There's a point to all this dreaming

[forthedog]

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.

Comments

[forthedog]

The names are like waves crashing against him, one after the other after the other--and then it descends into utter weirdness and he's caught between laughing and crying, pressing the heels of both palms against his eyes. He still hasn't touched his tea.

"A lot happens in a fucking year," he says, his voice slightly ragged.

[likeaplanet]

"I ran for council. Lost," I snort, picking at a hangnail instead of sucking it up and fucking looking at him.

"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."

[forthedog]

"I woulda voted for you," he says, still so close to laughing. It hurts. He drops his hands onto the table and stares at them for a few seconds more before he lifts his eyes, the corner of his mouth twitching. "And again? I'm really fucking sorry I missed that."

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."

[likeaplanet]

"I know," I whisper, looking down at his hand covering mine, broader and rougher, the way it's always been.

"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.

[forthedog]

He actually lets himself smile at that--hesitant and sad--and all he wants to do is pull Neil into his arms and just hold on. But there's a table between them. A table and a lot more besides.

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.

[likeaplanet]

"I just need you to know," I admit, my breath catching when he lifts my hand, his lips warm against my skin.

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.

[forthedog]

"I know." He lowers Neil's hand but doesn't let go, and again the double helix becomes a spiral. This is right. This is the way things should be. None of what he'd said about meeting again in some other life is bullshit, because here they are.

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."

[likeaplanet]

"I don't know," I whisper, my voice stretched thin to the point of breaking, and I lift my free hand to my face, knocking away the tear that's threatening to spill over onto my cheek.

"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.

[forthedog]

He can't speak. He doesn't try. He holds onto Neil's hand and just... lets himself be. Feels his lungs expanding and contracting, feels the blood pounding gently between his ears. This isn't the whole thing. Nothing's fixed.

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."

[likeaplanet]

A choked hiccup of a sob makes its way out of my throat before I can swallow it and I hang my head, just to try and hide the way my face has collapsed.

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.

[forthedog]

"Neil," he breathes, and he feels it, he remembers, the times before when someone with his body and his voice and hands could be strong, and that strength was in reaching out and letting the walls down. Not being afraid. Or accepting the fear and moving on.

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.

[likeaplanet]

I let him pull me forward, practically collapsing into his arms in an ungainly tumble from the chair to the floor.

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.

[forthedog]

It should be like a lightning strike, like being set on fire. It should burn and shiver through him and hurt, hurt like torture, like closing his hand around the blade of a knife. It should make him bleed. And it is doing these things. Part of him wants to pull away, terrified and in pain.

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."

[likeaplanet]

Coughing out a rough laugh that isn't much of a laugh at all, I whisper, "Shut up," my voice hoarse and thick and barely sounding like my own. I'm at a disadvantage, in my fucking underwear while he's practically fully clothed, but I don't care.

He hasn't touched me, not like this, in over a year, and I can't catch my fucking breath.

[forthedog]

"I can't," he murmurs, fingers threading through Neil's hair, holding him there before he tugs his head gently back again, looking into his red, wet eyes.

One good eye to Neil's two. Familiar.

He manages a crooked smile. "Don't you fucking tell me what to do."

[likeaplanet]

"If not me, then who?" I ask, huffing out a laugh and offering him a weak, watery grin. "You need somebody lookin' after you. You're obviously shit at doin' it for yourself."

I lift a hand to his face, tracing the curve of his jaw, my thumb brushing across his cheekbone.

When it comes down to it, I didn't miss the sex. I did, obviously, but that was only secondary to all the rest. I missed his face, his hands, the shape and weight of him in bed next to me. I missed waking up and making fucking breakfast together. I missed all the little things that maybe didn't seem all that important at the time.

Now, I'm touching him and I know I'm gonna have to stop, eventually. The idea of that-- of letting go, even if it's only temporary, terrifies me.

[forthedog]

"Hey." He reaches up, closes his hand around Neil's wrist--and doesn't tug it away. "I survived for years in the fucking Realm. Gotta be doing something right."

Now that he's started this--now that he's holding onto Neil, pressed against him--it's feeling... not more natural. Not easy. But bearable. He doesn't feel like he might literally be in danger of combusting.

Even with all that bare skin under his hands.

"Can we get off the goddamn floor?"

[likeaplanet]

"I dunno," I admit with a cough of laughter, half afraid to let him go. The moment still feels fragile, and I know that it doesn't mean everything's fixed. We could easily slip back down into something awful. Something hopeless.

Still, I pull away from him as much as I dare to, my hand still on his face as I push to my feet.

[forthedog]

"This is a start," he murmurs, pushing himself up along with Neil. And then they're just standing there, still so close, and it doesn't really feel any less awkward than the floor had been.

"I don't--" He falters, looks away and breathes out a quick laugh, starts again. "You got all the control here, okay? You want me to fuck off, you tell me and I'll fuck off. But I don't... I don't really wanna be alone tonight."

[likeaplanet]

"So don't be," I decide, taking his hand and tugging him out of the kitchen. "I'm tired of sleepin' with a fuckin' wall between us, anyway."

It feels like too big of a step to make, but at the same time, it's inevitable. I can't stop it. I can't tell him to go back to his apartment. I can't sleep alone in this place tonight.

[forthedog]

He lets Neil lead him, flicking off the light as he passes it, and all at once they're in the dark again. There's light from the windows, but as his eyes adjust the darkness still feels close to complete, and something clutches at him. Something between a dream and a memory. Something far too close to a nightmare.

"Not the bed," he says, his throat abruptly tight again. He feels faintly ridiculous. He also can't seem to help it. "I'm sorry, I just... I can't. Not yet." It still feels too much like a battleground.

[likeaplanet]

It's with a bizarre mix of relief and disappointment that I steer us into the living room instead, my fingers tightening around his.

"'s okay," I murmur, pulling him toward the couch. Luckily, we should both fit.

[forthedog]

He sinks down onto the couch with a sigh, hand still curled around Neil's and tugging gently. This is better. This is manageable. Because every touch is feeling like the edge of something, now. Maybe it's the dark. Maybe it's his own exhaustion. Maybe it's none of these things.

"Thank you," he says quietly, looking up at Neil's shape in the dimness, lines of him cast in soft gradients of shadow and light.

[likeaplanet]

"For what?" I murmur, and when I lean down to press my lips against his forehead, I do it without thinking. It's a reflex, bore out of years of being married to him and raising his children. I let him pull me toward him, stretching out on the bit of unoccupied couch space, my spine aligning with his chest.

[forthedog]

"For letting me stay." And that's not all, that's not even close to all of it, but he doesn't know how to make the rest of it come. He curls his arms around Neil's waist, lips against his temple--and it still hurts, but it's the kind of pain he thinks he could learn to love.

"Can I ask you one more thing?"