Chapter Text
“Did you really need to get both of those Arthur? It seems… excessive.”
“I need to eat, John,” Arthur hissed, hefting the weight of their overstuffed grocery bag onto his already sore shoulder to pat for their key to Marie's door. “Food isn't exactly a frivolity I can just do without-”
“I know that! But why did you insist on buying those overpriced chocolates and an entire cake? They were so expensive! We could have easily gotten triple the rice and beans like I told you to do instead of wasting most of our money on just those two things! Now we barely have any left! How are we going to pay Marie next week if we still need the room?”
Arthur froze for a moment after sliding their key into the lock.
“I… I'm not sure. We'll figure it out I guess,” Arthur mumbled, eyes closing out of habit as he leaned his forehead against the cool wood of the front door. “I just wanted something nice for myself, something to make me feel like a person again. After… after Addison. And the pit. And every other god awful thing we've been through-”
Arthur sucked in a breath as he felt his voice hitch and break, swallowing thickly against the sudden unexpected tide of emotion that threatened to overtake him. No. No. He was not about to break down on Marie's doorstep over a goddamn cake of all things.
“Arthur-”
Arthur set his jaw and forced himself to twist the key, pushing Marie's door open with a bit more force than was strictly necessary before stomping up the stairs towards their room.
“No, you're right. It was stupid. I shouldn't have bought them. A small selfish comfort wasn't worth the majority of our finances, no matter how tempting. We need a place to stay more than I needed pastries and chocolates,” he muttered under his breath while feeling along for the banister, unsure if Marie was home or not. She'd already been hesitant enough to rent them a room, hearing her new tenant blathering to himself likely wouldn't do them any favors.
“Arthur, I- wait, let me get the door- okay go ahead. We can set the bag down on the desk by the window. A little more to your left- your other left, there. Yes. You can set it down now.”
Arthur let the bag slide off of his arm and flopped face down onto the nearby bed with a defeated groan, not even bothering to take their shoes off. John tapped his fingers against the bedspread, waiting for Arthur to stir. After several minutes of motionless silence however, he heard faint snoring coming from below them. Arthur had fallen asleep then, facedown into the mattress. Great. Usually John would have just poked at his face until he woke back up, but all the frustration he'd felt at the man's stubborn impulsiveness had bled away at the mention of the pit. They… hadn’t really spoken of their imprisonment since being reunited, or the toll it had taken on them both. John wasn't sure he ever wanted to. Still, they were finally together again, relatively safe for the moment, and had no open wounds that required immediate attention. As much as it inconvenienced John, Arthur deserved to rest for once.
John contorted the leg he possessed up towards his hand and slapped blindly at the laces, eventually managing to pull the correct string and slide the thing off, wiggling his toes in victory. He hated wearing shoes. He let their leg drop back down onto the mattress and stared at the back of Arthur’s eyelids. What would it be like if their roles were reversed? Would he trust Arthur to drag him across Carcosa, hanging onto his every spoken word while navigating the world blindly? The thought of being damned to filter everything through Arthur's perspective, with no way to verify the validity of what information he was fed until it was too late…
It was awful.
John had always believed that Arthur’s lot in their accidental melding was much easier to endure than his own. Now he wasn't so sure.
Arthur whimpered in his sleep and John carded a hand through his hair without thinking, a leftover reflex from their time together in the pits. Arthur spasmed at the touch and latched tightly onto John's forearm with his other hand, the nails biting painfully into John's skin as he thrashed in his sleep and rolled to clutch it closer to his chest. It seemed Arthur still carried a few of his old habits from the pit as well. John let his arm be manhandled without protest, the muscles in his stolen wrist going stiff as Arthur's manic movements briefly brushed his fingertips against a jagged line of uneven skin just below their jawline. Eventually he curled in on himself and began to still, though he'd begun to frantically mumble unintelligible nonsense to himself.
John carefully wiggled his fingers back up towards the side of Arthur's neck, tracing along the length of the wound with feather light touches. The raised skin around it was slightly warmer than the rest of Arthur, but not concerningly so. From what John could feel, the worst of the wound had already closed and scabbed over. It would likely leave Arthur with quite a sizable scar. John shifted his fingers downwards slightly, feeling for Arthur's pulse. He found it easily, and something in his mind relaxed at the steady thrumming beneath their skin. Arthur was here, and he was alive. He wasn't pale and twitching on the cold floor, slowly choking to death in a pool of his own blood. John wasn't watching him bleed out, powerless to do anything that might save him.
John pulled his hand away from their neck, sliding it beneath the warmth of Arthur's unconscious palm to wipe away the memory. Arthur threaded his fingers through John's without waking, his grip still firm but no longer painful as he rolled over and dragged John along with him. John hesitantly gave Arthur's hand a light squeeze.
He was beginning to understand what Arthur had meant by wanting small selfish comforts.