Chapter Text
It finds them in their dreams. It’s quiet, waiting like a wild beast that has interacted with a human before. They don’t know how that last interaction went, but they know that it happened. It speaks in tongues and quiet sighs. It demands prayers and proclamations. It waits every night in the corner of their consciousness. Patient. Stalking. It is a wild beast, a hunter. They are Its prey, and they are safe only because It doesn’t harm them.
It sends emotions in their dreams. Longing. Devotion. Adoration. Want. It appears in bursts that makes their heads hurt and their chests heavy. It continues when they don’t awaken from it. Sometimes, they wonder if It prevents them from doing so.
‘Two,’ It says one night as he tries to wake himself up. ‘Two. Bear the weight of two.’
Who, he asks in return. Who is doing that? Me? Why?
But It only repeats, ‘Two. Bear the weight of two.’
He asks, Who are you?
And It sends images of shadowed figures leaning over a swaying curved branch, fingers to their mouths and making quiet shushing sounds. Hushing a fussy baby as it whimpers in the dead of night.
He asks again, Why me?
‘We'd rather be six feet under than be lonely,’ It replies. ‘Welcome me in.’
It sends images again. A piano. Long fingers gracing its keys. Crumpled sheet music. A table and a mug. Candles with wax dripping down the edges. Picture frames littering the walls, all devoid of photographs but steadily waiting. Black feathers tucked into corners.
It waits.
Where?
‘You’re a long way from home.’
This time, there are figments of people. A box of hair dye and bleach sits next to a large bottle of conditioner, boasting of a floral scent. Red-stained fingertips and hands. Plants crawling up walls and changing colors with the seasons. Flowers in a garden next to vegetables. Laughter and indiscriminate conversation around a table. Ink buried deep beneath the layers of the skin in colors that mean everything to the owner.
And emotion. Something nestles deep within his chest and nuzzles there safe and warm, purring the whole while. Something familiar. Something that’s cradled pairs of hands that he knows belongs to others.
Despite himself, he pines for it.
What do you want from me?
‘Let the tides carry you back to me,’ It croons. ‘Two. Bear the weight of two.’
It takes several weeks — sleepless nights coupled with the insistent noise of water in his head to bang it out on his drum kit — before he realizes that he’s the second of his title.
Where is the First?
He meets the others later, but it feels like they’ve always known each other. An easy grin, a smooth offer to buy coffee, and he swears hears his heartbeat in his ears when calloused fingers brush against the back of his hand. Between meetings that turn from “accidental” to “exponential”, he learns bits and pieces about them. Bassist. Guitarist.
He learns of their own dreams. Of how It watches them from a distance. Apprehensive. Almost timid. But familiar of how they move, of what they say, of how they react. It never agitates on purpose, and It never patronizes on purpose. Of course, It’s not perfect; there are misunderstandings, rude awakenings, and a wordless plea to stay.
“I dream of a garden,” the shorter of the pair says. He has a gentle look in his eyes, something that grasps and does its best to not let go least he never finds it again. “Lemons and avocados. Cherry blossoms and a beehive.”
“Mine’s covered in fire,” the other adds. He gestures wildly, nearly hitting his arm against his companion. “Sorry luv. Like, not a forest fire. But a… what’s the word– a hearth. A fireplace. It’s always burning, but sometimes there’s candles. Those scented ones that you sometimes go into stores to just smell, you know?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“You never walked into a store just to smell the candles?”
“Not lately.” He sips his coffee — it contains enough caffeine to potentially kill someone, the barista having narrowed her eyes at him when he told her his order — and tries to redirect the conversation back to the original topic. “Dreams. It communicates to you in your dreams. Well, It tries to. It never really says anything clearly. It just —”
“Sings,” says the shorter one. “It speaks like it’s singing.”
He doesn’t know when it happens. It registers to his mind that something’s dripping down his face when the taller one mutters something that sounds like “Oh shit” and a napkin is being unceremoniously dabbed over his eyes. He takes the napkin and pockets it, instead using his hands to clear his face of liquid. His palms shine with flecks of gold in his tears. Now, it’s his turn to say, “Oh, shit.”
“Does that happen often?” asks the shorter one.
“Define ‘often’,” he replies, pushing down the god’s wordless apologies as he sips at his coffee for a long time to clear the thickening of his throat.
“What is it that It wants? And you? What do you want?”
“If I knew, I would’ve told you by now.” He swirls the last of his coffee in his cup and adds, “I’ve always wanted a band.” He doesn’t know why he feels so shy to admit that. Of course he’s always wanted to be in a band, ever since he was in grade school. But maybe it’s the god that’s privy to his mind, or the way that it murmurs ‘two’ in between the seconds of a lightning strike and thunder within his dreams.
“We could be your band,” the taller one pipes up. “You already know we play.”
Water crashes in his head, swirling in his inner ear but never letting him get dizzy. The god croons over and over, ‘You will be mine.’ He takes a deep breath in an attempt to let It work Its energy out, but it just repeats, ‘I have waited. Did you not say we were made for each other?’
“Are you sure?” he asks. “If you become part of the band, you’ll be part of… this.”
The shorter one juts a thumb at the other and snickers, “Living with this prick is training.”
In the midst of a shout of indignation from the taller one, the god cries, ‘Just let me know that you're mine.’
He watches as something golden reflects in the afternoon sun. It highlights the taller one’s forehead and disgustingly fried hair, but also the sharp eyes full of mischief. It emphasizes the mouth of the shorter one, and the way that he said ‘sings’ reverberates in his mind. Another thing about having a god that’s privy to his mind is that he no longer is aware of which emotions and experiences are his own.
Is the yearning his, or the god’s?
“You’ll be the third and fourth,” he announces unceremoniously after he finishes the last of his coffee.
“Does that make you the first or the second?” asks the fourth.
“The second.”
“Where’s the first?” inquires the third.
This time, he manages to see the golden-flecked tears as they pour from the new acolytes’ eyes. He feels his own tear ducts being unwillingly activated once again, and the god doesn’t apologize this time. ‘Missing pieces find me,’ It sobs, ‘And I'm whole again.’
They make a point to not ask about the First for a while.
‘I will know it's you,’ the god — Sleep, as they figure out a month into being four minus one — purrs in the bond. It sends images of three figures, their lips swathed with black lipstick and faces dripping with gold.
“More?” III asks. “I thought it was just us.”
“You clearly thought wrong.” II follows the vague directions the god sends, reentering the coffee shop where he had made it official with III and IV. Between the instant waft of coffee hitting his nose, he receives the voice of another. It wordlessly exhales near his ear, and he shivers as it passes on by.
That isn’t the god.
“Sleep, you say?” one of the women asks once everyone is situated in one of the coffee shop’s larger tables. Her red hair is pulled back in a bun so tight it nearly rivals the phantom pain that II gets when he looks at III’s damaged hair. “That’s Its name?”
“That’s the name It reacts most to,” IV says. “It was a work in progress to figure it out because —”
“It doesn’t speak, only sings,” interrupts another woman. She has thick black hair and a light voice that dances upwards. “We noticed.”
“It’s very persistent as well,” the third woman says as she sips at her drink. “You three sometimes appear too. Though, we didn’t know that at the time. But we heard you play.” When she smiles at the statement, it’s asymmetrical, favoring the side where a small mole resides. “It’s amazing.”
Conversation continues into topics unrelated to gods and their whims, delving into everyday topics to learn about each other. Names are exchanged, simple numbers with normal ones paired with a group name: Espera. At that, Sleep stirs in the bond. Water crashes through and whispers mine, mine, mine.
If II listens carefully in the dark of the night in his flat, with his roommate snoring in the background, he hears another voice. It whispers home, home, home.