Work Text:
there are questions i can't ask
now at last, the worst is over
see the way you hold yourself
reel against your body's borders
i know that you hate this place
not a trace of me would argue
honey, we should run away
oh
someday
Something breathes in his apartment: his refrigerator humming despite the closed door, the tinning of the building’s guts through the walls, the radiator’s sigh. Mechanical. The clock on his alarm reads barely past midnight, although Arthur feels it dig itself in his bones; the lateness of the night outside, slicing through the bottom of his curtains and shining moonlight on his floor, cutting straight across the bed.
His bed sinks into his body, but Arthur feels heavy, agitated with exhaustion. He tries; he folds up his legs into a fetal position. He tucks his hands beneath his legs and squeezes, finding warmth between the naked skin of his thighs, but it isn’t enough, not for Arthur. It’s easy to snap his eyes open and palm around the cold space of his mattress. There’s a lingering citrus, tangy in his nose, pleasantly hazy, faint.
He wonders if George is asleep right now. If he sprawls across the sheets he could feel the imprint of his body stuck in the bed, dream-like.
“Where are you?” Arthur whispers into the dark. There isn’t a response, so Arthur turns over, white-knuckled around the sheets.
He tosses, turns, grabs his phone from the charging port and clicks it on until it's a reflection of white light in his face, brightening until his eyes sting and squeeze.
Arthur - 12:28 PM
can i sleep at yours tonight?
Arthur is at the door thirty minutes before their agreed time, standing in front of it with his backpack in his hand, pinched in his fingers. The welcome is there as always, with a text from George: door’s open.
Sunlight slips through despite the curtains drawn; Arthur has to roll over onto the missing warmth, arm draped across his eyes against the saccharine illumination. There is the hiss of a kettle in the background, the sound of feet slipping over tile – George appears in the doorway, holding two mugs, smiling at Arthur’s bedhead, “You still take milk, right?”
Arthur follows him into the kitchen – nods, like he remembers he’s supposed to – and watches George set down the drinks in front of him, smoke wisping like a curl. There’s a bar stool pulled out for him already.
“Heater broken again?” George asks, and Arthur –
His head swivels. “What?”
“Your heater,” George treads carefully. It pricks a claw inside Arthur, sharp and delicate. “It was broken just last week. That’s why you came over in the first place, remember?” He shrugs. “‘M just asking if it’s still out.”
Arthur moves the mug between his hands. It’s all too hot against his skin but it gives him something to work with. “Yeah,” he lies, thick on his tongue. George must hear it, surely, in the tremble of his breath.
“That’s fine,” George hums, taking a sip of his own tea. “You can always stay here as long as you need.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem,” he smiles, then – this soft little thing that has Arthur’s sternum aching painfully. He wants to reach out so desperately, to touch the sunlight dappling his cheeks in gleaming streaks and sparkles. It’s like glitter, all over the floor, all over George’s face.
One thing begins to blur after another and Arthur finds himself at George’s more often than not. It’s not a constant thing, but it’s damn near close enough.
Arthur doesn’t sleep on the nights he’s not in George’s bed.
He doesn’t know what to do about that except keep on knocking on his door.
“You should start paying rent,” George laughs, one day, curled up next to Arthur. There’s a soft glow from the dark yellow lamp lighting up the room, because that’s one thing he found out about George, that he doesn’t sleep in constant darkness. It’s weirdly comforting.
“Sure,” Arthur says, softly, his laugh caught onto the edge of his throat. “Up the services and I will.”
George lets an arm fall across Arthur’s, a hand wrapped around his wrist in a motion that leaves Arthur breathless. Their hands, palms flat against each other. Pulses close.
Arthur can feel the gentle beat of George’s underneath the pads of his fingers.
Sliding his arm underneath Arthur and pulling the other one close along his shoulder blades, Arthur can feel George’s skin underneath his bare ribs from where he only wears a short-sleeved shirt, the underside of his veins brushing where Arthur dips in and out. His hand rests, at the top of Arthur’s spine, along the little divot that Arthur feels like making him press down on.
“Good enough?” George whispers between them.
“Good enough,” Arthur says back.
There’s a weekend where George is away; family. So Arthur ends up in the night, stretching thin, the lamp dug from under his bed lit to a sodium orange glow.
George’s voice is clear through the background hum of his building. His phone lights up with the brightness of the call, a stark white that stings Arthur's eyes the more he looks at it; he doesn't stop. “You alright Arthur?”
“Yeah, ‘m fine,” he says, even though they both know it isn’t really true. None of this has been true. “Just miss you a little.”
“I know,” George says, quietly, and Arthur – fuck. “I miss you too."
Before, it was this, and now –
Arthur tries not to go to George’s. He listens to the heartbeat of his apartment and buys drugstore melatonin, a new blanket, a whole white noise machine. He's done a lot to not end up there again, but nothing seems to be working, and Arthur thinks, I can't do that again -
But he still ends up at George’s door all the same.
“C’mon,” George whispers, in the cold space of the apartment’s hallway. Arthur wants to crawl inside George and never come out: a fucking parasite in the warmth of his gut. “Let’s get you to bed.”