Gerard has been having a staring contest with his bedroom door long enough that he’s starting to wonder if some of the knots in the wood might actually be eyes staring back at him. He knows that’s ridiculous, of course. It’s to the point now where he can tell, with a little effort, how many living things are in a given space, and he’s the only one in this room. If the door does have eyes, they aren’t watching him. Then again, they also aren’t going to blink, which means he’s eventually going to lose this staring contest.
He takes a deep, slow breath, flicks the lock, and turns the knob.
Carefully, he ventures out into the hallway. It’s deserted and silent, but he can hear soft sounds coming from the kitchen and makes his way in that direction, conscious of the placement of his bare feet against the smooth, polished wood. Halfway along, he stops and looks at the bedroom that was once his mother’s and now serves as a guest bedroom because he feels, oddly, more comfortable in the modified closet he’s slept in all his life. The door stands open, the bed neatly made, which is either a good sign or a terrible one. Gerard’s stomach ties itself into knots as he keeps walking, then peeks into the kitchen.
And heaves a silent sigh of relief.
Tim stands at the stove, his shoulders stiff with tension as he bends over a frying pan, from the sizzle—Gerard’s sense of smell doesn’t really work anymore except in a vague, distant, half-remembered way unless he’s right on top of something or the memories associated with the smells are particularly strong, or if it’s a person, so he can’t tell what’s in the pan—in nothing but a vest and knickers. Umberto weaves in and out around his ankles, purring so loudly Gerard can hear him from the doorway, his plumed tail erect and waving in the breeze of his movements; while he’s nominally the shop cat, and even more nominally Gerard’s cat, Tim is his chosen person. The scraps of food in the ceramic bowl in the corner attest to the fact that Tim’s already fed him this morning. Tim looks tired and strung out and annoyed, but he’s there, and he’s alive, and he’s…upright and functioning, which is an improvement.
Most crucially, there’s no sign of the pulsing black mass that wreathed his chest and throat the night before.
Gerard steals across the kitchen, sidles up behind Tim, slides his arms around his waist, and kisses his cheek—even if he has to rise up on his toes slightly to do it. “Morning,” he murmurs, directly into Tim’s ear.
“Morning.” Gerard can feel Tim trying to keep himself stiff and aloof, but he sags into Gerard’s arms, just a little bit. “Sleep well?”
“Once I got to sleep?” Gerard thinks about it. “Actually, no, not really. Did you?”
“Would have slept better if I hadn’t been alone,” Tim mutters.
Gerard sighs and presses his face into the back of Tim’s shoulder for a minute, then steps back and tries to turn him with a nudge of the shoulder. “Tim, look at me.”
Tim shrugs him off. “The sausages will burn.”
“Hang the sausages. Just…look at me. Please.”
Tim glances at him out of the corner of his eyes. “I don’t even know why I stayed.”
“I’m glad you did.” Gerard takes a deep breath, then reaches up and gently turns Tim’s face towards his. “I’m sorry. I know you think I was being an ass last night—”
“Really? What gave that away?”
“—but I had a good reason. Best reason in the world.” Gerard traces the lines up Tim’s chest and throat that he remembers from last night, the curling paths the mass took. “You were…you had that stuff on you. You were marked for death, Tim.”
Tim goes still for a moment. He doesn’t say anything, but he does turn the burner off and turn to face Gerard. His dark brown eyes are stormy, but there’s a little bit of a pleading look in them, too. Gerard knows without him saying a word that he’s still angry, but that he wants him to be telling the truth.
He continues tracing the place where the marks were with his finger lightly. “I saw it the minute you walked in. It was right here—your whole upper respiratory system, seemed like. You were going to suffocate or choke or—I don’t know, drown, maybe? It wasn’t going to be pretty, whatever it was. It’s why I didn’t touch you. Why I told you to lock yourself in the guest room.”
“You don’t trust yourself that much?” Tim asks neutrally.
Gerard shakes his head. “It was hard, Tim. Harder than you can imagine. Not just the usual hunger from seeing it, especially when I haven’t…fed in a while, I guess. But—it was yours. It was a lot harder not…taking it from you than it is when it’s a stranger, or an animal. And those can be pretty damn hard to resist sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Why was it harder with you? I—I don’t know, not really. Maybe because there was a voice telling me you wouldn’t mind, you’d understand, that at least it wasn’t someone with no idea of what was going on who’d resent me for just taking, that you’d say yes if I asked. And maybe you would have, I don’t know. You were sure angry enough last night.” Tim looks a little embarrassed but doesn’t deny it. Gerard ghosts a hand lightly under his chin, encouraging him to look back at him. “But I had to fight it. I had to. I will not be the reason you die, Tim.”
Tim stares at him for a long moment, but a lot of the tension and fight goes out of his frame. “Is it weird of me to find that sweet?”
Gerard laughs, more relieved than he can say. “Honestly, I don’t know how to do sweet, so if that qualifies, I’ll take it.”
Tim laughs, too. “Hang on, let me finish breakfast and we can continue this.” He turns the burner back on, then pauses. “You’re not still…you don’t still need—other food, right?”
“I’m not starving,” Gerard assures him. “I, uh…i-it’s sort of the equivalent of popcorn, satiation-wise, but it’s something. I found some spiders.”
“Okay, Renfield.”
Gerard ponders for a minute. “I…don’t know who that is.”
Tim gives him an exasperated look, but most of the genuine anger has gone out of his expression and it’s more fond than anything. “Are you telling me you’ve lived virtually your entire life in a bookstore and you’ve never read Dracula?”
“The only copy of that book I’ve ever held in my hands was a Leitner, so no, not on your life,” Gerard retorts.
“Jesus, okay. I’ll buy you a safe copy this weekend. Bet Leitner’s was the only version where Seward remembers to introduce Jonathan Harker to Renfield…set the table, would you?” As Gerard reaches past Tim for the plates, Tim adds, as if he’s either afraid of the answer or annoyed that he’s asking, “What was it? Like I can’t guess.”
Gerard tries to remember—it’s been close to twenty years, and it was only in passing that he would have heard anyway. “Stranger. I think.”
“Okay, not what I would have guessed,” Tim admits. “I was thinking the Hunt, maybe the Web, but…yeah, okay, that makes sense.”
They settle down at the table, and for a while they eat in silence. Gerard’s sense of taste, much like his sense of smell, is virtually gone…at least when it comes to actual food…but the sausage is strongly flavored enough that he can taste it, and Tim’s seasoned the eggs well, almost like he knows. Guiltily, Gerard thinks he probably should say something about that, but for now, he concentrates on his breakfast, even if it doesn’t satisfy his hunger all that much.
After a while, Tim asks without looking up, “Nightmares?”
Gerard pauses. “Huh?”
“Is that why you didn’t sleep well last night? Nightmares?” Tim clarifies. “Or were you just so hungry you were uncomfortable?”
“Oh. Yeah, no, it was nightmares.” Gerard studies Tim’s jawline, which is still tense. “You?”
Tim exhales. “Yeah. A nightmare, specifically.” He gives a soft, bitter laugh. “Does it count as a nightmare if it’s just your brain replaying something that really happened?”
Gerard hesitates. He’s had an awful suspicion since he first woke up, but now it’s beginning to coalesce into hard certainty and he isn’t sure how he feels about it. There was a time, not that long ago, when he would have let the conversation die out and saved this to talk over with Martin and Melanie first, but…well. It’s not just that Martin has been missing for a month now and Gerard doesn’t know when he’ll be home, which is killing him, and that the tensions are getting worse between him and Melanie and he doesn’t want to be the first one to wave the white flag this time. It’s that he wants to talk it over with Tim. Not even just because it kind of affects him—it kind of affects the others too, unless he’s wrong about that—but because he wants to talk to Tim, specifically.
Quietly, he asks, “Were you dreaming about what happened to your brother?”
Instantly, Tim’s whole body goes tense again. Gerard feels bad about that, but he doesn’t apologize, which Martin would probably say is progress. Instead he just…waits.
“Yes,” Tim finally says, tightly. “Of course. What fucking else would I dream about? Not that you can imagine what it was like.”
Gerard knows Tim is just lashing out because he’s hurting and scared, but he can’t stop himself from snapping back in reply. “What part? The part when you first walked into the underground space that should have been abandoned and unused and found it looking like it probably did on opening day of the original theater, like someone had frozen the moment in time, like you’d stepped back into it, and in your last moments of innocence you just wondered why they weren’t using it? The part where the spotlight switched on and you saw that clown crouched in the corner, leering up at you with the same face you’d last seen drawn over and over again on scratch paper in your living room, and it didn’t make any more sense than when you’d seen the drawing? Or the part where it put its hands on what looked like your brother and you couldn’t stop yourself from feeling like if you’d just kept your damned mouth shut and gone to him, you might have been able to save him, but instead you were going to have to live the rest of your life believing that it was your own damn recklessness that killed him, and your last coherent thought before it whipped off his skin was what am I going to tell our mother? Which part can’t I imagine, Tim?”
Tim’s face has been going steadily paler and paler as Gerard speaks, and he can tell that if he wasn’t sitting down, he would have passed out by now. His hand grips the fork so tightly it trembles. “How…?” he whispers.
“Because I saw it last night, too.” Gerard’s own anger fades, and he swallows hard, then reaches for Tim’s hand, hesitantly, not at all sure if he’s going to want to be touched. To his relief, Tim drops the fork and grips his hand back tightly. “I didn’t realize it was you at first. I’m always the one going through whatever it is, so if it’s not one of my memories—or something I wasn’t there for—I can’t tell who it is most of the time.”
Tim frowns slightly. “Wait, this has—you’ve had trauma dreams before?”
“All the damn time,” Gerard says. “Except they’re not exactly dreams, like you said. They’re just memories. Really fucking traumatic ones.”
“How long has it been…happening?”
“The part where I’m experiencing other people’s memories? Few months. I-it started around the time Sasha and I went to the Christmas market. Before that it was just mine.”
Tim snorts. “I’m astonished you ever get any sleep at all.”
“I don’t think I need it that much,” Gerard says dryly. “Also, I didn’t fall asleep until after I relived that memory.”
“Wait, what?” Tim blinks at him. “What do you mean, you weren’t asleep?”
“Just that. When I sleep, they stop. It’s when I’m awake that I find myself…” Gerard frowns. “I don’t know if reliving is the right word. It kind of is, but…it’s like I’m going through those moments again for the first time, even if they were mine in the first place. No awareness of what’s going to happen, no recognition of if I just do something else, I can stop this. They’re just happening, and I’m in the middle of them, and everything just…happens.”
“That…sounds like it sucks. A lot.”
Gerard can’t help but laugh. “You could say that. Still…it’s not as bad as it was when I first…woke up, I guess. Back then, it was like I was constantly existing in all moments at all times. I was twenty-eight and ten and twenty-three and nineteen and twenty-five and thirteen. I was dying and coming home from prison and being summoned and escaping my mother and saying goodbye to Melanie and Martin and watching Roger and Lily get married, all at the same time, and it was confusing and it…hurt, almost as much as being in the Book did. Back then, only thing that made it go away a little was feeding. Now…well, being with you lot grounds me a bit. I’m still back and forth sometimes, mostly at night, but at least I can stay present most of the time.”
“And that’s why you were dreaming about me,” Tim says.
“Well, it’s why I was dreaming that about you,” Gerard says, and gets the satisfaction of seeing Tim blush a little bit. “But yeah, it’s the first time it’s been a memory that wasn’t mine where I recognized the person it was. I—I heard the voice coming out of ‘my’ mouth when I yelled down to the stage and I recognized it as yours.”
“Even if you don’t usually realize they’re not your memories when they’re happening?”
“Yeah, it’s—if I hear myself talk, I can usually recognize it doesn’t sound like me, but it’s usually not a voice I know.” Gerard frowns. “It’s weird. There have been a couple of times where it’s definitely been my memories, but…not mine? I don’t know how to put it. Like, I’m there, I can see myself, but it’s through Melanie or Martin’s eyes. I’ll re-experience good memories they’re in, too, but never when I’m watching through their eyes.”
“I’d be crushed if we’d known each other long enough that you could experience good memories with me in retrospect,” Tim says, with a bit of his usual return to levity.
Gerard smiles, relieved. “I’m sure it’ll happen. The thing is, Tim, I wasn’t there for—for what happened with Danny. It was, what, five years ago?”
“Four years this August.”
Gerard shuffles through his mental index cards looking for the ones marked August 2013. “I think I was in…Crete? I’d only just started helping Gertrude then. She had two lines that needed to be looked in on simultaneously, so she sent me after one while she went after the other. It’s fuzzy. Point is, I wasn’t even in London, let alone under the Royal Opera House. But I saw it, as clearly as if I’d been standing there with you, and more than that, I felt everything you must’ve been feeling then.”
Tim takes a deep breath. “I—I shouldn’t have said what I said. Even if…even if you hadn’t experienced it…I mean, you know what being a big brother is like, and you sure as hell know what it’s like seeing them in danger and knowing you can’t…” He swallows and looks away. “There’s got to be more than just…whatever happened to Martin this time around.”
“Yeah, I haven’t relived that one yet, but…look, I won’t tell you if you don’t want me to, but even if the details were different, I had kind of the same experience as you.”
There’s a long pause, and then, slowly, Tim raises his head and meets Gerard’s eyes. “I’d like to hear,” he says. “If you’re able to share. You know, you’ve got my pain…I’d like to have some of yours, too.”
Gerard knows it won’t be exactly the same, but he’ll give this to Tim anyway. “It was—there was a Halloween party being hosted by one of the other mothers in the support group for single parents all our parents—Mum and Aunt Lily and Uncle Roger, they weren’t married then—were part of. I was twelve, Neens and Martin were ten, or near enough to it in Melanie’s case, and I got permission to take them on my own—there were a lot of other people on the same train, so we thought it would be okay. We ended up leaving early. I’d overheard a couple of the girls at the party saying nasty things about Melanie and I got so angry…I made them both leave without telling them why, and they trusted me, so they came along. It was raining, kind of hard, and the umbrella wasn’t big enough for all three of us to be under it, so Melanie and I were sharing it because Martin had a coat and cap as part of his costume that kept him pretty well dry. We were halfway across this park heading for the train station when Melanie and I suddenly realized we’d lost Martin. We turned around and started calling for him, but…God, Tim, we could feel that there was something else there, something separating us. It seemed like it was swallowing our cries and…keeping us apart.”
Tim swallows hard. “The Lonely?”
“Almost certainly. He’d been Marked by it long before he met us, or so he said, but…I guess he was just too tempting a target. Probably preying on that sense of abandonment he must have felt when I dragged Melanie on ahead without so much as a thought for him.” Gerard bites his lip hard for a moment. “As soon as I realized what was going on…I panicked. If anything happened to him, it was my fault—my fault for not holding on, my fault for not waiting, my fault for not looking, for not thinking. Melanie let go of the umbrella and I absolutely freaked out, because I thought I was going to lose her, too, and—it was probably the most helpless I’d ever felt in my life. I tried not to be afraid, so it wouldn’t hurt us too, and I thought—I thought if I stayed brave, we could find him.”
“It worked, though,” Tim says, but he sounds uncertain. “You got him back.”
“That was one hundred percent Melanie. She started singing—some duet from a kids’ movie that was popular when they were little, I’d never seen it. Still haven’t, actually—they’ve been saying they’re going to make me watch it with them for years now and we’ve just never got around to it. Anyway, she started singing it at the top of her lungs and Martin sang the other part back at her, and we eventually found him. I don’t think I let go of either of them until we were back in London.” Gerard sighs heavily. “I got thrown back to that one back in January. That was a fun night. So yeah, not…quite as bad as your experience, but—”
“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” Tim interrupts. “You were twelve. And your brother got lost to circumstances you set in motion, that you think you should have been able to protect him from. And you already knew about all this bullshit, so you knew what you stood to lose, and what affected him even though he survived. Look me in the eye and tell me it wouldn’t have been better in the long run if it had—if it had claimed him forever.” His voice cracks on that.
An ache Gerard feels all the way to his bones settles in his chest. “Yeah,” he says softly. “For him, at least. Not too sure about the rest of us.”
“Yeah, good point,” Tim admits. “The Archives are a goddamn mess right now without him there. There is literally not a single person Melanie hasn’t made cry in the last month, Jon is making even worse decisions than usual, I don’t have a single solitary fucking clue what Sasha’s been up to because none of us are checking in on her, Basira’s treating it like a goddamned study hall, and I’ve just…”
“Been getting so angry you came over here looking for a good, hard fuck because it was the only way you could think of to have someone hurt you without actually hurting you?”
“Well, when you put it that way, Jesus.” Tim runs a hand through his hair. “You’re not wrong. And I probably would have done something stupid and pushed things too far and added to your already unnecessary guilt levels further by getting my dumb ass killed, so thank you for stopping me.”
“You’re welcome. And thank you for staying.” Gerard arches an eyebrow. “And since you’re still here, and you’re calmer, and you won’t die any time soon, and I’ve already paid the price for letting you live, I can think of better things to do with your dumb ass.”
Tim’s face flames scarlet again, but he grins. “I have work this morning.”
“So call out. Say you’re sick. As long as you’re not trying to escape, you’ll be fine for one day.” Gerard spreads out his hands, palms up. “We don’t even have to do anything. I’d just like you to stay for a while.”
“Is everything okay?” Tim looks a little worried.
“Yeah. I just…like your company.” Gerard tries to come up with a way to explain it and can’t. “Fuck. I don’t know if I have words for the way I feel when you’re around, Tim. I’ve been with a lot of guys, but it’s never—I’ve never had a connection like this. I’d say it’s like how I feel about Martin and Melanie, and a bit how I feel about Jon and Sasha, but—first of all, that sounds really fucking creepy when I phrase it like that, and second, it’s not the same. Like, it’s similar? But it’s not the same. What the hell.” He pauses to think it over, then says, a bit surprised, “Is this what falling in love feels like?”
“I—” Tim starts, blinking hard, then rubs the back of his neck and smiles sheepishly. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. Like being friends, but…different? Yeah, I’ve only maybe felt like this a couple of times, and never this strong. In love. Okay, yeah, we can go with that. I think I’m in love with you, Gerry Keay.”
“Well, that’s good, because now that I’m feeling it, I’d hate to be the only one. I think I’m in love with you, too, Tim Stoker.” Gerry smiles back.
Suddenly, it occurs to him that he’s thinking of himself as Gerry, not Gerard. For all he’s asked his friends to call him that, he’s never been able to think of himself that way. But hearing Tim say he’s (maybe, possibly, if that’s actually what this feeling really is and not something else entirely) in love with Gerry Keay, not Gerard, seems to have driven home for him that that’s who he is, and who he’s worthy of being.
He starts humming, one of those old sappy songs Roger used to play on his record player and croon along to in order to make Melanie roll her eyes. After a moment, he gets to his feet and reaches for Tim’s hand. Tim seems surprised, but lets him pull him to his feet and begin slow-dancing in the kitchen…sort of…while he hums, then starts singing in the worst approximation of Nat King Cole’s voice it’s probably possible to achieve. “When I fall in love…it will be forever…”
“Or I’ll never fall in love…” Tim joins in, and his voice sounds a lot better than Gerry’s does, at least on this song, but Gerry doesn’t stop singing. They’re both sort of laughing at how ridiculous they’re being, especially considering they’re waltzing in nothing but their underpants and barely managing to avoid tripping over the cat, but they keep it up until they hit the end of the song.
Tim leans down and kisses Gerry gently. “So. Give me five minutes to call Jon and tell him I’m taking a personal day, and then we can go back to bed?”
Gerry smiles, feeling a lot more relaxed despite how rough the day started, and the implications of the night before. “Sounds good to me.”