June 2016
The nights were hot and humid these days. Even with the rain that came through to wash the dirt and dust away, it was still almost too much to bear. Sleeping was more difficult than it should have been, and it didn’t help that no matter what Ilian did, he kept having horrible nightmares.
Nightmares of the past, nightmares of the future, nightmares of things that were so real and tangible that the tears he cried in his dreams were the same that streaked his face as he stirred restlessly.
He hadn’t had dreams like this for a long time. Not since his parents died. Even when his brother was killed, the dreams didn’t seem as real, maybe because he just hadn’t gotten used to the idea, or was in denial, or whatever. But dreams these days had him waking in a cold sweat.
Tonight was one of those nights, and as Ilian woke with a gasp, his fingers clutching tightly to the sheets and tears falling down his face, mingling with the sweat that had already formed along his brow, he realized that he was not the only one awake at that hour.
Lovely met Ilian with a blank stare through the darkness.
Without a visible clock, he had no idea what time it was. Certainly late. Probably early morning. This was not the first time he’d been jarred from sleep by Ilian’s dreaming, and Lovely suspected it would not be the last. He found the frequency of it displeasing. More so when he considered the fact that he had no idea what was causing it.
He figured it could be any number of things, given what Ilian had been through all his life, but the lack of an answer frustrated Lovely. Of course, he could only blame himself for not asking about it. He’d had every opportunity. He simply didn’t feel comfortable doing so. He didn’t know how to offer comfort or show support. Five months into this living arrangement, even with the strange turn of events that came up along the way, Lovely still had no idea how to adequately sympathize with another person.
With a heavy sigh, Lovely lumbered up on the mattress and reached across Ilian to turn on the lamp which sat upon the bedside table. He paused a moment to take in the look on Ilian’s face. It was impossible to miss the tears, which only served to make Lovely feel even more uncomfortable.
“The ******** settled back onto his side of the bed, staring at Ilian with a troubled expression that looked like it was tinged with fear.
And it was. Emotions scared him.
He felt bad for waking Lovely up every time he had one of these nightmares, knowing that the other needed sleep as much as he did, if not more. Lovely was on his feet all day at work, too, and then had to deal with Negaverse stuff which he was unwillingly dragged into because of Ilian. It wasn’t as though he wanted to make Lovely’s life miserable.
Ilian gasped for breath, sucking in air as he tried to control the tears that fell without provocation. He unlatched one of his hands from the sheets and lifted his whole arm up to rub at his face, wiping as much of the tears away as he could, but more kept coming to take their place.
He blinked in surprise at the light, only then realizing that Lovely had even leaned over him to turn it on, and then sat to stare at him. It was difficult to miss the strange expression on Lovely’s face, which made Ilian feel even more guilty about the whole thing.
“S-sorry,” he gasped, sobbing softly as he looked away from Lovely, knowing how awkward it was for Lovely to try and figure out what to do with him crying. He cried enough as it was, and he was perfectly okay with Lovely ignoring the tears.
“Bad dream,” he tried explaining, not wanting to just say nothing, but also not really wanting to go into details about it. It was too vivid as it was. Talking about it out loud would only make it worse, he thought.
“No s**t.”
It was not the explanation Lovely wanted. He already knew bad dreams to be the cause. What he wanted to know was why. He wanted specifics. He wanted to know exactly what he was being woken up for, so he knew whether or not to be angry about it. Instead, he could only sit there feeling frustrated and scared and confused.
He didn’t think it should bother him so much, no knowing what to do. Had it been anyone else, he likely wouldn’t have cared if what he said or did made things worse. He hated that it mattered with Ilian. He hated that he didn’t know why it did. A part of Lovely wanted to shout at him and insult him and prove that Ilian wasn’t any different from anyone else, but something stopped him. He didn’t know what it was, but it tightened his throat and blocked his voice before he could say anything he might regret later.
Lovely swallowed heavily, trying to work through his discomfort. He took a deep breath to steady himself, but it didn’t work. He shifted and fidgeted and fought with himself. He didn’t know what to do or say. He felt completely out of his depth.
He sighed eventually, a heavy gust of air he released through his mouth on a huff. Then he slid down the mattress and climbed off of the end of the bed, stomping out of the bedroom to go into the kitchen, turning lights on as he went.
Ilian could feel his head spinning, the images still fresh in his mind. He supposed that was what he got for chasing after senshi and knights who had nothing better to do than threaten their lives in return. But why was it always turning out to be Lovely who died? Why, of all the people it could be, it had to be Lovely?
He didn’t say anything as Lovely got up from the bed and stomped out into the kitchen, still trying to catch his breath. Ilian lifted his hand to wipe the rest of the tears away from his eyes, squeezing them shut for a few moments, before opening them again. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel bad when he woke Lovely up at night! He really did feel horrible about it. Part of him wondered if it would be better to get an apartment with two rooms, or maybe he could just sleep out on the couch until the nightmares went away.
After a few minutes of waiting for Lovely to come back, Ilian finally had himself under control enough to push himself up in bed, and swing his legs over the edge. He felt dizzy, and when he stood he ended up swaying dangerously and had to sit back down to rest for a few moments.
Once he was sure he wouldn’t collapse, he slowly got back up and took one step at a time to make his way out of the bedroom to try and find where Lovely went.
“Hey… I’m sorry. I can sleep on the couch if you’d like,” he offered, glancing towards the couch and not really wanting to sleep there since he was pretty sure one of the springs had recently broken, but it would be better than keeping Lovely awake.
Lovely was reaching up into one of the cabinets when Ilian left the bedroom, pulling out two ugly mugs he was sure had been purchased from the Goodwill, like most things in Ilian’s apartment that weren’t things Lovely’d bought himself. A box of chamomile tea courtesy of Ashley their nurse-neighbor already sat on the counter. Lovely set both mugs down with a loud ‘thunk’ and dropped a teabag into each. The busted looking kettle on the stove was already steaming, so he turned the burner off and poured the boiling water.
He tossed a glare in Ilian’s direction, though Lovely’s anger stemmed more from his inability to determine what he should do than it did Ilian’s recent habit of waking him up in the middle of the night. The clock on the microwave showed it to be nearly three in the morning.
He turned to face Ilian properly once the tea was steeping. Pale, scrawny arms folded across a pale, scrawny chest as Lovely stood there in a pair of Ilian’s boxers. With his hair messy and one side of his face rosey and creased from sleep, Lovely did not look the least bit intimidating, and he knew it. If anything, he looked petulant.
“I don’t want a ******** apology,” Lovely said. “I want an explanation.”
It was the closest he could get to asking what was wrong.
“This keeps happening over and over again, and I want to know why. It didn’t start getting this bad until-”
He struggled to come up with a way to complete the sentence that wouldn’t make him feel awkward. He ended up separating his arms to lift his hands and wave them in a gesture that, to someone not privy to their living arrangement, wouldn’t have any idea what he was referring to. He could have been motioning to the dump around them; he could have been bringing attention to his presence there.
Really, he was trying to draw attention to the fact that his neck was dotted with hickeys and he’d developed a habit of stealing Ilian’s clothes.
Ilian stared at Lovely as he made his way into the kitchen, knowing that Lovely was capable of doing things like this -- making tea when he was obviously upset or not feeling well -- but it was always a surprise because Lovely just didn’t seem the type to take it upon himself to care. Not about everything at least.
He opened his mouth to say something, but Lovely quickly cut him off. Ilian could feel his cheeks turning red as Lovely gestured to… everything… but Ilian knew right away what he was talking about, and shifted awkwardly where he stood with nothing more than a pair of his own boxers on.
“That’s… that’s not it,” he mumbled, looking away and rubbing his toe against an old scuff mark on the linoleum of the old kitchen. “I don’t… I don’t know why,” he tried to explain as requested, but it was difficult, especially since it was totally irrational, right?
“I… keep having dreams of that night that… Sorin died…” he said cautiously, knowing that Lovely wasn’t exactly happy about ending up in the Negaverse, but he hadn’t really had a choice since he’d been there when it happened. “Except,” he continued, still glancing away, unable to look Lovely in the eye. “Except it’s… instead of Sorin… it’s you.”
He didn’t know how else to explain it, so he said it and… took a step back so he could sit down at the table in the kitchen, his hands nervously rubbing against each other. “I don’t know why… it just… started happening.”
Lovely’s face reddened more noticeably than Ilian’s. He didn’t know what sort of explanation he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. Suddenly, everything seemed a hundred times more awkward than usual.
They never talked about the weird stuff that happened between them. Ever. At least not beyond commenting about how weird it was. They never discussed why. Lovely didn’t even know if there was a why. It was just a thing that happened. Sometimes they kissed. Sometimes they made out. Sometimes they did stupid things they should probably not be thinking about at sixteen and seventeen.
Sometimes it seemed silly to worry about it. Other times, it seemed silly not to.
Lovely liked to tell himself it wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t mean anything. They were just young and stupid, stuck in an apartment together trying to act like adults when neither of them really knew what the hell they were doing. s**t happened. There wasn’t any point in making a big deal about it. They hadn’t, so far.
Then Ilian had to go and admit to crying over dreams about Lovely dying, and Lovely really wished he hadn’t bothered to ask, not only because he didn’t like thinking about things like death and dying, but because it drew more attention to whatever feelings might exist between them beyond annoyance and companionship, and that was definitely not something Lovely wanted to think about.
He didn’t have feelings. He didn’t want to have feelings. And he didn’t want Ilian to have feelings either.
“Why the ******** would you…”
Lovely clamped his mouth shut before he could finish the question. He didn’t really want to ask it, and he didn’t really want to know the answer to it. He tried crossing his arms over his chest again, but it looked more awkward and defensive this time than confrontational.
“That’s the stupidest s**t I’ve ever heard. There isn’t any point in crying over s**t that’s not real.”
Ilian knew Lovely would freak out, which was why he hadn’t said anything to him before about his strange dreams that he could not control. Seriously, if he could control himself, he would. He would very much like to not have these dreams.
“I know, you don’t have to rub it in,” he grumbled, picking at the hem of his boxers as Lovely stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, looking flustered and out of place. Ilian felt bad about it. He didn’t want to put Lovely into such an awkward position, especially when he already had to deal with Ilian on a daily basis.
“That’s why I didn’t want to tell you,” he groaned, lowering his head into his hands, the images still vivid in his mind. “I can’t help it. I hate it. I wish it would stop,” he whimpered, practically doubling over himself as he sat on the chair, tears filling his eyes again despite himself. Not wanting Lovely to see how pathetic he was, he kept his head down, his knees pulled up against the built-in bench in their old kitchen. <********>,” he shook his head, trying to get himself to stop, but feeling utterly helpless. He couldn’t stop his brother from dying, and now he was having dreams where Lovely died too. “********, ********, <********>,” he hissed, as if that would disguise the sound of crying. Hopefully Lovely would realize that he didn’t want him to notice and would just… leave him be to be pathetic and helpless on his own.
Ilian didn’t have to be told that he was a baby to know how pathetic he was. He knew it was stupid to feel so distraught over a dream, but it felt so real, and he didn’t know what he would do if he lost someone else.
Part of his probably irrational fear was that he knew that Lovely really didn’t have a reason to stay with him. Sure, occasionally fooled around like the young, experimenting, teenage boys they were, but there was no real reason for Lovely to put up with him. If it wasn’t for the Negaverse, he was sure Lovely would still only look at him as an occasional rival at piano recitals, but Ilian couldn’t imagine there being anything more than that.
“I know,” he hissed, muffled against his knees that he had drawn up for his face to be buried against. “I know you’re not dead, but...” he started and then clamped his mouth shut. This was ridiculous. He was a Negaverse Captain. He had the power to take lives, to make a difference, and yet all he could think about was being so devastatingly alone.
Humiliated by his state, he shook his head and hid longer, even as he heard the mug being slid over to him. It was embarrassing and stupid, and he knew that Lovely thought it was stupid, too.
“Just don’t ask if you don’t want to know,” he groaned, knowing that Lovely was only forcing himself to pretend to care.
Lovely sighed heavily and took a seat at the table across from Ilian. He fiddled with his mug of tea but didn’t drink it yet, just turned the mug this way and that, studied the faded bat symbol and picked at a chip along the rim.
He didn’t know what else to say, so he decided not to say anything at all. It didn’t seem as if anything he did was going to make Ilian stop crying, so he figured he’d just let the idiot get it all out and then maybe they could get back to sleep. It was late and Lovely was tired. He didn’t have the time or the patience for this s**t.
Which begged the question, why was he bothering? He didn’t know. If it’d been anyone else, he wouldn’t have wasted the time or effort. But, for Ilian, he found himself doing a lot of s**t he wouldn’t have done for anyone else, even s**t that made him uncomfortable. He had no idea why. Why did he keep going out of his way for someone who shouldn’t mean anything to him?
Because Ilian did mean something, obviously, despite Lovely’s very best efforts to live in a state of denial. That annoyed Lovely to no end. He didn’t know what Ilian did to make him give a damn.
A few minutes passed without another word spoken between them. Eventually, Lovely stood to retrieve a few ice-cubes from the freezer, which he dumped into their tea mugs in an effort to help their tea reach a drinkable temperature faster. Then he sat again and waited for Ilian to learn some restraint.
The table was a bit cramped, just a thin plain of wood with two benches set against the wall. It’d been painted multiple times in the years since the apartment building was first built. The layers were chipped and peeling back in certain spots, revealing a number of ugly colors. The most recent was an eggshell white that did nothing to mask dirt and stains. Lovely frowned down at it and peeled a bit of it away, revealing more of the pistachio green beneath it.
He wished he knew why he was having these dreams, why Lovely was in them in the wrong place. Yes, Lovely had been there the night Sorin died, but he was an observer, not part of it.
“I’m afraid of losing you,” he said softly after several long minutes and their tea already half consumed. “I know you said you’re not going to die, but you don’t know that. No one knows that, Lovely. You were almost killed before, in the subway…” he reminded him, still feeling guilty for the fact that Lovely had been the one to step in front of him to protect him.
Why, Ilian still wasn’t sure he knew, except for the fact that they were friends, he supposed. And allies. And they lived together, among other things.
“If I died, you’d just be able to go back to your family. Same with Jericho. And he has his own family now, so… all I have is you, and the Negaverse,” he admitted, knowing it probably sounded stupid to Lovely, but it was the truth. It was how he felt.
“I don’t know what I’d do. And I hate that. Because I know I’m the reason you and Jericho are stuck in the Negaverse to begin with. And… sometimes I think that if I did die, it would be easier for you, because then you both wouldn’t have to worry about what happens to me.”
It sounded pathetic, he knew. He wished he didn’t have to feel the way he did, but he didn’t know how to stop himself.
Acknowledging the subway incident caused Lovely’s mouth to twist into a severe frown. His brows furrowed in a way that might have made him resemble his surly oldest brother Claude if Lovely didn’t have such a pretty face.
Lovely never really liked to discuss anything about the subway. He’d made a big deal about being injured at the time, but as soon as the stitches were done and he left the hospital, Lovely refused to speak a word of it. In fact, he’d done everything he could not to so much as think about it since the day in question, because he still didn’t know why he’d jumped in front of Ilian. He also knew he’d probably do it again, and that thought unnerved him just as much as all this emotional crap from Ilian did.
There was a noticeable scar on Lovely’s left side, just beneath his ribs. It was a single line, no longer than two inches across. Almost a year later, most of it just looked paler than the rest of his skin, but in the very middle it was still faintly pink and a bit raised. Lovely ignored it more often than not. He didn’t touch it if he didn’t have to, didn’t look at it, didn’t draw attention to it. His hand twitched against the table and he had to stop himself from impulsively covering the mark. Instead, he focused on peeling more paint off the table, digging beneath the pistachio green to find where someone had once painted it a glaring yellow.
“You dying wouldn’t make anything easier,” Lovely grumbled.
The very thought made him uncomfortable. He shifted on the bench like finding a better position might ease the mild nausea that suddenly twisted in his gut, but it didn’t work.
“You think I want to do this by myself?” he continued.
Lovely didn’t bother clarifying what he meant by “this.” It could have been the Negaverse. It could have been their living arrangement. It could have been everything that came about because of their living arrangement. He wasn’t entirely sure, but it was very likely he meant all of the above.
He hated how unstable his voice began to sound, how he seemed more upset than angry, but even when he paused to swallow and try to control it, his voice still sounded a little strained when he made himself speak again.
“Don’t you ******** dare leave me alone with all those Negaverse psychos,” he said, because focusing on the Negaverse part was easier than muddling through their relationship. “I can’t just leave if you die. They’ll pull me back. You know they will. Or they’ll kill me because I’m useless. Or let me be killed, I don’t know. So… so you have to stay… and you have to help me… because all of this ******** sucks, but at least with you it’s not… not as bad as it would be without you.”
Ilian didn’t say anything at first after Lovely spoke. Everything Lovely said were legit concerns, although he didn’t think that everyone in the Negaverse were psychos. There were some, yeah, but psychos were everywhere, including on the White Moon side.
“You,” he started delicately, not wanting Lovely to get the wrong idea, but he did want to be prepared if something were to happen, “Might be able to… get assistance from the others. Purify, I mean,” he said with a small cringe because he couldn’t believe that he was even suggesting it. He would have never mentioned it to anyone and didn’t believe in it, but if Lovely really wanted to not be tied to the Negaverse, then… that was the only way, right?
“I’m just saying if you absolutely had to. Even I’m not stupid enough to think that the Negaverse is for everyone. No, I wouldn’t condone it, but if I wasn’t here,” He explained, not knowing how Lovely was going to react to all of this. He wanted him to understand that he meant well. His loyalty wouldn’t waiver, but if he wanted Lovely protected and not killed because they thought he was useless…
“I won’t die, okay?” he promised, figuring it was better just to agree to not go anywhere than to explain himself out of the whole purifying bullshit he just said. It made him feel queasy just thinking about it. But while he hated senshi, they were all at least disorganized enough to let Lovely slip through the cracks and not be bothered.
Lovely tried very hard not to glance up at Ilian, because this whole conversation was super awkward and he had no idea what the ******** he was doing or what he wanted to accomplish by continuing it, but then Ilian went and said he could purify if Ilian ever died, and Lovely couldn’t stop himself from lifting his eyes and staring at Ilian in shock.
That seemed so ******** up. Here Ilian was, intensely loyal to the Negaverse to the point where he ignored all the gross, creepy s**t some of the agents got up to, telling Lovely he could purify and join the enemy ranks, the very people responsible for the fact that Ilian joined the Negaverse in the first place, the people Ilian hated so passionately he wanted to see them all dead, whether or not he had the capability to kill them all himself. Ilian just flat out told him, “Defect if I die,” and he seemed… not totally okay with it, but like he thought it would be the best thing for Lovely to do under those circumstances.
“What the <********>?” Lovely said. His voice sounded low and rough. A little choked, maybe.
Not because he was getting emotional. He just didn’t understand.
“Why would you say that? You hate them. You… If I didn’t join the Negaverse with you and none of this s**t ever happened, you’d have killed me in a heartbeat if I was one of them!”
Hastily, Lovely tore his eyes away and glanced back down at the table. He ripped a large piece of peeling paint off, then scraped his nail against the edge of what remained.
Lovely didn’t know what any of this meant, except maybe that Ilian cared more about his well-being than he did about revenge.
That was some heavy s**t. Lovely was not prepared to handle that at all.
“Drink your ******** tea. I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said. “I’m not going to die. You’re not going to die. We’re going to just… deal with all this s**t like we’ve been doing since the start.”
Ilian scowled heavily in the direction of his tea, fidgeting as he sat across from Lovely because he didn’t like the way he said… all of that stuff. Yeah, he hated the senshi and everything they stood for, but he didn’t think killing them all was entirely necessary any more. There were other uses for these people, even if he hated them.
“I would not have,” he grumbled, ignoring Lovely’s instruction for him to drink his tea for the moment. “I would not have killed you in a heartbeat,” he paused for a moment and then he continued, his voice a bit strained, “I would have had you corrupted.”
Because that would have been completely logical. If Lovely or anyone else he liked was a senshi or knight, he would just have them corrupted and that was that. Yes, he was telling Lovely that he could always consider purifying if he died, so he wouldn’t have to worry about dealing with the Negaverse, but that didn’t mean he still didn’t hate them.
He picked up his now lukewarm tea to chug, finishing it quickly and setting the mug back onto the table so he could scowl some more at it. He wasn’t entirely convinced that Lovely wasn’t going to somehow get killed, and he knew the nightmares would continue, but for now he would just keep doing what he was doing.
Lovely scoffed, because he didn’t believe Ilian for a second.
Back when they joined the Negaverse, they were barely even friends. They were rivals. Acquaintances. They didn’t really hang out, not like most people hung out, going to parties or playing video games or whatever, but they didn’t make a point of avoiding each other either. It was a weird coexistence that worked for Lovely at the time, because it meant he had company without having to put much effort into maintaining the relationship.
Then Sorin died and the Negaverse happened and Lovely didn’t really have a choice, and he decided to stick with Ilian because if he was going to do this then he wasn’t going to do it alone, and Ilian was the only person he could tolerate. At some point things took a turn for… for something. He didn’t know. Lovely couldn’t explain it. They weren’t friends, but then they were, then Ilian was captured and tortured and Lovely ran away from home, and this whole fake relationship started, only over the last few months it hadn’t felt very fake at all.
And he didn’t know what to do about that. He didn’t know if he was supposed to do anything. They didn’t talk about it. They just… did things. Kissing. Fooling around. Stupid s**t he wouldn’t be caught dead doing with anyone else, but the fact that he’d do it with Ilian... that meant Ilian was… not in the same category as everyone else. Lovely didn’t know what category Ilian was in instead, but he figured Ilian telling him to purify if he ever died meant Ilian had the same category set aside for Lovely. Which definitely meant this wasn’t fake anymore, right?
So what was it?
Lovely grabbed his mug to gulp at his own tea. He wasn’t in the mood for it anymore, but it meant he didn’t have to talk for a while. When both of their mugs were empty, he moved to take them to the sink, refusing to look at Ilian again while his head was all over the ********, it’s late,” he said, when the silence stretched on so long it became awkward. “Let’s just… try to go back to sleep.”
Ilian didn’t think about what his and Lovely’s relationship was. It just was. There was no defining it. It existed, it was there, it wasn’t something that he questioned or wanted to be able to explain it to anyone else because it wasn’t their business. But he’d also never really thought about it in context with everything else.
He pushed himself up from the bench when Lovely suggested that they try to go back to sleep, not bothering to stifle a yawn that escaped. He would probably have more nightmares and continue to wake Lovely up, but that was something they would both have to deal with, he supposed.
He wished there was a way to not have the nightmares, but it was something he would have to live with, and it was something Lovely would have to live with as well.
Lovely wasn’t looking at him, so Ilian kept his head down as he went back to the bedroom and crawled up onto the mattress to flop back down, grabbing his pillow to tuck under his head and try to get back to sleep. He would just deal with everything as it happened. Or at least that’s what he told himself.
