Chapter Text
It didn't take long to find each other. Maybe the beach moved them closer together; who knew?
They didn't speak. All four stood in the fog for a long, deeply weird moment.
"You gonna be okay?" Parker said to Arthur.
"Enough for this," said Arthur.
Parker looked at Sunny.
Sunny nodded. John had talked.
Time to go. "Come on, sunshine," Parker said, and led Sunny away.
In the fog, swathed in cold and damp and fish, John and Arthur stood in awkward silence.
Arthur swallowed. Shifted. "So. R'yleh, is it?"
"Yes. Cthulhu's Carcosa, or whatever."
More silence.
"Are you leaving me?" Arthur said.
Fuck fuck fuck… "I know you need space, Arthur. I fucked up. I just don't know what we look like from here."
"Like I do?"
"Fuck, Arthur..."
"So you're saying that's it? You're going to run. Just run, like a coward."
"I want to! I don't know how to fix this, Arthur. But running won't fix it. I know that now."
"Good, because it won't."
John was silent.
"John, I still love you. The problem is I don't know now if I can trust you. You lied for years, and I didn't know."
"I never wanted you to know! I begged him to send me back, Arthur. To make you alive, to be put back in your head. I didn't want to be evil. I wanted to be good again. I…"
Waves on the shore.
Arthur broke the silence. "I don't want you to go."
"But?"
"But nothing. I love you. You've never betrayed me all these years, or I thought you hadn't. I don't know what to do with this. I can't even look you in the eye and ask if you did it any other time."
"I swear I haven't!"
Silence.
Arthur sighed. "Maybe we can talk to Tabby. Not that anyone needs to be burdened with this wreck."
"Tabby!"
"She understands minds and hearts. That's all I'm saying."
"You think I want more people to know what I did?"
"Well, according to you, it was all about to come out, anyway!"
Breathing hard, both of them, in the fog.
"If I tell Tabby, will that prove to you that I'm telling the truth?"
"I don't know, John. But it's a start."
Muttered: "Sunny was right."
"Sunny talked to you?"
"Yes."
Arthur softened. "He's your Parker. Did you know that? He pulled you from the edge, didn't he?"
"He told me how much of a coward I was being."
"That's what a good friend… fuck, there's a saying I learned from Daniel. 'Faithful are the wounds of a friend.'"
"He told me running would make things worse."
"Of course it would. If you ran, I'd have to fucking chase you. Blind. Probably pissing off every deity we found along the way."
John snorted. "I couldn't even hide. Not with the shit you do with the mark."
"So I'd not only find your ass," Arthur said, making an almost-giggle himself, "I'd have to do it by stomping right into whatever good old boys club you tucked yourself into. Right on stage, probably, in the middle of something. Shouting your idiot name."
"You'd… you'd trip over the timpani, or something," John said, aware his laughter sounded utterly insane, unable to stop it.
"Fall right into the orchestra pit. Bend all the trumpets."
"Some trumpet god would vow vengeance and chase us for the rest of…"
Us.
Your.
Us?
Arthur managed a broken smile. "Fuck. Is there a trumpet god? Wait. It's Zeus, isn't it? That asshole keeps coming up."
A few soft chuckles, then silence.
"I won't touch you again. I promise."
Arthur sighed. "You think I'm going to withhold sex as punishment?"
"I think you won't want to. Not while not trusting me."
"You're right. But that's not the same as some punitive nonsense."
"No. I know that. I… I'm sorry."
"Do you want to fix this?"
"What? Of course I want to, I'm just not a fucking idiot!"
"So do I. So. As long as we both have hope… and work toward understanding… then we have a path forward."
John shifted, feet idly tracing patterns in the sand. "Arthur, there isn't a path forward."
"You don't get to decide that unilaterally."
"But you do?"
"No. No. But right now, neither of us are thinking clearly. There's a path forward, but we're in a snowstorm. It's big, John. Huge. Terrifying. So cold it sucks the air from our lungs, and we can't see a foot in front of our face."
Our.
Us.
As if they still shared…
"We have to let the storm calm down before we can walk that path and see where it leads," said Arthur, hugging himself, shivering. "So that means letting the storm blow over. Will you sit with me, John? Through it? You're worth it to me, to sit through it."
John's mouth tasted so strange. "Arthur you deserve better."
"Who cares?"
John blinked away tears. "What?"
"Who fucking cares what we deserve? I care what we choose."
"It isn't that simple."
"It is, though.It is."
"You can't be over this that quickly."
"I'm not over anything. I may never be. It's complicated, John, for fuck's sake. This is no black and white situation."
"I think it's pretty cut and dried."
"It's not. And I refuse to just… throw you out as if all those years of you being good, by choice, don't matter. They do."
And just for a moment, just one, hope tried to stir in John's heart.
It fluttered, like a little bird. Tried to lift his head, to clear his gaze. To lessen the stress tightening his lungs.
He shouldn't allow it. There was no hope here. He didn't deserve the relief, and that relief would only make it harder later when—
Arthur reached.
Arthur was… a little off, pawing the air to John's left.
"Idiot," John said softly, moving so Arthur could touch him.
He wasn't prepared to be pulled into a hug.
John froze. Unsure. Fearful.
"Sit with me in the storm, John. That's all I ask for now."
John closed his eyes.
Cold wind howled.
"I will wait out the storm with you," John said evenly, slowly. "It will hurt, but it will hurt no matter where I am. I'll stay."
Arthur tightened his grip.
John leaned in. Then suddenly, he went stiff. "Oh, fuck," he said, and reached and pulled Arthur to his side.
The King in Yellow appeared.
The air tore. Heat like rage boiled over them, turning the beach steaming and muggy. Power pulsed out like radio signals, a promise and a threat.
"Where in the devil's mildewed closet…" said Odd, who'd apparently come along for the ride.
Hastur (who was not well it hadn't been enough time he was not well) snatched Arthur up in one enormous hand, then bellowed. “FAROE!”