forthedog | There's a point to all this dreaming

Entry tags:

darrow,
neil

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.

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He feels the body shifting against his and holds on a little tighter, muttering something unintelligible. It's warm but that's normal for the climate, and soon the girls will be stirring and dragging them up but for the moment they've still got--

Oh.

He lifts his head, blinking, verifying a few things as the previous night comes flooding back.

He hadn't dreamed again.

"Hey," he murmurs, letting his head drop back down to the couch cushion. The thing about this is that it doesn't feel as awkward as he thinks it might.

"Hey," I murmur, biting back a yawn and trying to blink the last haze of sleep out of my eyes. I rub at them and they're unsurprisingly crusty and gummy from tears. My nose feels kind of stuffed up. I feel kind of gross, overall, but it doesn't really seem to matter much.

His arm tightens around me and I sink further against his chest, like I'm trying to melt into him. One of these days, it's gonna work.

"Mornin'."

"Yeah," he says, soft and meditative. "Guess it is." The room looks and feels the same as he remembers--very much like his, actually, down to a lot of the furniture. Nothing's changed. Everything is as they left it.

And it's all completely different now.

He closes his eyes again and buries his face in Neil's hair. "God, wonder what time it is," he says, voice slightly muffled. "Not like I got anywhere to fucking be."

"Who cares?" I murmur, grinning crookedly, my hand reaching to slide around the back of his neck, holding him close.

"Don't think this couch was made for two people to sleep on," I admit with a cough of laughter, "I can't really feel the left half of my body."

"We could get up," he muses, sleepily thoughtful, as if it seems like a sensible idea but he hasn't completely made up his mind. He holds Neil tighter for a moment--because the sheer fact of him seems almost beyond belief--and then loosens his arm, shifting a little more.

"Seriously, we should. I gotta take a piss like you wouldn't fucking believe."

"Me too," I say with a wheeze of laughter, pushing myself up to sit, arms up over my head to stretch a kink out of my spine.

"How 'bout that raincheck?" I ask, looking over my shoulder at him with a sleepy grin. "I could make pancakes."

The mention of that conversation--weeks in the past now but still so acidly fresh in his mind--pulls a wince out of him before he can hold it back... And then he thinks about pancakes and mornings in a warm kitchen with Tom and Neil and the girls, and suddenly he's laughing. It's tight and painful but it's real laughter.

This is so ridiculous. Every part of it.

He sits up, scrubbing at his eyes. "Shit," he mutters. "If you wanna make 'em, I'll eat 'em."

Edited 2012-05-25 20:18 (UTC)

"Okay, good," I say, pushing to my feet, standing in my boxers in a living room I only half think of as mine.

"Got eggs and milk still oughta be good. Came in on those creepy fuckin' supply trucks, few weeks back," I mutter. Creepy, but that hasn't stopped me from eating 'em. For all I know, there's drugs in all of it, making us hallucinate or making us docile or who the fuck knows what.

But right now, pancakes seem more important.

"Fine," he murmurs, still trying to push the sleep out of his head, eye a little unfocused.

Last night, everything felt possible. More than possible; right within his grasp. The life that he's still not entirely sure was ever really his. Redemption. Neil. Now--maybe it's the sun, or the distance of dreams. But he feels further away from it. Uncomfortable in this skin.

But it's still better than it was.

"Look, I'm gonna... I'm gonna go back to my place. Shower. I'll see you in fifteen?"

"Yeah, sure," I say, lifting one shoulder in a shrug and doing a pretty fucking shit job at hiding my disappointment. I can't seem to stop myself from believing that things will just fall into place, that they'll start feeling right for him and he'll stop feeling like he has to pull away. I can't seem to stop myself from wanting it. Now, not later.

"I'll keep the door unlocked, just come in," I say, slipping past him on my way toward the bathroom.

Back in his apartment he stands in the living room for a few minutes, processing. Trying to process.

Neil. He slept with Neil. Just... just slept.

And the world didn't burst into flames.

"What the fuck," he breathes, rakes his hands back through his hair and heads for the bathroom. In the shower--turned as cold as he can stand it--he leans against the wall under the spray and waits for his heart to slow.

This is going to be all right. He can do this. Fucking up is not inevitable.

And there's only a five second period where he wants to drive a fist into the wall.

Water off, towel, shave, brush teeth, clothes. Autopilot. He doesn't have the attention to spare for more than that. Neil. Neil's bare skin, the subtle curve of his spine, the smell of his hair. The huskiness in his voice when he speaks softly. The rhythm of his breathing when he sleeps. Licking his own lips in the dark and tasting sweat that isn't his.

Fuck. It shouldn't be legal to want someone like this, with the whole of himself, in ways he doesn't even really know how to jam into words. Was it like this before? Has it ever been like this before?

When he feels his feet carrying him back to the apartment next door and through the unlocked door, he guesses it's because they can't really carry him anywhere else at this point.

I take the fastest fucking shower known to man, refusing to linger on it... refusing to think about him like I really want to. There's a part of me that doesn't want to wash him away. The lingering smell of him on my skin, on my clothes, in my hair. If I let myself linger on it, I'll lose my fucking mind.

More than I have already.

I'm still damp when I pull on my clothes, hair messy around my face and dripping wet and when he walks back in, I'm barefoot in front of the fridge. I'm still learning this kitchen. Nothing feels quite right. All these packaged foods and factory-made appliances.

I look over my shoulder at him, hyper aware of every fucking movement he makes, and I say, "There's coffee in the pot."

"Thanks," he murmurs, moving over to it and finding a mug by memory--hip bumping Neil's as he does.

Okay.

He pours the coffee and sips it black, leaning back against the counter and watching Neil move, his hands, the way the light is hitting the side of his face. Little things. God, you idiot. If I died on the fucking beach I would've dragged my carcass home to this regardless.

And then he thinks of the girls and fights back a wave of guilt. Because they should matter more. They should feel more real.

"Well." He smiles faintly over the rim of his mug. "Isn't this fucking domestic."

"You been married for a fuckin' year, you get kinda used to it," I admit with a cough of laughter, but even if this is something I'm used to, I can't claim that it doesn't feel strange. It's been so long, and there are so many things that aren't the way their supposed to be.

Bending down to grab a mixing bowl, I wonder if I ought to be embarrassed that I've outfitted my kitchen with things like pots and pans and mixing bowls, flour and milk and eggs, like I'll be cooking for a family, instead of just me.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to explain to him how empty this apartment feels and how much I hate the quiet.

"Think this is kinda way the fuck outside both our experience," he says softly, gaze not leaving Neil. Last night is feeling more and more dreamlike. Now he doesn't know what to make of this.

Besides being in it and seeing where it takes him.

He nods down at the bowl. "Can I do anything?"

"I think I got it," I admit, flashing him a faint grin as I scoop out the flour, a fine dust of it rising into the air when it hits the bottom of the bowl with a plop.

"Tom was always better at this than me."

"He was better than both of us at a lotta stuff," he says, returning the smile--even fainter--and looking down at his mug like it might have some insight to share with him.

"When I came from--in the Realm--he was in some deep shit. I was worried he wouldn't get out of it this time." His smile turns more wry. "I mean, now I fucking remember how he got out of it. How we got out of it together. I think. But I still wish I could be sure."

"I know," I murmur, cracking an egg into the bowl and trying not to think about how in conflict something so domestic seems, when he's talking about Tom being in danger.

"I don't like thinkin' 'bout him still bein' there."

"I know." He's silent for another few minutes, watching Neil, turning inward, thinking about Tom's face lit by a dying fire and tense with rapt concentration as his pen scratch-scratch-scratched its way across paper.

He'd hurled things at Tom to stop that noise.

"I was thinking," he says, still quiet. "Say it's true, and we're together now because we're fucking meant to be or whatever. That we were fated to be here because we're supposed to see each other again." It's almost mocking, the way he says it, and he feels briefly guilty but he still can't quite help it. He almost can't believe he'd promise such a thing. Such an impossible fucking thing.

And then delivered on it. The sheer audacity.

"Why isn't he here too?"

"I don't know," I whisper, something clinching in my gut, all sharp, brittle edges and self-pity. The two of them are supposed to be together. I'm just the one that managed to wedge myself between them for a little while. It's fucking pathetic, but there's a part of me that can't help but feel that way.

"Maybe he will be," I shrug, only half paying attention while I stir the batter, the pan on the stove and heating up.

"Yeah," he says, looking down into his mug again. He takes a swallow and barely tastes it, but the heat against the back of his throat makes him feel slightly more awake. More real.

"I can't decide if I want him here or not," he says after another minute or so. This time he doesn't look up. "That's fucking awful, right? I mean, I do. But if he didn't remember..." He does look up then, and smiles, hard and crooked. "Think you got enough to deal with, with just me around."

"I want him here," I murmur, scooping batter out onto the pan. Usually, there's something comforting in that sizzle, the warm smell of the batter cooking, but now, all it's doing is making me miss things I'll probably never have again.

"Even if he didn't remember."

"Yeah, well." For a moment something surges up in his throat and it's a little hard to breathe--it blindsides him. All of it. The fact that he's standing in this fucking kitchen.

That he got to be with Tom at all.

He sets his mug down on the counter, reaches out and lays a hand over Neil's shoulderblade. "You always were stronger than me."

His hand's warm, burning through the fabric of my t-shirt and I let out a shuddering breath, eyes welling up with tears, blurring my view of the stove.

"'s got nothin' to do with that," I say, voice hoarse to the point that it hardly sounds like mine.

"You know it does," he says, dropping his hand away again. Every second here feels a little like being skinned alive. It's just a question of degrees. "You could face it. I couldn't. You could face me. I couldn't fucking handle you. Still can't."

He pushes away from the counter and moves over to the single small window, pushing aside the shades. Outside it looks like more heat and haze.

"You trust me. You forgave me. I can't fucking do either for myself." He shoots Neil a faint smile over his shoulder. "And I'm such a great conversationalist."

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