the night is long today
a nightly descent (not dreams, but fixed stars)
the dreamers (matthew/isabelle/theo)
title from ted hughes's birthday letters
Matthew has nightmares.
Matthew has always been a heavy sleeper. Each time he wakes it’s in a sudden upward heave, up and out of dreams that cling to the edge of his vision all morning. He is torn out of every dream he has, as though his nightmares want to keep him.
When he first moved to Paris, he’d thought (hoped) the nightmares might stop, but they didn’t. He still fell reluctantly into the creaky twin bed at the Hotel Malbranche night after night, waking up, gasping and heart-achingly terrified of nothing in particular.
Then he met Theo and Isabelle at the Cinematheque and everything was changed.
-
The night after the second time they make love (fuck, Theo says. You can say fuck, Matthew.) he is nervous about falling asleep with Isabelle. Her perfect body winding around him, sweating, boneless as his own, he tries to think up excuses.
“Won’t Theo mind us sleeping together?” His fingers wind into her hair of their own accord, tangling in the sumptuous mess of brown curls.
She laughs a hot puff of air into his neck, her lips brush his pulse as she murmurs. “After what he saw the first time, I hardly think he would be bothered by a little sleeping, my love.”
Matthew remembers that first night, a red light glowing through the crack in the door, Theo and Isabelle curled together the way he imagines they once were in the womb, naked and pure.
He’d jerked awake in the middle of the night, dreams of aimless heavy terror as always, and stumbling down the hallway past Theo’s room. He fell asleep easily that night, cupping himself and picturing that slight space between them, thinking that, if only he could make himself small enough, he might be able to fill it perfectly.
Now, Isabelle’s forehead fits exactly in the curve between his neck and shoulder, her body and the blankets wound around him like a vice. She intends to keep him here (what Isa, wants Isa gets, taunts Theo.) so he acquiesces. Matthew’s never been much of a fighter.
He traces the birthmark on her shoulder lazily, trying to ward off sleep, but her steady breathing-a quiet intake and then a gentle whistle of exhalation- is too soothing and he drops off to sleep, hand curved around her upper arm.
He wakes to a gasp. But this time, not his own. One higher and more delicate, but just as alarmed.
His head thrashes from side to side, making the bed shake until his sees the glint of bright eyes catching his in the dark; Isabelle.
“You were having a bad dream?”
In the dark, her mouth, curved slightly, seems even more unreadable than her Mona Lisa smile in the light. He wonders if she’s laughing at him.
“No, I just, um--” He feels tension in his knuckles and looks down at his hand, clenched in a vise around Isabelle’s arm. It must be hurting her, he’s squeezing so tightly that the skin has gone white, and he jerks his hand away in horror.
His knuckles ache and he can feel his face crumpling in shame. “Oh my god, Isabelle. I’m so sorry, I didn’t-” He’s near tears, revolted by the idea of hurting her.
“Non non non, Matthew, it’s nothing.” The handprint, his handprint, is a visible ugly red on her arm even in the dark. He flinches as she takes him by the wrist, splaying his hand over it again. “See, it won’t bruise. Theo hurts me worse than this when we roughhouse.” She smiles and cradles his face with one long-fingered hand, so similar to Theo’s.
“Isabelle,” he says and his voice breaks a little. “I would never hurt you. God, I’m sorry-- I was dreaming and-“ He trails off, not wanting to describe the dream, not even sure if he could.
Isabelle’s lips curve up in the dark, but her voice is tinged with something that could be sorrow. “I know, my darling.” Her fingers, still wrapped around his wrist, bring the offending hand to her mouth. She kisses each knuckle in turn, gentle and lingering.
“Now come, let’s go back to sleep.” Matthew watches her bright eyes for any trace of fear; there isn’t one. “If you get frightened, just make believe you are Jeanne de L’arc. That’s what I always do.”
“We’ve got to get our rest.” Isabelle’s voice is thick with sleep already. “Theo will be cross if we fall asleep at the cinema tomorrow.”
Settling back into the bed, Matthew rests his cheek against her clavicle, his chin fitting perfectly at the base of her throat. Her body curves welcomingly around him and he breathes with her until sleep comes.
-
Matthew passes out on Theo’s mattress one night just before the last cheque runs out, something he never would have done sober, wine stupor making his head heavy and his movements lazy.
He jolts awake, blessedly silent this time. His eyes open to black and he panics, not in his bed or his room and remembering the looming terror of dreams.
His right arm tingles painfully, pinned flat under a body sprawled out next to him. He sees the long pale curve of a throat exposed, and thinks with relief, Isabelle.
“Matthew?” Theo asks groggily. It grounds him, the familiar way his name sounds coming from Theo’s lips, the struggle not to instinctively harden the th drawing the last syllable out carefully. “Are you alright?”
He sits up a little, releasing Matthew’s arm, which Matthew immediately cradles against his chest, wincing at the pins and needles. His movements are embarrassingly skittish. He breathes in shakily. “I’m fine. It was just a dream. I was startled, that’s all.”
Theo’s eyes catch his, sizing him up. “Ah, Isabelle- said you have nightmares.”
A flash of hurt, betrayal. And then, unintentionally plaintive, “She told you that?”
“No,” His voice and expression are both unreadable. Matthew remembers a conversation in the coffee shop, Siamese twins. He drops his eyes from Matthew’s and reaches for the bedside lamp.
“Don’t,” Matthew pleads, before he can stop himself. He shivers, a sheen of cold sweat coating his face.
Theo sits up more but he doesn’t turn on the lamp.
Matthew can hear him moving in the dark and flinches without thinking when Theo’s hand is suddenly resting on his shoulder, heavy and warm. This close, Theo’s eyes are softer, the flat line of his mouth less pronounced. “Matthew, you’re trembling.”
“It’s nothing, I’m cold. It’s, it’s fine.”
Theo’s hand moves from Matthew’s shoulder to his face, the pad of his thumb moving beneath Matthew’s eyes, wiping through the dampness there. “You’re not alright.”
The shaking gets worse, Matthew leaning into Theo’s hand to keep from collapsing, when Theo says, “Un moment.”
His hand still braced at Matthew’s neck, he puts a Gauloise between his lips and, with a swish-click, lights it with Isabelle’s silver Zippo.
Theo takes a short aggressive puff and then, his movements as sharp as though he hadn’t just awakened, places it between Matthew’s lips.
Matthew feels the wetness of Theo’s mouth on the end of the cigarette, his hot fingers brushing Matthew’s bottom lip, lingering momentarily before he withdraws.
Matthew leaves the cigarette there, sucking in smoke unsteadily. He doesn’t trust his fingers to hold it.
He sees the smoke spiral lazily upward in the dim glow from Isabelle’s lighter as Theo lights a second one for himself. Theo smokes like it’s second nature, unconsciously cinematic in every movement, the smoke embracing his face like a second skin, a perfectly-tailored mask.
Matthew’s cigarette is mostly ash now, still dangling from his lips. Theo takes it from his lips, drops it into the wine bottle next to the bed, a hiss of steam as the ember is extinguished.
The bedroom door is shut and Matthew can’t remember where Isabelle is. He turns to ask but Theo is pressing something metallic and cold firmly into one of his hands, they’ve finally stopped trembling. He looks down; Isabelle’s lighter.
Theo says nothing. Matthew looks at him, his dark eyes and hard face, the noble line of this neck and shoulders. “I’m alright now,” he says.
“I know,” Theo answers, his expression nothing like Isabelle’s was. His voice sounds exactly the same.
“Come on,” he says, dragging Matthew down by the neck, back into the bed. He takes one last long drag off his cigarette and crushes it out on Matthew’s leather notebook. He considers protesting but follows the pull of Theo’s hand instead.
They lie in the dark, not touching save for Theo’s hand, curved around the back of his neck. His fingers are still and Matthew wonders if Theo can feel his pulse, slowing down steadily. He falls asleep before Theo.
-
Later, when he’s seen Isabelle sad too often and Theo too angry, his dreams change. Less frequent now, they terrify him more and grow harder and harder to awaken from. Gone are the unspecified horrors, the sinking feeling of despair. They unfold with excruciating specificity and he remembers them all too well.
He jolts out of sleep in the house, early morning with the sun painfully bright, and wanders from room to room. It looks just the same, but it feels wrong. Isabelle and Theo are nowhere to be found and he calls for them again and again until his voice grows hoarse. Staring to panic, he searches for a note and tries to the phone (it’s dead.) All their clothes still strewn about the house, Theo’s books and Isabelle’s records still in their rooms. They are nowhere. He tries the front door and opens it to nothingness. They are gone.
He wakes up, tears on his cheeks, face an inch away from Theo’s. Theo’s hand is gripping the back of his neck tightly, four of his fingers fitting between the end of Matthew’s hairline and the top of his spine. “What do you dream that frightens you so much?”
You and Isabelle leaving me, Matthew doesn’t answer. Being alone, being without you both.
“Is it your war, Matthew? Your father?” With each word, he breathes slightly into Matthew’s mouth.
Still dazed, giddy with relief at the sight of him, Matthew pushes forward, filling the space between them and resting his forehead against Theo’s. He sighs, but it sounds more like a sob.
Theo’s eyes move quickly, looking into Matthew’s own and then down at his face. “You were crying in your sleep.”
Theo turns away and awakens Isabelle with a finger trailing down her curved spine, who licks the tears off Matthew’s face before kissing him on the mouth, leaving sticky saliva to dry on his cheeks.
“Nous aussi, on t’aiment, Mathieu.” She murmurs against his lips, her voice in French, foreign and private.
The flickering of candles outside Isabelle’s tent, resurrected from their mysterious childhood (it seemed to Matthew they had emerged from oyster shells as they were now, perfectly formed), provide a frail, shaky light under which Isabelle’s long fingers undo the ties of Matthew and Theo’s bathrobes.
“Come,” she whispers, crawling to Matthew’s other side. “Let’s fight off your sleep. You’re safe in here, my love.”
-
After (and he will always think of life this way, Before and After his time with Theo and Isabelle), his nightly terrors are memories. Visions of their receding backs, running into the flames, film stars without script or cameras following them, destined to die beautifully and leave him behind.
He’s never wondered what Isabelle and Theo are doing now, can’t picture them existing after they disappeared in the crowd and smoke. They are trapped in his memory, furious and perfect, flinching away from his kisses.
The entire premise of this story comes from a single moment in the film itself, when Matthew awakens in the middle of the first night he spends at Theo and Isabelle's. He sort of tenses and moans, "No!" and that was enough for me.