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The loft is bitterly cold. It cradles a crispness not even the distant bumble of city life can breathe a warmth back into. Cold soaks into the floors, the walls. Each room harbouring an emptiness that clings to bare flesh with a wanton chill. It’s chilly in the absence of human activity.
It’s perfect.
Their operation relies on the constant whirring of programming. Overheating isn’t an option. That static kind of numbness is the force which keeps the tight circuitry complying under the strict schedule they’ve mapped out. One hiccup in the mechanics could create loose ends, extra work, distractions . These are things they cannot afford to get in the way when playing a losing game against time.
Nine thinks of himself in terms of machinery too.
He works just fine in the cold.
Nine sits on their one man, one spring mattress with his legs dangling through the gaps in the banister, brain trickling through the backlog of his day. Taking notes and analyzing, recalculating actions, improving outcomes, strategically tripping over distractions.
He finds peace in the way silence seeps across the city, the way the distant hum of humanity settles with the sun as the evening stains the sky. In a city as big as this it’s easy to indulge in to normalcy of it all; the high schoolers heading home before dark, the desk jockeys nodding off on the overground train, the buttery warmth of the sunset smoothing their faces. The anonymity only makes it easier to slip in between them. To live between the nothing hours of their day, amongst the faces on the train they’ll never remember, the stranger on the sidewalk. It would be so easy, he muses, to live between the people- the people, he has to remind himself, he has no right to pretend to be one of.
He’s getting distracted again.
The silence is grounding, a slap of reality bitter as the cold of the apartment. Real. He knows that pretending isn’t a luxury people like him are allowed, have ever been allowed. That self centered simulation of too many what if’s and could have been ’s had been hardwired out under the hands that weren’t his own. Even now, all these years on, he knows it’s not a privilege he has time for, not when their borrowed lot is already biting at their heels, baring fangs and waiting. Waiting for them to trip over that last, fatal distraction. Don’t you understand? We’re running out of time.
He doesn’t understand how Twelve can be so wayward. But he doesn’t want to, either. Nine’s not scared (not now, not after all this time) that Twelve will wander too far into the fantasy, to burrow, to make a life in it, to decide it’s in fact better there than anything Nine can offer him. But he sometimes fears it’s where Twelve is meant to be, truly, wholey. That he can walk among them without need to pretend, because he was born for it, and that he could be a friend, a brother, a lover, and not just a stranger on the carriage. He knows he is a sinkhole, a shackle, he knows it’s himself and not Twelve he should be telling to not get too involved, he knows he is dragging Twelve down with him.
Sometimes, Nine catches himself pretending he hasn’t realised this yet.
Sometimes, he pretends not to care.
When Twelve joins him, soft teeth chattering and unfed hunger trailing along behind, he swings his legs between the bars to a tune that disturbs the silence without being heard. Twelve tries to be respectful of Nine’s routinely mental reorganising, the way he retreats into himself for hours at a time, to come out again with their next step forward, the next re-patch of another disturbed plan. And wasn’t this one a big tear?
In turn, Nine is mindful of Twelve’s own unhinged, methodical ways of keeping his own balance. Like washing the dishes, or cleaning the bathroom, or the bi-weekly bike stripping to assess the mechanical wear and tear, the mental forecast of what will need replacing where, and when, and for how long exactly can he test fate to hold it all together if he crosses his fingers tight enough.
Nine exhales steadily and leans forward on the bannister, head huddled into curve of his elbows, hands loosely threaded through his own hair. The roots lay heavy, by choice more than forgetfulness. Showering is time consuming; time that could better serve deciding which bones to throw next to the Metropolitan Police, or how to cause nationwide chaos without the casualties. His clothes smell stale, and his skin crawls, but he’s too tired to do anything about it, too tired to care about his own comfort anymore.
“Have we finished for tonight?” Twelve asks, more to make noise than for a response. He lays a hand on Nine’s shoulder, rubbing away at the ropes of tension Nine’s knotted himself into, tracing his way up to the nape of Nine’s neck. Twelve gently massages there, sinking his nails up and in, occasionally to scratch at his scalp. Just before they settled in Tokyo again, not the first time, but certainly, certainly for their last, Nine had his hair cut shorter to avoid recognition. It didn’t last long for how fast his hair grew, but Twelved loved to run his hands through it.
Sometimes Nine considers cutting it off again, just to give Twelve another reason to smile, palms tickling, forehead pressed against his own. But he doesn’t, because he knows they don’t have time for it. It’s needs over wants this close to the finish line, and he can’t let desire dictate his next steps.
Twelve pauses, turning his head to yawn into his own shoulder and shiver at the night nestling into his bones. He’s built more for the morning than the late nights Nine insists on keeping, to watch sunrises and walk along shorelines, yellow and warm and free. Nine rises his head and yawns into his own hands, unable to fight the impulse.
“I guess we should call it a night now, huh?” Twelve suggests, patting their dog eared mattress.
Nine stretches and nods in agreement, “You can have the bed tonight,” he offers, beginning to stand to make his way down the stairs without waiting for a replay, the sofa lumps and scratchy blanket beckoning.
“You don’t have to do that-”
“And result in reports of a pair of ‘star-crossed terrorist lovers’ when she inevitably tells the authorities about us sharing a bed?” Nine drily replies, stopping short of the first step to clean his glasses on his shirt.
He’s tried not to think of that girl. There was nothing he could have done to avoid this outcome, truthfully, he concluded as they tucked her into the storage room with a pillow and a cold compress. Not after Twelve saw her eyes, and saw her again on the emergency stairs. Not after Twelve saw to making sure that Nine saw her, too.
She’s familiar and foreign all at once, with her dark eyes and quietness. She makes him feel like a licked flame. Having her in their space is exhausting, and it’s only been a few hours. He kids himself she’ll be gone by tomorrow, before he remembers not to pretend. Maybe he’s gone soft, to let her get to him this bad. However it’s reassuring to know how upturned she’d rooted Twelve too, for him to follow her and try to protect, and that it’s not his own weakness buckling his resolved but something that’s unsettled both of them.
Twelve laughs.
“And when has anything like that ever bothered you!” He gets up to try and steer Nine back towards the bed while he’s vulnerable with his vision reduced to fuzzy colours and blurred shapes. It works. Works like an uncoordinated ballroom dance that has the floorboards creakily applaud to, but it works. “You know that she - Lisa - barely has enough courage to look at you in the face, let alone someone in authority.”
“And all it’ll do is bring us more publicity, right?” Twelve steadies their blind and fumbling footwork by his hold of Nine’s biceps, leading them steadily backwards until his heel hits the mattress. Nine puts his glasses back in place, eyebrows knitting together as he looks at Twelve, smile tugging, hands slipping to cradle Nine’s forearms.
“Anyway, let them talk... I don’t mind, do you?” he says and Nine has to look away, not to be pulled under by the way Twelve eyes him, the coy way he carries his words and slides his fingers into Nine’s belt loops.
“Contrary to popular belief,” Nine begins, purposely pushing Twelve backwards with his index finger, a playfulness reserved for their online facades surfacing. Twelve indulges, letting himself be tipped over and bonelessly flopping to the mattress, hands outstretched in invitation, “Not all publicity is in fact good publicity.”
Twelve laughs some more, breathless and soft. They settle in together, facing one another on the same pillow. Twelve props his head up on one hand, the other carding through Nine’s hair. The way his hands play with it is anything but human, and Nine closes his eyes. His breathing evens out and he wonder what he did to make himself worthy of this, to be allowed someone like Twelve.
If he were a fool, he’d say Twelve is an apology for what happened to him. He’d say a gift, reparations for the war on his body, for the drugs and the years lost. But he’s not a fool, or a man of faith, and he knows that there’s an imbalance, because surely Nine is no gift to anyone, especially someone who deserves far more than him.
He thinks himself into oblivion when he’s allowed: a sun, the dying star. Too hurtful too look at too long, something people have never been able to get too close to. But Twelve, Twelve’s got these eyes, these kaleidoscope pupils, and he sees more in Nine than he’ll ever be able to see in himself.
Sometimes, at times like this, Twelve will ask him what he’s thinking, and all Nine wants to say is you. perfect impossible perfect you. please never leave me and other times, oftentimes, it’s of his own flesh burning. The stench of fried follicles. Embers and ash. He thinks of the wet guilt he sweats out each night, of the cold shivers and the spittle, and his humanity, up in flames.
Twelve kisses the crown of his head and he is threadbare. All the knots he thought he doubled tied and cross stitched to keep him out, keep everyone out, untangles across the mattress and all Nine can do it let it happen. He digs his hands into Twelve’s t-shirt by his hip, that stupid, stupid, yellow t-shirt. double open heart, his brave, honest heart,
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Twelve says, hand skimming across Nine’s cheek, tenderly, and Nine hadn’t even realised he said anything. A breath clatters out of his lungs and Twelve nuzzles him, closer. “You never have, ever.”
Nine wants to protest but his words are all misplaced, jumbled, syllables unaccounted for, throat taking hostages. but i do , he thinks, i have so much to be sorry for and doesn’t Twelve see? Doesn’t he see what he is?
And it hurts, hurts more than the fire, more than the headaches, more than the hunger. It hurts and his heart clenches. He thinks of himself in terms of machinery. He works just fine in the cold. Not like this, not filled with all this warmth.
“You are so smart,” Twelve whispers into his hair, “so brave ,” he tells Nine’s cheek, “ smart, strong,” to the dark under his eyes,
Nine can hardly breath, can hardly hold his hands steady. For once in his life he seeks for a distraction, anything to ground him again. He opens his eyes and finds Twelve’s, big, bright, wonderful Twelve’s.
“So loved,” Twelve says against Nine’s lips, and kisses him like he is.