flying.
Flying. Something Drysdale could only dream of, of course. In reality his construction denied him the joys of aerial acrobatics, but here? Here he could soar.
He swung on the trapeze higher and higher, goaded by audience and his darling alike. Washford was awaiting him on the next swing, and he let go, allowing himself to be caught in his lover’s arms and swung around to hang from the trapeze, held securely, safely. Everything was safe, his love had made sure of it.
He hadn’t double checked. Washford’s eyes never failed him. He had a one track mind, when it came to their safety. So he hadn’t double checked.
Everything was fine, as they swung together, Drysdale throwing Washford to the abandoned swing next. He bent over the back of the one he was on, reaching for his love as they met in the upswing, posing for the audience on the down.
Everything was fine, as a quiet sensation began to build in his chest. He felt that he may cough, but nothing more. His body was warm, yes, but it was flush from exercise and the saucy looks his partner gave him. Nothing more.
Nothing more.
He was aglow, basking in the simple pleasure of his craft, as he swung once more towards Washford’s loving arms.
There was a moment, mid-air, when Drysdale was weightless, floating, touching nothing but the sky. It was in this moment that he could feel it, like a string through his rotors, like a screw in his lung.
Washford reached for him, knees hooked over the bar, arms outstretched, ready and waiting to catch his newly renewed love. His fingertips grazed Drysdale’s, as the flyer coughed, violently, unable to catch his breath. The warmth of strong hands, the almost-hold of his partner’s catch slipped from his fingers, and he sank like a stone.
“Dry!”
He could hear the name, muffled under the sound of his own tumble cycle sputtering. There was something in his lungs, in his throat, that wanted out, and as he hit the net it escaped him, lint pouring out of his mouth in clumps as his body was wracked with heaving spasms.
He couldn't breathe.
He could not Breathe.
His body, in Reality, coughed almost as violently in his partner’s arms, but he remained asleep through the discomfort, his internal Pain stronger than his external breathlessness.
The terror in his chest was as painful as the lint embedded within, as he plummeted, plummeted, plummeted. Drysdale was lost in mid air, he had no idea where was up or down, he could not reposition himself; gymnasts called it the Twisties, others called it something else. Drysdale, however, knew only one word to describe the sensation of totally losing access to every instinct he had honed:
Horrifying.
The impact into the net felt like a ton of bricks, and the shock of it dislodged his ability to hold back his true illness. Through hacking coughs and retches, he choked up lint, unable to open his eyes through the pain, or even to roll over off of his side to relieve some discomfort. Wet, soggy lint from an improper dry cycle, huge pads of white lint from an entire load of towels, fragmented chunks of dark lint mixed with candy wrappers, and torn tissues from objects long forgotten in pants pockets: all of it came spilling, painfully, horribly, out.
He was vaguely aware of the gasps of the crowd, of their horror, and their fear. He was vaguely aware of their jeers and boos as it became clear the show could not go on. There was a new pressure on the net he laid on, a new voice, a man kneeling beside him who he had lost and regained.
“*I have you, Dry, I have you,” he said, holding his love's hair back from his face as he hacked up another disgusting pile. Drysdale looked up, right into Washford’s eyes, glad he was there.... but why did his chest still feel so *warm?*
Another cough compelled him onto his knees- how he wished it would stop, this breathless blockage- and he felt his lover's hands, rubbing soothing, small circles on his back. The ropes dug into his legs, cotton and jute pressed harshly into his skin, even through the spandex of his tumbling costume.
As lint poured from his mouth, it lost moisture, soaking wet sludge replaced with dry, replaced with warm, replaced with hot.
Lint should not be that hot.
Time slowed, in that moment of suspense, hours passing in Reality as seconds passed in the logic of the Dream. The dawning horror of what he had almost done, to himself, to his Love, to the House, of what was happening now, in his Perception; the contrast of the soft, smooth comfort from Washford’s fingers combined with the foreknowledge of what was about to happen to them both.
This was the point, of this Dreaming. Ill as he was from his missed maintenance, grateful as he was for his Lover, terrified as he was of failing, this was the Fear to be processed, tonight.
Deep in his chest, he felt the moment the cough sparked, metal on metal, and time resumed at what felt like double speed, by contrast. Hundreds of eyes surrounded him, like stage lights, like the audience, like his own self reflection, as he began to burn.
He tried to scream, but couldn’t, the fire coursing through his throat and burning up his words. The flyer struggled to push Washford away from him, to keep him away from the burning lint he had hacked up, but it was of no use. Through the haze of internal fire, and the pain that came with it, there was more yet to come; when he saw a spark land on his lover, and ignite his uniform as well, it hurt far worse.
The ropes were burning. The fire was spreading. The audience screamed in a thousand voices that all sounded like his own. He coughed still, despite trying to hold it back. When he did, momentarily succeed at holding it in, he felt the build up of fire within him, burning him from the inside out.
Everything was fire. Everything was death. He couldn’t hear Washford anymore over the sounds of his own sobbing coughs, he couldn’t see the audience through the roaring inferno.
The ropes were burning.
The ropes snapped.
The ropes snapped, and he fell like a comet, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. Dimly, he wondered what it had been thinking, all those millions of years ago.
If it were him, its last thoughts would have been, “Help me.”
The moment after the fall was the crash, hard concrete meeting flesh with a horrible sound of breaking.
The moment after the crash was the pain, the gut-wrenching feeling of bone piercing skin and of skin catching flame.
The moment after the pain, however, was where his true suffering occurred; where Washford’s screams pierced, sharper than his own through the haze, where the sickening crunch of his bones and the terrible burning in his lungs and across his body gave way to the vision of what he had done to his Love.
Washford was burning, his ankle caught in the net, dangling upside-down like the Hanged Man in a twisted tarot deck, and he was screaming has the flames engulfed him.
Were this Reality, Drysdale may not have seen, the pain and the fire on and in his own body blinding him to the sight of his Lover.
Were this Reality, Drysdale may not have been able to hear Washford’s cries above the screams leaving his own mouth.
Were this Reality, Drysdale may have fallen fully into unconsciousness, his injuries saving him from this torture.
This was not Reality.
This was Drysdale’s worst Nightmare, and he was aware, of Washford’s pain, of his screaming, of his burning, and of the fact, above it all, that this was his fault.
When he woke, coughing, lungs still full of lint, he screamed his love's name.
Despite the strong arms around him, alive and warm and safe, he could not seem to stop shaking for quite some time.
The image was burned into his mind.