Archive of Our Own

When the ritual is over, John opens his eyes to find himself face to face with Arthur. John jolts, and all other feelings drop on him like an avalanche—the floor digging harshly into his back, his head pounding, his arms aching and limp. Arthur’s face is wet with tears, and he has a manic smile plastered on his face. His eyes are focused on him.

Arthur takes him by the shoulders, does something to him that makes the world in front of him shake and his head loll slightly back and forward.

"John, I see you!"

This is the first sign that things are too good to be true.

They stumble through their front door. After that, John starts to miss whole chunks of time, like he's watching a movie with sections of the film cut out.

The feeling of the bed under his back, the clothes on his body, the air, palpable, gently scraping against his insides while it goes in and out through his nose. Then, Arthur's voice, exhausted, but with an audible smile. "How are you faring?"

Fingers pressing against the side of his neck for a moment or two, firm enough that John feels his pulse in the point of contact.

"Strange to see you so quiet."

Slow, halting footsteps on his right, then on his left, then somewhere in the distance. The whisper of the curtains closing. Water pouring into a glass. Motion, the bed dipping down. A warm hand on his forehead, brushing his hair up. John's hand flies up, and his fingers wrap around something solid.

"Ah, you're awake." Arthur's voice, embarrassed. Embarrassed over what? The hand Arthur kept on his forehead disappears. "You don't have a fever." Then, Arthur lets out a laugh. "You really should stop fighting it, John. You need the sleep."

Something tugs at his hand, the hand that's still in a grip around Arthur's wrist, trying to get him to let go, and John's heart pounds at his ribs like they're a gate that will burst open any minute. "Where the hell are you going?"

A long pause. Arthur says in that careful, vaguely amused voice that always gets on his nerves, "The couch?"

Fuck.

It was five days before the ritual, and they were standing at a furniture store. "Arthur," he was telling him in his best reasonable voice, "we have a perfectly normal bed at home," because they did, and John had no idea why he was now holed up here, wasting his time describing the beds, each and every one of which wasn't exactly cheap, not with how dull and quiet their investigating life was going.

"That's how things are done, John. Once we separate, everything will have to change, John," all said in a grave voice, as if the words made any sense at all.

They left empty-handed.

John's seen all of Arthur, his every foul mood, every mistake, every part of his body, but this is where Arthur decides to draw the line, at sharing a fucking bed? The bed is egregiously huge, too, able to fit two bodies with ease and leave miles of space in between, since Arthur is suddenly this concerned about space. The couch is cramped, ridiculously narrow and short, and John isn't going to listen to Arthur whine and complain in the morning about how much his back hurts, not now that they have other options, not now that Arthur's idiotic martyrdom is no longer needed.

It's been the longest day in John's life, and Arthur is topping it off by being an idiot. How is he even supposed to "stop fighting it" if he has barely ever lost consciousness, if all he knows is a reality that sinks its teeth into him, visceral awareness, sharp, newer-ending, not this useless half-awake state?

Arthur is still there, silent, with a strange, tentative look on his face. John tries to picture him leaving, lying down on the couch, turning away, his arm no longer positioned over his chest, rising and falling with his breathing, his pulse no longer under his fingertips when he brushes Arthur's neck with his hand.

John tries to imagine himself giving up the bed and hobbling to the couch, Arthur settling over where he just was, some of John's warmth settling into him. All he can imagine afterwards is Arthur tossing and turning again, this time under the onslaught of a nightmare. John knew better than Arthur himself did that even in the rare cases when life left Arthur the fuck alone, his mind wasn't so graceful.

"John?"

He can't picture it because that's not what they do. And that doesn't have to change now. Jesus, why is Arthur making it difficult when John only wants to help, because he knows how to help, because he's been helping him with the nightmares since fucking forever? Nothing has changed, there is no need to overcomplicate—

"Jesus, can't you just stay?" Arthur—how is he supposed to read his face when he only sees it in the mornings when they're getting ready, in the evenings when Arthur brushes his teeth? "We both know sleeping on the couch messes with your back, Arthur."

Arthur looks at him for a long moment. Then, he waves his hand, "Yes, yes, you're right. Of course." At that, John lets go of Arthur's hand. Arthur looks down at it in surprise as if he forgot about the point of contact at all. "There's plenty of space. And it's not like we've had the free time to find the right bed."

John doesn't know why Arthur feels the need to say any of this at all—as if there's an audience watching them that John knows nothing about, someone whose understanding and forgiveness he needs. He drops the line of thought when Arthur lies down, briefly wrestles with the blankets to burrow under them. Finally, John's whole mind sings, was it so fucking difficult? He tries not to think that he still feels dimly unsatisfied.

There's still five inches of space between them when John falls asleep.

Arthur’s been smiling more, laughing so often in the span of this single morning that for the first hour, John’s been worried that the ritual has knocked something loose in his psyche. The laughter proved to be sincere. The only downside is that Arthur has been laughing at him.

John trips over his own fucking feet while trying to accomplish the simple task of getting up from the bed, and Arthur looks at him with a radiant smile John’s never seen on his face before, because there aren’t many reasons to smile like this while simply standing in front of the mirror. John doesn’t know what it means, but Arthur must be laughing. John would be laughing too if it weren’t him stumbling pathetically through the most basic things that make up the human experience.

When John, after a thousand goddamn years of trying on shirts and discarding them, finds one that doesn’t make him wish he could peel his skin off, Arthur lets out a chuckle. John knows this one—Arthur is riding the high of some minor victory. John must be hearing it wrong. What fucking victory?

“Don’t worry, the toast won’t bite.” Arthur’s face is calm, but his voice shakes and wavers, betraying the fact that he’s coming down from a giggling fit.
John hopes that whatever expression there is on his face conveys everything he has to say about both the toast and Arthur himself.

“This thing will combust before it reaches my mouth.”

“It won’t, John, you’re alright.” Arthur covers his yawn with a hand. Arthur now barely has any trouble sleeping, almost never sees nightmares, so it’s strange to see him like this, worn-out and sleepy.

John tried asking him if he’s fine, tried to ask him what he’d dreamt of, wondered if it’s a side effect of the ritual that came to bite them in the ass, but he’s been politely informed that he’s being a mother hen and that Arthur’s “slept alright, John, I’m alright, it’s fine”. Jesus.

“You can still try the eggs,” Arthur says with a hope in his voice that’s been steadily dimming throughout the morning.

This is what they currently have on the table: the boiled potatoes, looking as much like a hard rock as food can; the eggs, fried, the whites looking like the bumpy surface of skin that’s been touched by disease or fire.

At this kind suggestion, John accepts his fate and bites into the toast.

Later in the day, when John finally caves under the flood of Arthur’s incomprehensible smiles and asks the reasonable question of what’s so fucking funny, Arthur looks at him like he’s grown a second head and says, “I’m not laughing,” like it makes any sense.

“Then what are you smiling at?”

Arthur sighs. “Jesus, John. I’m just glad to have you here.” This catches John off guard so badly that he almost chokes on a sip of tea. “That’s why I’m smiling.”

When Arthur isn’t hovering at his shoulder, he’s walking around the house like he’s a hurricane. Picks up a book, gives the cover a long, thoughtful look, then puts it down; looks at everything—the faded wallpaper, the closet, the kitchen, the bathroom.

John doesn’t know where to put himself during this. Doesn’t find much else to do other than watch him. Arthur spends the whole ten minutes staring out of the window, and John politely ignores the way Arthur’s eyes shine with wetness when he finally turns back to him. The mug of tea that John kept cradling between his palms turns cold.

They’ve put away some money specifically for this reason—to have the ability to spend some time at home, figuring themselves out, with no clients waiting for news for them, with no danger chasing them. Closer to the evening, they settle into a semblance of normalcy. Arthur is sitting next to him on the couch, Arthur is reading aloud to him and not vice versa, and Arthur’s voice is still shaking sometimes with aftershocks of emotions.

Arthur leans into him, and the pressure is so grounding that John thinks that this is what pure bliss must feel like.

Then, John puts a hand over Arthur’s.

This is a simple thing that they’ve been doing since forever–something Arthur’s been doing, sitting with his hands folded, fiddling with the cuff on John’s wrist, lacing his fingers with John’s, tapping something against his skin. Arthur does it when he’s sitting in a crowd, voices coming from everywhere around them at once; when the puzzle pieces refuse to put themselves together, and they’re running out of time. It’s something John never pointed out, something he just let happen because he knew Arthur needed it. But now, Arthur tenses under his touch and shifts his weight slightly so his shoulder is no longer pressing against John’s.

John takes his hand away and writes it off as a consequence of a really, really long day.

Arthur stirs in his sleep again. John stares at the ceiling as if it can tell him if Arthur’s having a nightmare.

There’s something John is successfully not thinking about. John manages not to think about it when Arthur is smiling at him from the other side of the table, and when they’re taking a walk down the street, not because they need to get anywhere but simply because they can. John isn’t thinking about it when they’re talking to a client, and when Arthur asks him to read their case notes aloud, still, even now that he can do it himself.

But then, sometimes, when they settle down onto their ridiculously small couch together, the cushions sink and tilt under them, making gravity tug their bodies closer together, making their knees and hips touch, and Arthur actually bothers to shuffle slightly away from him—why the fuck is he suddenly so concerned with keeping his distance now? And sometimes, when John drifts awake minutes before Arthur does, John can’t look away from his face; John’s hands itch to do something he can’t put to words, and at that moment, Arthur always turns his back to him, still mostly asleep, as if even looking at him is an intrusion now, after everything they’ve been through, as if Arthur doesn’t find the new arrangement unusual at all, as if John is the only one who might—who might think of how things were, before.

He thinks of the bleedover between them, Arthur’s feelings on the outskirts of his mind like echoes, like memories. He tells himself that by now he knows Arthur too well to need it. But on nights like these, when Arthur stirs in his sleep and sighs almost imperceptively, John can’t for the life of him get this body to sleep, because he wants to be there, in Arthur’s head, feeling it too, knowing for certain.

They had a system, and they never talked about it, because it was one of the things talking to Arthur about felt like pulling teeth. It wasn’t as much of a system as it was a simple gesture—John would put his hand over Arthur’s chest, and this pressure would be enough to soothe him.

Now, Arthur’s left hand is over his chest, too. It’s there every night. John knows this because John is still following it with his eyes like it’s his extra limb, numb but still his.

And at first, it rests limp against Arthur’s side or at the table, forgotten and alien but still near, casually there without a need for an explanation, without Arthur shying away from him when his hand accidentally brushed against his thigh, when John helped him button his shirt, when John fixed his tie.

Arthur remembers the hand, gradually starts picking up his glass with it, uses it to brush his hair. John watches his movements grow free and comfortable. It shouldn’t be something to dwell on, how Arthur closes his eyes, content, when his left hand scratches his nape, shouldn’t be something to think about this much when John finally has a whole human world to explore, how Arthur rests his head on it, his fingers on the side of his face, his palm supporting his jaw.

John can sometimes feel it in his own left hand after a long day of work, the roots of the wooden pinkie twinging under his skin. He can imagine it, then, the weight of Arthur’s head on his palm, the warmth of his cheek and the softness, his thumb grazing over his neck, a hint of stubble under his fingertips, the skin jumping with Arthur’s pulse.

Arthur frowns in his sleep, mumbling something under his breath. John reaches out, and crossing the meager distance between them feels like crossing miles of sea. He brings his hand to rest on Arthur’s stomach, over the ugly scar John knows still sometimes aches. The moment he does, something in Arthur deflates—John even has half a mind to yank the hand back. Arthur lets out a sigh and turns limp.

John lies awake and listens to his breathing, as he did on those nights when he got so tired of thinking that he couldn’t bear the inside of his mind. John notices, with no small amount of pride, that Arthur doesn’t tense or stir anymore.

Now it’s late morning, and they have all the time in the world. Arthur wakes in increments, shifting under John’s hand and mumbling something in his sleep. John’s been awake for a long time now—his body seemed to regard even the slightest discomfort as a reason to throw him out of sleep until the evening. There were books he could read, millions of tiny things he could do, things he catalogued for this exact impossible moment in the dim future where they would be free and safe. The simple pleasure of going to the exact spot he wants to go without having to explain himself, making a toast, a cup of tea—things he daydreamed about when his restless energy was threatening to boil him alive behind Arthur’s eyes. Now he couldn’t do anything other than watch Arthur sleep.

Arthur wakes up and looks down at John’s hand. It twitches, but doesn’t move from its position over Arthur’s stomach.

Arthur has a look on his face that John has no idea how to read, but that makes him feel distinctly uncomfortable. Another faux pas, another human custom he barreled through in a spectacular fashion, another time his inadequacy showed itself. Another time when Arthur gives him a smile and says something in a voice of someone who’s saving him the embarrassment—John could understand this back when his new body was tripping over itself, back when his voice was too loud, his tone too harsh, his movements jerky, sudden, improper, not now when John simply did what they’ve been doing for ages, a simple thing they never had to discuss. Arthur says, “Old habits die hard.”

John isn’t a complete idiot. They’ve already had the requisite unpleasant conversation back when John was still a part of Arthur. Human expectations, human dislikes against something as mundane as a stray display of affection on the streets. The consequences of something as simple as a kiss shared between two people.
The question still stands—what does any of it have to do with what they do inside their own damn apartment?

John is standing at the counter, fighting the bread with the bread knife and losing. How something could be both squishy enough to just turn flat under the blade and crumbly enough to disintegrate was beyond him. An object from outer space, defying the laws of nature just to spite him. Arthur made it look easy. Arthur made a lot of things look easy.

The resulting slice is so thick and uneven that it would be more accurate to call it a chunk.

“Well done, John,” Arthur tells him anyway without a single trace of sarcasm in his voice. John wants to roll his eyes–Jesus, just how bad is he at everything that something as simple as getting himself a slice of bread deserved praise? Still, he feels a strange wave of warmth.

In his peripheral vision, John notices Arthur’s hand hovering over his shoulder. The hand recedes without ever touching him.

It’s dark, and sleep isn’t coming to him. John retreats to his side of the bed and turns away from Arthur. When John falls asleep, Arthur is still breathing in a way that lets John know that he’s awake.

In the morning, while they’re having breakfast, Arthur misses a piece of a fried egg with his fork three times in a row.

“What did you dream about?” John asks him to break the silence, though he is mostly certain that he already knows.

Arthur freezes for a few long seconds until he says, not turning to face him, “You know. The usual.”

“Is there a way I can… help?” John says, and it feels ridiculous, how unsure he feels whether or not he’s allowed to ask this.

“No,” Arthur answers quickly, “I don’t think there is.”

Arthur manages to pull himself together by the time they meet their client, but there are still dark circles under his eyes.

“The police gave up.” At that, Arthur just purses his lips. He must’ve heard it hundreds of times. “They’re sure that by now he’s changed his face and name.”

Mrs. Bradford is a stern-faced woman sitting on their couch with her back ramrod-straight. She is clutching two photographs.

On one of them, faded slightly under the sun—a woman who looked like her much younger copy, beaming with a smile, her shoulder cropped out of the picture. The photo is framed, and the frame is black.

The other picture that Mrs. Bradford is holding isn’t faded at all, but it’s crumpled and doesn’t have a frame. There’s a young man with a thin blondish moustache and hair falling into his face, who’s looking immensely proud and holding the hand of someone who isn’t in the frame. There’s something black on his throat, a mole almost the size of a pinkie nail.

“It has been a long time,” Arthur says, “We aren’t certain that there’s a lot that can be done here.”

Arthur says that whenever the case seems hopeless to him, tries to warn the clients so the two of them don’t get their teeth kicked in for giving promises they couldn’t keep. The case seems hopeless to John, too—it’s been five years, and the case’s been closed for three. The client is still there.

The envelope on the table is thin—they can make much more in less time if they reject this case and take another—and their funds aren’t running dry, but they are getting close to that. It’s not the first time and not the last when John knows that Arthur is going to take the case, still.

“Fuck,” he hears Arthur say from behind the closed bathroom door. John already knows what this means. When Arthur emerges, John isn’t surprised to see cuts on his cheek, bleeding sluggishly.

Shaving was supposed to be easy now that it wasn’t a silent dance of two people trying to work together. Still, every time Arthur emerged from the bathroom looking like he had gotten into a fight with a stray cat. Arthur went through the long and unpleasant process of dabbing the cuts with a saline-soaked cotton ball. John is left sitting on the couch listening to Arthur mutter to himself, “I might want to grow out a beard.”

The only time John asks him if he needs help, Arthur looks at John like he’s grown a second head.

“No, no, I only need to get used to it.”

Like clockwork, John watches him toss and turn in his sleep every night.

The day John finally snaps is the day Arthur misses the cup while pouring himself coffee. Arthur never drinks coffee; their cupboards are stocked to the brim with tea. The only reason they even own coffee is so that they can offer it to clients. And yet, in the past few days, Arthur went through their entire supply and is now planning to venture out to buy more.

Arthur is still painfully slowly wiping out the blotch of coffee from the table.

“Arthur, why are you doing this?”

Arthur looks up at him as if he’s only just realized that John is sitting here across from him. “Doing what?” he asks, and John wonders to himself if Arthur genuinely has no idea, if their situation seems that detached to Arthur from what they had before, if John is a brand new person to him now, one he barely has any connection with.

“We both know you sleep better if I’m next to you.”

At this, Arthur instantly becomes more awake. “John, we didn’t really have a choice before,” he says and sounds defensive, for fuck’s sake, as if John is accusing him of some terrible thing.

“That’s not what I asked, Arthur.”

“I think I just need some time to get used to it,” Arthur answers him in that placating voice he uses on him when he, quote, feels an argument brewing. Why the fuck would he do it now? John has himself under control.

“That’s exactly my fucking point!” Arthur frowns. John lowers his voice, though god knows that lowering his voice while trying to get through Arthur’s thick head sometimes feels like swallowing stones. “You don’t have to get used to anything. You don’t have to force yourself to do anything. I can just be there for you like I’ve been for ages now, Arthur. I’ve seen all of you. Do you understand? I’ve stitched you up, I—”

“It was different!”

“Different how?”

At that, Arthur looks lost. “That’s just not what people do,” he says, but doesn’t manage it with enough conviction. Arthur sighs and begins in a tone of someone breaking a harsh truth, “John, remember when I told you—”

“Of course I remember, Arthur! The question is, what does it have to do with what we do here, where nobody can see us?”

“Fuck, John,” Arthur swipes his hand over his face. He looks tired, painfully so. “Why are you even asking this? Why do you care?”

The softness of Arthur’s freshly shaved skin as John smoothes his hand over it under the pretense of checking his work. The rise and fall of Arthur’s chest under his palm, giving him something to think about at night.

“I just—I’m only trying to fucking help.” Arthur picks up on the stutter; John knows he does, so John keeps talking. “You can’t even explain it, can you? You don’t understand it yourself.”

Arthur opens his mouth to speak, but then slowly closes it. The only word that makes it out is a quiet, “I…”

“Arthur, you barely sleep. All it would take is for one of the suspects to pull put a gun—”

Arthur’s voice was even, but low, “I’m not fucking useless, John.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, Arthur. Just—” he groans. “If this is what helps, why don’t you let yourself have it?”

Arthur doesn’t have anything to say to that.

“These people outdoors, they don’t know what we went through. And they aren’t here to see it. Is it…” John almost can’t get himself to say it. “Is it because of something I did?”

“John, John,” Arthur repeats, trying to get him to stop talking. “It's not that. It's not. This just—follows people indoors." After a drop of silence, Arthur lets out a laugh. "Can you believe that I just didn't think of an alternative. That's why I don't," he pauses as if making himself say it takes his actual effort. Well, perhaps it does. "That's why I don't let myself have it, John. I’ll think about it, alright?” And finally, for the first time since forever, Arthur’s right hand covers John’s left, and his thumb brushes across his skin. “Old habits die hard.”

John is standing in the middle of the living room. His eyes are burning distractingly, and his lungs are convinced that there isn’t enough air around him. Even his fucking teeth, for some reason, are hurting as if they’re actively moving through the meat of his gums. The last half an hour is replaying in his head, painstakingly showing him, time and time again, how he ended up in here alone.

They argue about something mundane. It’s ridiculously stupid in hindsight, like a vast majority of their fights are, but now isn’t hindsight.

God knows what he says to Arthur; the only memory he still has of those words is a foul aftertaste in his mouth. But John knows he doesn’t do anything halfway, and he still sees Arthur, his whole body taut with suppressed rage, his face falling with disappointment, standing in the middle of the living room like a mirage.
He says it, and then Arthur answers him calmly, like it’s something that should be expected, like it’s something they do, “I need some time alone.”

John just stands there, and it keeps ringing in his ears, filling his whole world, Time alone.

Time alone is never in the cards for them. It’s never a fucking option. Whenever Arthur leaves him alone to stare at the inside of his eyelids and stew in his thoughts, John still has Arthur’s pulse drumming under his skin, still has Arthur mumbling in his sleep. Whenever Arthur stops talking to him, and John spends his hours in lingering, heavy silence, he knows that it’ll never last because they’re bound together, because that’s the only state they can possibly be in—together.
John’s hand shoots out, and his fingers wrap themselves around Arthur’s wrist.

Arthur hisses, “Let me go,” and tries to tug his hand back. One long second, two—John lets go and watches Arthur leave, even if just to the kitchen.

Now, fuck knows how long later, John’s heart is still beating itself against the inside of his ribs like it wants out, and he still can’t make himself go to the kitchen and look, because he might not see Arthur there, because he might’ve missed his footsteps leading to the front door, because apparently, now they can just fucking leave.

When John gets a grip, he finally hears Arthur pacing and muttering to himself. And when John gets over his ego and his panic and his goddamn temper and just goes and apologizes, Arthur accepts it, and after ten or twenty minutes, Arthur is smiling at him again like nothing is wrong.

They’re on the couch together, and John is looking at the case notes Arthur is holding. John leans closer to get a better look and presses his shoulder against Arthur’s. Arthur freezes for a moment, and John even motions to unglue himself from him, when a hand comes to rest around his shoulder. John’s eyes snap to Arthur, but Arthur isn’t looking at him. John smiles to himself.

“John, we have to be sure,” Arthur tells him, his voice strained with annoyance he didn’t have a right to. Jesus, they knew it was him, so what if his hair is dark, so what that he’s older now? His face sags so much that it makes him unrecognizable, but they know it’s him; they’ve traced his every move, his every change of name. And he’s right in front of them, too, sitting alone at a nearby table, sketching something in a notebook, looking so peaceful that it’s hard to make sense of what those same hands did five years ago. Milton is looking around in quick succession—natural nervousness? animal instinct, letting him feel John’s eyes on him?—and because of that, Arthur keeps tugging at the cuff of John’s shirt or just hissing at him to keep silent.

This was much easier when he was just a pair of eyes.

“And I think,” John says, keeping his voice low, “that we should take him now. We’ve checked everything, Arthur. I know we’re right.”

“Half of what we checked we found illegally, John,” Arthur whispers, “the police just won’t take him. If we can just find something that fits the description…”

“Why can’t we just think about this after—”

“Sh-h-h!”

Arthur is looking intensely at Milton, who’s leaning against the back of his chair, tipping his head back, still occasionally turning his head to one side or the other, looking for god knows what. John looks and catches it too—in this position, the high collar of Milton’s shirt rides down and shows a dark dot positioned right under his Adam’s apple.

John hums, “Are you satisfied now?”

Then, Milton’s head snaps to the side again. This time, he locks eyes with John. After that, Milton stands up, pushing the chair with a screech, and bolts.

“I bet he can’t hear us, Arthur,” Arthur mutters sarcastically while they’re running after Milton. "You worry too much, Arthur."

John slips on a puddle and flattens himself against a brick wall. He hisses, “Save your fucking breath.”

Milton leads him into a maze of alleys, all dim and wet, piles of trash making them stumble, harsh turns almost making them lose him twice. Milton doesn’t look behind even once, seems to know that they’re still after him, runs like an athlete, like a man possessed, though John can hear his wheezing breath even from ten feet away.

Arthur falls behind. John can barely hear his footsteps behind him over the thrum of blood in his ears. There’s a thrill going through his body, and heat is sweeping over him in waves, and John finds himself smiling openly with his teeth showing. Climb the fire escape, making the whole ladder rattle, run along the roof, jump from one roof to the other, a lower one—

John stops right at the edge as if he’s hit a wall. He tries to get the body to move, but it’s as if his feet have taken root. He watches the slowly diminishing dark spot that is Milton.

Arthur catches up with him and, without pausing even for a moment, he jumps.

When Arthur lands, he topples over and puts his hand in front of himself. He groans in pain—there isn’t much hesitation or fear left in John after that, he jumps too. Arthur is on his hands and knees, slowly standing up.

Something in John grows cold.

“Fuck’s sake,” Arthur’s looking at his hand with a grim smile, “I can’t believe—” Arthur’s eyes snap up at him. “Run before you lose him, John!”
John turns around and runs, but the cold feeling stays.

Two more jumps, and soon, they end up back on the streets and hit a dead end. Milton whips around to face him.
Milton’s eyes are wide. He seems to know immediately what John is here for, seems to have been dreading it for a long time. He exclaims—which really doesn’t help his case—backing into a wall, “It was an accident!”

He seems like an empty sack of a man, his sickly pale skin hanging off his bones like a suit a few sizes too big.
“I didn’t want to,” Milton mumbles under his breath. He’s looking right through John.

Milton keeps muttering while John tugs his arms around his back, while he’s locking handcuffs around his wrists, while they walk down painfully slowly through puddles of rainwater.

John tugs Milton along, and he obliges blindly as if all his strength has been seeped from him, though he never stops talking.

“Please, I’m not that person anymore.”

At that, a shudder goes through John, and his grip on Milton’s arm relaxes for a split second. Milton falls silent and looks up at him expectantly, his eyes wide and crazed. He felt that moment of weakness, too.

“Don’t you believe in redemption?”

John tugs at his arm and mutters, “Move.”

Arthur is clutching his right hand closer to the elbow, and his wrist is so swollen that it’s almost as wide as his palm. He turns away from the taxi window to look at John.

“Seems like you won’t be hearing me play for a while,” he says with a chuckle.

“But it’ll heal,” John says, and it ends up being more of a statement than a question. Of course it’ll heal, he tells himself. Arthur’s seen much worse. The thought doesn't bring as much comfort as he's expected.

“Yes, it’ll heal, John. It’s alright. Hurts like hell, though, I must admit.”

“You shouldn’t have jumped, Arthur.”

“What, did we have alternatives?” Arthur asks in a falsely polite voice he uses to hide his annoyance.

John groans, “This wasn’t a matter of life and death. This—” he isn’t sure why his voice catches. His heart is beating too hard and too fast, still, even in the safe confines of their apartment. “This could’ve ended so much worse.”

Arthur gives him a long look John doesn’t know how to read and then says, offering an olive branch with a smile on his face, “I suppose I’ve gotten too used to having a sensible voice in my head.”

Arthur is cradling a cup of tea in a hand that isn’t covered with a splint, and John is left staring at a wall in their living room, wondering why he is still dimly worried and why, out of everything that could’ve been hurting after a chase, what is hurting is his gums. They’re pulsing, making him uncomfortably aware of his teeth, drawing him to swipe his tongue over them in the search for blood, damage, something out of the ordinary.

When he gets fed up with this, he goes into the bathroom to look in the mirror.

His reflection bares its teeth at him. The teeth are heavy and narrow and needle-like, so sharp that his breath whistles when it comes through his mouth.
His insides push themselves against his throat, and he wants to hang his head over the sink, but can’t take his eyes off the mirror.

His mouth closes with ease when he wills it to, and he doesn’t nick his lip, doesn’t bite through his tongue. But when John brings his thumb to one of those teeth and doesn’t even press, merely touches it, his skin breaks immediately.

His reflection, still snarling at him like it’s a trapped animal, looks off-center, a step outside human, too unfit for this pointedly mundane place, and he was sure, he was sure that they were done with the whole abominable bullshit, and he was sure that’s not who he is, not anymore.

There’s an idiotic impulse to go find Arthur—he can’t do this alone, he’s never done this alone—but then he catches himself.

It was Arthur’s flesh under the fangs of all the monsters that have been trying to end them, and it’s been Arthur running for his life, and Arthur putting sleepless nights into building the life they have now, free from the occult. And it was Arthur, telling him with conviction that he is human, like it’s the ultimate truth. Now the evidence of the opposite stares John right in the face.

He—he’ll have to tell him. And he will, of course. John simply needs time.

John just keeps standing there, and in a moment between one blink and another, his teeth change back to human. He holds his breath for a moment, leans forward, pokes them with his fingers and his tongue, and finds that it’s not an illusion, that they’re gone. Just like that.

It does nothing to make him feel better. He knows these things have a perverse sense of humor, a phenomenal ability to haunt—they give a moment of respite and then come back and keep coming back.

From a third person’s perspective, feeling strangely numb and disconnected, John watches himself exit the bathroom. While they’re making dinner, Arthur keeps trying to get under his skin with polite conversation, keeps smiling at him, keeps trying to look into his face. And John does smile back, but keeps his lips pressed into a straight line, because the teeth might come back any minute, and instead of looking Arthur in the eyes, he can only bring himself to look at the chopping board, at the kettle, at the window.

An hour of so later, John settles on the couch and makes a show of reading a poetry book, his hands gripping it so tightly that the pages are beginning to wrinkle, his hands itching to reach out for the ritual book they keep locked away in a drawer.

When the key to the drawer turns in the lock, the click is so loud that it seems to shake the air, and when John gets the book out, the pages turn deafingly like they’ve never been touched before, theatrical, like a metal foil being unwrapped. Arthur stirs, but doesn’t wake up. John settles back onto the couch.

He won't have to tell Arthur if he finds a way to fix it.

McGrath shifts on their stingy couch, briefly looking down at it as if fearing that some invisible dirt will rub off on him from it. John is counting seconds until he leaves, and John can tell by the strained smile on Arthur’s face that Arthur is, too. They’re both holding their tongues, because the first time they laid eyes on the number McGrath wrote on the check—all with a bored look on his face like this was nothing out of the ordinary for him—John had to pay close attention to himself to make sure he didn’t show his surprise.

And for what—just a stolen ring!

McGrath’s thick eyebrows jumped up when he told his painfully unfunny, wholly unnecessary jokes.

Arthur smiled readily, but by now, John’s learned to see the difference between a genuine smile and a strained one. And John couldn’t give even a polite laugh, because his gums chose this precise moment to start dimly hurting. The teeth weren’t there yet, but they were getting close. John simply smiled with his lips pressed together and nodded.

“Oh? It seems like Mr. Doe doesn’t share my sense of humor.”

Arthur says apologetically, “My partner isn’t the sort to smile openly.”

There comes a time when John reaches the last page of the book.

He tries to spur his brain into action, tries to think of everything he can still try—lying awake in bed, looking at the dark wall over Arthur’s shoulder–the Miskatonic library, the cults, the rituals…

Arthur shifts in the bed, and then John feels him cup the back of his head. Everything in him still for a long moment, expecting Arthur to realize his mistake and pull away. He doesn’t. John relaxes as if a taut string snaps, and only then does he feel his shoulders protest with abating pain. Just how tense was he?

“You’re thinking too loudly,” Arthur mumbles. “I can’t sleep.”

“Sorry.”

This doesn’t satisfy him. Arthur sounds clearer and much more awake when he asks, “No, really, John, what is it?”

John doesn’t answer for a long moment, instead hooking his arm over Arthur’s waist, pressing his palm against his back. He lowers his head to bury his nose in the crook of Arthur’s neck. Arthur lets out a sharp breath, but lets him.

This is more than enough.

“Just thinking about the case,” he mutters, his breath hitting Arthur’s skin. “It’s nothing.”

This glee, this giddy feeling of “Jesus, Arthur, we did it!” should’ve hit him earlier, but it’s only hitting him now that he’s lying with his face pressed against the back of Arthur’s neck. He’s plastered against him, his leg hooked over him, his arm around Arthur’s waist, bringing him closer. John is so warm that he feels something melt inside.

There were nights, before, when Arthur went to sleep with John’s hand on his chest and then turned to his side. But before John could left his hand fall away, Arthur, still asleep, cradled it in his, oceans of skin touching from the wrist to the elbow, shared warmth gradually mounting, a firm grip on his hand like Arthur really wanted him here. He’d wait for it every night, even though it sent pins and needles through his skin. He’d whisper to Arthur, “Turn on your side,” never loud enough to wake him, but, perhaps, loud enough for some part of his subconscious to register it and obey.

Now their bodies just drift together the moment they fall asleep, and John gets to wake up like this, without a single gap between their bodies left, his breath stirring a few hairs on the back of Arthur’s head. And maybe John gets to keep it—Arthur sleeping soundly by his side, his chest rising and falling under his hand—if John keeps his smiles close-lipped like a sheathed sword, if John stays silent when his monstrosity presents himself, if he has it under control.

He has it under control.

When he opens his eyes next, he’s in the citadel, and there’s Arthur Lester kneeling in front of him.

He chooses to look the most like a human when he faces an Arthur, but in his agitation, his body unravels itself here and there, dissolving into whisps of black smoke. Teeth in his mouth, ready to draw blood again. After one millennium or another, using a sword had grown to be too mundane, and he started to pull them apart by hand.

Most of Arthurs are too stubborn to understand when it’s best to stop fighting, and they keep trying to reason with him until the blood loss makes them lose consciousness, until he shuts them up. And this Arthur, too, looks into his eyes like they’re still on equal footing, where it would make sense for them to talk, and Arthur looks at him with compassion that morphs into anger and then into disappointment. The king digs deeper into him and even under the web of blood vessels, in the sinew holding the bones together, next to the heart that beats frantically against his hand that he’s cupping it with, he finds nothing—nothing to scratch the itch, nothing to help name the reason why so many Arthurs after, the anger is still there, why the feeling of flesh parting under his hands now only serves to bore him.

Every second stretches into a millennium; the split second when this Arthur goes limp is longer than the whole time he’s known him, in a past and naive life, a long time ago. The first gentle touch against Arthur’s skin before he parts it by hand, the warmth surrounding his hands when he has them buried in him, and the waiting for the next one—all of it lasts forever.

John is lying on his side on a soft mattress, and there’s a sound of breathing, loud and wheezing.

Arthur’s hands on his shoulders and on his face—“John, breathe”—endless whispered platitudes—“It was just a nightmare”—the dark in front of John slowly resolving itself into the shape of Arthur.

Then he looks over and sees his hands gripping Arthur’s shoulders so fiercely that it makes Arthur wince. This wince—that is what Arthur Lester looks like when he still doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation, when he thinks all the hurt the king has inflicted on him so far is accidental, something they can forget.
John lets go of Arthur and lets his hands fall to his knees.

He’s still a step outside himself, his breathing is coming too fast, he’s still looking at Arthur, he realizes, and the light in Arthur’s eyes doesn’t dim.

Whatever Arthur sees in his face, it makes him whisper, “We don’t have to talk about it now.”

Arthur’s hands guide him back down on the bed. John turns on his side to face him, and Arthur rubs soothing circles against his back, and John is grateful for the silence Arthur lets him have, because he doesn’t know what he’d say even if he could. And the thought of Arthur is here, alive, doesn’t calm him like he wants it to, and Arthur’s gentle touch feels ridiculous, like trying to chip away at a stone with bare hands, with how much tension is still left in him.

Arthur murmurs, “Can I try something?”

John nods.

Arthur places his hand on top of John’s head, flattening his hair. John huffs—this is ridiculous—but then Arthur starts petting him. He’s stirring his hair, scratching his scalp, an avalanche of sensation superimposed on itself, sending shivers along his skin. This–fuck, this is good. This almost makes him fall asleep here and there.
There’s a part of him that never ceases to think—he knows who this reminds Arthur, the act of petting someone’s hair, and he knows that Arthur is mistaken when he thinks John deserves it—but that part is muffled when John relaxes into the touch.

“Thank you, Arthur.”

The pillow drowns most of his words, but Arthur still hums in response.

John carefully folds his arms over his chest, hides the tips of his fingers—he’s convinced that there are still claws; he still feels something warm and moist bunched under them. Only when he’s certain these hands won’t get to Arthur, John manages to go back to sleep.

In the morning, Arthur is pouring him tea and trying to look into his face, and John feels his stare like the heat of the sun. Arthur keeps trying to get him to talk about it—“John, we both know it’ll help”—John is keeping his eyes trained to the table, to the plate Arthur’s put in front of him, and keeping his silence, because his teeth are back. He couldn’t talk about it even if he wanted to.

Arthur switches to rambling about everything and nothing— their tasks for the day, his assumptions about the case, and John would’ve believed him that he’s let it go if Arthur wasn’t still sending him concerned furtive looks.

John only hums in response and keeps his eyes trained to the plate, because he knows that with every minute that he hides his sharp teeth, with every minute he hums instead of giving a normal answer, Arthur’s frown deepens. And John knows that the fucking nightmare is probably the only reason Arthur is giving him room to breathe, because otherwise, he wouldn’t tolerate the silent treatment, he’d take John by the collar and shake him. If even a single detail was out of place, this would’ve been the moment Arthur found him out.

For the first time since they carved out this life for themselves, John is alone in the apartment.

“Don’t you want to spend time on your own?” Arthur asks him, and John bites back—he doesn’t know why it’s so urgent, his need to find an explanation, “Arthur, you’re forgetting that I still don’t know shit about humanity.” Arthur has the gall to huff out a disbelieving little laugh. What, does Arthur think running away from monsters counts as experience? He knows this place best, so why shouldn’t John want to ask him? “Just—just be my guide again.”

After that, Arthur never argues.

Arthur doesn’t stop bringing it up, either.

“John, it’s just the grocery store. I can go alone. You’ve been there before.”

John hums in acknowledgement and still follows him, because really, Arthur knows that John didn’t claw to this new life to be confined again, and really, Arthur never says that he wants to spend time alone right now, or today, or in the near future—he says “someday”, and, well, John doesn’t mind “someday”.

This time, John brings it up himself and watches a bizarre expression come over Arthur’s face—doubt, suspicion, like Arthur wasn’t the one who pushed for it.
Arthur asks him if he already knows what he’s going to do–organizing case notes, Arthur, why am I being interrogated? Arthur asks him if he’s alright. Arthur even looks mildly unsure of where to put himself when he stands next to the front door alone.

Jesus. John just has something he has to do.

The moment Arthur closes the door behind himself, his teeth appear as if they know what he plans to do. John smiles widely. His lips are peeled back, his mouth half-opened like the maw of a dog, and he feels the cold air of the room touch the teeth, seep through the bone up to his gums, and he just sits there, allows them to be out, because he knows they won’t be so for much longer.

This body is his. John rises from the couch and walks into the kitchen. This body is his, and the thought that he should spend even one second negotiating with it seems ridiculous in hindsight. The knife grinder burns his hand while he carries it to the bathroom, and John tells himself it’s just its rough surface scraping the inner side of his palm. This body is his, and if it decides to rebel against him, tries to rob him of this new life, he only needs to remind it of its place.

The body’s face in the reflection is pale, lips pursed in determination, a thin film of sweat over its forehead. He locks the door behind himself. He doesn’t think it will hurt. While his body shakes and beats its heart against its ribs and makes air come in and out of his lungs faster, his mind is calm because it knows what needs to be done.

John brings the knife grinder to his teeth.

He watches himself only for a moment or two, and then he winces and closes his eyes because his skull shakes under his skin—the whole world shakes—where he drags the grinder against the sharp points of his teeth. He breathes through his nose, tries to calm himself. He breathes in the bone dust; why is there so much of it when he’s just started? He works the grinder like a saw, in repetitive motions, and the teeth he’s working on start to ache, but distantly, vaguely so, start to feel precariously loose, but John knows they’re still there, he knows parasites are harder to weed out than that, so he doesn’t stop and doesn’t feel queasy, only revealed, doesn’t hurt, doesn’t feel afraid. John—alright, he lets himself breathe, not because he needs it, just to see the progress.

It didn’t do anything, he thinks at first when he lifts his eyes to the mirror and sees that the teeth still look sharp, still distinctly inhuman—fuck, it felt like hours, and it didn’t do anything?

He doesn’t know how Arthur still isn’t home. His arms hurt and shake, different parts of his body conspiring among themselves not to submit to him.

When he’s done, his shirt is soaked through with sweat and covered in white dust. His skull still feels like it isn’t in the right place. Something hurts, one tooth or the other. He probs them with a finger, swipes his tongue along them. They’re so rough they don’t even feel like teeth, just this foreign thing sticking out of his gums, slowly crumbling, his tongue coming away covered in grainy dust. But when he’s done, he’s done—his teeth look human. Uneven at the top, oddly narrow, but human.
John turns away from the mirror, clambers into the bathtub. Peels away his shirt and throws it under his feet. Closes his eyes. Almost immediately after, his human, untouched teeth come back. A comfort of the shower, his prize for winning; his arms, moving fluidly and obediently to turn on the tap.

He stands under the shower spray for so long that when he opens his eyes, he finds the room suspended in steam so thick he barely sees the walls. John feels almost asleep with how relaxed his shoulders feel, and somewhere in his chest, he even feels a laugh bubbling up.

He makes it out of the tub and leisurely pats himself with a towel—it barely helps him in here, where the steam is so thick that it almost counts as swimming.
Then—and he doesn’t know why, either; he’s calmer than he’s been in ages, he’s happy, he won, why can’t he have one fucking moment of peace—he feels the familiar pull of his other teeth shaping themselves into being again.

The bone twists and molds itself like clay. When it settles, John swipes his tongue against the teeth again.

They’re smooth. They’re sharp.

His arms are too heavy to lift them and wipe the mirror, and his teeth are bigger, sharper now, somehow, barely fitting into his mouth. When his hands obey him at last, he grabs at his teeth, goes through ridiculous motions of twisting and pulling, but his fingers keep slipping off their smooth, wet surface.

He doesn’t remember much of what happens afterwards. John goes through the motions of wiping the dust off the floor under the sink with his shirt, which soon ends up in the trash. The knife grinder ends up in the drawer again, and John ends up at the table, hunched over the notes, because around that moment, Arthur’s keys jingle when he opens the door.

Every last bit of bone dust he could see has been cleared away, but there’s still an inescapable grainy texture on his tongue. Arthur opens his mouth to say something, but then he fixes John with a long look.

“Any progress?” Arthur asks instead in a soothing, calming voice, and that is when John knows that there’s something written on his face. Whatever it is, John tries to wrestle it back to normalcy.

“No.”

Arthur hums in acknowledgement. “Don’t push yourself too much.”

Does John look that tired?

They’re in bed and aren’t pressed against each other, because the night before, John shuffled away from Arthur to make sure of that. And Arthur, already half-asleep, doesn’t question him then, but keeps stirring in his sleep until morning.

John’s hand on Arthur’s shoulder, Arthur’s leg crossing with his at the ankles. He remembers the flesh giving way to teeth, the taste of blood in his mouth, and presses his lips into a line on instinct. This, Arthur ridiculously far away, just two meager points of contact, is alright.

He relaxes and listens to Arthur breathe.

Then, John opens his eyes.

The hand that he has on Arthur’s shoulder is enveloped in smoke almost down to his fingertips. John holds his breath. He’s looking Arthur over—fuck, is Arthur breathing differently, is he moving under his touch, ready to turn around? John barely feels it when his feet hit the floor—the wood planks, harsh and cold this early in the morning, the bathroom tiles, cold, too, the inside of him, hollowed out, his head empty of everything except for the knowledge that he needs to get away.

He locks the door from the inside and tugs the shirt off over his head without even undoing the buttons. The fabric groans and complains when it stretches, and the buttons clink against the tile when he throws the shirt on the floor.

From over his heart and along his chest, then his shoulders, then climbing down his arms to his wrists, there’s black smoke. It’s indulating, shifting, but never straying too far from his body, and it feels like a dream when John brings his hand to his chest to try to touch it and feels nothing but cold and static. His hand hovers over his chest–his chest rises to meet his fingertips and falls, rises and falls, and the smoke follows it like a second skin.

“John?” from behind the bathroom door. Arthur, always a light sleeper.

He braces his palms against the tile–the only thing he seems to be able to fucking do, more helpless now than when he was tethered to Arthur, his hand unable to reach what he wanted to reach, his eyes unable to stay open when Arthur went to sleep. More helpless now; the body isn’t his—how presumptuous he was for calling it his!—and the filth won’t be done with him until it climbs up his fucking throat, until he’s choking on it, until it’s done mocking him, until he sees that he shouldn’t have thought that he can ever be anything other than this.

“John, are you alright in there?”

His ribs hurt as if someone punched him there, and, after a moment, he hears it—he’s breathing too loudly, too fast, the sound of it echoing against the walls. He fights it and doesn’t quite succeed, but manages to make his voice surprisingly steady when he says, “Yes. Yes, I’m alright.”

Arthur still hovers near the door. John hears him sigh–another argument brewing–hears him say in that placating tone, “John—”

“I said I’m alright!”

Silence from the other side of the door. His fingers are going numb, his palms stinging with cold, but oh, the smoke is certainly still there, because there’s no way on Earth anything can ever go the way he wants it to. If everything just stopped for a second—is the smoke climbing farther?—he just needs a moment, and everything will be back to normal—is Arthur turning the fucking doorknob?!

“Just give me a minute,” John says, twisting his voice so that there’s no bite to it. His throat hurts like air is being forcefully shoved down it. “Probably ate something wrong. Just—it’s fine, Arthur.”

Arthur doesn’t argue, but lingers near the door for a long moment. Then, John hears his footsteps retreating.

John lowers his head and looks down at his hands. He jolts when he sees that the smoke has cleared up to his elbows. His palms and knees sting from the cold of the tile. This gives John an idea.

He stands up and steps into the bathtub. John stands under the shower head with a manic sort of anticipation. The body shivers, bracing itself for what’s about to follow. After a few moments of fumbling with the faucet, he turns on icy cold water.

He almost brains himself on the tile on the wall when his body bends in half, caught off guard, trying to escape the cold. But just like he thought, it helps. The black smoke that’s been radiating from over his heart, covering his chest, clouding his shoulders, disappears immediately.

John should feel relieved.

The moment the door to the bathroom opens, Arthur’s eyes snap to him. John tells him, “I was just overheated.” Arthur frowns sceptically, but doesn’t say anything. “Now I’m alright.”

A beam of streetlights is making it through the slightly open window. It’s cold—that’s how John knows he won’t wake up in the morning fully covered in black smoke; the couch is ten feet away from the bed, a formidable distance for their small apartment.

It’s the farthest he can place himself without hovering in the kitchen all night, without locking himself in the bathroom, without drawing attention. If he draws attention, there will be questions; questions will lead to the truth uncovered.

Hope starts up in him again and again like a fire—Arthur might still forgive him. Again and again, John puts it out. Dim images of Arthur seeing what has become of his body, this deteriorating, rotting thing, and still forgetting John’s monstrous nature, still letting him into his life; dim images that won’t let John sleep at night.

Arthur did forgive him before for much worse. Arthur tolerated his every outburst and his every scalding remark and his every lie, every proof that John was still a monster. But how much of it was really Arthur and his blind forgiveness, his odds-defying faith in John, and how much of it was the simple inevitability of being stuck with him?

This, having breakfasts with Arthur and solving cases together and talking deep into the night, isn’t something he’s willing to gamble away. John can simply fold his hands, tainted by smoke, against his chest and press them between his body and the back of the couch.

It was late evening, the windows completely dark, when Arthur asked him in his usual conversational tone, “Are you going to sleep?” But John didn’t miss the way his eyes were following him like he was another suspect.

John put the book down. He makes it look casual, as if he hasn’t spent hours thinking about it, looking for any option that ends with him in his usual place on the bed.
“I’m sorry, Arthur. It’s too hot in there,” he waves a hand at the bed.

“You didn’t seem to have this problem before.”

John lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m very familiar,” he grits through his teeth, “with lying awake and not moving, Arthur. You just didn’t notice.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Arthur asks, incredulous, and sits down next to him on the couch. “You—you do know that you can just, well, ditch the blanket, lie on the edge?” He talks to him in that infuriating tone of voice that makes John feel like he’s an animal being domesticated. A weight on his forearm, a hand, the warmth already seeping through the fabric. John steels himself not to shake it off. It’s too warm, and Arthur’s hip, where it presses along his own, is too warm, and all of this is contradictory to this entire fucking exercise. Arthur seems to see something on his face, though, and pulls his hand back.

“You think I didn’t think of that?!”

Is the echo always so loud in their apartment? Arthur doesn’t even look angry, doesn’t even tell him off for screaming, keeps looking at him searchingly with infuriating degrees of care.

The moment he lets himself think of caving in, he sees it—blackened hands, losing their human disguise, squeezing, tearing through the skin, burrowing deeper, the same exact thing repeating itself a million times until that is the only thing he can remember of Arthur—not the poems he read to him by memory with a smile in his voice, not the readiness with which he believed he deserved to be called a human name, just this.

“Please, I just—just can’t sleep in there.”

Arthur sighs. “If this is about the nightmare—”

“Will you once,” John hisses. Arthur falls silent, “in my entire life give me some fucking space?”

John has achieved one thing–the expression on Arthur’s face isn’t gentle anymore.

“You know can still talk to me,” Arthur says quietly, “if something is bothering you?” He doesn’t ever give up, does he?

“Yes, Arthur. Thank you. Now, please. I just want to sleep.”

After a pause, Arthur walks away and climbs into the bed. John isn’t sure why he can’t shake a vague sense of dread. After all, he got what he wanted.

It takes ages for John to actually fall asleep. He wakes up outrageously late, alone in the house. The window is still open. He feels the cold in his bones. He checks his hands in a rush, swipes a tongue across his teeth. All human.

John knows that his hair is matted with grease.

Arthur doesn’t point it out, not directly, not yet, but John does catch him looking at him with worry, and Arthur does say, probably thinking he’s doing a great job at being discreet and polite and doing whatever else social gymnastics humans do, “We’re meeting McGrath tomorrow, we need to look our best.” Fuck’s sake.

By now, John has a system. He isn’t doing it because he’s afraid, or whatever—whatever other fucking explanation there can be. He’s simply efficient. He doesn’t waste time.

It’s mere minutes between him tugging his clothes off and putting them back on. He doesn’t even have to spare a single glance down; he just moves mechanically, so if the smoke is curling over his heart and spreading along his arms, it’s none of his business.

He brushes his teeth in the shower, too—the mirror is all in his face when he does it next to the sink; who thought that it wouldn’t be even the slightest bit annoying to always keep a mirror there?

Sometimes a bit of soap dries down on his neck where he didn’t wash it off and pulls at his skin. Sometimes, Arthur points it out. But they never talk about it, and for this to continue, John simply needs to wash his goddamn hair.

The spray of water is hitting his back, and his fingers are working shampoo through his hair, and somewhere between here and there, he’s reminded of their dark bedroom, of his chest heaving after the nightmare, of Arthur’s fingers cradling through his hair, whispering platitudes and confessions—“it used to help her too”—the gentle touch almost putting him to sleep. John’s eyes close by themselves, and he leans into the touch, and steps into the water, and the water is running warm.

When he opens his eyes, he sees something dark downwards in the periphery, and he knows what it is, and he doesn’t look down. He swallows the sickness and—something that has long ago become a habit—turns the handle to make the water run cold.

“Why?” John squints up at him from where he’s sitting on the couch.

Arthur is laughing at him like his question is at all unreasonable.

They’re drowning in work, they have two cases open, and Arthur is smiling at him and offering, just like that, to go to the movies.

“I know you’ve been tired for these past few days.”

By which Arthur means that for these past few days, John’s been good for nothing. Words turned into an incomprehensible jumble of letter the moment he lied his eyes on their case notes, because something was always there to distract him—the feeling of smoke presenting itself and shifting under his clothes, the sound of Arthur breathing, sitting too close to him on the couch with the notes laid out on the coffee table, or standing over him, looking over his shoulder, leaning in so close that John could smell his aftershave.

John only comes back to life the moment they’re on an actual chase—serves him right, a treat for a hunting dog, he thinks bitterly, when he feels his teeth manifest as he turns a corner, serves him right, when the thrill of it sets his blood on fire, when the footsteps, his own and the suspect’s, Arthur left behind, sounds like music to him, echoing off the brick walls of the alley like the walls of a grand palace.

“Arthur,” he sighs, “I don’t think we can afford it now. Five more pawnshops left to check, and” he—he can’t remember what else they have to do? Just how low has he fucking sunk? “And everything else. We need to focus—”

“What, like you can do that?” Arthur snaps.

John feels his eyes widen.

“For fuck’s sake,” he breathes out, “I already said sorry. I know you’ve been pulling more—”

“John,” Arthur said, tense, “John, that’s not what I’m talking about.” He takes a deep breath and gives John a sad smile. “You—you’re hiding something from me.”
John sucks in a breath, but Arthur speaks before John can get a word in, “And fuck, you know I’ll wait until you’re ready to tell me what it is, like I always do, because I trust you, John. I just wish—”

“It’s—it’s just stress.” At that, he sees Arthur deflate with something that looks like disappointment. “I don’t— I’m not sure why—”

Arthur sighs. “Then let’s just do this, you donkey. If it’s stress, getting away for a bit can help.”

That is how he finds himself in a darkened movie theater, Arthur sitting at his right, smiling at him, the dim light reflecting off his teeth. Arthur, whispering to him about everything and nothing—the book John was pretending to read, the case he was pretending to think about. John pretended to know how to answer and smiled back at him, while his chest constricted, and he kept wondering why Arthur felt this far away when they spent evert single moment of life within 15 feet of each other; wondering where his time has seeped to if he wasn’t reading, wasn’t thinking, wasn’t sleeping because he, like clockwork, sees the citadel every time he tries.

John doesn’t even notice the movie start. All he can fucking think about is that they’re almost touching shoulders, that he can almost feel the warmth of Arthur’s body radiate into him even through several layers of clothing. His eyes are trained on the screen, but he isn’t registering anything, because his entire self has collapsed into a single point just under the surface of his skin where he’s closest to Arthur.

The smoke is there—of course it’s fucking there—and it’s inching down along his arm, closer to the cuff of his shirt, closer to where Arthur’s hand lies parallel to his on the armrest, the sides of their palms almost brushing together. The smoke is reaching out, and John feels it circle his wrist, and a single whisp grazes his skin with cold when it reaches out, out—

He stands up and, without saying a word—he hears Arthur whisper questioningly, “John?”—heads to the bathroom.

It’s empty when he gets there, but he wouldn’t have cared if it weren’t. He just—he needs a breather, that’s all. He braces himself against the sink and deliberately keeps his head down—another goddamn mirror shoved into his face is exactly what he needs right now.

Soon, he hears footsteps, light but determined. He knows that it’s Arthur even before he opens the door.

“John,” he starts talking even before he’s properly entered, even before he’s made sure they’re alone, “what the fuck is going on with you?”

“What, now I can’t just take a piss?”

John barely turns to face him before it’s Arthur’s hands on his shoulders, squeezing and keeping him in place. He feels, then, the smoke coil around the touch and try to squeeze itself under it like a pet starved of attention.

“Stop fucking touching me.” He wiggles his shoulders, trying to shake the touch off. It falls away easily. “You’ve told me yourself that it’s improper.”

Arthur laughs, but it’s stilted, “Since when do you give a shit about what is proper?”

“You had a good damn reason to keep saying we shouldn’t be doing this over the most minuscule fucking thing, and you know, Arthur, I’m beginning to grasp it.”

Something wavers in Arthur’s expression, then, something between surprise and hurt, but Arthur quickly wrestles it back.

“Bullshit.”

“One of us should sleep on the fucking couch. And this–this touching, it’s not something that happens, Arthur,” he falls into the tone Arthur’s used on him, all patience and calm that immediately got under John’s skin. “That’s not what people do.”

“You childish prick, you don’t believe in that for a second.”

John wants to bite his tongue; he does, but he’s in too deep just to give up now, and the black smoke has poured down enough to evenly coat his fingers. He puts his hands in his pockets, and for a long second, he wonders if Arthur will notice, but he doesn’t, because his eyes are trained on John’s face.

“You asked me if I ever want to spend time on my own—well, now I do, Arthur. I need it, in fact. So please—”

“You really don’t make it easy sometimes,” Arthur mumbles under his breath, but it’s enough to shut John up. Because this whole situation—it’s almost making an actual cracking sound every time John opens his fucking mouth. What if he’s overdone it? What does it mean when Arthur clenches his fists, looks at him with calmness and clarity? What does it mean when he says, quietly, “Please, enjoy yourself. Enjoy your time alone. I’m going home.”

He remembers standing in the middle of the empty bathroom, his heart in his throat. Pacing along the dark streets, passersby giving him a wide berth like he’s carrying the plague. Jerking awake after a mere moment of sleep, finding himself in a park, meeting a few meager stars piercing through the dark sky, not a soul around to see them.

John is a puppet being dragged by its strings while he’s walking home. He’s thinking, but none of it is productive—it’s the state he found himself in on the long nights when Arthur actually managed to sleep, just floating untethered from meaning and time. This couldn’t have been the end, this petty argument, one of many. He climbs up the stairs. What were they even fighting about? He puts the key in and turn it just to find that the door is already open. He steels himself before entering. All of him is human.

Arthur meets him at the door, hands folded over his chest, his expression stony but quickly melting into something mundane. John just stands in the doorway like an idiot. He knows he should apologize, but the words don’t come to him. A battle he’s wildly underprepared for, a single empty “I’m sorry” in his arsenal.

“Arthur, I’m—”

Arthur moves away, letting him in. John holds his breath like it’s an illusion that can dissipate if he makes a wrong step. Arthur leads him to the table and puts a plate in front of him.

“Just eat the dinner, John. We’ll talk in the morning.”

John has no intention of talking in the morning. It’s imperative that they don’t fucking talk in the morning. But he still hums something that sounds like an agreement before eating as much of the dinner as he can stomach and heading to the couch. He lies there uselessly until the dawn peeks through the curtains, and only then falls into a dreamless sleep.

It’s warm. John finds himself sitting on the floor, leaning his back against the wall. There’s a blanket covering him up to his shoulders and a pillow between the wall and his head. He jolts in surprise, and his whole body moves, but the wrist of his left hand—his half-raised left hand—stays stubbornly in place.

When he opens his eyes, he sees that he’s cuffed to the radiator. Arthur is sitting in front of him on the floor, watching him intently.

“You’re awake,” he says, and his tone is even and eerily calm in a way that doesn’t promise anything good.

“Arthur, what the fuck—” John tugs at the handcuffs once just to prove to himself that the bastard really fucking did it.

“I should be asking you that,” he has the gall to still say to him as if it’s John who’s being unreasonable, as if anything good will come out of this, as if wanting to keep this, just a sliver of what they used to have, is that fucking selfish.

“What?!”

Arthur groans and covers his eyes with a hand.

“John, do you still need me to spell it out for you? I know you’re hiding something, and—”

Why the fuck can’t Arthur just leave this alone?

“Why are you still hung up—”

Arthur’s hand shoots out and collides with the radiator with an echoing bang.

“Fucking listen to me!”

John falls silent.

“You’re hiding something,” Arthur says again and looks at John as if challenging him to say something. This time, John stays silent. What else can he possibly say that he hasn’t fucking tried already? Nothing can get through Arthur’s goddamn stubbornness. “And I’ve given you plenty of time to sulk,” John takes an intake of breath, but Arthur doesn’t even let him open his mouth, “to think, to fix the problem yourself, to do whatever the fuck you usually do when you think that you can’t trust me with something. But now this is eating away at you.”

“And you thought the best way to confront me about it was this?”

Arthur lets out a bitter laugh.

“Like anything else has worked? I won’t put it above you to run away again.”

“Run awa—” he chokes on air. “Arthur, I’m not your property. I’m not your pet. I’m not your fucking child.” Something in Arthur’s face twitches, but other than that, he doesn’t react. “If I ever want to leave, I will, because now I don’t have to consult you on every little goddamn decision, because—because—”

Arthur leans in and looks him in the eyes. “Do you want to leave?”

“I…”

He did think of leaving him, the morning after his first nightmare, and he kept thinking about it afterwards, day after day of “I should,” day after day of “It would be the right thing to do.”

“I…”

But when has he ever done the right fucking thing instead of staying where he doesn’t belong and taking what he doesn’t deserve? There’s not enough air around him even with his mouth hanging open, even with him panting like an animal. Perhaps, there was never another way for this to end. Perhaps, it was always John saying yes through his gritted teeth, always Arthur unlocking the handcuffs and letting him go.

It takes too long for him to notice that Arthur is looking at his teeth.

Everything else happens to someone else. John is looking at himself from a third person’s perspective. His body scrambles back and flattens itself against the wall, and Arthur slowly inches closer to close the gap, not looking shocked one bit. His arms are raised in front of him, his face still gentle as if he forgot what he saw just a moment ago, saying to John, his voice still caring, “It’s alright, John. I promise it’s alright.”

His body closes its mouth, and the teeth clatter against each other.

“Is that what you wanted to see, Arthur?”

“Yes, John,” he even gives him a smile, this bastard, this naive idiot with his reckless desire to domesticate and redeem every abominable thing that comes his way. “Now I know what was bothering you all this time.”

Arthur is still here, and it doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel final, as if soon, any minute now, Arthur’s eyes start to cooperate with his brain, and he realizes fully what the thing he just saw means, and the gentle expression will drop.

But now Arthur is telling him that it’s alright—half of the words are lost behind the thrum of John’s own pulse—and now his whole being is caving in like a rotten wooden floor, almost ready to believe it.

“There’s more, Arthur,” he spits out. Arthur pauses and falls silent. “It’s—” For the first time in a long, long time, he struggles to describe something. So instead, he simply steels himself, brings his free hand to his collar, and starts unbuttoning his shirt.

It’s only halfway when Arthur inhales sharply, but when John’s eyes snap to him, he still doesn’t look disgusted, or scared, or even angry. If John looks down, he sees that there’s already a familiar veil of black smoke over his heart.

John knows he’s shaking like a prey animal.

Arthur’s hand comes to rest over John’s left elbow, and his fingers on the buttons stutter and trip over themselves. The more he thinks about it, the more ridiculous it seems–how fucking long has it been that a simple touch like this makes him reel?

But Arthur doesn’t motion to take the handcuffs off, even now that John is sitting there willingly, and John doesn’t ask him to, because it reminds him too much of what they used to have, John confined to the insides of Arthur’s skull with nowhere to run when they stumble into another one of their heart-to-hearts.

The shirt is fully unbuttoned. John pushes the blanket down to make it pool in his lap.

“It—it stretches further, sometimes,” his voice seems dull to his ears, “along the arms, down the torso.”

Arthur is still looking at him like he’s nothing to be afraid of, and John wants to shake him by the shoulders and ask him if they’re really seeing the same thing.
Arthur huffs, “You’re ridiculous.”

Whatever John expected, it wasn’t this.

Arthur grabs him by his shoulders and tugs him closer. His breath on John’s face, his nose almost touching his, his eyes searching. “We’ve taken out monsters together, creatures more awful than a normal human mind can ever imagine, and you think something like this can scare me? What do you expect me to be, disgusted?”

“You—” he groans. “I don’t understand why you’re still doing this, Arthur.”

“Doing what?” Arthur’s hands fall away from John’s shoulders. The places his hands covered just a moment ago immediately feels cold, and John feels this lack, this negative space like it’s something physical.

“Still sitting here and putting up with this,” John uses his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “All of this! And why you’re still telling me that this is alright when we both know damn well what this body did to you.”

“John—” Arthur winces.

“You’ve forgotten and forgiven me then, Arthur, when I was still stuck inside your skull, when we were low on time, when you couldn’t just walk away from this–this thing that used to torture you.” John looks down at his free hand, lying palm up over the blanket.

Arthur takes his hand with both of his, enveloping it in a pocket of warmth. John stutters and falls silent. His entire awareness zeroes in on this singular point of contact. It finds him a long moment to find his words.

“But now, now you’re free to leave, and—”

“I won’t.”

“Think of your daughter, Arthur,” he says, and knows that the words will work like magic. He watches the look on Arthur’s face turn unreadable. Arthur opens his mouth, but John doesn’t let him speak, “and then think of who it was who took her only family away from her, time and time—”

Hands on his shoulders again, yanking him forward. Arthur and he collide in what feels more like a punch or a tackle to the ground than a hug. Arthur puts his hands around him and squeezes tight, pinning John’s free hand, fisting the shirt on John’s back so harshly that the collar starts to dig into John’s throat.

“Don’t you dare,” Arthur’s voice, wavering with barely contained anger; Arthur’s hot breath on his ear, “suggest that I don’t think of her.”

John stays silent. The grounding weight on him is the only thing he can think about, even when he knows he should be apologizing. His head comes to rest on Arthur’s shoulder before John can think about it, and Arthur still lets him.

Slowly, the grip that Arthur has on his shirt unwinds itself, and he stops squeezing John’s breath out of him and settles one palm over his back, instead, and the other at the back of his head. John’s eyes fall shut, and he only notices it after a few long moments of darkness.

“I didn’t forgive you because I had to,” Arthur’s voice, calmer and gentler now, reverberating in his chest. “I’m not taking it back. I’m not leaving, John.”

Something is knocked loose in him by the words. He inhales sharply. The hand Arthur kept on the back of his head moves slightly, his fingers comb through his short hair, his nails dig lightly into John’s scalp, and it feels divine.

“And it’ll make things much fucking easier if you remember this and stop trying to push me away.”

“Arthur, who is to say that I won’t—that I never—”

“I’ll be there for you to keep you in check. I’ll help you be who you want to be. Let me help you.” Arthur adds, his voice growing annoyed, “Just stop keeping things from me.” Arthur pulls away, and this time it doesn’t feel like the world is ending, because Arthur might really stay. “As if it ever did you any fucking good, John.”

“I’m sorry,” he says as if he can even begin to cover everything that he’s sorry for, even everything merely for the past two weeks. But Arthur is satisfied with this little, it seems, because for that, John gets a pat on the shoulder.

Now that John has a moment of calm, he notices something. “Arthur, my wrist hurts like hell.”

“Alright, alright,” Arthur mumbles and pulls out the keys.