Even in his psychedelic state, tripping on colors, sounds, and unable to focus — he’s able to register Juwon. Juwon who keeps multiplying and each new copy look at Wade as if he’s someone they want to forget.
(I won’t let that happen.)
Wade keeps talking, most of what falls from his mouth are random words with absolutely no correlation to one another. His language is broken thrown out in stuttered patterns after rough intakes of breath to accompany rough exhale of breaths. “I think… I think some fucker tried to — I was poisoned.” Wade manages with a heaving chest.
And he probably was, most likely by something that he drank, by someone in plain sight who managed to slip under his radar. The poison is slow traveling, made to shut down a normal person’s blood flow by reversing it but it has a different effect than intended when Wade’s body fights against it.
He keeps talking to reassure himself that he is alive, continues to talk because his eyes are unfocused and he can’t feel the tips of his fingers but he mainly talks to make sure Juwon is still there. He isn’t afraid — but this is the closest he’s felt to fear since he left weapon x.
“You can sleep now, you said. You said that. I had a dream where you said that. Thanks for saying that. You weren’t supposed to.” Wade keeps repeating this yet he doesn’t know where the words come from, if they’re even his. Regardless he’s unable to communicate what he actually wants to say but he keeps talking, repeating the same nonsense.
(Why do you want to forget.)
(Let’s not talk about it, let’s just not talk.)
One the edges of his vision he can see Sori’s fingers, electric green, playing that damn music on a multicolored spiral of piano keys. He can see his eyes as he plays the climax of one of his pieces as red and intense as the music echos in his ears morphing with the theme song of some children’s show he used to watch as a kid.
The whistling is driving him crazy, the fact he’s not feeling grounded despite thinking of Sori is makes him grind his teeth together, thoughts going between murderous and angry to shaky to helpless.
He grabs the nearest thing that is stable. He grabs Juwon by the wrists, holding on too tight, shaking, creating bruises from his grip as he still refuses to say how much it hurts because he won’t give anyone that satisfaction so he keeps talking until the poison filters out and his body heals itself.
“And you’re wrong.” He says, forcing himself to focus on Juwon despite not being able to see him clearly. “You’re the one beautiful fucking thing that came from that place.”
Wade takes his hands before he can deny them for the third time. Even if his eyes settle elsewhere, he’ll catch the trembles caught in between their palms. Wade’s fingers come around his wrist, with his nails soon digging into raw skin. He numbs himself to it, and the way his hands are beginning to feel like hands in Wade’s grasp, and how it’ll be the same for Wade -- this is as destructive as it looks.
His eyes fall too fast for him to lead them astray, and they’re looking at him again, and that’s the start of everything. A single look and he’s watching Wade on his knees, hands wrung amongst his own being deconstructed from the inside out.
“Well -- I shouldn’t have said anything.”
From somewhere, he finds the will to empty his conscious, and vacate the heart. In another space they’ll be good, and they’ll be better, and perhaps they are even good together, better as them instead of one. Wade’s speaking of dreams but he’s moved beyond them, unable to stay asleep long enough to begin another.
He wonders if Wade is waiting for the words, the right ones, to lull him. There are things he can say, then there are things he should say, and amongst it all, there is so much he wants to tell him, dream or not. But he’s tried that, three times too many, when he tells him something like you can sleep now and the night will pass and the morning will come if you just close your eyes -- but nothing changes.
Nothing ever changes and they still wake up to survive a world that does not want them.
“Even in your dreams, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
It’s easier to say let’s forget about it and let’s not talk about it, because anything is easier than this.
"Look at me.” He cuts in between Wade’s grunts, a hand escaping to clutch at his chin. He tugs on his jaw, as if allowing his lips to part -- as if giving his voice the permission to scream the truth of the pain.
“Every bit of this hurts, and you can’t lie and you can’t say it doesn’t.” There’s a breath in between every other word, and every word hurts and he can’t lie and say it doesn’t. “It hurts but you’re going to survive it, even if you’re damn tired of surviving it just like you survived today, yesterday, and the day before.” His words are settling into his skin where it hurts, and he sees it in Wade’s eyes.
His words are a weight to him, but he knows it’s a burden he loves to keep. “So tell me I’m wrong again, Wade.”
