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In a place that does not exist, Peter Sqloint sat in a room of flesh.
The walls were wet, uncomfortably warm and steamy, smelling like rotten meat and pulsing blood vessels. With every touch and every movement, Peter felt the surface underneath his hands move, squelching as it did. As he came to, he pressed a hand to the wall to steady himself into a standing position. His hand came away wet. He didn’t know what with.
Breathing through his mouth only left him with the taste of bitter heat on his tongue, slowly strangling him. When he called out, his voice sounded muted. He hammered at the walls and the walls oozed at the contact.
Peter Sqloint was no stranger to night terrors. Having an overactive mind in a noisy apartment complex tended to cause plenty. When he was younger, he had the words to explain them. Embarassed myself during a school project again. Running to nowhere. Drowning in an ocean that isn’t real. But nights like these, as Peter’s body laid in an unfamiliar inn with an archangel twisting his own thoughts, the terrors were difficult to put to words that made sense. Drowned in a lake of fire but none of it hurt. Watched my hands be hammered to a wall to dangle me like a decoration, like wild game being displayed on a mantle. Opening my mouth and watching roaches crawl from my throat.
The room.
The nightmare of the room of flesh never seemed to really end. Not until that night. Perhaps Exandroth had come up with an idea for a finale, one that began with Peter’s feet scalding.
The floor reaches up and swallows his feet. Climbs up his calves. With every shift of movement, the burning overtakes his entire body, as if he’d stepped into an open blaze and didn’t bother moving. When he screamed, no sound came from his lips. He simply sank, so agonizingly slowly. As his hand dipped below the surface, he managed to pull it free, even if it was just for a moment. To his own horror - and maybeit had been the thing that had forced his brain to wake him up - the texture of his hand matched the wall. Oozing, rotten meat, twitching like a dead animal.
Peter Sqloint’s nightmares always ended the same. His legs would be tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, his heart would be pounding in his throat, his body would be trembling. At times, he’d wake himself up to the sound of his own screaming.
This time, he woke in an inn, with bile rising in the back of his throat.
The effort to grab his glasses off the nightstand proved fruitless. They simply clattered to the ground. With blurry vision, he forced himself to hurry forward, his shoulder smacking against the doorframe of the connected bathroom before he crumbled to his knees and vomited. Every sensation was amplified - the feeling of his clothes sticking to his skin felt unbearable, the feeling of his hair soaked in sweat felt even more so, and underneath all of it, he could feel Exandroth pulsing underneath his skin, intensifying his already aching head. He was dying, Peter was so sure of it, and in the most wretched way imaginable too.
He leaned as he gagged again and his shoulder hit the opposing wall beside the toilet. Peter forced one of his hands to touch the wall, feeling its rough and cool texture, as if trying to prove to himself that it’s there. As Exandroth pulses underneath his skin again, groaning loudly in his ears, Peter lifted his shaking head and slammed it against the wall with a hard thud.
Nothing. He hit his head again, harder this time. But Exandroth was not an animal to be handled, nor a spider to be killed, and it isn’t long before Peter’s back to his original position, a bruise surely growing on the side of his temple.
He grips the toilet, white-knuckled, his arms shaking and his throat burning as if he’d coughed up a mouthful of bugs. The thought makes him retch again. Peter forces his eyes to close to keep them from popping from their sockets. Another retch. He can’t breathe . His mind raced as if death were incoming, wondering if he’d be found.
When the retches eventually ceased enough for him to take a breath, Peter’s face felt numb and cold. The heat of his own breath felt unnatural against his skin. Tears dripped into the water beneath his face, and his vision began to flicker.
The bathroom floor welcomes him with open arms as he pitches to the side.
He does not remember much else.
. . .
In hindsight, maybe Rumi should’ve guessed something was wrong when Peter had pushed an extra couple of gold across the front counter of the Dorhaven Inn, paying for a separate room completely. Not a bigger room, not an extra bed, but a room across the hall, sharing nothing but a wall between them. They’d tried to poke fun in their usual, lighthearted tone, something offhanded - Exandroth requires privacy tonight, I presume? But Peter gave no response. No laugh, no rebuttal, not even a visible blush underneath his glasses. With a curt good-night, Peter Sqloint closed his room door and Rumi heard nothing else.
Until the bleary hours a little past midnight.
The sound Rumi wakes up to is inhuman. It isn’t the sound itself that forces them out of bed with the speed and urgency of a man ablaze, however - it’s the realization that the sound had been coming from the opposing wall. Rumi stumbles. Tears open the door. Peter’s room door opened with no added force - had he left it unlocked? The bathroom door was ajar. The light streamed through the pale darkness of the bedroom, illuminating the tangled bedsheets, stained with sweat and lack of sleep. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Without a second thought, Rumi pushed into the bathroom.
The sight forced Rumi to stop, suddenly unable to move another step forward. Peter, sprawled on the floor in a heap of sweaty, tangled fabric and skin. His head’s fallen back, the whites of his eyes glowing faintly, but flickering like an old bulb. His body jerks, mouth opens, and with another ragged breath, he howls, the sound of a wounded animal crying out. It’s as if two voices were simultaniously bursting past Peter’s lips - that of Exandroth’s and his own. His muscles contracted and jolted violently, and in the light, Rumi could practically count every blood vessel in the whites of Peter’s bloodshot eyes, and it was then that they truly woke up and hurried forward. Peter Sqloint wasn’t going to die on the bathroom floor of a Dorhaven inn.
They could’ve known. They should’ve known. How had they not known?
In an instant, Rumi’s hands were on Peter’s skin, and in an instant, the fever made itself known. As they pulled a jerking Peter onto their lap, tilting his head to the side, the burning of the young man’s skin scalded Rumi’s palms. They’d felt fevers before, but never to this degree - even the sweat beading at Peter’s forehead seemed to gleam with holy light. Every piece of his suffering was stained with Exandroth.
They’re able to lean up and grab a washcloth from the bathroom sink, and with a bit of a stretch, they soak it in cold water and wrap it around the back of Peter’s neck. Slowly, as they sat, the screams slowly lessened to short, wet croaks, as if Peter were trying to swallow his own tongue, and eventually, the silence returned once more. The jerking stopped, the glow of Peter’s eyes flickered out.
A new sound filled the stillness.
He’s apologizing.
It’s unlike any apology they’ve heard him utter in the short journey of knowing each other. Peter’s voice was hushed and broken, barely a whisper of sound coming from his cracked lips. As his eyes blink open, he sits up, and Rumi keeps the rag pulled around his neck with a gentle hand. As Peter’s eyes met the wall, distant and cold, Rumi grew unsure who exactly he was speaking to. The words were barely coherant, muddled with fever. Sorry ’s and can’t breath ’s could barely be made out, and the sound of Rumi softly shushing him didn’t seem to have any effect. His head jerked and his body twitched through the trembling aftershocks of the seizure.
“Peter?” Rumi cupped their free hand to Peter’s cheek, tilting his jaw upward. “Do you know where you are right now?”
Peter’s hand reached up, blindly groping in the air until his fingers wrapped around Rumi’s wrist. Each tremor of his body radiated through Rumi’s arm.
“Rumi-?”
“There you are.” Rumi took the washcloth and mopped it over Peter’s dripping forehead. Peter unconsciously jerked. His foggy eyes stared back at Rumi blindly for a long second before he squeezed them shut, trying to block out the buzzing lights of the bathroom.
“No, Peter, come on now, keep those eyes open.” Rumi took Peter’s wrist in a soft hold. His pulse fluttered under Rumi’s fingers. With their free hand, they mopped up the rest of the sweat from the back of Peter’s neck, the cool towel already growing lukewarm.
“Too bright, too bright- ”
Peter’s neck jerked again and Rumi had to hurriedly drop the rag and stop him from hitting his head against the bathroom wall. The pink, scar-like indentation of the eye between Peter’s eyebrows shifted ever so slightly, as if preparing to open. Rumi re-wet the cloth with the coldest water the sink could muster, and pressed it against Peter’s face, blocking out the light. Peter’s back went rigid.
Rumi neared closer to the shaking boy’s face, their voice low and dangerously soft.
“You’ve done your harm, Exandroth,” they said. “Let him rest.”
Another double jerk as the archangel resisted against both Rumi’s touch and the feverish confines of the vessel. It was as if he hadn’t expected it - all the humanity that came with living in a human vessel. The angel never truly paid much attention to the physical limitations of Peter’s body, making it obvious that the pain was something Peter would deal with, not Exandroth. Rumi couldn’t have been certain if the fever was weakening the angel or not.
The jerking ceased. Peter took a shaky breath, the heat of the exhale pooling at Rumi’s collarbone. Exhausted, Peter let himself slump against the other’s shoulder, taking slow and shallow breaths as the trembling slowly began to subside. This is softness. Peter simply sat in it for a while, feeling the sensation of Rumi’s hands on his skin, the heat radiating from the pads of their fingers, feeling as though he was being baptized. Exandroth had no place here anymore, or so it felt.
“Tell me what happened.”
Peter’s eyes cracked open, focusing on the folds of Rumi’s pants and the light shake of his own hands. His forehead rested comfortably against their shoulder, against the coolness of their skin.
“Jus’ a bad dream,” it was easier to say it without looking up at them. He could fool himself into thinking he was talking to himself.
“That clearly isn’t it, Peter,” Rumi’s voice lacked any sort of venom or bite, and somehow that made the words hurt a little more. They just dripped with concern. Something in Peter’s stomach twisted. “Forgive me, but I wake up to find you screaming on the bathroom floor-”
“I’m sorry-”
“No, darling, I’m sorry,” Rumi cupped Peter’s cheek and tugged his gaze upward. The changeling’s eyes were so piercing that he had to look away to rid himself of the rabid butterflies that overthrew his stomach. There wasn’t even anything to throw up anymore, but he was still so certain his body would find a way. Darling. Darling. Darling.
“I shouldn’t have allowed you to feel as though you couldn’t come to me - to us,” Rumi’s thumb stroked across Peter’s cheekbone as if wiping away invisible tears, and the tenderness of the touch made Peter’s throat go tight and hot. “I know we’ve only known each other for a short time, Peter, but you can trust me. I will never be upset with you for needing a moment to rest.”
Peter swallowed, wringing his hands together. The intensity of the moment made him lightheaded.
“Just…didn’t wanna slow us down.”
“I would rather slow down our travels a bit in order for you to rest,” Rumi said, “than watch you suffer through a fever like this.”
Peter couldn’t breathe, and for once, it wasn’t because of any kind of panic. The gentleness was too much for him to process, to handle, and his head spun like he’d been holding his breath.
“If you’ll allow me,” continued Rumi, “I’d prefer to stay by your side tonight.”
There seemed to be some sort of silent acknowledgment between the two of them. Peter couldn’t handle solitude, and Rumi couldn’t handle the idea of leaving Peter behind to fend for himself if another nightmare arose, if the fever hit a peak in the middle of the night, if something happened. Sickness be damned, Blights be damned, Thanatos be damned - Rumi would’ve halted everything just to rest beside Peter until he was well again.
“In…my bed?” Peter stammered.
“Only if you’d prefer that,” Rumi clarified, grabbing onto Peter’s hands to stop him from trembling. “If you wish, I can sleep on the floor beside you.”
“No-!” Peter swallowed back a bit of his desperation. His heart hammered in his throat. “It’s…it’s okay. If you want. Do…what you want.”
“I want you to feel better,” they replied, before standing up and hiking their arms underneath Peter’s legs, lifting the smaller man up and away from the bathroom floor. Peter gave a strangled squeak, gripping onto the fabric of Rumi’s shirt for stability, and Rumi carried him out of the bathroom and back to bed with the ease of carrying a child.
In the comfort of the sheets again, as Rumi settled beside him, it was then that Peter’s digging craving for the comfort of the changeling’s touch returned full-swing. He could blame the fever later, but for now, he nested closer. Their chests pressed together, heartbeats intertwining, Rumi’s steady and Peter’s fluttering with nerves. Rumi’s hands were cool, thrumming with an underlayer of magic just under their skin, and it’s comforting. It’s enough.
Rumi let Peter sink lower into their arms as their hands carded through his mousy brown locks of hair. Beyond the drying sweat, he still smelled so faintly of sandalwood that Rumi smiled, pressing a kiss to the trembling man’s hairline. He keened, and Rumi finally came to a realization that had been budding in the back of their mind since the two had met. The terrorized recognize the terrorized. The bruised recognize the bruised. The haunted recognize the haunted. And in Peter’s anxious touch, Rumi could practically trace every ghost under his skin with their fingertips.
We aren’t so different, Peter Sqloint. They mused, twisting another lock of hair through their fingers. Human or otherwise, archangel or without.
Peter Sqloint didn’t even need to be human. He didn’t even need to be alive. For now, he just needed to be in Rumi’s arms. Something that was stronger than both the feeling of being alive and being human combined.
The night grew light and soft, like a distantly drifting fog, and the two slept better than they could recall sleeping in years. Things could be alright for now.