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There's a point to all this dreaming
The metal clangs under his feet--he realizes after a few seconds of it that the floor isn't solid, it's grated, and under it there are hundreds of massive, turning gears.
They're standing over a giant meat grinder.
The little things with their long knives are swarming at them. He's firing, firing, emptying rounds into the room, but they keep coming, cutting at his legs, knocking him down. He hears a scream, high and wordless and terrified, and he sees Neil's twisted face in the dimness, sees them take him and lift him up, blood running over the metal grating as they carry him away. He's trying to crawl, dragging himself across the floor as beneath him that massive infernal machine grinds and grinds, and he sees another quick, moon-like flash of Neil's face as the knives go to work and Neil is screaming--
He's screaming. Sitting up in bed, the sheets soaked with sweat. Alone.
Quiet.
The window by the bed is open and breeze moves across his bare skin. For a few moments he just sits there in darkness mottled by city lights, trying to breathe normally again. And all he can think, with what little coherence he has at some ungodly hour of the fucking night, is that on a long enough timeframe all dreams might come true.
It takes him another five minutes to come to a decision.
He drags himself out of bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, splashes some water on his face and spares himself a look in the bathroom mirror. He looks pale, hollow-eyed. He looks like what he is, which is a man who hasn't been sleeping well the last two nights. And that, coupled with the city's change before, means that he hasn't gotten decent sleep in about a week.
Fuck this.
He could just go, he thinks. Just head out the door. But that feels a little too much like a month ago, a little too much like something dark and crashing, so instead he heads back into the bedroom, sinks down onto the bed, picks up the cell phone and dials Neil's number.
They're standing over a giant meat grinder.
The little things with their long knives are swarming at them. He's firing, firing, emptying rounds into the room, but they keep coming, cutting at his legs, knocking him down. He hears a scream, high and wordless and terrified, and he sees Neil's twisted face in the dimness, sees them take him and lift him up, blood running over the metal grating as they carry him away. He's trying to crawl, dragging himself across the floor as beneath him that massive infernal machine grinds and grinds, and he sees another quick, moon-like flash of Neil's face as the knives go to work and Neil is screaming--
He's screaming. Sitting up in bed, the sheets soaked with sweat. Alone.
Quiet.
The window by the bed is open and breeze moves across his bare skin. For a few moments he just sits there in darkness mottled by city lights, trying to breathe normally again. And all he can think, with what little coherence he has at some ungodly hour of the fucking night, is that on a long enough timeframe all dreams might come true.
It takes him another five minutes to come to a decision.
He drags himself out of bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, splashes some water on his face and spares himself a look in the bathroom mirror. He looks pale, hollow-eyed. He looks like what he is, which is a man who hasn't been sleeping well the last two nights. And that, coupled with the city's change before, means that he hasn't gotten decent sleep in about a week.
Fuck this.
He could just go, he thinks. Just head out the door. But that feels a little too much like a month ago, a little too much like something dark and crashing, so instead he heads back into the bedroom, sinks down onto the bed, picks up the cell phone and dials Neil's number.
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"That's what I liked about everything going to shit. It was like the fucking distance disappeared." He opens his eyes, meets Neil's gaze, and it hurts but he holds the line. "So let's try to fucking get rid of it."
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It's too fucking much. It's never fucking enough.
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That can also cross dimensions.
"Thing about that is there's always another fucking moment after that." He holds Neil's gaze for another few seconds and then drops it to his mug again, watching the steam curl through the air. Slow. Uncoiling itself. It's a process.
"You said you needed to get to know me. Sometimes I feel like I hardly fucking know you." His mouth twists. "I missed a whole year."
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"I don't really know where the fuck to start."
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It's like a knife in his mouth, cutting its way out of him, and that's why he says it, why he starts with it. And he says it--me, not him--and just for a moment the double helix becomes a single twisting spiral and it feels true.
My girls.
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"They still call me Neil. Anytime somebody calls me their dad by accident, they get all confused."
Or they did. Now... Now, I don't know. I don't know what the fuck's going on back there. If they're okay. If they even exist anymore, without us.
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He doesn't know how to say I'm glad they aren't here. But after the world going dark, he's twice as glad.
"Sometimes I miss them so much, I can't--" He trails off, shakes his head. There are no words for this.
"And then there are these other times... I have to work at it to even remember what they look like." His mouth twists harder. "They probably don't even fucking look like that anymore. They were growing up so goddamn fast."
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"We moved. Not away from the Tree, really, we just... built a new house nearby. We were runnin' outta room, and I just... I needed someplace fresh."
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The cruelty of it is almost unbearable.
He takes a breath and then another, pushes past it. But he doesn't raise his head. Moved. That... God, he can understand.
"Who's 'we'?" He lifts his head slightly, scrubbing a hand down over his face. "Were you... were you with someone?"
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And I miss her as much as I miss my girls. Living with someone for over a year, they become family. She and I were already close, we just managed to get closer.
"I wasn't with anybody. Not really."
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"Kara. I'm... I'm glad she stayed." She would have been good for Neil to have close. Especially after... After. "Did anyone else we know... y'know. Go?"
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"Joe's been gone a while. Logan and Jack had a fuckin' baby. They used a surrogate," I say with a cough of laughter, scrubbing a hand across my face.
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"A lot happens in a fucking year," he says, his voice slightly ragged.
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"Turned into a girl, again, just... maybe a month after Tom left. Did some stupid shit. You're right, a lot fuckin' happens in a year."
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He reaches out again and closes his hand over the one Neil is picking at. Touching him... it feels like a rule with some give now. One that he might be allowed to break, albeit only a little.
"Whether it really was me or it wasn't... it doesn't fucking matter. I'm sorry I missed any of it."
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"It felt... It wasn't fun, like it had been before. Without you. I fucked three people that weekend, tryin' to... trying to make it hurt less. Trying to forget what it was like, with the three of us," I admit. I don't know why I feel like I need to tell him. Confess sins that really weren't sins in the first place, but that I've felt guilty for, all this time. Things I've done wrong, missteps I've taken. Things I wish had gone differently.
Coughing out a laugh, I say, "Wasn't even a record, for me, it just... felt like this big step backward." I was only just starting to feel like I was ready to move forward again, and now I'm here. I don't know what the fuck that means for me and what I'm supposed to do with myself.
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But he edges a little closer.
"If you wanna have some kind of I-fucked-up-more-than-you thing..." He shakes his head. "I don't give a shit what you did. If you give a shit, that's something else, but... we're here now."
He curls his fingers, lifts Neil's hand in his and slowly, carefully, brings it to his mouth and kisses the smooth skin behind Neil's knuckles.
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I don't want secrets. More than that, I don't want there to be this year of my life, this gap in time, that he doesn't know about.
"Mike," I breathe, inching closer, moments away from just throwing myself at him, burying my face in his neck. Letting go.
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And then he's braced over Neil's body, shoving him into the mattress with a kind of viciousness that seems to stab up out of his core. Hurting him. Wanting to hurt him worse.
I need you to know.
"Do you trust me?" he whispers. "It's okay if you don't."
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"Yes," I admit, shoving aside a crashing wave of shame at the truth of it. I shouldn't. I should've learned my fucking lesson. I can't let him hurt me again, and I won't, but the only way we can do this, the only way we can move forward at all, is if I trust him right now. If I trust him, the way I did back on the island.
On the island, there wasn't really a moment I ever doubted him.
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But everything feels closer to that than it has since he opened his eyes on that fucking train.
"I got no fucking idea if I'm good for you," he says finally, slowly. "I feel like I'm probably not. But I wanna try. I can't be him--or the way I was then. Whatever. But I could try."
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I nod, wordlessly, because I don't know what to say. No, because if I open my mouth I don't know that I'll be able to keep myself from breaking down. I've been holding it together this long. A fucking year of struggling to hold it together.
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And he's too tired to run away from this now.
He slips out of the chair and onto his knees on the kitchen floor, reaches up and pulls Neil into his arms. It's slow and careful and very, very gentle--but he needs to remember that Neil isn't fragile.
Mike has beaten at him and he hasn't broken.
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I half expect the moment to shatter. Half expect to wake up alone in a cold bed. To wrap my arms around his neck and find that he's less solid than I expect him to be. Just a ghost of the person I want him to be.
But I settle with my arms around him, my face in the crook of his neck, and the moment's so real, so sharp, I almost can't breathe.
"God," I gasp, choking on another sob of breath, holding tight enough to him that my knuckles have gone white.
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The rest of him surges through it. Lets it burn.
"I love you," he whispers, one hand palming the back of Neil's head, the other tight around his middle. Clinging. On a fucking kitchen floor with tea going cold and a fucking city outside. Stranger things. "I love you. I love you, I'm sorry."
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