Chapter Text
It hasn't been too long since you met John Doe, at least two or three months. It has been a very long time since John Doe met you, though. He doesn't even think he knows how long it's been. That doesn't matter right now, though, because you're too tired to think about anything other than staying awake to not miss your bus stop. You can't think about why you're letting some random guy you met a few months ago sleep in your bed, some random guy who you can vaguely remember stabbing you with the biggest smile you've seen on his face, some random guy who followed you home after work, some random guy who you believe when he tells you he's known you longer than you remember knowing him. Some random guy who's not even really a guy, is he? He's a regular guy, for god's sake!
...It's starting to seem like you can think about all this. And it seems like thinking almost made you miss your stop. You shake your head as you step off the bus, as if trying to shake away your second thoughts. It is how it is, you tell yourself. Besides, if he's lying about the whole time loop thing, how come you can sort of remember some things he's brought up? He really seems to genuinely love you, a regular guy wouldn't try so hard to pretend to be in love just to mooch off of someone... right? You hit your palm against your forehead, maybe smacking the thoughts out of your head would work. You've known Doe for months now, you two are getting serious now. I mean, you've always been serious, it's hard not to be with the way he acts around you, but you're starting to get serious with him. This is Doe you're thinking about. Your Doe. You of all people know he has no malicious intent. Well, kind of. That doesn't matter right now, though, because you don't want to think about anything other than crossing the street and getting to your front door. You pull on your hair as you walk up the steps to your apartment, out of frustration with either yourself or the long shift your boss made you work. Probably out of both.
You unlock your door and muffled sounds almost immediately start coming from your room. It's nothing unusual, so you proceed to hang up your bag and coat. John Doe scrambles out of your room, looking like he had just woken up from a twenty year long coma. "I guess I forgot to set my alarm, sorry," he says, looking at the clock. "You're a little late, how was work?"
As soon as you turned around and Doe came into your view, all of your doubts about him melted away. "Horrible as usual," you respond.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he began to help you peel off your layers of warm clothes, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
You look at him for a second or two, "I think I just need to go to sleep. What time is it, like twelve? I don't know, past my bedtime."
He smiles at you and stretches him arm out towards the bedroom door, as if to say 'after you, darling'. You walk to your room and he follows. Already in his pajamas (pretty much the same as his regular clothes), Doe jumps onto his side of the bed. He watches as you take off your jewelry and place it on your nightstand along with your phone. You brush a hand through your hair as you open your closet to find a clean towel. "I should take a shower, I'll be back," you tell him.
He clicks his tongue at you and whines,"Can't you do that in the morning? I was all excited for you to hop in bed..."
You roll your eyes and smile, "Okay, freak."
You put the towel back in the closet and change into your pajamas. Doe smiles as he watches as you switch off the lights and climb into bed next to him. He places a hand on your cheek and whispers the same good night he does every time you go to sleep. You whisper it back, as you do every night. As you drift off to sleep, you feel like he's still awake, eyes wide open, watching you. Before you met Doe, you thought people were exaggerating when they said they could feel people's eyes on them. Now that feeling is very familiar, but not in an unnerving way. It stopped being creepy when you associated it with him. You fall asleep under Doe's comforting gaze.
In the morning, you wake up alone. You hear clatter coming from the kitchen, so you brace yourself for whatever the hell Doe is preparing. A few minutes later, he walks in with a tray and places it on your lap. "Good morning!" he sings.
You look up at him and smile, scared to look down at what's on the plate he's brought you. "I think you're gonna like this one. I saw you watching a video of someone making it the other day," he explains.
Okay, it can't be so bad, right? Wrong. You look down at the monstrosity sitting on your lap: very burnt toast and what looks like an egg(?) on top. "Wow, it looks great!" you lie.
"Really? I tried some and I think so, too!"
Oh my god, this'll really hurt his feelings. You begrudgingly take a bite. It's ...edible. Better than what he's made before, actually. He stands, watching you eat, smiling. This is probably the best reaction you've had to a meal he's made. Once you finish, he excitedly returns your plate to the kitchen sink and hurries back to jump into bed. You reach to grab your phone from your nightstand as he wraps his arms around you and rubs his head against your waist. You realize he wants attention and sigh, playfully pretending to be annoyed and rolling your eyes, placing your phone back on the table. You slide down so that you could also wrap your arms around him. "It's so cold..." he sighs.
You start rubbing your hands up and down his back and he buries his head in the crook of your neck. He starts doing the same thing to you, only he's scratching you up and down with his long black nails (they might as well be called claws). He's made progress in understanding that you don't like being hurt. Nobody teaches you how to explain that pain is bad to a grown ass man. He still has much more progress to make, but for now, you've settled on scratching being fine. It's difficult for you to understand how he could want to feel pain, maybe he doesn't process it properly? It's even more difficult for you to understand how he thinks you would want to feel pain, too. How could violence be the way someone expresses love? You hardly understand what goes on in your mind, so trying to understand Doe's is a whole other mountain to climb.
After a while of his scratching, it really starts to hurt. "Okay, okay, stop please," he looks up at you with a mix of concern and surprise on his face, "It's just starting to hurt, okay? I mean, you can still do it in another spot, I guess, just..."
"Oh, I'm sorry... I didn't mean to, you know I don't want to hurt you," he explains.
His expression morphs into embarrassment as he stops moving his arms to just hold you in a hug. You can't help but feel bad. Not for stopping him, but for how different you two seem to be. You tilt his chin up and kiss his forehead. You smile at him in hopes of easing his embarrassment. "You don't have to be embarrassed. I know it's hard for both of us to understand each other," you reassure him.
You were hit with the sudden realization that you haven't ever shown him that you love him in the way that he understands. Guilt washes over you and you start to feel his weight sink into you. "You know, humans - or at least I - show love though gentleness," you hug him tighter, "I'm sorry."
He tilts his head. "For what?"
"For being gentle with you."
You start to scratch his back the same way he did yours, your arms slipping under his shirt, his skin piling up under your nails. He buries his head into your neck again and starts to gently rub your back the same way you did his at first. "It's okay! You know, it's hard for both of us," he says.
He tilts his head back up to give you a slow, gentle peck on the lips. You stare into his eyes and giggle, no matter how many times your lips touch, it never gets old. Every single time, he manages to make your stomach weak and leaves you awing like a little kid. For the first time, you felt hope that from now on you would be able to understand each other, to properly show that you love each other. You think he felt it too. Seeing you smile like that, the way he made you feel, he couldn't help but smile, too.
He pushes you onto your back and climbs on top of you. This guy is heavier than he looks, but the pressure is just the right amount in order to not crush you. He makes a trail of kisses from your collarbone up to your cheek. "Is this gentle?" he asks in a way that you know is meant to be poking fun at you, but also holds some sincerity.
You dig your nails into his shoulder blades and make a failed attempt to flip him onto his back. "Very," you reply.
He chuckles and gets off of you. You lay side by side for a moment, until he leans his head on your chest. You use one hand to play with his hair and the other to draw shapes on his back with your thumb nail. He sighs and flips his head to face you. "I love you," you tell him.
"I love you more," he says back.
"Okay, we're not starting that," you laugh.
You can just make out his eyes behind the thick hair falling over his face, and you see them slightly squint as he smiles. You stay like that for a few moments, looking into each other's eyes. You tuck the hair covering Doe's face behind his ear. "Can I ask you something?"
"What is it?"
"Why do you like pain? Is that even it? Is it something else, or are you just... I don't know-"
"That's a good question."
"...You don't know?"
"Nope."
You don't know why you expected a solid answer. There probably isn't a solid answer on anything about John Doe. Your question should've stopped there, but you keep going. This is Doe after all, privacy is barely a concept to him. "So does it like, turn you on? You're a masochist or something?"
For some reason this question catches him off guard. You thought it would've taken a lot more to take him by surprise. "I mean..." he averts his gaze and blushes a bit, "I don't know?"
You doubt that. Your expression probably reflects your doubt, too, based on how Doe is now looking at you. "What do you mean by masochist?" he asks.
"Like, someone who gets off on pain?"
"I don't know if I get off on it," he tries to explain, "Do you get off on gentleness?"
"It's very situational, but I guess it helps," you answer.
Almost at the same time, you both realize the ridiculousness of your conversation and start to laugh. "I'm sorry I just..." your words are broken up by laughter, "I'm just having a hard time trying to get the appeal of violence."
You swipe away more hair that's gotten in the way of Doe's face as you speak, accidentally rolling up his sleeve to reveal a particularly bad scar. "Oh my god, look at that... Was that on purpose?"
Doe's expression is conflicted, the worry on your face seems to be telling him that something he'd thought was normal is actually worthy of concern. "How deep was that? I mean, regular guys are pretty different from humans, aren't you?"
He sits up and holds both your hands. "I don't really know what to say, I don't know what you think is normal or wrong," he says.
"I just... You can imagine my panic, right? I pretty much know nothing about your body, and to me, a scar like that means something pretty bad happened to you. Plus, pain is usually a bad thing," you explain.
He just stares at you, either trying to process your words or not understanding a thing. He looks down and then back at you, "Just don't worry about me, okay?"
"Man, I really felt like we were starting to get each other and I just messed it up," you say, leaning back into the headboard.
"This doesn't mean anything! Besides, you know I always find a way to love you," he says with a smile and a playful look.
"That you do."
He leans forward to kiss your forehead. "Can I show you something?" he asks.
"Yeah, of course."
He crawls to the edge of the bed and opens a drawer in the dresser. Out of a corner he pulls a knife, one that's a little familiar. "Is that what you stabbed me with?" you ask.
For some reason, your doubts come back. Did you mess up? Is he going to kill you again? You shouldn't have made him like you. Your heart picks up the pace of it's beating and your hands begin to shake. You thought you trusted John Doe. You thought you could trust him. What happened?
He sits back on the bed, only this time with a knife in his grip. "That's the loop you remember out of all of them?"
You don't know what to think of this question. "...Yes?"
"...Am I scaring you right now?"
"...Yes."
"Oh! I'm sorry! That's not what I'm doing! Did you think I was gonna hurt you? You already told me you don't like that."
Suddenly, all the doubt and fear vanishes and you're left feeling stupid and frustrated with yourself again. You find it hard to blame yourself, though, as he did stab you and he can be scary as hell sometimes. "Sorry," you apologize, though you don't know why. Habit?
"Don't be, you know it's my fault."
"I don't want to think about it, we're over it."
Not knowing how to continue the conversation, Doe slashes himself with the knife. Out of instinct, you gasp. He didn't flinch, though. He hands you the knife. "You know... for comparison," he says.
You can't help but feel like he wants you to cut yourself for some reason other than 'comparison'. You do it anyways. The two of you hold your forearms together to watch the difference. On his cut, the faintest dots of some black goop bubble up to the break in his skin. On yours, however, bright red beads of blood fill the gash only a few seconds after you cut it. Doe wipes the goop off of his cut and licks his finger. He waits for some more to come up to the surface, wipes it off again, and holds his finger in front of your face, offering you to try it. Hesitantly, you lick his finger. You immediately spit into your hand as Doe giggles at your reaction. The bitter taste is like nothing you'd tried before (in a bad way) and the aftertaste is even worse. It tastes like a mix of how you imagine corpses smell and the moldy gunk that builds up in a public shower drain. "Should I be insulted? Damn," he jokes.
"You just ate that like nothing?" you ask, not knowing whether to be concerned or impressed.
"That's just what the inside of my mouth always tastes like. You haven't noticed?"
"I'm never going to understand how the hell your body works."
You get up to get a paper towel to stop your bleeding. When you come back, Doe is patiently waiting to keep observing your wound. As you hold the towel to your skin, he pinches his own cut closed. "What the hell? You can just do that?"
"Yeah, I didn't think that would be shocking to you... You can't?"
"How the hell do you think I died when you stabbed me if I could just close up my chest?"
"I didn't really think about it too much."
You peel the paper towel off your cut, sucking in air through your teeth. Doe looks up at you expectantly. "What?" you ask.
He doesn't respond, just looks back at the cut. You realize what he wants and lift your arm towards his face, giving him the 'go ahead'. He sucks the blood off of your arm as he looks up at you. You're surprised at how this situation hardly seems to bother you. You're actively bleeding out and this guy is so eager to drink it, but you were more stressed when you had to eat the breakfast he'd cooked you. You can't help but laugh at how ridiculous he looks: on his knees, bent over, dead set on licking up every last drop of blood from your arm. It's silly how intrigued he is by a simple cut, he's surely seen a human get a cut before. Hell, he's even stabbed a human before. Is this his idea of intimacy? It wasn't as interesting the times he's seen an injured human before because it wasn't on purpose, you didn't want it, you weren't there to guide him through it.
Once he's gotten his fix, he kisses your arm up and down with his blood stained mouth. Somehow your arm is bleeding at a significantly less fast pace and you wonder if that means you've lost a certain amount of blood or if Doe just has some kind of magical healing tongue. It's probably not the latter, if anything you've contracted a disease from his spit in your open wound. But he's happy, you're happy, so what does it matter right now? You grab him by the sides of his face and kiss him. He picks the paper up and puts it back onto your cut, then falls onto your chest. "How long until it heals?' he asks.
"I'd give it a week or two," you reply.
He looks up at you with that 'oh shit' expression. You just shrug and play with his hair. "We're not doing anything today, right?" you ask.
"Yeah."
"Good."
You two hardly move from that position for the rest of the day.