Work Text:
Is it drowning
If you hold your own head down?
- CHOKE, The Warning, grandson, Zero 9:36
It’d never been this bad before.
Janus wheezed, fighting back the dizzy, darkening haze in his vision, and tried to push himself up against the rim of the bathtub. He felt the cold—the constricting, biting cold that was wrapping around his throat, shooting roots out and downward into his chest.
He’d lost his ability to speak a few hours ago, sometime in the late morning. He’d slipped away from the common areas since then, knowing his silence would, ironically, attract attention. His tongue sat heavy, like a stone, in his mouth, frozen and immobile and metal and cold—
Being in his room had helped, a little. The thick warmth of the heat lamps and satisfying dimness had countered the weight and the chill, but it hadn’t removed the feeling completely. He couldn’t distract himself by needling the others, of course—that would likely make it worse, in fact, if it were even possible—but usually time on his own, ruminating in silence, was enough to make it go away.
He wasn’t sure when he realized that something was wrong. He wasn’t sure when he realized that the cold was intensifying, that the uncomfortable weight hadn’t started to ebb. When breathing began to shift from automatic to a manual task—when he realized that his throat felt tight, and that he was struggling to take in a deep breath.
Janus pulled his pen away from his journal, leaning back in his chair. He drew in a slow, measured inhale through his mouth, trying to stretch his lungs to their full size. It didn’t feel quite as easy as it should’ve, somehow—like there was something sitting in the back of his throat, blocking his airway just barely enough to feel dangerous.
Janus shifted in his seat, then set his jaw, narrowing his eyes at the wall. Endure it. It’s fine. You’ve dealt with this before.
He forced his attention back to the pages, but he found it a little hard to concentrate. He’d lost his train of thought, and picking it back up eluded him, like trying to cup liquid mercury in his hands. He had to focus on pulling the air down into his lungs at the same time, which proved to be surprisingly distracting.
Maybe this was what it felt like for Remus when he drank soap, though perhaps notably less…hot, and itchy. This was cold; this was heavy, and thick, and sickening. Cold.
He tasted metal in the back of his throat. He couldn’t…he couldn’t breathe right.
Janus coughed, the sound oddly hoarse and strained even to his own ears. His fingers spasmed on their own accord; all at once it was too much, and he shoved to his feet, trying to get away from the feeling. His chair clattered to the floor behind him. The sudden shift in altitude made his head spin, and he stumbled a little, shifting to get his footing.
Relax. Relax. It’s fine. You’ve dealt with this, you’ve dealt with this before…
Janus fought to even his breathing, fought to tamp down the rising panic in his veins. He was able to get in air, sure, but it was like his windpipe was resisting him, reluctant to pull in oxygen at his command.
He shook his head, almost as though in an attempt to reset the feeling. It’s fine. It’s fine. We don’t even need to breathe—we’re not real.
Everything is fine.
His technically nonexistent lungs were hard to convince.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, poised with his hands splayed out above his desk, unsure if he was going to need to catch himself. All he knew was that at some point his latest breath came out as a wheeze, thin and rattling and almost completely unproductive. His vision pulsed, and there were odd…what might’ve been little black spots starting to flicker in the corners of his eyes.
He…he couldn’t breathe.
The cold clarity of the fact that he couldn’t deny, couldn’t glaze over, couldn’t wriggle his way out of sent icy fear shooting the length of his spine. The surge of adrenaline gave him the energy he needed—without discretion, he didn’t really think it through—to warp into the bathroom and brace heavily against the sink, feeling lightheaded, gasping, to look up at his reflection—
Freezing at the unmistakable glitter of silver starting to frost over the scales on his jaw, his throat. Watching it start to inch outward, creeping across his flesh like mold, like blood, like a fungus growing in a time lapse.
It’d never been this bad before.
He jerked up a hand to claw at the silver streak, but it wouldn’t flake away; it just kept growing, silent and steady and cold. He could feel it crawling across the roof of his mouth, then, stretching up from his tongue to consume the sides of his jaw.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.
Janus wheezed, the panic closing in. His vision swam, darkened, listed, and his reflection dropped away. His knees stung as they hit the floor, a sharp crack of flesh and bone on ceramic. Something shattered on the ground to his right—the soft-yet-shrill tinkling of glass reverberated in his ears. He felt at the cabinets in front of him; he tried to push himself up, tried to make a sound—the closest he got was the quiet scraping of his legs against the tiles.
Shaking hands tore off his capelet, his jacket. Thought, air, thought was leaving him. He tried to pry the cloth, the silver, the everything from his throat. Too close, too close—he couldn’t breathe—
He kicked out, scrabbling frantically, feeling his back hit the rim of the tub. Gasping, choking, terrified—but he couldn’t make a sound.
A small part of his mind still clinging to reason started to wonder if this was it, if this was how he went. Suffering in silence, drowning on dry land, swallowed up by his own lies. An appropriate fate, perhaps. He might have laughed wryly, if he could breathe.
There was a watery film blurring the haze of his vision, the haze that was tinged a pulsing red and gray and filled with static at the edges. His stomach turned—he felt sick, he felt sick. Every human and animal instinct in his body was screaming, telling him to fight, but he couldn’t make a sound.
He couldn’t summon someone else; he couldn’t call for help.
He tried to push up against the tub. He needed…he needed to find someone; his terror-clutched, oxygen-deprived brain tunneled in on this singular, simple thought. His legs gave quickly, and he hit the floor again with a dull thud—the pain arcing up his shins almost didn’t register, through the fear and the desperation and the tautness of his chest. It was in his chest, it was in his chest—
The bathroom was sideways, blurring hard. Janus felt the cold tile of the floor against his temple, pressing along his right arm, his legs. Spatters of sweat and tears and saliva were gathering under his face. He felt his body spasming with desperate, choking, wheezing attempts to fill his lungs, to suck in air. It wasn’t working. It wasn’t working.
He couldn’t breathe.
A distant sound started to register through the roaring of blood and the gasping and the ringing in his ears—a quiet tapping, the sound of knuckles on wood, somewhere higher up and somewhat close by. The muffled humming timbre of a voice, something light years away and vaguely familiar. Something that sounded…confused, concerned. Worried.
Janus shuddered and wheezed and fought to orient himself. He summoned the last of his strength in a desperate, choking, sobbing Hail Mary, and conjured an arm to tug at the doorknob across the room.
There was a tiny creak, and a faint sliver of light cut through the haziness of his vision. It hesitated for a second, then widened at a snail’s pace, and then there was a sound like a gasp and a whole flurry of motion burst into his rapidly fading line of sight.
Footsteps pounded through the tiles against his body. There was a rustling of fabric, a shifting of weight, a presence coming close to his side—a warmth against his shoulder, his face, slipping uncaring across trails of spit and perspiration—“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh—kiddo, breathe—”
Someone helped him shift into a less awkward position against the floor, rambling frantically, as Janus choked and gagged and failed to take in air. Someone, someone was warm, someone was with him, he was trying to breathe—the cold seemed to falter for a moment, slowing its pace, but it didn’t disappear, it still lay thick in his throat, his mouth, his lungs—
“Logan!” someone screamed, a voice filled with terror.
The world was dark. There was more movement, voices—a new hand on his shoulder, more warmth, warmth.
“—nus? Janus, c…—r me? What—”
He couldn’t respond. It felt like his head was swelling up, floating away. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t recognize the voice—he couldn’t breathe, he was dying—
Someone tipped his head back, lifting his upper body from the floor. The position didn’t help very much, if at all. He could barely move his neck, the cold metal burning into his flesh—
The world tunneled, and he tried to choke out a sob. His head pounded, his vision leaving him, his hearing fading along with his stolen words—
“MOVE.” A familiar voice cut through the ebbing unclarity, silencing the others. The distant pressure on his body shifted, the sound of motion, someone being shoved away—something tearing, splitting open and apart across his chest—
Something burning was pressed into his sternum, and the cold almost seemed to shriek as it was forced away. Janus jerked and gasped violently as the tautness of his chest unwound, the freezing weight of the silver pressed back up toward his throat.
A pungent, acrid odor like bleach filled the air. Janus didn’t mind—he gasped and gasped and gasped, his body flooded with a primal, unbridled relief. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the room that he could take in with a single breath. He could breathe—he could breathe again.
Janus lay there, wheezing, exhausted. His eyelids fluttered and he blinked hard, his vision clearing up a little. He caught a glimpse of Remus’s face above his own, then, his wild eyes bright with fear and concentration. One of his hands was pressing into Janus’s bare chest, but it wasn’t a hand, almost—green and slimy and covered in pulsing suckers, it was oozing a clear liquid that hissed and steamed and turned orangish-yellow in contact with the glossy gray.
The hand moved, rising with the cold, slicking up his neck and shoulders. “Breathe, Dee, breathe…”
Janus kept gasping, his airway opening further as Remus’s hand and the strange oozing liquid chased back the freezing, suffocating cold of his throat. Dizzy, lightheaded with relief, he sagged back into the arms beneath him, his chest heaving.
He could breathe again.
He started to slip…
Someone shook him, a little. A few worried voices picked up overhead—“no, no, honey—don’t fall asleep—” “Janus, stay awake—” “Hey, hey—”
Janus choked out an inarticulate noise, like a half-cough, jostled back to the waking world. He tried to swallow, and groaned. His chest ached; he was so dizzy. But he could breathe, he could breathe, and that was all that mattered.
A hand on his arm, squeezing softly. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Just breathe. It’s okay, take it slow…”
Janus obeyed, soaking in the warmth of the touch. The warmth on his face, the warmth of his chest. He breathed.
He breathed.
Slowly, the world started to settle back into place around him. The sizzling lightened up, and Remus pulled away; he flicked his wrist once, spattering clear fluid across the tiles, and his hand reverted to its regular shape. He pressed it against Janus’s opposite arm. “Snakey—”
“Th’nkyou,” Janus wheezed, through desperate gulps of air. He tried to meet Remus’s gaze with his own, tried to send him a look of gratitude. “Th’nkyou.”
Remus nodded, his lips tight. He looked worried, and almost angry. He dug his fingers into Janus’s arm.
“What was that?” Patton gasped—Patton, Patton was the one who found him, Patton was the one with kind words and a tear-streaked face. “What was that? What was that, Janus?”
“S-silver,” Janus choked out. He coughed, the sensation burning his tortured throat. “Silver…tongue. ’s worse—worse than…”
His words trailed away, and Logan leaned back, adjusting his glasses. The logical Side was fighting for an expression of composure. “A…a manifestation of the colloquial saying, tied to your role as the embodiment of deceit?”
Janus did his best to nod, the movement weak and jerky. “G-gets bad…when ’s…’s guilty ab’t lying—”
He broke off with a gasp, unable to keep up the effort. Janus slumped back into the arms beneath him, panting. Remus bent in and pressed a firm kiss into his hair.
Janus could just make out the look of dawning horror and guilt on Patton’s face as the duke pulled away.
He wanted to shake his head, to console him. You didn’t know.
Janus breathed. With the adrenaline ebbing, with the unfiltered exhaustion left in its wake…“’m’so tired,” he slurred, his voice barely a whisper. He felt his eyelids starting to droop again.
Remus brushed his bangs back from his snake eye, once, twice. “All right,” Logan said, off a ways to his right. “All right. You can rest, Janus. We’ll discuss this when you’re feeling better.”
Janus sighed, and let the world drop away.