Crossing Borders, Connor/Murphy (Boondock Saints / The Sandman crossover)
Title: Crossing Borders
Author: gentlezombie
Fandom: Boondock Saints / The Sandman
Pairing: Connor/Murphy
Rating: R
Word count: ~3,600
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, nor is any of this true as far as I know.
Summary: An encounter with one of the Endless leads to unexpected revelations.
A/N: Written for help_pakistan for kronos999 who requested a crossover with Boondock Saints and The Sandman or American Gods. Thank you so much for your donation and intriguing prompt, and most of all your patience! RL did everything possible to sabotage writing this fic, but I'm very happy to have beaten it into submission at last. No spoilers for the new movie.
Thanks to the awesome messy_kisses for listening to my whining and having a look at the fic. Any remaining oddities are solely my fault.
Crossing Borders
True stories don't have real beginnings. They ramble on like a joke told after too many whiskey shots, lacking in direction and climax. Trying to trace back the conversation to find out how you got to where you ended up is useless.
Still, for convenience's sake, it all starts the day they save the girl with the mismatched eyes.
She sits cross-legged on the floor amidst the carnage, everyone else around her either fled or very, very quiet. She has coordinated her striped pyjama bottoms with a leather corset. With her wild nest of hair and the bruise on her cheek, she looks like someone's idea of very bad a morning after. Her bitten fingers tap a soundless song into the floor, restless and erratic like tiny spiders. Her hands seem to never mind being handcuffed.
Her eyes are weird, but she isn't a druggie. Murphy has seen enough to know the difference between chemically induced hallucinations and holy, and as he crouches down in front of her, the girl's eyes are not so much blank as completely transparent, nothing hiding behind them at all in the emptiness of her skull.
“Your eyes are like coconuts in spring,” she says with a little, broken giggle. Her voice wanders across the ocean and back and gets lost in the places between. “Except peanuts are better, they don't have hair and all those scrunchy bits. I - I haven't offended you, have I?”
She covers her mouth with both hands, handcuffs jingling, like it's the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.
“People tell me I do that, offend them, like when I forget to button up my shirt and why are there so many buttons anyway, and why can't you use hard candy for that. But I'm not sure what it means, other than that they get angry and change colour, and sometimes it's really funny when they get all purple.” She is whispering conspiratorially between her fingers.
Murphy can't help grinning at her, because coconuts, what the fuck?
“Not offended, little sister,” he assures her. “We've been called way worse, eh Connor?”
“You're nice!” she exclaims, throwing her arms around his neck and twirling about, like she's trying to spin him around but only succeeds in moving her own tiny body. When she stops, she peers down at him curiously.
“You have kind eyes, just like my brother. He kills things. Well, not always, things are very good at taking care of that themselves, but everyone blames him anyway so it's not a problem.” There is something then, a stray speck of light in the dullness of her eyes, and she claps her hands together in childish delight. “Oh! He's calling now!”
Murphy is sure the smile she flashes him a second before she disappears is utterly mad. He feels a curious warmth nonetheless, at the corners of his mouth and the tips of his fingers, like residual happiness.
“Who was that little nutter?” Connor asks him when they exit the now-quiet building through the fire escape.
“Don't call her that,” he snaps, not knowing why, because if anyone fits the description it's her. But it also feels unkind.
He wants to explain, the words “someone important” already on his tongue. He doesn't, because Connor would never let him hear the end of it. It's bad enough that the smell of cocoa clings to Murphy's coat for days, and there is a miserable little brown-and-white butterfly nesting in his hair.
If he ever sees her again, he's going to tell her that cocoa has nothing to do with coconuts at all.
***
Sometimes, Connor goes out without Murphy. He changes his shirt and doesn't care about the tears in his jeans, and instead of a cosy Irish pub he heads to one of the fancy bars with pulsing lights and thumping music he absolutely hates.
Sometimes he needs company, and his brother following him like a shadow would only complicate things, cause misunderstandings. Murphy is distracting; they'd only end up laughing at their own sick jokes and get too drunk and fail at talking to the ladies at all. All the same, he feels vaguely guilty. He doesn't have a good reason for that, or for not telling his brother.
The woman sitting at the bar is strikingly beautiful, all wavy blond hair and endless legs and one of her stiletto boots hooked behind Connor's ankle before he's finished ordering his drink. She has a distance about her separating her from the dancing, laughing, sweating mass, yet she is very much earthy and present, the press of leather hard in the dip between chin and calve.
He can't see her eyes, but he knows they are the perfect shade of blue-green that makes him think of home. He knows he is staring, at her breasts and the curve of her neck and her mouth, just a fraction too wide, perfect. Perfect on his, too, when she leans close and cups the back of his neck. And her taste - kisses are not supposed to taste like anything at all, except alcohol and cigarettes and breath mints if you're lucky, but hers do. When you've once had that taste you know you'll always be hungry. The slow curling of her tongue along his leaves him shivering with need, and his hands are clumsy at her waist and under her jacket.
He wants her desperately, mindlessly. She is all he has ever wanted.
But that's... not true. Connor doesn't know where the sudden certainty comes from, but he knows there are things he has wanted before, wanted them more than her. And with that comes a sense of wrongness, her soft curves and the feverish heat of her touch suddenly alarming.
He backs away slowly, his arms raised like he's running from a gunfight. She is not what she seems to be, or rather she must be a lot more than that.
Her face seems harder now, the angles more pronounced. She smiles at him, and it is not a nice smile at all.
“You wouldn't dare.”
He turns, and runs, and takes the long way home, watching over his shoulder at every corner.
Maybe he doesn’t want her anymore, but every inch of his skin feels awakened as he slips between the cold sheets, facing away from his brother.
***
Connor dreams. In his dream there is a house unlike any he's ever seen. Its hallways are of living flesh, supported by pillars which are arteries, lit by the pink glow of blood pumping through the delicate network of veins.
With the effortless logic of dreams, he knows he must get to the center. So he follows the great slow heartbeats echoing through the chambers, venturing down into the belly of the beast.
S/he waits for him at its heart.
It is the woman from the bar, but it is also all women, and men, and everyone in between, all of them reflecting on its shifting face. All beautiful, all desirable.
It is still smiling, in his dream, a smile as sharp as the fingernails that stroke down his cheek.
“No one rejects me,” it tells him. “Not without paying for it.”
He sinks to the ground and he wants nothing more than to be on his knees in front of it, worship it, but again something in him rebels.
He can feel it in his mind, looking for the offending resistance, the concepts keeping him together. It finds: justice, God, brother, all mingled together in an unholy mess. It knows, he thinks in horror, but knows what -
“This is too perfect,” it tells him, and kisses both of his eyes, one after another, and lastly his mouth. That last kiss tastes like iron. Connor thinks blood, and spell, as he falls through the layers of the dream, down, down -
***
Murphy is watching him as he slowly blinks himself awake.
“Ye alright? Looked like ya were having a nightmare.”
It feels like his brother is always watching him, these days. Now it seems he's taken to guarding his dreams, too. Connor is surprised to feel pleased instead of irritated.
“I can't remember,” he says, the details of the dream already slipping away. “But I think it was... good.”
He hears his brother laugh, but he can't concentrate, because Murphy is sitting very close, on the edge of Connor's bed with his jeans only half-zipped, careless little bastard that he is. And it's Connor who can't take his eyes off, a thousand familiar details newly significant. The defined muscles in his brother's arms, the mole by the corner of his too-wide mouth, the rip in his old jeans showing pale skin, dangerously close to his crotch.
He feels amazingly alive again, lit up like that night, with her - what night, who? - as Murphy looks down at him, blue eyes slanted in concern.
He reaches up and pulls his brother down to him, and its the easiest thing to push their mouths together, steal a feel of cool lips against his burning ones. Murphy lets out a muffled sound of surprise, his hands flailing for balance until they settle on either side of Connor's head. Too perfect, Connor thinks.
“Are ya out of yer fuckin' mind?” Murphy hisses, glaring daggers at him. “This yer idea of a fuckin' joke?”
It's so very hard to understand what his brother is saying, his mind filled with a pleasant haze. He has the faint idea that Murphy is protesting, but he doesn't know why when this feels so good, so right. He drags his palms over his brothers back, feels the rapid beating of his heart against his fingers. His hands settle on the small of Murphy's back and pull him down to him, and he smiles as his brother instinctively yields, although his body is still as tense as his expression.
“What are ya doin'?” The question is a whisper, Murphy's eyes closed now, his face hidden against his arm. It makes him look all too vulnerable and young, not something Connor often sees of his brother anymore. This moment, despite the feverish pounding of his blood, were his brother trying to pull away he would let him. Instead Murphy's body is still pressed tight against Connor's, like he's trying to steal as much touch as he is allowed before he is thrown off. That is what Murphy is expecting, Connor realises, rejection and laughter.
He reaches up to turn Murphy's face to him by the chin, something his brother has always claimed to hate but that he now oddly seems to tolerate.
“What's it look like?” He kisses his brother softly, almost reverently, like he's kissed him on the forehead countless times. But this time Murphy whimpers into the kiss, his tongue tentatively licking along Connor's lips, dipping into his mouth. When Connor pulls him up by the short hair at the nape of his neck, his lips are flushed and his hard-on is digging into Connor's thigh.
“I want ya,” Connor tells him, his lips brushing against Murphy's cheek, and it's like that's what his brother's been waiting for, because his mouth is on Connor's again, proper dirty and desperate this time, and his shaking hands are struggling trying to push his jeans down. Connor is more than happy to help him, his hands splayed on Murphy's ass as he returns the kiss, his fingers teasing in a way that makes Murphy curse and his hips jerk against Connor's.
Soon they are gloriously naked, rolling on the narrow bed, pushing and pulling at each other. Everything goes strangely quiet in Connor's mind; there is no space outside this room, no people beyond the two of them, no churches or altars except for his brother's body beneath his. No home save the one he sees in Murphy's blue-green eyes, filled with desire.
***
He wakes up, for the second time, with a start. For a dizzying moment he is unsure of where and who he is. His lips feel dry and swollen, and as he licks them he catalogues a hundred little hurts in his body, different kind than he's used to.
The arm around his waist drags him back to reality, the weight and the meaning too heavy for him to comprehend. He closes his eyes and remembers: Murphy with his head thrown back in pleasure as Connor's mouth does wicked, wicked things to him. The long line of his brother's back, the way his shoulders shake as Connor licks a stripe all the way down. His brothers voice frantic in his ear, panting half-curses, half-endearments as Connor fucks into him slowly, Murphy's hands trapped above his head. The way his brother's face opens up as he comes, reminding Connor of more innocent years.
Connor lies on his bed wide-awake, with his brother's arm around his waist and dried come on his stomach. He remembers he isn't supposed to know any of this.
After a while, he reaches for his pack of smokes. His hand collides with the handle of a gun, lying on the floor amidst the trash. It's instinctive, the way his fingers curve around the smooth wood. He's never before allowed himself the thought, childhood imaginations of Hell too ingrained in him for that to be an option, but it hardly matters now when he's broken the most important rules, important enough never to be spoken out loud.
Murphy turns in his sleep, pulls his brother closer, presses his face between Connor's shoulder-blades. Connor reaches for the smokes instead. He doesn't know what the fuck is going on anymore, but he does know that Murphy would hate him for that.
And he doesn't want to give his brother more reasons than he already has.
Murphy finds Connor sitting in a chair in a cloud of smoke, his shoulders a sharp, forbidding line. He crosses the floor with his bare feet, lays his hand on Connor's back, doesn't comment on the tense energy beneath his fingers, an explosion waiting to happen just beneath the skin.
He sits beside Connor on the floor, and after a while steals one of Connor's smokes, holding it up for his brother to light. He waits for a shift in the tension between them, a minute relaxation. And when Connor takes his cigarette from between his lips to light Murphy's own, he reaches up to kiss his brother, easy as that. He is willing this to be easy and simple.
They don't have it in them to damn each other.
***
All too familiar with miracles and visions by now, the appearance of the King of Dreams in their run-down loft one cold winter morning doesn't surprise them as much as it should.
They are sitting on the bed, Connor's legs around Murphy's waist and his chin down on Murphy's shoulder as he squints to read the newspaper spread over his brother's lap. Possessive is not the right word, because it implies the one-sided act of taking possession of someone. Here with Murphy leaning easily back against his brother, it is impossible and unnecessary to tell who is possessing whom. They occupy the same space, and all the bickering and fighting and give-and-take take place inside that space. Not all that different from before, really. Not different at all.
There is a movement in the air, a cold gush of wind and the somewhat dramatic rustle of a cloak, although neither of the visitors are wearing one. This time, the girl's hair is half-shaved off, and her shorts and bare feet fit badly with the bulky winter coat she is hiding in. She drums her toes against the floor nervously, all of the nails painted a different chipped colour.
“Okay you can change back now, I never know what to say and they might be angry with me and you always do and I don't like this feeling at all all chilly and blue, oh please will you not?”
The cat is black as night, as the spaces between stars. It brushes past her, majestic in the way of cats, an unnervingly intelligent glitter in the dark eyes fixed on the humans on the bed. And then it shimmers, and disappears.
In its place appears a tall, pale, solemn presence, clad improbably in torn black jeans and combat boots. His solemnity is severely compromised by the girl clinging to him with a happy yelp.
“I, too, think I have indulged you long enough,” he says, his voice grave but not without a tiniest hint of warmth, gently disentangling himself.
“I have come come to apologize on behalf of my sister-brother. I am afraid Desire is the kind of creature to exact petty revenge on mortals. I undid its spell as soon as I encountered it, at the edges of my realm. My sister,” he glances at the girl, “demanded a more direct approach.”
“Dream wants to make sure you're okay,” the girl says with conviction.
Connor feels Murphy stifle a laugh. He remembers everything then, not just the blinding desire but a temptation resisted and a spell cast. A spell undone.
“Ye undid the spell,” he says, his fingers playing absently with the frayed hem of Murphy's shirt.
The pale being nods, fixing its dark eyes on him. Connor is suddenly very aware of how tangled together they are, sprawled carelessly on the bed around each other.
“But there's no difference,” he says, looking away, down at his brothers short brown hair.
“I see.”
There is no feeling, no inflection in the words. No judgement where one was expected.
“Then my intervention is not needed.” Dream stops the girl from poking him in the ribs with a bony elbow with an absent flick of his wrist. “However, I offer you compensation, for whatever grief my sibling may have caused you.”
“I'm not sure we want gifts from yer kind,” Murphy says quietly. “Any more of them.”
He still hasn't learned that some people are dangerous to resist. Maybe Connor loves him a little more for that, for the fact that Murphy is never likely to learn. And hell, it's not like them to shut up and look away. He glances up and catches a fleeting hint of expression in Dream's black eyes, something like amusement.
“You should not be so quick to refuse the Lord of Dreams, Murphy MacManus. We must be on our way, but I believe there is something of value I can do for the two of you.”
That is all the explanation Dream gives them, as is customary of him. His little sister skip-hop-runs to Murphy to whisper something in his ear. And then they are gone, and the loft is grey and ordinary again, not even a butterfly left behind this time.
“What'd she tell ya?” Connor asks after a while.
“Her name,” Murphy says. His smile is a little odd. “Turns out I've known her for a while.”
That night, sharing a narrow bed, they dream, two mortals who live their lives in the wild borderlands of idea and dream. They have nightmares, the way all men do, like all killers do until they become murderers. And they have nightmares specific to their kind of sin, of crucifixes crushed in fists until blood flows, and of flames, naturally.
But that night, there are no nightmares. There won't be any for a long time.
***
In the pearly mist of an early dream, two boys walk shoulder to shoulder amidst the ghost-barks of half-remembered trees. Nut-tanned and wiry, their spears and knives and throwing-stones close at hand, they are no less dangerous than anything hiding in the sea-green grass. They are laughing and pushing at each other, young predators yet careless of the strength of their bite.
And perhaps their laughter covers the rustling of the grass, or else the beast has learned new tricks.
The blond boy cries out as he falls under the charging beast, all sharp clever claws and stinking breath, and its jaws clamp shut around his wrist as he fumbles with his knife. He can taste fear in his mouth, dark and bitter, until the beast turns away.
It turns away, and faces the dark-haired boy, whose spear is buried in its shoulder. The terrible form towers above him, and he trembles: half-bear, half-wolf with the tusks of a boar and a mass of black fur, matted with old blood. But there is a fury in him younger and stronger than the ancient malice of the beast. He grips his knife tightly as the beast charges again, and he buries the blade deep into it's belly and slashes up, reaching for its heart.
The blond boy takes the offered hand, bloody as it is with the beast's entrails. He is more grateful than he should be, for they are brothers. And if his brother kisses him a time too many until the look of death has disappeared from his eyes, it is their own affair.
They get up, and they go on, into the wide world still as young as they.
Author: gentlezombie
Fandom: Boondock Saints / The Sandman
Pairing: Connor/Murphy
Rating: R
Word count: ~3,600
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, nor is any of this true as far as I know.
Summary: An encounter with one of the Endless leads to unexpected revelations.
A/N: Written for help_pakistan for kronos999 who requested a crossover with Boondock Saints and The Sandman or American Gods. Thank you so much for your donation and intriguing prompt, and most of all your patience! RL did everything possible to sabotage writing this fic, but I'm very happy to have beaten it into submission at last. No spoilers for the new movie.
Thanks to the awesome messy_kisses for listening to my whining and having a look at the fic. Any remaining oddities are solely my fault.
Crossing Borders
True stories don't have real beginnings. They ramble on like a joke told after too many whiskey shots, lacking in direction and climax. Trying to trace back the conversation to find out how you got to where you ended up is useless.
Still, for convenience's sake, it all starts the day they save the girl with the mismatched eyes.
She sits cross-legged on the floor amidst the carnage, everyone else around her either fled or very, very quiet. She has coordinated her striped pyjama bottoms with a leather corset. With her wild nest of hair and the bruise on her cheek, she looks like someone's idea of very bad a morning after. Her bitten fingers tap a soundless song into the floor, restless and erratic like tiny spiders. Her hands seem to never mind being handcuffed.
Her eyes are weird, but she isn't a druggie. Murphy has seen enough to know the difference between chemically induced hallucinations and holy, and as he crouches down in front of her, the girl's eyes are not so much blank as completely transparent, nothing hiding behind them at all in the emptiness of her skull.
“Your eyes are like coconuts in spring,” she says with a little, broken giggle. Her voice wanders across the ocean and back and gets lost in the places between. “Except peanuts are better, they don't have hair and all those scrunchy bits. I - I haven't offended you, have I?”
She covers her mouth with both hands, handcuffs jingling, like it's the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.
“People tell me I do that, offend them, like when I forget to button up my shirt and why are there so many buttons anyway, and why can't you use hard candy for that. But I'm not sure what it means, other than that they get angry and change colour, and sometimes it's really funny when they get all purple.” She is whispering conspiratorially between her fingers.
Murphy can't help grinning at her, because coconuts, what the fuck?
“Not offended, little sister,” he assures her. “We've been called way worse, eh Connor?”
“You're nice!” she exclaims, throwing her arms around his neck and twirling about, like she's trying to spin him around but only succeeds in moving her own tiny body. When she stops, she peers down at him curiously.
“You have kind eyes, just like my brother. He kills things. Well, not always, things are very good at taking care of that themselves, but everyone blames him anyway so it's not a problem.” There is something then, a stray speck of light in the dullness of her eyes, and she claps her hands together in childish delight. “Oh! He's calling now!”
Murphy is sure the smile she flashes him a second before she disappears is utterly mad. He feels a curious warmth nonetheless, at the corners of his mouth and the tips of his fingers, like residual happiness.
“Who was that little nutter?” Connor asks him when they exit the now-quiet building through the fire escape.
“Don't call her that,” he snaps, not knowing why, because if anyone fits the description it's her. But it also feels unkind.
He wants to explain, the words “someone important” already on his tongue. He doesn't, because Connor would never let him hear the end of it. It's bad enough that the smell of cocoa clings to Murphy's coat for days, and there is a miserable little brown-and-white butterfly nesting in his hair.
If he ever sees her again, he's going to tell her that cocoa has nothing to do with coconuts at all.
***
Sometimes, Connor goes out without Murphy. He changes his shirt and doesn't care about the tears in his jeans, and instead of a cosy Irish pub he heads to one of the fancy bars with pulsing lights and thumping music he absolutely hates.
Sometimes he needs company, and his brother following him like a shadow would only complicate things, cause misunderstandings. Murphy is distracting; they'd only end up laughing at their own sick jokes and get too drunk and fail at talking to the ladies at all. All the same, he feels vaguely guilty. He doesn't have a good reason for that, or for not telling his brother.
The woman sitting at the bar is strikingly beautiful, all wavy blond hair and endless legs and one of her stiletto boots hooked behind Connor's ankle before he's finished ordering his drink. She has a distance about her separating her from the dancing, laughing, sweating mass, yet she is very much earthy and present, the press of leather hard in the dip between chin and calve.
He can't see her eyes, but he knows they are the perfect shade of blue-green that makes him think of home. He knows he is staring, at her breasts and the curve of her neck and her mouth, just a fraction too wide, perfect. Perfect on his, too, when she leans close and cups the back of his neck. And her taste - kisses are not supposed to taste like anything at all, except alcohol and cigarettes and breath mints if you're lucky, but hers do. When you've once had that taste you know you'll always be hungry. The slow curling of her tongue along his leaves him shivering with need, and his hands are clumsy at her waist and under her jacket.
He wants her desperately, mindlessly. She is all he has ever wanted.
But that's... not true. Connor doesn't know where the sudden certainty comes from, but he knows there are things he has wanted before, wanted them more than her. And with that comes a sense of wrongness, her soft curves and the feverish heat of her touch suddenly alarming.
He backs away slowly, his arms raised like he's running from a gunfight. She is not what she seems to be, or rather she must be a lot more than that.
Her face seems harder now, the angles more pronounced. She smiles at him, and it is not a nice smile at all.
“You wouldn't dare.”
He turns, and runs, and takes the long way home, watching over his shoulder at every corner.
Maybe he doesn’t want her anymore, but every inch of his skin feels awakened as he slips between the cold sheets, facing away from his brother.
***
Connor dreams. In his dream there is a house unlike any he's ever seen. Its hallways are of living flesh, supported by pillars which are arteries, lit by the pink glow of blood pumping through the delicate network of veins.
With the effortless logic of dreams, he knows he must get to the center. So he follows the great slow heartbeats echoing through the chambers, venturing down into the belly of the beast.
S/he waits for him at its heart.
It is the woman from the bar, but it is also all women, and men, and everyone in between, all of them reflecting on its shifting face. All beautiful, all desirable.
It is still smiling, in his dream, a smile as sharp as the fingernails that stroke down his cheek.
“No one rejects me,” it tells him. “Not without paying for it.”
He sinks to the ground and he wants nothing more than to be on his knees in front of it, worship it, but again something in him rebels.
He can feel it in his mind, looking for the offending resistance, the concepts keeping him together. It finds: justice, God, brother, all mingled together in an unholy mess. It knows, he thinks in horror, but knows what -
“This is too perfect,” it tells him, and kisses both of his eyes, one after another, and lastly his mouth. That last kiss tastes like iron. Connor thinks blood, and spell, as he falls through the layers of the dream, down, down -
***
Murphy is watching him as he slowly blinks himself awake.
“Ye alright? Looked like ya were having a nightmare.”
It feels like his brother is always watching him, these days. Now it seems he's taken to guarding his dreams, too. Connor is surprised to feel pleased instead of irritated.
“I can't remember,” he says, the details of the dream already slipping away. “But I think it was... good.”
He hears his brother laugh, but he can't concentrate, because Murphy is sitting very close, on the edge of Connor's bed with his jeans only half-zipped, careless little bastard that he is. And it's Connor who can't take his eyes off, a thousand familiar details newly significant. The defined muscles in his brother's arms, the mole by the corner of his too-wide mouth, the rip in his old jeans showing pale skin, dangerously close to his crotch.
He feels amazingly alive again, lit up like that night, with her - what night, who? - as Murphy looks down at him, blue eyes slanted in concern.
He reaches up and pulls his brother down to him, and its the easiest thing to push their mouths together, steal a feel of cool lips against his burning ones. Murphy lets out a muffled sound of surprise, his hands flailing for balance until they settle on either side of Connor's head. Too perfect, Connor thinks.
“Are ya out of yer fuckin' mind?” Murphy hisses, glaring daggers at him. “This yer idea of a fuckin' joke?”
It's so very hard to understand what his brother is saying, his mind filled with a pleasant haze. He has the faint idea that Murphy is protesting, but he doesn't know why when this feels so good, so right. He drags his palms over his brothers back, feels the rapid beating of his heart against his fingers. His hands settle on the small of Murphy's back and pull him down to him, and he smiles as his brother instinctively yields, although his body is still as tense as his expression.
“What are ya doin'?” The question is a whisper, Murphy's eyes closed now, his face hidden against his arm. It makes him look all too vulnerable and young, not something Connor often sees of his brother anymore. This moment, despite the feverish pounding of his blood, were his brother trying to pull away he would let him. Instead Murphy's body is still pressed tight against Connor's, like he's trying to steal as much touch as he is allowed before he is thrown off. That is what Murphy is expecting, Connor realises, rejection and laughter.
He reaches up to turn Murphy's face to him by the chin, something his brother has always claimed to hate but that he now oddly seems to tolerate.
“What's it look like?” He kisses his brother softly, almost reverently, like he's kissed him on the forehead countless times. But this time Murphy whimpers into the kiss, his tongue tentatively licking along Connor's lips, dipping into his mouth. When Connor pulls him up by the short hair at the nape of his neck, his lips are flushed and his hard-on is digging into Connor's thigh.
“I want ya,” Connor tells him, his lips brushing against Murphy's cheek, and it's like that's what his brother's been waiting for, because his mouth is on Connor's again, proper dirty and desperate this time, and his shaking hands are struggling trying to push his jeans down. Connor is more than happy to help him, his hands splayed on Murphy's ass as he returns the kiss, his fingers teasing in a way that makes Murphy curse and his hips jerk against Connor's.
Soon they are gloriously naked, rolling on the narrow bed, pushing and pulling at each other. Everything goes strangely quiet in Connor's mind; there is no space outside this room, no people beyond the two of them, no churches or altars except for his brother's body beneath his. No home save the one he sees in Murphy's blue-green eyes, filled with desire.
***
He wakes up, for the second time, with a start. For a dizzying moment he is unsure of where and who he is. His lips feel dry and swollen, and as he licks them he catalogues a hundred little hurts in his body, different kind than he's used to.
The arm around his waist drags him back to reality, the weight and the meaning too heavy for him to comprehend. He closes his eyes and remembers: Murphy with his head thrown back in pleasure as Connor's mouth does wicked, wicked things to him. The long line of his brother's back, the way his shoulders shake as Connor licks a stripe all the way down. His brothers voice frantic in his ear, panting half-curses, half-endearments as Connor fucks into him slowly, Murphy's hands trapped above his head. The way his brother's face opens up as he comes, reminding Connor of more innocent years.
Connor lies on his bed wide-awake, with his brother's arm around his waist and dried come on his stomach. He remembers he isn't supposed to know any of this.
After a while, he reaches for his pack of smokes. His hand collides with the handle of a gun, lying on the floor amidst the trash. It's instinctive, the way his fingers curve around the smooth wood. He's never before allowed himself the thought, childhood imaginations of Hell too ingrained in him for that to be an option, but it hardly matters now when he's broken the most important rules, important enough never to be spoken out loud.
Murphy turns in his sleep, pulls his brother closer, presses his face between Connor's shoulder-blades. Connor reaches for the smokes instead. He doesn't know what the fuck is going on anymore, but he does know that Murphy would hate him for that.
And he doesn't want to give his brother more reasons than he already has.
Murphy finds Connor sitting in a chair in a cloud of smoke, his shoulders a sharp, forbidding line. He crosses the floor with his bare feet, lays his hand on Connor's back, doesn't comment on the tense energy beneath his fingers, an explosion waiting to happen just beneath the skin.
He sits beside Connor on the floor, and after a while steals one of Connor's smokes, holding it up for his brother to light. He waits for a shift in the tension between them, a minute relaxation. And when Connor takes his cigarette from between his lips to light Murphy's own, he reaches up to kiss his brother, easy as that. He is willing this to be easy and simple.
They don't have it in them to damn each other.
***
All too familiar with miracles and visions by now, the appearance of the King of Dreams in their run-down loft one cold winter morning doesn't surprise them as much as it should.
They are sitting on the bed, Connor's legs around Murphy's waist and his chin down on Murphy's shoulder as he squints to read the newspaper spread over his brother's lap. Possessive is not the right word, because it implies the one-sided act of taking possession of someone. Here with Murphy leaning easily back against his brother, it is impossible and unnecessary to tell who is possessing whom. They occupy the same space, and all the bickering and fighting and give-and-take take place inside that space. Not all that different from before, really. Not different at all.
There is a movement in the air, a cold gush of wind and the somewhat dramatic rustle of a cloak, although neither of the visitors are wearing one. This time, the girl's hair is half-shaved off, and her shorts and bare feet fit badly with the bulky winter coat she is hiding in. She drums her toes against the floor nervously, all of the nails painted a different chipped colour.
“Okay you can change back now, I never know what to say and they might be angry with me and you always do and I don't like this feeling at all all chilly and blue, oh please will you not?”
The cat is black as night, as the spaces between stars. It brushes past her, majestic in the way of cats, an unnervingly intelligent glitter in the dark eyes fixed on the humans on the bed. And then it shimmers, and disappears.
In its place appears a tall, pale, solemn presence, clad improbably in torn black jeans and combat boots. His solemnity is severely compromised by the girl clinging to him with a happy yelp.
“I, too, think I have indulged you long enough,” he says, his voice grave but not without a tiniest hint of warmth, gently disentangling himself.
“I have come come to apologize on behalf of my sister-brother. I am afraid Desire is the kind of creature to exact petty revenge on mortals. I undid its spell as soon as I encountered it, at the edges of my realm. My sister,” he glances at the girl, “demanded a more direct approach.”
“Dream wants to make sure you're okay,” the girl says with conviction.
Connor feels Murphy stifle a laugh. He remembers everything then, not just the blinding desire but a temptation resisted and a spell cast. A spell undone.
“Ye undid the spell,” he says, his fingers playing absently with the frayed hem of Murphy's shirt.
The pale being nods, fixing its dark eyes on him. Connor is suddenly very aware of how tangled together they are, sprawled carelessly on the bed around each other.
“But there's no difference,” he says, looking away, down at his brothers short brown hair.
“I see.”
There is no feeling, no inflection in the words. No judgement where one was expected.
“Then my intervention is not needed.” Dream stops the girl from poking him in the ribs with a bony elbow with an absent flick of his wrist. “However, I offer you compensation, for whatever grief my sibling may have caused you.”
“I'm not sure we want gifts from yer kind,” Murphy says quietly. “Any more of them.”
He still hasn't learned that some people are dangerous to resist. Maybe Connor loves him a little more for that, for the fact that Murphy is never likely to learn. And hell, it's not like them to shut up and look away. He glances up and catches a fleeting hint of expression in Dream's black eyes, something like amusement.
“You should not be so quick to refuse the Lord of Dreams, Murphy MacManus. We must be on our way, but I believe there is something of value I can do for the two of you.”
That is all the explanation Dream gives them, as is customary of him. His little sister skip-hop-runs to Murphy to whisper something in his ear. And then they are gone, and the loft is grey and ordinary again, not even a butterfly left behind this time.
“What'd she tell ya?” Connor asks after a while.
“Her name,” Murphy says. His smile is a little odd. “Turns out I've known her for a while.”
That night, sharing a narrow bed, they dream, two mortals who live their lives in the wild borderlands of idea and dream. They have nightmares, the way all men do, like all killers do until they become murderers. And they have nightmares specific to their kind of sin, of crucifixes crushed in fists until blood flows, and of flames, naturally.
But that night, there are no nightmares. There won't be any for a long time.
***
In the pearly mist of an early dream, two boys walk shoulder to shoulder amidst the ghost-barks of half-remembered trees. Nut-tanned and wiry, their spears and knives and throwing-stones close at hand, they are no less dangerous than anything hiding in the sea-green grass. They are laughing and pushing at each other, young predators yet careless of the strength of their bite.
And perhaps their laughter covers the rustling of the grass, or else the beast has learned new tricks.
The blond boy cries out as he falls under the charging beast, all sharp clever claws and stinking breath, and its jaws clamp shut around his wrist as he fumbles with his knife. He can taste fear in his mouth, dark and bitter, until the beast turns away.
It turns away, and faces the dark-haired boy, whose spear is buried in its shoulder. The terrible form towers above him, and he trembles: half-bear, half-wolf with the tusks of a boar and a mass of black fur, matted with old blood. But there is a fury in him younger and stronger than the ancient malice of the beast. He grips his knife tightly as the beast charges again, and he buries the blade deep into it's belly and slashes up, reaching for its heart.
The blond boy takes the offered hand, bloody as it is with the beast's entrails. He is more grateful than he should be, for they are brothers. And if his brother kisses him a time too many until the look of death has disappeared from his eyes, it is their own affair.
They get up, and they go on, into the wide world still as young as they.