An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Rejoice, o denizens of tumblr, for i have finally posted this thing. What a day! What a precious, holy day!
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Succession (TV 2018)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans
Characters: Greg Hirsch, Tom Wambsgans, Kendall Roy, Mondale (Succession)
Additional Tags: Misunderstandings, Recreational Drug Use, Cocaine, Alcohol, First Time, Blow Jobs, Bottom Tom Wambsgans, Discarded intention to frame your boss, Doing cocaine off of said boss' tits, Gratuituous use of religious metaphors
Summary:
“W-Well- So it was, like- Kendall was sort of the one who told me to- Um.“
Unable to continue, he shut his mouth, watching Tom’s eyes widen by the second.
And then, just then, Greg felt like he really fucked up – because the next words out of Tom’s mouth were, “Kendall told you to have sex with me?”
There are a lot of things eight pounds of cocaine can get you. This was probably not one of those intended things.
the response to this fic-not-fic has been much kinder than i anticipated, so hell, here’s part two you guys. this one's much longer, over 9k. so have fun!
(link to part 1 in notes)
He’s first to arrive at Rachel and Nick’s door – as is the routine in their little slice of the universe.
Well, in all technicalities, it was always Eric that arrived first. After he broke it off with his fiancée, though, he practically moved in with the two of them, so Jason thinks it shouldn’t really count. He doesn’t bother questioning it, either. If they are all content with the situation, he sees no point in trying to figure it out.
He just wants them to be happy.
So Eric’s already there when Jason’s bursting through the front door like his life depends on it, but he is still the first to arrive.
Rachel throws him a worried look and Nick cocks an eyebrow, and it’s taking way more strength than strictly necessary not to break out into a song and dance. It’s embarrassing, he feels it, but his stomach is light with bubbles and liters of champagne he’s had after the signing.
Instead, he tells them he’s got a surprise planned. That it’s going to be something none of them expect (Nick’s narrowed eyes tell him he might be somewhat expecting, but he doesn’t say a single word to confirm it or deny).
The preparations for the barbecue are oiled clockwork. Eric’s manning the grill, Rachel’s cutting up the meats, and Nick and Jason pass the booze around. Nick is also setting up the plates and cleaning up the occasional stray can that Jason leaves behind, but he likes to think that they’re all contributing their equal share of work.
The moment the doorbell rings, Jason is on it like a starving wolf is on a startled deer - and when he opens up the door to reveal his editor, arm thrown around his wife, the disappointment is so palpable the man has to ask what’s wrong.
Six doorbells later, Jason stops foaming at the mouth to man the entrance and is quietly sipping on his third beer in the space between the house and the garden’s sliding door. There is a lit cigarette in his fingers shedding ashes on the wooden planks. He toes the smudges with his shoe, even though Rachel won’t see it through the crowd.
Okay, so maybe he exaggerated. Maybe this wasn’t exactly a ‘small thing’, but rather the annual barbecue that all their co-workers and friends attended. Maybe this also had something to do with the end of the book tour, but no one was ready to acknowledge it beyond a ‘good job’ or a wry ‘congratulations!’
And hell, in the grand scale of things, it wassmall. Smaller than the span of the entire universe, bigger than a get-together. It fell firmly somewhere in-between these two extents.
Jason is reaching for the gin and tonic now, receiving heartfelt pats on his back for all his hard work and success. He mixes the drink in the living room, and Nick gives him a disapproving stare.
“You must be proud of him.” A writer-friend tells Eric, and Eric’s mouth is a thin line when he mutters “Yeah, ‘course we are.”
By the time the doorbell rings again, the house is a bustling mess, and Jason’s on his whiskey.
The only reason he knows it’s happening at all is Rachel’s sudden gasp, the turn of heads towards the entrance. The room feels hotter then, as though the thermostat was suddenly turned up.
“Salim!?” She whispers, eyes wider than two China plates, mouth agape when she is taking a frightened backwards step.
And Jason winces as the name cuts right to his very bone.
The shock is palpable across her features – round, shameless – as though she’s witnessing a monster at her door. He’s out of his chair in a heartbeat, darting over to her side, acting as though he didn’t just stumble over the carpet, didn’t slam his shoulder against a wall corner.
“Hello again, Rachel. You’re looking well.” The man on the other side smiles, something shy in his expression. Jason practically shoves the nearest person out into the garden, trying to make it to the scene in time to fix the mess he’s causing.
He should’ve warned them, should’ve told them he was coming.
Why didn’t he tell them!?
Rachel stares, still gaping, and it feels as though the whole house is holding her breath with her.
“I apologize, I’m-” Salim sinks further backwards, voice sounding smaller by the second. “I didn’t mean to intrude, but Jason, he-“
“Salim!” Jason all but hollers, breathless by the time he’s in the doorframe, and if Salim’s face didn’t light up the way it did when their eyes found each other, he probably would’ve collapsed right there and then.
The Earth is spinning thrice its usual speed now.
“Jason.” His smile is quick, exuberant, contagious; it’s as though seeing Jason gives him the strength he needs to stand up taller, allows him to take the step over the threshold of the anticipating house.
He turns to Rachel then again, his hands sheepish, but his back straight.
“I was told I’m his ‘plus one’.”
He points, and laughs, and Jason can’t not laugh with him. The alcohol is buzzing through his veins, and he takes another sip out of a glass that’s now half on the floor.
“It’s good to see you again, man.”
“I’m- God, I’m so sorry, I was just- Jesus, I was not expecting to see you today!” Rachel is sputtering, her head shaking of its own volition, but an uncertain smile begins to form across her face, and Jason doesn’t think she’s forcing it to be there. “But it’s really, really good to see you again. God, how are you here!?”
Salim nods, spreading his arms, eyes traveling over the room filled with confused onlookers.
“I came to visit. Thought it was about time.”
And it’s lighter now, easier to breathe though the tension is still there. It’s embedded into the very molecules that compose the flavor of the air and it’s not leaving any time soon.
Jason claps his shoulder, laughing louder.
He’s unable to stop himself, can’t prevent his hands from reaching out, from touching. He’s not crazy - Salim is here, is real. And Rachel is really pissed and shocked and scared and happy, and this was the worst decision of his goddamn life, but he doesn’t care.
“Can you imagine my fucking surprise when this guy just – shows up to my book signing? Just stands there asking questions, as if it’s fucking normal. Aw man, when I tell you I nearly died from shock-“
“Lieutenant Othman. It’s good to see you again.”
Nick wheels up behind Rachel, most composed out of the lot of them. His hand is extended, and his eyes are set, and suddenly Jason has the biggest feeling that he should’ve told Salim about this, too. He should’ve told a lot of things to a lot of people.
He should’ve done so much more and yet what he did makes him wish he hadn’t done a single thing at all.
He finishes his whiskey in a swig and his fingers itch to fill the glass again.
Salim’s expression is nonchalant as he turns to face the man, and his eyes don’t hesitate to travel downwards. He extends his own hand in a delicate response, but the grip is firm when they shake.
“Sergeant Kay. It is good to see you, too.” He steps back, his smile warm and easy when he nods. “I’ve read about your bravery. Your dedication to your country is… Beyond admirable.”
And Jason takes an unsteady breath, because of course Salim would know. Of course.
Nick’s mouth contorts into a smirk – approval.
“So, even you’ve read about it. Didn’t realize Jason’s little stories traveled that far.”
“I tried to keep up, as much as I could.”
He passes Jason an uneasy look, and Jason feels like his heart is exploding over the nearest wall. He leans against it, just to feel something support his immediately worldly weight. The room has no right spinning as fast as it does then. Salim has no damn right to read his little stories.
(God, he reads his stories).
“Oh, gosh- Um, everyone!” Rachel turns to the rest of the suspended room that hasn’t shared a breath in what feels like hours. “Please, let me do the introductions. This is Salim, our, uh…”
She trails off, and Jason propels himself off the wall upright, throwing another needy hand on Salim’s right shoulder.
“Our old, trusted friend!”
And so the house erupts in chatter, and people begin coming forth. Just like that.
“Please, Jason, I’m not that old.” Salim’s smile shines brighter. He shakes his head and his shoulders bounce with laughter. “The graying is premature, I swear.”
There is a bubble caught at the bottom of Jason’s throat. Perhaps it is a chuckle, perhaps a bout of vomit. He reaches over for the bottle of whiskey to quell it down, realizing all too late that the smell of Salim’s cologne is now imprinted on his shirt.
He can’t breathe. He takes a sip that burns right through his larynx.
There are introductions, and there are questions. There is laughter and there are smiles and there is life in this little household in the heart of the USA.
Eric stumbles through the back door, tongs and beer in hand, complete with an apron that proudly declares Kiss the Chefto complete the parody.
He’s looking caught in between wanting to run fromSalim and wanting to run at him, hands open in an embrace and face split in a grin that borders on incredulous. They settle on a hug, no doubt the result of at least two Screwdrivers Eric’s already inhaled, and that result is better yet than the alternative.
The afternoon bleeds into evening. Jason doesn’t leave Salim’s side, even if Salim leaves his more than once. And all the while, he just keeps dropping the nearest alcohol he can reach into his stomach, and with every liter the pounding of his heart grows stronger and his vision blurrier.
It is an hour later when a small group of them settles at the dining table, Jason placing himself by Salim’s side as though he’s glued to the man’s presence. He doesn’t miss the look Nick throws him when Salim moves his chair closer still, but he does ignore it. It’s all nothing anyway, he thinks, I’m the one that brought him here. He has the right to feel secure in my presence.
And then someone says something inappropriate. Something uncalled for, something stupid.
Someone congratulates them on the end of the Iraq War.
Salim’s face doesn’t betray his heartbeat but Jason can feel it through the floorboards. He wants to throw his bottle at the person who thought it was okay to speak.
“Iraq is but a distant memory to me these days.” He mutters, quiet and reserved. His voice is even, and it is for that very reason the words sound like an insult. “It is no longer the place I grew up in. It is… not my home.”
“Salim…” Rachel’s voice is quiet, her hands woven at the table. “What happened to you? After-“
She shuts her mouth with a click, and Nick throws a hand to cover hers.
“What have you been up to all this time?”
Salim only hums in understanding.
“Living a life, I guess.”
He begins to tell them, then, and Jason begins to realize he has to sober up to listen. He leans in closer, if only out of habit. The spiced cologne assaults his senses, still.
Salim speaks, and he says he didn’t waste time on staying around to find out what will happen to his homeland. He had his son to worry about, his own well-being. Perhaps, he says, he was a coward – but there was a thing he began to recognize about war that simply couldn’t cut it. He could no longer kill other human beings and be okay with it.
He was done with fighting a fight no one could win.
And so he turned towards his son for guidance. He followed him towards the light away from darkness. He turned to the UK for help.
He became a refugee.
The move was fast, was hectic, the processing took weeks. But God smiled on him, he says, when the two of them arrived in London only months apart. From then on, it was quiet. Peaceful, almost.
And so, so very painful. Wrong.
Salim is fidgeting with the napkins on the table, eyes cast downwards at his half-finished plate of steak. Jason is concentrating on the words so hard they may as well be gospel. He kicks his knee against Salim’s, casts a stare in his direction.
I’m here, he tries to say, to imprint in his mind. You don’t have to worry.
He knows that whatever look his face is pulling, it is far away from that. Salim seems to, at the very least, draw somethingfrom his grimace. He lifts his eyes, then, his fingers steady on the solid wood.
And he tells them that this new life in Great Britain came with all the pains of being born anew. His home, his groceries, his friends, and his backyard - every step of the way was stripping meat away from bone, skin away from meat. Everything that made him into a person, gutted, rearranged, repurposed. At the very least he had what many in his place do not - he had his tongue, his language.
He was not even close to qualified, and yet it was all that he had left.
So he became a teacher.
His brothers listened to his every word with baited breath, desperate to learn the language of this strange new world that they were forced to live in. Their children even more so, cowering in fear against a predicament they’d never manage to understand.
It was by pure chance then, not even a full year later, his position was switched up and he became an Arabic teacher to the Englishmen instead. A school recruited him, a very lucky soldier.
Salim agreed to the job offer, if only for the better pay.
He did not like the idea of abandoning his brothers. He didn’t think it fair. After all, there were more and more of them each year, and the hope of seeing Iraq ever again was waning with their numbers.
But Zain came first – and so he started teaching British children the language of his forefathers.
Research became his pastime. He would read up Zain’s old books on myths and legends, and he would delve into the Mesopotamian period with his head. A coping mechanism, of sorts, but really he was just curious. What other secrets were these ancient masters hiding?
Jason watched as Rachel’s jaw grew tense at the words, saw Eric slip away into the back and re-emerge with a glass of something very clear.
Salim didn’t say another word that would hurt them any further - caught Jason’s eye, and took a steady breath.
He told them he used the stories for his classes. Used to keep the children entertained.
Five years later, the school’s new principle approached him. Her daughter was in his class, studying Arabic. The principle herself, a descendant of Palestinian refugees, proud in her lost heritage that she would never really recover.
She said she’d heard his stories. She said she wants to help.
She said there was an opportunity.
Pure chance, pure luck, coincidence. A friend of a friend of a friend, a job posting, and an incident. Salim became one of the leading curators for the Ancient Mesopotamia exhibit at the British museum, having visited the place only once beforehand.
He laughs, then, shaking his head as though hardly believing in the fact himself. Two years, he says. It’s been two years and he still hardly knows what he’s doing. Zain, on the other hand, is pursuing a doctorate diploma. Still making his father proud. Still hanging out with the wrong people and getting into too much trouble.
He’s probably back at it now, he smiles, making trouble with his long-distance friends rather than being here with them. Someone begins to tell a story of their own, and Salim turns to listen.
Jason stares at his hands, clasped and steady. Pointedly free of any rings.
“You’ve never remarried.” He all but whispers, making it known in the recess of his breath just how expectantly he’s been waiting for that portion of the story.
Salim blinks at him in surprise and he says nothing, rubbing at the back of his neck with a tired hand.
“Why haven’t you remarried?”
Jason really ought to remain quiet himself.
“Well, you know, I had Zain to think about and… Never had the time for any of it, I suppose.”
Not once in near nine years? Jason wants to prod him, but something in his jaw refuses to let him speak. He knows it’s for the best when conversation drifts and the two of them remain seated, side by side and easy.
The hours tick away, and he’s growing that much warmer.
The next moment Jason can really start recalling is when he’s walking fast over to the small gazebo Eric’s set up in the garden. The evening turned to night, the stars are shining over the horizon. The air smells of roasted meat and beer and warmth, and midnight flowers are beginning to bloom under the dim light of the moon.
The wooden structure is light years away from nuclear engineering, but it is true and sturdy. There is a table, a couple of benches. Just right for midnight talks and stolen cigarettes.
There are a couple people out in the garden now, though most have either left or remain inside. Nick is there, talking to some co-workers. Rachel’s in the living room, obstructed by the flowing ghost of her flowered tulle. Eric’s in the kitchen, Jason can see his head peek through the window when he shouts something outside.
It’s quiet now. The tension’s dissipated. The air begins to taste almost like home.
He reaches the gazebo, plants himself inside it with a heavy grunt, and doesn’t even bother to pretend to know just what he’s doing there. Salim gently slides in beside him, the tiny wooden bench just big enough for both of them to sit while touching knee to knee. They stare outside, across the yard and out the fence, the cul-de-sac of houses big and tall and identical in every feature.
“The American dream.” Jason mutters to himself. Salim hums in agreement.
“I will admit, this was not as terrible as I first feared.” He bites his lip, and then turns his body to face Jason, his face wincing as he realizes his mistake. “Not that- Not that I thought your friends would be terrible. I just- I meant that this was intimidating. For me.”
Jason chuckles. The spring air is sobering his mind, and he feels like he exists in the space between all spaces.
“Though I have to say, if this is your definition of a ‘small gathering’, then our cultures may have way more in common than I have previously thought.”
“Is that so?”
Salim leans in, voice conspirational. “My second cousin had her wedding last summer. Told me it was just a small thing, only relatives and friends. Just two hundred people.”
Jason whistles in appreciation, and Salim laughs in turn.
“Needless to say, I left within the hour.”
The crickets chirp in unison, and a dog barks off in the night. Jason pulls a cigarette, struggling to click his near empty lighter on to catch a light.
“Since when did you start smoking?”
“Since when did any of us start doing anything?” The only reason he’s replying like an asshole is because he is an asshole. And he feels vulnerable and small and he doesn’t want Salim to know he’s trying to make himself seem that much bigger, stronger.
The smoke that fills his lungs feels dirtier than ever. He sips his beer and throws his back against the railing of the wooden structure.
“Jason, that’s not…”
Salim sighs. He can hear a bit of Rachel in that sigh. A bit of Eric, too, and honestly, even a bit of Nick. Funny how he picked up the sergeant’s useless habit just when the man himself had finally managed to quit.
“You should be more careful.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Why would anyone do anything.” Salim counters in return and Jason manages a puff of laughter that gets caught up in his throat and makes him cough. This man could always keep up with him.
Eight years wouldn’t change that.
“You’re being reckless, Jason. Just how much did you have to drink tonight?” When Jason doesn’t answer, Salim further turns to look at him, leans against the wooden table to stare into his face. “What happened to you? This is not the man I recognize.”
Jason stares into the night.
“We met once, a lifetime years ago. Maybe you just don’t know me as well as you thought you did.”
There is silence that is painful, and there is a ringing in his ears that hurts. He wishes he could take it back the moment it leaves his lungs, but he doesn’t utter a sound more. Watches the words dissipate alongside the cigarette smoke.
“Maybe.” Salim finally relents after the longest stretch of quiet – and then he’s leaning further in, as though what Jason said didn’t touch him in the slightest. “But I doubt that very much.”
“Oh yeah, how so.”
“Your book. Something happened to you after the catacombs. I know it.”
Jason’s heart is in his throat then and he doesn’t want to talk about it any longer. This is quickly becoming everything he’s ever wished to hear, and he is terrified.
Salim is staring right into his soul, and the anxiety of anticipation has left him raw and naked. He’s fucking shakingunderneath his clothes, can barely will his mouth to form the words that stain his tongue crimson.
“And what gave that away.”
He forms it as a statement, and Salim is deaf to it – no, that’s not right. He hears it – just ignores it.
He’s leaning further yet, but Jason still refuses to meet his searching eyes.
“The ending. What was written. That’s not what happened.”
Jason laughs, and his voice is hoarse and bitter, cough-ridden and annoyed. “You’re obsessed with that ending, aren’t you? If you got more questions, you should’ve asked them at the Q&A-”
“Enough joking. Tell me what the hell happened to you.” Salim’s voice is hard metal and Jason desperately wants to lean into him and cry. He takes a shaky breath of his cigarette instead.
“Now.”
He throws his elbows on the table and throws his head into his hands. His thumbs press into his eyes and it’s all that he can do to prevent the tears from spilling. He doesn’t care that the cigarette is burning at his temple.
“Nothing happened, Salim. I think that’s- I think that’s the extent of it.”
(Salim does. He pulls it out his fingers and throws it on the ground.)
“Explain.”
“There is nothing to explain, there is-“
“Jason. You and I fought demons together – and now you can’t even talk-“
“What if we didn’t fight them though, Salim!? What then?”
His shout comes out a plea, and his voice is broken. He’s finally facing the other man again, and there is concern painted on his face unlike any other. He’s confused, sure, but first and foremost he is worried. Jason doesn’t know if it’s his staining his cheeks or the beginnings of a rain.
“What do you mean?” His voice is gentle. The gentlest Jason’s ever heard.
The sky cracks with thunder, and someone inside shrieks.
“Those- The demons. Vampires. Monsters. Creatures. Whatever.” Salim nods, and Jason swallows. He can’t help turning around to stare into the bushes, feeling with his whole heart as though whoever is in there is listening to his every word with a loaded gun. “None of it was real, Salim.”
There is no answer to that, and Jason can’t help but face away. Reach for yet another cigarette. Light it before a bullet lights his head.
“Then… how do you explain it all? What, we all went crazy and-“
“Gas.”
Salim is quiet.
“Gas. Nitrous oxide… Something, something, something. A compound. I don’t know.”
“And where, in God’s name, did you ever get that idea?”
Jason’s chest is heavy when he looks around again. Lightning cracks the sky open, and the first few drops of rain drum a pattern on the roof.
“What did they do to you, Jason?” Salim’s question is a prayer, suddenly terrified of whatever’s in the bushes too. There is a beat where thunder makes its home, rolling through the sky in waves, and Rachel is beginning to close up doors and windows.
“They showed us- There were pictures. We saw what happened to the rest of the team. They were…”
She sends a look in their direction, raising a hand to wave them over, stops before it is all the way up. She casts a single glance Jason’s way – and turns to close the curtains.
“We were poisoned. All those notes the archaeologists left around influenced our minds, and…”
And Salim remains relentless. “That is bullshit.”
“But how can you know that!?”
“Because I saw a demon way earlier than I read a single thing those people wrote!” He slams a hand on the table, and it rattles underneath his weight. A couple more drops fall from the sky, stain the wood turning it vermillion.
“You don’t know that. You can’t know that, it’s been eight years-“
“Jason!” Salim begins, and Jason can’t not turn to face him, can’t allow himself not to listen with his whole body, soul, and mind. “Do you remember my crowbar? The one I took as a souvenir?”
Jason scoffs, shakes his head in fervor.
“That piece of metal was a crowbar?”
“It had their blood on it. So much of it, it was practically covered. I took that piece of metal home, and I laid it on the floor there. And my son, Zain – he’s a curious boy. One day, he rushes into my room. Screaming, crying. He looks like he’s in a panic, and I’m thinking someone’s come to hurt us. But no – there was no one at the door. He tells me he touched the crowbar. Wanted to take it to his room. Now, I don’t know why he wanted it – but the blood he touched? It made him have an episode. Practically a seizure. We both read of the effect those creatures can have on the human mind, Jason. What their fluids are capable of.”
Jason listens silently, carefully. The cigarette’s a stub in his fingers and his breath is baited as he watches Salim’s eyes on his.
“Tell me. Was my son also exposed to the so-called gas? Or did he touch the blood of a demon and learned a painful lesson about messing with things he didn’t understand?”
Jason sighs, and his shoulders slouch, defenseless. “The residues from the gas could’ve-“
“Damn you!” Salim screams at him in Arabic, throwing a hand against his shoulder. “I threw that thing into a demon to save your life! Do you not remember that, Jason? Tell me, did it get lodged in air when I thought I killed that creature? Was my captain killed by ghosts!?”
The thunder roars above them and lightening cracks the sky. Jason’s hands are shaking and he doesn’t know if there is anything he can do to prevent himself from lighting yet another cigarette. He takes half a breath and it’s as much as he can manage before he’s overcome by another fit, coughs his lungs out until they begin to ache.
They sit there, silently, watching the early spring rain cover the damp smelling earth. Jason reaches for his beer before he speaks.
“You really believe that? That they were- They are real?”
“What do I stand to gain by lying to you?” Salim asks him softly - and his hand covers Jason’s on the table.
Jason watches, mouth falling open, as his thumb slowly traces over the scarred skin. He can’t help the shuddery exhale, can’t help forgetting about his cigarette or beer completely. And he doesn’t realize how goddamn cold his hands are until he’s feeling Salim’s warmth shoot through his bloodstream like acid.
“And what does your government stand to gain by lying to you?” Salim continues, eyes trained on Jason as if this was the most normal thing in the whole damn world. As if they held hands all the fucking time. As if Jason’s heart isn’t about to fall right through his throat. “They want you to think you’re crazy, Jason. You know better than that. Trust yourself.”
But despite feeling like he’s forgotten how to breathe, for the first time in the last decade of his life Jason doesn’t feeling life hurling himself from the nearest cliff.
He nods meekly, swallowing down the smoke that’s beginning to taste way too bitter for his liking.
“So that’s why you wrote the book.” Salim’s voice is quiet, steady, and his fingers grow tighter around Jason’s hand. His eyes are searching for something in his expression, and Jason can feel himself beginning to burn up against his will. “You wanted to see if it was true. If your government would come for you.”
Jason nods, his teeth grit together, and to his greatest chagrin, Salim begins to laugh.
“You’d rather be killed than live not knowing the truth?” He laughs again, shaking his head, and his fingers are warm when they interlace with Jason’s own. “Maybe you are the man I thought you were after all.”
And against himself, Jason is beginning to smile too, something in his stomach fluttering to the surface. And he’s turning to face Salim then, and the look the other man is giving him is nothing if not soft. There is recognition in those eyes – acceptance. He’s seeing all of Jason’s weakness, and he’s okay with it.
He gets it.
His hand is strong and warm.
“Jason!” The voice cuts through the two of them like thunder, and Jason jumps from his seat, struck away by lightning. There is a man walking towards them – a man he recognizes all too well, and a man he doesn’t recognize at all. All his exes – first, eighth, fifth, and second – begin blurring into one (Jesus, did he really go through eight exes in eight years?), his system far too unsteady to be dealing with any of this now, or ever.
“Why- Why are you here!?” He’s either screaming or whispering or slurring, dragging his feet to meet the man in the middle before he sees Salim, but Jason’s far too slow, and the man is far too big, and suddenly, he feels like he is drowning in the rain that’s really starting to pour.
“Why- Why am I here!?” The man begins, incredulous, and there is something in his look akin to hurt, and there is something in his stance akin to rage. “I came here to congratulate you on your book. I know you’ve broken up with me, but I thought it would be the civil thing to do.”
Jason just stands there, blinking, and he can see Nick watching them from inside the house. He wouldn’t interfere – Jason wouldn’t want him to – and the rest is simply damage control.
He feels like he is going to suffocate on air.
“You shouldn’t be here…”
“No. No, I fucking shouldn’t.” He spits, eyes trailing somewhere behind Jason. “Not even a full week, Jason, and you’re already- Fuck,I can’t believe this.”
The man takes a few more steps forward, his figure a blur against the rain, and Jason is moving forward with a speed he forgot he had. He puts himself between his past and his even more distant past. His present and his future.
The man thrusts a box into his hands.
“Here, a fucking gift. Congratulations on your fucking book.”
He mutters the words above the rain, storming off into the night before Jason can catch his breath. And then he just stands there, feeling the droplets soak his clothes, and he doesn’t dare turn around or breathe. He doesn’t dare exist, then.
He really, really fucking wants to not exist.
“Well…” Salim begins, and Jason really wishes that he wouldn’t. “That was…”
“My crazy ex? Yeah, exactly that.”
He storms back to the gazebo, throwing himself on the opposing bench, slamming down the box against the table.
“There are more things that you don’t know about me, Salim, alright!?” He begins instead, and he’s really wishing that he wouldn’t, either, but there is only one way to stop him now, and there is not a single gun in sight. “I’m gay. That’s right, I’m fucking gay, and that right there? That was my fucking ex-“ He opens up the box with the same bitterness he feels bubble in his throat, slamming it down shut again once he sees the contents. “-Who just gifted me a really nice fucking pair of shirt cuffs.”
Salim stares at him. And then he stares some more.
And then an uncertain smile begins crawling its way up his features, and then he’s laughing.
Then he’s fucking laughing.
“I meant to say dramatic. That was really dramatic.” He drums his fingers on the table, something in his whole demeanor far too much amused. “Really, if this is the way he behaves, then I can only say I’m glad things are over with that man.”
It takes a solid moment for Jason to receive the words. When he does, his eyes shoot upwards, shocked.
“I’m- I didn’t-“ He winces at himself, and the anger dissipates as quickly as it came. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Salim, I didn’t mean to imply- I don’t know why I’d just assume you wouldn’t be okay with it, just ‘cuz of your-“
“Religion? Culture? Heritage?” Salim offers with an easy smile, and Jason can’t help but laugh.
“Yeah, I guess all of the above.”
“Well.” He begins, and there is something even lighter in his voice. “If I’m being completely honest with you, I have no idea how I’d react eight years ago. Never really had the time to think of it, you see. But a lot of things can change once you walk in on your son in the arms of another boy-“
“Zain’s gay!?” Jason cannot help his exclamation, and Salim can’t help the chuckle that comes forth.
“I believe the proper term is bi-sexual.” He enunciates both parts as though two different words. That makes Jason snort in quiet endearment. “He has a lovely girlfriend now. They’re very sweet together. But, well, I also had to chase my fair share of boys away from the house. And others. Neither boys nor girls.”
He takes a moment to consider.
“Still don’t know what that’s all about.”
Jason licks his lips, and suddenly, nothing in the world feels scary. In fact, everything is light and good and easy, and he’s finishing the last drops of his beer through a hefty chuckle.
“Well. That must have been an experience.”
“It was. May I?” Salim eyes the box at the table, extending an unsteady hand, and Jason nods.
He opens the box carefully, snapping the lid up with soft fingers, his gaze travelling over the accessory with appreciation.
He whistles.
“Well, those are some really nice fucking shirt cuffs.”
Jason sputters over his beer, and his laughter is contagious.
By the time they make it back inside, the guests have waned out. It’s just the same old team, back together. Out of hell, and into a different kind of hell altogether – clean up.
Salim offers to help out and Jason suddenly feels like a much better person than he really is, because he offers up to do the dishes. Rachel stares at him open-mouthed for at least a minute before giving him the green light.
Half an hour later and only a single broken glass (Jason’s definitely not sober), the house begins to look like a home again. Nick throws the last of the cushions on the couch, and Eric begins to prepare the guest bedroom.
The rain just pours, relentless.
Jason watches the drops slide down the pane as he hears Rachel’s quiet apology. She’s speaking in Arabic, assuring Salim that her reaction at his presence wasn’t meant to offend. She was just surprised, that’s all, and Jason didn’t warn them, and really, if he had said anything sooner, they would’ve prepared a room for him as well.
Salim, in turn, is reassuring. He tells her not to worry, that’s it has been far too long. He says he should head back to the hotel anyway.
Jason doesn’t feel like staying here. He doesn’t want to let him go.
“I’m going to go home.” He declares, and the rest of them stare at him like crazy.
There is bickering involved. Nick’s telling him he’s drunk and Rachel’s pointing out the weather. Eric says his car is in the front, and why would he even bother. He’d have to haul back here tomorrow to get it. None of it made sense.
Which Jason knew, of course, only he is stubborn.
And then Salim says that he could drive him home.
Another half an hour of that, and they are in the car which smells like cigarettes and pinecones. Rachel is begging them to be careful. Salim is adjusting the driver’s seat and mirrors, his eyes focused as he promises to call as soon as they arrive.
He didn’t have to do this, of course – the roads are unfamiliar and the seating are all switched up from the way it is in the UK.
Jason doesn’t care. Punches in his home address in the navigator.
He thinks that if this is what was offered, then Salim must have his reasons. Maybe he isn’t ready to head back to his hotel yet. Maybe he, too, wants just a few more breaths with the two of them alone.
Hey, Jason can dream.
They pull out of the driveway and begin their route. Jason doesn’t realize how drunk and tired he is until he’s sinking down in his seat, becoming one with the passenger side window. He’s watching Salim watch the roads with fascinations, eyes wide and shining with the lights reflecting off of advertising billboards.
He hums quietly, gaze against the skyscrapers in the distance, taking in the full scale of the USA. Jason thinks he likes to watch him. If his body wasn’t so disagreeable, he might have even reached out and held one of the hands that are gripping at the stirring wheels.
He stares at his fingers clutched around the leather, and he thinks that there should be a ring.
“Salim.” Jason slurs, the sound more a mewl than language. He tries to sit up straighter in his seat, fails miserably and falls back down again. “You really haven’t remarried in all this time?”
His voice cracks at that last word, and he sees the grip around the wheel becoming tighter.
“Yes. I told you already. I had to put Zain first and-“
“You were too busy? That’s bullshit and you know it.”
There is a heartfelt silence in the car, filled with the sound of rain and wipers squeaking across the windshield. The engine softly hums as they wait on a red light. Salim casts his eyes upwards to stare at yet another giant billboard advertising fast food.
“Jason. I can honestly tell you that in all this time, never once have I thought about marriage.”
“But you must have had girlfriends, right-” Jason stammers and realizes to his own great horror how much the idea makes his stomach turn. “Wait, do you have a girlfriend?”
There’s something exasperated in the glare that he receives in turn.
“No.”
The light changes with a click, and the car whirrs off its place. Jason’s lids fall heavy, heart beating steadfast in his chest.
“So, Zain is what like, twenty-four, twenty-five now.” He talks over the navigator insisting they turn left. “Do you really gotta worry about him, still? He’s, like, a grown up now.”
Salim simply shakes his head, eyes cast forward as he makes the turn.
“You never stop worrying about your kids, no matter how old they are. You will understand this once you’re a father.”
And Jason feels like he is really about to hurl.
“Nah- No, I won’t- That’s not happening.”
Salim allows his head to turn at that, if only for a second.
“You don’t think you would make a good father, Jason?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s…”
He stares outside the window, watching neon signs pass by, their lights distorted by the rain. The smell of gasoline hits his nostrils briefly, and he sinks further against the glass, swallowing a lump that’s forming in his throat.
“I don’t know. I mean, there was this time, back when I was dating this-“ Guy, he doesn’t say, and feels ridiculous for not saying. “An ex of mine had a kid, twelve years old. Smart little dude. Used to be obsessed with me, we’d get on like a house on fire. But- But I mean, I never thought of myself as his dad, y’know, I thought I was more of a- More like a fun uncle.”
Salim hums. Jason allows his eyes to fall, and his chest to hurt that much more in this one moment.
“Though I suppose I would’ve pretty much become his dad if…”
He trails off, and something in the air grows heavy. They hit a speed bump. Jason’s eyes fly open.
“If what?”
“Turn right here.”
“The navigator didn’t-“
“Yeah, I know. It’s a shortcut. Trust me.”
And so Salim does, taking the next turn without any further question. The machine announces that it’s recalculating their route. Jason traces the raindrops down the window.
“What happened, Jason?”
“I… Well, the kid’s dad, he wanted to propose. I know he did, we talked about it, and I guess I-“ He doesn’t know how to say it. How to say that he drunkenly broke up with a man that was far too good to him. Doesn’t know how to explain it happened after a fight with his best friend that he couldn’t even remember.
“I chickened out. Broke up with him before that could happen. Haven’t seen either of them since.”
Salim is silent then, and the navigator tells him that the next turn will bring them to their destination.
“Relationships are complicated.” He says finally, allowing the car to roll to a stop in front of the apartment block. “The painful thing may be the right thing in the long run. The only thing that matters in the end is that you’re happy.”
Jason turns to face him.
He thinks he could be.
He knows he isn’t.
“Far as I know, the guy’s engaged to some big shot from New York now. Honestly, I think he’s probably far happier than he would’ve ever been with me.”
“And I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit.” Salim smiles at him.
Jason practically falls out of the car.
It takes a while, but he manages to insist that they should call a cab.
Salim swears that he is fine with walking, but the rain doesn’t let up, and the thunder makes his points quite mute. Jason doesn’t have the balls to suggest that he stay over.
They settle on calling up a taxi from the inside of his home.
They tread their way inside the apartment block, and Jason somehow makes it all the way to the second floor. Getting the key in the door lock is a whole other ordeal altogether - Salim is patient enough to let him figure it out on his own.
Jason runs a hand down his sopping wet face once they’re inside. He throws on a single kitchen light, and keeps being thankful that the army life has taught him to at least clean up after himself.
The apartment is spotless, almost unnaturally so. He doesn’t like being here.
Salim’s eyes travel over the collection of memorabilia that he’s got on display near his TV. He doesn’t miss the way his fingers trace the photograph of Jason and the rest of the squadron from his days stationed in Iraq.
He thinks it must’ve been taken less than a week before they met. He thinks how if anything played out even remotely different, either one of them could have been dead. Either one of them could have killed the other.
He thinks he doesn’t want to think any longer, and so he reaches for his fridge and the whiskey he’s got stashed away in the corner.
“Jason.” Salim chides when he sees the bottle, and Jason immediately wants to smash it against his kitchen floor. “Maybe a glass of water instead?”
He nods, silent, and places the bottle on the counter. He reaches for a glass and allows the tap to run.
Then he watches Salim spot the phone hanging further down the dark apartment. Before he can begin to make his way towards it, Jason stumbles forward, a hand against his chest.
“No, no, please- I told you I’d call the cab, let me do it.”
He musters up the strength to dial a number, forces his eyes to focus on the buttons and his ears on the dial tone. His words are rushed and slurred, but he’s done this a million times before. He could do it a million times again, easy.
The woman on the other end announces that the cab will be with them in five minutes. Suddenly, Jason realizes he will be left alone.
Suddenly, he wants to smash the receiver into pieces and suddenly, he wants to fucking cry.
Instead he’s turning back to to announce the success of his endeavor, only to find the other man standing not a foot away. His eyes are level with a particular precision. Jason swallows down the sudden heat that’s crawling up his neck.
“I need you to start taking care of yourself.” Salim says then, and it’s the harshest Jason’s ever heard it yet. “No more self-doubt, self-sabotage, or self-pity. You are eating yourself alive, Jason. I won’t stand to witness it.”
“Wh-What-“ Jason wants to contradict him, to scoff, to roll his eyes, to pretend he has no clue where this conversation is coming from. Instead, he feels the last resort inside his chest crumble in dust. He coughs and grits his teeth and then he tries again
“What else do I have left? I hate this life, this fucking country, I hate-“ Myself,he doesn’t say. Instead he sighs, throwing a dejected look across his perfectly kept apartment. “Everything. I hate everything here.”
“Then leave.” Salim’s talks as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and Jason stares at him like he’s just told him to grow wings and fly.
“Where would I even go!?”
“Anywhere!” He throws his arms open, encompassing the entire globe in the space between his palms. “Canada, Mexico, the damn North Pole! You can go anywhere you want to!”
“But how would I- Wh- Who-“ He can’t breathe, can’t talk, can’t think. Who would want me there. Who would care.
Why would I exist anywhere at all.
Salim looks at him - he really looks. His head is tilted downwards and his lashes are casting shadows over his cheeks. There is just a dust of red there, from the lighting or the heat or the conversation, and he blinks softly before his words form in a whisper. “Come to London with me.”
Jason can only stare dumbly in return, feeling a bead of sweat rolling down his temple.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I thought about it this evening.”
There is something tight in his voice. Jason can barely hear the words through his crushing heartbeat.
“Really?”
Salim blinks slowly, his lips pursed as if to prevent words from spilling out all on their own.
Then he shakes his head, once.
Sighs.
“No.”
He blinks again, eyes gently meeting Jason’s somewhere in between all the rushing blood. “I began to think about it the moment I laid my eyes on you, back in that bookshop.”
And Jason doesn’t speak because it is the last thing he can do in order not to cry.
“When I saw you there, sitting at that table in front of all those people, you looked like you were somewhere else. Like your body was left behind, and your soul went off to wander.”
He takes a step closer and Jason doesn’t have the strength not to take a step back. His back hits the phone receiver which clutters to the ground.
“I almost didn’t recognize you, Jason. You were a just an empty husk of a man. And that’s when I thought it.”
Another step. Salim’s hands are firmly clasped together. Jason pretends he doesn’t see them shake.
The phone is digging into his spine and he wants to melt into the wall.
“What did you think?”
“That I wanted to take you away from here.”
“…Away?”
“From that book shop. From those people. From this country.”
Jason shakes his head, adamantly refusing to believe the tears that are streaming down his face.
“No- No, Salim, I- You wouldn’t want me there.” He scoffs, voice hoarse. “I’d be a burden.”
Salim laughs, but it is curt. Offended.
“Do you really have so little trust in me?”
“Wha- What does that-“
“Do you really think I am unable to decide for myself, whether I want you there or not?”
And Jason doesn’t say anything else. Stands there, his arms swinging uselessly by his side. His head is spinning and the nausea is in his throat.
“Just think about it, alright?” Voice gentle again, Salim let’s up. Leans backwards, and Jason wants to scream at him not to leave him behind. “I’m not insisting – I’m merely saying it is an option. You are not as stuck as you think you are.”
He reaches for the glass Jason’s left on the table behind him. “You have many paths ahead of you. And you have people that care for you, deeply.” The cologne now smells like rain, is getting in his throat. Jason takes the water with shaky hands. “But you need to start caring for yourself as well. No one can make that decision for you.”
He nods, and he wants to cry, and it matters little that he is already crying.
A car horn sounds outside then, and Salim turns his head towards the window. Jason takes this second to breathe, compose himself, shut his eyes and blink away the tears.
He pinches the bridge of his nose, clears his throat, something in the back of his head threatening to break free.
“Hey, uh- Tomorrow. Do you want to have breakfast? There’s this diner- Um I could, uh, show you around, the landmarks, and uh- Bring Zain?”
Salim turns back to him, slowly. Approaches him carefully, like he is fragile. Knowing he is fragile.
“Well, if you have the time. I think we would love nothing more than that.”
“Yeah- Yeah, yup. I have- I got time. So much time.”
“And if the hangover won’t be too bad.”
“I’ll live.”
Salim smiles at him. Jason cannot help smiling back, despite the burning pain.
By the time he realizes there is a tentative hand on his shoulder, it is already pulling back, so using the last of his resolve he stumbles forward, and Salim easily catches him in a heavy hug.
They stand like that, silent, locked, Jason’s body shuddering in tune with the drops of rain cascading down his windows. His ragged breath the only thing echoing through the shadows of the room.
The warmth is more intoxicating than all the booze he’s consumed that evening. He finds that he wants to drown in it, wants it to burn through his heart and lungs. As though this warmth was the only thing that’s been missing from his life.
As though this man was the only thing missing.
Jason begins to pull back once he feels like he can breathe again. The smell of his own breath caught in the crooks of Salim’s shirt makes him nauseous all over.
He turns his head to stare into Salim’s eyes, find that same solidity that he feels under his shirt, beyond his muscles, in his very core. Instead, he finds a couple of dark puddles, glimmering with the neon lights.
He’s so close Jason can taste that damned cologne in his mouth.
And just as his eyes travel to his lips, the impatient taxi cuts the air with yet another horn, and Jason exhales forcefully through his nose.
Salim chuckles - low and heady, and then he pulls back, holds out Jason at arm’s length and looks him over.
“All better?” He asks, not quite trusting what he’s seeing either, eyes narrowed down as though looking closely might reveal even more pain than he’s already dumped out tonight.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. All good.” Jason is nodding, keeping his eyes closed, and he fears (and he knows) that if he opens them right then there would be nothing in the world that would stop him from assaulting Salim’s lips.
And then another moment passes – and then Salim let’s go.
And then Jason allows himself a peek because he no longer feels like he is going to go insane.
Salim is smiling brightly.
He leaves not in a hurry, but in a steady rhythm, looking over his shoulder thrice to make sure Jason is still standing on his feet.
And not a minute after the door is closed and locked behind him does Jason hurry to the window to watch his silhouette traverse the heavy rain and settle in the shining halo of the headlights. It lingers there, a second longer than it should – and then Jason watches the cab drive off.
He exhales a breath he thinks he’s been holding his entire life.
And not a minute after that, he’s pouring out his whiskey down the clogged up drain of his kitchen sink.
It is expensive whiskey, too, but there is little care in the steady stream of golden brown as it enters the abyss of metal pipes and sewage.
Jason follows up by sending a pack of beer hurling onto the pavement down below, and dumping two cartons of his second favorite brand of cigarettes into the toilet, flushing it eight times.
It doesn’t matter. None of it fucking matters.
He’s got the plumber on speed dial.
There probably is something to be said about quitting the last decade of his life cold turkey; but his body is still shaking, and his hands are warming up, and his shirt still smells of spiced cologne, and he can still taste the particles of it in the crevice of his mouth.
He thinks about Salim and he thinks about his hands and he thinks about how easily they seem to hold the world between them.
He thinks about a life, and he thinks about family, and he thinks he’s going to throw up into the cigarette-filled recess of the toilet, and he thinks he’s going to cry right after.
The bathroom floor is cold and so unlike the life he’s been painting out for himself pure moments before. His hands are cold, and his fingers are itching for a cigarette, and his stomach groans, begging for another beer.
And then he think about Salim’s press against chest, his breathing, slow and steady. He thinks of London and he thinks of rain.
so this is not really a fic or a prompt but something in between… but hey, if anyone wants to do something grand with it, be my guest!
a speculation on what happens to jason and salim after they leave the nightmare; time and reunion, one fate and all that’s meant to be (around 4.5k words, just a little something for all y'all house of ashes fans)
After the events in Iraq, Jason did not hesitate to quit the army.
The hesitation that followed and forced him to postpone his decision walked in wearing bright colored hazmat suits and sporting clipboards. The questioning in the on-site facility took hours that bled into days, and by the time their little group was woken up with blaring horns and the whirring sound of helicopter blades, they were all convinced that they would never leave. Rachel held onto Nick as tight as she could. Eric’s jaw was squared, but he was silent. Jason was the first to board the choppers, the first to step into the military base airport, the first to hop on the plane that would take them “home” (a word that sounded so vile he could hardly believe that that was where they were headed).
Home, of course, was not all that.
It was another facility, and more hazmat suits. It was blood tests and interviews and rooms with no windows. He couldn’t tell how much time had passed until he actually saw another human face, not covered by a layer of protective clothing, not hidden behind a monitor or one-way glass.
She introduced herself as Dr So-and-so and she told him they had great news. She told him they finally identified the source of their “shared hallucination”.
She told him it was gas.
By that point, Jason was mad enough to cry.
He doesn’t really remember lunging at the woman, but he does remember the bruises from being manhandled back into his cell – his “personal quarters”, they called it, but he knew what it was. They all knew.
He was a goddamn prisoner and his guards were trying to convince him that all he knew was a lie.
What followed was even more bizarre than the whole ordeal in the temple. Photographs, blood results, data, charts, and graphs that all pointed to there being nothing but a dusty old tomb down in the ground. Group therapy with his old comrades and a vomit of scientific mumbo-jumbo that explained the composition and effects of the gas.
They showed them photographs of the recovered bodies of Clarice, Joey, Merwin.
They weren’t eaten. Weren’t turned.
Joey died from Iraqi bullets, Merwin bled out.
Clarice looked like she starved to death.
The day after their third group session they were allowed to roam the facility “freely”. This meant visit each other, walk up and down their shared hall. Socialize in privacy.
Jason kept staring at the cameras in his room and said nothing.
It was gas, they told him. Gas that made them all hallucinate. Gas that made them believe they were all in grave danger. Gas that had them conjure up vampire parasites from outer space.
Gas.
It was six months later that Jason finally saw the light of day again, being allowed to walk and return to normal life once their readings proved them “stable”.
He didn’t want to know what that entailed. How broken they all were by the end of it.
The night before release, Nick visited. He kept asking about the future, what they were going to do, what options they had left. They would always be watched, they knew that much. The amount of paperwork to sign was massive - not so much a non-disclosure agreement as a deal with the devil itself.
The information about the gas, they said, couldn’t be made known. The public, they said - the public would panic if they knew something so potent existed.
One step out of line, and they would all be back in therapy.
Therapy.
“Hey.” Nick’s soft voice rang out to his right. Jason didn’t bother turning back to face him. Just kept staring at the wall.
“What are you thinking? Talk to me.”
The tiny crack that formed from an impact with an angry fist kept growing in size each day. It became his secret friend, that tiny black lightning among the white concrete. Jason would imagine it swallowing him whole, the whole building crashing down right with it.
He sighed, waving a goodbye to his dear old friend.
“I miss him, Nicky. I miss him so goddamn much.”
They stood there in silence. Nick didn’t have to ask. He knew.
And then they were released.
And then Jason quit the army. No hesitation whatsoever.
In the end, it still came as a surprise.
He was offered the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, a considerable step up from his last position. They offered to station him back at home base. They offered him a team.
Jason said “no, thank you” and walked out the door after failing the psychological examination. Potent signs of PTSD, depressive disorder, generalized anxiety.
Unfit for duty, they called him.
And Nicky felt betrayed.
It came as a surprise to Jason, then, that hedecided to stay behind and serve in active duty. He had a strong feeling it had more to do with Rachel’s decision to remain in the army than anything else in particular, but it was still something Nick was passionate about.
Protect and serve and all that-
That is, until fourteen months later he came back home with an injury severe enough it left him paralyzed below the waist.
They called him a good soldier. They said he deserved to retire early.
Rachel quit the following month, and it was the toughest decision of her life.
And Nicky spent the next year of his life near catatonic.
Jason referred him to his therapist.
His first one, not his second. He already quit the second one himself and was looking for a third.
If there was literally anything remotely useful that he had gathered from the sessions, it was that writing was a good way to sort through the bullshit that kept bubbling up his brain like sewage water.
He was never a man of many words.
It was a struggle to bring the pen to paper.
Once he began, though…
Once he began, he found that he couldn’t stop.
He wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote until he filled out nearly forty odd pages with memories from Iraq.
From the checkpoint.
From the temple.
From the worst nightmare of his life.
He poured down on paper everything the shrinks in CENTCOM tried to suppress, to erase, to destroy and burn to cinders. He wrote down every gory detail, every pained breath, every shared smile, every revered touch.
He wrote it all-
And then he stashed the papers in the bottom drawer of his nightstand and never touched them, ever again.
Nine months later he arrived at Nick’s door and asked him if he could write his story - that last battle that made him unable to serve. Unable to walk.
Rachel nudged his side, and reluctantly, Nick agreed.
In another couple months, it would become the first story Jason published in a major journal. It would also be the story that would eventually get Nick country-wide recognition - and a medal of honor bestowed by the President himself.
After that, he did begin to feel better, albeit it wasn’t the story or the piece of metal that cut the deal.
It was the letters he began receiving from thankful citizens all across the fifty states.
And Jason would go on writing.
“Who knew you had a secret talent all this time, huh?” Eric teased him one day. He was the last of them to quit the army, but eventually, even the resident genius crippled under the pressure. He didn’t specify his reasons - Jason was beginning to think maybe he was forced to bail.
He still remained one of the most important civilian advisors for CENTCOM, which begged the question of whether him no longer being in the army was just a technicality.
And despite everything, Eric became a frequent guest at Nick’s and Rachel’s new home. These kinds of things, well - they either drove people apart or brought them closer together. And in their case, not many others could relate to the experience of inhaling metric tons of hallucinogenic gas that resulted in the imagining of the worst hell on earth.
After couple of years of moping, he even found himself a new girlfriend. She became part of the group just as well. Her and Rachel have girls’ night every second Friday.
Jason is sometimes allowed to join in.
And that is because Jason has been discovering things about himself along the way, too.
His first therapist suggested his complete disinterest in women was an understandable side effect of PTSD and that he shouldn’t push himself too hard to get out there again. His second therapist claimed it was downright unnatural and that he should get over himself and try harder to recover. He really didn’t like his second therapist.
His third therapist implied that perhaps his attractions simply didn’t lie with women at all.
It was that same week that Jason found himself hooking up with a bearded bartender in a bustling bar in the city’s downtown.
In all honesty, the realization that he was gay was terrible.
And then he met a handsome writer on his trip to Canada – and then it was no longer terrible.
And then the handsome writer cheated on him eight months later with a drunken college student looking to experiment on his Spring Break, and then it was terrible again - though for entirely different reasons this time.
All in all, Jason has accepted his sexuality with the same grace and dignity that he accepted the rest of the clusterfuck that was the ultimate conflation of his life. That is to say, he got drunk, picked up smoking, wrote, and then threw the pages that he wrote down into the toilet and flushed them.
It clogged up. He had to call a plumber.
An older Egyptian man that cursed at him in Arabic. Something about entitled rich Americans. Jason laughed, and told him to fuck off.
The decision to learn the language wasn’t even his, really. Not at first, at least. He doesn’t remember how it began, but he picked up a few words from Rachel back when they were still in action, and then he picked up some more when they were having dinner back in the States. And then she turned it into a game, a la Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Soon enough, Jason was seeking tutors and taking classes.
His first therapist disapproved. He said it was a bad idea, might put him into a regressive state, trigger his PTSD.
His second therapist - oh, screw her. She was adamantly racist, and all in all made him fall back into his nasty habits worse than he would have on his own.
His third therapist told him it could be healing. His fourth therapist concluded that if he found it something worth pursuing, there could be no harm.
Jason was no linguist, but he tried his damnest. It was the least he could do to keep his mind awake, prevent himself from beginning to lose it yet again.
He used his skills to talk to the Iraqi refugees in the US. He told their stories.
He was a damn good writer.
The first award he ever won was for a story of two soldiers that killed a girl carrying a bag of groceries. Their names, he claimed, were lost to history.
And that night, he and Nick had their first ever serious fight. It wasn’t about the story. It wasn’t about the checkpoint. In fact, Jason couldn’t be sure what it really was about.
All he could remember was Salim’s name, and the taste of copper on his tongue.
He broke up with his then-boyfriend that same evening, when he was no longer so drunk out of his mind that he could hardly string two words together. After a bought of the longest silence in the world, the man only sighed. Said he knew it was coming. Said there was no healing a heart that belonged to someone else.
They hung up, and Jason cried for the first time in six years.
Nick couldn’t remember what the fight was about, either. The next day Rachel and Eric adamantly refused to tell them the details - said if their drunken minds decided to block it out, it was for the best.
Jason apologized nonetheless, and Nicky did the same.
“Do you still miss him?” Nick whispered then, in the quiet of the living room, nothing but the fireplace cracking away in the dark. The clock struck midnight, and the neighborhood dog barked thrice.
“Nah, not as much. Not as much as I used to.”
Nick stared into the flames, a smirk painted on his lips.
“There’s that tell again.”
And so life went on. And on, and on, and on.
It would be two more years until Jason finally got the guts to publish his first novel - eight years since he escaped the fateful nightmare.
The reason was simple enough, really - the end of the Iraq War.
It wasn’t a decision he could very well discuss with others, not with the things written, with the words he put on paper. They didn’t exactly discuss the events of the temple as a group.
Not as though it was a forbidden topic, per se, but the men in suits stopping by at the end of every week in the first few months of their release made conversation difficult. Controlling the flow of information, they called it, asking them the same questions and recording the same answers.
Jason got a couple more visits than was strictly necessary after he became a published author. No doubt the big bad guys at Area 51 were terrified of their secrets leaking out.
He was a good boy, though. Kept his mouth shut. They all did.
And then the visits stopped and they still kept being good. They didn’t talk about it - because when the subject was inevitably brought up, Nick got angry; Rachel stormed out of the room, and Eric grew completely silent; Jason wanted to do nothing but scream and he was well aware that if he were to start, he wouldn’t stop.
So no, they didn’t talk about it. They continued not to talk about it when the book was published.
House of Ashes, Jason called it. He did his Sumerian research.
It was a New York Times Number One Bestseller in the first week of publishing. Every book these days was a New York Times Number One Bestseller. It wasn’t something Jason could be proud of.
He silently kept expecting the men in black to come tearing down his door any minute now.
No one ever did.
The others did not discuss the book with him. He didn’t even know if they read it and he didn’t care (at the very least, Rachel read it; there was a copy on the passenger side of her gray Sedan that she quickly tossed in the back when she was giving Jason a ride back home last week).
It probably did help that it took room under the Science Fiction genre.
Jason’s heart still twitched whenever he passed by a book store. He supposed that most of it, technically, was fiction - just not the parts that mattered.
He had a book tour celebrating the successful launch scheduled for the spring. Fourteen states, twenty seven dates. He was at his limit. His editor was over the moon, and his fifth therapist prescribed a larger doze of Prozac.
It was in another one of the big name bookshops that his mind abandoned his body yet again and began traversing the catacombs of his memory.
He was answering another question about the idea for the alien origins of the vampires in his book.
In reality, he was walking the dusty grounds of a temple buried deep underneath Iraqi soil. The rifle in his hands felt solid; his footsteps echoed across the empty halls.
Someone asked him about the meaning of the archeological crew. Why they all met gruesome, grizzly deaths.
Nicky was setting up a tripwire and Eric was manning the cams. From somewhere deep inside the tent, he could hear Rachel’s calculated muttering.
A question about the main character - a man named Haydar, peaceful shepherd that was swallowed by the earth and forced to deal with nightmares beyond his comprehension. His only goal was to survive.
To see his son again.
They were asking why. Who was the inspiration.
Jason turns around in his mind’s eye, and there he can see him. Wielding that same rusty piece of metal, stained black with blood of the creatures of the night. He smiles at him. Begins to walk closer. He extends his hand, and just like that…
“Thank you. It will be quick, I promise.”
“Right, right. But this is the last one, people! After that, we will proceed with the signings.” His editor announces, clapping way too loud next to Jason’s ear. “So, what’s the question?”
“It is about the ending of the book.” A voice states, and something in Jason forces him to reawaken. It stirs right beneath his throat, makes him sit up taller, but his eyes remain unfocused, far away. “As we know, Haydar is the only one of the group to survive, having witnessed the horrible deaths of his team. He makes it all the way to the surface, only to find out that the monsters, the horrors, and the tragedies were all in his head. Including the people he called friends.”
Jason stares at the table, not willing to look up. Unable to look up.
His hands are cold. Frozen solid.
“Yes, yes, what is the question, please?!” The editor’s voice is shrill. Impatient.
It’s brilliant, that voice is telling them, the ending is brilliant! Subversive! They’ll never see it coming.
“My question is this - what was the pointof the struggle, if in the end, none of it was real?”
His hands are shaking and he can’t look up and when he exhales, Jason is certain he can see a white puff of frozen air depart his lungs.
Perhaps it is the decade old dust, settled in from the temple, finally finding its way to the surface. Perhaps it is all the cigarette smoke he let gather over the years.
Perhaps it is his soul, travelling towards a voice it knew too well.
“The point,” He begins slow, uncertain. His throat doesn’t want to work, and his system is on high alert. He is back in Iraq, and bullets are flying over his head. Joey is bleeding out on the ground. He just gave the order to shoot a woman dead. “The point is that, even though everything was a myth, a legend, a hallucination - his pain was real. The emotions were real. The fact that it was all in Haydar’s head doesn’t make it any different.”
“Well, I don’t know,” The voice interjects before the editor can open his mouth to conclude the session, and Jason finally finds it in him to lift up his eyes.
“Wouldn’t you think that such a revelation would break an ordinary man?”
Salim is wearing a white shirt and dark blue dress pants. His jacket is in his hands that he keeps clasped in front of him. His hair is beginning to gray at the temples, but his eyes are bright and young. He’s smiling.
He’s sporting a new beard. It suits him.
“Then it’s a good thing Haydar’s no ordinary man.”
After the Q&A session is over, Jason feels like he can’t breathe. They take five to recuperate, and he throws up into a trash can behind some book stands. His editor hands him a glass of the coldest water this side of the globe, and only rolls his eyes when Jason tells him to bring by the man that asked the final question.
He does as he is told when Jason threatens to fire him on the spot.
And even then, he half expects to be met with someone entirely different - at this point in his life, he’s thoroughly convinced that hallucinating a man he’s met once eight years ago would be among the top ten things he’s most likely to do.
But when Salim steps into the back room, Jason doesn’t waste a single second before throwing his arms around his neck.
“You- But- Why- How?!” is all he can manage, gripping the other man by his shoulders as though letting go would result in him evaporating from this earth.
Salim just laughs - hearty, real. His smile is brilliant and theres just that much exhaustion in it. There is more gray in his temples than Jason noticed previous. He smells like peppermint and spiced cologne.
“I decided it was finally the time for me to tour America.” He smirks, his words floating up and overhead, light, easy. “After all, your great country has much sightseeing to offer.”
Jason can see the plane on him, in the wrinkles of his shirt, in the creases underneath his eyes. This must have been his first stop directly from the airport.
“But here- how are you here?”
“Why, is it so wrong of me to visit a good friend? I wanted to congratulate you on your success!”
The lights reflect against the hardcover copy in his hands. Jason grits his teeth and feels as though he would rather drop down into yet another hellish temple. He doesn’t like the idea of Salim reading it.
He doesn’t like the idea of Salim understandingit - even if that was the only reason he published in the first place.
“I wouldn’t have ever imagined you’d become such an accomplished writer, Jason.”
“Yes, well- It, uh, started out as a coping mechanism.”
“And you’ve done well for yourself. All those people out there, all that press… Honestly, I’m just happy I managed to catch the last date, before the tour was over.”
“The last… Right. Today is the last… Hey, listen…”
Eight years, he thinks, eight years you’ve had to think of what to say when you finally laid eyes on this man again.
But words refused to form, and Jason kept holding out on half a sentence up until his editor announced that he needed to get back in there for signing.
Salim just nodded at him.
“Well, you should get going. I don’t mean to keep your fans waiting.”
And something broke in him, then. Something sad. Something long-forgotten.
Jason clutched at his arm, eyes panicked, heartbeat in his throat.
Don’t leave, don’t leave, don’t leave, his thought were screaming, and Salim knotted his brows. He didn’t step away, didn’t bulk at the sight of a shattered man - stepped closer, instead.
“Jason?” He raised a hand to his shoulder, steadying him.
Solid as a rock. Real. A crowbar flying inches from his head, impaling a horrid monster right behind him.
“Are you alright?”
“Tonight, we will be gathering, at Nick’s and Rachel’s.” He swallows down, breathing. “It’s a small thing, just the closest people, but it’ll be nice. You should come.”
Salim blinks at him wildly, shrinking in on himself. His sudden smile is small, but Jason doesn’t think it’s insincere. He can tell it isn’t.
They never left that damned cave.
“Oh! Well, I don’t know- They aren’t expecting me, I don’t want to intrude-“
“Nah, nah, stop that. The guys will be stocked to see you again. And anyway, we have this thing, everyone’s allowed to bring a plus one. Like a date or- or a friend.” He’s sputtering now, saying nonsense. His hands are shaking and the sweat from his palms is staining Salim’s shirt. “You can come as my plus one. You won’t be intruding. For sure.”
It takes a moment, but he finally gives in. Salim nods, and his smile grows in size.
“Well, alright then, Jason. I will come as your plus one.”
Jason smiles back and for once, it doesn’t hurt. There’s something miraculous about Salim’s presence here - suddenly, he’s eight years younger, and suddenly, the world is much bigger and scarier than ever before.
But he’s not afraid, and neither is the man beside him.
Jason laughs, before heading towards the door.
“Oh and, one more thing.” Salim stops him in his tracks, and before Jason has the chance to doubt him, he’s holding out the copy of the book. “Could you sign? I know I should’ve queued, but since we’re already here, I thought…”
Jason looks at him as though he’s grown another head. Salim shuffles in place, equal parts amused, ashamed.
“It’s- It’s not for me, it’s for my son. Zain. He’s sleeping in the hotel right now. I was hoping to surprise him.”
The book is worn at the edges, the pages scribbled over with a furious kind of regard. It was as though someone studied the text religiously, reveled in every word as though it was a stated fact.
Jason can’t help the tremble in his hand as he tries to make out a message.
“He a fan?”
“That’s an understatement of the year! The boy won’t shut up about you. At this point I don’t know which one of us talks about you more often, him or me.”
The book snaps shut with a particular kind of fervor.
“You talk about me?” He is unable to stop his mouth from uttering the words above the book held in suspense in between them - and he regrets them more the moment Salim’s eyes land on his. A certain expression settles in his features that makes Jason wish he would never utter a single word ever again.
And then the moment is broken, just like that, when his editor screams into the open door.
“Kolchek!”
“I’m coming!” He screams back, voice cracking, and the book with the scribbled message is now in Salim’s hands.
To my biggest fan, Zain. Keep making your father proud. You’re something worth fighting for. Best wishes,
JK
Jason throws one last look at Salim before exiting the back room, and finds something that gives him strength. It is then, he thinks, for the first time in eight years that he finally finds the strength to look forward again.
He thinks, for the briefest of moments, that everything just might turn out to be okay.
“I do. All the time.” Salim tells him, ducking his head away.
His smile is quiet.
And Jason’s own is threatening to split his face in half.
the long awaited... the breath-baited... the most wanted.... (and maybe a little haunted? no, it definitely isnt, im very sleep deprived, sorry)
anyway, the last part of the jalim fic mini series. here it is. please enjoy.
(links to parts 1 and 2 + AO3 link in the replies)
There is not a single damn reason why there should be that many chandeliers on at the same time during broad daylight.
A stupid waste of energy for the sake of empty aesthetics – a trend that’s been ravishing this country like a plague. Really, you’d assume someone would think of the rainforests instead of the stuffy businessmen in their stuffy suits getting a micron less lighting than usual. With all the glass that’s wasted on the stupidly tall windows, that shouldn’t be a problem anyway.
Jason’s beginning to get extremely concerned about the hotel’s electricity bill, and it’s definitely not because the stupid light burns away his retinas and makes the hangover that much more present. It’s definitely not because he’s been standing by the sad-looking plastic plants for much longer than perfectly necessary.
(He’s been at it for twenty minutes now.)
(He arrived thirty minutes early.)
(The first ten were spent in his car, wondering why he bothered arriving thirty minutes early.)
Jason Kolchek is just a known environmentalist, and that is precisely the reason he’s hating on the crystal-bound lights of the ornamental chandeliers with unbridled passion.
He pauses in his laments the moment his ears catch a distinct ding of the elevator, and he spots a bright red hoodie atop a pair of washed up blue jeans.
The young man wearing them is lanky, paying far more attention to toying with his iPod rather than to actually not walking into one of the fake plants. His face isn’t one Jason’s ever seen before and, if he weren’t looking, it would’ve been all too easy to glance past him. But there is something intoxicatingly familiar about his manner – something in the shape of his hands as he’s desperately trying to steady the plant from toppling over; something in the mild panic in his eyes as he looks behind him and then goes straight back to his iPod.
He perches against a tall column, his shoes squeaking on the polished surface of the floors. The guy seems perfectly out of place in the grandness of the lobby – and he’d be damned if he’d let it get to him.
He and Salim are definitely related.
A shaky gulp of much needed oxygen, and Jason tries his best to feign casualness and remember the motions of simply walking over. He’s extending a hand in a greeting before he can think better of it, aims his smile for casual even when it comes off as strained.
“Zain? Hi, Jason Kolchek.”
It takes a moment for the young man to react, and when he does, he stares at him dumbfounded. His eyes are wide as they run between his hand and his face.
He pops out a single earbud.
“What?”
“Sorry, hi!” Jason winces. He doesn’t know why he’s apologizing. Tries again. “You’re Zain, right?”
“Oh, yeah-“ Zain grabs his hand, shakes it almost dismissively – before he blinks. And gapes.
“Wait, you’re Jason Kolchek!?”
The emphasis is all wrong in that statement, the stress is on the wrong parts, and Jason retrieves his hand uncertainly, trying to place where he’s heard that tone before. “Yeah? Your dad’s friend? Uh, we’re having breakfast in this nice little diner, and-”
“Like- For real?”
Something about the young man’s struck expression turns the gears, echoes of something that he should’ve already known about. Something about a book, and something about the writings in the margins, something about myths and legends, and something about a signature.
It’s only then that Jason remembers he’s a famous author. Not just Salim’s friend.
“You’re a fan, right?” He almost yells, but this is familiar territory now. He can handle fans. He’s done it before, he thinks. “I signed that book for you and everything.”
And Zain blinks at him, frozen on the spot.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“No, no, I remember, your dad brought it in, and-“
“You mean you- you really know my dad?” He stutters, and Jason smiles. For whatever reason, there is an intense amount of pride in that smile.
“I do.”
“You’re the friend we’re meeting?”
“Yeah.”
The younger man simply blinks, running a hand through his hair. There is something that is secretly making Jason smile that much wider. He was never much to care for fans – he wasn’t exactly writing for the people or anything. But this guy… Well, he was that much different.
Signing that book was definitely a score in Jason’s favor – not that anyone was keeping scores.
“Okay, tell me the truth.” Zain leans in, beckons him to lean in closer too. “Is my dad paying you to be here?”
Jason thinks he already likes the guy.
“I can guarantee that no money in the world could make me trudge here at eight in the morning. I’m here because I want to be.”
He doesn’t mean for it to sound as candid as it does.
Zain doesn’t look like he really believes him. Still, he nods.
“Damn, well- Um. Thanks for that. And thank you for the autograph. And, uh. Sorry for being so weird. I just-” He pauses, taking a quick moment to glance over his shoulder. “When my dad said you were coming, I just thought he was bullshitting me, like usual. But… Well, damn. You’re really you.”
“I’m really me.” Jason smiles, and doesn’t really believe it, either. “So where is Salim anyway?”
Zain rolls his eyes, not without a trace of affection. “Ugh, I think he’s still getting dressed. He’s been up for hours already, just changing outfits. Driving me insane.”
“Really? Hours?”
“Um-“
The younger man balks, looking over his shoulder once again. Jason knows that expression – the fear of saying way too much. That alone makes something far too peppy flutter in his chest, and he thinks that it’s way too damn early for any of it
As though sensing the tension in the air, the elevator chimes once more to interrupt their conversation. And when Salim walks out of the sliding doors, he’s wearing a smart gray coat and a black turtleneck sweater – and Jason really tries not to let it show how impressed he is with the ensemble. And the fact that it apparently took him hours to assemble.
He really, really tries not to let it show.
“Good morning, Jason!” He chimes from halfway across the lobby. Jason can swear his cologne is already assaulting his every sense, the hug from yesterday filling up his veins with ice and lightning. He smiles and waves, or thinks he smiles and waves. He has no idea what he does in actuality. He’s way too goddamn lost in the fit of that black turtleneck.
“Sorry I’m late, I couldn’t find the spare room key.” He passes a plastic card along to Zain, who shoots Jason a very pointed glance. Jason misses it entirely. He’s lost. He’s hopeless.
Salim smiles at him.
God, he’s goddamn hopeless.
“It’s- Alright. It’s alright.” The fact that words come out at all is a miracle, and he’s never been more glad for the hangover, which he could happily blame in case things get too weird. “We’re just- We were getting to know each other.”
He motions between himself and Zain, finally managing to tear his eyes away from Salim. Zain gives him an awkward smile, but it’s not unfriendly.
“Ah, that’s good! What were you talking about?” Salim clasps a gentle hand on Zain’s shoulder, who replies way too eagerly.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Jason decides that he definitely likes this guy.
“Keeping secrets from me already, hm? Well, I can live with that.” Salim gapes at them, but he is smiling ear to ear, and suddenly, the stupid chandeliers seem that much duller. The whole world, in fact, has faded.
They really, really need to leave this hotel lobby already.
“You know what I can’t live without?” Jason claps his hands, reminds himself to be a person. “Some good goddamn food. Let’s go team, breakfast’s waiting!”
-
As they are walking to the quaint yet charming diner Jason’s chosen for their all-American experience, he hears a faint whisper of Zain’s voice behind them.
“Dad,” He asks, the word distinctly Arabic, “Just who is this guy to you?”
Jason doesn’t turn around, but he feels Salim’s smile in his voice. “A very special friend.”
“Huh? What is that supposed to mean?”
An answer doesn’t follow.
The wind blows, and spring allows for one last gust of winter’s chilly air to bring about its final gasp of snow.
-
He’s staring at the dancing snowflakes, fingers restless on the plastic menu cover.
“The hangover’s that bad, hm?” Salim’s hand is opposite his own. He definitely isn’t remembering what it was like to hold it.
“Yeah, something like that.” Jason lies – or maybe doesn’t. He has no idea who to blame for his current disposition – the booze, the cigarettes, the universe, or the man sitting across the table.
The man, who is now reaching out – touching his skin, a trace that’s barely there, solid enough for Jason to feel it with his entire shuddering body.
“Hang in there,” He mouths, retrieves his hand back as the waitress comes in with their food.
Jason’s sitting with his heart on the table and his knees shaking.
Zain stares between the two of them.
-
“You were in the army together, right?”
He tries not to wince at the words, and tries not to hate the implications. He really doesn’t want to say I could’ve killed your father and I would’ve thought I made the world a better place – and so he doesn’t. Instead, he gives Salim a look, and he passes it right back.
Zain tries again.
“I mean, I know you were on different sides- What I meant to ask was – you’re that American that saved my dad’s life, right?”
Jason grits his teeth. “Not nearly as much as he saved mine.”
The response is automatic, and it is definitely not a lie or an exaggeration. Still, Salim shakes his head.
“The circumstances were… Extraordinary. We had to do what we could to survive.” He’s keeping it vague, tone leaving no room for discussion. Jason’s never heard him like this before, but he gets it. Zain, on the other hand, looks like he’s heard it a million times before.
Salim looks up.
“But… I consider it lucky that out of all the people in the world, I had Jason at my side.”
And Jason desperately wants to touch his hand again.
He doesn’t.
-
Salim insists he pays. More like orders it, really, with how offended he gets that Jason would even imply he got the bill covered.
Zain’s tapping a Morse code with his fingers, something along the lines of This is way too awkward if Jason has to guess, and his eyes are cast downwards. He doesn’t speak – Jason doesn’t know if he should be the one speaking – but there is something in his posture that reminds him of their age difference.
The guy’s still in university. Jason’s been through three mid-life crises just this week.
“So-” He begins, wondering whether to settle on Are you done with school any time soon? and I’m so fucking sorry I could’ve shot your dad.
“Thankyou.” Zain suddenly mutters, the words a single sound as he continues to stare holes into the table. “I mean that.”
And Jason’s pretty damn grateful too, because he’s pretty certain his own sentence would’ve turned into an Are you fucking sorry, and he shuts his mouth before he can let that happen.
And when no other words come to mind, Zain finally looks up from underneath his eyelashes.
“For saving my dad’s life, that is. It’s… Like, I still remember it, you know? It was my birthday, I got home pretty late. But he wasn’t there, so my first thought is that he found the shit I stole, and he got so angry he stormed out. I don’t even know why I thought that – it’s not like he’s ever done that before. But then a couple of hours later he actually gets home, and he’s all, like- Fuck, he’s all weird and dirty and like, carrying this huge piece of metal. He’s just a mess. And he just throws his arms around me, and he starts crying. And he cries and cries and cries for… Hours.”
His eyes are far away now, staring out the window at the relentless snow. Jason can imagine it all too vividly. Suddenly, he, too, is back at that little shack where they took their final stand, covered in blood and grime, sitting between Nick, Eric, and Rachel, waiting for the rescue he wasn’t sure would ever come. His heart is in his throat, and he leans further in, trying to just listen.
It’s all he can do not to remember what came next.
“Man, I didn’t- I don’t even know how to describe it. I’ve never seen him like that. And he didn’t even tell me what happened, just that Americans saved his life. And he kept – he kept thanking Allah, and his luck, and me, and- And you. He kept going on and on about you. And I remember, in that moment thinking, that if I ever got to meet you, I should thank you. For keeping him safe. So- Thanks.”
Jason stares at the bright red hoodie sleeves that are being torn apart by anxious fingers. At the empty ice cream platters in spite of the cold outside. He looks at this boy, who could’ve been somewhere extremely far away right now on the account of having lost his father.
And for once, he doesn’t think of all the other boys and girls who did lose their parents in the war. For once, he doesn’t think of all the mistakes he’s ever made, and all the regrets he’s accumulated in his life.
He’s thought of them more than enough in the past decade of his life. He will think of them more in the future.
But for now, he thinks of gratitude, and he thinks that he did something right.
For now, Jason almost finds it in himself to smile.
“And I’d go back and do it all over again if I could, Zain. Salim- Your dad. He’s an incredible man.”
Zain smiles at him then, meekly.
“Yeah. Thanks, Jason. You’re alright.” He nods, sighing heavily, and it looks as though his back is a little straighter now. His eyes just that much brighter.
Jason thinks the two of them really are becoming fast friends, if only-
“Wish we could hang out more. Too bad we’re leaving tomorrow already, huh?”
“Wait, what?!”
-
Jason keeps his promise of being a proper tour guide, and shows everything there is to see around the city – which is more than was expected, and less than was satisfactory.
Still, their sightseeing takes them far into the evening.
He doesn’t show that his soul is being crushed by his own ribs.
He doesn’t get that beer during dinner either, although he reallywants to.
-
The wind picks up again, if only briefly. It scatters the softly falling flakes across the rays of sleepy nightlights, not nearly strong enough to disturb their peace.
Zain must be meeting with his friends already, in a cozy little bar in the basement of someone’s apartment block, away from the sky, the winds, and the quiet snow. He managed to win a few more hours of freedom from Salim, the two of them exchanging silent whispers away from prying ears before they parted ways.
Jason could imagine what the conversation was just as well.
“Remember, we are leaving tomorrow. Do not stay long.”
“I won’t, dad.”
He’d leave, and Jason would gesture at the sad empty park behind the hotel. Salim would only nod his head.
And so they walked, their footsteps crunching in the freshly fallen snow. There is a cold little bench in a cozy corner, and Jason strolls right past it. His mind is buzzing, soft and tired and still burning with hangover. His only wish is to fall asleep and his only wish is to never leave this solemn little park.
He strolls over to the playground, yanking the chain of one of the swings.
“Jason.” Salim chides, and there is as much exasperation and there is softness in his voice. His voice, which became ridiculously dear in the last two days. Jason snaps himself out of it.
“They won’t hold the weight of a grown man.”
He only smirks, easily plopping down on top of all the snow. It’s cold.
“Okay.” Salim concedes, shaking his head as he fails to hide his own smile. “It won’t hold the weight of two grown men.”
“Are you doubting the structural integrity of the great American engineering, Salim?”
“I am doubting the structural integrity of these ancient-looking chains.”
He gives them a solid yank, and the construction, miraculously, doesn’t fall apart.
Jason beams.
With one last stolen look at the comfortable bench, Salim sighs. He brushes away the snow, and he makes sure to fold his coat underneath his knees.
The swings, yet again, miraculously hold - even if the chains do creak a little.
The snowflakes make their way toward the earth, lazy, brittle, as though knowing this snowfall would be their last.
Jason breathes out, gently swinging back and forth with his heels on the ground. The air comes out of his lungs in a big puff of round smoke. He doesn’t think of cigarettes.
He does, however, think that the cold is beginning to seep into his very bones.
“Today was…” Salim begins, slicing through the frozen air. “I wanted to thank you, Jason. For everything.”
And that sounds like a goodbye if he’s ever heard one before.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving.”
He doesn’t ask it. Doesn’t even look Salim’s way. The words pour out of him as easily as his next breath, and it was the one and only thing he could’ve asked.
His headache is throbbing, and he thinks his eyes are stinging from the cold.
He can see Salim’s breath trail from his open mouth like steam.
“I’m… Sorry. I was planning to.”
Jason only hums.
“Zain told you?”
“Earlier today. Mentioned it during breakfast.”
“Right.”
Another breath, another puff of smoke. Jason’s eyes are bleary and he’s looking into the streetlights. He thinks about crawling into his bed, and the thought makes him that much colder still.
“I really was going to tell you. Right now, as a matter of fact.”
“Why? Why haven’t you before?” And it’s only a little pathetic that Jason can’t help the crack in his voice and the sting in his cheeks.
Salim exhales slowly. Jason turns to look at him, and wishes he didn’t. There’s something tremendously painful there. He hates it. He wishes he could will it away.
He stays quiet.
“Because I didn’t want to.” Salim finally replies, too truthful, and that makes it hurt just a little less. “Because I was having too much fun.”
“So why the hell are you even leaving-“
“Jason, please-“
“No, seriously!” He’s yelling now, but he doesn’t care. The snow and the streetlights are his only witness, and if there is some poor sap that happens to stumble upon them - well, that’s their problem. Jason’s past the point of caring. “Two days, Salim! Barely!”
“I know-“
“Why the hell didn’t you plan to stay on longer if you are having so much-“
“Because I was afraid, alright!” Salim screams right back, and it’s enough to make Jason near fall backwards off his swing. “I didn’t know how this would go, Jason. Hell, I didn’t even know if you still remembered me!”
“Of course I remember you-“
“I know that now, but how could I before?”
An owl cries, following their voice, rustling the trees. Snow falls heavily from their widespread branches, hitting the soft earth with a hollow thud.
They stay silent for a breath, and it feels as though the earth is exhaling with them.
“You need to realize that this trip was the most spur of the moment thing I’ve ever done, Jason. I came here- I flew over the whole Atlantic-“
The words won’t leave his chest, and Jason looks towards him, pleading. He feels as though if he doesn’t hear what Salim has to say, his heart surely will collapse in on itself. And so he grits his teeth. And so he nods.
Salim throws him a sideway glance. His chest is heavy with the heaving gasp.
“You wrote a book for me, Jason. You made me the protagonist of your story. You were calling me, and – how could I not answer?”
Jason holds his tongue, eyes traveling to the glove-clad shaky hands.
“Those were the only thoughts I had in my head while I was sitting on that plane. But I also knew- I knew that I was being delusional. That I was unreasonable. There were far easier methods to reach out if that was what you were really doing.”
“Were there?” He asks, unable to stop himself, only half-joking. Salim turns to stare, his eyes bright, suddenly reminding Jason of hotel lobbies and early mornings.
“In the end, I had no way of knowing how this would play out. You could’ve been angry at me. Could’ve hated me, for all I knew.”
And Jason doesn’t ask why he’d think those things in the first place.
He knows. He gets it. He’s been there, too. Thought those exact same things, and still wasn’t sure he was done thinking them.
“I couldn’t risk it.”
“So you chose two days to make a quick escape in case it all went to shit?”
“That’s… Exactly right.”
“And in case it all went smoothly-“
“At the very least, I would have these two days to remember.”
Jason nods, turning his head towards the empty park. The streets beyond the gates have begun to blur; the lights in the hotel felt dimmer, distant. It was just the two of them in the blistering white snow. In the dark. On these rusty swings.
The air smelling of gasoline and mud.
“You can extend your stay now?”
Salim smiles, and Jason knows the answer before he gives it.
“I promised Zain. We have a very packed schedule ahead of us. He’s very excited about it. I mean, a road trip across America - I cannot disappoint.”
Jason only nods, and somehow, this feels right. Like it makes sense.
Like there was no other way for any of it to happen.
His hands are pulsating and he’s gripping at the freezing metal of the chains so hard his skin begins to burn. It’s all he can do to keep their dinner in his stomach, all he can do to ground himself and not run away.
“Salim.” He begins before he really knows that he’s beginning, and his throat tightens against itself. “I have something to tell you.”
“Oh? Well, this sounds serious.”
That reply was fast. Too fast.
Jason’s eyes are closed, but he swears he can see that nervous little smile.
He reminds himself he doesn’t have to do this.
He listens to Salim’s breathing, and he reminds himself he does.
“I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, but- Look, this is going to sound weird, so- I don’t know if there will be a better moment, so I’ll just-“
“Jason-“
“I am in love with you, okay?”
The words rip through his chest with a violence, ribs cracking open and his heart spilling crimson onto the perfectly white snow.
“I’m in love with you, and I have been in love with you for the past eight years, and that’s the reason none of my relationships have ever worked out – Because I fell in love with you all those years ago, and I couldn’t stop thinking-“
Jason shuts his mouth and forces his eyes open, turns to stare at the snow beneath his feet to make sure it really isn’t painted with his blood. Everything in his soul is shaking, rattled, beating - and it feels good.
It feels good to get this off his chest. To speak this into existence.
To say it to Salim.
“I’m in love with you. I love you.” He reiterates to himself and the entire universe. “God, I love you.”
He throws his head into his freezing hands, and lets the shock of the cold wash over him like thunder. His eyes begin to sting, and he thinks that it’s okay. That it’s alright.
That it’s just normal.
And the silence is just that - it’s silent. There is nothing more to it except Jason’s heartbeat in his ears.
He can live with that.
“I don’t expect you to respond or anything, you know.” He whispers from somewhere in between his hands and knees, doubled over as he’s valiantly staring at the snow that definitely should be bloody red. “I just needed you to know. Before you leave. I just- I just needed you to know.”
And it’s the truth. The one and only truth.
His shoulders feel lighter. And he needs to sleep.
But Salim’s voice then – well. To call it reassuring would be inaccurate; however, there’s something in its vibrations that make Jason turn his head.
“Well… This is… Embarrassing.”
He’s staring into the night sky, eyes wide. The lights reflect off them, and Jason thinks that all the chandeliers and crystals and stars and constellations of the universe gathered in those two dark pools.
And he is smiling.
“You just can’t help being one step ahead of me, can you?”
Jason blinks. Salim turns to face him – promptly turns away.
But for one second, there is something in his expression that positively glows.
“You reach out to me first, you find out I’m leaving before I tell you, and now this-“ He gestures in Jason’s direction without looking, shakes his head.
And Jason slowly lifts his face away from his hands, begins to straighten out and doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. His full conscious effort is on Salim, and he’s trying not to think so hard he’s definitely about to pull a muscle.
“Well. The truth is, Jason-“ His voice gets caught on the name, and he has to turn his head further. Jason, in turn, leans forward, trying to catch even a glimpse of that expression. “The truth is, there wasanother reason I went with the… Uh, with the two days.”
Salim gestures between them again, and coughs.
“This. This was the, uh- The other reason.”
Jason’s voice breaks through his throat, barely a real sound. “What do you-“
“I mean that I was going to tell you this. Exactly in those words.” Salim doesn’t turn his head, but he smiles wider. The air around him glows. “Before I left.”
And Jason just stares blankly.
“Only you beat me to it. And now, well- I don’t really know how to feel about that.”
And Jason stares some more.
“Okay? No, wait- You mean…”
But Salim does not elaborate this time. Jason runs his frozen fingers over his face, and tries to piece it together. He knows he can - he’s a smart boy, and it’s just on the tip of his tongue, but-
“You mean you…”
Nothing comes out of it, and he huffs out a cloud of frustrated air. He swears he can wrap his head around the concept, he just needs a little-
Salim laughs. Jason’s breath comes out a shudder.
“Yes. I do. I mean- Me too. I- Damn. Me too, Jason.”
The pile of snow at their feet grows taller. The sound of passing cars is white noise in the chilly spring air.
Jason looks at his red hands and he thinks he can almost comprehend.
“Huh.”
“Mhm.”
There is, arguably, quite a large variety of emotion that people have experienced across the span of all human existence. However, Jason is almost positive that whatever he’s been experiencing just then is unique to him and only him.
There is a kindness in his chest, somewhere in his lungs. It’s light, electric, and it almost doesn’t feel like anything at all. His mind is blank, and there are stars, only they aren’t in the sky.
He turns to look at Salim again, who’s simply smiling and staring at the snow.
It’s then that Jason realizes he has been smiling too.
He has been really smiling, and it’s beginning to hurt.
“So… When you said you haven’t thought of marriage, it was because…”
“Yes. I- There was no point.”
Jason begs for him to elaborate with his very being. He shifts the swing closer, feeling his whole body magnetized. He wonders if this is okay. He wonders if feeling like this is okay.
“I tried to go on dates, of course, but- Especially after seeing Zain, I just- I thought well, if he can do it, maybe so can I?”
Jason is as close as he can get without ripping the swing off its hinges, and it’s not nearly close enough. Salim doesn’t even notice, just keeps staring into the ground, his fingers playing with the edges of his coat.
“And have you?”
“Have I-“ His eyes go wide as he turns to Jason, shaking his head before immediately turning back towards the earth. “No. Never, not with- Not with other men.”
Jason nods again, and the swing creaks painfully under his weight as he tries to move in closer. He wants to touch the streaks of pink across Salim’s cheekbones. He wants to know if he can.
“I could- I can, um. Teach you, you know? N-Not right now, but one day- I, uh. Had experiences. I’m a good teacher.” He winces at his wording, but they only make Salim laugh, grin wider. Jason wants to grin too. He wants to shine, actually - and sing, and maybe burst into a little dance.
He’s pretty certain he’s frozen solid to the swing that keeps creaking far too dangerously.
“I think- Sure, yes. I’d take a lesson. Or two.”
He swallows down, and finally turns to face Jason. Jason, who is all but falling off the swing trying to lean in closer.
Salim exhales a breath.
His sudden smirk is treacherous.
“So… Your past relationships-“
“We don’t have to talk about that-“
“Even that one with the kid, whose proposal you rejected-“
“He didn’t technically propose-“
“Even that was… because of me?”
His voice is almost innocent, but there is something self-satisfied at its edges.
Jason’s eyes flutter. He exhales quietly.
Salim twists on his swing. Moves closer.
Jason doesn’t move away.
“He said he knew it was coming. Said there was no helping a heart that belonged to someone else. And that was when I knew for sure.”
Salim nods, his smile never faltering.
“How long ago was this?”
“Four years.” Jason searches his expression. Decides to be daring. “You?”
Salim blinks at him. Shakes his head.
“Three years. Maybe four. I don’t know what triggered it. I think maybe I was reading one of your stories, and then just- Boom. I knew.”
“You knew.”
“I knew.”
The way he’s staring into Salim’s eyes is unapologetic, but Jason doesn’t care. He’s drunk - he’s drunk and he hasn’t had a single drop to drink today and he can’t get enough. He wants to reach out - to hold and cherish and explain just how much he meant every single word he’s said. And he just sits there, half falling off the swing, and he doesn’t care.
He’d stay there forever. He’d be happy to die right there, on those frozen swings.
“We should get going. It’s getting cold.” Salim tells him, and Jason couldn’t agree more.
His knees protest loudly as he tries to stand up, and his hands are icy when he’s brushing off the snow from his jeans. He takes a few uncertain steps, and his whole body is threatening to snap.
“Jason!” Salim calls him, and Jason turns around before he can even stop to think.
And before he can also stop to consider what is happening, he feels himself being pulled back, a gloved hand rise up towards his cheek, brush against it. And before he can take a breath, Salim’s face is near his own, and he’s breathing in the spiced cologne that burns through his mind like the cold around them.
Jason pauses – no, he freezes on the spot, and none of it has anything to do with the weather. He feels the press of icy lips, the touch burning through his entire being the second his brain registers what’s going on.
Salim’s kissing him.
And his heart is finally giving out.
Jason dies. He knows he has to have died because he doesn’t move, and he knows he’s dead because Salim is kissing him and he isn’t kissing back.
It hardly lasts a second. Jason saw his entire life flash before his eyes.
“No, that wasn’t-“ Are somehow the first words out his mouth when Salim pulls back, and he’s holding onto Salim for dear life, arms around his shoulders and hands pressed into his back – as though letting go would be the end of it. As though he could somehow take this back.
“You just- You just did that, and- You didn’t warn me! That wasn’t fair? Shit, no, I mean- That wasn’t my best? I mean, I promised to teach you, and that wasn’t-“
Salim just laughs, and it’s the best damn sound in the fucking world.
“I’m sorry, I just- I couldn’t let you be the first one to do this, too. I had to take initiative at some point!”
“Okay, but that’s not- I didn’t think- I wasn’t- Can we do that again? Please? Now that I’m ready and-“
Salim leans in, and Jason forces all his facets to hard reset. If there is one time in his life he was truly grateful for his marine training, it was now - when he was using all of his willpower to make sure he was kissing a man right. And by god, he was going to do it right.
His hands travel up to Salim’s scalp, and get lost in his jet black hair, palms circling back to his jaw, cupping it, just holding him there. His thumbs graze over the blush he’s wanted to touch, and he thinks his fingers would be shaking if he wasn’t holding on so tight. Jason presses his lips again Salim’s, tender, slow, and the longing of the past eight years fills him with a vengeance.
Without meaning to, he’s pressing his entire pain into that one single kiss, his entire life story, the nights spent mourning utter loneliness and fear, and the days spent smoking, drinking. He opens his mouth to inhale Salim’s breath into his own, feels his tongue as though it were his only lifeline, relishes in the press against his body. Salim’s hands are on his hips, holding him in place, and Jason has to rise on his tiptoes to push in deeper, to show, to talk, to explain.
Kissing Salim is a conversation, and he’s said more with this one fucking kiss than he has to all his partners in the past decade of his life.
The only reason Jason even stops is because he’s certain that if he doesn’t, he would begin to cry. His breath is barely audible as he hangs there, in the space between them, and he can count Salim’s eyelashes against his rosy cheekbone. He allows himself to nuzzle up against it, and he feels alive.
“So, um.” His voice is hoarse when he speaks up, but he has to break the silence that has become unbearable. Salim’s hands are still on his hips. Jason think he’s about to go insane. “There you go! Uh. How… was it?”
Eyes still firmly shut, Salim simply hums in answer.
“Alright.”
And he knows he’s teasing – and he’s hating every second of it.
“Alright?!”
“Well, the stubble is a little weird, but… I suppose it’s nothing I can’t get used to.”
“St- Stubble?!” Jason blinks, pulling back for real this time. His stubble is so far down on the least of things he was worried about, he didn’t even consider it a candidate. “And how do you think I feel when you got a face full of beard?!”
“Oh-“ Salim opens his eyes then, blinks a couple of times in astonishment. “Sorry, should I shave it?”
“No, that’s not what I- Fuck, no, Salim, I like beards, don’t- Fuck.”
“What was that?”
The grin he’s wearing is somewhere between tender and shit-eating. Jason huffs.
“I said- I like beards. I like. Your beard. It’s- Its good.”
Softly, Salim reaches out, swings a strand of hair behind Jason’s ear. The grin only grows, and Jason can’t find it in himself to hate it. In fact, he can’t find it in himself to hate anything about this situation at all.
“I love you too.” Salim whispers, and Jason feels his heart bloom.
He leans up to press a small kiss against the corner of his mouth, and is more than astonished that he can. That this is something he can do. And Salim will just continue to hold him – to embrace him. Jason stuffs his nose against his neck, and takes the deepest breath.
He thinks he knows what he wants now. He thinks he finally has a clue.
“What time are you leaving tomorrow?”
“Um. Early morning. Six o’clock. We still need to rent a car-“
“A car.”
“Yes. Road trip implies cars, no?”
Jason smiles against his neck. This is the worst thought-out road trip he’s ever heard of. He definitely knows what to do.
“There’s a car rental near my place. I’ll come meet you there tomorrow, see you off.”
Salim’s arms close around him, and Jason feels his lips against his temple. He shudders.
“I would love nothing more than that.”
-
Six AM isn’t the worst time to be awake, really. Especially not after being up the whole night through.
He’s running on three cups of caffeine and incredible bouts of adrenalin, but that’s okay. He’ll rest later. At the next gas station, probably. If that were to come.
“I’m telling you it’s closed, dad.” He hears a familiar voice speaking Arabic and begins making his way towards the sounds. “It looks like it’s been abandoned for ages.”
“Quiet, Zain.” Salim is standing with his back against the skyline, the rising sun encompassing his silhouette in a golden halo. Jason didn’t know his heart could grow any fonder – and yet here he was, ready to fall at this man’s feet at any moment. He loves him.
“There has to be another entrance. Jason wouldn’t lie to us. He is not that kind of a man.”
Fuck, he really loves him.
“I technically didn’t lie!” He shouts back, making both of them jump. “I just said there was a car rental near my place. I didn’t say it was a functioning one.”
He searches Salim’s expression, and finds only shadows and early morning mist. And then he takes a few steps closer, and that’s when he really sees it – pure, unadulterated reverie. Jason grins, and Salim blinks at him in awe.
“You speak Arabic?” Zain gapes, moving closer. He’s carrying a backpack and wheeling a gigantic suitcase behind him. Jason immediately moves to take it from his hands.
“Picked up a few words here and there, sure.” He beams, all the while keeping his eyes on Salim, who simply stares at him. And stares some more.
And then he stares at him even more, and then he’s still staring when he says, “Jason. The car rental. Where are we supposed to get a car?”
Jason simply gestures for the both of them to follow.
He watches the dance of Salim’s expressions as they change like the fickle spring weather, flickering between annoyance and delight, confusion and defeated acceptance, and, finally, complete surprise when his eyes fall upon Eric, Nick, and Rachel, huddled together next to Jason’s car.
“What is the meaning of this.” He mutters, blinking rapidly, an uncertain smile growing on his face, and Jason can’t help grinning. He loves him. He loves him.
He loves him.
“Hey, bud!” Nick nods at him, and Rachel goes in for a hug. “Don’t think you can just escape without saying goodbye.”
Eric clasps his shoulder, giving it a firm shake. “From now on we stay in touch, you hear?”
Salim looks between them, either tears shining in his eyes or the morning dew, throws his arms open, speechless.
Their shadows are long on the pavement, blue on the already melting snow. The tiny street is silent, lacking birds, cars, or tired commuters who might shake up the icy quiet of the air. But the pale sun is shining right above their little circle, and between the five of them, the world feels alive.
“Uh, dad? Who’s this?”
The six of them.
As introductions are made, Nick, Rachel, and Eric surround Zain like vultures, eager to catch a glimpse of the person that’s become almost like a legend in their midst. They may no longer talk about what happened, but they all remember his name. They remembered how Salim fought to get back to him.
Despite themselves, they all began caring for him eight years ago, and they never stopped.
“Really, you didn’t have to- This is too much.” Salim takes a step back from a very puzzled Zain, huddling up closer to Jason’s side while Eric’s busy questioning him about his studies.
“No, it isn’t. It’s just enough.” Jason smiles at him, and then, when he sees the uncertainty on his face, adds, “They deserve their goodbyes too, you know.”
Salim watches Rachel inspecting one of the pins on Zain’s backpack, looks at Nick excitedly tell him about the landmarks they should visit. He sighs.
“I suppose so.” He relents, dragging a tired hand down his face. His other hand travels down to encircle Jason’s, and Jason feels easy fireworks in his stomach. “Though this still doesn’t answer the question of where we’re supposed to get a car.”
His smile is so wide it hurts.
“Right there.” And he’s pointing at his car with undue enthusiasm.
“Jason.” Salim informs him in a sober voice. “That is your car.”
“I know.”
“Jason. Jason.”
He turned to face him now, the grave delivery somewhat undermined by the fact that they are still holding hands. That he’s grinning.
“I cannot ask you to drive us five hours to the next state over. I simply cannot do that.”
“You’re not.” And Jason is holding his hand tighter, secretely terrified of letting go. “I’m inviting myself over.”
Somewhere in the distance, a radio begins to play an Elvis song.
“What?”
“To your road trip. I…” He leaves the sentence hanging, tracing Salim’s profile, who is now staring out into the horizon with unblinking eyes. ”If- If you’ll have me, that is.”
“And your work? Your home? Your friend?” Salim asks, but the corners of his lips are upturned, and Jason suddenly remembers that he can kiss him. He can kiss him all he damn wants, and that is a reason good enough to leave this world behind.
“I got it all covered. Don’t worry about it.”
His hands are cold. Salim pulls him closer, turning back to face him, his hands encircling Jason completely as he begins to laugh. “You’re insane, you know that, right? You’re absolutely insane.”
Jason find his own breath in the folds of Salim’s coat, begins to laugh just as loud, just as easy. He’s made many bad decisions in his life – thankfully, this isn’t one of them.
“That’s alright, I-“
“Hey, guys?” Zain appears behind them, and he’s almost enough to make Jason leap ten feet into the air. He settles for taking a quick step backwards, tearing himself away from Salim’s side painfully.
He clears his throat.
Zain just gestures towards the luggage.
“Uh… So, what so what do I do with the bags..?”
“Take them to Jason’s car.” Salim nods, giving Jason’s hand a quick squeeze. “He’s coming with us.”
Rachel gives out a squeal of delight. Nick and Eric give them the least coveted thumbs up Jason’s ever seen, and even those make him giggle.
“If that’s cool with you.” Jason adds, almost as an afterthought, defiantly not wondering about what the fuck he would do if it wasn’t.
Zain blinks. Gives the two of them that look that became somehow familiar over their brief encounter – the disproportionately long stare that travels between their faces and their still interlocked hands.
“Damn. Alright.” He finally shakes his head, shrugging. “It’s cool.”
He’s grabbing the giant suitcase, wheeling it off to the car as he’s shouting over his shoulder:
“I’m not gonna start calling you dad, though.”
And Jason’s doubling over in laughter as Salim quietly curses under his breath.
me? write a frenrey one shot fanfic with them drunkenly playing truth or dare? it’s more likely than you think
-
Nights like these made it all worth it.
The lulling whir of the air conditioner kissed his flushed cheeks as the sound of dying laughter dissipated through the air. The noise of the streets outside the window and the quiet chatter of the TV filled the room instead, and the smell of home cooked food mixed with old cologne and alcohol seemed to cling to his very clothes. His eyes traced the long shadows cast in red, pink, and blue, painting the familiar scene in technicolors.
It was nights like these, Gordon thought, that made it all worth it.
Joshua was long asleep in his room, snuggled next to his favorite plush toy of a head crab that Bubby (lovingly) stitched together out of old scraps of clothing. Tommy arrived first, as was usual, tagging Sunkist along and letting her carry a bottle of wine between her teeth. Dr Coomer and Bubby came later, always together, always the same chorus of ‘Hello, Gordon!’s, always a big bright smile and a warm tingle in his heart. Darnold arrived late, later than he usually would if he were to come at all, but this time he brought his ‘strongest potions’ and Gordon was equal parts terrified and excited to try them out.
Benrey was already there by the time Gordon remembered him. He always simply appeared, but even that became routine at this point.
Gordon never invited any of them.
It was enough, he thought, that they would come over like this, with food and alcohol and maybe a DVD or a board game, and they would spend their time in peace and (relative) quiet. Having the company was enough.
Gordon smiled, sudden warmth spreading through his belly.
“Hey-Hey guys,”- He stuttered, trying to get up on his already slightly shaky feet, the attention of the room shifting towards him from the TV as The Science Team all turned their heads in unison.
“Woah- Um, okay. Creepy. Guys, do you wanna like- Hey guys, do you wanna play Truth or Dare?”
It wasn’t the first time they would be playing it, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Bubby, particularly competitive in, well, everything, immediately perked up.
“What, you itching to lose just like last time, you little bitch boy?”
“Okay, just because I refused to drink an entire glass of bleach doesnt mea-“
“Bitch boy!”
“Um, I would like to go first, Mr Freeman!”- Tommy piped up, having a surprising competitive streak in him too.
Truth or Dare, for most people, was a game of fun and embarrassment and messing around. For The Science Team, it was more like a battle for dominance and glory.
Most of their games were, actually. Gordon already lost 6 packs of Uno cards to fire, and Jenga is completely forbidden in his apartment for the foreseeable future. And god forbid he ever saw anyone with a box of Monopoly ever again.
Gordon took an uncertain step, steadying his feet as he raised his glass and nodded, -“Sure, Tommy. Truth or Dare?”
“Oh, and why do you get to ask,”- Bubby piped up, crossing his arms.
“Because I offered the game, alright? Now-“
“Truth or Dare, Tommy?”- Dr Coomer took over, and Tommy immediately replied with a resolute “Dare”.
“Fantastic choice, my young friend!”- The older man smiled, and then his face immediately turned to stone. Gordon swallowed, on the edge of his seat (still standing) at what might come next.
Dr Coomer was known for going to the extremes. His dares were either along the lines of “Do a chicken dance” or “Drink this glass of bleach” (which was exactly where Gordon drew the line last time). One time he dared Bubby to eat a pack of ramen raw, and the maniac actually did it.
Once Dr Coomer opened his mouth again, Gordon’s heart sank to his feet.
“I dare you to drink-“
“No! No more bleach drinking! That is banned forever, okay, it’s-“
“-An entire glass of Dr Darnold’s strongest potion!”
Gordon paused in his tracks. Suddenly, the bleach idea didn’t seem to be as bad.
He threw a quick glance at the man in question, who seemed to be perfectly beaming at the suggestion.
“Why, I do think my potions are way too strong for you, Tommy! The side effects can be unpredictable!”- He exclaimed, already reaching over the precariously shaped vial, -“Now, I will need you to have a bucket by your side and a pack of ice and maybe a pair of tweezers-“
“I will be fiiiiine,”- Tommy slurred, more determined than ever. He was not one to pass up a dare, no matter how insane it sounded. Gordon began to wonder whether he had any tweezers lying around, just in case.
In the next second, with an agility unbecoming of a man as drunk as he already was, Tommy threw back the glass and Gordon watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed at every resounding gulp. He couldn’t help his jaw clenching as the fiery burn resonated in his own throat at the sight, a shiver running down his spine, The feeling was something akin to watching a car crash, the horrifying fascination making his stomach turn when Tommy thumped the vial back on the table and wiped at his mouth with his sleeve.
He had to sit back down for this.
“go, tommyyyyyy!”- Benrey shouted from somewhere behind the couch, and for once, Gordon agreed wholeheartedly. At this point, he was pretty certain that Tommy was the most badass person he knew.
“Hoo! Yeah! Woo- Aw-Awright, z-zat- Eazy! Eazier zan... zan.....!”- Tommy blinked hard, his eyes clouded over as he tilted further and further to his right, and yeah, maybe he was going to have the worst night/morning of his life, but damn if the street cred he earned in that moment wasn’t worth it.
“Cake!- Darnold helpfully supplied, and Tommy forcefully threw himself at the man to give him a huge hug.
“Iz cake!”- He slurred from Darnold’s shoulder, waving an arm around way too close to Bubby’s face, -“Whoza next!?”
“Gordon!”- The latter smirked, slapping away Tommy’s hand and leaning further back into Coomer.
Gordon turned his head so fast his neck cracked, a slight headache immediately forming from the whiplash.
“No!? What!? No, I didn’t agree to that. Why me!?”- He began pouring himself another drink. Suddenly he was really craving some of that strongest potion.
“Because you offered the game, right?”- Bubby grinned, and Dr Coomer nodded in agreement.
“You did offer the game, Gordon.”
“I know I offered the damn- Hey, why don’t we have someone else go, huh!? Why not- Why not Benrey?”- At the mention of his name, said being popped his head up and stared directly back at Gordon, -“He, like, never participates! What’s up with that!”
And he wasn’t lying, either. For someone who consistently talked about gaming, Benrey almost never took part in their late night competitions. Gordon could never tell why – he could never, ever tell why anything with this guy – but to him this felt almost deliberate. Of course, everything Benrey did felt deliberate – that is, he was always deliberately trying to get on Gordon’s nerves.
And this time was no exception.
“huh?”- Came the simple response, and the burn in Gordon’s stomach turned to a burn in his chest.
“Yeah, you never do anything! Here we are, running around like headless chickens, doing whatever stupid shit we want each other to do, and you just sit there!”
“whu-?”
“What, you think this is like, some kinda free show for you? Some kinda performance piece!? No, nope, that won’t do, buddy. You’re gonna participate or you’re gonna get the hell out of here, alright? Truth or Dare?”
“dare”
The reply came so fast, Gordon nearly lost his footing while sitting. He blinked down at the glass in his hand, brows furrowing in concentration.
Alright, sure, cool. Maybe he didn’t expect Benrey to actually answer. And maybe he definitely didn’t expect him to choose dare. This was fine. It was fine.
Gordon poured himself another drink.
“daaaaare,”- Benrey whined at the same time as Bubby said “The man has chosen dare, Gordon, now will you please give it to him!”
“Alright, alright; don’t shout at me, I’m thinking!”
“Well, think faster!”
“It is rude to make other people wait, Gordon,”- Dr Coomer pursed his lips as Tommy may or may not have said something in agreement. He was now more than half lying on Darnold, who didn’t seem to care in the least, and his hand was absentmindedly stroking Sunkist’s back.
Knowing him, though, he most definitely was on Benrey’s side here. They all always were.
“Would you like some ideas, Dr Freeman?”- Darnold offered, and Gordon reached his boiling point.
“No! No, alright, I got it! I dare you to, uh,”- Gordon looked Benrey over, his stupid acidic gamer slogan hoodie making his retinas hurt, watched as the same hooded eyes not blink as they stared back, dull, unseeing, bored, overcast in a shadow that seemed to be permanently encasing his sharp face. And then Gordon scrunched up his nose as he said with the most vitriol possible, -“I dare you to take off you stupid beanie.”
It was but a beat of silence before Benrey, understandably this time, went, - “huh???”
“You heard me,”- Gordon doubled down this time, fully recognizing how stupid and inconsequential his dare seemed in comparison to Coomer’s, but damn if he wasn’t going to insist on it now, -“Come on. Show us what’s under there. Show us what- Show us what you’re hiding.”
Benrey blinked once. Then twice.
And then he was suddenly making his way towards the front of the room, crawling on all fours like an animal, and his gaze pointedly fixed on Gordon as he said “ohhhhh does feetman wanna- does feetman wanna see my secret parts. does feetman wanna take a glance at my uhhhh my special place”
Gordon nearly choked on his drink, a renegade laugh escaping this throat as he desperately tried not to have vodka pour out of his nose.
“What the FUCK, man, don’t call it that!?”
“what next, you gonna ask me to take my shoes off. maybe my socks? i’m gonna need to see a signed permission for that first”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”- Gordon slammed the table as he keeled over, and he could almost physically feel Bubby rolling his eyes.
“You gonna do it or what!?”- He nudged Benrey with his foot so that the other nearly toppled over.
“what, that it”
“Wh-What?”- Gordon managed in between taking deep breaths, feeling the room sway slightly from side to side. He hated how everything the guard said made him lose his shit. He especially hated it right then, when he was staring right at him with that self-confident smirk that still somehow managed to look bored. He hated it so much.
“is that all? weak”
“What, you wanna take off your shirt too? Be my guest, man, fucking- Strip down to your pants. Do it. You won’t.”
Benrey stared at him.
Gordon regretted every decision he ever made that led him up to this point.
Benrey smiled.
And then in one confident motion he ripped off his hoodie, his beanie coming along with it.
He threw them to the side, the pile of clothes landing on Sunkist, who didn’t seem to mind in the least, and this was exactly the point where Gordon realized that this was a bad, bad, horrifically bad idea.
He didn’t know what he expected to see when Benrey took off his hat (or helmet or whatever other stupid thing he was wearing at the time), didn’t really think about it (or tried not to) but damn if it wasn’t this. It was just - just hair. Completely normal hair, almost insultingly so, jet black and cropped short to his skull. But it wasn’t even the hair that was the biggest offender - no, it was the now completely open, completely normal and completely handsome face that was staring back at him. Completely human, completely right, and so disgustingly unobscured that it made Gordon’s stomach do back flips that would have scored tens all around at the Olympics.
When Benrey’s fingers twitched to remove the undershirt that he had underneath, he knew he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Okay, okay, fuck! We- We get it! You did the dare, alright, enough! That’s just indecent exposure at this point! Chill out, man!”
Benrey didn’t reply, but didn’t move to strip down any more. Gordon allowed himself to breathe again.
He was way too drunk for this.
He poured another drink.
After an uncomfortable stretch of terrible silence where Gordon could acutely feel the burn in his face and shoulders, Dr Coomer finally spoke up with an “That was a shitty dare, Gordon!”
“Yeah, it was horribly underwhelming. Not even writhing snakes underneath that thing,”- Bubby immediately joined, and at that Tommy perked up only to mumble “badgers” and then fall back down onto Darnold, knocking them both over to the floor.
Gordon couldn’t keep in the laughter that bubbled up from his stomach, and he had to look for support if only to stay upright. At this point, he was certain that if he were to fall down, he would not get back up again.
Of course, it just so happened that this time his closest support structure was Benrey, and by the time he realized that he was grabbing onto the other’s shoulder, it was way too late. Benrey was already staring at him, a smirk stretching over his lips that, without the ever-present shadow painting over his eyes, now looked almost... Nice. Sweet.
Gordon shifted in his seat, slowly removing his hand and clearing his throat.
That’s right. Play it cool. Play it cool.
Easier said than done, though, especially considering Benrey’s skin was practically burning next to him.
Gordon pulled at his hair tie, freeing his curls if only to have something covering his face. Dammit, Freeman, play it cool!
“Alright, which of you lightweights is going to go next?”- Bubby sighed, clearly resigning to being an observer this round, rather than a participant.
“gordon,”- Came a voice directly from Gordon’s right, and he immediately opened his mouth in protest.
Only to be shut up by Bubby before saying a single word, -“If you even so much as make a single sound besides “Truth” or “Dare”, I swear to fuck I will set your curtains on fire.”
Gordon was really tempted to say “Fuck off, not again”.
Instead, he resigned to whispering, “...Truth.”
“huh? what was that? truth? does little baby want truth? does little baby want his truth bottle?”
“Shut the fuck up, asshole, that doesn’t even make sense. The game isn’t called Dare or Dare, I can choose what I want.”
“stupid shitty baby can’t even handle this truth.”
Gordon snorted, fists curling up at his sides as he inhaled sharply, turning to face the permanent annoyance of his life that was Benrey.
“Okay. Okay. You know what? Okay! You wanna dance Benrey, huh? You wanna dance? Then let’s fucking dance. It’s dare. I choose dare. Hit me.”
Benrey’s smile only widened as Gordon’s heart sank deeper and his ears tingled with a warmth that was unwelcome, but not unfamiliar. And before either one of them could make a move, there was the distinct sound of clothes shuffling, the noise of something breaking, and then Tommy was kneeling on the floor, swaying from side to side like a piece of grass in a gentle breeze, finger pointed up, eyelids half closed as he barely managed out an, “I d-daaare- I dare Miste-ww Freeemann and B-Ben- Rey- To danz!”
Having finished his incredible statement, Tommy fell onto his other side, head landing right on Sunkist, and Darnold gently patted him on the shoulder mumbling “There, there.”
Gordon could only side eye the other scientists. He would be laughing right now, really, if he wasn’t so perfectly outraged by the proposition.
“Uh, how about no? You know I love you Tommy, but if you think that even for a second-“
“chicken man.”
“...What?”
“gordon freeman more like. more like gordon fowlman.”
“Hah, that was a clever one, Benrey! Keep it up!”- Dr Coomer encouraged, and Gordon really didn’t need that in his life right now.
“I’m not afraid to dance with you, I-“
“chickon fowlman”
“Fucking stop, alright! We’re both drunk as shit, and I doubt any one of us is a good dancer, we’re probably gonna break some-“
“what, no. i’m a great dancer. i’m the best- the bestest at dance. moves. number one in just dance 2003 on the playstation 2- got an award. a diploma. what do you got. stupid chicken legs. cluck cluck cluck, i’m idiot baby, i can’t dance-“
Gordon was on his feet in seconds, the room spinning around like a freaking kaleidoscope, but he’d be damned if he let this pretty- this cute- this shitty garbage sack believe that he was better than him. Even if it was true.
At this point, he was more than drunk, he was pissed, he was warm, and he wanted to wipe that stupid smile off of Benrey’s face if it was the last goddamn thing he did. If that meant he needed to dance, then he was going to fucking dance.
“Fine, okay, sure! Let’s go, let’s fucking go, go, go! Dr Coomer, hit us with a beat!”
If it was a dance battle Benrey wanted, it was a battle he was going to g-
The soft sound of a gentle piano was definitely not what Gordon expected to come out of the- Of Dr Coomer...? He honestly wasn’t sure where Dr Coomer was producing the sound from, but that mattered less at the moment than the particular sound being produced - which certainly wasn’t what he had in mind.
“What the fuck!? What is this shit?”
“Gordon, this track is As Time Goes By by the Claude Williamson Trio-“
“No, no, I don’t give- Who cares about the name of the track!? We’re not fucking slow dancing! Give us something with a beat!”
“But Gordon, I enjoy this song.“
This was yet another moment where Tommy decided to speak up, suddenly raising his hand with one finger pointing at the ceiling, his voice muffled by the perfect dog’s fur as he muttered “I- I dare Mr Freeman- and- and Benrey to- to Slow. Dance. For fiiiiiiiiiiive miiiiiinuuuuuutesssssssss.”
His hand fell back to the floor with an audible thump.
“No! Hey, no, that’s not- That’s not in the rules! You can’t just change the original dare like-“
“Oh my god, silently! Quietly! Without words! Slow dance for five fucking minutes with your mouths shut tight, okay! That’s your fucking dare!”- Bubby threw his arms up, and the reflection in his glasses told Gordon that his curtains are very much in immediate danger.
This was dumb. This was more than dumb, this was shitty, stupid, against all rules, and really, he should just kick them all out and be done with it all.
So, like any rational and sound-minded person, Gordon swallowed down the horrible tightness in his throat, and opened up his arms in an invitation.
He didn’t mean to bite his lip when Benrey approached him, really, he didn’t, but his chest refused to stop pounding, his arms felt sticky and gross, and his vision was only ever so slightly blurry when he reached out his hand and grabbed Benrey’s.
“I’ll lead,”- He barely whispered, maybe more like mouthed so that didn’t count, and Benrey did not protest for once, his other hand finding his way over to Gordon’s shoulder. Gordon hesitated only a second before lightly guiding his fingers to the other’s waist.
There was a moment of certain panic, blood freezing over as an electric current ran through his spine, sudden realization that he couldn’t remember the last time he danced with anyone flooding his senses, before being replaced with a gentle, coaxing burn when he felt Benrey pull at him and take a step backwards. Gordon swallowed hard again, allowing his drunkenness to overtake for a moment, letting himself sway ever so gently as he tried his best to guide the other around the room. This wasn’t exactly a waltz, not even close, but at least he was conscious enough not to step on any feet or trip over his own.
This was... excruciating.
He didn’t know where to look, eyes darting around the room like he was desperately looking for an escape, and his hands and hair felt altogether way too sweaty for any of this. He didn’t want to hear Benrey’s slightly exalted breathing, the firm press of his hand in Gordon’s own, the feeling of those dark, dark, immensely dark eyes staring right into his very being. Five minutes, Gordon learned by the first 30 seconds, was an outrageously long time.
It was only around the second minute mark, when Gordon was certain he was going to pass out before finishing the dance, that his vision darkened for a split second, and it wasn’t before long that a feeling of complete and utter surrender washed over him. Shoulders dropping down, muscles releasing with an almost audible click, he felt his anxiety dissipate in the air along with that unbearable, pulsating heat. The only thing left was his heavy eyelids defiantly staying open and the soft sound of the piano keys running through the air. He willed his head to turn to Benrey then, finally allowing himself to make eye contact for the first time, and the sea of gently glowing blue orbs around them nearly overwhelmed his vision.
“calm down,”- Benrey mouthed, and Gordon gladly obeyed, nodding his head ever so slightly.
His arms felt like cotton, like melting butter, so he allowed both his hands to travel to Benrey’s lower back, not able to keep them up anymore. Benrey, in turn, gently wrapped his own arms around Gordon’s neck, and Gordon couldn’t find it in him to protest.
He could find it in him to be delighted, though.
He didn’t know what it was, exactly - the alcohol, the forced silence, or the gentle blue light that filled his very soul, but he suddenly felt braver, braver than he had ever been before. But more importantly, he felt curious - and so he tugged Benrey a little closer, just that much. He knew it was but a gentle pull - no, he was certain of it. The rest of the way between their bodies Benrey closed on his own.
Gordon’s stomach ignited in fireworks, his ribs prickling with the sensation of the other flush against him, the touch of his skin intoxicating in ways he didn’t remember were possible.
And all the while, his eyes were glued to Benrey’s, almost morbidly mesmerized by the two dark caverns that refused to reflect light and seemed to only take, take, and take.
Benrey’s fingers tangled in his hair, and Gordon couldn’t help the genuine smile that easily found its home on his face, couldn’t help the breath that got stolen when he saw that same smile reflected on Benrey’s own.
His fists balled in the other’s thin shirt, and he couldn’t remember the last time he felt so secure.
Serene. Right.
It’s nights like these, Gordon thought, that make everything worth it.
The last note played, the orbs burned out, and the only thing left standing in the middle of it all were the two of them, still clinging one to another, breathing hard as though they have just finished an intense exercise routine, and for a brief moment, time stood still.
And Gordon felt as though something unspoken has passed between them in that one moment.
And in the next, raucous applause followed, mostly provided by Dr Coomer, with Darnold gently joining in. Bubby let out a few claps as well, and they almost didn’t sound sarcastic.
“Bravo, Gordon! What a beautiful display of emotion!”- Dr Coomer kept on clapping, wiping a tear away from one eye as he cheered, -“For 2 Play Coins, I can replay the same song again!”
“N-No- Uhm-“- Gordon began, feeling his throat as dry as a summer in a dessert, having to cough violently as he practically peeled himself from Benrey. The immediate cold and overall shittiness that followed almost weren’t worth it, -“Ahem. That’s- That’s quite alright.”
“Ah shit, there he goes on talking again,”- Bubby rolled his eyes, and the atmosphere seemed to return to normal.
Benrey went to sit next to Tommy’s most probably unconscious form, and Gordon, after hesitating for way too long, sat down on the opposite side of the room.
A decision he came to regret immediately, if the brief look Benrey gave him was anything to go by.
How that permanently bored, expressionless face could carry so much emotion, Gordon would never know.
What he did know was that he needed another goddamn drink.
And from that point on, it was a huge blur. There were more dares, of course. He was pretty sure Darnold had to do a keg stand and Coomer and Bubby had to exchange clothes.
It was all stupid.
It was all ridiculously fun.
Gordon didn’t feel right throughout any of it.
His mind only came back online closer to morning, when the only thing keeping him awake was the constant noise of conversation and sheer willpower.
“truth,”- Benrey said, crude drawings of Sunkist now decorating both his arms. Gordon wasn’t sure if this was part of a dare or if he just did that for no reason.
“You want to mix it up a little, eh? Think this will be easy, don’t you?”- Bubby’s smile was sharp, all teeth and evil intent, and Gordon suddenly was really happy he wasn’t at the receiving end of that. Bubby was the most entertaining when he was being mean to someone else.
“hit me.”
“Okay. So. Who, out of this group, do you have a crush on?”
Oh. So Gordon was on the receiving end of that after all, huh.
He didn’t know why was it, exactly, that that question hit him like a pile of bricks. But it did. And now he was anxiously staring at Benrey, heart beating so fast it threatened to break through his rib cage.
Benrey, on the other hand, didn’t look nearly as panicked. He just... kept on staring at the floor. And he kept on staring. And he kept on staring until he finally blurted out an. “bbbb.... d.... coomer.”
“I am flattered, Benrey, but I am quite happily married,”- Dr Coomer replied hugging Bubby close, who only rolled his eyes and snorted.
“Bullshit! It’s called Truth, now say the goddamn truth!”
It was at this moment that Benrey’s eye met Gordon’s.
It was at this moment that Gordon knew precisely what to do.
In a move that probably required him to be way more sober, he kicked the table so hard that half the glasses and bottles on top of it tumbled over, some rolling to the floor and breaking with a resounding crash.
“Fuck! What the fuck!”- Bubby exclaimed, throwing his feet up on the couch, and even Tommy came back to life for a second to look around, before passing back out on Sunkist again.
“Careful, Dr Freeman! These babies can melt through concrete!”- Darnold immediately busying himself with picking up his vials, and Gordon took this moment to stand up, exaggerating his slur and wobbliness (though not by much) when he said, -“Woo... Huh... Sorry- Sorry, guys, I must have- Man, I’m dying, I think I- I need sleep, guys, I-“
“Yes, yes, we get the message,”- Bubby sighed, as Dr Coomer immediately laid straight down on the couch, forcibly pulling him down as well, -“Goodnight, Gordon.”
“Good night, Gordon!”- Coomer echoed, closing his eyes and passing out within seconds.
“Take care, Dr Freeman,”- Darnold nodded, before snuggling up next to Sunkist and Tommy.
Well, that was easy. If there was one thing about The Science Team that Gordon appreciated most of all, it was how they didn’t bother asking questions. It was better that way, really.
He should be a better host and at the very least get them blankets, Gordon thought, carefully avoiding the broken glass as he made his way across the room.
This was a problem for tomorrow’s Gordon.
Now, however, he had more pressing matters to attend to.
Benrey stood up as Gordon approached him, staring silently, before turning around and abruptly making his way to the entrance.
“Wa- Wait- Benrey, wait!”- This time it wasn’t an exaggeration when Gordon nearly tripped over his own feet. His head was throbbing with a headache unlike any other, but he shut that part up for a brief second. More important matters, -“Where the hell are you going!?”
“away?”- Benrey replied as though that was the most obvious thing in the world.
“But- Wait- I mean. Why? You can stay here? I’m not kicking you out?”
He stared. And then he stared some more.
It was true that Benrey usually disappeared before morning came, like some sort of vampire that could only come out at night. Gordon never questioned it, never bothered to ask him why he left – it didn’t matter that his apartment always felt a little emptier.
It didn’t matter before, but it mattered now.
“I mean- I know there’s not a lot of room, and the guys are all over the living room, but, y’know, my bed is a double, so if you wanna, you can-“
“i don’t sleep”
Gordon blinked down, the ramble in his head and his words interrupted by this simple poignant statement. He tilted his head, desperately trying to keep standing upright.
“What? Like, at all? That’s bullshit man, that’s complete- and I- I saw you, okay, I saw you sleeping in-“
“kind of gay of you. watching me sleep. wanna see my hair then. then taking my shirt off then. then dancing with me like-“
“Shhh- Shut up, shut up!”- Gordon hissed, taking Benrey by the hand and quietly leading him back to the bedroom. There was no way he would be able to handle this conversation standing up, -“This isn’t- It’s not like that, okay, it’s-“
“It’s not?”
It wasn’t often that Gordon was able to tell what Benrey was thinking or feeling at any given moment. In this instance, however, the disappointment in his voice was so palpable that he could almost taste it on his tongue.
“N-No! Wait, I mean- Yes? I mean- I- I don’t fucking knoooow, man,”- He sighed, dropping down on the bed, head immediately spinning like the propellers of a helicopter, heart drumming, jaw aching, -“I just- I’m too drunk, Benrey. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t- I just know I don’t want you to leave.”
He didn’t know if that was enough. It didn’t sound enough to him.
But to Benrey, apparently, it was.
In a moment the space besides Gordon felt the bed beside him dip, that already familiar heat seeping through his skin like nuclear radiation, overwhelming him whole.
He felt himself magnetized, moving closer to it almost unconsciously, keeping his eyes closed to prevent the room from spinning crazy. His hand worked of their own volition, desperately searching for anything to hold, and when he felt a set of fingers interlace with his own, he allowed himself to exhale all the tension in his shoulders.
“Thanks,”- He whispered, snuggling in closer, inhaling a scent that was near acidic, but not unpleasant. He didn’t know how he would justify this to himself tomorrow, didn’t want to think about that just yet, and he heard a stream of sweet voice being spread around the room.
He opened his eyes just for a second, just a brief moment to register the vibrant pink floating around his bedroom, the gentle glow that outlined Benrey’s hooded eyes, and for once he thought he could recognize something in them.
Gordon exhaled softly, holding on for dear life.
“Goodnight,”- He said, or maybe thought, or maybe imagined, his consciousness finally fading into sweet darkness.
“gordon,”- Benrey replied then, quiet, soft, and with the certain conviction of a man giving the right answer to a demanding question.
hi please accept this slightly nonsensical jonmartin fic (?) that i just had to write after the last ep. this is quite lovely and fluffy, or as lovely and fluffy as it could possibly get?
aka martin gets trapped in the lonely for a while
dialogue only.
i kinda yadda yaddaed the whole extinction business but shhh this is not why we’re here
*click*
- Statement of the entity previously known as Martin Blackwood-
- Martin, stop that- It’s not funny.
- No? I thought it was pretty good. Not exactly a joke, anyway.
- You’re not- You’re not an entity, alright?
- Well it’s not like I’m entirely human either, now am I?
- I mean, no, but... Listen. You’re alive. You’re still you. You’re still Martin. That’s all that matters.
- Or what’s left of him, anyway-
- Martin!
- Alright, sorry, sorry! Jeez, I’m kidding, chill out. I just wanted a cool new nickname.
- ...Excuse me?
- W-Well, you know? Like, you’re The Archivist and that sounds so... Foreboding. I want a name like that.
- I’m not sure that’s-
- I was thinking The Forsaken, maybe? How’s that sound? Very fitting, wouldn’t you say?
- You’re not forsaken, Martin. Quite the opposite of that, in fact.
- ...Really, Jon? Really?
- Look, can we just get to the statement? We’ve wasted enough tape.
- Only if you use my new name.
- I- Al-Alright, fine. Let’s just. Get on with it. *sigh* Statement of Martin Blackwood.... The Forsaken, regarding his time spent in the Lonely. Statement taken directly from subject, 31 August 2019. Statement begins.
- ...I missed that, you know. I mean, hearing you say that. I remember I‘d overhear you record sometimes and it was just... nice. It’s still nice. I’m stalling, aren’t I. I just- I-I don’t really know what to say, Jon. It all just happened so naturally. You died. I failed to protect you. I promised that that would never happen again so I- I went ahead and struck up a deal with Peter Lukas. Of course I had no clue how incompetent at protection he would actually be, but I mean- He tried. And with enough time I began to realize that the Lonely wasn’t... as terrible as I was making it out to be. It was... easier, in a way? Even after you woke up. Especially after you woke up. I kept my head low and kept on working on figuring out the Extinction, while giving you just enough to keep you off my back. It felt right. It... I- I’m not going to make excuses. I knew exactly what I was signing up for when I decided Peter and I were going to disrupt it’s first and only ritual on our own. I wasn’t planning on coming back. Counting on it, really. Dying a probably heroic death didn’t really sound so bad at the time. I still have no idea how you managed to find us on the night we were leaving, though... Well, I mean I guess I do have an inkling, heh. I didn’t expect to see you there, of course. Didn’t expect you to- To be so mad with me. ...Definitely didn’t expect the kiss. Um, it became a lot harder to be willing to, uh, sacrifice myself after that. You just had to ruin that for me too, didn’t you... Heh, I guess it was for the best after all. I won’t bore you with the details of our trip, I know Peter already gave his statement. All I can say is that when it did come the time for me to pull the trigger to prevent Extinction from emerging, I didn’t hesitate. It was like I- I knew I wouldn’t die. There was the pain, the flash, and then... Darkness. Funny enough, when I woke up in this desolate empty place my first thought was that I did indeed did die and- and ended up in hell or something, but that wasn’t... It wasn’t what it felt like. It stretched out for miles and miles, this endless deep dark sea. The thick white fog covered the horizons, and the sky was a never ending milky grey. It was cold. So cold, the ice seeped all the way down through my bones and into my very atoms, burning me from the inside. And it felt so overwhelmingly familiar, I could just cry. It felt like returning home. I could hardly move those first few seconds as I adjusted my eyes, my vision bleary and distorted... Though that could have been because of the fog. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so easy in such a strange, otherworldly place. Not that I’ve ever, you know, been to any other strange otherworldly places but I just- Like I said, it felt good. Right. It was so weird how I could just stand on that dark water, walk as easily as though stepping on soil. I think I fumbled around a bit, trying to grasp a sense of direction. I think I might have even been a little unsettled as the disorientation set in and I could no longer feel if I was even moving forward at all. It was enormous, this bleak open space that went on for god knows how far, and yet it felt... tiny. I was all alone, and that incomprehensibly ginormous vastness in the end amounted to just... me. I closed my eyes when I realized this, took a deep breath. I wasn’t in any hurry after all. That was when I heard it- a voice. Your voice, Jon. I don’t remember what it was saying, just that- It was so clear in my head. I started following it, with my eyes closed. I simply went towards the sound, wherever my feet would take me. It was so easy, Jon, god- It was the easiest thing I have ever done, simply following your voice wherever it would lead me. I... I don’t know how long I walked for. I want to say it felt like an eternity but really it felt like mere minutes-
- Two months.
- I’m- I’m sorry, what?
- You’ve been gone for two months, Martin. And- And they were- They were the most agonizing months of my existence. When Peter returned and you didn’t I- I think I lost it a little. The rest, they- they kind of just accepted your fate, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t, Martin, I- I promised I wouldn’t lose anyone else and I wasn’t about to lose you. I couldn’t. Not you.
- Jon....
- I Looked. It was painful, so goddamn painful, to see through the fog and the ice and the dark, but I kept Looking until I was passing out because I Knew you were still out there. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking... The moment you started to fade from my memory I knew it had to be real. Martin, I did everything - and I mean everything I could not to forget you. At first I realized I couldn’t remember the color of your eyes. I didn’t think too much of it, I- I’m not great at these things, so maybe I never noticed in the first place but- Then it was your hair. Then your face. Then I could hardly picture even a blurry shape so I- I started keeping pictures- God, your hands are so cold.
- Heh, yeah, it’s the- A-Anyway, pictures?
- Remember that one we- The one Tim forced us to take at the Christmas party? Near the tree?
- Oh, god, yes. I was so embarrassed I thought I was going to fall through the floor. He made us wear those antler headbands.
- Yes, well. I made sure to look at it every day. It was the only picture I had of you, if you can imagine.
- I-I can, actually, but- You kept it on your desk!? Really?
- Had to. Otherwise I’d go crazy.
- J-Jon, that’s a bit-
- What did you expect me to do, Martin!? Even the picture started to fade, eventually. You began to disappear, and then I began to forget the sound of your voice, so I- I listened to all your tapes, over and over and over, every single one I could find. I’ve, um, found a few of your old poetry tapes in the storage room and-
- Oh my god, Jon, don’t tell me you-
- I-It was an accident, I swear, I- I didn’t listen on purpose, not at first, I was just curious what was on them-
- I’m going to die. No, I’m- I think I should have died. That would have been easier than-
- Look, Martin, they’re- They’re the ones that helped the most. I don’t know why, it’s just- The tapes where you were just being you, not reading a statement or being brainwashed by Elias or- The ones where it was just you, reading your poetry into a tape recorder without a care in the world... They grounded me like nothing else, Martin. Even when they were a little tough to hear, I still felt like... Like you were still with me...
- ...
- I liked the one with the graying hair and the scars-
- Bloody hell, Jon...
- I, um. I decided to write out things about you too, Martin. Not exactly poetry, but... Just something before I started to forget what kind of a person you were. You are. Everything I liked, everything I hated, everything I lo- Uh, everything I’ve found interesting. And when I ran out, I started writing to you instead. About myself, about the Archives, about the world.... Everything I wished I had said. All the things that could have ended up different. I think I filled up 4 or 5 notebooks, hah. It was... It wasn’t easy.
- I... I can’t imagine it must have been. My trip to the Lonely sounds like a vacation in comparison to what you went through... I’m sorry.
- No, I- You were the one trapped and... I should be the one apologizing, this is your statement.
- There is not much left to say, really. I followed your voice. Sometimes it was as clear as though you were standing right next to me, sometimes as quiet as though you were a million miles away. I tried not to lose it, straining hard to hear, going on way past the point where my legs had to have given out. Eventually I found a door - one that i have seen a thousand times before, almost intimately familiar and yet so strikingly wrong in this empty world. The door to the Archives. I’m not going to lie, Jon. I... Hesitated. I could hear your voice so clearly, coming right from the other side, and yet I also knew that I could also just... Turn around. Walk out into the Lonely, let it consume me. Never have to worry about anything ever again. It was such an enticing idea, Jon. The warmth emanating from underneath the Archival door was unbearable. I felt like I was going to suffocate... And yet I couldn’t stop my hand from reaching out no matter how much I wanted to... What was it that you said to me before I left? “I would very much like to kiss you again, so don’t you dare die on me”? Yeah, I- I couldn’t do that to you, Jon. I couldn’t do that to myself. Not after everything, I just couldn’t- I couldn’t die. I knew I wouldn’t be the same, but it was still better than nothing. I promised you I’d come back. I wasn’t about to let you down, you know. Not again. And so I wrapped my fingers around the sizzling hot metal and I pulled and- And there you sat. Propped up against one of the bookshelves, a recorder in hand, looking worse than I have ever seen you, including that time in a coma. God, I don’t think I was ever so happy, Jon, I- And when you looked at me, when you saw me, and your eyes lit up and you had that look on your face that you just couldn’t believe it or thought you were hallucinating or- Hah, I just wish I had a camera.
- And I’m just glad that you didn’t.
- Well, uh. Y-You know what happened after that. You know very well.
- Yes, I- I believe that part isn’t necessary for the official statement. Though, I do think I blacked out for a moment or two there just from sheer disbelief.
- R-Right, um... Don’t worry, I’ll recollect the details for you later.
- O-Oh! Hah, I’ll keep you to that. Although, um... Martin, I have to ask... When was it that you began to realize I was the only one who could see you?
- Oh, er- Well, I- I don’t really know exactly when? I mean, I remember walking out of the Archives that evening, happy as a clam and so positively lost in my own head I didn’t notice bumping into a woman on my way to the station. It was quite late and she was the only one on the street, her eyes fixated on the screen of her phone. She mumbled a quick apology, immediately looking up, and then she just. Paused in her step. She had such a bewildered look on her face. We were the only ones on the street, yet she kept looking around as though she couldn’t comprehend what just happened. I thought it odd, but I was a bit too, erm- preoccupied to bother with it. So I just went home. I think it was when I got back this morning and not a single person in the Archives even so much as looked my way, yet alone said a word to me. I tried to chat to Melanie but she just ignored me. Like I wasn’t there. I tried to pretend that she was mad at me, but... I think I realized it then.
- Right...
- You know, the funny thing is, it almost feels as though no one else is there either. I was looking at Basira just earlier and she just... Kept drifting out of focus. Like I was a camera lens that just couldn’t find the right setting. No matter how hard i tried squinting it was like the image just kept shifting away, and I almost thought my vision was giving out until I looked at you and realized you were perfectly fine. As sharp and clear as always.
- Martin, I’m... I’m so sorry.
- Oh, it’s not all bad. It did make for an amusing moment with Daisy when she found you snogging with thin air-
- Y-Yes, well, let’s not dwell on that- I just. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for you.
- Not at all, really. I’ve spent so much time avoiding people myself that it’s actually a breath of fresh air to be able to walk around naturally with no one paying any attention to me. I honestly was beginning to imagine that maybe I had died and returned as a ghost or something but I don’t think so- I mean I can still interact with objects, and I can obviously still touch other people. And it’s not like I’m invisible either. People might bump into me way more often but they don’t exactly sit on me on the train or try to walk through me - so at least subconsciously they know I’m still there... Plus, animals seem to notice me.
- Is that so?
- Yeah, there was this cat at the entrance to the station today. It spent a good five minutes just staring at me as I bought my ticket and when I tried to approach it ran away. So that’s something.
- Maybe you should get a cat then. I-If that would help.
- Hm. Never really thought about it. It just seemed a bit... Sad, you know? Getting a cat to alleviate your own loneliness. I know that’s not exactly the reason people get pets, but it just... It always felt that way to me. Now getting a pet together with someone, that’s quite different-
- I like cats.
- O-Oh! Um, do you?
- Er, I mean- Well, uh, Georgie has this big one, called Admiral. Horribly fluffy, but I enjoyed his company greatly.
- Admiral? That’s just silly. Everyone knows the best name for a cat is-
- Colonel?
- Yes, actually, how did you- Oh, right.
- Just a lucky guess, really. I didn’t- I don’t think I can Know things about you anymore, Martin. Every time I try I just get this fog. And a brain freeze.
- You tried?
- Um, yes, I- Yesterday. After you left. I wanted to Know if you were really okay, or if you were just... If you were putting a front for me.
- You could’ve just asked, Jon.
- ...I didn’t think you’d tell me.
- Probably not. But I really am okay. Surprisingly few differences in this new invisible life I’m leading. I’ve lost contact with what few friends I had close to a year ago now, and it’s not like I was ever the most popular guy around. I mean, just at lunch I held a door for like, 5 people before realizing it. No one ever said thank you before and certainly not now.
- Martin-
- If you’re going to say you’re sorry again I’m going to punch you. I’m telling you this is fine. You can see me, Jon, and for now that’s- That’s enough.
- I... I’m glad. I’m glad I can see you.
- Me too... Hah. Haha. A bit ironic, isn’t it? All this time I’ve been trying to get your attention, and now it’s the only thing I’ve got.
- That’s...
- It’s not a bad thing. In any case, I think I got quite lucky. Don’t think other Entities are quite as benevolent.
- I don’t know if this is what you would call benevolent. Your misguided optimism concerns me a bit, you know.
- Oh, sorry, would you rather I mope around and drown in my own misery?
- Well, obviously not, but-
- Then quit it, Jon. We can’t change things by complaining. Maybe we can start looking for a solution tomorrow. Maybe this will pass on its own. Or maybe I’m stuck like this forever and ever, haunting your sorry arse till the end of times! Who cares? It’s fine. It’s all fine.
- ...Right. Right. Then I’m going to be here for you, as long as you need me.
- Good. I mean, thanks, Jon. It’s... I know it’s a lot, but I’m glad it’s you.
- You, uh... You going to head home now?
- Yes- Er, actually. I was going to ask, uh... Would you like to come over, perhaps? D-Don’t take this the wrong way, I just- Well, it was sort of horrible last night, being home all alone in that apartment? I know it contradicts everything I just said, but something about that place still unsettles me. And I really would hate to spend yet another night in the Archives, so-
- Of- Of course, Martin. I- Anything you need. I’d love to come over.
- Jon- I- *sigh* Please don’t feel as though you have to say yes just because you’re the only person who can see me, alright-
- Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no- Martin, please, will you just think back on how many months exactly has it been that I’ve been trying to get to you. To just- Spend time with you. And you really think that after all this time I’m going to agree out of some sort of- moral obligation?
- Well, no, but- It’s just- It’s still kind of hard to believe you actually- That you want to-
- Of course I want to. This is me being selfish, Martin. In fact, why don’t you come over to mine instead. I’ll cook us dinner. If- If you want to, that is-
- Yes. Of course. I would- I would love that.
- Ah. Good. Erm. Shall we get going now then?
- Let me grab my jacket. And, I... Thank you, Jon. Really. You- You quite literally saved my life there, you know.
- The gratitude is mutual. I- I missed you. I missed you a lot.
- Yeah... I missed you too. Jon, I- Oh, wait, um. Statement ends?
Aziraphale and Crowley spend the night after the Apocalypse-That-Never-Was at the demon's flat. It's all quite well and lovely.
According to a meticulous and accurate research conducted by a group of unnamed and unimportant scientists, a typical human being generally has three possible responses to the onset of an inevitable Apocalypse.
The first one is spending the rest of their quite limited time with their loved ones - a fairly common, if boring answer. Second, doing something they’d never done before but always told themselves they would, one day, perhaps when they’ve got the time, or the weather was just right. And third one - getting drunk. There were statistical outliers, of course, there always were in these kinds of research, but ultimately the third option proved to be the most popular response by a long stretch.
Therefore, it was safe to draw the conclusion that in the event of a hypothetical Apocalypse people here and there all around the globe would, as they say, “party like there is no tomorrow”.
Because, indeed, there wouldn’t be.
It just so happened that the inevitable Apocalypse proved to be quite evitable, and the moment Adam Young decided that he did not want to be rid of this world quite yet, the tension that was sizzling in the very atoms of all creation had dissipated. Things have returned to normal, as normal as they could have possibly been and always were for humanity.
The planet resumed its course, leaving its many residents in blind wonder at what in Heaven’s or Hell’s name had transpired in the last couple of days of their existence.
(News networks will inevitably call it mass hysteria. Conspiracy channels will rightly call it the End Times, though those people who listen to the News would only scoff and roll their eyes.)
Aziraphale and Crowley did not have the luxury of ignorance. They were there, in the corporeal flesh, at the very epicenter of Armageddon, watching the fabric of reality tear apart at the seams as four children faced off against Four Horsemen, nuclear weapons were preparing to launch all around the world, and the ground cracked under their feet to reveal Satan incarnate.
Frankly speaking, a bottle of wine to share was the least they could allow themselves to indulge in after all that.
“Oh. There it is,”- Aziraphale murmured, watching as their ride home slowly traversed the quiet streets of exhausted Tadfield.
They were sitting on a weary bench at the far end of the town, having said their awkward goodbyes to all the odd humans they’ve met in their race against the End Times, being more than certain that future would bring them together yet again.
They now had a future to look forward to, after all.
The angel furrowed his brows.
“It says “Oxford” on the front.”
“Yeah, but he’ll drive to London anyway,”- The demon sniffed, taking a sip from the bottle, - “He just won’t know why.”
The air around them hung unnaturally still, deafeningly quiet even with the gentle whirr of the bus engine. Tadfield never was a particularly bustling village, per se, but after last week tonight was like the ringing after an explosion had finely tuned down.
Aziraphale looked down at his hands.
“I suppose I should get him to drop me off at the bookshop,”- He declared, not exactly sure of why he even bothered declaring it. He wasn’t exactly sure of quite a number of things these days, actually.
The silence stretched on between them, Crowley pursing his lips, eyebrows knitted together in worry.
He swallowed hard.
“It burned down, remember?”
Aziraphale blinked.
Ah. Of course.
There were, admittedly, a few things going on today, but he still felt quite foolish forgetting this one prominent detail.
It burned down.
Indeed.
“…You can stay at my place, if you like.”
At that, the angel snapped his head towards the other being.
Crowley’s voice was soft, bordering on a whisper, and was it not for the silence of the night Aziraphale would have missed it entirely.
Something heavy settled in his stomach just then - something so desperately familiar.
Something desperately frightening.
“I don’t- I don’t think my side would like that,”- He stammered out as a last resort.
Resort against what, again, he wasn’t exactly sure.
“You don’t have a side anymore. Neither of us do,”- The demon assured him, soft, so eternally soft, that Aziraphale couldn’t help the breath that got caught in his chest. A breath that he hardly needed, -“We’re on our side.”
The lone bus neared, its lights disturbing the perfect darkness of the night. Crowley raised his hand to catch its attention.
“Like Agnes said, we’ll have to choose our faces wisely.”
The ride to London was long, longer than it had any right to be and then some.
Neither of them complained.
It was enough, for the time being, to move along through the English roads in silence, the creaking of the well-worn seats and the occasional yawn of the tired driver merging into a sort of an odd ballad sung in honor of the End that never was.
There was something mesmerizing about the shine of the street lights, the glint of the moon, the imposing structure of the corporate buildings, as though being trapped inside of a realistically abstract painting.
The World was as infinitely beautiful as it was mundane.
Crowley silently passed their bottle of wine on to Aziraphale, who took it without a word. Neither missed the significance of them sitting side by side on this empty old bus, lowering their inhibitions by drinking thrice the amount a regular human would be able to intake. Neither made a comment about it.
Aziraphale shifted closer.
They got out several blocks too early, and while the angel was certain it was because they were well beyond intoxicated to remember where they were going, Crowley insisted he just wanted to take a walk and ‘admire the magnificent sights created by human ingenuity, which were nearly annihilated in the impeding world-ending catastrophe’.
In not as many words, of course.
They sauntered around dimly lit streets, yellow and orange under flickering lights, gentle late August breeze wafting the smells of the night through the air – those of exotic foods and stale alcohol, of expensive perfume, of gasoline, and of rain that just recently passed. Crowley revealed yet another bottle from underneath his jacket. Aziraphale couldn’t say he wasn’t glad to have it.
Their walk back to the demon’s flat wasn’t necessarily a long one, but it was all too tempting to take detours to stare at a particularly old bookshop or look inside a floristry to assess their selection of succulents. Both of them enjoyed narrow side streets - there were more secrets to be found where no one would normally look, more little quirks of humanity to discover in between commercial buildings.
Crowley lived on the other side of Westminster Bridge, past the river bank of Waterloo, normally filled to the brim with tourists taking in the sights and non-tourists rushing through while grumbling about the tourists. Right now, though, it was completely empty, miraculously so, save for a few stray creatures of the night.
Aziraphale stared at the ground, deep in thought. The air was still, the commotion of the city a ways behind them. The only sounds accompanying their walk were the resolute clicking of Crowley’s Oxfords on the hard concrete pavement, and the quiet swishing of the leftover wine in the bottle. The angel blinked to focus his bleary vision, finally lifting his eyes to meet their reflection in the tinted sunglasses.
“The- The sound of footsteps,”- He nodded, taking a satisfied sip, -“I’d miss it. If the- What’s it called- Apoco- Alpaca- If it ended. The world. I’d miss. Footsteps.”
Crowley hummed, tilting his head in what appeared to be a questioning manner.
“Think- No, really, think about it. There’re no shoes in Heaven. Or- or in Hell. None. Not even, not even socks. There’s hardly any, any ground at all Up There.”
He pointed up, and Crowley instinctively looked. “Huh.”
“So that’s- That’s what I’d miss. If. End. Your turn, dear.”
Crowley furrowed his eyebrows, concentrating doubly hard after that speech. He reached for the bottle in Aziraphale’s hand, taking a large gulp. Thought harder.
He focused on the angel’s loafers and the soft, barely audible sound they gave off as he padded along. He decided he quite liked it. Took another sip.
“Mm, drinkin’,”- He finally mustered, taking yet another swig and finishing off the bottle. It disappeared from his hand immediately after, -“‘d miss that.”
“Now, now,”- Aziraphale shook his head, wagging a finger for emphasis, -“That’s chant- cheating, Crowley. Everyone would miss drinking. Be more creative.”
“But ‘d bloody miss it,”- Crowley persisted, scrunching up his nose in disdain, -“They don’ have booze like this Down There.”
“Up There they don’t have any at all.”
“Oh. Ouch,”- The demon winced, just as Aziraphale stepped into a pothole, stumbling forward in the most ungraceful manner. Crowley threw an arm around his shoulders, surprising even himself with his dexterity in spite of all the alcohol, and Aziraphale took a hold around the other’s waist to steady himself.
“Ah. Exc-Excuse- Um, thank you.”
Crowley tightened the hand around his shoulders.
“I’d miss drinkin’ with you.”
Aziraphale raised his infinitely wide blue eyes to stare, blinking in surprise, before offering the most brilliant smile that would put the sun itself to shame.
“Likewise, dear boy. Likewise.”
They continued on, leaning heavily against one another, dragging along their all too heavy feet. A comfortable silence settled in, and Crowley kept counting windows on the passing houses because that suddenly seemed like the most important task in the world. He kept forgetting what number came after four.
And windows really were incredible, weren’t they? Houses in general were quite the invention. Not to mention street benches and fences. Trees weren’t exactly an invention, but he was glad to see them planted alongside the road anyway. A perfect balance of urban and natural.
He threw his head up to the sky, watching as the last of grey clouds gave way to surprisingly bright stars, shining on through air pollution and city lights. Really, so much creativity and beauty could have been erased within moments. And how come he’s never noticed how the sky at night was not entirely black but rather a soft gradient of blues and purples? Or how the street lights elongated weirdly when you squinted your eyes and looked at them at different angles? Or how warm and soft Aziraphale’s hand felt on his hip?
The world was so different at night, so precious. Other creatures had to realize it too, as one jumped from a low window sill and padded across the road to settle on an empty bench.
Crowley stared at the cat that began to groom itself, an almost manic smile spreading across his face.
“Cats!”- He exclaimed, triumphant, -“‘d miss those. Miss those quite bit. I like cats.”
He really did. They had a mind of their own, those creatures. He could respect that.
Aziraphale stared at him like he had no clue what was going on - indeed, he forgot about the game they were playing in favor of watching the far off lights glint off of the still waters of the Thames.
“Hey, Azera- Aphaz-,”- The demon concentrated, forcing his brain to say it right, -“Hey, Aziraphale.”
He always made the effort to say it right.
“What you say we get a cat of our own, mm? A lil’ creature might be nice.”
Aziraphale blinked in thought, -“Cat, you say?”
It just so happened he quite liked cats too. They were graceful. Elegant. And they knew how to clean themselves. Even the prospect of shedding fur didn’t distract Aziraphale from their pristine.
“Mm, yeah, ‘was just thinkin’,”- Crowley continued, waving his free arm around way too much, -“‘d have it one week, you’d have it the other. That way it won’t turn too good or too evil-“
“We’d be its Godfathers.”
“Yeah, exactly,”- The demon laughed, shaking his head, -“Firs’ time kinda failed.”
“I think we’ve done a marvo- a bloody good job with ol’ Warlock.”
“We’re great.”
“We are.”
“Should check up on him sometime.”
“Mhm.” Aziraphale readjusted his grip on Crowley’s side, moving his long fingers to rest under his jacket as they made their way onto the desolate bridge.
“We- We could name her Cerberus,”- Said Crowley, his voice cracking uncharacteristically.
“Pardon?”
“The creature. Cat. We can call her Cerberus.”
Aziraphale looked, for a lack of a better word, scandalized. “No. Absolutely not- No way in Heaven, I say!”
“You never appreciated my sense of humor.”
“It’s hardly amusing- it’s vile.”
“Well, what’s your suggestion then?”- Crowley leveled him with a cold stare.
The angel flustered, dragging his eyes away. “Oh, erm- Well, I haven’t… Whiskers, perhaps?”
“An’ you said I wasn’t creative.”
“Well, pardon me for-“- Aziraphale interrupted himself halfway through, mouth hanging agape as he gawked out towards the Thames. And before Crowley could register what happened, he was being dragged along by an overtly enthusiastic angel, the sky and ground mixing into a colorful kaleidoscope of drunken haze.
“My word, Crowley, would you look at that view! Those lights!”- Aziraphale shouted, surging forward across the street to the other side. Crowley felt sick.
It was his turn to stumble, then, as he tripped over the curb which separated the sidewalk from the road (and was placed there, he suspected, to spite him specifically). The hard metal fence bore into his back as he turned to break his fall, Aziraphale stumbling in right after and landing square onto the demon’s chest.
Crowley shut his eyes to keep the world from spinning.
“It truly is remarc- bloody pretty, that’s what it is!”
It took a few steady breaths that he didn’t actually need before Crowley could open his eyes again – and he couldn’t help but stare.
“Yeah. Yeah ‘s beautiful.”
Aziraphale turned to look at him, shaking his head. “No, no, Crowley- You’re not looking! The view- The lights!”
Crowley blinked lazily behind his sunglasses, continuing to stare at Aziraphale’s face, his soft golden curls practically surrounded in a shining halo of stars. “’m lookin’ at the brightest light of all, angel.”
“How can you be looking if it’s behind- Oh.”
They stared at each other in silence for a long moment, Crowley brought up his hand to the angel’s face, gingerly stroking a thumb under his bottom lip.
“Are you trying to tempt me, demon?”
He barked out a laugh.
“Who, me? Can’t imagine.”
Aziraphale smiled, pulling back, letting his fingers brush against Crowley’s chest. “Come now. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I believe we’ve got a bottle of bourbon waiting for us at your place?”
It just so happened that his place was suddenly that much closer than it should have been. The London Eye’s lights shimmered brilliantly behind them, but Crowley wouldn’t see that. He hardly bothered turning back.
Crowley’s flat was about as luxurious as it got, located on the twentieth floor with a view to the House of Parliament. Not that a demon necessarily needed a flat, but he did like to indulge in finer things humanity came up with.
Plus, it provided a place for his plants.
“Say, Crowley, what is it that you do again?”- Aziraphale asked as they were making their way up in the fully-mirrored elevator. Crowley quirked an eyebrow.
“Torture lost souls for all eternity?”
“No, I meant, here. In the human world-“
Before the demon could interject with another half-witted jab about his wicked activities, Aziraphale quickly continued.
“What is your profession?”
“My p- Profession?”
“I mean, you’ve got- You’ve got a flat in the middle of London! You drive a Bentley- Er, well, used to- Wh-What I mean to say is, don’t people ever worry- wonder where you’ve got the money from?”
“You know as well as I do where I get the ‘money’ from,”- The demon scoffed, feeling all that much more sober already, -“Where do you get your money from?”
“At least I run a legitimate business-“- Aziraphale protested as he made his way down the ever-stretching hallway, only to be interrupted by a ludicrously loud moan resonating throughout.
He snapped his mouth shut with a click, eyes growing wide as he turned around to stare at Crowley. The other shrugged.
“Wasn’t me.”
The first moan quickly followed by another, and then another, and then a string of curse words so revolting, it would make Satan himself blush furiously. It certainly did Aziraphale.
“Looks like my neighbors are having a party,”- Crowley mused all too delightedly, staring at the jumping knocker on the door opposing his own.
(Here it should be noted that the scientists conducting the end of the world research found that ‘having sex’ was just as popular of an answer as ‘getting drunk’. At that point they turned to look at one another, shrugged, and proceeded to attribute those responses to either the first or second categories.)
“Well this is- That is quite- That is to say-“- Aziraphale fiddled with the hem of his vest, as he always fiddled in worrying or uncomfortable situations.
“You’d think a place as expensive as this would have better soundproofing, eh?”
It wasn’t that angels were necessarily ashamed of or condemning all acts sexual – Aziraphale prided himself on having a healthy and reasonable relationship with that aspect of humanity in spite of never actually participating in it himself. However, knowing of something and experiencing it, albeit somewhat second hand, were completely different concepts. Perhaps if he was sober enough he’d react differently, but as it were, desperately avoiding eye contact with the door or Crowley was all he was capable of doing in this situation.
Crowley sighed. “Let’s get inside, angel. I’ll make sure all of… that stays out here.”
As much as it would have delighted him to taunt Aziraphale further, he really wasn’t certain he wasn’t going to discorporate on the spot.
“Y-Yes, yes, that would be good. Quite good, really.”
Just a few moments later the angel found himself in an unfamiliar room, sitting on an unfamiliar couch, watching a familiar figure pour all-too familiar liquid into a couple of glasses.
Crowley’s flat was the very opposite of what Aziraphale would call ‘good taste’ – all grey and concrete, with huge windows and large rooms containing barely anything in them but a few pieces of overtly shiny furniture. He was certain there had to be some kind of a sin for having all the chairs in one’s home resemble thrones. He couldn’t quite recall what it was.
“Real- Really, how long’s it been since you’ve last visited?”- Crowley slurred, missing the glass he was holding entirely and spilling bourbon onto the counter. It ended up full anyway.
“Oh, I don’t quite- I don’t believe- Why, I-I don’t think I recall, dear- The 80s, was it?”
However, sitting on this extravagant red leather sofa, surrounded by lavish exuberant green plants and enormous windows looking out towards Big Ben, he couldn’t say he wasn’t enjoying it – and maybe, somewhere deep down, even finding a new appreciation for what he always imagined to be wasteful excess.
The demon sneered, making his was over to the couch with the glasses and the bottle, -“You’ve got to do better than that, angel! You ‘aven’t even seen my- my TV! I’ve cable ‘n everythin’.”
Aziraphale wasn’t quite listening anymore, paying more attention to the steady onset of London traffic than anything his counterpart was saying. He was, as they say, rather drunk.
It really was rare that he would seek out Crowley’s company first, and when he did it was always on business. Admittedly, business more often than not turned into either drinking or dining, but the point stood that he wouldn’t allow himself to indulge in the demon’s presence for longer than strictly necessary.
Not even when he desperately wanted to.
His eyes trailed over to scan Crowley’s form, sitting in that familiar spread out pose that Aziraphale could hardly imagine was comfortable, watching TV that he didn’t realize was now turned on to one of the News networks. The host was saying something about mass hysteria, but the angel was focused on something else entirely.
How queer was it, he thought as he watched the reflection of London traffic in Crowley’s sunglasses, that he always had such a wonderful time in his company. They were never anything more than work associates, he would always tell himself, and if he was being drunk or particularly honest, he would even go as far as to call them friends. But now his eyes kept trailing back to Crowley’s hand lying idly next to his, and his mind to the reckless couple next door. He wondered if Crowley has ever done anything like it – though, he must have. It was practically his job. Aziraphale poured himself another glass of bourbon. He stared at Crowley’s hand again.
Surely it would be alright to hold it, wouldn’t it? They held hands multiple times before. There was nothing special about it. Then again, now he’s made it weird by thinking about it too long. But, of course, Crowley wouldn’t have any idea how long he’s thought about it, so it would hardly be weirder than any other time. And what if all those other times were weird too?
He downed his glass in one go and firmly slid his hand across the couch before he could change his mind yet again. His fingers slipped into spaces between Crowley’s, surprisingly cold in the summer warmth.
The demon slowly lolled his head to the side to throw a questioning look at Aziraphale, who was firmly avoiding his eyes. Then he blinked down to stare at their locked hands.
And in another stunningly lively move, Crowley was suddenly toppling over Aziraphale, pinning his wrists over his head and staring down at him from behind his sunglasses.
The angel gasped in surprise.
“Why, darling, could it be that you’re trying to tempt me?”- He grinned, leaning in just that much closer.
Darling, Aziraphale noted mentally. That was a new one.
“Hardly able to, my dear.”
He wriggled one hand free and reached out to pinch the sunglasses off of the demon’s nose. Crowley swallowed hard.
“You might want to check up on that,”- He whispered, blinking languidly, bringing up a hand to stroke Aziraphale’s cheek. It was burning.
Aziraphale always found his eyes fascinating. Even after all this time he still wasn’t quite certain if it was okay to bring it up, how sensitive of a subject it was – but they always seemed to hypnotize him right in place. Very on the nose, he had to admit.
“Do you- Is this- Um, do you really-“- He tried to no avail, licking at his dry lips, his drunk mind trying to tie together a single sentence in spite of the sudden dizziness, -“Um, is this- Do you really think that this is- That this is wise, Crowley?”
He was unable to tear his eyes away from the demon’s piercing gaze. His throat was suddenly too tight.
“I ‘aven’t got the faintest what you’re referring to,”- Crowley lazily smirked down, his hand still pressed against Aziraphale’s cheekbone, thumb stroking gently.
The angel furrowed his brows, his own free hand finding its way to Crowley’s wrist. He licked at his lips again, the air surrounding the two of them suddenly that much warmer. He was practically burning.
“I believe you do.”
Crowley was burning.
“…How long, Aziraphale.”
The angel didn’t dare pretend he didn’t understand the question, finally found the strength to avert his eyes and stare at House of Parliament instead. The lights really were so beautiful…
That all too familiar heavy feeling settled in his stomach again; that feeling that he desperately tried to suppress. Run away from. A feeling that was rejected by his very nature, yet lingered like a lasting aftertaste.
The TV was now turned off.
“Far too long, dear. Far too long…”- He muttered, barely audible if not for the all-encompassing silence of the flat.
“How. Long.”
Aziraphale shut his eyes, wrinkling up his nose as the alcohol left his system practically against his will. He needed to be drunker- so, so much drunker.
“Why, decades, dearest,”- He swallowed down, feeling as though if he had a heart it would surely stop beating right then and there, -“Eight of them, if I’m not mistaken. Give or take a few, that is.”
Crowley didn’t respond, and Aziraphale dared to turn only to see a ghost of a smile trace his lips. There was something… almost tortured about it.
The angel exhaled hard, feeling as though he might just catch on fire.
“How-“
“Centuries, angel,”- His voice was quiet, gentle, so incredibly, unfairly gentle.
Aziraphale blinked, eyes growing wide- “No-“
“Six of them, if I’m not mistaken-“
“No-! No, I would have-“- He leaned up on his elbows, mouth dry, hands suddenly shaking. No, it couldn’t have been- He would have known, he would have felt it!
He was an angel, it was in his very nature! But looking at Crowley then, in that moment, he couldn’t- He didn’t feel any different.
Crowley always felt just like Crowley.
“Would I lie to you?”
Of course, Aziraphale hardly could account for the fact that once something was there long enough, one simply stops noticing it, no matter how prominent it was.
That’s why you don’t exactly notice the beating of your heart or the rush of blood through your veins; why you don’t exactly stop to take note of the air around you and how easy it is to breathe. It is simply there – a fact of life that always has been, and, if you’re lucky, always will be.
The demon smirked, tilting his head.
They were close now, ever so closer. Closer than they have ever been.
Aziraphale didn’t have any organs, of course, not any physical ones, but something in his chest still ached. His soul, perhaps. His very being.
“Crowley, I-“- He began, gently tracing a thumb under his jaw, the heat almost painful to his fingers, eyes darting to his lips if only for a moment, -“…May I?”
And Crowley was leaning in in seconds, lips hovering just inches away. They didn’t need to breathe, but both hungrily swallowed each other’s air, heavier than the weight of the world combined in that small space between their existences.
“Of course. Of course you may, angel,”- Crowley murmured, not quite touching, so close and so far, his own hands trembling terribly.
Aziraphale exhaled hard, leaning forward while everything in his angelic being screamed at him, scorched at his core. His hand traveled back, getting lost in the demon’s hair, the other holding onto his neck, moving almost as though through heavy water, something in the very air resisting, pushing him away.
“Well… This is… An unprecedented outcome, now isn’t it?”- Crowley tried to smile, poorly masking the crack in his voice with a cough.
The angel couldn’t help the nervous laugh that bubbled out of his throat, -“Yes, it- it really is. Ineffable, you might say-”
Crowley kissed him.
And when they finally connected, it was as though inferno itself broke out inside Aziraphale’s chest, as though he was fully submerged in a bucket of ice cold water – as though he could finally breathe again. His eyes fell shut instantly, the contact almost physically painful, his hands grasping at Crowley’s hair, the collar of his shirt, whatever force pushing him away was now gone entirely, replaced with a desperate need to pull him closer, closer, so much closer-
He didn’t know whether this was because Crowley was a demon or because he was just Crowley, had no point of reference to compare this to, but it felt as though hellfire was licking at Aziraphale’s lips, his skin, his very existence. That familiar dark feeling returned, twofold, threefold, overwhelming him whole to the point of drunkenness yet again, and in the next moment the angel was opening his mouth in pure lustrous desperation.
Crowley welcomed him entirely, sliding his tongue over, releasing a low, rumbling moan which resonated throughout the angel’s chest. Aziraphale tasted of honey, of clouds, of lemongrass, of angel cake, and something so very remarkably fresh. Every touch was sending him over the edge, his shaky hands barely managing to support his weight, overwhelmed by the burn, the pain, the sweetness, the need.
That new cologne made his head spin.
And in the next moment they really were spinning, turning over as Aziraphale roughly flipped him onto his back, towering above him without stopping to break contact, kissing him as though his very life depended on it. Crowley released a surprised gasp into his mouth, threading his fingers into the angel’s feather-like hair before reciprocating, soft, tender, pulling away only when he felt he couldn’t take it much longer without completely discorporating.
It could have lasted a month. It could have lasted ten seconds. He wasn’t sure anymore.
The room was swimming, detached from reality, a vague assimilation of shapes and colors.
Aziraphale breathed hard above him, eyes half-lidded, expression darker than anything Crowley has ever seen before. His gut twisted painfully.
“Angel…”- He began, voice raspy and hardly his own. He forgot what he was going to say entirely, as Aziraphale was now taking off his coat, shrugging it off to the floor, leaning back in and gently biting down at his bottom lip. Crowley couldn’t help the mewl that escaped his throat, the breath that got caught somewhere in his chest.
Six thousand years - six thousand goddamn years – and every second was worth the wait just to have Aziraphale lightly press his lips to his jaw like that, to feel that heavenly tongue run down the side of his neck, making him squirm in place, desperately swallow in the air he never needed until now.
There was something scratchy in his stomach then, something sending sparks all throughout his body, making his hips buckle forward against his will, his limbs no longer listening as he threw a leg over Aziraphale’s back, bringing him closer.
The angel paused in leaving a trail of particularly wet kisses down Crowley’s throat, changing his direction upwards to press his lips against his ear instead, whispering, -“Are you alright, dearest?”
And Crowley barely found it in him to turn his head, stare Aziraphale into those forever blue eyes, now nearly all the way black with the pupils diluted. He exhaled a shaky breath, pressing his nose into the angel’s cheek, inhaling hard.
“I am better than I ever was. The best I’ve been since I fell, Aziraphale,”- He felt the angel’s hand travel further south, his fingers now stroking at his hip, -“And- And what about you? Are we going too fast again, angel?”
He grasped at Aziraphale’s shoulders, closing his eyes as he waited for the answer. It was nothing new – it took centuries for them to sit on the bus side by side. Crowley was prepared to wait several more if he had to.
They had all the time in the world now, after all.
Aziraphale brought his hands back up to cup Crowley’s jaw, before catching his lips in another slow kiss.
“On the contrary, dear,”- He smiled against his skin, sweet, tender, and so eternally burning, -“I believe it is long overdue.”
And as though to prove his point, the angel shifted and now Crowley could feel a resolute hardness prodding at his thigh. He stopped breathing for good this time, eyes blown wide as he turned to face Aziraphale.
“Bedroom. Now.”
“Oh- You- You have a bedroom?”
“Now I do.”
The angel blinked as he was suddenly being tugged from the couch towards a door he could swear wasn’t there before, stumbling ever so slightly on the way in.
The room was as large as any other in Crowley’s flat, all greys and plants, with those giant windows facing out towards Big Ben. It didn’t seem to matter that with the door placement it should have technically been in the middle of the outside hallway. In fact, reality didn’t seem to matter at all just then.
“Wh- I don’t remember adding these,”- Crowley paused in his tracks, taking a moment to feel the silk canopy bed curtains between his fingers. Aziraphale couldn’t help the blush that formed on his cheeks.
“O-Oh, that was me. I just- I, um, thought it might be a bit more… Intimate, this way?”
The demon turned back with a delighted smirk, one that was practically bordering on a grin.
“Is that so?’
It struck Aziraphale quite prominently just then that Crowley was, indeed, really incredibly beautiful. With those striking yellow eyes, that lean pose, the fiery ginger hair and the constant bemusement that seemed to never leave his thin lips – the angel blinked in surprise at his own realization, taking a few definitive steps forward to let his fingers undo the first button on Crowley’s shirt. He bit his bottom lip, tugging back the fabric to reveal a slender collar bone.
“Aziraph-?”
“I think I understand it now, the whole ‘devilishly handsome’ business,”- He smiled, allowing his fingers to continue undoing the buttons.
Crowley’s hands were now firmly grasping him by the elbows as he was leaning against the canopy, looking as though his legs might just give out if not for the support. Aziraphale leaned in, tasting more of that painfully hot skin, toppling them both over onto the bed as the demon underneath him released another loud whimper.
He hardly bothered to resist that dark overwhelming feeling, letting it encompass him whole as though someone switched off the very sun, allowing it to take control completely, following its every whim and desire, his hands travelling over Crowley’s ribs, his back, his slender hips, his mouth moving down the exposed chest. His fingers felt as though they were continuously stung by innumerable needles, the pain sending electric jolts throughout his body and right into his abdomen. He bit down hard at the side of Crowley’s navel, licking at the teeth marks when he heard the demon underneath him let out a low hiss.
Crowley could only do so much not to completely dissolve on the spot, digging his fingers into Aziraphale’s hair which he could swear was glowing, his other hand tangled up in the bed sheets. The angel’s mouth reached the hem of his trousers and didn’t stop there, continuing on to leave wet kisses down the front of his pelvis, making Crowley’s hips buckle forward violently and his eyes roll back in his head.
“Fuuuuck, angel- Oh holy- Oh, fuck-“- He swore loudly, tugging Aziraphale upwards, capturing his lips in his own, desperately licking at the inside of his mouth.
And in the next moment their clothes were gone entirely, flesh against flesh, Aziraphale gasping in shock and Crowley lulling his head back as electricity coursed throughout his body.
“Crowley!”- The angel complained loudly, the tone of his voice having some weight if not for the brilliantly red blush spread throughout his ethereal face, -“That’s cheating!”
Crowley panted hard, hands thrown over Aziraphale’s back as he held on for dear life, -“No- No, angel- You were the one cheating- With your teasing and your- I- I simply made it more fair.”
And how could Aziraphale possibly argue with that when he was now looking at him from underneath those hooded eyelids, his erection prodding at his hip, his fingers practically burning a hole in his skin. He breathed out hard, moving ever so slightly as Crowley’s fingers found their way to his chest, brushing over his nipples, that resolute pressure building up in his stomach with every stroke.
“Al- Alright. That is to say, um- Quite- Quite well, indeed-“
Aziraphale released a shaky breath, his hands suddenly too cold despite the astounding heat between their bodies.
If there was one thing he admired about Crowley it was that he was completely unpredictable – brash in all his decisions and ideas, always bold and straightforward and so unlike Aziraphale. Unlike any angel, in fact.
Unlike anything Heaven.
And looking at him now, suddenly completely and utterly naked, putting a definitive damper onto the angel’s hard work of undressing, taking it to himself to strive forward and simultaneously wait for Aziraphale to catch up – well, he couldn’t help but lose his composure for a minute or two.
This was Crowley. His Crowley.
Right here, right now, underneath him, completely naked and unashamed - and so obviously desperately, thoroughly, so overwhelmingly in lo-
“Please don’t tell me you’ve suddenly remembered the Old Testament,”- Crowley quirked an unimpressed eyebrow, interrupting the long moment of frozen silence.
Aziraphale, in turn, didn’t hesitate to scoff, perhaps even having the gull to look slightly offended.
“Excuse me, this has nothing to do with the Testaments- Not that the Old one should matter anyway, it has been outdated for quite some time- “
“Then are you going to do something? Or should we just go for tea and crumpets instead?”
The angel blinked.
“Oh, crumpets-?”
“Aziraphale.”
“Sorry, sorry-!”- The angel sighed, the minuscule movement sending a jolt of pleasure up his back as their bodies brushed against one another, having him cough to mask a moan building up in the back of his throat, -“Th-Th-This is all too new to me, all too human-“
“Then let’s figure it out together, yeah?”- Offered Crowley, voice suddenly much gentler, his hips slowly bucking upwards, making Aziraphale exhale sharply.
“W-Wait- You mean to tell me... You’ve never-?”
“Of course not,“- The demon replied immediately, looking everywhere but the angel’s face
“Never-!?”
“Nope.”
“In six thousand years-?”
“Yup.”
“Not even once-?”
“And why would I.”
“But weren’t you ever curious? Didn’t you ever want to-?”
“Oh, I wanted to...”- Crowley suddenly leaned up, his lips pressing against Aziraphale’s throat, taking a moment to leave a wet mark on his skin, -“But you weren’t ready.”
Aziraphale swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up against the demon’s lips, his jaw dropping slightly. He wanted to say something else, something entirely unnecessary, perhaps, or maybe something that needed saying all along - but then Crowley was capturing his lips again and all he could do in that moment was reciprocate with as much force as he could muster, kissing him deep, needing, wanting-
He closed his eyes, letting his instincts take over once again, letting that feeling that he would now forever associate with Crowley lead him to new, never before considered places – and in the next moment, Crowley was crying out, throwing his head backwards as Aziraphale’s suddenly slick fingers found their way to his backside.
“What are you- Fuck, angel, what are you doing!?”- He hissed out, voice hoarse and trembling, fingernails digging into the angel’s shoulders.
“Erm, preparing you? I believe that is the standard custom-“
“Shit, just get it over with- I’m a demon, for heaven’s sake, I can-“
Whatever it was Crowley could do was lost in a particularly loud moan that resonated throughout the room once he felt Aziraphale’s middle finger prodding at his entrance, his back arching out as his eyes rolled back in his head.
He was practically falling apart in his arms at the smallest movement, and the angel could not look away. He’s known Crowley for six thousand year – six thousand goddamn years – and in all this time he has never, not once, have come even close to seeing him so utterly and purely destroyed. Aziraphale pressed his lips to his chest, letting his tongue taste the spice and the bitter sweetness of his sweat, watching his every move, every pant, every squirm as he added in another finger.
He could not look away.
Crowley looked beautiful. Crowley was beautiful.
And in that moment Aziraphale felt it yet again, that something that tugged at his chest ever so often – that time in the Garden when they first met, that time in Rome when they dined together for the very first time, that time in France when they had crepes, that time in the church when the bombs fells, and all and each and every other time after and in between – he felt it now once more, and he suddenly knew exactly what it was.
Indeed, maybe, he always knew.
The demon bit down the back of his hand to stifle his moan, and Aziraphale knew that he wanted to know him – know him in a very biblical way. He needed it.
He wanted it.
“I want you, Crowley,”- He whispered against his chest, voice low and rumbling, resonating throughout every electron of the charged air between them. Aziraphale pulled his fingers out, adjusting his also suddenly slick erection to the demon’s entrance, that dark feeling becoming him entirely.
“You have me, angel,”- Crowley whispered back, and Aziraphale realized all too clearly that whoever said that angels weren’t capable of sin were absolute liars.
In that moment, this one angel felt pure lust, and there was nothing in the entirety of the whole damn Creation that could have prevented him from following through with this temptation.
He slowly pushed his hips forward, biting down on Crowley’s shoulder hard, filling him up and feeling absolutely whole himself.
“Fuck,”- He swore, loud, unapologetic, feeling as though the entirety of Heaven and Hell combined could not have possibly separated them in that moment. He felt Crowley’s hips jerk wildly, a ludicrously lewd moan escaping his lips as he barely whispered “Say that again”.
And so Aziraphale did, swearing loudly, wantonly, over and over and over again as he moved his hips in rhythm with Crowley’s, his head suddenly clouded over with sparks and flashes of absolute pure bliss, the heat between them rivaling that of Armageddon itself. Pure fire was coursing through his veins as his lips somehow managed to find Crowley’s, perhaps pulled together by a force stronger than that of any magnet, their kiss slow and chaste in spite of the absolute fireworks going off in the angel’s stomach.
Crowley’s legs locked behind Aziraphale’s back, his hands digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave deep bruises, fingernails tearing at the fragile skin, as the angel’s own hands desperately held onto his sides, moving deeper, harder, more urgent with each passing second, their bone marrows mixing into one as their existences transcended human, Heavenly, or Hellish understanding - becoming something else entirely.
Aziraphale was suddenly looking at his own face from underneath himself, knowing full well Crowley was above him, there, still with him, still moving, rocking, gasping for air as one, and as their lips connected once again, he opened his eyes only to see the demon back where he belonged, his eyes staring intently into his own, a new understanding written into them. The angel bit at the side of his neck, feeling a pulsing vein with his tongue, Crowley’s heat around his hardness overwhelming.
The universe itself stopped existing just then. All of Creation was gone, save for the two of them.
That was what it felt like, at least – and who’s to say that in that one short, insignificant moment, one falling angel and one rising demon really weren’t the only ones in being.
Aziraphale came with a soft cry, something in between Crowley’s name and a swear, hot sweat rolling off of his back as he took a moment to let his vision adjust and his breathing steady. He didn’t dare move again as his consciousness settled in and realization of what they’ve done took over. He pulled out slowly, exhaling hard, feeling exhausted, dirty, weak, manic.
Feeling so remarkarbly, utterly human.
“Aziraphale…”- A voice dearer than any other quietly resonated throughout the room.
And when Aziraphale cautiously opened his eyes again, the angel couldn’t breathe.
It was a good thing that he was already half-lying down, or he would have surely fallen over in that moment. Crowley was looking at him – really, truly, sincerely looking, his eyes lost, diluted, exhausted, and so, devastatingly, purely, frantically full of love Aziraphale couldn’t help his arms giving out from underneath him, having him fall flat onto the demon's chest.
The drunk feeling returned with the force of being hit by a speeding truck, that feeling of absolute love knocking the very wind out of the angel’s soul, having him take a moment to even remember to exist. Never has he felt anything quite like it, not even in Tadfield, and certainly neverdirected towards himself.
That unadulterated, whole, ethereal, mesmerizing, eternal feeling of complete and utter love.
Crowley loved him.
The thought alone was enough to ascend him into Heaven - if he didn’t know what the place was like.
It coursed throughout his entire body, that pure ecstasy that swelled within his corporeal form and overflowed into the universe; that pulsing, shrieking sensation of love, love, love, love that made the past, the present, and the future bleed together into one beautiful, disastrous mess that washed over him in waves like a warm tide at a sunny beach on a tired afternoon.
It was love, he was loved, he was loved by Crowley and-
Aziraphale snapped his eyes open.
There was now something very tangible burning at his fingers, something beyond the realm of abstract feeling, and he turned his head only to realize the entirety of the canopy curtains were on fire. Actual, literal fire.
Their bed was burning.
“Oh, dear-!“- The angel mumbled as he shot upright, waving a hand to make the raging flames disappear. The damage was done, of course – most of the bed sheets were gone, and the canopy was now slowly but surely falling apart piece by piece. The floor and the walls were a blackened mess of scorch marks.
One of the bed legs cracked under their weight.
“Oh, my- Oh- Oh, I-I’m… I’m so sorry, Crowley, let me just-“- Aziraphale tried to stand up, to move and fix the damage that was no doubt a result of their recklessness- but in the next moment, Crowley was suddenly laughing, hard, bubbling, throwing his head back in pure delight as he pulled the fidgeting angel close to his chest, dropping back down on the mostly destroyed mattress.
The leg gave out then, and one corner of the bed dropped down to the floor with a resolute thud.
Crowley laughed harder.
Aziraphale failed to see the humor in the situation, but after a moment of stunned silence he chuckled along anyway, too dazed and utterly exhausted to even bother thinking about doing anything other than tucking himself into the crook of his demon’s neck.
He suddenly remembered that he was loved.
“Well that was... Something. Ineffable, even,”- Said Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t even need to look to hear the smile in his voice, -“…Didn’t know my plants could bloom like that.”
The angel exerted a fraction of an effort to look around just then – and indeed, the various plant life Crowley had placed around the room was now sprouting numerous flowers the names of which Aziraphale could hardly recall. He was certain there were quite a few of them that weren't supposed to actually exist.
“I don’t believe they can, dear,”- He mumbled, feeling a blush creep up his neck. Yes, this was definitely the result of their little exercise as well, -“I quite like it, though. Our very own little Eden.”
It really was. A bit more constricted space-wise, but lovely nevertheless.
Crowley tensed underneath him.
“A-Ah, but it doesn’t have to be!”- Aziraphale was quick to correct himself, sitting up again, ready to miracle it all away, -“Let me just fix this for you, yes-?”
“Don’t you dare, angel,”- Crowley suddenly snapped, roughly pulling him back into an all-encompassing embrace. Aziraphale gasped at the contact.
“R-Right, sorry, I’m just- Let me at least fix the bed-“
“No. Leave it.”
“But-“
“I said leave it, Aziraphale,”- The demon burrowed his nose in the angel's hair then, inhaling sharply as his thumb gently stroked down his arm, -“It’s perfect the way it is. I don’t want you changing a single damn thing.”
Aziraphale couldn’t help the smile that formed on his lips. Lying there, on pieces of destroyed rubble that could hardly be called a bed anymore, surrounded by a multitude of plants the likes of which could not be found anywhere else on this Earth, he could not possibly be happier. Heaven had nothing on being held like this in Crowley’s arms, knowing that he is loved. By Crowley.
Crowley, who was now reaching for the pair of sunglasses that suddenly appeared on the side of the mattress.
The angel caught him by the wrist, stopping him halfway.
“Why bother? It’s just us here,"- And then, when he didn’t reply, -“I really do love your eyes, Crowley. They’re wonderful.”
The demon took a long, long moment to stare at him then, slowly bringing up a warm hand to cup his jaw and leave a soft, quick kiss at his lips. His eyes were practically glowing, as bright as the lights of London.
“Aziraphale… I…”
“I know, Crowley,”- Aziraphale replied immediately, his chest clenching painfully. Delightfully, -“I felt it. I know.”
Crowley had always felt like Crowley, and that much hasn't changed. What the angel has come to learn in the span of these several hours, is that Crowley always felt like love.
The demon exhaled then, blinking slowly, and that was perhaps the very first time in six thousand years that Aziraphale saw him blush.
He promptly turned away, scoffing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even like you.”
The angel arched his eyebrows in surprise – before bursting into a fit of giggles, scooting up closer to bury his face in Crowley’s neck.
“You do.”
The demon smiled softly, holding onto Aziraphale tight, as though if he let go this all just might disappear. He was so angry for the past six thousand years. So thoroughly annoyed and pissed off and disgusted – with the angel, with the world, with himself.
He thought it was because that was just the way he was – it was in his very nature to feel nothing but the very worst. But now… Well, maybe it wasn’t all so bad. Maybe he didn’t need to be so angry after all.
Maybe, this was… Okay.
“I love you, Aziraphale-”- Crowley finally admitted, out loud and out there for the entirety of all Creation to hear, -“-More than you could ever know.”
“I love you, Crowley-“- Aziraphale replied right back without missing a single beat, turning his face to stare Crowley right into his eyes with those unbearably vibrant blues, -“-More than you have ever realized.”
Whether it was the tone of his voice, the look in his eyes or the touch of his flesh against his own, for the first time since he could remember, Crowley was certain that he could actually feel it. He felt love.
He was loved.
Aziraphale made him feel holy.
Holier than Heaven ever could.
There would be a lot of things yet to come – in the morning there would be strange new sensations and awkward conversations, strained limbs and tender kisses. There would be a realization of what happened this night, a recollection of an experience shared, and a coming up with a brilliant plan that would fool Heaven and Hell itself. There would be punishment avoided and life preserved. There would be St. James Park and cold metal benches. There would be jokes and laughter, and dinner at the Ritz.
There would be a nightingale singing in Berkley Square.
But all of that would come later.
In this one, eternal moment, an angel and a demon lay together as one, holding each other in their arms. Love, blooming in between.
For humanity. For the world. For each other.
There would be many things to come – but most of all, there would be love.
