Hope in the Mirror [1/4]
Title: Hope in the Mirror [1/4]
Authors: trollsttroll & mildly_neurotic
Beta: slash_scion
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Rating: R
Pairing: Pete Wentz; this is not a typo.
Word Count: 4,278 this part; 20,532 overall
Disclaimer: Not real, not assumed to be real. It’s fiction and it’s fun.
Summary: Pete Wentz has spent his entire life fighting off sleep; his adulthood, not just his childhood, haunted by recurring nightmares. One night, while on tour, he falls asleep and wakes up inside the very world he’d been trying to escape. But that’s not the end of it…
Pete lay in the hotel bed and stared at the ceiling feeling insignificant. He'd texted his twitter about sixteen times, couldn't settle on anything good on the television and as was far too often the case no one but himself was awake. None of the other guys would even room with him anymore. Not since they got big enough and the expense no longer matter. Because insomniac Pete Wentz had a habit of whining and poking and being generally unable to leave you alone. Pete didn't mean to do it. He didn't want to inflict his sleeplessness on the others. He couldn't really explain it adequately, but sometimes he just needed someone else's presence just to prove to himself that he existed.
Inhaling shallowly through his mouth, Peter tried to ignore the taste of the air. He'd never gotten use to it. But he had, at a very young age, learnt how to breathe through barely parted lips and to never... never use his nose for anything.
Step by step he walked down a sliver of light that cut down an unfamiliar alley. Peter had lived here all of his life, yet amazingly always, always fell upon somewhere he'd never been the moment he stepped out of what passed as his home. The light was rare reprieve from the slick grasping tentacles of the shadows. Their tendrils reached out just past the edges of darkness, causing his walk to falter. Peter laughed to himself and imagined himself dancing... yes, dancing towards destinations unknown.
Pete sat up with a start, heart thumping wildly in his chest, having clawed his way to consciousness from yet another bad dream. The world thought Pete was merely you're typical insomniac, what they didn't realize was he was afraid to sleep. A sense of panic came over him as he looked wildly around the room. He was conscious wasn't he? Why did the air still taste like something was dead and growing fetid under the bed? He swore he'd left the bedside light on but the room was semi-dark, bathed only in a sick bluish light from a halfway waning moon beaming through curtains he didn't remember even opening. It was the room. It had to be the damn room. Why the fuck couldn't 'Trick have stayed with him. He new sometimes Pete just needed a human presence.
And now he was awake, or thought he was awake, but the night still felt like it did in his nightmares. Shaking, he got to his feet, pulling on a hoodie scattered with the shameless product placement of his own logo and a pair of sneakers he crept from the room. Avoiding the shadows, which seemed even more pregnant with menace than usual, he made his way out of the hotel that he swore had been a properly bright, cheerful lodging when he checked in. Stepping outside he held his breath, stepping into the pool of light surrounding a guttering streetlamp, he clung to it. "Wakeupwakeupwakeup." he muttered, afraid to keep his eyes open but even more afraid to close them.
Dragging the zipper up his ratty hoodie, Peter curled his lips at its near dirt-like texture. He'd been asleep this time for far too long. It was almost as if the decay around him had attempted to absorb him into it. He'd need to scavenge one out of fresher shadows... if he didn't black out again. Rubbing the grime between his thumb and fingers, Peter shoved his hand into his hoodie pockets and cut a quick right around the street corner just as the alley went dark. Too fucking close... It was always worse the longer he slept. Turning his head from the sight of the now black alley, Peter let out a gasp at the sight that befell him. Never in his life had the Night played such a trick on his eyes. That's what it had to be a trick. Trick. His thoughts went hazy as strange sense of familiarity, unknown swept over him as his mind clung to the warmth that even thinking the word caused to blossom within him. Strange... and wait, was that... him? Himself? What was going on...
Against better judgment, Peter called out to the figure. "...hey..."
Wild eyed, Pete's composure exploded as he was addressed by his own doppelganger. His horrifying feeling of being trapped in the surreal had only intensified at the sight of a far too familiar figure darting out of an alley. He pressed his back against the lamp post and sucked air through his open mouth, as much to avoid the reek cloying the atmosphere around them as to get enough oxygen. Body trembling as it tried to work out fight or flight, his voice was little more than a terrified whisper as he echoed the grubby mirror "hey..."
Rubbing his fingers just under his own nose, Peter stepped forward, so enraptured with this new visage that he nearly let his ankle get entangled. He shook the darkness off of his leg and continued walking towards his other self. Peter felt bad for him... he knew how awful everything smelled around here. One could never get use to it.
"...yeah, breathing 'round here sucks..." When he was around a foot or two away from the other Peter, he stopped in his tracks and looked him up and down.
"... who are you?" Peter asked in honest... too honest... curiosity. He knew better than to fall for whatever misconceptions this world threw at him. He knew. Just the same as he knew that this… him... was, felt, more real than anything he'd yet to experience.
You... I'm fucking you and you know it. Pete's brain wailed, but he tried to stay calm.
wakeupwakeupwakeup
"Uh... Pete, I'm Pete... yeah... what the fuck is that smell?" He didn't even bother to ask who the man facing him, studying him, was. That seemed all too clear.
"I'm still dreaming..." he murmured looking with raw fear into his own eyes.
"Dead things, darkness... the Night..." Peter answered as he let his eyes follow the arch of light that seemed to now surround the two of them. His gaze landing back on Pete. He squinted his eyes. Dreaming? If only Peter was transported as such in his own slumber. He felt as if he'd spent most of his life not existing; never doing more than shutting off when sleep over took him.
"...Peter." His name was offered almost like an afterthought as he reached up to run his fingers over the shockingly bright colors of Pete's clothes. The implied nuances of their differences was not lost on him. Quite simply, Peter had learnt to accept the unexpected and expect nothing to go as it was thought it should. Tonight was wholly new and wholly different... but again, he'd always been resigned that this was so.
Pete on the other hand was not so good at resignation as his reflection. Where his counterpart may have accepted and adapted to his own waking world, Pete's anxiety over sleeping came from the need to escape vague impressions left whenever he woke. Impressions left by the world he seemed to be thrust into now. He shied away from the other's touch, more repulsed by the realm he embodied than the filth on his fingertips.
Curling his hand into a fist, Peter withdrew his arm. "S-s-sorry... I..." How did one explain the sheer wonder at seeing another living creature for the first time in what felt like a lifetime? In all likelihood, Peter realized that he should be scared. Things like this... they weren't normal. But then again, nothing really was. Something inside of him had always told him so.
"... you're just so..." Peter paused and met what was seemingly his own gaze. The fog of the newness wore off as he found something he'd not expected in his counterpart's eyes... himself.
"Hey. Hey... it'll be alright..." Peter whispered in a soothing tone. He cocked his head and played with his reflection in Pete's eyes until it passed for something he imagined was comforting. "... it'll be alright." Peter repeated in an even softer tone. This time trying to convince himself more than anything.
"Not real... can't be." Pete muttered, not really talking to Peter directly. That was more talking to himself than his brain could yet cope with. But the words and the softened expression of the other did sooth Pete on some subtle level; it was after all, in a way, him reassuring himself. "Fucking Andy slipped me an Ambien again..."
Neither names were familiar to Peter so he shrugged it off neither expecting or worrying the fact that clarification probably wouldn't come. "... does it feel not real?"
He tried reaching out to touch Pete again; this time offering his palm held up with his fingers splayed. "I-I'm real..." Pinching a face, Peter shuffled his feet and inched closer. "I'm real." He repeated with a little more force as if he was trying to not only prove it to Pete, but to himself as well. "... I am." I am! He's not, but I am. I am.
Quivering, Pete raised his own hand, placing it palm to palm against that of the other him. It was like laying his hand on the surface of a mirror. Except mirrors were not warm. He meshed their fingers even though his nervous shaking only increased with the proof of solidity. Either the copy of his own visage standing before him was flesh and blood as well, or he'd gone completely insane. He felt something slither against his ankle and looked down.
Peter's eyes followed Pete's line of vision down to his feet. Without thinking, he immediately jerked his doppelganger towards him; arms circling around him protectively.
"We've got to keep moving..." Peter whispered hoarsely in a voice that clearly spoke of conspiracy. "...quick!"
Before Pete could protest, Peter was dragging him away from the street lamp and towards what looked to be an abandoned building, only doing so because of the flicker of light he saw through boarded windows. The shadows swelled and bulged as the two of them passed. Even Peter who had lived in the Night all of his life, found his breathe stolen and his heart racing.
"...you have to stay in the light!" He urged desperately when Pete finally started struggling in his grip.
"But we were in the light?" Pete answered with a question, panic assailing him as he glanced over his shoulder to see the streetlight he'd instinctively clung to for comfort dim alarmingly and then snuff out like a candle. Other in the line began to wane.
"What the fuck..." It was more statement than question as he let Peter drawn him along.
Slumping against the building when they finally reached it, Peter let his head drop back against the grubby brick for once not caring if the near living surface clung to his hair and skin. "... it never lasts." He replied cryptically, his breathing finally slowing., Peter elbowed what appeared to be a door despite the black webbing nearly sealing it to the brick. It gave way easily and he urged Pete to follow him inside.
The light gave the room a strange atmosphere, the stained walls taking on the look of rusted steel and the floor the look of congealed blood or worse. But at least it was firm underfoot. It would provide haven long enough to figure out a thing or two about his visiting self.
What if he's stuck?
What if he's not just visiting?
You don't even know what he is!
Turning abruptly to face Pete, Peter released his hand. "...how did you get here... y-you have to go back."
"I don't know! I couldn't sleep... wouldn't sleep. 'Trick wouldn't stay, said he couldn't take another night sitting up, it wasn't his turn." Pete all but wailed, he'd felt hurt, abandoned when Patrick had gone off to his own room, a silent plea for forgiveness on the singer's face. None of them understood. Didn't get how Pete got by on so little sleep; he hadn't truly understood it himself but he was starting too. They'd learn to live without sleep too if it was a survival instinct...
"All I ever do is sleep..." Peter replied offhandedly.
He pressed his hand against the edge of the boarded windows. Not quite knowing how to measure the time in a way that Pete would understand. Peter just nodded and added. "Yeah, yeah... this will do." Returning to the other man's side before sliding to sit on the vile looking surface, he sighed. Peter watched Pete pace back and forth for a while before finally opting to ask questions. It was a foreign possibility but not a foreign concept. And now that he had the chance to actually engage in conversation with another person, he really wanted to.
"What's it like... where you're from?"
Pete paused his relentless pacing, jaw working to hold down his gorge as the odor of decay threatened to overwhelm him and stared at Peter a minute. He wasn't even sure how to answer that. He opened his mouth to speak then shut it, the implications of 'all I ever do is sleep' finally percolating through his brain.
"Oh God... Oh God... You are me, me in my nightmares, you're always asleep because I almost never am." But that made no sense, if that was true he should be in his room in bed, vicariously remembering only subconscious snippets of the terror filled streets Peter inhabited, not here and fleeing with him.
"My world is just like yours I suspect, just with a lot more light." he said bitterly, feeling there was a greater picture he was missing here.
Eyes filled with wonder, Peter watched his counterpart in awe. More Light. Did that mean that Pete's waking hours weren't spent always moving? He became so consumed with the idea of a world of light, it took him a while to really take a few steps back and absorb the rest of what had been said. Once he had, the gears started working in his head.
He wasn't anybody but himself, right? But how had everything that just happened to him... that just came to be happen? More so, why? There had never been explanations for how he just knew some things nor more importantly why... and he'd just accepted it. Not once bothering to question why he woke up sometimes in the same place and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Why had things happened to his actual body that he'd never ever done? What caused anything in his world... if, if Pete was right... where did that leave Peter?
I am real, I am... and so is he. I've always been... Peter's entire mood shifted with his thoughts.
Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke. "So, like... you fell asleep and ended up here?"
"I... I think so. I'm just not sure how I woke up here in the flesh. Sometimes I remember snippets of my dreams, bad dreams really, awful nightmares. I think maybe they’re glimpses through your eyes. What do you dream when you sleep Peter?" Pete asked. He was beginning to think which ever one of them was awake was the real one, like maybe they shared a soul or something. So what did that mean in a world with them both conscious?
"I... I don't dream." Then how do you know what dreaming is? ...I don't know. Peter sucked on his bottom lip and smiled in a mildly disturbing fashion at Pete. "... I never remember falling asleep, but I remember waking up. But it only sometimes the same place I fell asleep... and sometimes..." He tucked his thumbs inside of his hoodie sleeves and rubbed at his elbows.
Glancing down at his rotting clothes, Peter added. "Sometimes this happens... the dirt and decay, I wake up like this... when the waking hours are shorter, I wake up like this." Pulling his knees to his chest, Peter let his eyes dart over to the door again. His attention intent and ever watchful just waiting for the briefest glimpse of darkness to sneak in.
Guilt assailed Pete as he watched the other him sitting on the rusty floor, looking scared and forlorn. You're killing him... because you are afraid of what you see through his eyes. You aren't just killing yourself from sleep dep, you're actually killing him too.
"I'm sorry Peter, I am." He apologized without explanation, but if he ever got out of here he was so going to sleep more. Maybe that's even how he'd gotten himself into this mess. He slept so little, maybe when he finally did crash it was so hard he'd been sucked right in. And now he was trapped in his own nightmares with the other half he'd unwittingly shackled into doing his sleeping for him.
"Don't be..." I don't know what you are sorry for, but don't be.
It was strange, the not moving. His attention now so focused on someone else... it made Peter feel, literally feel, the emptiness of his prior existence. He felt more aware then he'd ever felt... ever. And he knew it had something to do with Pete or what had happened to cause all this.
Pete was sorry... but so was Peter. Guilt-ridden by somehow obviously being something that tied Pete to the Night. He suppressed the urge to check his arms and torso for more strange markings. Peter hadn't told his other self about those. He was scared... so scared that any confession linking him to the darkness would cause Pete to leave him. And he was so tired of being alone.
"... I, I think I have something I need to show you."
Pete braced himself for something horrible, some terrible, demonic nightmare moment. Like Peter would unzip his hoodie and tentacles would shoot out of his abdomen or he needed to eat Pete's brain to take back his own soul or some shit.
"Okay... okay... show me." he replied nervously, holding his breath, lower lip clenched tightly between his teeth. Trick was going to be sorry when he went to find out what was taking Pete so long in the morning and found a mutilated corpse or something equally as horrific.
Taking a steadying breathe, Peter stood. He turned his back from Pete to hide the coloring of his cheeks. Shame coursed through him as he unzipped his hoodie and shrugged it off of his shoulders. A ragged worm-eaten tank top hung over his frame; his skin strangely tan despite the absence of light in his world. From wrist to shoulder his arms were covered in dark lines; each depicting what Peter could only define as caricatures of Night incarnate... entirely unnerving in the child-like representations.
Staring at Pete from behind thick lashes, he waited for the blame and anger to come.
Pete stared at Peter waiting for the shoe to drop. What was so heinous that he was frightened of? "Ok it's kind of freaky that we even have the exact same tattoos, but what's the big reveal?"
Peter blinked and stopped breathing... seriously all at once. "T-they just... the Night it..." Confusion was painted over Peter's face as he tried to process Pete's total lack of surprise. "W-wait, you have these?!" He stepped forward already reaching for Pete's sleeves.
Nodding Pete held his arms up, letting Peter push back his sleeves. "Wait, the tattoos are what you’re upset about? I got them done, like on purpose. Haven't you ever seen the Nightmare Before Christmas? It's my favorite movie, shouldn't that mean it's yours too? But oh fuck it sucks you had no choice in the matter. Oh my god Peter I'm so sorry! I didn't know I was making decisions for anyone but myself when I got them. Who did them for you?" Pete asked the last because he could imagine the artist he saw rarely got to the real nightmare realm all that often. Then again who knew? Maybe his nightmare was giving Pete his ink...
Fingers tracing over Pete's 'tattoos', Peter marveled at how they must have gotten there. He knew somehow that it was painful, but it was nothing he'd ever experienced. "...no one... I wake up with them... I thought I'd been asleep for too long..." Peter glanced over at his discarded hoodie and frowned at it. "...that it was the Night..."
"I suppose in a way it was. I mean you didn't go to an artist and have yourself tattooed. They just appeared because I got mine. So someone does them when you are unconscious, so it would be like they just came out of the night." Pete bent and picked up the hoodie, covering a slight grimace as he helped Peter pull it back on. He couldn't believe even in a horror realm he'd dress so shabby. All was not right.
"Thanks..." Peter shrugged into his hoodie and with a sigh looked over his counterpart's own clothing.
On rare occasion he found items just as bright and colorful, but it had become a rarity more and more lately. He'd always wondered where the bodies wrapped tightly in the darkness' tentacles came from... or where they went. Looking at Pete now, he wondered who any of them were... and where they came from. There was so much he didn't understand... every thought had become a question since meeting Pete.
"So if I got this when I sleep you are awake in your reality, and if you sleep I am in mine? Why is tonight different? How did I wake up in yours? Jesus... Am I trapped here? What about when dawn comes?" Pete was trying hard not to freak right out. He had to be asleep and having a bad dream right? Somebody seriously needed to wake his ass up.
Licking his lips as he glanced cautiously around the room, not really on edge but always on alert when awake, Peter shrugged. It was yet another question that he quite simply did not have an answer for. He patted the admittedly dirty ground besides him and urged Pete to sit down. It was pretty obvious his doppelganger wasn't the type to adapt without clear explanation. And well, Peter simply didn't have one.
"...look, I don't know why anything happens, why this is happening now, or what will happen... I just know how to stay alive... and that I can't remember the last time I talked to someone... like at all. So, please... sit, talk... I'll keep us safe."
Pete let his breath out in a ragged sigh, but moved to the spot next to Peter. So far he was alive, that thing touching his leg, it hadn't felt like a dream, Peter knew how to follow the light. And it was him wasn't it? Who better to trust. In any case there was no one else was there.
Sitting on the floor he drew his knees up to his chest and leaned on the carbon copy, putting his head against his shoulder. "Peter, if I'm here, and I can't wake up... what if it means we're stuck running from shadows forever?"
A numb fuzziness enveloped Peter as he took in Pete's last statement. A realization chilled him. He didn't mean to be callous. He really didn't. "...and that would be different how?" Peter's voice held a previously unheard chill despite the fact that he too was leaning into his counterpart's body. The solid press of Pete's body against his own calmed him more than any sliver of light had ever been able to.
"Shit... I'm sorry. I really am.” Pete looked at his shoes and frowned. He hadn't taken into account his nightmare was pretty much Peter's life. He didn't want to insert his foot any further into his mouth, but he couldn't leave well enough alone. "But what if me being here, means no rest from the running? You sleep when I'm awake normally right? Now what? We're both awake."
Peter reached over and thumbed at the crisp, clean material of Pete's pants. "... if we both sleep... I dunno. Will we ever wake up? Can one of us stand watch? I dunno..."
Shoving the heel of his foot hard into the ground, Peter dug at the filth. He didn't want to admit that this was probably the clearest his perception had ever felt... that this was the most alive he'd ever felt. Pretty much everything was making Pete feel guilty. Which Peter got and totally didn't get all at once. It's not like Pete purposely caused any of this...
If you sleep and I don't recognize a danger I'll get us both killed. Pete worried, knowing he was out of his element, but not voicing it. It wasn't as if Peter could never go to sleep again to protect his stupid ass. Though he himself was used to coping with very little sleep he wasn't sure how long he'd last with none.
He pressed into Peter's side. "How long do you think we'll be safe here? Before we have to move again?"
"This is the longest I've ever seen light last..." Squinting, Peter looked toward the ceiling and frowned. He jumped up quickly nearly dragging Pete with him. It had to be a trick it had to.
"...look!" As both men looked skyward, the light that had illuminated the room they'd squatted in flared then, without warning, flickered out. Peter collapsed to the ground, entirely unaware as always that Night had taken him once more.
Bonus Content
Master Post
On to Chapter Two: No more darkness for a while
Authors: trollsttroll & mildly_neurotic
Beta: slash_scion
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Rating: R
Pairing: Pete Wentz; this is not a typo.
Word Count: 4,278 this part; 20,532 overall
Disclaimer: Not real, not assumed to be real. It’s fiction and it’s fun.
Summary: Pete Wentz has spent his entire life fighting off sleep; his adulthood, not just his childhood, haunted by recurring nightmares. One night, while on tour, he falls asleep and wakes up inside the very world he’d been trying to escape. But that’s not the end of it…
Pete lay in the hotel bed and stared at the ceiling feeling insignificant. He'd texted his twitter about sixteen times, couldn't settle on anything good on the television and as was far too often the case no one but himself was awake. None of the other guys would even room with him anymore. Not since they got big enough and the expense no longer matter. Because insomniac Pete Wentz had a habit of whining and poking and being generally unable to leave you alone. Pete didn't mean to do it. He didn't want to inflict his sleeplessness on the others. He couldn't really explain it adequately, but sometimes he just needed someone else's presence just to prove to himself that he existed.
Inhaling shallowly through his mouth, Peter tried to ignore the taste of the air. He'd never gotten use to it. But he had, at a very young age, learnt how to breathe through barely parted lips and to never... never use his nose for anything.
Step by step he walked down a sliver of light that cut down an unfamiliar alley. Peter had lived here all of his life, yet amazingly always, always fell upon somewhere he'd never been the moment he stepped out of what passed as his home. The light was rare reprieve from the slick grasping tentacles of the shadows. Their tendrils reached out just past the edges of darkness, causing his walk to falter. Peter laughed to himself and imagined himself dancing... yes, dancing towards destinations unknown.
Pete sat up with a start, heart thumping wildly in his chest, having clawed his way to consciousness from yet another bad dream. The world thought Pete was merely you're typical insomniac, what they didn't realize was he was afraid to sleep. A sense of panic came over him as he looked wildly around the room. He was conscious wasn't he? Why did the air still taste like something was dead and growing fetid under the bed? He swore he'd left the bedside light on but the room was semi-dark, bathed only in a sick bluish light from a halfway waning moon beaming through curtains he didn't remember even opening. It was the room. It had to be the damn room. Why the fuck couldn't 'Trick have stayed with him. He new sometimes Pete just needed a human presence.
And now he was awake, or thought he was awake, but the night still felt like it did in his nightmares. Shaking, he got to his feet, pulling on a hoodie scattered with the shameless product placement of his own logo and a pair of sneakers he crept from the room. Avoiding the shadows, which seemed even more pregnant with menace than usual, he made his way out of the hotel that he swore had been a properly bright, cheerful lodging when he checked in. Stepping outside he held his breath, stepping into the pool of light surrounding a guttering streetlamp, he clung to it. "Wakeupwakeupwakeup." he muttered, afraid to keep his eyes open but even more afraid to close them.
Dragging the zipper up his ratty hoodie, Peter curled his lips at its near dirt-like texture. He'd been asleep this time for far too long. It was almost as if the decay around him had attempted to absorb him into it. He'd need to scavenge one out of fresher shadows... if he didn't black out again. Rubbing the grime between his thumb and fingers, Peter shoved his hand into his hoodie pockets and cut a quick right around the street corner just as the alley went dark. Too fucking close... It was always worse the longer he slept. Turning his head from the sight of the now black alley, Peter let out a gasp at the sight that befell him. Never in his life had the Night played such a trick on his eyes. That's what it had to be a trick. Trick. His thoughts went hazy as strange sense of familiarity, unknown swept over him as his mind clung to the warmth that even thinking the word caused to blossom within him. Strange... and wait, was that... him? Himself? What was going on...
Against better judgment, Peter called out to the figure. "...hey..."
Wild eyed, Pete's composure exploded as he was addressed by his own doppelganger. His horrifying feeling of being trapped in the surreal had only intensified at the sight of a far too familiar figure darting out of an alley. He pressed his back against the lamp post and sucked air through his open mouth, as much to avoid the reek cloying the atmosphere around them as to get enough oxygen. Body trembling as it tried to work out fight or flight, his voice was little more than a terrified whisper as he echoed the grubby mirror "hey..."
Rubbing his fingers just under his own nose, Peter stepped forward, so enraptured with this new visage that he nearly let his ankle get entangled. He shook the darkness off of his leg and continued walking towards his other self. Peter felt bad for him... he knew how awful everything smelled around here. One could never get use to it.
"...yeah, breathing 'round here sucks..." When he was around a foot or two away from the other Peter, he stopped in his tracks and looked him up and down.
"... who are you?" Peter asked in honest... too honest... curiosity. He knew better than to fall for whatever misconceptions this world threw at him. He knew. Just the same as he knew that this… him... was, felt, more real than anything he'd yet to experience.
You... I'm fucking you and you know it. Pete's brain wailed, but he tried to stay calm.
wakeupwakeupwakeup
"Uh... Pete, I'm Pete... yeah... what the fuck is that smell?" He didn't even bother to ask who the man facing him, studying him, was. That seemed all too clear.
"I'm still dreaming..." he murmured looking with raw fear into his own eyes.
"Dead things, darkness... the Night..." Peter answered as he let his eyes follow the arch of light that seemed to now surround the two of them. His gaze landing back on Pete. He squinted his eyes. Dreaming? If only Peter was transported as such in his own slumber. He felt as if he'd spent most of his life not existing; never doing more than shutting off when sleep over took him.
"...Peter." His name was offered almost like an afterthought as he reached up to run his fingers over the shockingly bright colors of Pete's clothes. The implied nuances of their differences was not lost on him. Quite simply, Peter had learnt to accept the unexpected and expect nothing to go as it was thought it should. Tonight was wholly new and wholly different... but again, he'd always been resigned that this was so.
Pete on the other hand was not so good at resignation as his reflection. Where his counterpart may have accepted and adapted to his own waking world, Pete's anxiety over sleeping came from the need to escape vague impressions left whenever he woke. Impressions left by the world he seemed to be thrust into now. He shied away from the other's touch, more repulsed by the realm he embodied than the filth on his fingertips.
Curling his hand into a fist, Peter withdrew his arm. "S-s-sorry... I..." How did one explain the sheer wonder at seeing another living creature for the first time in what felt like a lifetime? In all likelihood, Peter realized that he should be scared. Things like this... they weren't normal. But then again, nothing really was. Something inside of him had always told him so.
"... you're just so..." Peter paused and met what was seemingly his own gaze. The fog of the newness wore off as he found something he'd not expected in his counterpart's eyes... himself.
"Hey. Hey... it'll be alright..." Peter whispered in a soothing tone. He cocked his head and played with his reflection in Pete's eyes until it passed for something he imagined was comforting. "... it'll be alright." Peter repeated in an even softer tone. This time trying to convince himself more than anything.
"Not real... can't be." Pete muttered, not really talking to Peter directly. That was more talking to himself than his brain could yet cope with. But the words and the softened expression of the other did sooth Pete on some subtle level; it was after all, in a way, him reassuring himself. "Fucking Andy slipped me an Ambien again..."
Neither names were familiar to Peter so he shrugged it off neither expecting or worrying the fact that clarification probably wouldn't come. "... does it feel not real?"
He tried reaching out to touch Pete again; this time offering his palm held up with his fingers splayed. "I-I'm real..." Pinching a face, Peter shuffled his feet and inched closer. "I'm real." He repeated with a little more force as if he was trying to not only prove it to Pete, but to himself as well. "... I am." I am! He's not, but I am. I am.
Quivering, Pete raised his own hand, placing it palm to palm against that of the other him. It was like laying his hand on the surface of a mirror. Except mirrors were not warm. He meshed their fingers even though his nervous shaking only increased with the proof of solidity. Either the copy of his own visage standing before him was flesh and blood as well, or he'd gone completely insane. He felt something slither against his ankle and looked down.
Peter's eyes followed Pete's line of vision down to his feet. Without thinking, he immediately jerked his doppelganger towards him; arms circling around him protectively.
"We've got to keep moving..." Peter whispered hoarsely in a voice that clearly spoke of conspiracy. "...quick!"
Before Pete could protest, Peter was dragging him away from the street lamp and towards what looked to be an abandoned building, only doing so because of the flicker of light he saw through boarded windows. The shadows swelled and bulged as the two of them passed. Even Peter who had lived in the Night all of his life, found his breathe stolen and his heart racing.
"...you have to stay in the light!" He urged desperately when Pete finally started struggling in his grip.
"But we were in the light?" Pete answered with a question, panic assailing him as he glanced over his shoulder to see the streetlight he'd instinctively clung to for comfort dim alarmingly and then snuff out like a candle. Other in the line began to wane.
"What the fuck..." It was more statement than question as he let Peter drawn him along.
Slumping against the building when they finally reached it, Peter let his head drop back against the grubby brick for once not caring if the near living surface clung to his hair and skin. "... it never lasts." He replied cryptically, his breathing finally slowing., Peter elbowed what appeared to be a door despite the black webbing nearly sealing it to the brick. It gave way easily and he urged Pete to follow him inside.
The light gave the room a strange atmosphere, the stained walls taking on the look of rusted steel and the floor the look of congealed blood or worse. But at least it was firm underfoot. It would provide haven long enough to figure out a thing or two about his visiting self.
What if he's stuck?
What if he's not just visiting?
You don't even know what he is!
Turning abruptly to face Pete, Peter released his hand. "...how did you get here... y-you have to go back."
"I don't know! I couldn't sleep... wouldn't sleep. 'Trick wouldn't stay, said he couldn't take another night sitting up, it wasn't his turn." Pete all but wailed, he'd felt hurt, abandoned when Patrick had gone off to his own room, a silent plea for forgiveness on the singer's face. None of them understood. Didn't get how Pete got by on so little sleep; he hadn't truly understood it himself but he was starting too. They'd learn to live without sleep too if it was a survival instinct...
"All I ever do is sleep..." Peter replied offhandedly.
He pressed his hand against the edge of the boarded windows. Not quite knowing how to measure the time in a way that Pete would understand. Peter just nodded and added. "Yeah, yeah... this will do." Returning to the other man's side before sliding to sit on the vile looking surface, he sighed. Peter watched Pete pace back and forth for a while before finally opting to ask questions. It was a foreign possibility but not a foreign concept. And now that he had the chance to actually engage in conversation with another person, he really wanted to.
"What's it like... where you're from?"
Pete paused his relentless pacing, jaw working to hold down his gorge as the odor of decay threatened to overwhelm him and stared at Peter a minute. He wasn't even sure how to answer that. He opened his mouth to speak then shut it, the implications of 'all I ever do is sleep' finally percolating through his brain.
"Oh God... Oh God... You are me, me in my nightmares, you're always asleep because I almost never am." But that made no sense, if that was true he should be in his room in bed, vicariously remembering only subconscious snippets of the terror filled streets Peter inhabited, not here and fleeing with him.
"My world is just like yours I suspect, just with a lot more light." he said bitterly, feeling there was a greater picture he was missing here.
Eyes filled with wonder, Peter watched his counterpart in awe. More Light. Did that mean that Pete's waking hours weren't spent always moving? He became so consumed with the idea of a world of light, it took him a while to really take a few steps back and absorb the rest of what had been said. Once he had, the gears started working in his head.
He wasn't anybody but himself, right? But how had everything that just happened to him... that just came to be happen? More so, why? There had never been explanations for how he just knew some things nor more importantly why... and he'd just accepted it. Not once bothering to question why he woke up sometimes in the same place and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Why had things happened to his actual body that he'd never ever done? What caused anything in his world... if, if Pete was right... where did that leave Peter?
I am real, I am... and so is he. I've always been... Peter's entire mood shifted with his thoughts.
Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke. "So, like... you fell asleep and ended up here?"
"I... I think so. I'm just not sure how I woke up here in the flesh. Sometimes I remember snippets of my dreams, bad dreams really, awful nightmares. I think maybe they’re glimpses through your eyes. What do you dream when you sleep Peter?" Pete asked. He was beginning to think which ever one of them was awake was the real one, like maybe they shared a soul or something. So what did that mean in a world with them both conscious?
"I... I don't dream." Then how do you know what dreaming is? ...I don't know. Peter sucked on his bottom lip and smiled in a mildly disturbing fashion at Pete. "... I never remember falling asleep, but I remember waking up. But it only sometimes the same place I fell asleep... and sometimes..." He tucked his thumbs inside of his hoodie sleeves and rubbed at his elbows.
Glancing down at his rotting clothes, Peter added. "Sometimes this happens... the dirt and decay, I wake up like this... when the waking hours are shorter, I wake up like this." Pulling his knees to his chest, Peter let his eyes dart over to the door again. His attention intent and ever watchful just waiting for the briefest glimpse of darkness to sneak in.
Guilt assailed Pete as he watched the other him sitting on the rusty floor, looking scared and forlorn. You're killing him... because you are afraid of what you see through his eyes. You aren't just killing yourself from sleep dep, you're actually killing him too.
"I'm sorry Peter, I am." He apologized without explanation, but if he ever got out of here he was so going to sleep more. Maybe that's even how he'd gotten himself into this mess. He slept so little, maybe when he finally did crash it was so hard he'd been sucked right in. And now he was trapped in his own nightmares with the other half he'd unwittingly shackled into doing his sleeping for him.
"Don't be..." I don't know what you are sorry for, but don't be.
It was strange, the not moving. His attention now so focused on someone else... it made Peter feel, literally feel, the emptiness of his prior existence. He felt more aware then he'd ever felt... ever. And he knew it had something to do with Pete or what had happened to cause all this.
Pete was sorry... but so was Peter. Guilt-ridden by somehow obviously being something that tied Pete to the Night. He suppressed the urge to check his arms and torso for more strange markings. Peter hadn't told his other self about those. He was scared... so scared that any confession linking him to the darkness would cause Pete to leave him. And he was so tired of being alone.
"... I, I think I have something I need to show you."
Pete braced himself for something horrible, some terrible, demonic nightmare moment. Like Peter would unzip his hoodie and tentacles would shoot out of his abdomen or he needed to eat Pete's brain to take back his own soul or some shit.
"Okay... okay... show me." he replied nervously, holding his breath, lower lip clenched tightly between his teeth. Trick was going to be sorry when he went to find out what was taking Pete so long in the morning and found a mutilated corpse or something equally as horrific.
Taking a steadying breathe, Peter stood. He turned his back from Pete to hide the coloring of his cheeks. Shame coursed through him as he unzipped his hoodie and shrugged it off of his shoulders. A ragged worm-eaten tank top hung over his frame; his skin strangely tan despite the absence of light in his world. From wrist to shoulder his arms were covered in dark lines; each depicting what Peter could only define as caricatures of Night incarnate... entirely unnerving in the child-like representations.
Staring at Pete from behind thick lashes, he waited for the blame and anger to come.
Pete stared at Peter waiting for the shoe to drop. What was so heinous that he was frightened of? "Ok it's kind of freaky that we even have the exact same tattoos, but what's the big reveal?"
Peter blinked and stopped breathing... seriously all at once. "T-they just... the Night it..." Confusion was painted over Peter's face as he tried to process Pete's total lack of surprise. "W-wait, you have these?!" He stepped forward already reaching for Pete's sleeves.
Nodding Pete held his arms up, letting Peter push back his sleeves. "Wait, the tattoos are what you’re upset about? I got them done, like on purpose. Haven't you ever seen the Nightmare Before Christmas? It's my favorite movie, shouldn't that mean it's yours too? But oh fuck it sucks you had no choice in the matter. Oh my god Peter I'm so sorry! I didn't know I was making decisions for anyone but myself when I got them. Who did them for you?" Pete asked the last because he could imagine the artist he saw rarely got to the real nightmare realm all that often. Then again who knew? Maybe his nightmare was giving Pete his ink...
Fingers tracing over Pete's 'tattoos', Peter marveled at how they must have gotten there. He knew somehow that it was painful, but it was nothing he'd ever experienced. "...no one... I wake up with them... I thought I'd been asleep for too long..." Peter glanced over at his discarded hoodie and frowned at it. "...that it was the Night..."
"I suppose in a way it was. I mean you didn't go to an artist and have yourself tattooed. They just appeared because I got mine. So someone does them when you are unconscious, so it would be like they just came out of the night." Pete bent and picked up the hoodie, covering a slight grimace as he helped Peter pull it back on. He couldn't believe even in a horror realm he'd dress so shabby. All was not right.
"Thanks..." Peter shrugged into his hoodie and with a sigh looked over his counterpart's own clothing.
On rare occasion he found items just as bright and colorful, but it had become a rarity more and more lately. He'd always wondered where the bodies wrapped tightly in the darkness' tentacles came from... or where they went. Looking at Pete now, he wondered who any of them were... and where they came from. There was so much he didn't understand... every thought had become a question since meeting Pete.
"So if I got this when I sleep you are awake in your reality, and if you sleep I am in mine? Why is tonight different? How did I wake up in yours? Jesus... Am I trapped here? What about when dawn comes?" Pete was trying hard not to freak right out. He had to be asleep and having a bad dream right? Somebody seriously needed to wake his ass up.
Licking his lips as he glanced cautiously around the room, not really on edge but always on alert when awake, Peter shrugged. It was yet another question that he quite simply did not have an answer for. He patted the admittedly dirty ground besides him and urged Pete to sit down. It was pretty obvious his doppelganger wasn't the type to adapt without clear explanation. And well, Peter simply didn't have one.
"...look, I don't know why anything happens, why this is happening now, or what will happen... I just know how to stay alive... and that I can't remember the last time I talked to someone... like at all. So, please... sit, talk... I'll keep us safe."
Pete let his breath out in a ragged sigh, but moved to the spot next to Peter. So far he was alive, that thing touching his leg, it hadn't felt like a dream, Peter knew how to follow the light. And it was him wasn't it? Who better to trust. In any case there was no one else was there.
Sitting on the floor he drew his knees up to his chest and leaned on the carbon copy, putting his head against his shoulder. "Peter, if I'm here, and I can't wake up... what if it means we're stuck running from shadows forever?"
A numb fuzziness enveloped Peter as he took in Pete's last statement. A realization chilled him. He didn't mean to be callous. He really didn't. "...and that would be different how?" Peter's voice held a previously unheard chill despite the fact that he too was leaning into his counterpart's body. The solid press of Pete's body against his own calmed him more than any sliver of light had ever been able to.
"Shit... I'm sorry. I really am.” Pete looked at his shoes and frowned. He hadn't taken into account his nightmare was pretty much Peter's life. He didn't want to insert his foot any further into his mouth, but he couldn't leave well enough alone. "But what if me being here, means no rest from the running? You sleep when I'm awake normally right? Now what? We're both awake."
Peter reached over and thumbed at the crisp, clean material of Pete's pants. "... if we both sleep... I dunno. Will we ever wake up? Can one of us stand watch? I dunno..."
Shoving the heel of his foot hard into the ground, Peter dug at the filth. He didn't want to admit that this was probably the clearest his perception had ever felt... that this was the most alive he'd ever felt. Pretty much everything was making Pete feel guilty. Which Peter got and totally didn't get all at once. It's not like Pete purposely caused any of this...
If you sleep and I don't recognize a danger I'll get us both killed. Pete worried, knowing he was out of his element, but not voicing it. It wasn't as if Peter could never go to sleep again to protect his stupid ass. Though he himself was used to coping with very little sleep he wasn't sure how long he'd last with none.
He pressed into Peter's side. "How long do you think we'll be safe here? Before we have to move again?"
"This is the longest I've ever seen light last..." Squinting, Peter looked toward the ceiling and frowned. He jumped up quickly nearly dragging Pete with him. It had to be a trick it had to.
"...look!" As both men looked skyward, the light that had illuminated the room they'd squatted in flared then, without warning, flickered out. Peter collapsed to the ground, entirely unaware as always that Night had taken him once more.
Bonus Content
Master Post
On to Chapter Two: No more darkness for a while