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There’s something so peculiar in having a body.
When he was only something abstract, a concept, a voice, a pair of eyes and a hand, there was a certain familiarity with nothingness. A space confined between the bone walls of a skull, his love for life and curiosity for this world filtered by the actions of a man who stopped believing in those things too much time ago.
He never thought about the problem of identity, before. Nobody has ever asked what he was.
Maybe Arthur, but he asked it first with terror and then with curiosity, and after some time their relationship became that of confidante, a friend. Something in which the lines get blurred.
Humans don’t ask if the person in front of them is a human or something else.
Even now, when others perceive him, they’ll just see a human.
But can he define himself as a human? He’s had a body for a few hours, since he made that bargain with Kayne to save Arthur.
He can still feel his blood under his fingers, a thick and sickly warm liquid that was keeping on pouring as if to mock him.
And Kayne’s voice was grating his ears and making him go mad, and Arthur was dying under his hand.
So he obviously accepted. Without even thinking, actually.
If there was even the most minuscule chance of survival for Arthur, he’d take it.
A second later he took his first and painful breath.
When a baby is born, it cries. It’s the cortisol, it makes lungs grow.
He dared to emit a sound only when Arthur touched his cheek. A long, guttural scream, his voice box adapting to air and his eyes learning how to cry.
Air burns if you’ve never breathed before, together with eyes that never actually opened before.
And Arthur was beautiful. He saw him many times, in many mirrors and puddles and windows, but to see him, right there, with his own eyes, just made him cry even more. He huddled between his arms on the hard dirt of the cave, confusion mixing with relief as he noticed how there wasn’t even the shadow of a scar under Arthur’s torn shirt.
Arthur. Who touched his cheeks as if he was something precious. His bright blue eyes damp with tears as he was murmuring words of surprise and affection.
What happens when a god takes shape? Last time something similar happened, it didn’t go well, let’s say. The difference, here, is that last time it has been a gradual process: first newborn then child then man and then god again. Now, John has been rejected from divinity like a work that gets taken from the ground after mistaking a stick’s vibrations with a thunderstorm.
They stayed like that in an infinite amount of seconds, ichor flowing on the ground together with their tears.
Naked, he then walked beside Arthur. ‘We need to get you some clothes,’ he told him, as they went back to Larson's estate. ‘You’re naked’
‘I know I’m naked, Arthur’ his voice had a strange echo between the cave’s walls, ‘I’m cold’.
Cold. He never felt cold before.
‘We’ll get you some clothes’ Arthur reassured him, looking around with an impossibly wide smile on his face. ‘And we’ll eat something’
‘What do you see, Arthur?’ he raised an eyebrow, feeling every single hair on his head and arms and legs. His chest moving with every breath, his eyelashes touching his skin when blinking.
Arthur’s smile got smaller, without disappearing. ‘Blurry, as if I’m underwater’ and then he turned to face him. ‘But you…I can see every detail on your face, John’ a pause, ‘you’re the only thing I can see clearly’.
He could have made an annoyed comment on how cheesy he sounded, on how all of this was just ridiculous. But, he got the chance to take his arm under his. ‘Do you still need my guidance, then?’
‘I think I’ll always need it’.
A thing that Arthur didn’t tell him about being human is the quantity of sensations you can feel. When he was inside him (a core of sounds and colors, the steady beat of a heart as a constant) he could only manage his eyes, his sight. Sounds were shared, so the burden wasn’t as heavy as it is now.
Since they took the last room available at the farthest motel they could find from Larson’s estate, after stealing food and clothes and a whole car, and since they had lay down on the single king size bed with shoddy covers and smoke-stained pillows, ten cars passed on the road. Under the window, from which a single ray of moonlight cut in two the wooden floor, some possums have been arguing intensely for the past ten minutes, dogs barking at a distance that feels too close. Dust particles dance in the silvery light, the cover thousand needles piercing his skin.
The cold, he remembers. The cold. If he takes off the cover now, the naked skin of his chest will suffer the consequences.
He doesn’t know if he should lie on his side or on his back. He doesn’t know if he should turn towards Arthur (sleeping Arthur, slightly snoring Arthur, Arthur who breathes and breathes and breathes) or keep on staring at the ceiling, hoping somehow to forget of ever having a body at all.
He tried to close his eyes, but he doesn’t like the feeling of his eyelids touching. He’ll have to get in the habit.
How many things he’ll have to get in the habit of? He’d never been the best of getting in the habit of doing things. There has always been a part of him that had the only goal of rebelling against whatever was happening, of making as much noise as he could. The weight of his words, his growls and his bad temper, confined before inside Arthur’s mind, now is free to fall on whoever will have the misfortune to encounter him in this new form.
A limited one, but somehow more powerful than his last one.
Earlier, to the half-sleeping clerk at the reception, he said that his uniform looked ugly and unkept. The clerk made an offended expression as he handed them the key, which he took with his still uncertain fingers.
Arthur, as they were walking through the corridor, had told him that now his voice was public domain. And it was better if he’d paid more attention to it.
Public domain. Like his eyes and his presence.
Arthur sleeps beside him, without even feeling an ounce of embarrassment as they had faced the single bed. ‘We shared a body for quite a long time’ he told him as he took off his shoes, ‘are you embarrassed to share a bed, now?’
‘No, of course’ then, ‘be careful of where you put your feet. There’s a step there’.
He’d never been jealous, he’d never had a reason to, but just now he realizes how close he was to Arthur. Of how his presence was only for him. Who knows him better than anyone could ever know someone.
They were in the same body, a few hours ago. And now? A few inches divide them on this mattress with noisy springs.
He decides to face him, meeting his relaxed, for once, face.
His hair, which is getting quite too long, is the same light brown from the last time he’d seen his reflection in the mirror, messy and with some grey falling over his closed eyes. When he shaves he looks older, his strong and serious jaw is more noticeable, but now that his beard is growing and covers his cheeks and the space between his thin lips and his regal nose, he looks more…domestic. More natural, in a way.
Without even thinking he places his fingertips on one his cheekbones -they’ve got so sharp since…everything- stroking the skin over the bone until he reaches his temple. And there his index and ring finger stop, to go back even for an instant to where he lived for the majority of their relationship.
He didn’t see himself, yet. He doesn’t know his face. He hypothesized that there was something…strange, in his appearance. Will he ever be ready to see it?
A weird sensation, the one of looking at himself. Usually, it’s a matter of words.
For him, for them, words have always been everything. Now he doesn’t need them anymore.
He can get up, get in front of a mirror and stare, seeing what Kayne made of him.
Really, was this the best he could do? Giving him a body and then making it the only thing Arthur could see clearly? The bastard. He’d always thought he had a penchant for dramatics, but this is ridiculous.
Simply ridiculous.
(Is it really a punishment? He can do whatever he wants. He can get a life, enjoying the beauty of this world. He can get away from Arthur, to spare him all the pain that will come once they’ll be out of this bed come morning).
He feels something under his fingers, Arthur clenching his jaw as he then exhales.
(There was a time in which he’d felt this breath in every part of his being, his breathing giving him substance)
(Yes, it is a rather cruel punishment)
(Will he ever be able to live without Arthur? He doesn’t know)
(He doesn’t want to know).
“John?” Arthur’s eyes open slowly, as he drags his hand (that hand, what was once the only physical connection between them) on his fingers. “Everything’s okay? Still cold?”
“It’s impossible to be cold under this blanket, Arthur” he puffs, “it itches”
“It itches?” a sleepy chuckle.
“Well, I don’t have thirty six years of habit with these…things”.
It’s true. He asked Arthur if human existence was always so…cold. And if all the senses were always so busy. Arthur handed him a rather heavy sweater from a wardrobe. ‘You won’t mind it after a while’.
“You’re right, but it’ll get easy with time. I swear”.
John grunts, about to take back his fingers and pretend nothing happened.
But Arthur, the bastard, grabs his wrist with his hand. His hand, that he can now control however he wants. “Were you missing my head?”
“Of course not. That place was a mess” he tries to maintain his usual slightly irked god voice, “and even though my landlord didn’t make me pay a penny, he was truly an idiot”.
They stay in a silence charged with electricity, that then melts in a river of laughter.
It’s his first laugh that escapes from his lips. Of course it follows Arthur’s one.
“Idiot is a big word, you shouldn't talk like this of your former landlord”
“Really, he couldn’t do anything beside” he touches the central part of his (intact, intact, intact) chest with his index, “trying to destroy my house”
“Okay, he didn’t do that on purpose, the majority of times” as a retort, Arthur pinches his cheek. “In his defence, a lot happened”
“Uh, yeah” he rolls his (his!) eyes, trying but failing not to smile.
He asks himself how Arthur sees it. When he passes his tongue on his teeth, he can still feel something pointy.
So, not all human then? Arthur doesn’t seem to mind.
Or maybe he does, but doesn’t say anything.
(As he did and does)
(It will be easier to maintain secrets from each other, now).
Arthur pushes him as a joke, his hand on his shoulder getting him away. Just a little, just as a joke.
“Didn’t know you cared about it so much” he whispers, “about my head, I mean”.
How can he say something like that? Of course he cares.
Arthur is his friend and he’ll always be his friend.
(He’ll always be his home).
His absence could drive him crazy. Here, another thing: now that he and Arthur are separated, he won’t be able to follow his every step. There will always be some distance between them, and in that distance death can hide.
(Will he die? Is he capable of doing so? Or these sharp teeth are just the proof of how the punishment went farthest that he could even imagine?)
(He doesn’t need another eternity)
(Not one in which he can’t find Arthur).
“Hey”
“What?”
“I can hear your brain thinking” Arthur moves some strands of hair (he saw that they’re black, and particularly long) behind his ear. “And now that we aren’t…well”
“I didn’t see myself in the mirror, yet” he whispers, words coming out with shame. He doesn’t have a reason to feel shame in front of (in front of) Arthur. He’s his eyes and he’d been his hand, he counted down the seconds waiting for him to wake up every single night and for months on end. And he described everything for him, using his best words.
A particularly selfish part of his mind would like him to do the same.
“I can, uh” Arthur avoids his gaze for a second, staring at a point on the cover. “I can say you’re handsome. Like, truly a handsome man” his long fingers run through his hair, as if he was touching the piano keys before a concert. “You have long dark hair that reaches your shoulders. Your eyes are a dark green color, and…and you have long, dark lashes. Your skin is slightly tanned, even if you’d never felt the sun on your skin” a brief laughter full of incredulity, “you have a nose similar to mine. You’re taller than me, and you’re uh. Wide, let’s say”
“Wide?”
“Your shoulders. They’re wide. Swimmer’s shoulders” he touches one of them, to underline the concept. “You’re beautiful”.
Yes, Of course. Next time, let’s lower the expectations, alright?
“That’s it?”
“It’s not like everyone has your talent for descriptions, mr Hugo”
“Shut up” he’d always taken his descriptions for granted, a way of communicating. Maybe Arthur is getting used to seeing something beside pitch black after all this time.
Maybe they do have some things in common, after all.
Silence. It takes a lot of silence to talk.
“Do I” he clears his throat, another pesky aspect of having a body, “do I scare you? Is there something that…y’know…”
“No, no” Arthur passes a finger over the curve of his nose, “you’re…beautiful. I’m not that good at this sort of thing, but you’re…well” he’s searching for the right words, he can tell, “you’re here, and you’re…”
“Beautiful, you already said that”
“Yeah but, it’s…like, it’s clear that you’ve been a god before. In some ways. You’re as beautiful as…” he takes his hand from his face to his chest, an alternation between flesh and wood. “During my honeymoon Bella’s father gave us enough money to go to Naples, in Italy. A rather expensive voyage. Bella was ecstatic, she was just like you. She saw things just to describe them with the prettiest words. I wasn’t, well. I wasn’t that interested. But then we saw this church. It was golden all over. It was tall and so…shiny. And so wide” another laughter, with some nervousness mixed in it. “You remind me of that church. Shining and golden and beautiful”.
Oh.
Oh, okay.
“Tomorrow we’ll head to, uh” he has to find a way to shoo away all the sensations pooling in his chest, because he can’t keep up with this. He has a reputation to maintain. “We have to wake up early. It’s better if we, uh…”
Arthur doesn’t wait for him to finish, placing a hand on the back of his head and then pushing it towards his chest, making their bodies fit together under the covers like two pieces of a jigsaw.
He can hear the beating of his heart as if he crawled back inside his ribcage. And as he allows himself the luxury to relax, holding him closer with an arm on his hip, he feels the ghost of a pair of lips where his forehead meets his hair.
“Thank you. For everything” Arthur whispers.
And John wants to say I could kill for you. And John also wants to say I could die a thousand times to keep you safe.
And John also wants to say I love you more than you could even imagine.
But he chooses the wiser option, and stays silent.