Chapter Text
They're at Harry’s tonight. It's too cold to do the average bar crawl and they’re too fucked up to make it back to Jean's. It’s snowing outside. Drifting silently down from the dark sky, each flake clinging to its brethren to form impassible drifts and piles. Too treacherous by far for two inebriated men to wade through. By necessity alone they're brave enough to risk the filth of his apartment. A hurricane of half eaten take out now infested with gnats, unwashed clothes, and empty bottles, both prescription and alcohol, take up the majority of his floor space. Harry had stopped cleaning long ago. Why bother when it’s only going to get dirty again? Why bother caring when there’s no one to impress? The only thing extravagant in his home is his mess. Everything else is modest at best. His sofa, a miserable third hand thing, is shoved against the back wall beneath a narrow window. In front of it is a coffee table, the water damage on the cheap laminate top is completely obscured by junk and garbage.
By the time they got there Jean was either too drunk or high to care. He’d waded through the festering lake of refuse on fawn weak legs, unsteady from the combination of drugs and bad terrain. He reached the relative safety of the sofa and let his weight drag him down onto the forest green fabric, surrendering to gravity; his scathing mouth quiet for once.
It’s Harry’s home and as such he knows where the narrow paths through the filth are, trails picked clean through use more than effort. He wobbles into the adjoining kitchen, which is an exaggerated term for an area with a hotplate, a sink, and a small fridge. He never uses the hotplate.
Winter’s deathly touch raps gently on the walls of his apartment, knowing she can slip in easily through the gaps the of his windows and the cracks in his door jamb; her icy hand leaving fractal spiderwebs of frost behind like a notice of a truant debt. The heating can’t keep up with the draft. He’s always cold here. Cold and alone. Winters are the worst, Harry thinks, throwing open the fridge door. He takes out two bottles of whatever cheap piss he’d bought at the Frittt. Thank Dei they’re twist off caps. He’s too far gone to try and find a bottle opener in his mess. He wobbles back to the living room, generously slipping an opened bottle of beer in the crook of Jean’s arm. His eyes roll to Harry and he gives a small nod in thanks. Harry doesn’t bother trying to find a place to sit. He lets himself collapse on the floor, closer to the kitchenette in case he needs another drink. In the dim silence his unsteady arm limply lifted his bottle of pilsner to his dry lips.
Now he’s supine on the grimy high pile carpet. Reeking from years of indoor chain smoking and drunken piss and vomit. Not to mention the daily filth he tracks in after work. Long hours spent sifting through anything from corpses to raw sewage; searching for any shred of evidence that may close a case. Not that solving a crime does anything for anyone. Won’t bring a victim back to life. Won’t stop a future crime from happening. Won’t liberate Revachol from the choking grasp of the Moralintern. It’s a futile effort, he’s come to realize in the last few months. Nothing he does fixes anything, makes anything better for anyone else. Everything he does is for nothing. Nothing, his mind whispers. Nothingness. Abyss. Oblivion.
Yes, horrible winter is here. Death in the guise of a season. The gray sky will blur into the gray concrete will blur into the gray roads will blur into the gray snow; everything tainted by coal fumes and fuel oil exhaust. A child’s charcoal smears on a gray scale painting. And worse than that somehow, is winter outside the city. Out in the farm fields, where the buildings don’t break up the skyline. Where the snow on the ground meets the overcast sky, horizon blending seamlessly into the ground to become a singular, terrible continuity. He thinks that it must be similar to what an aerostat pilot flies through in the Pale. Everything becoming one. Everything becoming nothing. Sweet nothing. Painful nothing. Nothing like what he’s worth. Nothing like what’s inside him. Who knew that nothing was so heavy? Could ache so brightly. Could be so all consuming?
It feels like a weight; it’s holding him down. A mother scorned, it both cradles and chokes him. Long fingered and merciless. Her sweet voice murmuring that there is somewhere where there is no pain. Somewhere that is both near and far, if only he could find the strength to follow through. And for the briefest of moments, he swears he smells the cloying, syrupy scent of apricots, panted hotly across his face. The grief that tears through him is somehow more horrible than the nothing. A festering wound of years old longing and resentment rotting him from the inside. The pain of it is worse than the booze, worse than the drugs. Fuck at least those helped. Helped calm the howling cacophony that clawed and wailed inside of his skull. Muted the ever present question he ran from day and night.
How could Dora leave him? After he gave everything for her? Tried to bend and break himself into any shape that would please her. Worshiped her like an Innocence. Shaped his entire being around her. Only to learn that it hadn’t really meant a thing to her. All of her sweet words nothing but poisonous lies. Like a child bored with a toy, she had thrown him to the side without a second thought. And with her she took all the joy and meaning in the world. The apricots have rotted and fermented; filled with drunken maggots too weak and stupid to become flies.
So Harry has nothing. Nothing to be his purpose. Nothing to dedicate his pain to. He no longer has a god to bleed for but still the wounds weep. And now it’s all for naught. The only deity he has left is chemical. God now dwells in the bottom of the bottle. His new church is a plastic vial, apricot orange with a child safety lid and a black box warning. But fuck him to pieces does it work.
So he does everything he can to worship at his new altar. To have constant communion; an unending Eucharist that heals all of his pain. To dwell in the hallowed halls of serene languor only a chemical god can bequeath. That heavy bliss where his brain is finally silent. The screams of the world are muzzled; bound and gagged behind a heavy dose of sedatives. Sweetness, softness. The cutting edge of the world has been ground down, lovingly sanded smooth to cradle him painlessly. The agonies are forgotten, forgiven, and peace descends to escort him into a paradise eternally scented with summer fruit.
Let him live in those moments forever. Fuck everything but that feeling. Fuck everything that isn’t this. It’s the only thing on this pathetic isola that matters. He would die for it. Will die for it. Every sacred milligram chipping away at his organs; the liver especially. All the good shit loves your liver. Hepatically metabolized. Sure you feel great now but give it 10 years. Fuck ten years. Harry didn’t have 10 years. Harry didn’t want 10 years. Or five. Or 3. Or 1. Rot me from the inside out. Let me liquefy and bloat; let my skin rupture and let the putrescence inside of me spill forth onto the world. Finally, all the rot festering just beneath the surface will be purged. There are horrors living just beneath his skin that he can never escape. This way they can be someone else’s problem. Finally he will be free.
Night has descended on Revachol. But the darkness comes so early now it could be 17:00 or 2:00 in the morning. Impossible to know without the aid of a clock. He has one around here. He knows he does. Hung somewhere on his wall. His eyes roll in their sockets, scanning his surroundings. But it’s not the clock he sees. There, on Harry’s forest green couch, is Jean. Lanky motherfucker stretched out, open bottle of beer completely untouched.
He's blissed out on something, staring blankly ahead. He’s in profile, right side to Harry. His face is long and lean like the rest of him, what little youth he has left being quickly siphoned away by the cruel realities of a life in Jamrock. A combination of substance abuse, likely malnutrition, and the quickly disappearing winter sun has left his flesh with a gray cast; it does no favors for the stucco like texture his scars impart to his skin. Smallpox had left its prints all over him long before the RCM had. Jean, more unlucky than most, was left partially blind in his right eye. Doused in liquor and a bit of pyrholidon, Harry can admit that he finds the silver, milky hue almost pretty. A thin mercury ring painted around the gaping black hole of his pupil. Jean’s left eye is unscathed, his iris retaining the original color. It’s a powdery blue, like what they use to paint delicate little porcelain cups. Harry remembers seeing some in person once, locked away behind glass in Dora's parents’ home. Safe and sound from his fists. They must have known at a glance he would break everything he touched.
That’s the good thing about Jean, he thinks, a burgeoning fondness taking root in his heart. Jean was broken long before he’d been partnered with Harry. Failed relationships and a lifetime of poor choices haunt Jean just like they haunt him. And how wonderful, he thinks, that they can be broken together. He watches the play of dim lamplight over Jean. His hair is night black, unkempt and somewhat shaggy after a long day, having come loose from his more professional side part hours ago. His facial hair is patchy and uneven from the scar tissue. Harry wonders if he’s trying to hide the vestiges of his pox behind it. He’s curious if Jean ever imagines a life without them or if they’ve become a central part of his identity. If he would be able to recognize himself in the mirror without the damage. What is it like, Harry thinks, to identify as so much scar tissue? One look and someone knows you were so sick you almost died; that disease has left you so indelibly marked you can never forget it happened. You can’t pretend the pain you suffered didn’t exist, every second of misery and torment branded onto you permanently for the prying eyes of all the world. Harry wonders if, somehow, everyone sees the same in him. That the sickness of his mind is so virulent people notice it seeping into reality; the agony that claws at his insides printed on his flesh.
He’s sure he’s spent enough time with Jean that he can see it. Lived through enough horror story nights of binge drinking and drugging with Harry that, even with his fucked up eye, he can see the pathetic creature beneath his human disguise. But, despite that, Jean stays with him. Not as an act of mercy or penance, but because like attracts like. The voice of the Pale calls to him just as often, just as sweetly, as it does to Harry. The endless wound of their own existence bleeds eternally within them. The sore still festers just as virulently but at least there’s someone else who can understand how it feels. Finally, there is someone whose pain feels like his. Even if they’re doomed to be miserable forever, at least they have each other. It makes him feel seen; he is recognized and understood.
Jean’s head lolls to the side, movements sloppy and loose. Harry notes that the bottom of his nose is an irritated red; the blood vessels and capillaries just beneath his skin are breaking and inflamed from snorting uppers. The endless stream of violence they wade through together means that most nights are sleepless. Jean prefers amphetamines because they keep him going through all the shit long after a sober man would have given up. You can push through two days of no sleep and no food if you have enough dextroamphetamine running through your system. Just be careful not to grind your teeth down to nubs or make your heart burst out of your chest. Harry knows he likes to cut it with downers on quiet nights like tonight. Valium, klonopin, ativan, xanax; whatever he can get his hands on. It helps with the come down after a long binge. Chew them up and swallow down, dry mouth be damned. His stomach empty save for maybe a coffee with cream. There’s a reason for that rhyme too; fat binds with the drugs, making them hit harder and faster. You get more for less that way. Harry taught him that. He feels a wave of something like pride wash over him. Even after all these years he’s still teaching.
Jean’s semi lucid gaze lands on Harry, and for a moment Harry swears he knows what he’s thinking. “If I died tonight would anyone miss me? If I killed myself would you carry a scar in my shape?”
A warmth Harry hadn’t felt for years grows in him at that. Fast and invasive, like kudzu in the heat of Samaran, covering him in a verdant and all encompassing love.
“That’s a pretty way to say it,” he murmurs drunkenly, suddenly feeling giddy.
“What?” Jean asks, eyes trying to focus on him.
“‘Carry a scar in my shape.’ I like that.”
Jean’s face is pinched in confusion as he looks at Harry, brows furled in concentration as he tries to understand what’s happening.
“D’I say that out loud?” he slurs. He squints his eyes in the low light at him, having trouble processing what Harry said.
“Must’ave. Else how would I know you were thinking it?” Harry buries his fingers into the long fibers of the carpet to get enough grip to flip himself on his front, trying to convince his body he can claw his way to Jean. He’s lovely in the low light of his home, all deep blacks and smeary grays, a tiny accent of delicate powder blue in his mismatched eyes. Dora was the sun; golden and illuminating everything she touched. Bringing light and warmth and joy to the monotone world around her in a perfect Dolorian magnificence.
Jean isn’t like that though. Jean is pale moonlight on black water. Both cold and distant, his light is merely a reflection of something greater than himself. And in that beautiful, drug induced ardor, Harry wants to bask in it as well. It calls to him in siren splendor, beckoning him to plunge into the unforgiving depths. Yes, siren like a lure, siren like a warning. Won’t you come and canonize a new saint into your pantheon of lost loves, drugs, and sorrows? It’s natural, isn’t it? That beautiful, golden day wanes into freezing, black night; all draped in the hazy, scar studded reflection of a singular satellite. Locked in orbit to a body whose gravity is stronger than its own.
Harry manages to get his knees underneath him, his strong biceps lifting his torso. He crawls like a beast through the hell of his own making, knocking over empty bottles of Commodore, his large palm landing on a bottle of methylphenidate, sending it skittering further into the filth. The discarded plastic film from a cigarette box clings to his damp and sweaty hand briefly as he closes distance, unsticking into a pile of sweat stained laundry. Single minded want consumes him, and no obstacle will be able to stop him. Harry is something animal, heat seeking heat. Contact as proof of life. Just like every second of his existence thus far, he wants with a desperation few could fathom. But he knows that, on this rare occasion, he will have succor. There’s a final, hollow clink as an empty beer bottle knocks against an equally empty aluminum soda can. The sound heralds his arrival.
He kneels in front of the sofa, lifting his calloused hands to cup Jean’s face. Jean huffs through his nose and loosely tries to squirm away. Harry, undeterred, gently runs his thumbs along the jut of his cheek bones, reveling in the lumpy, uneven texture of his scars. His eyes, silvery and sad, moon pale in the evening gloom of Harry’s apartment, lock on to his. “What the fuck are you doing?” he slurs, weakly slapping at him. Harry grabs his hands mid swipe, threading their fingers together and caressing the joint of Jean’s thumb with his own.
“I would miss you, Jean. I would carry a scar in your shape.” Jean is silent, startled into momentary submission. The opened beer he had so generously placed in the crook of Jean’s arm spills to the floor, adding to the stench and filth already in abundance. But he can’t even bring himself to care. He doesn’t want beer or vodka or speed or smack; he just wants Jean. Harry’s hands, now warmed by flesh on flesh and the wanting therein, grab for his face again. Thumbs back on his cheeks, just under his eyes, fingers wrapping around his skull and clutching his hair. He swoops in quickly. He knows he won’t have a second chance. He presses his lips to Jean’s, harder than he’d originally intended. His tongue darts out, licking along the cracked contours of his closed lips.
Jean’s mouth opens, whether in protest or acquiescence, Harry doesn’t know or care. He slides his tongue inside, running it over the surface of his nicotine stained teeth. He can taste the bezos in his mouth; bitter chemicals sizzling on his tongue. Harry laps against the smooth flesh of his soft palate before slithering further down, trying to reach the silky smooth back of his throat. He wants to force his sickness into Jean. Some type of reverse mouth to mouth resuscitation where the only way Harry can keep living is by forcing his poison into someone else. He wants to puke it into him, like the way birds feed their young. Let my pain nourish you; take the burden of my agony into yourself. Let it both fester and flourish; some type of slime mold oozing through the underground, feasting on the rot and refuse of the city. Or perhaps they are something more malignant and cruel; something that can only live in the healthy tissue of something else. Because that's what Harry is: an infection. A disease. Crawling through Jean's veins and hijacking his cells one by one. Injecting his RNA into him to replicate. Until he's more Harry than Jean. Dora aborted his baby. Maybe this is the only way he can reproduce.
Jean is whining and squirming under him, but his hands remain still. When Harry finally runs out of breath he pulls away, his hands still holding Jean’s face. “You’re the only one who understands me, Jean. You’re the only thing I have left.”
Jean looks up at him, still panting for breath after being tongue fucked for so long. His expression hasn’t changed much, eyes dilated and muscles loose, hair even more messy from fingers winding through it. “Harry…” he pants, his cigarette strained voice rasping over the syllables. It’s the only thing he needs to hear.