Agony, torture, eternal pain. Festering boils drive you insane.
Midnight passes. The sickness that's taken hold of every shapeshifter fades away, causing every one to shift back involuntarily. When they awake, they'll be human again, if the shift itself doesn't wake them
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Still, it was worth it. More than worth it.
He stares up at the Kashtta, nerves on edge from lack of sleep, the hissing agony of the boils, and from the emptiness of the city. There are looters out, handfuls of them, but the waves of disaster have left most people either hospitalized or hidden. Chicago reeks. The festering combination of garbage and pulverized animal bodies raises a muggy soup of smell over the streets. Flies whisper over the corpses and crawl everywhere.
Chicago. Adrian shudders and tries the door.
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...for about half a minute.
Owen was up in the infirmary, trying every topical antiseptic and anaesthetic in turn to see if anything would make the boils more or less manageable. He's met with... moderate success. But now, apparently, they have a visitor, and as the headsets don't work, he probably has to be the one going down and making sure it's just a normal supernatural seeking refuge from the plagues and not some kind of crazy plague axe murderer or something.
And hey, it's that demon from the trial.
He pauses on the balcony, looking down and considering what to say. After a moment, he shrugs to himself.
"Looking to kill Jack?" He really can't object, if he is.
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He has been feeling the pangs lately, but the violence from a few days ago has abated that somewhat.
Actually, he's been itching to get his fingers around J's neck ever since the first plague. Adrian looks away.
"Looking for him, yes."
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And that is about as helpful as Owen is going to be unless Adrian needs help arming himself. Then Owen will be a little too helpful for anyone's taste. Except Owen's.
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Seeing Mac again is not something he looks forward to.
The Kashtta is big. There are a lot of creepy hallways, even just on the one damn floor, the fit Owen's general description. Eventually he has to hit on the right one, however. Eventually he does.
And suddenly he's fighting the pressure of a half-dozen different confessions. "...Hello."
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And then there are footsteps and is NOWHERE in this building safe any more?
He looks up, teeth grit almost immediately, and then relaxes noticeably upon seeing it's Adrian. Adrian probably has some sort of Charun sense that lets him home in, or something. The man found him outside a Dunkin' Donuts when he'd laid a trail suggesting Iowa. And for all that Adrian may or may not be here to kill him, he's surprisingly nonthreatening ( ... )
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Adrian sits down across from J and leans his head back against the wall. Why is he even here? He doesn't have the energy for banter.
If it's your last week on earth, part of him whispers, you might as well get it all out in the open.
"Just another," he says.
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Instead he steps closer, leaning against the wall and sliding down it perhaps a little closer to the charun than would be construed casual.
It's okay. It's okay that absolutely nothing makes sense here, nothing falls into a beautiful ultimate order. God's wrath is raining down on Chicago without God's will to guide it, and they're lost in the floods, as always. It's how the world is, and in a year, in a decade, in another millennium it'll be the same as it always was.
It still... doesn't seem to make it ache any less.
"I don't suppose Rachel is taking it all too well," he says, and lets a mirthless laugh out after it. "I guess I don't know who would."
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The same night I told her I tried to kill myself. He was just going to say it. Have it out, a sort of 'So there', have it done.
Four days. What difference does it make what you say and what you don't?
All the difference in the world.
None at all.
He presses the heels of his hands against his forehead. "I'm losing my mind. No. Lost my mind. Still trying to pretend like I have one." He takes a breath and stares straight at J. At his nose. It gives the illusion, at least, that he's looking the other man in the face. In the eyes. "I was going to kill myself, about a month ago. I would have, if someone hadn't seen me. And now I'm going to die after a month of telling myself that tomorrow might be easier to live through. And you know--"
Adrian rubs his mouth, shoves to his feet, paces the distance from one side of the hall to the other. "I want to laugh. I want to laugh every time I think about it, and I can't."
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J--, in any of his aliases, tends to familiarize himself with whatever might be useful to help him communicate with people around him - apparently, that holds true even when he has no intention of communicating with them at all. He's been corresponding with a librarian on the journal networks, after a truly spectacular array of locks to keep it from being anyone who'd so much as heard of him, but she's been copying things down for him, downloading texts in the common domain, scouring the internet.
The centre cannot hold.
Of course, her journal being a laptop, he hasn't heard from her since the plagues began. Of course, Yeats was nothing new - but he'd forgotten most of the poem, everything except the part which always came up.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
...of course, he's read it recently enough now that the words come almost unbidden.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate ( ... )
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I can't comfort you. I can't do anything for you. I can't do anything for myself.
He shivers, willing himself to push J away or say something or... something. It doesn't feel right, anyone but Rachel holding him this way. He doesn't understand why anyone else would want to, particularly not right now.
And that reminds him of the boils, the festering sores covering them both and he does pull away, shuddering again. He feels like he should apologize. Make some excuse. "Sorry," he mumbles. "Sorry, I'm--" Adrian shakes his head. He's all out of excuses. About damn time.
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That response hurts more than he expected it to, and probably exactly as much as he should have expected it to. You were doing so well. Just hide, don't touch-
His face falls back into a hard-edged acceptance, an acknowledgement, a I know. Things are just this way, aren't they?
"It's all right," he says. "You don't need to."
Reciprocate. Be sorry. Say anything. Understand.
( Be anywhere near me. I know it's uncomfortable.)
"I'm not asking for anything." He pulls out another laugh - it's hollow, but isn't that the best they can hope for? "I'll be fine. It's not as if I have a choice. I just-"
I want to know you are. Somehow. I want to save you. I want you. I want you to kill me. I don't know. I never know. I love you.
He pushes himself back into the wall, making himself widen the distance until it's something more normal for this place and time. It hurts, but that's nothing new.
"I'm usually better with the end of the world," he says. "Well. Some worlds. This world. I can usually do something ( ... )
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He's nervous. Don't do this don't do this god why are you doing this--
Adrian kisses him.
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That was not something he let himself hope for.
And there it is, right there between them like an accidental Fact - like him, there in an instant and something to be lived through now, and his hands go up to catch the back of Adrian's head, the jaw, the nape of his neck, pull him in closer.
...wait.
The thought sparks in the back of his mind; he doesn't want it to.
Read the situation.
...he doesn't want to.
His cognition splits - part of him is pulling back to a construction site, The chorus of (YesYesYes) still screams through his mind, but he pushes and part of him to another world, another universe away, and damn him, damn them both, hadn't they been trying?, two mistakes (were they mistakes) made by two different men (were they different men?) and here he is - is he? - on the verge of another.
He pulls away. Not much - not entirely. He's still holding Adrian's face, but he rests his forehead against Adrian's, letting their mouths catch air. I don't know what we're doing. I don't know ( ... )
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Fuck up. Failure. You did it again.
"Hail Mary," he shudders. "Hail Mary, full of grace--"
His mother would laugh at him if she could see him now. He's shaking and he doesn't know it. He has his eyes closed, all his focus centered on the pressure of contact with J's fingers, his focus breaking between J's words and the dozen stored phrases he's repeated to himself over the years, unintentional little savored pains rehashed until their poison programmed its way into his veins. He stumbles over them in fits and starts, mumbles that fade in and out underneath J’s anger and pain.
"Consiga las alas, o I'el ll le ahoga, usted poca mierda. Prometido para su décimosexto. Solamente mi hijo si su sangre es más negra que la mía.He used to wonder what it would feel like, look like, seeing his mother from under the surface of the stream that ran through their back yard. Features reduced to a trembling blur. Fingers hot against his throat when everything else felt cold ( ... )
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No matter what.
No matter what.
He closes his eyes.
There, in the dark space just behind his eyelids, he can feel everything - the pulse coming down through his fingertips (adjust this for nonhuman norms - you know something about demons, don't you?-it's deep, almost subconscious, so terribly automatic), the tension, the slip from English. J's Spanish is fuzzy; his French is fine, and he remembers his Latin - it's not perfect (what is?), but it's enough to get the sense of things.
...it's enough.
It's enough.
Keep your eyes closed.
He exhales. Begins to draw Adrian in - not for a kiss this time, just getting him closer, getting his own hands on Adrian's body, looking for the knots of tension and the lines of balance that underpin the whole. Easy. Just - easy. Slowly. Threatless. Take away (take up) the weight of his body, take away (smooth out) the tremors in his limbs, slowly - keep everything below thresholds ( ... )
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